Addiction Medicine Made Easy | Fighting back against addiction

Psychiatric meds can feel like a maze when someone is trying to get sober and also sleep, focus, and stop panic spirals all in the same week. We made this updated, practical overview to simplify psychopharmacology for addiction treatment and recovery, using plain language and real clinical decision-making instead of jargon or hype.

We start by clearing up a viral rumor and then zoom out to how medications are actually create...

Kratom is being sold like a simple plant, but the way it’s packaged, concentrated, and marketed in 2026 can turn it into something much closer to an opioid problem hiding in plain sight. We’re taking you through a practical, clinician-friendly update drawn from a talk I gave to local therapists and drug and alcohol counselors, especially as the political and regulatory landscape shifts and bans and enforcement efforts e...

Binge drinking can look harmless right up until it doesn’t. If you only drink on weekends, vacations, or big nights out, it’s easy to tell yourself you’re fine because you’re not drinking every day. But the consequences of one high-risk night can be life-changing, and clinically, intermittent heavy drinking can still meet criteria for an alcohol use disorder.

I’m joined by Colleen Clifford, a fo...

Sugar is everywhere, socially approved, and often handed out as comfort, reward, and love. That’s exactly why it can be so hard to spot when it stops being “a treat” and starts acting like an addiction. I’m Dr. Casey Grover, and I sit down with Mike Collins, known as the Sugar Free Man, for a clear-eyed talk about what sugar addiction looks like in real people’s lives and why willpower is such an unrel...

Peer support can feel like the missing link in addiction care, not because it replaces medicine, but because it makes recovery feel possible when someone is scared, ashamed, or shutting down. I’m Dr Casey Grover, and I sit down with Mark Ehrenkranz, a certified peer recovery specialist who does bedside work across a thousand-bed hospital, from the ED and ICU to behavioral health. Mark brings decades of recovery experience, pl...

Your go-to stress relief can become the biggest source of stress in your life, and that’s where recovery often gets stuck. I’m joined by Dr Gary Sprouse, the “Less Stress Doc,” to unpack his deceptively simple framework called the Stress Reducer Loop: a substance or behavior lowers stress at first, then starts causing harm, which creates more stress, which drives more use. Once you see the loop clearly, it&r...

Nitrous oxide can look like a harmless party trick until you understand how fast it can flip into a medical emergency. We dig into whippets and laughing gas from an addiction medicine perspective, including why the high hits within seconds, why people keep reaching for “just one more,” and how the same drug can functionally mimic ketamine, benzodiazepines, and opioids in the brain. That mix helps explain both its legiti...

A benzodiazepine taper can feel like trying to land a plane in bad weather: the stakes are high, the instruments are imperfect, and speed is rarely your friend. We sit down with Dr. Rizzo to translate the ASAM benzodiazepine tapering guideline into real-world addiction medicine decisions, including what to do when a patient shows up on a very high dose of clonazepam and a sudden 50% cut has already happened.

We dig into the ...

Residential treatment gets talked about like a single thing, but most people have no idea what they are walking into until they arrive. I sit down with Rachel Docekal, CEO of the Hanley Foundation in Florida, to open up the “black box” of residential addiction treatment and partial hospitalization (PHP), from how programs are structured to what patients actually do hour by hour.

We dig into what separates a quali...

Someone you love keeps drinking, using, or relapsing and you can feel your body tighten the moment you walk into the room. That tension makes sense, but it can also become part of the system that keeps addiction stuck. We sit down with therapist and family coach Jeff Jones, founder of The Family Recovery Solution and author of Rethinking Addiction, to unpack what actually helps families when a loved one is in active addiction or ea...

THC isn’t the same drug it was 20 years ago, and pregnancy counseling hasn’t caught up. We sit down with Dr. Nazanin Amadieh, a board-certified OBGYN who also trained in addiction medicine, to map what today’s high-potency cannabis means for conception, the placenta, fetal development, and the newborn period. If you’ve heard “it’s legal” or “it’s just a plant” as proof of ...

Benzodiazepines can feel like flipping a switch: panic quiets, sleep finally comes, your body unclenches. But what happens when that “off switch” starts rewiring the system you rely on to stay calm in the first place? Dr Andrew Rizzo joins me to dig into the biology behind chronic benzodiazepine use and why so many clinicians now recognize benzodiazepine-induced neurological dysfunction (BIND) as a real, patient-alterin...

Fentanyl changed the playbook for starting buprenorphine, and we’re tired of watching people suffer through days of withdrawal just to “earn” their first dose. So we break down a cleaner, faster on-ramp: direct-to-inject. Think of weekly Brixadi as an automatic microdose that builds buprenorphine levels over 24 hours, cuts out guesswork, and sets up a smooth handoff to a monthly injection that actually sticks.
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A lot of people think addiction begins with a bad decision. We start earlier—at the moments when consent was stolen, trust collapsed, and silence felt safer than speaking. Carly sits down with us to map the real terrain: childhood sexual assault, a near-rape behind a high school bonfire, military harassment that exploited rank, and the long slide from alcohol to meth, from oxy to heroin. The story is raw and specific, and it ...

I sat down with a room full of high school seniors to talk to them about party culture in college. 

College freedom can be thrilling—and unforgiving. As an ER physician turned addiction specialist, I pull back the curtain on campus party culture with real stories, clear limits, and life-saving tactics to be used the first weekend of college. From Narcan basics and Good Samaritan protections to the truth about binge drinki...

Hypnosis and moderation rarely share the same sentence—until you understand how your brain decides to drink. We sit down with Australian clinical hypnotherapist Georgia Foster to unpack a practical, science‑aligned approach to reducing alcohol that starts by changing state, not shaming behavior. Georgia explains why the amygdala’s fear and urgency often override the best intentions, how the inner critic fuels that cycle...

What if addiction isn’t a failure of willpower, but a failure of the brain systems that make willpower possible? In this episode Dr. Brenda Fann (who has been on the pod before) interviews me about addiction as we provide a clear, compassionate walk through what addiction really is, why it grips so hard, and how families can help without enabling. You’ll hear a physician’s lived experience of losing a spouse to al...

In the case of an overdose, a person stops breathing long before most of us realize what is happening. That is why our mantra is simple and urgent: call 911 and give naloxone. We walk step by step through recognizing an opioid overdose, using nasal naloxone in under a minute, and staying safe while you help. You do not need a medical degree to save a life; you need a clear plan, Naloxone, and the courage to act when someone will no...

The story we’ve been told about cannabis—safe, simple, and mostly benign—doesn’t match what we’re seeing at the bedside. Two ER-turned-addiction doctors pull back the curtain on how high-potency products can quietly undercut psychiatric meds, complicate procedural sedation, and nudge recovery off course even when everything else looks better. This isn’t a panic piece; it’s a practical guide...