Flourishing After Addiction with Carl Erik Fisher

Afleveringen

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  How a Little Becomes a Lot, with Eric Zimmer 10.03.2026 58min

  Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings. Today I’m sharing my conversation with my friend Eric Zimmer: author, teacher, person in recovery, and the creator of The One You Feed, an award-winning podcast with more than 50 million downloads and over 800 conversations exploring what it means to live a meaningful life. Eric, I should add, is one of the most req...
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  What Addiction Science Got Wrong About Dopamine, with Dr. David Nutt 15.12.2025 50min

  Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings. Today I’m sharing my conversation with Dr. David Nutt—Edmond J. Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London—one of the most influential and outspoken figures in modern psychiatric research and drug policy. It’s a wide-ranging chat about addiction science, pharmacology, and the past and futu...
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  BONUS: Can You Become Addicted to AI? A conversation with neuroscientist Tim Requarth on AI dependency, cognitive shortcuts, and what AI is doing to our brains 07.11.2025 1u 29min

  Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings. This is a special audio edition of my recent Substack conversation with neuroscientist and writer Tim Requarth. The full post—including the video and more detailed show notes—is available on my Substack. Neuroscientist, writer, and NYU faculty member Tim Requarth joins me to talk about what "AI dependency" really me...
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  On Stigma, Burnout, and the Fight to Keep Caring, with Dr. Melody Glenn 13.08.2025 50min

  Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings. Today I’m excited to share my conversation with Melody Glenn, an emergency medicine doc, addiction physician, and Associate Professor at University of Arizona, who just published her first book: Mother of Methadone: A Doctor's Quest, a Forgotten History, and a Modern-Day Crisis. It’s an important story that reveals ...
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  Wise Effort, with Dr. Diana Hill 31.07.2025 56min

  Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings. My guest on the show today is Diana Hill, psychologist and ACT expert, whose new book Wise Effort: How to Focus Your Genius Energy Where it Matters Most comes out in September and deserves your attention—particularly if you're drawn to the intersection of behavioral science, modern psychotherapies, and contemplative...
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  BONUS EPISODE: a guided meditation for working with cravings, and Jud Brewer on Mindshift Recovery 16.07.2025 47min

  Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings. As promised, here's a quick follow-up to my conversation with Dr. Jud Brewer. We got so caught up in the core science and models of self-control and anxiety that we completely forgot to talk about what he actually came on to share: his new nonprofit, Mindshift Recovery! So we hopped back the mic on to cover the deta...
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  Unwinding Self-Addiction, with Dr. Jud Brewer 08.06.2025 1u 5min

  Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings. What if self itself is a habit? In this episode, psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Jud Brewer explores how struggles like addiction, anxiety, and even identity can be understood as habit loops shaped by reward and reinforcement. Drawing from neuroscience, contemplative practice, and clinical work, Jud offers...
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  What Is It Like to Be an Addict? with Prof. Owen Flanagan 22.04.2025 1u 6min

  Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings. Nearly two decades ago, Owen Flanagan stood before the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, ready to open up about something uncharacteristically personal. Unlike his typical scholarly talks on consciousness and philosophy of mind, he was about to tell the distinguished group about his lived experience with addict...
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  Fentanyl Nation: Toxic Politics and America’s Failed War on Drugs, with Ryan Hampton 30.10.2024 44min

  Friend of the pod Ryan Hampton, a national addiction recovery advocate, author, and person in long-term recovery, is right in the middle of a hotly contested state assembly election in Nevada. It is, in fact, he is running in of the most hotly contested races in one of the most consequential states in U.S. electoral politics. So I’m so glad to have him on to talk about how to take care of ourselves and one another in this final stretch of election season, while also getting his unique perspec...
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  First in the Family, with Jessica Hoppe 04.10.2024 48min

  Jessica Hoppe's brand-new memoir, First in the Family: A Story of Survival, Recovery, and the American Dream, is a tremendous exploration of addiction, intergenerational trauma, and the complex allure of the American Dream. I had the great pleasure of reading this book in advance copy and I’m so happy to be able to help spread the word and wholeheartedly endorse the book now. Don’t take my word for it. Leslie Jamison: “fierce and wise.” Javier Zamora: “raw and brilliant.” Kiese Laymon: “Art a...
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  The Zen Way of Recovery, with Laura Burges 21.08.2024 56min

  Join me on Sunday, September 8th, at 12 PM Eastern Time (9 AM Pacific) for From Recovering to Flourishing: A Foundational Workshop. Before spending three years in a Buddhist monastery and becoming a 3rd grade teacher, Laura Burges was exploring the world of alcohol and drugs, from opium dens in Afghanistan to a tent in Juneau, Alaska. After near-death experiences—such as blacking out and crawling through the snow—she realized she needed a spiritual solution to her addiction. This realization...
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  The Supreme Court Blocks the Purdue Pharma Opioid Settlement, with Ryan Hampton 25.07.2024 23min

  This is a milestone for the Flourishing After Addiction podcast: our first repeat guest! I wanted to have Ryan Hampton back on the pod for a quick hit: to discuss the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the controversial bankruptcy settlement involving Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family. As you may know, the Court rejected the settlement involving Purdue, which shielded members of the Sackler family from lawsuits. I thought there was no one better than Ryan to help us understand this rul...
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  How to help people change, with Dr. Carrie Wilkens 12.06.2024 1u 4min

  Carrie Wilkens is a psychologist with over 25 years of experience in the practice and dissemination of evidence-based treatments for substance use and post-traumatic stress. She and her team at the Center for Motivation and Change have developed the Invitation to Change approach for families and loved ones of people struggling with substance use, as well as the professionals who support them. This is a change model that has been used in group, family, and individual work, including by counsel...
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  Stash, Sedatives and A Life In Hiding, with Laura Cathcart Robbins 27.03.2024 56min

  One of the great gifts of being out in the world talking about addiction and recovery is I get to meet so many fascinating and talented people working on these issues. This is one of my deepest motivations for writing and speaking about my own experience; to connect with other values-aligned writers and thinkers. One wonderful recent example is the fantastic writer Laura Cathcart Robbins, our guest on this latest episode of the Flourishing After Addiction podcast. Laura is the author of...
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  Why We Can’t Therapize Our Way Out of Addiction, with Dr. Bruce Alexander 05.03.2024 47min

  In this episode of Flourishing After Addiction, I had the honor of speaking with Bruce Alexander, a towering figure in the field of addiction theory. As regular Rat Park readers will know, I named this newsletter after Bruce’s iconic experiment in the 1970s, honoring not just that experiment, but also the decades of contributions he’s made since to the broader understanding of addiction as a deeply human phenomenon. Now that Bruce is in his 80s, he’s said he won’t be doing much more writing...
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  What's Wrong? Personal Histories of Chronic Pain and Bad Medicine, with Erin Williams 15.02.2024 45min

  As a bonus for this special episode with the artist Erin Williams, author of What’s Wrong? Personal Histories of Chronic Pain and Bad Medicine, I got permission to post some of the illustrations from her new book, What’s Wrong? Personal Histories of Chronic Pain and Bad Medicine. Head over to my Substack page to see those. You won’t want to miss them. Erin Williams is the author and illustrator of ten books, including What's Wrong? Personal Histories of Chronic Pain and Bad Medicine, Commute...
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  Taking Ownership of Your Recovery Journey, with Dr. Ray Baker 01.02.2024 1u 1min

  Dr. Ray Baker is a distinguished leader in the field of addiction medicine and a person in long-term recovery from addiction. This episode of Flourishing After Addiction particularly resonates with the theme of the longer-form writings I’m starting to post about frameworks for making sense of recovery, so I’m grateful to have the chance to talk with him. A highlight of the conversation is Ray’s insight into the various processes of recovery, as he advocates for a holistic approach across di...
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  Brutalities: Exercise, Extremity, and Love , with Margo Steines 11.01.2024 57min

  In the latest episode of Flourishing After Addiction, I am thrilled to be exploring the intricate relationships between addiction, recovery, pain, and embodiment with Margo Steines, a writer and person in recovery with a deep understanding of these themes. Margo Steines holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Arizona and serves as a faculty member in their acclaimed writing program. Her work, including her memoir-in-essays "Brutalities: A Love Story," offers a truly unique ...
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  Shame and Self-Stigma: Strategies for Change, with Dr. Jason Luoma 20.12.2023 53min

  Shame and self-stigma can be powerfully limiting and harmful, and they are especially common among people with addictions. We’ve discussed on prior episodes of the podcast that there may be valuable and wise forms of shame, but psychotherapy research has also shown that the wrong sort of relationship to shame can also inhibit growth and stand in the way of recovery. So for this episode of Flourishing After Addiction, we dive into the practical aspects of working with shame, guided by Jason Lu...
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  Navigating the Complexities of Addiction Treatment and Recovery, with Dr. Brian Hurley 06.12.2023 55min

  For this episode of Flourishing After Addiction, I wanted a guest who could offer some insights into the journey of seeking help for addiction and recovery. What is going wrong with our systems and services, and where can people actually find care? Brian Hurley is the ideal person to help us with these questions, with his extensive experience as a practicing addiction physician, President of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, and Medical Director for Substance Use Prevention, Treatme...