96: Secrets Make Us Sick, But This Heals Us

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We put ourselves in a different direction. We give ourselves an opportunity.
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This is the Addiction Recovery Podcast with Steven T.
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Ginsburg, founder of Restore Detox Centers in Sunny, California.
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Enjoy your experience.
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Steven, so great to be back together with you today.
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We're on a roll here with the podcast.
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This is episode 96.
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Oh, so close to 100.
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Love it.
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Love it.
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Today I want to talk about this idea of every sin wounds us.
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And so this isn't like praise the Lord, open your Bible, we're gonna preach to you.
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Because trust me, I sin all the time.
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I make a ton of mistakes.
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So do you, so does everybody else.
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So if you sin, we we sin.
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Welcome to the show.
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Man, yeah, yeah.
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Welcome to the show.
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There's also there's a bumper sticker once that uh somebody's talking about there saying, Don't judge me because I sin differently than you.
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I love that.
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I love that.
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Yep, exactly.
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But here's the thought I I think it's like wickedness, sin, whatever you want to call it, evil is never ever, ever happiness.
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I was just talking to my kids about this, and I want to hear your thoughts on this.
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This isn't even a religion type episode.
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I I just think there's some truth to it, and because I I know for a fact, because I've been like I've I've done a lot of bad things in my life.
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But the thought here that I sharing with my kids, I want to share with you in the audience, is when we do something, we have this remorse of conscious.
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It's guilt, it's shame, it's embarrassment, and there's no way to escape it.
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You think you can escape it, and guess guess how you think you can escape it?
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You'd numb.
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Like you try to numb it because you're like, ah, I did something really bad, you feel bad, and then you numb it through drugs, alcohol, food, sleep, whatever it is, work, but it doesn't go away.
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And so I remember I try to be a really good kid, you know.
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I tried my best.
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I remember one of my friends came over from high school and he brought a little baggie of weed.
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Never smoked weed before in my life.
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And it's not like I had a pipe or anything to smoke it out of.
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So we just got like a pop can or a soda can and poked some holes and smoked.
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It's probably like terrible for your brain cells, you know, doing it like that.
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But we did.
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I don't even know if I got high.
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Oh my gosh, Steven, I felt terrible.
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I was like, I'm going to hell.
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Oh my gosh, what did I just do?
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Now I'm a drug addict.
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I felt so bad.
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I felt so guilty.
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I felt so much shame.
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And so you know what I did about it?
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I smoked more.
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Of course, and then I smoked more, and then I smoked more until I was just numb walking around like a like a dead person.
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And so I think like men, women, you know, sexual sin things that we do, like it plagues us, and we broken world because we have this system built in where we feel guilt and shame.
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I think that's by design.
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Otherwise, if there's no consequence, everybody would just do crazy stuff.
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They just murder their neighbor, they do this, they do that.
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But we have a system built in that alerts us.
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Absolutely.
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I just don't think there's a way to escape that.
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I wanna what are your thoughts on that, Steven?
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I mean, it's just so it's a it's a remarkably poignant, relevant, broad stroke, and I love it.
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And like we're only as sick as our secrets.
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And you know, we we are we are broken, and we gotta take this thing all.
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And yes, we're not doing a Bible study, we gotta take it all the way back to the garden.
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And and that it all just went from there, and it's a fallen world, and that's not bad news.
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There's good news, and the good news is we don't have to live in depravity, we don't have to allow shame and regret and remorse to govern or to rule us.
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We can take contrary action, we can pivot, uh, we can start a new pattern of behavior and focus on a different objective at any point in our day, at any point in our life, and start to rewrite the history and start to really rectify the very things that held us back.
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And so, you know, one perfect man I know about, they put him on a cross.
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The rest of us, while we're here, are doing the best we can.
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So I think we've got to continue to look and live in the solution, continue to look and live in the exploration for the solution, and continue to participate in supporting one another.
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Again, easy things to say, hard things to live.
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Extending ongoing grace to one another, reaching out to one another, and we start to slowly but surely rise out of those ashes and realize there's a better way.
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The day gets hopeful.
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We start to understand like we don't have to live in sin.
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And anything we take out of that darkness into the light, it has no power over us.
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Yeah, and and I love that.
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And I love how you brought up just Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
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And I think you know, God is so full of grace and mercy.
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What's interesting is, you know, in the Bible in Genesis, it talks about like this tree of life and cherubim and a flaming sword.
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And you're like, what is that?
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Is that just symbolism?
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What is it?
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And you know, the thoughts that I have on that is God is so merciful and graceful that he put a cherub, like cherubim's like an angel, like a uh angelic messenger.
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I didn't know that.
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I had to look it up in this flaming sword, basically in front of the tree of life, saying, I'm gonna protect you from yourself because if you sin or transgress, and then you go eat of this fruit of the tree of life, you're gonna live forever and you're gonna be forever miserable.
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So, what he did is he created this space.
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He said, I'm gonna create this distance between the tree of life and where you are right now.
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And that distance, that space allows us to change.
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And so, what's interesting about like the last episode and how this all ties in, um, episode 95, we were talking about doing stuff that works in simplicity.
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And when you think about it, like it's it's really simple.
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Every single day we're gonna probably make a mistake.
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And if maybe one day we have a perfect day here or there, but then the next day we're gonna make a mistake.
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It's it's basically okay, we make a mistake, we sin, we do evil, we transgress, whatever you want to call it.
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All we got to do is commit to change.
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We say, okay, we're not gonna do that again.
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Feel remorse, feel regret, and say, I'm gonna change.
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Yesterday, the way I spoke to my wife, that felt terrible and made her sad.
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I'm not gonna, I'm gonna try not to do that again.
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And then guess what?
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You're gonna do it again, right?
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But the whole attitude is today I'm gonna just be better than I was yesterday.
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But I I think when we believe that we can just hide our sins, like you said, our you know, our secrets keep us sick.
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When we believe we could live this life, and there's just no consequence, there's no wounds.
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That's where I think we trick ourselves and we open ourselves up to addiction because we're gonna feel this pain.
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You talk about it in your book, Steven, like this pain, emptiness, that emptiness, this the emptiness, right?
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And you're like, I don't know what's going on, but I feel this emptiness, I feel this gap.
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And then we try to fill it with terrible things.
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But that's why the gap gets us in the first place.
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A thousand percent.
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And again, this the whole conveyance of the sentiment is on track, and it's about giving ourselves, like giving ourselves through, and it's it's an action, it's a verb.
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We put ourselves in a different direction, we give ourselves an opportunity.
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We you can't like you know, that this thing's age-old, this part of it.
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Like the definition of insanity is what repeating the same behavior and expecting a different result.
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It all starts to anchor in.
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So, okay, let's get into a different behavior pattern, let's get into different choices, let's get on this.
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Or how about this?
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Let's reach out and be like, hey, I need a hand, like I need someone to process with me.
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I want to talk about how I'm feeling.
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Okay, like I mean, like, you know, one thing I this is good.
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It triggered me on this.
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Something I've been working on this year, and I work on different things.
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I'm finding different points in my life in sobriety.
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Steve, I'm working on different things.
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There's something I've been really intentional about this year.
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When people ask me how I am, I thank them for asking me because I really am excited they've asked me.
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And then I actually tell them how I am.
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I don't just, you know, I'm fine, I'm blessed, I'm nah, dude.
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Nah, we're not doing that.
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I'll be like, oh man, we're going right now.
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Like it's a roller coaster.
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I don't know.
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And like, or this or that.
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I share like my like what is my truth?
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And you know what?
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Like, good, that totally like releases that pressure valve for me.
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And by the way, they light up because they're so I can see they're like, this is so awesome.
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Thank you for like sharing with me what's really going on.
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I want to participate in that, and that that's like that's I'm not tooting my horn.
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Like, I do that for my own sake, but I'm doing something great for that person who cares enough to ask me how I'm doing.
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And so things like that, those are sin busters, man.
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Those are secret busters, those are shame busters.
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I like this, and I want us to live in those realms like we are right now, today, together.
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I like that.
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Guilt busters, shame busters.
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No, and I mean, think about think about a a while back when we when we had Victoria on the show, you know, she's a super fan of the show and and a friend of Restore.
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When she was on the show, like how natural was it to just have a conversation with her?
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It was like this, just like this.
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It was right.
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And we were just we were talking about things that mattered, and we were talking about things that were definitely sensitive and and personal, and we were talking about the solution and where there's hope and where there's light, and something remarkable and beautiful that came out of something that was, you know, horrible and horrific, but but that trauma and that mess uh starts to construct that beautiful message where there is hope for all of us.
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And and I'm I don't know about you, but I sitting on you know the the show and doing the show with her and and you and I was thinking there's 10 things here that she just said that I could say me too.
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Oh my gosh, yeah, same here.
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Completely, and it's the similarities, not the differences, and the world carries these things, and we realize we're not terminally unique, and then the best part, brother, is when we get together and we camp out on the solution to what?
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To everything, and then like we're gonna be here anyhow, right?
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We're here, let's make it like this like let's communicate, let's hold one another up, let's participate in the solution, let's foster hope and let's keep forging ahead and just keep finding a better way each day.
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That's a good deal, right there.
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Let's participate in that deal together.
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Yeah, and and here's the deal we know you're out there, we know you're listening because we see the stats on the show, right?
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So we we know that a lot of people are tuning into the show.
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So don't be weird.
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Like you could pull your phone right now.
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You're listening on your phone, I'm sure.
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If you're driving, yeah, don't don't do this while you're driving, but you could pull your phone, open your email browser, and type in hello at restore detoxcenters.com.
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We're not gonna like opt you into anything or try to sell you anything.
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Send us an email and just say, I'm alive, I agree, I want to be on your show.
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I am struggling with this.
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Like, look when Steven and I do this show together, we do it because we love you and we care about you.
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And like we just said, there's so many similarities with us.
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And I think when we're making mistakes, we're screwing up, or life's hard, or life's great, or we're full of gratitude, whatever state you're in, we can relate.
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But I think when you don't have anybody to reach out to, or you just don't feel like you're part of something, like you can be part of the the restored nation here.
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And when when you have that connection to a bigger community, you realize, oh my gosh, maybe I'm not so weird.
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Maybe maybe my struggles aren't so like foreign to everybody.
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I can relate to other people, and when we share into that, our pain is eased.
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Amen.
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I don't know.
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I just that that's what I wanted to end on here, Steven.
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I I love that, and I I think it's a common solution for the better good, and it's it's proven, and and we're participating in the proof of that now.
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And again, to your point, please know this like we want to hear from you, we want to interact with you.
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Uh, we want we want to have you come on the podcast.
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We want questions.
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We're here for you and with you.
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We love you, we support you.
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Everyone have a safe and sober day.
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And Steve, thank you so much for this remarkable subject today.
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Cheers.