Marci Hopkins is a recovery advocate, author, TV host, and speaker who is approaching 11 years of sobriety. In this episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour, she joins Jake White to share how recovery helped her move beyond trauma, shame, low self-esteem, and unhealthy coping patterns to rebuild her life on a stronger foundation.
Marci shares the mindset shifts and daily practices that have supported her recovery, including community, effective communication, asking for help, setting boundaries, gratitude, and faith. She also introduces her CARE method, discusses the tools behind her books, and shares the message she wishes she could give her younger self: you don’t have to figure everything out alone.
Key Takeaways
- Recovery is about getting your life back, not giving something up.
- Healing begins when we replace shame with hope and self-compassion.
- The CARE Framework Communicate, Ask for Help, Reinforce Boundaries, and Embrace Your Worth provides practical tools for personal growth.
- Small daily habits and healthy coping skills can create lasting change through neuroplasticity.
- Strong relationships, community, and asking for help are essential for long-term recovery.
- Prevention and recovery both benefit from teaching resilience, emotional wellness, and healthy life skills.
Introduction and Background
Jake White: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. I’m your host, Jake White, and today we are hanging out with a new friend, Marci Hopkins. She’s a recovery advocate, she’s an author, a TV show host, and a speaker. So Marci, thanks for hanging out with us today.
Marci Hopkins: Thank you so much for having me, Jake.
Jake White: Of course, my pleasure. Will you just do me the favor and give us your good old intro? And what I love to ask for introduction is like just the basic stuff about where you live, things like that, family. But then also, if you could tell us how you became passionate about recovery or things like that, that would be awesome.
Marci Hopkins: Yeah. Well, I live in New Jersey and actually live in between New Jersey and Florida now. I’m a snowbird. Never thought I’d say that before.
Jake White: Nice.
Marci Hopkins: And I have two children. I have a daughter that’s 20 and a son that’s 23. I’ve been married almost 25 years.
Jake White: That’s incredible.
Marci Hopkins: And I’m just so passionate about this work because October fourth will be 11 years sober.
The Journey to Recovery
Marci Hopkins: And I never thought I’d say those words. And it’s just been a truly remarkable journey. And I have learned so much, I’ve healed so much, and I’m just passionate now about helping others that are suffering with past trauma and shame and low self-esteem and just, you know, feeling negative overall about life and living in a victimhood, which is what I did.
And so once I surrendered and made this choice and things started evolving in my life, and I started living this very joyous life, I knew that I wanted to give back.
And that’s when I harnessed all of my education and experience. And I started my TV show. And I’ve written two books and I’m speaking on stages now.
And it’s just really so important for me to help people understand that kind of shift the mindset that you’re not giving up something, you’re getting your life back.
Jake White: Yes. Oh my gosh. You’re not giving up something. You’re getting your life back. I love that.
Our co-founder, Tomas, within our organization, he’s the one with lived experience or a recovery story. The rest of us work with teenagers because we’ve spent our life without using substances, promoting that lifestyle, right? Which I know you’re all about, right? If we could help more students realize they don’t need to go down that path.
Marci Hopkins: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jake White: We can help more, but today there’s access to so many things. And unfortunately, if we’re not talking about our mental health and finding healthy coping skills, we can turn to some unhealthy ones.
So I love the way that you put it, is that you’re not giving up fun or friends or anything. You’re actually protecting those things and you’re building a better future. You’re getting your life back and it’s never too late.
Marci Hopkins: Yeah. Yeah, it’s never too late. And I get it, especially for young people. It’s that social lubricant, it helps you with self-confidence. And if there’s things that aren’t going so well in the home, it’s a way to escape. I did those things. So I completely get it.
Jake White: Mm-hmm. Yeah. But that’s the thing, is it feels like an escape, but we get our problems right back. Like we don’t actually get to escape. It’s that moment.
Marci Hopkins: We escape mentally, but then we end up causing more problems in our lives.
Jake White: Yeah.
Marci Hopkins: And so it’s just not facing the things that we can face. And that’s what I’ve had to learn now, is to face my emotions instead of pushing them down and running from them and to calm my nervous system and really get in touch with who I am.
And that’s where we build that self-love and self-confidence. Because for so long I looked externally, right? We’re looking for our parents’ approval, our teachers, our coaches, whoever it may be, and our friends, our social circle.
So it’s when we stop, pause, and we change some of the things that we’re doing and we go internally. That’s where we really find the blessings of who we are, the gifts that we have, our passions, and really that self-love and self-confidence that we’re seeking.
The Importance of Community
Jake White: Yeah. Well, Marci, I mean, you’re doing incredible things in this space and you’re this personality. What’s so cool to hear is how your life dramatically got better without substances and that you’re just a living, walking proof of that, a testimony.
And so I’m curious, like now that you’re on this side and you’re helping others, what’s your favorite thing to teach and share and help people in recovery with? Like what lights you up in that? Because there’s a lot probably, right? But is there something that lights you up?
Marci Hopkins: Well, what lights me up is when they have hope and they know that they can live a different life. And it’s just really learning how to do that.
And a lot of times we are so afraid to share our stories because of shame or guilt. We’re afraid of what others will think of us, the judgment.
But it’s when we get really real with ourselves that we start tearing down those walls and stop just surviving and start thriving when we share our stories and start breaking down those internal walls that we have built up for ourselves.
So it’s when I start to see them, you know, break that down. And I like to say also is that we built a life—I did, and so many of us do when there’s trauma and so on—we build a life on this unstable foundation.
And I like to think of it, so we built this beautiful landscape, you know, beautiful building. And all of a sudden it starts wobbling and then comes crumbling down.
And so when we start over, when we start to live a new life, we build on that sturdy foundation brick by brick, and we’re just building a new life.
And that’s, you know, all the positive things that we start adding into our lives. And I’m not saying that bad things aren’t going to happen. It’s just we learn a new way to cope and become resilient.
And when we get through those difficult times, we can do it in a faster way and also transform how we look at it and look at it as a teaching lesson instead of something that’s there to break us down.
Jake White: Yeah. Ooh, that is well put. And it doesn’t break you down anymore because you’re able to break through.
Like you’ve become someone who says, “Yeah, I used to face that challenge. I’ve learned from it. I’ve become stronger. And I can break through that challenge because I’m better.”
And that’s a good feeling of growth. And it’s so fun.
Marci, we’re getting ready for one of our youth camps in a couple weeks and we’ve got teenagers from across the state of Arizona meeting us.
Marci Hopkins: Amazing.
Jake White: And we’ll be teaching them skills. Because I think what’s cool is that when you have communication skills, resilience skills, social-emotional skills, mental health strategies, then when you do meet those challenges, you’re like, cool, I’m built up. I’ve got the armor, I’ve got tools, I’ve got friends, I’ve got community.
And I think that’s a big one for us too, in either prevention or recovery. Like community is big. Where do you find your community?
Marci Hopkins: Well, at one time it was the 12-step program. And now it’s really about choosing the people that I surround myself with, and those people lift me up.
And I also have become very attached to my family. And they’re a huge part of my recovery and my happiness and my stability.
But I’m always surrounded by those that are in recovery and recovery centers. And I love one of the things that you shared earlier about, you know, learning those new tools and the communication.
The CARE Method for Effective Communication
Jake White: Marci, will you tell us about your CARE acronym and then I would love to learn more about your books as well.
Marci Hopkins: Yeah. So this has been life-changing for me.
And the first is C, which is communicating effectively. Communication is key. It was something I was not good at. I wasn’t raised in a way that I knew how to communicate.
I stayed small. I pushed everything down and then I would blow up. So it’s learning to communicate so we can effectively move forward in whatever situation we’re in, right? And communicate our needs.
And then there’s also asking for help without guilt. One of the things that I always felt like if I needed to ask for help, then I was failing. And I would just push harder and try harder.
So I teach others how to ask for help without guilt because actually you’re showing so much strength when you ask for help.
And then also reinforcing your boundaries so you’re not, you know, falling back on that people pleasing and asking yourself the question, like, “Is this going to drain me energetically, or is this something that’s going to fuel me? Is this something I really want to do?”
And then embracing your worth and just knowing your value. And if you don’t have that fully at the time, it’s allowing you to view yourself at this moment and then as you progress to build on that worth and just knowing that you are valuable always and just as you are.
Jake White: Wow, I love that because it’s easy to remember, but it’s so profound.
Like when you even talked about building that foundation for your house, that sounds like an incredible foundation.
And thinking about the ways that we grow up, and of course nobody’s perfect at this. We’re always growing in these, which is good, but the more that we can share.
And I just love the ask part so much because personally, even as someone who’s not in recovery myself, but seen it in my family, like I’ve seen their lives get better when they’re able to use that CARE and to ask.
And then I’ve seen in my own life, whenever I get too proud or something like that, and I’m not asking, I see evidence of my life suffering pretty much immediately.
So I love the CARE. Can you tell me, so is that something that’s in your books? Can you tell us a little bit about your works that you’ve authored?
Books and Tools for Recovery
Marci Hopkins: Yeah, it is. It is in my second book.
My first is Chaos to Clarity: Seeing the Signs and Breaking the Cycles. So it’s a memoir, self-help. I weave in my stories, how I got through trauma, how I healed, the addiction portion of my life, my mother as an addict, what I learned in the 12-step program, and then how I changed my mindset through gratitude and forgiveness and service and the things that I did that were life-changing and my spiritual connections.
So that “seeing the signs” is seeing signs from the other side and then breaking those generational cycles. You know, we just continue to pass those things along in our families. And so I hope that this will help you to break those cycles in your life.
And then Wake Up, You’re Not Broken: A Companion for Your First 30 Days is really just a gentle guide to help people in those first 30 days to lay that foundation.
And I share some of my personal stories. I share how I got through the emotions that you’re going to face, things that you’re going to face physically, cravings, triggers.
And each day, in addition to the things that I share, I have, let’s say, a guide for each day that you will face in those first 30 days.
And so what it is you may be facing that day, a journal prompt, an affirmation, and a tool. So it’s really to help you to create a foundation and be able to move forward with your recovery.
Jake White: Wow, that sounds really cool and honestly just useful to have a guide, and that you’ve written it that way that every day you can have something to follow, invest in yourself in, and then have a tool.
That makes me curious. I love tools. Is there one in your book that stands out that you’re like, “I love telling people about this one,” or that people have told you, like texted you, “Oh my gosh, like I’m using this one today”?
Marci Hopkins: Well, one of the ones that I learned early on that I really love and I still use is “move a muscle, change a thought.”
Because we can only have one thought at one time. We cannot have two.
So if we have the idea of maybe having that drink or something that we’re trying to change in our lives, if we get up, we do something else, we will interrupt that thought pattern and create a new thought pattern, right?
So it’s these little mini, micro changes that we make in our lives so we can become stronger and they will become a lifelong change in our lives.
So for instance, I’ll use a story way back when my husband had gone out of town, my kids were sleeping, I was watching a movie, and I thought about having a drink.
And I was like, “Who’s going to know? No one’s around.”
And I used that tool. I got up and, for me, I went up and I got my Big Book and I sat down and I started doing something more productive. And the craving went away.
And that, you know, usually a craving lasts for about 20 minutes. So “move a muscle, change a thought” is a life-changing one for so many reasons.
And it, again, it’s just about interrupting that thought pattern to create a change.
Personal Growth and Mindset
Jake White: That’s powerful. That’s very cool. Move a muscle, change a thought.
And I guess, yeah, you’re moving anything, you’re changing your environment. And I don’t know the most about triggers and mindset, but the more I learn, the more I’m fascinated at how amazing our brain is and how malleable it is.
And that you have a habit that you’ve been creating, but that your brain is so good, you don’t have to stay stuck. Like you mentioned hope. Like there is always hope, especially if you’re willing to do the work.
Marci Hopkins: Yeah, and that’s the thing. Nothing comes easy. It is work.
But just like anything, I mean, let’s think about so many people care about what’s on the outside, right? So we’ll go to the gym, we’ll lift weights. But it takes time to create the muscle, right? So we are changing the form of our muscle, which is the same thing that we are doing when we are changing our mindset. And that’s neuroplasticity. And we literally are changing the way that our brains are wired by the different actions we take.
And it takes time and it takes action every day. But then it does become easier over time. Just like we start with a five-pound weight, we then move to a 10-pound weight, and so on. So it gets easier and easier.
And, you know, I just wanna say that this is not about perfection, right? This is about being present. It’s about showing up and being kind and giving yourself grace.
So if you mess up, you get up and you just start again because you literally are changing your brain. So just keep that in mind. It’s going to take time. But I do, I still have my practices every day. I still have my gratitude practice, which is recognizing what I’m grateful for in my day.
And that moves us from a place of lack where we think things are always negative or happening to us. When we start seeing the positive things that are happening, we start viewing life in a very, very different way.
I also connect to my higher power every day. And what’s wonderful about that, I mean, whether it’s nature or whatever it is for you, I mean for me, it’s God, source, it’s an energetic connection. I know I’m not doing this alone and I have faith. And I don’t need to feel like I need to be in control of everything because I am not.
I am only in control of myself, right? How I respond to things. So that is it.
Marci Hopkins: You know, so it’s just these practices. It’s just encouraging you to do them every day.
Jake White: And that’s incredible. And it’s a good reminder too. Like I’m so glad that I’m not in charge of everything. God is.
Marci Hopkins: Woo, that’d be exhausting.
Jake White: Yeah. I’ve had enough just with one person trying to do what I want to do and not mess it up. So I love that.
Well, I would love to end with a question and then just learn more about where I can access all of the great things that you’re doing.
My last question for you is, I think teenagers today, honestly, they know more about drugs than a lot of us do because they’re seeing it around in their communities. They’re really smart, they research a lot of things.
Yes, there’s a lot of bad information out there too, so sometimes we have to guide them with the good information.
But oftentimes when students are coming through a path where maybe they’re in recovery and they need that nudge, maybe they’re choosing not to use and they just need that courage to keep going. But I’m curious for your story, Marci, if you could talk to yourself as a teenager and just tell yourself one thing that might have made a big difference for you, what would you tell your teenage self?
Advice to the Younger Self
Marci Hopkins: That I didn’t have to do it alone. And I didn’t have to try to figure it out alone.
Because, well, for me, I was in a home where there was abuse and addiction. And so it was very lonely. And I was acting out and I was doing things to seek attention in not necessarily positive ways. So I would say just knowing that asking for help is showing so much strength and you don’t have to try to survive and figure it all out on your own.
Jake White: That is so good, Marci. That is so good.
Well, I want to thank you for doing that and not only having that thought, but literally writing the book and being who you are, your personality. You’re big. I follow you on your socials. You are such an advocate.
So for people who want to stay in touch with you, and I mean, even I want to get a copy of your book, so I want to know where I can get that. Can you leave us with that?
Marci Hopkins: Yeah, please. Both of my books are on Amazon. And again, my most current is Wake Up, You’re Not Broken. And you could go to my website, Wake Up With Marci. But I’m most active on Instagram at Wake Up With Marci. So just Wake Up With Marci, pretty much just type that in and you’ll find me.
Jake White: Okay, perfect. Marci, thank you for everything that you do.
Marci Hopkins: Thank you, Jake.
Jake White: Of course. And for all of our listeners out there, we appreciate you staying in the field. If you’re in recovery and prevention, we really, really need you. We know the work is not easy, but it’s definitely worth it.
And you’ve got a story just like Marci’s that’s propelling you forward. Know that you’re not alone. You can ask Marci for help. You can come to us. We’re definitely better together.
And we will see you all next Monday for another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour.
Featured Quote
“You’re not giving up something, you’re getting your life back.” — Marci Hopkins
Connect with Marci Hopkins
Website: Wake Up With Marci
Instagram: Wake Up With Marci
Books: Available on Amazon
