I Made My First Million On Wall Street At 28 & Was Broke & Addicted To Opiates By 30

I Made My First Million On Wall Street At 28 & Was Broke & Addicted To Opiates By 30

From Rise Above with Kevin Lanning by Kevin Lanning

May 28, 2026 · 1h 5m

About this episode

TJ DelVecchio shares his journey from making a fortune on Wall Street to battling addiction and finding recovery.

TJ DelVecchio was a Division 1 baseball player at Providence College who walked onto Wall Street during the dot-com boom and made his first million dollars by 28. By 30 he was broke, $300,000 in debt, unloading boxes at FedEx in the middle of the night just to keep health insurance for his kids — and quietly becoming addicted to opioids. For years he held it all together on the outside. Wall Street lunches with pint glasses three quarters full of vodka. Parties in Miami. VIP sections. A lifestyle that looked like success and felt like a slow death. At his worst he was taking 6 to 10 thirty milligram Roxies a day — spending $5,000 a month on pills — while his ankles swelled, his kidneys ached, and his soul quietly disappeared. Then one night on a hotel balcony in Miami, he looked up at the sky and told his late father — if I don't stop right now, I'm never going to see my kids again. He flushed the pills the next morning. No rehab. No Suboxone. Six weeks of pure hell. And he never looked back. Now six years sober, TJ is remarried, living in Sarasota, building rental properties with his wife, and finally the man he always wanted to be. If you or someone you love is struggling with…

People in this episode

Host: Kevin Lanning

Guest: TJ DelVecchio

Topics covered

  • addiction
  • recovery
  • personal finance
  • mental health
  • overcoming adversity

Keywords

  • Wall Street
  • addiction
  • opioids
  • recovery
  • mental health
  • personal finance
  • success
  • failure

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Compassion Behavioral Health, Providence College

Places: Miami, Sarasota

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