I Love Being Sober

Most of us have heard that cortisol is the stress hormone and the goal is to lower it. Dr. Erin Kinney says that is backwards. Cortisol is your body’s energy currency. It gets you out of bed, handles stress, and helps your body heal. The real problem is running out. At 22, Erin was a marathon runner who gained thirty pounds almost overnight, couldn’t get out of bed, and cried all the time. Labs sh...

Getting sober is an amazing step. But as Dr. Gary Sanchez told a room full of our clients, not being shackled doesn’t mean you’re free. It just means you’re sober. The next question is the hard one: now what? Gary practiced cosmetic and sedation dentistry in Albuquerque for 32 years. He picked dentistry at 18 because his dad was a dentist and he didn’t know what else to pick. About 28 years in, si...

She was thirteen. She decided the world would be better without her, and she picked anorexia as the way she was going to leave it. She told her parents she would be dead by sixteen. She went into a treatment center three hours from home with four adolescent beds and a building full of adults detoxing. The program treated her by the number on a scale. Reach this number, you can call your parents. R...

He was a Versace model living at the Clevelander on Ocean Drive, drinking fifty drinks a day for free because his friends tended bar, and getting handed cocaine because the dealers knew he knew everybody. He worked five times a year. The rest of the time was idle. Then the hangovers started lasting five days. Troy Casey — The Certified Health Nut — grew up a ward of the state, started drinking and...

Everybody in treatment eventually gets the insight. They can tell you why they drank. They can name the childhood, the trauma, the trigger. And then they wake up the next morning and do the same thing they did yesterday. Natalie Hunter has spent more than twenty years studying why that happens. Her position is blunt: insight alone does not change anybody. What she teaches instead is behavior over...

You got sober. You did the work. And you still wake up exhausted, foggy, flat, and unmotivated — and everyone around you says give it more time. Sometimes that’s the right answer. Sometimes something underneath is actually broken. Dr. Amie Hornaman spent her twenties competing in bodybuilding and figure competitions. Then the scale started going up while she was training twice a day and tracking e...

Dr. Sharon Stills started drinking at twelve. By nineteen she was sitting in a parking lot in the Hamptons, too high to walk into the party — and that was the night it broke. She got sober at twenty, without AA, without rehab, and thirteen years later became a naturopathic medical doctor. In this episode she explains addiction the way she sees it after twenty-five years of practice: not as a moral...

On this episode of the I Love Being Sober podcast, recorded live in front of a client audience at Camelback Recovery’s outpatient treatment center in Scottsdale, Arizona, host Tim Westbrook sits down with master life coach, speaker, and labyrinth designer Elaine Glass , author of the bestselling book Get Quiet: 7 Simple Paths to the Truth of Who You Are , published by Hay House and endorsed by Dr....

On this episode of the I Love Being Sober podcast, recorded live in front of a client audience at Camelback Recovery’s outpatient treatment center in Scottsdale, Arizona, host Tim Westbrook sits down with Marine combat veteran, speaker, and mental performance coach Akshay Nanavati , author of Fearvana , a book endorsed by the Dalai Lama. Akshay came home from Iraq carrying PTSD, depression, and an...

What does it take to survive what should have killed you and come back stronger? In this live episode of the I Love Being Sober Podcast, recorded in front of an audience at Camelback Recovery’s outpatient treatment center in Scottsdale, Arizona, host Tim Westbrook sits down with speaker, coach, and author Kevin J. Parker. Born into generational addiction and trauma, Kevin spent four months in a ho...

What happens to your relationships when you get sober? In this episode of the I Love Being Sober podcast, recorded live at Camelback Recovery’s outpatient treatment center in Phoenix, Arizona, host Tim Westbrook sits down with Melissa Nanavati , a TEDx speaker, author, and relationship coach for executives and high performers. Melissa’s story will resonate with anyone navigating sobriety and conne...

Recorded live in front of clients at Camelback Recovery’s outpatient addiction treatment center in Scottsdale, Arizona, this episode of I Love Being Sober brings host Tim Westbrook together with Michael Roviello, U.S. Navy veteran, certified Wim Hof Method instructor, and co-founder of Optimyze, a natural wellness company with four locations across the Phoenix Valley. Michael grew up in a rough pa...

What does your spine have to do with staying sober? More than you think. In this episode of I Love Being Sober, recorded live at Camelback Recovery in Scottsdale, Arizona, Tim Westbrook sits down with Dr. Marc Blackstone, a board-licensed chiropractic physician with more than 25 years of clinical experience who has spent the past five years bringing chiropractic care into mental health and addicti...

What if addiction isn’t a moral failure — and it isn’t just a brain disease either? What if it’s the natural expression of a terrain that never got the support it needed? In this episode of I Love Being Sober, Tim Westbrook sits down with Dr. Nasha Winters — naturopathic oncologist, bestselling author, and 35-year stage IV ovarian cancer thriver — for one of the most clinically rich and emotionall...

What actually keeps women from walking through the door of a treatment center — and what keeps them from staying once they’re in? Tim Westbrook sits down with Dr. Whitney Howzell , a licensed clinical social worker, US Army veteran, certified sexual therapist, and Vice President of Inpatient Operations at Meadows Behavioral Healthcare , for one of the most honest conversations about recovery this...

What actually keeps women from walking through the door of a treatment center — and what keeps them from staying once they're in? Tim Westbrook sits down with Dr. Whitney Howzell , a licensed clinical social worker, US Army veteran, certified sexual therapist, and Vice President of Inpatient Operations at Meadows Behavioral Healthcare , for one of the most honest conversations about recovery this...

What if the part of you that wants to drink, use, or self-sabotage isn’t the enemy — it’s just trying to protect you the only way it knows how? In this episode of I Love Being Sober, recorded live at Camelback Recovery’s outpatient center in Scottsdale, Arizona, host Tim Westbrook sits down with licensed professional counselor and IFS therapist Kristy Crabtree for a deep conversation on trauma, he...

What if the part of you that wants to drink, use, or self-sabotage isn't the enemy — it's just trying to protect you the only way it knows how? In this episode of I Love Being Sober, recorded live at Camelback Recovery's outpatient center in Scottsdale, Arizona, host Tim Westbrook sits down with licensed professional counselor and IFS therapist Kristy Crabtree for a deep conversation on trauma, he...

In this episode of I Love Being Sober, recorded live at Camelback Recovery’s outpatient treatment center in Scottsdale, Arizona, host Tim Westbrook sits down with Michael Bernoff — founder of the Human Communication Institute, developer of Human Interaction Technology™, and author of Average Sucks. Michael has been alcohol-free since New Year’s Eve 2016, not because he hit a rock bottom, but becau...

In this episode of I Love Being Sober, recorded live at Camelback Recovery's outpatient treatment center in Scottsdale, Arizona, host Tim Westbrook sits down with Michael Bernoff — founder of the Human Communications Institute, developer of Human Interaction Technology™, and author of Average Sucks. Michael has been alcohol-free since New Year's Eve 2016, not because he hit a rock bottom, but beca...

What if the substance was never really the problem? In this episode of the I Love Being Sober Podcast, recorded live at Camelback Recovery Treatment Center in Phoenix, Arizona, host Tim Westbrook sits down with Dr. Marcus Earle, Clinical Director of Psychological Counseling Services (PCS) — one of the most respected behavioral health practices in the country. Dr. Earle has spent over 35 years trea...

What if the substance was never really the problem? In this episode of the I Love Being Sober Podcast, recorded live at Camelback Recovery Treatment Center in Phoenix, Arizona, host Tim Westbrook sits down with Dr. Marcus Earle, Clinical Director of Psychological Counseling Services (PCS) — one of the most respected behavioral health practices in the country. Dr. Earle has spent over 35 years trea...

At 18 years old, Elijah Kai put a loaded gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. It didn’t fire. What followed was two decades of searching — therapy, religion, hustle, two marriages, a felony, and a life spent building a character convincing enough that nobody, including him, could see the pain underneath. In this episode of I Love Being Sober, we sit down with spiritual teacher, Divine Architec...

At 18 years old, Elijah Kai put a loaded gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. It didn't fire. What followed was two decades of searching — therapy, religion, hustle, two marriages, a felony, and a life spent building a character convincing enough that nobody, including him, could see the pain underneath. In this episode of I Love Being Sober, we sit down with spiritual teacher, Divine Architec...

Hannah Keller lost three siblings, battled addiction, and hit rock bottom before finding recovery at Camelback Recovery in Phoenix, Arizona. In this episode of I Love Being Sober, host Tim Westbrook sits down with Hannah to talk about what it really takes to rebuild your life from the ground up. Hannah was a patient at Camelback Recovery. Today, she’s an employee helping others find healing. This...