Rise Above with Kevin Lanning

Delonte West lived a dream millions of kids chase — a standout at Saint Joseph's, drafted into the NBA at 21, and years in the league alongside legends like Paul Pierce, Gary Payton, and LeBron James. He was, by his own description, sheltered inside the business of professional sports, growing as a player while the rest of life stayed on pause.

When the game ended, everything he'd built his identity around went with it. In this conversation, Delonte is open about the long, slow progression of addiction that followed his career, his diagnosis and lifelong battle with bipolar disorder, and the years he spent cycling in and out of his lowest points — much of it playing out in the public eye in ways that were painful and dehumanizing.

But this episode isn't about the videos the internet passed around. It's about the man behind them, and the work he's doing now. Delonte is coming up on a year sober this December, and he credits consistency, the right medication and treatment, his faith, and the people who never gave up on him. He's found peace in staying in the moment, and he's using his platform to reach the person out there who's still where he was.

#RiseAbove #DelonteWest #AddictionRecovery #NBA #MentalHealthAwareness #RecoveryIsPossible #SoberLife#BipolarAwareness #Comeback #SobrietyJourney #SaintJosephs #Boston #RiseAbovePodcast #KevinLanning#SecondChances #MensMentalHealth #TheManBehindTheVideos #Redemption #YouAreNotAlone #OneMoreThing
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Jerod Thomas grew up in what he calls a "house of horrors" — two alcoholic parents, a father who drank a fifth of vodka a day and turned violent, and weekends spent walking on eggshells. He was dyslexic in an era when no one caught it until his second year of eighth grade, bullied relentlessly, and told by his own father that if he didn't learn to fight, he couldn't stay in the house. Football became the one place the chaos made sense — fast, loud, and violent, just like home.

Against every odd, Jerod became a college football star at Marshall, playing under future NFL head coach Rex Ryan, with a real shot at the pros. Then, weeks after his final college game, his father died — and a bartender at his dad's old bar handed him cocaine. Within weeks it was crack. He tried out for NFL teams while secretly smoking it, showing up 45 pounds underweight and unable to explain why. The football dream collapsed, and everything else went with it: two marriages he torched, restraining orders from his own mother, and years cycling between homelessness and prison. By the end he'd been charged with 12 felonies and convicted of four, all drug-related.

What turned it was a conversation with his grandmother in jail, where he listed every reason he couldn't get sober — and she gently told him that a man who could find a way around all those obstacles would be valuable to the world. That night he started writing a program. Today, 18 years sober, Jerod has built treatment programs inside prisons across the country — including the largest in-prison treatment center in the United States — turning the exact system that once held him into the place he now saves lives.

Jerod Thomas grew up in what he calls a "house of horrors" — two alcoholic parents, a father who drank a fifth of vodka a day and turned violent, and weekends spent walking on eggshells. He was dyslexic in an era when no one caught it until his second year of eighth grade, bullied relentlessly, and told by his own father that if he didn't learn to fight, he couldn't stay in the house. Football became the one place the chaos made sense — fast, loud, and violent, just like home.Against every odd, Jerod became a college football star at Marshall, playing under future NFL head coach Rex Ryan, with a real shot at the pros. Then, weeks after his final college game, his father died — and a bartender at his dad's old bar handed him cocaine. Within weeks it was crack. He tried out for NFL teams while secretly smoking it, showing up 45 pounds underweight and unable to explain why. The football dream collapsed, and everything else went with it: two marriages he torched, restraining orders from his own mother, and years cycling between homelessness and prison. By the end he'd been charged with 12 felonies and convicted of four, all drug-related.What turned it was a conversation with his grandmother in jail, where he listed every reason he couldn't get sober — and she gently told him that a man who could find a way around all those obstacles would be valuable to the world. That night he started writing a program. Today, 18 years sober, Jerod has built treatment programs inside prisons across the country — including the largest in-prison treatment center in the United States — turning the exact system that once held him into the place he now saves lives.
Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers

My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron.

If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available.

➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above

📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103

Recovery starts with taking the first step.

#RiseAbove #AddictionRecovery #18YearsSober #CrackAddiction #RecoveryIsPossible #SoberLife#FromPrisonToPurpose #Football #MensRecovery #SobrietyJourney #SecondChances #FromRockBottom#RiseAbovePodcast #KevinLanning #JerodThomas #GenerationalTrauma #Redemption #Dyslexia #ServiceWork#OneMoreThing
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Marina Lacerda is a survivor, an advocate, and a mother who spent most of her life carrying pain she was told to keep quiet. Now 6.5 years sober and one year into publicly breaking her silence, she sat down with Kevin to talk about all of it.

Marina was born in Brazil and raised largely in New York. From around the age of nine, she was sexually abused by her stepfather — abuse that continued for years while she was made to feel she had to stay silent to keep her family together. That wound shaped everything that followed. By her teens she had found the nightlife, and by adulthood she was self-medicating the trauma with cocaine and, eventually, a devastating Xanax addiction — at her worst taking 15 to 20 pills a day and going through dangerous withdrawals before she finally got clean.

The turning point wasn't just getting sober. It was finding her voice. In the last year Marina has connected with other survivors, spoken publicly for the first time, and become an advocate determined to make sure other people — especially children — don't suffer in the silence she was trapped in. She's candid about the guilt, the complicated relationship with her mother, the long road of recovery, and why service to others has become the center of her life.

This is a hard, brave conversation about surviving abuse, the addiction that so often follows it, and the freedom that comes from finally telling the truth.

Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers

My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron.

If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available.

➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above

📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103

Recovery starts with taking the first step.

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Bob Zbikowski wanted to be one thing his whole life: a cop, like his dad. He got there — nearly two decades in law enforcement, including years as a K-9 handler. From the outside he was living his dream. Underneath, he was a first responder carrying the weight of thousands of traumatic scenes with no healthy way to put it down, and a brain wired for addiction he didn't yet understand.

Bob is open about the two things that took him under. First, gambling — when New Jersey legalized sports betting, what started as a little action turned into compulsively running his account to zero night after night, in debt by morning, doing it all over again. And then, after being prescribed Adderall for ADHD, a shortage left him without his medication — and someone offered him meth, a chemical cousin of the very prescription he'd lost. He describes it as "Adderall times a hundred," and it pulled him into a secret addiction he carried while still on the job.

He's candid about the impossible bind so many first responders face: the fear that asking for help means losing everything — the career, the income, the identity — and the culture that told him to shut up, take the next call, and never show emotion. Eventually it all came apart, and Bob got sober in 2025.

Now he's turned his pain into purpose with the Behind the Badge Project, using his voice to reach cops, firefighters, and first responders who are silently struggling — before self-destruction, before it's too late. Because the first responder suicide rate is staggering, and Bob believes the system has to make it okay to raise your hand and ask for help.

This is a powerful conversation about addiction behind the badge, the cost of carrying trauma in silence, and finding a new identity in service.

Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers

My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron.

If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available.

➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above

📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103

Recovery starts with taking the first step.
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This one is different. Addiction is a family disease — it doesn't just happen to the addict, it happens to everyone who loves them. So in this episode, you'll hear both sides. First from Brandon, who nearly lost his life to it — and then from his wife Katelyn, who lived every moment of it beside him.

Brandon Cheek looked like he had it all — a successful business, a family, a life built with his college sweetheart. Underneath was crippling depression and anxiety that a Xanax prescription turned into years of destruction. He walks through the spiral: drinking from the moment he woke up, sipping vodka slowly just to keep it down, multiple trips to rehab, staying merely abstinent without ever doing the deeper work, losing the family business, and the suicidal ideation that convinced him there was no way out. Now two years sober and grounded in his faith, he's honest about all of it — including the damage he did to the people he loved most.

Then Katelyn joins. As she puts it, loving someone through addiction is not for the weak. A self-described fixer and problem-solver, she tried to control and rescue her way through it — hiding it from everyone, white-knuckling his recovery, getting her hopes up and crushed with every relapse — until she realized in therapy that she had become just as sick with codependency. She speaks with staggering honesty about learning to separate "sober Brandon" from "addict Brandon," about mentally rehearsing his funeral, about surviving the betrayals of active addiction, and about the moment unconditional love and real boundaries finally broke the cycle.

Together, they're a picture of what's possible on the other side — a marriage that didn't just survive, but rebuilt. If you love someone in addiction, or you're the one struggling, this conversation is for you.

Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers

My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron.

If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available.

➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above

📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103

Recovery starts with taking the first step.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices