In this Q and A episode Ashley answers the question "How Can I Work in Sales and Not Drink?". Many jobs can feel as if drinking is a prerequisite. Even more challenging is when you drank when you started working somewhere and now you don't. You have to make choices about what you tell people, who you tell and what will become your new way of interacting with the group. Ashley gives tips and tricks on how to navigate this challenging situation.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame has been clean and sober for 16 years, she's a drug and alcohol counselor, interventionist, and the co-founder of a telehealth company called Lionrock Recovery that provides substance use disorder treatment.

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Chris Howe endured 17 long years of addiction to alcohol and drugs while working as a firefighter. He was different from everyone else in the department. He was smaller, tattooed and spent his time away from the job with alcoholics, addicts and criminals. 

This double life filled him with self hatred and secrets. He’d been effected deeply by childhood sexual trauma and PTSD on the job and had no place to put it. Instead he was asked everyday to bottle up his feelings and do his job and the only way to cope involved massive amounts of alcohol and drugs to numb it all.

Eventually the internal pressure became too much, resulting in 3 suicide attempts in 3 years before finally finding recovery on the morning he wrote his final suicide plan.

Today, Chris is 11 years sober, a Captain with the Niagra Falls Fire Department and an addiction recovery speaker. He shares his story in and out of the prison system, leads a Buddhist inspired recovery group and hopes to inspire others through his actions and his new life in recovery.

Episode Resources

• Authentic Adversity Podcast Instagram | @AUTHENTICADVERSITY

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• Instagram |  @chrishowe

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Casey McGuire Davidson grew up moving around the globe with parents that worked as US diplomats. While it provided some amazing experiences it also planted the seed that she needed to be constantly performing at a high level. Being the child of important people made it feel like she couldn’t mess up.  

As an adult she led a high achieving life in the corporate world and the hypervigilance from childhood continued. She found that drinking helped her deal. She was basically having a bottle of wine or more 365 days a year and was oblivious to the effects of her drinking. The signs were her 3am wakeups that she treated with Ambien and anti-anxiety medication which were actually symptoms of alcohol withdrawal. 

When getting pregnant with her first child, she stopped drinking and things felt like they had gotten better so the behavior moved back to the same place it had been before. 

It wasn’t until her daughter was 2 and her son was 8 before she finally found recovery and even did so while navigating a stressful corporate job. 

Today Casey’s a Certified Professional Life and Sobriety Coach, the creator of The Free 30-Day Guide to Quitting Drinking and the host of the top rated Hello Someday Podcast, the podcast for busy women ready to drink less + live more. 

Casey specializes in working with women with full calendars and overflowing to-do lists, who are doing all the things and then coming home and drinking to forget about all the things.

Episode Resources

• Hello Someday Coaching |hellosomedaycoaching.com

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In this Q and A episode Ashley answers the listener question from a teacher wanting to know how to help their addicted students.  They are trying to find ways they can create a safe space for the students to talk openly about the challenges they are facing and want to know how they can help.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame has been clean and sober for 16 years, she's a drug and alcohol counselor, interventionist, and the co-founder of a telehealth company called Lionrock Recovery that provides substance use disorder treatment.

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Person Irresponsible, or PI as most people call her, describes herself as having been “fat, funny, forty-something, and in her fourth year of recovery when she felt an unfathomable urge to walk across America”. Previously she had hiked from the sofa to the fridge and back and considered camping to be a loathsome pursuit. She was also a confirmed nicotine addict and had never even considered climbing the UK’s highest mountain: a 4,000 footer called Ben Nevis.

And yet something drew her to the Pacific Crest Trail. She didn’t fully realize just how big a mistake she’d made until she hiked her way up the first mountain in Southern California. And if all that wasn’t bad enough, a global pandemic broke out in the middle of the excursion - leaving her to be one of the very few people to remain in the wilderness.

PI relied on everything she’d been taught in the AA fellowship to haul herself from Mexico to Canada. She then set about writing a book on how twelve-step thinking kept her from succumbing to the mental demons that lurked within. 

She called the book “Everything You Ever Taught Me” to honor her fellow alcoholics who have recorded their stories and wisdom in podcast format. She had listened to at least one podcast each day and it was their voices that kept her company day after laborious day: always reminding her that the twelve steps are a program for living that truly work - in all circumstances.

Episode Resources

• Everything You Ever Taught Me | Everything You Ever Taught Me

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Elizabeth Sockolov is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, a member of Psi Chi, The International Honor Society of Psychology, and the founder of One Mind Therapy. 

Elizabeth’s journey started eleven years ago when she got into recovery from addiction. Like so many, she used drugs as a means to deal with her anxiety. Then everything changed when she discovered meditation. It became the cure to the anxious thoughts swirling in her mind. When she realized the power and freedom that meditation provided, she felt compelled to teach others the skills that had saved her life.

She started by leading meditation groups at treatment centers for people who were struggling with addiction. She furthered her practice through silent retreats, loving kindness practices and began the work to become a Mindfulness meditation teacher. 

Elizabeth has helped so many people struggling with addiction through her meditation teaching and therapy work. Now as a mother of two, she’s had to find new ways to make meditation work in an environment that includes less and less dedicated time to her practice. She applies those lessons to the busy lives that we all lead.

Episode Resources

• One Mind Therapy | onemindtherapy.com

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• Instagram |  @onemindtherapy

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In this Q and A episode Ashley answers the question "Why am I addicted to my phone?". It seems like everyone has a complicated relationship with their phone and its addictive nature. Ashley talks about what is happening in the brain and what you can do to curb your attachment to your device.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame has been clean and sober for 16 years, she's a drug and alcohol counselor, interventionist, and the co-founder of a telehealth company called Lionrock Recovery that provides substance use disorder treatment.

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Andrea Ashley is a former CPA turned podcast host & producer. She grew up outside of Philadelphia in an alcoholic household. Andrea turned to drugs and alcohol herself at the age of 12. After years in and out of rehabs and boarding schools, she was granted the gift of sobriety at the age of 19 and celebrated 13 years of continuous sobriety in September 2021.

In 2018 and after 9 years of sobriety, Andrea had her “second great surrender” and came to terms with the true impact her dysfunctional upbringing had on her. This bottom and the subsequent healing work led her to launch Adult Child in March of 2021. 

The podcast is a deep dive into the impact of growing up in a dysfunctional family – with topics including addiction, codependency, and complex trauma. Andrea describes the podcast as “vulnerable and filterless conversations of depth and meaning, with a healthy dose of humor and self-mockery.”

Adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families have a unique story to tell and offer a picture into what unresolved alcoholism can do to a family.

Episode Resources

• Adult Child Podcast | adultchildpodcast.com

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Parham Nematollah grew up in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war where he lived through frequent bombings that sent his whole family fleeing for safety. 

They eventually made it to the US, but he then spent his childhood moving back and forth from the US to Iran. At age 9 he moved back to Iran and spent the better part of a year learning how to read and write in a new language. 

At 16 he moved back to the US for good but the constant change caused him to feel outside of both cultures and desperate to fit in by any means necessary. His anxiety (rooted in the early trauma of war) and the desire to fit in, caused him to start using alcohol and cocaine to deal with it all. 

At 25 he overdosed and finally found sobriety while sitting across from his sick mother who happened to be at the same hospital for treatment. He wondered what she did to deserve her sickness and what he was doing to her. 

Parham eventually went back to school to become a Licensed Advanced Alcohol and Drug Counselor and also holds a Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. He is currently the Chief Operating Officer at Buckeye Recovery Network, an Outpatient Treatment Facility he helped to create.

Episode Resources

• Buckeye Recovery Network | buckeyerecoverynetwork.com

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In this Q and A episode Ashley answers the listener question "How do I get my husband to commit to going to treatment?" Her partner has had several relapses and she can't convince him to get help. Ashley discusses how to let the crisis arrive, interventions and self work that can be extremely helpful in encouraging a loved one to get help.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame has been clean and sober for 16 years, she's a drug and alcohol counselor, interventionist, and the co-founder of a telehealth company called Lionrock Recovery that provides substance use disorder treatment.

Episode Resources

Connect with Ashley Loeb Blassingame

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Lionrock Resources