How We Get Thru Podcast: Wellness, Healing & Spiritual Tools for Growth in Real Life · Jen Hershey

S3 Ep 84 Overcoming Addiction and Building Community with Chris Sullivan

·1 hr 15 min·4 clips

Chris says he was arrested after using his gun to stop men chasing a sponsee over a dog.

1. How We Get Thru Podcast: Wellness, Healing & Spiritual Tools for Growth in Real Life centers on Chris Sullivan’s recovery story and his search for healing beyond Alcoholics Anonymous. 2. Chris Sullivan is the guest, and he is identified as the owner of Mohawk Wellness Collective in Los Angeles; the host is the voice guiding the conversation and asking about recovery, family, and cannabis. 3. The episode asks whether the traditional path to recovery is the only way, and Chris answers by describing a mix of AA, spirituality, running, therapy, and plant medicine. 4. Chris says he started posting TikToks about six months earlier, walked around his neighborhood, and opened each video with “I’m Chris, I’m 41 and I live in Los Angeles.” 5. He links those videos to a period when he could not keep his life together financially and was trying to process who he was. 6. He says 2023 included a jail arrest, unpaid rent, his father’s death, his grandfather’s death, and his uncle’s death. 7. Chris describes a nighttime incident involving a sponsee, two strangers, and a 17-year-old chihuahua that led him to show a firearm from his home’s entryway. 8. He says police later arrested him for assault with a deadly weapon after the men reported that he threatened them. 9. Chris says the legal case cost him about $20,000 and forced him to go through court and hire a lawyer. 10. He also says his stepfather died two weeks later after living with Lewy body dementia and bleeding to death after cutting his foot. 11. Chris describes helping his mother through that death, then helping her again when her father died later that year. 12. He says his family history includes Great Depression-era grandmothers, critical women, and men who became “bound up alcoholics.” 13. He says he has spent seven years seeing a Jungian analyst who does sand play and dream analysis, and he calls her his “Yoda.” 14. Chris argues that the suffering in his family was shaped by trauma, fear, and what he sees as inherited control patterns. 15. He says he found more progress after leaving AA than he did during 17 years inside it. 16. He says running, self-realization fellowship, breathwork, cold plunge, and “pranayama” helped him regulate his body and build a new life. 17. Chris describes cannabis as a daily tool that helps him function, stay honest, and avoid bigger spillover into sex, food, and other behavior. 18. The conversation has a confessional, back-and-forth interview style, with Chris often giving long, personal answers and the host reflecting them back. 19. People interested in recovery, spirituality, and alternative healing may connect with this episode. 20. People looking for a brief, non-personal wellness chat may skip it.

As heard by us

An honest recovery conversation that leaves the mess intact.

Chris Sullivan's discussion of addiction, sobriety, and self-discovery stays close to AA and the ordinary work of staying sober. It does not dress recovery up as a neat lesson.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want recovery talk that skips the fake neatness.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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