Greg’s Journey to Sobriety and Spirituality
Welcome back to another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. I’m your host, Jake White from Vive 18, and today we are hanging out with a new friend, Greg Johnson. Now, before I get into it, I’m very excited to share a little bit about what he does.
So Greg is the founder of Sober Heart. He provides VIP sober coaching and spiritual mentoring for high achieving athletes, artists, professionals, and the disenfranchised who are tired of destroying their lives with substances and negative behaviors. And they’re finally ready to break free from the struggle of dependence so they may fully love themselves and truly appreciate their success. love how, Greg, I’m looking at your bio is you’re really helping those struggling with drug and alcohol sobriety to remain sober, which I think is very interesting. And then you have over a thousand hours of coaching, facilitating and speaking. And then you had mentioned too, just being this boutique service for confidential VIP services for these high level athletes, actors and professionals where they’re anonymity? I don’t know how to say that word, but being anonymous is really important. So Greg, dude, thank you for taking the time hopping on with me to the episode. We’re super excited to learn from you.
Awesome. I appreciate you having me Jake and I look forward to our time together and getting to know each other and sharing with your audience today. So thank you. Appreciate it.
Of course. Well, to start things out, Greg, I would love to just learn a little bit and however you want to do it. But if I would love to learn what your job looks like today and then your story of how you got into that, into this world that you’re in right now.
Sure, if you don’t mind, think I’ll start in reverse and it will lead us into what I do today. I moved to Los Angeles, California. I’m based in Los Angeles and I moved here in 2002 and I initially moved down here for entertainment, which I still work in entertainment. This sobriety thing is my side hustle, if you will. And when I came down here, I was ⁓ struggling with my own addiction and using and I was really deep in a methamphetamine addiction and I was battling that and it was a challenging time coming to Los Angeles and not really knowing anybody and not having a support system. That went on for about three years. Prior to moving to LA, know, I dealt with addiction in my family when I was 25.
My father died of a drug overdose very unexpectedly. And at the time I didn’t know that he was a drug addict, but it all made sense. know, growing up in high school, his very erratic behavior. And at the time I had no idea that he was a drug addict. And then two months later, my uncle shot and killed himself because he was an alcoholic and couldn’t deal with his brother’s death. And so that sent me into an eight year spiral fast forward to 2005, three years into being here in LA, I finally got sober. Finally went to a 12-step program, this time on my own accord with the help of a friend. And at the same time, I found a spiritual community. That friend brought me back to the 12-step program, my Eskimo. And for years, she had tried to get me to go to a spiritual community that is Agape International Spiritual Center here in Beverly Hills. And I finally said yes to that.
And I threw myself into the spiritual community. I knew I was home. I was like, my God, these people are speaking my language. This is what I know to be true. And I threw myself into the 12-Step Program, and I threw myself into a four-year study program at my church’s university to become licensed as a spiritual practitioner because I needed it. I needed to reacquaint myself with God and to create a spiritual practice. And it did that for me.
And what happened in 2009, I graduated and they ask you, are you gonna do with your practice? How are you gonna serve? Well, it organically happened that I began working in treatment venues in the treatment arena. My best friend at the time, his ⁓ girlfriend, now wife opened up a facility and there’s like, come in and do a group and I did. And it was amazing. The work was powerful.
And because of that word of mouth, I just grew a sober heart. I started the company, Heart, and it has just grown over the course of what, 13, 14 years. And the work that we do is of a spiritual inclination, right? It’s sober, yet it’s a deep spiritual thing that takes place. And what we are doing is returning folks back to God. And a client said it best, you know, there’s a lot of, information about spirituality, what it is, and a lot of beliefs, and we could debate it, this or that. And a client said it to me best, just very simply yet profoundly. He came and perplexed when we began to work together. Like, I don’t know about the spirituality thing, This is not me. I’m not spiritual. And at the end of our time together, he comes running into our room together, and he grabs me, and he’s excited like a little child, and he’s like, Greg, I finally know what spirituality is. And I’m like, please do tell.
And he said to me, spirituality is my ability to love myself. And I said, yes, that’s absolutely it. So this work is transformational, it is healing, it is powerful. And yeah, that’s the gist of it, and that’s what I do. That’s incredible journey. I’m so glad that you were able to use that to get into an incredible situation yourself where you were no longer dependent on substances, but found freedom, but then to also help others get there is incredible. That’s what lights me up. We’re in the world of prevention. So hopefully keeping students that have chosen to be substance free that way for as long as possible. And it breaks my heart that some of these young people are already addicted, whether it’s nicotine, harder drugs, THC, things like that. There’s just a lot out there. And the people listening to this show, they’re school administrators, they’re working in drug prevention themselves through coalitions. They’re often passionate about recovery. And so I’d love to ask you because of your resume and what you do, when you’re emphasizing on remaining sober, is there some challenges you see that people commonly face after they’ve chosen to be sober? What are the challenges that come up after that that fall into that realm of remaining sober?
Challenges in Maintaining Sobriety
That is a great question. And if you don’t mind, I’ll just speak from my life experience. You know, God willing, one day at a time, May 22 of 2026, this year, I will have 21 years sober. So I’ve been at this for a bit of time. And I got to say, before my 20th year of celebration of sobriety, it was in August of 2024. All hell breaks out in my life.
I go in for a total left hip replacement on August 7th. I have to take time off from work. The same day, my mom unexpectedly, she was in a rehab, she goes in to the emergency room. And I come out of my surgery and I FaceTime with my sister-in-law who’s with my mother. She’s in her hospital bed. I’m in my hospitable bed. My mom’s like, how are you? I’m fine. How are you? I’m okay. Well, I go home shortly thereafter. The next day I’m on FaceTime with my family because they’re up in Northern California. I’m on my couch. I can barely get off the couch to go to the bathroom. And the doctors walk into the ER room and they say to us, to my mother, you’re going to die. Your liver is dead and you’re going to die. And we’re like, what? And within a matter of hours, she is in a coma on comfort care. The next day she dies.
And I got to tell you, Jake, it was like just the most excruciating moment of my life, not even just survival life. And I felt so helpless. And so that was not the end of it. Two months later, lost two of my major clients and I lost 70 % of my income. Months later, I experienced betrayal in business. I have a nonprofit and we experienced a betrayal and people using the name of the foundation to open locations, forging signatures. The list goes on and on and on. And just one of those things would have been the perfect storm to get high, right? One of those things. Yet it was one thing after another and I was like, dear God, this is unbearable, unbearable. And I felt like I was drowning.
The good news is that I have built my life. I built my life on sobriety and spirituality. And you know, when I first came in, it was so difficult to ask for help. I didn’t know how to ask for help. And that nearly killed me. I would go in and suffer in silence because I just didn’t know how to do that. Today, without question, I can lean in and I have that support system around me.
And what I found was that my sober program and my spiritual program got me through, right? And I devoted each day to a deeper experience with God, a deeper commitment, a deeper trust, a deeper surrender, a deeper turning over, and it got me through. And I’m just now, just now coming out the other side of that. You know, I had some legal stuff going on as well and that’s coming to completion. And the same, one day at a time, that thing I live by, one day at a time. But what I’ve done is I’ve utilized my personal spiritual practice and we do really great work. We have these beautiful retreats and I’ll tell you more about it as we go along, but we’ve put together these spiritual sober retreats, right? Strengthen sobriety and serenity through spiritual retreats. And they are powerful experiences and it’s all what I’ve utilized to keep me sober through all of that. I hope that answers your question.
Yeah, well, what I’m, I think what I’m catching is that you maybe had said it, I don’t know if I’m saying the exact words, but that you are rooted in your sobriety and that sometimes if your identity is in substance use or drugs, like that could be your identity for a moment. And you substituted it with your identity in Christ or in your faith. And that it became a new foundation to build upon. So when all those things were crashing down, you still had that foundation. And Greg, can I share something? I I literally wrote a note on my phone this morning. We had never met, but I wrote down this note and I feel led to share it with you because you had said like, yeah, I was rooted in that. And I’ve heard a phrase from some people that are in recovery and this phrase doesn’t sound harmful, but I can sense it being a little harmful to someone’s heart and maybe even to other people as they communicate it. And it’s something like, hey, don’t, they’ll say, I don’t regret my past because it made me who I am today. And I think the purpose of that statement is saying, I’m not gonna feel shame or guilt about the past, which I think is a good thing but I also am wrestling with it because if, I would think I would regret making those decisions. What really saved my life wasn’t using substances. It’s the recovery process and building yourself up again, healing. That’s what made you who you are today. The substance use didn’t make anything of it. I’m wondering if you have any thoughts on that. Cause I was, I literally was writing it down this morning.
Yeah, I do. fact, you know, that whatever we go through, all of it, our drug abuse, our addiction active, the things that we go through in sobriety that could possibly take us out, rather than looking at it from a place of guilt, shame, blame, remorse, heaviness. I know for myself, when I went through those things in sobriety, I gave thanks for them. I gave thanks for them because they are the beautiful things that lead us deeper.
Just as our drug addiction and alcoholism was progressive in nature, our sobriety and spirituality must also be progressive in nature. There’s no more buffer, right? And so for me to be able to do that, I must embrace all of it. And no, I say thank you God for this reminder. Thank you for taking me deeper, right? We get sober out of desperation and we continue to stay sober in that place as well.
I almost cursed, I hope that’s okay. When the crap hits the fan, You know, it’s not only the things that we go through, but it’s our relationship with it that deepens the negative impact. So we can just diminish all that by giving thanks for it all because we know it’s the thing that brings forth a greater good in our lives as we all have experienced.
Okay, that’s interesting. That’s interesting to hear the entire, the format and the picture. Cause my brain is from the prevention side. And so I’m imagining sharing your story with a teenager and they say, you don’t regret using those substances. So therefore I can go use them and one day it’ll make me into who I am. So I’m thinking like danger, danger, don’t share that with a teenager. Don’t share that, but it’s healing when it comes from one of your peers.
And we’re not. Yeah. Yes. And then that right there prevents us from having to use. Right. When we’re wrapped in the shame and guilt, that shame and guilt propels us to use. Right. It is the fire for using. So when we can give thanks for what has already happened, we’re not giving an excuse to use drugs who is healing from that as well, to know that there’s no shame and you can rebuild and be thankful for anything that has happened to you.
We are giving permission to give thanks for what has already happened. And in that gratitude, as we know the power of gratitude, it alleviates that craving, that demand to have to use, right? It diminishes and goes away so that we never have to use ever again.
Okay, thank you for sharing that with me. That’s super helpful for me to help me understand. I’m curious, I wanna learn more about your retreats next and kind of like all the encompassing parts of what you do now. But I’m curious, did you, it seemed like you’ve niched down on helping these high performing individuals and that maybe highly visible people. How did you stumble upon that that specific of a person that you were going to help, how did that first come into play?
Targeting High-Performing Individuals
Sure, my background as I said is in entertainment. So I’ve worked in entertainment for over two decades, about 21 years, 22 years now. So it was a perfect segue. And not only for athletes, artists, but also for all professionals, all successful professionals. You you talked about, have administrators, your audience, right? So your audience is a perfect audience, right? People that are successful, that have high success in their lives, that want continued support in their sobriety to remain sober, not only get sober, to stay sober. And that’s where that work came from. And also I have the nonprofit and we work with disenfranchised young adults, incarcerated, unhoused, those folks in that arena as well. So we go from A to Z.
That’s incredible work. That’s awesome. Well, I would love to get a full picture before we end our episode together, just kind of like, what are you excited about right now? And kind of give us a glimpse inside your work that y’all are doing, anything like that.
Sure. So we have upcoming on June 6th, June 7th, it’s a two day retreat and it’s in a beautiful setting up in Crestline, California. Most people do not know Crestline. It is adjacent to Lake Arrowhead. It’s up in the San Bernardino Mountains and we have a beautiful A-frame home up there that we utilize for a two day retreat with panoramic views of the mountains.
and there’s a lake underneath called Lake Gregory. And so we spend time at the home in retreat and prayer, meditation, processing to further strengthen our sobriety and our serenity. And then we utilize the nature. We will go out on Lake Gregory. We have a beautiful electric boat that we go out on. Nature hikes, beautiful food. party, a sober party. We dance and we just have a great time. And that is coming up June 6th and 7th.
I also do individual work, I do group work. You can reach me at greg, g-r-e-g, at sober, s-o-b-e-r-h-e-a-r-t dot org. That is the best way to get a hold of us. The space is limited, so if you’re interested, I would highly jump on board as soon as possible. Space is limited. And there is an application process. We want to make sure that we have the right fit and to create a wonderful gathering. It is a smaller intimate gathering. It’s under 20 people and we just create a beautiful intimacy. The intention is to walk away strengthened in our sobriety, strengthened in our serenity, right? The world is very challenging, especially now. There’s a lot going on and we wanna make sure that you are well provided for and strengthened and you can come and let go of all the stressors and detoxify mentally, emotionally, spiritually to come out purified, cleansed, and powerful.
That sounds wonderful. So that’s again, soberheart.org. You want to check those things out or get in touch with Greg. Greg, just to leave our audience on a positive, helpful note, is there one thing that you teach people inside your program or that you’re passionate about that you could leave us with to help us with sobriety or something that you think would be an encouraging way to end the episode that you could teach us?
Yes, this comes to mind off the top of my head. To remember who’s and who and what you are, the power that resides within you is greater than anything we will ever face in this world. That power of good, that power of God, that power of love, that you’re amazing, you’re worthy, you are deserving, and you are resilient.
Amen. Amen. Thank you, Greg. This has been an awesome episode for anyone listening. Keep up the amazing work doing prevention, recovery services, restorative practices in your community. You are crushing it. If you want to get in touch with Greg, go to soberheart.org and we will see you next Monday for another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour.
