Insight With Sylvia Maus 021124 Opioid Abuse Part 2

"Local Nonprofit Helps Achieve Sobriety Rates Well Above the Norm" Part 2

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
I'm Sylvia Moss. We're back againwith Insight It and this is part two
of the show that I really wantedto do because of the issue that we're
talking about. My guests last weekhave agreed to come back. They are
Jimmy Shamback, the founder and executivedirector of an organization known as M twenty
eight susan Ewing Wrathfund. You allknow where is the wonderful missus Pennsylvania American

(00:20):
twenty twenty three. She is veryinvolved in this organization. In fact,
she is a five year board member. Guys, last week we talked about
a lot of things, but Ithink there's a couple of things we have
to reiterate again. That especially whatyou said, Jimmy about Pennsylvania, and
we can talk a little bit moreabout the opia problem in the Harrisburg area.

(00:42):
Yeah, it's the huge issue inthe state of Pennsylvania. I think
last week we talked about how Yeah, I think you mentioned fourteen people a
day die from drug and alcohol abuseand or sorry opioid addiction an overdose.
I should also add there's some statisticsabout how the overdose rate has more than
doubled in the last five years,so it's made it even more prevalent to

(01:07):
do the kind of work that wedo because of the tragic effects of substance
use disorder and tethel typically get addictedfrom painkillers. Yeah, that is a
typical thing. And you know,part of that compounding effect is and this
is a story that a lot ofthe guys that we work with have similarly,
is that they get into heroin becausethey started using opioids after a surgery

(01:30):
or an injury of some kind orsomething like that, and then getting and
procuring opioids is expensive, but heroinis cheaper, and you can use it
in a lieu of opioids, andyou can get it more readily available,
you don't have to go to adoctor and all sorts of other things.

(01:51):
But heroin is more deadly and leadsto more catastrophic consequences. So, but
that's a story that a lot ofguys shared with us, as they started
with pills and it ended up withas ivy users of heroin. We were
talking about M twenty eight why itwas establishing exactly what it is. And
your organization is more successful, alot more successful than typically places that people

(02:17):
go when they need support and wouldyou tell us again why you feel it
as I mean, your records,your facts, people who've come and gone,
you have the proof that that's youhave been more successful. Tell us
what do you think it is?Yeah? I think that part of it
is that we offer a long termcommunity for people, Okay. And I

(02:38):
think that even though that sounds somewhatsimple, community and people that are around
to support you and encourage you andopen doors for you to jobs and people
to rely on when things are goingpoorly is such a monumental aspect of recovery.

(02:59):
And not that they don't get thatfrom other places, but just the
way the system is designed at thispoint is that rehabilitation centers, detoc centers,
halfway houses, they're really really goodat doing their job. They really
get people off onto a really greatfoot temporarily yep. And then they leave.

(03:21):
And some of those places do areally good job of following up with
people. But it's hard when youget you're managing twenty four to sixty people
and people graduate the program they're doingwell, and it's hard to stick around
and people move to different places.But for us, we're not really limited
by that. We will stick withguys forever. We've had guys in our

(03:44):
program that we still connect with thathave been clean more than nine years now.
And we have guys that we metone time and then they went back
out and we never heard from themagain. But the norm is for us,
about sixty percent of the people wework with stay clean for you or
more at a time. The nationalaverage is much lower than that, typically
somewhere between four to six percent overthat same time period. And so I

(04:08):
think the community aspect is very criticalto that, and so we do that.
We also have a lot of practicalneeds services for people that are helpful
to open those doors. And Aand NA are spiritually based programs, and
so people who are engaged in theirspiritual life and spirituality that really contributes to

(04:30):
their overall success as well, andit's something we highlight on now we work
with We are faith based organization,but we work with people of all sorts
of religious backgrounds and people even whoare lots of people who are atheists but
are interested in their cleaner life.You know, they want to talk about
what's occurring inside of them. Andso we meet with all sorts of people

(04:53):
along all different lines. Where dothey come from? We get referrals from
different agencies in the area, andI think that's important to to talk about
that. You work with a lotof agencies, So you are what would
you call you like a hub fora lot of the agency. You're the
resources, you provide the resource.Yeah, we provide resources and kind of
a warm handoff, if you will. I think it's a good phrase for

(05:15):
what we are. And so,yeah, we get some referrals from a
lot of different agencies in the areaand that's been good for us. I
think it's good for the agencies aswell. And it's been a meaningful partnership.
Let's get more specific about some ofyour programs. You have something called
the a CC program. Yeah,so the SEC project. It's twofold for

(05:36):
us. Not everyone. We havethree people currently that do one on one
mentoring, and it's just the waywe're wired. We like to do it,
we're interested in that and we enjoythat process. But not everyone is
capable, wants to, or isinterested in being like the only point person

(05:57):
for someone, and so the CCproject for us has been a way to
get people who want to help peoplein recovery with other people who want to
help someone in recovery to form whatwe call a table, and so okay,
there's anywhere from three to six peoplethat help one person in recovery,
and so so like, walk methrough the process of this. Someone comes
in, is there an intake todo that type of thing? And then

(06:21):
what happens, what happens, howdoes it work? So typically the one
on one mentoring that we do initiallyrolls into ours sc project. And so
the one on one mentoring we startwith is our way of kind of vetting
people checking are you, how committedare you to this? Where are you
at? And the a CC projectthen becomes a more kind of executive style

(06:46):
board for this person where the groupthen is going, this person's been clean
somewhere between nine months to a year. And then this person is focused and
the table is focused on accomplishing goalsand so yeah, so those people are
you have real practical goals. Theyhave to come up with about fifty goals
they want to accomplish in the year, and so the table then meets with

(07:10):
them bi weekly to talk about theirgoals, where they're at, what help
they need, and how the tablecan help facilitate the accomplishing of those goals,
and those goals range and it's beenreally cool. A lot of it's
are very serious stuff up front.It's like I need a job, I
need a place to live, Iwant to get my kids back, I
want to figure out my marriage,I want to Yeah, I want to

(07:35):
deal with lots of serious things.But some of it's really cool. I
mean, some of it's like andthey're lower we rank them in importance A
through C, but some of themare interesting. Like a lot of guys
never been to the beach and sothey're like, I have a goal of
mine that I want to go tothe beach sometime. And so one of
the tables I was on a coupleof years ago, we just one of

(07:59):
our guys does de sea fishing,and so one weekend he took them to
the beach. They did some fishing, they spend some time there. And
part of the recovery process is learningto have fun and do things like that
as well. Everything is course isserious. It feels like there's a lot
at stake, but you also haveto learn to have fun and do those
things that are contributing to you kindof coming back into society and doing normal

(08:20):
things again. And so we encouragesome of those goals. We took guys
to Hershey Park because they've never beento an amusement park. We've taken them
to the beach, We've taken himto I mean, some people have never
been to a movie theater. Sowe just get together and we do those
kinds of things. They're small,but they're very big relationally and they have
a lasting impact on people. Sothat's what the CC project is really aimed

(08:43):
at, is doing a kind ofhigh functioning, goal oriented group that helps
one person for one year. Andhow long this has this existed twenty eight
and twenty it's been around for thirteenyears as an organization, So how many
individuals generally have gone through their neP had successfully. Yeah, so we've
probably mentored close to one thousand peopleover the thirteen years. So yeah,

(09:07):
it's been a major undertaking for us. And so and really does take a
village, does it does? Yeah? I mean so for us, Yeah,
it was like that is the biggestpart is that it takes a lot
of people, a lot of timeand a lot of effort, and people
in recovery are doing something extremely hard. I mean, it is you know,

(09:31):
substance use disorder is under that kindof category of like obsessive compulsive mental
health. Yeah, and so.But one of the unique parts of it
is that like it requires such aholistic life change from someone. It's not
like you can just take a pilland it all goes away. It is

(09:54):
deep, meaningful work of like selfexploration, of dealing with your past,
things you've done, things that havebeen done to you. It is like
deep, meaningful, slow interior workthat is part of that process of life
change. Well, when you're rebuildingyour life all over again, you're not
going to do that in five minutes. No, you're not. It's going

(10:16):
to take a long time. It'sgoing to take people in a community around
you that can help support you whenyou don't want to go further, you
don't know how to go further andyou need those things and people who And
I think that again to circle backto your question earlier about that, it's
like, I think that's why we'vebeen so successful is because people can keep
coming back, and they do,and people keep coming You're a touchstone for

(10:41):
people. That's a lot of whatit is. Yeah, and you're like,
it's to them, I would say, I think it might be like
going home. Yeah, going hometo a safe place where I know who
the people that are there will doanything in their power to put me on
the right track and keep me onthe right track. Yeah, it's exactly
right. Yeah, and so youknow, and it's that's a really good

(11:01):
way of phrasing it because part ofthe yeah, part of the part of
the recovery process is relapse. Andpeople don't like to talk about that,
but so many people experience relapse.It's part of it. You almost have
to do it in some ways.I hate to say it that way,

(11:22):
but you almost have to go throughit because you have to reach a sense
of desperation. You've reached the bottom. You have to or you'll keep going
back out. And with anything withmental illness, you have to hit the
bottom before you can start all overagain. Yeah, and so and you
know, and so having the communityaround you when you do kind of fall

(11:43):
off the wagon, so to speak, to help put you back on bring
you back up to do that,it's it's vital. And you know,
we have so many stories of guysthat were like, yeah, I know
I relapsed, but you know whatkept me coming back was that you guys
kept texting me and like they didn'tanswer, you know, I didn't answer
whatever, But you know I knewthat if I wanted to and I was

(12:07):
ready, you guys were going tobe there to help me when things were
you know, when I needed toget back on the dedicated people you have
there. What about volunteers, Yeah, so we have a bunch of volunteers.
We've probably right now about forty differentvolunteers that do different things for us.
That's amazing because I've talked to severalnon profits, like locally lately and

(12:28):
they are having a hard time gettingvolunteers. And for you to say for
that's for your own good, Yeah, it's great. And they're very committed,
high capacity volunteers that love the mission. They care about what we're doing,
They are invested in seeing people changetheir lives. And so, like
I said, we've worked with athousand people over thirteen years in that capacity.

(12:48):
But it's really because of our volunteers, our support, people who care
about what we're doing, you know, see that. And it's people who
are committed to that long, slow, tedious life change process. People who
don't expect immediate results but are likewilling to kind of figure it out along
the way over the long term withpeople, and so we have, yeah,

(13:09):
some really great volunteers were super gladto have. And I think something
else that's important to mention that thisis not we used to think people that
were when I was a kid growingup. When you think about people,
excuse me, that we're drug oralcohol a dictator. You picture an old
guy sitting with a bag and analley drinking and drinking booze. Now it's

(13:33):
that that kid that excels in school, it's that doctor, It's it's everybody.
And there's very good chance that ifyou think you don't know somebody,
aha ha ha. Yeah, itaffects everybody. It absolutely does. I
mean I've had people that I wasshocked when people I know passed away because
I'm thinking, oh, dear god, that kid just started his life,

(13:56):
what a good kid. What happened? Well, somebody gave him a painkillers
killers when he was an athlete,and my god, my god. And
then you have these big corp thesebig drug companies that are pushing it.
So what are you going to do? So something I wanted and I was
Susan, We had talked about you. You're on the board for five years.

(14:16):
Part of your platform that you continueto do and will continue to speak
about is what had had happened toyour dad and your sister. Would you
mind sharing a little bit about thatagain? Oh sure, for anyone that's
tuning into this episode, they mayhave missed the last one. So I
have a family. Both sides ofmy family have struggled with substances disorder also

(14:37):
known as addiction, and also mentalhealth struggles, and for generations they sought
out substances to use as a meansof coping and numbing and dealing with their
struggles with mental illness. And sounfortunately, I did lose my father a
week before my twenty second birthday,and then seven years later I lost my

(15:00):
sister, my only sibling, tosubstance use disorder and overdose as well.
And left behind was my niece atthe time, who now is my daughter.
And some might think this story isshocking, but truthfully and factually statistically,
this is a has become a commonstory many of us that are left
behind after this overdose occurs. Thereare children who are needing to be cared

(15:28):
for. Well, excuse me asecond, I can offer something there too.
I've had Over the last few years, I've had two grandmothers in here
whose children they are raising babies becausetheir child overdosed as a grandparents. In
fact, that Commonwealth offers some sortof a tax credit for grandparents who are
taking care of kids. I mean, when the state starts doing so,

(15:52):
the government starts doing something like that, you know, it's a huge problem.
Yes, so okay, So areyou telling me about your daughter,
who is now sixteen years old andshe's a doll? Yes? Yeah,
yeah, she's amazing, she's thriving, she's a straight A student, she's
so talented. We absolutely adore her. One of the things I wanted to

(16:14):
talk to both of you guys aboutis families don't want to believe this.
You know, it's not my kid, not my husband. I mean,
And a lot of times they talkabout people who what do they call it
when somebody can go to work andyou don't know that they they're doing drugs
or alcohol. I forget what theycall that term. But there's plenty of
those walking around out there. Butif you are family, you suspect somebody

(16:37):
in the family, your child,your husband and wife, whomever, is
doing drugs, how do you getthem there. You know what they're going
to say, there's nothing wrong withme, or I'm only doing it for
this. And how do you,first of all, how do you recognize
opioid abuse? Are the signs differentthan other drugs? Yeah, I mean

(16:59):
that's a really good question. It'sreally hard to tell. It really is.
If they're high functioning, like afunctioning that's what I was looking for.
Yes, they are typically very highfunctioning. They're very charismatic people,
very enjoyable to be around, andand it's really hard. I mean,
one of the ways you notice isthe physical manifestations of it, typically a

(17:22):
lot of weight loss. That's lackof desire to do things they once enjoyed.
Harder things to tell. But ifyou were married to someone or you
know, family with someone, sure, I mean some of it is related
to finances. You can see alack of them in that because the money
is going to drugs or alcohol.Choices that people make that are kind of

(17:48):
odd in the moment, and thingslike that, and behaviors. The behaviors
people exhibit really help kind of clueyou into something else might be occurring here.
But really hard. You have tobe looking for them a lot of
people, as you mentioned to startthe question, don't want to look you
know, they don't want there tobe something wrong. Yeah, you know,

(18:08):
and that's a natural thing. Imean, nobody wants to think that.
It's a it's an uphill battle toclimb afterwards. It's very difficult to
manage as a family because you wantto help and you want to be there
and be supportive. But it's reallya tough thing to navigate for families,

(18:30):
and people unfortunately do have to kindof hit rock bottom to start to open
themselves up to change in a differentway of living and acting. And but
it's a hard process. It's amazingto me when you hear about these stories
and different people that they they're addictedand your mind is messed up. And

(18:52):
then somebody you'll say, well,I tried to help them, make sure
you just didn't want to listen.Maybe he's not capable of this leep because
there's it's all multi fi accident.It's a scary thing, isn't it.
Yeah, Oh that's yeah, it'san excellent way to say that. I
mean, you're in a situation wherepeople until they can get some long term
sobriety, you're talking a few months. The brain takes a while to repair

(19:15):
itself and they are not capable ofmaking the right decisions and thinking the right
ways. And you need some timeto do that to get things in order
to be able to see your lifea little bit more clearly. And you
need people that are walking with youthrough that a little bit as well,
because as you're trying to determine andweed through fact verse friction for your own

(19:36):
life, you need people that canbe a sounding board for you so you're
not just emphasizing too much of oneside. And so that's been a really
important part too. I'm one ofthose people who believes things happen for a
reason. And you were telling me, I know Susan's story about her sister,
and you were connected by someone,and it's amazing to me to do

(19:59):
that. You know that things likethat happening Susan. I understand, as
I said, why you're doing Butwhy are you doing it? Jim?
What brought you to this type ofwork? It's got to be hard to
get. How do you carry thathome with you? Yeah? Well was
really to answer that part that's beenreally hard for me. I'm fairly empathetic
as a person and it was along process of me learning about myself that

(20:25):
in learning to listen well, expressempathy, trying to see their side on
things or whatever, I actually wasn'thelping them by not telling them the truth
and explain that. And so becauseI was kind of going, yeah,
I understand that that makes sense andkind of going into that, yeah,
like trying to empathize, right,and you really didn't get it. But

(20:48):
I wasn't. Yeah, I wasn't. Then I had thoughts. I could
see things, I could notice things, but I wasn't saying them. I
wasn't being truthful about that. AndI realized that that was actually keeping me
from helping well and keeping them fromperhaps making or alerting themselves to like they're
about to relapse, you know,and I wasn't helping point out those signs

(21:10):
and being honest about those things.Where are some of those signs when even
for family, if someone's been througha program and they're about to relapse,
where do you look for? Yeah? So, same thing is when they're
addicted a little bit. You know. It's funny. One of the interesting
things is when you've spent like wedo. We spend basically every week once
a week with someone, you reallyget like pick up their mannerisms, how

(21:30):
they act, you know, whatthey're doing, saying what they're interested in.
And so you notice just subtle changesin how they respond and answer questions
and you're just like, Okay,why aren't you into this? And it
doesn't mean that they're using, butyou can tell that maybe their focus is
shifting. And then one of thereally real practical things is when people stop

(21:51):
texting back, Oh boy, whatdo you do? Yeah, you skid
this feeling? Okay, texted you, called you? You're not returning calls?
Wait till I mean you don't chasingafter them, do you? We
don't. Typically we typically will saylike send a text, a call,

(22:11):
We'll try to get with them onemore time, see where they're at,
and if they are using, we'lltell them like listen, we're here,
Like when you want to return backto to this, we're here. You
know. But you can't help someoneuntil they kind of get back on that
saddle themselves and make that decision forthemselves. You can't make you can't do

(22:32):
that, and they have to makethat choice for themselves. And and so
those are like two real practical things. Then things like they stop going to
work, they're missing for all sortsof excuses. Maybe their health is starting
to decline again. There are likesome of those factors with that. They're
not going to meetings, they're notmeeting their sponsor, they're not doing that

(22:52):
again, that interior work that's required, step work, things like that that
are so beneficial to helping them changetheir lives. But when all those things
start to come together and they're notdoing those things, you're getting hints that
like this person is angling back towardsan old life. How often does it
happen? It's very common. Imean, most people relapse. I think
the numbers are somewhere between sixty toeighty percent of people relapse within the first

(23:15):
six months the first time they gothrough a rehab. And there's sometimes that
I think there's some data that showsabout you need to go through treatment or
something about anywhere from five to seventimes before it kind of sticks with you
to get to a long term position. And so and that's the thing that's
the tough part for us as anorganization too. You never quite know like

(23:36):
where you're catching someone on that vein, Is this their first time, their
first time going through recovery, firsttime dealing with this, they're nineteen years
old, they're they think they canhandle everything. Or on the other side,
you know, we get people who'vebeen through it twelve times, thirteen
times, fourteen times through recovery andthey're asking questions of like am I ever

(24:00):
going to make it? You know? And both of those are something you
Like they say about alcoholism, youlive with it your whole life. Yep,
you do. And the good newsis most people do find long term
sobriety and recovery. Most people do. And so there is like I don't
want this to feel like it's avery drab or you know whatever, but

(24:21):
that is true, Like there ishope that if you put in the work,
the future you have you want foryourself is there and most and a
lot of people do. I meanlots of people you come across every day,
from doctors to lawyers, to salespeopleto wherever you go. There are
people there that are dealing with thatand have been in recovery for many years

(24:45):
and maybe some are just starting out. But it's possible and even if you
put in the work, likely tohave a good, meaningful life apart from
drugs and alcohol. I don't.I don't know if I should even ask
a decision, but you do.Do you think a program like this would
have helped your sister? Absolutely?I actually just had another media interview prep

(25:06):
a week ago and this came intoplay and it really made me stop and
think, and I told the hostthat I wish I had known of them
twenty eight back when my family,my father and sister were still living because
what I have seen and what Iassociate M twenty eight with is hope and
a solution, and I know thatwill resonate with the family members and individuals

(25:27):
because both the individuals and their familymembers are battling substance use disorder. We're
all battling that, and so yes, I think this program is amazing and
it's something that I would highly recommend. And I do wish that I had
known of it back then. That'samazing. I started asking about some of
the programs. There is something,oh what's it called? Forgive me?

(25:49):
Do you have like a food bankor a furniture How does that work out?
You provide furniture for these folks?Yes, well, Jimmy can tell
you all about it. I'm soexcited for them because they have helped almost
five thousand individuals providing home goods andthey actually just let's see, I think
they're over the one million dollar markINITs that have been donated. Oh my

(26:11):
god, do you tell James.Yeah. So the House to Home project
started like as this thing for uswhere we were meeting with people one on
one and you're doing a lot ofmentoring work and you're kind of going,
Okay, this is good, butpeople also have practical needs and don't We

(26:33):
were like, what can we doto kind of open some doors and handle
some practical needs so they don't feellike everything is against them. So we
started with a food pantry. Wegave furniture, make sure people were able
to eat and had food and someof those basic needs. And then guys
started getting their own apartments and thingslike that, and we were like,
they were like, well, furnitureis very expensive. I don't have a

(26:55):
bed, I don't have sheets,I don't have plates to eat on and
all those kinds of things. Andso we said, well, what can
we do about that? And sowe started collecting furniture from people and yeah,
since that was twenty seventeen, westarted that, we've given furniture.
Susan said about five thousand people overa million dollars worth of good used furniture

(27:15):
and home goods. And so thathas spread out to more than just the
recovery community. For US, wework with a lot of resettlement agencies and
refugeing immigrant resettlement agencies. We workwith some state and Dauphin County and Cumberland
County agencies. We work with awhole bunch of other partners that refer to

(27:37):
us, and so this program isa referral only thing. Yeah, we
had a process where we were generallyjust getting anyone, but now we're doing
referrals so people have long term helpas they get furniture and are rebuilding their
lives. M twenty eight Where isyour website? Yeah, it's M twenty
eight dot us. If somebody wantsto get in touch with either one of

(27:59):
you they know somebody needs help,or if they want help or they want
to volunteer, how do they getin touch with you? Yeah, so
you can go through the website twentyeight dot us and that will give our
contact information for our referral process forpeople in recovery or if they need furniture
or anything all that information is onthe website and what you haven't been coming
up later in the year, though, what is it? Yeah, well

(28:19):
of a banquet October twelfth to celebratethe year that was, tell some stories
and look forward to the future.That sounds wonderful. My guess are goain
have been Jimmy Shanback, the founderand executive director of your organization known as
M twenty eight, Susan Ewing WrathFond Missus, Pennsylvania, American, who
is a five year board member ofM twenty eight. There's so much work

(28:41):
to be done, and there areso many people who are suffering from addiction
in our area. As I saidearlier, and these guys agree with me
to one hundred percent. If ithasn't happened to your family, right,
guys, you will find out ifit's happened to somebody that you know.
Nobody gets away with this and it'sterrible you hear when these young kids they

(29:02):
die from an overdose. What wasit? It started with football injury,
It started with something like that.So it's become a part of our everyday
lives. I asked you to visittheir website, contact and support them.
Guys. Thank you so very muchfor coming in, and thank you for
all the work you do. Thisis amazing. If you missed last week's

(29:22):
show, I encourage you to listenon your iHeart or many other podcast steps.
I hope that you'll spread the wordabout this issue and continue to listen.
I'm Sylvia Moss. This has beeninsight Again, thank you for listening.
See you next week.