The One Day At A Time Recovery Podcast

What if the steps that saved millions of lives were never really about religion at all, but about the same science therapists use in their offices every day?

Today I sit down with Dr. Dice for round two. He's a former paramedic, firefighter and Navy SEAL who blew up his life, landed in treatment, got sober through 12-step recovery, and then went all the way back to school for his PhD so he could do for others what his therapist did for him. In his doctoral research at Old Dominion University, he pulled out the theory hiding inside the 12 steps, and what he found is something he calls the holistic change model. Before we get there, he tells me how he survived BUD/S training twice after a shoulder surgery a Navy doctor said no one had ever come back from, and the rope bridge moment that ended Hell Week for his entire class.

This conversation is for anyone who has ever said "that sounds like a cult" and walked away from 12-step, and for anyone who loves someone like that.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What emotional compulsivity is, and why drinking is often just the latest tool in a lifelong pattern

• How steps one through twelve line up with stages of change, narrative therapy, CBT and existential therapy

• Why seeing yourself as a character in your own story is the beginning of self-love

• The difference between white knuckle sobriety and a program that takes you from surviving to thriving

• How online meetings opened the door for people who are afraid of being recognized

So without further delay, please enjoy this episode, and let me know what you think!

SHOW NOTES:

Guest Website: https://bishopdicedefense.com/

👊🏼Need help applying this information to your own life?

Here are 3 ways to get started:

🎁Free Guide: 30 Tips for Your First 30 Days - With a printable PDF checklist

Grab your copy here: https://www.soberlifeschool.com

☎️Private Coaching: Make Sobriety Stick

https://www.makesobrietystick.com

Subscribe So You Don't Miss New Episodes!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Amazon Music, or you can stream it from my website HERE.

You can also watch the interview on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@theonedayatatimepodcast?sub_confirmation=1

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast/id1212504521

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4I23r7DBTpT8XwUUwHRNpB

Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/a8eb438c-5af1-493b-99c1-f218e5553aff/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast

What if getting sober didn't require a rock bottom at all? What if it started with two honest questions: who do I want to be, and how do I want to feel?

Today I sit down with Michaela Horvathova, a certified yoga teacher, health coach, and co-host of the 2 Sober Girls Podcast, who is four and a half years sober. After fifteen years of being sober curious, Michaela chose sobriety without a crash, simply because she knew who she wanted to be, and she built her own path to a life she loves.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The two questions that can shift your identity faster than any rock bottom

• Why you have to replace drinking, not just remove it, and what Michaela replaced it with

• How to reframe what "fun" means in sobriety

• Why letting go of the victim story opens the door to real freedom

• How to get sober your own way without doing it alone

So without further delay, please enjoy this episode, and let me know what you think!

SHOW NOTES:

Guest Website: https://www.healthwithmichaela.com/

👊🏼Need help applying this information to your own life?

Here are 3 ways to get started:

🎁Free Guide: 30 Tips for Your First 30 Days - With a printable PDF checklist

Grab your copy here: https://www.soberlifeschool.com

☎️Private Coaching: Make Sobriety Stick

https://www.makesobrietystick.com

Subscribe So You Don't Miss New Episodes!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Amazon Music, or you can stream it from my website HERE.

You can also watch the interview on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@theonedayatatimepodcast?sub_confirmation=1

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast/id1212504521

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4I23r7DBTpT8XwUUwHRNpB

Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/a8eb438c-5af1-493b-99c1-f218e5553aff/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast

What if the resentment you've been carrying, even the resentment toward yourself, is really just missing information?

Today I sit down with Dr. John Demartini, human behavior specialist, creator of the Demartini Method, and one of the teachers many of us first discovered through The Secret. He has spent 54 years in personal development, and in this conversation he explains why resentment, guilt and shame come from an imbalanced view of what happened, and how asking better questions can turn them into gratitude.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why resentment is an imbalanced ratio of perceptions, and how to rebalance it

• Why Dr. Demartini says he has never really seen self-sabotage

• The one question that dissolved three years of guilt for a man who missed his mother's death

• Why addictive behavior is a compensation for unfulfilled highest values

• How knowing your true values and delegating the rest can break the burnout cycle

So without further delay, please enjoy this episode, and let me know what you think!

SHOW NOTES:

Guest Website: https://drdemartini.com/

👊🏼Need help applying this information to your own life?

Here are 3 ways to get started:

🎁Free Guide: 30 Tips for Your First 30 Days - With a printable PDF checklist

Grab your copy here: https://www.soberlifeschool.com

☎️Private Coaching: Make Sobriety Stick

https://www.makesobrietystick.com

Subscribe So You Don't Miss New Episodes!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Amazon Music, or you can stream it from my website HERE.

You can also watch the interview on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@theonedayatatimepodcast?sub_confirmation=1

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast/id1212504521

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4I23r7DBTpT8XwUUwHRNpB

Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/a8eb438c-5af1-493b-99c1-f218e5553aff/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast

What happens when someone with more than two decades of sobriety, thirty years as a trauma therapist, and a book in progress about her own healing finds herself in a hospital bed with a yellow wristband that says Fall Risk?

Today I sit down with Lisa Arrigo, a licensed clinical social worker who has been in private practice for over thirty years specializing in complex trauma, Internal Family Systems, and somatic work. She is also a woman in long-term recovery who relapsed in 2022 after twenty-two years sober. She was not white-knuckling it. She was getting her makeup done before a fundraising event when someone offered her a couple of lines of cocaine, and a part of her that she had stopped paying attention to said yes before her thinking brain could get a word in. Three months later she overdosed.

Lisa gives the clearest explanation of relapse I have ever heard, and then she shows us the way back.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why all addictions begin as coping strategies, and how that changes the question from what is wrong with me to what happened to me

• How epigenetics, in-utero stress, and early attachment wounds wire a nervous system for survival long before the first drink

• Why trauma does not know time, and how memories surface as panic and sensation with no story attached

• What emotional relapse looks like from the inside, and the warning signs Lisa missed in herself

• Why shame, not the substance, is what keeps people from coming back, and how to step out of the shame bath

So without further delay, please enjoy this episode, and let me know what you think!

SHOW NOTES:

Guest Website: https://lisaarrigo.com

👊🏼Need help applying this information to your own life?

Here are 3 ways to get started:

🎁Free Guide: 30 Tips for Your First 30 Days - With a printable PDF checklist

Grab your copy here: https://www.soberlifeschool.com

☎️Private Coaching: Make Sobriety Stick

https://www.makesobrietystick.com

Subscribe So You Don't Miss New Episodes!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Amazon Music, or you can stream it from my website HERE.

You can also watch the interview on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@theonedayatatimepodcast?sub_confirmation=1

September is National Recovery Month. In honor of that, I'm really focusing on people who don't get a lot of support, and those are the people who don't resonate with traditional recovery programs. If you are someone who wants to find your own path, and you are willing to do the work of recovery, then I got you! I am doing a mini-series called Sobriety 101 where you'll get practical advice on the tools and practices that will help you overcome common obstacles along your journey so you can stay sober too.

Be sure you're subscribed to the podcast in your favorite podcast player and on youtube!

Today I sit down with Daniel Chase, a kitchen and bath remodeling business owner who spent over a decade living a double life: a Bible quizzer and gang member at once, a successful plumber running crews across three states while still using meth. He was arrested 16 times. His father checked into rehab 11 times before he took his own life.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How forgiveness helped Daniel stay sober

• Why his father's 11 stays in rehab shaped Daniel's own recovery

• The moment of true surrender that broke him open at a men's retreat

• How he built a new 12-step curriculum blending faith, the traditional steps, and DBT, now used in four inpatient programs and

• Why he believes mental health has to come before addiction in real recovery

So without further delay, please enjoy this episode, and let me know what you think!

SHOW NOTES:

Guest Website: https://finallyheflew.com/

👊🏼Need help applying this information to your own life?

Here are 3 ways to get started:

🎁Free Guide: 30 Tips for Your First 30 Days - With a printable PDF checklist

Grab your copy here: https://www.soberlifeschool.com

☎️Private Coaching: Make Sobriety Stick

https://www.makesobrietystick.com

Subscribe So You Don't Miss New Episodes!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Amazon Music, or you can stream it from my website HERE.

You can also watch the interview on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@theonedayatatimepodcast?sub_confirmation=1

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast/id1212504521

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4I23r7DBTpT8XwUUwHRNpB

Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/a8eb438c-5af1-493b-99c1-f218e5553aff/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast

September is National Recovery Month, so I'm kicking off a mini-series called Sobriety 101. This one's for anyone who wants a path to recovery outside of the traditional 12 steps.

I'm a 12-stepper myself, but after 450+ episodes of this podcast, I know there isn't just one way to get and stay sober. In this episode, I'm sharing what I would do first if I were starting over today and didn't want to go the 12-step route: get brutally honest with myself about whether I can actually moderate.

I talk about my own two years of trying (and failing) to control my drinking, the writing exercise I'd use to get clarity fast, and a warning about "coaches" who prey on people who aren't ready to fully give up alcohol.

Today marks 11,821 days sober for me, one day at a time.

This episode is brought to you by Soberlink, a high-tech breathalyzer with facial recognition and tamper sensors that sends results straight to the people who need proof you're doing the work. Go to soberlink.com/oneday to claim your $100 enrollment bonus with a qualifying plan.

Next week: how to get through your first week of sobriety, nervous system regulation, and how to identify (and survive) your drinking triggers.

If there's a topic you want me to cover in this series, leave a comment and let me know.

Subscribe on YouTube and Apple Podcasts, and share this with someone who needs it.

This episode is a continuation of the step work I've been doing with friend Sonia Kahlon the host of the Sisters In Sobriety Podcast. We've both been getting really positive feedback so I'm excited to share this one with you!

Today we dig into Step Six: which is "Were entirely ready to have God remove our character defects" Let me say right off the bat, that we do address that term "character defects" and offer maybe more palatable phrasing, so if that bothers you just know it doesn't have to be a barrier.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why Step Six is really the "ish" step, and what that means for perfectionism in recovery

• How envy quietly becomes the thief of joy

• Why resentments build like pebbles in a sack until we collapse under the weight

• What internal family systems work (and "Manager Marge") looks like on an anxious morning

If you find this podcast helpful in any way, please share it with a friend! And if you haven't watched these on YouTube yet, I highly recommend it. Be sure to subscribe and all that stuff. It really helps me get the message of recovery out to those who need it most.

So without further delay, please enjoy this episode with Sonia!

SHOW NOTES:

Guest Website: https://thesobercurator.com/

👊🏼Need help applying this information to your own life?

Here are 3 ways to get started:

🎁Free Guide: 30 Tips for Your First 30 Days - With a printable PDF checklist

Grab your copy here: https://www.soberlifeschool.com

☎️Private Coaching: Make Sobriety Stick

https://www.makesobrietystick.com

Subscribe So You Don't Miss New Episodes!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Amazon Music, or you can stream it from my website HERE.

You can also watch the interview on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@theonedayatatimepodcast?sub_confirmation=1

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast/id1212504521

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4I23r7DBTpT8XwUUwHRNpB

Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/a8eb438c-5af1-493b-99c1-f218e5553aff/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast

Relapse is one of the biggest problems people in recovery face, especially in the beginning. For most of us, it takes multiple attempts before we can stay sober.

Today I sit down with Paul Schulte, an EMDR expert and trainer to talk about how EMDR can help with relapse prevention. Paul is bbased in Barcelona and he is coming up on 23 years of sobriety! He's the creator of the iMover app, a guided EMDR tool that helps with relapse prevention. This app has also helped people with extreme cases of trauma, like soldiers, refugees, and abuse survivors.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How EMDR helped Paul finally integrate decades of unprocessed grief

• Why talk therapy so often can't reach trauma, and how EMDR does

• How childhood trauma gets hardwired in the nervous system and repurposed under adult stress

• Why relapse, not the physical symptoms we usually name, is the real number one symptom of alcoholism

Before we jump in, did you know we have a youtube channel with over 750 videos? It's called, you guessed it, The one day at a time recovery podcast! Oddly enough my team tells me that only 43% of listeners subscribe. So if you could do me a huge favor, and so that you don't miss new episodes, please hit that subscribe button. It costs you nothing, it only takes a second, and it's a huge help to me in getting the message of recovery out to those who desperately need it. Thanks friend!

So without further delay, please enjoy this episode with Paul.

SHOW NOTES:

Guest Website: https://emdrbypaul.com/

👊🏼Need help applying this information to your own life?

Here are 3 ways to get started:

🎁Free Guide: 30 Tips for Your First 30 Days - With a printable PDF checklist

Grab your copy here: https://www.soberlifeschool.com

☎️Private Coaching: Make Sobriety Stick

https://www.makesobrietystick.com

Subscribe So You Don't Miss New Episodes!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Amazon Music, or you can stream it from my website HERE.

You can also watch the interview on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@theonedayatatimepodcast?sub_confirmation=1

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast/id1212504521

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4I23r7DBTpT8XwUUwHRNpB

Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/a8eb438c-5af1-493b-99c1-f218e5553aff/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast

If you've been listening to the podcast for any length of time, you know that I love to support sober authors.When I got sober 32 years ago, there were exactly zero memoirs about recovering from alcoholism and addiction. I'm so grateful that nowadays, so many people are sharing their stories, so the people who are thinking about quitting can see that it's possible for them too.

Today I sit down with Tracy Viola, author of Pretty Wrecked: Confessions of a Teen Addict, who got sober at 19, over 30 years ago, after a childhood shaped by her parents' divorce, an abusive stepfather, and an absent, alcoholic father.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How Tracy's NERD mantra keeps her making the next right decision, one day at a time

• The trash can metaphor she uses to describe carrying (and finally unpacking) trauma

• How she made peace with her father by separating fault from responsibility

• Why she teaches teenagers about the "red zone" and a "yellow light" approach to risk

• How surviving a college sexual assault shaped the work she does with teens today

There are a lot of insightful nuggets in this conversation, especially if you're early in recovery. If you need a basic breakdown of how to stay sober for your first 30 days, there's a free guide at odatchat.com. There's also links in the show notes for all the action steps and resources mentioned there, including Tracy's new book!

So without further delay, please enjoy this episode with Tracy.

SHOW NOTES:

Guest Website: https://www.tracyviolaauthor.com/

👊🏼Need help applying this information to your own life?

Here are 3 ways to get started:

🎁Free Guide: 30 Tips for Your First 30 Days - With a printable PDF checklist

Grab your copy here: https://www.soberlifeschool.com

☎️Private Coaching: Make Sobriety Stick

https://www.makesobrietystick.com

Subscribe So You Don't Miss New Episodes!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Amazon Music, or you can stream it from my website HERE.

You can also watch the interview on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@theonedayatatimepodcast?sub_confirmation=1

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast/id1212504521

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4I23r7DBTpT8XwUUwHRNpB

Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/a8eb438c-5af1-493b-99c1-f218e5553aff/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast

Since it has been 10 years since I started the podcast, I wanted to highlight some of the most popular episodes with you. This one is with Dr. Anna Lembke. She is Chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic at Stanford University and author of the #1 Bestseller "Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance In the Age of Indulgence".

Over the years, I have found myself repeatedly sharing what I learned from her book, to explain the role dopamine plays in addiction, why we get so depleted of dopamine after drinking and using, and how we can speed up the process of healing.

If you are early in recovery and you're struggling you don't have to do this alone. There are many paths to recovery, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. If traditional methods haven't worked for you, you might want to consider coaching. I have been supporting people in early recovery for over 30 years now. In my process, I use methods like internal family systems, hypnosis, and goal-oriented coaching to help you get to the root causes and help you build momentum in sobriety. If you'd like to learn more, visit makesobrietystick.com to see if coaching is for you.

So without further delay, please enjoy this episode with Dr. Anna Lembke.

SHOW NOTES:

Guest Website:

👊🏼Need help applying this information to your own life?

Here are 3 ways to get started:

🎁Free Guide: 30 Tips for Your First 30 Days - With a printable PDF checklist

Grab your copy here: https://www.soberlifeschool.com

☎️Private Coaching: Make Sobriety Stick

https://www.makesobrietystick.com

Subscribe So You Don't Miss New Episodes!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Amazon Music, or you can stream it from my website HERE.

You can also watch the interview on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@theonedayatatimepodcast?sub_confirmation=1

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast/id1212504521

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4I23r7DBTpT8XwUUwHRNpB

Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/a8eb438c-5af1-493b-99c1-f218e5553aff/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast