What happens when the identity you built your life around falls apart overnight? In this raw interview, Dean Patrick—Stanford dropout, former crypto fund manager, and now author of God Money: Lost and Found in the Crypto Wilderness—traces the arc from early “prodigy” ambition to addiction, collapse, and a near-suicide on a 30th-floor balcony in Manhattan. Family pulled him into recovery in 2018. The years that followed weren’t linear: relapses, resets, and finally a shift from status to substance—trading a high-profile accelerator role for a humble job that protects the two practices that rebuilt him: writing and Zen meditation.
Dean shares how week-long silent retreats and six months living at a Zen monastery gave him a new center, why success without values is a dead-end, and how “boring, systematic” routines actually fuel creative work. If you’ve ever asked, Is this really the life I want?—this conversation is your permission slip to choose differently, start smaller, and build a life that can actually hold you.
Show Notes & Chapters
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[00:00] Opening: identity, ambition, and the prodigy trap
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[03:00] Homeschooled faith → atheism → “my new god became money”
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[05:30] Stanford insecurity, stimulants for confidence, and the crypto fund
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[07:30] Tripling the fund… then the crash, panic attacks, and the balcony
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[10:00] The phone call that pulled him back; rehab and the non-linear climb
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[12:30] Two steps forward, almost two back: relapse, lessons, and four years sober
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[13:30] Choosing a smaller life to save the bigger dream (service job → space to write)
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[15:00] COVID as a reset; five years to write God Money
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[18:30] Thoreau experiments: raw land, a DIY cabin, and what didn’t work
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[19:30] Zen practice begins: Rochester Zen Center, retreats, and rigor
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[21:00] Zazen: posture, pain, and why stillness hurts before it heals
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[26:00] The field beyond thought: “no problems” and taking the edge off life
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[28:30] Stoicism parallels; spiritual materialism and the ego in robes
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[33:00] Monastery life: 4:00 a.m. bells, choreographed breakfasts, work as practice
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[35:00] Designing a “boring, systematic” routine to protect creativity
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[41:30] Publishing God Money, reader response, and the next (auto)fiction project
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[43:00] Closing: being as an end in itself
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Book: God Money: Lost and Found in the Crypto Wilderness — Dean Patrick
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Audiobook: narrated by the author
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Website: http://DeanPatrickAuthor.com
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Community/Practice: Rochester Zen Center (mentioned)
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