Ep. 91 Honolulu Blues: Loving a Losing Team, Recovery, and Learning to Let Go with Joel Walkowski

What can being a lifelong Detroit Lions fan teach us about addiction, recovery, resilience, and life? Apparently, quite a lot—something yours truly, a long-suffering Lions fan, knows all too well.

In this episode of ShrinksRap, Dr. James Bramson sits down with Joel Walkowski, author of Honolulu Blues: How Loving a Losing Football Team Created a Winning Man, to explore the unlikely intersection of football, comedy, recovery, and learning to love something almost certain to let you down.

Joel describes being a Lions fan as being a musician on the Titanic: every Sunday the ship may be sinking, but you still show up and play. The Lions haven’t won an NFL championship since 1957 and have never appeared in a Super Bowl. Yet we diehards keep coming back.

Joel explores the parallels between football fandom and addiction—the obsession, anticipation, emotional highs and lows, magical thinking, and eternal belief that this time will be different. Recovery taught him to feel disappointment without staying stuck in it. Sometimes that means heading straight to the basketball court after a Lions loss rather than spending Sunday marinating in Honolulu Blue misery.

One of the most touching moments involves Joel’s dying father, “Banjo Bob,” who encouraged him to attend the Lions’ 2023 NFC Championship Game—where, naturally, Detroit blew a second-half lead. Bob’s humor remained intact to the end, wearing a shirt declaring, “I’m Not Dead Yet.” Clearly, funny runs in the family.

Joel also takes us from living in a van in Vallejo to completing his education, working in stand-up comedy and celebrity roasts, and ultimately helping others through SMART Recovery.

It’s a conversation about football that’s really about life: acceptance, resilience, recovery, humor, and learning to keep showing up when life doesn’t follow the script. Joel may have discovered the elixir for Lions diehards like me: how to keep winning at life even when your favorite team is losing.