Scott and Jenny Graham are changing the story from despair to relief for families impacted by the wide array of dysfunctions and addictions, they have been facilitating interventions and transports since 1988. They are both in recovery and are seasoned and trusted interventionists, keynote speakers, radio guests and authors with an unparalleled reputation in the treatment field. Enjoy.
The Illuminate Recovery Podcast is about Mental Health, Mental Illness, and Addiction Recovery. Shining light on ways to cope, manage, and inspire. Beyond the self care we discuss, you may need the help of a licensed professional. Curt Neider and Shelley Mangum are a part of Illuminate Billing Advocates. They are committed to helping better the industry and adding value to the lives of listeners by sharing tools, insights, and success stories of those who are working on their mental health.
Transcript (no grammar): scott and jenny graham are changing the story from despair to relief for families impacted by the wide array of dysfunctions and addictions they have been facilitating interventions at transport since 1988. they are both in recovery and are seasoned and trusted interventionists keynote speakers radio guests and authors with an unparalleled reputation in the treatment field welcome to the illuminate recovery podcast we shed light on mental health issues mental illness and addiction recovery ways to cope manage and inspire beyond the self-care we will discuss you may need the help of a licensed professional my name is kurt neider i'm a husband father entrepreneur a handyman and a student of life i avoid conflict i deflect with humor and i'm fascinated by the human experience and i'm shelley mangum i am a clinical mental health counselor and my favorite role of all times is grandma i am a seeker of truth and i feel like life should be approached with tremendous curiosity i ask the dumb questions i fill in the gaps the illuminate recovery podcast is brought to you by illuminate billing advocates make billing and collections simple with leader in substance abuse and mental health billing services verification and analysis of benefits pre-authorizations utilization management accurate claim submission and management denial and appeal management and industry leading reporting improve your practice's cash flow and your ability to help your clients with eliminate billing advocates scott and jenny graham are with us and um they are all about changing the story for from despair to relief for families impacted by the wide array of dysfunctions and addictions we have been facilitating interventions and transports since 1988 wow that is incredible and both jenny and scott are in recovery themselves they've got their own journey there and our trusted interventionists keynote speakers radio guests and authors with an unparalleled reputation in the treatment field and today they are our podcast hosts and scott and jenny thanks so much for joining us what a pleasure it is thanks for having us yeah this is super fun and and we were actually talking just um probably friday we were we were talking to a couple and they were sharing their story and and one and they worked together right um and and so the question was can a couple really work together and it sounds like you guys do that really well can you talk through that a little bit yeah we're in different locations all the time we're married remotely we haven't felt like that in certain seasons for sure convention work divides us people pick between us yeah but no the the answer your question you know yes i think if you have a solid friendship for sure uh and a willingness to you know to work through you know any kind of disagreements or conflicts or you know whatever i mean we're all human and we are married and you know i mean marriage it hasn't been hard for us there's been hard moments and uh and even you know a season here or there i mean we're in our we today is our 35th anniversary as far as when we met and we you know we married 20 days later so it's all in one kind of fell swoop so we're still you know rocking it we're solid we're still friends and uh it's working yeah the key is is that we're passionate about the same things so i mean beyond the big things the little things i mean right down to we're so fortunate because we like the same color and um so oh let's paint the wall this color like there's no argument and uh one time i bought a couch over the phone with i was in the showroom floor at macy's and scott was home and i'm like hey babe i really like andy says oh well if you like it i'll love it buy it you know like so that's the kind of relationship we have and again having met and married in under three weeks it's like oh these people they're like pull the trigger people it's like yep when you know you so so we go with that gut feeling and it does not scare us wrong oh that's incredible so okay now you don't hear too often people that meet and marry 20 days later right so talk talk about that journey a little bit and if you will if you will i also kind of want to know did you meet prior to recovery or did you guys do recovery together that seems like part like that's tied into it maybe in my head anyway but talk about those pieces if you're willing so uh going back before we got married i was an l.a county sheriff's deputy and i was working undercover advice narcotics and through a variety of different personal uh incident situations i was i was imploding and i was falling apart from the inside out you wouldn't know it by looking at me or why my arrest record you know job performance all that but i was definitely crumbling and crumbling fast and i ultimately got arrested while on duty because instead of taking everybody to jail i was taking half people to jail and still more than anybody letting half go and and i was ultimately you know utilizing the drugs i was confiscating just to self-medicate um escape my implosion so he was telling me this on the first date so which was 24 hours after meeting uh so he didn't tell me at the moment that we met i i always questioned would i have really given him my phone number if i knew what he told me on the first date i want to say yes i i think i would have because because ultimately i thought gee you're going to prison and you'll make a hot pen pal and there'll be a whole lot less pressure than a face-to-face relationship so i was in recovery that was our long-winded answer for i was in recovery scott was on the brink on the verge of recovery he was not in recovery yet he would be shortly thereafter yeah it still took me a few months to to fully embrace it because i had like so many i mean i started as a teenager and uh i i hit her hard from the very beginning it was just something that that worked for me and i had the the mental and physical fortitude to live that dual life from from day one and so um you know i maintained good grades in school relationships was nice and respectful to adults and so on and so forth uh so you know it it like i say it helps me maintain that from the beginning but it ultimately hurt me because it's like any type of high profile person whether it be a doctor lawyer you know first responder whatever they tend to hit a lower bottom because they can go so much further in their dysfunction without anybody really knowing and keeping people at bay you know usually pretty good communicators you know it's it's like one of those i liken it to like a little kid who's living in a dysfunctional home and this little child asks the adults like what's wrong and the adults say nothing oh but i think something is wrong no nothing's wrong everything's fine and then you start to not trust your you know your own senses and so that's kind of how i lived it you know it looks like something's wrong nope everything's fine we're good you know but it was uh it was a heart crash it was a very hard crash i was looking at six to eight years in prison i had gotten arrested in october we met in may so i've got this court case going on and uh you know then you know like jenny said i told her everything but it sounded like a really terrible decision on jenny's partner i mean heck i was like come on it's like you know a drug addict dysfunctional person's dream meet a hot young gal who's making money and i'm thinking great she can take care of me this is gonna be good well but you lent to as you talk about this scott i mean you you make it you make it sound so simple but this gets pretty complicated as you're an officer right you you don't have weaknesses you're not allowed that kind of stuff you know there's that stigma that that we talk about and try and overcome but but that's a reality and and here you are facing it and being willing to talk about it of course jenny's gonna pick up on that and go this guy might be all right but but he's in the heart of it you've been through recovery and you kind of knew what he was in for he might he might not stick well yeah well here's here's the reality so it wasn't it wasn't that deep at first the reality was was that i was also strip dancing and she had a party she had to get a strip dancer for and that was it so that that was why she was attracted to me i think because i was gonna give [Laughter] yeah her i mean the reason that happened i was all my girlfriends were strippers because i was working sunset strip in west hollywood and that was kind of my you know well it was the territory there it was it was the territory and the people that i was you know working basically and so you know i i i jokingly say that even though there is truth to it it was only a small little period of time but the funny story behind it is the first time i annoyingly meet my mother-in-law my sister-in-law all the cousins i'm dancing in a jean straight at that party that i hired him for for 75 bucks that was the best 75 bucks i've ever spent i'm gonna say i invested it yeah we're still i'm still wrapping up the dividends 35 years later that's so funny oh that's incredible what a story like yeah i've heard some good stories but this one's this was probably top set right now i'm just saying this i mean and when he was in prison like i brought his brother who looked enough like him to my work christmas party it's like hey stevie we're just gonna hit the hors d'oeuvres and don't talk to anybody like like let's just like make an appearance and actually they sound your voices even i remember one time i called and your brother answered the phone and i started talking because i thought it was you and then he finally said hey it's not scott and i was like what so all that to say that's that part of our story and because of my own recovery and and keeping all that a secret that i was struggling etc etc i could relate to scott's story at every point except for the point where he made abc nbc cbs when he was arrested while on duty so his his his fault was incredibly public where mine was incredibly private and regardless i mean we have that thing in common that we were both functioning and so people nowadays at least people are not thinking every drug addict is is living under the bridge and you know just doped up morning noon and night i mean we were using morning noon and night but we were using at a pace where we were still able to live a double life and so that's where i connected so deeply with scott and i wasn't even joking i mean i thought how great would it be to have a pen pal and how especially for you know someone who's highly functioning in recovery working three jobs like how would i even have time to date anyway right right so so here we are all these years later and it's why we wake up every day so passionate about helping people because we see all the time that it's the people who care about people the most that have the most influence and impact and they have and they have and they have laid down that influence and impact they have bought into a lie that says that they're powerless they've traded in this idea of the fact that i could still motivate you i could still be a reason i could still help you take a step in the right direction and i'm not saying that i can i can fight your addiction for you i'm saying i can fight your addiction with you and there's a real separation in the industry and everybody wants to like only have their own tribe like i'm going to my meeting and i'll see you later and it's like what about the people who were related to either by choice or by blood and wouldn't they take a bullet for me and yes i would say they would take a bullet for you and so why not let them into your recovery so that's our that's our magic is that we've let each other in and i think so many people don't and so many people are masters at compartmentalizing well what you've talked about is that you you've uh i mean because in recovery right in recovery and if you're in a treatment i don't know how you guys did this but if you're in a treatment facility or in a treatment program the one thing they say is you probably shouldn't be getting into any relationships right because a relationship is the quickest way to to relapse of anything that that i've seen out there and here you guys are i mean jenny you're in recovery you you probably know this piece right and and maybe scott doesn't maybe scott doesn't have that right on board yet but but you know and yet you still jumped into it what made the difference for you well for us you know i was already stable in my recovery i had i had a handful of years under my belt and so if they're talking about don't hook up in rehab where you both knew um and so they really haven't really defined that other and for me there were just so many things about scott that overrode any kind of advice where people would go you're flat crazy well and also too it was it was a more of a spiritual decision you know that i want you to talk about i think it's absolutely you know rock solid in that you know and everybody has a different you know belief system and what what you know just how they live their life and uh you know fill in the blanks that i miss but in a nutshell you know jenny didn't want to date because she didn't want to waste time so like she said she's had three jobs she's working hard she definitely doesn't want to um you know do anything from a moral or ethical standard that that is you know it's not congruent with what your faith was at the time and so literally uh the good lord gave her a download of a short stocky brunette green eyes two young toehead kids out of diapers talking in complete sentences the only the exact type they would be the only thing that he didn't tell her was that oh by the way he'll be facing 68 years in prison so when i show up on that day and not telling the whole story but just you know looking from an outward visceral you know kind of way you know i i kind of checked you know i checked the boxes and so it wasn't that she was because she's so grounded in her faith wasn't taking this huge risk day two would have been yeah now you're taking a kind of a risk here and uh it was one of those messages that you felt intuitively it's like well if god was talking to you audibly which he wasn't but it would be like hang on to my hand tighter than you hang on to his and you'll be okay and that's exactly what's the way to live life and that's what she's done the whole entire time because you know i you know we talk about you know not being perfect i am so far from perfect um i i struggled for years really because i had so many ingrained years of dysfunction of justification rationalization of you know the the spirits willing the flesh is weak moments i mean it's like oh my gosh it's like when am i going to get this thing right and jenny had the patience because of her heart and mindset towards me to hang in there and some might say endure my moments of immaturity as i grew into a more mature walk uh in all aspects of life so that's really been the staying grace in our relationship because if you were living from the worldly standards you would have been gone early on many times over yeah i agree so you know um that's just the reality of our lives and and i refuse to shrink back from that that's really what's grounded us uh as we've lived life together yeah no i don't think i'd ever shrink back from any of that right and and so what i hear you say is that there was a huge faith based and maybe a spiritual relationship with with your higher power god i think you used god as your higher power that really kind of led some of this uh what would have been really scary i would think i would think it would be kind of a scary moment for you for you jenny to go i'm gonna do what yeah but there was so many details in that download you know like things about his personality uh that he would have more freckles than i have which is a hard thing to beat um and and the exact size of his kids and that the girl would be this tall and the boy would be that tall and they would be very blonde and he would be very brunette i mean there were just so many precise things beating the physical or just in the personality and i have and he will attest to this uh i want to say a strong i don't want to say domineering i want to say strong personality so i know i know i like like i'm that kid so i'm from the era where uh we still typed so they didn't have keyboarding they had typing and i didn't take that elective because i wasn't going to be anybody's secretary i was going to be the boss so you get that kind of personality and what i had found uh in the course of both youth and then young adulthood was was that i would get bored in my relationships because if a guy was gonna let me dominate then that was just going to eventually get old for me and well to find someone as strong minded not john marin as myself was really it was it was so exciting because i had not had that and uh i forget where i was going with that well just where why you were able to make that decision and and be willing to step into that so quickly and so did i hear you say that you you knew or you had a premonition and i'm not going to put words into your mouth i'm trying not to that that you are already seen scott and you had seen his kids and you knew you knew a lot you knew this was coming on some level it was about a three and a half year wait once i got that download dialed in written out uh search search through travel magazines to try and find you know the guy the girl the two kids the exact size all that uh still have that old wrinkled magazine clip to this day and i knew and so every time which wasn't constant because i was busy working all the time but when i did have a conversation with a prospect um i said you have any kids and and if he'd say no i'd think darn you're so cute that's too bad shucks you know because i know i'm gonna marry him out with two kids that are this size the whole nine yards and um part of that was my own fear of having kids um i think if i could practice on somebody else's you know see what that's like and we went on to have two amazing sons together so i have two biological we have two biological children and then i have two bonus children and uh yep so that's that thing is that people quiet that inner voice that that that quiet place where where you get the intuition where your real wisdom sits you know what you know it's interesting you say that because i've never really thought about that in that when we talk to people for the work that we do we are trying to help them acknowledge that voice that they've heard our hearing or trying to squelch or let fear supersede you know the the intuitive piece of we need to do something and so you know we we we can with authority actually because we've walked down that road say that that always truth is is in that voice it's just a matter of you know dissecting it you know it's peace in the middle of the storm not not not no not the removal of the storm it's peace in the midst of the storm and and pulling all this into our business we talk to people i mean people people get our number from uh samsa or anita you know so we're talking things outside of the treatment industry and then of course hospitals and treatment centers and hotlines and and intuitively in a matter of you know minutes we're trying to decide if we're going to do something that has incredible risk incredible liability incredible uh odds stacked up against it and we're making those split decisions sort of like we made about each other i mean going back to the night we met i knew that's the man i want to marry and it was mother's day right mother's day and so after spending five hours together meeting at this restaurant where we sat at tables next to each other he left and took his mother out to dinner for mother's day and told her i met the woman i'm going to marry and so and so so now come back forward to our business and and someone where he's suicidal she's this you know this is what's hap you know and it's just fraught with with like responsibility i jump in and help them navigate their responsibility their opportunity their chance when all they've heard is counter information information that completely contradicts what we're telling them and so we feel like these mavericks in this industry that's it's so full of tradition and so much of it is so so so good but in the next breath let's all get angry with the relapse rates which are atrocious and so why wouldn't some new moves some new ideas of coming and leading with love and following up with the gravity and and and not helping them feel worse and all these things that so i heard you say early on that um this idea that that we're um powerless that we're powerless and i heard you not say that in an embracing like yeah we're powerless but in a no no no that is that is absolutely not true talk about that for a minute well we're not contradicting that you know a person is not powerless over their substance that they you know use decide you know decide to use that first time then boom they're powerless to stop or start that that need fulfilling experience i mean that's a classic definition of addiction we're talking about the influence that we have with each other not a manipulative one but in a healthy way it's like in our family programming we teach family programming as well as our intervention work and one of the principles that we like to highlight is the middle ground which we call interdependence and so that means we're doing life with and for each other and and we've lost that that beautiful sweet spot where we tout independence that's the holy grail we can all agree that a measurement co-dependence is not good but what about the middle and so when when people it's so funny when i talk to somebody on the phone and then you know i've spoken to them for a while and i know they're calling me because they know about the word intervention they don't really quite understand it and then they say yeah but they're in denial is really they really they i don't think they'll go it's like well that's kind of why you're calling me and why we're talking you know is because we have a system in place that will expose how much you matter to them because we can agree that they're not healthy enough to be the reason to go today and if you want to wait until they are ready well they could be dead they could be in jail they could be divorced they could lose their job they could a lot of negative things could happen and we don't know which one if not all of them it will be so it would be like waiting for somebody to have a heart attack when you've been watching them clutching their chest for for weeks on end it's like we don't do that with that why are we doing it with this so we in a very healthy way show how you can get in front of somebody and not shrink back from your truth but say it in an eloquent respectful kind yet firm way and give them the opportunity to say if not for me of course i will say yes to you because you matter that much to me and the interesting piece is that nine out of ten times people say yes when it was the furthest thing from their mind to go get help nine out of ten and they're all very very challenging cases and people are draw jaw dropped when it's like and i always say this they say i want this to go so smooth that when i'm taking your love into treatment you're all kind of talking with each other and you're saying we didn't even need scott or jenny that was so easy we could have done this on our own and of course that's not true because it's all about putting a strategy together and executing that strategy and actually having a vision way beyond a person saying yes to help i mean there's so many people who do what we do and that is their sole focus and we we really put ourselves in the shoes of the therapist of the family member and the client going to treatment and so how can we give the family a healthy voice so they can put closure to all of this how can we help the loved ones say yes to help them walk through the doors of treatment with their head held high how can we give the therapist information they otherwise would never get if they're just relying on the client to give it to them as they walked in in a fog of denial and how can we help that client stay longer and then ultimately increase the likelihood of success and after 33 years of doing this work i can confidently say we have done just that and so back to that word powerless the the idea is is we don't want you to feel powerful if you're going to use it for ill intent so we don't want you to use your power to overpower them that that's going to boomerang and bite you in the backside is what's going to happen with that but what if in a gentle and compelling and authentic and vulnerable way i could empower you so if we're just using our power to empower others versus overpower them then we're doing something that we're actually designed to do and that risk because there's vulnerability involved is so rewarding and so if we weren't designed to be this way we'd all find a desert island right and we'd have a little soccer ball wilson jr and and we'd be happy there we'd be doing our own thing but it it's messy but it's beautiful when we do life together and we have exercised this principle and and watched people on bended knee you know endear someone to choose you know life over death and we've done that you know in the in the corporate board room we've done that under the bridge with the barefoot homeless girl you know like like like every extreme just the most amazing stories and and people are afraid of that rejection and they are doubting their own power and so that's why we're on that crusade to say you're so powerful you're so influential you're so impacting are you shutting it off so every intervention isn't isn't a cakewalk like you'll say you know all the jaw-dropping and that is true many many times but there are so many that are fraught with you know either danger or fireworks or more stuff and and so that's where even in those crazy cases like the kid that ran me off the road you know into the he listened to all the letters but you know he blew up afterwards he was in treatment within a week and so there's so many where you know that one case and throwing everyone out and breaking chairs and and and they're in treatment that double intervention just you know ten days after and so sometimes it takes a minute so your power might not be a microwave oven like instant and it might be a crock pot but boy if we don't risk rising up and doing something then we're going to keep getting what we've got wow i could i could not agree more and so much power in what you're saying and the question that that is on the you know the forefront of my mind is are you telling me and i hear you saying it's not simple right it gets really messy and it might take a week for them to get into treatment but are you telling me somebody in the heart of using they're they've got a good high going on they are you know in their heavy in their addiction they can hear you tell them and give them that message of empowerment i i i think so so here's i break it down really simplicity simplistically and that is i think every human being has a strong desire to want to be connected to the people that they love and care about and we know that addiction disconnects us and so so there's principle number one the second is is that most people from one day to the other want to have some level of meaning and purpose in their life and you can only sit and watch tv for so long or do the same thing for so long you need to have some kind of outward focus that's that's you know fulfilling you in some way satisfying and then i think that most people even the ones that are suicidal they want to live they just don't know how to live with pain so there's a strong desire to want to live as long as we can so you take those three i think truths and then you put addiction in front of it and the addiction is doing the opposite of those things that are instinctual natural in all of us so that if we can present to them we want to be connected with you we want to help you fulfill your destiny your purpose in life and we want you to live we want to live with you for as long as you know we all can most people go ah really i've wanted that for so long i just didn't know how to do it since we're saying here we've got the easy button push it and they do and and it's so fun because when we're taking somebody to treatment they for me i don't know about you but but they'll look at me and once i've connected with them a little bit they go you guys so weird you know i just this whole thing is surreal but there's a big part of me that feels so relieved it's like oh no that's not weird to me i mean that's the turmoil and or like if somebody says i'm scared to go it's like wait a minute let's let's have a dose of reality i'd be scared to stay to me it's safer if you go than if you stay so again you know the person's perspective is so twisted you know you think about it it's the people who are their greatest fan base when did they become the enemy and that's what happens in addiction is everybody's against me when in reality no everybody is for you and they're just against what's taking you away yes what's what's absolutely cheating all of us of each other so this is this is so big and so many people like if they're not hung up on the fear of will they say yes or no then they're hung up on the fact that they think they have no leverage and and leverage is is some people yeah i'd say if they're 19 and you're paying for their college education there's some tangible leverage but you would be amazed at the cases where there's no financial leverage there's no tangible material leverage emotional and relational how how that can work and then you're going to have that tiny percentage where not only do they say no they don't go ten days later they might go nine months later or two years later and we have had the same phone number for three decades so we get those calls from 25 years ago or 15 years ago different different amazing stories uh so we know that we know that we know that it works but are you willing to take that risk if you fall in that three percent that never go that never get help or that go but relapse or have chronic relapsing due to a mountain of of pressures and and life that's thrown at them i mean we're when we talk with people we're not talking at them we're talking with them because a were both in recovery b we buried his mother when she fell intoxicated face forward snapped her neck was in a coma was was was the prognosis was she'll be a vegetable if we leave her plugged in i mean we have we've buried a nephew uh steroid and alcohol abuse in his 20s he called him uncle daddy like we have so many stories and skeletons that we traded out the closet with skeletons for the warehouse with skeletons that we we we get this in a deeply personal way we have a daughter that goes in and out of active addiction right the guy that i married with the little girl that little girl has struggled uh her whole her whole life and so so we we are coming from a place where we just take it upon ourselves to if we're going to do business with somebody if we're going to put ourselves on the line we're just going to have them and it's as if they were family that it matters to us that it's not just their sister now it's my sister too that sort of a thing and that's what keeps us fired up like every case even though there's so many things that are similar you have that unique handprint on someone's life where their life is unique and special well it's incredible what you're talking about and what i hear you say is that you're connecting with those those innate human characteristics that they're in there and everything that they're doing is in conflict with it right it's just it's it's co it's incoherent and it doesn't mesh and it's painful and you're coming in and saying look this is still part of who you really are let's talk to that part because that part is powerful right it's all this other stuff that's messing you up this is powerful and yeah i could not agree more but i hear you telling me i mean i know over the years addiction recovery has changed significantly but are you still seeing a huge portion of the industry doing it differently yeah well yeah really doing it the same as they have and the relapse rates have not changed really much since we started back in 88 and i kind of just laugh when i know that in the meeting halls we hear about you know not doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result that definition of insanity and it's like i turn my head like a dog like what that's what treatment's doing same thing over and over again expecting a different results and they're not getting it and yet and yet look at the one who went to three fancy places and then they got it in the county facility and now he is doing fantastic and owns a treatment center and is rocking his recovery so there's always going to be truth on both sides of the table the experience is going to be different and what i we've been doing family programming for about 10 years and again we we measure our success our long-term success which is the most important to us by the lack of phone calls we get because we have given every single person we have ever helped family not every single client because they might still be too unhealthy to want to give them our number but nevertheless i mean family we have you know every month one two sometimes three times a month family programs four to six eight sometimes interventions a month that we've been doing you know 33 years of this so a lot of people have our number that has not changed for three decades and so if we're not getting phone calls it's not because they don't like us because we go into deep waters with people i mean we we make people cry and so so we know what we're doing works so here's my point you know we all hear that family it's a family illness this thing called addiction or really just dysfunction is a family problem for sure but we don't hear it being touted as a family recovery i mean you just don't hear that and i get it it's because there's so many families who are dysfunctional and it's like too scary to bring my family in because they're gonna micromanage me or police me or while i was getting all my help they were sitting around watching you know their soap operas not doing anything eating bon bons and so you know are they doing anything to help you know grow and develop themselves typically not and so we just believe that if we could help families do the hard work that they have in front of them like their loved ones are supposed to be doing and i'll tell you if we were a fly in the treatment industry watching people all day long in treatment we would be appalled at some of the things that are going on in treatment uh the downtime the the lack of accountability the you know old material the sitting around watching the film you know instead of like getting some real dialogue going on as a consumer i'm not real happy with treatment by and large there's a lot of good treatment going on but but you know let's face it it takes more dollars to run a program that has more individual care than group care and so you know i understand that from a fiscal standpoint but again you look at the amount of money that's being charged for treatment uh as well as the people who do what we do i mean we're on the low end as far as cost-wise goes i'm appalled at what people are it's almost predatory with what these treatment centers and interventionists are charging people to do very i mean it's it's not like they're doing you know brain surgery my gosh you know they're just taking words and utilizing them and walking people down a road and and i mean it's just not that complicated it's hard work but it's not super complicated but it is so it is so passion driven i you know want to just contrast that and say there's so many people that are in the industry because they themselves are in recovery and so there there's there is there is a passion and an inspiration like if anybody listening if you remember who your favorite teacher was in grade school or if you played sports your favorite coach and that goes back to the point of there's inspiration points where people compel you urge you believe in you you have got you've got some tech that's like so new in recovery and he's gonna be that that that turning point for that client not the private therapist who is doing really excellent work but we're just i don't want to minimize the fact that even though the relapse rates are atrocious there aren't amazing people doing amazing work and there is good treatment to be found for sure yeah and there's there's a lot of factors i don't want to minimize or simplify it either because you know all the great brain research is being done in in combination with the talk therapy the you know the mdr and all the things that are happening within the treatment industry there's good work that's happening and then of course you get part of the equation that people don't stay in treatment long enough nor do they do what they're you know required to do post treatments those are all factors in you know i'm not a fan of when somebody says that treatment didn't work it's like no that person didn't work that treatment right it's not fair i was trying to get it it's not fair to ask you what's your success rate it's like well i mean i don't know you know i mean how do you really even know right it's not even a question it's like it's gonna be as good as the person is willing to work it i mean it's just that simple and that's a big part of what we're doing and what treatment is trying to do so too often i find that as a therapist their hands are tight because they're just relying on what the client tells them if they didn't sign a consent they can't talk to the family you know there's all these factors that are at play and so um yeah so smart well and what you say is true i i actually my ears perked up when you said we're going to give this therapist as much information as we can when we've met with the family and we want to help them see the whole dynamic because i work on the side where i'm a therapist right i worked at a at a treatment center for a while and and that was my thing is i would mull around these clients and try and get to know them and figure out what's going on and i realized they were telling the the staff stuff that they would never tell their therapist and i'm like how am i supposed to really help here and get to the deep of this if you're not willing to tell me any of it right if there's still these secrets and somehow i'm this person that you can't share it all with and so i totally get that it has to be done as a group now now i work with facilities now and i see their therapist right we go in and train their therapist like if like have you talked to the family do you know what's going on and we know insurances want them to do family therapy because it's obvious family therapy like you said right it's a it's a dysfunction like it's it's a it's a group dysfunction and if the family doesn't go into therapy you put that person back into that environment again and they're going to expect them to behave the same way they did they need them to if they don't understand the difference and so i love what you're saying it's it's harder like you said it's it's it's difficult to create that dynamic to create that encompassing program that's going to give them everything they want but if we're going to do treatment shouldn't we put everything into it just like you guys you're laying your heart and soul you're vulnerable you're out there and and you're going to treat this person like their family i could not agree more and i think we've come a long ways i you know i'm not going to the treatment industry is huge it's ginormous and we've come a long ways and we have a long ways to go and i think that's fair i love what you guys are doing um to make that change and to have a voice in the industry because it's it's that kind of a voice that really gets things to shift and change um i'm wondering i mean i know i'm sitting here going so do you guys train do you guys do trainings with facilities how do you engage other than interventions and to make this shift in this change well i mean to go into the depth of our intervention work we really don't have a system in play to to train like therapists and it really it it it boils down to you know the the intake people too we've done some trainings with intake people because number one it's such it's the most transient of a very transient industry and so to and so what we found is that many people who are working in those phones when people are inquiring about treatment their programs and whatnot they do not understand intervention healthy intervention they understand the word but they don't understand really what a healthy intervention would look like so we're we're missing that piece to it and i know that there was a gentleman he ran the betty ford program one of the one of the betty ford programs uh which is a hazelton for 25 years and and we did a lot of work with with him and personally and both as collective his his program but he said scott and jenny if i could have every single admission go through a carefrontation the way you guys do this it would change it could change the course of treatment and recovery and it's like yeah we we get that but what we do have is jenny and i we decided we were sitting on this idea for so so long 10 years how could we how can we get out to the general population this model that we have and then we execute so we we talk to so many people who don't even though we're on the low end of what we charge i mean if you don't have two nickels to rub together you know you don't have money for treatment number one and for sure don't have enough money for for intervention so we spent about two years just taking everything that we do and making videos put it on paper uh audio and we've called it intervention in a box yeah we threw it up on the thinkific platform which is online educational platform a big one it actually just went public right so so the intervention in the box so where we initially designed it for a family who had someone who wasn't completely crazy and could chair or facilitate the intervention that would walk them through in the course of a weekend with you know seven minutes 19 minutes 16 minutes eight minutes you know six modules and all these little video clips that add up to 90 minutes like who cannot put in a couple hours to make sure they don't put their foot in their mouth right so so in the next breath although that was designed and published and sits on that platform and people can buy it for just a few hundred dollars to walk themselves through it personally i wish anyone in the industry that was going to do an intervention would take the course because we constantly follow some someone who we we don't want to know their name but they're complaining about their interventionists that they use for a different family scenario and i've had someone sit in front of me and go well i had an intervention done on me and darn it i want to do over because this is amazing because i want to hear you know you want to hear you want to listen in your own funeral because nobody gets up and says that son of a gun you know they are gracious they are mindful of of the very best in you and so that is the heartbeat behind what we do and it's so simple and yet again there's little nuances to it like we really pull apart so many little nuances in the middle of the of the model so we did that and we'd like to do the same with the recovery principles that we teach when we do family programming which we do both in treatment centers and privately but that one's not that one's not published yet but the but the intervention is and and the family work will will come because that is really like our next couple of decades is how many families can we get to come back together and reconcile because it's important to get the one person in a clear and good pathway but it's another thing to catch the family up so so to answer your question though in regards to you know how can we because you as a therapist like you said you get how frustrating it could be how your hands are tight and whatnot and i was always a big one like when i was doing my individual work i would give it a homework assignment and of course they would come back and like i see your homework and oh my dog ate it it's like okay you're not really ready so quit wasting my time and your time pass out i would say and they'd like what what no forget it i mean that's what i'm so talking about that's why i don't wanna i just that's not my passion right well recovery is important to me because i lost my great career in law enforcement i lost you know 13 months of my freedom the privilege of parenting my two kids on a daily i mean it took so much for me so i'm sorry if i don't minimize or downplay my recovery but nevertheless i see too many people who are doing that so what we what we do a piece of what we do is we help identify the issues in a person's life and we help families kind of go through that exercise of you know we all have issues all of us do but when do we ever stop and go okay i'm going to name all my issues today i'm going to sit down and think about okay i'm defensive okay issue number one i'm angry issue number two things that could travel with you right after you're in recovery from whatever that was that you're in treatment for like like these move on yeah and and i know we just have a couple minutes till we go off the air but i just want to say i love it when you throw up a challenge when you'll say to clients who's ever been bored in treatment and literally 96 97 sometimes 100 will raise their hand and and and if they would want to take a hard look at these things and say mr mrs therapist please please please let's work on this issue like like stand up and there's nothing for yourself like you do when you go to the doctor you're helping the doctor diagnose something you treat and you get well but in treatment they fold their arms and slash down their chair and they're saying in their head not out loud go ahead try to fix me the last therapist could yep yeah instead of taking responsibility right responsibility for their own treatment their own recovery and and taking that bull by the horns and saying i'm not going to do it this way i'm going to do it different exactly right yeah that's how we're going to change it because i know when we do our interventional work early on it was like i wouldn't like to say anything to get them there but i would placate their craziness a little bit where now it's like you know 33 years years later it's like no here's what's going to be ahead of you here's what our expectations are if you're not willing to go then don't you know just don't don't waste everybody's money and time and when you're ready we'll be there to support that kind of thing so it's it's a different season which i love being in the season of life it's not that we don't care you know when it's not we don't care less we just care differently yeah so well and you're not enabling them right because they've got so much enabling going on as you're just you're just putting it out there in black and white if you're not ready if this really isn't where you're at then don't go because it's not going to help anybody but we do care you've already connected with them you've already let them know how much you care and and how powerful they are and how many people love them you've sent that message they know but they got to be serious or it does it just wastes a lot of time and energy it really does so our intervention work jenny this was that you know we're uh we're a remedy for guilt but not necessarily a remedy for grief you know you will have said everything done everything you really can do and the best way can't be done but even with that there's still those who will not get well but there are many who will we had a family call and they said we wanted to let you know our loved one died and we're thinking did he relapse and they said no he didn't relapse we just wanted to tell you that everything you said was true you said that the letters would speak that what we would do would matter not just at the intervention but onward and he died we found him in front of the fireplace with 15 old wrinkled letters in his coat pocket from the intervention 15 years ago and he was clean and sober all those days and we think that we just want you to be able to share this story because we think our love kept kept him on that journey like kept kept him lifted him up on a bad day that sort of a thing and so i would just want to end with uh if you ever heard this it's bad intel and it sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me there's nothing further from the truth our words carry such great weight and so just just just be aware of the fact when you're using 10 cent words or when you're using million-dollar words that we influence each other and best to love imperfectly at all yeah oh i love that and yeah i mean what you guys speak is true i'm just telling you these are truths these are human human and humanity truths and when you speak to the human heart they hear it and you know it right and so i just appreciate the work that you guys are doing it's incredible and i will guarantee there are going to be people that are listening they're going to want to reach out to you and learn more because of that and so what's the best way for them to get a hold of you so really calling our toll-free number is really the quickest and i think easiest way and so that toll-free number is eight four four five eight eight three two six seven and you can't text it because it's been the same for three decades and there was no such thing as texting back then and then and then if you wanted to email us it's uh info info at and then our business name carefrontations and just make sure there's a s at the end dot com and our website is carefrontations.com so uh reach out anytime we don't just keep business hours if we're awake we're gonna answer the phone and if we're not around our assistant we'll answer the phone and if no one's around you can leave a message and we'll get back to you very very very soon absolutely very soon and the link to the intervention in a box is on the main care printations website so carefrontations we took the con out of the word confrontations conning doesn't work don't con anybody care about them that works carefrontations i love that that's so so indicative of who both of you are you've shared with us just incredible story today your own and then you know how you're influencing and using your passion to help other people i can't thank you enough for being willing to come on and share that and for the work that you do thank you well thank you thank you for setting up the platform yeah we really appreciate what you're doing too you're what you're doing matters equally to what we're doing so thank you