This is an excerpt from my full-life memoir, Un Fn Myself — my real story of addiction, recovery, fatherhood, and everything in between from 1984 to 2026, including the parts most people would cut out.
You are about to experience my life in insanity, addiction, and recovery from 1984 to 2026. This is a raw, unfiltered account of what actually happened. I tell you how chaotic my life was, how messed up I became at times, the stupid choices I made, the trauma I carried, how deep my alcoholism went, and how much I tried to escape from myself. You will hear about my childhood, my college years, my time as a police officer, graduate school, meeting my ex-wife, getting sober through Alcoholics Anonymous, spiraling again in different ways, circling the drain, and eventually building a massive online following that reached over a billion views before I deleted everything to write books like this.
You are going to enjoy this journey because I leave in the things most reasonable people would cut out. I include the embarrassing parts. The moments that make me look bad. The stories that are uncomfortable to admit out loud. I also reflect deeply on all of it, sharing how I learned to live with more love and how I navigated some of the hardest parts of life while still finding joy. Writing this book has been incredibly therapeutic for me. If there is one thing I hope you take from it, it is that this book is an example of what you can do too. I hope it encourages you to write your own full life story. You can dictate it into your phone, turn those voice memos into transcripts, and use AI to help shape them into written form. Having a record of your life is powerful.
Working through this book helped me see something clearly. I am the creator of my reality. One decision at a time, over forty-one years, I built this life day by day. The first half of this book is largely about how I wrecked myself through addiction and constant escape, first through video games, then alcohol, and later other distractions. The second half is about trying to unravel all of that. If you have struggled with being overweight, addicted to screens, abusing substances, drinking too much, feeling out of control, or wondering what the point of life even is, I have been there. I share what it was like to be eighty pounds overweight, to feel hopeless, to try extreme diets, lose weight, give up, and gain it all back. I share what it was like to drink compulsively. I share what it was like to have a marriage that felt beautiful and then slowly fall apart and end in divorce.
My hope is that you recognize yourself somewhere in these pages. Sometimes this book serves as a bad example, a clear illustration of what not to do. Other times, it shows how getting sober through Alcoholics Anonymous became one of the most positive changes of my life. More recently, quitting video creation and walking away from being an influencer to focus on writing books like this has been another profound and positive shift. I love doing this work. I love showing up every day to write.
This book also serves as a prequel to my Daily Autobiography series, where the lens zooms in much closer and the details become even more granular. If I have one regret in my life, it is that I did not spend five, ten, or fifteen minutes a day writing about what happened that day, either that night or the next morning. I wish this book had been assembled from forty years of daily journal entries instead of memory alone. Going forward, that is exactly what I am doing. In my Daily Autobiography series, I dictate daily diary entries about what happened and what I was thinking, then I publish them. I leave in the parts that make me look bad, which is what makes them honest, real, and worth reading.
I believe deeply in being the change I want to see in the world. This book shows the changes I have lived through. I hope my kids one day read or listen to this and recognize some of the traps I fell into, like alcoholism and video game addiction, and see that there is a way out. I am truly grateful that you are here, reading this with me. I am honored by the time and attention you are giving to this story. I love you as a reader, and I hope this becomes a meaningful journey for both of us. Thank you for starting it with me.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.