What Does Full Recovery Look Like? Featuring Jason Wahler and Keenan Diamond

**Dr. Drew Pinsky** (0:10)
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But today, so pleased to bring Jason Wahler back for you all. Jason, of course, was one of the stars of Laguna Beach, the Hills. He was on Celebrity Rehab early on and struggled mightily with addiction and finally got all the way surrendered into the treatment process. Somewhat, if we were talking, he and I were at lunch yesterday, and as somewhat thanks to your wife. So Jason, maybe you would tell that story. Yeah.

**Jason Wahler** (1:06)
No, I mean, look, I mean, as you know, addiction is very cunning, baffling, and powerful, and it overtook my life for many years. And my wife, like you were talking about, as I was telling you this yesterday, wherever there's an alcoholic or an addict, there's a codependent and sometimes they're just as sick, if not sicker.

**Dr. Drew Pinsky** (1:23)
Oh, yeah.

**Jason Wahler** (1:24)
At that time, that was my wife. And again, after we'd met, I was sober, had multiple years of sobriety, and then it ended up relapsing, and she did not know what to do. She did not know the headspace of what it was like to deal with an addict in that situation. And ultimately, from that, after going on and off for about three years, she finally got plugged into Al-Anon and really set a hard boundary, was able to take care of herself and get to a place where she was able to then, by taking care of herself, by ultimately being able to support me.

**Dr. Drew Pinsky** (1:57)
We were talking a little bit about this yesterday too. I'm increasingly impressed with the co-regulation of a committed relationship in and around the setting of addiction and co-dependency. You can really help regulate one another if the boundaries are clear, if you have the ability to express yourself and be heard. But it takes work. It takes work.

**Jason Wahler** (2:19)
You know, I… You bring up a really valid point on that. And that's something. So she was got immersed and very entrenched into the Al-Anon program for, let's say, six months. And I went into her treatment again, actively arrested the disease, got stabilized and went on my way. But it was like by a year down the road, she had kind of slowly stopped going to meetings and stuff like that. I was progressing, and it was one of those things where I kind of went past that. And I was kind of like, hey, you're going to continue this process. And that's where therapy and her getting plugged back in ultimately helped us do that. But it's so important and pivotal that each person works her own program.

**Dr. Drew Pinsky** (2:53)
It takes time. It's a massive transformation. It takes years of work, really. And people think that they're going to go through treatment like it's a car wash. And that's just getting you cleaned up so you can start the process if you're lucky.

**Jason Wahler** (3:06)
Yeah. Well, the rubber doesn't hit the road until you get out, right? I mean, that's the thing. It's really hard. I always say it's easy. It's not hard to get sober. It's hard to stay sober. But when you actually go into treatment, when you're there, you're in high structure, low stress. But when you leave treatment, there's low structure, high stress. And so it's one of those things where it definitely takes time. But it's definitely a very interesting journey for sure.

**Dr. Drew Pinsky** (3:32)
Yeah. And there's a lot of sort of interests in recent years and sort of ink spilled on attachment styles, not just in terms of people's interpersonal lives and personality structure, but in the setting of addiction, too, whether somebody has an avoidant attachment or an anxious attachment, and sort of the classic setup for addict and co-dependency in broadest strokes is the addict, sort of the avoidant and the co-dependence, the anxious chasing the person around confused, doesn't understand what's going on in denial about things.

**Jason Wahler** (4:07)
Yeah. It's crazy, man. It's being on the other side, though. It's amazing what happens when you put in the work and the dedication and to see where you can be at on the other side, because collectively, she's a huge part of the success that I have now in this sobriety journey.