Founder's Story - Dr. Cali Estes: The Untold Truth About Addiction, Fame, and Why Rehab Is Broken | Ep. 273 with Dr. Cali Estes Founder of Sober on Demand and The Addictions Academy

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

In this episode of Founder’s Story, Daniel Robbins sits down with Dr. Cali Estes Founder of Sober on Demand and The Addictions Academy, to uncover her extraordinary journey—from being homeless and broke to building a multi-million-dollar global addiction recovery empire. Cali opens up about how she started her business with just $300 and rent due, why she was forced to take on an industry that tried to destroy her, and the personal battles that shaped her mission. Key Discussion Points:Cali reveals what really happens inside the world of addiction recovery and why traditional rehab often fails. She shares unfiltered stories of working with celebrities, athletes, and CEOs at the top of their game—people who look invincible on the outside but are struggling in silence. She also breaks down her controversial but effective biohacking approach, from parasite cleanses to peptides, explaining why 90% of mental health issues aren’t mental at all, but physical. Takeaways:Listeners will learn why hitting rock bottom can be the most powerful catalyst for entrepreneurship, how mindset and manifestation can literally put your rent money in the bank overnight, and why treating the body—not just the mind—may be the real breakthrough for mental health. Dr. Cali’s story proves that standing your ground against critics, even when they come for your reputation, can flip an industry on its head. Closing Thoughts:Addiction, burnout, and mental health crises don’t just happen to “other people.” They can hit anyone—founders, celebrities, athletes. Dr. Cali Estes’ mission through Sober on Demand and The Addictions Academy is a reminder that recovery is possible, disruption is necessary, and the right mindset can turn the darkest moments into unlimited possibilities. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

So Dr. Callie Estes, I have to say one of the things I like the most in life is to travel. And every time I travel, there always is a wild story that I can pull from the travel. But I've seen so many videos on maybe I'm being followed on Instagram, YouTube, shorts about crazy things that happen in airports. And you just have a book that just came out, airport antics. Yes, Daniel. Thanks for having me on your show. And yes, so I travel all over the place for a living. I think I was in 26 airports last year alone, just traveling, seeing clients, doing my thing.

And I would always post my stories of people I would see on Facebook. You know, the guy working out, the muscle shirt, the girl that's drunk, the couple that hooked up in a lot, you know, the lounge, that kind of stuff. And a friend of mine called and said, I want to publish the book. And I thought, okay, you know, this is my seventh book. And next thing I know, it's in Library of Congress. It's in Barnes & Noble. It's everywhere. So it's a book about the hundred funny stories of people I've seen while I was traveling.

Can you share what is a story that stands out as being so wild or out there? Do you have something? I think the workout guy that was like 25 that was like all muscle tattooed. He's got his tank top on and his gray sweatpants. He's a good looking guy. And he's doing pushups and squats. And all these middle-aged women just started congregating, like, closer and closer and closer. And they're all staring at him.

And they're drinking their drink and they're watching. And they're all trying to interact for his attention. And it was so funny because he was the typical gym guy that was kind of like clueless that all these women were there. He was just doing his thing. And they were all fighting to get his attention. And it was just funny. So that was one of the funny ones. There was a lady that was funny, too, who didn't know how to use her phone.

So she's got her phone on. and it's, you know, black because she doesn't have anybody there and she's yelling in the phone and she can't figure out to turn it on and then it's ringing and she can't turn it up and she's screaming at it, you know, in the phone while she's walking, which is so funny. It's like people do the weirdest stuff when they travel. It's like a, like a, I don't want to say like a culture of travel. When I used to travel a lot, I would see a lot of the same people at different places, at different, like, bars inside of the airports. I started to get to know on certain routes or like certain routes that, okay, these people might be there because they're also traveling for work.

I found it very fascinating. I was on a plane one time when I used to travel through Vegas a lot. And I noticed going to Vegas on a Friday evening was just like they were partying, drinking. I've seen some crazy stuff on a plane. But coming home on a Sunday is like very depressing. And everyone's like sad. And maybe they lost all their money or they made bad decisions. I don't know.

Maybe they're just hung over. But what about you? Were there certain places that you would travel to either A, you'd see the same people or were there certain flights that you go on that you would just notice things? For me, it was more by airline carrier like Spirit and Frontier and Southwest had the best fodder for the book. Because it's a cheap airline. Everybody's fighting. Everybody's arguing.

everybody wants more than what they've paid for. So that was funnier to me. But in terms of the same people, no, because I don't really do the same route. I'm Miami to L.A. a lot. Miami to Philadelphia a lot, but not necessarily the same day or same time. So that would be a no, but the same type of person, yes. There's always the loud person on their phone doing a business deal. There's always the drunk person.

There's always the person who lost half their stuff in the security. Curie screening. There's always that person. It's just a different person when I travel. It's like these are characters in a movie that you could plug in and just change the names or change the way they look. It is fascinating. And I, that's one part of the fun of traveling is people watching for me, whether it's getting in the airport or even right now I'm in Paris, for example, and I see I go to somewhere like you're saying, I could, there's the person, there's this type of traveler doing this. There's this type of travel, you know, this loud traveler than this traveler that, you know, does this. It is quite funny. I'm curious about your business, though. And thank you for

sharing around this book. You've done something really incredible with your business and something that really hits home to me from my personal experience is that I've struggled with in my life when I was younger. But you started with $300. Rent was due. And we do like we do, we've, we've heard this story before around, you know, at that bottom is the time when you become an entrepreneur. But take me back to that moment where you even had the courage to say, okay, I'm going to turn this into something. So I've done it twice. I did it once with the fitness company in my late 20s.

And then when the economic downturn hit, I lost everything and ended up homeless again. I was homeless twice in my life. With this company, I was married, living in Miami. Rent was due. And I went to work one day at a drug and alcohol rehab. and the owner threw a notebook at my head. And I thought, I'm done. This place is toxic. And I said, I have two words for you. And he basically said, what, F you? And I said, no, I quit. And he said, you can't quit. You need me. That was the motivation for me to make and scale a seven bigger company.

So I came home, said to my husband, I quit my job. And he goes, we have 300 bucks in the bank account rents due in a week and a half. And I'm like, I got it. So I'm real big on law of attraction and manifestation and I just put some pieces of paper around, you know, around the house. I'm going to get a client, took some business cards, went to the gym, three business cards out, went to Starbucks, went to gas stations, and within 48 hours, I had my first paying client. And that covered my rent and my car payment for the whole month. So he looked at me like he was like, how did that happen? And I'm like, it's all mindset. If you think you can do it, you can do it. But you can't say in your head, what if I can't pay the rent? What if I can't take care of my kids? What?

but if I can't feed myself because then you're creating that reality. But if you say I'm going to do it and this is going to happen, then it happens. Wow. That's powerful. I think, you know, for I've been fired twice in my life, probably quit, I don't know, maybe a dozen times of different things. And I was just talking to somebody and they were recently fired and they're having a really hard time finding a job right now in their, in their industry that's basically now going to AI and other parts of technology. And I can't think of how many people are in that same boat.

But they were saying, like, I don't know how to just start. I don't know how to start. And then I don't know, like, how do I even get that first client? So what do you see maybe one or two things as to, okay, they figured it out that they want to be an entrepreneur? How do they start? And how do they get that first client? So the first thing you do is you tell everybody what you're doing.

everybody in your phone, everybody on Facebook, everybody on Instagram, this is what I'm doing. Who do you know that needs this service? That's the first thing. Most of your network is in this thing and you don't even realize it. So just by telling people, this is what I'm doing, they'll start to say, hey, I have someone that needs your service. Now, my space addiction to mental health, one in five people has an addiction or mental health problem. So if I put, you know, six people in a room, one of them is my client. So you have to figure out where the people are that need what you're offering. And are you selling something that's needed? Does it serve a purpose? So if you're selling something that doesn't serve a purpose, you're not going to sell. You have to have something that solves a

need for somebody. And maybe the industry you're in might have to be tweaked a little bit too. So let's say you're a writer. Well, AI is taking over writing, right? Well, people say, well, I'm a writer. I'm better than AI? Well, that's debatable, depending on who needs your service. How can you tweak what you do to still stand out? Maybe you are proofreading or maybe you are helping with AI or bringing AI into your business. So you have to kind of figure out that first. Do you have what somebody needs? Then you let everybody know what you're selling. And then it's just a matter of pushing the product or pushing the service that you offer. How can I get this out there? How can I get it to market? How can I tweak it? And then looking for feedback. Maybe people say, well, I like what you have to offer, but I really need this.

Then add that to your business. Add something else to your business. I keep adding until you figure out what that pain point is and then you've solved it. And that's how you build and scale. Solving pain points, right? It's amazing how many people just miss that one thing. They want to offer something, but don't realize it's not really a pain point. Or maybe it's not a pain point to enough people. I was just watching the Charlie Sheen documentary on Netflix. And he was talking a lot about, obviously, addiction. And the more fame he got, the worse it became. And the people around him as well.

I know you've worked with tons of celebrities and CEOs and athletes. And they are considered at their top of the game. I would imagine people look up to them. They want to be them. But maybe they don't realize what they're going through. So what do you see as some of those misconstitutional? conceptions around these high performers when it also comes to addiction and mental health. So most of celebrities have depression, anxiety, phomo, something. There's something that they're

not comfortable with. A lot of them don't watch their movies. They don't listen to their music. They don't want to see themselves on screen because they don't like, you know, something. They don't like the way their hands look or the way their voice sounds or their eyes are droopy, whatever. So they don't, they have a bad, poor image to begin with. So when they do this kind of stuff and people say, oh my God, that's my idol. For every one person that worships them, they have five or six people that write something negative online. So they're constantly battling this. And then they look for a drug or a drink to escape that or to perform better.

So a lot of people in the, you know, 45 and up bracket are getting older. They don't look like they did when they were 20. So there's Botox and there's cheek fillers and all this stuff. And then people start to make fun of them online. you know, so they use a drug or a drink to escape that. Or they've just made so much money as an entrepreneur that they're bored. And now they're like, well, I've played everywhere. I've toured everywhere.

I've been to every continent in the city. I've got a wife and three or four girlfriends and I have all the money in the world. What else can I do? What can get high, you know? Let's get drugs. That's because that's the next level. Let's do those kinds of things because there's nothing left to do that's exciting. So that I come in and I try to help them get their life back in order

because it's usually out of control at that point. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I don't think people realize that somebody that they look up to also has issues, like you said, around how they see themselves, their body, how their voices, how they act. I can relate in the sense of I don't really watch myself, but I'm also not super famous. So I can't relate in that perspective. But I do see a common theme around people that are famous at a young age. and they hit this height of fame.

And it always seems, at least maybe the news makes it this way. It always seems to just become something that almost destroys them. And I think now that we're getting this, you know, social media is allowing people to become famous. Like it allows a lot of people, almost anyone can become famous now. But I don't think they understand the repercussions or negatives that can come about from this. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of things, especially with. social media influencers, when you get to a certain level, it's not just, oh, well, I'm famous.

It's also I'm monetized, right? I'm making this money off my videos, whatever they are. Travel videos, makeup videos, tutorials, what have you. There's always somebody coming up the mountain behind you, right? You're the top wolf on the mountain. You're millions of followers. And all of a sudden, this other person comes up and boom, you're here, right? And you can't get that momentum back up because you're old news. People aren't interested anymore in you. They're interested in the new, shiny person that came along. Same thing happens with acting and music and whatnot. But what happens is this person here starts to get frustrated, irritated, they might post something negative, they might get some pushback. All of a sudden, they're doing drugs, they're drinking, they're driving

fast, they're getting a DUI. All that happens because of this disbalance of power. And that happens with anything. You know, if you look at celebrities that were in play in 2000, where are they today? music from the 2000s, where is it today? You know? And then if you have issues like Britney Spears, for example, had a complete meltdown, shaped her head, that's what most people remember. They don't remember of the pre-Britney when she was doing real well and singing and dancing and that. They remember, oh, she shaved her head. She had this, you know, guardianship. She's a mess. Look at her on TikTok. That's what people remember. And that doesn't help somebody who's trying to get out of the cycle because they're constantly stepped on and pushed down. You also have the

issue of all of a sudden stardom comes in and so does money. The more money you have, the more you want to do. So a lot of people say, oh, well, if I had a million dollars, I would do this. No, you wouldn't. When I made my first million and I was 33, we blew through that in 30 days. What you think you'll do, you won't do. So it's kind of interesting in that perspective. And then when the money's flow and the money's flow and people are spending, spending, expecting it not to stop. And then when it stops, you're like, oh, wow, what happened? That happened with my fitness company. We lost it overnight. And I went from multimillion dollars in my bank account to zero. And it was like, what happened? So that happens with stardom. That happens with anybody who goes from, you know, slow turtle move to like fast car.

And all of that just happens so fast. People don't know what to do with that fame and that money. And they end up addicted to something or in a bad space. It reminds me of those people that that hit the lottery, but the big time lottery, a hundreds, a billion, and then they lose everything. And their life actually becomes worse post-lottery than before because there was no gradual getting there, right? They didn't gradually get to somewhere. They didn't learn about money.

They just all of a sudden have something. They didn't have, like you said, if I only had this, but if you don't know what to do with it, it could maybe even turn into worse than not having it at all. I know you've helped 60,000 professionals in 40 countries, which is amazing. When you look back, what is one of the decisions that you made along the way to create a global movement? So it was just me and a couple coaches in the beginning when I started sober on demand and a couple nurses and doctors. And I thought, we have more business than I know what to do with, but we don't have enough trained professionals I can trust. Because a lot of people in my space, you know, 10 years ago, and there's still issues now with ethics,

but they weren't doing the ethical thing. And throwing people in rehab, it just doesn't work, you know. I mean, it works for some people, but they're going five, six, seven times to rehab. And I kept saying, well, the models broke it. And people would say, well, the person's not ready. Well, that doesn't make sense. You know, you go to rehab to be helped, but yet you're not helped because you're not ready. That doesn't work. So I started coming up with what can we do? And I started creating, courses and people loved it because they could take it into the real world application. It wasn't just a clinical setting anymore. So recovery coaching or intervention or trauma coaching or mental health coaching was designed for somebody that didn't have that four year, five year, 10 year degree that

wanted to help outside of the box. And we went gangbusters. We started getting into all these countries and all these people saying, I want training. How do I do this? We don't have enough resources and we ended up with the biggest federal grant for first responders at one point because first responders don't know what addiction of mental health is. They're looking at overdosing and the person is not listening so they're, you know, tasering them when they don't understand that it's an overdose. So we started putting all that training in play. Sometimes when you go against the grain of the industry and you do things differently, even though it's needed or it most likely is the solution, you may get pushback from people that

are in the industry. Did you find that maybe people were like, hey, this is how, like you said, this is how it's done. They're not ready. There is no other way. And then when you started seeing success, maybe they still didn't believe in you. I got slaughtered in 2015. Treatment center owners, big people were on Facebook calling me fake, calling me a fraud,

saying that my degree wasn't right, that my husband was a junkie, that I was no good at my job. And I mean big players. I sued 11 of them and one of the accreditation bodies because I said, we're going to go. And I did. A couple of them cut me checks and basically said, you know, we're wrong. That's slander and defamation. And I stood my ground. I kept pushing forward and pushing forward to the point where they finally went, oh, my God,

we have to respect her because she's not going anywhere. And she's brought something else to market. So when I did that and I just kept going, at one point my husband who had cleaned up in 2018, he was doing heroin at one point. We wrote a book called I Married a Junkie because somebody had posted online that my husband was a junkie. And I said, let's roll with it. Let's write a book.

We did. And that book got me on KTLA as a nine-time expert because they said, wow, you just put everything out there. And I said, I did. And then my husband eventually passed away from long-term drug use with 29 days sober. And I wrote the next book. I married a Junkie, too, and put more stuff in there. And people said, wow, you like just put it out there.

You put your whole life out there. there and I said, yeah, because in this industry, people are very negative. They're very quick to make a judgment and hate people without actually doing the work. So I kind of flipped the whole industry around and shook it up. And I continue to do that because now we've added biohacking in our detox. Nobody's offering that treatment. You know, you go in on heroin or fentanyl and you come out on 15 different big pharma medications. That makes no sense to me. That's stupid, right? Why are you on more meds than you went in with because you have depression and then you have anxiety and then you have irritable bowel from those two and then you have something else and something else and something else.

It's like we do the opposite. We take you off of that. We're going to give you, you know, the biohacking stuff, the peptides, the red light therapy, the cold plunges, the NAD. We're going to do all that. The nutraceuticals to get your brain going, which is the opposite of way the industry is and they say, just stop using and, you know, go to a meeting. Well, you're not chemically treating the body that has a chemical problem. You're treating it with talk therapy, which doesn't work, which is why it has such a high recidivism rate. So that's sort of how I treat things, which is backwards, which is why the industry kind of said, well, we're not going to deal with you. And now they're like, well, now we have to deal with because here you are. Wow, what a story. I mean, that's, it sounds like

you've gone through a lot of downs in your life, but then also a lot of ups. And I think most people, they might just give up. You know, when they get beat. up online, they're just going to say, screw it, it's over. Like, I don't want to do this anymore, but the fact that you kept pushing forward is, it's not only just inspirational. It's also, I think, inspirational in the sense that it gives people the idea that, okay, it is safe for me to continue going in this journey. Because we know business entrepreneurship is so hard. I think it might be the hardest thing that people even do in their life. But I wanted to go back to some of the biohacking type stuff. You mentioned earlier that one out of five people, and I imagine from mental health,

all the people that don't talk about it, that number might be very high. Like, I know so many people that have mental health issues. Myself, I've had issues since I was a young teenager and it's something I struggle with every single day. Is there something that you're seeing that's been working when it comes to the biohacking side that people even without addiction can learn about? Yeah. So here's the problem in America, we treat the physical and the mental health completely different. And when somebody goes to doctor and they say, I'm depressed or I'm anxious, what happens? You get an SSRI, right? You get a medication from Big Pharma to fix it. They don't do blood work. They don't take any type of chemistry into consideration. They don't test for parasites.

They just give you a drug and hope it works. That to me is stupid because I haven't evaluated your physical chemistry. So when they come to us, we do a full blood panel. We want to know what's in your body. We do a urine test. We do a saliva test. We want to see where your cortisol is before we give you anything. And then from there, we heal the body from the inside out. So it's pretty simple.

When somebody says I have depression, my first question is, well, why? Is it social? Is it chemical? You know, is it mental health? Well, if it's mental health, there's something in your physical body that's off. And people say to me, well, why should I not take Prozac? or a big SSRI, well butrin. Because all it does is mask your symptoms.

It doesn't solve the root cause of the problem, which is in your body. A lot of times women come in and they're like, I'm depressed and I have them do a thyroid panel with reverse antibodies and TH3 and T4. And it comes back and they're like, I have a thyroid problem. You're not depressed. You have a thyroid problem. Your thyroid regulates your entire body. Or they have a men have low testosterone.

And they come in and they're like, I'm depressed. We do a TRT test. and all of a sudden it's like, oh my goodness, all you need is low grade TRT, and they come back and they're like, I feel fantastic. Or they have a muscle recovery problem. And they're like, oh, my shoulder hurts and this hurts, which makes me depressed because I can't lift weights. I can't lift my grandbaby. We do a peptide.

And all of a sudden, I feel amazing. So 90% of mental health is not mental health. So when they come to me and I work with a really good psychologist, we pull people off of the SSRIs. We get them on the stuff to clean up their body, clean up their diet. and they start to feel better. When they feel better, they go, I'm not depressed. I feel amazing. And they haven't taken any big form of medication. My body is like 80 years old, I feel like sometimes. So I think there's some things going on.

You did say parasites earlier. I was just talking to somebody about parasites and all these things that they're looking at. Even somebody was saying something about cancer and Paris. I don't know. They were going on and on about parasites. But why did you mention parasites and what are you seeing with that. So 90% of stuff is in your gut. Everybody wants to treat everything but the gut. So if you're eating sugar or sushi, you probably have parasites. That's how they thrive. So we do a very gentle parasite cleanse. We also do a heavy metal detox because the amount of metal in your body is crazy. So those are things as we start to unravel, you feel better. For example, for me, I have Hashimoto's thyroiditis. So the very first thing my functional medicine doctor did was a parasite cleanse.

And it took almost six months to get everything out of my body. And then the heavy metal was about a year. And I started to feel better. Like, well, I feel better. Then he retested my thyroid. And he said your thyroid went from like a 1,300 down to an 800 just for the cleanses. That's without actually treating the thyroid. Whereas Big Pharma wanted to put me on Synthroid to fix the thyroid, but not actually fix the underlying cause. So so much happens in your gut, because you're not. So much happens in your gut, is we don't eat well. And in this country, the food is destroyed, right? It's cooked.

It's fried. It's preservatives. Trying to find whole food that's organic to eat is almost impossible. And then it's got the appeal stuff on it. All the plastic wax that you're putting in your body, you're eating garbage and you're wondering why I feel so bad. So clearing that out of is step one. I might be made of plastic at this point.

It's pretty bad. I know. Whenever I travel, I get to see. You know, some places, I'm like, oh, wow, they're really good about cleaning it up and making it good. And then some other places, I'm like, this is even worse than the stuff that I've seen. And, yeah, I don't think a lot of people are, maybe a lot of people, I think maybe more people now are talking about it and I'm seeing it. Or maybe I'm just being targeted on social. Like, now that I've looked at parasite cleanse, I see like 25 videos a day about parasite cleanse.

But this has been an incredible conversation. The fact that you are really looking to help change the world in an area that we need it so bad. And I've had numerous friends that have gone through this. Myself, I've gone through things. And it's really sad. It's really sad. And I've had multiple friends die because, you know, they weren't able to get the help

that they probably needed. But if people want to get in touch with you, they want to find out more information, how can they do so? They can go to calliestis.com or soberundamandamand.com or the Addictions Academy. And then I'm all over social under Dr. Calli Estes. Dr. Calli Estes. I hope they check out the book, Airport Antics, even though it's totally unrelated. It's fascinating anyways.

And then thank you for all that you do in joining us today on Founder's Story. Thanks. Thanks for having me.