Hope Is a Person. Sometimes That Person Is a Peer Mentor. — "We're Here to Love You Until You Can Love Yourself"

That's what Luciano Nicolas heard on July 3rd — standing in a detox hallway, ready to walk out. His peer mentor said it. One sentence. And Luciano stayed.

We recorded Episode 120 of the Real Recovery Podcast live at True Colors Recovery in Portland, and it was unlike anything we have done before. Three guests — Luciano Nicolas from Atlas Treatment Center, Ebony Brawley from 4D Recovery, and Jack Taylor from True Colors Recovery — sat down with us to talk about peer services. Not what they are on paper. What they actually feel like.

She went in not sure she had a problem. She came out with her people.

What does it take to build a life in recovery — not just stay sober, but actually find your people, set real limits, and feel like yourself again?

That's the question Cassandra P. spends the better part of an hour answering in this episode, and we're still thinking about parts of it. If you heard Part 1 last week, you know how she grew up inside recovery — AA meetings from age five, a home built on honesty — and still ended up in addiction at 32. Part 2 is what happened after she finally walked through the doors of Another Chance in Portland.

She went in May 2024, not fully convinced she had a problem. She graduated six months later. Between those two dates, she did IOP five days a week, found a counselor named Julia through DBT who became her favorite person in the program, and discovered something she hadn't felt since high school — a real sense of belonging. "Another Chance has been good for you," her counselor Jerry told her at graduation, "but you've been good for Another Chance."

She knew the rooms. She just didn't think they'd ever be hers.

"Before I even gave myself to God, I just feel like I'm blessed." That's how Cassandra P. opens her story — and she means it without a trace of irony. She grew up with a mother who got sober cold turkey before she was born, attended AA meetings from age five, and never once saw either of her parents high. If recovery had a blueprint for raising a child who'd never need it, her mom Julie — our co-host — followed it.

And at 32, Cassandra still ended up in addiction.

That's the heartbreak at the center of this episode. And the reason we think it's one of the most important conversations we've ever had on this show.

At nine years old, Skyler Ray decided he was brave. It would take nearly twenty years to find out what that decision was costing him.

At nine years old, Skyler Ray decided he was brave. His mother left him and his brother at a Portland shelter — she said she'd be back with food, and she never came back. Police split the boys into different cars, placed them in different foster homes the same week. In less than seven days, he lost his mom, his dad, and his brother. He told himself it was an adventure. He didn't know he was broken.

We first put Skyler's story out as Episode 22, and it has never left us. When 4D Recovery invited him to perform at their Summer Bash 2026 on June 13th in Vancouver, WA, we knew it was time to bring it back. If you found us after Episode 22 aired, you're about to hear something that changes how you think about recovery.

A Note Under the Door, a Verse at Midnight, and a Walk That Took Decades

"I waited my whole life for this."

That's Aaron Burrell, and what he'd been waiting his whole life for was the moment he turned around in the visiting room at the Oregon State Penitentiary — age 21, three months into his first prison stretch — and saw his father standing there for the first time. His dad had just paroled after twenty years inside for attempted murder and a bank robbery spree. Aaron had grown up with that gang heritage idolized in his own house, and he'd spent his early years trying to fill those shoes under the street name "Money."

From a Tent in Seaside to the Middle of the Program

The night Jeremiah N. walked back to his tent at the Seaside homeless camp, he was praying. He'd been living in that tent, cycling in and out of county jail for years — every cop in the county knowing him by face and name — and something in him finally said enough. He didn't know what enough looked like yet. He just prayed for a way out. By the time he reached his tent, two cops stepped in front of him and two stepped behind him. What happened in the courtroom the next morning is the moment this whole episode turns on, and you need to hear him tell it himself.

We didn't know Jeremiah's full story before he sat down in Studio H with us. We knew him — he's part of a circle of people we love, people who are doing the work — but the story of how he got here is something we weren't fully prepared for. Years of heroin, fentanyl, and meth. An overdose his friends almost couldn't bring him back from. His mom's death unraveling everything he'd built — a custom truck shop, a tow truck, mud bog racing, a life in Spokane that fell apart piece by piece the moment she was gone. He told us he moved to Seaside convinced that a new location would fix things. It didn't. Nothing he tried fixed things, not until he stopped trying to fix things on his own terms.