Episode
A Decade Long Addiction to Opioids | How I Broke the Chains and Got Clean & Sober
- Published
- Jul 22, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 6878
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Summary
By June of 2017, Billy Rich had nothing left in his own eyes. A decade into opioid addiction, isolated in a blacked-out bedroom in Rhode Island, cut off from his family, grieving his father, buried under legal fear and a mental state he describes as beyond anything he'd known — he had decided he was done. He didn't see a recovery option. He didn't think there was a way out. He survived that night. Something he can only describe as divine intervention pulled him back at the last possible second, and for the first time he heard a different thought: maybe I'm still here for a reason. His mother found him, got on the phone calling every detox in a fifty-mile radius, and Billy walked into treatment the next day. What followed was the slow, unglamorous work of rebuilding a person — eighteen weeks in an outpatient program when the standard was six, learning who he was without a substance for the first time since he was a teenager, walking miles to and from treatment every day because his life was in pieces. Nine years later, Billy is engaged, has a two-year-old, has built a career with more opportunity than he ever imagined, and walked into this interview with a smile he couldn't have pictured back then. By June of 2017, Billy Rich had nothing left in his own eyes. A decade into opioid addiction, isolated in a blacked-out bedroom in Rhode Island, cut off from his family, grieving his father, buried under legal fear and a mental state he describes as beyond anything he'd known — he had decided he was done. He didn't see a recovery option. He didn't think there was a way out.He survived that night. Something he can only describe as divine intervention pulled him back at the last possible second, and for the first time he heard a different thought: maybe I'm still here…