The Zac Clark Show - Provider Spotlight: Andrew Roberts – From Crack Addiction in 1980s NYC to CEO of a Top Treatment Center

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

What are the odds of getting a random LinkedIn message that leads you back to the very place where you rebuilt your life? For Andrew Roberts, CEO of High Watch Recovery Center, that’s exactly what happened.High Watch Recovery Center, founded in 1939, is one of the longest-standing nonprofit addiction treatment centers in the U.S., rooted in 12-step recovery and dedicated to helping people heal through spiritual, clinical, and holistic approaches.In this powerful conversation, Andrew takes us through his decades-long sobriety journey—from getting sober at 20, drinking again after 14 years over a single drink, and ultimately finding his way back to leadership, purpose, and service. In this episode, Andrew shares: Losing his father at a young age—the trauma that set him on a path to substance abuse. Surviving the underbelly of 1980s New York, lost in addiction to crack and heroin. From Columbia University to rock bottom—how he went from the Ivy Leagues to long-term treatment. The deep link between trauma and addiction, and how early loss shaped his struggle. A powerful story of redemption involving a marriage, a divorce, and a rehab. His take on harm reduction, 12-step recovery, and the evolving landscape of addiction treatment. This episode is about grace, resilience, and the power of recovery. Whether you’re in the trenches, working in the field, or just want to hear a wild story of redemption and second chances, please give this conversation a listen. For more information about Highwatch Recovery, please visit here: https://highwatchrecovery.org/Connect with Zachttps://www.instagram.com/zwclark/https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-c-746b96254/https://www.tiktok.com/@zacwclarkhttps://www.strava.com/athletes/55697553https://twitter.com/zacwclarkIf you or anyone you know is struggling, please do not hesitate to contact Release:[phone]releaserecovery.com@releaserecovery

All right. Welcome back to the Zach Clark Show. I am excited today to welcome Andrew Roberts to the show. Andrew is the CEO of High Watch Recovery Centers, which is one of the longest-standing nonprofit treatment programs in the country. 1939. If you're an AA 12-step nerd like me, we're going to get into some of that stuff. And we're here putting on a behavioral health care conference in Las Vegas. Andrew, what's up, dude? How you doing? Doing great. Thanks for having me. Enjoy the show. okay okay so you've listened maybe once I've heard Sean's okay good we love Sean McGowan in the house what up Sean and I'm here with my my co-host Jay DeVore and we're

gonna working this in yeah we're gonna we're gonna dig right in so the story that I'm thinking about because I think it's a good place to start is how you got this job I mean that alone was a spiritual experience right I mean so can you share there it's a crazy godshot and one that almost can't be believed that it's true so i'm a high watch alum i started my you know sobriety journey in 1987 and stayed sober for 14 years had a lot of success you know had a great program and everything but like a lot of people uh changed cities and didn't work that hard to rebuild it's really hard when you move to a new city you're kind of starting over And eventually in 2001, we can talk a little bit about this later,

had a relapse, but I ended up at Highwatch in 2001. Which is in Connecticut for those listening at home. Yeah, even a crazy story of how I ended up there. I went to another place, and they didn't even know I was there for four days, and I went to see my case manager for the first time, and he pulled out this pamphlet, and it's a historical High Watch pamphlet, and we talked a little bit about it and thought that it would be a good place because it's kind of got a spiritual foundation,

and that's what I was really looking for to get back on the beam. So ended up there in 2001, stayed up there for seven months, ran the dish machine, worked in the kitchen, like all in at Highwatch, was going through some family stuff at the time, so ended up settling in Connecticut for a bunch of years, and came up to volunteer at the High Watch picnic, and came up on Saturday nights for the big meeting and the dinner. And eventually my career took me out of Connecticut to Columbus, Ohio, in 2012. And I stayed connected for a little while, but kids got too high watch. Too high watch. But, you know, raising a family, getting busy, living in Ohio, just sort of lost touch. Can I ask one question there? Of course.

Yeah. So it sounded me like a geographic kind of got you. What did you do differently when you moved to Columbus this time? Oh, I got right. And like I'll never make that mistake again. Like every time I moved to a new city, I pretend I'm one day sober, do 90 and 90. like everything like get connected right away i i you know i'm a person i don't mind making mistakes but i don't like repeating the same mistakes twice right so and so you're obviously very

comfortable talking about your your spiritual journey and your recovery even in this platform is that because you work for high watch which is such a spiritual place or is that because you're just damn proud of your recovery or a combination of both i think before you go there though when you say spiritual place though like what what what do you mean like when you use that word like when you talking about like the feeling there or your own spiritual journey just for what does that mean to you when you there's high watch is on carter road and it's a very steep one mile hill and when you come up carter road and go on to the campus of what used to be called high watch farm and is now called high watch recovery every single person that i've ever meant because of the surrounding

beauty the way the rolling mountains are the the way the campus is situated the immediate seeing of the original chapel that's there, every single person I've ever met has some sort of physical response to being someplace special in a spiritual sort of realm. And when you think about the fact that, you know, Marty Mann, the first woman who ever get sober in AA and Bill and Lois Wilson were up there, I mean, for a lot of people, the expectation of going to a mecca-like place in the recovery community sort of precedes that. And so when you get there and then you feel that, it'll make the, you know, the hair stand up on your arms. And that's what happened to me in January.

So I'm in Ohio and working as a consultant to non-profit. And I get a cold. So this is now we're in January of 2024. January, 2024. So you left in 2012. You moved for another opportunity. Yep. You're now for 10, 12 years, kind of disconnected from high watch, not really top of.

mind, which brings you to January of 24. This story is amazing. So I, in my basement office in Dublin, Ohio, shout out to the Memorial Tournament, and I get a cold LinkedIn email from somebody that I never met before and don't have any relationship with. I do not, I probably should now, but I don't on my LinkedIn say I'm an alum of High Watch Recovery Center. I don't talk about on my LinkedIn that, you know, I have an experience in recovery. And I get this email on their board, like you're not on their radar. This is completely random. This is crazy. Okay. And so I get this email and the email is very, it's kind of secretive, doesn't name. He says, I'm recruiting for a leader of a place that is on the East Coast and essentially in the healthcare

business. And, you know, I'll get into this a little bit. My wife and I have been married. We divorced. And then we remarried. And so very deep and longstanding relationship. I actually got divorced at Highwatch. I could tell that story. Just hold on. Oh, wow. So I say to her, I say, I heard from this recruiter today about this opportunity on the East Coast. And without missing a beat, she says, wouldn't it be funny if it was Highwatch? And we have. And we have a nice laugh. Oh, yeah, like, what are the odds of that? I get on the phone with the recruiter four days later, and he starts to describe the institution that he's recruiting for, and he says, it's in the northwest corner of Connecticut. It has a long history of AA. I said, are you talking

about High Watch Farm? He said, you know what High Watch Farm is. And, like, just both of us knew in that moment that this was a Godshot meant to be, like, he probably stopped recruiting. in that moment for the position. And then, you know, two and a half months later, after a very long and sort of serious process, here I am. It's just, it's unbelievable. And I will tell you, and you can talk to Russ Davis, who was the longtime chef at High Watch

when I was there working for him in the kitchen, you know, a Harvard MBA running the dish machine for seven months to try to get back on the beam of recovery. I used to say to him, I would really love to come back here and work one day. I would love to be here someday. And so the fact that this actually happened is, you know, I don't believe in coincidences.

Like, this is something bigger than that. Yeah, and it's a thing. It's a type of thing that I think that only people in recovery can understand. Like, everything you just said makes total sense to me. I mean, it's incredible. But those are the stories that I've heard time and time again just from getting sober. And, like, the thing that sticks out to me the most is Harvard MBA. running the dishwasher machine, the humility and acceptance that's required in the recovery process

keeps, with a lack of humility, I should say, keeps a lot of people drunk, keeps a lot of people high. You know, there's a great saying in the program, you know, we've never met anybody too dumb to get sober, but we've met plenty of people too smart. And so I just, you know, at that time in my life, you know, our belief at Highwatch and my personal belief is that the longer we can keep somebody engaged in the recovery process, the better chance they have at experiencing a successful recovery. And part of that is like the brain science of it, where it takes the brain a long time to heal. And so just the more distance and the more safety you can live in. And so it made perfect sense to me at the time to stay at Highwatch as long as possible, having experienced, you know, sobriety before to get back

on that beam. And I do think one of the things that I don't think a lot of people talk about enough but I think it's important is how hard it is when you've had a long period of sobriety and you do have a relapse of use or something like that how hard it is to get that magic feeling back and it's you know because you you feel shame about having failed and you have to get through that and work through that and start over in order to to get it back. Has that changed the idea that like long-term continuous? you know, immersion into a program is preferable. Because, you know, we've talked about this, you know, the 90-day rehab, you know, flip it,

you're good to go, go back out there. Do you think that that is, is that a newer idea or that has always been within the field, you know, to really change, you need to change everything consistently? When I first came into recovery, I was 20 years old, I used to tell people I never took illegal drink. And I went through a 19-month therapeutic community called Project Turnabout that was in Hingham, Massachusetts. I went there with the right to send and receive mail. It was a long program that had in-house aspects to it. You became a strength member, voting member of the community, and then there was part-time work where you went out and came back into the house. Then you worked

full-time and still lived at the house. Then you went through transition group and came back and still participated in the house and you know that that was really the foundational sort of work that I did and it's really interesting because we didn't have the language back then to talk about like trauma informed or anything else like that but these folks had intuited their way to a treatment process which involved sort of getting in touch with whatever deep-seated hurts or or experiences or traumas that that you'd had previously and they understood that the addiction piece of it was probably top level and that until you did the real sort of work for whatever it was

you were trying to numb that worked at the beginning and then stopped working as the disease progressed. If you didn't do that work, then you were probably going to be challenged to maintain. Which is interesting because you read about in the newspapers today, a lot of these TCs, a lot of these therapeutic communities have been shut down because they were abusive and they weren't, you know, doing good work. This was evolved.

The TCs from the 70s that had people wearing signs and, you know, dunce caps in the corner, this was not that. This was more based upon. I mean, quite honestly, it had to do with learning how to become vulnerable, learning how, you know, when I was a 20-year-old young man, I couldn't tell you happy, glad, mad, sad. 19 months later, I could describe my feelings with a thousand words, you know, because I was so fine in being able to really get in touch with what was going. So when you showed up there, and this is a personal question and personal questions on the show you can or cannot answer, that's your choice, but were you, was there specific trauma from your childhood that you were looking to address, or was the drugs and alcohol just kind of took over?

You know, I think for most people, it's all relative. So what was the thing for me might not be a big deal to somebody else? And what I would consider to be, you know, something truly horrible, like I would drink true if. if that happened to me. And so it's very personal and it's very individualized. For me, my dad died when I was 14 years old. I came from a divorced home. My mom had some mental illness.

And I remember thinking as a 14-year-old kid at my dad's funeral, now I'm alone in this world. Like who is going to take care of me? How do I make my way in this? And I started to use as a way to sort of numb those feelings. scared and vulnerable did I feel. And I also, I describe it like this a lot to people. You know, I was really close with my dad, and I felt a lot of abandonment when he left. And I remember consciously thinking to myself, I'm never going to let anybody get that close to me again, because if this

is what happens, it's not worth it. And I think one of the things, you know, I use this metaphor a lot when I talk about it, but, you know, when you build those walls to keep people out, what you're building is a prison to keep yourself in. You don't realize it at the time. It's a self-protection kind of behavior. But at the end of the day, those walls were such that I was trapped within them, and the deeper and deeper I got into my addiction, the lonelier and more isolated and just painful that life. So who, did your mom ever get help? who raised you? So I was sort of a, I went away to school in eighth grade. I spent a lot of time. Like I always laughed because I've just lived in so many different places, so many dorm settings

and sober houses and treatment programs. The most comfortable thing for me to do is to show up with a garbage bag someplace and, you know, settle in for a few months. It was a boarding school? You went to a way. Yeah. Yeah. I went to a place called Brook School in in North Endover, Massachusetts, in a place called Faye School before that in eighth grade. But I just sort of, and I loved those experiences, and I would, you know, recommend them. It wasn't their fault or anything. I mean, I think back in the 80s you had more access to more alcohol, more drugs, more of those types of things in those environments, which probably sped up, you know, the progression

of the disease for me. But, you know, I've been on my own since I was, you know, pretty much. So like financially on my own since I was 16, 17 years old. You're an only child? My sister and I. So where was she? She was in college and often in her thing. Yeah, she's a few years older than myself.

So you get sober at 20. You spend 19 months in this TC. You come out of, when do you go to Harvard? So I went to Columbia University. So both of my bottoms happened in Manhattan. And so I'm never living there again. Amen. That's so great because I didn't, I've never taken a drink in Manhattan.

I've lived there for 13. I took one drink, and I always say this. It was at a fucking Simon and Garfunkel concert where me and my boys, like, from college were, I don't know, probably tripping face and, like, got hooked on Simon and Garfunkel. So we went up to the concert, and I partied there one night, but that's the only drink I've ever had. So I got recruited to play soccer at Columbia.

The year before I went there, they finished number two in the country, lost to Indiana, won to nothing in the national championship game, a double overtime. Wow. Showed up on campus that August, quickly realized I was the worst recruit. and worst player on the field. That didn't make me feel great about myself. It was the 80s.

I was on the Upper West Side, New York, 1,4th, 105, 106, Columbus, Amsterdam, crack era. Like, it was just on. And I was off to the races. Bombed out of there, took a year off. You spoke crack. Did you get... Oh, yeah.

I was... So is it 20 years? I mean, like, you show up in Columbus. I mean, it's crazy. So... I was speedballing. I mean, there was nothing. Speedballing for those listening at home is mixing heroin.

in cocaine. Sometimes we've got to dumb this stuff down because I'll get DMs and people will be like, what's a speedball? You don't need to know. Yeah. I mean, you know, sharing needles in the 1980s in New York at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. Like, I'm literally a miracle. Do you, I mean, like, do you,

I'm sitting across a man who I've only known as sober, but there's got to be people in your life that, that see you today and knew you then that are just... Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I remember my uncle who sort of took a role as a male role model in my life who's from my dad's side of the

family he had three boys so having a fourth boy around you know it wasn't that big a deal for them but i remember in the in the car with him on the way to mclean hospital when i first uh i went missing in new york for four months they hired a private investigator it took a while to find me where were you 135 pounds i was banging around the upper west side it was hanging around in places uh one of my places I remember was called the Wax Museum because no one had there hadn't been power in this place for a long time so there was nothing but trash and melted candles and so everything was sort of well up and around like like I'm talking like some really dark places in Manhattan but I was living that life and uh they found me on the street they asked me if I want to come home

for treatment that's the first time when I was 20 years old and uh I said yes and on you know in a typical you know, alcoholic sort of self-pitying kind of way on the way to the treatment center, trying to use self-deprecating humor or what have you. You know, I said to my uncle, in the throwaway line in the century, I said, you know, I'm really sorry that I turned out to be the black sheep of this family. And with no training whatsoever, he said one of the most insightful things that I was only about to find out was true because of the disease concept of addiction. But he said, Andrew, you're not a black sheep, you're a sick sheep.

and like, like, mind-blowing. Like, and then I got to treatment and read the doctor's opinion and understood the brain science and saw the MRIs of the addicted brain and how little light there wasn't there for the executive function and all that kind of stuff. And for me, that was a real hail, like to find out that I wasn't a bad person and that there was a scientific reason for the compulsion and obsession that I had to keep using was like a gift from from god to me because that gave me a way out how did they

no suboxone no savoxone so how are you like kicking dope in the 1980s what did that what it was painful sweating it was hard it was uh you know but when they do you remember when you were found do you remember like you're off for four months just living in the underbelly of new York, do you remember what that, like, because you, then you went. You said, oh, you, that I was tired. I was out of money. You know, I was doing shameful things in order to get high every day, you know, whether that was stealing or, you know, going back on the campus or, you know, whatever it took to get high. I mean, I was in places, you know, I'm not proud of this, but I was in basements where people were playing Russian roulette for money and losing. Like, I

I saw some really traumatic, crazy stuff during those four months. And I remember, you know, I remember standing in a six-story, on the roof of a six-story building and kind of looking over the edge and wondering whether, you know, like I knew at some point in me, like I knew there was a different way to be leading my life, but I just didn't understand how I was going to get there. Because I, you know, I'd go on these three and four. day runs and at the end of them you know I would swear to myself with every fiber of my being that

tomorrow was going to be different and I was I just I really I was raised with good values like your core values are in you and I just I had with every ounce of my being I really wanted the next day to be different and then I would wake up and the physical requirement to to be you know to get straight would be there and that you know the part of my brain that said do something different you know wasn't functioning and I'd just be off to to the races again just a cycle of despair that would lead you to think about whether you know the world would be a better place if you weren't in it anymore and I certainly had that ideation and those thoughts and I'm so grateful that I was able to live through those days until my family came to get me yeah I mean we were lucky we were

lucky. I mean, I just missed kind of the fentanyl. I mean, I'm 13 and a half years. Your journey started in 87. There was certain periods of drug use where suicidal ideation or thinking about wanting to be here or not didn't really matter because if you were putting something in your arm, that's Russian roulette right there. Yeah. You're either going to get high or die. Yeah, it's, um, I'm, there's a lot of substances that I've never used as this, uh, sort of cycle of use has gone forward, and I'm grateful for that because it doesn't matter which chemical it was. I mean, I was a garbage hit. I would try anything. Like, I just wanted to get out of being me. I was just in, it felt so little. Have you written a book? Have you

thought about a book? I've thought about it, but never actually taken action to do it. I always describe that it would be kind of like a mix between bright light's big city and uh you know some sort of j d salinger type uh effort or or something like that sounds good to me yeah part of that's ego though because i always think like yeah my story sounds like super interesting to me but i'm always kind of humble about like i'm not sure we've interviewed a bunch of people your story's pretty interesting i mean the rossom roulette the i mean the visions that i have from you tell and maybe you're just a good storyteller i'll give you that but it's it's fascinating as I sit here because how long you sober now 15 23 and a half

17 17 40 I'm 13 so there's like 53 years sitting around this table and like I remember day one man for sure and that's what high watch is to a lot of people is day one yeah there's a couple things you know I I worry about people that don't work programs who work in treatment centers and I'm not that like I have a program I have a sponsor I have a home group I work the steps like I do all that stuff just because I keep it green and get to see people trudging up the hill every day that's not going to keep me sober it's a healthy reminder you know what I mean and the stories are all individualized and different but the same in in some ways but for me what what I know to be true is that you have to do the work every day.

And, you know, I gave up, like I told you, I went through a 19-month, you know. That was 12-set-based or no? Yeah, it was 12-step-based and very, you know, focused on, you know, having a recovery network and everything else like that. But I gave up 14 years of sobriety on a champagne spritzer on a flight. I was, after not going to meetings for about a year and a half and living, you know, in a different place and losing touch with all my friends. friends in recovery and just thinking, oh, I got it now. And having some success, we had just

taken a company public. And, you know, I had a few bucks in my pocket and thought maybe that had all been a big mistake. I was 35 and that all happened when I was 20. And this is how I gave up 14 years of sobriety. And this is what will happen if you don't actively, you know, take steps every day to invest in yourself and your recovery. I was flying a lot. So I was on a united flight. 757s that had the galley behind first class. I was in the last row of first class, and I heard a flight attendant say to another flight attendant. Back then, when you got on the plane, if you were up front, they would give you a choice of a glass of orange juice, water, or a champagne spritzer. And I heard one of the flight attendants say to one of the other flight attendants. This is after

14 years, right, after 19 months into TC, you got through with the right to send and receive mail. She said, it's a shame we're going to have to throw out these champagne spritzers. And I turned around and looked in the galley and said, I'll have one. And after 14 years, I sat in a seat and had a champagne spritzer. And I don't know what I thought was going to happen. Like the AA police were going to come out of the overhead baggage plant or something. And nothing happened. And I had the champagne spritzer.

And the message to this alcoholic was, oh, I can do this again. And, you know, within six months, that's when I was coming up the hill to Iowa. So it took you from that, that's what it took about. So when I, yeah, I mean, that was about right. It was eight months for me. And it happened like that. Like I went and bought one of those, you know, dirty $3 bottles of vodka.

Yeah. With that strange, the strange mental blank spot. Wife was at work. All right, we're on. Yeah. You know, and like it ended. Yeah. It always ends the way.

The same way. One of my other favorite things from the program is it's not the caboose that I'll kill you. Like everything is about building up the day. defense against the first drink and if you don't take the first drink and you know if you can take the first step every day admit you're you know powerless and the unmanageability and you can prevent yourself from kicking off that peculiar mental twist or getting struck drunk like the guy in the big book that goes to the bar to get the glass of milk like it's all about not getting yourself in that situation but do you but do you think in hindsight you were building the case for

yourself to be sitting in that seat with the with the spritzer being like I'm here or did that really catch you off guard it was just a sunny day and you heard the right thing at the right moment with no defense and you're like yeah I'll have one I'm a pretty impressionable guy like if I'm not going to a meeting and hearing messages about recovery and being taught lessons about the disease of alcoholism or addiction you know left to my own device you know You know, sort of an addict alone with his thoughts is in a bad neighborhood. And so my best thinking, you know, that's kind of trite and people say it all the time. But without the positive messaging of recovering that comes from, you know, working the steps and having a sponsor and going to meetings and everything,

then my natural state will be to pick up. And I learned that lesson. And this is, and you had had, you would say in your first, you know, that first stint, you would have a, deep and effective spiritual experience. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. So it didn't matter.

Nope. You can't stay sober today on yesterday's... Yeah. So I can take this a lot of different ways, and my mind is bending a little bit just with some of the stuff. I'm going to let you close at the end with the marrying the same grill twice story, because I think that's like the recovery story that will end on. I'm hearing a lot here.

So what I'm seeing here is you held leadership roles in nonprofits, healthcare, consulting, assuming that in those roles, you had an open mind. It sounds like you are someone that wants to make the world a better place. I also hear you talking a lot about 12-step recovery and what it's done for you and what it's done for all the people that have come through the doors at Highwatch. As a leader in the space and as someone who has not just worked in the substance abuse and mental health, or behavioral health care field, I'm curious about, so we've had a lot of smart people on this show.

And there is certainly some misalignment amongst professionals in terms of what works, what doesn't work in recovery. And I'm just curious how you feel about that. Like does 12 step, because it was your personal, experience and you've seen it work for so many other people work is it the only game in town for you have you seen other things work for other people you know for me I know my personal experience and I know what I've seen in the world and I get very angry when you know the harm reduction crew fights with the 12-step crew fights with the medication assisted treatment crew

is there a place in the world for all those communities like what what is your overall stance on, I mean, obviously, High Watch is very rooted in 12-step recovery. Yeah, I mean, I think I try to guard against confirmation bias and similarity bias, and so I enter into it trying to be self-aware that, you know, my personal experience is not the be-all and the end-all in the only point of view. I view that there's a continuum. I would consider myself to be a harm reductionist for sure, 100%. And, you know, even that old saying, you know, address your addictions in the order that they're killing you.

You know, so let's stop doing heroin before we take on the smoking issue, you know. And so let's just start and try to move along a continuum. what gets me a little nervous. And, you know, the 12 steps, I mean, let's just call them what they are. They're a set of Judeo-Christian values that I think a lot of people can relate to. Admit when you're wrong. Say you're sorry. Help another person.

Be honest. Own your, you like it. And so that's pretty accessible for most people that have grown up in any kind of sort of, setting, they're a good set of values. I get a little nervous when, you know, and it's always sort of taking the easy way out. Recovery is hard. It's hard work. It takes a long time. And I think the way we're training new doctors with their use of MAT and the way that we're sort of trying to skip some of the steps, rob some people. of the opportunity for a 12-step spiritual base,

absence-based solution to the problem. I've seen the data, you know what I mean? There's no more dangerous, there's no person I'm more worried about than an opiate user that's leaving Highwatch after 30 days of abstinence that doesn't have another tool in their toolkit to help them through.

Like those are the people that overdose and die. And we have a duty and a responsibility to give them the options on that continuum to help try to keep them a safe. Because I believe, you know, you're no good to us dead. And so let's keep people alive. But I think people then skip a bunch of steps and think, well, that's the answer for everyone. And so if you show me a 72-year-old lifelong opiate user, you know, who maybe Suboxone is the right answer for them for the rest of their lives. and that is harm reduction personified, you know what I mean? But then I see a 22-year-old kid that comes into treatment

who has an opportunity for the 12-step spiritual-based and can be titrated off, you know, on and off medicine over a period of time. I think what's happening today is we're being lazy and taking the easy way out and not pressing that person to perhaps head on a different path of recovery. but as an intellectual exercise there's a big continuum and it doesn't have to be my way everybody's different people need to do what is the best for them i just have a question though like how do you what is the impact of that on like the present culture of addiction or you know you have a lot of young people out there they're smoking weed or have access to pills is it rare to see

see the 20, 22-year-old who could, is on paper unquestionably an alcoholic. You know, there are a lot of other things that sort of compromise, like a clear diagnosis for that. And does that make then it harder to then say, well, this is the program for someone like you because you clearly have a problem. You're not someone who's, you know, being pulled out of the underbelly of New York City at 20, you know, shooting everything into their body, snorting everything. this is how we want to help you.

Is it harder to do that now today with the makeup of, you know, how people are using and abusing these substances? I think it is. I think it's more complicated. I think the treatment regimens and the interventions that we have are more complex. I think the comorbidity of mental health and substance use disorder and a host of other potential diagnoses do. complicated. Fundamentally, you know, I still believe a person has to have the willingness

to want to do the work. Sorry, people hate irregardous, regardless of... Irregardless is a word. I look that up. It is, because I've run into that. It is a word just as regardless. So, you know, let's go for it. I've always felt that way, but I've got enough sort of guff over the years that I just, you know, I'll do with the people. Surrender. So I do think it's more complex. And I do think there are more opinions from across the realm of the treatment world that do sometimes confuse, you know, what could be a more straightforward situation? I mean, the marijuana thing today, with the strains and the psychosis, especially in young

males, I mean, that is not the weed that I was smoking in the 80s, and I've seen it in my own family um you know i i i think uh that that is a huge that and gambling are are two of the really big areas that are are going to consume our insurance companies working with you on the weed stuff i mean that's yes right yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah they are and and as our i'm looking at sean when i ask us because sean's always the first call when we have someone to admit the high watch and he's over there in the corner love that guy um is there ruleouts now like the marijuana induced psychosis is there a certain type of patient that high watch can't treat because they've smoked themselves for lack of you know to put in layman's terms like smoke themselves into

psychosis i i think the psychological testing and i'll leave that to the medical experts because I'm not an expert at that, but I do think it is an underappreciated aspect of dealing with our certain potential guests that come into our care. And I don't think we truly understand because it ties into all sorts of other mental illnesses that might be latent there anyways, that it somehow then just exacerbates. I had a, I had a, friend, we both know her, but it was sober in alcoholics and ominous for 15 years, like on fire, you know, just helping people nonstop, drifted away, and solely with Shirley started smoking weed. It escalated, and she ended up going into like a 10-month

marijuana-induced psychosis. And had the means to go to treatment, couldn't get better. you know finally she started to recover her brain started to come back like she was out of her mind and at the end of the day it was it was induced by marijuana and i don't think the people that were helping her ever really could not i think they knew that but just couldn't really give it the weight that it deserved that this was started by you just smoking weed for whatever reason the way it reacts to your your chemical makeup and you've gotten a lot of shit in the past too about talking about you know marijuana-induced psychosis what do you that's bullshit like and and and i just don't think this is an issue that people really take seriously in the public know in the public kind of in the public sort

of uh discussion when i was first sober in the late 80s and early 90s there were you know people talked about california sober yeah was a euphemism still smoking weed yeah and like California Sober in 1995 is not California Sober in 2025. Like those are not the same things and it's dangerous to compare them. I mean, dude, when I would go buy a bag of weed, so when I was 18 years old, a senior in high school, we would get on the train in my hometown, we would take it into Philly or Camden, we would walk up to a street corner and they'd hang, hand us a dime bag. Right. Seeds.

Yeah. Full seeds. Seeds, stems, you had to pick it out, you'd break it up. Who the hell knows? Would it spray with Raid or what? We'd roll it up into a joint, smoke it, take the bong hit. And there'd be a feeling of getting high. The way that I see people behave, like I never felt like that. I see people stone today.

And like, whatever you're doing wasn't around when I was smoking weed. And also I just want to say, like, people smoking weed, like, you know, if you can do it safely and it's not an impact in your life, that's fine. But for someone, this is a question, too, for someone who is in. a marijuana-induced psychosis. Like, what does that look like? Again, I'm not a medical expert. I can talk in terms of the behaviors. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paranoia. There's a lot of fantastical thinking. There's a lot of other types of behaviors that would lead one to believe that there's a serious psychiatric disorder happening that is, is probably more important to treat initially than the substance use disorder. And so when I was first coming around, like, A.A. people would tell you, you know, don't go on the medicines, like, you know, and we've completely changed our field and profession in that where you can treat mental illness and substance use disorder at the same time in ways that

are effective. You know, it always made intuitive sense to me that a drug, free baseline from which to then sort of learn as to what was going on. But again, I'm not a physician. I'm not trained as a physician. I'm a nonprofit leader. You know, I'm good at governance. I'm good at fundraising. I'm good at running organizations. I'm good at leadership development. I'm good at different types of things. And I will not stick my toe in the water for medical expertise where I haven't been trained. Nice. Well, let's go there because we have about 10, 15 minutes left and I want to talk about you know the role of of leadership in in this field in behavioral health care which we are both so blessed to call ourselves I know for me you know I'm

a I'm a founder and owner and CEO but I still live with this and my father is a very successful business person you know so I have a vision of what a CEO is supposed to look like how a CEO is supposed to act, what a CEO is supposed to wear. And I don't know that that necessarily translates in this field all the time because I think that our employees, our guests, or patients, you guys call them guests, clients, you know, want to feel seen and want to feel heard and don't want to feel like there's some, you know, elitist or someone above them, you know, steering the ship. And I pay a lot of attention to all that stuff.

You know, like I beat a, I drive a beat-up Jeep Cherokee because that's what I want, you know, these folks to see me drive in when I pull into the driveway. Like that, and that's like by design. And then there's this whole idea of like the language that we use. And so, Andrew, I'm just curious for you, you know, your thoughts on being a CEO in this field that also has such a personal connection to your life and, and obviously recovery has turned you into the man that you are today. you know some of the challenges that we're being faced with we're at a conference here there's going to be a lot of talk around like you said like marketers marketing to marketers and this whole culture because it is it's it's a field it's a it's a business per se um so i just want to dig into some of that stuff with you and you can take it wherever you want but i know we've had some

conversations offline about some of these things and and for me it's important to have these conversations online? Yeah, so there's a lot to discuss. You know, I think in general, you know, I remember when I was at HBS in 1996, they brought Jack Welchin as the symbol of what a successful CEO was. And, you know, this was a person that unlocked shareholder value and felt like the bottom 10% should be called every year and everything. And as time has gone on, I think what organizational development experts and leaders have learned is that that type of command and control, top-down sort of leadership, ultimately can work for a while and can drive performance, but it will not drive innovation. It will not drive sustainable. It will not work

for a long time for the long haul. And so I see, you know, a much more focus and I'm intentional myself about trying to lead this way of, you know, being a person who sees their role as unlocking the potential of others around them. And I don't see this role as one of somebody on high looking down on others. I see myself in service to those who have entrusted me to lead them. And I think you earned that trust. And I say, hey, listen, I'm a year in you know and so it takes a it takes a wild to build trust but my my goals are through my own humble integrity filled service-oriented behavior to earn the trust of those that I'm leading in order to you know lead a successful organization because I believe that that's

where innovation comes from that's where belief comes from and that's where you're You know, if people that work alongside me believe that I wake up every day invested in their success, and I see my role as to break down the barriers and get them the resources they need so they can be the best version of themselves, I believe I'll run through a wall for that type of leader and really sort of give my all and my whole being. And I think working in the field or profession that we work in, what's great about it is that we can bring our whole selves, honestly. with great, you know, genuineness to this. But I think one of the things I see in our field is a blurring of the lines. And so we still have to conduct ourselves in a professional way.

We still have to have boundaries. You know, there's a lot of, you know, in general, you know, people that are the best at the world at what they do have large egos. Let's just call it what it is. Like in order to even think that you might be a CEO. or the best at this or the best at that, you have to feel pretty good about yourself. But I think, you know, the internal conversation

that you have in that regard versus how you present yourself with great intention to the outside world, those don't have to be the same thing. So I can wake up every day. You know, I always describe when I drive onto the campus of High Watch every morning, I sit in my Ford Explorer and say,

I take a deep breath, you know, and I know that people are going to be, judging my every move and behavior, you know, and so I met with great intention. I meet people's gaze. I say hello. I learn their names. These are all things that are important for leaders to do so that people can feel seen, can feel a part of. My job is to make people feel like they're part of something greater than themselves. They're part of a movement. They're part of a belief system. And so, you know, I think one of the mistakes I made earlier in my career was that I tried

to lead everybody using the same motivations that I have. And what I learned was that I was missing about 80% of the people. Well, I mean, I couldn't relate more to that. I mean, I always tell this story. We, so when we opened release, you know, we bought a house in Westchester and we hung a shingle. so we had guys start moving in and so for me I'm I like moved out in New York City I'm living on property

and we got four or five guys living in the house and there was one guy that I took a liking to and I was like this guy's like me and he can take it and so like when he would miss wake up time I would go upstairs and rip the cover off his bed and like he would not be happy about it and like who would right like I mean this is early in my career

and I know now like I wish I'd known that what I know now but one day he sat me down and he goes Zach you know like I might be like a jock or play sport be like that's not the way to communicate with me yeah he's like I need a loving approach and he taught me a valuable lesson that day which is like I'm the kind of guy that wanted someone to come up to my room

and rip the covers off because I would have gotten out of bed and I would say like let's go okay like that that worked for me it does not work for everyone that's been the biggest lesson I you know one of the biggest lessons I've had to learn Yeah, some people are motivated by, let's, let's, so I've kind of grouped these, some people are motivated by money, some people are motivated by recognition, some people are motivated by being on a team, some people are motivated by being part of a cause, and it's, it's not their job, it's my job as the leader, to learn enough about them to know what it is that's going to wind

their watch so that I can provide them that environment and those opportunities. again, to reach their full potential and to be the best version of those cells. You know, there's been a lot of studies done about what motivates people in the workplace and everything, and you've seen, you know, it's monies like number three or number four on the list. And so people want autonomy, they want respect, they want flexibility. And so creating a work environment where people can have those needs met in a safe kind of psychologically safe setting. You know, one of the biggest things is mistakes is how people, you know,

and so I want to work in an organization where people feel free to make mistakes and know it's going to be viewed as a learning experience, not as you're going to get in trouble or whatever. Now, there's life safety issues. You can't steal from us. Like, there are boundaries to that stuff. Yeah. But, you know, even in, like, tech world, you know, the best companies are the companies

that give people five hours a week to work on their own pet project, you know, to follow their passion. And so unleashing and unlocking the passion and the people that work for us is a huge focus of mine. Yeah, I mean, that's, you said something there that really struck a quote with me, and it's something I'm nervous about with our field. We saw in COVID,

a lot of these virtual services come online. And so a lot of treatment centers are losing talented clinicians because they can essentially go do therapy eight to 10 hours a day in their home from their computer screen and make a fair wage. I hope that people start to come back to us once they understand the importance and value in working as a part of a team, especially in treatment like our, your guests, our patients, our clients need that community. You know, they need those talented clinicians and recovery workers in person, you know, ushering through them, ushering them through this, this process early on. so high watch and alina lodge are magical places that are led by i mean we have 70% of our people

are in recovery i think more than half of them are alums of the program our our admissions department i mean when you talk to somebody we don't have a call center we have live alums that have been to high watch who can give personal testimony as to how their life has been been improved. They're also expert at talking to people about the reasons why they don't want to come in today, you know, or the excuses that they're making for, you know, not getting help. But if I were to say there's one special thing about Highwatch and Alina, it's the way in which the people that work for our organization can give testimony specifically about how their experience in those places has made their lives better. And I think that really connects with

people. And so when you talk to somebody on the phone at Highwatch about coming in, it's likely they're going to meet you at the door and say hello to you. And so part of that is scale. You know what I mean? If you're running a 50 center, you know, you probably can't do that at scale. But at an organization size, I mean, we're probably 160 to 170 beds and 70 or 80 million dollars in revenue with 400 employees it's still of a size where I can know everybody's name and our admissions people can know the people that are coming through the door and they stay with them you know and again our strong belief system going back to the beginning is is that the longer we can keep people engaged in treatment the better it's the insurance industry that's made it

It made us call it detox, residential, PHP, IOP, VLP. We've had to chunk it out like that in order to garner the resources to be sustainable and be there, you know, for another 86 years to help the next people coming up the hill. And so we've been forced to, but at the end of the day, we're talking about going from, you know, that first day of detox to when you finish the Hope House program and get a job at Wilson's Cafe in the community and live in our subsidized housing in downtown Kent. You know, it's a year later, and you've been esconsed in this recovery community, and your brain has healed, you have a network, you have a sponsor,

you're living and recreating with a bunch of people that are in recovery, and now you've rebuilt your life and can go forth and lead a productive and successful life. Yeah, I mean, look, I've been. to High Watch, my feet have hit the soil many, many times. I've watched people, I have good friends who've gone through the program. I mean, I can't speak highly enough about the work that is done there. And I think one of the challenges that we navigate is that there are other treatment programs doing it other ways. And I am open-minded to that stuff, right? Like, I am open-minded that some people are not going to touch a place like High Watch just because the word God is

somewhere in there right and and so like you know um i can only hope that people know that that like there's this experience available to them that for me has been profoundly effective in my life and and if there's another way for for someone else to to get and stay sober and and build a community and i always say to people when they when they come in to release and they say i'm not doing 12 step you know i'm not doing it i said okay okay, but you're not going to use that as an excuse to do nothing, right? So if you're going to do smart recovery, a Dharma recovery, a refuge recovery, whatever it is, you better find a community,

you better be going to meetings, you better be doing the work. Like, because that's still, it's the same principles, right? Like, it's, that apply to most things in life. You go to a gym, like, yeah, you got to lift the weights. I mean, offset, you know, but, you know, the opposite of addiction is connection, and it doesn't matter which community you're connected in, but I think isolation, the opposite of isolation is connection as well.

And so you have to put yourself in places and be vulnerable and open to the idea of putting yourself out there and taking a risk. And again, back to my dad, you know what I mean? What I said to myself is I'll never let anybody in close enough to hurt me like that again. And now there's literally hundreds of people that could hurt me like that again. you know I feel it in this conversation like I feel like you've been authentic and real with us which I deeply appreciate and I think we probably could have gone on for another hour but we have just one more question though I have one more question too I'll go first but do you and this because this is for you too do you wish or do you think about if more people who were not in recovery were working

in treatment in the behavioral health care field like what do you look for that what do you think the impact of that would be, or is it really about, I don't care, I want the best person who's really going to commit to this job and help these people? I mean, because that seems to be like the line is, it's a very insulated world because the barrier for entry is what we all have been through, you know, and I think that keeps people from thinking, I don't, like, I don't really belong there. Like, how could, you know, and I just wonder if, you know, that's another way to sort of break down that barrier and make treatment and recovery feel less like you have to walk across some

imaginary line. Here's what I think. When we hire somebody at Highwatch, I think we send them to a lab and we check their urine or their blood or something like that. I wish, I pray the day comes when I could give somebody a blood test and measure their empathy. If I could know somebody's empathy before I hired them, I would have a staff full of rock stars because I think the quality that we're looking for in our field is the ability to use a colloquialism or whatever to walk a mile and somebody else's shoes. It's to put yourself to feel what somebody else is feeling

so that you can relate and identify with them, which then creates the safety and the genuine connection with people. And so I don't necessarily think it has to be somebody that's traveled a path of recovery if their empathy is kind of off the charts and they have that ability to make people feel that way. Because we all know when someone's listening to us and hearing us and asking us questions that prove that they're understanding what we're saying. And so I would answer that that way and say empathy is the price of admission, I think, in our field. I mean, like, I will say this to you, you know, we met probably six, eight, nine months ago, whatever it was.

And we sat in your office, had about a two-hour conversation. And I know you heard me because you've followed up in ways that have nothing to do with business about the Eagles or about certain things that were said in that meeting. I was like, oh, well, he really was listening. So your test would read high, I think. That's kudos to you. We do have just a couple minutes left here, and I'm going to ask for two things. One, you know, what do you tell him the guy coming into this field or girl? And I say guy, you know why I say guy?

Because this field is flooded with guys, with men, it just is. You know, we're going to see it this week at this conference. And that's a whole other conversation that I'd love to chat about. But what would you say to the person that's coming into this as a way to get rich? or make money, which there is this blurred line, right? And what advice would you give to someone coming into this field? Like, what is the issue that you see now in behavioral health care, specifically as it pertains to substance abuse and mental health?

And then I just need you to give me the Cliff Notes version of the wife, married, unmarried, back married, because that's really what we're talking about here, which is like the stories you hear in the rooms or in recovery that make no sense to people outside but like it makes total like I'm sure there's someone out there three times you know like because we evolve as humans when we recover yeah so integrity so depending on the phase of the career that this person was in you know you know if they were younger in their 20s or 30s I would advise them to ask for help to not assume they have all the answers to be open to feedback to put themselves in high growth learning opportunities, but to let their core values kind of drive

their decision-making and to not be focused on income and not be focused on money to be focused on experiences and learning. You know, I'm not in this to make money, you know what I mean? I lead a nonprofit. We have to have enough resources. And so, you know, nonprofit is a misnomer, right? It doesn't mean you don't make a profit. It means you don't pay taxes. It's a 501C3. The government says because of the good that your organization produces, we don't want your 30 or 35% taxes because we know you're going to invest it in helping more people.

That's what that status allows people. But you still have to have, you know, clean buildings and good food. And, you know, you have to give an experience to people that is valuable in order to sustain yourself. and Highwatch is shown, you know, over its 86 years history to keep its core values while it innovates and adds and, you know, keeps up with the times. And so I think that's a quality of good ideas that stand the test of time, is that the core of them stayed the same even if on the outside the flavor changes or what have you. So my wife and I, so coming, I remember getting an HIV test in that treatment program. And at that time, people were dying of AIDS. And it was

a time of a lot of loss. My wife is a nurse practitioner. She specializes in the care. People, you should look her up. Just Google Mimi Rivard nurse. And you'll find a very impressive group of articles and awards and, you know, papers that she's written that have been published by the federal government and everything else like that. But we met, we were kind of trauma bonded because I was sleeping overnight at a hospice for people that had HIV were in recovery from addiction and had experienced homelessness. And she was a nurse practitioner in a home-based care program that was trying to keep people that had AIDS at the time out of the ERs by caring for them in the community. There was a Medicaid pilot program to try to give people better care and spend less

money taking care of them. So sort of treat them before it got so bad that they had to go to the hospital. So I worked at midnight to aid shift. I used to have to call her at night and say, this patient or that patient is sick. What do you want me to do? And she's pretty tough on me. I was like a lay person sleeping overnight. And there was a couple times where she was not too pleased with my decision-making in that role where I should have sent somebody to the ER.

Instead, I put them back in bed or what have you. But we became very close. We got married. I was a sober man in recovery. I had two jobs. She loved that about me because I only was around for like five hours a day, right? I had a nine to five job. I was around from five to midnight.

and then I went back into my overnight job. And so we got married. I was sober. You know, my career was pretty successful in everything. And then she got pregnant right around the time I picked back up. And, you know, she got great boundaries. And as I was reaching the end of that second stint of addiction, she was very clear with me, if you do this again, you know,

it's not just about us anymore. I'm carrying our child. This is 2001? This is 2001. and I will not, you know, put our child in this crazy, I don't know where you are when you're coming home type situation. I remember a long five-hour car ride where she told me that for four hours and 59 cents. And I thought at some point she said she was in for a penny in for a pound. And, of course, that was the one second that I listened to, not the five hours of if you do this again, I'm gone.

So I did it again and ended up up in treatment at High Watch. and I remember one day a couple of the extended guests came to get me and told me I was maybe three weeks there or four weeks there and they came to said there's a couple of women at the gate and they're here to see you and I thought to myself in my own kind of crazy thinking well that's great Mimi's forgiven me and she's come with a friend to support my recovery well it turned out to be two divorce attorneys from Manhattan with a divorce decree which I signed in the barn at High Watch and I I will say, I will flex on this. I didn't read the documents. I felt so guilty and so ashamed at what I've done to this pregnant woman who I loved that I just signed. Like, I didn't even care what it was. She could have had everything. I felt so terrible.

And so we got divorced, and we were divorced for about two and a half years. And when I left Highwatch and kind of got out of public company life and really sort of found my calling and leading nonprofits and became that sober, sort of do-gooder, spiritual sort of not-thinking. about myself, thinking about others, you know, sharing a child brought us back together, and we ended up, this is a story that I tell that's actually pretty funny. So our first daughter was conceived while we were married and born out of wedlock. Our second child was conceived out of wedlock and born out of wedlock. And our third child, who we adopted home from Ethiopia in 2010, was the only one.

only one of our kids that was both conceived and born while we were married, but it just happened to be by two other people. So it's been quite a ride. I'm so grateful that we've been able to partner together through the ups and the down. She's an amazing caregiver and a force for good in her own right. And it's been quite a blessing. And my higher power, whether it's bringing me back to High Watch or keeping me connected with Mimi or any of the dozens of way not getting HIV you know in the late 80s

shooting dope man like it's just been I'm truly a blessed person I feel the same way blessed to know you blessed that you came through and gave us some of your time I will say I did not know anyone else that has signed their divorce decree in rehab outside of myself but now I know that I have a friend in that department so the stories never get old but that's all for today thank you andrew thank you thank you and yeah this one could have went on forever but we got a wrap because we got business to do so thank you thanks for having me