RISK! Podcast – Episode: "Post Mortem"

Host: Kevin Allison
Guest Storyteller: Chelsea Dalcy
Date: September 9, 2025

Episode Overview

This emotionally raw Conversstory episode centers on Chelsea Dalcy's true-life journey through addiction, recovery, devastating loss, and ultimately, self-forgiveness. Host Kevin Allison guides Chelsea through a reflective and unsparing conversation about her struggle with substance abuse, the codependent relationship at its core, the turning point that forced change, and how both storytelling and the supportive RISK! community played a role in her ongoing healing. The episode is punctuated by moments of self-realization, grief, and profound honesty—a demonstration of why RISK! continues to matter to so many listeners.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Chelsea's Early Life and Path to Addiction

• Background & Family Environment (08:14)

  • Grew up in a small, affluent town where consequences were rare, leading to experimental behavior.
  • Early health problems caused trauma and isolation.
  • Extremely intelligent with a photographic "recording" memory, which allowed academic success without studying.

• Party Culture & Early Substance Use (09:00)

  • Began drinking and using drugs young, framed as typical "partying" among outcast peers.
  • Maintained outward success (class president, NYU with honors) while “blasting through cocaine every weekend.”
  • Quote:

    “I wrote my 20-page honors thesis on a three-day cocaine bender. I would love to see it now. At the time I remember thinking it was brilliant, but who knows about that.” – Chelsea (09:00)

2. The Slippery Slope of Prescription and Opiates

• Medical School & Prescription Dependence (11:21)
  • Entered med school with autoimmune and health issues, leading to prescriptions of Vicodin, then OxyContin, and finally fentanyl patches at age 21.
  • “My pain just escalated as I went on more pain medication. ...It becomes a cycle.” – Chelsea (11:21)
  • The cycle of physical and psychological dependency deepens.

3. The Relationship with Alex: Love, Codependency, and Enabling

• The Partner in Crime (12:43–15:00)
  • Alex, an equally gifted and troubled childhood friend, became her closest partner and co-survivor; together they used drugs as a coping mechanism.
  • Rehab forced separation; Chelsea relates the imposed belief that being together would be fatal.
  • Reflects on how their enmeshment was both survival and downfall: “He was a drug to me, too...I couldn’t set him aside the same way I couldn’t set the drugs aside.” – Chelsea (23:18)

4. The Cycles of Recovery and Relapse

• Relapse and the Anatomy Lab (16:25–27:36)

  • First major relapse occurred on the symbolic day of her medical school “white coat” ceremony, after finding fentanyl patches.
  • Describes a sequence of shame, hollow victories, and repetitive attempts at sobriety—each time “taking a 24-hour coin” at AA, only to relapse again.

• The Low Point: Introduces Alex to IV Drug Use (22:15–29:33)

  • Chelsea teaches Alex how to use heroin intravenously—“the most horrible, dangerous, sinister thing that I had ever learned.”
  • This act becomes the pivot point for overwhelming guilt and subsequent loss.
  • Quote:

    “I had taught this person I loved the most horrible, dangerous, sinister thing that I had ever learned. And I taught it to him.” — Chelsea (30:55)

5. The Breaking Point & Tragic Consequence

• Discovery of Betrayal and Reality Check (29:33–32:24)

  • Discovers Alex has been stealing from her, draining her student loan account to fund drug use.
  • Realization that her actions directly contributed to Alex’s deepening addiction.
  • Quote:

    “It was the biggest reality check I’d ever gotten in my life, in the sense that it wasn’t a game… I didn’t think about the fact that there might be casualties other than me.” — Chelsea (32:07)

• Alex’s Death

  • Five months after this collapse, Alex dies from an overdose. At the same time, Chelsea is five months sober.
  • Wrenching guilt, loss of friendships, and a fortress of self-protection built to survive the pain.
  • Quote:

    “If I was going to live, I absolutely could not take on the depth and breadth of that reality that I had been responsible for teaching the person I love most, the thing that killed him.” – Chelsea (33:03)

6. Self-Forgiveness, Healing, and the Power of Storytelling

• Coming to Terms After 14 Years (34:52–37:28)

  • Realizes only recently—while preparing this story—that she’d never processed her true feelings of responsibility and grief.
  • Quote:

    “This cracked me open… This is another gift that he’s given me, is that I can thrive, even in a different way.” – Chelsea (36:09)

• Support Systems: AA, Therapy, and the Limits of Both (41:42–50:34)

  • Discusses how formal recovery and therapy frameworks often limit or sterilize self-expression.
  • Emphasizes that only through storytelling—particularly in supportive, compassionate communities like RISK!—has she been able to fully access and process her feelings.
  • Quote:

    “Not feeling feelings is not the same thing as not having them.” – Chelsea (44:49)

• Storytelling as a Unique Healing Platform

  • Kevin: “Somehow sharing it on the show that way helped me, like, feel some ownership of it all or like, get to deeper parts of it in a way that I didn’t know was gonna happen.” (46:35)
  • Chelsea:

    “Having a built-in witness with this storytelling thing, like whether it’s an audience or you or a class or whatever… there’s a consenting person on the other side that wants all of you, right? And I haven’t had that experience in many places in my life, truly. Alex was one of those places, ironically.” (49:49)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the insidiousness of addiction:

  “This is why addiction is so insidious and so scary... It divides your own mind. It divides you from the people that you love. It, like, allows you to sit next to your own denial and still behave in ways that hurt yourself and others.” – Chelsea (33:53)

• On self-forgiveness:

  “I have to forgive myself for taking away the most important thing in my own life.” – Chelsea (37:28)

• On the impact of the show:

  “Risk has always been... really, listening to Risk coincided with my sobriety. And hearing all these kinds of different stories and ways of being really opened up my eyes to being forthright and sharing.” – Chelsea (37:41)

• On finding support in the RISK! community:

  “It’s literally not even like being hyperbolic. You’re saving lives. You’re saving the quality of life for people just by hearing that other people are as expansive, as interesting, as different, as, you know, outside the cookie cutter thing.” – Chelsea (51:57)

• Kevin on the importance of the platform:

  “When a story is as told with as much heart and honesty and daring as yours today, people will have, like, breakthroughs or realizations, eureka moments, whatever, that might have, like, nothing to do with the actual details of your story, but because the emotional truth was there...” – Kevin (52:23)

Important Timestamps

• 08:14 – Chelsea begins her story: early drug use, affluent but troubled childhood
• 11:21 – Prescribed opiates and descending into painkiller addiction
• 12:43 – Relationship with Alex; codependency and using together
• 16:25 – First major relapse; the white coat ceremony
• 22:15 – Chelsea teaches Alex how to inject heroin; recognizing the weight of this action
• 29:33 – Discovery of Alex’s betrayal and the stark reality check
• 32:24 – Alex’s overdose and death; Chelsea’s sobriety
• 34:52 – Processing responsibility and self-forgiveness, even 14 years later
• 41:42 – Reflections on workshopping the story and the importance of depth over detail
• 44:49 – The difference between not feeling and not having feelings
• 46:35/49:49 – Storytelling as unique, healing, and deeply communal

Concluding Thoughts

In a riveting and heart-wrenching conversation, Chelsea Dalcy brings listeners face-to-face with the reality of addiction, showing how its impact ripples outward, entangles the lives of loved ones, and leaves scars that may take decades to fully see. Her courage in owning her story—supported by the RISK! community’s safe, accepting space—offers solace and inspiration to anyone struggling to process loss or guilt.

Kevin’s empathetic presence and Chelsea’s transparency underscore why RISK! persists as an essential platform for difficult but necessary truths. This episode’s emotional resonance reminds listeners of the power of storytelling—not just as entertainment, but as a profound force for healing, connection, and change.

Chelsea Dalcy’s art can be found at Cherry Street Pier in Philadelphia and on Instagram @elsiedoesit.
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