Sobriety, Relapse & Redemption: Rich Speaks On Shia Labeouf & What True Accountability Looks Like

I am going to deconstruct a recent interview between the film actor Shia LeBuff and Andrew

Callahan from the YouTube channel, Channel 5. Shia LeBuff is arrested again. New Orleans police arrested him for allegedly firing people on royal street. The actor faces two charges of simple battery with a hearing schedule from March 19th. The transformer star has been going through a lot of turmoil.

He's been spotted all around the city since last Thursday, drinking and shirtless. Channel 5 news was so. We made it. Yeah, we made it.

If you've even been on the internet, a modest amount recently, you've probably come across

some of these clips. The L went viral this is a conversation that has created quite the discourse around it. And I thought it was worthy of discussion here, not for the Celacious Celebrity Aspect of it or for the voyeuristic aspects of it.

“But because I think it illustrates certain aspects of addiction and recovery that are worthy”

of deeper discussion, this is not TMZ, this is the RRP. My name is Rich Roll, I am an alcoholic in recovery. And I thought that it would be worth our time to understand the dynamic between these two individuals in this conversation as a means to illustrate certain aspects of addiction and recovery for the purpose of being helpful to you, the audience, should you be an

addict who is struggling with sobriety, or somebody who hasn't addict in their life and is struggling to understand how to support that person on the path to recovery. This is a bit of an experiment.

My very first solo episode, so let me know how this one lands for you.

If you like it, I can do more of these. In addition, if you have some insights you'd like to share in response to this episode or perhaps your own story of addiction and recovery or the story of your relationship with somebody in addiction or recovery that you think would be interesting to discuss or parse on this show. You can email that to me at [email protected].

So let's start by watching a clip.

“I think a lot of people probably saw some of the Marty Grott Media coverage not understand”

or about the arrest and stuff. God bless them, likely want to know how you're doing. Bro, I've been having the time of my life, you know I have some contrition on my heart, you know what I mean? It's not nice to hurt people ever, it's fucking lanes.

People got hurt, we got to deal with that, I'm going to deal with that, I'm going to deal with that info, I eat it all, it's on me, it's not on them, it's on me, I fucked up, it's on me, I fucked up, it's on me definitely, see take responsibility for $4,000 or what I'm playing games. But I had a great time, he's so charismatic, he is so compelling to watch that it makes

it a little bit harder to just call it what it is, which is just utter horseshit. This is just manipulation bullshit 101, 100%. Just a proclamation of contrition without actually any contrary action to kind of account for the harm that he's creating is just an empty promise at best. And so I think what's happening here is that he is indulging in his denial, he's convincing

himself that this isn't so bad, he's obviously well aware that he's an alcoholic and that alcohol is problematic for him, but he's willing to continue doing it because he believes that he can still control it, that he can get away with his bad behavior and that he's not going to have to pay for it in any meaningful way. That's the truth of the matter is that this is only headed in one direction and that direction

is bad that there are people who are suffering in the wake of this behavior that while he may be acknowledging that, he's not actually doing anything about it in a meaningful way. And I see no indication that he's going to stop behaving this way until he hits some kind

“of rock bottom and perhaps that's what he needs in order for him to wake up and realize”

the truth of his behavior and the situation that he's created for himself.

for a moment and just acknowledge the seriousness of Shilopus behavior.

This is somebody who has been behaving badly for a long time, you know, kind of very much in his disease of alcoholism, but behavior that is not without it's very significant consequences. There's been physical battery, there's been sexual battery, there's been lawsuits, run-ins with the law, et cetera. And so I want to make sure that people understand I'm not attempting to in any way minimize that simply because this is a very, you know,

kind of charismatic individual, this well-known actor who seems to be self-aware, I'm not

in any way giving him a pass or letting him off the hook for this.

“I think there's a big difference between understanding how addiction distorts a person's mind”

and behavior on the one hand and then excusing that behavior on the other hand and my goal here is simply to help all of you glean a better understanding of addiction and the journey towards recovery and what's important to understand about somebody who is in the throws of a relapse it is not in any way to give this person a pass or to excuse their behavior. As somebody who has been a recovery for a very long time and also is no stranger to relapse, I can tell you

that recovery is a program of vigilance. There is no stasis, there's no coasting, there's no taking your sobriety for granted. It requires a tremendous amount of work, persistent work, where you really can't afford to ever take your foot off the pedal or your headed towards relapse.

So when you see somebody who is in the throws of a relapse, the first thing to understand is that

the relapse began long before the person picked up the drink or took the drug or sat down at the poker table. That relapse pulled out of the station perhaps days before perhaps weeks before perhaps years before and it begins with a change in that person's relationship with their recovery program in which they take their self-will back and they begin to lack an appreciation for the fact that they are fundamentally powerless over the substance or the behavior. There's a thing

that happens with addicts where once you kind of get your life back and things start to feel like they're moving in the right direction, you want to take the helm again and start driving the car yourself.

“And that's what we call self-will as opposed to a surrender of your will, which is what's required”

in order to achieve sobriety. You have to acknowledge deeply to your core that you are truly powerless over again the substance or the behavior. And then you have to do the work of turning it over to your higher power, of bringing other people into your community, of running your decisions by them, of trusting them with giving you feedback on those decisions and those life choices. And the minute you stop doing that and you begin to isolate and think that you don't

need that anymore or that you've got what you needed out of the program of recovery. And now you can just kind of go about your life. That's when the relapse begins. And it may take a long time before that manifests in the air and the behavior, but you really become a ticking time bomb. And in the

“instance of a Shilobah, who somebody I don't know and have never met, I see somebody who has struggled”

with addiction for a very long time. At some point, it appears that he got sober. This was a guy who was well on his way to building a life in recovery. It appeared that he had found his higher power in the church. And he seemed to be pretty right-sized for somebody who admittedly has a gigantic ego about what his priorities were. Obviously, that didn't stick. I have no idea what happened in the interim in terms of his behavior in New Orleans. But clearly at some point, whatever he was doing,

either stopped working or he stopped doing it. He lost sight of the things that he had to do in order to get sober and started resorting to some old behavior patterns that led him to the decision that it was a good idea to go down to New Orleans and just do whatever you want it fast forward to arrests and all the kind of public frenzy around all of this. And again, I'm not raising this to be

a situation like this was going to emerge if the person stops doing the things that keep you sober on a daily basis, running your decisions by other people, holding yourself accountable, making amends for your past wrongs, writing those past wrongs. That's very different from apology. What we're seeing in this interview is Shia. It's a lot of apologizing. A lot of self-awareness around

“his behavior. But making amends is very different. That's when you have to actually write the wrong.”

And sometimes in addition to writing those wrongs when it's possible, that means writing your behavior going forward, taking the contrary action followed by the next right action one after the other quietly, essentially anonymously, to repair trust with not just the public, but with the people in your life that you care about. Once you stop doing that or you take your sobriety for granted or you believe you don't need to do any of that, that's when you put yourself in peril.

And I see somebody who is very much in his ego who believes that he is in the driver's seat and in control of his behavior and his decision making. And is in a tremendous amount of denial regarding the harm that his behavior is creating. That self-awareness piece is fine, but he's not really connecting with the fact that what he's doing is actually really hurtful to the people in his life. I can't imagine that it couldn't be given the fact that he has these former partners and

he has a child that is part of this dynamic as well. But that is addiction. Somebody who is in the throws of addiction is going to tell you, "Hey, I'm just having fun. I'm just doing what I want to do. I'm not harming anyone. I'm down in Marty Gra, or down at the car table, or it's my credit card. And I get to choose when to use it without really appreciating the ramifications and the ripple

effects that those behaviors have on basically everybody that that person comes into contact with.

When it's so clear that this person needs help, why is it that the addict

“declines or refuses that help? I think fundamentally a lot of it has to do with the fact that you can't”

solve a problem with the brain that is creating it. So if you are in addict, you don't have the clarity of mind to understand that you on your own are capable of even solving the problem. That's sort of problem number one. And the second thing is that recovery is all about willingness. It's a program of action and the people that are able to get sober and stay sober are the people who summon the willingness to take contrary action to do something different, to

make a decision to invest in their well-being. And willingness is something that doesn't come

easy for the alcoholic or the addict. First of all, you have to appreciate the cycle of craving

and reward. When somebody is truly addicted, let's just use substances as an example.

“The only thing that is important is saving that craving through the use of that substance.”

That's all this person is thinking about the can't function without it. And once they get the satisfaction of saving that craving, the cycle perpetuates. And everything else is unimportant to that person. And anything that is a threat or that might interrupt that cycle is something that the addict is going to run away from and not be interested in. So when you say to the addict, like listen, you know, I know you're doing this thing. Look at all the chaos it's creating.

It's obviously destroying your life. It's hurting us. You got to just stop. That person will maybe be able to recognize that and say you're right, I need to, but they are powerless to do it. Because they're running on their self-will, they're running this program. It's almost as if they have a virus or a malware in their operating system that overrides their better judgment and basically takes over their decision-making mechanism. Short of some kind of

intervention or interruption, that cycle is going to perpetuate. Until that person reaches what we call rock bottom, they arrive at a situation that is creating so much pain that they finally realize that they're going to have to do something about it. Rock bottom is a subjective experience.

It's not an objective thing. Things can always be worse. Some people have high bottom. Some people

have low bottoms. But addiction is certainly on the rise everywhere. We look, the opioid crisis,

make sure to say that I believe addiction is something that lives on a spectrum. I think most people

would recognize their own addiction tendencies with respect to the phone, you know, the super computer that we have in our pockets. And to one degree or another, all of us are victim to certain composite behaviors that we feel not adequately in charge of. That lead us towards negative life outcomes. Yes, on the one hand, on the far end of the spectrum, we have the, you know, the homeless heroin addict living on Skid Row or, you know, the alcoholic who just can't stop drinking.

But there's also the person who continues to get into the same kind of not so great relationship or the person who is a shopaholic or the person who is online gambling a little bit too much.

“So somewhere on that spectrum, I think most people could probably identify themselves. But with”

respect to people who are truly in the throes of a deep-seated addiction, let's say, to opioids. I think very few people don't have somebody in their life who is so impacted. And it's a very challenging and disorienting dynamic in which it's unclear how to interact with that person. Certainly you don't want to enable their behavior. But if you care about this person, you feel responsible for them and compelled to intervene on their behalf. And so what you see is a lot of

well-intentioned efforts to get a person to get sober, most of which don't work out, and generally that involves the transgression of all kinds of boundaries. It's simple to say, if somebody is

in throes of addiction, your job is to basically recede from that person, set a hard boundary,

and do nothing that will enable that behavior. But let's say that person is your child or your partner or your spouse. This becomes easy to say and very difficult to do. That puts the person in a vulnerable situation in which they end up conceiting to the addict's behavior in a way that is not only harmful to the addict, but also to the well-intentioned person who's trying to help that person. And so while there's no easy answer to all of this, the TLDR of it is that you can love that

“person deeply while also setting a boundary that cannot be transgressed. Sometimes you have to”

give them the hard truth and remove yourself from any kind of relationship, shift dynamic with that person. And what you will find is that oftentimes that might facilitate the rock bottom that gives them that that injection of willingness to actually do something about their situation because you've created a consequence for a transgression about boundary. But every case is different. I guess I would say that the notion that you're going to stage an intervention and you're going to surround this

person who's hurting with their loved ones and you're going to get them into a program and that program is going to fix them and they're going to come out and be fine. Well, that does work on occasion oftentimes, if not most of the time, it doesn't because it presupposes the willingness that is required in that person in order to make sobriety actually stick because you really can't get sober for

“somebody else. You have to want it yourself. The program works not for people who need it, but for”

people that want it. And you can't instill that want just like you can't instill willingness in that person, which makes it difficult when you're a bystander, a loved one bystander, observing somebody who's spiraling out of control. And you can see what they need to do in order to fix the problem and you're just flomics that why they can't see it themselves or do anything about it. And so what you do is you end up putting yourself in an enabling position where you're preventing

them from falling as far as they could, catching them when they're falling and softening the blow. And sometimes that's what you've got to do because you can't live with yourself just watching them descend into the darkness. But at the same time it's important to understand that

that's not always what's going to solve the problem. And generally it won't.

exceeds the fear of doing something different. And you cannot foment that in somebody.

They have to arrive upon it themselves. And so when someone is in the throes of addiction or relapse, they have to meet the consequences of those actions as an inciting incident to provoke that degree of willingness. Here is the dilemma. When you choose headphones, you usually have to decide. Do you want to be fully

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the mill is just how much cleaner and simpler our routine feels now. fridge cleanouts don't stress me out anymore, the kitchen stays fresh and looks great in the kitchen too. Try mill risk free for 90 days and get 75 dollars off at mill.com/richroll and use code richroll at checkout. AddX tend to be very good storytellers, but you can't narrate yourself into innocence or absolution. It's a program of action. And so when somebody comes into the program,

broken, confused, unable to modify their behavior, aware that they need to change, but confused as to how to do that. Just walking in the door of, let's say, an A meeting is an

“important first step. But self-awareness will avail you nothing without understanding that”

sobriety is built upon taking contrary action. And the first contrary action is to understand

that your brain, the brain that created the problem, is ill-suited to solve the problem. The solution rests in the hands of others. So the first thing is recognizing that you cannot do this alone, raising your hand, asking for help, and then accepting help when it's offered. And that's very difficult for most addicts because addicts are not trusting people. Most of them have had a challenging relationship with trust in the past where their trust has been betrayed. And we tend to

isolate. We tend to believe that only we can solve our problem. There's this sense of terminal uniqueness. You don't understand my life. You don't understand how difficult my problems are. There's so much worse than you can possibly imagine. And then layer on top of that, just a huge amount of guilt and shame for what they have done. And that fuels the isolation. Like, I can't possibly tell somebody how I'm actually behaving or what I did. I'm so ashamed of it. I just have to figure

out how to solve this myself because the prospect of opening up letting somebody else in, who, you know, I already have trust issues and trusting them to guide me or help me, is a terrifying prospect.

letting somebody in. So I think it's important to understand that for the addict that's suffering,

“for them to raise their hand and actually acknowledge that they need help and to accept that help,”

is actually a great act of courage because they have to overcome all of that guilt and that shame and that fear of being judged. There is this profound sense of just being an absolute piece of shit. Like, you're the worst person in the world. You are beyond the ability of being helped by anyone else. And it's just impossible to face up to that to somebody else. Well, at the same time, interestingly, this is a unique twist

of the alcoholic mind that same person who feels like the worst person in the world and just completely irritable, generally also happens to have a tremendous amount of grandiosity. Only I can solve

“my problem. My problems are the worst. There's so much more extreme. Like, there's this huge”

ego piece. Like, I'm so much worse off than everybody else. But I'm also like the only one who can fix this and like, I can get away with this or I can behave this way and still do x, y, or z. So it's this bizarre combination of these two mindsets that inhabit the addicts brain that seem to operate in parallel even though they're in opposition to each other. So when the person comes into the program, they have to be humbled, disabused of this egoic sense of entitlement and

grandiosity. Well, also being held in a non-judgmental way, such that the person feels safe that they can open up. So when you look at somebody like Shyla Buffin, I'm not going to armchair, so I apologize this person that I don't know what would motivate somebody with so much to lose to behave in this way. Fundamentally, oftentimes, it's because there is a deep-seated sense of unworthiness, often generated by some degree of childhood trauma or some series of experiences

earlier in their life when they were meant to feel unworthy or undeserving. And that's when the

substance is come into play to basically medicate that so that they feel comfortable in their own

skin and perhaps that partially explains the notion of these two opposing emotional dispositions

“that are common in the addict and the alcoholic. So when someone comes in the room, you have to create”

a welcome that a place of non-judgment where they feel safe to engage in this process of recovery. Well, also, disabusing them of their grandiosity and their egoic impulses to provide them with a sense of accountability and an appreciation for the consequences of their behavior. But in order to get sober, you have to create a degree of non-judgment for that person to

open up and create this crucible of trust for them to engage with the steps to basically

engage in truth-telling to open up about how they're actually behaving, how they're actually feeling, to get more connected with their body and with their emotional self so that we can get to a place of rigorous self-honesty because until you engage in rigorous self-honesty, everything else is theater. And so when I look at this channel 5 interview, I see a lot of theater. I see a lot of justification. And I see a lot of linguistically talented gymnastics to kind of charismaticly acknowledge

behavior while also sidestepping the responsibility piece in a way that leaves the viewer perhaps with a misunderstanding about what is actually going on with this person right now who's clearly spiraling out of control and in need of help. And on some level, perhaps decided to do this interview as an unconscious or subconscious call for help. And my hope is that he finds that help and he can get into a situation where he can engage in that degree of rigorous self-honesty

to repair the wreckage that he's raped recently and begin to assemble the pieces of his life and rebuild a relationship with sobriety. I believe in change. I believe that this is possible.

bullshit. Nobody is irredeemable. We have to create an on-ramp for people like this

to be redeemed. But that doesn't mean that we're allowing them to skirt the consequences.

“The consequences piece is a very important component in that redemption arc.”

Somebody has to actually take responsibility, face those consequences, walk through them, and do the heavy lifting of repairing trust with the people they care about quietly behind the scenes. And that only happens, not through words or acknowledgement or verbal self-awareness, but instead through a series of consistent right action over an extremely extended period of time.

Trust that's broken isn't repaired easily. It can be repaired, but it just takes a very long time.

And if the person is truly interested in redeeming themselves, they have to recede into the background, do this work, and do it quietly. And do it without expectations of anything other than that they get another day to hit the pillow without picking up. That's it.

“I also want to say a few words about relapse itself. I think there is this misplaced notion”

that if somebody relapses that they have completely failed. But in my experience, my personal experience and in my experience in the recovery community relapse, more often than not, is a part of the recovery equation. Most people relapse. Most people go out at some point. And so what's astonishing when somebody goes out isn't that they went out. What's astonishing is all the days that they didn't go out because the addict or the alcoholic all they want to do is use. And so every day that they don't,

that's a miracle. Relapse is more commonplace than people realize. And sometimes it can actually improve that person's relationship with recovery because it gives them a heavy dose of just

how powerful the pull of addiction can be. When you start to take your sobriety for granted

“and then you relapse, there's a recognition of powerlessness that I think can inform a deeper”

connection with recovery going forward. I know in my own personal story as somebody has been sober for a little while that I came into the rooms of recovery on the heels of two consecutive DUIs, two DUIs that I got in a period of about six weeks, blowing insanely high blood alcohol levels, one of which involved a car accident, both involved me going to jail. And together, meant that I was not only going to get my driver's license revoked, but that I was definitely

going to go to jail for an extended period of time. I was court mandated to go into AA. I didn't want to. But circumstances being as they were, I didn't really have a choice. And I can just remember the fear and the shame of walking into these rooms. The only relationship I had previously with was what I saw in television and movies, a bunch of trench-coded decrepit men talking about their problems and some dank smokey church basement. And what I discovered instead was an incredibly

vibrant and positive smiling group of seemingly high-functioning individuals. But I was in so much shame that I couldn't look anyone in the eye. I remember purposely arriving to those early meetings late, leaving early, trying not to engage with anyone, not trusting anybody who came up to me to ask me what my name was or any of that. Like I just didn't want anything to do with it at all. I knew that I needed help. I wasn't ready to receive help. And so I would say that

that phase would be characterized as being a tourist in AA. Like I kind of heard about the steps and I listened to the people share their stories about what happened and what they did and what it's like now. And I kind of got it intellectually. And I kind of understood how these steps might move my life forward. But that didn't mean that I modified my behavior at all. And as a result, for many, many months, I was in and out. And I'd be able to stay sober for a week or maybe three

days or maybe two weeks or once in a while for a month. But inevitably, I would relapse and come back.

until the aftermath of a relapse that left me waking up the next day in a sufficient amount of

“pain in which I was blessed with a degree of willingness to do something different. And that's”

set in motion this domino effect of actions and behaviors that very slowly and over an extremely long period of time repaired my life. It began with 100 days in a treatment center in which I was introduced to these ideas and it was impressed upon me just how vital understanding these tools and beginning to practice them was to whether or not I was going to be able to not only stay sober, but actually live. Like my life was truly on the line. And I had a degree of desperateness.

And for the first time, I had the temerity and the courage to actually tell other people

what I was thinking, how I was feeling and how I was behaving. And that really was the beginning of understanding the power of recovery and the power of the recovery community. And it's been

“decades since then. But every good thing in my life, everything that I have accomplished,”

every success or peak experience that I've ever had is solely attributable to the fact that I was able to get sober and create a foundation of sobriety, full stop. I do not get to even be alive, let alone have the life that I have today. Had those experiences not happened. But my sobriety has not been linear. It's been up and down. And I've had my challenges along the way because

it's not a linear thing. Human beings are messy. We're emotional animals. And once I was able to

establish physical sobriety, I then had to contend with emotional sobriety. And short of having my crutch, the form of substances, to manage those emotions, I then had to figure out how to deal with them on my own, how to sit in my discomfort and process all of that. And that is messy business. And to this day, something I am far from having mastered. And so perhaps understanding that might give you a degree of empathy or understanding for the addict who is suffering, who

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And so I suppose I would say that if you have somebody that you care about, a loved one, who is suffering, and you feel confused about how to help this person, because you're conflating your love with them, with your capacity to help them, I would say that it's important to let that person know that you love them and that you are there for them to support them, but that you're also unavailable for the lies, the excuses,

the justifications, the spinning of elaborate yarns to excuse some kind of inexcusable behavior.

But when they're ready to change, to actually change, that you will be the first one there

to support them. As long as they know that, like hey, I'm here for the solution, not the problem, but until you're ready for that, I can't be there for you. So call me when you're ready to get help, and I will do everything in my power to support that, but until then, you're kind of on your own. So that's tricky. Again, easier said than done, especially for parents, you know, of a child

“who is spinning out of control. But I think the general point I'm trying to make is you can love”

without also enabling or being complicit in the behavior. You love the person, you don't love the behavior, and that's an important distinction to make. The addict, as an individual, is very different from the behavior. So they're behaving in a certain way that is obviously problematic, and you know, you don't support and don't love, but you can still love the person underneath, because that person is in the throws of a disease, and that behavior really isn't the true

version of that person. So being able to hold a vision for the best version of that person free from their addiction is an important piece. Well, also, obviously and very stridently not condoning the behavior. How do you do that? Well, that's the subject of many hours of discussion, and perhaps many volumes of books, but I would say it begins with, again, raising your hand and asking for help. You cannot fix this problem alone, but you can do it with

other people. And so summoning the courage to enlist the support of somebody else. It could be a friend, it could be a teacher, a mentor, it could be somebody in a more formal therapeutic session, psychiatrist, psychologist, a therapist. It could be within the rooms of recovery. I'm not here to say,

“you know, what you should do or shouldn't do, only to say that you need to find somebody”

that you can talk to, that you trust, that you can be honest with, that you can open up with, and then to allow that person to provide you feedback and hold you accountable for your decisions in your behavior. So the next time you want to indulge in that behavior, you check in with that

person first. Here's what I want to do, or here's what I'm thinking about doing, or here's what

I just did, even though I told you I wouldn't. That is a fundamental practice that is essential towards not only the self-understanding and the accountability piece, but to actually end up modifying that behavior and replacing it with a better one. Every addict wants to isolate. They don't want to open up to other people. They withdraw. And again, reside in their minds and try to solve the problem on their own. This is a way of secret keeping, but when you're keeping secrets,

you're not in the solution. And the antidote to your problem lies in transparency and vulnerability,

“which means you have to do some truth telling, you have got to disabuse yourself of your secrets”

and find somebody to open up to. And I think around this creating structure so that you're not isolating so that you're being called out when you're keeping a secret so that you have people in your life who know you well enough when you start to view off track or engage in unhealthy behaviors

On the subject of weaving your own redemptive narrative arc, you cannot craft your own redemption

“story. What you have to do is do the redemptive work over time to rebuild trust with the people”

you care about and rebuild trust with yourself. There's a saying in the rooms of recovery, you can save your ass or you can save your face, but you can't save both. And if you'd rather spin a manipulative arc that makes you look good, you are engaging in saving your face. If you're worried about what other people think or you're afraid of how they will perceive you, if you tell them your secrets, you are saving face. If you want to save your ass,

you have got to just vomit out all the uncomfortable truths and embarrassing stories and humiliating

aspects of your past behavior. And then we can begin the process of repairing your ass. So it's a choice. If you are putting a veneer over how you're showing up and communicating with these people that you've now raised your hand and are inviting in to help you, you have got to be rigorously honest. Otherwise, you are putting a spin on your story that is a

“nathema to the work of recovery. You have to roll up your sleeves and get ugly with yourself.”

And that takes courage. It might be the most difficult thing that you've ever done,

but it's also incredibly cathartic and liberating. When you release these things that you have pushed

down in shame for so long, it's not until you release them that you realize the weight bearing that they have been doing that has been holding you back from the change and the growth and the evolution and the transformation that is available to you. But there's no end run around it. It's not optional. This process of rigorously honest, but it is the path forward. And so to the addict who is out there who is still suffering, who is harboring that degree of shame,

who can't imagine the idea of sharing those deep dark secrets with anybody else. I'm telling you that you're not alone, that you are not terminally unique, that your problems as tragic as they might be as difficult as they may come across. They are more common place than you might imagine. And the sense of connection and community that you will find and discover by opening up and trusting another person with those is the path to not only saving your

ass, but is the solution to your brokenness that will set you on a journey towards wholeness.

“If you want to change, stop feeling sorry for yourself, stop asking when are people going to trust”

me, why don't people trust me? Woe is me, don't you understand how hard my life is and how difficult my problems are? And instead ask yourself what you're going to do differently today. What are you willing to do now that you were previously unwilling to do? And that's truly as far as your gaze should be cast because recovery and the redemption that you seek is really a function of behavioral action in the present. You can't change the past. The future is uncertain and unwritten.

All you can do is focus on what is happening in the present moment and what you're going to do differently this time than you have historically that is going to nudge your life ever so slightly perhaps even imperceptibly in a different direction. And this is something that you have to repeat religiously over an extended period of time for a very long time in order to work your life towards those things that you want, which is connection with other people, trust, a sense of well-being

within yourself, a sense of wholeness and the capacity to be a productive member of society who shows up when they say they will, who does what they say they will and has a chance at pursuing a life of purpose, meaning, satisfaction, connection and love. In other words, what is the truth that I'm hiding from? What is the lie that I keep telling myself? What is the root cause for my

be free of all of the shame and the guilt and the lie? What would life look like? There's a funny

thing with addicts. You can say to the addict in the throes of their addiction, if you keep doing what you're doing, there's only three outcomes. It's either going to be jail, institutionalization or death. Or you can come over here and you come into this room and talk to people and be honest and then you can have a life that is happy, joyous and free. What is it going to be? Only the addict will say I'm going to have to get back to you on that. And that in a nutshell is the

disease of alcoholism. It is a disease that so captures the individual, that even when you can present

them with the solution that provides all the things that that person would want in their life,

they still are predisposed to choose the cycle of unhealthy behavior that is reaping chaos,

“destroying their lives and harming the people they care about most. And the only way for that person”

to snap out of that mindset, that delusion is when there are circumstances present them with a situation in which they're in so much pain, that pain overwhelms their otherwise fear of doing something differently. I think it's a useful exercise to reflect upon the excuses that we make to justify those behaviors. What is the narrative that we tell ourselves that lets us off the hook so that we can perpetuate the behavior or continue to do the thing that we know in our heart of hearts

we probably shouldn't. Because until you do that, you're really not putting yourself in a position to change that behavior. Again, self-awareness is not enough. Let's get honest, rigorously honest with ourselves. And that begins with identifying the excuses and the justifications that we make. This reminds me of a story from early sobriety. When I had a real resistance to availing myself of the recovery community, like I just wanted to solve the problem on

my own. I didn't want to have to involve all these other people. Let me just, you know, I'm a smart person. I'll figure it out. Leave me alone. Of course, this resulted in relapse after relapse after relapse because while I acknowledged the need to get help and receive help and I was contrite about my behavior, I was also continuing to justify or excuse my lack of commitment to this set of tools that had been presented to me as effective at solving this problem. So instead, me wanting to

“solve the problem on my own. And what I think held me at arms length from this solution was the”

fact that I saw these people as different than myself. I was in my sense of terminal uniqueness. I was indulging my ego. I had a lack of humility. Perhaps on some level, I thought, like, I'm better equipped to solve this problem for myself than any of these people. And so when I would go into these rooms and I would hear these people share their stories or attempt to introduce themselves to me, all I could think is that, like, I don't belong here. You know, these people

are different from me. I have nothing in common with them. And as a result, a short circuit at my capacity to learn, to be open and to participate in my own recovery. And there was one occasion where I sort of was ducking out of a meeting early. I would do this. I would like a rivalry

“and leave early avoid eye contact because I really didn't want to have to talk to anybody.”

And I thought that I was being quite crafty and what you realize later is that like this is very common transparent behavior. And on one of these days when I was ducking out early, a guy came out after me and he's like, hey, where are you going? I made up some excuse. I'm late. I got to get out. I'm so sorry, but I have to leave and I have an appointment or some bullshit like that. And of course, this guy saw it right through that. And he just pointed to a phrase on a wall,

one of those annoying AA forisms. And it said, look for the similarities, not the differences. And I'd seen that there before and I didn't really know what it meant. But in that moment,

it actually landed. Basically what he was saying is stop trying to create arguments for why

this isn't going to work or why you're different than these other people. Instead of listening

instead try to see yourself in this story. What is it that this person is sharing on an emotional

“level? Can you relate to? And once you start to do that, then you're able to kind of connect with”

whatever wisdom they are in a position to impart to you. And I share this story because while we

rubber neck at this story of Shaila Buff, we kind of perceive it for realistically or we jump

“on a chance to vilify this person that we haven't met, I would suggest that if you watch it,”

to look for the similarities, not the differences. And what I mean by that is, what is it about

this person and what they're sharing? Can you relate to? Can you see some aspect of your own behavior, your own blind spots, your own proclivity to justify or excuse your behavior in what he's

“sharing? And I think if you can do that, then you're in a position to better self reflect on your”

own behavior and what you're doing or not doing in your own life to become a better person tomorrow than you are today. (upbeat music)