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AllBetter
Discussions on addiction and recovery. We interview clinicians/researchers, legislators, and individuals that include a variety of means to recovery. Joe Van Wie is a father, husband, filmmaker, and reformed media consultant in recovery.
AllBetter
Healing Through Community: CEO Amy Durham's Personal Journey
Amy Durham's journey from a childhood overshadowed by her father's alcoholism to becoming the CEO of Brookdale Premier Addiction Recovery is nothing short of remarkable. As she opens up about her own battles with liver disease and addiction, Amy's resilience and commitment to breaking the stigma around substance use disorder come to the forefront. This episode invites you to explore her personal story and the profound impact it has had on her professional mission to elevate addiction care through innovative, evidence-based practices.
Listen as we unravel the complexities of navigating life’s challenges and the harrowing descent into addiction. Amy recounts the darkest moments, including severe liver failure and a near-death experience, shedding light on the physical and emotional toll of alcoholism. Her journey to recovery is marked by a strong support system and the transformative power of community – a testament to the critical role that camaraderie and mutual encouragement play in healing.
We also take a forward-looking perspective on the future of addiction treatment. Amy discusses how Brookdale is pioneering new approaches, integrating technology and AI to enhance patient care and prevent relapse. From biometric data to frequent check-ins, discover how these advancements are reshaping the landscape of addiction recovery. Whether you’re on a personal recovery journey or i
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Hello and thanks again for listening to another episode of All Better. I'm your host, joe VanWee. Today's guest is Amy Durham. Amy is the CEO of Brookdale Premier Addiction Recovery. As the Chief Executive Officer, amy brings a renewed vision to Brookdale, embodying the core values that set Brookdale apart compassion, empathy and dedication. Amy has over 15 years of senior management experience in educational leadership, in addition to six years as a corporate director of care and treatment centers. Beyond her extensive background in operational oversight, strategic planning and organizational development, she holds a master's degree from the University of Mississippi and is a woman in active long-term recovery.
Speaker 1:Amy is passionate about reducing stigma associated with substance use disorder and hopes to strengthen Brookdale's relationships with other treatment providers and increase their national presence. Driven by the belief that everyone deserves the opportunity to receive comprehensive, quality treatment, amy continuously aims to elevate Brookdale's standard of care through effective leadership in utilizing the most innovative and evidence-based practices. Alongside her innate ability to inspire and empower those she leads, amy's personal journey has resulted in an extraordinary capacity to connect and empathize with those struggling with addiction. I was taught early on that I can't keep it if I don't give it away. In her own words, her commitment has become the leading example for the Brookdale team has been exemplified through the environment of healing she has created for their patients.
Speaker 1:Outside of work, amy enjoys reading, exercising and going to the beach and spending time with her family and friends. We get to discuss many topics with Amy today. One, her personal story and the struggles she had medically with liver disease and failure. How long that road to healing was, her entry into the field of substance use disorder treatment and her current position in the future of Brookdale Leads us down a path to start discussing the space and role of AI in drug and alcohol treatment. I'm excited for you to meet Amy Durham. Amy, thanks for being available and coming on All better.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me. I wanted to talk about a handful of things, but sometimes I like to start with who are you and your personal story, which I've only heard through other people, and it's quite moving and compelling. So, amy, maybe you can summarize where you grew up, a little bit about your childhood.
Speaker 2:So I actually my dad was a resort developer, so I moved 13 times when I was a kid and our roots were always in the South. My dad was from Mississippi, my mom was from Iowa and we went wherever my father's job would take us, so all up and down the eastern seaboard and out west as well. Some but we most people when I talk about it say were you military and we were definitely not military, but we moved around as such. We were definitely not military, but we moved around as such. So growing up, you know, had to be really well adjusted, always, you know, in new and different environments from a young age. But my grandparents in Mississippi, that was home base for me, so I lived with them every summer, just because I like to pretend like I was an only child and you know I'm a Southern girl at heart, so that was, that was kind of where my heart was and you?
Speaker 1:you were not an only child no, I'm.
Speaker 2:I am number three out of four and so this time alone would it?
Speaker 1:would it be a sense of peace and ease to not be around such noise and activity all the time?
Speaker 2:when you say something like that, yes, I mean from my earliest memories my father's alcoholism was very present in our lives and so kind of going to either grandparents' house actually, you know, was a place for me to kind of escape from some of that. And you know, my father was a wonderful provider and my mom was a wonderful mother, but we definitely had a lot of chaos growing up. You know what addiction does to households and families, and so that was a way for me to try to get away from it all. And you know, be a kid again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that seems like a special retreat. It's amazing what I feel was normalized not only living in Scranton, in your Irish or your Catholic, whatever culture you emerge from and what you feel is normal just because of your proximity and what you want to remember from childhood. In my family we turned trauma or just the strangeness of my dad's addiction into humor and you get so used to delivering that story especially in your own cohort or people that are familiar with this as just okay, that's just comical. But in my twenties I saw it changed. In my thirties and now that I'm an adult with children, I look back with an entirely different lens. It's not like bitter or like aha, I figured it all out. Now I know what my childhood meant.
Speaker 1:But I look at it through this lens and tell me if you relate, their brains are just so. I don't know. They have their own intelligence, without volition, that they're constantly seeking, without your permission, a balance, an environment and when it's interrupted, say traveling a lot, be it a military family. But you know you were traveling for resorts. Someone has an active addiction. Know you were traveling for resorts. Someone has an active addiction not having the homeostasis or a balanced environment you and I seem to share this view that that's what you could point to as trauma Not having that stability. Would that be something you look back and think, okay, this might be the seeds, in the early earmark, this environment of something that addiction would soothe.
Speaker 2:So for me, you know, when I think back over kind of my life, I think when we're born. Can you hear me Because you're frozen on the screen. Oh, I can hear you, can you hear me now?
Speaker 1:I can't.
Speaker 2:Sorry when I think back over the course of my life. You know, I think as children, you know, our brains are wired for connection. You know we connect to our parents and our siblings and our families and then, as a result of whatever type of trauma people experience and I think all people experience it I think it gets our brains get rewired for protection. You know, and one of the things I learned as a very young child was that I never wanted to have a relationship with alcohol. You know, I can tell you there were many markers in early childhood where I said to myself I never want this to be a part of my life. I never want to be like this. I didn't always understand it. I was very confused because my father's alcoholism was such that when he was drinking, you could be around him. When he wasn't drinking, he was unbearable to be around drinking you could be around him when he wasn't drinking.
Speaker 2:he was unbearable to be around, wow. And so, you know, what I knew was that I was very uncomfortable and I was a little bit different from my siblings. I was very much a mama's girl still am, even all these years later but I really escaped in many different kinds of ways through books, through academics. You know, I was over. It's not just about achievement, never was. It was about overachievement, perfectionism, you know. And I didn't really understand why I was like that until I entered treatment in my 40s and alcoholism started really late in life for me. But you know, it was always around me and you know it. Just, I was in a constant state of confusion. You know, one thing I knew for sure is that I didn't like it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I want to come back to that eventually, cause I want to know how you're drinking related to the fact your dad's great to be around when he's drinking, and I can relate to that. I get real tight and sobriety. That's why sobriety in itself was never a solution for me. I actually don't feel like myself and I'll start thinking of the times. Oh, you know, whatever the consequences were, I feel like myself in this pocket of a four-hour buzz, like I'm tolerable to be around because I get real rigid. So I want to come back to that. What in your life changed and how old were you that you were curious, or that you thought drinking should be an experience, or that you began drinking after growing up that way?
Speaker 2:So I had never really experienced failure in my life until I hit my 30s. I had graduated from college and gotten a master's, had decided to go into education. I got married and, you know, one of the things that was really important to us was having children. I wanted a big family, I wanted to be a mom and, you know, one of the things that was really important to us was having children. I wanted a big family, I wanted to be a mom and, you know, prior to this, really no relationship with alcohol in life just got very challenging and as a result of some of the challenges that we were facing as a young married couple, you know, eventually the marriage dissolved and so I had a couple things going on. One infertility was a real thing and so I had a couple of things going on. One infertility was a real thing and there wasn't a lot of information around that and at that time I was didn't feel, you know, safe to really talk about it because I was hearing, you know people say, you know, you just have to keep trying, it'll happen and you know people getting pregnant all around me and you know, my husband and I, our marriage was not on solid ground when we went into that process and eventually it landed in divorce. And you know those, that double failure, if you will, you know, very close together. It was so unfamiliar to me and I didn't know how to cope with it. And but I, I immediately did what I'd always done, just propelled myself into my work and overachievement and got another master's and just, you know, let me climb the ladder at work and see how that was getting my needs, the isms. I was getting my needs met in other ways. And you know, then I got to this place where I started to be a little bit more social and started running with a group of, you know, young 30 year olds. And what do they do on the weekends? You know, they go out and they have a couple of beers or have a glass of wine. And that's really how it started for me.
Speaker 2:You know, just still, for the first couple of years had a very limited relationship with alcohol could take it or leave it, could be the designated driver for my group or not. Could drink a beer, leave a half sitting there. You know, just, really, it didn't latch on to me until, you know, life continued to get difficult. I didn't deal with some of the losses that I had had. They went very unresolved. I was really grieving.
Speaker 2:What I learned in treatment was an ambiguous loss, you know, the loss of something that never was the the option of becoming a mom, you know, and it caught up with me and I entered into another relationship with someone that was an alcoholic and I didn't recognize it at all because it looks so different from my dad's alcoholism, look so different from my dad's alcoholism. And you know, when my father got sick with cancer actually directly tied to his alcoholism, you know I would say I had a lot of unresolved issues with him and when I didn't or wasn't able to create, you know, the opportunity to go kind of make an amends to my dad before he passed, he died suddenly, more suddenly than we had hoped. You know, my addiction really pulled me under like a riptide after that and I had no idea what was happening and still believed, you know, in my mind, that I was able to control it. I was very focused on everybody else's problems.
Speaker 1:But that's really when things changed for me.
Speaker 1:A few things that stick out to me is the term ambiguous loss, and this is a form of grief and some people might not be familiar with the term and it sounds like Brookdale covers this, but I think it's a powerful term if a person is experiencing it and addiction is in their life or becomes the solution, because ambiguous loss leads to deep rumination you might not effectively know you're consciously thinking about daily, through a fantasy narratives, story of a life that if that happened, that's where I would have been happy and this could go through car drives or wherever. Wherever we are. Um, it's serious, it's a and it's a really I like that term and anyone who takes a grieving or loss counseling will run into this term and how to deal with it. But what I was curious about to kind of wrap up some of the ideas that alcohol became a tool during all these crisis, some compounded failures and challenges in your life that you're describing.
Speaker 1:What was the effect alcohol had on you? That was like it clicked, like you're like there's, this isn't as bad as I thought it was, because this was in a lane, that was just my dad and alcoholism. Now it's doing something for you. What was it doing? That validation through achievement, was it?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I entered into this phase where the things that had worked for me historically, my whole life, weren't doing it anymore, and so it was actually at my father's funeral that I was. It was very clear to me that my relationship with alcohol had changed Because, you know, as people were eulogizing my father, and I was, you know, just kind of wallowing in shame and grief. You know, I realized it at his funeral that I had spent my entire life trying to be nothing like him, and it suddenly occurred to me that I had become him, because the only thing I really cared about that day was getting out of that church and drinking myself into an oblivion. And so alcohol had become about being anesthetized, and it wasn't about fun and going out and partying, it was about how quickly can I numb this pain and just not feel anything. And I really everything really took off after that, and it wasn't long after that that, you know, I was confronted and told you're going to treatment.
Speaker 2:And you know, and that was a really hard time in my life because I was very shamed at what I had become and who I'd become, and I knew I was never going to get that opportunity back to go see my dad at the end of his life and have any type of what I called closure. And it wasn't until I got into treatment later that I learned that that was the result of my alcoholism and his. You know that wasn't just about me and you know going into treatment I don't remember that that time and wasn't in treatment very long couple hours. And you know the medical team realized that I was pretty sick and needed to be lifelighted to a level one trauma center. So there's a big medical component to my story. It wasn't just about loss of control in the end. It was about, you know, drinking copious amounts of vodka and Chardonnay and taking handfuls of Tylenol trying to dull the pain in my head and the throbbing. And you know I poisoned myself with acetaminophen and alcohol, wow, and was in triple organ failure.
Speaker 1:This is your liver.
Speaker 2:Liver, lungs and kidneys.
Speaker 1:And your lungs. How did that occur to your lungs?
Speaker 2:So I was, when I was life flighted from Reading Hospital to Temple University Hospital. You know, they learned in the hell of that ride that my kidneys were shutting down, my liver was shutting down and I had to be intubated. I slipped into a coma and so I was actually on dialysis for quite some time, which is probably the greatest torment I've ever experienced in my true suffering, Um, and was on the liver transplant list, which is tricky, you know. Liver trans, uh, any type of transplant is not an option for people in active addiction, and there were just a lot of variables, variables that went into that. And, um, you know, I was fighting for my life, not just addiction but all this other, you know, medical, medical stuff, and it was really hard for me, and so I didn't have a choice. You know, if I didn't do something differently, I was undoubtedly going to die.
Speaker 1:It's frightening. This moment of deep insight seems to happen while you're drinking in the the time of the funeral. Was there different insights to your body? Were you not aware of how sick you became until then? Is there a disconnection between, intellectually, how you can understand okay, I'm becoming my dad, but totally out of touch with what is happening to kidneys, or indication that your liver is failing in your lungs? What do you? Do? You attribute that to some disassociation. Were you that anesthetized Cause? That's addiction. I find myself disconnected from my body, but not my intellect. A lot at the end of my addiction I had no idea what was happening to me.
Speaker 2:I would say I was a shell of the human that I had been and I just, you know, I was having, you know, pretty significant trauma responses because of other things that had happened in life. And you know, when I was sober, for you know, I tried to stop on my own. You know I would try to stop for a couple days, a couple weeks. I just couldn't stay stopped and part of that was because I didn't know what to do with all the pain I was in. What I knew is that I didn't want to feel like that anymore and I still didn't really understand what happened to me until after I came out of that coma and started to the true process of rehabilitation. And it took me a month, six weeks, coming out of the fog to really understand what happened, and months and months after that to kind of pull it apart.
Speaker 2:You know, how did I get here? How did this happen? And then months of how do I get myself out of this. You know what do I do, coupled with do I want to get out of this? Do I want to continue with life? I don't know that I can. I didn't see a lot of hope for myself, not even around the alcoholism around, the stopping drinking. But just like, how does one get off the liver transplant list? You know? How does one get off of dialysis, you know it. Just, my circumstances were pretty dire and the one thing that I landed on always is I know I don't want to carry on this way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and how old were you? If I can ask, 40 years old 40.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Wow, and it has me leaning towards a two-part question. When did the internal motivation start to grow in that time, as you were describing like being stuck in a hospital? There's a coma. You see all these milestones that look Herculean, liver transplant oh, I have to be sober too, or I'm going to get therapy to treat. When did the internal motivation feel that it was creating security and did it coincide I guess this is the second part when did you come to an understanding that it was going to be beyond sobriety? It wasn't going to be what the definition of sobriety was your whole life, or what it would have been at that time, which would sound like suffering, I think, to any real alcoholic. When did you think there was, or come to terms with that? There's more texture to this. Maybe I could do it.
Speaker 2:So it wasn't an event, it was definitely a process. And I was in residential treatment for almost five months and my guess is it was somewhere right around month three when I started to look different. The fluid started to leave my body. I mean, I was a very unpleasant shade of yellow green. You know the true liver failure. Look, I, you know the smell of organ failure permeated off my body.
Speaker 2:And it wasn't until and listen I got outstanding care. I was surrounded by not just a team of treatment professionals but my transplant team at Temple, and then the community of patients that I was surrounded by, you know, took me months to be able to have conversations and actually connect with people. Have conversations and actually connect with people, you know I, I was so numb and so sick, I didn't really know, and in so much physical pain, emotional pain and spiritual pain. Having a conversation for me in the early months of treatment was really challenging and I, you know, was ashamed of the way I looked, the way I smelled, you know. And and it was really about the community, you know the people around me that had hope for me, not just my family, my mother and older sister in particular, but just the other patients, you know, encouraging me and helping me, and that sense of community was really fostered. And, you know, the right people came along at the right time and I just drafted off their hope for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and does someone stand out at the end of that period? That transformed your definition of what recovery could be.
Speaker 2:I think, multiple people in my care team. You know Father Bill, reverend Jack, you know the clinical folks Tootie and Sharon Matthew, who was the clinical director of Women's Extend at that time. You know I mean they wasn't one to take advantage of them. You know, I wanted to just be like everybody else and achieve this thing that I was supposed to achieve, which was sobriety. But there were just multiple people and I think you know my higher power was working in my life and if there's one thing that people would say to me regularly, it's there's. There's some reason why you're still here, because at one point in this journey, you know, I had about a 10% chance of survival and I never questioned that because I don't know if I just didn't have the energy or, you know, the wherewithal, the mental capacity to question that.
Speaker 2:What I did was just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and there was one woman in particular that was a patient in treatment with me.
Speaker 2:That's still my best friend to this day.
Speaker 2:Her name is Diana and what she taught me is that we were going to have fun doing this thing, even though it wasn't always fun, and she kind of pulled out the personality that she saw in there that I had trouble letting out and you know she made that time a lot of fun for me and essentially, when she came to the unit which was after me, she walked up to me and she said listen, I don't know what you're doing over here in the corner by yourself, but you need to start talking because you're like me and all these other people are crazy and we're going to have to talk about these people.
Speaker 2:And she just her sense of humor, you know. I mean she just wrapped her arms around me essentially and said come along for the ride because I'm not leaving without you. And you know we just became buddies and you know the treatment team actually intervened on this multiple times around our codependency for one another, because you never saw one without the other and she made that process not just bearable but a lot of fun and I learned to laugh again and smile and you know connect with people and you know she was definitely a game changer for me, in addition to my mom's love for me. You know we're gonna do this, you're gonna do this and you know it was just like the perfect storm wow.
Speaker 1:So the bonding was one of the strongest components on the tail end of that, to to connect with someone and feel safe, to find, like, show someone who Amy is. Wow, as, as this stabilized itself and you kind of hit the ground running, you're leaving. What was your plan for a life that would be recovery in lines with a career. What do I do moving forward? How do I I don't know, maybe review how ambitious you were or how driven to get the? Did that change or did it have to change? Was it something you had to confront and how did it lead producing you into the drug and alcohol field?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, they weren't kidding with me when they they said everything needs to change. And you know I I talked to our patients about that a lot here because I well, I don't believe that to be true for everybody Um, I needed to take a look at all the other things that were, you know, a problem in my life, if you will. And so, to be honest with you, like up until the end of my treatment experience, I really believed I was going to go back to Atlanta and resume my life, even though there was nothing healthy about that for me and my, my, my care team, my treatment team, was like, yeah, that's not the plan that we have. Here's the plan. And I didn't support it and I didn't like it. But my family did and you know they really held the line for me and said like this is what you have to do and we'll support you through this process, but we do not support you going back to this other life, because you know you're going to die if you do. And so, you know, through all the medical challenges and everything that I had, you know, even after I left treatment, I wasn't ready to go into the workforce.
Speaker 2:There came a time where, you know, I was healthy enough where I could get what's called a recovery job, and I ended up getting a job as a dental receptionist, which is honestly the worst job I ever had. But I worked it in tandem with the sponsor and the steps and a therapist. And what I learned during that process is, you know, I got to see my character defects and some of my thinking that was a problem in somebody else and it was a hard time. But my sponsor, you know, took me through the steps. My sponsor is a retired FBI agent, by the way, so like a walking lie detector, and she was firm with me but yet a very soft place to land and she knew me really well.
Speaker 2:So when I started working the steps, you know there's just there were no shortcuts that were taken. And and you know what's just, there were no shortcuts that were taken. And you know, what I learned is my resentments weren't going to be the problem. That wasn't going to. What was going to take me out, it was my thinking and my character defects. And so my step six and seven was really like a very, a much more comprehensive inventory, and I did that while working this job and seeing myself in this dentist.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And I'm convinced that it's one of the reasons I'm still sober today because I didn't like what I saw and my sponsor was able to point out well, you do the same thing, just in a different way.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so I committed to that job for one year and the day after that one year, marquette, I resigned and had been very active in the treatment center that I went to and involved in alumni and very connected to the staff. And you know, they had an opening in the Washington DC office and they said we'd like for you to come apply for this job. Didn't really know what the job was, went through a series of very serious interviews and got to the end and they were like well, we'd like for you to come on board. And when they told me what I was going to be doing, you know still, even after all this, I was like you basically want me to be somebody's secretary? And they're like, yes. So I called Mike Early, who was the chief clinical officer at the time, and he's like just shut up and take the job and just trust this process.
Speaker 2:So that's how I started in treatment. I started, you know, as the administrative assistant for the regional vice president in Washington DC and Philadelphia and love them and love the work that we were doing. And about a month into that, we're like they're like you're a little overqualified. So they started giving me projects. I started working with the chief development officer for the company and you know other things that you know had kind of fallen by the wayside and they were handing it to me and I was, you know, doing a really good job of just making things work and turning things around. I'm an operational leader, and so that's how it started for me and I just climbed the ladder and eventually became a corporate director on the senior leadership team there and really had an opportunity to transfer my skills.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:It was hard yeah.
Speaker 1:I see almost this organic therapeutic transformation, because I can relate to this being self-employed, being the boss for over a decade, and then I was a behavioral tech at a treatment and I despise treatment centers.
Speaker 1:I just hated going to them. I hated them when I was sober. I'm like, oh my God. And to hear you describe that position, I was. You know, this is how people in recovery talk back and forth. I was feeling the moments where I would be thinking I was the one there helping people and I know the steps and I'll be great up here. And then listening to people and realize, wow, how sick I still was at home, in my thoughts, in my stress. Response was just not even there for a year, a year even after, you know, I was doing a fourth and fifth step.
Speaker 1:So I'm picturing you in this position with two master's degrees, learning how to tolerate all kinds of behavior. And then it's not personal, it's not about me having to explain to them. You can't treat me this way. You just see it like you start seeing behavior as facts, facts to someone else's history, and I could tolerate it, like that's what happened to me. It took a year, and when you, you, you start at that level, it it really we're telling the story backwards, cause I know where you are and what you're running. Um, that's like the perfect footpath to lead operations, because operations is, doesn't have to take into account sentiment, but it has to be compassionate or it's not. It's not workable. And to have to have compassionate operations, you're allowing for a lot of human behavior that you got to spend a year with two masters degrees watching some of the probably the worst behavior and people just acting up that's, that's wild. That transformation doesn't stop once you really start this.
Speaker 2:It doesn't.
Speaker 2:And I think, because I trusted the organization that I was working for, because they helped me get my life back, you know, I mean, the care that I received was, you know, amazing and I loved the people that I was surrounded by and, to be honest with you, joe, like I didn't really think that I had anything to offer people even at that point I was kind of faking it, you know, until something just changed in me and again, you know it's, it's, it says it right there in the big book, you know, I mean it's, it's not, it's a process, it's, it's not an event and that spiritual change that happened for me.
Speaker 2:You know, really I would say that the light really came on when I started sponsoring other women, which I resisted, and I started that process before I started working in treatment and what I learned is that there was no greater honor in life than sitting with another woman trying to find her way and being able to share my experience and offer a little bit of hope, spark ignited for me. And then, when I started working in treatment really more on the business side of it than the direct patient care side of it for the first couple years when I started getting around the patients. You know that's when it didn't it really hit me in a very different place, like the responsibility of it. You know, having the opportunity to be a part of somebody's life changing journey and that that was such an honor and a responsibility that you know I wasn't sure that I deserved, but somehow, some way, that is where my path led me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's, that's clutch. I don't find my, my recovery, whatever lasts very long or be interesting or tolerable by anybody else If I didn't acknowledge a debt that I can't repay back In my 12-step community. It's the same approach and motto take to this work or it's impossible, or you'll do it wrong. You'll just be doing it the wrong way.
Speaker 2:Or for the wrong reasons.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for the wrong reasons. And out of all the places to pick for the wrong reasons, this isn't one of the fields.
Speaker 2:And that shows up pretty quickly.
Speaker 1:It does, and I think there's a lot of real people and I think it's the majority of credible people that last long in this field. It doesn't take long. It takes about four minutes of being in a room and I know who I'm in a room and I know who I'm in a room with. I think addiction and trauma give you Hawkeyes, so you know who you're sitting with. I could tolerate a lot as long as the objective is to help people. And is it a good program? Are you harming people? That'd be the first question. If they can't answer that, I mean you shouldn't be around here for very long.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can tell pretty quickly. You know, based on the culture that we've created here at Brookdale and our organizational health and the commitment and the passion that go with the work that we do, you can tell pretty quickly whether or not somebody is going to be along for the ride for an extended period of time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, let's pivot there. Brookdale how did you? What preceded Brookdale and how did you land at Brookdale? Because it's the most credible and beautiful provider in our area and I haven't met one person since its inception, and especially now, that doesn't feel safe with their family, friends and even providers. Any provider you talk to, it's always pursued as the first option.
Speaker 2:Well, that is the greatest compliment that you could give us, so thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2:So I started getting. When Doug Tiemann announced his retirement at Cameron, you know he was a big giant and I stood on his shoulders and then the others for a long time. But when he announced his retirement, the recruiters they came out in full force, not just for me but some of my peers too, and you know that's essentially how it started. Just a phone call, hey, come for a visit. And I was resistant to it because Karen was my spiritual home and I loved it there. But I also knew that I had goals and ambitions that weren't going to be met at that organization, at that time at least. And so, you know, I started exploring and I got very curious about what was out there.
Speaker 2:I went to treatment one time, one place, one time, and so a little bit different than the average American, I would say. And from the moment I drove down Back Mountain Road for the first time and looked over to my right and saw this enormous facility, I got that wow factor right away. And when I came inside and felt the magic that happens here and met some of the people that created the magic, you know, I knew that it was something that I was interested in being a part of and so months and months of negotiations back and forth and a lot of prayer and a lot of reaching out asking people what they thought. You know it wasn't a decision that I took lightly and I had a lot of help making it, but eventually I made it here about three and a half years ago and it was a bumpy ride because it wasn't what I was used to in terms of what was going on inside the house, and I've never regretted my decision for one moment.
Speaker 2:There were certainly times I wasn't sure I was going to make it and should I cut my losses and move on, but I was so committed to the mission and really the people, not just the patients, but the team.
Speaker 2:And you know, even during COVID I mean Brookdale opened COVID hit very challenging times but something kept us here and moving forward and evolving and we've recruited a fantastic team of treatment professionals. I've built a lot of teams over the years but I have to say this is by far the best team I've ever built. And you know we've created something really special based on our own unique experiences and, you know, with one common goal the patient's experience. Everything we do is about the patient's experience. Everything you do is about the patient experience, and I will never claim to be a one-size-fits-all organization. We cannot help every single person that needs it, and I love the fact that we are humble enough to move on from things when it's not a good fit and really look at what we do well here and stay true to that, instead of branching off in a million different ways just to try to stay relevant in the industry.
Speaker 1:It was just interesting to hear you acknowledge you know there's tough times, especially COVID transitions. You know this perfect synergy of not only a sprawling, beautiful piece of property that looks like you know it was always designed for healing or tranquility, great real estate, good team, and there's still this resilience. You need to know should I quit or do I go on? It's great to hear people in recovery in the field talk about that, because that's a struggle when you work in the field. For that, because that's a struggle when you work in the field, it could for any dimension. Am I burning out? Is this the wrong place? Are these problems, unfixable reputation, all these things converge and could create pressure. You go home. How do you deal with that when you to know to make the decision, you punch through and you brought Brookdale through your leadership, a place you wanted to land after COVID? How do you know? How did you know not to quit?
Speaker 2:Well, the only thing I've ever quit in my life is drinking. So that working for me, you know, I would say you know, I would say instilled at a very young age, was a strong work ethic and I was determined to figure this out. I knew that we had, you know, all the parts. I just needed to figure out how to pull everybody together and get everybody flowing in the same direction. And I think my years in education, you know, building teams and taking over schools, you know, and they weren't always high performing, you know, a lot of times they were low performing and underperforming.
Speaker 2:And you know, I go in and I do an analysis of sorts and I figure out, like where the weak spots are and where do we need to improve. And you know, building this clinical program to be solid and robust and helpful to people was not an easy task. Because and I had some things working against me, you know, and some people working against me initially, and you know those things have a way of working themselves out. I just had to persevere and push forward and I was unapologetic about it. I was unapologetic about what I believed, I had a vision for this place and I knew that if I could ever get us to the other side, that there'd be nothing like us in this space.
Speaker 2:And while we have not arrived we are not all the way there yet I think we've made tremendous gains and we've created a very therapeutic place for people to come in the early stages of their recovery, to get well and really dialed into. You know, thinking about every human life that walks through here as an opportunity to make a difference. And what can we do to remove the barriers? How can we keep this person here longer so they get the help that they need and increase their chances of staying sober? So, really looking at the data, you know, looking at the opportunity to help somebody make a change, and you know the recipe changed over the last three and a half years. You know I came into this with a certain set of ideas and I've had to pivot and adapt and overcome, based on resources at the time. But one thing never changed and that was the heart of this place, the mission, you know, stayed strong.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's refreshing to hear because missions could stay the same but approaches could change. Good leadership, you know, always could change their plan. Because of what you just said, usually data and I can't help but think Iowa had something to do with this Just being around the soil of Iowa influences America. Different Americans, tough people yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, if there's anything I learned from my Midwest family, it's that life can be beautiful and simple at the same time. Very different from my Southern family, but you're right, you know just the simplicity of it and you know knowing when to say okay, this is not working, let's pivot.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Making mistakes, taking risks and not and not being afraid of that. We've made plenty of mistakes along the way, but we own them and we learn from them and we persevere.
Speaker 1:Well, a couple compliments to that Same Removing barriers. I think you guys are great at it because I've experienced it firsthand with friends, families and people that ask for my guidance, that you are excellent at that. But moving way past that, a different you know it's a different departure from Brookdale and it's clear, in continual care and from providers, friends and knowing this, you are really at the level of care, the next level of care, when you leave Brookdale. What do I mean by that? Not everyone is after a 30-day inpatient, effective at reaching a broad population in the same clinical measures, that definitions of what this disorder doesn't have to be reestablished, there's, there's, there's a foundation there. They're at a point where now we could add more support.
Speaker 1:It's not starting, you know, someone's three months or spent 30 days with Brookdale. You're not starting at day one again. You're not having to redefine and that that's hard when you have a real curriculum, say for a partial hospitalization program or intensive outpatient. It doesn't match if these things weren't achieved at a 30 day treatment center and I could point to you know, to all stars, you being one of them where you meet people and you're like, oh, okay, finally we could have the discussions ready to go along to the next stage, cause I think good programming is slowly becomes universal to the good providers of what programs working, why, why?
Speaker 1:Why try to be too weird about it this is, this is working for a larger number of people, and I see you guys doing that and setting a trend with things changing, and I look forward to the way you'll respond to more biometrics, the incorporation you've done over the last couple of years with AI through voice analysis, crisis intervention there's nowhere we're not near that, but to watch how that's being formed the right way. It's great to see providers that can do it like yourself, and with that you have a parent company, correct? It's a Discover. How does that work overlap? Does that give you all the supports to to now innovate the way you're approaching clients with like a, like I mentioned, ai? Does this help you guys really kind of be in the lead of, of of doing the most comprehensive innovative approaches to clinical care?
Speaker 2:Well, you know we were privately. I went from nonprofit to for-profit private ownership to being acquired by a big conglomerate out on the West Coast, so very unfamiliar territory with me. And you know, initially I was not thrilled about that transition. It was a surprise of sorts and what I've learned is how to capitalize off the resources that they have to offer me. And they respect Brookdale as an industry leader and one of the reasons they acquired us was because of our reputation and our ability to lead here and to do it differently. And you know to your point.
Speaker 2:You know we try to prepare people for what comes next, whatever that may be, with the psychoeducation and the therapy you know and the exposure to 12 steps Dharma recovery, smart recovery, multiple pathways and programming at Brookdale is not optional, you know, and I believe that because of the psychoeducation that I received when I was a patient, you know it was a game changer for me, like I under. How do you expect somebody to stay well from a chronic, progressive and often fatal disease if they don't understand it and they don't understand why we do the things that we do? So we've built that psychoeducation into our daily, daily life here, not just Monday through Friday, but seven days a week, multiple times a day, and we have a very rigorous schedule here. And once the acquisition hit, we learned that they had resources available to us that it would have taken us years to acquire as an independent operating facility. And one of the things that you know we have the pleasure of participating in is what we call Discovery 365. And what I think it does is it really challenges the industry.
Speaker 2:You hear people say, well, relapse is part of recovery, and that has never landed well with me. Relapse is part of addiction and for some people it is part of their journey and for some people it is part of their journey and there are many variables that go into that. But what D365 does is it captures analytics to scale the provider patient interaction and it has like 16 separate data collection points, which is about four times the number usually associated with any post-discharge patient data gathering opportunity. So you know most places they call, you know their alumni. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:Or you know do various different types of check-ins this system is it sends automated prompts through text or email and it's a check-in and then the patient has a digital response. So they use their phone or their laptop and they answer a series of questions and through the technology they analyze the person's response, verbal and nonverbal. So sometimes it's keywords you know, and it can be anything. You know. The word relapse obviously is a buzzword, but it can be other things you know, like having a hard time not doing well, the inflections of their voice, the rate of speech. You know their body language, their facial movements and then it captures that in a video and that gets sent to us.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's video capture Okay.
Speaker 2:Yes, and you know, we're able to detect emotional distress or high risk behavior. You know if somebody is under the influence and they're on video, this technology is going to capture us and it's going to alert us and that way we can reach out.
Speaker 1:So this alert goes to you on your end prior to viewing like. Okay, this is flagged. There's distress here, either through a voice analysis, visuals, speech pattern, keywords, 16 points, 16 points being a self-report from a video audio. Are they typing answers at times? Is it an app or is it like a link?
Speaker 2:So we have an app where alumni can stay connected to one another and they can check.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's social. That's great.
Speaker 2:But this is different. This is a technology platform where they do the video checkins and it gets sent to us automatically and if there is a sign of any type of struggle, relapse, slurring of words, emotional distress, any type of high-risk behavior, we get an alert and then we go watch the video and then we immediately reach out to them. And so we have a team of people that have access to that.
Speaker 1:How long have you been using this? That have a team of people that have access to that. How long have you been using this? That is some of the data and engagement coming in that you're like okay, we're in the right direction.
Speaker 2:We started this probably around a year ago, and one of the things I'm most proud of is that Brookdale had the highest level of engagement for D365.
Speaker 2:Out of all of wow yes out of the entire division and that is about the team. That is about you know again that education piece making sure that people stay connected, get connected. You know they get a link that's sent to them as soon as they discharge and we want to get them hooked in right away. So we do a lot of education while they're here and we do alumni groups where the alumni team and others really educate the patient.
Speaker 1:On the use of it.
Speaker 2:Right. Yeah, and you know, one of the things I was taught in treatment is the more closely connected you stay to your treatment center post-treatment, the better your chances are of staying sober, and I'm evidence that that works, and a lot of other people so. This just takes it a step further and makes that connection easier for the person on the other end to stay connected.
Speaker 1:What a great tool and it's the first in play in our area, for sure because of the resources you have and it sounds like engagement. I was always. I followed tech and AI with deep curiosity and I was just curious of how it's going to fit this field. That doesn't have to create incentives to compromise maybe a clinical self-report, like you said with this video, and this video can analyze that. That answers my question. So, are there incentives to be engaged or like socially with 365? Are they? Are they going to merge into one lane? That would be interesting to understand how someone's going to come back. Do you expect them to report up to a year for alumni follow up? Is that what the goal is?
Speaker 2:It is. It's to start connecting right away and to keep that connection going until there's a break and they need help or they need to come back. But for the person on the other end, what they tell me is you know, I love doing these check-ins, even when I'm not doing well, because undoubtedly somebody's going to reach out to me either way and we're a very high touch organization, not just while the patient's here, but post-treatment. You know, we're reaching out to them one week, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, and we have many platforms for them to stay connected. We have online alumni groups, we have in-person meetings on campus, you know, and that connection, which is the opposite of active addiction, is part of what makes us special and that, you know, for an organization that's so young, I was wildly impressed by how connected people were to Brookdale post-treatment and we've taken it to the next level in the last year, year and a half no, I, I see that same.
Speaker 1:um, I don't want to call it status, but you know the status of being a karen alumni and the connections and bonds that makes, even to strangers. If you meet them in the future and you're both karen alumni there, there is something real incredible there and Brookdale being the new kid on the block, you know if we want to, it's there, it's there in the alumni I experience in my area and people. You guys are doing a great job. Last nerd question is biometrics. You have a beautiful gym that does biometrics record kind of diagnostics of what's going on. Is there any plans in the future for a data collection of biometrics of alumni or continual care that would be in the regard of you know your basic vitals coming in or collected if someone wanted to pursue that, to see if they're reaching a place that historically you could say, oh, this is dangerous, given history of the biometrics. Or could record sleep, rem sleep being disturbed or any of this? Are you guys that far ahead? It seems like. Well, this is what's coming right as a relapse alert.
Speaker 2:It's definitely coming and I would love to start that process the minute they step foot here.
Speaker 1:Gotcha.
Speaker 2:And you know, not just for. You know, safety is always our number one priority at Brookdale, not just for measuring while they're here and but beyond, and I think there's so many variables that go into relapse. Let's just take the sleep. You know sleep hygiene is very important. The sleep center in our brain gets destroyed when we abuse drugs and alcohol or use them addictively and it takes time and that's a big trigger for people and a and a catalyst for relapse for a lot of people, that insomniac state, you know, the only thing that's going to help me sleep I'm going crazy is alcohol or drugs and having that, you know, biometric if you will, to measure that not just while they're here, but beyond. I think we're definitely headed in that direction and I'm down to pilot any program. You know that that could make us more effective and to increase the patient's opportunity to get healthy and stay healthy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that is the future. It's going to take a lot of older models or people even in recovery that have great clinical approaches. It's almost this admission. How much of us is automated have great clinical approaches? It's almost this admission. How much of us is automated?
Speaker 1:And I think it freaks people out that especially have strong relationships to a concept of free will, volition, or that their recovery is this pure destiny, fantasy of will, and I think they don't even know why they're resisting some of this stuff. But I mean, we're not in control of our hair growing or how often our heart beats. This goes down to the moments we dream, what we're even ruminating about. I think this window of AI is going to tell us a lot about ourselves, especially in addiction. I really am hopeful to that. But it's also going to have to redefine how people digest the word spirituality. I would think I'm not saying it diminishes it, but you're going to have to see. You're going to have a challenge of the context of what that could mean to some people that haven't considered it again.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, I mean I think you know there are some people that will never participate in D365 for whatever reason, and the same for what you're, you know, kind of talking about, but for me, you know, any information that we can provide to help treat this insidious disease.
Speaker 2:You know I'm down you know there's just so many variables that go into this and you know, I think information is power and you know any type of data point that we can pull to say, hey, this is how we can do this better, or we need to be looking at this, you know, I think is the way to go. You know, I mean, we've evolved in this industry, you know, and I think we had a responsibility to evolve and we also are losing more people than ever, and you know we need to be forward thinking and looking at these things as opportunities for progress.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I agree. I think a lot of people agree, and I think drug culture and the longevity of an addiction has changed from the way you and I started. You started in your 30s but I had an adolescence that had far more wiggle room of not severe consequence, to say, with alcohol, marijuana, lsd. Your first night starting an addiction can kill you now because you, just because it's a different drug distribution. It's synthetic drugs. They're all can you know, consolidated into a gas station and they're legal. Like a gas station for me is where you stole a pack of camels. Now there's a casino in there drinks I've never heard of fake opiates, fake marijuana, thc blends and and you don't even have to socialize your addiction could start right there at a gas station. It's crazy. So I think what you're saying is definitely going to have to accelerate with that if you're going to reach and save lives. Amy, we're kind of winding down. Is there anything we did not cover that maybe you would want to talk about, or a question I didn't ask?
Speaker 2:No, I thank you for the opportunity to talk with you. You know I always love you know, hearing about other people's stories, and you know I love having you as an aftercare provider. I think it's really challenging to find like-minded facilities and we've been blessed to find a handful, including yours, where we seem to have the same goal in mind and the same heart for helping people. And, you know, if we do nothing else for the rest of our lives, I'd say job well done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is it for us, and we're flattered and it feels really good to be recognized that we're doing it right.
Speaker 2:Yes indeed.
Speaker 1:Well, hey, I hope to talk to you soon and thanks for popping on.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you, joe. Have a good day.
Speaker 1:You too. Bye, bye. 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.