Flourishing After Addiction with Carl Erik Fisher

Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings.  Today I’m sharing my conversation with my friend Eric Zimmer: author, teacher, person in recovery, and the creator of The One You Feed , an award-winning podcast with more than 50 million downloads and over 800 conversations...

Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings.  Today I’m sharing my conversation with Dr. David Nutt—Edmond J. Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London—one of the most influential and outspoken figures in modern psychiatric research and drug p...

Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings.  This is a special audio edition of my recent Substack conversation with neuroscientist and writer Tim Requarth . The full post—including the video and more detailed show notes—is available on my Substack. Neuroscientist, writ...

Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings.  Today I’m excited to share my conversation with Melody Glenn, an emergency medicine doc, addiction physician, and Associate Professor at University of Arizona, who just published her first book: Mother of Methadone: A Doctor&...

Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings.  My guest on the show today is Diana Hill, psychologist and ACT expert, whose new book Wise Effort: How to Focus Your Genius Energy Where it Matters Most comes out in September and deserves your attention—particularly if you&a...

Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings.  As promised, here's a quick follow-up to my conversation with Dr. Jud Brewer. We got so caught up in the core science and models of self-control and anxiety that we completely forgot to talk about what he actually came o...

Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings.   What if self itself is a habit? In this episode, psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Jud Brewer explores how struggles like addiction, anxiety, and even identity can be understood as habit loops shaped by reward and reinforc...

Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings.  Nearly two decades ago, Owen Flanagan stood before the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, ready to open up about something uncharacteristically personal. Unlike his typical scholarly talks on consciousness and philosophy...

Friend of the pod Ryan Hampton, a national addiction recovery advocate, author, and person in long-term recovery, is right in the middle of a hotly contested state assembly election in Nevada. It is, in fact, he is running in of the most hotly contested races in one of the most consequential states in U.S. electoral politics. So I’m so glad to have him on to talk about how to take care of ourselve...

Jessica Hoppe's brand-new memoir, First in the Family: A Story of Survival, Recovery, and the American Dream , is a tremendous exploration of addiction, intergenerational trauma, and the complex allure of the American Dream. I had the great pleasure of reading this book in advance copy and I’m so happy to be able to help spread the word and wholeheartedly endorse the book now. Don’t take my w...

Join me on Sunday, September 8th, at 12 PM Eastern Time (9 AM Pacific) for From Recovering to Flourishing: A Foundational Workshop . Before spending three years in a Buddhist monastery and becoming a 3rd grade teacher, Laura Burges was exploring the world of alcohol and drugs, from opium dens in Afghanistan to a tent in Juneau, Alaska. After near-death experiences—such as blacking out and crawling...

This is a milestone for the Flourishing After Addiction podcast: our first repeat guest! I wanted to have Ryan Hampton back on the pod for a quick hit: to discuss the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the controversial bankruptcy settlement involving Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family.  As you may know, the Court rejected the settlement involving Purdue, which shielded members of the Sackler fami...

Carrie Wilkens is a psychologist with over 25 years of experience in the practice and dissemination of evidence-based treatments for substance use and post-traumatic stress. She and her team at the Center for Motivation and Change have developed the Invitation to Change approach for families and loved ones of people struggling with substance use, as well as the professionals who support them. This...

One of the great gifts of being out in the world talking about addiction and recovery is I get to meet so many fascinating and talented people working on these issues. This is one of my deepest motivations for writing and speaking about my own experience; to connect with other values-aligned writers and thinkers. One wonderful recent example is the fantastic writer Laura Cathcart Robbins, our gues...

In this episode of Flourishing After Addiction, I had the honor of speaking with Bruce Alexander, a towering figure in the field of addiction theory. As regular Rat Park readers will know, I named this newsletter after Bruce’s iconic experiment in the 1970s , honoring not just that experiment, but also the decades of contributions he’s made since to the broader understanding of addiction as a deep...

As a bonus for this special episode with the artist Erin Williams, author of What’s Wrong? Personal Histories of Chronic Pain and Bad Medicine, I got permission to post some of the illustrations from her new book, What’s Wrong? Personal Histories of Chronic Pain and Bad Medicine. Head over to my Substack page to see those. You won’t want to miss them. Erin Williams is the author and illustrator of...

Dr. Ray Baker is a distinguished leader in the field of addiction medicine and a person in long-term recovery from addiction. This episode of Flourishing After Addiction particularly resonates with the theme of the longer-form writings I’m starting to post about frameworks for making sense of recovery, so I’m grateful to have the chance to talk with him. A highlight of the conversation is Ray’s in...

In the latest episode of Flourishing After Addiction, I am thrilled to be exploring the intricate relationships between addiction, recovery, pain, and embodiment with Margo Steines, a writer and person in recovery with a deep understanding of these themes. Margo Steines holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Arizona and serves as a faculty member in their acclaimed writing progr...

Shame and self-stigma can be powerfully limiting and harmful, and they are especially common among people with addictions. We’ve discussed on prior episodes of the podcast that there may be valuable and wise forms of shame , but psychotherapy research has also shown that the wrong sort of relationship to shame can also inhibit growth and stand in the way of recovery. So for this episode of Flouris...

For this episode of Flourishing After Addiction , I wanted a guest who could offer some insights into the journey of seeking help for addiction and recovery. What is going wrong with our systems and services, and where can people actually find care? Brian Hurley is the ideal person to help us with these questions, with his extensive experience as a practicing addiction physician, President of the...

Valerie Mason-John (Vimalasara) is a writer, Buddhist teacher, a person in recovery, and the founder of Eight Step Recovery. In this episode of Flourishing After Addiction , Vimalasara shares their transformative journey, beginning with childhood in an orphanage and evolving through various addictions, with a particular focus on their struggle with bulimia, to arrive at their current role as a spi...

Clancy Martin is a philosopher, an author, a recovering alcoholic, and the survivor of more than ten suicide attempts. His new book, How Not to Kill Yourself, is a chronicle of his suicidal mind, and—of particular interest to us here—an investigation of the ways his suicidal thinking functioned like an addiction. We dive into all that and much more in this week’s episode of Flourishing After Addic...

Judson Brewer ("Dr. Jud") is a renowned addiction psychiatrist and neuroscientist who has spent over two decades studying the mechanisms of addiction and the effects of mindfulness on behavior change. On this episode of Flourishing After Addiction , it was great to talk with him about some extraordinary connections between the science of addiction and contemplative practice.  We talk abo...

Zach Siegel is one of our most respected and prolific journalists on addiction and drug policy. He is also a thoughtful, introspective soul who thinks deeply about his own history of opioid addiction. In his many writings, he has often referenced that personal history, but he's never really had the chance to tell his own addiction story from start to finish. Until now! Listen to this episode...

A little over 40 years ago, Dr. Steven Hayes experienced his first panic attack—when he was a young assistant professor in psychology, no less! In the intervening years, and drawing in part on his own recovery from panic disorder, he developed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and produced a huge body of work that has revolutionized our understanding of human language and cognition. Today, he is o...