Addiction & Recovery Conversations with Brett Lovins

Richard Jones - Our Evolving Understanding & Treatment of Addiction

• Brett Lovins • Season 3 • Episode 3

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Rich Jones, a remarkable speaker I met at a SAMHSA event, joins me to share his transformative journey from the world of HR to becoming a therapist and certified interventionist in the recovery space. Rich opens up about his long-term recovery from opioid and alcohol use disorders, highlighting the personal and professional hurdles he faced during this pivotal shift. Our conversation sheds light on the stigma surrounding addiction and the courage it takes to embrace openness, even when societal norms might suggest otherwise.

Labels like "alcoholic" and "addict" can often feel like barriers rather than bridges on the path to recovery. Together, Rich and I unpack these terms, discussing the evolving nature of recovery and the importance of personal comfort levels. By sharing our stories, we aim to reassure those hesitant about starting their recovery journey, emphasizing that there are multiple pathways to success. We challenge common stereotypes about addiction, advocating for a more inclusive and understanding approach that celebrates diverse recovery experiences.

The episode also touches on the critical role families play in addiction recovery, exploring models like the Arise intervention that prioritize transparency and family involvement. Rich shares his insights into the psychological aspects of addiction and the spectrum of substance use disorders, underscoring the need for self-awareness and professional support. We also tackle the often-overlooked issue of workplace stress and substance use, highlighting the necessity of supportive environments that engage individuals proactively. This episode is a heartfelt exploration of recovery, offering insights and support for anyone touched by addiction.

Links from this episode with Rich Jones:
YouTurn Health
BuildWell Health
Sage's Army
ARISE Intervention info
Faces & Voices of Recovery

Other useful links from Brett:

  • Sober Curious Consulting - Brett's Recovery Friendly Workplace consulting business.
  • Brett's YouTube channel
  • 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.
Speaker 1:

Hello there, my name is Brett Lovins. Welcome to now my YouTube video and podcast. So if you're listening to this and can't see my video, that's awesome and I'm stoked. You're listening to my podcast and if you're watching me on video, this will be my first time adding both kinds of content, so I'm excited to start doing this and thank you for checking it out Today's. I mean, I couldn't pick a better person to start the video stuff with.

Speaker 1:

I first heard Rich Jones speak at a SAMHSA event for Recovery Friendly Workplaces. It was a conference out in Maryland at SAMHSA's headquarters and I was invited to come out there, surrounded by probably 150 people that were interested in working in Recovery Friendly Workplaces spaces, and I was there and it was cool and one of the people that spoke was Rich and his talk was one of the later second day end of the day, I made a mental note and I thought, well, that's somebody that I want to meet sometime. So I've been working to meet him and we finally got connected on LinkedIn the other day and he said, yeah, let's do it tomorrow. So I said, okay, let's do it. So this is a conversation with him about all kinds of things you know sober curiosity and the disease model of addiction, or whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 1:

Along the way, I'm curious. I'm curious for myself and for other people, and I'm hoping that I can provide value to folks by letting them hear from either myself or other folks, and so this is the first one. Hope you dig it. I thought it turned out great. Thank you, rich, for being willing to do it. Rich is an amazing speaker. You're in for a treat. Let's get this going. So the way I like to start my podcasts or, in this case, a video too is to ask you to introduce yourself. I know a bit about you, but my audience won't, so whatever you want to say about yourself, please do Okay.

Speaker 2:

So well. I guess one of the most important things in my life and one of the most important ways I introduced myself is I'm a person in long-term recovery, in my case from an opioid use disorder and an alcohol use disorder and probably a handful of mental health conditions too, but mainly identify in that way. Now the other thing about my story is when I got into recovery I went back to school and got a master's degree and became a master's level therapist and a certified employee assistance professional interventionist, so on and so forth, and I'm one of those guys who started working in the field right when he got in recovery. So I was prior to getting into recovery I worked in HR kind of like training settings. Ironically, I worked a lot with behavioral health but I wasn't a therapist or anything like that. So I didn't really know honestly what was going on with me when this was unfolding in my life. And so once I got into recovery, you know and you know this they tell you like you got to be careful where you're hanging out and who you're hanging out with, and when you're in like recruiting and sales and stuff you're not hanging out in the right environments. I can tell you that there are a lot of alcohol. I was very good at getting drunk with psychiatrists and recruiting them back to the system and stuff like that. So I couldn't do that job anymore.

Speaker 2:

That's how and I also became drawn to helping people and since I was already connected in a health system, I could get transferred over to the behavioral health department and start working, even though I didn't have the right degree. I could kind of do that working even though I didn't have the right degree. I could kind of do that. And I'll never forget when I approached my boss and I wanted to go work directly in addiction treatment and in mental health care, they were like why would you want to do that? Why would anyone want to do that?

Speaker 2:

And one of the things that stand out for me from back then 25 years ago I wouldn't even tell them I was in recovery. I wouldn't. I was so ashamed of my recovery that I wouldn't even tell the people that I was working for in a recovery program that I was in recovery Cause I was conditioned in the old school way, brett, like I was. I was not brought up with this like be open about your recovery stuff, I was told, stay anonymous. So on and so forth. I got it. I got my recovery a very old school, traditional way, and I'm really grateful for that. But I've learned some stuff along the way.

Speaker 1:

Well, and and so so you're. You're you introduce yourself as a person in long-term recovery? Uh, and you kind of alluded to it being about 25 years or so. It sounds like right out of the gates. You, you made a transition in a environment that was at least in a work setting, was robust in terms of at least alcohol. Yeah, you transition into this field of of helping, helping people. Um, that's fascinating. So you know yeah it was.

Speaker 2:

It was like it was. It was right time, right place kind of situation for me and um, and I knew I bought into the recovery stuff. Well, let me, let me rewind a little bit. I don't want to make it sound like it was like I bought into recovery right away, like I was one of those guys that tried four or five times before a quote unquote stuck, but whenever it did, you know, finally hit me, I got it. I got some things like I understood the whole people, places and things, stuff. I knew there was no way.

Speaker 2:

I'm not the type of dude that, in early recovery, is going to hang out with people that are drinking. I'm just not going to do it. I'm not the type of dude that, in early recovery, is going to hang out with people that are drinking. I'm just not going to do it. I'm going to drink with you. Does that make sense? Now, a year later, it was different. Two years later it was different and right now I could be around anybody drinking anything and it's not going to bother me at all. But I'm telling you I had to take it very, very cautiously. In my personal experience I know some people I had, like a guy. For example, when I started my nonprofit my second in command, if you will he was a bartender, his whole entire recovery and it didn't bother him. I was not one of those dudes. I needed some protection from that. I liked it too much, I guess. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well'm, I'm the same rich, and you know I'm. I'm 11 years, approaching 12 now, because, yeah, we do count in halves, most of us. Yep, that's right. Uh, and and in in my case, you know, I haven't, I haven't tested it in a while, but I always make, I always set myself up because there's a wedding. My wife no, my wife's my teammate, part of my program. She knows that two cars are is not unusual and there's no big deal. So they split and in my case, I don't mind it as long as it's not right in my face with somebody that I know well. Yeah, for a prolonged period of time where I can't escape, that seems to be the still at this point, kind of right. It's not like. It's not like I'm like tempted or I feel a longing, it's more like this is I don't know why like tempted or I feel a longing, it's more like this is I don't know why I just this isn't cool, I want to get out of here.

Speaker 2:

I had a guy say that to me. It's like you could go wherever you want, rich, and hang out with whoever you want. But why would you want to do that to yourself? You know, cause I? I always say this Brett, I used to speak fluent, drunk, like I used to be very good at it, I you know. But now it bothers me, like I'm not real good at talking to somebody who's loaded. Now you know how they get in. You get into that circular conversation. You start saying the same thing over and over. I don't like it anymore, like it's very unattractive to me. So, so to a certain extent it's.

Speaker 2:

It's almost like when you get into recovery and if you're out there and you're listening and you're freaked out by the recovery process, I want to tell you I completely understand that and I have great empathy for you. But here's what you want to hang on to. It doesn't stay like that forever. I don't know if you would agree with that or not. It changes dramatically as time goes down the road. You will not be as obsessed or thinking about, you'll just be a dude who doesn't drink. You'll just be a woman who doesn't drink, and and that's cool. I needed to know that I needed to know that it was going to be different, as, as I, as I went on, this.

Speaker 1:

Well, let's just keep talking to that person that that might be tuning in. And I would have if I had been that person on the down low on the sly, because I wouldn't want anybody to know. So maybe that person's listening in. So here's one of my hurdles and maybe we can bounce this one around. I had so many hangups about words. The word recovery would have jumped out of the speaker. Oh for sure, throw up out of the car window. So right, so, so, right away. You know, alcoholic addiction. These are words like barbed wire fences to me. Oh yeah, and we've learned a lot about that.

Speaker 2:

So so we, whenever I, you know, in 2001,. When I start, you know, this journey, when I first started checking out like 2000 turning into 2001 was the last time I drank was New Year's Eve of 2000 turning into 2000. No, it would have been. Turning into 2000 is when the last time. And so I said and my clean date's not that date and I hate to use the term clean date, that's one of those terms but my recovery date's not that date, cause I had some prescription medications that I was on that I also, and just the pathway that I got recovery in was very strict. Now to your point. If you're out there listening guys, here's one of the things I would have wanted to know. I wish I would have known this back then.

Speaker 2:

There are many different ways to get better from this condition. It is not a one size fits all solution and that is probably one of the most intimidating things that I faced and that people face. You can find recovery and maintain your recovery through many different models if you will, but I thought the only way to do it was go to rehab and then attend meetings the rest of my life. That was overwhelming to me. The word alcoholic was overwhelming to me. The word alcoholic was overwhelming to me. It engendered all these images of, you know, stereotypes and otis, the town, drunk from the andy grifflis show and and it just didn't. It wasn't the type of word that I was drawn to. Addict was even worse. The word addict was even worse. You weren't going to get me to say that Addicts were folks that were living underneath a bridge. They were homeless. They weren't me showing up for work every day. You know what I mean. And even recovery you said this like.

Speaker 2:

I agree with this too Recovery is too much for people to handle sometimes. I have an uncle, for example, who's quote unquote in recovery, but if I told him that he would probably punch me in the face. He had an accident when he was drinking and he made a decision to stop drinking and he did some things to get that done, but it wasn't going to AA and it wasn't going to rehab. In his case. He threw himself back into church and he started going to a men's spiritual meeting that promoted healthy lifestyles, and so to me I'm like that's a pathway man, run with it. But I want to honor what you were saying, brett, because I think one of the biggest problems we have is these words we use and the way that we kind of describe the recovery process scares off a lot of people. It just does, it's just, it's too much. And then what we do is we say to them go out and do some more experimenting and come back when you're ready. And that is a really weird way to approach this disease.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, so there's so many things to do here with this. Yeah, this is my world, man, if we're talking about guitars, which are behind me here, or we're talking about this, that's right. And you mentioned that you had a desire to help people, and obviously I do too, and I didn't need the 12th step to tell me that that's right. It's 12 steps. The last one says, basically go help people, right? So, circling back to the language piece, the way I frame it when I'm around people that I think will be charged is I frame it like this. I'd love your thoughts. I just say you know, I just found out that I'm incapable of drinking a little.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's perfect.

Speaker 2:

And that was my sponsor. I remember my sponsor told me he said you're just going to cause. I used to get freaked out by it. I used to get real freaked out by it, like am I ever? How are people going to think of me? What are they going to? Am I ever going to be able to be? And he would be like dude, calm down, you're. You will get to a point where you're just a guy who doesn't drink. That's it. Yeah, and and and. Why do we have? That is such a healthy way to look at it, I think Instead of this albatross of a.

Speaker 2:

I got to wear a scarlet letter, the big capital A on my chest. Again, I get the urgency, especially when you're in early recovery, to kind of like overdo it. You know what I mean Almost like overdo it, but as time goes by it becomes normal. Here's the other thing, and I'm interested in your take on this. The other thing that really is wild to me is are all these other movements that are out there now like Sober, curious and stuff like that Dry January?

Speaker 2:

I just read an article I just posted it on LinkedIn where it was all about they call it sober-ish and people in my profession freak out about this because they're like oh well, you got to be careful. You can't tell people that they can drink moderately. Well, I'm here to tell you some people can and I think we just need to. As a professional, where I go with this is we need to be more honest and we need to approach it from a healthcare perspective and have really honest conversations with people. You might be able to moderate your drinking. You might not hear it. Here's how you know, so on and so forth. Yeah, man.

Speaker 1:

Well, sober, curious is awesome, Like um, like these. These, to me, are indicators of a of a massive shift in the society, and you can also see it in the beer aisle where the NA options are exploding. So there's certainly capitalism is behind it as well. But for me, when I think about this concept because I wasn't ready for I don't know about you, but nobody's going to tell me anything honestly, no, not at all. Right, and I will say this too.

Speaker 1:

If I decide to go back and try this thing out again, if I decide that there's nobody gonna, that's exactly right. Yeah, so really, it's a very personal thing and I have to find my way. But but when we look at society and all these changes, if I think back to you know, 12 years ago, if those signposts would have been out there more rich, more normalization, more you're not a bad person. You can start to kind of see these things through a lens that's actually tangible, that I can logically hang on to a bit. That probably would have sped me along to get into that place where I said to my wife I don't know, I'm somebody who can't drink a little.

Speaker 2:

I know it would have sped me along. I know, I know that the thing and you know, maybe this is just me and just sort of my personality, although I think that you're kind of similar in this regard Like that stuff drove me away Like I was. And when they doubled down on that and said to me, well, that's because you're in denial, that's because you know you'll come back when you want it, that that shit excuse, my language didn't work Like like I actually said to myself well, yeah, you're, I'll never be back. Like good luck, guys, have a great time, and and and things got really. And I wish it wouldn't have been that way. I honestly do, cause it's the last two years of my active addiction. I caused some damage, man, especially financially, like stuff that to a certain extent, we're still working through as a family, and I would have loved those signposts to get me into this. But even if I would have got into it 18 months earlier or six months earlier, that would have been a difference in my life.

Speaker 1:

Well, let's just talk to the person who is like me. Maybe they've gotten over the hurdle of sober curious. Maybe that's helped that person get a little bit curious, because curiosity is the key, right? Yeah, information, yep. And they hear somebody like you or like me say maybe you can moderate, and I mean harm reduction, whatever you want to call it. If I could drink you know once in a while and tear it up you know once in a while and then be fine, but I couldn't, I tore it up and then I tore it up again, yep. And then I tore it up and pretty soon the tore it up is a very lonely.

Speaker 2:

Well, and you could get and I do, because I talk to a lot of people. You know I have a private practice, I have a coaching business. I'd salute you and it is. I do believe that for me to go drink is extremely dangerous and I will drink out of control and I will consistently drink out of control, you know. So I do want to, I do want to highlight that guys, if you're out there listening and stuff, like be honest with yourself, like that, that's probably the biggest thing it you don't have to answer for to anyone else. You have to figure it to your point. Brett, yeah, this is a personal issue. Can you, can you get in touch with? Do I, am I in control of my drinking? Like? I think that, like this is a fundamental issue is or is or is drinking controlling me? And and then obviously, all the other consequences that come up around it. But I will share this with your audience. I think this is just my take as a professional clinician.

Speaker 2:

I feel like the hallmark symptom of somebody with an alcohol or drug problem that really differentiates a person who, quote, unquote, can take it or leave it is the preoccupation with use, one of the things that normal people who have a normal relationship with alcohol don't experience is the constant obsession with it. And so when I wasn't drinking, I was always thinking about when I was going to be drinking, how I was going to be drinking, who was going to be there, what else might they have? How am I going to get my wife to be okay with this? You know, it was this constant preoccupation and in my practice, what I have found is that's the thing that differentiates a lot of people. I'll give you an example.

Speaker 2:

I have a brother-in-law and he and I same age. That's how I met my wife. We were like identical in terms of our use, and he could take it or leave it, and I'll be honest with you, he was the dude that most people were more intimidated by. He was the guy you didn't want to get in a car with because you didn't know where you were going to wind up with. He was crazier than me, but the difference was when the party wasn't going on, he didn't care. When the party was going on, he was going to get his money's worth, but if it wasn't happening anymore, he didn't think about it.

Speaker 2:

I came to understand that, this little voice inside my head telling me always go get it, go get. It was not normal, and so that to me is one of the hallmark signs. I think a lot of people get out of control with alcohol and they may or may not have a problem, but if you are thinking about it all the time and it's become like a 24 hour job, something's probably up. That's the indication that something's going on psychologically right Like that's not normal. And I thought about it all the time, man, and I thought everybody did. I just thought that's how human beings were.

Speaker 1:

Oh man, you know, this idea that the perceptions of our of what reality was and that's the other thing too is is my perceptions of reality were, were skewed, like. There's so many examples of that, like going into a restaurant and and in the past thinking that everybody is tearing it up, like I am Right, and then getting sober and walking in there and realizing people are leaving half of half a beer at the table, mostly.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and and, not really and and and they and. Again back to this concept of you can take it or leave it. You know, and and cause. Here's the thing. People will think things like well, if so-and-so got drunk, that must mean they're an alcoholic. Or if so-and-so got drunk and got a DUI, that must mean they're an alcoholic. It doesn't. It just simply doesn't. It has nothing to do with it. There's so much to the equation. And back to your point. It's a personal decision and it's not about the amount.

Speaker 2:

I remember my wife and I joke about this all the time. This is probably like in the mid-90s. I had a problem with alcohol. Before I had a problem with opioids and she used to call these like county drug and alcohol call lines to try to find out if I was an alcoholic. And she would ask these people questions and they were right when they would say this. She would always focus on the amount that I drank and they would tell her it has nothing to do with it. It has nothing. And she used to lay in bed and listen to the beer cans hit, hit the recycling bin. If I had told, I told her, if I'd have known you were doing that, I would have thrown the same can in over and over again. You'd have been like a hundred, 101, 103, but it has nothing to do. Well, obviously the amount is important, but it's not really about the amount, it's not necessarily about the frequency, it's about what happens when you drink, both internally and externally. That's the key thing.

Speaker 1:

Well, this, I think this is a good segue into a concept that I'd love to play around with with you, and this is this you know the spectrum, you know, and there's these indicators or whatever. And, like you, you've probably been at meetings where the rough fella or gal would say I spilled more than you drank. You know, that's right, yeah, and you know then. Then there's a weird pride that comes up in me that you know, is that's weird, right, like, like. Why are we one up at each other on how bad we were.

Speaker 2:

I mean, they do it, we do it, we do it. If you go to an na meeting, it gets really bad, because now you're talking like everybody's like, cranking it up to the next level, man, yeah yeah, um, so so.

Speaker 1:

So the I guess I'd love to wade into the disease model. So one of the things I love about the, the sober, curious movement and what we're talking about here is and I'm going to bring a new term forward like I've I finally got real comfortable with substance use disorder, alcohol disorder yep, year and a half ago that was like that was, that was like, you know, a real puke coming out of my mouth, right, it was just odd. And now it's comfortable. And what I love about it is, you know, if you don't know this, it, it it makes room for like you're not on this side or this side. You're not an addict or an alcoholic necessarily. You just maybe are on the spectrum of, and if you can rein it in, well, that's awesome. Right, that's exactly right. Yeah, so so.

Speaker 1:

But the disease model and you touched on it and I'd love to hear you run with this is like you. I'm convinced that my brain, if I tickle that spot again, yep, um, my frontal lobe is going to shut down and I am going to do what it takes to keep and I like to use the term the precious. I want to keep the best in my life. So how?

Speaker 2:

do you see the model? Yeah, so like any other disease or any other chronic disease, it falls on a spectrum and so if you look at something like diabetes, for example, you know that there's like pre-diabetes, and so it's the same type of a concept In the substance use disorder world. It goes mild, moderate or severe and how it works. So here's what's really interesting the word addiction is not a medical term. No one in the history of mankind has ever been diagnosed with addiction. It's not a diagnosis that you can get. It used to be called chemical dependency, so it used to be alcohol dependency, marijuana dependency, cocaine dependency, or if you were a little bit less severe than dependency, you would get labeled with alcohol abuse. Those terms have been thrown away. There's a lot of work that was done around that. Those terms are very. They have a lot of negative baggage that come with them. They went with this model substance use disorder.

Speaker 2:

You have 11 criteria if you're going through a treatment program or if you're going to see a doctor. This doesn't happen in normal everyday life. You don't go to an AA meeting and somebody diagnoses you because of criteria. This is if you're in the treatment system. You'll be talking to somebody like me, a licensed counselor or maybe a physician or a psychiatrist, and as they're talking to you, they will go through your history and they'll be looking for patterns and there are 11 different criteria. So the first two address the physical aspects of substance use disorder. The first one is tolerance Does it take more and more to get the same effect? And the second is withdrawal. So those two criteria you can meet those criteria and never meet any other criteria and not meet the criteria for addiction. Does that make sense? I'll give you an example of that. People have that happen every day with pain pills. There are people out there that experience tolerance and withdrawal from opioid-based painkillers and it never goes any further than that. So you got those two.

Speaker 2:

Then you start getting into some of the social aspects of addiction right Interpersonal problems related to your use, role, failure related to your use. You can't do work, you can't do school. Then you start to get into some of the psychological things inability to cut down. So you try to. This was big for me. I was always only going to be drinking on the weekends. I was always not going to drink on the weekdays. Never happened, but I was always in the process of doing that, I couldn't cut down Inability to control use. We talk a lot about this in recovery meetings. I went out, I planned on drinking four beers and I wound up drinking 44 beers and coming in three days later. That type of thing Used to spike clear psychological dangers or physical dangers.

Speaker 2:

Now this is an interesting criteria. This is one that a lot of people don't endorse, but you have to understand that when you look at that criteria, that's pretty deep. That means things like if you went to the doctor and he told you that your liver enzymes were elevated and you continued to drink. That would be an example of that one. But I'll give you a better example Depression. Let's pretend that you struggle with depression in your life. Drinking will make that worse. And if you know it and you continue to do it, then you're probably meeting that criteria.

Speaker 2:

And then, as you dig down into it, you get into things like use and physically hazardous situations. The best example here would be drinking and driving repetitively, and I'm not sure how many I covered, but there's like three or four other criteria and you go through that. And if you establish a pattern of use criteria and you go through that, and if you establish a pattern of use. If you meet six or more of those 11 criteria, you technically meet criteria for substance use disorder severe. And that is addiction. Brett, like I said, there is no such thing as the word addiction, but what your official diagnosis would be like if you rewind the clock on me. That's why I introduced myself as a person in long-term recovery from an opioid use disorder and an alcohol use disorder, I would have had opioid use disorder severe and alcohol use disorder severe. You probably could have mixed in cannabis use disorder, moderate or mild.

Speaker 2:

I really wasn't doing a lot of that. I was a one or two trick pony, but that criteria. Here's the problem with that. I was a one or two trick pony, but that criteria. Here's the problem with that.

Speaker 2:

First of all, a lot of people that are trying to figure out whether or not they have a substance use problem never even hear about that criteria. They don't even know that's what they're looking at. It's like me when I used to pick up the AA pamphlet right, answer these 35 questions and see if you have a problem. People don't even know what addiction is, what it's not that kind of thing. And the second thing is that's not how people work. Does that make sense? That is not how People. We aren't that simple. It's no different to me where I have literally been told change your eating habits, your A1C is getting high and I don't do shit about it. I go out and I run out and buy a Pop-Tart and a monster drink and have at it. It's the same thing with addiction. We think just because people know what this stuff is, it's not going to make a difference. It's not, in and of itself, going to make a difference.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, and using the, let's play it. Let me just play with that a little bit, because story, um, you know, I had this moment where, um, you know, I had tried many things like you. It sounds like moderation was a moderating attempt over and over and over for years. And along the way, there were doctors in the mix and I didn't ever tell them the truth. That wasn't going to happen and I decided at one point I was going to really try to understand this thing. So I gave myself a month off, which I tried a few times, and I started seeing a drug and alcohol counselor. He built rapport with me and trust and it's in another one of my podcasts if anybody wants to go hear it.

Speaker 1:

But he put that piece of paper in front of me. Rich, yeah, I could see it out of the corner of my eye and I would see that list and I could start to scan down it and probably in my story, one of the best things that ever happened happened. I told him I was on the way out the door, I was pissed. Yeah, he would. Even he had the audacity to do that. Yeah, yeah. And as soon as he and as soon as I did that he immediately took the paper, threw it into the trash. He said no problem, we don't have. That's an excellent counselor. It it may or may not have. You know, we say these things may or may not have saved my life. I we say these things may or may not have saved my life, I don't know. It might've been a while more until I got my window of opportunity, but he made it safe for me to stay. That is so cool. And now I can look at those kinds of things and diagnose and all that for myself and where I was.

Speaker 2:

But in that moment, in that moment, uh, if he'd oppressed he would have said to you if he'd have waved his finger and said you're in denial. Brett, you need to really take a close look at yourself in the mirror and I can tell you right now you meet these criteria. You would have ran the other way.

Speaker 1:

And not only that, I would probably got you know, I probably would have beeline for the latest, the nearest bar. And yeah him, what was what right, yep?

Speaker 2:

That is that that right there, that phenomenon that you experienced, and it's and it's outstanding that you experienced the other side of it, Cause I will go on the record and tell you I think that the field is trying to move a little bit more toward that type of counseling. But, but I can tell you, when I, when I got into the field professionally, I was literally taught, I was told, this your job is to break the person down, break through their denial and then allow us to build them back up. And I was like I was a newbie man and I didn't want to be living in a van down by the river. I was going to follow what my boss was saying, saying, and I did that for two or three years. But then I was introduced to this concept and, if your listeners want to check it out, it's called motivational interviewing.

Speaker 2:

It's a counseling technique that your counselor used with you. It's I'll meet you where you're at in the process. It's your life. It's not my life. It's not my job to tell Brett he's an alcoholic and get you to never drink. It's my job to help you explore this issue. And you just happened to have a guy 12 years ago who was either he had a lot of experience in the field or maybe he had been trained that way, but I will tell you it's a crapshoot on whether you get a guy like that. Now, A lot of people aren't like that and I don't blame the people. This is how we were taught to do the counseling. Like you are either an alcoholic or you're not an alcoholic, and if you're an alcoholic, you could drink it forever and you know, and you know what they tell us. If we don't go for that, you're in denial, you're being willful, you've taken your power back or whatever, whatever label they put on it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's tricky business. Um, yep, do you have some more time? I do, yeah, so let's, let's flip this around a little bit then. Um, so we've just, we've just explored the, you know, the first person perspective of this and I think we've done a. I think I think this has been great. Let's flip it around to the family members, because I look in you up and stuff. I've seen that you have a significant amount of experience there and I'm fascinated with this as well. We all have our own stories, and you do have yours and I have mine. But what do you say to somebody who is well, let me just leave it open.

Speaker 2:

I won't even define it. So I think the family, I think the family is one area that we could probably, as a system and those of us that are helping professionals we can do better with the family. I'll just I'm going to say it straight up I'm a big family advocate, mainly because of the way I was trained. I was about three or four years into my career. One of my duties I opened up an adolescent rehab. Three or four years into my career, one of my duties I opened up an adolescent rehab, and so we were working with people that were like age 14 to 18. You can't do work with those guys unless you get the family involved, and so that's where I learned from my supervisor about family systems theory and stuff like that, and so what we know is that if you think of a family system, any family system, whether alcohol is involved or not, it's like a baby's mobile If you move one part of the family, you move the whole family. That is a fact, and so one of the strategies we have in my companies is we're going to go after the family number one, because the family deserves support. It is absolutely horrible to go through this when you have a loved one self-destructing and I know that from personal experience. My adult daughter, who's doing well now, went through some stuff and it was way harder than anything I dealt with in my own life. Like watching another person drink themselves to death is extremely terrible for the family or use or whatever it is. So, number one, the family deserves support. But here's the dirty little secret that we are really short-sighted on in our society If you help the family, you'll drag the person along.

Speaker 2:

I've seen this so many times in my career. I've seen a person who was obstinate, who didn't want anything to do with recovery, but we started working with his mom or dad or his wife and all of a sudden they come along and they want to know more. And you want to know the reason for it. It isn't what you think, it isn't like they say, oh, I want to get better. It's, they want to protect their drinking, so they don't want their family getting this information unless they're there. Look, people think I'm making this up, but the intervention model that I use is called Arise and it is an invitational intervention model, which what it means is, if we're doing an intervention on Brett, we tell him we don't sneak up on him. We say Brett, I'm going to be meeting with your wife and we're going to be talking about how we can help you. We're going to invite you to an intervention at some point, but right now I'm just going to start trying to help her understand what's going on. That stuff will drag that part.

Speaker 2:

I don't know if you can relate to this, but when I was an active addiction, I didn't want anybody talking to my family. I wanted everything to stay the same. So as a society, one of the areas where I think we could make the most impact quickly on addiction is if we develop payment models that had to do with the family. Like if I was in charge, if Trump called me up today and said, hey, you're the czar of recovery I would say we have to find a way to reimburse for family services, not just for individual services. So when Brett was struggling, his wife could go to the clinic and get a therapist and it would be paid for. Because of Brett and his condition, because I've seen this so much in my career and I had to be brought to this I wasn't naturally drawn to this. I was naturally one of those guys who said no family recovery over here, individual recovery over there. Never should the two meet. I'm the opposite of that now, just based on experience.

Speaker 1:

Well, let's play a little bit more with that, just based on experience. Well, let's play a little bit more with that. So what we do with that family? So you've got this situation. Let's just, let's just set expectations aside as to whether Brett is going to be curious and or want to protect the precious by making sure he owes what's being said in there, so he can refute it later, cause that's me.

Speaker 2:

That's right. That's exactly what you want to do.

Speaker 1:

Yep, yeah, and so and so let's just take that. So you're talking to my wife, you know, and Brett isn't interested, or or so I'm going to guess. But it's important in my mind for the, for the family member to understand the disease model.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you have to. It starts with education. You have got to get so a lot of people this is actually part of the problem, brett, if you want to get real is there aren't a lot of great services out there and a lot of the family recovery, support stuff the families aren't drawn to. It's basically, if you were to go to like rehab or go see a drug and alcohol counselor, they might say something to your family like go to Al-Anon. If they don't say go to Al-Anon, they probably don't say anything at all. But if you go to Al-Anon, what we are finding is that is not what people want.

Speaker 2:

Al-anon is designed for a very specific type of dynamic. It was started for wives of middle-aged white dudes who were alcoholics. But even then but even then it's not educational in nature. Like when you go to an Al-Anon meeting, they don't educate you on the neurobiology of addiction. That has to be job one. So the first thing that the family needs is education and awareness. The second thing is I believe they do need now some people get it through one-on-one counseling. But I'm a big proponent Like we have an online group, for example, for families. Every night, monday night six o'clock, you're invited to our group and it's half share, so we open it up and it's half education. Because of what you said, that educational part is such a key part for the family, just like any other disease.

Speaker 2:

Right Like let's pretend, god forbid I'm diagnosed with cancer. Here's what it is, here's what it's called, here's what the treatments are. Right Like the family doesn't even know that. If you think about it, when I started going to meetings, my wife would be like where are you going every night? What the hell is that? And I never thought to educate her or you know what I mean? I never said anything other than that's where I have to go, melissa. That's just what I have to do Because I didn't know better, if that makes sense. I didn't know that she deserved this information because I was told it's none of her. I basically was told it's none of her business.

Speaker 1:

She should go to Al-Anon to me, this is where the rubber meets the road in some ways when it comes to the family. So here's what I'd love to propose and love you to, to take a swing at as as feels right to you. So you know, in the case of so I I, I'm a proponent of this idea that I was sick, yeah, so so, so Brett was sick, and if I could have known that for myself, I think that would have been useful, as opposed to I'm a bad person, or this behavior, that's escalating behavior, was happening. But if somebody would said, no, you're sick, and then let's take it to the family, no, he's sick, yeah, but then the family comes back with yeah, but sickness doesn't mean that he needs to go steal money from our account like the right symptoms of this disease, this is where it gets weird. This is where the rubber meets the road. It's where it gets real weird. Yeah, would you?

Speaker 2:

Would you play with that? Because I say something. I say this all the time and sometimes it's offensive to people. So I want to apologize up front. But I say one of the problems with the disease model is when we're in active addiction, we act like such assholes and it's very hard for people to have sympathy and say you have a disease, you're sick. And it's very hard for people to have sympathy and say you have a disease, you're sick, when you're, when you're still in pain, pills out of their medicine cabinet and and and it is an absolute reality to the problem. It is honestly like it makes it really really difficult for people to have sympathy for folks who have addiction. It makes it. It's probably why the stigma is so um, it is still there despite our efforts. The stigma is still so strong.

Speaker 2:

The only thing that I've come up with, brett, is these are the particular symptoms for our disease. I don't know what to tell you. If you have diabetes type 2, your symptoms are going to be wounds that don't heal. You might have to have amputation If you don't take care of yourself. There are some pretty vicious things that are going to happen On the addiction side if you don't take care of yourself. There are some pretty vicious things that are going to happen. But you hit the nail on the head. The real problem is the societal and the community and the family impact. It's very hard for my wife If I were to go out tonight and drink four or five beers because my buddy came in town. And come back home and look at my wife and say, oh, it's a disease, man, it's a relapsing chronic disease. She's she's gonna stab me in the neck with a fork or something. It ain't gonna work and uh.

Speaker 2:

So I think this is a reality that we have to have a conversation about and we have not had a conversation about. Does that part make sense? We have not really talked about this. Those of us in recovery don't really talk about it. Family members don't talk about it. It's like this elephant in the room that we won't acknowledge and here's how I would verbalize it that we won't acknowledge. And here's how I would verbalize it. Do we really think it's a disease? And are we really being honest with how hard it is to think it's a disease? People know that it's the right answer, like if you go out and do it's like a politically correct answer to say that addiction is a disease. But if you really dig into it, do you actually think that? And a lot of people, because of what you said, because of our behavior, they don't think it. Man, yeah, a lot of decision makers don't think it. A lot of policy makers don't think it yeah, enabling you know you're enabling.

Speaker 2:

Why would we? Why would we do that? Why would we? You know the whole like, let's just look. You don't have to look any further than the war on drugs. If our society thought that addiction was a disease and they really thought it there would be no such thing as people getting locked up for drug use. There would be treatment centers, mandated treatment centers, rather than going to jail. Because here's the dirty little secret They've done studies on this it actually costs less to run a treatment, like if you had a secure treatment center rather than a minimum security jail. It costs less to run that treatment center than it does the jail. And the reason is is that people do not think it's a disease. You have opened up a can of worms, dude. That is like really society doesn't talk about. We do not think it's a disease because of the behaviors.

Speaker 1:

Well, I'm really one of my heroes as well. You've become one of my heroes. Just bear with you, and I want to tell you a little bit about what your work, you do and stuff. Do you have a few more minutes? I do, I do, I'm fine. Yep, um, so I've got. Another hero of mine is on as I'm recording next week, which is dr kevin mccauley. You're probably, he's great, yeah, and and I've sent his stuff to so many people to help them bridge that gap to understand pleasure.

Speaker 1:

Unwoven is his uh your unwoven is, is gets shown in a lot of places, like most treatment facilities show it, and it really helps a lot of people that I interface with. That really aren't gonna aren't taking the hook line and sinker of a lot of the program, right, the one with the, the two letters in it. You know they're just not ready to do that, but they're ready to maybe intellectualize it a bit and and that's exactly yeah, so, so anyway, so I'm, I'm stoked. We had that little conversation. I'd love to aim to land this land, this plane, um, I'm.

Speaker 1:

I first saw you at the samsa event in in maryland, uh, and that was a recovery friendly workplace, uh event. And that's the place where I I really want to, I want I'm putting my shoulder into trying to effectuate change in HR, in companies etc. And you were invited there. I don't know you from Adam, and then I connect with you on LinkedIn and you manage the content on LinkedIn. I encourage everybody I'll put a link in the show notes to follow, as his videos are amazing, but you were invited there because you have some sort of expertise in this. I would love to to move this conversation into what. What do you do? What's your work? It's clearly you're an amazing communicator, great conversation, but but why were you invited to that and what do you?

Speaker 2:

do so we, so I've. My journey has involved for the first 12 years of my career. You would look at my professional career and say it was pretty predictable, it was pretty much the normal route. I climbed the ladder, wound up being a CEO at a couple of rehabs, doing other things, but it was very traditional in nature and tell you, I love the people that I worked with, I love the patients that we were helping and we were doing good work.

Speaker 2:

But the opioid epidemic came in and I come from a family of entrepreneurs Like, like in my family, our, our motto is work hard, play hard, like it doesn't like if you work 80 hours a week, you can drink as much as you want and uh, but they have that I ha. I kind of have that mentality of if something's broken, fix it, and and I'm always looking for opportunities. And I started to see these things happen around the opioid epidemic that I just couldn't stomach. And what it was Brett was at that time. This is pre Narcan, like Narcan wasn't even really being distributed. It's definitely pre-medication assisted treatment. So all the I had I had a private practice going where these young men would be coming to me Cause I kind of specialized in working with like 23 to 25 year olds, 20 to 25 year olds, all dudes and I kept having the same thing happen over and over again they wouldn't go to rehab, they would relapse. They wouldn't go to rehab, they would relapse, they wouldn't go to meetings, they just didn't buy into what we were selling and then they started dying.

Speaker 2:

And I had a couple experiences and I'm still on the board of these organizations where they turned into nonprofits and stuff and we really started challenging the system. I had one experience and this organization is called Sage's Army, sagesarmycom. I encourage people to check it out. It's called a recovery community organization and his son was in my rehab and this kid, he did as good as you could in rehab, brett. You couldn't do better than this kid did. I ran that rehab for seven years and we had a level system and we only had 85 people ever graduate at the top of the level system and he was one of them.

Speaker 2:

But when he left he was left behind. When he left our program there was nothing for him. He didn't like adult rehab, he didn't like meetings and, to make a long story short, he was found in a hotel dead of a drug overdose and it was the thing that pushed me over the edge. I was like I'm not doing this anymore. That got me into the recovery movement and the peer support movement, and it started with an organization in South Carolina that I founded called Faces and Voices of Recovery, and we did it in South Carolina because that was the right place. There was a coalition there and that's when I started opening the door onto this alternative way of thinking. So I've become a leader in the peer support recovery management movement. So it's a subclinical philosophy. It's this idea of been there, done that, the main thing. So when I introduced myself to you on this podcast, I opened it up by talking about my recovery experience. That's very intentional. I used to open it up by talking about my clinical experience, so that has led to the development of many different programs on my end.

Speaker 2:

Right now, where I'm focused and the reason that you saw me at the SAMHSA event is I'm very focused on the workplace. I do a lot of work with unions, I do a lot of work with the construction industry. I do a lot of work trying to get to people that aren't stepping forward and raising their hands, and I've widened the conversation. We don't talk, even just in terms of addiction. We talk about stress management and the relationship between substances and stress management. Everybody who works for me is in recovery, everybody who works for me. They come at it from that certified peer angle. There are two main organizations that I've started now. One is called U-Turn Health wwwuturnhealthcom. And then our construction division that we just carved out is called Build Well Health buildwellhealthcom. And I was invited to that particular event because it was a workplace event and I was there to talk about our experience working with construction workers and in the unions and stuff. And what we have developed is a peer support model where we embed ourselves in the company. And so you'll see me out on job sites, you'll see my people out on job sites and it's all about getting to Rich and getting to Brett before they hit bottom. It's what you talked about earlier when you said if I would have gotten here two years earlier, could I have gotten here two years earlier if somebody would have talked to me?

Speaker 2:

The right way is trained to be non-confrontational, non-judgmental, non-one size fits all. So this dude's not going to come at you from a go to meetings or you're going to die model. He's going to meet you where you are and that's where we're getting our traction from. We are finding, like, our engagement rates. If you look at like a regular clinical EAP, they come in at about one to 3%. We come in at about 12 to 15%. So we're still not where we want to be, not by any means. Like, think about that. We still don't even have 50% of the people in need getting the help they deserve. But 12% is better than 3%.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, and that's the whole idea is, and it's coming on podcasts like this, it's championing people like you. We've got to get away from this idea that there are only certain people that can help and that we got to build more rehabs or hire more counselors, because, between me and you, that's not the solution. The solution is all hands on deck. We are all part of the solution. Does that make sense? You are part of the solution by having this podcast. Employers are part of the solution by becoming what More recovery friendly. We are not going to solve this problem with the model that we've had in place for 70 years. It's just not going to happen, dude. It's just not going to ever happen.

Speaker 1:

Well, I'd love, I'd love to to finish this podcast cast off or this conversation Rich with a post you put on LinkedIn that I that I shared a minute ago, that you know I'm a huge believer that connection is, is is the key, and even that word would have pissed me off.

Speaker 2:

So there's right, yes, it would have, yep.

Speaker 1:

It would have been too corny, it would have been too much. Yeah, yeah, but but for, for whatever reason, if I could have, if I could have been around, you know people that were comfortable talking about this and it's, you know, no big deal. I mean it is a big deal but it's not right. And and so in that, in that video you shared, where you went into the dollar store or whatever, that was great, Impromptu conversation with five people in line at the, at this counter, and that that beautiful synergy takes place. And if you're in recovery, and I am and you are, and we're, we're attracted to others like us, there's a beautiful thing that happens, yeah, and even the word beautiful would have pissed me off. So there's that too.

Speaker 2:

But but uh, I could totally relate to that, though Like all that warm and fuzzy shit would have been like I don't want anything to do with it, man, yeah.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, so, so yeah, your peer recovery.

Speaker 2:

You know this, this idea of getting around people, making it more accessible, Recover out loud out loud, recovering out loud, recovering out loud is the opposite of what we were taught when we kind of like got, especially like 20 years ago when you got exposed. When I got exposed to this stuff 25 years ago it was like anonymous. And then when I first started working in the recovery management movement, it was interesting. It was highly controversial whether you should share your story. And then AA to their credit, the World Service Office at AA came out with a pamphlet that said hey, you could talk about your recovery all you want. Nobody should care if it's your recovery. You just don't represent AA when you talk about it. And so this recover out loud thing I wasn't used to it for the first 10 years of my recovery, but I have embraced it over the last 12, 13, 14 years. I'm not ridiculous about it. Do you know what I mean? I still am careful I don't walk up to people in the grocery store and say nice to meet you. My name is Rich. I'm a recovering drug addict, because that's just weird. But I talk openly about my recovery man.

Speaker 2:

And in this case, at the Dollar General 100% true story there's me and like three people in front of me and then there's like two people behind the counter and this guy who's checking us out, he's a rough looking character, he's got some tats, he's got some gauges, but he's telling this dude a story and he's like talking about these kids that were I don't know what they were using, but they were smoking weed or something behind a dollar general. And he went out to chase him off. But he gave him a speech. He said but I tried to give him something to think about because you know, I don't want him to wind up like me. And I was standing there when he said that and I said dude, why, why do you even care? Like, why are you, why are you telling him that? And I said it in a way that he was cool with you know what I mean. Like I can't remember exactly what I said, but it was like in a and he was like oh, I'm in recovery man. And he said like 18 months or something. And I'm like I'm in recovery 24 years. At the time it was 24 years. And then I'm not making it up Like the dude in front of me said I'm in recovery from pain pills.

Speaker 2:

And then the guy in front of him said yeah, me too. I haven't done pain pills for like three months and we and we talked for probably 15 or 20 minutes about the freedom of being, specifically about being off pills, and told a couple of funny stories and and just sort of like, interacted with each other. May see these guys again in the future, may not. It's a small town, who knows, I'll probably see him at a meeting. But I left there thinking to myself like that was really cool, man.

Speaker 2:

And and if and if we were like that in society, where a person could come home from work and talk to his neighbor about this stuff or you could talk to your coworker about it, wouldn't that help? Wouldn't it be a better world? And wouldn't that make more people be comfortable with coming forward? Because I'll leave you with this we know that recovery works. We know that treatment and recovery works. There was a study done at Harvard Medical School and what they looked at was if you stayed engaged with your treatment or recovery and it didn't matter what you did. It could be go see a counselor, it could be going to AA meetings, it could be coming to Rich's group, whatever it was if you engage with that for at least six months, your likelihood of what they call remission, which is the medical term for recovery. It means the symptoms go away of what they call remission, which is the medical term for recovery. It means the symptoms go away. It's a 75% success rate, brett. If you compare that to other diseases, that is a really good success rate.

Speaker 2:

The problem is nobody comes and gets the treatment. Does that make sense? We do not have a solution problem, we have an engagement problem. We do not have a solution problem, we have an engagement problem. And so the way to get around that is, we have got to get out of our own way. And by we I mean those of us who are professionals. We have got to quit thinking that there's some like super secret formula that we keep locked up in our cabinet, in our IOP offices.

Speaker 2:

Anybody can get recovery. You may or may not need treatment, you may or may not need meetings, who knows? Start the conversation. You owe it to yourself and start to learn about this. And here's the other thing More people get in and I'm sorry I get going when I start thinking about this, but as more people get in recovery, I'm sorry I get going when I start thinking about this, but more people, as more people get in recovery. That means there's more people like brett and rich out there. That means it's easier to help more people. Does that make sense? And it starts to become a snowball moving in the right direction. And recovery we recovery can choke out addiction. I'm convinced of it. It's more powerful than addiction. It's more powerful than addiction. It's more hopeful than addiction. It's just there aren't enough of us talking about it yet. That's why these podcasts are so cool. Dude, what a treat.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, man, this was awesome. And or watching on YouTube Rich, thanks for doing what you do and thanks for being on this episode. Rich can be found at u-turn-healthcom and he's been involved in all kinds of things, so if you look him up on LinkedIn too, and I'll put links in the show notes as well. Until next time, you know, be curious. Thank you.