62. The Evolution of the Treatment Industry, Navigating Adolescent Addiction, and the Compassionate Care Model feat. Evan Haines

Apr 24

Today I am joined by Evan Haines. Evan is the co-founder of Alo House, a leader in the compassionate care model, and an active member in the recovery community. He works to connect with individuals and help them obtain and maintain sobriety through compassion rather than control. (bio adapted from alorecovery.com)

Evan’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsevanhaines/?hl=en

Alo House (offering Detox, Inpatient & Outpatient and dual-diagnosis treatment): https://alorecovery.com/

Evan and I cover the following topics…

+ Evan's journey to sobriety and working in the addiction treatment industry

+ How mental health and addiction treatment has evolved over the last few centuries

+ How addiction and mental health challenges are the result of an environment, emotional sensitivity, and relationships

+ The direction we as a society to increase connection, compassion, and decrease the mental health challenges plaguing America

Mentioned in the episode…

+ Alo House

+ Alcoholics Anonymous

+ Lost Connections by Johann Hari

+ Andrea Arlington (Life Coach specializing in Family Recovery)

Episode Sponsors

🍓This week's episode is brought to you by Sakara. Sakara is a nutrition company that focuses on overall wellness, starting with what you eat. Use code XOSADIE at checkout for 20% your first order!

🛋This week's episode is sponsored by Teen Counseling. Teen Counseling is an online therapy program with over 14,000 licensed therapists in their network offering support with depression, anxiety, relationships, trauma, and more via text, talk, and video counseling. Head to teencounseling.com/shepersisted to find a therapist today!

About She Persisted (formerly Nevertheless, She Persisted)

After a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, 18-year-old Sadie recounts her journey by interviewing family members, professionals, and fellow teens to offer self-improvement tips, DBT education, and personal experiences. She Persisted is the reminder that someone else has been there too and your inspiration to live your life worth living.

listen to this episode:

a note: this is an automated transcription so please ignore any accidental mispellings!

This week on she persisted…

Evan: Addiction and mental health problems. They don't, they don't occur out of a vacuum. They're not genetic. They occur out of a context that can, they occur out of family systems,

For that parent to see, to become aware of those impossible situations that they've created for their children and to understand why they've snapped under to understand why they've withdrawn to understand why they have escaped

All of the, the research shows that more empathetic, more kind of non directive non-controlling techniques and the therapeutic bond itself more than any particular modality is what creates good outcomes.

Sadie: This week's DBT scale is the chain analysis scale. A chain analysis is a way to examine your problem behaviors, to figure out what prompted them, how you could have been more effective with your skills usage and understand how that problem behavior had consequences in your life.

The first thing we're going to look at is your vulnerability going in theater action. If you were hungry, not well slept. If you have been lacking on getting exercise and moving. So that's also impacting your physical health.

These are all things that could make you more vulnerable to being reactive rather than responsive. Other things that could lead to vulnerability are, if you are already sensitive about a certain topic, you are feeling already emotionally aroused and distressed. So you're more reactive. The next thing we're going to look at is your trigger.

What caused the problem behavior? What was the problematic event that then led to this, this behavior happening at this point? So go ahead and describe what happened when you engaged in this problematic behavior. Was it an argument you got into was a comment that was made? What behavior did you engage in?

Kind of breaking that down? Who, what, when, where, why, how doing the same thing for the triggering event? Next thing we're going to do is look at the links in our chain analysis. These are all the things that happened between the triggering event and your problem behavior, where you could have potentially implemented skills.

If you were getting in an argument with someone, and you're looking at the chain of events where you're both going back and forth and saying things you could have potentially implemented some deep breathing or pausing and taking a step back, maybe some validation is that's a quick example of how you can implement it.

From there. We're going to look at what happened after this interaction. Going back to this argument example, did you have to repair the relationship? Was that person treating you differently for a couple of days because of that argument? Did you have a negative mood for the next couple of hours due to the argument?

We're going to look at all of these things and figure out how it impacted your life. So that's a chain of analysis. You're able to better understand why and how you engage in problematic behaviors and how in the future you can implement different skills to avoid engaging in that behavior.

Hello everyone. And welcome back to another episode. I'm so excited for this episode. I just have to start off with that. This might be my favorite episode that I've ever recorded. It is just phenomenal. Every single second is filled with value and insight. And I just left this conversation being like, Oh, Oh my gosh.

So before we get into that kind of unpacking this week, a little bit, doing a little bit of a check-in moment. I went back to school for the first time, since we went into lockdown over a year later, I'm finally going back for the first day of my senior year in person. And it was so much fun. I am so much more engaged and have a better mood.

I'm feeling more energized and productive, being able to get up and, and, and go places and still do all these things that I love. And so I'm really happy to be back at school. So I don't wanna make this intro too long because I want to have this episode be as much about this interview as possible. So we're going to dive into our Q and a really quick, and then we'll jump right in. First question was, how do you work on your habits?

I talked about this a little bit last week, about how I'm working to improve myself, discipline by setting reinforcements that make me excited, whether that's visuals or to do lists, check boxes, things that may bring me a lot of joy. But aren't necessarily significant to someone else.

And the next thing is to set measurable goals at certain dates. So my goal for this past week was to do two workouts. So I said, okay, by Friday at 6:00 PM, I'll do one workout. And by Tuesday at 4:00 PM, I'll do the second workout. And I could go over that. I could do more than one workout. And I ended up doing four workouts last week, and I still met my goal on the timeframe.

And so that was something that was really enjoyable and effective as far as habits. I think the biggest tip is to be really aware of the habits that you are you're tracking. And I do this in my bullet journal where I write down what habits I'm tracking every month, whether that's getting up out of bed at a certain time or getting to sleep and unplugging at a certain time things like that, or studying for a certain number of hours, whatever it is that I'm trying to increase or decrease having them.

In front of you and checking in on them daily is a great reminder too, to build those habits and also keep track of where you're at with them. So adding check-ins in your planner, having them on your schedule, different ways where you're visually reminded to practice these habits and check in on how you're doing with them is really effective.

And then the last tip I'll give on this is to try and build habits that you enjoy. I think anything that we do, if we don't get value from it or enjoy it, it's really hard to, to get any energy from it and want to continue doing it and have the change be long lasting. So even as if it's something like studying, having it be associated with something fun, like after you study for an hour, You'll reward yourself by watching a certain TV episode.

And you'll only watch that TV show when you've studied. So kind of pairing it with things that are enjoyable or making, studying fun. If you really like visuals doing like FODMAPs, that kind of thing. So it is enjoyable for you. And it's not just another task that you have to get done that you'll eventually end up avoiding.

Next question is advice on being sad about leaving your friends in college. Totally relate to this one. I am definitely very excited to go to college in the fall or actually this summer I'm in August, but I'm definitely nervous. I've made a lot of really great friendships here and I'm, I'm sad to miss everyone.

I also have moved to boarding school and then moved back home and had to kind of let go of those relationships. And I think what I keep coming back to is that when you've built a really strong friendship and you've built a healthy relationship and, and you have confidence in that and trust and, it's a great relationship on both sides. You're able to reenter interactions and it feels like no time has passed. You can call them up, you can visit them. And your friendship is just as strong and, and it feels like no time has gone by. So I think my, my advice relating to that would be partially having trust that you'll still be able to see these people and, and have these interactions that, that you love and being able to, to support them and be connected. And also focusing on just continuing to strengthen that rather than suffering twice and being overwhelmed by, by the anxiety and apprehension about what if you, you aren't friends anymore and you don't talk at all. And then when that eventually happens, you've gone through that emotional experience twice.

And then my second piece of advice is that, especially with something like college, where there are so many different people from all over that that you'll get along with, or you won't get along with, you will find your people, you will find your tribe, you will find your community.

So regardless of what happens with your friends at home, you're going to find some amazing relationships and some amazing friendships, and those can really come into your life in a way that, that you're feeling the loss from your other friends. So I think really diving into that, working on building those relationships Rather than staying attached to other friends that are kind of have moved away or are in different parts of the country at school.

And of course not to say that you shouldn't keep in touch with people or call them or anything like that. But, but I think one of the way that I'm going to approach college is to really, really work on building our relationships while there, and building great friendships that I can have for the next four years.

So that is all the questions that I'm going to answer this week. So diving into this week's interview today's guest is Evan Haines. Evan is the co-founder of aloe house and a leader in the compassionate care model, as well as being a very active member in the recovery community.

After his own journey to sobriety, he now works with individuals to help them obtain and maintain sobriety through compassion rather than control. So if you guys want to check out more of Evan's work, you can go to aloe recovery.com or follow him on Instagram at, at it's Evan Haynes.

, and as always links to anything mentioned by Evan and aloe house and all of these amazing resources will be in today's show now.

So without further ado, let's jump into this episode.

Thank you so much for joining me today on she persisted.

Evan: Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here and thank you for inviting me.

Sadie: Of course. So can you tell me a little bit about you and your story? What led you to becoming sober and working in the recovery industry?

Evan: Yeah, so I've been alive for like 46 years and I guess I've been sober for about 15. So I was 30 when I realized my life was falling apart a little bit or at least I wasn't It wasn't going the way I maybe felt it should. And I'll, I'll back up a little bit you know, but to sort of set it up in a non-linear kind of Quintin Tarantino movie type thing.

Imagine I'm in jail in LA County jail. And I've imagined maybe there's been some horrible mistake. Although, you know, I had kind of come to out of a blackout and handcuffs on a curb after a car accident where I'd hit a car with a person. And I mean, thank God nobody was hurt. I could have killed somebody.

And that was kind of where I was at. And that's what my life had kind of come to them. I'm a, a nice guy I'm sort of intelligent. And that was kind of the best I could do. So backing up and kind of Telling you how least I think I got there. I grew up, I think like a lot of families do nowadays in a home where, where there were people suffering from mental health problems, addiction problems divorce, some of the things I think we think are normal.

You know, it turns out can be difficult, difficult for, for a child and for maybe a sensitive child like myself. I was an only child definitely introverted, shy, and you know, I grew up visiting my mom in psychiatric hospitals. She was a wonderful woman. She was highly intelligent, hilarious.

One of the most incredible artists maybe ever this beautiful stylist, unique person. And and she, and she struggled. She had had her difficulties in, in childhood. And when I was 14, she took her life. She took her life. And I remember, I mean the day, literally the day before, you know, just despite all these adversities, I was still fairly solid.

I had a good group of friends. I was actually at a birthday party and I remember I wanted to stay overnight. And we were having a pool party and pizza and watching movies. And, and I called my dad. My parents had been split up and I called my dad to ask if I could stay over. And he says, you know, you need to come home.

We're going to come pick you up. Him and my step-mom and somehow sitting out there in the curb. And I just knew it. I knew, I just knew before they got there. I knew what happened. I knew she was dead. And I loved her. I mean, we were very close. I would live with her on the weekends and we'd go see movies and go to McDonald's and go to the park and just hang out and watch TV.

We were really close and I knew it. My dad told me, and I think I'd lost my grandma like a year before where I'd cried and bawled. My grandma was really this rock for me. And was so loving and stable, you know, but by the time my mom died, I remember even at her funeral, I didn't, I didn't shed a tear. I didn't cry.

I was just shut down. I shut down. And almost, I wonder

Sadie: you talked about being super sensitive and I'm wondering if you were as sensitive when you were grieving that second time, or it was just completely internalized

Evan: a hundred percent. And I, and it was just too much. It was just too much. I mean, I, I didn't cry until I was like 35 years old.

I mean, I might've cried once, but I mean, bald, like sort of appropriately for something so. So painful. I was telling a friend who had suffered from mental health problems who had attempted suicide a few times, and that she'd survived. And I was telling her, I started reading her, this letter that adopt our family doctor had written me about me and my mom and my mom, and I could feel it coming up.

And I was like, Oh my gosh. As I'm talking to him, I just started bawling, bawling. I bawled like that recently. Alexa, so, you know, and we've done a like a staycation at the four seasons near our house, I guess that was Valentine's day. So February we watched this movie. If you're, if you ever have a chance called Paris, Texas direct, directed by VIM vendors.

And there's the scene at the end where this. Mother's reunited with her son and my mom was, I mean, I can get chills just thinking about it at night, ask Alexa, she turned around and I'm balling. I did it again. Exactly. She'd never seen me cry in my life and I did it again. Just, you know what was that a month?

Not even a month or two ago. So though not knowing how to deal with these feelings from that age where I'm literally calling like my bad friends, my sort of like emo friends the next day after that, you know, I'm with my sure. Goody-goody friends one day and my sort of goth emo friends the next day. And that just set me off.

It was cigarettes, it was weed, it was LSD and it was alcohol and ephedrine pills and whatever. But I mean, I went to school, I went to college, things started definitely falling apart. By the time I was I was supposed to write my master's thesis and I kind of struggled with that. I turned a two year master's program into like a six year or deal, but then I moved to LA and I didn't know I had a problem until honestly I moved here.

I'd before that accident, I drove drunk frequently and you know, I would drive. Up against a bunch of parked cars. And I mean, I was a mess. I was just a total mess. And I lost any sense of, you know, the kind of things that matter, or just a sense of passion or values or wonder all these things I think are kind of essential to our mental health and certainly a sense of belonging and a sense of being safe or a sense of, I don't even know what, what necessarily what these things are, except I know when I feel them, it's like living,

Sadie: you're either moving in emotions or you you're

Evan: living, living.

And I, I, my life, I think I've become really just a one dimensional and So I was sentenced by a judge to AA. And I remember like my first meeting and there was a girl speaking to the podium and just the way she talked and the words she was using, I was like looking around, there was all these other cool people and I'm like, these are my people.

And I found, I found my people, all these other people just like me and it felt great. I mean, it took me another five years to kind of like find my people. You know, so anyone who was in recovery, who is in a, maybe doesn't like the meetings, my, my advice is to keep looking. And, you know, eventually when I found that crew of people, those are still my best friends to this day.

That was 10 years ago. That was where I met Alexis out of that community and my life just kind of blossomed. And that's, you know, that's where we started a aloe house at the time, but 10 years ago, in fact, June 1st it'll it'll have been 10 in 10 years. Oh my gosh.

Sadie: That's amazing. Yeah. That it's, it's very interesting.

And I kind of want to ask you about that community aspect of it. It's I've heard so many times that it's crucial for recovery and you say you found like your true community years later. Do you think that your initial community was just as beneficial in your journey and then your, you had different needs that were met later on, or it was you just waited to find your people for, for awhile?

Evan: That's a really good question. I know it was kind of like that in the beginning, like that first meeting I went to, it was like celebrities. It was like cool people. They were never. I mean, I, I could have done more to kind of reach out or try to make friends, but I never felt totally welcomed there. Things weren't clicking.

It was enough. It was enough that for whatever it was an hour, a day affidavit, I can immerse myself. I bet you started going to like say a men's meeting where, you know, you would sit in a circle and everyone would share. So for the first year, I mean, I didn't say a word and I would go, but I would listen to speakers.

These like really like inspiring uplifting speakers. And that was kind of enough, you know? And then I went to the men's groups where I could share, I was, I had to, you know, and then I started making friends or someone, you know, to take me through the steps or, you know, or I would go out for lunch after, go for coffee after it really wasn't until that kind of five-year Mark.

And I think I've had like a. An AA sponsor at the time, he said, you know, you really got to go get a commitment. And I think I was moving to Malibu and I found this meeting that was outside of the Franciscan monastery, overlooking the ocean with the mountains all around you under the blue sky. And I was like, I'm going to go to that meeting.

And I asked the field guy used to set it up. I said, Hey, can I have a commitment? And he goes, yeah, sure. You can set up the chair. So I would go like every day and set up the chairs. And then, you know, what's funny, that's where I met my friends and eventually met Alexis, but that wasn't quite it. The catalyst was, it was before we started aloe house.

Basically my life fell apart. Jared, my business partner here, my best friend and I, we like lost everything. We were in the film business and we failed like in this kind of ball of flames and just went down and lost. All the money we had and this idea, we were going to make a movie and it just totally disappeared.

And so then I really dove in, I dove in and I would share about this, honestly, that, you know, my life's falling apart, but I'm not going to drink or use about it. And here I am and people started at the first time ever, you know, someone would come and ask me to take them through the steps. And I was like, Oh my God.

Like I finally really, after five years it took understood what kind of AA was about. And that's fine. I mean, no one anyone who's kind of in early recovery, I don't think needs to necessarily worry about sort of timelines or what they're supposed to do. I mean, really AA didn't start like that. It wasn't about that.

It was about. It was about community. It was just about being with other people. So, so to answer your question, and that's a great question. I think that my needs must've increased and especially at that crisis point, because, you know, just because you're sober doesn't mean bad things, aren't going to happen.

And here I am, I'm, I'm in recovery, I'm sober and I'm having a total crisis. My whole world's falling apart. Then I needed to dive in and it turned out as I dove in, I became more useful. Really what it was is I found out I wasn't, that kind of identity who I thought I was, I thought I was this kind of sober guy.

Who's now going to be a filmmaker. And all of these things that I thought kind of made me what I was and gave me my value. It turned out that those things, weren't what I was and what I was with someone who could, no matter what I was going through, still kind of be there for other people that in that we can kind of go through these things together.

And that's, that's what it was.

Sadie: Totally. So you mentioned early recovery versus when you you've been sober for awhile. And I wanted to ask kind of a two-part question, one being what early recovery is like that emotional experience. And then when that shift takes place, what's so different.

When are you finally past that threshold where you're like, I'm no longer early recovered, I've made it I'm, I'm sober and, and I'm gonna, I've been this way for a while. What's that difference?

Evan: It's a really good question. So I remember I was obviously sentenced to hae, but I happened to like it, like I would take my court card to get signed after the meeting, you know?

And it's for those people who have to go, not the people who want to go, but I would say, no, no, no, I want to be here. I know you're signing this, but don't worry. I'll be here that I go. Okay. Like, and You know, and then, so I felt at home and, and, and I, I never would have thought I could do that for 15 years.

That's for sure. Maybe a year. I mean, I wasn't honestly, it wasn't, I guess thinking like that. I thought though, I remember before I even went to my first meeting, I thought if I can just learn to be comfortable in social situations, that would be huge. That that would be huge. And then after kind of going to those first meetings, I'm seeing people putting away chairs or talking to new people or doing all making coffee, whatever it was.

And I thought I added one more goal. I thought if I could just learn to be useful. So I had these sort of twin goals, if I could be comfortable in social situations and be useful that maybe I would stick around to. To sort of see what happens and that's what I did and I stuck around and I guess both of those things happen.

So, you know, when, when did it change? When did I know? I was like, in the clear it's different. It's going to be different for, for everyone. Like not everyone kind of goes to their first meeting and it's like, I'm home. Like, I mean, I remember before I went to my first meeting, even the morning after my last night drinking where I'd like cleared a table of food at a Mel's diner and was trying to fight everybody.

And you know, I was in bare feet and I was diving into bushes and stuff like that. My friend walks into my bedroom the next morning and he's. Recounting all of these things I did. And I'm like, Oh my God, I didn't do that. Didn't I, this was only a week, by the way, after I'd been arrested and gone to LA County jail.

So, and where I had, remember, I remember telling my cellmate in jail. I said, I think I, I think I have a problem. I think I got to switch to beer and I did. And I did the first night I was out in the second night and the third night I had a shot at the bar and it's kind of the last thing I remember. And so my friend walks in and he tells me all these things and he goes, I think you're an alcoholic.

And I was like, I am an alcoholic. Like I was like relieved. I was like calling people like, guess what? I'm an alcoholic. Like, I was happy that I finally had like a word for it's. So

Sadie: validating valid in my head

Evan: that there's like something I can like, kind of. Identify or, or attached to that. There's a vocabulary that I can, that I can use to, to talk about what's what's happening.

And, and I still think that's true. So it's, it's not going to be like that. I know there's people who struggle. And so I've never had like a, I'd never had like a relapse per se, where I know people who have, and they struggle and they're kind of like back, back and forth and that kind of almost becomes their thing.

So my version of it, you know, may not kind of work for everyone. I just happened to like, get it right, right away. And I loved it.

Sadie: Yeah.

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Kind of a random question,

you said you used drugs as well as drinking. What makes it so that you identify as an alcoholic and rather than as a drug addict or what kind of help someone make that

Evan: differentiation?

So that's a very good question. I have to probably drink more than I did drugs. I happen to do drugs play, identify, you know, identify with like kind of why nos or, you know, alcoholics. I could, I remember I would go to dinner parties and I could drink probably at least a couple of bottles of wine.

And I would get like physically anxious as I watched, like those other bottles go down, I'm watching everyone else drink. And like, like we, I get outta here. Like the liquor store is going to close. Like I definitely relate to people who drink alcohol. I know there's people who more so relates to drugs. I think You know, bill Wilson who founded a happened to, and Dr.

Bob has his partner happened to be alcoholics, but there was also other people I think, in early AA who, who did do drugs. And they often went hand in hand, like were bill Wilson got sober, was it was a place called town's hospital in New York. It was very kind of fancy. And, and the owner of the facility towns, he had some cure, it was called the Bella.

Donna care was actually this kind of plant medicine basically is what it was that sent you into like a delirium. And they would give you, they would administer this cure every hour for like 50 hours. And that's where bill Wilson had his like white light experience, but I digress and that Bella, Donna cure was originally meant for like narcotic addicts.

And though towns figured out it also happened to work for alcoholics. So they were treating both those people, but. Then what happened is people really identify, you know, that AA is for alcoholics. It's finally loosening up now where someone who's, maybe doesn't even like alcohol, but they could identify as an alcoholic, go to an AA meeting, find all of the same benefits as they would at say an FDA meeting.

But the problem is an early AA, maybe not the earliest, but at some point, maybe during the fifties or so, I don't know exactly when it happened, but they became very exclusive. Like you had to be an alcoholic. You can't, you can't talk about anything else or they call it outside issues. And some people are still like that.

What then ended up happening actually is a guy named Chuck DJ right down here in Santa Monica. Got into a fight with AA. He was like a dope addict. He was a, you know, he was a narcotic addict and he wasn't even feel welcome at AA. So he went and started this off thing called synonym, which was actually

Sadie: therapeutic boarding schools in troubled

Evan: teen industry.

Yes. Yeah. You know about that. So that's, so that's the Genesis. Really? It was the fact that, that Chuck Diedrich wasn't accepted. That led to all of that. Of course, there you go way back into the history of our mistreatment of people with mental health problems. And so that's why Chuck Dietrich's approach resonated is because it contains all of that violence and punishment and control and seemed perfectly natural.

And of course, as we know, as people like my solid it's beautifully illustrated how that influence of Chuck Diedrich spread. So from direct lines, you know, from, from Sinan to Eagleville hospital in Pennsylvania to Hazeldon, which was. Hazeldon based on the AA model basically, but now it's been hijacked by synonym and still to this day addiction treatment, we don't even, people don't even know because they don't know where we've come from.

They don't realize the degree to which has impacted and influence our business, our business, our field.

Sadie: It's insane. It's, it's a topic I can just go into for hours because it makes me so angry and you're never aware of it unless you've been like within the treatment industry and have those experiences and seeing it yourself because it's totally a hidden world.

And unless you have that emotional connection, you would never be like, huh, I wonder what happened there.

Evan: And the only people that, that we seem to think it's okay to still use this approach with our poor people and children. Yeah. Poor people, poor, poor people and children of any kind of economic background.

It's

Sadie: terrible. I know right now there's 10,000 kids in troubled teen industry programs that are signed away because they don't have their own rights as an individual. They're not an adult yet. And it's, it's insane. They can be legally kidnapped and put into these programs for years. And you would never know, unless you you've known someone that's gone through it.

Evan: And parents think that they're, they don't know what to do. They're so low that

Sadie: they're healthy so much compassion because they're being told what they want to hear. They're being told we can help your child. We see this is not your fault. We've, we've done this before we can, we can fix this. And that's all they want to hear is that their kid will be okay.

Their worst fears come true and someone's giving them the answer.

Evan: And, and, and no one, I don't think so. I'm writing a book right now called America is addiction and I'm I've learned so much. I had to I'd learn so much in order to be able to say anything, you know? And so one thing I, I learned was sort of the history of how we treat people with mental health problems.

And what was really interesting was that, so up until about the 14 hundreds, leprosy was a big problem in Europe and there was 19,000 of these leprosy area around. Christian Europe where, you know, it was like a charity. We would help these people. We would keep them contained. But it was, it was also redemptive that are helping them, but somehow redeem us that it was both like, kind of a sign of God's kind of punishment of them is this awful theory, like, you know, bad things happen to bad people.

Good things happen to good people. If they have leprosy, well, they must've done something wrong. Right. Which is the. Anyone who thinks that hasn't read like the book of job, for example that it's more complicated than that. Of course. So these leprosarium somehow around in the middle of the 14 hundreds, leprosy was kind of cured.

It just kind of went away. These leprosy were working, they were keeping an isolated and it went away and now they have these empty 19,000 empty leprosarium. Well, it took, took 150 200 years or so, but they started putting vagrants and people with basically mental health problems into these leprosarium changed from charity to punishment and control that they needed to be punished.

And so, for example, in Paris, these this was the birth of the asylum basically. And in Paris it was called the general hospital or the Opetaia and Rao and whereas an around 1500. There every European city had a, had a wall around it and these Gates, right. And so they were called the archers and they would chase away all the vagrants and they would chase them out into the woods.

And they were called the archers because they would chase them with bow and arrows. And then they would, they would stand guards at the Gates to make sure that they didn't come back into the city. 50 years later, when the, when the general hospital opens up they now were called the hospital.

Archers are the arches of the poor. They would go out into the countryside and find vagrants and bring them back and put them into the general hospital. That's what they're doing. That's what they're doing in the middle of the night. When they come. Grab someone and put them in a van. This is the history of, you know, and then, so the, the asylum existed like that, you know, where they started in the around 1930 started using Labatt, gummies or electric convulsive shock therapy or Metrazole or diabetic comas, all of these horrible brain damaging therapeutics.

They were called until 1950 when Thorazine was brought to market, which was basically the Labatt army in a pill. And that was the sort of birth of modern psychopharmacology and, you know, which became a huge business, but the same spirit that people had to be managed, that they were somehow defective, that they were broken, that they were, you know, just to have less value and that this, these ideas persist that there's something wrong with them, right.

That they need to be more like us.

Sadie: And it's totally deflection. It's like, if they're not me, then I'm not associating with these issues. They don't resonate with me. It's totally a deflection thing, which is just so, so crazy because if you humanize and you validate and you relate to these experiences, the other person is so much better off.

And, but you would be accepting that you have the same, the same problem.

Evan: Exactly. And so that solution to instill the sort of way we understand addiction today, which is that it's this chronic relapsing brain disease. Doesn't take into account the sort of context out of which. Addiction rises. We're starting to learn about adverse childhood experiences.

We're starting to look about, you know, look at social determinants of health. And so my book originally was going to be to kind of promote these, these new emerging ideas. I mean, they're, they're 20 years old now. And then if you think about it too, I mean, even Freud was talking about the way our parents give us complexes and what I realized as I'm writing this is that's not enough that, that yes, that's, that's a big part of it, but there's something more.

And so the, the ingredient that I added to the problem of addiction and how I understand addiction is I believe it's closely related to the disenchantment of the world and that we live in this really sick world. And that you just pointed it out, that that it's a deflection. So addicts became the scapegoats because that's what that's what the lepers were.

Right. We were able to put all of our kind of problems on that. They're the sick ones. They're the ones with the problems. They're the ones attracting God's wrath. And thank God it isn't us. You know, obviously we're the, we're the good ones. We're the ones God loves. And, and, and that tradition, I mean goes way back.

Obviously it's an ancient tradition where they would literally put all the sins of the community onto a goat ritualistically and send it out into the desert and they were somehow redeemed and cleansed of, of, of this negativity. What's interesting actually is the Greek word Farrakhan for drug means both.

It means medicine. It means poison and it means scapegoat. They all come from the same root word. So this is the idea that Paracelsus the, the, the Alchemist says that the, the sort of poison is in the dose or the medicine is in the dose that one substance take alcohol, for example, it could be therapeutic in one dose and totally fatal in another dose.

But that that, that scapegoating is this kind of ritualistic spell. I mean, it's a spell that you kind of put, it's like a kind of sympathetic magic that is supposed to help us, but that. You know, we're, we're, we're scapegoating the wrong people. And as we kind of create this paradise, say, America is this utopia we're creating this paradise.

Well, everyone who doesn't fit in who's poor or who's a person of color, or who's mentally ill, which are these categories that we created hundreds of years ago or more that they don't fit into our paradise. That, that, that we, that we keep having to build these gulags and these prisons. This was a concept when I can, Derek came up with it within the concept of paradise is kind of the, the hell or the Gulag because we keep excluding these people.

And so those walls around those cities and the leprosarium, we have to go back so far. So the last time we were kind of sane as a culture I mean, frankly, we might have to go back thousands of years in order to. To get there, but it's, it's crucial that we question everything about the way we live together and really who's good and who's bad and who's healthy and who's sick.

It's it's frankly, it's this Alexis and I just watched the matrix over the weekend. And honestly, I hadn't watched it in 20 years, but that's what this is. And, and it's that shock of waking up to kind of who we are, which is the process of recovery, right? Where we learned to kind of, I guess, accept ourselves and understand our dark Nesser, whatever that is.

Well, this is what America needs to do. We need to kind of wake up to the fact that we're not who we think we are and it can be shocking, but it's crucial. It's crucial that we accept ourselves in full.

Sadie: Yeah. So I have two follow up questions. One being when all of these super unethical treatments are being instituted historically whether it's the bottom or over medication trans medical simulation and all these kinds of things asylums is there a clinical evidence at this point that's like, okay, maybe this is working or is it

Evan: well, there always was.

I mean, each time one of these new techniques was, was invented. It was the thing. And only when a new thing was invented, did we kind of say, Oh no, no, we, we didn't quite have that right now. We know this is the thing, but as far as like the therapeutic community model, what's interesting is there was no research that it ever worked.

And in fact, there was plenty of research that it didn't it's more like a feeling one study showed that it isn't even necessarily that a program has that. Philosophy that, that violent kind of punitive therapeutic community model, you don't even need that you can have a fancy Malibu treatment center, but you could have staff who believe that people need to be punished, that we're sending the wrong message, that you know, that we're rewarding, bad behavior that we need to break them down before we can build them up.

All of these ideas. Are are, are either part of the program or they're just part of what the people who work in those programs, because they've been through recovery because what was so funny is AA rejecting Chuck Diedrich, it's kind of like rejecting their own shadow. Maybe that those things we don't want to admit about ourselves, well, it'll come back and bite you.

It's like a double-edged knife, you're cutting a piece of bread or meat with a knife, and it's cutting into your hand. So it'll come back and that's, what's happened to AA. And that, that Sinan model that Chuck Diedrich modern really poisoned AA, where you have this very controlling sponsorship. Like, I want you to call me before you brush your teeth in the morning and it's this kind of weird, like almost SNM type relationship, which if someone's into that, that's cool.

But I think a lot of them. People who are involved in it, just think, well, this is just the way it is. Well, no, the way it is is when bill Wilson came to talk to Dr. Bob, who reluctantly agreed to hear this guy out for 15 minutes. He told his wife, Oh, I'll listen to him for 15 minutes. Bill Wilson came and just talked with him.

He didn't lecture him. He didn't tell him he needed to do anything different than what he was doing. And they ended up talking for hours and the rest was history and it was really just them meeting as, as equals and, and talking. And I mean, they got into cool stuff. They were into seances and the itching and bill Wilson was into the psychedelic drugs and niacin and all this stuff.

So, you know, I don't think people realize really what and, and really AA was, was, was a branch of the new thought movement and about the mind care movement and things like that, and about the power of our mind to heal and really about the power of fellowship and community. So anyway, I have lots of ideas about these things, but there was no greater kind of poison in the, in the treatment world then sending on in the therapeutic community model and, and in fact, All of the, the research shows that more empathetic, more kind of non directive non-controlling techniques and the therapeutic bond itself more than any particular modality is what creates good outcomes.

Sadie: This week's episode is sponsored by teen counseling. I can not tell you guys how many DMS texts emails I get from teens, parents, even friends asking, how can I find a therapist? How can I enroll in therapy? How can I find a therapist for my team? How do I tell my parents? I want to go to therapy.

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Yeah, no, it's really interesting when you're talking about the treatment programs and how it's not necessarily the philosophies and values of the program themselves, but maybe the staff that work there. And I, that totally resonates because when I was at a therapeutic boarding school in Montana, I even since then going back and talking to the different people.

That run the program or our higher up staff, even when I was there, those relationships were very authentic that the intentions were there. They had so much compassion and care for these kids. And I always said like, if this staff member was every staff member, there wouldn't be an issue. But the, the people that are spending 10 to 12 hours a day at a time with the girls, 24 seven, who are, who are severely struggling, are coming out of high school with a graduate, barely a graduation, looking for a minimum wage job in the middle of nowhere, five minutes out the Canadian border, because that's the only place that's hiring.

And so

Evan: it's, and you've heard of the Stanford prison experiment, right. Which they had to shut down after a few weeks because it got way out of hand and supervised there's something. And again, I don't think it's because humans are necessarily violent and controlling. I think it's within us. We've obviously had to survive historically and from an evolutionary point of view.

But I think way more than that, we've been communal we have been empathetic and, and these things, but that there's this again, because we don't except within ourselves, like, I mean America, which, which I love has a violent history. There's a history of violence here. And until we admit, admit that about ourselves, it pops up in the weirdest places.

And of course, it's going to pop up in the sort of mental health treatment world and addiction world, because these are again, historically the, the people who have been excluded or, or exiled or devalued. So they're, they're the most vulnerable or children are often too, right? Again, it's the poor people and children.

These are the people that we've decided it's okay to basically treat like animals. That

Sadie: was my exact followup question, which is we've made progress in many other aspects of the mental health industry. Just taking that one example of people being exiled and excluded. Why is it still okay. That, and why do we as a society deem it.

Okay. For a treatment for the, either the impoverished church or adolescents to be conducted

Evan: that way. Yeah. So. I think, and this is one thing I've discovered right in the book is that it's a bit of a myth that we moved from the moral failure model that it's kind of this singular line that we moved from the moral failure model to the brain disease model, which, you know, makes sense.

That's I guess, an improvement, you know, we're supposed to treat people with a disease compassionately, like they have diabetes or cancer. That's the idea. So when you unpack this, though, it's actually a little more interesting than that. If you look at it we still treat it as a moral failing, you know, where you look at the prison population and something like 20% of people in prison still does it.

Two today are in for drug charges. I'm sure it's another 20, 30, 40%. I don't have the figures in front of me, but who were in there either to get money for drugs or who were under the influence of a drug while they committed their crime. And the drugs are expensive because they're illegal. They call that the prohibition price, which only really serves drug dealers creates this huge profit center.

The whole it's, the whole drug economy is based on prohibition. If you made them drugs legal tomorrow, that it would collapse. And I, I'm not sure there will still be black markets, but you would see a huge decrease in the sort of theft and criminality that often goes along with

Sadie: and the violence as well.

We hear

Evan: about yeah. And the bar. So, so, okay. So we've just proven basically that, that we've have both a moral failure model and a disease model, but then you look at the disease model. If I have a chronic relapsing brain disease, That's kind of like a sentence in its own, right? Like I can't, I can't like fix my brain.

I can't like get in there and it's chronic and it's relaxing and I'll have it forever. I mean, even those first it's so funny because AA helped kind of bring about this new enlightened perspective that the, of the disease model, which was an improvement. But it didn't maybe see that it was going to create just another trap though, in a way they're writing in their first edition of the book.

Like we who have recovered, you know, we want to show you how we recovered. Like they're talking about having recovered nowadays, you go to an AME and you're like, no, no, no, no, Whoa, you never recover. This is a lifelong thing. We're addicts. And so even, and this is where, where I would sort of even take issue with some of the adverse childhood experience.

Sorry, social determinants. Not that those things aren't true. Those things are true, but that's just behaviorism. That's just sort of stimulus response. That's that's environmental determinism. So now whether it's medical logical determinism or environmental determinism, so even the way out of biological determinism is the environmental distress.

There's always determinism. So how do we ever recover them? And we know from experience, people recover through this miraculous revelation. I mean, I don't know. I don't know why people recover there. There's no other way to describe it, but it's a miracle and it involves community. It involves some kind of surrender.

It involves all these things that have nothing to do with, with medicine or. Very little do with more morals. I mean, the people I know who are, who are kids, I know Maya salad it's takes issue with the fact that in a, do a moral inventory, that you wouldn't have someone with cancer or diabetes have to do a moral inventory.

I think that's, and that's such

Sadie: a big part of adolescent treatment is the accountability letter. You, you get in, you write this giant letter of everything you've done wrong and you read it to your parents,

Evan: teenager, teenager, you did nothing wrong. You did nothing wrong. So we pathologize everything, which is why, again, I don't like the disease model.

So we pathologize what do they call it? For, for adolescents like conduct disorder or oppositional defiance, we're pathologizing, normal team rebelliousness. It's normal. There's nothing wrong. And, and Are again, addiction and mental health problems. They don't, they don't occur out of a vacuum.

They're not genetic. They occur out of a context that can, they occur out of family systems, which when you're talking about young people, when you're talking about our childhoods, that's, that's really not something we're responsible for now that doesn't necessarily mean that blaming our parents is the, is the, is the key because frankly, they're just going to blame their parents for gonna blame.

Their parents are gonna blame their parents, but, but at least we've kind of see like, Oh, I see where this started. I see these patterns. I see how I'm repeating these patterns because those were my role models like, Oh, ah, I see. So, so what I think is we. We're getting to a new kind of frontier. So we've gone through the moral failure model.

We've gone through the disease model. We've we've, we're, we're, we're kind of rushing through the social determinant model, which includes those family systems even. And I think we're getting to something even more transcendent, even more powerful, which is turning around and changing these things. Like we can, we can change our family.

We can change the world. We can change the conditions that lead to so much suffering. I, I literally just in the last probably couple of months have, have had a major change myself centered around the idea that 99.9% of suffering in the world is totally avoidable. And people like take issue with, and it's so funny because it's almost like people are going to try to police my imagination.

Like you're not allowed to think that, or you're not allowed to say that. Like I honestly wholeheartedly believed literally up until a couple of months ago, I would've said, well, life is suffering. There's a certain suffering of life. Like there's a certain amount of pain. That's normal. Like I honestly don't believe that anymore.

I don't believe that it's all avoidable. We all create so much. We caused so much pain. We've suffered from pain, but I mean, the real pain of the world is occurring in neighborhoods. We've probably never been to parts of the world. Most of us have probably never been to that. We're all intricately connected to.

I mean, there's kids here in Los Angeles who go to bed hungry in one of the richest cities in the richest country, in the world. And I believe I also happen to believe in something called open individualism that we're not actually just separate individuals, but that we're actually one being one organism kind of experiencing itself, subjectively from different points of view.

Some my feeling is if there's kids starving in Yemen or in Los Angeles, that I feel that pain. I actually believe that a lot of the pain of the world, a lot of it, our addiction problems are caused by the fact that that is us and

Sadie: heightened by the level of news, we're constantly consuming. You can understand why stress rates rise, anxiety rates rise.

Because if you go back 200 years, you wouldn't have been hearing about all of these different things that are going on daily. It, it makes sense. It's just amplified.

Evan: I believe though, that those are signals like that in the same way. Like Johann Hari says that addiction or sorry. Well addiction, but that depression and anxiety are signals like that they would have been evolutionary signals.

Like if we were separated from our tribe, we would have felt depressed and anxious, and that would have motivated us to find our way back. I believe in the same way that the earth is talking to us through the media, perhaps. And it is so chaotic, but there's a way to make sense of it. That if we have like a conceptual framework that basically says, you know what, the children shouldn't suffer, but you can be super basic about it.

Children shouldn't suffer. We shouldn't mistreat women and everyone should be clothed, fed and housed because we have the ability and the resources to be able to do that. So that's like your starting point. And that we live in a community it's, it's, it's a huge 8 billion person community, but it's a community and it's all connected.

It's like that family system, and it's not occurring in these sort of little isolated vacuums that, that, that we normally are, have been taught to imagine ourselves as being so, so yes, however, disturbing the news is I think it's important. I actually happen to think journalists are doing God's work, trying to give voice in the same way that scientists with their instruments are telling us, like we're seeing some really disturbing things.

They have to do it in this really kind of like detached, dispassionate way. You know, my hair would be on fire and I'd be screaming from the rooftops like we need to change now. And, and I feel a lot of positive things. But I believe we won't solve the addiction and mental health problems until we solve these kind of larger problems.

We just won't, we won't. And that, and that drugs don't cause addiction that something like less than 1% of, you know, we're blaming big pharma. We're always looking for kind of things to point our fingers to. And we're missing the whole, the bigger picture that less than 1% of people who get prescribed opioids, for example, who didn't already have a substance use problem become dependent on those drugs.

So none of the things we thought it was none of the things we thought it was.

Sadie: It's crazy. So before we go into kind of navigating adolescent addiction and kind of steps you can take to work through that, I want to quickly ask your opinion on wilderness therapy and, and that, that form of treatment, because I feel it's a very interesting perspective to add to the, to the show is we've had a couple of girls on that that went through that themselves.

Evan: Well, this is, and this is part of you. You mean the therapeutic community or bootcamp, tough luck.

Sadie: You, the, the gooning where you're your parents watch is two men come into your room and they, they pick you up. They put you in a van, they take you to Utah, Montana, Colorado, these places, and then you carry on your back.

A tarp filled with the spoon you whittled and your, your sticks. You use to make your files fire. So you can earn the privilege of dinner that night with, with. Young adults that have graduated college and loved being in the woods. You see a therapist that doesn't necessarily have their doctorate once a week.

And you're there for six to eight weeks with no contact. No, no clothing note. Well, you have the one pair of outfit that they give you, but no, no shelter, no parents, no, no contact. And then, and then you leave and you're, you're often sent to therapeutic boarding schools or residential or other long-term care.

Evan: I think, I think it should be illegal. Yeah. I think it should be outlawed entirely. What's interesting is, is like a lot of things. It's so close to being like, there's there, there is something

Sadie: there it's like you breaking down the, the hierarchy of needs. You can see why someone could build up healthier connections and healthier ways to get that love and belonging, but it's slightly missing the Mark

Evan: rites of passage.

What happened to all the rights of rites of passage and initiations? Like there's a role for something that looks kind of like that, but that's the, that's the shadow. And again, it's,

Sadie: you're missing the willingness, the choice to go. All of those things that make it a successful experience,

Evan: you know, being, being probably the most important thing because I'm sure how many young people would want to do that.

Like. Hey, are you, it's how you presented it. It's like, Hey, we've been living in this part of the world so wrong. We've become so disconnected. And how would you like an opportunity to go, you know, connect with others, to connect with nature, to learn about yourself, to learn about the world and, you know, through philosophy and storytelling and, and that, that, that, that you could have a situation that was challenging, but that didn't need to be cruel.

So it's, it's, it's all these little nuances and it's because the people who are delivering those programs, aren't aren't right with themselves. They don't know themselves and they don't know their own. They don't, they think they're doing good. They don't believe that they're capable of violence and abuse, which is exactly what they're doing.

Sadie: So they're told they're doing good to constantly reinforce by families. And I think it's also a really interesting thing. Kind of like Stockholm syndrome, ask where these girls come out of this and they're transformed. They believed it saved their lives because when they're at, they were at home, they were miserable, they were isolated.

They were, they were navigating all these things, which were somehow worse than this experience in the middle.

Evan: Imagine you could have all these young people going to like plant trees and like, you know, saving the world. Like there's so many volunteering, some like the peace Corps, there's so many great opportunities that would have all of the positive benefits with none of the violence and abuse that, that is so expensive,

Sadie: right.

For the a hundred thousand dollars for those 18 weeks there ever longer there, there's

Evan: not insane. And so, yeah, I think, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're missing rites of passage. We're missing kind of Those initiatory rituals and things like that. But no, I'm definitely not a fan. I would, I would do whatever I could to help raise awareness around it.

And thank you for, for you doing that. If you ever need my help, you know, if you want to go, I think we should actually go to these places and like liberate the kids.

Sadie: That's what Paris Hilton did. She went and she stood at the exact school that she attended, where she was isolated and physically abused and malnourished.

And so all this kind of stuff. And she went back with hundreds of people and they stood outside with their microphones and they told their stories and it's still there.

Evan: We need to do more of that. And so again, it's, until we can see that the homeless people on the street likely grew up in, in conditions that would, that would break most of us.

They're living in a car with their mom, or, you know, who's who was running from an abusive boyfriend or husband who, you know, they're then given a choice to go to a to a homeless shelter, which are dangerous places unsafe where they're not allowed to bring stuff where they have to leave in the morning where there's, you know, abuse and violence going on as well as opposed to an actual home, like like an actual apartment that's safe that they can lock the door.

Things that will anyone takes takes for granted. So until we learn to see. And it's so funny. Cause I'm, I don't know if I'm APS or definitely like spiritual, but not religious. And though, you know, a lot of people would say, this is a Christian nation. Well, I believe it's like Matthew chapter 25 verse, like 42 or something like that.

Jesus says like, you know, you, when I was hungry, you didn't feed me when I was naked. You didn't close with me. You know, when, when I was in prison, you treated me badly. And his father is like, no, no, no, no, we never did that. And he says, what you do to the least of the, you did to me. And basically you're going to go to hell.

Like until we learn to see that those people who are struggling, who are suffering are like literally the divine child that is.

Sadie: What we're built off of as a, as a country, as a nation into society, all those. Right.

Evan: Like, and, and if we don't understand that, like we're just doomed, we're doing until we understand that.

Yeah,

Sadie: totally. Okay. Last segment kind of being adolescent addiction getting your expertise. Do you guys work with adolescents at aloe house and I'll link all of that in the description? So anyone that is pursuing adolescent addiction treatment or dual diagnosis treatment can pursue that. But I think primarily going from the perspective of a parent, what, what can they do coming from a compassionate perspective and then maybe secondarily to a teen, what steps can they take?

How can they get support if they, they want support? And they, they recognize that that's what they're looking for and feel they need at this point.

Evan: Hmm. So I think for, for parents,

It's really important that they see their role, that it's too easy to point fingers. That again, I mean, they can blame their parents. It's not like, you know, we're born into these roles and they've been modeled for us and we're born into these relationships and these, these ideals and, you know, cultural values, like, so it's not, it's not that it's anyone's fault.

It isn't that we're trying to blend people, but for that parent to see, to become aware of those impossible situations that they've created for their, for their children and to understand why they've snapped under to understand why they've withdrawn to understand why they have escaped. All of these, you know, it's, it's either snapping as the psychotic break withdrawing as the depression escaping as the rebellious newness you know, or it's just low level anxiety, or it might be even that kind of type a workaholism, which has its own health consequences as well.

And of course, adverse childhood experiences, don't just cause addiction that cause you know, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, all of these other, you know, sexual promiscuity and things like that. So to see that too, except some have that they're involved in this world that might not be healthy and to see how they might've been downloading a lot of that those expectations onto their kids and kind of hurting them in a.

In a, in a way and that's okay. Like as long as they stop now, like that's, that's what happened. And what's important now is that we process it and we get it. We get through it together as a family, like addiction is a family problem. It's I think it goes even bigger. It's a city problem. It's an America problem.

It's a global problem. It operates on all these scales, but one scale, it never operates on this kind of an individual when there's no such thing as, as an individual. So that would be my advice is to find someone, even like, Alexis's mom, this is her philosophy, or to call us if they ever want advice.

And there's other family groups that I know of around the country. And so. If you do have a link to, to our website or whatever people can find me you know, and I would point them in, in all these other directions, but to sort of learn, to accept their own responsibility. Right. And that model is that for the young person to can then see, well, their part, everyone can kind of see their part.

And then most importantly, alter their part to perhaps even start playing a new game, right? These are all games we're playing. These are the sort of social game. And the fact is the game we play is very unhealthy. It's very destructive. It's this game of, you know, he who dies with the most toys wins and it's killing us and it's making us miserable and there's more to life than that.

Completely.

Sadie: So to a teen, if they're listening that is, was kind of in a similar head space to you, which is like, I think I have a problem. I think I might have to switch change something. Is it their first step to go and sit in on an AA meeting? Is it,

Evan: it might be, it might be. And there's there there's young people, AA meetings.

I remember one of the first things we did when we opened up our house, I was like on the older edge of being young 35, but we went to the icky power, which is the young people in AA world convention. It was in San Francisco. We had so much fun. They were like dancing all night. We were going to, to the diner and going to see these amazing talks by these like just mystics, just awesome inspirational people.

And And there was just this community of young people who are maybe because the drugs are so strong nowadays and the stakes are so high. Like a lot of them are getting sober, younger, like teenagers. And so they can find, I mean, you're

Sadie: surrounded by it at a younger age, whether if we argue that nicotine is a drug of vaping is becoming increasingly common in, in school settings and in social situations.

And so you're just inundated by it at such a young

Evan: age. Yeah. Find, find your people. I mean, find, find your passion, find your people. I mean, hopefully your parents, hopefully your parents kind of, hopefully our parents give us that apology that, you know, we, we deserve, but sadly many of us aren't ever going to get, so learning how to kind of live without that.

And I think that that's building a family of choice, right. We have our family of origin and then we find our family of choice and we find, we find some kind of passion and. And some kind of interest in some kind of community of other people who share that interest. And that can be an, a, it can be outside of AA.

Don't do things despite your parents. I mean, although it's a great way to hurt your parents, you really are only gonna hurt yourself. And, and that there is kind of a diminishing return to these drugs, which can, can indeed be therapeutic. I mean, drugs serve me well when my mom died for a long time until they didn't.

So I'm crashing cars and I've lost all kinds of sense of self of of who I was and of what's important. And so I think it's, it's be safe. Number one, these drugs, particularly fentanyl kill people. They kill young people. This is it's, it's almost like it's definitely an epidemic of, of deaths amongst mostly young people.

So the very first thing is be safe. And find, find someone who kind of speaks your language, find someone who's not going to judge you and who understands. Who's not going to blame you, but instead sees the sort of systemic problems. You know, again, we're, we're born into this world where, where it's this kind of like race from the maternity ward to the crematorium.

And we're just supposed to like work at Starbucks and make money like, or going to school, maybe like that. There has to be more than that. And so I understand anyone who kind of wants to escape from that. It makes perfect sense. So just be safe, try to find other people who, who understand. And there are, there are people in, hopefully people like yourself and you know, what, what we're doing, you know, we can kind of point people in the right direction so that they can find ways of, of coping that aren't self-destructive because frankly, as long as they stay alive, what young people will eventually learn is that everything changes and who knows we could be right on the brink of, of some kind of revolution where we're the whole world changes.

It kind of feels like that. And to stick around because this, this could be really interesting in the next kind of 30, 40, 50 years. Very interesting.

Sadie: You can totally see it happening. It's I would where it feels like we're in this storm right now, so we'll have to see

Evan: we're in like the birth canal and you're in that like transition state where it's very difficult.

It's very difficult and things could go very wrong. But we're, we're almost there. We can see kind of the light at the end of the tunnel and to stay curious, they interested like find, find books, find YouTube high quality books, high quality YouTubes of people. Who've got a track record or some kind of substance and intelligence to them who will set them off on these paths of, I guess, enlightenment or liberation or seeking that, that to be a, to be a seeker, which sometimes involves drugs and often doesn't that the seeking is what's important and just don't give up, try to stay, stay interested, sticks, cited, stay enthusiastic.

And I understand when people aren't, I think I've gone through different. Kind of dry spells and I'm at this point in my life, I'm 46 years old where I'm, I'm extremely enthusiastic and I'm, I'm on this path and learning so much. And so it's never too late. Things always change things, just stick around, stick around and things will, will change.

And, and the best advice I could, and I know how hard it is, it's different than my generation gen X. It was different for millennials. And I know it's even harder for, for the newest generation, but you know, if you can become independent where we're not dependent on our parents, where there can be all those unhealthy strings attached to almost everything that in its own right, is very liberating where we can kind of be criticized or control because we're.

Autonomous. I mean, we're autonomous within a community and we have our own responsibilities and accountabilities, but we're not kind of beholden to parents who, who might not be ready to kind of make that leap themselves and to kind of, it's very humbling. It's very humbling to have to admit that you might've got it wrong.

Sadie: Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's for so many. It's, it's their worst fear to have done your child wrong or misled them or made a mistake. And so it's completely understandable why that's the scariest thing to, to admit that, and there's, it's, it's downhill from that point when you admit that and you can move forward and repair the relationship rather than continuing.

Evan: Yeah. After that, I mean, it's downhill in the sense that you're just coasting. Like they think that that's there, they're going to catch on fire. If they admit that they made a mistake, but really they're going to be free. Like that's again, how this is kind of an individual isolated thing. It's a, it's a system thing.

So the young person hopefully creates sparks this conversation. Shakes the, the matrix a little bit, I suppose, and that the parent kind of takes the opportunity to themselves also open themselves and kind of become vulnerable and become fluid and ready to change. Like there, there are big kind of earth changes, I think, way beyond our control.

And the fact is, and that's scary for people. They don't like to admit that they're out of control or that it's right up there with having got it wrong. Like I've got it all wrong and I'm not in control. I mean, there's, there's forces at work, I think in the earth that are trying to kind of wake us up and it's very disturbing.

And though the nice thing is once we're awake, it becomes much easier to deal. Even like with that information you were talking about, like it fits, you know, like I. Feel the suffering of the world. We become open to that, but it doesn't destroy me. It just, if, if anything, it just gives me more motivation to, to fight and to fight for what's right.

And to fight for what I believe in and to speak my mind. And I think that that's that's the most important thing. I think it, you know, talking about kind of open individualism. If we understand that we are not just our isolated cells, but that we are everything we are kind of the whole universe experiencing itself.

We're not like afraid of dying anymore. Like we're not afraid of anything. So that's this huge empowering sense that we get. Now the flip side is that we feel the pain of the world. That's the trade off. Yeah, that when we were imagining we were isolated individuals, all we felt was our own pain. We couldn't quite put our finger on where it was coming from, because again, I think it's coming from way beyond that, a boundary we created for ourselves.

But we, we open ourselves to, to all kinds of things, into amazing opportunities and to be part of this thing that is so much bigger than ourselves. And that's meaning that's love, that's all the things in life that actually matter.

Sadie: Absolutely. I think that's the perfect place to, to kind of wrap it up and, and kind of let people have a really strong takeaway to go with.

But thank you so much for joining me is, is one of the most phenomenal episodes I've recorded and then so many takeaways for teens and parents and anyone that's looking to, to change their life for the better and really build that life worth living. So thank you so much. Thank

Evan: you, Sadie. Thanks for having me.

It was fun.

Sadie: If you enjoyed this week's episode, please share with a friend, family member or post about it on social media.Make sure you're subscribed to the show. So you don't miss any future episodes and leave a five-star review on Apple podcasts. Let me know what you think. Thanks for listening. And I'll see you next Friday.

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