Steve Groth
Co-Host and Medical Commentator

Dr. Steve is a fully licensed and board-certified emergency physician who graduated from Harvard College and the University of Minnesota Medical School, and who then went on to serve as Director of Emergency Services at a large urban hospital for 14 years. As Bob's side-kick Co-Host “on the perch”, he serves as Medical Commentator for the “Recovery Radio Show”. Dr Steve is the one to turn to for medical explanations of addiction and its many manifestations. He is the “steady one” in the booth; always keeping the discussion on track and focusing on the facts as we know them. He, too, is in recovery.

Steve’s life took a major turn several years ago when he came down with a chronic pain condition that seriously transformed his once-golden medical career. Prior to that, he practiced emergency medicine for over twenty years on the “front lines” of the ER, serving as Director of a busy ER for the last 14. He acquired many industry accolades and served as president of his 2200 member statewide professional association in 1988. During that time, he among many noteworthy accomplishments led his specialty colleagues in developing legislation in Sacramento that improved the quality of ER care for California’s residents.

Somewhere around 1998, he began to experience debilitating abdominal pain, nausea, and weight loss that defied diagnosis or explanation for nearly 6 years- in spite of being a patient himself in several of the country’s finest medical institutions. His colleagues thought he might have terminal cancer or AIDS- and possibly he might be a de-stabilized “nut” since no medical explanation for his pain was forthcoming in spite of numerous evaluations and hospitalizations. Finally in 2004, a diagnosis of chronic pancreatitis was definitively made. But not before his life had taken a huge downhill swirl.

Because chronic pancreatitis causes extremely severe ongoing abdominal pain, he had become enrolled in medical pain management clinics to deal with that aspect of his illness. However, being the addict and alcoholic that he is, he violated the primal stipulation of being a physician: “Do not treat thyself”. Among other things, he self-prescribed staggeringly large amounts of opioid narcotics and other prescription medications. His addictions flung him out of control. He had to discontinue actively practicing medicine in 2001 due to the combination of his addictions and the disease of chronic pancreatitis.

A family intervention in 2002 led to Dr Steve’s first rehab experience. This one lasted over six months and was complicated by his yet-undiagnosed chronic pancreatitis. The doctors and staff at the rehab facility simply did not know how to crack Dr Steve’s denial; he continued to believe that his primary problem was chronic pain, and that his profligate use of alcohol and drugs was justified by that reality. Rehabilitation of the combination of addiction and chronic pain is maddeningly difficult; such “dual diagnoses” are a major challenge in addiction treatment.

A subsequent prolonged relapse involving self-prescribing of narcotics followed his departure from the first rehab treatment. A near-brush with the law nearly a year later propelled Dr Steve into rehab once again. This time it “stuck”, and he is now sober, loving it, and is off all narcotics except for a low dose of Suboxone for pain, the latter under the careful eye of an addictionologist.

While in his last rehab, Dr Steve started thinking about creating a reality TV show based upon life in a sober living home like the one he was in.  Dr Steve shortly thereafter was introduced to Bob M, who had by then already was on the way to creating the “Recovery Radio Show” as we now know it. Dr Steve joined Bob on the Recovery Radio Show as Medical Commentator shortly after the second show.
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