Subscribe & Connect:

If this episode resonates with you, subscribe, rate, and review The Clean Slate Podcast to help others find these conversations. New episodes release regularly featuring personal stories, recovery insights, and honest discussions about starting over.

Content / Trigger Warning:

This episode contains discussion of:

• Substance use

• Intravenous drug use

• Addiction and homelessness

• Family dysfunction

Listener discretion is advised.

Who This Episode Is For:

People in recovery or considering recovery

Loved ones of someone struggling with addiction

Anyone who has asked, “How did my life get here?”

Listeners who value honesty over perfection

About The Clean Slate Podcast:

The Clean Slate Podcast is a recovery-centered space for real conversations about addiction, healing, accountability, and rebuilding life—without shame and without pretending it’s easy.

Audi0 editing provided by: The Spokane Show podcast

In this first episode of The Clean Slate Podcast, host Cheryl shares her personal story for the first time—from growing up in a family where substance use and crime were prevalent, to becoming a mother trying to “do everything right,” and eventually descending into active addiction.

What began as unaddressed trauma and learned survival patterns slowly evolved into heroin use, intravenous drug use, and homelessness. This episode is not about shock value or glorifying addiction—it’s about honesty, context, and breaking the silence around how addiction really begins.

This episode lays the foundation for the podcast: real conversations about recovery, accountability, shame, healing, and the possibility of starting over.

• Growing up in a household shaped by substance use and crime

• How early environments normalize chaos and survival behaviors

• The disconnect between outward success and internal pain

• The progression from “functioning” to active addiction

• Heroin use and homelessness

• Why addiction is not a moral failure—but a response to unresolved pain

• What “clean slate” truly means in recovery

Subscribe & Connect:

If this episode resonates with you, subscribe, rate, and review The Clean Slate Podcast to help others find these conversations. New episodes release regularly featuring personal stories, recovery insights, and honest discussions about starting over.

Content / Trigger Warning:

This episode contains discussion of:

• Substance use

• Intravenous drug use

• Addiction and homelessness

• Family dysfunction

Listener discretion is advised.

Who This Episode Is For:

People in recovery or considering recovery

Loved ones of someone struggling with addiction

Anyone who has asked, “How did my life get here?”

Listeners who value honesty over perfection

About The Clean Slate Podcast:

The Clean Slate Podcast is a recovery-centered space for real conversations about addiction, healing, accountability, and rebuilding life—without shame and without pretending it’s easy.

Audi0 editing provided by: The Spokane Show podcast