Alchemist Recovery Podcast

Based upon my own experiences from both sides of the line of sobriety, I know that addiction can feel like something that comes from outside of us and has taken over. That we’re under a spell or even possessed. In this episode, we’ll tie together Chinese medicine, core shamanism, psychology, and some classic monster mythology to explain why, and what it takes to break the hold.

Starting with our simple four-part model f...

“I need something.”

I hear this a lot, as this is a familiar feeling in addiction recovery. “But Randy, I got to have something to…ease the pain, fill the emptiness, make life manageable, etc…”

But what happens when the thing we reach for keeps changing while the need underneath, and that pull of the Void, stays the same?

In this episode of the Alchemist Recovery Podcast, I explore the differenc...

What Do I Do When There’s Nothing I Can Do?

Feeling Stuck and Feeling Powerless

In recovery, as in life, there’s few feelings that are as frustrating as stuck-ness with seemingly no way out. Whether we’re talking a job, a marriage, a health diagnosis, or a legal battle, powerlessness stinks because it feels absolute and immovable, especially once we’ve stopped using our old coping mechanisms in the form of th...

We’ll dive a little deeper into the Newsletter’s info from this week and really examine what we mean by…

* How does an addiction deliver Nurturance?

* What exactly does this look like?

* What can I do about it?

Also, we go into everybody’s favorite of The Big 3: Food, Sex, Money, with regards to substitution.

* Why does our relationship to these things change in recovery?

* What are the forms of Nurturance we get...

The opposite of addiction is…Home.

It is not just sobriety, as I’ve known plenty of people who were sober but not at home. They remain in a wrestling match of daily struggle.

In this episode, we’ll look at the power that resides in the archetypal idea of Home and how it holds the ability to single-handedly disrupt the entire cycle of addiction.

Some points we’ll look at are:

* “New York’s home but i...

I use the word communion on purpose, so as to illicit a response and begin an exploratory conversation.

Let’s reveal exactly what your beliefs are around these-things and see how they bring clarity to your position.

Because I propose that we enter into communion with the spirits of addiction when we are engaged in the cycle. We feed them our energy and give them our power, and from this unhealthy union, all we get back are the...

As I often say, words have power. And when supporting someone in the early stages of making a big change in their life, like getting clean & sober, how we use our words matters.

They can connect us or they can cause unintended obstacles.

For some, the word “treatment” is one of those words. It can imply meanings that are less than helpful and land as:

* A reinforcement for a limiting core belief repeating, “I am ...

There’s no such thing as staying the same.

We’re either moving forwards or sliding backwards; releasing and rising, or attaching and sinking; riding with the flow, or anchoring in and deepening-stuck.

There truly is no such thing as staying the same. This holds true for a life in recovery, as well as applying it to any important area you want to look at: career, relationships, health, to name a few.

In this episode, we&rsq...

I love the line, “and Heaven is overrated?” from the song, Drops of Jupiter by Train, and this week we’ll use it as an entry point to explore how, once again, our A to Z linear perception of time keeps us in patterns that eventually outgrow their usefulness.

This is true, and becomes clear, as we get more & more sober-time under our belts.

We’ll then apply that awareness to The 4 Stages of Recovery, from L...

In this episode I dig into the tension between shamanism and appropriation, sparked by a few conversations I had this past week with people in the podcast, mental health, and psychedelic communities.

I explain why I named my podcast “The Sober Shaman” even though I don’t claim the title of shaman myself, and unpack the word’s anthropological roots and current misconceptions.

I introduce the idea of “seve...

At Stanford, Andrew Keaveney was chairing the Buddhist Club and trying to meditate. He tried a dozen techniques and kept coming up short. Then he found Sky Breath Meditation and four years later he was living at the source of it, at an ashram in Bangalore, India figuring out why it worked when nothing else had.

In this conversation, Andrew shares how Sky Breath Meditation works with our physiology rather than against it, using the d...

There’s nothing wrong with comfort. Rest, recovery, the exhale after a hard week, these are essential. The problem isn’t comfort. It’s when comfort becomes the goal.

That’s the line this episode draws. Because when we’re working toward mastery and comfort serves the work, we come back Monday morning lit up and ready to give. But when we’re just grinding until Friday, when the drink, the couch, the...

Recorded from the back porch along the banks of the Ping River here in northern Thailand, I’m joined by Tucker our Temple Cat and a cacophony of singing birds for this episode of the Sober Shaman Podcast. We get into Qi, and not by talking about it, but by having an experience of it.

The focus is one simple, powerful Qigong exercise: hold the ball. In 13 years inside addiction treatment centers, this is the exercise that lit ...

“Sobriety Is Boring”

Really?

I’ve noticed this sentiment has been showing up on social media lately, and I’ll admit, I get it. I bumped up against it in those first couple of years and I’ve had many people tell me they’ve experienced exactly the same. It’s common to hit some pretty quick plateaus of the, “Ok, I’ve stopped. Now what?” variety.

But here’s what I keep co...

Am I a shaman? It’s right there in the name but the answer might surprise you. 

In this episode, I dig into what the word “shaman” actually means, why I deliberately use it, and why I’m equally deliberate about saying I’m not one. 

From lineage, ancestors and sacred language to power loss, soul loss and spiritual intrusion, I share the path I do walk and why I’d rather teach you to be you...

In this episode, I ask a few questions that always seem to hit a nerve, reveal definitive opinions and ignite interesting conversation.

To begin, I start with, "What are the long term effects of Adderall?" 

There's a lot to look at there...

Episode #68: A Shamanic View of Illness

“There is no chemical solution to a spiritual problem.”

You’ve probably heard this one, as it’s one of the most quoted lines in recovery. Maybe you’ve even said it a few times yourself. But here’s the thing:

What exactly is the spiritual problem?

Because if we can’t name it and we can’t map it, then the saying is just a groovy bumper sticker. True, ...

Kevin O'Leary is making the rounds, and his case for the Stratos Hyperscale Data Center is polished, confident, and deeply unsettling. Not because he's lying — but because he's telling the truth about exactly what kind of world we're ...

What if the problem with Ozempic isn’t the drug itself — but what it says about our relationship with hunger?

In this episode, I’m sharing my first take on one of the most loaded topics in wellness right now: Ozempic and addiction. And just for a heads-up, my angle might surprise you.

I hear people talk about Ozempic quieting “food noise” or reducing cravings. While that’s great, when I look at it ...