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...
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How Emerging Adults Can Achieve Healing
I Love Being Sober
What actually keeps women from walking through the door of a treatment center — and what keeps them from staying once they're in? Tim Westbrook sits down with , a licensed clinical social worker, US Army veteran, certified sexual therapist, and Vice President of Inpatient Operations at , for one of the most honest conversations about recovery this podcast has ever had. Dr. Howzell breaks down why shame is gendered and shows up completely differently for women than for men, why emerging adults struggle to engage in treatment even when the consequences are right in front of them, and why the...
info_outlineWhat actually keeps women from walking through the door of a treatment center — and what keeps them from staying once they're in? Tim Westbrook sits down with Dr. Whitney Howzell, a licensed clinical social worker, US Army veteran, certified sexual therapist, and Vice President of Inpatient Operations at Meadows Behavioral Healthcare, for one of the most honest conversations about recovery this podcast has ever had.
Dr. Howzell breaks down why shame is gendered and shows up completely differently for women than for men, why emerging adults struggle to engage in treatment even when the consequences are right in front of them, and why the prefrontal cortex matters more than most treatment programs acknowledge. She talks candidly about digital culture, dopamine, and how recovery has to evolve to meet a generation that was born into the internet age.
The conversation goes deep on intimacy — not the physical kind, but the kind most people in recovery have never learned: eye contact, vulnerability, what it means to let someone actually see you. Dr. Howzell also discusses her work treating sexual trauma, sexual compulsive behavior, and the new Willow Healing Center at Meadows Behavioral Healthcare, a combined women's program that integrates eating disorder treatment with intimacy disorder treatment after clinicians discovered the two were almost always co-occurring.
This episode is for anyone in recovery, anyone who loves someone in recovery, or any clinician who wants to understand why the one-size-fits-all treatment model keeps failing the people who need it most. Recorded live at Camelback Recovery in Scottsdale, Arizona with a live audience of clients and staff.