"I went into my living room, reached into a cabinet above my TV and grabbed my gun, a loaded .22," recalls the now 34-year-old. "I sat back on my heels, cocked it and put it into my mouth. I pulled the trigger. The gun didn't go off. I thought, 'Are you kidding me? I'm such an [expletive] failure I can't even kill myself? I dropped the gun and broke down. That was the turning point in my life."
Goldstein entered a recovery program and began working out, but relapsed 90 days later. "I had to start all over again. But at that point I had no choice – it was recover or die." A relationship breakup with an unidentified girlfriend made him start eating again, but with time he gained the self-confidence to kick his overindulgent habits.
"I no longer needed a trophy girlfriend or drugs to feel good about myself," he says. "It's been nine and a half years since I’ve had a drink or taken drugs. But every day I have to remind myself that no matter how much time I have behind me, I'm still a drug addict.
"At any given moment, I'm five seconds away from walking up to someone, grabbing their drink out of their hand and downing it. And if I do that, within a week, tops, I’ll be smoking crack
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