279: The Ripple Effect of Healing in Community-Based Addiction Treatment with Dr. Mark Lasko

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It's Patricia Carpice, host of Untangle ORG, the award-winning podcast that covers topics like optimizing brain health, finding your purpose, how to sleep better, harnessing the power of anxiety, successfully changing habits, finding more happiness and joy, and overall, all the many ways to live your best life. If you enjoy hearing from thought leaders, neuroscientists, psychologists, nutritionists, business leaders and more, join us wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Hello there, lovely souls. I want to invite you to join me for a special webinar. Well, we'll explore the powerful emotion of shame. Now, shame can hold us back in the cycle of addiction, especially when it comes to sex and love addiction. So join Eric PERSON and I as we guide you in understanding how shame impacts your relationships andblocks your growth and learn the ways to empower yourself to break free from its grip and become the person you aspire to be. This is your opportunity to make a profound transformation. So visit theaddictedmind.com forward slash shame, take a leap of faith and reserve your spot. You won't regret it. And I look forward to seeing you on the webinar.Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Addicted Mind ORG podcast. My name is Dwayne Austerlund PERSON and I'm your host. And today our guest is Dr. Mark Lasko PERSON. He has more than 18 years of experience in the health care and mental health fields, and it has overseen the care of thousands of patients, including prisoners and rehabilitation,and he's motivated by a strong desire to help others. Dr. Lasko earned his PhD WORK_OF_ART in psychology and before joining Samaritan, served as CEO of Hermitage Hall ORG, a facility treating adolescents with serious and persistent mental illness under the backing of United Health Services, Inc. Dr. Lasco has led Samaritan Recovery Community ORG, a nonprofit agency that has provided treatment for addiction and co-occurring disorders in Middle Tennessee since 1964 into a period of great growth andadvancement. And today, Mark is going to talk about client-centered care and why that is so important in creating a treatment facility that can really help individuals get recovery and the incredible importance of community and facilitating community in that process. It was great to talk with Mark PERSON. I can tell that he is really passionate about his work and is excited about Samaritan ORG and where it's going and how it is really helping the community in Nashville, Tennessee GPE. So I hope you enjoy this interview. And if you're getting a lotout of the addicted mind, please share it with a friend or write a review in your podcast app you're using right now. That really does help the podcast get found. I really do appreciate it. It means a lot to me. And you can also continue the conversation online. Join our Facebook group. Just go to Facebook and type in the Addicted Mind ORG podcast and click join. All right, let's go ahead and start this episode. All right, everybody, welcome to the Addicted Minds. Got a wonderful guest today, Dr. Mark Lasko PERSON. And Mark PERSON, we're going to talk about client-focused care, client-centered care, and why that is so important, especially at treatment facilities and to be able to really help people get recovery.But before we start, I just want you to introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about you and why you got into this work and why this is so meaningful to you.

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Well, my name is Mark Lascoe PERSON. I have been in this field, a field of addiction treatment for about 21 years now. And I really fell in love with it right out of the gate. A lot of my family on both sides, both my mother and father's side, struggled with addiction. And so I started learning more about that as I got into college, got into psychology. I love helping people become their bestversion of themselves. I like to say that counseling kind of found me. I was one of those kids in high school, middle school even, that everyone came and told me their problems. So it just felt like something I already had been doing for years when I met with the guidance council to figure out what kind of career do you want. So I knew I wanted to help people become a better version of themselves and, you know, achieve more. And when I got into the field of addictions, it was just like, wow, this is where it's at.You know, this is where you can make a substantive change in a person's life and not just the life. I would say even in my current role running Samaritan Recovery ORG community, I would say that I tend to think of myself as a person that helps build families more than anything. helps build families more than anything because a family doesn't exist if one member of them has a substance use disorder problem. Like that's going to break up a family. That's going to cause problems. So that's kind of what I started at trying to think like, how do you help families?And I went into the jail system. I worked in jails and prisons all over the country for about nine years. And then I was like, you know, take a step even further before that. If you can help them avoid problems with substance use disorder, you help the majority of people not get entangled in the legal system. So I kind of always went backwards from where I started trying to think, what's the stepI can take that prevents the problem that I'm seeing now? And addiction is as far as I've gotten so far. And I feel like that's a good place to start. Yeah. Yeah. And I would imagine, you know,

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having that experience working with all of those people, you start to get all this experience. You start to see what works for people. You start to see what's important and what they need. to see what's important and what they need. So I would love to know how that early experience of working in addiction treatment started to influence how you work now and what you're doing presently.

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Yeah, I would tell you, one of my first jobs, my first facility that I ran was a correctional system in the state of Delaware, James T. Vaughn Correctional Center ORG. And I served as a director of mental health there. And I started just seeing so many people had like all these commonalities. So I started keeping just a notebook sheet of paper and marking, you know, one, two, three, four, cross out the fifth and going to the next one. And just seeing how many of them had these commonalities.How many of them came from a family where they did not have a nuclear family intact, whether that meant that they were raised by family members, raised by the state, raised by, you know, community members, foster parents. How many of them had that? And then the other commonality that I looked for is how many people had substance use problems. And for both of those, it was well over 90% of the people, patients that we were treating who were incarcerated, had checkmarks in both of those areas.Like, wow, those are really, you know, when it comes to research, you say that there's a strong correlation there. Might not be a causation, but at least there's a correlation. These things always seem to happen together where the families were struggling, and that caused people to use substances, and that caused them to get locked up. And so many of the people were good, good people who were locked up for 20, 30, 40 years. And I'm not exaggerating at all. And you look back,you're like, man, if one thing had been different in their life, they wouldn't be sitting here locked up

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today. So I kind of started paying attention to that and noticing, as I mentioned, addictions

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really starts people down a difficult, difficult path. And I thought then, and I still feel, that if you can help people get into recovery, you're helping to build the fabric of society, the community in which they live in. So that's kind of

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what I saw. Yeah, like this just ripples out. When you help someone get into recovery, you're helping everybody around them do better and feel better and mitigate some of that suffering. One of the things that you also mentioned is that, and I had the same experience working in, I didn't work in prisons, but I worked in the legal system helping clients navigate. It's either court time or treatment. And so a lot of them chose treatment.But what I did notice too is that, oh, my gosh, these are such good people. They want so much to get recovery, even though they're mandated to be there, man. When we cut through the stuff, they wanted recovery. I mean, oh, my gosh. And yet they were trapped in this system.

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And it's tragic. It's heartbreaking. It truly is. Yeah, it is truly tragic how once the legal system, correctional system, how do you want to define that. Once it gets its claws in someone, it is so hard to break out of that.

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It is so, so difficult, which is why part of what I try to do

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at Samaritan ORG is try to keep people from getting entangled in that system to the best of our ability.

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Yeah, absolutely. And that's so good. So let's jump into the topic that we wanted to talk about, which is client-focused treatment care. And what does that actually mean? When you're trying to help these people not fall into that system, what are you doing there? And why is that so important for clients who are

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struggling? Yeah. So I'll open that by giving a little bit about who Samaritan ORG is because I think it's so vital to what we're talking about and why we are client-focused. The first I like to explain Samaritan ORG. It's a very well-known story taught in a bunch of different religions coming out of the Bible that teaches just that we can give tremendous amounts of compassion of people that other people don't think deserve it. And that's a good thing that we ought to do.Samaritan ORG is based on that. Recovery is the second part of our name. And it's so important to know recovery is not what most people think of it as. Most people think recovery is just not using drugs and alcohol. That is like a tiny part of it. If that's all you focus on, you're not going to be in recovery very long, right? Recovery is about restoring everything that someone lost because of substance use disorder. So I don't really like to tellpeople, picture you go out in the morning and your car has been stolen. You call the police, you go through all the reports, but you don't care about that. You just want to say, are you going to recover my car? In other words, you're going to get back what somebody took from me. That's what Samaritan ORG recovery is about, not just about getting someone clean and sober. Lock someone up for 28 days, they'll be clean it sober. That's easy to do days, they'll be clean it sober. That's easy to do.It's about how do you restore self-worth, dignity, sense of purpose, sense of community, family relationships, job, housing, transportation, all of those things are part of recovery. So those two things are really vital. And then the third one, which lines up with your question, although I think that the other two do as well. Community is a part of our name, Samaritan Recovery Community ORG. We don't want someone just to come in here, do a 28-day stay and leave. The goal is for them to stay connected for as long as they need.We have a very good alumni program. One of our alumni has been an active participant for 32 years after she went through our program. That's amazing. And that says something about, that says something about client-centered

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care, doesn't it? Yeah, absolutely. We want to be a part of this person's life who's coming

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through our program. And the reason for it, I guess, is that everyone is made up of, you know, at least a body-minded soul. You can break that down into other fragments as well. But everyone is unique in the way that they're made up. Everyone is unique in what drove them to use for the first time, their family history, their maybe permissive attitudes about using certain substances versus others that is very related to their environment growing up. Everyone comes in a unique setting. So at Samaritan ORG, we look at them as unique. We are12-step-based, and we believe very strongly that working through the 12-steps gets people into recovery, but we also don't believe that that fits everybody. And so we also do medication-assisted treatment. You meet the patient where they are. That's the essence, I think, Dwayne PERSON, in my opinion, of, you know, client-centered care. What does this person need? And how can I make Samaritan ORG fit so that they're getting what they need so that they can be a part of our recovery community? Yeah, absolutely, because we're all so

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different. And I'd also say our wounding is so different. You were talking about earlier these family dynamics that people grow up in that kind of sets the stage for addiction or helps facilitate the addictive process, so to speak. And then I'm also tying that back to community because a lot of times what my experience is, is that people who grew up in these dysfunctional dynamics never had a healthy community to be a part of anyway. And so it's like learning how to be part

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of a community in the first place. That's so true. Years ago, and this was, I think, during President Bill Clinton PERSON's term, goodness knows, I don't want to get political. But Hillary Clinton PERSON came up with a saying, or publicized the saying that it takes a village to help raise a child. Do you remember that?

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And it was seen as somewhat controversial at the time.

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But all it really means is if all they have is the family and there's no outside community, then they've got a very isolated family to help them. And the way that, you know, we look at a community is that, you know, you're a part of our family when you come through Samaritan ORG. You're not related to me. You might not look like me. You might not identify like me. We might have different belief systems. But you're part of our extended family now. And so we want to help support you because like you said, people come with different types of wounds. Different types of trauma is what we say in theclinical world, right? Trauma-based care. You know, what traumatized you? And people don't even understand that. So many people think, well, you know, I haven't been traumatized. I've never been

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in the military. Yeah, the military is pretty good at traumatizing people, but there are a lot of other people that are good at that as well.

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Right. That you could make a case that the legal system traumatizes a lot of people. And I think that's an easy case to make.

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So, you know, thinking about that, that everyone comes in differently, how do we as treatment providers, people that want to see people living their best version of their lives, which is in recovery, how do we facilitate people getting there? And part of that is not just changing ourselves, but changing the community that we have and that

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we're in. How do you go about doing that and how do you welcome these people in, especially if they've been hurt by other communities before, right, their own maybe family of origin community and, you know, being caught up in the system, being stigmatized for substance use, all of that. How do you start to create that environment that says, hey, you are welcome here. We want you and we want all the stuff that comes with you.

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That's a great question. People often ask that question. How do you do it? And it's really a very, very simple and basic answer, almost too simple when you think about it. And it goes back to, you know, compassion. You show people compassion and love.You think about like a puppy that you, I don't know if you've ever rescued a dog from a pound or one of those places, but if you ever get a rescue, they come in traumatized.

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You know, you go to pet them and they duck because they're used to being hit, right?

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How do you overcome that with an animal? You show it low. You show it that you care about it, right? So we redid our mission statement about a year ago, maybe a little less than a year ago, to focus on the fact that our primary goal is to be the most compassionate provider to substance use disorder patients. And the reason we chose that was twofold. Number one, we're a small nonprofit doing.We have 130 beds, and we are bootstrap organization over the last 60 years. Very well run, very well managed. But we're a small operation in a very big world just in Nashville, Tennessee GPE, where we're

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at headquartered, let alone the state of Tennessee or the southeast or the United States GPE. We're just a drop in the bucket. We can't compete with other organizations. There are addiction treatment centers I know that I like that have masseuses that come and visit them, that have, you know, five-star chefs that prepare meals, horse their equine therapy.

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We can't compete with that.

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What we can compete with is our mindset, Dwayne PERSON, which is that we're going to love each and every individual that walks in here and let them know that we care about them.

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And the remarkable thing that I found, and you and I haven't talked about this, Dwayne PERSON, I'm going to go out on a limb and say you've probably seen the same daggone thing that I saw. When you're dealing with patients, whether they're sentenced to life in prison or even to the death penalty, dealt with patients like that, when you show them

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that you love them and that you care about them, it transforms them. Yeah, absolutely.

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And so I would say that's how you go about that in the small sense, you know. And I think about that illustration that I read years ago of, you know, some kid throwing starfish into the sea. There's like a thousand up on the shore and a guy says, what are you doing? I'm saving a starfish. You'll never save all of it. I know, but I'm saving this one. I'm saving that one. I'm saving that one. It keeps going. I mean,that's how you change the community, right? You start with what you can do. Hello there, lovely souls. I want to invite you to join me for a

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special webinar. Well, we'll explore the powerful emotion of shame. Now, shame can hold us back in the cycle of addiction, especially when it comes to sex and love addiction. So join Eric PERSON and I as we guide you in understanding how shame impacts your relationships and blocks your growth and learn the ways to empower yourself to break free from its grip and become the person you aspire to be. This is your opportunity to make a profound transformation. So visit theaddivemind.com forward slash shame, take a leap of faith and reserve your spot. You won't regret it. And I look forward to seeing youon the webinar. Yeah, absolutely. When I was working in, this was back in California in the Prop 36 LAW program, it was like care instead of prison, you know, drug treatment instead of prison time. And, you know, a lot of these people had come out on probation. And understandably, they didn't trust me at all, right? I was just part of the system and just part of that whole process. But what I found is as I, as they begin to realize that I respected them as a human being, that I really wanted them to get better. I really wanted that they, they were able to let their guard down.And then that's when I really saw, like you said, community really start to flourish with each other because they let their guard down with me, but then they also let it down in the groups. And then they just started supporting each other. And it was amazing to see these people who were, I have to say, their backs were up against the wall because if they didn't get sobriety and they were drug tested, they were going back to prison. So everything was on the line. And they, you know, 99% of them were rooting for each other. It was amazing to be a part of that process to do that.It's just, I don't know, there's nothing better.

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Yeah, and you pointed out something that I didn't mention that's so vital, which is when you do that to one person, the goodwill they give to you gets rubbed off on other people as well. Then they give other people the benefit of the doubt. It's like, well, this guy, Dwayne PERSON was good. Maybe the person that I'm talking to next in court is going to look at me that way as well. So it's got this ripple effect, really, where you change one little thing and then it just changes a person's life.And again, it sounds very cliche, but I mean, kind of the Beatles PERSON had it right. All you need is love.

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You show people love, it fixes a lot of the problems. Again, it doesn't fix everybody. It's not going to heal a sociopath or psychopath or things like that. But for the people that we're talking about who want to be in recovery, it's such a game changer.

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And one thing that I'm really super proud of at Samaritan ORG is that we have been doing this long before I got to Samaritan ORG. They've been showing this kind of care. And I often point people to our Google ORG reviews. I think we get a 4.7 or 4.8 out of 5 stars. And I like to point out that's Google ORG's rating system.And we're rated higher than Google ORG rates themselves. That says something about the type of compassion rates themselves. That says something about the type

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of compassion. That's pretty good. Yeah, that says something about the type of compassion. Well, I'm thinking about the lady you mentioned earlier that's been in your alumni group for,

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you said, like 30 years. I mean, that says something about community. So tell me a little bit

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about how you create these spaces for people to come together, right?

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Because there has to be some way, I think as a treatment facility, we have to help, I guess, grease the tracks for that to happen, right?

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Like, because it's not going to, it doesn't necessarily happen totally naturally. It's got to, it's got to be some underlying force that kind of starts the ball rolling.

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You're definitely right. So some of the things that we do to help create it, and you're going to love this since you're talking about client-centered care and community and family, one of the things that we do is we offer a meal every month for all of our clients to come back and share on our campus so they stay connected. People love to eat. Everybody has to eat. And everyone loves a free meal. And it doesn't

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matter if it's a spaghetti dinner. People come back. So that's like these are little things that we put in place. That's one of them. The second is that we do an aftercare group as well. And we really focus on at admission. We focus on building the family and getting the family involved. And not everybody has a family. So our family program is called concerned persons.

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So anyone who's concerned about that person can come in. So a lot of people, you probably saw this as well, Gwain PERSON, a lot of people, by the time they get to needing residential addiction treatment, their families turn their backs off. They don't want anything to do with them.

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So, okay, is there someone who does care about you that wants to come in and we can work with you guys about how you guys can build a dynamic? So when you leave here, you can stay, you know, in recovery.

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So we focus that right at admission, start building that. And that then carries over to aftercare and say, hey, what you guys have been experiencing and are concerned persons, we offer that as well in an aftercare program that meets on a weekly basis initially and then an alumni group that meets every month. And that's kind of how you systematically build a community by putting these things in place. And we've seen our aftercare go up and down up and down but right now we'reclose to 100% of the patients that complete our program or then staying involved in our aftercare program and they're not staying in it because i asked them to you know it's not a favor for mark

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they're staying because they see that there's a value in it and and whether the value is that

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their transitional living counselor is the one who really cares about them and they want to stay in touch with her or him because they really care about them, that's a lot of this, by the way. And I have nothing to do with that. That's just good counseling that the team is doing. Or whether it's that they say, man, you know what, I like being able to come in every week for the aftercare. It keeps me accountable. There's someone here who's going to ask about how I'm doing. That's a

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benefit. But somehow, the client, the patient who is trying to stay in recovery, they have to see the

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value in it. And if they think there's a value, they'll stay involved. And if no one is staying involved, and I say this to your audience at large as well as to myself, you know, if you have a program, if people aren't staying involved, you're doing something wrong.

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Because the people going through your program don't see any value in it. So you've got to build that value. Yeah. And that takes a real focus, like you said, like creating the opportunities for that to happen. But I think I've had the same experience. Once you start to create those opportunities and you create the environment of caring, love and respect and dignity,I think almost all of us want to be part of communities like that because it lifts us all up.

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Definitely. Again, there's a reason that people like to come to Samaritan ORG. And it's because they see the value. They see that they're not just coming in to get dry, not just coming in to get sober. Not that we don't preach that. We do. That's part of the program.But the ultimate goal is we want you to recover everything that you've lost, and we're here to help you. And so we have our case managers. You know, I mentioned that T.L. counselors, and I feel bad that I'm not going to be able to mention everybody. But everyone at Samaritan ORG plays a role in that. But what you said was really important.It's all about the intentionality of it. You have to be able to say that. And without having myself hung the back, you really have to have that intentionality from the top all the way down to really be able to make an impact. And we've been very fortunate to be able to. One of the things I'm excited about at Samaritan ORG is we're dipping our toe into affordable housing as well.

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So we just had a brand opening, moved into our new building. We're still in the process of moving into our new building, which is moving us from 56 beds to 130 bed facility in downtown Nashville GPE. We're very excited. Those beds are very, very needed for the community. But we also are building 195 affordable apartments. That, again,is part of the community. These are not apartments that are just for us. We do want our clients to be able to graduate and move into affordable housing, but we have 195 because we want anyone in the community to be able to have an affordable place to live. And we like the idea of having mixed individuals. Not everyone there needs to be in recovery. There need to be people who are not in recovery.You know, there needs to be a mixed environment because we want it to, I don't know, not to simulate, but mirror and reflect what society is really like. Yeah.

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And to be able to get the skills. and if you have that supportive community around you and you're in that environment and things come up, you've got the support around you to help you navigate it so that you don't fall back into that addictive process. Because, yeah, I think that's awesome. I love to hear that, and I can hear your passion for it to be able to help, help these people. And like you said, I think, you know, once you start to do that, it's, it's contagious to just keep supporting people. It just, it feels really good.

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It really is. Another question I have for you is when we look at this, when we look at the treatment model, we also want to look at providing care that's evidence-based. And I know you've talked about that a little bit.

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Can you talk about how this lines up with evidence-based care providing these kind of

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therapeutic environments? Yeah, yeah, sure. So our basic model of care, and I would say we have really two basic prongs, cognitive behavioral therapy being the kind of underlying and then trauma-based care. So we try to be trauma-informed in the presentations we do. Our counselors are very fortunate. We are very eclectic. So any therapeutic style that evidence based, they're welcome to use. So we have counselors that stick to just CBT. We have counselors that come in and do motivational interviewingand anything in between that wide gamut of therapies. But in every one of the therapeutic modalities that are evidence-based at all, and there's no ones coming up all the time. An old friend of mine, an old psychiatrist friend of mine, once told me, he said, no matter what you dream up, it's not going to help everybody. But no matter what you dream up, there's somebody it'll help.

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And that was both encouraging and daunting at the same time. Right. So there's going to be constantly new evidence-based modalities because nothing helps everybody, which is why you need the person-centered. If there's one thing to work for everybody, that'd be the only thing that was used. So, you know,

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every single modality that's coming out, though, says person-centered is the way to go. Whether it's CBT, whether it's MI, whether it's trauma-informed care, all of them are going to focus on the same thing, which is you've got to focus on the individual and take in their personal challenges, environment, and trauma when you're putting together their treatment plan of how they're going to be successful. We're fortunate in Tennessee GPE that the state agrees with that. So, you know, anyone that gets state funding has to agree to do person-centered treatment plans, which, you know, we've been doing that before they got on board with them. We appreciatebeing in a state that recognizes that and helps it. How do you build that person-centered treatment plan?

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When they come in, how do you start to craft that? Do the therapists meet with them and start to put those pieces together? Or do you have a plan? How do you start to meet the person

Speaker 31801.94s - 2019.22s

where they are? That's a great question. And there's no wrong answer for this. There are other places I'm going to share what we do at Samaritan ORG. There are other places I run that have different plans and those are okay as well. At Samaritan ORG, it doesn't actually start with the counselor. It starts with the admissions clerk. The admissions people that are sitting down saying, okay, tell me about what you're going through right nowso I can try to determine what caseload you need to, what level of care you need. So it starts even before they get in. I guess you could even go back to the screening questionnaire that's on our website that starts gathering information. So it starts with what is the person's cause? Why are they here? Did they come here out of jail diversion? Are they here as part of probation and parole? Are they here because their family wants them to be here? Are they here because they're just tired of being sick and tired? Right. So find out what's the cause. Why is someone here?And then what's the barrier to you gaining that success? And then those two things inform that client-centered approach of saying, okay, now that we know why they're here and what their challenges are going to be, we can put together that treatment plan. So if the person says, look, I'm here because I got arrested for vacancy, you know, I got arrested because I'm homeless. And I was passed out on a public park. I got arrested. They threw me in jail and said, look, this isone too many times. If you don't get treatment, we're going to lock you up for the next three months. That's why I'm here. Okay. So why are they here? Initially out of court, what's a barrier to them being able to be successful? One of them is that they are homeless, right? Because we can get them clean and sober. They don't have a place to live. They're still going to get arrested again for just wandering around. So, you know, those two, and you could pick anything here, Dwayne, I'm just given a scenario. Those two things need to be a part of that person's treatment plan, right? Now, if someone else came in and said, yep, I'm here just because my wife says I have a problem and I finally agreed to it. Okay. So that's a completely different scenario, right? We probably need to spend more time focused on that person getting into our concerned persons group, right? Becausewe know that's going to be one of their obstacles to being able to having success. So that's kind of, that's how Samaritan ORG does it. It's very systematic. We start at the beginning. We look at what their problems are. Then we look at, you know, what sent them here, what are the challenges to being successful with whoever sent you, and then moving on from there, okay, let's put the treatment plan together. And that's where the therapist comes in, sometimes a nurse practitioner, medical director, someone like that that gets involved to say, okay, let's put, let's put paper to pen and say, these are the challenges that are involving you.And we try to do everything holistically. So we look and say, you know, is there something wrong with their mind? Is there something that we need to put down related to the way that they think? Cognitive behavioral therapy, I said, that kind of underpins everything, really, in almost all of addiction treatment. CBT underlines it.It may sound complicated for those of your listeners that might not know, it's really easy to understand. Cognition is how we think. Behavior is how we behave. So the idea of CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, if we can change the way you think, we'll change the way you behave.It's that simple. So looking at mind, you know, for body, mind and soul, the mind, are there areas of faulty thinking that we need to address? For medical, are there medical complications? Do they have high blood pressure? Is there diabetes not under control?You know, do they need to get started on a medication-assisted treatment to be able to stay in recovery?

Speaker 02019.72s - 2038.72s

And then finally, the soul, we have a very religious sounding name and we do follow the 12 step, which is the idea of there's a higher power. We're not affiliated with any denomination or anything like that. We do believe that it's important though. So we have a chaplain. If someone wants to get involved, they do that. So, you know, that's kind of how we approach this holistic care.

Speaker 22039.36s - 2066.78s

And how long does this process take and how long do you stay with a client? Because it sounds like, you know, care will evolve as you're saying, you know, as you get new information, you might add a piece of treatment or maybe a piece of treatment isn't working and you do something else. And it sounds like you're adapting to the, to the person as they're evolving through this process. How long is that process? And, you know, yeah, how long does that take?

Speaker 32066.78s - 2119.24s

And it can vary, as you just mentioned, you know, because we are looking at a patient saying, you know, this client that came in, maybe we thought they needed five days of detox and then they could go out. Now we see, no, they definitely need more support. So then they go into their, you know, intensive residential that can last up to a month. Could be as little as 25 days, 32 days, somewhere in that mix, probably 28 being the most common. That's, you know, a full month, generally, that you're living on site year. You can stay for that. After that, we have transitional living. Transitional living is where someone doesn't have a safe place to go or someplace some people don't have any housing to go to,no job, no one to go back to. You can move into our transitional living program. Duane, that's a full year program or up to a year. If you can find stable housing before then, you can leave early, but up to a year you can stay. So someone can see.

Speaker 02119.24s - 2129.7s

I like to brag about this, Dwayne PERSON, because we generally only serve what most people refer to as the underserved. But really, people without insurance without money.

Speaker 32130.3s - 2158.14s

That's who we serve. So I like to point out that people can come to Samaritan ORG with no insurance, no money, no family support, no job, and no housing. And for the next 13 months, they can stay on our campus. We take care of them. We help provide for them. We ask them to pitch in when they're able to as well.We help them get jobs. We help them get housing. And then they move on. So really, it could be as short as one week and as long as 13 months, Wayne PERSON.

Speaker 22158.42s - 2177.5s

Wow, that's amazing. And that's amazing that you help this population to be able to get the support. The individuals out there who may have no other resource to go to can come here and get this support. I just love that you guys are doing that.

Speaker 32178s - 2207.54s

Thank you. And I appreciate that. What we're most excited about is that we're going to be able to now have affordable housing. So in the past, at 13 months, we cut off. and then it's, you know, stay connected with us. Now we'll be able to say we have 195 apartments on our property. You can just walk over here, keep coming back to aftercare, walk around the corner anytime you need support or when you're struggling or when you just need an ear to listen to you.To be able to have that as well, to me, is really just extending our continuum of care.

Speaker 22208.18s - 2232.48s

So it's awesome. I love it. All right. Well, we're coming up on our time here. But before you go, I love to ask every guest one question. And that is if someone out there is listening, maybe they have a loved one who's strugglingor they're struggling themselves. And you had the opportunity to say one thing to them, what would you want them to know? What would you want to tell them?

Speaker 32240.02s - 2245.58s

I would tell them that everyone is one mistake away from being the person that you look down on and everyone is one good decision away from being the person you admire. Awesome.

Speaker 22246.02s - 2255.02s

I love it. All right. Thank you, Mark PERSON, for coming on. Where can people find you? They want to know more about you and Samaritan ORG. Where can they go?

Speaker 32255.34s - 2274.04s

Sure. Social media, Samaritan Recovery Community ORG. We have LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram ORG. And look at our website. It's a unique website. It's samctr.org,s-a-m-c-r.org. Feel free to look, support us, connect with us, and check us out.

Speaker 22274.58s - 2290.36s

All right. Thank you. I will put all the links in the show notes at theadictivemind.com ORG so you can get them there. Mark PERSON, thank you for coming on, sharing your wisdom, your passion to help everybody and just support people out there who are struggling and making better lives.

Speaker 32290.9s - 2302.02s

Yeah, well, first, thank you. And thank you for having this podcast, giving us the opportunity to be able to share a little bit. It's very meaningful and I appreciate you doing that work. All right, everyone.

Speaker 22302.02s - 2392.72s

Thank you for listening to the Addicted Mind ORG podcast. As usual, all the show notes will be at theaddictedmind.com ORG. So check them out. Before we end, I want to give a shout out to dash 79 dash and their review. I have been struggling with addiction and felt hopeless and shame and guilt. And this opened up my eyes to all the trauma I have been carrying and escaping from, especially with social media to numb the pain, especially with a lot of people passing.This just not only gave me hope, but the tools to work on myself and implement change in my life. Thank you. Dash, thank you for leaving a review for the Addictive Mind ORG podcast. That means a lot to us and the work that we're doing here, that this has had an impact on your life. So thank you for taking the time to do that.I really appreciate it. And anybody out there, if you're loving the Addicted Mind ORG podcast and it's helping you, please leave us a review in whatever podcast app you're using, it does really help the podcast get found and it helps people find this information. All right, everyone, have a wonderful day and I will talk to you on the next episode. It's easy to blame ourselves for our struggles with alcohol.

Speaker 02393.12s - 2438s

We see people around us being able to control their drinking without any consequences, yet no matter what we try, we can't seem to figure it out for ourselves. My name is Jillian Teets PERSON, and I am the host of the sober-powered podcast, where I use my biochemistry background to explain the latest research and addiction and help you understand both why you drink the way you do and how to develop the skills and mindset you need to find freedom from alcohol.I discuss topics like why we think about our drinking 24-7, why we have no off switch, and why we crave alcohol. If you're struggling with your drinking or you know someone who is, then I hope that you will check out the Sober Powered ORG podcast. New episodes every Friday. See you there.