SHAIR 47: Dope Sick with Cole Chance - What would you do with a Second Chance? From Heroin Addiction to Hope and Recovery!SHAIR 47: Dope Sick with Cole Chance - What would you do with a Second Chance? From Heroin Addiction to Hope and Recovery!
The SHAIR Recovery Podcast
Cole Chance shares a raw account of her journey from teenage drinking through heroin addiction, seizures and multiple rehabs to finding hope in yoga, long-term treatment and sober living. The conversation highlights how leaving room for the unknown made space for a life in recovery she never thought possible.
1:07:40•5 Jan 2016
From Dope Sick to Downward Dog: Cole Chance’s Second Chance at Life
Episode Overview
- Longer-term treatment (around 90 days) gave Cole enough separation and clarity to start real self-reflection beyond basic detox.
- Yoga became a key spiritual and physical tool, helping her reconnect with her body and a sense of inner power after years of self-destruction.
- Openly saying "I don't drink" and owning her identity as someone in recovery reduced shame and made daily life easier.
- Leaving room for the unknown helped her accept that alcohol and drugs meant losing any chance of happiness, while sobriety kept possibilities open.
- Safe, structured environments like high-risk sober houses can provide crucial support for those with very little clean time or resources.
“Leave room for the unknown. Otherwise, your story has already written itself and is just going to get worse and darker.”
Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This conversation on The SHAIR Recovery Podcast follows Cole Chance as she looks back on 16 years of heroin, cocaine, and alcohol addiction and the second chance she never thought she'd get. Cole speaks candidly about her first drink at 13, early pregnancies, crack-fuelled nights on yachts and in mansions, and how that same drug use later left her in trailers without wheels and seedy compounds.
She talks about grand mal seizures from withdrawal, endless trips to hospital for benzodiazepines, and even landing in a Scientology-linked rehab where staff had her "look around the room and tell me something you can have" while she shook through detox. The episode is aimed squarely at people in active addiction or early recovery, especially those who feel they’ve "tried everything".
Omar Pinto keeps the tone warm and conversational, asking the questions newcomers are often too scared to voice, like what really kept Cole from getting clean and why 90-day treatment finally made a difference.
Cole shares how yoga became her way of connecting with a higher power: "There's a dormant spark of divinity in each of us that it must be fanned into flames by yoga." Her emotional turning point comes on a yoga mat, in child’s pose, sobbing with fear and hope at the same time, realising she might actually make it.
Two years clean, she’s now a yoga teacher, Y12SR instructor, Thai massage practitioner and global traveller, returning to the very rehab where she once stayed to teach yoga to others. She sums up her message to newcomers simply: "Leave room for the unknown...
Otherwise, your story has already written itself and is just going to get worse and darker." If you’re wondering whether life can be good again without drugs or alcohol, Cole’s story may be exactly the nudge you need to leave a little room for your own second chance.
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