The Fear and Loathing in the Law Edition

Episode Notes

Transcript

@theBar

The Fear and Loathing in the Law Edition

03/07/2018

[Music]

Jon Amarilio: Hello everyone, and welcome to CBA’s @theBar podcast, where young and youngish lawyers discuss legal news, events, topic, stories, and well, whatever else strikes are fancy really. I’m your host rather, Jon Amarilio of Taft Stettinius & Hollister, and co-hosting the pod with me today is Sally Pissetsky Steele of Pissetzky & Berliner.

Hello Sally.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Hi everyone.

Jon Amarilio: This is Fear and Loathing in the Law. With us today is Brian Cuban. Brian is an authority on Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Male Eating Disorders and Addiction. He’s the author of best-selling book Shattered Image: My Triumph Over Body Dysmorphic Disorder.

He also writes extensively on these subjects. His columns have appeared on CNN, Fox News, in the Huffington Post, and in online and print newspapers around the world.

Cuban speaks regularly about his recovery and breaking the stigma surrounding eating disorders, addiction, mental illness. His newest book The Addicted Lawyer: Tales of the Bar, Booze, Blow, and Redemption. I love that title, Brian.

Brian Cuban: Little alliteration there.

Jon Amarilio: It’s available on his website  HYPERLINK “http://www.briancuban.com” briancuban.com. Brian, welcome. Thanks for joining us.

Brian Cuban: Thanks for having me.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Welcome to the Bar ironically.

Brian Cuban: Yeah, yes, yes, yes; it’s been a nice day in Chicago. Tell us a little something about your journey?

Brian Cuban: Well, I am a one-time practicing lawyer. Now, my license hasn’t been suspended, I haven’t been disbarred but it wasn’t for a lack of try. I am in recovery from alcohol and cocaine addiction and I had been in recovery since April 2007.

I grew up in Pittsburgh. I have three brothers. A lot of people know my older brother Mark, I have a younger brother Jeff. We all live in Dallas, and my journey has been an interesting one, from trading Dallas Mavericks championship tickets for cocaine.

Jon Amarilio: You mentioned that before. I got it. Tell me that story, what happened there?

Brian Cuban: Back in June 2006, the Dallas Mavericks were going to the NBA championship for the very first time and this was before I went into recovery as you might imagine. I was going to get some pretty good seats for those games, right?

Jon Amarilio: Yeah, I would think so.

Brian Cuban: I also had the opportunity to get a couple of free tickets, very nice ones for some friends. I took those tickets and instead of giving them to my friends I traded them to my drug dealer for a thousand dollars in cocaine, twice. Interestingly, I flushed it down the toilet twice.

Jon Amarilio: Is that right?

Brian Cuban: Yes.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: That’s stressful to read.

Brian Cuban: Not because – yes, I mean it was stressful to wake up the next day and realized I had flushed now $900 worth of cocaine in the toilet because I had done some, but it was kind of like we call the “insanity of addiction.” I had even drilled fake electrical outlets in the drywall in my house to take the cocaine and put it in all these little Ziploc baggies to hide it behind all these fake electrical outlets; like the cops, the DEA and the drug dogs have never thought of that before, right?

Jon Amarilio: Was your house ever raided by the authorities?

Brian Cuban: In my mind it was.

Jon Amarilio: In your mind.

Brian Cuban: I was very paranoid. In my mind, I heard the cops, I saw the SWAT team coming through my window like at the end of Christmas vacation.

Jon Amarilio: Oh wow. It’s dramatic.

Brian Cuban: There is a lot of paranoia with a hardcore cocaine addiction.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Yeah, that’s a theme throughout your book, it’s the ongoing sort of concept struggle between I have to get my life together and because people are always kind of looking over my shoulder, you constantly talk about worrying about other people and authorities and the police, but something overpowered that quickly.

Brian Cuban: Absolutely. That is why we know that addiction is not a choice. And it’s interesting, a lot of people get lost in that nuance. Was the first time I did a lot of cocaine a choice? Absolutely. That was a choice, it was a choice that was influenced by a lot of environmental factors, a lot of feelings about myself, about self-loathing that go back to childhood, but it was a choice.

The biological process of addiction that followed from that was not a choice. Addiction is a disease. I did not do that first line of cocaine in a bathroom in Dallas, Texas, saying, you know what, I’m going to lose my career as a lawyer. I’m going to get divorced three times. I’m going to go to jail, and that’s great.

Jon Amarilio: Yeah.

Brian Cuban: And I’m going to love that. It wasn’t a choice.

Jon Amarilio: And we should probably start out by saying that this is a problem that a lot of lawyers face, right? There was, I remember, a few years ago, a study from the American Bar Association and the Betty Ford Foundation came out, it said one in three practicing lawyers are problem drinkers, 28% suffer from depression, 19 shows symptoms of anxiety. I don’t know any lawyers at all that don’t show symptoms of anxiety. So I questioned the study on that regard, 29% of new lawyers to find is their first 10 years of practice are problem drinkers, I mean, this is epidemic proportions, isn’t it?

(00:04:54)

Brian Cuban: Absolutely, and the study was actually just this last February.

Jon Amarilio: Oh okay.

Brian Cuban: So, yes, and actually the lawyers under 10 years, Millennials, I think everyone but me at this table, and which is interesting because the last study, which I believe was in 1990, found that lawyers who are my age were the problem drinkers, so it has reversed.

Jon Amarilio: Okay.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: And this is a self-reporting thing, I mean it’s probably even worse than that they say.

Brian Cuban: Absolutely, absolutely.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: You can ask me and my friends any day, nobody asked us that study.

Brian Cuban: Absolutely, and as to other substances like cocaine and illicit — other illicit drugs, there weren’t even enough lawyers responding to an anonymous survey to have a clinically significant finding, because lawyers are so stigmatized about something illegal they could lose their 05:44 ticket, that they’re not even going to respond anonymously where alcohol use is legal, it’s more accepted. So that was easier.

Jon Amarilio: So, let’s talk about that. It’s obviously a gigantic problem that’s out there. What if anything is being done to address it? You’re writing this book.

Brian Cuban: Well, the study came out first, the Betty Ford, ABA, Hazelden study came out, which told us about the problem. Now, the ABA has just released a task force report, we were talking about this, that is very extensive that has all these recommendations.

So, there are things being done. There was a ‘New York Times’ article that came out “The Lawyer, the Addict”. Awareness is slowly being created, so how are we going to implement energies to take it from awareness to recovery, and that is a good question.

We need law firms need to get involved; big, small, Bar associations need to get involved because the majority of lawyers are not in law firms, right? They are solo practitioners or even really small firms.

Jon Amarilio: Right, so they don’t have the infrastructure, yeah.

Brian Cuban: So, they don’t have the infrastructure and they don’t have the stopgaps for someone to say, hey, something is going on here.

Jon Amarilio: Right.

Brian Cuban: A lot of social isolation within small firms, solo practitioners. We have to implement procedures and we need the legal assistance programs to get involved, we need law schools to get involved because a lot of the starts in law school, addictive law students become addicted lawyers.

A study came out a long time ago that found that law students tend to come into the law school relatively mentally healthy, but they come out worse than they were.

Jon Amarilio: I think that’s going to surprise anybody, yeah.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Surprising.

Brian Cuban: But where that really fits in is that we all bring our baggage to the game, right? With lawyers we bring our childhood baggage, we bring our home baggage, we bring our mental health baggage. So, a law student walking into law school that may have unresolved mental health issues even though they may feel like they are on a level playing ground.

Those issues can be triggered by stress, those issues can be triggered into drinking as a way of dealing with stress, and the same thing happens with lawyers. We bring our baggage to the game, lawyers are people too. Let me give you an example.

I talk to lawyers all the time and all they want to talk about is, okay, I’m going to get sober, I need to do this, I need to work on my — I need to repair my relationship at home, I don’t want to lose clients, I just need to string together sobriety.

Jon Amarilio: Yeah.

Brian Cuban: That is right. We need to deal with where we are, right?

Jon Amarilio: Right.

Brian Cuban: For me, I had to get sober to deal with all the other stuff and I start asking questions and I don’t ask questions about drinking or drug use. I ask questions about family, I told them about my family, I ask them about their relationships at home, I ask them about growing up.

I’ve had lawyers tell me about sexual abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse at home, mental abuse, childhood abuse. Now, I am not a counselor, I refer — I say we need to refer you to deal with that. But the point is, they said, I’ve dealt with that, I’ve dealt with that, I’ve dealt with that, so —

Jon Amarilio: But they haven’t.

Brian Cuban: But they haven’t, but they haven’t. They compartmentalize it because they don’t want to allow themselves to be vulnerable.

Jon Amarilio: So, if I hear you correctly, it’s the chicken and the egg, which is kind of one of the questions I wanted to ask you, is there something about the law that attracts addictive personalities and that’s why we see these high numbers or is it the other way around, that there’s something about practicing the law that turns people into these addictive personalities?

Brian Cuban: There is other profession, I do not believe are predisposed to addiction.

Jon Amarilio: Okay.

Brian Cuban: Because that would get into genetics.

Jon Amarilio: Yeah.

Brian Cuban: Right?

Jon Amarilio: Yeah.

Brian Cuban: So genetics loads a gun environment, pulls the trigger. Genetics is what predisposes us. So, we know that as a profession, that doesn’t — it doesn’t work that way. Does the profession attract a personality type that couldn’t be more easily triggered into drinking, drug use, sure, we’re Type A personalities. You work hard, you may not have healthy ways of dealing with stress.

(00:10:00)

Jon Amarilio: Yeah.

Brian Cuban: And the legal profession is not a profession that provides healthy ways of dealing with stress.

Jon Amarilio: It’s a drinking culture, isn’t it?

Brian Cuban: It’s a drinking culture. It’s a drinking culture that starts in law school.

Jon Amarilio: That’s how you network.

Brian Cuban: When I was going to Pitt Law in 1986 we had Beer Keggers right in the still lounge. I don’t know if that’s going on now, but that’s a drinking culture, I mean, call me, I’ll just spitball here that that’s a drinking culture.

Jon Amarilio: Sally has been here more recently than I have. Sally, is that the whole thing?

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Yeah, I’m also in the Chicago Bar Association, does a show every year and it’s called Christmas Spirits for a reason. It is more drinking less performing, I would say.

Brian Cuban: That’s right and that is not to say

Sally Pissetsky Steele: I’m just kidding, not really.

Brian Cuban: No, I mean, this is an issue. This is an issue, it’s not – and it’s with a lot of Bar associations although I think Bar association is starting to reevaluate that approach. We can’t cater to a profession in terms of, okay, if you don’t have a problem drinking you’re just — everyone is a problem drinker, everyone is not a problem drinker; but we can recognize that as a profession we can take steps that there are other alternatives for people who don’t drink.

Jon Amarilio: What do you mean?

Brian Cuban: Well, I see Bar associations now doing rock climbing.

Jon Amarilio: Ouch, yeah, okay.

Brian Cuban: Law firms want to have their holiday party, are we offering the appropriate alternatives for non-drinkers? Are we empowering people who don’t want to be in that — people who are in – are we empowering people in recovery to not feel ashamed to attend these events?

Sally Pissetsky Steele: That’s really interesting. I know a lot of big — I never even thought about that, but Christmas parties are really just alcohol-centric activity. That’s what everyone thinks of as soon as —

Jon Amarilio: I mean, that’s the best part about them.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Yeah, usually right for some people, but I didn’t even think about. There are people out there that will probably feel ostracized if they don’t party.

Brian Cuban: They feel ostracized and it is a major stress factor. I have lawyers telling me that is one of the most stressful times of the year. I do not want to go to this event, but I have to go to this event. Everyone is going to be drinking at this event. If I don’t drink at this event will people think something differently of me? Will people bring it up then will I have to tell them I am in recovery, it becomes the stressful stigmatized chain of thought.

Jon Amarilio: Let’s talk about that, the stigma that’s attached to this. One of the things we were talking about before the pod got going today was that a lot of law firms aren’t dealing with this because there is a stigma not only attached to the lawyers as individuals but if a law firm comes out and says, we are going to address this problem because it is a problem in our firm that they may be afraid that clients flee, that infects their good name and image, that kind of thing. What can be done about that? How do you convince law firms? That’s a little easier for Bar associations, right? But how do you convince law firms where a lot of lawyers are big medium-sized firms to address an issue like that on any of those concerns?

Brian Cuban: Okay, well, let’s give the context of this. There was a Wall Street Journal study that came out where talked about how some bigger law firms were actually putting counselors on retainer to help lawyers –

Jon Amarilio: In-house.

Brian Cuban: In-house.

Jon Amarilio: Yeah.

Brian Cuban: Or just bringing them in to deal with lawyers who may have mental health issues, who may want help, and there was one I’m not going to call the guy out, but said, we don’t want to that. It was a managing partner firm. We don’t want to do that because people will think our lawyers are “crazy”. So, if we do anything to help people will think our lawyers have a problem.

Jon Amarilio: Acknowledging the problem itself.

Brian Cuban: That’s right. So, we’re thinking about it from the back and forwards. How about taking the steps so our lawyers have fewer problems? One of the things we talked about that I feel law firms should consider are mental health panels, if you have a law firm that’s big enough say medium-sized law firms, a mental health committee that meets twice a year, that talks about whether how things are going from a mental health standpoint and how we can better empower lawyers within the firm to do better and to seek help that also encompasses wellness. What is so hard about that, why is that such a problem?

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Are you finding it all though right now we are living in a time where mindfulness and wellness is kind of on the forefront especially for Millennials? Are you finding it all that law firms which are traditionally very male-led and —

Jon Amarilio: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: — may be not quite as open as other cultures, like social media cultures to have this kind of wellness program installed? Are you finding that there is a little trickle of that in the legal world?

Brian Cuban: Yes, and we also — you bring up a great point about wellness. I am a big fan of wellness, I am a big fan of mindfulness, and I am a big fan of anything that supports a recovery program in that way. We have to distinguish between wellness as a recovery support and wellness as an excuse not to deal with addiction. Okay?

(00:15:12)

I see people talking about wellness and a bootstrap on addiction where we have these addiction stats, these problem drinking stats. Hey, wellness, what we don’t want are lawyers who may be dealing with a problem drinking issue, a drug issue to say, you know, if I just meditate that’s going to be everything I need to do. If I just start running that’s going to be everything I need to do. No, we have to have baseline recovery issues, baseline recovery procedures, and then when you move into what recovery wellness becomes part of that.

So, my issue with wellness is that it’s taking on this all encompassing type aura where we really need to focus first on helping people get sober after dealing with that. Helping people deal with the depression. Do we need to be on antidepressants? Do they need to be getting psychiatric help? That is different than wellness.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: There is also a preventative aspect though to it for people who haven’t — not yet gotten to that.

Brian Cuban: That’s right, that’s right, and wellness is great for that. So, my issue with wellness is when we confuse things. There’s wellness for people who just want to have a better mental health outlook, who may have no issues whatsoever. There is wellness for people in recovery who want to have a healthier recovery. Wellness is not a baseline treatment for addiction.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: There is — Nichol is somebody who helped us prepare for this podcast today, in her law school experience she did have a class about alcoholism and certain addictions in the legal world. I don’t know if you know this, Brian, but Illinois actually just implemented a requirement that one hour of our continuing legal education has to be around — I don’t really know the specifics yet because it’s new.

Jon Amarilio: No one does.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: But it is something one hour of our requirements that we report every —

Brian Cuban: That’s great and I know the ABA has recommended that every State adopt that. So I think that’s a good thing and I think that’s a great first step. But again, I don’t want people to think of anti-wellness. I just believe that wellness should be placed in the proper categories, within law firms, within recovery.

Jon Amarilio: You don’t want this to get lost in kind of a lot of the white noise of wellness.

Brian Cuban: That’s right. That’s right.

Jon Amarilio: Bringing in fruit once a week to the law firm isn’t going to be addiction.

Brian Cuban: That’s right, and yoga is great, meditation is great, but let’s be sure it’s within its proper perspective.

Jon Amarilio: It’s a good point it’s probably also a good time to take a break. We’ll be right back

[Music]

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[Music]

Jon Amarilio: So, Brian, one of the things that we mentioned in the last segment was the drinking culture that exists in law and not only in law school but in the practice of law, especially for young lawyers. Can you tell us more about that, what your experience has been?

Brian Cuban: Yes, the drinking culture for me, starting — well, my drinking culture started at Penn State. We have to remember, I was a “alcoholic” by my sophomore year at Penn State.

Jon Amarilio: Sophomore year undergrad?

Brian Cuban: Yes, sophomore year undergrad, so I was already drinking heavily at Penn State, already I was bulimic, dealing with that. I was exercised bulimic, which is the compulsive exercise for the sole purpose of offsetting calories, running 20 miles a day. So, I was bringing all of that to Pitt Law, and it’s important to understand that the only reason I went to law school was that I could repeat the same behaviors that I did at Penn State and not have to show them to anyone.

Jon Amarilio: You mean just because you stayed in school?

Brian Cuban: To stay in school. That is the only —

Sally Pissetsky Steele: The path of least resistance.

Brian Cuban: The path of least resistance, that is the only reason I went to law school; that’s it, no other reason; and so, I walked through the doors of Pitt law with that already under my belt.

Jon Amarilio: Okay.

Brian Cuban: So, when you walk in through the doors of and into a drinking culture, it was perfect. Every other night is a different bar, the law students going to a different bar although they knew how to — the ones who did weren’t problem drinkers knew how to prioritize things. When I wasn’t doing that I was back in my apartment, binge drinking a bottle of tequila, just to be able to walk out of the house.

(00:20:08)

There were again the happy hours within the law school lounge where we had the Keggers right in the law school lounge.

Jon Amarilio: Yup, sounds familiar.

Brian Cuban: So, you have the people like me who already had issues, it could be easily triggered into issues, you have the other law students who — it’s not going to — they can have a good time and move on, but then you have the other law students who may not have those issues but all of a sudden they are learning to drink as a way of dealing with stress.

Jon Amarilio: Right.

Brian Cuban: And they may have experimented with alcohol before as a teen or in college, but in law school we are really now socializing to drink as a way of dealing with stress, and back then there was really nothing else. We did not have legal lawyer assistance programs of any type back in the ‘80s, let alone ones that also cater to law students, which many states do but some don’t.

So, we did not have awareness of counseling, there really wasn’t an awareness of 12-Step, Alcoholics Anonymous is the biggest one. In my day for a law student who is a problem drinker, who a “alcoholic”, you were either not in recovery, you were in a 12-Step program or you were in a hospital. That was it. We didn’t have residential treatment. We didn’t have this awareness where students were talking to each other. Deans of students who were aware, that has changed, but has the drinking culture changed? I think we were stepping back from that. But, once you become an alcoholic law student, a law student who learned — who is now culturalized to deal with problems by drinking, you were going to take that boom right into the legal profession.

Jon Amarilio: Where it’s incredibly useful for business generation?

Brian Cuban: Absolutely, where you are now networking, where now it may be encouraged as a way of bonding.

Jon Amarilio: Absolutely.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: My question is, I’m sorry to interrupt, but men versus women you were saying also this ties into an eating disorder that you also had, did you find that — I imagine that a woman experiencing a lot of this stuff would probably be recognized a little bit faster than a man going through all of this stuff, and so did you ever notice this in women versus men, or how did that kind of?

Brian Cuban: Are you talking about alcohol or the eating disorder?

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Everything, because I imagined one kind of rolls into the other sometimes, but let’s talk about alcohol since that’s a theme.

Brian Cuban: Well, the ABA study found that there were some different demographic groups where men and women drink differently, but from an anecdotal standpoint, I mean all I hang around — all I eventually hung around with were other lawyers and other non-lawyers who were drinking, dealing drugs and doing coke.

Jon Amarilio: Right.

Brian Cuban: So, it wasn’t like I was making those distinctions while I was not in recovery. As somebody in recovery I do believe that we deal with the — I do believe that there are different ways of dealing with how we express ourselves in terms of alcohol, in terms of addiction, but again, I’m not a clinician and my observations would be more anecdotal than something that is study based.

I think the ABA, Hazelden Study really goes into that and how the different sexes in different demographic and age groups know that the problem drinking rates.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Did your friends or family ever say, hey, do you think you have a problem or did you just avoid them?

Jon Amarilio: Like, your brother Mark is known for being pretty blunt guy.

Brian Cuban: Well, you have to remember. That’s a great question. The first when it came to head was in the summer of 2005 when all of this came to a head, when I became suicidal, when I believed in my heart that I was doing my family a favor to end my life that I saw nothing but a black hole in my future. I saw no career as a lawyer, a career I never wanted in the first place. I saw that no relationships, I had already been divorced three times all failing as a result of drugs and alcohol. I saw nothing of value in my future.

Jon Amarilio: So what changed?

Brian Cuban: I bought a weapon and I put that weapon on my nightstand and somebody fortunately alerted my family and my two brothers showed up at my house and I had that 45 Automatic on my nightstand, there was cocaine everywhere, there were alcohol bottles everywhere, there was Xanax lined out all over the place, I was into the black market Xanax. That was when it really became evident that there was a problem and that was my first of two trips to a psychiatric facility.

(00:24:56)

Before that I had really distanced, I had distanced into the people who did drugs, the people who drank, the people who party all the time, and during that time I went from a lawyer making about six figures, which in my mind was the marker of success money, because money allowed me to buy more drugs.

Jon Amarilio: Right.

Brian Cuban: Money allowed me to party. I was always broke because I was spending all my money on cocaine and drugs, and cocaine and alcohol. And so I went during that period up to the point where they came in my house with that weapon. I had gone from a successful lawyer to having no clients at all, none.

Jon Amarilio: Really?

Brian Cuban: All of them failing. I was doing cocaine in the bathroom of the law firm I was of counsel to, I was doing cocaine to be able to work, walk into a courtroom. I was high in courtrooms, I was taking cases I shouldn’t have taken, because I needed that money. We were joking, and remember I said, as I said earlier it wasn’t — I still have my license but it wasn’t for a lack of trying to lose it.

Jon Amarilio: Yeah. Yeah I can —

Brian Cuban: And I did many things that crossed the line.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: In your mind was there a point, like can you pinpoint exactly the time where it went from sort of gray to just all black or —

Brian Cuban: Yes, and that was in 2005, that was the summer of 2005, and that would venture, that would segue into a conversation about suicide. And we’ve had — lawyers have a very high suicide rate, and as I think back on that, and I even ordered my psychiatric notes from Green Oaks Psychiatric facility.

I ordered from two reasons. One as a lawyer in case someone said that never happened. Yeah, I wanted to be able to say, here is the psychiatric notes, both my brothers in the room, so you’re wrong.

Two, I wanted to — it was such a fog that I wanted to be able to look back at it and see what I was really thinking, see what was said in the room. There was a lot of blame on my family, of course, it wasn’t their fault. There was a lot of blame on my brother, Mark, of course, it wasn’t his fault. There was a lot of talk about having to live in his shadow, and that wasn’t his fault. His success is wonderful.

There is another, we can talk about that too what I call Name Fame. When someone has no identity of their own, I had — I hated myself so much it became easier when Mark became famous to be that, to be Mark Cuban’s brother rather than to be someone I despised when I look in the mirror. I could be Mark Cuban’s brother and date girls half my age, every relationship based on cocaine of course.

Jon Amarilio: Oh, so you could just leverage that relationship to feed the addiction?

Brian Cuban: Absolutely, it was easier to be that. It was easier to walk to be — to be — this fake love, this fake adulation that had nothing to do with me, to get this love that I wanted so badly from my mother, from my family to love myself. This artificial love that wasn’t real, but I could walk into nightclubs, everyone loved me. People put cocaine in my pockets. Everyone loved me.

Jon Amarilio: Yeah.

Brian Cuban: I was — 45 girls in their 20s, everyone loved me. And so why not be that, instead of being Brian, instead of exploring that Brian who was hurt so badly because he didn’t think he was loved as a child. Much easier just to fill the void with fake love.

Jon Amarilio: So, summer 2005, that was the turning point?

Brian Cuban: That was the darkest, and that was when it just went like that. I went from a fog into a suicidal state.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: And you don’t know why? You can’t pinpoint exactly?

Brian Cuban: It just happens that fast.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Yeah.

Brian Cuban: It happens that fast, and when we talk about suicide that is one of the things I’m always careful about, and it always just breaks my heart when people talk about selfishness, it’s selfish, it’s a selfish act. I thought I was doing — I didn’t think in terms of selfish. In my mind it was perfectly logical to me that I was doing my family a favor. It was not selfish, it was an act of love to take my life.

Jon Amarilio: I get that, I just don’t know why people have to do it by jumping in front of the train in the morning and ruining everybody’s commute.

Brian Cuban: If I don’t — is that a serious question?

Jon Amarilio: No, I am just kidding.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Just trying to lighten it up a little bit.

Brian Cuban: Oh yeah.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Well, so – go ahead.

Brian Cuban: So, talk about suicide, we have to be — I try to be really careful about that because it was a fog that my mind just switched over just like that. That was not even my “rock-bottom”.

Jon Amarilio: What was?

Brian Cuban: My rock-bottom was — and I really hate that term, I prefer recovery tipping point, because rock-bottom has become this term that we assume you have to experience the worst in your life to recover.

Jon Amarilio: Right.

Brian Cuban: Which is exactly when I try to get lawyers and law students to realize we don’t have to do when I say today is as good as it’s ever going to get, right?

Jon Amarilio: Yeah.

Brian Cuban: We don’t have to wait for “rock-bottom” to come. I had started dating this girl, Amanda, in 2006, right around Dallas Mavericks cocaine take its time.

(00:30:04)

I met her while I was at the end of a week-long cocaine binge celebration of my birthday, which was very normal for me. Every birthday celebration was just a week-long binge, drug and alcohol binge.

Jon Amarilio: Yeah.

Brian Cuban: And as usual I was able to pull it together for enough time to make it seem like I was just this normal lawyer, everything’s great, but eventually in addiction those worlds do come crashing together.

Jon Amarilio: Right.

Brian Cuban: And so we started dating, she moved in with me. April 2007, she went away for a weekend to Houston. Next thing I know it’s two days later. I’m lying in bed, there’s cocaine spread out all over the dresser. There is Xanax on the dresser, there is alcohol bottles everywhere. She’s looking down at me, what’s going on here? trying to process the scene, I had a 2-day drug and alcohol-induced blackout, and of course as a lawyer I’m thinking what lies can I kill to get out of this? I’m going through every permutation of something that I can say that will deflect away from the scene that there’s no way to get out of, right?

Jon Amarilio: Right.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: And she had no idea.

Brian Cuban: She had no idea, she had no idea. So, I decided I needed time to think of a better life. So, I said, okay, we’re going to go back to Green Oaks Psychiatric facility. She didn’t even know about the first time. I said, let’s go here. I need help figuring that would mollify her.

Jon Amarilio: Okay.

Brian Cuban: So, we’re standing in the parking lot of Green Oaks Psychiatric facility waiting for another psychiatric intake, and a few things occurred to me; one, there won’t be a third trip back because I’d be dead; two, it occurred to me that she was gone, I’d go too, right? She’s crying and she’s hurt, she is angry. She actually, Amanda actually stood by me and we dated for over ten years while I found recovery, built recovery, rebuilt the trust that I had destroyed and I had to recover for me, not for her, because without recovery whether she goes or stays, you are still in trouble.

Jon Amarilio: Sure.

Brian Cuban: And she stood by me and we got married, last October.

Jon Amarilio: It’s wonderful, congratulations.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Congratulations.

Brian Cuban: Thanks. So, relationships can survive that, but it takes work, and I realized early on it had to happen for me, not for her.

Let me give you an example of the microcosm of what I realized. She had just moved in with me, so now she’s moving out. Okay, that same line, I know she’s gone, she moved, instead we’ll go to a hotel, she’s going to move out the next day. I could have put my head in the sand and allowed her to move out and not played any part of it and just said, go, I helped her move out and I looked her in the eye and I helped her move out because I knew if I didn’t take ownership right there I would never see her again, and it would be a detriment to moving forward in recovery.

So, as much as it hurt, as much as I was just wracked with guilt and knew that she was hurting and she was just devastated and betrayed; every piece of furniture to her car I was there, and I believe that was a big part of her staying.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Do you think kind of showing her all of your cards at that moment in time was something that kept you accountable for the rest of your actions?

Brian Cuban: I think in the end it did, but I didn’t look at tailgate 33:27 at the time. I showed her all my cars because there was just no way out of it.

Jon Amarilio: Yeah.

Brian Cuban: I mean, she walked in with it all right there, I mean that’s what we call an orgy of evidence, right?

Jon Amarilio: Right.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Every lawyer would love that.

Brian Cuban: Yes, yes, yes, so there was really no way around that, taking responsibility for that, but I had to take responsibility for me. I had to take responsibility in my recovery, so helping her move out, knowing that I may never see her again she clearly hadn’t made a decision at that point and I would guess at that point her mindset was probably, no, it’s not happening, but that was important to take ownership of what I did and of my first step in recovery right there.

Jon Amarilio: So, you’ve said a couple times as we’ve been talking about recovery, used the phrase today is as good as it gets.

Brian Cuban: That’s right, but let me — I want to finish the thought — do we have time?

Jon Amarilio: Yeah, of course.

Brian Cuban: I want to finish the thought because the third thought in that parking lot was that I was going to lose my family.

Jon Amarilio: And that hadn’t occurred to you before you said you were keeping your distance from her.

Brian Cuban: No, that hadn’t occurred to me before that time because families may love us unconditionally but there are probably going to be limits on there and we hope they do love us unconditionally. Some families don’t have that. There are probably going to be limits on a family’s willingness to watch somebody they love destroy their lives and kill themselves if they’re not going to at least try to recover, take that first step, and I knew I had reached that point and it is a funniest side.

(00:35:01)

My father, our father, Mark, Jeff and I, 91-years-old, a veteran of the Pacific, a veteran of Korean War, he and his older brother Marty, my father was the middle of three boys, like I’m the middle of three boys. He and his older brother, Marty, fixed cars in the same place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from the end of the Korean War till his older brother died in 1999. Now, it was like a bad marriage sometimes, two brothers working together.

Jon Amarilio: Yeah, strong bond though.

Brian Cuban: But it was that bond of brothers, the three boys, and he constantly tried to instill that bond in Mark, Jeff and I growing up. He would say, guys, he would go Mark, Brian or Jeff or he’d get our names wrong and go Jeff, Brian, Mark. He said, don’t worry about it, dad.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: My mom does that.

Jon Amarilio: My parents do that too.

Brian Cuban: Don’t worry about it dad, we get it.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: What’s your name? Jon?

Jon Amarilio: One time my mom called me by my dog’s name, so, yeah.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Yeah.

Brian Cuban: He would say, wise may come and go, well, for me they certainly have, like he is kidding, right? He is kidding. He’d say girlfriends may come and go, being tongue in cheek we hope you have great relationships, but when push comes to shove, all you have is each other. So, no matter where you go in life, no matter where your travels take you, you pick up that phone and you tell your brother you love him. You ask your brother if there is anything you could do for him.

This was what his parents instilled in him with his brothers, and he was passing this gift onto us. I thought about that gift in that parking lot, and I couldn’t lose that. And if you want to know how that gift stuck, all these decades later in Dallas, Texas, 1,200 miles from where we grew up, Mark, Jeff, my father and I, all live walking distance from each other. That’s no accident, that’s the bond that my father instilled in us that I was unwilling to lose, and that was my tipping point to begin my recovery.

Jon Amarilio: And now that relationship is recovered as you’ve recovered?

Brian Cuban: That’s right.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: That third realization that you made was there ever — I think a listener that’s kind of hearing this maybe apply to their own life story, might be interested to know if that was ever articulated to you, was there ever a threat, you will not see us again if, or was this something you knew you were approaching naturally?

Brian Cuban: My younger brother, Jeff, told somebody who told me so this is just hearsay that if I ever use cocaine again I would never see him again.

Now, again, that’s hearsay. Jeff’s never said that he said that, but here’s what I do know. I had stopped going to events to see my nephews. I had stopped going to dinner with my family. They had stopped asking me to a lot of events, I wouldn’t want me all coked up around my family. I don’t blame them.

Jon Amarilio: This was out of shame, embarrassment?

Brian Cuban: For me? No, for me, well, now they know from 2005, now my family knows that I have an issue, my logical solution was to distance myself from my family. So, I didn’t have to put it in front of them again and only hang out with I think with other lawyers who do drugs, other non-lawyers, some of them are dead now, some of them are in prison. This is part of addiction not just in the legal profession all around the world.

Jon Amarilio: And these problems landed you in jail once, aren’t they?

Brian Cuban: Yes.

Jon Amarilio: Tell us about that?

Brian Cuban: Oh, that was fun. Yes, summer 1990 after my first divorce, out drinking Peach Schnapps or whatever it was, towing up the highway 75 miles an hour, a state trooper pulls up behind me, maybe half block from my house.

So, of course, of course I —

Jon Amarilio: Can’t take the alphabet backward to that point.

Brian Cuban: And you know what?

Sally Pissetsky Steele: 38:40 you passed?

Jon Amarilio: I can do that sober by the way, but —

Brian Cuban: I thought I am passed. Of course, I break the first rule you tell everyone, don’t do the dump blow. Shut up.

Jon Amarilio: Right.

Brian Cuban: And this was before laws that changed, back then it was 0.10.

Jon Amarilio: Okay.

Brian Cuban: So, it was this 65-year-old state trooper and he was as nice as can be, we’re heading back down to what’s called Sterrett Justice Center. He is like, sorry dude, you didn’t pass that test. You may think you touched your nose, and so he pulled aside when I said the handcuffs were too tight to let me on — to loosen my cuffs, and in the car I’m so convinced that I’m not intoxicated.

When I passed the breathalyzer, are you going to take me back to my car? He was like, dude, you’re not going to pass; but yeah, on that miracle if you do, somebody will take you back to your car.

So, we get down to Sterrett Justice Center, and at the time I was wearing a dangling earring from my left ear.

Jon Amarilio: Wow that’s —

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Rockstar!

Jon Amarilio: Yeah.

Brian Cuban: I was also had a problem with steroid addiction, which is another issue, that I don’t talk about in the context of this book.

Jon Amarilio: Sure.

Brian Cuban: But I was also addicted to steroids and I was huge. So, I was wearing this short little muscle shirt thing, I had a earring dangling from my ear, here I am arrested for DUI, and then stared at that time I don’t know if that’s how it is now, thank goodness, but it’s this assembly line of deputy sheriffs, where you’re fingerprinting and it’s an assembly line of verbal abuse.

(00:40:03)

They are swearing at everyone, they are humiliating everyone. So, this one deputy sheriff gets a millimeter from my nose, and he goes you’re a stinking lawyer. You put this earring, you stink, you’re a loser, you’re a disgrace to the profession. And I remember thinking, I earned this. This is my punishment, I earned this. And so, into the drunk tank thinking, this is where my life is going, I’m a mess.

Jon Amarilio: Yeah.

Brian Cuban: The short-term awareness, I’m sitting in the drunk tank and there are kids crying and everything.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: As beautiful and fresh as can be.

Brian Cuban: Oh man, it smells like urine and it’s disgusting, and so I make bail and my buddy picks me up, and it’s fine. I remember a story from the arraignment, the arraignments run video. I had a story from the arraignment. I am sitting there, just I was crying and there was this one guy who is screaming, and the deputy sheriff goes, dude, if you don’t sit down and keep quiet, we’re going to put you back in the drunk tank and you’ll have to go wait for the next cycle, wait for the next arraignment. The guy sits there, looks around, just come up there, I have given a whole amount. I remember that like it’s yesterday. But in any —

Jon Amarilio: So, you felt super-safe in that environment?

Brian Cuban: Yes, so — and this was 1990, so this was 15 years before —

Jon Amarilio: Before your recovery?

Brian Cuban: No, that’s 17 years before my recovery, but 15 years before I became suicidal.

Jon Amarilio: Yeah.

Brian Cuban: So, the next day I was called my father crying, called my brothers crying, the advice was just not talk of recovery or anything because really no one knew I had a problem. I didn’t think I had a problem. I was just out drinking like everyone drinks, the culture of the profession, right?

Jon Amarilio: Right.

Brian Cuban: I made a mistake. That was my view.

Jon Amarilio: And DUIs were pretty common back then.

Brian Cuban: I don’t know but it certainly — there was shame, there was embarrassment, and the next day I was a litigation manager for an insurance company. I walk in, I tell my boss, I think I’m going to get fired, he’s like just get a good lawyer.

Jon Amarilio: Yeah.

Brian Cuban: That was it.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: You said everyone makes mistakes, your brother said the same thing, right?

Brian Cuban: No, my brothers just said you effed up, get a good lawyer. And that was it, that was the discussion, there was no talk of anything. And —

Sally Pissetsky Steele: So, what would you say to a listener right now who is — this is kind of like percolating and they’re hearing things that might be sort of familiar in their own lives who are not going to go just check themselves in some way or going to go to their first AA meeting. What’s that first baby step for self-care that you could start maybe?

Brian Cuban: Am I my ingesting something, alcohol or whatever that is affecting my life on a personal level, on a social level, on a professional level? Can you look at yourself and say you are performing at a high level, at the highest level you could? Ask yourself that first. That’s the first step.

Because whether you’re a lawyer or a lawsuit, the first step always has to be recognizing you have an issue. And so, can you get to a place of self-awareness and say, look, I am not doing as well as I could be. We don’t have to get to the stage of saying I’m an alcoholic or I have a drug problem. How’s my marriage, how’s my family relationships, how’s my work, why don’t we start with that? And then, if you can look at yourself and say things could be better, then we can say how much better and then maybe we can get to a place of saying, okay, there really is a serious drinking issue. Maybe it’s an issue of harm reduction where you’re not an “alcoholic”, but you could be drinking less. There’s a wide range of drinking issues that we can be on the scale of, that may not necessarily be something that puts you into residential treatment or you have to go into Alcoholics Anonymous or another 12-Step — type of 12-Step, that’s only one of them.

Jon Amarilio: Yeah.

Brian Cuban: So, having an honest look in the mirror and just say, how am I doing? How is this relationship, how is that relationship? Isn’t that a good first start?

Jon Amarilio: It sounds like wisdom to me and also probably a good place to take a break, we’ll be right back.

[Music]

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[Music]

(00:45:01)

Jon Amarilio: All right, so Brian, we left off before at a place where our listeners may be able to look themselves in the mirror and reach some point of recognition. If they get there, if they are looking in the mirror and they answer those questions a certain way, what are their treatment options, what’s out there?

Brian Cuban: If you feel you are at a point where support is definitely needed to get help, there are quite a few options. One of the great places to start is the Lawyers’ Assistance Program. They are experts in this. They know what the resources are available. They can help you begin that journey.

Jon Amarilio: For our listeners who don’t know, what’s the LAP about? What do they do?

Brian Cuban: The Lawyers’ Assistance Program is there to help lawyers, not with just drinking issues or drug issues, but a wide variety of mental health issues. One of the problems we have in the legal profession is there is this systematic stigmatized belief that the Lawyers’ Assistance Program, whether it’s TLAP here or Illinois Lawyers’ Assistance Program here is an arm of the State Bar and there is this fear that if people go to the Lawyers’ Assistance Program, it’s automatically going to get to the State Bar. That is not correct.

Now, the State Bar, if they are in trouble for something, if there’s a disciplinary issue and they are sent to the Lawyers’ Assistance Program by the State Bar, yes, there are reports made, but if you go to them on their own, no, the conversations are protected by statute.

To show you how stigmatized this is in the face of logic, last year I gave a presentation to a Dallas Bar Association event. It was a bunch of seasoned litigators. After the presentation one of the lawyers comes out to me and goes, Brian, I know what you are saying, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s not confidential. State Bar is going to find out. How do you know that? Another lawyer told me. Well, how does he know that? Well, I think another lawyer told him.

You are a seasoned trial lawyer and you are coming to me with a guy told a guy who told a guy.

Jon Amarilio: Yeah, but he has got a guy.

Brian Cuban: But he has got a guy. So you are coming to me with triple hearsay. Something you wouldn’t dream of walking into a courtroom with as fact. He laughs and he goes, I know, but it’s not confidential.

That is how overpowering the stigma is around seeking help with the Lawyers’ Assistance Program. Now, we are breaking through that stigma with the help of the Lawyers’ Assistance Programs, with the help of the State Bar, with the help of people getting out there and talking about Lawyers’ Assistance Programs. That is a great place to start.

If you are in a small to large or a mid-sized to large firm, you may in fact, or probably do have an Employee Assistance Program. They are also confidential. You can go to the Employee Assistance Program.

I know a lot of, or not a lot, I am sorry, I shouldn’t say that, some bigger law firms I know are starting to experience with 47:48 lawyers. Those are lawyers who may be in recovery, who somebody can go to without fear of reprisal and let them know what’s going on and are trying to educate the people in the firm that this is — you can come to this person. That is something.

As far as actual recovery modalities, there’s 12 Step. That’s how I got sober. I am also in psychiatric counseling to deal with how I got there. 12 Step is dealing with the alcohol, drugs; how I got there, all the mental health issues leading up to that, I am in psychiatric counseling today. No shame in that. I take antidepressants medications today. I find no shame in that.

If 12 Step is not your thing, you are just turned off by whatever, there is what is known as SMART Recovery, which is based on behavior modification. It is much different than 12 Step.

If religious faith is a big part of your recovery, we have Celebrate Recovery, which is 12 Step based, which is a Christian 12 Step.

There is Holistic Recovery, which is more of a wellness-based type recovery. I have recently been made aware of Refuge Recovery, which is Buddhist. There is a way to begin recovery for almost any personality now. We did not have that when I was first going through this. Like I said, you were either in 12 Step, you were in a hospital or you weren’t in recovery. That is not the case today. There are many different paths we can take.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Do you know the contact information for the LAP or website?

Brian Cuban: I think you can go to the American Bar Association website and they have the contact information for every Lawyers’ Assistance Program in the state.

Jon Amarilio: That’s great. That’s a good resource. So tell us a little bit about where you are right now? What are you doing with your life now?

Brian Cuban: Right now, well, The Addicted Lawyer just came out two months ago, and so it has been an interesting journey since I wrote it. It was a journey of over two years to write it.

(00:49:52)

And then, while I was writing it the Bar Association Study came out so that was fortuitous. I didn’t know it was coming out. And so then the New York Times article came out, The Lawyer, the Addict, which I was mentioned and the book was mentioned. And since that happened, it has really been kind of a whirlwind, where I have been approached by a lot of Bar Associations, not so much law schools, but a lot of Bar Associations, a lot of Legal Assistance Programs.

What I love to do is share my journey, so I write for Above the Law, The Addicted Lawyer column. I am starting to formulate my next book and I speak. I speak to anyone who asks me to speak.

Two days before this I was in Miami speaking to the Cuban American Bar Association.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: No pun intended.

Brian Cuban: No pun intended, that’s right. That was a great pun though when I opened it up to say, let me get the elephant out of the room, I am cute, I am a Cuban, but I am not Cuban, so they loved that. But I have always wanted to say that, so it was a great place to say it.

That’s what I do. I speak. I speak, I write, and I just try to pay it forward. I try to do the next right thing. I get asked, do you regret anything?

Jon Amarilio: Do you?

Brian Cuban: I don’t regret the journey, because the journey got me here talking to everyone here, alive, sharing my story. I regret the collateral damage. I regret the ex-wives that I hurt. I regret the family that I hurt. I regret all the people that I hurt along the way. But I can’t engage in revisionist history, go back and change that, so what I can do is try to help just one person every time I speak. Try to just reach one person that emails me. Try to lay a path for one person who may decide based on my story, they identify with one thing, whether it’s bullying, whether it’s family, whether it’s recovery and they say, okay, I am going to try. It’s my redemption for the people I hurt along the way, the collateral damage. That is what I do.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: It sounds like you through your journey did find your life’s purpose.

Brian Cuban: That is right. My life’s purpose I knew back then was never to be a lawyer. We are a profession of thinkers. I am a feeler. I am a feeler who went into a profession of feelers, helping people.

Jon Amarilio: That little jewel of Zen sounds like a good place to take one more break. Stay with us. We will be right back.

[Music]

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[Music]

Jon Amarilio: And we are back. Before we wrap up today we are going to play a game we like to call Stranger than Legal Fiction. Each of us has done a bit of research and found some of the strangest laws on the books in this country of ours. We are going to summarize one of those real laws, make another one up completely and each of us are going to guess or see rather if we can distinguish which one is real and which one is fiction. Everybody ready?

Sally Pissetsky Steele: I am ready. Are you ready?

Jon Amarilio: We will find out, Brian.

Brian Cuban: Let’s do it.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: All right, I will go first. The law is my husband’s favorite law. He is also an attorney. But the first one I am going to talk about is called the Nunchuck Act and it is actually an Illinois law. And it basically says you are guilty of a Class C misdemeanor if you own nunchucks or any other sort of martial art weapon and do not register it. And you have to register it with like this administrative agency that’s been created.

Jon Amarilio: Like a FOIL license or something?

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Kind of, but I don’t think it’s quite as stringent.

Brian Cuban: You know, with Chicago’s strict handgun laws, I am going valid.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Valid, okay. So let me tell you number two and then you will have to guess. That’s the game, right, am I doing it right?

Jon Amarilio: Yeah, that’s the game, that’s the game.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: So the second one I am going to talk about is called the Refrigerator Act and you are guilty of a Class C misdemeanor if you leave a refrigerator over a certain size outside of your house. Like you throw it on the garbage or whatever and you can lease the property, you can own the property, whatever, if you allow there to be a refrigerator outside of your house at any point, you are guilty of a class C misdemeanor.

Jon Amarilio: Is that a state statute or a county ordinance?

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Both of these are state statutes.

Brian Cuban: So we have to decide whether that’s made up or not?

Jon Amarilio: Yeah, which one is made up?

Brian Cuban: I am thinking that one is made up. I just can’t envision the refrigerator police coming out on a 911 call. I am going that one is made up.

(00:55:03)

Jon Amarilio: I am going to keep it interesting and go the other way, just so we have some friction here. Sally.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: 430 ILCS 150/0.01, Abandoned Refrigerator.

Brian Cuban: You got it.

Jon Amarilio: I mean there are good policy reasons behind that.

Brian Cuban: Yeah, the refrigerator police that 911 calls. There’s a huge refrigerator out there, come on out.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Yeah. Officer, my neighbor just violated the abandoned refrigerator.

Brian Cuban: Yes, yes, yes.

Jon Amarilio: All right, you guys ready, round two. In Massachusetts it’s illegal to manufacture, sell, or possess explosive golf balls. Violators are subject to $100 fine and up to a year imprisonment. That’s option number one.

Brian Cuban: Okay.

Jon Amarilio: Option number two, in Montana it’s illegal to leave your horse tied to a parking meter without feeding it; the meter, not the horse.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: I thought the horse.

Brian Cuban: Okay.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Okay.

Brian Cuban: I am going with option number one as being made up. I mean Montana, horses, just sounds legit.

Jon Amarilio: Sally, what do you think?

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Isn’t there like some — I don’t golf at all, but isn’t there some sort of big golf thing in Massachusetts, some sort of —

Jon Amarilio: Big golf thing.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: A big golf thing.

Brian Cuban: Exploding golf.

Jon Amarilio: Like a golf course.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Like a course in which people use a club and hit the baseball into the goalie.

Jon Amarilio: I think they are in most states — into the what did you say, goalie?

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Yes, that’s golf, right? I think that one is the right one.

Jon Amarilio: So you think that one is the right one. Ironically, you are correct. Massachusetts General Law, Part I, Title 20, Chapter 148, no exploding golf balls.

Brian Cuban: So I want to know who exploded a golf ball that somebody initially decided that we needed to do that. I think we need some due diligence on this.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: I do too. We need to have — we should have brought the committee notes on this.

Brian Cuban: The original exploding golf ball.

Jon Amarilio: I would like to see that.

Brian Cuban: Legislatives notes.

Jon Amarilio: Maybe we can check that out for the next pod. Unfortunately, that’s going to be our pod for today.

I want to thank our guest Brian Cuban for joining us. It was a lot of fun. I hope you will consider joining us again the next time you are in town.

Brian Cuban: Absolutely, it was a great time.

Jon Amarilio: Thank you. And I also want to thank everybody who makes this machine run, including my co-host today, Sally Pissetsky Steele.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Sally Steele is easier.

Jon Amarilio: Sally Steele, alliteration.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: It’s a real upgrade from Sally Pissetsky.

Jon Amarilio: So I can just use that from now on, right?

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Yeah, Sally Steele is good.

Brian Cuban: It’s kind of a movie name too, Sally Steele.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Your Honor, Sally Steele here.

Jon Amarilio: Yeah, I mean that scared me a little bit.

Sally Pissetsky Steele: Yeah, it was amazing.

Jon Amarilio: Yeah. Okay. I also want to thank Jen Byrne, our Executive Producer and our sound crew Ricardo Islas and Steve Weirich.

Remember, you can follow us and send us comments, questions, episode ideas or just troll us on Facebook, Insta and Twitter @CBAatthebar. Please also rate us, leave us your feedback on iTunes or wherever you download your podcast, it helps us get the word out.

Until next time, for all of us here at the CBA, this is Jon Amarilio and we will see you soon @theBar.

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