Aug 20

Written By Guest User

#18 – Tank Sinatra

Tank Sinatra’s Story

#18: We are so excited to introduce a very special guest! Tank Sinatra (George Resch) is a prolific content creator who gained millions of followers on Instagram through meme creation and reposting hilarious content. He most recently created the website “Tank’s Good News” where he only focuses on re-sharing positive, uplifting media to the general public. From selling fences in Long Island to standup comedy and a move across the country briefly to Los Angeles, Tank Sinatra shares openly about his journey to sobriety and the hold that drugs and alcohol once had on his life.

Join Ashley and Tank for this incredibly entertaining interview, and enjoy getting to know this incredible guest!

Questions, comments or feedback? We want to hear from you! Email us at podcast@lionrock.life.

Show Notes:

3:10 – Preliminary talking about being a drug addict

4:50 – Ashley talking about being on the same AIDS walk team, the “Fanny Packs”

6:30 – Tank’s background and how he got out to California from Long Island

14:00 – The feeling of responsibility in recovery

17:24 – “Progress, not perfection” and the element of practicing recovery

21:15 – Talking about alcoholism and drinking for the first time

25:00 – The progression of drinking

30:45 – What drugs and alcohol did for him

33:37 – Hitting his bottom

35:40 – CORRECTION – Movie = Little Shop of Horrors

37:23 – The last day he drank

56:27 – Being proud of who you are in recovery

1:01:10 – Life in recovery

1:03:25 – Explaining how his Instagram accounts took off to millions of followers

1:08:40 – How Tank helped start the first online AA meeting hosted by Lionrock

1:15:12 – Shifting your focus

The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast would like to thank our sponsor, Lionrock Recovery, for their support. Lionrock Recovery is an online substance abuse counseling program where you can get help for drinking or drug use from the privacy of your own home. For more information, visit http://www.lionrockrecovery.com.

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#18 – Tank Sinatra Episode Transcript

Ashley Welcomes Tank Sinatra

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. I am your host Ashley Loeb Blassingame and today we have a very special guest Tank Sinatra. I am going to read his brief bio and then give you a little background. Tank Sinatra is an OG of the social meme repost craze. George Resch is now a prolific content creator of his own, his Insta-famous account, a marriage of viral memes and comedic quips stemming from his self-proclaimed chubby kid sense of humor has seen an evolution from meme mockups and shirtless bodybuilding selfie posts to the politically charge. Now with nearly 2 million Instagram followers the meme mogul is using his celebrity and social savvy to fight today’s growing cultural negativity through good news stories on coordinating Instagram account TanksGoodNews, sharing Good News only memes to an already 1 million plus and growing following.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So George Tank Sinatra is a friend of mine and I have known him since the early, early days. I think we met in 2009 and he was part of my awesome AIDS walk team, the Fanny packs. Anyway, George is an incredible guy and what he’s done as Tank Sinatra is amazing with his huge following and I know that he is going to do amazing things. He has a book out and when we knew each other he was doing something called Happy Is the New Rich. So I am just so humbled by the fact that he was willing to come into our studio. He’s a very, very busy man now and he flew in from New York and came down to our Laguna studio and recorded so that you all get to hear his amazing story. So if you don’t already know him, look up Tank Sinatra on Instagram or TanksGoodNews and please enjoy my friend George. You know him as Tank Sinatra, episode 18 you know what’s next, say it with me let’s do this. Tank.

Tank Sinatra:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Thank you so, so much for coming in to my podcast booth.

Tank Sinatra:

Super fancy.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It’s pretty [crosstalk 00:02:50].

Tank Sinatra:

It does the trick.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right?

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah, it does the trick.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right? I have my office and then this room.

Tank Sinatra:

Very soundproofed in here.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. We needed that. We needed-

Tank Sinatra:

It’s like vacuum.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

We didn’t want the neighbors to know about all this stuff we talk about in here. They’re going to kick us out. Got a bunch of drug addicts in the building.

Tank Sinatra:

That’s pretty funny. Yeah, I’m a drug addict.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You are a drug addict.

Tank Sinatra:

Everything addict. Like really just whatever. We’ll get to it later but I’ve had some eyeopening experiences the last couple of weeks.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, yeah.

Tank Sinatra:

Oh, yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I’m having that lately and I feel like that’s the universe’s way of like “you’re not free, you are Ashley. You must maintain a high level in fact not maintain increase like-“

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah I have no desire to be done with this at all. I mean, if I thought for a second that I was like good to go, that would be the end. Not that I create challenges for myself because I’ve done that too where I’ve purposely kept myself sick so that I didn’t relapse.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You did that?

Tank Sinatra:

Oh, yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I’m apparently really good at just doing it without thinking about it.

Tank Sinatra:

Well, that’s what happened eventually. But in the very beginning of it was like, “If I spend all my money, I obviously can’t drink or if I eat a whole pizza obviously I can’t handle alcohol.” So I would act out in ways that were less harmful. So I’d be like, “Oh, let’s see if I can handle that.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I did with cigarettes. Where it was like I’ll smoke so I don’t drink.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah, it makes total sense.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah exactly. Whatever gets you there.

Tank Sinatra:

Just should have put the cigarette into my system to get it out of my system and then I’ll be good.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. It’s one of those things where if you’re a drug addict or an alcoholic, the logic makes perfect sense at the time.

Tank Sinatra:

There’s no other way.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It just makes … Yeah.

Tank Sinatra:

Everyone else is an idiot.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah 100%.

Tank Sinatra:

Even you’re an idiot for not seeing that sooner.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

For not thinking that sooner.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, exactly. No, it’s true. It’s true. I look back and like, “God.”

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah, it’s been quite a journey. Never dull.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. So you and I met in 2009 and you were so bad ass because you joined my team called the Fanny packs.

Tank Sinatra:

Oh my God!

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

To do the AIDS walk. We didn’t actually know each other then and you joined and that was the … My now husband and I had been dating for two months and you joined with Chris and a bunch of our other-

Tank Sinatra:

What was that other girl’s name?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Angela.

Tank Sinatra:

With the reddish hair?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Laura.

Tank Sinatra:

Laura.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Well, that’s a whole other story.

Tank Sinatra:

One, two, three stuff.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, exactly. No, I love Laura. She joined the call but that’s-

Tank Sinatra:

Oh that sounds interesting.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

No, that’s what I mean. It’s literally a-

Tank Sinatra:

Fanny packs could’ve been cult for all I know. Who knows?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

The Fanny packs was a cult and we rocked it.

Tank Sinatra:

That’s funny because when I moved out here … You ever seen the movie Yes Man?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

No.

Tank Sinatra:

With Jim Carrey?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

No. But it would be helpful if I had.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah. So yes man is just basically a movie about a guy who is miserable and depressed. It’s Jim Carrey and somebody. It’s either a wizard or a psychologist says say yes to everything. So when I got out here I just said yes to everything I said, “Yeah. Like walk.” How many miles was that? 10 miles?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Six.

Tank Sinatra:

Six miles?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Tank Sinatra:

I would have never ever in my life walked six miles living on Long Island.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It was amazing. Literally, I’m like, “I don’t know who this guy is, but he wants to come on my team called the Fanny packs and walk with us.” And you were stoked. And I was like, “This guy is great.”

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah, I didn’t run out of energy at all. I was so pumped. I was brand new to California.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. That’s right.

Tank Sinatra:

So new.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So yeah-

Tank Sinatra:

I was still in like-

How Tank Got from California to Long Island

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

How did you get here? So you … Okay. Maybe we should start. You grew up on long Island, I’m assuming you grew up there since-

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah. Well, I was born there. I grew up here a lot, actually. No seriously. No, I really did. Man! I don’t even know where to start. Let me just say because it’s something that I think about a lot. When I moved to California, the reason that I was so hyped on everything was because I remember being with somebody after a meeting and being like I was on acid almost. I was like, “This is a California curb. That’s a California wall. That’s guys.” I couldn’t believe I lived in California now because-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It’s so beautiful here.

Tank Sinatra:

Well, that and also had lived in one area my entire life. So yes, I was born and raised in Long Island, New York.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Not a bad place to end up in Laguna beach.

Tank Sinatra:

No. How did I get here? My God! Everything in my life that’s been interesting or good has been a result of the program. So some guy that I met-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

How long are you sober?

Tank Sinatra:

October 3rd will be 17 years.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What! Damn!

Tank Sinatra:

October 3rd, 2002.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

17 years. So you were sober sometime when you came out?

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah. Seven years.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I didn’t realize that. I thought you were-

Tank Sinatra:

Fresh out of rehab? What a loser!

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That sounds really bad. I thought you were new and that’s … I thought you were like everyone else who comes here for the rehab.

Tank Sinatra:

No, I was new to the area. It’s funny because when I had … I was about to celebrate seven years when I moved here. And when I drove across country, talk about little signs from God or whatever. I stopped in Las Vegas, which was a devastating blow to my perception of the world because I left long Island. I went down to Maryland to make a ninth step. That was the last one that I had. I used to work at this restaurant. I stole from it for six months. I don’t know how much I stole. I went down there with $3,000 just to hand it to the guy and say, “This is way more than I took, but”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Here you go.

Tank Sinatra:

And When I went down there, the place was closed. So I was like, “All right.” I told my friend Jay that I was driving with, I was like, “I might wind up in jail tonight just so you know, I’ll be out definitely tomorrow. It’s not a big deal, but I can’t move across the country with this thing on, you know?” So we drove from Maryland to DC to Chicago to Saint Louis and then across. And thankfully, on the drive from DC to Chicago, we drove through Akron and I stopped at Doctor Bob’s house and cried basically the whole time I was there because I couldn’t believe. Like it’s … I don’t know, it was a very powerful experience. So anyway, we went from Saint Louis-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It’s like Jerusalem for us.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah, so The Mecca. Yeah. Colorado Rockies, Moab, Utah, Arches National Park, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Grand Canyon, Vegas. Man’s most feeble attempt to-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You’ve never been there?

Tank Sinatra:

To Vegas?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Tank Sinatra:

No, and I was just coming off this natural hide that … I’d never seen man’s futility more than when I went to all those national parks. And then ding, ding, ding, bright lights, hookers, steak, spend your money. Wow! We suck. Oh my God! This is our idea of fun. It was just such a downer. So I went to a meeting there and it just so happened that a guy that I met who had the same exact sobriety date as me, October 3rd, was celebrating eight years and he had a seven ball, a cue ball key chain that he gave to me when I got here.

Tank Sinatra:

And then I got here and I met a bunch of people at the Canyon club when people asked me like, “How did you do it? How did you move to California not knowing anybody?” Barry Bonds has the asterisk next to his home run record because of the steroids? That’s what I feel like whenever I do anything pretty much. But especially that because people would be like, “You just moved here and you didn’t know anybody?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I’m pretty nuts.” Right?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Tank Sinatra:

Went into a meeting the first day I got here and got 15 phone numbers of guys that I could call them and went to the beach with one of them that day and spent six hours with them. So it’s kind of cheating, but it’s also like, “I have alcoholism. So what’s the trade off?”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Exactly. What’s the trade off play?

Tank Sinatra:

You want to trade places with me because … I have a lot of friends, but I pee my pants when I drink, so.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Me too. Do you want to drink or do you want to move somewhere where you don’t know and then have some friends?

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It’s up to you.

Tank Sinatra:

So moved here and then something amazing also happened when I left and so on September 14th or whatever it was, I got here like the 30th or whatever of September and I was asked to speak. First of all, I was feeling a little bit “poor me” because in Long Island when you celebrate, the group has … Let’s say the third Thursday of every month. Everyone celebrates in the group. When you get here, which I didn’t know, if they say, “Is anybody celebrating a birthday?” They call it, “Stand up.” And I stood up at seven meetings and introduced myself at seven meetings and told the three minutes synopsis of myself at seven meetings. By the end of that week, I knew everybody I needed to know pretty much.

Tank Sinatra:

I treated myself like a beginner all the way. 100%. I treated myself like a beginner. I didn’t do 90 and 90 but I didn’t do 90 and 90 as a beginner either, and I got asked to speak on October 3rd which is my anniversary at the Canyon club, and I was like, “All right. I get it. You’re with me. Fine. Okay. Understood.” And that’s one of hundreds of experiences where I just … I don’t know, I can’t deny the fact that there’s a higher power working in my life. If I was to look at my life from the outside right now the way it is, I would be furious at myself for not believing in some kind of higher power. Like, “You think you did all this?”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Tank Sinatra:

“Okay. I guess.” But it’s like I have the awareness to do that. When Obama said I’m not getting political, it’s just something that he said. When he said, about the community and society and everyone is like in it together. He’s like, “You drove your trucks to work on the roads that the government put up. You didn’t put the roads down.” He said, well, kind of like that. That’s how I feel about everything. Literally everything.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, I get that. I totally get that. Where it’s like, we feel like we’ve been overpaid, right? Like we’ve been given tools that no one else has. You remember that movie? Speaking of movie references where they take a pill that accesses a whole other part of your brain?

Tank Sinatra:

Limitless.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, Limitless. Okay. Yeah. I didn’t actually see the movie but I always thought that the program and sobriety in general … The ability to do things sober and to the end for me being so connected in the therapy world and it has given me the ability to connect and deal with humans and in so many different scenarios to connect with people in a way that most people don’t know how to do.

Tank’s Feeling of Responsibility in Recovery

Tank Sinatra:

No. But part of that comes with a responsibility. Right? Because it’s like my sponsor says to me often, “These people don’t have a program they don’t know.” And it’s like, “Well, if I do, then I got to act like I do. I guess.” You can’t be on their level. You can’t stoop down to somebody who’s not aware enough to know that they’re being inconsiderate or rude or selfish or whatever. You have to see that from a different … That’s very recent for me. Very recent. The feeling of responsibility where it’s like if my son who’s six tried to start a fight with me, an actual fist fight, I would be responsible for calming down the situation, not going Buckwild and being like, “You want to do this bro?”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Sorry, I just pictured that.

Tank Sinatra:

Like rip my shirt off. Just like, “You don’t know who you’re messing with.” No, I’m above that. I have to be above that. I want to be above that. I want to be better than I have been

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Like this person is an emotional six year olds.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah. I can’t engage.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. You have 2 million followers, probably more with both your accounts now. On 2 million on Tank Sinatra and then what’s then?

Tank Sinatra:

1.1.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

1.1.

Tank Sinatra:

1.7 and counting.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I’m Inflating your numbers.

Tank Sinatra:

It’s okay. We call it two.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

We will call it two.

Tank Sinatra:

Call it five.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

We’ll call it five. And then TanksGoodNews. I mean, I have this issue where I see things on the internet, things people say and I think to myself judgmental things people say about others and I think to myself, “Gosh! We have no idea what that-” I say someone who’s talking about Melania Trump. And I get. This is not political. I don’t know her. My opinions on her are irrelevant. They were talking about her being a former escort or something. Who cares? Why is it that what we’re judging her about. They don’t have a program.

Tank Sinatra:

The only people I still judge are people that judge other people. I have a hard time not judging people who judge other people. I try not to because I understand that they’re coming from a place of needing to build themselves in some way and if knocking down the first lady for her past makes you feel better about your current situation, I guess have it. Have your moment.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, no, no. It’s not about the politics. For me it’s like-

Tank Sinatra:

Just a human being.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Let’s separate out what someone did when they were 20 years old under circumstance we have no idea about, and we’re having commentary on the internet about it right now. Why? What is that? Is that helpful? Are we engaging in helpful commentary? Are we listening to each other?

Tank Sinatra:

That’s not even a thought.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. But then I go, “Oh, I’m coming from program. I’m coming from trained years of trained thought about-“

Tank Sinatra:

Professional human beings.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah and I’m surprised when other people who don’t have that don’t act that way.

Tank Sinatra:

No. Listen, even people in the program are like-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Totally. I still sometimes do stuff and I’m like, “I’m such an ass.”

Tank Sinatra:

I’m pretty perfect at this point but speak for yourself, so I-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

For myself. I am working on getting to Tank perfection.

Tank Sinatra:

Tank perfection. You know what I like to think about? Because in the big book it says the word perfect, enlarge and perfect your spiritual life?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh yeah. It does say that you’re right.

Progress, Not Perfection

Tank Sinatra:

In AA I learned that things that I thought were nouns were verbs like love and perfect progress not perfection. Perfection is not a state it’s a … it’s not a state of being it’s a state of action. Yeah, you’re perfecting … The 12th step practice these principles in all our affairs. I share this in my home group all the time. They’re probably absolutely tired of hearing it, but nobody’s here from my home crew, so.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah there you go.

Tank Sinatra:

I remember being a little kid and saying to my mom … Hearing a doctor talk about his practice. This is his practice. And at that point I guess I had maybe gone to a couple of T-ball practices or whatever. Then I said to my mom, I was like, “I’m not coming here anymore. I don’t want a doctor who’s practicing. Get me a guy who knows what he’s doing.” In not so many words I basically said, “I’m scared of this doctor. I want a professional doctor not practice.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I understood like someone out of medical school.

Tank Sinatra:

But the fact of the matter is that with medicine or emotional awareness or anything, there’s just too many variables, right. Your hormones could be off one day and all of a sudden like I had a guy … Everyone says New Yorkers are so rude. Not everyone says all New Yorkers, but I’ve heard people saying that somebody whatever-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Parisians and New Yorkers are famously known for being rude.

Tank Sinatra:

Being aggressive. Yeah. I pulled three feet into the crosswalk today on PCH and this guy walked in front of my car and was like, “Yo, what the (beep) man. What you doing?” I’m sorry if you’re going to have to blip all this out.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It’s all good.

Tank Sinatra:

It’s like, “What are you doing man?” I hope I made him feel stupid because I was like, “I made a tiny mistake that caused you to walk this far around and you want to start a problem with me.” And then his wife looked at me and saw that I’m a 250 pound maniac from New York and she was like, “I’m sorry.” And then he just walked. He was 60 years old. But my adrenaline did not raise at all. My heart rate did not increase. Point being that I had a good day. Had I had an off day, I would’ve been out of the car with the guy. I just don’t have many off days anymore because of all the work. Just like doctors do better work as they practice more. I’ve been practicing this thing for a long, long time, every day, all day, every day.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And to be clear, I mean for me, I practice because I don’t want to be in pain, not because I’m a wonderful human being. I’d like to think I’m a good human being, but my impetus for all this practice is that when I don’t practice, it hurts a lot.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah. That’ll shift. I don’t know if anybody ever gets past the final frontier of selfishness, which is transmuting your selfishness into what looks like selflessness because there’s no … I don’t believe there’s anybody out there that’s truly selfless. I just. I don’t think there’s anybody out there. I don’t care how much good you do kindness is its own reward. And if you’re the first recipient of that little bit of kindness that you did, that’s a great way to use your selfishness. It’s probably the ultimate way to use your selfishness. And obviously I’m not counting people who like do other people favors to hold it over their head or to cash in on it later.

Tank Sinatra:

Talking about somebody who understands that in the moment the transaction of kindness is its own reward. You feel good. The more you focus on the thing you just did, the less you’re aware for the next one. So you miss out on opportunities to be of service and to be nice to people and just remind people that the world is not all bad. Here’s one person that you just ran into that is pretty good. I’m trying very hard, not perfect, but, let me serve as a reminder that you can go from pretty much near death to constantly thinking of how I can improve the world around me for my benefit, but also for the people around mes benefit.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Absolutely. So speaking of us-

Tank’s First Drink

Tank Sinatra:

Let’s talking about drinking.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Well, no, I was going to ask you. So speaking of us practicing, what is your alcoholism look like? Because you must’ve been decently young when you got sober.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah I was 22. But I also say that like “that’s how bad I was.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I was 19. The alcoholic in me sees the alcoholic in you.

Tank Sinatra:

You didn’t get in here because things were going to get bad eventually not to worry.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

No, no. When I’m 19 my husband was 20 or 22. You don’t quit at that age unless things are so bad.

Tank Sinatra:

Unless you’re going to die.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Exactly, unless you get that.

Tank Sinatra:

And don’t want to. That’s part of how it felt.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I actually did, but I couldn’t.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah, I don’t know. I thought I wanted to die back then. I thought I was homicidal and suicidal. I don’t know if you’ve heard me talk about this, but it recently came to attention … This might derail the whole thing and I’m not trying to go back, but a truce of thoughts are a big part of my story. I think they’re responsible for a large part of my alcohols and that obsession where it’s like when something pops into my head, I can’t get it out. It’ a form. I think it’s a manifestation of anxiety. There’s a lot of different pieces to the puzzle, but I was raised and I’m not … This is also new I used to say I came from an alcoholic household, mentally ill, yada, yada. I’m done. I’m not blaming them or holding them responsible.

Tank Sinatra:

I’m the alcoholic. It’s nothing to do with them at all. The only thing that may have affected me when I was growing up is seeing people drink around me, but I don’t know. Maybe on 100% maybe that was 2% the other 98% is all the anxiety and the physical component and the genetics and … The first time I drank, I had I think 12 drinks. I was 13 years old, six shots, six beers blacked out. My cousins were like, “You drink this SoCo, Southern Comfort and then you chase it with a beer.” And I remember taking the shot and drinking the whole beer and taking the shot, drinking the whole beer. And after the third one my cousin was like, “You don’t have to drink the whole beer. A sip will do.” You know what I mean? A sip is fine.

Tank Sinatra:

From day one it was like, “if it’s there, it’s going in me. All of it as fast as possible.” I think that’s why I blacked out so much. It’s because I drank so fast to try and … Eventually, obviously it wasn’t the case that time, but I was just trying to catch up to how much I had drank in my head already. Because I had had three or four drinks in my head before I even started drinking. So now I got to catch up to-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Because we’re always living in the future and worrying about how many. Yeah, totally. I guess that-

Tank Sinatra:

So excited to drink. Oh my God!

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What was your dream?

Tank Sinatra:

Ah, seems so excited. Started off with Southern Comfort and beer and then the next time I drank I drank … So this is my alcoholism and I guess me being bad at math, I was going to a party and I was going to get two 40 ounce bottles of malt liquor and I said, “Ah, that’s too much. With those 22 ounces. Let me take five of those.” And I drank all of them. I funneled one. That was a year after I drank for the first time.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Because as alcoholics, we don’t-

Tank Sinatra:

That’s more by the way. It’s 110 ounces instead of [crosstalk 00:24:51] or whatever it is.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Yeah. We don’t leave alcohol behind.

Tank Sinatra:

No. Not even in the store.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

No. I asked someone the other day … Literally this was three days ago. I was like, “Does alcohol go bad?” I have no idea.

Tank Sinatra:

Who knows.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I don’t know.

Tank Sinatra:

We’d never know.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

All I know is if it ages it’s better, right?

Tank Sinatra:

Some wine.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

But does any alcohol actually go bad?

Tank Sinatra:

It must. It’s like going food shopping hungry. They say not to go food shopping hungry, don’t go into a liquor store as an alcoholic.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Just like in general. As a general rule-

Tank Sinatra:

The amount that you think you need is so much. So then I didn’t drink it. I was raised to believe I would be an alcoholic. My mom was like, “You got to be careful.” My whole dad’s side, my uncle who actually was sober for 15 years when I came in and helped me figure things out and kind of like just assured me that it would be okay. That was his place in my life. Whatever, it’s all over there. I’m German and Irish. What was I going to do? I had no chance. So I didn’t drink again for another two years because I was just so scared. I’m like, “I’m doing this wrong. I know this is not normal.” And then in my senior year of high school, I actually quit playing football because I wanted to drink. That was like the first thing that I lost.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I love. You quit playing to drink like it’s a job.

Tank Sinatra:

Well, the games are on Saturday morning and I wanted to drink Friday night. And I didn’t want to miss a night of drinking for a game. Didn’t care. Didn’t think of anybody else on the team at all. They were pissed. They were pissed. So in 30 seconds I’ll try and explain why that was so inconsiderate of me. Commack high school football had been horrible for 10 years. My senior year, the team went all the way to the Long Island championships, which is unheard of and in the final game, the center who is the position that I played was this … I’m not going to say he’s little because he’s a man, but he’s not as big as I am. And he got run over the whole game and that’s how they lost the game because they just kept running through the middle. They couldn’t get anything. And if I was there 250 pounds versus 150 pounds, could’ve been a much different game.

Tank Sinatra:

They said they were cursing me the whole ride home and that was the first time I affected a large group of people with my drinking, unintentionally. I didn’t mean to, it was just like, “Too bad. I don’t care.” So then I drank pretty much every weekend for the rest of my drinking, which was from 17 to 22. Every weekend at least there was … My progression only took form of how often during the week I drank. I always blacked out when I drank. Almost every single time. There’s one time in college I can remember going to get a beer at a bar with food and then leaving. But definitely blacking out that night because I guess I was holding my breath. I can hold my breath for a little while as long as I can breathe later, I’ll hold my breath as long as you want. But yeah, there was like most people can count on one hand the amount of times they’ve drank too much, I can count on one hand the amount of time

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Really? Is that true?

Tank Sinatra:

Making this not statistically accurate. My wife can probably count on one hand the amount of time she’s drank too much. She doesn’t know the last time she had a drink. It’s so sad. I know the day, the time, where I was.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. No. So you blacked out every-

George Tank Sinatra:

Every time I drink.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Every single time you drink. And did you know that other people weren’t blacking out? Were you like, “Oh, this isn’t normal.”

Tank Sinatra:

I thought it was kind of funny, but I do remember going to my mom when I was 17. I had been drinking for three or four months at this time and I knew something was wrong. I didn’t know what was wrong, but I knew something was wrong because, and this is … Imagine my mom telling me that I was going to have a drinking problem for my whole life. “You got to be careful. You going to have a problem.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

She said you’re going to have a problem or you have to be careful?

Tank Sinatra:

Both. Let’s say both because what’s the difference between one or the other?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I don’t know because I want to tell my kids to be careful. That’s the difference.

Tank Sinatra:

Nah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

No? I guess-

Tank Sinatra:

I mean, they’re two and a half. You should probably-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I mean, I tell them to be careful all the time.

Tank Sinatra:

Oh, that’s true. she said, “Be careful, you’re going to have a drinking problem.” Basically. Not one night. So I went to her because I … I was buying 12 beers or a cider, which is what I was drinking in the beginning and my friends were buying six and I was finishing my 12 and I was drinking their last one or two. So if I had a 12 pack and I had five friends who had a six pack and they all left two, I now had 10 extra that I could drink and I would tap into those. I be, “You don’t with that I drink.” Whatever was left over from there and I remember like it was yesterday, she was downstairs on the computer and I went to her and I’m like, “Mom, I think something’s wrong. I think I have a problem. I think you were right basically.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. It’s happening.

Tank Sinatra:

And she goes, “Well, when you drink, do you feel like you can’t stop?” I was like, “Yeah.” She goes, “When you drink, do you ever forget what happens? Do you black out?” I said, “That’s a blackout?” She goes, “Yeah.” I said, “Yeah, every time.” And she goes, “Ha, you’ll probably be fine. Just be careful.” Which was for me-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s interesting.

Tank Sinatra:

It’s interesting because alcoholism, drug addiction, it’s so hard for everyone to face. Even faced with it, knowing you were going to have to face it one day she couldn’t say, “You have to stop right now.” She didn’t want to believe that I had a problem probably. I can imagine she just wanted it to be like, “Maybe it’ll be all right. But now I’m going to worry for sure.” And then I drank like that for the next like I said, five years. But I also did a lot of drugs and I smoked pot every single day. All day, every day.

What Drugs & Alcohol Did for Tank

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And what did drugs and alcohol do for you?

Tank Sinatra:

Besides the excitement and the anticipation? It’s funny because I was thinking about this the other day. I was like, “What did it do for me? Why did I value it so much?”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Because you didn’t remember most of … Right? Because you’re blacking out.

Tank Sinatra:

No. It was mostly anticipation and excitement. And it was that relief, that sense of ease and comfort that comes from the first drink. There’s no ease and comfort from the 20th drink.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

No. Usually it’s very fuzzy.

Tank Sinatra:

There’s nothing. Yeah. It’s just like you’re throwing quarters into a well, you know what I mean?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Tank Sinatra:

Nothing’s happening. First drink because I know that with the second drink or the third drink, there’s supposed to be some kind of a buzz that happens before you get drunk. I never felt that. I went from sober to insanely intoxicated.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right because you drank so fast.

Tank Sinatra:

So fast. I would have three drinks in 10 minutes. You know what I mean?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Tank Sinatra:

Like really, really drunk.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah because you’re drinking to get it done.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah. Drinking to disappear.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. You mentioned that you played football. Was the sports culture kind of … Was that part of that? I mean, you left football but was it-

Tank Sinatra:

No.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It wasn’t.

Tank Sinatra:

I mean it may have been, it wasn’t for me. I’m sure that the kids who played football drank at parties. I drank at parties and they would be there. I still remained friends with some of them, but I didn’t … I remember there was one summer, maybe it was summer. I’m trying to think of when this happened. It was a school year. There was one kid who didn’t drink yet. Just wanting to hang out. You know what I mean? He was just happy to like be around people and he had a minivan. We used to call it the party van. And we would get seven of us in there and oh my God! All of us would be so, so, so drunk. Fast forward. Some of the kids that I used to drink with, one of them is in recovery. One of them I’ve speak to is down in Florida. The guy who used to drive wound up drinking a little bit. I think he’s fine. He seems to be doing okay.

Tank Sinatra:

There’s a couple of people that came out of that party then that never left the party then. Right then their lives reflected and it’s fine. It is what it is. I don’t know. I’ve always wanted more for my life. I always knew that I was capable of doing great things if I was given the opportunities and I knew that alcohol was going to either a end my life completely or b, keep me from living the life that I really wanted to live and I just wasn’t willing to see what would happen if I could pull it off with the drinking.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What was the thing that made you like, we would call it your bottom, but what was the thing that made you say, “Okay, I’m going to go to AA. I’m going to get help.”

Tank Hitting Rock Bottom

Tank Sinatra:

I’m very fascinated by the fact that alcoholics don’t have an off switch. At all. For alcohol. You called me out on a scientific fact before don’t do it on it this.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. I won’t ask for sources.

Tank Sinatra:

From what I understand, if you put a bowl of food in front of a dog, let’s say, or another animal, I’m not sure which animal. I know there are certain animals out there that will just keep eating and eating and eating and eating until they die because their bodies, they don’t know that there is more in the cabinet. There just like there’s food here, I’ve got to eat it right now. Which kind of how I do it sometimes.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It’s like are those animals me? Why are you going to use my example?

Tank Sinatra:

Alcoholics, I know don’t have an off switch. They don’t have the “I’m getting buzzed, I should stop” thing. It’s a very different reaction. I actually heard in a meeting here, a guy talk about the law of diminishing return and how it just doesn’t apply to alcoholics.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

No. We don’t understand it at all.

Tank Sinatra:

It’s like, “I’m thirstier now. Much thirstier than when I had the first drink. I’ll need 17 more please.” Whereas if you were in the desert and you came out of the desert, you got a glass of water, you drink it, you might take a second, third, you going to take a sip or a half and you’re going to put it down and be like, “I’m hydrated. I’m good. I know I was in the desert for three months, but I’m actually feeling pretty good right now.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Like I’ve achieved what I need to achieve so I’m going to stop.

Tank Sinatra:

There’s none of that. But that I think is the experience for normal drinkers.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. They’ve achieved what they need to achieve, so.

Tank Sinatra:

They feel slightly looser, a little bit more handsome or pretty or funny or charismatic or whatever, and then-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

They got what they needed from it. Right. There’s just not enough to get what we need. There’s too much need for-

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah supply and demand.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah really. It’s really a supply and demand issue. We have so much need.

Tank Sinatra:

And the more you drink like they say tolerance, which I’m sure there’s definitely something to that. But I think about the movie Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I think is a metaphor for alcoholism. I have no idea. It’s definitely a metaphor for some sort of void. Have you seen it?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Not in a long time.

Tank Sinatra:

So in the movie Rick Moranis gets this little cute plant that wants his attention and he gives it his attention and it starts to grow and it starts to want him more. So picture that plan being alcoholism or the void inside of you and it feels good to give it to yourself. It’s like, “This is good. I feel like part of a crowd now. I feel like I can make friends.” And then all of a sudden you keep feeding it and it grows and the more it grows, the more it needs to eat, the more it eats, the bigger it grows so on and so forth. Until however many years later you have this massive plant screaming “feed me, seymour” from the other room and you can’t sleep. That’s alcoholism that plant.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You’re right. That’s a great example of how it feels.

Tank Sinatra:

I’ve never looked it up, but I’m sure it has to be it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That is how it feels. It is how it feels and for me drugs were a big part of my story and that’s really how drugs felt for me. And it was like, “Oh God! I got to get off this train.” This is like, this is-

Tank Sinatra:

Going to crash.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

“I don’t know how to stop this train. I need more and more and more and more. It’s not even fun anymore.”

Tank Sinatra:

No, I kind of pictured myself running up to a cliff and trying to stop right before the edge of the cliff. That’s how I made sense of it. In the end I was like, “If I keep running up to that cliff, I’m going to fall off one day.” I just knew I wasn’t going to make it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And that was enough to bring you to recovery?

Tank’s Last Drink

Tank Sinatra:

No. So the whole starting but not being able to stop thing that goes into the last day that I drank. So the last day I drank was May 19th, 2002 and then I continue to smoke pot, but I’ll get to that. So I went to Great Adventure with this restaurant I worked at and 30 people on a bus. Restaurant people be drinking. Restaurant people they drink and seven o’clock in the morning drinking all kinds of mixes of whatever. All tasted good. Breakfast juice, mimosas, vodka and orange juice, whatever. It all tasted good. And when we got to Great Adventure, I was hammered and I had my little sister with me who was … I was 21 she was 19 at the time. So I had her with me and we were there all day. I was smoking weed in the park and whatever. We get back on the bus at five o’clock and we drink from five til about eight because it took that long to get home. By the time we got back to the restaurant, I was so drunk, but I was just getting started because the sun was still out.

Tank Sinatra:

I knew I had time, which for me, that’s the other thing, besides the ease and comfort of the first drink, knowing that I had time to drink and resources and money and safety, that was also very comforting to me because I knew that I was going to be able to basically be dead for the next eight hours. Honk if you love dying and being dead. Yeah, like honk, honk. So I dragged her across the street to the bar and-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’d be a good Tinder profile.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah. I’ll give you up dying than being dead?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Tank Sinatra:

So I dragged her across the street to the bar. 19 can’t come in, can’t drink. So she’s sitting there with me. It’s eight o’clock then it’s nine o’clock then it’s 10. “Hey, can we leave? Can we go home?” Two hours. If somebody kept me anywhere for two hours now, Oh my God! 11 o’clock, “What are we doing?” 12 o’clock I’m like “Leave me alone.” I’m getting drunker and drunker and drunker.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And you’ve been drinking since 7:00 AM.

Tank Sinatra:

7:00 AM yeah. So finally more of that same thing, “Can we leave now?” “No.” I’m getting angry for her asking me now because now she’s really starting to piss me off because she’s cutting into my drinking time. I sent her home in a cab at 3:30 in the morning because I had a half an hour left to drink. According to New York state, four o’clock you’re allowed to drink til. So she goes home in the cab. If anything happened to her, Oh my God! It would have been life altering in the worst way possible. So I wake up the next afternoon, let’s be honest, two o’clock or whatever it is, and my mom’s sitting in the kitchen just ripping cigarettes. She is waiting for me to get up and she goes, “You sent your sister home in a cab last night at 3:30 because you had a half an hour left to drink even though you had been drinking all day long. Are you out of your mind?” I was like, “Not a big deal.”

Tank Sinatra:

She’s like, “You need to stop drinking tonight or get out of the house tonight. Those are your two choices.” And it was like, “How dare you.” That’s how I felt kind of. But at the same time, thinking about it in retrospect, I don’t know if she would have kicked me out that night. It didn’t matter because I figured the fact that she was bringing it to me in this package with this severity meant maybe I should take a closer look at it than I had ever before. And I did a little bit of math and I was 21 at the time and I said, “Oh my God! I understand how people become homeless now.” Because I was like, if today’s Monday maybe I could go sleep at so-and-so’s house for two nights. But then their parents will definitely ask me to leave because I’ll come home drunk and I’ll go somewhere else. Maybe I stay a week there.

Tank Sinatra:

Maybe because their parents aren’t home that much. Maybe I’ll have nowhere to go after that. I have money for a couple of nights in a hotel, then I’ll sleep in my car. And then once you’re in your car, people don’t realize you’re homeless at that point. You’re homeless if you don’t have a home. If your home is on wheels and it’s not an RV, you’re homeless. And then I was like, “I will be homeless in a month. Oh my God! That’s how it happens.” And I went to a meeting that night.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. You knew to go to a meeting from the uncle?

Tank Sinatra:

no, I don’t remember which came first. I do remember calling him, but I think my mom … I was in the yellow pages. This is how long ago it was. Little (beep).

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I hate when stuff like this comes out of me.

Tank Sinatra:

Yellow pages.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Did you say yellow pages? Okay.

Tank Sinatra:

I remember a friend of mine went to Apple Daytop, which is a community in Long Island that was rehab oriented. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but I remember looking that up. And then I remembered that a woman at the restaurant that I worked at, who I waited on was a spiritual advisor and she had given me her card and I told my mom, I’m like, “All right, I’m ready to do something.” And she already knew what I had to do and in her mind, but I came out of my room with this spiritual adviser card. I’m like, “I’m going to call Barbara.” And she goes, “Okay, you can call her, but you’re going to AA. That’s what I meant. There’s no other.” I was like, “Oh, I thought I had options. Thought we’re going to figure this out.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Barbara was on the table.

Tank Sinatra:

That we were going to heal my soul. So I was like, “Oh, AA, all right. I’ll go. I’ll check it out.” And because I thought I knew nothing about it. I’m sure everyone has this, but I thought, I swear to God, it was a Tuesday. I thought I was going to have to call, sign up, get approved, register, buy a ticket, go to the stadium or wherever they have these things and then get into it. I called the hotline all cocky and the woman’s like, “All right, there’s one at seven o’clock tonight.” And I was like, “What? Where? Please tell me it’s in New York city so I can’t go.” She was like “No, it’s on this street. Yeah in the same town as you’re in right now.” And I was like, “(beep) kidding me. What!” My luck I thought that was the one. That one near my house was the one for the whole of New York.

Tank Sinatra:

And then when I got to AA, something in the big book talks about that … My mom went to Al Anon for a little while and she came home crying one day because it’s … I forgot the passage. It’s something like that indescribable feeling of knowing that you’re home or something like that. The energy, the indescribable electricity, something something. It was something in that room. The presence of the people healing in that room healed me almost instantaneously. And I had that psyche change pretty much as soon as I walked in. And I think I only was able to get sober because I had the psyche change and then I did the steps and then I had the spiritual awakening as a result of the steps. But like I said, I did hang on to smoking pot because I thought Alcoholics Anonymous were dealing with alcohol here. We’re dealing with alcohol, cunning, baffling, powerful not pot otherwise kind, open, not cunning, whatever the opposite of cunning is. But it was more of the same.

Peter Loeb:

Hi, I’m Peter Loeb, CEO and co founder of Lionrock Recovery. We’re proud to sponsor the Courage to Change and I hope you find that it’s an inspiration. I was inspired to start Lionrock after my sister lost her own struggle with drugs and alcohol back in 2010. Because we provide care online by live video Lionrock clients can get help from the privacy of home. We offer flexible schedules that fit our client’s busy lives and of course we’re licensed and accredited and we accept most private health insurance. You can find out more about us at lionrockrecovery.com or call us for a free consultation. No commitment at (800) 258-6550. Thank you.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

How long did you smoke pot for?

Tank Sinatra:

For four months. May, June, July, August, September. Yeah, like for four or five months and then people just loved me. I would go into the meeting. I’d say I’m high right now. I’m going to get high when I leave here, I can’t stop. I only go to the meeting on Tuesday and Thursday night. I wish there was other meetings around here. There was seven today in this building, but okay, I knew nothing. And then finally one day two things happened actually. This guy Charlie, my sponsor’s sponsor, came up to me after the meeting and he goes, and this guy I trusted implicitly about recovery because he was a heroin addict. He had a liver that was completely crapped out. He needed a liver. He couldn’t get one because he was a heroin addict. He was in and out of the rooms for 25 years. By some miracle he got a liver, from the day he got the liver he never used ever again. He was sober 17 years when he died. So when I came in I was like, “Man, that guy gets it. He understands that this is very hard.”

Tank Sinatra:

So he came up to me after the meeting and he was like, “Listen, what you’re doing is not a mortal sin, but you need to just give it a shot.” He didn’t even say you need to. He was, “Just try it without it. Just stop smoking pot for 90 days. If you want to smoke pot, smoke pot. Nobody hates you. Nobody’s mad at you, but you should give it a shot.” That happened. I was at a meeting one night where it was three or four people because it was some kind of holiday and raining and something happened and it was like nobody in the meeting. And so we just all talked for an hour and I told these guys how many meetings I was going to and this guy, Jimmy looked at me and he goes, “You’re not going to make it.”

Tank Sinatra:

And I was like, “What do you mean?” He goes, “You’re not going to make it.” And I didn’t understand what he meant. I was like, “What do you mean I’m not going to make it?” Then I got like belligerent. He’s like, “You’re not going to make it. You’re going to die if you keep doing two meetings a week, you’re not going to make it like, I don’t know how else to say it to you.” And then finally when he said, “I don’t know how else to say it.” I was like, “Oh, he’s saying it that way because that’s what it is.” He’s not speaking in codes. He’s telling me-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

like, “What are you trying to say?”

Tank Sinatra:

I’m saying it’s so simply though and then the final straw was going into a meeting one night at that same group and the guy who was running the meeting was scrambling around trying to find a speaker. And I kind of asked somebody, I’m like, “What’s happening? He doesn’t have a speaker?” And the guy goes, “No. The speaker couldn’t be here because he’s at a funeral, his sponsee died. He went out one last time and died.” And it just so happened that the guy had about as much time as I thought I had at that time. He had six months. I thought I had five months. And I was actually planning something. Yeah, I was planning one. I know I need to stop smoking weed. Let me get some gin because that’s what I like drinking at the end. So gross.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Really gross.

Tank Sinatra:

Gin, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms. I’ll get everything. Do it all. And this is like the insanity of what … I made a little joke before, I just want to get it out of my system by putting it all into my system. That makes perfect sense.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I really do understand that so deeply.

Tank Sinatra:

That’s that addict logic.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Makes sense.

Tank Sinatra:

It really does though.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

No I know it does. It does. I know that other people would disagree who are normal.

Tank Sinatra:

But you’re wrong.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You don’t understand.

Tank Sinatra:

You’re wrong and I hate you.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

One last beautiful [crosstalk 00:48:17].

Tank Sinatra:

Get it out of my system.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Although all those drugs combined probably wouldn’t be-

Tank Sinatra:

By putting it into your system. Fast forward into my alcoholism two or three years in, I remember having a horrible time with this girl I was dating and I was on the phone with my friend Joe and he’s like, “It doesn’t have to end with you on the lawn spitting in her father’s face, fighting him like it happened to me.” I could see that happening because things were that crazy with this girl. I was like, “You know what? You’re right.” I said, “Let me go. I’m going to call her to tell her I’m not going to call her anymore and then I’ll call you back.” And he was like, “What! Do you hear yourself? Do not call her.” Do not call lists. People don’t call people on the do not call us to say we’re not going to be calling you. That defeats the purpose, but I’m so dumb.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That one last call.

Tank Sinatra:

One last call, just to let you know, I’m not going to be calling you anymore.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What could go wrong?

Tank Sinatra:

And maybe I’ll call you again in a week, probably.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And spit in your dad’s face.

Tank Sinatra:

And fight him and go to jail. Just like Joe said. I think getting sober young you’re going to come up against things that normal people don’t come up against. You have opportunities to build a life that you want but like … I don’t know. When people told me not to date in my first … They were, “Don’t date in your first year.” I’m like, “Okay, still. You’ve been married for 12 years, but okay.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Let’s take you down on that buddy.

Tank Sinatra:

I’m sure you know what you’re talking about.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. How about just tell me not to get married in the first year. I can commit to that.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah that’s fine. No dating! No relationships at all!

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I mean, they’re right in the sense that you’re not who you’re going to become and whoever you attract is probably trash, but-

Tank Sinatra:

But you need some distractions.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Totally.

Tank Sinatra:

But they’re wrong in the Susie Orman sense. Who was Susie Orman? You know she is?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yes.

Tank Sinatra:

“If you would just stop drinking coffee.” “Okay, but what do I do about not drinking coffee though?”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah listen hear Susie.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah. “If you don’t spend money on coffee at the end of the month, you’ll have $120.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

But then I won’t have coffee.

Tank Sinatra:

But then I won’t have coffee. So how do fix you that?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Susie that’s wrong.

Tank Sinatra:

You’re wrong.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You’re wrong.

Tank Sinatra:

Oh man. I hate people like that. They make it seem so simple. It’s just not that simple.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Alcoholism is not a math equation. Right? Because a math equation has a logical … Like if you add this to this, you’ll get this, right? Like alcoholism, you can add, you can … There’s no equation. It just is like you just-

Tank Sinatra:

Imagine if you added two plus two but the two had a trap door in it though an eight dropped out. It’s like “What, wait!”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s exactly what it’s like. And then his brought his friend over and his friend had a little three on him

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah. Six divided by two if you move it. But the two is at 47 now. So it makes no sense at all.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah no sense at all. Whatever, yeah.

Tank Sinatra:

I mean, listen, I’ve been around and you’ve been around long enough to know that there are plenty of people who do the work and don’t make it. But I’ve never seen anybody make it and not do the work. So I’m erring on the side of what has worked for the majority of people because I know also that it’s work every single day, 10 years. When I celebrated 10 years, that was the closest I ever came to drinking.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I get that.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah. Because there was a lot of stuff going on personally. Most of it was good, some of it was not good. But the lesson that I learned is time doesn’t matter, they say. It does. If you’re using it properly, it doesn’t, if you’re sitting still

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Also because you’re so far away. I don’t know how you feel, especially when you’re young, you’re so different. You’re so far away. Your life doesn’t … Nothing looks the same. So you’re so far away from it, you think, or you don’t think about it anymore?

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah no. I wasn’t using my time to create spiritual distance between me and a drink. I was depending on the time to do the work for me. And that’s not how it works. It’s as if you’re sitting in a car and in your mind, you’re going 60 miles an hour, but at the end of the hour you’ve gone zero miles because you’re not moving at all. I don’t know, that’s the best way I can explain it. You got to be using your time to create spiritual distance between you and your problem. Whatever it is. And creating spiritual closeness between you and the solution. And it’s funny because when you stop drinking … I’ve never had a pink cloud. I didn’t experience a pink cloud.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I don’t know what that’s about.

Tank Sinatra:

“Hey psycho. You’re good? I’m the worst I’ve ever been.” Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I’m like, I really … Still waiting.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah. One day.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

13 years.

Tank Sinatra:

Imagine you wait really long for a pink cloud and then you’re like, “Oh this is pretty good.” Maybe some people have to wait long. I don’t know. I have no desire to have a pink cloud. My whole life is like the end of It’s a Wonderful Life when George Bailey’s running down the street yelling Merry Christmas and everybody, because he can’t believe he’s alive. Have you seen that movie?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Tank Sinatra:

He’s like a dry drunk in the beginning and then he’s like … Clarence shows him what’s up. The name thing maybe my name is George. I don’t know. I feel a lot of kinship to that movie because I feel like I’ve lived two lives. I feel like I have, I have.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

yeah. More than two, two minimum.

Tank Sinatra:

Four or five.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. You said something interesting, you said, “I was trying to disappear.” And what I find interesting about that is that since I have known you, you have been trying to appear as the wrong. You have been showing yourself. And I remember early back in the … You were doing the Happy is the New Rich, I mean serious. I thought you were going to be on Oprah in 2009 and I was like, “This guy’s serious.” He’s all about it. He’s all about it. And I loved it. When you said that I thought how interesting that your alcoholism was all about trying to disappear and your life in recovery has been all about showing-

Tank Sinatra:

Appearing.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Has been appearing for lack of a better term. All about bringing you to the world and what has that … Has becoming more and more visible brought up any of the old feelings that brought you to the point where you wanted to disappear? How did that change come about?

Tank Sinatra:

My time in California was almost all good. Almost all of it. There’s one time in particular and I feel … I’m not going to say the guy’s name because he’s actually a nice guy and I don’t think he meant to do this, but I remember being at a meeting and this is when I was like, “Vote for George.” Every day, all day. I was so annoying. I know I was annoying but I didn’t see it then I was just like, “I want to win.” For the win your own show on the Oprah Winfrey network. Happy is the New Rich was the video blog that was born out of that that I created because to get to the voting link was kind of difficult. So I just redirected happyisthenewrich.com to the voting link. So I remember-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. That’s what it was. It was your own show.

GTank Sinatra:

Yeah pumping it out. Win your own show on the Oprah Winfrey network, submit your video, vote for me, whatever. And I talked about it so much that somebody who was chairing the meeting, I was speaking, they said, “So tell me about this Oprah Winfrey thing.” And everybody in the meeting started laughing and I was like, “Oh, I guess you guys got me. Yeah.” And I wanted to die. I remember feeling like-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Why? Because-

Being Proud of Who You Are

Tank Sinatra:

Because it was a joke on me that I didn’t know about beforehand. Felt that same seven, eight year old feeling. They were talking about how annoying I was and how they wished whatever I would stop or there’s no way it’s going to happen or whatever. But that’s the kind of person I was. And that’s the kind of person that I still am and I feel now like, “Look at me now.” But I’m not going to make excuses. That was just one of those times where putting myself out there, that was the time I wanted to disappear. Other than that, I don’t know. I’m proud of who I am. I’m not ashamed of myself anymore. It’s actually being visible and being public has really made me double down on my everything, behavior. I can’t be responding to people in the comments telling them to go (beep) themselves. Ellen’s watching. I can’t do that.

Tank Sinatra:

Companies are watching, other people are watching. That’s why I’m saying like I need to be above … The word trolls I don’t know. That’s kind of how I feel about the whole … Like feel the same way about the coffee thing. People say just don’t respond to the trolls. It’s like, “Well, what am I supposed to do with all this rage?” Because they tell me they wished my mom would die of cancer. Like how do I-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What!

Tank Sinatra:

Not all of them, but there have been some really, really nasty messages. Completely unsolicited.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I’m a bit naive because I don’t understand-

Tank Sinatra:

Oh, it’s bad.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I am a bit naive because I don’t … Who would say that?

Tank Sinatra:

Well, something like that at this point in my life would roll off my back because it’s almost like the more aggressive the comment is, the less I value it. If somebody was like, “Hey, it looks like you gained three pounds.” I’d be like, “What! Which your video are you talking about.” If somebody said, “It looks like you gained a hundred pounds.” I’d be like, “That’s obviously not true.” The more extreme the comment is, the less I value it. But yeah, there’s some interesting people out there and I have to remember a time in my life when I would have done that. Definitely would have done that. Like I heard the fat Jewish say, “If it was the ’90s and I had access to Pauly Shore and I could tell him that he sucked and I hope he died, I would’ve done that.” Because that’s what kids do.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I believe that I just don’t relate. I was serious asshole. But it just wasn’t my form of-

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah, no, there’s definitely something you feel like a little …

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

My form was more like, “Let me politely show you that you’re stupid.” But the outward like-

Tank Sinatra:

In writing.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Well, like a betrayal.

Tank Sinatra:

Publicly. Screenshots. You want to hear something funny a pay off of shifting your perspective and focusing on the positive. TanksGoodNews was a different account before that. That I never posted on. I started an account, it was @trollblast and what I was going to do was grab screenshots of people’s awful comments and make them public and permanent. That way they couldn’t delete them. Because I wanted to start making people accountable for their … “You said this man, that’s your picture and that’s your name.” Especially on Facebook. You look on Facebook sometimes it’s like, “I can see this. You’re a psycho. Oh my God!” So I was going to grab screenshots of comments and post them on this page and at the last minute when Hurricane Harvey was going on I saw all this great stuff going on in the middle of this tragedy and I was like, “I’m going to grab like 15.” Because it was so much. You couldn’t even handle all of it. So much good things coming out of … It was rain was the one thing.

Tank Sinatra:

Then there was 80 different good things going on because of the rain. So like there’s no triumph without tragedy. It’s a stupid cliche thing to say, but otherwise there’s just. Like, “Okay you pick your neighbor up in a jet ski, why?” “She was going to die.” “Oh, now it’s important. We wouldn’t have been able to get the jet ski there otherwise [inaudible 00:59:54].

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Logistically speaking.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah, they require water. So I changed the name of it. I tried to change it to Tanks Goodness and I couldn’t do that then I tried … Because there was some stupid pit bull has Tanks Goodness Instagram handle with two pictures from four years ago. Then I couldn’t get Tank Goodness because it just … I forgot what happened with that. And then I made it TanksGoodNews because TankGoodNews doesn’t make any sense. TanksGoodNews. Posted 15 things on it, tagged it from Tank Sinatra and overnight it was 30,000 followers. Then I did it again the next day, another 30,000 and it was at 100,000 before the end of the week.

Tank’s Life in Recovery

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So let’s walk through just quickly the things that you’ve done. So you tried to get on the Oprah show and then-

Tank Sinatra:

Oh, you want to talk about the good stuff now?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Tank Sinatra:

Okay. Well I had to do this recently and it was really powerful.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Well, I’m just going from what I know, which clearly your baby is two, which I was … Jeez.

Tank Sinatra:

He’s a toddler.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, right. So this shows you how much I remember. I remember Happy is The New Rich-

Tank Sinatra:

We got to go back because I stopped drinking then I did stand up comedy when I was 23.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, you did? Okay. So I thought standup comedy was in the past like five.

Tank Sinatra:

It’s in the past year, but it was also when I was 23. Then when I was 25 I went back to college and graduated.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right University of Maryland, right?

Tank Sinatra:

No, I graduated from Farmingdale State.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, you didn’t go to University of Maryland?

Tank Sinatra:

I did but I didn’t graduate from there. But that was a big deal because it was like a very good thing that I did. I had an internship at Def Jam. Huge music fan.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I listened to that. It didn’t count for college credit.

Tank Sinatra:

So stupid. My fault though.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, totally. No, no, no, no.

Tank Sinatra:

Kind of hers but mine, everything’s mine. Interned at Def Jam, finished college, moved to California.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What’d you do there?

Tank Sinatra:

At Def Jam?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah. I was doing anything. It’s actually like one of the worst jobs I ever had.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

But it sounds cool.

Tank Sinatra:

The woman I worked for was a psycho. She was so angry all the time. She wanted it to be Diddy. First day there she goes, “I want this, this, this and that. Go downstairs, get my breakfast.” I was like, “Okay.” So I take the elevator downstairs before I even get off of the elevator, she’s calling my phone screaming at me, where am I? I’m like, “Well, now I forgot your order because the adrenaline’s going. What did you want again?” Yeah it was bad. Really bad first day. Like I don’t need that. You’re not that important. You’re not, nobody is. I don’t care. Jay Z was the president of Def Jam at that time, which is kind of like part of the beauty of the fact that I got to work there because I’m a huge Jay Z fan, but don’t talk to me like that. I’m an adult. And I just completely disregarded her for the rest of the time there. She asked me to do something I’d say yes, I wouldn’t engage. I wouldn’t say thank you. I wouldn’t say please. Nothing. Just, “Here. Here you go.” And then I’d go around.

Tank Sinatra:

So then I moved to California, which was a major check on my spiritual checklist. I tried not to say check again there. Then I came back from California. I got married, then I got a job where I started making money, which was great. I know they say it doesn’t matter, but-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It helps.

Tank Sinatra:

It does help. It takes the sting out of being alive. Then all the other stuff. I started doing standup again. We started making a movie. The Instagram pages took off and I was good. Like I wasn’t-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

The movie was before then?

Tank Sinatra:

No the movie is being made now. Movie we started making two and a half years ago about memegods.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So the Instagram accounts take off. You start making your own meme content. Was that part of the plan?

Tank Sinatra:

No. Because I always treated every job, like it was a stepping stone. It was just tided me over until the next big thing where I could finally be lazy and make a lot of money. I thought that was going to happen. I really did. Still do kind of somewhat. So I was selling fence and I said to myself, “I’m going to treat this job like I’m treating my marriage. This is my wife now. I don’t look and try to date and see what I can.” You know what I mean?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Tank Sinatra:

With the job I was like, “I’m going to do this as well as I possibly can every single day. Treat it like there’s no other options.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

With Instagram?

Tank Sinatra:

No, with the fence company.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

With the fencing company.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah. And when I started doing that, I started making good money. The better you get at sales, the more free time you have because it’s like you’re walking somewhere and people just say yes because you’re so good at it. And they’re just like, “I just want to wear, I don’t know, this guy knows what he’s talking about. Price is good honey, get a check.” So when I had free time, I was digging in the internet. Long story short, I emailed the fat Jewish. I said, “I’m on the internet all day, can I send you stuff?” And he said yes, which is very unlike him. You just took a liking to me for some reason and I would send him stuff. And then he started reposting. He started tagging me in his captions and it went from nothing to 300,000 in a year because of him only. And obviously the page was good, people would get there and convert or whatever but he’s largely responsible for where I am today. For the beginning of it anyway. And two things happened. One, he kind of cut me off. I think maybe he… At first-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You’re not in contact with him?

Tank Sinatra:

No, not really. There’s no beef. I mean, maybe from him, but not for me. I just can’t hate the guy because he helped me out so much. He felt kind of like I duped like I was a normal guy with kids and then all of a sudden now I’m going to try and be a meme account. Like I tricked him, which is not what happened. But once he cut me off, I started making my own memes and once I started making my own memes, then that’s when it really took off. That I was doing back when like a not a lot of people were doing that. Everyone was reposting, nobody was grabbing a picture, writing a funny caption, tweeting it, screenshotting it, cropping it, watermarking it, posting it, writing another caption. It’s a lot. And I was doing that like 10 times a day.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Wow.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah, I was mad. Manic with it. And the more you put out there, obviously the more people have to decide, “All right, I like this guy. I don’t like this guy.” And people liked me and I’m still amazed. Ryan Holiday is a … Right, you know who that is?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah. And I’m listening to Ego Is The Enemy again right now. And he talks about the people who do it slow and methodically and how much more gratifying their success is. And it almost seems like it’s a surprise to them, but it’s not. But it is. My whole life has been one big surprise to me after another. And I’m not saying that to be cute or anything like I really feel like the life-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Knowing you, I believe that.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah. Looked like it was not going to be good.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. I mean, you didn’t quit selling fence for a long time.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

SI mean, I believe that and-

Tank Sinatra:

I mean every success, my wife, my job, my fitness, everything about me is like I have to pinch myself sometimes because I can’t believe how good it is and I don’t really talk about that because I spoke at a group anniversary. My sponsors partner asked me to speak at a group anniversary and I was like, “Yeah.” It was like 70 years. Big group in Long Island. Was very excited. I said, “I’m going to get into it.” And then I said before I said all this stuff, I’m like, “The reason I don’t share this is because I don’t want you to be sitting there with three months thinking if I don’t get 2 million followers on Instagram my sobriety isn’t worth anything or if I don’t make $1 million, my sobriety is not worth anything. Or if I don’t get married or if I don’t get in shape or if anything, your sobriety is everything and everything springs from that. If you can get that intact, I’m not saying you’ll intern at Def Jam, but you’ll do your version of that. Whatever your version of having an Instagram meme pages, it’s possible now.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Your passion, project or whatever that fits your life.

Tank Sinatra:

Whatever it is. You’ll figure it out. It doesn’t make it easy. It makes it possible, you know?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, right, exactly. It doesn’t make it easy. It makes possible I like that.

Tank Sinatra:

Because it’s impossible otherwise. People talk about, I don’t know how I get all this stuff when I was using. Like you did nothing when you were using. You sat in the house and got high all day. What do you mean you don’t know how you did all this stuff when you were using? You didn’t live.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

But you don’t know … I don’t know. I think I feel like you don’t know that until you get to the other. Like there’s just so much you don’t realize you get to there.

Tank Sinatra:

You don’t care.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Til you get to the other side. And what it feels like to do things differently

Tank Sinatra:

To be effective and a contributing member of society.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

One thing I’ve noticed was you over the years. In the lion rock journey you helped me start the first line rock online, AA meeting and East meets West. I don’t even know how you volunteer. I don’t even remember, but you were in New York and you seriously that’s the first … And now we have, there’s so many meetings, there are chairs from all over the country. There are different types of meetings and there’s huge community now and it’s all volunteer, same way that AA is run in person. And you, my friend were the first leader of that and helped me start that. And I said, when other people were encouraging me to do that, I said, it won’t work. It won’t work. It won’t work. It won’t work. And you were volunteered in that and that meeting stuck around and it’s still the same time and.

Tank Sinatra:

Wow.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Same with the Fanny packs and for me, I’m the organizer, right?

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Like you’re the show up and I’ll just say yes, guy. I see that about you. And you’re like, “Okay, I’m here. Okay, I’ll participate.” I joke that if I write my memoirs, it’s going to be called accidental leadership because it’s like I end up starting something and I’m like, “I just wanted it to exist. I didn’t want to start it.”

Tank Sinatra:

Maybe you did.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, but you are someone who takes risks, tries new things, and follows what you love. And that’s always been clear to me. willing to say yes. I mean, very much willing to say yes. And I think that that has been a part of your recovery and also your success.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah. Like writing the fat Jewish and email was not part of the plan. It was just like 2:30 on a Tuesday. I was like, “Let me write this and motherfucker and see what he’s saying.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Why not?

Tank Sinatra:

It all stems from this and it’s not the most positive example, but I remember being youngish and my oldest sister was … I don’t know. I don’t want to say she was 12 because it’s going to sound weird. Maybe she was 15 or whatever. I don’t know. And there was some guy standing by the stationary store by our house and he was in a car I think, and he was staring at her and he was just being weird and she was uncomfortable. And then she’s like, “I’m going to go see what this guy wants.” She just walked over and was like, “What’s up?” I was like, “Oh my God! That’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.” I wanted to die. The guy wasn’t even looking at me. So that boldness where it’s just like, “Let’s see what happens.” That might not be where it comes from. But that was the first I saw it and I was like, “wow! That looked pretty cool.” I want to emulate that. Be bold.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Be bold. I like that.

Tank Sinatra:

See what happens.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah see what happens. I don’t know if you saw this, but I tagged you in, my dad wrote something on Facebook about how his feed is just depressing.

Tank Sinatra:

Oh, really?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And just what everybody’s right. Just like this stuff, right?

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

How often do we report like, “Hey, I’m having a good day.” No, we’re talking about so often we lead with, “and! My life’s crazy. Argh! This is this.” Turned him on to like, here’s these news feed that talks about all these good things that people are doing. And I just did that. I think a lot of memes go over my head because I don’t know how that happens. But I had-

Tank Sinatra:

“Why is Kyle punching [inaudible 01:12:06]? Is this funny?”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, “Like I don’t know.” Dak just rolls his eyes at me. But TanksGoodNews very much speaks to me in that it highlights a lot. It highlights the good that humanity is doing, which we so need because I feel like we’re inundated with what is bad and wrong.

Tank Sinatra:

Well, that’s what gets people going. Most people. The media is actually … I don’t blame them. I wish they would take a little bit more responsibility and onus for changing the way that people see the world. But if I post something and it gets 10 retweets and then I post something else and it gets a thousand retweets next time, I’m probably going to post something along the lines of what the other, you know what I mean?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Tank Sinatra:

Well, same thing with commercials, people tuning in, but what they’ve figured out and what I figured out is if you cause a visceral reaction in somebody, they will stay tuned and tune back in and tell people about it. They’re just going for that gut punch adrenaline, rush, mouth dry. I’m going for the crying warm, but I get the same reaction, same extreme. I think that 5% or so of your life is tragic, horrible disaster.

Tank Sinatra:

The other 5% is elation, euphoria. Your mom dies, you have a baby, you get fired from your job, you get a promotion. The extremes. And then the middle 90% is gray nothingness. And depending on how you see it, if you’re going to … I remember being told by my college professor it’s too long of a story, so I’ll just tell you the end. He goes, “If you’re going to react at a 10 every time your car doesn’t start, you got to react at a two every time it does. Just to even it out.” You can’t react at a zero you got to be a little happy your car started. It’s a good thing, right?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

George Tank Sinatra:

Car starts 300 times. So 300 times two is 600. 600 versus ten, now all over sudden your life is 590 points of awesomeness. Its insurmountable awesomeness. If you look at everything that goes right there’s a paralympic skier who was blind and he used to ski by sound. I read this in this book The Brian. One of the best books I ever read in my entire life. David Eagleman, yeah. Unreal. Because he said that like, “You don’t see with your eyes, you see with your brain. If your eyes are not processing stuff, the part of the brain that process it, sound will be bigger and touch will be bigger to atrophy and make room.” So this guy had a surgery to correct his vision and it ruined his life.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh!

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah. He threw up for the first month. He was dizzy for the first six months, couldn’t ski anymore, could barely go outside. Look at all these ridges in this room. He saw every, every detail of everything because it was all on him. I’m not saying you should do that with your life, but there is a lot more that goes right every day and goes wrong every single day. My heart didn’t stop again right now.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

But we get so mad when things seem to-

Tank Sinatra:

Oh, go wrong. Slight inconvenience.

Shifting Your Focus

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It’s really about shifting the focus. And what’s that been like for you as a sober man and just in general. Obviously that sober man is your experience. Going to be the one you have. But with TanksGoodNews, I think I saw that it’s moving into something bigger now and like what’s that?

Tank Sinatra:

So I have always wanted to expand. Every chance I get I’m doing something new with it. And I ran into a guy who was talking about investing in it in a major way, in a way that would really move the needle to create more content, not just for me but for people that I find that I want to cultivate that I think are doing good out there, that I want to make a show around, make videos to them, put their content out there, expand the website, do live events. My goal right now, you know Rupert Murdoch is? Fox. I want to be the opposite of Rupert Murdoch. He’s the guy who ruined media. He just corporatized and made everything evil and greed one and whatever. I want to be like the exact opposite of him. That would be really I think for my life.

Tank Sinatra:

If in 30 years I’m sitting on top of this media empire where it’s like people do still watch Fox and CNN but it’s just like 10% their ratings are so low because people just want to watch this good stuff all the time now. In the ’80s and ’90s sex sold. The last 20 years, fear sold. I think for the next 20 we’re looking at love and hope and at the very least unbiased information and I want to create a platform where people can become informed, inspired and entertained, humor, goofiness, lightheartedness, everything’s so grave like you know what I mean?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Tank Sinatra:

When people say stuff is heavy, I think of gravity. Gravity is just weighing you down. What do you do to combat gravity? You bring levity to uplift and make people not feel so heavy. That’s what I want to do. I want to put a major dent if not completely changed the way news is reported. And I said to this guy, I said, the best worst case scenario is if you give us money to make this happen. And a year from now, Fox, CNN, MSNBC, Huffington post, the Hill, everybody all reports all good news all the time. It makes me obsolete. That would be phenomenal. It’s not going to happen, but I’d be okay with it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Because I mean, it is problematic and it’s hard. We talk about in program or one thing that is aside. You act your way into a new way of thinking. Right? And that has been so much retraining my brain to see the good. To live in abundance rather than scarcity. I’m so like, “Oh gosh! There’s not enough for me.” There’s just the fear in my head. And I think that hearing and seeing all people doing all these good things helps me, I should speak for me, helps me want to go out and do more of those good things, participate in more of those good things which retrains my brain to want to be more a part of that and to look for that and focus on those things, which makes me an overall happier person.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah. I knew the page was onto something when pretty shortly after I started. I knew that it was on something because it grew so fast and I was like, “Man, people really have a hunger for this good stuff. They want it bad.” But that wasn’t the point. The point I knew that I had something was when people started sending me stuff maybe two weeks in and I was like, “Man, not only do they come into the page for a little jolt of like a little reminder that things are okay, they’re then turning and going and finding their own version of that and who knows what happens from there.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

How often do you use what people send you or are you finding most of your own stuff?

Tank Sinatra:

There’s a lot of overlap. If I had a team of people to hunt down leads and cultivate stories, it would be a lot more. That’s one of the plans with expansion; is to not just find stories that are already out there and then kind of put our spin on them. It’s to break stories. We’ve broken a couple of stories. The most recent thing was with Pixar, which was really cool.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That was really cool. Yeah the cancer.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah the girl. Little girl sick in a hospital. Huge toy story fan. I posted it within like … I don’t know, within 10 minutes Kristen Bell wrote me, somebody from Pixar wrote me, somebody from Disney wrote me like. They were like, “We’re going to figure it out.” And the next morning the girl had the movie.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So cool.

Tank Sinatra:

I know. There’s something power is not evil. Having power is good. I love power. I love having power and being able to-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

If you’re able to use it in a way that’s to help people. It’s awesome. Yeah.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah. Unbelievable.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Do you have any ideas around how the sobriety piece is going to mix into it or do you plan to just attraction rather than promotion with that?

Tank Sinatra:

What do you mean?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

like-

Tank Sinatra:

Like I’m going to open up a rehab? No.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Let me just help you out as a friend. No, like do you plan to make that part of as you grow invisibility. Do you plan to make that part that awareness of this is what sober can look like. You can get help too. Is that going to be a big piece of Tanks life or is-

Tank Sinatra:

It is. I mean, I talk about it pretty openly and freely, but I know it’s, yeah, attraction, not promotion. I have a book coming out in November.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay, cool.

Tank Sinatra:

You know what I like about recovery is that like I shot something for men’s warehouse and I was driving and talking and the guy who was doing the sound in the back. They were listening and they liked what I was saying. We get out of the car, the guy goes, “I really got a lot out of your share ban.” And my ears perked up. I was like, “What did you just say?” I know what that means. And then he goes, “Yeah, I got a lot out of your experience strength and hope. And I was like, “Oh, it’s like you’re one of-“

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, one of us.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah you get.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Secret handshake.

Tank Sinatra:

You don’t need to be overt about it. People that know, know and-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I love when peoples drop like little … I don’t know if you watch the debates, someone said “faith without works is dead.”

Tank Sinatra:

Who said that Marianne Williamson?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

No, but it would have been perfect if she had, but you bet. I just mean like they say things and you’re like mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tank Sinatra:

I wrote a brief. Do you like her or no?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

My mom and I just … Do I like her for the president?

Tank Sinatra:

So y’all appreciate this tweet. I said, our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our greatest fear is that Marianne Williamson might be (beep) president. That can’t happen.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

We’ve no fear of that. At all whatsoever. That is not going to happen. Although that’s what I said about Donald Trump so nevermind. But that is not high on my radar yet of things, but I find her absolutely fascinating.

Tank Sinatra:

Yeah. She’s out there.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It was awesome. It was so awesome.

Tank Sinatra:

[foreign language 01:22:18]. I wish Beto would have said some Spanish and Marianne Williamson would’ve start speaking in tongues or something.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

No. There was so much. I was like, “I love this.” I was like, “I can’t wait. I hope there’s an SNL. I can’t wait for all the late show stuff.” Like I was just like, “This is so much content from the funny people. I just can’t wait.”

Tank Sinatra:

It’s so, so much fun to just make fun of everything.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That a cool job you have. That’s a really cool job you have. It’s like, Oh this is just what you … With political season, is this like gold mine are you-

Tank Sinatra:

Everything is a gold mine always. Everything. It’s funny because there are … There’s not a meme season but there are like, Halloween comes around, I’m like all right candy. Ghost me or whatever. Like Valentine’s day, Christmas, Thanksgiving. It’s a fun time because there’s stuff I like having some kind of a … What is it? A prompt to create thought instead of just looking around and trying to figure out what I want to say, what happened today that I could turn into some kind of funny content. Having some kind of a goal or an angle to shoot from is really good.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. I would imagine.

Tank Sinatra:

And the debate. I mean, politics is just so ridiculous and people are so ridiculous. Half my followers think I’m a liberal cock. The other half think I’m a Nazi. It’s like, “When you guys figure it out you’ll let me know.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

There are mental twists like the one where you randomly tell some person you don’t know. “I hope your mom gets cancer.” And there are certain things that I simply don’t understand. And here is one of them.

Tank Sinatra:

It’s like this is narcissism in a nutshell. And it’s me, so I’m good to say it. When I came back from California, I was very tan. I was in shape. I was broke but I looked great and I went to my therapist and I’m like, “I’m back. It was good.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

How long were you here?

Tank Sinatra:

A year. Unintentional to do it. It was just like how long I could last here. So I said, “Because I feel like maybe vanity wise you’ve come across like a little bit of a narcissistic streak, just watch it and then we’ll check back in on a periodically.” So I go back, whatever it is, two weeks later, a month later, first thing I say when I sit down is, “So I’ve been thinking about what you said about that narcissism.” And he looks at me and he goes, dead pan. He goes, “No (beep).” That’s narcissism. It’s complete, devoid of any kind of awareness at all that you’re all you think about.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

There are narcissistic traits that people can have. And then there is full blown narcissism. I think we all have traits.

Tank Sinatra:

Sure. Definitely.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

People have talked about how we’re not listening to each other and I wonder how much … I’ve like, “Okay. I’m going to try that on and see how it fits. And I wonder, “Am I listening to what people are saying?” And again, it’s very limited. My circle is mostly similar views to mine which are very moderate actually. And I think that when you get down to most of the issues, if you get down to immigration, what it really comes down to is that people are concerned that you’re going to harm their family.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And we can all relate to that. Right? So like I feel like a lot of the issues are so understandable when you say, let’s take out whatever the issue is, if I felt like you were going to hurt my family, whatever that was. I would feel that way too. And so I’ve been really working on that. Finding that, “Okay, this is where that’s coming from. This is the feeling that-” I don’t agree with how you got there, but I do agree that if I thought that you were going to hurt my family, I’d be really, really heated about it.

Tank Sinatra:

That’s why in AA, it’s so powerful because you talk. You hear about identifying and not comparing. It’s like, if the world was put on a program and people were forced to listen and communicate and be honest, the hard part is that you’re asking somebody to be honest with you and they’re not even able to be honest with themselves. There’s a lot of unpacking of people to do generational. It’s going to be generational. And I think there’s a book called Enlightenment Now where a guy just basically rattles off statistics about how awesome everything is and it’s like throw that in the face of somebody who tells you the world’s burning or this country’s going to hell in a hand basket. It’s like, “Maybe your country is because you suck,” but everything else is amazing. It’s very hard to deny the fact that things are much, much, much better. Even with all the videos of people being killed by police officers, the numbers are down. There’s more cameras so you see it more. It’s a perception issue. I’m not saying that things don’t need to be changed, but let’s not make anything.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

But we’ve been proud. We’ve made some progress. We’re making progress

Tank Sinatra:

I don’t want to misquote him, but I don’t think there’s one category where things haven’t improved. School shootings are up, but total number of gun deaths are so way down. But it’s like they’re collected, they’re concentrated. So that seems like, “Oh my God! Wow! I can’t believe got a band guns.” And it’s like, well, it’s very isolated.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

My sponsor always says to me, she says, because I’ll get into the head space of like, “Oh my gosh! Have you seen these things? I mean, all my friends are buying Kevlar.” literally friends are putting Kevlar in their kids’ backpacks for school and all this stuff. And she says, “The truth is that collectively the same thing that like things are better than they ever have if you were at…” And she’d something that strikes me, which is, “if you’re going to be born into a time now would be the time you’d want to be born into.” And when I think of it that way, I’m like, “okay, that’s true.” So the things must be improving if now would be the best time in the course of history to be born into, right?

Tank Sinatra:

There’s no time that’s better. Do you want to go back to the ’20s?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right, no I don’t.

Tank Sinatra:

Right before the depression. Do you want to go back to the thirties during World War II?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Maybe the ’90s and the.com boom. And do some-

Tank Sinatra:

No, because there was plenty of problems. You ever listen-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

See, that was my attempt at a really terrible joke.

Tank Sinatra:

Oh, I’m sorry. You’re right, .com. It’s funny because a couple of years ago I realized where this perspective came from. Why TanksGoodNews exists. I think it all comes from being in boy Scouts and having to do-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You were in boy scouts?

Tank Sinatra:

I was in boy Scouts. Yeah. And I had to do a song in front of my troop, me and my troop or whatever. We had to do a song in front of the rest of the troop. So we had to pick a song. So we picked, we didn’t start the fire, you know that song?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Tank Sinatra:

Where he just rattles off everything good and bad that happened over the last 60 years. And how like, “It is what it is man. What are you looking at?”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right, What are you looking at?

Tank Sinatra:

“What are you looking for because you’ll find it.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. what are you looking for because you’ll find it.

Tank Sinatra:

Being eight or nine years old and having that all laid out in front of me and learning every single word and learning what is Ho Chi Minh? Who’s Bernard Goetz? Why is he in this song. Learning about this stuff just kind of I guess prepped me for the fact that you will find what you seek and you better be very conscious of what you’re looking for.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. It’s something I’m working really hard on and I think that your prosperity in every sense of the word is a result that … As long as I have known you, which now is ten years. Crazy. Your name’s changed in the last ten years.

Tank Sinatra:

It changed in the last two.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. I was talking about change you are finding what you have sought and you continue to seek. And I just think you’re a wonderful man and I’m really grateful that you came here and I know you’ve got a lot going on and I really appreciate you taking the time to-

Tank Sinatra:

Glad I was able to do it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Come to my little Popsicle stand.

Tank Sinatra:

You have popsicles here?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I mean, I can get some.

Tank Sinatra:

So hungry. You have popsicle stands.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

All right. Thank you.

Tank Sinatra:

Thank you.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast would like to thank our sponsor Lionrock Recovery for their support. Lionrock Recovery provides online substance abuse counseling where you can get help from the privacy of your own home. For more information, visit www.lionrockrecovery.com/podcast. Subscribe and join our podcast community to hear amazing stories of courage and transformation.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

We are so grateful to our listeners and hope that you will engage with us. Please email us comments, questions, anything you want to share with us, how this podcast has affected you. Our email address is podcast@lionrockrecovery.com. We want to hear from you.

#18 – Tank Sinatra

Tank Sinatra’s Story

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Show Notes:

#18 – Tank Sinatra Episode Transcript

Ashley Welcomes Tank Sinatra

How Tank Got from California to Long Island

Tank’s Feeling of Responsibility in Recovery

Progress, Not Perfection

Tank’s First Drink

What Drugs & Alcohol Did for Tank

Tank Hitting Rock Bottom

Tank’s Last Drink

Being Proud of Who You Are

Tank’s Life in Recovery

Shifting Your Focus

#18.5 - After the Episode

#17 - Nicole Ory