When we continually put off taking action, we fall into the trap of believing that opportunities will always be available to us in the future. We convince ourselves that tomorrow will be the perfect time to start, make changes, or pursue our dreams. However, this mindset can lead to missed opportunities and unfulfilled potential. What is that costing us in our recovery? Could this be why the "pink cloud" stage of recovery wears off? Can we regain the same excitement for the sober life we had in ...
Jun 23, 2023•12 min•Season 1Ep. 36
In this episode, we talk about how the attempt to avoid discomfort is causing most of the struggles not only in recovery but our lives. It is often why we started drinking or using in the first place, a reason why we struggle to be happy in our recovery journey, why it is the core reason behind most relapses, and how our lives will improve dramatically if we challenge and embrace discomfort in our lives.
Jun 16, 2023•13 min•Season 1Ep. 35
Within recovery there are several points that we have two choices: give up or be resilient, push through, and become the hero of our own life story. This is very obvious at the decision point of quitting an addiction, but in our recovery journey, we will find ourselves at the crossroads of this decision many times. In this episode, we will discuss why it is vital that we step up to those challenges, why even giving up on what may seem small at the time can begin a pattern that will lead us back ...
Jun 09, 2023•12 min
This week, we will talk about how we can build lives that are so amazing that the substance that we were prisoners of for so long, will no longer have any power over us, even if it is all around us. Once we do that, living one day at a time sober no longer will be necessary, because our sobriety simply will just be part of our new amazing lives. We will discuss how to discover the life you want to live and the steps you can take to get there....
Jun 02, 2023•15 min
If you have been in recovery for any amount of time, you likely have heard some version of the study where they placed a rat in a small enclosure where he had two bottles. One had water, the other was water laced with drugs such as morphine and cocaine and the rat would become hopelessly addicted. However, simultaneously the same scientist performed another experiment that had a shockingly different result, yet it is rarely talked about in the world of addiction recovery. What did he find and wh...
May 26, 2023•12 min
I wanted to talk about the effects alcoholism and addiction have on our families. I am of the belief that stories are best told by people who have experienced them, so I thought who better to join me on this episode than my mom? She talks about what it was like to watch my destructive path with addiction, and how support from her friends, family, and al-anon helped her cope. She also discusses the fears she carried even after I got sober. Finally, we discuss how those fears eventually turned int...
May 19, 2023•30 min
One of the most common phrases I hear when people are struggling with either active addiction or in their recovery is "I just feel stuck". Sometimes when we feel stuck we don’t know what is holding us back. Other times, we know exactly what it is, but don’t know the best way to get unstuck. In this episode, I am going to discuss how to identify the things that are holding you back and the steps you can take once you have recognized the problem to move forward to where you want to be....
May 12, 2023•14 min
Recovery from any addiction can be incredibly overwhelming to the point that we often will question whether we can make it through those periods where it seems like too much. But when you know the type of things to expect and why those emotions can be so difficult to process helps. Today, we will talk about some of the most common sources of being overwhelmed in recovery and the steps we can take to work through them.
May 05, 2023•13 min
In this episode, I answer some of the most asked questions I have received in the six months of doing this podcast. I talk about the following questions: What to do if I am not being supported by my loved ones when I quit drinking? Is alcoholism a disease? What does your daily routine look like? Should I wait a year after getting sober before dating? Do you ever crave alcohol anymore? Were you worried you were going to relapse when you left AA? How do I stop relapsing?...
Apr 28, 2023•11 min
Today I want to talk about how to live your best life in recovery. I am not talking about the Instagram posts in some exotic location with the tag “living my best life”. I am talking about regularly waking up and being excited about your life even if you aren’t in some exotic location. Waking up in your bed, in your everyday life, and being excited level of your best life. Today, I will give you some tips on how I was able to discover my best life, and how I am able to live it daily. So buckle u...
Apr 21, 2023•12 min
I want you to ask yourself this question: Are you happy? If you were to measure the success of your recovery by joy and fulfillment instead of sober days accumulated, would you consider your recovery a success right now? When I started asking people this, they will point to events in their life that made them happy, but if I ask them if they were to think of a day that didn’t have things on the outside going right, would they still feel happy? Surprisingly, the more people I asked this question ...
Apr 14, 2023•16 min
What is the story that you tell yourself about who you are? Maybe it is that you are not worthy, that you fail at everything you try, that you never will be able to get sober, that sober life is miserable, that you can’t have fun sober, that you are not worthy of love, that you are stuck, that you are a bad friend, child, parent, or sibling. We end up becoming the stories we tell ourselves. Of all the people that I have tried to help, this is the biggest factor in whether they are going to live ...
Apr 07, 2023•15 min
In today’s episode, I want to discuss the importance of having a plan for getting sober. We will discuss what you should do before taking the last drink, give you steps to get through that first 30 days, and how you can best set yourself up at the beginning of your sobriety to have long-term success.
Mar 31, 2023•15 min
One of the biggest challenges people have especially in early recovery is dealing with the cravings to return to the substance that has been destroying their lives. I remember when I first got sober, I would hear in AA meetings that some people were still dealing with cravings even decades after getting sober. So how do we deal with the cravings that come in early sobriety and conquer them for good so that this is not a lifetime battle? In today's episode, I am going to tell you how I went from ...
Mar 24, 2023•12 min
Today we will discuss one of the biggest reasons I see people still struggle in recovery with either staying sober or being unable to live a sober life filled with joy and happiness. You often see people start their recovery with great enthusiasm. You often hear people refer to this as the “pink cloud”. But for most people, this period of happiness wears off and most people in recovery accept this as simply part of the process. The problem is most people do not survive the post-pink cloud stage....
Mar 17, 2023•13 min
I think most people with addiction problems go through various phases and degrees of denial about the true impact alcohol has on their lives. I know from personal experience getting past denial can be a difficult and often uncomfortable process, but it's an important step toward personal growth and healing. This week, I want to get into the importance of getting real with ourselves and the steps we can take to do an honest evaluation of our true relationship with drinking. If you ask yourself an...
Mar 10, 2023•13 min
Today's episode is going to be a little bit different. I had another topic scheduled for this week, but I want to talk about dealing with difficult moments that life deals us when we get sober. This is very fresh for me as someone I love very much had a massive loss in their life this morning. Here is the thing, life can be tough at times. Tragedy doesn’t stop just because we got sober. We just have to learn to deal with it in different and hopefully healthier ways. One of the greatest gifts in ...
Mar 03, 2023•9 min
The inability of people in recovery to establish and set healthy boundaries is one of the biggest struggles I see with people when they are building their new lives. In fact, this is the method I see most people trying to set boundaries which is exactly what I did for the first many years I was sober: If someone does something that upsets us, we react negatively to it with maybe anger, sadness, storming out of the room, passive aggressiveness, or whatever your preferred method is to show you are...
Feb 24, 2023•15 min
One of the hardest shifts I see people in recovery make is becoming someone who believes in themselves. It makes perfect sense early in recovery. Most of us while in active addiction have years of making really bad decisions and likely were not someone who can be trusted. So it is natural that when we first get sober, it can be very challenging to trust ourselves and always be questioning our decisions, even the ones that are obviously good decisions. So how do you start learning to trust your i...
Feb 17, 2023•13 min
Most people don't have a plan for getting sober and simply try to wander through life. They just decide one day today is the day to get sober. They might kind of know where they want to go, but do not have directions on how to get there. They simply wander around hoping that one day they will find a place where they are in a life free of their addiction. Then when things get painful or even slightly uncomfortable they give up because they don't know where they are going. Recovery can be difficul...
Feb 10, 2023•21 min
When you try to change everything at once, you will get overwhelmed, you give up, and nothing ends up changing. So how much should we change at the beginning, and how do we pick and choose what to change?
Feb 03, 2023•14 min
In this episode, I want to talk about whether you need to give up your old friends and other things in your life when you get sober. I know many people struggle with giving up the people, places, and things that existed in their old life. One of the most common questions people ask me when they are first sober is whether they can still hang out with their friends that they partied with, can they still go to their old bar to listen to that one band they like, and do they need to give up old frien...
Jan 27, 2023•17 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Today we are going to talk about the biggest mystery in recovery that almost all of us alcoholics have tried to solve. I believe people have been trying to solve this riddle since the first time someone figured out how to brew alcohol. And that mystery is: Is it possible to ever be a normal drinker? Have asked yourself any of the following questions: How can I control my drinking? Am I an alcoholic? Why do I always drink so much? Will I always be an alcoholic? Why can't I control how much I drin...
Jan 20, 2023•16 min•Season 1Ep. 14
One of the more common questions I see on various recovery forums online is “Can I get sober without AA?” Having spent several years in the beginning of my sobriety in AA and watching the majority of people that come through the doors not stay sober, I have to wonder if we are asking the right question. I have spent many years struggling in AA, many more years researching some of the reasons why so many people struggle in AA, and have experienced massive growth since leaving and applying differe...
Jan 13, 2023•21 min•Season 1Ep. 13
How many times have you heard or even said something like this? Today I lost my job and don’t know how I am going to pay my bills. I am not sure I can get through this without having a drink. When we have that mindset, we set up conditional sobriety on the impossible task of nothing ever going wrong. To live truly sober and happy lives, we must accept and even embrace our challenging times. If you are asking yourself questions like this, then this episode is for you. How can I maintain my sobrie...
Jan 06, 2023•16 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Are you planning on doing a new years resolution? Maybe you are still struggling with your recovery journey and this is the year you want to get and stay sober. Maybe you have put together some sobriety time, yet are not satisfied with some other areas in your life, and want to improve on something else. Maybe you are absolutely killing it right now, and want to keep that momentum so you want to improve even more in an area you are already making progress. Or, maybe you have tried resolutions in...
Dec 30, 2022•17 min
In this episode, I want to talk about what to do if you just relapsed. Most of the focus around relapse is through relapse prevention methods and with that focus we tend to think all is lost if we did actually relapse. I think the biggest thing you can do for relapse prevention if you have already relapsed is to shift the focus off of the fact that you relapsed to focusing on what you can learn from this so that you can break the patterns that led you to where you are now. We will talk about why...
Dec 23, 2022•20 min•Season 1Ep. 10
In this episode, I want to talk about how our identities based on our past is often holding us back from our greatest potential in recovery and life. So much of our identity when we get sober is based on what we think we are not capable of achieving. We start picking up limitations when we are young from people and experiences in life. Maybe we are told we are not smart enough, not talented enough, are a troublemaker, or that we are never going to amount to anything. Then as life goes on we find...
Dec 16, 2022•17 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Relapse. The most dreaded word in recovery and the most misunderstood event also. How many times have you talked to people who have relapsed and they can’t really tell you why? They might talk about some general ideas of things that happened leading up to it or maybe they put themselves in a compromising position and were unable to resist when the sudden temptation hit. But is that really why people relapse? In this episode, I want to talk about relapse and how many of the things we have been ta...
Dec 09, 2022•18 min•Season 1Ep. 8
In this episode, I share practical tips to navigate a world filled with alcohol after quitting drinking. Although it can be challenging to be surrounded by alcohol, especially in social settings, there are strategies to help. Rather than trying to avoid alcohol entirely, I've learned to accept its presence and focus on what I can control: my reactions and approach to situations involving alcohol. Initially, I used to stress about saying no or explaining my choice to not drink anymore. Seeking ad...
Dec 02, 2022•15 min•Season 1Ep. 7
