You’re on top of the world. You have it all. You have everything you have ever dreamt of, but still, it isn’t enough. There’s that voice in the back of your head—that itching, nagging voice that tells you that you don’t deserve any of it. With endless possibilities at his fingertips, Seb W. really only wanted one thing: help.
Soho, England—Europe’s Times Square. A baby Seb was born—held in the arms of his loving mother, with his father nowhere in sight. When Seb was eleven, his mother, step-dad, brother, and he moved to an asparagus farm 50 miles outside of London. Around this time, Seb was being sexually abused by his piano teacher. The weight of this wouldn’t fully hit him until much later in his life.
For a plethora of reasons, school was an absolute nightmare for Seb. He grew up as a dyslexic kid in a time when that was just labeled as “stupid.” So, naturally, he despised going to school every single day—bullied, ridiculed, and slapped in the hands by the nuns. Oh yeah, that’s right, this was a Catholic school. In England, the Catholic church had built a system where all the best state schools were Catholic prep schools. So, he was forced to attend one of these schools…as a young Jewish boy. His Jewish identity was a struggle at first. As Holocaust survivors, his family constantly told him horror stories; he remembers being deeply scared to be Jewish and thinking to himself, “Why are we choosing to be Jewish?”
“Drugs in England are not like the drugs in the US. I hear horror stories of kids doing cocaine at 13. At 15, I think one of my friends once had some shitty weed that 12 of us gathered around the woods to try and smoke and it just blew away in the wind.” This was Seb’s introduction to the wonderful world of substances. Harder drugs, like cocaine, would pop up from time to time in his teen years, but not until he was 24 did it become a problem. By that point, Seb was already skiing his way down from the highest peak of the music industry.
Seb started his music career as a DJ, playing at clubs in Ibiza for thousands of people. That led to the record business where he was a junior executive of the team that discovered a few underground, little-known, small-time acts such as Adele and M.I.A. “When they blew up, I blew up.” Before he knew it, he was featured in Forbes, 30 under 30, and Variety. The back and forth between London and America became too much. So, they simply made him the head of the label in America…at 24-years-old. It was exactly how you would imagine it. Drugs. Parties. Celebrities. Seb was buying the cars, sleeping with the models, and living, what he thought (at the time), was his best life. At this same point in time, Seb sold a ticketing company he was working on as a side project…Songkick. With more money and resources than any 24-year-old should ever have, Seb lived a life of lavish extravagance. “I had two apartments in the same complex. One for working and one for partying. No one really ever taught me anything.” Although his life was full of massive achievements, fame, and success, although he bathed in it on the outside, there was always a voice in the back of his head that told him he was undeserving of what he had earned. “I rode their coattails. Adele would have been a star with or without me there.” The love the industry showered him with was transactional—conditional…and he knew it.
Everything was going great for Seb until one day—Needle drop. He discovered crystal meth. He was spending some quality G-rated time with a pornstar from The Valley when she offered him a pookie. “I was euphoric—it was spiritual in a weird way.” Slowly, meth started to take everything from him and with that same lighter he lit his pookie, he started to burn his life to the ground.
The first time Seb realized he had a problem came when he was at a music festival in Serbia. A promoter, who had never met, handed him a huge bag of drugs and told him he had heard about him in advance and that they were told to “look after” him. “Oh no…that means that someone at the agency said, ‘Seb’s coming? You better make sure he has drugs.’” By this point, he knew everyone else knew. Eventually, the records spun him dizzy and he knew he needed more than money could buy.
In and out and in and out and out and in of the rooms of AA, Seb just couldn’t gather any substantial sober time. “My relapses start with a pornstar in the Roosevelt Hotel and end with a dude in a wig in a Motel 6.” Somehow, through the 14 years he was in and out of recovery, Seb bounced from management to agencies to being the creative director of Tidal. These opportunities started to dry up slowly, like a wet sponge left in the summer heat. He was living a double life, constantly thinking to himself, “Who do I have to lie to, to get through this day?” The party life, the larger-than-life executive, would crumble in private and become a withered, isolated, drug addict. The character of Seb was becoming increasingly harder to play.
A few years prior, Seb became a father. “There are two dates I will never forget…the day my kid was born and the next is five days later when I was smoking meth in the alley outside her house and I realized not even that little girl was going to save me.” This wake-up call made Seb that much more determined to change his behavior before his daughter had to grow up without a father—a pain he knew all too well. As the watches were sold for rent, the cars were repoed, and the apartments got smaller, Seb barely even noticed how bad it had gotten—until he was a father. “Having a kick-ass art collection and then, ‘Oh, it’s time to sell the Banksy. Now, it’s time to sell the Damien Hirst. And then all you have is the artwork your kid made you…which is fine by me because it’s my favorite piece.”
After manipulating his way through multiple other treatment centers, he found himself ready to surrender at a place impervious to manipulation (because we have seen it all, and most of us have done it all). Broken, battered, beaten, and finally ready for recovery, Seb took every suggestion offered to him here. One thing that he mentioned to me that he loves about Beit T’Shuvah, is that there is “Recovery in your downtime.” The community is there at all hours of the day and there is always something to do. From working as an intern in the music department (a humbling experience to say the least), to working as a thrift store intern (people used to buy his clothes for him), to now being a clinical intern, working as the driver (I don’t even need to tell you that people used to drive him around) he has engaged in every possible activity in and out of program hours. He has even started a recovery-based podcast here! Sicker Than Others, coming out soon! “It has given me my own part of Beit T’Shuvah.” Without realizing it, Seb has made a home here. “When you come to these sorts of centers, you feel like you are living in somebody else’s house and it is a temporary stay. Here, it becomes your house.”
When you talk about beloved residents, there are only a few that even come close to how loved Seb is around this campus. There is a genuine reason for that. That hot-shot exec who only thought about himself has become a loving, teddy bear of a man who greets every newcomer with his open arms, and his British charms. If somebody needs something—anything, Seb will be there to help them. Those incredible gifts he was given to rise to the top of the music industry have now translated into an ability to give back to his fellows in a deeply meaningful way. But it’s not just his fellows he is there for. Since coming to BTS, he has gotten to see his daughter and build a wonderful relationship with her. “I am trying to be a triple black belt in showing up.” He has become the man he was always meant to be—the Seb underneath the character.
Although the road to realizing it may be long and winding, Seb deserves every bit of the life he has today. “My self-confidence has been battered over the last few years. I think of it as a tank of gas. It was on empty for a long time. I didn’t believe in myself… Now, it is at about a quarter of a tank.” Seb, a quarter of a tank of belief in yourself is fine. At five months sober, that is pretty standard. But I want you to know, there is a convoy of hundreds of tanker trucks backing you up. You deserve the beautiful life you have today. You deserve to be your unbelievably hilarious and profoundly wise self. You deserve all of the world’s authentic love….and we are all so lucky to be deserving enough to have you as a part of our community.