Untoxicated Podcast

Pain is thought of as an almost exclusively negative emotion and experience. But does pain serve a purpose? Is pain necessary for forward motion in certain scenarios? And is recovery from alcoholism one such scenario?...

What comes first, safety or connection? Can two married people be in two different relationships when it comes to trust and implied consent? Is there guilt inherent in detachment, and rejection inherent in sex without...

Can forgiveness be achieved without an apology ever being offered? Likewise, can we find comfort in feeling remorse without ever being forgiven? On this special roundtable episode, Sheri and Matt are joined by four lived-experience...

In order for a relationship to survive alcoholism, both partners, the former drinker, and the spouse, need to do an amazing amout of work in recovery. It is not about sobriety, although that is a...

Sheri and Matt welcome The Addiction Nutritionist, Kelly Miller, back to the podcast to learn more from this amazing nutrition therapist and recovery coach, and to apply her nutrition lessons to the recovery of the...

Alcoholism has lots of victims – including the drinker. High-functioning alcoholics in sobriety often have a really hard time accepting their victim status for a variety of reasons discussed by Sheri and Matt on this...

Last week, we published this article titled, “Your Wife’s Not a Bitch,” to our Sober and Unashamed website and blog. We got a lot of reaction, most of it in the form of email from...

Sheri and Matt dive deep into Sheri’s favorite topic: intimacy. But this discussion might not be what you are expecting. They separate emotional intimacy from sex, and describe emotional intimacy as the ultimate vulnerability (complete...

Do you want to know what it takes to save a marriage from alcoholism? One word: genuine humility. OK, that’s two words. And it also takes therapy, group work, hard-earned detachment, faith, resentment processing, group...

The brain is the final frontier of human biology, so the full impact of alcohol on our gray matter is a topic that undergoes continuous discovery. In this episode, Sheri and Matt discuss five ways...

The official cause of death was, “Complications of chronic ethanolism.” We all knew Suzy’s husband Matt was struggling and relapsing, but no one is ever really ready for death by alcohol. Suzy Jahn joins Sheri...

To celebrate our 150th podcast episode, we gathered in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains for our first ever Echoes of Recovery retreat. We took a break from hiking and hot springs to record this...

Why do we give so much power to the mantras that surround us (at least some of us do (Sheri’s looking at you, Matt))? There are gross and glorified mantras that are pillars of the...

There is a flow to the process of recovering a marriage from alcoholism. In this episode, Sheri and Matt talk about the universalisms found in the eight phases of relationship recovery. This is time consuming...

Anyone who has experienced an alcoholic relationship is familiar with the traumatic events when the drinking and the aftermath spins wildly out of control. But for most high-functioning alcoholics, there are plenty of times when...

As a drinker, Matt’s goal for the marriage was for Sheri to agree with him on morals, politics, religion, finances, parenting, etc. Only now in sobriety, Matt is realizing that with the exception of morals,...

Leah suffered from denial for years while living with someone whose drinking became a progressively more significant problem. She describes it like living in the middle of a tornado and refusing to acknowledge the storm....

Pride, self-esteem, ego and confidence often get a bad rap in the traditional recovery community as leading to relapse. We believe the opposite is true, and that self-esteem is the single most important component to...

We are thrilled to announce the “Evolution Series” as part of our Sober and Unashamed website and blog. Writing our stories of the impact of alcohol on our lives and families is very therapeutic, and we...

Everyone understands the consequences associated cigarette smoking (lung cancer) or a poor diet heavy on added sugar and fat (diabetes and obesity). Those consequences are directly correlated and societally accepted. When it comes to alcohol,...

Nothing is more important to healthful, sustained recovery than staying in tune with the traumas of active alcoholism. It isn’t a good idea to wallow in misery, but as the seasons change and summer drinking...

What are the most impactful steps we can take to decrease the massive amount of abusive drinking that is condoned in our culture? Prohibition didn’t work, but are there other legal, taxation, media/marketing or educational...

The decision to stay or to go when in an alcoholic relationship seems to rely on the ability of the drinker to find sobriety. Because humans can’t change other people, it feels like the spouse...

Bridget stayed with her husband as his drinking destroyed his health and their marriage. The lies, the hiding and the gaslighting is something with which so many loved ones of alcoholics are familiar. She made...

The indicators of the increase in bad behavior are everywhere. The airline industry, big city crime statistics, and alcohol industry consumption numbers all correlate to paint a concerning picture of the aftermath of COVID isolation....