Overcome - A Mental Health Podcast

From Trauma to Triumph: Addiction, Recovery & Finding Purpose with Dr. Cali Estes

• Travis White • Episode 16

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In this powerful episode of Overcome: A Mental Health Podcast, host Travis White welcomes renowned addictions coach Dr. Cali Estes. Dr. Estes shares her raw, personal journey from growing up in a household shaped by mental illness to overcoming her own struggles with food and substance addiction. She opens up about her unique approach to coaching, the flaws in traditional treatment centers, and the power of individualized recovery through her "Sober On Demand" method.

This episode dives deep into:

The roots of addiction: trauma, parental neglect, and dopamine-driven behaviors

Sugar as the most overlooked gateway drug

How to recognize behavioral addictions like shopping, gaming, and exercise

Tools for sustainable lifestyle change

The importance of purpose in long-term recovery

Whether you or someone you love is struggling, this conversation is a must-listen for hope, insight, and action.

🔗 Find Dr. Estes: https://soberondemand.com/ | https://theaddictionsacademy.com/

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Travis White (00:00)
Hello and welcome to Overcome, a mental health podcast. I am excited for you to be with us tonight and I'm especially excited for our guest, Dr. Kelly Estes. She is an addictions coach and I'm just gonna hand the microphone right over to her and let her start us off on her journey.

Dr Cali Estes (00:22)
thank you. Thanks for having me first,

Travis. I appreciate it. It's nice to be here. So my journey is a little different than most. I grew up in a very violent mental health laden household. So my dad was diagnosed schizophrenic, but he was actually bipolar. We found that later. Back in the 80s, schizophrenia was a big pop term. So if you know bipolar, you you don't really know what's coming in the door, right? Happy, sad, angry, what's happening.

So I grew up like that and I started to think my family was different than everyone else's. And my grandmother was very borderline, if you know what that looks like. So that's what pushed me into psychology was the way I grew up that my family was not like anyone else's family. There wasn't addiction, there was just a lot of mental health. And I started studying psychology and as I was studying psychology one day, I'd come home from one of those girls nights where all the girls go out and they all pick up guys and I always come home alone.

And I was sitting on the floor and I was eating cake and I was eating with my hands and I was upset and I was crying and there was cake everywhere. So imagine cake on the dog, cake on the floor, cake on the walls. You know, and my roommate walks in and she puts her hands on her hips and she goes, dude, something's wrong with you. And I said, what do you mean? This is what we did in my household when we were sad, we ate cake, right? Two o'clock in the morning, didn't matter, you eat cake. And she goes, that's not right. And that was the first time I realized

Something was not right with me. That's all I knew. So I went to the guidance counselor and you can imagine back in the 90s, late 90s, the guidance counselor says, well, she pulls out the DSM book and she looks up eating disorder and she says, well, do you throw up? No. Do you restrict food? No. She goes, well, there's nothing wrong with you. You just probably just fat and sent me to the fat doctor. So the fat doctor says, okay, well you eat too much.

Okay. And he puts me on FenFen. Now, if you remember FenFen, it's like speed, right? So now I'm taking FenFen and I'm eating cake. I'm doing both. So now I'm losing weight and I can still eat the whole cake and cry on the floor. So I thought I had this down. And about a year later, I'm in Dallas, Texas and I started getting heart palpitations. Now, mind you, I'm 90 pounds. I thought I looked good. I did not. And I ended up at the ER and the doctor says, well,

you're eating the line of your heart with these drugs you're taking. And I said, but the doctor prescribed the drugs. He goes, well, it doesn't matter. You're gonna hurt your heart. Of course I said, what does this guy know? Stupid doctor, right? Just a couple degrees, $100,000 worth of degrees. He doesn't know anything. So I leave and I thought, well, maybe I shouldn't take FenFen. And I started doing diet pills. Cause in my mind, I'm like, ah, that's better, right? Little addicted mind goes, this will be better.

Well, that led to street speed. So now I'm doing speed and still eating cake. Six months later, different ER, different doctor, same heart palpitations. This doctor sat me down and he dropped the F-bomb. And when he did, I went, this must be serious. And he said, you're gonna kill yourself. The drugs you're taking are gonna kill yourself. You have eaten the lining of your heart at this point. So I thought, okay, I've got to get off these drugs. And I tried and I couldn't.

And lo and behold, I'm studying psychology at Penn State University. I'm in the bachelor's program and I ended up taking an addiction class and I'm sitting in class and this professor's writing stuff on the board and I'm going, that's me, that's me, that's me. And I went, uh-oh, maybe I'm an addict. Like, okay. So I'm reading the book and I'm like, yeah, these are my people. This is, this is it. This makes sense. So I started studying more about addiction and I started asking questions and

This time I got handed an NA pamphlet and an OA pamphlet, an NA for Narcotics Anonymous, OA for Overeaters Anonymous. So I go to Overeaters Anonymous and there's no food. It's in a church basement. It's cold. It's dark. Everybody's miserable. I didn't want to be there. Then I went to NA. Now it's not in a church basement and they had coffee, which is caffeine, sugar for my coffee, which I liked.

candy bars, honey buns, ho-hos, ding-dongs, and cigarettes. And I'm like, this is awesome, right? So now I'm hooked back on sugar and food and right back into diet pills again I go. So that didn't work for me. So a friend of mine said to me, she's like, listen, you've got to kick the habit, come to yoga with me. And I thought she was crazy. I'm like, I can't touch my toes. Why would I go to yoga? She just, come on. So we do this yoga class. I'm five minutes in, I can't touch my toes, it's hot, I'm hungry.

I have to go to the bathroom. I'm tired. I don't want to be there. And all I'm doing is complaining. And she looks at me and she said, shut up and just be. And I was like, okay. So for an hour I did yoga. And when I was done, the instructor said to me, he said, I'm going to teach you how to get sober on a yoga mat. Like, I don't want to be sober, but I have to be sober. He's okay. We're going to learn. So he taught me how to use breath work to get rid of all of my trauma.

and my negative childhood experiences instead of eating and then using diet pills to counteract the food problem. And that's how I got sober. So that's sort of my whole journey. Second part of that is I ended up getting married at 34, married somebody who was in recovery, who ended up using oxy and roxy, which turned into heroin, which turned into fentanyl. And he had a 10 year run during our 14 year marriage and he ended up passing away from complications of all his drug use. So I had two different...

Travis White (05:45)
Good.

Dr Cali Estes (06:04)
experiences of what I went through. Meanwhile, I'm learning how to help people do what I do, deal with all of this stuff because here I am. like, I've been through it and then I got educated on how to help people. So that's my story, Travis.

Travis White (06:19)
That is, that's like,

I'm like speechless. It's just so much to go through. But the cool thing is in the end is you're helping people using your journey to reach out and help people. and that's why I have like guests like you on the show. It's because I love that type of stuff. So you're, you're an addictions coach. Explain kind of more.

Dr Cali Estes (06:36)
Yeah.

Travis White (06:42)
of what you do and how you start people off to kind of start getting rid of their addictions.

Dr Cali Estes (06:48)
So I went and got my PhD in clinical psychology and I learned I don't wanna be stuffy. I wanna do more of the coaching stuff. So I start people off very differently. The first thing I ask them is, it's open-ended questions. Where do you wanna go and how are we gonna get there? So that's where I start. And then I ask them the why. Why are you doing the behavior you want to change? And once we figure out the why, and then we figure out where we're going and how to get there, we create a whole blueprint.

of how we're going to make it happen. And then I let the client tell me how we're going to do it. So unlike a therapist that says, well, you got to be sober. You got to go to a meeting. You got to do this. You got to do that. I say, tell me what you're going to do, which is the opposite. And then if the client doesn't do it, the accountability is on them because they set the parameters.

Travis White (07:38)
Yeah,

yeah, that's cool. You're so you're letting the client choose their own path. Right? And then just be like, OK, well, you decided to do this, so you need to stick with it.

Dr Cali Estes (07:45)
Yes.

And sometimes a client will pick a goal that's unrealistic. Like I had a 23 year old say to me, well, this week I'm going to get a job. I'm going to get an apartment and I'm going to buy a car in one week. I said, okay, how much money do you have in your bank account for the apartment? Can you guess? Zero. Okay. How much money do we have for the car? Zero. So I said, we have a very unrealistic set of three goals, right?

Travis White (08:08)
Cero.

Dr Cali Estes (08:19)
let's start with the job this week and then start saving for the car and the apartment. And he said, nope, nope, nope. I want the car, the job and the apartment. And I said, there's no way that's gonna happen unless money falls from this guy and it rains money or mom cuts you a big old check because we are not gonna hit those three goals. But he insisted. I said, okay, I'll check it in seven days. And when I checked it in seven days, he said, I'm defeated. I couldn't do my goals.

Travis White (08:38)
Mm-hmm.

Dr Cali Estes (08:47)
And I said, you made unrealistic goals. Let's start over. And he goes, yeah, I should have listened to you. But that way, if I said to him, it's not gonna work, he would have come back and said, well, you told me it wasn't gonna work, so it didn't work. But now he tried it. He came back, he said, okay, let's reevaluate. I have to get that job first. And then he made that decision.

Travis White (09:11)
Yeah, I can relate to that. Once you understand the steps you need to take, and sometimes you just need to back up two steps to actually get in your head like, okay, well, I'm going to go nowhere with the calls that I said. What do you think, what's one misconception about like...

No, I should reword that. What do think society could do better to actually help people with addiction issues?

Dr Cali Estes (09:41)
So the problem that I see, and this is from almost 30 years in this industry, is that every treatment center is cookie cutter because of insurance. So you go in, you have five groups a day, they're all the same thing. Process group, education, psycho education, blah, blah. And you literally are like cattle. You go from group to group to group, smoking, lunch, group, free time, smoking, domino playing, card playing, smoking in a meeting.

and then you're dumped out in the real world in 30 days with no skillset at all. Back into the same environment that's toxic. So if we could do individualized care, we would have a higher success rate, which is why I created Sober On Demand. It's all individualized care. If I can meet with somebody for five hours a day, one-on-one, I can figure out why you use, what your goals are, what your problems are.

we can get to the core issues and create an entire blueprint to fix everything. In the same amount of time you would be in a rehab.

Travis White (10:44)
Yeah, I absolutely love that approach. Because we don't, it's like you said, we don't spend enough time as a society, like trying to understand the core issue that people have. We're like, well, you know, it's the same bandaid for everyone.

Dr Cali Estes (10:59)
And everybody's different. I have clients that use to escape. I have clients that use because they're bored. I have clients that use because their childhood was so traumatic. And then I have clients that are just like, hate my job, but I can't leave because I have kids in college. So I'm just going to drink till they go through college to get through work. And I'm like, well, that's not going to work for you. It's not working. So how do we fix these things? How do we make everything move in succession?

Travis White (11:01)
Hmm?

Dr Cali Estes (11:27)
Everybody's life is a series of big moving parts. But when you come to a treatment center, it's like, well, the drugs are your problem. They're not, they're your solution to a problem. I want to know what your problem is. What's your core issue? So it's very different.

Travis White (11:41)
Yeah,

exactly. So I just went through kind of a transformation this last year myself. I started eating healthier. I stopped drinking soda, stopped eating as much sugar and that type of stuff. And until like I put my mind forward and say, I'm going to do this, you know, that's what it took a lot of change of mindset to actually do it.

But my point is, is I didn't realize how much I was using like soda as a vice to actually get through the day. And like even like sugar, like, and it's like every time like, you know, I get stressed or anxious or depressed. I'm like, well, I gotta go and have a soda. So it was just one after another. So it's crazy.

Dr Cali Estes (12:08)
Mm-hmm.

you

When it comes

to sugar, we use it as a reward or a punishment. So it's either, know, oh my God, it's two o'clock, work ends at five, I'm gonna have a Snickers bar. And then you get excited, you're like, ooh, I'm gonna have a Snickers bar, it's gonna distract me from the three hours of work I have left to do. So it's a reward to get through the day. Or you finish your day and you're like, I am so exhausted, I ate that Snickers bar, and then I had junk for breakfast, and I'm supposed to eat healthy.

Travis White (12:28)
Yes.

Dr Cali Estes (12:52)
and you say, screw it, I'm gonna have pizza and then I'm gonna have ice cream because I screwed it up anyway, but I'm gonna punish myself and have more junk. And it's like, either way is not healthy. But that's how we do it in our mind.

Travis White (13:03)
Mm-hmm.

And like with your coaching program, what do you see like most people coming in for as far as addiction wise? Like more drugs and that type of stuff or is it?

Dr Cali Estes (13:14)
Right now it's alcohol, lots of alcohol, because I do C-level executives, so a lot of alcohol. In the younger sector, kratom, a lot of kratom, a lot of opiates. Sometimes Xanax, but Xanax is a very difficult long taper, so we don't get a whole lot of Xanax. But it seems since COVID, there were a lot of people, there are a lot of people that aren't identifying as alcoholics, because before COVID they weren't.

But then when they were home and they were alone and they were bored, they would have a glass of wine here and there. And then they got caught in the cycle where they're drinking all the time. And they call and they say, listen, I'm not a drunk, but I can't stop. And then I come in and I'm like, okay, we're gonna bring in a detox nurse, a detox doctor. We're gonna get you cleaned up. We're gonna get to the bottom of the Y. We're gonna fix some of the traumas that you've created. And then boom.

you're back in society doing things the way you used to.

Travis White (14:10)
And throughout your career, have you ever seen like a, what's the word, kind of a specific type of trauma that relates back to people going, the driving force behind alcohol or addiction?

Dr Cali Estes (14:26)
It's usually parental abandonment or parental violence almost every time. And I had both. My mom was more abandonment dismissive and my dad was violent. So usually they'll have one like my husband's mine was very different. You know, my dad was very physical and verbally abusive. My husband's addiction was worse than mine. And he had the perfect family like Beaver Cleaver. They had dinner every night. Dad was a school superintendent. Mom was a school teacher.

His brother went to school, became a NASA person. He built spaceships. The other one is a school psychologist. Like everybody fell in line. And then my husband wanted to be a rock and roll drummer. So when he said to his dad, I'm going to move to LA from Florida and be in a band, his dad called him a hippie. And then he dropped the F word and he didn't sit well. He was, know, Oh my goodness, my father doesn't like me. And he started using drugs.

where I was like, my father from the age of two was abusive. Like it was just normal, you know? So very different types of abuse, but we both gravitated towards something to stop the noise in our head, you know? And that's what happened. You gravitate towards that, you don't want the noise. And then whenever your drug of choice is, it becomes the vice. So it can be sugar, it can be alcohol, it can be opiates, it can be porn, it can be sex addiction, it can be gaming.

Travis White (15:35)
Mm-hmm.

Dr Cali Estes (15:51)
It can be Amazon Prime. A lot of women I deal with, they're like, I put the kids to bed and I sit down and I'm on Amazon. And how many hours are you on Amazon? Two or three and I have a whole full cart full of stuff and you their brain and their dopamine is just going like this. And then the boxes come and their husband's mad. What did you buy? You don't need that. Send that back. And then they're fighting, you know, and then the dopamine wears off and they're like, back in the shopping cart. And there they go again.

Travis White (15:58)
Hey.

Dr Cali Estes (16:19)
it becomes an addiction because that's what they're filling their time with. So when I work with people, I tell them anything in excess that's ruining your life and your relationships is an addiction. It can't even be exercise. If you're at the gym four hours a night and your husband or wife is going, don't eat dinner, we don't go out, we don't have date night, you have an addiction to the gym. So we have to talk about what's going on there.

Travis White (16:33)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's true. It's funny because you said all this stuff and my wife and I just last night were speaking of like, well, if I had an addiction, like, what would it be? And I named, you know, we went through like Amazon Prime, mine would be like buying music and buying books. It's like when I'm in kind of a depressed mode, I'm like, well, I'm to buy a book or an album now. And then I was making fun of my wife for, you know, buying

Dr Cali Estes (17:12)
Uh-huh.

Travis White (17:16)
getting stuff off Amazon. She's like, nope, you're just as bad as me. But what you just told me may be calmed down a little bit, because it's not like a ton of stuff. It's like, you know, something here and there, but it's not like I don't feel like it's over the top.

Dr Cali Estes (17:30)
So there's two things you can do. Number one, you set a budget. So you both say, we're only gonna spend $50 a week each, whatever it is, 100 bucks a week. And you stick to your budget. If you go over your budget, that's when you're in the addiction piece. And then, let's say you use your budget today, right? For the whole week. And tomorrow your wife is going, I found something on sale and I still have $30 left in my budget. And you're going, that's not fair. Try doing squats.

Travis White (17:37)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dr Cali Estes (17:58)
I know that sounds weird. 25 squats boost the dopamine just like the Amazon Prime button. And then you're going to have that happy chemical and you won't feel as depressed and you'll go, fine. You can buy more shoes you don't need because I have my book coming and I'm fine with that. So that helps to balance out the dopamine.

Travis White (18:16)
Yeah, that's actually really good. I've never heard that before. I mean, obviously I've heard like exercising to help balance it, but like I've never thought of it in that particular way.

Dr Cali Estes (18:28)
I had a colleague teach me that 20 years ago because I would go to like a Target and I'd get so frustrated with the kids in the cart, like not my kids, but other people's kids. And I was saying to her, I'm like, everybody's kids are obnoxious. And she said, listen, calm yourself down, do 50 squats. And I said, in Target. And she goes, in Target. Like, seriously? So I'm the crazy person now. You'll see me in Target doing 50 squats to like put up with other people's kids. And it works. And I'm like,

I go from, my God, that kid's screaming to, look at the cute kid, look how nice that is. 50 squats changes my brain structure.

Travis White (19:05)
Yeah, I think I might need to start doing that except for the other end, because sometimes I the parent walking through the store with the naughty kids.

Dr Cali Estes (19:13)
You

Travis White (19:16)
Um, and I'm just curious, this is more of a curiosity question. Uh, you said your dad suffered from bipolar. Did you know when he was in a manic episode? Were you able to tell or?

Dr Cali Estes (19:30)
So I left home at 19. So we didn't know what it was yet. He got diagnosed correctly later and I kind of distanced myself from him. And then when I came back into his life, I would know because his girlfriend would call and say, your dad's suicidal. Here's the phone. You're the therapist. Figure it out. Like, well, I'm not his therapist, but okay. And then I'd hop on the phone and I could tell, like, okay, you didn't take your medication. You need to be on medication. You have a chemical imbalance in your brain. And here we are. Cause he would go from

Travis White (19:34)
Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

Dr Cali Estes (19:59)
my God, life is great. We're gonna go to Hershey Park. We're gonna go here. We're gonna do this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, And then two days later, I'm so depressed. hate life like that. And he would, he was like three weeks down, one week up. But when he's medicated, he's so even and so easy to get along with. And I'm like, just gotta take your medication. Life will be great.

Travis White (20:08)
Okay.

Yeah, I just ask because that's just, you know, in my mind just seems like a very difficult situation to deal with.

Dr Cali Estes (20:28)
Well, because my family, it's not that they didn't know. My grandmother was very like, you didn't talk about things outside the family. So all this stuff is going on inside, but outside we're normal. You know, we all go to church. We were active in the community. Nobody knows there's a problem. And then things, you know, people would start noticing there's a problem. Like the police were called or this happened or that happened. And that would embarrass her. And remember she's borderline.

Travis White (20:38)
Mm-hmm.

Dr Cali Estes (20:57)
So the attention has to be on her. When the attention's not on her, then there's a problem. So it's like, I was dealing with all this stuff as a child and didn't know what any of it was until I started studying psychology. And then when I got the DSM and I'm like, this, that, and this, and that, this is why nobody gets along, and this is what's happening here, and this is what's happening here. And I'm like, okay, and this is how I deal with you, and how I deal with you, and how I deal with you. And then once I learned that, I was like, huh, we all get along.

Travis White (21:11)
Yeah.

Game changer. Yeah, after you got that book and go through and diagnosing everybody and figuring it all out, like game changer.

Dr Cali Estes (21:34)
And then I still moved 1700 miles away. And I'm like, I'm going to stay way away from you guys. I'm over here.

Travis White (21:40)
Yeah,

that distance relationship, I think that's needed at times. What do you think is the biggest stigma when it comes to addiction?

Dr Cali Estes (21:51)
Well, it's better now than it was. It used to be, you know, you're a junkie, which...

That's what I titled my book, I Married a Junkie, because it was all about, you're heroin addict, you're a junkie. You know, you're less than, you're garbage. That was real big in the eighties and the nineties, and even in the two thousands. Now it's more like everybody has a problem. What's your problem? You know, what's the thing you're addicted to? Everybody has something. So it's more open, I would say now than it was 10 years ago.

We're also classifying it as a mental health disorder, which I don't know if I agree with some of these things, but it's like, cause you have anxiety, you have depression. by the way, you have an addiction, you know, and then there's so many types of addiction. So I think the way I look at it is I treat the whole person. So I say, let's see what's going on chemically first. I take a look at all your stressors. How are you eating? Cause sugar can cause anxiety. Sugar can cause depression.

I wanna see, you exercising? Are you on any big pharma medications? And then from there, I wanna talk about the other stuff you're taking. Are you taking Xanax? Are you taking alcohol? Or what are you doing? And I lay it all out and I can see chemically what you're doing. Then I can see socially what bothers you. For example, some people will say, well, I hate my job. I hate my husband. Okay, that's a problem. You're not gonna get sober if you're in a toxic environment. So let's talk about your social environment.

You know, so we have the chemical, we have the social, then we have mental, emotional. You know, are you being triggered from a past trauma? What's happening that's causing these issues? When I separate it like that, and I do it section by section by section, we can see each part of the person, and then we can start making changes. And when we do that, that's when they start to get better.

Travis White (23:46)
Yeah, can you? Is it possible for you to like share a story of where you just saw somebody like, you know, from basically just rock bottom and you saw them come out on top?

Dr Cali Estes (24:02)
My favorite story, my favorite and worst client. So I had a very, very wealthy client that was a trust fund kid that inherited a lot of money overnight. And the parents were just done. This kid had been in, I say kid, he was like 33, in and out of 10 treatment centers for the time I get him. And he's in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills. And I get there and he's got the entire floor rented out. 10 rooms.

because he wants to walk around in his underwear and smoke weed. Now these are $1,200 a night rooms. So you can imagine he has all this money, this is what he's doing. So I get there and he's in his underwear, smoking weed. And I keep up the elevator and he's like, what do you want? I'm like, okay, this is gonna go well. And I said to him, you your trust sent me, you can't have any more money until you get sober. And he cussed me out, went in the room and shut the door. And I'm like, this is gonna be fun. I'm here for 15 days. So I left.

I came back, knocked on the door. I'm like, okay, you ready yet? Nope. Cussed me out again. Okay. I left. I came back the next day, knocked on the door. You ready yet? Cussed me out again. Okay. It took me five days of this. And on day five, he says to me, are you just going to keep coming here every day? I said, yep. And he goes, every day. I said, yep. And he goes, fine. I'll talk to you and then you'll leave. Okay.

So day five, I got 30 minutes. Then day six, I got an hour. Then day seven, I got an hour and a half. By the end of the 15 days, I got him sober. And he said to me, I hate being sober. I said, I know you have all this money and you have no purpose in life anymore because your purpose in life was to build a business, make money. Now you don't need to. So what are we gonna do? So when I sat him down and I showed him...

what he could do, the good in the world he could do, like have this nonprofit and go here and do this and do that. We created a whole life for him. Now it's awesome. He's a pilot. He travels with people all the time and takes them all around. He's got nonprofits in Africa for clean water and helping kids go to school. So he's got all these really cool things now. And it's such a cool story. He calls me every Christmas and says, I'm sober. This is 10 years now, every Christmas.

And I wanna thank you and here's what I'm doing this year. And he always shares a little piece of something else he's done. That's really cool. And the reason I like that story is he really was on death's door when I saw him. I mean, he was a mess and the family had given up because he had inherited the grandfather's money. It skipped the parents and he was an only child. So he literally got the entire fortune of the entire family in his bank account.

and everybody hated him. So his entire family turned their back on him and he was literally a billionaire overnight. And everybody in his circle was there for money. He had no friends. So when I came in, I said to him, let's fix all this stuff. We can fix this. And this is how we're gonna do it. So I was the first person that he let in that wasn't there to take his money. I wasn't there because of who he was or what he made. I was there to help him get sober. And watching him do that and blossom,

and sort of kind of take over and give back, which is one of the coolest things for me.

Travis White (27:21)
Yeah, that's really cool. That's amazing. He basically found purpose in his life and how it just his mindset shifted. He was like, you know what? I can do this now. I remember when I was in my early 20s, I worked at a boy's home for teenagers that were 13 to 18 and in there for different things. Usually it's like really bad anxiety. We had to keep those borderline and some drug problems.

Those were the coolest moments is when you saw one of the teenager boys turn around saying, you know what? I'm actually going to change for the better. You're like, this is why I do this.

Dr Cali Estes (27:56)
Yeah.

It's cool to hear their stories later on.

Travis White (28:02)
Mm-hmm. Not so fun dealing with the emotional side of them, but you get to experience some of cool things too.

Dr Cali Estes (28:11)
Yeah.

Travis White (28:13)
Bye.

to somebody who's struggling with addiction, like what advice do you give them if they're like, you know, kind of trying to take that first step into recovery? You're like, you know, they've admitted they have the problem, like, okay, well, I need direction now, where do I go?

Dr Cali Estes (28:34)
So it's pretty simple. Give us a call. If we can't help you, we will point you in the right direction. I have the largest school online for addiction and mental health studies. So a lot of the treatment centers have been trained by us. And we have a lot of people that if I don't know where to send you, somebody will know where to send you. So if you need a free service or a discounted service or a specialized treatment program or a specialized outpatient program, if you just call us or email us, we'll point you in the right direction. So.

We're a pretty good resource out there for a lot of people that are struggling. And that's the first step. You reach out and say, need help. Where do I go? What do I do? And we'll point you in the right direction.

Travis White (29:13)
I'd love to hear more about your, just your business in general. Like you said that you, you train a lot of like places and is it just like how you do things or your approach? Is that what you train them to do? Is that kind of use more of your approach on like.

Dr Cali Estes (29:15)
You're all around here. This is a channel like, you said that you train a lot of places.

So the Addictions Academy is 45 different classes. We're accredited all over the US, Canada, European Union, and all over South America. And we teach people how to become counselors, recovery coaches, interventionists, sober companions, mental health coaches, sex addiction coaches. We have a whole track for Christian people. And then we have a whole training program for treatment centers, where we go in and we teach them about opiate use disorder and methamphetamine and compliance training and ethics.

Travis White (29:44)
OK.

Dr Cali Estes (30:02)
and how to run groups and how to do customer service and call center training and AMA blocking. So anything you can think of addiction and mental health, even autism, we have an autism coach training. We are able to provide for the individual or for the treatment center, anywhere in the world.

Travis White (30:19)
That's insane. You're just like all over the place. That's really cool though. That's really, really cool. What?

Dr Cali Estes (30:21)
Yeah.

Travis White (30:29)
is one of the, like with the clients you've dealt with, like what is the one thing that you've seen, I don't know how often you've seen it, but like, what do you think is a turning point for most people to actually reach out and get help?

Dr Cali Estes (30:45)
loss. When they have a DUI or they're losing their job or their spouse said, I'm done and the spouse is moving out. That's when we see a lot of the turning points. So, and sometimes it's physical. Someone ends up in the ER. You know, they fell down drunk, broke their arm and they're like, okay, now I'm having major problems from my use. Then they call us and they're like, okay, I need help. You know, I'm messing up here. What do I do?

Travis White (31:15)
And another question I have is what are some of the like hardest obstacles that your clients have to overcome like during recovery and just, you know, just trying to get better.

Dr Cali Estes (31:31)
I a lot of it is the mindset that this is a lifestyle change. Like you talked about letting sugar go. So I'm sugar free. So what does that mean? That means I started with soda and then I went all drinks. So none of my drinks have sugar. So I have tea, tea bag, no sugar, no honey, just tea and water. That took a while. And then I went and took cake candies and cookies out. That took a while. Then I went and took sugar out of my pasta sauce.

Then I took out gluten. That took a while. And it was a commitment. It wasn't, I'm going to lose 20 pounds tomorrow because I'm going to not eat sugar. It was, I'm going to shift my lifestyle change. So getting people to say, I'm going to go alcohol free isn't what I want them to say. I want them to say, I'm going to make a better lifestyle choice. So instead of having six beers today, I'm going to have four. And next week I'm going to do three. Then I'm going to do two. And then I'm going to do one. then, look.

I'm not drinking at all. Now I'm having a non-alcoholic beer or I'm having a mocktail or now I'm having a seltzer water. And I have a wine drinker who's like, well, I have to have my fancy wine glass. I said, put your seltzer in the wine glass. And she looked at me and I said, listen, when you go out with the girls, they're going to order a bottle of wine and it's going to come out in the wine bucket, right? They're going to sit it next to table and they put it in and they move it around and you hear the ice and all that.

And I said, order a bottle of Pellegrino. And she said, why? And I said, just do it. So she calls me from the table. She goes, this is the coolest thing. They brought a bucket of ice and a big bottle of Pellegrino and they stuck it in just like the wine, never even said a word, poured it in the glass just like they would wine and handed it to her. And she said, they didn't bat an eye. And I said, they won't. That's how it's done. So that's all you have to do is make that shift, let the girls drink their wine. You have the whole bottle of Pellegrino.

You're getting it in the same wine glass, just like everyone else, and you're not missing out. And when she realized she wasn't missing out and she still was having a good time, she went, I don't really need the wine. I'm having a good time. And that was the first for her. And she's like, this is easy. You know, well for her it was easy. And she made the shift and she's like, lifestyle change. And then she called me the next day and she's like, I don't have a hangover. I woke up with no hangover. And I said, yeah. And she's like, this is awesome.

Travis White (33:48)
Thank

Dr Cali Estes (33:51)
She's like, I'm up at eight o'clock in the morning on a Saturday to see my kids basketball. She goes, I've never done that.

Travis White (33:59)
Yeah, and it's like you mentioned, sometimes it's about taking those baby steps and just slowly progressing. And then finally, it's like something sets into your mind and you're like, I can do this. I do have the ability to do this.

Dr Cali Estes (34:14)
Yep. And I tell people, quitting sugar was hard, but when I made it in my mind, it's a lifestyle change. Drinking tea without sugar is the new way that I'm gonna do this. And then I did it and did it and did it. And I'm like, now I don't even miss it.

Travis White (34:16)
Thank you.

Peace.

Okay.

Yeah, it's a huge change, like the sugar aspect. And that the more I learn about sugar, the more I understand it's almost like a gateway type of drug. Like it's just a gateway towards addiction.

Dr Cali Estes (34:44)
Sugar is the most abused drug in America. And somebody asked me on a podcast once, is marijuana the gateway drug? And I said, no, sugar is. And the podcaster stopped and he went, wait, what? And I said, sugar is the gateway drug. And he goes, why? And I'm like, because you can buy it a gas station. It's legal for any age. It's literally in every food and drink you can come up with. And it's everywhere. Like if you go down the street,

You know, somebody has a pop tart or somebody has an ice cream cone or, know, and we celebrate with sugar. It's a birthday party, have a cake. It's a wedding, have a cake. There's a divorce party, have a cake. You know, there's always something out there. You take the whole team, you know, the baseball team won the championship. Where do you go? Out for ice cream. So we teach people that sugar is celebratory. And then when you have it, it's like, Ooh, you know, I'm going to have some, I'm going to have an ice cream because I'm in a good mood.

Travis White (35:30)
if it says couldn't.

Yeah, I honestly don't think people realize how addictive it is though. I actually made my first batch of cookies with sugar substitutes, all sugar substitutes. I even used a flour substitute last night. I'm not saying I'm fully off sugar, I'm still taking steps to reduce it even more. But was like, these are actually good. Because now a date to me tastes like

really good now, where I hated them before. It's all because of that lifestyle change. Well, is there anything that you can think of that we have not discussed that you would like to?

Dr Cali Estes (36:10)
Mm-hmm.

No? I think we covered all of it.

Travis White (36:23)
Awesome. What last minute advice would you give to anyone that is struggling mentally?

Dr Cali Estes (36:36)
Reach out, that's the first step. Just reach out and say, need help. And from there, there'll be people that wanna help. You might get drug to a meeting or drug to a yoga class, but people will try to help you. They want to see you do better and they want to see you get better. So just saying, hey, I need extra help is the first step. And then try different things. You may not like the meetings. I hated them. I hated yoga, but you know what? I became a yoga teacher. This worked, it worked. I'm gonna run with it.

So you don't have to like all the different health that comes out to you, but try it and see what sticks.

Travis White (37:12)
awesome. I love it. And where can people find, where can our listeners find you?

Dr Cali Estes (37:18)
at sober on demand.com or the addictions academy.com or caliestes.com and I'm all over social media caliestes everywhere and you'll you'll find me and they can also call us at 1-800-706-0318 extension one

Travis White (37:34)
Awesome, thank you. And Callum, I love what you're doing. I love your story and the help that you're providing people. It really touches my heart. I absolutely love stories like this. So thank you so much for coming on and speaking with us today. Thank you to all of you who have listened to us. You can find us at OvercomePod on Instagram.

Dr Cali Estes (37:50)
Thank you and thanks for having me.

Travis White (37:59)
and YouTube. And the best thing you can do for us right now is just help spread the word, you know, share, like, follow, do all that fun stuff. And thanks again for listening. Until next time.