Barbara Connolly, PhD, runs Benzo Warrior, the online community I recommend most often when someone tapering a benzodiazepine asks where to find support. In this conversation from April 2026, we talked about how people learn to taper safely, why so many are pushed to go too fast, and what still gets in the way.
David Gandini is a technology entrepreneur and the chairman of SOBR, a company that detects alcohol through the skin with a wristband and a stationary device. In this conversation from July 2025, I spoke with him about how that technology works, who uses it, and why he believes monitoring should build trust rather than catch people.
In April 2025, I spoke with Dr. Rani Banik, a neuro-ophthalmologist in New York City who brings integrative and functional medicine into eye care. She wrote the book Beyond Carrots, about the foods that support healthy eyes.
Early in 2025, I spoke again with Paul Perrier, a photographer and filmmaker. The last time we talked, he had just published his memoir, Cracked Wide Open. Since then, he had taken the book on tour by bicycle, filming the whole way for a new documentary.
Shortly before her memoir came out in September 2024, I spoke with Ginelle Testa, a writer and content marketer. Her book, Making a Home Out of You, is a coming-of-age story about drugs, alcohol, relationships, and body image.
Andrew Hill, PhD, is a scientist who has worked in neurofeedback for about 25 years and runs his own company, Peak Brain Institute.
Nicole Lamberson leads the Benzodiazepine Information Coalition, a nonprofit that educates people about the harms of benzodiazepines taken exactly as prescribed. In this conversation from 2024, we talked about the difference between physical dependence and addiction, why so many people are tapered too fast, and how medical training can wear down a doctor's empathy.
In June 2024, I spoke with Dr. Steven Pratt, a senior medical director at Magellan Health. He has spent many years treating people with substance use disorders. We talked about the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, often called the ACEs study.
In May 2024, I spoke with Brad Stoddard, who owns Sunrise Mental Health, a mental health practice in Arizona. Brad is not a clinician. He runs the business side of care, the part a lot of us doctors know little about.
In March 2024, I spoke with Paul Perrier, a photographer and documentary filmmaker, about his memoir, Cracked Wide Open. The book grows out of a documentary he shot in about an hour in a hotel room in downtown Toronto, called Crack Not Broken.
In March 2024, I spoke with Eric Fisher, who has worked in mental health and addiction services for more than 13 years, about his first book, The Martial Art of Recovery: How to Subdue Addiction and Achieve Mental Wellness.
In March 2024, I spoke with Nicholas Kardaras, PhD, an addiction psychologist and the author of Glow Kids and Digital Madness. I introduced him as one of the leading experts on what he calls digital addiction.