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

By Heidi Mitchell | October 5, 2023
Dr. Bob Weathers Recovery From Addiction Integral Recovery

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.”

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Topics & Time Stamps – Part 1

  • Introducing 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 (30:22)
  • Where are we now with Integral Recovery and recovery in general? (34:15)
  • How our understanding of the causes of addiction went from demonic possession to moral failure, from psychological to spiritual—and now is often a reductionistic neurological approach (36:10)
  • One size does not fit all and the challenge of matching the treatment approach to the needs of each individual (38:28)
  • It’s going to get worse as the technology to create & distribute drugs keeps getting more sophisticated (40:02)
  • Integral practice is key: an integration of physical body practices, intellectual practices, interior/psychological practices, and spiritual practices (40:51)
  • John’s song: A Drunk’s Prayer (45:32)

Resources & References – Part 1

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Listen to Part 2

Dr. Bob has created two powerfully healing and transformative guided meditations to which iAwake added brainwave entrainment technology. You can check them out here:

The Freedom of Forgiveness & The Gift of Gratitude

“It was a marvelous therapy for me. I’ve never been so candid and honest about myself and my past actions…it’s like months of therapy.”  ~ Nina

Dr. Bob Weathers Recovery Coach Integral Recovery

Dr. Bob Weathers is a highly regarded addiction educator, recovery coach, author, and public speaker. Over the course of his professional career, “Dr. Bob” has provided tens of thousands of hours of therapeutic counseling and recovery coaching to satisfied clients. He has also committed over four decades to teaching, training, and inspiring graduate-level mental health providers at several southern California universities, including helping to develop their nationally accredited addiction studies certificate and mindfulness-based clinical training coursework. His two most recent books on addiction recovery are currently in press with Cambridge University Press.

Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell

Presented by iAwake Technologies’ innovative, sound tech infused, brain wave entraining audio track

The Freedom of Forgiveness

So THIS is what extreme peace feels like! I loved it!

~ E. Z.
Listen to a sample of 01 Full Guided Meditation with Instructions
Listen to a sample of 02 Shortened Version for Daily Practice
Listen to a sample of 03 Music and Brainwave Entrainment for Self-Directed Practice

Very intense process, but with a gentle handed guide. Tears and joy. Leading me into and then accepting some difficult challenging interactions from the past. I was not even aware I was so unforgiving – particularly of myself – that is the biggest insight.

~ K. M.

iAwake Technologies was founded in 2010 with the mission of helping the world to heal, wake up, and evolve, through creating and offering cutting-edge, transformational technologies and promoting and inspiring their skillful use in our daily lives.

iAwake’s unique approach to session design entrains both our nervous and our subtle energy systems by combining traditional entrainment methods with newer applications based on the power of resonance. In addition to increasing intelligence, creativity, flow, and skillfulness in practically any activity that requires the human body-mind, with iAwake Technologies, we enter into deep healing brainwave states almost immediately while listening to these audio tracks.

To see what we are talking about, download a free sample of Stealing Flow’s Warm-up track here for a 25-minute, full-spectrum, whole-brain workout.

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~ Colette Baron-Reid, world-renowned intuitive counselor, psychic medium, author, TV personality, and radio host. They call her the Oracle.
Posted in Addiction, Integral Theory, Mental Health, Neuroscience, Psychotherapy, Recovery, Social Change, Spiritual Development, Transformative Practice and tagged , , , ,