Let The Journey Begin

This week, Jason (in the middle of newborn baby mode) and Hilary are joined by Kyle Purschell. Descending from a long line of alcoholics and addicts, Kyle believes he was genetically destined to become one himself. His mother left when he was a young child and his father was always battling his own demons, creating a void he would always try to fill with outside substances. Additionally, growing up and being a part of the "cool kids group" in high school who only cared about partying, Kyle got to the point where all he lived for was bodyboarding and fun. Things progressed rapidly from weed and alcohol to eventual heroin addiction in his early 20's, a drug he considered to be his God and everything he had ever been looking for. Things finally took a turn when what he used to consider fun, was no longer fun anymore. He recalls a particular event whilst lying in bed, dope sick off heroin, no longer wanting to feel this kind of sickness anymore. Soon after, he reached out to a recently sober friend (ironically the same friend that turned him onto heroin in the first place) and began his journey into sobriety. Today, after three years, Kyle is grateful to be alive and is always amazed by all the positive things that have revealed themselves to him. He stresses the biggest thing someone can do needing help is to have faith and reach out. Also, staying humble and staying grateful has been his mantra throughout the journey and his action for those listening would be to simply "suit up and show up."

Instagram: @k_purschell

Facebook: Kyle Purschell

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Malek Vossough joins Hilary and Jason this week to talk about how his recovery took him from the streets of skid row in Los Angeles to Santa Monica. Malek grew up with a passion and curiosity for music, but this love was interrupted when he started high school and developed a "social life". Malek wanted to fit in with the "cool" kids and latched onto smoking and drinking to connect with them. He discusses how he was raised by a single mother who couldn't provide enough discipline to prevent him from deviating from the straight and narrow path. It wasn't until he turned 18, that he discovered he and his mother were homeless and that his father was an addict. He went on to discover how much of his own addictive personality traits were ingrained and passed down from his father and his own struggles. Malek then began to realize that his drug and alcohol use prevented him from being helpful and that he was ultimately just a distraction. After reaching his lowest point, he decided he needed to turn his life around and get sober. Today, Malek finds great joy in helping others obtain sobriety and is able to use his musical talents to help reach those in treatment centers all over the world.

For more information on the Red Songbird Foundation, please visit:

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Breezy Nowlan, founder and CEO of Taste Recovery, joins Hilary and Alex (filling in for Jason) this week to discuss her journey into sobriety and how she came to create her business. From an early age, Breezy utilized alcohol as a coping mechanism for her stage fright and anxiety, so she thought. However, she eventually discovered that she was really using alcohol as a means to survive. Things began to take a turn when she experienced a blackout in front of her father who then suggested she seek help. Very hesitant at first and in her own stage of denial, she finally admitted herself into treatment as she understood that if she didn't, this disease may kill her. Breezy has been sober ever since she truly embraced treatment and credits prayer and meditation, among many other things, as the keys to her success.

Breezy founded Taste Recovery out of a negative experience with a treatment facility in the beginning stages of her recovery. Taste Recovery is an app and web based sober living directory and marketplace platform that allows users to search for the best sober living facilities in the country. Breezy believes treatment really does work and for this to be possible she expresses that the "fit" needs to be right for each individual and that every sober living facility needs to display full transparency. With Taste Recovery, users can search out and find exactly what they are looking for.

You can find Breezy and Taste Recovery at the links below:

tasterecovery.com

Instagram: instagram.com/tasterecovery

https://www.linkedin.com/in/breezy-nowlan-4374a078/

For more information on the Red Songbird Foundation, please visit:

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If you are interested in donating to the Red Songbird Foundation, please visit:

redsongbird.org/donate

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This week, certified life coach and owner of Unearthed Wellness Center, Patti Gunstream, joins Hilary and Jason to discuss her experience with loss and how she began her current profession. Patti lost her father as a teenager from a traumatic accident, followed shortly afterwards by several other close losses. She explains how, for almost five years after her father's death, her family did not even speak his name. She believes this was ultimately a coping mechanism for her mother as well as her siblings to stay strong and survive. However, this tactic ended up doing more damage than she realized as she had created unresolved trauma that would come up later down the road in her personal life. Fast forward to marriage counseling with her first husband years later, she talks about how they opened a "whole can of worms" pertaining to her unresolved trauma that she had never dealt with. Patti explains that there is usually a core issue within someone, and many branches then stem from that root resulting in further trauma and/or addictions. Patti describes how she was a "professional victim" while living with her unresolved trauma and that this is the mindset she tries to help her clients get out of. Today, Patti is in a place she could have never imagined herself in and she explains how, if she never would have worked on herself, she would have never been in the position to obtain all the wonderful things life has thrown her way since.

https://www.pattigunstreamlc.com/

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This week, actress, producer, director, author, and host of the mental health podcast, Secret Life, Brianne Davis joins Hilary and Jason to talk about her 10 years of recovery as a sex and love addict. Brianne explains that she didn't know what she wanted to be when she grew up, but she knew she loved the feeling of having power and having control over her peers. Before she knew it, she would ruin good relationships and friendships in the quest for this "high" she received from the attention and validation of others. Brianne stresses how you can still be a sex and love addict even if you have not experienced abuse, multiple partners, or even a one-night stand. Ultimately, if you are continually making choices that are a detriment to your own life in a quest for love and acceptance, there may be an underlying issue. Today, Brianne discusses how after years of therapy she feels a much better sense of self and no longer requires validation from people and partners around her. Brianne provides a great deal of insight in this week's episode and sheds light on relationship issues that may be overlooked daily.

You can find Brianne and her book, Secret Life of a Hollywood Sex & Love Addict, at the links below:

https://briannedavis.com/

Instagram: instagram.com/thebriannedavis

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@the.briannedavis

https://secretlifenovel.com/

You can also find Brianne's podcast, Secret Life, on Apple Podcasts in addition to all major podcast platforms.

For more information on the Red Songbird Foundation, please visit:

redsongbird.org

If you are interested in donating to the Red Songbird Foundation, please visit:

redsongbird.org/donate

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Paul Alexander is the founder and CEO of Northbound Treatment Services in Southern California. Like many teenagers do, Paul began experimenting with alcohol in his teenage years and he immediately knew that he loved the feeling. A few years later, after getting very interested in existentialism, he began experimenting with harder substances which eventually led him to opiates, specifically heroin. Soon after, Paul found himself addicted to the substance. He was able to keep the balancing act of going to college and maintaining a heroin habit together for a few years, but the drug finally took over. He was bouncing around from city to city, living in one seedy place after another, until he finally realized he needed to get help or he would end up like the other addicts that he surrounded himself with. He had gotten to such a low point in his life that he was willing to do literally anything to not go back to the lifestyle he was living. Today, Paul finds great joy in helping others obtain sobriety and as the founder and CEO of Northbound Treatment Services, he can do just that. In recovery, he now realizes how great life can be and how important it is to be present. As a friend once told him in referencing sobriety, "why just eat the cherry on top, when you can enjoy the whole sundae."

We also celebrate a very special milestone, in that Hilary is now officially 24 years sober!

NorthboundTreatment.com

For more information on the Red Songbird Foundation, please visit:

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If you are interested in donating to the Red Songbird Foundation, please visit:

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This week, Alex Thomsen joins Jason and Alex (filling in for Hilary) to discuss his journey in sobriety. Alex grew up not having any big aspirations or career goals and simply lived life waiting for the "next thing." However, deep down he knew there was always a piece of him that was trying to please his father and one of these expectations was that he would attend college. He did eventually go to college and began cramming as much drinking and partying into his life as he could. Unfortunately, he never considered it a problem until much later down the road. Alex got to the point in his life in which he had nobody close around him and he was waking up in the middle of the night for a "fix." As fate would have it, somebody did come into his life that would change everything. Alex has always been a very active gentleman; swimming, biking, but especially running on the beach. One particular day, he was running the beach and struck up a conversation with another runner who mentioned he was sober. As fate would have it, this was the catalyst that would begin his sobriety journey. This fellow runner on the beach not only provided a blueprint for Alex to go after sobriety, but also became a longtime friend. Whether it is fate, divine intervention, or whatever you want to call it, Alex discusses how you never know what the world has in store for you. For him, it took just one specific interaction to change his life. Today, Alex explains why he is extraordinarily happy with his life now and keeping a journal has really helped put his sobriety journey into perspective over the years.

For more information on the Red Songbird Foundation, please visit:

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If you are interested in donating to the Red Songbird Foundation, please visit:

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New episode every Thursday!

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This week, Jason and Alex, filling in for Hilary, are joined by Satch Selden, the Director of Business Development & Admissions for Dream Recovery in Costa Mesa, CA. Jason always likes to stress that the disease of addiction does not discriminate and Satch is a true example of this. Satch grew up in a well-off household in which both parents were Ivy League graduates with very respectable careers. Money was never an issue, his home-life was great, but Satch still found his way to opiates at the age of 18. He got his wisdom teeth removed and was prescribed painkillers to help, but what he found though, was that he loved the way these painkillers made him feel. Things quickly escalated into harder drugs, including heroin. Satch explains how he felt so much pressure from an early age due to his parents' success and hated the idea that he had to have everything in his life mapped out and this is where the drugs came in handy. He no longer cared what people thought and no longer worried about peer recognition while he was high…that was until the drugs stopped working. He finally reached out for help after an attempted suicide overdose, realizing the drugs were doing him in. Today, six years of sobriety later, he explains how his life has done a full 180. Satch discusses how a lot of therapy/self-care work and learning to love himself has been the key to his sobriety. He believes that the more you learn to love yourself, the less you will feel the need to pick up the drink or drug to mask those feelings of inadequacy. Finally, he leaves Jason and Alex with a simple message that was taught to him in sobriety: give yourself a hug.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/all_satchs_fault/?hl=en

https://dreamrecovery.com/

For more information on the Red Songbird Foundation, please visit:

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If you are interested in donating to the Red Songbird Foundation, please visit:

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New episode every Thursday!

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Russell Howard, co-founder and head composer of Signature Tracks, joins Jason and Alex, filling in for Hilary, to talk about his rise in the music industry as well as his battle with substance abuse along the way. From an early age, Russ knew that music was his calling. He began writing raps and producing beats at the age of 12, and later, with the help of high school friend, Kobe Bryant, he found himself immersed in the Philadelphia music scene. However, as his career in the music industry became more serious, so did his drug use. Drinking and smoking weed were the start of everything, but eventually it evolved into ecstasy, GHB, speed, and cocaine as these drugs finally made him feel "free." His drug usage led to paranoia, lying to loved ones, and waking up handcuffed, among many other things, and Russ finally got help when he realized the drugs were now controlling him and his life. Russ always asks himself, "free" from what when it came to drugs, and it was finding the answer to this question that helped him truly get to the root of his addiction. Today, after 19 years of sobriety, life is much better than he could have imagined and he uses his experiences to help those just beginning their sobriety journey by making them more comfortable sharing. He stresses that, although we are all unique and have our own story, we as people are much more similar than we think, and this relatability is what he tries to convey.

instagram.com/rwhofficial

For more information on the Red Songbird Foundation, please visit:

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If you are interested in donating to the Red Songbird Foundation, please visit:

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New episode every Thursday!

Check us out on YouTube every Friday! Let The Journey Begin Podcast

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Gratitude Lodge's Andrew Schaffer joins Hilary and Alex this week to talk about treatment and how he ultimately became sober. Growing up an insecure kid yearning for camaraderie, Andrew thought that using drugs and alcohol would lead to acceptance by his peers. At the age of 13, Andrew's feelings of insecurity were exacerbated when he endured a terrible sexual trauma. At this point in his life, he began looking for a solution to help him cope with his demons. Later down the road, when he took his first real drink, he knew this was the answer he had been looking for all along. Unfortunately, Andrew's alcohol and drug use got out of control and led to hurting close friends, going months without remembering what he had done, and losing everything he had. After he hit "rock bottom," he knew he had to make a change and with the help (or "trickeration") of his brother, he started treatment and began to put his life back together. Today, Andrew is truly grateful for how sobriety has changed everything for him. People say sobriety can give you the best life imaginable, but he believes sobriety has given him all of that and more. Working in admissions and clinical outreach at Gratitude Lodge, Andrew hopes his story can be relatable to those that have gone through similar experiences and inspire courage in discussing trauma.

You can find Andrew at:

Email: [email protected]

Facebook: Andrew.Schaffer

For more information on the Red Songbird Foundation, please visit:

redsongbird.org

If you are interested in donating to the Red Songbird Foundation, please visit:

redsongbird.org/donate

New episode every Thursday!

Check us out on YouTube every Friday! Let The Journey Begin Podcast

Please subscribe, rate, and review!

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.