080: Discovering Your Cross Addictions

080: Discovering Your Cross Addictions

Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This episode of "You're Sober! Now What?" follows host Tamar Medford as she talks frankly about cross addictions and how they showed up both before and after she stopped drinking. Tamar explains cross addiction as having two or more addictive behaviours, and she points out that it’s rarely just about alcohol or drugs.

You’ll hear her describe moving between substances, food, fitness, relationships, and even work, using each new obsession to convince herself she didn’t really have a problem. As she puts it, "humans can get addicted to anything that gives us pleasure," and she repeats this because it rings so true in her own experience.

She shares vivid examples, like taking painkillers "like Skittles" before her doctor cut them off, and later swapping alcohol for an intense gym routine: six or seven days a week, strict chicken–broccoli–rice dinners, and eventual exhaustion and burnout. More recently, she talks about becoming hooked on entrepreneurship itself, working early mornings and late nights because she loved her purpose, until the familiar signs of burnout appeared again.

Rather than pretending it’s fine, Tamar walks through what helps her reset: returning to 12-step basics, admitting powerlessness over the new behaviour, and building healthier routines. She talks about scheduling daily self-care, including meditation, affirmations, an unapologetic morning dance session, and an hour-long walk that clears the mental fog. She also suggests a simple check-in: has this thing consumed your life, and is it all you can think about?

This episode is aimed at people in recovery who suspect they might be swapping one addiction for another and want practical ideas to shift gears. It’s honest, occasionally funny, and very relatable. Have you stopped to ask what your own "next addiction" might be—and what you’d like to put in its place instead?