Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic with Jon Seidl

Doug Johnson knew his drinking had gotten bad. There were bottles of whiskey disappearing over a weekend, around $1,000 a month going toward alcohol, Everclear mixed into sweet tea, and drinking at 10 in the morning. But he still wasn't ready to admit it was a problem.

Then came "the look"—the moment his wife, Abby, looked at him and had seemingly lost all hope after making ...

Charles Reed was drunk in the delivery room when his daughter was born. Afterward, he told his wife he was going for a walk—but he went straight to a liquor store. Becoming a father hadn’t made him stop. So what finally did—and what would following Jesus require afterward?

For years, Charles could close a big deal at work while hiding how badly alcohol and drugs were running his life. He ...

Emily White is an addiction counselor who once filled a CamelBak with alcohol to walk to class, collected a nine-month sobriety chip while secretly drinking, and was eventually kicked out of rehab. She knew recovery language—and enough Christianity to look the part—but she was still trying to become presentable before coming fully to Jesus.

After more than a year in sober living, Em followed ev...

Karla Adkins was successful, active in church, and working in health care—and yet she was dying from alcohol-related liver failure. When Karla’s doctor called and asked if she was OK, Karla said she thought she was dying. Her doctor was honest: “I think you are too.”

Yet even surviving liver failure wasn’t enough to make Karla stop drinking and find t...

When chronic illness took away Natasha Kennedy’s ability to eat, alcohol became the one comfort she believed she had left. Instead of gorging on food, alcohol became her new gluttony. The illustrator behind the beloved children's FatCat series and author of the incredible new book Lacking Nothing: The Year I Lost My Ability to Eat and Found Satisfaction in Christ joins Jon Seidl for an unfl...

What do you do when you love someone who won't stop drinking or give up their addiction? Dr. Brenda Fann Katula knows that frustration well. She understood alcohol addiction, withdrawal, and relapse. But none of that could fix her husband. 

In Part 2 of this two-part interview, Brenda takes us through the final stage of her former husband's destructive behavior. From an intervention, to hallucinations...

Dr. Brenda Fann Katula knew how to recognize alcohol addiction in an exam room. But when alcoholism took over her own home, the family physician who understood the diagnosis could not figure out how to make her husband choose sobriety—or explain to her nine-year-old son why Daddy wouldn't stop drinking.

The warning signs had been there from the beginning, like the handle of rum she expected to last f...

Podcaster Jeanette Tapley doesn’t call herself an alcoholic. But after one sober month, she realized she had a problem with her drinking—and that the second glass of wine she couldn't say no to was doing a job she was hesitant to admit: It gave her the foggy relief she wanted when life felt heavy. Her Christian faith then forced a hard question: Why did alcohol feel easier than trusting God?

"I don't have a drinking pro...

What do you do when God seems silent? How do you even hear God's voice? International speaker and author Em Tyler knows what it's like to struggle to hear God. She joins host Jon Seidl for an honest conversation about hearing God, abiding in Christ, prayer, and discerning the Holy Spirit.

For those struggling with addiction or walking in recovery, these aren’t abstract questions. Sometimes we’re asking God for new direc...

Amber Ginter Johnson spent seven years trapped in an eating disorder and exercise addiction rooted in trauma, fear, and a desperate need for control. What began as “healthy eating” became orthorexia, severe food restriction, obsessive calorie counting, and compulsive exercise—even jogging in place for three hours a day.

Then Amber broke her foot, abruptly ending the routine that had controlled her. Yet stopping th...

Arman Kaymakcian’s (Ky-mock-chin) journey from childhood sexual abuse and heroin addiction to faith in Jesus Christ began in unimaginable darkness. After years of using food, marijuana, drug dealing, and eventually intravenous heroin to escape his pain, Arman reached a point of suicidal desperation. He planned to step in front of a train—but walked into a psychiatric ward instead.

That night, Arman opened a Bible to Psa...

We know how to talk about alcohol, pornography, drugs, and other destructive behaviors. But there is another substance Christians regularly use for comfort, escape, reward, and emotional relief. It’s present at nearly every church gathering, woven into our traditions, and rarely questioned.

We’re going somewhere in this episode that we’ve never gone before.

We’re confronting an addi...

“I desperately wanted to be loved... and yet my entire life had feared that if I let people know me, I would be deemed unworthy of love.”

Joel Warneking lived a double life.

He was preaching, leading worship, traveling with a Christian band, and serving in ministry—all while secretly battling a pornography addiction that began when he was just eight years old. Even after confessing part ...

“I told my whole family, ‘I'm quitting.’ But in my head this voice was screaming, ‘I don't know what to do. I can't quit.’”

For years, Sherry Hoppen lived between those two realities.

To the people around her, she was trying. She was makin...

“The fear of our heart is built on sin’s great lie: that the place of healing is the place of harm. That the chalice of confession is filled with poison. That the medicine God has provided cannot be trusted. We have come to believe that confession is not a place of life but instead a place of death.”

Those words from Jamin Goggin’s book, Pastoral Confessions, capture the heart of th...

“The addiction is not who you are. This is not your identity. You are a person first and you are loved by God.”

For years, Christina Dent viewed addiction the way many of us were taught to view it: as people being simply too lazy, too selfish, or too indifferent to stop. Then she became a foster mom—and what she saw changed everything.

“In success, I sought to self-medicate. In failure, I sought to self-medicate.”

From the outside, Travis Blakeley had the kind of life many people would envy. He grew up in an affluent area of Dallas, attended a prestigious school, followed Jesus, worked in professional basketball as a coach, executive, and broadcaster, and built the picture-perfect life in the suburbs with his wife and children. But underneath the succ...

“It was such a relief to not have to lie anymore.”

That’s how Jed Payne describes the moment he finally stopped hiding and came clean. Again.

For years, Jed was a substance abuse counselor. He hosted a recovery podcast. He helped other people pursue sobriety and healing. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, he was spir...

"The younger we are when things happen to us and the more serious they are, the stronger the feelings are and the more often those feelings show up.”

Those are the words of therapist and author Kimberly Miller, one of the kindest and most genuine people I have ever met.

Kim’s work has profoundly shaped not only this p...