My Story: the inspiration for the course

For ten long years, I was the prisoner of addiction. This is the course I wish I had when I was going through everything.

My Professional Background

I have helped countless individuals overcome addiction, whether in my private coaching as a practitioner of somatic psychotherapy, the groups I run and facilitate, or the writing on Modern Addiction and Awakened Recovery that I’ve been publishing for years now. 

I am the co-founder of Natura Care, an interdisciplinary addiction program that harnesses psychedelics. Natura Care is a non-profit organization that interweaves practical recovery education, training in meditation and contemplative practice, and expanded states of consciousness aided by sacred plant medicine. 

But, far more important than any professional credentials is my direct lived experience facing and overcoming a near-fatal addiction. This is what informs the course more than anything else. 

My Personal Story

For ten long years, I was the prisoner of a severe addiction.

I had severe addictions to opiates, benzodiazepines, amphetamines, cannabis, alcohol, and more. There were many nights when I’d go to sleep unsure if I would wake up the next morning. The toll of my addiction was devastating, marked by debilitating withdrawal symptoms, pawned electronics, crashing cars, at one point buying a stolen car, the collapse of my marriage to my college sweetheart, getting fired and losing jobs, accumulating $96,000 of personal debt, and a year-long medically supervised detox in an outpatient program. 

Along the way, I tried everything to get sober. Many times. I met with medical doctors and tried normal talk therapy. I did Cognitive Behavioral therapy. On numerous occasions, I tried gritting my teeth and going cold turkey, suffering through weeks of horrifying withdrawal, in a hell realm of my own making. I tried using cannabis, benzos, and alcohol to get off the “harder” drugs. 

At the time, professionals and friends alike advised me to stop treating my body like a chemistry lab. I ignored them: these people simply had no idea what it was like to be me, how hardcore and badass I was! I kept telling myself that it was only the opiates that were the real problem, since the withdrawal from them was by far the worst. 

Because my opiate withdrawal was so bad at such a young age, I thought what I was facing was a mere physical problem. That was how I experienced it, right? I was entirely unaware of the deeper levels of what was happening. I found that the traditional treatment methods only reinforced this materialist understanding of addiction and its causes and effects. I wish I would have had access to a course like this one. 

Because my recovery is also a living case study in what is currently available in addiction treatment—and more importantly, what is emerging. I underwent medically-assisted outpatient treatment (for opiate, amphetamine, and benzodiazepine addiction), talked my face off in talk therapy, Serenity Prayer’ed my way through AA—and did the 12 Steps, going to a meeting a day for essentially an entire year—and I meditated while plunging myself into Buddhist-based Recovery. I did this all in earnest, fully committed. I read every book about addiction science I could stomach. I even turned myself into a fasting, cold-showering biohacker and vegan, which I can laugh about now. 

Yet, despite all this, as my one-year “sobriety” anniversary approached, despite being conventionally “Sober” with my life back on society’s tracks, I found myself just as hooked on other types of Modern Addictions—like work, Twitter, The New York Times politics section, Tobacco vape and snus, and PornHub. It was only then that I summoned the courage to follow my own recovery path that mixed spiritual traditions with modern methods. I explored a yogic, somatic, and consciousness-expanding vision of recovery. 

It worked. Since I’ve introduced such irreverent holistic modalities into my recovery, I have felt peace where once was internal strife, I have felt connection where I once felt alienation. I have felt here and now and thankful. And I do not need to numb myself with tobacco, social media, porn, or unhealthy foods. 

But there is a truth that underlies the success of my recovery: every modality built upon each other. Before I intentionally carved my own recovery path, I’d already laid the groundwork: I’d prioritized changing basic behavioral patterns, got in touch with my body and prioritized physical health, movement, diet, opened up to my emotions, began to calm and understand my mind with meditation, started to develop my own unique relationship with spirit, and much more. 

My hope is that this course will provide you with a toolkit and save you from making some of the mistakes that I did. This course distills everything I learned. It’s the center point, or the focal point of many years of hardship, struggle, failure, experimentation, and a triumphant well-being I could never have imagined. My mind, body, heart, and sense of soul today would be entirely unrecognizable to my former self. My relationship to my Self, to my friends and family, to the universe, to life itself is un-imaginably better, happier, lighter, more beautiful and free. 

My hope is that this course will provide you with a toolkit and save you from making some of the mistakes that I did. This course distills everything I learned. It’s the center point, or the focal point of many years of hardship, struggle, failure, experimentation, and a triumphant well-being I could never have imagined. My mind, body, heart, and sense of soul today would be entirely unrecognizable to my former self. My relationship to my Self, to my friends and family, to the universe, to life itself is un-imaginably better, happier, lighter, more beautiful and free. 

It’s my sincere hope that this course could bring you similar peace. 

An online course to break free from your addiction and rediscover joyful living

Copyright © 2024 Deep Fix, LLC. All rights reserved.

An online course to break free from your addiction and rediscover joyful living

Copyright © 2024 Deep Fix, LLC. All rights reserved.