One Last Hit | A Sobriety and Addiction Recovery Podcast

One Last Hit #16 With Attorney Mark Astor | The Florida Law That Saves the Lives of Addicts

Austin Rampt — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 15:25:59 -0400

Attorney Mark Astor started his law firm in February 2016 out of a public library, flat broke, and went 14 months before the phone rang. Today he runs a 15 person firm in South Florida that does one thing: it uses the Marchman Act and guardianship to help families get a loved one with a substance use or mental health disorder into court ordered treatment, and keep them there. Austin was Marchman acted himself in early 2014, so this one is personal.

Mark breaks down what the Marchman Act actually does (assessment and treatment for up to 90 days, with jail as the consequence for walking out), who can file, why it only works when families enforce it, and the story of a client who called an Uber from a treatment center in the sugar cane fields and fled to Mexico. Austin shares what relapse felt like after nine years sober ("like someone's holding my head underwater"), the two of them get into why addiction is a family disease, why some families are secretly afraid of what recovery will change, and the heartbreak of the families who walk away. They close on the lingering effects of a Marchman Act, including losing your gun rights, and where to get Mark's free book, Breaking the Cycle.

⏱️ CHAPTERS
0:00 Meet Attorney Mark Astor
1:18 Starting a Law Firm From the Library
3:51 Guardianship for Behavioral Health
6:23 The Marchman Act, on the Books Since 1993
7:53 Who Can File and What It Requires
9:55 South Florida's Wild West Years
13:59 She Fled to Mexico
16:29 Does Forced Treatment Work?
18:30 Austin's Relapse, Held Underwater
21:33 Addiction Is a Family Disease
25:06 Why Families Fear Recovery
28:08 Austin's Stepbrother
30:11 Gun Rights After a Marchman Act
33:13 Where to Find Mark

Find Mark: https://MentalHealthAddictionLawFirm.com

One Last Hit Podcast — real stories of addiction, survival, and coming back from the edge.

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One Last Hit #15 w/ Dave S | Dead on Arrival at 15, Clean 17 Years, Then He Blew It All Up

Austin Rampt — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 13:03:33 -0400

Dave S. was pronounced dead on arrival at 15. By 16 he was in a 1980 "attack therapy" rehab — diapers on heads, break-them-down tactics — and sitting in his first 12-step meeting next to his dad. He stayed clean for 17 years. Then came the wife, the kids, the business… and the idea that he was cured. One "social" smoke later, the disease that had been doing pushups for 17 years took the next 9 years of his life: benzos, opiates, a decade on subs, legal trouble, and losing his house, his marriage, and nearly himself.

Twelve and a half years ago, Dave walked into a meeting high, planning to borrow money — and his old friends trapped him into detox instead. Since then: 144 pounds lost, a bipolar diagnosis that finally explained the self-medicating, peace made with the mother he'd hated his whole life (he was with her the day she passed), a weekly prison meeting commitment in PA, and Sober Transport — driving people to treatment with his rescue dog Henry riding shotgun. Today he builds AI answering and text-message re-engagement tools that help treatment centers reach the people everyone else gave up on.

⏱️ CHAPTERS
0:00 Meet Dave S
6:26 Dead on Arrival at 15
10:43 Seventeen Years Clean, Then Relapse
15:59 Benzos, Subs, Rock Bottom
22:55 Sober Transport and Henry
28:37 Bipolar and Self-Medicating
31:51 Weekly Prison Meeting Service
37:25 AI for Treatment Center Admissions

One Last Hit Podcast — real stories of addiction, survival, and coming back from the edge.

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One Last Hit #14 w/ Barb Nangle | Codependence, Food Addiction and Boundaries

Austin Rampt — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 16:33:59 -0400

Barb Nangle spent 37 years in therapy and never once heard the word that explained her whole life: codependence. She'd been numbing since she was a baby — thumb, cigarettes at thirteen, weed at fourteen, alcohol at sixteen — and when she "just stopped" the substances, food took over. Her bottom came in a Dunkin' Donuts parking lot: buying six donuts so the cashier wouldn't know they were all for her, crying while she ate them, then hiding the box in her own garbage — in a house where she lived alone. On April 20, 2016 she woke up feeling electrocuted by sugar, texted a friend "just for today, I'm not having sugar" — and hasn't touched it since.

Now a boundaries coach, speaker and host of Fragmented to Whole (top 1% of podcasts worldwide), Barb tells Austin how a manipulative houseguest sent her to Google at fifty-two, how ACA's "what happened to me" version of step four unlocked decades of intergenerational trauma, and how she shed over a hundred pounds by treating hunger as an emotion. They dig into boundaries as the antidote to codependence, internal safety — not abandoning yourself when things get uncomfortable — caring more what you think of you than what others do, and why she's "full awesome: awesome AND flawed." This is the One Last Hit Podcast.

One Last Hit #13 w/ Colleen C | Binge Drinking, Her Husband's Suicide and One Drunk Drive Home Scared Her Into Sobriety

Austin Rampt — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 14:54:55 -0400

Colleen Clifford spent 36 years as a commercial fisherwoman on the Bering Sea — and more than four decades hiding a story she swore she'd never tell. At nineteen, a single shaming moment convinced her she was unlovable, and binge drinking became the way she reinforced it: near-death nights she now calls a self-imposed death sentence. Fourteen years ago she lost her husband Scott to alcohol-related suicide. Her own turning point came five years ago on one last drunk drive home — a double yellow line, and a desperate prayer: "God, get me home and I swear I'll quit." She kept the promise.

Now in her sixties and alcohol-free, Colleen is honoring a second promise — the one she made to Scott to bring something good out of his death. She just published her book, Life Beyond the Binge, with proceeds going to Mothers Against Drunk Driving. She and Austin dig into why binge drinking hides so easily behind "partying," shame as the story beneath the behavior, signs from the other side, and finally embracing the nineteen-year-old she spent a lifetime running from. This is the One Last Hit Podcast.

One Last Hit Ep. 12 w/ Dawn M | Meth, 8 Years Homeless and a Desperate Prayer Turned Her Into a Sober Author

Austin Rampt — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 10:57:08 -0400

Dawn Mannion started drinking with her parents at 11 years old and was a full-blown alcoholic by 19. Cocaine came next, then meth — and what followed was over eight years living homeless in the woods around Jacksonville, Florida: sleeping under cameras for safety, building a camp with her boyfriend Tony off a highway on-ramp, surviving hurricanes, arrests, and being robbed of everything she owned. In this episode she and Austin trace the slow, almost invisible slide from a straight-A kid desperate to be loved into full addiction — and the desperate prayer, three days before her camp was raided, that she now believes was the turning point God used to get her sober.

Dawn is nearly a year sober and just published her book, Love Is Greater Than Addiction, which she wrote so other addicts and people in jail cells could hear a real success story instead of hearsay. This is the One Last Hit Podcast.

One Last Hit Ep. 11 | The Real Root of Addiction: Healing Trauma w/ Barb Varcl-Smith

Austin Rampt — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 20:14:11 -0400

On this episode of One Last Hit, Austin sits down with Barb Varcl-Smith, a UK-based trauma and PTSD recovery specialist and creator of the Ascendance Method. Barb's own path started with a childhood marked by her mother's hospitalization, chronic fatigue syndrome that left her bedridden at 17, and losing classmates to addiction — experiences that pushed her to understand why people turn to drugs and alcohol in the first place.

Barb breaks down addiction as a trauma response (not a moral failing), explains the four trauma responses (fight, flight, freeze, fawn), why 12-step recovery often stops short of the root cause, and how subconscious tools like hypnotherapy, body coding, and quantum healing can release stored trauma that talk therapy can't reach. She also shares her reframe on victimhood ("the best revenge is to live your life fully") and why even high-achievers secretly numb out through workaholism and hidden drinking.

One Last Hit Podcast — real stories of addiction, survival, and coming back from the edge.

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One Last Hit Episode 10 | The Anti-12 Step Movement | Moving Through Hard Things In Sobriety | Old Ideas

Austin Rampt — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:00:00 -0400

Hunter S. is back — and this time he's Austin's sponsor. They open with the anti-12-step movement that's taken over recovery media: the podcasters, the guests, the hour-long attacks on AA. Austin and Hunter aren't interested in firing back. Instead, they go somewhere more useful — a word-for-word breakdown of Step 2. Not the platitude version. Hunter's read: it's not a reprogramming, it's an unbelief — a deprogramming of the old ideas that have always run your life. And it's not a one-time event. At ten years sober, Hunter hit a bottom he didn't hit in rehab. That's how Step 2 works if you let it.

But the most raw moment is Austin's. That morning, before the recording, one of his kids got a bloody nose — a milk carton, a moment of trying to control a chaotic morning, and an accident he didn't even see happen. He called Hunter from the car. And now they're unpacking it live: selfish, self-seeking, dishonest, afraid — the four inventory columns. What I did wrong is Step 4. How it affected them is Step 8. Austin almost didn't publish this one. He did anyway, because that's the whole thing: brothers in our defects, not our virtues.

This is the One Last Hit Podcast.

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One Last Hit #9 w/ Marc B. | From Chicago's Murder City to 10 Years Sober

Austin Rampt — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 16:00:00 -0400

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Marc B. was born on the wild west side of Chicago — Murder City, the ghetto, a Puerto Rican neighborhood bordering an African American one — the youngest of four kids whose alcoholic father died of cirrhosis at 46. His stepfather, a Vietnam vet with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, was a monster behind closed doors. He nearly beat Marc to death multiple times before the age of six. Marc grew up across 12 schools and 4 high schools, always the new kid, always trying to fit in, carrying a head full of trauma he wouldn't understand for decades.

What followed was 17 treatment centers, years of homelessness on the streets of Chicago, crack cocaine, heroin, an engagement ring sold for dope money, a fiancée abandoned with their dog, two violent felonies, and a life lived in abandoned buildings, alleys, and project stairwells — surviving on hundreds of dollars a day running cons on strangers. He was a professional, a decorated executive, a man who could build a team and close a deal — and he was sleeping under cardboard and shooting dope the same week.

The turning point came in a jail cell, facing 6 to 8 years in prison, when a probation officer decided to believe him. Marc walked out the next morning instead of into a penitentiary. He hasn't looked back since May 3, 2011.

Today Marc is a Chief Operating Officer, 15+ years sober, married to the woman who never gave up on him, and the father of a little girl who wins Empathy Awards at her Christian school. He lives in Orlando. He still carries the weight of complex PTSD. And he'll tell you plainly: it's all about willingness — and his arrived right on time.

This is the One Last Hit Podcast.

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One Last Hit Episode #8 With Austin & Matt | The Non Negotiables of 12-Step Recovery

Austin — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 11:00:00 -0400

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Episode 8 is a different kind of episode. Matt is back, not as a guest, but as a co-host. We dive headfirst into what it actually takes to stay sober. Inspired by a deep-cut episode of "Three Legacies" featuring Don L., Austin and Matt unpack the practices that hold their lives together: morning prayer and meditation, working with the newcomer, and nightly inventory. They talk about the neuroscience behind why meditation actually works (the prefrontal cortex, Victor Frankl, and the gap between stimulus and response), the difference between sobriety-as-checklist versus sobriety-as-spiritual-practice, and the very real cost of letting the non-negotiables slide. Matt opens up about competing in strongman, his bipolar diagnosis, and how medication finally allowed him to hear the message. Austin gets real about five kids, a busy business, and the mornings where prayer gets swallowed by the workday before it ever starts. They also get into medication-assisted treatment, the danger of self-righteous sobriety groups, and why the nightly inventory is always the first thing to go — right before a relapse.

This is the kind of conversation you have after a meeting in the parking lot when nobody wants to go home yet. Raw, funny, and full of hard-earned wisdom. This is the One Last Hit Podcast.

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One Last Hit #7 w/ Matt H | Alcohol, Cocaine and Five Years as a Dry Drunk Before He Truly Surrendered

Austin — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 16:00:00 -0400

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Matt H. grew up the son of a cowboy carpenter and an Avon saleswoman, born in 1980s Colorado and raised on ten acres of cow field in the tiny town of Micanopy, Florida. His mom passed away when he was six; his dad got sober a few years later and has stayed dry for 23+ years. Matt took his first drink — a shot of 151 — at 13, swore it off, and stayed dry through high school as a devout Southern Baptist athlete. Then at 20 he picked up in college, and after his high school sweetheart cheated on him and filmed it, he drank to numb the pain, dropped out of the University of Florida, and spent seven years working a downtown nightclub. At 25, cocaine flipped a Jekyll-and-Hyde switch — a thousand dollars of blow a week turned an outgoing, people-loving artist into a hermit crying alone in a dark room. He built theme parks across the country and the Bahamas, drank away the woman he thought he'd marry, and spent five years cycling in and out of the rooms — "dry," but never truly sober.

One of the heaviest moments of his life: watching a 23-year-old coworker — a young father of two, drunk on the job — fall 40 feet through a roof and die in front of him, a guilt and shame he carried for years. Today Matt is sober (date 2/16/2026), competes in Strongman, wakes before dawn to sit with God, and has finally found the peace he chased in a bottle and a bag for decades. His message to anyone still out there: keep coming back, keep showing up, until the miracle happens — because it will. This is the One Last Hit Podcast.

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One Last Hit #6 w/ Nicole G | Heroin, Meth Addiction and Losing Everything Propelled Her Into Sobriety

Austin — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 14:00:00 -0400

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Nicole G. grew up in Phoenix, Arizona , born to an alcoholic father and a drug-addicted mother who had no business raising a child. The only stability she ever knew came from her grandparents, and when her grandfather died, the last anchor she had slipped away. What followed was a decade-long spiral that touched almost every stop on the map: drinking, opiates, heroin, dealing, a home invasion, a high-speed police chase through residential Phoenix, a night in jail in a Chipotle uniform, and a relapse the same day she left her first rehab. She didn't have a dramatic rock-bottom moment , she had a hundred of them. The aunt who busted down her bedroom door. The glass in her hair from a crash she barely remembers. The moment she sat high in an AA meeting telling herself she was fine.

Today, Nicole is 12 years sober. She's married, a stepparent, and one of Haley's closest friends. Her story isn't about one breaking point — it's about how long a person can survive on empty before they finally let someone help them fill it back up. This is the One Last Hit Podcast.

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One Last Hit #5 w/ Jordan M | Multiple relapses, Hearing Loss and Finding A New Experience

Austin — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 15:00:00 -0400

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In Episode 5, Austin sits down with Jordan M. — a close friend in recovery who grew up a block from the ocean in Daytona Beach and took his first drink at 13. What followed was decades of cycles: treatment at 18, three years sober, a son, a marriage, a relapse, seven more years sober, a real estate career — and then it all came apart again. COVID hit, his father died, and on November 4, 2021 he woke up deaf in one ear. He sold his house, used chemicals to numb out, and admits there was a period where he was ready to speed things up and see what the bitter end actually looked like.

He made it back. Today Jordan is sober, has a cochlear implant, and is doing the work differently than ever before — men's meetings, a sponsor who shares the same hearing loss, iron sharpening iron. His message to anyone who says sobriety "didn't work" for them? Did you really try twelve out of twelve? If you did, he's got a list — and he'll go with you to try every single one.

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One Last Hit Podcast #4 w/ Shelby M. | My Dad Gave Me My First Hit at 12

Austin — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 13:00:00 -0400

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Shelby M. grew up watching his father , his hero, wrestle with addiction in Casselberry, Florida. At eleven years old, Shelby ran to the house, grabbed a knife, and cut his father down from a noose in the shed behind their home. A year later, his father sat with him in a truck and gave him his first hit of freebase cocaine.

That moment lit a fire that would burn for decades.

What followed was years of juvenile delinquency, crack, opioids, and a juvenile record he lost count of , but also faith, recovery, and a miraculous near-decade of sobriety. Shelby built a thriving tree business from scratch, married a woman in recovery, had four kids, became a circuit speaker and sponsor in AA, and was flying families out to tell their story in Utah and Colorado. Then his father died. And Shelby drifted slowly, silently, until Kratom opened a door that led back to cocaine, fentanyl, and meth. Eight detoxes. Four rehabs. More white chips than he can count. And still getting back up.

In this episode, Shelby sits down with Austin to tell the whole story , from the shed in Castleberry to 15 days sober, and what it actually looks like to fall down hard when you know exactly where the door back in is.

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One Last Hit Podcast #3 With Ernie C. | From Drugs and Gangs to Freedom

Austin — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 13:00:00 -0400

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Ernie C didn't just flirt with the wrong crowd — he was in it. Gangs, cocaine, a lifestyle built on survival and loyalty to the streets. By the time things fell apart, he’d lost years he couldn’t get back and come closer to losing everything than most people ever want to admit.

In this episode, Ernie sits down with Austin to tell the whole story — what pulled him in, what kept him there, and the moment he decided freedom was worth fighting for. No sugarcoating. No polished recovery speech. Just the real thing.

If you’ve ever loved someone caught up in that world — or if you’ve lived it yourself - this one’s for you.

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Austin’s memoir One Last Hit is available now — onelasthitbook.com

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One Last Hit Podcast Episode #2 with Hunter S. | Cocaine. Booze. Molly. & Miracles.

Austin — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 11:00:00 -0400

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What does it look like to live inside a full-blown addiction spiral — cocaine, alcohol, and ecstasy — and somehow walk out the other side?

Hunter S. sits down with Austin Rampt for one of the most raw, honest, and redemption-filled conversations in One Last Hit Podcast history. From putting cocaine in his contact lens just to feel something, to a wire that nearly hit his father's neck, to a courtroom miracle nobody saw coming — Hunter's story will stay with you long after this episode ends.

This is addiction without a filter. And this is what recovery actually looks like.

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One Last Hit Podcast Episode #1 with Dallas R.

Austin Rampt — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 14:00:00 -0400

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Dallas R. grew up in Southern California surrounded by drugs, crime, and chaos. What started as curiosity turned into a full-blown meth addiction that consumed everything. To fund the habit, he turned to robberies. Eventually, the law caught up with him, and he did the time. But prison was not the end of the story. It was the beginning of one.

In this episode of One Last Hit, Austin Rampt sits down with Dallas R. for a raw, unfiltered conversation about meth addiction, the crimes that followed, what it was really like inside, and what it took to finally walk away from that life and build something worth living for. This one does not hold back.

Austin's memoir, One Last Hit: The Remarkable True Story of an Addict's Journey to Find Himself, chronicles his Tampa upbringing, a decade-long battle with addiction, eight stints in rehab, and his journey to Mexico where he found himself surrounded by members of the Sinaloa Cartel. What followed was a near-death experience that became the turning point he needed to reclaim his life.

If you have ever felt like you were too far gone to come back, this episode is proof that you are not.

Whether you are in recovery, love someone who is, or just need a reminder that people can change, this one is for you.

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Website: https://www.onelasthitbook.com
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