Addiction recovery
Maria Power on why shame keeps addiction hidden
Addiction specialist doctor Maria Power says the secret, not the substance, is what keeps people stuck, and explains how recorded sessions, groups and daily habits help people come out of hiding.
Video from My Functional Medicine Clinic.
Generated from the canonical interview transcript and validated against source data by Guests on Air.
Why does shame keep people stuck in addiction?
Maria Power argues that shame keeps people hiding, and hiding is what keeps an addiction going. A person who will not accept part of their own story stays triggered by that secret. Recovery starts with admitting the problem out loud, then holds through recorded sessions, group support and steady daily habits that leave no room for a double life.
Maria Power has spent 15 years as an addiction specialist doctor and has worked with a couple of thousand clients. In a live interview on the My Functional Medicine Clinic channel, Maria Power argued that the drug or the behaviour is rarely the hardest part of recovery. The hardest part is the shame that keeps a person hiding.
Maria Power speaks from both sides of the problem. Before getting sober on Valentine's Day 2013, Maria Power lived a double life, with a respectable front for some people and a hidden world for others, and spent time in and out of psychiatric wards. Study ran alongside it: a psychology degree, a master's in public health focused on alcohol and drug studies, and a PhD.
That history shapes a method built on openness. Maria Power records client sessions, plays people their own promises back to them, and is moving clients into group sessions, because hiding is what keeps an addiction going. This article sets out what that approach asks of people in recovery and of the professionals who support them.
Key takeaways
- Shame keeps addiction hidden, and hiding keeps the addiction going, so recovery starts with saying the problem out loud.
- Recorded sessions let clients hear their own promises and denial later, the way an athlete reviews footage of a game.
- Group sessions show people that what they thought was rare is common, which loosens the shame that keeps them silent.
- Recovery holds through daily habits: a quiet first hour, regular exercise, good food and a clean house and mind.
1. Shame is the first thing to face
Maria Power's turning point came in a monastery, a Shaolin temple with martial arts, yoga, gardening and four to five hours of meditation a day. With everything else put down, Maria Power recalled lying in a fetal position, crying and asking how such a life could be faced. Facing that shame head on, Maria Power said, is the first step most people never reach.
In the interview, Maria Power placed shame at the very bottom of the emotional scale, with guilt just above it. Shame is the state of hiding: contracted, and unwilling to accept a part of oneself. As long as someone holds on to that secret, Maria Power argued, it eats at them and triggers the addiction again and again. Letting it go gives a person room to grow.
Maria Power pointed to the first step of Alcoholics Anonymous as this principle at work. Saying a name and admitting to being an addict is a public statement that the speaker is no longer ashamed. Once that admission is made, Maria Power said, a person can start to move up the rungs of recovery instead of staying stuck at the bottom with the secret.
2. Recorded sessions make denial visible
For a PhD thesis on holistic care, Maria Power video recorded every client session. The recordings became a working tool. When a client later slipped into a denial pattern, Maria Power could take them back to their own words from an earlier session, where they had promised to do anything to get well because their children needed them.
Maria Power compared the method to sports coaching. A good coach makes a player study their own game, mistakes included. In recovery, that means listening back to the lies and broken promises eight sessions later. Hearing their own voice, rather than a practitioner's opinion, is what Maria Power found helped clients repair broken thinking and stop lying to themselves.
The same openness runs through the coaching itself. Sharing a personal story sets clients at ease, because it shows the coach is not there to judge them. Maria Power said the aim is never to minimise or belittle anyone, and that the work avoids dwelling on the pathology of addiction or the disease model, where people can easily get stuck.
3. Groups and daily habits keep recovery going
Maria Power is now moving from one-on-one work to a group model. The reasoning follows from the rest of the method: a shy person who stays hidden keeps the addiction going, while a group shows that what felt uncommon is something many others are going through. Maria Power's online recovery community meets on Zoom three times a week for training, coaching and healing.
Outside the sessions, Maria Power describes recovery as a lifestyle rather than a single fix. Each morning starts with an hour of silence, sitting in the sun without touching a phone. The week also includes martial arts, the gym, yoga practically every day and preparing good food. No one habit carries the load, Maria Power said; it is the sum of all the parts.
Maria Power also had advice for anyone choosing support. A five-minute appointment is unlikely to be enough for addiction. Maria Power's consultations run for an hour or two, and lasting change can take a couple of years of continuity. The practitioner should also show the vitality the client wants, because clients rarely get further than the person guiding them.
