#85 – Jeannine Coulter Lindgren: Chasing Heroine#85 – Jeannine Coulter Lindgren: Chasing Heroine
Recovery Survey
Jeannine Coulter Lindgren shares her journey from high-achieving student to heroin addiction, homelessness and jail, and how she rebuilt her life through 12-step recovery. She describes the mindset shifts, gratitude practices and hard work that led her to owning a fitness studio and hosting the Chasing Heroine podcast.
43:36•20 Oct 2021
From Doghouse to Spin Studio: Jeannine Coulter Lindgren’s Chasing Heroine Story
Episode Overview
- Relapse history can still provide useful tools; each attempt adds experience that can be used when someone is finally ready to stay sober.
- Taking a clear stand in recovery—cutting off using contacts and becoming someone who supports accountability—helps break ties with a criminal lifestyle.
- Gratitude, even for small things like not being dope sick or noticing a view, can shift how life feels without changing external circumstances immediately.
- Post-traumatic growth can mean coming out of addiction stronger, with deeper relationships, clearer priorities and a more meaningful spiritual path.
- The discipline learned in early recovery can translate into strong work ethic, opening doors to new careers and responsibilities, as Jeannine found in fitness.
“You have been so committed to a lifestyle of criminality and addiction that you are going to have to take a stand… You’ve got to pick a side.”
Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This conversation with Jeannine Coulter Lindgren offers a raw, honest look at addiction, chaos, and what can come after losing absolutely everything. Jeannine shares how she went from high-achieving student with “anything I could ever want” to a 15–year stretch of addiction that included cocaine, meth, and, eventually, starting heroin at 30 years old.
Her story moves from bartending and acting dreams in Los Angeles to smoking meth in the car park before teaching spin classes, and finally to homelessness, jail, and parole-funded programmes.
One of the most striking moments comes when her sober living manager confronts her patterns: “You have been so committed to a lifestyle of criminality and addiction that you are going to have to take a stand… You’ve got to pick a side.” That challenge becomes a turning point as Jeannine starts cutting ties with using friends, taking commitments, and leaning fully into 12–step recovery.
She also talks through the mindset shifts that helped her stay sober after so many relapses, including learning to see her experiences through the lens of post–traumatic growth and finding real gratitude in simple things like not being dope sick and being able to notice a mountain view from a shabby sober living deck.
Now a fitness studio owner in San Diego and host of the Chasing Heroine podcast, Jeannine explains how that “newcomer grind” turned her into “the hardest working person in the room”, eventually leading her to buy the very studio where she first taught with just 19 days clean. This episode is aimed at anyone who’s ever thought they’d ruined their life beyond repair—and the families who love them.
It asks a simple but uncomfortable question: what if the very thing you’re most ashamed of could become the engine for your best life?
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