#126 – Reagan Reilly: Stripping Barriers to Recovery#126 – Reagan Reilly: Stripping Barriers to Recovery
Recovery Survey
Reagan Reilly shares her journey from heavy drug use and repeated rehabs to over ten years sober, grounded in a spiritual awakening and the 12 steps. She discusses working as an exotic dancer in Las Vegas while staying clean, and coping with the deaths of loved ones from addiction without picking up.
31:54•24 Aug 2022
Stripping Barriers to Recovery: Reagan Reilly on Sobriety, Grief and the Club
Episode Overview
- Early exposure to addiction and normalised drug use can quickly progress into severe dependence and repeated treatment stays.
- A spiritual awakening, including asking a higher power to remove the obsession to use, can be a turning point after many failed attempts at recovery.
- Working a full 12-step programme, including amends, prayer, meditation and ongoing service, is presented as crucial to long-term sobriety.
- Sobriety is shown to be possible in environments like strip clubs when recovery remains the priority and spiritual practices stay consistent.
- Processing deep grief and losing loved ones to addiction is possible without relapsing when there is a strong relationship with a higher power and community support.
“"If you leave, picture yourself in a coffin. You are not the kind of alcoholic or addict who makes it."”
How do people cope with the challenges of staying sober? This Recovery Survey episode focuses on Reagan Reilly, an exotic dancer in Las Vegas who has over ten years of sobriety and a brutally honest story about addiction, grief, faith, and strip-club life in recovery. The conversation is relaxed and candid, aimed at people in recovery (especially those in 12-step fellowships) who want real talk rather than polished soundbites.
Reagan shares how early curiosity about drugs in a small Pennsylvania town turned into heavy meth, heroin and opiate use from her teens to early twenties. She recalls, "Right from the start, I just had that obsession, that desire to intoxicate myself," and describes the cycle of rehabs, overdoses and arrests without glossing over the chaos. The emotional centre of the episode is her eighth stay in rehab, where she hit what she calls an emotional and spiritual bottom.
After being told, "If you leave, picture yourself in a coffin... You are not the kind of alcoholic or addict who makes it," she got on her knees in a bathroom stall and begged for her obsession to be removed. That moment pushed her into long-term treatment, the 12 steps, and a daily practice of prayer and meditation she still follows.
Reagan also talks frankly about working as a stripper before and after getting sober, competing in exotic dance and athletic pole competitions, and how she keeps her recovery first in an alcohol-soaked environment. She explains that she was told, "You can do anything and stay sober," as long as she stayed spiritually connected and honest. The episode will resonate with anyone wondering if recovery is possible in unconventional careers, or who has faced family addiction and loss.
It’s raw, faith-filled, sometimes darkly funny, and very much geared towards people who know the language of meetings and want to hear how someone is staying clean in a setting many would find risky. It might leave you asking what "doing the deal" really looks like in your own life.
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