GET UNHOOKED PODCAST
GET UNHOOKED PODCAST: Real Help For Families Facing Addiction hosted by Jason Coombs. WELCOME TO THE JOURNEYHey guys, welcome to the Get Unhooked Podcast. I am excited to be your guide providing you real help for families facing addiction. I share inspiration, tools, and insights on addiction, mental health, parenting, leadership, influence, company culture, goal setting, goal smashing, daily routines, prosperity, finance, success, entrepreneurship, relationships, and fitness. This show is all about how to help you become the best version of yourself while striving to help an addicted loved one recover. Join me on this journey of growth and change, a...
Stop Begging Them to Get Sober! Try These 5 Steps Instead
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What if the harder you try to convince your loved one to get sober, the more you're actually pushing them away from recovery?
It's frustrating. They've admitted they have a problem. They've promised to change. Maybe they've even been to rehab. But somehow, they keep ending up in the same place.
Here's what most families don't realize: Your loved one may not be in denial. They may be stuck in the contemplation stage of change, where part of them desperately wants a better life, while another part still sees...
7 Ways to Help an Addicted Loved One Who Refuses to Change
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You've tried everything to help someone you love get sober. So why isn't anything working?
You've paid their bills. You've covered for their mistakes. You've had the same conversations a hundred times. You've threatened consequences, made promises, and spent countless sleepless nights wondering what else you could possibly do.
But here's the painful truth:
Sometimes the things we do out of love are the very things keeping addiction comfortable.
In this powerful episode of Get Unhooked, Jason Coombs shares a deeply...
I Went to Rehab 5 Times Before THIS Finally Changed Everything
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How does a successful professional with a promising career end up homeless, facing felony charges, and addicted to heroin?
And more importantly, how does someone come back from that?
In this special episode of the Get Unhooked Podcast, I'm sharing a conversation I had with my good friend Shane Ramer, host of That Sober Guy Podcast.
We're going deep into my personal journey through addiction, the consequences that nearly destroyed my life, and what it actually took to find lasting recovery.
I wasn't someone who...
You Love Them… But Are You Hooked by Their Addiction Too?
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What happens when you love someone struggling with addiction so much that their addiction starts consuming your life too?
In this episode of the Get Unhooked Podcast, Jason sits down with bestselling author, recovery coach, and host of the One Day at a Time Recovery Podcast, Arlina Allen.
Arlina recently celebrated 31 years of recovery—but her story is about far more than simply getting sober.
She and Jason dig into what recovery actually looks like beneath the surface: people-pleasing, self-judgment, codependency, the need to control, finding a Hi...
Stop Trying to Get Them Sober Until You Know THIS
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What if the reason you’re exhausted from trying to help your addicted loved one isn’t because you haven’t tried hard enough…
…but because you’ve been using the wrong tool for the stage they’re actually in?
In this episode of Get Unhooked, Jason introduces the COMPASS Framework—a practical way to identify where your loved one is in the stages of change so you can stop guessing, reacting, rescuing, threatening, and trying to force progress that isn’t yours to control.
You’ll learn...
10 Things You MUST Stop Doing If You Want Your Addicted Loved One to Recover
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You love them. You want them to get better. And you’d do almost anything to help.
But what if some of the things you’re doing to help your addicted loved one are actually making recovery harder?
In this episode of the Get Unhooked Podcast, Jason Coombs breaks down 10 things NOT to do when you’re trying to help someone you love recover from addiction.
This isn’t about blaming families. Most of these behaviors come from fear, exhaustion, heartbreak, and a desperate desire to keep someone...
Stop Trying to Fix Your Addicted Loved One—Do This Instead
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What if the key to helping your addicted loved one isn’t doing more—but learning when to stop pushing, fixing, and rescuing?
In this episode, Jason answers real questions from family members navigating addiction, relapse, broken trust, financial consequences, and the constant fear of making the “wrong” move.
He explains why the advice-giver often doesn’t get an honest participant—and how curiosity, empathy, and the right questions can create the kind of relationship where your loved one actually feels safe enough to tell the truth.
You’ll also...
Your Story Isn’t Boring. You’re Just Telling It Wrong. (Here's How)
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Why do some stories move people—and others make their eyes glaze over?
For years, Jason Coombs thought the problem was his story.
Maybe it wasn’t interesting enough. Maybe he wasn’t a natural storyteller. Maybe nobody really cared what he had been through.
Then he learned a lesson that completely changed the way he communicates:
Write for the reader, not for the writer.
In this episode of the Brick House Podcast, Jason breaks down how to turn your lived experi...
What I Wish Someone Told Me Before My First 4 Rehabs
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Getting sober is important.
But what if getting sober isn’t actually the goal?
In this episode, Jason Coombs shares what he believes was missing during his first several attempts at recovery—and why simply telling someone to stop drinking, stop using, stop lying, or stop destroying their life often isn’t enough to create lasting change.
Because when someone is deep in addiction, sobriety can look less like freedom and more like a life sentence.
Jason shares how he approaches conversations with someone who may fi...
Stop Trying to Convince Them to Change… Do This Instead
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How do you help someone change when they don’t believe they need to?
In this episode of Brick House, Jason breaks down the connection between the Stages of Change model and the Epiphany Bridge framework — showing how recovery professionals, peer supports, and anyone trying to influence change can communicate in a way that actually lands.
Jason explains why advice often creates resistance, why stories create recognition, and how the right story at the right time can help someone discover their own reason to c...
The Biggest Mistake Families Make When Their Addicted Loved One Won’t Change
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If you love someone struggling with addiction, you've probably wrestled with this question:
How do I stay loving and supportive without rescuing them, enabling them, or becoming a doormat?
In Episode 70, Jason breaks down one of the most difficult parts of loving someone with a substance use disorder: learning how to hold clarity and charity at the same time.
You can have empathy for the disease and still hold someone accountable for their choices. You can create a safe, nonjudgmental relationship and still enforce a boundary. You...
Your Loved One Won’t Get Help. Here’s What You Can Do.
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What do you do when your loved one desperately needs help—but refuses to admit there’s a problem?
In this Q&A episode, Jason Coombs tackles some of the hardest questions families face: When is enough enough? Should I push them toward rehab? What if they deny they’re using? Should I keep helping financially? And how do I influence someone who doesn’t want to change?
Jason explains why people change at the speed of pain, how the stages of change affect recovery, and why pushing, convincing, rescuing...
How to Get Your Life Back by Stopping the Fight Against Your Loved One’s Addiction
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“I should have caught it sooner.”
For parents and spouses of an addicted loved one, that thought can create years of guilt, shame, hypervigilance, and sleepless nights.
In this episode, Jason Coombs explains how to stop arguing with reality without giving up on the person you love. Using Byron Katie’s four questions and “the turnaround,” he walks you through a practical way to challenge the thoughts that keep you trapped in fear and control.
You’ll learn why constant monitoring can turn you into a warden instead of a...
Every Text Feels Like a Relapse: How Addiction Traps Families in Constant Fear
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When you love someone struggling with addiction, every buzz, missed call, and stretch of silence can feel like a possible emergency.
Before long, your phone stops being a tool and becomes a leash attached to your loved one’s chaos.
In this episode, Jason Coombs explores the phenomenon known as “screen apnea”—holding your breath or breathing shallowly while checking a screen—and explains why families affected by addiction may be especially vulnerable to it.
After months or years of anticipating the next relapse, crisis, hospital call, or broken...
What to Do When Someone You Love Relapses: Don’t Make These 5 Mistakes
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Your loved one relapsed. Now what?
For many families, relapse immediately triggers panic, anger, lectures, threats, silent treatment, or another round of rescuing. It is not because they are bad people. It is because they are scared—and in that fear, they forget everything they have learned.
In this episode, Jason Coombs shares the STORM Response, a five-step framework designed to help families respond to relapse without getting pulled back into chaos.
STORM stands for:
S — Steady yourself first
T — Tell yourself the truth
O...
This One Recovery Principle Changed My Education, Finances, and Entire Life
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What does a spiritual awakening actually look like?
For most people, it isn’t dramatic. It may be a Tuesday afternoon when you suddenly realize you haven’t checked your addicted loved one’s location in days. It may be the first time you hold a boundary without collapsing under guilt. It may be a full night of sleep after months or years of fear.
In this episode, Jason Coombs breaks down Step 12:
“Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry th...
The 12-Step Framework for Families Who Feel Stuck
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What if your loved one doesn’t change right away?
What if they’re still struggling, still making choices you don’t understand, and still leaving you wondering, “Am I doing enough? Am I helping? Am I enabling? Am I just stuck in the same painful loop?”
In this episode of Get Unhooked, Jason closes out week six of the family recovery masterclass with a powerful reminder: your freedom cannot depend on your loved one’s sobriety.
Jason walks through how the 12 Steps apply to families, no...
The One Question That Can Repair Broken Trust
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What if the words “I’m sorry” are not enough?
In this episode of Brick House, Jason Coombs walks through one of the most powerful parts of recovery: making real amends. Not the kind that asks someone else to hurry up and forgive you. Not the kind that tries to erase the past with one emotional conversation. Real amends are different.
They require honesty, specificity, humility, and sustained change.
Jason introduces the CLEAN Framework for making amends:
C — Choose the moment
...
Amends Are Not Apologies: Finding Real Repair After Addiction
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In this episode of The Brick House Podcast, Jason Coombs shares a powerful conversation from just outside Yellowstone, beginning with a personal story about seeing wild bears with his wife during a sacred season of her cancer journey.
From there, Jason leads listeners into a deeper discussion on Step 9, grief, surrender, and what it really means to make amends.
So often, families impacted by addiction are told to forgive, apologize, move on, or “just set boundaries.” But real healing is more honest than that. In this...
The Question That Could Change Everything With Your Addicted Loved One
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When you love someone struggling with addiction, even a simple conversation can feel like walking into a courtroom, a battlefield, or a trap.
You want to help. You want to say the right thing. You want them to open up, be honest, and finally see what you see. But too often, the conversation turns into defensiveness, arguing, guilt, shutdown, or another exhausting ride on the addiction rollercoaster.
In this episode, Jason Coombs teaches families how to approach hard conversations differently using simple, practical tools from motivational interviewing, including the...
If Recovery Feels Impossible, Listen to This Before You Give Up
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What if the biggest mistake families make in addiction recovery is focusing on the wrong mountain?
In this episode, Jason shares a deeply personal reflection after celebrating his birth son’s 19th birthday—a moment that reminded him just how impossible recovery once felt.
For years, addiction felt like an endless cycle of trying, failing, promising, and starting over. The distance between hope and reality felt impossible to cross.
So what changed?
Jason breaks down the 3 essential ingredients of hope that every family and individual in r...
Masterclass: You Can Be the Rescuer, the Persecutor, and the Victim All Before Lunch. Here's How to Stop.
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If you have an addicted loved one and you have been holding everything together for longer than you can remember, this is the episode where it starts to come apart, in the best possible way.
Jason takes you inside one of the most pivotal weeks of the six-week Live Unhooked Masterclass. You will learn why cleaning the goldfish never works, what really happens in Step Four of recovery, and the one psychological model that explains why the same loving move you have made a hundred times keeps producing the same painful...
You're Helping Them Recover. But You're Slowly Suffocating.
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You're still functioning. You're answering the crisis calls, researching treatment centers, watching for signs, holding the family together. But underneath all of it, your own oxygen is getting thinner. In the opening week of the Unhooked Masterclass, Jason Coombs sits down with families who love someone with substance use disorder and names what most of them already feel but rarely say out loud: addiction can slowly take the air out of your own life. This episode is the first step toward putting your own mask on first, and it starts with two questions...
Put On Your Oxygen Mask First The Step Every Exhausted Family Forgets
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EPISODE 57 -DESCRIPTION
Two commercial pilots had a checklist for a cabin pressure problem. They followed every step except one. The plane crashed and everyone on board died.
If you love someone with addiction, you've been making the same mistake.
In Episode 57, Jason Coombs teaches the emotional raincoat: the one shift that separates families who burn out from families who create the conditions for their loved one's recovery. You'll hear the Tuesday morning scenario most families know by heart, the loving response Jason calls "Vitamin N...
The Insider Confession: What Addiction Was Really Doing While You Were Rescuing
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If you’re the mom, dad, or spouse who has become the detective, the cleanup crew, and the emotional first responder, this one is for you.
In this solo episode, Jason Coombs sits down with the families who are exhausted from organizing their entire lives around someone else’s addiction. He shares the one shift that changes everything: your loved one’s recovery begins when you change first.
Jason is not speaking from theory. He is speaking from both sides of this. He was the addicted son. Four felonies. Homeless. Five treatm...
Ibogaine for Addiction? Here’s Why I’m Saying No (For Now)
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Everyone is talking about ibogaine like it’s the cure for addiction.
I’m telling you why I’m saying no.
You’ve probably heard the buzz.
A “breakthrough.”A “reset.”Maybe even the answer your family has been praying for.Ibogaine is everywhere right now. Podcasts. Headlines. Conversations between people who are desperate for something to finally work.
So let’s talk about it.
In this episode, I give you my honest, unfiltered answer to the question I’ve been asked more than anything lately...
Special Episode w/ HR Brown —The Man Who Changed My Life
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Seventeen years ago, I was a difficult, entitled client who had already failed four treatment centers. HR Brown owned the place where I finally got sober. He pulled me into his office one day, told me part of his story, and handed me his 12-year sobriety coin. He asked me to make a deal: in 12 years, I’d give that coin to a newcomer, and he’d hand me his 24-year coin. That moment planted hope in me when I had none.
This episode is that conversation. HR shares the night he had...
The Desperation to Decision Ladder: A Framework for Families
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You’ve tried everything. Nothing’s working. And somewhere in the back of your mind, you’re wondering if you’re making it worse. This episode is for you. Jason Coombs breaks down the Desperation to Decision Ladder: a five-rung framework that maps exactly where your loved one is in their journey toward change, and what your role actually looks like at each rung. Practical, honest, and built from lived experience.
Show Notes:
In this episode of the Brick House Recovery Podcast, Jason Coombs, person in long-term recovery and founder of Brick...
3 Core Desires of a Woman’s Heart: The Healing That Changes Everyone Around You with Melanie Meszaros
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What happens when a woman’s heart finally gets the space to heal? Jason sits down with Melanie Meszaros, co-founder of Heart of a Woman retreats, to talk about the three core desires every woman carries, what fathers can do to protect their daughters, and why restored hearts don’t just change women — they change entire families.
Show Notes
There’s a metaphor I keep coming back to after this conversation: a river that’s been dammed up. The water doesn’t disappear — it just stops flowing. And the world downstream goe...
The Cracker Barrel Conversation That Finally Broke Through My Addiction
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What if the most loving thing a family can do is stop helping? In this raw solo episode, Jason Coombs shares the unfiltered story of his addiction, his parents’ breaking point, and the family therapy moment that changed everything: “Get off the beach.” If you’re exhausted from absorbing the waves of someone else’s addiction, this episode was made for you.
There’s a moment in almost every family’s addiction story where love and enabling look identical. You can’t tell them apart. That’s not weakness — that’s the nature of the dise...
“She Wasn’t Trying to Enable Him. She Was Trying to Love Him. There’s a Difference — and It Almost Destroyed Her Family.”
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There’s a moment most families never forget.
It’s not the first time they found the pills. It’s not the arrest, or the call from the hospital, or the Christmas that fell apart. It’s quieter than that. It’s the moment they realize that everything they did out of love, the bail, the hotel rooms, the money on the jail books, the middle-of-the-night rescues, may have been feeding the very thing trying to destroy their child.
That’s where this episode begins. And it doesn’t stay there.
In Episode...
“ When Helping Hurts: The Gift of Desperation in Family Recovery”
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When Helping Hurts: The Gift of Desperation in Family Recovery
In this episode, Jason Coombs tackles one of the hardest truths in family recovery: sometimes helping actually hurts.
Drawing from Chapter 6 of Unhooked, Jason shares his personal rock bottom and explains why desperation is often the turning point that families try hardest to prevent. When we rescue, soften consequences, or step in too soon, we may delay the very pain that could finally lead someone to change.
This is a hard episode. But it’s an honest on...
“The Story Still Being Written: Adoption, Addiction, and Purpose” with Donna Pope
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In this deeply personal episode of the Get Unhooked Podcast, Jason Coombs sits down with Donna Pope, Executive Director of Heart to Heart Adoptions and an adoption advocate with more than 25 years of experience.
Together, they explore the rarely discussed intersection of adoption, addiction, and purpose through both professional insight and lived experience. Jason shares his perspective as a birth father in long-term recovery, opens up about his son Nathan, and reflects on the meaning that can grow from a story still being written.
This conversation...
"What Siblings See That Parents Often Miss About Family Recovery" with Cory & Melissa
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When a family is living through addiction, most of the focus falls on parents and spouses. But siblings carry their own kind of heartbreak, confusion, and hope.
In this episode of the Get Unhooked Podcast, Jason Coombs is joined by his brother Cory, his sister Melissa, and co-host Jennifer Chase for an honest conversation about the sibling experience in family recovery. They talk about loving someone from a distance, learning the difference between helping and fixing, and discovering that recovery can change the whole family, not just the person struggling.
<...“How Do I Navigate Relapse?” - Understanding the Cycle of Change
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Episode 46: How Do I Navigate Relapse? - Understanding the Cycle of Change
Relapse is one of the most feared words in a family’s recovery vocabulary. It shatters trust, reignites fear, and leaves everyone asking the same desperate question: Why would they go back after everything they’ve been through? In this raw and revealing episode of the Get Unhooked Podcast, Jason Coombs pulls back the curtain on his own relapse story and reframes how families can respond when their loved one stumbles. The answer is not panic. It’s not...
Homeless in a Salt Lake City Winter … Then the Cartels Showed Up
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Episode 45: Jason Coombs on That Sober Guy Podcast with Shane Ramer
A wide-ranging conversation on recovery, faith, fatherhood, identity, and the daily work of staying sober.
In this episode, you’ll hear:
How a legitimate injury and pain pills turned into a life-consuming spiralThe collapse of an OxyContin supply chain and why heroin surged nextWhat it’s like to survive homelessness in a brutal winterThe moment a text from Jason’s mom disrupted a suicidal night“The gift of volition” and why lasting change has to become per...Why You Say You Want Peace… But Refuse to Do the One Thing That Brings It
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Why You Say You Want Peace… But Refuse to Do the One Thing That Brings It
Most families say they want peace.
But when it comes time to grieve the loss of the relationship they hoped for…
they tighten their grip instead.
In this deeply honest episode, Jason reveals:
Why control disguises itself as loveHow fear keeps families emotionally hookedThe grief step most people skipWhy surrender is not giving upAnd how to finally reclaim your life — even if your loved one hasn’t change...“The Boundary Trap: Why Good Intentions Make Things Worse with Addicted Loved Ones“
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You set the boundary. They break it. Again. And somehow, you end up feeling like the bad guy.
If you’ve ever tried to hold the line with an addicted loved one—only to second-guess yourself, give in, or get gaslit—this episode is for you.
In Episode 43 of the Get Unhooked Podcast, Jason unpacks the BOUNDARY Framework—a practical, compassionate tool for setting and holding boundaries that actually work. Through a powerful real-life story about a woman named Grace, you’ll see how relapse and resistance aren’t always failu...
When Numb Isn’t Working Anymore – The Battle to Live Fully Alive with Doug Nielson
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🎙️ “When Numb Isn’t Working Anymore – The Battle to Live Fully Alive” with Doug Nielson
In this soul-stirring Part 3 of the Warrior Heart series, Jason Coombs sits down with licensed psychotherapist and Warrior Heart co-founder Doug Nielsen to uncover what really keeps men stuck in cycles of addiction, burnout, and emotional disconnection—and what it takes to break free.
Drawing from decades of clinical experience, personal recovery, and transformative men’s retreats, Doug shares a raw, powerful framework for reclaiming agency, healing the heart, and living fully alive. This isn’t...
The Pose Every Man Hides Behind and Why Dropping It Changes Everything with Duane Crabtree
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Dropping the Pose Is Where Healing Starts.
I used to think most men were struggling with behavior.
But a lot of the time, they’re struggling with hiding.
In Part 2 of the Warrior Heart series, I sit down with Duane Crabtree, Executive Director of Warrior Heart, to talk about the mask men wear and why most of us don’t even see it.
What looks like confidence is often fear.
What looks like strength is often self-protection.
We talk about porn, peop...
