God Money, and the Edge- Dean Patrick on Ambition, Addiction, and Awakening

Episode Summary

What happens when the identity you built your life around falls apart overnight? In this raw interview, Dean Patrick—Stanford dropout, former crypto fund manager, and now author of God Money: Lost and Found in the Crypto Wilderness—traces the arc from early “prodigy” ambition to addiction, collapse, and a near-suicide on a 30th-floor balcony in Manhattan. Family pulled him into recovery in 2018. The years that followed weren’t linear: relapses, resets, and finally a shift from status to substance—trading a high-profile accelerator role for a humble job that protects the two practices that rebuilt him: writing and Zen meditation.

Dean shares how week-long silent retreats and six months living at a Zen monastery gave him a new center, why success without values is a dead-end, and how “boring, systematic” routines actually fuel creative work. If you’ve ever asked, Is this really the life I want?—this conversation is your permission slip to choose differently, start smaller, and build a life that can actually hold you.

Show Notes & Chapters

• [00:00] Opening: identity, ambition, and the prodigy trap

• [03:00] Homeschooled faith → atheism → “my new god became money”

• [05:30] Stanford insecurity, stimulants for confidence, and the crypto fund

• [07:30] Tripling the fund… then the crash, panic attacks, and the balcony

• [10:00] The phone call that pulled him back; rehab and the non-linear climb

• [12:30] Two steps forward, almost two back: relapse, lessons, and four years sober

• [13:30] Choosing a smaller life to save the bigger dream (service job → space to write)

• [15:00] COVID as a reset; five years to write God Money

• [18:30] Thoreau experiments: raw land, a DIY cabin, and what didn’t work

• [19:30] Zen practice begins: Rochester Zen Center, retreats, and rigor

• [21:00] Zazen: posture, pain, and why stillness hurts before it heals

• [26:00] The field beyond thought: “no problems” and taking the edge off life

• [28:30] Stoicism parallels; spiritual materialism and the ego in robes

• [33:00] Monastery life: 4:00 a.m. bells, choreographed breakfasts, work as practice

• [35:00] Designing a “boring, systematic” routine to protect creativity

• [41:30] Publishing God Money, reader response, and the next (auto)fiction project

• [43:00] Closing: being as an end in itself

Resources

• Book: God Money: Lost and Found in the Crypto Wilderness — Dean Patrick

• Audiobook: narrated by the author

• Website: http://DeanPatrickAuthor.com

• Community/Practice: Rochester Zen Center (mentioned)