Exploring the Intersection of Adventure, Addiction, and Authentic Recovery with Nicholas Gettel

What happens when addiction meets the innate human need for adventure? Join me as I engage with Nicholas Gettel a Continuing Care Specialist at Caron Treatment Centers, to unravel this fascinating intersection. Together, we shed light on the nuances of how activism can sometimes fill voids left by personal dissatisfaction and the significant role political polarization plays in the recovery journey. Hear our personal stories about navigating these turbulent waters and understand how authentic adventure and meaningful engagement can be vital tools in a healthy recovery process.

The media landscape today is a minefield of bias and hyperbole, making it challenging to discern the truth. Nicholas and I discuss the mental health implications of consuming news during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the alarming effects high-dosage THC can have on younger generations, potentially inducing psychosis-like symptoms and extreme ideologies. We underscore the importance of balance and stability, highlighting how genuine human connections are crucial in navigating these chaotic times, especially for those in recovery.

Our conversation then moves into the profound impact of intellectual and spiritual pursuits on recovery. Nicholas shares transformative experiences from trauma-focused environments, emphasizing the importance of vulnerability and honesty. We also explore the lasting imprint of e

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello and thanks again for listening to another
episode of All Better.
I'm your host, Joe Van Wee.
Today's guest is NicholasGettle.
Nick is the Continuing CareSpecialist, Young Adults and
Teen Male Services at KarenTreatment Centers.
We get to discuss his positionthere.

(00:22):
Nick is also a graduate ofLackawanna College where he
studied criminal justice.
I got to know Nick over adecade ago.
We discussed that.
We discussed the polarizationof medium and how that can
affect someone entering recovery, what its effect is on young

(00:43):
adults, someone enteringrecovery, what its effect is on
young adults, and we alsodiscuss many other existential
kind of framing of addiction andwhat that condition would be
for someone who is sober, theway they perceive things,
perceive reality.
Nick is a really wonderfulguest to talk to and I'm excited

(01:07):
for you to meet him.
Let's meet Nick Gettle.
Well, we're here with NickGettle.
Nick, thanks for coming on.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, thanks for having me man.
I've had the opportunity tolisten to a few of these shows
and it's always really cool,having lived up here and known
some of the faces and also justthe interesting content you know
well thanks I, it was always mygoal to be interesting, great
cost and danger, but fuck it,let's be interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
No doubt about that.
Be interesting at all costs,that's uh.
I guess that's the adventurer'sway.
I think it's the way ofalcoholics of our generation.
Yeah, and up before us andright after us we have this
still prior.
This priority we'll never loseto.
Adventure's important.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yeah, seek it, yeah dude it's, and it's interesting
you say that a person who Ireally enjoy listening to, who's
a psychologist, talks aboutthis phenomenon with people who
oftentimes are and I've falleninto it certain times in my life
they become really, reallyfocused on like activism and
things like that, which is not abad thing at face value, right,

(02:20):
but when people get totally wayoff the rails, you know, and
their personal life is suffering, et cetera, right.
Basically, if you don't haveauthentic adventure in your own
life, right, in a meaningful andauthentic way, you're going to
go find it elsewhere.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Right or a muted way.
It feels adventurous.
Like I know, I recognize andrelate to your addiction and,
that being said, I also had thissense every time I drank
distress or not distress.
There was a sense many timesthat I was doing something

(02:58):
adventurous.
I don't know what the rest ofthe night's going to be.
I have a lot of problems on myplate, but it felt like I was
playing an active lottery.
Yeah, every relapse.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah, yeah, dude.
Well, it's like there's almosta ritualistic.
It's the high in between thehigh.
Yeah, it's this place of like Idon't know what's going to
happen where it's going to gowho I'm going to meet.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
You know or pre like dark addiction, the ritual of
shower, the shave, somethingmagnificent.
It's out there waiting for mewhen I still shower, yeah, and
six hours later I'm urinating,cigarette burns and a brand new
jacket I had.
Yeah, so the adventure would befound either way.

(03:41):
You started that off by sayingthere's also adventure like, say
, activism.
But I have a psych profile thatyou know, not a mood or a
personality, but like anextremity with me, and I think
you can relate.
Activism did call to me at onepoint in my life in a way that

(04:03):
evolved into a destruction,destruction to an existing
business.
I had it alienated, friends,that even though we had
different, say, politicalideologies, my, my beliefs were
drawing a line that were soextreme.
So I would take what could benational or world news and two

(04:27):
binary approaches to this, this,this scenario, life or
democracy and they were sopolarizing that, like the stakes
were, I was taking that newsand making the stakes at home.
Now, that's something that wasalways, I guess I think um
valued growing up, but it neverhappened in the way I've

(04:47):
experienced the last eight yearsand I don't know if you can
relate to this.
What seemed virtuous to me wasa consequence, was coming with
it before my relapse of activismthat was more about me than I
don't know the people that Icould be advocating for

(05:09):
Absolutely.
Can you relate?

Speaker 2 (05:11):
to that A hundred percent.
I was.
I was really.
I look back man and I was likeinsufferable to deal with and
this was in a period of my life.
Looking back where I was, I wasin a dark place, you know what
I mean, and it was before arelapse.
Right, it was before the relapse, when everything kind of fell
apart and I look back at who Iwas and thank God that

(05:31):
Facebook's deleted or whateveryou know.
But it was like I'm Nick thethis right.
Yeah, like, and this is what Ibelieve in Like a costing, like
people you know, like what areyou doing?

Speaker 1 (05:44):
It's exciting at first.
Yeah, it's exciting at first.
You're in the fight.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
Yeah, I'm in the fight and it's like that person
is forever going to hatewhatever you stand for, on
account of the way they standfor in quotes right.
On account of the way that youjust behaved.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
Man.
I'm glad we're talking aboutthis because I think we met many
years ago and I always had agood rapport and then the
political polarization reallyramped up, I'd say 2015,.
If we're talking in just themodern phenomenon and without
going into ideologies, I thinkwe had opposing views, maybe

(06:23):
socially, but we always gotalong.
We always had a rapport.
Yeah, and that was around thetime I myself I would do
political advertising, but Ialso had my personal really
extreme views that were almost Idon't want to call them liberal
because they're tied into myown nihilism, right.
So I would make comments myselfon someone's Facebook that

(06:45):
maybe I had a loose associationwith, with no consideration,
like okay, I know this person,that they there's this open
forum now that we're callingFacebook and I'm leaving really
cruel and mean comments.
I was, I couldn't believe, yeah, and then I'd be celebrated,
like once there's thatvalidation, this light button,
like oh, it was the same crowdof seven people.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
Here we go, rally the troops.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
It starts.
So I don't know.
There's a an invisible reward.
I at no point was itconsidering what my reward was.
Neurologically, right Likethere, I'm being hacked into my
own behavior and I'm alsoradicalizing myself Like no
one's doing this to me.
I'm in an echo chamber.
We're all radicalizing eachother With nonviolently.

(07:39):
It started on Facebook, butthat was right around the time I
found myself relapsing becausethe crisis is the way I would
read news.
It would escalate.
I was reading news Okay, thisis the event that may have
happened.
Whatever source I'm getting mymind with a background of
anxiety and trauma was readingthe news that doesn't exist.

(08:02):
That was six months from now.
I know the catastrophe.
This is step one.
Step two is step three.
Oh fuck, I better, just.
I just better acknowledge the.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
You know the nuclear warfare that's six months out
we're gonna be broken.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
Radiation, radiation, yeah I've seen this film.
We're engineered to think thatway, though I think good
evolution allows for, I think,people with anxiety to have high
intelligence, extreme anxiety,I think they they're constantly
calculating it's.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
It's incredibly functional, right until it.
Until it reaches that pointwhere that pendulum swings and
all of a sudden, you're alone.
Yeah, I can't have arelationship with other people
when, when, when were the firstconsequences?

Speaker 1 (08:43):
I've had them, we both, both experienced.
When did you?
When did it hit its low thatyou had to acknowledge is there?
It's not the world, it's mymind.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah, that's a really good question.
You know, I think it'ssomething that.
So I had had experiences thefirst time I was sober, right,
like the experiences we have inrecovery that changed kind of
our outlook on life, you know,and as a result of that
experience, I think, joe, if youwould have asked me, I would
tell you that I intuitively knewthat to be true, despite how I

(09:14):
was, which which adds so muchinjury to it, because you're
you're, you intuitively knowsomething to be true, or you
feel you do and you're justacting, in total, totally
against it, right, and it's likeI don't know.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
I mean, well, that's giving me?
And said I never phrased my ownexperience that way and I knew
exactly what you're saying yeah,yeah and it's, and I think it's
always.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
It's kind of always coming coming back and going
away a little bit right,depending on what I have going
on in my life.
I have, you know, proclivitytowards still that sort of
ideology, that, that mindset,this I know everything you know.
I put that cap on and it'soften in, often like in direct

(10:01):
correlation to whatever level ofdistress I'm experiencing in my
current circumstances.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
Yeah, it's the last analysis, that this is mirroring
my own internal stresses.
Yeah, but the news, you know, Icould easily say it's
hyperbolic, it's very biased.
If you're left or right whereyour sources are, if you're left
or right where your sources are, even the objectivity of, say

(10:26):
just for the generalization ofthis discussion truth lies
somewhere in the middle.
The middle's really fuckingweird.
So, whatever our realities are,it's a lot of extreme
information.
But I think I wanted to explorethe idea.
It's still a story, right, sothe story's not complete.

(10:48):
You and I are still alive, butI still complete these pieces of
news like all right, I'm alwaysin the middle of a story.
Something started the news.
I'm reading yep, be it.
All of history, whatever scopeor small scale, I want to look
at what's the end?
What's the end of his right?
That's what's driving.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
It's almost boring boring to think that it's just
going like everything's going tocontinue to adjust, yeah and
and things will change and itmight not be that dramatic.
I just was listening to apodcast on my way up here and
the individual was sharing hisworldview that, like, look, you
know, things aren't nearly aswild or wonky or bad as we, you

(11:28):
know, believe they are, or as weyou know, and I don't know that
I, I don't know personally thatI agree with that.
Yeah, but to hear that it waslike man, that would be nice.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
I tend to agree with it.
When I'm in crisis I did duringCOVID I had to convince because
my anxiety was really making mylife dissatisfying my intimacy.
Being trapped in the house withmy wife who was pregnant, my
consumption in news is alwaysfar more substantial than hers.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:01):
And I always think the stakes are just dire oh yeah
like it's braveheart act.
Three patriot, it's a.
It's a mel gibson like aimsmall, miss small.
Yeah, aim small, run in slowmotion, carry the flag, um, and
you know my ideologies, um, Ithink are.

(12:21):
Some of them are an expressionof personality, others Others
are principles, and I don'tthink, when I sit down, what I
could historically be painted asa liberal, but there's always
complexities.
I could paint you as aconservative, but I know you and
I don't think Nick theconservative.
But this had us for a while.

(12:42):
These stories, the fear comesin with the end, and the end is
strange.
There's no such thing as theend.
Nothing ends, and this kind ofcould be our pivot into a little
spiritual or existential talk.
For sure, I saw you three monthsago.
I walked into Karen Foundationat a meeting.

(13:05):
I had no idea that you werethere.
Yeah, and I'm not being poetic,when I shook your hand and saw
you, it was like intuition, likeyou were talking about earlier.
We're in the same place for thesame reason.
Something trumped.
I was part of this toy, of whatI like in politics, yeah,

(13:27):
democracy, threats, yeah,culture, yeah, I love these
topics.
Yeah, and here's the two of us.
We have one thing to advocatePeople are suffering.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
From not only addiction but the rumination
that we both just opened up withMm-hmm.
How do you approach thatknowing?
Are you seeing that in theyounger, like younger, be it
adolescent, 19 to 25 year olds?
How are they digesting what youand I have always had an
interest in politics, government, history?

(13:58):
Is that happening in thatyounger generation?
Is it part of discussions andanxiety, or culture?

Speaker 2 (14:29):
no-transcript.
I mean, joe, I experienced itmyself in early sobriety.
This time, you know we'll talkabout this right.
Like you know, having traumaand this, that and the other
thing, I got sober six monthsinto my sobriety.
Covid started.
Right, we're on the sametimeline bro I figured dude.
And I was like I was like thiswas crazy.

(14:51):
You know, um, I'm like makingamends via WebEx or calling
people Right, and it's um, Icould not.
I got very close to be to, toto be quite honest with you, to
really kind of going off thedeep end a little bit in light
of what was going on and tryingto make sense of it, and then

(15:12):
also in light of my own personalexperiences and the things that
needed to be felt, that weren'tbeing felt right and all of
that stuff.
So it's easy.
I mean, it was an easy world toslip into, that it is.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
It was part of my entry into recovery If am I
going to be happy and stable.
The psychosis I wasexperiencing and what I'm
starting to see in youngerclients is is really related to
THC.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
Yes exactly.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
I don't.
I'm not being a sensationalist.
The amounts and dosages havenever been seen in our culture
or history to the effect theycould have not only on cognition
.
Or say you have these ideas,ideologies, what happens to the
worldview while you're in thatdose high is essentially
tripping, paranoia, rumination,it looks.

(16:07):
I'm not saying a full psychoticbreak, but it's psychosis.
Sure that I have concretethinking, I am assured of what's
going to happen.
These thoughts are thenreinforced with some of the more
extreme emotions.
Someone could feel, yeah, andnow they'll produce behaviors
that are completely irrationaland you can't see it.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
No, no, no.
It was almost like, and witheverything that went on it was
kind of the perfect storm and Idon't I don't know enough to
know whether I do certainly know, from experience and from from
what I see, the relationshipbetween cannabis and it.
I mean, it's unreal.
I honestly had no idea theextent of it until I started

(16:53):
working with it and was in frontof it all the time.
And I know that there was a lotof research done on on the
impacts, because when weed wasgetting legalized, right it was,
there was a lot of.
You know it's great, it's bad,whatever, but there was research
done on its impacts on thedeveloping great brain, Right,
and I know that there's stillsome pending research on its
impact.
And then you know a higherlevel of individuals who end up

(17:17):
on the skip with schizophreniayeah, it's good, so effective,
right, or or any combination ofboth.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
It's alarming.
It is, and some of the researchthat's being led is Stanford.
If anyone's ever interested in,andrew Huberman has a great
podcast where he goes over justraw data of this.
If someone wants to explore it,that's a great place to start
for general information.
But seeing it aggravate say anunderlying comorbidity or you

(17:48):
know you're using THC and aco-occurring kind of personality
disorder, mood disorder, startsto present itself.
It's hard for regular people toadmit that because we're talking
about weed and weed has adifferent definition depending
on your age.
Yeah, and we were both around.
I had.
No, no, I thought it was a fairargument and I'm I still.

(18:09):
I'm not, um, a prohibitionistwith anything, no, really, um,
I'm not saying what's right orwrong, but I weed, I think for
some people was a reallyremarkable medicine, be a pain
management or these strangeoutliers I've seen we've all

(18:31):
seen videos on TikTok orsomething of a Parkinson's
patient, a reduction of thesymptomology of neurological
problems.
You know, uncontrolledmovements of your arms.
This gets reduced.
Okay, we see this.
This campaign's flowing.
What we didn't really see, orsee a place where you could hub
all this information, is the newstrands are unnatural to
anything you've seen in the lasthundred years of marijuana use

(18:53):
it could be cultural, ritual orhabitual into an addiction.
What we didn't see is the amountof THC that could be smoked
from one drag.
Yeah, the amount of THC thatcould be smoked from one drag.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
Um strands that I don't have any genetic
background, but I mean that camearound when we were back in the
day.
Oh man, I'd be chewing on barkout there.
Man, I thought I got stoned inhigh school, 14 years.
And not smoking pot, nick, Ismoked.
I ate a gummy the first time Iate it.

(19:25):
Edible yeah I, I could havejust shit my pants and done
nothing about it for an hour,like, and just I, I just didn't
know I was gone.
Yeah, like I was in a puzzlefactory and I I was convinced
this is not marijuana.

Speaker 2 (19:42):
Like someone gave me LSD, yeah, or K2 or something
right, this was.
This is not marijuana, likesomeone gave me LSD or K2 or
something.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
Right, this was.
This is art.
Yeah, and it was pop.
I was.
I was out of my mind.
Now it really goes to say whatis underneath my fragile
personality.
At this point in my beliefs, inmy life, the crisis and
polarization say that wasexpressing itself.
Facebook, oh, I'm relating tothe news, my own political
leanings.
A couple months into smokingpop before I drank, it was awful

(20:12):
because I could only see theworld in one lens.
It was horrifying.
It was filled with dread.
It matched most dystopianstories that the architecture's
in my mind.
It's what I was drawn to, evensober, of course.
And now it's just banging itLike it's a symbol and it's
feeling truer and truer andtruer because of the emotions

(20:35):
you get from being high at thatlevel of TC.
You can't hack emotion, sonatural course of emotions lets
you know that something's trueor motivates a behavior.
Right, they do something.
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(20:58):
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That's 1-888-HELP120.
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(21:23):
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Sadness is a good thing and theemotions I'm getting from music
or the sensations around me atthat level of THC are
reinforcing my own falsenarratives I'm getting from

(21:44):
music or the sensations aroundme at that level of THC are
reinforcing my own falsenarratives and it's making my
life dissatisfying and myrelationships are getting
alienated and isolation.
It's the only place where Ifeel comfortable.
Walls closing, yeah, yeah, Idon't want to be around anyone.
I don't even know how toexpress what I'm feeling because

(22:05):
it's just, it's unclear, it'sjust filled with this noise of
my political image and then mywhole life's falling apart.
But I'm looking for the news,for some global, clear picture.
Answer yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
Did you ever think, and do you ever think, that
maybe and this is something thatI've often asked myself, right,
it's like ultimately and I dohave, I think, a general
interest in that I grew uploving history, loving it, you
know, I mean, and I think thatjust kind of naturally segues
into almost contemporary issues,that sort of thing, into almost

(22:40):
contemporary issues, that sortof thing.
But one thing I've realized,you know, particularly over the
past five years, is that, a lotof my intention, with all of
that, with the insane amount ofdeep diving I would do, a
reading books on economics,reading, you know it was there

(23:01):
was a level of that that waslike me, protecting me from
being hurt, wow, protecting mefrom me from being hurt, wow,
protecting me from connectingwith other people, right,
because if you saw me and what Iactually believe, or, better
yet, what I have no clue what Iactually might believe, right,
which is even scarier.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
You know, or like it's spiritual, like if I have
an emotional regulation beingopen to anything being changed
in my mind.
Yeah, history specific and youknow, being that you, I know you
love history that that couldalways have a methodology to it
that you have a primary source.
So there's criteria forinformation to be more credible,

(23:40):
even as you go further.
So that's a great practice.
But you just said somethingspecific.
I mean, explain that to me,because I'm, I'm, I'm feeling
what you're saying, but I wantto, I want to make sure, yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:54):
So much, man, and it's.
It's like the yin and the yangright, like there's there's,
there's authentic truth to someof it, and then it gets
weaponized.
Okay.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
Right Is what.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
I'm what I'm saying, where it's like, um, I have to
know the most, I have to be ableto firmly defend this idea that
, to be quite honest with you,at my core I'm not even a
hundred percent sold on, right,yeah, but so that you don't see
that I don't know.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Yeah, you know that's anxious, that's anxiety.
Yeah, I had the same thing.
To be caught Like a gotcha wasso humiliating, or maybe I
experienced in ways others don'tgive a shit I felt like my
whole identity is on the lineover a comment.
Yeah, Look, they got 20 likes,it's true.
Yeah, it's so complex, there'sso many dimensions to that

(24:48):
really specific period of timeof.
I don't think Facebook has thatgarners that kind of audience
anymore.
Like people have restrainedthemselves, but it was exciting.
I mean there was some clashesand comments.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
Oh yeah, you got a war on there, man yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
Part of my over blanket solution.
I don't want to speak for you.
I felt when I got into thisfield and I had to have a new
sense of recovery, because Ifelt like I relate deeply to how
you described your experienceand mine as well my identity
kind of failed at what I waspieced together to call myself
an adult.
I had a relapse that I foundwas meaningful, filled with

(25:32):
crisis, but also destroyed thefraud of me considering I was my
ego, like that's annihilated.
Yeah, where do I start?
I?
I was drawn to this fieldbecause it had no other lens but
help.
I don't have to ask anythingexcept about trauma, your pain.
But help, I don't have to askanything except about trauma,
your pain.

(25:53):
There's no question in abiopsych, social outside of that
you need intellectually.
Do we agree on something beforewe help each other?

Speaker 2 (26:03):
No, not at all, not at all, and it is.
I get entirely what you'resaying.
It's like this Wow, that reallysimplifies things.
You know that was a big.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
yeah, it helped me tremendously.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
Space I can operate in comfortably, then you know.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
I'm human again.
I don't have to know myintellectual.
It also lets me play withintellectuality, and you as well
.
I appreciate how little I knewabout new research in the last
10 years.
I was a fundamentalist kind ofapproach to the 12 steps.
It worked for a long period oftime I think my age matched it

(26:39):
well 20s, 30s and it started tocrumble in my hand.
I didn't explore the details ofmy own spiritual beliefs and
there was nothing there that waslogical or could withstand kind
of scrutiny, and I didn't knowwhat I believed.
So what does this mean?
Like I don't know what, yeah,and that kind of cascade into

(27:01):
other things where I just wasn'texamining my own behaviors and
then using the news that way,instead of wondering why I
wasn't opening mail, right,right, yeah, wondering why I
wasn't opening mail Right.
Right, yeah, so to find myintellectual curiosity woke up

(27:22):
again in a way that wasn'tbiased, was just from a position
I don't know, what don't I knowand can I learn things that
make my life better.
But can I be a teacher in this?
Make my life better, but can Ibe a teacher in this?
How do you relate to that andwhen you decided or started to
get drawn towards drug andalcohol treatment, substance use

(27:43):
disorder treatment, and maybetell me a little bit how that
landed you at Karen?

Speaker 2 (27:48):
Yeah, that's a that's a really good question and this
is where we'll start to getmore into like the consciousness
Cause.
Joe, honestly, if you wouldhave asked me when I got sober
this time, right, like early on,you'd have been like what's the
one thing you won't do?
This time I would have saidI'll never work in treatment
again.
I'll never work in treatmentagain the exact thing I'll do.
Let me make that one.
Yeah, could have passed a liedetector test, right and like.

(28:11):
This is where you kind of hopinto what I conceptualize is
like the spiritual realm.
Right, it was about a yearsober.
I was living in New Jersey,just wasn't feeling it over
there.
This was, covid was happening,that's most of the state might
feel that way.
Yeah, it did.

(28:33):
I'm just like a simplePennsylvania Dutch kid.
You know what I mean.
My family hasn't left BerksCounty since the early 1700s.
Wow, that could be a podcast initself.
Next, time.
Audience of three on that one.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
Deep dive into Amish country today, and all better.

Speaker 2 (28:50):
But I really hit this wall man and all better, but I
really hit this wall, man and I,in looking long story short, I
was like I'm going to move backto Berks County.
Not only that, I'm going tomove in with my 94-year-old
grandma right, who was alwayslike my closest person to me Wow
, you know, and it was really awonderful, wonderful experience.
She's still alive, she's 98 now, you know, and we got to share
some awesome experience.

(29:11):
We got COVID together.
Like it was wonderful, man, youknow, and it was weird because
during that whole time, whatreally troubled me about COVID
COVID at my core, outside of allthe other stuff was the fact
that my 94 year old grandma'ssmall life got that much smaller
.
You know, I don't know, I justhad this like light bulb, like

(29:35):
idea, you know, maybe go moveback in with your grandma and
help her out, you know, andstart talking to people about it
.
They're like do it Okay.
Long story short, man.
I had a dream one night about afriend of mine who I knew was in
recovery.
Him and I grew up together.
We raised hell together, youknow, and I knew he had gotten
sober like six or seven yearsbefore.
And I had a dream about him andlike I don't reach out to

(29:58):
everybody I have dreams about,but, like, for some reason the
next day, I felt compelled totext him.
I hadn't spoken to him in a fewyears.
And I texted him and I was likehey man, how are you Like?
It's Nick Gettle, I'm movingback to Berks County.
And he was like hey man, I workat Karen now.
Put in an application, Wow,yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
Wow, wow, wow, wow, yeah, and you're nuts and bolts
kind of guy and now you'rehaving dreams that are dictating
the course of your life.
You're Joseph, that's biblicalweird stuff.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
Recovery like I don't know about you man.
Recovery turned me into a spacecadet, Like I.
Recovery like I don't knowabout you man recovery turned me
into a space cadet, like I wasnever a space cadet and like
recovery totally turned me intowhere I'm like I just had enough
experiences that I can't deny,yeah, where I'm just like I.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
I don't know yeah, I don't know, you know man.
Yeah, it's flow, yeah, it'snice, it is to not.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
Exactly, exactly, and so much of my experience has
been that what Carl Jung talksabout, like the idea of
synchronicity, or these eventsthat happen that you just can't,
you're like what?
How is that you?

Speaker 1 (31:03):
know, yeah, it's.
It's hard that I don't I couldread it until it's relevant to.
I'm such a self-centered kindof person that rose up from,
maybe, my own trauma.
Sure, I've read that differentperiods of my life and it meant
different things because I waslimited to my experience.
Now I feel I'm not limited tomy experience, yeah, um, cause I

(31:25):
could my empathy.
I just find my rigidness wasalmost restraining, not only a
fake way to protect myself fromanxiety, but limiting my empathy
because I didn't have aregulation to it.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
Yeah, there was no ban, it was unsafe.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
Yeah, because you could take over my whole day if
I got in tune, vibed, with youremotions.
Yeah, I could lose the nextthree days of my life because
you lost somebody.
I've had this happen.
Days of my life because youlost somebody.
I've had this happen.
And I had this fake kind ofapproach to responsibility,
maybe in my late 20s, to try towill a coldness to my plan

(32:03):
rigidness, yeah, don't getdistracted.
Yeah, and it came at a hugeprice because I don't know how
to uh find a meet, like a middleway of approaching things.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
Yeah, yeah, exactly Exactly, and it's like those are
the.
I feel like those are what youjust talked about in your mid
twenties, like those are theseideas that we cultivate, and I
feel like we cultivate them outof out of direct experience with
other people.
Okay, I think, they'rerelational in nature and we have
these experiences that leadthose we'll call them voices or
those ideas, to show up in ourlife and be like you need to do

(32:36):
this or this will, or you'llcomplete failure.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
And then you're, like you know,in a psych ward with six years
sober, like what happened.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
All shoelaces are tired before the shoes go in the
closet.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's, it's wild man.
But just to go back to that, tothe Karen thing, and like I
started there working inadmissions, I kept having more
weird experiences that I won'treally like dive into too deep
man, I mean I'm comfortabledoing so.
Long story short, I look backon my own experience right as a

(33:11):
20 year old.
I turned 20 in karen's youngadult program 2010 okay and
looking back, man, it's one ofthose things that you didn't
really.
The time and place was perfectto look back and see how
formative an experience that wasand how much of an impactful
part of your journey.
That was right.

(33:33):
And I kept the guy who used torun that unit, who started it,
who ran it.
His name was Tom Ditzler andTom was a person somewhat
similar to my grandma in my life, and when I say that, I mean
like somebody who I feel asthough loved me unconditionally
and appropriately.
Wow, we'll use those wordsright when he would show up at

(33:57):
times in my life when he had noobligation to do so.
If I'm in a hospital bed, youknow, having overdose, tom
Ditzler's there, right, tomDitzler's.
Well, you know all of thesethings and he had actually died
when I was in Marworth this time, when I was in treatment this
time, and I felt that, man, thelast thing he ever said to me in
person was like remember,partner, I love you.

(34:18):
And then I found out he passedaway and I kept having these
experiences on campus, wherethere's like these few pictures,
these memorial pictures of hisdog, his therapy dog, fenway,
who he used to bring around,there's like three or four of
them on campus.
Somehow, I keep like bumpinginto these things, you know, and

(34:41):
I, every time I'd bump into it,I don't know, man it just like
did something to me.
It was like he was lookingright at me and I started to
feel more and more drawn towardsit.
And I started to have moreaffirming experiences of like no
, you're going the rightdirection, like that's where you
want to be working with youngadults.
You know, I can't reallydescribe it, man.
You know, um, the cheap wordsluck.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
Yeah, it's real.
Yeah, you mentioned and I wantto bring context to it You're
from the area.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
Oh, yeah, grew up in singing.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
So my, my, they are, oh yeah, grew up in singing.
So my, my grandma and grandpagot home from world war ii.
They lived on that mountain inlike a bungalow where karen is.
Karen is essentially a neighbor.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, as kids, we,we always like, uh, full circle,
you're in your own backyarddoing something not only that's
noble, fulfilling, and here's amentor yeah, and images where
you work is on a wall.
How many people get toexperience that Like he's?

Speaker 2 (35:36):
he's talk the dead talk Dude.
I talked to him all the time.
Yes, all the time I talked tohim.
You know where I'm just hey,what do you think about this one
?
You know what I mean.
Like what do you?

Speaker 1 (35:48):
well, ai exists, it's in our head and, like, forget,
like I always say, it's alwaysbeen here.
This accessibility to our ownresilience, consciousness,
agency, intelligence.
It's an AI program that allowsthe dead to live.
I still get my dad criticizingme.
Yeah, he's software in my skull.
A brother, 100% Dits, is aliveto you.

(36:11):
And now you got imagery aroundyou.
Yeah, that makes sense to me,man.
Yeah, it makes sense to peoplein recovery.
Before we go further, how doyou view Karen growing up so
close to it, and how do you knowthe world views Karen and its
credibility as a leader intreatment?
Did you ever know that wastheir position or was it just

(36:35):
kind of taken for granted?
That was the treatment centerdown the street.

Speaker 2 (36:40):
Yeah, it was kind of out of sight, out of mind.
Right, there was always this oh, that's where famous people go
or whatever.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
That's what we knew about it.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Growing up in the area we never like drove up
there.
I didn't really know a tonabout it at all, joe, until I
took the two and a half threemile drive to check myself.
You know, at 19 years old Ireally didn't, I didn't, I
didn't, I had no clue that that.
You know that in our backyard,and probably more more so than

(37:11):
anything else in Berks County,that there's a true pioneer
industry leader.
You know it's something to beproud of research, treatment,
and they still are.

Speaker 1 (37:23):
And you said campus.
If no one's ever been there,you're on a campus 112 acres,
man hospitals, residentialcomponents, alumni, sprawling
fields yeah, Just the most idealplace to have an inpatient
experience and detox with theworld's kind of leading
professionals.

Speaker 2 (37:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
And here you are on the campus.
Is there a pride or a sense ofaccomplishment that you only get
?
Not only are you doingsomething that's beautiful and
that you love, and, metrically,is what could be more important
than helping another human beingrelieve his pain before he dies
?
Yeah, especially if he can't.

Speaker 2 (38:01):
Yeah, yeah, it's.
Yeah, I do have a tremendousamount of pride right and it's
like the kind of pride that Idon't think you could teach
somebody.
It's a lot of it's in light ofmy own healing experiences that
I've had there as a patient.
I also went through theirbreakthrough program, which is
like a five-day family of originclinical intensive psychodrama,
internal family systems work,life-changing, you know, really

(38:25):
totally life-changing.
What does that break out tolook like?
Five, five days that culminatesinto really highly trained
individuals that know whatthey're doing, to kind of this
psychodrama where you act outWhere's dad, where's mom,
where's little Nick?
You know, Okay, what does littleNick need?
And they almost, they almosttrick you into just bawling.

(38:48):
That's like a stall.
Yeah, it's just just stalled asin there as well.
Yeah, and it's.
It's a reconnection with yourauthentic self.
Wow, and that's.
I didn't realize I had traumauntil I went through that and I
reconnected with you know, hadthat experience, and they were
like, all right, who here cansupport you in the room?

(39:10):
And like I picked a guy and hewent to put his hand on my
shoulder and I couldn't let himWow, and that's when I was
started to realize that thegravity of some of the
situations that had occurred inmy life and how it was impacting
my relationships with otherpeople, I couldn't let that guy
touch me.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
I didn't trust him you know, yeah, and it just was
like.
Oh some people leave there.
They're like sunshine andrainbows.
I left there.
I was like, oh my, that's realtherapy, though, to have that
insight.
Yeah, um, you said a wordauthentic, we.
We say that often here, and alot of our colleagues do.
Authenticity is the cure totrauma.
It is the opposite of substanceuse disorder.

(39:50):
The dishonesty people and maybeeven in 12-step, we'll say you
know, this is one of thecharacter defects of four, and
we always remind people it's notthe dishonesty of lying, it's
the dishonesty of you thinking,you, your thoughts or who you
want the world to believe youare.
This is a fraud, dude, and it'snot working anymore.
No therapy.

(40:11):
You just described saidauthentic self and a return to
this idea is what we would calllong-term recovery.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
That's recovery, man.
Yeah, yeah, I agree, 100% right, and it's even in, and I'll
cite the big book.
There's a line in there.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
I feel like it's so.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
I feel like it's so undervalued Big book Nazis from
the past, man yeah quoting.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
So I feel like it's so undervalued, nazis from the
past, yeah, and it's and it'sit's so under, and I think it's
because it's not aninstructional line, right, but
there's a line and a vision foryou.
And they talk about thegentleman who runs his political
campaign.
Okay, and he ends up not, heloses by a slim margin.
It says right, and he said itdidn't matter, he said he had
found god and in finding god, hehad found himself.
Yeah, and it's like that linegets slept on man, and it's like

(40:57):
.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
You know, that is that is what this is all about
and that line I held on tobecause I was pretty secular on
my return um anti-theist.
But then there's this puzzlethat I'm really glad, I think,
think Hank P had an influence onit and build it to um, how much
of an Easter lens, eastern lensthey're kind of brushing the

(41:19):
big book with.
That, I think isn't easilynoticed if you're Catholic or
from a Christian origin.
An awakening, yeah, isn't it acommon word for Judeo Christians
you don't wake up, you're saved, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
That's interesting where you're saved.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (41:33):
That's interesting, where you find God.
We found this great realitywithin, yeah, okay, but they
also have a caveat you can't doit by yourself, yeah.
So where's God and other peopleRight, all in the together?
If we reveal this authenticity,I tell you my real story Nick's
family of origin.
Guess what happens?

(41:53):
You found God.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
Yeah, and God's a mirror.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:57):
It's back and forth and it couples that last line
where we find God.
That's the paradox of gettingbetter.
Do I have enough time to tellsomeone exactly who I am?
And it's hard because there's alot of shame and it feels
really reckless for people thathave addictions to do that.
You will fucking destroyyourself if I tell the truth

(42:18):
about myself, a hundred percentDon't do it.

Speaker 2 (42:20):
That's what you're telling yourself over and over,
and it's such a all thoseprotective strategies that come
up right To keep us safe fromourselves.
Because, and quite honestly,joe, and what I've found for me
and a lot of the work that I'vedone, is that goes back a long
way, yeah, and sometimes, joe, Ieven think it goes back from
before we can even remember.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
Like it's energetic.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
It's generational.
I believe in generationaltrauma.
There's.
There's nothing spooky about it.
To me, it's logical and linear.
It's the core of reality.
How am what preceded me?
That's it and I?
You could break that down tofucking carbon.
Yeah, you're just what ispreceded.
Yeah, right, and now I'm this,this reflection, echo of it

(43:03):
happening.
If you want to get spooky, yeah, but this is really what's
happening subatomically,absolutely echo.
Um, and I look back to think,not so far of the origin of the
universe.
Forget the origin of culture,the origin of cognition.
I just saw inside out too, andwe're right.

Speaker 2 (43:20):
Right yeah, beautiful yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
I brought my daughter to her first movie, persia, and
I'm writing a we're.
We're starting to like.
Blogs are famous.
Now we're just catching up.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
Are they bad?

Speaker 1 (43:32):
I don't know we're adding a blog to our website
because we want to expressourselves of what we're, where
we're getting um, influenced bygood research, good reading,
people that care and friends,colleagues.
I want to write about it alittle more and, uh, express
ourselves on um, our website forfamilies, kind of just see

(43:53):
where we're drawing ourinformation from Sure and inside
out too.
I was thinking, okay, you gotthese little characters that
represent emotions pulling theswitches in your head and I'm
thinking, okay, where's theorigin of this?
And some good evolutionaryresearch and the ideas I like

(44:15):
about the beginning.
Genesis of cognition is reallyanchored to optics, the eye, the
first land kind of creaturesand mammals, the first fish.
Fish were limited to, say,meters underwater with vision.
First it was detecting light,just fast forward, some kind of

(44:36):
scale.
I'm now one of the first landcreatures and I could see, say,
a mile on a flatland.
What is this doing?
It's changing my relationshipto time as experience, cognition
and senses.
So if my experience with timechanges in scale, cognition
rises up to give choices.
What are the choices?

(44:56):
Responding to?
Fucking fear.
So our origin of relationship?
Fear would be the drivingemotion to prompt behavior, move
left, move right, hide fight,flight With, with incredible
consequences for the wrongdecision.

Speaker 2 (45:12):
Yeah, fast forward.
Sabertooth tiger comes in.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
Yeah, now fast forward, that to say 10,000
years ago, with the rise ofsociety.
Yeah, the tigers are gone.
We have cleared land.
We have structures, role,identity, status and position in
society.
You make bread.
I'm a soldier.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
This automation of processing fear is still built
for the saber-toothed tiger.
Yeah, Homo erectus, kind of theNeanderthal.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
So the consequences of me feeling that the bread guy
isn't worthy enough as thesoldier starts to have the same
emotions that your life's injeopardy for some of us.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
Exactly, exactly.
It's almost a level ofprocessing within ourselves that
no longer serves us in thecurrent environment.

Speaker 1 (46:01):
So, nick, you and I are here because we had some of
the best weirdos in our familiesgot us here first off.
But think of that.
Like, I mean, that's wherewe're coming from.
Why would that change?
Because what I was born inScranton, I'm, I'm, these are
the tools.
That just that's where we'recoming from.
Why would that change?
Because what I was born inScranton, these are the tools.
That just it's.
They emerge.
I didn't choose, you don'tchoose any of this.

(46:22):
So it really goes to the heart.
When does free will begin?
So all these components justrise up in a fetus.
Fetus is born.
Yeah, thinking about that todayis spiritual for me, absolutely
, man.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
And it it unhardens my judgment, some people and
myself, dude, when you can startto read back on your own book
and really start to see that toa degree.
If we are, if, if, if you and Iare sitting here and we're both
in agreeance, that connectionright, human connection is as
important.
It will not kick, killconnection is as important, it

(47:00):
will not kick, kill you asquickly as not having water or
food.
But if you cannot connect andhow can you connect if you're
not connected with yourselfauthentically, if you cannot
connect with other people you'regoing to, you don't have what
you need, You're not a mammal.
You're not exactly broke themain part of being a mammal
being in the pack and if youdeal with situations early on
that leads you to believe thatwho you are authentically is not
necessarily the best idea to be.

(47:20):
Yeah, you're going to try toget that connection.
You're going to come up withmillions of different schemes
and ways Ambition.
Yeah, exactly, and it's likethose are the things that end up
really jacking us up, man.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
Oh God, yeah, that movie really.
My daughter's a little tooyoung.
She likes the animation, butlike just to think that's the
offering of what I'm bringingher to see.
Yeah, let's go back to both ofus being not I want to paint you
as a nihilist, but you knowpessimist, seeing the worst in

(47:55):
nature, having to protect thingsfanatically our ideologies.
That's the cartoon I took tosee my daughter.
I saw Cobra at that age.
That's starring SylvesterStallone fighting off a guy
who's killing just strangerswith a seven foot knife.

(48:17):
He's part of this cult likeorganization in the film that
has no ideology.
They meet and click axes andthey're just randomly murdering
people in la.
Until you know sylvester sloan,you know he gets smart on this
and he's like I'll find thesepsychos, I'll shoot every one of

(48:38):
them.

Speaker 2 (48:39):
That's that was my inside out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:46):
I can think of so many.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
Yeah, I was watching that at three.
She's watching inside out, I'mwatching.

Speaker 1 (48:50):
Freddy Krueger, just just six hour shootouts.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
Yeah, oh, the world's not safe.
Yeah, this is not safe.

Speaker 1 (48:59):
You know, the soft stuff I was watching was the
fall guy, right.
I mean like come on.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
I remember I would get taken to see like the Lion
King.
I remember getting taken to seethat in theaters.
I was like five, yeah, and thatwas a big deal or toy story,
but I remember like not beingall that interested, like I
liked the fight scene.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
Death did?
Did it have an impact?
Like to to know what death was.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
I think a lot of things had a really strong
impact on me at a young age andI think there's a lot of me that
didn't feel safe to express orfeel those things yeah that
didn't feel safe to express orfeel those things, you know.
One memory I do have is I wasprobably a little bit older than
that and I was at the shorewith my uncle and he rented the

(49:45):
movie Amistad.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
Oh yeah, it was about the slave ship Anthony.

Speaker 2 (49:48):
Hopkins, and like I just wasn't, I didn't understand
that that took that.
How old were you six?

Speaker 1 (49:58):
seven.
This is the birth of your joyof history to be surprised, it
wasn't it, chorus?

Speaker 2 (50:05):
my birth of my love of history probably came from my
dad and just learning aboutworld war ii, the civil war
right all of those things, yeah,place to start the most, I
don't know, dynamic points ofamerica, of human history yeah,
yeah and it was just.
But there was almost like aloss of innocence in seeing that
movie and seeing cruelty,cruelty and seeing desperate

(50:28):
like it.
Just I'm six or seven years oldman, it's I became looks like
genocide, an active act ofgenocide.
Yeah, and I became obsessed withit from wow, yeah, I did like a
school project on amistad andthe teacher was like what's this
all about?
Like who does this at six orseven?
But it was like a thisrelationship I had to this thing

(50:48):
that I couldn't quite.
How do you?

Speaker 1 (50:50):
resolve that at six.
So yeah, I guess the crisis isnot understanding what would
drive someone else's cruelty.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
Yeah, and just the disturbing nature of it, man.

Speaker 1 (50:59):
Yeah, just wow, nick, I the mirror.
This is how all tennis matchesand a cover I'm thinking King
did that for me.
Yeah, and Jesus Christ, jesusof Nazareth.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
I forget who played him, maybe Christopher Plummer?
It was on TV a lot.
I can't be no more than first,second grade, yeah, so watch
Jesus of Nazareth.
This is our religion.
Yeah, well, it doesn't looklike we win.
No, he's on a plank at the end.
Yeah, we win, he's on a plankat the end.
I'm like I could neverreconcile what human sacrifice

(51:40):
was from that.
That always bothered me and Iwant revenge.
Why, why isn't Jesus gettingrevenge?
That that would always tormentthem and then King.
So Martin Luther King's thefilm when he gets shot.
I just don't understand thehatred of black people.
I'm in first or second grade.

(52:00):
I wasn't around anything Icould point to as racism.
I was in a project I didn'tnotice like racial pejoratives
or until later on in gradeschool.
And that really I, when youwere describing Amistad, I was
thinking of my own Amistad.

(52:22):
It was King it was about.
Martin Luther King.

Speaker 2 (52:25):
Yeah, it's just, it's very just like Whoa.

Speaker 1 (52:28):
Yeah, yeah, that's intense, that's.
That's a breaking of innocence.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
It is, it is and just like when we talk about like
the generational stuff and allthis stuff that comes in like
that's one of the reasons I loveworking with young adults so
much.
You got sober at a pretty youngage the first time, right yeah,
16 to 20.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
And I got sober again at 24 and stayed sober for
basically 14 years.

Speaker 2 (52:51):
Yeah, and there's just like something and this is
something Karen as anorganization recognized a long
time ago that there is thisgroup of individuals.
You know, you have youradolescence right.
You know, and then you haveadults, and then you have this

(53:24):
group in between this 18 to 25year old, where meaningful, deep
, meaningful, effectiverelationships are a lot of times
off the table.
Yeah, I don't want to sayentirely off the table, right,
but there's careers off thetable, you know where, and it's
just something I connect with sodeeply.
This level of pain and like themaladaptive means, of dealing
with that at a young age and howit shows up Right, and you

(53:45):
presenting the treatment betweenthe ages of 18 and 25.
And, like to me, I've alwaysseen it as I love, I love, I
love working with these guysbecause they haven't constructed
.
Richard Rohr writes this bookand I'm called Falling Upward to
Spirituality for the Two Halfsof Life and he says that in life

(54:08):
, the first half of life isspent building basically an ego
structure right Through whichmost people can function and
some people may only stay inthat half of life for their
entire life.
Yeah, he says you know, a lotof people build this ego
structure in this first half oftheir life get the wife, the
kids, the family, the job, etc.
And like the second half oflife is really about
deconstructing it in light ofyour experiences.

(54:30):
And what I find with youngadults is that like they haven't
even built that yet it seemsout of reach sometimes, uh,
economically yeah, it hasn'teven been built.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
So like there's this level of malleability I don't
even want to use the termmalleability, but this level of
upside to their situation- doyou see multiple dimensions in
this, not only, I just said,economically, but culturally, um
a more openness and and thatgeneration's, not only their

(55:06):
sexuality, their communicationis driven primarily by an
interface of technology.
If it's the phone, the phonebeing, is it tiktok, is it
instagram?
Yeah, whatever is coming nextweek, it's so hyperbolic, it's
changing fast.
It's actually it's driving themedium of culture.
It culture's not being drivenby human behavior.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
It's, yeah, technology yeah we're being
hacked yeah, it's, it's likealarm, it's it.
Every once in a while I'm ableto step into the space of
realization of like thecapabilities of ai and like the
world and I'm like, all right,get out of there, you're on ai,
now this is gonna edit, like Iwent from editing this to two

(55:48):
punches of a button, yeah, um,and a transcript.

Speaker 1 (55:52):
You know, if this was 15 years ago, my transcript
would come a couple of dayslater If I was paying top dollar
.
Someone type it up, listen,type, verify.
This is done in seven seconds.
I load up an audio file for 60minutes.
I have a transcript a minutelater.
Now, it's not completely, buteach, you know, every six months
it updates it's more accurate.

(56:12):
But each, you know, every sixmonths it updates it's more
accurate.
Yeah, I don't go in and correctthe spelling.
Sure, you know, for the fewaudience members that's reading
the transcript man, you're weird.
Yeah, what are you reading?
It's like every other word shoe.
Yeah, you know, when I'mworking with young shoes, that's

(56:38):
what's coming out of thetranscript.
Shoes really are built theirwhole structure of ego.

Speaker 2 (56:41):
The upside's tremendous that's.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
I don't know any other provider or have a
relationship I should but better, I would better describe it as
then Karen really doing multiplemodalities and know kind of in
phases of a really solid program, not throwing darts at a board

(57:06):
how to work with 18 to25-year-olds so consistently and
repetitively in a way that'sgiving them baseline and even if
they're not reached becausethey're, maybe their
participation or theircompliance is low, that they're
coming back to a place that theycould later find cared, like

(57:28):
you described earlier.
Yeah, how is that assuring?
How do you assure families?
That's must be the struggle.
We didn't reach him last time.
How?
Why do you think they come backto Karen consistently Like this
is the right course?
Yeah, is there someone workingdirectly in specializing with
families in that, that realm?

Speaker 2 (57:50):
Yeah, I mean we, catherine Karen, all the way
back to the beginning, Dick andCatherine Karen.
Catherine Karen coined all theway back to the beginning.
Dick and Catherine Karen.
Catherine Karen coined the term.
The patient is the family isthe patient.
Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 (57:59):
Which is like so explain that.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
Yeah, I mean, and it's, I feel like it's
particularly applicable to youngadults.
Yeah, because when you have ayoung adult or an emerging adult
in your family, that's notgetting into adulthood.
Families are going to warparound, that right they're going
to begin to naturally enable,they're going to lose their own

(58:21):
footing of where they end andthat you know, the individual
begins.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
Or comforting their own pain on how they treat the
person, rather than kind of runprinciples around this.

Speaker 2 (58:32):
Yeah, yeah, and that's where it's like, that's
where the generational stuffcomes out.
You know, that's where you seeit all.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
From the 1700s the ghettos.

Speaker 2 (58:43):
Yeah, life of the ghettos, yeah, that's where you
see it all and but thatindividual man who's coming into
treatment, and this is like thegreatest honor of all honors,
it's the honor that you get,that I get that that young
individual gets.
It's like that generationalstuff can start to disappear a

(59:06):
little bit.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
Yeah.
So that's a place where wecould start to wind down and end
this.
Yeah, it can end Absolutely,man.
End this.
Yeah, it can end Absolutely,man.
Everything ends.
Yeah, but things we can haveagency on how things end and
they only happen in moments.
It could be the call totreatment.
It could be answering apre-screening a little more

(59:28):
honestly your second visit totreatment.
You really start from theget-go?
No, that's not true.
I've been answering that thesame way for four years and none
of that's true.
These little moments happen forall of us.
They happen for you or me, andI'm like how separated am I from
what's reality and the story,the comfortable one?
I have to tell myself that it'snot true.

(59:50):
It all starts in these chancesthat we get to be courageous, to
just be honest.
Yeah, Change that answer.
That is just not true.
Let me.
Let me answer that again.

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
And you get better, you get better.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
You start to have a you have, you start to recover.
Is an experiential processright?
You start to have a correctiveexperience with truth.
You know and realize that likeit's not, I guess what?

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
like nobody hates me, no my relationship with it
keeps getting deeper.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
It's not.

Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
It's not fully consummated.
Because of the things I catchmyself thinking about, I'm like
well, why?
Why am I floating there?
What am I insecure about?
What's the where's this dreamcoming from?

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
For me it's the practice of recovery is
constantly interrupting the fakelife that's happening in my
head.

Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
Yeah, yeah.
And where do you go when you'reinterrupting that Do you go to
your body.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
Yeah, I do.
I go into the only place.
That's real experience.

Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
My face, this image of looking at you.
Yeah, there's times if I thinkothers would describe it as
disassociation, like a normalperson, for me disassociation
feels like reality.
Yes, okay, yeah, I keep kind ofhaving to converge into it and
I'm like life's novel again.
I haven't been living it.
Yeah, like I've arrived again.

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
Yeah, I've arrived again.
It's almost a real likedissociation and mindfulness,
like there's this, almost reallyit's.
I have it when I feel consciousconnection.
Right, I'm like this just feelslike I'm dissociating from my
feelings, but it's not.

Speaker 1 (01:01:25):
I'm glad you said that because, um, we're at the
same kind of experience ofrecovery and I don't get to talk
about that all the time.
I'm with newcomers or peoplebeing treated all the time.
That's my job.
But in my personal life, mysponsor's relationship is very
tactical.
We kind of just talk it rightdown to brass tacks.
But, friends, I want to talkabout what you just talked about

(01:01:47):
more someday, because I feltthat I'll be driving and feel
like I've arrived in the car andI'm realizing, oh, I've been
ruminating, yeah, and thearrival back into the real life,
the spiritual life, the now,the presence can be jarring with
people who have, uh, got morecomfortable ruminating than

(01:02:09):
having a life yeah, existedentirely.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
Isn't that wild.
Yeah, I wonder who's writingabout.

Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
Maybe we should write something about that.
I don't know, man, it's likethat wonder who's writing about?

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
maybe we should write something about that.
I don't know, man, it's like.
That's why I asked about thebody too.
I feel like so much, so much,so much of our thought content
is driven by, and this is justwhere I'm at currently, and what
I've been doing currently isdriven by feelings, old feelings
that are begging to be felt.
You old feelings that arebegging to be felt.

Speaker 1 (01:02:36):
You know I feel like that sometimes, yeah Well, yeah,
that could be a beautifuljourney If it's driven by art.
Nature that draws it out of me.
It's.
It's not intentional.
I feel open and I'm moresuspect, like I'm more
vulnerable to have theexperience because it just
arrives Anytime I try to willthem.

(01:02:56):
My thoughts get in the way of alot of stuff Like yeah.
Yeah, Nick, would you come back?
Oh, I'd love to man.
Yeah, I would love to.
Well, that's when we get tostart our history podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
Pennsylvania Dutch history Only on Warnersville 17
part series on the history ofwell joe, it's actually.
I literally have spent well.
Two weeks ago I spent I readprobably 100 pages of conrad
weiser's correspondence with thegovernor of pennsylvania about
the relationships with nativeamericans in that area.

(01:03:29):
Yeah, it's a real thing, I'mglad you're you, man, the world
needs you.

Speaker 1 (01:03:31):
You're doing great work, you too, man.
I'm glad you're you, man theworld needs needs you.

Speaker 2 (01:03:35):
You're doing great work, you too, man.
I love what you guys are doing.
I really do.

Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
The guys I meet you.
You've had a lasting impressionon them and it warms me over.
I'm like, yeah, this is whatit's about.

Speaker 2 (01:03:45):
Absolutely.
This is what it's about.
No doubt, man.
This is to to take it back towhere we start.
This is the adventure.
Yeah, it is.
This is the how can we do thisbetter?
Well, we'll keep talking.

Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
Yeah, thanks, brother , you got it.
Thanks for coming up, thank you.
I'd like to thank you forlistening to another episode of
All Better.
You can find us on allbetterfmor listen to us on Apple

(01:04:21):
Podcasts, spotify, googlePodcasts, stitcher, iheartradio
and Alexa.
Special thanks to our producer,john Edwards, and engineering
company 570 Drone.
Please like or subscribe to uson YouTube, facebook, instagram
or Twitter and, if you're not,on social media, you're awesome.
Looking forward to seeing youagain.
And remember, just becauseyou're sober doesn't mean you're

(01:04:44):
right.