Howard Behar helped build Starbucks and wrote the books on leading with heart, and at 80 he checked himself into a treatment center to save his own life.
Howard Behar was the president of Starbucks North America and Starbucks International. He helped grow a coffee shop into a global icon, wrote the books on servant leadership, and mentored a whole generation of executives on how to lead with the heart.
And around his 80th birthday, it caught up with him. The birthday party itself turned into pain, real physical pain he felt sitting in his chest. He’d had the same counselor for years, so he called her and said something’s up. She listened for a minute and told him: you sound like you have depression. He did not want to hear it. He did not want to admit he was sick.
It got worse from there. He stopped wanting to be alive. He told his wife he had to go to the hospital, and from that hospital he flew himself across the country to a treatment center in California and moved into a house with five strangers.
The man who wrote the book on leading with heart, at 80 years old, had to be taught how to keep his own beating. “Nobody necessarily escapes,” he told Will. It comes for the titan, the mentor, the guy who looks like he has all of it figured out.
Will sat down with Howard for this one, I wasn’t in the room. I listened to the whole thing as a guy who’s been a lot closer to that edge than I let anyone see for a lot of years.
It’s a sickness, and it lives in the body
Howard’s first teaching is the one most men need and most resist. Depression is a sickness. As much as it’s mental, it’s physical, and he learned that by feeling it, a genuine pain in his chest that came and went. The work started the second he stopped pretending. “Once I dealt with it physically and mentally, then I could deal with it.” Before that, he couldn’t, because he wouldn’t call it what it was.
That resistance is the whole trap. It gets filed next to weakness, so a man buries it, and a buried thing never gets treated.
I know that trap from the floor of it. After Operation Red Wings in 2005, after we lost 19 men, the survivor’s guilt turned into serious anxiety and depression. I self-medicated with alcohol and prescription medication. I got to a very dark spot, dark enough that I considered suicide. What turned it was a counselor pointing me toward mindfulness and meditation, which I credit with quite literally saving my life. And here’s my version of Howard’s confession: for years I could describe my emotions in perfect detail and feel almost none of them. I intellectualized the whole thing. Being able to explain the sickness is not the same as admitting you have it, and I hid behind the explanation for a long time.
The door was only halfway
Here’s the part of Howard’s story I’d want every man to hear. He did a full month in treatment, felt good, decided he was ready, and went to leave. And right at the door, everything came back. He calls it falling off the wagon. He couldn’t go home. So he stayed, went through the entire process a second time, another month, all of it again.
Will put an image on it that stuck. You get your hand on the doorknob, you’re sure you’re done, and the whole weight drops back onto you. Howard was so certain he’d made it, and he hadn’t.
The way through was work he had to choose every day. He walked every morning. Group therapy first thing, then individual sessions all day long. And the actual move, the one he keeps naming, was leaning into the pain instead of running from it. “I knew that I couldn’t get out without embracing it.” The pain in his chest would rise while he sat in it, and then it would pass. That’s the opposite of what every instinct tells you to do, and it’s the only thing that worked. Healing didn’t run in a straight line for him, and it won’t for you, so a slip after you thought you were fixed is just part of the shape of it...
The medicine was other people
Now the part that matters most to me. When Will asked what protects him now, Howard didn’t lead with the meds, though he’s honest that a psychiatrist and the right medications made a real difference. He led with people. Staying in treatment twice a week. Going to parties. Dinner with friends. Cribbage with his neighbor. Grandkids in the house. Being back inside a regular life.
And he was clear about other people. People want to help. They’re afraid to ask, but they want to know, and when Howard tells them the truth about the depression and the suicidal thoughts, they lean in. What he needed from them was smaller and harder than advice. “Don’t judge me, just be my friend.” He also said the thing that undoes most of us: “you have to learn to accept it.” The help is there. Taking it is the skill.
That matters more for men than we admit. Men die by suicide several times more often than women, and it almost always starts the same quiet way Howard’s did, pulling inside, not wanting to go anywhere, not wanting to see anyone, until the isolation has its own gravity. I’ve watched strong men vanish into that silence one skipped phone call at a time. Howard’s whole message is that the exit is a person. It’s telling one true thing to one safe human, and letting them stay...
What to do about it
Say one true sentence to one person. Howard’s first move was calling his counselor and saying “something’s up.” You don’t need the right words. “I’m not okay” is a complete sentence, and it’s where the sickness starts losing.
Use the two-week rule. Will’s line from the episode: symptoms that run longer than 2 weeks, persistent sadness, no interest in what you used to love, sleep and appetite changes, pulling away from people, a flat sense of hopelessness, are a signal to get help, not to wait out. If that’s the last two weeks of your life, this is your cue.
Do the unglamorous daily things, and get a real baseline. Howard walked every morning and kept showing up. Sleep, movement, sunlight, people, in whatever small dose you can manage today. Start by seeing where you actually stand with our free Awareness Self-Assessment, about 5 minutes: focusnowtraining.com/assessment-page. Paid subscribers, Resource 2 turns it into an early-warning system.
Be the friend who asks. Howard said people were afraid to ask him but desperate to know, and what he wanted most was “don’t judge me, just be my friend.” Pick one man who’s gone quiet and call him, out loud, on the phone. Reply and tell me who you’re reaching out to, I read every one.
If you’re the one in the dark, reach out right now. Call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, any hour of any day. Tell your doctor the truth. Reaching out is the strong move, the same one Howard made at 80 and I made after Red Wings. And if you want a human on the other end, reply with the one thing you’ve been carrying alone. I read every single one.
This week on Men Talking Mindfulness
Howard Behar is the former president of Starbucks North America and Starbucks International, one of the most respected voices in servant leadership, and the author of It’s Not About the Coffee. He’s a returning guest and a friend of the show, and he came back this time to talk openly about the depression that put him in a treatment facility earlier this year, so the rest of us can spot the signs sooner, in ourselves and in the people we love. This is a heavier one than usual, and an important one.
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Awareness to Action is our 12-week self-mastery course and community, built to help you turn this kind of knowing into a daily practice, alongside real men doing the same work. Text A2A to 33777 or go to FocusNowTraining.com/A2A-course. On the fence? Reply with the word A2A and I’ll tell you straight whether it’s for you.
Until next time,
Jon Macaskill and Will Schneider
Focus Now Training and Men Talking Mindfulness
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