“I think it's important that teens have some kind of role model… somebody in their life that believes in them.” -Kim Thompson Sometimes, the harder we hide something, the more painful it becomes- both to the person hiding it and to the ones it was hidden from. This is what happened to our guest, Kim Thomson. Her teenage years was marked with unaddressed questions and emotions that became an empty space, which she constantly tried to fill in. But the path she walked expanded that empty space inst...
May 29, 2019•49 min•Ep. 43
“How did I do it? Well, I just kept learning and paying attention to my inner emotions … It takes practice.” –Dr. Cheryl Scheurer We all put a fight to live, but not everybody wins. From the moment we start breathing, obstacles, one after another, will tell us to stop. But, as for our guest, she survives the battle with the words quoted above. Be introduced to Dr. Cheryl Scheurer, an accomplished woman of many gifts. She is a doctor in Financial Management, a book author and editor, a minister, ...
May 22, 2019•47 min•Ep. 42
“Community heals addiction… addiction hates community.” -Michele Ryan The pain when you see your loved ones suffer from addiction is indescribable. The pain when you can’t help them because you are going through it yourself is even worse. While you have exhausted all your means and energy to get rid of your situation, you seem to be digging deeper down that abyss. The problem? You were fighting the battle alone. But you don’t have to. Michele Ryan, the Program Director at Behavioral Health Group...
May 15, 2019•30 min•Ep. 41
“Recovery is a way of life.” –Marie Krebs Are you looking for an intervention you can trust? Well, you just reached the right corner. No intervention works the same way for everyone and so assessment plays a crucial role. If the intervention seems to intervene blindly to your specific needs, then it probably is no intervention for you. To this end, asking the right question on the onset of mediation is imperative to getting the appropriate type of intervention. So today, let us get a hang on ass...
May 08, 2019•57 min•Ep. 40
“Recovery is a practice of love.” -Dr. Michael McGee Indeed! The one thing that love can change is everything. That is true as well in recovery. Without it, the only change that can happen is from bad to worse. In your journey, have you ever felt that things aren’t working out? Maybe our guest, Dr. Michael McGee can help. Growing up in a wounded family with an alcoholic father, an addicted brother and an abusive mother, Dr. Michael McGee felt broken and unloved. To get the love he earnestly desi...
May 01, 2019•42 min•Ep. 39
“We need to have a space for families to go where they can connect because … the disease lives where there's disconnection.” –Denise Klein There’s a great book coming to town! It’s called, The Truth About Rehab by Denise Klein, the Co-Owner and CEO of Milestones Ranch Malibu. Denise has been a social worker for nearly 30 years. And what can she say: “ “I love what I do.” Allow her to tell you more about her book and how it can help everyone, family members and professionals alike. The truth is, ...
Apr 24, 2019•46 min•Ep. 38
“And what they really need is a lot of hand holding and a lot of encouragement to say: ‘Well, let's start out!’ ” –Debbie Briem So you got your loved one to treatment and it was successful. What now? Our guest, Debbie Briem will walk you through the halls of post discharge and help you to get pass through your dilemmas. Debbie is a licensed Marriage and Family therapist and is currently with Milestones Ranch Malibu as a Clinical Director. Her 20 years of experience says a lot about how she can h...
Apr 17, 2019•33 min•Ep. 37
“I’m not broken. I’m okay as I am.” –Jo Huey Everyone refers to their environment before doing anything because, aware or not, we always seek the approval of others. We are all born with the need and want of belongingness. But if we constantly receive this false message, we forget who we are along the way by trying to be someone acceptable to anybody else but ourselves. Our guest, Joanne Huey has a story to tell that will change your outlook and create a different impression of self-worth. She e...
Apr 10, 2019•47 min•Ep. 36
“Nobody comes to trauma, but through trauma.” – Karin Dremel The true nature of addiction comes not from what we see at present but what we did not see in the past. And this is Science in what we call trauma. Our guest, Karin Dremel will expound the subject and enlighten us on the things we might not be aware of that has a direct bearing on family issues and addiction. She is a German psychotherapist, Naturopath and a Humanist Chaplain. Currently, her practice is situated in Boulder, Colorado wh...
Apr 03, 2019•51 min•Ep. 35
“Don't worry about trying to get the whole family to do it. You just start.” - JW. Wilson Living in an ever-so-busy world keeps our toes tied up in our mundane activities. So getting the whole family to support the healing process can be a little bit short of impossible. But we can learn something different from our guest, JW Wilson. As his words above explains, initiative itself is the key. Does he have the claim for this? Absolutely. JW grew up in a family where most of those he eats with at t...
Mar 27, 2019•48 min•Ep. 34
“CRAFT” is “… evidence based practice.” – Jessica Triplett The path to recovery can be appalling if the path you chose ended up in dismay. No path is perfect. Therefore, it is necessary that families choose a path that keeps the harm to a minimum. Our guest will introduce a model that accomplishes just that. Meet Jessica Triplett, a trainer for the CRAFT model. She’s been in the addiction field for a decade, starting her career in Nebraska then to Colorado. She worked with child welfare, substan...
Mar 20, 2019•50 min•Ep. 33
“So attachment based intervention is about bringing people together.” - Jim Thomas In a world where no one seems to care, we often choose to be in isolation- away from people and things and situations that hurt. But in reality, nobody wants to be isolated. And that idea of ‘bringing people together’ is stressed by our today’s guest, Jim Thomas. Raised in a broken household, Jim himself struggled with adverse childhood experiences and went through his own recovery journey. Wanting to be a part of...
Mar 13, 2019•50 min•Ep. 32
“It's very important that you start today to build an inner nurturing voice… because you're going to need that voice, even when you take your last breath .” -Julie Simon Food! Food! Food! Who does not love food! Food is comfort. Food is life. Food is everything good in the world. We can say a lot about food but food can also say a lot about us. Today’s episode will give voice to that with our guest, Julie Simon. Julie is a licensed Psychotherapist and Life Coach and is specializing in emotional ...
Mar 06, 2019•51 min•Ep. 31
“Everybody in the family has to make changes, and this is how we help parents make those changes.” –Aaron Huey Whoever said that they sacrificed this and that because they didn’t have a choice is seriously disturbed. They often forget one thing and that will be reminded by our guest, Aaron Huey, the owner of Fire Mountain Residential Program for Young Adults. Working with kids and kids camps lead to this interesting story of Fire Mountain. The unique idea here is a dual diagnosis facility reside...
Feb 27, 2019•50 min•Ep. 30
“There's hope. There's hope. There's hope. It's not your fault and there's something you can do about it.” –Christina Vaselak A casual conversation with an old acquaintance turns into a very enlightening discussion! Well, we’re still in the Winter Symposium with Jeff and he just had a great breakfast with Christina Vaselak, owner of Garden Gate Counselling and The Academy for Addiction and Mental Health Nutrition. She is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and a certified nutritionist. She’...
Feb 20, 2019•50 min•Ep. 29
“And who holds our emotional heartstrings more than our children or our grandchildren.”- Jerry Moe Welcome to the 45th Annual Winter Symposium! We know traditional conferences as a gathering packed with professionals and their talks but this one where we find our host is surely remarkable as it is designed to be educational in a fun and exciting way! Jeff surely is ecstatic about this conference and meeting field experts that can help us too to be conversant about new and multi-faceted ways of r...
Feb 13, 2019•49 min•Ep. 28
“What Ibogaine does is it gives people the insight that they have to…have the courage to do something that they must do.” –Richie Ogulnick Who would dare be a major proponent of an unfamiliar heroine detox with just a flickering assurance of success? Not even this man- Richie Ogulnick, a simple Jewish jeweler from the Bronx who has not even the slightest experience with addiction. But with just one phone call, he was off to Africa to embark on this very challenging adventure to become one of the...
Feb 06, 2019•54 min•Ep. 27
“My goal is to lift them up with the strength of their actions even if their actions haven’t always been productive.” -Dr. Robert Weiss We do anything and everything for the people that we love. Sometimes we fall into crisis dealing with our own relationship problems but we fall even deeper into that crisis by people who ridicule the things we do for love. Dr. Robert Weiss became open in such a field by overcoming the troubled seasons of his life. At present, his expertise is spread as a psychot...
Jan 30, 2019•58 min•Ep. 26
“A lot of what I’d like to do is to try to help people, if they are in a dead end, to get out and decide for themselves how it is to be human” Started out in Engineering and found a drive to go to Med school, Dr. Michael Levin discovered his passion in Addiction psychiatry. He is now an accomplished psychiatrist for 20 years in Denver, Colorado. During this episode, Dr. Michael Levin talks about how addiction has followed him throughout his career as a physician, from his first patient who was a...
Jan 23, 2019•46 min•Ep. 25
“The healing process is ...educating yourself on your own emotion.” Meet the woman behind two best-selling books: “Running On Empty- Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect” and “Running on Empty No More-Transform Your Relationship With Your Partner, Your Parents and Your Children.” Dr. Jonice Webb. She is an expert in Psychiatry and is now dedicated to helping people recover from Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN). Perplexed by the seemingly identical symptoms among her patients, Dr. Jonice We...
Jan 09, 2019•48 min•Ep. 24
“The family is core for everything.”- Pam Feinberg-Rivkin Being a nurse by profession and having to serve in many areas of the medical field such as dialysis, homecare and case management, Pam Feinberg is an eyewitness of how addiction is gradually injected from vials of trauma and drug prescriptions to people of varying age and backgrounds. Her own experience with a family member who battled with addiction fuelled up her desire to help others through an approach that is deviant from the common ...
Jan 03, 2019•39 min•Ep. 23
“I firmly believe that unless the family begins to change, there will be no change” Despite growing up within a family beset with mental illness, Dr. Louise Stanger is an accomplished individual in the recovery field. She is an author, a speaker, a professor, mother, grandmother, widow and above all these roles she is a licensed clinician. In this episode Dr. Louise Stanger speaks of her passion for the family; not just her family but for all families and their role in the process of recovery. H...
Dec 26, 2018•38 min•Ep. 22
“We all get the perfect lessons that we need if we are open to seeing them” -Pamela Ziemann Pamela Ziemann is a catalyst for creativity and confidence. She is a former real estate appraiser turned actress, who encourages people to express their authentic self. In this episode, Pamela talks to Jeff about her amazing journey towards discovering her passion for self-expression and most especially acting. They also discuss how taking on the different roles of her family in her shows have proved to b...
Dec 19, 2018•50 min•Ep. 21
"I don't have to fall into the box...and nobody does...you don't need to fit in a box" -Dr. Reef Karim A star at whatever he does, Dr. Reef Karim takes time to sit and talk with Jeff about his passion for helping people express themselves. Raised in a strict Indian family where, at the very moment he was born, his parents decided he was going to be a doctor. Reef proved himself different. He is now known as a psychiatrist, international speaker, writer, entrepreneur and a philanthropist. Well tr...
Dec 12, 2018•48 min•Ep. 20
“Addiction shouldn’t be called addiction, it should be called ritualized compulsive comfort seeking” -Alida Schuyler talking about what Dr. Daniel Sumrok said about addiction She is one of the most interesting people Jeff has come in contact with, and Alida Schuyler’s life is a story to be told. Jeff met her 8 to 10 years ago while he was doing the Crossroads Recovery Program. She is the co-founder of Recovery Coaches International and Director of Crossroads Recovery Coaching Inc. Aside from thi...
Dec 05, 2018•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 19
“I really see where addiction in the family can create an opportunity for transformation for everyone” -Jeff Jones Tables have been turned and Jeff is being put under the spotlight for this episode. Cody Wooten will be interviewing and Jeff Jones will be the one answering the questions. Just a bit of a background about our interviewer: Cody Wooten has his own podcast called “Emerge leadership connection” and it is centered around leadership ideas and concepts to unlock legendary leadership. Jeff...
Nov 28, 2018•1 hr 39 min•Ep. 18
Josh discusses with Jeff Jones how he started, the demons that he overcame, how rehab is not just a journey for the addict but for the whole family, how hard it is to face the truths of addiction and how rehabilitation can really change the lives of people around you. Get the show notes, transcription and resources mentioned at http://thefamilyrecoverysolution.com/ Highlights: 2:16 The new guy in Colorado 8:00 Learnings are for everyone in the family when it comes to rehabilitation 13:18 Chronic...
Nov 21, 2018•43 min•Ep. 18
“Love brought me back to where I needed to be. If I didn’t have people that loved me and cared about me, I probably wouldn’t be alive.” ~Adam So many families believe that if they can fix that one person that seems to need the most help, then the whole family dynamic will be fixed as well. Adam and Lindsay Yurack understood that this concept was far from the truth. While Adam was going through his rehabilitation, Lindsay sought her own therapy, allowing both of them to come out of their darkest ...
Nov 14, 2018•49 min•Ep. 16
“What I mean by being addicted to meetings was that I was getting something there that I really wanted and needed. What I understand it now to be is connection, relatability, community, and fellowship. All very important things.” Almost 36 years ago Bill went to his first AA meeting and became sober from substances. While he was no longer drinking, he became addicted to AA meetings, or more importantly, what they offered him. He found a place for connection, relatability, community, and relation...
Nov 07, 2018•56 min•Ep. 15
“I now know that when I feel resistance to something there is a lesson to be learned, there is something to free myself from, and there is freedom on the other side of it.” Stephanie McAuliffe has had a lifetime of experience dealing with alcoholism. As a child, young adult, and two marriages, alcohol was a key ingredient in her closest relationships. Hindsight 20/20, she now understands that the universe always gives you exactly what you need, when you need it. Having the right focus on what yo...
Oct 31, 2018•54 min•Ep. 14
