Employee of the Year: A Pharmacist's Recovery Story | Nancy HooperEmployee of the Year: A Pharmacist's Recovery Story | Nancy Hooper
Drug Diversion Insights with Terri Vidals
Pharmacist Nancy Hooper recounts her lengthy struggle with alcohol, benzodiazepines, stimulants and opioids, including diversion, felonies and lost licensure. She shares how treatment, faith, and the Tennessee Pharmacy Recovery Network have supported her path to long-term recovery and professional redemption.
54:06•21 Oct 2026
From Employee of the Year to Felonies: A Pharmacist’s Hard-Won Recovery
Episode Overview
- Addiction can coexist with high performance at work, even earning accolades like "Employee of the Year" while diversion is occurring.
- Language such as "return to use" may reduce stigma, but many in recovery still relate to the term "relapse" and its meaning.
- Honesty with sponsors, family, and colleagues is crucial; secrecy around doses and sourcing medications fuels progression of the disorder.
- Repeated treatment, legal consequences, and long-term residential care can eventually create the space needed for lasting sobriety.
- Peer assistance programmes like the Tennessee Pharmacy Recovery Network can support healthcare professionals through monitoring and advocacy for licence reinstatement.
“"Let me ask you this. Did you ever wake up one day and be like, you know what I want to be when I grow up? I want to be an alcoholic or I want to be a drug addict."”
What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol and drugs after years of chaos, loss, and second chances? This conversation between pharmacist and recovery advocate Nancy Hooper and host Terri Vidals takes you through a long, messy, and fiercely honest journey that many healthcare professionals will recognise.
You'll hear Nancy talk about her early alcohol use tied to intense social anxiety, her self-described "free spirit" and experimentation in college, and how benzodiazepines entered the picture when she began diverting them as a pharmacy student. She explains, with difficult clarity, how "we can rationalise oftentimes our use" and how "your brain lies to you" when substance use disorder takes hold.
Nancy walks through multiple treatment attempts, her struggle with the concept of a higher power, and the dangerous shift from alcohol and benzos to phentermine and then opioids after surgery. At one point she was "Employee of the Year" while secretly diverting controlled substances, forging prescriptions, and living in terror of losing her licence and livelihood. She doesn’t gloss over the hard bits: three felonies, jail, surrendering her licence, a divorce, and roughly ten treatment centres.
Yet she describes the immense relief of finally feeling understood in treatment, the impact of faith-based care, and the crucial support from the Tennessee Pharmacy Recovery Network, which later helped her regain her licence and now benefits from her leadership. This episode speaks directly to healthcare workers wrestling with substance use, to families watching someone struggle, and to anyone thinking, "my problem’s not that bad".
Nancy’s story shows how far addiction can go — and how far recovery can take you. If you’re wondering whether it’s worth asking for help again, what’s stopping you from taking that next step today?
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