IN RECOVERY - The Ark House Podcast - S2 EP 5 - Feat ORE ODUBA

IN RECOVERY - THE ARK HOUSE PODCAST is thrilled to be named one of the Best Podcasts by The Sunday Times (in June 2026) and is riding high in the charts, as we continue our second season.  We are so grateful to everyone for their support. If you are listening on Apple - we would love you to leave us a review.

IN RECOVERY is a companion guide for those on their addiction recovery journey. We also want to offer advice and support for those still suffering and offer solutions for those who just want to know more. This is a well-being podcast produced and presented by people with lived experience who want to carry the message of recovery.

Every episode we speak to someone in the spotlight who shares their struggles with addiction. This week presenter and Strictly Come Dancing champion, ORE ODUBA bravely speaks about an addiction steeped in stigma - online pornography. He tells us about his journey and why being an advocate for change is so important to him

Former resident of Ark House STEPH speaks honestly about her battle with alcohol and how she struggled in her recovery journey after Rehab. These vital conversations are to help anyone listening who also may be finding the recovery journey tough. We want to give you the support and inspiration to keep strong.

We are also joined by the founder of Sobriety Films UK, MADDIE KITCHEN  who is a Director and fellow of The Royal Society for Arts and uses film to raise awareness of recovery and champion recovery for those that need healing from addiction, mental ill health and trauma. 

She tells us all about how to enter this year's RECOVERY STREET FILM FESTIVAL. Recovery Street Film Festival (RSFF) is a UK-wide film festival showcasing films created by, with, or about people affected by substance use and recovery. This includes individuals, families, friends, professionals, and communities with lived experience.The festival exists to amplify lived experience, reduce stigma, and celebrate storytelling through film.

ENTER YOUR FILM (and find out more information)

https://rsff.co.uk/competition-information

If you or a loved one need help from addiction, please know there is help. Reach out and speak to Ark House today....

PHONE 01723 371869

EMAIL info@arkhouserehab.co.uk

ADDRESS 15 Valley Road, Scarborough, Y011 2LY

WEBSITE www.arkhouserehab.co.uk

FACEBOOK  @arkhouserehabltd

INSTAGRAM @in_recovery_podcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:13

Welcome to In Recovery, the Apple Castle Podcast. I'm Richard, and I've been clean as sober for over six years.

SPEAKER_03 0:20

I'm Sam, also in recovery, and together with Richard, we are here to bring you inspiring stories of recovery as well as game-changing tips and advice.

SPEAKER_05 0:29

Whether you're in addiction, in recovery, or just want to know more, we welcome you to our In Recovery conversation.

SPEAKER_03 0:35

Coming up today, Strictly Con Dancing Champion Aurela Double opens up about something steeped in Stigma. It's on addiction. Welcome to season two of In Recovery.

SPEAKER_05 1:16

My guest today is not only known for being one of the country's top presenters, but also has a successful musical theatre career. However, he is famously known for winning the 14th series of Strictly Come Dancing. Today, however, he is here to talk about his addiction to online pornography, a topic rarely discussed, but one that impacts so many lives. So it's a pleasure to welcome Ori Aduba. Hello, Ori, how are you? I'm great.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Thank you, Richard, for having me on. Since coming out and talking about my experience of addiction in the last six months, not only have I found such solace in sharing something with so many people and having like a shared shoulder has been so healing for me. But then I also just want to thank you for giving a platform for people who are going through difficult things and allowing them to speak about the difficult things of that internal make their lives easier and everybody listening easier as well. I think it's it's just so incredibly important. So it's really it's my pleasure.

SPEAKER_05 2:20

You know, you've had an amazing career. You know, what stands out for you?

SPEAKER_01 2:25

So many, you know, I I left university in 2008 and went straight to working at CBBC at television centre in London. You know, it was huge. I was described as like Charlie in the chocolate factory and going like I I can't believe I'm actually inside the the factory, the workings, the engine. And then fast forward to what nearly 20 years later, and uh as I speak to you, Richard, I'm I just announced a 10-year anniversary tour with my friend Joel 10 years after our strictly victory. In the last two years, I've come to understand so much more about myself. All of those successes still happened in the backdrop of fear, unhealed trauma. I was striving and achieving a lot of the things that I wanted to do, but much of it in order to block a hole that I didn't even know existed.

SPEAKER_05 3:16

You know, I I had this ability and this drive to become really, really successful in what I did. On the flip side of that, internally, I was dying because I couldn't show outward what I was actually feeling. You know, I didn't want anybody to know that I was a cocaine addict. I I wanted to see people to perceive me as being really, really successful. Yes. And within all that, I would sit at home on a night, you know, and I was a really, really sick individual who, you know, had the shame.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 3:45

And I guess today, with you and your addiction that you that you have to come out in the public eye must have been a very, very brave thing to do because not a lot of people talk about porn addiction.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Yeah, yeah. It had to be said, it had to be said, Richard. I think despite a lot more openness, I think there's a lot more loneliness and a lot more isolation. You know, we can be as connected as anything, but actually our worlds can become smaller if we like we can go days without actually interacting with any body human. The world, the landscape has changed. And one of the uh greatest harms is that the digital world has even in the last five years just been a tsunami of change. We have just sled warped into a whole new existence. Uh I guess where I saw the intervention that was completely necessary was I have two children. One of them is eight years old, a year younger than I was when I was first exposed to pornography, and uh the availability of pornography from 30 years ago to what it is today is completely unrecognizable. I was like, this is gonna be their normal if we don't uh admit that there is a heinous issue. I was terrified, but there have been a number of things that happened over the course of the last two years that just made me go, what am I afraid of? My career, life as it was, you know, I knew no I had no idea what the impact was going to be like. I had I had had all the devil's advocate conversations with family and agents and friends. And I at the end of the day, I just thought, what is the point if I just continue to let that cycle happen all over again? If there's something that I can do, if that 30-year period is for something, then I I need to make it count. And and I've been blessed that the reaction has been the opposite of what I feared.

SPEAKER_05 5:42

And you know, it it is an amazing thing that you've done, and you know, in a situation where 60%, 67% of men in the UK watch porn, 10% admit they have a problem, you know, you're within that small 10% at the minute, and at such a young age you were exposed to it. You know, what when did it start to become a a real sort of problem to you?

SPEAKER_01 6:05

I think teenage years around 14, 15 years old. Actually, my older sister moved out of the house, so I got her room, which is actually the on the ground floor of the house. And I had access, lights out in the house. I had access to the family computer, to my games, to the internet. You know, I'd be up till four o'clock in the morning, obsessing over football, obsessing over gaming, and watching online polyphy. Even at that time, at that age, you don't necessarily know how it's affecting you. You don't understand the rewiring when we talk about the fact that children are still growing, and the fact that there is a neurological mapping that is going on at that age, that if they are exposed to something repeatedly, it is effectively rewiring the person that they're going to be as adults. Uh, and and at that point where it becomes fixed and normal, and that's their cycle, it becomes incredibly difficult to change. And what I didn't understand is that my mid-teens and onwards, I was shaping my entire attitude towards sex, towards relationships, to the visions that I thought I saw was normal. But these that was my unhealthy diet. This was the first education that I have of sex. There was not a single conversation that was had in my household. I think I remember having a sex education conversation at 14 at school. That was like one lesson and done.

SPEAKER_05 7:32

From a sort of a young age, obviously, you're in your house, you're at the you know the bottom floor of your house, you're isolated. You know, you you're starting all that stuff of beginning to be all right in your own company, you've got what you need, you've got what you think you need in life. You know, mine was pretty much the same. You know, I started on cocaine, I was 29 when I started taking cocaine, and to start with it, I was out on the party scene in Leeds doing it all where you should be doing it, and then all of a sudden it's party for one in a hotel. It took me to a really, really lonely place where there was just me, cocaine, and that was it. And I and I guess you know, I hit a rock bottom at a certain point. You know, what did your rock bottom look like to you then with regards to when you thought I need to change here?

SPEAKER_01 8:17

I mean, I had a I had a few during that period of my life, but when it came to this, it it had amalgamated from just watching explicit imagery to now you have subscription sites. Now you're spending thousands of pounds because what was what was enough for you before is now not enough. What are you doing? This is this is just happening over and over again, hours and hours, just into the night, just wasting your life on something that you know isn't giving you anything. There was a point where I thought I just want out. It would be easier for me to end my life than to end than to affect anybody else because I can't see a way out. And isn't it so so sad? It's the tragedy of all of it that you can have these two personas, you can have the the the front world presenting version of you that might seem like it's swimming marvelously on the top. Um, this addiction is one of many spectrum disorders. You can go through it completely normally in your life from the outside, uh, but on the inside, uh it's actually removing all of the things that make you feel alive. It's removing all of your relationships, it's removing all of the things that you would naturally love to do and spend time doing, whether it is out in nature, whether it is sport, whether it's being active, it's just sucking the life out of you. It's removing all vitality. And if that is not your life, then you are dying. You are slowly, daily heading towards the end by not making the most of freaking incredible opportunity that we have to live and breathe every day. Gosh, I've just I have separated myself from all of the things that I love. And when I started opening out from that and seeing the abundance of love that was in my life, man, that's the drug.

SPEAKER_05 10:17

Yeah. You know, I can remember sat in a car in I was sat in Little Car Park for 40 hours, taking cocaine with tears rolling down my eyes, looking at people, getting the kids out of the car and just going to get a pint of milk, do the shopping, put the kids back in the car. And I'm thinking, how the hell do they do that? Why can't I do that? What is wrong with me? And I didn't understand I was an addict. You know, I had no comprehension I was an addict. I just literally thought that I was disconnected from the world and and and that I didn't realize that the drug that I thought was the thing that was helping with me was removing me further and further away from reality. But then another thing happened was that we read a book in here called Alcoholics Anonymous, and there's a part in there that talks about what you've just discussed, where it talks about I can be normal in any single part of my life, but I put a drink inside me or a drug inside me, or I watch porn and I become disgustingly antisocial, and I can't stop doing what I do. Through the programme that I did, I had to recognise that I was powerless over it and that my life was unmanageable.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

It's it's crazy, isn't it? Because the memory, you know, I'm only 18 months to two years on the other side. But there is so much that has, you know, we're talking about 30 years of banks worth of cabling and networking and wiring here. That it's a constant conversation and return into what are the tools, who are the people, what are the methods that I have to not return to that. It can be very easy, especially this what it's all there. All the drugs, all the drink, all the imagery, all of the shopping, all of the all of the things that are there for you to just fall back into these patterns. Like while I say for us as as adults, free to make our own choices. If you want to go to Vegas and spend loads of money, of course you're welcome to do it. But if we're doing it at a scale societally, and these restrictions aren't in place, and these companies are continuously allowed to filter through to everyday behaviours and we don't understand that it's having an effect on ourselves, our children are going to walk into that. Um, I don't think we've addressed that or shifted it over into the digital world that is the level through which we all we all experience our lives today. You know, they talk about it being this the the same way that cigarettes were advertised so freely in the 1870s and 80s. They knew what they were doing, they knew that there was a harm to it. What I think we can all agree on is that no children should be exposed to the levels of some of this um explicit adult imagery that is available now.

SPEAKER_05 13:00

You know, I I still think there's a huge addiction, a huge issue around a stigma around addiction. You know, all these things are still out there. And if it if people like me and you and this platform that we're on today can help one, two, three people into some kind of a recovery, then you know, I'm happy with that today. If you were speaking to somebody and they came to you and asked for help, what what what direction would you point them in? Where would you tell them to go? And what would you what would you where will where would you point them to go?

SPEAKER_01 13:31

The first thing I'd say is just be with them for that moment. If it was somebody coming and asking for help, how huge is that first step? I think when it comes to um this world of um adult imagery, there are uh incredible platforms. I work with the Naked Treat Project and um Pivotal Recovery. But the reading helps, you know. I think for me, my my own personal development, just reading and understanding one, how great is it to know that you're not alone, but then to go, oh gosh, I read that thing and it really resonated with me. It made me understand that that might have been where I was at that particular part of that journey. Or, gosh, okay, that was a little tool or a little bit of advice that might just help. I might just try and put that into tomorrow, and just that information helped me feel seen as well. But I I think the the thing that became the foundation for me to recover and to get better was sharing with friends, friends that I know love me full stop, regardless of any, you know, no transaction, no caveat that would listen.

SPEAKER_05 14:38

So, last question. So obviously, you stepped out of the shadows in sort of 18 months ago into the light. What does the light look like for you today in terms of your recovery?

SPEAKER_01 14:50

It is a daily conversation with myself, a daily reminder that I'm worth more than that. Me finding, you know, I text a friend this morning. I've got lots to do this afternoon, and I text a friend first thing this morning instead. I am forcing myself to go to the sea and go for a walk at sunset this afternoon. Will you come with me? So it's continuously searching for those things that make my eyes light up and remembering I've got two incredible children, I've got so many amazing friends, I've got work that I'm pouring myself into that I love that gives me so much. I'm like, that's that's where the energy is. Yeah, this this gremlin will come up. We we know how to put him back in the box, and hopefully over time he'll get a bit deeper and deeper and uh and not as every day.

SPEAKER_05 15:42

But I left this treatment centre in May 2020 and I went home to a little apartment that my mum and dad had given me because I had nothing left, and it looks over North Bay in Scarborough. And I went in and I picked my dog up. I went for a walk along the seafront. The last time I walked along that seafront, I was keying cocaine in. It was the most overwhelming experience I've ever had in my life. I walked down there, like you, it's just a vast vista, it amazes me. Does the sea? It right sizes me, it humbles me to the fact that I'm just a grain of sand in this world, and I had an overwhelming sensory feeling. Like I heard children on the beach, I heard seagulls, I heard the sea. I was on the phone to my mum crying. My mum was crying down the phone at me because she'd finally got her son back. Oh, it just it it blew me away. And I walked down there, I was saying hello to people, saying hello to everybody. You know, they were thinking, who's this bloody weirdo walking along here? You know what? I can remember that day as as clear as anything. And I go down to the sea every day and I stand at the sea and I just look out, and it has a routine, it goes out every day, it comes in every day, it has rough days, it has calm days, but it always shows up. And like you today, you're gonna go and have a walk along there. And what a great place to be at peace, you know, this afternoon when you go for a walk.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

If I I if I can, just because we can talk about this till the end of time, but just you saying that your mum said that she had her son back just left me in bits because I mean that was my experience, whether it was as a son, as a friend, as a human being, there is so much available to us. Addiction isn't the person that we are. Correct. I've I truly believe that it is an adaptation that's happened somewhere along the line to fill a hole of something that was missing. You know, we didn't we weren't born addicted. And when we understand that there is something that deviated away from the person that we are that we can attend to to stick with it, the person that we really are has the opportunity to shine out. And when you mention those the bird song and the the rush of the waves crashing on the shore, like it's mad because I'm talking to you, like we get it.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

There might be people listening going, what are they on about? Why are you calm down? Like, you don't understand, mate. It is the best thing in the world, and like I wish you addicted or not, I wish you had this.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Yeah, because this is what it feels like to feel alone, and I can feel I um I can stand by myself on my own, pause those thoughts, and just be. I I I will I'm going, I'm going, it's your podcast. I'm going to let you go because this understanding that you've been through in a journey, that I've been through on something. This is what recovery looks like when you meet people who've been through the journey in the same way. Yeah. That you just have this understanding, and you know, from the isolated person to the community-based person, like there's just this there's the void in between is just huge. And um, so I appreciate you. Thank you. Yeah, let's let's do 12 months a time and then let's let's see where we're at.

SPEAKER_05 19:41

Every episode we speak to someone who walked through the drama of African broken and ready to change their life. As anyone in recovery knows, admitting you need help with addiction takes dedication and guts, and the rehab process can be tough. Today, someone who's put the hard work in and is now on the recovery road. It's a pleasure to welcome this week's recovery graduate, Steph. How are you today?

SPEAKER_02 20:02

I'm very well, thank you, Richard.

SPEAKER_05 20:04

Excellent, and it's great to see you. So, what I'm gonna do is just ask you some quick fire questions just to get your brain ticking over.

SPEAKER_02 20:10

So, age age 43.

SPEAKER_05 20:13

Where are you from?

SPEAKER_02 20:14

Manchester.

SPEAKER_05 20:15

What brought you to Ark House?

SPEAKER_02 20:16

Um, I kept going to AA meetings and I couldn't stop drinking. A girl, when I was having a cigarette break, she said, I know a place you can go. I went there myself for three months. So she mentioned it to me. I mentioned it to my husband, and then my husband called Ark House.

SPEAKER_05 20:32

Wow. So, how long were you struggling with addiction?

SPEAKER_02 20:35

When I look back now, it was always a shit show. Every time I picked up a drink, but I'd say the last five or six years of my drinking is when it really took off, and the last two or three were just unbearable.

SPEAKER_05 20:48

Current clean town?

SPEAKER_02 20:49

Oh, but it's six years.

SPEAKER_05 20:50

Amazing. Amazing, congratulations.

SPEAKER_02 20:53

Thank you.

SPEAKER_05 20:54

So let's start. So, when did you think addiction started for you?

SPEAKER_02 20:58

The first time I picked up a drink, it led to blackout. Uh, I was only 15, and the police were called. When I really started to notice it, I was probably about 30 when I realised that this is getting a bit more.

SPEAKER_05 21:12

So, what kind of consequences did you face?

SPEAKER_02 21:15

Oh gosh, I wrote my husband's car off. My children didn't want anything to do with me, they were only little, but I was incapable of looking after them properly. I always most got lost my um job. Um, loads of consequences, and the biggest consequences was in my head living that torture and that pain. And I think a lot of people thought, you know, she's picking up this drink, she's doing this to herself, but I couldn't stop. I didn't know how to stop. I didn't really want to stop because at that point, you know, I was completely and utterly addicted to it, and I couldn't imagine my life without it, you know, even though my life had become so small, I was just basically isolated in the house, in and out of sleep, in and out of blackout. In the end, I was drinking at work, I was drinking at my desk all day. Drinking on the way to work. Um, there's been so many consequences, but like I say, living, you know, looking at my husband, looking at my kids the next day with like they just looked like absolutely flawed by my behaviour, and just looking at me thinking, God, I keep creating, creating this, this awful atmosphere, and not a safe one either. So um, yeah, it just it was just awful. And I remember my daughter one day she said to me, I'd been drinking, and um, I told her that I wasn't drinking, and she'd phoned my husband and um told him I was drinking, and I said, 'What have you done this for? What have you caused all this trouble for?' And she looked at me and she burst into tears. She was 14 and she said, I just want a proper mum. But it can it can make me well at that now. And God, that was like, oh, she deserves to have a proper mum. And I took a load of tablets, and I woke up the next day and I was vomiting, and oh god, I've never felt so well in my life. My dad called an ambulance and I went to hospital and I was in and out. And I remember waking up and I said to the doctor who was looking after me, I said, Am I gonna die? And I'd been wanting to die for five or six years. Every night I used to go to bed and think, I hope I don't wake up in the morning so I don't have to live this torture yet again, day after day. And he said, We don't know. He said, You're seriously ill. And at that point, all I wanted to do was live. I felt this horrific guilt. I've got two kids at home that need me, and here I am trying to kill myself over a drink.

SPEAKER_05 23:33

It's really pointing, isn't it, that you're here today and last week you brought your sister into recovery. What did you say to her to make her realise that she probably needed help?

SPEAKER_02 23:43

With Lindsay, it had been going on for quite a few years. I knew she wasn't ready for recovery, she didn't want to stop. She openly told me that. So for a few years, I was there for and when she needed it. And then probably the last 12 months, Lindsay's addiction has you know progressed, haven't just it's a progressive illness. And then the Wednesday before she came in, my husband called me at about half seven in the morning and he said, I've had your sister on the phone this morning, and he said she wants help. So I phoned her, she said, I want to go into recovery steph, I can't do this anymore. Yeah, and then I phoned our cow, spoke to yourself. She had an assessment that day and she came in on the Monday.

SPEAKER_05 24:22

You know, walking through the doors of the treatment centre can be really, really scary. And I had a huge fear about leaving. You know, how was that for you when you left?

SPEAKER_02 24:31

Yeah, it was to be honest, when I walked through these doors, I thought my life had ended. I thought, oh my god, I remember sat at the bottom of the bed once I'd um gone through all my belongings, check that I hadn't brought in, and I thought, how the fuck have I ended up here? And then the first phone call I could make after five days, um, I phoned my husband, we talked to him and went, Don't you send another fucking penny to this place because I ain't staying for the six for 12 weeks, I'll do the six weeks. And then I remember he came to pick me up on the Monday morning. We got in the car, we drove off to where we were approaching the motorway, and he's holding my hand, and he was like giving me this speech, and it's us against the world, and I've got you, and you know, and I remember being terrified. So I all I wanted to do was go home the entire time I was here. And as soon as I got on that motorway, all I wanted to do was turn the car around and bring me back. Um, I was terrified because I didn't know how to live without a drink, I didn't know how I was gonna go home. I didn't, like I say, I just didn't know who I was, I didn't know if it was okay to hug my children because when I left, my daughter wouldn't hug me, she wouldn't kiss me, she wouldn't say bye to me. And that took me a long time, actually. Even I'd say a good seven or eight months in recovery, I was still like, who am I? What am I doing? But I just knew I just had to take one day at a time, get to a meeting, speak to people in recovery, and put my head on the um pillow sober that night.

SPEAKER_05 25:54

I mean, I you know, I can remember leaving similar to you and drove back to the flat where I was living with a long corridor in this flat, and I just and I walked through the flat door and I could just see my dog. I just saw the dog and I thought, oh fuck, this is it. So they've just left me the dog. And then my wife came in, and like you, life had changed so quickly in six weeks. I guess the one thing that I stuck to was I was told to write a plan before I left, and I wrote that plan, and that plan stuck on my wall, and it was there every day for four weeks, do the same thing for four weeks, and then do it again. So obviously, during during your your your addiction times, you know, you're expected to be a mummy, you're expected to take them to school, do all those things, then obviously you come out and you've got that added pressure that you're now no longer using, and you're expected to fall into that mum ideal mum situation again. How did that feel and how did that look like to you?

SPEAKER_02 26:48

Difficult, it was really difficult. It was because all as I'd ever wanted to be, I never had any ambitions, I never wanted to be this or that, or all as I ever wanted to be was a good mum. And my mum was an alcoholic, and we grew up in a lot of dysfunction. And I always said, My kids will never grow up around this shit, you know. They did. That was absolutely heartbreaking to me, you know, that I never wanted that life for them ever. But and like you say, like things move on so quickly in that six weeks. I couldn't believe, you know, when I was there, we were eating our dinner in the lounge, you know, and it's like my husband had put a new rule note. Everybody, you know, they had to sit at the table and eat the dinner properly every night. This happens. He'd brought in his new rules, which you know, I wanted to respect because I knew they were better, you know, it was a better thing. But I found everything difficult and I was so ashamed of being an alcoholic. Like I said, it was so difficult. I wanted to be this great mum and I wanted to come home and just connect straight away. I didn't know my place. Looking back now, I should have reached out way more than I did with all the struggles that were going on in my head.

SPEAKER_05 27:56

You know, you talk about that you didn't want anybody to know. So, what's changed today then?

SPEAKER_02 28:00

To surrender, it was like that is it, that chapter is done, it's closed, and I need to live in the solution now. Once I started to get a bit more confident, once I started reaching out to people, it was just brilliant. And I felt so free and I'd never felt so good in my life. And I think it was when people started opening up about you know their crazy shit that they've done. It sort of like gave me, yeah, this is an illness. I I was very sick, and if I can help somebody in any way that I can, then I will do. And that is then when I started getting out more and saying, you know, I am an alcoholic.

SPEAKER_05 28:37

I met my sponsor on the stairs of Westboro Church, nothing in common. Met this guy, leather waistcoat on, nothing on underneath, and an hat. And I'm like, thank you. What the fuck? That guy took me through the steps, and like you, he said to me, You need to start reaching out to people. It's only your ego that's stopping you from doing it. So, what you're gonna do is I want you to bring a cardboard box the next time we meet. I'm gonna bring some scissors. And we sat in the park and he made me cut out credit card size things. Right, put your name, put your telephone number, and every single meeting that me and you go to, you're handing those out. Those people from six years ago, I'm still in contact with. You know, moving on to your recovery, what does your recovery look like today?

SPEAKER_02 29:17

I am just beyond blessed. So my husband and I still together, and to be honest, it's like we fell in love again. Because he said, like, I can see the old Steph coming back, and I think when he saw the lens that I was going to to stay sober, that it was becoming it was my priority then, you know. I and I never used to realise that when people said it's got to be a priority, it's got to come over your children. I'm like, oh my god, how can it come over your children? But today I realise if I don't stay sober, I don't have any children, you know, and so I've got to do, you know, I have to make AA my priority in order for me to have everything that I do in my life and my children, you know, the relationship that I have with my children today, my daughter's 20 and my son's 17. And like I drop my son off at college every morning, and I'm like, God, this is like great. I can drive sober, you know. I know that I'm not doing anything wrong. I was always paranoid all the time. That just simple things like making breakfast in the morning, walking down the stairs in the winter, the heating's on, we've got heat. This food in the cupboards, there never used to be food in the cupboards, there's food in the fridge. You know, I can make breakfast now, and just all these little things are things that I can't take for granted. Because if I put a drink in my system, yeah, you know, all that is gone. And it sounds so simple, but it's so massive. Just being able to do those simple things that I couldn't, I couldn't have done. I thought when I came into recovery, I might be free from a drink, but my life will be boring, I'll be boring, maybe my friends won't want to be my friends anymore. But you know, that has not been my experience whatsoever. I have, I've still got all my old friends, but I've got the most amazing new friends. If I've got a problem or something's going on in my life that's unsettling me, I don't phone my old friends. I phone my recovery friends because they're the friends that get me, they're the friends that know how my head works, they're the friends that can support me and give me advice. Yeah, you know, and it's taught it's taught me a lot about myself that I was doing a lot of things that I didn't even, I think I put the drink down me a lot of the time to make myself feel comfortable in situations and around certain people. Having a simple life, you know, I don't feel I feel like I'm finally me. And for, you know, I'm 43 now. For 30 odd years, I had no idea who I was. And he actually liked me, you know. I was always, I was like, I want her looks, her teeth, that person's personality, that you know, I wanted something of everybody. I didn't like anything about me. And to be comfortable and to be happy with me today, and think you know, I don't get everything right, nothing's perfect, but you know, I always tell myself it's progress, not perfection, and I'm making progress. And as long as I'm making progress, you know, that is that is all that matters.

SPEAKER_05 32:04

Sounds amazing. Just the one thing that I need to pick up and made me laugh because you we we had a discussion before coming on here about what did we have for breakfast. I had nothing for breakfast, and the reason behind that is that you had food in your cupboards this morning. So I had a bowl of crunchy nuts, but we didn't have any milk. Now, six years ago, I'd have gone out, wouldn't have got the milk, and I'd have gone and picked up a load of cocaine because it would have been an excuse for me to use. Yeah. You know, today I've accepted that I'm not having any breakfast. And I'm not gonna go out and get any coke, I'm gonna come here and come to work. So, yeah, that's an improvement in my recovery. So, right, we've got another set of quick fire questions for you. Meditation or sport?

SPEAKER_02 32:41

Meditation. Step four or step nine? Step nine?

SPEAKER_05 32:45

One thing you were proud of recently?

SPEAKER_02 32:47

Uh, Lindsay coming into arc.

SPEAKER_05 32:49

And one thing you're grateful for today?

SPEAKER_02 32:52

Life. Life. And I could never ever picture six years ago that it would look how it looks today.

SPEAKER_05 32:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 32:59

And then finally, if you could give give a younger Steph some advice, what would it be?

SPEAKER_02 33:05

Keep beating yourself up. And if you're gonna do it, do it with a feather. I'd beat myself up so much about everything, everything in life. I come down on myself like a ton of bricks. Um, so yeah, so be kind to yourself.

SPEAKER_05 33:20

Well, it's been amazing to me. Yeah, thank you for joining me on the recovery podcast today and continue doing the right thing.

SPEAKER_02 33:26

Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_05 33:27

Thank you. So, every episode I'm joined by someone in the recovery community, someone who is carrying the message, and this week she is the founder of Sobriety Films UK, which every year hosts the Recovery Street Film Festival. She is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in recognition of her work where she uses film to support and advocate for inclusive mental health and addiction recovery. To tell us more, it's a pleasure to welcome to the podcast film director Maddy Kitchen. How are you?

SPEAKER_04 34:03

Hello, good morning, Richard. Makes me sound very grand, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_05 34:07

Yes, it does. How did you end up running the sobriety films?

SPEAKER_04 34:11

So I set up sobriety films in 2019 as a Lero. We were one of the early Leroes, and so I trained as a filmmaker. I've always always been a filmmaker, and it's always been like using film for social change and social impact. And then when that became very personal to me, I was like, oh, I really want to marry the two, uh, recovery and film. And so this is how it all came about.

SPEAKER_05 34:37

So I take it you're in recovery yourself.

SPEAKER_04 34:40

Oh, hell yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely 100% in recovery and very grateful. Yes.

SPEAKER_05 34:46

So, how long are you clean?

SPEAKER_04 34:48

I I surrendered on the 2nd of August 2006. Um, so since that day, I've I've always been in surrender. I have relapsed twice, and I always talk about that because you know, that's been part of my journey, and nobody chooses that. Nobody, you know, it's it's awful, but you can come back from it. My story is also mental health. So um from the age of like 19, I developed very severe depression, and then I began self-medicating with alcohol. So, yeah, so in recovery, which it's nearly 20 years, there's sort of balancing the mental health aspect and and yeah, and and and the addiction head.

SPEAKER_05 35:28

What does that look like today?

SPEAKER_04 35:30

Uh yeah, I'm not gonna lie, it's been challenging at times. When I first went into recovery, I thought, how am I gonna deal with like bereavements and end of relationships and stuff like that? But actually, I've been able to deal with that and I've and and and also personal illness. I've also also had breast cancer. I had breast cancer 10 years ago. But yeah, the the things that I found very difficult is when I thought when I've had an episode of depression and anxiety. So I have to then increase my support, just just really like really self-care and and yeah, ask for help.

SPEAKER_05 36:02

Yeah, it's interesting you talk about reaching out. I I and I guess with this this sobriety films and what have you, that's a way of reaching out to as many people as you can to support them in in their journey, I guess.

SPEAKER_04 36:12

100%. So it's basically it's all about being lived experience and as a peer sharing my skills as a filmmaker to support people to find the story that they want to tell because you know we're quite, aren't we? We're quite marginalized and stigmatized. And yeah, so I'm doing I'm incredibly passionate about helping people to find what they want to say. And I'm really excited about this year's Recovery Street Film Festival, which is in Leicester.

SPEAKER_05 36:39

It's interesting you talk about people being able to have a voice and be able to kind of express that through film. You know, this morning, half of our clients have gone up to Westboro Church to sing. We have a singing club on a on a Thursday, and it's I guess it's their way of expressing, you know, how they're feeling through music, something that you know you would never find me doing. But I guess you know, there are all different ways for people to be able to vocalize what you're doing at the moment, is a great example of that.

SPEAKER_04 37:10

Do you have a creative um something that you're creatively drawn to? You don't sing, but is there some music maybe?

SPEAKER_05 37:17

I I'm I'm really crap at anything creative.

SPEAKER_04 37:20

I don't I don't believe that. Like let's have a session together and I bet I could find I'll find something in you that's creative.

SPEAKER_05 37:27

Right, okay.

SPEAKER_04 37:27

That you could do.

SPEAKER_05 37:28

Okay, so we're talking about the Recovery Street Festival, yeah, which was launched 12 years ago. So tell me what tell me what that's actually about, what that looks like in Leicester this year.

SPEAKER_04 37:39

Sure. So the Recovery Street Film Festival was set up 12 years ago, and the first time it was um that that happened, it was actually in Borough Market in London, and they had it on the the public screens and people had like deck chairs. So the Recovery Street is basically that the films be on the street, and it was all about smashing Sigma and still is. So this year in Leicester, um, it's going to be happening on the 26th of September, it's a Saturday. It's been funded by Leicester um City Council public health team, which is absolutely brilliant. Um, every time that I've been there, the first time was 2019. It's just electric because you're seeing all these the films are so different, you know, and they don't have to be like really high production values, they can be made like when I do filmmaking workshops, I just I I show how to use you know mobile phones. Everybody's sitting in there together, and we no one knows who's gonna win, although we're all winners because we've been shortlisted, and it's just it's it's a top buzz, you know. It's like but but it's a it's a natural buzz. Seeing your film on the screen is that's what I think about. Like when I'm finding it really tough and I'm really tired and I think I can't do anymore. I just think but remember that feeling and remember how how people will feel and and feel empowered. Yeah, it's magic, and I'm just incredibly excited about the films that we're gonna get in this year. And the deadline is the 23rd of August.

SPEAKER_05 39:05

Right, okay.

SPEAKER_04 39:06

So the theme, rewriting the script, is about how we may feel that um our stories have been written for us, like in a stigmatizing way, and it's about taking back our narratives and telling our stories as we want to tell them. That's quite that's quite a wide church, you know.

SPEAKER_05 39:24

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 39:25

A lot you could do within that.

SPEAKER_05 39:27

So, in terms of you got any tips for anyone thinking about entering?

SPEAKER_04 39:31

Loads, loads, give us some there. Well, I would say think about the way that it will be judged, and I'm not a judge, like I'm I'm on your side, right? Think about the theme, think about what you feel that you want to say about your journey that isn't being said or isn't being heard out in the sort of uh public domain. Think about whether it's safe for you to do that, you know, whether or not you want to be on camera, you may not be the time for you to be on camera. Um, and then just just sort of brainstorm. So when I do the workshops, that's that's exactly what I do. We have on the website there's sort of a guide to putting together your film together shooting on uh mobile and editing on on mobile or laptop. But as I said, I think so the the successful films, and it's not about being shot on a super duper camera, it's about what you're saying and what you're conveying.

SPEAKER_05 40:27

And how how long do these films last? What sort of length are the films?

SPEAKER_04 40:31

Right, so they need to be one to three minutes.

SPEAKER_05 40:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 40:34

Uh if you go by the website, you there's a submissions portal there. We don't allow images of explicit drug and alcohol use, yeah, or swearing. I mean, we can bleep swearing out, I suppose. Take it and and do what you will. And it's fun, it's about the process of making the film as much as the display or the performance.

SPEAKER_05 40:56

Excellent. So, my last question to you how would you like to see things expand in the future?

unknown 41:02

Ah, that's a good question.

SPEAKER_04 41:04

So, I want this to be the UK wide film festival, like and any other film festival, like I don't know, Yorkshire Film Festival or the London Film Festival, because you know it's it we we are unique, our films are unique, and and they're they're they're really good.

SPEAKER_05 41:21

I'll obviously get in touch with Tom Hardy to play me. I've got I've got I've got a director sat to the left of me who's going to talk to you about what we think we could potentially do.

SPEAKER_00 41:31

Right.

SPEAKER_05 41:32

Um, what I would say is thank you very much for your time today, Maddy. Obviously, we'll put everything onto our uh onto our link on here onto the podcast with regards to where people can look out for your Recovery Street Film Festival. If you could just remind us of where they can reach out.

SPEAKER_04 41:47

Yes, you can find us on social media, Instagram and Facebook, Recovery Street Film Festival. The closing date is the 23rd of August for submissions, and there's also the website that is www.rsf.co.uk. I think. I mean, it would be absolutely thrilling if we got some films through through this. Thank you, Richard. And also, I want an invite Carbra, because I'm gonna I want to come up there. Yeah, your workshop. You're looking worried.

SPEAKER_05 42:16

No, no, fine. Listen, you can call whenever you want.

SPEAKER_04 42:19

Yeah, 100%. It'll be a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_05 42:22

And we'll probably see you either before or at the Leicester at the Leicester uh recovery.

SPEAKER_04 42:28

Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_05 42:29

All right, take care.

SPEAKER_03 42:43

Remember, you have until the 23rd of August to enter your film to the Recovery Street Film Festival. Head over to their website for more information.

SPEAKER_05 42:51

Thanks to Ori, Steph and Maddy for joining us on today's show. We are back next Monday for a special episode to recognise the start of Alcohol Awareness Week.

SPEAKER_03 43:00

Famous for Plain Jesus dad and me in between us. Actor David Charles joins us to talk about his recovery journey.

SPEAKER_05 43:06

If you or a loved one are struggling with addiction issues, then please know you are not alone. Reach out to Arcous today.

SPEAKER_03 43:14

Thanks for listening and stay safe.