From Vodka to Victory: How the Real "Jerry Maguire" Hit Rock Bottom, Rebuilt His Life, and Stood Up to the NFL

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Change Your Brain Every Day

Episode: From Vodka to Victory: How the Real "Jerry Maguire" Hit Rock Bottom, Rebuilt His Life, and Stood Up to the NFL
Date: November 17, 2025
Hosts: Dr. Daniel Amen & Tana Amen
Guest: Lee Steinberg

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Overview

This compelling episode features legendary sports agent Lee Steinberg—widely recognized as the inspiration for the film “Jerry Maguire”—in a deeply vulnerable and impactful conversation with Dr. Daniel and Tana Amen. The discussion weaves through three main threads: the long-overdue reckoning with brain injuries in sports (especially football), Lee’s personal struggle with alcohol addiction and journey to recovery, and his ongoing mission to improve brain health and resilience across high-pressure professions, with lessons that apply to everyone.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Silent Epidemic: Concussion & Brain Injury in Sports

• Lee on Early Warnings and Resistance:

  • Lee has been a vocal proponent of brain health in sports since the 1980s, long before concussions were headline news.
  • He organized the first ever concussion brain health summit for football in 1994 and has continued annual summits since.
  • “In football… it is not just a football issue. It's a hockey issue. It's young women who head the ball in soccer, but it's people who fall off horses and trip and all sorts of things. So it's a societal problem.” (06:22)

• Brain Trauma: The True Cost of Contact Sports:

  • Steinberg shares that NFL linemen can have "10,000 sub-concussive events" over a career—none of which are ever diagnosed (00:43, repeated at 10:23).
  • Dr. Amen highlights the NFL’s historical reluctance to acknowledge or deeply study the problem, even likening the oversight to “tobacco companies studying lung cancer.” (07:19)

• Cultural & Institutional Change—Slow but Crucial:

  • Both Steinberg and Dr. Amen discuss how youth tackle football poses “an existential threat” to the sport’s future due to rising awareness among parents, particularly mothers (00:00, 37:22).
  • Lee: “If 50% of the mothers in this country understand the connection between playing a collision sport and brain health…and tell their teenage boys, you can play any sport but not tackle football, it won't immediately kill football, but it will gradually change the socioeconomics of it, so it becomes a gladiator sport.” (00:00, 37:22)

2. Personal Story: Addiction, Rock Bottom, and Redemption

• Late-Onset Alcoholism and Hitting Bottom:

  • Lee explains that he didn’t start drinking heavily until later in life, after a string of personal crises.
  • “I didn't understand the power of alcohol. I didn't understand that it would take volitional power away from me.” (17:50)
  • His bottom: “I would sit on my father's bed and my only sentient thought was where I could find more vodka…eventually I crashed… closed my office. Stop practicing.” (17:50–20:44)

• Recovery and Brain Rehabilitation:

  • Lee embraced a classic 12-step program, complete with sponsor and ongoing fellowship.
  • “In a couple weeks, I'll be 15 and a half years continuously sober.” (22:05)
  • He chose to get his brain scanned by Dr. Amen—“it was not a pretty picture”—and committed to physical brain healing in parallel with sobriety.
  • “Your brain is not stuck—you can make it better. I can prove it.” – Dr. Daniel Amen (24:31)

• Multi-Modal Healing:

  • Lee details his proactive regimen:
    • Amen supplements, hyperbaric oxygen 3x weekly, Nanaby oxygen protocol, 120+ RTMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) sessions, international stem cell treatments, and more (24:55–26:29).
  • Lee: "I've explored all sorts of healing modalities... I've looked everywhere for solution." (25:37–26:29)

3. Societal Change, Advocacy, and Paying It Forward

• Changing Athlete Culture:

  • Athletes, especially football players, are “acculturated from Little League…to accept norms about long-term health that are different from ours... If you have young people's denial and athlete denial, you have, like, denial cubed." (13:06)
  • Many hide symptoms or deliberately game concussion tests—e.g., Peyton Manning faking baseline tests to ensure continued play (14:39–14:54).

• The Family Factor:

  • Lee’s greatest allies have been the wives and mothers of athletes, who often support tracking and advocating for their sons’ safety (15:08–15:52).

• Expanding the Mission:

  • Lee’s foundation now targets not just athletes but “firefighters who fought the fires in Los Angeles, the homeless, inner city kids, the military”—underscoring the broader social imperative (05:55).

• Reframing Sobriety and Service:

  • On staying sober: “The one great thing about recovery is that once the cravings leave, then in my mind, I'm over here, I'm not over there.” (32:13)
  • Shift from personal struggle to service: “Can I use athletes to deal with bullying? ...sex trafficking? ...racism?” and recounts athlete-driven social change projects (32:51–33:46).
  • “My job at this point in life is to tackle a variety of societal issues and see how we can make it better.” (34:00)

4. Practical Brain Health and Optimizing Human Potential

• Every Decision Matters:

  • Dr. Amen reframes self-care: “Why would you put a poison in your body?...It's a love issue. I think…we don’t love ourselves enough.” (27:10–29:48)

• Nutritional Awareness and Challenges:

  • Lee and Dr. Amen discuss how “Calories aren’t all that matter”—effects of artificial sweeteners, the function of historical diets, and how misplaced nutritional virtue signals (e.g., diet sodas) mislead millions (30:05–31:28).

• Tools for Guided Change:

  • Lee shares his values-audit with clients, prompting them to prioritize what truly fulfills them—mirrored by Dr. Amen’s “One Page Miracle” exercise (45:12–46:56).

• Advice for Parents and Athletes:

  • Lee and the hosts agree: keep kids under 15 out of tackle football, institute concussion education and tracking at all levels, and scan/rehabilitate brains regularly (39:51–43:15).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Quote | Speaker |
|------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------|
| 00:00 | “Is it healthy for someone to play tackle football when they're 8 to 15 years old? And I would argue no…so it becomes a gladiator sport.”| Lee Steinberg |
| 10:23 | “An offensive lineman…could have 10,000 sub concussive events…none of which have been diagnosed, none of which he's aware of, because he just feels stunned after every play.” | Lee Steinberg |
| 14:49 | “Peyton Manning took the…impact test and faked his answers.” | Lee Steinberg |
| 17:50 | “I didn't understand the power of alcohol...I had cravings that were so strong…I was sitting with a big bottle of vodka.”| Lee Steinberg |
| 24:31 | “You’re not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. I can prove it.”| Dr. Daniel Amen |
| 26:29 | “I went around the world. I went to Medellin, Colombia, and had stem cells...I've done a number of billions of stem cells.”| Lee Steinberg |
| 29:48 | “Why would you put a poison in your body?... I don’t think we love ourselves enough.”| Dr. Daniel Amen |
| 32:13 | “The one great thing about recovery is that once the cravings leave…in my mind, I'm over here, I'm not over there.”| Lee Steinberg |
| 33:46 | “My job at this point in life is to tackle a variety of societal issues and see how we can make it better.” | Lee Steinberg |
| 45:12 | “The most important skill in life is listening.” | Lee Steinberg |
| 48:04 | “Jerry Maguire has to go through a growth process where he starts to understand what truly is important.”| Lee Steinberg |

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Key Timestamps

• Concussion Awareness & NFL Resistance: 05:55–08:51
• Transformative Concussion Stories: 10:23–13:06
• Addiction, Rock Bottom, and Recovery: 17:34–21:20
• Brain Scans & Multi-Modal Healing: 22:46–26:29
• Artificial Sweetener & Nutrition Caution: 27:10–31:28
• Maintaining Sobriety & Turning to Service: 32:13–34:00
• Changing Athlete & Parent Culture: 37:22–39:51
• Advising Athletes on Life Priorities: 45:12–47:55
• Behind “Jerry Maguire”: 48:04–49:05
• Lee’s New Book, Stories of Resilience: 50:13–52:13

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Flow, Tone, and Final Thoughts

The episode maintains a candid, empathetic, and solution-focused tone throughout. Lee Steinberg’s humility and honesty about his personal struggles, combined with Dr. Amen’s scientific grounding in brain health, make for an inspiring interplay between vulnerability and actionable hope. The hosts and guest frequently return to the twin pillars of accountability and compassion, urging listeners to educate themselves, love and protect their brains, and support one another in the lifelong journey of health and healing.

Final words:
“We can change the world, Dr. Amen.” – Lee Steinberg (52:21)

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For Listeners:

If you’re seeking powerful stories and practical tips on overcoming addiction, protecting brain health, and leading a life of impact and integrity—especially in high-pressure or high-risk fields—this episode is essential listening.

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Lee Steinberg’s upcoming book: “The Comeback”—stories of resilience and recovering from life’s setbacks—out February 2026.
Learn more at: changeyourbrain.org

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Transcript

[Lee Steinberg]

Is it healthy for someone to play tackle football when they're 8 to 15 years old? And I would argue no, because the brain's in formation. If 50% of the mothers in this country understand the connection between playing a collision sport and brain health until they're teenage boys, you can play any sport, but not tackle football. It won't immediately kill football, but it will gradually change the socioeconomics of it, so it becomes a gladiator sport.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Lee Steinberg is a legendary sports agent.

[Tana Amen]

Who'S represented over 300 professional athletes across.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Football, baseball and beyond. For five decades he's been shaping the.

[Tana Amen]

Business of sports and redefining what it means to lead from behind the scenes.

[Lee Steinberg]

Every time an offensive lineman hits a defensive lineman at the inception of a football play, it produces a low level little bit of brain change. So you could have an offensive lineman who played in high school, college and Pros who had 10,000 sub concussive events, nine, none of which have been diagnosed, none of which he's aware of because he just feels stunned after every play.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day. This podcast is brought to you by the Change youe Brain foundation, dedicated to ending the concept of mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health. Go to changeyourbrain.org to learn how you can support our mission. Tana and I are so excited for this podcast. Our friend Lee Steinberg is with us who is a legendary sports agent, entrepreneur and chairman of Steinberg Sports and Entertainment, widely known as the real inspiration for Jerry Maguire. Show me the money. He has represented over 300 professional athletes, including 64 NFL first round draft picks, eight number one overall selections, and 12 hall of Famers, and has negotiated contracts exceeding $4 billion while directing over 1.2 billion to charitable causes. A UC Berkeley graduate, Lee is also a philanthropist, media personality and author. He recently established the Lee Steinberg foundation for Concussion, Traumatic Brain Injury and Brain Health to continue champion brain health and making a lasting difference in athletes lives. Plus, we met when we were doing our big NFL study and found that it's not just athletes that have problems with their brain. Sometimes it's people who care for the athletes. So I'm just so honored. 10 and I are so honored that you're with us.

[Lee Steinberg]

Oh, it's a pleasure to be with both of you.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

So let's start with how we met. Do you remember what was going on then?

[Lee Steinberg]

I remember that you had a client Charlie White, I think it was. And we ended up on the same radio broadcast.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Yeah, I think. With Anthony Davis.

[Lee Steinberg]

Yeah. Oh, I saw Charlie White. Anthony Davis, USC running back.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Yeah, USC running back. And then I think I told you about our work. And then you told me about your work. When did you first get concerned about traumatic brain injury in football?

[Lee Steinberg]

So I had a crisis of conscience back in the 1980s because I was representing half the starting quarterbacks in the NFL. They kept getting hit in the head. And we would go to doctors, prominent neurologists, and ask, how many or too many? When should we contemplate retirement? And they had no answers. So we held the first concussion brain health summit in Newport beach in. In 1994. Really? And we had Troy Aikman, Steve Young, Warren Moon, Drew bled. So a whole series of players listening to the state of the art and what we knew with a number of prominent neurologists, Bob Cantu and Julian Bales and Jim Kelly. By 2006, we held another big conference, and we had Bennett Omalu, who was the subject of the concussion movie. And he came and said he thought that three or more was a trigger for exponentially higher rates of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, premature senility, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and depression. And so I called it a ticking time bomb and an undiagnosed health epidemic. So we've been holding brain health summits every year. Last year in New Orleans, we held two hours of one with a number of neurologists. And along the way, I. So we kept doing it and recently set up a charitable foundation to try to raise money for research and to try and raise awareness, but also to do what you do, which is to help untreated and affected subgroups. So firefighters who fought the fires in Los Angeles or the homeless or inner city kids or the military. And so I continued to campaign on this. One of the things I learned is in football, and as you rightly point out, it is not just a football issue, it's a hockey issue. It's young women who head the ball in soccer, but it's people who fall off horses and trip and all sorts of things. So it's a societal problem. And so I've found a couple treatments that start to neurofeedback, RTMs. It seemed to move the core. But you have the. I learned through you about the concept of a brain spec. A brain scan, and. And I've been fighting the good fight ever since.

[Tana Amen]

I love that. But you knew about this in 1994. You started talking about this, it took a long time before.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Well, actually, the NFL formed its concussion committee in 1994 and. But it never sponsored a brain imaging player, a brain imaging study on players. Instead, they studied rats. They put little tiny helmets on rats, put them in dryers, threw them down, laundry shoots, sacrifice.

[Lee Steinberg]

David Hobbs at UCLA was called the rat doctor.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

And in front of Congress in 2009, Roger Goodell said they didn't know if playing football caused long term brain damage. They were studying the issue. And then Maxine Waters, the congresswoman from Los Angeles, whacks him and says, commissioner, having you act like you're studying traumatic brain injury in football is a conflict of interest. It's sort of like the tobacco companies studying lung cancer. You remember that?

[Lee Steinberg]

Yes. Well, it's worse than that, Dan, because what happened is they had a head of their brain committee named Elliot Pelman. Now, his background was he was a rheumatologist. Now, you're the doctor, not me, but I don't think rheumatology has anything to do with the brain. And he had gone to med school at the University of Guadalajara. So the NFL can pick any expert in neurology from all across the country, and that's who they protect. And so when I started pushing this, he went into Sports Illustrated and other publications and said I was a fear monger. The truth is the NFL had the studies and knew that one in close temporal proximity to another had a exponential effect that multiple concussions would cause long term thing. And they just lied to the players.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

O so our first NFL player was Brent Boyd, who played for UCLA and then he was an offensive linebacker for Minnesota. We saw him in 1999. And his brain clearly, because on spec you can clearly see traumatic brain injury, right? You can't see CTE because that's an autopsy diagnosis, Chronic traumatic encephalopathy. But you can absolutely see this is a head trauma pattern. And so I said, you have a workers comp claim. He applied to the NFL. They laughed at him, called me a Charlatan. And then 2007, Anthony Davis came to see us. And again, it was clearly traumatic brain injury. But he got so much better that he wrote to the commissioner, who never wrote his back. But because of Anthony, we partnered with the Los Angeles chapter of the NFL Players Association. And now we've scanned 400 players, high levels of damage, right? It's like, stop lying about it. But the one thing they don't know is you can make these brains better if you scan them and then put them on a rehabilitation program. I Mean, the earlier you start, the better, right? Shouldn't we be scanning players when they start and then periodically to just know where they are?

[Lee Steinberg]

So think about this. Every time an offensive lineman hits a defensive lineman at the inception of a football play, it produces a low level little bit of brain change, right? So you could have an offensive lineman who played in high school, college and pros who had 10,000 sub concussive events, none of which have been diagnosed, none of which he's aware of, because you just feel stunned after every play. You asked how I got started on this. So it's the early 90s. Troy Aikman has just led the Dallas Cowboys to victory over the San Francisco 49ers. Of course, I represented both quarterbacks. So speaking of conflict, but what happened was he had a concussion, so I went to visit him at Baylor Hospital. Now Dallas is awash in celebration, horns are honking, they've got big skylights going because they're going to the Super Bowl. Troy is in a darkened hospital room. And I walked in to visit him. He's all alone. And he said, where am I? And then he asked, did I play today? And then he asked, did we win? And what's that mean? So I gave him the answers and his face brightened and he was all excited. Ten minutes passed and he looked at me and said, where am I? Why am I here? Did we play today? Did we win today? Now, at first I thought he was just teasing me, but he wasn't. And 10 minutes pass and he asked me the same questions again. I finally took a piece of paper and wrote down the answers. The most commonly asked concussion night questions by Troy. But it terrified me how close the deadline was between sentient consciousness and dementia.

[Tana Amen]

Wow.

[Lee Steinberg]

And I thought, I have to do something here. My responsibility to athletes has to be more than simply stacking dollar after dollar in their bank book. It's got to be concern and care for their long term health.

[Tana Amen]

I love that.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Do you have any stories of your athletes that because of your work with concussion, has really been transformational for them?

[Lee Steinberg]

Part of the problem, Daniel, is that athletes have been acculturated from Little League and Pop Warner to accept norms about long term health that are different than ours. If we would say on a value system, the most important thing is long term health. The next level down is the ability to have a pro career. Below that, the ability to play in a given season. Below that, the ability to play in a given game. And the least important thing is this play. The athlete turns it on their head and it becomes this play. You don't understand. I just like the military. They're in a state of denial about their health. And if you have young people's denial and you have athlete denial, then you have, like, denial cubed. And so it's been a rough road to try to get athletes to deal with this, but I'm starting to have a little bit of success with veterans.

[Tana Amen]

Well, and aren't they afraid to say anything, even if they feel something? Like they don't want to be diagnosed.

[Lee Steinberg]

With a concussion, they don't want to be scrutinized. So you have an ex athlete who's on the air, for example, and he doesn't want people micro analyzing every statement, looking for the symptoms of. Of brain damage.

[Tana Amen]

Right. And even while they're playing, I mean, even in, you know, younger high school and college, it's like they don't want to say that they've been hurt. They don't want to.

[Lee Steinberg]

To your point, Donna, Peyton Manning took the. The. Took the.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

The impact test.

[Lee Steinberg]

The impact test and faked his answers.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

So he scored purposefully poorer. So if he had a concussion, he'd still be able to. To play.

[Lee Steinberg]

So they game the system and they. They.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

So my hall of Fame quarterback is doing that. Imagine the SO culture.

[Tana Amen]

This is going to be a cultural issue.

[Lee Steinberg]

Yes. And my best allies have been the wives or the mothers. And, and so when I meet with Nathalie first time, I say, look, here are the facts about the connection between pro football and brain damage. So we have to pledge today that you'll work with me to make sure your son has an awareness and is charting the number of concussions. And we're monitoring this together so that we surround him with people that are concerned about brain health.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

You know, there's another way to tackle this. We just had Julius Randall on our podcast because I've been working with the NBA superstar for the last year or so, and I just talked to him a little while ago. He's doing so well because he loves and cares for his brain. We have to get NFL players to go, oh, it's my brain that makes the decisions that help me be successful or not. And if my brain's not right, I'm not right. And if I love and care for my brain. But the big misconception among players is CTE is chronic, progressive, and untreatable, and that's a lie. And it comes from neuropathologists who don't actually treat living people. Well, I treat living people, and you can come to me with evidence of cte. But if you do the right things, your brain can be so much better.

[Lee Steinberg]

See, and that's where you're a real inspiration to people in your teachings and your practice. Or an inspiration because the commonly belief is that a TBI brain only gets better, worse, not better. And you've just confidently. Right, but the point is we have to spread that message. We have to make sure that in an education sense we're telling athletes that if they're vigilant and willing to do the work, they can get better.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

When we first met, you were struggling with an addiction. And how did that impact your relationship with your family and with your work? Tell us a bit about it.

[Lee Steinberg]

So I didn't start drinking until I was older. I started out in college. I was one beer Steinberg. So I didn't have this problem for my whole life. But eventually a series of things in my life, the death of my father, two kids that were declared legally blind at a young age, breakup of my marriage, all this destabilized me and I didn't have the right coping skills. So I turned to alcohol. And I didn't understand the power of alcohol. I didn't understand that it would take volitional power away from me. And you know, it wasn't a matter of self discipline. I had cravings that were so strong that I would drive my car to my condo and I'd say, tonight I'm not going to drink, tonight's going to be different. And magically, 15 minutes later, I had driven to a liquor store and was sitting with a big bottle of vodka. So the effects of it were that I was mostly a private late at night drinker. So it didn't affect my work for a long time. And because I was productive, I was surrounded by people that wanted me to continue being productive. So what happened was that eventually I crashed and I would sit on my father's bed and my only sentient thought was where I could find more vodka. And I had an epiphany. And I thought, you know, I was brought up by a father who had two core values. One was treasure relationships, especially family. And the second was make a meaningful impact in the world. He whole pain and help people who can't help themselves. And I'm failing on all these counts. And let I had a sense of proportionality. I'm not a starving peasant in Darfur. I'm not with last name Steinberg in Nazi Germany in the late 30s. I'm not. I don't have cancer, I don't have heart disease. I have nothing that wasn't self looked at. What excuse do I have? And so at that point I went and followed a 12 step program with a unique fellowship and did all the work. And part of my journey was that I knew intuitively that something might have happened to me physically. So I came and saw Dr. Amen and we did a brain specific and it was not a pretty picture.

[Tana Amen]

Can I ask you one question? When you say you crashed, what did crashing look like for you?

[Lee Steinberg]

Close my office. Stop practicing.

[Tana Amen]

Oh wow.

[Lee Steinberg]

Like for real. Right? It.

[Tana Amen]

So you got pretty dark.

[Lee Steinberg]

Pretty dark. And I hit bottom. So in alcoholism or addiction, you have to hit a bottom at some point and realize your circumstances are so reprehensible, they're so unacceptable that you have to make a change.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Did you know that physical and emotional pain run on the same circuits in the brain and they fuel each other to keep you in pain. In my new book, change your Brain, Change youe Pain, I'll show you how to break free from what I call the doom loop and step into a healing loop that can transform your life. Less pain, more joy. It's absolutely possible. Pre order my new book now and receive special bonus gifts at change your brain changeyourpainbook.com.

[Tana Amen]

Do you mind sharing? You said you did a 12 step program with a fellowship.

[Lee Steinberg]

I got a sponsor, I had a home group. I read the big book, I worked the 12 steps in order. I accepted the fact that I was powerless over alcohol and life had to change. I plugged into a higher power to, to help me with the situation. And that was in a couple weeks, I'll be 15 and a half years continuously sober.

[Tana Amen]

That's amazing.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

And, and then shortly after that you also saw us and we scanned you.

[Tana Amen]

How soon?

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

And you were sober when we scanned you?

[Lee Steinberg]

Yes.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

So let's put up the scans. And one of the reasons I want to do.

[Lee Steinberg]

Okay, if you're at home, don't be scared by what you're about to see.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Well, and they're I think 13 years apart because we just re scanned you. The one on the left is your first one. You can see it looks deeply scalloped. All those bumps and ridges are the brains dying. And if you look at the top left one, the temporal lobes, those big holes, it's bad, you were in trouble. But I mean I've seen thousands of drug affected brains and I know if you stop and do the right thing, it can be better.

[Tana Amen]

How long had you been sober when you had that scan?

[Lee Steinberg]

That was 13, 2013. Since March of 2010.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Okay, so. So if we would have seen March 2010, it would have been way worse still, right? But then this year, and it's very important to understand this, you're also 13 years older, and your brain, like, your face doesn't get better with age, right? It usually gets worse. But your brain this year is remarkably significant. Better. And it can be better still.

[Lee Steinberg]

But that looks pretty good.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

I'm so excited.

[Tana Amen]

But you.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

But this is the concept. You're not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. I can prove it. And not only in NFL players, but in regular people who've maybe not been great to their brains. You can make it better, and you did.

[Tana Amen]

And he's very proactive. You're very proactive.

[Lee Steinberg]

Now, first of all, I used your supplement. So I used to call it restless sleep, but it's restless. I use your supplements. I worked with Christian Wilmeier, who was a godsend to me, and then I've explored all sorts of healing modalities. So I do hyperbaric oxygen three times a week. I do a process called Nanaby, which you breathe through a cannula. And it helps the brain, and it also helps with protein folding. I do. I've done about 120 RTMS sessions.

[Tana Amen]

RTMS. Let's explain that.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Just repetitive trans cranial magnetic stimulation, Call it Woody Woodpecker, because powerful magnets that stimulate brain activity. And it's FDA approved for depression, but it can also be helpful for anxiety. There's some evidence it can help with addiction.

[Tana Amen]

And so you're sort of not kidding. You, like, went after every way you.

[Lee Steinberg]

I went around the world. I went to Medellin, Colombia, and had stem cells. I've actually shot stem cells into each temple and dropped my glasses so I don't have to wear them anymore. They had a magical effect. I've done a number of billions of stem cells.

[Tana Amen]

That's amazing.

[Lee Steinberg]

So I want to take these modalities into sport so that it's stem cells, hyperbaric, nanophy, Bimini red light. And I've done them all, and I do continue to do them. So I've looked everywhere for solution. And then if Dr. Amen can just get me to stop drinking diet Dr. Pepper. And I once brought a diet Dr. Pepper into his office, and he. It was like I was bringing poison. And he.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

But you were bringing po.

[Lee Steinberg]

Something.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

It's not like you were bringing poison.

[Tana Amen]

So funny.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

There's this. There's this fascinating. There's this fascinating new study on aspartame, which is what's in diet Dr. Pepper. They gave it to mice, and it made the mice very anxious. And then they gave the mice Valium, and Valium calmed down the mice. Why they did that, I'm not quite sure. But what they found was their babies were anxious and their grandbabies were anxious. So is it possible that the. Our mental health epidemic in children is aspartame part of it, and that it's in 5,000 products and started really going through society in the late 70s, early 80s, and now we have this anxiety disaster? I think it's. It's just one thing to look at. But why would you put a poison in your body? So let me tell you a story.

[Lee Steinberg]

Well, I did the same thing with alcohol.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

You did the same thing with alcohol. So we were at a luncheon recently, and we sat next to Lisa Trout. So Lisa and Kenny Trout own racehorses, and they own Justify. So Justify is the most recent Triple Crown winner. And as I was sitting at lunch and Tana's rolling her eyes at me, I'm like, would you ever feed Justify junk food? And she goes, no. And I'm like, well, would you ever get them stoned? And she laughed and she said, no. I said, would you ever get him drunk? And she's like, of course not. Now she knows my work, so she sort of knows where I'm going. I'm like, why wouldn't you do all of those things for Justify? He would never live up to his potential is what she said. And you. And I think they sold justify for like, $75 million. But you and all of the players you represent are worth so much more. Right. Even people that aren't making these huge contracts, they're worth so much more. But they don't have the mindset of, why would I put this crap in my body? Because it's. It's a love issue. I think that Lisa and Kenny loved that horse so that horse would perform. I don't think we love ourselves enough.

[Lee Steinberg]

But I think also, Dr. Amen, the whole food pyramid, the concept of nutrition, the things wrong with it. Remember, people felt like they were being virtuous by going to Diet Coke because they weren't doing sugar.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

We thought it was free.

[Lee Steinberg]

Right, Right.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Oh, it's. There's no calories, so it's free. But people who use diet soda have a higher incidence of obesity, they have a higher incidence of diabetes, have higher incidence of metabolic syndrome, because it's not free.

[Tana Amen]

Well, everything you put in your mouth matters. You know, it matters. So just because it doesn't have calories, doesn't mean it doesn't have chemicals. It doesn't mean it doesn't have an effect.

[Lee Steinberg]

So this. Your understanding of nutrition and the deleterious effect of putting that in your body is not widely known. In other words, most people think that I'm not drinking all that sugar in Coke. You know, I'm, I'm. So the more you can spread this information on nutrition, I mean, I recently read a book by Noah Duvall Hariri called Sapiens. One of the points he makes is that in the evolution of our species, there was no grain until 5, 6000 years ago when they cultivated it. So human body's intolerant of that. There was no refined sugar. So the human body's intolerant for that. And what we think of as normal, you've just pointed out, can be destructive.

[Tana Amen]

Well, and even when they first did start cultivating it, it's very different than it is today because we're mass marketing it and putting chemicals in it and preservatives and, you know, we're doing GMOs, and it's not the same thing.

[Lee Steinberg]

So.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Well, and the goal is for you to love yourself and then just ask this one question. Is what I'm doing now good for my brain or bad for it? And if you can answer that with science and love, you just get so much better. And you've been obviously so much better. How do you think you maintain the sobriety today despite still being in a very high pressure job?

[Lee Steinberg]

The one great thing about recovery is that once the cravings leave, then in my mind, I'm over here, I'm not over there.

[Tana Amen]

Yeah. So you've left it behind.

[Lee Steinberg]

Right. So the point is, I understand I'm supposed to be struggling, but there's no struggle once you.

[Tana Amen]

So you don't have cravings at all anymore?

[Lee Steinberg]

I don't. I haven't had them for 13 years. And so I just stay focused on trying to make a difference in the world.

[Tana Amen]

So it's not all about you.

[Lee Steinberg]

Right. Can I use athletes to deal with bullying? Can I use athletes to deal with sex trafficking? Can. Can I use athletes to deal with racism? Can we had Lennox Lewis, the heavyweight champ, do a PSA that said real men don't hit women, and that could do more to trigger imitative behavior in young, rebellious adolescents and a thousand authority figures. Or Oscar De La Hoya and Steve Young, Prejudices, foul play. And through the. I ask each athlete to go back to their high school, college and pro and set up Programs that enhance the quality of life. So, you know, we have one athlete work done. Who just put the 220th single mother and their family in the first home.

[Tana Amen]

Wow.

[Lee Steinberg]

By making a down payment. So my job at this point in life is to tackle a variety of societal issues and see how we can make it better.

[Tana Amen]

That's amazing.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Have you dealt with many athletes who had substance abuse issues.

[Lee Steinberg]

There? It's so much less than it used to be. In other words, I came through a time in football where there was heavy cocaine use. There was heavy.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

San Diego Chargers. A lot of my NFL players, the San Diego Chargers, they told me that the doctors were actually giving them what? Uppers and.

[Lee Steinberg]

Right. They were using steroids. And unlike baseball, I was passionate about player stuff and said let's just ban the stuff. So the economics are so high right now. Yeah.

[Tana Amen]

There's a lot of pressure for them.

[Lee Steinberg]

Players stay in shape all year round. They don't have to ever get a lot of motivation. Yes. And so the incidence of self destructive behavior is a lot less. Matter of fact, I could show you statistically that the rates of domestic violence and a whole lot of things are lower in professional athletes than in the same age group in their own situation. Each incident is blown up and so it gives you cumulative effect that it's, you know, gone to the dogs. But those incidents are rare now in basketball. They can smoke marijuana, which is so crazy to me.

[Tana Amen]

You're paying.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Yeah, no, we talked about that with Julius, that they don't test for it. It's mind blowing and players show up high for the game and some still play at a really high level. But you would. Julius says the difference in him from smoking a lot of pot to deal with his problems to not, but having a mechanism to deal with his problems has freed him immensely. Yeah. Do you think the other sports leagues are gonna stop testing for marijuana?

[Lee Steinberg]

No, I think that it's. You would not want to be high on. On marijuana in a football game. I mean, they may do it in basket. I guarantee.

[Tana Amen]

It's too brutal.

[Lee Steinberg]

It's, you know, you'd be carried off the field because you.

[Tana Amen]

I would think their drugs of choice would probably be opposite of that. They probably want to be more high than low.

[Lee Steinberg]

Yes. Yeah.

[Tana Amen]

If they were going to be anything.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

What'S your hope going forward? I mean, we see in the NFL from 2009 when the commissioner said they didn't know if playing football caused long term brain damage. I think it was 2011, they put post in every NFL locker room saying concussions can lead to dementia. So we've seen. And then we've seen them change some of the rules, the kickoff, which the president hates. So we've. We've seen them changing, but they're still wicked concussions.

[Lee Steinberg]

Right.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

If we think of the Miami Dolphins quarterback.

[Lee Steinberg]

Right. So let's start with. With younger kids, is it healthy for someone to play tackle football when they're 8 to 15 years old? And I would argue no, because the brain's in formation, and if it takes three weeks for an older player to recover from a concussion, it could take six, it could take forever, and you could alter brain structure. So that's the first thing. Second of all, there now are programs that play football with no hitting in training camp and no hitting during practice. They just model the plays. They're doing that in the Ivy League. So that's the second thing we can do. Here's what I feel. If we don't get a grip on the concussion epidemic in contact sports, if 50% of the mothers in this country understand the connection between playing a collision sport and brain health and tell their teenage boys, you can play any sport but not tackle football, it won't immediately kill football, but it will gradually change the socioeconomics of it. So it becomes a gladiator sport. And the same thing that happened to boxing and mixed martial arts, which is people clearly who have overwhelming economic need. So I think it's the existential threat to the dominance of pro football, which right now is not only the most popular sport by 3 to 1 in reader surveys, 91 of the top 100 Nielsen rated shows last year were NFL football. So for the first time in our culture, it's the most popular form of entertainment. It's the highest rated entertainment. So if we can get this right in pro football, it sends a trigger message to every other collision sport. It makes people think about their own brain health. So that's why you have a charitable foundation that tries to bring awareness. That's why I have a charitable foundation, so that we get the facts out.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Yeah. And the brain is actually not finished developing until you're 25. And so.

[Lee Steinberg]

So if that's true, and given that that's the fact, why would you have kids play popcorn or football?

[Tana Amen]

It's crazy. It's amazing to me. And one of our. One of our kids is dating someone who played football and was groomed from the time he was very young. I mean, that was, I mean, very young. And he's been doing that all the way through college, you know, so you have to Wonder like how many people.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

And we love him, he's amazing, but we have to scan him.

[Lee Steinberg]

What's important is to not get put into that category of you're just trying to destroy football. I believe athletics teaches great values. It teaches abstaining from current gratification for future success, work habits. It's teamwork, it's performance under pressure. It's taking a complex body of information and processing it in real time. These are all skills which are great. We're just trying to make these sports safer.

[Tana Amen]

Right. I would agree with you with that. And that was one thing that this young man was saying was that he really missed it. He had a really hard time when he left it and he left because of concussions and he wanted to have a normal life. And he was starting to get really worried. He got hurt and he said it was very, very hard because not only are you getting so much attention for playing football if you do well, but that structure and you have a coach that just is always guiding you and your teammates and it's, there's so much good that comes with it too. It's very hard for them when they have to leave.

[Lee Steinberg]

Right?

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Well, I think most parents will know. My opinion is the brain is soft about the consistency of soft butter. Your skull is really hard and has sharp bony ridges. Letting kids play tackle football puts them and their future, which means it's also putting their marriage and their ability to be good dads at risk. Now, obviously not all everybody has a problem, but we should love and protect our brains. And I often say golf is good, tennis is terrific, we just went through the US Open and it was great fun. Table tennis obviously is the world's best sport. I think it's, it's such an important discussion to have. And like you said, the NFL is not going away. And one of my players signed an 80 million dollar contract. So if you're gonna play, you should be rehabilitating your brain all the way through, not just when you retire. And somehow together we have to get the message out. CTE is not necessarily chronic, progressive and untreatable. It's, you need to start putting your brain in a brain healthy environment no matter what. Like firefighters, it's a brain damaging profession.

[Lee Steinberg]

So if you're going to have Pop Warner football, you ideally have an education component where when they sign up they would get realistic information about what the danger is. And, and the point you just made, it's what is your life after collision sport? Okay, you're going to stop playing at some point, even if you're Tom Brady, it's 45. But the point is. So I work with players in terms of second career planning, everything else. But I'd like to have a packet of amen nuggets to tell to every potential client. And I do discuss in that first meeting the fact that we have to be conscious of long term health.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

So I rewrote the 12 step program in one of my books, your brain is always listening. I thought that was written in the 1930s. I'm like, if a neuroscientist wrote it, how would I change it? And I actually took step one, your life is out of control, and made that step two. So I think with every player, you start with step one and step one is what do you want? Right? What do you want in your relationships, your work, your money, your physical, emotional, spiritual? What do you want? Because clearly when you decided to stop drinking, your behavior was not getting you what you want. But if you start with I think everybody, like all of your clients, that would be a great. It's like, what's the goal?

[Lee Steinberg]

Let me tell you what we do when I, I think the most important skill in life is listening. Is.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Is what?

[Lee Steinberg]

Listening.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Listening.

[Lee Steinberg]

If you can draw another person out, couple, load surface responses and understand their deepest anxieties and fears and their greatest hopes and dreams. I mean, the biggest skill in life, if you can put your head into someone else's head and harden the heart and see the world the way they see it, you can navigate your way through. So what I do at the very beginning is I give an athlete a set of values. Short term economic gain, long term economic security, family profile, geographical considerations, spiritual considerations. And then for an athlete, being on a winning team, the quality of coaching, the system, the team plays, the facilities. And I say, before we get into this experience, I want you to prioritize what actually fulfills you and what you're looking for in life. And let's have the. Do a little internal audit of what's most critical to you. So you have a guiding path as we go through this experience. So that's what I do in the first meeting.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Yeah. So very similar.

[Tana Amen]

What they want.

[Lee Steinberg]

Yes.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

So our exercise called the one page miracle on one piece of paper. Write it out. So when Julius and I were going through a hard time in the season, it's like, okay, so does your behavior fit what you want? And I think that was so, so helpful for so many of my.

[Lee Steinberg]

I asked him to do spot check at different points of their career. Okay, so you're 21. But now you're 30. Have your values changed? Have your goals changed? And are we on the path to fulfilling you? You know, have we done second career plans? Have we. How's your family life? What are we doing? So we. I try to be holistic.

[Tana Amen]

I love that you're not just doing contracts for them.

[Lee Steinberg]

Right. Oh, my goodness.

[Tana Amen]

It's amazing.

[Lee Steinberg]

Like I said, the role of an agent has to be more than just cramming dollars into a bank book. It has to be truly having a deep understanding of what the value system and of each individual person. You don't represent them generically. You represent that person and who they are without me superimposing my values on them.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

So that sounds very different than Jerry Maguire and how Jerry Maguire was portrayed.

[Lee Steinberg]

Jerry Maguire has to learn. Jerry Maguire has to go through a growth process where he starts to understand what truly is important. And so it's a journey that starts him off with. With being pretty brutal and ruthless and has him move in a different direction.

[Tana Amen]

How accurate was that?

[Lee Steinberg]

It's. Cameron Crowe followed me around for about two years, and he went everywhere I went. He went to the NFL League meetings, he went to the draft, he went to games. He went to a Super bowl party. He said in office for hours. And I told him a lot of stories. So what part of it made it on the screen, you know, is something I'll keep between him and me, but it's close enough.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Well, this has been so much fun.

[Lee Steinberg]

So much fun.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

We're so grateful to know you and to support your path and helping people have had traumatic brain injury, like 3 million people every year have a new concussion.

[Lee Steinberg]

So one last thing. I have a book coming out which I'm not as prolific as Dr. Amen, who his book written is the size of a large library. Okay. You could read your way through the rest of your life on simulating tips for better health from Dr. Amen. This one's called the Comeback, and it's stories of resilience. Life will inevitably push you back. You'll have reverses. We all have them. You'll have frustrations. So the question is not whether you may crash. It's how do you come back from that? How do you find the light in all the darkness? How do you.

[Tana Amen]

We should have you back when you.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

When's the book coming out?

[Lee Steinberg]

To super bowl. At my super bowl party. Fun.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

How exciting. Congratulations. So the book is the Comeback.

[Lee Steinberg]

That's my.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Going to come out early February of next year.

[Lee Steinberg]

So that's my third. I wrote Winning with Integrity, which is a book on the 12 steps in negotiating. And I wrote the Agent. Very clever name, right? The Agent, which is not a biography. And this one will sort of trace stories of people who faced major life setbacks and how they recovered from it and how they, they rebuilt their life or their whether it's marital problems, whether it's financial problems, whether it's addiction.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Can you tell us a story from it?

[Lee Steinberg]

Well, for example, I tell the story of coach June Jones, who was a coach at the University of Hawaii. And he falls asleep in his car and hits a concrete stanchion on the freeway. And his, his aorta is cut and most people would die, so but he lives. And he broke like 24 bones. So how does he come back? In his case, it was mostly his Christian faith. But the point is, athletes have a remarkable ability to heal. They have bodies that are not like ours, they have faster rehab in them or they couldn't survive. So it's a story of how he goes from the point of death and comes back and coaches the team. And when he comes back, they're the Only undefeated Division 1 team in college football at the University of Hawaii.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Wow. I love that. Thank you so much. Well, let's stay connected and we're just so grateful for you.

[Lee Steinberg]

We can change the world, Dr. Raymond.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

We are.

[Tana Amen]

You guys are changing the world.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

There are days when I need to be at my best. Whether it's back to back clinic sessions, long writing days, or just keeping up with life. That's when I take peak energy from Brain md. It gives me clean, steady energy without jitters or crashes. And I'm not the only one who loves it. It just won a 2025 Nextie Award, beating over 500 other supplements. If you want real energy that lasts, check it [e-mail] and use the code podcast20 for 20% off. You're listening to Change your Brain or watching Change your brain every day with Lee Steinberg. He has a new book coming out called the comeback February 2026. Leave us a comment A Question Review subscribe we are here for you. Thanks so much.

[Tana Amen]

Thank you so much.