Addiction Recovery

67: The Lie of “Just One”

• Steven T. Ginsburg • Season 1 • Episode 67

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Ever told yourself it was “just one hit” or “just one drink” and felt the urge to hide it? We tackle those quiet decisions that derail recovery, showing why even a small slip is still a relapse—and how owning it out loud can turn shame into momentum. Steven explains the danger of false time, the relief of taking a 24-hour chip, and why honesty is the fastest path back to stability. No judgment—just community, courage, and support that meets you where you are.

We also address family dynamics: how to respond when a teen admits to drinking, how to celebrate truth without normalizing patterns, and practical tools like random drug testing, clear household values, and daily check-ins. The goal isn’t perfection—it’s catching problems early and creating a home where honesty wins over secrecy.

On the nuts-and-bolts side, we break down craving as an allergy and why addiction is progressive. Steven shows how consistent 12-step work produces lasting psychic and spiritual change, and how stacking small wins—hour by hour or moment by moment—keeps recovery moving forward. Whether you slipped or are supporting someone who did, this conversation offers a direct, compassionate roadmap: tell the truth, take the chip, call your sponsor, and lean on the group. Recovery restarts right now.

Helpful Links:
Learn more about Restore Detox Centers
Filling the Void book by Steven T. Ginsburg
Overcoming the Fear and Lies of Addiction e-book
How to Love and Set Boundaries Without Enabling Addiction e-book
Call Us for Addiction Recovery:  1-800-982-5530

DISCLAIMER:
Welcome to the Addiction Recovery podcast, brought to you by Restore Detox Centers. We are dedicated to providing valuable and insightful information on addiction recovery. However, it is essential to understand that the content shared in this podcast is intended for educational purposes only. While we strive to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information presented, we cannot guarantee its completeness or suitability for individual circumstances. The topics discussed in this podcast are based on general knowledge and should not be considered a substitute for professional advice or treatment.

It is important to note that the views and opinions expressed by the podcast hosts, guests, or contributors are their own and may not necessarily reflect the views of Restore Detox Centers. We strongly advise listeners to consult with qualified professionals, such as addiction counselors, therapists, or medical practitioners, before making any decisions or taking any actions based on the information provided in this podcast. Please be aware that listening to this podcast does not establish a client-provider relationship with Restore Detox Centers.

Steven Ginsburg:

The chicken is involved. The pig is committed. And we can't be a little bit pregnant. Things are what they are.

Steve Coughran:

This is the Addiction Recovery Podcast with Steven T. Ginsburg, founder of Restore Detox Centers in Sunny, California. Enjoy your experience. Steven, so great to be back with you. Today I want to talk about just slipping up a little bit. And what I mean by that is let's say I'm in recovery. And you know, maybe I maybe I just left the house, maybe I just left restore, and I'm supposed to be working the program, and I am, but I slipped up just a little bit. One of my good friends came over. I smoked a little bit of marijuana that night. It's just weed, just weed, right? Quote. Or it's just I just had a shot or two. Yeah. Do I need to say anything to anybody? Or can I just like keep this to myself and then just like get back on track and start attending meetings the next day? And just I mean, because it's probably embarrassing in some ways.

Steven Ginsburg:

You know, Steve, that okay, first and foremost, you know, grateful. Thank you. Great topic, important imperative. So many things come up. Let me start with the obvious. We are only always what as sick as our secrets. We are not here to participate. Uh, there's this terminology in the program, taking a dirty chip. We don't take dirty chips around here. Uh, nothing good comes of it. Uh, if there is a regression or a relapse or a slip, I would hope whether it is the day of or the next day, any one of us would go right back to a meeting and with courage and vulnerability and transparency, raise our hand. You know, I slipped. This is my my day one. Take a 24-hour chip, let the group come alongside us and support us. We don't shoot our wounded in recovery. Uh, take ownership of it because nothing good is gonna come of it. We cannot commit to or adhere to or celebrate false time. It doesn't work. It always inevitably, through the work, it always inevitably, and I've seen this time and time again in my journey of sobriety, inevitably it'll come up and come out and be brought out through a good sponsor, through the work in the steps, and people identify and they they own it. So at one time or another, it's gonna come to the forefront. Just you might as well get it out of the way and take ownership of it because it happened. Just really quickly, kind of closing up this part of the conversation. Listen, the chicken is involved, the pig is committed, and we can't be a little bit pregnant. Things are what they are, it is what it is. There's no little bit of anything, any mind-altering substance that we ingest that passes our lips that we take in, we are no longer clean and sober. We are starting again on that first 24 hours.

Steve Coughran:

Okay, so I mean, are there rules involved with this? So, like, do I have to admit it? Like, do I have to go to confession if something like this happens? Because you mentioned like going to group the next day, having the courage to say something. Like, are you required to do that? Or can I just be like, uh, it was just I mean, it's just a shot, dude. Come on.

Steven Ginsburg:

It's you're not required, we're not required to do anything, but I'm I'm gonna end up regressing back to what I shared with you. You're gonna be carrying that weight, it haunts the individuals who are carrying it. They're not properly adjudicated with the time that they're professing to have. It weighs on them. It's easy, easy ground for the enemy to gain and make the relapse worse because it's a progressive illness. There's huge shame cycles that come behind it. No, we don't have to, but if we read chapter five, how it works over and over and over again in that first paragraph, it references what? Honesty, rigorous honesty, the capacity to be honest. This is a program that is based on the truth, empirical, imperative truth, truth that will save our lives.

Steve Coughran:

Okay, let me let me take this a different direction. What if okay, you got two beautiful kids? Have kids, right? And what if one of your kids got like wasted and they came to you and said, Look, dad, this is the first time I was at a party, I drank and I, you know, totally blacked out, I got completely obliterated. Yeah, would you be kind of about that, like as a dad, like it recurring? Are you thinking like, wow, okay, you open the gate now, the chances of you doing it again, like there's a higher probability, or like how would you like think about a situation like that?

Steven Ginsburg:

First of all, I'd be yeah, it makes perfect sense. First of all, and I'm playing the tape all the way through right now as we speak on it. First of all, I'd be thrilled that they told me the truth because they should tell me the truth and they should feel comfortable in telling me the truth. And and the truth doesn't always feel good and it's not always convenient. I would be more concerned if they tried to hide it from me. I'd be more concerned if they tried to hide it from me and it was something that happened repetitively. You know, youth is wasted on the young, things are gonna happen with young people. Not too long ago, a teammate at Braden's came up to Braden and was like, Hey, Ginsburg, do you ever think you're gonna like drink before legal drinking age? You think you'll ever try alcohol? And he just really didn't know about our family and know about Braden. And Braden's like, Do you like know what my dad's life is about? Like what he does for work, where he's called, like, do you do you? And they're like, No. And he's like, My no, I I won't be drinking through my high school years a day at a time with my family and my parents and the way that our household is. I was thrilled that that was his answer. That was a conditioned answer, and it's a real answer. Things are gonna, but that being said, things are gonna happen and things could happen. I'd be concerned if there was a pattern, I'd be concerned if there was unmanageability, I'd be concerned if he was trending towards showing that he suffers from what I am blessed with and suffer from.

Steve Coughran:

Yeah, no, and that makes sense. And we've talked about before in other episodes about drug testing our kids. Absolutely as a safety mechanism for them, which I won't necessarily get into. I I did, I'll tell you, I did get my drug test in the mail just a few weeks ago that I ordered from Amazon for my daughter. She's 12 years old now, getting into middle school. And it's very clear with her, thanks to your your whole uh guidance and insights here, that we do drug tests randomly in our home. Not that I don't trust my daughter, but that's a whole other topic in itself. But really, it's this idea like, because I was thinking of the first time I smoked marijuana, and I I can't even remember like who gave it to me, you know. Like obviously we say a friend, but no friend gives another friend drugs.

Steven Ginsburg:

Right. Right.

Steve Coughran:

A person, I should say, gave me some marijuana, and it sat in a little baggie in my closet probably for like two or three weeks, and I was really paranoid of it. I was like, dang, I got like drugs in my house, and I was like freaked out. The police didn't come, like I wasn't gonna touch it, but then I was like, uh, you know, so then I had a friend over and we're like, let's just like smoke it. So we I remember smoking it and I got a little high and I felt terrible, not like physically per se, but like spiritually, because yes, uh I'm a Christian, and yeah, obviously, doing like smoking weed is not good. I dude, I I felt like I committed the dirtiest sin in the world, and I felt so bad about myself, and that was enough to like scare me into thinking like I do not want to be like my dad who died from drugs, I don't want to be a drugie, you know. I that I broke a commandment, I sinned, and I felt so bad, but then guess what? That just opened the door because after those feelings faded away, and it's like huh, maybe I'll try it again. And then and then try it again, and then try it again. And so, like, I think that like when I kicked off the episode with slipping a little bit, like even when you're in recovery or you're not, like whether it's your kids or you're in recovery that we're talking about here, you just slip up a little tiny bit. Even if you were like, hey, okay, I was at a party, they passed the pipe, I smoked, I took one hit. Just took one, I didn't, I didn't even like get high. That right there is a relapse, right?

Steven Ginsburg:

It it a thousand percent is, and and and listen again, I am bodily and mentally different than my fellows, and I suffer from a spiritual malady. My manifestation of craving, which is in a remission state right now due to my footwork, that manifestation of craving isn't part of my life today, right now, as we speak. If I ingest a mind-altering substance, it triggers my allergy, and that manifestation of cravering does what? It comes back and it comes back full force because my illness is progressive. As I am equating and having more and more amassment of sobriety, my illness is growing in scope. My progressive illness is growing in scope, so it comes back with so much ferocity if I let it back in. So even one toque of that pipe will trigger that manifestation of craving. Just like when I relapsed after 12 years of sobriety, my second time around it was way worse as I was out there for four and a half years than my first time around because I suffer from a progressive, not a regressive illness.

Steve Coughran:

Okay, well, let's flip it now and let's talk about it from the perspective of somebody who just slipped up a little bit because I imagine that would be super discouraging because you just got done with this program. You know, you just met all these great people and you made this commitment in group in front of everybody and to yourself. And then, yeah, it's like, dang it, here I go again. I just slipped up again. Like I am so stupid, I cannot stay clean. Maybe this isn't for me. Maybe I am a drug addict. What would you say to this person? Like, what kind of encouraging words would you give to somebody who just feels like they're never ever gonna escape this disease?

Steven Ginsburg:

That's a lie. It's a lie of the enemy. Don't listen. Come right back, own it, raise your hand, know that you're loved. You don't have to do that again. That's what you did. That's not what you're doing, it's not what you're gonna do. Come right back, come right back home, roll up those sleeves. We do not shoot our wounded. People who go through that are not shamed, they're not disparaged, they're not beat up, they're too busy beating themselves up anyhow. They don't need any of that. Come back home and dig in and get into that footwork. It's a day at a time. And listen, nobody needed to do what I did. I stayed out for four and a half years. Why? Listen, I was on a long play suicide march. I was bound and determined to end my life. Praise God that he had other plans for me. Yeah, and thank goodness. Then I met my wife. Now we have our kids, and then I do what I do with the restore and I'm on the phone right now with you. There's people who've gone out for a day and come back and they come right back, they take a 24-hour chip, and they're like, all right, that is a very cautionary tale. Like I dodged a bullet and they stay put and they hang on to their seat and they go to work a day at a time. It's a daily reprieve. And if the day is too much, we go into the hour, and if the hour is too much, we take it moment by moment. But all together, cumulatively, it works, and we continue to foster the solution, we continue to focus on the solution.

Steve Coughran:

Did you ever feel it like in your veins or like in your blood, like literally, where you're just like craving it? You're just like, you know, like when you get really hungry, like for me, I get hypoglycemic sometimes. Yes, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I need sugar, like I need a candy bar right now. I'm gonna like murder somebody. Now I'm not gonna like literally murder them, but I like I start shaking, I start getting cold sweats. I don't know what that is with me. I think I just like have some degree of hypoglycemia, but I imagine that the same thing is true with people. Did you ever feel that way? And like, what do you do in that situation where you're like, oh my gosh, like physically, I feel like I'm not gonna survive this.

Steven Ginsburg:

So, yes, one of the things that is so important and so imperative about all of the things that I constantly describe that have been prescribed to me in the rooms the work of the 12 steps produces and provides a psychic change and produces and provides a spiritual awakening. And as the result of these steps, I have that spiritual awakening. And as the result of the work of the 12 steps, I have that psychic change. And due to that psychic change and spiritual awakening, that manifestation of craving literally leaves my body, leaves my spiritual being. I no longer have that today, but that remission and reprieve is earned daily, and that psychic change has occurred because of the work I have done and am doing actively on a daily basis, where the 12 steps are concerned.

Steve Coughran:

It goes away. It goes away then.

Steven Ginsburg:

Yes, sir. It goes it goes away through what? Through the work of what? The steps.

Steve Coughran:

Yeah.

Steven Ginsburg:

And that's how it works. And you can't understand the steps until you work the steps. And until you work the steps, you won't understand the steps. But once you do, with that sponsor and with the support of those groups and with a higher power umbrellaing the whole thing, all of these things that I've just described will be as obvious as like reading a book or a stop sign says stop. It's that same element, it's that simple. It's just I am complicated, but I am not going to complicate that remission and reprieve today.

Steve Coughran:

Yeah, love it. Well said. If you're struggling with this and you just need somebody to talk to, or maybe you have some thoughts for us you want to share, you can always reach out to us at Hello at Restore Detox Centers.com and also on our website, restored detoxcenters.com. We have a lot of resources and you can learn more about us there. Stephen, what a great conversation. Thanks for being so vulnerable and sharing you know different experiences from your past and your life overall.

Steven Ginsburg:

Steve, thank you for your part. The the work that you are doing, the things you are providing, the topics you are bringing, and this path that you and I are trudging on. Like we are actively participating in people out there, uh, a podcast at a time and an episode at a time. It is part of what will save people's lives. And that's what we're all about here. We want everyone to have a safe and sober day. Know this like we love you, we are for you, we want to hear from you. God bless you all.

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Steven T. Ginsburg

Host
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Steve Coughran

Co-host