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Cali Estes

Cali Estes

Dr. Cali Estes, PhD — addiction psychologist, founder of The Addictions Academy and Sober On Demand, 6x #1 bestselling author of "I Married a Junkie," and host of the UnPause Your Life podcast.

Oct 18, 2026

10:25
Tell us a little bit about that, if you would.
10:27
So I just put a movie trailer together.
10:30
We're putting a whole docu series on the dirty shade, dirty side of this business.
10:36
There's a lot of people that the, the movie is going to be called the black book.
10:39
So it'll be out this side of this business between people, patient brokering.
10:44
So paying for clients, paying for leads, paying for information that if you take a look at the whole Cindy Crawford son deal, where there was a sober coach, uh, which is I train coaches.
10:56
I own the addictions Academy.
12:53
Is that how it works?
37:23
in the throes of grieving the loss of your spouse, but also divulging that real time, like not even later, but real time as it's happening to the
37:34
world.
37:35
So what happened was I had gotten the phone call at eight 30 in the morning on a Monday that, cause he went to visit a friend and he passed away at the friend's house.
37:44
And I got the phone call.
37:45
My first question of course was, was there drugs? They said no.
37:49
And And I had gone to pick up the car.
37:51
So it was like a five hour drive.
41:48
They're
32:23
shows that you've helped deal with some of the trauma in your life for you even to say that.
32:27
Right.
32:28
And after my husband passed away, I got into a very bad abusive relationship.
32:31
I'd never been in an abusive relationship before.
32:34
First time ever.
32:35
And he'd punch a hole in the wall just like my dad.
32:37
He stole my car.

9 MINS LATER

42:02
So it starts out uncomfortable, but then it becomes almost a routine, almost a habit that you may have.
4:41
Do you also do the deprescribing?
4:43
I defer to her.
4:45
She's part of what we do.
4:46
So in my space, and I don't know if you know this, when somebody goes into rehab, you know, traditional 30-day inpatient, when they come in, they get a psychosocial evaluation.
4:57
And that is done by an intake specialist, but not a clinician.
5:00
So somebody without The clinical background is asking questions, the client's answering questions, and then that person gives the client a diagnosis.
5:09
And they say, oh, according to this questionnaire that you just asked while you're in detox, in stress, in crisis, coming in here because on the other side of this wall is a doctor, that person's hurrying up to answer those questions.

30 MINS LATER

34:54
Have you helped people actually get off of narcotics?
9:08
Why don't – just to recap, and you did explain this in the first episode, but maybe recap a little bit more about what you do, services you provide because you're on the front line.
9:19
Sure.
9:19
Well, first, thank you for having me back.
9:22
I enjoyed the first round even though – I got some haters in your list, but I want to talk about that.
9:27
I want to talk about the addiction to hating on social media.
9:30
That's a whole nother thing that spikes your brain.
9:32
We're going to talk about that.

31 MINS LATER

41:04
Can you share another story of maybe just one of the craziest experiences that you have had, or at least most interesting experiences?

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