The Recovery Guide

Michelle DeMicco was in and out of rehab six times before she turned 21. Nearly 19 years sober now, she'll tell you the sobriety was just the beginning.

What came after—the mindset work, the spiritual growth, learning to sit with herself without running—that's the part nobody warns you about when you put the substance down. And it's the part Michelle built her entire life around.

She's a mindset coach, speaker, sales leader, and author of The Journey to Source Journal. She founded All Is Well Vibrations to help people reconnect with who they actually are underneath all the noise—the stress, the fear, the constant feeling that you're falling behind. Through journaling, meditation, and intentional daily practices, she helps people break old patterns and start trusting themselves again.

But before she was any of those things, she was someone who kept ending up in the same place—and didn't think there was another version of her life available.

She found power in realizing she wasn't stuck. Service became the thing that kept her grounded. And the work didn't stop when the substance did. As she puts it, it's a lifetime process, not something you graduate from. It's a commitment to change your life and continue working on yourself for the rest of it.

🎙️ The Recovery Guide Podcast by Guardian Recovery

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If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction or mental health challenges, Guardian Recovery can help. Visit guardianrecovery.com or call 888-721-3790 for confidential support and guidance.

David Niknafs, was born with Cystic Fibrosis, a chronic illness he was told he might not outlive. Growing up, people didn't ask him what he wanted to be. They asked when he was going to die. He formed friendships with other kids living with CF, grew close to them, and then had to watch them pass one by one.

Today, at 39, he's the oldest person with Cystic Fibrosis he currently knows of.

That reality shaped his relationship with addiction in ways most people never have to think about. For a long time, it kept him from pursuing recovery altogether. He prayed to end the pain. He didn't think he'd make it to another detox. And in one therapy session, the therapist told his parents plainly that they didn't know what to tell their son. In David's words: "Why would I want to get sober and die?"

He chose recovery anyway. And looking back, he calls treatment the single best time in his life—not because of the substance or the setting, but because of the growth that happened inside of it. He describes early recovery as a window most people can't fully understand unless they've been through it: "You're in this window of a growth that is impeccable, remarkable. Don't ever lose that."

Host Michael Herbert brings his own experience to the conversation, sharing how he sought a mental health evaluation before getting clean, hoping someone would tell him he was mentally ill so he could make sense of everything. It wasn't until the substance use was addressed that he could finally confront what had been present the whole time: depression he didn't even recognize while he was still using.

Between the two of them, this one stays with you.

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This episode is sponsored by Guardian Recovery. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction or mental health challenges, Guardian can help. Visit https://www.guardianrecovery.com or call 888-721-3790 for confidential support and guidance.

Celeste Bowman was 23 when she was diagnosed with HIV. In the early years, the diagnosis felt less like a medical reality and more like a verdict—she says plainly that it was hard for a 23-year-old to grapple with something so tied, in most people's minds, to death. For a while, it was almost like the diagnosis had a voice of its own, telling her she'd never even cared about living before it showed up.

She didn't let that be the end of the story. Celeste became a licensed therapist and addiction professional—the person other people call when their world is falling apart. She's spent nearly three decades doing that work: as a family interventionist, a counselor, someone clients trust with the hardest parts of their lives.

She's just as honest about what that role has cost her. She talks about carrying dozens of clients at once, about telling herself she'd do "anything for anyone," about how easy it is for someone in her position to cross a line while telling themselves they're just trying to fix the world. She's candid about the boundaries she didn't hold early in her career, and about the ongoing, intentional work of holding them now.

With host Michael Herbert, she moves between two hard-won truths: how she survived being told her life was already over, and how she learned, sometimes the hard way, that being everyone's helper isn't the same as taking care of herself.

Follow Guardian: https://www.instagram.com/guardianrecovery

This episode is sponsored by Guardian Recovery. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction or mental health challenges, Guardian can help. Visit https://www.guardianrecovery.com or call 888-721-3790 for confidential support and guidance.