Brad Wetzler Addiction and PTSD S4 E19
Brad Wetzler speaks and writes passionately about mental health, men's issues, and spirituality.
His new memoir, Into the Soul of the World: My Journey to Healing {Hachette, March 2023) is an adventure journalist’s story of a decade-long, round-the-world quest to overcome his drug addiction and to understand and heal from past traumas.
More about his new book: Suffering from PTSD and severe depression from past trauma, battling an addiction to overprescribed psychiatric medication, and at the rock bottom of his career, journalist Brad Wetzler had nowhere to go. So he set out on a journey to wander and hopefully find himself—and the world—again.
Into the Soul of the World is Wetzler’s thrilling, impactful, and heartrending memoir of healing—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. An adventure journalist at heart, Wetzler mixes travelogue with empowering insights about his inner journey to better care for his own mental health. Journey with him as he travels across Israel and the West Bank, before moving on to India, a candle-lit cave on a mountaintop in the Himalayan foothills, and a life-changing encounter with a 100-year-old yogi.
Wetzler's writing is full of the poignant, amusing, and occasionally heart‑breaking situations that unfold when we finally decide to confront depression (or any mental health struggle) and declare ourselves ready to heal: How do we heal our past and thrive again? What does it mean to live a good life? How can we transform our suffering and serve others? His answer: live to tell the story and find the humility and courage to be the best human you can be.
More about Brad: Wetzler began his writing and publishing career serving as an editor at Outside magazine, where he worked with some of America’s finest journalists and nonfiction writers. He later turned in his editor’s pen for a writer’s and traveled the world writing about adventure and exploration, business, politics, the environment, sports, and wellness. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, GQ, Wired, National Geographic, Travel + Leisure, and Outside, as well as hundreds of major U.S. newspapers.
In midlife, after recovering from a long, debilitating depression, he became a certified yoga teacher and began exploring and writing about our inner landscape: psychology, spirituality, meditation, and yoga. He writes the Substack newsletter: Enlightened-ish with Brad Wetzler and hosts the Enlightened-ish with Brad Wetzler Podcast. He teaches in-person yoga workshops at Practice Yoga Austin and he teaches yoga online.
He holds a masters degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
He lives in Austin, Texas.
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