Be Well: Dancing With the Stars' Cheryl Burke Talks Sobriety

<div class="block">Former Dancing With the Stars contestant, Cheryl Burke, joined &#39;beWell&#39; to talk about her trek down the road to sobriety. She battled with alcoholism, even while competing on the show, but shared a few tips on how she remained sober. </div>

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This is B Well, helping you live life better on today's show, former dancing with the stars, Pro Cheryl Burke. She's opening up about her sobriety and personal struggles and how she's starting a new chapter in her life. Plus Wellness Trends Week continues. We are trying out IV therapy that tells a boost to your immunity. Then celebrity chef Andre Rush dishes on how it was working in the White House and he's also helping his fellow military veterans and it is a workout that tests your endurance and coordination, the moves that will have you training like an M MA fighter. This is be Well, Cheryl Burke first stole our hearts as one of the professionals on dancing with the stars. She won the ball trophy two years in a row and competed for 25 seasons. It's just incredible. And you know, she's also really opened up to her fans about the challenges that she, she's faced from divorce to her sobriety. And now she's spilling the tea on her new podcast, Sex lies and spray tans taking us behind the scenes of dance dancing with the stars. Cheryl Burke. Welcome to be Well, thank you. So much for having me. I love the name. Yes, I'm very risk. I mean, I think the title alone says it. All right. Yes, you look great though. You're glowing. Oh, thank you. I mean, I hope it's not just the lighting that is making me glow, but thank you. No, no, we do want to congratulate you. You've had five years sober and, and you've really been open about talking about that. Why is that? I just find that, you know, obviously God or a higher power gave me this platform to be able to talk about my experience. And, you know, by any means, I'm not a certified therapist, but I do have a lot of experience when it comes to my own mental health experiences. And I feel like it's my responsibility, I guess and, and duty to share that with everybody, whoever wants to hear it. Because when I was younger, I wish I had somebody that I could actually relate to when it comes to the mental health side of things. That's such an important component of it. But, you know, it's also very important when you're dancing to have precision and to have energy and strength. How were you able to perform so long and with such perfect precision while being drunk? Or was it not like, I don't know, what type of drinker were you explaining a little bit? Well, II, I wouldn't say that I was drunk while I was performing. It's you know, addiction is a disease and um it's something that I've battled with for many years and that I still will continue to battle with. But I have to take my whole sobriety and journey one day, sometimes one minute, sometimes one hour at a time. Um It isn't like I was absolutely wasted during the live show. It was, it was not that it's, it's of an addict, you know, type of brain that I have. It. It's just that there's no such thing as just one drink. So, but I obviously, you know, when I was younger, there was this like get out of jail free card. I felt like that where, you know, with my social anxiety with the pressures of just being in the entertainment industry. Um after so many seasons of dancing with the stars, I didn't understand how to, I guess deal with this certain, an anxiety that I was, you know, all of a sudden would pop up in my body and I would numb through drinking. Now, for people at home who are watching, how have you been able to, you know, stay sober and what, what tricks or, or tactics do you use that? Maybe someone else, you know, could find and glean some information from, well, there's no real trick. Um And you know, I, a lot of this, a lot of my work is through the a program, but also through God and through a higher power, like I take my sobriety, like I said, one day at a time. Um, and it is a constant, um, it's something that I need to constantly stay up on. I can't just skip out a week. I have to really try and stay as present as possible. Um, and, and kind of just sometimes take it one minute at a time because, and I think about, uh, 10 years from now, am I gonna be sober? 10 years from now? It's so overwhelming um for, for my brain that sometimes it's just easier to take whatever is unfolding in front of you instead of thinking of the long, long term. Yeah. And I'm glad you said take it one day at a time because there are so many things happening in our day to day lives that could cause people to relapse. For example, you recently went through a very public divorce in 2022. How did you get through that without turning back to the bottle or to drinking again one day at a time? You know, I have a great, I have a great sponsor who I talk to regularly. I'm in therapy. I have a somatic therapist. I have a talk therapist. It is about being and staying proactive when it comes to your mental health and staying curious, staying, you know, wanting to continue to be motivated by just bettering yourself because at the end of the day, all you can really do is change yourself and nobody else. So let's talk a little bit about your podcast. What kind of conversations are we going? Are we gonna be able to hear? Well, you kind of intro it earlier. It is all the tea, all the behind the scenes um stuff that, you know, the audience I'm sure. And the loyal fans who've been with us on this journey for many, many decades, they just want to know like what goes on, what really goes on behind the mirror ball. You know, it's like you will hear it from me and mainly my guests. Um We have guests like Trista Sutter who was the very first Bachelorette also the very first laminated on dancing with the stars. She danced with Louie Van back in season one. I wasn't even on that season. So and I consider myself the OG. So I introduced her as the OG and I was like, that's so weird because she is the very first eliminated celebrity um on the show. And then we have Heather Morris as well and she tells me why, you know, she thinks she got the boot week six, which was obviously a shock. Um So we really just have a candid conversation. And at the end of the day though, I wanna make it clear that I am the biggest cheerleader for dancing with the stars. I'm not here to bad mouth the show nor are my guests. We are just like, there's a lot of celebrities to get through. You know, we, there's, they're going on their 32nd or 33rd season. Like, that's amazing. Ok. So how spicy is it gonna get? How Candid will you all be? Like, nothing's off limits type of conversation or what? Nothing, nothing. It's like dancing with the stars after dark. Ok, because like you give me a mic and you give me basically no boundaries. I'm going to, uh get there and go there pretty fast, right? So I'm gonna give you the boundary of this is morning TV. But what kind of, what kind of tea can you share with us right now? So everybody gets a little taste of it. Well, you know, Trista, she was great. She straight up said, you know, I think I got eliminated because they showed the package of me not wanting to be intimate with my pro partner and I had to bring her, she had to bring her husband into the rehearsal space. And what's interesting and I find this very interesting as well. It's not so much the dance. That is the reason you go home. It's really the package and the chemistry with your partner. And if you don't have it or if you're fighting chances are you're going home. Oh OK. So who has been your favorite partner so far in all of your 25 years? Um I would say this man right there, Emmett Smith. He's a, this is right So I don't, I normally don't have all this dancing with the third uh memorabilia. But, but this is where I record my podcast. So, and is dance still a part of your life always, it will always be now, whether or not my hips can still shake is uh is irrelevant, right? But dance has been and I will never forget where I came from. You know, dance has been the way I, you know, shaped the woman I am today. Really? So, of course. All right. Well, we always love to see you dance. So don't let those hips li Thank you, Cheryl. Cheryl. Thank you so much. We appreciate your time. Lovely to meet you. Thank you. Well, it is. Well, Wellness Trends week here on be Well and today he's testing out IV therapy. Oh gosh. Well, he's taught it as the way to get crucial vitamins and minerals into your system a whole lot faster. So I rolled up my sleeves at bounce back IV and Mount Vernon to give it a try. So what types of IV drips do you all provide here at? Bounce back IV. So we offer different types of um IV drip. We have um inner beauty, we have the glow, we have the booze reset, we have the hangover cure, we have the walk of shame. So if you go on the website, you'll see a list of different ones with uh what the ingredients and you know, let us know what you're interested in and we'll do an evaluation and if you meet the criteria, definitely you will be able to give you that draft and then they won't feel it at all. It went right in there. Yeah. Ok. And now that you have the needle in, you have to put the IV drip in and it'll just keep dripping and go into my system. Do I let my go this off? All right. So now you hooking up the IV? Yep. Ok. I'm gonna sit back, relax and enjoy my drip summer may be in the rear view mirror, but according to experts, taking care of your lawn for the next summer should actually start now. Yeah, consumer reporter, Janice Lieberman has the details. Autumn is here and you're probably forgetting about your lawn. Don't do that because next year you'll be sorry because it'll cost you a lot of money when the weeds all come back. So, what do you do? We asked landscape architect Paul Keys for some help. Hi, Paul. Thank you. Great to see you again. Welcome to be community college horticulture program. Thank you. So, give us your advice because I don't want to waste my money next year with all kinds of weeds and aggravation. Well, autumn is the best time to seed or sow your lawn. It is the time to prepare for next year so that you do not waste a lot of money on herbicides and pesticides. Next year, simply grow your grass well, and you will not have to waste all that money. So how do you do that? You can have two options. You can, so your lawn or you can use grass seed and overseed. I like grass seed and overseed. It's the less expensive way to go. And I think it produces a better lawn in the long run. So it's cheaper and a better product. But you can't just throw it on the lawn. You cannot just throw it on the lawn. You have to prepare the soil just like any other seed or any other plant. We do that with some mechanical tools. If you have a smaller space, if you have a larger space, you can either rent an aerator or a hydro seater or a slicer to take care of larger spaces or you can hire out for just that simple process and do the seeding yourself. Still sounds like a lot of work to me. All right up next. How a celebrity chef is taking time away from the kitchen to help service men and women. Plus they're called to annuals for a reason, but you may not want to throw out those beautiful summer flowers just yet. Our Alex Calvi shows us why. In the garden guide.