Recovering Out Loud

Everybody hands you a journal in early recovery and says "use it" — nobody tells you what to do with it. So this episode is the missing manual: six journaling techniques (plus a bonus), what each one is actually for, and what the evidence does and doesn't back up.This isn't "dear diary." Different methods do different jobs, and matching the technique to the day is the whole game.Bottom line: journaling is a tool, not a cure. The research is modest and mixed, not miraculous. It works with your program, not instead of it — and if writing about the hard stuff cracks open something you can't hold, that's the signal to reach for a person, not just a pen.Peer to peer, one alcoholic addict's experience — not medical or clinical advice.JOIN ME ON MY SOCIALS - FREE RECOVERY GUIDE AND RECOVERY COACHING⁠https://linktr.ee/Recoveringoutloudpod⁠— Anthony

How addiction treatment went from moral failing to disease to harm reduction — 240 years of recovery history, told through lived experience. This is a peer recovery podcast, not medical advice.I'm Anthony, an alcoholic and addict in recovery since 2015. In this solo episode of Recovering Out Loud, I walk the whole arc of how society has explained and treated addiction — moral failing, disease, medicine, harm reduction — and why every one of those models is still alive in the room today. You can meet all of them in one 12-step meeting, one hospital, one comment section.The 12 steps are younger than the telephone. Methadone is younger than television. Almost everything we call "treatment" was invented inside living memory. Here's the timeline:From sin, to disease, to medicine, to just keeping people alive — each model didn't replace the last. They're all still in the room, arguing. Recovery isn't one thing and never has been. Whatever door worked for you — 12 steps, medication, harm reduction, a fellowship — it exists because people before us refused to accept moral failure as the final word.The opposite of addiction is connection.

Ten honest lessons from another sober summer — victimhood, relapse, isolation, service, and faith.Summer's over and I'm back to school for my counseling diploma, so this one is a reflection on getting another summer under my belt sober. If you made it through sober — congratulations, I'm proud of you. And if you didn't, I'm proud of you for being here and trying to do better. Coming back from a slip is the hardest thing I've ever done.These are ten things I've journaled and thought about over the last few months working a recovery program. They're not clinical advice — just one person's lived experience, out loud:Recovery is simple — not easy. And if no one's told you today: I love you.

My real problem was never the drugs or alcohol. It was King Baby — the toddler ego running my life.In 2015, in treatment at Hazelden, I read a little pamphlet by Tom Cunningham called King Baby. It rewired how I saw my whole problem. It made me realize I wasn't a victim — I was the problem. Not the drugs, not the alcohol. Those were symptoms. The disease underneath is perception: being stuck inside myself, unable to get out of my own head.This episode is my walk through that idea. We all start as King Baby — the infant at the center of the universe, every need met instantly. Most people grow out of it. Some of us never shed it, and the infant ego spends a lifetime trying to get that warmth back. Enter drugs and alcohol: the thing that made me feel like the center of the universe again — until it stopped working.I get honest about the "sheriff of the universe" in me (the one who's right, you're wrong, and everyone in traffic is breaking Anthony's law), the masks we wear so the real self can't get rejected, and why King Baby can't tolerate calm — how we rock the boat and manufacture chaos to hide a shrinking sense of worth. Then the way out: surrender (putting down a job I was never qualified for), humility, letting the community love me until I could love myself, and choosing — every day — whether King Baby or the program gets the mic.This is lived experience, not medical advice. I'm not a doctor or a clinician. I'm an alcoholic and addict in recovery. King Baby's still in there. He just doesn't drive the bus anymore.Would you rather be right, or free? I want to be free.FIND THE PAMPHLET HERE

Nobody warns you sobriety can make anxiety louder, not quieter — here's why, and what actually helps.When you put down the drink or the drug, the anxiety you were medicating doesn't vanish. It gets uncovered. In this solo episode I talk about the 2 a.m. racing heart, the tight chest before a phone call, the dread with no evidence — and why the further I get from a substance, the louder my brain can get.Anxiety and substance use feed each other, and I break down the two directions that takes: the anxiety that came first and got "solved" by a drink, and the rebound anxiety the substance itself manufactures. We get into why early recovery spikes anxiety (post-acute withdrawal — the second wave nobody warns you about), the anxiety–relapse loop that keeps so many of us stuck, and how avoidance quietly wears respectable clothes: skipped meetings, isolation, and yes, workaholism.Then the part this show exists for — the solutions. Five tools, strongest-evidence-first: thought work (CBT), breathwork, movement, sleep, and connection — plus an honest word about medication. This is lived experience and peer perspective, not medical advice. I'm not a doctor or a clinician. I'm an alcoholic and addict in recovery, sharing what's worked for me.Anxiety was never the enemy. It's information from a nervous system built to outrun bears, now stuck managing a group text. You can feel it and be okay. It peaks, and it comes down — every time.