007: I could not stop drinking alcohol while in route to Cusco, Peru where I was slated to be a chaperone
Recovery Elevator
Paul
4.7 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2015
⏱️ 42 minutes
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Summary
I was headed to Cusco, Peru as a chaperone for a group of highschool students around this same time last year, and when I started drinking on the first flight I kept drinking all night and up until moments before meeting the students. It was insane, which is exactly what this disease is.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Recovery Elevator, episode 7. |
| 0:02.0 | I finally surrendered and I got honest right then and I said, no. |
| 0:07.0 | Welcome to the Recovery Elevator. |
| 0:12.0 | My name is Paul, and according to my Recovery Elevator. My name is Paul and according to my Recovery |
| 0:14.2 | Elevator sobriety tracker I have been sober for six months, two weeks, and six days. |
| 0:19.5 | Currently it is 2.10 in the morning and I am at the Lima International Airport. |
| 0:24.7 | You might hear the operator call for a flight to be boarded or people carrying your luggage |
| 0:28.1 | down the hallway. |
| 0:29.1 | I'll get to why I'm recording this podcast in the airport as we speak later. But first off I want to talk to you |
| 0:35.0 | about relapse and how relapse happens way before you take that first drink. Now for |
| 0:41.6 | some not myself but for some people relapse is not part of their |
| 0:46.0 | story. They quit drinking and they stick to it. They do all they can to stay sober from the start. |
| 0:52.1 | But for me, it has been part of my story and I don't |
| 0:55.6 | think relapse happens when you take that first drink. I had met a guy whose sobriety date |
| 1:00.3 | was about two days before mine and we were right around 60-day sobriety and I took a week |
| 1:05.6 | trip. I came back and he was in a cast and he had a limp. And when we chatted outside, |
| 1:11.1 | I was like, man, what happened? Well he got hit by a car when he chatted outside, I was like, man, what happened? |
| 1:13.2 | Well, he got hit by a car when he was drunk, he relapsed. |
| 1:16.8 | And I said, what do you think happened? |
| 1:18.8 | And he said, well, I don't think it's really worth my time to go back and think about |
| 1:22.4 | what happened. I just need to keep moving forward. |
| 1:24.4 | Yeah, I agree you can't dwell on the past, but a mistake or a relapse or a slip is really truly a slip up if you don't learn from it. |
... |
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