ICYMI: No More Secrets About Addiction

Mountainside, a collection of addiction treatment centers in the Northeastern United States, has been in operation for nearly three decades, running on the belief that everyone is capable of achieving recovery. The organization has engaged the national not-for-profit Shatterproof to help create a short film entitled "NO MORE SECRETS" to serve as a call to action to help end the stigma associated with addiction.

Jana Wu, Senior Clinician at Mountainside Treatment Center and Dr. Manassa Hany, Director of Addiction Psychology at Northwell detail their work with Shatterproof and discuss the film's upcoming premier in New York City.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
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Speaker 2 (00:32):
I've never really had faith in myself that I could
stay sober. A lot of people in my life had
given up hope on me and didn't think I was
going to make it. You don't know what your life's
going to be like in a year. If you choose recovery,
if you take the suggestions, you could be living this big,
beautiful life.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
It's been so life changing and it's the best decision
I ever made.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
You're hearing there from people featured in a short film
called No More Secret. It's a short film that's going
to debut to that focuses on addiction and recovery. We're
going to talk about that here with Jenna Wouh. She's
a senior clinician at Mountainside A Treatment Center. Doctor Manasahni
is with us as well, director of Addiction Psychology at Northwell.
He's a psychiatrist. And Jenna, let me start with you
and kind of the driving thrust of this short film

(01:18):
which centers on two individuals, one named Peter, one named Rachel,
and they're talking, yes, about addiction, but about the process
by which they sought help and went into recovery. And
I wonder if you could talk a bit about that,
the forcing mechanism, that the way by which people decide
it's something that they need to do, that they have
to seek out recovery.

Speaker 4 (01:37):
Oh, thank you, David Well. I think for most people
it's not a choice. Usually, life gets to a point
where it is so uncomfortable and unbearable for not just
them but their family, community, productivity at work, that they
have got to make a change and the only way
is in the other direction. And we really wanted to
explore two different family relationships and two different d visuals

(02:00):
that made that change, that decided that they had to
do something differently, and that meant asking for help, being
more public about their struggle. You know, we all struggle
with something, but addiction is something that is still riddled
with shame and tremendous amount of stigma, both from the
community and often internally in the family system. So we
wanted to take this opportunity to really share with people

(02:23):
openly what we saw as a call for action to
end the stigma around addiction. So making this film and
collaborating with Shatterproof was a natural segue there called action,
you know, in that they focused completely on breaking the
stigma of addiction nationwide, so that sort of had this

(02:43):
game to be I.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
Want to stick with you, Janna. I did get a
chance to look at the short film to take a look,
and I thought that it was very, very emotional. I
felt like it was tear jerking and all the sort
But what I did notice from it was the importance
of community. Can you just speak a bit more about
the purpose and the importance of community for those that
are recovering from addiction.

Speaker 4 (03:06):
Yes, I'm glad you saw that. I think it's absolutely essential. Actually,
evidence based practice finds that group therapy is far more
effective than individual therapy for substance us to serves. We
know other things are also very important, like medicaid assistant treatment.
But going back to the question of community, it's actually
related having a community that understands and supports you and

(03:26):
again doesn't judge you. You know, with addiction, unfortunately, the
behaviors that come with it are typically pretty reprehensible and
really affect relationships, and it's very difficult when you love
someone to separate that person from those behaviors. So having
a community that's not going to judge you, where you
can share some things that you've done that you might

(03:47):
not understand with maybe an appropriate clinical guide in this
process or a pure support recovery coach, and a community
heals people in ways I can't see anything else. You know,
that community and ability to say what I've done where
I'm struggling and have other people here respect you, understand
and help you process. That is invaluable, doctor Harney.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
Watching this film, you hear from these two individuals. You
hear from members of their family as well. So in
the case of Peter, you hear from his wife who
wrote him a letter at some point. You hear from
Rachel's father who was worried about her, And there's kind
of a through line between both of them that they
were each wrestling with the fact that they thought that
this story might end with the death of their spouse

(04:29):
or their child. What is your counsel to family members
who are seeing somebody in their families a spouse, a
child going through this and want something catalytic to happen
by which they could seek health.

Speaker 5 (04:41):
Well, it is really a challenge and disease in that
sense that it not only affects people's lives, but also
affects their significant others as well, affects their kids, affects
their significant others, family members, and others. Now, the issue
with the addiction as it is is it does affects

(05:01):
people behavior. It makes a bit of a change in
their personality and their behavior that upsets the support system.
And speaking of the support system that Norah was asking about,
whenever we do an evaluation and a new patient, one
of the most important predictive factor of their recovery is

(05:23):
how big is your support system who is existing around
in your sphere to provide support for you. Now, we
come to the support system and we provide the advice
is stay supportive, stay there, stay there for them. They're struggling.
They're not doing that by choice. As we say, addiction
is not a choice.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
How challenging is that? Not to interrupt, but I mean,
how challenging is it to convey that message to the family.

Speaker 5 (05:47):
It is not easy. It is not easy, and it's
not a straightforward things. Some days you're willing and happy
to support your spouse or kid, other days you're really tired,
And we continue to provide that. Now there are groups
that we have specially for significant others. Also, if you
hear about the l on on that that's for the

(06:09):
family and the kids of those who suffer from addictive disorders.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
Well, addiction is very clearly a disease, as we've been
pointing out on this conversation. Can you speak to the
resources available from a medical standpoint in terms of treating
this as a medical concern.

Speaker 5 (06:23):
Well, we know about it way more than we did
in the past. This is one we know that the
chemicals that are implicated, and the mechanism of happening, how
it affects, Where does that affect the brain, what the
retrans method that implicates, So we know how it works.
It's a chronic brain disease. You can compare it to diabetes,

(06:48):
it can compare it to hypertension and so forth. Now
it does also have medication that affects it and helps
you with it. We have so many medications if you're
going to talk about, let's say opoid use or we
do have evidence that we have methadone that helps with
it a lot. We have upernorphine, which has been helping
for ages since the year two thousand and three. We

(07:10):
have noxon on narcan that can revive and get people
from overdose. So we have the medical model. We know
how it works, we know the process, and we know
that it has some kind of management that can help
people do your own recovery as well.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
Just in the minute that we have left. This is
a business finance economic show. A lot of folks who
listen are on Wall Street working on Wall Street, and
I gat this is a community that has been historically
at least resistant to talking with or confronting at these issues.

Speaker 4 (07:40):
Absolutely, I think there's a high cost to acknowledging that
you need help. But we do see a lot of
people that are in very high stress jobs and this
becomes an outlet and it's very difficult then to ask
for help. We also know, too, if they have a
partner that's struggling, their own productivity is affected and that
can be very difficult too. These aren't the types of
things you might tell your colleague at work, or other

(08:00):
parents at the parent pick up. Oh, my wife's drinking
too much. These are things that are very painful to
hold and can be very consuming. So I think lastly,
one important thing I wanted to put out there is
we know that recovery is out there, There is hope,
there's a lot of joy in life, but not just
for the individual, but for the entire family system. We
have a whole program at Mountainside, particularly just for family

(08:22):
members that they don't have a substance use disorder diagnoses,
but they love someone that does, and it's been essential
to work with them from that lens of people that
specialize in this, that see them and see the disease
and want to be with them.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
Well, thank you both for being here, really appreciate it.
That's Jenna Wous, senior clinician at Mountainside, doctor Manassahni joining
us as well, Director of Addiction Psychology at Northwell, a
practicing psychiatrist, and just noting again that the short film
is called No More Secrets Than It's going to make
its debut at Mountain Sides New York City Center at
six o'clock. It's about ten twelve minutes long. And would
catalyze a conversation like the one that we've had here,

(08:58):
just surrounding the issue of ad and recovery. This is
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