Mike Catherwood says something that sounds impossible at first: “Thank goodness for drugs.” Not because addiction was good to him, but because it destroyed the respectable life he was pretending to want.
Mike grew up believing the path had already been chosen: sports, college, a business degree, and a recognizable version of success. Underneath it, he wanted to make things. He painted, loved animation, played music, wrote songs, and wanted the freedom to be strange. Addiction did not create that person. It made the lie impossible to maintain.
In the chair, Mike takes Tab from repeated overdoses and a motel room in Inglewood to the Yellow Pages call that got him into treatment—and the final day he ever drank or used drugs. Recovery then required something less cinematic and more difficult: learning to tolerate ordinary life after chaos had become normal.
“I’m a series of mistakes, and that’s all I have to offer.”
Those mistakes became part of his qualification. Mike started at KROQ doing the work nobody glamorizes: cleaning, driving talent, and handling whatever needed to be done. He prank-called the morning show, leaned into the humor he had once hidden, and landed on the radio without ever growing up dreaming of being a broadcaster.
When another hire failed to appear for his first shift, Mike got the call. A decade on Kevin and Bean eventually led to Loveline, where lived experience mattered as much as polish.
What if the worst chapter of your life does not become your identity—but does become something useful?
Mike did not erase the years behind Psycho Mike. He survived them, built a life in recovery, and found a way to make the hardest parts useful without letting them define the person speaking now.
