How to Know If You're an Addict (with Dr. Cali Estes)
Release Date: 11/16/2025
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info_outlineA gentle note before you dive in: this conversation touches on addiction and loss of a spouse. It's okay to pause, skip ahead, or come back to this one another time.
Dr. Cali Estes was sitting on her floor eating cake with her hands, crying, with cake on the wall and cake on the dog, when her roommate walked in and said, "That's not normal." Cali's response: "What's not normal? This is what we do." She was 23, wanted to be an FBI agent, and had no idea she was already deep in a food addiction that a college counselor would later wave off ("you're not bulimic, you're not anorexic, so you're just fat") and a doctor would try to fix with a diet pill that was, at the time, still legal.
That diet pill (Fen-Phen, later pulled from the market for killing people) sent her looking for something stronger, and it took two ER visits and one doctor blunt enough to drop an F-bomb before she found her way to a yoga mat instead of a meeting room. Cali is now an addictions coach who's built her career on the idea that recovery isn't one-size-fits-all: the traditional meeting model works for some people and leaves plenty of others, like her, feeling worse instead of better. She's the founder of Sober On Demand and the Addictions Academy, a five-times #1 bestselling author, and a regular voice on CNN, Forbes, and more.
We get into her simple two-week test for telling casual use from addiction, the exact boundary she draws with parents who keep rescuing an addicted adult child, and why she believes loving someone sometimes means refusing to be the one who saves them.
Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVIwbDaq4Cs
In this episode
- Dr. Cali's simple two-week test for telling casual use from addiction
- Why the traditional 12-step meeting model works for some people, and made her own addiction worse
- How a hot yoga class, not a treatment center, became the turning point in her own recovery
- The difference between therapy and coaching, and why she made the shift to coaching in 2012
- Her "brain dump" exercise for clearing ruminating thoughts before they spiral
- The boundary she tells parents to hold when an adult child's addiction keeps putting everyone in danger
Timestamps
- (00:01) Welcome and intro: meet addictions coach Dr. Cali Estes
- (01:24) Wanting to be an FBI agent, and the night that led to a cake-eating breakdown on the floor
- (02:52) "You're just fat": a counselor's dismissal, and the diet pill that made things worse
- (04:26) Trying NA and OA, and why the snack table almost pulled her back into using
- (04:55) The addiction class where she scored "20 out of 20" on her professor's checklist
- (05:55) No health insurance, no rehab: how a friend dragged her to hot yoga instead
- (07:24) Ten sun salutations before you open the fridge: the practice that started to work
- (08:23) What she saw working in treatment centers, and why she quit on the spot
- (10:32) Why the meetings work for fellowship but not the therapeutic piece, and the shift to coaching in 2012
- (16:15) The two markers Dr. Cali uses to tell functional use from addiction
- (17:51) Trading the drug for the meeting: why some people get stuck in the rooms
- (20:26) The "brain dump" exercise for clearing ruminating thoughts
- (22:52) The mother who bought heroin with her son, and the boundary Dr. Cali drew
- (31:39) Advice for women scared to start a business: freedom over money
About Dr. Cali Estes
Dr. Cali Estes is an addictions coach and the founder of Sober On Demand and the Addictions Academy, the online addiction and mental health education school she describes as the largest of its kind. She's a five-times #1 bestselling author and host of the podcast Unpause Your Life, and her expertise has been featured on CNN, NBC, ABC, MSN Money, CNBC, CBS, Fox News, KTLA, Forbes, HBO, the LA Times, People Magazine, and The Drew Show.
Learn more at Dr. Cali's website, or connect with her on LinkedIn.
Favorite quotes
"Your vice isn't your problem. It's your solution to a problem." —Dr. Cali Estes
"So love is setting a boundary." —Dr. Cali Estes
"I simply say, can you go two weeks without it?" —Dr. Cali Estes, on her test for spotting a real addiction
Resources mentioned
- Sober On Demand: the recovery company Dr. Cali founded
- The Addictions Academy: her online addiction and mental health education school
- Unpause Your Life: Dr. Cali's own podcast
- CaliEstes.com: Dr. Cali's website
- Dr. Cali Estes on LinkedIn
Related episodes
- Journey From Addict to Award-Winning Author: Interview with Melanie Yates: another guest who rebuilt an entire identity and career on the other side of active addiction.
- Healing from Trauma and Addiction: Dr. Stephan Neff's Journey: more on the trauma underneath addiction, the piece Dr. Cali says the meetings rarely address.
- Trauma Impact: From Codependency to Self-Mastery: a closer look at the codependency and enabling patterns Dr. Cali describes in the families of people she coaches.
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