Flourishing After Addiction with Carl Erik Fisher

What Addiction Science Got Wrong About Dopamine, with Dr. David Nutt

Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings. Today I’m sharing my conversation with Dr. David Nutt—Edmond J. Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London—one of the most influential and outspoken figures in modern psychiatric research and drug policy. It’s a wide-ranging chat about addiction science, pharmacology, and the past and future of medication development—including his current focus on psychedelics.In particular, we turn to the intellectual foundations of addiction science and focus on one of Dave’s core arguments: the field went down the wrong path by treating dopamine as a master explanation for addiction.Check out my Substack post for more about Dr. Nutt's workFind him on YouTube, Instagram, Bluesky, Twitter/X, and at the charity he founded, DrugScience.org.uk. Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my own free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings. 

BONUS: Can You Become Addicted to AI? A conversation with neuroscientist Tim Requarth on AI dependency, cognitive shortcuts, and what AI is doing to our brains

Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings. This is a special audio edition of my recent Substack conversation with neuroscientist and writer Tim Requarth. The full post—including the video and more detailed show notes—is available on my Substack.Neuroscientist, writer, and NYU faculty member Tim Requarth joins me to talk about what "AI dependency" really means. Some behavioral addiction researchers are proposing that "ChatGPT addiction" qualifies as a bonafide mental disorder, while others strongly object! We explore how tools like ChatGPT affect our thinking and attention, and whether AI can actually cause "brain damage"--as recent headlines have claimed. We discuss what happens when people lose trust in their own thinking, why productive struggle matters, and why AI can’t challenge your assumptions the way a real friend would.Check out my Substack post for more! Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my own free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings. 

On Stigma, Burnout, and the Fight to Keep Caring, with Dr. Melody Glenn

Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings. Today I’m excited to share my conversation with Melody Glenn, an emergency medicine doc, addiction physician, and Associate Professor at University of Arizona, who just published her first book: Mother of Methadone: A Doctor's Quest, a Forgotten History, and a Modern-Day Crisis. It’s an important story that reveals how we got into our current mess of a treatment system and challenges some foundational myths about addiction that are deeply ingrained in our cultural history. Ultimately, it’s an inspiring biography of a pioneer who was able totally transform care, even during troubled times.Check out my Substack post for more about Melody's work! Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my own free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings. 

Wise Effort, with Dr. Diana Hill

Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings. My guest on the show today is Diana Hill, psychologist and ACT expert, whose new book Wise Effort: How to Focus Your Genius Energy Where it Matters Most comes out in September and deserves your attention—particularly if you're drawn to the intersection of behavioral science, modern psychotherapies, and contemplative wisdom. Diana is a leading voice in psychological flexibility, known for making complex ideas both practical and grounded. Our conversation focuses on one of my major preoccupations: effort, right effort, wise effort--what makes effort wise and how to cultivate the wisdom to discern what you can't change from what you can. She has done wonderful work on psychological flexibility and the art of directing our finite energies toward what actually matters. We also talk about the deeper aspects of that question: how we make peace with the fundamental difficulty of being human, how to be with discomfort, how to navigate traditional treatment versus other practices in the messiness of life. Diana was very kind to share her own experience with anorexia and the limitations of traditional treatment, and how that shaped not just her therapeutic approach, but her psychological perspective. We explore how the conventional idea of fighting against our difficulties is often precisely what keeps us stuck, and what it looks like to work with our psychology rather than against it.We alo talk about attachment patterns, values clarification, the wisdom of the body, couples work and intimacy, and even touch on artificial intelligence. I found it personally very helpful and enlightening and I hope you do too!Check out my Substack posts for more links to Diana's work. Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my own free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings. 

BONUS EPISODE: a guided meditation for working with cravings, and Jud Brewer on Mindshift Recovery

Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings. As promised, here's a quick follow-up to my conversation with Dr. Jud Brewer. We got so caught up in the core science and models of self-control and anxiety that we completely forgot to talk about what he actually came on to share: his new nonprofit, Mindshift Recovery!So we hopped back the mic on to cover the details—their courses and group models, of course, but also more about how he puts into practice his core approach to working with habitual, addictive behavior. We also dive a bit more into his model of how awareness (not willpower) creates lasting change. It's fascinating work that's worth knowing about, and perhaps trying, if you're interested in how contemplative approaches can be applied to addiction recovery.Finally, we close with a bonus meditation: an inquiry into the nature of craving itself.For a short episode, it's surprisingly rich. The meditation alone is worth the listen.As always, let me know what you think!Check out my Substack posts for more links to Jud's work and our previous conversation. Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my own free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings.