From Addiction to AI: Richard Schreiber’s Journey of Resilience (Part 1)

What if your greatest struggles were the foundation for your greatest impact?

In this powerful episode of Rise from the Ashes, we sit down with Richard Schreiber, a man whose life journey stretches from the gritty streets of 1980s New York—where addiction and the crack epidemic shaped the city’s pulse—to the forefront of artificial intelligence and ethical tech.

Richard opens up about his battle with addiction, the gripping reality of self-doubt, and the unrelenting pressure of balancing fatherhood—particularly raising a special needs child—while building a high-stakes career in IT. His story is one of raw transformation, fueled by resilience, faith, and an unwavering commitment to ethical AI’s role in autism care.

Inside This Episode:

🔹 The Dark Side of NYC in the ‘80s – Addiction, survival, and breaking free from destructive cycles
🔹 Beyond Sobriety – The deeper emotional work required for true healing
🔹 Imposter Syndrome in Tech – Overcoming self-doubt while navigating high-pressure environments
🔹 Faith & Meditation as Catalysts for Change – How spiritual practices became Richard’s anchor
🔹 AI & Autism Care – The groundbreaking intersection of technology and human empathy

From surviving the streets to leading innovation in artificial intelligence, Richard’s journey is proof that transformation is possible for anyone willing to embrace faith, purpose, and resilience.

🎧 Tune in now for a story of grit, recovery, and the future of AI-driven impact.

📢 Join the Movement → A Million Dreams Success Circles
⭐ Subscribe & Leave a Review → Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Listen Notes

Colorado’s best business coach, Baz Porter, has a new mindset strategy mentoring service to help you unlock new heights of growth, prosperity, happiness, and success. Book your first meeting with the coaching visionary at https://www.ramsbybaz.com/

Chapters

• 0:02 From Burnout to Brilliance
• 5:08 Overcoming Addiction and Resilience in Career
• 16:58 Journey From Addiction to Success
• 29:08 Rise From Ashes

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, whatever time of day, it is, welcome to another episode of Rising Ashes podcast. This is season five, and season five is all about, from burnout to brilliance, the roots of burnout and betrayal in leadership. This is a vast subject because people think burnout is just fatigue. Burnout is just a state. It isn't, and there are many forms of burnout Insomnia, there is addiction and there is just total fatigue and collapse. But they have many different areas.

Speaker 1: 0:43

My next guest is an amazing human being. He's very much heart-centered. He's also a personal friend of mine and I've known him for nearly four years now. Richard Schreiber is somebody who has a heart of gold and I invited him on the podcast to share not just his wisdom but his story of where he's come from through addiction, through challenges and going through a period of his life where his daughter had autism and the struggles with that, and many families often face this daunting time as well. Richard, welcome to the show and how are you today? Please tell the audience what you do and a bit about who you are.

Speaker 2: 1:32

Sure. First of all, thank you, baz, for having me. Hello everyone, I'm doing great. It's New Year's Eve about to be. We're recording this, so 2025, I'm just so excited about and really grateful to be here today.

Speaker 2: 1:48

What do I do, boy? I have many different identities. First of all, I am a Christian and a believer in Jesus Christ. Secondly, I'm a father and a husband. I'm a father of a special needs daughter which has created just an amazing color and purpose in my life.

Speaker 2: 2:08

I started as a journalist. I still consider myself a journalist. That's how my mind operates. I'm pretty good at interviewing and questioning and seeing both sides of an issue, many sides of an issue. But I got into IT kind of early on in my career, even though my background is more in liberal arts and journalism.

Speaker 2: 2:26

As I mentioned, worked on some of the biggest projects out there with some of the masters of the universe when I first got started. Created software platforms, custom platforms, for decades. Also had some consulting career in business process outsourcing. So I've got the operations side of the brain too going on.

Speaker 2: 2:47

More recently, I have taken the bug, if you will, the AI bug, in a big way, understanding and recognizing that it is the single biggest phase change in my lifetime, even more so than the internet or personal computing was and I'm just so excited, in particular being an autism advocate, on what it means for advances in autism care and how AI, properly deployed and I wrote a bestselling book about this in a very faith-based, in a very humanistic, compassionate and ethical way, ai has a chance to really change the world and solve a lot of the world's problems, eliminate a lot of diseases and provide advances in in medicine and medical profession that are just transformative yeah, I love what you do and I know what you do very well because I've been with you and been friends for a while now.

Speaker 1: 3:47

When you were leaving and we'll back up to the journalist part of it when you were leaving and moving away from the journalist and that sort of theatre, what was the transition like? I believe it was about the 80s, wasn't it? When you were coming back, what was the reason you actually left? Do you mind sharing?

Speaker 2: 4:10

Yeah, I had a brief career in journalism but for whatever reason, baz, I think at that time in my life I struggled with imposter syndrome and really reconciling if I was good enough to be a journalist which is crazy, because I stuck a microphone in Larry Bird's face and in many professional sports athletes while I was in college and I was always a really good interviewer because I was a great listener, very learned, very well prepared but something happened, I'm not quite sure why. In any event, I don't like to look back on life with regrets, but, transitioning from that, I moved to New York City with 40 bucks in my pocket, no place to live, and it was a disruptive time in my life. I just gravitated towards at that time what I needed to do really to survive, towards at that time what I needed to do really to survive. And God has gifted me with some skills and some abilities and I guess I gravitated towards that in operations and ultimately, and I just made a career out of it.

Speaker 1: 5:17

What I love about you is your resilience, because the transition for anything is quite hard Going from one thing to another, because the transition for anything is quite hard Going from one thing to another, there's all the unknowns of it, and generalistic views back then were very much different than they are now. There was a whole different theatre. There was whole different ball games. The world was a lot different. It was the 80s. There were a lot of normalities which was acceptable back then the drugs, the sex, the rock and roll, all the rest of that stuff, which is a fantastic era. If you grew up in that, because you're not a snowflake in this society now where you're just pampered, that's just my opinion. Right or wrong, it doesn't matter, but back then this was acceptable. Burnout there was often a normality. For people like yourself who were going through transitions. The burnout factors came in many different ways.

Speaker 1: 6:15

Addiction was one of them, because we masked things with this. Now I know, because I know you very well. You went through the drug addictions. How did that actually start for you? Well, you went through the drug addictions. How did that actually start for you?

Speaker 2: 6:25

if you don't mind sharing, yeah, that's definitely an interesting point, certainly the 1980s, at least the beginning of the 1980s, in New York City where I grew up. If you will, I graduated college in 1980 and then moved directly to New York City within months of that. It was a lovely time. It was the height of the club era in New York Danceteria Area, red Parrot, all those fun places, and even after hours clubs. New York was the place to be for the clubbing scene, at least from my perspective. And it was a fun time. And you were young. So, yeah, you would stay out till two, three in the morning, drink and smoke pot and get up at six to go to work, or at least try to, and so the burnout there wasn't. When you're young you don't even think twice about burnout, you just go full tail, full without controls and you worry about those other things later. But it takes a toll and it has a compounding effect and by the end of that decade the light that the decade started in New York turned into darkness because New York was overrun by the crack epidemic by the latter part of the decade and unfortunately I got caught up in that and as I think back as to why that happened, certainly I was in proximity to it. Think back as to why that happened. Certainly I was in proximity to it. And what a lot of people fail to realize is that at its height, one in 10 people in New York City were doing crack. So it was in the boardrooms, it was in the bedrooms, it was in the bathrooms, you know, later it became, unfortunately, a drug that was primarily predicated towards lower income folks, but in the beginning it was very widespread.

Speaker 2: 8:07

For a couple of years and I got caught up in that and it definitely anesthetized some of the pain. But it also gave me this kind of exhilarating feeling that I never felt before that I could just do whatever the F I wanted. And of course, the high was just the first time you try that substance. It puts you in a stratosphere of euphoria that you just can't even imagine. And of course, each subsequent time you do it diminishes and that's why you keep doing it more and more. But yeah, it was a time in my life where doing it more and more. But yeah, it was a time in my life where, looking back, yeah, I lost control and I'll never forget.

Speaker 2: 8:50

There was one evening I think it was in 1986 where it got to a point where I looked up at the sky and said, god, this isn't happening, this isn't right, this I'm not enjoying this. Take me, god, I'm tired of this pain. And I got through it. I went away, visited a friend where I was drug free basically for the week, and that helped a lot, but it still took me a good two to three years to get off that merry-go-round. I was able to find my way into Cocaine Anonymous and this was at a very interesting time also Not interesting, in fact, very dark time because the AIDS epidemic was running in parallel to the crack epidemic and I lost so many friends during that period due to AIDS. We're also intravenous drug users and cocaine users.

Speaker 2: 9:50

It was the harshest time in my life and, by the grace of God, I'm just so grateful that I got sober and now 29 years have been changed. But it changes your life again when you go through the darkness and come out the other side your appreciation for life and the positives in life. I don't know how to ascertain the chemical impact on my brain and my body and my soul and my being, but I think yeah, you mentioned the word resilience. It wasn't my intention to really test my resilience at that age, but sure I certainly did, and it's probably made me a better man today.

Speaker 2: 10:38

I don't advocate, of course, anyone to go through something like that. If you can go through life drug and alcohol free, that's the better route to go through something like that. If you can go through life drug and alcohol free, that's the better route to go because you don't need it. It doesn't provide anything positive. You don't need. The experience and moments in my life where I've chosen to be drug and alcohol free were some of the most freeing, relaxing, productive moments in my life, and I'm actually going through a spell right now where I've returned to my roots, if you will. I was sober for eight years where I didn't do so much as an antihistamine in my body and that allowed me to regenerate and hit the reset button it's interesting.

Speaker 1: 14:09

You said that eight years, seven or eight years, you didn't do anything. People think that because they go to rehab, or a group of people, right or wrong, if they work, great, if they don't, also it's an experience. But it doesn't stop there. As you're you're going into now, which I think is very poignant. It's a poignant, pivotal point in your life and so many other people. The journey doesn't stop because you go to rehab. It's the start of a journey and then it's re relearning how to socialize and be another person or a different identity in society. That's, I think, the hard bit. But you mentioned something earlier which is great the emotional impact. You said you felt numb. You said you felt as if you were, you didn't want to be here, you didn't belong. That's an emotional component that a lot of people who go through addictions, including myself I'm for those people who know me, I'm an ex drug addict, alcoholic been there, done that, got the t-shirt and the rainbow and the whole went to the other side of the moon. But the emotional component has a longer, longer lasting effect. Your body can heal but the emotion it's still there, the memory muscle for that is still there. I still. I walk past bars now and I'm sure you sometimes feel the same. Walk past bars and go oh, I'll just. No, I won't just pop in for one, because that one will turn into 16 and I'll be on the bars jumping around like a lunatic and the next time I'll be in a jail cell and I may not come out. So it's the discipline and the emotional discipline that you gather while doing it.

Speaker 1: 15:54

Now, richard, you're a high performer. You work at some of the highest levels and have done for many years. Ai space at the moment, the computer space, the IT journalistic interviews these are all high, demanding jobs and roles. What was the driving force for you transitioning out of journalism, going into IT and then realizing what you had as an IT consultant and probably one of the most leading, formidable, leading experts in America, if not the world, doing what you do? What happened in that period of your life where you were like I want to do this and what did the transition afterwards like? How did you level up after going after addiction, after the emotional component, recovery, because this is huge for you yeah, into. I'm now an it consultant, I'm going to be responsible, whatever that means, and step up my game.

Speaker 2: 16:59

I have to first of all acknowledge and thank God because when I started my IT career, I actually transitioned into my drinking and drugging period and still managed to not only keep myself intact, but there was a brief moment where I came back down to earth. I was managing a billion-dollar startup with a partner and we were doing well, but my drinking and drugging took effect and we actually lost a client or two because of that and he ended up selling the company. I was not an equity partner and my former boss, if you will, really did not go out of his way to provide me an opportunity with the new entity. So I took a 50% pay cut, but it wasn't just the financial impact which was unwelcome, but it wasn't just the financial impact which was unwelcome. It was very humbling and very humiliating, but it was exactly what I needed at that time. May I ask why, richard?

Speaker 2: 18:04

Again, I think it harkens back to when you are a drug addict, and a lot of people certainly who did crack or cocaine during that period lost it all and I was blessed and there were a couple of times I fell three months behind on my rent and my boss wrote me a check so that I could get even and I made sure that didn't happen again. I always had. I guess one of my real strengths is that, in spite of everything I did, god has given me, like this, internal governor that allows me to get to the precipice but not go over the edge. I never ended up on the street. I never hurt anyone, I never robbed from anyone. I never did anything other than to myself. I didn't kind of damage or harm during that period of my life.

Speaker 1: 18:54

But that takes self-discipline. And you're mentioning something here which I love. It's faith, it's grace, it's something that's a driving force within you and addicts lose it. They lose that component a lot. I was one of them. So when I speak about you lose faith, you lose grace within yourself and everything around you. I know because I lost it.

Speaker 1: 19:18

I was an asshole for a very long time, but you didn't. You kept it and you kept your integrity. That takes so much courage within you. And don't confuse courage with resilience, because they're separate. Yeah, courage is great. Courage is knowing. It's an inner compass, it's that moral, the moral, uh, part of you that goes I'm not doing the nasty shit that everybody else does and that that to stay that course is honorable for anybody, especially being an addict for drugs and then alcohol intertwined with it. Burnout comes and your experience in this now, with what you're describing, is you've replaced something from drugs cocaine, the white powder, snow, whatever you want to call it into masking something else which is a deeper-seated issue, and the IT component, the guided faith or an encompass, pulled you out of it, didn't it?

Speaker 2: 20:26

Yeah, no, it really did. Because, again, my career started before the drinking and drunken period. Somehow I survived through it and again, by the grace of God, I avoided falling off the cliff entirely. And then, once I gathered myself, then I began arguably one of the most productive periods of my life in total sobriety. One of the most productive periods of my life in total sobriety. And a lot of that was triggered also by around 1996, when the company that I was working for and managed to work myself back into a favorable position. There. I ended up training my replacements, two young MBAs who came in and I trained them and taught them everything about the business and whatnot. And then in December of 1996, I was ushered out the door, but I was okay, and that's when I started my consulting practice and within weeks I had my first consulting assignment with Morgan Stanley and that lasted into the next, the following year, and then did more consulting work and that that was a really good transition for me, because it taught me how to fend for myself. It taught me how to hang my own shingle, it taught me the value of being responsible in every aspect of your life. At that point I was in a relationship too, and that person had two daughters that I adopted and helped as best I could, and so it was a period where a lot of positive things were happening. Again, I can only say, by the grace of God, whatever inside me caused me to step up to the plate and do what I needed to do and fulfill as best I could what I was doing just happened.

Speaker 2: 22:27

The burnout really came later period, when I took a job running development, software development, and I did a Y2K project in 1999. It was a legitimate Y2K project because it was for Goldman Sachs and it was a system that we knew wasn't going to work. It was an old VAX system, the year was two digits and it was an incredibly successful project. But burnout, oh my gosh. I worked so many hours and that was the beginning of this mindset that I ultimately developed. The kind of take no prisoners project manager is what I morphed into, and I think a lot of it was because of that project, because that project had you do a project that has literally a hard deadline Y2K project. You had a hard deadline. If the thing didn't work on January 1st, you're fucked and everything we did. You know all the long hours I had to learn. I had to learn how Goldman Sachs did their entire international accounting practices and learn their general ledger, their accounting systems, because we had to recreate accounting entries to post to their general ledger from the software system we were building. So it was a in retrospect it was a pretty extraordinary period to have to get up to speed on all that and it turned out to be incredibly successful.

Speaker 2: 23:57

We went to UAT after Thanksgiving, went successfully January 1st, the light bulbs came on and no issues, and later we actually yeah, Afterwards, goldman Sachs honored us with a dinner saying it was one of the most successful independent third-party software development projects they'd ever been part of. So it was a lot of pride went into that. It wasn't just me, I was the project leader, you know we had software people and it was all hands-on and it was a great thing and so much. Five years later they invited us back Goldman to recreate, webplifyify the system from client server and yeah, I was with that company for about 14 years. We later white labeled the products and moved it on to most of the investment international banking community in New York and I was running things basically. So it was quite an interesting period.

Speaker 2: 24:49

But again, there were other projects that, and adopting that mindset as I said, I've taken no prisoners caused a lot of friction. There was a lot of ego involved and definitely some burnout Working with a Chinese development team 12 hours ahead, often up till two, three, four in the morning, getting very little sleep but getting the results. But it was taking a toll on me and in other ways physically, emotionally, and I don't recall if there was so much of a crash, but there were times when stuff didn't work. I'm not the kind of guy that plays the blame game, but there were a couple of instances where that happened and which I truly regretted because I've always been someone who feels accountability stops with me you mentioned two things here and this still sounds true for you today.

Speaker 1: 25:47

I know that. I know you very, very well. I like to think so faith and self-responsibility, or self-accountability. Yeah, for those people listening to now and they're thinking, burnout it some christian guy. Drugs, rock and roll, 80s it doesn't matter what era you were born in, these things still exist today, but they exist in different forms. So if you're now going, oh my God, it isn't me, please take another look at what your surroundings are, who you're associating with, because the five people you associate with is who you're becoming. So if you're surrounded by drug addicts or people you don't really like, or just there for passing the time, you're going to become that. Equally, if you're surrounded by focused people who are becoming billionaires or millionaires, or seven figures, six figures they have drive, they have impact, they want to change people's lives. That's also what you're becoming. That's just fact. It's just how it works. Get a pen and a paper and write down the four or five things that are driving you in your life right now, because in the next six months what's going to happen is they're going to change and you're going to notice patterns. So, for the listeners, write these five things down and understand what you're addicted to now. Have no shame in it, be honest and then re-evaluate it in six months. Burnout isn't just about your physical burnout, it's about emotional. It's about mental, spiritual and the physical.

Speaker 1: 27:41

Yeah, what richard's journey has done and the way he's told this story. He's come from a place of being dropped into an ocean in journalistic realms which was heavy in many opinionated ways. In the same thing, he was dropped into IT and he rose and recalibrated, but, more importantly, he didn't ever give up. Anybody who is successful has always got a past. Cody Sanchez, who is a world-renowned businesswoman she owns multiple companies. She says this quote anybody who has ever been successful has never had an easy past, and that's very true. I want to end part one, richard, with a quote from you. What's one of your favorite quotes that still sticks with you today?

Speaker 2: 28:44

That's a good point. I would think I would draw on my spiritual and God's message to me, which is we are not alone. He is there and the path that we choose, if we just trust and have faith in him, then we will succeed. He will deliver for us and it's his will, not our will. I spent much of my life imposing my will, only to realize the damage it caused and inevitably it wasn't my will, because it was his will, and that's what I would invite people to perhaps pray and meditate over. Get out of yourself, get into your heart and realize that. Get into your heart and realize that it's really up to him and god loves you and god definitely loves me. Man, I've been a sinner. I hate you have no idea, and we haven't even talked about some of my other addictions and we won't go there.

Speaker 1: 29:45

but he knows what's in our hearts, he knows the goodness that's in our core and if we just trust in ourselves to access that through through the holy ghost, through him, then we're going to be all right I love that, richard, thank you very much until we meet again in part two, where we go into artificial intelligence, which I'm very passionate about, and so is richard, but we'll also speak about how he transition from the the cyber side of it into an updated version of it into, I think, is people are calling it now the sixth, or fifth, or sixth revolution. It's going to set up the rest of the world for a very long period of time for myself. Thank you for listening, thank you for being here. Please share the message, subscribe and change somebody's day, because this message from richard and it's not my message, it's richard's is a testament to someone's resilience, coming from burnout into brilliance. That was rise from ashes. Part one with richard schreiber, and I'll see you very shortly for part two.