Six Years of Sobriety and Just Getting Started

Addiction is like the wind: you can’t see the wind, but you can see the effects of the wind. The disease of addiction isn’t like having the flu or a broken ankle. There are no obvious signs of illness. There is no sharp, shooting pain that keeps you from walking, and addiction will not appear on an X-ray or MRI.

Addiction is an invisible illness, and like the visible effects of the wind, you can see the impact addiction has on a person and their world. In 2018, I was very sick with addiction and needed help, however I was unwilling to admit it. I needed treatment, but I couldn’t see it. However, I could see my life spiraling out of control due to my addiction. Those unmanageable side effects of addiction are what ultimately led me to get help.

In 2018, I was falsely accused of a crime that DNA evidence later proved I did not commit. The charges were eventually dismissed, clearing my name. But not before I endured five years of public shame, humiliation and pain created by headlines that have been proven false. However, that pain finally drove me to get the help I needed, and I’m forever grateful for even the most painful parts of my journey.

In September 2018, I checked into rehab at The Meadows in Wickenburg, Arizona. My time at The Meadows saved my life and gave me a foundation upon which to build an entirely different life, a sober life. I was given an incredible education in mental health and addiction with a focus on the neuroscience behind what drove me to that place. The Meadows is truly a special place, it saved my life, just as it has for so many thousands of others for nearly five decades.

Shortly after completing my treatment, I wrote a blog post about my struggles with addiction. Many people reached out to me and encouraged me to tell my story more broadly. They also pushed me to find purpose by combining my personal journey with my professional background in finance. With this inspiration, I launched a venture capital firm called What If Ventures to invest in mental health and addiction-focused startups. Over time, that focus has grown to include disruptive healthcare, stigmatized healthcare, and startups outside of the healthcare space while collaborating with some of the top venture funds in the world at various stages.

What If Ventures:

Having found a sense of purpose, I spent most of 2019 trying to raise a $20 million venture capital fund to invest in mental health startups. Though I met with countless polite, attentive investors, they consistently told me that I couldn’t raise money because I was fresh out of rehab. However, a dozen investors did agree to join me in a one-time deal through a special purpose vehicle (SPV).

This led to the launch of What If Ventures as a venture investing syndicate in January 2020. As a group of twelve investors we made our first investment into the seed round of Foresight Mental Health. Foresight is a mental health care delivery platform providing a range of therapy, psychiatry and other services for multiple mental health indications. After we invested, Foresight was able to raise additional capital from some of the best investors in the world including Sequoia, Polaris Partners, Jazz Ventures among others.

Over the next few years, some incredible founders took a chance on What If Ventures by letting us invest in their startups. People like Michael Smith (Co-Founder of Calm), Tom Insel (Psychiatrist-Neuroscientist, Author, Entrepreneur, and Mental Health Advocate), and Russ Glass (Headspace CEO at the time) also encouraged me early on to grow the fund. They also spoke at What If Fellowship events over the years and have been mentors to me.

After our initial success, investors began telling friends about us. Through mostly word of mouth, our list of engaged investors has grown to over 4,000 people. Thanks to the collective efforts of all those involved in getting What If Ventures off the ground, we now have a well-funded platform to support the mental health startup ecosystem

What If Ventures Progress Since 2020:

In just the last four years, What If Ventures has accomplished the following:

• Invested over $90mm into 75 startups.

• Attracted over 4,000 investors to our syndicate.

• Produced 92 episodes of the Stigma Podcast including guests such as Zak Williams (Robin Williams’ son), Michael Smith (Co-Founder of Calm), and many others.

• Four exits to date, with three IPOs and one portfolio company acquired.

• 60% of Fund 1 is committed from existing LPs, with a first close pending.

• Graduated 500+ startup founders across ten cohorts of the What If Fellowship since October 2020, facilitating the launch of many mental health startups.

• Became an early-stage investor in Alto Neuroscience, sourced a Series-A lead for them and participated in every round through IPO in February 2024.

• Received inbound interest from a C-level executive at the rehab facility I attended as one of our fund’s LPs.

• Grew the Disruptive Healthcare newsletter to over 4,200 subscribers, including founders and investors who read our regular valuation and market reports on the disruptive healthcare market.

Personal Life:

Like many people facing addiction, I required extreme pain to get help. But for me, the pain was worth it. Today, I am blessed with a life I never deserved. My wife, Christine, saved my life and our family by getting me to rehab in 2018. I’m proud to say that we now have three beautiful, healthy children: two boys and a baby girl.

Hays family in 2024.

In my family, I found the ultimate dopamine hit. The high I was searching for in substances was never good enough. Then, after getting sober, I found what I was looking for in raising three incredible children. Our two boys love God and sports and are intellectually curious. Our baby girl loves to chase me around the house with her tennis racket, hitting anything she can find. None of this was possible without first passing through the dark days 2018.

But don’t let the pretty pictures fool you. I’m still a work in progress, with as many setbacks as successes. Every day, I fight to stick to my recovery program, pursue dependence on God, process my resentments, and regulate my nervous system. I get it wrong just as often as I get it right, but I hope to accomplish the following:

1. To show people who struggle like me that there is hope.

2. Reduce the stigma around addiction and mental health so that people are more understanding of those in recovery from substance abuse and mental health differences.

Work in Progress:

For much of my adult life, I hid from my emotions, numbing painful feelings with alcohol and controlled substances. Instead of learning from those experiences and maturing as an adult, I stunted my personal and emotional development in my teenage years.

But at age 38, I removed alcohol from my life and discovered I had the emotional intelligence of an 18-year-old. While I’ve made quite a bit of progress in the last six years, I still have a long way to go. One of the most complex parts of getting sober has been learning how out-of-practice I am in processing those emotions.

The road ahead seems long sometimes, but it also motivates me to find recovery solutions for people like me. I haven’t figured this all out. However, I have an insatiable curiosity to understand myself and embrace my role as a test subject for mental health solutions.

I’ve tried countless solutions as both a patient and an investor. Some work for me, some work for others, and some don’t work at all. I don’t invest in any solution I can’t see working for me or the people I’m close to within the recovery community.

Difficult Journey:

It would be an understatement to say that my journey has not been easy. There are still times when someone throws false accusations from my past in my face to hurt me in business, keep my kids off a baseball team, or because someone sees it as a way to gain an advantage over me for one reason or another.

This is what stigma looks like for those of us living in recovery. Often, it feels like people pay lip service to “fighting stigma” but then turn right around and stigmatize someone in recovery. I often feel like I earned this stigma, but then I have to remind myself that it’s unfair to be stigmatized and being thought of as a person defined by my worst moments does not reflect my life now. I want other people living in recovery to know that it is normal to face these challenges. You are not alone, and there is hope.

Just Getting Started:

One thing the recovery community has taught me is that even though I have been sober for six years, my journey is just beginning. I don’t know what the future holds for What If Ventures, which of our companies will succeed or fail, how far my kids will make it in sports, or what they will do with their lives. And for the first time, I’m okay with not knowing. Sobriety has allowed me to “let go and let God”, as they say.

Instead of worrying about the future, I focus on what I can control today. I will work my sobriety program, help others doing the same, and pursue funding solutions that make the human experience better for people like me.

If you would like to join me or support our efforts in any way, then please reach out via email. Founders and investors who have an interest in the mental health space can reach out to me directly any time via info@whatif.vc.

I hope to hear from you!

Sincerely,
Stephen Hays

My Struggle with Mental Health (Bi-Polar Disorder) and Addiction

I want to share something very personal here. My hope is that that others who need help, will be encouraged to get it and feel comfortable reaching out before it is too late.

Addiction

For the better part of the last two decades, I have struggled with addiction and type 1 bipolar disorder. The addiction started with binge drinking in college and quickly manifest itself as a gambling addiction during my senior year at West Point. In the early years of addiction, I didn’t consider drinking to be anything other than a controllable, recreational activity or at worst, something I did to “keep up with my friends” (this was just an excuse).

On the other hand, the gambling, hooked me the first time I did it online from my dorm room at West Point as a senior in college. I knew I was addicted the first time I placed a bet online. I would go on to spend the next 17 years lying, cheating, hiding, covering up, and finding excuses to feed that addiction. The pursuit of that addiction would lead me to pursue money over all things personally and professionally. It would lead me to other addictions, countless trips per year to Atlantic City, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Shreveport, and many other places in between. Simply put, the gambling obsession drove all other things in my life for many years.

The disease of addiction spread to other areas of my life. After the Army I began using various substances numb myself from the pain I created in my life from not only gambling, but my struggles with bi-polar disorder. I started to frequent strip clubs, and then eventually that led me to seeing sex workers. I began to embrace the “party” life style of Las Vegas on my dozens of trips per year, which further drove me into a dark place where addiction seemed to fuel addiction.

Mental Health

In addition to the addiction issues, I have struggled with mental health all my life. Early in my childhood I was mis-diagnosed as ADD and given Ritalin. I was in the early stages of showing bi-polar tendencies with a bent toward manic episodes. The Ritalin acted as “speed” and made things worse. Just imagine giving someone in a manic state an “upper” of any kind.

“I’d seen the way my friendships ended consistently in dramatic disaster…”

As I got older, I heard feedback from friends, teachers and coaches that I was often viewed as the “life of the party” when you first meet me, but then that quickly fades, and I burn bridges. I’d seen the way my friendships ended consistently in dramatic disaster, the way people shun me, the way people react to me, the paranoia that I feel about what is being said about me that often turns into self-fulfilling prophecies. Why? Mood swings.

In a manic state, everything appears great to me (regardless of reality), I can do anything, I can do well at West Point or work 120 hours a week on Wall Street. In a depressed state, I am self-sabotaging, catty, gossiping, insecure and paranoid. I can only imagine what the roulette wheel of interacting with me over those years must have been like.

I had considered getting help at many times in my life. Each time I sat in front of a psychiatrist or psychologist the Stephen they got, depended on my mood. I would stop going once I felt like I was getting caught in my mixed stories and lies.

One of the reasons I lied was because I thought mania was my super power. It seemed like I was productive on a super human level when I was in a manic episode. I cycled so rapidly into these states that I began to feel like I could summon these cycles on my own (which I’m not even sure is possible). For instance, I could plan a trip to Las Vegas, and start to feel my mood improve and because of the relief I felt with that trip on the calendar, and then I could leverage that increase in mood to be productive.

“I didn’t want to give up my super power.”

The downside was that if anything interrupted me from that manic state, then I could lose control of my temper, or worse, want to kill myself suddenly. However, the positive benefits outweighed the negative in my mind so I really didn’t actually want to get help. I didn’t want to give up my super power.

August 2018

August of 2018 was when things all came to a head. Several incidents during the year had left me really struggling with my mental health issues. I found myself in Las Vegas late in August, trying to cope with a lot of my issues. On this trip I stayed at the Wynn Hotel but I booked an extra room at the Cosmopolitan solely because they had balconies. I knew I was at the end of my rope and I wanted an escape route. I expected not to survive this trip.

I lost a lot of money, I attempted suicide, and I hit rock bottom with all of my addictions. My father and wife came to Vegas to get me one morning and bring me home. After that I went to a therapist for the first time and told them the truth about everything I had done. I asked my wife to sit in on that session with me so that I wouldn’t lie to the therapist. I trusted myself that little.

After that session, the therapist recommended I attend an in-patient rehab facility in Arizona called, The Meadows. I spent the next 2 weeks really struggling with the idea before I agreed to do go to rehab.

Rehab

When I arrived at The Meadows in Wickenburg, AZ I was informed that every patient was required to attend Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous or another meeting in the evenings. The first night, I went to an AA meeting and at this point, I was still not convinced that I was an alcoholic.

“it hit me for the first time… I am an alcoholic”

There were about 30 people in the room that night and we all took turns sharing one by one as we went around the circle. After about 15 people had shared, it hit me for the first time. I’m a lot like these people. I’m an alcoholic. When it was my turn to share, I admitted this for the first time and broke down emotionally. The next 44 days were full of realizations like this.

On the second day I met with a psychiatrist. I later found out she knew I was bi-polar within about 5 minutes of meeting me. She said my speech, my erratic communication, the intensity of my stories, the experiences I’d had in manic states and the frequency of the mania gave it away immediately. She prescribed a medication for me called Lithium.

“For the first time in my life, I felt balanced”

After just a few days of taking Lithium I was able to tell a difference in how I felt. I felt more balanced. My peers told me that on my first night, I was very erratic and almost scary when I told my story of how I ended up there, but that all subsided when I started medicating. For the first time in my life, I felt balanced, and I felt accepted for who I am and I didn’t have to pretend to be what I thought people expected me to be.

Returning Home

When I left rehab, I was on cloud nine. I thought I was “cured” in a way. The funny thing about rehab is that the more screwed up you are when you arrive, the more pats on the back you get for being there.

“I felt as if the fun part of me had died”

It took me just a few days after returning home to realize that the real world was still full of difficulties. I still had all my problems, but none of my coping mechanisms. I also felt as if the “fun” part of me had died. The manic, partying, dice slinging good time Stephen had been buried. How would anyone think I’m fun or like me if I couldn’t bring a party to their lives, I thought?

For the next two months I was in a dark depression. I didn’t leave the house for weeks except to attend therapy where my therapist and I would sit there and stare at each other. He implored me to begin going to “12-step” meetings (AA, and others).

“I had spent years convincing myself that there was not a God… to reduce the shame and guilt I felt”

One of the biggest reasons I struggled to go to AA meetings after rehab was that I was battling with this idea that shows up in several of the 12 steps of the program, a Higher Power (or God as you understand Him). I had spent years convincing myself that what I was raised to believe about God was wrong. I had convinced myself that there was not a God. This allowed me to reduce the shame and guilt I felt as I continued to do bad thing after bad thing.

Higher Power

Right after I returned from rehab, I met with a minister from Prestonwood Baptist Church who was hired to form a recovery group in the church community. I told him my story and he seemed to be able to relate. Little did I know it, but he asked a guy named Bob, to reach out to me who had a very similar story to mine. So, one day this guy Bob asks me to meet him at Starbucks. It was on a therapy day for me, so I was already going to be out of the house, which was convenient.

We sat down and talked, and he told me his story. It sounded a lot like mine in many ways. He had found peace and recovery through his relationship with God and he invited me to a bible study on Wednesdays. I told him where I was with religion in general and he said to come to the bible study anyway because there were a bunch of guys in there who had ended up in prison or had addiction issues that had turned their lives around and they would be a good influence on me. So, I went.

This bible study is what I needed to turn my life around. I was headed to a dark place and this Bible study brought me back to what I had learned early in life about God. I started to open up to the messages I was hearing. This allowed me to believe I could attend AA and other meetings and progress through the 12 steps because I was able to believe in a Higher Power again. I started attending 12-step meetings and I got a sponsor. I started to work the steps. I started attending the Prestonwood Life Recovery Group and going to Sunday school with my wife.

Conclusion

Fast forward to today. I feel the best I’ve ever felt. My wife and I are the best we have ever been. My kids are the happiest and most well behaved they have ever been. What was the thing that got me here? I don’t know specifically.

I couldn’t have done it without Bob and the Bible study. I couldn’t have done it without my wife. I couldn’t have done it without my Dad. I couldn’t have done it without sponsors in various 12-step groups encouraging me.

I am far from “healed” and in fact I don’t think I ever will be. I found a solution for the mental health issue which was the primary driver of all my problems. By stabilizing my mood with medication, I can function like a relatively normal human being. Then by attending 12-step meetings, church and working the 12 steps, I’m able to continually take an internal moral inventory, address my deficiencies and work hard to be a better person daily.

“Why am I sharing this?”

Why am I sharing this? I want others who struggle with the problems I have, to get help, before it becomes life threatening. If telling my story helps one person, then it was worth it.

I leave you with these thoughts. There are a few burning questions that I have. I hope the answers to these questions, or at least, the discussion about them, leads others to get the help they need.

1) What would it have taken for me to listen to someone who told me I needed help sooner?

2) What are the warning signs that others can look for to identify those who need help with mental health sooner, rather than later?

3) How do we reduce the stigma associated with getting help for mental health issues?

4) How do we encourage people to regularly assess their mental health and seek help when needed?

I hope that anyone who needs help, or thinks they may need help, or thinks they may know someone who needs help would reach out to me on LinkedIN or Twitter.

Since writing this, I have had the chance to create What If Ventures, a venture capital fund focused on seed stage mental health and addiction related startups. With the blessing of my wife, and the help of an amazing advisory board, I hope we will be writing checks by January 2020.

1 Year of Sobriety

I’ve been getting emotional over the last few days. Every time I think of making it to 1 year of sobriety I get a little shaken. I’m not sure why I’ve been getting so emotional. I’ve asked some of those I trust, like my pastor, and my sponsors, and they tell me it’s a ‘huge deal.’ And today is the day!

My reaction to this feedback is to shake my head and say “I never thought this was even possible.” When I say that, I’m talking outwardly about going a year without drinking, using, gambling or acting out.

But, what I really mean, is that I never thought it possible to live a life where I’m not looking over my shoulder, missing milestones in my family’s life, being excluded, going to jail, ending up in rehab, and losing the ability to even take myself seriously.

“Taking myself seriously,” what does that mean? Many people suffer in silence from their mental illness or addiction. I did for many years. I would walk into a room and have this intense paranoia wondering if people could “see me.” I don’t mean seeing my skin, clothes and exterior, but that they could see who I really was. That paranoia was part of a bigger problem, called type 1 bipolar disorder. As my addictions took over my life, I was convinced that everyone knew, but they weren’t saying anything, but rather attacking me in ways I couldn’t see (socially, professionally, etc.).

I would take that paranoia and react to it causing harm to people who had done nothing wrong to me. Then I would feel bad about it, and need to cope with that feeling. This cycle owned me for nearly 20 years.

That cycle led me to a place where I knew I could no-longer cope by using substances and processes to boost dopamine to mask the pain. I got to a place where taking my own life sounded like a good idea. However, I was too much of a narcissist and too weak to actually jump off the top of the Cosmopolitan that night in Vegas to be honest. So I figured I would just drink and use until I overdosed.

Instead of going that route, and thanks to an intervention by my wife and father who were my only family left at that point, I got a chance to get help. Thanks to rehab, and then to my friend Bob, a Bible study group I found my way to, 12-step groups, and the Life Recovery ministry at my church, I was able to begin to figure out how to live without coping mechanisms. You can read more about my early recovery story here.

1 Year In, So What Now?

Every day of sobriety is new territory for me. I’ve never been here before. Day 365 is just like days 364 and 366 for me. Yes, I’m getting better at applying the principles I’ve learned, I’m deepening my faith, and I’m learning to help others, but don’t get me wrong, it’s still a grind sometimes.

However, there is freedom. I get to choose how I show up in life. I get to live my life proactively, and not in reaction to others. I have peace, and I have real relationships and friendships which, while some “gave” that to me in the past, I never accepted it. I have freedom from addiction and I have freedom in my faith as well. I’m starting to actually believe what the Bible says about me is true, which agrees with what they told me in rehab, that I am perfectly imperfect, and am valuable, despite my imperfections. There is nothing I can do or fail to do that would change that. This applies to all of us.

I’m really excited about making it this far, yes, but I’m most excited about getting sober at age 39 instead of 59 or instead of death. I can’t even express how happy I am to get to be physically and mentally present for my kids, my wife and our friends in recovery in the coming years. Or, at least I have the chance to do that, as long as I take it one day at a time. I’m also excited about being in a place where I can start to help others who are looking for recovery, it’s a blessing, to say the least and I can say I finally understand why step 12 of the 12-step program is what it is.

Still Suffering?

If you read this and you are struggling with addiction or mental illness, here are the things I’ve been doing that have worked for me. I can’t promise this will work do you, but it did for me:

1) God — I had been running from the idea of a higher power for decades. Ceasing that fight and believing that I’m not in control of everything made a huge difference and was very very hard for me to do.

2) Rehab — I went to rehab at The Meadows in Wickenburg, AZ. I learned what recovery even means. I got a crash course in psychoeducation. I learned about me, about my brain and why I certain things.

3) Weekly men’s bible study — I’m very blessed to have been invited to a bible study by a stranger, at the time. That weekly meeting and those guys had more of an impact on my survival than I think they will ever know.

4) AA — Some people love Alcoholics Anonymous and some hate it. I got a lot out of those rooms. Chapter 5 of the Big Book explains how the program works. Honestly, for me, it’s just nice to hear that chapter read out loud frequently. I often walk out of an AA meeting thinking that I wish the entire population could experience what it’s like to have the chance to be vulnerable with other humans in a threat-free environment.

5) SAA — Another 12 steps group but this one for sexual addiction. This is the best group I attend weekly. When a dozen men sit in a room and get vulnerable about this topic, it’s powerful stuff and you can literally feel the shame and stigma melt when you walk out of that room. It’s not as cool to tweet about or talk about as AA, but it’s SOLID help if you’re willing to try it.

6) Life Recovery Group — A faith-based recovery program for any of life’s sufferings. It meets weekly at my church in Plano, TX — Prestonwood Baptist Church.

7) Sponsors — I have an AA sponsor who is absolutely golden with 30+ years of sobriety. I have a sponsor in SAA who has really been amazing to me and helped me work the steps in detail. And last but not least the minister at my church’s Life Recovery ministry has really been the person who has taken my feeble understanding of God and equipped me with knowledge about me, who I am, and where I’m going.

8) Therapist — I saw a therapist once a week for the first few months after rehab and now I see him a couple times a month.

9) Trauma Therapy — Separate from regular therapist meetings, I believe strongly that trauma is the center of a lot of addiction. It’s really hard in my opinion to find someone who doesn’t have some sort of trauma in their past. Addressing it, bringing to the surface, and doing so while guided by a professional is literally life-changing.

10) Psychiatrist — I’m type 1 bipolar, so I needed meds. I take Lithium and it works great for me. I could never tell you what will work for you, but a psychiatrist can. There’s such stigma around mental illness and taking medication for it, but I can tell you, I am grateful that the meds work and I am happy to take it every day.

In closing, when I left rehab I was told about this “recovery community” that I could plug into. Little did I know how big, powerful and life-changing it would be.

If you’re looking for help, you won’t have to look far. I’m open to speak with anyone anytime who needs help finding help. Just about everyone I know in recovery is just as ready to help.

Medical Industrial Complex

“The healers have become the harmers, they’re just pharmaceutical farmers.

What we used to call dealers, We now call doctors.”

-Fat Mike (NOFX), Song Title: Oxy Moronic

Have you read the news recently?

• 3,271 Pill Bottles, a Town of 2,831: Court Filings Say Corporations Fed Opioid Epidemic

• DEA Database: Where the Pills Went

• Internal drug company emails show indifference to opioid epidemic

When I read these articles, it makes me think of all the friends, loved ones, classmates, veterans, etc. who have had their lives wrecked by opioid addiction. It makes me feel anger and pain.

In what world is it acceptable for the government to allow drug makers to make something addictive, and push the pills for profit to citizens while showing no concern for how the medications can be abused, acquired, stolen and distributed?

No wonder there is an opioid epidemic in the United States . 130 people die every day in the United States from opioid overdoses. The makers of the medication don’t care. The distributors don’t care. The doctors are paid to not care. The government allows it because the drug companies are paying for political campaigns via lobbyists. Who gets screwed over here? 130 innocent Americans every day. 

What can be done? 

The solution will not come from the corrupt government. The solution will not come from the Medical Industrial Complex. The solution will come from entrepreneurs who find ways to disrupt this dislocated, broken distribution system, and these toxic medications with technology, innovation and revised incentive alignment.

Entrepreneurs will smash the Medical Industrial Complex

I am very keen to find those entrepreneurs and invest in what they are building. This problem can and will be solved. It will not be done without pain. The members of the Medical Industrial Complex will not go down without a fight, but they will go down and we will fund the solutions.

3 Reasons Why I’m Not an Anonymous Alcoholic

Alcoholics Anonymous has been a big part of my life over the last 9 months. I attribute a lot of the success I’ve had so far in sobriety to AA, my sponsor, and the friends I’ve made in the program. I remember walking into that first meeting after rehab, scared, alone, embarrassed, and unsure of what my life would look like going forward.

I love AA. It’s the first place I take people who need help. Frankly, I think all humans should go to AA, regardless of a struggle with alcohol — there’s something mentally healthy about sitting in a room with people who openly admit their struggles in life, which flies in the face of popular culture where we present this fake image of who we are, living out “best life” on social media when we are really dying inside.

My local group is robust with multiple meetings a day, all week, and they are very well attended. There’s a lot of sobriety in the room at any of the meetings and there is never a shortage of people willing to be helpful.

There’s one particular thing I just don’t agree with, and it’s pressure to maintain anonymity at a personal level. I fully understand that many people don’t want to advertise that they go to AA, nor does AA want to ever appear to be self-serving or asking for money, or taking political stands here and there. Those are values that I agree with.

When I reached 6 months of sobriety, I posted a picture of my 6 month chip on social media. I was informed that this is a big “no-no” and frowned upon by the local group that I attend.

I can’t refute any of their reasons for frowning upon that action. They have been doing this much longer than me. I think that my other recovery experiences (therapy, rehab, etc) are consistent conceptually with the concepts around their argument for maintaining anonymity.

HOWEVER…

I’ve shared my story and my experiences on social media. For better or for worse. Just last week a long time, dear friend who I haven’t spoken to in about a year, called me and said, “Hey man, I need help with this drinking thing.”

He called me, because he knew what I had been through. He knew that I had found help and he wanted what I have. The AA book says we only keep it by giving it away.

As stigma around addiction and mental health disorders has decreased significantly in recent years, we see more and more people reaching out for help. It’s clear that the bravery of people that have come and gone before me showed when sharing their stories has had a massive impact on society’s willingness to talk, share, help and heal by reducing stigma.

I share my story publicly for 3 reasons:

1. I have experienced a reduction in shame when I share my story, and the more often I share it, the better for my mental health.

2. Others have read my story, and been encouraged to share theirs. This reduces stigma further because more and more people are seeing their friends share their struggles openly.

3. My story has encouraged people that I haven’t talked to in years, to pick up the phone and call me knowing they can get help.

My copy of the AA Big Book tells me to carry this message of recovery to other alcoholics. My way of doing that, is to hang a shingle out front that says “Hey, if you need help, you can get it over here or you can at least get some encouragement, so come on over.”

Let me be very clear. If I went to jail, lost my job, got flogged by the media, lost my friends, and my money but the story could save someone from going down that path, then my life and everything I’ve endured is more than worth it. The me, I knew, for the 37 years prior, couldn’t have even faked it to say those words, in that order. That change — is one of the many gifts I’ve received from AA, and I just can’t help but share that message.

My name is Stephen Hays, I’m an alcoholic and an addict, and I’m not afraid to tell everyone. You shouldn't be afraid either.

Stephen is a Dallas based venture capitalist focused on the mental health and addiction recovery industry. Feel free to reach out on LinkedIN, Twitter or via whatif.vc

If you are struggling with addiction, please reach out.

Previously, Stephen Hays was the founder and managing partner of Deep Space Ventures, a Dallas based venture capital firm.

Read more of Stephen’s personal journey here.

Why the name "what if?"

I've seen thousands of startup pitches. I've invested in dozens of startups. This makes me rather inexperienced versus many industry veterans. Yet, I've seen enough to notice a trend.

Just about every startup pitch begins with "why." Why this problem, why this solution, why this market, and so on. If the founder could just convince the investor with enough data, or enough anecdotes, as to why this matters, then surely the deal will get funded, it seems.

I can't speak for every investor out there, but for me, "why" is marginally interesting or relevant. What really matters is how the idea sparks my imagination. Does the idea make me start to wonder "what if....?"

The best pitches I've ever seen, end in a brainstorming session where the founder and investor say "what if" in a number of contexts, about numerous future iterations of the business plan.

It's in those enlightening, intellectually stimulating conversations about "what if" that I find myself wanting to partner with this founder, wanting to put time, emotional energy, money, and resources into this business. This is the moment that founders should be trying to get to in a pitch. And it often doesn't require a standard, dry, boring 12 page accelerator approved pitch.

Fast forward to today, as I think about the essence of my job, I realize it's a job about wondering, thinking, hoping, guessing, and trial & error. The best part of my job is getting to learn to think in ways I could have never imagined by thinking alongside some really talented people.

So naming this fund was easy. I had this name in my back pocket for several years. I always thought about when I'd get the chance to run a fund named "what if" and let that mantra permeate everything we do.

Thank you for reading - I can't wait to brainstorm with you!

Why Invest In Mental Health Startups?

Why create a venture fund to invest in mental health related startups?

Part of the answer to this question certainly includes some data on mental health, supply/demand observations in space, and stories of recent founders’ success underpinned by a reduction in stigma. However, the primary component of this thesis is driven by personal experience.

Personal Motivation

Stephen Hays is building What If Ventures — focused on Mental Health startups

After nearly 2 decades of struggling with addiction and type 1 bi-polar disorder, I finally sought help. Often people respond to that statement with congratulations for taking the step to get help. That response makes me feel self conscious because that realization could have been made many years prior, and without having to hurt so many people along the way. I’ve detailed that story a bit more in a personal blog post here.

While I live one day at a time in recovery, I still think long term about problem sets, just as I did in the past. I wonder what it would have taken for me to get help earlier. I wonder what my path would have looked like if I was aware of resources that existed to help me. I ponder one question more than any other though, which is “why didn’t I listen to anyone who told me I needed help?”

Was it because I didn’t think there was a problem? Was it my ego? Was it stigma? Fear? Pride? I don’t know. I can’t help but suspect that my lack of openness was a combination of many things that leads a large swath of the population to also not get help every year.

How Big is the Problem?

It doesn’t take a lot of work to convince anyone that Mental Health is a large problem for society. The numbers are staggering and have been well documented by the National Association for Mental Illness here. Here is a taste of the scale for those learning of this today:

• Approximately 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. (46.6 million) experiences mental illness in a given year.

• Approximately 1 in 25 adults in the U.S. (11.2 million) experiences a serious mental illness in a given year that substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities.

• Approximately 1 in 5 youth aged 13–18 (21.4%) experiences a severe mental disorder at some point during their life. For children aged 8–15, the estimate is 13%

• Among the 20.2 million adults in the U.S. who experienced a substance use disorder, 50.5% — 10.2 million adults — had a co-occurring mental illness.

• Serious mental illness costs America $193.2 billion in lost earnings per year.

Let’s take that last point and think about it for a moment. $193 billion in lost earnings each year due to serious mental illness. This leaves out mental illness impacts that are not considered “serious.” This statistic comes from the report linked here. This report was written in 2008. The specific data is from a 2002 estimate which is a revision of a number from an original 1992 study.

This is a huge number, and it is pre-social media (which many view as a primary driver for increased loneliness and unhappiness). How big is this number today? I can’t prove it, but I can’t imagine anyone arguing that it is smaller today.

Dislocated Market: Supply and Demand Imbalance

The demand for help with respect to mental health and addiction recovery is easy to prove. At the same time, the supply of “help” is minuscule at best. There are about 2.5 million people a year who are able to receive in-patient addiction treatment. This is just a fraction of the number who need help. At the same time there are just 28,000 psychiatrists in the U.S. and that number is declining every year.

Above in the stats I listed, we said 46.6 million people experience mental illness annually. This doesn’t include the people who go unreported for a number of reasons.

The supply of “help” in the form of psychiatrists, and treatment centers, can’t even scratch the surface or make a dent in the demand for help.

What Will the Solutions Look Like?

1) The solution is NOT building more treatment centers or minting new psychiatrists at universities. You could never create enough of either, fast enough.

2) There will be many solutions. One size does not fit all in recovery. Many of those solutions will be technology solutions that help us leverage the resources we already have, or help us learn to treat ourselves as well as learn to treat one another without expensive inpatient treatment that is only available to a few people.

How do Startups Fit in to the Landscape of Solutions?

Startups will play a big role in helping society tackle this mental health problem. The first signs of this are meditation apps, virtual therapy apps, and resources to help you find acute care help when you are in need. Businesses such as Calm, Headspace, Talkspace, and many others that have gained broad awareness and raised significant venture capital are pioneering the way in our industry.

I believe that there are many areas for innovation in the space. Let’s take the idea of measurement for example. For thousands of years humans have found ways to measure their physical health. We use scales, tape measures, blood pressure devices, heart rate monitors, and so on. When you consider how important mental health is, then why do we have so few tools to measure our mental wellness or mood? What are the road blocks to building these tools? There is a great deal of opportunity around this one idea, that will lead to platforms that transform mental wellness for generations to come.

That’s just one vertical within a huge market place. There are so many ideas and solutions that could improve availability of care, that could reduce the burden on insurance and government, that could help us become more focused on our wellness that seem like low hanging fruit when you dig in just a little bit.

What if….

So I was thinking about it. I wondered, what if we put money to work backing entrepreneurs who are just now coming forward due to reduction in stigma, to build these solutions? What if we were honest about our shortcomings, and in the process of seeking self improvement, identified solutions that could help many others? What if we ended up backing one startup, that transformed the statistics mentioned above?

The goal of What If Ventures is to invest in startups that are tackling these problems and have the greatest social impact on as many people as possible with the solutions our founders are building.

Stephen Hays is a Dallas based venture capitalist focused on the mental health and addiction recovery industry. Feel free to reach out on LinkedIN, Twitter or via whatif.vc

Previously, Stephen Hays founded and managed Deep Space Ventures, venture capital firm based in Dallas, TX.