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I know Cheryl Burke as a former DWTS professional. I was looking through our archives on her and we haven’t talked about her in about three years, which is just about the length of time she’s been sober. She wasn’t particularly scandalous before that and always came across as a decent person. Cheryl, 37, has been married to actor Matthew Lawrence, 41, since 2019. Matthew is Joey Lawrence’s brother and they met when Joey was on DWTS. Cheryl has a podcast called Pretty Messed Up and a YouTube channel where she vlogs and talks about her life. In a recent video she said that she’s been thinking about drinking again and wanted to tell on herself to hold herself accountable. There’s a history of alcoholism in her family and she doesn’t want to risk it or go back to that life. She hit on a lot of points that rang true to me and I wanted to talk about it. I’m going to use People’s writeup of some of her quotes and the video is below:
Cheryl Burke… said in a YouTube video Tuesday that though she’s been sober for nearly three years, she has been struggling recently with thoughts of drinking again.
“I’m here to confess that lately staying sober has been a little bit of a challenge for me. And recently I’ve been thinking a lot, I have to admit, about drinking again,” she admitted. “So, I decided to hold myself accountable by confessing my anxious feelings.”
She added that she never went through a rehabilitation program when she first decided to become sober, saying: “I basically quit cold turkey, but to say I’ve never looked back would be a lie.”
Recently, there have been multiple “triggers” in her life that have made it harder for her to stay sober, including “something bothering me that I don’t necessarily want to feel or face,” Burke said.
She revealed that she struggled with her sobriety during a vacation in Hawaii with her husband, Matthew Lawrence.
“Us being in Hawaii, just that carefree feeling of being under the sun, my husband may have had a glass of champagne, my senses have come back even stronger,” she said. “So, the smell of it I missed.”
She added that in the past “when I [had] any feelings of doubt, betrayal, uncertainty, those for me [were] red flags…My go-to is booze, is anything that numbs and gets me out of my head.”
“There’s so much chaos going on in my life right now. In the past, everyone always used to say, ‘How do you do it all?’ But I did it all because I was numbing through it all. Now, for the first time, through all the chaos, I’m actually having to feel it and be uncomfortable while I’m feeling it.”
[From People]
I know a lot of people will say she needs to get in a program, but in the video she said she has a therapist she’s seen 2-3 times a week for the last ten years. She said that she’s an introvert and finds the idea of joining a 12 step program overwhelming for that reason. She’s thinking about it and would like to be around more sober people. I think that people need to find what works for them to stay sober. For some it’s AA, for others it’s smart recovery, therapy or a supportive group of friends. Cheryl is in therapy and she’s telling on herself and that’s admirable.
This week I had my five year sobriety anniversary. I don’t always remember the date, but my mom reminded me it was coming up. Overall it doesn’t occur to me to drink that much, but I do find certain things triggering like Cheryl mentioned. I don’t really struggle with the decision to not drink anymore because I was sober for two years in my late 20s and then I drank again and saw where it got me. Also it’s just weird how our society normalizes heavy drinking. Sometimes I see people drinking on television or I see ads for alcohol in my Twitter feed and I have to remind myself how horrible it was. It also helps to be around people who drink but who aren’t alcoholics. Maybe that sounds counter intuitive but when I see people have one or two drinks over the course of an entire night it reminds me that I could never do that.
Imma drink something that doesn’t taste good.. so I can feel good for a lil bit … only to feel worse later ?.
— Wale (@Wale) June 25, 2021
Here’s that video. I like how open and honest she is but on a superficial level the music is somewhat annoying.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CLc3Rl4hyK6/
A post shared by Cheryl Burke (@cherylburke)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CLSu98qhm1t/
A post shared by Cheryl Burke (@cherylburke)
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