Mackenzie Phillips is an actor and artist best known for her roles in the 1973 movie American Graffiti, the 1975 sitcom One Day at a Time, and, most recently, her role as Barb on the hit Netflix drama Orange is the New Black. Today, Mackenzie takes Dr. Flowers and Robin through her experiences with chronic pain, addiction, and her journey to long-term recovery.

Mackenzie opens up with incredible vulnerability about her relationship with her father and the trauma and abuse she suffered. She talks about forgiveness, self-care, and the amazing work she’s doing at Breathe Life Healing Centers. Mackenzie shares her deep love for animals and her own understanding of the human condition.

Key Takeaways:

01:47 – Mackenzie Phillips shares her experience with hyperalgesia and her journey to long-term recovery

12:22 – Mackenzie talks about her background as an actress and what led her to Breathe Life Healing Centers

20:05 – Working with and learning from the master, Kathleen Murphy

22:21 – Mackenzie opens up about her experience with generational trauma and her relationship with her father

28:32 – Orange is the New Black and other projects Mackenzie has on the horizon

31:07 – Jason, Robin, and Mackenzie share their love of dogs

32:36 – What Mackenzie does for self-care

34:29 – Mackenzie shares her understanding of the human condition

35:34 – Jason and Robin thank Mackenzie for joining the show and let listeners know where to follow her

Resources Mentioned:

JFlowers Health Institute – https://jflowershealth.com/

JFlowers Health Institute Contact – (713) 783-6655

Subscribe on your favorite player: https://understanding-the-human-condition.captivate.fm/listen

Link to Breathe Life Healing Centers Website – https://breathelifehealingcenters.com/

Mackenzie’s Twitter – https://twitter.com/MackPhillips

Mackenzie’s Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mackphillips/

Mackenzie’s Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100050576825643

Mackenzie’s Books

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable.

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Listen to the podcast here

MacKenzie Phillips – We Are Light, We Are Power, We Are Love

Welcome to the show. This is my amazing co-host, Robin French. I almost said Robbin Mooney.

I know. We have two Robins, Mack.

She knows Robbin Mooney.

Yes, I do.

We’re double B. We’re one B and two B.

Welcome Robin.

Thank you.

Robin Mooney told me to tell you, Mackenzie, hello, and she loves you.

I love Robbin and Jimmy.

I am so excited that we are joined by the one and only Mackenzie Phillips, who you all know from the stage, screen and currently is a huge public advocate for treatment and recovery and substance use addiction. Mackenzie, thank you so much for being here. We said before we started that I haven’t seen you in two years in person, so I can’t wait to see you and hug your neck.

Let’s do it. Are you going to go to the West Coast?

Yeah, absolutely.

I’ll definitely see you there. We’ll get some squishies in.

I’m coming out to LA. I’ll be staying at the Sunset Marquis, probably one of your old haunts.

The scene of many crimes.

I’ll be staying there. We’re doing Leigh Steinberg’s Super Bowl Party and we’re sponsoring the Brain Health Room. We’re excited about that. We’ll be talking about TBI and we’ll be talking about substance abuse and treatment. Mac, thank you for doing this with us.

My pleasure. You know I love you. I’m happy to be here.

I love you, too. You had knee replacement surgery.

Mackenzie’s Experience With Knee Replacement Surgery

I did. I’m about three weeks out from total knee replacement. There’s an element of mortality. How am I old enough to need a knee replacement? There’s an element of it that has forced me to slow down. I’m always a person who’s like, “Let’s do it. Let’s get it done.” I currently have graduated from the walker to the cane. Of course, there’s also the element of pain medication and how one manages that in recovery.

I have an adult son. His name is Shane and he lives here in our big old house with me and he’s very boundary. He’s not an addict. He’s holding the meds, bringing them. It’s been an interesting time for me. I moved from my upstairs bedroom to the guest room on the main floor. It’s bringing up so much stuff for me in negative ways and in positive ways. I’m managing well. Thank you for bringing it up.

Chronic Pain And Opioid Addiction

Of course, being in recovery, my background, of course, is chronic pain and opioid addiction. Mack, how have you been handling your physical pain from a total knee replacement and then your medication? Obviously, having total knee replacement, you’re going to need some pain medication. I know that he’s been amazing and he’s been helping you withholding the medication, which is the right way to do this. How are you emotionally handling this?

Let me say this. I have a history of hypoalgesia and chronic pain, which was medicated by a neurologist who said, “You’ll never be off pain medication.” It was fentanyl patches, liquid oxy, and Actiq lollipops. It was over the top. My brother was in long-term recovery and he is in recovery again now. He sent me a book that said, “Healing Your Pain Spiritually.” I threw it out. I was like, “Screw you. You don’t understand my pain,” as one does. People would think it would be a very unlikely jump to go from prescribed pain medication to street drugs, but I guarantee you it’s happening. It’s not surprising to think about it in terms of someone like me doing that jump, but it is surprising people think, “This guy’s a lawyer. He would never do that.”

Yes, he would.

When my doctors were like, “This is getting a little out of hand,” they stopped prescribing. I started using black tar heroin. When I got sober again many years ago, the pain was gone. Normal aches and pains and freaky this and freaky that, but then thinking back to these prescribed medications and this syndrome of pain that I was in, which was justifying the continuing pain.

You were experiencing that hyperalgesia, right?

Absolutely. The opioid pins the pain in place and makes it more powerful. Having said all of that, none of that experience matters unless you’re present in your life because the opioids will jump into your brain and make things look very different than they actually are. I’ve had a good experience. This is very interesting to me anyway, and likely to you. At first, when the doses were higher to manage the pain, I was like, “Opioids are so gross. How did I ever want to feel this way? This is disgusting.” I think they become more tolerable the longer you take them. There’s been an element of, “This isn’t that bad. I’m like, “Okay.”

I know where you’re going with this, that next thought.

That next thought has to be to lower the dose and go from scheduled to as needed. Now, I’m only taking meds prior to physical therapy, which is grueling, like a fortress. It’s going well. I’m working from home for a Breathe Life Healing Center, where I’ve been working for years. A lot of my chart auditing and all the administrative stuff that I do, I can do from home, but it’s going okay. I want to drive, I want to get back in my life, and I want to dance, but I can’t.

You mentioned that you’re probably going to have a second knee replacement one day. You will. You will recover from this. You’ll keep doing that hard physical therapy. Physical therapy is going to get easier and easier. Before it, you’ll be back at life full-time. You’re already going to be back at life full-time, but you’ll be up dancing and doing the things that you want to do.

I’m so excited. Let me ask you a question before we move on. In your practice, you treat a lot of people like me in my previous opioid addiction with this chronic pain. People need to help you up from sitting down. Once the meds are gone, you get back to baseline and you figure out what pain you have, but then you’re dealing with the denial in the mind that creates the pain that needs the opioids.

You are so far ahead of the game. That’s amazing. In that chronic pain world, Robin, so many people have ongoing chronic pain. Whether it’s from sports injuries, whether it’s from backyard playing or whether it’s from aging or spine surgery or whatever it is, they get in a cycle of depression and anxiety and fear. They develop kinesophobia, which is a fear of movement. “If I do anything, I’m going to hurt worse.”

They get more depressed. You get anxious. You need more medication. You develop what we call hyperalgesia, which means your pain tolerance goes down and your pain threshold goes down, the medication need goes up. It takes more medication to manage the same amount of pain that you were having. On that little 0 to 10 scale, I often say, Mack, that if someone is rating their pain at a 10, which many people with chronic pain patients do, you can wipe off about 7 points if you remove the emotional and psychological overlay from pain.

Here’s an interesting thing, too. It’s like hyperalgesia versus tolerance because you have the tolerance that comes, which builds up over time with pain, but then the hyperalgesia lowers the threshold, which creates higher tolerance.

Your life spirals out of control. People who have knee replacements and they get on opioids and pain medication for short-term knee replacement. You start thinking, “This is not good. This is taking my pain away. I need a little bit more. This is okay.” In recovery, the perfect scenario is to have someone like Shane, your son, a colleague, someone who’s helping you or living with you short-term to dole out that medication as prescribed, which is what she’s doing, which is a perfect way to do this.

I never knew how boundary my son is.

He’s a normie.

He’s hardcore. He is a gift on a daily basis.

I’m so glad that you have him. Did your mom live with you, Mack, before she passed away? I miss her. I miss seeing her on Facebook.

My little mommy. No. When my mom moved from her home of many years into assisted living, I was like, “Mom, why don’t you come live with me?” She’s like, “Hell no. I’m not going to do it.” She moved to assisted living. She did not live with me. I wish she had, but my mom was a trip and she was such a lady. She passed away in 2016. I miss her all the time. This is actually the room she would have lived in had she moved in with me. I’ve been in this house for many years. She’s missed.

She was a beautiful woman. I miss her too. I miss seeing you interact with her on Facebook, happy birthdays, and all of that. I know that you miss her a lot. I wanted to give a shout-out to Brad Lamm at Breathe Life Healing Centers. How many years have you been there?

Transition From Acting To Counseling

I’ve been at Breathe for a long time.

Why don’t you talk about your journey a little bit, from being the amazing actress that you’ve been your entire life to working with Brad Lamm at Breathe Life Healing Centers? How in the world did that happen?

When I was a little girl, I grew up in very non-normal circumstances. My dad was a rock star. He was Papa John of The Mamas & the Papas. My mom was an Eastern Seaboard socialite who knew which fork to use, sit up straight like the queen, no white after Labor Day kind of lady. I believe I was conceived during a one-night reconciliation and I never lived with both my parents that I’m aware of. My dad went on to become this huge superstar and my mom was McNamara’s personal secretary at the Pentagon, which is another story. I grew up living a double life. It was like Disneyland on acid at my dad’s house and know which fork to use at my mom’s house.

I grew up sort of living a double life. It was like Disneyland on acid at my dad’s house and ‘know which fork to use’ at my mom’s house.

I remember being a little girl, like 5, 7 years old, looking around at the adults in my life and not necessarily my mom, although she was a pretty hardcore alcoholic, and thinking to myself, “What makes people do the things that they do? What drives behavior? Why would these adults think it would be okay to be the way that they are around a child?” I remember thinking this when I was very small. I was always interested in what makes people do the things that they do. Apparently, I went to my mother when I was a little girl and said, “I want to be an abnormal psychologist.” That’s what she said I said to her, and apparently, that was the term.

I remember that term.

She said, “Honey, only boys can be doctors.” I said, “I want to be a fireman.” She said, “I’m sorry, honey, only boys can be firemen.” I said, “I want to be a nun.” She said, “Your boyfriend will be Jesus Christ and you’ll never get married and have children.” I was like, “Fine, whatever.” I digress. I had a lifelong curiosity and obsession. I’m an observer of behavior and intuitive like, “When someone does that, that means they’re thinking or feeling this.” The acting train pulled into town when I was twelve and I rode that train in the direction it was going for many years. In those years, going to treatment multiple times and thinking, “This is what I want to do.” Of course, I wasn’t sober yet and hadn’t gotten sober for many years, but I thought, “I want to help. I want to be a helper. I want to be a healer.”

My second book is called Hopeful Healing because I think of myself as a hopeful healer. I got arrested in August of 2008 for felony possession after many years of recovery and a very public relapse. I remember being chained to a bench, handcuffed to a bench and thinking, “Oh boy.” If addiction is like maybe a tumor that needs to be excised, I missed a spot. I didn’t get clear margins. I had to go back to the beginning.

Such a great analogy, by the way.

Thank you. I went to treatment again, and I came home and I walked into this house that I’m sitting in right now and I thought, “Am I going to continue to compete with other women? Am I going to follow passion or am I going to follow expectation?” The expectation is for me to continue to try and book acting jobs and audition and it’s just, pardon me, effing exhausting.

Working With Brad Lamm And Breathe Life Healing Centers

I was tired. I thought, “Let me go back to school to become a counselor and see if anyone will hire me.” I ended up working at a facility for three years. I was at a conference and Brad said, “Do you want to go for a drive with me?” I said, “Sure.” I still love Brad Lamm. I’m obsessed with him. He offered me a job. Out of a misplaced sense of loyalty to my current employer, I turned him down. I went back to my job.

On a daily basis, my ethical panties were in a twist just like, “If I stay, I am complicit.” I texted Brad and I said, “If you ever offer me a job again, I will have a very different answer for you.” Within three weeks, I was at Breathe. I started there as a primary counselor. I carried a caseload. I loved it. I worked with clients and all that.

I started traveling to speak and then my second book came out and I was on a book tour. You can’t say to your caseload, “I hope the rest of treatment goes well. I got to go. I got to go on a book tour.” I became the float counselor. I became a director and now I’m a part owner. Over the years, I’ve moved upstairs bit by bit. I’ve found that I’m capable of doing things I never ever thought I would be able to do. Administrative work, systems improvement, chart auditing, resolving billable hours, all these things. I never even thought they would interest me.

I became the float counselor, a director, and now a part owner. I’ve moved up bit by bit. I’ve found that I’m capable of doing things I never thought I would be able to do, things that I never thought would interest me.

Isn’t it amazing that you can go from where you were? Obviously, having a very successful career, coming from a very successful family, and then also having the addiction, the life of addiction and the struggles that you’ve had, not even believing, “I could own part of a treatment center. I could own a treatment center. I could audit charts. I can save lives.” You wanted to do it, but you thought, “How am I going to do that?”

I always had this idea that, “Mack can’t drive a stick. Mack can’t do this,” because of early conditioning that I was only capable of one thing. As they say in recovery, these old ideas about ourselves have to be smashed to create space for new skills, interests, and ways of being. I have to tell you when I started working at Breathe Life Healing Center, I was sitting at the feet of the master.

As they say in recovery, these old ideas that we have about ourselves need to be smashed so that we can create space for new skills, new interests, and new ways of being.

I was sitting at the feet of Kathleen Murphy for many years. She was our clinical director, brilliant psychodromatist, and sensory-motor psychotherapy therapist, one of those magical unicorn people. Kathleen, after founding Breathe Life Healing Center and creating the curriculum that we use at Breathe, has since left Breathe and moved on to Onsite where she works.

She’s so yummy. Now we have Adrienne Glasser, who is an internal family systems guru and is a brilliant clinician in her own right. We keep on keeping on. We have the echoes and the remnants of the beautiful program that Kathleen Murphy created and then we add in this incredibly trained internal family systems therapist. We have this rich and vivid program and we also have our chem sex track. We work with gay men with crystal meth and sex addiction where those wires of meth and sex are so tangled up that work of untangling those wires and having a sex-positive sex life instead of a meth-induced sex life. It is something important and something that we do very well.

It is so needed in our community and in my community, the LGBTQ-plus community. It’s an underserved population, I believe, and especially that chem sex population. You guys and my good friend Manny Rodriguez at La Fuente, who’s a good friend of yours both do such great jobs in that population. Thank you for making that part. Obviously, Brad Lamm is very proud of that program as well as you guys. Congrats to all of you guys who are doing it at Breathe. We’re a big supporter and we love you guys.

I wanted to ask something rather difficult and that is, again, coming from the family that you come from, the life that you’ve had, the struggles that you’ve had, and the huge successes now that you’re experiencing. You had a very difficult relationship with your father and you had a significant amount of trauma related to your father. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about overcoming that trauma.

Overcoming Trauma And Forgiveness

When I think about my father and I think about my life, I think about generational trauma. I think about inherited trauma. I think about the perfect storm of untreated mental illness, raging addiction, and childhood abuse and neglect that we unwittingly pass through the generations. My father was a narcissist and I have discovered there’s no pill for narcissism.

When I think about my father and my life, generational trauma, and inherited trauma. I think about the perfect storm of untreated mental illness, raging addiction, and childhood abuse and neglect that we unwittingly pass through the generations.

It took me a long time to see that I had been groomed and that I had been prepped for incest and sexual abuse from a very young age. When I think about incest survivors and how it’s so taboo and people don’t want to think about it, people don’t want to look at it. People don’t believe that it happens as often as it does, not only in societies around the world but in Western society and here in the United States. I believe that in order to speak of forgiveness, I had to practice forgiveness.

I know my dad didn’t hold me in his arms for the first time and go, “A baby girl. I’m going to drug her and I’m going to groom her and I’m going to have sex with her while she’s unconscious.” I don’t think that’s how it went down. I hate what he did. It’s so difficult because it’s such a complicated thing to think about or even speak about because I love my dad, but he harmed me. His music is brilliant. He was a genius, but he was a tortured, megalomaniacal, narcissistic genius.

For me to walk free from that, those two things have to be able to exist at the same time. I have to be able to love my dad, but I also have to be able to hate what he did to me. I am left with this busy brain that has conflicting emotions about that. It’s like coming from a wealthy family. How do you speak of neglect? How do you go, “My needs weren’t met?” You lived in a mansion and your dad had a Rolls Royce and there was a chef. All of these things are very conflicting. I forgave my father on his deathbed.

He couldn’t speak anymore. He was intubated, but I know he heard me. I said, “I am grateful that I am your daughter. I am grateful for the highs and the lows because the person that I have become is tremendously resilient and able to say, “Me too. I’ve been there. I’ve walked through this.” Now, here’s something interesting. High on Arrival, my book was a New York Times bestseller, the host was like, “Mackenzie Phillips shares this devastating secret.” It came a little too early. If High on Arrival had come out during the Me Too movement, nobody would have the backlash that I had.

Which is traumatic in itself, I’m sure.

Absolutely traumatic. I still can’t wrap my mind around it. I remember sitting at home one day and I turned on, I don’t know, Access Hollywood or Extra or one of those, and they were showing a clip of me talking to Oprah Winfrey on her show, and they had a body language expert watching it and commenting on whether or not I was telling the truth. Can you imagine? In our current climate, it would never have happened. I guess I was a pioneer. It wasn’t an easy time. It wasn’t an easy time and I lost my family. We have since reconciled. We are as close as a scattered family like mine can be.

Full of artists and geniuses. That’s difficult.

It’s been an incredible ride. I was talking earlier about that mortality thing about having a knee replaced, your joints going bad, and having osteoarthritis. I’m like, “How am I 62? How did my son turn 35 last week?” It’s shocking.

I want to wrap up that segment real quick on your dad by saying the gift I feel like you were given was the gift of healing other people and being able to talk about that experience and in showing women, men for that matter, everyone that’s been through what you’ve been through that it’s survivable and not only can you survive but you can thrive.

Thank you.

Are you still singing and are you doing any acting besides Breathe?

Balancing Acting And Counseling Work

I don’t actively seek acting work. I have an agent because I’ve always had an agent. It seems like I should have an agent. Let me tell you that when I did Orange is the New Black years ago, I was at the Flight Attendant Drug and Alcohol Program Conference. I got a call from my agent and I was sitting there with Kathleen Murphy and Deb Hughes, the CEO of Breathe and my agent was like, “Orange is the New Black called. Do you want to put yourself on tape for Orange is the New Black?” I was like, “Yeah.” The CEO of Breathe, Deb Hughes, played the other role. Kathleen Murphy, the clinical director of Breathe, directed the audition. We were at a conference where I was presenting on generational trauma.

I emailed the tape back to my agent. As I was waiting in line for security to fly home from the conference, I got a call that I booked the job. It’s still funny how that works. I was on location in New York for 4 or 5 months, sitting in my prison uniform in my dressing room, auditing charts on my computer, working at Breathe while working on Orange is the New Black. Do I have any acting work in the works? No. Could that change at any given moment? Sure. Do I value myself by my last acting project? Part of me does because that was ingrained in me.

The work that I do at Breathe is so fulfilling and so exciting. I remember when I was doing the new One Day At A Time on Netflix. It was at Sony so I could drive over to Breathe. I’d be at Sony rehearsing and doing the new One Day At A Time and then the day would end early and I’d get wrapped. I would get in my car and I’d drive over to Breathe. I’d walk into a clinical meeting where people were talking about saving somebody’s life. What clinical interventions can we use to retain this client in treatment so that they don’t end up dead? I thought, “This is my jam.” That’s fun, but this is my jam.

This is where I want to be and where I need to be. You wanted to ask her. You told me in the elevator ride over here, you said, “Let’s talk about dogs.”

You had Louie. You didn’t introduce Louie. Is he still there in your lap?

Here’s Louie.

We’re huge dog lovers.

He’s lived with me since he was four.

Did you rescue him?

I’ll introduce you to one more guy.

Now, are they all rescues, Mack?

All of them.

I love that.

This is One Eye. His name is One Eye. He’s my baby.

When did you rescue him? How old was he?

He was a year and a half old. He was a one-eyed dog at the time, but his name was Hershey. I was like, “Hershey, no. Your name is One Eye.” We call him Oney.

He’s adorable.

He’s beautiful.

He’s deaf. He can’t hear a word.

You’ve got four?

I had four dogs, but Rudy Pug passed away. Now, we have 1 pug, 2 chihuahuas, and 3 rescued cats. It’s a busy house.

Self-Care And Hobbies

Speaking of being busy, when you’re not at Breathe and you and I being in this business, when we’re not at work, we’re at work. It’s on our minds and we’re working all the time. What do you do for self-care and what do you do for fun when you’re not recovering from knee replacement?

I am an avid board gamer. I’m not talking about Risk or Monopoly or Settlers of Catan. My son and I play these massive board games. It’s a category of board games called Eurogames. They’re heavy strategy games. We’ve turned our den into a game room. We have many games. We play whenever we can. Talk about something that promotes neuroplasticity.

I was going to say you’re not getting Alzheimer’s.

I don’t think so because this is a massive game table, and you’re managing resources, finances, and worker placement. It’s absolutely wonderful. I also play Oculus, the VR headset. It’s so much fun.

Good for you. Now, you’re probably not able to do Oculus right now with your knee.

I have been playing Fruit Ninja from the bed. You can set a stationary boundary. I absolutely love it.

You’re using your arms and swords.

You’ll have to explain that to me later.

We’ll talk about it. I don’t even know what that is.

I can’t wait until I can play my favorite game standing up again, but I can’t do it.

We ran out of time. Do you want to ask her your understanding question?

I could sit here for another hour with her or two hours with her.

We’re way over time.

Mack, I always want to ask folks, what is your understanding of the human condition? That’s a hard question, a little curve ball out there, but you are the epitome of the human condition.

I think that we forget that we are light. We are light. We are electricity, we are power, we are love. I think we get so caught up. I get so caught up in the doing of tasks, “Let me do this, I have to do that. Let me do the laundry while I clean the floors,” that I forget to remember. I learned this from Kathleen Murphy. I have inherent worth and value that cannot be taken away and I am the physical manifestation of light.

We are light. We are electricity. We are power. We are love. I get so caught up in the doing that I forget to remember – and I learned this from Kathleen Murphy – that I have inherent worth and value that cannot be taken away.

What a perfect way to end this. Let me say one more quick thing. I am so proud of you for your life, what you’ve been through, where you are, being a part owner at Breathe, and all the work you’re doing at Breathe with Brad. Please tell Brad I said hello. One other person who told me to tell you hello, who loves you and has known you your entire life, is my wonderful friend, Candy Finnegan.

I adore that woman. We have stories.

That’s another episode.

I should get the two of you on an episode.

She is something else. I loved her husband, Mike, too.

I love Mike Finnegan so much and I love Candy. I’m having dinner with her. I can’t wait to hug her.

Will you kiss her right on the face for me?

I will. I’m air-kissing you, and I hope to see you soon.

Mackenzie, if anyone wants to reach you, how do they reach you?

My handles for social media are @MackPhillips. Instagram, Twitter, and also Facebook is Mackenzie Phillips. BreatheLifeHealingCenter.com.

Dr. Flowers, how do folks reach you?

Flowers Health Institute and it’s JFlowersHealth.com. I would love to have you and Brad out to Houston. Come to tour J. Flowers Health and spend some time with us. You got to go.

We’ll be having a tour with you soon.

We sure are. Yeah. I’ll call you offline and say hello. I love you, dear.

Thank you, Robin. Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

I’d like to remind everyone that there are numerous platforms to find our show, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, and iHeart Radio. Please share this episode on social media or with someone that you think could help. We remind you also that a clear diagnosis is key to the most effective treatment possible. See you next time.

Thanks again, Robin.