With 11 days until Christmas, we find ourselves clenching our teeth and forcing a smile as we try to remember positive holiday experiences. We have them, yet sometimes our minds go right to the bad memories. We welcomed a counselor from one of our recovery centers with almost 41 years of recovery. Larry is an old head, but he knows the score. Addiction is addiction and Larry acknowledges that addiction is a family disease. We have to treat the root cause of why we self medicate. Once you've identify the problem, now you can work on rectifying it.

We welcomed a new friend to the Trash family today in Zeb M. from Saskatchewan. Call him Zeb, for short. We talked about holiday's past that weren't nearly as good in active addiction. Living a life free of drugs and alcohol spawns beautiful outcomes, it just takes time. Give yourself that time it takes for permanent sobriety to sink in. It will we just have to hold on tight. Stick win the winners, show vulnerability, do the next right thing. Practice integrity by doing deeds when nobody's looking. That's integrity at it's purest form. We really do have to give it away at no cost and we try to stay in our lanes in doing so.

The boys burnt no dount.

It was an impromptu performance with some last minute changes and a myriad of technical problems as our client who hosts the show is making changes all around. Which is good, in the long run but we endure the growing pains as we're all trying to up our game. Not all motives align, but we can agree on one thing, recovery from addiction. We land on that level playing field and meet them where they're at to try and get the message across. We talked about preparing for the holidays, we celebrated Jim's 4th year of sobriety, and Will decorated his place, so there's that.

A quasi-milestone hittin' 160 tonight. Nice round number for which to hang our hats on. Thanksgiving is over & done with & we seamlessly segued right into red & green tinsel with bows, snow & wrapping paper. Christmas lights that twinkle on high. We decorated & we decorated early. This being our 2nd Annual Christmas Recovery Season at Talkin' Trash, we thought we'd get out in front of the Christmas rush & since Thanksgiving's over, we can officially decorate for Christmas. Our topic tonight was "Surviving the Holiday's". We shared different coping mechanisms & safeguards against being an inactive participant in the holiday festivities which quickly leads to isolation. Journaling, gratitude lists, prayer & meditation and maintaining a positive outlook despite whatever pile of shits being dumped on your boots. There's so many anniversary dates for brothers and sisters in recovery, between November-December-January 1st. Many and more got clean during the holiday season. You'll never forget that first rehab, 6 days in detox, completely lost and making bead bracelets into Christmas tree ornaments while contemplating an epic AMA for the ages. But if you stayed strong, took the suggestions, by the time your month-long tenure is complete, you can think clearly, remember things quickly & accurately. You're you again and given some time, you'll wonder where that witty, intelligent, funny person was all that time.

Tonight was a Canadian invasion as we welcomed Jim's fellow province-mate, Jennifer N. What a courageous effort by Jennifer tonight as she recalled some very hard, very personal trauma that spawned her addiction to alcohol. Like most addicts, we self-medicate when life shows up and we're not in active recovery. Jennifer is over 2 years clean and serene and we collectively thank her for her time-donation to help the show and foster recovery. With Thanksgiving (US) a few days away, we took some time to reflect on what we're thankful for as we shifted perspective with a feel-good story that did just that. Gimmie' sum dat turk.

3 countries, brought together by 1 podcast. Tonight we welcomed back a good friend of the show, Thomas Guffi Vestergaard. Thomas hails from Denmark. It's tomorrow there so he's literally a day ahead. He donated his time at 2AM with 2,000km of ocean in between us. We looked at fear tonight. Fitting given we brought one of our more bad ass guests to the program tonight. Fear is the driver for many of our choices in life. We also obsess about things that aren't even going to happen. We need to take control of our thoughts in our recovery narrative. Thoughts drive emotions and emotions drive our decisions and decisions have consequences. Take back control, rediscover the real recovery narrative in your life.

Despite a late change of plans and a myriad of technical problems, the boys still rallied and pulled of a show. This show in particular. The team rallied to pull off a show. M&M's know no age limit whilst we explored the cosmic questions about our universe.

Everything is awesome! 150's a nice number. We thanked our supporters tonight as we celebrated our 150th episode. Just Tim and Jim this evening as they tackled a number of topics one of which being the age old conundrum, "teeter totter" or "seesaw". We fielded some questions from a treatment facility which is starting to feel like a nice addition doing Q and A with people early on in treatment. Will dropped his phone in his hot tub and couldn't make it to one five oh while Richard Simmons was sweating to the oldies.

The boys did their thing tonight as we looked at grief in early recovery. Grief isn't just reserved for those who've lost a loved one. You can lament a situation, a relationship, a thing. Grief is about loss and we sometimes grieve for our addiction. We believe the lie that we'll never feel okay again. Even though addiction ruined our lives we still mourn for it as if it were a person lost. We get clean and sober to a life of unfamiliarity and adjustment may take some time. How we used to cope is now off the table and we have to talk about our disease with others who are afflicted similarly, just for today.