20250723 - (4) Doesn't matter how much time I have20250723 - (4) Doesn't matter how much time I have
Love Your Life, with Randy Mermell
Randy Mermell is an international coach, speaker, and podcaster. Randy helps people live happy and purposeful lives. Drawing from his own experience from 20 years of happy marriage, raising two daughters, and his success as an entrepreneur, he has helped others get through all types of professional and personal challenges, including love, marriage, children, jobs, and finding passion in everything we do. With over 28 years of sobriety, and success in his own life overcoming low self-esteem, addictions to alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, and coffee Randy draws on his real-life experience to lead meditation and recovery retreats internationally.
37:18•6 Aug 2026
It Doesn’t Matter How Much Time You Have: Randy Mermell on Willingness, Self and Sobriety
Episode Overview
- Alcohol is described as an allergy for the alcoholic, and using it to self-medicate only feeds the disease of alcoholism.
- Past experience, length of sobriety or number of meetings attended are said to matter less than present-moment willingness to show up, meditate and pray.
- Randy highlights that self-will can quickly regain power, and that admitting complete defeat over trying to control the mind opens the door to help from a higher power.
- Participants emphasise that resentment, disappointment and difficult emotions in sobriety can become a route to growth when paired with meetings, meditation and amends.
- The group repeatedly returns to the idea that this moment is the only one that can be lived in relationship with a higher power rather than with alcoholism.
“It doesn’t matter what’s happened up until this moment, because this moment is the only one I have to get right.”
Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This meeting-style conversation from "Love Your Life" drops you right into an all-inclusive 12-step gathering led by long-time sober alcoholic Randy Mermell, where honesty, humour, and raw spiritual struggle are all on full display.
Randy opens by grounding everything in a simple but uncompromising truth: “My body is allergic to alcohol… I could never, ever drink alcohol successfully ever again.” From there, he walks through a rough day where meditation felt like torture and his mind was hijacked by self-centred thinking about work. He admits, with a grin and a wince, that while praying “Relieve me of the bondage of self,” he was “100% the opposite” of what the prayer asks.
That clash between intention and reality becomes the heart of the conversation. You’ll hear him stress that “It doesn’t matter how much time you have” in sobriety; what matters is the willingness to show up, admit complete defeat, and turn again toward a higher power. “I am the wrong power for the job,” he says, describing the moment he realises he can’t even quiet the voice in his own head without help.
The meeting-style format means you also hear from participants like Adrian, who shares four days of intense resentment and eventual amends; Marlon, who frames each day as a choice between “alcoholism or God”; Christine, who calls Randy’s laughter in meditation “the sunlight coming into your mind”; Sana, who ties everything back to the third step and the “bondage of self”; and Amanda, who recalls begging for help in hospital and finding a tiny opening in her otherwise frantic mind.
Anyone in recovery, or supporting someone who is, will recognise the messy, human side of spiritual practice here. Fancy a reminder that you don’t have to get it perfect, you just have to be willing today?
Do you want to link to this podcast?
Get the buttons here!
More From This Show
The latest episodes from the same podcast.