A Sober Musician With Borderline (Feat. Justin Yates)A Sober Musician With Borderline (Feat. Justin Yates)
Bold Beautiful Borderline
Musician Justin Yates talks about living sober with BPD, from early drug use and chronic pain to diagnosis, therapy, and what really helps him cope. His conversation with the host highlights both the pitfalls and the promise of treatment, and the courage it takes to ask for help.
55:30•30 Aug 2026
Music, Sobriety and Borderline: Justin Yates Shares His Story
Episode Overview
- A clear BPD diagnosis can reduce isolation and guide people towards more relevant information and support.
- Sobriety may come from many small turning points rather than one dramatic event, including noticing the physical toll of substances.
- DBT skills can be useful, but scripted communication techniques may feel artificial and are not a perfect fit for everyone.
- Somatic work, meditation, exercise and simple daily pleasures like walking and spending time with pets can help manage intense emotions.
- Letting go of ego and accepting that no one has all the answers can make seeking therapy and support feel more possible.
“"If you had the answers, then why are you in the problems that you're in?"”
How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety? This episode of Bold Beautiful Borderline follows musician Justin Yates as he chats with host Sara about life as a sober man living with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Justin shares how chronic back pain pushed him to move from Chicago to California and changed his music career, describing a time when he was “literally crawling to the bathroom” and sleeping on a piece of wood.
He talks openly about growing up in a family of addicts, starting drugs in his early teens, and the slow, messy process of weaning himself off different substances. Waking up with blood on his face and feeling violently ill became the turning points that made him realise, in his words, that he could “see exactly where it was going” if he didn’t stop.
You’ll hear Justin’s relief at finally getting a BPD diagnosis after years of labels like depression, ADHD and anger issues. Rather than feeling doomed, he says it made him “feel a little bit less alone” and opened the door to books, therapy and DBT skills groups. He’s honest about the bad side too: a DBT provider who left him feeling worse, the scripts that felt “extremely disingenuous”, and the challenge of applying textbook skills to real-life relationships.
For anyone curious about how BPD shows up in day-to-day life, Justin talks about intense internal chatter, struggles with abandonment, and how performing music in a rejection-heavy industry can flare everything up. His metaphor of people with BPD walking around “without skin on” makes emotional hypersensitivity easy to picture.
Targeted at people living with BPD, those in recovery, and anyone who loves someone with both, this chat stays raw, funny in places, and deeply honest about therapy, somatic work, quitting cigarettes, and the ego-hit of asking for help. It leaves you wondering: what would change if you dropped the act and reached out, too?
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