ELKTON — If you have ever sat with a friend talking about something both of you are passionate about, chances are, the idea of “we should record this,” was said. That simple four word sentence often leads to playing with the idea of starting a podcast. Even though most of the time these ideas never make it past a conversation, Bill Tuerke and Jason Chrystal have made their conversation – that occurred over meditation – a reality, leading to the birth of their podcast, Recovery (sort of), in 2019.
“We wanted to do a podcast that wasn’t just people telling addiction recovery stories like the listener was at a meeting,” said Tuerke. “We wanted to make something that is interesting about mental health and recovery concepts because a lot of the time the mental health issues aren’t addressed with recovery.”
Recovery (sort of) is a mental health podcast with strong ties to Voices of Hope (VOH), a non-profit recovery treatment and resource organization in Elkton. The podcast focuses around 12 step addiction recovery, spiritual living and growing through recovery. Prior to starting Recovery (sort of), Chrystal and Tuerke hosted meditation sessions on Sundays, where they both shared their experiences with recovery as Tuerke has been in recovery since 2000 and Chrystal has been in recovery since 2003.
Once attendance at the meditation sessions grew scarce, Tuerke and Chrystal pitched the idea of a podcast that now releases a new episode every week, has over 150 episodes and averages over 10,000 listeners a year.
“At the start, Voices of Hope bought us our microphone and neither of us had audio or video editing abilities because I was working from a Chromebook but overtime it was piecemeal and we have grown,” said Chrystal.
Outside of having minimal experience in producing a podcast, a challenge Tuerke and Chrystal also faced when starting the podcast was finding a good name for their show.
“When we started the podcast we were both worried about coming across as experts and we don’t want that, we just want to be two guys – so that’s why we have the ‘sort of’ part,” said Chrystal. “It lives true to us because the ‘sort of’ part means we don’t take ourselves too seriously and we both enjoy that.”
After settling on a name, Recovery (sort of) was off the ground and generating viewership, Tuerke and Chrystal decided to give back to Voices of Hope and donate all of the donations and proceeds from the podcast to the non-profit recovery organization. The donations, which are formally called the Recovery (sort of) Fund, are used by VOH to help provide resources to people in recovery in Cecil County.
“The money is used to fill gaps that traditional recovery grant funds don’t cover,” said Tuerke. “Buying new clothes for job interviews and things like transportation aren’t really covered by grant money for people coming out of hard situations who don’t have money so that is what our donations are used for.”
In their continued efforts, Tuerke and Chrystal aim to uplift and help people in all stages of recovery. The pair share a main goal for Recovery (sort of) in that the podcast is used as a platform that brings real conversations and perspectives about addiction and recovery to the public eye.
“It would be nice to have real conversations in society and in the mainstream about mental health and addiction,” said Tuerke. “It is not a mystery about how people get into addiction but you don’t hear that in the mainstream, all you hear is the pharmaceutical companies that tricked us into addiction and all that stuff that isn’t going to fix the problem or help anyone.”
Tuerke notes that in bringing genuine conversations to the mainstream, he hopes to bridge the gap between people suffering from all addictions.
“Building a community among all addiction recovery factions and finding a way to bring the voices together would be great because together, we can solve a lot more problems,” said Tuerke. “All of the people in Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous and everything else never meet each other and it’s almost like a tribal thing so to break that down and say ‘hey, we are all addicts with way more in common than in difference’ is the goal to make a big difference in the local community and unity amongst the recovery community through the podcast.”
An avid listener, Jennie Hasted says Recovery (sort of) has helped her tremendously in staying within her recovery mindset.
“I started listening around episode 15 and when Covid hit, in-person recovery meetings stopped and social connection is really important to people in recovery so not being able to get together with other people was really hard,” said Hasted. “I had been in recovery at that point for about seven years but I still needed the connection and, listening to the podcast every week, I had this one hour episode with friends where even though I wasn’t in the conversation, the podcast style felt like I was hanging out with them.”
Hasted has been in recovery for 10 years and is described by Tuerke and Chrystal as being the podcast’s number one fan.
“What I like about Billy and Jason and the topics they tackle is they are real talk that people don’t talk about at recovery meetings because there are rules at the meetings about things you can’t say,” said Hasted. “After the meeting, you hang out with your friends and you talk about recovery things they don’t talk about in the meeting so listening to Recovery (sort of) is like having that meeting after the meeting because it’s real recovery stuff with no rules.”
The feedback from listeners like Hasted who are able to share how Recovery (sort of) has helped them has been a shared enjoyment by Tuerke and Chrystal.
“We never anticipated the feedback but it is cool to know that people are listening and we are impacting their lives,” said Chrystal.
Anyone interested in the podcast is encouraged to visit their website- Recoverysortof.com.
“We are just two guys wanting to help other people while growing and becoming better versions of ourselves and it is interesting because Billy and I, there are just enough opposite nuances between us to where we are able to debate and learn well from each other,” said Chrystal.
CECIL WHIG CLIP
By Matt Hubbard
