The Game of Consciousness: How to Transcend Addiction by Mastering Your Energy System (Ep. 18) 🌀
Strategic Recovery with Matt Finch
Release Date: 10/14/2025
⚖️ Consciousness as Regulation — Ending the Inner War of Addiction (Ep. 34)
Strategic Recovery with Matt Finch
What if addiction isn’t a personal failure… but a signal that the nervous system and consciousness have fallen out of alignment? In this episode of Strategic Recovery, we move beyond willpower, discipline, and surface-level behavior change — and explore addiction as a problem of regulation, coherence, and inner conflict, not character. This is not motivational hype. It’s not dogma. And it’s not about believing anything blindly. It’s a calm, grounded exploration of what actually stabilizes recovery when force stops working — and why freedom emerges naturally when the inner war...
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🌅 How We Forgot How to Feel Alive — And the Recovery Path That Brings Joy Back Online (Ep. 33)
Strategic Recovery with Matt Finch
Why do so many people feel sober… yet still numb? Why does modern life offer endless pleasure — yet leave us feeling empty, restless, and disconnected? In this powerful, paradigm-shifting episode of Strategic Recovery with Matt Finch, we explore why humanity has quietly forgotten how to feel truly alive — and how addiction, overstimulation, and instant gratification hijack the brain’s natural joy circuitry. This episode goes far beyond substances. It dives into the pain–pleasure balance of the nervous system, the concept of dopamine debt, and why chasing comfort and relief actually...
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🎠The Performance Trap: Pervitin, Dopamine Debt, and Why Regulation Always Wins (Ep. 32)
Strategic Recovery with Matt Finch
In Episode 32 of Strategic Recovery with Matt Finch, we explore a powerful historical case study with urgent modern relevance: Pervitin — pharmaceutical methamphetamine — and the hidden cost of chemically forcing performance. Used extensively in Nazi Germany to suppress fatigue, fear, and doubt, Pervitin offers a stark lesson for modern recovery, burnout culture, and stimulant-driven living. When output is prioritized over regulation, systems don’t become stronger — they become fragile. This episode isn’t about shock value. It’s a nervous-system masterclass. We break down: How...
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🎧 Audio-Therapies for Addiction Recovery — How Sound Calms Cravings, Heals Shame, and Rewires the Brain (Ep. 31)
Strategic Recovery with Matt Finch
Addiction recovery is not just a willpower problem — it’s a nervous system problem. In this episode of the Strategic Recovery Podcast, we explore how sound-based therapies can help regulate stress, stabilize cravings, improve sleep, and retrain your brain toward safety and calm — without substances. Sound is one of the fastest ways to shift state. When used correctly, it can downshift over-activation, soften PAWS symptoms, improve emotional regulation, and restore recovery momentum. In this episode, you’ll learn: • Why addiction and cravings are often state-based, not moral failures...
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đź’Ą Stop Cravings Fast: The Fitness Blueprint for Addiction Recovery, Mood, Mindset & BEYOND (Ep. 30)
Strategic Recovery with Matt Finch
In this powerhouse episode of Strategic Recovery with Matt Finch, we explore one of the most overlooked—and most effective—tools for healing addiction, rebuilding brain chemistry, and transforming your identity: fitness. You’ll discover how exercise becomes a natural pharmacy for the recovering brain, triggering powerful molecules like endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, oxytocin, GABA, and BDNF—the very neurochemicals that addiction drains. Matt breaks down the science, the strategy, and the spiritual psychology behind movement as medicine, including: • How exercise...
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🛡️ Recovery in a Collapsing World — How to Build a Fortified, Peaceful 2026 (Without Burning Out or Breaking Down) | Ep. 29
Strategic Recovery with Matt Finch
Recovery is harder than ever — not because you’re failing, but because the world has changed. Economic pressure. Healthcare chaos. Digital overstimulation. Loneliness disguised as connection. A treatment system still stuck in the Dark Ages. If something has felt off lately, you’re not imagining it. In this episode of the Strategic Recovery Podcast, Matt Finch offers a grounded, compassionate recalibration for anyone navigating addiction recovery — alcohol, substances, behaviors, or compulsive coping — in an increasingly loud, unstable world. This is not motivation. This is not...
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🌟 The Christmas I Got Sober — And Everything in My Life Changed After That (Ep. 28)
Strategic Recovery with Matt Finch
Most turning points don’t announce themselves with fireworks. They arrive quietly — during a break in the noise, a pause in the chaos, a moment when the system is finally exhausted enough to listen. Fourteen years ago, during a Christmas break, I made a decision that didn’t feel dramatic… but it changed the entire trajectory of my life. In this deeply personal episode, I share my full story of addiction, near-death collapse, and awakening — from growing up as a highly sensitive kid in Ocean Beach, to alcohol, pills, heroin, overdose, and finally the quiet internal shift that led to...
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🎄The Holiday Relapse Trap — And How to Escape It Forever (Ep. 27)
Strategic Recovery with Matt Finch
The holidays are not “just a rough time.” They are one of the highest-risk periods of the entire year for relapse, emotional collapse, depression, and nervous-system overload — especially for people in recovery. In this episode of Strategic Recovery with Matt Finch, we break down why relapse spikes during the holidays, what’s really happening beneath the surface, and how to move through this season without white-knuckling, isolating, or losing your ground. This is not a willpower talk. This is a strategy episode. You’ll learn how the holidays compress biochemical stress,...
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🔑 The Incentive Code: The Most Effective Addiction Treatment No One Talks About (Ep. 26)
Strategic Recovery with Matt Finch
What if the most powerful addiction treatment on the planet… is the one almost no one is using? In this episode of Strategic Recovery with Matt Finch, we dive deep into Contingency Management — a science-backed, wildly effective, yet shockingly overlooked approach that outperforms nearly every other behavioral treatment for stimulant use disorders. I call it Incentive-Structured Recovery — or simply, The Incentive Code. For decades, the recovery world has pushed willpower, shame, and discipline… while completely ignoring the one thing the brain ACTUALLY responds to: incentives. This...
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🌱 The One-Path Recovery Lie — And Why “Any Positive Change” Can Save Your Life (Ep. 25)
Strategic Recovery with Matt Finch
In this powerful, paradigm-shifting episode of Strategic Recovery with Matt Finch, we dismantle one of the most damaging myths in addiction culture — the belief that there’s only one “real” way to recover. For decades, the one-size-fits-all recovery model has dominated the conversation, shaming people who don’t fit the mold and ignoring the science of how humans actually heal. Today, we shred that old doctrine and replace it with something far more humane, scientific, spiritual, and effective: A vision of recovery where any positive change counts, and where you have full...
info_outlineLife is more than survival. More than willpower. More than just “not drinking or using."
In this episode of Strategic Recovery with Matt Finch, we explore the truth that life itself is a Game of Consciousness—a game where every choice either aligns us positively with love or negatively with fear.
Addiction thrives when we’re stuck on the flat gameboard—living in fear, shame, and survival mode. Recovery accelerates when we learn to step onto the Unitary Gameboard, where love flows through an unblocked energy pipeline and cravings dissolve naturally.
Inside, you’ll discover:
- Why intellect alone can’t beat addiction—and why consciousness can.
- The seven circuits of your energy pipeline (Root → Crown).
- How blockages in survival, shame, ego, and judgment fuel relapse.
- The daily tools to “toggle up” and live as a spiritual athlete.
- Why the ultimate goal is not abstinence, but transcendence.
👉 If you’ve ever felt stuck in relapse city, this episode is your roadmap to playing the game of life consciously, unlocking your heart, and experiencing lasting freedom.