He sits in my office at Beit T’Shuvah and leans back on the couch like he’s done this before, like he knows how these conversations go, like he’s already preparing himself to dodge whatever comes next. I ask him who he is and he doesn’t hesitate. “Motherfucker? Who am I?” He laughs, but it isn’t really a laugh. It’s more like a reflex. A defense mechanism. A way of buying himself a second before answering a question that has followed him his entire life. Then he adds, quieter, more honestly, “I can be a lot of things. It depends on who you ask, the context, and thereof.” At this point, all I know is he is Ryan J.
For most of his life, Ryan has been a master of context. He learned early how to read a room. How to become what was needed. How to survive. How to blend. How to disappear inside whatever version of himself would get him through the moment. School Ryan. Rebel Ryan. Hustler Ryan. Music industry Ryan. Prison Ryan. Sober-but-not-really Ryan. And now, finally, something else. Something different.
But before any of that, before Texas and money and ranches and rules and the kind rebellion that is born of fear and fire, there was a baby in an abandoned trailer. His biological parents are strangers to him. He has DNA records, paperwork, reports, but nothing else. That’s it. Police and CPS found him alone. A neighbor had heard the cries of an infant in a trailer where no one ever came or went. They kicked in the door and found Ryan inside. Having not eaten or drunk in who knows how long. An infant near death, yet still near birth. He was taken to the hospital. Then to foster care. Then, at age three, adopted. When he talks about his early childhood, parts of it are gone. “That area of my life is black.” No memory. No story. Just absence. The abyss of abandonment—a relatable tale to many of us in this community.
Ryan’s adoptive parents gave him stability. They provided him with an upper-middle-class lifestyle and plenty of opportunity for growth. “I grew up in a very good household. I grew up in a very wealthy family. I had everything I could ever have wanted.” But it was a house full of strict rules. No TV. No video games. No freedom. The movies he watched were preselected, and he could only listen to his dad’s old vinyl records—crafting a unique musical taste that would follow him throughout his life. Tough love. Ranch work. Discipline. Structure. Expectations. The only problem: “Ryan does not like rules,” he says now, with a devilish smirk. Those rules felt suffocating. He learned quickly that if he couldn’t break them, he would bend them. Sneaking DVDs. Finding friends whose parents were more relaxed. The “I’d rather you do it in the house” types. He learned to hide, cover his tracks, and get one over on everyone. “That justification and rationalization…was something that was instilled in me at a very young age.” He became clever. Resourceful. Independent. Distrustful. He didn’t trust adults. He didn’t trust systems. He trusted himself.
School came easily. He was gifted. Smart. A strong test-taker. The only issue: he never did any of the “busy work.” He would skip the homework for an entire semester and show up to the final and, after a night of studying, ace it. His teachers hated that—and how could you blame them? Real, “if you only applied yourself” types. If he didn’t respect something—anything, he ignored it. “I beat systems for a living. That is what I do.” It wasn’t arrogance. Not yet (That comes later). It was survival. In his mind, if you can outsmart the system, you don’t have to depend on it. And to his credit…it worked…for a while at least.
At seventeen, he smoked weed for the first time. Another act of rebellion. A foot in the door of another world. But alcohol had already been calling to him long before that. As a kid, he’d pretend to drink martinis in restaurants, ordering Sprite with olives. A dirty soda on the rocks. He was fascinated by it. Curious. Drawn to it. There was a lifestyle he yearned for hidden within that bottle. Then one night, alone in his aunt and uncle’s house, he found tequila. He filled a Gatorade bottle and drank. “It felt like I’ve been crawling on the ground my entire, since I was born, and I suddenly grew wings and could fly. I did not want to come back down to planet Earth.” In that moment, something clicked. Something dangerous. Alcohol didn’t just make him feel good. It made him feel free. It made him feel like himself. Or at least like someone he wanted to be.
Within a year, Ryan was drinking every day. “All day.” He hid it as long as he could. His parents confronted him. They told him he either had to stop drinking or they were going to kick him out of the house. So, at age 18, he moved out.
They pulled some al-anon and he pulled some alcoholic.
So, Ryan got his own apartment. Worked two jobs. Made good money. And drank every night until he passed out. College at UT Austin barely registered. “I don’t remember much of it.” Drinking replaced studying. Parties replaced purpose. He flunked out quietly and found a job in music. It felt like an escape hatch. Proof that he didn’t need anyone.
His first rehab came at twenty. After drunkenly wrecking his motorcycle. After roommates called his parents, his father showed up with a U-Haul. “I always knew I had a problem, but I always thought I could figure out a way around it.” That belief followed him everywhere. Rehab. Out. Relapse. New job. New city. Same patterns. Arizona. California. Tour management. Artist relations. Big festivals. Big personalities. Big chaos. And constant drinking. He was fast and loose in the music industry. The industrious spirit, instilled in him as a child, led him to amazing opportunities. But the alcohol blurred his vision of success.
Then came the DUI. Flipped motorcycle. No helmets. A woman paralyzed. Prison. Restitution. Shame. Survival. “I learned very quickly how to survive in that arena….gladiator school.” In jail, he became someone else. Again. “I’ve had to be so many different Ryans over the years…It’s literally you’re playing a character.” Being behind bars taught him how to adapt. How to harden. How to perform toughness. How to puff his shoulders and hide the fear. How to stay alive. Ryan learned things he shouldn’t have learned. Made connections he shouldn’t have made. Took notes he would use later.
After prison, he landed at Amoeba Music. A&R. Meeting legends. Quentin Tarantino. Elton John. It looked like a comeback. But underneath, nothing had changed. Ryan managed to stay sober for a time, but ultimately found himself drinking once again….and, of course, scheming. He kept operating in gray areas. He got a job working in the cannabis industry. Then started “brokering stolen goods.” In simple terms, he was the middleman for any illegal product anyone needed, but I prefer the way he puts it, “The concierge for shenanigans.”
After his friends committed a robbery in Texas, he fenced the stolen goods and was later charged with the whole crime—he wouldn’t give up any of the names. Ten-year sentence. Two and a half years served. Good lawyer. COVID hit while he was locked up. “I tried to kill myself…which I tried to kill myself numerous times.” Thankfully, unsuccessfully.
The day after Ryan got out, he drank. “I didn’t last three months before I ended up in a wheelchair.” Another motorcycle wreck. He was vomiting blood from his DTs. He ended up in UCLA hospital six times in those three months. “I was sick drinking, but I was even more sick not drinking.” After the wreck, despite the fact that he couldn’t walk. The judge sent him to jail. He went to a special wing for the sick and disabled—but it’s still jail. He’d watch people get beaten with crutches and inmates fence with prosthetic limbs.
When Ryan got out in 2021, he still couldn’t walk. A friend picked him up and told him the truth. He told him that he wasn’t allowed to go back to his home in Calabasas. That he’d die if he returned. So, he listened and stayed with his friend. Over the coming months, he’d use walls and cabinets to learn how to walk again. Step by step. Day by day. No applause. No audience. Just the pain of microscopic daily progress. A lesson in patience for Ryan.
Parole sent him to treatment, where he gave it his first honest try and met many great friends. Then, Ryan did something that surprised even him. He went back to school. He finished what he had started years earlier. “I will certify myself in anything that I possibly can do.” Dentistry became another unlikely chapter in his life — not because it was easy, but because it demanded precision, patience, and accountability. He worked one-on-one with patients. Assisted in surgeries. Learned how to manage an office. For two years, he managed to stay sober and work as a dental hygienist on his way to becoming a full-fledged dentist. But, the pressure became too much and he eventually found a new substance. Meth. And meth brought him to his knees quick. The next chapter of his life was a dance between treatment centers, dental offices, and meth parties. Then, within two weeks, his world truly fell apart. He lost his career, he lost his fiancé, and he was sexually assaulted by someone who he thought was a friend. With a rusted needle in hand, eight hours into the hunt for a vein, Ryan knew that everything needed to change.
Before walking into Beit T’Shuvah, he made a decision. “I’m going to give it every single fucking thing I have because two things are going to happen. Either one, it’s going to work, or two, I can at least say I tried it.” That was surrender. Surrender hinged on dramatic spiritual exhaustion.
At Beit T’Shuvah, everything slowed down. The masks came off. The characters faded. “I liked the idea of the results of being sober, but I never really wanted to be sober.” Until now. Here, he walked in empty. “Having everything stripped away and walking in here as a blank canvas.” No reputation. No shortcuts. No angles. “I spent so many years of my life trying to be someone that I thought people would accept.” And finally, he stopped. “I think that’s the greatest gift of Beit T’Shuvah is being able to be accepted for truly who you are…the more I don’t judge others, the more I don’t judge myself.”
Near the end of our conversation, he looks back on everything. The rebellion. The restlessness. The reinventions. And he says, “I needed to get my ass kicked quite a few times for me to open my eyes and say, you know what? Maybe somebody knows better than me…despite all the bad shit that’s happened, I am grateful for everything because it’s brought me here.”
So who is Ryan J. now?
Not the abandoned child.
Not the rebel.
Not the hustler.
Not the inmate.
Not the addict.
Not the performance.
He is a man learning how to be present in his own life.
A man who no longer needs to outsmart the world to survive it.
A man who, not only, taught himself how to walk, but how to stand on his own two feet.
A man of integrity and service.
“I am the most authentic I’ve ever been,” he says.
And for the first time, it sounds like he believes it.