TSP 078: "Real Deal Recovery" with Stephen Girard, let's talk about relapse prevention.TSP 078: "Real Deal Recovery" with Stephen Girard, let's talk about relapse prevention.
The SHAIR Recovery Podcast
Stephen Girard shares his long-term sobriety journey with a strong focus on relapse prevention, emotional sobriety and service. The conversation highlights how asking for help, working the steps and staying connected to meetings helped him stay clean through intense life crises.
59:05•9 Aug 2016
Real Deal Recovery with Stephen Girard: Staying Sober When Life Falls Apart
Episode Overview
- Plan each day around a meeting and stay close to the recovery community to keep sobriety active and energised.
- Treat asking for help as a core skill; reach out to peers, professionals and a higher power rather than wait for crisis.
- Use service and sponsorship as powerful tools to get out of self and protect against relapse.
- Accept that emotional pain and situational depression can happen in sobriety, and respond by increasing, not decreasing, recovery actions.
- Work all twelve steps over time with honesty, knowing they are a lifelong process rather than something to perfect once.
“I can sum up my recovery in two words, giving and asking.”
Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This conversation between host Omar Pinto and guest Stephen Girard is packed with straight-talking recovery wisdom, especially if relapse prevention is high on your mind. Stephen, 32 years clean and sober at the time of recording, talks about why his recovery is anything but dull.
He shares his daily routine of early mornings, meditation, prayer, making music in his Times Square studio, teaching autistic students, and, crucially, “planning each day around a meeting, my meeting around the day.” You’ll hear how staying “close to the pack” and being of service keeps his recovery lively and grounded. The heart of the episode is relapse prevention and emotional sobriety.
As he puts it, “I can sum up my recovery in two words, giving and asking.” He also shares powerful stories from his past: getting drunk at six or seven, being told at 15 he was “too young” to be a drug addict, lighting his flat on fire, near-fatal injuries, and then that moment of surrender when he told someone, “you just have to lock me up somewhere.” Later, he describes spending almost six months as a forest monk in Thailand and how active listening in meetings now feels like meditation.
Stephen is blunt about wanting to get loaded for months during a brutal period in 2001 when he lost his home, relationship, work and was directly affected by 9/11. Instead of picking up, he ramped up meetings, took on new service commitments, sponsored men through *all* the steps, and leaned heavily on asking for help. If you’re struggling with shame, afraid to ask for help, or convinced long-term sobriety will be boring, this chat might make you rethink everything.
What would change for you if you treated asking for help as a daily habit, not a last resort?
Do you want to link to this podcast?
Get the buttons here!
More From This Show
The latest episodes from the same podcast.