Our guest on this episode of the Addicted Mind podcast is Lacy Bentley, a recovery mentor, and coach in the areas of love and sex addictions for women. Calming The Addicted Mind - 6 Day Mindfulness Email Series theaddictedmind.com/mindfulness At age 13, Lacy found herself consuming erotic novels and pornographic anime called hentai. She didn’t realize it until much later in life, but her involvement with those types of pornography had created an addiction to the fantasy that affected all of her ...
Jan 24, 2019•38 min•Ep 57•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of The Addicted Mind podcast, we are joined by Peter Grinspoon, a primary care physician in the Boston area who is an advocate of medical cannabis. Calming The Addicted Mind - 6 Day Mindfulness Email Series theaddictedmind.com/mindfulness During medical school, Peter and a few of his classmates decided to try a sample of Vicodin to see if they could experience the euphoric side effects. While his friends tried it that once and never felt compelled to try it again, Peter immediate...
Jan 02, 2019•33 min•Ep 56•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest on this episode of the Addicted Mind podcast is Joshua Shea, who joins us to tell his story of addictions to alcohol and pornography and the past 4 years of recovery. Joshua was first introduced to porn around age 11 and alcohol at age 15, and looking back, he recognizes that he was addicted from Day 1. Even at a young age, he began to use alcohol and porn as an escape from life and a way to soothe whatever emotions or pain he was experiencing, seeking the element of power or control o...
Dec 11, 2018•43 min•Ep 55•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest on this episode of The Addicted Mind podcast is Mari Lee, a licensed marriage and family and certified sex addiction therapist supervisor, consultant, coach, speaker, author, and founder of Growth Counseling Services in Glendora, CA. Mari is a firm believer in the power of group therapy in conjunction with individual therapy and 12-step sessions to aid in the recovery process, especially with sex and porn addictions. Addiction thrives in secrecy and isolation, and could often be trigge...
Nov 30, 2018•33 min•Ep 54•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of The Addicted Mind podcast, our guest is Suzie Wolfer, LCSW, SEP a therapist specializing in Somatic Experiencing®, a powerful system of healing trauma and addiction at it’s core and for completing trauma so that it’s let go of you. Sign Up For our 6 Day Mindfulness Email Series theaddictedmind.com/mindfulness Somatic means “of the body,” which includes the sensations we feel when we experience different emotions and thoughts. Trauma and stress are stored in the body, causing b...
Nov 13, 2018•33 min•Ep 53•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of The Addicted Mind, we are joined by Michael Hobbes, a writer for The Huffington Post and co-host of the You’re Wrong About… podcast. Michael wrote an article entitled “Everything You Know About Obesity is Wrong” for HuffPost in September 2018 which has gotten a lot of attention in the psychology community as well as the culture at large. There are 160 million Americans that are classified as overweight or obese based on the BMI scale, but even though these individuals constitu...
Nov 02, 2018•40 min•Ep 52•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of the Addicted Mind podcast, our guest is Tom Horvath, founder of Practical Recovery and co-founder of Smart Recovery. Smart Recovery is a non-12-step approach to addictive behavior problems that provides an alternative to programs like Alcoholics Anonymous. While both methods provide new communities and relationships to build on as well as specific examples of individuals who are models of success, AA is based on the idea that you must give yourself up to a higher power because...
Oct 19, 2018•32 min•Ep 51•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest on this episode of The Addicted Mind podcast is Dr. Ken Adams, a therapist specializing in the area of parental enmeshment and its connection to compulsive behaviors such as porn and sex addiction. All families are defined by the balance of closeness and separate between the members. Enmeshed families overemphasize their closeness, resulting in the parents controlling the decisions of their children, demanding their loyalty, prohibiting them from becoming involved with friends or activ...
Oct 11, 2018•30 min•Ep 50•Transcript available on Metacast Ricky Santiago, a specialist in adventure therapy, joined us for this episode of The Addicted Mind podcast. He uses specially planned and designed activities such as kayaking, snorkeling, and ropes courses in his adventure therapy sessions. Experiential therapy like adventure therapy maximizes the benefits of group therapy by building self-esteem, utilizing metaphors, and providing an arena to practice coping skills and process emotions. Ricky and his colleagues have often found more success thr...
Sep 27, 2018•31 min•Ep 49•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of The Addicted Mind podcast, our guest is Anne Fletcher, author of 8 books including “Sober for Good” and “Inside Rehab.” Anne felt the need to write “Inside Rehab” after consulting with several experts, one of which posited that people usually spend more time picking out their next vacuum cleaner than they would finding the right addiction treatment facility. Driven by the notions that treatment should help people avoid hitting rock bottom and that their treatment should emphas...
Sep 21, 2018•40 min•Ep 48•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest on this episode of The Addicted Mind podcast is Nate Postlethwait, who joined us to share his recovery journey. Nate grew up in a very religious environment in a rural southern town, which had a profound impact on his childhood and his eventual recovery from the trauma he experienced and his resulting sex addiction. Sexual dysfunction was a generational issue with his family that was never properly handled, and he was the victim of multiple abusive encounters as a child, but it was not...
Sep 06, 2018•36 min•Ep 47•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of The Addicted Mind podcast, our guest is Marla Berger, a clinician in the field of experiential therapy, who joined us to talk about equine-assisted psychotherapy. Research and experience show that treatment centers, which incorporate some experiential treatment into their program, see their clients make more progress more quickly. Equine-assisted psychotherapy and other similar activities give clients an opportunity to apply the insights they have gained through their talk the...
Aug 24, 2018•35 min•Ep 46•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of The Addicted Mind, we are joined by Amy Emerson and Shannon Carlin of the Multidisciplinary Approach for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) research group. Amy and Shannon’s group has had 107 participants complete their MDMA-assisted PTSD therapy program in the last several years, with promising results. As you may know, PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) affects 7% of the US population who have experienced life-threatening events such as military combat, car accidents, natural dis...
Aug 16, 2018•41 min•Ep 45•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest on this episode of The Addicted Mind podcast is Brad Kammer, a therapist specializing in somatic psychotherapy to solve shock and developmental traumas. Brad’s interest in somatic psychotherapy began during his time as an aid worker working with Burmese refugees. He observed their healing rituals, which frequently involved physical actions such as singing, chanting, or performing, and while he was going through his own healing process from the secondary PTSD from his time with the Burm...
Aug 09, 2018•40 min•Ep 44•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest on this episode of the Addicted Mind podcast is Lori Kandels, a therapist in the Bay area specializing in anxiety. Anxiety is often the result of trauma and can manifest as fear, stress, self-doubt, and persistent negative stories ruminating in the mind, and can sometimes lead to addictions as a way to escape. The repetition of these stress responses creates neural pathways in the brain that become a cycle that can be difficult to break and usually negatively impacts the individual’s m...
Aug 02, 2018•27 min•Ep 43•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of the Addicted Mind podcast, we are joined by a returning guest, Adina Silvestri of Life Cycles Counseling in Richmond, Virginia. Adina’s practice works with individuals battling eating disorders partnered with addictions with the goal of transferring their shame to hope and healing. The combination of eating disorders (anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, or binge eating) with substance or other addictions is very harmful to the health and wellbeing of those struggling and can ev...
Jul 26, 2018•30 min•Ep 42•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of the Addicted Mind podcast, Timothy Wienecke joins us to discuss his work in advocacy, clinical mental health, and an educational institute for veterans and first responders. A military veteran himself, Tim recognized the need for clinicians to focus on the mental health of veterans and first responders, who are prone to mental injury on a daily basis. He found that non-combat veterans and combat veterans with a dishonorable discharge have almost no access to resources to help ...
Jul 19, 2018•43 min•Ep 41•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest on this episode of the Addicted Mind podcast is Dr. Jack Bloomfield, a specialist in the ARISE model of interventions. This model is an alternative to the “traditional” form of confrontational interventions created in the 1960s by Dr. Johnson. In this confrontational model, the focus is very much on the addict, usually involving an ambush-type situation where several family members trick the addict into coming to a certain location where they are presented with some type of “go to reha...
Jul 06, 2018•29 min•Ep 40•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of the Addicted Mind podcast, our guest is Dr. Scott D. Miller of the International Center of Clinical Excellence in the field of mental health. Dr. Miller has used his decades of experience in the industry to develop outcome measures with the goal of increasing the effectiveness of therapy. These outcomes are not merely “milestones” or objective progress markers, but are more subjective and are focused on the client’s well-being and function. Previous training for therapists had...
Jun 28, 2018•40 min•Ep 39•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest on this episode of the Addicted Mind podcast is Amy Smith, founder of the Worth Recovery podcast, which has grown into a community of mutual support. Amy began her recovery journey in 2011 when she realized that her multiple failed “relationships” were a result of sex addiction and the notion that intimacy was nothing more than a transaction. On the very same day that she promised to do something to change her situation, her father – with whom anger had characterized her relationship –...
Jun 21, 2018•36 min•Ep 38•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of The Addicted Mind podcast, we are joined by Robert Weiss, a digital-age intimacy and relationship expert and author of several insightful books on the topic (links below). Rob’s non-alarmist approach to the impacts of our digital age on intimacy and relationships as well as on the minds and futures of our children is refreshing and encouraging, while still reminding us to be aware and informed. In his 25 years in the industry, Rob has noticed significant shifts in the accessib...
May 10, 2018•37 min•Ep 37•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of the Addicted Mind podcast, we talk with Nicki Mosley about trauma-sensitive movement practice and the effective impact that this can have on those suffering from long-term trauma. Trauma-sensitive yoga was developed by The Trauma Center in Boston several years ago to give individuals a safe way to access their trauma and work through the sensations felt in the body by rebuilding the neural pathways related to making choices based on feelings. This is an evidence-based techniqu...
Apr 26, 2018•29 min•Ep 36•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of The Addicted Mind podcast, we are joined by Dr. Pam Peeke, a physician and scientist specializing in food addiction. Those struggling with food addictions fit into two categories: (1) people who practice disordered eating which eventually takes over all other aspects of their life, or (2) those who are recovering from another addiction and have turned to junk food and beverages as a transfer addiction. Disordered eating and food addictions mainly revolve around the chemical ef...
Apr 12, 2018•39 min•Ep 35•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest on this episode of the Addicted Mind podcast is Dr. Louise Stanger, a clinician, interventionist, author, and trainer specializing in the grief and loss experienced by the family members of an individual who dies of an opioid overdose. Since nearly all overdoses occur somewhere other than the hospital, there is not much scientific research on the opiate epidemic. We do know that in 2016, 155 people per day died of overdoses, and for every one of those people, at least four family membe...
Apr 05, 2018•35 min•Ep 34•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest on this episode of the Addicted Mind podcast is Colleen Koncilja, a counselor based in the Chicago area who specializes in gambling addictions. Shortly after a casino riverboat became a permanent fixture just blocks away from her practice’s office in Elgin, Illinois, the town recognized that compulsive gambling would become an increasing problem and they gave Colleen’s team funding to assist the population who would suffer from this behavioral addiction. Problematic gambling, also refe...
Mar 29, 2018•34 min•Ep 33•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest on this episode of The Addicted Mind podcast is Jonathan Horowitz, founder and director of the San Francisco Stress and Anxiety Center. Jonathan is a clinical psychologist who studied anxiety research in graduate school before transitioning to being a clinician and opening the Stress and Anxiety Center. It is a misconception that anxiety is always a bad thing; in fact, our minds were built to experience healthy anxiety when our bodies sense that they need to be alert to their surroundi...
Mar 22, 2018•30 min•Ep 32•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of The Addicted Mind podcast, Curt Widhalm shared with us on his area of expertise, teens, and self-harm. Curt has observed two types of teens who are engaging in self-harm behaviors: (1) those struggling to find the opportunity to express their emotions due to their busy schedules, and (2) those whose friend groups are engaging in self-harm behavior for attention-seeking. In general, self-harm behaviors, which could include cutting, burning, or over-exercise, are quick ways for ...
Mar 15, 2018•30 min•Ep 31•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of The Addicted Mind podcast, my guest is Kay Simmeth, a Marriage and Family Therapist certified in EMDR. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing is a type of bilateral stimulation that activates both sides of the body and both sides of the brain. This dual action process of tapping on the client’s knees back and forth, listening to music or sounds that alternate between headphones, or feeling vibrations in alternating hands, the frontal cortex and the amygdala are both act...
Mar 08, 2018•33 min•Ep 30•Transcript available on Metacast Susanne Jessee is with us today to talk about Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS). TMS is a relatively new treatment, at least in the United States, for individuals who are struggling with depression. Depression is often present in addiction and TMS is something that may help people that are struggling with addiction and treatment-resistant depression. Susanne Jesse is the CEO and founder of Anew Era TMS in Huntington Beach, California. To start, Susanne breaks down what TMS stands for. Tran...
Mar 01, 2018•32 min•Ep 29•Transcript available on Metacast Today our guest is board certified music therapist Amylynn Dimaano. She speaks to us today about music therapy and how music can help us deal with underlining issues in recovery. What is music therapy? Music therapy is the scientific use of music to effect a change of non-musical goals. It is not a music lesson, and Amylynn is not a music teacher. Music therapy isn’t about to learning music. Her goals are to help people through mental health therapy that are struggling with depression, anxiety, ...
Feb 22, 2018•31 min•Ep 28•Transcript available on Metacast 
