If rehab worked the way it’s supposed to…why do so many people end up right back where they started?

After more than 30 years in the trenches of addiction treatment, Jimmie Applegate has some theories.

In his recently released book Addicted to Failure: Why the Rehab System Doesn’t Work and What Must Change, he pulls back the curtain on the myths, blind spots and outdated models that keep people stuck.

We talk trauma, brain rewiring, why “just go to rehab” is wildly oversimplified and what real, lasting recovery support should actually look like. This one is part wake-up call, part hope for something better.

Learn all about Jimmie’s work here. 

Finally, check out all things Recovery Rocks, Lisa and Anna.

Lisa Smith is the author of the award-winning memoir Girl Walks Out of a Bar. Anna David is the author of the novel Party Girl, as well as multiple nonfiction books. Together, they bring the honesty of lived experience to conversations about addiction, sobriety and the messy, meaningful truths at the heart of recovery.

What happens when your “journey of self-discovery” includes Burning Man debauchery, spontaneous decisions to move to other countries and the ingestion of substances you probably should’ve Googled first?

We asked the best source on the topic—Carly Schwartz, a former top editor at The Huffington Post and Editor-in-Chief of the San Francisco Examiner all about it when discussing her upcoming recovery memoir, I’ll Try Anything Twice: Misadventures of a Self-Medicated Life.

To call Try Anything Twice just a recovery memoir doesn’t do justice to just how poignant, tragic and inspiring it is. It’s a sharp and painfully honest look at dealing with depression and addiction, not to mention chasing meaning in all the wrong places—before finally finding real recovery.

We get into adult identity crises, denial that deserves an award, suicidal depression and what it actually takes to rebuild a life you almost lost. Also, we talk a lot about how we’re all obsessed with each other.

Find out more about Carly on carly.ink, on Instagram, and on LinkedIn. And book a writing and storytelling workshop with Carly at Mindwriters. 

Finally, check out all things Recovery Rocks, Lisa and Anna.
 

Lisa Smith is the author of the award-winning memoir Girl Walks Out of a Bar. Anna David is the author of the novel Party Girl, as well as multiple nonfiction books. Together, they bring the honesty of lived experience to conversations about addiction, sobriety and the messy, meaningful truths at the heart of recovery.

Our resident Swiftie, Anna, is over the moon as we chat with Julianne Griffin, founder of Swift Steps, a recovery community for sober Swifties. We talk about what music, and Taylor’s music in particular, means to us in recovery and the power of a supportive community in staying sober.

Find Swift Steps:

www.swiftsteps.org

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Instagram

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Check out all things Lisa and all things Anna.

We both love to shop, but come at it from different places. No surprise it reflects our feelings of financial security. Anna has been buying things she loves to decorate her dream home. Lisa loves to pay bills. We save tons of money by not buying drugs and alcohol, and we didn’t get sober to feel deprived. So if it’s in our means, it’s in our basket.

Check out all things Lisa and all things Anna. 

Being in a human body means experiencing physical pain at some point. Handling it can be challenging for sober people. We talk about attitudes of people who don’t understand recovery, including many doctors, toward pain medication. And we both agree – there is no shame in taking prescribed medication to find relief. Of course, we’re careful to protect our sobriety when meds are necessary.

Check out all things Lisa and all things Anna. 

Friend and fellow sobriety author Kristin Casey hangs with us to talk about her books, CASEY DANCER: A MEMOIR OF DATING, STRIPPING AND A LITTLE HOT YOGA and ROCK MONSTER: MY LIFE WITH JOE WALSH, and much more. We talk about what our relationships were like before and after getting sober. Spoiler: once we learned to like ourselves, our standards got higher and our own needs took priority.

Check out all things Lisa and all things Anna. 

Baby, it’s cold and dark outside. Winter blues and seasonal affective disorders are real and we struggle with them. We talk about how we handle them. Anna does the bold thing, combining cold plunges and infrared saunas. Lisa tries to stick her body in the sunshine, now that she realizes how it lifts her winter mood. 

Check out all things Lisa and all things Anna. 

Open Instagram, Ruin Your Night?

We love to hate social media. But it’s also a singular tool for staying in touch, getting the word out on things we care about, and even learning a thing or two. We talk about our early days on the socials and how we use it now. Sober tools can help – just like with a drink, before opening that app, maybe ask yourself why you want to log on and play the tape through on where it might lead.

Check out all things Lisa and all things Anna.

It’s the question many ask when getting sober: What am I going to do on New Year’s Eve if I’m not drinking? The answer is anything you want! No need to have FOMO – New Year’s Eve is a night for amateurs. And nothing beats waking up on New Year’s Day without a hangover. We take the opportunity to catch up on sleep. And we don’t make resolutions. Why make a declaration that we’re going to change on a certain day when we can just commit to new behavior anytime.

Check out all things Lisa and all things Anna. 

Following the murders of Rob and Michele Reiner, their son, Nick, has been charged with their killings. Media reports focused on Nick’s long history of substance abuse, oversimplifying what is clearly a more complex situation. Anna interviewed Nick a decade ago with his mother sitting alongside him and while the original interview is no longer online, we are releasing it as part of this episode. We’re highly aware of what a sensitive and tragic topic this is and want to be entirely clear that we don’t have any firsthand knowledge of the exact sequence of events that led to this horrific situation. What we have is first-hand experience with the people involved and our own experience with addiction and recovery.

Check out all things Lisa and all things Anna.

We all have them. And guilty pleasures in sobriety are even more fun when we’re able to enjoy them fully, without the blur of alcohol. Anna is on a steady drip of sugar all day long (Dr. Pat Allen told her she was a “non practicing bulimic”). Other guilty pleasures include Love is Blind, Instagram/Threads, the podcast My Therapist Ghosted Me, Hunter Harris and Joel Stein’s Substacks and regular massages. Lisa’s guilty pleasures include anything true crime, everything Dexter, and podcasts about ghost stories. 

Check out all things Lisa and all things Anna.