David, Goliath, & the 'Gift' of Desperation: Filmmaker Andrew Peloso on Addiction vs Heroism
The Heroic Men videographer says surrender and gratitude healed his addiction — and now he wants young men to stop living someone else’s story online and start their own
Andrew Peloso, the filmmaker behind Heroic Men’s most recognizable recent video work, says the story of David isn’t about swagger — it’s about God using simplicity, vulnerability, and humility to animate real strength. It inspires his own recovery, where the turning point wasn’t willpower but surrender: admitting defeat, asking for help, and rebuilding life through connection with God and people.
Now married with a young son and another child on the way, he says marriage gives a concrete reason to sacrifice and forces a man out of isolation and into service. His message to young men is blunt: the strength you were given wasn’t for you, and every hour spent living someone else’s story online is time stolen from the adventure you’re meant to live.
The man behind the camera
Peloso has been “in the trenches with us over the last couple of years,” De Souza says — producing the Be a Man series, a recap on “the future of Catholic men,” filming the Heroic Men summit in Orange County, and helping the team deliver what De Souza calls “some of the most epic and beautiful footage and production that we’ve ever had.”
But the episode, De Souza says, is about meeting the person behind the work: “Today is about meeting the man behind the camera, behind the mystery, hearing about Andrew’s story.”
A story of heroism that lights him up
Peloso goes straight to the Old Testament— and to a current show.
“Recently with the House of David series on Amazon Prime,” he says. “The story of David and Goliath is just what a mighty story for us men. It really captures your attention.”
He calls it “an example… of secular media telling a story that’s biblical and they did a pretty good job.”
What he loves about David isn’t a superhero vibe.
“David was not the right fit,” Peloso says. “He was so simple and God used his simplicity, vulnerability, and his humility to animate David with God’s strength.”
Peloso says his mind also goes to a different kind of hero.
“I’ve really been inspired by the stories of men behind the curtain who are working hard at their job, and are endeavoring to be good and present husbands and good fathers,” he says.
In an industry built around putting stories “in the public forum that’s online,” he says, he’s grown more excited about the unseen.
“The things that are not seen,” Peloso says. “The ways we live our life, the decisions we make, the sacrifices that we all try and make to glorify God and to be his sons.”
‘The mundane’ and the anointing
De Souza presses him: What, specifically, stands out in David’s story?
Peloso points to David as a shepherd — “fighting the lions,” he says — as evidence of courage and fortitude. But it’s “{articularly was when he was anointed by God.”
Peloso says he’s “often” tempted to reduce masculinity to performance. “I’ll fall into the trap that it’s what I’m doing on my strength alone that makes me a masculine guy,” he says.
David’s story undercuts that. “It’s in our vulnerability, it’s in our weakness that the real story of the greats emerges,” Peloso says.
He imagines a very human David: “Frustrated, feeling overwhelmed… like everything has become too much.” He imagines “feeling just terrified and afraid” with the lions, and then holding to faith that “moves him past his own handicaps, his own defects.”
“I imagine him being quite kind and gracious,” Peloso adds. “I imagine him having a good sense of humor… and I imagine him being deeply prayerful.”
Fortitude, surrender, and the ‘gift of desperation’
When life gets hard, De Souza asks, what does fortitude mean — and how do you practice it?
“For us men maybe the ability to suffer and to suffer well,” Peloso says. “To sacrifice… to delay instant gratification. To put yourself on hold and maybe what you want most for a greater good.”
His definition is personal. “I really struggled with substance abuse actually in my earlier days, my young adult life,” Peloso says. “It was like torture… and I could not stay sober. I could not sober up.”
The first action, he says, wasn’t “heroic” in the way young men might expect.
“The first action was surrender,” he says. “The first action was admitting defeat.”
He says it “doesn’t sound very courageous… at first glance,” but he describes surrender as the start of humility.
“In a statement or action of surrender… I acknowledge that I’m not God,” Peloso says. “That I have no business managing my own life. And that I desperately need the Father’s help… to just take it one moment at a time.”
De Souza asks about the darkest decision he’s ever made.
“The darkest moment was… I had to admit defeat,” Peloso says. “I use pride as a safety net… a wall of defense to protect myself.”
He says he kept working and “was still able to keep a job,” but “there was this darker part of my life that many people didn’t see that was taking root in me.”
Doing the same thing over and over without change became unbearable.
“You see your own inadequacy just right there in the mirror,” he says.
Friends, he says, call it “the gift of desperation” — “the first gift that acknowledges that I’m not God and I need him.”
A ‘quantum leap’ into a different life
De Souza asks how he moved from desperation into hope.
“It’s seeing it work,” Peloso says — seeing “a godly life where God is at the center as best as we can.”
He describes a “proper hierarchy” of service, where you put God first, then serve others.
“God’s going to take care of me,” he says, “and it’s in those little mundane moments of life… that I started believing that this is working.”
What changed, he says, wasn’t his outer life.
“It all probably looks the same,” Peloso says. “I’m still working a job… still have the same family… same friends… same interests. But it’s an internal job.”
He describes “more peace,” “a little less anxiety,” “a little less chaos,” and a calmer voice in hard moments: “It’s okay… I can just breathe. One day at a time.”
He says the people he looks up to now often appear ordinary.
“They’re so ordinary, yet they’re so strong and filled with so much conviction,” he says. “You feel so peaceful being around them… Those are the greats. Those are the legends in my life today.”
‘Connection is the antidote’
De Souza asks how much loneliness played a role in his struggles.
“I do really think addictions of all forms are… an isolation of sorts,” Peloso says. “It encourages isolation and loneliness, which only makes the problem worse.”
His answer comes in a simple equation. “What solves addiction is connection,” he says. “Connection — spiritual connection with God the Father. Connection with our friends and family — that is the antidote to the chaos.”
He says addiction drives a person to “burrow away,” lose self-respect, and “not want to be seen.”
“And I don’t think it’s a winning strategy… to having beautiful relationships of connection that you lean on when you are living that way,” he says.
“I’m blessed now — I have a wife, I have a one-year-old son, and we’re expecting our second in May this year,” he says.
“How do you connect with people?” Peloso asks. “Well, you ask them questions. You listen to their stories, and you actually listen… You try and serve.”
Humility and the limits of stoicism
De Souza pivots to humility, and asks about stoicism — a popular path for young men seeking discipline.
Peloso says stoicism “has very good principles,” especially in “building virtue, rooting out vice,” and “tampering the appetites.” He says it can “build resilience” and “delay gratification.”
But he says it “still falls short” when taken on its own.
“With knowledge of the resurrection, stoicism actually still falls short,” he says. “It kind of just leaves it flat.”
He argues that Christianity doesn’t flatten life; it gives it drama.
“Stoicism… is almost for… to almost cut out all the emotions, to cut out the drama,” Peloso says. “And that’s where… Christianity breathes life into stoicism — not taking it all, but taking what works and putting that into this drama of Christ’s revelation.”
Then he defines humility in a way that’s personal and concrete.
“To be a humble man is to be on the journey of seeing myself the way God the Father… sees me,” he says. “That’s not more than or less than — it’s as I am.”
He calls that “a sober, realistic view of oneself,” and says humility makes room for God where pride does not.
“There’s very little room to work with pride,” Peloso says.
Practices: small prayers, gratitude lists
De Souza asks how he actually tries to live that definition.
Peloso describes “little check-ins, little prayers throughout the day” — and remembering place in the “authority structure.”
“Okay, God, your will be done,” he says. “Thy will be done.”
He says gratitude is another practice that reshapes the heart.
“A mentor of mine… tasked me with starting to do a gratitude list of at least five things every morning and it really works,” he says.
De Souza laughs and offers his own low-bar moment. “At least the chair didn’t collapse. Praise the Lord,” he says.
Peloso agrees: “It could be as simple as that.”
Marriage as ‘a concrete reason to sacrifice’
De Souza asks what’s changed for Peloso in the last two years as a husband.
Peloso says he already loved his work and had “a beautiful network,” but marriage gave him something more specific.
“What changed when I got married is I had a reason,” he says. “I had a very concrete reason now on what I’m sacrificing for.”
He calls marriage “a mutual call to sacrifice,” “to will the good of the other,” and “to endeavor to love your spouse, even when that’s really challenging.”
“It gives a real daily practical way to see where you can endeavor to sacrifice,” he says, “to try and be a heroic man for the glory of God, to serve your family, to build a good family.”
He says it simply: “It’s just such a joy to be married.”
De Souza calls marriage a “container” that forces focus. “There’s nowhere to hide and you can’t run,” De Souza says.
Peloso agrees, laughing. “There’s nowhere,” he says. “It is… painful… when you have some of your glaring defects… and just how your wife sees that and that there is literally nowhere to go.”
Heroes: his father, Peterson, and a priest who talks about crowns
Asked about heroes, Peloso begins at home. “My father,” he says — a business owner with nine kids, “still married to this day,” who was there.
“I can’t even remember him not being there for a family dinner,” Peloso says. “He’s just really cared about that accompaniment.”
His father’s backstory, he says, includes pain. “Youngest in a family… that suffered divorce,” Peloso says. “He saw his family get ripped apart.”
He says his father experienced “a reconversion of sorts in his 20s,” put “bad habits aside,” and “focused on building an authentically Catholic life.”
The lesson: “He knows what’s at stake,” Peloso says — and “he knows what life is like without… a present father.”
Peloso also names Jordan Peterson as an early intellectual guide during recovery.
“Listening to him… gave me a lot of hope,” he says, especially in the early days: “Cleaning my bedroom and doing simple things… getting things in check.”
He adds another influence from the spiritual side: Father Chad Ripperger. A talk about heaven and “winning the crown of glory,” Peloso says, helped him reframe his struggles.
“Look at your vices… the things that you just profoundly struggle with,” Peloso says, describing the idea. “It is an invitation to go on the adventure of your life… in heaven you will be known for… having built the virtues… that were the exact opposite of the vices you struggle with.”
Who he wants to be a hero for
De Souza closes with the question he calls the “final question that everyone loves to hate”: Who do you want to be a hero for?
Peloso aims past the obvious.
“I’d like to grow in heroism for the young men that are coming up right now,” he says.
He describes young men who have “felt robbed by the culture” and by what they’ve been told masculinity is.
“I would like to be one of… many men who encourage them to develop a life of virtue and discipline and service to others,” he says, until that becomes “the popular narrative.”
Asked what he’d tell them, Peloso doesn’t offer a pep talk. He offers a charge.
“They’ve been given a lot of strength, and it doesn’t look like what the world tells you strength is,” he says. “And it wasn’t given to you for you. It was given to you to give to others who are more vulnerable.”
He urges them to stop living someone else’s life online.
“Every moment they spend on the sidelines, living someone else’s story online, on social media, they lose some time to go on their own adventure,” Peloso says. “They’re worth going on that adventure.”
He calls it a pilgrimage.
“God promises us the fulfillment of all desire in heaven,” he says. “And this is ultimately a pilgrimage.”
Where to find VEK Labs
Peloso describes his role simply. “I’m a film director and producer and I like to make films, documentaries and commercials,” he says. He credits “the most incredible, hardworking, humble, sacrificial team out there.”
His company: “VEK Labs.”
“And in addition to working in the marketplace… we have as our aim to try and be a part of the cultural story of breathing truth, goodness and beauty wherever possible into the conversation,” he says.