What Happens When ADHD, Trauma & Meth Collide? | Lance Wright’s Recovery | ANEW EP 133

In ANEW Insight Episode 133, Dr. Supatra Tovar sits down with Addiction Recovery Specialist Lance Wright, whose powerful journey from childhood abandonment and untreated ADHD to meth addiction, incarceration, and eventual recovery reframes addiction as a survival response to unresolved trauma—not a moral failing.

With over 32 years of sobriety and founder of Life Over Addiction, Lance explains how his first encounter with meth created profound clarity and emotional relief, falsely quieting the chaos of untreated ADHD and childhood pain. That temporary calm reinforced addiction rather than healing, deepening the cycle of shame, self-medication, and emotional numbing.

This episode explores the deeper psychology of addiction, including:
 • How ADHD and trauma increase vulnerability to substance use
 • Why drugs can feel like “medicine” before becoming dependence
 • The role of neuroplasticity in recovery and emotional healing
 • How incarceration failed to address root causes while education transformed recovery
 • Why vulnerability and accountability restore identity
 • How forgiveness opened the door to purpose and redemption

Lance shares intimate reflections on childhood abandonment, punishment-based systems, discovering meaning through mentorship, and how the 12-step process supported not just sobriety—but emotional maturity and self-compassion. His story stands as a beacon of hope for anyone navigating addiction personally or supporting a loved one through recovery.

📌 Free 30-Minute Zoom Consultation
 Schedule here: https://calendly.com/info-overaddiction/30min

📧 Email for Support / Enquiries
 info@lifeoveraddiction.com 

🌐 Founder & Addiction Recovery Specialist
 Lance Wright — Founder/CEO, Life Over Addiction, LLC

🎧 Watch or listen now via the link in bio and join us for Part Two as we continue the conversation on healing, mentorship, and recovery pathways.

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Thank you for joining us on this journey to wellness. Remember, the insights and advice shared on the ANEW Body Insight Podcast are for educational and informational purposes only and do not constitute medical advice. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making any changes to your health routine. To learn more about the podcast and stay updated on new episodes, visit ANEW Body Insight Podcast at anew-insight.com. To watch this episode on YouTube, visit @my.anew.insight. Follow us on social media at @my.anew.insight on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Threads for more updates and insights. Thank you for tuning in! Stay connected with us for more empowering stories and expert guidance. Until next time, stay well and keep evolving with ANEW Body Insight!

Transcript

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:00

Hello and welcome everyone. I am so thrilled to have Addiction Recovery Specialist and my new friend Lance Wright with me today, Lance. Hi, So I'm gonna read you a little bit about Lance and then I am going to drill him with all my questions. Lance Wright is an addiction recovery specialist with over 32 years of sobriety and is the founder of Life Over Addiction, a program that helps individuals and families navigate recovery with compassion and clarity. Oh, I'm so excited. I, you know, you really did impress me with just your raw honesty and just how vulnerable you were up on stage, and I think people who are struggling with addiction, or anyone who knows somebody struggling with addiction can really gain something from your message. So I really want to, as much as you feel comfortable go into your history if you can just give us a glimpse into what your life was like before recovery.

Lance Wright: 0:03

Well, I mean, I think what you, when you define addiction, it's the beginning point of every conversation we are, we're going to explore today because the understanding of addiction in society is people that have a problem with substances or alcohol or criminal behavior or eating or gambling, and those are all external manifestations of an internal problem with our thinking. It's how we do things. I talk to the clients a lot about it every day, and I'm very vulnerable with them because I can't expect them to understand something that they've never heard or seen themselves. And so for me, my journey and my story and my programming, or how I develop the way I see the world or myself, and it started as a little boy. And you know, you heard me speak, but really my earliest memories were being home alone in the bed with my little dachshund Duchess in the middle of the night, wondering if mom was gonna come home. I had to learn how to feed myself, take care of myself from a very young age. When I think about it and I see a little 4-year-old, like when my niece lived with me, I'm wondering how did I survive? How did I make it through that? And I, today, I believe firmly in a higher power or God of my understanding that had my back even when I didn't, nobody else did. But those early impressions in my programming where I'm alone, I'm different, I'm abandoned. Those spaces within that many people may experience in life and gloss over or not think of, but those little programmings start to evolve over time. They just punished the behavior. So that little kid that felt abandoned and alone and scared goes into a school system that says you're different, you don't belong, and you're separate. I'm not saying that the school system or my mom or anybody had these intentions. This isn't a blame right or wrong thing, it's just facts that an evolution of a child. And by six years old, I had a very definitive perception of myself as that little bastard kid that nobody loved and cared about, that I was different and that, you know, I was alone in the world. So by that time I had started to evolve and had a few friends in my neighborhood that were like-minded, not, how do you call a six or 7-year-old, a troublemaker, you know? You can see the programming. Me coming home from school with this programming or wherever I was at coming home, and I saw a rack of the old Coke bottles or a couple racks of Coke bottles in somebody's yard, and I said, I know those are quarters because I've taken them to the store from my mom before. I grabbed those little couple racks of Coke bottles and off to the store I went. Now, of course, I wouldn't perceive it as stealing or theft. We'll call it requisitioning at that age. And I had a handful of quarters all of a sudden. I was somebody, I had what you had. Matter of fact, I had more than what you had and I couldn't wait to get to the pinball place at the Greyhound bus depot to give you quarters and to play 10 or 15 games. And that little kid that felt like the little bastard kid disappeared for a minute. They were like, oh, that's great. You're giving us quarters. It's ah, Lance! Peers and friends that were like accepting and family and like, yay. And this little kid was finding a sense of purpose and an identity. And by nine, I was a little thief to be honest, but we were in Northern California in an aunt's house, and my mom up to that point had taught me drugs was bad and she, my aunt went under the couch, Northern California, pulled outled out the tray and rolled a cigarette, passed to my uncle, passed it to my mom, passed it to my cousin who passed it to me. do what they're doing. This must be okay. I choked and coughed and you know, everybody laughed. time it got around the second or third time, smoking pot was something I really liked. It made me laid back. I was cool. And now I had another thing that helped me change the space in here and in here. And from stealing and pot, it got into burglaries and trying everything but hard, real hard drugs. And of course with that, juvenile halls, youth authorities, camps, programs. I was reprobate, so to speak. And nobody really ever questioned, why is this kid screwed up? It was, you broke the law, you did bad. We're putting you in a facility, we're locking you down. Boom boom. And I'm not blaming anybody. It was just the system and how the system's set up. It's like if your son or your daughter get in trouble and you send them to their room without their phone for an evening and you don't explain why you're taking the phone, they're not gonna learn why you're taking their phone. And so I grew up in an environment where incarceration or programming was the solution to my problems, and nobody really ever asked or explored it with me. And so my life up to 16 progressively got worse. Like we talk about alcohol or substances, my lifestyle progressed to a point where I was in a program for like six months behind the juvenile hall where they were trying to fix me. And in that program I got taken home one night by my counselor and I found out my mom was dying of cancer. He told me and I didn't hear cancer. I heard, you know, mom's gonna die. As this little, 'cause you, I might have been 16, but I was more like eight inside my head in my heart. 'cause I really never matured 'cause I had been just escaping reality all my life up to that point. My mom was diagnosed with cancer and I can't deal with that. I'm very empathic and it was too much for me, and I was already in a drug induced culture and lifestyle, so I just ran away. And over the next three years I found methamphetamine. And the problem with drugs for me is I have mental health problems. It's why I couldn't sit still in school. Right after I found out my mom was diagnosed with cancer, I met some people that said, Hey, you wanna do some meth? I don't even know what that is. I thought it was like cocaine. You do it, it's high for a few minutes and then you go whatever. So I, I, I was messing with these people and ended up doing methamphetamine with them. And when I first ingested that substance and it entered my system, my ADHD, it was like my entire life was like going through life like the Star Trek Enterprise through warp speed. And obviously with a substance like that and looking back on my life and the broken soul that I was when I was introduced to that already broken, it just was off and three years later my mom died of cancer. Ellis and his wife Tina, and his son Brandon, and their family. I live and do today is to honor them and Matthew, of course, my life and my journey because I can see how I ended up there and how that man didn't deserve what happened to him anymore than I did. And I'm, that's not a justification or a rationalization, it's just that I am responsible for my actions and I live accordingly today. But I didn't really get that when I was arrested and was sent off to prison with a 17 year, four month to life sentence. I continued to do the same things 'cause it's the only way I knew how to cope with self, with the reality

Lance Wright: But nine years into that life sentence, three months to my first parole board hearing, I got caught for possession of methamphetamine for distribution and being high as a kite. And I am in an ad seg cell, and I came outta psychosis about three days later and it was March 11th when I came out of it, about 1: 0:15

30 in the morning. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to think that you're gonna die in prison at that point. But I remember that night vividly. It was the, probably like we talked about disruption.

Lance Wright: 0:16

And so, at that point I had surrendered to the fact that I didn't want that lifestyle anymore, but I didn't know what this new one was gonna look like. And you didn't hear me and I didn't speak about this. This is the first time you're hearing about it, but the mo, one of the more pivotal points in my life was three months later when we went to the parole hearing, and two things really stood out to me and still stand out. One is I got to go into the parole board and say, look, I get, I have problems. And at the end of her share, she looked over and she made eye contact she said, my fam we're Christians. We don't believe in hate. right. You know what I mean? Like yeah. I should probably be in those meetings even though I don't think they work. So I'm sitting in these meetings with Opey Taylor and I'm like, okay, I'm here. But they're giving you a chrono says You're a good boy and you're going to meetings. he went to prison and some old guy named David G came in doing hospitals and institutions work and running meetings and told my sponsor, Richard, you're full of shit. If you want help, ask me, but don't waste my time. And Richard was the kind of person that respected that level of communication. So we had said, yeah, I started working with David. He made suggestions. I do 'em. We went through the steps. I still do 'em. They work pretty good. They might work for you. And he kind of just tossed the mic. And I was like, that's the first person I've ever heard that talked about transformation and recovery but he had my attention it, he spoke from the heart and he, like you said earlier, when we first started this, his vulnerability attracted me. His honesty and authenticity made me think there was hope. And from that point on my life began to change. He wasn't one of those people that said you have to do anything. He said let's sit down over lunch and talk about step one, step two, let's meet on the yard and talk about step three as a group of us, like eight or 10 of us. And he was taking us and teaching us what the 12 steps were so that we would be comfortable saying, Hey Rich, would you sponsor me? And the rest is history. Yeah. And so that's kind of where I met Richard and then he left and there was a bunch of us on the yard that were like, oh God, Richard's gone. It was like a drug, you know. And so he fell into that and he ended up being transferred to another prison. And I believe around 2009, he was diagnosed with cancer in his liver. And the archdiocese in Los Angeles, father Greg Boyle and a few other real prominent people in LA went to the court and petitioned for a compassionate release and it was granted.

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:23

Oh Lance, oh my gosh. I can't even get through this story without just tears. And I think you are so right that there is so much power in vulnerability. I mean, Brene Brown did a whole TED Talk on that in and of itself, and it's so true when we can be raw and honest and speak from our hearts and admit our, you know, faults and our wrongdoings, and ask for forgiveness and then carry it forward as a mission. And so when he was done the speech, everybody just stood up and gave a standing ovation 'cause it was just so beautiful. So. So please come back for the second half. And Lance, I know you're gonna be back. So thank you all for joining us. Tune in next time for the second half of this amazing interview with Addiction Recovery Specialist Lance Wright.