From Headlines to Healing: Denise Klein

Denise Klein, co-owner and executive director of Milestones Ranch in Malibu, CA reveals her transformative career switch and her personal recovery from codependency. With over 35 years of social work experience, Denise passionately discusses the importance of addressing family systems and underlying dynamics to foster lasting recovery. Her unique approach involves a systemic, holistic focus on family-centered solutions, offering a refreshing perspective on tackling addiction and mental health challenges.

Discover the innovative methodologies at Milestones Ranch, where Denise and her team prioritize individual and family therapy to heal relationships affected by addiction. Understand why learning to love differently, setting boundaries, and processing regrets are crucial elements in recovery. Denise shares insights into the impact of the pandemic on treatment services and emphasizes the necessity of trauma-informed care. By maintaining a limited number of patients, Milestones ensures high-quality, personalized care, highlighting the immense dedication and teamwork essential for successful recovery journeys.

Navigate the complexities of selecting the right addiction treatment program with expert guidance from Denise and her co-authors. Gain valuable tips on evaluating recovery centers, understanding the significance of visiting facilities, and verifying their credentials to avoid overpromised solutions. Emphasize the importance of persistence in recovery, debunking the myth of a quick fix, and learn about the critical role of aftercare plans. This episode empowers families to recognize addiction, choose effective treatment options, and align efforts with first responders for a supportive, unified approach to recovery.

For more information regarding Milestones Ranch or to order "The Truth About Treatment" please visit: Milestones Ranch or call 1-866-874-9774

Chapters

• 0:03 Addiction Treatment and Social Work Journey
• 9:14 Holistic Approach to Addiction Treatment
• 19:33 Choosing a Quality Addiction Treatment Program
• 23:21 Action Stage
• 27:47 Recognizing Addiction and Seeking Help
• 35:12 Finding the Right Addiction Treatment

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the Party Wreckers podcast, hosted by professional interventionists Matt Brown and Sam Davis. This is a podcast for families or individuals with loved ones who are struggling with addiction or alcoholism and are reluctant to get the help that they need. We hope to educate and entertain you while removing the fear from the conversation. Stay with us and we'll get you through it. Please welcome the party wreckers, matt Brown and Sam Davis.

Speaker 2: 0:40

Welcome back everybody. My name is Matt Brown and I am writing without Sam today. Sam at least for the foreseeable future is taking a little bit of a break to focus on some other things, and so, at least for the time being, if you were tuning in to listen to Sam, you're going to be sorely disappointed, and I apologize for that opportunity to hear about a wonderful guest that I've lined up for us today. Her name is Denise Klein, and Denise is the co-owner and the executive director of Milestones Ranch in Malibu, california. Denise has just written a book that we'll get into here and talk a little bit about the treatment industry. But, denise, welcome, thank you for being here today.

Speaker 3: 1:22

Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2: 1:23

Tell us a little bit about you. Let's start out with just a little bit of your background and how you ended up working in this field. You're a woman in recovery, right?

Speaker 3: 1:34

Actually I am in recovery for codependency.

Speaker 2: 1:37

Okay, so that's even you know. Most of the time when you hear about people who own treatment programs, many of us get into this field simply because you know we're in recovery ourselves. But talk to me about a little bit of a different path that led you into this field. How did you get started?

Speaker 3: 1:52

Well, it's kind of a long story. It wasn't by intent. I actually was started out in journalism and broadcasting before I became a social worker and I was a single mom and I had a boyfriend my daughter's father who was in active addiction the whole time. I knew him and gratefully now he's been sober for a few years, so it's wonderful. But I started out in journalism and I decided that wasn't the path for me. So I took a social work class and just fell in love with social work, because you know, we focus so much on the solutions and getting out of the story getting the story but moving to a different place with the story so I have never looked back. I've been a social worker for 35 years and I absolutely love it.

Speaker 2: 2:46

So what is the difference between an LCSW, a licensed clinical social worker, and a licensed professional counselor?

Speaker 3: 2:52

Well, with social work we look more at systems. We go into communities and we look at what's not working and how we can fill those holes. So whether it's prevention with children and families, or going into a hospital and working with the elderly, or you name it, I mean social worker covers every aspect of the community. So we're always looking for those little holes so that we can fix them. If you are a counselor, by and large you're trained just to do therapy, which is wonderful. We need therapists. But social workers think systemically and they do therapy and they're looking at the micro, meso and macro community.

Speaker 2: 3:39

Okay, so you took a social work class.

Speaker 3: 3:42

Correct.

Speaker 2: 3:43

And what happened from? There.

Speaker 3: 3:45

It was wonderful. I took it and I fell in love with the curriculum. I was a single mom and I grew up in North Dakota, so there's a lot of codependency in North Dakota. I say there's about 600,000 people there and probably 595,000 are codependent. It's just in our DNA and so basically the training was family systemic and we went into homes and so back in North Dakota and later in Colorado, when I lived there, I would work with families for up to two years to prevent out of home placements of children.

Speaker 3: 4:22

So we'd go into the system and we'd work with the family and you might have a father who's a closet alcoholic. And I remember a mom who was diagnosed with bipolar and emphysema and her medications were contraindicated. So we had to fix that. And in this particular home there were three kids who were in wilderness programs and we brought them all back into the house and worked with them for two years and they never had to leave again. I actually was called in because they were throwing matches and gasoline on each other and they thought the kids were the problem, but really it was.

Speaker 3: 5:04

It was, um, because of the family systems. The parents needed to do some work on themselves and so I felt like there was situations like that where it was so complex you think there's no solution, but really what it is is slowing down, looking at the family system doing really great work and doing it over time. And that's what led me to want to write the book, because when I later moved to Malibu like 20 years later I was just shocked that people were only given one month, two months in treatment and we're supposed to fix everything, because all of my training was long-term treatment and we saw fantastic results. So I think that's part of the problem is that America hasn't been properly educated in regard to addiction and mental health and that it is a process. It's not a 30-day deluxe wash.

Speaker 2: 6:09

Well, and this is how you know that somebody's meant to do this work. They look at a family where dad's a closet alcoholic, mom's bipolar, the kids are throwing matches at each other while they're soaked in gasoline and somebody like you or I looks at that and says you know what that's? That looks like something I want to do. Um, for most people, it's like this is crazy. I want nothing to do with this. I'd rather work in a cubicle. Um, but people that are wired with a certain amount of crazy, like we are we we look at a situation like that and go yeah, okay, that feels normal to me.

Speaker 3: 6:57

It'd be a little bit of a lot of a detective. You know you have to want to get all the information and a lot of times especially now in the year we're hitting 2025, that people are stretching their bandwidth so much and trying to see so many people isn't what it could be if we slowed down and we really practice what we preach and just treat a few families at a time and not make it so much about you know the money and that's not always the case but because sometimes you work somewhere and you just don't have any choice. They just keep piling clients on you. But it's up to you to show up and advocate for your patients, your families and yourself that this is my bandwidth and I want to do it right. And I say at Milestones we're addicted to people getting well. We're not addicted to anything but watching people get well and being part of that process.

Speaker 2: 7:38

Well, what led you to Milestones from North Dakota? You said about 20 years ago you moved to Malibu, but did you move out there with the intent of going to work at Milestones?

Speaker 3: 7:47

No, actually I was going to run another wraparound program for the county. I wanted to run a small business. My daughter had graduated from high school and she went away to get her social work degree in Denver, and so I was dating someone in California and I didn't think I'd want to stay. But so I wrote myself a little note and said I'll stay for a year and see how it pans out. And after a year I just fell in love with it and I actually took the job at Milestones, because at that point in time I thought my house was going to sell in Colorado and it didn't, and so I had to go to work for someone else instead of being an entrepreneur. But, as we know, everything happens for a reason, and so it turned out absolutely perfectly.

Speaker 2: 8:39

Wonderful. Well, tell us a little bit about your journey through Milestones, from first going to work there. Now you're a co-owner and the executive director, so obviously you've come up through the ranks. What did that look like for you, and what was it that drew you to Milestones? What has changed since you've taken part ownership in it? I'd love to hear a little bit more about that part of the journey for you.

Speaker 3: 9:05

Well, because of my social work and family systemic training, of course, right away, you know, I wanted to add more family services. So as soon as a patient arrives at Milestones, we're on the phone with them. We're gathering collateral information because we're a very family systemic model. We don't bring everyone into the room together like all the families, like some centers do. I do appreciate and respect that way of doing it. We do private sessions.

Speaker 3: 9:35

So if you say you and your family were involved in milestones, we would look at what's going on in regard to your treatment issues and then, based on what you share in the room, we would determine do you need a little space from your family right now to individuate, to emancipate a little bit, or do we need to get in and start doing the heavy lifting right away? And so we do a lot of individual sessions, couple sessions. Our doctors are available. I can call them even 22 years later after being at Milestones for this long. I can call the doctors and say, hey, can you clear your schedule for an hour tomorrow to work with our family Because they need some education on neurodivergent disorders? Or we have a client who's got substance use disorders and has had a traumatic brain injury. They will clear their schedules, they will be available and we do good old fashioned multidisciplinary work like you would do in a hospital or in a social service setting, and so that's kind of unheard of that level of care and I think we need to get back to that.

Speaker 3: 10:40

And I'm kind of on my bully pulpit about that because I want families to receive more care. It is a family systems disease. Everybody needs a trauma-informed plan, and so that's how it evolved. I started out as a primary care therapist because I didn't want to be a manager until I knew more about how a drug and alcohol rehab works, because I had always worked outpatient. I'd ran a family program in Colorado, but it's very different working with kids and families and doing a lot of prevention than it is with a late-stage alcoholic who's been drinking for 50 years, who's got cognitive decline, and so I took the first two years again putting on the detective hat, studying like a mad woman and learning exactly what I was getting into, and I fell in love with it again. It was just like it found me.

Speaker 2: 11:37

Getting back to that family work, I have seen a decline across the board, especially since the pandemic.

Speaker 2: 11:47

I think the pandemic it made it very difficult for families to do, or for treatment centers to do, family work, particularly, of course, in person.

Speaker 2: 11:56

But I think across the board we saw a real decline in the services that families received when their loved ones went to treatment, the services that families received when their loved ones went to treatment, and I'm so glad to hear that you say that that that's something that you guys really focus on, because it's those of us that are in recovery from addiction. You know we don't arrive at this point in a vacuum. You know there's certainly genetic components to it, but you know, by and largeinformed, when you talk about multidisciplinary, you know so much of that has to do with the input that we received as young people in those formative years and you know largely the family contributes to that, the adaptations that happen there and how we take care of ourselves, how we try to get our needs met, and just to hear that you are continuing to put an emphasis on that is so refreshing and I just wish that more treatment programs would get back to doing that. Family work, like many were pre-pandemic.

Speaker 3: 13:08

Yeah, Thank you for saying that. What we say at Milestones is we're going to teach you to learn to love differently. It's not like you need to go out and hit bottom we don't do that with any other illness and we teach them fair fighting boundaries, how to process regrets, resentments and the miracle question right, which is, if a miracle happened today and your family system was better and you, you were happier and everyone was healthier, what would that look like? And so you get that little microcosm of what each of them are looking to change. And then you start working, you know, not on huge, lofty goals, but small, little. Okay. Well, we're going to turn our phones off at dinnertime. You know we're going to, you know, have a date night. We're going to talk differently to one another.

Speaker 3: 13:57

So it's really building a foundation that has crumbled over years and years because by the time people get to milestones, this has been going on for decades and I always think of addiction in my mind, kind of like an octopus with all the tentacles, and it affects your mental health, it affects your basement level, belief in yourself, and it affects sometimes there's legal problems, work problems, you name it I mean just process addiction, spiritual deprivation, and so that's a lot to untangle and those tentacles they're hanging on and we have to go in, like a surgeon, a therapist does, and diagnose and look at the x-ray and say, hey, what's going on here and start creating a treatment plan.

Speaker 3: 14:46

And that's just one person, you know, when you add the family system. So I think sometimes people really don't understand in how could they how much work has to be done in a recovery center and how brave these people are for coming in and doing this work, because now they have to feel their feelings and they have to, you know, pull up those old memories of things that they might not be so proud of and share that and and forgive themselves and move forward and ask for forgiveness. And so it's a lot of work, but that's why we only work with no more than 12 patients at a time and we have 45 staff at Milestones. That's why we've never grown is because we're really aware of our bandwidth. Everybody works very, very hard and in order to go to a larger model, the way we do our work, it just wouldn't be possible without having another center with 45 more staff and a license for 12, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2: 15:47

It does. And looking at where you guys are, the restricted number of clients that you work with, with the kind of staff that you have, you know most people elsewhere in the country or around the world that might be hearing this they think, oh, malibu, california. You know that's one of those hoity-toity celebrity treatment programs and that's really not what you guys are. You know this. You are located in a beautiful location, but what sets you apart? How, other than just the way you've described? How can you help families wrap their heads around the fact that just because of where you're located doesn't mean that treatment dollars are getting spent on real estate? Because I think that's a really important distinction to make with you guys.

Speaker 3: 16:34

Yeah, thank you. That is an important distinction. We call ourselves clinically luxurious because our experts have 10 to 20 years in the field our doctors, our clinicians. Do you want to go to the dentist who's pulled a tooth once or a thousand times? Right, we want the experts, so we pay for that's where their money is going. We have to, and this is real. We have to pay them what they would make in their private practice setting or we couldn't keep those experts. So that's why that's a chapter in the book.

Speaker 3: 17:07

In the truth about rehab is why is healthcare so expensive? Because if you're doing it right, it's very labor intensive and you have to have experts. For us it's not the real estate. It is beautiful. We are on a ranch, our houses are beautiful, but they're not mansions, they're just beautiful ranch style houses on an acre of land. We have some critters, we have gardens, lots of gardens. We have a wellness center, a gym, a pool, et cetera, pickleball courts which is great because they're doing 18 groups a week and seven to eight individual sessions and going to AA. They need to have balance. So the balance comes in with the wellness activities sober exposure, therapy, going to the AA meetings, having a little time to relax, journal, read a book, play board games. It's really called a balanced life and that's what we're trying to help them, because stress is what's going to take people out. What's going to take people out.

Speaker 2: 18:14

Yeah Well, and it's those three sides to the recovery triangle You've got mind, body and spirit, and whenever one of those sides gets out of balance, the other two are in jeopardy. And so it really does take a well-balanced lifestyle. And I know, early on in my recovery I mean I knew I wanted to stay sober, but I did not know what self-care looked like. I did not know, you know, how to take care of my emotional wellbeing, my mental wellbeing. The only thing I knew is, if I keep doing this, then I, you know, I'll stop drinking and I'll stop using drugs.

Speaker 2: 18:48

Obviously, as time went on and I did deal with process addictions, I did have a real issue around food and exercise and, and you know, I got very compulsive about all of that, got really heavy for a while and then lost a bunch of weight in very unhealthy ways. And, um, you know, just really trying to figure out those, those balances, and and trying not to, you know I had two speeds at the time. Basically it was either full tilt or a dead stop and there was really no middle ground there. And so a lot of that is just figuring that out. Is is how to put focus on the important things and keep things in priority, but at the same time, let that little boy inside of me have some fun every once in a while as well.

Speaker 2: 19:33

You'd mentioned your book and I certainly want to get into that. What was the genesis of this book? What motivated you to write it?

Speaker 3: 19:43

What motivated me to write the book with Kurt Garby and with Dr Seth Kadish. So I have some co -authors who've been in the field for over 20 years, both of them One is Dr Seth, that was a forensic psychologist and was our clinical director. Kurt Garby has a counseling degree and is a national outreach worker for PCH and Visions both wonderful programs and I went to them and I said I'd like to write a book and I'd like you to co-author it with me. It's for admission workers and it's for families and clients looking for treatment. To co-author it with me. It's for admission workers and it's for families and clients looking for treatment who have never been through the process, and people spend a lot of money on treatment. Treatment is not inexpensive and so I felt it was our duty to create a book that could answer pretty much all the questions about how to choose a good recovery center and how to vet programs.

Speaker 2: 20:40

So, in your mind, what sets a good, good program apart from those that aren't?

Speaker 3: 20:47

not over promising and under delivering. So you can go to websites which look fantastic, go to websites which look fantastic, um, but it's really much better to go in person and tour the facility. This is a you know, this is a big decision. Addiction recovery is life and death, and so go, meet the people, vet the backgrounds. If you're in a smaller, it's easier, because you can go to a hospital chaplain, you could go to a social worker, you could go to a nurse, you could go to a police officer and ask five people the same question what's the best treatment center? Who's doing good work?

Speaker 3: 21:28

And you're going to hear the same name, especially in small communities. In larger communities like LA, it's a little trickier because there's I just read on the Internet there's like 17,000 programs in the country and most of them are in California. So that's a little different, you know, and people like to come here because the weather's so great and you can be outdoors and there really is an active fellowship here, unlike any other area in the country. Not that I've traveled everywhere, but the places I've lived, they haven't had the services like LA has, and so that's why we wrote the book is to help people through the process.

Speaker 2: 22:07

It reminds me of an experience that Sam and I had together.

Speaker 2: 22:10

We were brought in to do some training with a treatment center in the Midwest, brought in to do some training with a treatment center in the Midwest, and we asked the staff we did different training sessions, with medical, with clinical, with some of the frontline tech staff, with admissions, and we asked them all what is your definition of addiction?

Speaker 2: 22:31

And depending on what department they worked in, depending on a lot of different factors, we got a myriad of different answers and most of them actually weren't even close to what it should have been. And these were the people that were providing treatment on the front lines and, and you know, even from a medical standpoint. And so you know, that was a real eye-opener for me to be like, wait a minute, you guys are treating this disease and you're struggling to define what it even is. So I think, yeah to, really for me, at least in that moment, it really kind of shined a light on like, do they even understand the condition that they're treating here, you know, let alone the fact that this is life and death and families are entrusting their loved ones to come and be treated at different facilities around the country? Do they know what they're treating?

Speaker 3: 23:21

If you recall, you know, back in the nineties and early two thousands there was a lot of information out there that there was a cure. And we know there's no cure. We wish there was a cure. It is one day at a time and people don't really want to. It's hard for people because they don't want to take away people's hope, because once you hear there's no cure then you have to roll your sleeves up and recognize that it's hard work but it does get easier. After the neural pathways, you know, change over the first year and and you have new habits as you transform your life it gets easier and what you would know better than me after like five years you know, success rates go up even more when you've got five years of recovery. And so we educate to elevate at Milestones. We're constantly educating, hence going back to the book. So if a family calls me like I was on the phone for three hours already this morning before I got on this podcast with families I can say, oh, go read this chapter and then call me back tonight and we'll talk some more. So every admission worker, before a patient arrives in the treatment center, sometimes you're on the phone for a year before they decide to make the decision. Sometimes it's immediate, but that's rare, and most of the time you're spending 20, 30 hours on the phone and we will continue to do that. We want to follow through with our duties. But the book will be helpful because they can read the chapters. And then if you have an admission worker who isn't as not admission worker, say someone a first responder who isn't as educated in the community, we can give them the book too and then they can read. And then we're all singing the same tune to the family. That get them in, stabilize them.

Speaker 3: 25:06

Look at the underlying issues. See what's driving the addiction, what's underneath. It's like a tip of the iceberg substance abuse on top. Is there trauma? Is there basement level self-esteem? Is there a personality disorder? Are there sleep deprivation issues? It goes on and on. That's our job to figure that out with the doctors and the clinicians. And then we can educate the family and hopefully secure good results if they follow their aftercare plans, because that's the next piece, of course.

Speaker 2: 25:39

Well, you talk about the timeline and you know I can't tell you how many times I've talked with a family and they just weren't ready for whatever reason. And then a year later, a year and a half later, I'll get a call and say, hey, I don't know if you remember me, but you know we talked about a year ago and I think we're ready. Why do you think sometimes it takes families that kind of length of time before they're ready to take some action? Or or even the individuals that you work with? I typically talk with families first, because I'm working with those that aren't necessarily motivated to get help, and so I'm usually interacting with families first. I'm sure sometimes you're talking with the clients themselves, but why do you feel like families or individuals wait so long?

Speaker 3: 26:22

It's a great question I've never been asked that before and it's a good question because it does happen more frequently than you would think that it does take a good long time to get people to finally get into an action stage, and I think it's because the illness wears people down. Everybody's exhausted, they want to be hopeful, but a lot of times they've lost hope because they actually waited too long to make the first call, and so when they call and you give them this information, then they have to figure out how they're going to get to an action stage, and if they don't think that their loved one's going to go into treatment, they really don't have the bandwidth to do much back and forth, and so I think sometimes they back off for that reason. They're just plain old, exhausted.

Speaker 2: 27:18

Yeah, the thing that I run into the most is, you know and this, I think, is one of those myths that tends to get perpetuated without a whole lot of foundation to it, and that is, you know, we have to wait for somebody to hit bottom.

Speaker 2: 27:33

And you know, the family's like, okay, well, maybe this is the bottom and the bottom hasn't come yet, and so they wait a little longer. And well, maybe this is the bottom and they're waiting for that event to happen, for the bottom to finally happen. I think sometimes families will wait unnecessarily, in a very painful state, for that loved one to find this. Okay, I'm ready for some help. So often I think that there are things that we can be doing, whether it's in the capacity that you're in or the capacity that I am, to really help families recognize it's time for someone else besides the addicted individual to take that first step. And so what kind of signs do you think families should be looking for if they have an addicted loved one? What should they be looking for in terms of when is it time to give someone some space, and when is it the time to actually take that first step and start making phone calls to programs like yours, or to really start moving the ball a little bit faster themselves.

Speaker 3: 28:35

Well, the first thing is to educate yourself as much as you can on the disease of addiction and get as much knowledge as you can, and then go to someone like yourself and let them guide you, because you've been doing it so long and each situation is so different and timing is important. I always say the sooner the better, you don't let any disease get worse. And I also am probably one of the biggest cheerleaders ever for interventions, because I've worked in the field 35 years and I've never heard a client say, oh, I wish they went to done an intervention, even if they came in kicking and screaming. I always say you'd rather have them mad than have to be going to a funeral.

Speaker 3: 29:20

So that's where codependency comes in. Be okay with their. You know, if they they're upset, know you're doing the right thing. Get an expert. I love interventions. There's a lot of great case management teams out there that can guide you as well and do it sooner than later, because it is a progressive disease and the longer you wait, the person I mean, especially with fentanyl now I mean oh, it's just like you, don't have time to wait.

Speaker 3: 29:48

I just heard a story last week. It wasn't one of our clients, but a client came in, said her friend had been sober for a year, relapsed on cocaine. It was laced with fentanyl. They died one slip. So, yeah, there's no luxury of waiting.

Speaker 3: 30:03

And so, educate, get a sophisticated expert and get in there and let them guide you, because every situation is different and sometimes, you know, it might take a couple weeks of prep to get all the family members on board, because you might have an outlier of someone who's, you know, has some different feelings about all of it. So, work through that, get in, do the surgery and, like I said, in 35 years all I've heard is I'm so glad they did the intervention and they go back and thank their loved ones. And what they will say the patients will say is I didn't have the wherewithal, I was so depressed I couldn't get out of bed. Even though it's not like, oh, I'm going to call milestones today and go in, this is the day. That's not like, oh, I'm going to call Milestones today and go in, this is the day. That's not how it works with addiction. They're beaten.

Speaker 2: 30:49

But so many families are waiting for that moment to happen.

Speaker 3: 30:52

Yeah, good luck with that. I mean it will happen, but it doesn't happen as much as you think, because you really have to be practical about this. This disease affects your mental health, so they're depressed, they're anxious, they might have a diagnosis of bipolar. Now there's a more severe mental illness. You just don't know, and there's a lot of. It takes a lot of vulnerability to reach out for help and the courage. So we have to help them. I went through it.

Speaker 2: 31:40

I went through it with my daughter's father you know and, um you know, now he's 67, he's got seven years of sobriety. We honestly didn't think he would like that is probably not fair, but many families are so concerned about how their loved one is going to feel, whether it's hey, we're going to do a family intervention and we're going to ask them to go get treatment at a place like Milestones, or just even having that conversation to begin with, do you think you have a problem? Do you think you need some professional help? And what I try to help families understand is that how someone feels is the most flexible part of that entire equation. How they feel today is going to be very different from how they felt yesterday. It's going to be very different from how they feel tomorrow or a week from now, but their needs are going to remain fairly constant, and so what I really want families to hear is that stop worrying about how they're going to feel. Let's get their level of willingness to rise to that level that meets their needs and let the feelings change as that process happens. And yes, there's going to be anger.

Speaker 2: 32:46

We fight for control at every turn while we're in active addiction Because internally we are so out of control we cannot control or regulate what's going on internally with us.

Speaker 2: 32:58

So we have to try to control everything that's going on around us.

Speaker 2: 33:02

And when it devolves into a power struggle and we start trying to play that game of mental chess of, well, if I say this, then they're going to feel this way and they're going to do that, and so I have to do this, and then they're going to do that, and so this better happen.

Speaker 2: 33:15

And all of a sudden we're trying to think 10 moves ahead and we've overcomplicated it when, if we can just boil it down to its most simple form and say what do they need and how do I get them willing to meet that need? Now we're talking a much simpler process. It's not always easy, but it's certainly not as complicated as I think sometimes we'll make it. Now, as families get to this point where they're willing to have that conversation, they're starting to look at different treatment options. When they call a place like Milestones, if a family's done that education process that you just talked about, they've taken the time, they've educated themselves, what kinds of questions should families be asking when they call treatment centers to really make sure that this is a good fit for their loved one?

Speaker 3: 34:01

Before I answer that question I'd like to go back to what you said the feelings, the process of the feelings changing is is so important. And there's a ted talk called wasted, and this young gal comes in and her brother had been in active addiction through like 18 treatment centers, something like that maybe not quite that many, but quite a a few and she did this wonderful Ted talk and she said addiction is like you're out in the desert for 40 days and you come back from the desert and you walk into a room and your family's on the left side and there's a glass of water on the right side and all you can think of is that water and families need to understand that it feels so personal. It's not, they're physiologically just thinking about that water. And then the feelings will change as they get into treatment and they feel better physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and then you won't see as much of that anger or that frustration or that blaming like you took me away from my water right it's like there's gratitude that surfaces.

Speaker 3: 35:12

So I I really always, you know, try my best to help families understand that you need to be okay with the anger for now. We got power through this. We just got to get them the help. You wouldn't let any other illness get worse. So let's, let's, let's, get this fixed. And so when they come in, they need to ask how many groups, how many sessions, how, how many years have um the practitioners been doing this kind of work? And the biggest thing is um walk the property, meet people. Your intuition isn't going to guide you wrong, you know. Go, feel the place out. Secondly, um ask how long people stay in treatment and ask for real testimonials. Like, it's great to read something online, Um, but in this day and age, people can do whatever they want on the internet.

Speaker 2: 36:06

So many of those are AI generated. These days, yeah.

Speaker 3: 36:08

Yeah. So it's really important to say I want to talk with, I want to have if you've been in business 22 years, you know how many can I talk with someone who's my husband's demographic or my child's demographic and talk to at least half a dozen people and and get on the phone with them. And if they won't do that, then it's not the right place, because everybody should be able to have hundreds of testimonials, live testimonials, that they can send you to. That's what I would do, you know, if I was sending my child to treatment. I would say I need to talk to some people who've gone through the program you know privately. And I need to talk to some people who've gone through the program you know privately and I want to hear, because it's such a big decision.

Speaker 3: 36:54

It doesn't even mean that they're doing anything bad or you know that they're scofflaws or anything like that. It just means that you really want to see what the experience is for the person who's went through the treatment center and were they in attunement with their patients Attunement is a big word to me Are they really focused and are they really listening and are they really reading all the collateral information, because you've got years of information you're giving them and that makes a big difference in the treatment plan. It takes longer on the front end to get all. That makes a big difference in the treatment plan. It takes longer on the front end to get all that but it saves lives on the back end because you're looking at developmental issues what were they like before they got into drugs? So you can kind of start weaning out those diagnoses and those personality disordered issues, et cetera.

Speaker 2: 37:41

And when families start asking those questions one of the things that I hear pretty regularly as I'm recommending treatment programs to families you know we start talking about groups and individual sessions and so many times I hear, oh, they're never going to, they don't want to do group, they don't like group therapy, and so we need to really focus on the individual therapy. Why do you feel like groups have so much importance and have such a prominent place in the treatment process?

Speaker 3: 38:10

Groups are fabulous because the disease wants you alone and wants you to think you're terminally unique. And so when you get into a group setting, you find out that, like 99% of the time, everybody wants the same things. Everyone wants love, connection, purpose and meaning, etc. And so groups bring that out and it's it's good to hear from your peers um their experience, because sometimes if, especially if you're dealing with young adults that might be still suffering from small positional defiance and they can project the parental figure onto the therapist, it's better to hear it from people their own age. And that is one thing we do at Milestones too is we make sure that the demographic is very mixed up. So we always save at least three beds for sliding fee scales. So we have all demographics because we don't want it to be homogenous, we want it to be different, we want them to see that they can relate with anybody.

Speaker 3: 39:14

And that's the magic of being in treatment center that sometimes I wish everybody could go away for 30 days. And if you sit in the room, especially with the way of the world, now we all kind of want the same things. There's just a lot of noise on now. We all kind of want the same things. You know, there's just a lot of noise on the outside and you get into the room and that's when the magic occurs. And another thing that's kind of trending that I'm kind of concerned about is when they say customize the treatment plan, that means the clinicians customize it, not the person coming in like I want three yogas, two, two meditations, one Tai Chi, no, no no, no, no, no.

Speaker 2: 39:51

We have structure for a reason you know of experience. Yeah, you're not ordering a value meal at Burger King.

Speaker 3: 39:53

And some treatment centers are letting the clients call the shots. If they could call the shots they wouldn't be at your treatment center, you know. And so you have to be really brave to run a treatment center and just say this is the structure. We believe you need relapse prevention, we believe you need psychoeducation, we believe you need this experiential group and and make it mandatory. Like we're, we also have our clients unplug. They get, you know, a half hour in the morning, an hour at night of time to connect and Skype with their kids, which is super important. They need a little bit more. We're not militant, you know, it's all. You know common sense. But no, they're unplugged all day long, and so that's the other thing is, you know, I just that my bully pulpit is unplugged.

Speaker 3: 40:45

I, you know, I went to a spiritual retreat once and my dad was in the hospital. I was on my phone because he was in the hospital and of course I wouldn't do it any differently, but I missed the whole spiritual retreat. I didn't get hardly anything out of it. You can't do two things at once.

Speaker 2: 41:01

Do you find that people have an actual withdrawal process when they disconnect from technology?

Speaker 3: 41:07

I actually think that they would. We always believe they're going to have more, but it is so limited. Once in a while, if you have someone coming in who has a really true, serious technology addiction, you're going to see more pushback, but it's rare You're going to see more pushback, but it's rare Like it's rare. After a day or two they like feel so good. Their anxiety is down.

Speaker 2: 41:37

It makes such a difference. Well, denise, I want to thank you for for being here today and talking a little bit about yourself and about milestones. How can people find your book?

Speaker 3: 41:44

Well, it's coming out the first of the year, so we will have it on our website at wwwmilestonesranchcom. And if you ever have any questions or need any feedback about which you know you're going through and this is for the audience it's just call 818-667-9537 or 818-879-9110. We have only three people who carry the phones for 22 years. You're not going to get a call center, you're going to get a real person and we will help you. Help you, you know, until the book comes out. And thank you, matt, for all you do. I just um. I know we haven't known each other real long, but I just love your vibe and and I love your party records.

Speaker 2: 42:33

Thank you. Thank you so much. And for those families that want those phone numbers again, I will put them in the show notes. So please feel free to look at the notes. The numbers and the contact information will be there. The milestones website will be there.

Speaker 3: 42:46

The Milestones website will be there, yay.

Speaker 1: 42:52

Thanks again for listening to the Party Wreckers. If you liked what you heard, please leave us a rating and a review. This helps us get the word out to more people, to learn more or to ask us a question we can answer in a future episode. Please visit us at PartyWreckerscom and remember don't enable addiction ever. On behalf of the Party Wreckers, matt Brown and Sam Davis. Let's talk again soon.