166 The Gratitude Shift with Joseph Devlin166 The Gratitude Shift with Joseph Devlin
You're Sober! Now What?
Joseph Devlin shares his journey from teenage treatment to long-term sobriety, highlighting how gratitude and family support shape recovery. The conversation focuses on living amends, daily routines, and the powerful role families can play in helping a loved one stay sober.
49:59•27 Dec 2021
The Gratitude Shift: Joseph Devlin on Family, Purpose and Staying Sober
Episode Overview
- Small, consistent changes like daily gratitude lists can gradually rewire the brain and support long-term recovery.
- Families are not to blame for a loved one’s addiction, yet they hold vital social capital that can support sobriety.
- Living amends—showing change through daily actions—often matter more than repeatedly saying “I’m sorry.”
- Community and supportive meetings help ease the intense pull to drink in early sobriety and create new routines.
- Helping someone in front of you is a powerful way to step out of self-focus and experience genuine gratitude.
“The quickest thing to find gratitude is to go help somebody else.”
What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol? This episode of **You're Sober! Now What?** brings in behavioural health expert Joseph Devlin, who shares how a simple focus on gratitude and family connection reshaped his recovery and his work.
Joseph talks candidly about growing up as child number five in a big New Jersey family, learning to "fly underneath the radar" and lose his voice, and how alcohol instantly felt like relief: "Drugs and alcohol were fun until they weren't fun anymore." At just 15, a blackout and a run-in with the police landed him in treatment, planting the first seeds of self-awareness and 12-step recovery.
As Tamar Medford chats with him, you’ll hear how Joseph’s addiction progressed through college and bartending, and why he kept trying to "manage" his drinking instead of giving it up. His turning point came when grief and a funeral nudged him into a meeting where people simply remembered his name and held out their hands. Early sobriety, Joseph admits, was tough – he describes a daily "pull in his chest" to drink and the need for structure.
He shares practical tools like his three-and-a-half-year habit of writing ten quick gratitude statements every morning, and a simple prayer-and-meditation routine that helps him stay grounded and less reactive. A big part of this conversation centres on families. Joseph now runs Family Sobriety Now and stresses that relatives hold "the key to long-term sobriety".
He reassures families that "it is not your fault" while encouraging them to recognise their influence and seek third-party support to repair relationships through living amends and restorative practices. If you're sober and wondering how to rebuild trust, find purpose, or simply feel a bit happier day to day, Joseph’s gratitude shift might be the nudge you need. So what small gratitude habit could you start practising today?
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