The Addiction Podcast-Point of No Return - TopPodcast.com

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The Addiction Podcast-Point of No Return — Alternative Health
The Addiction Podcast-Point of No Return

This podcast addresses hope and recovery options for individuals, friends, family, parents and associates who have been or may be addicted to opioids, heroin, cocaine, prescription drugs, fentanyl, alcohol, or marijuana and want to overcome the addiction.

There are interviews with former addicts, stories of having gone through numerous failed rehabes, parents and loved ones that describe the horrors and ultimate methods they have sought to save lives and help.

Issues include the changing world of rehab, from 12 step programs to successful and effective alternative approaches to detox, withdrawal, and education for stable life style changes for former addicts. The benefits and dangers of different types of rehab from those that have experienced it.

The “point of no return’ is when the individual has come to a realization that they need and want help.

This is also for friends and family of addicts who are at their wits end and don’t know what to do to help the addict. This podcast gives hope and inspiration for recovery.

Some topics include:
– Where can I get help?
– How do I know if my child or relative or friend is addicted?
– How do I get someone up to realizing they need help?

Latest Episodes:

Nadia Davis - Finding the Home Within after Addiction Apr 28, 2022

Show notes

Nadia Davis is the recipient of multiple state and national public service awards and has been a public figure in California for over two decades. As a young high-profile lawyer, Nadia served on the school board and represented the wrongfully convicted. She then led local and state efforts to improve collaboration of services for victims of interpersonal violence and was elected as county supervisor. She is the former long-time spouse of Bill Lockyer, California's former Attorney General and Treasurer, with whom she now happily co-parents. Her experience with PTSD and addiction in the trenches of a highly publicized abusive relationship led Davis through the challenges of public shaming, injustice, arrests, mandated treatment, and a total lack of privacy for personal issues.

Her memoir, Home is Within You, details her courageous journey to wholeness and health in a powerful homage to finding one's truth and worth. Nadia captures heritage, justice, and personal recovery into a tour de force utilizing prose, poetry, and letters to her sons. It is also a defense of privacy and motherhood, as well as a call to action against shaming of women and ineffective, often damaging policies toward struggling families. Davis suggests more compassionate methods of treatment and restorative justice enabling those in recovery from trauma and addiction to ultimately find their personal truth and strength within.

Josh Villareal - Heroin addict - His secret to sobriety Apr 21, 2022

Show notes

Well obviously my name is Josh. Basically in a nutshell as it were I was a careered musician and was very successful in many capacities. I once owned a recording studio with Gordon Raphael (producer of the strokes & Regina Spektor) after getting my own record deal I worked on my debut album with Anthony Braun Perry and Scott Montoya (both from the band the growlers) and was well on my way. I have met and worked with many successful musicians and others in the entertainment business for years, and had built up quite a catalogue of gear and equipment along with a nice shiny resume. I had a house a supportive girlfriend who actually quit her job to work with me on my career full time because she believed in mine that much. I had custody of my autistic and diabetic son from a previous relationship. Life was good then I gave it all away for one small yet very big thing. That thing was so elusive and so deceitful. It was so romantic looking and yet so insidious. That thing was heroin. I've dabbled in drugs and alcohol for a long time and they sunk their teeth into my life long ago but I was always able to go dry for a while so I thought I had it under control. Through everything I've lost and all the problems I've gained it all changed October 1st, 2021. You see after a few jail stints and a prison sentence I basically just resigned myself to drugs and thought ok music is over so I'll become a full-fledged criminal. But this last year I got in trouble once again with the law and to my surprise instead of sending me back to prison they gave me probation and when I screwed that up I thought surely they'll send me back now but they didn't; they gave me a corrections based treatment program. When I left there I relapsed once again while living with my brother and ended up getting into a huge fight with him about who was the better addict. My brother had his own demons but in his mind he was ok because he was still living in his own place with a job and a car. So he kicked me out after the fight and that was the last I ever spoke to him. I feel very fortunate indeed but it came with a price and with consequences. Sadly my brother passed away from drugs a few months ago as did my ex girlfriend so those things and a few other things blessed me with the gift of desperation. But I'll tell you, through my brother's death I was able to be reborn. On September 31st, 2021 I was parked in a car I had borrowed from a friend while he was doing some time in jail and I tried to shoot myself in the head not long after I found out about my brother. However, before I could get the gun against my temple it randomly went off right before I got it in the place I wanted. So I had just done a bunch of heroin and from the adrenaline shock and the last bit of drugs; I fell asleep and woke up to cops knocking on the window of the car I was in. They found me with a gun, drugs and all sorts of other illegal things. They should have taken me back to jail then prison, as I'm already on probation. They were about to, when all of a sudden the police officer asked me what I was doing with the gun and I told him. So he doesn't say much and we get in the car and I assume I'm going back to jail to finish my sentence and we pull up to this building I've never seen and I say where are we? He says I'm bringing you here to detox because I don't think you need jail or prison again. You have quite a rap sheet and it won't fix you to go back. I think you need help, so do yourself a favor and get it. That was my higher power working in my life and I felt it for the first time in a long time. That was October 1st, 2021 and I've been sober ever since. I go to meetings; reach out to people; and help wherever I can; and I work a 12 step program. I honestly wish I would have started a long time ago because it's the best thing I've ever done aside from having my son. So yeah! My recovery comes first as does my program. I surrendered myself to a higher power and realized my life was unmanageable and that I desperately needed and wanted a change. Now I'm learning to love myself again and I started some projects but I'm focusing on helping other bands again but I also help other addicts. My story could be so much longer but this is as I said in a nutshell!

Jeff Johnston - A Grieving Dad - Helping Others and Living a Life Undeterred Apr 14, 2022

Show notes

On October 4, 2016, the trajectory of Jeff's life changed with one phone call. Prior to that day, Jeff was living the American Dream. He had a great family, was a successful entrepreneur running a financial services firm in Iowa, and was seemingly coasting through life. The morning of October 4, 2016 Jeff received the phone call that is every parent's worst nightmare. His oldest son, Seth, had died from fentanyl poisoning. He was 23 years old. Jeff soon realized that he had two options. He could go down a road of anger and despair and become bitter, or he could use his situation as motivation to become better. He chose the latter. Jeff decided to take a step back from his career as a financial advisor and focus his attention toward making a difference. He became an advocate for bringing awareness to substance use and addiction in teens & young adults. He began speaking at high schools and community events and joined the board of a local treatment facility that Seth spent time at before his death. In 2020, Jeff founded his own non-profit, Choices Network, Ltd. dedicated to educating kids, parents, teachers & coaches on the importance of making positive choices. That same year, he wrote his first book, "This One's for You: An Inspirational Journey Through Addiction, Death and Meaning" and started the Living Undeterred Project. Jeff is currently organizing the Living Undeterred Tour with the goal of building a network of contacts and resources to help develop alternative solutions to the mental health and addiction crises.

Big Al Szolak - former Washington Generals basketball player - former addict - Now sober and an inspirational speaker Apr 07, 2022

Show notes

"Big Al" Szolack (born 1950) is a retired American basketball player best known for his time spent on the Washington Generals, the traveling exhibition team who plays against, and always loses to, the Harlem Globetrotters. He played for just the 1974–75 season, one in which the Generals lost all 245 contests. Szolack became a favorite among the Globetrotters and was selected as the "unwitting" participant in many of their pre-determined entertainment plays.

Szolack was raised in Woodbury, New Jersey. He was described as "reed-thin" but was a "sniper" on the basketball court while playing for Woodbury High School, from which he graduated in 1968. His ability earned him all-conference and all-county honors, and Szolack then continued his career at Atlantic Cape Community College for two years. After community college, Szolack attended Glassboro State College (now called Rowan University), a then-NAIA school located in Glassboro, New Jersey. He was an integral player on the team, serving as one of their best substitutes off of the bench for head coach Jack Collins. In both seasons the team qualified for the national tournament. Szolack graduated from Glassboro State in the spring of 1973.

Right after college, Szolack tried out for the Scranton Apollos in the Eastern Professional Basketball League, but he was the last cut and did not make the roster. He came upon the Washington Generals when he went to see the Globetrotters at the Spectrum in Philadelphia and obtained Red Klotz' phone number. Szolack spent the next year touring the world and playing against (losing to) the Globetrotters. They played seven days a week and sometimes played twice in a day.

After his exhibition basketball career ended, he moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida and became a bartender. Then, his 54-year-old mother—with whom he was very close—died from a heart attack. He began to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol, and even admitted later to using up to $1,000 worth of cocaine per day for a time. From ages 27 through 34, Szolack's life was in ruins. In an interview, he later admitted, "Drugs turned me into a thief, a liar, a cheat ... One day I found myself sitting in a corner, holding a shotgun. I lived the life of a vampire, peeking out windows for hours at a time. Sometimes I had only enough energy to get from the bed to the sofa. I was sick, very sick. I didn't live ... I existed."

He now goes by the nickname Al "Hugs Not Drugs" Szolack and serves as an abuse awareness director at Hammonton High School in Hammonton, New Jersey. He is also a motivational speaker and runs an annual basketball camp which he calls "Big Al's Basketball Camp." Szolack travels across the United States giving speeches, many times at colleges and universities, and he is on the NCAA-approved speaker roster.

Aaron Reed - Former Teacher - Former Addict - Incarcerated in a Colombian Prison Mar 31, 2022

Show notes

Aaron Reed accepted an International teaching position at a prestigious prep school in S.E. Asia, and in 2006, he and his wife relocated their lives to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Soon after the birth of his daughter in 2009, he found myself swallowed into the belly of the city's drug scene with a raging meth addiction. Within months he was recruited as a drug mule working for both the Nigerian and Khmer cartels, running kilos from S. America to S.E. Asia to support his habit. He lost his job, his wife and his child. In Bogota, 2015, he was finally arrested while muling three kilos onto a plane and was thrown into Colombia's most feared and treacherous prison. The prison experience proved to be the worst and best experience of his life. He has been sober since 2016 and has since published a true crime novel detailing both his downward spiral into addiction and his road to recovery.

Tracy Strawberry - wife of Darryl Strawberry - former Addict -Helping others to Heal Mar 24, 2022

Show notes

Dr. Tracy Strawberry is an international speaker, published author, CEO, and wife of baseball legend Darryl Strawberry. After many years of battling addiction, alcoholism and other life controlling issues, Tracy surrendered her life to Jesus Christ and experienced a radical life transformation through the power of God and the process of change.

By sharing her testimony openly, with biblical solutions and practical application, Tracy is a highly sought after international speaker with requests to deliver her powerful messages of how to experience lasting change, re-inventing yourself, experiencing God in the most difficult of times, overcoming your past, and becoming the very best "you" that God created you to be, and much, much more!

Tracy now holds a Doctorate Degree in Theology, with a focused study in Cultural Restoration and Leadership. She holds her Masters Degree in Business Administration and Management, with a Bachelors in Ministry Leadership.

Dr. Strawberry is the Author of several publications including, Clean Sober & Saved, a Christ-Centered Recovery Curriculum that is established globally. In her weekly programs and traveling ministry, she teaches biblical truth with practical application to deliver a message of faith, redeeming hope, restoration and freedom in Jesus Christ. Tracy believes that those who are lost will be found and those who are bound will be free!

Alongside her biblical teaching and preaching platform, she is an international business consultant with a specialty in assisting Pastors, Governments, and other Leaders with infrastructure and organizational development, strategic planning, and the creation of innovative solutions needed to reach culturally diverse demographics and territories.

Robert Scoggins - Air Force Veteran - Living through hell - Giving back Mar 17, 2022

Show notes

Robert grew up in small town Georgia, admittedly more interested in sports and the outdoors than academics. He graduated high school in 1998, attended Marion Military Institute from 1999-2000 and earned a Bachelor of Science from the United States Air Force Academy in 2003.

Earning the rank of 2nd Lieutenant at graduation, Robert went on to flight training, first at Vance AFB, then being awarded his pilot wings at Ft Rucker, AL, in 2005. Throughout his career, he flew over 1500 flight hours as a UH-1N Instructor Pilot and a HH-60G Pilot. Diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and a Traumatic Brain Injury, he was medically retired at the rank of Major in 2015, after 12-1/2 years of service.

Major Scoggins is a combat Veteran of Balad AB Iraq; Khandahar Airfield and Camp Bastion, Afghanistan; and Camp Lemmonier, Djibouti, Horn of Africa.

As a HH-60G Combat Rescue Pilot, he conducted 252 Combat Missions, totaled 291 Rescued/Recovered, and 151 Lives Saved. Over 200 of those missions and almost all of the 291 Americans, allies, and civilians were in Afghanistan, 2010.

Robert is married to Jacqueline Scoggins and is the proud father to four uniquely creative and beautiful children. He lives with his family in Colorado where he gets by as a full-time dad, and a part-time writer, speaker, painter, farmer, and entrepreneur.

Peter Murphy - Poet, Author, Former Alcoholic Educational advisor Mar 10, 2022

Show notes

Author Peter E. Murphy looks forward to celebrating his 50th year of sobriety after waking up in a gutter when he was 21. He has since fashioned a life of service to others by leading hundreds of workshops for thousands of writers and teachers in the United States and abroad.

In addition to being the founder of Murphy Writing of Stockton University, Peter has been a consultant to numerous organizations including The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Educational Testing Service and countless school districts from coast to coast. He has been an educational advisor to three PBS television series on poetry with Bill Moyers. And after his second visit to the Rose Garden where he was recognized as a Distinguished Teacher by the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars in the Arts, Bill and Hillary Clinton added Peter to their Christmas card list.

Peter began writing his memoir in progress, "Once Upon a Time You Lived in a Castle," to better understand how his mother's suicide and ongoing abuse by a priest led to his addiction to alcohol as a teenager. Writing in general and poetry in particular led Peter from New York City, where he grew up, back to Wales, where he was born, and where he decided to rise out of the gutter and change his life.

Andrew Zimmern - Celebrity Chef - Writer - Speaker - Former Addict Mar 03, 2022

Show notes

Andrew Zimmern knew from a young age he wanted a career in food. After attending The Dalton School and Vassar College, he cooked in New York City restaurants for Anne Rosenzweig, Joachim Splichal and Thomas Keller, amongst others. Andrew helped open and run a dozen restaurants, and at the same time was also an addict spiraling out of control. After a year spent living on the streets, an intervention by close friends brought him to the Hazelden Foundation in Minnesota. Transforming his life around sobriety, Andrew took a job washing dishes at Minneapolis' Café Un Deux Trois. In 1992, he was named executive chef and during his six-year tenure, turned Un Deux Trois into an awarded, national caliber restaurant.

An Emmy-winning and four-time James Beard Award-winning TV personality, chef, writer and teacher, Andrew Zimmern is regarded as one of the most knowledgeable personalities in the food world. As the creator, executive producer and host of Travel Channel's Bizarre Foods franchise, Andrew Zimmern's Driven by Food and Emmy-winning The Zimmern List, he has devoted his life to exploring and promoting cultural acceptance, tolerance and understanding through food. In 2020, Andrew returned to television with the MSNBC series What's Eating America. His latest series, Family Dinner, airs on Chip & Joanna Gaines' Magnolia Network and steams on Discovery+.

Danny Strong - Master Story Teller - Director of Dopesick the miniseries on HULU Feb 24, 2022

Show notes

Danny Strong is a multi-award winning writer, director, actor, producer who is the creator, showrunner and director of the hit Hulu series Dopesick, starring Michael Keaton and Rosario Dawson. He was also the co-creator, executive producer, writer and director for the hit FOX series Empire. He also wrote the screenplays for the films Recount, Game Change, The Butler, Rebel in the Rye (which he also directed) and co-wrote The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 & 2. He won two Primetime Emmy Awards, two WGA awards, a Peabody and a Golden Globe Award for Game Change, and earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for Recount. As an actor, he's appeared in major roles in a number of iconic TV shows and films, including Billions, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gilmore Girls, Justified, Girls and Mad Men.

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