The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Steve Feldman, CEO of Feinberg Consulting On Substance Abuse, Addiction and Mental Heath Treatments

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

Steve Feldman, CEO of Feinberg Consulting On Substance Abuse, Addiction and Mental Heath Treatments Feinbergcare.com Biography I have over 40 years of experience as a business owner and entrepreneur. I am a trained interventionist, and I now work with hundreds of families, helping to create positive outcomes in the areas of addiction, mental health, family crisis interventions, and healing. I have made my passion my career, and I am proud to be part of Feinberg Consulting, a great group of people involved in personal growth, interventions, mental health, addiction recovery, and self-care. I love what I do and am grateful for every part of my journey that has led me here. My philosophy is that balance, continual efforts toward optimal self-care, and ongoing personal development are everything when it comes to being your best. I believe the most successful outcomes come from creating an environment of compassion, love, courage, diligence, and commitment. I love spending time with my family and learning new ideas and concepts in my free time. I also love to be physically active through cardio workouts and yoga.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

The Chris Voss Show. I'm just like Beyonce, only less talented or not talented The Chris Voss Show. I'm just like Beyonce, only less talented. Or not talented. I should probably just give up and stick to my day job. But that's what we're here for, folks. The Chris Voss Show. Welcome, one and all.

Family and friends, women and children of all ages. Welcome to the Chris Voss Show podcast. As always, we couldn't do it without you. You know, the Chris Voss Show is a big family. And the one thing about a family is we kind of all live in the same home. And so the Chris Foss Podcast is like a giant home of people that love you but don't judge you. So it's like living without your mother-in-law. So there you go.

But the great thing about it is you can sit on your couch and you can listen to the show and you can go, holy crap. And you can welcome in all these amazing, brilliant minds. And none of them are me. You can welcome in billionaires, CEOs, the hottest new authors that are coming. Simon Schuster, Penguin Random House, all the great publishers, auto book with us, entrepreneurs, news from you know journalists pulitzer prize winners and you can sit there right wherever you are and be in your home with the chris foss show doesn't that feel warm like a little chimney fire going in the corner there because if it doesn't well you should probably further show your family friends and relatives and i'll feel more like that go to goodreads.com for chest christmas linkedin.com for us christmas youtube.com for

us christmas and christmas one and why aren't you more impressed whenever i do the improv YouTube.com, 4chesschrisfoss, LinkedIn.com, 4chesschrisfoss, YouTube.com, 4chesschrisfoss, and chrisfoss1. And why aren't you more impressed whenever I do the improv ramble at the beginning? You should be. And do a five-star review on that over on iTunes if you would, too. You know, years ago, I had someone that I was very much in love with, and she struggled with alcoholism. And I didn't know what alcoholism was at the time or addiction was at the time and so it was very hard for me to understand it and it was kind of a part-time thing. There were choices that I had to make in the relationship. At one point we were

engaged to be married and that had to be called off. There was lots of struggle to get her to stop drinking and deal with her thing and in the uh we broke up and then a few years later she unfortunately passed away from her alcohol addiction so addiction uh alcohol abuse trauma childhood stuff all this stuff we're gonna be talking that today and educate yourself on what i didn't know when i was going through these things and maybe if you know somebody who's out there who needs help we can give you some advice and give you some resources and all that sort of good stuff. Today we have Steve Feldman. He's the CEO of Feinberg Consulting. And we're going to be talking about some of the services they offer, how to look for addiction, how to understand it, how to, you know, know if

you need help or maybe someone you love needs help and maybe some things to empower you to know what to do because when I came across it I had no idea what to do. Steve Feldman's journey to recovery from addiction began in 1992 and has become a foundation of his life and work. He is trained interventionalist and CEO of Feinberg Consulting, a company that helps families manage addiction, mental health, and family health care crises. His reason for being is to help those in crisis get the right kind of help fast and make it stick. Steve also looks forward to sharing stories

and new perspectives about navigating through crisis. Welcome to the show, Steve. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you for having me. There you go. Give us a.com. So where do you want people to look you guys up in the internet for more information? So the website for our company is feinbergcare.com. There you go. And give us a 30,000 overview. What do you guys do there? So our company was established in 1996. My partner, Pam Feinberg,

who was a nurse, created a company that was really designed and in place to help people who had been catastrophically injured, a lot of traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, and really complicated medical conditions. And case management is really best described as care coordination and patient and family advocacy. And over the years, that expanded into working with people in the behavioral health field, mental health, substance use addiction, other types of addiction as well. And we really are guides, navigators that help people through some of the most challenging times of their life or a family member's life. There you go. So give us your hero's journey.

What got you into this realm? Tell us, you know, kind of your upbringing, your journey, and why you love working in this field? So there's really a parallel path. And the parallel path is that my career, my business life has been in a path of working in a lot of different businesses, all in which was about providing a service that helped people. Like I've always been somebody who has been interested in others and been interested in helping. And on a personal basis, I struggled with substance use addiction. Really, anything, if it could help me avoid numb or not deal with something, I could become addicted to it. And what brought me to my knees really was in 1992,

I got sober from drugs and alcohol and been fortunate to be on a path of recovery that hasn't been a straight line since then. But I've been sober from drugs and alcohol for, I'm 62 and just passed my 31st clean day, you know, 31st anniversary of being clean. Wow. And I can say more than half my life has been that. There you go. Congratulations. Would you be 62 if you hadn't gone down this path?

Most likely not. Wow. most likely not wow that's that's it's it's great that you survived that i have friends that deal with addiction and and every day it's one day at a time and they they'll post their coins on uh facebook and and and you know talk about what they're going through and you know everyone supports them because you know it's it's hard especially you you know, people that are heavily addicted to something and chemically their brains wired to be an addiction personally. Let me ask you this. Is it true that there are certain people that have a predilection to addiction more than others? Maybe it's genetics.

Maybe it's character traits, things like that. Yeah, the answer is yes. And, you know, there is both genetic and environmental issues that play into where in a way that is, uh, alcoholically or, you know, abusing drugs into a, into a place that it has turned into addiction, there's really no, no, no turning back. There you go. And I've, I've seen, like I cited my ex-girlfriend, uh, she was a wonderful gal when she was sober. When she was sober,

she was just an angel when she was sober when she was sober she was just an angel she was worth marrying and i i would see a physiological change a physical change to her face and body when she would strike alcohol it could be a shot of vix like it just took like that little thing and she would be she would go it was dr it's probably what dr jekyll and and mr mr hyde and dr jekyll dr jekekyll and Mr. Hyde was formatted on, because she would go from being the nicest person to just being the meanest. She was just one of those mean drunks, like not fun, you know, mean, like, and her face would contort, you would almost have a different person. And so it was kind of interesting to see how that worked in some sort of addictions, a formative sense. Listen, you bring up something that is really

powerful because one way to look at this is that the person that you described that was so important to you, that you cared for, that you loved, that you wanted to be close with was the authentic person that that she was yeah and that the addiction or alcoholism really hijacked her and the brain actually goes through a change that the decisions that are made the things that are said the the behaviors are not the person that you really knew. It doesn't excuse those behaviors because everybody's responsible for what they do, but it certainly explains it because there is really a hostage that is taken by the disease. There you go. So you talk about the transactional nature of medicine these days.

What do you see in that, and how do you guys maybe do things differently? So, you know, you bring up a really great point. And the system in many cases is set up in a way that there are different people who have different specialties that have a particular thing that they work on and they go from A to B, but they don't go from B to C. And it's very transactional in nature. And what I mean by transactional in nature is if you're going to the doctor, you fill out a bunch of forms, you sign in, they call you back and you see the doctor and then you leave and you maybe get given a list of follow-up and things that are needed and it's up to you to manage it. And then you may see another provider for another issue and it's also transactional. What we really believe in is that, especially

with complex situations in the mental health world that maybe are co-occurring with medical issues or co-occurring in mental health with addiction, that transactional relationships aren't enough, that it's really relational. And relational means getting with somebody to look at the big picture, being alongside in a way that helps navigate through some of the most difficult and challenging things that somebody's facing. There you go. And you guys also deal with behavioral or process addiction what is what is that exactly so a process addiction could be something that isn't dependent upon a substance but more of a behavior so a process addiction could be like gambling it could be shopping it could be sex yeah right i laugh a little bit i probably shouldn't laugh because I, I've lived in Vegas

for 20 years. So I know what gambling addiction looks like and it's pretty ugly. Um, and it's pretty rampant there too. Uh, so I know how, how I know how prevalent that can be. Um, and then you guys do mental health disorder. Uh, so you guys have probably a room for me somewhere in over there. Listen, we all, we all have some level of challenges with with mental health and you know it's been prevalent for a long time the things that took place during the pandemic uh only exacerbated it uh increased so much anxiety uh increased so much so many people that were isolated, that were alone on their own island, that became depressed. And then there were behaviors as a result of that discomfort that didn't help things. And we face often co-occurring disorders. So it's not just somebody has an issue with alcohol.

It could be alcohol and anxiety, and it could be that the alcohol is used to numb, to comfort the anxiety. But that use of alcohol then becomes something that creates other unintended consequences. Yeah. And I know a lot of people that I've seen that have addiction issues, you know, if they're into one thing, they can easily switch to another thing or they can be doing multiple things at once, you know, like they have an alcohol problem and a gambling addiction, or if they try and quit one, they'll move to some sort of other addiction and they just

have that locked in their personality. And you're like, well, we got them to stop drinking. And then it switches to, it can even be like food or something like that. Yeah, completely. Listen, it's, some people have talked about, it's like whack-a-mole and recovery. The path of recovery from, uh, from addiction is different than the path of stopping a behavior stopping a behavior is very similar to Being able to you know, we talked about people who quit smoking they did it white-knuckle and White-knuckle doesn't deal with the the reason why I was smoking in the first place

It just has me stop a behavior. It doesn't get filled up with something else and and recovery and recovering is where there is actual change and transformation that happens rather than just stopping something yeah because you've got to dig down to the source right and either root it out or apply some sort of uh like what you mentioned earlier, some sort of healing or some sort of recovery aspects to it. Yeah, that's exactly it. And so it is a process. It's not an event. When somebody gets to the point where there are consequences as a result of their behaviors or use, there's no quick fix.

There you go. And addiction is about instant gratification. There you go. issues that they have. And maybe when we look at people, because I know I was challenged by this, you know, you think, well, the alcohol is the problem. And in trying to understand them, you realize that there's something deeper that's unresolved, that's unfixed. And it's easy to get distracted by, you know, well, if we could just get them to stop drinking alcohol, it really comes down to, like you say, the deeper thing to that. I had heard a statistic once that many people that suffer from drug addiction that go into rehab have sexual childhood trauma

or have some sort of childhood trauma. We've talked about that a lot on the show with a lot of doctors that have been on the show. Is that true? Yeah. So if we take trauma, there is the kind of trauma that you just talked about, sexual trauma or witnessing war and death. PTSD. Power accident, right? That's complex trauma. But if we also look through a bigger lens,

there's also developmental trauma. And developmental trauma in a way can be described as something that is something less than a nurturing experience. And as a coping mechanism, in many cases, substances or behaviors are sought out. So if you think about it, if you take away the substance or behavior, but you don't treat the underlying cause or situation, what ends up happening is you could leave somebody in a really, really difficult place, really painful and uncomfortable place. And I really believe one of the reasons why there is, in many cases, a high recurrence of use when somebody has all the consequences in the world to stop,

they stop, but the underlying cause is not being addressed and is not being healed. And it just becomes recurrence after recurrence after recurrence. Yeah. Which creates a lot of shame for people. Mm-hmm. It's very tough. Yeah. Now, you mentioned you guys work with families and stuff, and I guess individuals as well. I noticed on your website there's a thing about interventions.

I used to watch that show Intervention all the time, and it was always kind of heart-wrenching to watch it. And, you know, sometimes it worked out and sometimes it didn't. Tell us about how that works and some of the services you can offer to family members. You know, I've known people that they're in, they have to be in Al-Anon for their, you know, try and help them deal with their person who's in AA. Yeah. It's, it's really important for us to talk about what this process of intervention is. When you say the word intervention, in many cases, what comes up is that TV show. It is something that's very dramatic. But intervention, down to the simplest form, is really interruption. What we really need to do is kind of interrupt a path that isn't working. It may look like a surprise where the family is rehearsed and brought together and trained with a specific letter and ask where plans are made to help

somebody say yes when otherwise they're really going through destructive behavior and part of their life but it could be as much as really helping the family get on the same page of what they're asking their loved one to do yeah it's kind of a way of it just occurred to me it's kind of a way of providing a bottom without having them hit rock bottom maybe is that it's that's really great what you said because that it's talked about all the time that somebody has to hit bottom yeah to want to change yeah well if we want to use that then we can say okay but we want to raise the bottom yeah because if we as a family or somebody close to the person of concern is in any way enabling or allowing the behavior or disease to continue, then the bottom is lower. And the bottom in many cases can be death.

It can be jail. It can be, you know, hospitalization or being institutionalized. And what we want to be able to do is we want to be able to create an environment around that person that raises the bottom. So, you know, enabling somebody is being able to provide things for them that allows the addiction or behavior to continue. There you go. We want to help train families to be the kind of environment that raises the bottom. So you guys help train the family too in how to cope with it, how to deal with it, how to counteract maybe some of the sociopathic aspects or narcissists.

I've seen the trips that people that, you know, they're very manipulative sometimes with addiction that they'll play on the family, you know, like, like when I was watching the show. So you help people kind of, uh, get mastered on that. Listen, a great way to talk about that is that the family really is the environment in which we want something to grow. So, you know, I'm in Michigan. If I want to grow a cactus, no matter how bad I want that cactus to grow, cold, wet weather is not going to have that happen. That's true. You guys do that. If we want to get a healthy family member to grow and recover, there's a certain environment that's needed. And that environment is loving, is compassionate, is dignified, is direct,

kind of courageous. And in many cases, when families come to us, there's anger and resentment and emotional outbursts and threats. That's not the environment to help somebody shift their behavior, their decisions. There you go. I like the family coaching part that you guys offer as a service because that makes sense because those are the people who are going to continue to interact with that person. I remember my ex's mom was in Al-Anon. She had to be in Al-Anon for her father or her husband at the time, my ex's father, and then for her daughter. And, you know, being a caregiver to these people can be a challenge and all that sort of good stuff. Do you guys deal with holistic? Let me interrupt you and say that Al-Anon is something that is such a positive support group for people to not only learn and get education, but to lean on and get support and recognize they're not alone. Because the disease of alcoholism or addiction wants to have people think that their situations are unique, they're alone, and they're different.

And the opposite of addiction is really connection and community, and Al-Anon is able to provide that. So that's a really, really valuable tool. It's part of what, in most cases, gets recommended to family members. Any sort of training that, because like when I came across addiction, I had no training. I had no idea and it was hidden so well like i didn't know she was drinking she she had it hidden underneath the sink in the in the detergents and and and like i said it was like i couldn't figure out like why does friday she go off the rails friday to monday and we're fighting and she's bitter and like you

know and at first you just think well you know i must have done something wrong as a as a dude um so you guys deal with process addiction this is kind of interesting uh we should share out Like, you know, and at first you just think, well, you know, I must have done something wrong as a, as a dude. Um, so you guys deal with process addiction. This is kind of interesting. Uh, we should share out. There's exercise addiction. Boy, I don't have that problem. Uh, food addiction. Uh, might have that problem.

Gambling addiction, porn addiction, sex and love addiction, uh, shopping addiction. I actually had one of my employees years ago that had a shopping addiction problem and she was married with kids and we started getting these wage garnishments that were coming into the office for her. And we're like, I mean, she seemed like a, you know, I don't know, you can't really say, well, she didn't seem like a person I have bad credit, but I mean, she had a family, a husband and kids. and so let me start getting these things for these these uh garnishments and i and and i went to her and i said you know we're getting these garnished we're gonna have to withhold this from your check and she was kind of upset she's like please don't tell my husband and like what do you mean i mean you're married your husband you know doesn't he know about this um and she's like no he doesn't

know and she had a shopping addiction and we were getting like a lot of these these bounce checks i guess they were something credit cards maybe in default and and that's what she had technology addiction i think uh 90 of the people have that now video game addiction that might be mine uh and work addiction so there you go that might also be mine too you know i also want to a distinction in all of this because there is a difference between abuse and addiction. Right? And abuse is something that has an impact, that's getting in the way of something, that in most cases can be recognized and said, you know, I'm spending too much time on my phone. I want to back off. And you make those changes. That's abuse that's been

intervened on by, hey, I'm committed to doing this. Addiction is I have that conversation or somebody has that conversation. I agree with it or I deny it or whatever the case may be, but I continue to do it. And I continue to do it into a way that begins to impact and affect other things in my life. There you go. Let me ask you this, because I had an argument with a friend once, because there was a point in my life where I was drinking half a bottle of vodka about every night or every other night. And I was never, in my mind, I was never addicted to it.

Now, let you correct me here. But my friend, I would just do it. But if I ran out of vodka i wouldn't get the jones i wouldn't shake i wouldn't lose my mind in fact half the time i'd just be lazy and go i'll just get some more tomorrow night or whatever just didn't care um but i abused it pretty heavy for a good 10 20 years um and i'm a big guy so i can can consume. I was even bigger then, so I could consume a lot of alcohol. And I have a high, what would you call it, resistance to drugs. A lot of drugs are just candy.

I'm just like, this does nothing for me. But booze was my one little agent. But my friend said to me one time, because he had a smoking addiction, when he would not smoke, he would jones. He would start shaking and start losing his shit. i'm like you know i think you have an addiction i just have abuse and i know what i'm doing i'm abusing this uh are those two really different things or is still really it's a form of addiction because there is a line there is a line and there is a screening that you know that somebody would go through to be able to really get a diagnosis of if it is a true disorder or if it is abuse.

And it's not the exact same for everybody. Okay. There you go. You know, what happens is in many cases, it's not the same for two people, right? Somebody that was drinking the same way that you did for the period of time that you did could certainly have and create a physical dependence. And if they didn't have it, start to shake and start to potentially even have the possibility of having a seizure or other medical complications. And it is a, you know, at the center, it's a pretty fine line.

It's, and it was interesting. I was, I used to drink like 10 to 15 Mountain Dews a day. One day I just quit. I just said enough. I just can't take the abuse of my body anymore. And alcohol was the same way. Alcohol was kind of a wind down. Once I hit my fifties, my body was like, yeah, if you want to keep doing this, um, we're just going to make it really painful and give you just horrendous hangovers. And after a while you're just like, I don't want to do this. It's just not, this is not worth it. And, uh, and so I eventually quit and moved on.

But, you know. Listen, man, you're talking about the difference between abuse and addiction. I could have never had that conversation. Yeah, yeah. Well, actually, I could have the conversation, but I could never follow through. There you go. Because as soon as it was coming out of my mouth, I was thinking about how I could hide it, figure it out for the next day, somehow get around what I said, and some way manipulate into some kind of behavior that got what I wanted. In addiction, there's a big demand to do whatever it is that's necessary to keep that addiction going.

There you go. You tell yourself a lot of, you know, lies and you, there's always a, what do they call it? It's like reasoning or they call it rationalization. There you go. You're like, well, you know, if that's that or the other, well today, you know, and stuff like that. So what, what have we talked about on services you guys provide and, and how you help integrate, um, not only, you know, a a family and or an individual who's out

there going, I'm listening to this and I think I probably should ask somebody if I need help. Yeah. The service that we provide that kind of wraps around everything that we do is when people come to us and mostly people come to us that are concerned about a family member, but, you know, periodically we get somebody that is concerned about themselves and want to make, ready to make changes. What we want to do is first gather information and get a real full thorough assessment of not just the person of concern, but the whole family. You know, you talked about trauma before. It's really looking generationally, looking familial wise, looking at it from a real holistic perspective to put together a picture of

what the past has been. They get a clear understanding of where somebody is currently at so that we can work together real closely to come up with recommendations and a plan for how to move from where somebody is to where it is they want to go. And those services include formal interventions, include coaching families on how to work with their loved one, include making recommendations for treatment facilities. We have, you know, we spend lots of time, effort, resources in getting to know the different levels of care, the different facilities from one end of the country to the other. And then really being able to provide ongoing management consultation kind of direction to help people have a light

shined out in front of them to deal with things that we're not necessarily trained on how to do. Coordinating providers, having a therapist and a psychiatrist be able to talk with each other and know really what's going on. Being able to help deal with legal issues. Whatever the situation is that could increase stress or increase the fact that the plan could go offline, we're there to help guide people through that there you go and we've kind of talked this touching this a little bit before but why is it more important that people approach professionals like you reach out from help uh that way as opposed to just uh googling symptoms or talking to a neighbor or friend and says hey you should you should probably, you know, I don't know, read a book on positivity or something. It's a great point because we have, we're in an age right now where the greatest resource of all is, you know, a couple keystrokes away from getting information

on the internet. Yeah. And there is good information on the internet about a lot of things and a lot of things even in this world, in this realm. The problem is there's also a ton of things that are not good. There's good, not, there's players in this, in this arena that are not good players. There's a lot of money in, in, in, in this, in the field of, of rehabilitation and treatment and treatment centers. And it's hard to navigate through what is the right fit, what is the right provider, clinically, ethically, morally. And, you know, I think that when we do something really meaningful in our life, it's best done with getting the guidance of somebody who's done it before, who's experienced. Yeah. You know, when it comes time to do taxes, we go to a professional accountant.

When it's time for any kind of legal issue, we'll take counsel with a lawyer. Somebody comes up with a medical diagnosis that that is you know pretty scary they want to go talk to somebody who is acclaimed in this arena this is no different there you go note to self quit talking about my mental health issues with my auto mechanic all right that's uh just had to make that note there. So he knows which ratchet to use to bang me upside the head, but that hasn't been working very well. And it's very painful, too. But we were going to try the shock treatment with the batteries. But I think I'll call a professional, like you say.

The one thing I noticed on your guys' website. We do the comedy here. Uh, one thing I noticed your website is, uh, the seniors, a portion of services in aging. Talk to us about what you guys offer there. You know, the, the type of service, uh, advocacy and coordination of care is the, is the same. You know, we work with seniors that come up with complex medical issues. Many cases as a, you know, there is substance use that is involved. Sometimes there's mental health challenges. Sometimes there's all of it. But being able to assess, come up with a plan, work with the family to help navigate through challenging times with, you know,

either somebody in the natural aging process or something that happens with an event that becomes some type of, you know, acute episode or crisis. There you go. I know my sister's in a care center with MS, and she's pretty much declining rapidly, and she's got dementia and other issues. And I know a lot of our senior, you know, we have the largest baby boomer group of folks that are going into retirement

and, you know, they're going to be suffering from all sorts of stuff. And I think I read somewhere that more people are starting to care personally for their loved ones as they age, as opposed to just throwing them into a home, which I think is better, but it can be overwhelming, especially if you're a caregiver. It can be very draining

and hard to be a caregiver as well. Yeah. You know, providing care and having it be dignified for a loved one is really super, super meaningful and important. And the other thing is being able to collapse, being a child, you know, an adult child of an aging parent and being a son or a daughter versus being a caregiver is something that often becomes, you know, the breeding ground for burnout for a family member. And we find ourselves in many cases getting calls from burned out family members that are, you know, providing direct, the only ones providing direct care for their, for their parents. There you go. And it can burn you out. It's,. You almost need counseling and preparation and time out. I see my mom going through that with my sister.

And a lot of these care centers need a lot of help, especially now they're struggling to staff up. And so there's that. As we round out, correct me if I'm wrong but i know one one problem with people who have issues addictions traumas things of that nature is sometimes they feel incredibly alone and and reaching out to professionals like you guys asking for help meeting other people that have have like yourself that have had addiction and and overcome. It could be a guiding hand. I think that's really important is to realize you're not alone and not feel isolated, but you have to reach out. Do I have that right?

You do. And from a professional standpoint, some of the things that we hear about all the time is a client or a family member would say, listen, I wish I would have known about you sooner. I've tried so many things before and nothing has ever worked. And being able to reach out to a company

that has the experience, has that relational feel to it and can help us navigate through has made just a huge difference. In many cases, even before we decide, you know, somebody decides that they want to use our services by connecting and talking about what's going on, they start to feel relief already. Yeah. And, you know, in short, connection is what helps people thrive. And disconnection is what helps dysfunction, addiction continue to grow.

And maybe some people, this is probably something we should bring up for people, is maybe sometimes they feel, you know, if they're a mother of a child who's addicted or a father, they feel some shame. They don't want people to know. It's harder to reach out for help and say, hey, I need help with my son or daughter. But you're really managing a tiger that you're not trained to deal with. And it really becomes time to call in the professionals, I think. Yeah. The whole stigma and shame piece is really challenging is what we know about mental health diagnosis, conditions,

and addiction is that it's not a moral failing. It's not a weakness. It needs professional help and it needs to be talked about. And, you know, I can say for myself that it is so important to be able to share a journey of, I mean, I'm somebody that was impacted significantly by substance use. I hurt my family. I caused all kinds of issues. I hurt myself. And it wasn't until it was brought to light until i opened up and was you know really kind of put in a corner i i didn't come willingly but being able to share disclose be vulnerable recognize that there's a need for help is actually powerful definitely, I, I, I'm sure you feel a whole lot more healthier.

Your life's more fulfilling. You, your, your, your, your body probably thinks you as well. I've kind of learned at 55, my body's kind of like, yeah, well, I guess we'll keep you around for a while now. And so that's really important. What do you think separates your consulting service in, in, in, in business from other people in the same sort of fear? What are some tips or high points that you? You know, the most obvious is that we have both a medical staff and a behavioral health staff. And we're able to bring in medical consultation in really heavy behavioral health cases when there are medical issues. And also when we're dealing with complex medical, we can bring in a behavioral health staff.

So really being able to look at it through the perspective and the lens of medical and behavioral health is something that sets us apart. And we're also the only behavioral health case management company in the country that is joint commission accredited. What does that mean? So joint commission is an organization that sets standards of best practices and is in the space for hospitals and rehab centers and other providers of medical and behavioral health services. There you go. It's a gold seal. Now, give us your locations, and then are there only certain areas that you cover,

or do you cover across the United States? No, great question. Physically, we have our office in Michigan in West Bloomfield, which is right outside of Detroit, and we also have an office in Delray Beach, Florida, in Palm Beach County. So we have staff in both of those places. And we also have staff in other parts of the country. We do a tremendous amount of work remotely. We did that virtually before the pandemic. And as virtual became something that was more available, accessible, and doable for people that even increased. So we work nationally and also we have resources and clients internationally. There you go. There you go. So give us your final thoughts,

final roundup on what you guys do, how you do it, and pitch to anybody out there who needs to get in touch with you. Yeah, so, you know, the place that our phone rings the most is when people are in some level of crisis. They've tried a whole bunch of things

that hasn't worked before. There's some willingness with somebody in the family in some level of crisis. They've tried a whole bunch of things that haven't, hasn't worked before. There's some willingness with somebody in the family that wants something to be different. And, and it could be a complex medical condition. It could be a mental health situation. It could be addiction. It could be a combination of all of those. The first step is to reach out. Better to do it sooner than later. You know, for us, it's really important and we're a mission-driven company that wants to help people. If we're not able to help, we also want to be able to provide a value to point people in the right direction of the kind of resources that they may be able to contact directly. There you go.

Well, Steve, it's been wonderful and insightful to have you on the show. Thank you very much for coming on. It's been my pleasure to be here, and thank you very much for having me. Thank you. And give us your dot coms, where we want people to find you on the interwebs, please. So www.feinbergcare.com and our telephone number is 877-538-5425 There you go.

And there'll be a link on the Chris Foss Show blog as well. So thank you very much, Steve. Thanks to our audience for tuning in. We really appreciate you. One thing I would mention, don't wait until you get to the crisis point if you can. Try and get help early on when you see there's a problem

because the bad times are usually going to come, and the sooner you can try and get help, the better. That's my recommendation, and I'm not a professional. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time. And that should have...