99Relapses Podcast Episode #1 Show Notes- Welcome to The Podcast World!

 

Hi, I’m James Egidio and welcome to the 99 relapses podcast the podcast that moves you from recovery to discovery through the grace and mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is episode number one, titled, welcome to the podcast world. In this episode, I will discuss who I am, what I do, what inspired me to launch the 99 relapses podcast, I will bear my personal testimony of addiction and recovery. I will discuss what sobriety looks like in faith and finally I will outline the goals and objectives of the 99 relapses podcast, but before I get started, I would like to thank my lovely wife, Eva who kept encouraging me for the last year and a half to launch the 99 relapses podcast.

I would also like to thank you the listener, of the 99 Relapses podcast without you and your support this could never happen. The past two years have been very challenging with the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the past two years of coaching and counseling clients through addiction.

I’ve personally encountered clients who have been challenged with loneliness, isolation, depression , and hopelessness, which has led to an increase in addiction broken families lost jobs and an increase in suicide among young and adult populations, however you, as the listener of the 99 Relapses podcast have come to the right place to hear about the good news of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, especially during these fragile times when confronted with an addiction. Without further ado, let me jump into who I am and what I do, again, I am James Egidio and you’re listening to the 99Relapses podcast. I became a saved Christian in 2013 I grew up in a Catholic family and I attended church with my mother and my sister on the weekends, after becoming a saved Christian I realized that growing up as a Catholic, I didn’t really develop, a personal relationship with Jesus Christ until I was saved. Shortly after becoming a saved Christian I heard many messages from my pastors on my purpose and my plan I often pondered this through daily prayer, devotional readings, and just meditating on the word and it became clear to me that my purpose and my plan was to give back by helping individuals such as yourself who are struggling with addictions. I felt. That this was a way to give back and be able to spread the good news of Jesus Christ and what he has done for me.

Having personally gone through the struggles with drug and alcohol addiction in the early to late 1980s, I decided in 2014, One year after becoming a saved Christian, to enroll in an online course in order to get certified as a life coach with an emphasis on addiction and recovery. I pursued a volunteer position at the Las Vegas Rescue Mission and served lunches on Saturdays while, getting credentialed on the secular side of addiction and recovery with life coach training. I wasn’t very comfortable with the secular model for addiction recovery. These programs are more designed to get addicted individuals through addiction based on self-reliance and willpower and this often led into a perpetual cycle of relapsing, and I just knew deep down in my heart that there was something more to overcome addiction through teachings of Jesus Christ and biblical principles. I was actually fortunate and afforded the opportunity while serving lunch at the Las Vegas Rescue Mission to attend a training program called the Genesis Recovery Process in order to become a Genesis recovery counselor and this was a blessing in disguise.

Once I got certified as a Genesis Recovery Counselor, I went from serving lunches on the weekends to serving as a Counselor to the male clients at the rescue mission, who were housed for inpatient drug treatment and homelessness.

At that point I wanted to take things a step further and cast a wider net, and since I already had experience managing a medical practice for the past 17 years as a daytime job, as well as managing a tele-health medical practice called QuickRxRefill.com, I decided to utilize the same

business acumen and business model as the tele-health medical practice and develop an online Christian recovery coaching website called TrinityRecoveryCoaching.org which I actually turned into a nonprofit entity and still have to this day, I offer online Christian addiction and recovery counseling and coaching services to individuals such as yourself challenged with addictions, of course, this became more popular with the COVID 19 outbreak in 2020, especially with the lockdowns, as for what inspired me to watch the 99 relapses podcast I decided to launch the 99 relapses, podcasts and website to reach more people worldwide and deliver the message of hope and sobriety through biblical principles in the gospels of Jesus Christ.

The 99 relapse podcast is specifically designed to educate, inspire, inform, and empower and coach you the podcast listener as well as be a place of refuge online for those who are struggling with addictions and who want to succeed with addiction and recovery through the grace and mercy of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.

I certainly don’t come from an academic background with a PhD master’s degree or bachelor’s degree in addiction recovery but for our background of living and experience in addiction with 32 years of sobriety from drug and alcohol addiction under my belt. I also know that I can succumb to relapse if I do not depend on Jesus Christ, I’m well aware of that, but as well as a practical hands-on knowledge of coaching and counseling clients, this all started in 2009 in a medical clinic where I found myself coaching, drug addicted, patients who were addicted to prescription pain medications as well as heroin and this is where I felt my place was, of course, I didn’t really discover that until 2013 when I was seeking my purpose and plan,

What I found counseling clients for the past nine years, is that most individuals struggle with these out of control addictions, especially drug addictions have experienced or are currently experiencing physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, abandonment issues, as well as the repetitious cycles of shame, guilt, fear, anger, anxiety, and hopelessness which all leads to multiple relapses. This is where I came up with the name 99 relapses, because it seems as though addictions lead to a repeat cycle of relapsing.

However, I can’t emphasize that enough, that through faith in Jesus Christ and through biblical principles I’ve seen clients make a 180 degree change, of course, I will discuss these elements of addiction and recovery in future podcast.

The biblical verse that the 99 relapses podcast is inspired by comes from Luke 15, the parable of the lost sheep. Which reads in chapter 15, starting in verse numbers three and ending in verse number seven and reads and Jesus told them this story. If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them gets lost, what will he do? Won’t he leave the 99 others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it, and when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders. When he arrives, he will call together as friends and neighbors saying rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep. In the same way, there is more joy in heaven, over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God then over ninety nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away. The whole point of this verse as it applies to addiction and recovery, is that even if you stray away, Through relapse God is always there to pursue and rescue you

I will be right back after this short break.

welcome back to the 99 Relapses podcast. In this segment, I will bare my personal testimony of addiction and recovery and how Jesus Christ has changed my life over the course of the last nine years and what I subjected myself too, but not only myself, but also my parents and the loved ones around me. Over those years.

My personal testimony, it comes from a place that will hopefully inspire you as the listener of the 99 Relapses podcast. I don’t want to make this a personal testimony about me, but more of an inspirational testimony to you the listener about faith, hope, restoration, addiction, and recovery, and how I overcame and how I realized years later that my self destructive behavior was due to falling away from God as well as personal issues that I had to resolve to the grace and mercy of God. I know for sure. And looking back, I’ve realized that through the grace and mercy of my Lord and savior Jesus Christ, that he came and rescued me, as it says in the parable of the lost sheep.

My story begins in 1963. I was born in Bellville, New Jersey. My parents along with me and my sister moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1969. I come from a working class family that is both parents worked in the casino industry. My father got me into playing golf at an early age, swinging a club at the age of two, which led to playing golf competitively in tournaments by the age of 10. I won the first state sanctioned junior golf tournament by the age of 10 in Las Vegas, Nevada in my age group and I was starting to come into my own at the age of 12, 13 years old. I was accelerating at a pace to play golf competitively on the national level.

And again, as I had mentioned a minute ago, It can come from a working class family. So we didn’t have much in the way of financial resources and I didn’t have much in the way of financial resources, especially participating in a sport like golf, which was considered a rich man’s sport so I wasn’t considered your typical country club, kid. I can remember one day in particular, which was the turning point in my relationship with my father in golf. It was in the summer of 1976 at the age of 13, me and my father were playing golf on a hot summer day it was a golf course that me and my father would play once in a while when we can afford it.

I hit a golf tee shot if you know anything about golf and he hit it tee shot out of bounds and I made a remark like, oh, you hit the ball out of bounds, and I remember receiving a backhand across the nose and my father throwing a towel at me to stop the bleeding and there was some resentment and competitiveness from my father I couldn’t figure it out. It just took the wind out of my sails that summer. I decided not to take the game very serious. Prior to that incident, I was playing golf every day, in fact, most of it, if not all the time during my early childhood and most of my childhood was consumed through the discipline of playing golf. In fact, I used to eat, sleep and drink golf, I can remember going out to the golf course with a $1 bill in the summer at six o’clock in the morning and practicing all day until sunset and of course I didn’t have any financial resources, so I would even find myself sneaking out on the golf course in the early evening hours around six o’clock in the summers because I had a couple hours of sunlight to still play golf, at least nine holes. As time went by, my father started to become more resentful and jealous of my natural talent for golf and by the age of 14 years old, I’d decided to start smoking marijuana with friends in middle school. I played one year of high school golf as a sophomore, but by the age of 15, I gave up golf and I substituted the challenge of golf for academics and of course by this time, My mother was going through a hard time with my father and his infidelity with their marriage. I lived through this nightmare with my mother and watched her go through it with a lot of stress with her marriage, to my father. And this was such a sad thing to watch. Of course, my parents never got divorced. They lived happily miserable for 55 years in marriage.

As I pursued academics in my sophomore year of high school and substituted the competitiveness of golf for academics I had an interest to study biology and chemistry in preparation for college and my father became resentful with that pursuit as well, and this led into my early twenties, and I was still addicted to drugs, still using drugs. I was a functional addict at that time, going to school working out and I was going to school when I was barely getting through school, barely getting through college that is, and I was floundering back and forth with college in and out of school enrolling and re-enrolling into college, and it was in the early. Spring of 1987, I remember and I was out with a roommate of mine one night at the time and we were up all night. I had been using cocaine all night and I overdosed the next day and my sister found me dead on the floor and of course this was before the inception of cell phones. There were cell phones, but they were too expensive to own back then and if it wasn’t for the grace of God and my sister to have driven by my condominium, that I was renting at the time. I would have been dead. I can recall to this day, my sister telling me that she was literally driving by the condo and she decided to stop by my roommate was already off to work and I was alone high as a kite a year later, I had a brush with the law over drugs and this of course led into 1988. At this point, I said to myself, this is it, I have to put an end to it.

So years later, after becoming a saved Christian, I realized that God had his hands all over the recovery of my addiction from drugs. I also realized that you can’t rely on becoming sober on your own even through any self-reliance program. The only way is through the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ and so I just wanted to share that testimony with you. You’re the listener more as an inspirational testimony to let you know that if I can overcome this addiction you can do it too, you’re not alone!!

The other thing that I’ve learned having gone through sobriety and having become a saved Christian is that I came to realize years prior, 10 years prior that is to my father’s death in 2012 and prior to having become a saved Christian in 2013, is that I was able to forgive my father by looking him in the eye and telling them that I loved him. Prior to that, I was carrying around so much angst and anger and resentment against my father, I realized it was the cause of manifesting itself into self destructive behavior and out of control addiction due to my past experience of the physical and verbal abuse that I experienced with my father.

Of course, when I became a saved Christian, I also realized the importance more so of forgiveness and letting go of the past and letting go of the present, and when you think about it, Jesus Christ was hanging at the cross of Calvary after being crucified and with his arm stretched out, he says, father on the cross, forgive them for what they don’t know what they’re doing. That is such a powerful statement of forgiveness for the inequity and the brutal treatment of Jesus Christ and the price that he paid for our sins at Calvary. If Jesus Christ can forgive, then we must forgive, of course, this is easier said than done. I am sometimes guilty of this at times as well.

We have to forgive, forgiveness, is so hard. We have to shed the pride, the ego and the anger we have to pray about it in our walk with Jesus Christ and realize that they play a role in triggering addiction and relapse. These are also things that I’ll address in future podcasts, how forgiveness, anger, self identity, and all these other things align with biblical principles. in the meantime

I will be back after this short commercial break.

Welcome back to the 99 Relapses podcast, in this segment, I want to discuss what sobriety looks like with your faith in Jesus Christ. You have to remember that change starts from the inside, the Bible verse that comes to my mind when I hear this, is from Romans chapter 12, verse two, which reads don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.

When it comes to addiction, we all have to realize that we’re not alone in this. We all have addictions, not just to drugs and alcohol, although that is the first thing that comes to mind with most people. Addiction is food gambling, pornography, work, hobbies, obsessive thinking, codependency and the like,

All these addictions are all part of our sin nature, and this is why Jesus Christ died for us at the cross. To fully commit and overcome your addiction, it requires a deep understanding of your beliefs, your identity and behaviors, as well as your relationship with God and others. That is your family, your friends, your coworkers, and etc.

This is not to say that we will not relapse. And if you do, it’s not the end of the world. It does not mean that you’re not forgiven by God. even if it is for the 99th time. That is why it is better to have the knowledge, faith and wisdom through the grace and mercy of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ when getting through your addiction rather than through self. The power of Jesus Christ will lead to salvation transparency, honesty, peace, and self-reflection for motivation to change, and with that change, you must change who you are, every behavior, both good and bad, is supported by your beliefs and your belief systems, and that is something that I will address in a future podcast.

And of course change happens with the renewing of your mind and comes from your heart and it’s transformed into the words and these words lead into actions. That’s why Romans 12. Verse number two, again, reads don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into new person by changing the way you think then you will learn to know God’s will for which is good and pleasing and perfect. These are such profound words, that speak so much truth and of course you got to realize that change doesn’t happen overnight. It comes with staying in the word through prayer, repentance, devotional readings, fellowship and having faith in God by meditating on the word and, most importantly, accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior. It’s a process in episode number two, I will discuss the five pillars for successful addiction and recovery as a Christian and what it takes to avoid relapse through the grace and mercy of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.

I will be back after this short commercial break

Welcome back to the 99 relapses podcast. In this segment, I will go over the goals and objectives of the 99 Relapses podcast. As I mentioned earlier, the 99 Relapses podcast and website is designed to educate, inform, inspire, and empower you the listener on how to get past your addiction and avoid relapse in faith, through the grace and mercy of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. I have personally found that 70 to 80% of my clients who have gone through and sought out Christian addiction and recovery resources have been extremely successful in avoiding relapse compared to secular programs where it is about self-reliance and willpower. Jesus is the answer to sobriety and relapse prevention this I know for a fact. Because the 99 Relapses podcast is an interactive podcast. Each podcast episode is accompanied with exercises and tools., Memory versus as well as video devotionals. It not only provides you the listener of the 99 Relapses podcasts with the listening experience, but a hands-on interactive experience.

I highly encourage anyone that listens to this podcast to pick up the phone or email me anytime if you have any special prayer requests for yourself, family, friends, or anything like that. I am always here to help. Each episode starting with number two and moving forward, builds upon itself as if you are receiving a one-on-one Christian addiction and recovery coaching session, but you can actually start at any one of the individual podcast. You can start at number three, number six, number eight, episode that is, and still learn something from each one. However it is best to start at the beginning since each episode builds upon itself from the very beginning. The podcast website is also a way of connecting with other Christians who are interested in faith-based recovery and are challenged with addictions.

Finally, I cannot emphasize it enough if you would like a prayer request for yourself, your family, friends, or anyone else or anything else, please do not hesitate to send me your prayer request. You can go to 99Relapses.org. That’s 99Relapses.org. Also, finally, if you have any interesting story to share about God, how God changed your life through addiction, recovery, or an expert in the field of Christian addiction and recovery, you’ve published a book or have a Christian addiction recovery podcast or website that you would like to promote on the 99Relapses podcast, please email me any time by going to 99Relapses.org to the contact page.

Thank you! And God bless. I would like to close out this podcast with a prayer heavenly father we just give you so much thanks and praise Lord we thank you so much for each and every day that you give us each and every day, knowing that you are the almighty God, that you are an omnipotent God. Omnipresent God.

a loving God. a God who continues to give us strength and courage and most importantly, a God brought his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior, who you brought here in a physical body to be sacrificed at the cross to wash away our sins clean and white and also to provide us with strength and courage each and every day and we’re so grateful for your son jesus Christ.

And Lord, as I pray, I just would like to pray for the people that are listening to this podcast that you open up their hearts and minds and as it says, Romans, that you transform their minds, that you give them the wisdom and the courage and the strength to get through their addictions and that they do that through the surrendering to our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, and I just thank you so much, and we thank you so much in your son’s name Jesus Christ. Amen.