Stronger Together: How Community Fuels Lasting Recovery

Mike Diamond dives into why recovery can’t happen alone. Addiction isolates, but connection rebuilds. Community gives you support, accountability, and people who truly understand your journey. One bad meeting doesn’t mean the whole system is broken. It means you haven’t found your people yet.

He highlights the power of mentors (both direct and indirect), reminding us that “success leaves clues” and that modeling healthy behavior creates a roadmap for growth. He also shares how unexpected moments—even online connections—can become lifelines.

Keep showing up, stay open, and let community carry you when you can’t carry yourself. Recovery is built one day at a time, and the right people make the path possible.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:21

Hey guys, I'm Mike Diamond, and this is another episode of AAC Thrive. This is episode three, and today we are diving into an incredible topic. And the topic is finding strength in community. Now, what a lot of people don't understand is this connection and community is the most important thing that addicts need to stay sober. Without connection and community, we're left alone by ourselves. And if we're left alone by ourselves too long and we feel lonely and we're struggling, and we can't reach out to people that connect with us, well, it's very easy to reach for the bottle or a pill or for me a line of cocaine and connect. Because here is what people don't understand alcohol and drugs will never say no. And what we need to understand is this is recovery is built on the strength of compassion and understanding. And if we get around the right community, we find compassion and understanding. The right communities see us for who we are, understand us for the problems we have, because guess what? They have the same problems. And here's the most important thing that people don't understand. When we get in the right communities and we share our stories and we support one another, it helps us to not only remind ourselves that healing happens together, but also it reminds us that we're all struggling. Because anyone that tells you they're not struggling, it is not true. And that's why I've always found that no matter where I go in the world, I have to meet people where they're at. So if you're struggling right now and you find it's hard to connect, reach out to a community. But here's the most important thing you have to remember. And a lot of addicts and alcoholics do this. We go to one meeting, or we get in one little group, and someone says something that we don't like, or we hear something that we feel doesn't agree with us, and then we say, you know what, I'm done with AA, I'm done with that group, therapy sucks, and we globalize our problems. But think about this for a second. Imagine going into a restaurant and eating a hamburger, one hamburger, and it didn't taste that great. And then say you say, you know what? I'm never eating hamburgers again. I'm done. Is that really logical? Having one experience and then taking that one experience wherever we go? No, it's not. Most of us are pretty irrational. So think about this. If you go every day and you search for like-minded people, over time you will attract those people. Now, it does take courage, and it is hard sometimes, and we all found how hard it was during COVID, and we were isolated, and we thought, wow, what is going on here? But here's the most incredible thing. See, without COVID, people wouldn't have got used to using Zoom. I remember when I first started podcasting, you had to be in a nice studio and had to be well lit and had to travel. COVID hit, and all these podcasts took off. You know why? Because people knew people are at home and they had Zoom. So if you're struggling to find a community, go online and search around, and you will find the right community. Now, what I've found really important is in addiction and recovery, it's attraction over promotion. I always have always looked at people that walk the talk and found those mentors. And some of them have been very inspiring to me. And it's it's what inspires me is people that show up, face adversity, and can stay sober. I have a dear friend by the name of Brent Bolthouse, and he's very open about his sobriety. Um, he was on the TV show The Hills. He's coming up 40 years sober, and I remember he still owns bars and restaurants, and I was in the bar business back many years ago, and I met Brent when he was sober and I was using, and he never judged me. And then I got sober, and I've stayed very close to him. And when I was still in the restaurant business and I finally got out years ago, I would always go to him for advice because he had the ability to be around people that drank, and he worked a great program, and he still does. And he's a really, really, really inspiring person. So I always say to people this, and it's a lot easier now to find what I call indirect mentors. An indirect mentor is someone that you don't know directly, but what they do inspires you. Um, if you can't get a direct mentor, which would be like calling me personally and chatting to me personally, look for indirect mentors. And here's the greatest thing success leaves clues. So look at what someone does and follow the map. Okay, you've always got to have a blueprint, and that's why some people get frustrated when they hear people talk, you know, they quote stoic philosophers. And they're like, oh, they're just repeating the same stuff over and over again and wording it differently. Yeah, we've been around this planet a long time. There's a lot of information you can steal, but steal the good stuff and model the right behavior. Okay, so I want you to think about this most the most important thing and why community is so important. Community is so important because as addicts, we love to isolate. Okay, but if we don't connect and keep reconnecting with people, it is almost impossible for us to recover and stay in recovery. Okay. And here's another thing you have to remember is this our families sometimes can be very toxic. I come from a very toxic family. They never ever saw me for who I was, they never spent time with me, they never invested time with me. If you get into the right community, the right community can be very safe, and the right community can keep us accountable, and the right community can always understand us. Okay. So one of the most important things that most addicts are searching for is connection community and to be seen for who we are and heard. There's nothing worse when you are in a family system like I was, and all they do is say, that didn't happen, suck it up, you know, you should be able to quit, and they just blow everything off and they take no responsibility or account of accountability. Now that changes if you get in a supportive community, if you get around people that will actually carry you and lift you. I always say there's three types of P people sorry, three types of people you will meet in the world. There's people that'll pull you down and drag you down, there's people that'll kick you when you're down, and then there's people that'll lift you when you're down. Okay. Unfortunately, we can't choose the people that'll lift us, but if we go searching and we do a lot of research, we will find people in a community that care, that see us for who are who we are, and that will lift us. Now, here look, here's something I want you to think about. I want you to personally think now, by yourself, if you're listening to this, and ask yourself this. What do you want? Why do you want it? How are you gonna get it? And what does community mean to you? Because that's the most important thing. You've got to look at that. You know, what do you want from the community? Okay, and then if you are struggling, right, and you have relapsed, look at why, and then think about and say, hmm, did I reach out to someone? Did I ask for some someone for help? And if you didn't, and you were afraid to, ask yourself why. Why was I afraid just to ask someone for help? If you don't have the support, I get it. But remember, you can go online, you can go online and you can be on a Zoom talk and say nothing and just get that medicine because that's what it really is. It's our therapy and it's our medicine. And without it, I'm telling you, 19 and a half years sober, and I have a really amazing community, and I have so much that I can give and get back. Another thing's important is this. When I first went to meetings, I remember someone saying to me, take commitments and be of service. And I never forgot that. I went to three meetings a day. I was greeting people, I was making coffee. If I was asked to read out of a book, if I was asked to go pick someone up, whatever I had to do, I made sure I served the recovery community. And I still do today. I do so much work to help people who are sick, who are struggling. I help family members, and that is a very important part of our sobriety. Without serving others, first, yes, we have to take care of ourselves, but without giving it back, we can't stay sober. It's not just about us, it's about healing ourselves so we can give back. All right. So I really, really, really want you to think about that and really understand that if you're not giving back, you'll never get back. Don't make your relationships transactional, especially with recovery. Because recovery isn't a job, it's a lifestyle. And here's another thing that you have to understand. There is no destination to this, it's a journey, day by day. Okay, and I want you really to start breaking down in your mind who is in your community, and are they bringing you up or are they pulling you down? Because remember, some people will bleed us, but the right people will feed us, and you have to be around the right people to get fed. And I'm talking about the spiritual food, I'm talking about the food that we need to nourish our soul. All right, so really go out of your way to look for those indirect mentors, to search for communities, and to make sure that if someone says no to you or you don't like the meeting or the community, you don't quit. You got to keep going. I'll give you a little story. Many years ago, in 2006, I was newly sober and I was living in New York City, and I had an apartment, I moved to Williamsburg, and we there was a big snowstorm, and I used to go to meetings, physically go to meetings three times a day, and we couldn't get out and we're blocked in. And I went, you know, online. Wasn't a lot of searching back then, but I just started Googling and I was like, AA meetings. And I thought, well, I'll just try it. And ironically, I found a website and it still it still exists, and it's called X, the letter X A speakers. And I went on it and I was with a friend of mine, and he's like, Are you sure it's not spam? You know, it'll ruin your computer. I'm like, I gotta take a chance, and I hit it, and there was thousands and thousands of speakers recorded on this website. It's called XA Speakers. So, what I did is I didn't know if anyone was, you know, recovering in my in the apartment building I lived. It was a big building, and I went out and I wrote my name and my my apartment number and my number, and I put it on a couple letterboxes. Three days later, I got a bunch of people showed up to my apartment with coffee, and we would actually play one of the speakers. I mean, we heard Bill Wilson, we heard all these fabulous speakers, um, and just audio, and we would share about the speakers. And for three days when we were snowed in, that was our meeting. And to this day, if I'm traveling, I you know, I go online, I grab one of those speakers, and I use whatever I can. And this was, you know, 2000, this is when I was nearly service 19 years ago, and I found it. So be resourceful, okay? Be resourceful and and know this one important thing. You can you can get gold, but here's the thing no one tells you you have to dig for it. Okay, so you're gonna have to do a little work, advocate for yourself, take a little responsibility, and every day have faith if you do the work. You will prosper and you will progress. And remember this there is no such thing as perfection. Okay, so do your best today. It's day by day. And I remember when I was a newcomer and I would hear people say that we're 20 years sober, and I was like, 20 years sober, you can't have any problems. I do more work now, coming on 20 years than I did as a newcomer, and I worked hard as a newcomer. All right, guys. So have a beautiful day. Get through it day by day, and I'll see you guys on the next episode.