The 1% in Recovery Successful Gamblers & Alcoholics Stopping Addiction
The 1% in Recovery Successful Gamblers & Alcoholics Stopping Addiction
Treatment Center Researcher & Expert Joanna Talks Numbers, Success Rates, Family Tips
Addiction treatment hasn't improved in thirty years. This sobering reality forms the backbone of our eye-opening conversation with Joanna, founder of VISTA Research Group and Conquer Addiction, who shares her journey from desperate mother to pioneering researcher in addiction treatment outcomes.
www.Conquer-Addiction.org
When Joanna's daughter struggled with life-threatening alcohol addiction, she discovered the troubling truth: treatment centers weren't measuring success rates in any meaningful way. Claims of 85-95% recovery rates were unsupported by evidence, leaving families to make critical treatment decisions based on who sounded nicest on the phone. After her daughter finally achieved long-term recovery, Joanna dedicated herself to solving this problem, creating methodologies to track patient outcomes during and after treatment.
What she discovered was shocking. The effectiveness of treatment centers varies dramatically – some help over half their patients maintain recovery a year later, while others barely reach 20%. Yet without standardized measurement, families have no way to identify the most effective options. After monitoring over 100,000 patients during treatment and following up with 35,000 post-treatment, her research reveals crucial insights: patients who stay in treatment 90+ days are twice as likely to recover; supportive environments like sober living significantly boost success; and recovery rates vary substantially by substance, with alcohol addiction showing better outcomes than opioids or stimulants.
Most treatment centers resist measuring outcomes, citing costs despite spending far more on marketing. Joanna's ambitious goal is creating a national claims registry that will transform how families choose treatment, driving the entire industry toward greater accountability and effectiveness. Her vision could save a million more lives by 2030 by finally answering the crucial question: which treatment approaches actually work?
Explore the groundbreaking research at Conquer-Addiction.org and join our Facebook Recovery Freedom Circle to connect with others on their recovery journey.
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Welcome again to our 1% in Recovery podcast. Today we are talking about treatment centers and we have an excellent guest. So welcome again to another episode of the 1% in Recovery, where we encourage people to laugh every day. Work hard, work hard in recovery, work hard in your relationships, Work hard in your job, your business, school. Just work and to love unconditionally. Just put more love out there and watch more love return to you. Always remember recovery is beautiful, your EQ is your IQ and you cannot outthink an emotional issue With that. We just encourage people to join the Facebook group Recovery Freedom Circle. It's just a community where people talk about the steps, they talk about recovery. They talk about something that they're trying to achieve, a dream, a goal or something that they're struggling with, that they need help on. So, with that, just go to the show notes and you will see the link there. So tell us now. Welcome everybody, joanna. She's in Florida. How are you doing today? How are you feeling today, joanna?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me on the show, Hugo.
Speaker 1:All right, let's just start off. Tell the audience one thing you love. Spicy food Indian, chinese, vietnamese, italian, japanese, you name it Vietnamese, italian, japanese you name it, any specific spice that's a little higher up on your list?
Speaker 2:Well, I love za'atar and other Middle Eastern spices like sumac.
Speaker 1:Oh, excellent, so we're going to just jump in. I always like to just make the episodes more concise. Joanna's done a lot of research on treatment centers so she's got a lot of hard data. It's the whole reason because a lot of people want to know why am I picking this treatment center? Or the choices their insurance gives them, or it's out of pocket? Their insurance gives them or it's out of pocket. So we're going to ask the questions just around treatment centers in this country, in the US, and I do.
Speaker 1:I love the research you do, it's so it's kind of disappointing that we haven't been doing this since the 1980s when treatment centers were really starting to go.
Speaker 1:Seems like a lot of people and I go to a lot of meetings. I've heard a lot of stories and people will say, well, I went to one treatment center, then I went to another, then another and treatment, and I believe, just like I guess you had to confront this as the family dealing with someone with an addiction on where to send a loved one to treatment you know where to go and I know the treatment centers for a long time haven't been looking at what has been effective, either while they're there or post, and you do a lot of research. One month, six months, one year. Talk to us about why recovery centers, treatment centers as well as you know. So then families like yourself can make these very emotional, gut-wrenching decisions, because it's first of all, it's so emotional, but it's also financial. You have this big combination. What are you telling treatment centers? Or trying to get more treatment centers to follow your data? Or tell us a little bit more about all the evidence research that you've been doing?
Speaker 2:Sure Well for everyone on this podcast. You might be interested to know that I started because I had a daughter who had a very serious alcohol addiction, and she was drinking to potentially lethal levels night after night, and over the course of six years, I had to, on several different occasions, decide where to send her for the treatment. Occasions, decide where to send her for the treatment, and what I really wanted to know was which treatment centers were providing really effective treatment. But unfortunately, no one was collecting that information, and so they would either tell me oh, 85% of our patients are in recovery, or 95%, which we all know is absolute nonsense. 95%, which we all know is absolute nonsense. And so each time I was forced to make a decision of where to send her on the basis of who was nice on the phone, we were lucky. We usually found effective treatment and eventually my daughter was able to become in long-term recovery and has now been in recovery for 13 years completely turned her life around.
Speaker 2:So we're a wonderful success story. We've been very blessed. But when the worst was behind me, I said there has to be a way to help the families coming behind us to find treatment that can prove that it's doing an effective job. So I talked to different treatment center owners and I said I don't get it. Why aren't you measuring what works? And enough of them said they wanted to, that I said, and they didn't know how. That I thought well, okay, this is a business opportunity and I started a VISTA research group to monitor patients during treatment and then follow up with them one, six and 12 months later. And we've now monitored over 100,000 patients during treatment, followed up post-treatment with 35,000 of them. So we've learned a lot about what works and which treatment centers are providing really good job.
Speaker 1:Okay, so how many treatment centers did your daughter end up going to?
Speaker 2:You know, for for us, as for a lot of different people, there's different ways to count it. Do you count the IOP where, um, unfortunately, the young uh counselor tried to invite her out drinking? You know, do you do you? You know she went to three different serious residential programs. She, she was in sober living a number of different times. She went to different IOP programs. So you know it was a, it was a process. It took six years before she finally was able to fully recover.
Speaker 1:No, and like you, you know, besides me being a compulsive gambler, alcoholic, and then after I finally, you know, was started my recovery, you know I went back and I got an MBA. But, like you, businesses run on numbers and you know you can make a good decision, or a better decision, based on at least some evidence, some data. I mean right now there's. You know the big push is just understand you know how much data is out there. You know we're constantly getting recorded on phones and computers.
Speaker 1:But I'm the firm believer too, after so many years, you know, just dealing with my own recovery doing this, that there had to be better ways, cause a lot of people say, well, just go to treatment or just find a therapist or go to a 12 step room and like, and then it's like they'll just say certain steps is like, don't quit before the miracle happens. Well, okay, I mean that that's nice. I mean I'm a big believer in work. You know the people who work harder. But the other thing is it's like saying is you know you just got to work, you know, or it's always putting it on the onus, on the person who's trying to get it, and whatever you know, first it's just stopping the addiction. Then it's dealing with the character, dealing with just kind of getting more maturity.
Speaker 1:But a lot of it is well, you aren't doing the steps more, or you just didn't go to the right treatment center, or you just need to change your therapist or something. And to me I'm like with you. I mean we need numbers, you have to know how many people you're helping or you're trying to deal with and then you, and then follow them, not only while they're in your care but then afterwards and follow up, because a lot of people start doing well while they're in treatment or, like with me, while they're doing coaching, and then afterwards you know when they're almost like being thrown in the deep end, no one's really watching them, and then it's easily to revert back to old behavior watching them, and then it's easily to revert back to old behavior.
Speaker 2:But tell me Well, one of the things we found that was really discouraging is that our outcome recovery rate in the late teens and through the first five years of the 2020s is identical to the percentage of patients who recovered in the last federally funded outcomes research study. That was done in 1993, 30 years ago and there's been no improvement in the effectiveness of addiction treatment, and I think the reason for that is that treatment centers, for the most part, have not been measuring it, and you can only manage what you measure, and so what's happened is we see a tremendous variation in the effectiveness of treatment at different treatment centers. You know, at some treatment centers, over 50% of their patients are doing well a year later. At others it's less than 20%, and the problem is no one really knows until they scientifically follow up with their patients and do it the same way that other treatment centers are, so they can compare their results. And that's what we've brought to the industry is the ability to measure and benchmark treatment center success against each other's.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's encouraging, because everyone almost wants to treat every addict the same and a lot of times and it's like well, first of all, alcohol is different than gambling, which is different than if you had meth you're doing with cocaine. And then on top of that, people will say, well, like, I believe in the 12 steps, but I also did a lot of therapy. I would, you know, I've been, I've gone to always, I still go to meetings, I still believe in it. I still was in therapy seven years. But I also went back and people would say well, you know certain things, like within meetings, everything is perfect. It's not because so few people just walk into a 12-step room and then stay stopped. And the same thing, like with treatment centers, they would constantly use I think in the beginning would use too much of the 12-step model. And I know now there are a lot of them are changing and trying to do. I know one guy who runs a treatment center. He's going we're doing a lot more life skills and we're finding that to be more effective to treatment centers. We're doing a lot more life skills and we're finding that to be more effective, and I like that. People are challenging all different the way recovery was introduced 30, 40, 50 years ago and realize, okay, we're in a new environment, especially with the phones, especially just the way economy goes.
Speaker 1:But you were saying here, let's go jump into question two. You're saying that the average graduate amount of times is three times that people go into treatment centers. And so what can you tell families on what they should understand? Let's say they're sending their let's say more than likely it's parents sending their child to their first treatment center. What should they be aware of? What should they be looking for? What questions should they be asking insurance to maybe get a few extra days? Tell us anything that could be helpful, especially to those mothers and fathers that are, you know, by the time they get to this question, you know they're at wit's end. They're just sort of like I'm deep.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well. Some people do recover after one episode of treatment. On average, according to our data, it's about three is the sweet spot, but some people are still having to go to treatment 20 times. You know it's unfortunately there's no, there's no firm answer. Everyone, as you mentioned, hugo, everyone is different.
Speaker 2:What I will tell families is there are several things you can do to increase the likelihood that this episode of treatment will be successful. The most important is find a truly effective treatment center. We identify some of them on the website of our nonprofit conqueraddictionorg. It's conquer-addictionorg. However, you can also ask other people for their advice. If they're sent a child or a spouse or went themselves to different treatment centers, how they would rate it. So find an effective treatment center.
Speaker 2:The second thing is whatever you can do to encourage your child or loved one to stay in treatment through all the levels of care they recommend. It makes a huge amount of difference. We found that people who are in treatment for 90 days or longer are twice as likely to be in recovery a year later as if they stay for only the 20 days or fewer that the health insurance company would really like to pay for. So stay in treatment as long as possible. It doesn't all obviously wouldn't all be at residential or a PHP level. You can keep stepping down, but stay connected to the treatment center.
Speaker 2:The other thing is you really need to build a support network around your loved one when they return from treatment, because giving up an addiction is really hard, and we found that there are three different things that make a huge difference in the likelihood someone is likely to recover. One is if they can go to sober living and stay away from the people, places and things that remind them about their substance. If they can stay in a sober environment, stay focused on their recovery for a couple more months, if they can be out working you know at the, you know at the local Starbucks or whatever they can be starting to get their feet under them, but that will dramatically increase the likelihood they're able to stay in recovery. A second thing is if they get involved in recovery support meetings like you have. That makes a tremendous difference. To be involved in a group who are focused on recovery, who are supporting one another and hopefully teaching each other how to have fun sober.
Speaker 1:Correct. I said you've got to have fun, you've got to be laughing at this stuff.
Speaker 2:Exactly Because a lot of people will be like my daughter. She'll say you know, I couldn't imagine having fun without alcohol. Well, you have to learn that, yes, you can have a whole lot of fun without the corrective substance and have more fun, exactly, and you can remember it the next day, right, right.
Speaker 2:And then the last thing that can be helpful for some people is a randomized drug and alcohol testing program. Maybe in that moment where they're really tempted to, you know, get that first drink or that first hit, they can say to themselves well, you know what they might find out, because they're probably going to test me tonight, and so maybe that's just enough to keep them from relapsing at that point. So, whatever you can do, surround your loved one with support for their recovery and encourage them to stay in treatment for as long as they possibly can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and to follow up, I like that last piece that you talked about doing, that random drug testing or alcohol testing. Like the one thing like, especially like with gamblers, I encourage families. There's different software that can block a lot of these ads that come on our phones and so for all, like these casino ads, they're nonstop. I've been in recovery 25 years. I still can get someone the last one was Ryan Seacrest coming on my phone talking about it and the colors are all nice and shiny and they're saying join this casino. But yeah, like you said, whether it's blocking because we're all going to get tempted, because society will keep tempting you. You should be drinking, you should be gambling, you should be doing all these other types of behaviors and you know it's just. All it takes is just that little bit. You know just a little bit. You got to utilize all the help. I'm a big believer. I say utilize all the help you can get, whether it's groups, being alumni of treatment centers, therapists, your church, your gym, anything that's healthy, that's doing you know healthy friends. You got to challenge family and friends. To challenge family and friends. Who is a supportive person Like I came back and my family was totally tone deaf that I just wanted to stop drinking for 30 days. You know, my mother asked if that included beer and wine. My brother asked how are you going to have fun if you were drinking and gambling? You're not drinking and gambling and then it'd be, but it's sad. What you're saying is is you've got to find certain amounts of groups and you. Part of it is in our own mindset that we're done, but part of it's also, you know you do need that support, and so what I will do is I'll get some of these hints from you and I'll put it in our show notes because people that are listening to it whether it's on Apple or Spotify or YouTube they can go back to the show notes. Number one go to your website, which would be the ideal point to get all this information. Another two is just like some quick little hints on what families can do. I think that can be very helpful.
Speaker 1:But let's jump into question three. You touched on it a little bit. What drove you to really do this research? Because I think what you're doing you know, just like a lot of people talk to me as, like a lot of people you know, want to learn about the steps. I said well, just come to my podcast and, like you're doing all this research, we need people that just get really motivated and excited about recovery, not only about their own families. But what can we share with them and so many other people because there's too many? There's addiction is everywhere. So what kind of drove you to do this research? And then, is there anything new in research? Is there any new questions you were talking about? You've changed some questions. Tell us certain things that are evolving.
Speaker 2:Well, we've continued to ask about different things in our ongoing research, but what I am most excited about right now is a step change that we're making to move beyond just following up with a small percentage of the treatment centers who are willing to cover the cost of having us follow up with our patients post-treatment and figure out how to get the data we need on a national level of which treatment centers are effective and, interestingly, which health insurance companies are paying for enough treatment at effective centers that more of their members recover.
Speaker 2:So you know, we've got data now on a small number of treatment centers. It's well less than 1% of all treatment centers are monitoring and following up with their patients after treatment. What we need to do is we need to get the data nationally on which treatment centers are providing the most effective treatment and which health insurance companies are providing effective treatment to their members, and so our nonprofit is in the process of raising the money to build a national claims registry that would allow us each year to identify these are the top treatment centers in the country in terms of what percentage of their patients are in recovery a year later, and then we'll allow them, if they're proud of their results to publicize them to other families so that families can see where to go to get effective treatment, and hopefully that will energize the whole field to start measuring and continually improving the effectiveness of their treatment, if we can do this.
Speaker 2:We think that we can save a million more lives by 2030.
Speaker 1:It's huge. No, I know I do. I love your aspirational goal of trying to save lives because I'm in the same, you know, boat, the same, the same desire just to help people. You know, mainly I'm mainly more focused on gamblers as well as the people that are the combination gambler, alcoholic, uh, cause there's a lot more help for the alcoholic or the drug addict. Like you've stated, you know, there's a lot of unknowns around gambling because there's just less research. But on your research, do you break it down on success, like this person was mainly an alcoholic or mainly heroin, or do you break it down on specific addictions? Because I know sometimes, because I've been asked that question, it's just like, well, my daughter mainly has a meth problem, or my loved one mainly is a gambler. Do you break it down in any of your data in terms of addiction or is it just mainly if they're successful or not?
Speaker 2:Oh, we see a huge variation in the effectiveness of in recovery success rates depending upon what the patient's primary drug of choice is. Alcohol has the highest recovery success rate, the lowest is fentanyl, heroin and cocaine and meth. Those are the hardest. The others are kind of in the middle someplace and so you know we do break that out. It'd be interesting you know I haven't gone back and looked at the success rate of patients who were also in treatment because of gambling to see those that were able to stop drinking or using drugs what happened with their gambling addiction. So I can go back and do that. That might be very interesting to look at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I'm with you, because I know each addiction, each drug or behavior let's say we're talking about gambling or sex will affect our brains differently and it will also then depend on kind of recovery. Now I have a knew, since I was mainly doing just 12-step rooms and outpatient therapy I never went to an inpatient mainly because of insurance or money To me I could deal with, because my drug of choice was always gambling. Number one, alcohol, number two, that I thought at the time I'll give up alcohol first and I still. It took me three years to finally give it. Uh, you know, it's almost like a lot of people. You know they stopped drinking but they'll still start smoking cigarettes or now it's a question of they.
Speaker 1:they still vape. But the question is and I know that can vary I just say people just get on the train that's headed towards recovery. If you've got to do it one at a time, do it that way, and I know you've got a lot of research here. Tell everyone again and you can just kind of just spell out, you just spell out Concord group, just spell out the whole website so people can hear it and I'll put it in the show notes. But I think a lot of people like to hear it. You know they want to. Either they're hearing it on their phones or they're walking around.
Speaker 2:Sure it's Conquer Addiction, so it's C-O-N-Q-U-E-R-Conquer-Addictionorg.
Speaker 1:Okay, because I actually, for some reason I heard the actual town, concord, massachusetts, concord, new Hampshire and so I was thinking, well, maybe there's some kind of touch there. So I was hearing I'm glad you clarified it because I think, look, I just talked to a lot of addicts. We go to meetings, there's a lot of ADD, there's a lot of OCD, people are spacing out, people assume they hear it one way. They don't, and that's why.
Speaker 1:I like for you to spell it out, I'll put it. I'll spell it out correctly in the show notes, because I want people to get their hands on this research. So tell people what is the number one reason treatment centers don't want to fund this research on their own facility. Is it because they don't trust you, or is it they blame it on as a budgetary issue?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they will always give us that it costs too much, which is just an excuse, because you know a midsize treatment center could use all of our research for maybe 50,000 a year. They are probably spending many, many times that in marketing, you know, with Google ads and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:And so they become a five star treatment center. In your statements, more people will see that, and as you keep growing, they're going to. More people will add Well, joanna says this I'm going to go to this treatment center over you.
Speaker 2:And then they lose out on potential money goal of where we want to get long term is to have enough people choosing where to attend treatment on the basis of hard outcomes research and then, as you know, more and more people are aware of that and start choosing that way, then hopefully that will drive the whole industry to be a lot more cognizant of the importance of measuring and improving their outcomes. So that's my long-term goal.
Speaker 1:Hey, I'm with you and I want to just keep moving forward. Share any types of data, because numbers don't like they usually say. Well, numbers can lie, but for the most part, numbers are a lot more believable than just someone, like you said, throwing out whatever percentage they want on how good their recovery system is. Well, with that, I thank you for your time this afternoon and with that we are going to conclude this episode of the 1% in recovery podcast.