The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast

In this Q and A episode Ashley answers the question "How Can I Work in Sales and Not Drink?". Many jobs can feel as if drinking is a prerequisite. Even more challenging is when you drank when you started working somewhere and now you don't. You have to make choices about what you tell people, who you tell and what will become your new way of interacting with the group. Ashley gives tips and tricks on how to navigate this challenging situation.

Chris Howe endured 17 long years of addiction to alcohol and drugs while working as a firefighter. He was different from everyone else in the department. He was smaller, tattooed and spent his time away from the job with alcoholics, addicts and criminals. Today, Chris is 11 years sober, a Captain with the Niagra Falls Fire Department and an addiction recovery speaker. He shares his story in and out of the prison system, leads a Buddhist inspired recovery group and hopes to inspire others through his actions and his new life in recovery.

Casey was basically having a bottle of wine or more 365 days a year and was oblivious to the effects of her drinking. The signs were her 3am wakeups that she treated with Ambien and anti-anxiety medication which were actually symptoms of alcohol withdrawal. It wasn’t until her daughter was 2 and her son was 8 before she finally found recovery and even did so while navigating a stressful corporate job. Today Casey’s a Certified Professional Life and Sobriety Coach, the creator of The Free 30-Day Guide to Quitting Drinking and the host of the top rated Hello Someday Podcast, the podcast for busy women ready to drink less + live more.

In this Q and A episode Ashley answers the listener question from a teacher wanting to know how to help their addicted students. They are trying to find ways they can create a safe space for the students to talk openly about the challenges they are facing and want to know how they can help.

Person Irresponsible, or PI as most people call her,  describes herself as having been “fat, funny, forty-something, and in her fourth year of recovery when she felt an unfathomable urge to walk across America”. Previously she had hiked from the sofa to the fridge and back and considered camping to be a loathsome pursuit. PI relied on everything she’d been taught in the AA fellowship to haul herself from Mexico to Canada. She then set about writing a book on how twelve-step thinking kept her from succumbing to the mental demons that lurked within.

Elizabeth Sockolov is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, a member of Psi Chi, The International Honor Society of Psychology, and the founder of One Mind Therapy. Elizabeth has helped so many people struggling with addiction through her meditation teaching and therapy work. Now as a mother of two, she’s had to find new ways to make meditation work in an environment that includes less and less dedicated time to her practice. She applies those lessons to the busy lives that we all lead.

In this Q and A episode Ashley answers the question "Why am I addicted to my phone?". It seems like everyone has a complicated relationship with their phone and its addictive nature. Ashley talks about what is happening in the brain and what you can do to curb your attachment to your device.

In 2018 and 9 years of sobriety, Andrea had her “second great surrender” and came to terms with the true impact her dysfunctional upbringing had on her. This bottom and the subsequent healing work led her to launch Adult Child in March of 2021. Adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families have a unique story to tell and offer a picture into what unresolved alcoholism can do to a family.

Parham Nematollah grew up in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war where he lived through frequent bombings that sent his whole family fleeing for safety. At 16 he moved back to the US for good but the constant change caused him to feel outside of both cultures and desperate to fit in by any means necessary. His anxiety (rooted in the early trauma of war) and the desire to fit in, caused him to start using alcohol and cocaine to deal with it all. At 25 he overdosed and finally found sobriety while sitting across from his sick mother who happened to be at the same hospital for treatment. He wondered what she did to deserve her sickness and what he was doing to her.

In this Q and A episode Ashley answers the listener question "How do I get my husband to commit to going to treatment?" Her partner has had several relapses and she can't convince him to get help. Ashley discusses how to let the crisis arrive, interventions and self work that can be extremely helpful in encouraging a loved one to get help. Ashley Loeb Blassingame has been clean and sober for 16 years, she's a drug and alcohol counselor, interventionist, and the co-founder of a telehealth company called Lionrock Recovery that provides substance use disorder treatment.

Andy grew up searching for a place to fit in and find acceptance. As a Minister’s son, kids were often brought to his house against their will in order for his morality to rub off on them. In high school he found a new persona when he got blackout drunk at a college party. Suddenly people were talking about how funny he was when he was drunk, how he was just like Will Ferrell, and he liked the attention. So he leaned into it. In college he found more acceptance by blacking out and doing wild things people could laugh about the next day. It wasn’t until his fifth serious consequence from drinking, shortly after his 25th birthday, that things began to change.

Roland Williams is an interventionist, author, trainer, counselor and consultant specializing in addiction related issues. He is one of the first Licensed Advanced Addictions Counselors in the state of California.

In this Q and A episode Ashley talks with producer Scott Drochelman about the reasons that people relapse. Hear Ashley's relapse stories and what factors put people at risk. Ashley Loeb Blassingame has been clean and sober for 16 years, she's a drug and alcohol counselor, interventionist, and the co-founder of a telehealth company called Lionrock Recovery that provides substance use disorder treatment.

Lynsie found the success she was looking for when she became Miss Teen Arizona, but it led to a strange splitting of herself. In one life she was a pageant queen riding in parades and talking to kids about not drinking or using drugs all while partying heavily and on the road to her own addiction. It wasn’t until she received an aggressive DUI from an accident that found her car wrapped around a tree with a passenger in the car that things started to change. She was sent to Tent City jail in the Arizona and then to treatment which led to her eventual recovery. Today she is 16 years sober.

Wes Geer is a professional guitar player (Korn, Hed PE), songwriter, recording artist, and producer. What many didn’t know at the time was while he was leading his band to their first-ever record deal, Wes was a full-blown drug addict, using alcohol, methamphetamines and other drugs, daily, for years. After nearly a decade of touring the world, with the biggest names in rock, Wes’ life was imploding, and he finally left in 2003, for a ‘lifestyle change’ that ultimately ended him up in rehab in 2004. In 2012 he founded Rock to Recovery (R2R), a non-profit organization created in late 2012 with the purpose of providing those in various types of treatment and recovery programs the cathartic, uplifting, healing experience of connectivity through music.