Kevin Kreider’s 7 Lessons on Sobriety, Identity, and Mental Health After Bling Empire

Kevin Kreider is known for his charisma on screen in Netflix’s Bling Empire and Peacock’s The Traitors, but in this episode of Recoverycast, he gives listeners a look at what’s behind the spotlight, including the parts that never made it into a highlight reel.

Kevin talks about growing up as a Korean adoptee in Philadelphia, wrestling with belonging, and learning from an early age how loneliness, shame, and stereotypes can shape a person’s choices.

He also gets honest about how alcohol can feel like a shortcut to relief. Not happiness. Not healing. Relief.

For Kevin, drinking quieted the voices that told him he was “other.” It helped him fit in, until it didn’t.

What makes this conversation compelling is how practical Kevin is. He doesn’t frame sobriety as a punishment, but describes it as “a secret code to life,” something that opens the door to self-awareness and a more grounded way of living. He also doesn’t pretend it’s easy. He talks about the mess, the misunderstandings, the regret, and the second chances that sobriety made possible.

If you’re navigating addiction recovery, mental health challenges, or the pressure to become someone people will accept, Kevin’s story is worth a listen.

1. Sobriety Is the “Secret Code” to Life

Kevin says he wants people to see being sober and in recovery as “a secret code to life.” It’s a bold phrase, and he means it.

To him, recovery is about building relationships, connecting to a higher power, and learning how to live with yourself without needing to numb out.

He describes the difference between addiction and recovery in a way that likely feels relatable to many. For Kevin, addiction feels stagnant, like you’re not going anywhere. Recovery feels like “eternal growth,” something endless, something you can’t fully access while you’re busy trying to fill a hole with alcohol or drugs.

There’s also a quiet tenderness in how he talks about sobriety. It isn’t “sobriety made me perfect.” It’s “sobriety made my life possible.”

For Kevin, spiritual growth is something that doesn’t run out, unlike substances that eventually stop working and demand more. Recovery isn't just about quitting something, but about gaining access to the kind of growth addiction can’t give you.

2. Identity Pain Doesn’t Disappear, It Leaks Into Everything Until You Face It

Kevin’s childhood sits at the center of his story. Born in Seoul and adopted into a German Irish Catholic family in Philadelphia, he grew up in a confusing in-between space.

At home, he was loved, but outside, he was constantly reminded that other people saw him as different.

He talks about microaggressions that weren’t “movie moments” of obvious violence, but day-to-day reminders. People not making room on the sidewalk, shoulder-checking him, mocking Asian stereotypes, treating him like he didn’t belong. As a kid, you don’t always have the language for that. You just absorb it.

And when you absorb enough of it, you start trying to solve it. Kevin tried to solve it by becoming the “exception,” the Asian guy who was ripped, confident, could outdrink anyone, and could prove something to everyone. He’s honest about the motivation underneath it: acceptance and wanting to belong.

3) Alcohol Felt Like Relief, Until It Started Stealing His Life

Kevin had his first drink young, but he says the real “kick off” started when he was around 14 years old. The feeling was immediate. Drinking gave him a break from himself. It shut off the noise. In his words, for the first time, he “wasn’t Asian anymore,” meaning he wasn’t trapped under the weight of how others saw him. From here, his drinking escalated.

There’s a moment in the episode that captures how distorted things can feel when you’re deep in addiction. After a night of drinking vodka and smoking weed, Kevin jokes that he figured out “how the universe came to be,” only to forget it the next morning. The moment resonates because many people recognize that pattern of feeling certain and expansive in the moment, then waking up to nothing but emptiness.

As the years go on, the pattern becomes clearer. Alcohol becomes the center of the social world. Friends are “good” as long as they drink with him. Romantic partners get a different, messy version of him that does damage when the party ends.

He also connects alcohol to dreams he lost, or at least opportunities he couldn’t fully take. He talks about choosing drinking over auditions, showing up to professional events not at his best, and watching addiction quietly strip away momentum. It’s not just the hangovers, but the missed opportunities that pile up until you barely recognize your own life.

4) Sometimes Love Gets You to the Door, But You Still Have to Walk Through It for Yourself

Kevin describes what many people feel but don’t always say out loud. Early on, doing recovery “for yourself” can feel impossible when you don’t even like yourself. He shares how a relationship helped push him toward AA, and how he later realized the recovery was actually his, because he stayed sober even after the relationship ended.

His turning point came one day in December, after an Eagles game, when he woke up with a sense of clarity and lightness and admitted, “I’m an alcoholic, I’m never going to drink again.” He called the friend who introduced him to Alcoholics Anonymous and started showing up consistently.

He also tells a story that shows how early sobriety can still be foggy. He and his partner Devon broke up over a misunderstanding about where she was staying during a stressful housing situation. Years later, with clearer eyes, he realizes how much his alcohol misuse shaped his interpretation of reality, and how easily fear can hijack a relationship when the nervous system is still in survival mode.

This lesson is a good reminder of how accountability and compassion go hand-in-hand in recovery. People often start recovery because of consequences at home, school, or work. Whatever gets you there can be enough to begin. But long-term recovery becomes possible when the reason shifts from “please don’t leave me” to “I want a life I can live in.”

5) A Few Loving Truths Can Change Everything, Even if You Hate Them at First

Kevin credits his dad with several pivotal moments that led him to getting sober. Not because his dad always said the perfect thing, but because he stopped enabling and started telling the truth.

One story stands out to him. On Kevin’s birthday, his dad took a photo of him clearly drunk and looking "terrible." The message wasn’t cruel, just direct: “I want you to see what you look like.”

There were other small truths his dad was transparent about, too. He told Kevin he’d stepped in dog poop, tracked it through the house, and didn’t remember. He also told Kevin he’d been mean to his girlfriend, and didn’t remember. While these were small moments on the surface, they revealed how addiction was affecting the people around Kevin.

He didn’t hold back in other conversations, either. When Kevin said he wanted to be a life coach, his dad replied, “You need to have a life.” Kevin hated hearing it then, but he now admits his dad was right.

Recovery often begins with moments like these. Not the cinematic rock bottom, but the ordinary truths you can’t unsee once someone hands them to you. A photo. A sentence. A boundary. A parent saying, “I can’t enable you anymore.” It hurts, but it can be the beginning of change.

6) Fame Doesn’t Fix the Void, It Just Gives It More Places to Hide

Kevin says he’s grateful he was sober when Bling Empire happened, but he’s also honest that he wasn’t as grounded as he could have been.

The pandemic had disrupted his community, meetings, and routine. Then the show aired, and suddenly there was attention, invitations, and a kind of overstimulation that threatened to throw him off-balance.

He describes how strange it was to go from being anonymous to being recognized, even with a hat, mask, and sunglasses. And with the attention came a kind of fear and stress most people don’t experience, but the emotional pattern is familiar. When life changes fast, old coping strategies can resurface.

Kevin also talks about “overindulgence” showing up in new ways. If it isn’t alcohol, it can become attention, opportunities, saying yes until there’s nothing left. For many people in recovery, this can be a quiet danger—replacing one obsession with another and calling it growth.

7) Recovery Isn’t Glamorous

When Kevin talks about what keeps him sober now, he starts with something refreshingly practical: sleep. He calls good sleep undervalued in recovery, and he’s not wrong. He ties sleep to emotional stability, diet, and even how caffeine late in the day can mimic that depressed, hungover feeling.

To further support his recovery, Kevin’s routine includes meetings (both in person and Zoom), keeping in touch with his sponsor, sponsoring someone else, prayer, readings, and returning to church. He also sees a pastor for marriage counseling, which highlights how recovery isn’t just about sobriety, but learning how to live in relationships with integrity.

He’s also learned limits. He used to believe he could help everyone, especially after fame, and he now sees that as naivety. He talks about helping “the right people,” especially people who are actually asking for help, like someone showing up to a recovery meeting and requesting a sponsor.

And he doesn’t shy away from spirituality. He believes people need a higher power, and he describes moving from being “spiritual” to being more rooted in faith. For Kevin, that grounding is what helps him regulate emotions, pause before reacting, and step away from the old “authentic self” that used to lead him astray.

Kevin’s story is a reminder that sobriety isn’t just the absence of alcohol or drugs, but the presence of clarity, community, faith, and self-respect.

His biggest lesson might be this: recovery gives second, third, and fourth chances, and it asks you to show up for them.