Rise Above with Kevin Lanning

Marina Lacerda is a survivor, an advocate, and a mother who spent most of her life carrying pain she was told to keep quiet. Now 6.5 years sober and one year into publicly breaking her silence, she sat down with Kevin to talk about all of it. Marina was born in Brazil and raised largely in New York. From around the age of nine, she was sexually abused by her stepfather — abuse that continued for years while she was made to feel she had to stay silent to keep her family together. That wound shaped everything that followed. By her teens she had found the nightlife, and by adulthood she was self-medicating the trauma with cocaine and, eventually, a devastating Xanax addiction — at her worst taking 15 to 20 pills a day and going through dangerous withdrawals before she finally got clean. The turning point wasn't just getting sober. It was finding her voice. In the last year Marina has connected with other survivors, spoken publicly for the first time, and become an advocate determined to make sure other people — especially children — don't suffer in the silence she was trapped in. She's candid about the guilt, the complicated relationship with her mother, the long road of recovery, and why service to others has become the center of her life. This is a hard, brave conversation about surviving abuse, the addiction that so often follows it, and the freedom that comes from finally telling the truth. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bob Zbikowski wanted to be one thing his whole life: a cop, like his dad. He got there — nearly two decades in law enforcement, including years as a K-9 handler. From the outside he was living his dream. Underneath, he was a first responder carrying the weight of thousands of traumatic scenes with no healthy way to put it down, and a brain wired for addiction he didn't yet understand. Bob is open about the two things that took him under. First, gambling — when New Jersey legalized sports betting, what started as a little action turned into compulsively running his account to zero night after night, in debt by morning, doing it all over again. And then, after being prescribed Adderall for ADHD, a shortage left him without his medication — and someone offered him meth, a chemical cousin of the very prescription he'd lost. He describes it as "Adderall times a hundred," and it pulled him into a secret addiction he carried while still on the job. He's candid about the impossible bind so many first responders face: the fear that asking for help means losing everything — the career, the income, the identity — and the culture that told him to shut up, take the next call, and never show emotion. Eventually it all came apart, and Bob got sober in 2025. Now he's turned his pain into purpose with the Behind the Badge Project, using his voice to reach cops, firefighters, and first responders who are silently struggling — before self-destruction, before it's too late. Because the first responder suicide rate is staggering, and Bob believes the system has to make it okay to raise your hand and ask for help. This is a powerful conversation about addiction behind the badge, the cost of carrying trauma in silence, and finding a new identity in service. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This one is different. Addiction is a family disease — it doesn't just happen to the addict, it happens to everyone who loves them. So in this episode, you'll hear both sides. First from Brandon, who nearly lost his life to it — and then from his wife Katelyn, who lived every moment of it beside him. Brandon Cheek looked like he had it all — a successful business, a family, a life built with his college sweetheart. Underneath was crippling depression and anxiety that a Xanax prescription turned into years of destruction. He walks through the spiral: drinking from the moment he woke up, sipping vodka slowly just to keep it down, multiple trips to rehab, staying merely abstinent without ever doing the deeper work, losing the family business, and the suicidal ideation that convinced him there was no way out. Now two years sober and grounded in his faith, he's honest about all of it — including the damage he did to the people he loved most. Then Katelyn joins. As she puts it, loving someone through addiction is not for the weak. A self-described fixer and problem-solver, she tried to control and rescue her way through it — hiding it from everyone, white-knuckling his recovery, getting her hopes up and crushed with every relapse — until she realized in therapy that she had become just as sick with codependency. She speaks with staggering honesty about learning to separate "sober Brandon" from "addict Brandon," about mentally rehearsing his funeral, about surviving the betrayals of active addiction, and about the moment unconditional love and real boundaries finally broke the cycle. Together, they're a picture of what's possible on the other side — a marriage that didn't just survive, but rebuilt. If you love someone in addiction, or you're the one struggling, this conversation is for you. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the biggest fears I had before going to treatment — all five times — was the unknown. What is it actually like inside? Will I be comfortable? Will they get to the root of what's really going on? So in this vlog, I'm taking you behind the doors of a rehab to show you exactly what it's like. I got a full tour of Caron's Keele Center in Delray Beach, Florida — one of their two inpatient facilities — and honestly, it feels more like a five-star hotel than what most people picture when they think "rehab." I'll show you the private rooms, the outdoor space and nature that's so important for healing, and the dining hall (the food genuinely blew me away). But the real difference is what happens on the inside: I sat down with Allie, a clinical supervisor who's also a Caron alum with 12 years sober, to talk about how they treat addiction as a brain disease — using brain mapping, neuro-restorative care, and diagnostic clarity to actually get to the root of the problem instead of guessing. The thing that's always meant the most to me about Caron is that they treat the patient like family and the family like the patient. You'll hear that firsthand from a staff member who lost her sister to this disease, was cared for by Caron through that grief, and changed her entire career to come work here. Whether you're thinking about taking that first step yourself, worried about a loved one, or just curious what treatment really looks like — this one's for you. Asking for help is scary. My hope is that seeing what's behind the doors makes it a little less so. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

7-OH is one of the most talked-about drugs in the country right now — a concentrated kratom derivative sold legally at smoke shops and gas stations, often pitched as a natural remedy for pain. Isabella "Izzy" Saravi is a 26-year-old who got caught by it, and she's here to warn other young people what it actually does. Izzy grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, in a chaotic home — her parents divorced young, her father was, in her words, an abusive narcissist who wanted little to do with her, and she carried low self-worth into a string of unhealthy relationships. She found escape first in alcohol, then Molly and the festival scene, then ketamine — the drug that became her "I've arrived" moment and eventually pulled her into paranoia, psychosis, and daily use. Then a smoke shop employee handed her 7-OH, telling her it was a natural, over-the-counter fix for her pain. She had no idea she'd just been given what amounts to a legal opioid. She's remarkably honest about what followed: the fast physical addiction, nodding off standing up, the hundreds of dollars a day, and the withdrawals almost no one warns you about — not just the flu-like sickness, but a psychological crash so severe she became suicidal and couldn't be left alone. This episode goes deep on the parts of the 7-OH crisis that aren't in the headlines yet. Now sober alongside her boyfriend, Izzy is part of a growing wave of young people rejecting the party lifestyle — and putting a face to a danger sitting on smoke shop shelves across the country. If you or someone you love is using kratom or 7-OH because it's "legal," this is the episode to hear. This Episode Is Sponsored By NOCD A lot of people who've done the hard work of getting sober still struggle with unwanted, intrusive thoughts that bring guilt and shame and keep coming back. For some people, that may be OCD — and in recovery it often goes unrecognized for years because it can look like anxiety or feel like part of the process. The good news is it's treatable. NOCD is the world's leading provider of OCD treatment, with licensed therapists who specialize in ERP (exposure and response prevention) therapy through live, face-to-face virtual sessions, plus support between sessions. NOCD is covered by insurance for over 138 million Americans. 👉 Book a free 15-minute call at: https://www.treatmyocd.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jared Watson is the frontman of the Dirty Heads — the voice behind songs millions of people have sung along to. He's also, in his own words, an alcoholic who spent more than a decade fighting to stay sober while the disease kept pulling him back. Jared grew up in Southern California surf and skate culture, born in a beach apartment to "cool parents," raised in a world where everything — surfing, fishing, good times, bad times — came with a drink. He didn't know until much later how deeply alcoholism ran in his family, or how genetically loaded the deck was against him. He talks candidly about roughly ten years of back-and-forth sobriety: getting a year, getting a few months, telling himself he could use just one night, and watching that one night stretch into another lost stretch. The bottom underneath the bottom came recently. What was meant to be a single night in Vegas spiraled into the worst year and a half of his life — three rehab stays in six months, full-blown withdrawals within thirty minutes of a drink, pacing himself through a three-week tour just to function, and begging for beers on the flight to treatment. He's raw about what it's like to go through that as a father, the shame that comes with it, and the "feel free" kratom products he calls dangerous and dark. Now a few months into his most honest sobriety yet, Jared has given up the "1%" he always held onto — and he's here sharing it while it's still fresh, because someone else needs to hear it. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tyler Bowers grew up in Pennsylvania with what looked, from the outside, like everything — a nice house with a pool, travel baseball, a mom who gave him whatever he needed. But underneath was a kid carrying guilt for his parents' divorce, a complicated relationship with a father who battled his own addiction, and an entitlement he now names as the core of his disease. It started with weed, then a Xanax at a party that blacked him out — and instead of scaring him, it became the thing he wanted to chase. A baseball injury and rotator cuff surgery introduced him to opioids and the euphoria of morphine, and from there his addiction took off. Cocaine became the great love of his life; he describes doing eight balls alone and using around the clock through a chaotic college and fraternity chapter. There were DUIs, a totaled car he somehow parked in the driveway, a night he punched a police officer and ran, and thirteen separate trips to treatment. What finally changed wasn't the consequences — it was surrender. Tyler is honest about how long he faked the steps, manipulated the system, and leaned on his mom to fix everything, until a counselor called him out, a breakup cracked him open, and he cried for the first time in his sobriety. Now sixteen months sober, he works in the treatment field, sponsors other men, and has rebuilt his relationships with his mom and sister from the ground up. This is a story about entitlement, surrender, and the truth that addiction doesn't care how good your childhood looked. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

7-OH is one of the most dangerous drugs almost nobody understands yet — a concentrated kratom derivative sold legally at gas stations and smoke shops, often marketed as a harmless supplement. Ian Crawford is here to tell you what it nearly cost him. A surfer, lacrosse player, and Florida kid whose athletic future was derailed by concussions, Ian had moved through years of experimenting — weed, psychedelics, the festival scene, cocaine — while mostly holding it together. Then a friend mentioned kratom, and Ian picked some up at a smoke shop, figuring anything sold legally over the counter couldn't be that serious. He'd taken it only a handful of times. Then came the night that changed everything. Ian and a close friend each took 7-OH, and over the course of the evening his friend stopped responding. Ian describes performing CPR, clearing his friend's airway, and calling for help as his own body was shutting down — until he collapsed in front of the arriving officers and flatlined. Both of them ended up in comas. By what Ian can only call a miracle, they both survived. Now four months clean, Ian has turned that night into a mission. He's testified before his city council, shared his story with local news, and become one of the few young voices putting a face to the 7-OH crisis and pushing to get it off the shelves. This episode is essential viewing for anyone — especially young people — who's been told these products are safe because they're legal. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Justin Gurland grew up the oldest of four in a close, loving New Jersey family — family dinners every night, a dad who was a doctor and coached his teams, a childhood that looked idyllic from the outside. But Justin always felt a little different, a little black-sheep-ish, and from the very first time he drank at 13, he'd found the feeling he didn't know he was missing. By college at the University of Vermont, the partying had curdled into something darker. His whole crew got hooked on opiates, and Justin moved seamlessly from OxyContin to heroin. He moved to New York City telling himself the problem was geographic — that he'd learn to "drink like a gentleman" — and instead spent the next few years in the darkest, most isolated stretch of his life, secretly using IV heroin while keeping up appearances just enough to avoid the alarms. It all came down when his sister walked into his bedroom and found his works out in the open, and weeks later, when his doctor father spotted the abscess on his hand. In one of the most powerful scenes he shares, Justin describes grabbing his dad by his white coat and telling him he needed him more than he ever had in his life. He detoxed that night and got sober in 2008. Eighteen years later, Justin has spent more than 15 years working in behavioral health — and recently took a leap of faith to build something that didn't exist: The Maze, a first-of-its-kind alcohol-free membership club in New York City, a place to find community and connection without alcohol at the center. This is a story about isolation and belonging, the families who love us through it, and building the thing you always wished existed. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lauryn Boorstein grew up in the Poconos in a home full of chaos — a painful divorce, a father she loved who struggled with his own demons, and an autistic brother she appointed herself the protector of before she was old enough to protect anyone. She fell in love with the lifestyle — the fighting, the adrenaline, the not-caring — long before she understood she was an addict. By her early twenties, crack and heroin had taken over. Her story is one of hard crashes, literal and otherwise. A stolen-car wreck as a teenager. A later accident where she describes her body shutting down at the wheel, crashing into a tree, and walking away convinced God had spared her. Multiple treatment stays, a devastating injury that left her unable to walk for years, and the losses that piled up — including a boyfriend early in her sobriety who overdosed the night she begged him to get help. But this is ultimately a story about what recovery makes possible. Lauryn got sober in 2017, and in one of the most bittersweet gifts of her life, her father — sick himself — got to watch her pick up her one-year medallion before he passed away the very next day. In the years since, she's become a devoted single mother to her daughter, worked the steps, sponsored other women, and built a thriving national business from the ground up. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Danny O'Connor was an Olympic-team boxer and professional fighter from Boston who spent ten years chasing a world championship. From the outside, he was elite, disciplined, relentless. What almost no one knew was that the same all-or-nothing drive that made him a champion was also fueling a secret, life-threatening eating disorder. It started when he was a teenage wrestler, learning to manipulate his body to make weight, with no education about nutrition and no idea what he was doing to himself. That same pattern followed him into a pro boxing career fought entirely in one weight class — and over the years it grew into a full-blown, medically diagnosed eating disorder, one of the deadliest mental illnesses there is. Danny is unflinching about what it cost him: his health, trips to the ICU, and ultimately his shot at a world title in 2018, when his body finally gave out on the biggest night of his life. He also opens up about the chaotic period after he lost wrestling as a teenager — leaving home, a string of arrests, and a judge's warning that stopped him cold — and how he found his way back through boxing, and eventually into recovery. Today Danny is a keynote speaker, an author, and a devoted husband and father who brings his kids along on his book tours. His story is a powerful, rarely-told look at eating disorders in men, the hidden cost of elite sports, and what it takes to finally choose your life over the thing you built it around. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⚠️ The views in this episode are Dr. Teralyn Sell's professional opinions and personal experience. This conversation is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Never start, stop, or change a prescribed medication without consulting your doctor — stopping some medications suddenly can be dangerous. Dr. Teralyn Sell is a psychotherapist and PhD with a background that spans maximum-security prisons, addiction treatment, and nearly 15 years in private practice. In this wide-ranging conversation, she shares a perspective the addiction and mental health worlds are only beginning to reckon with: that many people leaving addiction behind are being moved straight into long-term dependency on psychiatric medication — and that no one is being told the full cost. Drawing on her own seven years on antidepressants and her clinical work, Dr. Teralyn digs into the emotional numbing and sexual side effects that often go unmentioned, why she believes the popular "chemical imbalance" explanation for depression isn't supported by the research, why she considers coming off SSRIs harder for many people than detoxing from heroin, and how the same "you'll need this forever" message shows up in both psychiatric medication and long-term Suboxone use. She also shares what she's seen actually help the brain heal — nutrition, sleep, movement, connection, and trauma work — and why she believes in the brain's capacity to recover. Whether you agree with all of it or none of it, it's a thought-provoking conversation about questions worth asking your own doctor. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On paper, Emma Gray had every advantage — a New York City upbringing, elite schools, a spot at Harvard, and eventually a six-year finance career. Underneath it, she was a person who, in her own words, couldn't sit with an uncomfortable feeling for more than a moment without needing to escape it. Emma started with alcohol, which never agreed with her, and then found the thing that did: first weed, then the downers that would take over her life — Oxy and Xanax. She describes the exact mechanism of her addiction with unusual clarity: the second she felt relief from a drug, she was already terrified of losing it and reaching for more. That pattern followed her to Harvard, where she partied instead of studying, plagiarized her way through assignments, looked administrators in the eye and denied it, and was ultimately asked to leave. Her rock bottom came quietly — 72 hours in bed, not answering her phone, her family convinced she was overdosing. She got sober in 2015 after treatment at Caron and an intensive therapy program that, as she puts it, rewired her. The first year was small and hard: sober living, meetings, reality TV, knitting, learning to read a full page of a book again, waiting for the joy to come back. It did. Emma went back to Harvard, graduated, built her career, and recently left it to pursue what's next — all on the foundation of a sobriety she's had for nearly a decade. This is an honest, self-aware conversation about high-functioning addiction, the delusion that keeps us sick, and what it actually takes to build a life worth staying sober for. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

7-OH is one of the most talked-about drugs in the country right now — a concentrated kratom derivative sold legally at smoke shops and gas stations, marketed as a natural supplement. Bari Leigh is here to tell you what it actually did to her. Bari's story starts long before 7-OH. A gifted athlete and touring singer-songwriter from a family that looked, for a while, like the American dream, she survived a childhood shattered by her father's near-fatal accident and a series of profound traumas that she carries with hard-won honesty. Pain — physical and emotional, compounded by real medical conditions and surgeries — became the thread that led her to opioids: Percocet, OxyContin, and years of a dependence she fought through two pregnancies. When she finally got off the pills, she found what she thought was a harmless, natural alternative on a smoke shop shelf. Kratom became 7-OH, and within six months she describes being, in her own words, a shell of herself — nodding off like she was on heroin, going through brutal withdrawals every morning, hiding it from her husband and kids, and watching her personality disappear. It's a powerful, first-hand look at a substance most people still don't understand. Now sober since January 2026, Bari is speaking out to warn others about 7-OH and to show that recovery is possible even after the hardest things imaginable. If you or someone you love is using kratom or 7-OH and telling yourself it's fine because it's legal, this is the episode to hear. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On paper, Ava Garcia was the kid who had it together — straight-A student, captain of the varsity basketball team, an artist, the responsible firstborn. Underneath it, she was raising herself in the chaos of two parents in active addiction, competing for attention with a younger brother who needed all of it, and by 13 she was already using. She sold Xanax to fund an opioid habit while keeping her grades near-perfect, convinced that as long as she was checking every box, she couldn't really be an addict. Ava's story is a decade-plus odyssey that most people wouldn't believe: opioids that gave way to a ten-year battle with an eating disorder running in parallel, a chapter living abroad in Israel with a partner deep in his own addiction, alcohol that took over at the end, and a series of treatment centers and relapses. She's remarkably, sometimes darkly funny about it — but she doesn't flinch from the hardest parts, including the night she nearly lost her life and the rock bottom that followed. What finally turned it was a moment of total desperation, a prayer, and a phone call she describes as nothing short of a miracle — her mother showing up at her door to take her to treatment. Now four years sober, Ava has her life, her health, and herself back, and she's using her story to reach the people who are still where she was. This is a raw, honest, and ultimately hopeful reminder that no one is too far gone. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the outside, Laura Bonczek was the picture of success — a well-known family in her Connecticut town, a teacher mother, a father in long-term recovery, good grades, sports, and eventually a master's in social work. She built a career as a therapist and rose to clinical director of a substance abuse treatment facility. And the entire time, she was secretly living the exact disease she was being paid to treat. Laura's addiction started young — alcohol and weed at 12, ecstasy and opioids in high school, hydrocodone giving way to the "thirties" she'd chase for years. She was, in her own words, high-functioning: seven years of college straight through while using, always getting just enough done to convince herself she wasn't really an addict because she wasn't "living under a bridge." She managed it through a cocktail of prescribed Adderall, Xanax, opioids, and alcohol — until she couldn't. She's brutally honest in this episode about the parts that are hardest to admit: being a therapist counseling people on their addictions while hiding her own, discovering kratom through her own clients, getting Suboxone delivered to her mailbox, being pulled over by the DEA on a work errand, and the day her own coworkers — many in recovery themselves — sat her down and refused to let her lie her way out one more time. One of them, a mother who'd nearly lost her own kids, told Laura she was going to lose her daughter. That was the moment the fog broke. Now four years sober, Laura is a licensed clinical social worker and clinical director doing the work honestly — using everything she survived to help others find the way out. This is a powerful story about the high-functioning addict nobody suspects, and the moment of clarity that changes everything. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On paper, Tatum Love was thriving — a bright kid from New Hampshire who lived the all-American athletic life and went on to an Ivy League education at Cornell. Underneath it, she'd been fighting something since childhood: a family history of addiction and disordered eating that, after her parents' divorce, found somewhere to take hold. Tatum's story is a powerful reminder that addiction doesn't care where you come from or how much promise you have. Her struggle began not with drugs or alcohol — which she didn't touch until she was 19 — but with the way she used control and food to escape what she was feeling. From there it moved into stimulants she first used to manage her eating, then alcohol, then psychedelics, until the straight-A Ivy League student was living out of her car with a few dollars to her name. She speaks with remarkable honesty about the hardest chapters: the decision, in active addiction, to let her mother raise her baby daughter; the depths she reached far from home; and the moment she finally chose treatment. Now 18 months clean and sober, Tatum has her life, her health, and her relationship with her daughter back — and she's sharing all of it so someone else knows they're not too far gone. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Back by popular demand — Karina Miesner (IG @karina.mies) returns for our second Q&A, where Kevin and Karina answer the questions the audience asks most in the comments. Two people with real long-term recovery talking honestly about the stuff people actually want to know. In this episode they get into: how you know if you're actually an alcoholic or addict versus someone who just drinks too much, whether you can have a problem if you don't use every day, what's harder — getting sober or learning to live sober, how to handle grief and hard times without picking up, whether you can stay sober and still behave the way you did in active addiction, whether two people in recovery can have a healthy relationship, what to do when someone won't forgive you even after you've changed, and why so many people relapse when things are going well. Honest, practical, and straight from lived experience — no scripts, just two people sharing what actually worked for them. Karina will be back to share her full story again soon — drop a comment if you want to hear it. And if you have questions for the next Q&A, leave them in the comments and we'll bring them to the next round. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alexa Cunniff never really had a childhood. Raised like what she calls "a gypsy kid" — living in hotels and trucks, on the run from process servers, never setting foot in a classroom until sixth grade — she learned to read off an atlas and grew up around addiction on every side of her family. She was drinking and using by 12, in the clubs by 15, and chasing the "hard stuff" she'd heard glorified her whole life. Her story runs through a decade-plus of addiction: cocaine and Xanax as a teenager, two kids by 21, and then the drug that truly took her under — Adderall. She describes eating eight to ten pills a day, dropping to 134 pounds, and finally crossing into meth (introduced, unforgettably, by a stranger driving a street sweeper) and then heroin and speedballs. She lost everything, ended up living in her car, and survived things she says by all rights should have landed her in prison or worse. What finally broke through came on Halloween of 2021 — after a terrifying assault and a night sitting outside a detox for hours waiting to be let in. A clinician she'd never met refused to let her sign herself out, told her she was worth fighting for, and it changed everything. Alexa got sober that day. She later went to work as a peer recovery specialist for the very organization that saved her, and today she's a therapist helping others find the way out. Alexa Cunniff never really had a childhood. Raised like what she calls "a gypsy kid" — living in hotels and trucks, on the run from process servers, never setting foot in a classroom until sixth grade — she learned to read off an atlas and grew up around addiction on every side of her family. She was drinking and using by 12, in the clubs by 15, and chasing the "hard stuff" she'd heard glorified her whole life.Her story runs through a decade-plus of addiction: cocaine and Xanax as a teenager, two kids by 21, and then the drug that truly took her under — Adderall. She describes eating eight to ten pills a day, dropping to 134 pounds, and finally crossing into meth (introduced, unforgettably, by a stranger driving a street sweeper) and then heroin and speedballs. She lost everything, ended up living in her car, and survived things she says by all rights should have landed her in prison or worse.What finally broke through came on Halloween of 2021 — after a terrifying assault and a night sitting outside a detox for hours waiting to be let in. A clinician she'd never met refused to let her sign herself out, told her she was worth fighting for, and it changed everything. Alexa got sober that day. She later went to work as a peer recovery specialist for the very organization that saved her, and today she's a therapist helping others find the way out. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the outside, Cassidy Matone had it all together — a makeup artist and bikini bodybuilder from Long Island with her own business. Addiction doesn't discriminate. What started as a single Roxy a friend handed her "to help her sleep" turned into a full-blown opioid addiction, then counterfeit fentanyl pills, and eventually a needle. Her story runs from the corporate office where a boss left a Roxy on her desk like a morning coffee, through rehabs and relapses, to the streets of Kensington in Philadelphia — one of the epicenters of the opioid crisis. She's unflinchingly honest about the depths: shooting heroin and cocaine together, drug-induced psychosis, and a rock bottom in a trap house that finally broke through. Getting clean nearly killed her — her detox was so severe she went into seizures and was placed in a medically-induced coma for days. Today Cassidy is over a year sober, has her own apartment for the first time in a decade, and is rebuilding a life she thought was gone. A raw reminder that no one is too far gone. This Episode Is Sponsored By NOCDA lot of people who've done the hard work of getting sober still struggle with unwanted, intrusive thoughts that bring guilt and shame and keep coming back. For some people, that may be OCD — and in recovery it often goes unrecognized for years because it can look like anxiety or feel like part of the process. The good news is it's treatable. NOCD is the world's leading provider of OCD treatment, with licensed therapists who specialize in ERP (exposure and response prevention) therapy through live, face-to-face virtual sessions, plus support between sessions. NOCD is covered by insurance for over 138 million Americans. 👉 Book a free 15-minute call at: https://www.treatmyocd.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices