JB Copeland on Losing His Identity After Football, Addiction Recovery, and the Emotional Strength That Changed His Life
- 2 days ago
- 8 min read
JB Copeland is a multi-platform digital creator and media entrepreneur known for motivational, insight-driven content that helps audiences reach their full potential through emotionally resonant wisdom and practical teachings. With a combined reach of 2.8M+ followers across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, alongside a fast-growing podcast averaging approximately 30K listeners per episode,
JB has cultivated a loyal and deeply engaged community that consistently shows up across formats. Amid continued rapid growth, JB has already partnered with leading global brands including Netflix, Skechers, Eight Sleep, Liquid I.V., and Calm, delivering thoughtful, high-performing partnerships that feel authentic and native to his voice and audience.
Beyond content creation, JB is actively building a scalable media business with a long-term vision that extends across social platforms, products, apps, and publishing—positioning him as more than a creator, but as a growing, future-facing media brand.
His journey, however, did not begin in the media. It began in sports, identity, loss, and eventually a deeper exploration of emotional awareness and personal healing. In this conversation, JB Copeland reflects on the experiences that shaped his perspective on fulfillment, vulnerability, and the emotional strength required to navigate life’s most difficult chapters.
You grew up as a high-level athlete where performance was everything. How did that identity shape the way you handled emotions early in life?
Athletics were everything to me. The performance. The work. My goal was to play at the highest level. I almost got there, but in the midst of it, I was not fulfilled. I think sports are an amazing thing. The discipline and the work to become the best shaped my work ethic into something I’m proud of. Throughout life, that work ethic has become my default, but with every positive comes a negative.
This time of sports in my life helped me understand the science of success, but I never truly understood the art of fulfillment. Without being fulfilled, that success didn’t mean much to me because I hadn’t become the person who could actually enjoy it. Because of this, I never truly knew myself; I only knew the chase for more. I wasn’t connected with myself. I had no joy. I didn’t know myself. All I knew was the next play, and that took me to a place of darkness when it all ended abruptly my junior year of college.
When football ended due to injuries, what was the hardest part of that transition that people on the outside couldn’t see?
When you lose who you think you are, you are left lost and in the dark. Whether it be a person, a place, a thing, a talent… when you don’t have it anymore, you are faced with a question that you really don’t want to answer: “Who am I?” At that time, I couldn’t even begin to answer that, and all I wanted was to feel okay. My anxiety and depression were at an all-time high, and I turned to drugs to numb the pain. Because of my inability to connect with the darkness in me, I wasn’t able to help myself in my time of darkness. All I could do was run from it.
After I retired due to concussions, and this is embarrassing when I say this… I failed three drug tests in a row. Because of that, I was kicked off my scholarship in the first semester of my senior year, and I failed out of school in my second semester of senior year. Everything I’d worked for was gone, and I found myself at a rock-bottom moment in my life. Addicted to substances. No sports. No scholarship. No degree. Maybe I had to hit that bottom to be able to answer that question… who am I?
“When you lose who you think you are you are left lost and in the dark.”
You’ve been open about struggling with addiction for nearly a decade, and you coined the term “Sappy Medium.” What did recovery teach you about emotional avoidance, and what does that middle ground between shutting down and drowning in emotion look like in daily life?
Growing up, I was afraid of my shadow. I was scared of those “dark” emotions. I knew if I had them, I couldn’t perform. I thought that if I felt these emotions that it meant I was broken or defective. Because of that belief, I stuffed everything down for years. 26 years to be exact.
Turns out when you don’t process the dark, you can’t experience the light. So it left me numb. This led to that addiction. I didn’t know how to cope or how to feel, and when things hit the fan, instead of learning to process my life, the only thing I knew to do was to mask it with drugs. Going to rehab in 2022 was one of the hardest times of my life because I was forced to feel and process things that had been deep within me since childhood. From doing that and learning to have grace with myself, I coined the term Sappy Medium.
While at rehab, I was out on a walk, and I came across a tree. This tree had a cut in it. Something had wounded it. I looked closer and saw this sticky tree sap. It had a smell to it, and it wasn’t very pretty, but it was there for a reason. I think we all know this, but when a tree is wounded, its roots send sap to that wound. The sap covers that wound, and as time goes on, it heals that wound.
I realized that maybe we, as humans, are also trees. Throughout my life, I’ve had a lot of wounds. And I believe when we are wounded, the healing that comes is from us learning to process and feel. So I made the connection between the sap on the tree and the feelings that we feel. That sap in our lives is emotion. It’s what helps us work through the wound.
I knew that for so long, I hadn’t let the sap do its job in my life. It was too sticky for me, and I’d wash it off by numbing myself. I realized that there had to be a way for us to feel. That there was an art form to that. Feeling for healing. Letting the emotion/sap do its job for a season. To connect with it, but not be overcome by it. And to know that it isn’t here because there is something wrong with us, but that it’s here because it has a job to do.
“When you don’t process the dark, you can’t experience the light.”
Many men are taught to either suppress emotion or over-identify with struggle. How do you personally define emotional strength today?
Emotional strength is our ability to hold space. Hold space for ourselves and for the people around us. To be able to deal with the pains of life and those dark emotions with peace and confidence that things will be okay. To realize that we are strong and resilient and that those emotions don’t have to overtake us and create suffering, but rather we can listen and learn from those emotions.
One thing that has really helped me with dealing with “dark emotions” in myself and in others is coming to the conclusion that those dark emotions that arise are little versions of us. We as little kids who are still scared and still live within us. And I’ve had to ask myself… “how will I make them feel better?” What a little kid needs in those situations is someone who can love them gently. Making sure that they know they are safe to feel in this moment, but to also process these feelings with them and to show them the truth.
For me, it has become reparenting myself in these moments of fear. Being that confident adult who speaks clarity over that little boy in me, and doing it in a way that doesn’t make him feel broken or defective.
With over two million followers, you’ve built a platform around vulnerability. Was there a moment when you realized honesty could be a form of leadership?
I am still trying to figure that out. We see a lot of content creators/gurus / spiritual advisors / etc. acting like they have all the answers, almost making it seem like they don’t struggle like the rest of us. And I’ve had a really hard time with that. I think people today just want something that is real. They want to know that they are not alone. They want someone to go on the journey with them. That has been my goal.
You’ve spoken about concussions and their impact. How did physical injury intersect with mental health in your experience?
Luckily for me, the concussions/side effects are completely healed. I think that although I was physically injured, the true injury was emotional for me.
What habits or practices help you stay grounded now, especially when life feels heavy?
I’m a person who likes things simple. There are so many different wellness hacks and things that I love, but for me, I try to do one thing a day, and that is to get inspired. Whether it be through music, a show or movie, a book, a walk, a prayer, or saying hey to a little baby… There are so many ways to do that, and it’s unique to all of us in how we do that. If I can do that daily, it helps me get out of my head and into my heart, and when I’m in my heart, I am able to do things that align with it. That’s how I live my life.
Hosting "MOTION with JB Copeland" on Sappy Radio 44.4 allows you to explore deeper conversations. What kinds of discussions do you feel are still missing in mainstream mental health dialogue?
What I think is missing in the mainstream mental health dialogue is that sometimes I feel like we make things feel so difficult. Like we have to go through all these steps to find joy. We almost make people reliant on a person or a doctrine. The truth of the matter is that each of us has the ability to heal ourselves. All of the answers that you are looking for are within you. You’ll learn more about yourself and how to handle a scenario or how to heal yourself by sitting in silence for 30 minutes and writing what comes up, rather than listening to another podcast or doing another course. You are the person that you’ve been looking for.
If someone reading this feels stuck between numbing their emotions and being overwhelmed by them, what would you want them to understand first?
Take a breath. Close your eyes. Picture little you. Be kind to yourself. Be patient with yourself. Forgive yourself. And stop taking things so seriously. Go on a walk. Go get some ice cream. Know that things are going to work out for you. Go get inspired. Be childlike. Be curious. Don’t judge yourself. Watch something that will make you laugh. Everything is okay.
JB Copeland’s story reflects a journey that many people experience but few openly discuss. From the identity-driven world of elite athletics to the vulnerability of addiction recovery and emotional self-discovery, his path highlights the deeper work that often follows external success.
Today, through his growing digital platforms and podcast MOTION with JB Copeland, he continues to explore conversations around emotional awareness, personal responsibility, and inner healing. His message ultimately returns to a powerful idea: emotional honesty, curiosity, and self-compassion are essential tools for navigating life’s most complex moments.
