Rise Above with Kevin Lanning

Tyler Bowers grew up in Pennsylvania with what looked, from the outside, like everything — a nice house with a pool, travel baseball, a mom who gave him whatever he needed. But underneath was a kid carrying guilt for his parents' divorce, a complicated relationship with a father who battled his own addiction, and an entitlement he now names as the core of his disease.

It started with weed, then a Xanax at a party that blacked him out — and instead of scaring him, it became the thing he wanted to chase. A baseball injury and rotator cuff surgery introduced him to opioids and the euphoria of morphine, and from there his addiction took off. Cocaine became the great love of his life; he describes doing eight balls alone and using around the clock through a chaotic college and fraternity chapter. There were DUIs, a totaled car he somehow parked in the driveway, a night he punched a police officer and ran, and thirteen separate trips to treatment.

What finally changed wasn't the consequences — it was surrender. Tyler is honest about how long he faked the steps, manipulated the system, and leaned on his mom to fix everything, until a counselor called him out, a breakup cracked him open, and he cried for the first time in his sobriety. Now sixteen months sober, he works in the treatment field, sponsors other men, and has rebuilt his relationships with his mom and sister from the ground up.

This is a story about entitlement, surrender, and the truth that addiction doesn't care how good your childhood looked.

Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers

My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron.

If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available.

➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above

📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103

Recovery starts with taking the first step.
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7-OH is one of the most dangerous drugs almost nobody understands yet — a concentrated kratom derivative sold legally at gas stations and smoke shops, often marketed as a harmless supplement. Ian Crawford is here to tell you what it nearly cost him.

A surfer, lacrosse player, and Florida kid whose athletic future was derailed by concussions, Ian had moved through years of experimenting — weed, psychedelics, the festival scene, cocaine — while mostly holding it together. Then a friend mentioned kratom, and Ian picked some up at a smoke shop, figuring anything sold legally over the counter couldn't be that serious. He'd taken it only a handful of times.

Then came the night that changed everything. Ian and a close friend each took 7-OH, and over the course of the evening his friend stopped responding. Ian describes performing CPR, clearing his friend's airway, and calling for help as his own body was shutting down — until he collapsed in front of the arriving officers and flatlined. Both of them ended up in comas. By what Ian can only call a miracle, they both survived.

Now four months clean, Ian has turned that night into a mission. He's testified before his city council, shared his story with local news, and become one of the few young voices putting a face to the 7-OH crisis and pushing to get it off the shelves. This episode is essential viewing for anyone — especially young people — who's been told these products are safe because they're legal.

Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers

My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron.

If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available.

➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above

📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103

Recovery starts with taking the first step.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Justin Gurland grew up the oldest of four in a close, loving New Jersey family — family dinners every night, a dad who was a doctor and coached his teams, a childhood that looked idyllic from the outside. But Justin always felt a little different, a little black-sheep-ish, and from the very first time he drank at 13, he'd found the feeling he didn't know he was missing.

By college at the University of Vermont, the partying had curdled into something darker. His whole crew got hooked on opiates, and Justin moved seamlessly from OxyContin to heroin. He moved to New York City telling himself the problem was geographic — that he'd learn to "drink like a gentleman" — and instead spent the next few years in the darkest, most isolated stretch of his life, secretly using IV heroin while keeping up appearances just enough to avoid the alarms.

It all came down when his sister walked into his bedroom and found his works out in the open, and weeks later, when his doctor father spotted the abscess on his hand. In one of the most powerful scenes he shares, Justin describes grabbing his dad by his white coat and telling him he needed him more than he ever had in his life. He detoxed that night and got sober in 2008.

Eighteen years later, Justin has spent more than 15 years working in behavioral health — and recently took a leap of faith to build something that didn't exist: The Maze, a first-of-its-kind alcohol-free membership club in New York City, a place to find community and connection without alcohol at the center. This is a story about isolation and belonging, the families who love us through it, and building the thing you always wished existed.

Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers

My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron.

If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available.

➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above

📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103

Recovery starts with taking the first step.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lauryn Boorstein grew up in the Poconos in a home full of chaos — a painful divorce, a father she loved who struggled with his own demons, and an autistic brother she appointed herself the protector of before she was old enough to protect anyone. She fell in love with the lifestyle — the fighting, the adrenaline, the not-caring — long before she understood she was an addict. By her early twenties, crack and heroin had taken over.

Her story is one of hard crashes, literal and otherwise. A stolen-car wreck as a teenager. A later accident where she describes her body shutting down at the wheel, crashing into a tree, and walking away convinced God had spared her. Multiple treatment stays, a devastating injury that left her unable to walk for years, and the losses that piled up — including a boyfriend early in her sobriety who overdosed the night she begged him to get help.

But this is ultimately a story about what recovery makes possible. Lauryn got sober in 2017, and in one of the most bittersweet gifts of her life, her father — sick himself — got to watch her pick up her one-year medallion before he passed away the very next day. In the years since, she's become a devoted single mother to her daughter, worked the steps, sponsored other women, and built a thriving national business from the ground up.

Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers

My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron.

If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available.

➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above

📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103

Recovery starts with taking the first step.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Danny O'Connor was an Olympic-team boxer and professional fighter from Boston who spent ten years chasing a world championship. From the outside, he was elite, disciplined, relentless. What almost no one knew was that the same all-or-nothing drive that made him a champion was also fueling a secret, life-threatening eating disorder.

It started when he was a teenage wrestler, learning to manipulate his body to make weight, with no education about nutrition and no idea what he was doing to himself. That same pattern followed him into a pro boxing career fought entirely in one weight class — and over the years it grew into a full-blown, medically diagnosed eating disorder, one of the deadliest mental illnesses there is. Danny is unflinching about what it cost him: his health, trips to the ICU, and ultimately his shot at a world title in 2018, when his body finally gave out on the biggest night of his life.

He also opens up about the chaotic period after he lost wrestling as a teenager — leaving home, a string of arrests, and a judge's warning that stopped him cold — and how he found his way back through boxing, and eventually into recovery.

Today Danny is a keynote speaker, an author, and a devoted husband and father who brings his kids along on his book tours. His story is a powerful, rarely-told look at eating disorders in men, the hidden cost of elite sports, and what it takes to finally choose your life over the thing you built it around.

Sponsored by Caron Treatment Centers

My recovery journey began at Caron Treatment Centers, and the care I received there changed the course of my life. That's why I'm proud to partner with Caron.

If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, Caron has been helping individuals and families find hope and lasting recovery for nearly 70 years. They are in-network with all major insurance providers, and same-day admission is available.

➡️ Learn more: https://www.caron.org/lp/rise-above

📞 Call Caron today: 855-352-0103

Recovery starts with taking the first step.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices