The Recovery Guide

Nikki Soda was 22 when she realized her drinking and drug use had gotten out of hand. After spending an entire paycheck on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Key West with a friend, she called her mom for help, and her mom refused. So Nikki did something few people do on their own: she walked into her boss's office and admitted she thought she had a problem. He told her she was fine, since she drank and...

In the '60s and '70s, Gary Stromberg co-founded Gibson & Stromberg, the PR firm behind names like The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, The Doors and Elton John. He later co-produced "Car Wash" and helped found the legendary Rainbow Bar & Grill. Through all of that success, he was convinced drugs were what made him so creative, because getting high made him feel like he could really think and cr...

Kyle "Rapps" Sutton had a solid foundation in recovery and a creative career starting to take off. Then he moved to New York City with some money in his pocket, and his old patterns found a new way in. It wasn't drinking or using this time. It was women, one hookup after another, and he got deep into it. He stopped leaning on his recovery, started isolating, and never really dealt with the grief h...

Thatcher Shivley's first sponsor told him he had no idea what recovery had in store for him. Part of him thought it sounded cheesy. The other part was intrigued. Sober since 2005, Thatcher spent ten years building a solid foundation before turning his experience into a career. Today he's a certified Recovery Coach with professional intervention training, and interventions are the part of the work...

Erik Coleman would dominate on the field. Then he'd come home and throw up. The stress of what was happening at home followed him everywhere. He was getting an ulcer as a young athlete, and almost no one knew. He put on a front for everyone, and he got pretty good at hiding it from the world. Football took him all the way to a nine-year NFL career. But the league that hyped him up for years didn't...

Esin Pinarli was double majoring in English literature and psychology when her own life started to look like the kind of story she was studying—the one where the character you're rooting for can't get out of her own way. She was anxious, fearful of her future, and going through her own addiction.  She almost became a professor. Instead, her pain redirected her entire life. She went through the ful...

Matt Williams had a wake-up call over a decade ago that changed the direction of his life. What he did with the years that followed is the part most people don't see coming. Today he's a performance coach, entrepreneur, personal trainer, and recovery mentor based in Boca Raton, Florida. He founded FROPRO Snack Bar, a nationally distributed wellness brand built on the principles of healthy living a...

Michelle DeMicco was in and out of rehab six times before she turned 21. Nearly 19 years sober now, she'll tell you the sobriety was just the beginning. What came after—the mindset work, the spiritual growth, learning to sit with herself without running—that's the part nobody warns you about when you put the substance down. And it's the part Michelle built her entire life around. She's a mindset c...

David Niknafs, was born with Cystic Fibrosis, a chronic illness he was told he might not outlive. Growing up, people didn't ask him what he wanted to be. They asked when he was going to die. He formed friendships with other kids living with CF, grew close to them, and then had to watch them pass one by one.  Today, at 39, he's the oldest person with Cystic Fibrosis he currently knows of. That real...

Celeste Bowman was 23 when she was diagnosed with HIV. In the early years, the diagnosis felt less like a medical reality and more like a verdict—she says plainly that it was hard for a 23-year-old to grapple with something so tied, in most people's minds, to death. For a while, it was almost like the diagnosis had a voice of its own, telling her she'd never even cared about living before it showe...

By the time Adam Jablin was 30, he had the life he was supposed to want. A family business he'd spent his life stepping into, a wife, a home, a body he'd sculpted through years of competitive bodybuilding. From the outside, he was the guy who had it figured out. Inside, he was drowning. Alcohol and pills had become the only way he knew how to keep playing the role everyone needed him to play—provi...

For years, Melissa McGovern tried to get sober on her own terms—cutting out alcohol for a while, feeling great, then slowly letting it creep back in under the guise of moderation. The cycle repeated more than once. Then one of the worst things imaginable happened: she lost her best friend, who had spent years cycling in and out of rehabs and homeless shelters. Melissa coped the only way she knew h...

The assumption is almost always money. If someone in a Black community isn't getting access to treatment, the reason "must be" that they can't afford it. Rick Hubbard has a hard piece of evidence against that. There was a nonprofit, state-funded treatment center where care cost nothing at all, and the problem existed at that level just the same. What's actually in the way is often shame and stigma...

Eight and a half years into recovery, and Kevin Lanning puts most of his healing in the last two.   For five of those years he stayed sober and did the work as it was handed to him—made amends, kept commitments, sponsored others. And was still, by his own description, mentally all over the place. He estimates about ten percent of his healing happened in that stretch.   The start was its own proble...

Keesha Scott knows addiction from the inside. As an author, a podcast host, and the co-founder of Guardian Recovery, she's built her life's work around helping others navigate parenting and addiction, but her own story runs deeper than her title.   A mother in recovery herself, Keesha has spent years loving a child through the very disease she's fought firsthand. She gets candid about the grief of...

Shon Tripp grew up in a one-room shack with an outhouse in unincorporated Johnson County, one of five kids in a family where addiction and mental illness went unnamed — just "dysfunction." She became the family caretaker before she understood why, and found her calling in the kitchen, turning whatever was in the cabinet into a meal for her siblings. Years later, Shon met her husband, a man in reco...

What happens when someone loses everything... and decides to rebuild from the ground up? Derek Lewis shares his remarkable journey from addiction, multiple arrests, and prison to becoming the owner of one of South Florida's largest electrical companies. Derek opens up about the denial that kept him trapped, the relapse that nearly cost him everything after four years of sobriety, and the mentors w...

In this episode, Craig Robinson shares how his own recovery journey reshaped his life, gave him a deeper sense of purpose, and ultimately led him to help families navigate one of the most painful situations imaginable: watching a loved one struggle with addiction while refusing help. The conversation explores why intelligence, success, and problem-solving skills can sometimes work against someone...

In this episode of The Recovery Guide Podcast, we sit down with Marc Kantor for a powerful conversation about addiction, intervention, family support, enabling, food addiction, and what long-term recovery really requires. Marc shares his personal recovery journey, including what led him to treatment 21 years ago and how addiction had left his life, marriage, health, and career in shambles. What st...

Today, Danielle Sharpe shares her powerful story of addiction, trauma, survival, and recovery in this deeply honest conversation about rebuilding a life from the ground up. Growing up around addiction and chaos, Danielle found herself trapped in a cycle of alcoholism, drugs, survival mode, and self-destruction that eventually led to arrests, suicide attempts, and rock bottom moments. But through r...

Today we sit down with mental health professional John Puls to discuss the growing mental health crisis, the dangerous rise of high-potency THC, the failures within addiction treatment, and why recovery needs to evolve. John breaks down the shocking differences between marijuana from decades ago versus today’s highly concentrated THC products, explaining why anxiety, panic attacks, psychosis, and...

Sex addiction is one of the most misunderstood and hidden addictions—and it’s affecting more people than you think. In this episode, we sit down with sex addiction therapist Kim Litton to break down the truth about compulsive sexual behavior, the difference between sex addiction and love addiction, and why so many people struggle in silence. We dive into the cycle of shame, acting out, and remorse...

What if the way you’re working out is actually accelerating your aging? In this episode of The Recovery Guide Podcast, Kai Evans—founder of The Lift Lounge—breaks down the truth about longevity training, aging, and why most traditional workouts haven’t evolved in decades. From muscle loss after 30 to the real science behind strength, mobility, and recovery, this conversation dives deep into how to...

What if addiction isn’t just about the person struggling… but the entire family system? In this powerful episode of The Recovery Guide Podcast, licensed mental health counselor Tommy McGee shares his journey from addiction to becoming a therapist—and reveals the hard truths most people never hear about recovery. From childhood trauma and loss to navigating the limitations of traditional 12-step pr...

What if yoga isn't a supplement to addiction recovery — but one of its most powerful tools? In this episode of The Recovery Guide Podcast, host Michael Herbert sits down with Fern L Conn, a certified yoga teacher with 35 years of experience and owner of the Dancing Lion Studio in Delray Beach, Florida, to make exactly that case. Fern brings a grounded, science-backed perspective on why yoga — and...