December 10, 2024 • 9 mins
THE OTHER SIDE ACADEMY This organization has a similar mission to Step Denver, but they also accept women. The Other Side Academy is a training school in which students learn pro-social, vocational and life skills allowing them to emerge with a healthy life on “the other side”. This program is available as an alternative to those facing long-term incarceration as well as those seeking a change from the life they’ve chosen in the past. Many of those who seek entrance into the Academy are convicts, substance abusers or homeless. This school accepts men and women, both pre-and post-sentencing, who are ready to learn a new and better way to live. You may have heard my listener Bill who called me in desperation as an alcoholic living in his truck. He has been at TOSA and has a new lease on life. I love this program, it is so incredibly good. Donate to them here, or find out more about the program by clicking here.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It is Colorado Gives Day.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
This is the day where if you have a little
extra scratch laying around and you want to give it
to an organization that does great work, I have conveniently
provided you some options.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Now, of course, you don't have to choose my options.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
If you have a charity that's near and dear to
your heart, please give money to them. But if you'd
like to give some money away but you're not quite sure,
the organizations that I have on my blog are two
things for the most part that you are either helping
keep Colorado as free as possible, or they are helping veterans,
or they are helping people get out of the depths
(00:32):
of addiction. And one of those organizations is called the
Other Side Academy. And joining me now is a guy
you may have heard the last time he was on
the show. Bill, a caller to the show several years ago,
was at rock bottom, as they say, and I said, Bill,
you got to go to the Other Side Academy. And
then we hung up the phone call on I was
pretty sure Bill wasn't going to go to the Other
(00:52):
Side Academy. But lo and behold, he went to the
Other Side Academy. And now is a successful Are you
full graduate now, Bill?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Not yet? I graduate in May, in May a master student.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
You're a master student at the other side academy and
joining me also is Keith?
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Now, Keith, what is your where?
Speaker 4 (01:09):
Where's your role?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Get right on that mic, where's your role at the
other side Academy?
Speaker 4 (01:13):
I'm the same as Bill, I'm a master student. Yep,
we work together in the warehouse.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
So how did you end up at the other side?
Speaker 4 (01:20):
I was just a decade long drug addict, very bottom
of the barrel, drug addict, homeless, out of options. I've
gotten to numerous rehabs, and I have enough of a
ability that I could talk my way out of any rehab.
I was really you can say, I'm really good at rehabbing.
I was really really good at it. I could tell
I can tell you. I can tell anybody anything they
want to hear. Right. So for me, it was going
(01:42):
to have to be something drastically different, something free, because
I'd run out of any kind of financial options, right,
and something where I was going to be held account
a point, and something where I was just gonna have
to learn a completely new way of life because the
way I'd been living for a decade didn't work for me.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
And I had the opportunity very recently to go and
speak to the the participants at the Other Side Academy,
and this program is so incredibly cool and powerful, and
I want to kind of speak to what you just
said there, Keith. What made this different? Why did this
stick well for.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Someone like me? I mean, I'm a master manipulator, and
I'm a master at believing my own dishonesty. My main
core issue was dishonesty. And so it took me being
in a program where I was going to be held
account well by fifty other master manipulators who could spot
every tale I had that I was bessing or that
I wasn't being completely truthful. It took that kind of
(02:34):
peer accountability to really get me to take a look
at what was really going on with me. Because I
can tell you if I was one on one with
a therapist, I can say the most beautiful things about
Freud Nietzsche, and I could tell everything I want to hear.
But it was when I was with someone like Bill,
someone who'd been on the street, someone who was an addict,
who knew how to gain the system, and he could
tell Hey, hey, you're not being completely forthcoming right now.
(02:55):
That was the only thing that could work for me.
I was so far gone. My moral compass had completely degenerated.
I had no semblance of any kind of honesty with
myself or others. And it wasn't until I was in
a facility with a bunch of other dishonest people that
I was able to really see that and start to
work on it.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
We were talking when I was there about certain things
in the program that I found fascinating, and I'm going
to ask you about this bill, the notion that you
guys have meetings where people can say you did something
wrong and you're not allowed to respond. You just have
to sit and take it. But the reason for doing
that is to force that kind of accountability that Keith
(03:30):
is talking about. Is that the kind of thing that
makes the other side academy work? And is that the
kind of thing that really truly changes behavior for me?
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Yes, it is, because a lot of times we want
to fight back somebody's telling us something. Excuse me, we
don't want to believe it, we don't want to hear it.
Most of the time because what they're telling us is
true and it hurts right and it hits, and we
immediately want to deflect or we want to blame somebody
else when you're forced to sit there and take a
look at your actions through somebody else's eyes. Because I've
(04:02):
lived my life and I've seen my life through my
own eyes, and for me, a lot of the stuff
I do is okay. But when Key sits there and
tells me, Bill, you did this today or you made
a comment like this today, and here's how it affect right,
I appreciate it and this is why. And I have
to sit there and I have to take a look
at that and go, okay, well, this is something I've
(04:22):
done my whole life. Maybe other people around me have
felt the same way, but they haven't said it, either
afraid to or they just didn't care enough, or they.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Knew you would be angry in response, so there wasn't
any point, right, right, Does that kind of approach wear
down that hard?
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Outer?
Speaker 4 (04:39):
BSL Absolutely Like when you have to recall anything about yourself,
nine tens out of ten you tell it as you're
either the hero with a complete victim. Right, So when
you get to hear it from people, and you get
to hear other people, multiple people's perception of something that
you did where you thought you were either the hero
of the victim, and you were neither. You're actually a perpetrator. Yeah,
you know, it's a sobering effect. Especially for me. I
(05:01):
would think, well, this person, they don't really know what
they're talking about. But when I heard it from five
or six different people twice a week for a year,
I kind of had to. I didn't really have another
choice other than other than to believe that, yeah, they're
probably telling the truth and that I was seeing things
in a distorted way.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Was there a was there.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
A distinct moment, or was there a single event or
was it all an accumulation of this that made you go,
wait a minute, they may be onto something.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
For me, it was just that I just believed all
the rhetoric that went on in my head all the
time for my whole life about how I thought I
was so smart, nobody really knew anything. It was one
I got a group. They're called groups. I got a
group where somebody looked at me and said, you're completely
incompetent when it comes to telling the truth. Wow, And
no one has ever told me I was incompetent in anything.
(05:46):
So when I heard that I was incompetent at telling
the truth. It stung me, and I had to take
a look at it, and I realized that actually I was.
I had no idea what the truth was with myself
or with anybody else.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Do you think, I mean, where did all these defense mechanisms,
because all that's a defense mechanism that you're describing, Where
did that come from?
Speaker 4 (06:01):
I think it comes from. I mean, it comes from
a lot of the way I was raised, but it's
just a lot of the way I was able to
survive on the streets, or the way that I was
able to just do everything my whole life. I didn't
have to put a lot of effort in. I could
talk my way out of anything, and when somebody would
confront me with something ugly, I had the ability to
tell myself something that I believed and then tell them
whatever they wanted to hear. Right, I have some severe
(06:24):
codependency issues where I don't really care how I'm doing inside.
I care more or less what you think I'm doing, right,
how I look, I sound, how you're fronting, Yes, exactly.
So for me, my defense mechanism is, let's just push
off what actually didn't let's make myself sound good or
look good in that moment.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
So the Other Side Academy is a commitment. How many
months are is the program? How how long are people there?
Speaker 4 (06:45):
Thirty months, two and a half years.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
And they commit to living there being there.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
On Yeah, we lived together, we work together, we eat together.
You know, we you know, we get to know each
other probably better than most of our families know each
other from constantly being around each other, being in the
groups and seeing the behaviors, the good, the bad, and
the ugly.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
We see it all.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
We see all of it, you know, because people come
in there and when we're like everybody, they come in there,
they want to put that front up. But as you
stay there, you know, the real youth starts showing and
those behaviors start showing, and people point that out to you.
But it's I mean, it's it's a family. We were
a family. I've have brothers and sisters.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
One of the things that I like about the Other
Side Academy is immediately as soon as people come in,
they immediately start participating in the financial side of things.
So you guys have the moving company, you have the
furniture to teach, so people are actively engaged in supporting
the Other Side Academy as they are benefiting from the
Other Side Academy. But this is an expensive program. You
(07:51):
guys have a beautiful space. You've got another house coming
up for women, which is something I want to talk
about because we had stepped inver On earlier. They don't
accept women. The Other Side Academy does accept women. Yes,
do we have a women's house as well?
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yes, we do.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
I will say this.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
You have to go in sober, yes, And you have
to have an interview process, which sounds terrifying.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
I mean this sounds terrifying.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
It's rigorous.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
We're going to point some it's older students that are
going to interview you. When you come in and sit
on the bench. Myself and Keith are interviewers, and we're
gonna we're.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Gonna poke the front right.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
We're going to ask you about yourself and we're gonna
tell you some things about yourself that you probably don't
want to hear, but there's a reason for it. And
we're also going to make sure that you're a right
fit for us, and we're a right fit for you,
because we're not going to let anybody that's prone to
violence come inside the house or anything like that that's
never happened in our house since not tolerated. But we
just want to make sure that you're the right fit
(08:45):
and you want help, because you have to actually want
the help.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
And to be clear, you know, Step has a lot
of guys off the streets, but you guys have a
lot of people that are into versionary programs, so they
have the option of going through treatment or being incarcerated,
and that's a big motivator. But you still have to say,
we're not gonna put up with violence or any of
that stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
A lot of the guys though, when they come in,
there's a lot of people that come in there just
to beat a sentence. Right. We have a lot of
people now that you know, after the two and a
half years is over, Like myself, I'm committed to stay
in a third year. Keith is committed to staying a
third year to give back. You have a lot of
people that once they embrace the program and they see
the changes in them, the bridges that they're rebuilding with
(09:27):
their family, they are truly invested in it.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
I mean, I think this program is amazing.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
It is doing incredible work right here in Denver at
a place in time when we need it desperately. If
you have a little extra money to throw at the
Other Side Academy, I put a link to their Colorado
Gives a page on the blog today, or you can
go to Colorado gives dot org, search the Other Side
Academy and give them your money. Bill and Keith, thanks
for coming in today. I really appreciate it.
It is Colorado Gives Day.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
This is the day where if you have a little
extra scratch laying around and you want to give it
to an organization that does great work, I have conveniently
provided you some options.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Now, of course, you don't have to choose my options.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
If you have a charity that's near and dear to
your heart, please give money to them. But if you'd
like to give some money away but you're not quite sure,
the organizations that I have on my blog are two
things for the most part that you are either helping
keep Colorado as free as possible, or they are helping veterans,
or they are helping people get out of the depths
(00:32):
of addiction. And one of those organizations is called the
Other Side Academy. And joining me now is a guy
you may have heard the last time he was on
the show. Bill, a caller to the show several years ago,
was at rock bottom, as they say, and I said, Bill,
you got to go to the Other Side Academy. And
then we hung up the phone call on I was
pretty sure Bill wasn't going to go to the Other
(00:52):
Side Academy. But lo and behold, he went to the
Other Side Academy. And now is a successful Are you
full graduate now, Bill?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Not yet? I graduate in May, in May a master student.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
You're a master student at the other side academy and
joining me also is Keith?
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Now, Keith, what is your where?
Speaker 4 (01:09):
Where's your role?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Get right on that mic, where's your role at the
other side Academy?
Speaker 4 (01:13):
I'm the same as Bill, I'm a master student. Yep,
we work together in the warehouse.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
So how did you end up at the other side?
Speaker 4 (01:20):
I was just a decade long drug addict, very bottom
of the barrel, drug addict, homeless, out of options. I've
gotten to numerous rehabs, and I have enough of a
ability that I could talk my way out of any rehab.
I was really you can say, I'm really good at rehabbing.
I was really really good at it. I could tell
I can tell you. I can tell anybody anything they
want to hear. Right. So for me, it was going
(01:42):
to have to be something drastically different, something free, because
I'd run out of any kind of financial options, right,
and something where I was going to be held account
a point, and something where I was just gonna have
to learn a completely new way of life because the
way I'd been living for a decade didn't work for me.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
And I had the opportunity very recently to go and
speak to the the participants at the Other Side Academy,
and this program is so incredibly cool and powerful, and
I want to kind of speak to what you just
said there, Keith. What made this different? Why did this
stick well for.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Someone like me? I mean, I'm a master manipulator, and
I'm a master at believing my own dishonesty. My main
core issue was dishonesty. And so it took me being
in a program where I was going to be held
account well by fifty other master manipulators who could spot
every tale I had that I was bessing or that
I wasn't being completely truthful. It took that kind of
(02:34):
peer accountability to really get me to take a look
at what was really going on with me. Because I
can tell you if I was one on one with
a therapist, I can say the most beautiful things about
Freud Nietzsche, and I could tell everything I want to hear.
But it was when I was with someone like Bill,
someone who'd been on the street, someone who was an addict,
who knew how to gain the system, and he could
tell Hey, hey, you're not being completely forthcoming right now.
(02:55):
That was the only thing that could work for me.
I was so far gone. My moral compass had completely degenerated.
I had no semblance of any kind of honesty with
myself or others. And it wasn't until I was in
a facility with a bunch of other dishonest people that
I was able to really see that and start to
work on it.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
We were talking when I was there about certain things
in the program that I found fascinating, and I'm going
to ask you about this bill, the notion that you
guys have meetings where people can say you did something
wrong and you're not allowed to respond. You just have
to sit and take it. But the reason for doing
that is to force that kind of accountability that Keith
(03:30):
is talking about. Is that the kind of thing that
makes the other side academy work? And is that the
kind of thing that really truly changes behavior for me?
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Yes, it is, because a lot of times we want
to fight back somebody's telling us something. Excuse me, we
don't want to believe it, we don't want to hear it.
Most of the time because what they're telling us is
true and it hurts right and it hits, and we
immediately want to deflect or we want to blame somebody
else when you're forced to sit there and take a
look at your actions through somebody else's eyes. Because I've
(04:02):
lived my life and I've seen my life through my
own eyes, and for me, a lot of the stuff
I do is okay. But when Key sits there and
tells me, Bill, you did this today or you made
a comment like this today, and here's how it affect right,
I appreciate it and this is why. And I have
to sit there and I have to take a look
at that and go, okay, well, this is something I've
(04:22):
done my whole life. Maybe other people around me have
felt the same way, but they haven't said it, either
afraid to or they just didn't care enough, or they.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Knew you would be angry in response, so there wasn't
any point, right, right, Does that kind of approach wear
down that hard?
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Outer?
Speaker 4 (04:39):
BSL Absolutely Like when you have to recall anything about yourself,
nine tens out of ten you tell it as you're
either the hero with a complete victim. Right, So when
you get to hear it from people, and you get
to hear other people, multiple people's perception of something that
you did where you thought you were either the hero
of the victim, and you were neither. You're actually a perpetrator. Yeah,
you know, it's a sobering effect. Especially for me. I
(05:01):
would think, well, this person, they don't really know what
they're talking about. But when I heard it from five
or six different people twice a week for a year,
I kind of had to. I didn't really have another
choice other than other than to believe that, yeah, they're
probably telling the truth and that I was seeing things
in a distorted way.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Was there a was there.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
A distinct moment, or was there a single event or
was it all an accumulation of this that made you go,
wait a minute, they may be onto something.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
For me, it was just that I just believed all
the rhetoric that went on in my head all the
time for my whole life about how I thought I
was so smart, nobody really knew anything. It was one
I got a group. They're called groups. I got a
group where somebody looked at me and said, you're completely
incompetent when it comes to telling the truth. Wow, And
no one has ever told me I was incompetent in anything.
(05:46):
So when I heard that I was incompetent at telling
the truth. It stung me, and I had to take
a look at it, and I realized that actually I was.
I had no idea what the truth was with myself
or with anybody else.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Do you think, I mean, where did all these defense mechanisms,
because all that's a defense mechanism that you're describing, Where
did that come from?
Speaker 4 (06:01):
I think it comes from. I mean, it comes from
a lot of the way I was raised, but it's
just a lot of the way I was able to
survive on the streets, or the way that I was
able to just do everything my whole life. I didn't
have to put a lot of effort in. I could
talk my way out of anything, and when somebody would
confront me with something ugly, I had the ability to
tell myself something that I believed and then tell them
whatever they wanted to hear. Right, I have some severe
(06:24):
codependency issues where I don't really care how I'm doing inside.
I care more or less what you think I'm doing, right,
how I look, I sound, how you're fronting, Yes, exactly.
So for me, my defense mechanism is, let's just push
off what actually didn't let's make myself sound good or
look good in that moment.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
So the Other Side Academy is a commitment. How many
months are is the program? How how long are people there?
Speaker 4 (06:45):
Thirty months, two and a half years.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
And they commit to living there being there.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
On Yeah, we lived together, we work together, we eat together.
You know, we you know, we get to know each
other probably better than most of our families know each
other from constantly being around each other, being in the
groups and seeing the behaviors, the good, the bad, and
the ugly.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
We see it all.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
We see all of it, you know, because people come
in there and when we're like everybody, they come in there,
they want to put that front up. But as you
stay there, you know, the real youth starts showing and
those behaviors start showing, and people point that out to you.
But it's I mean, it's it's a family. We were
a family. I've have brothers and sisters.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
One of the things that I like about the Other
Side Academy is immediately as soon as people come in,
they immediately start participating in the financial side of things.
So you guys have the moving company, you have the
furniture to teach, so people are actively engaged in supporting
the Other Side Academy as they are benefiting from the
Other Side Academy. But this is an expensive program. You
(07:51):
guys have a beautiful space. You've got another house coming
up for women, which is something I want to talk
about because we had stepped inver On earlier. They don't
accept women. The Other Side Academy does accept women. Yes,
do we have a women's house as well?
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yes, we do.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
I will say this.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
You have to go in sober, yes, And you have
to have an interview process, which sounds terrifying.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
I mean this sounds terrifying.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
It's rigorous.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
We're going to point some it's older students that are
going to interview you. When you come in and sit
on the bench. Myself and Keith are interviewers, and we're
gonna we're.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Gonna poke the front right.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
We're going to ask you about yourself and we're gonna
tell you some things about yourself that you probably don't
want to hear, but there's a reason for it. And
we're also going to make sure that you're a right
fit for us, and we're a right fit for you,
because we're not going to let anybody that's prone to
violence come inside the house or anything like that that's
never happened in our house since not tolerated. But we
just want to make sure that you're the right fit
(08:45):
and you want help, because you have to actually want
the help.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
And to be clear, you know, Step has a lot
of guys off the streets, but you guys have a
lot of people that are into versionary programs, so they
have the option of going through treatment or being incarcerated,
and that's a big motivator. But you still have to say,
we're not gonna put up with violence or any of
that stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
A lot of the guys though, when they come in,
there's a lot of people that come in there just
to beat a sentence. Right. We have a lot of
people now that you know, after the two and a
half years is over, Like myself, I'm committed to stay
in a third year. Keith is committed to staying a
third year to give back. You have a lot of
people that once they embrace the program and they see
the changes in them, the bridges that they're rebuilding with
(09:27):
their family, they are truly invested in it.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
I mean, I think this program is amazing.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
It is doing incredible work right here in Denver at
a place in time when we need it desperately. If
you have a little extra money to throw at the
Other Side Academy, I put a link to their Colorado
Gives a page on the blog today, or you can
go to Colorado gives dot org, search the Other Side
Academy and give them your money. Bill and Keith, thanks
for coming in today. I really appreciate it.
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