Sense of Soul - Addiction and Mental Health

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Sense of Soul podcast. We are your hosts, Shanna and Mandy. Grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Hey friends, if you are looking for ad-free Sense of Soul episodes, you can find them at Sense of Soul Patreon. Become a monthly member at any level. You will also have access to our monthly SOS Sacred Circles, our mini-series, merch, and

Starting point is 00:00:26 MuchBorn. And it's a great way to help support our podcast so that we can continue to bring you inspiring episodes twice a week with our enlightened guests from all around the world. Check out our Patreon. Today we have with us Dr. Philip Hemphill. He is a thought leader in the behavioral health and addictive service industry. He was the strategic board advisor for All Points North Lodge before becoming their CCO, which is a premier addiction treatment facility for both behavioral health and also addictive

Starting point is 00:01:00 services. He has wrote and published academic research and is the author of the new book, Integrated Care in Addiction Treatment. This is a topic that is very close to Mandy and I, so we are super excited to have Dr. Hempfield on with us today. Hello. How are you doing? I'm doing excellent. Great to meet you. Nice to meet you. So actually, I want to first ask you, are you from Louisiana by chance? Oh, yeah. I'm New Orleanian. Me too. Awesome.

Starting point is 00:01:31 Yeah. I was really excited to have you, and I wanted to share a story. I had 12 years of sobriety, and then I relapsed for a short period of time recently, actually. And so when I got out of Cedar, which is a program here in Colorado, I'm sure you're aware of it. Yeah. I used to actually work there too. I was going for my CAC. It was really humbling to be a patient at that place when I spent so many years there on the other side. But when I got out, I was kind of in this place where I, I wasn't sure if I was just going to take some time off of the podcast and try to kind of get my head straight again. I really didn't know. So I reached out to Shanna and I said, you know, I might have to gracefully

Starting point is 00:02:16 walk away for a little bit. I don't really know. I love what we do, but I just, my head space hasn't been good. And I don't know if I'm aligning with it right now. And then I swear to God, bing, an email came through and it's you. And I was like, okay, that was the sign. Cause I'd been praying about it. I'm like, God, do I let the podcast go? What do I do? And your email came through. And then I saw that it was in Colorado and I'm like, all right, I'm listening to you. I'm going to stay with this podcast. I'm telling you it's so awesome. And I called Shannon. I'm like, all right. Or no, she texted me and she goes, well, do you think you align with it now?

Starting point is 00:02:57 Yeah. It was emotional. It was so divine. And Mandy and I often say like our podcast is like alive. It always gives us what we need that's awesome yeah yes you know if you're just open to what happens with like these types of rhythms you will find them they will come to you absolutely well and then my doorbell rings and i open my door and it's my sweet cousin. She says, I need help that same day I had gotten home. She didn't know I had relapsed. Your email comes through. She rings the doorbell. Yeah, it was, it was amazing. I'm really plugged

Starting point is 00:03:38 in, in the community. And we have a lot of people from Colorado that are going to be excited to hear about what you offer. And it's great to know that there's another place that I didn't know about because it is frustrating right now. Everywhere I called, I was on the phone for almost 24 hours trying to find a place for her was full. And then you're running into insurance and not insurance and Medicaid and not Medicaid. And so it seems like the fact that they were all full, like Parker Valley Hope was full, Cedar was full, Harmony House was full, Pathfinders where I took her, but it was sad to me. I'm like, what is going on? Everywhere's full. So what does that say about our society right now? People are hurting.

Starting point is 00:04:19 Yeah. There's a lot of pain out there. You're absolutely right. Well, just in the future, if you run into something and you really need help, just don't hesitate to reach out to me. I'll do the best I can. I have a lot of connections in the industry, but obviously I'm one of the executive leaders at APN. And how many facilities do you guys have or locations? Yeah, so currently we have a detox in Aurora, right there close to you guys, you know, the suburb right there of Denver.

Starting point is 00:04:52 And we have 12 beds. So we do the traditional detox, which could be five to seven days. We do medication adjustments, which could be three to five days. We do brief observations of people just to make sure they're stable before they come to our residential facility up in Edwards. So we have that location. We also have a number of centers. We're trying to completely destigmatize mental health and substance use disorders by

Starting point is 00:05:28 offering alternative means of entering into care, whole person care in these systems. So for example, our location out in Malibu has what we call a 9x gym. And it's nine stations, and we have a trainer, and people can sign up for it. And oh, by the way, you're having some difficulties, some distress, maybe we'll do a brief assessment of you right next door. And we'll recommend a telehealth outpatient group or something along these lines. Maybe you have a need for a more professional evaluation, which we can do right next door. And then maybe you could benefit from TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation, you know, ketamine, different types of journeys that could be beneficial for this particular person that are really what we're calling interventional psychiatry, not just your traditional talk

Starting point is 00:06:27 therapy, not just your traditional, let me write a script and I'll see you in three weeks and tell me if there's any side effects or impact on you. We're looking at being much more proactive, much more engaged, much more present. We also have those services in Aurora as well. So, you know, we have these outlying centers, which are, you know, trying to change the face of mental health and substance use. We have one in Boulder that we're about to launch as well in the next quarter, which is a month away. So we have that one for those types of services. Again, outpatient, evaluation, TMS,

Starting point is 00:07:08 ketamine, these types of things. We've acquired property and we're under construction in Dallas, Texas. We have a 22 bed detox where, you know, people will have the same traditional detox or medication adjustment. We also have some of those service lines that I mentioned to you a moment ago with TMS. And in that location, we'll have hyperbaric oxygen therapy as well. HBOT is what we call it. Then we have a site down in Naples, Florida with a similar presentation of services. And lastly, we have a site in London that we're finishing out. Right in the heart of the medical center of all of the hospitals and clinics right downtown.

Starting point is 00:07:58 And we're a behavioral health location stood up right there. And those are all the outlier and all of the beginning type of service lines. Then we obviously have our big residential facility in Edwards, which is a 77 bed facility where we have residential treatment for both mental health and substance use. We're licensed for both by joint commission. We're ASAM accredited, CARF accredited, all that good stuff. And we offer residential care as well as PHP level of care at that facility. We have a couple of houses in that community as well, where we're doing retreats for people, which are very short-term three to five day type retreats

Starting point is 00:08:47 dealing with a lot of burnout from health care workers people who just need a boost like have some difficulties have hit a patch in their care that they might need a little booster and so and some of it's educational as well so we have that. So that's pretty much the platform. The last thing I want to tell you is although it's not a physical place, we have a complete comprehensive telehealth platform. Love it. So we have a dozen professionals from all over the country who provide services to, I think today we may have 135, 140 patients in our telehealth platform. And we offer tele-IOP for substance use and mental health. We offer about 10 different outpatient groups. We offer individual therapy, and then we also offer family therapy. So you can see we have a pretty comprehensive platform at APN in the past two and a half years of building out our infrastructure. That's where we're at today.

Starting point is 00:09:54 We're pushing 300 employees as an organization, and we're very proud of the platform that we have and that we continue to build out. Yeah. Shanna? Yep, I'm here. What's going on? Oh, it's hard for me to talk about. I think that it is incredible that you have so many things available.

Starting point is 00:10:23 You mentioned here in my city, you know, I live in Aurora and I live with someone who will not seek your help. And so knowing that there's that much stuff out there, I got emotional because you've dedicated obviously your life to helping people. But people have to want help. Sure. Yeah. It's really challenging. You know, there's so many individuals that are affected by addiction. It has no barriers, no one person that it affects. There's no demographic. It affects everybody. And then like yourself, it affects all the people who are in relationship to

Starting point is 00:11:03 that person as well. So it's a huge impact. We get the highlights of all of the overdose deaths, and it's in the thousands every day. But we don't even recognize the people around them that are impacted by it as well. And so, yeah, it's very painful to feel this sense of powerlessness as a loved one can be overwhelming and it's understandable, Shanna. Yeah. I had no idea you had a detox here in Aurora. I ended up going to one in Fort Lupton that my friend Scott owns, but I will tell you, I would like for our listeners to know that detox, it's not like the ones you think of when you're like acting out at a Broncos game and they throw you in the drunk tank and drive you off.

Starting point is 00:11:51 These detoxes are there to love on you. They're there to help you not feel the pain of the withdrawals. You know, I don't know that a lot of people are aware of what detox looks like and that there are truly medications and doctors and nurses that can help you to get through that horrific experience. Sure. So medical detox requires a pretty full comprehensive assessment by licensed medical providers to be able to determine what exactly is a level of detox that's required. And so for the most part, it's looking at the symptoms that are present, the amount of substance that the individual has been ingesting and consuming, the period of time that they've been consuming this, if there's a combination of these different things. And then sort of coming up with a very curated strategy

Starting point is 00:12:46 of providing oral medications to support a person and that withdrawal process, because there are many different types of withdrawals, you know, like people with alcohol use disorder is much different than if someone has stimulant abuse or stimulant use disorder. Different very much so from people with opioids and the withdrawal there. So, dependent on the exact substance, there's a very specific medical protocol that is based in ASAM, which is the American Society of Addiction Medicine. And there are very strict protocols that we go through. It's curated in a sense that each person can tolerate things differently. And also there's our body weight. There's all these other variables genetically

Starting point is 00:13:37 about what we need when it comes to a detoxification. But essentially you have the need for nutrition, hydration, as well as detoxification all at once. At the same time, as you say, with a big, you know, arm around the shoulder the entire time and a holding of it's not like a hospital. It's much more like staying in a nice sort of dormitory where you have your own room. It's very private. You have your own television. You have access to all of these amenities. At the same time, you have 24-hour nursing and medical right there at your call if there's a need there. So we have a chef, we have activities to get people engaged, group therapy, talk therapy. But during the detox process, people are mainly uncomfortable physically. And we try to support the individual as much as we possibly can in that process. When Mandy had went to detox a few months back, she said that she wanted to feel safe. And actually she had already stopped drinking, but she was afraid she probably was going to start again.

Starting point is 00:14:51 And of course she also was very sick from withdrawing from it, which was very amazing actually comparing to her, like, you know, say 20 years ago, she would have been like, we would have been pulling her by the feet to get her to detox. So it was pretty amazing that she knew that there was a place that she could go, that she could get help and that she could feel safe. That was, I think, very important that she felt that way. Yeah, it's very scary, not having control over your faculties, over your environment, access to your social support systems, even access to your phone, let's say, which everybody has as a source of safety nowadays. It feels like a threat. It's very destabilizing as an individual. You're very vulnerable. And so, yes, you want to be in a trusted environment where you feel a sense of

Starting point is 00:15:45 comfort, security, getting those basic needs met. You're minimizing the uncomfortableness. It's going to be there, but you're trying to minimize it. Yeah. I did want to feel safe. Sometimes as an alcoholic, there's 19 of us in my family, nine just first cousins. I mean, it runs deep. And I will tell you, the safe thing was really about not feeling judged, number one, because sometimes when I've gone into hospitals for help, it feels judgy sometimes. So I love the environment that you're providing for people that like they're in a dorm or a hotel room with a TV and it's private, but at the same time, they can step out when they're feeling better and getting involved with other people within the place. And I did feel that this last time it didn't feel so hospitally. It felt very,

Starting point is 00:16:35 I love that word safe. And I even had a like sleep paralysis, which has only happened to me once. And I literally came running out of the room crying and the nurses said, come sit with us. And we sat on like a normal living room couch and we watched golden girls till three o'clock in the morning. And so you won't find that at a hospital. Now, of course, I'm not saying to our listeners, don't go because if you can't find a place and you need help go, but it's just great that people have these facilities, especially in Aurora. A lot of our listeners are from Colorado. So this is going to be great to put out.

Starting point is 00:17:12 If you don't mind talking a little bit about mental health, a dual diagnosis. Unfortunately, when we're in our addiction, it seems like our mental health takes a backseat. And a lot of times I find that people that I've sponsored even stopped taking their medication, like if they're bipolar. So you're dealing with both of them. Do you guys deal with dual diagnosis as well? Yeah, absolutely. And we see a tremendous crossover and SUD and behavioral health. And so because there's this huge under addressed situation with this

Starting point is 00:17:49 combo, we see people about less than 10% of the people need it get treatment for strictly substance use, and less than 15-20% of people get treatment strictly for behavioral health. But when you put those two together, it reduces even more because the need for both of those is in the 70th percentile. It's common to have substance use and behavioral health go together, co-occurring is how we explain it. But unfortunately, we've bifurcated and created these silos that people just go get treated for one. And that's really not fair to the individual. So having qualified quality professionals who have the ability to assess not only for addiction, but also for behavioral health issues is necessary in this case. And so absolutely, we provide an initial assessment that helps us understand what's the primary, but then we're always treating both of those things.

Starting point is 00:18:53 And by treating both of those, you know, you have something called an addiction psychiatrist. So that's a psychiatrist who has been trained in both of those areas to address both the substance use and the behavioral health. So we have a number of those on our staff full time. Then you have, you know, nursing and psychotherapists working side by side throughout the episode of care, where there's heightened communication between those two. On a daily basis. We have a huddle every morning with everybody in it, and we sort of maximize our communication about monitoring and what types of interventions may be warranted for each individual. So a full assessment in both of those areas, both psychiatrically and physically, and then a full treatment plan that address both of those

Starting point is 00:19:43 are completely necessary to sort of have the best impact and the best outcomes. Wow. So I have to have someone else in my family who is also undiagnosed and very concerned about their mental health. It's really sad though, because I would call places sometimes and I would say, you know, what do I do? But the places that I've called before, they're like, unless she walks in or unless she's not taking care of herself, there's nothing you can do. So those things look good. Great. I mean, how can we base things off of the outside like that? I don't know. It's frustrating. Yeah, I think it goes back to that powerlessness that you described earlier, even in the behavioral health world. And that's why, you know, the legal system

Starting point is 00:20:33 has been so full of mental health cases, because that's been the brunt of the interventions a lot of times. When I was in this facility recently, there were a couple people that had unfortunately landed themselves in jail before they came to rehab. And they were not given anything to help them withdraw. And one girl like even had a seizure on the floor. They threw a Gatorade at her. Me and Shannon have heard about this a lot happening that people go in and sometimes they don't have their medications even, you know, it's, it broke my heart. I was like, how do we get the prison systems to have doctors or nurses or people to come in and help them? Cause that's just not fair. That's brutal. Yeah. Yeah. That's tragic, actually, you know, I mean, because there are a lot of intersection of

Starting point is 00:21:28 substance, mental health, and the legal system. So unfortunately, you know, the systems that we have in our society aren't all capable of having this type of response to the need. And especially today, there's a tremendous amount of understaffing and, you know, people having a difficult time just staffing places. You know, we were on a nice trajectory with the justice system with, you know, we had this trauma-informed care. So we had the schools that were trauma-informed, where everybody was recognizing and could intervene on trauma. We had the court systems. We had this trauma-informed approach to understanding trauma had an impact on individuals.

Starting point is 00:22:13 And then it was making its way into the penal system with trauma-informed care. And then, unfortunately, you know, this pandemic hit. And it's really disrupted so many of our systems and that being one of them. So I hear you loud and clear. I mean, it's tragic to hear that story. But I do know that a lot of the systems that we have are having a difficult time functioning and just meeting the basic needs of individuals. Well, and they need to speak up if it happens to them so that way you know the more people speak up then you know maybe they'll listen like you know sometimes they just they don't think they have the right to do that but absolutely you do yeah absolutely yeah but

Starting point is 00:22:58 somebody's autistic i always worry because he's just turned 18. So as an adult, I'm concerned what will ever happen if he is perceived in a wrong way because of his disability. He may say something inappropriate. It freaks me out because I mean, look at Elijah McClain here in Colorado. And that just doesn't even make sense to me, you know, what they gave him and how, you know, what did they give him? You mentioned it earlier. Is that a safe drug? And should we be using it? Or what is that? So I think every drug has to has its place if it's FDA approved. And, you know, we have to be strategic and deploying these medications. And we have to always note that therapy is a very important component. You can't just do methadone. You can't just do suboxone. You can't just do ketamine. You have to

Starting point is 00:23:53 really have some other form of engagement. And, you know, I think, unfortunately, that message is, it falls a lot of deaf ears, because people have a difficult time accepting the longevity that's required for healing. And they want something much quicker, much more rapid. Yeah, they want a quick intervention, a quick turnaround. And unfortunately, that doesn't always happen. And what some of these interventions do, like the ketamine, the TMS, the HBOT, they actually speed up the processes. So they allow for an expedited experience so that a person feels relief much quicker. So that's the ultimate goal is to introduce some of these interventions where people feel this sense that

Starting point is 00:24:46 I'm seeing some progress. I'm going to stick with it. There's a medication now that they give people to help them stay sober and help them not want to drink or something like that. It's naltrexone. It's actually very old. It's been out. It is? Oh, okay. Yeah. It's been out since like the 90s. I was never aware of it, but that was something that was suggested to me. What are your thoughts on naltrexone? Oh yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, these are assisted therapies. Okay. And they're, you know, they help support the therapeutic process and to have a physiological support of impacting cravings and urges really, which it would do with alcoholism is something that is so powerful and so impactful. And it's also in the intramuscular, like an IM. So you could just take a shot once a month and it can be something that you don't even have to have,

Starting point is 00:25:42 you know, sometimes you have difficulty with medication compliance with people. Well, this could be just an injection once a month. And absolutely the power of assisting a person. And then for other substances, it just doesn't have the same effect if a person takes the substance. So it kind of not only reduces the urges, it lowers the effect if a person was to sort of have a difficult time and have an episode where they may be returning to the youth state. Naltrexone does have a Sinclair method that has been talked about. The Sinclair method of naltrexone, I guinea pigged it. It didn't work out for me.

Starting point is 00:26:22 That's what I was talking about. Yeah. What is that? The Sinclair method is a method that I wouldn't suggest based on my own personal experience, but maybe it works for some people. I don't know. It's where they continue to have drinks and be able to drink socially on the Naltrexone because it doesn't have that euphoric feeling. And they find that maybe sometimes people don't binge drink the next day. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:26:48 I feel like it's kind of an older method. What are your thoughts on that? You know, I'm not a staunch, strict individual related to you have to do just one thing. I'm open to the possibility of interventions, but I, similar to you, have had, you know, limited results with stuff like that, with people who sort of have this sense of controlled process. And I want to be open, but I also anecdotally have difficulty with some of the outcomes. Yeah. I love that there's other things you offer like the Reiki, massage therapy,

Starting point is 00:27:28 sound therapy, yoga, mindfulness. I mean, we've had on guests that, you know, talk about all those things. And those are things that Shanna and I use in our life. I think these people that I was very blessed to be with in rehab were getting frustrated with only having AA as an option. And a lot of them actually were walking out of groups because they were just sick of hearing about AA and NA. I don't

Starting point is 00:27:53 know why. To me, I love AA. I love the big book. But for some people, it just doesn't resonate and they need other options. And in the big book, it says, you know, our way isn't everyone's way. It's so great to see that you guys have those kinds of things too. book, it says, you know, our way isn't everyone's way. It's so great to see that you guys have those kinds of things too. Now I will tell you, I remember my spouse one time being like pissed. He was like, oh, so you're just going off to like a resort. You get to like get acupuncture and go walk around and Estes park and you get massages and I'm at home taking care of our kids. And you're off like basically on a vacation you know it's interesting that they think that way because I looked at the destination that you guys have in the Rockies and

Starting point is 00:28:31 I'm like oh he would definitely be saying that if I went there it's so beautiful yeah yeah you know recovery is painful it's painful to the soul It's painful to the mind. And the individual has already beaten up themselves enough. The family has already beaten themselves up enough. They're entitled and you deserve to have care for yourself. And it should be whole person care. It shouldn't just be a one dimensional experience. Mind you, you know, AA and the support systems that were in place long before AA were really about bringing people together and feeling like you belong to something greater than yourself and feeling this engagement with a group. And I can understand that might be a little premature for some people, like if they're detoxing or in their early pre-contemplative stage of wanting to commit themselves. So I could

Starting point is 00:29:41 see how people could get turned off and pushed away from some of that and that may be an intervention that comes a little bit later in the process but at first we have to really get people to engage you know the whole thing is like this is really a long marathon this isn't a sprint for 50 meters or 100 meters this is really a marathon well if i can get a discount i need two rooms one might be long term well set your podcast up right in your room and you could do it from there no it's funny too because i had a therapist once and because i did a lot of work you know in therapy talk therapy and she, you know what? So often it's the person that's in here getting the therapy because the ones around them won't.

Starting point is 00:30:31 And that was true. So when you talk about AA, Al-Anon was a huge thing for me doing the work with boundaries and working on the codependency and all those things. And sometimes it looks cold. And Mandy has pointed this out before, but it's the only way that I can survive with the relationships with these people in my life. It's the only way. Otherwise I can't even have them in my life. So it is the only alternative. Anybody can do it if I did it. Whenever I see people ready to like throw the towel in on their relationships, it's like, well, what did you do, you know, to work on yourself that maybe if you did, you might still be able to have them in your life. Because a lot of times we are actually enabling that.

Starting point is 00:31:20 Yeah. Yeah. You know, just from meeting you so far, shan i could tell how passionate you are about this and you know even you taking the first step and getting out there and making changes there's something called the change first principle where you know i could do all day try to get people around me to change but the best way to get them is for me to make changes first yeah and I really wouldn't qualify you know yourself as having to be the benchmark like oh if I did it anybody could do it I would just say you know anybody can do it yeah yeah because I

Starting point is 00:32:00 mean the three c's right you didn't cause it you You can't change it. You can't cure it. Those were huge for me because, you know, I definitely grew up an empathic person. You know, I wanted to change everybody. And I was telling my daughter this, who's only a fifth grader. She was talking about this kid in her class that kind of seems to be a bully, but he also was bullied when he was little. And my first thoughts were, oh my gosh, let's fix him. Let's fix him. You can befriend him and we can change his life. And, you know, I just thought to myself, I almost did. Like I almost was like, I can conspire through my 10 year old to fix this child. But that's like this mentality that I still have to consciously stop myself and say no this is not

Starting point is 00:32:48 mine and teach her how to deal with the bully rather than how to fix him yeah yeah well you know you're bringing up why things stay in the family you know and there's patterns that are passed on from generation to generation and a lot of it is not in a malice there's no like like you really weren't trying to hurt anybody doing what you thought was like the best intervention but you somehow recognized it you know I've also been sober for the entire length of Mandy's sobriety. She inspired me to, I mean, I wasn't addicted or have a dependency in any way, but I wanted to be sober for the people who weren't sober. And I wanted to show my children that you can still have fun. You can still be an adult. It doesn't have to be a thing. There's, there's lots of coffee in the world. There you go. Coffee. Cheers.

Starting point is 00:33:51 I wanted to jump in and say that I love that you guys call it Colorado Wellness and Personal Development Center because there is this stigma about, you know, the word rehab. People don't like it. Yes. Because the second you hear rehab, your body, you feel it, you start getting a little defensive and then people, there's a judgment around it. So why did they decide not to call it All Points North Rehabilitation Center? Yeah. And our mission is really destigmatizing these services. And it starts at the visual and it also starts with our language. So all of the words have been redefined, reworked.

Starting point is 00:34:31 It's all focused on health. It's positive. Okay. So we're looking at healthy values. We're looking at team skills. We're looking at sexual health, systemic health, balance, wellness, being a part of, team skills, neural health. We're not using pejorative language to describe these things. We're promoting health and wellness and well-being. And every person that walks through the door gets a full comprehensive health and wellness

Starting point is 00:35:05 assessment. And so absolutely, those words are so important on this commitment to destigmatize it. I mean, I could give you another example. So instead of calling our alumni an alumni program, we call it the social club. We're immediately trying to reframe. And instead of calling them workshops or intensives, we call them retreats. You know, so we really are committed to these principles of destigmatizing, taking things out of its silo and out of its archaic language, and moving it forward. Really, to be

Starting point is 00:35:45 quite honest, the pandemic has really shed a lot of light on things with regards to the need that was actually below the surface. We knew it was always there as mental health workers and substance abuse providers. We've always known that it's been there, but this really reared its head. And people saw how isolated individuals feel, how difficult it is to remain engaged in relationships with people, and how impactful this is on children, adolescents, and adults, and how painful that was. It really peeled off and exposed the realities of mental health and substance use. And since it's so many people that are affected by this, we need to really change our approach

Starting point is 00:36:37 and make it much more open so that people don't feel those barriers to engagement. Me and Shanna always talk about words. You know, part of our journey has been just really looking at how much, you know, meaning and value they hold. So you have to be so careful with them. Yeah. It's everyone's perspective around just a word can get so twisted.

Starting point is 00:37:00 And Mandy, where have you been for 30 days? Rehab? Or Mandy, where have you been for 30 days? At a personal development center? Yeah, right. Yeah. I wanted to ask you, how effective is telehealth since COVID? It seems pretty popular.

Starting point is 00:37:13 Yeah. As I was mentioning earlier, I think the issue of access and the reality of how much pain people are in and needing some quick relief and quick attention to what's going on with them is part of the draw and part of the power of it. And also the ease of being able to get to an appointment and to just jump on an appointment, maybe even at the office without having to leave work or something like that. So I think the biggest piece is access to professionals, which usually was much more difficult to drop everything, go to an appointment, come back. I think we're actually moving to a hybrid model, our organization especially, where we have a combination of that, like with these

Starting point is 00:38:00 satellite clinics, people can go in, do some face-to-face, but then also can migrate over to the tele and do a combination of those things. As far as having quick access and availability and being able to have access to a professional, because, you know, we often just go to our peers, our family, our friends, our neighbors, and reach out for these things, but we don't always get the best advice. So we sometimes need to have a very trained person guiding us in the things that we need. So for us, it's been very successful. We also have an app that allows people to log into and have access to a lot of different resources. So we're using technology to really, you know, offer a complimentary experience for sure.

Starting point is 00:38:47 Even sound healing, meditation, Reiki, like past life regressions, hypnosis, all this, these different things. A lot of them have learned to do it on Zoom. You know, even Shanna and I, Shanna is a Reiki master. You know, we were both a little apprehensive at first about it working through a Zoom platform, but we're finding the results are just as good. So can EMDR work online? Yeah, it's absolutely working every single day.

Starting point is 00:39:15 It's working with people. I'm shocked. The power behind it. Yeah, power behind it. Just like your Reiki. I mean, it's the same principles that people are able to feel a sense of guidedness. The wonderful thing about this is it's actually empowering the person to be able to practice some of this on their own. And they feel safe enough to be able to deal with some of this,

Starting point is 00:39:37 contain this work, be able to be slowly introduced into it, and yet be able to pull out and be alert and I'm here in my office, you know, so I'm here at my house. So it actually is a very empowering experience for people to do these techniques on online and over. And yeah, so EMDR is a way of doing resource development and it's bilateral. So it's using both sides of the brain to use the expressive as well as the intellectual side and to blend these two together. And so being able to do that with a safe person in a way that essentially, you know, you can tap your shoulders, those are some of the ways you can watch a light, you can have these pads that stimulate your hands at different times, and then you're able to talk to the individual on the screen. So I think it's actually an opportunity to create

Starting point is 00:40:32 like a safe place, also to empower the person. So there's something called self-efficacy, where I have a sense that I'm mastering myself, and I'm mastering my environment. And all of this is a way of really restoring safety and trust and awareness and structure in my life, both socially and psychologically. And so I think this enhancement of EMDR online has been really, quite honestly, a bit of an eye opener, like you just said about your own reiki experience i think that that's wonderful because i mean it's like there's no excuse here a lot of people will say well i couldn't get there or you know they're uncomfortable going into you know medical facility for whatever reason a lot of people are especially men you never want to go

Starting point is 00:41:19 to the doctor and so it's like no excuse you just sit down in your chair and get on the phone with them well it's you know it's the same with Alcoholics Anonymous you know now they're posted on zoom you I could jump on one any second of the day it could be in Europe it could be in Africa it could be in you know it could be right here in Aurora so it's better to get one through zoom than not go to one at all yeah can you tell us i've never heard of btms the deep transcranial magnetic stimulation yeah what is that yeah yeah so uh this has been around a while as well um and what it essentially does is it uh locates a very specific section of the brain. This is FDA approved. And it's approved when there's been failed treatment episodes with other types of interventions. So if there's medications that have failed, if there's ECT that's failed, if there's therapy that's failed. It's a very localized, deep stimulation,

Starting point is 00:42:29 it's magnets, you know, magnetic stimulation, transcranial head, magnetic stimulation. So it's penetrating the matter, the brain matter into a very specific region and you know when this happens one of the things that we do is we actually start to activate some of the neurons and you know like just in a square inch of neurons we have more than the milky way has stars just in one square inch of our brain so if you think about how dormant a lot of those are, and if you can activate some of those, you know, just recently, I got approved for OCD, and actually has shown promise with alcohol use disorders, eating disorders, some of these other things. Now, the insurance companies have been slow to accept this because they have a tendency to want to deny things.

Starting point is 00:43:25 But the FDA has approved, you know, not only for depressive episodes, but for some substance use disorders and, you know, obsessive compulsive disorders as well. So this is about a 19 minute session. You sit in a chair. There's like a helmet that goes on. It feels like if you just put your finger up by your head right now and you tap your index finger on it, it just feels like it just continues to do that for about 19 minutes. There's very little pain and there's very low risk adverse outcomes afterwards. Generally, you want to get about 35 sessions. And there's remarkable research on the outcomes. So yeah, that's one of the services we provide. That's one of the interventions

Starting point is 00:44:14 we provide. And we do it for not only mental health issues, but also for substance use issues. Yeah, well, thank you. I appreciate you coming on and sharing all of this with us. Love to hear about your book and what that highlights, after all the wonderful knowledge that you've already shared with us. Yeah, thank you for that. So, yeah, I compiled a book over about the last two or three years. It got released at the beginning of this year and it's called Integrated Care and Addiction Treatment. And it's essentially the culmination of my experiences and all the wonderful people and patients that I've been able to work with over the course of my 30-year career. And I take you through the journey, the things that I've learned in the different organizations and the people that I've encountered and the processes that I've been exposed to that truly are represented really in what I spoke to you today about. And it's really the

Starting point is 00:45:12 culmination of deployment of what we've been doing at APM. I'm so proud to be able to represent the organization through an academic piece here, manuscript. You know, my father read the book and he said, son, like you're telling everybody how to do this. And I said, exactly, because I want everybody to know these are the things that have to be done to have the best possible outcome. We cannot live in silos. We have to integrate. We have to have multiple sources of contribution, multiple people. We have to shatter behavioral health and addiction and make it fall on their health and wellness. We have to shatter it. We have to say we're just as important to be at the table as health. We're just important to be at the table as everyone else

Starting point is 00:46:07 as it relates to our industry. So, you know, unfortunately, you know, insurance companies, people don't see behavioral health, mental health as being a big investment for them. So they just sort of focus on the health components of people's episodes and the course of their life. But we know that behavioral health and substance use have a profound impact on health. And people that show up in the healthcare system have co-occurring issues related to these conditions. So why not bring them in the fold, use data to inform our care, use leadership across the spectrum here, and have a seat at the table. That's really what the book is about. Behavioral health and addiction care deserves a seat at the table. You know, there's a lot of people that have written about it. This is just my experiences. So

Starting point is 00:46:59 I appreciate your invitation there. Yeah, it's so important, the work you do. It's so important and so needed. You know, this is so close to home for me. I've struggled with addiction my entire life. The one thing I learned recently was that, unfortunately, relapse is part of my story. But I was able to pick myself up quickly and get back to those tools that I've been taught. You've broadened my horizon as far as different healing modalities that maybe I should try, like the magnets. I'm down. Put the helmet on my head. This is life or death. If you need help, you guys, here's another

Starting point is 00:47:38 amazing program right here in Aurora. Yeah. And we have a resource page for here locally and also internationally everywhere. So we're definitely going to put you at the top of the list. Oh, I really appreciate that. Yeah. I really appreciate you guys' stories.

Starting point is 00:47:56 And, you know, I'm really proud that you actually have a story and you're willing to share it and you're here to tell it. And you're advocating for that story and for those experiences. And just the willingness to come out and put that broadcast that out is my hats off to you. So thank you for having me on. And I really appreciate your attention and respect of my work. And I really take it as a strong compliment when you sort of honor my time in the field. So thank you for those kind words.

Starting point is 00:48:46 Yeah, throw out your website or how they could get ahold of you or find more about this. Sure. It's APN.com. It's as simple as that. APN. You don't even have to remember all points north, which is wonderful if you can find your way north in this horrible disease and, you know, that suffering that people have. But just think of APN.com. That's plenty. And I think you'll find a lot of resources. See all of our wonderful staff that work with people day in and day out. Read about things.

Starting point is 00:49:16 See some of the blogs, podcasts. We just launched a podcast. And we have like eight interviews on different topics, very similar to what we just did here. I invite people to visit it as a resource. And my book is published by Rutledge. So you have to go there or you have to go to Amazon, Barnes & Noble. Those are some of the places that you can actually get the book and now it's time for break that shit down i want people to know that someone is listening someone is hearing the pain that

Starting point is 00:50:01 you're experiencing and if there's any way you can reach out and be open to someone listening, someone hearing, someone is there for you. Absolutely. You know, for our listeners, Sense of Soul was, you know, we put a lot of thought into that name because it represents, you know, the abbreviation is SOS, help. We have so many amazing guests that come on that teach you different ways that you can get help for yourself physically, mentally, spiritually, you know, how to turn your pain into purpose, because sometimes we have to go through that pain to evolve as a human. It's all perspective. Like we talked about with words, addiction has been so hard for me, but it's helped me to evolve. It's not easy, but with programs like you, it helps us to stay on top and you're right. This is something that

Starting point is 00:50:50 you have to do for the rest of your life. And so again, thank you for helping people do that same thing. Yeah. You're such a blessing. It's such a pleasure to meet you. Thank you. Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week. If you like what you hear, don't forget to rate, like, and subscribe. Thank you. We rise to lift you up. Thanks for listening.

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Sense of Soul - Addiction and Mental Health

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