Open Hearts, Hidden Truths
Open Hearts, Hidden Truths is a new podcast where the raw meets the revelatory – secrets, realizations, and turning points that reshape who we become, yet rarely get discussed.
First-time and never-again experiences, in particular, compel us to evolve.
Through personal confessions and guest stories, we explore provocative shifts and uncover the hidden truths that connect us.
Episodes released every other Tuesday.
Open Hearts, Hidden Truths
From Isolation to Connection, One App At a Time
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
"We don't recover in isolation."
Burk Jackson saw the loneliness in life and recovery, and decided to do something about it. He created RecoveryBridge, a no-cost app that anonymously connects those struggling with addiction and isolation to one-on-one peer support. We cover how isolation in the digital age is a universal theme, and how addiction, loneliness, and technology intersect.
RecoveryBridge is available on all major platforms, including via web browser.
Is technology negatively or positively affecting the way you connect?
Enjoying the show? Leave a review!
Intro
Speaker 1This is Shamron, and you're listening to Open Hearts, Hidden Truths. Burk Jackson is here, and he has created this fantastic no-cost app for those struggling with addiction called RecoveryBridge. I love what you've created with this app, RecoveryBridge. Tell me at what point in your sobriety did you recognize that there was a need for something like Recovery Bridge?
Inspiration
Speaker 2Gosh, I've had so many different points in my recovery that I could need something like this. And luckily, I was able, you know, I've always been very involved in my recovery. You know, I, you know, first of all, RecoveryBridge is very agnostic. Like, we don't talk about alcohol, we don't talk about drugs, we don't talk about mental illness because I wanted it for everybody. I wanted it for anybody in recovery. I didn't want it to be like, oh, you need to be a recovering alcoholic that goes to AA in order to use this app. Like that was never the case for me. Um, but I and I say that as a precursor to say that Alcoholics Anonymous is what has worked for me. You know, it's been almost 32 years now that I've been sober. And um, I've had numerous times where, you know, I I didn't feel like I could call anybody that I knew or I didn't know anybody in recovery that would uh that would understand or would just listen. Um, you know, I know that that happened to me, you know, what was it? Has it been now 12 years ago when I was going through my divorce? And I ended up um having a lot of personal issues around my divorce, you know, just stuff that I'd never addressed. And it wasn't that I hadn't done quote unquote the work. It was just the fact that things came up for me that I didn't have a frame of reference on how to deal with. So I had a series of at that time I was I was involved in my recovery back then. I was pretty diligent about it. But I and I had a group of four or five people that I would simply call and leave a message for, you know, that apps like this wouldn't have existed back then. But I I remember calling them up and I was going through so much grief and so much shame and and and you know, and this compounding grief. You know, I'd lost my mom in early recovery, and I did a bunch of work, you know. I went to therapy, I'd I've done all that stuff, but I would just have these days where I just needed somebody to hear me out. You know, I didn't need some great piece of advice. There wasn't like a uh a big picture solution, like, oh, I need to do this kind of work or I need to go to this therapy or whatever it may be. But I had this group of probably five people that I would call and leave messages for. And I would just be like, look, I'm just feeling X today. I'm feeling a lot of shame today, or I'm feeling a lot of guilt, or I really miss my ex-wife, or I'm feeling a lot of fear today. And and 90% of the time, these people wouldn't even call me back, but it gave me a venue, but which I could own up to just a feeling the way that I felt. And and again, it happened to me a couple of years ago. Um, I was going through a really challenging situation with my ex- with my, we're still together, my girlfriend now, but um, we were broken up and things were really, really rough and really tumultuous, and just things weren't working out between us. And I would wake up in the middle of the night. I was living up north uh in northern New Mexico in a little town called Abbecue, which is where I grew up, and and uh there's nothing there. There's like a general store and a hotel and a post office, you know, and you got a dollar general down the street in a restaurant. But I used to get up, I'd I couldn't sleep, and so I would wake up at two o'clock in the morning and drive to the gym, which was 30 minutes away down a highway to go work out because I literally needed to do something. And um, luckily I had met this friend of mine by the name of Michael in meetings and he lived in Spain. So I remember sharing on the meeting one day, I was like, Yeah, you know, I'm up at two and three o'clock in the morning and I don't have anybody to call. He was like, Oh, you can call me. I'm up at two or three o'clock in the morning your time. It's eight or nine o'clock in the morning here. I was like, oh wow, okay. So Michael really kind of became this Eskimo for me for a while that, you know, if I couldn't sleep in the middle of the night, um, he would answer his phone and he would just talk to me. And he didn't give me a bunch of huge life-changing advice. But what he did is he showed me that I didn't have to be alone. I'm I was on threads for a while, and I've I've fallen into this recovery community on threads, and a lot of people post up things like, I've been sober for a hundred days and I have nobody to tell, or I've been sober for three months now and I don't have anybody to talk to. I don't have anybody in my life that is sober that I can talk to. And um, I found myself repeatedly saying to these people, I was like, Look, congratulations on your recovery, you know, but we don't do this in isolation. You know, we don't recover alone. You know, I don't care what you've been through. Um, you know, to recover, you know, Einstein said it best, the mind that created the problem cannot solve the problem. And I find that when people are in recovery and they're trying to do it on their own, it's the same mind that tells us that it's okay to drink and use drugs and slowly kill ourselves, or cut, or spend or shop, you know, inappropriately. Well, not inappropriately, but shopping binges or you know addiction, addiction, binge, addiction in general.
Speaker 1Yeah, gambling, gambling, sex, substance.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, SAMHSA last year said there's 34.5 million people in the United States that identify in recovery right now. You know, that's a lot of people. I mean, that's a that's a big chunk of our society when you consider, you know, America is not that big, you know, and to have 34.5 million people identifying in recovery, there has to be a benefit to that somewhere, you know. So I've I started, I one day a friend of mine was like, look, you need a project. You know, we were working on stuff. He's we're still we still work together. And but I was kind of in a lull, and he was like, You need a project. And it was months that I was telling people, I was like, find somebody to support you, find your people, you know, find your tribe, find somebody that you can talk to. When the sh when not when things are falling apart and you feel like dying, like we're not a resource for that. You know, if you go to our app, you know, we're very clear, like, look, if you're in crisis, here's who to contact. We're not a crisis center, we're peer support network. Um, but you know, find somebody that so you don't have to do this alone. You know, Yuan Hari is one of my favorite researchers, and and uh he says that the the opposite of addiction is not recovery, but the opposite of the opposite of the basically to paraphrase it, the antidote to addiction is connection. You know, we find so often, you know, that whether through drinking drugs or any of our other addictions, so much of it is about just not feeling so disconnected from the world. You know, have a few drinks and you can go to a bar and feel connected to somebody. Have a few drinks, you can go to a bar and take somebody home, you know, and now you've got connection for maybe just a few hours, but you're not alone. And so what I really strive to do is create a place where, you know, somebody's just like, I don't know who to talk to, I don't know what to do. And in two minutes, they can, you know, log onto our app and be connected with somebody. You know, the first person I ever talked to was this woman. Um, I call her Laura. That's not her real name, out of privacy. But the first person that ever reached out on RecoveryBridge, she had 29 years of recovery. You know, she'd been sober for no, it was 19 years of recovery. She had 19 years of recovery and didn't have anybody to talk to. So we ended up texting for 30 or 45 minutes. And I was like, look, you know, I'll I didn't tell her what to do. I didn't tell her she needed to go to a meeting or call her sponsor or any of that other stuff. I was just a voice on the other end, you know, I was just on the other end of a keyboard and was able to tell her, like, look, you're not alone today. You know, and I think as our society has grown, this loneliness epidemic that is just so pervasive in our society, you know, really affects. I think it affects everybody. I think everybody's struggling with that somewhat. But I find that when we're, you know, when we're emotionally susceptible coming out of addiction or have addictive personality traits, that that becomes even more important to not feel like we have to do this alone. So that was the I mean, to kind of go all over the map with you, Shamron. That's been the the whole impetus for it was simply a place to just have people not feel alone in their world today, you know. And I don't I don't care what people are suffering from or what their addiction is, it doesn't matter. We all need this, we all need to feel a sense of connection in this world. You know, I think our devices have allowed us to be connected to everybody in the world all at once. But when was the last time you sparked up a conversation with somebody at a coffee shop? You know, I mean it wasn't that long ago that we didn't we weren't tethered to these devices and we'd go to a cafe and there was somebody sitting next to us, hey, what are you doing today, or how are you? You know, I find myself doing that a lot.
Speaker 1You know, I think we all struggle with that because we're all not all of us, but a lot of us are buried in our phones, even when we're out and about in public. You know, to your point, at a coffee shop or at a bar, at a restaurant, anywhere, people are glued to their phones. We're not we're not connecting with each other in a way that we could.
Lost in the Digital
Speaker 2I had this in I was in LA um probably about six weeks ago now. My daughter had a had an emergency, so I had to drive out to LA and I spent about 12 days there. And I was at a coffee shop in Korea town. I was in a Starbucks in Koreatown, um, because I would wake up before her, so I would go and get my coffee, and then I would get something for her and bring it to her apartment, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I was sitting there and there was this elderly man walking across the coffee shop, and he was using a cane, and he's probably in his 80s, and um was trying to carry a cup of coffee with one hand and walking with a cane. And I was like, hey, do you need some help? And so I helped him get to his table, and um, and you know, and we just started talking, you know, and I could tell this he probably hadn't talked to anybody in days. I mean, maybe he does, maybe he has a beautiful home life, but he was very interested in talking. So we talked about his Vietnam service, and we talked about getting him hit by a car and and all these other things, and and I had to leave to go see my daughter in the hospital, so I couldn't stay and talk with him. But he's one of those people that I just would have sat with for an hour just to be like, tell me your story. You know, tell me your, you know, and uh so before I left, I was like, hey, do you need another coffee? And um, he was like, Oh yeah, that would be great. So I went up to the counter and got him another coffee. And the woman behind the counter was astonished that I was helping somebody else out. She was like, You're doing what? And I'm like, I'm getting a coffee or a coffee refill for this older gentleman sitting over here. And she she didn't know how to process that because she was so shocked that somebody was helping out somebody else. You know, somebody I didn't know, somebody I didn't need. I wasn't there to, you know, like steal a cup of coffee. You know, it was it was like a dark rest coffee with some milk and a couple splinters in it, you know. It just got me thinking, you know, again, like when we get out of these little boxes that we put ourselves in, because we've created the box that isolates us from other people. It's not it's not done by society, you know. But then again, I probably look like a crazy person going up and asking somebody how they're doing, you know, or it's just um, I've just found my best connections have happened that way. We've become this culture of isolationists in a way, unless it's our friend group, unless it's the the core group of who we have, you know, or you know, maybe we're not. Maybe everybody else is out there meeting new friends all the time. But I find that more often than not, you know, we're we're not doing that. You know, and I simply asked him how is go ahead. I'm sorry, please.
Speaker 1I was just gonna say I'm I'm finding the same thing. I've talked about it quite a bit. I've um podcasted about it. I've Yeah, you know, it's just as much as the the digital world is connecting us on one hand, it's isolating us on another.
Speaker 2Absolutely. Yeah, we're so stuck with this idea that you know uh I don't want to say this go-it-alone mentality. I don't think that that's it. You know, I I just think somewhere along the lines we've lost the ability to have a conversation, you know, and to be there to support somebody. You know, I uh you know, I uh I find myself I give a I give a fair amount of money to people flying flags, you know. When I was in LA, I would do it, you know, and I would I was just like, hey, I hope you have a really great day. You know, here's here's a couple of bucks, but you know, how are you today? You know, just to let this person know that they're seen and heard by somebody in the world. And I think that's where, you know, I think there's a much bigger solution to this somewhere, you know, somewhere beyond RecoveryBridge. Um, there is a solution to this somehow. And I don't know what that is yet, but I saw people in recovery struggling. And so I I just decided to create a solution rather than wondering if there was another solution out there. I took a couple of months and built one. I was just like, okay, well, I'm seeing a need, you know, I'm smart enough to figure out how to address that need, you know, and I use technology to do that. I used AI to help me build this because I am not a coder, I'm not a developer, I'm one man sitting in an office trying to come trying to figure out how to best help people. You know, asking that older gentleman how he was today, you know, caused me to create a whole series of prompts in our app. So if you log in and you go to the chat and you don't even know what to say, there's like six preloaded chat prompts there. And one of my favorite is I don't know what to say, but I just need to connect to somebody. You know, and somebody can just simply sit hit that and it starts the conversation, you know. And the and there are different prompts for both the listener and the and the and the uh seeker, but it was it was important for me to somebody can log on and not even know what to say. You know, hey, I'm really struggling today, or hey, I just need to connect with somebody. And so I tried to make it as um I tried to make it how I've found the best conversations to happen.
Speaker 1So walk me through the app. So well, first off, what about if someone is already in recovery? Is this still for them? Is this app for anybody?
Bridging the Gap
Speaker 2I think it's for anybody that's that needs connection. I think it's for anybody that just needs somebody to to listen. You know, we um it's a pretty straightforward, simple process. Um, you know, the second person I ended up talking to, you know, the first person had like 19 years of sobriety. The second person I ended up talking to had three days, you know, and she had to take her son to basketball practice and didn't want to go drinking while he was in basketball practice. So she reached out to me and she ended up feeling better. And you know, we texted for like 45 minutes, and she ended up doing a uh a recovery meeting on her laptop in her car rather than going into the bar while her son was at basketball practice. She just needed somebody to hear her out so she wasn't alone.
Speaker 1What kind of interactive features does RecoveryBridge have?
Speaker 2Well, as I said, it's it's a pretty straightforward app. So I'll I'll just walk you through the very beginning of it. You come to it. What I I built it as a progressive web app, so you don't even have to download anything. It works off a website, so you don't have to download an app and go through the app store and all of that. It's it's very simple. You go to recoverybridge.app and it loads it up and you say, I'm in, you know, I'm new here. Or yeah, it's either sign in or log in. Very straightforward. I made it very um user-friendly. You know, we have we do an age requirement, obviously, you know, because I can't legally have people under the age of 18 using it just for you know, and that's not my choice. That's simply the legal legal aspects of what we do. But you you go through four quick steps and then you're brought to a chat window. It's and it works just like text messaging on a phone. And um, you you know, like I said, you'll start with, I believe there's six different prompts as you get to the window, and then it loads up, and then you're you know, it sends out a notification to all our listeners, everybody who signed up under a group to listen. Everybody gets a little notification on their phone. They, you know, I ask that our listeners sign up for notifications. So a little window pops up on the phone and says, Hey, so-and-so is looking for a listener. Are you available? And you can click yes, and it literally brings you right to it. So in two minutes, you can be communicating with somebody. I, you know, there's no like wait time, there's no insurance, there's none of that. There's no cost to any of this, it's all free. You know, we became a fiscal, we have a fiscal sponsor now, so we're a nonprofit. Um, so you know, people have started donating to us to keep our doors open. You know, there are the hard costs, as you know, of running an online business still has hard costs. I really think as we're getting this kind of still off the ground, it's only been three months that I've been doing this. And, you know, we have probably 30 to 40 people signed up right now, um, you know, which isn't huge. You know, the site can handle a lot more than that. You know, I our first person came from a blog post that I wrote, the second person came from a threads article I wrote, and it's kind of trickled down from there. You know, so I spend a lot of time on social media telling people about it.
Speaker 1And what about accountability features?
Speaker 2Accountability features in what aspect?
Speaker 1In terms of tracking sobriety or just being accountable, be it does it hold you to accountability on it the way that a group would?
Speaker 2Different in a way that a group would. Um you know, is there is there a test for somebody that's being honest? Not really. You know, I I have a if you sign up to be a listener, I do have a uh a more substantial onboarding that happens with that. You know, we talk about the fact that we're listeners and we're not paid paid help people. You know, one of the big things I tell people is you also, you know, make sure that your own tank is full. You know, you can't ask to, you know, you can't offer to be a listener if you're really having a bad day, you know. But it talks about empathetic listening. And, you know, we're not necessarily necessarily here to give advice. We're just here to, you know, yes, did I give advice to the people I've talked to? Probably a little bit, but only after they led that way. You know, like with the woman with three days, I was like, look, do you have any sort of support network? Do you have anybody that you can talk to? She was like, I really don't, you know, she didn't have anybody that she could talk to. So, yeah, I'm hoping that she's still sober today, but you know, or and still in recovery, excuse me. I I still fall back to to old to old uh non-agnostic terms sometimes. But um we do have um, if there is kind of any sort of malfeus malfeasance or any sort of like inappropriate communication, like, oh, let me give you my phone number or let me do this. There is a report function there. So if somebody does cross a boundary, they can be reported, and then I have the ability to go back in and look and see what's happened. Um, you know, all our confident all our chats are purely confidential. You know, the only reason I save them is is because if any, you know, they're not saved forever. I can't see everybody's chat history for the lifetime of what they've done. But if somebody's reported, I need to know why that maybe somebody didn't do something that was within our guidelines. You know, we have a whole set of guidelines that people agree to in order to be a listener, you know. Um, because like I said, we're not paid therapists, you know, we're not paid peer-to-peer counselors. You know, if if you want to talk to a professional peer-to-peer counselor, it's gonna cost you money, you know, and and that's not what I wanted. You know, better help is a great service. They have peer-to-peer counselors, but some people don't necessarily need that, you know, they just need a listening ear. They maybe just need somebody to say, hey, you're not crazy today, or hey, you're not, you know, I understand that you're struggling and you're, you know, and I'm here for you. You know, and you can say it's funny, you know, we have like, oh, if you want to favor this, favorite this person. So if they're online again and you want to talk to them, so you can come back to the same people that you've talked to. There is a whole favorites, and then at the end of the conversation, there's a feedback form, you know, where how did this go? You know, how was it? You know, if you're still struggling, do you need to talk to somebody else? That was another piece that we built in. So if they feel like they got off of a conversation and they're still in a in a in a place where they need to still connect, they can reach out to somebody else, you know, like not every person is going to be a perfect fit. You know, I'd love to think in this world everybody can help everybody, but it's not the case. You know, I had to build in some safeguards for that stuff. Like I said, and on the bottom right corner of every page, we have a little SOS button. And if you're struggling, you can click that SOS button and it brings up all the text messages and all the phone numbers of um resources that somebody who's really in crisis would need. And um, I actually built a built a filter into the chat function. So if somebody does talk about suicide or somebody does can talk about self-harm, then it will immediately flag that and give them resources of the right people to talk to.
Speaker 1So that they can talk to somebody in in real time then and they can get further help.
Speaker 2Yeah, there's there's help above and beyond what we do. And while I love what we do, I think if somebody's really struggling, if somebody's like, oh my God, I want to, I really want to hurt myself, you know, that person needs to be directed towards appropriate resources. And there's plenty of those out there, and I think that they're amazing. You know, I've I've been in those crises. You know, I've I've been in those crises in recovery. And so I I know how um how important it can be to be connected to the right person at the right time.
Speaker 1There's so much shame uh around addiction. And um i is that something you've struggled with and are you still struggling with that?
The Shame Barrier
Speaker 2It has been a part of my life. You know, I think there, you know, I think addictive uh or addictively prone people are more apt to struggle with shame. And I don't know, I don't know if it's a chicken or the egg situation. I don't know if my addiction was caused because I was a shameful, you know, I felt so much shame or I just felt so uncomfortable in my own skin when I started drinking at 12 years old. You know, I remember feeling like that first beer that I ever had. I was like, ah, you know, it was like all of a sudden I could breathe. And this was I was 12 years old. And you know, and so I think that shame has been um it's probably one of the biggest barriers for us to be connected to anybody, you know, which is one of the reasons that I make sure that that RecoveryBridge can be done anonymously, you know. I think telling a stranger that you're feeling shame is probably a whole lot easier than telling your mom or telling your best friend, you know. That's that's one of those really loaded topics, you know. Shame is one of those things that I think kills people. I if you log into RecoveryBridge, you can put whatever you want as a username, and the person that you're talking to never sees anything that you didn't share, you know, they don't see your email address, they don't see anything else, you know, it'd be like, hey, I'm feeling you know, I'm feeling really ashamed today, you know, and it's you know, I I use the word ashamed, but not in ashamed about X, but more in that sense of shame is part of our being, you know, which I think we all struggle with on some level. And I think it's one of the hardest things to talk about. And um, you know, there's a saying in AA that I love, and it's you know, we're only as sick as our secrets. And that to me is has never been more true. The longer I stay sober, you know, the longer I have to do this work, and you know, and and recovery for me has not been linear by any stretch of the imagination. It has not been, I'm starting at zero and I end up at a hundred, like that, you know, it looks like a stock market, you know. If you're looking at a stock market over the last hundred years, it's like this, it's always moving up. But I've had huge valleys in my sobriety. And um, and I share about those things very openly because um I hope that it gives somebody else the opportunity to know that they're not alone. You know, I at 20 years sub at 20 years sober, I uh I had perfectly planned it to to end my life. You know, I I I my kids were young and I was separate, you know, was going through that divorce with my ex-wife, and I drove up to the you know, to this value to these mountains outside of Portland, Oregon, not mountains like this gorge. And uh and I had every intention on killing myself. And I ended up in the, you know, I ended up not doing it, driving back into town, and a police officer pulled me over because my ex-wife had called the police to for a well for a wellness, it's not a wellness check, they but they saw me and they pulled me over, and I went to the hospital for five days. And um, and I ended up doing, you know, two and a half, three years of very intense treatment outside work, um, therapy, um, dialectrical behavior therapy, DBT is what I did for about two and a half years to process that shame and to process just stuff that I just didn't even know was there. You know, I think you've probably had that, Shamron, where like you know, something triggers an old memory or something triggers this old thing. And it's like, wow, that's really old. And it doesn't necessarily relate to this situation, but it's there and it's present and it's painful. Two years ago, I was kind of retired and I lost a bunch of money and had to go back to work. And you know, here I am at 55 trying to figure out what the next chapter of my life looks like. And I never thought I'd be here at 55.
Speaker 1I think that's so relatable, though. That's so relatable. Sometimes I think there's this misconception that we're supposed to have it figured out by you know, in sert age. You know, and I know I do this to my I do this to myself all the time. Like when I catch myself, okay, for one, stop comparing yourself. Two, show yourself some grace. Uh and I think that's important to show to show some grace, the way that you would show a friend grace. Show yourself that same grace.
Speaker 2Give me an example. Give me an example of one you've worked through. I'd love to know.
Speaker 1Well, I was just uh just last night, um I I was beating myself up about a couple of a couple of milestones that I hadn't reached, and just a couple of things that I was starting to spin about. And I I found myself having to talk myself down. Like, okay, first off, take a deep take a deep breath. Your mind right now is not your friend. Your mind is putting you into this hamster wheel that is only making you know the situation worse. And it's and it's what our minds are telling us and the way our minds manipulate us when we get you know caught on that hamster wheel. And when I start doing that, you know, it's not productive. Nothing good comes out of that. What I start to do is sometimes I just I put my phone down or I turn on my app for my uh meditation and I clear my head, close my eyes, and I just I try to get back to basics and I try to get in tune with my body and my breath. And I don't drink and I don't do any of that, and I don't I've never, you know, coped that way. But uh, you know, so that's not something that's on my mind. But um but for many people when when they get to that point, I imagine, you know, to silence all those thoughts and to smooth everything out, they would reach for the bottle or for a line or whatever.
Speaker 2Absolutely. I think that you know, it's it was funny. I think last week I was telling somebody on social media, it might have even been earlier this week, but you know, they were like, you know, how do you stay sober? And I was like, well, you you know, first off you stop drinking or using or doing whatever it is that you do, whether it's self-harm, but you know you have to address the underlying reasons why. You know, I mean, some people drink because it's fun, some people drink because it it's a release from cared and bored care, boredom, and worry, is the big book would say. But you know, for someone like me, I grew up, I had so many issues, you know, not so many issues to sound it sounds a little bit exaggerating, but um, you know, we have to address those thoughts, you know, and people go to therapy for that, people go to recovery for that, but you know, none of us came into this world perfect. You know, we have those issues, and um, I'm I think it's amazing that you're able to turn that off and go to a meditation app and self-soothe in such a way. I think we're gonna be able to do that.
Speaker 1It doesn't always, Burk, it doesn't always work. But I I do my best to get out of that to get out of that downward spiral going on in my head. Some days it works better than other days. But I think we all if we if if we're honest with ourselves, I think we all have that in some in some shape or form. We all go through that.
Speaker 2Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think the people that that have it the most together on the outside could feasibly be the most broken on the inside, you know, when when there's this performative display of look how good I am, or look how you know, or look at my hundred thousand dollar car, or my twenty-five thousand dollar watch, or you know, my thirty-five thousand dollar Birkin, you know, and and it's like all that stuff for me, it just shows that there's something not right. Don't get me wrong, like if I had $10 million in the bank, I'd probably drive a $200,000 sports car, but I don't, and so I don't. And but I think so often people are finding ways to, you know, if I look good, it means that I am good. Whereas on the flip side, it's like, well, if I feel good, I generally radiate good. And that's kind of been at least my experience with life, you know. The more I take care of myself, um, the more I try to do the things that I'm that I know work for me, you know, that aren't necessarily fun. Like I don't enjoy, you know, I I've been on a weight loss journey for about a year now, and I've lost a bunch of weight, I've got a bunch left to lose, and and I don't like having to do it. I don't like watching what I eat, you know, I don't like going to the gym. It's not fun for me. Is have I have I made it fun? Yes. But, you know, then again, I I see people in the gym who are probably addicted to fitness. You know, if I look, if I look this perfect, if I have the perfect butt, you know, whatever it may be, then I'm okay. Then people are, you know, and what it really says is people are really gonna love me. You know, I think it boils down to that. It's like, you know, if I, you know, if if I can look or act or be in a certain way, the people are gonna love me and I'm gonna be okay.
Speaker 1I gotta tell you though, about about the gym. Man, there is nothing better than endorphins. Endorphins from the gym and weightlifting in particular have it's really helped. Really helped me with stress, with depression. Um I mean I don't think there's anything better and more natural. Um and that's another way to silence my mind sometimes when I want to really, you know, f you gotta focus on something else. And that's the perfect the perfect. It's so healthy, it just feels so good.
Speaker 2Yeah, oh nothing gets me more focused than going to the gym. It's you know, I I have a very, you know, strict routine, not strict routine, but you know, I have the things that I do, and and going to the gym makes me feel good. It it doesn't make me feel good like eating a piece of chocolate cake would, but that's just not who I am. So, you know, I mean, but then again, I probably I I I haven't had a piece of chocolate cake in a long time. So I don't I don't know how I would feel about it now. But no, and and I totally agree with you. Um that you know, I think as human beings, we're built to move. Um, I think if you're if you're working a physically demanding job, you probably don't need to go to the gym. But I think for the rest of us, when we work online, I sit at this desk a lot throughout the day. So I need to go and move my body. I've struggled with it, I've struggled with weight. This is my third go-around in my 55 years. You know, I did it once in my 20s, I did it again in my late 30s, and here I am at 55 doing it again. You know, and is it it's certainly not easier than it was when I was in my 20s. Doing it in my 20s was easy. Doing it in my 50s is a whole different animal, you know. But I love it. You know, I I like the fact that you know I'm healthier and I can move better and things like that. And and um, but you know, I I think that when we get addicted to those things is when it can become a problem, you know. But then again, who's to say, you know, one person's addiction could be another person's release, you know. So I don't think that that's you know, you could be working out right next to somebody that could be working out for a completely different reason, you know, and and maybe it's healthy, maybe it's not. It's not my place to say. I don't know. I am not, I'm sure there's smarter people in the world than me who could say, oh, this is where this crosses from like enjoyment to addiction, you know. But you know, then again, I can tell you with alcohol and drugs, there is no enjoyment in there in for me anymore, even if I went back now, you know. So I don't think that that's a fair comparison.
Speaker 1And uh is it something that you still think about? Do you, when you have a bad day, do you think about drinking still or
Ghosts from the Past
Speaker 2I've only had that happen once to me in the last two years that I legitimately thought about taking a drink, and it was the day that I found out about all the financial bad news. I had just come back, I'd spent eight months down in Mexico, and I was driving back up, and I was in this little hotel in Fogstaff, Arizona, and um God, it was, you know, it was it was like a mid-range hotel. It wasn't really nice, but it wasn't like really crappy either. But I was I remember sitting on the bed spread, and it was like a synthetic bed spread. And I remember reading this email, I'd gotten this email from someone that is I'm involved with financially, and they're like, oh, guess what? Everything's gonna change for you in the next six months. Like everything that you thought you were doing, all the money that you thought you had is is not there anymore. And it was like, and and it was just like, look, we need to make some changes. And and that fear, that financial fear hit me so hard that my first thought was I was I wondered if there was a bar that I could walk to to go have a drink. Yeah, I had I had no idea what to do, you know. But what I did do is, you know, I reached out to people in my network, you know, I reached out to my sponsor, I reached out to my best friend. I, you know, within five minutes, I was in touch with people and I was like, look, this is what happened, and I'm really scared and I don't know what to do about it. And I did exactly what I built RecoveryBridge to do, not necessarily in that kind of situation, but I reached out to people, you know, and I found myself that I wasn't alone and that, you know, I didn't um once again in that moment was proven to me that connection is the antidote to addiction. Because I couldn't have gotten through that night by myself. Had I not had somebody to call, had I not had somebody to connect with, I probably would have drank that night. And I was 29 years sober, you know, and because I knew nobody, you know, I was in a town where I knew nobody, and could I have called a central office or called a church and found somebody to talk to? Yeah, but that wasn't my thought. You know, my thought was I really want to go out and take a drink. And, you know, my second thought was I really need to reach out to somebody, you know, because I can't do this alone.
Speaker 1How do you hope to grow the app uh even further? Are there do you like what's your vision for RecoveryBridge?
Speaker 2Well, I think as a chat function, it works really well right now. I've looked at the idea of putting in a kind of a an anonymous phone call system as well. So if somebody really needed to talk to somebody, that they could hit a button and it would connect them with somebody that's willing to take their call. But uh again, anonymously, where your caller ID doesn't show up, you know, it would show up as a call from RecoveryBridge to a willing listener. Um, you know, I've I've had suggestions of creating like daily check-ins and things like that, but you know, there's so many apps that already do those kinds of things. You know, there's some beautiful recovery apps out there now, you know. I talked to somebody that signed up this week. We were emailing, and she has a Discord group that she uses for her sobriety support. You know, that wouldn't have worked for me. I needed him, you know, I needed more than a Discord group. And then again, maybe maybe that works for her, you know. But she was like, Oh, I just I read about this and I wanted to check it out. And I was like, Yeah, please welcome to, you know, check out uh anything that you'd like. You know, if you find that you need a support that you can't find in your Discord group, or maybe some nobody's on the Discord group at the time, um we're here for you. So um, yeah, you know, I I feel like, you know, doing doing podcasts like this, you know, I've been on a couple recovery podcasts. So and just really, I think the growth process now for probably the next year is just continuing to let people know that we exist. I really want to make sure that the features that we have work exceptionally well for people and and make sure that, you know, as simple as RecoveryBridge is, that it's there for people when they need it, you know. So I don't want to add in a bunch of bells and whistles and have it lose its original focus. Um, you know, the phone system idea would be great, but it costs a lot of money. Not a lot of money, but it is it there is a there is a cost in running those kinds of systems. And um I need to have you know either fundraising or something set up in a way that I can keep this running by itself. You know, there's hundreds of dollars it costs me every month to just keep RecoveryBridge kind of up and running. And so um above and beyond that, you know, this will always be a labor of love for me. I never see myself getting a paycheck from RecoveryBridge. This is something I love, it's something I believe in. So I don't need somebody to, you know, I don't need a paycheck
One Step Closer
Speaker 2from it.
Speaker 1What about if somebody's listening to this podcast who uh hasn't made the decision to get sober but is thinking about it, or is perhaps struggling and staying sober, what would you say to that person?
Speaker 2Two different things. I think to the person that doesn't know if if recovery is right for them or not, I would say give it a try. Try it for 30 days and see how your life goes. You know, I think that recovery is one of those things. It's kind of like going to the gym, as we were talking about earlier. Like if my whole life was based, if my whole um fitness journey was based on my first workout or my first three workouts or my first 10 workouts, I probably wouldn't have stayed doing it. You know, but things got better. Like I got stronger, I got more agile, I got more, you know, I had more energy, I was able to walk stairs easier, whatever it may be. But I wouldn't have known that until I went back to the gym. You know, and I was a triathlete years ago, you know, and I I literally I blew my knee and hurt my shoulder after my first triathlon. And so I I that's when I started putting on weight again. But I knew that I could do it. So I knew that I could come back. So I think, yeah, for somebody that's yet to get sober, give it a try for 30 days, but don't try it on your own. You know, like I don't care what kind of support you feel is appropriate to find, but you know, one of my biggest sayings that I use on my side or to my blurb on the site is, you know, we don't recover in isolation. You know, I've never found anybody who's gotten better struggling with these kinds of things in isolation. So it doesn't mean, you know, I'm not saying to go to an A meeting or a smart recovery meeting, but find someplace that you can have support. And then somebody that's struggling, it's kind of that same message. You know, don't struggle in isolation, don't struggle by yourself. Um, you know, I I make a joke a lot of times in meetings. I say, my my addiction wants to get me alone, kill me, and make it look like an accident. And the one thing that I can do in all of those things is not let it get me alone. You know, I know that if I were to drink again now after 31 years, that you know, it was funny. I was having a conversation with somebody from Columbia a couple of days ago, and she was telling me how cheap the drugs are there. She's like, oh yeah, for $2.50 and a telegraph message, I can have cocaine delivered to my house. And I was like, oh my God, if I was using again, if I was using still, like, you know, living someplace with the best where cocaine is made, and I could have it delivered to my house, you know, that would be the that would be the end of me. That would be the death of me right there. You know, I would be, I would have a case of booze and cocaine delivered to the door, and you know, that would be it. But um, you know, but I know not to get myself alone in those situations. I know to reach out to somebody. I know to reach out, you know. I luckily have a pretty big support group. I'm really involved in my recovery. Um, not a big support group, I have some people, but um, I've always had I've always believed in depth rather than breadth in my relationships. So I have people that I have more, I have fewer people, but I'm closer to them as opposed to having more people that I'm less communicative with. So um quality versus quantity. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's always, but it then again, I'm not good at small talk, you know. Like somebody asked me how I'm doing, it's like, well, what do you really want to know? And you know, my one of my favorite questions is you know, what has made you really happy lately? You know, like I'm gonna ask you how your job is, like, hey, what's given you the most joy in the last 30 days? You know, and um, what do you look forward to at the end of the day? You know, you know, if you could spend your weekend doing anything anything on earth, what would you spend your weekend doing? You know, and um, so I those are the things that I love to know about people, you know, yeah, and inevitably end up in just day-to-day conversations with people as well. But, you know, I try to remember, like I have a good friend of mine, Matt, and his his daughter was sick a few months ago. And um, you know, every time I think about Matt, I keep reminding myself to ask him, like, yo, how's your daughter doing? You know, and I haven't really had a chance to talk with him recently. I'll probably see him tomorrow. And it's really important. I remember that his daughter was sick and I want to know how she's doing. And it's not to show that I'm a good friend, it's just to show that that's what matters. It's not how's your car running today, you know, or didn't anybody did any cute girls talk to you because you drive a Corvette? You know, it's like, you know, it's like, how's your family doing? How's your daughter holding up from those from the seizure she was having? You know, and um I think that when we can take ourselves out of the equation and really listen to other people, um, what matters to them is what matters is what should matter to us for them.
Speaker 1Tell me again how I can access this app.
Speaker 2Just simply go to the website, recoverybridge.app. Uh, we're also on threads and Facebook and X at um recoverybridge.app for the for recover for Threads and X, and then a recovery bridge on Facebook. Um, I share a lot of stories there about recovery and things along those lines. And then to find me, I'm I can be found pretty much anywhere on earth. I'm it's Burk Jackson, you know, B-U-R-K Jackson. I don't I don't hide anymore. You know, I I make sure that people, you know, if they had a question, they could reach me at Burk at recoverybridge.app. You know, if they didn't if they didn't even want to sign up for the app, but just wanted to send me an email and be like, look, I need somebody to talk to. I'd be like, look, here's my phone number, give me a call. You know, I believe that the world that I'm the world that I want to see is a world of service and generosity. You know, so often we're so in so concerned about getting ours that we forget that, you know, maybe by getting giving helping somebody else get theirs, we get ours as well.
Speaker 1If this episode resonates, I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to hear your story. What are you feeling? Talk to me. If you're enjoying this podcast, click the subscribe button. If you have a similar experience you'd like to share, drop me an email or a DM at Open Hearts Hidden Truths.
