AllBetter

Exploring the Intersection of Adventure, Addiction, and Authentic Recovery with Nicholas Gettel

• Joe Van Wie • Season 4 • Episode 81

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What happens when addiction meets the innate human need for adventure? Join me as I engage with Nicholas Gettel a Continuing Care Specialist at Caron Treatment Centers, to unravel this fascinating intersection. Together, we shed light on the nuances of how activism can sometimes fill voids left by personal dissatisfaction and the significant role political polarization plays in the recovery journey. Hear our personal stories about navigating these turbulent waters and understand how authentic adventure and meaningful engagement can be vital tools in a healthy recovery process.

The media landscape today is a minefield of bias and hyperbole, making it challenging to discern the truth. Nicholas and I discuss the mental health implications of consuming news during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the alarming effects high-dosage THC can have on younger generations, potentially inducing psychosis-like symptoms and extreme ideologies. We underscore the importance of balance and stability, highlighting how genuine human connections are crucial in navigating these chaotic times, especially for those in recovery.

Our conversation then moves into the profound impact of intellectual and spiritual pursuits on recovery. Nicholas shares transformative experiences from trauma-focused environments, emphasizing the importance of vulnerability and honesty. We also explore the lasting imprint of e

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Speaker 1:

Hello and thanks again for listening to another episode of All Better. I'm your host, Joe Van Wee. Today's guest is Nicholas Gettle. Nick is the Continuing Care Specialist, Young Adults and Teen Male Services at Karen Treatment Centers. We get to discuss his position there. Nick is also a graduate of Lackawanna College where he studied criminal justice. I got to know Nick over a decade ago. We discussed that. We discussed the polarization of medium and how that can affect someone entering recovery, what its effect is on young adults, someone entering recovery, what its effect is on young adults, and we also discuss many other existential kind of framing of addiction and what that condition would be for someone who is sober, the way they perceive things, perceive reality. Nick is a really wonderful guest to talk to and I'm excited for you to meet him. Let's meet Nick Gettle. Well, we're here with Nick Gettle. Nick, thanks for coming on.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, thanks for having me man. I've had the opportunity to listen to a few of these shows and it's always really cool, having lived up here and known some of the faces and also just the interesting content you know well thanks I, it was always my goal to be interesting, great cost and danger, but fuck it, let's be interesting.

Speaker 1:

No doubt about that. Be interesting at all costs, that's uh. I guess that's the adventurer's way. I think it's the way of alcoholics of our generation. Yeah, and up before us and right after us we have this still prior. This priority we'll never lose to. Adventure's important.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, seek it, yeah dude it's, and it's interesting you say that a person who I really enjoy listening to, who's a psychologist, talks about this phenomenon with people who oftentimes are and I've fallen into it certain times in my life they become really, really focused on like activism and things like that, which is not a bad thing at face value, right, but when people get totally way off the rails, you know, and their personal life is suffering, et cetera, right. Basically, if you don't have authentic adventure in your own life, right, in a meaningful and authentic way, you're going to go find it elsewhere. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Right or a muted way. It feels adventurous. Like I know, I recognize and relate to your addiction and, that being said, I also had this sense every time I drank distress or not distress. There was a sense many times that I was doing something adventurous. I don't know what the rest of the night's going to be. I have a lot of problems on my plate, but it felt like I was playing an active lottery. Yeah, every relapse.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, dude. Well, it's like there's almost a ritualistic. It's the high in between the high. Yeah, it's this place of like I don't know what's going to happen where it's going to go who I'm going to meet.

Speaker 1:

You know or pre like dark addiction, the ritual of shower, the shave, something magnificent. It's out there waiting for me when I still shower, yeah, and six hours later I'm urinating, cigarette burns and a brand new jacket I had. Yeah, so the adventure would be found either way. You started that off by saying there's also adventure like, say, activism. But I have a psych profile that you know, not a mood or a personality, but like an extremity with me, and I think you can relate.

Speaker 1:

Activism did call to me at one point in my life in a way that evolved into a destruction, destruction to an existing business. I had it alienated, friends, that even though we had different, say, political ideologies, my, my beliefs were drawing a line that were so extreme. So I would take what could be national or world news and two binary approaches to this, this, this scenario, life or democracy and they were so polarizing that, like the stakes were, I was taking that news and making the stakes at home. Now, that's something that was always, I guess I think um valued growing up, but it never happened in the way I've experienced the last eight years and I don't know if you can relate to this. What seemed virtuous to me was a consequence, was coming with it before my relapse of activism that was more about me than I don't know the people that I could be advocating for Absolutely. Can you relate?

Speaker 2:

to that A hundred percent. I was. I was really. I look back man and I was like insufferable to deal with and this was in a period of my life. Looking back where I was, I was in a dark place, you know what I mean, and it was before a relapse.

Speaker 2:

Right, it was before the relapse, when everything kind of fell apart and I look back at who I was and thank God that Facebook's deleted or whatever you know. But it was like I'm Nick the this right. Yeah, like, and this is what I believe in Like a costing, like people you know, like what are you doing?

Speaker 1:

It's exciting at first. Yeah, it's exciting at first. You're in the fight.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm in the fight and it's like that person is forever going to hate whatever you stand for, on account of the way they stand for in quotes right. On account of the way that you just behaved.

Speaker 1:

Man. I'm glad we're talking about this because I think we met many years ago and I always had a good rapport and then the political polarization really ramped up, I'd say 2015,. If we're talking in just the modern phenomenon and without going into ideologies, I think we had opposing views, maybe socially, but we always got along. We always had a rapport. Yeah, and that was around the time I myself I would do political advertising, but I also had my personal really extreme views that were almost I don't want to call them liberal because they're tied into my own nihilism, right. So I would make comments myself on someone's Facebook that maybe I had a loose association with, with no consideration, like okay, I know this person, that they there's this open forum now that we're calling Facebook and I'm leaving really cruel and mean comments. I was, I couldn't believe, yeah, and then I'd be celebrated, like once there's that validation, this light button, like oh, it was the same crowd of seven people.

Speaker 2:

Here we go, rally the troops.

Speaker 1:

It starts. So I don't know. There's a an invisible reward. I at no point was it considering what my reward was. Neurologically, right Like there, I'm being hacked into my own behavior and I'm also radicalizing myself Like no one's doing this to me. I'm in an echo chamber. We're all radicalizing each other With nonviolently. It started on Facebook, but that was right around the time I found myself relapsing because the crisis is the way I would read news. It would escalate. I was reading news Okay, this is the event that may have happened. Whatever source I'm getting my mind with a background of anxiety and trauma was reading the news that doesn't exist. That was six months from now. I know the catastrophe. This is step one. Step two is step three. Oh fuck, I better, just. I just better acknowledge the.

Speaker 2:

You know the nuclear warfare that's six months out we're gonna be broken.

Speaker 1:

Radiation, radiation, yeah I've seen this film. We're engineered to think that way, though I think good evolution allows for, I think, people with anxiety to have high intelligence, extreme anxiety, I think they they're constantly calculating it's.

Speaker 2:

It's incredibly functional, right until it. Until it reaches that point where that pendulum swings and all of a sudden, you're alone. Yeah, I can't have a relationship with other people when, when, when were the first consequences?

Speaker 1:

I've had them, we both, both experienced. When did you? When did it hit its low that you had to acknowledge is there? It's not the world, it's my mind.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a really good question. You know, I think it's something that. So I had had experiences the first time I was sober, right, like the experiences we have in recovery that changed kind of our outlook on life, you know, and as a result of that experience, I think, joe, if you would have asked me, I would tell you that I intuitively knew that to be true, despite how I was, which which adds so much injury to it, because you're you're, you intuitively know something to be true, or you feel you do and you're just acting, in total, totally against it, right, and it's like I don't know.

Speaker 1:

I mean, well, that's giving me? And said I never phrased my own experience that way and I knew exactly what you're saying yeah, yeah and it's, and I think it's always.

Speaker 2:

It's kind of always coming coming back and going away a little bit right, depending on what I have going on in my life. I have, you know, proclivity towards still that sort of ideology, that, that mindset, this I know everything you know. I put that cap on and it's often in, often like in direct correlation to whatever level of distress I'm experiencing in my current circumstances.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's the last analysis, that this is mirroring my own internal stresses. Yeah, but the news, you know, I could easily say it's hyperbolic, it's very biased. If you're left or right where your sources are, if you're left or right where your sources are, even the objectivity of, say just for the generalization of this discussion truth lies somewhere in the middle. The middle's really fucking weird. So, whatever our realities are, it's a lot of extreme information. But I think I wanted to explore the idea. It's still a story, right, so the story's not complete. You and I are still alive, but I still complete these pieces of news like all right, I'm always in the middle of a story. Something started the news. I'm reading yep, be it. All of history, whatever scope or small scale, I want to look at what's the end? What's the end of his right? That's what's driving.

Speaker 2:

It's almost boring boring to think that it's just going like everything's going to continue to adjust, yeah and and things will change and it might not be that dramatic. I just was listening to a podcast on my way up here and the individual was sharing his worldview that, like, look, you know, things aren't nearly as wild or wonky or bad as we, you know, believe they are, or as we you know, and I don't know that I, I don't know personally that I agree with that. Yeah, but to hear that it was like man, that would be nice.

Speaker 1:

I tend to agree with it. When I'm in crisis I did during COVID I had to convince because my anxiety was really making my life dissatisfying my intimacy. Being trapped in the house with my wife who was pregnant, my consumption in news is always far more substantial than hers.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And I always think the stakes are just dire oh yeah like it's braveheart act. Three patriot, it's a. It's a mel gibson like aim small, miss small.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, aim small, run in slow motion, carry the flag, um, and you know my ideologies, um, I think are. Some of them are an expression of personality, others Others are principles, and I don't think, when I sit down, what I could historically be painted as a liberal, but there's always complexities. I could paint you as a conservative, but I know you and I don't think Nick the conservative. But this had us for a while. These stories, the fear comes in with the end, and the end is strange. There's no such thing as the end. Nothing ends, and this kind of could be our pivot into a little spiritual or existential talk.

Speaker 1:

For sure, I saw you three months ago. I walked into Karen Foundation at a meeting. I had no idea that you were there. Yeah, and I'm not being poetic, when I shook your hand and saw you, it was like intuition, like you were talking about earlier. We're in the same place for the same reason. Something trumped. I was part of this toy, of what I like in politics, yeah, democracy, threats, yeah, culture, yeah, I love these topics. Yeah, and here's the two of us. We have one thing to advocate People are suffering.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

From not only addiction but the rumination that we both just opened up with Mm-hmm. How do you approach that knowing? Are you seeing that in the younger, like younger, be it adolescent, 19 to 25 year olds? How are they digesting what you and I have always had an interest in politics, government, history? Is that happening in that younger generation? Is it part of discussions and anxiety, or culture?

Speaker 2:

no-transcript. I mean, joe, I experienced it myself in early sobriety. This time, you know we'll talk about this right. Like you know, having trauma and this, that and the other thing, I got sober six months into my sobriety. Covid started. Right, we're on the same timeline bro I figured dude.

Speaker 2:

And I was like I was like this was crazy. You know, um, I'm like making amends via WebEx or calling people Right, and it's um, I could not. I got very close to be to, to to be quite honest with you, to really kind of going off the deep end a little bit in light of what was going on and trying to make sense of it, and then also in light of my own personal experiences and the things that needed to be felt, that weren't being felt right and all of that stuff. So it's easy. I mean, it was an easy world to slip into, that it is.

Speaker 1:

It was part of my entry into recovery If am I going to be happy and stable. The psychosis I was experiencing and what I'm starting to see in younger clients is is really related to THC.

Speaker 2:

Yes exactly.

Speaker 1:

I don't. I'm not being a sensationalist. The amounts and dosages have never been seen in our culture or history to the effect they could have not only on cognition. Or say you have these ideas, ideologies, what happens to the worldview while you're in that dose high is essentially tripping, paranoia, rumination, it looks. I'm not saying a full psychotic break, but it's psychosis. Sure that I have concrete thinking, I am assured of what's going to happen. These thoughts are then reinforced with some of the more extreme emotions. Someone could feel, yeah, and now they'll produce behaviors that are completely irrational and you can't see it.

Speaker 2:

No, no, no. It was almost like, and with everything that went on it was kind of the perfect storm and I don't I don't know enough to know whether I do certainly know, from experience and from from what I see, the relationship between cannabis and it. I mean, it's unreal. I honestly had no idea the extent of it until I started working with it and was in front of it all the time.

Speaker 2:

And I know that there was a lot of research done on on the impacts, because when weed was getting legalized, right it was, there was a lot of. You know it's great, it's bad, whatever, but there was research done on its impacts on the developing great brain, Right, and I know that there's still some pending research on its impact. And then you know a higher level of individuals who end up on the skip with schizophrenia yeah, it's good, so effective, right, or or any combination of both.

Speaker 1:

It's alarming. It is, and some of the research that's being led is Stanford. If anyone's ever interested in, andrew Huberman has a great podcast where he goes over just raw data of this. If someone wants to explore it, that's a great place to start for general information. But seeing it aggravate say an underlying comorbidity or you know you're using THC and a co-occurring kind of personality disorder, mood disorder, starts to present itself.

Speaker 1:

It's hard for regular people to admit that because we're talking about weed and weed has a different definition depending on your age. Yeah, and we were both around. I had. No, no, I thought it was a fair argument and I'm I still. I'm not, um, a prohibitionist with anything, no, really, um, I'm not saying what's right or wrong, but I weed, I think for some people was a really remarkable medicine, be a pain management or these strange outliers I've seen we've all seen videos on TikTok or something of a Parkinson's patient, a reduction of the symptomology of neurological problems. You know, uncontrolled movements of your arms. This gets reduced. Okay, we see this. This campaign's flowing. What we didn't really see, or see a place where you could hub all this information, is the new strands are unnatural to anything you've seen in the last hundred years of marijuana use it could be cultural, ritual or habitual into an addiction.

Speaker 1:

What we didn't see is the amount of THC that could be smoked from one drag. Yeah, the amount of THC that could be smoked from one drag.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Um strands that I don't have any genetic background, but I mean that came around when we were back in the day.

Speaker 1:

Oh man, I'd be chewing on bark out there. Man, I thought I got stoned in high school, 14 years. And not smoking pot, nick, I smoked. I ate a gummy the first time I ate it. Edible yeah I, I could have just shit my pants and done nothing about it for an hour, like, and just I, I just didn't know I was gone. Yeah, like I was in a puzzle factory and I I was convinced this is not marijuana.

Speaker 2:

Like someone gave me LSD, yeah, or K2 or something right, this was. This is not marijuana, like someone gave me LSD or K2 or something.

Speaker 1:

Right, this was. This is art. Yeah, and it was pop. I was. I was out of my mind. Now it really goes to say what is underneath my fragile personality.

Speaker 1:

At this point in my beliefs, in my life, the crisis and polarization say that was expressing itself. Facebook, oh, I'm relating to the news, my own political leanings. A couple months into smoking pop before I drank, it was awful because I could only see the world in one lens. It was horrifying. It was filled with dread. It matched most dystopian stories that the architecture's in my mind. It's what I was drawn to, even sober, of course. And now it's just banging it Like it's a symbol and it's feeling truer and truer and truer because of the emotions you get from being high at that level of TC. You can't hack emotion, so natural course of emotions lets you know that something's true or motivates a behavior. Right, they do something.

Speaker 1:

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-HELP120. 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. To help you get to the treatment you need End addiction now at 1-888-HELP-120. 1-888-help-120. Sadness is a good thing and the emotions I'm getting from music or the sensations around me at that level of THC are reinforcing my own false narratives I'm getting from music or the sensations around me at that level of THC are reinforcing my own false narratives and it's making my life dissatisfying and my relationships are getting alienated and isolation. It's the only place where I feel comfortable. Walls closing, yeah, yeah, I don't want to be around anyone. I don't even know how to express what I'm feeling because it's just, it's unclear, it's just filled with this noise of my political image and then my whole life's falling apart. But I'm looking for the news, for some global, clear picture. Answer yeah.

Speaker 2:

Did you ever think, and do you ever think, that maybe and this is something that I've often asked myself, right, it's like ultimately and I do have, I think, a general interest in that I grew up loving history, loving it, you know, I mean, and I think that just kind of naturally segues into almost contemporary issues, that sort of thing, into almost contemporary issues, that sort of thing. But one thing I've realized, you know, particularly over the past five years, is that, a lot of my intention, with all of that, with the insane amount of deep diving I would do, a reading books on economics, reading, you know it was there was a level of that that was like me, protecting me from being hurt, wow, protecting me from me from being hurt, wow, protecting me from connecting with other people, right, because if you saw me and what I actually believe, or, better yet, what I have no clue what I actually might believe, right, which is even scarier.

Speaker 1:

You know, or like it's spiritual, like if I have an emotional regulation being open to anything being changed in my mind. Yeah, history specific and you know, being that you, I know you love history that that could always have a methodology to it that you have a primary source. So there's criteria for information to be more credible, even as you go further. So that's a great practice. But you just said something specific. I mean, explain that to me, because I'm, I'm, I'm feeling what you're saying, but I want to, I want to make sure, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So much, man, and it's. It's like the yin and the yang right, like there's there's, there's authentic truth to some of it, and then it gets weaponized. Okay.

Speaker 1:

Right Is what.

Speaker 2:

I'm what I'm saying, where it's like, um, I have to know the most, I have to be able to firmly defend this idea that, to be quite honest with you, at my core I'm not even a hundred percent sold on, right, yeah, but so that you don't see that I don't know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you know that's anxious, that's anxiety. Yeah, I had the same thing. To be caught Like a gotcha was so humiliating, or maybe I experienced in ways others don't give a shit I felt like my whole identity is on the line over a comment. Yeah, Look, they got 20 likes, it's true. Yeah, it's so complex, there's so many dimensions to that really specific period of time of. I don't think Facebook has that garners that kind of audience anymore. Like people have restrained themselves, but it was exciting. I mean there was some clashes and comments.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, you got a war on there, man yeah.

Speaker 1:

Part of my over blanket solution. I don't want to speak for you. I felt when I got into this field and I had to have a new sense of recovery, because I felt like I relate deeply to how you described your experience and mine as well my identity kind of failed at what I was pieced together to call myself an adult. I had a relapse that I found was meaningful, filled with crisis, but also destroyed the fraud of me considering I was my ego, like that's annihilated. Yeah, where do I start? I? I was drawn to this field because it had no other lens but help. I don't have to ask anything except about trauma, your pain. But help, I don't have to ask anything except about trauma, your pain. There's no question in a biopsych, social outside of that you need intellectually. Do we agree on something before we help each other?

Speaker 2:

No, not at all, not at all, and it is. I get entirely what you're saying. It's like this Wow, that really simplifies things. You know that was a big.

Speaker 1:

yeah, it helped me tremendously.

Speaker 2:

Space I can operate in comfortably, then you know.

Speaker 1:

I'm human again. I don't have to know my intellectual. It also lets me play with intellectuality, and you as well. I appreciate how little I knew about new research in the last 10 years. I was a fundamentalist kind of approach to the 12 steps. It worked for a long period of time I think my age matched it well 20s, 30s and it started to crumble in my hand. I didn't explore the details of my own spiritual beliefs and there was nothing there that was logical or could withstand kind of scrutiny, and I didn't know what I believed. So what does this mean? Like I don't know what, yeah, and that kind of cascade into other things where I just wasn't examining my own behaviors and then using the news that way, instead of wondering why I wasn't opening mail, right, right, yeah, wondering why I wasn't opening mail Right.

Speaker 1:

Right, yeah, so to find my intellectual curiosity woke up again in a way that wasn't biased, was just from a position I don't know, what don't I know and can I learn things that make my life better. But can I be a teacher in this? Make my life better, but can I be a teacher in this? How do you relate to that and when you decided or started to get drawn towards drug and alcohol treatment, substance use disorder treatment, and maybe tell me a little bit how that landed you at Karen?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a that's a really good question and this is where we'll start to get more into like the consciousness Cause. Joe, honestly, if you would have asked me when I got sober this time, right, like early on, you'd have been like what's the one thing you won't do? This time I would have said I'll never work in treatment again. I'll never work in treatment again the exact thing I'll do. Let me make that one. Yeah, could have passed a lie detector test, right and like. This is where you kind of hop into what I conceptualize is like the spiritual realm. Right, it was about a year sober. I was living in New Jersey, just wasn't feeling it over there. This was, covid was happening, that's most of the state might feel that way. Yeah, it did. I'm just like a simple Pennsylvania Dutch kid. You know what I mean. My family hasn't left Berks County since the early 1700s. Wow, that could be a podcast in itself. Next, time.

Speaker 2:

Audience of three on that one.

Speaker 1:

Deep dive into Amish country today, and all better.

Speaker 2:

But I really hit this wall man and all better, but I really hit this wall, man and I, in looking long story short, I was like I'm going to move back to Berks County. Not only that, I'm going to move in with my 94-year-old grandma right, who was always like my closest person to me Wow, you know, and it was really a wonderful, wonderful experience. She's still alive, she's 98 now, you know, and we got to share some awesome experience. We got COVID together. Like it was wonderful, man, you know, and it was weird because during that whole time, what really troubled me about COVID COVID at my core, outside of all the other stuff was the fact that my 94 year old grandma's small life got that much smaller. You know, I don't know, I just had this like light bulb, like idea, you know, maybe go move back in with your grandma and help her out, you know, and start talking to people about it. They're like do it Okay. Long story short, man.

Speaker 2:

I had a dream one night about a friend of mine who I knew was in recovery. Him and I grew up together. We raised hell together, you know, and I knew he had gotten sober like six or seven years before. And I had a dream about him and like I don't reach out to everybody I have dreams about, but, like, for some reason the next day, I felt compelled to text him. I hadn't spoken to him in a few years. And I texted him and I was like hey man, how are you Like? It's Nick Gettle, I'm moving back to Berks County. And he was like hey man, I work at Karen now. Put in an application, Wow, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Wow, wow, wow, wow, yeah, and you're nuts and bolts kind of guy and now you're having dreams that are dictating the course of your life. You're Joseph, that's biblical weird stuff.

Speaker 2:

Recovery like I don't know about you man. Recovery turned me into a space cadet, Like I. Recovery like I don't know about you man recovery turned me into a space cadet, like I was never a space cadet and like recovery totally turned me into where I'm like I just had enough experiences that I can't deny, yeah, where I'm just like I.

Speaker 1:

I don't know yeah, I don't know, you know man. Yeah, it's flow, yeah, it's nice, it is to not.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, exactly, and so much of my experience has been that what Carl Jung talks about, like the idea of synchronicity, or these events that happen that you just can't, you're like what? How is that you?

Speaker 1:

know, yeah, it's. It's hard that I don't I could read it until it's relevant to. I'm such a self-centered kind of person that rose up from, maybe, my own trauma. Sure, I've read that different periods of my life and it meant different things because I was limited to my experience. Now I feel I'm not limited to my experience, yeah, um, cause I could my empathy. I just find my rigidness was almost restraining, not only a fake way to protect myself from anxiety, but limiting my empathy because I didn't have a regulation to it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there was no ban, it was unsafe.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, because you could take over my whole day if I got in tune, vibed, with your emotions. Yeah, I could lose the next three days of my life because you lost somebody. I've had this happen. Days of my life because you lost somebody. I've had this happen. And I had this fake kind of approach to responsibility, maybe in my late 20s, to try to will a coldness to my plan rigidness, yeah, don't get distracted. Yeah, and it came at a huge price because I don't know how to uh find a meet, like a middle way of approaching things.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, exactly Exactly, and it's like those are the. I feel like those are what you just talked about in your mid twenties, like those are these ideas that we cultivate, and I feel like we cultivate them out of out of direct experience with other people. Okay, I think, they're relational in nature and we have these experiences that lead those we'll call them voices or those ideas, to show up in our life and be like you need to do this or this will, or you'll complete failure.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then you're, like you know, in a psych ward with six years sober, like what happened.

Speaker 1:

All shoelaces are tired before the shoes go in the closet.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's, it's wild man. But just to go back to that, to the Karen thing, and like I started there working in admissions, I kept having more weird experiences that I won't really like dive into too deep man, I mean I'm comfortable doing so. Long story short, I look back on my own experience right as a 20 year old.

Speaker 2:

I turned 20 in karen's young adult program 2010 okay and looking back, man, it's one of those things that you didn't really. The time and place was perfect to look back and see how formative an experience that was and how much of an impactful part of your journey. That was right. And I kept the guy who used to run that unit, who started it, who ran it. His name was Tom Ditzler and Tom was a person somewhat similar to my grandma in my life, and when I say that, I mean like somebody who I feel as though loved me unconditionally and appropriately. Wow, we'll use those words right when he would show up at times in my life when he had no obligation to do so.

Speaker 2:

If I'm in a hospital bed, you know, having overdose, tom Ditzler's there, right, tom Ditzler's. Well, you know all of these things and he had actually died when I was in Marworth this time, when I was in treatment this time, and I felt that, man, the last thing he ever said to me in person was like remember, partner, I love you. And then I found out he passed away and I kept having these experiences on campus, where there's like these few pictures, these memorial pictures of his dog, his therapy dog, fenway, who he used to bring around, there's like three or four of them on campus. Somehow, I keep like bumping into these things, you know, and I, every time I'd bump into it, I don't know, man it just like did something to me. It was like he was looking right at me and I started to feel more and more drawn towards it.

Speaker 2:

And I started to have more affirming experiences of like no, you're going the right direction, like that's where you want to be working with young adults. You know, I can't really describe it, man. You know, um, the cheap words luck.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's real. Yeah, you mentioned and I want to bring context to it You're from the area.

Speaker 2:

Oh, yeah, grew up in singing.

Speaker 1:

So my, my, they are, oh yeah, grew up in singing. So my, my grandma and grandpa got home from world war ii. They lived on that mountain in like a bungalow where karen is. Karen is essentially a neighbor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, as kids, we, we always like, uh, full circle, you're in your own backyard doing something not only that's noble, fulfilling, and here's a mentor yeah, and images where you work is on a wall. How many people get to experience that Like he's?

Speaker 2:

he's talk the dead talk Dude. I talked to him all the time. Yes, all the time I talked to him. You know where I'm just hey, what do you think about this one? You know what I mean. Like what do you?

Speaker 1:

well, ai exists, it's in our head and, like, forget, like I always say, it's always been here. This accessibility to our own resilience, consciousness, agency, intelligence. It's an AI program that allows the dead to live. I still get my dad criticizing me. Yeah, he's software in my skull. A brother, 100% Dits, is alive to you. And now you got imagery around you. Yeah, that makes sense to me, man. Yeah, it makes sense to people in recovery. Before we go further, how do you view Karen growing up so close to it, and how do you know the world views Karen and its credibility as a leader in treatment? Did you ever know that was their position or was it just kind of taken for granted? That was the treatment center down the street.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it was kind of out of sight, out of mind. Right, there was always this oh, that's where famous people go or whatever.

Speaker 1:

That's what we knew about it.

Speaker 2:

Growing up in the area we never like drove up there. I didn't really know a ton about it at all, joe, until I took the two and a half three mile drive to check myself. You know, at 19 years old I really didn't, I didn't, I didn't, I had no clue that that. You know that in our backyard, and probably more more so than anything else in Berks County, that there's a true pioneer industry leader. You know it's something to be proud of research, treatment, and they still are.

Speaker 1:

And you said campus. If no one's ever been there, you're on a campus 112 acres, man hospitals, residential components, alumni, sprawling fields yeah, Just the most ideal place to have an inpatient experience and detox with the world's kind of leading professionals.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And here you are on the campus. Is there a pride or a sense of accomplishment that you only get? Not only are you doing something that's beautiful and that you love, and, metrically, is what could be more important than helping another human being relieve his pain before he dies? Yeah, especially if he can't.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, it's. Yeah, I do have a tremendous amount of pride right and it's like the kind of pride that I don't think you could teach somebody. It's a lot of it's in light of my own healing experiences that I've had there as a patient. I also went through their breakthrough program, which is like a five-day family of origin clinical intensive psychodrama, internal family systems work, life-changing, you know, really totally life-changing. What does that break out to look like? Five, five days that culminates into really highly trained individuals that know what they're doing, to kind of this psychodrama where you act out Where's dad, where's mom, where's little Nick?

Speaker 2:

You know, Okay, what does little Nick need? And they almost, they almost trick you into just bawling. That's like a stall. Yeah, it's just just stalled as in there as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and it's. It's a reconnection with your authentic self. Wow, and that's. I didn't realize I had trauma until I went through that and I reconnected with you know, had that experience, and they were like, all right, who here can support you in the room? And like I picked a guy and he went to put his hand on my shoulder and I couldn't let him Wow, and that's when I was started to realize that the gravity of some of the situations that had occurred in my life and how it was impacting my relationships with other people, I couldn't let that guy touch me.

Speaker 1:

I didn't trust him you know, yeah, and it just was like. Oh some people leave there. They're like sunshine and rainbows. I left there. I was like, oh my, that's real therapy, though, to have that insight. Yeah, um, you said a word authentic, we.

Speaker 1:

We say that often here, and a lot of our colleagues do. Authenticity is the cure to trauma. It is the opposite of substance use disorder. The dishonesty people and maybe even in 12-step, we'll say you know, this is one of the character defects of four, and we always remind people it's not the dishonesty of lying, it's the dishonesty of you thinking, you, your thoughts or who you want the world to believe you are. This is a fraud, dude, and it's not working anymore. No therapy. You just described said authentic self and a return to this idea is what we would call long-term recovery.

Speaker 2:

That's recovery, man. Yeah, yeah, I agree, 100% right, and it's even in, and I'll cite the big book. There's a line in there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I feel like it's so.

Speaker 1:

I feel like it's so undervalued Big book Nazis from the past, man yeah quoting.

Speaker 2:

So I feel like it's so undervalued, nazis from the past, yeah, and it's and it's it's so under, and I think it's because it's not an instructional line, right, but there's a line and a vision for you. And they talk about the gentleman who runs his political campaign. Okay, and he ends up not, he loses by a slim margin. It says right, and he said it didn't matter, he said he had found god and in finding god, he had found himself. Yeah, and it's like that line gets slept on man, and it's like.

Speaker 1:

You know, that is that is what this is all about and that line I held on to because I was pretty secular on my return um anti-theist. But then there's this puzzle that I'm really glad, I think, think Hank P had an influence on it and build it to um, how much of an Easter lens, eastern lens they're kind of brushing the big book with. That, I think isn't easily noticed if you're Catholic or from a Christian origin. An awakening, yeah, isn't it a common word for Judeo Christians you don't wake up, you're saved, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2:

That's interesting where you're saved. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:

That's interesting, where you find God. We found this great reality within, yeah, okay, but they also have a caveat you can't do it by yourself, yeah. So where's God and other people Right, all in the together? If we reveal this authenticity, I tell you my real story Nick's family of origin. Guess what happens? You found God.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and God's a mirror. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

It's back and forth and it couples that last line where we find God. That's the paradox of getting better. Do I have enough time to tell someone exactly who I am? And it's hard because there's a lot of shame and it feels really reckless for people that have addictions to do that. You will fucking destroy yourself if I tell the truth about myself, a hundred percent Don't do it.

Speaker 2:

That's what you're telling yourself over and over, and it's such a all those protective strategies that come up right To keep us safe from ourselves. Because, and quite honestly, joe, and what I've found for me and a lot of the work that I've done, is that goes back a long way, yeah, and sometimes, joe, I even think it goes back from before we can even remember.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Like it's energetic.

Speaker 1:

It's generational. I believe in generational trauma. There's. There's nothing spooky about it. To me, it's logical and linear. It's the core of reality. How am what preceded me? That's it and I? You could break that down to fucking carbon. Yeah, you're just what is preceded. Yeah, right, and now I'm this, this reflection, echo of it happening. If you want to get spooky, yeah, but this is really what's happening subatomically, absolutely echo. Um, and I look back to think, not so far of the origin of the universe. Forget the origin of culture, the origin of cognition. I just saw inside out too, and we're right.

Speaker 2:

Right yeah, beautiful yeah.

Speaker 1:

I brought my daughter to her first movie, persia, and I'm writing a we're. We're starting to like. Blogs are famous. Now we're just catching up.

Speaker 2:

Are they bad?

Speaker 1:

I don't know we're adding a blog to our website because we want to express ourselves of what we're, where we're getting um, influenced by good research, good reading, people that care and friends, colleagues. I want to write about it a little more and, uh, express ourselves on um, our website for families, kind of just see where we're drawing our information from Sure and inside out too. I was thinking, okay, you got these little characters that represent emotions pulling the switches in your head and I'm thinking, okay, where's the origin of this? And some good evolutionary research and the ideas I like about the beginning.

Speaker 1:

Genesis of cognition is really anchored to optics, the eye, the first land kind of creatures and mammals, the first fish. Fish were limited to, say, meters underwater with vision. First it was detecting light, just fast forward, some kind of scale. I'm now one of the first land creatures and I could see, say, a mile on a flatland. What is this doing? It's changing my relationship to time as experience, cognition and senses. So if my experience with time changes in scale, cognition rises up to give choices. What are the choices? Responding to? Fucking fear. So our origin of relationship? Fear would be the driving emotion to prompt behavior, move left, move right, hide fight, flight With, with incredible consequences for the wrong decision.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, fast forward. Sabertooth tiger comes in.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, now fast forward, that to say 10,000 years ago, with the rise of society. Yeah, the tigers are gone. We have cleared land. We have structures, role, identity, status and position in society. You make bread. I'm a soldier.

Speaker 2:

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:

This automation of processing fear is still built for the saber-toothed tiger. Yeah, Homo erectus, kind of the Neanderthal.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So the consequences of me feeling that the bread guy isn't worthy enough as the soldier starts to have the same emotions that your life's in jeopardy for some of us.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, exactly. It's almost a level of processing within ourselves that no longer serves us in the current environment.

Speaker 1:

So, nick, you and I are here because we had some of the best weirdos in our families got us here first off. But think of that. Like, I mean, that's where we're coming from. Why would that change? Because what I was born in Scranton, I'm, I'm, these are the tools. That just that's where we're coming from. Why would that change? Because what I was born in Scranton, these are the tools. That just it's. They emerge. I didn't choose, you don't choose any of this. So it really goes to the heart. When does free will begin? So all these components just rise up in a fetus. Fetus is born. Yeah, thinking about that today is spiritual for me, absolutely, man.

Speaker 2:

And it it unhardens my judgment, some people and myself, dude, when you can start to read back on your own book and really start to see that to a degree. If we are, if, if, if you and I are sitting here and we're both in agreeance, that connection right, human connection is as important.

Speaker 2:

It will not kick, kill connection is as important, it will not kick, kill you as quickly as not having water or food. But if you cannot connect and how can you connect if you're not connected with yourself authentically, if you cannot connect with other people you're going to, you don't have what you need, You're not a mammal.

Speaker 2:

You're not exactly broke the main part of being a mammal being in the pack and if you deal with situations early on that leads you to believe that who you are authentically is not necessarily the best idea to be. Yeah, you're going to try to get that connection. You're going to come up with millions of different schemes and ways Ambition. Yeah, exactly, and it's like those are the things that end up really jacking us up, man.

Speaker 1:

Oh God, yeah, that movie really. My daughter's a little too young. She likes the animation, but like just to think that's the offering of what I'm bringing her to see. Yeah, let's go back to both of us being not I want to paint you as a nihilist, but you know pessimist, seeing the worst in nature, having to protect things fanatically our ideologies. That's the cartoon I took to see my daughter. I saw Cobra at that age. That's starring Sylvester Stallone fighting off a guy who's killing just strangers with a seven foot knife. He's part of this cult like organization in the film that has no ideology. They meet and click axes and they're just randomly murdering people in la. Until you know sylvester sloan, you know he gets smart on this and he's like I'll find these psychos, I'll shoot every one of them.

Speaker 2:

That's that was my inside out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 1:

I can think of so many.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I was watching that at three. She's watching inside out, I'm watching.

Speaker 1:

Freddy Krueger, just just six hour shootouts.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, oh, the world's not safe. Yeah, this is not safe.

Speaker 1:

You know, the soft stuff I was watching was the fall guy, right. I mean like come on.

Speaker 2:

I remember I would get taken to see like the Lion King. I remember getting taken to see that in theaters. I was like five, yeah, and that was a big deal or toy story, but I remember like not being all that interested, like I liked the fight scene.

Speaker 1:

Death did? Did it have an impact? Like to to know what death was.

Speaker 2:

I think a lot of things had a really strong impact on me at a young age and I think there's a lot of me that didn't feel safe to express or feel those things yeah that didn't feel safe to express or feel those things, you know. One memory I do have is I was probably a little bit older than that and I was at the shore with my uncle and he rented the movie Amistad.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, it was about the slave ship Anthony.

Speaker 2:

Hopkins, and like I just wasn't, I didn't understand that that took that. How old were you six?

Speaker 1:

seven. This is the birth of your joy of history to be surprised, it wasn't it, chorus?

Speaker 2:

my birth of my love of history probably came from my dad and just learning about world war ii, the civil war right all of those things, yeah, place to start the most, I don't know, dynamic points of america, of human history yeah, yeah and it was just. But there was almost like a loss of innocence in seeing that movie and seeing cruelty, cruelty and seeing desperate like it. Just I'm six or seven years old man, it's I became looks like genocide, an active act of genocide.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I became obsessed with it from wow, yeah, I did like a school project on amistad and the teacher was like what's this all about? Like who does this at six or seven? But it was like a this relationship I had to this thing that I couldn't quite. How do you?

Speaker 1:

resolve that at six. So yeah, I guess the crisis is not understanding what would drive someone else's cruelty.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and just the disturbing nature of it, man.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, just wow, nick, I the mirror. This is how all tennis matches and a cover I'm thinking King did that for me. Yeah, and Jesus Christ, jesus of Nazareth.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

I forget who played him, maybe Christopher Plummer? It was on TV a lot. I can't be no more than first, second grade, yeah, so watch Jesus of Nazareth. This is our religion. Yeah, well, it doesn't look like we win. No, he's on a plank at the end. Yeah, we win, he's on a plank at the end. I'm like I could never reconcile what human sacrifice was from that. That always bothered me and I want revenge. Why, why isn't Jesus getting revenge? That that would always torment them and then King. So Martin Luther King's the film when he gets shot. I just don't understand the hatred of black people. I'm in first or second grade. I wasn't around anything I could point to as racism. I was in a project I didn't notice like racial pejoratives or until later on in grade school. And that really I, when you were describing Amistad, I was thinking of my own Amistad. It was King it was about.

Speaker 1:

Martin Luther King.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's just, it's very just like Whoa.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, that's intense, that's. That's a breaking of innocence.

Speaker 2:

It is, it is and just like when we talk about like the generational stuff and all this stuff that comes in like that's one of the reasons I love working with young adults so much. You got sober at a pretty young age the first time, right yeah, 16 to 20. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And I got sober again at 24 and stayed sober for basically 14 years.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and there's just like something and this is something Karen as an organization recognized a long time ago that there is this group of individuals. You know, you have your adolescence right. You know, and then you have adults, and then you have this group in between this 18 to 25 year old, where meaningful, deep, meaningful, effective relationships are a lot of times off the table. Yeah, I don't want to say entirely off the table, right, but there's careers off the table, you know where, and it's just something I connect with so deeply.

Speaker 2:

This level of pain and like the maladaptive means, of dealing with that at a young age and how it shows up Right, and you presenting the treatment between the ages of 18 and 25. And, like to me, I've always seen it as I love, I love, I love working with these guys because they haven't constructed. Richard Rohr writes this book and I'm called Falling Upward to Spirituality for the Two Halfs of Life and he says that in life, the first half of life is spent building basically an ego structure right Through which most people can function and some people may only stay in that half of life for their entire life. Yeah, he says you know, a lot of people build this ego structure in this first half of their life get the wife, the kids, the family, the job, etc. And like the second half of life is really about deconstructing it in light of your experiences. And what I find with young adults is that like they haven't even built that yet it seems out of reach sometimes, uh, economically yeah, it hasn't even been built.

Speaker 1:

So like there's this level of malleability I don't even want to use the term malleability, but this level of upside to their situation- do you see multiple dimensions in this, not only, I just said, economically, but culturally, um a more openness and and that generation's, not only their sexuality, their communication is driven primarily by an interface of technology. If it's the phone, the phone being, is it tiktok, is it instagram? Yeah, whatever is coming next week, it's so hyperbolic, it's changing fast. It's actually it's driving the medium of culture. It culture's not being driven by human behavior.

Speaker 2:

It's, yeah, technology yeah we're being hacked yeah, it's, it's like alarm, it's it. Every once in a while I'm able to step into the space of realization of like the capabilities of ai and like the world and I'm like, all right, get out of there, you're on ai, now this is gonna edit, like I went from editing this to two punches of a button, yeah, um, and a transcript.

Speaker 1:

You know, if this was 15 years ago, my transcript would come a couple of days later If I was paying top dollar. Someone type it up, listen, type, verify. This is done in seven seconds. I load up an audio file for 60 minutes. I have a transcript a minute later. Now, it's not completely, but each, you know, every six months it updates it's more accurate. But each, you know, every six months it updates it's more accurate. Yeah, I don't go in and correct the spelling. Sure, you know, for the few audience members that's reading the transcript man, you're weird. Yeah, what are you reading? It's like every other word shoe. Yeah, you know, when I'm working with young shoes, that's what's coming out of the transcript. Shoes really are built their whole structure of ego.

Speaker 2:

The upside's tremendous that's.

Speaker 1:

I don't know any other provider or have a relationship I should but better, I would better describe it as then Karen really doing multiple modalities and know kind of in phases of a really solid program, not throwing darts at a board how to work with 18 to 25-year-olds so consistently and repetitively in a way that's giving them baseline and even if they're not reached because they're, maybe their participation or their compliance is low, that they're coming back to a place that they could later find cared, like you described earlier. Yeah, how is that assuring? How do you assure families? That's must be the struggle. We didn't reach him last time. How? Why do you think they come back to Karen consistently Like this is the right course? Yeah, is there someone working directly in specializing with families in that, that realm?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean we, catherine Karen, all the way back to the beginning, Dick and Catherine Karen. Catherine Karen coined all the way back to the beginning. Dick and Catherine Karen. Catherine Karen coined the term. The patient is the family is the patient. Yeah, right.

Speaker 1:

Which is like so explain that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, and it's, I feel like it's particularly applicable to young adults. Yeah, because when you have a young adult or an emerging adult in your family, that's not getting into adulthood. Families are going to warp around, that right they're going to begin to naturally enable, they're going to lose their own footing of where they end and that you know, the individual begins.

Speaker 1:

Or comforting their own pain on how they treat the person, rather than kind of run principles around this.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, and that's where it's like, that's where the generational stuff comes out. You know, that's where you see it all.

Speaker 1:

From the 1700s the ghettos.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, life of the ghettos, yeah, that's where you see it all and but that individual man who's coming into treatment, and this is like the greatest honor of all honors, it's the honor that you get, that I get that that young individual gets. It's like that generational stuff can start to disappear a little bit.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So that's a place where we could start to wind down and end this. Yeah, it can end Absolutely, man. End this. Yeah, it can end Absolutely, man. Everything ends. Yeah, but things we can have agency on how things end and they only happen in moments. It could be the call to treatment. It could be answering a pre-screening a little more honestly your second visit to treatment. You really start from the get-go? No, that's not true. I've been answering that the same way for four years and none of that's true. These little moments happen for all of us. They happen for you or me, and I'm like how separated am I from what's reality and the story, the comfortable one? I have to tell myself that it's not true. It all starts in these chances that we get to be courageous, to just be honest. Yeah, Change that answer. That is just not true. Let me. Let me answer that again.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And you get better, you get better.

Speaker 2:

You start to have a you have, you start to recover. Is an experiential process right? You start to have a corrective experience with truth. You know and realize that like it's not, I guess what?

Speaker 1:

like nobody hates me, no my relationship with it keeps getting deeper.

Speaker 2:

It's not.

Speaker 1:

It's not fully consummated. Because of the things I catch myself thinking about, I'm like well, why? Why am I floating there? What am I insecure about? What's the where's this dream coming from?

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

For me it's the practice of recovery is constantly interrupting the fake life that's happening in my head.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. And where do you go when you're interrupting that Do you go to your body.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I do. I go into the only place. That's real experience.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

My face, this image of looking at you. Yeah, there's times if I think others would describe it as disassociation, like a normal person, for me disassociation feels like reality. Yes, okay, yeah, I keep kind of having to converge into it and I'm like life's novel again. I haven't been living it. Yeah, like I've arrived again.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I've arrived again. It's almost a real like dissociation and mindfulness, like there's this, almost really it's. I have it when I feel conscious connection. Right, I'm like this just feels like I'm dissociating from my feelings, but it's not.

Speaker 1:

I'm glad you said that because, um, we're at the same kind of experience of recovery and I don't get to talk about that all the time. I'm with newcomers or people being treated all the time. That's my job. But in my personal life, my sponsor's relationship is very tactical. We kind of just talk it right down to brass tacks. But, friends, I want to talk about what you just talked about more someday, because I felt that I'll be driving and feel like I've arrived in the car and I'm realizing, oh, I've been ruminating, yeah, and the arrival back into the real life, the spiritual life, the now, the presence can be jarring with people who have, uh, got more comfortable ruminating than having a life yeah, existed entirely.

Speaker 2:

Isn't that wild. Yeah, I wonder who's writing about.

Speaker 1:

Maybe we should write something about that. I don't know, man, it's like that wonder who's writing about?

Speaker 2:

maybe we should write something about that. I don't know, man, it's like. That's why I asked about the body too. I feel like so much, so much, so much of our thought content is driven by, and this is just where I'm at currently, and what I've been doing currently is driven by feelings, old feelings that are begging to be felt. You old feelings that are begging to be felt.

Speaker 1:

You know I feel like that sometimes, yeah Well, yeah, that could be a beautiful journey If it's driven by art. Nature that draws it out of me. It's. It's not intentional. I feel open and I'm more suspect, like I'm more vulnerable to have the experience because it just arrives Anytime I try to will them. My thoughts get in the way of a lot of stuff Like yeah. Yeah, Nick, would you come back? Oh, I'd love to man. Yeah, I would love to. Well, that's when we get to start our history podcast.

Speaker 2:

Pennsylvania Dutch history Only on Warnersville 17 part series on the history of well joe, it's actually. I literally have spent well. Two weeks ago I spent I read probably 100 pages of conrad weiser's correspondence with the governor of pennsylvania about the relationships with native americans in that area. Yeah, it's a real thing, I'm glad you're you, man, the world needs you.

Speaker 1:

You're doing great work, you too, man. I'm glad you're you, man the world needs needs you.

Speaker 2:

You're doing great work, you too, man. I love what you guys are doing. I really do.

Speaker 1:

The guys I meet you. You've had a lasting impression on them and it warms me over. I'm like, yeah, this is what it's about.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. This is what it's about. No doubt, man. This is to to take it back to where we start. This is the adventure. Yeah, it is. This is the how can we do this better? Well, we'll keep talking.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thanks, brother, you got it. Thanks for coming up, thank you. I'd like to thank you for listening to another episode of All Better. You can 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.