Addiction Medicine Made Easy | Fighting back against addiction

Sobriety is a Team Sport

• Casey Grover, MD, FACEP, FASAM

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Tom Barnum, former Michigan State linebacker and NFL player, shares his remarkable journey from addiction to finding joy in sobriety through his team-based approach to recovery. 

He is the author of the book "Sobriety is a Team Sport"

We discuss:
• Addiction recovery requires admitting the problem is beyond personal control
• Tom identifies the three paths for people with addiction: sobriety, jail, or death
• AA meetings provide essential human connection that helps rewire the brain's dopamine system
• Forced sobriety through court mandates or fear tactics rarely works long-term
• Recovery groups create unique bonds between people who might otherwise never connect
• Non-alcoholic beverages can be safely incorporated into recovery for some individuals
• Even after decades of sobriety, addiction triggers can unexpectedly surface
• Tom's recovery team includes his wife of 56 years, family, physicians, and former teammates
• Social media has played a positive role in maintaining Tom's recovery connections

Find Tom's book "Sobriety is a Team Sport" on Barnes & Noble or Amazon.

To contact Dr. Grover: ammadeeasy@fastmail.com

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Addiction Medicine Made Easy Podcast. Hey there, I'm Dr Casey Grover, an addiction medicine doctor based on California's Central Coast. For 14 years I worked in the emergency department, seeing countless patients struggling with addiction. Now I'm on the other side of the fight, helping people rebuild their lives when drugs and alcohol take control. Thanks for tuning in. Let's get started.

Speaker 1:

Today. I am very pleased to be interviewing Tom Barnum. I tell my patients all the time that treating addiction is a team sport, and the reason I am interviewing Tom on the podcast is because he wrote a book called Sobriety is a Team Sport. Tom is a former Michigan State linebacker who went on to play in the NFL and we are going to talk today about how he got sober and how he has a team to help him stay sober and the role of teams in treating addiction. We will also discuss how Alcoholics Anonymous meetings help people stay sober and get sober in the first place. A few clarifications and then we'll get started.

Speaker 1:

First, tom had a question for me about treating addiction with medication. We specifically discussed the medication disulfiram, also known as Antabuse. The way the interview went, it sounded like they were different medications, so I want to clarify that they are the same medication. Antabuse is the brand name and disulfiram is the generic name. And second Tom referenced a movie called North Dallas 40. He and I discussed it before we started the recording and I hadn't heard of it. It's based on a book of the same title and exposes the wild and decadent lifestyle of professional football players. And with that here we go. And with that here we go. All right, well, I am so glad to have you on my podcast. I was just telling you, I say all the time that treating addiction is a team sport and you wrote a book about it. So why don't you tell me who you are and what you do?

Speaker 2:

Well, I am a. I'm a retired educator and a retired linebacker, so I spend my time now. I lived in Michigan for like 70 years and then three or four years ago we moved over. We live near the Twin Cities now. My daughter is a physician over here and I've got a couple of young grandsons. So my wife and I build a little house across the road from her farm and we spent all our time spoiling grandkids, traveling and hitting the golf ball.

Speaker 2:

I, as I say, was an old linebacker. I played college football at Michigan State and then I was in the NFL with two different Super Bowl teams. So my first experience was with the 72 Dolphins and then the following year was with the Vikings, who ended up playing the Dolphins the following year in the Super Bowl. But my playing career was actually limited to training camps and exhibition games and that sort of thing. So I then went into coaching and taught high school math and had a small carpenter business and I've done a lot of things.

Speaker 2:

Anyways, when I first learned about sobriety? Well, when I first learned about alcoholism let me back up a little bit 1984, I got a drunk driving ticket. In 1984, I got a drunk driving ticket and I had been a pretty lousy parent and husband for several years leading up to that. My wife gave me an ultimatum that I needed to do something about my drinking, or she and the girls were going to be leaving. So I realized that it was time to hit the door. Anyway, I went into a treatment center for 30 days and then I started going to AA for Monday night meetings in the basement of an old Greek Orthodox church, and I didn't drink, but I certainly was not sober. I was in treatment we call ourselves dry drunks and I spent about 20 years as a dry drunk. I just didn't get it. I couldn't understand why these old people were so happy in their sobriety and I didn't catch on. Ultimately, I developed another bad habit. I played blackjack and decided that I knew how to win at blackjack and wasn't smart enough to leave the table when I was up. And my addiction to gambling put me on the right path for understanding mindfulness and living in the present. And that, in combination with, I started studying Buddhism Buddhism At the time I was an old Presbyterian and the Christian thing.

Speaker 2:

I was having a hard time with some of the stories and this and that. And in AA they fight. The Christians and the non-Christians battle all the time in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings all over the country. That's been an ongoing fight for 90 years. And's still the same and we have to learn to work with that. But ultimately I learned to live in the moment. I learned some things about controlling my breath and my emotions and and things like that, and in the past several years I've I've had a pretty good life and I spent a fair amount of time helping people with their sobriety. I'm happier now than I've ever been in my entire life and it's worked for me and I try to spread the message. So that prompted the book.

Speaker 1:

So your book is called Sobriety as a Team Sport. What's the story behind the book?

Speaker 2:

Yes, Well, actually, actually, that my my pen name still Tom came before, came before the book title itself and one of the things that we learned in recovery. There's two very important things that have to be mastered right off the get go. Number one uh, an unhealthy way of dealing with desire, which leads to craving, and then the inability to handle craving, which then turns to addiction. Once an addictive behavior or pattern has developed, the person themselves has zero chance of changing that behavior. They must admit that it's out of their control and find some sort of a resource that's going to allow them to learn about addiction and to discover sobriety and to have a chance to be happy.

Speaker 2:

In group meetings we talk about people who are addicted have three paths One is to get sober, one is to go to jail and one is to die. Well, it starts out. You learn that you have to find sobriety, and then those of us who have managed to find a happy sobriety understand that being sober is better than chasing a buzz, even the minor buzz that we thought we were going after when we were younger. Being a happy, sober person to me is far better than having a little buzz. So I think that it was interesting. I've looked at some of your podcasts and understand. I understand that. Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that you assist people who are addicted by prescribing the proper chemical that helps them to wean themselves off off, and I'm fascinated by that because I think that's very important. But I don't want to argue with you. But that's minimizing discomfort but it is far from putting people on a path in the right direction. Is that something that you have thought about or dispute or have ideas about?

Speaker 1:

have thought about or dispute or have ideas about.

Speaker 1:

So essentially my specialty is addiction medicine and that second word, medicine, references what I'm good at, which is prescribing medications. That being said, in the way I look at addiction, there's three basic treatments there's medications, there's group meetings and then there's some form of therapy. And a lot of times I'm in a position where it's not the medicine that's the problem. I'll give you an example For one of my patients who's homeless, I cannot prescribe a home.

Speaker 1:

I can't address that aspect of his life. He's depressed, upset and, being homeless, he feels horrible and people around him use, and so he uses with them. So I can prescribe all the meds I want, but I can't fix the fact that he's unhoused and living with other people who use. In other words, the medicine has a time and a place, but it's not always the focus, and I make this joke all the time. If someone told me, dr Grover, when I put mayonnaise on my left ear, I'm sober, I'm going to go to Safeway and buy them some mayonnaise.

Speaker 1:

In other words, I look at it that each of us has a different path to sobriety and I want to support whoever needs what in what capacity, and I think the reason there may be some misperceptions about what I do with the medicine is sometimes it's understanding their mental health diagnoses, whether it's a life of trauma, whether it's a chemical imbalance like the bipolar disorder. But if you can imagine, if your brain is distracted by these mental health symptoms, it's really hard to do the recovery work, like if you're constantly distracted in an AA meeting because of your ADHD. I need your brain to work better so you can do the recovery work. I need you to get through step four.

Speaker 2:

That makes perfect sense to me and that's one of the reasons that I wanted to talk to you today. Aa is 90 years old, okay, so there's a lot of things that, in my opinion, have run their course. And so if somebody tells me that all I have to do is turn my life over to a higher power and come to these meetings and sit and listen and I stay sober, I say congratulations and good for you, and the same way that you're looking at if I put mayonnaise on my ear and I no longer have the desire to drink, good for me. That makes perfect sense and it's far better than to feel as though we have to be right.

Speaker 2:

That's another problem, in my opinion, is there's so many similarities in alcoholic personalities. There's usually a deep-rooted inferiority complex. There's anger that pops up and is always close to the surface. There's so many things. There's having to be right. You know we expect to win every single argument. There's a reason that about twice the number of military families experience alcoholism because when you, when you realize number one, that you have to surrender the military, people don't want to surrender. People who are macho don't want to surrender, but they have to learn that it takes courage to surrender. That doesn't fit. That doesn't fit, that doesn't fit our thinking, and it's a very critical element of having an opportunity to follow a path that leads to sobriety and happy, peaceful, mindful living. I was curious. I had another question for you. If you don't mind, I can remember when I first got sober, the only drug that was given to alcoholics was called Anabuse. Do they still have that? Is that still a thing or not?

Speaker 1:

and it makes people sick violently sick, if they drink, and the studies have largely shown that it doesn't work, because if people want to drink, they know they can not take it and then they can, they can just drink. I have a very, very small number of patients that take it and it's really when coming back to your book title, they have a team around them. Back to your book title, they have a team around them, meaning that it's around accountability and someone to really support them. So one of my patients is on it. He's on the last legs with his family of it's get sober or you're going to live somewhere else.

Speaker 1:

And every morning the whole family gathers, they all support him and he takes his disulfiram or antibus and then they know that he's really not able to drink for that day and then they come back together again and they support him in taking it. And that's really the only circumstance that we use disulfiram or antibus is when there is a lot of family support, just because otherwise people won't take it. And I think for me the desire to drink is complicated and the fear of consequences is not enough to deter people. So it's really a combination for disulfiram of the carrot and the stick. Right the stick is you'll get sick, but the carrot is that your family supports you, and I say all the time that treating addiction is a team sport and so with that particular medication I will really only offer it if someone has a lot of family support.

Speaker 2:

That makes perfect sense. I can understand that completely. You get a drunk driving or two and the judge takes your driver's license away and then decides that you are going to be on a tether, or you have to blow in something to start your car, or, in some extreme cases, you flat out have to prove your sobriety on a daily basis or twice a day basis, and it never, ever, ever works. You can't scare people into stopping their behavior. You are correct. I feel sorry for judges. Really, that's all they got. They can tell people they have to go to meetings and sign in and bring the thing back to their caseworker and that sort of thing, but the fact of the matter is forced sobriety does not work. We have to have as you say and as I say, you have to have a team. And one of the things that I find in group is, if you find a group that you're comfortable with, it's incredible the dynamics, the dynamics in sobriety groups. You discuss things, you become closer with people in sobriety groups than family members or friends or neighbors. It's a very bizarre dynamic where people who normally wouldn't have anything to do with each other are drawn together around this table. There is one alcoholic group. That refers to their higher power as a group of drunks, and the people that they sit around the table with is their group of drunks and their higher power. There's an element of people that get sober, and with people like that, oftentimes the pre-meeting and the post-meeting will have more of an effect on the person than the meeting itself. I find that a good meeting is going to have an equal portion of laughing and crying both, and the emotions are honest.

Speaker 2:

The other thing that I think maybe has run its course with Alcoholics Anonymous is the word anonymous was put in back at the beginning, as though there's a stigma. Somehow you need to feel embarrassed that you are addicted. There's a feeling that you have to be embarrassed. I understand that sometimes people's jobs are on the line in terms of get sober and lose your job, and so you know that portion becomes very important. But the fact that anonymity is kind of forced on people who attend Alcoholics Anonymous I fight that all the time. That's where the pen name for this book came still top.

Speaker 2:

When I go to an alcoholic's meeting, the typical way that you would introduce yourself is Hi, my name is Tom, I'm an alcoholic, or Hi, my name is Tom and I'm an addict For years. When I go to a meeting, I introduce myself as I'm still Tom. I'm going to be an alcoholic when I die and I've had years of sobriety. I count my sober life as beginning when I stopped playing blackjack and that was in 2005. So I am coming up here on 20 years of sobriety, even though I've got more time than that since I had a drink.

Speaker 2:

It's too bad that you are not familiar with North Dallas 40, because that had to do with NFL players and steroids. We used to have a saying in the NFL the bigger they are, the bigger the pill, and team physicians inscribed speed Team physicians would give you downers because after you got too hopped up on the speed and a good team doctor was every bit as much a chemist as he was a physician. So that part of it going along with the partying type of a lifestyle and that sort of thing just caused a very large number of people to be off the hook.

Speaker 1:

I have learned quite a bit about addiction in professional athletes. It's, unfortunately, a lot more common than I was aware of. I met a former NFL player who spoke at an event we did locally and he got sober with AA and he talked about drinking during halftime and blackout periods of drinking the night before and waking up still intoxicated and go into the game, and I found some interesting podcasts on addiction at that level. There are a few NFL players that are open about their sobriety from alcohol and then prescription opioids. Obviously there are some bad cases of just give them more opioids you got to keep playing, leading to some pretty bad consequences. So it's interesting We've talked now about when you have a good team like AA supporting you, you can get sober, and when you've got a not so good team, with people who are using around you, it's hard to stay sober.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Exactly and even with the idea of prescription medicine coming from physicians. I've heard a joke before that has to do with prescribed medicine where they said if they came up with a chemical that could cure alcoholics from drinking by only taking one a day, alcoholics are going to take two. That's just the way that it is. If one is good, two is better. Simple as that. We don't know what one is. It's like me trying to eat one cookie.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about the science behind why AA meetings can work and why having a good team is so helpful. So the chemical that makes us feel good is called dopamine. It's the chemical that we've learned over thousands of years helps us to do things that are associated with survival for the long term. Right, so the short term, our first response is to ensure that we're safe. If our fight or flight response looks around and there's no danger, we take a deep breath and then our brain motivates us to do things that are associated with long-term survival, namely food, sex and human connection. Right, we needed a village to protect us.

Speaker 2:

Exactly.

Speaker 1:

And the idea is is that when we develop an addiction, it's through that dopamine system breaking. People consume alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, whatever, and the dopamine goes off the charts beyond normal levels and eventually people forget what good human connection feels like because they've broken their dopamine system through gambling, pornography, alcohol, whatever. And part of an AA meeting is you go and there's good human connection that's dopamine. You feel accepted, that's dopamine. And then it's like you said, it's more than the meeting. It's catching up with people before the meeting that's dopamine. The meeting itself getting your chips oh my gosh, I'm 30 days sober and people clap that's dopamine. And then the socializing afterwards as well, and then being told we want you to come back, downplay any of the great work that AA does. But when I look at AA as a doctor, I think about the chemical behind it, which is essentially it teaches people how to enjoy human connection again and it helps to retrain their dopamine system to work better.

Speaker 2:

That makes very good sense. I would tell you that I have a personal experience with years ago. Years ago, when non-alcoholic beer first came out, the prevalent attitude was wait and see. But this is scary. It's too much like the behavior that we had that we enjoyed, and if we begin drinking non-alcoholic beer we perhaps are going to enjoy it too much and it's going to cause a slip.

Speaker 2:

So there was two rules in early sobriety. Number one is that you don't consume non-alcoholic beer and you don't begin a romantic relationship too early into your into your sobriety. Well, that that has kind of played itself out and I, I, I started drinking non-alcoholic beer back when it was horrible, the old O'Doul's and Sharps, and it was just God awful stuff. Well, as the as the better IPAs and better beers have come out, we now have a pretty good tasting non-alcoholic beer and I do drink non-alcoholic beer and I don't have a problem with it. I can drink one or two and I've done it that way, and I've done it that way for years. And sometimes if I go out I just drink water. Way, and I've done it that way for years. And sometimes if I go out I just drink water. And so I stand at the position where it is okay as long as it doesn't create a problem. You know, we've had too many times when we change geography and we change what we drink and we change when we drink and things like that, and that always leads you to going off the rails. So, fortunately for me and for a few people that I know, the non-alcoholic beverages have worked. Now I have an exception to that that I am involved with and that's the CBD stuff. My wife and my daughters drink the CBD beverages. Some don't have THC, some do have THC, and the amount of THC varies greatly in these drinks. I'm scared to try them. I understand that I drank for years because I was trying to capture a feeling, and the last thing I want to risk is trying to capture a feeling by drinking a CBD beverage, and so I'm too scared to try it and I'm not going to. It's as simple as that. I'll stop and buy it for my wife and daughters, but I'm not going to drink it With THC. Without THC, it doesn't matter a bit.

Speaker 2:

I would also share a story from my personal experience that happened just a month or so ago. I had an old molar that had a root canal in it and the root canal was kind of old and the tooth went bad and I had to have the tooth taken out. Well, I can remember in my younger years I wouldn't even think of having my teeth cleaned without having laughing gas. Oh, I just, I loved laughing gas.

Speaker 2:

Okay, now, prior to, you know, getting getting my jaw drilled with the, drilled with the Novocaine. I knew that I was going to be getting laughing gas and the memories started coming back to the point that I can remember sitting in the chair waiting for the girl to put the mask on my face. She's at her computer and I start to get impatient. What the hell you got to do all that stuff? Get that mask on my face. Now I'm talking as someone with decades of sobriety and that feeling hit me just a month or so ago. So I'm still an alcoholic, I'm still addicted, I'm smarter than I was, but we're never cured. We're only on the right path, but it's easy to fall off a path and we just have to be aware.

Speaker 1:

Well, I was going to say, unfortunately we have to wrap up, but I am really excited to read your book and I will probably start handing it out to my patients because I keep telling them getting sober is a team sport. Let's wrap up with telling us who's on your team right now.

Speaker 2:

My team is my wife, who has stayed with me for 56 years, and my family who does the same. I have a couple of physicians who direct people in the path of attempting to find sobriety. I've got old teammates from Michigan State that I stay in regular contact with. Facebook is perfect. Social media is bad for politics because I get sucked into that, but there are good things, and Facebook and Instagram and things like that are very good about sharing. So my Facebook friends are on my team. There's a lot of people from Hazleton live here in this area, yep, and so I've got I've got a strong team with them and and I'm starting to do the do the podcast things on a on a more regular basis. Again, the book it's sobriety as a team sport, and there's a couple of stores that got it, but mostly the easiest way is Barnes and Noble or Amazon.

Speaker 1:

So it's worth the read Well said Before we wrap up, a huge thank you to the Montage Health Foundation for backing my mission to create fun, engaging education on addiction, and a shout out to the nonprofit Central Coast Overdose Prevention for teaming up with me on this podcast. Our partnership helps me get the word out about how to treat addiction and prevent overdoses To those healthcare providers out there treating patients with addiction. You're doing life-saving work and thank you for what you do For everyone else tuning in. Thank you for taking the time to learn about addiction. It's a fight we cannot win without awareness and action. There's still so much we can do to improve how addiction is treated. Together we can make it happen. Thanks for listening and remember treating addiction saves lives.

Speaker 2:

Bye.