In this edition of The Way Out, I’m absolutely thrilled to bring you a tremendous interview I had the pleasure of having with person in long term recovery and author of the new book Addicted in Film: Movies We Love About the Habits We Hate, Ted Perkins. Ted shares his journey to and through recovery to this point and how both smart recovery and how watching films about addiction and recovery in his early recovery – over 100 films in 100 days to be more precise – was instrumental to his recovery for what amounted to a few key reasons. The first reason and definitely one that’s near and dear to our hearts here at The Way Out, is that films are at their very core are telling a story, in this specific case, about addiction or recovery or both, and stories are how we humans evolved to learn, grow, and connect to each other. Stories help us understand our shared history and how we persevere and overcome all manner of hardship and adversity. At their best, stories captivate us, and we cannot help but connect to the characters, and they carry within them essential truth, wisdom and hope - which is precisely what we’re doing on the regular here with The Way Out Podcast. The second, and not insignificant, is that the film occupied the time that was spent drinking with something positive and productive. Idle time and boredom, especially in early recovery, can be a daunting situation to contend with. Replacing that time with positive and healthy activities that improve our minds, bodies, and spirits goes along way in laying the foundation for an enduring and rewarding life in recovery. Third and arguably most instructive from a recovery perspective, is what films and the stories they tell, tell us about ourselves, which, just like the heroes in our movies, we can reckon with our own demons and get honest about them, whatever they are and then we can overcome them in order to become the people we always knew, deep down inside we can be or the people we ultimately determine we want to be. Recovery stories inspire us to truly believe we too can recover and become heroes of our own stories by stepping into our innate skills, gifts, and abilities to connect to and help ourselves and others. Indeed as Ted so insightfully tells us, our lives can indeed imitate art or a powerful recovery story that you might just hear in the rooms of recovery, or on your favorite recovery podcast like Ted’s story on this here podcast which is about to unfold before your very ears so listen up.

Contact Ted and Learn More About the Book and the Movie Club:

www.addictedinfilm.com

Best Addiction and Recovery Movies:

The Lost Weekend | Thanks for Sharing

Best piece of recovery advice - Recovery is a muscle or skill, it takes practice

Song Perfect Day by Lou Reed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wxI4KK9ZYo

Duran Duran Version:

https://youtu.be/48YIGqvpXNE

Don’t forget to check out “The Way Out Playlist” available only on Spotify. Curated by all our wonderful guests on the podcast! https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6HNQyyjlFBrDbOUADgw1Sz

(c) 2015 - 2022 The Way Out Podcast | All Rights Reserved Theme Music: “all clear” (https://ketsa.uk/browse-music/) by Ketsa (https://ketsa.uk) licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd