Roads to Recovery

Steve Schlafman is a professional certified coach, angel investor, facilitator, speaker, former operator and former venture capitalist. He’s also a husband, a father and the founder of High Output, a boutique leadership development company based in New York. Steve joins our host and Halcyon Certified Peer Recovery Coach, James Cardamone to discuss his past struggles with addiction and his unique integral approach to recovery.   

Tricia Lewis is a speaker, encourager, host & creator of The Recovery Happy Hour Podcast. She is also co-founder of Sober by Southwest. She was a high functioning, successful, over-achiever who drank to black out on a regular basis. Her drinking was scary and unpredictable, and she went to great measures to hide it. On this episode, we dive deeper into her story and what early recovery looked like for her. Tricia’s sobriety date is November 14, 2016.

Shelly Weizman is the Associate Director of the Addiction and Public Policy Initiative at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. She works on a project portfolio focused on the opioid epidemic, addiction policies, barriers to treatment for substance use disorders, public health approaches to drug policies and how law can promote access to treatment and support recovery.

Before joining the Institute, Ms. Weizman worked as the Assistant Secretary for Mental Hygiene in the Office of Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York. In that role, she oversaw New York State’s efforts to address the opioid epidemic as well as policy and operations related to addiction, mental health and developmental disabilities. Prior to joining the Governor’s office, Ms. Weizman served as Policy Director for Managed Care at the New York State Office of Mental Health, where she focused on developing and implementing systemic reforms within New York’s public mental health system.

Shelly and James discuss her unique recovery journey that began during her teenage years while she was still in high school and how her experiences have led her to dedicating her career to driving change both through education and the public sector.  

Jane Macky is the founder and CEO of We The Village. As a friend, colleague, wife and family member of individuals who have struggled and at times still struggle with addiction, Jane sought to build a solution in the addiction sector that solves the challenges she faced herself while trying to help loved ones on their recovery journeys. 

Village Community Q&A is an opportunity for everyone who has been affected by someone else’s addiction to share what they’ve been through in a way that helps others, and to find answers — whether it be from reading other people’s experiences or professional moderators weighing in with evidence-based skills someone can use based on their specific situation. 

To learn more about We The Village, visit their webiste at: https://wethevillage.co/ 

On this episode of Roads to Recovery, we do things a bit differently than previous episodes. This time - Matt DeMasi, Director of Care Delivery at Halcyon Health takes the mic and interviews the show's host James Cardamone. James shares his story, what led him to get help, and how he navigates through his own recovery today.

Greg Nance is an entrepreneur and ultra marathon runner. He is passionate about working with great people to expand access to education. Overwhelmed by depression after his Grandpa Charlie’s debilitating stroke, he turned to alcohol and opioid painkillers at age 16. His free fall only stopped with the help of compassionate mentors, friends and a daily running ritual. In the years since, he’s jogged 49 countries and recently completed 7 marathons in 7 days on 7 continents! 

Now he’s gearing up for his biggest challengte yet —
a 3,000 mile Run Across America! To learn more about 1 IN 7, Greg's documentary chronicling this run while raising awareness for mental illness and substance use disorder through the stories and circumstances of other Americans across the country, please visit: https://www.documentary.org/project/1-7

Josh Nussbaum is the CEO and Co-Founder of Halcyon Health. Prior to starting Halcyon Health Josh was a partner at Compound, an NYC based venture capital firm. Helping people who are battling addiction is something that is near and dear to Josh as he has dealt with his own mental health struggles and substance use disorder. He will be celebrating 10 years of sobriety on November 28th and his excited to see where this next journey with Halcyon takes him.

Paul is the founder and former host of the Recovery Elevator podcast. He is also the author of Alcohol Is Sh*t. He recently celebrated five years in September. On this episode we talk about his journey of recovery, his experience with ayahuasca, and a new treatment program he’s starting to build centered around community, plant medicine and connection.

Tim Clarke is the founder and CEO of UNCrushed.org, a non-profit platform and community for mental health awareness. Tim is also the Senior Director of Product Marketing focused on CPQ & Billing at Salesforce where he's worked for the past 8 years. Tim and James discuss Tim's 'aha' moment, advice he's received during his journey in recovery, and different life challenges he's faced over the years.

Ruben Harris is the CEO of Career Karma and Co-Host of the podcast ‘Breaking into Startups’. A Bay Area transplant from Atlanta, Ruben organized Atlanta’s first Healthcare Hackathon. Ruben began his technology career working in Partnerships and Sales after writing a viral blog post called "Breaking Into Startups" about he how moved to San Francisco without a job and landed a position 3 weeks later. 

He is currently the CEO of Career Karma and Co-Host of the podcast ‘Breaking into Startups’. 

Ruben recently celebrated 10 years of sobriety this past May and on this episode Ruben and James dive into is journey through recovery and the ‘non-traditional’ route he took.