an Enneagram podcast where we explore how your personality shows up in all of life. I'm your host, Tyler Zach, and in each episode I connect you with leading experts on how your personality impacts your relationships, mental health, spirituality, and everything in between. In today's episode, I'm joined by best-selling author, psychotherapist, and The Road Back to You co-author Ian Morgan Cron. While Ian has helped millions of people understand the Enneagram through his teaching, this conversation is much more personal. Ian shares his own journey through addiction and recovery, why he believes every one of us is somewhere on the addiction continuum, and how our deepest attachments — to work, success, relationships, control, or even our own pain — can quietly shape our mental health. This was one of the most talked-about sessions on my Mental Health Summit, and I think it will change the way you think about addiction. You can find Ian, his best-selling books, his Enneagram courses, and his new assessment at ianmorgancron.com. Now, without further ado, let's jump in.

Ian Cron (02:21)

Tyler, it's a delight to be with you again.

Tyler Zach (02:23)

Let's start with a big question: what is mental health? What are we actually talking about when we use that phrase?

Ian Cron (02:43)

That's a great question, and I've thought a lot about it. Everybody assumes they know what mental health means until you ask them to define it. As a therapist and a priest, it's very hard for me to compartmentalize the psychological and the spiritual — they're deeply interwoven for me.

I don't have a pithy two-sentence answer, but I'd say that good mental health is the lived experience of being rooted in our identity as children of God — as beloved offspring of the divine — who are free (and freedom is a big word here), able to love and be loved, and able to maintain a stable relationship with God, self, and others in a way that brings fulfillment, purpose, and usefulness in the world. It's the ability to accept life on life's terms. To maintain emotional and spiritual balance in the face of whatever comes at us. To live from a posture of presence, freedom, and compassion. And I'd also include rightly ordered desires — because having a healthy relationship with desire is a hallmark of good mental health. People will have all kinds of other answers. But I think those are core features, and it's a good place to start.

Tyler Zach (05:38)

Those are brilliant. And we'll discover that mental health is not just mental — it's mind, body, spirit. Anything that can affect that shalom, that peace between self, others, and God, is affecting mental health. I love how identity is at the core of what you're describing.

You wrote a book called The Fix on addiction and recovery. Before people tune out because they don't think addiction applies to them — I'd love for you to make the case that all of us are somewhere on what you call the addiction continuum, and explain why denying that reality can itself affect our mental health.

Ian Cron (07:43)

When people hear the word addiction, they immediately picture people sleeping under bridges or needing to go to rehab for drug and alcohol problems. We "other" this group — we say it's a subset of the population with serious problems. But through the lens of my spiritual tradition and my own experience, it's pretty clear to me that we all suffer from self-defeating addictions.

There was a great psychiatrist named Gerald May — a person of faith — who wrote a book in the 1980s called Addiction and Grace. It was very important to me. He writes: "To be human is to be addicted. And to be human and addicted is to stand in need of grace." He was saying that addiction is the universal human experience — not a "those people" problem, but an "us" problem. Brené Brown famously said we live in the most addicted cohort in US history. So addiction is part of what it means to be human.

Now, psychology does recognize a continuum — from mild to moderate to severe. Some addictions are less life-threatening than others. But all addictions interfere with our freedom to love God, self, and others. They diminish our lives.

Let me offer two definitions. The clinical one: an addiction is a compulsive, uncontrollable relationship with a substance, a behavior, or a person that has mood-altering effects and negative consequences. That's a solid starting point. But the definition I like more — the one with a spiritual component — is this: an addiction is what arises when the unquenchable desire for union with God misdirects and pathologically bonds with a substance, a behavior, or a person.

That tips its hat to Carl Jung, to Bill Wilson the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, and to all those who said that essentially all addicts are human beings looking for wholeness or union with God, and that desire has become disordered. Rather than attaching to God, it has attached to something else — a substance, a behavior, a person. Think about codependency. And I think that's a beautiful description, because at its core, addiction has a spiritual component.

Tyler Zach (11:46)

This resonates with the biblical idea of idolatry. One of the prophets mocks carved wooden idols: they have mouths but don't speak, ears but can't hear. And as you get to the New Testament, the language shifts to "heart idols" — whatever has mastered you, that is your idol. Whatever you're looking to for transcendent meaning, purpose, and identity. And you mention in The Fix that the fourth-century Christian desert mothers and fathers spoke about this in terms of attachments. Can you unpack that?

Ian Cron (13:25)

Yes — the earliest church mothers and fathers would not have used the word addiction; they would have talked about attachments. And they're synonymous. An attachment is a physical, emotional, or psychological dependence on some real or illusory object that eventually robs a person of their freedom. We know we're in the grip of an attachment when we use something in excess of our needs, for purposes other than those for which it was intended — as an end rather than as a means to a legitimate end.

Take workaholism. Work is a good thing. But when you use it in excess of its needs — to bolster your self-esteem, to give your life meaning and prestige and value, to create security and safety — when it becomes an end in itself rather than a means to something legitimate, you're sitting somewhere on the addiction continuum with it. Ultimately, attachments are spiritual workarounds. They are self-designed strategies for making life more tolerable apart from reliance on the love, power, and grace of God. They consume our attention. They drain our desire — siphoning the desire for God away to something else — leaving us with not only less life, but with less love for God, for others, and for ourselves. And eventually, your attachments will start to demand sacrifices and compromises of your values that you may not be prepared to make — but you do anyway.

Tyler Zach (16:22)

So addiction isn't just about alcohol, drugs, or gambling. What are some of the subtler, more unconscious attachments that can be just as powerful and still shape our mental health significantly?

Ian Cron (16:48)

The obvious ones are well known: alcohol, drugs, sex, love, pornography, codependency, food, sugar, technology, shopping, gaming, sports betting, social media. Those are fairly widely recognized as life-diminishing. But there are countless others. Off the top of my head: controlling behavior. The need to be right. Success. People addicted to the suffering of their past — they've organized their entire identity around it and don't know who they would be without it. Anger — I know people who are genuinely addicted to their anger. Fantasy, worry, exercise, overthinking, knowledge. The list goes on.

All of these are external solutions to an internal problem. The internal problem is a feeling of what the Buddhists call dukkha — the feeling of not being at home. Restlessness, listlessness, anxiety, afflictive emotions that cause distress. Human beings go looking for fixes for that distress, and they find a substance, a behavior, or a person and apply it as a solution. Here's where it goes sideways: when your external solution to your internal problem becomes a bigger problem than the problem it was trying to solve, now you have two problems. The original big ache — which is just being human — and now the addiction on top of it.

What's particularly tricky is that some of these behaviors — like workaholism or the drive for success — are things the culture actually praises. That's why it takes real discernment to ask: has this become an ultimate end for me? Am I depending on it in a way that's displacing God at the center of my identity?

Tyler Zach (20:45)

You outline a five-step cycle in the book for how we get into these patterns. Can you briefly walk through those five steps?

Ian Cron (21:15)

These aren't original to me, but they're a helpful non-clinical lens on how addictions get rolling. Step one is pain. Human beings have pain. Gabor Maté — who wrote a great book on addiction called In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts — says the question isn't "why the addiction?" The question is "why the pain?" If someone said to me, "Tyler has a drinking problem," I'd say: actually, Tyler doesn't have a drinking problem. Tyler has a drinking solution. Alcohol isn't the problem. Heroin isn't the problem. Overeating isn't the problem. Those are solutions to a problem. The journey of healing involves turning your attention away from the solution and toward the cause — the pain underneath.

Step two: we discover a fix. We find a substance, a behavior, or a person that ameliorates the pain. When I feel distress, I discover that a drink begins to evaporate it. Or a sleeve of donuts at one in the morning. Or that feeling of meaninglessness that goes away when I do X, Y, or Z. We find the fix.

Step three: we get a dopamine hit. Our brain's reward system fires. We get temporary relief from those afflictive emotions. And here's what's nefarious about addictions — in the beginning, they work. I'm a recovering alcoholic and addict. Back in 1985, I had a lot of fun drinking. It worked. I felt at home in my own skin. I felt oddly connected to God, actually — a feeling of transcendence and connectedness to myself and others. It worked. And then it didn't.

Step four: consequences. You get a DUI. Your wife says you have a problem and will leave unless you address it. You lose a job. For those with less severe addictions, the consequences are less dramatic — but still real. Let's say you have an addiction to control through the lens of an Enneagram One. People experience you as judgmental, critical, morally superior. You're suffering consequences.

Step five: shame and guilt. Your addictive behavior produces shame or guilt, which then leads to more pain — which then starts the cycle over again. Now you're locked in the circuit: lather, rinse, repeat. Something has to interrupt it. And I've heard probably 50 addiction stories a week for years, and I've yet to hear a truly new one. They're all variants of the same story.

Tyler Zach (28:38)

To summarize: pain leads to a substance or behavior as a solution. We get temporary relief. Then consequences. Then shame and guilt. And that shame and guilt feeds back into pain — and with it, almost always some damage to the relationships around us. You started to share your own story. You're one of the most vulnerably honest writers and speakers I know — it's why I love fours. Can you share a bit more about your own journey?

Ian Cron (29:31)

My recovery journey began in 1987 when I first entered the rooms of recovery for alcoholism. I grew up in an alcoholic family. My father died from alcoholism at 62 — never saw a day of sobriety. Two of my aunts died of alcoholism. I have a sibling in recovery. A cousin died from addiction. It doesn't run in our family; it gallops. So I come from what you might call an alcoholic dynasty. All to say: addiction has genetic, trauma-based, psychological, and sociological dimensions. It's a multi-pronged condition.

I came into recovery in 1987. I attended a 12-step program for a couple of years, but I'll often say I was more auditing the course than taking it for credit. I did stop drinking — the compulsion was removed — and I went on with my life. I became a psychotherapist, an Episcopal priest. I ran a church, wrote books, wrote songs. A very productive, wonderful life for multiple decades. Then in 2019, I had a relapse — in the form of prescription medications: Adderall, Xanax, Klonopin. And this is how addictions work: I didn't consciously connect what I was doing to relapsing, because it wasn't alcohol. Until I woke up one day with a real problem, and thought: wait. This is just cross-addiction. The addiction that had been sleeping in my psyche for 25 years had simply awakened in a new form.

I spent 30 days in treatment. That was now coming up on six years ago. I decided to write The Fix because I spent those five or six years immersed in the literature of addiction, trying to make sense of what addictions are from a psychological and spiritual perspective — and trying to figure out how to communicate this to people who wouldn't classically identify as addicts, so they could deal with similar attachments in their own lives.

One thing that has always been true of addictive behaviors in my life is that they were a misguided search for God, for the divine. Carl Jung is often credited as the anonymous co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous because of an interaction he had with Roland Hazard, a mutual friend of Bill W's. Roland was a completely out-of-control alcoholic who spent a year in Switzerland with Jung, thought he was healed, left — and was drunk by the time he got to Paris. He went back to Jung: "Is there any hope for me?" And Jung said something stunning: "Actually, no. However, I have met some people who have had a vital spiritual experience and found freedom from their addiction." Roland heard that, went back to New York, got involved with a Christian organization called the Oxford Group, found faith, and found a solution. That eventually reached Bill W., and Alcoholics Anonymous was born. Jung later wrote to Bill W. about Roland: "His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language as the union with God."

Tyler Zach (36:08)

This is where the Enneagram becomes incredibly useful. The first of the 12 steps says: we admitted we were powerless over _______ — that our lives had become unmanageable. Most people fill in that blank with alcohol or drugs. But the Enneagram gives us vocabulary for naming the deeper, more unconscious attachments that quietly run our lives. Could you go around the Enneagram and fill in the blank for each type?

Ian Cron (37:14)

I would actually say you could make the case that each type's passion or fixation is an attachment — a pathological relationship with a feeling or a thought pattern that drives unhelpful behavior and interferes with our ability to love God, self, and others.

And by the way, powerlessness is a word that makes some people bristle. But I find it a little absurd that people want to protect the fantasy that they have enormous control over their lives when most people can't sneeze without wetting themselves. What's ironic in the spiritual life is that the moment you admit powerlessness, a new kind of power comes in that actually frees you to become the person you want to be.

So: Type 1 — powerless over their attachment to being good, to resentment, to being right. Type 2 — powerless over their need to be needed, their addiction to appreciation, to being seen and loved. Type 3 — if twos want appreciation, threes want admiration. Powerless over the drive for success, and over this reflexive projection of false masks in order to win admiration. Type 4 — often have a powerful attachment to the suffering of their past, to their unique story of pain, and to the compulsive need to feel special and unique. Type 5 — attachment to information, knowledge, self-sufficiency, autonomy. Type 6 — a lust for safety, certainty, security, and reassurance. Type 7 — powerless over the passion of gluttony, this feeling of deprivation that needs constant satisfying, this commitment to avoiding pain and staying free. Type 8 — attachment to control and power. Type 9 — attachment to comfort, to being unaffected by life, to sloth. You could go through every type and reframe these as addictions or attachments — and if you were to apply the 12 steps to them, it would help free people from them.

Tyler Zach (41:19)

I want to highlight how potent and practically useful this is. As a type three, if someone in a therapy room said, "Let's talk about your relationship with admiration or with workaholism," I would have a tremendous amount of work to do — because those attachments have caused real problems in my life. These words will take a lifetime to tease out.

Ian Cron (42:08)

Thank you for using your own life as an example. Can I ask you a few questions about it?

Tyler Zach (42:17)

Please.

Ian Cron (42:18)

Have you, on your own unaided willpower, been able to overcome the passion of vanity or deceit, the workaholism, the derivative behaviors that flow from being a three? Have you managed to break free from those on your own?

Tyler Zach (42:40)

No. Let me tell you about a moment of intervention. As a three, I want to be extremely competent in whatever I focus on. When I was pastoring, that was theology — I was constantly reading books on theology, listening to podcasts while doing dishes. My wife got so upset because I was just not present or accessible. We ended up in our pastor's office together, back when we were young church members. And I didn't even see it as a problem. I was like: "I'm multitasking — I'm listening while I do the dishes." And she said: "I literally cannot talk to you. You always have something in your ear or your nose in a book." That led to a year-long fast from books, podcasts, and blogs — a complete withdrawal from those things.

Ian Cron (43:52)

You went into the desert. This is why the desert mothers and fathers went there — in part to overcome attachments and addictions. Interestingly, the other person I know whose spiritual director made them fast from books was a five. You could do this with every single Enneagram type. And here, identity comes back to the center again — so much of good mental health is rooted in identity, in the lived experience of being grounded in the divine. You had developed a relationship with work and knowledge that became a psychological and emotional dependency — it robbed you of freedom, damaged relationships, and you were using it in excess of its needs for purposes it was never intended for, as an end rather than a means. Very subtle. People might say, "You don't go to rehab for an addiction to theology." True — but it was diminishing you. It could have damaged your marriage. It was starting to rob you of freedom. And here's the telltale sign of all addictions: you were the last one to see it. Addiction is the only disease that constantly tells you you don't have a disease. Everyone else sees it before you do.

Tyler Zach (45:47)

For those who are listening right now and coming to terms with the possibility that they're on the addiction continuum — that there are some unhealthy attachments shaping their life — what would your advice or encouragement be?

Ian Cron (46:11)

A couple of things. First, there will definitely be people listening who are in life-threatening situations — addicted to drugs, alcohol, or other substances in serious ways. I want them to know there is a solution. And the solution isn't the one they're currently using. It might be found through the 12 steps, which could mean residential treatment, or starting to attend 12-step meetings. That's one group.

Then there's the larger group — the two who is compulsively meeting everyone's needs while disavowing their own, who can't stop, who says it's just reflexive. Or the three who can't stop chasing the next achievement. For these people: we begin by being honest. That's what step one is. We admit we're powerless over our compulsive pattern — whatever it is — and that our lives have become unmanageable in this area. We just begin by saying: God, I'm licked. I've tried therapy, yoga retreats, all of it, and I still can't break free from this pattern. So we're ruthlessly honest.

Steps one through three are about mending your relationship with God. Step one: I can't. Step two: he can. Step three: I think I'll let him. You recognize your powerlessness, you come to believe there's a power greater than yourself that can help, and you turn your will and your life over to that power. Steps four through seven are about mending your relationship with yourself — through honest self-reflection and owning the parts of your person that are unhelpful and unskillful. Not shame-based, not beating yourself up — if it feels like that, you're not doing it right. Steps eight and nine are about mending your relationships with others — making amends to people you've hurt. And ten through twelve are about creating a lifestyle that supports the ongoing journey toward wholeness going forward.

There's nobody who can't use this. It gets at the core of what's broken and gives us a way out.

Tyler Zach (49:42)

We've really been focused on the first few chapters of The Fix today — making the case that this topic is for everyone. If you're intrigued, go get Ian's book. And Ian, where else can people continue learning from you?

Ian Cron (50:16)

The main hub is ianmorgancron.com. I have three courses I'm really proud of. Discovering You is an eight-hour introduction to the Enneagram. True U is Enneagram 2.0 — it goes into arrows, subtypes, and so on. And Enneagram in the Workplace is exactly what it sounds like. All three are content-rich — we worked hard on them. There's also The Road Back to You, The Story of You (a narrative approach to the Enneagram), and of course The Fix.

And I now have an Enneagram assessment. We spent significant resources developing it — because as a therapist I know there are assessments out there that are a real disservice to people, poorly constructed and not scientifically validated. We hired a research psychologist who is a Harvard fellow and specializes in psychometric assessment. The result has very high validity and reliability scores. It also surfaces your wing and subtype, not just your type — and the report is about 22 to 25 pages. I'm proud of it. You can also reach out through my website for corporate workshops and individual coaching.

Tyler Zach (53:03)

Ian, this has been another sacred conversation. I'll be forever grateful for The Road Back to You and for the credibility you've given the Enneagram on a wide scale — paving the way for teachers, coaches, and therapists to use this tool with confidence. It's been an honor to be with you today.

Ian Cron (53:33)

Thanks, Tyler. It was really fun to riff for an hour with you about ideas that lead to better mental health.