Recovering Out Loud

Latest Episodes:

How to Stay Sober Through Hard Times (While You're Still In It) Sep 24, 2026

Show notes

Staying sober through adversity while you're still in it — not the highlight reel after.

This one's recorded from inside the hard middle. I'm in the middle of something with school right now that could change my path, and instead of waiting until it's tied up with a bow, I wanted to talk about what actually gets people through while it's still messy — and why so many come out the other side changed for the better.

We get into pain versus suffering (pain × resistance = suffering), post-traumatic growth and the five places research says growth tends to show up, and the Stockdale Paradox — holding total faith that you'll get through it alongside the discipline to face the brutal facts right now. Faith without facts is denial. Facts without faith is despair.

Then the practical stuff: four inner moves and four outer moves for getting through a hard stretch without picking up.

Inner moves

Accept what's actually here (acceptance isn't approval)
Shrink the timeline to the next right thing
Don't believe everything your mind says in a storm
Protect the boring basics — sleep, food, water, movement

Outer moves 5. Let people in 6. Ask for specific help 7. Do one thing for someone else 8. Find a thread of meaning — carefully, and on your own schedule

Some adversity is just loss, and it stays loss. Growth is something you notice looking back, not something you owe anyone while you're hurting. Two things can be true.

If you're in the hard middle right now: text one person the truth today.

This is lived experience and peer perspective, not clinical advice.

The 5 Slow Killers of Sobriety — Why Relapse Is Emotional Before It's Physical Sep 22, 2026

Show notes

Relapse is emotional before it's physical. The 5 slow killers that take us out — and how to get ahead of each one before it gets ahead of you.

None of these five feel like drinking. They feel like normal life — a grudge you're nursing, a secret you're carrying, a Friday night with nothing in it. That's exactly why they're dangerous. By the time a drink is in your hand, the relapse already happened weeks ago, quietly, in your head.

In this solo episode, Anthony walks through the five things he watches for in his own recovery — the quiet stuff that moves first:

This is peer perspective and lived experience, not clinical advice — one person in recovery sharing what's kept him sober. Anthony has been in recovery since 2015, came back from a relapse, and is sharing the tools that help him stay ahead of his own disease.

6 Journaling Techniques for Recovery (and the Evidence Behind Each One) Sep 17, 2026

Show notes

Everybody hands you a journal in early recovery and says "use it" — nobody tells you what to do with it. So this episode is the missing manual: six journaling techniques (plus a bonus), what each one is actually for, and what the evidence does and doesn't back up.

This isn't "dear diary." Different methods do different jobs, and matching the technique to the day is the whole game.

Bottom line: journaling is a tool, not a cure. The research is modest and mixed, not miraculous. It works with your program, not instead of it — and if writing about the hard stuff cracks open something you can't hold, that's the signal to reach for a person, not just a pen.

Peer to peer, one alcoholic addict's experience — not medical or clinical advice.

JOIN ME ON MY SOCIALS - FREE RECOVERY GUIDE AND RECOVERY COACHING⁠https://linktr.ee/Recoveringoutloudpod⁠

— Anthony

The History of Addiction Treatment: Sin, Disease, Medicine & Harm Reduction Sep 15, 2026

Show notes

How addiction treatment went from moral failing to disease to harm reduction — 240 years of recovery history, told through lived experience. This is a peer recovery podcast, not medical advice.

I'm Anthony, an alcoholic and addict in recovery since 2015. In this solo episode of Recovering Out Loud, I walk the whole arc of how society has explained and treated addiction — moral failing, disease, medicine, harm reduction — and why every one of those models is still alive in the room today. You can meet all of them in one 12-step meeting, one hospital, one comment section.

The 12 steps are younger than the telephone. Methadone is younger than television. Almost everything we call "treatment" was invented inside living memory. Here's the timeline:

From sin, to disease, to medicine, to just keeping people alive — each model didn't replace the last. They're all still in the room, arguing. Recovery isn't one thing and never has been. Whatever door worked for you — 12 steps, medication, harm reduction, a fellowship — it exists because people before us refused to accept moral failure as the final word.

The opposite of addiction is connection.

10 Things Another Sober Summer Taught Me Sep 10, 2026

Show notes

Ten honest lessons from another sober summer — victimhood, relapse, isolation, service, and faith.

Summer's over and I'm back to school for my counseling diploma, so this one is a reflection on getting another summer under my belt sober. If you made it through sober — congratulations, I'm proud of you. And if you didn't, I'm proud of you for being here and trying to do better. Coming back from a slip is the hardest thing I've ever done.

These are ten things I've journaled and thought about over the last few months working a recovery program. They're not clinical advice — just one person's lived experience, out loud:

Recovery is simple — not easy. And if no one's told you today: I love you.

King Baby: The Ego Underneath Addiction Sep 08, 2026

Show notes

My real problem was never the drugs or alcohol. It was King Baby — the toddler ego running my life.

In 2015, in treatment at Hazelden, I read a little pamphlet by Tom Cunningham called King Baby. It rewired how I saw my whole problem. It made me realize I wasn't a victim — I was the problem. Not the drugs, not the alcohol. Those were symptoms. The disease underneath is perception: being stuck inside myself, unable to get out of my own head.

This episode is my walk through that idea. We all start as King Baby — the infant at the center of the universe, every need met instantly. Most people grow out of it. Some of us never shed it, and the infant ego spends a lifetime trying to get that warmth back. Enter drugs and alcohol: the thing that made me feel like the center of the universe again — until it stopped working.

I get honest about the "sheriff of the universe" in me (the one who's right, you're wrong, and everyone in traffic is breaking Anthony's law), the masks we wear so the real self can't get rejected, and why King Baby can't tolerate calm — how we rock the boat and manufacture chaos to hide a shrinking sense of worth. Then the way out: surrender (putting down a job I was never qualified for), humility, letting the community love me until I could love myself, and choosing — every day — whether King Baby or the program gets the mic.

This is lived experience, not medical advice. I'm not a doctor or a clinician. I'm an alcoholic and addict in recovery. King Baby's still in there. He just doesn't drive the bus anymore.

Would you rather be right, or free? I want to be free.

FIND THE PAMPHLET HERE

Anxiety in Sobriety: Why It Spikes and What Actually Helps Sep 05, 2026

Show notes

Nobody warns you sobriety can make anxiety louder, not quieter — here's why, and what actually helps.

When you put down the drink or the drug, the anxiety you were medicating doesn't vanish. It gets uncovered. In this solo episode I talk about the 2 a.m. racing heart, the tight chest before a phone call, the dread with no evidence — and why the further I get from a substance, the louder my brain can get.

Anxiety and substance use feed each other, and I break down the two directions that takes: the anxiety that came first and got "solved" by a drink, and the rebound anxiety the substance itself manufactures. We get into why early recovery spikes anxiety (post-acute withdrawal — the second wave nobody warns you about), the anxiety–relapse loop that keeps so many of us stuck, and how avoidance quietly wears respectable clothes: skipped meetings, isolation, and yes, workaholism.

Then the part this show exists for — the solutions. Five tools, strongest-evidence-first: thought work (CBT), breathwork, movement, sleep, and connection — plus an honest word about medication. This is lived experience and peer perspective, not medical advice. I'm not a doctor or a clinician. I'm an alcoholic and addict in recovery, sharing what's worked for me.

Anxiety was never the enemy. It's information from a nervous system built to outrun bears, now stuck managing a group text. You can feel it and be okay. It peaks, and it comes down — every time.

The Habits That Got Me to 1 Year Sober Sep 03, 2026

Show notes

Willpower won't keep you sober — it's a battery, and it drains. In this solo episode of Recovering Out Loud, Anthony makes the case that year one isn't about white-knuckling, it's about building: constructing the routines and habits that do the heavy lifting so recovery isn't a decision you have to remake at your weakest moment.

He starts by killing a myth — the "21 days to a habit" idea has been debunked since the 1960s. The research that actually holds up found a median of 66 days for a behavior to become automatic, with a wide range (roughly 18 to 254 days), and exercise-type habits taking longer. What matters more than the number: consistency beats intensity, and one missed day doesn't break a habit — it's the consecutive misses that do. As Anthony puts it, you don't relapse because you skipped one meeting; you relapse because you skipped it again and again.

Then he walks through the keystone habits that make everything else easier: structuring your day around the danger hours (your old use times), protecting sleep as a genuine relapse driver, moving your body, getting into community, eating regularly (with HALT — hungry, angry, lonely, tired — as a daily craving gut-check), and a daily emotional check-in to name feelings before they drive a relapse. Running through all of it is the one keystone that holds the rest together: connection. Reach out on a good day so reaching out on a bad day is already wired in.

This is lived experience, not clinical advice — but the science is real. Anthony references the meta-analytic evidence for exercise in substance use disorders, the large review of 12-step and mutual-help involvement, and James Clear's Atomic Habits on removing obstacles to make good habits easier and bad ones harder.

This week's one thing: Pick one small habit. Anchor it to something you already do. Do it imperfectly. Recovery isn't for those who need it or want it — it's for those who do it.

Recovering Out Loud is produced by ROL Productions. Anthony shares as a person in long-term recovery — peer to peer, lived experience only, never as a clinician or expert.

Perfectionism Is a Relapse Risk — Progress, Not Perfection Sep 01, 2026

Show notes

Perfectionism isn't a personality quirk — it's a documented relapse risk, and it doesn't switch off just because you got sober. In this solo episode of Recovering Out Loud, Anthony unpacks how the same engine that drove the using — the need to be liked, to fit in, to perform, to be "the funny guy" — quietly follows us into recovery and sets up the next slip.

We get into the difference researchers draw between perfectionistic strivings (high personal standards, which can be healthy) and perfectionistic concerns (fear of mistakes, dread of judgment, self-worth on the line) — and why the second one is the one that hurts you. Anthony walks through the abstinence violation effect: how it isn't the slip that relapses you, it's the shame spiral about the slip. He shares his own story of not even recognizing he was in a relapse — telling his story in a 12-step room while still in it — and the all-or-nothing "might as well burn it all down" thinking that turns one bad moment into a full return to use.

This is lived experience, not clinical advice. But the tools Anthony names are evidence-based: catching all-or-nothing thoughts (a CBT move), self-compassion (backed by meta-analysis and RCTs showing it weakens maladaptive perfectionism), and deliberately doing one recovery thing imperfectly on purpose — the "B-minus" practice that teaches your brain you can fall short and survive it.

If you've ever skipped the meeting because you couldn't do it right, quit the journal after one missed day, or worn the "I've got it together" mask while quietly drowning — this one's for you. Recovery doesn't ask you to be perfect. It asks you to be honest.

This week's one thing: Do one recovery thing imperfectly, on purpose. Notice that you survive it.

Recovering Out Loud is produced by ROL Productions. Anthony shares as a person in long-term recovery — peer to peer, lived experience only, never as a clinician or expert.

Trauma & Addiction: Gabor Maté & The Body Keeps the Score (An Honest Take) Aug 29, 2026

Show notes

Why the pain, not why the addiction? An honest, peer look at the trauma model of recovery.

This week it's a solo one. I sit with two thinkers who reshaped how we talk about addiction — Gabor Maté (In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts) and Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score) — and I try to do the thing recovery content usually skips: take what's genuinely useful, and stay honest about where it gets oversold.

Maté's line — the question isn't why the addiction, it's why the pain — did more to pull shame out of addiction than almost anything this century. It reframes you from a bad person into a hurt person, and for a lot of us that's the first door out of self-hatred. Van der Kolk adds that trauma doesn't just live in your memory, it lives in the body and nervous system — which is why cravings and relapse aren't a simple willpower problem.

I also get personal about what trauma actually is (it's not only the "big" events — it's how your body stored what happened), a grade-four moment I still carry, and the long work of forgiving myself, including after a relapse that cost me what I thought was seven and a half years.

Then the other side. Critics like Stanton Peele and Nick Haslam point out that most people with addiction weren't traumatized as children, and most people who were traumatized don't become addicted — trauma raises risk, it doesn't write destiny. Richard McNally argues some of the science gets stated more strongly than the evidence supports. The danger for us in recovery: "my trauma made me this way" can flip from liberating to a life sentence. The honest frame — your pain is real, and you're still not sentenced by it. Understanding why you hurt is a starting line, not a verdict.

Two questions I leave you with: – Does understanding my pain free me, or give me a place to hide? – My pain is real, and I'm still responsible for ______.

Recovering Out Loud is peer-to-peer lived experience, not medical or clinical advice. If you're struggling, please reach out to a professional or a trusted person in your life.

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