Recover Outloud: Ep 127: Rewiring the Mind in Recovery
Recover Outloud: Ep 127: Rewiring the Mind in Recovery

Sitting with Sean

Sean talks with sober life coach Alex Garner about his journey through multi‑substance addiction, homelessness, and repeated rehab stays, and how meditation and neuroscience‑based tools helped him change his thinking. The conversation focuses on practical ways to retrain the brain, calm the nervous system, and build a purposeful life in recovery.

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51:54•25 Mar 2026

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Rewiring the Mind: Alex Garner on Addiction, Science and Sobriety

Episode Overview

Staying sober can be harder than getting sober, and often requires more than meetings and willpower alone.
Meditation helps create distance from negative thoughts, allowing you to see that you are "bigger" than your thinking.
Most thoughts are negative and repetitive, especially in recovery, so deliberate practices are needed to retrain the brain.
Breathwork and body‑focused practices can release stored tension and trauma and help reset the nervous system.
Affirmations and manifestation work by raising awareness of opportunities to act differently, not by magic alone.

“"No matter how bad you get into this, there's always a way out. There's always a way out. You can always turn it around."”

How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety? This conversation between host Sean and guest Alex Garner shows exactly how messy, scary, and ultimately hopeful that process can look. Alex, a sober life coach with around four and a half years away from substances, talks through a history that includes alcohol, cocaine, heroin, and meth, multiple stints in rehab, homelessness in Chicago, psychosis during COVID, and serious legal trouble.

He openly describes a terrifying night in Los Angeles where he was drugged, ended up barefoot in Compton, and woke up to an intervention that led to his first attempt at treatment. That wasn’t the turning point, though. As Alex puts it, staying sober was the real challenge. What shifts things for him is mindset.

After his fifth rehab, Alex reads *Think Like a Monk* by Jay Shetty and realises, "I have the ability… to take a step back from what I'm thinking and realise that I am bigger than that." From there, he leans into meditation, affirmations, and neuroscience, learning how subconscious thoughts and a hyperactive nervous system feed addiction.

Sean and Alex break down how most of our daily thoughts are negative and repetitive, why that’s often amplified in recovery, and how practices like meditation, breathwork and structured mindset work can start to "rewrite" those patterns. Sean adds his own understanding of early versus longer-term recovery and brings in ideas from Dr Joe Dispenza, keeping things grounded in everyday experience rather than theory.

The episode is ideal if you’re sober-curious, in early recovery, or years in but still battling your own mind. Expect honest talk, some humour, and plenty of practical ideas about connection, science-backed tools, and why you might need more than just willpower. If your thoughts are exhausting you, could it be time to train your brain differently?

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