Edward Keohane joins us on the SHAIR Podcast. Ed is very active in the private group, has been a long-time listener to the podcast, huge supporter, and he's got a hell of a story, so he reached out to me quite a few months back, and I'm finally getting him on the show. This is one of my favorites, you do not want to miss this episode.
Omar: So Ed, let's dive right in, buddy. You ready?
Ed: I'm ready to go when you are.
Omar: All right, let's do this, man. So first, let's talk about what your daily routine looks like today and then throw in how you maintain your recovery.
Ed: Well, my days are backwards for most people. I work nights. I work for the United States post office, so I work nights, and so everything's kind of flip flopped. How it usually begins is I get up after going to work all night after a few hours, I go to the gym, I go from the gym and then I go to a meeting four to five times a week, I come home, I just hang out, I do yard work, stuff like that, stuff to keep me busy. I recently bought a house, so my girlfriend and I, we are not cohabitants and we have her son, who's four and a half, so I go pick him up from school, we hang out until his mom gets home, I usually try to catch a few more hours of sleep, and then I go to work.
Omar: Tell us how you maintain your recovery, then. Do you make lots of meetings? Do you have go in the mornings? How does that look?
Ed: No. I usually catch my meetings at noon. There's a noon meeting that I go to in Springfield, Missouri, about 20 minutes away. I do that roughly four times a week. I have a sponsor whom I speak with several times a week. We work steps. I currently don't sponsor anyone else because I have a new, improved recovery date, which we'll get to.
Omar: Right.
Ed: It's a lot of prayer at work, at night. I'm in my head a lot. I'm in my headphones a lot, which is when I listen to your show, so you're in my head a lot, which is kind of crazy to think about it. There's a lot of prayer, man, almost continuously throughout the night and during the day, "Your will not mine be done". I really try to bring my recovery into every area of my life. I know some folks who drop that stuff at the door in terms of the meeting door. Man, I've got to carry mine with me throughout the day in every area of my life. Otherwise, I just get lost, and then my recovery gets lost, and then I'm truly lost.
Omar: Yes. It makes a big difference. With that being said, do you have a daily spiritual practice to maintain your conscious contact with a higher power?
Ed: In terms of actually sitting down and meditating, I didn't start doing that until I don't know what episode of The Rule 62, but you guys were talking about meditation. I think you had Michael Hill and then Stephanie on there, and you guys were talking about the Calm app for your phone.
Omar: Right.
Ed: At that very time when I was listening to that, that was in January I think, I was going through some turmoil in my recovery, and I thought that was definitely a facet of my recovery that I was missing, so I purchased that app, and man, I'm telling you what. Like a good addict, I was doing that app two or three times a day, listening all day, man. You know what, though? It really helps. Formally, aside from my meetings and aside from all the components of my recovery, meditation, I'm still an infant, but it's become part of my daily practice.
Omar: Let me ask you this. As you already mentioned, you have a new clean date, so what is your new clean date? How much time do you have?
Ed: My new and improved sobriety date is January 14th of this year. I actually had three relapses over the last 18 months, which I'll get to, but before that, I had four years, and so HP, baby. It takes what it takes, and that last one, if that's what got me here, then that's what was needed, so no regrets.