#88 – Episode 88 – Turn Up for Recovery with Melia Clapton

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Chip and Veronica interview Melia Clapton, the wife of guitar legend Eric Clapton. She discusses ‘Turn up for Recovery,’ her charity that helps use music to raise money for addiction treatment. She also discusses her own journey with 12-step programs and how she ‘lost herself’ in relationships.

“How will I have fun if I’m sober?”

This is a topic we speak about a lot on the podcast, and one of the biggest questions on the surface that my sobriety clients raise. When you go out with your friends, you’ll stick out like a sore thumb, or you won’t have the social lubricant you’ve relied on to help you cut loose, dance and meet new people.

But what if we knew that being sober doesn’t actually stop ANY of that?

Back in the day, Eric Clapton used to throw really awesome New Year’s Eve guitar festivals that were 100% sober events. I really believe it saved a lot of lives. 

It opened people up to know that being sober is not a stiff affair, you can have real fun. 

Chip would take the clients from his rehab there to see the awesome sight of 1,500 people singing and having fun completely sober. It was a safe place for me when I was 3 years sober, it got me away from the other heavy drinking New Year’s Eve parties. Russel Brand wrote about those events as well, and I’m sure several other people have fond stories about those days. 

Those events inspired Eric’s wife, Melia, to launch a charity “Turn up for Recovery”. It’s a platform that allows anyone to get musicians involved for the cause of creating a substance-free, safe and entertaining event to introduce the idea of sobriety and raise funds for people who can’t afford recovery treatment.

Melia is on this week’s episode to talk more about the charity and share her story as someone who was in a relationship with someone who was using.

She was introduced to the sobriety world by her then friend, now husband Eric when he encouraged her to join Al-anon. She joined it to learn how to help others, but instead, she found and helped herself.

She came face-to-face with her codependency and her life changed immensely. She moved from feeling empty and constantly people-pleasing – getting her self-esteem from other people, to content and happy within herself.

Now she’s helping people on a much larger scale with her ongoing work and her charity, not out of self-sacrifice and codependency, but out of love and abundance.

“You have to put so little effort into recovery to get so much back out of it.” – Chip Somers

So if you’ve felt on the surface that sobriety may not be for you because you don’t want to be the square in your friend circle, or if you fear deep down that without pleasing others, your value is low and you’re not worth love, or if you fear you’re not providing your children with enough guidance, there’s something for you in this episode.

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