Life After Skid Row at 19, Going to Treatment 60 Times, and My Dog and My Truck Getting Stolen by a Woman I Met in Detox

Matt Handy (00:00:03):
I am Matt Handy, and you're listening to My Last Relapse. Okay. So Robert Braun, how are you doing?

 

Robert (00:00:13):
Doing all right. Been a long day dealing with clients, but overall good.

 

Matt Handy (00:00:18):
So we've talked a little bit and I've asked you to come on mostly because of who you are and your recovery, right?

 

Robert (00:00:30):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:00:32):
So tell me a little bit about you.

 

Robert (00:00:35):
About me. My recovery started in my mid twenties and opened the door for everything for me. Wandered around most people, questioning purpose, the meaning of life even, but kind of just miserable trying to find something. And when recovery started becoming a consistent part of my life, it was this unique feeling that I think only those with addiction or addiction problems that recover can get to feel or experience. Of course, my journey has the stories and the occurrences of use, but growing as an individual once I got sober is probably the coolest thing. And the people I meet. So I don't know. There's lots of parts of my story. I was in the military for a little while. I grew up overseas in Singapore. I moved to California, played football in college there, and then I moved to Florida chasing the football dream.

 

Matt Handy (00:01:50):
When it became a consistent part of your life, what does that mean?

 

Robert (00:01:54):
So I first entered treatment at 17, and that was when I kind of knew I had a problem, but did not want to accept it. The painkillers, the heroin, the Dilaudid, it had a hold on me. It filled that void, it quieted my mind and it told me everything was going to be okay.

 

Matt Handy (00:02:22):
Oh yeah.

 

Robert (00:02:23):
And I thought that I couldn't use it. I thought that I couldn't live life without it, and I always went back to it. So I racked up probably about 55, 60 treatment stents between detox to IOP all throughout the country. My family had access to, well, not my family's a little, they have good resources available to them and insurance plans. And I flew all over to get treatment. And so once I was 2020 is when that started becoming pretty consistent where it was no longer two days, three days a week. It was three months, nine months a year.

 

Matt Handy (00:03:12):
Staying clean at a time.

 

Robert (00:03:13):
Yes.

 

Matt Handy (00:03:14):
Yeah. So 50 legitimately 50, 60,

 

Robert (00:03:18):
Including IOPs,

 

Matt Handy (00:03:19):
Detoxes and I. Oh, okay. Okay.

 

Robert (00:03:21):
Yes. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:03:23):
So I think you have the record for the show so far. That is a lot of treatment.

 

Robert (00:03:28):
It was a lot.

 

Matt Handy (00:03:29):
How much time total have you done in treatment?

 

Robert (00:03:32):
I'd have to count. So I'm not a day counter. I don't do the days. That's just not me.

 

Matt Handy (00:03:36):
I don't either.

 

Robert (00:03:39):
The way I teach it to my clients now is I've adopted it as a way of life. Recovery is a part of me, just like I say, when people join a faith or a church and they accept the Jesus our God, you don't count days since then. And so I don't count the days, but if I had to estimate, it would probably be two or three years of my life in an institution that was treatment, not jail or prison.

 

Matt Handy (00:04:09):
That's like, I don't know what your walk in recovery looks like. And we will get into all that, but I am not a 12 step guy, and I have always the whole counting days thing, and I get why a lot of people put a lot of premium on that. But then somebody told me one day, he was like, stop counting days, make days count. And I was like, fuck. I was like, okay, alright. And it's little things like that that I have picked up over the stupid amount of time that I spent in treatment. I haven't done a lot of different treatment. I've been to treatment seven times. And in that seven times I've done a wide variety of treatment. I did a work therapy place for a year. I did a Synanon based program for a long time. I've done faith-based programs, I've done, and then I've done the 12 step programs. I've done, let's see, therapeutic communities,

 

Robert (00:05:17):
Like prison type environment.

 

Matt Handy (00:05:20):
And then they are a prison type environment for sure. But this was actually, I robbed a bank and was facing 33 years and I got sent to a therapeutic community. It was, I guess for the audience, it's a sentence diversion, but really what it was was Delancey Street in California is this place that it's been around since the seventies. And it's like where California sends people, if they are facing a life sentence or if they're coming out of a life sentence to reintegrate back into society. The thing is, it is a secret society in and of itself. And so when you send people into these therapeutic communities to reintegrate back into society, that is not what's happening there at all. It is, its got its own lingo. You end up joining a way of life that it's completely isolated from the rest of the world. And it isn't like, so the people who are running that program, there is no staff. Everybody that runs it is clients. There's a minimum of two years, but there are people that have been in that program for 40 plus years. Whoa. So I mean, they meet their wives there, they have their kids there, they have their dogs.

 

Robert (00:06:43):
Oh, okay. So it you can build a life in that program

 

Matt Handy (00:06:47):
For sure.

 

Robert (00:06:48):
Wow.

 

Matt Handy (00:06:48):
It isn't like a, you're going to learn how to function like a normal human being. You're going to learn how to function within this society.

 

Robert (00:06:56):
Yeah. Dang.

 

Matt Handy (00:06:58):
And I do owe it a lot. I learned a lot of really, really valuable lessons there. But it's definitely not a place that a healthy, you should never send a 17-year-old that is struggling with heroin addiction there. That's not the kind of place that they should go.

 

Robert (00:07:13):
It doesn't sound like it,

 

Matt Handy (00:07:15):
But it's interesting because you've done a lot of treatment, and one of the things that I have been posing to the guests lately is this hypothetical, because the landscape of addiction has changed, of addiction, has changed drastically with the introduction of fentanyl.

 

Robert (00:07:32):
It has

 

Matt Handy (00:07:33):
To the drug supply. So I always give this hypothetical, and I tell him, how do you deal with a client who's 19 years old who is injecting fentanyl, his family's forcing him to go to treatment, and all everybody knows he's going to relapse. How do you deal with that? How do you address that situation? How do we basically lessen the chances of this kid going out there and dying? The reality is that's the leading cause of death for people under 40. And a situation like that. You are setting this kid up to die.

 

Robert (00:08:07):
Right? A hundred percent.

 

Matt Handy (00:08:09):
And so that's a really hard situation that I'm looking at these realities as we build this company out. It's like, is that an ethical line? Is that a moral line? Are we talking about turning somebody like that away and letting somebody else make those bad decisions where it's like, I know there's treatment centers out there that don't care enough to say, well, we know he's going to die, but we're going to take him. It's money

 

Robert (00:08:34):
Policy. Yeah. You got a policy. Come on. Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (00:08:37):
Yeah, for sure. If you have a policy, you're for sure going in there.

 

Robert (00:08:41):
Oh yeah, they're going to help you.

 

Matt Handy (00:08:43):
Yeah.

 

Robert (00:08:44):
Yeah. That's a tough one.

 

Matt Handy (00:08:45):
It is.

 

Robert (00:08:46):
And it hits hard, right? Because that's part of my story, being 19 and doing that. But also, I lost a client last week that was really close to me. She was 25. And I care deeply for her as I do all my clients. But every once in a while you get one that's kind of closer to the heart for sure. And I wonder that that same question, now granted that's a little bit older, but how do you get through to them? How do you help them? And that's a hard question to answer.

 

Matt Handy (00:09:28):
And the hypothetical is really a thought experiment and a thought exercise around family work. And in the industry we fail on that too.

 

Robert (00:09:39):
Oh yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:09:39):
It's, there's so much. First of all, addiction is messy. Recovery is messy. It's multifaceted. It's complicated in more than just one way. It's complicated on so many fronts. And when you've got clients that, especially young clients, and there's these two extreme ends of young clients where it's like they're still close enough to their trauma, where they want to address it. And then the other opposite extreme end is they're still close to it. They're just trying to avoid it. I was the 19-year-old that was in prison, and then ended up in treatment for the first time at 21, and still hadn't realized I got out of prison at 21 and ended up in treatment a few months later. But that was the first time that I realized that I was a drug addict. And I'd been sliming heroin since I was 17, all through prison

 

Robert (00:10:41):
Finally. Hit you though.

 

Matt Handy (00:10:42):
Yeah.

 

Robert (00:10:43):
Damn.

 

Matt Handy (00:10:44):
Yeah. Yeah. And how that ended up happening was, I still remember the shocking realization. Like, oh my gosh, I'm a drug addict. Because my dad, basically, I told on myself to him, because I was messing around with somebody who was being vindictive and said that she was going to tell my parents that I had relapsed. And the reality is, I didn't relapse. I never stopped using it, but I had to be like Dad. I called him at three in the morning and told him, dad, I got to tell you something and mom can't hear this. And so he got out of bed and this is my dad. It's

 

Robert (00:11:22):
Right.

 

Matt Handy (00:11:24):
The epitome of how much he cares. He gets out bed, and this dude is like a worker gets out of bed at three in the morning, goes and hides in the closet, or goes to the bathroom or something. He's like, okay, what? I was like, I relapsed. And it's funny, I even used that terminology, but still hadn't dawned on me. So he was like, what, dude? You've been doing so good. You got out of prison and you're doing this and you're doing that. I'm like, dude, what are you some kind of addict? And I was like, oh my God, I'm a drug addict. And it was like this hard realization. That was my first moment of clarity around my addiction. And I'm talking about there was already, I'm the oldest 10 kids, and so I was kicked out at 16, basically. They were like, you can't be doing this shit. We have really little kids here. You got to go. And that wasn't a warning to me or a wake up call at all. It was like, okay, cool. Now I got to do my own thing.

 

Robert (00:12:24):
Yeah, no rules now.

 

Matt Handy (00:12:25):
Yeah.

 

Robert (00:12:25):
Yep. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:12:27):
Damn. Yeah. So treatment for you. Have you done ran the gamut of all different types of treatment too?

 

Robert (00:12:34):
A hundred percent. I wanted to touch, before I get into that, about with the hypothetical and as an industry, I do believe we fall short heavily on the family side of this, but that would be my answer or approach would be surround them with family. It is such an important piece of recovery, especially in the beginning. It can be used to not save their life, but just to change it really. If you surround them with family and really open the doors for communication, but as you know, the willingness has to be there. They have to want to stop. But going back to this question, I've been to all types of treatment centers, so

 

Matt Handy (00:13:27):
Wait, let's continue down this road for a second. It is one thing to try to raise awareness around the family dynamic. The hard part is doing the family work. First of all, we don't get paid for that. There is no medical billing code for family work. There's no medical billing code for family therapy. All that work is free. And so as an industry at large, there are a lot of operating procedures and policies around stuff that it's like, if it doesn't benefit us, we're not doing it. So another hard thing about the family work is it requires them to get honest about their part in it. And so for a mom or a dad to have to look at what their part is, at least, because one of the things that I really try to hammer on is the fact that they are constantly interfering with people's ability to benefit from their own suffering. They're always stepping in. They're always trying to help curb the consequences,

 

Robert (00:14:37):
Lessen the blows,

 

Matt Handy (00:14:39):
Or when it's raining outside, they'll allow 'em to come in. Or if they're really, really hungry, they'll give 'em 20 bucks. And it's like there are lessons behind every single moment, and there is a benefit to every bit of suffering. And when you rob them of those opportunities to suffer, when you take responsibility for somebody, you are now taking responsibility from that person. And now you are contributing. And it's like families end up living in one of two ways. They either love with their time or with their money. It's hardly ever both. You will see those families where it's like they'll just give 'em money, but they don't want 'em around. Or you'll see them where it's like, you can come spend time around us, but won't give you money. It's hardly ever the same. It's hardly ever both of them.

 

Robert (00:15:28):
Yeah, I would completely agree with that. That's definitely what you see. Or the doors closed and they've put the boundaries up and I'm not speaking to you for a year.

 

Matt Handy (00:15:39):
So those families are ready to do the work though,

 

Robert (00:15:41):
Right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I get what you're saying. They definitely, because now they've set that boundary and yeah, they give them, what was it you said? They give 'em the money for food. The biggest thing that I hear with the family members from moms more so is they're afraid to lose that communication. They believe that as long as I'm there and I enable 'em, at least they'll talk to me about the problem that's going on. And like you said in the beginning, addiction's changed. A lot of people don't get a second chance.

 

Matt Handy (00:16:18):
No, for sure. Not only do they not get a second chance. Second chances are a gift that we squander in addiction. And so it turns into third and fourth and fifth chances, at least it did for me. Heroin was safe, relatively safe compared to fentanyl.

 

Robert (00:16:36):
Yes.

 

Matt Handy (00:16:38):
And what ends up happening is as the addict, we end up understanding the pattern of codependency, and maybe not in those terms, but codependency and enabling, and we know how to manipulate it. So we lie and we cheat, and we take, and we only give problems. And the moms rights, you're right. The moms just want the communication. The addict just wants the money. The addict just doesn't want to sleep in the rain,

 

Robert (00:17:06):
Tell mom just enough to get the little bit of money or the roof for the night, and then I don't speak to her until I need something again.

 

Matt Handy (00:17:14):
Exactly. And they think that it's communication, but really it's all deception and it's a hard thing to have to open their eyes to that. And so that family that has set the boundary, I feel like families that have already gotten to that point of setting boundaries, there's one of two things. They are either sick of getting burned by that person, or they actually understand what's going on.

 

Robert (00:17:39):
They've went and got some work done and went to Al-Anon or something, right,

 

Matt Handy (00:17:43):
Something. Or they've seen a family member go through it, or there's some awareness around it. Definitely. But that is, I mean, you probably see this all the time. That is a rare thing. That is not the typical. That is not the normal thing.

 

Robert (00:17:57):
No.

 

Matt Handy (00:17:58):
The normal thing is there's enabling and there's codependency still. And in order to really peel that back, you have to accept that you fucked up to, and parents want to just love their kids. First of all, they don't want 'em to die. Second of all, that is their child. They're supposed to protect them, and they failed. They didn't really fail. Maybe there's failings in parenting or whatever, but that's the hardest job in the world. There is no playbook. There is no instruction manual. When that baby comes out, it's like most people start growing up at that moment.

 

Robert (00:18:33):
You're

 

Matt Handy (00:18:34):
Right.

 

Robert (00:18:34):
Got to get my shit together. I got a kid now.

 

Matt Handy (00:18:38):
And so it's like the family work. Not only are we failing, the industry is failing. We're not just failing the family. We are in turn failing our obligation to the clients. Because if we can't send a healing person into a sick family dynamic and expect them to stay healing, they will immediately go back into their family role. And it's like historically, the people who just wanted them to go to treatment and just wanted them to get better and would help them in any way possible when they get clean, they're just pissed off at this person. And they're pointing fingers and Well, what about this? And let me see your eyes, and I'm going to drug test you when you come home. And it's like all of those things are barriers and friction points that the addict will use as a perfect excuse to just go back out.

 

Robert (00:19:31):
Yeah. Fuck it. You don't believe me anyway, so I'm going to do it.

 

Matt Handy (00:19:33):
Yep.

 

Robert (00:19:34):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:19:34):
Yeah. So yeah, the key to that, I mean, the answer that I like to find in that thought experiment is really the family work. Because ultimately we may not be able to sell this person on recovery. He's 19. He's 19. At 19, I wasn't getting sober for shit. And at 21, a little bit older way dumber because now I've done prison time. Now I've really experienced the actual benefits of addiction, the soothing, the consistency, the solace in the drugs. I have found the answer. And so as you grow into that addiction, I always say that it's like an abusive marriage. Drug addiction is a lot abusive marriage. And in that, it's like there's the honeymoon phase, and then there is reality hits, and then it's the abuse cycle, and then it's your fall out of love with each other. And then if the addiction runs its logical course, you end up desperate to get away from it. And so it's just this abuse of marriage where you're deeply in love

 

Robert (00:20:52):
And you're afraid to leave. You're afraid to lose that person, but the substance,

 

Matt Handy (00:20:56):
Right?

 

Robert (00:20:57):
Yeah. I like that. I like that.

 

Matt Handy (00:21:00):
And the longer your relationship lasts with whatever substance it is, and I speak from a heroin addict's perspective, that is a uniquely comforting drug. It is. Alcohol is not a comforting drug. Meth is not a comforting drug. Cracking cocaine are not comforting drugs. Heroin is a very comforting drug. And one of the things that I've definitely identified in my, so I was sexually abused as a kid, and one of the things that I found was that because of these walls that I'd set up around myself, around telling the truth specifically, I didn't have to face that truth or talk about it because I found this blanket slated

 

Robert (00:21:47):
Blanket that keeps me, I'm good now.

 

Matt Handy (00:21:50):
And it does something really specific to that trauma. It really quiets it down. And so yeah, the family piece to that is massively important. And I feel like we neglect that wholesale across the board. And I'm not saying this is a hundred percent of all treatment centers. I've heard of some legendary family programs where it's like, not only is it a great program, but they have an amazing family program too.

 

Robert (00:22:18):
Interesting.

 

Matt Handy (00:22:20):
And I look up to those places as an example of what I want to give to our clients. But wholesale, the majority of what's going on is not that.

 

Robert (00:22:33):
Yeah, I would definitely agree. Even back when I was in that cycle, I went to a facility that was cash pay only. It was 70,000 a month, minimal family work. Minimal. It was just all me, me working on that trauma, I share that experience with you as well. That happened to me and let's work on that. But never working on the family unit. We don't have 10, I'm number two of five. Never worked on it, just all me. I like that. That's a really good thing to strive for. So important.

 

Matt Handy (00:23:11):
So important. It is. It's aside from the trauma work, I think that it is the key to most people's success. If you can insulate yourself with people that love you, who understand what's going on on a level that's not normal because it's 2025, nobody's healthy anymore.

 

Robert (00:23:31):
No,

 

Matt Handy (00:23:33):
There's no healthy communication. The actual tolerance for open dialogue has shrunk to almost nothing. There is thought wars going on and Infowars going on, and it's like nobody wants to actually communicate anymore. It's like the crux of all healthy healing is communication. And we've forgotten that. We've forgotten how to communicate. I mean, you look at kids, they are avoidant to the point of they don't talk to their parents. They will text them. They live in the same house, and then we'll text them.

 

Robert (00:24:05):
Yeah, I'm upstairs and just shoot a text for dinner. Go down, check in with mom.

 

Matt Handy (00:24:12):
Yeah. How old are you?

 

Robert (00:24:13):
I am 33. 33,

 

Matt Handy (00:24:14):
Okay. So pretty much I'm 36.

 

Robert (00:24:16):
Okay.

 

Matt Handy (00:24:17):
Right.

 

Robert (00:24:18):
Basically

 

Matt Handy (00:24:18):
The same. I'm part of the last generation that didn't have a high school, a phone in high school.

 

Robert (00:24:23):
Yeah, I had one. That makes sense.

 

Matt Handy (00:24:28):
Yeah.

 

Robert (00:24:29):
I like that. With the communication I had something I was going to say, oh, this is it with the communication. And we live in a culture where it's just not as encouraged or as important or a foundation of it. It's not at present in recovery. That communication was so important to me. No one was closer to me than my mother and my father in early sobriety, in sobriety in general, until I met my wife and then my wife became that. I still call my parents almost every day. That's awesome. And my brothers and my sisters, I talk to them frequently, but having that communication open and being able to talk to my youngest sister who watched me go through all of the shit I went through and be able to have a conversation with her and just I'm struggling today. That's healing. That's healing

 

Matt Handy (00:25:25):
For sure. And also that is still not normal. Within recovery. I feel like we also insulate ourselves in a bubble. We get comfortable with other people in recovery. And I feel like we still do a really poor job of fixing family dynamics. And honestly, we're not taught to

 

Robert (00:25:50):
No, it's not in the 12 steps. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:25:53):
Yeah.

 

Robert (00:25:54):
We're not in smart recovery.

 

Matt Handy (00:25:56):
We're not taught to heal that family dynamic. And so in my personal journey is I was probably the leading cause of all family friction. And I'm 36 now. I recent, I didn't talk to my family for 10 plus years and I left and it was like the family all came together. So I've returned to the family now, and it's still just a struggle, a massive struggle. I've got an entire 106 people directly related to me have moved here from California. And I think on average I talk to two a week.

 

Robert (00:26:40):
Would you say that that's on both sides or is it primarily their side where the communication is just not occurring or just in general?

 

Matt Handy (00:26:48):
The family dynamic is such that, well, we're not healthy. They are healthy. My relationship with them is not healthy, and it's on both sides. There just isn't open communication. Now, I will say this, my dad has been my greatest advocate my entire life, even through all the bullshit, greatest advocate in my entire life. And then I'm in business with my brother. So my brother and I talk four or five times a day, and then I talk to my dad probably once a day. We text. And that relationship has never been strained in the same way that the rest of the relationships have. And I left. They were kids, I came back, they were adults with kids and lives and families of their own and stuff like that. So it's like I missed out on them becoming grownups, and now they just do their own thing. And so I've accepted that this is probably how it's going to be, but it's consequences for my actions. So I mean, I've accepted that and I'm sure down the line somewhere this may change. But I also come from a line of people. My mom didn't talk to her parents for 20 years. And so it's kind of like a family thing where it's like if you have friction, you just don't talk

 

Robert (00:28:16):
Almost like a family trauma or the family curse. It's just generational. We didn't talk to our parents and I passed that on to my kids. I think that ties into what you said. We live in a society and a culture where that's okay. It's acceptable. It's acceptable to text your kids and not speak to them for the whole day. And they're 12,

 

Matt Handy (00:28:42):
Which is crazy.

 

Robert (00:28:43):
When has that ever been an acceptable thing in society? Never. But we have phones now and we have technology, and I'm not going to speak about this difficult event. I'm going to share a TikTok video or I'm going to watch someone live their life on YouTube and I'm not going to communicate about it. I'm not going to talk to mom. I'm not going to talk to dad. We're going to play video games together and have a good night.

 

Matt Handy (00:29:06):
Yeah.

 

Robert (00:29:06):
And that's it.

 

Matt Handy (00:29:07):
Yeah. I mean, evolutionarily, we were not made for this.

 

Robert (00:29:10):
No,

 

Matt Handy (00:29:11):
Hell no. Things changed gradually over hundreds if not thousands of years. And it was like basically when you look at the ultimate timeline, it's like overnight humans became partially cyborg. We are a piece of us is now a phone. It's literally a piece of us.

 

Robert (00:29:35):
Could you imagine the look, if you don't have a phone on you, you go to a marketing event or even a family function and you don't have your phone on you, people would be talking about That's so weird. What's wrong with that person? Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:29:49):
Yeah. I mean, so I got my first social media profile for the first time I got an Instagram around this podcast. The last social media profile that I had was MySpace.

 

Robert (00:30:02):
When Tom was your friend back in the day.

 

Matt Handy (00:30:04):
Yep. My first friend. Yeah.

 

Robert (00:30:05):
Hell yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:30:06):
And I did that on purpose. I didn't want my family to find me. And I used to tell people, this is what I actually used to tell people. The government can track me. I'm a conspiracy enthusiast. And I used to tell people that it was for government reasons, but the reality was I didn't want my family to find me.

 

Robert (00:30:25):
Because of what?

 

Matt Handy (00:30:27):
So when I left my family, I had an uncle that had just burned every bridge in the family. And I watched that happen. And when I made the decision to leave for good, the dialogue in my head was, I can do what Josh did and play the half in half out game and completely fuck every chance that I ever have to come back for real, and I can just benefit for now or I can leave, do my thing, do whatever I have to do and then come back when I'm actually ready. So it was a very intentional, like I am cutting ties. They didn't want me around either. At that point it was like, but I am not going to do this where I'm playing this half in, half out game. And I went out and I went hard and I came back when I was ready. So family work massively important. Massively, massively neglected, right within the industry. So tell me about your treatment episodes.

 

Robert (00:31:36):
Oh, which one? I did

 

Matt Handy (00:31:39):
Start with the first one. I want to hear the

 

Robert (00:31:41):
First one,

 

Matt Handy (00:31:41):
The progression on how your recovery became a more consistent thing still.

 

Robert (00:31:47):
Okay. So the first one was in intensive outpatient here in Conroe. And I'll put an asterisk on this side note. I have spoken to that counselor that was there recently. He doesn't remember me. I remember him and I actually did a little step work with him, which was a really cool kind of full circle thing.

 

(00:32:10):
When I went there, I told them I had a problem. I was like, I'm ready to go inpatient. I'm ready to do treatment. I can't keep doing this. And he convinced myself and my family that outpatient's enough, you don't need to go inpatient while I'm actively shooting heroin still. And I didn't stop. Of course I didn't stop. As soon as I tried to, the withdrawals kicked in and I went back to it of course, and then that window closed and I no longer was willing to seek help. So I left that program and continued to rip and run until I went into my first inpatient treatment. And my first inpatient treatment was primarily for college age. So I was quite young still for that group of people, but it had former and current athletes, professional athletes in it. And I made at the time a great friend who was a current major league baseball player, a little bit older than me, but we clicked because he didn't give a shit and I didn't really give a shit.

 

(00:33:19):
I was a kid and got into some interesting things with him. There was no desire. Then the desire to start maintaining sobriety came probably a year later, more pain. Ultimately what it took was my family putting that wall up and cutting me off completely. A hundred percent, no, nothing. It progressively got worse as far as enabling, like we were talking about where mom could no longer send me money, then dad would no longer then well, can't be at the house. That was one of the first things to go when the cops got there. It was when they cut all funding, we're not paying your phone, we're not paying for your insurance anymore. We're not paying anything you want to continue to use. We will love you from afar,

 

(00:34:20):
But we cannot participate in this anymore. That is when treatment really started hitting, hitting hard. Every time I went to treatment, I learned something most of the times, some of them I didn't. I was just fucking off or about women and I ran out with a girl and the love of my life, I learned something at the most of them. At the end, when I went through my trauma, I repressed that memory of me being molested for my entire life. Until then, I didn't even realize it. It was the therapist at the time. One of the other clients in the room was talking about a trauma that happened to them and he was observing my body language and asked me to share. And then it kind of just came to me at that moment. I knew something happened, but my brain locked those memories away for sure. And I started to realize that that event was kind of the core of my control issues and needing to be in control of everything tied to my use of anabolic steroids with wanting to be bigger and stronger than anyone. So I will never be in that position again where someone can hurt me.

 

(00:35:39):
So I learned that was huge. I used after that event or that time in treatment months later, it was the family with the family is when it really, that's when it stuck for me. When that happened and I didn't want to lose the people that I loved the most. My father told me that you might give up. What was it? I have to remember it. I'm going to butcher it on the spot now. We're not giving up on you, so you better not give up on yourself. That hit me at the moment. It hit me really hard because I did not want to lose them. I didn't want my parents to bury me as no parents should have to.

 

(00:36:26):
So going, rewinding back in the story, several treatments in the greater Houston area, we tried the geographic change at 19 and that's when I moved to California. And California is where I received a lot of that trauma. Therapy ultimately got back into school. That's where my college football started, fractured my femur, ended my college football career, introduced me to another level of my addiction being going to skid row at 19. And it was interesting. There's so much that can be learned, and I love that question you asked because I am putting myself back into those moments of all these days. If someone could have said something different to me, if there would've been this type of therapy, I don't know. That's a hard one.

 

Matt Handy (00:37:28):
So there are a couple things that have been said to me that clicked so hard. And I always say, man, if somebody would've told me that at specific moments in my life, things could have been different. And one of them was, so I'm a certified peer and family specialist in that training. It's one of my friends that owns the training company. And when him and I were talking about peer support, that's a whole different mindset around recovery because it isn't within a framework of a traditional recovery structure. And really what it is, is you are just a peer trying to help another peer. And the whole philosophy around it, he said, how do you know when somebody's in recovery? He asked me that, how do you know when somebody's in recovery?

 

Robert (00:38:25):
That's the question for me. Yeah. How do I know when someone's in recovery? Probably the follow through or the genuine compassion of how's your day going when you can see it on someone? How's your day going? Good. No man, seriously, how are you doing,

 

Matt Handy (00:38:45):
Dude, let's talk about that in a little bit.

 

Robert (00:38:47):
Okay?

 

Matt Handy (00:38:47):
Yeah, let's talk about that specifically how we are desensitized to what language actually is.

 

Robert (00:38:53):
Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (00:38:54):
Let's bring that back up.

 

Robert (00:38:55):
Okay, I like that.

 

Matt Handy (00:38:57):
So yeah, that care,

 

Robert (00:38:59):
That's what I think

 

Matt Handy (00:39:00):
Is, so you are saying that you can know when somebody's in recovery, when they're actually emulating those principles

 

Robert (00:39:07):
And the values, their actions are aligning with it.

 

Matt Handy (00:39:11):
So he told me the answer that he told me was, they're in recovery when and if they say they are, bam. I was like, dude, if somebody would've told me that I can be in recovery today if I choose to be, and I worked towards that goal of abstinence, things could have changed a long time ago because I thought recovery was this beast of a mountain that I had to tackle around being completely abstinent before you're in recovery that I was like, oh my gosh. Right? So that was one thing, right? If somebody would've told me that when I was 19, my journey with harm reduction and my journey with the way that I framed recovery could have been totally different.

 

Robert (00:39:52):
I like that. I'm taking that. It's

 

Matt Handy (00:39:54):
True for sure. All the literature points to it and people say it all the time. I can't tell you what your recovery is. People say it all the time. But when you put it like that where it's like you can choose to be in recovery right now,

 

Robert (00:40:10):
Just say you are. I am in recovery. Yeah, I like that. That's good.

 

Matt Handy (00:40:14):
Yeah. Dang. So it's like recovery happens over a long period of time too. You can have years, decades clean and still be in the process of recovering. And then I know people are, it's like I've met them and they were a year sober and they attacked it full force head on and you would easily say, this person has done an immaculate job with their recovery and they're recovering. Right? And then there's the old timer in the back of the room who's fucking miserable and he's like, I wanted to drink today and I just didn't and I made it to this meeting. So it's a victory.

 

Robert (00:40:57):
You dunno what the fuck you're talking about. You don't have as many days as me. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:41:02):
And it's like that is the last person that I want to be in the world.

 

Robert (00:41:07):
Agreed. Agreed.

 

Matt Handy (00:41:09):
So it's like recovery, super subjective, but also very easy to point to when you see it.

 

Robert (00:41:16):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:41:17):
Right. It's very easy to spot when somebody's in recovery. So let's go back to where you're at. Let's go back to your college experience.

 

Robert (00:41:29):
I didn't finish actually, I'm technically not finished still to this day yet. California is where most of that happened. Once we went down the skid row route, I did another geographic change and that is what led me to, well, I didn't continue college and Florida, that was the end of my college actually was because this was the second time in my life where what I felt like what I wanted to do with my life blew up in my fucking face. Because before that was the military and I enlisted with the Texas Army National Guard, went to basic training, was doing the deal. This is my calling, this is what I don't even think at the time. It was God wanted me to do, this is what I wanted to do. I'm going to serve our country. I'm going to go fight in this war. This is going to be me.

 

(00:42:25):
Other plans, I was diagnosed with some interesting heart conditions and a major came, it was a major or Colonel higher up came and said, Braun, you are not going to be in my army. You need to go home. You are going to hurt people with this condition. If you are out in the field and your heart has an episode or anything, your entire squad is going to die trying to get you out. So you can't be here. It's not for you. Thanks for signing the dotted line. Pack your bags. That was the first time my idea of what I was supposed to do in my life blew up. I football was the second I fractured my femur and didn't know damaged my knee permanently. It was the end of my football career. I lost my spot. I was starting no longer starting no longer on the team. What position? I was right guard, offensive line. It was a great opportunity. I was actually just in a class business law with the quarterback and they were short on offensive line members. That's not like a glory position.

 

(00:43:33):
And I was a big guy. They were like, come on. I walked in, met the coaches, signed up, and it was

 

Matt Handy (00:43:40):
At what school?

 

Robert (00:43:41):
Santa Monica College. So I was at Santa Monica College and I was in the works and talks of going to UCLA.

 

Matt Handy (00:43:47):
Cool.

 

Robert (00:43:48):
I'm not super tall. I'm right under six two, but I was really strong and really fast for an offensive line. When that happened, though, I lost that. I tried to do school just with school.

 

Matt Handy (00:44:04):
Were you wrapping up identity in these things as well? A hundred percent military football,

 

Robert (00:44:08):
A hundred percent.

 

Matt Handy (00:44:10):
Did that contribute to feeding the addiction?

 

Robert (00:44:14):
Yeah, it did. Then I lost myself back to this hollow individual, this noise, this empty, what's the purpose? What am I doing? I'm a failure. The big thing too is comparing myself to my father. We have generational. I have to surpass my dad. I have to do more than my father. I have to be more successful than him because he was more successful than his father and he was more successful than his father. And my dad left a huge fucking footprint that I probably won't in monetary ever meet up to. And that's okay. I've worked through that. Back then, no, I had to be something. I had to be someone. And when I found these things, that was my identity. I was Robert Braun, the football player, the college athlete. That was me. I was the big guy. I was the strong guy, and I was the mean guy. I was not a nice person. So yeah, when I lost that, I lost me.

 

Matt Handy (00:45:15):
It's hard to picture you mean

 

Robert (00:45:17):
I was a nasty person? I was very nasty.

 

Matt Handy (00:45:20):
So you bring up that generational leapfrogging of success, right? I think we were also some of the last generations that had that thought because the levels of success that people are reaching today, our families, our parents, that generation of people, that's unattainable for 99% of the world now. A hundred percent. And so it is really also, we are living in a time where broken families is the norm,

 

Robert (00:45:50):
Right? Single parent homes. Yeah, broken families.

 

Matt Handy (00:45:54):
So I'm pretty sure we're part of the last generations that had that philosophy baked into us.

 

Robert (00:45:58):
Yeah. Doesn't surprise me. I haven't had the opportunity to work with too many clients that long and to be able to get into the family work, partly because it's not a billable thing. But yeah, I can see that. I can see that.

 

Matt Handy (00:46:14):
Yeah. Okay, so keep going.

 

Robert (00:46:17):
So after then, there was a little shred of not wanting to let go. I don't let go of things easily. And that story with the major of the colonel was after multiple times with paperwork of me not wanting to sign to leave because I was not giving up on this dream. This is what I'm going to do. Fuck. You don't know what you're talking about. Fuck the doctors. I mean, just ignorance. Same thing with football. And so I moved to Florida to potentially play, I knew a guy out there

 

Matt Handy (00:46:54):
Like an arena football. Is that what That's a big thing out there, right?

 

Robert (00:46:58):
Yes, it is growing now. It wasn't that big then. It was. Should have never done it, but I did. And that's when I let go of that though too. I, my knee was too trashed also. I couldn't stop randomly using drugs and blowing my life up financially, stability wise, all of that. I was kind of chaotic. And that's where I landed at the watershed, which is where that number racked up really fast because of the program they have set up. They have every level of care. So their detox is two weeks. Then you go to their PHP facility for two weeks, then you do their IOP five. Yes. And they owned every piece of it. They owned multiple apartment complexes with a hundred units. The one of the detoxes was a four story hotel that had, I would probably estimate like 300 patients at a time. So I got into that whole, and that is when my addiction got really bad. Isn't that interesting when trying to get sober and it's when it got the worst and it got the worst probably for a lot of reasons, but I believe because I had no family,

 

(00:48:17):
I was away from everyone. It was just me and my fucking misery or this misery trying to fill a void, trying to find my purpose, and I was accepting the destiny of being this fucking Hollywood drug dealer, drug user guy, which is movies not real. So that's when I started doing that. Tango got involved in some programs over there where there's movies out about patient brokering is what it's called.

 

Matt Handy (00:48:52):
Yeah. Body brokers.

 

Robert (00:48:53):
Yep. Yep. Did some of that.

 

Matt Handy (00:48:55):
Kenny Chapman and that whole

 

Robert (00:48:56):
Thing lived at his facility.

 

Matt Handy (00:48:58):
Really?

 

Robert (00:48:58):
Yep. Very familiar with him.

 

Matt Handy (00:49:01):
You should talk to Ian. He just moved from Florida. Really? And he was working at treatment centers in Florida.

 

Robert (00:49:07):
Oh, that's funny.

 

Matt Handy (00:49:09):
Really talked to him.

 

Robert (00:49:10):
Okay. He's

 

Matt Handy (00:49:10):
Got stories.

 

Robert (00:49:11):
I will. We might know each other then.

 

Matt Handy (00:49:13):
You probably do. I would not be surprised. That is a small, it is a big community, but it is a small world

 

Robert (00:49:19):
And because a lot of us aren't alive anymore too.

 

Matt Handy (00:49:21):
That's true too. And a lot of people are in prison.

 

Robert (00:49:25):
Yes, rightfully so. People like Kenny Chapman. That man deserves to be in prison

 

Matt Handy (00:49:28):
For sure.

 

Robert (00:49:29):
The human trafficking. I

 

Matt Handy (00:49:30):
Was literally talking about this today about how he ran every piece of his programs, including the relapse. Including the relapse, and when you are getting ready to leave or discharge, he'll be like, I'll give you a thousand bucks and some drugs, go check back in two days.

 

Robert (00:49:48):
Yep. A hundred percent crazy. So fucked up. They'll be there with you to call your family to get money. We'll send it to the facility and they'll keep 60% and give you a little bit. And here's the clean urine. If we need one Wild, wild Marshall's kicking in the door at places,

 

Matt Handy (00:50:06):
People dying in his homes the whole night. It's really crazy. And the movie's crazy, but it's crazy in a Hollywood way, the reality of what actually happened is so crazy. Yeah, it is. It's really, really crazy. And the amount of fraud, just the amount of money and fraud when you hear about what actually happened and like pee testing three times a day, dude, the yellow gold rush. That's what they called it.

 

Robert (00:50:34):
Yeah. Yeah, that's what it was. I remember my insurance company called me. We were on a first name basis at this point, and they were discussing a UA request for a bill. It was like 110,000. They did a genetic test on me and all this. I'm like, I don't know, but I had a free house. My housing was covered, so I had no other, it's just insurance.

 

Matt Handy (00:50:58):
It's funny. Ian says it took him two years of working in treatment in Florida before he heard there was a JCO walkthrough that was going on, and that was the first time that he heard that he was actually working at an outpatient program. He was like, this is outpatient because he's from Massachusetts and where there's regular treatment, Florida has such a unique, it's a Florida model. It's called the Florida model, but it's indistinguishable between outpatient services and inpatient services and inpatient is a thing over there, but not really.

 

Robert (00:51:37):
No, not really. Yeah, not really. Definitely. It's different. I've heard it's changed a little. I only have been back to Florida once when the woman that I thought I was destined to be with took my dog and my truck on. When I was on a mission trip with my church, I had to go get back my shit for sure. But I was in recovery and sober at the time, so I didn't get to experience it. It changed the industry and it changed a lot of people's lives. It did. And families, unfortunately, a lot of people lost their lives. My OG sponsor, when I was doing the 12 steps, the same as Cornelius Fee is a legend of a man. Love him to death. He was in my wedding. I love him and I still talk to him to this day. He was a big name in that area in the West Palm Beach area in Florida. And we have a Google Drive that we share that you can just scroll for pages of lost loved ones to this. And I can't imagine the perspective of a family sending their loved one to Florida, going to a place like Kenny Chapman's believing that my son, my daughter is going to get help. They're going to, I'm get them back and then they fucking die. Or they get trafficked. Fucking, fucking heartbreaking.

 

Matt Handy (00:52:57):
And that is another complete disconnect that I talk about often is what we tell people treatment is and the reality of what happens with a client because they think they're going to go into treatment for 28 days and come out of different person. Their family's going to love them. They're going to get everything back. All of these consequences that you've been avoiding, they're just going to go away. Right. All because you put the needle down. Right. And it's like what actually happens is you go over there, you come out of treatment and the shit hits the fan.

 

Robert (00:53:29):
Yeah. You're more broken. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:53:32):
And if they've addressed trauma in any way over there now you're spiraling too. If you don't go to aftercare, if you don't hit the step down services, you're out there spiraling.

 

Robert (00:53:44):
Yeah, yeah. You're done. That's the aftercare IOP op. So important for that. It is a disservice to a client to try to get into that kind of trauma for 28 days, which if you're not getting 28 days of treatment or therapy, you're getting three or four if you're lucky, sessions with a therapist

 

Matt Handy (00:54:05):
In four weeks.

 

Robert (00:54:06):
Right? Right. That's it. You cannot heal trauma that quickly. No. I mean some people maybe, but you know what I mean? Like me. No way.

 

Matt Handy (00:54:16):
Let's say that it didn't, it was possible and it may be happened somewhere. But the reality is this is what you're putting needles in your arm over. You're not going to heal it in three hours.

 

Robert (00:54:26):
Fuck no.

 

Matt Handy (00:54:28):
So it's crazy. It's crazy. So that's a massive disconnect and it's like what's our actual, what is our actual obligation to people that we're servicing? What is it? These are the questions that this company is being built on. What is our actual obligation to them and how are we fulfilling that? Because if we think that we're going to make any changes in this person's life, we're already starting in the wrong foot. That's already a fucking crazy way to think that you are going to change. You said it. You only get one session a week, and then the rest of it's group work and how you've been to a lot of treatment. How many times have you had a group where the clients were leading a big book study or you guys were having a process group with no therapist?

 

Robert (00:55:27):
Yeah, the techs are leading it. Dude. Someone.

 

Matt Handy (00:55:30):
Yeah, so it's like, I mean, I had this realization because the last time I went to treatment, I was sold on this program that was, they specialize in childhood sexual trauma. That's what I was told. I get there. First thing I say is like, Hey, I need to talk to my therapist. I finally meet the therapist on day three and I unload all this shit on her, and she's like, we're not talking about any of that. I was like, what? That's your job. Yeah. She goes, you can call your family every session. I don't care. I was like, are you serious? What the fuck? Then within the first week of me being there, a different therapist came into a process group, started it and was like, okay, you guys are going to be doing a big book study and you guys can't leave for an hour and 15 minutes. And in my head I'm going, aren't we here the fuck because of you guys? Aren't we supposed to be in front of professionals processing stuff, learning things, and it's like,

 

Robert (00:56:39):
Damn,

 

Matt Handy (00:56:39):
This is how we get in trouble amongst ourselves.

 

Robert (00:56:43):
Yeah. Spiral talking to each other. Romanticizing. It wasn't that. I'm not as bad as that person. Maybe the heroin I'm shooting is not a big problem. That guy was doing meth. Dude. That's the problem. I was just shooting heroin. The fuck.

 

Matt Handy (00:56:58):
Dude, that guy killed his own dog on accident. Dude, I've never done anything like that.

 

Robert (00:57:04):
Yeah. Where am I? I don't need to be here.

 

Matt Handy (00:57:07):
You guys are all drug addicts. Not here.

 

Robert (00:57:10):
Not me.

 

Matt Handy (00:57:11):
Yeah,

 

Robert (00:57:12):
That's so true though, because a lot of 'em are tech ran, which love the techs. Their hearts are, but not why you go to treatment to have tech ran groups should be trained licensed professionals.

 

Matt Handy (00:57:26):
Yeah. They're also not hired for that. Right. They do their job really fucking well. Techs are always, the hearts of gold that you find in treatment are always the people in early recovery. They got a shot to work in treatment.

 

Robert (00:57:39):
Yes, they are. Yes, they are.

 

Matt Handy (00:57:40):
They're there for an altruistic reason and they're not there to pay their bills. They're not paying their bills with that.

 

Robert (00:57:45):
Fuck no.

 

Matt Handy (00:57:47):
So yeah, it's like the disconnect, just the amount of dishonesty that goes into the treatment industry. That term alone, the treatment industry has started to make my skin crawl. I just heard for the first time last week that in the nonprofit sector, they don't even call it the treatment industry. They call it the field of addiction, which I'm like, when I heard that, I was immediately was like, I'm in the treatment industry, and it just rang all kinds of bells and realizations around what is actually going on.

 

Robert (00:58:20):
Yeah. I field of addiction sounds better. The treatment industry.

 

Matt Handy (00:58:28):
Well, and it also says where the mindset is,

 

Robert (00:58:31):
Right? Just like you said, with the expectation of the services that are being provided. Where does that put you? What are you thinking? Now? It's this monstrous machine, billions of dollars all based on that this 30 day model of treatment that is proven time and time again to not be successful yet. That is what insurance companies approve and that's what we're going to do then, and we have hopes and promises and false advertisements. Wild, wild, wild. Back then insurance would pay for a flight to fly you in, and that's why Florida blew up. And even if your insurance didn't pay for it, they wouldn't give a shit. They'd buy you a iicket, they ticket

 

(00:59:20):
Because you have a policy and that policy is going to pay a lot of money. So the advertisement of services, one, I think like you said, is kind of misleading. They don't really, or they oversell it, but two, as a suburban mom, dad, family in the suburbs, what do you know about therapy? What do you know about treatment? You're going to say, oh, they're going to get CBT. We're a 12 step based program. They go to AA meetings, hit the buzzwords. Right now it's EMDR, trauma-informed care. We hit the buzzwords and then

 

Matt Handy (01:00:02):
That's it. And those buzzwords. It's funny. I feel like I have this conversation all the time. It's such an important conversation though, because there are buzzwords that are used in the industry to communicate something very specific, but it doesn't have anything behind it because trauma-informed care, what does that mean? Nobody knows what that means. Or evidence-based. Right? It's like, okay, what evidence? Because it should definitely not be the evidence that this works. This does not work.

 

Robert (01:00:33):
The evidence shows it doesn't work. For

 

Matt Handy (01:00:35):
Sure.

 

Robert (01:00:35):
So yeah, especially love the 12 steps. I know you said you don't do the 12 steps,

 

Matt Handy (01:00:40):
But I still believe them. I just had a negative, so my experience with the rooms is what stopped me from participating.

 

Robert (01:00:49):
Okay.

 

Matt Handy (01:00:50):
I get that. Dude, I've read the book. I don't know how many times. I mean, I understand the history of the program is so rich and so amazing.

 

Robert (01:00:58):
Agreed.

 

Matt Handy (01:00:59):
Bob and Bill are personal heroes of mine. Like, dude, I fully believe in the program. I just have a hard time with the people.

 

Robert (01:01:05):
Fair. I completely agree with everything you said there. And that is what got me sober, kept me sober. I think it gets misused though with that evidence-based kind of evidence-based care, evidence-based approach, and it becomes the default for treatment centers. Oh, we're a 12 step facility. What does that even mean? I'm sure there's going to be the correct me, but the 12 steps was not intended to be used for the treatment industry and inpatient treatment. So it's interesting and it's a disservice. The buzzwords, the EMDR is the one I hear the most right now. Everybody talks about wanting to do it. A lot of people don't know what it is. And then you do the trauma-informed care and you get to the facility and there's not a single master's level therapist there

 

Matt Handy (01:01:57):
For sure.

 

Robert (01:01:57):
It's only addiction level therapist, which is what I am in the state of Texas. That's a two year degree. It takes work. There's a massive difference between my licensure and my scope of practice and what someone with an LPCA therapist can do, but they call me a therapist in this field probably because of money. And we talk about the gray areas where, well, as long as the trauma that I or they went through as a kid ties to their addiction, it's in your scope. I am not qualified to do. I'm not qualified to do it. I also don't want to open that box when we have two sessions left,

 

Matt Handy (01:02:40):
Dude.

 

Robert (01:02:41):
Yeah, it's an interesting, we've created this.

 

Matt Handy (01:02:47):
It's a monster. Yeah, It's a monster. And it's killing people. Ultimately. That's what happens. Do you know how much formal training an MD gets on addiction medicine?

 

Robert (01:02:59):
It's like two courses in two classes.

 

Matt Handy (01:03:01):
6 hours between the day that they enter pre-med to the day, they're an md. Six hours.

 

Robert (01:03:08):
And then we're going to put this doctor behind our program that has zero training in addiction, but we need an MD signature and we have this doctor signing the paperwork or prescribing the medications, and the detox protocol is the same cookie cutter, generic. We're all different unique individuals,

 

Matt Handy (01:03:27):
And we're using at different rates and we're using different drugs. It's like I have seen it where they will treat an alcohol protocol the same way that they're treating a benzo, the exact, and it's very similar and it's doing the same things. It's all reacting on the GABA receptors and there's a lot of similarities, but those are completely different drugs still though.

 

Robert (01:03:49):
Yeah, a hundred percent. Then the sugars that go into some of all the different aspects, it totally different drugs and this guy's 62 and this one's 19. Here's the same dose of Ativan or Lorazepam or whatever it might be. No doctor at the facility anymore. It's turned into a moneymaking machine for sure. Unfortunately. Or like they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions where people start a treatment center with the intentions of helping people and I'm going to change their lives. I'm going to save them. We're going to do the, and insurance money people get caught up in it. That's why it's so, it makes my heart feel like this warmth just every time I've talked to you about what you're building because it's different than everything else.

 

Matt Handy (01:04:46):
Yeah,

 

Robert (01:04:46):
It is so awesome to see it, hear it from a patient, a client's perspective. I love it. We were talking about just a minute ago, the chairs like, fuck, how many treatment centers have I been to where it's fold out chairs that were 10 bucks at academy and you are, you're uncomfortable. You're not focusing on anything because they can't spend the money on getting a little bit more of a comfortable chair. You're just a policy. You're just a number. That bed is going to stay warm and it's just going to rotate.

 

Matt Handy (01:05:21):
Yeah. It is heartbreaking to realize that now we are contributing to the problem because ultimately that's what it is. And I keep hearing this thing where it's like there are treatment centers that pay their bills with their retreads, with the people who are relapsing and coming back. It's like the fact that that is being said is heartbreaking. Whether it's true or not, I don't know. I can't point to anybody where there's a standard policy around admitting people specifically that, so this is the rumor that I hear is that there is people who when their census is low, they will go down the list of their alumni and call them and say, have you relapsed? Come back

 

Robert (01:06:09):
A hundred percent. I would agree with that. I have heard that being done at places before, and that's something that's said on kind of the inside is if they're going to leave, they're going to leave treatment a MA, which against medical advice or against clinical advice because we're always going to recommend the 30 days, no matter the situation. It's better. Well, because it's more time away from the drug and all these other things. If they're still leaving, well, let's at least make sure that they are happy and comfortable so we can call them again. Or they'll call us when they slip or when they use again, why are we thinking that way? Because we're not offering a product that we have. The confidence is going to have the solution for them available.

 

Matt Handy (01:06:54):
The way that I said this the other day to somebody was you are banking on failure, which means that if you're not banking on success, are you setting them up for failure?

 

Robert (01:07:07):
Yeah, I would. Yeah, a hundred percent from the beginning. You're setting them up for failure when you start with the misleading of services or not having the appropriate staff, not meeting the client where they're at. Doing an evidence-based approach of we're doing the 12 steps only, but like we said, love the 12 steps. Sometimes people don't need that in the beginning. Sometimes they need something

 

Matt Handy (01:07:33):
Else. So Scott, he didn't go to meetings for the first nine years of his recovery and it led him to going to meetings. His recovery involved in evolved in such a way that that's ultimately where he ended up. The thing about it is getting off drugs is easy. Staying quit is fucking hard. Nearly impossible.

 

Robert (01:07:57):
Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (01:07:58):
That's the hard part. I think that there are three superhuman powers, real powers. It's high level math, childbirth and recovery. I like that. If a woman can do all three of those things, she's like, unicorn. But recovery is so hard. It has to be one of the hardest things that a human has ever had to do because getting a master's degree, getting a Juris doctorate or a doctorate where you graduate from law school, you graduate from medical school, those are hard things to do. It is a different kind of hard

 

Robert (01:08:36):
A hundred percent.

 

Matt Handy (01:08:37):
Yeah. That is a perseverance, a dedication, a discipline thing. This hits on every plane. Spiritual, physical, mental, emotional. You are talking about tackling something that is metaphysical. Addiction is not of this world. There's something else going on, and so entering recovery, stopping doing the drugs is the easiest part about recovery. Hard upfront. It's uncomfortable. It's painful. Some people, they get really sick. The mental side of it's hard, but ultimately putting it down for a month is way easier than putting it down for five years.

 

Robert (01:09:15):
Yeah. That's where the difficulty comes in is that long continued abstinence. Continued sobriety. Completely agree. I like the math a's definitely a gift when you are a math wizard. Impressive and childbirth, dude. For sure. I've met some of those women that check all three boxes. They're usually the CEOs of those really good places, facilities, and they're like pillars in the field for

 

Matt Handy (01:09:44):
Sure. Damn.

 

Robert (01:09:45):
Yeah. Fucking legends.

 

Matt Handy (01:09:47):
Yeah, like 28 years old, got all three boxes checked and everybody's like, oh my gosh, when she walks around. It's crazy.

 

Robert (01:09:55):
Yeah, I didn't know that about Scott though. That's fascinating. Like we talked about earlier, and if I'm coming across as bashing the 12 steps, I do not mean to because they played and still play such an important part of my life. I got to the point though where they love to say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, and that is what I was doing with the 12 steps. There was no new way for me to call my sponsor or to go to more meetings. I did it every possible way. I followed suggestions. It wasn't working for me. I needed a little bit more, and so I always tell my clients that we are baking a recovery cake. The ingredients for your cake might be slightly different than the ingredients for his cake or her cake, but there's going to be more than one. We have to find that balance. For some people, it's 90% flour or AA and 10% church or family. Some people the flour, the AA might be 5%, and we have to find that balance of it and figure it out. We are all unique individuals, but we are not terminally unique,

 

(01:11:10):
And so it's figuring out what recipe is to work for you, and that is what led me to Smart Recovery and going through that program and getting my certification to be a facilitator for Smart Recovery. I love that program. It is, as far as I'm aware, the only evidence-based approach to recovery, which I believe just means there's been studies done on success rates that have been certified as legit studies, and so it led me to that, but that ultimately led me back to the rooms.

 

Matt Handy (01:11:45):
So you talk about these recovery cakes, right? And it's like the formula for each cake. So individualized care, another buzzword, what is individualized care? That is something we can point to and actually define, but something that I find in the recovery industry is that everything is broad brushes, broad strokes. Everybody's doing this, everybody's doing that, everybody's doing this. Why? Because it worked for this person. So if it worked for this person, it can work for you, and if it doesn't work for you, you did it wrong. And it's like, so another thing that people neglect across the board is the physical part of it where it's like that is actually the piece that fell into place for me, and it changed the trajectory of my life when I started working out and eating better, it changed everything. And I met my mentor, his name's Taylor Kavanaugh, really, really fucking amazing guy. ex-Navy Seal, went to the French Foreign Legion, just a beast of a man,

 

Robert (01:12:52):
Badass,

 

Matt Handy (01:12:54):
But in between both of those services picked up the craziest fentanyl habit and was just doing crazy shit and ended up suicidal and was going to jump in a volcano in Hawaii. He didn't want his mom to have to clean up the mess of a suicide, and in order for him to get right, he had to join the French Foreign Legion. And he calls it his baptism and humility where he had to change things foundationally in order to, and I'm talking about this guy was a high level seal, jtac, specialist sniper, really high level operator. That man had to still reset, rebuild the foundations and then build from the ground up. And so when I met him, he told me, quit doing what you're doing. It's going to kill you. If I was going into these situations, miserable coming out of them, even more miserable. And when I reached out to him, he was like, quit everything you're doing and go to the gym today. And I put that piece in place and it changed everything for me.

 

Robert (01:14:00):
Give a shit about you physically. I mean even not the gym. That's an amazing thing to do. Cold plunges saunas, invest your time into your physical body and physical wellbeing, kind of the holistic kind of approach,

 

Matt Handy (01:14:18):
Truly,

 

Robert (01:14:19):
Right? Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:14:21):
And it's like we're men. So I speak from a man's perspective and I have found for myself that I am a four part person. There's the mental, the physical, the spiritual and emotional, and if any of those, this is the goal to be balanced. And if any of 'em are lacking, they have gravity and will pull everything else into it. And so one of the things that is, I mean, you've done a lot of treatment. I've done a lot of treatment. One thing that is across the board told to everybody is, well, now you're sober. You need to work out and need better. But they never tell you why. They never show you how. They never put invest in any time. You can't bill for that,

 

Robert (01:15:01):
Right? There's no dietician that comes in. We're not doing a group on wellness. That's something that I incorporated is trying to do a sleep group where we talk about the importance of sleep hygiene, putting the phones down and how compromised you become, your cognitive ability decreases and you make compromised decisions because you're not sleeping well. So yeah, a hundred percent. You can't bill for a nutritionalist to come. No. What we can bill for is this generic junk meal that we got a bulk discount on and junk food and sugars and here you go. Which is a whole nother monster,

 

Matt Handy (01:15:39):
Dude. Yeah. Because a lot of addicts are deficient in a lot of nutrition and they go into treatment and they're just packed with carbs. They're packed with starches and sugars and comfort foods, really cheap comfort foods that is first of all, cheap but palatable. And you're talking about people that aren't eating and they're packing on pounds in 30 days pounds,

 

Robert (01:16:04):
Right? Leaving like 20 pounds heavier,

 

Matt Handy (01:16:06):
20 pounds, 30 pounds. You're putting on weight and it's all designed to do something specific. It's supposed to calm you down, but you can't charge or bill for a personal trainer to come in

 

Robert (01:16:23):
Like a workout. Yeah, no.

 

Matt Handy (01:16:25):
Right? And so that's coming out of the treatment center's pocket, so it's just neglected. And then also what that ends up happening is they're not trained in why or how, and ultimately they never pick it up. And most people avoid the gym at all costs, at all costs.

 

Robert (01:16:43):
I'm so raw and vulnerable. I can't go there and be judged, and I don't even know what the fuck I'm doing,

 

Matt Handy (01:16:48):
Dude. Not only is there this mental block where it's like, I don't want people to judge me. I can't lift that much. I can't do this. I can't run fast. I can only be on the treadmill for five minutes. There's that part, but then we are so adverse to pain in early recovery. It is amazing. And going to the gym and training, actually training is not fun. It's painful. And until you learn to love that, so I work out pretty religiously and I hate the gym. I hate the gym. So I built a gym in my house. Right?

 

Robert (01:17:29):
There you go.

 

Matt Handy (01:17:30):
It's a dope gym. I spent a year putting it together and buying all this stuff, and so now I don't have to go to the gym.

 

Robert (01:17:37):
You have one.

 

Matt Handy (01:17:38):
I have one, right. And I get it. Not everybody's got that freedom or ability, but the reality is I understood I hated the gym, so I fixed it.

 

Robert (01:17:48):
You created a solution.

 

Matt Handy (01:17:50):
Yeah,

 

Robert (01:17:50):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:17:53):
So we're never taught to communicate. We're never taught to fix our physical. And it's like I said, we're at least four pieces. What's focused on is the mental and emotional, and it's like those two things are massively important. There's nothing more dangerous than an emotionally immature man. There's almost nothing more dangerous, right?

 

Robert (01:18:16):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:18:16):
Those are sick men, period. And we're living through the silent, the epidemic of silent suffering for men. They don't know how to talk about it. They don't understand. We're two men that have sexual trauma, men who have sexual trauma typically are not willing to talk about it, and they will deny it and lie about it and shove it down. And that causes, no matter what the shell says, no matter what the facade says, massive instability.

 

Robert (01:18:47):
It leaks into everything else in my life. And the foundation is completely compromised. Completely agree. I love that. Where the four points and when one is lacking in what your example where two are lacking of the four, that's going to pull everything down with it. I think it's cool with working out where it's difficult in the beginning. No one really loves it in the beginning. You also don't see results immediately. Right. Kind of like recovery

 

Matt Handy (01:19:17):
For sure.

 

Robert (01:19:17):
It takes time to start seeing those results. The healing, the growth, the mended relationships takes time with the gym. And we're just this instant gratification. I need it right now. Right now, right now, which I believe leads a lot of younger men or men in general to anabolic steroids when they're entering recovery

 

Matt Handy (01:19:36):
For sure.

 

Robert (01:19:38):
It's so something that not talked about.

 

Matt Handy (01:19:41):
Yeah. I mean, so we also are living through a time where steroids is systemically available,

 

Robert (01:19:49):
Normal,

 

Matt Handy (01:19:50):
And it's like, so we're living in a time where men are just unhealthy, period. And now you're feeding this not endogenously external hormone into your machine that is already out of whack.

 

Robert (01:20:05):
You're completely out of balance. And now I'm going to throw this monster of a drug in because it's not fentanyl,

 

Matt Handy (01:20:12):
Dude, you can't test for it. Traditionally, there's no drug panel test that tests for steroids

 

Robert (01:20:19):
For trend or for testosterone. Yeah, I was about to say with, it used to be the pain clinics, the opioid epidemic, pain clinics fucking everywhere. Now it's wellness clinics

 

Matt Handy (01:20:29):
For sure. T clinics.

 

Robert (01:20:30):
Lemme get you testosterone. Let me get you your, is it Wegovy or

 

Matt Handy (01:20:34):
Wegovy? The GLP one and

 

Robert (01:20:37):
All that stuff. All those.

 

Matt Handy (01:20:39):
And here's the thing, it is a tool and you can either with a hammer, you can build a house with a hammer, you can beat someone's head in with it, you can build things with tools or you can hurt people with tools. And in early recovery, we've got this crate thing that's going on systemically and it's like people are testing for it now a hundred

 

Robert (01:21:01):
Percent,

 

Matt Handy (01:21:02):
But it isn't a drug, right? And so it's like, I was just talking to a doctor recently and he said there are two major people that I see that come into detox for this specific drug, and it's people who have no clue what it is. And people in early recovery, that's who he's treating in this detox for Kratom withdrawal.

 

Robert (01:21:25):
Yeah. It's that seven hydroxymetrogyne shit. Yeah. We've been seeing a lot of it too because it falls into this justifiable area

 

Matt Handy (01:21:34):
For sure. That is the gray area,

 

Robert (01:21:36):
But it getss hooks in and it rips you down.

 

Matt Handy (01:21:40):
It is a partial agonist of the mu receptor, so it attaches to the same place that opiates do.

 

Robert (01:21:45):
And the treatment centers, your insurance won't pay for your detox for it. So what do they do? They slam you with an opioid use disorder code and give you an opioid detox. But it's not an opioid. It's not, you don't test positive for opioids. You don't test positive for fentanyl. It's more complicated than that.

 

Matt Handy (01:22:02):
And it's actually, it's super dangerous. We literally recorded a whole thing about this on Tuesday.

 

Robert (01:22:10):
Okay.

 

Matt Handy (01:22:13):
It isn't FDA approved and there is no DEA scheduling around it.

 

Robert (01:22:18):
Nope.

 

Matt Handy (01:22:19):
So there is no oversight in how it's packaged, manufactured, or sold. None. It's a

 

Robert (01:22:24):
Dietary supplement.

 

Matt Handy (01:22:25):
It is a dietary supplement.

 

Robert (01:22:26):
Yeah. I'm very familiar with the research chemical dietary supplement area of the world, unfortunately

 

Matt Handy (01:22:34):
Mean, so specifically with Kratom, right? There is this thing going on where people are ignorant to it. And then you have fitness influencers that are advocating because they've got sponsors right now.

 

Robert (01:22:51):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:22:52):
But fitness influencers aren't taking 200 milligrams in the morning to get going.

 

Robert (01:22:56):
No,

 

Matt Handy (01:22:57):
They're literally doing the two milligram tea versus the addict who is this doctor said he had the highest dosage come in last week, 600 milligrams a day and

 

Robert (01:23:12):
Kratom or test

 

Matt Handy (01:23:13):
Kratom

 

Robert (01:23:14):
Okay.

 

Matt Handy (01:23:14):
Kratom. test is a whole nother,

 

Robert (01:23:16):
Okay.

 

Matt Handy (01:23:17):
That is specifically in the recovery world, such a slippery slope. I've seen the aftermath of, so I have a really good friend who should I even get into this?

 

Robert (01:23:34):
You don't have to.

 

Matt Handy (01:23:36):
He made some terrible decisions, really, really fucked up decisions. And he pointed it all towards his steroid addiction and it made total sense. But I look at this man, and I have a lot of respect for this guy ended up doing seven years in prison because he paid somebody to try to kill one of his loved ones based on just terrible decision making. And so I've seen the extreme end of what steroid abuse can do, and then I've seen the non-harmful, you do a couple cycles in a year and you look better. You do your cut cycle right before the summer and now you look good. And it's a very gray area where it's like,

 

Robert (01:24:17):
Yeah, it is.

 

Matt Handy (01:24:18):
But it's like a tool. You can kill somebody with a hammer, you could build a house with it. And these clinics that pop up everywhere, it's like, have you gone in? I know a little bit about what you're going through, but you go in there, there's very little restriction in what actually needs to happen. And now you've got the over the phone clinics.

 

Robert (01:24:38):
Oh yeah, the apps.

 

Matt Handy (01:24:39):
Yeah, the apps. And they're testing your, and so full disclosure, about three years ago I thought I was going to get on testosterone, and I had my levels checked and they were like, you're at a 7 96. We can't even fuck. We can't even mess with you. You are naturally just way too high to even justify any of this.

 

(01:25:00):
So I was like, all right, whatever. But they told me, they were like, if you want to get around the blood test, make sure you come in. Don't eat the day before, go for a run and be dehydrated and you'll test much lower. I was like, really?

 

Robert (01:25:14):
Teaching you how to beat the system.

 

Matt Handy (01:25:20):
I was like, first of all, blood drawing for me is a big problem. I don't have veins. So I go into these places and it's like a half an hour of them sticking me. I was like, I don't even fuck that dude. I'm good.

 

Robert (01:25:33):
I feel your pain.

 

Matt Handy (01:25:35):
But yeah, the amount of workarounds for people in early recovery to access chemical relief is much greater than it's ever been as well.

 

Robert (01:25:46):
Yeah, it absolutely is. And it continues to evolve, just like you said earlier with addiction is completely changed now. There's all these new substances available. Steroids 10 years ago were nowhere as popular as they are now. It's almost like a given. You go into the gym, there's going to be half the guys on testosterone

 

Matt Handy (01:26:10):
For sure.

 

Robert (01:26:11):
And say Kratom. Now you can walk into any gas station right now in Texas and find the seven hydroxymetragyne, which arguably isn't even Kratom anymore.

 

Matt Handy (01:26:22):
Right?

 

Robert (01:26:22):
It's a chemical.

 

Matt Handy (01:26:23):
It's crack. It's crack versus chewing on a cocoa leaf.

 

Robert (01:26:26):
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then there's all these other research chemicals. I think it goes back to how we were talking about family with communication, where we live in a society where we don't do the research of what we are consuming. We just are so used to consuming and defaulting to trusting companies. Or the guy at the store said it was okay. He doesn't know shit about it.

 

Matt Handy (01:26:50):
I didn't even need to show him my id. Right. It's like gets down to that level. And then you look at all the other available things at a gas station like these rhino pills, right?

 

Robert (01:27:01):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:27:01):
Yep. John Jones failed a steroid test because he swears he took one of those, right? And I don't know about that specific situation. He probably was doing steroids, but you have no idea what's in them, but you have no idea.

 

Robert (01:27:15):
And you're taking it. You're taking it. I went into a supplement store, this was quite a while ago, and got something that the guy told me there. This was when I was big into lifting, and he told me this would help me relax and sleep better after a workout. I found out a month later, roughly, because I ran out and I liked it, and I got another bottle, and then I was like, money's tight. I can't keep buying all these supplements. And I started going into withdrawal for sure. What was it? I was like, what? T Neptune.

 

Matt Handy (01:27:44):
Oh, wow.

 

Robert (01:27:45):
And I was like, what the fuck am I on? I didn't do any research. I didn't look, I didn't read the label. I didn't do my due diligence. And some of the times it can be hidden by the proprietary blend label

 

Matt Handy (01:27:57):
For sure.

 

Robert (01:27:59):
The access to, you have to be careful what we're consuming.

 

Matt Handy (01:28:02):
Yeah. It's very murky around both of those drugs. And have you seen that TikTok that's going around about that girl that got that energy drink and she drank that energy drink and felt fucking crazy, didn't know what was going on, and she looked the can and buried in there. It said that there was Kratom in it, but it wasn't advertised that there was crem in it. It wasn't on the major label you got to read. That's everything that's in it. So now look, treatment centers allow kids to get people to bring energy drinks in. It's like what happens then? What happens if they bring in an energy drink and not even realize that there's Kratom in it? And now a lot of treatment centers are testing for Kratom.

 

Robert (01:28:47):
They are.

 

Matt Handy (01:28:47):
That is a setup for failure. So first of all, we're talking about a broken system. That's ultimately what we're talking about. And we're probably never going to reinvent that wheel. Maybe conversations like this can start to break down what's actually going on. I don't know. I hope it does. The reality of what we're actually talking about is the struggle of early recovery for these people that, so for people like us, early recovery when we got clean looked completely different than the kid who got clean one time. We were aware. We understand the systems, we get what's going on. A lot of people enter early recovery and have no clue what's going on. They just know that they can't use.

 

Robert (01:29:36):
That's it.

 

Matt Handy (01:29:36):
That's it. So it's all of this really slippery slope, right? And there's no education around it. Do you know Dr. Shah?

 

Robert (01:29:46):
I believe I've met him once. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:29:47):
Okay. So he's our medical director. Yeah, that's the doctor who I do all these Q and As with and starting to put out a lot of content around this stuff for this reason. Exactly right.

 

Robert (01:29:58):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:29:59):
His whole thing is awareness. If you are aware, you can then be aware,

 

Robert (01:30:06):
Make an educated decision then at that point. At least now. Yeah. And that going to, I interrupted you and cut you off, but that's a whole nother piece that's just completely neglected in treatment is the pharmacology of addiction.

 

Matt Handy (01:30:22):
Yes.

 

Robert (01:30:22):
What are these drugs actually fucking doing in your body? Why did I physically, mentally completely get hooked on Oxycontin or alcohol, whatever it might be? What receptors does it play on? What am I looking at for my brain to heal from this and the actual physical part of addiction? Not taught about it. Totally neglected. I'm going to have a tech read hazelton's curriculum 15 years ago that I pulled off the internet. What the fuck? What a disservice to these humans.

 

Matt Handy (01:30:54):
Another thing, people go into treatment with no medication. They come out with five on average, they come out with five prescriptions, antidepressants, sleep

 

Robert (01:31:07):
Aids,

 

Matt Handy (01:31:08):
Sleep aids, all this stuff is doing damage to your body. These drugs are not developed to fix everything. And it's a chemical you don't endogenously produce. And it's like what you're actually doing is putting a bunch of stuff in your body for one thing, but they call 'em side effects, but it's actually an effect of the drug. Right? And it does all of this cascading stuff where it's like, yes, it fixes this,

 

Robert (01:31:37):
It's a direct result,

 

Matt Handy (01:31:39):
But it does all this other stuff. And you look at what's going on with these mass shooters, right? I hear it all the time. I've never actually seen the proof of it, but it seems pretty widely accepted that a large majority of them are on SSRIs. A large majority.

 

Robert (01:31:59):
I've seen that as well. Yeah. I don't believe we have enough. There's not enough data out, and they're just, so when you leave treatment, guess what? You're on? And SSI, most of the time you have to get tagged with the depression, anxiety. You have addiction. You got both of those too.

 

Matt Handy (01:32:18):
And it's like we are talking about this broken system. They have to check the boxes to be able to continue with these services. If you are healthy and you're doing great in groups and you're doing all that stuff and they write that down, insurance going to say discharge.

 

Robert (01:32:36):
Yep, absolutely.

 

Matt Handy (01:32:37):
They're not going to keep paying for somebody that doesn't need it.

 

Robert (01:32:39):
They report their cravings at zero every day for a week. They don't need to be in treatment. Nope. They're not craving anymore. Got to go. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:32:45):
Yeah. Cravings triggers. It's like if somebody's, and the sad part is a lot of people have dependent on chemical sources for relief for so long. A lot of people after their fourth week of treatment, they don't want to leave. They feel great. It's like that should be a warning sign to people that if they're feeling like this right now and they go out there and their trauma gets re-triggered or their fear gets re-triggered, what do you think they're going to do? They're going to look for that relief,

 

Robert (01:33:17):
Right? I'm looking for this pill. I'm looking for something outside of me to change what's going on internally and having no idea the consequences or the other effects that are going on

 

Matt Handy (01:33:30):
And the communication. We don't know how to speak. We do not understand how to communicate, how we feel in an effective way. And we're professionals going in to a doctor and actually having to describe what we're feeling. It would still probably be really fucking hard. So imagine somebody who is not educated, who doesn't understand the lingo, who doesn't know what to actually say. They're going in there and they're all saying, I'm depressed and I have anxiety at the same time. It's like that is physically impossible to have depression and anxiety at the same time, physically impossible. So it's like, but they get put in these baskets of, okay, manic depressive, depressive anxiety, clinical anxiety, clinical depression, all this stuff. We all manifest with all that as soon as we get clean. Our dopamine levels are serotonin levels. Our chemical machine is fucked up.

 

Robert (01:34:29):
Broken.

 

Matt Handy (01:34:30):
Broken.

 

Robert (01:34:32):
We're going to check some of the boxes for that for sure. It does not mean that I have these things, and I think it ties to, and as a society, it's almost accepted or cool to have a mental health diagnosis

 

Matt Handy (01:34:46):
Nowadays. It is.

 

Robert (01:34:47):
Oh, that's just my O-C-D or B-P-D is the one I hear all the fucking time. Do you even know what that is?

 

Matt Handy (01:34:55):
Do you understand the severity of what you're saying?

 

Robert (01:34:57):
Right?

 

Matt Handy (01:34:58):
You have BPD,

 

Robert (01:34:59):
Right?

 

Matt Handy (01:34:59):
And the extensive testing that you have to go through to get that diagnosis, that is not an easy thing to get.

 

Robert (01:35:05):
No,

 

Matt Handy (01:35:06):
But you hear it on Instagram and TikTok all the time where it's like, I have BPD or I have O-C-D-O-C-D is something very specific. Very easily definable. But now everybody's, everybody's got ADD.

 

Robert (01:35:19):
Yeah, everyone does because of whatever box they think they meet or this requirement. And it's almost cool to have it, and maybe I'm wrong, but that's what I see.

 

Matt Handy (01:35:30):
It's what I see too.

 

Robert (01:35:31):
And it's not to shame people that have these things, but it's not,

 

Matt Handy (01:35:37):
What it's actually doing is cheapening the fact that these people have it. Because now everybody's like, well, everybody's got it. I've got it. You can't deal with it. It's like, dude, I really cannot focus. I really need this. And it's like there's that one chick, the rich hippie chick. You know who I'm talking about? I

 

Robert (01:35:58):
Believe so.

 

Matt Handy (01:35:58):
She's like a white girl with blonde hair and dreadlocks and she has all these songs. She talks about psychedelics and stuff. Yes. That girl is the epitome of what is wrong with mental health diagnosis. She talks about her depression and taking mushrooms to heal herself and all this stuff. And it's like you are almost mimicking in a mocking way, what people are going through in a detrimental way. These people are killing themselves over this stuff. And now you're just cheapening this by, oh yeah. The other one is narcissism, right?

 

Robert (01:36:35):
Oh God, yes.

 

Matt Handy (01:36:37):
That is a crazy one.

 

Robert (01:36:38):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:36:39):
Anybody that's ever broken up with anybody was dating a narcissist.

 

Robert (01:36:42):
They're narcissists for sure. Yeah. They're a narcissist. And it desensitizes the world to it. I'm so used to having all my employees say they have depression or ADHD. That's why these tasks aren't getting done. So then when I meet somebody that actually has it, I'm just get the fuck over it because all of these other people that said they had it, this is what they did. They took, I just needed to get an energy drink or, whatever. But that's not the actual solution. And so now you have all these people that are used to hearing those diagnosis, but they don't know what actual treatment or the actual manifestation of it looks like. So they're used to the people that don't have it and how they got over it and just depression. Just get out of bed. Just get out of bed, just get over it. Or the narcissist thing. And it just does a disservice to the people that actually have those diagnoses and the battles that they have when you really have some of the, it is a fucking struggle,

 

Matt Handy (01:37:40):
Dude. It's a nightmare.

 

Robert (01:37:41):
I mean, depression, the core is a deficiency of serotonin. There's no getting over your brain, producing not enough serotonin. You can't get over that. You have to do things or take things to help. I think the physical part, like you were talking about, is so important that it's just neglected everywhere. Most places.

 

Matt Handy (01:38:01):
Most places. Most places. Most

 

Robert (01:38:03):
Places. And that is huge.

 

Matt Handy (01:38:07):
So somebody was saying the other day, they were like, all treatment's the same. I was like, no. And she was like, no, all treatment's the same. It all sucks. And I was like, okay, yeah, you're pretty right. The reality is there's really good treatment out there, but it's few and far between. Few and far between. And in a lot of places are coasting off a good reputation.

 

Robert (01:38:30):
They had a good reputation and their standards have been dropped. They're paying for reviews.

 

Matt Handy (01:38:37):
Yeah, absolutely. And it's like, so Ian told me this one time, he was like, the treatment industry is the Italian food industry. These people will come in, they'll have an amazing product. They got their cousins coming in from Italy, and they got Graham out in the front greeting people. And then they got that greedy cousin in the back that says, you know what? If we just stop making the sauce, we can save a bunch of money. And then it's like cutting corners here, cutting costs here, cutting costs here. And he was like, and then you see it in their Yelp reviews where people are saying, five years ago, this place was amazing. I don't know what happened. The difference is the treatment industry would never let those reviews fly. They are buying reviews. They are cornering clients into writing good reviews,

 

Robert (01:39:25):
Make sure the patient, make sure that client gets their phone and leaves us a Google review before they discharge. I remember when I was told that, and I left that meeting, I was like, I am not fucking doing that. Yeah, I did that in the automotive industry. I am not doing it in this treatment world. Crazy, fucking, not a chance. Crazy if that individual had a bad experience, that is for them to share. For sure. Yeah, for sure.

 

Matt Handy (01:39:50):
It's like you can have your belongings back, but make sure you write that review first, right? And then you're

 

Robert (01:39:56):
Like, did you put my name? It's my name on there. Oh, for sure. For sure.

 

Matt Handy (01:40:01):
Make sure I'm sure you mention

 

Robert (01:40:02):
Me. Yeah. Fuck, fucking sick. It is. It's so true. And you start with, we're not going to make the sauce anymore. And once you start down that road, you've lost. Because when do you stop? You have now compromised your product and the quality and it bleeds into everything. Everything. And then the good people that you had there that were passionate and driven and had that fire, they leave.

 

Matt Handy (01:40:32):
There's a changing of the guards, and now the vision is gone, the mission is gone. It's still on paper. But everybody that took part and actually had a hand in developing all this stuff gone. And now it's just, if it gets passed down, it's passed down because they have to be exposed to the operation, manual, whatever. And they're not actually reading it. And the captain of the ship is responsible for in the treatment industry, it's a top-down culture. The captain of the ship is the person who's responsible for instilling that in his employees or her employees or whatever. And it's like when that person neglects the staff in that way, you can see it. It's a ripple effect that translates into people dying,

 

Robert (01:41:23):
Right? It does. I will not, no names, but that hits home big right now with where I'm at, at the top. And it bleeds into every staff member and the boots on the ground. The techs that are so important in their role, they don't care. And it's not that they don't care about the clients, the patients, but they don't care about the company. They no longer believe in the cause and the human suffer, and they're the ones that die.

 

Matt Handy (01:41:58):
Yes.

 

Robert (01:42:00):
And

 

Matt Handy (01:42:00):
Ultimately, we are probably going to be fine. The people who are in the field on that front line at the tip of the spear, we are probably going to be fine. We're probably going to stay sober, but how long are you going to stay sober with that over your head? Those are the kinds of dominoes that fall, that takes people out with 20 plus years of sobriety,

 

Robert (01:42:24):
When my executive director is only reaching out to let me know what I'm not doing, how bad I am doing at my job, what note I forgot to submit on time, not to check in, not to say great week, when that's all you hear. Yeah. That bleeds. And then eventually if you continue, yeah, your recovery will become compromised because then you've now entered into the what's the fucking point line of thinking. It's dangerous.

 

Matt Handy (01:42:57):
And it's like whether people agree with this or not, everything we do in recovery is a result of the recovery. And it also always feeds back into the recovery. If you're doing fucked up shit, your recovery's going to be fucked up.

 

Robert (01:43:11):
Oh yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:43:12):
If you're doing good shit on an altruistic plane, you're going to have a good recovery. The way that you do anything is the way you're going to do everything in your recovery. It's why it's very important to have foundationally a solid foundation with really good bones of that structure, super important. And community feeds into that. And this is why. So I've already got it from people. I bash AA and stuff. I do not bash AA.

 

Robert (01:43:41):
Haven't heard once.

 

Matt Handy (01:43:44):
And I've gotten this feedback where it's like, well, you shouldn't say this stuff. And it's like, is it true? If it's not true, show me how it's not true. And I'll stop, right? If you can prove me wrong, fine. But the two things that Bill and Bob got fucking perfect was the sponsor Sponsee relationship and the wording of that book, dude, they are, I mean, just fucking monks, right? But the sponsor Sponsee relationship, amazing how they came up with that. And the way that it really, really sets the pace for people's recovery is amazing.

 

Robert (01:44:28):
Yeah, I completely agree. Like I told you that Cornelius's feet, he was my sponsor, but still talk to him to this day, years later, because we developed something, this intimate relationship that the foundation was pure and genuine. And that connection you get with people, not everyone gets that with a sponsee sponsor, but it can develop into that. And it's a beautiful thing.

 

Matt Handy (01:44:54):
So Dr. Shah is developing this. It's a model around a theory. And so this is another thing that if I would've had the information that he gave me early on, I'd still be a participating active daily member of the 12 steps. But he wants people to, he's a 12 stepper and he massive, massive proponent of the community aspect, because oxytocin comes from we, dopamine comes from me in those rooms. You can get massive, massive oxytocin releases, right? But the key to that is you got to be honest, and that's where this whole sponsor sponsor thing comes in. If you can be honest with another man, that one person, it sets the stage for you to go in there and have a safe place to rebuild your prefrontal cortex in an effective way. And so he says, you need three things. You need to build a safe space, whatever that is. It could be the rooms, it could be church, it could be some kind of club that you're a part of, whatever. It's got to be a safe place where you get your oxytocin and you've got to have a community. You've got to have those three things, and they all feed into each other. But the key to the sponsor sponsee relationship is you have stripped yourself naked, metaphorically,

 

Robert (01:46:24):
Completely raw.

 

Matt Handy (01:46:25):
Raw. And what it does is your brain cannot rebuild prefrontal cortex. All that neurogenesis cannot happen in a state of fight or flight. You have to be in a safe place. So what it does is it makes you vulnerable, intimate, and then you can get that oxytocin release. And what that ends up doing is you go into these meetings and you get all these signalings, you park your car, you're in the parking lot of whatever meeting you go to, you park a car and you've got that first initial relief. Now you're walking in there and you see Steve, it's always sitting in that chair and you kind of side eye each other. You get another wave of like, okay. And then you sit down and you see the 12 and 12 up there, and it's like, okay, you have now signaled to your brain, I'm in a safe place. I can do my thing here. And if somebody would've told me, you are treating a physical manifest, a biological manifestation of the problem by going into these rooms, if they would've framed it to me like that, I would probably still be going daily. I developed something different. It's very specific, it's very intentional, and I get the same exact things out of it. But man, if you can find your way into recovery in those rooms, that is a surefire. If you can get the right things out of it. The structure's there, the road's been paved, it's well worn. This is something that can work if you do it correctly.

 

Robert (01:47:55):
Right . Absolutely. No, I love that. A lot of people don't realize that when you are in this state of fight or flight, your brain is not rewriting things. It's not remembering things. It is in a survival mode. You're not learning. You can't learn, you can't reprogram. You have to be safe. You have to feel safe. And that goes even to the family dynamic. If I'm returning home to my family home where my dad beats my mom or my wife and I don't communicate and talk and I'm not safe, there is going to be no healing that happens

 

Matt Handy (01:48:30):
At all.

 

Robert (01:48:30):
No growth that happens there until I am safe. I love that. I love it.

 

Matt Handy (01:48:36):
It's really interesting. And then he even breaks down farther where he is. If you're dishonest with your sponsor, your brain now is protecting itself lying. You're being dishonest and your brain doesn't understand why. Probably all it knows is you're protecting yourself now, right? Walls are up. Yep. Walls are up. No healing. And so that's why it's so important to be a hundred percent honest with your sponsor, the one person in your life that won't judge you, the one person in your life. And so he says this, right? You want people in early recovery to do better. How about we teach better sponsorship, right? It's like if you have better sponsors, you'll have better sponsees. I was like, God damn.

 

Robert (01:49:23):
Yeah. You don't throw in the freshmen to be the coach of the team. You bring in the good coach. The good coach comes in,

 

Matt Handy (01:49:32):
You have a good team, changes everything. Yeah. I mean, remember the Titans, right?

 

Robert (01:49:37):
Yeah, man, I love it. Yeah, that's so true. It's not talked about really too much.

 

Matt Handy (01:49:43):
I mean, it's also not really understood. I mean, people might put all this stuff together. There might be high level clinicians and doctors and people, clinical directors, executive directors that understand this on an educational level, but it's never applied to addiction. That's not an accepted model.

 

Robert (01:50:01):
No. Yeah, it's not

 

Matt Handy (01:50:02):
The accepted model, the evidence-based practices, all that stuff. Something totally different.

 

Robert (01:50:07):
Yeah, it is. I love what you said about if you're dishonest or it all comes kind of full circle. It all connects back to your recovery. It's something I teach a lot with the value system and how we have two value systems when we lived a life in addiction. We have our addictive values or the values of our addiction and the values of recovery. This what we are striving for. Recovery is going to be integrity, honesty, trust, love, compassion. Addiction's going to be manipulation, honesty, money. Of course, the substances, your actions, your behaviors will align with one or the other. There is no, no gray area in this. Your brain understands it's one or the other. I am going to lie to protect something. I'm over here. You can convince your brain doesn't recognize that.

 

Matt Handy (01:51:04):
No,

 

Robert (01:51:04):
I am in a survival mode. And if I am not following this value system, if my actions, my behaviors are not aligning over here, they're aligning over here. And what side's going to win? What am I feeding?

 

Matt Handy (01:51:19):
Yeah, it's interesting, right? Like people in recovery exhibit addict behavior all the time. And it's like, yeah, Dr. Shaw talks about this all the time. It's like, yeah, you might have five years sober, but are you recovering? What are you doing? Are you doing the work? If you're not, dude, there's a high likelihood that you're being dishonest with your fellow men somewhere. It's like if you're being dishonest, even on a basic, and we all lie, it is very hard to not lie on some level.

 

(01:51:53):
I used to think that the human condition was defined by emotional dishonesty. I've evolved past that, but it's very hard to be a hundred percent honest. For some reason it's like, actually, it's funny, I forget where I heard this, but it was like a hundred years down the line. There was this cartoon or something where it was like this AI robot was interacting with humans, and it was checking its honesty level. It was like, what is your honesty level set at? It's like 86. It was like, why not a hundred? And he is like, humans don't do well with a hundred percent honesty. It's like what? It's like, oh my God, that's so true. Can you imagine if somebody told me like, oh dude, you look like shit today. I'm like, What?

 

(01:52:40):
So it is hard. But the honesty that we're looking for in recovery is a baseline honesty. And it's the secrets. It's those things that keep you sick, and it's the ability to tear down those walls, vomit all over somebody else, and then really move forward. And in order to do that, you have to let it all go. You can't hold onto that, that one thing,

 

Robert (01:53:06):
That one little piece that I won't let go of.

 

Matt Handy (01:53:10):
And for a lot of men, it's sexual trauma. Yeah, it is. It's really crazy. So let's go back to your story. That was a really long detour. That's a good one. But let's go back. You were talking about football, arena, football and breaking all that down.

 

Robert (01:53:30):
Yeah. So that football was the last thing that I tried to build my identity on, and that was me. That is when recovery started to completely take hold. There was one more event that occurred that was the final nail in the coffin because then it was women. I evolved into the woman, A woman's going to fix me. I have to have kids. I'm getting older, which I really wasn't, but I needed to have kids because you have to have kids when you're 20, 21. I want to be the young dad. So I forced a relationship that should have never happened. Met her in detox, and we were in love, and she was 16 years older than me. Yeah, it should have never happened. And all you wanted to do was have kids and she couldn't or safely, and I couldn't either from all the steroid use, and I refer to the Neil Cornelius from day one.

 

(01:54:43):
He was like, get the fuck away from her, man. What are you fucking doing? So fast forward, she steals my truck, my dog, and all my shit. I bring her back and then it ties into the T Neptune figuring out that part. This is where I was the most broken and the most defeated in my entire life, where I was in recovery. This was the final use of my kind of story. I was in recovery. What happened was I was sober. I was doing the deal, working my steps, working my program, but the seed of dishonesty with this relationship just kind of bled into everything in my life. And I was coming home and forcing a dysfunctional codependent relationship. And this woman did nothing all day. She stayed at home, in bed, whatever, she nothing while I was trying to recover and get healthy and working and doing these things. And I would come home and Where were you all day? Why weren't you here? Those things. And it kept bringing me down and bringing me down and bringing me down, and I continued to force it. Sponsor would, the one thing I wouldn't let go of, like you said, is that relationships, I needed to be loved

 

(01:56:09):
Because I ultimately think I didn't love myself for sure. And I needed to have someone, and maybe it tied into some kind of control, but that was the one thing I wasn't letting go of. Everyone was telling me to get the fuck out of it. I wouldn't, wouldn't do it. And it eventually led me to an ICU stay where I had to reteach myself how to walk. Jesus. A family mother thought I was completely gone mentally where I was in, I would come back to reality for about 30 seconds, and then I was in some older delusional state. It was scary. It took my brain a while to heal from that one. And it was not even the drugs, like the drugs. It was the availability of these chemicals that I justified as being okay to take while in recovery because I'm not shooting heroin anymore. I'm not taking painkillers. I'm not doing weed. I'm not drinking. I'm not doing this. I'm taking this supplement that I buy from the star. It's okay. That's the one that really almost killed me. And it all tied to her, and that's where I let go of everything. I said, I can't. I can't do this. I have to just let go of everything.

 

Matt Handy (01:57:33):
Nothing will derail a good recovery. Like a fucked up relationship.

 

Robert (01:57:38):
Yeah. Yeah. I've seen it. I see it with my clients to this day. I lived it. I did it. And once I let go of that fuck in my life, it's been incredible. It's been amazing. And it's been really fucking hard. But I have been living in recovery since then, and I love it. It has led me to meet my wife where I could actually, I let go of that relationship and now I could really feel where the growth in me had to happen and what I wanted from a relationship. I could be the partner that I wanted to be, and I could choose the partner that I needed, wanted deserved. I met my wife and it's been incredible. I would've never met my wife if it wasn't for me having these learning experiences along the way.

 

Matt Handy (01:58:30):
The benefits of your suffering.

 

Robert (01:58:31):
Yeah, absolutely. It has been. And getting to experience what a healthy relationship looks like is beautiful. Something I never kind of thought of as a goal of life for, I want to experience what a healthy relationship looks like. I want a wife. I mean, for me at least that's what it was. I want a wife, I want the kids. I want the picture. Perfect family. But it's the journey of getting there, of building this relationship with another human is so beautiful. You have the one with your sponsor, another men, which is incredible. But then with my wife, who's the person that I want to spend my time with? I want to go do everything with. If I win tickets to go travel to a different country, that's the person I want to do it with.

 

Matt Handy (01:59:23):
Yeah, for sure. It is taken for granted, and it's almost, we think it's baked in that you're going to have a healthy relationship because it's a relationship. But all the evidence, I mean, it's just so illogical because all the evidence points to the opposite. It's like every relationship that you see or stumbled into is unhealthy.

 

Robert (01:59:44):
Yeah. Because sober, I've worked the 12 steps. I've worked on myself, and I'm sober. It's going to be healthy because I'm doing healthy things, not how it works.

 

Matt Handy (01:59:55):
It's a lot of work.

 

Robert (01:59:57):
It is. And a lot of uncomfortable conversations that, thank God I had the practice from the rooms on having huge one, like pouring killer, talking about sex needs that aren't being met. But I've had practice having these difficult conversations and bringing the walls down and being raw and vulnerable and having that conversation. And so it all led up to being able to have this, which it's beautiful.

 

Matt Handy (02:00:34):
Living a healthy life in recovery is cyclical. It feeds into everything, and everything feeds into it.

 

Robert (02:00:38):
Yeah, it is. And it's something that is, I wish you could put it in a box and be able to give it to people. And it is not. It's something that you have to walk through. It's this journey. We only get such a short period of time on this world,

 

(02:00:57):
And it is summarized by the dash between two fucking numbers. And man, it's, it's not about the finish line. Its about the journey. And I used to think that it's so bullshit, but man, it really is. And I love it so much. I never would've thought, rewind to my first time in treatment with my major league baseball friend. I'm fucking this cool guy that I would think that I would have. This now is really an incredible thing. The pot letting go of control, allowing God to open the doors and me having the courage to walk them and having the peers, you've mentioned that several times, the people around me in my life to encourage me to do those things, to encourage me to go back to school. I was like, Robert, you're too fucking smart. You need to go back to school. How many times have I had therapists and all these people tell me, you are fucking, I was the therapist's favorite client from how many episodes of treatment I've been to Always knowing the answers too fucking smart. Go back to school to finally just be like, yeah, I want to help people. And how am I going to do that? Go get my license. Try to do it that way. But then I get in the cog in the machine of the treatment industry. And so it's constantly evolving and I have to always monitor and be careful with where my actions are aligning, where my beliefs are, what am I feeding? Because if I don't, I'm feeding that addiction

 

(02:02:36):
And my recovery will start to become tarnished. And now I will be projecting that that hatred will start coming back, that that monster will come, and I don't want that anymore.

 

Matt Handy (02:02:51):
So it is a lot of work. It's ultimately the rewarding thing about life for people in recovery. We don't have the ability to cheat. We don't have the ability to lie. And it's this higher accountability that keeps us on track. And so there's pros and cons to it, right? It's like we can't be dishonest. We can't be dishonest with ourself. We can't be dishonest with people around us. But at the same time, it lends to this awareness that is not normal. And it's so healthy. It is so healthy, right? Conversations, the ability to have these conversations, then the actual implementation of those abilities to having those conversations. That is not normal. It is not normal. It should be the wish. And the hope for the world would be that we are, I mean, this country was built on the exchange of information and free speech, the free exchange of information with other people and the ability to accept it. We don't agree. Not happening today.

 

Robert (02:04:02):
Fuck, No.

 

(02:04:03):
Not happening. No, you don't agree with me. You're the enemy

 

Matt Handy (02:04:06):
For sure.

 

Robert (02:04:07):
Yeah. And I will kill you because you're wrong. Like what the fuck?

 

Matt Handy (02:04:12):
Yeah. People laugh when they hear the term info war or the thought war, the ideology war, and it's like these are just as real as the war that's being fought in the Middle East. Maybe we don't see the death behind it because the reality in the world that we live in, we don't connect those dots really easy. But there are people dying because we can no longer accept that we disagree. Look at what just happened with Charlie Kirk. That was an ideological difference that led somebody to kill somebody else. And whether that guy was right or wrong or telling the truth or lying, that should not have been the answer. And we're living in a world where that is a viable choice.

 

Robert (02:04:57):
Death. Murder, execution. Yeah, absolutely. It is. It ties into, even with the society we live in, where we are not communicating, we are not exchanging these ideas. And what we are doing is we're surrounding ourself with the people that have the same belief. Exactly. And I have this negative feedback loop of the same bullshit. So I'm not growing, and then what am I going to do? I'm not feeling fulfilled. I'm not feeling purpose. I'm getting the same information, so I'm going to reach out for a ubstance, then I'm going to quiet. I'm going to numb. I'm going to be content with complacency. Oh,

 

Matt Handy (02:05:42):
Dude. The exception of mediocrity, right?

 

Robert (02:05:45):
Yeah. Fuck. And

 

Matt Handy (02:05:48):
People get comfortable

 

Robert (02:05:49):
Fast. Real quick, really quick. Got my phone, got my, and I'm okay with it. I'm comfortable. No, I don't want to have that conversation. No, I don't want to talk about politics. I don't want to talk about what I believe. No, I'm okay.

 

Matt Handy (02:06:03):
And what ends up happening is people aren't convicted of their beliefs anymore. You have extremists that are, but it's like the average person out there is just so avoidant of confrontation where it's like confrontation doesn't have to mean hatred. Confrontation is a healthy part of communication. Are you using that tool to build something or kill someone. It all goes back to that. It's like everything in our life is a tool. How are you going to use it? And when people talk, this conversation is not had enough, first of all, not had anywhere near enough. But then the people who have these conversations, they're typically framed in an adversarial way. The big conversations that you see, it is always got you moments for clips.

 

Robert (02:06:57):
Oh yeah, yeah. Look, gotcha. You look how stupid this was. Yeah. And it's just the clip taken out of most of the time, taken out of context

 

Matt Handy (02:07:06):
So far out of context.

 

Robert (02:07:07):
Right. And it's just to get a viral 12 seconds, 15 seconds and generating hate, confirming my bias or whatever.

 

Matt Handy (02:07:18):
Confirmation bias. Yeah.

 

Robert (02:07:20):
Look, I'm right. I was right. Like you were saying with people, say you bash aa. I haven't heard you say one negative or bashing thing about it, but could someone take some of what you said? What have I said? Frame it into a little blip and Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (02:07:37):
I'm sure. Yeah. So this is a good point where it's like this is a long form podcast a very long, this isn't not a typical conversation. We have been talking for two hours and eight minutes.

 

Robert (02:07:51):
It feels like 15,

 

Matt Handy (02:07:52):
Right?

 

Robert (02:07:53):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:07:55):
And this is about the average time. I've had a couple go past three hours, right? Around three hours. But this is about the typical length of a conversation. It flies, but this is not a typical conversation. We have gone from treatment to life to relationships, to politics lightly. We've talked about a lot of stuff and we've never spent this much time together, ever. The most time we've spent together before tonight was five minutes when I went and visited you guys, right?

 

Robert (02:08:25):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:08:26):
But for all the agreement that we have, we probably disagree on a lot of things too. But the reality is this exchange of information and this open dialogue has lended to a relationship that has been built on something tangible that we can now say, I know Robert. Yeah, I probably know more about you than a lot of your friends. And it's like this is all it takes. You sit down with somebody for a couple hours, you get to know them in a real way. You get to make eye contact with them. There's all the micro expressions. We understand each other and it's like this doesn't happen anymore at all.

 

Robert (02:09:11):
No, it doesn't. Like I said earlier and you said, we'll get back to that. How are you doing today? Are you doing all

 

Matt Handy (02:09:18):
Right? Okay,

 

Robert (02:09:18):
I'm good.

 

Matt Handy (02:09:19):
Yeah. So how are you doing specifically is one that has been, people are so desensitized to it where it's like, how are you doing means something very specific, but in today's parlance it is. Hello?

 

Robert (02:09:35):
Yeah. It's a greeting. Yeah. It's the new hello. Hey man, how you doing? That's the greeting, what you say when you're walking into a room or you see someone you haven't seen in a couple of weeks.

 

Matt Handy (02:09:50):
But if you would've asked me, Hey, how are you doing? And I said, dude, me and my wife are fucking fighting. I don't know what's actually going on. I think our marriage is struggling and I don't know what's going to happen. You'd be like, not you, but the average person would be like, Oh shit,

 

Robert (02:10:05):
Dude, I didn't ask you that. What the fuck?

 

Matt Handy (02:10:08):
Yeah, yeah. So I have recently done this a few times where somebody would be like, Hey, how do you really want to know? Or are you just saying hello? And they always go, no, really, how are you? It's like, okay, but the reality is

 

Robert (02:10:24):
You don't mean that

 

Matt Handy (02:10:24):
We have 15 minutes. How much time does that actually take? And so the power of words, and this goes back to recovery. When I entered recovery, honestly for the first time I had to, and because of the situation that I was going, I was on Suboxone. So the way that it works is this. I was on Suboxone. I was going to AA because I cannot go to NA because I can't. That's just how it is. I cannot spend that amount of time around those people talking about the things that they're talking about and think it's going to be healthy. And in the rooms that I was going to, I was always told that I am not free to share because I'm a drug addict. And even if they're okay with that, I was on a drug.

 

Robert (02:11:11):
You're not sober.

 

Matt Handy (02:11:11):
I'm not sober. And it was like, dude, I need help right now. And if you guys, I didn't have time for them to get to know me and accept me before I needed that help. And so that's how I ended up doing what I'm doing now. I needed help now, and I didn't have the time to get you to like me, but I had to because I went off on my own. I'm not on my own though. The thing is, Taylor's in recovery, a bunch of people that I'm surrounded by in my tribe in recovery, we just don't subscribe to a traditional recovery path.

 

Robert (02:11:52):
I fucking love it.

 

Matt Handy (02:11:53):
So one of the things that I had to do was I had to sit down with a piece of paper and write down words that had power over me, triggers, cravings, recovery, addiction, addict. I had to redefine all this stuff for myself, and I ultimately had to get rid of triggers and cravings because every time I've ever used those legitimately was actually in a manipulative way. Because the reality is when I crave a pizza, I can taste it, I can feel it in my body. I'm craving something. When I crave drugs, ultimately what I'm doing is I'm obsessing mentally that's all that is. And they use this word to point to so that they can kind of understand what's going on, but it is not even related to craving food. It's not even the same thing. So I had to get rid of that so that I could take the power back from these words, because ultimately what I did was I gave the power to this word that I could point to and say I had no control.

 

Robert (02:13:02):
I was triggered.

 

Matt Handy (02:13:03):
I was triggered.

 

Robert (02:13:05):
I had a craving. The trigger happened. Yeah. It's almost like it's an out an excuse.

 

Matt Handy (02:13:11):
Yes.

 

Robert (02:13:12):
I gave it the power over my behaviors or my actions.

 

Matt Handy (02:13:16):
So I had to completely get rid of those. Now I'm in the treatment industry. I mean literally we have to use those things as metrics with our clients. Triggers and cravings

 

Robert (02:13:27):
We do.

 

Matt Handy (02:13:28):
But for me, I cannot sit on those words anymore. The way that my recovery works is I have to take responsibility. I'm not taking control or power. I'm taking responsibility for my actions. And what that means, I have to stop using those words.

 

Robert (02:13:45):
Yeah, I love it. Yeah. I'm taking responsibility for my thoughts. I'm in control of my thoughts. I choose what I feed. I typically use urge instead because good word of a similar belief with craving. It's overused. We're desensitized to it, and it's not appropriate. I'm having a mental, I'm having the mental obsession, I guess you could call it, right, where I'm just thinking over and over and over about it.

 

(02:14:10):
And I am as a side note with you mentioned the Suboxone is huge supporter of harm reduction. Me too. And recovery is I am in recovery. If that person says they are, then okay, I'm am not here to judge. Your recovery cake is going to look different than mine. For sure. That person's is going to look different. There's too much of the shame goes into that too, where you're not sober. They're not sober. Why? Because they were taking Suboxone. Alright, motherfucker, you're drinking 18 C fours a day doing your testosterone prescription, taking your sleep aids. Why is his recovery not the same? Why is it not recovery from your standpoint?

 

Matt Handy (02:14:59):
I mean, yeah, and imagine I was being told I couldn't share. And so that's what I was saying. I would go into these situations miserable and come out even more miserable. And I was like,

 

Robert (02:15:11):
It wasn't safe

 

Matt Handy (02:15:12):
In a desperate place. I knew I was going to relapse. I was very clearly spiraling. If you ask my wife about this time period, she was worried. She was freaking out.

 

Robert (02:15:25):
She's watching it front row seat watching the For sure.

 

Matt Handy (02:15:28):
Yeah. And she's in recovery. She said she'd never understood why people reacted the way that they did when they were watching it in real time. And she was like, I've never even understood that whole concept of watching people spiral until that happened to you. I was like, really? She was like, yeah, yeah, for sure. And so now I work out religiously and if I go a day without working out, she's worried and I'm not in there killing it. Some fucking, my mentor probably is, but I work out every day. I've got a very structured regimen and she's like, if I miss a day, she'll be like, yo, are you okay? I'm like, yes, I'm fine. And it's cool. That is healthy. That is a healthy worry. She understands. I need structure, I need regimen. I need regular activities that I participate in because if I don't, and if I stray off that path, there's a pretty good warning sign I like wrong.

 

Robert (02:16:29):
Oh, absolutely. We thrive in structure. That's why there's minimal recurrence of substance use in treatment because it's high structure, high accountability. When does the recurrence happen? The recurrence of the substance happens when the structure's gone. Right. Once that's, it's not that your therapist isn't a phone call away or you don't have someone, the structure's gone

 

Matt Handy (02:16:54):
For sure.

 

Robert (02:16:55):
You don't have the schedule, you don't have a structure in place. Early recovery addicts, whatever you want to call them, thrive in a structured environment.

 

Matt Handy (02:17:05):
For sure.

 

Robert (02:17:06):
And it is why intensive outpatient, outpatient services aftercare so fucking important.

 

Matt Handy (02:17:13):
Sober living.

 

Robert (02:17:14):
So important.

 

Matt Handy (02:17:15):
So important.

 

Robert (02:17:16):
Yeah, it is incredible. That is why I started a sober living because it was an important part of my journey and my success.

 

Matt Handy (02:17:30):
So you come from a Florida model, you've experienced that.

 

Robert (02:17:33):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:17:35):
So in California, they pay for supportive housing too in sober living. When I came to Texas and I found out that they don't, I was like, what do they do? What do they do? They're, I don't know. It's like nothing frowned upon. If you got PHP with housing, people have a negative opinion of it unless they intimately understand what you're doing. And it's got to be like by the fucking book, the majority of people who have PHP with supportive housing, their reputation gets smeared just from that alone.

 

Robert (02:18:09):
Which yeah, I don't understand. It doesn't make sense. Absurd. The people smearing them aren't offering that for

 

Matt Handy (02:18:17):
Sure.

 

Robert (02:18:18):
So what's your solution?

 

Matt Handy (02:18:19):
That is a good point.

 

Robert (02:18:20):
Well, we can't do that. No, no. It's not that you can't taken the time to go look and work on it. Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (02:18:28):
It's wild man. It is. It's wild man. So on top of a broken system, we also have broken ideology around what's going on. So now you're burning the candle from both sides. And then ultimately, I'm going to keep saying this, and I always say this is at the end of the day, people are dying because of these disconnects between what's promised and what's actually delivered. Yeah, me and you are going to be fine, but your client that just passed away, dude, it's like, is that a direct result from the industry failing her? Maybe she's got her responsibilities in what happened, but did we fail her?

 

Robert (02:19:11):
There's a part that's played. Yeah, we had that. Like I said earlier, the window of opportunity opened, and I think that happens for all addicts, right? We get this moment of clarity, this window opens where we're like, okay, I fucking need help. And then we go somewhere where we're told we're going to get help and we're promised we're going to get help. And you don't get it. Not delivered. Yeah, not delivered. Or there's no follow up after the 30 days, which

 

Matt Handy (02:19:40):
Because you can't charge for that. You cannot bill for alumni programming.

 

Robert (02:19:45):
Right? Can't bill for it. I mean, shit, Texas and LCDC can't even bill an insurance company directly in the state of Texas. Last time I checked an LCDC cannot bill no insurance.

 

Matt Handy (02:20:00):
I believe you. I'm totally unaware of all the billing codes here.

 

Robert (02:20:02):
Yeah, it's a whole nother monster too. But I had a clinician disagree with me that I researched it in Texas and LCDC cannot bill an insurance company directly. There has to be an LPC master's level, but a associates level LCDC cannot directly bill an insurance company. It has to be with an MD signature, an LPC signature, some other entity,

 

Matt Handy (02:20:28):
Somebody else's license has to go on it.

 

Robert (02:20:30):
Yeah. Yeah. That is crazy. What the fuck? It's wild. We just tie the hands behind the people that are actually trying to help. And so then when the companies figure out how to do supportive housing with their program, oh well, they're doing shady, shady, backward, shady shad shit. Now they're trying to help people. There is a huge need for it. And

 

Matt Handy (02:20:54):
I have another friend that owns a sober living, and him and I talk all the time about this, and it's like if insurance companies, the problem is that they're using data sets against worse data sets. They're comparing a bad dataset against a worse dataset. And so if they actually put the treatment industry under a microscope and evaluated what's actually going on, I think I would hope that greater minds would prevail and realize that supportive housing is the backbone of somebody's early recovery. It can literally make or break somebody's recovery. If you expect this person, this healing person to go into a sick situation, which is the family dynamic, typically the scene of the crime, you've got to send them back to the scene of the crime or the alternative is they've got to pay. A lot of it is astronomical. There's the two extremes of it. Astronomical pricing for sober living or the free option, which is sometimes worse than not going to supportive housing got in this market alone. You've got examples of you go to these facilities and it's like, so when I first got into the market, I wanted to open a sober living. That was the idea to start from

 

(02:22:20):
Sober living and build out. I went to all of the local sober livings around this. There's like seven of 'em.

 

(02:22:26):
And my brother went with me and literally only one of them was, I like, this is a decent program. The rest of 'em I was, it felt like the houses feel like drug houses. I was like, what is going on here? I'm from California. The recovery industry in California is so robust and saturated, and it's like you've got the shitty houses, you've got the great houses, and then you've got the middle ground where everybody's comfortable at and it's like, it's everywhere in San Diego. There's hundreds of treatment options. It's just everywhere. Then you come to Houston, fourth biggest city in the United States, which means it's one of the biggest cities in the world. And treatment is so scarce. Treatment options are so scarce. So I think there are nine RTCs in the greater Houston area, nine servicing the fourth biggest city in the world. I mean in the country servicing that when parity came around in 2008, they did, Obama came to Houston and did a bunch of studies. They found out that in 2008, a thousand people a day in Houston, the greater Houston area, all of the counties, a thousand people a day were getting turned away from treatment that had insurance, a thousand people a day. That was in 2008.

 

(02:23:57):
Since then, we've lost two RTCs and the landscape of addiction has exploded with people. So can you imagine how many people are getting turned away today? So there was a massive, massive need. It only grows. This is like a recession proof industry.

 

Robert (02:24:20):
Yes, it is. It is only growing as it adapts and gets larger. And it changes now into this where Kratom is available in every gas station and it's going to be now the new fentanyl is, I believe they're called Ezines, and that's hitting Australia and Canada. And it's starting to come here because the DEA has not found a new isotope of fentanyl in several years, which means that they're shifting now to a new thing and it's just expanding even more. But we're not having, we're more getting more help and we're not getting different help. It's not evolving.

 

Matt Handy (02:24:58):
So in California, they're going through this thing right now. So they developed 24 billion package billion with a B 24 billion package to address the homeless issue. And in 2019, when this was first proposed, they did this feasibility study and the question was how much money would it take to take every homeless person in California off the streets, put them in housing and give 'em a thousand bucks a month? And it was like 1.6 billion for a year. They got a 24 billion package approved. They distributed the money. 32,000 homeless people in 2019. Guess how many now?

 

Robert (02:25:37):
I would imagine it's gone up.

 

Matt Handy (02:25:39):
162000. I would not quadrupled.

 

Robert (02:25:43):
That's fucking, and they got 24 billion.

 

Matt Handy (02:25:45):
$24 billion. So now there's all these investigations and government oversight, federal oversight. They're looking into this. They found one case where somebody was awarded a $20 million grant. The idea was they were going to build a treatment center, 132 beds that were going to get 5 million a year to build and implement. They didn't even break ground. They got all the money. They didn't even break ground on the facility.

 

Robert (02:26:09):
They just typed up some nice shit on a paper and submitted it. So

 

Matt Handy (02:26:13):
Now you've got all these people that are going to prison over this stuff like misappropriation of funds, embezzlement, all this stuff. But it's like you dumped 24 billion into the problem and quadrupled it. It's like that is a perfect example of what happens when you try to systemically and socially fix an individual problem. It's impossible. It doesn't even make logical sense. You're going to fix an individual problems socially. How?

 

Robert (02:26:46):
Would you think that some of it has to tie into societal as well?

 

Matt Handy (02:26:50):
For sure.

 

Robert (02:26:50):
Whereas a society, we have to accept that it is an individual problem and that it's not necessarily a bad person.

 

Matt Handy (02:26:58):
So we're living in 2025. It is October 8th, 2025. The big book was written almost a hundred years ago. We have had a hundred years of scientific advances, social acceptance, social awareness. And so today, more than ever, people are more aware of addiction as a whole than we've ever been, right? Science has made these advances. We've got all these drugs that have, they've been developed and created around addiction specifically. You've got an abuse, you've got suboxone, you've got methadone, you've got all these drugs that are developed to specifically treat this specific thing. And we're really starting to come around socially to the realities of what addiction is. Also, I heard this thing, I don't know how true this is, but every person in the United States is at least, or at most two degrees of separation away from an addict. So everybody's touched by this in one way or another.

 

Robert (02:28:02):
I've heard that as well. But the healing side of it, we're almost all touched by it now. But we still have this same old failed system of healing and approach to treatment for it. And I don't know what the change has to look like, but I believe that once it happens that it will be a much smaller problem. We won't see a quadrupled number or the death rates, which is called overdose, which I don't believe is really a good word for it, because which one? Overdose overdosing from fentanyl. That would imply that there is an appropriate or a healthy dose of it. That's a good point. When it's illicitly manufactured fentanyl,

 

Matt Handy (02:28:48):
That's a really good point.

 

Robert (02:28:49):
You don't know what's in this, but once the society we adopt in except something that actually will help communicating, repairing the family unit, then I think society will get on board with it. Cause you look at prohibition era when they were talking about making alcohol illegal or drinking and driving illegal, there's this clip that went around, I saw that clip that was freaking out about, you can't tell me I can't drink a beer when I'm driving. This is a communist country. But today it is universally accepted that drinking and driving is not an okay behavior to have. So hopefully as we continue to grow as a society, we will no longer shame or bash the individual for using the substance and get them more on board with meet them with love and compassion and kindness.

 

Matt Handy (02:29:45):
It's bridging that gap between the disconnect is this, people look at drug addiction as the problem. That is not the problem. That is a symptom of the problem. Awareness around that will change the societal lens that they look at it through. But that needs to spread. That's going to take however long it's going to take. Now, the systemic issue that you see around the solution is that we can't communicate. And we've talked about this ad nauseum now, and it's like we're in a broken society and it's like, so when you look at addiction, the family isn't under that bridge, right?

 

Robert (02:30:30):
No.

 

Matt Handy (02:30:31):
But the family is just as sick, right? That's a hard concept, right? Because mom's still going work, dad's still going to work, brothers are going to college, sister having kids and married. It's like,

 

Robert (02:30:43):
You're the one shooting heroin telling me I have a problem. For

 

Matt Handy (02:30:46):
Sure.

 

Robert (02:30:46):
Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (02:30:47):
For sure.

 

Robert (02:30:47):
I'm not a sick one.

 

Matt Handy (02:30:49):
And so there's that. But then also societally, now this is where I'll start to get myself in trouble, but it's like you've got third wave feminism that has broken the family, and we have to put that back together somehow. That means that a lot of unlearning has to happen. It is much easier to learn something new than it is to unlearn something, right? So there has to be a lot of unlearning or something has to come around that revolutionized, revolutionizes the way that people think about this problem. Because if the family unit was still intact, which it's not at all, this would be a much smaller problem. And so that started in the eighties. That is a downstream effect of the dissolution of the family

 

Robert (02:31:38):
When we broke the nuclear family and we dissolved that and it was no longer the goal or the ideal or perfect image or the goal to strive for. And I don't need that. I don't need that. And a lot of it ties to the communication, having those talks. That is an interesting, how do you repair that? How do you fix that image? Because we want people to feel empowered and we want some of the things that have come along with this change, but we need to have the family unit fixed and healed. So what does it look like where it is? It's kind of the best of both worlds, right?

 

Matt Handy (02:32:23):
And I mean, you look at the outcomes for children, when you look at the outcomes for children, the outcomes of a child who was raised with both parents, both biological parents, the outcomes are astronomically better

 

Robert (02:32:38):
Than a single family home,

 

Matt Handy (02:32:39):
Than a single parent home. And then even when there's just one biological parent with a stepparent, still better, but way, way worse doesn't compare than for both biological parents, right?

 

Robert (02:32:55):
Right.

 

Matt Handy (02:32:55):
And now this conversation is crossed into politics. It's like what we're actually talking about is getting people not dependent on government handouts,

 

Robert (02:33:10):
Right? Yeah. That's a huge part of it. Yep. Huge part.

 

Matt Handy (02:33:14):
So, how do you heal this? Fuck. I mean, people are fighting about this in the streets right now. I don't know.

 

Robert (02:33:22):
Having conversations is probably a start.

 

Matt Handy (02:33:26):
It's a start.

 

Robert (02:33:27):
Tough conversations.

 

Matt Handy (02:33:28):
It's a start, but this is what I think is going to have to happen. Some really fucked up shit is going to have to happen. Sadly, the wheel is going to have to break from the hub. In order for this to go away. Something's going to have to implode. Things are going to have to get really fucked up before they get better.

 

Robert (02:33:45):
People are going to get hurt, more hurt than they already are.

 

Matt Handy (02:33:47):
People are going to get hurt. Yeah. Yeah. It's really crazy to think about that. It's like we've gotten to such a crazy place societally, that it's like the only light at the end of the tunnel. It has to get darker first. It's like what? Like how much darker can it get? Look at what's going on in the streets. It's crazy. It's crazy. And really what we're speaking to is the roots addiction. So look, the individual's problem is a manifestation of what's societally wrong, right?

 

Robert (02:34:30):
Yeah, I like that.

 

Matt Handy (02:34:33):
It's crazy.

 

Robert (02:34:34):
It is. Damn, that's tough.

 

Matt Handy (02:34:39):
That is tough. And it's painful to have to watch kids go through this. There is a generation of kids that are being raised by phones, by the internet.

 

Robert (02:34:49):
The kids are saying, they're no longer saying, I want to be a soldier. I want to be an astronaut. I want to be an

 

Matt Handy (02:34:55):
Influencer.

 

Robert (02:34:56):
I want to

 

Matt Handy (02:34:56):
Be an influencer. I want to be a YouTuber.

 

Robert (02:34:58):
Yeah. What the fuck?

 

Matt Handy (02:35:00):
What's crazy? There's a generation alpha, so we're talking about 12 and under,

 

Robert (02:35:04):
Okay?

 

Matt Handy (02:35:05):
They are looking at us, their parents, the millennials and saying, these dudes are so fucked up. I don't want be anything like that. There's this whole wave of kids that when I was this age was not thinking like this, but this whole wave of kids that they're dedicating themselves to sobriety and celibacy waiting until they're married, children, literal children, not no teen after their age, children are making these decisions very informed, very adult decisions. And it isn't because of their parents, because our generation are their parents. Our generation is fucked up.

 

Robert (02:35:43):
They've seen the results of it. Yeah. I've read one about the number, the church, the number of churchgoers is starting to increase for the first time in years, and I believe it's similar reasoning for that. I didn't know about the celibacy. That is really good to hear because we haven't really talked about it much tonight. But the porn industry and porn tears the family apart and it just destroys the men mainly.

 

Matt Handy (02:36:19):
Yes. So this is what I talk about when this subject comes up, the bow that I put on it, I already said, right? Emotionally, immature men are the most dangerous people around. You can start from that bottleneck and extrapolate it out, and it goes to porn, communication, lack of security, third wave feminism that is taught men, that masculinity is all toxic. So now we don't have these examples of what a, so first of all, we're not being raised with our fathers. That's just true. And then if there is both parents in the home, they're absent because they have to support their kids.

 

Robert (02:37:02):
Both are working full time.

 

Matt Handy (02:37:05):
So emotionally immature men here, porn, third wave feminism, you got masculinity as toxic masculinity. We're talking about healthy, mature, masculine traits are now being demonized. Then there's just such a wide variety of things that men are being pointed out and saying Bad, bad. And it's like, okay, you see what's going on now, the porn industry has taken healthy relationships away as well. Healthy dating relationships. So what it is now evolving into is AI girlfriends.

 

Robert (02:37:51):
That's the new thing, right? Yeah. That is an interesting thing you said about how they took away the dating relationships because the birth of Tinder and Bumble and all these

 

Matt Handy (02:38:03):
Dating hookup culture,

 

Robert (02:38:04):
That's all it is, is we're just going to go have sex. There's no more dating, getting to explore the building of a relationship, the conversations with another human,

 

Matt Handy (02:38:17):
The eye contact. I saw this sign, it was a meme and it was like kids in 1995, and it was like showed a playground, a bunch of kids playing, said kids in 2025, and it was like a playground full of kids looking at their phones and I was like, holy shit. So do you remember a time where dating was like you had to call the girl's house and hope that the parents didn't answer?

 

Robert (02:38:45):
No, I didn't have that. So I had a little Nokia phone growing up, but I also grew up in Singapore, so I didn't grow up here. I grew up in Southeast Asia in a small kind of community, but I do know what you're talking about.

 

Matt Handy (02:39:00):
So I am talking about, I was the last generation of people that didn't have a cyborg component to us, and there was a time where I had to call this girl's house. There was one phone number in that household and it was everybody's phone number. There was no and caller id. That was a revolutionary thing when that happened, but not all phones even had a screen on it. It was just people would answer the phone, right?

 

Robert (02:39:32):
Handy household. Braun household

 

Matt Handy (02:39:34):
Dude. For sure. And it was like this was the time where we remembered phone books worth of phone numbers too. That has changed. But ultimately what was taken from us with this whole cell phone thing was actual conversations. I don't know how many times I called a girl's house and had to talk to the dad or had to talk to the mom and get them to give the phone to their daughter. That is a hard thing to do as a teenager, to convince a dad to let their daughter talk to you and what are you doing? What are you calling for? Well, why do you want to talk? How old are you? What are your grades? What are you doing? Who are your friends? It was like every fucking time you call, it was like a grilling every single time, but what it did was it prepared you to treat his daughter with respect. Right? There is none of that anymore.

 

Robert (02:40:29):
You have something valuable and protect it and yeah, I'm going to treat it with that respect.

 

Matt Handy (02:40:33):
Yeah, there was actual was gatekeepers between you and that girl, and they were the gatekeepers that were traditionally put in place By God, it was their fucking parents. That isn't a thing anymore. That is not a thing anymore. As a matter of fact, the average child under the age of 10 that has access to online gaming is talking to a pedophile. The average kid under 10 that has access to online gaming is either talking to or has interacted with a pedophile online.

 

Robert (02:41:08):
And why do you think that number of pedophiles has increased so much too?

 

Matt Handy (02:41:12):
It exploded. Exploded.

 

Robert (02:41:14):
Not having those conversations, not being able to develop relationships with women,

 

Matt Handy (02:41:19):
No parental oversight, the lack of conversations and education around what's actually going on. Also, the ignorance of the parents to not realizing that this was a thing. It is more socially aware now because of everything that's happened, but four years ago, five years ago, six years ago, parents thought that Roblox was like a kid's game. Guess what? That is a breeding ground for pedophiles to victimize kids.

 

Robert (02:41:48):
Isn't that Tim Tebow's project did a lot of research on that

 

Matt Handy (02:41:54):
There's been, so actually this is interesting, right? The government actually has the largest database on information statistics around child abuse, predatory abuse, in-home, domestic violence. They have the biggest database in the world around this and everything gets fed into it. So yeah, Tebow and his organization led the charge on a lot of information around this stuff. And then there was the one that was in the south that was really big, protect our kids. Okay, what was the other one? There's a bunch of 'em, right? But that wasn't a thing 10 years ago.

 

Robert (02:42:36):
No,

 

Matt Handy (02:42:36):
That wasn't really a thing five years ago where parents were aware that if you have a child that has a cell phone, you have to check. This is a very new thing.

 

Robert (02:42:46):
Facebook is for their friends. Dude, games are,

 

Matt Handy (02:42:51):
What was the other one? Kick, kick?

 

Robert (02:42:54):
Streaming platform where they watch people play games or whatever.

 

Matt Handy (02:42:59):
Dude, so many kids have just been victimized because of the free access to things that we didn't evolve to have access to.

 

Robert (02:43:06):
No,

 

Matt Handy (02:43:07):
This wasn't supposed to happen like this fast. We didn't know what was coming and that shit storm hit us and we just had no fucking clue. We didn't know what to look for. Total ignorance around what the reality of this device was going to do to us.

 

Robert (02:43:22):
And then the sick individuals took advantage of it, played the system. Arguably just like the individuals, like the Kenny Chapmans took advantage of a broken system, hurt individuals.

 

Matt Handy (02:43:32):
If there is a loophole, if there is a vulnerability in the system, this is what is crazy about when you build a system, you only understand the vulnerabilities when they get exploited. But what's on the backside of that? What is the ultimate price for the vulnerabilities in our kids'? Safety net is the abuse of children. What is the bottom line in the inefficiencies or the vulnerabilities in the system of the treatment industry? Dead people.

 

Robert (02:44:11):
Buried loved ones.

 

Matt Handy (02:44:11):
Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. It is. And that's why people who test systems like security tests people and so important, but in every industry within our industry, that should be a thing where it's like we don't have that.

 

Robert (02:44:31):
Don't have secret shoppers that go through your detox program to see if you're being ethical and being medicated properly. No, we have JCO and we have these agencies that everybody gets ready for

 

Matt Handy (02:44:43):
Every two years or three years. There's warnings.

 

Robert (02:44:46):
You pick the files you're giving them and it's just a fucking sham. It's a joke. So yeah, we should have that. Just like companies will hire other companies,

 

Matt Handy (02:45:01):
Pen testers, penetration testers.

 

Robert (02:45:03):
Why doesn't the treatment industry have that? Because you can't fucking bill for it.

 

Matt Handy (02:45:06):
For sure.

 

Robert (02:45:08):
You can't fucking bill for it. You're not getting paid for it. I can't bill for offering a better product or quality service to these individuals, and nobody has the money to pay for the private facilities. They exist.

 

Matt Handy (02:45:21):
Oh yeah.

 

Robert (02:45:21):
Dude. Nobody has the money for 'em. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:45:26):
When I first heard of Betty Ford, I was in treatment with a kid who had, he was actually on Dr. Phil, been to treatment 150 times And he was talking about all the different treatments that he'd done and he'd talking about 120 grand a month for Betty Ford. He was there with Lindsay Lohan and all this crazy shit, and it was like 120 grand a year. What are you doing a month? What are you doing here? He was like, treatment doesn't work. Treatment doesn't work. Watch, I'm going to be here. He was there for 60 days at this, it was a cash pay program. He's like, I'm going to be here for 60 days and watch. I'm going to end up relapsing. I was like, totally see why.

 

Robert (02:46:05):
Shocker.

 

Matt Handy (02:46:06):
Totally get it. But yeah, man, it's so crazy. That is ultimately what brought me to do what I'm doing. And it's like it is more expensive to offer the level of quality that we're building and offering. It costs more for us, but our goal is one and done. That is our goal. And we understand that it's unrealistic to expect that. Here's something that's crazy, you probably may have heard. In order to get a five x valuation on a treatment center, you have to have a 5% success rate. The metric that they use is how many clients are staying clean for a year? Five out of a hundred. To get a five x valuation on your total annual revenue, guess how much you have to get to max out your valuation, which is 10%, 10 x to get a 10 x valuation. Guess what the number is?

 

Robert (02:47:02):
7?

 

Matt Handy (02:47:02):
13, 87% fail.

 

Robert (02:47:07):
So 13 out of a hundred humans a year later have to report.

 

Matt Handy (02:47:12):
That's another thing.

 

Robert (02:47:13):
That they have to report. The handpicked from the alumni department on which ones I'm calling,

 

Matt Handy (02:47:19):
Right? 13, 13% gets you a 10 x valuation of your annual revenue.

 

Robert (02:47:26):
What other industry is that an acceptable margin?

 

Matt Handy (02:47:29):
This is failing. This is a failing business right now. What we are trying to do and the plan that we are building and the systems that we're implementing, and then with Dr. Shah. Dr. Shah's whole model is built on the prediction of relapse, not just the prevention. Relapse prevention for us means prediction of relapse. What our goal is 35%. Our goal is to get 35% actively constantly 35%. That is our goal, and that is our starting point. Our goal long-term is that goes up. I fucking love it. We think we can do it. We really think we can do it. I love it. Hell yeah. I didn't know that. 13, 13, 5 x 5%, 10 x at 13%. And we're talking about these are very profitable margins. If you have a treatment center that breaks past a certain point, very profitable, all you need to do is, and we're talking about, so there is, without naming names, there's a treatment company that started with six beds. Six beds. They grew to 540 beds in 10 years, sold for 1.4 billion. Billion with a B billion dollars in, it was either, I think it was 10 years, it was 10 years. It was less than nine years that the sales started going

 

Robert (02:49:08):
With five out of a hundred succeeding.

 

Matt Handy (02:49:11):
I don't know what their success rate was, but what I'm saying is this is a very profitable business to be in, and you don't got to be that honest.

 

Robert (02:49:23):
And if you're going to change the industry you're doing, the big dogs are going, why are you offering more? Why are you offering better than, why are you going for 35? Five is acceptable,

 

Matt Handy (02:49:35):
Right? Don't. Right. And so this is the dirty politics and the dirty ball, the inside baseball around. What we're talking about here is I am already getting blowback around this podcast for these conversations that I'm having. This is not a normal conversation. We have gone into way more than what we normally talk about on this podcast, but a lot of it is centered around your recovery, your recovery, not your addiction, your recovery, and your experiencing the industry. And so a lot of these points are touched on almost every time, but I'm getting blow back around some of the stuff that I'm saying, right? And it's like my only answer to those people is if I'm wrong, I will shut up. Prove to me I'm wrong. That's it. And until you do, I'm going to keep talking and keep telling this stuff.

 

Robert (02:50:39):
Because 17, no, fuck that. Fuck

 

Matt Handy (02:50:44):
That.

 

Robert (02:50:44):
Fuck that. The four is 35. Fuck.

 

Matt Handy (02:50:46):
Because those four, they might be the ones that pay our bills this month. Right? It's so gross, so dirty feeling, right? It's like,

 

Robert (02:50:56):
I didn't know that. It's so fucked,

 

Matt Handy (02:50:59):
So Crazy.

 

Robert (02:51:00):
It's such a profitable industry to be in, and the potential is there to offer more mean, and they continue the lies and not the falsehoods maybe, but you didn't get into this to make money. You get into this to help people and it's, that's how the top continues to justify the

 

Matt Handy (02:51:21):
Top down culture says, we're in this to save lives. That's what it says.

 

Robert (02:51:25):
And their Ferrari and

 

Matt Handy (02:51:27):
In their Ferraris and their Porsches and their $5 million mansions and their behavioral techs struggling to pay the bills

 

Robert (02:51:35):
Living at their sober living still isn't going to be able to move into their own apartment because they can't. You're doing this to help people. We're really not making that much money. Insurance companies, they don't pay.

 

Matt Handy (02:51:48):
Yeah, man, it's, it's always a breath of fresh air when I hear people that understand this the way that I do too. This is not so, first of all, a lot of people that I talk to on the background of this podcast that I asked to be on will, a lot of people tell me no because they're scared to say something that might cost them their job. And it's like the fact that you're scared to lose your job. Are you going to lie? Are you going to come on here and not tell the truth or be deceptive or No, no, no, that's not it. I can't say certain things. And it's like, ah, okay, why can't you say them? It's like, well, I don't want to hurt the business. Why would it hurt the business? Why would it hurt your business to say the truth?

 

Robert (02:52:38):
If you're being honest and transparent and having these things? It shouldn't hurt the business at all,

 

Matt Handy (02:52:43):
Dude. And then it's like, wait a minute, aren't you in recovery? Right,

 

Robert (02:52:47):
Right, Right. Where's the honesty? Where's the, yeah, man.

 

Matt Handy (02:52:52):
Then I hear these conversations. I have these conversations with people and I hang up the phone. I'm like, who do they work for again?

 

Robert (02:53:03):
Yeah, man, that's fucked up. And a whole nother side of it too is if you're in this industry and you slip, you have a recurrence of use. It's almost like it's gossip and shame and wow, can you believe that that person, they're a human being and we should be giving them the same love and compassion. It's wild to me,

 

Matt Handy (02:53:30):
Not just that they're on the front line of this fucked up situation. You think every single therapist, every single behavioral tech, every single counselor, every discharge planner, they take that shit home. They wear that shit on their sleeve. The majority of us are in recovery and take this very personally when somebody goes out there and dies because we failed them. Believe that every person that had interaction with them that is in recovery goes home and asks, what could I have done different? Every single person.

 

Robert (02:54:04):
Yeah, I did with a client. I just lost Kennedy. Could I have met with her longer? Could I have met with her more? Am I contributing to her death by not advocating more? Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:54:19):
And now that is the testament to where they're at in their recovery, right? Because I'm sure there's people out there that are in recovery that had interactions with any given person that passed that was like, well, that's somebody's got to die for that chair to be open. How many times have you heard that somebody died for you to be in that chair?

 

Robert (02:54:38):
Too many.

 

Matt Handy (02:54:40):
That is crazy. It's the truth. It's a hundred percent true. But does it have to be true? I don't know. I don't know. But I hope not. I hope that really what's going on is the broken system.

 

Robert (02:54:53):
I believe that as well because, and I say that I carry it with me, but I know that I could not have stopped anyone from stop. No one could have stopped me. I couldn't have stopped this individual. But I do believe that the system we have right now is completely broken. It has been broken since the Florida model, and it's just adapted and evolved. And we are not offering,

 

Matt Handy (02:55:24):
It's a status quo problem. It's a status problem, status quo problem where people will say, if it's not broken, why fix it? And it's like, did you just hear what you said? But the reality is what's going on is that we are in a dogmatic belief system where in front of the person who trained that person told them This is how it goes, and we're not changing anything. This is how it goes. So then the person who just got trained will then in turn train somebody and have the same message,

 

Robert (02:55:57):
You're going to do it this way. We're going to teach this. This is how you're going to meet with them for this. And it just continues. Yes. You continue the cycle and providing mediocre services.

 

Matt Handy (02:56:11):
Mediocre at best, right? Yeah.

 

Robert (02:56:13):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:56:14):
Because the reality is good treatments, few and far between. It's out there. It's expensive typically, but it's out there. And they've only got so many beds. And the places that I have the most respect for stay 80, 85% full. It's like, that makes sense to me. And then you have treatment centers out here that are failing, failing financially in a situation where there are more people by a hundred, maybe a thousand fold than there are actual options. How are you failing when there's that many people that need help?

 

Robert (02:56:52):
Yeah, just like you're talking about the city of Houston, the city of Houston, the number of people that actually need help versus help that's out there. How are you feeling? False Advertising, not delivering.

 

Matt Handy (02:57:05):
Yeah, the packaging of the product is deceptive.

 

Robert (02:57:11):
We haven't adapted to where we are as a society as well. We're not meeting the clients where they're at.

 

Matt Handy (02:57:18):
Massive problem right there.

 

Robert (02:57:19):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:57:20):
Massive problem because of the broad stroke mentality that we

 

Robert (02:57:23):
Have. Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. And we are not giving the services that are needed to Supportive housing.

 

Matt Handy (02:57:31):
Supportive housing is such an interesting one. And I mean, I literally have hours of conversation about this weekly, weekly. Supportive housing in Texas is not a thing. What?

 

Robert (02:57:41):
No, no. Is this brand new regulatory agency?

 

Matt Handy (02:57:45):
Have you talked to him?

 

Robert (02:57:46):
To Danny?

 

Matt Handy (02:57:47):
To Jason.

 

Robert (02:57:47):
Howell, his last name?

 

Matt Handy (02:57:51):
Poland. Jason Poland. He is the president of trone.

 

Robert (02:57:55):
I think I was at a recovery housing continuing education. He was there. And then I believe the guy's name is Danny Bald gentleman? or is that Jason?

 

Matt Handy (02:58:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I actually just started posting the shorts in preparation for his episode to get posted.

 

Robert (02:58:14):
Oh, hell yeah. That's exciting.

 

Matt Handy (02:58:16):
Tomorrow, I think his episode gets posted tomorrow. He came out of the Florida model and he's taking nar. So Texas is interesting. In order to get anything passed or done, it all has to go through Austin. Everything goes through the state government, our

 

Robert (02:58:34):
House and Senate at the state level,

 

Matt Handy (02:58:36):
Everything

 

Robert (02:58:37):
Every two years,

 

Matt Handy (02:58:38):
Everything including peer support work. The ICNRC offers reciprocity in 38 states. Texas is not one of them because Texas oversees the certification of sober coaches. So in order to get through this bureaucracy, you've got to lobby, you got to get stuff passed, you got to make arguments, you got to fight against the pharmaceutical industry, the medical industry. You've got to go against giants in order to get shit moved over here, the insurance industry, alright? And it's like supportive housing. As long as they don't have to pay for it, that's money that they get to keep. And then it's like you've got to change that. You got to go up against that to get that changed. Sounds incredibly impossible.

 

Robert (02:59:27):
And it's a failed model with a 95% failure rate, which means they go back into treatment again.

 

Matt Handy (02:59:32):
Into treatment.

 

Robert (02:59:33):
So guess what? They're going to keep them in there, get more money, repeat offender, continue. So yeah, they're going to be pushing hard for it to not be supported or funded. Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (02:59:45):
No doubt. Yeah. And it's like, so the Kennedy family, as in the political dynasty, right? Patrick Kennedy is the person that wrote the bills around parody. And their whole story with that family story with addiction and mental health and

 

Robert (03:00:04):
Yeah, brief a little bit.

 

Matt Handy (03:00:06):
So they have a long, I mean, they're bootleggers, right?

 

Robert (03:00:09):
Yeah. That's

 

Matt Handy (03:00:10):
Massive history with alcoholism, addiction and mental health issues. Patrick Kennedy wrote the laws for parody and the idea around it altruistic really good goals. The problem is it had to be layered into these machines, these well-oiled, well-funded machines, which are the pharmaceutical industry, the medical industry, the insurance industry, and it meets basic criteria, but it doesn't actually help the individuals.

 

Robert (03:00:45):
No.

 

Matt Handy (03:00:45):
Right? Because access to care is still a fucking problem.

 

Robert (03:00:48):
Massive problem,

 

Matt Handy (03:00:50):
Massive problem.

 

Robert (03:00:52):
And they don't care about the individuals. They care about the multi bajillion dollar companies that are the ones in their ear. And lobbying. And

 

Matt Handy (03:01:01):
Lobbying. I mean, look what happened with Luigi Mangione, right? The guy that killed the president for United, that is a microcosm of something that's happening to probably a majority of their clients. That is a very extreme example of the outcomes. But on some level or another, anybody who's dealing with insurance companies is dealing with some kind of problem like that,

 

Robert (03:01:33):
Right? Yeah. I've heard recently, what I didn't realize until I just found this out, that a lot of these marketplace plans, they're gating the policies to the county that you're located in. So if you are living in Harris County or that's where you said you were living, right? When you got this policy, you are gated and locked to receiving treatment only in Harris County for sure. You cannot leave the county.

 

Matt Handy (03:01:59):
So Blue Cross Blue Shield, really good example of this, right? Where Blue Cross Blue Shield is the parent, but there's Blue Cross, blue Shield, California, Texas, Delaware, every single one. And so in network, the way that that is all defined, and now you're looking at, so what about places like Oklahoma, no treatment. I think there's one residential, this is what I heard, one residential option in Oklahoma.

 

Robert (03:02:25):
That's insane.

 

Matt Handy (03:02:26):
So Blue Cross, blue Shield, Oklahoma, what are they offering for parity? It's like now you're talking about having to, without a PPO, how are you going to get out of network benefits unless you're paying premiums and you've structured, nobody's structuring their insurance policies around if they got to go to treatment.

 

Robert (03:02:48):
No.

 

Matt Handy (03:02:49):
So now you're talking about deductibles out of pockets. These are really, really complicated issues that the average person signing up for insurance, they just want the cheapest option.

 

Robert (03:03:00):
Just something, give me some type of coverage just in case I need it. I'm not even looking into the mental health side of my policy, which is completely different than the medical side that I'm, most of 'em don't even advertise the mental health side of the policies. You're only looking at your primary care physician, your ER visits, your copays on prescriptions. Not that Is this policy going to cover me to see a therapist?

 

Matt Handy (03:03:28):
That's a whole nother thing. The whole therapist access to cares to therapists and stuff. The majority of them are not. They might all be in network. The majority of their clientele are paying cash.

 

Robert (03:03:38):
They are.

 

Matt Handy (03:03:39):
It is a nightmare to get reimbursed a nightmare. Yeah, it's crazy.

 

Robert (03:03:44):
Put the date on wrong or you didn't hit the right buzzword.

 

Matt Handy (03:03:49):
Yeah, because looking for a criteria of wording, and if they do not qualify for the care, you're not getting reimbursed. So a lot of these therapists will say, I'm not dealing with that shit. Right. It's cash pay or nothing. And I don't blame 'em.

 

Robert (03:04:03):
Right? They have to survive. They have to. They want to help people, but they also have to support their family.

 

Matt Handy (03:04:09):
They have expensive educations. Those educations. That is a whole nother issue. The education system and the scam that is student debt, right? It's like it doesn't matter how many times you file bankruptcy, guess what's going to follow you?

 

Robert (03:04:25):
It's coming.

 

Matt Handy (03:04:26):
Your student debt,

 

Robert (03:04:27):
It's going to follow you until and when you die. It's going to go to the next.

 

Matt Handy (03:04:30):
You kids.

 

Robert (03:04:31):
Yeah, it's going to the next person.

 

Matt Handy (03:04:34):
And we're talking about institutions that have billion dollar endowments. These people don't. It's crazy. It's crazy.

 

Robert (03:04:43):
And it all boils down to the individual where that amount of money that would change this person's life by giving them that service or opening the door for treatment, wouldn't even be a fraction of a decimal to their bottom dollar.

 

Matt Handy (03:04:56):
What's crazy too is that they're looking at outcomes and value for their dollar, and they're weighing it off of broken statistics and broken data sets,

 

Robert (03:05:09):
Right?

 

Matt Handy (03:05:10):
So it's like it's really fucking crazy. It's tragic. The situation we find ourselves in. We are lucky that we got sober when we did.

 

Robert (03:05:21):
Yeah, no doubt, man. But that just shows the testament to what you're doing, what you're building here, fuck the norm. Fuck the broken system. Fuck the 3%, 5%. No. We're going to offer something that these people,

 

Matt Handy (03:05:41):
Dude, what it comes down to is the obligation. What is our moral obligation? We can talk about legalities, we can talk about ethical obligations, which is minimal to meet the ethics standards. Dude, there are people out here meeting ethical standards that shouldn't be in practice.

 

Robert (03:06:00):
No,

 

Matt Handy (03:06:01):
But the moral obligation on a human level, what do I owe this person that is paying my bills? They are paying for this service. It might be their insurance company or whatever, but this is them. What do I owe this person? What are they coming here for, and what do we owe them when they're walking out the door? What should they have in their pocket? Nobody's asking that. Nobody's asking that. What they're saying is what do we need to give them? What do we need to give them to give

 

Robert (03:06:30):
By? What's the minimum?

 

Matt Handy (03:06:31):
Yeah,

 

Robert (03:06:32):
Yeah. Yep. I haven't thought of it that way, but that is exactly how the system is right now. We need to hit this. We need to do one here, one there, and one there. That's it.

 

Matt Handy (03:06:47):
These three hours a day, billable. The rest we'll figure it out. And it's like some crazy shit. It's like they're going to do, I mean, just totally arbitrary systems built into these curriculums where it's like, you're going to do what? Recovery movie hour recovery movie hours. You guys are watching vignettes on fucking mental health in the 21st century. Like what?

 

Robert (03:07:18):
It's fucking crazy.

 

Matt Handy (03:07:19):
It is crazy. It is wild. Yeah. Whole curriculums, like entire foundational systems built into treatment centers around what do we need to give them? Yeah, it's crazy.

 

Robert (03:07:31):
That's it. We checked those three boxes of the needs and not concerned about the rest. We hit what we have to do.

 

Matt Handy (03:07:39):
That's so crazy. And that's where it all comes down to me is the moral obligation, the human to human obligation to this person. I like that. If I wasn't doing that, if that wasn't the standard and the culture and the metric that we're going by, I wouldn't do this. I just wouldn't. It is so easy to fall to slip on the slippery slopes that we're on.

 

Robert (03:08:04):
Yeah, it is. It really is. Both sides of it, like straight down, slippery as fuck, and you're walking on this path.

 

Matt Handy (03:08:14):
Yeah. Razor thin path.

 

Robert (03:08:15):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (03:08:16):
It's crazy. Well, all right, dude, do you want to add anything else?

 

Robert (03:08:22):
I think that was good.

 

Matt Handy (03:08:24):
We hit a lot. Yeah. Well, thank you for coming.

 

Robert (03:08:26):
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

 

Matt Handy (03:08:28):
Yeah, we can definitely do this again.

 

Robert (03:08:30):
I'd love to.

 

Matt Handy (03:08:30):
For sure.

Thanks for listening to My Last Relapse. I'm Matt Handy, the founder of  Harmony Grove Behavioral Health, Houston, Texas, where our mission is to provide compassionate evidence-based care for anyone facing addiction, mental health challenges, and co-occurring disorders. Find out more at harmonygrovebh.com. Follow and subscribe to My Last Relapse on YouTube, apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you like to stream podcasts.

Got a question for us? Leave a message or voicemail at mylastrelapse.com. If you're feeling overwhelmed or struggling, you don't have to face it alone. Reaching out for support is a sign of strength and help is always available. If you or anyone needs help, give us a call 24 hours a day at 8 8 8 - 6 9 1 - 8 2 9 5.