Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
What did you eat for
breakfast?
Do you eat breakfast?
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I do not.
I drink a lot of coffee in themorning.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
When was the last
time you had breakfast?
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Monday Monday All
right, I eat breakfast for lunch
a lot.
That's a nice way to live.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Hi everyone, this is
Jonathan Edwards.
Your editor, joe did not recordan intro to this episode, I'm
assuming, because thisparticular guest has already
been on the show.
Something is we have to playthe intro music or the flow of
the beginning.
Doesn't really work, but inorder to play the intro music,
we have to have a voiceover.
So here we are.
(00:39):
Anyway, I hope you enjoy theepisode starting now.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Over here with Larry
Moran and I want to pick right
back up where I left off.
How do you have your coffee?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Thanks for having me
back, Joe.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Thank you, I forgot
you.
You drink coffee.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
I drink less of
coffee these days than I have in
the last 15 years and it'sbecause it now kind of affects
my sleep pattern and it gives meunnecessary anxiety.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yeah, it does, and
it's stronger as you get older.
I drank a lot of coffee mywhole life and I can't believe I
haven't picked up on you.
I don't remember sitting.
I'm prolific at being at coffeeshops and crushing sigs and
drinking black coffee.
I don't remember you sittingnext to me drinking black coffee
.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
No, and this came up
in a conversation with another
sober guy at the end of theother night.
We went to a restaurant.
It was a BYOB.
There were two of us who weresober, one who wasn't, one, who
wasn't asked why I picked theBYOB and I told him I paid no
attention to that stuff anymore.
And then the sober guy grabbedthe waiter and said give me a
(01:50):
pot of black coffee and just putthe pot right here in front of
me.
And he said, and he thenproceeded to tell me that that's
his order.
You know, any meal of the daythis was a 7 pm Wednesday dinner
the guy ordered a pot of coffeeas his beverage.
So I started to explain that.
You know, just looking at thatis making me anxious.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yeah, it's like 80s
cop movies All right, departing
from coffee.
This is the second time you'reback.
The first time you're here, itgave a lot of people insight to
your story and I think a lot ofpeople listen that wouldn't have
known that side of you or maybejust did in a general way and I
(02:29):
had a lot of views.
It's you, russell, and Tim TimKalpin who have your neck and
neck.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
I don't know how to
take that.
I'm weirdly proud of that.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Yeah, I was proud of
it because of a.
Your involvement in politicscould seem adversarial to the
other person on the other end ofit, and to not have secrets
that you're even scared of showsa different kind of strength in
the field you've been in mostof your life legal and politics.
(03:01):
Did you ever view it in thatlens that you're not afraid of
your weaknesses?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yes is the honest
answer to that, and it was in
this context, in an unrelatedway, about I don't know at this
point maybe eight years ago Iwas doing a public service
television show with a court ofcommon pleas judge on a local
NBC affiliate and it was reallyto advocate for veterans.
(03:30):
And it was tough to come upwith a topic as you can imagine
being the host of a podcast fivenights a week just to come up
with content to talk about andthat became such a challenge and
then I exhausted my researchand I would just, frankly, run
out of time.
It was easier for me to talkabout what I knew and so I
(03:53):
started going on the show andtalking about substance abuse,
recovery and mental health andobviously that tied in to some
of the harms that we were seeingat the time with veterans PTSD
and suicide in particular.
And there was an episode whereI just got talking and I started
(04:13):
talking about my own recoveryand Judge Munley at the end of
it pulled me aside and said youknow we're in 16 counties and we
broadcast to a million people.
And I didn't at the time, but Iwas proud to have just told my
story that way to a televisionaudience that consisted of what
(04:33):
he said.
We're up to a millionhouseholds and I felt like, okay
, it's out there.
Now I'm wearing this on mysleeve.
But it was also really at thetime when I had a problem
reflection.
I started realizing that'srecovery, where I can just stand
in front of who I am especially.
You know the wreckage of thepast, but most especially you
know the story of redemptionrecovery.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah, I don't
subscribe for all people, but
that's my recovery because mypersonality, you know, is just
drawn to public life or publicthings.
I don't mind being in front ofsomething.
And I struggled with that atthe end of a 14 year tenure of
sobriety that I felt like I hada hidden life.
I didn't feel sober, I didn'twear it on my sleeve and I found
(05:18):
out I'm the guy that has tolike it's not.
It's not something that I'mafraid of committing to, because
it is exactly who I am.
I don't want a personaseparating my recovery and this
is like oh, this is my, mypersona, life.
Yeah, and you said you're proudof it.
What does that mean?
Is there no retreat now, likepublicly that you're in recovery
(05:41):
?
Does it make you feel whole?
Speaker 2 (05:45):
It's a little bit
more subjective than that.
Let me give you a little bitmore of my story.
I'm a lawyer.
When I began my most recenttrip through law school the
successful one, orientation Imigrated to an individual who
was at my orientation.
He was speaking on behalf ofLawyers Concern for Lawyers LCL
(06:09):
is the acronym and it's a subsetof essentially alcoholics
anonymous, but it's almost likeI can be a little bit cynical.
It was like an elite subset,like you know just for lawyers
and judges.
And it was helpful at the time Istarted going to some meetings
that were cloistered.
They weren't part of the introgroup list.
(06:30):
It wasn't in pink cloud.
I think they were secretmeetings of Lawyers, concern for
Lawyers, and that's what itseemed like.
They were just kind of likehidden away.
So it didn't appeal to me.
I only went to two or three ofthem.
But when I started practicinglaw and I came back to the
Scranton community I found thesame thing was going on in the
basement of the Medical ArtsBuilding and there was a federal
(06:53):
judge that was attending thesemeetings For instance.
He's no longer alive.
I didn't even know he was sober.
It was like the secret societywhere nobody was supposed to
know.
And it reminded me of Iremember watching the show and
liking the West Wing, which waswritten by a guy who was openly
in recovery named Aaron Sorkin,who was also struggled with
(07:13):
relapse and in the early 2000sand the show was popular and I
was watching it like regularly.
I remember there was an episodethe White House Chief of Staff,
who was openly in AA, and thevice president, who's not openly
in AA.
They want to go to a meetingtogether and the Chief of Staff,
leo McGarry, explains to thevice president that they have a
(07:37):
very secret meeting down by theyou know where the situation
room is in the basement of theWhite House, where essentially
dignitaries in and around thehill and nobody has to know
about it.
And that was a part of theepisode too.
And I remember at the time,watching this in the early 2000s
, thinking like that's what AAis.
You got to be secretive aboutit and if you're a dignitarier
(07:57):
or you're somebody of prominence, you don't want anybody to find
out about this.
So like we have this wholesecret society where we can meet
and we can kind of exposeourselves to just these certain
people.
And I'll be honest with you, Istayed confused about AA for a
very long time and a little bitbecause of those experiences,
and I'm not really trying to becynical, I'm not really
(08:20):
criticizing it.
It works for some people.
It didn't work for me becauseit kept me feeling like there
was something to be ashamed of,there was something that I had
to keep secret.
It was almost, like you know,it was like an allergy or a
deficiency, as opposed to what Ithink of it is now as an
enhancement and almost like asuperpower, like I'm proud of
the wisdom and the enlightenmentand the serenity that I found
(08:41):
in recovery.
I didn't know that when I waskind of bouncing around and
trying to figure out if I wasgoing to be exposed at a meeting
and this culture that came outof the profession that I'm in
that kind of showed me by justthe way that it was built, that
you had to kind of keep thisthing cloistered and secretive
or people will use youraddiction against you.
(09:02):
Nobody used their addictionagainst them better than I did.
My addiction kept me stuck inthe mud, defeated me, and I was
the cause of that for far toolong.
So this is a long one way ofsaying that's part of it, my
story, but really the actualbenefit of my recovery is living
(09:26):
it.
I used to think the part of mystory that I like to tell was
that AA is just a small part ofmy life.
It doesn't have to define me oraffect me.
I don't believe that anymore.
I think everything good in mylife flows from the principles
of 12 step recovery and thespirituality and the serenity
(09:49):
that I've derived from that, andI think it's part of my mission
and my duty to live that inevery aspect of my life.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
That's perfect in the
sense.
That's what I want to talk toyou about today, because your in
AA would be considered big bookNazis Me maybe at one point,
but I'm kind of an outlier withmy spirituality.
I want to talk specificallyabout.
You received what you wouldcall recovery, fundamentally
(10:20):
from the experience of workingthe 12 steps and being in AA,
not from being, say, afellowship guys and I don't
disparage guys who just getsover from fellowship meetings.
I know it's not for me, it'snot the condition I have.
You need both, for most peoplehave the experience of working
the steps, finding the community.
(10:43):
That being said, what would yousay you're not fundamental about
and in lines of what you'redescribing, you thought you had
a perception of AA.
It wasn't wrong.
It evolved into something else.
What is evolved?
Say the last five years, thatmaybe you were afraid that if
you applied this to yourself foryour own recovery ideas that it
(11:06):
wouldn't work, but maybe itworks for other people.
Is there any space there thatyou've had change or an
evolution about the terms, termsof recovery, other people's
experience?
That isn't fundamentally AA.
Aa, 12 steps, meet every weekand go through the book.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Sure, and it's
honestly been another part of my
personal story and it's beengrowing and supporting my wife
and trying to heal some of herown emotional wounds and trying
to find what works for her who'snot an alcoholic or an addict,
and then coming to therealization with her that a 12
(11:53):
step solution works for her.
Who's not an alcoholic and anaddict?
So watching that happen in myown family, in my own household,
has given me all the proof thatI need that AA or NA doesn't
have the monopoly on emotionalregulation through the framework
of whether you call them 12steps or, as the Oxford group
call them, six steps, as long asthere's the basic framework for
(12:17):
what I believe is going back tothat Oxford group, like the ego
deflation, the moral inventory,the willingness to dig deep to
find what makes us asindividuals triggered, what's
going on, what's stirred upinside of us.
That's the real problem, that'sthe real pursuit and ultimately
the real solution.
Whatever that is, however, wedo that inventory, that work and
(12:39):
then finding some mechanism toovercome that with faith.
If those components are there, Idon't think AA has the monopoly
on it.
I don't think you're going tofind that exclusively in a
meeting.
I've become a strong believerthat, in a word, to heal
(13:00):
emotionally, mentally andspiritually, we've got to find
the trauma.
And that's new in the last fiveyears, joe, my faith and my
belief in evidence-basedclinical pursuits of betterment.
It's not exclusively found orto reside in an AA meeting room
(13:24):
or in a residential primarytreatment center.
I think this work is ongoingand my wife, for instance,
participates in a program calledACA Adult Children of
Alcoholics and DysfunctionalFamily Members.
Yeah, that's a goodorganization.
Their 12 steps are identical toAlcoholics Anonymous, except
for the first one.
(13:44):
Their step one says we admit it, we were powerless over our
dysfunctional family member.
Thereafter it's pretty much thesame.
I don't try to judge supportgroups that don't have that, but
what I do like to see and findis some other mechanism for
(14:06):
getting members to look atthemselves as the problem, as
opposed to outside, externalpeople or influences.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Now, do you have
experience with therapy?
I do.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
I have a therapist.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Different forms of
therapy, too, like
psychoanalytic.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
I don't.
I'm aware of it.
I don't have personalexperience with anything other
than conventional talk therapywith a psychologist.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Let me ask you this
Tell me in summary you've had
therapy before working the stepsor what you would call profound
personality change thatovercame your addiction.
Have you had therapy afterwards?
Yes, what's the difference?
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Night and day.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
How would you
describe?
Speaker 2 (14:51):
it.
I was exactly as the bookdescribes it.
I was the guy that never gavetherapists a fair shake before I
had a personality change.
I was pursuing therapy becauseI think others were convincing
me.
You know, it probably wasn't ofmy own volition I was.
It was probably an effort.
(15:11):
It was an effort of a halfmeasure.
I didn't want to do the hardwork of recovering.
So I thought, and I also was indenial and I was self deceiving
in a lot of ways, believingthat I could drink and use drugs
like a normal person eventually, if I could just get a handle
(15:35):
on Like all the normal peopleyou know.
Yeah, if I could just get ahandle on my immaturity or on my
anxiety or on my depression oron my bipolar condition.
These were my experiences andthe recesses of my memory,
because I just they weren'thelpful to me.
But I think it was my fault.
I don't criticize thoseclinicians because I don't think
(15:57):
I was giving them a fair shake,I don't think I was honest with
them.
But having had a personalitychange sufficient to overcome my
alcoholism and then, as part ofthat kind of rededicating
myself as much as I can to aspiritual life, I find my
pursuit of mental health and myuse of therapy is very
(16:21):
productive and it's selfish.
I use it that way to really tryto get at what makes me tick.
And I use it the same way I usefour, five, six, seven, eight,
nine if.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
I have to.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Hopefully I don't.
I can stay fit and I can stayin 10, 11, 12, but I'm not
perfect and I find myself atleast once a month, if not twice
a month, doing a session with atherapist.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
I derive benefit and
medicine from that that I don't
get from my 12 step program.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
It's interesting
because we wouldn't be having
this conversation.
It was five years earlier.
We would have had some harder,more concrete ideas.
Right, let's talk aboutfellowship house.
Yeah, the last three years.
Why do we do this?
What else is there to do, man?
What else is there to do?
Life just goes, it shows up andgoes away.
(17:21):
We're doing somethinginteresting and, I think,
meaningful.
I think between the combinedexperience of what you
experienced and spoke prettymuch in great detail last
episode about your experience offoundation house in Maine,
trying to take the vision andeverything that you experienced
there, how can this work inScranton with more resources are
(17:44):
offered in Scranton fromuniversities and colleges.
My love for secular, highlyresistant or chronic relapses I
relate to that story profoundly.
I relate to thinking and youunderstand alcoholics, anonymous
and electrically, and it's notworth trying again Like you
(18:07):
might have to get used to beingthe drunk that dies, and I think
there's a lot of people thepopulation's growing of people
like that and their criticalthought will get them killed
because it's compromised the waythey're looking at A.
So those combined kind of takeson how you could approach
(18:27):
recovery, I think somethingreally exciting to happen.
We're here at a mile marker.
The doors are open, theoutpatient is running, the IOP
is running, dharma recoverystarts actually tonight, fridays
, at 7.30 at the house.
And where do you think we gofrom here?
(18:47):
You have what's your pitch.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Thanks, joe, thanks,
well, thanks in a big way for
everything you've done the lasttwo years to get us to this
place.
My pitch is that we had avision and we are staying the
course and we are not justundeterred.
But everything I've been seeingsince we first conceived of
this has made me more committedto this and more convinced that
(19:18):
this is the right model forgetting people better, and I
gave an interview on our openhouse and I watched it.
The video that you cut togetherand one of the lines that I use
is still the best way todescribe my hope for this is
that it becomes a factory ofgetting people better, a
wellness factory, and the onlyother than some of the things
(19:43):
I've picked up in the last twoyears that have showed me that
this is gonna work.
I only had to go on my ownexperience and I don't think
there were harder cases than Iwas.
I know I've met some maybe youhave an argument that you were
but I know how difficult it wasto get through to me and I know
a lot of good clinicians and alot of good treatment centers
(20:07):
tried, and I know the wellintentions of my family and
friends and deans and counselorsand administrators it was.
I was a tough nut to crack andwhat ultimately got me better
was, in this order, pain andwillingness and then the right
(20:33):
kind of culture and then layeredin with the right kind of
supports that did not make meseem like I was being punished.
And I found that in Portland,maine, and I'm grateful still to
Foundation House for theprogram that they continue to
(20:54):
offer, that they've pioneered,that they've only expanded on.
It wasn't that program when Iwas there.
It was different.
There were less amenities,there was less money, they
weren't in business very long,it was sober living.
But the culture was there,culture of man, your life's just
(21:16):
starting, the party.
You might have thought for 10years, like a foolish college
student, larry, that sobrietywas about the party being over.
You don't know what life is,you haven't lived life yet and
that was true.
And finding that I wasn'tliving life, that my world had
gotten small, that addiction hadtaken things away from me and
(21:39):
isolated me and I didn't know it, and then just realizing that
and seeing the fun and thecontentment and others that were
similarly situated, wasimmediately helpful and hopeful
and comforting to me.
And it didn't take much, it justtook that in the beginning, but
(22:01):
it also took time, and what Ineeded was every bit of the four
to six months I think that Ispent there I don't have a
precise handle on it because Ihaven't thought about it in a
while, but I think it was closerto six months and it was
definitely more than four and Ithought I had recovered, of
course, because I was naive andI had a big head of steam.
(22:22):
And now, looking back on that,it gave me a really good
beginning.
But I needed every bit of thatbecause I still didn't know what
I didn't know, and it gave methe beginning of the spiritual
experience that I ultimatelyachieved in sobriety, and there
is just no way I would havegotten that in a 28 or even 60
(22:48):
day program.
And so, yeah, I mean, this isthe why of it.
The why of it is, I believe,young men.
That's what we're focusing on,and I think we've similarly
situated to what I was in 2009.
If there are also hard cases tocrack, they can probably
(23:08):
similarly benefit from a similarprogram to Foundation House.
And you're asking me aboutScranton.
It just happens to be anothersituation where I couldn't see
the forest for the trees.
I grew up here.
I took for granted the thingsthat we have in this community
and it wasn't until we had toreally think through Fellowship
(23:30):
House that we started reallystarted paying attention to the
attributes of NortheastPennsylvania our proximity to
major highways.
That puts us within I thinksome estimates are four hours
drive of three quarters of theUnited States population.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
It used to be called
the middle of the megalopolis.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Any major community
in the Eastern Seaboard we can
get there pretty reasonably in acar from Scranton and the
colleges and universities.
It was shocking when I reallystarted to list and put on paper
the very many institutions ofhigher education in and around
Scranton and I know that thatwas important not just to me but
(24:13):
to my family and to the peoplethat suffered with me when I was
in my addiction was like, okay,when Larry, when that switch
turns on, or when Larry was ableto kind of pull himself out of
his spiral, what's next?
When is he gonna finish thatdegree?
Where is he gonna go to school?
They were pretty quick withthose questions while I was in
(24:35):
these institutions what's next?
And it wasn't just my family, asI was meeting families of other
young men who were coming hereto recover.
That was what their questionswere.
Their concerns were Well, whenis he gonna start his upward
mobility?
When is he where?
What's that gonna look like?
And Scranton is the answer.
Scranton's about about 100,000people.
(24:56):
If you look around at asimilarly sized American city,
you're not gonna find a dozencolleges, universities.
It's just weirdly true ofScranton and this is something
that I will happily admit aspart of this conversation.
It is a time warp and the costof living is out of whack.
I mean, you drive into Scranton, you're 25 years behind and
(25:20):
architecture and technology, butthe prices and that's a really
good thing that young men cancome to Scranton to start over
and they can support themselvesvery easily with what we call in
this industry a bread andbutter job.
And I thought that would beappealing to families like mine
who had been burdenedfinancially by addiction.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
And stop right there,
the guys that are with us.
It's not like they're gonna beknocking on doors and applying.
They can, but we have jobplacement.
How would you summarize the jobplacements we just achieved,
saying the last year, for peoplein IOP, op that were unemployed
?
We're having hurdles withcriminal backgrounds that were
(26:05):
just marginal crimes ofaddiction and we found every one
of these guys a job, which it'shard to stay sober for a year
if you have no income.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Yeah, so, yeah, the
quick answer is 100%.
I don't think we've not beenable to play somebody in a job.
Let's come here and we makethat commitment as part of our
program and it's also part ofour curriculum.
It's, you know, you're there toknow that recovery is first and
foremost.
You know, we obviously valuethe assessment at the beginning
(26:36):
and we need to know, you knowwhich levels of care to place a
patient in.
But at some point that patientis gonna achieve a level of care
that we believe supportsgetting a job or going to school
, and that's part of thecommitment we make to families
that we're going to.
We're gonna make that happenbecause it's part of the next
(26:59):
step of recovery.
So, yeah, I believe verystrongly, and if we're making
that commitment, that if you'resending your child here to be a
patient and he's not looking togo to school, we're gonna put
him to work and it'll be anesteemable job.
It'll be a job that there won'tbe much of a limit on potential
(27:21):
.
But yeah, I don't know of otherprograms that offer that.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
No, and there's
programs we're about to announce
that we're partnering with andoffering their services for job
training.
That would be four months couldsubsidize living.
We'd be making thoseannouncements.
But you said something reallyimportant about that Job, no job
, house no house.
Wife no wife.
That's a great line inAlcoholics Anonymous.
(27:47):
Can you stay sober?
And we kind of seem to assessthat not only in our admissions
application but the initialassessment of especially for the
housing green, rich.
And we're really taking ametric of your desire and your
commitment to a new life,irregardless of the job.
But the job's there, thesupports are going to show up.
(28:08):
But I think that might be themost important factor is
screening Right With us.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Well, it's not just a
commitment we make generally as
a marketing pitch to families.
It's a commitment we make tothe communities where these
facilities are located.
It's a commitment we make toour employees, to ourselves,
that we want to create andmaintain a culture here of
people who want to get better.
Yeah, now, we're not going toget that 100%.
We know the reality of thisdisease.
But we want to give the peoplewho do want to get better the
(28:37):
best chance, and I've been inprograms where there's, you know
, the culture changes when thepopulation turns over, and it
could take.
I was one of these bad appleswhen I was at Alina Lodge.
I thought I was cool hand Luke,that I was just going to be the
anti guy, that if you said thiswas red, I was going to make an
(28:58):
argument that it was blue.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
It was just the Larry
, they call that that
oppositional defines disorder.
They.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
I had oppositional
defines disorder in spades when
I was being put intoinstitutions involuntarily and I
would imagine that you know 90more than 90% of our patients
are going to be in some level ofinvoluntary commitment.
It's not going to, it's just areality.
Nobody's going to show up herewith his bags pack saying I'm
happy to start my life over bycoming to rehab.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Or feeling coerced by
people.
They they want it to trust.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
And that's okay
because I, you know, we, we got
to give those people the spaceto grow into the awareness of
their affliction and whatrecovery can be.
But we also can't do it at theexpense of the ones who are
living in that community tryingto get better.
So so you know it's, it's,there's no science to it, but
you're exactly right.
So it's going to take a lot ofattention to the initial
(29:53):
screenings and the assessmentsand we're going to have to be
prepared to make some mistakesas well.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Yeah, well, it's
interesting to talk about this
in a podcast, to kind of givethe broad strokes of what we're
doing, what we envisioned.
You talked a little bit aboutschools, the offerings here,
employment, but we're startingto put together a program like
this, programming that immersesyou into the community, a
(30:19):
Russell pre-nosed cooking.
It's a family that's been here120 years.
If you know Rush, you feel likeyou're from Scranton, so that's
happening on Mondays and theninterharmonies about to start
every Friday.
Do you think we're on track oron target of how you could
present this to a family that'snow deciding to send their,
(30:40):
their son, or they're coming upwith the decision together to go
to a partial hospitalizationprogram to put extend treatment
for another 90 days?
How would you describe thatthey, your son, can be a part of
Scranton outside of theemployment, and how would you
describe that to them whatScranton is as a culture?
Speaker 2 (31:00):
It's, it's, it's,
it's, it's, it's, it's.
Let's quote our president,who's from Scranton being from
Scranton is like going home,yeah Right, Isn't that what Joe
Biden says?
Sure, and I'm not trying to putany specific political bent on
this, but I think it is a goodway to describe it as a guy who
was born here and, just like thepresident, I didn't always live
(31:22):
here.
I've lived other parts of thiscountry.
I've lived in Maine, I've livedin Minneapolis, I've, you know,
I have family that's lived fora long time out in California
and I've.
I've been all over this countryand I've experienced the
treatment communities and thesober communities in other parts
of the country and I putScranton's recovery community up
against any other, any othercity in America.
(31:48):
That's first and foremost.
My wife isn't from here, butshe spent some time living here
and she still remarks aboutevery time we go to a restaurant
.
You know there's going to bethree or four people and they
might be people that are 60years older than I am.
We're going to come to thetable and give me a remember
(32:09):
when you know chitchat.
That doesn't happen where shegrew up, it doesn't happen
everywhere.
There is a camaraderie, there isa familial, intangible air of
Scranton.
It is what the president says.
It's like coming home and andas somebody who had the
(32:31):
experience of feeling alienatedand feeling alone in the final
days of my addiction, now I didit to myself.
All I really wanted was to earnthe ability to come home.
You know I felt like I was, youknow, untethered and out in the
wilderness.
Now it was by my own actions,by my own decisions and
certainly by my you knowaffliction, but I needed to know
(32:56):
that things were going to beokay in the beginning.
I needed to have a connectionand a sense of safety and a
sense of stability and a senseof warmth and every, every,
every way, and I think thisScranton as a, as a city, as a
culture, provides that as anintangible, and then later that
(33:17):
in with the other attributesthat we were talking about.
I hope I'm answering yourquestion, but that's that's the
best way that I can.
I can describe it.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
I'm going to review
this tonight.
I'll give you transcripts.
We've done a handful ofadventures together politically
and marketing, had our interestsaligned and partners on things
before this is something totallydifferent.
I guess I didn't know howdifferent it would be because
(33:49):
we're both in recovery thinkingall right we've been the product
of treatment many times thatthis would be all right.
It felt right.
But there was a lot of thingswe didn't know and I'm surprised
by how much I didn't know aboutthe guts of setting up a
treatment center, a level ofcare, what the business
(34:12):
apparatus is around a treatmentcenter.
And it's been a lot over thelast three years.
It has not deterred us.
It actually it's been the mostexciting and the hardest thing I
ever did, most hard things I'veleft or abandoned.
This wasn't for me.
This wasn't the case With mesaying all that.
I guess I'm trying to givecontext.
(34:35):
We went to our first drug andalcohol conference.
It's called the Cape CodSymposium.
What was your takeaway fromthat?
With that, what I just said, inbringing us up to that
conference, what was your takeon that?
Speaker 2 (34:53):
So before I get into
it, I did not answer your last
question, so it ties into that.
I wanted to.
Just when you were talkingabout Russell Prano and you're
talking about what we're doingwith inner harmony, I want to
just make a confession right now, the time of my life when you
and I were conceiving of this, Iwas up to my eyeballs in daddy
daughter duty, the same way youare right now.
(35:13):
Two young ones and I just Ididn't have a lot of fun in my
life at the time.
So as it became a fantasy, aswe were putting this together of
, well, I'd like to be going torail riders games.
I'd be like to be going toSixers games.
I would like to be doing cookingclasses with Russell.
I'd like to be doing puttingthe gear on and doing some mixed
martial arts with Jimmy Simrel.
I'd like to find some more timefor meditation and candidly, I
(35:35):
thought, if we put all that intothis program, my wife would
support me doing all that, andshe is, and I'm thrilled about
it and I'm having more fun justin these initial experiential
sessions that we're doing than Icould even describe.
So part of it is they're justthe things that I enjoy doing, I
think there are things that youenjoy doing.
(35:56):
But I wasn't doing enough of itthree years ago when we first
started kicking this around andI thought, if I'm going to put
this out there as part of aclinical program, I don't want
to be a hypocrite.
I want to be layering in aspart of our curriculum, as part
of our culture, the things thatI know I enjoy and my friends
enjoy, and it wasn't just to addfodder and verbiage to a
(36:23):
program agenda.
It was so we can actually havea lot of fun while we're getting
people better.
Yeah, it's a lifestyle.
But now to pivot to yourquestion about what I'm really.
I guess we're in it now.
The credentialing, thelicensing, the business part of
the treatment business yeah, Iguess I leapt before I looked in
(36:49):
this regard, Because I kind ofbelieve that if I had done to
this part of this business whatI've done in other businesses,
that I've been really analyzed,it really looked at the time and
the effort and the expense andthe frustration.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
One of the lack of
professionals.
Consultants help.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
There's a chance we
might not be doing.
I mean, I'd be sitting there.
I would have just said forgetit.
But Joe, no, I'm really nowmore excited about this than I
was even in the beginning, but Iwas before we became owners of
Fellowship House.
I was cynical about and towardthe treatment business.
(37:28):
Yeah, I had judgments.
I thought it was a for-profitkind of gross beast that had
grown out of a greedy culture ofWall Street and snobbish
medical professionals.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
There's half-truths
in it.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
I really did not live
the experience that I lived,
and I was wrong.
I think there's still a littlebit of that.
I'm sure that it is neverindustry, but what I am finding
is that this is a tough business, but I'm glad it's regulated.
I'm glad that not just anybodycan be a licensed, credentialed
(38:08):
treatment provider.
I'm glad it's hard.
I'm glad to go through theeffort of competing for
contracts with insurance payers.
As part of that effort, we haveto showcase our program.
We have to say here's what weare as Fellowship House, here's
who our clinicians are, here'swho our counselors are, here's
who our medical director is.
Here's what we've done in thelast two years.
(38:29):
Even though we haven't openedthe door, we've achieved these
licenses, we've renovated theseproperties.
I'm proud to actually put thatpackage in front of a
bureaucracy whether it's agovernmental regulator or a
panel of insurance evaluators,and hearing what they have to
say, because what I'm seeing isthey're judging us on what we've
(38:50):
done.
And we're doing pretty well,joe.
Yeah, realistically, this isour first test.
This is the new business forboth of us.
We were passionate about it.
We want to help people, but interms of like, have we gotten
anywhere?
We got in network this week.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Yes, we got in
network for two.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
We're getting these
emails saying hey, we are in
network with this provider atthese rates.
That is less to me about.
Hey, should Shane, we make himmoney?
Then, wow, we've actuallysucceeded.
We've done A, b and C and allthe way through X, y and Z and
it's resulted in a regulator oran insurance provider that's a
(39:27):
big publicly traded company,recognizing that we've done
something pretty special.
And now we are a professionalentity and we are allowed and
encouraged to go and carry themessage forward and help people
get better.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
I didn't hear anyone
say that to me yet.
Your head's.
Just you know I'm in thecomputer all day with Timmy and
Tim's doing an unbelievable job,so that's kind of cool.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Where does it go from here?
In the sense, what do you seemarketing?
As for rehab, you know myfeeling about marketing.
(40:05):
I've been doing it a while.
I'm good at coming up with amessage, creating content, but
it seems like I was able to doit as like being asleep.
I spent a lot of time doing itasleep, unconsciously,
manipulatively, having fun,causing trouble.
I never marketed something thatI want to do with my heart,
(40:28):
with some sincerity.
That shows not only who I am,what we're doing.
How do you see it?
I know the way I see it, but Iguess I'm trying to flush out a
full.
How do you do that?
Did you ever market something?
Because you never had to marketyour law firm?
Really no.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
I mean, listen to you
.
I'm smiling because the goodnews about this is, I think,
collaboration and being able topartner with other people in
this space.
Other owners, other clinicianswho have been doing it before us
are doing it now with us.
(41:09):
We don't share any sense ofcompetition.
We don't share any sense ofrivalry that's at least what I'm
getting from it.
That's not true of my otherbusinesses, that's not true of
my law firm, that's not true ofreal estate development.
That's not true of theconstruction business.
I don't collaborate with otherlaw firms a lot.
(41:31):
I don't collaborate with otherreal estate developers.
I don't collaborate with othercontractors a lot, because
there's just a culture ofcompetition and rivalry.
I never saw us doing that here.
I never wanted to and neverengaged in it.
To my delight, I've seen theopposite in this business, which
(41:52):
is the idea that if we'resuccessful, other providers are
going to be successful,supporting each other, helping
identify other levels of carethat we don't offer.
Having a closed continuum ofcare through relationships with
other providers has made mereally delighted about the whole
(42:13):
idea of marketing this, becauseit's about lifting up other
facilities.
What I mean by that is anexperience I had this week.
I'm building a freestandingdetox facility for two friends
of ours who are going to own itand operate it.
The local newspaper called mebecause they saw the zoning
(42:33):
hearing notice and they'reasking me about it as if it was
mine, because they knew what wehad done with Fellowship Outs.
When I explained that I'm justbuilding it, I'm not going to
own it, the reporter was curiousabout what that's going to look
like and how we're going tocoexist with our business being
only a few miles down the street.
I explained that it's the sameway that we are coexisting right
(42:57):
now that we send patients up toElk Mountain to a PHP because
we believe in the ownership andthe clinicians that are there
and we support them.
If they're successful, we aregoing to be successful.
Vice versa, they have somesimilar levels of care, there's
some overlap, but there's nocompetition.
(43:17):
It is collaboration.
It is how do we put ourresources together?
How do we put our talents andour vision, our shared vision of
just helping a patient getbetter, whether we can provide
that bed or that level of careor not?
I find that the marketing hereis really coming from word of
mouth, from other providers,other businesses.
(43:38):
You wouldn't get that.
People who are in this spaceare telling would-be patients to
call us and vice versa.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
That's everything
that's happened to date.
It's collaboration.
People see you're serious, youshould be taken serious and care
.
You're following a standard andyou're just kind of magnetized
to the other providers that aredoing that.
The other ones that are playingsome other strange game don't
seem to last very long.
(44:08):
You spoke to that with it firstbeing regulation would be a
barrier to get into thisbusiness.
If somehow you could getthrough that and you have bad
intentions, you're not going tobe around very long because
you're actively harming people.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
We talk about our
target patient as somebody who
has relapsed or had been throughmultiple institutions.
Our industry that we're now inhas a term for that person.
It's called alumni.
Imagine that that's part of ourbusiness is.
We're not going to geteverybody better on the first
(44:51):
pass.
We want everybody who comesthrough our program to have a
first-rate, first-classexperience.
Only if that person stumbles sothey can come back, we have the
shot to actually get thembetter.
Whether it's from a businessstandpoint or from a caring
clinical standpoint, I certainlydon't understand any business
or any medical or mental healthprovider that isn't in the
(45:13):
business of making sure somebodyhas a terrific experience.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
We have a lot of big
announcements.
We're taping this now withOctober 6th.
By the end of this month, we'llbe announcing a new schedule.
It will be daytime andnighttime IOP and I'll offend
our clinical center.
The house is seeing screeningsevery week for admittance into
Greenwich, looking for thatpopulation you just described.
(45:37):
So there'll be a lot going on.
It was good to catch up live asa podcast.
Did you get through to Andy'sbefore this started?
Speaker 2 (45:48):
I'll be going down
there knocking on the door, just
showing up in the kitchen.
You don't have to call or putany calls into Mellow or get
like it was my fault for tryingto get through to Andy's pizza
on a Friday at five o'clock.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Man, I've never seen
you make such a strategic
mistake.
Man there, thanks for coming in, Thanks for bringing me to the
Mid-Valley.
Anything.
I should have asked you that Ididn't.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
I don't think so, but
you know where to find me if
you think of something elseYou're it, you're my guest.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
You're going to have
to cover for me, probably in the
spring.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
You'll be the host.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Larry Moran, everyone
.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
I'll be back when
Joe's on spring break.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
I'd like to thank you
for listening to another
episode of All Better To find uson allbetterfm or listen to us
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,Google Podcast Stitcher,
iHeartRadio and Alexa, Thanks toour producer, John Edwards, and
(46:53):
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 because
you're sober doesn't meanyou're right.