Life After Addiction: Forgiveness, Neuroplasticity & Family Healing | ANEW EP 134

Explore transformative healing in life after addiction with Dr. Supatra Tovar on ANEW Insight. This episode delves into forgiveness, neuroplasticity healing, and a body positivity approach alongside holistic health practices that support addiction recovery. Dr. Tovar highlights how self-forgiveness and purposeful action can rewire the brain through neuroplasticity, promoting nervous-system healing and family restoration.

From surviving 27 years of incarceration to pioneering trauma-informed coaching, this episode sheds light on how forgiveness is a lived experience, built through daily integrity, vulnerability, and compassion. Learn how simple emotional practices create new neural pathways, replacing addictive survival mechanisms with sustainable healing.

Additionally, discover how families can aid recovery through compassion and effective boundaries, why addiction hijacks the brain's survival system, and why interventions work best as invitations rather than judgments. If you or your loved ones are seeking hope, clarity, or practical tools for recovery and holistic wellness, this episode offers profound insights grounded in science and lived experience.

You will also hear how families can support recovery through compassion and boundaries, why addiction hijacks the brain’s survival system, and how interventions work best as invitations to restoration—not judgments.

If you or your loved one are searching for hope, clarity, or practical recovery tools, this episode offers real-world wisdom grounded in science, compassion, and lived experience.

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🌐 Addiction Recovery Specialist
 Lance — Founder, Life Over Addiction, LLC

🎧 Watch or listen now via the link in bio and continue the journey toward healing and freedom.

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Thank you for joining us on this journey to wellness. Remember, the insights and advice shared on the ANEW Body Insight Podcast are for educational and informational purposes only and do not constitute medical advice. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making any changes to your health routine. To learn more about the podcast and stay updated on new episodes, visit ANEW Body Insight Podcast at anew-insight.com. To watch this episode on YouTube, visit @my.anew.insight. Follow us on social media at @my.anew.insight on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Threads for more updates and insights. Thank you for tuning in! Stay connected with us for more empowering stories and expert guidance. Until next time, stay well and keep evolving with ANEW Body Insight!

Transcript

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:00

Welcome back to the ANEW Insight podcast. We are back for the second half of this amazing interview with Addiction Recovery Specialist Lance Wright, and he's also my new friend. Lance gave us some heart-wrenching insight into his path from addiction to recovery. I have got to learn more, and we are going to start with forgiveness.

Lance Wright: 0:01

Well, you know, as we ended that last segment, it was in my heart to speak on that because it's one thing to forgive others or even others to forgive you. But there's a place in this process that's probably one of the more important ones and one that we carry in a place of amends, is that forgiveness is not a noun, it's an action. Um, my forgiveness is something I live every day and honor by how I live my life and honor those people I've hurt and the life I live today I can hold my head high. I can live in integrity. I can believe in myself. I can honor myself and love myself because I honor and live in accordance to that and to my past. And for me, that's really at the essence of self-forgiveness. When you are doing, like when I sit with clients in treatment and like I was this afternoon and one of the young ladies, I threw some heavy hard balls at 'em and they were like, and I said, you listen well, and you struggle with forgiving yourself because you don't think you're a good mom. And she's like, and I said, the fact that you're here and you've said you wanna be a good mom tells me everything about the lady of grace and dignity that you truly are and that I hope you learn and see here. And she just kinda like, because really at the end of the day, a path out of the darkness is light and love and connection. And so that, for me, forgiveness is a big part of what I live and what I teach. It may not be spoken a lot, but it's in the ether. It's, it's the mortar or the integrity of the wall that we build in recovery or in life because not everybody's a drug addict or alcoholic sometimes. I'll meet with people that struggle with, I'm not good enough, or I've, I'm a failure.

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:03

know, truncated amount of time as possible so I can answer, get all the other answers to my questions in there. Uh, how you got from incarceration to life over addiction.

Lance Wright: 0:04

I had a lot of recovery. I had grown up a lot. I knew how to ask. One of the biggest things recovery taught me is how do you do that? Can you help me? Because I didn't know how to get sober. I didn't know how to do a lot of things, but I learned how to ask. So in 19. No. 2011 in June, I had gotten a 3-0 decision by the first appellate court ordering my immediate release, and it was upheld. I, I walked out around the end of June of 2011 with a rubber tub with all my life possessions. But in here and in here, I had faults of recovery and wisdom from my own journey of growth and growing up and helping others. So I had a foundation of what I was to become and be here today. I didn't know, just like I don't think God wants us to know tomorrow sometimes he wants us to be in the today and growing. I went to a place called Be Teshuva in Culver City. 'cause I knew Rabbi Mar Borowitz, he was a good friend and a supporter of the work we do. And he said, just come here, chill out for a minute, get your feet under you. You've been away a while. You'll have support. You know, you really just, it's not a program for you. What's up? And he goes, you going to school to be a counselor? I go, well, of course. You know, that's what you know, you know that. And he goes, uh, you're not on my maintenance crew. Monday, you're gonna be a counselor. I'm giving you $2 more an hour. And now you'll have like 10 clients. Get outta my office. And I'm like, a counselor now. And for four years I was a counselor there and, and I, not to toot my own horn, but because of how I approach things, how I work with clients, I see it as more than drugs and alcohol. And I was able to be very effective in helping people in those four years and met a lot of people and helped a lot of people. And about four years in, I got an opportunity to go work somewhere. And it was more money and my ego, you know, Hey, who doesn't want more money? You know what I mean? And they wanna make me a program coordinator. Oh wow. A title and all this. And so off I went ended up being a body brokering kinda shady treatment center. Yeah, I'm there and. One day they tell me they're not gonna gimme a pay raise. They promised me and I gave my resignation to 'em, and I didn't have a parachute, a job, nothing. You wanna figure out your problems.

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:09

So I wanna know your pattern of doing things. I want, I wanna know because it, you know, I think people have an idea of a addiction treatment and I think yours is much different. Give me how yours is different.

Lance Wright: 0:10

What's your programming? What's your code that's you're operating from? 'Cause what you're doing is not normal and it's not congruent with a normal human being or what we do. How did this happen? Where did this come from? I'll give you an example. Today working with people at the treatment center, they're really, they love me to push 'em and I says, okay. did to them what I did at the end of the TEDx, I says, I want each one of you to go look at three of your negative codes or programming. Write 'em down, leave space. I want you to go back over your life and look at where that comes from, where it was created, how it's affected your life in a negative way. Changing the things that I ran away from so I'm not running away. 'cause that's what people do, drugs and alcohol most of the time for, Well, neuroplasticity is simply this. We're programmable beings and brains and our neural pathways and how we see things are malleable. You know, they can shift, they can change. Um, I think everybody watching this has had something in their life that they've attached to or believed, that they realize today isn't true and they're not attached to it anymore. That's neuroplasticity. It's like I create a new pathway, a new relationship with something. When. I grew up, I was abandoned on love, blah, blah, blah. I say it that way now that, but then it was very real. You could not have convinced me otherwise, but like the day I sat with Richard and I tried to make this quick. And we were talking about my father, who I never knew, which was a big, big, bad thing in my soul. And when I was sharing with these, this list of things about my dad, with Richard, I got vehemently hot 'cause all the anger, all the rage, that little boy in the narratives and the programming showed up and he's listening to me. And after I was done venting, he goes, can I ask you a couple questions? Sure. That's strange, but, okay. Do you know why your father wasn't, or No. Do you know why your father and mother split up? No. Did your mother ever say your father didn't love you? No. Did he ever say he didn't love you? No. About the fifth or sixth? Well, neuroplasticity is simply this. We're programmable beings and brains and our neural pathways and how we see things are malleable. You know, they can shift, they can change. Um, I think everybody watching this has had something in their life that they've attached to or believed, that they realize today isn't true and they're not attached to it anymore. That's neuroplasticity. It's like I create a new pathway, a new relationship with something. When. I grew up, I was abandoned on love, blah, blah, blah. I say it that way now that, but then it was very real. You could not have convinced me otherwise, but like the day I sat with Richard and I tried to make this quick. And we were talking about my father, who I never knew, which was a big, big, bad thing in my soul. And when I was sharing with these, this list of things about my dad, with Richard, I got vehemently hot 'cause all the anger, all the rage, that little boy in the narratives and the programming showed up and he's listening to me. And after I was done venting, he goes, can I ask you a couple questions? Sure. That's strange, but, okay. Do you know why your father wasn't, or No. Do you know why your father and mother split up? No. Did your mother ever say your father didn't love you? No. Did he ever say he didn't love you? No. About the fifth or sixth? Now of course I had to practice new things like honesty and vulnerability and things, but there was a clear path out now. I, there was a moment of healing in that space that I don't think I would've gotten from anybody else or any other space or moment. I don't forget it because it's that transition. It's that like, almost like a new neural pathway was being formed from that point forward.

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:15

And it's not just about making realizations or gaining objectivity, which are the two things that you're really, uh, you know. You've already illuminated that you do. There needs to be practice because if you have had that story wired in your brain for so long, it becomes automatic or the thought, and usually, you know, for a lot of people, and a lot of people I see come into my office, the thought is I'm worthless or I'm not lovable.

Lance Wright: 0:16

I am gonna go back to the young lady who I talked to this afternoon about being a good mom. She hasn't heard that in a long time. That's really neuroplasticity, that's action. That's creating a new neural pathway. And there was a young man, well not so young, but he had a son and daughter and his dad raised him very little, communication, very little love. He thought I was crazy when I made the suggestion to him. said, how cool would it be if you went home and found a box of letters from your father that said he loved you and he was sorry? And you got to hold that box. How much would that mean to you? And in the process of doing that, you're gonna create a channel of love and connection to your kids and to yourself that you don't even know. So see, that's neuroplasticity, but that's action. That's creating belief. belief.

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:19

And I've seen that be really effective. I love the idea of using these actions as well as the way to like, you know, reinforce who they really are. Um, it's really not changing. It's, it's, it's, it's remembering who they really are and then Yes. And then passing it forward. Oh, I love this Lance. Really beautiful work.

Lance Wright: 0:20

It is very difficult to deal with a loved one, an addiction of any kind, whether it's a thought addiction, a attitude, a behavior, drugs and alcohol, because they're not themselves. When a person becomes addicted, I guess the brain, for real quick, we have this thing called the amygdala. I know you're aware of it, but most people don't know what that is. When you don't have that, the amygdala takes that as threat, problem. I tell people it's not normal for somebody to walk into a gas station with a gun and say, gimme your money. about an invitation to healing and restoration. And that's typically that empathetic, loving way of doing things will guide a person to say yes, rather than if you, if I came in and was pointing a finger at you, you're probably gonna run away. If I say, Supatra, I want you back in the family. We care about you. We, I remember the time when we were kids, man, I'm here for you and I'll be here for you. But I can't support that. And that's why we're here to support you getting back to who you are. 'Cause we miss you. How? It's a long process and it may never be perfect. I'm not gonna say that this is a perfect work and that your loved one or your family member or friend won't violate that space again. I would say having healthy boundaries. You know when your loved one is acting off, know when something's not congruent, when acting up. And you know, at that point, if you just wanna play it off, like man, maybe it's that. 'Cause you don't want to confront the issue or bring it up or set a boundary so you let it continue to happen. I would always say if they are stealing or if they're being problematic or aggressive or any of that, there's a firm boundary.

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:24

Yes, 100% yes. That's exactly how I help my clients as well. It's it, I think it's very important that those boundaries are set, especially if you know the loved one, the family member uh, is feeling trodden upon is feeling like, you know, I, this, I can't maintain this, I can't live like this. Sometimes there has to be some kind of ultimatum and that person has to make a decision, you know, do they wanna continue this addiction or do they want to keep the relationship between their loved ones?. And, and, and honor their loved one's boundaries. So I 100% agree with this. Lance. Oh my gosh, I have 80,000 more questions for you, but we are low on time. I would love for you to help people find their way to you, because I really think your method is so effective. You've really turned a troubled life into a life of meaning and purpose and service, and I want as many people as possible to know how to get to you. Yes. Oh, Lance, I have people I'm sending to you already and I know that they will benefit from your help. I, I just think you are a rare, beautiful, kind human being who you know, through just being vulnerable. And allowing, have transformed a very troubled life that I can completely understand into something that is just so beautiful. He's the example. An amazing example. So thank you so much for joining me, Lance. I just think you're fabulous. I'm so glad to, to have you in my life.