Finding Your Own Inner PeaceFinding Your Own Inner Peace
I Love Being Sober
Spiritual teacher Elijah Kai shares how a failed suicide attempt, alcoholism, and deep trauma led him to question his own story of being broken. He talks with Tim Westbrook about thoughts, ego, and the idea that everyone is already whole beneath addiction and pain.
1:09:13•9 Jun 2026
Finding Your Own Inner Peace: Elijah Kai on Being Already Whole
Episode Overview
- Alcohol often starts as a practical way to escape pain, especially when no one has taught you how thoughts and emotions work.
- Suicidal urges can come from overwhelming frustration and believing a single thought instead of letting it pass.
- Suffering usually comes from the story about what happened, not the event itself; questioning those stories can dissolve long-held shame and self-hate.
- You were "already whole" as a child, and the belief that you are broken is just a thought that can be dropped.
- Facing the original hurt with support can end the need to use substances as a way to run from yourself.
“If you can't show me a two-year-old, a three-year-old, a four-year-old that's broken, then that means it wasn't true for you either.”
How do people cope with the challenges of staying sober? This conversation on **I Love Being Sober** follows spiritual teacher and author Elijah Kai as he shares how an 18-year-old suicide attempt and years of drinking to numb the pain eventually led him to a very different understanding of himself. The chat with host Tim Westbrook is raw, funny in moments, and very direct.
Elijah talks openly about putting a shotgun in his mouth, the misfire that kept him alive, and the way alcohol became "just a solution to a problem" when he didn’t know what to do with his emotional pain. From there, you’ll hear how childhood trauma, abandonment, and abuse fed the belief that he was broken – and how that belief quietly drove addiction, rage, and destructive relationships. Elijah breaks down complex ideas in simple everyday language.
He explains the difference between thoughts and thinking ("thinking is having a conversation with the thought"), why suicide often comes from a desperate urge to "turn the game off," and how many people in recovery have been "on punishment" for decades rather than facing the original wound. His highway-and-chair analogy for mind chatter gives a very practical way to think about meditation and cravings.
At the heart of the episode is his message that "you were born whole and complete" – just like the two-year-olds we all adore – and that the feeling of being broken is a story, not the truth. He talks about working in prisons, why all behaviour has a positive intent, and how shame blocks people from using their worst mistakes to help others.
If you’re sober, sober-curious, or supporting someone in recovery, this one pushes you to ask: what if there was never anything wrong with you in the first place?
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