I Get By (And Sober) With A Little Help From My Peers

Peer support can feel like the missing link in addiction care, not because it replaces medicine, but because it makes recovery feel possible when someone is scared, ashamed, or shutting down. I’m Dr Casey Grover, and I sit down with Mark Ehrenkranz, a certified peer recovery specialist who does bedside work across a thousand-bed hospital, from the ED and ICU to behavioral health. Mark brings decades of recovery experience, plus the clarity that comes from having lived through relapse, depression, and the brutal way substance use disorder can hijack decision-making.

We get practical about what peer recovery specialists actually do: building trust quickly, sharing just enough personal story to invite radical honesty, translating brain science into plain language, and helping patients move from crisis to a realistic next step. We also talk about the real-world barriers, including stigma in medical settings, limited funding for peer teams, and how different states handle certification and reimbursement. If you’ve ever searched for recovery coaching, peer recovery support services, sober support, or how to get help for addiction, this conversation maps the terrain with honesty and hope.

We also go straight at the “one path” problem. AA helps many people, but it can feel dogmatic to others, so we discuss multiple pathways like SMART Recovery, CBT/DBT, secular and Buddhist recovery, online communities, and medication for opioid use disorder support spaces. Mark shares his “Navy SEAL Recovery” approach to nervous system regulation: one-minute diaphragmatic breathing, humming to stimulate the vagus nerve, and small doses of intentional discomfort to build resilience. If you care about compassionate, evidence-informed addiction treatment that respects individual fit, you’ll leave with tools you can use today.

Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

To learn more about Mark's work: https://www.go-humans.com/

To contact Dr. Grover: ammadeeasy@fastmail.com

Transcript

Why Peer Support Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hi, I'm Dr. Casey Grover. I spent years practicing emergency medicine before shifting my focus to addiction medicine. This podcast grew out of caring for patients, hearing their stories, and wanting to do better. Here we talk about recovery, medicine, and compassion. This is Addiction Medicine Made Easy. This is an episode on peer support and how those with lived experience with addiction can help other people get and stay sober. In this episode, I speak with Mark Ehrencranz, who is a peer recovery specialist based on the East Coast of the US. And as you will hear, he is very passionate about his work. Mark has a website that you can visit to learn more about the movement he's trying to create to share the word that peer support is awesome. His website is www.god-humans.com, and I'll put a link in the show notes. And as you will also hear in this podcast episode, I have peer support specialists as a part of my addiction medicine practice here in California, and I agree with Mark, they are awesome. They do incredible work. Now, if you are wondering what peer support is, let's quickly define it. A peer support worker, they could also be called a peer support specialist or a peer recovery specialist, is someone with the lived experience of recovery from a mental health condition, a substance use disorder, or both. They provide support to others experiencing similar challenges. They provide non-clinical strengths-based support and are credentialed by their experience, by their own recovery journey. In the world of addiction, you can think of them as providing general support to people trying to get and stay sober, and they use their lived experience with addiction to make that support effective. As in, I know how you feel, I remember when I was going through that. And as peer support is becoming more common, there are now courses and certifications for people who want to do it as a profession to help others. Now, we did have a few glitches in the audio, almost all of which I was able to fix, but if something sounds a little funky, sorry about that. Okay, let's get started talking about the great work that peer recovery specialists do.

Mark’s Story Into Addiction

SPEAKER_00 2:41

All right, good morning. Why did we just start by you telling us who you are and what you do?

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Yeah, I'm Mark Aaron Crance. I'm a certified peer recovery specialist. I was in the movie business for 40 plus years, in recovery for 40 years, and I decided to retire after making a documentary called Addiction Warriors, and went back to school, got certification, and now I'm working at a thousand-bed hospital. I'm the only peer recovery specialist there. And I go bedside to all floors, the ED, ICUs. I work with the Department of Psychiatry with some great folks who are addiction psychiatrists and doing good work. How did you decide to become a peer recovery specialist? Yeah, we know from the AA sponsorship model that one person with lived experience helping another is very powerful. And they actually say it's unparalleled. So a little background for myself growing up, nice uh Jewish suburban kid. And whenever I got a cold or I had a stomach ache or a sore throat or a headache, all of the over-the-counters came out on the kitchen counter. So if I had a stomach ache, albeit maybe from nerves or a test the next day, my parents would say, Here, peptobism, I had a headache. Here's some aspirin, whatever it was, a little bit of sniffles, chorusetin, or all of these things. So I began to associate any dysregulation or any feelings with taking something to change those feelings. And it didn't really do me a good service in that as a parent, now we know feel your feelings, don't say no reason to be afraid, or you have no reason to be anxious. You know, that yeah, that's okay. Be anxious, be fearful, develop coping skills. So flash forward, you know, there was a PDR around the house. So I began reading it. That's a physician's desk reference. It had all the medications available at that time. I began looking through it, and I noticed in my dad's medicine cabinet, he had all sorts of things Librium Valium. So I read about it, I took some Valium, I had arrived. Now, as a peer recovery specialist, I say, What why did you decide to drink or take those drugs in the first place? What did it achieve for you? And they would say it made me relaxed. It took care of my ADHD, whatever it is. So that was the solution for me at the time. And as we know, it comes in, it does its job, it goes out, and one needs more and more to achieve the same effect. So I became addicted to benzos at like age 11 on. I would steal it from my grandmother. She had the big bottle of the yellow five milligrammers, and that was my thing. And of course, it was the 70s. So smoked weed, dabbled in cocaine, quaaludes, quaaluds also did the same thing. I don't know why those were invented. It made no sense to me. It was the greatest party drug of all time, made people horny and very relaxed. And I guess they they wanted to replace some of the barbs that were around at the time, and they made this hypnotic. So that also, so I began taking a lot of quaaludes, and I actually I preferred the after-effect the next day because I was very relaxed. And this went on for like, I don't know, 11 years until I was working in Hollywood. I thought it would be a good idea to invite my drug dealer to live with me. It was too inconvenient to go to Brentwood, and I would have these what I call balushi weekends. And it was wild. And then it just, I then I hit the wall. I moved back east and I dabbled a little bit again, and I try to stop on my own. And we know, okay, it cleaned out. I was good. I had this. I'll try an IPA. I love Sierra Nevadas on a Friday night. Fine for a couple weeks. Two Sierra Nevadas, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And then it just always went back to where it was. And AA we call it doing research. So I had done my research and I realized I had now no on-off switch. And it was like a peanut allergy, or I couldn't eat the peanut. It's like a bag of potato chips. I couldn't eat just one. I don't know many people that can. So I had a lot of experience, and I made this documentary addiction warriors,

Relapse Triggers And Prescription Risk

SPEAKER_01 7:13

and actually 22 years in of clean time practicing very strong recovery. I injured my neck. So at that time, they gave me traumatol, which was a non-scheduled, non-opioid pain reliever at the time. I checked with everybody. I was the poster child for recovery. It took me out. I took it. Everybody's different. I got high. This was now a license to use. I had a prescription. I'm using it for pain. And it was great. Made me social and I wanted to talk a lot and go out. And that got the best of me. And then it wasn't working. It worked until it stopped working. And then I began to seek opioids and alcohol and all sorts of things for three years of slipping and sliding, conning psychiatrists out of it, immediate care psychiatry. And then I cleaned up for a good five, six years, practicing good recovery again. And I was actually making this documentary in Adi Jaffe, Dr. Adi Jaffe, who made the who wrote the book, The Abstinence Myth.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

I I know Adie. I used to teach him tennis. Wow. UCLA. UCLA. That was my kind of my side job was teaching tennis, and he was one of my students. Yeah, I just connected with him and read his book. Anyway, sorry.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Yeah, no. Please interject anytime because I can fire hose. Yeah. So he said, Mark, I had a problem. I'm not gonna enjoy a little alcohol, a little weed. And it's all I had to hear that. So I was up in San Francisco shooting the uh DA. I went into a dispensary. I said, I want CBD only. I went back to my room. It had traces of THC, the cannabinoid sensors with a sponge. I got so high. It was a great time. I ate a lot, the usual stuff. That was five years of slipping and sliding, smoking cannabis from the dispensary, having it brought in from California before it was made legal with a medical card, which is bogus. Anyone can get that. Oh, I have a marijuana medical card. You and everybody else. Um and basically that cannabis, and you taught me that it, or one of your guests, it blocked the CB1, CB2, ABC channel where my serotonin reuptake inhibitor, the cymbolta that I'd been on, the well butra that I'd been on, couldn't get through and wasn't working. So I got hugely depressed. I was crying all the time, wake up in the morning crying, have to smoke weed. I alienated my wife, almost blew that relationship. Next thing I knew, she was concerned. And uh police were here. My ambulance came, took me to the hospital. I work in now, and I ended up in the behavioral floor with suicidal ideation. And so I have all of that experience of mental health, substance, and poodles of other stuff. So that's why I got it to see the RS.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

So, how did you actually get to become a peer recovery specialist?

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Yeah, as I was recovering from the cannabis, I was going to meetings and I and because I was in such a state, I was like, I asked everybody, do they exercise? Because I needed to motivate myself because I was an athlete and I exercised. I couldn't do it. And what do you do for a living, especially the retired guys? One guy told me he was a peer recovery specialist. Oh, what's that? I'm like, that's for me. So I took the certification through the New Jersey board, and uh I worked, I had to do an internship in New Jersey. It's 500 hours at a peer recovery center or something in the field. And I did a lot of advocacy and a lot of different things beyond just participant peer recovery. And then actually, I was recruited by this hospital. I was very full of myself, and that's been great because I've learned the medicine and all about MAT and really honed my chops listening to your guests and Jason Lyle and Georgia Foster and all of these people, because I'm a big fan of your show, and I love how you're curating all of the modern addiction warriors doing new things. And I really see you as a giant in doing that. And of course, Steve Delisi and Andrew Rizzo, these guys are just giants to me and mentors. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

What does your day look like as a peer recovery specialist?

Becoming A Certified Peer Specialist

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Yeah, I worked full-time for a while. I'm 66. Just that as an aside, I got when I applied for the life insurance, my blood test came back a little awry, and I had multiple myeloma. So now I only work three days a week. But while I was undergoing treatment for that, I gained more experience, another opportunity for another awakening, and to become more comfortable with discomfort, having developed all of these skills. So that adds to my my experience. And I got to write two books. So that's that was great. So I only work three days a week now, and I I will run a group on the behavioral floor, an all-recovery meeting, and that's mostly mental health. And I'm getting certified soon and getting all the necessary things. I'm fed patients who've been admitted for SUDAUD or have had a history of it, and then I research them and I go to see them on the floors and basically try to bring some light uh to a uh a potential dark situation. I open the shades. So that's the first thing I try to bring some light. I get vulnerable with them. I tell them about myself, I tell them my brain was hijacked, I lied, I manipulated, I conned. That was part of the malady. So I get it. And it's it became a habit. Like I didn't even know I was doing it because I want them to become radically honest with me. I'm only as sick as my secret. So I do about eight patients. I go to all the floors, I go to the ED, I go to ICU, then I come back and I have to chart. And we round in the office, that's our meeting, and uh with uh a tremendous addiction psychiatrist and my team of APNs, an ECT doctor, and uh talk about the patients and try to help them with MAT and refer them to treatment, peer recovery center, whatever it is, all the levels and pathways.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

How would you describe your role to someone who knows nothing about this? As an educator, as a motivator?

SPEAKER_01 13:54

I think all of that. I don't know if uh I was speaking with you, but you know, the peer recovery certification is ample. I would like to have a 2.0 and introduce what I've learned and bagel toning and microbiome and all of these very, very helpful things to regulate and rewire. So yeah, I do my thing and I actually educate some of the doctors on vagal toning, and I find that most of the doctors and the medical staff throughout the hospital have no idea what peer recovery is. There's lots of stigma, as you've always stated, par for the course. So when I see a participant, I do all of that. I try not to fire hose them. But I but I this is what I give them. And I think Jason Lyle and you have articulated perfectly that, you know, that fight, flight, or freeze, amygdala, the reward system, the comfort system, it's driving the bus because that prefrontal cortex, that executive decision has gotten foggy. It almost disconnects from the back of the brain. And they were like, oh, I never heard it explained that way. And then I think Jason Lyle, he's he said, hold your breath. And then the little guy back here can say, You need to breathe. And then there's gonna be more messaging. Fear is overreactive. So you're gonna pass out, you're gonna die. All of this messaging and allow the executive decision to say a little while longer, I'm driving the bus. So they, oh, I get it. So and I say, and that takes time, and it takes deconditioning, conditioning, and rewiring. Um, but the the most important thing is time. And even though we believe in harm reduction, moderation management, the benchmarks are AA says 90 days, 90 meetings in 90 days. We know two years is a good benchmark in AA actually, and it's along with a lot of science. AA was my basis. There was so much wisdom and science to it. The great pause and becoming more efficient, and all of those things. They actually believe at five years, you should get your marbles back. And some people actually give you marbles. And NA does that too, because now we know it's science. So I say it needs time. I don't overwhelm them. I just say, I ask them what time it is, Doc. And they go, Oh, Mark, it's seven

Hospital Peer Work In Real Life

SPEAKER_01 16:27

o'clock. I go, uh-uh. It and Eckertolate taught me this. I say, it's now, it's just now, it's now o'clock, it's now time. And I explain what that is. And so I always ask people after the meeting, and people eat on the floors. I say, Hey, what time is it? And they go, It's now, mystery or Markey. And like that to me is the key to comfort being present and practicing good recovery.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

How long do you tend to follow patients for? Is it just while they're in the hospital? Do you do any aftercare?

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Yes, while they're in the hospital, like I've heard you say, or Steve Delisi, it's kind of like diabetes. We their sugar is whacked, they're not taking their insulin or they're drinking, and we get their numbers a little better so there's not crisis, but not all the way better. And we give them the tools, the insulin, the uh test strips, and a good diet. That's like recovery, and we send them on their way. And it's the same thing with substance or alcohol use. We try to stabilize them, get them on a good track, refer them to treatment or other things, and we could talk about that, repeating the same things over and expecting different results. And now I send them other places, and Delancey Street is one. There's a place in Italy, San Pelagano, which you may have talked about on your show. Wonderful community, no AA, just two to three years of community. Everyone trying to be abstinent. And then I send them on their way. Now, when I had the bandwidth, I would phone them and hey, how you doing? I would, I would, but I I'm the only one who desperately need more money, even at a hospital that's so rich, to have somebody else, a navigator, God forbid. I work with social workers, I give them the resources because my resources are curated. It's not from Google. I have a relationship with these people, and then we send them on their way, and I say, call me, and they say I will. And I say, you know what? Nobody ever does. And they say, I'll prove you wrong, Mark. Okay, prove me wrong. Well, nobody ever does. But that's pretty much it. And I guess some people do, who I've established a strong relationship with now with Optum and some of the other insurance companies, accepting peer recovery as a bona fide behavioral list. I'll work in conjunction so that there's proper credentialing with a family C ADC, LCADC, and I hope to begin because you really they want you to work within an agency for insurance and other things, but I'll keep copious records and all that. And my mission through Go Dash Humans is to teach this to doctors, DOs, PhDs, mental health professionals, as per your suggestion, social workers, what this is, and refer them to all the peer recovery centers throughout the country. And they can refer their patients to them, and they could actually hire, God forbid, hire one or two of them for their hospital or their private practice. So that's what I'm looking toward for continued care. And to me, there's no success, there's no goal. Success to me, I learned from Eckhard. One I can never become successful. I can only be successful in the moment. So to me, it's practicing recovery the next day and the next day. And and that's it. That's it.

Getting Hired And Reimbursed

SPEAKER_00 20:01

So let's imagine someone listening right now is five years sober, wants to get into the work that you're doing. How do these sorts of peer support jobs get paid for? How do they get reimbursed? How do you get hired? What's it like?

SPEAKER_01 20:14

Each state is different. In New Jersey, there's a free peer recovery center in every county. New Jersey has good AUD and SUD support, as does New Hampshire, West Virginia. So you can contact your peer recovery center. I I re I recommend you do that to ask them. Because hope to me is not a wish or a prayer. It's hearing other people's experience. So if you want that job, talk to the people who already have it. And how did you get it? What did you do? What's the state? Blah, blah, blah. How does it pay? All that kind of stuff. And CARS, C-A-R-S, is the national organization. You can also on my site find in the resources, all of them listed, plus a glossary demystifying all these terms, anadonia, and all of this stuff. And the resources, national resources, which are tremendous. But nobody knows about them. You know, where to get their test strips, dance safe, and all of these things. And having been a producer in the movie business, I really pride myself in the research, the homework. I love to learn. I have a joy of learning. That's so important with recovery to return to those joy, joys, and simple aws and um, you know, of life and joy of life. So there's a lot of that there. And so I would say call your local peer recovery center. Actually, sign up. So they give you the coaching. A lot of them do TRS, telephone recovery support, or some have the bandwidth to set up as a dedicated coach that will call you one to three times a week. Same person, and it's like a it's a free. Professional sponsor, a free therapist. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

So between the medical practice that I work at and the nonprofit I help run, we have 10 peer recovery specialists that we hire.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

Unbelievable. Yeah, unbelievable.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

So we're big believers. So I've shared kind of our practices, core goals, and values. And one of them is the value of peer recovery specialist and lived experience being shared. So I am 100% on board with this. And what's cool here in California is if you've, let's say, had a real bad addiction, ended up incarcerated, you're trying to rebuild, going back to school and getting an associate's to get your certified alcohol and drug counselor, that's a lot of time and money. Here in California, many of the peer recovery specialist courses are 80 hours because your recovery is your education. And so it's a fairly low barrier to get into the recovery space. And you and I both know helping other people get and stay sober helps a person with addiction stay sober. The work in and itself helps support someone's recovery. So, yes, I am a jihuid believer in beer recovery specialists, which is why we're here.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Amen. Amen, brother. And I really see you as 2026 addiction warrior. I was asked to continue the documentary, and we've spoken about participation and looking at the US model and spreading awareness and reducing stigma. And I think it's about time that we have another documentary after the painkillers and all that opioid stuff to say, here are new solutions. There's a treatment center for everybody, whatever you want, abstinence, 12-step, AA, spiritual, and other things. And even the Delancey Street model, they have like seven locations throughout the U.S., start in San Francisco, in your neck of the woods by Dr. Mimi, and she does all the seven locations. That's great for unhoused people. And it brings them in and it teaches them skills and vocational things. It's very practical. And it's a two-year program. So hence the reconnection of the front and the back of the brain.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

So Mike, let's move on to some tougher questions. I think you and I are both

Many Pathways Beyond AA

SPEAKER_00 24:24

on the same page that lived experience and peer recovery specialists are amazing. Now, one of the criticisms my patients give me about AA is it's very dogmatic. And people will say, I got sober this way. This is how you have to do it. And here's what I tell my patients. Let's say one of my patients is struggling and they come to me and they say, Dr. Grover, you won't believe this, but if I when I put mayonnaise on my left ear, I'm sober and I don't have any cravings. I would tell them to put mayonnaise on their left ear because it works.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

I quote that all the time.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

There we go. So how do you avoid your own lived experience biasing what you recommend to people, knowing that you know your journey, but you may not know theirs?

SPEAKER_01 25:09

Yeah. So look, I'm Jewish. What a surprise. When I went to rehab, it was AA, it was Christian based. So we said the our father at the end. And I how much more alienated could anyone get? But I was taught that there's a victory in doing something that you're not comfortable with because this is all about becoming more comfortable with this comfort. So I was able to interpret it and enjoy the wisdom that's inherent, and the spirituality is basically Bill Wilson's definition was the willingness to change. That's it. However, someone will go to a meeting, there's a lot of old guys sitting around, and my day was smoking cigarettes and coffee. It was alienating and get very turned off. So I know that. So I say to them, there's many pathways. You could go to a peer recovery center and just have a peer call you. That's a good level. Under MAT first, uh inpatient, outpatient, peer recovery. Then the various pathways are smart recovery. No God, nothing spirituality. CDT, DBT, it's cognitive behavioral therapy, identifying behaviors, changing those behaviors. Very pragmatic. The essence is in the action. Act as if we say, uh, fake it till you make it. You can't think yourself into right action. You can only act yourself into right thinking. So your three-pronged approach with MAT one-on-one and community, because we know we need a tribe. We were hunter-gatherers. That's that we're coded for survival. That's part of the issue. And so important to have a group and feel part of something and know you're not alone. We need oxytocin, right? The warm and fuzzy, that's one of the feel-goods, dopamine, serotonin, noreepinephrine, yeah, endorphins. Oxytocin is a great one. Six second hug. So that to me, I believe that too. And I stole that from you, or it's an homage to you. And I go, you can go on anonymously online. Just check it out. Get out of your comfort zone. So that there's Buddhist recovery. Like I dig that. I'm a student of Eckhart Tole. Buddha, to demystify the whole thing, meant awake in Sanskrit. And he taught suffering and the end of suffering. That's Huddism. Everything else is lexicon, um, impermanence and equanimity. And just like all practices of spirituality, we're all going to the same place. Love and breath, I believe. It's just how we get there. It's different language, it's different customs, but it's basically the same thing. And so, you know, that's that's how I look at things, and my brand of Navy SEAL recovery, it's not what you think, is part of it. But I'm digressing.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

I want to reflect back to you that you're open-minded, which is great. That's the goal.

SPEAKER_01 28:24

Totally. Yeah. And just to add, there's secular recovery, there's women in recovery, there are there's just people that are doing medically. There's a new word you guys use, M O U D or something, not just M-A-T. Let the folks know what that is. But there's whole meetings online for people who are doing that. Because some say, ah, you're not absent, you're not sober. It's not true. You're in recovery. So there's others like you. M-A-R-A is another meeting. There's marijuanaanonymous.org and all the behaviorals, of course, sex, gambling, and everything else. But there are so many pathways, and you and I and other health professionals have procured, have curated what we feel credible, and that's vetted. I obviously the most meetings are AA and NA. God knows it's been around since June 10th, 1935. A lot of this stuff is new. So there are like smart. There are some. A lot of times, peer recovery centers have them. People can get training to be a smart facilitator. It's not that hard. That could be a form of recovery for someone out there. Or you can go online. Whatever it is, because we say stay connected, be protected. Because once you disconnect on your pathway, the weeds grow back. Just like on a path through a meadow, the weeds grow back. And then you disconnect again, return of symptoms. We don't call it relapse. We don't call it slip. I like to call it return of symptoms. And it'll just continue to disconnect unless you've connected it again, you have no chance. And that lets people know it's not them. The brain got hijacked. Your brain got hijacked, and it's a malady. We know how that works. So there's so many pathways. And just ask a peer recovery specialist. Yeah.

Training Standards And Peer Support 2.0

SPEAKER_00 30:26

So another more difficult question, Mark, you're obviously very informed and savvy about this. Do you think the 80 hours it takes to become a peer recovery specialist is enough?

SPEAKER_01 30:37

I don't know. You may know better than me that it's not so onerous. Now, William White and the folks that started CCAR in Connecticut, which I guess was the inception of this type of many pathways course of peer-to-peer. I don't know when it started, early 2000, something, 2004, maybe it came into existence. Yeah, there are many different ways now. And I think that training was less onerous because of the opioid crisis. So we needed more boots on the ground. I don't know. This is just me. I don't know if to be true. But so the 80 hours was good enough to get people out there to be skilled sponsors, participants, peers. So I think that was good. However, I mean we know that what is it, N-A-A-D-C. They offer all sorts of training, and you have to get CEs, CEUs. So do that training. Take it seriously. Don't just hit the video and walk out of the room so it ends. So you say you watched it. Like edify yourself and you'll be a better peer recovery specialist. So, no question. And I'd love to, with your help or whomever, create a CE course that's peer recovery 2.0, you know, to elevate it to being savvy about brain chemicals, disconnection, medically assisted treatment, like really learn about buprenorphine and supplicate and all, like you said, there's only four substances right now that we use to treat, right? Bupe, methadone, vivitrol, or others that are antagonists. And I don't know if the fourth use antibuse or camperl, but there's five. Okay. So what did I miss?

SPEAKER_00 32:30

It was buprenorphine, methadone, naltrexone, antibuse, and campro, the five addiction medications.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

Got it. Yeah. And then I guess Felisi said it's like where cancer was 20 years ago, it was just cancer. It was chemotherapy, radiation. That's all there was. And God forbid it was a death sentence. Like nobody would even say the word. But they've broken it down now. There are many different maladies, and you don't have to die from it. I had multiple myeloma. It's very treatable. And I think AI will expedite that learning curve. God willing, there'll be some cures for some of these more treatable cancers, and people don't have to die from it. It's just like a substance use disorder. There's no cure. It's not going to go away, but it's treatable. However, you need to pay attention and be in recovery from it with various things that I like to teach the vagal toning and the microbiome and that kind of stuff. So yeah, I think there's a lot of room for more training and you know, lots of new things that generally key recovery specialists don't know about unless they're superstars and really want to learn. And there are side of us, they get the mental health, they do everything. And however, the the the industry doesn't pay great. I hate to tell you to discourage anybody out there. That's why I do it, not for the money, but to help others. And it's part of my recovery. I keep what I have by giving it away. William White actually said peer recovery, it works both ways. And I wrote a book called Radically Honest: 10 Peer Recovery Stories, shamelessly promoting myself, which has those accounts. And how, after each chapter, it's how it affects me. Because there was an ad in the New York Post, and then everybody around the country knew about it. They're like, how do we do this? And it was only a couple of meetings, Cleveland, Akron, New York, and then they had to write a book. So this book went out to teach people.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

So I don't know that there's a right answer on what the right number of hours of training is for a peer recovery specialist. But I think what I see is that a person's state in their recovery is a big part of their ability to take what they learn and the program and apply it. So if someone's two weeks sober, they're not ready to start a peer recovery specialist course yet. Or somebody who might be two years into their recovery but hasn't addressed their profound PTSD from childhood abuse might not be ready yet. But what I've seen with the peer recovery specialists we work with in my practice is we've had some who came in and they were doing the work and they were sponsoring people in AA and they'd done the work themselves. The course was more of a formality. Others who'd come to recovery from different pathways realized in the training they had to do more work on themselves. So I don't know that there's a right answer. I just was maybe being a little provocative and asking that question. But I believe that there's value in peer recovery for so many things. My advice, as you've probably heard me say on the podcast, was an eating disorder. And being able to relate to someone that I know exactly how you feel when you're trying to fight urges for donuts at 2 a.m. I've been there. And I think that's where peer recovery really shines, is it's so much harder to judge someone when you've lived through it themselves and they feel that. And that I think is part of the magic of peer recovery.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

No question. And I've learned from Eckert that there are certain skills that humans can learn to be a better human being, hence mico-humans. Um and others have not had the opportunity, or they just haven't had to. So hence, people who don't open the door, they may cut you off, they're unaware, they're on their phone. I'm not condescending or judgmental. I'm accepting in that they haven't learned the skills yet. They just haven't learned the skills. So for me, that's a gentler approach to calling somebody an a-hole or just a jerk or and just condemning them. Like we're all humans, we're all souls trying to get along. And we just haven't learned those skills, which I learned in recovery and from other pathways. And the Buddhist thing is really primary because it teaches that the suffering was good to end the suffering. It's necessary, and that whatever anyone has gone through with lived experience seems painful at the time. God forbid somebody loses somebody. I mean, that to me is unfathomable. However, time and then there's some purpose and meaning to it, and that one would have had to go through that experience to become more expert and more

Navy SEAL Recovery And Vagal Toning

SPEAKER_01 37:37

refined. May I talk about Navy SEAL recovery? So my thing it's vagal tonum, it's like Jason Lyon. Little different slant. So I call it Navy SEAL Recovery, it's not what you think. And I say they don't throw Navy SEALs into the ice cold water to teach them how to swim in cold water, not even to toughen them up. It's to basically condition their bodies to what we were all coded for survival, the fight, flight, or freeze, sympathetic nervous system into the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the opposite. That's the relaxation, restoration, and digestion. And I've been certified of this. I need some credibility, I don't want to just make it up, but I practice it so that we begin to practice a couple of things. I tell people to set their alarm to go off at noon every day and repeat on their iPhone. It goes off. Just a diaphragmatic breathe for one minute, just one minute. And I say, we're shallow breathers, we're incessant thinking machines, we're coded for that. What do I do next? Where do I get more money? All of these repeating thoughts, which are generally broken records, same thoughts every day, to quiet that down, the chatter. And that can be done through belly breathing. So that instead of take a deep breath, it's let the belly go up and the belly recedes when one breathes. You can look up diaphragmatic breathing, belly breathing, and let it actually go into your pelvis or even into your groin, like just drop everything. And I say, do it every day. It's like doing push-ups. I now welcome when somebody at the supermarket has a lot of coupons. I say, good, I can practice my belly breathing. And now's a good time because I might get a little dysregulated from because everybody's in a hurry, and everybody's thinking the same thing online, tapping their foot, whatever. So I say, now it's productive time. I'm going to the vagal toning gym. Yeah. So breathing is good. The vagus nerve starts here, goes close to the throat. I know this is audio only for the podcast, but it's the largest nerve in our bodies. Vagus means wanderer in Latin. It controls the whole central nervous system. Like it's important. Like, why haven't we learned about that? So the second thing in NAD seal recovery, it's not what you think, is since it's so close to the throat, when people used to hum, sing, or chant, it felt good. Took their mind off things. They didn't know there was science to it. So by vibrating the throat, mmm, the oh, right? Anything to vibrate that is toning the vagus nerve so that the nerve is in shape and it regulates more easily. So if one is to get dysregulated into a rage, it doesn't happen so often. And if you get upset, it's not so bad. And it comes back to regulation very quickly. And there's up regulation, like you need to show up for things, and there's downregulation where you need to mellow out. But if you do the exercise, you're ahead of the game. And the last is inflicting a little intentional discomfort on yourself to become what? More comfortable with discomfort. Buddhism. Get out of your comfort zone. Act as if. Yeah? Walk a flight of stairs. The cold shower is a good one. Huberman says it doesn't have to be 10, 15, 20 minutes. Like just do it for a couple of minutes, work your way up to it. So you're going to hate when you're in that nice warm shower and it's cold, especially here in the winter on the East Coast. You're like, there's no effing way I'm going to go into the cold water. That's when you do it. You ram on the cold water. You might think it's going to suck, but you do it, and then you get grad, you can do it more. You need to move around. Like you can't just stand still and get used to it. Put on the top of your head, back of your neck, all that kind of stuff. And then what happens? You can do it longer and you become less afraid. You become conditioned. So when it's nice and cold in the or cold in the morning, you go, I'm going to do it. It's not so bad. It's not so bad. And think about it. So going through life, if there are things and obstacles, you begin to learn it's not so bad. And not only psychologically, like the Navy SEAL, but you now conditioned your body through the parasynthetic nervous system, which is also a huge impact on the gut, people with IBAS and all these other things. I think that's a big contributing factor. I'm not a doctor, but I had that. And with microbiome, that call the psychobiome now. There's a lot of science to it. Yeah, probiotics, prebiotics, and I can go on about that. But that's what the vagus nerve does. So is Navy SEAL recovery what you thought?

SPEAKER_00 42:48

I had never heard the term Navy SEAL recovery, but you're what you tell me makes perfect sense.

SPEAKER_01 42:53

Yeah, so I think it might be intimidating if I said, Oh, that sounds tough. What are you going to do? Make me do uh squats and tug of war in the ocean? So I just say it's not what you think. And then there's a shift. And I say, and then you can be in recovery like a Navy SEAL. Like I thought that's like, you know, the gold star.

Final Wisdom And How To Help

SPEAKER_00 43:14

Nice. Mark, as we wrap up our time together, what words of wisdom do you want to leave us with about your work as a peer recovery specialist?

SPEAKER_01 43:21

Yeah, I think I say to patients, if there's nothing else that you remember from this encounter, remember that it's all about becoming more comfortable with discomfort. More comfortable with discomfort in many ways. So that when you like all bummed out and you're so anxious, and like a drink to cut the edge at the end of the day seems like a sensible thing. I say work toward having no edge. Right? I know I hate to use AA, but on page 88, double and affinity on its head, it says something to the effect that we will retire less easily, we will not use up energy foolishly as when we were trying to control the world to suit ourselves. We will become much more efficient. And I think that's the hokey pokey folks. That's what it's all about. And so that's a goal. And I think by staying out of your comfort zone a little bit every day talking to somebody you never spoke to. This is so critical with recovery or for any human being. Yeah. Because we're so in that fear and control. Fear and control because we're coded for survival. We're asking the human to do something entirely opposite to what it was coded for. Yeah. And it's doable. But remember that coding is strong. And as far as using something to be more comfortable it's not a sustainable thing. And I say to them, because you can't scare someone I think that woman you had from Georgia. Amber. Yeah she said you can't tell somebody you're gonna die because they say it sometimes I feel like I want to die. However a fate worse than death is powerful. I say dude you might live and you'll have a fate worse than death because you could be crippled you could be cognitively impaired. You could you you your brain it's Wernicke's we have names for wet brain yeah um uh what's the other one Wernicke's and then Corsicovs that's permanent we have names for these things and to me that's like a fate worse than death to be in a wheelchair lose my leg because I didn't control my diabetes it kept drinking and then I say you're screwed dude so you might live and then this will just be recurring symptoms until the brain reconnects so Mark I have to say thank you for your passion thank you for your wisdom you and I both are big believers in peer recovery specialists so I just want to say thanks for taking the time today thank you so much for listening to Addiction Medicine Made Easy.

SPEAKER_00 46:29

If you found this helpful please leave a review it really helps others find the show. And a huge thank you to Central Coast Overdose Prevention for supporting this podcast. And always remember treating addiction saves lives