AllBetter

Transforming Addiction Treatment: Insights from Caron Treatment Centers with Louis DeSanto

• Joe Van Wie • Season 4 • Episode 77

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Discover the transformative power of addiction treatment as we sit down with Louis DeSanto, the Regional Resource Director of Pennsylvania for the Caron Foundation. Louis shares the remarkable journey of Caron Treatment Centers, one of the world's most established and credible providers for substance use disorder. Learn how Caron holistic approach, which treats both the individual and their family system, has fostered a loyal and supportive community, ensuring long-term recovery and a robust alumni network.

Listen to the inspiring story of Richard Caron, whose pioneering vision turned addiction treatment into a recognized and treatable disease. With over 70 years of history, Caron's commitment to its founding principles has created a legacy of trust and excellence. Louis discusses the center’s dedication to accessibility through its non-profit status, offering financial aid to families in need. Despite changes in the healthcare landscape, Caron core programming remains steadfast, providing comprehensive care to those who need it most.

Explore the cutting-edge use of brain science at Caron Treatment Centers, where neurocognitive assessments and brain scans are revolutionizing addiction treatment. Louis explains the significance of viewing addiction through a medical lens, advocating for insurance coverage of comprehensive mental health assessments. This episode underscores

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Joe Van Wie :

Hello and thanks again for listening to another episode of All Better. I'm your host, joe Van Wee. Today's guest is Louis DeSanto. Louis is the Regional Resource Director of Pennsylvania for the Karen Foundation. We speak a little bit about Karen's history today, which is one of the oldest and most credible treatment providers in substance use disorder in the world. Lou is the Regional Resource Director for Philadelphia, bucks, montgomery Counties and the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre area. In this role, he's a resource for individuals, families and clinical professionals in need of substance use disorder mental health treatment resources. He's always available to answer questions, provide information and guide people into treatment and the thoroughness of the treatment process. He has an in-depth knowledge about Karen's programs and services, as well as other resources, allowing him to create a continuum of care for each patient's specific needs. As a Karen alumnus, lewis uses his lived experience to offer empathetic and passionate assistance to those who need help. Prior to coming to Karen in 2023, lewis served in a similar role as outreach specialist for another treatment center. Before that, he was the director of a new business development for a retail energy provider, a position he held for five years. He has a bachelor's of arts in communications from Shippensburg University, pennsylvania.

Joe Van Wie :

Today, we discuss a lot of topics with Lou. Most interesting is scanning the brain. Most interesting is scanning the brain and in mental health services, say, if you even had a broken bone or any other medical condition, you could get an image and associate data to that image. You don't find that too common in mental health services. Karen is changing that and we discussed some other topics but that in the most interest, let's meet Lou. Well, that's it. That's enough counting Beautiful Lou. Thanks for coming by. Yeah, thanks for having me, lou DeSanto. Lou, where are you from?

Louis DeSanto:

I'm from Delaware County, pennsylvania, and born and raised there and, if you're asking work-wise, I work at Karen Treatment Centers currently.

Joe Van Wie :

Karen Treatment Center. So what? What does? How would you define Karen in the field of treatment? For someone who didn't know what Karen is, it's a. It's kind of an institution, one of the first um and the namesake of Richard Karen. Um, how do you make your kind of pitch? Or what story do you stay to to let someone who's not familiar with karen or family, how do you tell that story?

Louis DeSanto:

yeah, um, there's a lot of history, a lot of history behind karen, almost 70 years or close to that. Started as chitchat farm when it first originated with dick and katherine karen, and when it started dick karen was writing a letter he called chitchat before the grapevine.

Louis DeSanto:

Then he would type up on his typewriter and mail out to all the members of aa and he'd go around and pick up local alcoholics and they'd come by the house and eventually his wife Catherine learned that these wives keep calling me and they're asking for their own help. And so you know, when they started really getting into it, they decided that the family is just as important as the patient. The patient is the family just as important as the patient. Patient is the family and the family is the patient and being able to treat the whole system rather than just the patient.

Louis DeSanto:

So as it as it grew, and Karen today. I think one of the main things that stands out to me about Karen is the connection and our alumni base.

Louis DeSanto:

I would put Karen's alumni up against most universities honestly in terms of philanthropy and just overall involvement, wanting to give back. We do this really cool thing. You know each region has their a dedicated alumni coordinator. So let's take Philly, for example, where I'm from. Keith Rogers goes up to campus a couple of times a week and he'll meet with every patient that's discharging back to the greater Philadelphia area. When he meets them he'll ask you know where are you heading, what are your plans, what fellowship are you interested in? And there's a number of alumni I'm one of them.

Louis DeSanto:

We've given Keith permission to give out my phone number. Yeah, and so if he meets a guy that's you know, local to me and they're he's interested in AA, they have my phone number. He says call Louis. He'll take you to a couple meetings, introduce you to some folks and he'll give at least three numbers to each individual. So immediately when you discharge from treatment you're going to meet someone who went through the same treatment process you went through. That gets it, that knows what Karen is, and that gets you plugged in. And I think Karen does that amazingly. And we know that the longer you're involved, the more you stay connected, the better chance you have at recovery. So I was a patient before I ever worked at Karen and I got plugged in as soon as I came back from Florida and it's made my recovery that much stronger.

Joe Van Wie :

Well, there's a lot to unpack. Um, we got family dimensions of addiction, that the trend and the approach was set by Richard, karen and this, the chit chat letter, and how they were going to approach treatment, which evolves totally to this alumni base that rivals an Ivy League. There's almost a status that comes with recovery, with care. I don't mean to be strange, but there's a social aspect to this, especially in the recovery culture and community. But I think where we could start is the idea of families being approached seems just so intuitive and it might not be historically and I think you could see families say we don't know what's wrong with our son or our daughter. They've caught some genetic illness that's now associated with an opioid or an alcohol and this just isn't fully true or flushed out or even meaningful in that regard, as when you compare it to treating a family dimension, even generationally, this is what seems to be the most profound factor in addiction. Is environmental communication, coping. It's complex. We could even say it's on a spectrum now of severity that doesn't have to involve, say, violence, severe neglect. It could be just heightened cortisol in a long pregnancy that was stressful could now increase the chances of someone having this.

Joe Van Wie :

How does Karen still take that approach today? And how do you present that to families? Is it ever delicate that they feel that they're defending something like you know? No, that's the problem with our son. It's not all of us. How do you navigate that delicately without offending someone's good senses? Yeah, that's a. It's not all of us. How do you navigate that delicately without offending someone's good senses?

Louis DeSanto:

Yeah, that's a it's a really great question and there's something important to talk about, because every family is unique and and every family I'll speak for myself and you know I thought my family was crazy and no one's like us and then you start talking about it and other people are talking about it and we're all more alike than we seem, but but still, every family is unique and they will have their own experiences with recovery and their loved one will have their own experience. So I think, when there's patients who you know maybe this isn't their first try, maybe this isn't their first treatment center, their first shot at recovery, those families tend to you know they can be a little more hands off. You guys take them. I don't know what to do anymore and what I try to do, you know, in those situations is let the family know that that they're not alone. And, yes, we're going to take your loved one and we're going to treat your loved one and love them until they can love themselves. But you deserve to be loved too and you deserve to love yourself too and you deserve to understand what your loved one's going through.

Louis DeSanto:

And I think that's the biggest point that I try to get across to families is. We want to help you understand what your loved one's going through. Amidst all this chaos that has occurred over the past years, or however long it's been, you've been so caught up in it. What have you done for yourself and really try to explain to them that you know when our therapists reach out to family members, it's not just an update to say, hey, lewis is doing great here, it's, lewis is doing great here. And what are you doing for yourself today? What have you done? And we have a great family therapy team that focuses more so on the family than they do the identified patient, and I think once I start explaining that, they realize that they can play an active part in this whole thing. They listen a little more and they get enthused about that.

Joe Van Wie :

Yeah, it's apparent. And why it's apparent and what I mean by that is when I've seen people that have left your programming, karen, any age from 19 to even late 20s or 30s it's apparent that there is a different result happening, distinctly from what you just described working with families, an isolated treatment of just the person, even though you know most social work's always in this lane and this culture of empowering the patient. That's it. They're up to it To take that approach. I think you're really doing a disservice, irregardless of the family. If you're, if you're making, if there's this approach, that's non-separation that you're from your environment, you're from your culture, you're from your family and you're not treating that as a whole system, I think the probabilities of success go down. I'm not saying it's a failure, but you're increasing the probability of success because of this is what you're treating. You're treating a sociological problem, not only a psychological. So where is this person from? Not only a psychological, so where is this person from? You see it in your approach of how engaged families are.

Joe Van Wie :

I just I guess I see where it gets complex that there's so many dimensions to this is that you're talking about someone that rose out of a family. You're a result of your family, that you have to always be on guard and cautious of of of restraining people, that there's nothing to blame. Like this is almost an emergent event addiction. It emerged and there's there's no profound or meaningful position to say. We finally found what to blame. Oh, this, this will make sense of it all. So, once that's kind of diminished, that that game of blaming, you see, the last complexity I I feel is seeing a person become more, more of a free agent of their future. And where does a parent? That seems where where things get real delicate, okay, where does this person become fully responsible for their future, even if it's not going to converge with what a family wants, and can they still have recovery? I guess that that's really hard to navigate. Do you see that the complexities in that like?

Louis DeSanto:

when does?

Joe Van Wie :

when does a 19 to 24 year old become autonomous? And I don't know. That's gotta be, that's gotta be hard.

Louis DeSanto:

It certainly is, and the one thing that Karen's therapists are really great about is they will do family work with both parties when the time is appropriate.

Louis DeSanto:

Yeah, you know, they certainly don't want to rush into anything and maybe do more harm than good, but I think it really comes down to education.

Louis DeSanto:

So we have a family education program that every family has access to when they have a loved one with Karen, and it's a two-day program and the first full day of that it's just psychoeducation.

Louis DeSanto:

We're learning about the disease of addiction and all of the things that come with it, and that's a really eyeopening moment for families. As you kind of hinted at, like okay, this emerged from somewhere and here's how our family of origin operates, here's how we've always operated, and you can see, it starts to something, starts to click in their mind, like, uh, maybe I had a little more to do with this than I may have thought. And I think once a family is open-minded, once they're educated, they can really become a partner and an active participant in their loved one's recovery, rather than try to run the show or the patient try to run the show and finding that happy medium and setting boundaries. Boundaries are super important so, and both parties need them. And so you know, I think it comes down to open-mindedness and education, and if you have both of those things, you're going to be set up for success, at least from the beginning those things.

Joe Van Wie :

You're going to be set up for success, at least from the beginning. Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. So, karen, maybe if I could step back for a second. And in total, it's what? 70 years old yeah and how many people does it staff now would you? Would you say?

Joe Van Wie :

we have around 700 700 employees, 70 years, one of the leaders in addiction treatment. How has this been maintained? Like why do you think Karen is not only just relevant, is still a leader in credibility, being trusted and somehow able to scoop up all the leading professionals in clinical work and inpatient treatment? How does something like if you had to take a look back? How does something like this just happen and be maintained?

Louis DeSanto:

So one of the major points I'll make is that when I started professionally at Karen and I had meet and greets across campuses with many different professionals, it was uncommon to hear I've been here for a year, I've been here two years. It was much more common to hear I've been here 10, 20, 25, 30 years, which is amazing. And I think that that happens because Karen has never strayed away from the original ideas that Dick and Catherine Karen had about treating the patient and treating the family and treating the unit together, even when one of the biggest shifts was maybe about six, seven years ago. Before I was working at Karen, we started taking insurance on our Warnersville campus. Prior to that, it was a fully self-paid program. When we did that, the programming didn't change. We just increased access to the programming we were already providing.

Louis DeSanto:

So I think Karen does a great job of just staying true to what they know works. Just staying true to what they know works, and with that comes an amazing community of working professionals that every employee has a voice. Every employee can go into anyone in leadership's office and say, hey, I have this idea or hey, I've been seeing this come up a lot recently. Maybe we should have a group about this, a webinar about this, and I think the fact that everyone's voice is heard and we're all working together to fight this disease is what keeps employees there. It's what keeps alumni engaged and just sticking with the mission of recovery for life, and we haven't strayed away from that, karen hasn't strayed away from that to date, and and that's what just makes it such a magical place- yeah, that's basic physics.

Joe Van Wie :

A simple idea could create many complex things, but the core is still. It started with a simple idea of programs work that way and that's you know we, and we tried to mirror that ourselves Even down to our logo. It was a fractal Very simple thing Could just keep repeating itself into kind of a complexity. Karen, what if someone felt they didn't have the resources to send a loved one, family, their child there? How do you guys approach that?

Louis DeSanto:

Sure. So we've operated as a nonprofit for all of these 70 years. With that being said, I mentioned our alumni being amazing in terms of philanthropy. So we have a large pool of donations that our admissions team can access. So if a patient doesn't have insurance, that works with us. Or maybe they do have insurance but they have a high co-pay and deductible Even for anything out of pocket.

Louis DeSanto:

We do have a financial assistance process that our admissions team is great at working with the families on, and they fill out some information and can get back to the family of if they're eligible for this assistance and how much it may be. We do that for a number of families every day. We want to be as accessible as we can and and we are actively working with many different payers and insurance companies to get as many in-network contracts as we can, so we never have to turn a person away and if, for some reason, you know we have to. That's why people like me and some of my colleagues in business development and admissions are there to work with our partners to make sure that they get to a place that's appropriate Patients get to a place that's appropriate for them, but our goal right now is to increase access.

Joe Van Wie :

Yeah, and access where your main campus is Warnersville correct, correct, and there's two other offerings in Florida. How would you describe all the locations? Sure, what level of care are they?

Louis DeSanto:

So Wernersville is the original site. A lot of our clinical building is built around the house that Dick and Catherine lived in. Oh, they lived there.

Joe Van Wie :

Yes, I never understood, so that was their home.

Louis DeSanto:

It was their home. Wow, so it was their home. And then there's a larger building behind the original clinical building. That was a hotel that they acquired and that was the first property they purchased to treat patients behind their home. And we've just expanded on all of that original structure.

Joe Van Wie :

And for anyone who's not, I mean you could look up further information about Richard Karen he. He is the man that got insurance companies and advocated for them to pay for this as medical treatment. He's it was the first time addiction was a treatable disease and noted as a disorder Not only in the American medical association. Later on, dsm five for APA, he spearheaded all of that.

Louis DeSanto:

You, just you know you struggle for words because just such a champion of recovery and from helping the next alcoholic and helping the families, just you know whatever he could do, he did.

Joe Van Wie :

We have a short history, say, as a recovery community of culture. Both of us understand that it's about 120 years. If we want to say modern history, um, from 12 steps to great psychologists, great sociologists, he is in the top five. I I would venture to say that his contribution to culture and american life in treating addiction you know we're talking about a nation that has 75 million illegal drug users, 22 million people in some form of recovery. That's a short history and it must be. It feels prestigious. I know for my friends that work at Karen, to work there because you're doing really meaningful work with a meaningful history. Is that still felt all over Warnersville when, when you're down there?

Louis DeSanto:

It's such a privilege to work for Karen.

Louis DeSanto:

I'm a Karen alumni from 2019.

Louis DeSanto:

When I I did 90 days of treatment in Florida, I came home I was working a family business for another two years and I reached out to the contacts that I had made at Karen as an alumni and just said you know, hey, what do I have to do to be a part of this and it?

Louis DeSanto:

I had no experience in this industry other than being an alcoholic and um. But instead of just saying, you know, kick rocks, no, keep being an alumni but never going to work here, they helped me understand what skills I needed to gain and what experience I needed, referred me to some great people to get that experience and when I was ready, I applied for a job and they took me back and I. It is just such a privilege, not only to work for the organization that saved my life and saved my family's life, but to see it grow and to see increased access and to see patients on this side now go through the full continuum and come out on the other side. I mean, every day is a blessing and it's amazing and and I know many of my colleagues feel that way, which is why they choose to stay at Karen for 10, 20, 30 years.

Joe Van Wie :

And is that common Uh? Many of the staff clinicians support uh on that campus, florida or Warnersville. Are they alumni?

Louis DeSanto:

I don't know the exact percentage of people, um, I do know that there's a bunch. It's not uncommon. It's not uncommon, um, and I think industry-wide right, you go through some of the stuff as a active addict or alcoholic and it's a lot of people's path once they go back to school to to want help the next people. So, whether they do it professionally, they become a therapist or take their business skills and business acumen and help in another aspect. I think that's common across the industry, but alumni coming back and working at Karen is not uncommon and it helps me serve our patients and families better. And it helps me serve our patients and families better. I'll just speak for myself and say that, knowing and being 100% confident in what I'm recommending, because I lived it is a game changer.

Joe Van Wie :

Staying on that topic of alumni how many events and how do you engage alumni events and how do you engage alumni? What's what's the event of the year and how do you keep communication and a dialogue going with the alumni that are across the country?

Louis DeSanto:

so there's a lot of events, um, some of them in person, some of them virtual. There's a handful of things. One of the biggest events is at the end of June. We have our Karen reunion on the PA campus, which is a weekend long. We always say family, friends, loved ones of Karen are welcome and they all stay there. People stay locally locally If they're from you know, out out of the area, not close to Pennsylvania. If they're close, people will drive up. I know my family will drive up for three days and it is just full of love and fellowship and and connection and whether you went to the Florida location, the PA location or any of our regional sites, you're welcome and you know that's a very large kind of Karen-wide event.

Louis DeSanto:

In addition to that, each region every year has a gala. The Philadelphia gala is at the Kimmel Center in November, dc, florida. Everyone has their own gala to recognize partners in recovery, to recognize alumni. They also serve as fundraisers for our nonprofit. And on top of that, each region has fellowship meetings weekly. So I'll stick with Philadelphia. Wednesday evening there's a philadelphia area alumni fellowship meeting which you it's not for a specific fellowship program, any and everyone is welcome. Uh, three, three weeks a month. It's virtual on zoom. One week a month we get together at the k Philadelphia office and patients are welcome from day one and there are individuals who attend that meeting that just got out of Karen yesterday and there's individuals that got out of Karen 15 years ago.

Joe Van Wie :

And that's special. That's a lot of organization, that's a lot of data to keep. So many years of data, pre-database, pre-salesforce, a lot of archives. Yeah, when you say regions, when you're describing regions, who designates these regions? Are you describing regions of your own outreach, internal outreach, designations of a region? Is that a map of what? The Eastern Seaboard, the country?

Louis DeSanto:

Really just looking at the country. So Northeast, southeast, that's what we traditionally know. Our big regions where we have an active office are Philadelphia, new York, atlanta, delray Beach, florida, arlington, virginia, dc and then, right by, warnersville, wyomissing also has a regional office.

Joe Van Wie :

Yeah, I wanted to note that because I think that would be surprising for certain families if it's their first go-around at confronting this disorder in their family, or alarm that this may be the first time it's occurred in their family. Are they always kind of astonished at the size and scope of Karen? Do you still see surprises in this?

Louis DeSanto:

I do. I was surprised myself when I was a patient. I went straight to Florida from just outside of Philadelphia and I got down there and a bunch of guys were like, oh, did you come from PA? I was like there's one in Pennsylvania, what?

Joe Van Wie :

region. Are you from?

Louis DeSanto:

Um, so yeah, it's. It's surprising, I think, to a lot of folks and it just adds to why people love and respect what Karen does. Uh, cause we want to be everywhere and support every patient that's coming through the doors, no matter where they're from, and for some, I'm sure of it that there's families out there that don't know the wealth of knowledge and resources that we have to offer them. But it's everywhere and there's alumni everywhere and there's someone to connect with.

Joe Van Wie :

It's a basic law to me that good things enlarge, they can enlarge and they enlarge well. The size and scope is a testament to the approach, the advocacy, that simple, fundamental kind of mission that you described not only treat addiction but treat the family has made this all happen, especially from such a dynamic founder. What does the future look like for Karen? What things are changing and I guess I could just add this question there to guide the next kind of segment I want to talk about there, to guide the next kind of segment I'd want to talk about what.

Joe Van Wie :

What have you been wrong about in approaching your own treatment that you still see is astonishing for other people, like this revelation oh, I thought recovery was this, or I thought the problem substance use disorder was this, and it's almost like a rebel revelation that you could, you know, be apt to describe as an awakening, spiritual awakening. Some of that's just provided by straight information that the paradigm I'm living in was so false it's so impossible to share with truth. This is what you could point to as a spiritual awakening, not something supernatural. You could say holy shit, I'm completely wrong about everything. I think is me. Yeah, absolutely. How are you seeing? How do you see that still relevant there and how are you adding to that, Karen, this happening to a wider base of people?

Joe Van Wie :

Sure, so, If you're suffering from a substance use disorder or your addiction is bringing your life to a standstill, call 1-888-HELP-120. That's 1-888-HELP-120. This hotline is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Use evidence-based practice, crisis intervention and trauma-informed therapy to help you get to the treatment you need. End addiction now at 1-888-HELP-120. 1-888-h88. Help 120.

Louis DeSanto:

Personally, I mean one of the biggest things. I was 26 when I went to Karen and got sober and I thought my life was over no more fun, no more Eagles games, no more anything I like to do.

Louis DeSanto:

And that couldn't be further from the truth, and that has to do with being in Florida, having a local alumni base in Florida that volunteers to pick up patients and take me to their house and watch the Eagles game with them, so I can be with other guys from Philly and take me golfing and take me to local AA meetings to see that my life was only just beginning. Where's Karen going? I'm really excited about where Karen is going and that's another reason why I'm so blessed to work for Karen, and what I think Karen does great of is holding on to Dick and Karen, catherine Karen's original mission, but also being innovative for the future. And something that we're really working on and studying right now is is the brain.

Louis DeSanto:

Addiction is a brain disease. If you have a heart attack, you go to a cardiologist. If you tear your ACL, you go to an orthopedic surgeon. If you're an addict, you should take a look at your brain. You go to the brainwash. Yeah, and we've been doing some really sophisticated work with the brain as far as brain scans and different labs. We can run with our docs down in Florida. That we've been doing for quite some time as part of our program. What we've done recently is package all of those things together and we call it the neurocognitive assessment, which can be anywhere from five to ten days, where you can come in without an SUD diagnosis, without mental health, really no strings attached. Okay, you say I want to take a look at my brain health and my performance. We're going to do a QEEG brain scan, okay, and you will receive this very colorful report that shows the activity in your brain.

Joe Van Wie :

That gives a electric, magnetic kind of scanned visual of every region of the brain correct.

Louis DeSanto:

It is a non-invasive yep. You kind of put the shower cap type deal on and and look at a tv and have you done it? I've done it. Oh wild, it's amazing, and so you. So you're, you do that right. And then you're going to meet with a psychologist and just do a general talk, psychological assessment while you're you're under that, you're being scanned, you're, are you? Doing it separate, separate. So this, in addition to being so, you're going to get your scan. That, that's part one.

Joe Van Wie :

Well, let's let me just isolate part one. You put the cap on and you're getting a map, a reading of activity, of where it's happening, and it's on a scale of what's normal and what isn't of activity for most of the population that had this. What exercise? What is happening during the scan? Are there any cognitive exercises or tasks being approached, or is it just a straight mapping of a set time of the brain?

Louis DeSanto:

So there's two parts of that. One is with your eyes open, one is with your eyes closed. Okay, when your eyes are closed, that's it. Your eyes are closed. You have the cap on are closed, that's it. Your eyes are closed, you have the cap on. For a set amount of time Eyes are open. I do believe that you're looking at something on the television, but there is no task.

Joe Van Wie :

You're not doing any tasks or exercises.

Louis DeSanto:

You're not asked to complete anything. You're really asked to relax as much as possible.

Joe Van Wie :

I'm not a neurologist but that is substantial. So, eyes closed, it's really interesting to look at these maps of, say, someone who's suffering from anxiety, generalized addiction, trauma, that their occipital lobe is where vision is located, the cortex. It would go back there and show activity, that you have a visual field. Now, with your eyes closed, if that stays and remains active, it's curious to see how active is that. Is this rumination, resentment, what is this presentation of the activity still looking like? It's seen visuals. I'd be curious to have a long discussion on that. That always fascinates me, but for some people, when their eyes close, is the amygdala being activated, and most I would.

Joe Van Wie :

You know I don't know what the portion of the metric is. We both know how high anxiety is a comorbidity or it might be what addiction could be treating this measure of never feeling safe, never feeling attached to people. You are leading the way of, not only in mental health and behavioral health, especially in addiction, that you can now have a metric from our technology to say let's look at this like a broken leg, and that's simplicity. I don't mean to oversimplify it, but there's very few psychiatrists I could go to in this country and say I have a problem with my brain, the quality of my life's dissatisfying. I think it's my thinking. All right, let's talk about it more. No, scan my brain.

Louis DeSanto:

Yeah Well, and what's interesting about that is, you know, you'd be in the advanced portion of the population to even go and say, hey, there's something wrong with my brain. Most individuals are just something's wrong, I don't know what, and they don't even think about their brain. And as a general population, even as an industry, we just starting, yeah, to look at the brain science and how we can improve that to help the patients. So the scans, part one, yep, part two. What's part two? Part two you're going to be with a psychologist and run through a battery of assessments. Dr kranz, our doctor down in flor in Florida, is much better at explaining the medical terminology for this. Maybe we can get him on someday.

Joe Van Wie :

Lou, are you going to help me?

Louis DeSanto:

I'll help you out with that. So you're doing an R-band. You're doing things that I believe are similar to what you might see in an IQ test Okay, believe are similar to what you might see in an IQ test. You're looking at pictures and memory, recall and language and spelling and things like this. And then the doc's just going to ask you questions and they're going to ask you about an interview, history, growing up, traumas, things like this. They're going to take notes the whole time. They're going to get the scores of those assessments. We're going to do blood work with some specific biomarkers that can indicate different areas of the brain to look at and you're going to put all of this together and all of our docs, the neurologist, the psychologist, psychiatrist everyone's going to get together and look at these results comprehensively. So I'll give you my.

Louis DeSanto:

I went through this when I was a patient and my experience with it was I did this maybe halfway through a month, month and a half into my 90 day stay. So I'm sober, I'm detoxed, I'm having the thoughts of am I actually an alcoholic? Do I really need to be here? These things right, I'd never been to therapy before. And then I sit down with the team and we're going through my report and they say do you see all this red in your brain scan? That's a decrease in alpha, and alpha correlates to anxiety and depression, and if you have decreased alpha, you're probably anxious and depressed. Also, you told Dr A about being bullied in second grade and your parents getting divorced. We think those two have something to do together. Wow, I'm not kidding you. I sat there and said wow, is that what I'm supposed to talk about in group?

Joe Van Wie :

Lou, this isn't most people's experience with approaching addiction, and you know that well. Yeah, that is real work.

Louis DeSanto:

Real.

Joe Van Wie :

That is real help.

Louis DeSanto:

It is and you know I am blessed that that was my first and, you know, knock on wood last experience with treatment. So it's what I know. But the more I've come to learn and study different treatment centers and providers, I know that not everyone is doing this yet and it just helps. You know I could have sat there for 90 days trying to figure out what I talked about. What should I talk about in group? Why am I an alcoholic?

Joe Van Wie :

All of these things and that report told me it finished your you know historically, maybe you could call it a first step, which is this more of an existential kind of meeting with other people? Do I have this same condition? Other people described it to me and this is what's parallel to the discussion we're having. A human being has no intuitive access that he has a brain, for most of history being the last week we could look at brains, in the in the context of, you know, just modern civilization.

Joe Van Wie :

I won't even go far back as evolution and I look at brains. You know, atomically there could be a problem with a structure, which is kind of rare, or there could be, you know, an insurgency of something, a lesion, a cancer, a mutation. Um, the environment had some effect. All right, let's put that all aside. I have no access that. I have a brain. I think on my experience, this is this is a weird thing to do.

Joe Van Wie :

Now, the technology the technology you were specific to tell us could take a map of the brain. We have EEGs, fmlris. This proved to you in five minutes you didn't have an argument left that you had substance use disorder. That's awesome, that is just straight awesome. And to think now that you can use this evidence-based approach really excites me, because I didn't have that when I first got into treatment.

Joe Van Wie :

It was a sales pitch and I'm going back and forth disputing it. I desperately need help, but my critical mind was compromised by my own anxieties so I couldn't even I wasn't approachable Like you. Put a map of my brain in front of me and you tell me something's happening. That's. There's a scary thing that could happen to someone there? Where is will? Where's your agency? What am I calling me If it's just this soft, strange tissue I have no access to controlling. Um, that's where I think things get really interesting on the back half of like being existential cognitive therapy, that that will and volition arises through agency. I might not be controlling this, but I could be aware of it.

Louis DeSanto:

That's a different game and you guys are you guys are killing it and and there's, like you know, a couple things with that that I'll add. I mean one is it can also be validating, you know, yeah, knowing knowing I'm here, I'm here for a reason. I know I have a substance problem. Okay, maybe this is why, and maybe that did have, maybe these things from childhood did have a greater impact on me than I gave him credit for. So it's validating in a sense.

Louis DeSanto:

So now let's get to work, because I feel validated, that I quote deserve to be here, right, and in addition to that, it gives the docs and anyone thereafter that's treating you a roadmap. Yeah, you're going to know what modalities, what therapies, what exercises are going to work for an individual, based on this scan and based on the battery of psychological testing that went through For me. After that, now I had to start talking about childhood a little more, a little, some of those things that I put in the back of my mind and buried way deep down that, ah, they didn't affect me. Now I had to talk about them. So, guess what? You're on your way to trauma group. You're on your way to anger management group, and now my treatment is very individualized and very evidence-based and specific to my history, which is really unique.

Joe Van Wie :

That is promising and I look forward to the field going faster with that, especially now overlapped with AI and how AI can develop patterns, which is a little frightening, but I'll leave that in its own caveat for now.

Joe Van Wie :

We could talk about that for hours, but I guess, to be poetic and summarize, richard Caron started with a simple, fundamental approach the family and things built upon that. Now, 70 years later, you have 700 employees, the largest alumni association I would attach or associate to any treatment center. And this started from a simple idea. You saw a map of your brain. This starts with a simple idea. Brains just seem to always like what I'm just in, this constant concrete state of being Lou or Joe. No, the brain started somewhere and it started with simple stuff, and that simple stuff could just be disconnection. Let's go back and take a look at it for meaningful treatment. I'm not saying everyone has to you and I both know recovery could happen without many ways, sure, but I think for people who are going to, we're going to need sober in recovery with the future we're facing. We need more alcoholics and addicts because they have big hearts.

Joe Van Wie :

They have creative minds. We need them in the game for the future, Just as a species. We need these people a part of community. They will increase our survival the way they think and connect with people, and you guys are leading it in the most scientific, thoughtful, I don't know precise way. I don't know where else this is happening.

Louis DeSanto:

And we want everyone to join us. We want this. You know you sound like the to join us. We want this. You know you sound like the Moonies now.

Joe Van Wie :

We want everyone, everyone.

Louis DeSanto:

You know, our docs and our leadership is traveling to different conferences, specifically with payers, because right now, insurance companies aren't recognizing this assessment as a necessity and we need to change that and we need to. The world needs individuals to have access to this and you know we're at the beginning and we're happy to be, but we don't want to be the only ones. You know, we want to spread what we've learned, what our docs have researched, and make this accessible to everyone. Again, regardless of if you have a diagnosis, if you have history or you know, maybe you are just a high functioning executive, business person and you're curious about your mental wellbeing. Yeah, sure, as you should be. You go to your doctor and get a checkup, a physical, every year, right?

Joe Van Wie :

Yeah.

Louis DeSanto:

Check on your brain and you can repeat it. I'm interested. So I did mine almost five years ago now and I'm interested to get it done again and see what's changed.

Joe Van Wie :

I bet you have less stimulation in your amygdala. Yeah, with short circuits right to like, the temporal lobe can't get to the frontal lobe for activity, with rumination thoughts, unresolved issues of just feeling safe, I think every alcoholic I meet. I have to rely on self-reporting and then actions and observed behavior and then take a full picture and this is a great basic clinical approach. Now coupled with a roadmap of someone's brain who has an internal, maybe a mixture of internal and external motivations for recovery which helps you could see where there's a disconnect from reporting versus. Well, this is what's happening here. You, you, you can have more direct work, you won't waste time and I think it's more effective it serves the client and the patient for for real, real, distinct help.

Louis DeSanto:

Yeah, yeah, let's maximize, you know, as clinicians, maximize the time we have with the patients by looking at the playbook. You're going to receive the playbook and it's, it's fascinating, it's fascinating stuff.

Joe Van Wie :

Lou, is there anything I didn't ask you that I should have? Well then, would you come back?

Louis DeSanto:

I would gladly come back. I love that you're doing this. I just want to say that I think it is so important for people like me, when I was 26 years old, to hear that you know in podcast or in any type of media, that one recovery is possible to there's a lot of resources. And three you get sober, you get to do cool stuff like go on podcast and this is my first time on a podcast.

Joe Van Wie :

Really Congrats, man.

Louis DeSanto:

Yeah, so thank you for having me, and just it's so exciting to to share what we learn. You know I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. You got to give it away, right? Yeah, we're looking to give away, we're looking to give it to other providers, we're looking to give it to families, to patients, and just asking that people be open-minded and start thinking about addiction as a brain disease, as we would any other medical illness.

Joe Van Wie :

That's it, man. That's the future, all new. Thanks again. Thanks for having me. If you want to stick around, we've got some pizza. Can's the future, although thanks again. Thanks for having me. If you want to stick around, we've got some pizza.

Louis DeSanto:

Can't say no to pizza, right.

Joe Van Wie :

You're in me, but now baby, all right, thank you, thank you. I'd like to thank you for listening to another episode of All Better To find us on allbetterfm or listen to us on Apple Podcasts, spotify, google Podcasts, stitcher, iheartradio and Alexa. Special thanks to our producer, john Edwards, and engineering company 570 Drone. Please like or subscribe to us on YouTube, facebook, instagram or Twitter and, if you're not, on social media, you're awesome. Looking forward to seeing you again. And remember, just because you're sober doesn't mean you're right.