My Sobriety Story with Randal

From making music in LA to practicing holistic medicine

Dec 02, 2024

This series showcases personal stories of addiction recovery and sobriety. Today’s edition features

, a Doctor of Chinese Medicine and shamanic practitioner whose spiritual, integrative program of addiction recovery has been implemented in holistic clinics, premier treatment centers, and his private practice. You can access the online version of The Program through his newsletter,

The Sober Shaman

. You can listen to Randal read his responses to this Q&A here.

When and how did you get sober?

The when is July 17, 1994. And the how is simply that I had just had enough. After countless attempts to quit and many relapses, what changed this time was a clear and unwavering decision to quit. Boom. That’s it. I wasn’t going to try—I just did.

I knew that if this was really going to work, I had to relinquish all the slippery people, places, and things—which made up about 90 percent of my life as a rock ‘n’ roll guitar player trying to make it in LA.

The only other things I had going for me, which were keeping me alive during the insanity, were my study and practice of Chinese martial and medical arts, along with my spirituality.

Neither of those offered clear or well-defined pathways for getting and staying sober, but I knew they worked for me. The passion I had previously poured into making music—and the fire that had fueled my cravings to use—was now redirected into my curiosity about how this medicine could help me and, later, others.

What was the turning point in your decision to get sober?

I would call it the tipping point rather than a turning point. In the moment I made “the decision,” I felt the full weight of 17 years’ worth of using and its consequences tip over into conscious awareness.

It wasn’t any one thing or a lightning-bolt moment of understanding. It was the felt accumulation of all the wasted time. For whatever reason, that was—and remains—my pain.

This pain still serves me to this day, because whenever I’m engaged in an activity that could be judged as wasting time, I’m brought into the present moment. And this is the practice: I breathe, relax, and observe from an objective view what the next right thing is. Usually, it involves stopping whatever activity I was doing, because it indeed was “enough of that.”

What surprised you about getting sober?

What surprised me the most was that I was able to give up playing music as easily as I did. I had such a deep connection between my addiction and my playing that I knew I couldn’t stay in that field. That part was obvious.

But the good that I received from music, which I would call soul nourishment, led me to be surprised by the possibility of finding new ways to get the same medicine.

For example, when I wrote music, it was always a collaborative jam. There’s nothing better than riding a groove, being carried by its current, and, in all aspects of the phrase, playing together. This was experimentation, without judgment, in which we responded to each other’s input with, “Yes, and…then, what if…?”

Later on, armed with a degree, a medical license, and a bunch of acupuncture needles, I could drop into a group at an addiction treatment center and do exactly the same thing. But instead of hitting a chord to elicit a band member’s response, I could throw out a question like, “What’s stronger: belief or reality?” and the room would quickly divide into sides, the discussion rolling, and the current of exploration, learning, and insight in motion.

And now, I can add healing to that list—and yes, this was, and continues to this day to be, surprising, as well as exciting and inspiring.

What’s the biggest challenge you’ve encountered on your recovery journey?

I’d say there have been two challenges. First, because I was a man of more and addicted to faster, louder, sharper, let’s-keep-this-train-a-rolling ridiculousness, there’s still a part of me that holds these beliefs and suggests that sticking my finger in the nearest light socket is a good idea. You know, just for the feeling of it—just for ol’ time’s sake.

Quite simply, this is when I allow feelings to completely override all sense of logic and reason. A freight train of feeling has always provided enough of a jolt to ignore whatever reality I’m avoiding.

So, the big challenge is recognizing when that belief is offering its opinion—disguised as passion, excitement, or something I totally deserve—and seeing it for what it is. Most often, I say, “Thanks. Great idea. But instead, I’m just going to do this boring, next right thing over here.”

The other big challenge has been with my spirituality. It’s hard walking a path of practicing core shamanism, especially as the teachers lie on the other side of the veil in non-ordinary reality. So, finding other people who know the language, the medicine, and the ins and outs of this work is not so easy. After all, it’s not like being able to look up the nearest Roman Catholic Church and drop in on a service.

What are the biggest benefits or gifts of sobriety?

While there are so many obvious and powerful benefits of sobriety and how it affects health, wealth, and happiness, of course, the biggest gift is my relationship with the Love of My Lifetimes and simultaneously ex- and current wife, Dr. Dana Leigh Lyons—which in no way could have happened or been maintained if I were anywhere near active addiction.

And while a close and meaningful relationship is easy to identify as the biggest gift, it also serves as a reminder of the big gift of appreciation and gratitude for exactly what I’ve got, right here and right now, in this exactly perfect form, showing up exactly as the way things are.

What words of advice would you give someone who’s considering sobriety or newly sober?

Stop searching. Start trusting. Trust what you already know to be true. “Answers” are not found “out there” somewhere. Rather, they are listened to as what I call “the truth that resides in your bones.” This truth speaks of the next right thing to do and reminds you that you are completely deserving of all the best this world has to offer.