I sat in my bay window explaining the deal to my largest potential investor over the phone. My pitch was the anti-pitch. I didn't consciously understand what I was doing or why, yet here I was talking to an investor who wanted to do my deal. Once he agreed, I quickly went about nailing down commitments from the rest of my group.

My new venture fit nicely into the new persona I was cultivating: "Scooter Boy," as my friends affectionately called it. I threw away the blue suits and white starched shirts, and bought Italian slacks and the wildest colored shirts I could find. I replaced my brief case with a purse. I bought Gucci loafers to replace my old black lace-ups. I started wearing thick, black-rimmed Clark Kent glasses. I got up in the morning, had my coffee and meditated as the sun rose over the city. Then I got dressed in my new trendy clothes and carried my newly purchased scooter to the street. I set off for morning Alcoholics Anonymous meetings with abandon, flying down Newbury Street, my man bag flapping on the handlebars. I am sure I looked crazy—a grown man on a child's toy—but I didn't care. The ride was a key element of my new life.

I took the kids to mommy classes. I sat in a circle with moms and their kids. We sang, wrestled and goofed around. I was comfortable in this setting because I actually got to do something with my kids. As we rolled around on the floor, the moms at first didn't know what to make of me; they ultimately accepted me when they saw how passionately I played with my kids and theirs.

By Thanksgiving 1998, the first anniversary of my new investment, the company was on a roll. We were attracting new customers in waves. On Wall Street, the Internet gold rush had begun as every Amazon doubter had been promptly run over by Internet stock prices stampeding for the moon. Everything you could attach a ".com" to was headed for an initial public offering, we planned our own for the spring.

Around the same time, I found myself sitting in a chair constructed for an eight year old, surrounded by thirty other men at a grade school classroom in South Boston. There was a halfway house across the street. Many of the men were part of that program, sober less than thirty days. I noticed the tough guy looks of some of the participants: tattoos, body piercings, plenty of white-guy-mobster gold chains. I felt like the only one without a gang affiliation in the room.

Frank, one of the leaders, began to tell his story from the front of the room. He talked about jail and hookers and drugs; family members who were dead after overdoses or shot during drug deals. The words came straight from his heart. There was no intellectual head game involved. Listening to him talk made me stop feeling sorry for myself in a hurry. I had a penthouse apartment and two healthy children. I had drank because of an inferiority complex. I had been a bad husband, absent father and ultimately got caught having an affair. But I had a roof over my head and plenty to be grateful for.