Addiction Medicine Made Easy | Fighting back against addiction
Addiction is killing us. Over 100,000 Americans died of drug overdose in the last year, and over 100,000 Americans died from alcohol use in the last year. We need to include addiction medicine as a part of everyone's practice! We take topics in addiction medicine and break them down into digestible nuggets and clinical pearls that you can use at the bedside. We are trying to create an army of health care providers all over the world who want to fight back against addiction - and we hope you will join us. *This podcast was previously the Addiction in Emergency Medicine and Acute Care podcast*
Episodes
197 episodes
Does Letting Your Teen Drink at Home Prevent Drug and Alcohol Problems?
The idea sounds caring and practical: if my teen is going to drink anyway, I’d rather it happen at home where I can supervise it. I’m Dr. Casey Grover, and after years in emergency medicine and now addiction medicine, I keep hearing this “safe ...
Skip The Strip: Talking Direct to Inject for OUD With Dr. Reb Close
Getting someone from fentanyl to buprenorphine can be one of the hardest transitions in addiction medicine, and not because people “don’t want it.” The pharmacology is unforgiving: start too soon and precipitated withdrawal can hit fast, loud, ...
Sober Living Explained
Walking out of treatment can feel like being dropped right back into the fire: the bills are higher, relationships are still strained, triggers are everywhere, and the old “solution” of numbing out is suddenly right there again. We wanted a cle...
Ozempic Goes to Rehab: GLP-1s for Addiction
GLP-1 medications are everywhere right now, and not just because people are losing weight. We’re starting to see something far more interesting for addiction medicine: semaglutide may reduce alcohol cravings and heavy drinking, and early data h...
The Most Effective Stress Relief You Should Never Use
In this episode, Dr. Grover sits down with his daughter to discuss some of the more subtle aspects of quitting smoking. If you're wondering why it was his daughter, well - she was home when the recording was happening and it just felt right.&nb...
What Do You Do With the Patient Using Everything? (Rebroadcast)
Polysubstance use is where addiction medicine stops being a single-problem visit and becomes real clinical triage. When someone is using alcohol, fentanyl, methamphetamine, benzodiazepines, cannabis, nicotine, and whatever else is in the supply...
Ibogaine: A Miracle Cure for Addiction?
Ibogaine is being talked about like a moonshot for addiction treatment and mental health. But when a substance is powerful enough to reshape cravings, mood, and perception, it is also powerful enough to hurt people when the science and safety s...
Getting Sober Is Hard. Bipolar Disorder Makes It Harder
You can look put-together, build a big career, and still be drowning the moment the door closes. That tension sits at the heart of our conversation with Louise Barnett, host of the Unmasking Sobriety and Mental Health Podcast and author of Tain...
Different Battlefields, Same Scars: What an Ex-CIA Agent Taught Me About PTSD
PTSD isn’t always born in a firefight or a resuscitation bay. Sometimes it grows quietly while you sit at a computer, doing your job well, watching the worst parts of humanity play out on screen. We sit down with Dr John Tullius, a former CIA o...
Far From Over: We're Still Fighting Stigma
Stigma doesn’t just hurt feelings, it changes medical decisions, family dynamics, and whether someone stays in care long enough to recover. That’s why we sat down with Jeanne Foot, founder and CEO of the Recovery Concierge and host of the Natur...
What Is Trauma-Informed Care and How Do I Provide It???
Trauma-informed care is often explained with jargon, but we think it lands best as a promise: we will help you feel safe. Dr Casey Grover sits down with psychologist Dr Angela Chanter, Chief Clinical Officer at Sierra Health and Wellness, to tr...
A Psychiatrist Said Bipolar. He Was Wrong. And It Almost Cost Her Everything
A prescription is supposed to help you get your life back. What happens when it quietly takes it away instead? I sit down with Stephanie Starr, a program manager and graduate student, whose search for mental health support after a traumatic bir...
A Practical Guide To Psychiatric Medications For Addiction Care (Update from 2025)
Psychiatric meds can feel like a maze when someone is trying to get sober and also sleep, focus, and stop panic spirals all in the same week. We made this updated, practical overview to simplify psychopharmacology for addiction treatment and re...
What's The Latest With Kratom?
Kratom is being sold like a simple plant, but the way it’s packaged, concentrated, and marketed in 2026 can turn it into something much closer to an opioid problem hiding in plain sight. We’re taking you through a practical, clinician-friendly ...
I Don't Have a Drinking Problem. I Drink, I Get Drunk. No Problem.
Binge drinking can look harmless right up until it doesn’t. If you only drink on weekends, vacations, or big nights out, it’s easy to tell yourself you’re fine because you’re not drinking every day. But the consequences of one high-risk night c...
Sugar: When The Kitchen Cabinet Is Your Drug Dealer
Sugar is everywhere, socially approved, and often handed out as comfort, reward, and love. That’s exactly why it can be so hard to spot when it stops being “a treat” and starts acting like an addiction. I’m Dr. Casey Grover, and I sit down with...
I Get By (And Sober) With A Little Help From My Peers
Peer support can feel like the missing link in addiction care, not because it replaces medicine, but because it makes recovery feel possible when someone is scared, ashamed, or shutting down. I’m Dr Casey Grover, and I sit down with Mark Ehrenk...
A New Way to Think About Addiction: The Stress Reducer Loop
Your go-to stress relief can become the biggest source of stress in your life, and that’s where recovery often gets stuck. I’m joined by Dr Gary Sprouse, the “Less Stress Doc,” to unpack his deceptively simple framework called the Stress Reduce...
Whipped Cream With A Side Of Spinal Cord Damage
Nitrous oxide can look like a harmless party trick until you understand how fast it can flip into a medical emergency. We dig into whippets and laughing gas from an addiction medicine perspective, including why the high hits within seconds, why...
Goodbye Benzos, My Old Friend: Benzodiazepine Tapering Done Right
A benzodiazepine taper can feel like trying to land a plane in bad weather: the stakes are high, the instruments are imperfect, and speed is rarely your friend. We sit down with Dr. Rizzo to translate the ASAM benzodiazepine tapering guideline ...
What Happens in Residential Treatment: Inside The Place Rock Bottom Leads To
Residential treatment gets talked about like a single thing, but most people have no idea what they are walking into until they arrive. I sit down with Rachel Docekal, CEO of the Hanley Foundation in Florida, to open up the “black box” of resid...
Why Pushing A Loved One Harder to Get Sober Doesn't Help
Someone you love keeps drinking, using, or relapsing and you can feel your body tighten the moment you walk into the room. That tension makes sense, but it can also become part of the system that keeps addiction stuck. We sit down with therapis...
An OB Addiction Specialist Explains Why Marijuana Is Not Benign In Pregnancy
THC isn’t the same drug it was 20 years ago, and pregnancy counseling hasn’t caught up. We sit down with Dr. Nazanin Amadieh, a board-certified OBGYN who also trained in addiction medicine, to map what today’s high-potency cannabis means for co...
BIND: Benzodiazepine Induced Neurological Dysfunction
Benzodiazepines can feel like flipping a switch: panic quiets, sleep finally comes, your body unclenches. But what happens when that “off switch” starts rewiring the system you rely on to stay calm in the first place? Dr Andrew Rizzo joins me t...
Straight to the Shot: A New Way to Quit Fentanyl and Start Buprenorphine
Fentanyl changed the playbook for starting buprenorphine, and we’re tired of watching people suffer through days of withdrawal just to “earn” their first dose. So we break down a cleaner, faster on-ramp: direct-to-inject. Think of weekly Brixad...