Mental Health conversation centered around 12 step recovery and related topics. We talk about spiritual living, living with addiction and growing in the 12 steps. Find us on our home at https://recoverysortof.com/. If you want to join the conversation, email us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com, find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RecoverySortOf, Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/recovery_sort_of/, or Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Recovery-Sort-Of-112376247161866/?view_public_for=112376247161866.
We are doing a recap episode! Instead of doing our recap here and there as we were, we are going to try to have recap episodes every so often to talk about the feedback and add everyone’s voice to the show. We talk through lots of messages that were sent our way, some of our plans for 2023, and some of the highlights of accomplishments from 2022. We also introduce our Audible sponsorship thing where we earn money from people signing up for Audible memberships. You can click here on the Audible link to sign up for a trial membership for 30 days. When you sign up for a free Audible trial using our links, we earn a commission at no cost to you. Listen in and share your thoughts with us.
How to find us and join the conversation:
Email: RecoverySortOf@gmail.com
Episodes mentioned:
Other things:
Dave’s Empty Circle Meditation
Don’t Count Me Out – Book about Bruce
The Weight of Air – Book by David Poses
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Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/recoverysortof/message
We are doing a recap episode! Instead of doing our recap here and there as we were, we are going to try to have recap episodes every so often to talk about the feedback and add everyone’s voice to the show. We talk through lots of messages that were sent our way, some of our plans for 2023, and some of the highlights of accomplishments from 2022. We also introduce our Audible sponsorship thing where we earn money from people signing up for Audible memberships. You can click here on the Audible link to sign up for a trial membership for 30 days. When you sign up for a free Audible trial using our link, we earn a commission at no cost to you. Listen in and share your thoughts with us.
How to find us and join the conversation:
Email: RecoverySortOf@gmail.com
Episodes mentioned:
Other things:
Dave’s Empty Circle Meditation
Don’t Count Me Out – Book about Bruce
The Weight of Air – Book by David Poses
Transcript:
recovery sort of is a podcast where we discuss recovery topics from the perspective of people living in long-term recovery this podcast does not intend to represent the views of any particular group organization or Fellowship the attitudes expressed are solely the opinion of its contributors be advised there may be strong language or topics of an adult nature
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welcome back it’s recovery sort of I’m Jason a guy that’s about to do a recap episode and I’m Billy I’m a person in long-term recovery and I’m Caroline I’m also a person in long-term recovery so here we are it’s 2023 as you listen it’s probably later in January but it’s January 1 for all of us as we record and so we wanted to we wanted to do some stuff we’ve been hearing some stuff we’ve got some ideas about 2023 for the show we wanted to talk about the feedback so we wanted to get into that the first thing I wanted to say and we put this in the show notes for the episode but when Dave was on a couple weeks ago he forgot to mention his empty circle meditation so Sundays three o’clock there’s a link under his episode maybe we’ll throw the link up under this episode as well but we wanted to put that out there so you ready to get in comments sure sounds great okay so we did our episode on marijuana legalization we were all here for that in fact and uh I’m not sure this is what their name is supposed to be um but on YouTube sure germ Trail um said interesting conversation I live in New Hampshire and our governor said why would we legalize something that’s obviously a gateway drug which I think is stupid yeah yeah I agree do you think marijuana is a gateway drug Caroline no I think marijuana is the easiest of all the drugs to access and so inevitably it becomes the first drug you use well unless you live in rural areas where alcohol is the easiest drugs yeah and there is I guess my one I don’t know that it’s gateway drug per se but the idea that alcohol like is the most abused drug because it’s the easiest and most available as soon as marijuana becomes the most available is it going to become the most abused you know like probably right probably so in 20 30 years I mean you might have a population flip that needs to happen first yeah and then but there’s the flip side of that is if it’s legalized you’re sort of taking them out of that uh illicit drug Community like you don’t have to go to CD neighborhoods or you know your bad you know friends to get you know drugs you can just go to the store and get it so it keeps you out of that community of people so anyway uh we get we get some interesting comments so this was just somebody who reached out to us uh Thomas he says hello just letting you know you’re doing a great a real good thing helping others it’s a battle living with the recovery process I have been four years clean and sober after a 30-year addiction lots of people just get lost and feel alone just don’t know where to go or who to talk to so keep what you’re doing it’s a great thing so thank you Thomas thank you appreciate it uh we had someone I guess that’s Joan uh suggested a topic would like to hear more about xylazine and other new cut agencies being used besides fentanyl because of xylazine rescue breathing after naloxone is extremely important which is incredible because we did an episode right damn I must not have heard that episode yet before yeah I think it might have been that’s crazy I guess that’s what happens when it takes this long to get around to recap you’ve already done everything so this was interesting uh I won’t read the entire comment but a guy Jeremy reached out to us one morning through messages and asked if we were on 98 Rock which is the local rock radio station around Baltimore station yeah and I was like no no we’re not and he was saying that uh he heard somebody on there that said they did a recovery podcast in the Baltimore area and he was like I just knew it was one of you guys or whatever and I was like that wasn’t us but I was like damn how many recovery podcasts are the Baltimore yeah I don’t know um but no he said he he listens to us and he loves the podcast even though he’s an AA and then he puts some big old side eyes on us yeah for our bashing of the pit that must have been before the bashing of the promises episode how are you Jeremy
uh another topic suggestion from Mateo hey guys this podcast is incredibly relevant to recovery and what it’s like today in the 21st century kudos for taking risks and controversial topics so maybe not a podcast topic suggestion but a way to give us feedback Anthony reached out to us uh and had some incredible numbers he got his Spotify wrapped or whatever at the year end yeah and he had listened to 7563 minutes of recovery sort of wow more than we did I don’t know I think he like listened to the entire thing thank you so much that’s incredible so yeah he said in three months he’s listened to almost all of our episodes he was on number 147. wow that’s awesome three months that is crazy that’s like multiple episodes a day Anthony you might be sick yeah he said he’s not up to date yet but he will be this week we need to come out with a quiz for like are you addicted to recovery sort of uh his sobriety date is November 19 2019 and the first episode he found on Spotify is dated November 17th so he figured he would be an addict about it and binge every episode nice yeah awesome okay you guys ready for some fun feedback this is about the clarity statement episode we did eight billion years ago I don’t even remember that I know I mean I kind of remember we talked about it but I think that was even before we had good equipment I know I hate I think that was a topic I suggested it might have been I think it was I don’t think that’s changed any I don’t like it well we got some uh some lengthy feedback about nice which is interesting so it’s from William uh he said sorry I didn’t get to see your video sooner here’s my take on the clarity statement first this isn’t either fellowship or conference approved as such it has no place being used in any meeting as only n a approved literature should be used in meetings to use reductio add absurdum words I don’t understand if we can use this can we use other unapproved literature religious texts Mayo’s Little Red Book the Turner Diaries using it in meetings is strongly implied endorsement any thoughts about that so I hate the clarity statement I don’t think it should be read in meetings but I don’t necessarily agree with that statement I think groups and different places I’ve been do use outside literature for different reasons I mean maybe that’s endorsement I guess that that’s all up for interpretation but there’s nowhere in I guess that I can see and we did the Traditions episodes that says you can’t quote or read anything from Material that’s not an a approved like that’s not a [ ] law somewhere that you can’t read outside material yeah but we do say that in our meetings or I’ve heard that in like group consciences and stuff like only na approved literature there was a meeting or something a women’s meeting down in the Parkville area that used to do readings that were not n a you know like just kind of like more Wellness spiritual um readings at the beginning of their meeting and they were doing that for years and then at some point they voted to stop because it wasn’t any Improvement yeah I mean to me that’s all the autonomy of the group like if your group decides we don’t read anything but n a approved literature that’s fine but I don’t know that that’s you know again as we went through with the Traditions there’s nowhere in the Traditions that says you can’t do it whether it’s endorsement or not uh I don’t know I I guess you could make that argument I feel like it aligns a little little bit with like you shouldn’t be having a speakers chair and NA meeting like I feel like those principles are are kind of aligned right because it’s blurring the message of Narcotics Anonymous is that an opinion though or something more of uh so again going back to Traditions like I don’t doesn’t say anything about any of that in Traditions anywhere I mean I think there’s Traditions that that and I’m I’m not at all prepared for this conversation but um I think you can make a pretty strong case using the Traditions that you shouldn’t be having people from AA chair the interesting part or the reverse the interesting part about the Traditions was that what I really learned was that there are no they don’t really say anything right well they’re guidelines so to me I’m like all right let’s say we have a guy that’s been to aana goes to both maybe he’s even got just a [ ] AA sponsor but he comes in he’s got a great message and a great story about how the 12 steps of n a have saved his life do I give a [ ] I don’t know maybe I do I don’t but I’m like is it more important that he’s helping people or is it more important that but what about the guy that doesn’t go to Na and gets us to do an NA meeting like and he’s just it certainly happened yeah oh yeah no it happens a lot certainly it happens a lot um even for like h i commitments attack I feel like we’ve had this conversation I feel like we’ve had this conversation so this is what I’m saying if if you’re the women’s group you used to go to if it was 10 women every week and they all benefited from Reading from some other spiritual literature that they brought in that seems like a really useful time to use not n a approved literature in a meeting everybody’s benefiting there’s no harm done it’s great right if they’re doing it because there’s newcomers and Recovery houses in the area and they’re hoping to drive those people away from the meeting and they also just hate traditions and Old-Timers and just want to Buck the system maybe that’s not good reasons for you you know what I mean like I don’t think it’s about the YouTube and I think those are so going back to that meeting those readings were really cool and they were nice and they were a good point of introspection they were something different to hear at the beginning of the meeting instead of the same thing that we all just kind of tune out at this point um but I do see how that’s a slippery slope because what we definitely don’t want people doing is coming in and reading Bible verses at the beginning of a meeting and if you you can do one why can’t you do the other well this is why uh can’t do that I went out to that group and I really liked that they did that but I didn’t like that it wasn’t approved literature so instead I just went in the basic text and pulled out other pieces of it and we read those at my home group in the beginning for the same reason because it was different it was something else to hear and we didn’t go outside the rules there you go right sorry yeah so that’s an option but anyway yeah I don’t what were we talking about Clarity saying that yeah well yeah it got to be whether na it meetings should only have n a approved right periods anyway let’s go back to Williams Point second unless someone has copyrighted or trademarked clean or sober then we have no right to co-opt those terms third we say in N A we don’t care what or how much you used Etc but we do care what words you use to describe yourself total BS the bogus dilemma the clarity statement anguishes over is no dilemma at all the Dilemma is in the reading we do recover now that’s a gen genuine dilemma that’s when at the end of the road we find that we can no longer function as a human being with or without drugs we all face the same dilemma what is there left to do either go on as best as we can to the bitter ends jails institutions or death or find a new way to live so I think what he’s saying there is that that’s a real dilemma right you know what I mean okay that’s a dilemma you gotta deal with not what [ ] words you use to call yourself or I agree with that point a little bit uh fourth we claim that the newcomer is the most important person in the room yet when they come in scared confused more ready to bolt than stay we greet them with you better talk like us if you want to belong how is that welcoming loving tolerant inclusive nurturing kind or loving giving people a chance to grow and change is what we’re all about I don’t disagree yeah fifth this reading seems to be meant more to appease members with time than anything else n a is resilient so is a a we don’t need to be the Arbiters of language I heard a guy actually in our area in the Baltimore area share he had 40 something years clean and he was sharing that a lot of that with the like the clarity statement and specifically clean and not letting people say clean and sober like a lot of that came directly as like a resentment at AAA for the unwelcomeness that addicts felt at AA and they really wanted to separate and this guy was involved in all of that movement and he said and they really wanted and they really wanted to like completely separate from AAA almost to like a [ ] you guys we’re gonna go over here and do this thing so a lot of that language stuff came out of that like they didn’t want anything similar to what they were doing over in AAA they wanted to be completely separate and to prove like we can go over here we’re going to call ourselves something different we’re going to do something different we’re going to show you guys that you know we can do it too and it wasn’t for any specific reason other than resentment right right but I love how they masked it with this idea idea that it was best for the newcomer to not confuse them because that sounds like how I live in my life right like I want to do [ ] to manipulate the situation but I make it look good well here’s what I’ll say so I think the clean and sober I do struggle with that a little bit because I think it perpetuates the idea that alcohol is different right like a lot of people come in the rooms and they think well I have a drug problem but I can still drink I actually think it’s slightly different than that even though there is confusion around that um I I my understanding of those words is different now because uh actually what we were talking about how CNN’s broadcast of whatever the New Year’s thing it was sober or sober curious I guess they were saying they were going to show less alcohol on their presentation of New Year’s which was funny because it ended up they they screwed up for some technical difficulties and like missed the ball drop in New Orleans or the actual you know 12 o’clock in New Orleans and so there was all these things on Twitter about how uh drunk Don Lemon never missed but anyway anyway the difference was abstinence is not drinking alcohol sober is pursuing a healthy lifestyle like they’re two different things so I I would say that sounds the same as as what these words mean like clean supposedly means this abstinent idea but sober is more this kind of idea of recovery this idea of like seeking a pursuit of betterment that’s the way the article presented it at least that’s interesting but I would question whether you know the general population interprets that as the definition of sober you got a point I mean I I don’t know but yeah I thought that was interesting that they presented it that way we should just it should just be in recovery no sober no click just in recovery I just yeah to me it’s like arguments about things that don’t matter that much you know what I mean like anybody that sticks around for six months and goes to meetings is probably going to figure it out you know there’s more harm a lot of times you know telling people they’re doing stuff wrong or pointing out how they’re not fitting in or not conforming in fact a lot of us come in we don’t want to fit in and conform we’re used to not being people I can figure it out if you come around enough so I can still say is it any different for the guy that comes in and still does his weird ass announcement I’m a recovering crackhead or whatever [ ] words yeah right you know they those guys that do that like to me that is if you’re going to point out like dangers like that’s just as dangerous because he’s just separating and wanting to be different and wanting to to be outside the norm you know but I don’t really care what anybody calls himself I don’t even call yourself an addict just say your name is whatever I don’t I’m not going to kick you out of the meeting or get hung up over any of that [ ] yeah I I think when I when the justification that people will figure it out eventually I think that works because to some new gray we try to pull people into alignment so that they’re all saying the same thing and so that is the consistent message that people do here and even if someone’s not calling them out specifically they’re going to enough meetings where they’re hearing 98 of people say the same thing and they kind of fall in line
um but if if you know someone can make the argument that if if we step away from that and we stop trying to get people to speak the same way that so many deviations would start to occur that like there is no consistency and then people are just all over the place forever and I I mean you know doesn’t matter is is the ultimate question the same thing I hear anytime I hear an argument against like being good to other people in humanity it’s just fear we’re all gonna die it’s all chaos
[Laughter] let me finish this damn email [Laughter] finally I have been clean and sober for 32 plus years clean is over there he goes I take my recovery very seriously I attend meetings in both fellowships and have since and have since very early in my recovery I do not struggle with reconciling the two I also really don’t care what propels someone in a 12-step recovery I’ve been in N A meetings with porn addicts food addicts sex addicts sugar addicts and video game addicts again I really don’t care what or how much someone used if we as a fellowship can help we owe it to ourselves and future members to do so I refer to myself as an addict in n a and an alcoholic in AAA out of respect not out of fear of being ostracized many AAA members do use other substances recreationally or addictively not my problem if made aware of that I choose not to seek their Counsel on recovery related subjects many n a members also self-medicate I engage them similarly I don’t want them to leave or fail many do find paths to abstinence that’s my hope for everyone who shows up but we have each other we each have our own Journey implying that someone’s journey is wrong is anathema to recovery yours in recovery Bill e sorry Bill we’ve been calling you William because that was what I saw at the top of the email but your bill and you use the word anathema then I gotta look up at some other point because I don’t know what I don’t know what that word means yeah damn it thanks Bill no I do appreciate the uh the thought out response and yeah he’s opinionated I mean I agree with most of that yeah me too I don’t I don’t disagree with a lot of it I don’t really like the clarity statement or see the purpose of it yeah and most of those multiple identities of Addiction come out of treatment anyway that come you’re addicted to this that another thing your cross-addicted dual addicted right whatever that’s all treatment words foreign
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so we got an email from Dylan which wasn’t particularly about any episode he said hey guys I’m in the military almost 10 years now and I used to know a couple of people in the love you lots area of Virginia which he specifies as Norfolk and Virginia Beach because I had no idea um that used to be in the military but I need some guidance as far as the intersection of military versus recovery Community is there anyone you can recommend is there a podcast I missed do you know anyone I could reach out to uh and so we we have not done an episode on life in the military as it relates to addiction and Recovery do you think that’s something that needs to be covered so there are some specific issues with military people that from work I know like voices is done with Perry point and things like that there are some sort of it’s a specific culture in the military of like we’re strong we don’t need any help we take care of our own you know what I mean so there is some uh reluctance to reach out and admit surrender and emit defeat like those aren’t words that are synonymous with military and Military culture um so there are some barriers there that you know in that culture that are a little hard to overcome we’re specifically Lucky in this area because we have the Perry Point Military uh recovery center right down the street so we get a lot of folks that have military experience in this area um but we haven’t done a podcast about it it could be interesting it is on our list it is okay yeah it’s on our list I think we’re struggling to find right now someone who is active in the military I’m an active military person yeah I know a lot of retired people yeah a lot of people after they leave then come into recovery so if you are active in the military preference to like five-star generals active in recovery please reach out maybe we can feature girls well and Dave Dave doll uh that did our episodes on meditation and a few things he’s military or ex-military I think he was a Marine so he’s military as well yeah and that’s what we uh we did I reached out to Dave Dave said it was great idea so I connected those two so hopefully they are still talking or or Dave has gotten him to somebody still active um because Dave’s really tied into that Community as well so you know hey uh that could be an episode coming up if we can find the person we need uh we got another funding support email so the recovery sort of funds are supporting Sean Sean was looking for housing after he came out of treatment he’s local to the area he had a job up here he needed needed the money to get into the housing like the down payment so to speak and we were able to cover that with the recovery sort of fun so that’s awesome so we got a message from Amber don’t know if you’ve ever covered anything about this but I was court ordered to a recovery house as was my husband we went to the same program just different houses him to a men’s house and me and the women’s he got kicked out after four days for being married to me the only reason I wasn’t kicked out was I was there longer we were not allowed to associate with each other even though we were married for years at that point that seemed like a pretty stupid ass idea yeah just that I mean I don’t know if it’s worth a whole show but like I’m what I wanted to do because somebody pointed this out to me a long time ago was that there’s like a lot of insurance for all that exists because of these court-ordered placements in rehab because I okay people will be selling drugs so they’ll have drug charges but then they’ll get court ordered to rehab but then it’s insurance fraud because the they have to go to the rehab and the rehab has to diagnose them with something some sort of withdrawal even though they’re not having it in order for them to be it’s like Yeah I wanted to do an episode all about how this court ordering of people into Rehabilitation Facilities is a problem yeah but so I guess I wasn’t aware court order people into halfway houses or recovery houses I guess so yeah I don’t even know that was all the things announced either right yeah it might have been part of like a long-term program like if you get court ordered to drug court which we did an episode on maybe part of the drug court process it’s like you have to follow these stages and I’m trying to think like Mike so I was court ordered to like an alcohol program and I was court ordered to like IOP but never anything inpatient and I was allowed to pick like I didn’t there was multiple choices and I just picked which one I wanted to go to it wasn’t a like court ordered to a specific one some recovery houses qualify as treatment and so I would imagine if someone is court-ordered to a drug treatment program there’s there’s specific recovery houses that would check that box yeah what and I’m guessing with their situation like you think I guess I’m thinking well they probably or maybe didn’t like they should have had a choice of the recovery how she went into and you think you would go talk to those people and go hey we both got to come in and we’re married like How’s that gonna work before you got there and they’re throwing people out like it was yeah but they’re not information shared up front like there’s too much missing out of that story to know how that ended up that way I know it’s inpatient facilities you can’t go in as a couple I know I encountered that am I using when you know me and my boyfriend were both trying to get treatment we couldn’t both get admitted to the same facility it was just ridiculous um I mean it’s not though because that’s a huge distraction like if I have my significant other with me in 28 day rehab I’m not having to kind of step outside of my box and be outside of my comfort zone to make how are they going to have rehab romances if they’re [ __ ] vowels
well that’s what I’m saying though what’s the difference that’s going to be going on either way there’s going to be like I mean they really try to discourage that yeah but it’s gonna happen whether you’re well depending on the facility though like some facilities are small so the ones I went to like I wouldn’t want to be in a Therapy Group session with my wife sitting there you know maybe or whatever yeah but well and I guess I could see like the jealous partner problem if you’re trying to have your rehab robots are still there like I could see that leading so there’s lots of drugs the other one you know yeah that doesn’t then you’re into that [ ] like so that could be hard but these people just make some stuff places though they were in like a men’s house a little crazy maybe they did groups combined groups at that facility together I don’t know I don’t know I’m sure there’s more information but like yeah in general there’s we have a [ ] up system yeah sorry I’m sorry that happened to you and I’m sorry it happened to everybody else that it’s happened to yeah when it’s like court ordered to meetings like my understanding of that was you just you went to whatever meetings you wanted right you didn’t have to go to specifically n a you didn’t specifically a a it was just 12-step meeting so you know yeah yeah somewhere along the line somebody dropped the ball with that one but uh Victoria reached out we were in her top five uh podcasts for the year yeah so that’s pretty awesome thank you Victoria uh and we talked with Austin who has experienced some tragedy in his life and we’re looking into doing an episode around that uh so we got a comment on YouTube on on our tradition one episode and Eric said awesome thank you guys for this episode just happened to stumble across your podcast today and I’m extremely grateful I did I can only assume that he was having a debate with someone about what tradition and we proved him right yes the only mean anything that’s the only reason he could be that excited about that episode Traditions don’t mean anything right they’re a lot of grounds to be mean to people
so that’s about all the the feedback we had we did hit some Milestones this year though uh we have 50 000 listens all time it’s crazy to just even think about it’s like a football stadium yeah yeah they’re full of lessons maybe it’s fewer people one time listen a lot still cool though still cool uh our our highest percentages of listeners come from the US the UK and Canada probably not hugely shocking right three large areas with English speaking populations uh similar cultures our largest three listener percentages of states are California Maryland and Pennsylvania so wow thank you listeners of California Maryland and Pennsylvania uh we got in the paper this year Yes actually technically three times uh because the article was in the paper and then like a couple weeks later it was in some live entertainment section or something and then we were just uh we were number five on the top seven heartwarming stories of the year for the Cecil weeks oh nice oh I missed that one yeah yeah that’s nice I know right doing good stuff yeah yeah and didn’t you guys get mentioned even prior to the actual article when you got the award wasn’t there a Cecil wig yeah the voice is banquet so the article wasn’t about us no but we were in yeah we got an honorable mention yeah well and that’s that was what I was going to say next was we got an award from Voices of Hope which is kind of cool and also you know we kind of have an end to get an award from Voices of Hope yeah now I got it sitting right on my mantle so my wife can see how important I am and what good stuff we’re doing over here on Sunday mornings yeah well I mean you know if you’re ever getting ready to leave the house on a Sunday morning and she starts complaining about about not having time with you you just point to that award it’s like this is important dear no I pick it up and start to polish it do the podcast this morning I’ll be back in a couple hours breathing on it
so yeah the award was for the uh the donation money you know and maybe this is where we talk about donations a little bit again uh we’ve gotten some you know some sporadic donations here and there one-time donations which you can give on our website recoverysortov.com there’s a little PayPal link it says donate now or donate to me or give me money send me cookies I don’t know what it says it says something but it looks like a PayPal thing and it’s legit it’s real um and that money goes you know anything that doesn’t go to continue running the podcast goes on and passed on to the community of people who are trying to find this recovery Community or in the process of finding this recovery community in this healing to help them in ways that grant money doesn’t cover generally is what it does kind of covers the gaps so that’s great and we have a couple of you know people who have signed up for regular monthly donations which is amazing as well we are looking into having subscriptions in the new near future which will remove the advertisements from the episode so if you hate advertisements we might have a deal for you soon still thinking about that but if not well but if not you would still get the episode for free just currently the way it is we don’t plan to stop that yeah we always will be out there for festival right right you just have to tolerate our advertisements so that we can keep funding you know the podcast and the donations that we do which is great and it’s amazing so thank you everybody for all your contributions we also want to talk about the sponsorship kind of agreement we have going with audible right now and I’m going to let Billy say that yeah so uh audible is a audio book uh platform that is where I listen to most of audio books that I reference on the show as I say all the time I say I read these books but I don’t really read at all I listen to the audio version of most of them we’re red too yeah that’s nice yeah it’s it’s yeah it’s easy to be read to um driving in the car you know is where I listen to most of them uh so almost all the books that I reference on recovery you know my library’s full of these books about recovery and addiction and some of the ones I still go back and listen to over at different times um but we want to see about getting into some sort of sponsorship program with them to get money basically they would give us 15 I think it is or a certain amount of money if people click on the link and sign up for the audible monthly subscription yeah they started out as a trial I think it’s a two-week trial 30-day free trial oh wow 30-day free trial no commitment and then you just do what I do you put a reminder in your phone then on the 30th day to cancel it or like the 28th day in case you’re busy on the 29th day or 30th day like the 28 days from whenever you sign up just put a note in to cancel it and then wait like six or eight months and then you can get another free one I don’t know I used to do that for a while I would cancel and then wait a while and sign up for another one or use a second email but if you really enjoy it you could just keep the audible membership so now I keep the audible membership because I listen to enough books but in the beginning I wasn’t sure because it is whatever it is 18 or 20 a month
between fifteen and twenty dollars a month and uh I use it now because I listen to at least one book a month you get one book a month free with your subscription with a paid subscription you actually will get two books for free when you sign up for the trial so great and if you do that we get some money and again that money will go to whatever we need to run the podcast and then that whatever we don’t use for the podcast gets sent on to help people in recovery I think kind of the cool part too is like you get to sign up as a trial which is I I did the same thing Billy I think I tried a couple of Trials along the way and then and ultimately I found that I enjoyed it and so I did keep it right um and I’m a steady audible member I was listening to my book on the way in here this morning like it’s just what I do but the cool part is like you don’t have to pay any money out of your pocket to help us right you can just sign up for the trial Get It Free cancel it and we’re good but if you do enjoy it like Billy and I do and you love to overthink everything like yeah go ahead keep yeah and some of the people we’ve had on um you know Bruce his book uh was on there no I can’t think of the name of the book at the moment don’t count me out yeah don’t count me out we have uh Brook seem is going to be on a future episode she has a book side effects may occur like both of those books I listen to on Audible so their books are on there um hopefully we’ll get some future artists we want to get my plan or hope would be to get Gabor mate to come on at some point that would be awesome he’s got a bunch of good books on there really so I think I have two or three of his books in my library I want to say uh David that came on and talked to us about the weight of air yeah I believe and and you know rest in peace David I do believe his did come out after I ended up reading it on Audible so I think that’s out there as well yeah so go forward you guys will start to see links coming up uh in the show notes on the website um linking you to any books that have been mentioned in in episodes so keep an eye out for that and then also people can if you just want to sign up for a trial right now you can go to
www.audibletrial.com backslash recovery sort of everybody who thinks it’s impossible to remember that reach out to me because I’m arguing with Caroline that nobody can remember that it’s just it’s really simple though it’s recovery sort of I mean it’s I know I said it backwards audibletrial.com backslash recovery sort of that’s what it is it’s it’s very simple if you want an audible trial we’re just confused recovery sort of all right link in the show notes yeah yeah just look below the show the link will be there you’re good Billy you’ve heard that we were in the top five recovery podcast for a minute or something oh gosh I wasn’t prepared for that but yes I and I don’t even know how I came across that I think I was on a recovery site or looking because I listen to different recovery podcasts or I’m always looking for different recovery podcasts and uh came across the thing and we were listed as a top five recovery podcasts you know in the country which was pretty interesting I can’t I wish I would have had the link up I could tell you but yeah so I had shared that on my social media and it’s just interesting to see like wow people are actually listening to this now because originally it was to me the only people listening are like our friends or people that want to be nice to us that live here or people that work at voices I hope because they want to hear themselves and that’s about it you know right but they hear like people in other states other countries other places they’re listening is pretty incredible so in 2023 we’re are aiming to get on the women’s list top five recovery yes Jenny and I are charging forward with that goal nice
so some of our Spotify wrapped for podcasters our podcast was in the top five percent most shared globally I think that just means I share it a lot I’m assuming I can’t imagine it’s just you though because everyone’s sharing their podcast the way that you’re sharing Jason are they I mean anyone who’s trying to have a successful podcast is sharing it a whole hecking lot so it’s got to be more than just you you’re in the top 10 most followed podcasts which seems incredible to me yeah I saw those numbers I’m like this can’t be real it’s not to me that it can’t be real it just makes me question like God what are the other 90 doing sorry but so here’s when I talk to people about like our success or what’s working it hasn’t been like all of a sudden all these people started listening we’ve been doing this for three [ __ ] years yeah and it’s just been us showing up and continually putting out content on a repeated basis and keeping it interesting and fresh and and new and not just regurgitating the same stuff yeah you know so it keeps people engaged and you know if one person listens and they tell five friends and then one of those five decides to listen as well you know that’s how it grows yeah I think Billy’s right people don’t listen to us because we’re good they listen to us because we just keep showing up all right like these guys have a lot of episodes they must be good right false assumption there uh so our podcasts all games right like we’re in the gym [Laughter] plus 331 percent listeners wow that’s great that is big well the other thing I wonder about is with the amount of content we have out how much does that push us up like in algorithms and things like that you know what I mean we have so much now for the what are they called the SC search word optimization stuff yeah search engine optimization so we’ve done enough episodes where now if you start to search up like it used to be kind of hard to find us if you try to search up recovery sort of it didn’t just come up you know now if you Google it it comes right up I think that’s because your phone’s used to you looking at it yeah I was wondering the same thing no it’ll do it on other stuff too I’ve done it on other people’s uh uh Spotify apps so like other people that I know that have asked about recovery sort of podcasts I’m like oh let me see I’ll find and if you start recovery we’ll come up pretty quickly so yeah but that helps a lot you know what I mean like because what are you going to do you’re going to type in recovery and then whatever the first couple that come up you’re gonna click the first couple you know so I think that person’s phone new Billy was looking well they know we were in the same area we were because I did the same thing and I think I shared with you that it wasn’t you know when I put in like recovery podcasts I don’t it was like numbered on Spotify I think it was Spotify yeah um but I wonder if it’s also Guided by prior listening because I don’t listen to other recovery projects yeah this was just the other night like about a week ago or maybe it’s just gotten better since a month ago
146 up followers what the [ ] sorry everything disappeared yeah some of those things I weren’t sure what they meant uh yeah I didn’t know what they all meant either for 686 people we are a top 10 podcast for 396 people we’re a top five podcast and 91 crazy [ ] out there have us as our number one I guess I’m probably one of the 91. no probably not
I only go listen to our episodes that I’m not a one all right my favorite ones are the ones I’m on actually we probably have 89 and Jenny and Caroline
[Music] thank you
[Music] all right so 2023 what are we doing for 2023 here we doing the spiritual principle thing I think that’s what we decided right we’re just going to keep rolling along because there’s like you know I think there’s some person who said there was like 46 spiritual principles but then there’s like a book that says there’s 58. my wife would tell you there’s 26 spiritual principles in the basic text we’re just in the basic text that’s at least enough to get us through to you yeah so that’s what you I think 26. anyway can you ask her for a list so we can make sure we don’t I’m sure she knows the list oh yeah she can make a list I would love the list of those 26. but we had also talked about the idea of the uh character defect and the opposite spiritual principle so I don’t know if we want to try to incorporate that idea into our spiritual principle talk or have that as its own topic but I love that Khan’s because that is a big concept that I learned in recovery that help is very very helpful to like how I live yeah yeah I mean we’ll bring in the defect I guess and then I’ll argue that the principle and the defect don’t exist
yeah uh We’ve also been talking a little bit you know diving a little further into like the research and news and and what’s going on in the Science World and and what’s being reported on around the recovery or addiction community so I think you know with Caroline helping with Jenny helping um this is kind of the direction we’re we’re sort of starting to shift towards I don’t know that it changes a ton about our podcast I think we just want to have more so to speak experts on to teach us more things about it so we can you know find ways to make that apply to our life as well yeah and I guess just to be frank I feel like we maybe have a little more weight now to get real guests
we we need to yeah build it up build it up and then get the real celebrities on yeah if we want to have like genuine you know authorities in these fields I mean I don’t know we’d probably be surprised most people love to hear themselves talk so they probably would go on anyway but still it’s it’s like now we have like a legitimate established you know platform with right years of episodes and things people can reference and they can see you know a product that we put out and I think that helps you know when we’re trying to get people especially people that have like publicists and [ ] you know they’re gonna have like Gatekeepers yeah so hopefully we have some help getting through some of those Gates yeah Snowball Effect yeah yeah we’ll get there what would be like your biggest get of 2023 what would be your biggest guest you think I got some pretty big ones I don’t know I don’t even know anybody who is famous no that does recovery stuff so immediately I think Russell Brand Russell Brands like that’s the big one because he’s got a huge following and he does a lot of recovery stuff well sorry so you could say like uh Robert Downey Jr but he doesn’t really talk about recovery stuff well that’s why yeah that’s why I think he um and now like Curtis more and more well I was thinking too like Brandon Novak like he’s got a lot going on probably not a hard one recovery houses and stuff and he’s got recovery houses that are local you know fairly local so to this area yeah we could try that we didn’t we didn’t get our comedian on either I know and I I do want to do that yeah because he he seemed like he’d be fun yeah from the voices of hope it was yeah recovery yeah yeah that’s his he’s got a comedy college and he also uh did does this does like recovery uh comedy ma what do you call that show like not a show but like his his thing is recovery he could do a short set because I would like to hear it I also wanted to make sure we thank Stephanie who runs our Tick Tock because I’m old and don’t understand Tick Tock and it’s difficult and challenging and I don’t want it on my phone because China I have it on my phone just so I can see how many times people like now I don’t really care to watch Tick Tock either but yeah I think my kids do I’m sure they do they have to they’re not social media people though yeah they’re weird that’s true they go to the alternative schools so they’re not like I don’t have all this peer influences yeah I don’t know but I do really appreciate Stephanie’s help because that’s awesome and I don’t know how to do it so yeah social media is weird uh Twitter might be falling apart who knows so maybe we won’t be on there forever but we don’t do a tunnel so I briefly started to get back on uh Facebook for like a minute because I’m like well I should try to do some stuff with the show and there’s some things I could do and it’s it feels disgusting like I don’t know you like one of my posts like I got on for like a week and then it was like two weeks and I’m like oh I hate this feels dirty I can’t do this and I had to stop like I haven’t been on it in a while again yeah so I was trying yeah I don’t know I don’t I don’t get on my own personal Facebook much but yeah I mean Instagram’s doing well Facebook’s doing well I don’t know I I hope we have an awesome 2023 I don’t have anything else to recap uh we love your feedback please keep doing that keep spreading the word you know it doesn’t cost anything to like great reviews subscribe tell your friends tell your family those are all ways you can support us without spending a cent you can uh support us through donations obviously like we talked about earlier you can just listen whatever yeah and you’re on Instagram is the recovery sort of yeah page or recovery sort of at recovery sort of whatever it is yeah I don’t know how to do it either yeah and I’m on Instagram as recovery sort of Billy that’s the one social media I do have so you can get a hold of me through there message me through there I’m not a daily user but I will message you back and Jason does good with messenger back on all the platforms so sometimes yeah well maybe not right away like none of that shit’s instant but yeah I I mean thank you thank you everybody for for everything thank you for listening thank you for feeling like this helps you it definitely helps us we’ve said it a billion times I mean this thing just has changed my life and continues to um thank you for everybody involved in the process I also want to give a shout out to Chelsea who sent us a really nice Christmas gift uh thank you very much that was very special with a nice little note in there that was really uh really heartwarming you know that someone would take their time to you know consider us during the holidays I’m terrible at thinking of other people during the holidays so it was extra heartwarming to me like gosh I’m so terrible at that stuff so so thank you Chelsea it was greatly appreciated yeah Billy found a new way to criticize himself and the the apricot ones are [ ] incredible so that’s that’s awesome all right so everybody have a great beginning to your your year and uh stay with us enjoy the ride have a good week [Music] [Applause]
did you like this episode share it with people you think might get something out of it check out the rest of our episodes at recoverysortup.com also while you’re there you can find ways to link up with us on Facebook Twitter Instagram Reddit YouTube anything we’re always looking for new ideas got an idea you want us to look into reach out to us [Music]