Recovery Demystified
Recovery Demystified is a 501c3 nonprofit based out of Northwest Arkansas. Our mission is to empower people to create their own unique path to addiction recovery by providing free peer support, books, resources, and education. We are a group of people who forged their own unique paths to addiction recovery outside of the typical spiritual framework. RD is science based, non-religious, empowering, adaptive, and practical. If you have ever felt left behind or pushed to the fringes of society, you are in the right place! Recovery for the rest of us! Instagram @recoverydemystified Email info@recoverydemystified.com Donate to our cause! https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/PLEJRR76CAMHG or Venmo @recoverydemystified
Episodes
A lot of us use substances to bury our trauma and discomfort -- especially those of us who are queer and trans. Today we hear from Brody who tells their story of growing up queer in the deep south in heavily Christian surroundings. After being bullied for their gender expression, they flipped to hyper-femininity. They found solace and escape in substances, effectively self-medicating their trauma. Eventually, they found recovery th...
Hot take alert! Making your life AWESOME isn't as hard as it seems -- and here's how you can do it! Today I talk about ways to balance our lives by reducing stress, adding in more cool stuff, and changing our perspective on life to make ourselves feel grateful as a knee-jerk reaction. I talk about my favorite empowerment skill from the book Nonviolent Communication, why we should all read the news less, and why we should work less....
Sascha Altman Dubrul is a punk elder, therapist, and co-founder of The Icarus Project -- a radical mental health support network. In his interview he talks about being friends with people on TV as a kid, finding weed and having the whole universe open up, psychedelics, and ending up involuntarily commited to the psych ward. Sascha discusses extreme mental states, finding punks, how psychiatric drugs are also very much drugs, the ha...
When it comes to mysteries, why we relapse is among the most common problems in addiction recovery. In this episode I discuss four reasons why you keep relapsing and provide clear, actionable ways to catch yourself before it's too late. If you've ever wondered "Why do I keep relapsing?" ... get out your pen and paper, because we are about to demystify that shit. You're not broken, you just need more information about what it takes ...
Josh Datant joins us today to tell his harrowing story of becoming an IV meth and heroin user after first being prescribed the painkiller pills Oxycontin by his doctor at the age of 15. The pills to heroin to meth pipeline is very real, and it's not the first time we have heard someone go down this path on our show. Opiate pills can seem like a miracle drug at first, but like so many folks, Josh quickly became addicted and then see...
Nobody likes anxiety. It makes sense to want it to go away. In this episode we dive into how alcohol and other substances can cause a neurochemical spike that causes the anxiety that we are using the substance to relieve, and how this can be a slippery slope into self-medicating and addiction. What if the secret to getting rid of anxiety isn't about trying to make it go away? What if we can find a way to understand it, greet it, an...
Why do people think weed addiction isn't real? Today we hear from Armstrong about his experience with the magic, medicine, and misery of weed. He also talks about high-dose psychedelic experiences and having what might be defined as a spiritual psychosis. Near the end of his addiction, he was scrounging around for roaches on the ground. The existential crisis has eased a bit, but it's still with him.
If you've ever wondered i...
Binge drinking can be a response to unbearable emotions -- and that was the case for our guest today, Colleen Clifford. She talks about being a kid whose needs were unmet, people pleasing, and how a difficult diagnosis left her feeling broken. Unsure where to turn, she ended up finding solace in binge drinking. She kept it together while at sea as a commercial fisherwoman, but her time on land was frought with brown-outs, black-out...
Getting sober can mean your social life changes overnight — and nobody really prepares you for that. We often get really bad advice about how we need to make extreme changes, but sometimes that can cause more harm than good. What if we moved slowly, with more intention, and landed in a place that is authentic to our needs?
Shame is a huge driver of addiction, and cultural overvaluing of independence is keeping us stuck. How might things change if we destigmatized substance use, genuinely cared for each other, and prayed with endless devotion to the things that spark our ravishment?
In today's episode, we talk about one of my favorite books of 2025 - "In Praise of Addiction" by Elizabeth Roberts. We dig into the gray areas and dusty corners of addicti...
In this episode we dive into books & podcasts that are off the beaten path -- ones that cater specifically to struggles of people who are autistic and/or have ADHD. The way we recover is not the same as everyone else, and it has everything to do with authenticity and honoring our needs.
We also hear about a 30+ year old book that dives into intersectional feminism and how it relates to addiction and recovery. And we talk about ...
Let's talk about the origins of harm reduction that are often overlooked: queer & BIPOC folks have always used underground methods of mutual aid as a method of survival. In this episode Meesh and Early discuss their paths to finding harm reduction spaces and practices, and we get a couple history lessons from Meesh on the origins of harm reduction and the war on drugs. Importantly, we also hear about how queerness and BIPOC str...
If AA didn't work for you, you're not broken. One size fits all isn't real, and it's ok to want something different...
In Part 2 of this series, we're diving deeper into why the 12-step model fell short — not as a personal failure, but as a structural one. If you'r...
Chris's addiction story started with drinking at 13 because he wanted to be included in what the grown-ups were doing. Later he also found that drinking made the pain of his trauma go away. Things got very dark, very fast. His sobriety journey is not a straight line -- like many of us, he had bouts of sobriety, followed by times of going back out. It got a lot worse before it got better. He illustrates how vital it is to love ourse...
In today's Recovery Resources episode Early answers some listener questions! Addiction recovery and harm reduction come with a multitude of curve balls and challenges. Sober but still riddled with shame for being a degenerate? Have a deeply loved family member with an addiction and don't know how to help? Wondering how to get back on track after a relapse? We will discuss all this and more in this week's recovery resources.
In this episode we hear Annette's addiction recovery story. Their life starts with the divorce of their parents at a young age and exposure to a step-parent who was using substances. She talks about struggling with social anxiety, ADHD, and multiple traumas. Her drinking and psychedelic use eventually spiraled out of control, and as she quit drinking her weed use accelerated. After a series of allergic reactions to intense weed use...
In today's Recovery Resources episode, we talk about exactly what in the heck our "intuition" is... and how it is our guiding light in addiction recovery! We each require a constellation of changes in our life in order to create a life we no longer need to escape from. How do we know what the next right step should be? When we learn how to listen to our intuition, we begin to trust ourselves again, and we can each work authenticall...
In today's episode we hear Adam's addiction recovery story. His life starts with a feeling of being very different. After he found out he was adopted -- it was confirmed for him that yes, in fact, he was different. Finding alcohol gave him an initial sense of relief, and an immediate bout of consequences. Things got a lot worse before they got better. When faced with the news from his doctor that if he kept drinking, he would die -...
In today's episode of Recovery Resources we build our skills on rewiring our brains to move past our addictions. Do you ever argue with yourself about if you're going to drink/use? Do you find it exhausting to let yourself down over and over again? You're not broken, and you can rewire your brain to move past difficult thoughts. There's a reason why we have an inner critic, an inner addicted voice, and a fearful voice that's afraid...
In today's episode we hear Pepe Bandit's story. He describes growing up with divorced parents, and a lot of freedom. School never made sense to him, so he dropped out and started hanging out with older kids who opened up the world of drugs. This quickly led to acid-freakouts, weed turning on him, and it fizzled out when he found out his girlfriend was pregnant. He was only 17. Working for a living was fruitless and entirely unfulfi...
Popular Podcasts
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of NFL Media hosts including Jourdan Rodrigue, Colleen Wolfe, and Nick Shook provide all the NFL news, previews, recaps and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.