perimenopause

Breaking the Silence on Perimenopause

Empowering Women Through Perimenopause: A Conversation with Jessica Erlendson Van Remmen

In the latest Reduce the Stigma podcast, dive into the topic of perimenopause with Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen, a certified yoga therapist and women’s health advocate. With over 9,000 members in her Canadian perimenopause support group, Jessica emphasizes how perimenopause, the hormonal transition before menopause, is often overlooked and misunderstood. She shares the physical and emotional challenges women face during this phase and the societal stigma surrounding it.

Jessica highlights the critical need for education and open dialogue on perimenopause. Through her group, she provides a safe space for women to connect, share, and find support in a world that often ignores this life stage. Her insights remind us of the importance of validating every woman’s experience and offering resources that empower them through their journey.

Click here for the episode’s full transcript.

About Our Guest:

Jessica has a Bachelor of Arts having studied Anatomy, Physiology, Pathologies, Psychology with a minor in Anthropology.   A certified Yoga therapist with over 900 hours of Yoga training(s), including Pre & PostNatal Women’s Health, Jessica has been working in the field of peri & post menopause care since 2019. Her Canadian support group includes over 9,000 members and continues to grow at a high rate, indicative of a woefully underserved demographic.
 
Perimenopause is an extremely confusing time as women are often told they are too young for menopause and that their symptoms cannot be treated if they are still menstruating – even when their cycles may become longer, heavier, more painful and unpredictable.  This is treatable and women are ashamed and embarrassed by their bodies changing while their doctors are largely unprepared to help them.
 
Follow this link to get your copy of the comprehensive symptoms list and sign up for my occasional newsletter.  This can be used to show your doctor, monitor your symptoms and your progress as you add in new medications, supplements or lifestyle changes.
 
Anxiety is one of our most troubling symptoms and this track is a soothing balm for frazzled nerves.  You don’t even need to listen to it for it to work.  The patterns of 2’s & 3’s work to calm your nervous system effortlessly.
 
Jessica’s website hosts tons of resources, podcasts, book recommendations, blogs, and stories of hope.
 
link to Jessica’s Facebook group
 
The FB page
 
YouTube channel
 
Instagram

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Transcript

Whitney (00:43)

Hello and welcome to reduce the stigma. Today I’m talking with Jessica Eriendson van Remmen. Jessica has a bachelor of arts, having studied anatomy, physiology, pathologies, psychology with a minor in anthropology. A certified yoga therapist with over 900 hours of yoga trainings, including pre and postnatal women’s health. Jessica has been working in the field of peri and post menopause care since 2019. Her Canadian support group includes over 9 ,000 members and continues to grow at a high rate, which indicates a woefully underserved demographic. Jessica, thank you so much for joining me today.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (01:26)

Well, thank you for having me, Whitney.

 

Whitney (01:28)

I, you know, you are serving an underserved demographic and I want to dive right into it. Let’s talk about perimenopause. I have to say, as someone in her mid coming on late thirties, I don’t know really anything about it. What exactly is perimenopause?

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (01:49)

Right. And you’re not alone in not knowing anything. So don’t feel that you know, you’ve missed the boat. They just leave that part out of our education. You probably got like a really basic anatomy and kind of an idea of what could happen during puberty. And then most of us know menopause when your period stops. But perimenopause is the fluctuation of hormones that can happen for some women as and they’ll say, you know, up to a decade, it depends on the person.

 

Whitney (02:03)

Mm

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (02:17)

And it could involve any number of physical symptoms, but also impacts your emotional life and your, you know, your ability to work sometimes is impacted. Even for myself, I feel like I’ve had a bit of an identity crisis because I’m transitioning from being, you know, a fertile mom, I had two children. And then now I’m becoming, you know, in our culture, Western culture, you become what? Like nothing. Unless you become a grandmother.

 

Whitney (02:47)

Right. Which, yeah.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (02:47)

You know, that’s a pretty big part of your life if you think lifespan is somewhere around 75. And a lot of us are living into our 80s, especially women. So it’s a long time to be in post menopause. So that’s basically how I think about it. Peri is before. Menopause is the day that you reach that one year where you haven’t had a period. And then post menopause is the rest of your life after that.

 

Whitney (03:14)

Okay. You’re right, not taught. Even menopause, I have to say, it was almost like the thing, you know? She’s going through the change of life. Right. What is like, why have we approached this natural occurrence in a woman’s life with such almost fear and as if it’s like contagious?

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (03:26)

The change. Yeah, and I think a lot of it has to do with our ageism. Like, we are an ageist culture. We like young and beautiful, right? I mean, like, who comes to mind is Britney Spears. Everyone was all about her when she was young and beautiful. And, you know, then she decided that she wasn’t going to play into that, which was a lot of the, you know, what she did with her hair and was rebelling against what she had become. And now she’s moving into more of a mid age range and, you know,

 

Whitney (03:45)

Okay.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (04:10)

Less visible and where is her career opportunities at this point? And a lot of actresses talk about that too, you know, the pressure to change their appearance and have surgeries and avoid becoming older or avoid becoming seen as older. A lot of women talk about feeling invisible as they age because their opinions are maybe not important, which is very opposite from more Aboriginal cultures where they would honor their elderly people who’ve been through it, you know, like, and it’s very sad in a lot of ways because if we are going to live, let’s just say average menopause would be somewhere around 52. And we’re gonna live say to 82, that’s 30 years of our lives. Does that 30 years then not count for anything? Are we then no longer important in our lives? kind of like your life is over. But that’s a perception and a mindset that individual women now have decided that they’re throwing out. They’re just going to throw that in the garbage. It’s not applicable to them anymore. And I feel like a lot of us, because I’m Generation X, we don’t like authority. We don’t like being told what to do. And we’re going to rebel against it. So we’re yippee yapping online about our period and how it’s changing and what’s going on with our doctor and the husband or the work situation and we want to talk about it. Now, not everybody wants to talk about it because some people really do feel like that’s very private, very personal, and they should be allowed to do that. But I’m not one of those people and that’s partially why I started the group that I started because I wanted to talk about it. And other people that want to talk about it have joined.

 

Whitney (06:03)

Right, clearly 9 ,000 members.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (06:07)

Yeah, with no advertising. don’t go out searching for it. It’s all women coming in and realizing that compared to other groups, because I’m leading it, my personal philosophy is you Whitney, I don’t really know you, we’re just meeting. But I believe that if you want to try a certain thing, say skydiving, I would never skydive. If you want to try it though, I will support you to try it. Because this is your life, it’s not my life, it’s not for me to decide what’s right for you.

 

Whitney (06:17)

Mm, See you next time.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (06:37)

So when we have people join and they say, think, know, prescriptions, it’s all wrong. It’s like, you’re entitled to that opinion and we’re going to support you in that opinion. I will help you as a yoga therapist to stay off the prescriptions. However, if Judy wants to take all the prescriptions, we’re going to support her to do that too. And because of that, they’re just inviting their friends like, come on, let’s come in, let’s talk about it.

 

Whitney (06:59)

Yes. There are so many parallels there with mental health and substance use, the stigma surrounding medication in general. And I’m sure, I know me personally, it takes a lot for me to be accepting of a medication, not because I think down on it, but because I want to try and address it in a natural way or in ways through other coping skills and such.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (07:16)

Mm

 

Whitney (07:27)

And so hearing this approach that really, you know, we’re talking about a natural occurrence in our body’s physiology. What I’m also hearing is a cultural and societal empowerment that you are doing for these women.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (07:44)

Yeah, and definitely there’s a, every so often we get like some backlash. Well, someone will say, you’re really into HRT, hormone replacement therapy. And I’m not, right? Like I take advantage of some prescriptions, but I can’t do like a more traditional, you know, the one that they would, their go -to treatment, I can’t do because I have endometriosis. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not appropriate for someone else. And I think there’s, for me, a lot of it feels like that inclusivity. We’re including everybody, include everybody, right? And then they get to learn and they get to read about it. And then maybe their opinions might change on certain things. You know, I’ve had people come in and be like, I’m not giving up sugar or alcohol or whatever it is. And then after participating in the group for a while, they’ll start to say, you know what, did you actually really feel better? Because I would like to feel better. And then their opinion might change. But you’re not going to. You know, I have a background. This is how I learned to run support groups in Al -Anon, Friends and Family of Alcoholics. And I did that for over a decade and it’s all volunteer led. So I’m offering women recovery in my group. I just don’t talk about recovery because they’re not thinking about it in that term. So it doesn’t really matter, but everybody can take advantage of the fact that I’m going to allow them.

 

Whitney (08:48)

Mm -hmm. Great.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (09:06)

To be themselves and be wherever they’re at in their journey and take as long as they need to and go whichever path they feel is best for them. And as women, we don’t often get that. Someone’s almost always telling us what to do.

 

Whitney (09:20)

Right, which comes back to that identity about you’re a child bearer or a child caregiver as the grandparent, which doesn’t match in, I’m sure, Canada, like the US, the numbers of women who are in high successful positions is just continuously increasing. And not that there’s anything wrong with being a stay -at -home mother or full -time caregiver. That’s absolutely just as important and valid. It’s no longer, though, an accepted

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (09:45)

Hmm.

 

Whitney (09:54)

Only path forward.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (09:56)

Exactly, exactly. We don’t, everybody gets to decide and have the dignity, I think that I keep going back to that. Like one time I had recently a woman get really upset with me because she felt that I was being unsupportive of her because she was right about something. Okay. So the truth of the matter is that estrogen does not cause cancer if it’s introduced with progesterone, unless you already have something growing, and then it would feed what’s already growing there.

 

Whitney (10:25)

Okay.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (10:26)

So that is correct. She was right about that. But my argument to her was, this isn’t an I’m right group. It’s a support group. And this woman was posting a question about HRT and really needed to hear reassurance and have her questions answered in a kind and loving fashion. So educating her on something that she wasn’t prepared to hear and hadn’t asked about is not supportive. It’s not the right group. It’s a support group where everybody gets the opportunity to be right about their own lives. And you know, she didn’t really appreciate that, but I think she’s still in the group. You know, I haven’t checked. She didn’t leave right away. Sometimes they do, right? As soon as you correct them. But it’s a different philosophy. was like, if you want to be in a group that only talks about using HRT and that is the go -to and they do not discuss anything else, join a UK group. The UK groups will talk only about HRT. Yeah.

 

Whitney (10:57)

Great. UK as in the United Kingdom. Interesting. See, I didn’t know that. there are even differences between countries, it sounds like, as to what is kind of the accepted approach. Is that it?

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (11:31)

Mm -hmm or even what’s available or how well educated the doctors are. It kind of goes UK, US, and then Canada. So we’re stuck educating our doctors a little bit more than you would be in the US, but you’re still gonna have to educate your doctor more than the lady who lives in the UK.

 

Whitney (11:38)

Yeah. Well, that’s interesting. We would have to, as women would have to educate our doctors, the medical professionals who should know these things. Is this not a common component of general practitioner training?

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (12:01)

You know, it’s unbelievable. So when I decided I wanted to move from the yoga teacher training directly into yoga therapy, which is treatment of specific issues, right? So I mean, I treat women in perimenopause and menopause with yoga therapy. I was really excited to go because my program was at Mount Royal University. And I had to do pathologies with a textbook that is like the grade one kind of level one, you know, textbook for disease.

 

Whitney (12:37)

Yeah.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (12:38)

I thought for sure I was going to learn so much about perimenopause and menopause, right? I mean, like most of the yoga teachers who become yoga therapists are women. No, there was one section in the whole book that said under menstrual issues that women would go through menopause and some might have troubling symptoms such as hot flashes. That’s all it said.

 

Whitney (12:59)

Wow.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (13:00)

Nothing about perimenopause, nothing about any of the other symptoms that can, and there are a lot that can be associated. It was extremely disappointing. And that just kind of put me in that position where I needed to learn more on my own. And so that’s what I did. Luckily, I know how to do that, and it’s not on Instagram, not that I’m bashing Instagram, just don’t go there to learn about something because…

 

Whitney (13:07)

Wow.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (13:26)

People can say whatever they want. If you want to find someone to tell you menopause isn’t real, you know, or drug addiction isn’t real, there’s someone on there right now saying that. They’re wrong, but they can say whatever they want. So, you know, I’m talking research like go to the library, start taking out books.

 

Whitney (13:35)

Absolutely. Sadly. Right. And that highlights what I imagine can be significant differences amongst different socioeconomic statuses. You mentioned the UK and Canada and in the US in that three country comparison. And there’s a really big difference between the US versus the UK and Canada, which is centralized health care. And so there is also like, can you get to a specialist who may have that education?

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (13:59)

Yeah.

 

Whitney (14:15)

But then, if you look at it beyond the healthcare that’s provided or the system, that education. Do you know how to educate yourself? Has that education been provided to you or have you been dependent on maybe a clinic that is just so overwhelmed with patients in dire need that they can’t take the time to educate you? So I imagine there’s probably a big gap in that education and awareness of what the signs are, the symptoms, the potential approaches for treatment, but also coping skills. Can you help us? What are, like, let’s talk about those signs and symptoms. What could be something that a woman experiences?

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (14:58)

I’ll talk about myself because that’s, you know, I’m the expert of my own life. So my doctors were women. Like your general practitioner, your family doctor, and then I have a specialist who’s a functional medicine specialist. So she is, she’s going to look under every stone. She’s used to working with people with chronic conditions. I have an inflammatory condition. So I was already seeing her for that. And they were looking for perimenopause. So when I started saying, you know, my periods are getting wonky and I’m feeling more uncomfortable and I’m having more cramps and I’m having some trouble sleeping and I’m feeling more anxiety, they were like, okay, well, let’s start treating you. And so they did with an IUD, but I hated it. So they pulled that out and then they put me on a pill that worked okay, but then I had estrogen dominance. So then I had to switch to another pill. And then I found out I had endometriosis and then they switched me to another pill. And now I’m pretty stable. I’ve been..very stable for the last probably year and a half. did have to have, I did not have to have, but I opted to have endometrial surgery in March, which was a very good idea on my call. It was a good call because it was actually a lot worse than I was thinking or even the surgeon was thinking. She said it was everywhere. So I probably had it my whole life, but it was just asymptomatic. But in perimenopause, I was going estrogen dominant and then estrogen down. And same thing with the progesterone, right? So your hormones are doing these huge fluctuations and not at the right time in your cycle. So your cycle’s all over the place. And I think that’s part of the stigma of perimenopause because we don’t know when our period is coming. We don’t know how bad it might be. We don’t know how long it might last. Sometimes there’s clotting that’s really concerning. Like one time I was at my desk doing homework for one of my psychology classes and I thought, maybe I need to go to the bathroom. You know, it wasn’t a big warning. was just a little, hmm, might be something happening over there. So I went to the bathroom and I passed a clot. And it was like, what the? Did I just have a miscarriage? Like, what is going on here from nothing? And yeah, so, you know, you have that happening. You’re like, what is that? But for me, because I knew that that could be part of perimenopause, I could file that under perimenopause, you know?

 

Whitney (17:06)

That fear.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (17:17)

And not panic about it. That’s why I think the education is so important. And for us in Canada, what’s happening right now is one of our group members yesterday was just, you know, beyond desperate. Like honestly, she’d been talking about, you know, unaliving herself because she can’t get in to see a specialist. She doesn’t have the money. She’s destitute. And in Canada, there is some welfare kind of like bare minimum income that will keep you, hopefully not homeless and she’s in that kind of situation, man. She can’t afford to go and spend. Some of these doctors are asking for $500 for one session just to do all the intake and all the information. No way she could do that. So because of the group members being like, you can’t be in this situation, babe. Like we’re in Canada, we have free healthcare. You just have to go back like what’s close to you. And the girls talked her through it. I didn’t even get in there because, you know, it was like 53 comments got her to go back to the specialist doctor that she’d seen before at the hospital and just sit her butt down until someone took her seriously and walked out with prescriptions to try. But you think about like, why, why does this woman have to suffer to that point where she’s completely desperate?

 

Whitney (18:15)

I love that.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (18:38)

Talking to basically a room full of strangers who thank God had all been trained by me to be supportive and kicked out if they weren’t, because unsupportive people get booted right away. She could have ended up with some really terrible advice, right? Or someone just being cruel to her when she was down. And instead, she has an opportunity now to try those prescriptions. And hopefully, a lot of the time, they do make a huge difference. But it’s certainly not an even and fair situation for women in Canada.

 

Whitney (19:12)

And you said the words for someone to take her seriously. And that’s what, when you were talking about the support group, I imagined too many other people and they just missed it, right? you’re just, you know, whatever, know, complaining or, or, you know, I can’t help but think about the fact that there’s so much judgment about a woman’s

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (19:24)

Mm -hmm.

 

Whitney (19:38)

Behavior and activity actions during menopause, you know, they’re crazy, they’re hormonal, that who like who wants to acknowledge that and say, hi, I’m going through menopause or to push for people to recognize it because then you can’t just be dismissed or you’re exaggerating because your hormones are all over the place and to have to fight to be taken seriously that that’s just unacceptable.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (20:02)

It’s not right. It’s not right. And this woman I know I’ve been back and forth with her quite a lot because she has needed quite a lot of support. And she really is in that situation where they have diagnosed her with anxiety. She does have an anxiety disorder. She has gone through the hoops of trying different treatments for the anxiety prescription treatments and had reactions to the medications for that. It’s not an option for her because she’s sick from medication. Do you know what I mean? But there’s a tendency to be like, here’s the umbrella of an anxiety disorder. Here’s the woman underneath that umbrella. And then the doctor’s just going, well, she’s non -compliant. was refusing to treat the anxiety. Therefore, my job is done. I offered her this. And she even though she would say, you know, I did try that one. And I had a bad reaction to it. And this is in the same family of drugs. So please don’t give that to me. It’s going to make me sick.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (21:01)

And you know, whether that’s true or not, you really need to give the medications a try. I encourage everyone. But if you also have a belief that that’s going to make you sick, right? Should she have to take that stuff if she doesn’t want to take it? No, she shouldn’t. Especially when they know that that weird anxiety symptom responds really well to HRT.

 

Whitney (21:23)

And just because someone may say that medication does not work for me and I’m not going to take it because I’ve had an adverse reaction to a similar medication, that does not mean non -compliant. Are you kidding? No.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (21:36)

Yeah, yeah, it’s not. Yeah, it is very patriarchal. It’s very condescending. And I kind of look at like, like you said, fight, right? So you think about a fighter. Think about Rocky. Remember the movie Rocky? Okay, so imagine him, but he’s strung out and no one’s been helping him and he hasn’t eaten properly in six weeks. And then you put him in the ring and see what happens. How well is that person able to fight?

 

Whitney (21:49)

Yeah.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (22:04)

So this woman with her anxiety being so high, she’s having trouble sleeping, she’s having trouble eating, she’s having digestive issues. She’s been in the emergency room at least six times in the last year and sent home with the all clear as in you’re not dying. Why didn’t they just help her in the first place? Like that’s a huge drain on her and the system because she’s going back to get tested again and again and again. And you know, we’ll see how her story unfolds, but I mean, it’s not a magic pill, right? We can’t say a hundred percent it’s gonna work for everything, for everybody, cause it doesn’t. But I hear again and again that that is the tipping point for people.

 

Whitney (22:43)

What is the tipping point exactly?

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (22:45)

Actually getting to try some hormone replacement therapy. They just want to try it.

 

Whitney (22:48)

Okay. Okay, great. And so in that example, you’re talking a lot about the anxiety the person was experiencing. That’s a little bit of an overlap with mental health. I’m curious if there is more correlation between anxiety, depression, and what a woman experiences during peri and menopause, post -menopause.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (23:15)

Absolutely. it’s one of these, like, I think what happened with my mom and her generation, when they had their perimenopausal or menopausal anxiety spike and mood disorders, they got diagnosed as having a nervous breakdown and sent to the hospital to special care for, you know, a few weeks or a few months, and then probably put on to some kind of anti -anxiety, anti -psychotic medication and sent back home and maybe even had a hysterectomy to treat the bleeding if they were having those kind clot passing stories for themselves. But the whole thing of menopause was never part of that discussion. It was just kind of taken away. Mommy had a nervous breakdown, she needs a little break in the hospital and then she comes back home and everybody’s okay and we just don’t ever talk about it again. And I know several of my friends who had mothers go through that kind of thing and doing the math, it’s like,

 

Whitney (24:07)

Great.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (24:13)

wait a second, she would have been somewhere in her late 40s, early 50s. I wonder if it was actually menopause related, but there was no, maybe it’s like, what is the cookie for the medical establishment to actually identify exactly what’s going on? Maybe there really isn’t one. And perhaps, I mean, when I talk to women sometimes like, well, my doctor never said perimenopause. So I started wondering why. Why? Because they slapped an IUD in you, which we know is treatment for perimenopause, abnormal bleeding. I know that. So they treated you for perimenopause, but they didn’t say perimenopause. Why wouldn’t they say it? And I think it’s because they don’t want to upset anybody. So if they don’t say anything about it, you don’t have to…

 

Whitney (24:59)

Yeah, I’m just imagining that and there’s that stigma again, even like I don’t want to see this because she’s gonna think I’m calling her old or you know, she you know, wow.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (25:10)

Yeah, especially if she maybe wants to have another baby, right? Because when you say perimenopause, what you’re saying is like…

 

Whitney (25:13)

Mmm. The end of that, yes.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (25:18)

You know, your time is coming up. So if you’re going to do it, like.

 

Whitney (25:23)

Which is a disservice if you are aware that that could be happening for the woman to not inform her. What if she does want to have additional children? Or honestly, why shouldn’t we know what’s going on with our body? It can be very stressful whenever your body is acting in certain ways and you don’t understand why. So let’s not just say, here’s an IUD.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (25:32)

Exactly. Mm -hmm. Exactly.

 

Whitney (25:49)

Please explain to me why an IUD is valid for this and what’s going on, what can I expect, what else do I need to know?

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (25:58)

Yeah, what exactly are we treating here with this IUD, right? Like, let’s be really clear about it. I think that a lot of it is just our culture has a tendency to just leave things out that are uncomfortable, perhaps. We just don’t even talk about it. We leave it out. The example I gave recently was when I was in high school, one of my girlfriends called me over because she had the biology book out and it was female anatomy. And she said, where’s the clitoris? And I was like, well,

 

Whitney (26:02)

Yeah.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (26:25)

They left it out. It wasn’t there. And I was like, holy shit. What? I was like, it’s right there. It should be right there. It looks like this here. Probably a little triangle right about there. That’s like, how did they do that? Like how on what a huge disservice for everybody to just leave that information out. But, you know, maybe it’s, yeah, it’s just.

 

Whitney (26:26)

They left it out. Draw it on.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (26:51)

Ignorance and an old -fashioned idea that women don’t need to know what’s going on. They just need to be obedient and compliant. And it’s not going to fly with this Generation X. We’re all like, nope, I want to know. I want to know what it looks like.

 

Whitney (27:03)

Great. Yeah, and how to do something. I think there’s also that part, right? So this is with your generation and those coming behind you, it’s I’m not just going to sit and let something happen to me.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (27:12)

Hmm. Yeah, exactly. And why would you, right? Like the one that really gets, you know, makes my blood boil is the uterine biopsy. So there’s two cancers that women often get that the Western medicine is terrible at diagnosing and treating. That’s ovarian cancer because the ovaries are inside internal and they’re not easily accessible like the cervix you can get to quite easily and they can just do that little exam when you do your yearly checkup. It’s not a big deal. But the ovaries they can kind of look at with ultrasound, but they can’t really tell what it is. It looks like it’s probably this kind of assist or it looks like it’s probably that kind of assist. But until they pull it out and actually take it apart, they don’t know what it is. And the other one is uterine cancer. So I had this abnormal bleeding like I was saying, and I finally got to a gynecologist and I had to drive. Talk about privilege, right? I had to have a car so that I could drive to Canmore to see the gynecologist because everybody in Calgary was too busy to take anybody. And my referral got lost twice. So now we’re talking over a year before I get in when my family doctor is saying you need to see a gynecologist over a year. So I drive all the way out there and a lovely, lovely woman, Chelsea Topping, she’s the best. And she said to me, well, every woman who’s had abnormal bleeding should be offered a uterine biopsy.

 

Whitney (28:29)

Wow.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (28:47)

And, you know, we’ve just met, so maybe let’s not do that today. Like, we’ll do that on our next appointment, you know? Think about it. I think that you should, because this one is a really easy one to treat if we know you have it. But we don’t know you have it unless you do a uterine biopsy. And then, you know, so I thought about it I was like, you know what, she’s right and she’s an expert and I should just do it, right? I’m chicken about getting medical testing, but we’ll go do that. So I did it the next time.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (29:17)

And I, my mind like, my goodness, it sounds terrible. But it was really like a Pabst mirror, except for just going scrape, scrape. went zoop, zoop, and that’s it. Really not a big deal. And then I said to her afterwards, I was like, so is there some reason why that can be part of my checkup that I did with my doctor? Because we did the Pabst mirror and it didn’t seem like it’s more involved. And she said, it’s not more involved. It’s just not.

 

Whitney (29:27)

Alright. Right.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (29:45)

part of the training that we give general practitioners. And then I’m thinking about it afterwards going, so we’re just going to let a bunch of women die.

 

Whitney (29:54)

Why isn’t it a part of the training?

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (29:57)

Why isn’t it a part of their training? She said it’s not hard. It’s no harder than a Pab smear. You just need to know how to do it. But the training takes, you know, like 20 minutes to, and the right tools, right? You have to have the right tools on hand. But how many women, like I didn’t have anything in my uterus of concern, but if I had, now it’s a year and a half later by the time I get the uterine biopsy. What are my chances that it’s grown into something that’s now difficult to treat? You know, like three months is not long enough for it to grow significantly usually, but a year and half sure is.

 

Whitney (30:33)

Absolutely. And thank goodness that you were someone who continued to advocate and push and say, no, I’m going to get this. I’m going to look at this. I’m going to get this appointment. because so many people would give up. Understandably.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (30:46)

Yeah. Well, my functional medicine doctor is a little bit scary. She’s like, she said to me, no, Jessica, you have to go. You have to go. want you to, you’re going to drive to Canmore. She didn’t give me an option. She was like, you’re going to go and see this gynecologist and you’re going to get your uterine biopsy. We want to know for sure. We want to know a hundred percent what’s going on with you because I think you have endometriosis and we want to know for sure. And she was right.

 

Whitney (31:01)

Well, that’s great. Wow. So, okay, we’re here, we’re learning a little bit more. If there’s this, you know, irregular bleeding that’s going on, that’s the type of test to request or ask if it would be appropriate. What are some other things that someone who maybe is early into perimenopause or menopause, what are some things that should be like on their mental checklist of remembering, keeping in mind, maybe educating themself on?

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (31:18)

Mm -hmm. Well, I mean, there’s a lot of symptoms that can be related to perimenopause and we shouldn’t assume that they are, right? We do want to go to see the doctor, but it’s a really good idea in general if you can just make a list of your symptoms, like, you know, I’m having more anxiety or like I started having rage. I’m usually like, you know, calm, loving. I write silly little songs and, you know, like I like to paint.

 

Whitney (32:10)

Yeah, very calm, chill, yeah.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (32:11)

I’m a pacifist. Yeah, but I would be like, and I just put my shoes on and go for a walk. And it was my husband that called it rage walks because it’s just, you pump your arms and you’re just mumbling to yourself. Or sometimes I’d call a friend who would just let me talk and then come home feeling so much better. But that was not normal for me. That was an indicator of high estrogen. That’s estrogen dominance.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (32:37)

So keeping track of those things and mentioning those things to your doctor, like anything that’s out of character for you, anything that comes up that’s new that really wouldn’t be an issue. like I had chronic UTIs all of the sudden. hadn’t probably had one in 20 years and then all of a sudden I had like three in a row. And I went to my family doctor and she was like, we’re gonna send you to the urologist if you get another one. And I was like, I know what that means. They’re gonna look inside the bladder, very unpleasant. I don’t wanna do that. So I went back to the functional medicine doctor and I said, you know, I’m getting these UTIs and she was like, you need a little bit of estrogen in the vagina. That’s all. So we’ll give you a little estrogen cream and you know, you can take a supplement if you want that really good with the D -Manos and Crownberry, which would probably help keep everything nice and clear. And a hundred percent she was right, but I was not having vaginal dryness. Do you know what I mean? Like I wasn’t aware that I was having any less natural lubrication that would

 

Whitney (33:26)

Mm

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (33:32)

Make it a nice funky environment for some greeblies to get up there. But I wasn’t like, I’m uncomfortable. I’m just like, shoot, I have another bladder infection. What’s going on? So anything like that, anything that comes up like I’ve never had headaches before and I suddenly am having like aura migraines. Yeah. any like suddenly my breasts are really, really hard or extra lumpy or.

 

Whitney (33:39)

Right, anything different.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (33:58)

tender, these are signs of estrogen dominance as well, right? So the doctor, may not hesitate to say you may not have a good doctor, because it’s really not about good doctoring. Yeah, you know, they would have to have educated themselves in the area of perian postmenopausal care.

 

Whitney (34:09)

A knowledgeable doctor. 

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (34:18)

So that doesn’t mean they’re a bad doctor, right? The family doctors are trying to take care of everybody and they’re dealing with cancer patients and they’re dealing with people that are going blind and all kinds of very serious issues. But, you know, sometimes I always tell the girls in the group, you know, you just keep going back. You just keep going back and you keep talking about your symptoms and you write it down or I have a chart. I have a comprehensive symptoms list. Fill out your chart, you bring it in because if you’re, say for example, the not sleeping well, you say to the doctor three or four times you’ve come in, you say I’m not sleeping well. And they go, that’s kind of common for people in their mid -age, we’re not too worried about it. And then they look at your chart, but it says I am always having trouble sleeping. And then beside it in the note section, it says I haven’t slept through the night in 10 days. Now the doctor looks at it and goes, that could be any number of things. And she drove herself here and she’s taking care of three kids or, you know, grandpa or trying to work full time or all of those things. We’re in, we’re in, we’re setting ourselves up for a health crisis.

 

Whitney (35:12)

Yes. Absolutely. I’m curious, and I don’t know if you even know this, there’s evidence out there that girls are hitting puberty younger. Are we seeing women hitting perimenopause and menopause at a younger age or any change in the moment of the lifespan that this is occurring?

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (35:39)

Mm -hmm. Well, we don’t really know because my mom, you know, by the time she wanted to talk about it, I was a new mom myself. So, you know, I politely listened to her, which means I really didn’t understand anything she was saying, except for that she needed a hysterectomy. But exactly why she needed it, I don’t really know. So we don’t really have that.

 

Whitney (35:59)

Mm, It’s not relevant to me right now, I’m okay.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (36:16)

Tracking, right? We don’t have 100 years of evidence of average woman’s progression. That being said, you’re kind of living under a rock if you haven’t noticed that things are changing in the hormone world around us with people having hormone disruptions and fertility issues are definitely a problem, can definitely in what I’ve seen in my practice with clients that they do seem to have more trouble in perimenopause if they’ve had trouble with fertility.

 

Whitney (36:19)

Yeah. Interesting. Okay.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (36:46)

Yeah. So I mean, it’s probably somewhat related to that. It really could be a lot of the environmental factors, right? Like the estrogen mimicking type things inside the plastics that are in the oceans, all the birth control pills that we’ve been taking that have been, you know, peed down into the ocean and we’re drinking that up and all of those things. We’re not really sure. But I think it’s a..I would really like to see more of the women in university learning about this so that they can kind of be aware that this could potentially happen as early as mid 30s so that they’re looking for it. So that if they start to have more anxiety instead of going, I’m just nuts, they’re asking that question. Maybe there is something going on. Maybe it’s worth looking into. if you have the money,

 

Whitney (37:19)

Yeah. Right.

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (37:39)

maybe you do go to see a naturopath. They’re a little bit better usually at testing, although one of the ladies I was talking to recently said one of her naturopaths, she tried three before she got one that was bang on for her, but she called her the fairy doctor because she tried to prescribe her cream and she called it like magic fairy dust. This is an educated woman in her 50s, right? Like she wants to take a thing that’s actually like explain to her what it is. Don’t call it magic fairy dust.

 

Whitney (38:06)

Right. Right.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (38:08)

Nothing against that particular naturopath. Maybe it was wonderful. And the people that need her help are going to find her and get her help. And they will understand her language and it will make perfect sense. But we do need to make sure that the care we’re getting is appropriate for our circumstance and that it isn’t a one -size -fits -all kind of thing. Right now in Canada, there’s a little bit of a trend I’m seeing in my group of people doing the online prescriptions for HRT.

 

Whitney (38:36)

Okay.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (38:37)

And it’s not bad or wrong, of course, you know, like I wouldn’t be a supportive person if I was going to give them a hard time about doing what they need to do. But if you’re starting on estrogen and you haven’t had a mammogram and you haven’t had a uterine biopsy and you’ve been bleeding abnormally, you see where I’m going with this? Now we’ve added hormones in potentially, you know, not that it is a problem because it might not be a problem.

 

Whitney (38:56)

Yeah.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (39:05)

it might be fine. But for the person that does have a lump, because you know, the reason we’re doing mammograms is because we can’t always feel them ourselves. Yeah, so that’s the only thing about it. So whenever I do have people saying, you can do the online thing, I will say, go back to your doctor and tell them that you’re going to do that. And make sure that all your tests are up to date.

 

Whitney (39:14)

Exactly, Yeah, do right, right. Make sure that, you know, if you don’t have the training, the education to understand the different potential contraindications and things like that, just have the conversation. Just be safe. Take care of all of those potential issues or, you know, warnings and then make it that educated decision.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (39:49)

What do they call that? Do diligence, Do your due diligence. Because if you come back later and you say, shoot, I did it online and now I have a breast lump, but I haven’t had a mammogram ever. You know, like whose responsibility is that then? Is it the prescribing agency online?

 

Whitney (39:51)

Yeah, yes and just if I’m understanding correctly, to clarify for those listening who may not have followed, having those tests done first gives a baseline. Should something come up, then you can compare it so that if there is a lump, you’re able to say that it wasn’t there before. So it’s just about being.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (40:19)

Mm -hmm. Exactly. Exactly.

 

Whitney (40:30)

I completely understand that and it makes sense. I wish we did a lot more baseline testing just so that we know when something is different. But that can also be, you know, a great like keeping track, like you said, your chart, being able to say, no, starting in September, I was experiencing this every single night. Data helps.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (40:35)

Yeah. Mm -hmm. Yeah, and it makes the doctors take it much more seriously, especially if you can bring in something that, like my chart, is a combination of several different sources that I’ve found. And I even have another section so that, you know, like I think a left elf breast tenderness. So you can add that one if that is an issue for you. And then of course, there’s another document that I will share quite readily called the Pocket Guide to Menopause. And it’s written by the Menopause Foundation of Canada. So it’s written by doctors, for doctors to explain the history of hormone replacement therapy and then gets into the specifics, even product names and dosage, like what to start them at. Yeah. So an ignorant doctor can have that handed to them by their patient and they can wipe their butts with it if they want. But if she comes back again in three months and brings them that again, eventually they will look at it and go, wait a second, wait a second, this is medical language. Who wrote this? Doctors wrote this.

 

Whitney (41:30)

Wow, yeah. Ooh, okay. There’s an MD behind their name? Yeah, well, you know, it’s, I feel like I could just keep going on. I’ve certainly learned a lot. I want to though, make sure that we touch on your group is thriving because there aren’t many spaces for women or women are not feeling supported, heard, what have you. Can you give us some tips?

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (41:55)

Yeah.

 

Whitney (42:15)

We all know a woman. How do we support women in this experience of life?

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (42:24)

Well, I think it just depends on the person like being open to talking about it, like talking about your own experience. Like now that we’ve had this podcast, it might start a conversation with your aunt or your cousin that you wouldn’t have had because you hadn’t had the podcast, right? And you might just say, you know, it’s kind of like, they call that being an ally, right? Like you’re a trans ally. I’m not…I’m not trans, but I have several friends for whatever reason. didn’t exactly go advertising, but here they are. And I’m an ally because I firmly believe that whatever they need to do, they need to do. And I do not know what they need to do because I’m not them. My job is to support them in whatever it is. And when you approach a woman and talk to them in that same level of dignity and respect, of sharing your story a little bit, you know, like…What’s going on for you? I’m wondering about myself here because I’m getting a little bit closer to 40 and I have noticed that, you know, maybe there are some changes that are happening because the metabolism slows down and you can start there. And then, you know, depending on the woman, she might be really open to talking about it. I’ve been really surprised and thrilled with the amount of women who as soon as they kind of get that permissive indication that you’re cool with talking about it, that they want to talk about it because it can be so, I mean, the one that I hear more than anything else is I felt like I was going crazy. I kept going back to the doctor and they kept saying, you’re fine, because they were looking for markers of disease and they didn’t find anything. But I know I’m not fine. You know, I’m itchy and I’m sad and I’m rage walking and I’m, you know, I yelled at the kids and I never do that. And I can’t drive anymore. That happens a lot where they get sudden driving anxiety. Who am I, right? I’m this weird.

 

Whitney (44:17)

Can feel like you’re losing all control of yourself, I’m sure.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (44:21)

Exactly. And then you try to explain it to your husband who has absolutely no idea. And then so what I say to women about that is look up andropause. Get them to look up andropause. That’s the male equivalent. Andro -A -N -D -R -O -Pause. It’s the male equivalent of menopause. They do go through hormonal changes, but because they didn’t have these big fluctuations in the first place, theirs aren’t as extreme. But when they start looking into it,

 

Whitney (44:25)

No idea. Can you spell that for us?

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (44:49)

They’ll hear about menopause

 

Whitney (44:50)

I can’t learn about one without the other. Well, that’s good. Sometimes you need that kind of backdoor way into getting somebody to think about a topic. And for those men who are listening, good job listening. And now you’re more educated to go and support the women in your life. You know, what’s up? You heard it from Jessica.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (44:59)

Yeah. Good job listening. Yeah. And you know what we need you to do? More stuff. Yeah. When I first got into it with my husband, I was like, dude, would you like to come into my group and do a talk for the dudes so that the women could show them like here’s a man, you know, coming from the man standpoint?

 

Whitney (45:26)

Yeah! It’s fabulous.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (45:32)

But he was like, no, I’m not going to do that. And I said, why not? And he was like, none of them would appreciate what I had to say. And I was like, well, what do they mean? How do you know that? And he said, because I’m going to tell them what you’re doing isn’t cutting it. You have to up your game. Your star player needs more help. And I was like, well, I guess maybe they don’t want to hear that from you because it’s pretty cut and dry. And he said, you know, I had to get honest with myself and be like, I was pretty lazy about it. I let you do all the cooking. let you do all the cleaning. I let you do all the childcare. I mean, that’s an exaggeration, but you know what I mean. It was largely my responsibility. And now he knows, you know, if little joke, it’s five o ‘clock and he’s in the kitchen looking in the fridge and trying to see if there’s something started and if there isn’t, he’s like afraid to ask because he knows that’s, you know, he knows now what that means. It’s not a good day for Jessica. So he’s either buying dinner or making dinner.

 

Whitney (46:22)

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, regardless of the couple’s orientation, we can all do a little bit more for the people in our lives, right? And we can ask people to do more for us.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (46:28)

Yeah and that’s hard for women too, because I mean, we have gotten very used to being very resilient and really taking care of a lot of responsibilities. They talk about the mental load of the woman in the household because she’s carrying the soccer practice and the problem at school and everything that has to happen for everybody to get to work tomorrow. And Buddy just went out and played golf, know, like he’s not thinking about anybody because he doesn’t have to. And then it’s not a criticism of males. It’s actually something they’re looking into with the biological brain and how we’re functioning and what we’re trained to do. But it is humbling for that woman to have to say, you know what? It’s 4 30 and I’m done. Like I can’t do anything anymore. I have to sit here and just be sad because my stomach hurts. And I’ve been bleeding for 10 days and have the husband be like, where’s it’s Tuesday. We usually have tacos and like, well make it yourself. How do you make tacos? Like.

 

Whitney (47:17)

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (47:39)

Jeez. I’m going to my room. Everybody can starve. It’s cereal night, kids. Yay. It’s cereal night. But yeah, I try and tell them like, give yourself that slack, right? If you need to go to your room and everybody’s having cereal, they’ll they’ll they’ll live. They’ll survive. It’s not fatal.

 

Whitney (47:52)

Yes. Right, absolutely, absolutely. Well, as we wrap up here, my question for you is if people walk away from our discussion today and they can only take one thing with them, what would you like it to be?

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (48:15)

Really, it’s that you’re not alone. You are not alone. Even if there’s no women around you that want to talk about it or that have that experience or know how to talk about it. I’m estimating right now there’s 1 .6 million women in Canada who are probably in perimenopause. So there’s someone there that does know what you’re talking about. And if you look around, you’ll find them, you can come and join the group if you mentioned that you heard the podcast. We have been trying to keep it Canadian based, but I’m going a little bit more international because I’m going to be in a book called Women of Purpose in the fall. Yeah, so we’re going to open it up a little bit more for international. you know, we were keeping it Canadian because we wanted that clarity because we’re going to talk about the Canadian medical situation. So as long as you’re okay with that, then it’s fine to join. And I just don’t think that it’s… Don’t put up with…

 

Whitney (48:53)

Nice. Congrats. Yes, right, Yeah.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (49:12)

good enough, right? Like if it’s not working for you and you need to be heard and you need to be validated, keep talking about it till you find someone who’s gonna listen.

 

Whitney (49:22)

Yes, thank you. Yes. I love that. And you, before we met today, you shared a lot of resources, which I’m going to include in our show notes, the links to the group. I was gonna ask you when you’re starting a group that the people in the US can join. So I’m excited to hear you’re gonna open it. You’re going to open the borders. So that’s great. But how can people connect with you?

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (49:23)

Yeah. We’re just opening it up. Yeah. Well, I’m pretty easy to find online. I’m on Instagram as perimenopausesupport and there’s the CPMS on Facebook and I also have a Canadian perimenopage on Facebook and my website, thecanadianperimenop .com. And I try and share like really quality, like we have like book recommendations, right? So if I see on the page that people keep talking about a certain book, I’ll make sure to link it. These are books that we love. These are podcasts that we like, you know, these are really good resources for people. Cause you know, I was just talking to someone about an app today. They’re building an app and they want to maybe get me on board as a consult, you know, consultant. And we were talking about that whole, how do you get the information out to the people and what does it look like? And I said, you know, you can’t just link articles because not everybody loves to read. I like to read, but a lot of people like podcasts listeners. They want to hear the information verbally and honestly, it comes in here a lot easier for me because I’m dyslexic. So let’s give them the podcast. Yeah. Let’s acknowledge that. Isn’t that inclusivity? Come on.

 

Whitney (50:53)

And we all have different learning styles, Invert visual, hands -on, absolutely. Yes, it’s all coming back to meeting the person, understanding their needs, supporting them in achieving what they need. Wow.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (51:07)

Exactly. That’s my main thing, right? Is it actually supportive because that’s very important to me.

 

Whitney (51:14)

Well, thank you for what you’re doing. It’s amazing. You know, here I am, a woman, a cisgender woman who really is right on the cusp of, you know, experiencing perimenopause. And I knew nothing. And I still need to educate myself a lot, but I know a lot more. And I know more of what knowledge to pursue.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (51:34)

Mm -hmm.Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that knowledge is power.

 

Whitney (51:41)

So I know I learned a lot and I appreciate that. It absolutely is. Thank you so much, Jessica, for coming on, taking the time, opening up your group for others who are going to be able to benefit from you and the other women in the group. That’s what’s really amazing. It’s women supporting women. So thank you for your time. I really enjoyed it.

 

Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen (51:49)

Yeah, it is. Mm -hmm. Yes, thank you for having me. It was lovely to chat.

 

Whitney (52:11)

Yes, absolutely. And all of you listening, I will include all of the links so that you can follow up, learn more, share the resources, and share this episode. Maybe you are not yet ready to talk about it yourself, but you’d like somebody to know the information that was discussed today. That’s one way to show that you care or that maybe you are in need of some support. Just pass it along, right? Jessica just said it, knowledge is power. And this episode can be a source of knowledge for some. So thank you all for listening. Keep on coming back, subscribing, liking, sharing, and visiting our guests such as Jessica and supporting her work. Thank you all and have a wonderful rest of your day.

Empowering Women Through Perimenopause: A Conversation with Jessica Erlendson Van Remmen In the latest Reduce the Stigma podcast, dive into the topic of perimenopause with Jessica Eriendson Van Remmen, a certified yoga therapist and women’s health advocate. With over 9,000 members in her Canadian perimenopause support group, Jessica emphasizes how perimenopause, the hormonal transition before […]

Continue reading "Breaking the Silence on Perimenopause"
A podcast graphic for "Reduce The Stigma" featuring Nathan Smiddy, also known as "Narcan Nate." The image shows Nate in a black hoodie and a cap, with the quote: "Everyone should carry naloxone or Narcan. That's the easiest thing we could all do." The "Reduce The Stigma Podcast" logo is in the top right corner. Harm Reduction is the focus of the episode

Harm Reduction Hero: Narcan Nate’s Mission to Save Lives

Exploring harm reduction strategies with Nathan Smiddy, a leading advocate in overdose prevention.

A cutout image of Nathan Smiddy, also known as "Narcan Nate," wearing a black hoodie with the "Hope Shot" design on the front and a black cap with the phrase "Vans Off The Wall." He has a neutral expression, visible tattoos, and a calm demeanor.
A graphic with a quote from Nathan Smiddy, also known as "Narcan Nate," against a dark textured background. The quote reads: "Not everybody understands that they're just as fallible as the next human. We're all just going through this experience the best we can, you know?" Nathan Smiddy's name and nickname are in white text below the quote, along with mentions of "Reduce The Stigma" and the website "straightupcare.com."

In this insightful interview with Nathan Smiddy, also known as Narcan Nate, we dive into the importance of harm reduction in combating the opioid crisis. Nate shares his journey of becoming a key advocate for harm reduction, educating people on the life-saving potential of Naloxone (Narcan) and the dangers of fentanyl-laced drugs. His dedication to getting Naloxone into the hands of everyday people, while busting myths about overdose risks, is inspiring. Nate emphasizes the power of small acts, like carrying Narcan, as one of the simplest yet most effective ways we can reduce overdose deaths.

Nate’s commitment to harm reduction extends beyond his work in 12-step meetings, into the community, and even internationally. By distributing Naloxone kits and fentanyl test strips, he is helping individuals make informed choices, ultimately saving lives. Despite the challenges and stigma around harm reduction, Nate encourages everyone to remain open-minded and take action, because no one deserves to die from a preventable overdose.

Click here for the episode’s full transcript.

About Our Guest:

Nate has been conducting naloxone trainings and distributions for almost 5 years now. He’s currently the BIPOC grant manager at Harm Reduction Coalition San Diego (HRCSD). Nate helps navigate bringing resources to reservations across the U.S. and capacity building for the program while remaining and presenting culturally competent resources and information. He also has a mailing program for resources at no cost to individuals. Last year, he mailed out over 100,000 fentanyl test strips and distributed around 24,000 doses of naloxone.

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Transcript

Whitney (00:01)

The sad reality is that we are losing tens of thousands of lives each year due to fatal overdoses. Unfortunately, we will likely always have some number of fatal overdoses. However, it does not need to be anywhere near the number it is today. We can do something about it, all of us. And the thing we can do is to support harm reduction. Now I recognize that harm reduction is not something that everyone supports or believes or thinks is a good idea. It’s a divisive topic. And so I’m going to ask that everybody listen to this episode with an open mind. If you are someone who historically has not been very interested or eager to support harm reduction. In reality, we’re all practicing harm reduction in our daily lives. When you wear a seatbelt or obey traffic laws, that’s harm reduction. Speed limits are harm reduction. When you wear a helmet or put a helmet on your child riding a bike, that’s harm reduction. In the simplest terms, harm reduction is just reducing the risk of a negative occurrence. There’s a lot of stigma though with harm reduction when it’s applied to substance use. And that stigma is causing deaths. As we talk with our guest today, just be open to maybe learning something new. I’m not saying you have to support harm reduction at the end, but maybe you’ll walk away with something that you hadn’t realized. And our guest today is the best person to have that conversation with. He has dedicated himself to sharing accurate information and resources to engage in harm reduction. In fact, his Nickname is Narcan Nate. One really should probably be harm reduction mate. It just doesn’t sound as good. So this guess is really going to help us all understand what we can do in a simple act, a simple willingness to maybe carry a certain Naloxone kit. That’s what we can start doing to reduce the number of fatal overdoses. Thank you all for listening in advance being willing to engage in this conversation with us. Stay tuned and get ready to be inspired as we continue to reduce the stigma.

 

Whitney (02:41)

Hello and welcome to Reduce the Stigma. Today I am talking with Nathan Smiddy, better known as Narcan Nate. And I’m excited for everyone to get to meet Nate. I have recently found him on Instagram and I think we’re gonna have a really great conversation. So Nate, thanks for joining me.

 

Nathan Smiddy (02:59)

Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate

 

Whitney (03:01)

I appreciate your time. Just from the little bit I’ve seen on social media, you are a very busy person. And so any of your time, I greatly appreciate it. But let’s dive in. Narcan Nate. I mean, it’s a little bit of a self -explanatory nickname, but maybe not. How long have you been Narcan Nate? Where did it come from? Tell me about your persona of Narcan Nate.

 

Nathan Smiddy (03:25)

Yeah. So I, when I started doing this work in 2019, I would go to like 12 step meetings and they would have like outside announcements, right? And I would always announce that like I had Narcan and give some statistics and things like that. And my buddy CJ, he used to call me, he would call me Nate with the Narcan is what he would tell you. That’s what he would say. And then one meeting, he just had this epiphany to call me Narcan Nate. And then ever since then, that’s all people called me because it just stopped and it’s just been that way ever since that was in like the middle of 2019 so it’s just stuck ever since like some people just call me Narcan that know me so It’s coming, narcan.

 

Whitney (04:06)

I mean, Narcan, the thing that saves lives, I think that’s an amazing thing to be known by. So that’s awesome. yeah. Yeah, definitely worse things to be called. But that’s interesting. So you were talking about it in 12 -step meetings, which historically aren’t the most welcoming for harm reduction ideas.

 

Nathan Smiddy (04:12)

Yeah, yeah, it’s not not a bad thing. It’s fun. Yeah, for sure. I caught some grief for sure. There’s been times where it’s, I mean, I’ve almost been in like some physical altercations over it and some 12 step meetings before.

 

Whitney (04:41)

And yet you’re, you’re keep bringing that message. I mean, that’s gotta be tough going into a space where, you know, abstinence is typically the focus for 12 steps and saying, Hey, let’s talk about, you know, overdose reversal and saving lives. And yeah, recognizing some people are going to continue using. How do you approach those conversations? Talk about like tough condos.

 

Nathan Smiddy (05:04)

I mean, for the most part, really don’t hear much about it. Usually, I think the conversation that almost led to being physical, there’s some other factors into it, but they just thought that it didn’t belong there and it thought it was a sales pitch or whatever. they got all in their feelings without ever having a conversation with me. And this dude was like some 20 year old timer who thought he was like put his sobriety time on the table and thought that it mattered to me and it didn’t make a shit to me. And you know, I just told him, I pretty much told him like, well, you’re going to have to have a steering committee if you want me to stop doing this. Like if someone can, it’s an outside announcement. If someone can talk about fucking Domino’s hiring, I can talk about fucking Narcan, you know, if you don’t like it, go fucking change it. Don’t bitch at me over it. You know, and I was like, obviously it makes you look like a fucking asshole to do that. And then I just left it at that and they never did anything about it, you know? And by this point, by that point anyway, it didn’t even matter because I wouldn’t even have to make the announcement. He would just come to me at the meeting and get it. So it really didn’t matter. This is also the same person that’s on like a board for this like this little meeting place and they don’t want to let like unhoused people in the fucking meeting. So like fuck that dude honestly. You can cut that out, but like fuck that dude. Yeah.

 

Whitney (06:26)

Wow, yeah. So that’s awesome. mean, going in and just getting Narcan out there. So that’s clearly a big mission of yours, at least what I’m gathering is just having Narcan available to people. So you’re at meetings, what else are you doing to get information out there, to get kits.

 

Nathan Smiddy (06:49)

Mmm. Why support like?I don’t know, maybe like 10 or 12 AA meetings that give out Narcan and like fentanyl test strips. And then, so I really don’t have to do it anymore. It’s just kind of like, people do it. I just supply them and then they do it. It’s kind of like how it’s turned over the years. But I do that. I let people, people that know me can pull up to my house, like as long as I’m not dead asleep, they can pull up and grab whatever supplies they want. I mail it anywhere in the U .S. I’ve mailed stuff internationally before. Last year I mailed out a hundred thousand test strips by myself. And then I mailed, I mailed and distributed like in my free time through a nonprofit, like 24 ,000 kits of Naloxone. And then that’s not counting like what I, whatever I gave out for my day job, you know? So all of that, the mailing and stuff was like either at cost or I’ll cover it typically with like the some of the test strips shipping was bulk towards the end. So like some packages would be like 30 bucks. And so I was like, you got to cover that. Like I can’t, there’s no way I can afford that and like have longevity. But some of that went to like Ireland and like, I don’t know, like every like a couple of countries overseas. Yeah.

 

Whitney (08:11)

That’s incredible.

 

Nathan Smiddy (08:14)

And then as a day job, a project manager for a harm reduction college in San Diego. I do like my main priority is to bring resources into like indigenous communities, whether it’s Naloxone or Fentanyl test strips, education, training people, capacity building and like kind of networking with them or going over the best practices, things of that nature. And we also have a liaison that kind of handles that as well. And I kind of make sure they’re up to date on their knowledge. And we do syringe services. We do drug checking with an FTIR machine. So all these are different.

 

Whitney (08:54)

So Narcan Nate is truly harm reduction Nate, just doesn’t sound as good. Yeah, yeah. That’s incredible. So rewinding a little bit, Narcan, like let’s, and then I want to go down through the other harm reduction things that you’re supporting and advocating for. For people who don’t know Narcan can reverse opioid overdoses. It’s a quick spray.

 

Nathan Smiddy (08:58)

Yeah, it just doesn’t match.

 

Whitney (09:23)

In the nasal, there are of course, you know, the version that you can inject into an individual, but the kind of mainstream right now is the nasal spray. What should people know beyond the facts? Like, okay, this is what Narcan is. Why should people care about it? Why should people know about

 

Nathan Smiddy (09:32)

I mean, it’s one of those things where it’s better to have it not needed than needed not have it. I mean, I’ve come across people overdosing when I least expected it. I remember I did an event and some people grabbed Narcan. They were like, I’ll just grab it just in case. And then like they hit me up a few days later and like, yeah, we narcan somebody at an AA meeting and I was like, yeah, let’s check out like you’ll get high and they go to meetings You know what? mean? Like it’s like we’re whatever, you know I’ve narcan people in porta potties before You just never know you know what I mean, so it’s a simple thing to do and it’s just caring about like human life, you know mean no one deserves to die because they did some drugs like you know, I mean and I’m an empathy for fellow humans. You know, and I don’t know, not everybody’s there. Not everybody has that empathy. Not everybody understands that they’re just as fallible as the next human. we’re all just going through this experience the best we can, you know? And yeah.

 

Whitney (10:43)

So I’m gonna hit you with some myths, some things that I frequently hear. I personally always have Narcan in my house. I try to keep it on me when I go to certain places, you know, if I’m like trying, going around the city, like on our paths and stuff. Been carrying it with me for, it’s like 2017 is when I first started carrying it. And so I’ve heard a lot of myths as well. I’m gonna hit you with the myth of how about I don’t use heroin. I don’t shoot up, why should I carry it? I don’t need it.

 

Nathan Smiddy (11:16)

Yeah, well, doesn’t, it’s not about you. People make it about them. Like you don’t narcan yourself, you know? So it’s not, it has nothing to do with you. It’s about caring for your fellow human being. It has nothing to do with.

 

Whitney (11:26)

Absolutely. How about, well, isn’t it dangerous? Couldn’t I overdose if like, or me or my kid, if my kid accidentally like uses

 

Nathan Smiddy (11:36)

No, you don’t. You’re not overdosed from narcan. I mean, you might get a headache from it if you dose yourself, but you’re not like nothing’s going.

 

Whitney (11:45)

And aren’t I at risk if I go over to someone if they had fentanyl in their system? Isn’t that like, by contact I can get impacted by it?

 

Nathan Smiddy (11:55)

Passive exposure isn’t a real thing. What happens to cops is a psychosomatic experience due to their training. There’s never been a confirmed case with toxicology of them and we could also like look at their levels and I don’t know that there’s a way to like tell what a passive level of ingestion is because it’s not really possible with it but we could compare their levels to someone who’s actually ingested fentanyl and see what their levels look like but it’s never it’s not possible you don’t get high off fentanyl being in the air, you don’t immediately overdose. It would take forever. I think that I know in like 90 minutes in an industrial setting, you get like 100 microgram dose, like no PPE. So that’s like, you’re not gonna overdose. And so most of these stores, they like immediately overdose and stuff like that. And that’s just, that’s not how it works. You don’t narcan yourself. It’s just, yeah, it doesn’t happen.

 

Whitney (12:49)

Yeah, exactly. And I’m so glad you went there to the first responder because we get these absurd media, like posts and news articles and stuff that are like, this cop or this EMT, you know, interacted with paraphernalia and had a contact overdose.

 

Nathan Smiddy (13:07)

Thank God that the dollar bill dude that just happened. you see that? yeah. Imagine if I said that like, yeah, I just got high because was on the

 

Whitney (13:15)

Yeah, right. And I love that you even on your, you have like a link tree on your link tree, you refer out to the, who is it, the American College of Medical Toxicity that says that there is not this danger of contact exposure, that these are, you know,

 

Nathan Smiddy (13:15)

Yeah, go to jail.

 

Whitney (13:39)

Misrepresented and that there have been calls for retractions because of the misinformation and the fact that it is contributing to a ton of stigma, a ton of avoidance of having this life -saving resource available.

 

Nathan Smiddy (13:53)

Mm -hmm. Yeah, there’s been a ton of retractions. The CDC even made a retraction as well,

 

Whitney (13:59)

I didn’t know that. Look at that. See, it’s just ridiculous because you get these people, you know, that’s what’s going to stick in someone’s head. well, that cop, you know, and nothing against the cop. I appreciate what they’re doing. What the spin on these things, though, is leading to loss of lives.

 

Nathan Smiddy (14:15)

Mm -hmm. Well, yeah, no one’s gonna respond to someone if they think they’re gonna die from a contact hire just being around it. So these people

 

Whitney (14:23)

Right, Yeah. And so then kind of going down the harm reduction railroad, let’s go to the test strips. Tell us about test strips. What kind are out there and available? Why are they beneficial?

 

Nathan Smiddy (14:32)

Mm. There’s an assortment of brands and things like that. There’s a lot of nuance around this conversation. I would say, and I don’t get paid to say this for the record, but I would say the best test strips are, excuse me, I’m trying to think, Grassroots Harm Reduction and Dan’s Safe, probably the two best test strips out there. The xylazine test strips are kind of wishy washy. They have a lot of, like a lot of things that make them false positives and things of that nature. But ultimately the idea is that you can test your substances and you can make an educated decision about, do I still want to take this or do I not want to take this? We have data showing that when people test their substances and they know what’s in their substances, it alters their use to a degree. And so people can use less, they can make sure someone’s with them, they can even toss it if they don’t want it. And so It’s just preventative measures to prevent the overdose from ever happening in the first place is what it’s there for. They’re somewhat expensive, and can be expensive once you buy them in bulk, but typically most cities or states have a way to get them. If anything, you can always go through NextDistro if you have no resources in your area whatsoever.

 

Whitney (15:53)

Yeah. And so let’s play another round of Bust the Myth. Test strips, doesn’t that just mean that I’m encouraging someone to use?

 

Nathan Smiddy (16:03)

People use drugs whether you encourage them or not. They don’t even need encouragement. They’re going to do drugs whether there’s test strips available or not. It’s just best practice to be able to make an educated decision on what you’re putting in your body.

 

Whitney (16:15)

And that’s it, right? Like people think like, it’s not gonna say, and maybe in some cases there’s the whole like, okay, I’m gonna not use this substance because it’s cut stronger than I realize. I’m like, maybe I recently had an overdose, you know, and reversal and things like that. So you’re thinking about it. But it’s to be able to take action. Like it could be making sure a friend’s available or having Narcan in the area, you know, having these different approaches so that the person, yes, if they’re going to engage, they’re going to engage whether we make, we’re passing out test strips everywhere, right? And so, and that’s okay. That’s there. They have that autonomy. What we’re saying is let’s keep them alive as well. And so if this action is going to happen, ensure that it happens in that way that that person can be okay or reduce the risk of the fatal overdose because no one gets better if they’re

 

Nathan Smiddy (17:10)

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Whitney (17:12)

Yeah. And so you mentioned xylazine. That is certainly, you know, been trending for a while now. What are you seeing? What should people be aware of about what’s going on? I know you’re out in California, so this may only be reflective of your area, but what are some things that people aren’t realizing about xylazine?

 

Nathan Smiddy (17:32)

Well, I think that I don’t even know that it’s realizing us that like we find out how this works is like we’ll find out after a drug has been in our local market, so to speak for X amount of time and then it takes our response is going to take like a year or two to respond and by that time we’re like way too far behind and we’re just playing catch -up the whole time. This is typically like how this works with like prohibition and new drugs in the market, etc. but I think it’s more so it’s not even knowing. It’s more so like doctors learning how to treat the withdrawal or places testing for it to figure out in your area if it’s like actually in the drugs or how to treat the necrotic wounds or if someone with necrotic wounds wants to go to treatment or detox, that wound has to be healed before they ever let them in because they’re not going to let them in because they’re a liability. And so there’s all those things like that. That goes into it as well. meaning, typically on this side of the coast, we usually just see like xylazine and opioids. That’s typically the idea is it is supposed to be an opioid because it gives it legs, right? It feels better, it lasts longer, et cetera. But the further you go down the supply chain, like meaning further East, you could find it in drugs that it’s not supposed to be in. It can be contaminated for X amount of reasons. And so just because you’re a non -opioid user, you might still come across xylazine at some

 

Whitney (19:04)

Yeah. I think that’s a big thing that people who aren’t more intimately aware of, you know, the interaction, like the cutting of drugs and stuff that they miss that, you know, or maybe they’re not thinking about it for themselves or maybe not being as like mindful of maybe a loved one who’s using something. And can you talk a little bit more about how, you know, it can get into things that you’re not expecting xylazine to be in or fentanyl?

 

Nathan Smiddy (19:34)

Well, so, I mean, a lot of times the media likes to say that the cartels are doing it and things like that. And there was a pilot study done in Mexico and we determined that the cartels don’t do that. It’s bad for business. Like if you get caught doing that, they will kill you. It’s pretty much what the pilot study determined. And then Vice even went down there and did an interview around the same area and they got the same thing. Like, we’ll kill you if you that, So honestly,

We don’t know how drugs really get contaminated. The thing that we know the most is that a lot of times dealers sell more than one substance and they have bad quality control and they don’t clean the scale or the surface or the area. Fentanyl is just a white crystalline powder. So if you have cocaine and you don’t label your bags, you’re going to mix it up. So that’s the things that we do know. A lot of times a lot of things like we we don’t know and it’s okay to say that there has been people in orgs that tried to make bulk purchases along like key distribution routes being like 55 and 80 but the DEA and Hit the high intensity drug traffic. Yeah hit that they’re like no you can’t do that It’s illegal and like they were just gonna buy the they wanted the goal the idea was to buy drugs at this these points and to see at what point were these drugs getting contaminated and was it getting contaminated in bulk to figure out where it was happening at. But they wouldn’t let them do it. And obviously they’re not, yeah,

 

Whitney (21:02)

Mm -hmm. Why wouldn’t you allow that?

 

Nathan Smiddy (21:19)

Those eagle buying drugs is

 

Whitney (21:23)

And was it government agents? Like who was it that wanted to buy?

 

Nathan Smiddy (21:26)

It was some nonprofit agencies, but there were some people there that were pretty high up as far as in regards to policy and things of that nature. They’re they were known, you know, I mean, they they’re on calls with like hit on the DEA and like all these other key

 

Whitney (21:44)

Yeah. See, that’s like, and I want your thoughts on this more than I want to say my own. Right there, right? This is an innovative approach of let’s figure this out. And then the laws get in the way of taking action to do something that could be very life saving. And I’m not trying to dismiss, let’s just say screw it to the laws. They cause some challenges at times such as, hey, yeah, we get it. We’re not gonna buy the drugs to use that. Like we are trying to address the problem. are taught, know, everyone’s talking about an opioid epidemic. Well, here’s a way that we could potentially address that. That gets into policy, as you mentioned. Can you tell us like, my understanding is you’re involved, you’re an advocate, you’re advocating for policy changes and things like that.

 

Nathan Smiddy (22:23)

Well, I mean, dirt, I mean, it really depends on where you live. I mean, locally, I would find out like what

 

Whitney (22:39)

What are some of the movements that are beneficial or that we need to be pursuing a little bit more?

 

Nathan Smiddy (22:53)

Good Samaritan laws are, I would find out what your naloxone access laws are because some states you can’t give out naloxone still without a doctor or physician being present. Some states, maternal test strips are illegal. You know what mean? That’s, and that’s just like bottom, that’s not even like, that’s just like the bottom of the barrel right there. It’s just basic, basic shit. And pretty much every state has Good Samaritan law besides Maine. Maine has the best good Samaritan law out of any state. And so, I mean, to get involved, I think you would need to either look at drug policy alliance and see what they’re doing, or if you have a local org, see what bills and stuff they’re supporting, what they’re not supporting. And I think, ultimately, I think it’s education, too, to understand how laws affect the drug trade and supply, which triples down to affecting the people that we love and how that plays a part in it. And then even so, there’s so much to it. Even so, going and looking at other countries and looking at what they’ve done and how they’ve been successful. And then it would be going and looking at the US and seeing, if we implemented these things, how would that look? And why haven’t things been as successful here? And why is that? So that would be just systemics around things that are here that other countries really don’t have to deal with. We don’t have one fully funded armor deduction program in this country.

 

Whitney (24:30)

And when you say one fully funded harm reduction program, what would what exactly do you mean by

 

Nathan Smiddy (24:36)

I mean, they’re not every org. And so they’re like getting grants and they’re hoping that when that grant runs out, they have another grant to cover the time between when they were to get the next grant. they’re just like playing off shoestring funding. And it’s typically, typically it can go bad. I mean, a lot of places make it. But they’re all, you know, obviously they’re all like scouring for grants and funding. And it’s just like chump change funding. A lot of people are underpaid, undercompensated for it. And yeah, it’s just not the way it should be. And obviously we don’t have like, we don’t have the infrastructure to have the best potential outcome with harm reduction practices in this country too. I don’t really think, I don’t even like to say that it’ll be like we have harm reduction because we really don’t have harm reduction. We have like a fraction of harm reduction.

 

Whitney (25:36)

Yeah. And then you mentioned Good Samaritan laws and that Maine has the best one. What does that one look like? I’m not familiar with

 

Nathan Smiddy (25:45)

I’m pretty sure it’s, you’re covered if you’re, if whether you’re in possession or not, you’re, you’re covered if you’re the one calling or if you’re the one that’s overdose. And I’m pretty sure they don’t, I’m thinking that they don’t violate you if you’re on probation, like for sure. So.

 

Whitney (26:04)

Okay, wow. And for anyone who doesn’t know why this is relevant, and Nate, please feel free to hop in and add to this. But from my knowledge, what I’ve learned talking to people, if there is an overdose, there’s a fear of calling for help, because who responds? Well, it can be a cop who shows up, whoever the first, you know, responder is in the air, that’s closest. And if you are engaging in an activity that’s illegal, there’s the fear that you will be arrested. So there is that kind of trepidation of, I call and risk being arrested, being thrown in jail, or do I wait this out to see if the person will be able to come back on their own? And so that can lead to a lot of people either calling and like running and like leaving the scene just so that they don’t get in trouble, but their friend maybe does get help or not calling. And that can be an extremely detrimental, you know, hindrance. What else is important to know about, you know, the role that strong Good Samaritan laws play?

 

Nathan Smiddy (27:20)

I mean, I think you really covered it. That’s basically it. That and some people, think it’s also a thing that’s not talked about a lot, people that don’t use, they’re not used to that sort of life. This is not their thing, just a bystander. They’re worried about giving medication and an adverse reaction or what if they do CPR. They’re worried about a liability or a lawsuit is what they’re worried about. So that’s another thing that it protects for taxing ants.

 

Whitney (27:52)

Right, right. Okay, right. So if you deliver some sort of care, even if you’re not a professional, you’re protected by that Good Samaritan Law.

 

Nathan Smiddy (27:59)

If you’re a, it’s different. If you’re a professor because you’re held to a standard, if you have a license, it’s different.

 

Whitney (28:05)

But if I’m walking down the street and I offer someone care in this situation that we’re talking about, obviously every state’s different, but in general, there can’t be anything negative that occurs to you if you’re just the passerby. However, if you are someone who may be using it with a friend, you could be. If you still have paraphernalia on you, if you have supply on you, and I know there are a lot of cases being charged and then convicted for people being charged with manslaughter and for the death of someone that they were using alongside of simply because maybe they were the one who supplied it that day. And that also is causing a lot of issues, right? We’re not talking about maybe, I don’t think anytime in jail is just a little bit of time, but we’re not talking about like a violation for a weekend. We’re talking about people being charged for their friends’ deaths.

 

Nathan Smiddy (29:04)

Mm -hmm. Yeah, sorry.

 

Whitney (29:05)

And I

 

Nathan Smiddy (29:07)

There was the guy here that got charged, I think he got like, first degree manslaughter for just handing the bag to somebody and they died because the guy, the dealer didn’t know the guy, it was his friends. He just middle -man a bag and got like, first degree manslaughter. Like, you know what I mean? It’s fucking insane.

 

Whitney (29:23)

And it doesn’t, you know, doesn’t

 

Nathan Smiddy (29:25)

That guy just lost his friend and his fucking life.

 

Whitney (29:32)

Yes, exactly. It’s not good. This isn’t the big time dealers. These aren’t the people bringing it into the country. It’s someone, it’s someone that you know, you were just best friends with or occasional friends, whatever it is. But like, that’s not going to end the opioid epidemic. And I think, you know, at least from my perspective, the belief that we can just arrest and charge and punish people we do not want to use is just so harmful.

 

Nathan Smiddy (30:03)

Yeah, well, I mean what alcohol prohibition creates. It created the biggest organized crime syndicate in US history. I mean, you know, so we’re just literally just reliving history every

 

Whitney (30:16)

Yeah, and then it’s, you know, it could easily go on a soapbox of what’s the difference between alcohol and other substances, right? I mean, somebody chose alcohol to be okay and everything else not. but alcohol kills too. Drunk driving. 

 

Nathan Smiddy (30:32)

Fentanyl does. Alcohol kills more people globally than fentanyl does.

 

Whitney (30:38)

Yes, right. Like people aren’t realizing that they’re not thinking about it because it’s not that fast, immediate kill killer, right? It’s more like a long -term cirrhosis of the liver. Maybe, yes, they’re definitely the deaths while intoxicated, but it’s more long -term. And whereas, this scary thing. And yeah, fentanyl is freaking scary and we should be scared of it and we should be afraid of and we should be providing resources so that those who come into consuming it are able to live and go on with their lives. Yeah, man. And so, you other things that are going, you talked about other countries, there’s definitely, you know, a lot of other countries doing different things. We have Canada who has safe injection sites.

 

Nathan Smiddy (31:16)

Yeah.

 

Whitney (31:30)

We have completely different systems in other countries, like the Netherlands and everything. But what are you seeing as kind of, you know, if we could all unite between one kind of harm reduction approach, test strips, syringe exchange, safe consumption, what have you, what would be kind of your ideal?

 

Nathan Smiddy (31:55)

Well, I mean, here’s the thing, like even with all that, like we’re not going to make a difference until we have like a safe supply until we just like legalize drugs and tax drugs. You know what I mean? Cause that’s the killer is it’s an unsanctioned drug supply, no quality control. You know what I mean? And, obviously like we’ve not learned that we have to look at our society and be like, why is there such a high demand? Why do these people just want to get obliterated on drugs? Most people use drugs, they don’t have any consequences. They don’t develop chaotic use. They’re weekend warriors. They go on coke benders on the weekend, they go to work, and they really don’t have a fucking issue. Maybe later on, their heart’s bad, but they don’t really attain consequences. For example, It’s really expensive to survive right now. So a lot of people are working two and three jobs. Well, they’re probably doing stimulants to be able to work. So just an example of systemic and societal issues. But none of that’s gonna matter if we don’t have safe supply because ultimately that’s what is killing people is an unsafe supply. Meaning, safe injection sites will help, safe supply would help, access to resources, continuum of care. I would say a complete revamp of our health policies here and insurance policies and our approach to public health in general. This for -profit approach is insane. For example, cancer treatment here costs $400 ,000, but I can go to Japan and get it for $44 ,000. So it’s like a classes thing here. So there’s all these variables that go into this, that exacerbate this. And that’s why I said people need to understand things here that other countries just don’t have to necessarily deal with that, it is just here.

 

Whitney (33:53)

Yeah, and I can’t help but think, you know, we tend to believe that our approach in America is, you know, a little bit better than other countries. We’re really not doing well with our approach to this.

 

Nathan Smiddy (34:01)

Yeah. Our approach is cops and if like jail or like consequences with law enforcement had like an implication on public health, we would have the best public health outcomes out of any country. I stole that from Ryan Marino, just so you know, but he said that one time and it like lives rent free in my head.

 

Whitney (34:32)

Yeah, well, I it’s gonna live rent free in my head too, because you’re right, like we have no evidence that it works. It’s just the most accepted approach. 

 

Nathan Smiddy (34:44)

Yeah. Well, yeah. What people like think it works and it doesn’t work. I mean, some people, some people will, you know, they think it’s their life in jail, but I don’t think it’s because maybe they have a God moment. I don’t know what they have, but I feel like most of the people that I know that went to jail or prison, they were like, I don’t want to come here and deal with all the bullshit in here is pretty much like what happened. It wasn’t because they just, it was like what’s going on on the inside. And they were like, yeah, I don’t want to have to deal with this ever again.

 

Whitney (35:10)

Right, right. And there’s just a lack of recognition of the person and it becomes so much more about the acts than who the person is. And I was on a panel, man, back in 2017 and it was talking about Narcan distribution. I facilitated Narcan distribution upon release program at our county jail. And someone said, you know, well, I hear that because of all these Narcans being handed out, we’re seeing a rise in people having more than one overdose. And I looked at the person and I was trying so hard to be like, you know, diplomatic about it. I’m on this council or panel and I said, well, yeah, you’re going to have someone who experiences more than one overdose because they’re living. They’re alive. I would much rather have someone who continues to live and yeah, maybe they continue using, maybe they have another overdose and we have to then use Narcan again. They’re alive. If you have someone who dies, you’re not gonna have any additional overdoses from that person because they are dead. You will have nothing else from them. So what’s your point here? Like, why is that something? Why aren’t we just looking at how do we keep people alive?

 

Nathan Smiddy (36:31)

Yeah. Yeah, that’s a really annoying narrative to put. But yeah, there’s no… They probably think there’s Lazarus. They think people do Lazarus parties too. I don’t know if you know what that is or not, but… So that’s where people think that people go and purposely…

 

Whitney (36:46)

No, I haven’t heard that term.

 

Nathan Smiddy (36:51)

Overdose because they have Narcan available and they just do like a bunch of drugs like that so people think like lies with parties are real they’re not but yeah there’s no like access to to naloxone doesn’t people don’t just do drugs because they have like a they call it like a safety net that’s just dumb like no one wants to overdose like no one like it sucks like it’s not fun and getting Narcan sucks so like you don’t want to do.

 

Whitney (37:13)

Yeah, yeah. so for the, was, let’s go here. We talked about education and people now are more aware of Narcan, but there are some things to know if you are going to be the person distributing or, you know, using it or giving it to someone. What are some of the things that are important to know? Cause you mentioned like, you know, it’s awful to go be revived with Narcan, but what are some of those other things that maybe don’t come in the

 

Nathan Smiddy (37:46)

I mean, I think it’s always good to notice that like if someone like and this is probably a rare thing but my friend is a diabetic and she’s also on like methadone so she always comes into my mind when I think about this but if her sugar tanks and she passes out someone like people now think anytime something and someone is not responsive, it’s always an overdose, no matter what. So if I was to go and Narcan her, it would put her in immediately precipitated withdrawal on top of that, and then it wouldn’t even do anything for her because she just needs to fucking insulin, you know what I mean? So she just needs to be hit with a pin or shot with insulin. So I always try to think about looking for bracelets and stuff like that on people, you know what I mean? That’s what I try to do. I always keep that in my head because of her. And then it doesn’t tell you to rescue breathe in the pamphlets or on the box or anything like that. And that’s the most important part of the process.

 

Whitney (38:38)

Can you explain what rescue breathing is?

 

Nathan Smiddy (38:40)

Yeah, I mean, the rest of the reason is essentially just supplementing oxygen for that. So you’re like breathing for that person, hoping that they don’t suffer any irreversible brain injury because that can happen within like six minutes of an overdose. And people can survive the overdose still within the oxygen administration, but they can be brain dead on coming. And so they don’t live really.

 

Whitney (38:57)

And so that’s just the breathing part. Like think about what you’re imagining for CPR. It’s just the breathing, not like the chest compressions. One thing that I always, whenever I have been in a situation where I’m educating someone on Narcan, that I always wanted to make sure people realized was, like you said, if someone has opioids in their system and the naloxone is distributed, they are going to go into withdrawal.

 

Nathan Smiddy (39:15)

Mm -hmm.

 

Whitney (39:35)

What that does is it basically pulls the opioid off the brain receptors, but it doesn’t like rid the body of it. It kind of, the opioids are still in the body. So the person can then experience another overdose whenever those receptors or the opioids reattached to the receptors. And so you have, it can’t just be like, okay, I revived someone and whatever, like walk away. You have to monitor them because there could be a second overdose or just like other complications. And I don’t think people always realize

 

Nathan Smiddy (40:05)

Yeah, I think it’s best practice. I always tell people to like to stay with them. I think clinical it’s like six to eight hours. But I think it’s a one in 20 ,000 chance that the opioids reattach to receptors and they fall back out. So it does happen, you know what I mean? But I think it’s just good to monitor them, you know what I mean? But I know that the data shows that we definitely need a better continuum of care. Post, like Post ever does care for sure.

 

Whitney (40:36)

Yeah. And you know, I’ve never experienced withdrawal. I’ve heard it described and it sounds absolutely horrific and like something I never want to experience. So don’t expect someone if you are there after somebody has been given some, you know, opioid or overdose reversal medication, don’t expect them to be all cheery. They’re going to feel awful. And so, If you’re trying to then talk to them about going into treatment or something like that, I think it’s also important to recognize that they’re not physically not going to be feeling that great. And they just went through a life threatening situation. I’m sure there are going to be people out there who go, well, you know, they did it to themselves. No, that’s like Nate said, no one is using for the goal of overdosing. So recognize what this person just went through, recognize that if they are still using they probably have something else going on, like you said, the stuff on the inside. So let’s be more respectful about that experience and not just say, see, you gotta go to treatment, man. man, no, let’s talk to the person. Let’s just treat them like a human that they are.

 

Nathan Smiddy (41:45)

Mm -hmm. Yeah, I would agree.

 

Whitney (41:49)

So as we are kind of wrapping up, before I get to my final questions, I want to just ask you, is there anything else, you are doing so many amazing things, anything else you’d like to share with our audience?

 

Nathan Smiddy (42:00)

Not that I can think of. If I go and distribute at like shows and stuff like that, know what I mean? Like underground shows, illegal shows. mean, do that. That’s probably the coolest thing.

 

Whitney (42:13)

That’s pretty cool. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is without anything that would give indication as to where you’re doing

 

Nathan Smiddy (42:20)

Yeah, I mean pretty much just in LA they have a huge history of like illegal shows whether it’s EDM or like punk shows or whatever and they just do them under a bridge in an alley, in a wherever and I just like show up and give out Narcan test strips as gay people.

 

Whitney (42:37)

Yeah, that’s wonderful. mean, you’re truly going to where it’s or potentially needed and getting it out there. That’s really one of the best things people can do is just, I don’t know, my approach is if I’m carrying it, obviously one, I want to be able to save someone if I come across that situation, but it also reduces the stigma of accepting a Narcan kit. If more people are carrying it, you know, there would be no stigma of carrying an EpiPen. So why is there Sigma carrying a narcan kit? Let’s just have it available everywhere because anyone can be the lifesaver. Anyone can be essentially a hero for lack of better word. So let’s just, you’re getting it out there and making sure it’s more accessible. And that’s what everyone can be doing is just, you know, getting it, check how you can at your state level. You know, I live in a state that has a statewide prescription, standing prescription. I have gone to the pharmacy and just gotten kits and then handed them out as well. There are lots of health departments distributing them. Like just having it available. You never know when you’re gonna need it. So I just think it’s great that you’re getting it out there in different ways, in different settings and just spreading that awareness. So thank you. Man, thinking about the numbers, 100 ,000 last year you distributed, the amount of lives you’ve probably contributed to saving is astronomical.

 

Nathan Smiddy (44:07)

Yeah, I guess yeah potentially

 

Whitney (44:10)

Yeah, and you’re like us. I’m not worried about the number. I’m worried about just getting it out there and making sure people can save lives.

 

Nathan Smiddy (44:17)

Yeah, yeah, that’s all I think about. Yeah, I don’t think about the numbers or anything. I just do the work.

 

Whitney (44:22)

That’s man, we need more people like you, Nate. So how can people connect with

 

Nathan Smiddy (44:29)

On Instagram, it’s narcan underscore nate. On TikTok, it’s narcan underscore nate. If you want to be, do the professional thing, you can find me on LinkedIn at Nathan. My name is Nathan Smitty. You can find me on there.

 

Whitney (44:43)

Great, we’ll have all of your contact information in the show notes. And as we wrap up, I’m going to ask you my question I ask everyone. If people can only take one thing away from our conversation today, what would you like it to be?

 

Nathan Smiddy (44:59)

Everyone should carry Naloxone or Narcan. That’s the easiest thing we could all do. The easiest thing they could do, the simplest thing they could do.

 

Whitney (45:09)

Yeah, absolutely. Check out your state where you can get it. Again, you holding it does not mean anything about you other than the fact that you care. That’s what it means. If you carry a Narcan kit, you’re showing that you care. So carry it, reduce the stigma of carrying it, reduce the stigma of it being available to people. This is true. We saw a little bit of a decline. I believe in 2023 if I am recalling my numbers correctly, and that’s because we’re having more of these approaches. let’s just, again, keep people alive because people can’t get better or achieve their goals, whatever life they want to live, if they’re dead. So get the Narcan Naloxone kits, be aware, learn about your Good Samaritan laws, maybe advocate if it’s not the greatest Good Samaritan law. And just keep spreading awareness and education, everybody. Like this is what we can do. So Nate, thank you so much for coming on today. I enjoyed our conversation and it was, yeah, it was fun.

 

Nathan Smiddy (46:15)

Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate you reaching out. Totally enjoyed it.

 

Whitney (46:18)

Absolutely. All right, well everybody, thank you so much for listening. Please share, comment, subscribe, get this message out there so we can continue reducing stigma surrounding substance use, mental health, and all the other challenging life experiences we all go through. Thank you for listening.

Exploring harm reduction strategies with Nathan Smiddy, a leading advocate in overdose prevention. In this insightful interview with Nathan Smiddy, also known as Narcan Nate, we dive into the importance of harm reduction in combating the opioid crisis. Nate shares his journey of becoming a key advocate for harm reduction, educating people on the life-saving […]

Continue reading "Harm Reduction Hero: Narcan Nate’s Mission to Save Lives"
A promotional image of Patrick Bibza for the Reduce The Stigma podcast. Patrick is smiling with his arms crossed, wearing a checkered shirt. A bold quote above him reads, “I think that people in recovery are the most resilient people I know.” The podcast and Steel City Hardcore Recovery logos are present in the image.

Transforming Lives Through Holistic Recovery

A Veteran's Journey to Empowering Others Through Holistic Healing and Recovery

A portrait of Patrick Bibza smiling with his arms crossed, wearing a checkered shirt with the logo of the University of Pittsburgh. The Steel City Hardcore Recovery logo is in the top left corner. The background is black.
A quote from Patrick Bibza on a light green background with a leaf pattern border. The text reads, “I don't know anybody that doesn't have some kind of a stuck point where in my metaphor mind, it's a weed. It's a weed that got put into our life garden and we've been providing it nutrients subconsciously and it's growing and it's growing rapidly. So being able to identify with the help of someone like myself, that's a weed. It's not benefiting me anymore. Let's remove it and let's remove it together.” The quote is attributed to Patrick Bibza, CEO of Steel City Hardcore Recovery, from the Reduce The Stigma podcast on which he discussed holistic recovery.

In a recent episode of Reduce the Stigma, host Whitney sat down with Patrick Bibza, founder and CEO of Steel City Hardcore Recovery. A United States Navy veteran and licensed social worker, Bibza shared his powerful journey through addiction, trauma, and recovery. Describing recovery as a battle that requires immense strength, he refers to those in recovery as “warriors.” Bibza’s approach focuses on holistic well-being, targeting the body, mind, and soul to help individuals achieve meaningful, lasting transformation.

Steel City Hardcore Recovery was founded to support not only veterans but also adolescents and civilians in need of physical, mental, and spiritual growth. Bibza’s passion for addressing trauma and mental health, paired with his personalized programs, provides a lifeline to those seeking to reclaim their lives.

Through connection, accountability, and a focus on holistic recovery, his mission is to help individuals become the best version of themselves, proving that real transformation requires resilience, effort, and strong community support.

Mentioned in the episode:

Click here for the episode’s full transcript.

About Our Guest:

Patrick Bibza LSW CPT and Veteran of the United States Navy created SteelCityHxCxRecovery LLC in 2022. The basis of the company was to help at risk adolescents who were struggling with behavior, mental health and substance abuse issues. In 2024, the company expanded and is now providing mental, physical and spiritual support for Veterans and civilians alike.

SteelCityHxCxRecovery’s goal is to strengthen the body, mind and soul so that when life hits hard, we, together can fight back!! We provide physical fitness along with health and wellness classes, mental health seminars and spiritual guidance, both in person and digitally.

Connect with Patrick:

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Transcript

Whitney (00:47)

Hello and welcome to Reduce the Stigma. Today I’m talking with Patrick Bibza, founder and CEO of Steel City Hardcore Recovery. A veteran of the United States Navy, a licensed social worker, and a warrior in recovery, Patrick created Steel City Hardcore Recovery with a goal to strengthen the body, mind, and soul for physical, mental, and spiritual growth. Patrick, thank you so much for joining me today.

 

Patrick Bibza (01:16)

Whitney, thank you for having me on.

 

Whitney (01:18)

It’s always wonderful when I get to have somebody on who I’ve had the pleasure of talking to before. And when we last spoke, I was so energized and excited about what you’re up to. And I think there are going to be so many people who also resonate with your story and what you’re doing. I’d like to start by asking, you know, the identification as a warrior in recovery. Can you tell us a little bit more about what that means?

 

Patrick Bibza (01:48)

Sure, I would love to. our first conversation, I loved the energy that we had and I knew that this was gonna take off and go in a direction that I wasn’t even aware of. But in regards to your question, recovery is a battle. I don’t think that it’s for sissies. Recovery is not for sissies. And it takes someone strong, dedicated, motivated to overcome what I believe is a mental and physical allergy that manifests in a way that a quote unquote normal person doesn’t typically relate to. So it takes a warrior to go to battle against this demon that honestly takes over our body, and soul.

 

Whitney (02:29)

That’s a way of looking at it that, you know, I’ve heard pieces of it, but never put into such a spot on reflection. And it makes me think about how incredibly strong individuals who achieve recovery are. And even for those who are working towards recovery, it is not easy. And I think that, you know, there’s such a big misunderstanding that people who maybe are having substance use or mental health issues that they’re weak, when in reality, that’s just not the case.

 

Patrick Bibza (03:04)

I agree. I think that people in recovery and actually in active addiction, they’re the most resilient people that I know and have the most promising I don’t want to say future, they have the capability of really overcoming any adversity because they’re already going through hell on a daily basis. My act of addiction was going through the sludge. Sometimes I’m digging through just trying to get to that next one. I would go to any means. I would figure out a way I could overcome absolutely anything. So when I got into recovery and became a warrior, it wasn’t that difficult to be successful without the drugs and alcohol involved in my

 

Whitney (03:40)

And that’s such a, like, I hope more people can see that for themselves because there’s so much negativity put on individuals whenever they are struggling with substance use or mental health or really trauma, anything. Whenever they’re going through something, there’s so much self -doubt. And yet, you know, I certainly don’t want to encourage any sort of activity that contributes to, you know, substance use or, illegal activities. However, I know that the creativity and the resolve that it can take, that can be applied in other ways and the person just flourishes, which I’m guessing is the story.

 

Patrick Bibza (04:25)

Yeah. And I can relate totally to what you were just talking about with the PTSD or the trauma. There’s typically some kind of an event that has happened. And I do remember one of my first ever meetings, a guy came up to me he said, well, what was, what was the starting point? Like what made you start using? And I’m thinking to myself, like, there was nothing, man. I just like getting high. I like getting drunk because at that point I did, I was 21 years old, 22 years old. I was still enjoying it. But when I looked back, you know, through doing step work through the anonymous programs that I’m a part of. You know, there was a point and it had to do with trauma. And when I used and I drank, people ask, what’s your drug of choice? Escape. I just want to escape reality because my reality at that time from the age of 14 was completely distorted. The way that I perceived myself, the way that I perceived others, and when I put something into my body, whether it was a drug, an alcohol, a relationship, a big gamble, it made me feel powerful. It made me feel different because that trauma took that power away from

 

Whitney (05:35)

Your drug of choice was an escape. And then how, you know, recognizing that comes through a lot of hard work and achieving a place of recovery. What was that process? So you mentioned the 12 -step programs. What else contributed to you, you know, getting to where you are today?

 

Patrick Bibza (06:02)

Lordy lord, how much time do we have? I think if I could summarize it, it would be a lot of pain, a lot of pain, a lot of experience. People could tell me pretty much anything. I recognize that I was an alcoholic. I admitted that I was an addict, but to the point of like when I accepted it and had to really be like, wow, I can’t do anything. Like I am.

 

Whitney (06:03)

Hahaha!

 

Patrick Bibza (06:23)

It became every four days. I would drink and use. I would go into a rehab or go into a detox and then four days later I would forget. I have a disease that for that tries to trick me into forgetting of how bad it was. Many, many of rehabs and as a veteran of the United States Navy, I’ve went through, I want to say a handful of the CTAD program, which is the Center for Treatment of Addictive Disorders, phenomenal program. They teach you so much. However, if I’m not ready, I’m not ready. Maturity played a huge role in that with the trauma, you know, 14 years old. I stopped developing. I was also traumatized while in the military at 20. I stopped developing So as a 30 year old, I’m behaving like a 20-25 year old. I just wasn’t ready. So I think What it really came down to is I knew that I was taking bullets. I always use this metaphor of like I had armor on and the armor I had was based off of these different hats that I was wearing to like protect certain areas with different kinds of armor. And these bullets were flying at me. And every time I’d get knocked down, I just had to get back up and I asked for, and I would ask for help. Even if I didn’t know what that help would look like in the long run, I knew that going back to a rehab. It was like taking my car to the mechanic. I cannot fix my own car. I might be able to change a tire, maybe, but there was so much more that needed help, that needed repair. So when I go to treatment, they offer me these tools, they fix the car up. Then there’s the aftercare. What do I do after I get out of the bubble of safety? And that’s where I slipped up at several points. They would offer continued care. And I would say, no, I got this. That’s the problem. I have nothing. I cannot do this alone. Whether it’s a higher power, it’s the program, it’s talking to therapists, know, whatever it is, it’s just as an addict or a person in recovery or as a warrior in recovery, as I call myself. This isn’t a, this isn’t a loan. We go to war, we go to battle with a bunch of other soldiers. You know, I can’t see where the enemy’s flanking around me if I don’t have some good, you know, recon specialists. So that’s kind of how, and I’ll, and I’ll revert back to like, so when I was in grad school, my undergrad, I was using heroin pretty regularly. During my graduate degree from the University of Pittsburgh, I was using cocaine every day, drinking all day. So I was a very, they say, addict. And functioning addiction, sure, protected me, it saved me, it got me through X, Y, and Z, but I couldn’t see my ultimate future. I couldn’t see that light at the end of the tunnel before I could remove, before I removed the substances, the mental health aspect of it. You don’t know if it’s depression, anxiety, plethora of those, while you’re still having a substance. So removing the substance, identifying the mental health, seeking mental professional help, maybe getting on medication, treatments, therapies, and then get into the 12 steps. They don’t get me clean and sober. They help me find a power greater than myself, and they help me be a better person. I don’t want to just be clean and sober. I don’t want to be miserable. I don’t want to be discontent. I want to be the best damn version of myself I can be.

 

Whitney (09:49)

Well, you’re doing that. Here you are today, right? And I know there’s so much we could still dive into there. I want to move into, you created a business, you created an organization to be that best version of yourself. Can you tell us about Steel City Hardcore Recovery?

 

Patrick Bibza (10:12)

Sure, I would love to. Let me start off by saying it was terrifying. It was terrifying going against the norm. I’ve had careers and successful jobs that provided me financial stability. And I’ve always been a risk taker and I wanted to jump out of that norm. I wanted to be my own boss. So I started Steel City HHardcore Recovery in 2022. The mission began as helping at -risk adolescents from

 

Whitney (10:16)

Heheheheh!

 

Patrick Bibza (10:40)

poverty stricken homes and areas. Typically they were being dismissed from their educational system and they needed guidance. So I was kicking butt, let’s say, with these adolescents and getting positive feedback and helping, you know, dozens of adolescents at a time. And I just wanted to do a little bit more. I’ve always wanted to get back to the veteran population. I’ve worked in the VA hospital. I’ve worked with wounded warriors and disabled veterans with PTSD. And then I also thought there is a mass amount of the population who’s not in recovery, who’s not a veteran and who isn’t an adolescent. So how can I get these people involved? And that’s why I expanded Steel City Hardcore Recovery from an independent social work therapy practice to a wellness opportunity that, you know, targets the body, mind and soul. Because I think, and from my experience, typically look at one of those three or maybe two of those three and really strengthening the connection of all three to an equal degree is key in order to fully transform your life into the next version that you want to see. We don’t have to be stuck with who we are.

 

Whitney (11:54)

So you started working with adolescents. That’s a tough population.

 

Patrick Bibza (11:59)

I started with veterans at first in the mental health field. I actually worked at Pittsburgh behavioral, Pittsburgh Mercy behavioral, and I was making crisis calls and going to locations in the, how do I want to put this? Our mental health system sucks. It’s broken. We diagnose, we medicate, and then we make crisis calls. There’s no preventative measures that are, that are working. So when I went from that, I went to a veteran population, which I absolutely loved. Love my veterans. We’re stubborn, we’re entitled, know, we, who, rah, who, yah, kind of thing. But they relate, they related to me. And I saw a relation too with the adolescents because, know, I’m a tattooed social worker. I’m kind of stuck in that kind of middle age, you know, thinking I’m younger than I am, you know, going down and playing basketball with the kids, taking on a McDonald’s, sitting down one -on -one with them and just shooting the shit. Like I’m not gonna report you unless you’re talking about hurting yourself, hurting someone else or someone being hurt. And then they start to trust. You plant the seed. I will attempt to nurture and help them grow it, but it’s up to them. But planting that seed of trust, many of my adolescents don’t have a father figure. They don’t have a male role model and they don’t trust anybody. yeah, working with the adolescent field was fun.

 

Whitney (13:19)

And of course there’s the parallel to your story when you shared that you can identify at 14 is kind of when things started for you. And so I imagine, you know, working with that age group in ways you were working with who you were and helping them maybe go down a different path than what you experience.

 

Patrick Bibza (13:40)

That is so powerful and so real. I can think back to what happened when I was 14 and the sexual trauma that occurred and the way that it shaped my life. It shaped my life for 20 plus years. So being able to meet these kids at an age where my development started, I just, yeah, there’s something there I see myself in them. And it really, it means a lot.

 

Whitney (14:06)

And I’m sure it means a lot to the kids you’ve been able to work with. And there’s so many times where we forget about the child who was hurt that is now an adult before us. Because when it’s a child, we will all bend over backwards, right, as we should. And then it changes. We expect children to know better when they’re an adult and you know why did you make that choice? Well as you shared you know you in ways didn’t continue developing right and there were parts of you that were locked at 14 and until you could process and revisit and rework. So why are we having these unrealistic expectations for adults until we help them resolve that childhood and adolescent trauma?

 

Patrick Bibza (14:57)

Well, and I think that’s a big part of what Steel City Hardcore Recovery does. I use this book called The Shadow Working Guide. Carl Jung started it and then a woman put it into a working book. And I’ll tell you, I don’t know anybody that doesn’t have some kind of a stuck point where in my metaphor mind, it’s a weed. It’s a weed that got put into our life garden and we’ve been providing it nutrients subconsciously and it’s growing and it’s growing rapidly. So being able to identify with the help of someone like myself, that’s a weed. It’s not benefiting me anymore. Let’s remove it and let’s remove it together. Then we have the opportunity to start prushing, start, what am I trying to say? Seeding, we start planting, planting new seeds, new flowers, new vegetables, whatever you want to grow in your garden, but healthy, nutritious. And what do weeds do? They zap that nutrition. So anytime one pops up, boom, we pull it out immediately.

 

Whitney (15:54)

Yeah, and I like the emphasis on doing it together. We’re not meant to be solo. It’s tremendously hard in general, but to do it alone is near impossible.

 

Patrick Bibza (16:06)

And that is one thing I want to segment into. There’s an organization I work with, a nonprofit called Eyes Wide Shut. And it’s about doing things together. It’s about identifying the child and seeing that, you know, we’re not connecting anymore. We are so in our technology. We’re so in our world out here. We need to engage. We need to engage with the adolescents, with the youth. We need to engage with the community, with the parents, and help them see that there are not only physical components to being in your phone and on your tablet looking down, causing issues to your neck and your shoulders, but there’s also the mental addiction characteristics that come from these games they’re playing and the way that they are algorithm. Algorized there’s an algorithm to these claims that catch them into an addiction just like casinos use slot machines And then there’s the spiritual disconnect where we don’t have family dinners anymore We can’t talk with our parents about this weed that’s coming up in our garden and our parents go. Hey, let’s help out with that So that’s what this organization eyes wide shut really does is we’re trying to come together in order to Shed light on what’s happening to these children because if not, we’re gonna be flowing with weed children that are adults that are growing into adults

 

Whitney (17:26)

Right? Absolutely. mean, the presence of technology has impacted every aspect of an individual’s development. The constant availability of entertainment, getting the likes for the dopamine hits and things like that. I mean, we’re not really recognizing or taking enough action to help it because even as adults are doing it, I know that if I have a comment that has a hundred likes, I’m feeling pretty good, right? So we have to look at ourselves too. What are we modeling? Are we modeling sitting on the couch next to a young one and looking at our phone? Or are we saying, hey, let’s go for a

 

Patrick Bibza (18:14)

Right? Instant gratification is so addictive. And as parents, and I don’t have children of my own, but I do find when I go visit my nephews, my mother, I’m on my device and I hate myself for doing that. But that’s the same way as I say I’m a warrior in recovery. I just need to take the steps to realize this is becoming unmanageable. And luckily at this point I can put my phone down, but I foresee if I was a fortune teller that the longer these children are in their phones, the harder it’s going to be. And there are pros and cons to technology. I’m not anti -technology. I just want to educate the power for good. What does Spider -Man say? If you have the great responsibility or great power comes with great responsibility. We’re using this internet and this technology. We need to be responsible.

 

Whitney (18:49)

Right, right.

 

Absolutely. And it all, all of what you’re saying makes me think about what you, when you mentioned the mental health system and how it’s not preventative, you are taking a preventative approach. Yes, you’re helping people in a recovery sense, you know, but also getting involved early with adolescents. I imagine also for individuals who maybe, you know, I know that you don’t just work with individuals who are in recovery, you work with anyone who needs that wellbeing. And that is preventative, taking action today so that you don’t get to a place of burnout or a place of distress where you search for something else to help or to escape.

 

Patrick Bibza (19:45)

Absolutely. And let’s talk about escape for a second. 22 veterans a day commit suicide. 22. There has to be a way, and I get chills when I talk about this because it drives me mad. There has to be a way that we can get to them before they get to the hospital, before they are at that point where they’re seeking help and when they’re at the point they’re ready. They’re going to do it. And what are we doing? I don’t care. I want to get to them before then. Figure out what’s making this tick and how can I help? You want to go fishing? Do you want to go out and shoot the shit and have some coffee? Can we have a little camaraderie? Let’s talk about some stuff. Let’s talk about some real things. And that doesn’t just work. It’s not just a veteran approach. I’m just saying the fact that 22 commits suicide a day drives me nuts. But as civilians, as adolescents, I want to get to the problem of you’re being bullied at school. Let’s talk about it before you go shoot up that school, before you go do something that’s going to change your

 

Whitney (20:40)

And when you were talking about the horrific amount of suicide death or of veteran deaths by suicide that our country is seeing, it made me think of the technology that our exposure to it, because I was thinking, what could be different compared to previous wars and things like that? Well, I hadn’t thought of it before, but the constant access to videos on YouTube, to the news of bombings, of shootings, of all these things. I’m guessing when someone came back decades ago from, you know, serving, there wasn’t this daily exposure. And that I can’t imagine. Talk about triggers for trauma and just how painful it must be.

 

Patrick Bibza (21:35)

I have a grandfather and an uncle who just passed away who I remember growing up when the 4th of July would come and the fireworks could go off and they would shell shock. They would lock up. You know, they didn’t know how to handle it. They thought they were back there. That was once a year, maybe twice, three times a year on the daily, myself included and reminded of triggers of what happened. Whether it was over there, I was not a combat veteran, but I work with a ton of combat vets and they come back addicted to something, whether it’s a drug and alcohol, perhaps it’s the action and they come home and how do you deal with it? And they’re watching these action movies, they’re watching these war movies or just turning on the news and seeing the disgusting nature of human on human crime. No wonder we go back out there and use no wonder we have PTSD symptoms that cause self harm and no wonder we commit

 

Whitney (22:34)

Right. What? And I know this is not an easy problem to solve. I’m curious. I’m sure you have some ideas. What could we be doing differently?

 

Patrick Bibza (22:45)

I first want to say that I believe that the VA and these other veteran organizations are doing a good job and it’s progressively changing every month, every day. They’re getting more information, more data. They’re working with the veterans to see what could help you. So I’m not trying to change the wheel or reinvent the wheel. I think it’s just making it more available and spotlighting it. You, you turn on a Super Bowl commercial and they’ll promote alcohol left and right, but where’s the commercials for veteran, you know, awareness? And it’s not just a crisis line. A crisis line is great. You can call and have a crisis line, but where’s the…where’s the camaraderie website that we can just talk together? Know, where, you know, there are organizations that’ll take you fishing, they’ll take you hunting, they’ll get together and we’ll have coffee and stuff. We just need more. It needs to be as prevalent and as advertised as the casinos advertisements about the politics advertisements. Talk about a trigger for veterans politics. I go to the VA hospital, you have 50 % on the left, 50 on the right, and we’re going to war with each other in the United States of America. And right now, the veterans are even divided.

 

Whitney (24:00)

Wow, I had never even thought about that perspective. Previously I had conversations with veterans of what it’s like to serve for a war you may not support or about an effort you may not support. I had not thought about coming back, returning to civilian life, and then there being that division from the people who are the only ones who have any idea what they are going through.

 

Patrick Bibza (24:29)

There is a disconnect between civilian population and veteran population. There’s a disconnect between generational wars, Vietnam to the wars that are happening now and so forth. But what I’m seeing now is even more of a disconnect because of politics and political views and ideologies that are veterans across the board to just come at each other instead of coming together and it blows my mind. It drives me crazy, but like we just circle back, it’s technology. The information we’re getting may be true, it may be false. People get to believe whatever they want. How about sit down and have a conversation with that person based on beliefs? I can disagree with you, you can disagree with me. It doesn’t mean I hate you. But it seems like the left hates the right, the right hates the left, and they don’t even know why.

 

Whitney (25:20)

Yeah, great. And back to have a conversation, you have to have practiced it and have communication skills, which are going out the window. And it’s, you’re really, man, my mind is, is going a million miles an hour thinking about all of this. And it really highlights the necessity of programs like yours. And I know that you are not just serving veterans, that you are serving civilians as well, and really working on those almost, I want to say basic, maybe basic’s not the right word, I think overlooked, the overlooked core parts of our being, the physical, the mental, spiritual, you know, and that’s what you’re doing. And we heard about their origins and how you’ve now expanded. I realize we haven’t yet really heard what you’re offering. Can you tell us how do you do this work? How do you address those different components?

 

Patrick Bibza (26:34)

And it’s funny that we said that because to me, my organization isn’t as important as what we’re doing right now. The conversation, the dialogue, but I guess I’ll circle around to what I’m doing. So putting an emphasis on the body, mind and soul requires physical, mental and spiritual guidance. I truly believe that I have the capability to reach the masses because of my experience, my strength and my hope, a warrior in recovery, starting off as a bullied adolescent, picked on, belittled, beat up, joined the military because he was troubled, facing jail time, was traumatized in the service, many surgeries, addicted to pills, coming out, going into different schools and educations with no guidance. I was like an airplane or a boat just floating down the stream and I am the worst captain in the history of captains. So, you know, getting through the addiction, getting the mental health component taken, taken care of, know, getting physically in shape. I’m 200 pounds right now. Active addiction was 130. So let’s look at the physical component of nutrition, of exercise, of what it does to your mind to get a little bit of dopamine from something that isn’t technology. So we’re going to transition from the physical to the mental. We need to get those dopamine fixes elsewhere. We need to be confident in ourselves. We need to look at ourselves in the mirror and say, I am enough. And even when I’m not enough, it’s okay not to be okay. You know, I heard this once in a meeting and it stuck and it changed my recovery forever. I am not bad trying to get good. I am sick trying to get well. If I had cancer and it flared up after remission, would I beat myself up and say I’m bad because my cancer came back? No, I would try to get healthy and well again. And it affects my body, my mind and my soul, because let’s be real, we’re fighting a war right now with spirituality and demons, the higher power source, God, Buddha, whatever, nature. It doesn’t matter to me. There is a high frequency and a low frequency. And if you’re not feeding this one, you’re feeding this one. And all I’m trying to do today is just weigh out, balance of the scale so I’m a little bit higher than I was yesterday.

 

Whitney (29:00)

And how important, you’re right, we as a system silo out, right? Especially like we’re in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania is a carve out state. So you have medical on one side or physical on one side, behavioral health, mental health on the other. And we’ve done that. And then spiritual, that doesn’t come in unless you are in a 12 step program or where you are active in a religion, and yet that’s not how we live. We don’t live alone. I’m gonna just be my physical self today. No, we are all of those things constantly coming together, adapting and evolving. And we can’t, it just almost feels like weights, like holding you back or like if you try to only take care of one thing. So I love this holistic approach that you have. know, boost in the nutrition. Cooking is something that you’ll be able to offer guidance on. How do you feed your body, not just physically feeding it, but nurturing it, nurturing the garden, as you said.

 

Patrick Bibza (30:10)

Mm -hmm. It’s unity. It’s all three of those components and balance Too often we see people put all their time into work and neglect family or put all their time into family and neglect bills You know for me it’s like if I go to the gym and I look at the weights and expect results, I’m not going to get them. So I have to pick up those weights and do some work. That’s the same with my spirituality. If I’m praying to God, but I’m not doing the step work in order to get closer to that higher frequency, how do I just expect results? And if I want to be clean and sober, but I’m not willing to do anything for old timers used to say if you’re not ready to stop drinking, here’s five dollars. Come back when you are like that’s to me. It’s life or death. Too many I’m burying too many of my friends on the monthly basis, if not weekly basis.

 

Whitney (31:04)

And so as you are moving forward with Eyes Wide Shut, you’re involved with Steel City Hardcore Recovery. What are you hoping in the next maybe year to what impact are you aiming

 

Patrick Bibza (31:21)

My number one goal is I want to reach as many people as humanly possible. Financially, sure, making money is a great thing, but for me, nurturing as many people from all aspects of life, rich, poor, black, white, male, female, I just want them to be able to feel okay, to feel safe, that they have someone in their corner. And what I do is I provide daily reflections on the body, mind and soul. you follow my Facebook page, Steel City Hardcore Recovery, you know, you can follow that along. And every day I’m to give you a little just a little something, you know, just go with it. If you want to engage more, there’s different services that I do provide. There are 26 different programs that I will teach you skills that I’ve learned throughout my course of not only just life, but also collegiate academics and how I’ve just kind of grown to find a power greater than myself that has no religious tie. So between that going to colleges and universities, high schools, getting these adolescents where they start, because let’s be honest, by the time you graduate college, am I really going to influence you? I want to influence them at their most influential points, you know, it’s their lives. They can choose what they want to do, but understand that there are consequences. I’ve always talked about pivot points. We’re on this path and you’re going to have a point. You know, your friends want you to go to a party, they want to, you know, alcohol drugs, or you need to go home and study because your goal is you want to get into a higher form of education or trade. What are you going to choose? And I just want to let you know that there’s consequences to both of those actions. Let’s think. Let’s take a quick second and pause before we make a decision.

 

Whitney (33:10)

I’m a little speechless. just, that’s, I don’t think enough of those moments are happening. We live at a very fast pace and we expect, especially younger individuals, to make some very serious lifelong decisions, you know, that can impact lifelong at a young age. Thankfully now we can, our culture is more accepting of, you know, transitioning careers. It used to be you pick one thing at 18 and that’s what you do for the rest of your life. And that is just, who knows? I’m definitely a different person than I was at 18. So how do we put this pressure, right? And so it’s so great that you’re getting in at that time when, yeah, there are some things we can be fluid with, but there are other things, if you make a certain choice, it will follow you forever. If you get a record, it will follow you forever. And so we’re not always great at thinking about 10 years from now or what it will imply. I played rugby in college and I would say, had a lot of injuries prior to rugby and people would say, why are doing that to your body? And I would actually say, what’s the point of having a body if you don’t use it? Now, as I am very achy all over, well now I really wish I would have listened.

 

Patrick Bibza (34:38)

Thank you. We don’t take a lot of suggestions as an adolescent, even as a young adult, you know, think about the consequences. If I could share anything with these adolescents, it would be to pause. It would literally be, I wish I could just come into their brain and say, just take three seconds, please. Think about what’s going to happen when you pull that trigger. That guy’s making fun of you. That girl did X, Y, and Z. You’re feeling some kind of way and you shoot them.

 

Whitney (34:49)

No.

 

Patrick Bibza (35:10)

The gun violence in this country is ridiculous and we don’t think about the consequences of what happens. One, you’re going to jail for a real long time. Two, you’re taking a life, a life of another human being. That is someone’s child, that is someone’s loved one. The consequences are astonishing. Pause for a half a second, step back. What do they say the three R’s you want to retreat, rethink, and then react? We don’t do that. We don’t do that when we think about the bag of drugs in front of us, you know, it’s going to get me a natural high. It’s going to get not a natural, but an instant gratification. hi. It’s going to show off to my friends. I’m tough. It could kill you. There could be something in that bag and more than likely there is that could kill you. Let’s pause. Let’s take a second before we sign documents and paperwork for loans and credit cards. I can buy this now. Do you need it? Do you have any idea what it’s like to be in credit card debt? Do you have any idea what an interest rate even is? We’re not teaching our adolescents basic fundamental skills or like integrity, properties of just being a decent human.

 

Whitney (36:17)

Yeah. And then to go up, you know, to use the social work line of going upstream, why did they reach out for the gun or the substance or the this or the that? What could have been done to give them healthier coping skills? What education could have been provided before they signed for, you know, student debt that will end up they’ll pay five times what it actually costs for them to go. You know, what can we be doing? We can’t stop everything. We can minimize and reduce the likelihood and empower and prepare. And I just, so, I love hearing what you’re doing because we are a reactionary world and we need to be proactive.

 

Patrick Bibza (37:09)

And one of the biggest components of Steel City Hardcore recovery, and this comes from the military, is we do a pre -action report and we do a post -action report. So we like to check in and see what do we have planned for this week. What are we going to look at? What could be coming up? What kind of flags? What kind of harmful things could be presenting themselves? What do we want to accomplish? How do we accomplish that? We don’t just get things handed to us in lives. And then at the end of the week, we check in and we go, or we check out and go, okay, this worked. This didn’t work. Let’s write it down. Let’s take a look, let’s get some statistics on what’s working for me and what’s not. If you keep drinking every Friday, wondering why you’re waking up Monday, going into work, hung over, maybe we don’t drink on Friday. You know, if on Monday you want to work out and hit weights all week, but then you never go to the gym. Well, maybe we need to make a little different action plan where we, we actually go, we have the, we have dedication rather than this is what I want, know motivation.

 

Whitney (38:06)

Right. Well, I could keep going and talking with you all day. And so I want to be respectful of your time and also ensure that our listeners get the information to connect with you. You have mentioned your Facebook. How else or is there any other way that people can connect with

 

Patrick Bibza (38:27)

Sure. My website is in early development. It’s up and active. It’s www .steelcityhxcxrecovery .com. All of my other social media links are on there. I’m on Facebook and Twitter and TikTok and Instagram. There will be commercials coming up where you’ll be able to see and click on and sign up for consultations where you’ll have one -on -one sessions with me to figure out if programming is something you’re interested in, our goal is not to change anyone. Our goal is to transform and help see what the potential for transformation can look like. You’re right. Not everybody needs to go to college. Not everybody needs to have a trade. Not everybody’s going to be Michael Jordan. Let’s just see what we can do. Let’s lay out a blueprint for you. And they’re all customized. Customized. This isn’t some template. I’m going to ask you some questions. You’re going to give me some answers. And I’m going to provide you real ass feedback. I’m not going to sugar coat it. I’m not going to walk you through life with a leash and do you want to transform or don’t you want to transform? And if you do, I’m here.

 

Whitney (39:32)

Wow, I love that. And just to clarify, if someone does want to transform, they can meet with you if they’re in your area, which is Pittsburgh, or virtually,

 

Patrick Bibza (39:45)

Correct, yeah, everything that I’m doing right now is virtually accessible. My inpatient, my in person sessions will be advertised as they come up and as this grows. I’m always around, able as much as possible to answer a phone call or write an email back to just, you know, don’t be shy. You’re not alone out here.

 

Whitney (40:10)

Great. And if my question I ask everyone, there’s a lot to take away from today. We’ve hit on a lot of really important topics. If people can only take away one thing though from this conversation, what would you like it to

 

Patrick Bibza (40:26)

Recovery ain’t for sissies. I think that would probably be the one thing that I want to tell anybody out there is recovery ain’t for sissies. ain’t for the soft. It ain’t for the weak. You got to be a bad motherfucker to be in recovery, to recover and to turn your life around. You know, we’ve been conditioned from the moment we have our first thought and we have this unique sense of this is who I am. Why? Because you were told this. Let’s find our true selves. Let’s work towards that. Let’s nurture the positivity and never give up. You know, I’m never finished as David Goggins would say.

 

Whitney (41:07)

Well, I know that’s resonating with multiple people listening. And I hope everyone starts following you on Facebook and reaching out. You’re going to be doing such amazing things. You already are. I just want to thank you, Patrick, for sharing your story, talking about your own experience, and then also giving us all some inspiration for how to build something and have a positive, big impact. So thank you.

 

Patrick Bibza (41:36)

I want to thank you very much and one other real quick thing. My mother, her name is Paula Bibza and she’s a kidney cancer survivor. So I just want to let her know how important she is to me and my life. And without her, I wouldn’t be here.

 

Whitney (41:42)

Yes. right. Thank you, I am so happy that you shared that. Thank you. We’re gonna share some information in the show notes as well about kidney health awareness, as well as any actions you’d like to take. So everyone, thank you for listening. Pass this along. Anyone in your life who you think may benefit. Really the best way to reduce stigma is to continue having these discussions and conversations and just sharing them with people. So please pass it along, like, share, subscribe, comment. We want to hear from you. And everyone take care of yourself and we’ll talk to you soon.

A Veteran’s Journey to Empowering Others Through Holistic Healing and Recovery In a recent episode of Reduce the Stigma, host Whitney sat down with Patrick Bibza, founder and CEO of Steel City Hardcore Recovery. A United States Navy veteran and licensed social worker, Bibza shared his powerful journey through addiction, trauma, and recovery. Describing recovery […]

Continue reading "Transforming Lives Through Holistic Recovery"

The Power of Advocacy: A Conversation with Nikki Soda

Empowering Voices and Bridging Gaps: How Advocacy Can Transform Addiction Treatment

In this episode of Reduce the Stigma, we sit down with Nikki Soda, Executive Director of Sodas Consulting, who shares her powerful journey in addiction treatment advocacy. Nikki discusses her passion for public policy, highlighting her work with the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers and her role in creating the impactful National Hill Day. Through her lived experience and deep involvement in treatment centers nationwide, Nikki has developed a unique perspective on the complexities of addiction recovery, policy, and community engagement. Her drive to bridge the gap between treatment providers and policymakers is a crucial step toward improving behavioral health outcomes and creating positive change.

Nikki emphasizes the importance of everyone’s voice in advocacy, regardless of experience. Her message is clear: advocacy can be a tool for anyone willing to take action. From hosting town hall meetings to mobilizing communities for Hill Days, Nikki is a relentless optimist, pushing for more inclusion in the policymaking process. By empowering others and offering strategic tools, she envisions a future where addiction treatment and policy work hand in hand for a more just and effective system.

Organizations mentioned:
Faces and Voices of Recovery (FAVOR)
National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers (NAATP) 
American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM)
National Council for Wellbeing
Recovery Advocacy Project 

Click here for the episode’s full transcript.

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About Our Guest:

Nikki Soda is a highly accomplished advocate and strategic marketer with a strong
background in the behavioral health field. She possesses an MS in Addiction Policy from
Georgetown University and has amassed over 10 years of experience in this domain.
Passionate about advocacy and public policy, Nikki actively engages in local and national
initiatives to make a meaningful impact. Currently the Executive Director of Soda’s
Consulting, she utilizes her addiction policy knowledge to help treatment centers get
involved in public policy. Recently serving as the Director of Membership and State
Advocacy for the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers (NAATP), she
leverages and consults her expertise to lead productive discussions with industry leaders
and conducts comprehensive tours of treatment centers nationwide. Through these
experiences, she has gained a profound understanding of the substance use disorder
treatment landscape.


Nikki has excelled in various leadership roles, including Director of Business Development
and Marketing for renowned treatment facilities. In addition, she has overseen multiple
alumni programs while currently serving as co-president for the board of the Treatment
Professionals and Alumni Services (TPAS). Her diverse responsibilities in creating and
managing a treatment center start-up have honed her skills in admissions, policy
development, procedure implementation, and business growth. 


As a result, Nikki has built an impressive reputation and is frequently sought after for
client placement recommendations and policy guidance.

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Transcript

Whitney (00:00)

There’s something magical that happens whenever a person finds a way to pursue their passion through their work, right? It’s a different energy that they bring to the world and to what they’re doing. And that’s exactly what we have with today’s guests. Nikki Soda is an advocate who is ensuring that everyone knows that their voice can make a difference, that their actions can make a difference whether it’s in the form of attending the National Hill Day that she created while at the National Association for Addiction Treatment Providers, or through community events and community organizations. Let’s just all recognize that we have a role to play, that we can play a role, and let’s get started.

Whitney (00:55)

Hello and welcome to Reduce the Stigma of Recovery Conversations. Today I’m talking with Nikki Soda, the Executive Director of Soda’s Consulting. Nikki’s passionate about advocacy and public policy. She actively engages in local and national initiatives to make a meaningful impact. Utilizing her addiction policy knowledge to help treatment centers get involved in public policy, and she was recently serving as the Director of Membership in State Advocacy for the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers, where she leveraged and consulted her expertise to lead productive discussions with industry leaders and conducted comprehensive tours of treatment centers nationwide. Through all these experiences, Nikki has gained a profound understanding of the substance use disorder treatment landscape and I’m honored to have Nikki, thank you for joining me today. I’m so honored to have you on.

Nikki Soda (01:51)

I’m so glad to be here. Thank you for asking and I’ve really enjoyed listening to some of the past shows. So I’m looking forward to a fruitful conversation.

Whitney (01:59)

Thank you, that means a great deal. And I had the pleasure of connecting with you a little over a year ago through your role at NAATP. And I was excited when I saw you taking a transition in your career and moving into this consulting role, as well as some other things that I know you have going on. And I’d love to just start with this recent kind of transformation for you. What led you to kind of move into this space?

Nikki Soda (02:31)

Yeah, so very good question. I was with NATAP, which stands for the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers for five and a half years and had an absolutely wonderful, profound working experience working for a national association where I was able to work with a stellar team and get to meet people all over the country, visited well over 100 treatment centers and got to sit down and talk to the executive leadership teams to CEOs, to behavioral health techs, to nurses. And so really got a feel for the ends and the understanding of what goes on in a treatment center and the good and the bad and be able to connect people. So with that job, Whitney came a really good understanding of treatment. I am a person with lived experience. I celebrated 20 years this year. And so having that understanding of what the other side and being a product of residential treatment myself gave me a good knowledge and background for that. What happened is in 2019, I was asked to help lead a national Hill Day. And when I was in DC helping to co -chair with Sherry Layton, who is one of my mentors and just a badass all around policy guru from La Hacienda in Texas. When I was there, a passion ignited in and why we were advocating for a couple different behavioral health care issues on the Hill. It really started turning like this is something that I want to do. This is something that I think I’m decent at. And so what that led me to do was to decide to go back and get my master’s in addiction policy. And so I went to Georgetown where they’ve created a new program from a former director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Regina LaBelle is the director of it. This program specifically works with addiction policy. So I went back and I graduated last May. The National Association allowed me the opportunity to create state advocacy groups. And so while my work there, so I received my master’s working on a state advocacy group. And I just wanted to be able to do a little bit more from the advocacy realm. And so we parted ways in December. I loved the team so much there. what I did is I’ve created, so does consulting. And so, well, it was actually already created. But what my goal, Whitney, is to go and help treatment centers bridge treatment with state and federal public policy, and also with their own community leaders. So city council, the mayor, and be able to provide them with the tools to successfully build program to be able to have that liaison between public policy that’s specifically going to impact them. that is right now I have the privilege I’m consulting for High Watch Recovery and Alina Lodge and then doing some other work with some other nonprofits as well but those are the two treatment centers right

Whitney (05:40)

That is a fascinating role to play because I just think about how siloed our system has been historically. The treatment providers in one area, the policy makers in another, the people who are the patients, the clients, and in a whole other area. And you’re really bridging and bringing it to be a cohesive approach to behavioral health, to effective programming and I think that’s just such an area that we haven’t really seen, at least not that I’m very aware

Nikki Soda (06:13)

Yeah, it’s really not. mean, addiction policy has been around for a very, very long time. But one of the things is that there’s not a whole lot of us that are out there pounding the pavement. It’s a more silent group behind the scenes. And so you’re exactly right. There’s a lot of people that haven’t heard it. And unless you are heavily involved with the political landscape or with the public policy landscape, you wouldn’t. So now, you’re most certainly in the majority. One of the things that I want to do is bring it more to light, to let people know that anyone can be an advocate if you have the right tools to do it and the passion and the desire to make some positive change.

Whitney (06:58)

There is such a misunderstanding, as you said, as to who can be in the room, because historically, again, it hasn’t been the average person. We have lobbyists and things like that going and pushing for different ideas and policies. So what can you envision happening if we’re able to have more of these voices raised in part of the policy making and then the implementation as

Nikki Soda (07:31)

So I’m gonna start with saying I’m an eternal optimist. My ideas are pie in the sky. We can make shit happen. And I believe the more people that we have Whitney, the better. And so with that, going back to the Hill Day in 2019, we had a number of people that joined that had never had zero experience, had never done it before. And we had a combination of people with lived recovery experience.

Whitney (07:35)

Okay, all right, let’s go

Nikki Soda (08:01)

And we had people with academia experience and we had individuals who worked in a treatment center and who were just there to support. And so I say that because anyone can be an advocate. And it’s so important because the more that we have, the louder our voices are and the more that we are heard, right? And so if there is an issue that senators or representatives have not been aware the more people that we can get to write letters, to send emails, to make phone calls, to go and physically visit, the more likely we are to have change

Whitney (08:36)

I love the optimism because that is, if you don’t have that optimism, if you don’t have that belief that it could happen, you’re gonna burn out. And I’m gonna speak from the devil’s advocate perspective, right? Policy in this space in particular has been harmful. If we look at the war on drugs and criminalization of different things, sentencing, we have seen some really harmful impacts on the people who need to help the most. What, if anything, is different now than what occurred in the past?

Nikki Soda (09:12)

There is not, I think what it is, this is my personal opinion, is a lack of knowledge. So if we go back and we look at how incredibly hard it failed to have the war on drugs earlier, we have some people of certain parties that are trying to do these exact same things that failed miserably. And it’s like, please look at history so that we don’t repeat ourselves. But what we also have is some really good examples. Like, I don’t know if you’re familiar with what’s gone on in Portugal where they made a number of drugs legal. And what they did is they offered treatment for people who were caught using. And so some of those have tried to be implemented over here in the United States, some successfully, some not successfully. But I think one of the main things needs to be education. And that takes time and that the education incarceration is not always the best answer. And so I think it has to be a balance to Whitney, again, just my personal opinion of having consequences, but also understanding that there are people who don’t know any better and have fallen upon extremely hard times and being able to offer viable resources to those people as opposed to just throwing them in jail and expecting them to heal magically.

Whitney (10:38)

Right, right. We have continued the same approach for decades and it has not gotten better if anything in ways it’s gotten worse are, you know, we can go into some debate about, you know, the death rate right now and the fact that there’s a little bit more attention to it now than in the past because of, you know, certain populations affected. And I think that is part of, you know, the opportunity for raising voices, but also from my own perspective, a fear. We see opioid settlement funds and how are they being utilized and who’s being part of the decision making. I know in Pennsylvania, there’s a lot of money going to police officers as far as funding for them. And while, yes, they’ve been impacted, the trauma they have seen by responding to numerous overdoses, I, as a Pennsylvanian, am wondering why there and not two different programs. And so

Nikki Soda (11:35)

Thank

Whitney (11:36)

You know, here we are with this large opportunity. How do we not replicate those mistakes of the past?

Nikki Soda (11:42)

Right. And how do we not replicate what happened with the tobacco settlement? Because that is a very prime example of that money, of that settlement money being very mismanaged through a number of states. And unfortunately, we’re seeing that happening again. And it’s just one of those things that makes you hit your head. Please just read a little bit about what happened and what was successful and what wasn’t.

Whitney (11:47)

Yes. Yes.

Nikki Soda (12:09)

But you’re right. And it’s different in every state. And I’ve had a little opportunity. I’ve been fortunate. I live in Palm Beach County, Florida. So I’ve been able to really have my hands kind of in the dirt, so to speak, for the opioid settlement money here. And it’s vastly different in Connecticut and it’s vastly different in New Jersey. And so it’s interesting. It’s very interesting how the task force are made up and how the money is being decided and what lack that people have

Whitney (12:38)

Right, which is where you come in and all of your experience you have the for like the treatment side you’ve been through your touring of different facilities, your lived experience, your academic training. Where then, so what do we need to do? What, what, like where do we

Nikki Soda (12:41)

Right. So a great example is here in Palm Beach County where we have the county itself has been the behavioral health portion of the county has been working diligently on a plan for the opioid settlement money of how it can most benefit the individuals that are struggling with substance use disorder or mental health issues. And so what we’ve had to do is there’s two proposals that are up for grabs, but where people can come to help is we’ve had some town hall meetings. Where we’ve invited the public to come and hear what the plan is. And that’s where everyone can have a voice and come and say, by showing up, by reading what’s sent out, which can sometimes be tough, I realize that. But that’s where, like, look to see where you can show up and where you can be a voice, because even in Pennsylvania, I would venture to guess that there’s opportunity for people to come and chime in, I would hope at least. And so that’s where you can look on this specific issue for coming

Whitney (14:02)

Right. There’s a little bit of a dynamic we know that certain demographics are going to be heard more. mean, even treatment providers. And there can be a question then even about ethics whenever a treatment provider is involved in policy, either policy advocacy or what have you. Do you have any thoughts on that ethical space for providers?

Nikki Soda (14:25)

I do. I, going back to my work with the national association, we had a very good vetting system for our members and we had a code of ethics that was required to be signed. and so it is, it is tricky sometimes when you are wanting to pull together a group. I have an example not too long ago where we were wanting to bring together different providers in the state to have a roundtable discussion. There had been examples of one treatment provider that had been proven to do some very unethical behavior. And so we’re like, well, how do we exclude them from being part of this round table discussion? Fortunately, they decided not to be part of it themselves, but that’s a very, very real part of, how do we be inclusive yet keep the bad guys out? And

Whitney (15:20)

Yeah.

Nikki Soda (15:21)

It is a very, very challenging task. And I think the best answer in the groups that I’ve been a part of that we’ve seen is to try to hold everyone accountable, which can be very tough if you’re dealing with a shady provider who has ulterior motives, which is usually what it is. They want to get the inside scoop. I just participated in an event in Maryland and we had a lot of recovery advocates that were invited. In this meeting, there were a couple of alleged patient brokers that were there in the room. And so my hope, Whitney, is that when you have the bad players that are in there, that they can at least hear and absorb some of what’s going on. And that, you know, we have to hope that goodness will prevail. And this is one of those eternally optimistics, because there’s not. There’s not a law that says we can just exclude them from it. So it is a very tricky balance. But the groups that I belong to down here in Florida do a very good job of vetting and ensuring that, all right, you have to agree that your facility is adhering to all of these ethical considerations and then it’s on your honor. Yeah, it’s tough.

Whitney (16:32)

Right, which is tough. even, you know, it’s not, I don’t want to make treatment providers sound bad, right? That is not my belief in it at all. There are bad players in every role, people with different motivations. And so it’s, it is important to think about who you’re supporting, getting, you know, even an advocacy, do you really understand what they’re advocating for? Because, you know, it can be very complex what’s being presented and then kind of twisted in a way to say, see this really nice kind of shiny thing? See, this is great. Don’t look at this other stuff over here. So someone who wants to get involved, who wants to start raising that voice, do you have any tips on what to look for when identifying a potential, you know, movement or organization

Nikki Soda (17:17)

Right.

Whitney (17:29)

Align with.

Nikki Soda (17:31)

Absolutely, and I’m gonna take one step back for a second though and when you were looking for ways to get involved so in South Florida for example We have something called stuff then which is the southeast Florida behavioral it’s a network advocacy group not network, but it’s an advocacy group and Maureen Killian is the head of it and she is a mom on a mission and She is so in the

Whitney (17:34)

Yes, please.

Nikki Soda (17:54)

And so she is one that is sending out alerts. so finding a tribe and finding a group like that is going to be very, very helpful, particularly in Pennsylvania. Not particularly in Pennsylvania, for example, finding a group like that where you have someone who’s got a pulse on what’s going on. and part of how I figured out that they were a good group. Maureen is a badass. Lisa Franklin is the co -leader of that. I went to a couple of their meetings,did a little Google background check, which isn’t necessarily the end all be all, but found out that they’re two fearless, just incredibly talented, dedicated advocates. And so I think doing a little bit of due diligence with treatment centers, Whitney, you can look and see if there’s been any pending lawsuits. You can also see if there’s any articles about fraudulent behavior for a number of treatment centers. When you’re getting in with an advocacy group, it’s important to know who you’re coming to the table with. And so doing your research and asking around too, asking some of your colleagues, hey, are you familiar with XYZ, people that you trust?

Whitney (19:04)

Yeah, yes, absolutely. And it just, I couldn’t help but think just even thinking about when you pick a treatment provider, know, these are things that you want to think about in all situations. And I think it’s just amazing the way that you’re approaching it, you’re identifying how to go about it in a way that the voices are raised in an ethical manner. And there’s just so much opportunity there and you know you’ve shared your pie in the sky, I shared my brief pie in the sky, it can be really hard being in advocacy. Do you have any thoughts on you know how to approach advocacy in a way that you don’t burn out before like quickly before you can make an

Nikki Soda (19:54)

For sure. So a couple of things. Find something that you’re really passionate about. So if you are really passionate about, you know, reproductive rights, or if you are really passionate about gun control, find something that you are passionate about. For me, it is addiction. It is being able to advocate for those in recovery who don’t necessarily have a voice for themselves. And it is also, I feel very passionate about ensuring that residential treatment stays around for a long It’s a very good option. It saved my life and I want to ensure it stays around for a long time. So finding something that you’re passionate about would be one. Second, don’t make it your full -time job unless you are all in and fully vested is gonna prevent burnout. Two or three, I think it’s important and I’ve seen this in some of my friends who’ve been burnt out that you have to be able to separate yourself from what you’re advocating for. I know this is a lot harder and it’s way easier for me to say this from a distance, like I’ve seen some moms whose, you know, children have passed away from overdose and it’s all consuming. And I think that it’s important. And again, this is easier for me to say, but it’s important to have a little bit of disconnect from what you are breathing in and out every day and working and advocating for that you have other things that you are doing too and other passions that you work on, think that that is gonna help. And then last but not least, understanding that it’s a marathon and not a sprint. And so there is not instant results that are gonna happen from this. And so patience is essential and understanding that when you get in that this is not something that happens so quick is gonna help to alleviate burnout or disappointment.

Whitney (21:40)

Right, right. So the person has decided, all right, I’m going to get involved. I am thinking about how to go about it in a way that I can last the marathon. What impact does advocacy have? What can it even

Nikki Soda (21:57)

So much. Advocacy can… There are so many policies, so many safety regulations that are in place now for the benefit to keep us safe that are due through advocacy. I’m going to try to think of an example off the top of my head. okay. I have a great one. So I told you I live in South Florida. South Florida was unfortunately well -known, became well -known for patient and patient brokering for those who aren’t familiar with it are when a very shady or unscrupulous person decides, finds someone who needs, who’s in need of recovery and takes that person and literally sells them to a recovery residence or a treatment center. And by selling them means getting money for turning them in. And Whitney in South Florida, became unfortunately very well known for it. And the Sober Homes Task Force was put together in 2018. And this task force was composed of different community members. So it was put together by Dave Ehrenberg, who is our state attorney. it did have police officers, it had attorneys, it had treatment providers, it had mom advocates, it had recovery residences as part of this group. And what they did was they created legislation that made patient brokering illegal and it made deep fines and jail time for it. And so what came of this is there was also a hotline that was created. So if you were witnessing patient brokering going on, you’d call this hotline. They’ve had over a hundred people arrested because of this bill that was passed. So that’s one example of people, of advocates saying, we have had enough of this, we have to do something and being loud enough, beating the drum loud enough that there was action that was taken. So from the task force of community leaders, the legislation was written, created and passed. And so that’s a really good example of something that was able to curtail something really bad that happened. So that’s one of many examples. There’s been marketing legislation that’s passed too because of very fraudulent marketing that’s put out and so there’s been stops to that. And then also there’s been really good patient safety regulations that have been passed because of, we’ll look at mental health, for example. There was some just absolutely heartbreaking mental health institutions that were just deplorable. And so there was parents of children who had gone into these homes and there was an undercover reporter who went up to one in New York and saw absolutely deplorable conditions. And so they made a news expose on it. And very shortly after that, it was shut down. The owners of that treatment home were prosecuted and those patients were dispersed into other places. And so there’s so many examples of what advocacy can do for the better. That’s why it’s so important. And I also want to encourage that anyone can do it. And so it can be so overwhelming, but there’s toolkits out there and it takes one person to believe in something to be able to make a change.

Whitney (25:19)

I’m inspired. The passion you have for this work is so clear that it’s making me think, my gosh, what can I be doing more?

Nikki Soda (25:31)

And I’m gonna look up some Pennsylvania advocacy groups for you, so know that.

Whitney (25:34)

Thank you. you know, and I think it’s just, and I’ll speak for myself, you know, there’s also a privilege with whether or not you get involved in advocacy because, you know, I can say I’m not gonna go and exert myself in that way because it’s not affecting me directly right now. And I think we have to think about that because It can’t just be the people that are being incarcerated or who are being denied treatment. It has to be those of us who are not being impacted today. Whether we have a history of experiences where we were impacted or what, it’s going to take all of us getting involved and raising up the voices of those who have been impacted, right? Because they should be involved. But also, it can’t just be on the individuals who are suffering right now. So hopefully like everyone is hearing this and seeing that it can be anyone. Because I think that’s also part of it. Well, it doesn’t affect me. So why should I get involved?

Nikki Soda (26:35)

No. Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, I think you almost have to live under a rock right now, though, to not have some type of impact from something. And

Whitney (26:55)

Yes.

Nikki Soda (26:58)

Not saying that everyone needs to be going up and making appointments with their senators and representatives, but there’s a number of little things you can do, whether it’s signing a petition, even, you know, can make a difference, whether it’s sending an email to your senator representative about something that you’re passionate about. So there’s a number of little things that anyone can do. There’s things my 12 year old daughter could do for, you know, she loves cats and dogs. And so there’s all sorts of things that anyone can but it does take a willingness, it takes time, and those are two things that not everybody is willing to do.

Whitney (27:36)

Right, Yeah, it is definitely a commitment. But it can be also a small thing, right? It is signing that petition, right? So maybe we just need to be open to recognizing even some of the small steps we can take. And then those of us who are, or those like you who are so energized by the idea of doing this to be

Nikki Soda (27:46)

Totally signature.

Whitney (28:04)

The charge, right, to lead the charge. And then those of us who maybe are not yet ready or what have you, or don’t have the capacity for any reason, okay, what can I do.

Nikki Soda (28:16)

Yeah, you know, and I will share this example too. So last night I participated in a webinar and they had a list of action steps. Like the first one was let’s roll up our sleeves and then it had a list of action steps. And it was everything from big things to one of them was click on this button. We will send you 10 postcards already stamped. If you can just write a note on them and then stick them in your mailbox. And so like anyone can do that, right?

Whitney (28:40)

Yeah. Yeah.

Nikki Soda (28:43)

So there really is, you just have to kind of know where to look, which I do understand that that can sometimes be challenging, but there’s something for everyone.

Whitney (28:51)

Absolutely. So if someone wanted to get started, what would be, and let’s focus on the mental health, substance use, behavioral health space. What would be their first steps that they could take? It could be Googling a certain term? What, like down to the simplest thing that they could start with.

Nikki Soda (29:15)

So there’s a couple really good advocacy groups in the mental health and substance use disorder space. So Faces and Voices of Recovery is one, their acronym is FAVOR, and they have an advocacy section on their website. And so they have some really good steps on there. And then the National Council of Mental Well -being. And they have a litany of tools on their website, Whitney. They have free webinars that you can go back and look at. They have a kick -ass advocacy toolkit. And Natap does too. Natap has an advocacy tab where you don’t have to be a member and you can look at some of the past webinars that we put together. A toolkit that I helped put together is on the Natap website too. So if we have a way to put those in the notes or the transcript for this, we can put links to those. But

Whitney (30:05)

Yes, absolutely.

Nikki Soda (30:10)

Those are three very good ones. Trying to think of those are the ones off the top of my head that provide webinars and advocacy tool kits. And so those are a good place to start. ASAM, I’m sorry, I’m gonna say one more. ASAM, which is the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Kelly Cordair is their head public policy and they have a number of really good.

Whitney (30:23)

And

Nikki Soda (30:37)

Now, theirs is a little more medically inclined, but they have a number of really good policy tools.

Whitney (30:45)

wonderful

And so you mentioned education a lot. I know that’s very significant. Is there any other types of education that someone should pursue as they are kind of getting into the space of advocacy within behavioral health?

Nikki Soda (30:58)

Yeah, so that’s another really good question. I did kind of an extreme by going to get my master’s in specifically addiction policy, but I am going to promote that program. It’s at Georgetown. It’s a year-long program in person that’s there, that’s taught by the creme de la creme of addiction professionals in DC. And it’s run by Regina LaBelle and Shelly Wiseman. And I learned more in that year than I had in 10 years in the field and that was in regard to policy. So that was very beneficial. But there’s also all sorts of courses that are online that come from some of those groups that I mentioned before. SAMHSA, I know I’m throwing out all sorts of acronyms, is another one that does a number of policies. And Ryan Hampton runs a Mobilize Recovery. And so they do a number of different advocacy and he…does, he has a conference every year, Mobilize Recovery in September, and they bring together peer recovery specialists, just individuals with lived experience, and give them all the teaching tools that they need to become advocates. So that would be a very good education opportunity

Whitney (32:10)

Wonderful. So many great resources and we will make sure we share all of them in the show notes. But then also, let’s talk about how people can connect with you. Maybe they’re an organization that wants to get involved. How would they do

Nikki Soda (32:26)

Yeah, so thank you for that question. With SODA Consulting, so I am working with different treatment centers, as I mentioned, to provide tools for them. So whether or not it’s meeting with your team and figuring out what the needs are, and then being able to bridge that gap of connecting, all right, are these state issues or are these federal issues or do you not know? And we can sit and figure that out. And so that’s something that I’m really passionate about and want to help more with and in DC quite a bit. And so it’s nice to be able to work with the different treatment centers and have a foot in DC as well. You know, one of the things that we haven’t mentioned is that I am co -president of the board of TPAS, which is treatment professionals in alumni services. And so with TPAS too, I didn’t want to mess that up.

Whitney (33:08)

Bright.

Nikki Soda (33:17)

Support services for alumni services. And alumni services, I’m a very stout advocate of the treatment center that I went to. And so that drives for me a passion to want to advocate for alumni. so alumni has grown to be a critical component of addiction treatment and primary mental health programs. TPAS offers all sorts of wonderful tools and resources to be able to help treatment centers and mental health programs provide their alumni directors and coordinators with the tools to be successful for that. So I’ve been on the board for a number of years, recently became the co -president, but we’re working with a number of different advocacy components too with alumni groups. so TPAS is the name of that organization. So that’s another way to become involved or if you have a treatment center to get them.

Whitney (34:08)

That’s great. And I may have to ask you to come back on so we can dive into the world of alumni in the recovery space. Yes.

Nikki Soda (34:14)

It was, my second passion. Well, it’s another passion, let’s say that.

Whitney (34:19)

Well, and you know, before I ask you my final question, I’m going to share what I have really like. I just have my own kind of thoughts here, because I’m always asking what should someone take away? And what I really what resonated with me, not only what you know, the fact that anyone can get involved in this, but what you just said about talking with the team and saying, okay, what is this a state level? Is this a federal level? The treatment provider in the room is saying, this doesn’t make sense. This regulation is harmful and I didn’t know what to do. And I just love that anyone who’s experiencing that can reach out to you and you will be able to work with them to help them take action and make that impact because it’s going to be the people who are hitting the barriers, both the individuals going through treatment as well as the treatment providers who are going to know, that requirement that you get a pre -authorization, blah, blah, blah, blah, that’s harmful. That’s causing deaths. If you are in that position, reach out to Nikki. Like that is amazing. I wish I would have like had that resource whenever I was in those treatment providers or offices.

Nikki Soda (35:20)

Thanks. Yeah, thank you. Well, and I by no means have the answers, but what I do have is a large network of people that do. And so being able to, I had a colleague who shared the term people connector and I love that. And so I can most certainly, most certainly do

Whitney (35:44)

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Absolutely, and it’s gonna take all of us. So yes, let’s pull in, okay, this person knows this, this person knows that, and then we get things going. I’m energized. So I shared my big takeaway. Let me ask you, if people can only walk away with one thing from this conversation, and I hope they take away more than that, what would you like it to

Nikki Soda (36:05)

Yeah, good. Every single person, no matter your experience, no matter your status, no matter where you are in life, can be an advocate and find what you’re passionate about or find what is impacting your life and don’t be afraid to speak up and do something about it. That would be my… Yeah.

Whitney (36:38)

Great message. All right, everyone, you heard her. And, you know, I always encourage everyone to share the episodes, but I’m going to make that an even bigger emphasis. Even if you never share another episode, which please don’t do that, but this is a way to do advocacy is to share the message. If this resonated with you, if you’re like, wow, I understand now.

Nikki Soda (36:54)

Thank you.

Whitney (37:05)

Share this with someone else because it may resonate with them. It may be, wow, that T -pass, I can get involved in that or whatever resource. So let’s do this. Let’s keep getting this information out there, everyone. Nikki. Yes.

Nikki Soda (37:17)

Yeah, we’ll get it. They are a huge group that’s going to advocate on the hill before too long. I do want to create recovery hill days in every single state where we have tons of people that are of all different kinds of lived experience that are going up to the capitals in each state. So that is that is a goal.

Whitney (37:23)

That would be amazing. I can’t wait to see it happen because I’m sure it will and I am going to be a fan and whenever it’s Pennsylvania, I will be there. Yeah. I will happily drive down the interstate to Harrisburg. So you let me know when and I’ll be there. But just thank you so much, Nikki, for not only taking time to speak with me today, but just, you know, using your experience personally, professionally, your knowledge and

Nikki Soda (37:46)

We’ll do it in Pennsylvania. Thanks.

Whitney (38:08)

Passion and making things happen. Thank you so much.

Nikki Soda (38:12)

No, absolutely. It’s an honor to be on your show, Whitney. Thank you for working on reducing the stigma and it’s making a big difference. And so you are a change maker and you know, we talk about people doing it in different ways and you being able to bring people and give them a pulpit to talk to is a change agent. So thank you for the work you’re doing.

Whitney (38:33)

Thank you so much. We’ll just all keep doing our little part and we’ll make a big impact. Great. Thank you everyone for listening.

Nikki Soda (38:37)

Right. Awesome.

 

Empowering Voices and Bridging Gaps: How Advocacy Can Transform Addiction Treatment In this episode of Reduce the Stigma, we sit down with Nikki Soda, Executive Director of Sodas Consulting, who shares her powerful journey in addiction treatment advocacy. Nikki discusses her passion for public policy, highlighting her work with the National Association of Addiction Treatment […]

Continue reading "The Power of Advocacy: A Conversation with Nikki Soda"
Straight Up Care Peer Specialist

Become a Peer Support Specialist: Transform Your Experience into Empowerment

10 Applicants Will Receive Free Peer Specialist Training!

If you’ve lived through addiction or mental health challenges, or if you’ve supported a loved one on their recovery journey, you already know how powerful shared experiences can be. There’s an undeniable strength in turning your struggles into a beacon of hope for others. If you’re passionate about helping others and want to make a positive impact, now is the time to channel that passion into a rewarding career as a Peer Support Specialist.

Who Should Attend?

This course is specifically designed for individuals who have firsthand experience with addiction or mental health challenges, as well as those who have provided support to loved ones through these difficult times. Whether you’re looking to give back to your community, deepen your understanding of the recovery process, or turn your personal journey into a powerful tool for change, this training is for you. With the right skills and knowledge, you can help others navigate their own paths to wellness.

What Will You Learn?

Throughout these comprehensive training sessions, you will gain the core competencies necessary to excel as a Peer Support Specialist. You’ll learn the importance of effective communication and active listening—essential skills that enable you to connect with others on a meaningful level. Additionally, the course will teach you how to harness your personal experiences to inspire and guide others, turning your story into a source of empowerment for those who are struggling.

By the end of the training, you’ll be equipped with a solid foundation in peer support, ready to help others achieve their best selves and build a life in recovery.

Exclusive Opportunity

Thanks to generous funding from the South Dakota Community Foundation, Straight Up Care is excited to offer this series of free Peer Support Training courses to 10 individuals who are passionate about making a difference in the lives of others. This unique opportunity is available to anyone with lived experience in addiction or mental health struggles, or those with loved ones who have faced these challenges. Don’t miss your chance to be part of this transformative experience.

When and Where?

Mark your calendars for the following Sundays:

  • Sunday, November 3, 2024
  • Sunday, November 10, 2024
  • Sunday, November 17, 2024
  • Sunday, November 24, 2024

Each session will run from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM, and attendance is required on all four days to complete the training. The exact location in Sioux Falls, SD, will be announced soon, so stay tuned for updates.

Funded by South Dakota Community Foundation

This life-changing course is generously funded by the South Dakota Community Foundation, ensuring that it is accessible to those who are ready to make a difference in the lives of others. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to transform your experience into a powerful tool for change.

How to Apply

Complete this form to apply

 

We look forward to seeing you in Sioux Falls this November!

10 Applicants Will Receive Free Peer Specialist Training! Apply Now! If you’ve lived through addiction or mental health challenges, or if you’ve supported a loved one on their recovery journey, you already know how powerful shared experiences can be. There’s an undeniable strength in turning your struggles into a beacon of hope for others. If […]

Continue reading "Become a Peer Support Specialist: Transform Your Experience into Empowerment"
Kurt Lebeck Recovery Capital RCADE Tools

Building Recovery Capital Through Strengths

Building Recovery Capital Through StrengthsAdd Your Heading Text Here

In a recent episode of Reduce The Stigma, Whitney interviewed Kurt Lebeck, a recovery scientist and PhD candidate, who delved into the concept of recovery capital as a cornerstone of his work in behavioral health. Kurt’s journey from achieving recovery to becoming a leader in recovery-oriented program development is rooted in his belief that recovery capital—comprising internal, external, and social resources—is not just an outcome but a process. Through his innovative RCADE Tools, Kurt empowers individuals and peer support workers to identify and leverage their strengths, enhancing their recovery journey.

Kurt’s focus extends to empowering marginalized communities by building coalitions across diverse groups. His work in New Mexico, a state known for its rich cultural diversity, has reinforced his belief in the critical role of community in recovery. Kurt emphasizes that recovery is attainable for everyone, even without traditional treatment methods, by recognizing and utilizing personal strengths. His approach offers a fresh perspective on recovery, centering on empowerment and the unique pathways each individual can take.

Click here for the episode’s full transcript.

About Our Guest:

Over the last several years, Kurt has worked with several of New Mexico’s behavioral health programs, enhancing recovery from substance use and co-occurring disorders. Through innovative tools and programs, he has bolstered the capabilities of peer support workers (PSWs) and community support workers (CSWs). Kurt’s experience, including roles as a consumer, PSW, NIAAA predoctoral fellow, and clinical social worker, underpin his approach to supporting clients across the continuum of care — from withdrawal management to sustained recovery to reduced harm.

Central to his strategy is the concept of recovery capital, which encompasses the resources individuals can draw upon to initiate and sustain recovery. Kurt’s methods aim to accelerate recovery and reduce harm by explicitly educating consumers on recovery capital — enabling individuals to lead fulfilling lives in recovery. He has developed a recovery capital assessment tool and a coaching method, empowering PSWs and CSWs to empower their clients to harness their strengths and navigate their recovery journey effectively.

Kurt extends his expertise beyond New Mexico, offering nationwide consultancy and research services to behavioral health organizations. His current initiatives include developing a low-threshold buprenorphine program and conducting mixed-methods research for projects like the SXSW MHTTC. His work spans various domains, including program design and implementation, feasibility studies, and quality improvement.

His research interests focus on recovery science, harm reduction, organizational health, program R&D, and implementation science.

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Transcript

Whitney (00:50)

Hello and welcome to Recovery Conversations. Today I’m talking with Kurt Lebeck, a substance use and co -occurring disorders recovery scientist specializing in recovery -oriented program development and implementation. Kurt draws on his own and others’ lived experiences of recovery, resilience, and flourishing, including managing chronic pain, to improve behavioral health programs and policies. He incorporates organizational, social, and individual change theories to enhance the responsiveness of treatment providers and behavioral health systems to the needs of those in their care. Kurt is the president of the New Mexico Society for Addiction Medicine, a chapter of ASAM. He teaches social policy at the Smith College School for Social Work in Massachusetts and is entering his third year as a PhD candidate in National Institutes of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Training Fellow at Brandeis University Heller School for Social Policy and Management in Massachusetts. Wow, Kurt, you have a lot going on, and I am honored that you took time out of your busy schedule to join me today.

 

Kurt (02:00)

Well, thank you very much for having me. I’m looking forward to

 

Whitney (02:04)

I am as well. We’ve actually been connected on LinkedIn for a bit and I’ve been able to follow your work, but this is the first time we’re getting to talk and I’m excited because I saw that you are really moving and working a lot in the recovery capital space. And I’d like to ask you, know, let’s hear how you came to where you are today. You know, you’ve gone through numerous schooling programs, you’re doing a lot, but where did it begin?

 

Kurt (02:32)

Yeah, thank you. And it’s really, it is an honor and a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Yeah. So as many of these stories do, this begins in my own mental health and addiction struggles, which really began in probably my late teens, but didn’t become, I would say really problematic until my late twenties and thirties. And the reason I go ahead and locate the beginning of this odyssey there is because I didn’t study behavioral health or psychology or medicine or anything of its kind when I was a teenager. And in my early 20s, I studied fine art. And my hope was to become an artist and make beautiful things. And in order to sort of sustain myself in college, I worked in the trades. worked, I learned a lot growing up. My family. My uncle has a farm in Illinois and my dad is an engineer and had a shop in New Mexico. So I learned a lot of trades growing up, everything from electrician to carpenter to everything else. And I was able to sort of parlay that into work as a college student. And so my 20s were very busy, but I was building things, fancy things, if you will. I was, my specialty was metal fabrication and fine art metal fabrication and architectural metal fabrication. And the reason this matters is because the trades are pretty notorious for being great places to get injured, which would happen to me later. But also they’re great places to hang out with other folks working in the trades and there’s a lot of drinking and hanging out and we had a lot of fun. And again, I would say, I would describe my 20s as, you it wasn’t problematic substance use or problematic mental health at that point. It was what I would call like developmentally normal, at least now with the education that I have subsequently gotten, developmentally normal kind of drinking and behavior. And then in my early 30s, I would get into a couple of accidents. Work -related accidents, just the sort of hazards of the trades. One of which caused a really pretty serious damage to my right leg. It severed my Achilles tendon. It was really quite gruesome. Yeah, and so it got stitched back together. I have most of the functioning there. And then I also would strain my back and need to have surgery on my lower back. And so those kinds of events really sort of catapulted me from, I would say, regular developmentally appropriate use to chaotic and hazardous use, where I was using substances really to blunt pain and to manage some very difficult other social consequences that were arising. And so the origin of this sort of odyssey I’ve been on for the last eight years really begins almost 20 years ago in that sense because I get injured and then, you I develop a pretty severe addiction, you know, to alcohol, opioids, benzos and a number of other things, you know, all the while trying to sort of manage a small business that I was running in New York City where we were building, again, still really amazing things for people. You know, I had some really incredible clients. I worked for Paul McCartney, one of the Beatles, built a staircase. Yeah, so if you’re ever at his house and you see his stair, you can say, know exactly. Yeah, so I’d worked for these really famous, famous people. He’s just one of them. And it was a really the so the demands on that that level, the quality that goes into that are really high. You can’t really mess around. And with

 

Whitney (06:29)

Wow. all the time, yeah.

 

Kurt (06:53)

My injuries and this need to basically try to just stay right, just to stay even keeled, I was using more and more and it was becoming more more problematic. my ability to maintain the business and sustain myself and my family, we’re slipping. And so one of the things that would happen is in the sort of deluge, if you will, of all of these problems. You know, as a small business person, I was paying for my own health insurance, right, and that of my families, and paying at that point, you know, for very good quality coverage. And, you know, I’m going to these experts and I’m feeling, you know, downright suicidal, frankly, because I was so stressed out by my inability to perform at the level that was expected of me and so stressed out about money that I just didn’t know what to do. And so one of the thoughts that occurred to me as I think it does many people who are in that situation is it might just be easier if I checked out. And so that would be one of my several hospital admissions. And then…I would, and I was always voluntary. I always went in on my own, recognizing that I was having this, you know, these really pretty significant problems and I was managing to keep my health insurance. So, scraping by, but you know, putting huge amounts of money on my Amex business card, you know, that kind of thing. And ultimately what would happen is that I would go to these, I would get inpatient status, you know, and be in a psychiatric stabilization unit you know, a week or 10 days. And then I get discharged into the community with, you know, a psychiatrist and a bunch of prescriptions. And maybe somebody would say, hey, you should go check out an AA meeting, or maybe you should do some IOP intensive outpatient program. And so I do, I did a lot of those things and I took the prescriptions and I tried to do everything that was sort of prescribed to me by what I now know is the medical model of disease care. And I think it was, I know these doctors and social workers and others were really trying to do their best with the resources they had. And I had to, like I said, I was paying for this, I don’t remember if it was platinum or gold or something, but this really good quality insurance. So I had like access to the best care in New York City, which is not too shabby for most people. But when it came to addiction care and to pain management, you know, I was caught up in that sort of middle stage of the opioid crisis when they were really starting to crack down on things like Oxycontin and the prescribing of it. But they didn’t see a problem with prescribing me a bunch of fentanyl patches to maintain myself. They didn’t see a problem prescribing me a lot of benzodiazepines and so on at the time. And now, of course, we know that that is contraindicated. So yeah, that’s sort of where I get a lot of my energy for this work. Yeah, it’s the origin.

 

Whitney (10:21)

That there’s so much there. And I appreciate you mentioning the trades. That is a subset of our, you know, workforce that, like you said, there is a high risk of injury and not every person in a trades position has that high quality healthcare such as you had, which can mean then that either they can’t afford to address it or they maybe don’t have the ability to take time off to rest because of how their employment arrangement is. And so that can lead to becoming dependent on different medications and maybe obtaining alternative ways just to be able to get to work, to do the job that causes you pain, that you need then the medication and that horrible vicious cycle. So thank you for mentioning your experience in that world. I don’t think it gets as much notice as perhaps it should.

 

Kurt (11:23)

Yeah, I agree. I would like to think a very generous employer, all of my full -time employees had healthcare, but it was extraordinarily expensive. And I know they didn’t take advantage of it because as a sort of small business, I wasn’t in position to pay them for time off at that point. I only had a handful or a dozen employees. I did work with as many as like 40 at one point, but you know, a lot of those were subcontractors and different kinds of contractors. Um, so I never had to meet that threshold that you have to, where you give everybody the same, uh, insurance, um, or the same benefits. But I did give them that and, and they didn’t take advantage of it. And many of them would probably mostly because you afford to take time off, especially in a city, I mean, anywhere, but in a city like New York, where the cost of living is increasingly high relative to the average income of a blue collar or a tradesperson, you just can’t stop working, unless you have paid time off. And that was not something that I could afford to provide at the time.

 

Whitney (12:46)

Great, absolutely. it’s almost, it’s a good segue then into recovery capital because employment and those types of resources can be a part of someone’s recovery capital. So can we start with what is your definition of recovery capital, not the official one?

 

Kurt (13:07)

Mm. Well, that’s a little trickier. I know that it’s the official one. But I think the work that I’ve been doing has really made me appreciate how much recovery capital is both sort of an object or an endpoint or an outcome. But what I’m most interested in is recovery capital accrual, which is how we build recovery capital. And so in that sense, as a sort of operational definition, I think of it less as an outcome and more as a process. So for me, it is the process of developing resources, internal, external resources, social resources, my own resources, and also being aware of and getting connected to the resources in the community. And so those are all, you know, it’s sort of flipping and…and playing a little bit of semantics there, but it’s really about how can we accelerate the acquisition of those resources. And a lot of this work, just in my experience, sort of shows this as well, isn’t something that somebody can do for you. It’s something you have to learn how to do on your own. And one of the things that I think I take a lot of inspiration from is a guy by name of Paulo Freire, whose name I can never pronounce correctly, but he was a Brazilian activist and most of his work was in Brazil. And he kind of coined this term called, Portuguese it’s contienchão, but in our sense, I think it might be like critical consciousness. And it’s this idea that we become aware through literacy, through learning of relative position and what is going on in the world around us. And the injustices there also. And then because of that awareness, we’re able to act on it. So I think of the process of recovery capital accrual as really trying to light the spark and helping folks recognize that they have a part to play in this, that there are a lot of systemic reasons that they are in this position that they’re in specifically when we’re talking about addiction, nobody wakes up and chooses, right? We always hear that. But what happens is we often wake up in, whether it’s the trades or in some other industry or some other part of the world where we don’t have a choice. Like the only opportunity for us is like, I’m gonna get well by taking some medication, legal or illegal, who cares? Like I need to have one.

 

Whitney (15:56)

I have to.

 

Kurt (15:58)

Otherwise I am not gonna be able to do my job or whatever. And so I think, you know, it matters a lot that people start to recognize that these, the environment in which they’re in, which can be a resource, but can also be a negative kind of recovery capital. So I think about recovery capital really is that kind of process of how do we become aware of it in our environments? What it is, is less important as much as it matters that I start to mobilize it and recognize my own strengths to do

 

Whitney (16:33)

So I hear a lot of, or what I’m taking is really the need for that internal reflection and identification. Is that kind of accurate?

 

Kurt (16:44)

Yeah, think I definitely am inspired. So yeah, I went on to study clinical social work. And so there’s a lot of at Smith College, which is very psychodynamically oriented. So we think a lot about drives and we think a lot about insight and we think a lot about what motivates people within their family system and so on. But I think part of it is that it isn’t just like the insight, because I don’t want to confuse that with like, some people have better insight than other. It’s really an opportunity to sort of be able to assess the conditions in which you’re in and think of it as, and to learn the skill of discernment, right? It’s not just about, you know, this is good for me. It’s like, why is this, you have to balance your resources. Like certain things are gonna give you more advantage than others, right? Certain strengths that I have are gonna give me a better chance at sustaining my recovery than your strengths, right? Your strengths are unique to you. And so I think a lot of this is about trying to help folks recognize what their sort of unique strength matrix is and say, wow, that’s really cool. Like I have all this stuff.

 

Whitney (17:54)

Right.

 

Kurt (18:09)

And I can take this stuff and I can figure out how to use it to get housing, right? Get transportation. Maybe it’s to move to a better neighborhood, something along those lines. But whatever it is, it’s about recognizing that, you know, those, the consequences, getting housing, proper nutrition, everything else, that outcome, which is a kind of recovery capital, doesn’t happen.

 

Whitney (18:15)

Yeah.

 

Kurt (18:36)

Because you started out with the same amount of recovery capital, right? Like we have to figure out how to build it. So

 

Whitney (18:40)

Right. Yes. And I imagine what I mean, putting together is we all have recovery capital within us just innately because we all have different strengths. And it reminds me of a group that we would run when I had a program in a jail, which was like resource sharing and the, knowledge base of individuals who have been through this different systems and who have mental health needs and substance use needs, their awareness of where to go for what was phenomenal. It was way better than anything I could have found on Google. And then, you know, it was the inside tips and the resourcefulness that they had and the ability to say, yes, that may not work, but if you approach it this way. And I think, you know, that strengths based approach not only is going to just get the ball rolling, but also builds up that sense of self -worth for individuals who’ve often been told that they’re not worth anything.

 

Kurt (19:46)

Yeah, yeah, I couldn’t say it better myself. And one of the things that happens particularly, and this is why I focus most of my work on peers, I like to educate social workers. That’s a fun job. And I, you know, I believe that they’re definitely part of the solution. But most of my work so far, the last four years or so has been with peer support workers and community health workers. And the reason is, is that if we can facilitate opportunities for peers, to sit with other people experiencing those problems and have those conversations, they immediately start building recovery capital, right? Because they’re identifying explicitly the resources in their community that the social worker or the medical provider have no idea, right? And one of the things that we know is that the social determinants of health…which we can think of recovery capital was really the sort of antidote, if you will, to negative social determinants. Yeah, it’s an awesome way to think about it because the social determinants really drive a lot of what makes use chaotic, dangerous, hazardous, et cetera, right? Somebody who has relatively good access to a clean supply has a much better chance of survival than somebody who doesn’t. And that’s determined, right, politically. So thinking about that, getting all those people into the room and having them sort of hash that out, even if their objective isn’t sobriety or being clean or whatever, whatever their objective is, they’re gonna start hearing about these resources. And so they’re gonna start taking better care of themselves simply by knowing what’s available to them. And again, we know that that kind of health behavior drives outcomes more so than does the engagement with the medical prescriber or the social worker. Because it’s in their life all the time, right? Like they meet with the, when I was training to be a therapist, I’d see people maybe once a week at the most, right? I don’t know how many hours there are a week, but it’s not very much. Whereas if you are sort of, if you’re embedded in a community of other people who are thinking about all of these other resources,

 

Whitney (21:47)

Yes.

 

Kurt (22:07)

You’re embedded in that 24 seven and you’re certainly conscious of it whenever you’re not sleeping. And so that is a lot more time to be working on yourself and the opportunities you could have than you ever could have even in an intensive outpatient program, nine, 12 hours a week or even 20 hours a

 

Whitney (22:29)

Right. Well, and it’s the applying it in the daily life, you know, that’s the part that a lot of times treatment misses is, yeah, we’ve sat here, we’ve processed, we’ve, you know, challenged negative cognitions and things like that. What are we doing for the 23 hours a day that they’re not in group or in a session? And so being able to say, here’s what you can tap into, that’s gonna, in my opinion, be the difference maker and really empower that person to be able to say, okay, I know what it takes. I know where I can go. And then being able to do it. Whereas, you know, maybe we just say, here’s a list of resources. Well, that can even be overwhelming to have to search through a list. And so like, we’ve got to look at this different approach. And it sounds like that’s what you’re doing. You’re in let’s talk about the peers that you’re working with. Are you training them Building recovery capital?

 

Kurt (23:28)

Yeah. So what I’ve done is I’ve so for the last four years, I’ve been working in New Mexico. I started about seven years ago, like I said, as a peer. And then I shifted and went back to school. And then about four years ago, when I graduated with my MSW, I needed I needed a gig. And I was fortunate enough to be pretty deep in the recovery community in Albuquerque in New Mexico, I had been, what do they call it? I’d been leading groups of outreach folks for one of the anonymous organizations and going out to really far flung parts of the state. And so I met literally hundreds of people in early recovery and various stages of recovery. And through one of those chance meetings, I got introduced to somebody who was working in the state and they were really interested in building up peer supports. And so they gave me a job as an evaluator of a program. And so I started evaluating this program and it wasn’t one of my own creation, but I started evaluating it and observing what was going really well and what wasn’t. And one of the things that I took away was that like peers really want to do this work and they don’t have a lot of tools to do there’s this sort of expectation that, you have lived experience, you know what you’re doing. And, you know, after a 40 hour, not even 40 hour training, you’re somehow now able to command a group and, you know, run a group and, and be an effective person. And I think that to an extent, that’s definitely true. Like we didn’t need the certification process or any of these other things to make peer support a legitimate, valuable part of the process. But I think when we start thinking about the problem of efficiency and the reality that 95 % of the people in the country don’t even recognize that they have a substance use problem yet do or likely do, at least according to the National Survey of Drug Use and Health, that is a huge gap between what we can do and what, know, right now we’re doing, right? And also given the fact that 70 or 80 % of people don’t actually ever even make it to treatment or an AA meeting or an NA meeting. So we need some way to get into the community and get deep into that and build that recovery infrastructure more quickly than I would say the current organic system of AA meetings and NA meetings and so on. Part of that is the professionalization of the peer support worker. So I know that there are sort of pros and cons to that, and I’m here for that discussion maybe another time. But my point being is like, I want to see peers be able to engage folks effectively using their lived experience. I think this is key. If a peer finds themselves in any scenario in which they’re not able to use their lived experience, they should quit not being a peer support worker. But what I’m doing is I’m helping them. So I created this thing, which is called the RCADE Tools. And that’s Recovery Capital Assessment, Development, and Engagement Tools. And I thought it was cute to call it Arcade because it sounds like the game. And I was all very much inspired by a thing I did, as I mentioned earlier, at MIT, which was this how to innovate and commercialize.

 

Whitney (27:04)

Yeah.

 

Kurt (27:16)

Products to help with the substance use crisis. And so during that, I kind of came up with this name and I was like, yeah, that would be a much, that’s a much clever, more clever name. And I figured I could actually turn it into an app and so on. But anyway, in the meeting, what it is, is it is an assessment. And I look, I have, I teach peers how to deliver this assessment. And right now it’s got 48 statements. And they, on the personal capital side,

 

Whitney (27:29)

Yeah.

 

Kurt (27:43)

There are statements like people at work, where I volunteer, go to school, or spend most of my time, support my recovery. Oh, that’s a social capital example. And then you rate that one to six. And there’s 48 of those statements in individual, social, and community capital. And then you basically get a score. And this is a lot like a lot of the other instruments out there. But what I’m interested in is less about scoring it, I love the idea of collecting the data and I think that’s down the road for me and my team. But for now, what it’s about is the peers that I work with get a score and then they can engage in some very quick coaching and say, what of these things matters to you most? Why? And then we take the sort of why, that’s really one of the things as we know in psychotherapy training. The most important thing to get folks to like motivate to change is like they have to have a reason of their own. And if they don’t, know, sometimes, you know, the nudge from the judge is great, but usually what happens is even with that, they realize, you know, I need, I need to do this for me. Otherwise it’s not gonna really happen. And so I don’t mean to say it’s great. By the way, that’s how it came out. Yeah, I don’t want more carceral solutions. I want fewer, but I think I want to acknowledge that sometimes many, I shouldn’t say sometimes, many people have found their way into recovery through those carceral systems and they are the lucky ones because some have not found that way and have found the other way or the other side of that, which can be really tragic. But we take the score and then we work with the client and say,

 

Whitney (29:06)

I know. Right? Right.

 

Kurt (29:34)

So what’s most important to you here and which of these strengths, the things that you gave a six or a five or even a four or two, do you think you can use to help you like achieve that goal? And then we coach them on how to do that. And we use a lot of motivational interviewing, at least when there’s some ambivalence, but just some straight up coaching techniques like encouragement and enthusiasm and bring your own lived experience into that. I always tell the peers, I tell them my story, I make sure that they understand where I’m coming at, this from and why. And then I do this assessment using my own story sort of as background to make it live a little, right? We can take these assessments and I think there’s value in all of that. But I think when somebody gives you an assessment and then coaches you a little bit and not what to say, because these are all strengths, these are all things. We don’t have it. It’s not like you get penalized, right? But what we’re saying is like, if you have some of these strengths, if you have enough energy, and this is a bark 10 question, which is the brief assessment of recovery capital, I took 10 of those out of that as well, just so that there would be some fidelity to that measure. But if I have enough energy to complete the task I set for myself, right? Like that’s a strength. And some people don’t recognize it as something that they have, but that they can use to get

 

up every day and take care of some of the smaller steps to getting towards their bigger goal. And so that’s what that’s really about. It’s just thinking about how do we get some motivation.

 

Whitney (31:16)

I was thinking about the MI readiness scale whenever you were talking about that and just the ability to help the person apply what they already have to different situations. I’m a very visual thinker and I’m imagining a person who has this like ring of keys, right? And they think that that key, that strength only fits the one, But what you’re doing is being able to say that key can also open this lock and this lock and this lock. And I think that’s just amazing because people, we always look at what we’re not good at. We focus on our weaknesses and we don’t always realize that some of our strengths can be applied in different ways. And I think that’s phenomenal because those are lifelong skills then that the person will

 

Kurt (32:12)

Thank you for that. think that’s a great analogy, the keys, because it’s true. I call it the recovery capital building program where I’m doing this in New Mexico. But the idea is that by being explicit about this, by saying, look, this is your recovery capital, this is your stuff, this is you, and we’re going to call it what it is and we’re going to name it, we empower because all of a sudden they realize, I’m not empowering them. They’re empowering themselves through their own sort of recognition. And so that’s kind of what I mean by the critical consciousness. They become aware of how these pieces can play out in their life. And then they start to recognize by, because we take the individual social and community levels and separate them and make that very explicit, they recognize that these individual strengths that they might have an affect the community resources that they can access. And they also can then recognize that it goes the other way, that the community level resources that they might have access to can affect how they build social capital, right? Because if you don’t have the opportunity to go to certain kinds of meetings and build a network, a recovery network that’s appropriate for you. So for example, people who for whatever reason don’t like AA or NA, for example,  If they can’t find an alternative that still serves that social piece and helps them build that social capital, their chances are diminished. One of the things that I’m also really interested in has become my parallel path is thinking about why it is that recovery generally has become whiter in the last five or 10 years preliminary data out when I look at the NISDA, the National Survey of Drug Use and Health that shows it becoming a little bit whiter over time. And the question is, like, and there’s more people going into recovery, but what it’s also showing, at least if we take this sort of preliminary result seriously, is it’s showing that more black and brown folks are leaving recovery as a portion. And so I think about that a lot because I think is happening is that I think some of these environments are not ideal, right? Or folks who have been minoritized at different levels, whatever that level is, and that they’re less and less inclined to participate in these spaces. And so what I’m doing with the arcade tools is I’m really saying that’s all well and good. know, AA might work for some folks, whatever that is, great, but if that doesn’t work for you, what does? We gotta find you something that works for you because what we know is that most of the benefit of 12 -step programs is the participation, the active social participation in the community itself. So without those kinds of active participation opportunities, folks, really, it is a disadvantage.

 

Whitney (35:04)

Great. Yeah, absolutely. The community has to be one where they feel safe. And if it’s a community that is not reflective of who they are, if they are the only Black or Brown person in the room, then there’s all of the intersectionality coming to play as well. And so we need to ensure that those opportunities are there for each person to feel safe and with people who they can truly connect with. So it’s great to hear that you’re looking at that.

 

Kurt (36:02)

Yeah, no, if I may, I’m glad you brought up the word intersectionality because one of my professors here at Brandeis is Anita Hill. And you can’t do better than that, right? she and I, or at the class I took with her last term, I really got steeped in critical race theory and thinking about intersectionality and thinking about coalition building. And one of the things

 

Whitney (36:05)

Please. Great.

 

Kurt (36:31)

I’ve realized is that recovery for folks who don’t necessarily fit into one of the mainstream. So if you accept the sort of premise as I do that there are a lot of unique pathways, maybe as many as there are people, but there are also some rivers in which many people might take a unique path, but there’s a stream, if you will, that a lot of folks are basically able to sort of flow along. So if I take that perspective and think about how do we build those streams, it’s really kind of like coalition building and political activism. And what that looks like is people with different diverse identities and characteristics or intersections of identity coming together, maybe not necessarily with people that look exactly like them or are the same as sexual orientation, but maybe share other facets of that identity other intersections and building a coalition so that they can have the same kinds of opportunities that some of these mainstream, literally mainstream provide, right? And so I like to think about this sort of arcade tools as a means of trying to help facilitate that. And part of the things, one of the great benefits of working in New Mexico for this has been that it’s a very culturally diverse

 

Whitney (37:41)

Yeah.

 

Kurt (37:59)

Ethnically diverse state. You know, there are folks who are coming from the Pueblos, from the reservations, there are folks coming from little towns and cities that have been around longer than those here in New England. I’m in New England right now. But that is a kind of historical arc and relationships that is pretty rare in this world today. But in New Mexico, we find all these folks coming together in recovery. And it is possible to sort of build these coalitions along diverse lines if we name it and we get explicit about it. we aren’t to, what’s the word? guess we don’t treat, I guess if we have to accept that idea that there are these pathways, multiple pathways and that many of them have a lot to offer us.

 

Whitney (39:02)

Yeah. Wow. I’m excited to hear how Arcade continues to grow. am a big fan of peer support, of course. mean, Reduce the Stigmas is sponsored by Strait of Care, which is all about peers. And I think that one of the components we haven’t yet touched on is that not only are you building the recovery capital of the client or patient, you’re also building the recovery capital of the peer. It even makes me think like the ability to look at the data because that’s what you’re having. You’re having data as an output from the assessments and then apply that, analyze it and apply it. That is an amazing skill for peers if they ever decide to pursue a different career. like, so they’re right there, you’re building it like everyone who comes into contact with it is growing.

 

Kurt (39:54)

Yeah, yeah, I’m glad you said that because I think one of the things that not only rebuilding their skill set to provide, you know, increasing their facility with MI and everything else, but we are giving them the disability to coach people around goals or sort of facilitating it. But moreover, they are giving me something, which is to say, like of the 48 statements that I’ve got, like I said, 10 are from the bark 10. But the other 38 were derived almost exclusively by people’s lived experience. Granted, some of mine, of course, but also by many of the folks I’ve worked with in Santa Fe and now Gallup, New Mexico and Albuquerque, New Mexico, but also in Boston, Massachusetts and where else? San Diego, California. I have all these friends all around the country who are peers, peer supporters. And so we have all these statements coming from, and I may have edited them or have fine tuned them and so on, but none of this, this whole thing isn’t just me saying, I have an idea. It’s really trying to draw out from the peer support workers and the community health workers that I’ve been working with, whether it’s in the rooms or these professionals at these treatment organizations or whatever, and have them tell me what’s worked for them. And so I think the assessment, looks very different than a lot of the other assessments. It’s a lot. There are some peculiar, like, peculiarly specific things. You know, like, for example, like going back to the New Mexico context, but one of the individual strengths is I feel connected to my ancestors, culture, religion, or higher power, right? And so instead of saying, you have to have a higher power. When people are early recovery, the higher power concept can be a little confusing. And instead of saying that, I’m saying like, no, your ancestor, what about your ancestors? You know, that’s an opportunity there. There are many people, you know, that I know from different diverse backgrounds who think about their ancestors more so than they think about a God or even a religion.

 

Whitney (42:14)

Right, right.

 

Kurt (42:15)

And so being able to sort of say, this is another way to be in communication with a spiritual, something bigger than yourself is, and it’s just fine. It’s just as good. I think it’s really important. And I wouldn’t have gotten that, you know, had I not been listening carefully to the peer support experience.

 

Whitney (42:37)

That’s the cultural considerations that need to be present in everything because we can’t apply one religion or mindset or what have you. So that’s wonderful to hear that it’s approached that way. And it just sounds like you’re really building the tool from the voices for the people who’s speaking for it. And that’s really amazing and typically, you know, the way that these innovations occur. So it’s wonderful to hear, you know, of course you have lived experience, you’re also utilizing the lived experience people have shared with you. And I hope more innovations in our space continue to do so.

 

Kurt (43:21)

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, and I am using also traditional academic research tools with this. My corn box alpha was 0 .88. I know these things, so I have all these other resources that I’m bringing to this as well. And that’s been a really great experience. But yeah, I wouldn’t be anywhere without those voices. This is what happened.

 

Whitney (43:46)

So exciting to just learn about. And as we’re getting ready to wrap up, I want to ask you one of, ask you the question I ask everyone. If people walk away from listening to our discussion and can only take one thing with them, what would you like it to

 

Kurt (44:05)

I think that we touched on this, but I think the idea that you can achieve recovery or remission or whatever you want to call it without treatment or without going to an AA meeting or an NA meeting or any of the other hundreds of fellowships is possible. But it’s a lot easier if you know what your strengths are and you start to use them. And so I guess the one thing would Like you have strengths, all of us do. I’ve never met anybody who’s filled out one of these forms and we’ve got a few hundred of them now who just, you know, really didn’t have a single thing. And one of the things I tell folks is that maybe somebody only has a few, but that’s a start. You know, being alive is a start. Sometimes you’re starting much further behind than somebody else. That happens. That’s unfortunate, but you have those strengths and you can do it.

 

Whitney (45:03)

Yeah. I love it. And I just think about, you anyone who uses affirmations, that’s, you know, strengths that are identified can then become affirmations. And it just it’s feeding the person, building their self -confidence, their self -worth, their, you know, ability to believe in something better for them moving forward. And it’s amazing. Thank you for coming on and sharing this and helping people just continue to see that they have a lot already within them. So anyone who would like to connect with you, how can they do that? What’s the best way to reach

 

Kurt (45:49)

Email’s good. letters K and D at Arcade tools. And that’s spelled R C A D E tools .com. that’s the easiest, but, yeah, I’m out there on the internet. You LinkedIn friend or whatever.

 

Whitney (46:01)

All Yeah, well, we’ll make sure that we put all your details in the show notes so that people can connect with you. Peers, specialists who are out there listening, this is a way to build your skill set to serve the people that you’re working with. So keep that in mind as well. So and anyone who really is looking to build up the recovery capital of their clients, patients, maybe Arcade is the fit for you. Yeah, do a little pitch there for you.

 

Kurt (46:33)

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, actually add one last thing, which is, you know, I have found I can sometimes find grants to pay for the training and things like that. And so sometimes those are especially if, you know, not dealing with a lot of resources, there are resources coming online now for this kind of thing. Sometimes it takes a while to get to them, but they’re out there and I’d be happy

 

Whitney (46:47)

Wonderful.

 

Kurt (47:02)

Try to pursue that with anybody who’s looking.

 

Whitney (47:05)

Great, great. Wonderful. Well everyone, share this with anyone you know who may need to realize that they already have a strength within them or someone who’s working with individuals and would be interested in building up recovery capital. Really just spread the message because the more we get our stories out there, the more we’re going to beat stigma. Leave us some comments, tell us what you think. Be sure to like and share, subscribe, and just thank you for listening.

Building Recovery Capital Through StrengthsAdd Your Heading Text Here In a recent episode of Reduce The Stigma, Whitney interviewed Kurt Lebeck, a recovery scientist and PhD candidate, who delved into the concept of recovery capital as a cornerstone of his work in behavioral health. Kurt’s journey from achieving recovery to becoming a leader in recovery-oriented […]

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