MIND OVER MUSIC

During his years as a student at New Trier Township High School in Winnetka, Aaron Weiner performed in ensembles, played the piano and the clarinet, sang in two choirs, and was a member of the orchestra band.

He also listened often—to his close friends’ problems.

“They felt comfortable coming to me and talking with me,” recalls Weiner, a former Wilmette resident. “I didn’t mind being there for them and giving them all the time they needed. We’d have long conversations about life. I helped people open up.

“I’ve always been interested in people.”

Nobody in Weiner’s life was surprised when he contemplated pursuing either a career in music or a career in psychology while attending Iowa State University (Class of 2007) in Ames.

“I remember asking myself, ‘How can I be of most service in a line of work?’” says Weiner, who majored in psychology and minored in music and in sociology at ISU. “Songs make people smile, and it’s fun to go to concerts. In psychology, I’d be able to impact fewer people, but the impact would be more significant. That’s why I chose to go down the path of psychology.”

Now 38 and living in Long Grove with his wife, Lauren, and their two classical guitar-playing children—a 9-year-old daughter and a 7-year-old son—Aaron Weiner, PhD, is a licensed, board-certified psychologist and master addiction counselor. Also a clinician, author, and frequent speaker on addiction treatment and issues, he launched his Lake Forest-based practice, Bridge Forward Group LLC in 2020.

Bridge Forward Group is an entrepreneurial venture with a mission to catalyze positive change in the addiction space. Projects focus on connecting clients—clinical, professional, governmental, or the general public—to the information required to most effectively elicit change, with an emphasis on presenting information in an accessible and actionable way.

The group’s reassuring message is, “Addiction is complicated. Understanding it doesn’t have to be.”

“I’m passionate about sharing information with people who need it to become hopeful and empowered,” says Dr. Weiner, who speaks 50 to 60 times a year before a range of audiences, from students of all grades to parents to fellow therapists. “I care about being the vehicle of information for others who seek solutions to treatable problems like anxiety, depression, trauma, and others.

“I’m also aware that information is good, but action is better.”

Weiner earned his doctorate in Counseling Psychology at the University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign in 2013, four years after completing his master’s degree (American Psychological Association Accredited Counseling Psychology Program) at the Big Ten school.

“Beginning at Iowa State, normal psychology interested me more than abnormal psychology did,” Weiner says. “Social psychology appealed to me, because it deals with human dynamics and personalities, as well as why people do what they do. Everybody has a story, right? “I find people fascinating.”

After serving as a staff psychologist/clinical director at the Spectrum Health Medical Group in Grand Rapids, Michigan, from 2014-2016, Weiner was named director of addiction services at Linden Oaks of Edwards-Elmhurst, a three-hospital health system based in Naperville. His tenure there spanned 2016-2020.

On his second day at Linden Oaks, Weiner was pulled out of a work orientation session shortly after it had begun. But not because Edwards-Elmhurst had second thoughts about hiring him.

“They wanted me to attend a meeting with the chief medical officer and other hospital leaders on that morning,” Weiner says. “They wanted to hear about the science of addictions. I shared some of that and some of my ideas. They listened. They were receptive. I liked that.”

Born in Melrose Park, Weiner lived in River Forest until the fifth grade and resided in Buffalo Grove from the ages of nine to 13. His family—his mother, Teresa Barker, is a health writer and editor, and his father, Steve Weiner, has a background in business writing— then moved to Wilmette.

“I had stage fright,” Dr. Weiner remembers. “I was a musician, and a future public speaker, who used to fear appearing on stage as a band member in high school. I was nervous about getting nervous. But I overcame it. Years later there was a three-year gap between my speaking engagements, due mostly to COVID-19. The day I resumed speaking at a gathering, I was at a conference, wearing a suit. I stood up and spoke. I was fine. No nervousness.

“Anxiety,” he adds, “is one of the most treatable conditions.”

Regarding addiction, there’s good news and concerning news about nicotine vaping among U.S. youth, Weiner reports.

“Vaping is down at the high school level but up among middle school students,” he says, citing 2022 data. “It’s awful what companies are doing to market such products, preying on uninformed teens. E-cigarettes aren’t safe. Smoking cigarettes cost 480,000 lives, recent studies show. Alcoholism cost 140,000 more lives, but nobody, it seems, talks about the heavy toll of alcohol abuse.”

Russia Today interviewed Weiner for the article “Drinking on an empty stomach? You might have ‘drunkorexia’ and should question your relationship with alcohol. Here’s why.”

Dr. Weiner, the founder and owner of Bridge Forward Group, is the bridge between addiction science and the frontline realities of medicine, public health, politics, clinical treatment, and youth drug prevention. A symposium he presented virtually was titled, “Building an empire: The tactics and science behind vaping’s rise and ideas about where to go from here.”

“I believe in the work I’m doing, and there are a lot of folks out there who would benefit from a bit more psychology in their lives,” says Weiner, the recipient of both the DuPage County Prevention Leadership Team Changemaker Award and the Naperville Jaycees Distinguished Services Award (Healthcare Professional) in 2019.

“It was gratifying helping others when I was young, and it still is.”

Bridge Forward Group LLC is located at 100 South Saunders Road, Suite 150, in Lake Forest. For more information, visit weinerphd.com.