Alchemist Recovery Podcast

“Sobriety Is Boring”

Really?

I’ve noticed this sentiment has been showing up on social media lately, and I’ll admit, I get it. I bumped up against it in those first couple of years and I’ve had many people tell me they’ve experienced exactly the same. It’s common to hit some pretty quick plateaus of the, “Ok, I’ve stopped. Now what?” variety.

But here’s what I keep coming back to: what’s boring, exactly? Life?

Yup, there’s a lot to cover here. Because, as we know, stopping the active addiction is just the beginning.

Links referenced in this episode:

• continue reading on Substack here
• thesobershaman.com

Am I a shaman? It’s right there in the name but the answer might surprise you. 

In this episode, I dig into what the word “shaman” actually means, why I deliberately use it, and why I’m equally deliberate about saying I’m not one. 

From lineage, ancestors and sacred language to power loss, soul loss and spiritual intrusion, I share the path I do walk and why I’d rather teach you to be your own shaman than do the work for you.

Show Highlights

What a shaman actually is, Unpacking the real, traditional meaning of shamanism: lineage, sacred language, ritual, and the role of intermediary between people and spirit.

Why I use the word, but don’t claim the title. The intentional tension behind the name “The Sober Shaman” and why challenging preconceived notions is part of the work.

The three forms of shamanic disease. A breakdown of power loss, soul loss, and spiritual intrusion, and how they show up in addiction and trauma.

Teaching you to do it yourself. Why I believe the most powerful healing is the kind nobody can do for you, but it’s also the kind nobody can take away from you, either. And how I guide people to reclaim it.

This one is close to my heart, so I hope it sparks something in you too. 

Listen in, and let me know your thoughts. Don’t forget to like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and come find me on Substack and at www.thesobershaman.com.

In this episode, I ask a few questions that always seem to hit a nerve, reveal definitive opinions and ignite interesting conversation.

To begin, I start with, "What are the long term effects of Adderall?" 

There's a lot to look at there.

Then, I visit a question that I'm often asked, which is: "If I'm diagnosed with ADHD, prescribed Adderall by a licensed psychiatrist, and taking it as I should be, is this still an addiction?"

I take a look at these from a Chinese medicine perspective, which Adderall, and any amphetamine, is simply a form of Fire. Speed makes us go faster, and as is the nature of things that make us go faster, certain universal laws come into effect.

And the last one, which is something I ask of every prescription, "Where's the off ramp?" Which is my way of exploring when is enough going to be enough, the "problem" finally fixed, and we can stop taking the medicine.

These are the questions not enough people seem to be asking, which is why I'm kicking up the dirt here. It's a discussion that needs to keep being revisited. 

Episode #68: A Shamanic View of Illness

“There is no chemical solution to a spiritual problem.”

You’ve probably heard this one, as it’s one of the most quoted lines in recovery. Maybe you’ve even said it a few times yourself. But here’s the thing:

What exactly is the spiritual problem?

Because if we can’t name it and we can’t map it, then the saying is just a groovy bumper sticker. True, sure, but not particularly useful.

In this episode, I’ll be nailing down exactly what the spiritual problem is through an introduction to the core shamanic model of illness. It provides answers and gives us a solid framework for understanding addiction,

This isn’t one culture’s tradition or one religion’s perspective. It’s a structure that’s found on every continent of the world that points to the same three root causes for all disease. And when I applied these to addiction, something fit into place where nothing else had clicked before.

The shamanic map finally made sense of the spiritual territory.

The three reasons, in order:

* Power Loss — We are all born with spiritual help. Whatever you call it. That connection gets severed when the TAHL hits — the Trauma, Abuse, Heartbreak, and Loss that overwhelms every defense we have. Power Loss isn’t weakness. It’s a severed connection.

* Soul Loss — When the pain becomes too much to be present for, a piece of us leaves. Psychology calls this dissociation. Shamanism calls it Soul Loss. Basically the same thing, different language. That piece takes qualities with it, our innocence, trust & childlike-joy, and leaves a void where those blessings used to be.

* Spiritual Intrusion — The void doesn’t stay empty. It never does. Something moves in. It’s pain-fear-based, hungry, and perfectly fed by your drug of choice. This is the spell of addiction. And the only reason it works is because we believe the lie it tells us about who we are.

You don’t have to frame any of this in spiritual terms if that’s not your language. The concepts hold whether you call it a spirit, a belief, a pattern, or a spell. What matters is recognizing the sequence and understanding that recovery, at its core, is about reversing it.

Stop feeding the intrusion. Court your soul back. Reclaim your power.

That’s the treatment plan. And this episode is where it starts.

With Blessings,

Randal

Here’s the Alchemist Recovery Program’s complete and in-depth coverage of this material in Lesson #21: The Shamanic View of Illness.

“There is no chemical solution to a spiritual problem.”

You’ve probably heard this one, as it’s one of the most quoted lines in recovery. Maybe you’ve even said it a few times yourself. But here’s the thing:

What exactly is the spiritual problem?

Because if we can’t name it and we can’t map it, then the saying is just a groovy bumper sticker. True, sure, but not particularly useful.

In this episode, I’ll be nailing down exactly what the spiritual problem is through an introduction to the core shamanic model of illness. It provides answers and gives us a solid framework for understanding addiction,

This isn’t one culture’s tradition or one religion’s perspective. It’s a structure that’s found on every continent of the world that points to the same three root causes for all disease. And when I applied these to addiction, something fit into place where nothing else had clicked before.

The shamanic map finally made sense of the spiritual territory.

The three reasons, in order:

• Power Loss — We are all born with spiritual help. Whatever you call it. That connection gets severed when the TAHL hits — the Trauma, Abuse, Heartbreak, and Loss that overwhelms every defense we have. Power Loss isn’t weakness. It’s a severed connection.
• Soul Loss — When the pain becomes too much to be present for, a piece of us leaves. Psychology calls this dissociation. Shamanism calls it Soul Loss. Basically the same thing, different language. That piece takes qualities with it, our innocence, trust & childlike-joy, and leaves a void where those blessings used to be.
• Spiritual Intrusion — The void doesn’t stay empty. It never does. Something moves in. It’s pain-fear-based, hungry, and perfectly fed by your drug of choice. This is the spell of addiction. And the only reason it works is because we believe the lie it tells us about who we are.

You don’t have to frame any of this in spiritual terms if that’s not your language. The concepts hold whether you call it a spirit, a belief, a pattern, or a spell. What matters is recognizing the sequence and understanding that recovery, at its core, is about reversing it.

Stop feeding the intrusion. Court your soul back. Reclaim your power.

That’s the treatment plan. And this episode is where it starts.

With Blessings,

Randal

thesobershaman.com

Kevin O'Leary is making the rounds, and his case for the Stratos Hyperscale Data Center is polished, confident, and deeply unsettling. Not because he's lying — but because he's telling the truth about exactly what kind of world we're choosing to build.

In this episode, we pull apart the reasoning behind "we need this" and ask a harder question: need it for what, exactly? And according to whose values?

Some of O'Leary's foundational pillars — national security, medical advancement, and job creation — sound like progress. But look closer and you'll find the same engine running all three: fear. Fear of enemies. Fear of disease. Fear of falling behind. When fear is the foundation, the structure it builds is one of control, dependence, and hierarchy — not human flourishing.

We look at what it means to place data centers on top of farmland, possibly permanently. That isn't a neutral infrastructure decision — it's a declaration that our relationship to data is more important than our relationship to food. And when tech inevitably offers lab-grown food as the solution to the food problem it helped create, we'll have traded another living thread for a managed one.

We talk about medicine — and the empowered patient that this model of "advancement" continues to leave out of the equation. We talk about community — what Main Street actually gave us, and what we quietly surrendered when big business became the default form of human organization.

And we talk about power. Not the kind that flows through server farms, but the kind that flows through relationship — with nature, with neighbors, with your own body and choices.

Two kinds of power are on the table right now. One is being built with billions of dollars and the full force of fear. The other lives in the choices you make every single day.

Which one are you feeding?

Takeaways:

The "if we don't, our enemies will" argument behind Kevin O'Leary's Stratos Data Center is the same fear-based logic that drove the nuclear arms race — and it's still building the wrong world for the wrong reasons.

When we place data centers on farmland, we're making a values statement: that our relationship to technology matters more than our relationship to nourishing, living food.

Modern medicine's promise to "advance through AI" continues to disempower the patient — ignoring that the vast majority of chronic disease is lifestyle-dependent and entirely within each person's own control.

Big Business as community — built on competition, hierarchy, and dependence on billionaire infrastructure — is one model, not the only model; Main Street, reciprocity, and relationship-based commerce existed, and can exist again.

Every strand we hand over to a tech system — food, health, commerce, human connection — is another thread removed from the Web of Life, and the cost doesn't show up until the web starts to tear.

Links referenced in this episode:

substack.com / thesobershaman

randallyons.com

Kevin O'Leary is making the rounds, and his case for the Stratos Hyperscale Data Center is polished, confident, and deeply unsettling. Not because he's lying — but because he's telling the truth about exactly what kind of world we're choosing to build.

In this episode, we pull apart the reasoning behind "we need this" and ask a harder question: need it for what, exactly? And according to whose values?

Some of O'Leary's foundational pillars — national security, medical advancement, and job creation — sound like progress. But look closer and you'll find the same engine running all three: fear. Fear of enemies. Fear of disease. Fear of falling behind. When fear is the foundation, the structure it builds is one of control, dependence, and hierarchy — not human flourishing.

We look at what it means to place data centers on top of farmland, possibly permanently. That isn't a neutral infrastructure decision — it's a declaration that our relationship to data is more important than our relationship to food. And when tech inevitably offers lab-grown food as the solution to the food problem it helped create, we'll have traded another living thread for a managed one.

We talk about medicine — and the empowered patient that this model of "advancement" continues to leave out of the equation. We talk about community — what Main Street actually gave us, and what we quietly surrendered when big business became the default form of human organization.

And we talk about power. Not the kind that flows through server farms, but the kind that flows through relationship — with nature, with neighbors, with your own body and choices.

Two kinds of power are on the table right now. One is being built with billions of dollars and the full force of fear. The other lives in the choices you make every single day.

Which one are you feeding?

Takeaways:

• The "if we don't, our enemies will" argument behind Kevin O'Leary's Stratos Data Center is the same fear-based logic that drove the nuclear arms race — and it's still building the wrong world for the wrong reasons.
• When we place data centers on farmland, we're making a values statement: that our relationship to technology matters more than our relationship to nourishing, living food.
• Modern medicine's promise to "advance through AI" continues to disempower the patient — ignoring that the vast majority of chronic disease is lifestyle-dependent and entirely within each person's own control.
• Big Business as community — built on competition, hierarchy, and dependence on billionaire infrastructure — is one model, not the only model; Main Street, reciprocity, and relationship-based commerce existed, and can exist again.
• Every strand we hand over to a tech system — food, health, commerce, human connection — is another thread removed from the Web of Life, and the cost doesn't show up until the web starts to tear.

Links referenced in this episode:

• substack.com / thesobershaman
• randallyons.com

What if the problem with Ozempic isn’t the drug itself — but what it says about our relationship with hunger?

In this episode, I’m sharing my first take on one of the most loaded topics in wellness right now: Ozempic and addiction. And just for a heads-up, my angle might surprise you.

I hear people talk about Ozempic quieting “food noise” or reducing cravings. While that’s great, when I look at it through the lens of Chinese medicine and shamanic tradition, I see something different: a drug that solves hunger by treating hunger as the problem.

Here’s why that matters. Hunger isn’t just a body signal — it’s a sacred function. It’s our daily act of communion with the Earth, with nourishment, with life itself. When we chemically suppress that, we don’t just suppress cravings. We weaken the very muscle that allows us to say yes to what truly nourishes us.

And that, by the Alchemist Recovery definition, starts to look a lot like addiction — the patterned and repetitive use of any substance or action that attempts to fill a void, but instead reinforces the origins of the pattern.

We’ll walk through each element of that definition and apply it directly to Ozempic. We’ll talk about rituals of communion, the archetypal wound of disconnection from nature, and why…

your daily pill may have replaced your daily bread.

This is not medical advice. This is a perspective — one I hope sparks some open thinking & honest conversation.

Important discussions like…who makes the best stuffed noodle? Wontons vs. ravioli vs. pierogis. Let’s sit down, disagree, and figure it out together.

🎙️ The Sober Shaman Podcast — making the spiritual practical.

You can listen to the audio of this episode here:

he Sober Shaman Podcast #65

Addiction is Possesssion: A Modern Shamanic Take

Let’s clear up what we mean by possession. We can start with what it’s not, which is the sensationalized version we’ve been shown in the exorcism movies.

Overwhelmingly, and almost exclusively, that’s not the case.

So, what exactly is it?

What is doing the possessing?

Who and what is being possessed?

How do we unravel all of this?

And especially as it relates to our modern take on addiction?

That’s what we’ll be diving into and the questions we’ll be answering in today’s episode.

thesobershaman.com

Explore the nature of reality through the lens of psychedelics and shamanic journeys, and their potential in addiction recovery. Discover insights on how these experiences alter perception, foster trust with spirits, and support healing.

keywords:

reality, psychedelics, shamanic journey, addiction, consciousness, spiritual healing, perception, non-ordinary reality

key topics:

The nature of reality and perception

Differences between psychedelic and shamanic journeys

The role of trust and relationship with spirits

Impact of experiences on addiction beliefs

The importance of intention and partnership in journeys

sound bites

"Reality isn't as cut and dry as I thought it was."

"Psychedelics can help dissolve limiting beliefs."

"Both realities are true and valuable for healing."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Reality and Psychedelic Perspectives

01:21 Perception of Reality During Psychedelic Experiences

02:30 Living in Different Dimensions: From 2D to 3D to Higher Realms

04:10 Shamanic Journeys and the Experience of the Other

06:08 Differences Between Psychedelic and Shamanic Experiences

09:35 Control and Agency in Psychedelic vs. Shamanic Practices

11:57 Partnership and Trust with Spirit Guides

14:14 Thresholds, Dismemberment, and Transformation

15:27 Impact of Experiences on Identity and Beliefs

23:44 Psychedelics and the Dissolution of Limiting Beliefs

29:46 Using Shamanic Journeys for Specific Intentions

36:48 Integrating Multiple Realities for Healing and Growth

37:57 Conclusion and Future Directions for Healing with Psychedelics and Shamanism

Website - thesobershaman.com