Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Zak Williams: Discover Opportunities for Post-Traumatic Growth

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

Zak Williams (son of the late Robin Williams, mental health advocate, Call For Help Podcast) discusses the benefits and challenges of the new 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (formerly known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline). He talks openly about the struggles he faced after the loss of his father, including self-medication with alcohol, PTSD, generalized anxiety disorder, and depression. Zak and Mayim break down the complexities of death by suicide, public mourning, and the clinical symptoms of PTSD. They explain why law enforcement isn’t always the most well-suited to respond to mental health crisis calls and why individuals in the prison system may not always get the mental health support they need. Jonathan opens up about the survivor’s guilt he faced after his brother’s near fatal car accident, and how the trauma of the event altered his family dynamics. Listen to "Call For Help" (Lemonada Media) here: https://link.chtbl.com/CallForHelp BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yeah, a lot of people who are newly sober say, maybe I'm just an asshole. And I will be perfectly direct here. There are a lot of people who I would qualify as assholes in recovery. That said, you know, they're lovable, wonderful assholes on a path to healing. It's Miami-Biolic's breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. Because, you know, she knows a thing or two. And now she's going to break down.

Hi, I'm Miami-Biolic, and welcome to my breakdown. This is the place where we break things down, so you don't have to. Today we're going to be talking to Zach Williams. He is the son of the late Robin Williams, and he's an entrepreneur, he's an investor, and he's a tremendous mental health advocate. Before we get to Zach, I'd like to introduce you to my favorite entrepreneur, investor, and mental health advocate, Jonathan Cohen. Hello, my name.

Hi, everyone. We're going to talk to Zach Williams. He really opens up with us about what it was like growing up. in that home with Robin Williams as his father. And he, honestly, I did not think he would want to talk about all the things that he talked about. He's extremely open and honest. And, I mean, it's beautiful to hear him discuss his journey. The complexity surrounding post-traumatic stress disorder, also his journey into sobriety

and how that made room for understanding and processing trauma. Really, really, really a wonderful, wonderful talk. He talks about how this mental health journey also led him to the work that he does with Bring Change to Mind, with United for Global Mental Health, with Project Healthy Minds. Also, call for help. The four-part podcast series he did about the 9-88 suicide and crisis lifeline, very, very excited to welcome Zach Williams to the breakdown. Break it down. Obviously, for people who do not know, your father was Robin Williams.

And he passed away. That was, gosh, eight years ago, is that correct? If I'm doing my math right? Yeah, eight years ago as of last week. You know, obviously, the world had reactions about your father's passing, and it was a tremendous loss for the, you know, comedy and kind of just historical industry. But for you personally, how old were you when he passed? I was 31.

And one of the things that you've been so brave to talk about is sort of, you know, what happens to the people who are left when someone passes? And I wonder if you can talk a little bit about sort of what your initial kind of coping strategy was or sort of what that felt like. And was there an aspect also of an acknowledgement of, gosh, there's a public mourning going on for something that's so private? Sure, well, it's twofold. My way of coping initially was self-medicating using alcohol. In conjunction with that, the grieving process for me was challenging because when it comes to publicly grieving versus privately grieving, there's some nuances to it that I wasn't distinguishing

that led me to not take care of myself and the way. way that I ended up needing to take care of myself, specifically was trying to show up for others, was grieving publicly, and ultimately what I needed to be doing is really taking time to manage my own well-being. You know, as I go speaking all over the country, now throughout the world, I'm hearing similar stories from survivors in that they're finding difficulty managing grieving publicly versus grieving privately, but also what's not factored in is that, yes, I'm the son of a celebrity.

There's a sharing your family with the world component to that, but also publicly grieving happens for nearly everybody. Right. And so my experience just so happened to have been magnified, but it's something that everybody has to do. deal with to some, nearly everybody has to deal with in some respect. Mm-hmm. I think a lot of us can, you know, relate to wanting to numb out after something like, you know, like this happens. And also just, you know, not to put to find a point on it,

how do you describe how your father passed? I want to use terminology that you're comfortable with. He died by suicide. Okay. I just, I didn't, yeah, I wanted to just gauge your comfort. So, you know, the nature of that kind of loss is, you know, also. even more profound in its kind of complexity. And in terms of, you know, either things left unanswered, I mean, when we talk about complicated grief, this is one of the situations where, you know, we absolutely would imagine that. What would you say was your kind of coping mechanisms before when dealing with difficult things? Meaning, were you a person who generally, you know, tended to turn to alcohol or, you know,

other things? Or was that something you found kind of specific to this situation? Oh, yeah, I've been oriented towards self-medicating since I've been in my teens. Right. So, you know, I identify as an alcoholic. Got it. You know, I'm sober, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't something I used over a long period of my life. Got it. To manage my feelings, my experience.

Primarily, it helped slow my thinking and help. established clarity in many ways. And so beyond how it made me feel, I liked how it enabled me to what I believe focus, but in a very insidious way. So yeah, no, I'd been self-medicating over the course of most of my life. It just so happened to got to a point where trying to self-manage self-medicating was not viable anymore, especially when you're dealing with, you know, diagnosed PTSD, diagnosed generalized anxiety disorder, diagnosed depression. And so you have to go through measures to figure things out that ultimately, or I had to go through measures, I'll just speak for myself. I had to go through measures to figure things out that brought me to a transitionary phase

of coping to healing, right? You know, the term I sometimes, I sometimes, used, not all the time, is discovering opportunities for post-traumatic growth. Hmm. Right? And you can't really do that if you're self-medicating to cope. When were those diagnoses made? Meaning, were you, did you have mental health, you know, support in your teens and in your 20s, or were these things that kind of after your father passed that you started sort of uncovering? Yes, I did have mental health support. I came from a family that believed in things like therapy.

I'm also the child of divorce, had the privilege of being able to experience seeing a therapist from a very early age. That said, the way in which I experienced a lot of that was through something that was kind of mandated through some sort of informal or formal agreement. you know, between my folks. There's a way in which I was brought up specifically culturally on my mother's side

through an Italian-American upbringing specifically in which the idea of mental health, and my mother is very enlightened, right? She's an Ayurvedic yoga teacher practicing Ayengar yoga. She's very focused on her process of healing from, all sorts of things. And so culturally, though, there was the Italian-American thing. And the Italian-American thing relating to mental health was you're fine until you're not, right? Walk it off, drink it off, figure out whatever it is you need to do, take care of yourself.

So you're not going to get put on the funny farm. It was like, be a tough guy, that kind of thing? expanding upon that, be a sensitive, tough guy, you know? Okay, got it. No, but certain things were not meant to be discussed amongst anybody, you know, like being depressed, being anxious, you know, you're supposed to just figure it out, right? And so that was kind of a pathos that I adopted throughout most of my life. And then, of course, that doesn't end up working out when you've got issues with substance abuse to manage other mental health issues that snowballs, right?

So you need to start kind of acknowledging what's really going on underneath your neurological hood to figure out how you can feel comfortable in your own skin and focus on doing things that you're seeking to do in longer time horizons. That said, did you then have any diagnoses before your father passed, or was that something that came about after? And I'm curious also about the diagnosis of PTSD in particular. Sure, yes. I had been diagnosed with depression in my 20s. Got it. And the diagnosed with PTSD occurred after my father passed away. Can you tell us a little bit about what PTSD looked like to you? And, you know, this is one of those terms that a lot of people kind of use and many people use it kind of colloquially.

We used to sort of academically think about it most acutely with veterans, you know, who have experienced, you know, trauma. But it is it is widely researched now and much more accepted as something that happens to people when they experience traumatic events. and it's different than being upset about something. I like to clarify that, especially as a person trained in neuroscience. Being upset, having upset feelings about something bad or traumatic that happened is different from the clinical diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. What did it look like for you? What were your symptoms?

Well, first off, I want to unpack what post-traumatic stress disorder has looked like historically from the clinical community and how it's evolving. Because, yes, you're spot on generally it's come in conjunction. A diagnosis is come in conjunction with being in a theater of war, being the victim of sexual or physical violence. What's becoming more apparent based upon the research that I'm seeing with major academic institutions, publishing studies specifically around this is that also world events,

financial duress, death of a loved one, litigation, legal issues, medical issues, these all can catalyze traumatic reactions from people. So for me, my post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis came not only for my father dying by suicide. It came from three other events. Came from not managing my close friend dying by suicide, my cousin who died when I was 12 years old and he was 13 years old. He died by a handgun as a 13 year old in a time when I would say culturally speaking, this was in the mid-90s. We're just starting to have these conversations more. Sure. I, I, I, experienced my first week in college as an undergraduate at New York University, September 11th.

Jeez. And then I found going through a lawsuit after my dad died was specifically very traumatic for me after I was brought in to litigation. So there were several events that stacked to lead me to feel very, unmanaged, personally, very disregulated and very unmanaged. Sorry, to be clear, I was brought in a litigation by my father's widow. So it was those four events that ultimately led me to feel very traumatized. My Ambialx breakdown is supported by Superpower.

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They'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention my ambiolics breakdown to help support the show. Can you tell us a little bit about what your symptoms were? I mean, I'm happy to share mine if you'd like so you don't feel alone. Or I can go through my checklist and we can see how much we match up. But, you know, there are some things that people who have post-traumatic stress disorder will have in common, but there's also a lot of variability. What did it look like for you?

For me, specifically, it was inability to focus. It was inability to sleep. It was emotional dysregulation. So inability to manage my emotions properly, meaning you could, you know, joy, anger, sadness. They all get kind of jumbled up, especially the anger thing. I was getting angry and it was manifesting

in all sorts of odd ways. Inability to make emotion. connections with people for a number of reasons, polysubstance abuse, to manage feeling disconnected, extreme isolation. There was just a number of things that led me feeling alone, disconnected, disregulated. And did you have flashbacks, you know, even of previous events from, let's say, from when, you know, your cousin passed, or was that not a component of this? Not in this most recent phase.

You know, I was also self-medicating heavily, drinking a lot as a means of trying to damp in what I was feeling. It's only when I started processing a lot of what I've experienced dramatically that we started uncovering, oh, wow, there's stuff that you've built a superstructure around managing that ultimately made me realize that I had tamped down a lot. And so it was very hard to pinpoint where a lot of these symptoms, were derived from. But the couple things became very clear to me.

One is I had to stop drinking. I had to establish a baseline of what it looked like not self-medicating and had to then start kind of taking in a creative approach towards managing my well-being, saying, okay, here's what you look like. I'm medicated without any sort of community support, counseling, coaching, anything, and then start understanding what it is.

that you can do to kind of start building out a more meaningful, viable path to healing. Were you in a relationship at the time? Yeah, I was previously married. I'm now remarried and have two kids with my current wife. What's that moment that you got help? I guess that's why I was asking if you were partnered. You know, was it someone else reflecting for you like, this is a problem or was it so evident? You know, did you have a moment, did you have a moment of clarity? Like, did you, like, what kind of got you to sort of realize this is not a way to keep going? First off, the alcohol, the active alcoholism was not manageable. It was destroying a previous marriage.

I would say the catalyst for me was, like, primarily around, hey, you're, you're destroying your health to cope. And you're destroying relationships based upon that. I'd say there's a number of things that ultimately led me to stop drinking. But the first thing was, it's like, hey, I have this opportunity to save a relationship. That ultimately reconfigured over time. I ultimately decided to save myself, if that makes sense. But what's the decision point? You know, a lot of people talk about bottom or sort of a moment of realization.

And when I'm hearing this, it's like it's very collected in a way. You know, you can tell you've been doing work. You can tell you've been stepped back. And, you know, if I have to like prod a little bit and you can push back, you know, tell me to go away. But like, is there a moment where you're like, oh, this is unmanageable? Like, I found myself in this situation. Because the erosion of a relationship and especially the erosion of health happens so gradually. You know, and then we find ourselves in that point of like reflection and where we realize how bad it's become.

Sure. Yeah. Let's go into, I'm going to go into advocacy mode right now. So bear with me here. Bottom for me is not, I can't bottom out. It's death, right? And so I had to actually arrest the process of coping using alcohol because it was going to kill me at some point or another. You're thinking, I just want to feel oblivion.

I don't want to feel anything. That's one element of it, right? The second is when you start isolating in extreme ways, when you don't want to see. friends, family, significant others because you're most comfortable either around strangers or alone because there's fear, there's anxiety, there's frustration, there's anger, there's resentment, all wrapped around very specific considerations relative to your state within the world, your personal mindset, the shame, the guilt, all these things wrap up into an experience where you're like it can be it can be very challenging

to relate to people and that isolation becomes very pronounced over time so that's another element I was feeling very isolated I just wanted to be alone and self-medicate alone and didn't want to be around other people obvious tells there the emotional dysregulation is another major thing Psychosis, alcohol-induced psychosis is something that I started experiencing. And I'm not predisposed towards violence or acting out or risk-loving behavior. But what was happening, I was just becoming very angry and irrational. And I was understanding inside, I would be feeling, I didn't quite know how to articulate it because it was just this kind of almost kind of animal reaction to, I mean, later learned

there's all sorts of reasons why this occurs. But I was effectively completely disregulating my hormones, elements of my neurochemistry, and ultimately, you know, the electrical patterning in my brain around thinking and processes. That's what long-term substance abuse does. But as a coping mechanism, for me, the thing was I believe that this is what I needed to do to get through to manage a very challenging time of my life. So there was almost like a mission-oriented approach to all this is like drink, self-medicate, numb, feel oblivion, so you can ultimately show up for others.

That's backwards thinking. In reality, having clearer hindsight, this is not really how it works, but when you're in the thick of things, your body and brain desires certain things and certain ways of thinking and habit and habituates around activity because it's its way of continuing to exist. Did people call you out on it, people around you, friends, family members, were they, like, trying to shine the light and put the mirror up to you? Ultimately, in the end, sort of. But I have people still come to me and say, I didn't realize there was a problem.

I had managed to construct a way in which, you know, I could have a career. I could work out ways in which people could experience me and the way. way that I was hoping they would experience it, which is like fun, jovial, able to manage social situations, able to manage all these things. But then inside, I was just being eaten up. You know, for anybody listening, this is not an uncommon thing for people to be able to outwardly project a semblance of normalcy and have their inner life, their private life, be falling apart. How long are you sort of allowed to grieve? Because I think there's a disconnect between what the world expects us to grieve, how long that process is versus how long it actually takes someone to grieve. And so that disconnect fuels us trying to be charming and trying to turn it on and try to show the world we're okay when really underneath that is still a lot of emotional process. Well, you know, again, this harkens back to the public and private grieving experience, right? For me,

I didn't start really grieving until about 18 months in, you know, because I was trying to take an approach, which I was, which I had full conviction was the right approach, was to show up for others, you know. And at the time I was, you know, working and volunteering, teaching a class at San Quentin Prison, just trying to do things that I felt were necessary to, basically manage what I believed at the time was my process of recovering from the trauma.

I did actually, specifically, I was working at a tech company and I did leave that role a month after my father died by suicide to help get family affairs in order and help try to get myself in order and then ended up taking on another job soon after. But I needed a bit of time to reconfigure my personal affairs, all while, of course, self-medicating as I did. But, you know, that process of trying to figure out things took a while. My father passed in 2015. So, you know, I think also what I learned, and my father had a neurodegenerative condition, so he had been sick for about three years. You know, but one of the things that I learned and, you know, I come from a religious tradition that has a very specific designation for how you mourn. There's certain things we do

for, I'm Jewish. Are you talking about sitting Shiva? Well, not just Shiva. I said Kaddish for a year. There's a whole year of mourning and there's restrictions on behavior that people who are observant choose to take on. So for us, like, you know, there's this like year and obviously, Things are different after a year, but what I've discovered is that, you know, especially with complicated grief, there's not like a beginning, middle, an end to it. It's a new reality, you know, and it's sort of functioning in the world in a completely different way. So, sure, the first year is like, oh, the first Father's Day, the first birthday, the first this. But beyond that, it's an ongoing process. And, you know, the Joan Didian book, The Year of Magical Thinking, you know, is about exactly that.

You know, we create a reality when we're in acute grief, and it's going to be different for every person, you know, and we will all turn to a variety of things to make it tolerable. You know, the need to numb that is, you know, completely, I mean, I think many people sort of understand that, but you've talked openly about using the 12-step programs. The big book of Alcoholics Anonymous specifically talks about the distorted thinking. And I think that's kind of what, what it felt like you were describing. You know, we have a whole way that we start thinking either to justify or defend or explain or, you know, really protect us. How long have you been sober? This time around five years. Got it. Congratulations.

So how has that, because also, you know, when we're talking, there's so many layers, there's so many levels here, you know, any one of the events you described might bring about post-dramatic stress disorder in and of themselves. But what we know about sort of how post-traumatic stress disorder works is that repeated events of trauma will obviously lead to a higher probability of having a more sustained and extended stress response, which can eventually become what we know is post-traumatic stress disorder. But like I said, any one of the events that you mentioned could have also precipitated that. So the fact that you had all of these things, it makes a lot of sort of chemical sense. But what was the process of sort of, you know, first finding sobriety and then sort of, I'm assuming what happened is once you kind of, you know, start on that road, then you have to deal with everything else that is no longer being numbed, correct? Is that an accurate description?

Yes, that is an accurate description. There are different coping mechanisms that come into play in early recovery and mid-recovery and more long-term recovery. So yes, there is a lot that happens all at once. I also experienced an early recovery going through divorce, which is something that I was working through personally while I was trying to manage staying sober. And, you know, I'm a big advocate at 12-step. In the spirit of anonymity, I'm going to continue to refer to it as 12-step and will be speaking in certain general terms. But the thing that I really had to rely upon,

and this might relate to some familiar tenets to certain people, is just continuing to show up. There's an element of just trying to put one foot in front of the other that's absolutely necessitated in certain situations. What does that look like practically for people who don't kind of know what kind of showing up is? Well, if you're in 12-step, that means continuing to show up for 12-step-oriented things. Right. Whether that's meetings or with, you know, potential sponsors, so forth.

But as part of that, as well, it also relates to doing the work. You know, there's a procedure. There's a process associated with it. It doesn't work for everybody. When you're not coming from a place of acknowledgement and not coming from a place of understanding that there is resentment and feelings of anger and the like, you're going to set yourself up for a challenging time.

There have been various stages in, My experience being sober or not sober, where I've been consumed by things like resentment, right? And so I love the community support elements of 12-step. It's essential for me because my alcoholism personally is symptomatic of all sorts of other things. Say more about that. When I would drink, it was to manage. elements of my world and my life that I had difficulty managing. I had a complicated upbringing.

I have a wonderful, deep, fantastic relationship with my family. You know, going through the evolution periods of becoming, you know, a kid to becoming a teen, to becoming an adult, for me, were kind of challenging. I had a lot of anxiety. Always was a very high-performing human, but I didn't necessarily consider, you know, I came from a position of low self-esteem and...

You also qualify for Alon because you grew up also with a father who struggled. That was, you know, something people knew about. So you also grew up in a home that was affected by alcoholism even before you, let's say, took your first drink. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, but, you know, mind you, I never said,

saw my father drink up until I was, you know, an adult, in quotes, you know, in my early 20s. And so, but, but throughout all this, you know, I had, you know, always did great in school, always had great starts with, you know, career and jobs and things like that. And then, you know, got to a period where I either felt not good enough or let things like, you know, self-medicating, take control and ultimately would have this spiral of guilt and shame and get frustrated around that and that impact of my relationships. And so there's this kind of this negative feedback loop for me, very much relaying to guilt, shame, frustration, anger, resentment that would lead me towards like a path of finding great opportunities,

try to engage with those opportunities, land the job, land, you know, whatever it was that I felt like I was deserving of and then would self-sabotage because I'd have self-esteem, right? And so there was this kind of this loop. And, you know, in hindsight, it actually primarily related to experiences with trauma, right? And I'm only now beginning to kind of piece things together in a way in which I can understand. And it's like, look, the reason why I found oblivion, self-medicating, all these things helpful for me is because I didn't feel I was good enough to be experiencing joy and happiness and the like. And that was a way for me to self-select out of showing up because I was worried that I was going to get judged and rejected and judged and rejected and judged and judged and rejected. And that, for me, was painful, a lot less painful than numbing out, right?

And so, you know, when you get sober, at least for me personally, it was, hey, how can you live with yourself? Right? I think that's very much kind of a symptom of recovery. Yeah, a lot of people who are newly sober say, maybe I'm just an asshole. Because sometimes that's what feels like what's left over. And I will be perfectly direct here. There are a lot of people who I would qualify as assholes in recovery. That said, they're lovable, you know, they're lovable, wonderful assholes on a path to healing.

And honestly, to be perfectly frank, just because someone is direct or terse. or like they might be misconstrued as being resentful or rageful. And, you know, ultimately, sometimes people in their brutal honesty can be seen as assholes when they're just trying to be direct. Right. But I'm going to be honest. I don't have a, you know, a spiritual malady that makes me unable to consume alcohol. I really don't drink any more, though.

I have a physical allergy, literally. I break out in hives. That's a different story. But I know that I'm more fun to other people at a social event if I have a drink or two, meaning it's a social lubricant. It removes that inhibition, which for many of us prevents us from feeling relaxed, especially I have, you know, that's what, you know, my social anxiety will look like. In certain amounts, it is socially acceptable, right?

To just like, yeah, I'm in a better mood when I have a couple drinks. but obviously, you know, what you're talking about is a completely different level, which I think it's also really important. You pointed out that, you know, then the numbing out is it's a symptom, you know. It's not the problem. The problem is revealed when you stop doing the thing that makes you not have to deal with the problem. And what's left over then is, you know, what it's like to be a human if you're you or you or me. I do want to shift a little bit and have you talk kind of about your advocacy.

You know, there are many specific and wonderful resources that you've kind of taken part of. But I'm curious sort of what, did you make a decision like, this is my mission? I need to do this now. What did it sort of come out of? So I started actually in teaching while volunteering at some of. at San Quentin Prison a course on financial literacy. Working with a prisoner

who went by the name Wall Street, named Curtis Carroll, and I was just enamored with his approach around things. And to teach something like financial literacy for me was very comforting because I know how to do it. I'm very passionate about numbers and the markets and invests.

investing and so to sit in front of a crowd who was genuinely interested in learning about this and having opportunity to support people's education around this subject matter was valuable for me. As that evolved, I realized, oh, wow, I like doing this, the educational component. I like taking complex ideas and boiling them down into essentially curricula, but expanding beyond that, taking complex ideas and finding what's communicable and then having those ideas graphs in ways that can then be applied. Right.

And so over time, I realized that I was becoming interested in mental health advocacy because I was starting to learn about my own mental health struggles in a way that I could communicate better. And I started working with an organization called, bring change to mind because I was approached by the board and the executive director of the organization, Pamela Harrington, because they heard me beginning to talk about what I was going through from a mental health perspective. And I just didn't realize that I was actually doing it, but I was. Over time, I started working with more organizations and started speaking. Because of my approach

towards advocacy. I'm very keen on trying to figure out the root causes of issues and then I need to start establishing frameworks to understand why those root causes occur. It's just my nature of problem solving. And so as I started working with these organizations, and I work with four primarily now, I work with Bring Change to Mind,

which focuses on peer-to-peer program development support for high schoolers and a few universities throughout the United States. I work with Project Healthy Minds, which is focused on developing resources, specifically around helping people discover solutions for mental health support, in addition to anti-sigma campaigns and the like. I work with Inseparable, which is a 501C4, focused on advocacy and educating policy stakeholders around pragmatic policy,

focused on access, parity, and equity of care. And I work with an organization called United for Global Mental Health, which is a global policy-focused organization, focused on educating global stakeholders around pragmatic policy for parity, equity, and access of care. I also did want to talk about Call for Help, which is a four-part podcast series from Lemonada Media that examines the promise and the perils of the,

what used to be called the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and is now known as 988. So this is something that like has come out. It's not fully out. A lot of people are talking about it and where it still needs help and what kind of doors it is opening. But 988 is the suicide and crisis lifeline. And so I know you are part of this four-part series, but can you just tell us sort of In a nutshell, you know, what are some of the issues surrounding 988 its significance or, you know, really any challenges you'd like to tell us about? Sure.

Well, I joined the series in its earliest phases as a special correspondent and supported co-producing the series, specifically because when it comes to creating an evolution of a lifeline to be leveraged as one would leverage 911 for a law enforcement response. but for an actual compassionate, contextual, mental health crisis support response, when it came to learning about that and really understanding what it takes to pull that off, I was extremely interested and curious. And so from my end, it was really about learning as much as possible about the benefits, the risks, the challenges of doing this because it was a massive undertaking. in the public sector is a drop in the bucket. It's $300 million, which is less than $1 per American.

But we wanted to go into it, and this is myself, the producers of the show at Lemonada Media, Stephanie Widows-Wox, who is the host of the show, still is the host of the show. We wanted to go into it with the lens of, hey, we think this is a good idea, but let's explore it further and really validate the good, the bad, and the ugly of what's going down. And when we came out of it through recording and developing the series, we realized that it was actually a really good thing. Congressman Seth Moulton, who catalyzed the initiative within the public sector, wanted to create essentially contextual responses. He's a veteran. he's been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder

and he wanted to create a situation where should someone have an experience, they could speak with someone with potential lived experience or training to support managing the lived experience of the caller. And, you know, the way in which Seth puts it, you're a veteran and you call the line, you connect with a veteran. or someone who knows how to support veterans, right?

The other thing, too, is that you want to orient towards a compassionate response and potential non-law enforcement response out the gate, right? The chances of connecting with law enforcement, if you call 9-88, are very slim, and you're going to be informed if a transfer needs to occur to 911. That's how it occurs. And so that's very different than calling 911 and having a default law enforcement response. right? And there's not things like geo-tagging occurring. You call 988. There's a, you know, you'll share what city you're in. You'll share, you know, they know what state you're in.

But it's not like people are coming to your house when you call, right? Should you want people to come to your house, then you can provide inputs, which will then enable people to come to your house to support you. But it's designated to be a response that's, focused around care and support and navigation, not enforcement and so forth. And there's also, you know, in the sort of mental health circles, there's a strong emphasis on how many calls that go to 911 could benefit from someone with more mental health experience as opposed to enforcement. However, I will say that there's another sector of people who believe that no, there's very few calls that have to do with mental illness and police are still the best to

handle a mental health crisis. And I would say that I think this is exactly the kind of thing that we need to, you know, start making more accessible. And, you know, it's the kind of thing, you know, as a teenager, you know, in some of my darker moments, even through my 20s and into my 30s. There's a special kind of help that comes from people who are trained specifically to deal with you, especially if you're having suicidal ideation, if you're feeling like you're going to a place of depth from which you cannot get out. So, you know, Zach, I really want to thank you, you know, for how honest and open you've been with us. And I think also, you know, you're a person who really has, you know, built your life around not only sort of working on yourself, but really passing it on to others. And that's,

It's really exceptional. You know, so many people have trauma and crises and go through alcoholism, you know, and just the fact that you've dedicated so much of your, you know, your personal time and energy and really your life to helping other people is really, really, really inspiring. And we really, really appreciate you sharing your story with us. Oh, thanks. I would want to share why I do that. Please.

Plain and simple, service is my path to happiness. It's what keeps me happy and joy. So, you know, I need to be joyful because I'm a parent of a three-year-old and the one-year-old, and they bring me so much joy. And when I'm not with them, I need to find other ways to be joyful. And it's funny because when I asked you about what it means to show up, that is one of the main ways that many people find a tremendous amount of comfort, and that is one of the bases of the 12-step programs, is you keep what you have by giving it away.

and there are many, many ways to be of service, and we really are so grateful for the work that you do, and thank you. Thank you. The feeling's mutual. I appreciate everything that you do. That was a heavy episode. That was a heavy conversation. That's how we do here. Well, I think, I mean, I was, I'm just really, really impressed at how much, I mean, he calls it service, you know, how much he really has. He's made his life, not just about his own recovery, but about, I mean, education. It's really, it's such beautiful work. And, you know, we didn't really get to get into the specifics, but a tremendous amount of work that is done in a controlled environment for people who are designated criminals, you know, meaning by societal state federal standards, a very large percentage of those individuals need mental health support and needed a.

mental health support long before they ended up in the criminal justice system, a system that, you know, many believe is really not about justice. It is, you know, it's a system that is not necessarily organized to facilitate recovery. And there are many reasons for that. I don't mean to, you know, make a sweeping statement about our country sucks because we, I love this country, but I think we're all having much larger conversations about what it means, you know, in particular for incarcerated individuals and the mental health impact. You know, I think also what really impresses me about Zach is, you know, he comes from, I mean, he's Robin Williams' son. And for many people, Robin Williams is one of the, I mean.

One of the greatest comedians. I mean, his stand-up alone and then his, I mean, incredible, incredible film career. I learned about him on Mark and Mindy. I mean, as a child, that was a show that I loved. used to dress like him. I had the suspenders like him. So I, you know, he comes from this family that is such Hollywood, you know, it's a Hollywood gold, right? Like that, and he's a very humble person. And I believe him when he talks about the advocacy that he does, like he's boots on the ground person. You know, it's wonderful to be an advocate and sit on boards, but he's in

present, like he's doing incredible work. And I think, especially coming from the family that he comes from, I think that's really, it's amazing. And it really speaks to his dedication. One of the things that we didn't get to talk to Zach a lot about, which I would actually like to talk to you about Jonathan, one of the things that he has spoken about is the notion of survivor guilt and how that impacts a traumatic event from which you are coping.

When we had Chelsea Handler on, she talked about how she had a sibling who passed away and how that kind of shifted the whole dynamic. of the family and it shifts everybody's sort of responsibilities and it shifts everything. And when you were 14, your family experienced a trauma that has, you know, impacted the rest of your life. Your brother was involved in a near fatal car accident, which left him in a coma and, you know, has led to a lifetime of really beautiful recovery, but also a lot of challenges, not just for him, but for your whole family.

And while in no way am I comparing, you know, your situation to one where there is death or in particular death by suicide, there's so many layers of that, that is something that Zach has spoken about in other arenas that I wanted to speak to you about. So can you describe what it feels like when you've, when there's been a trauma that you have experienced even, you know, adjacent to you. When you've experienced a trauma, what's it like to try and get back to normal? What does normal look like? I don't think there is a normal.

While there's absolutely no comparing a death to a car accident, the thing about a death is that there's a finality in it. And with my brother, there was just this changed human being whose life we didn't really truly know how it would end or not end, but how it would evolve. You know, he was changed so drastically that there was no normal. after that. So all his friends, for example, he was 17 when it happened, and all his friends started to go off to college and started to go get into serious relationships. And, you know,

he was left to sort of figure out what the rest of his life looked like. And so for me at 14, you know, there's the immediate, well, how are we going to deal with this? And then there's like three months of hospital. And then there's rehab. And then there's like, oh, he comes home. But then what do we do with him? And then there's, you know, I'm 17 and he's now 20 in his early 20s. And like he's very disabled and hanging out with my friends. And so there's all of a sudden, you know, it kind of starts, you try to, again, not you normalize it, but it's never like how you imagined or how I would have imagined life

to have been. So it feels more like an adaptation. And again, everyone's like, oh, well, that's just the way it is now. And so that's a little bit what I was talking with or trying to get to Zach. What does that mean when someone says that's just the way it is now? I mean, there was a period of time when I was 14 that my parents were pushing two children in wheelchairs and we were like going through a mall. Your older sister was also struggling at that time. She was struggling. And so as I think I was probably 15 at the time. And, you know, a year and a half ago, I was like chasing an older brother. who was like the epitome of this athletic teenage god. Right, and cut to a year and a half later, and he's in a wheelchair.

And my sister's also in a wheelchair. And my parents are emotional wrecks. And like, I'm watching the eyes of people walking towards us looking at this Frankenstein family. And I'm like, I want to be anywhere but here. Right. How do I get out of here? And like all of my energy trying to be as small as humanly possible. So like, is that normal now?

Like it's so different and uncomfortable that like it's not normal. It's just this force that I have to deal with. So first of all, I mean, your story is, it is so unusual and it is. It's exceptional, you know, in many ways. But I want to just sort of highlight that what you described is in general terms what it looks like when you've experienced trauma, right? So there's the initial like, that happened, what do I do now? Right? Then there are all the compensatory things that you do just to put one foot in front of the other, right?

And so as Zach talked about, that might mean, oh, I better drink a lot more, right? So there's that phase. And then when what was so acute has worn off, right? Meaning the accident and the immediate aftermath of like keep his body alive, right? Get him, will he wake up, right? Once that's gone, so once that the things directly related to trauma go away and think about any trauma you'd like. I know this is a pastime of yours. Think about if you've experienced the destruction of your home in an earthquake.

Think about if you, God forbid, have been a victim of a violent crime or you've been raped or assaulted, right? There's the, here are the things we have to do. And then it's like, okay, now the rest of my life is laid out on this road that I have to walk, right? and then it's all the things that you do to try and recalibrate. At 14, I had to go back to school. He was in the hospital. They were figuring out, is he going to wake up? What are the next steps for him?

And I was in ninth grade where I was trying to socialize in a new school environment with kids who are doing ninth grade stuff. And it's like there's a fire alarm going off just out of arms reach. And I'm trying to focus on like, hey, there are the, these kids doing normal ninth grade's kid stuff. And like it's very, very hard to focus on that or avoid the fact that there's this fire alarm going off, even though the fire alarm, like, you can feel it in your body. It's like there's something horrible happening. I can't describe it to anyone. No one else sees it. And so I'm trying to ignore that. Even though like if

you run out of the building, nothing happens because there's this long process that is you have no control over. And so, you know, yeah, you try to distract from that. And so at 14, of course, the first thing I started to do was like, oh, I'm in social situations. Let's get drunk. Because that's at least quieting the alarm that's going off. And then it's- Well, it helps you forget. It's also something to do with other people that, like, you don't have to pretend everything is so, you know, whatever they were talking about meant nothing at that time because it wasn't addressing the fire alarm. Say more specifically what drinking then does.

Well, number one, it's... I did not drink that young, so I need you to... What is it to... I mean, I think you're hitting on something really interesting. What you said is it's something to do that doesn't involve, like, any emotional depth. That's right. It's something to do. It's a shared experience.

You're getting away with something at that age. You're having a shared physical experience. It checks all those boxes. All the boxes. So it's like... And you don't feel as much pain. I mean, that... I mean, look, alcohol is a depressant, but at this kind of cognitive level that it sounds like, you know,

and I think that a lot of people are when, let's say, they're first experimenting, yeah, it's a thing. It's like, it's fun and we're crazy. And we're all in it together. And we can talk about that as opposed to talking about anything else, which seems so mundane. A lot of people, especially who, I mean, I remember this when kids were already, like, experimenting with drugs and drinking. Like, they like to talk about it a lot because it is. it's this shared experience. And then that becomes, hey, remember, I mean, it's like the joke about guys.

Like, remember when we did that thing? Remember when we got drunk? Like, that's an activity for the evening is to talk about it. Well, and then the next weekend or time you're meeting up, it's the details around, well, how are we going to get it? And what are we going to get? And let's curate it and where are we going to be? And who's going to be involved?

And how are what? Sounding a little more elaborate than I pictured. But okay. So. And then you can focus on that as opposed to the thing that is either emotional or dealing with the larger issue that's at play. So I'm going to ask you a difficult question. I've never asked you this. With all of the knowledge you have now, all of the superpowers that you have acquired since you're 14 years old, I'm going to go ahead and say you do energy work, somatic work, you have

entered realms of other aspects of our consciousness in a lot of amazing ways. You're a poet, you're a writer, you're a father. With everything you know, what did you need? at 14 when this happened? I needed adults that were present. I needed not to be in that situation. I needed to be removed. I needed to be in an environment that catered towards my needs, which my needs did not exist because there was a fire going on.

And every ounce of energy, not because they didn't want to, but because they could not emotionally or physically do it, they could not be available. And I have a very clear memory, the night of the accident, we were north of the city and we got the call that he had been in the accident and we drove back to the hospital. And my sister was there. She had signed the papers to give approval for the surgery to happen.

And then my father's brother and his wife, so my aunt and uncle, were there. and met my parents and I when we got in. And the surgery happened and was many, many hours. And so about at 1.30 or so in the morning. This is brain surgery just so people. Yeah. At 1.30 or so in the morning, my aunt and uncle took me home to their house.

And I spent that night, and I think it was even the next night, with them and their family. And I have two cousins and we were playing street hockey like we would always do. and we were playing video games and hanging out and like life was normal. And then I remember being dropped off at my parents' house, which was my house, a couple days later, and like opening the door. And, you know, in the movie version

that is now my memory, like the door creaks open and there's just no life in the house. It's dark and the people inside have just been exposed to a bomb blast. And I was left there. to what feels like to fend for myself for the next five years. And your parents, your mom is a child educator and both of your parents took on a very, very active role, obviously, in your brother's care to whatever, you know, ability they could.

But it was interesting that Zach mentioned some of the challenges that can lead to other symptoms of PTSD because I thought of your parents, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. the legal battles, the medical stuff, the insurance claims, like all that stuff that your parents had to deal with for years and years. But I... My father was in a legal battle for seven years. Right. I didn't know if you want to talk about that. Oh, he is now in his mid-70s and is looking at the intensity of the stress that he went

through from that period because he... 27 years ago. And he was in such a fight mode that... And he was so contracted. and so focused that only now, decades, decades later, has he slowly been able to unpack that. So let's talk about you decades and decades later. Here are some of the classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Do you ever have intrusive memories, recurrent, unwanted distressing memories of the event,

reliving the event as if it were happening, that's called a flashback, upsetting dreams or nightmares about the event, emotional distress or physical reactions to something that reminds you of the traumatic event? Would that be a yes? This is a little bit cheating because you knew last night I told you I had this crazy dream. It wasn't about the accident itself, but it was a dream that I was driving in a car and someone else was I was a passenger, which I hate. You hate being a passenger. Let's start there. I hate being a passenger. And in this dream, I was a passenger in a car. The roads were slippery.

We're on like a two-lane country road, which is part of where his accident had happened. and a logging truck makes a... Can you tell he's Canadian? You can. Oh, hey. There's logging trucks in America too. Makes a right-hand turn, and then jackknifes, and this back end of the logging truck is coming towards us

and we're in imminent death. And when, like for years, actually, after his accident, especially in the early years, like in, you know, one, two years after, if I was ever, a passenger in someone's car, like it would get to the point where I would pass out. Okay, so here we go. Severe emotional distress or physical reactions to something that reminds you of the traumatic vans, i.e. being in a car. I mean, I've had that problem with you when I've been driving. Oh, I've totally lost it. Yeah, I no longer even try. So, okay, I'm just, just in case you

were curious, that's what that means, right? That's number one, intrusive memories. Number two, avoidance, trying to avoid thinking or talking about the traumatic event, avoiding places, activities are people that remind you of the traumatic event? I would say like it's a 50. I don't even know why you're not saying yes right now. It's a 50-50 because I have tried not to avoid it in that I've written about it. I wrote a screenplay about it. I've written prose about it.

I went to undergrad and like focused on it enormously. So in that regard, I have definitely not avoided it. On the other hand, yeah, in other ways I have definitely avoided it. Got it. Negative changes in thinking and mood. negative thoughts about yourself other people hopelessness memory problems not remembering remembering certain aspects of the event difficulty maintaining close relationships feeling detached from family and friends lack of interest in things you once enjoyed difficulty experiencing

positive emotions feeling emotionally numb yeah all of that okay next the caveat though which goes back to survivors guilt which is why it's so insidious is that like I would experience this all the time when things were good. Yep. Things were good. I would be going out somewhere. I would be having a good time. I'd be with friends.

And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this feeling of dread and, and I don't even know. And guilt. And just horrible feelings would just arrive seemingly out of nowhere. And that feeling is, why should I enjoy myself when fill in the blank? Next category.

Changes in physical and emotional reactions. Easily startled or frightened? Always on guard for danger. Self-destructive behavior, like drinking too much, you don't drive too fast. Trouble sleeping, trouble concentrating, irritability, anger, aggressive behavior, overwhelming guilt or shame. If you're not always on guard for danger, what are you doing? Right. The stress response is there for a reason and, you know, repeated trauma as Zach kind of talked about. Your brain remembers, your body remembers. It holds. those kinds of memories. And there may be people who are more predisposed to, you know,

having trauma lead to post-traumatic stress disorder. A lot of it is about support. It's about coping mechanisms. And much of that is environmental. And some of it is also, it's genetic. You know, we do. We inherit ways of coping and ways of thinking about things. You know, as Zach said, you know, his family milieu was about kind of being resilient. And, you know, I'm not saying that that's what makes someone have post-traumatic stress disorder, but the things that happen when you experience trauma, they do. They will build up. And for many people, there is a breaking point, you know, the experience your family had.

That might have been, you know, that event in and of itself had a tremendous amount of saliency. And that is very logical, you know, that your body would have such a, you know, a huge response to that. but for many people there are many traumas that, you know, can compile that way. Jonathan, I appreciate you letting us kind of, you know, poke this point. You know, I think it's very inspiring to people to hear you be so honest, you know, about what your experience is and how that relates. And I think also the notion of survivor guilt is a separate component. However, I wouldn't be surprised if that is most prominent in situations where there was trauma.

you know, related to loss. And your situation, again, while different from death, is a very different kind of, you know, rebirth that your family had to experience. So I want to make sure that people learn about 988. And, you know, while we, while we didn't focus specifically on suicide per se, in this episode, we do have other episodes that talk about suicide prevention and give a little more information about suicide. I really just appreciate Zach. being with us and Jonathan, thank you for elaborating a bit about trauma and how it kind of ripples out. Anything else we'd like to tell our friends? It seems a little strange to put a plug in, but it's a little gauche. It's a little gauche. A little gauche to be like, what a cute sweatshirt

Jonathan's wearing. So yeah, I think we'll just leave it at that. I was going to tell them to follow the Instagram if they haven't already. Let's not tell them that. Yeah. If you don't, we're not going to tell you anything. We're not going to tell you anything. From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. It's my ambialics breakdown. She's gonna break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. Fun fiction. And now she's gonna break down.