SHAIR 110: "How to Grow an Addict" with J.A. WrightSHAIR 110: "How to Grow an Addict" with J.A. Wright
The SHAIR Recovery Podcast
J.A. Wright shares her journey from a chaotic, addicted family to over three decades of sobriety and a writing life that produced *How to Grow an Addict*. The conversation highlights old-school recovery tools, daily routines, and direct advice aimed at people new to living alcohol and drug free.
1:00:00•21 Mar 2017
How to Grow an Addict: J.A. Wright on Family Chaos, Recovery and Writing Sober
Episode Overview
- Growing up around heavy drinking and pills can normalise substance use long before a person understands addiction.
- A simple reframe from “mentally ill” to “chemically dependent” helped Jodi accept that substances were the core problem.
- Building a life around meetings, sponsorship and service created enough structure for long-term sobriety to take root.
- Daily practices like prayer, reading recovery literature, writing and exercise help keep emotional balance decades into recovery.
- For newcomers, Jodi’s core message is to avoid drinking or using under any circumstances and trust that life will change for the better.
“Do not drink or drug no matter what. No matter what, don't do it. And that your life will get different, and different will be better.”
What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol? This episode of The SHAIR Recovery Podcast sits down with J.A. (Jodi) Wright, clean since 1985 and author of the novel *How to Grow an Addict*, to unpack that question through grit, humour, and hard-earned experience. Jodi grew up in a chaotic family of heavy drinkers and pill users, where Crown Royal bags doubled as school lunch sacks and learning to mix cocktails at eight felt normal.
She explains how alcohol and pills initially felt like survival tools: they kept her alive through a childhood where she “didn’t want to be here” and longed to escape. Marriage, kids and careers didn’t fix the hole either, and a string of psychiatric labels followed until one social worker calmly reframed everything as chemical dependency and pointed her towards treatment. From there, the conversation shifts from chaos to structure.
Jodi talks about building a life around recovery: going to meetings every day for years, finding a tough old-school sponsor, and staying so busy she suddenly realised two years had passed without a drink or a pill. Her daily routine now begins with prayer, readings over coffee with her husband (also in recovery), writing, running, and an active meeting and sponsorship life.
She also shares how her attempt at a memoir morphed into a novel because her memories were tangled with other people’s stories and even films. *How to Grow an Addict* became her way of showing how a girl raised in an addicted home can spiral into addiction herself. Throughout, Jodi’s advice is straight to the point: “do not drink or drug no matter what. No matter what, don't do it.
And that your life will get different, and different will be better.” If you’re wondering whether a different life is possible for you, this one may give you something to think about.
Do you want to link to this podcast?
Get the buttons here!
More From This Show
The latest episodes from the same podcast.