Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic with Jon Seidl

What do you do when you love someone who won't stop drinking or give up their addiction? Dr. Brenda Fann Katula knows that frustration well. She understood alcohol addiction, withdrawal, and relapse. But none of that could fix her husband. 

In Part 2 of this two-part interview, Brenda takes us through the final stage of her former husband's destructive behavior. From an intervention, to hallucinations...

Dr. Brenda Fann Katula knew how to recognize alcohol addiction in an exam room. But when alcoholism took over her own home, the family physician who understood the diagnosis could not figure out how to make her husband choose sobriety—or explain to her nine-year-old son why Daddy wouldn't stop drinking.

The warning signs had been there from the beginning, like the handle of rum she expected to last f...

Podcaster Jeanette Tapley doesn’t call herself an alcoholic. But after one sober month, she realized she had a problem with her drinking—and that the second glass of wine she couldn't say no to was doing a job she was hesitant to admit: It gave her the foggy relief she wanted when life felt heavy. Her Christian faith then forced a hard question: Why did alcohol feel easier than trusting God?

"I don't have a drinking pro...

What do you do when God seems silent? How do you even hear God's voice? International speaker and author Em Tyler knows what it's like to struggle to hear God. She joins host Jon Seidl for an honest conversation about hearing God, abiding in Christ, prayer, and discerning the Holy Spirit.

For those struggling with addiction or walking in recovery, these aren’t abstract questions. Sometimes we’re asking God for new direc...

Amber Ginter Johnson spent seven years trapped in an eating disorder and exercise addiction rooted in trauma, fear, and a desperate need for control. What began as “healthy eating” became orthorexia, severe food restriction, obsessive calorie counting, and compulsive exercise—even jogging in place for three hours a day.

Then Amber broke her foot, abruptly ending the routine that had controlled her. Yet stopping th...

Arman Kaymakcian’s (Ky-mock-chin) journey from childhood sexual abuse and heroin addiction to faith in Jesus Christ began in unimaginable darkness. After years of using food, marijuana, drug dealing, and eventually intravenous heroin to escape his pain, Arman reached a point of suicidal desperation. He planned to step in front of a train—but walked into a psychiatric ward instead.

That night, Arman opened a Bible to Psa...

We know how to talk about alcohol, pornography, drugs, and other destructive behaviors. But there is another substance Christians regularly use for comfort, escape, reward, and emotional relief. It’s present at nearly every church gathering, woven into our traditions, and rarely questioned.

We’re going somewhere in this episode that we’ve never gone before.

We’re confronting an addi...

“I desperately wanted to be loved... and yet my entire life had feared that if I let people know me, I would be deemed unworthy of love.”

Joel Warneking lived a double life.

He was preaching, leading worship, traveling with a Christian band, and serving in ministry—all while secretly battling a pornography addiction that began when he was just eight years old. Even after confessing part ...

“I told my whole family, ‘I'm quitting.’ But in my head this voice was screaming, ‘I don't know what to do. I can't quit.’”

For years, Sherry Hoppen lived between those two realities.

To the people around her, she was trying. She was makin...

“The fear of our heart is built on sin’s great lie: that the place of healing is the place of harm. That the chalice of confession is filled with poison. That the medicine God has provided cannot be trusted. We have come to believe that confession is not a place of life but instead a place of death.”

Those words from Jamin Goggin’s book, Pastoral Confessions, capture the heart of th...

“The addiction is not who you are. This is not your identity. You are a person first and you are loved by God.”

For years, Christina Dent viewed addiction the way many of us were taught to view it: as people being simply too lazy, too selfish, or too indifferent to stop. Then she became a foster mom—and what she saw changed everything.

“In success, I sought to self-medicate. In failure, I sought to self-medicate.”

From the outside, Travis Blakeley had the kind of life many people would envy. He grew up in an affluent area of Dallas, attended a prestigious school, followed Jesus, worked in professional basketball as a coach, executive, and broadcaster, and built the picture-perfect life in the suburbs with his wife and children. But underneath the succ...

“It was such a relief to not have to lie anymore.”

That’s how Jed Payne describes the moment he finally stopped hiding and came clean. Again.

For years, Jed was a substance abuse counselor. He hosted a recovery podcast. He helped other people pursue sobriety and healing. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, he was spir...

"The younger we are when things happen to us and the more serious they are, the stronger the feelings are and the more often those feelings show up.”

Those are the words of therapist and author Kimberly Miller, one of the kindest and most genuine people I have ever met.

Kim’s work has profoundly shaped not only this p...

“The Enneagram was demanding that I look to it first, and only through its lens could I look to God second.”

That’s just one of the revelations made by author and Oxford theology student Christina Lynn Wallace.

For years, Christina loved the Enneagram—a tool that has become popular in counseling and recov...

“The only thing that had changed was the object of my worship—I went from worshiping alcohol to worshiping sobriety.”

Those are the words of Brett Smith.

For years, Brett struggled with alcoholism, eventually finding sobriety through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. He did everything right. He worked the p...

Welcome to the first ever bonus episode of the Confessions podcast! I'm trying something new, and I'm excited to hear what you think.

On this special episode, you’re going to hear me on the other side of the mic—instead of interviewing someone, I'm being interviewed. The interviewer? My good friend Christy Osborne, host of the 

“I didn’t want to be sober. I wanted to be free. True freedom is only found in Jesus Christ.”

“I knew I wasn’t supposed to do it but I didn’t understand why, because it felt like it was helping and I wasn’t hurting anyone.”