It would be easy to call it an overnight success. Luis Garai joined Toastmasters in October 2025. A few months later, he was the District 3 Tall Tales champion, competing against speakers from more than 125 clubs across Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas. (He joins fellow 2026 District 3 champion Bryan Wannack in the winner's circle this season.)
But that timeline hides everything that came before it. The addiction. The years of standing in his own way. The rock bottom. And the ceremony where a song in an ancient language told him what he already knew: his voice was the tool, and the job was to grow.
Luis sat down with host Rupesh Parbhoo to talk about the journey that brought him to Toastmasters, the tall tale he wrote two days before competition, and what it means to finally step into the thing you were built to do.
Tall Tales Is My First Language
Luis grew up the oldest of three kids in a Mexican American family in Phoenix. His younger brother had chubby cheeks that everyone adored. His little sister was funny and cute. And Luis, watching from the oldest sibling's seat, realized he needed another way to get attention.
He couldn't be Michael Jordan right out of the gate. He couldn't shred a guitar on day one. So he learned to talk. He learned to tell stories. He became the interesting one.
"On one end, it's kind of a trauma that children get," Luis said. "But on the other end, it gave me this awesome, wonderful gift, which is being able to talk."
That gift would take years to become something intentional. But it was always there.
The Grip
For most of his life, Luis was not using that gift well. He dealt with addiction from the time he was thirteen. Multiple addictions, across years, woven so deeply into his daily life that he could not imagine existing without them.
"It's easier for me to name what I wasn't addicted to," he said.
He smashed into walls. He ruined things he cared about. He stood in his own way over and over. And even when a quiet voice inside tried to warn him, he could not hear it through the noise.
It was not always the dark chapter people imagine when they hear the word addiction. Sometimes it just looked like a regular life with something heavy underneath, something he was not yet willing or able to face.
Sepsis of the Soul
Luis does not talk about emotional wounds the way most people do. He compares them to infected physical wounds. If you had an infection on your arm, you would go to the doctor. You know that leaving it untreated could spread through your blood and kill you. But emotional wounds? Those get hidden. Nobody wants them touched because the pain feels worse than anything physical.
"It can cause sepsis of the soul," Luis said. "We might have an emotional wound and somebody touches it on accident. And we know that it was an accident. And we act in a way that is incongruent with who we really are."
Those untreated wounds change how you react. They block goals you want to reach. They make you someone you don't recognize. And until you tend to them, they keep running the show.
For Luis, tending to his wounds came through a combination of the 12-step program, therapy, and a plant medicine that changed the way he saw himself.
Let My Voice Be a Tool
In August 2025, Luis sat in an ayahuasca ceremony. Ayahuasca is a brew from the Amazon, used by indigenous people for thousands of years as a tool for self-discovery and healing. The ceremonies are guided by songs in native languages, designed to touch on themes essential to growth and self-understanding.
One song, sung in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, repeated a verse over and over: let my voice be a tool when the job is to grow.
Luis sang it again and again. And in that repetition, something landed. He had always been a talker. He had always had the gift. But he had never treated it as something to develop, sharpen, and use with intention.
"The real ceremony starts outside of ceremony," Luis said. "Life is the real ceremony, when we start applying those things that we learn."
He started looking for ways to develop his voice. He looked into the John Maxwell School. He explored other programs. Then three separate friends mentioned Toastmasters. By the third one, he paid attention. He googled it, sent a message, and within minutes Don Griffith from Voice of Many Toastmasters welcomed him in.
He walked through the door and felt like he was exactly where he needed to be.
Two Days Before Competition
Luis won the Tall Tales contest at his club, but he was not satisfied with that speech. He needed a new one for the area competition. The problem was, he had not written it.
Two days before the contest, he showed up late to his Thursday morning Toastmasters meeting. At Voice of Many, if you are late, you have to improvise a tall tale on the spot. Luis had just driven to the meeting in his self-driving Tesla, so he riffed on that. The car drove him to the Superstition Mountains. It turned into Optimus Prime. It sent him on a quest.
The room laughed. And Luis thought: okay, there's something here.
That afternoon, he built on the improvised version. He wove in elements of Mesoamerican mythology, his eclectic wardrobe, his ayahuasca practice, and real details from his life, all stretched and exaggerated into the kind of wildly over-the-top story that defines the Tall Tales format.
Two days later, he competed. And he kept winning. Club. Area. Division. District.
The Brain Is a Goal-Achieving Machine
Luis does not chalk his wins up to luck. He visualized them.
Before every competition, he sat with the feeling of winning. Not as a fantasy. As something real. He felt the joy, the dopamine rush, the smiles. He soaked it all in and held onto it. And when he stepped on stage, that energy is exactly what the audience experienced.
"It wasn't perfect, but it was all of my energy coming out," Luis said. "Knowing that it was something that I was going to win. That's what you could hear in that speech."
He connects this to a broader idea he has been studying through Napoleon Hill, Neville Goddard, and David Bayer: that our thoughts drive our emotions, our emotions drive our words and actions, and that chain determines the quality of our lives. What you think is what you put out. What you believe is what you build.
Dharma and the Talents You Already Have
Luis frames purpose through a concept from the Bhagavad Gita called dharma: the idea that each person has a duty or responsibility tied to their unique talents. Not a tyrannical obligation, but a calling rooted in what already comes naturally.
"If we're looking for purpose in life, we have to look at what are our talents," Luis said. "What are those things that come natural to us? What do other people come to us for? What are things that we do and the time just flies by?"
When he stopped ignoring those signals and started paying attention, everything opened up. Toastmasters appeared. Speaking opportunities started showing up. His ability to communicate expanded in ways he had not expected.
The purpose was never missing. He just had not recognized it yet.
Treasures Beyond Fear
Luis's advice for new speakers starts with reframing the thing that stops most people before they begin.
"Stop seeing fear as this terrible enemy and see it more as this kind of great ally," he said. "When you feel fear, what is the task that you should be doing the most? The one that scares you the most."
Fear is a signal that something real is on the other side. Confessing love. Changing careers. Stepping on a stage. The treasures are beyond the fear, not before it. But fear needs you to prove you are ready, and the only way to prove it is to push through.
He draws one important line: fear is not the same as survival instinct. Fear keeps you from what you want. Survival instinct keeps you from what you don't want. Know the difference, and let fear be the compass.
How Beautiful Everything Looks in the Light
Six years sober, Luis does not hide where he has been. He is grateful for it. Not because the darkness was good, but because it gave him the contrast to appreciate what he has now.
"I've been down low and at rock bottom and seen how dark it is," he said. "It really makes me appreciate how beautiful everything looks in the light."
His voice was always the tool. Toastmasters gave him the place to sharpen it. And the tall tale he told on the district stage, wild and exaggerated and completely over the top, carried more truth in it than most people realized.
About Luis Garai
Luis Garai is the 2026 District 3 Toastmasters Tall Tales champion. He is a mortgage loan originator, a father of three with a fourth on the way, and the founder of an ayahuasca church in Arizona. He joined Toastmasters in October 2025 at Voice of Many Toastmasters. Find him on Instagram at @luisgaraim and his church at @casa_de_los_abuelo_official.
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