Staying Sober While Travelling, the Strivers' Curse & "We Could Have Missed It All"

CHEF DEV IS BACK...A counsellor once asked Devan: what's wrong with the way you feel? This is that conversation.

Chef Devan Rajkumar Today, he travels and cooks across different cities, constantly learning, evolving, and refining his approach. Every kitchen, every culture, and every experience adds to how he creates. He stays curious, asks questions, and continues to grow because great food comes from understanding, not ego.

He was filling out intake forms in treatment, and where they asked why he got high, he wrote the honest answer — I love the feeling of it. The counsellor read it back and asked him one question that took years to really land: what's wrong with the way you feel? That question sits underneath everything we get into here.

We start somewhere lighter — cutting the "jacked guys" out of an Instagram feed — and end up on steroids, peptides and Ozempic as drugs, and the question neither of us fully answered: are you still sober if you're on gear? From there it goes where the real ones go. Body shaming and the comments that stick — the uncle who says "you got fat" before he says hello. The guilt and shame under the attention. And the root of it: what are you actually escaping from?

Devan opens up about the mask, the people-pleasing, and putting the oxygen mask on everyone but himself. We talk about how you help someone who won't help themselves, the bridge you can't see until you've crossed it, and why early recovery feels impossible from the inside. Then the stuff that keeps us here: quitting cigarettes and finally deciding if I put it in my body, it has to be good for me. The double life and the secrets that fuel relapse — because in my experience it was never the substance, it was the behaviours around it. The strivers' curse — trading the addiction for a stacked calendar and an overtrained body. Spirituality as humility and gratitude. Seva — selfless service with nobody watching. And a moment I didn't expect, where Devan gets honest about where his own program is thin right now, and decides to do something about it.

Nobody in this one has it all figured out. That's the point. If you've ever sat in a room thinking you're the worst one doing this, this episode is for you.

This is a peer conversation — lived experience, not clinical or professional advice.

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