My guest this week is Jason Dobbie, a chef of 26 years who got sober while still running professional kitchens. Sobriety, though, did not answer the question underneath it all: who am I? Eight years on, Jason leads a community of more than 750 people working through that same question, and he joins Ash to unpack what it actually took to rebuild a sense of self from the ground up.
Jason and Ash talk about quitting marijuana years after quitting alcohol, the moment a spiritual awakening cracked his life wide open, and the discomfort of becoming a different person. He shares how learning to put himself first, speak his truth and trust his intuition eventually led him to walk away from a lucrative head chef job for a life built on purpose and alignment.
It is a conversation about the long, often unglamorous work of self-discovery, and a reminder that sobriety is only ever the beginning of finding out who you really are.
Episode chapters:
00:08 Meet Jason: 26 Years a Chef, 750 People in Community
01:02 Building a Community From a Meditation Group
02:43 A Day in Jason’s Life Now
04:13 Where His Drive Really Comes From
06:02 The Photo: Successful on the Outside, Empty on the Inside
08:52 Quitting Weed After 25 Years
10:43 The Veil Effect of Weed and Alcohol
12:07 Why He Finally Quit Drinking
14:34 Free Health Care, Group Therapy and Finding Meditation
18:18 A Shared Story of Spiritual Awakening
20:43 Sober but Lost: Who Am I Now
22:13 The Turning Point at the Mirror
26:39 Learning to Put Himself First
30:52 The Body Signal That Pointed Him Toward a New Career
38:09 Reframing Meditation as Just Paying Attention
44:26 Jason’s Three Non-Negotiables
Connect with Jason here:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jason.dobbie/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jason.dobbie
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