Today we’d like to introduce you to James Byous.
Hi James, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I came to Los Angeles at 17 years old to attend the Studio Acting program at AMDA. I brought my guitar and I dreamed I’d start a band and get discovered playing somewhere classic like The Whiskey A-Go-Go. I’d seen it happen in The Doors movie and decided that’s how I’d do it. Of course, it went a little different. I was the kid in high school who brought his guitar to school every day and I’m pleased to tell the reader that the tradition continued into…. “college.”
I didn’t take my studies seriously. I took my guitar playing and songwriting very seriously. I played at open mics, street corners, and little bars. My first crowds were my classmates lucky enough to be hounded and cajoled into coming to one of said performances.
Being a young and impressionable lad I started drinking and partaking in the other various forbidden fruits around this time. It started off fairly innocent and fun. I experienced a sense of relief, freedom, and liveliness which had previously seemed unattainable. It was experimental. I was an artist, you see? Why not be creative with my brain chemistry and my lifestyle choices as well?
As the years unfolded it began to look a lot less fun. If you’d have been a fly on the wall, reader, I’m certain you’d have been distressed to see the darkness of it all. The experiment was returning some very alarming results. I wasn’t getting high for fun anymore. I was getting high as a means to be, OK. It’s a tale as old as time.
It took a long time and I caused a lot of wreckage on my way down, but I hit rock bottom at 28. On the outside, things looked pretty good. I was living in a decent apartment, I was filming a Netflix show, I had two vehicles in the garage, and I was engaged to be married. But for some reason I was drinking myself to death over it all. I was drinking upon waking up, buying cocaine with money I didn’t have, and I was forever running– head change to head change– from a tsunami of self hatred. The chasm was widening and the path became narrower with every night of heavy drink and drug.
I’m writing this now, so obviously I survived. I’m one of the lucky ones. I know folks who didn’t make it out. I know a few who died to get high one more time. I know some folks who are still out there running from the wave. But I survived because I got sober and I had to figure out who I was. I feel like I had to pick up where I left off in some regards. I started using as a teen. I was a petulant boy with ridiculous notions about adulthood and 10,000 fears playing on a loop in my head. I was a mess. I got help from some very lovely people who showed me how to stay sober and I figured out who I am. I started saying YES to life. I tried new things. I went to new places. I took Kung Fu, Hitch Hiked across the country, saw myself on billboards in Times Square, backpacked in Europe, and I found my voice as an artist without the drugs.
This is the most important bit of all–– I remembered who I am. I am an artist. The world hurts me and I cannot hide from that pain because as an artist, I feel like it’s my job to observe and report. I know I’m not the only one who feels these things. I’m not the only one who knows what it’s like to feel cosmically alone. I know what it is to feel completely sublime and to be held in the heart of the world’s heart. I want to share those things with you and I want to hear your version of it all. Now I know that these big, scary feelings are not to be run from, but to be embraced.
I have been sober for 7 years now. I run a sober men’s jiu jitsu meeting on Sunday Mornings, I run a podcast called Rolling Sober with my dear friends Seth and Zach, and I am producing a rock opera about addiction called “Jimi Darkness: Alcoholic Superhero.” I am happily married to the love of my life and we get payed to perform with each other onstage at The Cinevita in a Quentin Tarantino themed musical called “Tarantino: Pulp Rock.” I am overcome with gratitude, Reader. I hope you’re happy, too. Bless you.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I faced so much adversity. I think everyone does, but I had a special kind of genius for creating more trouble for myself than necessary. There are apparently people who get to say “No Regrets.” Sounds nice. I’ll never know what that’s like. My regrets are not torturing me anymore because I’m not replaying them on a loop in my head anymore… but they’re there. Those hard-won lessons that come with the kind of massive trial and error (heavy on the latter) a wild, young artist will undergo are indispensable, but probably could have been learned an easier, softer way. But they were not. The main and most important lesson— the one you’ve heard so many times it’s redundancy is bordering on cartoonish— is to be kind. This one lesson really contains the greatest idea of the entire Pantheon of thinkers, scholars, and Gods. There is no loftier goal, no greater good than to be kind.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I have always done and continue to do musical theater, act, sing, write and perform original music, and I work in addiction treatment. My newest work is a musical which explores alcoholism and drug addiction titled “Jimi Darkness: Alcoholic Superhero.” Jimi is, of course, a metaphorical retelling of my journey with addiction and audiences can expect to be taken on an emotional roller coaster of belly laughs, sorrowful tears, and moments of great triumph— all set to some killer rock and roll.
Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
Don’t waste your time staring at your phone! Make something. Do it now!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://rollingsoberbjj.com
- Instagram: @JamesByous
Image Credits
Riker Brothers, Damu Malik
