Interesting week. Helped a good friend get into treatment. Watched a young woman start drinking again on Tik Tok to the jubilation of everyone in the bar. Friend relapsing. And lots of recovery. Recovery is a choice.
The speaker opens the video, acknowledges technical issues, and explains that it is the last Saturday of Recovery Month, setting the context and tone for the talk.
The host shares recent personal experiences: a friend's relapse, helping others enter treatment, and watching the show Euphoria; he then mentions a viral video of a woman drinking after five years sober to set up a discussion.
He describes his reaction to the viral video where a woman is encouraged to drink and applauded, expressing shock and labeling the situation morally troubling, leading into his main theme about recovery.
Using examples of friends in treatment and relapse, the speaker emphasizes that recovery is a choice made daily, acknowledges different recovery paths, and clarifies that recovery isn't limited to one method like AA.
He reflects on his 32 years sober, family life, and the deliberate decisions to avoid testing drinking, articulating his commitment to recovery and honoring others who choose it.
The host prays for the woman from the viral video, wishes viewers a good weekend, and closes by asking the audience what they will choose today.
All right, Cadre, we're doing take two here and it wasn't the easiest to get take two going. So let's see what happens. Oh, and it says unstable again. I hope it's not talking about me. So yeah, you know, this is the last Saturday of September. And that means it's the last Saturday of recovery month. And let me tell you, I absolutely love recovery month. I love what recovery month stands for. Just in this past week, I have learned of a friend's relapse. I have helped a friend get into treatment, talked to another friend who just got out of treatment that I helped get into treatment.
watched Euphoria, which is like a crazy, crazy ride through addiction and recovery and sex. And I mean, I don't even know, man. More has happened in two episodes of that show than normally happen in like one whole series of a show. And then I saw this video that some of you may have seen And it's a video of a woman with five years of sobriety giving up her sobriety to the great encouragement of her, assumedly her boyfriend. And then when she takes her drink, which she does not look happy about doing, when she takes her drink, the bar erupts in applause.
Now you want to talk about a den of iniquity. I can't think of a better description of that kind of situation. My God, you want to drink, drink. You want to get drunk, get drunk. You're going to applaud a person after five years of sobriety deciding to drink, which has got to be such a difficult decision for so many people. And you know, The young woman's probably just looking for relief and probably not going to find it. So that goes to the title of my live stream. Recovery is a choice. Recovery is a choice that we make.
Recovery is a choice that we make every day There are people who don't believe that alcoholism is a disease. I don't think it matters if you do. There are people who don't believe in AA. Definitely doesn't matter if you don't believe in AA. There are 12 steps in AA for recovery. There's Buddhist recovery. There's religious recovery. There's more secular recovery. There is just doing it on your own. I don't know. There's tons of stuff. And in fact, AA has never had a comment about other paths or about AA being the only path.
So let's just be clear about that. So that being said, what do I mean by recovery as a choice? Well, what I mean is my buddy who just went to treatment, well, he was sober for 15 years and his wife and he were having a conversation on their beautiful porch in their beautiful home with their beautiful kids sleeping and the sun's going down and something to the effect of she was saying, man, I'd love to just share a glass of wine with you on these days. And that's all it took. That's all it took. Eight years later, here we are, right?
Here we are. And he's in treatment. Thank God. Another guy, but he's choosing to be there and it's really, really hard for him to be there. And so I want to honor that choice and I want to honor his wife for supporting him. I'm not blaming his wife for that. I mean, she just said something that felt harmless to her. She hadn't been through addiction with him. She had never been through addiction. People who don't understand addiction do not understand the incredible devastation that it brings to a person's home and their family.
But now he's on his way to treatment and he gets to choose what he's going to do. Recovery is a choice. My friend who relapsed, we could see it coming a mile away. Is he going to choose recovery again? Don't know. Don't know what he's thinking. Don't know. But it's a choice to use again and it's a choice to come back. But it's not an easy choice. There's a lot of shame involved. There's a lot of ego involved. There's a lot of different things involved. And it's just sometimes once you get to drinking again, it can be really hard.
So recovery is a choice that we honor every single day Because when we are choosing to recover, we have made an amazing decision. I stand here with 32 years of recovery, with a 23 year marriage, with a 17 year old daughter who has never seen me drink or use. Neither of them have. And I don't want them to. people sometimes make comments and stuff and it's like, I choose recovery. I choose not to drink. I don't want to. I don't need to. I don't need to test the idea that maybe, oh, it's not an addiction.
Oh, maybe you could just control your drinking. Maybe, and maybe I could put a gun to my head, spin the chamber, Not having any idea how many bullets are in the chamber. Maybe I could do that too. I choose not to today. I choose to be in recovery. I choose to have a family in recovery. I choose to honor all of those who are in recovery today because it is hard work and it is a tough decision in a society that still wants to see us drinking ourselves to death, that wants us to believe, wants to believe for this young woman in that video, what they needed was for her to drink.
They needed to know sobriety doesn't work. I pray for her. I pray she finds what she needs. I pray she finds peace. And I wish everybody an incredibly wonderful weekend. And there you go. What will you choose today?
