The Behavioral Corner 

Hi, and welcome. I'm Steve Martorano. And this is the Behavioral Corner, you're invited to hang with us as we discuss the ways we live today, the choices we make, the things we do, and how they affect our health and well-being. So you're on the Corner, the Behavioral Corner, please hang around a while.

Steve Martorano 

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Behavioral Corner. I'm Steve Martorano and this is the Behavioral Corner . I hope you know what the deal is by now. We hang here at the intersection of What's Happening: What's and Happening, and we run into great people. That's why we pick this corner. It's our corner. And we're here talking about behavioral health. In the very strict sense, behavioral health encompasses we like to say everything, everything, every decision you make, everything you choose to do affects your behavioral health, emotionally, physically, psychologically. So we talk about a lot of different things. And we run into great people who have great, great stories. I'm going to begin by straightening out a quote that has bothered F. Scott Fitzgerald scholars for a million years, and that is that Fitzgerald never really said, "There are no second acts in American life." He's always quoted as having said that, but in fact, he was saying something quite the opposite. You know, you literally guys look it up. But what he was really saying is, yeah, there are second acts, and we've got a dandy for you a dandy second act in an American Life. Chris Therien has had a remarkable career. There's no other way to describe it, and association with sports and the city of Philadelphia for 14 years. He was a defenseman for the Flyers franchise, in fact, the longest-tenured defenseman in franchise history. So he's a Flyer through and through and then 13 more years as a TV hockey analyst, covering the team. So over a quarter of a century of deep involvement in sports, and athletics, and broadcasting, which is a pretty nice first act by anybody's dimensions. Unfortunately, the whole thing was marred by a serious substance abuse problem, in this case, alcohol. And Chris has joined us to talk about his struggles with alcohol, what it cost him, and how I ironically, is set up what they say is a pretty remarkable second act that he's just about to launch right now. So we welcome Chris Therien to the Behavioral Corner or aka "Bundy."

Chris Therien 

You can go with that for sure. Absolutely.

Steve Martorano 

Tell me where Bundy came from, first of all.

Chris Therien 

You know, I get that question a lot. And hopefully one of these days I'll have answered it for the last time. But you know what I was, it was I was in my, I mean, literally in like the first week of my career. I hadn't even played a game for the Flyers yet. And Craig MacTavish was you know, the perennial kind of leader at the time of the team that came in you want to come up with the Rangers the year before the Flyers, sign them in the offseason. And I would be like the first kid in there as I don't want to be 22 or whatever it was when I first came in and sitting there watching like Nickelodeon or whatever channel was Married with Children and you know, Al Bundy made a kind of a striking resemblance - not necessarily on looks, but you know, kind of our, you know, office antics and MacTavish had another teammate that reminded him of me his nickname, I guess, was Bundy. He wasn't around for a long time. But then he said, You looked at the TV said, you know, you remind me exactly that guy right there sitting on the couch. And it was ended up being Al Bundy. So I would say it's Al Bundy, not Ted. And that's a good thing.

Steve Martorano 

Wow. I never thought of that? anyway? Yeah, it's better than Ted, that's for damn sure. First of all, you know all guys like they like give it nicknames. Somehow cool. Hockey guys have this unique, at least in Philadelphia growing up when they didn't want to resort to something clever, like Bundy. They would just add an "ie" to everybody's last name. So it was "Clarkie." You know, when it was "Leachie." It was crazy.

Chris Therien 

Billy Barber's is "Billy." They always add "ie" or like a "y" at the end of their name.

Steve Martorano 

I think I think that's a hockey shortcut myself. Otherwise, you got to come up with something anyway. Like I say, there's a lot of people who know a lot about you. But for folks who don't. Where are you from?

Chris Therien 

Well, I was born in Ottawa, Canada. I was 19, the early 1970s. I'm like I say how early but it was in the early 70s. And you know what I was I was raised there until, you know, my mom and dad had his sister till 15 years old and very, very humble beginnings. Very small home in Ottawa, about 10 minutes from a downtown area. It was a beautiful place to grow up. You know, very good gets cold in the winter. We had a great skating rink. You know, it was an article really where I, you know, I first developed my love for the sport of hockey. And, of course, we had enough outdoor venues and different types of places we could get to especially the Rideau Canal, who, you know, is a is a six-kilometer long skating, essentially skating rink that's open in the winter and we live five minutes from it, so I get dropped. My dad would leave me at one end I'd skate to the other and he'd be waiting there to pick me up some days so if not that we were playing pickup hockey at like the community rinks under the lights with snow falling. Now like I said it was a good childhood for me I just amazing memories. And when I was 15 years old, still kind of young. I had a very interesting kind of hockey career in my teens pre-moving to the US, you know, I've been cut from two teams that 14 - 13 or 14 years old that I skied for a whole year I quit hockey and skied for an entire year. It was like $2 a night to go skiing so I figured you know I'd be happier ski and today for eight bucks a week than going out to get hockey and getting cut at every corner and up you know what luckily you know as I take you to know, I ended up being 15 years old. I've pretty much been in the United States the entire time I went to Northwood Prep School and Lake Placid. I went in as you know kind of a project no one knew who I was no one knew what I was. And you know at the end of the day when I look back at Northwood, now I'm in their Hall of Fame for athleticism and that's for me is where the journey began was and I took that step did three years of US high school at Northwood. My second year - my dad and the only reason that happened was my dad believed in me, he believed in me as an athlete and who I was as a person. That's why he was you know, made that small financial wager at the time to get me out of auto get into the US. He was a US collegiate he played at St. Lawrence. And from that point, my career really took off. I still even basically when I went to Northwood, my first year, I still got cut from the varsity team and played JV my whole sophomore year, you know, I tell my son who's the same age now at 14. I said You know what, end of my JV year I was the best player in the JV. And to show you how bodies changed when I went in as a junior, I was the best player on the varsity team right away. So again, it just thought how things like that kind of shape up. And I always tell kids now don't fall in love with who your child is at 12 or 13. Because when I was 12, or 13, I was probably you know, five foot one and five foot one wide. You know, I didn't know I'd grown up, you know, six foot five, and 225 or 230 pounds by the time I was 18 years old. So, you know, I learned a lot I learned a lot as a parent, from my memories. Well, what you know, I've done with my kids and their athletics now and, and I remember that I remember vividly, you know, some of the pain that I went through with being cut, and how resilient I had to be, you know, but I really, if it wasn't for my mom and dad, especially my dad, I would never have had that opportunity to get I would have probably stopped playing hockey altogether. And we wouldn't be talking right now, Steve.

Steve Martorano 

Yeah. You know, we all know the Gretzky stories and the Tiger Woods stories, the immediate prodigies, everybody sees them coming a million miles away, we often forget that you're living proof of this, that there's another whole class of athletes who succeed at a pretty high level for a very long time, who just had to keep proving themselves every time they skated out on the ice, or, you know, went out onto the field to play and that shapes you for sure. They keep telling you you're not good enough, and you keep going. Well, I'm gonna try again. That comes in handy. I know in your story about alcoholism because you did have a relapse and relapse it's like getting cut. You got to bounce back from it. Anyway, wait, when did the drinking start if you did it start the way just for most of this year young guy and you're having a beer with your pals? Is that how it started for you?

Chris Therien 

You know, I go back to the beginning. I was a very vanilla type of kid, you know, like I didn't drink in high school, you know, this summer is you go out and have a couple of nights as everyone else did, but it was not a focal point to me. You know, hockey was a focal point to me, you know, 18 - 19 and when I went to Providence, I went to Providence College from Northwood. And I became and I was a college partier like anybody else but I was no more or no less than anybody else. So yeah, it certainly uh, you know, I wouldn't play for the Canadian Olympic team and the 93 / 94 season. You know, I mean, again, you be your kind of a pick your spots type of night, but never anything that was trending for me at that point. I was pretty, I guess for a kid, you know, 20 years old 21 years old is pretty normal. I guess drinker. Like I said, no different than most other guys. Even when my first I would say my first three or four years in the NHL, I was pretty disciplined to again, pick my spots. It was really the summer did the lockout year or 2004 that I really really noticed, you know, a pattern developing here was, you know, you're not going to practice. I've been in the league already, like 10 years, I had a pretty good feeling I was going to get a job again. I actually thought we were going to start again. I really did. I was hoping in the new year we're gonna start it just never happened and not ended up. You know, I talked to a lot of guys that were kind of like, you know, getting into their 30s at that point, and they're like, I don't know how I'm gonna come back and play, you know, on the kind of condition I'm in, but I don't think there was any doubt after 2004 that I had a clear problem with alcohol. And I had to do something about it. There's just no -- you know, that was the worst and I played. I did come back after a year and like I told many people a 2005 - 2016 year especially 2006. That was my 2020. For the rest of the world, it was just that bad. It was all fun and games until it just wasn't fun at all. 

Steve Martorano 

No, it wasn't Yes, you're just to go back to your introduction to professionalism. There's a culture around sports in general. All men, lots of testosterone, lots of partying, it can look social. The Broad Street Bullies, their unofficial clubhouse was a famous bar in New Jersey. I mean, it was part of the allure, part of the charm. No one ever, at that point ever looked below the surface and said, "Hey, is everybody hitting it pretty hard?" What did you see as a young hockey player when you first got there? Did you see heavy drinking around the game?

Chris Therien 

I did. Immediately when I got here. You know, a lot of those older guys, you know, I don't want to throw anyone's name out. And that's because that wouldn't be right. But a lot of the veteran guys I played with, drank a lot of beer. When I first got the Hershey -- I mean, it was and I was talking about this was Mike Johnson is on the NHL Network about a month ago, we were talking about a similar subject and, and I said, you know, it's really funny, and he concurred because we both kinds of came in to be a couple of years after we go to practice I got sent down during that the first lockout 1994 -- fall of that year actually made the Flyers right out of training camp. And I had to go down the play because I wasn't under a mandatory contract where they had to keep me up. So they sent me down to get some more experience in the minors. And every single day at lunch, we practice at 10:30 we were sitting at a bar like 12:15, eating lunch was a burger, or whatever. But there were 12 - 15 guys, and everyone had a beer. That doesn't mean everybody was drinking, you know, 15 - 20 beers. Yeah. That's the culture, right? You practice together, you hang out together, and you go drink beer together and have a meal together. So at that very much as a culture, we were the epitome, I believe, of a team sport type of player will do anything for our teammates, including going through a wall for one another, and not sure when I played. I don't know if it's like that as much anymore now, but your brother and your brotherhood, you took it very seriously.

Steve Martorano 

Sure. I only mentioned that culture because when you when someone who winds up with a substance abuse problem very often doesn't see coming right away because of their surroundings. You didn't have a problem in your family. But a lot of people who have come up in the family are heavy, heavy drinkers. It may be alcoholism, but it's not talking about but the culture normalizes the behavior. Right? It doesn't look like anything's unusual here. We're pounding beers.

Chris Therien 

And really what happened to me as I became that guy that was the guy I saw when I came into the league, you know, at the end of it, you know, there are young guys around and you become the guy that you are, you become like the drunk uncle that everybody accepts is like, Oh, he's been here forever. He's just a dynamite dude. He plays his ass off on the ice. Exactly. Listen, I will say this. I mean, I had drank in my career. And there were probably days I showed up many days, I hung over for practice. That happened. But it was really only that last little bit that I thought really, really affected both my person and the player.

Steve Martorano 

So look, looking back at that, do you think it was the idleness, the injuries, or depression just, you know, undiagnosed depression, that caused you to start an effect self-medicating, or any of those factors at play when you started having a problem drinking?

Chris Therien 

I don't know. You know, I don't I people always say you got to delve into what happened. I you know, again, I had a great childhood. I had great experiences in high school prep, in college. I think the pressures of being an elite staying in the league added up and compiled over time. You know, I don't know if there's a history of depression in my family. I'm sure most people I mean, if you look at the numbers are staggering, in this country, how many people are on antidepressants, an anti-anxiety medication. So, you know, again, I understand that very much whether or not that was an issue for me. I don't know. I just think that it was and I had a lot of time on my hands. There was pressure to stay in the league. And I think another problem that adds to the speed, quite frankly, is you have four or five months of summer, where you're not doing anything, you know, you're sitting in 95-degree weather. You've done your workout by 2:30 that's one thing too. I stayed in shape. I mean, really, really well. Yeah, I got kind of slapped a couple of times over like, you know, a general manager, but for the most part, I came into camp in really good shape prepared.

Steve Martorano 

Even when you were drinking?

Chris Therien 

Oh, yeah.

Steve Martorano 

You had the additional burden of being what they referred to often as high functioning. So...

Chris Therien 

I played guilty or practice guilty is, you know, that's one of the hockey. I mean, you know, I'm not you know, I say this, I don't say it lightly or with pride, but I had teammates, I would tell the coaches leave him alone. Just leave him alone. If he's drinking, leave him alone, because he might be you know, to get on the bottle. I was one of those guys. Like, why are you bothering me right now? I have a game to play in two days. I don't want to hear this crap.

Steve Martorano 

Were people around you at some point going, "Chris, man, you gotta slow down."

Chris Therien 

No. No. I mean, I did. You know, I think there were a couple of times I said, you know, you gotta you know, maybe Paul Holmgren or Bob Clark had said something but you know, again, you know, I'd seen addiction issues over the years within the Flyers, you know, I'd seen that to happen to other guys. So I, you know, again I was out and I was always one of those guys like I did never want to throw in anyone's face that you know I was drinking or whatever it was. I didn't want to rub it into a point where I listen, I just did my thing. I didn't want to involve anybody else. But I remember like even Keith Primeau was the captain was like, just leave this guy alone. The guy plays hard every night. I never came in after a period "Are you going to play hard or not? That's an awful period." It never happened.

Steve Martorano 

Yeah, yeah.

Chris Therien 

You know, again, people say, you know, nobody ever played quite as good guilty as I did. That may be true. But one thing I knew is when the jersey was on, I was ready to play and I came to play hard. That's the way I was raised.

Steve Martorano 

The way you are remembered. I spoke to a fellow the other day - a hockey fan. I mentioned we were going to do this and he went, "Bundy? I still remember when Crosby came - the first time they faced Crosby - Bundy's cross-check. It just smashed him. It was it was wonderful. It was wonderful." Anyway, how bad did it get? I mean, it got worse. Were you blackout drinking?

Chris Therien 

How is the full Nelson? Do you know what I mean? You know, I can make light of it now. You know, I guess going back into I just say lastly, my career. I mean, you know, other than the end for me. I mean, I had a wonderful I had a great run, I mean, a remarkable run of a lot of many happy positive strong years. Would love to want to come here. But how bad did it get? This is always the fun part. So the 05 season I actually never playing the first half and I was on a minimum week minimum contract. I didn't care. I was happy to be back playing and I thought I could control I already knew at that point at a problem. So I would try to not drink cuz I knew if I did pick up at that point, I was off to the rodeo like it was I was gone. And actually, in January, I went back to get a puck behind the net. And Robert Ashe, the goaltender, came out to play he didn't see me and as I turned to grab the puck the wheel around the net, he turned in my head hit his shoulder. And I had a concussion. I had concussion problems, you know, most of my career. Guys, do I mean back then you get your bell rung. You shook it off, and you're back out there a minute or two later. That's another question people ask me to Steve is, you know, do you think concussions had anything to do with as they progressed over the years. That one to me actually might make a little bit of sense, I had six concussions, and all of them were pretty been pretty really bad. I had one that was actually it was like the video that they showed trainers around the league of what a serious head injury would look like. And it was actually a play on what hit a guy, I banged my head three times on the same flight. And it was ended up spitting ice facedown at the end of it. In terms of my drinking out here. So I hit Robert Ashe and I went back I had a concussion, couldn't see like I was like, really bad, bad nighttime driving vision. I didn't even want to drive. And then what happened was, is the Olympic break came that year, about the same time, so everybody had to get away from the rink. Why they look at it, like I got three weeks to heal, I got, you know, wow, I got an open pass, I can go drink now. And what happened was is that I went up to Canada, we went skiing, it was just you know, one of those things, guys to go away for the Olympic break of still kind of around the team. And then when I got back, I was fully on my way. I mean, I couldn't even play anymore. I was I couldn't even I couldn't tell the difference anymore between what was a concussion and what was alcohol. It was that bad. It really was. So to tell you just how bad my '06 got. The season ended. I actually was a couple of years earlier had a horse I had, like I owned half of a horse that ran into Kentucky Derby and went down to Louisville. That was kind of a mess. But it was really what had transpired. After that. I finally said enough is enough. My kids were young, I just didn't want I always known that the effects of whether it was alcoholism or addiction inside a house. So I didn't want that to be something I sure know that at the time, you know that my family didn't want that either. I wanted to eliminate it. And I had to make this choice so-called the league and said -- like June 1 -- and I said I need any help. And I was scared you know, I was scared all year to go to you know whether it's Bob Clark or Holmgren and said I need help. On top of my concussion, I got a drinking problem they probably knew already. But what happened in June is I called the league and they were great said we're gonna get you to rehab. We're gonna call you back tomorrow. And the doctor came down to Philadelphia, just wanted to take a look at me and looking for any kind of open signs of you know that we got to do something right away. And that wasn't the case. So I looked healthy enough at that point. But on June 10 excuse me, June 11. We got a call on a Sunday morning, my parents were down that my sister had collapsed at her house. She didn't have any kids. She had a boyfriend. She's 32 years old. And she had a cardiac event in lost so much oxygen in that span that she died six days later. I was there. I watched the...you know, ...watch her die. It was at that stage in my life. You know, I mean? I was I was drunk. I mean I just you know I was just a function just keeping myself going. So was two weeks. You know, I had to keep myself going for my family. The kid my kids here did not go up my wife joined me I couldn't have thought of a worst like is almost like you know I've been sent to hell and then someone kicked me an extra kicked out and say a little further you're not quite down far enough so you know I it was the worst month of my life I mean I there's no other way to put it. My only sibling and one of my best friends maybe my best friend was dead. She and I shared stories with about my drinking was how much I wanted that to come to an end and I'm what she knew that I wanted to do that so it wasn't a long journey with it but she saw enough of it to know it was a problem and so we got through the funeral and I was home for about another 10 days just alone everywhere I didn't you know I go park my car in the woods and just sit there I didn't want to be around anybody. About July 7 you know six that the league called you to know, I got kept in touch with them and they said you know what? I'll never forget the league told me the NHL doctor said don't stop drinking whatever you do, do not stop drinking. Don't be a hero. Because you know you can go into bad really bad DTs without alcohol and you could die.

Steve Martorano 

Well yeah. If people understand detoxing from alcohol is probably the most dangerous detox that can occur. The idea that you can cold turkey alcohol is your right dangerous.

Chris Therien 

It really is. So that's where I was and I so I'm finally got I got through that time. My wife and an old friend of mine had driven me to Caron which is up in Burnsville, PA. It was the closest one -- about an hour 35 or 40 minutes from my front door. So I thought, well, it's gonna be somewhere I mean, it will be close. And, you know, we had three little girls the time I went to the rehab -- they dropped me off and I went into it was well 11 o'clock in the morning and I went in and they gave me the test. And my blood alcohol level was .63.

Steve Martorano 

You're lucky didn't burst into flames spontaneously.

Chris Therien 

Yeah, right. If they would have cremated me I would have been burning for six months. You know what, like, but seriously, she kind of looked at me like, Oh, my God, like, this is incredible. So she's like, give me a sec. So she called the league and the doc said I think it might be high, but just get another machine. And it was the same number of .63 again, and the lady looked at me she was even open 50 years here, sir and we've never seen anything like this ever. She goes we've had people check-in at a .4 and they were dead two hours later. 

Steve Martorano 

Overachieving once again.

Chris Therien 

You know, I guess. I guess somebody was on my side looking over me. And you know, the doctor called me two days later to do all those tests on your liver and your blood and all that. Like I basically said, If you hadn't been playing the highest level of sports in the world for the last 20 years, whatever it was at that point from college.

Steve Martorano 

You'd be dead. You've dead. Were you there for 30 days?

Chris Therien 

30 days? Yeah.

Steve Martorano 

Was that your was your first trip into rehab? Were there subsequent trips into residential? 

Chris Therien 

No. 

Steve Martorano 

Okay. So it took for you very lucky, as you know, people can go multiple times to treatment until you know, they either OD or they get it. Do you think that your discipline as an athlete helps you in your rehab?

Chris Therien 

It certainly kept me in a state of mind that this what nothing about this was right. I mean, I knew that right away. The problem is with alcohol is it keeps knocking on your door. Right? Like, come on. Come on. It's It's okay. It's, you know, cunning, baffling powerful, right? That's what we hear all the time. So, you know, from my standpoint, yeah, I think that there probably was, you know. I was not a, I want to say like, I wasn't a dumb person, like, I want to, you know, I want to have great kids and a great family. And then you know, and again, when I stopped, those rewards came to fruition through you know, the accomplishments of my kids and the people that they become because I believe I stopped drinking. But I think that probably the fact that I wasn't pro athlete, the fact that I played in a town as demanding as Philadelphia, with as much pride as it does, I think, absolutely, maybe helped push me over the top, but also kept me back on the right road again.

Steve Martorano 

Yeah, we're talking to Chris Therien, whose career in both hockey and broadcasting were stellar, and this town has been around as long as anybody else. We're going to pick up on Chris's story straight ahead. I want to just pause to do a little housekeeping here, Chris, here on the Corner, we need your help in terms of feedback. So if you had the occasion to like us, or follow us on any of those platforms, if you could write a review, we'd appreciate it. Nobody likes criticism, but we're not afraid of it. So if we're doing something wrong, where we could do something better, give us a review. I think he could do that on iTunes. So anyway, Behavioral Corner, look for us.

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Steve Martorano 

Chris Therien. Chris, let's, let's talk about that moment. I mean, there's a lot of confusion in the lay public about what goes on, when somebody finally says, Help me. I gotta get help. They refer to as "hitting bottom." That's a very nebulous place. Bottom can be different places, for lots of people. You seem to had an awareness of the problem. Hit a wall with your sister's, sudden and tragic death. But more importantly, that where your bottom was, was that insight, which you had, for a period of time where you knew you had a problem. A lot of people with substance abuse issues. take a long time to get to that.

Chris Therien 

You know, I think when you just go back to a little bit of what I said, I think I knew I had a problem. And I recognized today, you know, immediately my bottom. I mean, in terms of the way I felt as a human being, I don't think I could have ever felt worse than the day we buried my sister. I mean, that to me was, you know, the absolute worst. I mean, I don't know, if it was at a bottom that you're, you know, you've you're drunk. You know, you're the only siblings dead at 32 for no real good reason. You know, it's funny, when I look at that whole journey to sobriety, you know, I look at that, I went to rehab, and I got out and I got till about May, two years later, so almost 22 months, I got sober. And it's funny, you know, I didn't really, I wasn't really living the life of someone who's happy, sober, I was just abstaining from not drinking. And I was, you know, again, I think your mind and your body and your heart probably doesn't necessarily understand who you become. And there's a lot of guessing at the time. You know, I look back when I talked about you talk about broadcast and you know, I was it was 2006 2007 was my first year out, unfortunately, was a lot of the veterans on our teams the first year out of the league, and Keith Primeau was asked to do the pre and postgame show. And a one in one night. And he said he called me He goes, dude, that is the worst job on the history of a planet pregame and postgame for the Flyers. He goes, it's awful. He goes, do you want to do it? I said, Sure, sure, I'll do it. Like, what else am I gonna do? It gets me out of the house, I get to watch hockey still, which I loved. So that's how the whole thing started. And then they started calling me and said you want to do the game tonight. I said, Sure. I'll be happy to do it. So that's my broadcasting career got started a great job there for a couple of years in the Flyers liked my work so much to ask me to do radio. And that turned into you know, a TV job, which was, it was a little odd at the end, but the radio was I mean, I love radio, radio was just unbelievable - working with Tim Saunders. We had great chemistry together, we had a lot of fun. And that's how my path after it started. So I said I had two years, almost sober. And I wanted to test the waters. You know, I wanted to see like, you know, 22 months, I haven't drunk, you know, not really been, is on my mind, maybe a little bit, but not a lot. But I decided I was gonna, I was gonna try something. And, and I did and you know, like, you know, like, I always say to people now I wish I didn't. Relapse is not a requirement. But it was for me when I look at it. You know, if it was a different kind of relapse, I probably went back out for a couple of years again, it was never like it ever was again, you know, I'd gotten past all stages of my sister dying. And when I did drink, it was a very, very, very private thing, whether it's in my room, quietly at home, I tried to hide it from people as long as I could. And, you know, my wife saw it, and the kids did again, cut my oldest one especially. And again, it was not every day like it was when they were younger. So now I was very much more like, man, what did I do? But I realized it again. And I you know, I the difference this time was I had some medication that helped me stop to detox myself. And that's probably why it went on for a little bit longer than that I wanted it to, you know, again, I think you mentally get to a point where you just like, you know, what, enough, enough. I'm a big boy now. You got a lot of good things go on your life. You know, you're doing radio, and I'm you know, I was very disciplined in terms of that. It kept me It kept my head in the right place. But it was really when I got that last party where I said, This is enough like I can't anymore, it is February 7 2011 work. Well, I didn't realize that would be my actually it was actually January 7 2011. And it's kind of a funny story. But I was upstairs cleaning my closet. I was picking up clothes. And in this old shoe. I found like this water bottle of vodka. People always put the stuff in water bottles. There was like one ounce of it. And I took it I slammed it and I said that's the last day last thing ever drank web service. It was a month after I switched that last thing and it's been It's been nothing but amazing things ever since it really has.

Steve Martorano 

That moment and I've heard it many, many times. There are some common threads. I always say to people, all stories and substance abuse and recovery are the same, except they're different. But they do bear lots in common. And that moment, when people it's not about morality or ethics or any, it's the awareness that this ain't working, you know, it ain't working anymore. I gotta try something else. So you get to that point, and have a, you know, just a great and successful recovery period, 10 years now sober, at what point in the past 10 or 15 years? Did you begin to realize that wasn't enough for you? Just to get yourself together? That maybe you could help somebody else? When did that happen?

Chris Therien 

Well, you know, I've been in a guy and you don't want to have my sponsor, we finally got together and I really got my head screwed on the right direction. It was it was a fast, 10 years I'll tell you that. Like, it really was one day at a time. I didn't know we're complicated it. I just knew that I'd lost and I was never going to win. I was never going to find a happy medium, where me and alcohol were ever going to get along. So I knew that and I'd been down that road, it's like getting back in the ring you know, time and time again, with the same guy. It's like the definition of insanity, right? Doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result. That was going to be the same result every single time. And you know, the old saying in this too, is you know, you start off a cucumber and you become a pickle. You don't go back to becoming a cucumber anymore. You're a pickle for life. So, you know, I had to I had to understand that. And then when I finally did, you know, things got got far, far better for me.

Steve Martorano 

And you felt that you had something you could share with other people. And not just because it's an uplifting story because you thought you could help them. So, you have purchased a treatment facility in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia. How did that come about? It's Limitless Recovery. Right?

Unknown Speaker 

Limitless Recovery Center. Yeah. And that's, you know, it' limitlessrecoverycenters.com. About five years old, I got approached by a group of people that said, Hey, do you mind if you think we could use your likeness and start, we heard you were in the program - you go to AA, and we'd like to see if you have any interest at all of opening a treatment center. They had other people put in place, and it never really came to fruition. But it certainly piqued my interest to say, Hey, you know what, I have no problem sharing my story. You know, a lot of people know it. Close friends of mine have all known that story for years, you know, like that. I got 10 years, like a lot of people like oh my god, I didn't know like no one ever knows, right? Who had a problem before if you don't say anything. So I decided that you know, I was gonna fulfill this, I got fired by the Flyers and fired by NBC in the fall and never really given a reason. And that's fine. It's been a really bad year for a lot of people. And I understand that. That being said, I've always been a doer, I'm not a guy who's gonna sit around and whine and cry because I don't get to do postgame anymore. That's just life. So I said, you know, what, what would be something that would keep me tethered to Philadelphia, to keep me going over the bridge, and more importantly, to keep its outreach to the community. And that would be through what would be my roots all along a blue-collar path of playing hockey, who seems as we talked about earlier, you know, I see a lot of beer drinking, and inside the hockey community sports community. So I've seen people my own struggle, you know, with kids, I haven't college. Now I've seen - I hear the stories of kids dying on college campuses or high schools that break my heart. Kills me to hear that. So I wanted to do something about it. And I found a couple of partners, we decided that you know, what, yeah, let's, let's leverage your name. Let's leverage the time you spent in the city to try to get people the help they need, whether it's, you know, alcohol, drug abuse, mental health. That's what we do. That's what I do now. I mean, and there's not a single person that I won't reach out to if they call and ask for help. I feel very, very grateful to have this opportunity. And I'm excited for Philadelphia, you know, we got a spot in Fishtown. It's conveniently located. And again, we have nothing but good intentions. We just want to give people the support they need. We have sober living as well, which is a key component. For aftercare. We are an aftercare facility an IOP but again if somebody calls me and says Hey, Chris, you know, I know it's happened numerous times since we started, you know, I've got a drinking problem. Can you help me? Yes, I can. What do you need? Where are you at? You know, most of the time people that are drinking the detox, just because we don't have a detox we have, you know, plenty of relationships with all the detoxes locally. And the same thing for extended care. They'd like to come to us after that would be great - our IOP would love it. That's how it started.

Steve Martorano 

IOPs are critical. The old notion that you found a treatment facility somehow or another got yourself there. And 28 days later, if you were Sandra Bullock, you met a really cute doctor. And I tell people, "yeah, well, it ain't like that." And everybody in the field who experienced this in their lives knows that getting a straight getting sober, no matter what the abuses in / were, is not a thing. It's a process. It goes on for a long time because you don't cure this stuff, you manage it. And IOP's are important. Sober living facilities are important and the industry welcomes guys like you into the field, I can tell you, because I know a lot of people in that business, certainly in the city of Philadelphia, can use all the help we could get. Five years from now, what do you want to where do you want to be? What do you want to see Limitless Recovery Centers doing?

Chris Therien 

Yeah, great. That's a great question. And you know what, to me, I want to keep expanding. You know, we're in Philadelphia right now. I've had tons of calls, what New Jersey, you know, people down in New Jersey and help, it's harder to get them over the bridge. So I think really, I think step two would probably be opening a place in New Jersey, the thought process going in was to have four of these places, whether one in New Jersey, the one in Fishtown, maybe somewhere out in, you know Westchester area. Try to corner the market, essentially. And then have it capped off with detox at the end. That's, I mean, really, no one can do anything until they get less you just said, Steve, so you get that detox. Because again, if you're managing it, and until you get the drugs and the alcohol out of your system, you're not really gonna find a path forward under those types of circumstances. So that's the plan. Whether that happens or not, I don't know we're really really focused on buttoning up this one place right now their place in Fishtown. We're looking at a new buildings right now. And we have a lot of really good things going around. But you know, one of our goals as well to is because Fishtown is a pretty cool little area. And it's getting built up a little bit. We want to develop and have a sober community down there people that have come, whether it be alumni, people want to just come out and hang out outside front of the building, you know, we have tables, chairs, coffee, if they want to come over and join us, we want to have that. It's an important thing, you know, and make sure that people are aware, keep people aware. So whether it's open concert venues on Girard or something we could work out with, with that area, we want people to know that we're very much part of Philadelphia, we're very much part of Fishtown, and we want them to understand that it's a place that we care for you, whether you're in treatment with us, or you're just somebody who's really working at it, we want to see your face. And that's really the message that we get out to people. The guys and our clinicians are just amazing, as well. unbelievable how impressed I was when I met them. We've retained them when we bought the business, just amazing people. So the team we have is amazing. I couldn't be happier, more thrilled about I feel confident I wouldn't want to just put my again, I've told people this I'm not a name on the building or just a face that they put in promotions. I get into the building. I talk to people if you don't give up my mobile number, I don't care if that's what it takes to get that one person how I felt I've done my job for the day.

Steve Martorano 

Yeah, yes. That's great. And you know, Chris, thanks so much for your time. I know, the article that appeared in the Inquirer a month or so ago, just ignited a lot of interest in your story. It's a remarkable story. As I said, it's, it's interesting. Life's a funny thing, right? All of this sort of looks like it makes sense. regrets are no regrets. You're right exactly where you're supposed to be.

Chris Therien 

And I'll just I'll cap it off by saying that every single road in my life since I was 15 years old, and I went to Northwood Prep School, every single journey every single day that's happened has brought me on rules and appointed me right here. That's the journey of life and that's where I'm at.

Steve Martorano 

You change one little thing you know a lot, and maybe a whole nother thing happens. Great success with limitless revenue centers. And going forward, you know, we're on the corner here. We're on a corner not unlike a bunch of corners in Fishtown and anything we can do to help spread the word. We hope you'll reach out to us and come back and see us real soon.

Chris Therien 

Thanks so much for having me on, Steve. I appreciate it. It's so great that you're getting the message out to so many people in the area as well. I truly thank you.

Steve Martorano 

Bundy, back in action.

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