A short motivational monologue (by Nick Stumbo) that urges listeners to self-reflect on the direction their actions are taking them. The speaker uses a geographic analogy—distance from a state line and from Boston—to represent stages between a neutral/bored state and a full relapse, and emphasizes noticing early warning signs and turning away before crossing the line into relapse.
I think one of the things to look at is to ask yourself, does any action that you're taking, where is it heading? What direction are you facing? I was working with a guy in New Hampshire once and I go, how far are you from the state line of Massachusetts? And he said, like 30 miles. And I go, how far are you from the city of Boston? 60 miles. I said, okay, let's think of Boston as a full blown relapse, but let's go back 30 miles to that state line. What's the state between kind of maybe being a little bored or procrastinating or just kind of in that state where you could go one way or the other and then you take a step across the line, Right? You do a search. That's the thing we want to start getting good at seeing. What state am I in right now? Because if you're in one of those relapse states, if you've kind of crossed the line, it doesn't matter if you've looked at porn yet or not, this is the time to figure out how to turn the car around and get back into that healthy state.
