Explore every episode of the podcast Rise Above with Kevin Lanning

From the outside, Mike Van Holderbeke had no reason to end up where he did — a two-parent home, food in the fridge, gifts under the tree, a successful older brother. But addiction doesn't discriminate. What started with weed in seventh grade and a single oxycodone he calls "the warm blanket" spiraled into a full-blown fentanyl and benzo addiction — crushing pills behind the wheel, surviving multiple seizures, losing his best friend to an overdose, and eventually watching 16 officers raid his home. He got sober the day he was sentenced to prison, and served 15 months. Prison could have broken him. Instead, with the help of a counselor who became a beacon of hope and a sponsor he met on the inside, Mike used the time to rebuild himself from the ground up. When he came home, he found the thing that changed everything: running. He ran his first marathon alone around his neighborhood on Christmas Day — and today, 3 years sober at 27, he logs over 100 miles a week and spends his life showing other people that the past doesn't have to define them. This is one of the most inspiring comeback stories we've had on the show. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ingrid Casares lived through the cocaine-fueled Miami of the 1980s, multiple trips to treatment, relapse, fame, the height of the South Beach nightclub scene — and even a federal investigation that brought the FBI to her door. In this episode of Rise Above with Kevin Lanning, Ingrid opens up about discovering cocaine as a teenager, how quickly addiction consumed her life, running away, treatment and relapse, and eventually finding sobriety. Her life then took an unbelievable turn. Ingrid became a major figure in Miami nightlife, co-founding the legendary nightclub Liquid while sober and building a life she once never thought possible. But success didn't make her immune to addiction. She shares how relapse returned years later — including after being prescribed Vicodin following surgery — and how one drink eventually progressed into drinking tequila every day. Today, Ingrid is seven years sober again and shares what decades of addiction, relapse, recovery and the 12 Steps have taught her about staying sober one day at a time. This is a story about addiction — but even more importantly, it's about second chances. If you or someone you love is struggling, please know that recovery is possible. Subscribe to Rise Above with Kevin Lanning for more conversations about addiction, recovery, trauma and the people who have found a way forward. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the outside, Victoria Treadwell was the picture of the all-American girl — raised on a 295-acre dairy farm in upstate New York, a crowned dairy princess and beauty queen, an honor-society athlete who seemed to do it all. What no one saw was the addiction underneath. Chasing acceptance and drawn to the "bad boy," she was introduced to heroin in a Walmart parking lot as a teenager, and within a year and a half it nearly killed her. In June 2016, at just 20 years old, she overdosed — waking up to CPR on a kitchen floor after being brought back with Narcan twice. That night became the turning point. Through outpatient treatment, hard-won boundaries, and cutting ties with the people who kept her sick, Victoria rebuilt her life from the ground up. Today she's 10 years clean — a certified surgical technologist, a college graduate chasing PA school, a marathon runner, and a national pageant finalist who now uses her crown and her platform to prove that addiction doesn't discriminate. Her story is living proof that one choice can send your life in a completely different direction. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

William Ellis was 14 years old, a freshman in high school, when gas splashed onto him near a smoldering fire and he went up in flames from the waist up. He survived second- and third-degree burns, skin grafts, and months in a burn unit — but the narcotics that came home from the pharmacy with him started an addiction that would last most of his life. What began as prescribed painkillers turned into selling pills at school, forging prescriptions across four states with his mother, and eventually shooting heroin and fentanyl just to keep the sickness away. William is the third of the Ellis siblings to sit down on the show — after his sister Brittany and his brother Cody — and together their stories are one of the rawest portraits of the family disease we've ever aired. He buried both of his parents, bounced from ministry to ministry chasing a geographic cure, survived being electrocuted and flatlining on a job site, and finally found his way to treatment in South Florida with his brother's help. Today he's sober, married, working as an electrician, and building the kind of ordinary, grateful life he never thought he'd live to see. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paris Bazley had her first drink at 13 — and blacked out that very first night. From the outside, nothing looked wrong: she was a straight-A student in AP classes, graduated high school two years early, joined a sorority at UCF, and became the bartender everyone loved. Underneath it, she was blacking out almost every time she drank, chasing the next party, and using alcohol and cocaine to fill a hole she'd carried since childhood. She survived a traumatic night at a sorority social and the disbelief that followed, and kept drinking to escape it — until her 21st birthday, when she found herself detoxing on her parents' couch without even understanding what was happening to her body. What turned it around was a phone call from her dad — six months sober himself — asking one simple question: "Are you okay?" That was the moment everything changed. Today Paris is coming up on two years sober, back in school, working as a nanny, training for a Hyrox, chairing her home meeting and serving as an intergroup rep — living proof for a younger generation that putting the drink down isn't the end of the fun. It's where the real life begins. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Delonte West lived a dream millions of kids chase — a standout at Saint Joseph's, drafted into the NBA at 21, and years in the league alongside legends like Paul Pierce, Gary Payton, and LeBron James. He was, by his own description, sheltered inside the business of professional sports, growing as a player while the rest of life stayed on pause. When the game ended, everything he'd built his identity around went with it. In this conversation, Delonte is open about the long, slow progression of addiction that followed his career, his diagnosis and lifelong battle with bipolar disorder, and the years he spent cycling in and out of his lowest points — much of it playing out in the public eye in ways that were painful and dehumanizing. But this episode isn't about the videos the internet passed around. It's about the man behind them, and the work he's doing now. Delonte is coming up on a year sober this December, and he credits consistency, the right medication and treatment, his faith, and the people who never gave up on him. He's found peace in staying in the moment, and he's using his platform to reach the person out there who's still where he was. #RiseAbove #DelonteWest #AddictionRecovery #NBA #MentalHealthAwareness #RecoveryIsPossible #SoberLife#BipolarAwareness #Comeback #SobrietyJourney #SaintJosephs #Boston #RiseAbovePodcast #KevinLanning#SecondChances #MensMentalHealth #TheManBehindTheVideos #Redemption #YouAreNotAlone #OneMoreThing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cody Ellis grew up as the youngest of three in a small Georgia town, and by the time he was a teenager, addiction had swallowed his entire family. It started when his older brother was severely burned in an accident at eight years old — the pain pills that followed pulled his parents in, and the household never came back from it. Cody watched his mother forge prescriptions, watched his family lose their home again and again, and was handed his first opioids at 13. By 16, his own father was teaching him how to use cocaine. What followed was more than a decade lost to methadone, pills, crack, and IV meth — cycling through jail, psychosis, and moments standing on the edge of a highway ready to give up. Both of his parents died in active addiction. But his sister got sober first, came back for him, and got him to treatment in Florida — and everything changed. Today Cody is four years sober, married to a woman in recovery, raising two kids, and chairing a meeting every week to give back what was given to him. This is one of the most raw examples of the family disease we've had on the show, and proof that the cycle can be broken. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the outside, Zac Spowart had every reason to be fine — loving parents, a disciplined home, good grades, a heart-surgeon father. But from around 13, he was being crushed by an anxiety so severe he was physically sick, throwing up before school with no idea why. Then he found alcohol, and for the first time the chaos in his head went quiet. That relief became the problem. Zac is honest that his isn't a story of a traumatic childhood — it's proof that addiction doesn't discriminate, and that what's happening inside someone's head can be enough. Through high school and college he chased that quiet, drinking daily just to function, cycling through a minor-possession arrest and two DUIs. Then, at 21, came the moment that changed everything: driving drunk with his younger brother in the passenger seat, Zac flipped the car. His brother fractured his neck — an injury doctors said could have left him paralyzed or worse, and one he survived by something close to a miracle. (His brother went on to face his own battle with addiction, and is sober today too.) Zac takes complete accountability for that night, and he's unflinching about the fact that even it didn't get him sober right away. What finally did was jail, a hard-nosed judge, court-ordered treatment, and a 12-step program where — reading the first 64 pages of the Big Book on a couch with no phone — he finally heard his own thoughts in other people's stories. Now 19+ years sober, Zac is an addiction counselor with a master's in the field, a world traveler who's been to 50+ countries, and the author of a new book on self-acceptance and conscious relating. He's candid about the hard parts of long-term sobriety too — a divorce, a suicidal stretch a couple years back, an injury that took away the diving he loved — and how gratitude, service, and doing the work carried him through. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jerod Thomas grew up in what he calls a "house of horrors" — two alcoholic parents, a father who drank a fifth of vodka a day and turned violent, and weekends spent walking on eggshells. He was dyslexic in an era when no one caught it until his second year of eighth grade, bullied relentlessly, and told by his own father that if he didn't learn to fight, he couldn't stay in the house. Football became the one place the chaos made sense — fast, loud, and violent, just like home. Against every odd, Jerod became a college football star at Marshall, playing under future NFL head coach Rex Ryan, with a real shot at the pros. Then, weeks after his final college game, his father died — and a bartender at his dad's old bar handed him cocaine. Within weeks it was crack. He tried out for NFL teams while secretly smoking it, showing up 45 pounds underweight and unable to explain why. The football dream collapsed, and everything else went with it: two marriages he torched, restraining orders from his own mother, and years cycling between homelessness and prison. By the end he'd been charged with 12 felonies and convicted of four, all drug-related. What turned it was a conversation with his grandmother in jail, where he listed every reason he couldn't get sober — and she gently told him that a man who could find a way around all those obstacles would be valuable to the world. That night he started writing a program. Today, 18 years sober, Jerod has built treatment programs inside prisons across the country — including the largest in-prison treatment center in the United States — turning the exact system that once held him into the place he now saves lives. Jerod Thomas grew up in what he calls a "house of horrors" — two alcoholic parents, a father who drank a fifth of vodka a day and turned violent, and weekends spent walking on eggshells. He was dyslexic in an era when no one caught it until his second year of eighth grade, bullied relentlessly, and told by his own father that if he didn't learn to fight, he couldn't stay in the house. Football became the one place the chaos made sense — fast, loud, and violent, just like home.Against every odd, Jerod became a college football star at Marshall, playing under future NFL head coach Rex Ryan, with a real shot at the pros. Then, weeks after his final college game, his father died — and a bartender at his dad's old bar handed him cocaine. Within weeks it was crack. He tried out for NFL teams while secretly smoking it, showing up 45 pounds underweight and unable to explain why. The football dream collapsed, and everything else went with it: two marriages he torched, restraining orders from his own mother, and years cycling between homelessness and prison. By the end he'd been charged with 12 felonies and convicted of four, all drug-related.What turned it was a conversation with his grandmother in jail, where he listed every reason he couldn't get sober — and she gently told him that a man who could find a way around all those obstacles would be valuable to the world. That night he started writing a program. Today, 18 years sober, Jerod has built treatment programs inside prisons across the country — including the largest in-prison treatment center in the United States — turning the exact system that once held him into the place he now saves lives. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. #RiseAbove #AddictionRecovery #18YearsSober #CrackAddiction #RecoveryIsPossible #SoberLife#FromPrisonToPurpose #Football #MensRecovery #SobrietyJourney #SecondChances #FromRockBottom#RiseAbovePodcast #KevinLanning #JerodThomas #GenerationalTrauma #Redemption #Dyslexia #ServiceWork#OneMoreThing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Marina Lacerda is a survivor, an advocate, and a mother who spent most of her life carrying pain she was told to keep quiet. Now 6.5 years sober and one year into publicly breaking her silence, she sat down with Kevin to talk about all of it. Marina was born in Brazil and raised largely in New York. From around the age of nine, she was sexually abused by her stepfather — abuse that continued for years while she was made to feel she had to stay silent to keep her family together. That wound shaped everything that followed. By her teens she had found the nightlife, and by adulthood she was self-medicating the trauma with cocaine and, eventually, a devastating Xanax addiction — at her worst taking 15 to 20 pills a day and going through dangerous withdrawals before she finally got clean. The turning point wasn't just getting sober. It was finding her voice. In the last year Marina has connected with other survivors, spoken publicly for the first time, and become an advocate determined to make sure other people — especially children — don't suffer in the silence she was trapped in. She's candid about the guilt, the complicated relationship with her mother, the long road of recovery, and why service to others has become the center of her life. This is a hard, brave conversation about surviving abuse, the addiction that so often follows it, and the freedom that comes from finally telling the truth. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bob Zbikowski wanted to be one thing his whole life: a cop, like his dad. He got there — nearly two decades in law enforcement, including years as a K-9 handler. From the outside he was living his dream. Underneath, he was a first responder carrying the weight of thousands of traumatic scenes with no healthy way to put it down, and a brain wired for addiction he didn't yet understand. Bob is open about the two things that took him under. First, gambling — when New Jersey legalized sports betting, what started as a little action turned into compulsively running his account to zero night after night, in debt by morning, doing it all over again. And then, after being prescribed Adderall for ADHD, a shortage left him without his medication — and someone offered him meth, a chemical cousin of the very prescription he'd lost. He describes it as "Adderall times a hundred," and it pulled him into a secret addiction he carried while still on the job. He's candid about the impossible bind so many first responders face: the fear that asking for help means losing everything — the career, the income, the identity — and the culture that told him to shut up, take the next call, and never show emotion. Eventually it all came apart, and Bob got sober in 2025. Now he's turned his pain into purpose with the Behind the Badge Project, using his voice to reach cops, firefighters, and first responders who are silently struggling — before self-destruction, before it's too late. Because the first responder suicide rate is staggering, and Bob believes the system has to make it okay to raise your hand and ask for help. This is a powerful conversation about addiction behind the badge, the cost of carrying trauma in silence, and finding a new identity in service. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This one is different. Addiction is a family disease — it doesn't just happen to the addict, it happens to everyone who loves them. So in this episode, you'll hear both sides. First from Brandon, who nearly lost his life to it — and then from his wife Katelyn, who lived every moment of it beside him. Brandon Cheek looked like he had it all — a successful business, a family, a life built with his college sweetheart. Underneath was crippling depression and anxiety that a Xanax prescription turned into years of destruction. He walks through the spiral: drinking from the moment he woke up, sipping vodka slowly just to keep it down, multiple trips to rehab, staying merely abstinent without ever doing the deeper work, losing the family business, and the suicidal ideation that convinced him there was no way out. Now two years sober and grounded in his faith, he's honest about all of it — including the damage he did to the people he loved most. Then Katelyn joins. As she puts it, loving someone through addiction is not for the weak. A self-described fixer and problem-solver, she tried to control and rescue her way through it — hiding it from everyone, white-knuckling his recovery, getting her hopes up and crushed with every relapse — until she realized in therapy that she had become just as sick with codependency. She speaks with staggering honesty about learning to separate "sober Brandon" from "addict Brandon," about mentally rehearsing his funeral, about surviving the betrayals of active addiction, and about the moment unconditional love and real boundaries finally broke the cycle. Together, they're a picture of what's possible on the other side — a marriage that didn't just survive, but rebuilt. If you love someone in addiction, or you're the one struggling, this conversation is for you. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the biggest fears I had before going to treatment — all five times — was the unknown. What is it actually like inside? Will I be comfortable? Will they get to the root of what's really going on? So in this vlog, I'm taking you behind the doors of a rehab to show you exactly what it's like. I got a full tour of Caron's Keele Center in Delray Beach, Florida — one of their two inpatient facilities — and honestly, it feels more like a five-star hotel than what most people picture when they think "rehab." I'll show you the private rooms, the outdoor space and nature that's so important for healing, and the dining hall (the food genuinely blew me away). But the real difference is what happens on the inside: I sat down with Allie, a clinical supervisor who's also a Caron alum with 12 years sober, to talk about how they treat addiction as a brain disease — using brain mapping, neuro-restorative care, and diagnostic clarity to actually get to the root of the problem instead of guessing. The thing that's always meant the most to me about Caron is that they treat the patient like family and the family like the patient. You'll hear that firsthand from a staff member who lost her sister to this disease, was cared for by Caron through that grief, and changed her entire career to come work here. Whether you're thinking about taking that first step yourself, worried about a loved one, or just curious what treatment really looks like — this one's for you. Asking for help is scary. My hope is that seeing what's behind the doors makes it a little less so. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

7-OH is one of the most talked-about drugs in the country right now — a concentrated kratom derivative sold legally at smoke shops and gas stations, often pitched as a natural remedy for pain. Isabella "Izzy" Saravi is a 26-year-old who got caught by it, and she's here to warn other young people what it actually does. Izzy grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, in a chaotic home — her parents divorced young, her father was, in her words, an abusive narcissist who wanted little to do with her, and she carried low self-worth into a string of unhealthy relationships. She found escape first in alcohol, then Molly and the festival scene, then ketamine — the drug that became her "I've arrived" moment and eventually pulled her into paranoia, psychosis, and daily use. Then a smoke shop employee handed her 7-OH, telling her it was a natural, over-the-counter fix for her pain. She had no idea she'd just been given what amounts to a legal opioid. She's remarkably honest about what followed: the fast physical addiction, nodding off standing up, the hundreds of dollars a day, and the withdrawals almost no one warns you about — not just the flu-like sickness, but a psychological crash so severe she became suicidal and couldn't be left alone. This episode goes deep on the parts of the 7-OH crisis that aren't in the headlines yet. Now sober alongside her boyfriend, Izzy is part of a growing wave of young people rejecting the party lifestyle — and putting a face to a danger sitting on smoke shop shelves across the country. If you or someone you love is using kratom or 7-OH because it's "legal," this is the episode to hear. This Episode Is Sponsored By NOCD A lot of people who've done the hard work of getting sober still struggle with unwanted, intrusive thoughts that bring guilt and shame and keep coming back. For some people, that may be OCD — and in recovery it often goes unrecognized for years because it can look like anxiety or feel like part of the process. The good news is it's treatable. NOCD is the world's leading provider of OCD treatment, with licensed therapists who specialize in ERP (exposure and response prevention) therapy through live, face-to-face virtual sessions, plus support between sessions. NOCD is covered by insurance for over 138 million Americans. 👉 Book a free 15-minute call at: https://www.treatmyocd.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jared Watson is the frontman of the Dirty Heads — the voice behind songs millions of people have sung along to. He's also, in his own words, an alcoholic who spent more than a decade fighting to stay sober while the disease kept pulling him back. Jared grew up in Southern California surf and skate culture, born in a beach apartment to "cool parents," raised in a world where everything — surfing, fishing, good times, bad times — came with a drink. He didn't know until much later how deeply alcoholism ran in his family, or how genetically loaded the deck was against him. He talks candidly about roughly ten years of back-and-forth sobriety: getting a year, getting a few months, telling himself he could use just one night, and watching that one night stretch into another lost stretch. The bottom underneath the bottom came recently. What was meant to be a single night in Vegas spiraled into the worst year and a half of his life — three rehab stays in six months, full-blown withdrawals within thirty minutes of a drink, pacing himself through a three-week tour just to function, and begging for beers on the flight to treatment. He's raw about what it's like to go through that as a father, the shame that comes with it, and the "feel free" kratom products he calls dangerous and dark. Now a few months into his most honest sobriety yet, Jared has given up the "1%" he always held onto — and he's here sharing it while it's still fresh, because someone else needs to hear it. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tyler Bowers grew up in Pennsylvania with what looked, from the outside, like everything — a nice house with a pool, travel baseball, a mom who gave him whatever he needed. But underneath was a kid carrying guilt for his parents' divorce, a complicated relationship with a father who battled his own addiction, and an entitlement he now names as the core of his disease. It started with weed, then a Xanax at a party that blacked him out — and instead of scaring him, it became the thing he wanted to chase. A baseball injury and rotator cuff surgery introduced him to opioids and the euphoria of morphine, and from there his addiction took off. Cocaine became the great love of his life; he describes doing eight balls alone and using around the clock through a chaotic college and fraternity chapter. There were DUIs, a totaled car he somehow parked in the driveway, a night he punched a police officer and ran, and thirteen separate trips to treatment. What finally changed wasn't the consequences — it was surrender. Tyler is honest about how long he faked the steps, manipulated the system, and leaned on his mom to fix everything, until a counselor called him out, a breakup cracked him open, and he cried for the first time in his sobriety. Now sixteen months sober, he works in the treatment field, sponsors other men, and has rebuilt his relationships with his mom and sister from the ground up. This is a story about entitlement, surrender, and the truth that addiction doesn't care how good your childhood looked. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

7-OH is one of the most dangerous drugs almost nobody understands yet — a concentrated kratom derivative sold legally at gas stations and smoke shops, often marketed as a harmless supplement. Ian Crawford is here to tell you what it nearly cost him. A surfer, lacrosse player, and Florida kid whose athletic future was derailed by concussions, Ian had moved through years of experimenting — weed, psychedelics, the festival scene, cocaine — while mostly holding it together. Then a friend mentioned kratom, and Ian picked some up at a smoke shop, figuring anything sold legally over the counter couldn't be that serious. He'd taken it only a handful of times. Then came the night that changed everything. Ian and a close friend each took 7-OH, and over the course of the evening his friend stopped responding. Ian describes performing CPR, clearing his friend's airway, and calling for help as his own body was shutting down — until he collapsed in front of the arriving officers and flatlined. Both of them ended up in comas. By what Ian can only call a miracle, they both survived. Now four months clean, Ian has turned that night into a mission. He's testified before his city council, shared his story with local news, and become one of the few young voices putting a face to the 7-OH crisis and pushing to get it off the shelves. This episode is essential viewing for anyone — especially young people — who's been told these products are safe because they're legal. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Justin Gurland grew up the oldest of four in a close, loving New Jersey family — family dinners every night, a dad who was a doctor and coached his teams, a childhood that looked idyllic from the outside. But Justin always felt a little different, a little black-sheep-ish, and from the very first time he drank at 13, he'd found the feeling he didn't know he was missing. By college at the University of Vermont, the partying had curdled into something darker. His whole crew got hooked on opiates, and Justin moved seamlessly from OxyContin to heroin. He moved to New York City telling himself the problem was geographic — that he'd learn to "drink like a gentleman" — and instead spent the next few years in the darkest, most isolated stretch of his life, secretly using IV heroin while keeping up appearances just enough to avoid the alarms. It all came down when his sister walked into his bedroom and found his works out in the open, and weeks later, when his doctor father spotted the abscess on his hand. In one of the most powerful scenes he shares, Justin describes grabbing his dad by his white coat and telling him he needed him more than he ever had in his life. He detoxed that night and got sober in 2008. Eighteen years later, Justin has spent more than 15 years working in behavioral health — and recently took a leap of faith to build something that didn't exist: The Maze, a first-of-its-kind alcohol-free membership club in New York City, a place to find community and connection without alcohol at the center. This is a story about isolation and belonging, the families who love us through it, and building the thing you always wished existed. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lauryn Boorstein grew up in the Poconos in a home full of chaos — a painful divorce, a father she loved who struggled with his own demons, and an autistic brother she appointed herself the protector of before she was old enough to protect anyone. She fell in love with the lifestyle — the fighting, the adrenaline, the not-caring — long before she understood she was an addict. By her early twenties, crack and heroin had taken over. Her story is one of hard crashes, literal and otherwise. A stolen-car wreck as a teenager. A later accident where she describes her body shutting down at the wheel, crashing into a tree, and walking away convinced God had spared her. Multiple treatment stays, a devastating injury that left her unable to walk for years, and the losses that piled up — including a boyfriend early in her sobriety who overdosed the night she begged him to get help. But this is ultimately a story about what recovery makes possible. Lauryn got sober in 2017, and in one of the most bittersweet gifts of her life, her father — sick himself — got to watch her pick up her one-year medallion before he passed away the very next day. In the years since, she's become a devoted single mother to her daughter, worked the steps, sponsored other women, and built a thriving national business from the ground up. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Danny O'Connor was an Olympic-team boxer and professional fighter from Boston who spent ten years chasing a world championship. From the outside, he was elite, disciplined, relentless. What almost no one knew was that the same all-or-nothing drive that made him a champion was also fueling a secret, life-threatening eating disorder. It started when he was a teenage wrestler, learning to manipulate his body to make weight, with no education about nutrition and no idea what he was doing to himself. That same pattern followed him into a pro boxing career fought entirely in one weight class — and over the years it grew into a full-blown, medically diagnosed eating disorder, one of the deadliest mental illnesses there is. Danny is unflinching about what it cost him: his health, trips to the ICU, and ultimately his shot at a world title in 2018, when his body finally gave out on the biggest night of his life. He also opens up about the chaotic period after he lost wrestling as a teenager — leaving home, a string of arrests, and a judge's warning that stopped him cold — and how he found his way back through boxing, and eventually into recovery. Today Danny is a keynote speaker, an author, and a devoted husband and father who brings his kids along on his book tours. His story is a powerful, rarely-told look at eating disorders in men, the hidden cost of elite sports, and what it takes to finally choose your life over the thing you built it around. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⚠️ The views in this episode are Dr. Teralyn Sell's professional opinions and personal experience. This conversation is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Never start, stop, or change a prescribed medication without consulting your doctor — stopping some medications suddenly can be dangerous. Dr. Teralyn Sell is a psychotherapist and PhD with a background that spans maximum-security prisons, addiction treatment, and nearly 15 years in private practice. In this wide-ranging conversation, she shares a perspective the addiction and mental health worlds are only beginning to reckon with: that many people leaving addiction behind are being moved straight into long-term dependency on psychiatric medication — and that no one is being told the full cost. Drawing on her own seven years on antidepressants and her clinical work, Dr. Teralyn digs into the emotional numbing and sexual side effects that often go unmentioned, why she believes the popular "chemical imbalance" explanation for depression isn't supported by the research, why she considers coming off SSRIs harder for many people than detoxing from heroin, and how the same "you'll need this forever" message shows up in both psychiatric medication and long-term Suboxone use. She also shares what she's seen actually help the brain heal — nutrition, sleep, movement, connection, and trauma work — and why she believes in the brain's capacity to recover. Whether you agree with all of it or none of it, it's a thought-provoking conversation about questions worth asking your own doctor. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On paper, Emma Gray had every advantage — a New York City upbringing, elite schools, a spot at Harvard, and eventually a six-year finance career. Underneath it, she was a person who, in her own words, couldn't sit with an uncomfortable feeling for more than a moment without needing to escape it. Emma started with alcohol, which never agreed with her, and then found the thing that did: first weed, then the downers that would take over her life — Oxy and Xanax. She describes the exact mechanism of her addiction with unusual clarity: the second she felt relief from a drug, she was already terrified of losing it and reaching for more. That pattern followed her to Harvard, where she partied instead of studying, plagiarized her way through assignments, looked administrators in the eye and denied it, and was ultimately asked to leave. Her rock bottom came quietly — 72 hours in bed, not answering her phone, her family convinced she was overdosing. She got sober in 2015 after treatment at Caron and an intensive therapy program that, as she puts it, rewired her. The first year was small and hard: sober living, meetings, reality TV, knitting, learning to read a full page of a book again, waiting for the joy to come back. It did. Emma went back to Harvard, graduated, built her career, and recently left it to pursue what's next — all on the foundation of a sobriety she's had for nearly a decade. This is an honest, self-aware conversation about high-functioning addiction, the delusion that keeps us sick, and what it actually takes to build a life worth staying sober for. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

7-OH is one of the most talked-about drugs in the country right now — a concentrated kratom derivative sold legally at smoke shops and gas stations, marketed as a natural supplement. Bari Leigh is here to tell you what it actually did to her. Bari's story starts long before 7-OH. A gifted athlete and touring singer-songwriter from a family that looked, for a while, like the American dream, she survived a childhood shattered by her father's near-fatal accident and a series of profound traumas that she carries with hard-won honesty. Pain — physical and emotional, compounded by real medical conditions and surgeries — became the thread that led her to opioids: Percocet, OxyContin, and years of a dependence she fought through two pregnancies. When she finally got off the pills, she found what she thought was a harmless, natural alternative on a smoke shop shelf. Kratom became 7-OH, and within six months she describes being, in her own words, a shell of herself — nodding off like she was on heroin, going through brutal withdrawals every morning, hiding it from her husband and kids, and watching her personality disappear. It's a powerful, first-hand look at a substance most people still don't understand. Now sober since January 2026, Bari is speaking out to warn others about 7-OH and to show that recovery is possible even after the hardest things imaginable. If you or someone you love is using kratom or 7-OH and telling yourself it's fine because it's legal, this is the episode to hear. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On paper, Ava Garcia was the kid who had it together — straight-A student, captain of the varsity basketball team, an artist, the responsible firstborn. Underneath it, she was raising herself in the chaos of two parents in active addiction, competing for attention with a younger brother who needed all of it, and by 13 she was already using. She sold Xanax to fund an opioid habit while keeping her grades near-perfect, convinced that as long as she was checking every box, she couldn't really be an addict. Ava's story is a decade-plus odyssey that most people wouldn't believe: opioids that gave way to a ten-year battle with an eating disorder running in parallel, a chapter living abroad in Israel with a partner deep in his own addiction, alcohol that took over at the end, and a series of treatment centers and relapses. She's remarkably, sometimes darkly funny about it — but she doesn't flinch from the hardest parts, including the night she nearly lost her life and the rock bottom that followed. What finally turned it was a moment of total desperation, a prayer, and a phone call she describes as nothing short of a miracle — her mother showing up at her door to take her to treatment. Now four years sober, Ava has her life, her health, and herself back, and she's using her story to reach the people who are still where she was. This is a raw, honest, and ultimately hopeful reminder that no one is too far gone. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the outside, Laura Bonczek was the picture of success — a well-known family in her Connecticut town, a teacher mother, a father in long-term recovery, good grades, sports, and eventually a master's in social work. She built a career as a therapist and rose to clinical director of a substance abuse treatment facility. And the entire time, she was secretly living the exact disease she was being paid to treat. Laura's addiction started young — alcohol and weed at 12, ecstasy and opioids in high school, hydrocodone giving way to the "thirties" she'd chase for years. She was, in her own words, high-functioning: seven years of college straight through while using, always getting just enough done to convince herself she wasn't really an addict because she wasn't "living under a bridge." She managed it through a cocktail of prescribed Adderall, Xanax, opioids, and alcohol — until she couldn't. She's brutally honest in this episode about the parts that are hardest to admit: being a therapist counseling people on their addictions while hiding her own, discovering kratom through her own clients, getting Suboxone delivered to her mailbox, being pulled over by the DEA on a work errand, and the day her own coworkers — many in recovery themselves — sat her down and refused to let her lie her way out one more time. One of them, a mother who'd nearly lost her own kids, told Laura she was going to lose her daughter. That was the moment the fog broke. Now four years sober, Laura is a licensed clinical social worker and clinical director doing the work honestly — using everything she survived to help others find the way out. This is a powerful story about the high-functioning addict nobody suspects, and the moment of clarity that changes everything. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On paper, Tatum Love was thriving — a bright kid from New Hampshire who lived the all-American athletic life and went on to an Ivy League education at Cornell. Underneath it, she'd been fighting something since childhood: a family history of addiction and disordered eating that, after her parents' divorce, found somewhere to take hold. Tatum's story is a powerful reminder that addiction doesn't care where you come from or how much promise you have. Her struggle began not with drugs or alcohol — which she didn't touch until she was 19 — but with the way she used control and food to escape what she was feeling. From there it moved into stimulants she first used to manage her eating, then alcohol, then psychedelics, until the straight-A Ivy League student was living out of her car with a few dollars to her name. She speaks with remarkable honesty about the hardest chapters: the decision, in active addiction, to let her mother raise her baby daughter; the depths she reached far from home; and the moment she finally chose treatment. Now 18 months clean and sober, Tatum has her life, her health, and her relationship with her daughter back — and she's sharing all of it so someone else knows they're not too far gone. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Back by popular demand — Karina Miesner (IG @karina.mies) returns for our second Q&A, where Kevin and Karina answer the questions the audience asks most in the comments. Two people with real long-term recovery talking honestly about the stuff people actually want to know. In this episode they get into: how you know if you're actually an alcoholic or addict versus someone who just drinks too much, whether you can have a problem if you don't use every day, what's harder — getting sober or learning to live sober, how to handle grief and hard times without picking up, whether you can stay sober and still behave the way you did in active addiction, whether two people in recovery can have a healthy relationship, what to do when someone won't forgive you even after you've changed, and why so many people relapse when things are going well. Honest, practical, and straight from lived experience — no scripts, just two people sharing what actually worked for them. Karina will be back to share her full story again soon — drop a comment if you want to hear it. And if you have questions for the next Q&A, leave them in the comments and we'll bring them to the next round. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alexa Cunniff never really had a childhood. Raised like what she calls "a gypsy kid" — living in hotels and trucks, on the run from process servers, never setting foot in a classroom until sixth grade — she learned to read off an atlas and grew up around addiction on every side of her family. She was drinking and using by 12, in the clubs by 15, and chasing the "hard stuff" she'd heard glorified her whole life. Her story runs through a decade-plus of addiction: cocaine and Xanax as a teenager, two kids by 21, and then the drug that truly took her under — Adderall. She describes eating eight to ten pills a day, dropping to 134 pounds, and finally crossing into meth (introduced, unforgettably, by a stranger driving a street sweeper) and then heroin and speedballs. She lost everything, ended up living in her car, and survived things she says by all rights should have landed her in prison or worse. What finally broke through came on Halloween of 2021 — after a terrifying assault and a night sitting outside a detox for hours waiting to be let in. A clinician she'd never met refused to let her sign herself out, told her she was worth fighting for, and it changed everything. Alexa got sober that day. She later went to work as a peer recovery specialist for the very organization that saved her, and today she's a therapist helping others find the way out. Alexa Cunniff never really had a childhood. Raised like what she calls "a gypsy kid" — living in hotels and trucks, on the run from process servers, never setting foot in a classroom until sixth grade — she learned to read off an atlas and grew up around addiction on every side of her family. She was drinking and using by 12, in the clubs by 15, and chasing the "hard stuff" she'd heard glorified her whole life.Her story runs through a decade-plus of addiction: cocaine and Xanax as a teenager, two kids by 21, and then the drug that truly took her under — Adderall. She describes eating eight to ten pills a day, dropping to 134 pounds, and finally crossing into meth (introduced, unforgettably, by a stranger driving a street sweeper) and then heroin and speedballs. She lost everything, ended up living in her car, and survived things she says by all rights should have landed her in prison or worse.What finally broke through came on Halloween of 2021 — after a terrifying assault and a night sitting outside a detox for hours waiting to be let in. A clinician she'd never met refused to let her sign herself out, told her she was worth fighting for, and it changed everything. Alexa got sober that day. She later went to work as a peer recovery specialist for the very organization that saved her, and today she's a therapist helping others find the way out. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the outside, Cassidy Matone had it all together — a makeup artist and bikini bodybuilder from Long Island with her own business. Addiction doesn't discriminate. What started as a single Roxy a friend handed her "to help her sleep" turned into a full-blown opioid addiction, then counterfeit fentanyl pills, and eventually a needle. Her story runs from the corporate office where a boss left a Roxy on her desk like a morning coffee, through rehabs and relapses, to the streets of Kensington in Philadelphia — one of the epicenters of the opioid crisis. She's unflinchingly honest about the depths: shooting heroin and cocaine together, drug-induced psychosis, and a rock bottom in a trap house that finally broke through. Getting clean nearly killed her — her detox was so severe she went into seizures and was placed in a medically-induced coma for days. Today Cassidy is over a year sober, has her own apartment for the first time in a decade, and is rebuilding a life she thought was gone. A raw reminder that no one is too far gone. This Episode Is Sponsored By NOCDA lot of people who've done the hard work of getting sober still struggle with unwanted, intrusive thoughts that bring guilt and shame and keep coming back. For some people, that may be OCD — and in recovery it often goes unrecognized for years because it can look like anxiety or feel like part of the process. The good news is it's treatable. NOCD is the world's leading provider of OCD treatment, with licensed therapists who specialize in ERP (exposure and response prevention) therapy through live, face-to-face virtual sessions, plus support between sessions. NOCD is covered by insurance for over 138 million Americans. 👉 Book a free 15-minute call at: https://www.treatmyocd.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Come behind the scenes on one of the biggest weeks yet for Rise Above. We just launched our merch line — hoodies, sweatshirts, and hats — and every dollar from it goes right back into the podcast to keep spreading the message of hope. I'm also pulling back the curtain on the business. Two years ago I started this thing not knowing if anyone would watch, and it's grown into something I never imagined — about 112,000 subscribers on YouTube and over 1.1 million followers across all platforms. I just hired a five-person team handling social media, guest bookings, and content, which has finally freed me up to focus on the interviews and new opportunities. One of those opportunities was surreal: a deal with Paramount. When I started the podcast two years ago, one of my early interviews was with Dr. Nadine, Jordan Belfort's ex-wife. Paramount licensed that content, and when The Real Wolf of Wall Street came out, my phone blew up with people who spotted the clip in the documentary. Through all of it, the mission hasn't changed. It's become my job and there's real business behind it now, but I keep my 12-step recovery completely separate, and the goal of every single episode is still just to help that one person. God takes care of the rest. Plus — Lilo update. The Rise Above puppy is 19 weeks now, nearly doubled in size, fully potty trained, and crushing his training. Thank you for being part of this. Episode six is coming in a few weeks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kelsey Daniels grew up poor in Connecticut, one of three kids, chasing an athletic scholarship as her whole identity and her only path out. She was molested at eight, sexually assaulted at sixteen, and — in the aftermath — slut-shamed by classmates and even her own family, until she quietly absorbed the belief that the abuse was somehow her fault. That belief followed her to college, where a professor's offhand pitch about "sugar dating" pulled her into a world she didn't understand until she was deep inside it. What started as a way to feel some control over her own body turned into exploitation, coercion, and being trafficked — passed between men who told her she was owned. For years she saw it as her own doing. It wasn't. This is the story of how Kelsey came to understand what was actually done to her, how she got out, and how she rebuilt a life and an identity that finally belong to her. Today she's sober, healing, and using her voice so other survivors know it was never their fault — and that there's a way out. This is a hard, honest conversation about trauma, exploitation, and reclaiming your life. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matt Handy was the oldest of ten kids, raised in a strict religious home in San Diego — and living a double life almost from the start. He smoked weed at 13 the night his youngest sibling was born, tried crack within a month, and was shooting heroin by 17. A felony arrest in high school slammed the door on his plan to become a lawyer, and from there his life accelerated into a world most people only see in movies. He ran a nationwide retail-theft ring that took him through 38 states in 11 months, got involved in gang life, and cycled in and out of prison. It culminated the day after Christmas 2020, when — a daily user of meth, heroin, PCP, and more — he walked into a bank and robbed it, then told the FBI he had a bomb. He was facing 33 years and two strikes. Matt walks through all of it: the sexual abuse that shaped his childhood, the 14 years he went without speaking to his family, getting sober, relapsing after three and a half years, and finally finding his way back. Now 2.5 years sober, he's using everything he survived to help other people find a way out. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the outside, Allie Serea had it all together — good grades, a masters degree, a corporate job at a major company, an easy way with people, and a reputation as the fun party girl. On the inside, she describes crawling out of her skin, hating who she was, and feeling like an empty shell every Monday after another blacked-out weekend. Allie was never a daily drinker. She was a high-functioning binge drinker — the kind who could go weeks without a drink, then take one at a party and not stop until 6am. For years that let her tell herself she didn't really have a problem, especially when everyone around her in college and corporate life was drinking exactly the same way. Underneath it was childhood trauma she wouldn't fully face until she got sober, and a body she never felt safe in. Her story isn't one of arrests or overdoses. It's the quieter, more common one: geographic moves that never fixed anything, a new city and a new relationship that never fixed anything, and the slow realization that the problem followed her everywhere because the problem was the thing she was running from inside. After a decade of trying to moderate, she finally got sober a year and a half ago — and found that the real work, the trauma healing and the rebuilding of an identity, was only just beginning. Now 19 months sober, Allie is a recovery and healing content creator who talks openly about inner-child work, nervous-system regulation, and building a life so full you don't want to escape it. This one is for anyone who looks fine on paper and is quietly struggling underneath. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Andrew Gautreau grew up in a middle-class Louisiana family — a dad who built his own business and a mother who worked in child services, sometimes bringing him along as she pulled kids out of crack houses and placed them in foster care. He saw exactly what drugs did to families before he ever touched them. He went anyway. It started with weed and ecstasy at high school parties, the first time he ever felt comfortable in his own skin. But the twist in Andrew's story is what came next: he became a corrections officer, working the dorms of Louisiana prisons — one guard to 120 inmates — while secretly getting high. He was buying pills at a known trap house, still in his prison uniform after a shift, when a SWAT team kicked in the door and put everyone on the ground. He talked his way out of that one. He was arrested again, still employed as a CO, and finally quit the job when he realized how close he was to smuggling drugs into the prison himself. From there it accelerated into full-blown heroin addiction and the needle. Andrew describes hundred-dollar-a-day Roxy habits, a string of arrests, work-release programs, and finally total collapse: homeless, living in the backseat of an old Honda Civic, robbing and breaking into houses to keep using. He overdosed in a Dollar General parking lot and woke up in the hospital having lost his hearing from oxygen deprivation. Days later he overdosed again in his parents' house, went septic, and spent two weeks in the hospital hallucinating. Then one night he walked into his mother's room and said the words he'd said a hundred times before — "I'm ready" — except this time it stuck. His brother had just gotten sober too. On March 1st, nine years ago, Andrew got clean, and he says it didn't just save his life — it brought his entire family back together. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jonah Fingerhood had a nearly perfect childhood in New Hampshire — until he was 16 and lost his older brother to substance abuse. A year later, a skateboarding accident and a compound fracture put a bottle of Percocet in his hands, and the pain of that grief, followed by his father's cancer diagnosis, finally had somewhere to go. He describes the first time he crushed and snorted a pill as the moment he'd "arrived" the feeling he wanted to chase for the rest of his life. That chase took everything. Percocet became heroin, heroin became a needle, and a move to Philadelphia and then Florida accelerated it all. By the summer of 2014 he was homeless on the streets of Miami, sleeping in a chair in Bayfront Park, panhandling every morning just to stave off withdrawal, and calling his father for hotel money he'd spend on dope. He survived an overdose that left him in a coma for a week. He cycled through arrests, rehabs, and relapses, and by October of 2019 — heartbroken, back on the streets, and certain he was too far gone — he had all but given up. Two things pulled him back: seeing a friend he'd been homeless with return from rehab completely transformed, and a fifty-something man in a state-funded rehab who had been coming back to that same program since before Jonah was born. Jonah decided he refused to become that man. He got sober on January 10th, 2020 — a date that, unbeknownst to him at the time, was the same day he'd later mark as the anniversary of his father's death. Now 6 years sober, Jonah went from being turned down by every employer because of his felonies to building a career, starting as a driver's helper at UPS the same day he left rehab. This is a story about grief, hitting the absolute bottom, and the hope that finally broke through. #RiseAbove #HeroinRecovery #FentanylRecovery #6YearsSober #RecoveryIsPossible #AddictionRecovery#SoberLife #OpioidRecovery #HomelessToHopeful #MensRecovery #SobrietyJourney #MentalHealth#RiseAbovePodcast #KevinLanning #JonahFingerhood #OverdoseSurvivor #GriefAndRecovery #SecondChances #NeverTooFarGone #OneMoreThing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chris Broby grew up in Sarasota, Florida, in a good middle-class home — hardworking parents who built a furniture business, no trauma, no abuse. But he always felt a little like the black sheep, a small kid looking for a way to fit in, and when alcohol showed up in his early teens it filled that space instantly. By his senior year of high school, a Roxy at a party made him feel, in his words, the way he was always supposed to feel — and that was the beginning. What followed was a fast, brutal slide into opioid addiction, made worse by a string of deaths in a matter of weeks — a close friend killed crossing a road, his uncle, his old rowing coach — that piled grief on top of a young man already numbing everything he felt. He details a decade-plus odyssey through the pill mills of Florida, wilderness programs and Hazelden, sober livings full of unforgettable characters, Suboxone and Xanax, spice and kratom, and the self-corrected relapses in between. It culminates in a harrowing night during COVID — drinking beyond recognition, his memory in pieces — when police showed up at his door at four in the morning and his gun went off. No one was hurt, he was never charged, and dropping to his knees in his apartment afterward, he knew something had to give. The redemption is the best part. Chris turned the exact thing that nearly killed him into his purpose, building a career in medical and toxicology sales in the drug-testing world — his hard-won knowledge of addiction becoming, as he puts it, the first time he saw God working in his life. This is a raw, funny, wide-ranging conversation about grief, identity, and finding meaning on the other side. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michaela DeGier grew up in a close, loving family just outside Cambridge, Ontario — high school sweetheart parents still together after decades, three tight-knit siblings, summers in the forest behind the house. Her little brother was the baby of the family: the uncle who'd sit at a tiny table and have tea parties with his two-year-old niece, present at every birthday and holiday. Today he's in his early thirties and has been in active addiction for over a decade. This is a conversation about what addiction does to the people who love an addict — the family members Michaela calls the silent sufferers. She talks with unflinching honesty about the guilt she still carries from being the one who first smoked weed with him, the slow-dawning realization that her sister's missing Percocets meant something was wrong, the chaos of the family scrambling to force him into rehab, the relapses, and the heartbreak of watching him choose the street over the family that's right down the road. Most of all, it's about her own healing: learning that she couldn't shame him or love him into recovery, that tough love and boundaries aren't the same thing, and that the only thing she can be for her brother right now is his sister — with boundaries firmly in place, and the door still open. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mike Morgan spent 30 years in law enforcement — a decade of it working the most violent part of one of the most violent cities in America. On his very first shift, he saw two homicides in five hours. He describes a career of natural deaths, suicides, fatal car accidents, and children he couldn't save — and the armor he'd started building as a kid, growing up with a hypercritical, verbally abusive father, only got thicker with every scene. That armor had a cost. Mike traces his addiction back to the pills he was prescribed as a teenager and the painkillers that made him feel, for the first time, like everything was okay. Over the years tramadol became the thing that held him together — until it was pulling him apart. At his worst he was taking as many as 55 pills a day and suffered nine seizures, including one in a GameStop and one that slammed his face into a countertop, before he finally looked at his ex-wife and said the words he'd avoided for years: I need help. He got sober in 2012 — reportedly one of the first people his insurance company had ever sent to rehab for tramadol. But sobriety was only half the story. After being medically retired, the anger and grief he'd channeled into the job for three decades had nowhere to go, and a nervous breakdown forced him to finally face the PTSD he'd carried for years. This episode goes into the healing work that followed, including his experience with plant-based medicine. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Indee Fields was four years old the first time she watched her mother hide from witches that weren't there. Her mom was smoking crack. By ten, Indee was the one running the household — bathing and feeding her younger siblings, breaking up the violence between her mother and stepfather, and calling the police when she was told to, only to be blamed for it the next morning. The rule was simple: you don't tell anyone what happens in this house. This is a raw conversation about what it actually does to a child to grow up as the parent in their own home — the hypervigilance, the caretaking, the way chaos starts to feel like the only thing you know how to operate in. It's also a story of breaking the cycle: how Indee got out, what she's unlearning, and the father who got sober and reminded her of her own worth. For every adult still carrying what they survived as a kid — this one's for you. #RiseAbove #AdultChildrenOfAlcoholics #ACOA #GrowingUpWithAddicts #FamilyDisease #CrackAddiction#BreakingTheCycle #ChildhoodTrauma #Parentification #GenerationalTrauma #TraumaRecovery#RiseAbovePodcast #KevinLanning #IndeeFields #HealingJourney #Codependency #SurvivorStory#DomesticViolenceAwareness #YouAreNotAlone #OneMoreThing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sydney Steele was prescribed Ritalin at five years old, just as she was finishing preschool. From there came Concerta, Vyvanse, and Adderall — a stimulant cycle that ran nearly nonstop through her childhood, alongside psychiatric diagnoses she now believes were largely a reaction to the medication itself. She made it through Syracuse as an illustration major with a real gift and a growing art business — while binge drinking and discovering she loved pills. Then she tried ketamine. A friend had warned her she'd never be able to handle it. He was right. She describes it as the drug she'd been looking for her whole life, and within a few years her tolerance was, in her words, like a 700-pound man's. What almost nobody talks about is what ketamine does to the body. Sydney does. She describes cramps that escalated into 72 hours of pain so severe she was screaming through a heating pad, five ER visits in a single year, and a urologist warning her she was headed for surgery — all while holding a 200-pill Klonopin prescription from a psychiatrist she'd told, in plain words, that she was using every day. Her mother noticed a prescription refill Sydney never picked up. That was the thread that pulled her into treatment. Today Sydney is nearly two years sober, president of the Caron Alumni Association, and back to making the art she loves. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. #RiseAbove #KetamineAddiction #Ketamine #AddictionRecovery #RecoveryIsPossible #WomenInRecovery#2YearsSober #SoberLife #Caron #PrescribedYoung #ADHDMedication #SobrietyJourney #MentalHealth#KetamineRecovery #RiseAbovePodcast #KevinLanning #SydneySteele #OverPrescribed #SoberCurious#OneMoreThing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By June of 2017, Billy Rich had nothing left in his own eyes. A decade into opioid addiction, isolated in a blacked-out bedroom in Rhode Island, cut off from his family, grieving his father, buried under legal fear and a mental state he describes as beyond anything he'd known — he had decided he was done. He didn't see a recovery option. He didn't think there was a way out. He survived that night. Something he can only describe as divine intervention pulled him back at the last possible second, and for the first time he heard a different thought: maybe I'm still here for a reason. His mother found him, got on the phone calling every detox in a fifty-mile radius, and Billy walked into treatment the next day. What followed was the slow, unglamorous work of rebuilding a person — eighteen weeks in an outpatient program when the standard was six, learning who he was without a substance for the first time since he was a teenager, walking miles to and from treatment every day because his life was in pieces. Nine years later, Billy is engaged, has a two-year-old, has built a career with more opportunity than he ever imagined, and walked into this interview with a smile he couldn't have pictured back then. By June of 2017, Billy Rich had nothing left in his own eyes. A decade into opioid addiction, isolated in a blacked-out bedroom in Rhode Island, cut off from his family, grieving his father, buried under legal fear and a mental state he describes as beyond anything he'd known — he had decided he was done. He didn't see a recovery option. He didn't think there was a way out.He survived that night. Something he can only describe as divine intervention pulled him back at the last possible second, and for the first time he heard a different thought: maybe I'm still here for a reason. His mother found him, got on the phone calling every detox in a fifty-mile radius, and Billy walked into treatment the next day.What followed was the slow, unglamorous work of rebuilding a person — eighteen weeks in an outpatient program when the standard was six, learning who he was without a substance for the first time since he was a teenager, walking miles to and from treatment every day because his life was in pieces. Nine years later, Billy is engaged, has a two-year-old, has built a career with more opportunity than he ever imagined, and walked into this interview with a smile he couldn't have pictured back then. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. #RiseAbove #Recovery #9YearsSober #RecoveryIsPossible #AddictionRecovery #SoberLife#MentalHealthAwareness #SuicidePrevention #YouAreNotAlone #HopeInRecovery #OpioidRecovery#SobrietyJourney #RiseAbovePodcast #KevinLanning #BillyRich #988 #SecondChances #KeepGoing #MensMentalHealth #ThereIsHope Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⚠️ This episode is presented for educational and prevention purposes only. In 2018, Brendan Vaughan was arrested for making terroristic threats against his high school. We sat down with him — and previously with the detective who arrested him — not to sensationalize what happened, but to understand the early warning signs that might help someone intervene before a young person reaches that point. If this helps prevent even one tragedy, it will have done its job. Brendan grew up an only child in Orange County, New York, raised by two alcoholic parents in a home where, by his own account, he never saw human connection modeled. A severe stutter and later-diagnosed autism left him profoundly isolated. His father was physically abusive during his drinking years; his mother later drank herself to death. He speaks candidly about the things that, in hindsight, were red flags: being put on SSRIs young, an escalating obsession with true crime, the empathy problems he now takes responsibility for, and the deep resentment he felt toward peers after an injury took away sports — his one connection to others. He walks through how the planning began, the classmates who reported him (which he now says was exactly right), and the multiple points where the adults around him could have intervened. Today Brendan takes full responsibility for the fear he caused. This is a hard conversation, but an important one for any parent, educator, or young person trying to understand what these warning signs actually look like from the inside. Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. #RiseAbove #SchoolSafety #ViolencePrevention #WarningSigns #MentalHealthAwareness #SandyHookPromise#KnowTheSigns #Accountability #TraumaAndBehavior #YouthMentalHealth #RiseAbovePodcast #KevinLanning#SchoolShootingPrevention #SeeSomethingSaySomething #Autism #Isolation #SecondChances #Rehabilitation#Parenting #Prevention Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brittany Logan grew up an only child split between two households — her mother's world of structure and discipline, and her alcoholic father's world of no rules and chaos. By 15 she was drinking before class and never wanted to stop. She got kicked out of art school, was arrested five times in a single month, and moved from blues to Oxys to heroin — a drug she says she first heard glamorized inside her own rehab. For eight years she ran on methadone and weekend heroin. Her final year spiraled into crack addiction and selling her body full-time through the COVID pandemic, cycling in and out of psych wards, certain she was going to die. It took a move to Florida, more relapses, and finally a total surrender — she was simply too exhausted to fight anymore — before two girls outside a 12-step clubhouse showed her that people really could be happy without drugs and alcohol. Now 5 years clean and sober, Brittany has done the work, rebuilt her family relationships, and lives a life she never believed was possible. Brittany Logan grew up an only child split between two households — her mother's world of structure and discipline, and her alcoholic father's world of no rules and chaos. By 15 she was drinking before class and never wanted to stop. She got kicked out of art school, was arrested five times in a single month, and moved from blues to Oxys to heroin — a drug she says she first heard glamorized inside her own rehab.For eight years she ran on methadone and weekend heroin. Her final year spiraled into crack addiction and selling her body full-time through the COVID pandemic, cycling in and out of psych wards, certain she was going to die. It took a move to Florida, more relapses, and finally a total surrender — she was simply too exhausted to fight anymore — before two girls outside a 12-step clubhouse showed her that people really could be happy without drugs and alcohol.Now 5 years clean and sober, Brittany has done the work, rebuilt her family relationships, and lives a life she never believed was possible. This Episode Is Sponsored By NOCD A lot of people who've done the hard work of getting sober still struggle with unwanted, intrusive thoughts that bring guilt and shame and keep coming back. For some people, that may be OCD — and in recovery it often goes unrecognized for years because it can look like anxiety or feel like part of the process. The good news is it's treatable. NOCD is the world's leading provider of OCD treatment, with licensed therapists who specialize in ERP (exposure and response prevention) therapy through live, face-to-face virtual sessions, plus support between sessions. NOCD is covered by insurance for over 138 million Americans. 👉 Book a free 15-minute call at: https://www.treatmyocd.com/ #RiseAbove #WomenInRecovery #HeroinRecovery #CrackAddiction #5YearsSober #RecoveryIsPossible#AddictionRecovery #SoberLife #AlcoholRecovery #Methadone #SobrietyJourney #MentalHealth#SurrenderToWin #RiseAbovePodcast #KevinLanning #BrittanyLogan #FromRockBottom #OverdoseAwareness #OneDayAtATime #OneMoreThing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available. ➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above 📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103 Recovery starts with taking the first step. Brian Hughes grew up in a quintessential New England town on the water, the son of loving parents — and the great-grandson, grandson, and son of alcoholics. His mother would go on to get sober and become a doctor specializing in addiction, quietly paving a way Brian couldn't yet see. He blacked out the first time he ever drank, at 13, was found passed out in a shower with his head split open, and was back on the basketball court the next morning with no real consequences. That, he says, was the story of his life for decades: no consequences, until there were. Brian built a successful career in the beer and alcohol industry, married his valedictorian sweetheart, raised four children, and eventually sold his business for a small fortune. And then the free-fall came. An affair. Drinking around the clock. Within about a year of having a beautiful home and millions in the bank, he was homeless. His drinking escalated to 700 straight days. The bottom, when it finally came, was total: federal prison, where he spent 44 days in general population detoxing on a bare metal slab, the only English speaker in a cell block, certain at his lowest that he wanted to end his life. What turned it was nine months of treatment — long enough, he says, when 28 days never was — a therapist he still sees today, and the slow rebuilding of a man. He got out with nothing, walked to a job cleaning up the blood and cartilage in a grocery store meat department for $13.65 an hour, and felt more pride in keeping his word to himself than in any paycheck he'd ever earned. From there he found his way to helping others, becoming a recovery coach, and eventually working at Caron, one of the institutions that had once saved his own life. Now with years of hard-won sobriety, Brian is a wounded healer using his wounds to help others — and this conversation is a masterclass in how far down the disease can take a person, and how completely a life can be rebuilt. #RiseAbove #AlcoholRecovery #SoberLife #RecoveryIsPossible #AddictionRecovery#HighFunctioningAlcoholic #SobrietyJourney #MentalHealth #FromRockBottom #WoundedHealer #RecoveryCoach#PrisonToPurpose #RiseAbovePodcast #KevinLanning #BrianHughes #Caron #SecondChances #EstimableActs#NewEnglandRecovery #OneMoreThing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matt Von Boecklin grew up outside Seattle, raised by a single mother after his father suffered a mental break when Matt was a toddler and had to be cared for in a home. A socially anxious kid always reaching for the edge of the cool crowd, Matt found early that alcohol quieted that feeling — and years later, a motorcycle accident introduced him to opiates and opened a door he says was impossible to un-see. What followed was a global, restless run — tramadol by the pocketful in Mexico, a rock-bottom withdrawal alone in Nairobi crying on a shower floor, and finally the substance almost nobody talks about honestly: kratom, and its concentrated form 7-OH, sold legally over the counter at gas stations and smoke shops. This episode is essential listening on a crisis that's exploding right now, because Matt lived it and beat it. He describes buying "feel free" bottles and the hardest-hitting extract shots every single morning just to get through work meetings, seeing double, losing his balance, hiding it from the fiancée he loved, and the shame of driving a mile and a half for a fix in the time it should've taken to grab a bagel. Here's what makes his story valuable: Matt is a chemical engineer, and he approached quitting like an engineer. He built himself a "quit kit" of non-prescription supplements to manage the brutal withdrawals, did the reading, and finally threw the last shot in the trash before a trivia night with his fiancée. Now 2 years sober, he can speak with rare clarity about how these legal products hook people who never thought of themselves as addicts — and exactly what it takes to get free. If you or someone you love is stuck on kratom or 7-OH and telling yourself it's fine because it's legal, this is the episode to hear. Matt Von Boecklin grew up outside Seattle, raised by a single mother after his father suffered a mental break when Matt was a toddler and had to be cared for in a home. A socially anxious kid always reaching for the edge of the cool crowd, Matt found early that alcohol quieted that feeling — and years later, a motorcycle accident introduced him to opiates and opened a door he says was impossible to un-see.What followed was a global, restless run — tramadol by the pocketful in Mexico, a rock-bottom withdrawal alone in Nairobi crying on a shower floor, and finally the substance almost nobody talks about honestly: kratom, and its concentrated form 7-OH, sold legally over the counter at gas stations and smoke shops. This episode is essential listening on a crisis that's exploding right now, because Matt lived it and beat it. He describes buying "feel free" bottles and the hardest-hitting extract shots every single morning just to get through work meetings, seeing double, losing his balance, hiding it from the fiancée he loved, and the shame of driving a mile and a half for a fix in the time it should've taken to grab a bagel.Here's what makes his story valuable: Matt is a chemical engineer, and he approached quitting like an engineer. He built himself a "quit kit" of non-prescription supplements to manage the brutal withdrawals, did the reading, and finally threw the last shot in the trash before a trivia night with his fiancée. Now 2 years sober, he can speak with rare clarity about how these legal products hook people who never thought of themselves as addicts — and exactly what it takes to get free.If you or someone you love is stuck on kratom or 7-OH and telling yourself it's fine because it's legal, this is the episode to hear. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction or mental health, you don’t have to do it alone. Reach out to my partners at Compassion Behavioral Health. They offer individualized care and a full continuum of treatment. Call or Text: 844-443-5669 Visit: https: https://compassionbehavioralhealth.com/rise-above/ #RiseAbove #KratomAddiction #7OH #KratomRecovery #2YearsSober #RecoveryIsPossible #AddictionRecovery#SoberLife #LegalOpioid #OpioidRecovery #MensRecovery #SobrietyJourney #MentalHealth #RiseAbovePodcast #KevinLanning #MattVonBoecklin #FeelFree #OverTheCounterAddiction #QuitKit #OneMoreThing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you caught Brenda Zane's episode a few months ago — the mother who shared the harrowing story of her son's addiction and near-death — this is that son. Enzo is here to tell it from the inside. Enzo grew up in Seattle with two loving, supportive parents and a natural entrepreneurial streak, running little candy schemes and haircut businesses as a kid. But a fascination with the "forbidden" turned into weed by middle school, then cocaine and Xanax, then the pills that got too expensive — and finally, in 2017, fentanyl, right as it was flooding the streets and long before most people knew what it was. His first overdose landed him in the hospital; he walked out and used again the same day, telling no one. His second nearly ended everything. Found in a car with no pulse, foam coming from his mouth, his heart had stopped long enough that doctors placed him in a three-day medical coma to keep his organs from swelling. When they took him off the ventilator, no one knew if he'd breathe on his own, or what mental capacity he'd have if he woke. He woke up unable to recognize his own family, his hands and feet curled from lack of blood flow, and had to spend the next month learning to walk again. That was his last time using. Now 9 years sober, Enzo has rebuilt his life around the lessons that saved it — and this conversation is a rare chance to hear a survival story this extreme told with humor, gratitude, and hard-won wisdom. This one is proof of just how close the line is, and how completely a life can come back from the other side of it. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction or mental health, you don’t have to do it alone. Reach out to my partners at Compassion Behavioral Health. They offer individualized care and a full continuum of treatment. Call or Text: 844-443-5669 Visit: https:https: https://compassionbehavioralhealth.com/rise-above/ #RiseAbove #FentanylOverdose #FentanylRecovery #9YearsSober #RecoveryIsPossible #AddictionRecovery#SoberLife #OverdoseSurvivor #NarcanSavesLives #MensRecovery #SobrietyJourney #MentalHealth#RiseAbovePodcast #KevinLanning #AddictionDoesntDiscriminate #MiracleStory #SecondChances#FentanylAwareness #LearningToWalkAgain #OneMoreThing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nick Thornton grew up outside Portland, Maine, raised by his grandparents after his mother's addiction pulled her out of his life. He was warned early that with both parents struggling, he could never drink — a warning he took as a challenge. By 14 he was drinking and smoking weed daily, and from the very first time, he always went harder than everyone around him. What followed was a decade-plus run through Oxy and blues, cocaine, a move to California, a marriage, a business, and a drinking problem he was certain he'd beaten — right up until he replaced it with something he could buy legally at the store. This episode goes deep on the drug almost nobody's talking about honestly yet: 7-OH, the concentrated kratom derivative sold at gas stations and vape shops that Nick describes as, functionally, a legal opioid. He was taking 400 to 500 milligrams a day, living on an eight-hour timer, waking up in full withdrawal in the middle of the night, and dropping three to four thousand dollars a month — all on a product sitting on a shelf next to the register. He talks candidly about the nodding off at his desk, snapping at his kids, the brutal withdrawals when Florida made 7-OH illegal, and finally getting honest with his wife and business partner — both of whom already knew. Now 9 months clean and sober, Nick is rebuilding, running his company, and speaking out about a substance he believes is quietly hooking a lot of people who don't realize what they're actually taking. If you or someone you love is using kratom or 7-OH and telling yourself it's harmless because it's legal, this is the episode to hear. #RiseAbove #7OH #KratomAddiction #7Hydroxymitragynine #9MonthsSober #RecoveryIsPossible#AddictionRecovery #SoberLife #LegalOpioid #OpioidRecovery #MensRecovery #SobrietyJourney #MentalHealth#RiseAbovePodcast #KevinLanning #NickThornton #KratomRecovery #SoberDad #HotTopic #OneMoreThing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the outside Gregg looked like he had it handled — a family, a career, a wife he'd known since middle school. Underneath it he was doing cocaine every single day, and had been for years. He'll tell you he never fit the picture of what people imagine an addict looks like. He wasn't running around wired; cocaine actually quieted the chaos in his head, turned down the noise, and let him not feel. And once he started, he couldn't stop. For about two and a half to three years he used daily, isolating, trying to solve the problem himself without ever saying it out loud to another person. His marriage was going south, his self-worth was gone, and he'd gotten to the point where he couldn't even look at himself in the mirror to shave. Then, in the middle of a run, he had a seizure and woke up on the floor, ending up in the hospital. And even that didn't stop him — he kept using for days afterward. His actual bottom came quietly, sitting on his son's Little League bench, unable to keep his eyes open, thinking to himself what a piece of garbage he'd become. A few days later, something a podcast host said cut through: you can't start to fix the problem until you say it out loud to someone else. Gregg picked up the phone, called a friend who's now his sponsor, and for the first time felt the weight lift. That friend told him to go to treatment. He put up a fight for about thirty seconds — and then he went. Now 1 year sober, Gregg has his marriage, his kids, and himself back — and he's learned that the drugs were never really the problem. They were his broken solution to a life he didn't know how to live. This one is for the high-functioning addict who looks fine on the outside and is quietly falling apart. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction or mental health, you don’t have to do it alone. Reach out to my partners at Compassion Behavioral Health. They offer individualized care and a full continuum of treatment. Call or Text: 844-443-5669 Visit: https: https://compassionbehavioralhealth.com/rise-above/ #RiseAbove #CocaineAddiction #1YearSober #RecoveryIsPossible #AddictionRecovery #SoberLife#HighFunctioningAddict #SobrietyJourney #MentalHealth #FatherhoodInRecovery #FromRockBottom #SoberDad#RiseAbovePodcast #KevinLanning #GreggHayim #SelfWorth #CocaineRecovery #OneDayAtATime #NewYorkRecovery #OneMoreThing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pete Kuc was living a life that looked like the movies. A young real estate hotshot in northeast Florida, he was making a fortune, flying on private jets to the Bahamas, entertaining high-end clients on the waterfront, and running on Adderall and alcohol to keep the whole machine going. He describes it as his own Wolf of Wall Street era — money, parties, and the feeling that as long as he was performing, nothing else mattered. Underneath it was a man who had built his entire sense of worth on being the athlete, then the businessman, then the provider — and had no idea who he was without the win. When the market crashed, it all came apart. A $150 million company gone in a year. Real estate leveraged to the hilt, upside down. He went from living like a billionaire to $7 in his pocket in eighteen months. In the middle of the collapse came a one-night stand, a hidden child he tried to keep secret for years, and three kids across a chaotic stretch of his life. He kept trying to fix it himself — Tony Robbins seminars, masterminds, personal development, charts and triathlon training and sheer discipline — always convinced he could pull it out without surrendering. He never could. There were DUIs he talked his way out of, one he didn't, a marijuana company he built and lost, and a moment standing at the edge of the ocean, financially buried and drowning in shame, seriously thinking about swimming out and not coming back. He finally got sober at 44. Now 7 years in, Pete is married, raising five kids including a two-year-old son, and has built a life grounded in family, faith, and the recovery he spent decades running from. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction or mental health, you don’t have to do it alone. Reach out to my partners at Compassion Behavioral Health. They offer individualized care and a full continuum of treatment. Call or Text: 844-443-5669 Visit: https://compassionbehavioralhealth.com/rise-above/ #RiseAbove #AlcoholRecovery #7YearsSober #RecoveryIsPossible #AddictionRecovery #SoberLife#HighFunctioningAlcoholic #SobrietyJourney #MentalHealth #FatherhoodInRecovery #FromRockBottom#SoberDad #RiseAbovePodcast #KevinLanning #PeteKuc #SelfWorth #FaithInRecovery #WolfOfWallStreet #SecondChances #OneMoreThing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Colton's addiction began long before adulthood. By 17, he was injecting drugs. Before turning 20, he was cooking meth, living in violent drug houses, escaping juvenile detention, and eventually serving time in prison. He shares stories of psychosis, crime, near-death experiences, and the devastating reality of meth addiction.Today, nearly two years sober, Colton has transformed his life. He helps others in recovery, hosts the Broken Chain Podcast, and is working toward opening a recovery home so others can find the hope he once thought was impossible. His journey is proof that no one is beyond redemption.If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, know that recovery is possible. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction or mental health, you don’t have to do it alone. Reach out to my partners at Compassion Behavioral Health. They offer individualized care and a full continuum of treatment. Call or Text: 844-443-5669 Visit: https: https://compassionbehavioralhealth.com/rise-above/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices