The Loving Leverage Podcast
Welcome to The Loving Leverage Podcast, presented by Valiant Living, where we help you love someone through addiction without losing yourself in the process. If someone you love is struggling with addiction, you know how heavy that weight can be. You want to help, but nothing seems to work. This podcast is for you. Host Drew Powell (Recovery Advocate and Valiant Living alumnus) sits down with betrayal trauma experts, CSATs, therapists, betrayed partners, and alumni living in recovery, along with Valiant Living Founder and CEO Michael Dinneen, LCSW, CSAT-S, creator of the Loving Leverage™ framework. Valiant Living has been restoring lives and families since 2017. Fully accredited by The Joint Commission, Valiant offers residential care, PHP, IOP, and detox services for men and their families, and has earned a national reputation as a premier treatment program for men ages 26 and older. If you or someone you love is ready for help, call us at 720-669-1285 or visit valiantliving.com. We'd love to have a conversation with you.
Episodes
Love can look heroic while it quietly keeps the cycle alive. When someone we love is stuck in addiction, the instinct is to fix, cover, explain, and cushion the consequences. But what if the most loving move is to stop rescuing?
Drew is joined by Ian and Roxcy Brown, co founders of Iron Ridge Recovery in Texas, the first intensive outpatient program in the state built specifically for men with compulsive sexual behav...
The hardest part of getting a man into treatment is rarely finding the right program. It's the moment a smart, successful, "I'm fine" kind of man starts negotiating for control while the people who love him are running out of hope.
This is the first Mondays with Michael, a bonus series on The Loving Leverage Podcast that drops on Mondays whenever there's a conversation worth sharing. Every Monday, Drew Powell and Val...
On paper, Jeff Hatch's early twenties looked like a highlight reel. All-American at Penn, third round pick by the New York Giants, a million dollar contract. What nobody saw was the kid underneath who'd learned to hide, and then the injuries, the prescriptions, and the alcohol that quietly took over. Jeff got sober in 2006 and spent years helping other men find recovery. Then in 2019, in a very public way, it all ca...
Love can sound soft until it starts telling the truth. That’s the heartbeat behind our rebrand to the Loving Leverage Podcast, and it’s why we believe boundaries can be one of the most compassionate tools in addiction recovery. When addiction is running the show, everyone gets pulled into the same exhausting loop: promises, bargaining, secrecy, shame, and the constant attempt to “manage” what...
"My husband is a narcissist." It's one of the most common things families say when they call for help. But is it true narcissism, or something else entirely?
In this episode, Drew sits down with Dr. Alexandra Repke, a licensed psychologist who specializes in personality disorders and their overlap with addiction. Recorded live at the Hope for Healing conference by Lit Path, this conversation unpacks the blind spot th...
The most damaging myth about recovery is that it is mainly about stopping something. We believe it is about building something: a life where you can handle stress, emotions, relationships, and uncertainty without reaching for old patterns. That is why I sat down with Melissa, our Director of Wellness, to unpack the Five Pillars of Wellness that shape the daily rhythm of Valiant: physical, mental, emotional, social, ...
Complex case management sounds like paperwork until you see what it really is: the difference between a client staying engaged or falling through the cracks. We bring together a roundtable of experienced leaders in addiction treatment and recovery to talk candidly about what “complex” looks like now and why it keeps evolving. We get into whole-person care, family systems, trauma, and the real-world barri...
Prayer can feel like a talent you either have or you don’t. If you’ve ever sat in a 12-step meeting, heard the Lord’s Prayer, and realized you’re just repeating words without connection, you’re not alone. Drew Powell sits down with his close friend Matt Smallbone, a pastor, former touring musician, and the author of The Prayer Experiment: How Praying Like Jesus Realigns Everything, to t...
A mother and daughter getting sober at the same time sounds inspiring, until you hear what it actually takes: naming the family patterns, setting real boundaries, and staying in the room for the hard conversations. I’m joined by Sherry Young and Julie Hurley to talk about how addiction shows up inside a family system and how recovery becomes possible when we stop performing “fine” and start telling...
What happens when faith falls apart in ways sobriety alone cannot fix?
In this episode, a former pastor who found himself disqualified and starting over sits down with Anglican priest and author Father Chad Jarnigan for an honest conversation about losing and rediscovering faith.
This is not a polished, theological discussion. It is a grounded, real exploration of what it looks like when your relationship with God no ...
Most people try to love addiction out of someone, and it quietly turns into enabling. We wanted a more honest approach, so we hosted a live roundtable called Loving Leverage with clinicians, family advocates, and people in recovery to talk about the question families live inside every day: when does support help, and when does it keep someone stuck?
We dig into what “loving leverage” actually look...
The most dangerous part of process addiction often isn’t what people can see, it’s what shame does in the dark. We sit down as a host, a betrayed partner, and a clinical forensic psychologist to map the real terrain of sex addiction recovery, betrayal trauma, and the moment families realize that weekly therapy and willpower aren’t enough. If inpatient rehab sounds “extreme,” we unpack w...
Most recovery podcasts keep a safe distance between interviewer and subject. This episode doesn't. Our host, Drew Powell, sits down with his own wife, Jamie, to talk about what his addiction and betrayal did to her life, her sanity, and their family. It's uncomfortable because it should be.
This isn't about redemption arcs or tidy endings. Jamie talks about the moment she stopped protecting him from consequences, sto...
Your phone isn’t just a screen anymore, it can function like a casino that follows you everywhere. We bring back gambling addiction expert Chris Anderson for a timely, clear-eyed talk about microbetting, sports betting, and the new wave of problem gambling that’s exploding through constant ads, instant payouts, and real-time prop bets. Chris explains why the core addiction hasn’t changed, but the p...
We share an unflinching look at pornography addiction as a counterfeit path to presence and how surrender, regulation, and community create real change. Tyler opens his story, breaks down brain science, and shows couples how to rebuild safety without linear timelines.
• the link between fear, dysregulation and porn use
• why willpower fails under fight or flight
• addiction as unmet needs seeking relief...
What if the person who “has it all together” is carrying a secret that’s slowly dismantling their life? We sat down with Dr. Stephanie to unpack sex addiction without euphemisms or moralizing—how it hides, why it’s misdiagnosed, and what real recovery looks like when shame no longer runs the show.
We trace the path from early trauma to skewed arousal templates, showing why a &ldq...
Your gut knows before the facts arrive. That’s where this story begins: a widow and mom who rebuilt her life, fell in love, and then felt the quiet signal that something was wrong. What followed wasn’t a straight line to healing. It was a maze of gaslighting, a painful trio of discoveries, and the realization that love alone can’t cure compulsive sexual behavior.
We walk through the exact mo...
Ever felt the pressure to be “on” every waking minute? We sat down with Rabbi and therapist Gary Katz to unpack the quiet cost of spiritual leadership: how constant likability, role-based identity, and unspoken expectations can turn faith into performance and push leaders toward secrecy. Gary opens up about his own crash into sex and love addiction, the spiral into substances, and the slow rebuild that f...
The week Grace packed for college, Drew packed for rehab. What followed wasn’t a neat redemption arc, but a raw, practical path: loving leverage, clear boundaries, impact letters, and the slow re-growth of trust. We open with a feelings check—fear, shame, anger, gladness—then trace the hardest choice Grace made: asking her dad not to be part of move-in so she could protect her heart and he could fa...
December can light up old wounds as quickly as it lights the tree. We invited Dr. Jake Smith Jr. of Plumline to help us turn holiday triggers into a plan for presence, connection, and real growth. Together we unpack why family dynamics can collapse time in the brain, why anger is never alone, and how the eight core feelings give you a simple language to name what’s true and meet your needs without handing your...
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