This episode features Davina Mena, tribal liaison for the Arizona Division of Problem Gambling, discussing the importance of relationship-building, cultural humility, and authentic communication when working alongside tribal communities.

The conversation explores what tribal liaisons actually do, why many professionals are still unfamiliar with the role, and how tribal liaisons help bridge communication and collaboration between tribal communities and state agencies. Davina shares why listening first matters more than arriving with predetermined solutions and explains how trust is built through genuine human connection.

The discussion also challenges traditional Western approaches to treatment and prevention, particularly in problem gambling services. Storytelling, community, and relationship-centered conversations are highlighted as meaningful ways to engage tribal communities more effectively than statistics or symptom-focused models alone.

This episode is a thoughtful conversation about trust, culture, connection, and the future of problem gambling prevention and recovery support.

About the Guest

Davina Mena, the first tribal liaison for the Arizona Division of Problem Gambling, serves as a bridge between tribal communities and the division. She focuses on addressing problem gambling by promoting the prevention and treatment through culture revitalization and community empowerment. Davina has several years of experience ranging from trauma-informed direct practice to community outreach and prevention. Davina is a 4th generation Tucsonan, proud Chicana and holds a Masters degree in Social Work from Arizona State University.

Links:

• DPG Website: problemgambling.az.gov
• Immediate problem gambling supports:
  • Text NEXTSTEP to 53342
  • Call 1-800-NEXT-STEP
  • Chat With us on our website, ProblemGambling.az.gov
• Follow us on Facebook at Arizona Division of Problem Gambling
• X at ArizonaDPG
• Email: dmena@azgaming.gov

Support the show

Thank you for listening to this episode of Talking Addiction & Recovery Podcast.

To learn more about the podcast visit www.andrewjschreier.com

To inquire being a guest on the podcast or sponsorship opportunities you can e-mail hello@andrewjschreier.com

The podcast is also a platform for FREE continuing education. Licensed and certified professionals are able to listen to select episodes at no cost. Listen to an episode. Take a quiz. Complete an eval. Earn a certificate. Learn more at www.andrewjschreier.com/continuing-education

Talking Addiction & Recovery Podcast is the follow-up to the book "Addiction & Recovery" by author and clinician Andrew J. Schreier. This podcast explores discussions regarding important issues related to addiction and recovery. Information you learn here is not typical of what you will find in academic textbooks and resources; and comes from the experiences of a clinical supervisor, clinical substance abuse counselor, and licensed professional counselor and the work with individuals and others involved in this field. Listen as guests join the show and cover a wide range of topics looking to educate individuals, families, communities, organizations, institutions, mental health professionals, educators, and anyone else impacted by addiction and recovery. Content is not intended to be treatment and is not affiliated with any specific group.

Medical anthropologist and author Elizabeth F.S. Roberts joins the Talking Addiction & Recovery Podcast to discuss her thought-provoking book, In Praise of Addiction: How We Can Learn to Love Dependency in a Damaged World.

Drawing on years of research in Mexico City, Roberts explores a radically different way of understanding addiction—not as the opposite of connection, but as a form of connection itself. She examines how cultural beliefs about independence, self-control, and dependency shape the way we think about substance use, recovery, and human relationships.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• How the meaning of "addiction" has changed throughout history
• The difference between addiction and vice in Mexican cultural perspectives
• Why shame and isolation often worsen addiction-related harms
• How American individualism influences treatment and recovery approaches
• What soda consumption in Mexico can teach us about addiction
• Why dependency may be a universal human experience
• The role of community, belonging, and connection in recovery

This episode challenges many commonly held assumptions about addiction and offers a fresh lens for clinicians, people in recovery, family members, and anyone interested in understanding human behavior more deeply.

About the Guest

Elizabeth F. S. Roberts is professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan and the author of In Praise of Addiction: How We Can Learn To Love Dependency in a Damaged World and God’s Laboratory: Assisted Reproduction in the Andes. Since 2013, she has participated in collaborative environmental health research in Mexico City. She, along with many family members, has struggled with addiction.

Links:

• E-mail: lfsrob@umich.edu
• Book-
  • https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691245805/in-praise-of-addiction?srsltid=AfmBOoospzenUCk2UttASSl3jm03ctqyyjDDj04eEl4MZGhJLTMsDN2H
  • https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/elizabethroberts/

Support the show

Thank you for listening to this episode of Talking Addiction & Recovery Podcast.

To learn more about the podcast visit www.andrewjschreier.com

To inquire being a guest on the podcast or sponsorship opportunities you can e-mail hello@andrewjschreier.com

The podcast is also a platform for FREE continuing education. Licensed and certified professionals are able to listen to select episodes at no cost. Listen to an episode. Take a quiz. Complete an eval. Earn a certificate. Learn more at www.andrewjschreier.com/continuing-education

Talking Addiction & Recovery Podcast is the follow-up to the book "Addiction & Recovery" by author and clinician Andrew J. Schreier. This podcast explores discussions regarding important issues related to addiction and recovery. Information you learn here is not typical of what you will find in academic textbooks and resources; and comes from the experiences of a clinical supervisor, clinical substance abuse counselor, and licensed professional counselor and the work with individuals and others involved in this field. Listen as guests join the show and cover a wide range of topics looking to educate individuals, families, communities, organizations, institutions, mental health professionals, educators, and anyone else impacted by addiction and recovery. Content is not intended to be treatment and is not affiliated with any specific group.

Austin Taylor never expected a gambling sponsorship to change the course of his life. A software engineer, military veteran, and Twitch streamer, Austin accepted a crypto casino sponsorship in 2021 that quickly evolved from a side opportunity into a devastating gambling addiction. Within two years, he had lost millions of dollars, damaged important relationships, and entered inpatient treatment in search of recovery.

In this powerful episode of Talking Addiction & Recovery, Austin shares his personal journey through gambling addiction, the challenges he encountered while trying to find specialized treatment, and the lessons he learned throughout recovery. He discusses the unique nature of gambling disorder, the growing accessibility of sports betting and online gambling, and why recovery can be especially difficult when money itself becomes a trigger.

Austin also introduces Cope Compass, a free platform designed to help individuals affected by gambling addiction find specialized providers, access recovery tools, connect with peer support, and manage gambling urges between counseling sessions. The conversation explores how technology can be leveraged to improve access to care and support individuals during the critical moments when they need help most.

Whether you are a clinician, person in recovery, family member, or someone interested in understanding the evolving gambling landscape, this episode offers valuable insights into one of the fastest-growing behavioral health challenges today.

Recovery doesn't happen only during the hours spent in counseling. It also happens between sessions that don't always match office hours. This conversation explores what meaningful support can look like during those moments.

About the Guest

Austin Taylor is the founder of Cope Compass, a real-time recovery-support app for people struggling with gambling and other behavioral addictions. A U.S. Air Force veteran, he built Cope Compass to reach people in the moment that matters most: 2am, mid-urge, in the gap between a trigger and a bet. It pairs a real-time intervention engine with peer support, meetings, and progress tracking.

Links:

• Download the app (iPhone & Android): copecompass.com/download
• TikTok: tiktok.com/@copecompass
• Contact: austin@copecompass.com

Support the show

Thank you for listening to this episode of Talking Addiction & Recovery Podcast.

To learn more about the podcast visit www.andrewjschreier.com

To inquire being a guest on the podcast or sponsorship opportunities you can e-mail hello@andrewjschreier.com

The podcast is also a platform for FREE continuing education. Licensed and certified professionals are able to listen to select episodes at no cost. Listen to an episode. Take a quiz. Complete an eval. Earn a certificate. Learn more at www.andrewjschreier.com/continuing-education

Talking Addiction & Recovery Podcast is the follow-up to the book "Addiction & Recovery" by author and clinician Andrew J. Schreier. This podcast explores discussions regarding important issues related to addiction and recovery. Information you learn here is not typical of what you will find in academic textbooks and resources; and comes from the experiences of a clinical supervisor, clinical substance abuse counselor, and licensed professional counselor and the work with individuals and others involved in this field. Listen as guests join the show and cover a wide range of topics looking to educate individuals, families, communities, organizations, institutions, mental health professionals, educators, and anyone else impacted by addiction and recovery. Content is not intended to be treatment and is not affiliated with any specific group.

In this episode of the Talking Addiction & Recovery Podcast, Dr. Rosenna Bakari, author of 7 Exits: Leave Behind What No Longer Serves You, shares a powerful conversation about empowerment, recovery, shame, healing, and personal transformation.

The discussion explores how empowerment differs from traditional psychology’s focus on pathology and mental illness. Rosenna shares why people often struggle more with leaving familiar situations than with knowing where they want to go, and how understanding the function of behaviors can create deeper and more meaningful change.

Topics covered in this podcast episode include:

• Empowerment in addiction recovery
• Shame and self-forgiveness
• Comfort culture vs true rest
• Risk-taking and personal growth
• Trauma and adverse childhood experiences
• Worldview exploration in counseling
• Healing beyond addictive behaviors

This conversation highlights the importance of addressing the underlying experiences beneath addiction while encouraging listeners to recognize their own capacity for growth, healing, and change.

What keeps people stuck in unhealthy patterns — even when they know they need change?

About the Guest:

Dr. Rosenna Bakari is a leadership consultant, empowerment expert, and author of the upcoming book Seven Exits: Leaving Behind What No Longer Serves You. With a background in psychology and educational leadership, she has spent decades helping individuals and organizations create meaningful change through empowerment and self-awareness. Earlier in her career, Dr. Bakari worked in the field of addiction and recovery for several years, supporting individuals and families through the challenges of healing, transformation, and rebuilding their lives. Today, her work bridges personal growth, leadership, and emotional wellness with a practical, empowering approach.

Links:

• Website: transformation.sevenexits.com
• E-mail: dr.b@sevenexits.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosenna-bakari-ph-d-b3120194/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sevenexits_rosennabakari/

Support the show

Thank you for listening to this episode of Talking Addiction & Recovery Podcast.

To learn more about the podcast visit www.andrewjschreier.com

To inquire being a guest on the podcast or sponsorship opportunities you can e-mail hello@andrewjschreier.com

The podcast is also a platform for FREE continuing education. Licensed and certified professionals are able to listen to select episodes at no cost. Listen to an episode. Take a quiz. Complete an eval. Earn a certificate. Learn more at www.andrewjschreier.com/continuing-education

Talking Addiction & Recovery Podcast is the follow-up to the book "Addiction & Recovery" by author and clinician Andrew J. Schreier. This podcast explores discussions regarding important issues related to addiction and recovery. Information you learn here is not typical of what you will find in academic textbooks and resources; and comes from the experiences of a clinical supervisor, clinical substance abuse counselor, and licensed professional counselor and the work with individuals and others involved in this field. Listen as guests join the show and cover a wide range of topics looking to educate individuals, families, communities, organizations, institutions, mental health professionals, educators, and anyone else impacted by addiction and recovery. Content is not intended to be treatment and is not affiliated with any specific group.

What if the biggest challenges in behavioral health aren’t due to lack of effort—but how systems are designed?

In this episode, we sit down with Isamu Pant, author of The Behavioral Health Fix, to explore a practical and refreshingly honest approach to improving care, staff satisfaction, and operations—without waiting for more resources.

Drawing from experience in community behavioral health and scaling systems in high-performance environments, Isamu introduces the Find-Fix-Serve framework—a simple but powerful method to help organizations move from reactive problem-solving to intentional, sustainable change.

This conversation challenges a typical reaction of “checking boxes” and instead invites leaders, clinicians, and teams to ask a more powerful question: Where do we actually want to be—and what’s the smallest step to get there?

We also explore:

• Why behavioral health systems stay stuck in the same problems
• How to identify high-impact “levers” for change
• The role of human connection in an AI-driven future
• And how reframing challenges can restore agency across all levels of care

Whether you’re on the frontlines or in leadership, this episode offers a clear path forward—grounded in reality and built for action.

About the Guest:

Isamu Pant is the founder of Behavioral Health Fix and author of The Behavioral Health Fix: A Leader’s Guide to Better Care, Happier Staff, and Smoother Operations. He works directly with behavioral health and IDD executives to fix long‑standing operational problems and grow without burning out staff or putting care at risk, often in focused 30‑day sprints.

Before launching Behavioral Health Fix, Isamu built the first analytics department and led organization-wide strategic initiatives in a 500‑person community behavioral health center, and later helped Amazon Web Services stand up and scale a new cybersecurity and early AI services organization. He now brings that combination back to the field to help leaders build the operational foundations, governance, and workflows that support better care and staff well‑being – and to layer AI on top of those foundations in ways that actually help, rather than chase tools for their own sake.

Recent appearances include the opening keynote at the Behavioral Health AI Summit and the Behavioral Health Business “Perspectives” podcast on the field’s first AI‑related labor action.

Links:

• Contact: media@behavioralhealthfix.com
• Amazon link: https://a.co/d/0gtbUpmi
• Website: https://www.behavioralhealthfix.com/

Support the show

Thank you for listening to this episode of Talking Addiction & Recovery Podcast.

To learn more about the podcast visit www.andrewjschreier.com

To inquire being a guest on the podcast or sponsorship opportunities you can e-mail hello@andrewjschreier.com

The podcast is also a platform for FREE continuing education. Licensed and certified professionals are able to listen to select episodes at no cost. Listen to an episode. Take a quiz. Complete an eval. Earn a certificate. Learn more at www.andrewjschreier.com/continuing-education

Talking Addiction & Recovery Podcast is the follow-up to the book "Addiction & Recovery" by author and clinician Andrew J. Schreier. This podcast explores discussions regarding important issues related to addiction and recovery. Information you learn here is not typical of what you will find in academic textbooks and resources; and comes from the experiences of a clinical supervisor, clinical substance abuse counselor, and licensed professional counselor and the work with individuals and others involved in this field. Listen as guests join the show and cover a wide range of topics looking to educate individuals, families, communities, organizations, institutions, mental health professionals, educators, and anyone else impacted by addiction and recovery. Content is not intended to be treatment and is not affiliated with any specific group.

What role can movies play in addiction recovery?

In this episode, Ted Perkins—author of Addicted in Film: Movies We Love About Habits We Hate and creator of Recovery Movie Meetups—joins the podcast to discuss how film can become a meaningful tool for healing, reflection, and recovery engagement.

Drawing from a background in Hollywood as both a studio executive and screenwriter, Ted shares how his own recovery journey inspired him to watch 100 films focused on addiction and recovery over 100 days. That experience eventually evolved into a book, discussion guides, and a growing program now being used in treatment settings around the world.

This conversation explores:

• How movies help people process addiction and recovery
• The balance between realism and glorification in film
• Recovery as a heroic transformation story
• Why storytelling creates emotional connection and insight
• How Recovery Movie Meetups became a structured clinical intervention
• The future of AI-generated storytelling in treatment and recovery spaces

From classic films to emerging technology, this episode examines how storytelling continues to shape the way people understand addiction, mental health, and recovery.

About the Guest

Ted Perkins is the CEO and founder of Recovery Movie Meetups, an innovative program that transforms Hollywood films into structured, clinically meaningful mutual support experiences for addiction and mental health treatment. A longtime Hollywood screenwriter and media executive, his work bridges storytelling and behavioral health, using film to spark insight, emotional engagement, and lasting change.

Perkins created Recovery Movie Meetups out of his own lived experience with alcohol use disorder, depression, and the psychological toll of constant “what-if” thinking—both personally and professionally as a writer. Drawing on the principles of cinematherapy, he developed a model that uses carefully curated films to help individuals explore addiction, mental health challenges, and recovery in a more accessible and less confrontational way.

His program is now used in hundreds of treatment centers, recovery community organizations, sober homes, schools, and correctional settings across the United States and Canada. By combining film with guided discussion and structured workbooks, Perkins has created a scalable approach that helps participants identify with characters, examine their own behaviors, and engage more deeply in the recovery process.

He is also the author of Addicted in Film: Movies We Love About the Habits We Hate, and continues to advance the use of narrative and visual storytelling as powerful tools for self-reflection, connection, and transformation in behavioral health.

Links:

• www.recoverymoviemeetups.com

Support the show

Thank you for listening to this episode of Talking Addiction & Recovery Podcast.

To learn more about the podcast visit www.andrewjschreier.com

To inquire being a guest on the podcast or sponsorship opportunities you can e-mail hello@andrewjschreier.com

The podcast is also a platform for FREE continuing education. Licensed and certified professionals are able to listen to select episodes at no cost. Listen to an episode. Take a quiz. Complete an eval. Earn a certificate. Learn more at www.andrewjschreier.com/continuing-education

Talking Addiction & Recovery Podcast is the follow-up to the book "Addiction & Recovery" by author and clinician Andrew J. Schreier. This podcast explores discussions regarding important issues related to addiction and recovery. Information you learn here is not typical of what you will find in academic textbooks and resources; and comes from the experiences of a clinical supervisor, clinical substance abuse counselor, and licensed professional counselor and the work with individuals and others involved in this field. Listen as guests join the show and cover a wide range of topics looking to educate individuals, families, communities, organizations, institutions, mental health professionals, educators, and anyone else impacted by addiction and recovery. Content is not intended to be treatment and is not affiliated with any specific group.

Prediction markets are changing the way people engage with risk, information, and even real-world events—and they may be the next major challenge in gambling and public health.

In this episode of Talking Addiction & Recovery, Abdullah Mahmood, a counselor at Maryhaven in Columbus, Ohio, joins to unpack the rapid rise of prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi. Unlike traditional sports betting, these platforms allow users to bet against one another on outcomes ranging from elections to global crises.

Abdullah shares his journey into problem gambling treatment and highlights how these emerging platforms are already impacting clients—especially those transitioning from sports betting after exclusion. We explore the parallels between the gambling boom and the opioid epidemic, the ethical concerns of betting on real-world tragedies, and the growing integration of prediction markets into mainstream media.

This conversation is a must-listen for clinicians, policymakers, and anyone concerned about the evolving landscape of gambling and its impact on individuals and communities.

About the Guest:

Abdullah Mahmood, LSW, LICDC-GAMB, ICGC-I, OCPS, ICPS, started working with clients at Maryhaven several years ago, before becoming the Administrative Coordinator of the Gambling Intervention Program. He has worked extensively in prevention, treatment, administration, as well as having direct services with clients with mental health concerns, clients with substance use disorder, and clients with disordered gambling.

Abdullah attended Columbus State Community College for his associate’s degree, attended The Ohio State University, for his bachelor’s degree in social work, and lastly Cleveland State University for his master’s in social work. You can learn more about Abdullah and find ways to connect in the podcast notes.

Links:

• https://maryhaven.com/gambling/
• https://www.gamfin.org

Support the show

Thank you for listening to this episode of Talking Addiction & Recovery Podcast.

To learn more about the podcast visit www.andrewjschreier.com

To inquire being a guest on the podcast or sponsorship opportunities you can e-mail hello@andrewjschreier.com

The podcast is also a platform for FREE continuing education. Licensed and certified professionals are able to listen to select episodes at no cost. Listen to an episode. Take a quiz. Complete an eval. Earn a certificate. Learn more at www.andrewjschreier.com/continuing-education

Talking Addiction & Recovery Podcast is the follow-up to the book "Addiction & Recovery" by author and clinician Andrew J. Schreier. This podcast explores discussions regarding important issues related to addiction and recovery. Information you learn here is not typical of what you will find in academic textbooks and resources; and comes from the experiences of a clinical supervisor, clinical substance abuse counselor, and licensed professional counselor and the work with individuals and others involved in this field. Listen as guests join the show and cover a wide range of topics looking to educate individuals, families, communities, organizations, institutions, mental health professionals, educators, and anyone else impacted by addiction and recovery. Content is not intended to be treatment and is not affiliated with any specific group.