Addiction & Recovery Conversations with Brett Lovins
The kind of conversations I would have wanted to hear when I was finding my way to sobriety. Conversations that can help remove shame and stigma and move people toward finding help. Substance Use Disorder (addiction) is treatable.
Addiction & Recovery Conversations with Brett Lovins
Ryan Hampton's Mission to Revolutionize Recovery Support & Advocacy
Ryan Hampton, a beacon of hope and a leading voice in recovery advocacy, takes us through his transformative journey from the depths of heroin addiction to founding Mobilize Recovery. His story is one of resilience and a relentless commitment to change, illustrating how personal battles can fuel a larger mission. Through our conversation, Ryan shares how his experiences with homelessness and near-death encounters propelled him to mobilize 70,000 advocates across the U.S., aiming to break down societal stigmas and reshape the policies surrounding drug addiction.
We also dive into the pressing need for systemic healthcare reform, particularly concerning substance use disorders. Ryan discusses the barriers imposed by insurance companies and healthcare systems that make recovery seem more like a stroke of luck than a right. He emphasizes the importance of shifting perspectives to treat fentanyl and other substance issues as public health crises, advocating for comprehensive care that includes treatment, housing, and employment opportunities.
Brett and Ryan explore the power of community and the urgent need to create Recovery Friendly Workplaces (RFW). They reflect on the collective effort required to foster inclusive environments and support systems. As we set our sights on the future, the conversation leaves us inspired by the possibilities of continued advocacy and the role we can all play in supporting this vital movement.
Links:
Ryan Hampton's Website
Mobilize Recovery
Ryan's books on Amazon
Ryan's media appearances - Fox, MSNBC, BBC, etc.
- Sober Curious Consulting - Brett and Nell's Recovery Friendly Workplace consulting business.
- Washington Recovery Alliance - building the capacity of the recovery community to advance substance use recovery and mental health wellness by catalyzing public understanding and shaping public policy in Washington State.
- Recovery-Ready Workplace Toolkit - providing information, tools, and resources to help employers from all sectors—government, for-profit, non-profit, and not-for-profit—effectively prevent and respond to substance misuse in the workforce from the Department of Labor.
- Data on SUD in the US (2022) - from SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration). Link to my favorite PDF for statistics.
- Addiction 101 - it’s not a moral failing—it’s a treatable illness. Get the facts about this misunderstood medical condition from my friends at Shatterproof.
Hello, my name is Brett Lovins. Welcome to my podcast. Today we have Ryan Hampton, which is a big name in the recovery advocacy space. He's the founder of Mobilize Recovery. He has made massive changes through that organization and as an individual bestselling author he's been on all the big news networks, from Fox to MSNBC to BBC etc. And we've gotten to know each other a little bit through the interwebs here. And he was willing to come on to the podcast and I'm just really grateful for it and I'm certain that it'll be a treat for you as well.
Speaker 1:Such an eloquent orator and just a master communicator and somebody who is basically in the same kind of space as I am, only in a much larger scale, and you know, it's just cool to have him on. So I want to define a couple of terms that he mentions through the podcast. Pill mill is one of them. Pill mill is one of them and I'm going to read off the screen here as an illegal or unethical medical practice where prescription medications, often opioids, are dispensed inappropriately or excessively, typically with little regard for medical necessity. And the other one that I heard that I had to look up is a trap house. Basically it's a business or residence that's used often for production and distribution of drugs. So those are two terms that he's going to drop here as we go along.
Speaker 1:I'm going to have a ton of links in the show notes. I hope you'll go check him out and let's get into the conversation. So welcome, and I'm really excited to invite you to listen in to a podcast that I'm thrilled to have made happen. I've got my friend here, ryan Hampton, who's well known in the space of recovery and advocacy, but I'd love to give you the opportunity to kind of do your pitch on who are you, what do you do and where do our interests align? That put us together here.
Speaker 2:Brett, thanks so much for having me. It feels like it's been a long time coming trying to get this podcast organized, so I appreciate the opportunity to be here and spend some time with you and your audience. I'm Ryan Hampton. I'm an author, I'm an advocate, dog lover, husband, I'm a community member. I founded a nonprofit organization called Mobilize Recovery recovery, started it in 2017 after, you know, because of my own personal experience that I had with accessing treatment and recovery support services, but also after losing a lot of friends close to me and just seeing there was this gap of lived experience of people who were, who should be involved, advocacy and you advocacy and helping to guide policy decisions for people in recovery and those still struggling and family members out there.
Speaker 2:We've since scaled it to be quite a large organization. We work with roughly about 70,000 advocates around the country. We try to harness the power of bold media and popular media to drive home messages that break down stigma and discrimination and prejudice against people in recovery and support forward-thinking policies that support treatment, harm reduction, recovery support services, recovery-friendly workplaces, peers, which is a big focus of ours. We distribute naloxone. We've given out about 940,000 free doses of naloxone since 2019. We helped to launch innovative pilot projects, such as an emergency room pilot we're doing, where we're embedding peers in six states in emergency room settings to help increase outcomes for people who experience a substance-related crisis when they go into the ER room.
Speaker 2:I've written a couple of books on the topic, my most recent book, fentanyl Nation Toxic Politics America's Failed War on Drugs, published by Macmillan in just this past September, really talking about how we need to reframe fentanyl specifically as a public health crisis and not just a criminal justice and foreign policy crisis.
Speaker 2:It's really a domestic policy crisis, but there's all of that. And then the most important thing to me is I'm a person in long-term recovery. Haven't felt it necessary to have a drink or a drug or a mood or mind-altering substance since February 2nd 2015, which means you know, knock on wood if you hear that this coming February I'll celebrate a decade if I can keep it together one day at a time between now and then. So you know my heart, though. I'm a community organizer. I organize around the recovery community and recovery related issues on a bipartisan basis, you know, working with Democrats and Republicans and independents, and folks from all stripes push the ball forward on our issue, and I'm just grateful to be able to spend some time with you, and one of the one of the joys of being able to do this work is getting to meet so many people, like-minded people, around the country, and I'm grateful our paths crossed.
Speaker 1:Well, that's, that's a great opening and I'm going to I'm going to kind of butter up what you've just shared. So so just to talk to those that don't know about Ryan, first off, you know, mobilized recovery is a really big deal. I'll put a link in the show notes or please do Google it when you get home, if you're listening in the car and you know I'm going to name drop a little bit. So you just did that was was it last year? You do this every other year, I believe where you do a big thing at the end of your across every year.
Speaker 2:We do something every year. It's just a little different every year, but every year, every year.
Speaker 1:So so and and because when we first started here you saw the guitars on the wall. I'm a. One of my things that I'm near and dear to my heart is the musician community, artist community that tends to have trouble with drugs and alcohol. I certainly did, and you've paired up with some pretty big names, including Macklemore, who lives in my neck of the woods near Seattle. So I see those opportunities, ryan, of people in recovery who are willing to step forward and own it right and to talk about how we're not bad people, we have a disease, and when you get famous names and you're one of them, I'm afraid, my friend, I think it's powerful. What do you think about that hypothesis I just shared?
Speaker 2:I mean, I believe that messengers are just as important as the message itself. So I think the more opportunity that we have to bring known brands, trusted messengers, people that you know, individuals that folks can identify with, to speak about this issue and to come out of the shadows and to be open about it and to be open about not just their own recovery but the need, you know, for more action on this issue the better we are as a movement. You know, is it a? Is it? You know a secret? You know a secret sauce to like making it all work? No, I think I think it's a combination of things.
Speaker 2:I think you know you need a healthy level of organizing on the ground from the grassroots. You know you certainly need infrastructure. You certainly need, you know, authentic voices who are on the front lines doing this work involved. But any opportunity you have to lift that message up and to lift their work up and to, you know, help reach a broader audience that may not otherwise have tuned into the work, because you have a messenger like Macklemore or Elton John or Demi Lovato, or you know there's a whole host of Jelly Roll or others out there. You know, talking about this, it certainly reaches new folks. It certainly expands the reach of the work and helps to shift public attitudes and perceptions. I mean, that's just a fact of life and so whenever we have that opportunity, we're grateful to embrace it and make the most out of it.
Speaker 1:Love it and we totally agree. And here we are. Yeah, so you know, let's just take a little little tour into if you're, if you're willing just to tell a short bit of your story. How, how is it you came? I've got a dear friend of mine who we we lost her brother, my friend was was lost to a fentanyl you know overdose and she's a. She's been on my podcast and she's an avid listener and advocate in a small town where I grew up and she kind of hounds me a little bit. You know that I tend to have people on that are more alcohol centric. I know you know the opioid crisis we just touched on the big F word, fentanyl but would you be willing, ryan, to just tell people a little bit about how it is that you became addicted to opioids and what that was like? Is that a good setup for you?
Speaker 2:Sure, you know I. So my background earlier in my life was around government and politics and public policy. I, you know, had worked on Capitol Hill. I had worked in the White House when I was in college, I had worked at the tail end of the Clinton administration and after President Clinton had left office and I was 21 years old at the time I scored a pretty big political public policy job in Washington DC, stayed in Washington and was hiking in 2003 right outside of Washington DC at a trail called the Billy goat trail which is right at the intersection of Maryland and Virginia, and I had a really bad slip and fall. I injured my knee and my ankle, actually split my platella and my knee and fractured my ankle and ended up in the care of an urgent care physician right outside maryland. And the urgent care doc told me, you know, wrapped up my knee and my ankle and said I needed an mri and had prescribed me dilaudid to help with the pain and I I had never really had a encounter with a prescription narcotic such as dilaudid important to mention.
Speaker 2:At the same time in my life I was dealing with a lot of trauma. I was going through identity issues. I, you know, didn't really know who I was, what my place in the world was. I. There was a lot of issues going on at home. My father had gotten out of prison recently and around this same time my mom called me my. My father had actually recently just passed away and my mom said, you know, you need to come home and she needed some, some assistance. And home was South Florida and I was still on this pain medication for my leg. Because you know, believe it or not, I never went and got the MRI. I just kind of like walked off the you know, walked off the injury, which is crazy, with a, you know, with a split knee and a broken ankle, and walked it off in a boot. But I kept taking the pain medication, but I wasn't chaotically using, I was just using as prescribed, honestly, but had a pretty long-term prescription. I kept going back to that same urgent care position and they kept writing me for another month and another month, and another month and I had moved back home to Florida to take another job and be closer to my mom and my family.
Speaker 2:And this is kind of where it all took off for me. I, you know, home was South Florida, broward County, if you know anything about. You know the overdose crisis, the modern day opioid crisis. You know that we had a pill mill crisis and unscrupulous doctors and pain clinics. And you know, south Florida was really the ground zero for it. It was a hotbed of them. South Florida was really the ground zero for it. It was a hotbed of them.
Speaker 2:And I went to my. One of the first things I did when I got back home was went to my primary care physician and told them I said hey, doc, you know I'm on this, I've got this issue with my knee and my ankle and I'm on this pain medication and I'm going to need to continue the prescription now that I'm here. And he said oh no, you know, I don't. I don't do that kind of medicine. You need to see a pain specialist and there's plenty to choose from. And that's what I did. I looked for a pain specialist. I found one in the back of the Miami new times and went, made an appointment, went into that pain specialist unbeknownst to me, it was actually a pill mill and the doctor there, you know, looked at the prescription I was on and said you know, you're, you're having to take like five or six of these a day at this point, because you've been on it for quite some time and you know there's this new formulation that's out of a new medication. You take it, you know, once every 12 hours. It's long acting. You know it's less than 1% addictive. We've got some great outcomes with it. Not only does it help with pain but it can help you with depression and, like you know, a whole litany of things. And you let me move you over to this because it's safer. You know it's a safer alternative and we need to get you off this medication you're currently on and the medication you prescribed me was oxycontin and I, you know, took that oxycontin and it my journey into full blown, chaotic addiction and substance use disorder from there was not protracted.
Speaker 2:It was within, you know, a year that I was unemployable. It was within two years I was, you know, lost my apartment, lost my health insurance, had my first episode with treatment failed. You know, over the course of you know, the better part of the next five, six years got in. You know it was never enough and so got into doctor shopping and, you know, ending up in trap houses and couch surfing, and I mean just completely my life was took a complete tailspin. Nobody that mattered to me or had a meaningful role in my life, family included, was talking to me and then, you know, overdoses started happening and you know the real I think down like real fast downward spiral. Downfall for me was around 2008, 2009,.
Speaker 2:The state of Florida decided they were going to take on this crisis of prescription opioids, and the way they were going to do it was by instituting one of the first versions of the physician drug monitoring database, the PDMP, to essentially track any prescription opioid, who it was prescribed to, who prescribed it, how many you had, how many doctors are seeing all of that. And if you weren't abiding by the law which I wasn't at that point you were seeing multiple prescribers you were going to be cut off right and face potential felony charges. And I remember I showed up in 2009 to my doctor's office who, at this point, I was IV using my prescription. I was IV injecting my Oxycontin and the doctor knew that this was not a above board doctor and I walked in in withdrawal, as I usually was, the day it was time for me to have a doctor's appointment and the doctor pulled up my record and said I can't see you anymore. In fact, nobody can see you anymore. You've been seeing too many doctors and you need to get out of my office or else we're going to have to call the cops. And this was after they took my 200, the last $200 I had to my name for the appointment, and I remember sitting there in withdrawal thinking, well, what about my meds, though? What about my pill? I'm going to get my pills right. And they kicked me out of the office and called me a junkie.
Speaker 2:And this wasn't just happening to me, though. It was happening to thousands of people. It felt like all over the state at the same time, because when I walked out of the doctor's office into the parking lot, there was just a whole ton of people in withdrawal that had been kicked off the rolls. And there was a guy there, and you know he had these little tinfoil packets with this little brown substance in it, and he said he was just get. He said he was there to get people. Well, and that was the first time I tried heroin, and you know he gave me a taste. And he said you know, forget this, doctor. Like you, you know you call me whenever you need something, and you know this is a lot cheaper and a lot better. And you know we'll be in touch and that was it.
Speaker 2:You know I became a full blown IV heroin addict, I guess you could say at that point, and almost lost my life because of it. And you know, thinking back now, I mean I got you know Thanksgiving Eve 2014 is when I finally made it into treatment. I actually was on made my way to the West coast at that point Cause I thought a geographic change would fix me and it only got worse. I ended up homeless on the streets of Los Angeles and was able to access treatment public treatment that night and it changed my life. I didn't go into treatment hoping to get better. I went into treatment because I didn't want to sleep outside and I was hungry and I thought that if I was able to just get myself a public bed, I might be able to get a couple of days reprieve and be able to get back out and figure out how to get my life back together. And honestly, I had the intentions of continuously continuing to use, just using a little bit less chaotically, because heroin was my life, you know.
Speaker 2:But I think back, there's a lot of, a lot of reflection been going on the last couple of weeks. For me, this is a really, you know, kind of poignant but also reflective time of life, you know, coming up on 10 years and looking back and knowing just how lucky I was. I mean, I didn't survive because everything worked. I didn't survive because systems were working. I didn't survive, you know, because the healthcare system is great and there was a whole safety net to catch me. I I survived because I got struck with a tremendous bolt of lightning. Full of luck, I guess you could say A lot of people friends of mine and people I was on the streets with and using buddies of mine from way back when didn't survive and I got clean and got that opportunity of hope literally within a hair of fentanyl crashing down on the West coast. Fentanyl arrived on the scene in full force just a few months after I got into treatment and I'm convinced, had it not have been that moment after I got into treatment and, I'm convinced, had it not have been that moment, that second that I went in, I probably wouldn't have survived.
Speaker 2:I didn't wake up on February 2nd 2015, which is the day I walked out of treatment, which is why I claim that day as my recovery date, thinking I was going to write a book, write three books, start a nonprofit organization, run for elected office which I did last cycle in 2024,. Get married, start a small business, start a mobilized recovery. I mean, none of that was in the cards. I didn't want to do any of that. All I wanted to do was drive Uber, which is what I did in the first year and a half in recovery and get my life back together and figure out how to just live a normal life, you know, and not talk about addiction, not talk about recovery, not talk about my experience, not just kind of lock that entire chapter of my life away and forget. It ever happened and my family wanted to do the same thing. I mean, it was a, it was a really dark time in my life and that first year in I stayed in a sober home for 18 months.
Speaker 2:That first year, you know, things changed for me. I had a few moments of change. I lost friends, a lot of friends, a lot of guys I went to treatment with. I lost my roommate that I was living with in sober living and he was turned away to hospital living with in sober living and he was turned away to hospital room when he needed help and he was afraid he was going to die of an overdose because he couldn't stop using. I had friends who died in sober living homes because Narcan wasn't available. I had friends who died because their insurance was denied when they tried to get help and I was being told.
Speaker 2:You know, each one of these deaths had its own profound impact on you know my life, but also my journey, and I kept asking why. You know why is this happening? And you know folks in my recovery rooms and the sober homeowner would tell me this is just kind of what happens. People will die. This is what will happen to you if you don't stay on the straight and narrow. And while I accepted the fact of life that, yes, people will die, what I didn't accept was the fact that they were dying at the hands of a healthcare system while they were in the process of asking for help. That didn't sit right with me and it set me off on this journey that started in the summer of 2016.
Speaker 2:I had had enough and my best friend and I packed up our bags and rented an RV and traveled the country that summer and went to treatment centers and jails and homeless encampments and met with members of Congress and met with policymakers, and I was just this sponge for information about what was working, what wasn't working. Was I the only one out there that felt this way? I didn't know anything beyond the borders of my own little small world at that point that all I knew about recovery was 90 meetings in 90 days and get a sponsor work the steps. I mean, that's all I knew. That's all I knew. That's it.
Speaker 2:I didn't know there was this thing out there called the recovery advocacy movement, and I met that movement during that trip that summer of 2016 and got back from that trip and recognize that maybe there was a place for me in that space and one night, with $20 in my pocket and a laptop that an old Google. I don't know what they call them today. They were like a Google Air or something. It was like a laptop that I was able to get at a pawn shop Cause I had no money for. I don't know. It was like 40 bucks or something and like literally the the. The only thing the laptop could do was like get on the internet and, like you know, create a Microsoft word document and like if you tried to do anything other than that it would crash. It was like really, really, you know, first generation of like these Google laptops and hijacked the internet from next door Cause we didn't have internet. And I had an open connection and started a Facebook page and, you know, put a call to action out there and people started sharing their stories with me and took that $20 and started a nonprofit and some of the content started going viral and then started a blog and a website and it just started building day by day, piece by piece, to where.
Speaker 2:Now what, eight years later, seven years later? And we've done a lot. We've done a lot of good work with that $20 and that Google I guess you call Airstream or whatever it was. And it's not because of me, it's because I think we met along the way and I met along the way a lot of people just like me who felt the same way I did, who felt that they had been kicked down, left behind, ignored when it came to this issue, and decided to get more involved. We worked and passed successfully hundreds of pieces of legislation, forward-thinking legislation for folks in recovery all across the country, and I still, even though we're a couple years old, I always say we're still getting started. You know we are.
Speaker 2:This movement is. It's not about one person. It's bigger than any one person and it will long outlive me and long outlive Mobilize Recovery. You know we hope to just play a small role in reaching more people to be a part of this movement in whichever way they feel speaks to them, like you and the work that you're doing with recovery-friendly workplaces. You know, one of the things I try to do and have long tried to do through Mobilize Recovery is to help people understand where their passion lies and where their talent is to help this space and this movement, and then to grab a hold of that and do everything they can with it.
Speaker 2:That's what somebody did for me in 2017, you know, when I was looking for my own place and trying to figure out what my place in this world was and where I belonged in the recovery movement. Do I think I found my place in the recovery movement? Probably not, yet I think it's constantly shifting. I'm asking myself that question today what is my place in this world? I think it's a constant observation that we need to be cognizant of and really reflective on if we're going to have the most impact, because I think our purpose and our passion can lead us in a lot of different ways. So it's been a hell of a journey, you know. I just have found that it's. It's important also to remain grateful and humble about where we're at today and to always, you know, lead with a keen sense of service. You know, if we lose that ability to be of service to advocates and folks in recovery, then we're we're losing our way, and it's and it's important that we always remain true to that, to that North star of of why we do this work.
Speaker 1:Well, that was. That's beautiful stuff. I'm going to, I'm going to. I know you're short on time. Your your calendar is a lot more busy than mine, ryan, so I just want to say thank you for for being here today, and what an awesome telling of your story for those that don't know it, and a lot of that's recounted in your books as well and the advocacy work that you've done. You've been on Capitol Hill, you've testified before Congress, you've been on famous TV shows, et cetera.
Speaker 1:But I want to rewind to one spot to maybe close us out, because I think it sort of accentuates the why you said you had a lightning bolt of luck. In the documentary that I love so much, called the Anonymous People, there's a scene where a counselor says something to the effect of you know, there's that you had a window of opportunity. So I'm going to overlay that language over that that you had a window of opportunity. So I'm going to overlay that language over that that you had a window of opportunity. And then you got lucky. And I feel the same way for myself, right, and I would not to put word in your mouth, but I think you're trying to not make it so much about luck, does that?
Speaker 2:never be about luck. Like, recovery should not be about luck, treatment should not be about luck. Being able to live your best life should not be about luck. This is where I get fired up. There should be systems in place and a healthcare system that supports people when they are ready and when they need it. We should not be creating these arbitrary barriers whether they be through insurance or hospitals or healthcare systems or whatever the system may be that keeps people from accessing what they need and when they need it. And, furthermore, there's a corporate interest, particularly around insurance companies, to deny care and to make it even harder for people to get the support they need when they're most vulnerable.
Speaker 2:You know, this is a true public health crisis, but at more times than not, it's only a public health crisis, in words only. It's certainly not matched with measurable action that's going to save more lives. Action that's going to save more lives Even today, in 2024,. If you're able to get treatment, if you're able to get housing, if you're able to get five years of care, which should be the minimum for substance use disorder, you are lucky. You are lucky because the system is designed to fail you. That is just the hard fact of life that we live in right now. I am a capitalist, but I believe that most of these systems set up are more built upon reckless capitalism. They're built upon maximizing the almighty dollar, as opposed to saving someone's life or supporting them in their most vulnerable times. We've seen a lot of discussion over this, particularly over the last couple of weeks, and this is really where I believe my fight stands right now and where my fight is going to be for the foreseeable future is changing that system. We have got to figure it out, and if we don't, we're going to be for the foreseeable future is changing that system right, like we, we have got to figure it out. If we don't, and if, if we don't like, we're going to continue to just like live, you know, repeat the cycles of the past.
Speaker 2:Look, I mean folks are excited. I mean excited may not be the right word, but they're looking at this decrease in overdose deaths. We're now at about 98,200 or so, after peaking in the six figures the last two years. That number is nothing to celebrate. When I got sober, it was around 46,000. And we were talking about how these were epic proportions that we needed to start solving because the crisis was ballooning out of control. I will tell you that, while we're seeing a temporary deviation in the overdose numbers, you know, anywhere from from 10 to 18%, depending on what state you're in you come out here to the West, where we're at right. You come out to Washington state, oregon, nevada we're seeing 24 to 30% increases, which shows that the drug supply is volatile and it's and it's changing and something's happening on the West Coast that's probably going to export itself to the East Coast if we don't start getting our heads out of our asses, right?
Speaker 2:So at what point do you struck a nerve, brett? I apologize. What point do we reframe this issue and get serious about it? Because a lot of the BS that we get fed by policymakers on this it's just BS, it's lip service. Their rhetoric is not matching up with action, and when I talk about action, I don't talk about things like just a supply side only strategy. Right, we have to look at demand. Any good student of politics, government history, will tell you that to reduce supply you've got to reduce demand. How do you reduce demand? You get people treatment. You get them housed. You get them a job. You get them five years of services so that they can increase their chance at sustaining the recovery by 85%. I mean, these are things that real serious people would be considering, sadly, in 2024, you know, we've seen more of a effort to politicize the issue rather than actually take on the issue in a meaningful way, and I'm kind of sick and tired of it.
Speaker 1:Love it. I'm glad I struck a nerve. Well, I want to be. I want to be a respective of your time here. Do we need to wrap it up here, or should I?
Speaker 2:I have another call to jump on, but I, brett I appreciate the time man I would love to connect with anybody that hears this and that maybe it strikes a nerve in them too and, you know, want to support you and the work you're doing with recovery-friendly workplaces. Like I was just saying, you know in the interview, you have a place in this movement and you are. You are going through that journey right now and I'm so grateful that you are on it and I want you to know that myself and Mobilize Recovery, we are here to back you up and it takes all of us, certainly takes all of us.
Speaker 1:Right on, ryan. I appreciate your work and your friendship as well. Best to you on the rest of the week and through the holiday season. Thanks, brett, talk to y'all soon. Okay, bye. Thank you so much, ryan Hampton, and thank you for the work you do mobilize, recovery, et cetera and uh, yeah, I'm just stoked. I know you and um, and I'm glad you were able to squeeze me into your schedule. Um, there again, I know you and I'm glad you were able to squeeze me into your schedule. There again will be some excellent links in the show notes and with that, I wish everybody that's listening to this a happy new year, in this case of 2025, in case you're listening to it at a later date. We're fresh into the new year and I'm excited for the work that I'm going to be doing and the advocacy that Sober Curious Consulting will be doing as well. Ryan, keep at it, man. Thank you.