You Know Exactly Why You Drank. So Why Are You Still Stuck?
I Love Being Sober
Everybody in treatment eventually gets the insight. They can tell you why they drank. They can name the childhood, the trauma, the trigger. And then they wake up the next morning and do the same thing they did yesterday. Natalie Hunter has spent more than twenty years studying why that happens. Her position is blunt: insight alone does not change anybody. What she teaches instead is behavior over belief — that change comes from doing something different, not from finally thinking differently. In this episode she walks through her Six Stages of Conscious Change, including the...
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Sober But Still Not Yourself
I Love Being Sober
You got sober. You did the work. And you still wake up exhausted, foggy, flat, and unmotivated — and everyone around you says give it more time. Sometimes that's the right answer. Sometimes something underneath is actually broken. spent her twenties competing in bodybuilding and figure competitions. Then the scale started going up while she was training twice a day and tracking every macro. Six different doctors inside a major medical system looked at her labs and told her she was normal — eat less, exercise more. The seventh doctor was the first one to physically touch her...
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The Doctor Who Beat Addiction — Without A 12-Step Program
I Love Being Sober
Dr. Sharon Stills started drinking at twelve. By nineteen she was sitting in a parking lot in the Hamptons, too high to walk into the party — and that was the night it broke. She got sober at twenty, without AA, without rehab, and thirteen years later became a naturopathic medical doctor. In this episode she explains addiction the way she sees it after twenty-five years of practice: not as a moral failure and not purely as a brain disease, but as a nervous system trying to regulate itself. Which is why, as she puts it, we don’t quit addiction — we graduate from one to the next. She’s...
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Addicted To Looking Away: What Happens When You Finally Get Quiet
I Love Being Sober
On this episode of the I Love Being Sober podcast, recorded live in front of a client audience at Camelback Recovery's outpatient treatment center in Scottsdale, Arizona, host Tim Westbrook sits down with master life coach, speaker, and labyrinth designer , author of the bestselling book , published by Hay House and endorsed by Dr. Mark Hyman and Stanford behavioral scientist BJ Fogg. Elaine spent three decades as a dental hygienist, sitting one-on-one with more than 40,000 patients, while living what looked from the outside like a perfect life: a house in Paradise Valley, a surgeon husband,...
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Transforming Human Suffering: Facing What You’ve Been Running From
I Love Being Sober
On this episode of the I Love Being Sober podcast, recorded live in front of a client audience at Camelback Recovery’s outpatient treatment center in Scottsdale, Arizona, host Tim Westbrook sits down with Marine combat veteran, speaker, and mental performance coach , author of , a book endorsed by the Dalai Lama. Akshay came home from Iraq carrying PTSD, depression, and an alcoholism that escalated to a bottle of vodka a day and, one morning, a knife in his own kitchen. He walks the room through that rock bottom moment and the slow, non-linear climb out of it. This is not a story about a...
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Reclaiming Your Identity After Addiction: Turning Rock Bottom Into True Purpose
I Love Being Sober
What does it take to survive what should have killed you and come back stronger? In this live episode of the I Love Being Sober Podcast, recorded in front of an audience at Camelback Recovery’s outpatient treatment center in Scottsdale, Arizona, host Tim Westbrook sits down with speaker, coach, and author Kevin J. Parker. Born into generational addiction and trauma, Kevin spent four months in a hospital fighting for his life. He flatlined three times, a priest read his last rites, and he lost his leg to addiction. Doctors said he would never walk again. Two weeks later he took his first...
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100 First Dates Sober: Building Secure Relationships From Chaos
I Love Being Sober
What happens to your relationships when you get sober? In this episode of the I Love Being Sober podcast, recorded live at Camelback Recovery's outpatient treatment center in Phoenix, Arizona, host Tim Westbrook sits down with , a TEDx speaker, author, and relationship coach for executives and high performers. Melissa's story will resonate with anyone navigating sobriety and connection. After graduating college at nineteen, she began drinking heavily to fit in, was clinically diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and struggled with anxious attachment and people pleasing. She went on more than...
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Nervous System Regulation: How Cold Plunges And Breathwork Accelerate Natural Healing
I Love Being Sober
Recorded live in front of clients at Camelback Recovery’s outpatient addiction treatment center in Scottsdale, Arizona, this episode of I Love Being Sober brings host Tim Westbrook together with Michael Roviello, U.S. Navy veteran, certified Wim Hof Method instructor, and co-founder of Optimyze, a natural wellness company with four locations across the Phoenix Valley. Michael grew up in a rough part of Queens, New York, where blackout drinking and drugs were normal by his early teens. At 20, a Navy recruiter found him day-drinking in a Long Island bar and offered him a way out: helicopter...
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How Chiropractic Releases Traumatic Stress And Resets The Nervous System
I Love Being Sober
What does your spine have to do with staying sober? More than you think. In this episode of I Love Being Sober, recorded live at Camelback Recovery in Scottsdale, Arizona, Tim Westbrook sits down with Dr. Marc Blackstone, a board-licensed chiropractic physician with more than 25 years of clinical experience who has spent the past five years bringing chiropractic care into mental health and addiction treatment settings. Dr. Blackstone breaks down the mind-body connection in plain language: how a chiropractic adjustment affects far more than the joint being treated, why addiction and mental...
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How I Reversed A Terminal Diagnosis: The Metabolic Root Of Healing & Addiction
I Love Being Sober
What if addiction isn’t a moral failure — and it isn’t just a brain disease either? What if it’s the natural expression of a terrain that never got the support it needed? In this episode of I Love Being Sober, Tim Westbrook sits down with Dr. Nasha Winters — naturopathic oncologist, bestselling author, and 35-year stage IV ovarian cancer thriver — for one of the most clinically rich and emotionally honest conversations this podcast has ever hosted. Recorded live at Camelback Recovery’s outpatient treatment center in Scottsdale, Arizona, in front of a live audience of clients and...
info_outlineIn this powerful live conversation recorded at Camelback Recovery, Tim Westbrook sits down with Dr. Don Middleton to explore the intersection of faith, addiction medicine, and lasting transformation.
Dr. Middleton is a board-certified physician with more than 30 years in family medicine and currently practices addiction medicine at the internationally renowned Meadows Behavioral Health in Wickenburg, Arizona. He also serves as medical director at Vital 4 Men and was named Arizona Physician of the Year at the state medical convention.
In this episode, we dive into his book The Dunamis Effect: When Your Higher Power Is Jesus and discuss what happens when Christian faith becomes the foundation of 12-step recovery.
This conversation covers:
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Christian 12-step recovery and the meaning of “Dunamis”
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The role of Jesus as a Higher Power in addiction recovery
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Medication-assisted treatment (MAT) and faith-based recovery
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The balance between science, scripture, and sobriety
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Rebuilding identity after addiction
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Overcoming shame after relapse
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The future of Christian recovery ministries
Dr. Middleton also shares his perspective on the controversy surrounding medications in recovery and how medical science and spiritual transformation can work together — not against each other.
Whether you’re early in recovery, a treatment professional, part of a Christian recovery ministry, or simply curious about the role of faith in sobriety, this episode offers practical insight and hope.
Learn more about Dr. Middleton’s work:
📘 The Dunamis Effect: When Your Higher Power Is Jesus (Available on Amazon)
🌐 https://dunamisinitiative.com
📱 Follow “Dunamis Initiative” on Facebook and YouTube