Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

A lot of people think, you know, sobriety is about quitting something. I got to quit smoking, I've got to quit drinking. I got to quit doing this or that. But anyone that's kicked a serious habit knows that it's not so much about quitting as it is confronting, not just your relationship with that substance, but why you turn to it in the first place, what it's doing in your life, what whole it's filling,

what problem it's helping you medicate or run away from, you know, it's about facing your

emotions instead of running from them, how to deal with chaos and dysregulation instead of

just reaching for relief. And I think that's why stoicism has become so popular in 12-step groups and

recovery, but also just anyone trying to get control of themselves, trying to deal with those

things that Seneca says, make us a slave. And Seneca isn't even just talking about substances,

right? Seneca's talking about ambition, talking's talking about power. It's talking about wanting to be liked, wanting to be famous, wanting to be rich. And for the Stoics, it wasn't about perfect abstinence necessarily, especially for some of these things that actually are a part of life, unlike, you know, cigarettes, which you don't need

to smoke or crack what you don't need to do. Some of these other things are a more integral

part of life and therefore confronting them and our dependence on them or our unhealthy

relationship with them is even harder.

I was talking about this a few years ago with Troy Baker.

We did a great episode of the podcast.

We're talking about Marks-Ruilis, and the idea that Marksurelius is not the work of someone who has mastered himself once and for all, but someone who's still wrestling,

still correcting, still trying, still confronting himself in the fight to be the person that philosophy

wants him to be. This is what we said. It's important that we don't see the Stoics. He's not writing

in meditations from this sort of sage-like Zen perspective of having triumphed over his emotions.

It's the opposite. He's saying that because he got pissed at people today. I literally picture him from the river. You know, he's like, sitting there going, you gotta get your shit together, man. When there's a passage towards the end, he's like, you're an old fucking man, and you're still doing this, you know, and you realize this is not, this is not teenage Marcus putting down

rules for how he wants to be. This is 30, 40, 50 years of philosophy, Marcus, who's still having

trouble with this shit. With great teachers along the way. It's not like he didn't have a model

for it. Yeah. Like he had literally the best education and he's still struggling. There is sometimes where I think that the employing of comparison can be helpful. And that's what today's conversation with John Guston is about. It was a lovely little conversation. John is the creator of the tired dad. If you spent any time on TikTok or Instagram, you've got kids, probably the algorithm has surfaced you, his stuff. A couple of years ago, his wife bought him stillness is the key, my book, and then Daily Dad, which he was saying were sort of a transitional point in his life when he was trying to get sober, trying to write more, trying to be a better father and husband. And in this episode today, I wanted to riff a little bit with him on his path to

sobriety. What made him change? Practices that are helping him stay sober and how stoicism became

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