Dr. Nicholas Kardaras

Dr. Nicholas Kardaras is an Ivy-League educated psychologist, an internationally renowned speaker, and one of the country’s foremost addiction experts. He is the CEO and Chief Clinical Officer of Maui Recovery in Hawaii and Omega Recovery in Austin, Texas. A former Clinical Professor at Stony Brook Medicine in NY where he specialized in teaching the neurophysiology and treatment of addiction, he has also taught neuropsychology at the doctoral-level and has worked closely in developing clinical protocols with Dr. Howard Shaffer, Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and the Director of their Division of Addiction.

Dr. Kardaras is the author of the best-selling "Glow Kids" (St. Martin's Press, 2016), the seminal book on the clinical, neurological and sociological aspects of Technology Addiction (Smart Phones, Video Games, Social Media, etc.). “Glow Kids” has now been translated into 10 languages. Dr. Kardaras is also the author of "How Plato and Pythagoras Can Save Your Life" (Conari, 2011) and often uses philosophy to help work with and treat young people who are struggling with an existential crisis.

He has written for TIME Magazine, Scientific American, Psychology Today, Salon, The NY Daily News, and FOX News, and has appeared on ABC's 20/20, Good Morning America, the CBS Evening News, FOX & Friends, NPR, Good Day New York and in Esquire, New York Magazine and Vanity Fair. He was also featured on the 2019 A&E TV series “Digital Addiction” and his 2016 NY Post Op Ed “Digital Heroin” went viral with over 6 million views and shares.

Considered a leading expert on young people and digital addiction, he's clinically worked with over 2,000 teens and young adults during the last 18 years and has been active in advocating that screen addiction be recognized as a clinical disorder akin to substance addiction. As a result of his clinical training and expertise working with tech addiction, Dr. Kardaras has developed the most comprehensive treatment protocols to treat this emerging global problem.

Dr. Kardaras is also the creator of Seahab, an intensive experiential form of nature immersion therapy. Based on the very successful evidence-based principles of Outdoor Behavioral Healthcare (OBH), Seahab has proven to be very effective as an intensive intervention to help addicts shift out of self-destructive and toxic lifestyle patterns.

Dr. Kardaras has also, admittedly, lived a colorful life: he’s a former AAU National Karate champion, a recovering NYC nightclub owner and a coma survivor. Having once owned high-profile NY nightclubs where he had mingled with the likes of JFK, Jr., Uma Thurman and Tom Cruise, Dr. Kardaras emerged from that glamorous-yet-self-destructive world and discovered a healing path to his own recovery from addiction. Today he devotes his life to helping others find their path to recovery, healing and a life of meaning and purpose.

He lives with his wife and twin sons in Austin, Texas (although travels frequently to NY and Maui) and is a frequent presenter and lecturer on the subjects of philosophy, mental health, and both substance and screen addictions.