Getting honest with ourselves and taking ownership and responsibility for our actions is one of the hardest and most important parts of the recovery journey. In this episode, we are joined by Jason, Robbie, and Dave as we take a vulnerable dive into taking responsibility and taking action, to make the changes necessary to live a full and healthy life.  

Some of the concepts we cover include:

• Acknowledging and owning that we have a drinking problem and taking action
• Determining what is our responsibility and we need to let others own
• Remembering why we chose to take action
• Apologies in recovery
• Taking responsibility for our mental health and emotions
• Noticing when we blamed others for our drinking
• Recognizing changes we need to make
• Sharing the stories that bring us shame
• The importance of community
• Increasing meaningful connection in relationships
• Self forgiveness

“Taking responsibility means taking an action.”

Robbie is 44 years old, from Rapid City, South Dakota and he’s been sober 120+ days. He’s a trail endurance athlete and running coach, and Robbie is also the host of the Golden Hour Adventures Podcast.

Dave is 7 months sober from his over 20 year relationship with alcohol. He went to rehab on August 12th, 2022. His Rock Bottom didn’t look like losing everything or a long path of destruction, but it was his bottom. He has suffered from childhood trauma, and comes from a long line of addiction. Breaking the cycle and healing is his new goal. He hopes to inspire others, while sharing his daily story through social media.

Jason is father of two boys and an experienced executive and entrepreneur. He is an active public speaker, philanthropist, and has held board of directors seats at various non-profits and educational institutions throughout New England.Jason’s recovery began on December 27, 2022 and included overcoming alcohol abuse as well as multiple mental/emotional health disgnoses. He continues to lean on his sober network and close friends for support while giving back to the community through hosting meetings and offering assistance where he can. Jason prides himself on authenticity and being true to himself.

Get in touch!

throughtheglassrecovery@gmail.com

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Transcript

Julie: Alright, so I get to party with the boys tonight!I think this might be the first time we’ve had all guys on the podcast.

Steve: I think it is!

Julie: Yeah, this is super cool. So we are, as always, going to do introductions. I’m going to start with Robbie.

Robbie: Hello. I’m Robbie, I live in South Dakota – Rapid City. I’m quite new to this sober life, today is day 93 for me. I’ve stopped and never really quit for a real reason or for wanting to stop, it’s always like I’m just wanting to take a break. But this time I realize I need to do it for good, so here I am.

Julie: Awesome! We’re really glad to have you. And I will say Robbie is also the host of the Golden Hours Adventure podcast. I’m going to include a link for that and whatever other information for Robbie in the show notes here, as with everybody here, so make sure you check those out so you can get some more information about these amazing guys. And next we’re going to go with Jason.

Jason: Hi, I’m Jason. I’m from Merrimac, NH. I’m 65 days into my recovery at this time. I’ve had periods of sobriety in the past that have been in even longer than this. But this is the first time I’d say I’m really in full recovery – or discovery – mode. And just awesome to be here, thank you.

Julie: Thank you for being here. And last but certainly not least is Dave.

Dave: Hey, how ya doing? I’m Dave. I’m just about a week away from 7 months sober, and I’m in St. Louis, MO.

Julie: Awesome. And we met Dave on Instagram also, he posts some really amazing stuff so I’m going to include that in the show notes as well. It is really cool to be hanging out with you guys tonight. So I think one of the first things we have to do in recovery is get really, really honest with ourselves. It’s probably the most important thing we do as we start navigating this journey and it can also be one of the most difficult. For a lot of us, that starts with realizing that we need to start owning things we used to try to blame others for. So let’s talk about it. What does taking responsibility look like for you? How has it affected your recovery? What’s been hard about it? And how have you worked through it?

Robbie: For me, realizing that I do have a problem was taking the first responsibility for it. I would always say, “Oh, I can do this or that. Hard day at work.” My issue was cannabis. I used cannabis for half my adult life and I don’t know how long, ever, that I was sober. If I was already at work, when I got off, before I got out of the parking lot I was high. These days cannabis is so easy to consume. And then, I would never drink alone. But I did start finding myself drinking almost every night just because the cannabis wasn’t enough for me. So realizing that I did have a problem and it was taking away from my family and my daughter. That was my first step in taking responsibility.

Julie: Yeah, and that is huge. That’s the most important thing any of us will do, I think. Really owning that yeah, I really have a problem. Because when you’re drinking and you’re escaping, it doesn’t feel good and you try to avoid that, right? You don’t even want to admit it, don’t want to think about life without it. So if you don’t admit you have a problem, it’s easier to avoid that.

Steve: It feels kind of gross, doesn’t it?

Dave: Yeah, I mean, when you’re living it it’s just the norm. You’re not even thinking about it in that context. It’s just like, “Oh, it’s Monday night, I’m going to drink with my friends.” I agree with what Robbie said. The first part of getting honest with myself. I’m never going to forget that moment when I made the decision to go to rehab. I told my fourteen year old son, he was the first person I told. I told him, “Yeah, I’ve got to make a change.” And after that, I hit rehab, and that’s when the real honest began. That was like pulling back layers. But when I went into rehab, I told myself I was going to submerge myself in it and get everything that I could out of it. So I really opened up and it was difficult for sure, but I got a lot out of it.

Jason: I like the way when Robbie said the first step of responsibility is taking stock in the problem that you have. My problem, my brand of alcoholism is that I can drink in safety most of the time. Nine out of ten times I can have a drink, maybe two, but not need the next fifteen. But I just never know exactly when that switch is going to throw and the monster is going to come out. And so for awhile I thought to myself, I mean in the majors, a 900 batting average could win you a lot of money. That’s not a problem, right? (laughter) But when so much death, destruction and mayhem can occur on that one out of ten times, you have to come to terms with the fact that yes, you do have a problem. When I think about taking responsibility outside of just that, it has a lot to do with me understanding what the boundaries of responsibility really are. I was never really someone who would blame other people, but I would blame myself for all of my problems and all of the problems of other people around me. I was a self deprecator and a self hater. And that would lead me to extraordinarily low sense of self worth that would me to saying f it, I’m just going to drink. Why not, who cares? So a big piece of my journey is understanding where those boundaries of responsibility begin and where they end, so I can understand what I truly do need to be responsible for and what I can release and accept and let go.

Steve: That’s the “What is your part?” and releasing what isn’t your part. And then taking an action. I think there’s action related in all of it when you do take that responsibility. Dave, when you said, “When I made the decision to go to rehab,” that was your decision to take that action. Then the beautiful part was you said I’m going to do everything I can this time. That’s the all in mentality taking that responsibility that really has to come with it.

Dave: Yeah, I was lucky enough to have a lot of people around me that have already been through the process of rehab. I had a lot of people I could reach out to. And I only want to do this thing once. It’s not something to keep going back to rehab, repeatedly. It’s not a fun process or anything, so I wanted to get it right.

Steve: I think sometimes to take responsibility you have to remember where you came from. Because that was that moment. I know that’s what I do, I remember that moment where I was like, “That’s it.” I’m coming up on two year sober now, and time passes and it can get easier and easier to forget where I came from and what my motivation was then. And that’s still my motivation today. I can go back and remember what my own version of that hell was like and say, “Yep, this is exactly why I’m doing this right now, and this is exactly why I’m going to push through this uncomfortable.” Because I do not want to go backwards. Backwards doesn’t sound like a really good option to me, not any more. So taking responsibility, one of the things I thought of was apologizing. I was a horrible apologizer. Anything to deflect or so I could maybe own just a little portion, or make it go away. Apology was to make it go away as fast as possible because Jesus Christ, I was uncomfortable. And not own any part of it and carry on. Because everyone’s going to forget it in time, right? We’ll be good if I say I’m sorry and cook a nice dinner or something. That doesn’t do the trick. So apologizing with an action was something that I learned to do. And apologizing with intention. If I apologize now, I set rules for myself. I apologize now and it is, I think Julie can attest for this, when I apologize now there is an action that is going to come from it, and an intention to either improve or so something or work through it or whatever that may be. It doesn’t have to be immediate. But it definitely means a lot to me now, more than it ever has.

Jason: I feel like in the past… I came off about a year of sobriety a few years. And all I did was stop drinking. We’ve heard these stories before, when somebody was a “dry drunk.” I like to say that I took responsibility this time, but I was kind of left with no choice. My sobriety began, or was triggered by a long period of poor mental health which resulted in a suicide attempt for me. I hit rock bottom hard, really really hard. And not only was I responsible for making sure alcohol was no longer a part of my life, but even more importantly for my acute situation was to ensure that I was taking responsibility for managing my mental health and emotional well being. So I’ve been through a lot of psychological rehab, and continuing intensive counseling to make sure that I’m landing on my own two feet. I’m able to process, I’m able to operate in a way that’s not escapist when it comes to emotions because that’s the kind of thing that leads to anxiety, it leads to all sorts of resentment, which definitely leads to drinking in a lot of us, including myself.

Julie: Yeah, I think that you talk about psychological rehab, psychological recovery. The mental health part of recovery absolutely has to go hand in hand with just not drinking. I had a really similar experience, I had over a year sober, and I was just not drinking which resulted in a really ugly relapse and starting over from scratch.

I wanted to go back to something you talked about a little bit ago Jason, and that was taking responsibility for everything, and not being able to figure out what is… for me it was, I couldn’t figure out what was my responsibility and what wasn’t my responsibility and so sometimes I would take on way too much of something, and then other times I wouldn’t own something at all that really I needed to be handling. A lot of figuring that out has just been that process of recovery. There’s so much to learn, I guess, in recovery. Digging into everything, getting really honest with yourself. I know for me, parenting – if anything went wrong with the kids, if they were acting out, if in some way I felt like I had failed as a parent, I would take that all on. It would be, “I am failing as a parent.” I would never give my husband 50% of that responsibility even though he’s their parent too. I would just take it all on. And then it would be, “I’m failing, I’m a failure, I can’t get anything right.” And I would internalize all of that and then would just hate myself for it. Looks like Jason agrees with that. But then there was other stuff, like if I yelled at my children, it was absolutely my fault. But I would blame them for it. “They behaved in this way, and it made me yell at them.” I would even… most of the time I was a pretty good mom. But if I had really screwed up as a parent, I would absolutely try to convince my children it was their fault that I was yelling at them. That’s really messed up, and it’s really sad. And it was all shame based and that perfectionist thing and whatever. I just didn’t want to admit that I had failed. And that went all the way to drinking. I never took responsibility for the fact that I drank, it was, So and so made me drink. My kid acted out and made the day really stressful and it made me drink. Or I got into it with my husband and he made me drink. I never owned that I decided to drink, because I don’t know how to handle my sh–. And that was really important that I started just owning that alone. Yeah, it can be really hard to figure out what’s yours and what’s not yours and let the stuff go that you need to let go, and there’s a balance in there that takes some time to figure out.

Dave: Yeah, I feel like for me, kind of like you were saying Julie, I had those moments where I would get into it with somebody and that would be my excuse to drink. But I think also, I’d go a step further and antagonize the situation to give me that excuse. I’m gonna start this argument, and then I’m going to blame the argument on the person that I started it with so I could be like, “We’re in an argument so I’m going to drink.” Like it wasn’t my fault. I also think that when we’re drinking we give ourselves this false like, get out of jail free card. So you’re saying Steve the next day you wake up, you just have to say sorry. I mean, I was drunk. I was drinking the night before. In hindsight, that’s not a pass. I think it was this false sense of security to me to think I had a pass the next day.

Robbie: Most recently for me, a certain group of friends I would hang around, I had to drink to be around them. Which is quite interesting because I didn’t like being sober around them. They would all drink and if I was sober, if I consumed some cannabis it made things easier. It became like, well if I’m around these people I have to drink. That was the first time in my life that being around a certain set of people I had to drink. Younger in my life, I always drank for fun. That’s when I really started realizing that this is a problem if I have to be drunk to be around these people. Not that I’m sober I don’t associate with those people anymore because come to find out, I didn’t want to hang out with them in the first place, besides drinking.

Steve: Interesting how that happens. Where you just realize, wow, okay this is part of the things that I’m doing wrong. And some of that is the people that you surround yourself with.

One of the things I was thinking about is that my sense of what right and wrong was so twisted that I don’t think I would be here where I am right now if I didn’t have a group of people in recovery to talk to. I have to get honest with myself, but to take responsibility, for me anyways, I had to share it with someone else. It had to leave my mind and I had to set it free to make it real. And then I had to face that with a group of people that understood. I got really lucky, I was with a group of people that were really amazing and I got to show my scars and have it returned back to me. Realizing that when I’m sharing these things that they’re hurtful. They hurt me, not anybody else, in recovery we get it. Dave that you were talking about before. That twisted sense of reality becomes even more noticeable when I say the words. Then it’s really cringy when some of the things, the drinking and driving and ditching the truck. Lying about it. All of those things that I was so ashamed of. Throwing a full bottle at the window because I thought it was open and I thought it was an empty one, because I was so drunk, and then just breaking the passenger window because that’s what I did, I just threw them out the window. There’s a litany of stuff that was stuck inside of here, and as soon as I got to share it and as soon as it left, I took responsibility for it. I had to share it. I had to put it in a place that was safe.

Julie: That’s where the shame goes away too. You start sharing those things that were super cringey and those things that you were carrying around inside of you that you really didn’t… that’s stuff that, if you don’t start owning things and saying stuff out loud, that shame will eat at you. And it won’t just weigh you down. You’ll replay those situations that you don’t want to talk about over and over again and make yourself and make yourself miserable and feel terrible about yourself until you start talking about it. I think that just lifts the shame so much and helps you move forward from it. Because you have to own it, but then you have to move forward from it. Once you do own it, you get to make amends or apologize or make changes and then more forward. I think that’s the really important part of owning and taking responsibility for stuff.

Jason: There’s a responsibility to be true to yourself. And that includes a certain regiment of self care. And part of that self care is to, at least I’ve noticed for my own experience, if I’m feeling spun up about something, guilty about something, happy about something, sad about something, the idea of sharing that has just become part of my daily routine. I had a wonderful therapist tell me one time, it was something that really clicked in my mind, she said to me, “For years it seems like you have been the destination for your emotions. And you can’t be. You need to be a rest stop for them. You need to be a highway for them.” Meaning that you can take them in, you can process them, and then you can get rid of them. And as Steve was talking about these and sharing these stories, your experiences, your ups and your downs with trusted deep connections that you have, those stories are somewhat analogous to the just married convertible taking off and all of those emotions are the cans dangling behind as you tell the stories. They’re all just leaving your body. The weight off your shoulders, at least from my own experience, is astounding because for years and years I was just bottling everything. Every time, to Julie’s point, my children had a negative experience in life, it was my fault. Every time something wrong happened at work, it was my fault. Everything was on top of my shoulders, I couldn’t do anything right, and it would drive me to drink for a variety reasons. For frustration, for self punishment, whatever it might be. And I never shared anything ever. So that idea of sharing your truth outwardly, with others, in a vulnerable emotionally naked kind of a way is a regiment of self care, at least speaking for myself, I’m responsible for. Even if I don’t want to share, I need to share, because it needs to come out.

Julie: So you said something there that is really important. Once you share something, you get other people’s perspective. And somebody else can say, “Hey, wait, you’re taking on too much here.” And I have needed that. That’s been a huge part of this for me. If I’m taking on all of this responsibility for something and I tell somebody, then they can say, “Okay, wait, let’s take a step back here. What part of that is really yours?” And I think some of us have learned how to do that for one another. But I really needed somebody to… And I wouldn’t talk about it for so long. Especially like the kids thing, because I had this idea in my head that I had to be the perfect mom. So I would just internalize all of that responsibility and all of that shame and never talk about it because God forbid anybody what a terrible parent I was. But as soon as I did tell somebody, they could be like, “Wait, you’re really not a terrible parent. Most of what you’re taking on isn’t your responsibility. The fact that some other kid was mean to your kid isn’t your fault.” And that perspective from the outside is so valuable.

Steve: There’s a quote, and this comes with sharing these things and getting that perspective. “When you share your happiness it gets doubled. When you share your worries or your sadness, it gets halved.” And that is one of the most amazing things about sharing all of that hard stuff is there’s a good chance that, especially in a recovery community, or even outside of that, you might not be able to relate to the circumstance or the situation, but generally you can relate to the emotion.

Robbie: That’s one thing I’m struggling with quite a bit is dealing with my emotions. Before I’d just use and those emotions would go away and make everything better. And now having to deal with these emotions, it’s like a roller coaster. One second you’re happy, one second you’re mad, one second you’re sad. Sharing them – I’m going through this journey with my sister as well, and we came to a little pact and we text each other every what we’re going through. And that’s been a huge help to me. There’s been a lot of times that I’ve said something, and she’s like, from the other side, as you were saying Julie, I’m like, whoa! She’s like no, this is a good thing, you’re doing the right thing. And then vice versa, she thinks she’s a bad parent some days and I’m like, you’ve got two awesome kids. You’ve got a teenager just testing you.

Julie: All parents feel like bad parents when they have teenagers, just for the record. (laughter) Make sure she knows that!

Robbie: My daughter’s 12 going on 16 so I’m just learning that. But the emotions are something I struggle with every single day and I’m not going to lie, it’s probably every single second of the day. Because I’d just use to get rid of those and having to deal with those is quite interesting.

Julie: You’re early on, too – you said you’re around 60 days? Oh 90. And it is still such a roller coaster there. You’re so used to drowning every emotion that every emotion feels massive still. I think just the more time you get in recovery, the more you get used to feeling those things and they don’t feel like they’re taking over your whole life anymore. There’s a lot of practice working through them too, but that first 3-6 months, it’s just a roller coaster and you just have to hold. I think that’s a big part of where you’re at right now.

Dave: I think a lot of times people think it’s just not using or just not drinking and it’s like, “Oh, okay, you’re cool now.” But you’re retraining your brain how to process emotions without whatever substance it was that was yours. Something comes up and you’re learning in the moment, in real time, how do I process this, how do I navigate through it? When you really want to just drink to get through it.

Steve: It’s almost like a level of sensitivity, if I’m going to try to explain it from my own aspect. Everything was big. Even though it was small, because I drowned it out for so long, it was basically like living and having a sunburn. So you would touch it, and it would hurt. Or if it was joyful, it was really freaking joyful. There was no middle ground. I would just flop from one side to the other, and I was like a baby. A lot of the times. Because that’s how I would react, like if you took my sucker I would be really, really pissed. And then if you gave me, I was super excited! Like, if you give me one now, I’m like, “Oh wow, this is pretty cool, thank you.” Not to those extreme levels. But I so get it, because everything is raw. It’s coming in raw and it’s leaving raw, because you’re like whoa, what do I do with this now? At least you get the colorfulness of it all. That’s the way that I like to look at it. You’re giving yourself the chance to live your life in color. There are so many experiences that you get to experience the emotions now that you numbed away, you took away from yourself. Now you get to experience the joy and experience the sadness and you get to experience everything in between and that’s part of the beauty of it all.

Julie: And too, I’m in a group of a bunch of guys here. Guys in general are just expected to not show their emotions and not feel their emotions and stuff. And you guys are lucky because you’re in recovery and you get to have these conversations and realize emotions are okay. Emotions really are what make life, life. If you go through life not feeling anything, you’re missing out on all of it. In a way, you guys are lucky that you get to start letting yourselves feel stuff, even if it’s uncomfortable sometimes.

Jason: That’s the key to it right there is the fact that – I think a lot of it has to do with managing my own expectations, because some of it’s going to suck. And I’ve never been able to put myself in a position where I’d say to myself, this experience is going to be rough. It’s going to be painful. Or this day is going to be really hard, or be comfortable just sitting down and just saying wow, did I get my ass kicked today. It’s nothing more than that, it’s just those things. I agree with what Robbie said, processing emotions every day is a really difficult thing. I have to constantly write things down and keep my thoughts somewhere expressed. I journal like it’s a sugar addiction all throughout the day. It keeps everything in perspective, I can read and see what’s going on in my head right there in front of me. To Steve’s point about the sun, it’s like I’m experiencing sunlight for the first time. My skin’s never been exposed to this kind of thing before, what do I do? But actually, it’s very interesting, as I’ve realized I’m actually okay. Somewhere in there was a point I was trying to round to and I’ve lost it a bit. So I’m going to move on. (laughs)

Dave: I remember coming back from rehab, I had my handy dandy notebook that had all my answers in it. Right, like I’m going back into the real world, I took notes and I’m good to go. Let me tell you, the notebook doesn’t help when life starts punching you in the face. You can’t turn the tab and say, “Oh there’s the answer.” It wasn’t quite as easy of a transition as I thought it was going to be. To Julie’s point, 90 days was really hard to get to. I thought doing 30 in rehab was going to be the pill that made it a lot easier and it wasn’t. It was a lot of learning in the moment and keeping myself in check and allowing myself to feel the emotions. Allowing myself to make mistakes and also learning from them is important.

Steve: I think the neat thing here is there we’re all talking about emotions and what they are, and in this conversation, what we’re doing is taking responsibility for it. Every single one of us has our own way of taking responsibility for it. Whether it’s journaling those thoughts or Robbie, it’s texting your sister. It’s example after example of taking responsibility of those emotions to see what you’re going to do with it. It’s just really neat to see where this went.

Dave: Taking responsibility and saying sorry is one of the harder ones to learn when you’re going through this process. Sorry looks a lot different than waking up the next day like we were saying before and just saying sorry. I think a true sorry is checking in with someone’s emotions, how did you make them feel in the moment when something happened? That’s really important to hear that and also can you take it if they don’t take your apology, can you handle that, too.

Julie: We actually just recorded an episode on Forgiveness a couple of weeks ago and that came up a lot. Sorry looks different. Sorry for me used to be, I’m going to say sorry so we can just move on and I don’t have to deal with all of this. Sorry now is actually understanding how that person felt and intentionally making changes like Steve said earlier. It’s just completely different. Before, sorry would make me feel better and I could move on. Now, sorry is kind of uncomfortable. Sorry is saying I recognize that I did something really crappy here, and I would appreciate it if you would forgive me. And it does not feel good and it does not feel like brushing it under the rug anymore.

Dave: Yeah, I think that action that comes with it that you and Steve had talked about is important, because otherwise it’s just a word.

Steve: I abused it for so long. Even to myself, because of the twisted sense of reality, it never meant anything. Now that I’ve given it meaning, like what Julie said, it stings now when I have to say sorry. I don’t like it at all. But it’s also necessary and now when I apologize, I understand it’s room to grow.

Julie: It’s not a failure.

Steve: Right. It used to really suck. But now I get to learn something new about me and who I’m apologizing to. I get to learn where they’re coming from, their perspective, how they see the world. So in the end it’s an opportunity for connection. It’s not something I try to go and do for fun because I want connection.

Julie: This actually reminds me of something that I read in Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown, I think we talk about her on every episode. She talked about a disconnect in a relationship is normal. Owing somebody an apology in a relationship is normal, but often we fail to see that opportunity to reconnect and we just don’t. And that just drives the relationship further apart. Any opportunity to apologize and reconnect makes the relationship stronger. We just avoid that uncomfortable feeling and create a greater sense of disconnect. If we do that over and over again, the relationship really suffers. If we just come in and apologize, and reconnect, the relationship gets stronger. I thought that was a really cool point that she made. It’s okay to have disagreements, it’s okay to have fights, it’s okay to do something and hurt somebody’s feelings. I mean, it’s not okay. But it can be made okay and it can make that relationship stronger if we take the opportunity to do that and face that discomfort.

Jason: I found in the last couple of months that there’s been a half dozen or so times that I’ve found myself wanting to, and then following through with taking responsibility for my actions in a proactive way in the form of an apology where the person didn’t seem like they were outwardly bothered or hurt by what I said but I did feel like I did them a disservice by not being my best self in a certain moment. Being judgmental of somebody when I shouldn’t have been or whatever the case, I’ve found that by outing myself proactively with somebody does a great job of… This is all very experimental for me. These are things that I’ve heard work, but why the hell would you ever do that when you could just turn a blind eye and avoid a situation. There was a time when I was in a group therapy program and the circumstances don’t really matter but I let them know, I was thinking very judgmentally of them initially, but then I respected them and appreciated their insight and feedback and that they had taught me something in that moment. And the person had no idea, but was really appreciative for the apology and the compliment for the added perspective where I would never have done that before. I would’ve kept quiet and gone about my business. But it does, the apology process certainly does strengthen relationships and deepen connections.

Dave: For me, I’m so stubborn that sometimes getting out of my own way and saying sorry feels like defeat. Like I’ve lost this argument. If I take responsibility for my actions, I’m throwing in the towel, I give up. That is something I currently work on and struggle with, I’m so bullheaded a lot of the time, that I have to actively tell myself to get out of my own way. It’s okay to be sorry and take responsibility for my actions.

Robbie: For me, I’m pretty hard on myself. I’ve been single for quite a few years so I don’t think I’ve had to tell anyone I’m sorry because it was always myself doing it to myself. But for me I would never tell myself sorry, I’d just say don’t do that again. Hearing all this sorry talk makes me think I need to dig deep down inside and find out, who I should tell I’m sorry for. I’m sure I’ve done some things to other people and didn’t realize it. But I think I need to tell myself I’m sorry.

Steve: That’s a good place to start. That’s a really healing place right there.

So tonight we talked about taking responsibility. Apologizing with an action. “When I made a decision,” Dave that was really great. That’s really taking ownership. Responsibility is a decision you make. Talking with others in recovery helps us see the difference in right and wrong and getting that perspective. Be a rest stop for your emotions, I thought that was really good, Jay. Just being a rest stop, there’s not reason putting in the backpack. Just drop it off, it’s only temporary, we can move on from them. And I think what I got out of this whole episode is that taking responsibility is a practice. It’s something we practice on a daily basis and you guys all shared really excellent examples of that. So I want to thank you Robbie, thank you Dave, and thank you Jason for being on the podcast tonight. We really appreciate your time and your thoughts.