Healing High Performers with Dr. Cali Estes | EP006

Dr. Cali Estes got sober at 23 on a yoga mat—not in a meeting, not in a treatment center. A friend dared her to survive a hot yoga class, and an instructor in recovery taught her to breathe through trauma before anyone was calling it "breath work."

What followed was 27 years of building a radically different model for recovery. She founded The Addictions Academy (75,000+ students across 40 countries), created "Sober on Demand," and trained nearly everyone on A&E’s Intervention. She works with celebrities, executives, and fighters—personality-matching each client with the right practitioner because the relationship matters more than the method.

But the real story? While building all of this, Cali’s own husband was in catastrophic relapse. Fourteen car crashes. Five overdoses. When he passed in 2023, she chose silence. Now she’s in Manhattan Beach, filming a movie, and stepping into full visibility on her own terms.

We talk about the 50 squats rule, why your brain picks the convertible over climbing the mountain, how to actually help a loved one who’s struggling, and what flourishing means when you’ve earned it the hard way.

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Connect with Dr. Cali Estes:

• caliestes.com

• soberondemand.com

• theaddictionsacademy.com

• Podcast: Unpause Your Life

• @DrCaliEstes on social

Books: I Married a Junkie (1 & 2), Airport Antics, The Black Book (coming soon)

Movie: The Black Book (in production with BMG)

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The New F Word is presented by Baryons,  your AI-powered Flourishing Partner. Try for free at baryons.com. 

Baryons is your Flourishing Partner. You call, it listens, and together you design what's next. Science-backed. Patent Pending. Start for free with your Baryon today at Baryons.com 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hello everyone and welcome to the new F-Word Podcast. I'm your host, Brooks Canavesi, and today I am super privileged to be here with Cali Estes. I'm really excited for her to share her story with us today. So thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Thanks. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

So I think kind of just starting out, you know, our kind of welcome check-in. You know, we're the new F-Word podcast and we talk about flourishing a lot. That word to you, how does that resonate with you? What does flourishing mean to you?

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Flourishing means not being in fight or flight mode, which most people are always in chaos. They're in fight or flight, right? You get up, you get running out the door, coffee, event one, event two, event three, event four, and then you come home, and then your downtime is binge watching Netflix. Like you're never flourishing, you're always in go mode. And by the time you get a chance to relax, you crash and then you get sick. So there's not really flourishing. That's a whole lot of just the rat race on repeat every single day.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Awesome. That's a tremendous definition. When you kind of think about where you've come from, so I think it was 20 years that you were in Florida and now you've landed in Manhattan Beach. Can you tell us a little bit about how you're arriving today to the conversation and what that transition's been like for you?

SPEAKER_01 1:24

So I did 10 years in Florida. I was married. He passed away. He was from Florida. So I'd always wanted to come back to California. And I lived out here in 2008 and he hated LA. So I was always like, let's go to LA. It's a price, it's grungy, it's dirty. Why? So I stuck out in Florida and then, you know, I hung out after he died for about a year in Florida. And I went home to see people in Philly and did that whole thing for six months and realized nobody's changed. You know, it's the same people doing the same crap. Nobody's flourished. They're all complaining. I was like, I can't do this. And it's cold and it's wet and it's miserable. So I'm like, you know what? I'm going to go to LA. So that's how I ended up here. And uh I had given all my stuff away in Florida. I just had enough. So I called a girlfriend of mine and I'm like, there's 15 to 20 girls that always got together and it's a cool group. I was like, just come take what you want. I got a three-bedroom house. I don't feel like selling it. I don't feel like taking it. And she just spearheaded everybody coming and just taking what they wanted. It was awesome. And cleaned it out. I shipped 10 boxes of clothes and business stuff to my mom's house, drove up the Wrangler with a friend of mine and the dogs. Uh left two dogs with my mom because she wanted, you know, companionship. She wanted grandkids from me. And I never provided grandkids. So I'm like, here's two fur babies. And she's like, you're kidding, right? Now I can't get them back. I'm like, I'm coming to get that she wahwa. No, these are my dogs now. So I did that. And then I shipped those boxes of clothes over to uh California and started open over here. That's what I did.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Wow. So it's just completely new, new place to live. Started over. How did you choose Manhattan Beach? Like what was it? Is it the proximity to LA? Like what's going on right now that, you know, kind of made LA not just the weather and that you've been in California before, but what was it about Manhattan Beach and that location?

SPEAKER_01 3:12

So my heart's in Laguna Beach, and I was gonna go to Laguna, and I'm like, if I land in Laguna, the average age is 80, right? So first of all, I'm not gonna find that rich husband that I'm looking for. And I joke and I say that is not gonna be in Laguna Beach. And all my friends are Manhattan Beach North. So I would have to drive to them, and I'm thinking that's an hour and 20 minutes one way without rush hour. So maybe I should be a little closer. And I thought Huntington, and I'm like, still not close enough. So then I'm like, well, I love Manhattan, but Manhattan's expensive. But everybody's right here. So the minute I moved to Manhattan, I'm a block from the beach, I can watch the sunset from my living room. As soon as I did that, everybody's like, I'm coming to see you, I'm coming to you. So now they're all coming to me, which is really cool. So I could just entertain this one, entertain that one. And then uh my friend Peter De Stefano is the guitar player for Porn of Papyros and Psychedelic Burst. And we start talking and he's like, What do you want to do? And I'm like, Well, I want to make a movie. My goal was always to get on Netflix. And he says, Well, you know, you have intervention on AE. And I said, I know, I trained to have the people on intervention. And every time they asked me to be on it, I said, no, because I'm the trainer of them. I don't want to do what they're doing. I want my own movie. And Peter goes, Let's make a movie. So he pitched me to BMG, who's gonna pick us up for eight episodes with a possible spin-off. So we're doing a movie on addiction and mental health and my life and what it looks like with what I do in this chaos and how I train people to do what I do, and helping people outside the box and the rehab with no walls and all that fun stuff. And some cool key players are coming in to join me to do it.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

So when you are looking at this new place, you have this new movie that you're starting, like script and starting to film and magazine covers, just to give our audience a sense like where did this all begin? Because we started to kind of fast forward a little bit into how successful your career's been and the type of clients that you've worked with and the transformations that you've helped to bring forward, not just in your clients, but even coaching others to carry this message forward and be that kind of sober on-demand business that you've created. But you didn't start at that point. Yeah. Everything has an origin story. So for you, what was the thing that that was a turning point for you, or how did your life kind of get to a point where you got interested in this kind of work?

SPEAKER_01 5:36

So I wanted to be an FBI agent, and I was in college, I was going to Penn State, and I used food as a coping mechanism. So I would eat when I was depressed, I would eat when I was sad, I was eat when I was happy. So food was the thing, as opposed to say, here I went our cocaine and what have you. And one day, one of my roommates came home. We did girls' night out. They would always come, you know, they would always hook up with guys, and I would always come home alone. And she walked in and I'm sitting on the floor and I'm eating cake and I'm eating it with my hands, and it's on the wall, it's on the floor, it's on me, it's on the dog. And she walks in and she goes, Dude, that's not right. And I thought, this is normal. And she's like, You need help. And I went to the guidance counselor who said, Well, that could be an eating disorder. She pulls out the DSM and she says, Well, do you, you know, throw up? And I said, Well, not voluntarily. Who does that? Right? She goes, Well, you're not believing. Do you restrict food? I said, No. So she goes, Well, you don't have an eating disorder, you're just fat. So she sends me to the fat doctor. Back then in the 90s, the fat doctor goes, Oh, you want to lose weight? Here's fenfen. Put me on fen fen. And I thought it was the greatest thing in the world because now I can eat cake, I can eat pizza, I can take fenfen, and now I'm losing weight. It's amazing. This is great. This works. Until they recalled fenfen. And then I switched to Ripiool, which is Maha Wang, Garana, and ephedra. So Mahawang is like an asthma pump. Garana straight caffeine and ephedra is the basis of methamphetamine. So now I'm taking this, eating cake and pizza and losing weight, but I'm also working out because now I'm in the gym. So I thought it was great until it wasn't so great. And then I switched over to speed. And then I took a class on addiction. And as the instructor is putting up all the markers of addiction on the board, I'm going, oh, look, I have all 17 of those. Crap. And then I was very interested in addiction. So I switched from I'm going to be an FBI agent to let me study addiction. So that's how it went. From there, I got into the industry after I graduated and I did a lot of nonprofit. I worked in Kensington, Philadelphia. I worked with street women and prostitutes, runaway girls. It was all nonprofit, very hard work, completely burnt out. Quit my job and went to work in the fitness industry because I was like, I can't do this anymore. These people have more resources than I do. I can't pay my rent, my car payment, my student loan in the same month. And they've got food stamps, they've got free housing, they've got free medical. I'm like, I can't, I'm not even getting that. And I'm putting in 60-hour work weeks now with a master's degree, busting my ass, getting nothing. So I quit, started working in a gym. And um, the sales guy that was in the gym and I started talking and I said, let's start a company. So we started an in-home training company and it went gangbusters. We had the biggest in-home training company in the world at one point. And now I'm in Dallas. We have a penthouse, we have houses all over, we have offices all over the US, we have cars everywhere. And 2008 hits, and we lost everything in 60 days. Everything because that was the market crash. So I ended up coming to LA, trying to get a job, couldn't do it, put my stuff in a moving truck to go back to Philly, and that burned up at a fire. So I lost everything. So now I'm in Philadelphia, squatting in a house with no heat, no running water, literally with my Jeep that's in repo status, my zembe drum, my dog, my one outfit on me, which is workout clothes, this tiny little flip cell phone, if you remember that flipped phone back then, and this little crappy laptop. Yeah. And I'm sitting there going, WTF, you know? Different F, not flourish. And I got mad and I threw my phone and broke my phone. And now I'm like, now I don't even have a phone. You know, now what? So that's what started me trying to figure out and having like an awakening of I want to do this again, but I want to help people more and give back more. And I ended up meeting my late husband. He was a rock and roll drummer, and we ended up going around the country and doing some cool things. And then I started building this company. So that's how I got to get this company off the ground in uh 2012.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

I think in our previous conversation earlier, you mentioned on the yoga mat. Can you talk a little bit about that experience and maybe some teachers there?

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Yeah. So when I was using all these drugs, I started having what I thought was a panic attack. And I went to the ER and I was in Texas. And they basically, you know, the doctor said, What are you taking? You know, and if you're using something, you're like nothing. And the doctor goes, Okay, well, whatever it is, you should probably not take it. Great. Thanks. Have a nice day. Off I went. And then fast forward six months later, I was in New York and I was in another ER. And that doctor was not so gentle. If you know New York and Philadelphia and you know my people, we're very straightforward. So he drops the F bomb, not the fleurge bomb. He drops the other F-bomb and he says, Do you want to die? And it caught my attention. And I said, What do you mean? And he said, Within six months, at the rate you're going, you will, you'll be dead. Your heart will give out. So he hands me this pamphlet for Overeaters Anonymous and a pamphlet for narcotics anonymous. So I said, Okay, I go to OA, and it's a bunch of people in their you know, 50s crying in a church basement. It's cold, there's no food, I'm bored, I don't fit. I'm 23, I'm out. Done. So then I went to NA. I get there, they have coffee, caffeine, they have sugar, they have Snickers bars, ho-ho, ding, dungs, bear claws, you name it. And everybody's outside smoking. And I'm like, these are my people. Sugar, caffeine, smoking, love it. Well, you can't get sober in that environment if those are your drugs of choice. So that didn't work for me. So I was talking to a friend of mine, and she says, just come to yoga with me. Now, this is way before the fitness company. So I go to yoga and it's hot yoga, and it's a hundred degrees, and you can't have water, you have to put it behind you. And all I'm doing is complaining. It's hot, I'm tired, I can't touch my sh toes. I'm not even five minutes in and I'm done. And she looks at me and she says, Shut the F up. Just shut up. I looked at her and I went, What the hell? And she goes, Just do it. And now it's a challenge. And I'm like, well, fine. Watch me do it. You know, 90 minutes of this. So I did it. And I hated it. Every minute of it, I hated it. And the instructor came up after and he said, Let me help you learn to get sober in a yoga mat. Because addiction is trauma and you're dealing with trauma. And every time you have a feeling, you're eating. And every time you eat, then you take a drop to counteract the eating. So he started teaching me how to do the yoga poses to go through my trauma. So he said, every time you want to grab food and you're not hungry, you're going to do a sun salutation. You're going to do 10 of them. Well, if you've ever done a sun salutation, 10 sun salutations is a 30-minute process. So I was like, okay, whatever. And I started doing it. And I would do one and I'd be like, oh my God. And then I would do two. And then I would do three. And eventually I'd get to 10. And then I didn't want to eat and I didn't want drugs. So I started breathing and learning that pranayama and the breathing and the motion and the exercise actually helped. Fast forward, I started to learn why. Why was this working for me? When I would see people go, oh my God, I have a feeling. And they would look at me and go, Well, that's my thing. Well, you never got through the trauma if that's your go-to, because now you're addicted to a meeting instead of your drug of choice. So I started studying the chemical side of this that no one was studying. And the dopamine that comes from exercise helps your brain with the rush that you're getting. So your brain can't be anxious and happy. It can't be sad and happy. So if you're doing exercise, it makes the brain happy. Whatever that secondary feeling is, it's gone. So with my clients, I'll be like, you're going to do 50 squats. And they look at me like I'm crazy. And then they do 25 squats and they say, I don't want to get high, or I don't want to eat, or whatever the thing is I'm trying to avoid, all of a sudden I don't want. Why? Because the brain is learning that that dopamine rush fixes the desire for whatever that thing is you're after. So that's where it all started for me.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

The 50 squats that you're offering to your customers now is something that was built through those sun salutations, right? Yeah. From the yoga mat. And it's beyond that, though. Like you took the whole fitness thing a little further as you were talking about with the business, in-home training, and got into nutrition and took it a lot further: supplementation, nutrition, mindfulness, meditation, yoga, and you know, kind of fast-forwarding as you met your husband and you know, he was going on some of these tours and you were going with him and you were starting the business. Can you talk about like how that all came to be and how you brought those experiences forward to start the business that you started and how you brought aspects of those experiences that you went through yourself to actually bring to bear for your customer base?

SPEAKER_01 15:11

So after I lost the fitness company, uh my business partner looked at me and he says, What do you want to do? And I'm like, I don't know, let's do a music company. And looks at me and he goes, What do you know about music companies? Said, nothing. I'm just tired of being in the fitness industry. And he's like, Why don't you go back to addiction and mental health? And I looked at him sideways. I was like, I don't know. That was a lot of work for low pay. So I took a job in the interim with addiction and mental health, and I went from a$4 million earner to$40,000. And I walked in and I was doing biopsychosocials for children that were coming with mental health. And the first thing I noticed was they wanted me to give them a label and give them medication, like right away without finding what was going on. And I kept saying to the director, we're not doing these kids a service. And I'm in the front of the house. So one day I went back into the like the psych ward, if you will. And I was horrified with what we're doing with these kids. And I said, This is not okay. And this is going back to 2007, 2008, like 2008, 2009. And I was like, I can't believe we're doing this. And I said to my business partner, I can't do this industry. It is awful. We're not helping people. We're we're harming them with med. So I quit and I said, let's just do a music company. And he goes, We don't have any money. Like, okay, we're gonna figure it out. Just like I did the every other company, 300 bucks in my bank account, I'll figure it out. So we started a music company. And my husband had answered an ad for what we were doing. So we took the knowledge of the fitness company of being able to make press kits online. And this is when for musicians, it went from you have to send your demo CD, which used to be a demo tape or demo reel. We were creating an EPK online that no one did. So now you have your photos and your music, you just send a link in an email. So we had something ahead of the curve. So people started liking that. So we had musicians come in, and that's how I met my husband. And I said, I can't date you, you're a client. So he fired my company and said, Now I'm not your client. And I was like, seriously, no. And then he said, you know, you need to date me. And I said, Give me, give me four reasons why I should go out with you. This is right when, you know, texting, still flip phone. We didn't have the whole, you know, face calling and all that yet. And he texted me and he's like, Well, we both like music. And I went, okay. He said, We both like to text. And I was like, Okay. And then he said, We both were eyeliner. And I went, uh-oh. That's my weakness. Because you know, I grew up in the 80s, men with eyeliner. I'm like, ah, no. And then number four, he goes, We both love me. And I went, purely based on your narcissistic, self-absorbed asshole attitude, you have one date. He goes, You'll marry me after one date. And I'm like, challenge, accept it. All right. So I picked him up at the train station, and you have to imagine he shows up and he's got on green Chuck Taylors, a CBGB shirt, he's got on board shorts and a little bandana. And I'm like, this dude can't even match. But he gets in and he's got this little thing of Gatorine and vodka, spills it all over my car, and he is hilarious. He is absolutely so much fun. So we ended up going to the beach and hanging out, and I dropped him back at the train station, figuring, we're so different. I'm never gonna see him again. I mean, I'm a company owner, I'm a multi-million dollar company owner. But at that time in my life, I was like, what I wanted and needed was fun, and he was fun. So we started hanging out, and next thing you know, I moved in like a month and a half later to New York City. And then it was game on. And I started helping him with his music, and he was talking about what do you want to do? And I'm like, I don't know. So I went back into my industry down in Florida. We came down to Florida, ended up getting married, you know, did the whole thing, moved to Miami. And I'm working back in my industry at a treatment center, and I went from, you know, a therapist to basically running it in a year. And one day the owner came in and he threw a notebook at me. And I was like, why? And he's he just looked at me and he's like, I don't like the way you're doing this, that, and the other. And I said, you know what? I'm pulling up at a Jeep Wrangler that's old, and you've got a Bugatti, and your wife has this Mercedes, and she's got red bottom shoes for every day. And I'm the one running the show, putting in 60-hour work weeks, killing myself. I'm done. I got two words for you. And he's like, What? F mu? I said, No, I quit. And he's like, You can't quit. You need me. And I'm like, challenge accepted. 300 bucks in my bank account, came home, said I quit my job. And my husband looked at me and he's like, you know, we live in Miami. It's not cheap. Rent is due in two weeks. I said, I'll make more money in a week than I would in a month. Watch. And I just used my law of attraction, made some business cards, put them out, and got a phone call in 24 hours. Went and met this guy at uh Starbucks, and he wanted help staying sober. Cut me a check for$2,500, and I walked in and I'm like, there's your rent, there's your car payment. And he was shocked. And I'm like, now I'm building a company. So next thing you know, I'm building the addictions coach brand. And that turned into people asking, How did you do that? Which turned into the Addictions Academy, created classes, and then it went gangbusters. And here we are.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

So while this is going on, your husband is active in the rock industry, also using.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

He wasn't at the time. So he didn't start using till about two years into my company. That's when it started happening because the money was coming in.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

And it went from So he was just drinking and and being fun.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Well, yeah. I mean, but he was never out of control. So drinking was never his thing. So we could go out and he could have a beer or two. Wasn't a big deal. It's not like he had a beer and it landed in cocaine and an arrest. It wasn't that type of behavior. So for me, I've always said, you know, unless your drugs and alcohol is a problem, it's not a problem. So it never was a problem up until two years into the company when he tried an opiate.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

So you built this brand starting in Miami and first customer, first week, you're you just made more than you made in a month working at the treatment facility. And that experience just completely took off, and it's still going today. This is what you started and has been the mainstay for you. Has your education been something that, like, when did you go back for your master's? We talked about Penn State and undergrad, and now you have a PhD as well, Dr. Caliestees. Um, so you want to talk a little bit about kind of when the education then also started to unfold for you?

SPEAKER_01 21:46

So I got my master's back in my 20s because I had gone, I got the bachelor's, I worked with runaway girls, and again, I'm doing second shift, I'm busting my ass, I feel like I'm not making any money. I'm eight bucks an hour. The bachelor's. You know, who does that? So I was like, I've got to go back and get more education. So I did, and I actually got my master's for free. So I auditioned with 20 other people to get an assistantship, which means you work in a department. And I auditioned for the economics department. And I basically had to give a speech on what I could do. And I went in and I said, I want to do a white paper on welfare and women in welfare and addiction, because that's the market I was in. And I won. And we did a white paper and it got published. So I had my master's by the time I was 28. So that was before the fitness company. Um and then I was I was working in the industry, but I'm still making, you know, 40 grand, 45 grand with a master's, and I still can't pay all my bills. And I'm watching people on welfare and WIC with way more money than me and way more resources. And I'm thinking this system is backwards. So that's when I quit and went into the fitness industry after the master's. And then in 2015, I was like, I'm gonna get the PhD because I really wanted that doctorate. And I had started a couple courses before I moved to Florida. And then I just rolled everything over and got and finished a PhD. I just wanted it. I wanted the DR. I was like, I'll just have the DR. I don't even have to use it, but I can have it.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

That's great. What was your thesis on and what was your PhD in?

SPEAKER_01 23:19

So it's clinical psychology, and I did my thesis on the Hell's Angels and Differential Association. So basically, the Hell's Angels and the Mafia run like the government, they run it like a business. And I got to interview the president of the Hells Angels and talk about what it looks like and the business side of it. It was fascinating to me because I was like, here is these little microcosms that we have in our culture society that are running things optimally. Take out the fact that, you know, it's a gang and just say, How do you run this? And I thought that was so cool because my very first client out of, you know, getting a degree, I worked with the Latin Kings. And I was like, this is fascinating. Sitting across from somebody, hearing your story is fascinating. You know, and I when I worked in treatment, that time when I got, you know, quit or fired or whatever you want to call it from that guy, I got two types of clients. They gave me every eating disorder client, because they say you understand that, and they gave me all the gang members. And I was like, well, that is like, you know, two different types of people. But no one wanted to deal with that. And I learned I was really good working with men, really good working with men in different ways. And, you know, my company now, we help everybody. So sober on demand is for everybody. One, you know, we work with executives and celebrities, but I work almost exclusively with men. And I work with narcissistic men or men that have entitlement or men that work with a specific type of population where they have a wife and a girlfriend and a drug problem. And I come in and I just kind of navigate the whole thing and solve all their issues, and they're like, wow. And I make it run smooth. So, you know, having done that dissertation and having worked with that population, I think that gives me a very unique platform where you have a lot of people that are experts out there and they say, Oh, I'm an expert in addiction because I'm sober. No, you got yourself sober. Congratulations. That doesn't make you an expert. An expert is somebody who's helped hundreds of thousands of people or thousands of people to get sober or get the tools they need. That makes you an expert. There's not a lot of experts in this space. There's a lot of people who want to be experts, but haven't gone through the training and actually done the work to get where they are.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

Yeah. And so as you start this business, you know, you're a couple years in and your husband picks up opioids. How does someone starting a business like having a family in crisis while you're also advancing, running, building, and helping others with similar types of issues? How do you work with that? Like tell us about that time.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

So I started the company two years before he started using opiates. So we had that two-year window where it was really good. And then I started traveling. So I didn't know right away because I wasn't there. He was on tour, I was traveling. So we're kind of missing each other. So I didn't catch it. I wasn't seeing the sickness. And he was taking oxy and roxy back then when the pill mills were in Florida. So it gave him energy. So it wasn't like he was knotted out. It wasn't, it wasn't any of that. It was the opposite. So I didn't see it. I'm like, oh, he's energy. He's going to the gym at 5 a.m. He did his normal schedule, he'd go on tour. There were no signs until in Florida, they went from being able to buy an oxyeroxy for$3. They closed those pill mills, which forced people to go underground. That same pill is now$30 a pill. So his$30 a day habit at 10 pills is now$300. You can't sustain that. So he started having to pawn things and things were disappearing. And then he decided to go from the pills to heroin because it was cheaper. So when he did that, you know, the difference between the pill is you know what you're getting, you know, milligram-wise. Now you're getting backyard Bobby's concoction. So in 2014.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

Street chemistry.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

Yeah. In 2014, he was in the BMW and he overdosed in the hood in Miami. And if you know you're in a BMW and you're a blonde-haired white boy in Miami in the hood, that's not a good idea. So he was lucky that someone called 911, very lucky. And when the ambulance came, they gave him the Narcan, which back then was a spray, two shots of Narcan, nothing happened. And there happened to be a rookie on that bus that it was his first day on the job. And he decided he was going to shoot him up with Narcan. And that hadn't been done back then. There wasn't a three, three shots. It was two shots and called time of death. So he took it, he did it, and brought him back. And he wasn't supposed to. He got in big trouble for that, actually. Because his boss was there and said, We don't, this is not the protocol. Let the junkie die. You know, that's what it what it was back then in that time period. So he came back, and that was his first, you know, God smack wake up. And he's like, All right, I'm done. I'm not doing this. And he got a he got a break and he decided to clean up. And he did for a short period of time. And then he went on tour. And he was traveling all around with Eric Sardinus and Big Motor. They were doing a nationwide tour, and then he was supposed to do international. And the drummer for fuel stepped back in and he got kicked off the tour. Well, that sent him down a spiral. He started doing hero again. Then we had another overdose. You know, and he ends up in the hospital. We go through all that stuff together. And I'm like, you've got to get sober. So now he gets on methadone. And I said, get on Suboxum. Back then, Suboxum was so new methadone was the go-to. Well, if you know anything about methadone, it's not very good for your body. It's hard to get off of, and people could still use. So now he's doing heroin and methadone. And he was never a shooter, he was a snorter. So now he's doing both. We have, you know, another car crash. The police let him go. There was no arrest on this. So it just continues. And eventually I sat him down. I'm like, you're gonna get sober, or you're gonna go to treat. So, you know, I've got access to the best people: the doctors, the nurse, the detox, the sober companion. We go through the whole thing. Okay, great. He's sober again. Now he gets another year under his belt. So it's not like he was using for so long. It was better. So now we're traveling and he's in a band and he's doing his thing. He's great. And he's about to go on stage for the first time with Crowfly, and the whole band's there. And the singer's girlfriend gets a phone call. Now we're two hours from Miami, north, in his hometown area. The singer gets a call from a hospital that her mom just had a brain aneurysm while driving a car and is on life support right before they go on stage. So she's freaking out. Now she's got the singer all freaked out. So my husband's sitting at the drum set, his phone rings, like literally, you can't make this up. His phone rings and he just looks at me and I'm like, what happened? And he won't tell me. And he's just sitting there. And they play and they come off stage. They had a great, there's like 300 people in the crowd. It's amazing. And he comes off stage and said, We got to go. I'm like, what do you mean we got to go? You got to sign, you know, merchandise, you got all this stuff. He's like, we got to go. His dad was in the hospital, just got diagnosed with cancer like that. And they said, we don't know if he's gonna make it. So this is all happening. This is like the opening of Crowfly. So we go to see his dad, we do all this stuff, and he's like, I gotta get back to Miami. As soon as he said that, I'm like, here we go. This is because this is the triggers. When it comes to addiction, it's never a linear path. It's always a trigger. So now I know this is gonna happen. And I'm like trying to hold it off. And he was his dad's favorite. He was that son, you know? So now his dad's in the hospital. We get back to Miami and he goes on a tear. Great. So he's another overdose, and now we have another Narcan episode. And it's just constant with this stuff. So 30 days later, his dad passes away. Like it was that fast. And now he's in a full run. And I woke up and I kept hearing him gurgling. And I looked over, and this is back before you could get Narcan. This was like you had a private prescription and it was$300 and it was a process. And so I didn't have any Narcan. And I looked at him and his lips were blue. And he's sitting on the sofa and I'm like, oh my God, he's overdosing. So I'm grabbing my phone to call 911, and I have enough adrenaline that I actually kicked him. I kicked him in the chest and knocked him over the sofa, which brought him back quick enough as I'm calling 911 to come give him a narcan. Well, if you remember back then, it was like, oh, you know, these guys are junkies. We're going to resuscitate them to use again. It just kept happening. So after that, he got sober again. And in 2018, we wrote, I married a junkie. And it was all about this lead up of this whole story of everything. Because at the time period, somebody in the industry who owns a treatment center, who was kind of a big deal, heard that he was using and posted online that I was bad at my job because my husband was a junkie. So that's why we wrote I married a junkie. So, you know, that got me on KTLA as an expert. Because I went on and I said, this is happening in my own house because I can't work and control it. And I'm not an enabler. He doesn't have the money. I cut him off from everything, but he's still getting high. He's still figuring out how to do it because that's good. You know, they do.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

Yeah. Addicts are ingenious, right? Yeah.

unknown 32:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:42

Addicts and alcoholics are some of the most creative people I've ever met. And you know my story. Like I was homeless at 19. I spent a lot of time in recovery and, you know, met and helped plenty of people myself and my own little microcosm of the world, not like you, but yeah. They are innovative people. They will find a way.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

Yeah. Yep. And and that's it. I mean, that took us to 2018, and then he relapsed again. And then I asked for divorce, and then COVID hit. And when COVID hit, you couldn't file. So it was like, you know, and by then he's doing fentanyl. And he's he learned how to microdose fentanyl. And it you can microdose it and you can do it without overdosing. And he was doing it really, really well. So, you know, as the wife of an addict, it's hard because it's like people say, oh, well, you could have just filed for divorce. Why didn't you leave? It's not that easy. You know, you have somebody you loved and they were sober, and you know who they were sober for, you know, six, seven, eight years. They're an amazing human being, and you know they have sobriety because you've gotten them sober, and then they've gotten sober and you've got pockets of that. It's not easy just to walk away and go, Well, I'm just gonna throw you away because I can, because I can file for divorce, you know. Unconditional love is unconditional love. I wouldn't have left if he had cancer. Why would I leave if he's an addict? And people didn't like that. And they said, Well, you should have left. Well, you're not in my shoes, you know? And then he got really sick, he ended up in the ICU, almost died, his apotic artery burst, and there was that, you know, and then I nursed him back to health, and then he got sober and he had 29 days sober, and he looked at me the day he died, and he said, I think I screwed my body up. And he goes, I know I screwed my relationship up, but I think I screwed my body up. And I'm like, that's not good. And he said, I'm gonna go visit my friend for a couple days, clear my head, drive to Naples, and he did, and then he never came back. So he had a heart attack and he was sober when he had a heart attack, but his body couldn't sustain that level of drug use on and off and on and off and on and off for such a long period of time.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

Yeah, I mean, and you hear it every day, the people coming off of fentanyl, learning how to walk again, you know, and the years of abuse and what that can do physiologically. And I was talking to you, I had some colleagues of mine, you know, locally that I'd known from high school that are currently getting sober off of things like 70H and you know, uh Kratom and these kind of like whatever, synthetic opioids or like natural opioids that they're selling in gas stations now. And they're coming off of that stuff, and they're not overdosing, but their withdrawal symptoms are the same as something like heroin or the same as something like an opioid or a fentanyl. And it's like these are these are things they're selling at the local gas stations right now. Yeah, it's super scary. And I don't think people have enough respect for the physiological damage that can happen. And after prolonged use, like what your husband realized, even though he's 29 days sober, it was just the the body's broke. Like it's yeah, it's working with with faulty parts at that point.

SPEAKER_01 35:53

That's correct. And a lot of the stuff that they're selling, people think, oh, it's legal, it's okay. Like if you look at alcohol, for example, alcohol's been in play for what, 100 years or so? You know, people are like, oh, it's legal. Okay, well, it's probably one of the worst drugs for your body. I mean, you're literally putting poison in your system, going, well, it's legal. You know? So that's what I tell people, don't look at it because it's legal, it's good for you. Sugar's legal. Sugar is horrible for your body. And when I say this, people go, well, isn't the body, you know, supposed to have glucose? And I'm like, hold up. A ho, a ding-dong, and a bear claw does not glucose, they don't go together. That's like that's not what I'm talking about. So, you know, if you're drinking a soda, that's really bad for you. There's no nutritional value, and that's bad for your body, but it's legal. So that it's legal argument, I say take off the table. Why are you using something from a gas station? Because it's easy to get, it's legal, it's quick, you won't fail a drug test for work. However, once you get hooked on that, it changes your brain structure. So just to show your listeners something, this is something I did about 10 years ago to explain addiction. So if you're using speed, cocaine, uppers, your brain goes like this, right? Just like you would if you were driving fast in a car, road rage. And then it goes back to normal. Fires like this normally, right? If you're doing alcohol or benzos or marijuana, it still fires. It just fires slowly. And you know that because if you ever have been drunk, if you've ever been to a party about three hours in and you're having a conversation with people that have been drinking for three hours, it's very different than the initial conversation, right? When you walk into the party. Hey, Brooks, how's it going? How's your day? How's your job? How's your life? What's going on? What's new, right? Three hours later, it's like, we should go to Cabo, right? Now, let's book it. Four hours in, people have crap all over the front of their shirt. Five hours in is incoherent, right? So your brain is still firing, it's just not firing normally. And then you have the hangover the next day, and you're like, I can't think. I have a headache, right? And then it goes back to normal. When you do opiates, it doesn't fire at all. It completely shuts down. And those opiates flood your synapses a thousand times more powerful than your brain's own juice. That's why oxyroxydilatin, morphine, ketamine, kava, kratom, fentanyl become so highly chemically addicted, is your brain goes, Why should I work? I'm just gonna ride the tide. And I say it's like this if you could go climb Mount Rainier right now. I said to you, we're gonna go hike Mount Rainier. Are you ready?

SPEAKER_00 38:41

I'm always ready, but I just like challenges.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

Do you think you could summit it right now, right this moment? Are you ready for the elevation change and the O2 change?

SPEAKER_00 38:52

Probably not. Probably not. I'd give it the try, though.

SPEAKER_01 38:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

Or I said, hey, why don't we take a convertible, put the top down, get some coffee, maybe some snacks, put some tunes on, and then ride to the summit. How's that sound?

SPEAKER_00 39:08

Way easier.

SPEAKER_01 39:09

That's your brain.

SPEAKER_00 39:10

More obtainable.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

So your brain is gonna go, why would I climb the mountain to get the view when I could just ride in that car easier? So it's gonna pick the easy way. That's why you get chemically addicted, and you're addicted after three days. Nobody tells you that. So if you're using consecutively for three days on day three, you're gonna be chemically addicted. Now you're gonna detox. And when you don't put that drug in there, your brain doesn't open. It stays like this because it's waiting for you to take the drug. Now, if you've been using for a significant amount of time, people think, oh, well, I stopped using my brain's gonna fire. No, this could be day one, this could be week one, this could be month one. Somewhere around month six, your brain starts to do this with no help. That's why people never stay, or shouldn't say never, rarely stay sober with opiates with no assisted brain help. That's why they can't get past the fog.

SPEAKER_00 40:07

The brain, when you have things like even ecstasy or other types of drugs like that, that are just jumping serotonin and dopamine all at one shot, just like squeezing the brain, like wringing it out. When you're using that for multiple days or weeks in a row, does the brain forget how to produce that? Does it not produce as much? You've kind of I've heard these urban legends about like you've depleted it all, it needs to rebuild, and sometimes it never gets back to full capacity of its ability to rebuild that. What's the truth in all that?

SPEAKER_01 40:40

So most people don't use ecstasy every day. So that so MDMA, ecstasy, that's why they say they're not so much addictive. They're party drugs. You're not going to use it every single day. So depleting your dopamine, then it can never come back. That's kind of an urban legend there. So if you're using that kind of a thing, you're rushing it, you're flooding it. And let me put these things together. This little thing can make your brain ping very similar to some psychedelics. Because what happens? You go on social media, right? There's TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, what else? Snapchat. And you have, oh, who talked to me? Oh, who talked to me today? Oh, they like my stuff. And you get start getting that dopamine rush. Or if you're in the dating apps, it's crazy. Oh, I don't like that one. Swipe left, swipe left, swipe left, swipe right, swipe left. You're constantly getting a dopamine hit. Then you have Amazon Prime, right? Oh, I want toilet paper. Oh, it's gonna come to the house. Dopamine hit. So it's not that you're depleting your dopamine, it's that you're constantly burning out your receptor. That's why you have crash. That's why I say everybody is running on caffeine, cortisol, and chaos. Because what happens is when you crash, you're looking for that quick hit, right? Maybe it's MVMA, maybe it's ecstasy, maybe it's a quick, let me see what's going on. I'm gonna doomsday scroll on social. Maybe I'm gonna buy something on Amazon. And then you have to gambling. Same thing as 50 squats. So all those are in the same capacity, but that is very different than opiates because opiates shut your brain down. Now your dopamine's not producing because your brain is waiting for the synthetic that's a thousand times more powerful. That's completely different than a psychedelic or a phone or that kind of stuff. So I would put those in completely different categories. In fact, I would put opiates in its own category. And I say that because it's the hardest to reboot your brain from.

SPEAKER_00 42:41

As you were going through the process after your husband passed away, did you release the book? Like, did you think I maybe I shouldn't release this book? Was it released before he passed? Like, what was the process like with the book that you wrote while he was, you know, going through the process and getting sober?

SPEAKER_01 43:00

So 2018, he was sober. We did the first I married a junkie. I believe Matt Bradley from Deadliest Catch did the forward for that because I trained him and how to work with other people. So he he did the forward. It was pretty cool. And then I wrote another book called The Seven Keys to Tap into the Wealth Inside You. And that was all about law of attraction. And then COVID hit. And my husband battled his addiction. And then we were writing the second book, I Married a Junkie Two, in his pockets of sobriety. So when he passed away, I actually got into his email and I had some chapters that he had written. So I opened I Married a Junkie Two with his chapters that he had written. And Mike Tramp from White Lion, he's the singer for White Lion, he did the forward to that book because his brother had passed away from heroin use. So I put everything in there. And I had some of his bandmates write some stuff from, you know, over the years of the bands he was in. And I published that because I didn't talk about what happened. Everybody on Facebook was like, oh my God. You know, when somebody dies, they don't say, Are you okay? They go, What happened? Happened. And I'm always like, you're more curious of what happened than to say, are you okay? So I didn't explain anything. I didn't say anything. I just put he passed away. And then I wrote the book. And I put everything in the book because I thought, number one, I want to help people. Number two, I want his story from his point of view to be told. And number three, I don't care what people think about me on Facebook. So here you are. Here's the story. You want to read it, and it's in the book. Because it's raw. So that's what I did for I married a junkie too. So that came out in the fall of 2023. So that went gangbusters, you know, as a self-help book. And then I did Airport Antics after that in 2025. So I just did that one. Airport Antics was my stories over the years of what I see in an airport. It's a funny book. The one I'm working on now is called The Black Book, and it's how to biohack your mental health, and it's the secrets that I give my wealthy clients. And that's going to coincide with my movie that's also called The Black Book. So it's basically, since I work with celebrities and executive, it's going to have some celebrities in it, how I work with them, what it looks like, what chaos looks like behind the scenes. And then the tools and tips and tricks that I give them, you'll get in the book and you'll get in the movie.

SPEAKER_00 45:13

Awesome. There's some tips and tricks that you could probably give that aren't forthcoming in the book, but maybe some things that you've mentioned before that you could give our listeners as part of even how you maintain your own well-being. You've been through a lot, you've had a pretty wild life, you've had huge successes, you've ridden the roller coaster, as I say it. Like I think that people that kind of live in these comfort zones, they never kind of when things get a little too hard, they back off. When things get a little too easy, they speed up, and they just kind of stay in those comfort zones. I can relate to where you're at, where we kind of break through those, bounce off the bottom, and then you can go much, much higher. So you just there are no comfort zones. It's big risk, big rewards, and big adventures. So I really appreciate that about you. And I just wanted to see if there's something that maybe you know you can give our listeners as they're thinking about how you know you take care of yourself that they could take home, and maybe some things that they could practice. And then we'll get into some other tips that if any one of our listeners is struggling with addiction themselves or has a loved one that's struggling with addiction, how we might be able to help them. But let's start with how you take care of yourself from a well-being perspective.

SPEAKER_01 46:24

Sure. So I'm a gym rat. I'm crazy. I have four different gym memberships. So anywhere I go, I can get into a gym. I also do yoga and I train my, I'm a yoga teacher by trade. I went and learned how to do it. So I could do it anywhere. So that's important for me. I also live at the beach, I walk on the beach, I get the sand in my feet, which is, you know, energy in itself. So those are important. Magnesium bath every night, that's important too. So I soak. And in terms of tips and tricks, it takes 21 minutes to change a habit. It takes 31 days to change a habit. That's your difference. So I tell people if you can't start big, start small. So for example, if you say, Well, I'm drinking six beers a day and I want to drink less, I'll say drink five. I'm smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Well, how many cigarettes is in a pack? Do one less today, one less tomorrow, one less the next day. Take it down in chunks. And that's how you how you work it. Every time you have a craving for something, do squats. And then I had one of my my life is pretty public. So one of my staff members is trying to lose weight and quit vaping. And every time I see her make a video, she's sucking on this vape. So I said, before you vape, I want you to do 25 squats. So she posted a video the next day of her trying to walk down the steps. And she's like, every time I wanted to vape, I did 25 squats to the point where I can't walk. And she's like, she's like, I must be an addict. So now she's realizing how bad her habit is because every time she wanted to bait, she did the squats. Before that, she didn't realize it was that bad. She's like, oh, you know, I vape here and there. Well, when you do that break, when you give your brain that break, you start seeing what you're really doing. What does that really look like? You know? And I tell people, if you know, if it's hand to mouth, if you're eating or you're drinking, you'll notice people that are in recovery for alcohol and food addiction have many different cups around them of stuff and chapstick everywhere because it's the hand to mouth. Sometimes they'll have a bowl of candy. I try to get them off the candy. I'm like, get flavored chapstick, do the chapstick thing instead of the candy, you know, or a drink. So I'll have them switch from, you know, when you want to have an alcoholic beverage, do a seltzer water. Get a flavored seltzer water. Put some berries in the there we go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:47

I'm laughing because I have chapstick and water sitting right next to me.

SPEAKER_01 48:51

It it's it's because it's the hand amount. I want stacia. I want to feel gratification. So if you want to feel gratification, you need something near you. And it can be flavored water, it could be regular water. If you're into wine, I say keep the wine glass, fill it with seltzer water, put some berries in there, put some honey in there if you want something sweet, and just drink that. It gives you the hand-to-mouth thing that you want to do without, you know, having the alcohol, without having the substance. And that's how you break it down.

SPEAKER_00 49:22

I did the ons, which are like zins, like the nicotine little pouches. Whoa. Like instead of smoking or vaping, it was obviously a pretty decent alternative. But I did probably did for five years. It took me a long time to get that kicked. Like, and then it was gum and breath mints, because it was like you pop in those things in so often, you have to have something like to replace that because you still have that hand-mouth thing going on.

SPEAKER_01 49:52

And you don't think about how much you're doing it. When when I quit smoking, I was 23, I was doing a pack a day in Newport. And I didn't think it was an issue until a friend of mine said, We're gonna run up this little tiny hill up at Penn State. And I'm like, Fail, I got that. He's like, Okay. So you know, we're jogging up the hill, but halfway up, I'm going, time we get to the top, I threw up black. And he looks at me and he goes, Ready to quit yet? And I was like, What did I just throw up? And he said, Tar. And I looked at him and I went, That's it. I'm done. Well, that's easier said than done, you know? So I would take the pack and I'm like, all right, I'm gonna have, you know, the whole instead of having the whole pack, I'm gonna have so many and a lollipop. Tomorrow I'll have two less and two lollipops, and then three less and three lollipops. And I started doing sugar-free dum-dums. And I would just swap it out. And by the time I was done, I realized it wasn't the cigarette, it was the whole ritual of let me let me tap the pack. There was the sound. And then I would flip the cigarette over for good luck. That was the ritual. And then you pull the one out, and then you're doing, you know, you're doing this. So I started, I realized I smoke when I drive and I smoke when I'm at a bar. So the first thing I said was, I'm not drinking at a bar. There ends that. So when I would drive, I would take the lollipop and I would do the hand email. And then to come off the lollipops, I started using pens. So I would put the pen in my hand while I was driving just for the feeling. And I would do the whole open the window, pretend you're smoking. And then eventually I'm like, I'm an idiot. I've got a pen in my hand. Everyone thinks I'm stupid at the red light. And I'm like, all right, we're done with this. But that took a year just to get there because it was the ritual. It was the whole, it wasn't I was addicted to nicotine. It was my brain was used to the pattern. And that's when I started realizing the neuroplasticity of the brain. Now I'm 24. This this stuff years ago wasn't a thing. Now it's a thing. Everyone talks about neuroplasticity of the brain and habits and how it works. I knew back then what it what it was. So I started when I got into this with my clients, that's the first thing I teach them is your brain thinks in patterns, not emotion. So your brain doesn't know the difference between angry, happy, and sad. It just knows I'm supposed to feel this way based upon the circumstance. So if you teach your brain to feel differently, it changes how you respond to the stimulus. And people started going, wait a minute, what? So I would say, Well, I had a very violent, neglectful childhood. I have two ways of looking at that, right? If I say this is how I respond to something and I react to something, based upon my childhood, all I'm doing is reinforcing in my brain the trauma from childhood. But if I stop and I go, wait a minute, what if I change the thought around my childhood? And they said, What do you mean? I said, Well, my childhood made me who I am. My dad calling me fat and stupid allowed me to work with a narcissist male who goes, You're just a dumb bee. You know, what do you know? Like, okay, that doesn't phase me. So that childhood allowed me to do what I do at the level I do it. And when I started thinking that way, my brain went, Oh yeah, let's use that to our advantage. I literally took a traumatic childhood and made a whole brand out of it, not only helping other people, I was able to show other people how to monetize this and start a whole school. So that's what you do with the brain. When you can do that level, you can do anything.

SPEAKER_00 53:30

You just mentioned the school. I want to talk a little bit about the numbers, the sheer numbers that have gone through your educational program, because I think it's a tremendous feat that you've accomplished. And can you just talk a little bit about how it started? Obviously, people seeing you be successful and helping so many people, but you're limited by time and where you're available to be. You know, can't be in too many places at one time. So can you talk about how that success rolled from starting the business into getting into the schooling aspect?

SPEAKER_01 54:01

So in June of 2012, I started the Addictions Coach. And by December 2012, I'd made 150K part-time coaching people over the phone and in person in Miami. And people started saying, How did you do that? And I went, I don't know, I just did it. And then I sat down and I started researching schools to do that. And there were none. There was no training to do this. I was a therapist who became a coach. So I started creating a course called Recovery Coaching One, which led to Recovery Coaching Two and Ethics, and we bundled it together with 10 weeks of supervision under the Addictions Academy. So I created that, and then I realized people needed a better quality, less expensive intervention course. Because there was only four on the market and they were 10 grand a piece. You had your beginner and then you had your super advanced. And I'm like, why is that so unaccessible to the average person? Because an intervention isn't done by a counselor, it's done by boots on the ground, someone in recovery. So I created an intervention course, and that went gangbusters. And the four people teaching did not like that. So they posted nasty stuff online about me because they said you can't do this. And I said, why? Because you can't. Well, why? Because you can't. Well, I'm doing it. And I'm gonna make it affordable for everybody. So that's what set me apart. And I created a RAD model. It's called the RAAD model, and it's a faster intervention. You do all the work by phone, phone, and Zoom, and then you show up and you do the intervention in five hours. Whereas my competitors were saying, well, you show up on a Friday and you're there till Monday. And then the other one, the big course that everyone's like, oh, this is the gold standard is a nine-month process. Like, you don't have nine months to save someone's life. You got now or never. And it's not a gold standard. It's it's your method of doing things that it's it's antiquate. So my course started going gangbusters. And then they said, we want more. We want more. And I'm sitting there going, I don't have more. I got to create. So I started thinking, well, what else do I do? I'm like, well, let's get a family course because people need to work with the family. So we pop that out. And then I want more. And I'm like, how about a trauma course, a mental health course? And next thing you know, we're at 45 courses. We're about to launch two more. We're gonna do a grief course for people that have lost a child or a spouse in addiction specific, because that's very different than someone to cancer. You know, you you know it's coming. Addiction's overnight. So we have that coming out, and then I've been asked to write a course on narcissism for the victim. Because I did a little, I was on a podcast and I talked about narcissism, how all these women say my husband or my ex is a narcissist, and I'm like, no, he's not. And people went, what do you mean, no, he's not? 1% is a narcissist, not everybody. So we're misusing the two term, we're mislabeling people, and then we don't know what to do with what happens when you are the victim of somebody who had a narcissist trait. So the whole course is about that. So we'll have 47 courses. Uh, we've trained 75,000 people at this point. I thought it was 60. We actually ran the numbers the other day, and we're in almost a thousand treatment centers that teach our program or have been trained in our program. I've trained almost everybody on the show, A and E's intervention. So there's that. And uh we're in 40 countries. The country of Curakao bought all of our stuff. So the whole country teaches and licensed our manuals. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:31

Wow, that's so amazing. Congratulations. I mean, and the work that you're doing and the people, I'm sure it's so like the edification that you get from hearing those that have gone through your courses and the stories of who they've helped and go on. Like, I think that would just be one of those things. And and I've done this before in technology where you can see it benefiting so many people because it's spread so far. Is that something that like you take time to reflect on and and engage with those, you know, past students and you know, they have a place to share those kind of things with you?

SPEAKER_01 58:07

So we have a whole community. Once you have taken our courses, you're part of the community, you're family. Um, you get discounts, you get supervision, we help you with business. We want you to succeed. So it's not like just take this course. I know I have a competitor that teaches recovery coach, and they give you the course and then they just send you out there. I'm like, no supervision, no hands-on anything. It's just an online course and off you go. We're not, we're the opposite. So we want you to be well-rounded. If you have questions, we're here. We meet every Tuesday. It's ongoing, rolling. So you always have somebody that's a mentor that you can talk to about anything. And that's been my really big for me from the beginning is I want that hands-on, one-on-one help. So that's there. We help with job board. I have the largest Facebook group online for addiction and mental health. Everybody's in there talking to each other. So there's people asking for help, there's people scooping them up to help them, people pointing them with free resources. All of that's super important. Then we have a train the trainer program where you can franchise our courses. So we have a gentleman that took our courses and put us in the prisons. So we're in almost every single prison now. He had a big grant for prison work. So he has our prison reentry program in most of the prisons in the US. That's really cool. And then we had a first responder do the same thing. So we've trained all the first responders in Alaska, in Florida, in New Jersey, in New York. So our first responder program is out there. So if it's something that people are passionate about, we have courses for that that they can take. They can get continuing education units, they can start their own business, they can do nonprofit work, whatever they want to do using the curriculum. I always say, you know, why reinvent the horse? We have the curriculum, we have the accreditation. We're accredited by almost everybody that you possibly can get an accreditation by. So it's all out there. And you just take it and use it however you want, make some money in the process and help more people. That was my goal.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:05

And for youth, you have youth programs as well or counselors that are working primarily with, you know, young adults, teenagers.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:13

So we added young adults and teenagers as our new platform for mental health because we were working with so many parents that had addiction. And while we're asking questions, we're finding out, you know, there might be three kids in the family, and the middle child also has addiction. And it's like, well, you can't, you know, get the parent sober and not get the child sober. We got to get the whole family. So we started adding the adolescent. So we have adolescent mental health and addiction. We work with clients on that, and we have a course on that to train people on how to do that. Um, and then we also have mental health companions. So it's not just sobriety anymore, it's also mental health. Mental health can be burnout, it can be a diagnosis, you know, bipolar, borderline, schizophrenia, depression. What is this diagnosis you have? And is it right? So a lot of people come to us and say, Well, I'm bipolar. And I say, When did you get diagnosed? And they say, Well, when I went to treatment, and I laugh. And I'm like, You're probably not bipolar. They probably diagnosed you in the middle of a detox, A, to get the insurance benefits, and B, they asked you a bunch of questions and you answered yes. That doesn't mean you're bipolar. So I like to get them sober and then redo the questionnaire six months in. I also like to do blood work. That's something we do, no one does. I want to know what's going on inside your body. Because I have, you know, women clients that will say, I have depression, and then we do a very extensive functional medicine blood draw, and I find out they have a hormonal imbalance. And I'm like, you're not depressed. You have a hormonal imbalance. And when one of our doctors fixes that, all their depression symptoms go down. Same thing with thyroid. We have a lot of women clients that come and say, I have no energy. I test their thyroid for all this stuff, and it comes back, and I'm like, you have Hashimoto's and you have hypothyroid or hyperthyroid, and you're diagnosed with depression, you're not depressed. Your body chemically is not optimized. So we optimize it. And when we start optimizing your body, your brain follows. And then you don't want drugs and alcohol because you don't feel bad. You feel good, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:17

Totally. Will some of the biohacking, functional medicine, looking at this be part of the black book, both the movie and the book? Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:26

I'm gonna put some of my secrets out there because I've got some cool secrets. I've been doing this whole biohacking before it was biohacking. So like I just went.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:34

You've been doing breath work before it was called breath work.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:37

Yes, yes. I actually hung out with a friend of mine who's studying breath work, and she's talking about all this stuff, and I'm just looking at her and she goes, Why are you staring at me? I said, I've been doing that since I got yoga certified in 99. And she's like, What? I'm like, Yeah, you know, there's breath of fire and there's accordion breathing, and she's just looking at me and I demonstrated and she's like, I just learned how to do that. I said, I've been doing that since 99.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:00

Yeah. Right nostril, left nostril.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:03

Yes, yes. And everyone's like, oh, I just learned this new breath work. And I'm like, this has been around for centuries. It's just packaged, you know. TikTok, this girl on TikTok just sold it to you for a couple hundred bucks, and it's been around forever. Like, oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:18

Right. There's a lot of that. There's a lot of repackaging when it comes to self-help. I hear it all the time people talking about things, and I'm like, that sounds like Cloud Sioux. Like, I'm not sure that you invented that, but sounds great. Um I heard whatever works for people.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:34

Yeah. I heard somebody talk about law of attraction, and I always I always preach it's intention, gratitude, action. And they're like, they're talking about it, and I'm listening, and I'm like, that's the Silva method. And they took the Silva method and made it theirs. And I'm like, that's been around since you know the 40s and 50s, because I'm Silva Train. I trained under Ken Koshka, which was Silva's right hand, and Silva Train, Joe Dispenza, Tony Robbins. So all these people, you see these gurus, they're Silva Train. So I went and learned Silva instead of following the guru. I want to learn where it started, right? So when I hear people talk about it, I'm just like, uh, okay. So then you know how to broadcast. And they go, What? Like, you didn't take the Silva training. You don't know how to broadcast? Like, that's like the core of the training. And they're like, Well, I know how to do this. And I'm like, you know this much. You need to know this much if you're gonna sell it. Go take the silva training. And they're like, You're kidding. I'm like, no, you're you're selling air. You because you don't know all the steps. You have if you're gonna sell this, you gotta know how to do it. And then I always say, Don't hire somebody who hasn't done what you're trying to do. So if you're gonna buy somebody's law of attraction program, ask them what they built with it. I built six companies with it. So people come to me, they're like, Can you do this? And I'm like, I've done this with six companies. Sure. And then I show them how to do it and they're like, whoa. Like, yeah. So you have to be authentic. You know, you don't want to hire somebody who's using drugs to get you sober.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:00

Exactly. So for the audience that's listening in, if they are struggling themselves or they have a loved one that might be struggling, or it could be a child, it could be a spouse, it could be a cousin, a colleague, a peer at work. What are kind of some key tips that you kind of give everyone about recognition and how to approach these types of things?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:20

So the first thing is I always say don't accuse somebody of something. So don't say I know you're using drugs if you don't really know, because that does not solve the problem. And yelling and screaming and calling them names because you're angry doesn't solve the problem. It just projects your anger onto them, which causes them to be defensive, which causes them to get high. So the first thing I say is you need help first. Get somebody that you can sound bored off of a professional, not a friend, a professional. So that might be a therapist or a coach, somebody you could say, This is what's happening. What do I need to do? So you need it starts with you. And then from there, you can get the loved one help. Because what happens is everybody goes here. He's using, he needs to go to treatment, or she. And then they dump that person into treatment and the family unit doesn't change. And that person goes through treatment, has this pink cloud, they come out, they're like, Okay, I'm gonna be sober. I feel great. And they go right back into the toxic family situation. And the family goes, I need you to work, I need you to clean. Can you pick up the kids? You've been gone for 30 days. I need, I need, I need, I need. And the person who just spent 30 days getting fed, going from group to group to group, falls apart and starts getting high. And then the loved one goes, Oh my God, it didn't work. You failed. And then we're in this cycle. So get help first so you know what you're looking at. And then from there, you can set up an intervention or help the person get help or do a whole family type scenario for help. Because you also don't know if it's mental health. I had a husband call me that wanted an intervention on his wife who swore she was doing opiates and she wasn't. We and we did the intervention. And at the intervention, she says, Do you have a do you have a drug test? I'll pee in a drug test. Well, I happen to have one. She pees in the drug test, it's negative. And I'm just looking at the husband and he goes, I swear she was doing opiates. She goes, I don't do drugs. So what's the problem? She wanted a divorce. He didn't want a divorce. So therefore, he, you know, so these are some things you you might misread things based upon your scenario. So start with a third-party observation and then go from there.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:24

And if they're looking for resources, do you have a list of resources on the website that if they're looking for someone that from a mental health companion or they just don't know where to go? They don't have those resources. Maybe they recently moved. Where can they go that that would you would recommend is high quality, curated type of stuff?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:43

So we are soberondemand.com. We don't have a list of resources for a very specific reason. I want you to call me first. I always take all the calls and I do a consult free. I want to know what's going on before I give you a recommendation. Because I don't want you just to go, oh, I'm in Arizona and there's a therapist. That may not be the right person for you. With us, we personality match you with the right coach, the right interventionist, the right nurse, the right doctor. So you get that done from the beginning, that helps your longevity of staying sober, as opposed to just work with this person. Because you may not click with that person.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:20

That's great. Where else can the audience find you online? You know, what are social media outlets or YouTube channels, or do you do your own podcast?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:28

So if you Google my name, I'm everywhere. So calliestes.com has every site on it. Soberundemand.com is for clients or for families of a loved one that need help. The addictions plural coach, the addictionsacademy plural.com is if you want to be a student. You want to take some classes, you might find some information on there of direction you want to go, coaching, intervention, counseling. And then, of course, social media, I'm Dr. Caliestis, pretty much everywhere. And if you can reach out to me or my team, they'll uh they'll scoop you up, they'll ask you what questions you have, how we can help you and point you in the right direction. And if we can't help you, we won't just go, we can't help you figure it out. We will give you a resource. Even if you don't have money, we're gonna put you in touch with somebody that can give you a free resource somewhere. So don't feel like you can't reach out because you look at the website and say, well, I can't afford you. We have resources for other people that might need it. I also have a podcast that's called Unpause Your Life. And I've got some celebrities and some guests on there with some cool stories. So give it a listen if you like. And there's we don't sell anything, there's no sponsors, there's none of that. It's just free information.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:36

Great. And if someone's looking from, you know, any type of addiction, it's not just drug and alcohol addiction, but gambling, pornography, overeating, that's looking for an in-home type of treatment option, you know, like you talked about outside of a treatment center, can be inside of your house. You guys offer that service nationwide and maybe even further.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:57

We're actually international. Yep. So we have mobile detox. We have a nurse that's 24-7 with a doctor telehealth anywhere in the US. And if you want privatized, like on a plane or a yacht, or you want to go to Mexico or Canada or Europe, we can do that too. Just let us know. And then we have sober companions, which is 24-7 around-the-clock care for sober companions and mental health companions, and that's anywhere internationally. Everybody is certified, bonded, and insured with five years plus sobriety, and we personality match you with that companion. So if you're a C-suite, we can put you with a C-suite. So you're not getting, you know, Becky who lives next door. You're actually getting somebody with the same education that you have with the five years of sobriety plus. So that's companions. And then I have a five-day executive reset that is unlike anything on the market. I bring the entire concept of treatment to you in five days. We do deep dives. You get the companion and me, and you get a ton of biohacking stuff. We have some really cool cutting-edge biohacking tools, things that we bring with us that you won't get anywhere else. Um, stuff that's in Europe that's not in the US, stuff that's in Canada that's not in the US, not your typical here's a red light kind of a thing. We've got some really cool things. And I don't talk about them generally on what they are because they're pretty proprietary and they help with brain reset. We do a whole supplement line, we have a whole peptide line, in addition to things like sauna and frequency and PM PMFs and stuff like that. So we've got some really cool biohacking things.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:28

That's great. And if I haven't made the introduction, I will to uh Craig Goldberg at Inharmony Interaction. Uh Inharmony is uh vibroacoustic technology, and they do the vibroacoustic beds and they are amazing. He's in Vegas.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:41

So I'll make sure I make that introduction as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:43

That's the one thing I don't know yet.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:46

Okay. Yeah. I have one here in my office. Oh, cool. Actually, yeah. So we really appreciate the time and you coming on the podcast, uh sharing your story and the story of hope and flourishing that that you actually have brought forward into the world, not without your own trials and tribulations. Deeply sorry for the loss of your husband. And we appreciate you coming with the authenticity and telling us the story today. It's been very moving and very inspirational for me, I know.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:17

Thank you. And thanks for having me, and thanks for taking the time. And I hope I added some value for your listeners.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:22

Yeah, for sure. And as our listeners know, Baryons, you know, as an application, we're all about flourishing to provide that type of voice-based assistance for people, you know, in their business or in their personal life that are looking to grow, not in replacement of any kind of therapies that we talked about today. That's for licensed therapists and addiction counselors. But when you're looking for an accountability partner, someone to talk to, uh, we do have an AI system for that that we've built. And we've really patented the understanding engine, which gets to know how you think and understand what's important to you from a goals and aspirations perspective. So it's free to try. We recommend that anyone give it a shot.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:02

I just had Diane on my podcast talking all about baryons. So if you want to hear Diane on Unpaws Your Life, she was just on there.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:09

Very good. Yeah, we appreciate that. Thank you so much for coming on and uh best of luck on the new movie, the book. And we can't wait to see the releases and um best of luck in California and the new place to live.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:22

Thank you, and thanks for having me.