If you haven’t checked out the Elevation Recovery Podcast yet, you might enjoy it. However, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
Traditional sober podcasts are plentiful.
Plus, there are some really good ones, especially Recovery Happy Hour, hosted by Tricia Lewis.
An Under-Served Population
If quitting drinking using alcoholics anonymous (AA) is someone’s preferred modality of recovery, they can find numerous podcasts on this exact topic.
However, for people wanting to quit drinking and/or using drugs without AA (while using alternative and integrative modalities), there are much fewer podcasts like this.
It is for this reason that Chris Scott and I started Elevation Recovery.
We wanted to create a podcast that delivered value to a grossly under-served population…
Individuals using alcohol, drugs, or both, and/or people with behavior addictions, who are deeply interested in holistic addiction recovery podcasts.”
Holistic Addiction Recovery
Holistic recovery views addiction as a bio/psycho/social/spiritual disorder.
Mainstream alcohol and drug treatment often leave out the biological (aka biochemical; physical) aspect of addiction and recovery.
Alcohol and drugs are physical substances that cause serious negative physical changes to a physical organ, the brain.
Thus, holistic addiction recovery views “rebalancing the brain to a state of neuro-chemical optimization” as the foundation of all treatment.
The psychological, social, and spiritual domains are much easier to optimize when the brain is no longer deficient in dopamine and other neurotransmitters — which are paramount for healthy mood and behavior.
Fact is…
Prolonged use of alcohol and/or drugs leads to neurotransmitter imbalances, prefrontal cortex disabling, midbrain hijacking, gut-brain axis issues, a broken dopamine-reward-pleasure-system, and a cascade of other negative consequences.
If a person doesn’t know about these issues and has no idea how to correct them, then AA, counseling, therapy, and other psychosocial and spiritual strategies will have only mild or moderate efficacy at best.
Elevation Recovery Topics
The Elevation Recovery Podcast goes deep into biochemical repair strategies for rebalancing brain-body health.
These make up the foundation of the “Hierarchy of Recovery” approach that Chris Scott and I teach on the show.
Additionally, the podcast exhibits a very wide range of topics.
Elevation Recovery was created for the millions of individuals throughout the world that want to learn how to beat addiction using therapies such as:
- Supplementation
- Diet therapy
- Exercise therapy
- Self-development
- Self-reliance
- Positive psychology
- Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)
- Subconscious software hacking and reprogramming
- Psycho-cybernetics therapy
- Brainwave entrainment therapy
- Biofeedback therapy
- Yoga
- Thermal stress therapy
- Breathing exercises
- Sleep optimization
- Self-hypnosis
- Nootropics
- Mindset and psychology
- Biohacking gear
- Meditation
- Qigong
- Taichi
- Environmental medicine
- Native American sweat lodge therapy
- Acupuncture therapy
- AcuDetox therapy
- Deep tissue massage therapy
- Reiki therapy
- Ibogaine therapy
- Infrared sauna therapy
- Floatation chamber therapy
- Cryotherapy
- Pranayama
- Holotropic breathwork
- Meta-awareness, meta-cognition, and mindfulness-based approaches
- …and a superabundance of other alternative and even traditional therapies that can be added to your own customized “Hierarchy of Recovery Treatment Plan”
Who Elevation Recovery is for, and not for
Some of the people that listen to Elevation Recovery still maintain 12-step as the base and foundation of their treatment, and they’ve been enjoying learning about supplements, diet, and other strategies for feeling great naturally — without addictive substances.
Many who listen are recovering (or have already recovered) without 12-step in their plan.
Thus, there are “different strokes for different folks.”
The main population that dislikes Elevation Recovery are people that think AA is the only way.
For people with this belief, the Elevation Recovery Podcast is sacrilege.
It goes against all they believe and find sacred.
Additionally, other individuals that dislike Elevation Recovery don’t agree with even the small amount of “harm reduction” we cover, and instead, they promote total abstinence of all mind-altering substances even if someone only had a problem with alcohol, for example.
Thus, the Elevation Recovery Podcast, like all podcasts, is not everyone’s jam.
And we wouldn’t even try to make a podcast that everyone liked.
As I stated earlier, Elevation Recovery was created for the massively under-served population of millions that want to listen to a recovery podcast — but preferably one that has information on alternative therapies including both Western and Eastern healing modalities.
For individuals that prefer 12-step-oriented podcasts, there are plenty of awesome ones to listen to and benefit from.
A Cool Story…
A few weeks ago, a man contacted me about how best to taper off opioids. He stated that while searching Apple Podcasts he “couldn’t find any addiction podcasts that contained biohacking protocols.”
“Then,” he stated, “I googled biohacking recovery, and an Elevation Recovery episode on this exact topic showed right up at the top!”
Here is the episode he referred to:
This particular episode was one of our best ones. It was a very-alternative topic, although Chris Scott and I still don’t see why!
Now this man is excited and finally feels like he will be able to quit, as the strategies he’s learning and implementing are already helping him feel better.
Conclusion
To recap: Alcohol and drugs are physical substances that do serious damage to the brain. It still blows our minds that mainstream treatment still focuses almost exclusively on 12-step, group counseling, individual counseling, psychotherapy, and psychiatry and has yet to include “fixing the addicted brain” in their treatment.
But mark my words:
In 5-10 years from now, any mainstream drug treatment program that doesn’t focus on healing the addicted brain as the foundation of treatment will be out of business.”
Many of the topics we cover on the Elevation Recovery show are largely viewed as alternative as we round the corner to 2021.
Yet, in 5-10 years from now, many of these will be common knowledge and common practice (even in “traditional” treatment programs).
So whether a person likes our podcast — loves it — hates it — is appalled by it — or even thinks it’s the greatest addiction podcast of all time…
That all depends on the listener’s lifestyle, unique predicament, personality, character, beliefs, values, preferences, desires, needs, resources, model of the world, experiences, and many other variables.
Like I stated earlier…
Different strokes for different folks.
And now you know what the Elevation Recovery Podcast is; and isn’t…
As well as who it’s for; and not for. 🙂
-Matt
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