In this Q and A episode Ashley talks with producer Scott Drochelman about the reasons that people relapse. Hear Ashley's relapse stories and what factors put people at risk. 

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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Lynsie was a high achiever from a young age. Starting dance, gymnastics and singing classes at age three. She joined the pageant circuit at 12 and immediately had success. The achievement of it all brought peace to her turbulent home with an alcoholic father. 

She eventually found the success she was looking for when she became Miss Teen Arizona, but it led to a strange splitting of herself. In one life she was a pageant queen riding in parades and talking to kids about not drinking or using drugs all while partying heavily and on the road to her own addiction. 

Then a sexual assualt, and other major life events caused her to have a mental breakdown which had her fleeing from non-existent Mexican Federalis and diving deeper into her growing problem. 

It wasn’t until she received an aggressive DUI from an accident that found her car wrapped around a tree with a passenger in the car that things started to change. She was sent to Tent City jail in the Arizona and then to treatment which led to her eventual recovery. 

Today she is 16 years sober.

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Wes Geer is a professional guitar player, songwriter, recording artist, and producer, who signed his first record deal to Jive Records with the band he founded, (Hed) P.E.. Wes toured the world for nearly a decade, and the band sold over 1 million records worldwide. Their music was on high rotation on MTV, radio stations, as well as having numerous placements in popular feature films, TV, and video games.  

What many didn’t know at the time was while he was leading his band to their first-ever record deal, Wes was a full-blown drug addict, using alcohol, methamphetamines and other drugs, daily, for years. No matter the efforts to quell his addiction and control it, things continually got worse. After nearly a decade of touring the world, with the biggest names in rock, Wes’ life was imploding, and he finally left in 2003, for a ‘lifestyle change’ that ultimately ended him up in rehab in 2004.

In 2010, Wes decided he wanted to get back into music and started praying and meditating on what that would look like. Not long after, and only because he was sober, Geer was offered the gig as a guitarist with the rock band Korn. He traveled the world, performing in more than 40 countries with the multi-platinum stars, as well as appeared on numerous live televised and studio recording sessions.  

Geer was then moved to give back, wanting to create something that could help people who struggled the same way he had.  He then founded Rock to Recovery (R2R), a non-profit organization created in late 2012 with the purpose of providing those in various types of treatment and recovery programs the cathartic, uplifting, healing experience of connectivity through music. 

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In this Q and A episode Ashley talks with producer Scott Drochelman about how to maintain hope when you've been trying to help for a long time. You might not feel like there is much more you can do. You might find it difficult to remain connected. Ashley provides practical ideas on how to approach this complicated situation without enabling.

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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• TikTok | @ashleyloebblassingame

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Benjamin Heldfond grew up in San Francisco where he lived through a high conflict divorce. He internalized the breakup as a signal that he was bad. The experience was like Miracle Grow for his growing drinking and heroin addiction which eventually led to a flatline overdose that saw him clinically dead. But even that didn’t lead to his sobriety.

Ben eventually entered treatment, found help and 6 years into his recovery, moved to Florida with the woman he would eventually marry. The move carried a great deal of resentment towards his wife which manifested in Ben living as a dry drunk without any accountability for his actions. This led to turmoil in the relationship. The two had a son together and divorced bitterly shortly after.

Only after reflection did Ben see that left unchecked he threatened to repeat the same painful pattern he’d lived as a child. The realization moved him to call his therapist and sponsor. 

Ben eventually co-authored the book, “Our Happy Divorce”, with his Ex-Wife Nikki DeBartolo, which told the story of how their journey through divorce eventually brought them closer together.

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• Our Happy Divorce | amazon.com/Our-Happy-Divorce

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Dr. John Umhau is a board certified  addiction medicine specialist who directs AlcoholRecoveryMedicine.com and provides telemedicine treatment for people with alcohol use disorder.

For over 20 years Dr. Umhau was a senior clinical investigator at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of the National Institutes of Health, (NIH). 

As a Commander in the United States Public Health Service, he served as Clinical Director for an Indian Health Service Hospital in Whiteriver, Arizona and as a Medical Officer in the Division of Psychiatric Products of the FDA. 

His scientific interest in nutritional neuroscience is informed by decades of clinical experience. He is past president of the Academy of Medicine of Washington, District of Columbia.

Dr. Umhau is revolutionizing alcohol use treatment, utilizing medications, diet and The Sinclair Method to change lives. He has also led a team of scientists to develop a method of measuring the brain uptake of the essential omega-3 fatty acid, DHA. His comprehensive treatment methods consider the whole person and are highly effective.

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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.

In this Q and A episode she talks with producer Scott Drochelman about how to wade into the sober dating world with intention and authenticity while avoiding some of the mistakes from her own dating experience.

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After Will's mom passed away in 2017, a lifetime of suppressed memories and events came flooding back in. 

What felt like a normal childhood with humble beginnings began to change. Suddenly he was seeing everything iin vivid detail, defending his mother during an attempted sexual assault, witnessing russian roulette at the kitchen table or being around for a long list of traumatic events.

Will turned to food to deal with the trauma eventually climbing to 400lbs. He tried everything he could to change his trajectory including appearing in a local Biggest-Loser-style competition where he lost 88lbs in 12 weeks. But without understanding the psychology of food in his life the results didn’t last long.

Eventually Will did the hard work of understanding food’s place in his life and digging into the trauma he experienced growing up. He’s since spent intentional time working through his complicated grief and even becoming a grief facilitator in the process.

Will sees the world with a totally new outlook, living his personal mantra “Your Attitude determines your Altitude.”

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• Will Certain Music | facebook.com/willcertainmusic

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Pej was born in Germany but raised in Salt Lake City where he always felt different due to his skin color and nationality. In his youth he was bullied and encountered verbal, physical, and mental abuse within his home. Pej began experimenting with alcohol at six years old and experienced his first black out at the age of twelve.

At seventeen Pej was hung over, driving his friends to school when he had a fatal car accident causing the death of a young teenager riding his bike to school. The event caused Pej to go off the deep end, drowning his guilt, shame, and sadness with drugs and alcohol. 

Pej was later incarcerated as a juvenile and spent time in the psych portion of the facility as he was deemed a danger to his own life. After he was released, he became worse, dealing drugs and using excessively. 

By age 35 he’d experienced jail, institutions, homelessness and near death experiences. He finally threw up the white flag and asked for help. Pej now uses his experiences to help others through his work as an interventionist, recovery coach and the creator of multiple sober communities.

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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. In this Q and A session she talks with producer Scott Drochelman about the challenges in caring for a loved one who is addicted to something. Folks are asked to lead with empathy, but they also have a right to be angry about the behaviors they're seeing. In this episode we talk about how to hold both ideas in your mind at the same time and tips for anyone caring for someone with an addiction. 

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• TikTok | @ashleyloebblassingame

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