Alchemist Recovery Podcast

What Do I Do When There’s Nothing I Can Do? Feeling Stuck and Feeling Powerless In recovery, as in life, there’s few feelings that are as frustrating as stuck-ness with seemingly no way out. Whether we’re talking a job, a marriage, a health diagnosis, or a legal battle, powerlessness stinks because it feels absolute and immovable, especially once we’ve stopped using our old coping mechanisms in the form of the go-to drug-of-choice. In this episode, we explore what a simple but powerful shift in perception can do. When we change our perception of medicine, the medicine of perception changes us I propose that what we call “stuck” is often based upon an assumption, and once we see it clearly, we get to trade powerlessness for empowering conscious choice. One of Tim Ferriss’s favorite guest quotes is, “How am I complicit in the situations I say I don’t want?” I love that. And when we reframe our stuckness into a choice, we restore our agency, we reclaim our power, even if every option still feels difficult. This episode covers: * The four common areas of stuckness: Job and finances, marriage and relationships, health and diagnosis, and legal struggles, along with the hidden assumption that keeps each one feeling immovable. * Shifting from assumption to choice, and why that shift alone begins to return power to you, even before you’ve solved anything. * Head versus heart decision-making, weighing logic against emotion, plus the deeper distinction between man-made power, which others can give or take away, and spiritual power, which no one can give you or take away from you. If you’ve ever felt trapped by circumstances outside your control, I hope this podcast episode sheds light along the path back to clarity, choice, and empowerment. Blessings! Randy Get full access to Alchemist Recovery at alchemistrecovery.substack.com/subscribe

We’ll dive a little deeper into the Newsletter’s info from this week and really examine what we mean by… * How does an addiction deliver Nurturance? * What exactly does this look like? * What can I do about it? Also, we go into everybody’s favorite of The Big 3: Food, Sex, Money, with regards to substitution. * Why does our relationship to these things change in recovery? * What are the forms of Nurturance we get from them? * What do we really need & how do we get it? There’s Power in this work, and if we don’t acknowledge, receive and redirect it into our new places of recovery, then the forces, habits, and spirits of addiction will gladly accept them back into the self-perpetuating cycles of the-way-things-have-always-been. Please like, share, subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts on, and send me any questions or comments you have. Blessings! Randy Get full access to Alchemist Recovery at alchemistrecovery.substack.com/subscribe

The opposite of addiction is…Home. It is not just sobriety, as I’ve known plenty of people who were sober but not at home. They remain in a wrestling match of daily struggle. In this episode, we’ll look at the power that resides in the archetypal idea of Home and how it holds the ability to single-handedly disrupt the entire cycle of addiction. Some points we’ll look at are: * “New York’s home but it ain’t mine no more” - a little Neil Diamond to illustrate the tension between where we are now and where we came from * The Story of the Identified Patient - is this yours, as well? * The Weave of Home - the Irish joke that holds profound truth * “Go where you’re treated best” - is that back home or somewhere new? We all are somewhere on the continuum of deeply rooted where we’re presently at, to blowing around like a kite in the winds of circumstance, so either way and from wherever in-between you find yourself, there’s questions to ask in this one. I’ve love to know how you answer them, so drop me a e-line, or type them in the comments below! With Blessings, Randy Get full access to Alchemist Recovery at alchemistrecovery.substack.com/subscribe

I use the word communion on purpose, so as to illicit a response and begin an exploratory conversation. Let’s reveal exactly what your beliefs are around these-things and see how they bring clarity to your position. Because I propose that we enter into communion with the spirits of addiction when we are engaged in the cycle. We feed them our energy and give them our power, and from this unhealthy union, all we get back are the consequences of our ordinary reality actions and the validation, through experience, of our original limiting core belief. There are three reasons I use communion to explain addiction, and they are: * The rituals involved * The definition: to become as one with * The power this moment in the cycle delivers I go through each of these to show how this perspective illuminates the insane, but in this moment accurate, logic of how “addiction actually works and makes perfect sense.” Let me know how all of this lands with you - I’d love to hear your take. Here’s the newsletter that covers all of this: Here’s Lesson #33 of the Alchemist Recovery Program that provides material, guidance and experiential exercises to dismantle this portion of the cycle: Please hit the little ♥️ if this resonates, leave a comment below, and share with another who may need to hear it. We never know what the word, gesture or small action is that tips the scales from active addiction into recovery - even if just for today. Blessings! Randy Get full access to Alchemist Recovery at alchemistrecovery.substack.com/subscribe

As I often say, words have power. And when supporting someone in the early stages of making a big change in their life, like getting clean & sober, how we use our words matters. They can connect us or they can cause unintended obstacles. For some, the word “treatment” is one of those words. It can imply meanings that are less than helpful and land as: * A reinforcement for a limiting core belief repeating, “I am broken” * A professional will do the heavy lifting for me * When does treatment end? Whereas a simple shift to the word, “transformation” can imply: * I see my limiting core belief of, “I am broken” & can transform it * I will do the heavy lifting * I will know when I’ve transformed While these are simplified examples, the shift in how we use words is important. They can carry implied meanings that either reinforce old stories or begin to question the limiting core beliefs we’ve been telling ourselves for years. We’ll dive deeper into all things transformation on this one. So, let me know how it lands with you, what practices you use and if you’ve experienced anything similar along your path of transformation! With Blessings, Randy Chapters: * 00:01 - Introduction to the Alchemist Recovery Podcast * 04:43 - Understanding Transformation vs. Treatment * 14:07 - Exploring Transformation Practices * 21:22 - The Transformation of Jing, Chi, and Shen * 24:45 - Transformation through the Spleen: A Metaphor for Healing * 29:30 - The Importance of Language in Transformation * 35:14 - The Path of Mastery: Transformation Practices Get full access to Alchemist Recovery at alchemistrecovery.substack.com/subscribe