Soberly Speaking

Growing up as a second-generation Chinese Australian in Canberra, Alex spent much of his childhood wanting to be anything but himself. At just eight years old, he made a quiet but powerful connection: success, titles and money equals love.

That belief followed him into adulthood and when COVID hit, the pressure, boredom and loss of identity converged into a gambling addiction that quietly took over his life. He was placing sports bets in the middle of the night, lying to his partner about missed bills and rent, borrowing money from friends and slowly losing the relationships that...

Trigger warning: this episode contains discussion of sexual assault.
Raj's earliest memory is of his father leaving him on the side of the road to teach him a lesson. It was the first of many moments that taught him emotions weren't safe to show.

By his teens, he was selling and using. What began at parties didn't stay there and one line led to another until he was moving large amounts of drugs and dealing weapons. Two stints in jail later, the reality of that life had nothing left to romanticise.

Now in his...

Trigger warning: this episode contains detailed discussion of sexual assault. 

Stacey was 14 years old when two strangers assaulted her. One night. A warehouse. An experience no child should ever survive. She did. And then she did something even harder. She took them to court as a child, and won. She has never spoken publicly about it. Until now.

Melissa Beaton is a Clinical and Forensic Psychologist who works with high-performing women who hold everything together are ready to take back control over their lives.
She specialises in spotting the moment a woman overrides herself. F...

“Comedy is a hotbed of mental illness" 

Sian Smyth is a stand-up comedian whose past includes domestic violence, drug abuse, sex addiction, and sex work. After leaving an almost decade-long violent relationship in which she saw the devil himself, Sian finally felt free to take control of her body and experiment with every drug imaginable.

Her addiction cost her every friend, derailed her career, and led to psychotic episodes overseas. After hearing a voice telling her to go to a meeting, Sian is now almost a year clean and making comedy again.

Trigger war...

Trigger warning: This episode discusses sexual assault, substance use disorder and mental health including psychosis.
Have you ever been in psychosis? You hear the horror stories of people staying in it for days, weeks or months, but Nikki lived with it for five years. During that time she became someone she didn’t recognise: erratic, paranoid and eventually lashing out at a family member. Nikki believed her only way to escape the addiction and chaos she had known for most of her life was either to end her life or end up in jail. For Nikki, reconnecting with he...

At 26, Henry Brayshaw was drowning in hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt from his gambling addiction.

Gambling had felt normal since childhood. Some of his earliest memories were placing bets on the Melbourne Cup and slipping into the TAB. What started as something familiar slowly became uncontrollable.

As the debt piled up, so did the shame. He self-harmed and isolated himself in a dark room for days.The turning point wasn’t dramatic. It was honest. He told his best friend at the time, Annie, and that was the moment he stopped running.

...

What really goes on inside the world of selling sex online? I was invited into the home of Australia’s most sexually active woman, Annie Knight, one of the country’s top OnlyFans creators. From the boundaries she sets with her fiancé to exactly how she pulls in millions each year, Annie lifts the curtain on a world most of us only glimpse from the outside.

Follow Annie Knight on Instagram: @anniekknight

Content warning: This episode contains discussions of sex and adult themes

Ready to share your s...

Soberly Speaking is back with a brand new season starting Monday February 16th.
This season marks an evolution of the podcast. Once a month, you'll receive a documentary-style episode. These episodes take you inside the homes, lives and hidden worlds of my guests and are designed to be watched like a TV show, not just listened to.
You can watch the documentary episodes for free on YouTube by searching Soberly Speaking, or on Spotify if you use Spotify. Patreon members can also watch inside the app.
Each month you'll receive:
• One documentary-style episode
• Three clas...

For ⁠Ash Butterss⁠, addiction was a constant pursuit of more: more thrill, more chaos, more ways to avoid the emptiness. It started with sugar in childhood, then alcohol at 12, and drugs by 14.

She moved from one addiction to another, telling herself she didn’t have a problem as long as she had periods of sobriety.

On the outside, her life looked impressive. She owned a home in Bondi, did early-morning HIIT classes, managed a team, and kept getting promoted. It wasn't until she hit what she calls "the gift of desperation" that she became willing to get...

Andrew Moses⁠ grew up as a closeted Jewish gay boy, feeling immense pressure to be academically successful, marry a Jewish woman, and have Jewish children, all while battling the belief that something was fundamentally wrong with him.

To fit in, he started using party drugs, masking his true identity and trying to convince everyone, including himself, that he was straight. Over time, his opioid use evolved into a secret crystal meth addiction. It wasn’t until a trip to Costa Rica for his birthday, where he used ayahuasca, that everything changed.

To...

The holiday season can be especially triggering when it comes to food and eating. In this episode, I’m joined by Vanessa Kredler to talk about food addiction, food noise, and why so many people feel stuck in the same cycle year after year.

We explore why willpower isn’t the problem and what “food sobriety” really means. Vanessa shares how recovery is possible, what support can look like and how to approach 2026 with compassion rather than punishment.

Links mentioned in this episode:
Food Sober Fundamentals (8-week program):
https://www.vanessakre...

JOIN THE UNSPOKEN: ⁠https://patreon.com/SoberlySpeaking 

Julia Vogl ⁠never identified with having a drinking problem, but she realised alcohol was holding her back and capping her potential. It’s a story so many can relate to, knowing something isn’t good for you, not being addicted to, yet continuously crawling back to it.

Growing up confused about her sexuality and living with internalised homophobia, she would kiss girls while drunk, only to spiral into shame afterward, keeping her stuck in a cycle of self-hatred. 

Taking a six-month break from drinking tu...

JOIN THE UNSPOKEN: ⁠⁠https://patreon.com/SoberlySpeaking⁠

⁠Glen’s⁠⁠ childhood was something no one should ever have to experience. His father was a predator, and his mother a heroin addict who later turned to alcohol.

Throughout this two part interview you'll hear Glen be abused by many people- the first was being raped by a close family friend at just nine years old.  one year later, he was already trying to escape the abuse, running away from home, institutions, and boys' homes, where he faced further sexual assault and bullying.

Glen's dad then w...

JOIN THE UNSPOKEN: ⁠https://patreon.com/SoberlySpeaking

Glen’s⁠ childhood was something no one should ever have to experience. His father was a predator, and his mother a heroin addict who later turned to alcohol.

Throughout this two part interview you'll hear Glen be abused by many people- the first was being raped by a close family friend at just nine years old.  one year later, he was already trying to escape the abuse, running away from home, institutions, and boys' homes, where he faced further sexual assault and bullying.

Glen's d...

JOIN THE PATREON: ⁠https://patreon.com/SoberlySpeaking

By the age of 10, Nicole was already weighing drugs for bikies at clubhouses. She experienced child abuse from a young age and had no family or friends surrounding her. This led Nicole to put her trust in the wrong hands, becoming the victim of a horrific crime in high school. 

Years later, she married her ex-husband, entering an abusive relationship so violently destructive that she knew staying would eventually cost her life. Fleeing with nothing but the clothes on her back, Nicole found herself once agai...

Trigger warning: This episode contains discussion of suicide, substance abuse, postnatal depression, and birth trauma.

"I was just an average mum from Byron Bay" were the words that Ninny wrote to me in despair. After her second child, postnatal depression, lack of support and two traumatic birth experiences led her down an unexpected path: prescription drug dependence.

Ninny shares her journey through overprescribing, the systemic failures that left her struggling and how she is now reclaiming her life while helping others. This is a vital conversation around mental health, postpartum care and the hidden dangers o...

JOIN THE UNSPOKEN: ⁠https://patreon.com/SoberlySpeaking

Yasmine grew up in a loving home in New Zealand and never really encountered drugs. But even in a great childhood, trauma can exist. In high school, Yasmine was sexually assaulted, an experience that shaped her early choices.

In her early to mid-twenties, she moved to Australia with a new partner and, from the airport, drove straight to a trap house. She spent years as a high-functioning addict, working retail jobs while slowly losing her mind to psychosis.

Back in New Zealand, after two...

Have you ever asked yourself what was really at the core of your addiction? Trauma specialist and co-dependency coach Drew Wild joins me to ask the questions we often avoid.What was my addiction helping me cope with?What came before the substance?How do we start to heal the root cause, not just the behaviour?Many people believe that if they don’t have trauma, they can’t have an addiction. Drew helps us see that addiction often comes from unmet needs as a child and can be shaped by all kinds of trauma, not just the obvious or e...

Tyson was abused by his mother and her partner when he was just 12 months old. The abuse was so severe he had to be resuscitated. After that, he was placed in the care of his maternal grandmother with his older brother, but soon after, child protection separated them. When Tyson was seven, he found his grandmother dead and was once again passed to another family member.

What followed was a difficult path through crime, addiction, juvenile detention and an unexpected teen pregnancy.

Trigger warning: This episode discusses child abuse...

Trigger warning: This episode discusses eating disorders, substance abuse, domestic violence and pregnancy loss.

Bianca is a full-service sex worker addicted to feeling good. When she works, the urge for alcohol and drugs disappears, but for as long as she can remember, she has been chasing dopamine through binge eating, ice addiction, or sex. In this episode, we dive into how one addiction can replace another, her abusive past with men, and her accidental involvement with a Russian sex cult.

Follow Bianca on TikTok

Ready to share y...

He’s an ex–pro surfer. The biggest DJ in the world is in his family. And he’s one of the few people I’ve spoken to who took a full year off drinking… then chose to go back.

But that year changed everything for Cooper Chapman.

Cooper doesn’t demonise alcohol, he just has a completely different relationship with it now. After losing people close to him to suicide, he founded The Good Human Factory to spark real conversations about mental health.

Now, he’s sharing what he’s learned in his new book The 1...

JOIN THE UNSPOKEN: ⁠https://patreon.com/SoberlySpeaking⁠

James partied for 25 years. Looking back now, he knows he was just a full-blown dopamine addict.

He had the life everyone dreams of; the beautiful family, the thriving business, the house. But beneath it all, James never felt loved.

Weekends were spent ignoring calls and disappearing into benders. When they ended, the shame hit so hard he’d stop by the bottle shop at 10am just to numb himself enough to face his wife and kids again.

In his darkest moments, he’d dri...

Would you recognise the early signs of domestic violence?

Kacey Jackson grew up in a lower socioeconomic town with an alcoholic father and was never shown what a healthy relationship or boundaries looked like.

After being love bombed by a new partner, she found herself trapped in a violent relationship just three months later. One night, after five hours of torture and threats to her life, Kacey fled barefoot into the dark and hid in the bush to survive.

Now, she’s rebuilding herself piece by piece and sharing her story so others do...

JOIN THE UNSPOKEN: ⁠https://patreon.com/SoberlySpeaking⁠

Gordon Lownds didn’t try drugs until his 40s. By then, he was a celebrated Canadian entrepreneur who had built a business that sold for over $1.7 billion this year. On a business trip, he met a 27-year-old stripper, “the ultimate femme fatale,” as he called her, and what began as a fling soon turned into a relationship. What he didn’t realise was that she had been battling a serious drug addiction since her teens.

By 48, Gordon had become a high-functioning addict himself, excelling at work while living in constant f...

⁠Conrad Tracey⁠ joins me again on the podcast, this time in the studio. He’s an addiction coach whose own story of transformation shapes the way he helps others break free from dependency.

We talked about what it takes to become an addiction coach, the emotional challenges of working with people in deep addiction, how families can support without enabling, setting boundaries without guilt, and staying connected through recovery.

We also touched on socialising sober, from handling events when everyone else is drinking to shutting down those relentless “just one drink” comments, plus the biggest misconcepti...

JOIN THE UNSPOKEN: https://patreon.com/SoberlySpeaking

What’s the first thing you remember doing wrong to someone? Did it hurt them? And if it did, would you call that person now, 10, 20 or even 30 years later, to apologise?

That’s exactly what Liam has had to do in his recovery.

Liam, an executive chef, always told himself: I’ve got kids. I’ve got a family. I’m an award-winning chef. My career is thriving. I can’t be an addict.
But decades of drug and alcohol abuse proved otherwise.

His final wa...

For as long as she can remember, Justine Santowiak's OCD was the driving force behind her behaviour. But it wasn’t until she was 45 that she finally got a diagnosis.

One day, scrolling through social media, she came across a clip of someone describing their own OCD and emetophobia, and for the first time in her life, she felt seen. After 45 years, she realised she wasn’t alone.

For decades, alcohol had been her way of coping. At first it felt like self-medicating, but soon it spiralled into something darker. Friends and family lost trust, to th...

JOIN THE UNSPOKEN: https://patreon.com/SoberlySpeaking

If you’re drawn to the mystical, curious about manifestation, or just open to the idea of magic, this episode is for you. Sunshine, the pink-haired witch, is a psychic medium, Soul Healer, Reiki Master, and High Priestess. A recovering alcoholic, she guides witches in recovery to reclaim their magic and step fully into their highest purpose.

We explore the spiritual side of addiction, how dark entities are formed, how they attach to us, and what it’s like to live with them. Sunshine shares from...

Wayne lost everything to drugs, his home, his family, and almost his mind. Growing up as one of four boys, he prided himself on being the last man standing when it came to drink. But once drugs entered his life, everything changed.

He spiralled into psychosis for days, ran through national parks convinced people were after him, spent time in multiple rehabs, and lived on the streets with no support, no one to talk to, and invisible to all who crossed his path on their commute.

Wayne shares a...

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Jessie grew up with a mother she calls a psycho. Her mum’s life was ruled by drugs and alcohol, and those same substances eventually claimed her. Jessie thought she would feel relief when her mum died, but instead she was hit with crushing guilt.  

Her grief does not stop there. Her sister, who endured the worst of their mother’s abuse, has now followed in the same destructive footsteps. Jessie also grieves for her niece and nephew, growing up robbed of the mother they deserv...

Today I’m joined by Vanessa Kredler, a Sydney-based Counsellor and Psychotherapist who specialises in helping adults recover from food and sugar addiction, disordered eating, trauma, and other addictive behaviours.

Vanessa combines her own lived experience with clinical expertise to guide people towards lasting recovery.

In this conversation, Vanessa answers all your burning questions about food addiction, including:

What actually creates food addiction

Why so many people switch to sugar after going sober

How to stop the relentless food noise

JOIN THE UNSPOKEN: https://patreon.com/SoberlySpeaking

For Stevie, putting down the drink has actually been the easy part of sobriety. It is facing the parenting guilt that cuts the deepest. The memories of being absent, snapping at her kids, and wishing time with them away just so she could get back to drinking still haunt her. She carries the weight of those years, constantly wondering what her children will remember most.

Stevie became a mum young, with three little ones depending on her before she had even turned 24. She felt completely...

Braiden Tonks grew up in his father’s shadow, carrying a reputation for violence and anger. He leaned into that image to start selling party drugs in his hometown in Tasmania. After trying ice at an after-party, he quickly escalated to smuggling it across the Tasmania to Melbourne border. On one return trip, he was caught with $40k in cash on his body and spent weeks on the run until a SWAT team raided his bedroom while he slept.

But one night, while trying heroin with a stranger, Braiden faced a moment that would haunt him forever whe...

JOIN THE UNSPOKEN: https://patreon.com/SoberlySpeaking

Today’s episode is a little different, and deeply personal for me. Not in a traumatic way, but because Rachel is both my friend and my hypnotherapist. What you’ll hear feels more like an intimate chat between two friends than a formal interview. We dive into my own session around sugar addiction, explore how subconscious beliefs are formed, how new neurological pathways can be created, and even touch on past lives.

I recorded this back in May and kept putting off rele...

Adriana’s life has been shaped by alcohol since before she was born. Growing up with an alcoholic father who abused her mother, she always knew something was wrong, but it wasn’t until she confronted her parents that she discovered the full truth about her family.

Her own drinking went unchecked for years, hidden behind constant travel and a busy life. She had always told herself, “Next Monday, I’ll start.” But one Sunday in her mid-thirties, Adriana downloaded an app to help, and that moment changed everything.

Trigger warning: This episode di...

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On the exact one-year anniversary of her fiancé Kris’s death, Taylor sat with me to share her story.

Just twelve months earlier, she had said her goodnights, told Kris she loved him, and gone to sleep beside him. Hours later, she was on the floor trying desperately to bring him back. Kris had died of an overdose.

This episode is about grief in its rawest form. It is about loving an addict until their final breath, and mourning two lives at once: the life you hav...

Jeremy Donovan spent his whole life believing he was Māori. Orphaned young, he was whāngai’d (fostered) into a Māori family. But a court appearance for graffiti charges revealed the truth: he is Aboriginal.

Suddenly, everything shifted. Who am I? Where do I belong? Especially when the only images of Aboriginal people in the media are negative?

This feeling of displacement led Jeremy down a dark path, using cocaine every single day, as he tried to navigate a world where he never fully felt at home.

...

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Nicole spent 26 years in active addiction, starting with heroin at just 17 after entering a violent relationship. What began as “rough play fighting,” a red flag she recognises now, escalated until she made a desperate escape through a window while her abuser was in the shower.

To fund her habit, Nicole built a shoplifting operation so elaborate it could have been a movie plot. We’re not talking about swiping a handbag or a few groceries from Coles. She would dress up as rostered staff and pretend to work in the...

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Marni’s earliest memory is knowing she wasn’t in the right body. Born male and adopted from Ethiopia, she spent her childhood feeling like a stranger to herself. At 18, Marni had bottom surgery, transitioning from a man to a woman- believing it would finally make her feel complete. But the relief she hoped for never came.

During her modelling career, it was in one of the most affluent suburbs in Australia that she was introduced to ice and quickly became addicted. Not just to substances, but to dang...

JOIN THE UNSPOKEN: https://patreon.com/SoberlySpeaking

It was just a cocktail in Bali, at a nightclub every millennial has been to if you've partied there: Bounty Nightclub.

But Ashley King woke up permanently blind.

What started as the trip of a lifetime for 19-year-old Ashley ended in tragedy. On her final night out with friends, she ordered what she thought was a vodka-based cocktail from a well-known bar.

It was laced with methanol, and it cost her her eyesight. 

Ashley joins me today as she's trying to raise m...