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John Beyer, "Live a Little Better: One Man's Journey of Survival, Sobriety, and Success" (Worth, 2025)
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- [00:01]
John Byer
Close your eyes. Exhale. Feel your body relax. And let go of whatever you're carrying today.
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1-800-Contacts Customer
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- [00:16]
Deidre Tyler Holtz
And breathe.
- [00:17]
1-800-Contacts Customer
Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste.
- [00:25]
Deidre Tyler Holtz
Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order.
- [00:28]
John Byer
1-800-contacts. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [00:36]
Deidre Tyler Holtz
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the New Book Network podcast. I'm Deidre Tyler Holtz. Today we'll be talking with John Byer, author of the book Live a Little, One Man's Journey of Survival, Sobriety and Success. How are you doing today?
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John Byer
I'm doing okay.
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Deidre Tyler Holtz
Great. I wonder if you could start by telling the audience a few words about yourself and how you got started on this project.
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John Byer
I had read another book and it was an excerpt in that book that I identified with dramatically. And I was quite enthusiastically reporting it back to my daughter, my daughter Lauren. And she relentlessly, she turned towards me and became relentless for months about how I have to tell my story because I do have a. It is a bit of a survival story, somewhat of a rags to riches story. And said, dad, you have to do this. You have to do this. You have quite a message. You have quite a message. And it was my daughter that really pushed me into doing it.
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Deidre Tyler Holtz
Wow. Now, let's start with your childhood experiences. How did that impact your addiction?
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John Byer
Yeah, you know, both my parents were bonafide alcoholics. My father was a chronic drinker every day. My mom was this periodic alcoholic who didn't drink for weeks and then would stay drunk for weeks and longer. And she went in and out of rehabs and they both died at young ages. And I watched it destroy their lives. They got a divorce as a matter of course, as the Billy Joel song says. And I vowed that it was never going to affect me that way because I knew that that was the case. And believe it or not, that didn't happen. I just, the first time I drank, I just drank differently. And there, you know, so I have it genetically and environmentally. I don't know, you know, why I'm an alcoholic. Both my sisters are not necessarily alcoholics and they had it genetically, environmentally, and, but I do have it. And, and that's the story. I mean, we became very poor, dirt poor, food stamps, child protective services. Parents were divorced. My sisters are a little Older, they moved out. So it was just me and my mom. And by the time I was 11, 12 years old, I had nothing to eat in the refrigerator, and I had nothing. No guidance, no supervision whatsoever. Whatsoever. And something. You know, I was. I was. I was about 11, 12 years old, and. And there was nothing to eat. And I wound up going across the street to the shopping center, to the grocery store, and not to buy anything. I didn't have any money. And I. I decided to help. Start helping the women put the groceries into the trunk of their car or especially if they had a baby, or the older people, you know, wheel their cart and carry the groceries for them. And they would give me a quarter, you know, or sometimes even 50 cents back then. And I started to earn money, and I started putting all the shopping carts away in the parking lot because the parking lot wasn't efficient, and people were waiting for a spot and there was a cart in the way. So I would help out by doing that. It was my own benefit, really. And a couple hours later, some big guy comes out and says, what are you doing? And I said, I'm just trying to make some money here. And he came out later on, and he handed me $2. He was the manager of the store, and he said, you keep doing it, kid. So I earned my own money that day. I created my own job that day. And it was literally because I wanted a slice of pizza for dinner. I wanted to be able to eat. And that was very impactful because. And I was a kid. I was a child. And it was very impactful because I learned that if I wanted to eat, I would have to literally earn my own keep sometimes at a young age. And I started working like a maniac from that day on, starting my own money.
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Deidre Tyler Holtz
Now, your teen years, they were somewhat troubling, but you made it through it. Can you give us some examples or stories during that time period?
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John Byer
Well, we would. You know, you'd get up to go to school, and you'd open the door, and there would be an eviction notice on the door. And we were constantly being evicted, and that was embarrassing. And the U.S. marshals came a number of times. And I remember I had a good friend, Richie, and Richie would be so relieved when somebody. We never got evicted as many times the marshals showed up and had our stuff wrapped up and ready to go out the door and in the hallway a couple of times. This stuff was in the hallway. It was an elevated building, and we never got evicted. But I remember the look on Richie's Face that I didn't get evicted and I wasn't moving, and we didn't know where we were going to go, but somebody showed up with the money. And sometimes my grandmother at the time, and you know, that you. You don't forget that stuff. And it was. It was persistent, it was consistent, and it wears you down, and it hurts. It hurts.
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Deidre Tyler Holtz
Did those experiences lead you into committing deviant acts?
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John Byer
I. There was a tough guy in the neighborhood, a bad guy, and he was forcing. He scared me. He was a little older than me, and he was a monster guy. He was huge. And he made me do things that I put in the book where we would go on top of the elevators, and he had a gun and the gum wound up being in my hand. And we would open the hatch of the elevator and we rob people through the top of the elevator. And he made me do this a handful of times. And I was. Always been very ashamed of that. Always been very. I felt terrible about it. We had a plant. There was a guy inside the elevator who was pretending to be robbed along with him. But he was there to talk the person out of screaming or yelling or anything like that, in case they started to do it. He was acting as if he was, you know, being robbed, too. He would handle his wallet. And we did this a handful of times. And one day, that guy, this bad guy who used to make me do this, he threatened me. You know, if you don't do this, I'm going to kick you. I'm going to kick your butt. I'm going to kick your butt. And one day he just disappeared. I was so grateful that all of a sudden he was just gone, because I could have gone in a very different direction. I could have been in prison.
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Deidre Tyler Holtz
Absolutely. Now, when you were young, you experienced death, divorce, illness, and moving. Tell us how these events impacted your life.
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John Byer
Well, I had a friend, Jimmy, who committed suicide when I was 20, 20 years old. And I called his house looking for him because he was supposed to be at the bar, and he didn't show up. And that's when his family would just come back from vacation, went upstairs to his room to find out that he killed himself. I was on the phone, and I remember I called my dad and I went to a pay phone back there. No cell phones. Then I called my dad and I said, dad, you know, Jimmy died, Jimmy died. I was hysterical, crying, and my dad just kept repeating the same thing over and over again. I said, son, life is for the living. Life will go on. Life is for the living. Life will go on. Well, lo and behold, he got sick because he started drinking again. He put it down for a little While and just 10 weeks later after he. He picked it back up, he went into the hospital and my dad died just months after Jimmy died. And, you know, death is a part of life. Life does could keep on going though, you know. So, yeah, I saw a lot of death. That's. That's just a couple of examples. And then a few years after that, my mom got cancer and died a long, slow, painful death of lung cancer. That was horrible. And it was, you know, it was. Poor me, you know, poor me felt sorry for myself. Pour me a drink. And that's how I dealt with my feelings. I, I would, I would just numb my feelings and, and drink and. And now I. I had dropped out of college and was a bartender in my 20s. And, you know, I was classic underachiever. You know, I was supposed to skip a grade in high school, but I didn't do that. I wound up graduating with like a, you know, a 78 average or something like that when I, when I was an honest unit at one time. But I become a full blown alcoholic now.
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Deidre Tyler Holtz
You, you talk in your book about 1986 and 1986 being a turning point. Tell us about the support you received during that time period.
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John Byer
In 19. On January 6th of 1986, a guy in the bar who I idolized, a guy in my bar, the Midland Bar, Jamaica, Queens and near Long island in New York. He. He overdosed. He. He was more of an alcoholic than a heroin addict. But he did do a little heroin that day also. But he drank a ton. I think it was the combination that made him. Made him die. But I idolized him. He was older than me, had a lot going for him, and it was good looking, macho guy. And he. He died. And I went into. I went into a bender for. From January 6th to March 31st, where I didn't draw a sober breath. I would share with you. This is rather graphic. I hope this is okay, that I would. I would sit on the edge of a bed, of my bed. I was so out of it that I thought it was the toilet pole. That's the only way to put it. And only to wake up hours later or come two hours later to realize, oh my God, I thought I was on the toilet bowl. That that wasn't the toilet bowl. And yeah, I Woke up on March 31, 1986. Or I should say, I came to. I came to and the clock said 6am I pull the curtain back, the sky was in me. The clock said 6 o'. Clock. There was no a.m. or p.m. and I pulled the curtain back and the sky was a medium blue and I did not know if it was AM or pm. I did not know if it was day and night. Can you imagine coming to and becoming conscious and not knowing if it's day or night? I was 26 years old. I had just turned 26. And that's the case that state I was in. I had known of AA and I heard of AA through my uncle. He had gotten sober and my mom tried to go to AA many times. And so I was aware of it and I called my girlfriend at the time I was seeing a girl named Amy. And I went to my first meeting that night and the rest of my life changed. I went to that meeting and I, I, I just knew I was in the right place from day one. I'm so grateful for that. I am so grateful for that. I came, I came back and before the door closed, Amy was cooking a dinner for us. And before the door closed, I said to her, our whole lives are going to change. And boy, I had no idea how right I was when I said that our whole lives were going to change. And I haven't had a drink since March 31, 1986. It'll be 40 years. And I still go to meetings. I was at a meeting at 7 o' clock this morning. I go three, four days a week, pretty, pretty regularly. I'm active, I sponsor people, I help people. And I'm still learning. I still learn something new every day almost at a meeting, every time I go, I still learn something, learn about myself, I learn about others, learn how to deal with life and you find out you're not alone. I would say that, yeah, I would say AA saved my life. It literally did save my life when I was 21. I'll tell you a story. When I was 21, I was in a lot of pain and my dad was dying and I was drinking. I never thought I was suicidal, I never called myself suicidal. In retrospect, I would tell you that I drank suicidally. And my, I was drinking so much I was in, my stomach was killing me. And my sister, my sister Denise somehow dragged me to a clinic in Manhattan and I took a GI series and I'm 21 years old and I got the robe on after taking, you know, this with the split down the back and, and the nurse says to me, go down the hall, make a left and a left, and, and you'll see the doctor in room so and so. And I had not met the doctor yet. So I go down the hall, I make the left and the left. And I stand in front of this doorway and there's two doctors looking up at a light box with an X ray on it. And I clear my throat and they say, yes, can we help you? I said, yeah, my name is John Byer. Your John Byer. We were expecting somebody 80 years old. That's what their response to me was. They thought I was 80 years old. Based on my X ray, I was 21. And they gave me a. How much do you drink? I drink a little bit. I drink, you know, a few times a week. I drank every day at that point. You know, whether or not it's a minimal amount of six pack a day to, you know, a quart of OC or scotch or. I used to drink Manhattan's also. I loved Manhattan's. So I, you know, I left there with a vial of medication to make me feel better, my stomach feel better. And I drank another five years after that. Yeah, so it literally saved my life. I'd be dead, I'd be long dead physically. And I had car accident. I had the car accident. I hurt people. In 1979 when I was 19 years old, I hit people. It was coming from an after hours bar and I hit people in the car. And I got sued in 1979 for $2.9 million. That's equivalent to about 10, $12 million today. And yeah, so I did a lot of damage. That was just one accident.
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Deidre Tyler Holtz
Now let's look at your organization that you started. Tell us about Men on the Move.
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John Byer
I started Men on the Move that year I got sober and I did it by. I met a guy in the bar that I knew. We used to drink, we drank together. And I get sober and I needed a job and he puts me on his moving truck. He was at a prison. He came out of prison and he was an unlicensed mover. And he asked me to start helping him move some furniture. And I did. And he says to me, john, you're a smart guy. Why don't you start your own company too? We'll work together and we'll build our businesses together. And that's what we did. I started moving furniture when I was in 1986. So men on the Move was born and I would get a truck a year and I grew the business and then. And it really took off. And we're one of the larger, if not the largest, independent moving company. On Long island, which is a big deal. It's a pretty congested area in Nassau county. And yeah, we've got a great reputation and I'm proud of what we've accomplished. I married that girl Amy. We have two children. Lauren, I mentioned before, and then I have my son Gregory, who has autism. Gregory has autism. He was diagnosed when he was 2 years old. I was sober about 6, 7 years at the time. Thank God. Thank God I was sober. Yeah, thank God I was sober. I. The day he was diagnosed, I remember walking back from the doctor's office to the car and my wife and I have both have two and we both have his hand. And I knew life just changed. I knew life just took a hard left turn and I knew I was going to have to make a lot of money, that this was going to be expensive. We're going to have to get him two tutors and somebody to care for him and how bad is it going to be? Nobody knew. You didn't know how bad, how rough it was going to be, what level he was going to be at. And you hear about high functioning autistic kids. You hear about low function. Gregory is a classic kid with autism. He's right in the middle of the pack there. He's not very verbal. He's 30 or 4 years old now and, you know, he doesn't live independently and he still doesn't speak very much. He understands what you say most of the time, but we don't have a conversations. I don't know what he's thinking very much at all. But the AA really managed to. It gave me the bedrock in which to function and want to see, be responsible and face this head on. That was a great thing. And to give back. One of the credos of Alcoholics Anonymous is that you have to give it away to keep it sobriety and you help others and that's. And you practice these principles in all of your affairs. And that's what I do. And I've generalized that across all the things that I do in my life, not just with my drinking. And my son has made me grateful for everything. I get grateful for the things he does do and that he does achieve. So, you know, it's a great thing. You know, I, my friends that I grew up with in Lefrak City. Lefrak City is, is a complex that I grew up in Queens. You know, after I got sober, we, you know, I, I made AA the focus of my life there for a while and I'm glad I did. No regrets. On that. And we. We got separated a little bit. But I am still friends with those people today. I'm still friends with those people today. People I've known since 8, 10 years old. And that feels lovely. And then I'm still friends with all the people that were in my wedding party when Amy and I got married in 1987, just a year after I came into the program. We got married a year and a half after because she was the right girl. I met my wife on my 17th birthday on the steps of our high school. And that was one of the. That's why I dedicate the book to her. I'm in the moving business and the dedication leads. Marrying you is the best move I ever made. A little campy, but it's very true. She's a good woman and she's remarkable. And we would not have achieved what we've. Nothing one iota would have been achieved without. Without my wife Amy, of what's been achieved. Yeah.
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Deidre Tyler Holtz
Now, you know, you are an advocate for children who. Or parents and children who have autism. Tell us about the advocacy.
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John Byer
We had founded an organization. We were one of the founding families of an organization called the David Center. At one point, the David center is no longer in existence. The real founder, the principal founder of that organization was a doctor named Dr. Pat L. Elvier, who was a pediatrician, pediatrician, who when her child was diagnosed, she didn't know herself what to really look for. And as a professional, that really bothered her. So her mission was to educate doctors on how to diagnose somebody with autism. Very interesting, isn't it? And then we help provide families with services along island resources. And that was. That was a big deal back then. It was important. I. I led a. I started and let a father support group which was very rewarding because the fathers really exposed themselves and broke down and cried and you know, was all men in the meetings and you know, could have been a macho atmosphere, but it turned out to be a very vulnerable group who really shared their hearts and souls. And I learned that, I think from, you know, I think I learned how to facilitate that a little bit from, from, you know, attending the meetings that I, that I attended, you know, regarding the drinking and that was a very rewarding thing. And then autism, Autism Speaks came along and service and the Internet came along and then more information and more resources became available and, and doctor, the doctor and her husband Jim, great people moved away. They moved down to Florida. And so then we got involved with Autism Speaks, which is the biggest organization for the Support of autism in world, I believe. And they asked me to be the chairman of the Long island chapter one time. And I was. And also very rewarding, great thing to do. We would sponsor walks and raise money and help with legislation. One of my good friends, Michael Jean Gregorio, who's in Congress now, was instrumental in passing the ABLE act because the ABLE act lets you save for your disabled child with the same tax benefits of, let's say a 529 college deferred, you know, investment so that you have resources, so that the child will have resources. If they're not going, you know, they can't go to school, they'll have some resources to help them live, you know, better when they, you know, live a little better themselves when, when they're older. So we did all kinds of things like that, you know, and helped him with those things and just, that's the journey. And my wife, my wife got on the school board in our neighborhood and what she did there was nothing short of remarkable. She was an advocate for building a life skills program where you would take all the special needs kids and it doesn't have to be autism, it could be down syndrome or anything. And she would make sure that they learned how to go to the bank or mail a letter and a life skill. And they set up programs that were individualized for each one of the kids. And it's to me that the legacy of that and many other aspects to that, that's what life is all about. And my wife won. You know, there was 600 school board members in the state of New York and she was nominated and she won the award one year for being the best school board member person in the state of New York out of 600 people who are, you know, school board members. And that's nothing, you know, that's not too shabby.
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Deidre Tyler Holtz
No.
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John Byer
So, yeah, she never talks about that. I have to mention it for her.
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Deidre Tyler Holtz
You've had several health crises throughout your, your lifetime. How has these health crisis impacted your, your family and your, your business?
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John Byer
Well, the health crises have come. They started when I was really at 57, I'm 66 now, and I got diagnosed with colon cancer. And it was, that was relatively smooth, actually. There was a 2 inch tumor. After a colonoscopy, they found a 2 inch tumor and it was cancerous. And I went in and they removed it and they staged it at stage 2A, so it had not spread. They said, so they thought, and they said I did not need chemo. I think that that was probably a mistake. And I had the surgery, which, frankly, was easy. It was really not bad at all. And they. I left there and I was fine. And then four and a half years later, I'm going for the routine colonoscopies and CAT scans. Get one of each every six months. And the CAT scan shows a big tumor on my liver. Yeah, four years ago on March 1st, they called me on my. Well, they called me on my birthday four years ago to tell me that they found the tumor. And that's in February. And then on March 1, four years ago, I had the tumor removed at Sloan Kettering Hospital in Manhattan. And they took out two thirds of my liver. They took out 2/3 of my liver in the first 24 hours. I was fine. I was doing okay, you know, no painkillers. No, you can't, because you're not. You can't process. You. You don't have a liver to process, any medication, not even a Tylenol. So. And all of a sudden, for some reason, I couldn't breathe and I started to fail. And they had to intubate me and they put me on a ventilator and it looked like I was dying. And my wife and my daughter huddled and they stayed together for a couple of nights. My daughter came over and looked like I was going to die. And all of a sudden I came to and I remember the doctors saying, the team of doctors is standing at the foot of my bed saying, we don't understand this. We've never seen anybody fail so quickly and come back so quickly. We thought you were dying, you were dying, and here you are, you're alive and you're stable all of a sudden. And I remember they couldn't give me any. I had a. I was burning with a fever and they couldn't give me anything for the fever either. And I had ice packs all over me, underneath my arms, my back. I mean, oh, God. And I can. I could feel that today. And it's coming up on the anniversary of that. And you don't forget that. So, yeah, I had that occur. And that was obviously, that took months to recover from, to losing 2/3 of your liver. I had chemo. And this is in the heart of when Covid was hitting and a chemotherapy and my resistance was low. I wound up having. I got E. Coli. I. I got. I wound up having a rotavirus, which was one of the worst things I've ever had in my life that hospitalized me. And I got Covid all within about a six week period. Coming up over the summer of what Would be four years. And it was devastating. It was the thinnest I've ever been. And I stopped taking the chemo in September. I survived all those. And I've had some problems since then. That chemo, I don't have cancer, but that chemo was very strong. I had a chemo pump put into my abdomen and that chemo was 400 times more powerful than full body chemo, up to 400 times more powerful. And I. But it damaged my liver, it turns out. So now I have a liver problem. So I'm not a cancer patient, I am a liver patient. And I have to go for iron infusions. And I was bleeding profusely. I almost died on last August 25, which happens to be my mother's birthday. I started bleeding profusely with vomiting blood. And I have what they call a TIPS procedure. And yeah, I have. I have what they call obliterative portal for neopathy, which you can live with. And I'm living with it. I'm okay. Kind of weakens you a little bit, but I'm okay. And I could live another 20 years. And that's my goal, is to live, you know, to have another 20 summers on the planet. Absolutely, yeah. So it's been a journey that the health in the last eight, nine years has been a journey. You know, in the middle of all that, I want to share this too. My granddaughter was born, and she was born with Sturge Weber disease, which is. Can be a very devastating diagnosis where people can be cognitively impaired, they can be in a wheelchair, they usually have a port wine stain on their face. She had that. We had a laser remove about 90% of that laser doctor do that. And she's had seizures, but she takes seizure medication now. And she hasn't had a seizure in almost two years. And she's developing fine. She's four and a half years old and fine now. But when this was diagnosed and this was happening, it kind of freaked me out. For lack of a better term, it did freak me out. And the thought of my daughter having to raise a special needs child like we did with my son Gregory, really devastated me. And my. I. I developed real extreme heart palpitations. And my wife took a picture of my chest popping out of my chest, you know, and she sent it to our cardiologist and he said, get in here. And I took a stress test and he said, it looks like you have a blockage. I go in for a routine angiogram and you're not going to believe what I tell you. I'm sober 36 years at the time, and I go in and they give you a sedative for the angiogram. I don't even didn't think to question that. And I come out of there, and two things occurred from this angiogram. And I will tell you that they're completely unrelated. Two big things occurred. One is I overdosed on the sedative. The sedative was fentanyl, and that's commonly given to people for the applications of an angiogram. And they actually had to give me Narcan in the hospital. Here I am, sober 36 years, never shot. Heroin came very close. I talk about that in the book. My book Live a Little Better and. But, yeah, I had overdosed. They had to give me Narcan. On top of it. I had a stroke. I had a stroke. And a piece of plaque during the angiogram broke off and went and floated up and went behind my brain and impaired my vision dramatically. My right eye was all adrift all the way to the right. And fortunately, I wound up making a full recovery from that. Couldn't drive for a long time, and only later to be diagnosed with the cancer. So, yeah, medically, it's been very challenging in the last X amount of years. Yeah. Yeah.
- [34:42]
Deidre Tyler Holtz
Now, tell us about coming out publicly with your story. How has that experience been for you?
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John Byer
That's been very interesting because it's. The goal of this was to help people. I'm not selling this book to make money. I will never. I would be stunned if I make back the money it cost me to. To. To write the book. I did hire a notable ghostwriter named Glenn Plaskin. Not a ghostwriter, if I'm mentioning his name, but. But he's kind of famous himself. He really was instrumental in helping me with the book and then with the printing of it and the marketing of the book. And the reason why I'm doing it is because I want to inspire people. I want to let people to know that they're not alone, that if you do have a problem, you can get help. And the thing is, I learned through this process that everything. There were kind of three aspects to this. Alcoholism is the cord that runs through the book. And then, of course, my son's autism. And then I touched on my business a little bit. Just a little. It's not what the book is about, but it was unavoidable because it's the reality of. It's my memoir. And music, because I love music. When I was younger, my mom, drunk, would make me sing at 8, 10 years old to Sinatra and Andy Williams and so on and so forth. So I learned how to sing a little bit and I made the High School of Music and Art in, in New York City, which is a hard high school to get into. I auditioned the song On a Clear Day and Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head and I got in. I never really went. I dropped out of that one too. But I always love to sing. So about five or six years ago I started making music. So those are the subject matters that through the book. And what I've learned is that the same thing occurred. Not only did I build my business one truck at a time, and then I started developing self storage facilities. Self storage facilities that made me a lot of money. And then I stay sober a day at a time. My son was learning all his tasks. Everything that we had to teach him was being taught one on one, broken down into little pieces. I remember teaching him his first word to utter a sound. We would have to go ah, ah, just breaking it down. And eventually his first word was apple. And you would have to break it down into increments. And I realized everything in life can be achieved if you work at it incrementally. So I have a fleet of 20 some odd trucks out there and I have thousands of self storage units. And you know, and I write one song at a time. I can't do two or three at a time. I can't do that. I write, you know, and produce and, and publish my music with my collaborator Benjamin Hay. So. And all of that gets done incrementally. And I did not. That became realization as result of writing the book. Anything can be achieved incrementally.
- [38:15]
Deidre Tyler Holtz
So tell us, how did you get that title Live Little Better?
- [38:20]
John Byer
Oh, I love telling this. This is great. So Lafrock City, like I said, is this huge complex. 15,000 people. 15,000 people or so live there. There's shopping in the middle, there's stores, there's a swimming pool. There was. It was very nice at one time, it's nice again now. And they had a billboard on the Long Island Expressway, which is the main artery that runs right through the middle of Long Island. And as you can imagine, there's a ton of traffic on this. And they had a billboard up on the lie, the Long Island Expressway for decades. It had to be there for decades, 20, 30 years. And the top of the billboard, it said live a little better at LeFrack City. And I don't know, you know, when I move people, I'VE always. I come from LeFrak, which was an apartment building and in. And it had a rough. It was a rough neighborhood at times. I learned how to survive by learning to play basketball with the, with the brothers who at one time were, you know, rifling my pockets. Then I became pretty good at basketball, so I became friends with these guys. So, you know, and everybody was on food stamps like we were. And so that Live a little better thing just stuck in my brain. Well, one day my daughter, who's now 36 years old, we're driving on the Long Island Expressway and she's in college, so she's about 20, 21 at the time, and she's taking a photography class and she. The car is moving at about 10, 15 miles an hour and she takes a picture of the billboard and she prints it in this grainy black and white sepia thing. Real old fashioned photography. 35 millimeter camera. And that's where I got the title of the book from. Live a little better each day you can live a little better. A day at a time is really the message behind the book. And that you can. You're not alone. You know that if I leave the reader with anything, I want the reader to know that you're not alone. If you have a problem or need help with anything, if it's drugs, alcohol, poverty, you're not alone and there's help. And don't be afraid to ask for help because there are people who want to help.
- [40:45]
Deidre Tyler Holtz
Well, I've taken up enough of your time. Can you tell the audience the next project you'll be working on?
- [40:53]
John Byer
I'm working on a play. I'm writing a play about addiction. It's called We. And the play is about all the anonymous programs. Alcoholics Anonymous, Gambles Anonymous, Sexaholics Anonymous, Overeat is Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, Marijuana is Anonymous. About how all those programs are Based on the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and how that. That the. It's a musical. And in fact, one of my songs on Spotify or john byermusic.com you can see is called Powerless. And I sing that song. It's the first song I released. It was. It's actually the fourth anniversary of Luis, that song. I released it right before I had surgery because, you know, I said, let me put this out into the universe just in case I don't make it. And God knows I almost didn't make it, but here I am. So that's my neck. That's the project I'm working on now. Working on this Broadway musical about letting people know how many millions and millions of lives the 12 steps of alcoholics Anonymous have helped people around the world.
- [42:06]
Deidre Tyler Holtz
Well, we'll be looking forward to seeing that play, that musical. And I would like to thank you so much for being on the podcast. And again, we have been talking with the author, John Byer and the book is Live a Little Better One Man's Journey of Survival, Sobriety and Success. Thank you again.
- [42:30]
John Byer
Thank you. Foreign.
- [42:45]
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