Here’s an article I wrote with a sneak peek into all 13: https://medium.com/@jason_16990/13-things-ive-learned-in-13-years-of-recovery-e91ff3335c3c
Jason Lennox celebrated 13 years of recovery in December of 2023. He shares 13 things he's learned in 13 years recovery. The first thing he learned is that he's playing with house money. If we can think about life that way, boy, we can do a lot of cool things.
Cadre World. I am grateful to be here with you. My name is Jason Lennox. I'm your resident recovery champion, here to talk about everything, recovery, mental health, wellness, health in general. And one of the things I want to do, I just wrote a medium article in the last several weeks and celebrated 13 years of recovery in December of 2023. And I wrote this article, and rather than a long social media post, it was 13 things I've learned in 13 years recovery. And I want to make these fairly quick.
I'm going to hit you with one at a time, and I'll put the link in the description. By the way, the first thing that I learned, number one, was I'm playing with house money. Let me tell you a little more. I had several instances of overdose, potentially fatal instances, end up in the hospital and, you know, thoughts of suicide, almost, attempts, nearly. So just a lot of experiences where I was feeling like I was at the end of life. And, you know, as I think back on the last 13 years, I didn't plan to have any of them.
And so it really is, to me, this is bonus time. It's house money. And I was actually speaking at an event training a workforce a couple months ago, and one of the people in the audience said, hey, I've noticed, Jason, that a lot of people in recovery have a different kind of motivation. They have a different level of meaning and purpose and passion, and what's that about? And I said exactly what I alluded to a little bit. When we stand, when someone stands at the gates of death over and over and over and comes out the other side alive, everything else becomes a little less scary.
Everything else becomes a little easier. Not to mention I've found a message and a passion that I can take to the rest of the world. And so there is a lot of that. So I'm playing with house money, and I'll give you an analogy and then close up here. I sometimes, actually, the first time I went to the casino, I went and played poker, and my coworkers had given me $50 to sit at the poker table. Now, they were teaching me how to bet. It's $5 a bet, and that's out of this world to me at that moment.
$5. How could you do that on the flip of a card? But they showed me how, and I ended up winning four or 500. And I got to believe a lot of that was because that wasn't my money. And so whether I'm sitting at the table with my own $50, $50 that coworkers gave me, the cost is really relative. When it's my money, I'm a little more fearful, I'm a little less ambitious to make the bet. And when it's someone else's. Yeah. I never had it in the first place. Right. And so that's what I mean. I'm playing with house money, and in this world, the life that I've found, I wasn't expecting it.
And so it's all bonus time to me. And because of that, I'm betting big. I'm going all in and look forward to sharing a little bit more. But that's number one. I'm playing with house money. And if we can think about life that way, boy, we can do a lot of cool things. Look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks so much.
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