Utah Life Coach uses past addiction as motivation to help others

SALT LAKE CITY — Overcoming addiction can still bring a lot of pain and anguish while on the road to recovery but one Life Coach in Utah is hoping to change that.

Utah native, Rob Eastman, the owner of Eastman Fitness is using his past experiences with addiction as a motivational tool to help others with their own struggles of substance abuse.

Eastman, the son of former state senator Dan Eastman, has been sober for the past ten years but sobriety did not come easy for him. He constantly struggled with substance abuse dating back to his teenage years. Looking back, Eastman attributes his addictive tendencies to childhood traumas that he wasn’t able to cope with until decades later with the help of rehab and therapy.

Eastman abused cocaine, heroin, and various other drugs throughout his years of abuse — until it almost cost him his life.

Eastman describes his rock bottom

He realized he needed to go to rehab but to avoid the dangers of detoxing, he just needed to “shoot up” one more time. So he and a co-worker went to a concrete shop that Eastman owned at the time.

“That’s all I remember,” Eastman described. “The [worker] said I came out and was sweating like crazy. I had a convulsion and I threw myself back and my head hit the concrete.”

Upon hitting the ground, he began to bleed out of his nose and ears due to the impact. Then his heart stopped beating. His co-worker saw what happened and immediately left.

Feeling guilty, the co-worker anonymously called the police and told them where Eastman fell.

Upon arrival, paramedics worked on him for twenty-five minutes to resuscitate Eastman.

He had suffered a brain hemorrhage and would spend the next seven days at the University of Utah Hospital in a coma.

The societal shame in talking about addiction

Eastman was able to recover from his coma and was able to finally beat his addiction but it almost cost him everything.

“Unfortunately, it took me losing my wife, my house, and my dad passing for me to get out of my own way,” Eastman said.

“When I got sober … families didn’t want to talk about it,” Eastman explained. “I spent a lot of time hiding at my mom’s house and sister’s house because I was fearful of the real world.”

He believes that his status in the community helped others realize that they could speak out about their own addictions. 

“People came to me for help due to the fact that my dad was a state senator,” he said. “If I can come out in the open and be an addict, then maybe it was okay.”

Eastman’s work as a Life Coach

Eastman has now begun to focus his efforts on helping others as a Life Coach and Fitness Instructor. His primary tool in helping others — harnessing the pain of addiction and use it as motivation.

“I don’t want people to take the pain away because that’s the way I learn,” he said.

He’s now using the lessons he learned while on his road to recovery to help others lay the groundwork of sobriety. In his opinion, that starts with finding a guru.

“Find a guru. Your one year of recovery can be equal to my ten [years of recovery],” he said. “You don’t have to live in fear.”

As a personal guru or Life Coach, Eastman becomes a “big brother” for many.

“A life coach is simply, we help people set goals, we help them set the steps to achieve those goals, and we hold them accountable to hitting those goals,” he described.

He also explains what you should look for if you are considering finding a Life Coach.

“If I were searching for a life coach, I would find somebody who had gone through life in that area and learn from that,” Eastman described.

For Eastman, the perfect client is someone who is ready to make a complete life change for the sake of sobriety.

“I want somebody who’s ready to take action and make change and wants to make nutrition, fitness, and gains part of their recovery,” he said.

The keys to ensuring a save road to recovery

Eastman does admit that COVID-19 has taken a toll on his work. But with the recently lifted restrictions, he is able to help others again.

“We’ve had a lot of success with people coming in. It’s been real hard on mental health and it’s given us a chance to spend a little extra quality time with our people,” he said.

And while the emphasis on personal growth is a huge component of his program, Eastman is quick to point out that sometimes all a client needs is love.

“A lot of the time people just need hope and they need somebody to love them for a minute,” Eastman concluded.

Listen to the podcast to learn more about substance abuse awareness in a time of crisis

For more information on addiction or if you or someone you know is struggling, you can find more information on Facebook, KSL TV, or from Use Only as Directed. To hear more from Casey Scott and Dr. Matt Woolley, you can listen below or subscribe to the ‘Project Recovery’ podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get major podcasts.