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When life gets hard, does what we think we believe hold us up, or does it crumble under the weight of doubt? I'm your host, Dr. Lee Warren- I'm a brain surgeon, author, and a person who's seen some stuff and wondered where God is in all this mess. This is The Spiritual Brain Surgery podcast, where we'll take a hard look at what we believe, why we believe it, and the neuroscience behind how our minds and our brains can smash together with faith to help us become healthier, feel better, and be happier so we can find the hope to withstand anything life throws at us. You've got questions, and we're going to do the hard work to find the answers, but you can't change your life until you change your mind, and it's gonna take some spiritual-brain surgery to get it done. So let's get after it.
Hey, my friend, I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and I'm so grateful to be back with you
for another episode of the Spiritual Brain Surgery Podcast, and I'm very excited
to reintroduce you to my good friend today, Carolyn Beidler.
Caroline is a writer and long-term recovery advocate, and she explores addiction
and recovery from a neuroscientific and faith-based perspective.
She's written a couple of my very favorite books on the subject of recovery
and healing and hope, and she did a wonderful thing.
About a year ago, she invited me to a group that she wanted to start of writers.
Most of them are in the recovery space. I'm one of only a couple of the writers
in that group that's not a member of the recovery space.
But Caroline and her friends found my book, Hope is the First Dose,
helpful, and they invited me to be part of this group.
And at first, I wasn't sure where I would fit in. Lisa encouraged me to try
it. And it's turned out to be one of my favorite hours of the month.
Every month, it seems like I get closer to these folks. They become friends.
We're endorsing and helping each other with our work and sharing our platforms with each other.
And I got to know Christy Osborne and Mead Shirley and John Seidel and Erica
Anderson and several other people who have been guests on the podcast through
Caroline's group. And I'm just really grateful for her.
And today, I'm really honored that she's spending some time with us on the Spiritual
Brain Surgery podcast as a guest host to talk about her personal journey with addiction and trauma.
She's going to share how understanding the biological impacts of substance use
changed her life. She critiques the outdated This Is Your Brain on Drugs campaign
and emphasizes the importance of realizing that addiction is really complex and multifaceted.
Caroline is going to go through how neuroscience shows that recovery can heal
your brain through neuroplasticity, how individuals can regain cognitive function
and emotional stability. And she advocates for a hopeful approach to addiction.
Both individuals and their loved ones can experience healing and transformation
through grace, community and faith.
My friend caroline is going to help us change our minds and
change our lives and if you've got a friend or a loved one who's
struggling with addiction or in recovery or if you're dealing
with these things yourself this is something that'll really help
you caroline is a leading voice in the recovery space and she can help you too
we're going to get after it for spiritual brain surgery with caroline beidler
right now when life gets hard does what we think we believe hold us up or does
it crumble under the weight of doubt?
I'm Dr. Lee Warren, your host, and this is Spiritual Brain Surgery,
where we'll take a hard look at what we believe,
why we believe it, and the neuroscience behind how our minds and our brains
can work together to help us
build a bulletproof faith that will withstand anything life throws at us.
Whether you're struggling with anxiety, grief, doubt, or you just want to go
deeper into the big questions we all have, Remember,
you can't change your life until you change your mind, and sometimes it takes
spiritual brain surgery to get it done. So let's get after it.
I'm Caroline Beidler, and I'm so grateful that my friend, Dr.
Lee Warren, invited me to host this week's episode of Spiritual Brain Surgery.
I'm an author, recovery advocate, and speaker, and most importantly,
I'm a woman in long-term recovery from addiction and trauma and other mental health challenges.
For me, healing isn't something that happens overnight. It comes through grace,
community, and a broken, beautiful faith.
I like to say that I'm not a neuroscientist or a brain surgeon,
just a woman in recovery with a curious mind.
Today, I help people break free from addiction and trauma and reclaim their
lives through faith-based encouragement and practical recovery tools.
So whether you're struggling yourself or love someone who is,
whether you're struggling yourself or love someone who is, I want you to know
this, healing and recovery is possible.
It's possible. This is the podcast where we take a hard look at what we believe,
why we believe it, and how neuroscience and faith come together to help us find
the hope to withstand anything that life throws at us.
And it can throw some really challenging things at us, can it?
Today's podcast is, this is really your brain on recovery, addiction, healing, and hope.
You ready? Is your loved one struggling with addiction?
Do you have a loved one in recovery? Do you wonder how this not only impacts
their life, but maybe even their brain long-term?
Can people even ever really change?
The conversation we're about to go on today, you all, is an important one,
especially for families and loved ones trying to make sense of addiction.
Do you remember the old ad? Now, this may date me and you, I guess.
The old ad, this is your brain.
This is your brain on drugs. Anyone?
In 1987, the Partnership for a Drug-Free
America began a public service announcement that you may remember.
In this announcement, there was a man holding an egg, and he says,
again, this is your brain.
He cracks the egg into the pan, and it sizzles.
This is your brain on drugs.
Any questions? Any questions?
Yeah. Yeah, I've got questions. This ad was supposed to highlight the dangers of drug use.
And just like the Just Say No campaign, deter everyone, including children and
teens, from using illicit substances.
Did it work? Well, we only need look around at our communities,
churches, in our homes, some of us in our lives to see that today there is still
an epidemic of substance use and addiction.
Today, the opioid crisis and things like fentanyl, synthetic opioids,
have destroyed, they are destroying our communities.
Maybe it's your spouse, your child, your colleague, your neighbor, your pastor.
Maybe your loved one is struggling with addiction and you want to understand
this from a biological perspective.
What is happening? Why can't they stop or control their use?
Why does just one turn into a blackout or rage-fueled all-night argument,
marital affair, or worse?
Maybe you, like me, have lost loved ones to addiction.
Sadly, y'all, this This Is Your Brain on Drugs campaign did not deter me from using drugs.
What this ad did share was incomplete information, to put it kindly,
about the neuroscience that was emerging around this time.
It painted a picture, a very incorrect and exaggerated one.
What we know now is the reality of what happens in the brain and the body when
substances are used, used repeatedly and when dependency develops.
The good news, we also know what happens in recovery. We're going to get to that in a minute.
We know what happens to the brain synapses and what can happen,
not just physiologically, also emotionally, even spiritually.
The truth is addiction is complex.
It's biological. It's emotional. It's spiritual.
And recovery from addiction, it's just as layered. When I was 17 years old,
I had been living several years in active addiction.
At 17 years old, I experienced an overdose and almost died.
This was after the first time I was in inpatient treatment.
So this overdose landed me in inpatient treatment again.
My parents were just like at their wit's end. They didn't know what to do with
their daughter who had turned from being an athlete, straight day student,
kind of this girl next door to someone who had been extremely,
severely traumatized, who was struggling with her mental health,
who was struggling relationally, and was using drugs and alcohol to cope.
So the second time I was in inpatient treatment, I remember something.
We were in this group room, and they showed us what looked like kind of a low-budget
film on what cocaine does to your brain.
Now, cocaine was a substance that I struggled with. I remember the film,
not every detail about it, but I remember when it was talking about what was
happening in my brain, something clicked.
I remember thinking, well, maybe I'm not just this horribly broken person.
Maybe I'm not just depressed to the point of wanting to end it all. Maybe this isn't me.
Maybe a part of what was going on had been my brain being hijacked or changed
by the substances that I was ingesting.
Maybe that substance use disorder that was developing, there was more going on.
Maybe that withdrawal I was feeling was a neurochemical kind of chaos that I was trapped in.
What I learned was that my dopamine levels were tanking.
My reward center in my brain was shutting down.
The prefrontal cortex, which helps judgment and decision-making,
that part started malfunctioning in a major way.
I wasn't using substances to have fun anymore. And I think that's a lot of where,
you know, there was some confusion with my family.
It's like, why can't you just stop? Why are you doing this to us?
It was this thing I was doing. I was being bad.
Why couldn't I just be good, right?
I was using substances to just feel normal, not to get high.
I had stopped getting high a long time ago. And that's the grip of addiction.
What I started learning about how my brain was impacted by addiction changed
my life. And you all continues to, to this day, as new science emerges.
And I'm going to share a little bit more about what my dear friend,
Dr. Lee Warren says about our minds and brains.
And I started to learn, too, that my brain wasn't permanently damaged. That was another thing.
You know, that egg in the pan is like, well, you're sizzling in a pan.
No going back now. But what I learned is that I could change.
My brain could actually heal. my brain could heal.
The science shows us today that the addicted brain, the brain of an individual
who has a substance use disorder or problematic substance use, the brain changes.
And what can happen in recovery, which is the good news. And as the Apostle
Paul shares, we can become new creations.
All right, let's get there. So I'm going to do a little bit of,
I told you, I'm not the brain surgeon here. All right.
I'm guest hosting this incredible podcast, but that is definitely Dr.
Lee's role, but I'm curious. And so my own research in the field of addiction
recovery has led me to discover some really exciting things about what happens
to the brain in addiction.
So let's go through that. We're going to talk about a couple of points and then
we're going to get to the really good stuff about what happens to our brains
as we heal, what we can do to help them heal and what happens in recovery.
So neuroscience points to several factors why addiction can take hold or hijack
the brain, morphing our loved ones, ourselves into people that we barely recognize.
We as human beings have knowledge about the body that evolves over time.
And thank goodness, right?
I learned this recently. Did you all know that like centuries ago,
philosophers like Aristotle thought the brain was like a coolant in a car engine
whose only function was to keep the heart from overheating? Isn't that interesting?
What we know now, what we know today is that the brain is a miraculous organ,
maybe lacking in the looks department, no offense, but it is the most advanced and complex of organs.
I love this that Dr. Lee Warren shares.
He says, today, what we're really learning now is that the root of neuroplasticity,
I'm going to talk more about that in a minute, the root of neuroplasticity is
the brain's response to the mind.
The mind and the brain are not the same thing.
The mind and the brain are not the same thing. This is where the hope lies because
your thoughts are what drives positive brain changes,
overcomes addiction, and allows us to believe and know that we are not just
our brains, not just our brains.
In other words, our brains are not us. And this is a hopeful thought.
This is a hopeful thought. So when we do damage to our brain,
our brains on drugs, you know, quote unquote, there's an imbalance.
Maybe there's a surge in feel-good chemicals like dopamine through creating this temporary high.
Maybe over time with continued use, like what I experienced as a young adult
and into my 20s, this rush of dopamine overstimulates the brain's reward system.
Over time, what does the brain do to compensate? It's a very intelligent organ.
It adapts by cutting back its natural dopamine production and then becomes less sensitive to it.
This is when addiction takes hold. You need to start having more and more substances
to get the same effect, right?
And when that substance is taken away, like with opioid use,
for example, withdrawal symptoms set in.
And if you have ever been with or experienced yourself withdrawal from substances
like opioids, alcohol, things like sweating, shaking, nausea,
hallucinations, sometimes it can be deadly withdrawal if you don't have medical support.
The brain struggles without its chemical boost, right?
And long-term use can even change the brain structure, affecting memory,
judgment, emotional control.
So what started as this feel good escape.
And for me as a teen, I desperately wanted to escape.
I desperately was looking for ways to cope. I had experienced things,
you know, trauma in my childhood. And then in my substance use as a teen,
like sexual violence, I just, I wanted it to go away.
Anything I could do to escape the pain, escape the pain.
But as I was overloading my sweet young brain with, you know, substances, I'm.
Overloading it with dopamine over time, what happens is we develop a tolerance.
You may have heard the phrase chasing the high, right? We chase this high.
That's this elusive lie that somehow we can find that feeling again.
Chasing the first high is something that is always just out of reach for those
of us who struggle with addiction.
No matter how hard we try, tolerance
along with other factors will never let
us get to that point that first feeling of
euphoria tolerance can be deathly too
and i've met too many families who've had to experience this with many overdose
with many overdose deaths happening after people stop for a time like during
incarceration and then go back to using the same amount only to discover that
their body wasn't used to that.
So you all, the idea that you're just like wired this way, or,
you know, you just have a broken brain or, you know, you're never going to change. It's a lie.
Believing this lie keeps us stuck. And as family members and loved ones trying
to understand what someone we care about is going through, it does damage.
You all, we are not our brain. We are not broken beyond repair and we can change. Dr.
Warren shared recently in one of his newsletters, which if you're not subscribed,
by the way, it's fabulous.
Please do that on Substack. But he explored this kind of older materialistic
view of neuroscience and how it misses the mark.
So many people today believe that personality, behavior, brokenness,
maybe addiction is kind of hardwired, right, due to what we've experienced.
The materialist view instead says that our identity comes from brain's chemistry and structure.
If our brain is damaged, we're hopeless.
This view isn't true.
So we have this cultural myth, and then we have this view that says,
no matter what, you can never change.
But you know what the truth is? The mind and brain are two different things.
The mind can change your brain. This is all what this amazing podcast is about.
This is called neuroplasticity, and this is where recovery comes in.
Our thoughts, attention, beliefs, and actions can literally rewire your brain over time.
Over time. I love in Romans chapter 12, verse 2, it says this,
be transformed by the renewing of your mind, you all. This is a command.
This is a command from God's word to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.
We can be active participants in this.
And in 2 Corinthians, we can take our thoughts captive.
Take every thought captive.
Every thought captive. I love that today the research has evolved to the point
of us understanding that that big sizzling in a pan no longer cuts it in terms
of our understanding about our brain and addiction.
And what's even more exciting, there's folks like the Recovery Research Institute
that share that while research may still be too limited in terms of how the
brain heals in recovery.
There is a growing body of evidence that shares addiction recovery can literally
heal the brain long-term. How amazing is that?
There's actually a study on alcohol use disorder for adolescents that shows
the brain imaging scans changing over time, that that functioning part of the
brain impacted by alcohol, increased abstinence from alcohol over time,
leads to improvements in that executive functioning.
So removing that substance, healing, healing that behavior and replacing it
with healthy actions actually improves the brain's functioning.
Some other ways that have been shown to heal the brain's recovery can include,
you know, when we are in recovery, we have this restoration of balance.
So those chemicals we talked about earlier, those natural chemicals of dopamine and serotonin.
Over time start to learn, your body starts to develop those naturally again.
We learn that things like exercise, maybe a new hobby, being with loved ones
and social support, we find ways to get those substances naturally and our brain
starts developing them again in a healthy way.
We start to feel normal and even good without the use of substances.
We can actually see in recovery and improvement of cognitive functioning.
Memory, attention, even problem solving can improve as the brain returns to equilibrium.
Stress decreases. And we know from other research that reduced stress,
you all leads to a ton of really positive health benefits, reducing things like
anxiety, even the function and structure of the brain, that prefrontal cortex,
those things that are impacted by substance use can return to a normal state
and function regularly again. It's amazing news.
It's amazing news. And we can take Dr.
Lee Warren's incredible self-brain surgery approach.
Again, if you're not a subscriber to Dr. Lee's sub-stock self-brain surgery,
please do that because he shares some incredible information about this approach.
But we can use our mind to direct our brain towards healing.
Again, taking those thoughts captive, focusing on being new creations.
Taking a charge and being active participants and renewing our mind.
We can listen to and recognize those old thought patterns.
I've always been this way. It's just who I am. I'm broken. I'm never going to
heal. My brain is always going to be damaged.
We can hear that. We can hear that for a minute, but we don't have to connect
with them. Those thoughts aren't truth.
We can challenge them and we can replace them with the truth.
We can start by practicing small daily shifts in our thinking.
Like, we aren't our addiction. We are not our brain. We are capable of renewal, mind, brain, and soul.
So as a next step, start noticing some of those limiting beliefs.
If you're a person struggling with addiction, if you're a person in addiction
recovery, start noticing those limiting beliefs.
If you're a family member, this applies to you too.
Family members and loved ones, start noticing those limiting thoughts that you're
having about your loved one.
They are not true. Healing is possible.
Healing is possible. So you all, this is where the hope comes in.
The same science that explains addiction also shows us how recovery can heal
the brain. Recovery can heal the brain.
The brain can rewire itself. Thank you, neuroplasticity. With time and support,
dopamine levels can normalize.
We can gain cognitive function, regain cognitive function and emotional stability.
And we can build healthy routines, prayer, community, and purpose to create new pathways.
You may have heard the saying, neurons that fire together, wire together.
This means that when we practice new habits as loved ones or people in recovery,
seeking recovery, when we practice new habits, when we speak life over ourselves,
when we connect with God and others, our brains begin to rebuild from the inside out.
Y'all, recovery is possible for you and a loved one.
And maybe, maybe you're listening and your heart is just broken right now.
Maybe you're feeling overwhelmed.
Maybe you are that someone and you feel like you're just too far gone. Let me say this clearly.
Please listen to this. You are not broken beyond repair.
Your loved one is not broken beyond repair.
Addiction may have rewritten some stories in your brain, but God's grace can rewrite our future.
Recovery is a process, y'all, and it's also a promise.
It's a promise that healing is possible, that relationships can be restored
and that our minds and our brains can be healed.
If your heart is tired, if you've stopped believing in change,
or if you're scared that this time won't be different for you or a loved one,
stay open to the truth of brain surgery.
Stay open to the truth of self brain surgery and let the science stories and
Holy Spirit give us hope.
You are not alone, friend. Let's keep walking in the truth.
I'm just so grateful for the invitation to host this podcast today.
Again, I'm Caroline Beidler. Be on the lookout for my next book.
I have a book coming next year, 2026 from Nelson Books called When You Love
Someone in Recovery, A Hopeful Guide to Understanding Addiction.
I also have some amazing offerings on my website, carolinebeidler.com,
including an upcoming offering, Recovery Rhythm Reset, a 30-day journey for healing,
for addiction, and mental health recovery for you or a loved one. So find me online.
And again, I'm Caroline, and this has been Spiritual Brain Surgery.
Be sure to subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode.
And remember what our friend, Dr. Warren says, you can't change your life until you change your mind.
And the good news is you can start today. What an incredible talk.
Thank Thank you so much to Caroline for her time.
Friend, if this was helpful, be sure to check the links in the show notes for
more about Caroline and her books and her website and the great work that she's doing.
And don't forget, you can't change your life until you change your mind.
Thanks for checking out Spiritual Brain Surgery. Please be sure to subscribe
to the podcast wherever you listen and make sure you're getting my newsletter,
drleewarren.substack.com every Sunday since 2014.
I've been sharing my best prescriptions for how you can change your mind and
change your life by smashing neuroscience and faith together.
This has been Spiritual Brain Surgery with guest host Caroline Beidler.
God bless you, friend. We'll see you next time.