Friedrichs beats alcoholism, becomes YouTube sensation, author, life coach

DINWIDDIE — Back in 2013, Dinwiddie County resident Ralf Friedrichs finally took his life back from decades of alcoholism and created a new life dedicated to helping others.

The alcoholism

Born and raised in Germany until he was 11, Friedrichs was brought up in an environment where alcohol was the norm. He recalls his grandmother who took care of him worked at a department store where her job was to hand out tester shots of liquor.

“She had to babysit me under the table, and she’d hand me the shots, at the age of one, two, three, and the reason she was doing that was to get me to fall asleep,” Friedrichs said. “There was no harm intended, I don’t think, because in Germany, alcohol is totally different than here. It’s like the norm over there.

“But I think that’s where it kicked in, the alcoholism, besides genetics,” he added.

Friedrichs considers himself to always have been an alcoholic, but as he got older, it only got worse. He constantly binge drank to forget all of the pain, depression, and unforgiveness that resulted from his upbringing. He never had energy or an appetite, and he’d spend days with his head in the toilet, often times unable to make it to work.

Then, one day in 2013, Friedrichs hit his absolute rock bottom.

Working in Manhattan at the time, he came home inebriated off of 10 shots of vodka, and his wife wouldn’t let him in the house.

“She said the dogs are sleeping out there. Guess where I ended up? You hear jokes about being in the dog house, I literally was there,” Ralf said. “Not just an hour or two, for a day and a half. And you know what, like an epiphany from God - God was like you’re getting ready to lose everything, including your life. You’re going to lose your wife, you’re going to lose your daughters … He didn’t say it in words, but I felt [it].”

Friedrichs knew he was close to death and that he needed to make a decision.

“I knew I was going to die, because I was very close to it. I could feel it. I knew I was in bad shape,” he said. “So I was sitting there weighing my options, and there was no competition anymore. At that point it’s almost like dropping to your knees and saying God, take me. And that was the turning point.”

In that moment, without ever having to attend rehab, Friedrichs quit drinking.

He said, “It was because I said to myself, I can not go any further. And it sounds strange - a lot of people won’t believe when I tell them that - but I was able to do it. I was able to do it.”

The YouTube show

At one point back in 2013, Friedrichs decided to attend a few Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) sessions to assist him in his recovery process, but he quickly realized he wouldn’t be able to successfully recover in the AA format.

“I went to AA three times. You have a desk, and you have all these people sitting there for an hour-and-a-half, and people are like ‘hi, my name is Ralf, I’m an alcoholic,’ and everybody just talks about what they did for the day, and then they go home and that’s the end of that. That’s the rehab,” Friedrichs said.

“I said to myself this isn’t going to work for someone who’s drinking heavily. I need to come up with something 24/7 that’s going to keep me in check,” he added. “I said to myself, I’ve got to come up with some sort of method to help me, and what better method to help yourself than to have people who rely on you? And what better way to get people to rely on you is if you expose yourself?”

That’s when Friedrichs decided to create a blog where he would write transparently about his life experiences and his struggles with alcohol addiction. He found that being candid about everything he had been through was therapeutic for him.

“I believe transparency gives you transformity. One leads into the other,” he said.

Friedrichs’ blog was getting a lot of attention, as emails piled in complimenting his work and thanking him for his vulnerability. It wasn’t long before his readers were asking him if he would go on camera.

“I was getting all these emails from people saying ‘this is great stuff you’re talking about your life experience,’” he said. “I got all these emails, [and] somebody said to me ‘listen, can you just get behind a camera for us one time?’”

That’s when Friedrichs created a YouTube channel, which he named the “Take Your Life Back Today Show With Ralf Friedrichs.” He began filming and uploading at least one video everyday, sometimes two or three. He notes the show became his very own personal rehab.

“That show is my rehab. I have to study each and everyday to do these shows. If I talk about depression, I have to get that knowledge somewhere to talk about that. So I go to Mayo Clinic, and I study their material, and then I, like a reporter, absorb it like a sponge and expose it to my audience. So now this is my rehab,” he said.

“I’m learning all of these things about alcohol, drugs, and depression. That keeps me on the up and up, something AA couldn’t do for me,” he added. “I know for a fact if I should have one ounce of liquor, I would let down 900 some thousand people. And what stronger will do you have?”

Then and today, Friedrichs says he created the YouTube show to provide rehab for himself, as researching, compiling the information, and then filming and uploading the videos consumed his time and allowed him to open up and talk about his problems. However, he was unaware of the drastic impact his videos would have on others from all over the world who are going through similar situations.

“I’m in 45 rehab centers in the United States that play it, I’m in homeless shelters, some in New York,” he said. “My biggest audience is Alaska, probably because of all the years I worked in the villages in the arctic circle, and Asia.”

His videos now have over 950,000 different views in different areas.

“It’s to a point where if I miss one video in one day, people think maybe he fell off the wagon, because if you don’t hear from Ralf in 24 hours you think oh my gosh what’s going on?” he said. “And I do need a break from things too every once in a while.”

Friedrichs’ show now has about 2,600 videos, and he continues to post one everyday he’s able.

The show’s popularity has even landed Friedrichs on several impressive, widely-viewed talk shows including six appearances on Time Warner and five different shows in Manhattan. He was also interviewed on “A Name to Know,” which skyrocketed his YouTube audience and bookings for speeches.

Being a counselor and speaker

Friedrichs always knew he had a gift for helping other people, and his time spent in the Marine Corps in the '80s really verified that talent.

“Back in 1981, I went into the Marine Corps, and I became a lay reader in boot camp. A lay reader is someone in between the recruits and the chaplain. Almost like a liaison or a mediator,” he said. “And it was back then that people already knew that I was intended to help people; it was in my personality.

“So it started there, in the Marine Corps I started seeing that I was meant to help people,” he added. “I let it go, I let it go, I became an optician, and that’s what I did by trade.”

A few decades later, Friedrichs now works as a full-time optician, a part-time Dinwiddie County worker, and a job that allows him to utilize his gift for helping others: a life coach/certified counselor.

Friedrichs was already making his inspiring videos when Dr. Lewis Gonzalez with an organization called Starting Point - which trains people to become counselors - emailed Friedrichs after seeing several of his YouTube videos. He wanted Friedrichs to consider acquiring his addiction recovery counselor certification through Starting Point.

“He emails me to call him, so I call him and he goes ‘you should really go through my schooling here and become an addiction recovery coach. You have a gift, you know how to communicate to people,’” Friedrichs said. “I said ‘well how much is it?’ Because I didn’t have money for that at the time.”

Friedrichs was told the schooling would be $9,000. “I said ‘sorry I can’t do it, I have grandkids, I have daughters in college, two of my daughters just finished RN school,’” he said. “And he goes ‘Listen. I saw how many hits you get here and there on your Youtube channel, how about we do this: if you run commercials on every show you do for six months, I’ll put you through this school personally myself, from your house [online].’ And we agreed to that.”

Friedrichs ended up running the Starting Point ad for over a year just because he was so grateful. Now with the title of Certified Addiction Recovery Counselor, he is qualified to help people through hotline calls which redirect to his cell phone, FaceTime calls, and meet-ups in person.

“I have a hotline number, so I’ll get phone calls at two or three in the morning; people that call me are in the position that I was in in the dog house, literally,” Friedrichs said. “They are calling me because someone is telling them you need to get help.

“A couple of weeks ago I had somebody call me at two in the morning with a gun to their head. I kept that person on the phone long enough, with their consent, to notify authorities to come over there and help him,” he added. “I think he was just seeking somebody to talk to, and he went to the hospital, and I spoke to him a couple of days later and he’s doing okay, he’s got some issues with alcohol and stuff, but he’s checked himself into rehab. But I kept him alive through that one phone call.”

Despite the sacrifices he makes with sleep, time, and several other things, Friedrichs chooses not to collect money as a counselor.

“I don’t make any money; I do everything pro-bono,” he said. “The life coaching and addiction recovery coaching, when somebody calls me or if I meet somebody somewhere or if they facetime, I’m allowed to, by law, charge somebody $170 an hour because I’m certified.

“I don’t do it, because then it’s a job,” he added. “I want to help people because I want to help people from my heart.”

As a Life Coach, Friedrichs also gives motivational speeches to groups of people who vary in age, background, and prestige. He’s spoken to everyone from groups of youth to those in attendance at a governor’s ball.

His speech topics vary depending on his audience. He speaks to the youth in programs such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) about everything from alcohol and drugs to peer pressure and cyber-bullying. He speaks to adults about alcoholism, depression, hope, forgiveness, and the need for society to provide nonviolent alcoholics and drug users with the tools they need to get better.

The book

As Friedrichs’ videos, speeches, and big-name interviews spread, people became more and more intrigued by the things Friedrich has been through in life and his willingness to openly share it all. His family members, friends, colleagues, and YouTube viewers began urging him to turn his wild life into a book.

“People constantly were saying to me, ‘why don’t you write a book, you’ve got some stories to tell,’” he said. “And I’m like I’m not a book writer.”

Nonetheless, Friedrichs followed everyone’s request and began writing his very first book - an autobiography titled “Bottoms Up - Surrendering to God, Not to Booze!” about two years ago.

The book, which Friedrichs’ says is designed to “tell it like it is,” shares all of the important, good and bad life-altering moments that made Friedrichs who he is today. He candidly tells readers about his unsolid family dynamic during his upbringing, about all of the years he spent binge drinking, about the time he was shot in the chest in the military, about his mother being killed by a drunk driver in New York City, about the self esteem issues that resulted from the relationship he has with his father, about the power of forgiveness, and much, much more.

“Everything in there is me,” Friedrichs said. “A lot of people look at the cover of my book and they’re like oh, another addiction book. But it’s not. It’s more. If you read the book, it’s more than just addiction in there. It’s about struggling in life. Because anytime you face a struggle in life, I believe God is putting that there to make you stronger.

“I’m saying how can I not humbly be able to sit and tell someone you have a chance in life? Because if I can go through all of that, and I’m sitting here with a smile on my face, how can you tell me you have financial problems? How can you tell me you have boyfriend problems? You can get over that, but it all is here,” he said, pointing to his heart. “People seem to think that overcoming has to be somebody else bailing you out, but you are your biggest asset in life. You are your strength of your own vessel, and if you have God in your life, that makes it even easier.”

Friedrichs’ book is currently selling on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Books A Million, all it’s selling all over the world. Amazon also published a kindle version of the book.

“It’s been a pretty good hit so far. I’ve seen it in Israel, Russia, and China,” he said.

Once “Bottoms Up - Surrendering to God, Not to Booze!” was published, people began asking him to write more books.

“I agreed to write the book, and then people were like ‘oh my gosh this book is real good, can you do two more books?’ I was like are you kidding me I just got this one,” he said with a laugh. “So I agreed to the second one but what they’re really pushing me to do is write a kids book, for the youth, for anti-drugs.”

Friedrichs is currently working on his second book - which will be titled “Struggles Became My Strength”

“The next book is going to be about my struggles, but it’s going to be incorporating a lot of people’s struggles in life,” he said. “I’m going to be talking about AA and how people in AA struggle, I’m going to talk about people struggling with peer pressure, and basically it’s just to give that encouragement no matter what you go through in life.

“And it’s definitely going to be God in that one,” he added.” I don’t care what people say, without God I couldn’t even write a book, without God I couldn’t do these shows everyday, which take a tremendous amount of time to do.”

Friedrichs is still in the process of holding book signing events where he can meet and greet his readers. The most recent book signing was held at the Rainbow Christian Bookstore in Colonial Heights - an event he says went very well.

“One lady who came into the book signing had been sober three days. She was crying and saw the advertisement in The Progress-Index,” he said. “She came in to see me, and she goes, ‘you don’t understand; I need a person like you in my life.’ I said forget the hotline number, here’s my cell phone number. Anytime of the day, call me. If you feel like you need to drink, call me. If you feel depressed call me.”

“She’s called me twice now since Saturday,” he added. “I’m not a miracle worker. I’m a bridge between a bad today and a better tomorrow. I’m a shoulder, ears and knowledge.”

Friedrichs has several upcoming book signing events scheduled:

Community Block Party at 410 S. Harris Street, Blackstone, October 6, 12 - 5 p.m.Walmart on Southpark Boulevard in Colonial Heights, October 7, 3 - 7 p.m.Walmart on S. Crater Road in Petersburg, October 7, 9 a.m. - 1 p.m.Walmart on Peery Drive in Farmville, October 14, 9 a.m. - 1 p.m.Barnes and Noble on West Broad Street in Richmond, November 15, 6 - 9 p.m.Barnes and Noble on Midlothian Turnpike in Richmond, November 17, 2 - 6 p.m.

To access Friedrich's videos, visit his YouTube Channel: Take Your Life Back Today Show with Ralf Friedrichs. His hotline number is 1-844-405-HELP.

Kelsey Reichenberg may be reached at kreichenberg@progress-index.com or 804-722-5109.