Hour two of The Neil Haley Show opens with Todd R. Mitchell Jr., author of Never Gave Up (Reclaimed My Life), joined by his fiancee Tanya Weiner. Todd grew up moving constantly as a military family child, uprooted from the north to the south, and chased belonging in ways that pulled him toward trouble and, eventually, alcoholism. He was an exceptional athlete who earned a full college scholarship without ever playing a single high school basketball game, spotted dunking in a pickup game. He played at Piedmont College in Georgia and was headed to the University of Florida before the drinking derailed the transfer, then played eight years of arena football. Asked where he would be had he reached the NBA or NFL, Todd did not hesitate: homeless, broke, or dead, because the money would have arrived long before he reached the root of the problem. He described watching door after door open through basketball, football, and later film, and closing each one himself because he carried the alcohol into every city and every team.
Todd traced the bottom honestly: homelessness, incarceration, repeated car accidents, and the last twenty dollars his father sent him spent on alcohol instead of food. He explained that drinking was never the celebration it looked like but a cover for everything he did not want to feel, and that the hardest part was accepting he could not blame anyone else. The turning point came when he felt his faith slipping and believed God had stopped opening doors. Tanya, who met him at the start of his rehab process and visited every day, spoke candidly about what it takes to stand beside someone in recovery, that relapse is part of a process rather than a failure of will, and that the person hurting most is the one who fell. Todd also spoke about his daughter, and the look on her face one day in Atlanta that he has never forgotten. Today he has finished school, earned a film production degree from Miami Dade College, and launched Born From The Ashes Mitchell Production Studios in Jacksonville. Neil and Todd went deep on the question facing every retired athlete, which is what you build once the crowd noise stops, a subject Neil knows firsthand from his own pro wrestling career.
Neil then welcomed Dr. Pam Mullarkey Robbins, author of What's So Funny About Dementia?, in a segment presented with Books to Life Marketing. A counselor and psychologist who has been a caregiver four times, Dr. Pam explained why humor became her survival tool during her mother's Alzheimer's journey. She and her father made a deliberate decision to look for what was funny, and she is emphatic that the laughter is with the person, never at them. She shared the story of her mother refusing to let her in the house because she was convinced Pam was her husband's girlfriend, and how a high school graduation photo held up to her face briefly bridged the gap. Each chapter pairs a story with practical guidance, and her counseling work starts with the caregiver, because a caregiver who collapses cannot care for anyone.
The conversation turned practical on prevention. Dr. Pam walked through the protein BDNF and the five habits that support it, diet, exercise, rest, lower stress, and socialization, and named early warning signs worth watching, especially repeated questions and unexplained damage to a car. She discussed why isolation is the worst response to a diagnosis, why sugar works against brain health, and why she believes the roughly seventy percent female incidence rate will eventually trace back to menopause. At 79, with Alzheimer's on both sides of her family, she is living proof of her own advice. Neil added his own recommendation to keep the mind sharp after retirement by learning to work with AI. Her second book, The Brighter Side of Dementia, collects a hundred reader-submitted stories.
