Dr. Bob Weathers (Part 1) – The Future of Addiction & Recovery: Wherein Lies the Hope? Integral Responses, Skillful Social Strategies & Exploring What Leads to Real Happiness

Ep. 98 (Part 1 of 2) | In this riveting, disturbing, and hopeful conversation, addiction expert and recovery coach Dr. Bob Weathers explains the enormous difference it makes when we apply the Integral Model to addiction and recovery. It helps us cover all the bases in our understanding of addiction, from the neuroscientific to the spiritual, and offers a map for recovery in the form of integrated practices that target our physical, emotional, spiritual, relational, and system-coping needs. Bob’s mission in life is to educate—his clients, treatment professionals, policy makers—everyone who is affected by addiction one way or another (which is pretty much everyone) about this set of perspectives that is comprehensive enough to address something as complex as addiction. Bob is deeply familiar with addiction and the suffering it causes on a firsthand basis, and he shares his own experience with an open heart. He is also well informed about the big picture of addiction and shares the latest statistics: 46.3 million Americans are currently clinically addicted—only 6% received treatment last year.What about the future of addiction? Technology is becoming increasingly capable of creating powerful “super stimuli,” making it ever more difficult for people to exercise self-restraint, and internet addiction and internet porn are through the roof. What can we do to influence the powers that be on a social/systemic level to guide us on a new path? One that recognizes that happiness correlates with connection, contribution, and flow rather than the never-ending quest for more acquisitions? Listening to this honest, heartfelt, and impassioned conversation, you will not be in the least surprised to find out Bob is the 2022 winner of the Most Dedicated Substance Abuse Education & Recovery Coach award. “Living a life of value, meaning, and purpose? If you want to talk about happiness, let’s talk about that.” Recorded May 15, 2023.“I’ll trade off the burdensomeness of addiction, of enslavement, any day for the freedom of transformative life practices.”(For Apple Podcast users, click here to view the complete show notes on the episode page.)Topics & Time Stamps – Part 1Introducing addiction expert, recovery coach, psychologist & author Dr. Bob Weathers (00:52)There are so many different perspectives on addiction and they often tend to be reductionistic (03:30)Fifty percent of people who see a therapist are clinically addicted (04:33)Bob’s own history with addiction and how he encountered 12-step meetings, Refuge Recovery, and eventually Integral Theory in the process of recovery (06:10)The neuroscience of addiction is often the missing piece in recovery and how incredibly important that piece is (11:39)The War on Drugs and the deinstitutionalization of mental hospitals in CA in the 70s resulted in drug related offenses accounting for 80% of those incarcerated (13:37)Providing conventional religious/spiritual responses to addiction doesn’t work for all (16:10)The road to recovery involves service (19:22)Do you need to have firsthand experience with addiction in order to understand and help addicts? And, the importance of knowing suffering (19:53)John’s portrait of addiction and the unspeakable hell of suffering it involves (23:15)John’s groundbreaking book, Integral Recovery, which applies the Integral Map to recovery...