Ep. 32 - What It Really Takes To Break Free From Addiction

What happens when the thing that once felt like relief slowly becomes the thing that takes everything from you?

Brad Lamm shares the long arc of his story, from growing up in a Quaker household in Oregon to discovering alcohol at 15 and feeling, for the first time, a kind of emotional numbness that felt like safety. What started as a powerful escape eventually cost him relationships, trust, and a career he loved as a morning television weatherman. After years of drinking, meth use, and trying to manage it on his own, a conversation with a trusted friend pierced the secrecy and led him toward treatment.

He speaks honestly about how hard early recovery was, the anger, the vulnerability, and the unexpected grace of people who stood beside him. Brad and Pam reflect on the many paths to healing, why there is no single right way to recover, the role of trauma, family involvement, and even the importance of avoidance when something continues to wound you.

From founding Breathe Life Healing Center to training families in compassionate, invitational interventions, Brad’s life has become rooted in service. His story is a reminder that recovery is rarely easy, often messy, and deeply human. And sometimes, the most meaningful work grows out of the places that once broke us.

Contact Pam Feinberg-Rivkin:
Facebook: @FeinbergCare
Instagram: @FeinbergCare
LinkedIn: Feinberg Consulting Inc
YouTube: @FeinbergConsulting8059 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:06

Welcome to the Resilient Butterfly Podcast. My goal is to share inspiring stories of healing and recovery through many diverse approaches and models. Our guests bring incredible lived experiences, insights, andor professional expertise, each with their own unique path. While we highlight and celebrate these stories, our intention is to inform, inspire, and demonstrate resilience and creativity. This podcast does not endorse any one approach. We believe there is more than one way to heal, and we're here to showcase the resilience and possibilities that exist. Welcome to Resilient Butterfly. I am your host, Pam Feinberg Ritkin, and today we have Brad Lamb from Los Angeles. I'm so excited to have you here, Brad. It's we see each other maybe once every few years and happened to run into you in December and uh in Los Angeles, and I'm like, I want you on this podcast. You have a powerful story and have done some amazing things in uh addiction recovery and all types of addictions. And I want to start out with the fact that you are an educator, um, a leader and thought leader in the industry of mental health and addiction, and um a founder of Breathe Life Center, Healing Center. And we'll get into that some more, but I want to start with your personal story.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Morning, Pam. Afternoon, as it may be for you on different time zones. Um it's good to see you. Thanks for asking me to join you uh today. You know, uh, it was 23 years ago that I got help, and it occurs to me that of course all of our stories start wherever we think they start, but um mine was at 15, I was a kid growing up in Eugene, Oregon, and I'd never drank, I'd never done a drug, uh, never smoked. My family was Quaker, so there was none of that in the house, wasn't part of my family's, you know, sort of habit bucket.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

So the mysticism of Quaker, Quakerism, what can you explain how that would be growing up for yourself?

SPEAKER_01 2:32

It was sort of lovely in some ways. Uh it I grew up in a a part of the religion that was evangelical. So it was uh a nice theme and kind of put on its head, in that uh today uh I I love the both the origin story and how Quakers are. And uh while I don't count myself a Quaker, uh it was a nice way to grow up. Because it was evangelical, we would go door to door trying to save people. So it was a okay, it was a spin on a lovely theme. Sure. It was sort of like, you know, coltrane. You love if you love Coltrane, uh, you love Coltrane. But for some people it's it's too damn uh too too much. There's too much going on. Uh take something that, you know, that some people love and then, you know, make it so different that you have a hard time keeping up with it. Um but in terms of drugs and alcohol, it was a really nice environment to grow up in because there was none. I had no uh access to it, uh, didn't have the experience in the home that anyone suffered from alcohol or drugs that I knew of. Um, and and I just plugged along. I I at 15 though, when I tasted alcohol, I didn't just taste a little. Um, I developed very quickly uh a taste for it. And it wasn't that I love the taste for it, really.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

I was just gonna say, was it the taste or the feeling?

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Well, it was definitely not the taste. Uh in that in the case of that first time that I drank, I I remember I was I played piano at a nursing home for a Christmas party where I volunteered. And then I ran down the hill to a Youth for Christ event at the high school, and I I got sick because I'd stolen a bottle of uh bad champagne at the old folks' home. Oh, well. So it was like uh aided and abetted by seniors.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Um, they gave it they gave it to you or you stole it.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Uh well, I st the first sip I I was given, but the the rest of it I I chugged on the way down the hill. And uh and so that that feeling it gave me was one of uh now now I think back on it, I I would describe it more like it was a numbing out of uh things that caused me pain, emotional, emotional pain. Um but it was pretty powerful, fam. It was it was uh it turned a light on for me. And that light was I want more of that. And uh and while it was hard to source, I was crafty. And uh and I I figured a way in to to getting it just by hanging out more at my friends' house, friends, friends' houses that they weren't Quakers or they had alcohol.

SPEAKER_02 5:31

I was wondering where the whether you were with a group of people or you were lonely doing alone doing it, but you you wound up their own.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

I was alone, and then after that, I gravitated toward the the kids that you know had had it in the house and that had the ability to uh you know go to the shelf and pour a drink. Um, but it was such a powerful turn uh switch that turned in me that and until I got help really 20 years later, I because I I was I had an intervention of sorts at 35, it it was uh a defining moment and and it laid a path out for me that I didn't want to leave that path because when I had alcohol in me, I felt better. And uh there were some things that weren't positive about it for sure. But first few years, you know, it was a pretty great love story. And I liked it, it liked me, and uh, we were happy as we could be.

SPEAKER_02 6:37

And you you were finding ways to be successful even during the probably during the young early years, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Yeah, I I as I look back though, and if I just take a rudimentary inventory of things it cost me, certainly cost me relationships, it cost me uh the career track I was on, it cost me um trust of people that loved me. Uh, but in other ways, you know, I'm I'm grateful for it really. Uh it helped me break out from the really cloistered existence that I grew up in. Uh it gave me courage to find my own path. Uh and then it just wasn't sustainable, as is often the case, you know. It's a great love story until it ain't.

SPEAKER_03 7:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Uh and once it turned, uh, it was a long time that it was it was hard. Uh so when you know, some people say, you know, gosh, I got sober at 16 or 18 or 20, I think, oh gosh, I wonder what life would have been like had that occurred for me. But it just never occurred to me that I needed to stop or that I should stop, or I might be a different opportunity uh brought for life if I stopped.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

What brought the intervention at you say 35 years old?

SPEAKER_01 7:58

I I had started a discussion with my business partner at that time, and and and it was around the concern that I was drinking a lot. And so as as that conversation progressed, I had already lost a dream job and a career that I loved. I was a weatherman, uh uh a news anchor, but weather was my thing, uh, in Washington, D.C. at the Fox affiliate. And I I loved that work. Um, it was very ego-centered. I was sort of a clown on the morning show, like Willard Scott or Al Roker are those gregarious uh morning personalities. And there was a part of me that loved that because it was really easy and people liked me, and I was recognized as having some knowledge base for what I was talking about. And uh and I had lost that job. I had passed out on the morning show, I'd fallen to the ground, I had a yellow tie on that day, and my news director asked me if I would go get help, and I was aghast. You know, I was offended that she was so nosy about something so personal. That's how I framed it at the time. And so I lost that job and and I went into the nightclub business. So I had opened a nightclub in DC called Cobalt, and it was very busy, and I was doing my thing, but I was drinking a lot and I had started using methamphetamines. So it was a it was just a recipe for uh either an untimely end or the discovery of something different. And uh so it was a conversation of hey, you know, you you're pretty erratic, Brad. And you did some things last night that probably will embarrass you when I tell you. And uh and I and I got curious about getting help. And so my path was about six months. It was from July of 02 when that conversation first was had. And then he kept me accountable. Like, what are you doing to take care of yourself? How are you doing? Are you are you sober today? Uh, I remember I told him I was addicted to meth too, and he was just, he couldn't believe it. He's like, oh, well, that makes a lot of sense because I I drank so much more when I was uh using methamphetamine that for me it was uh it was like the alchemy of uh addiction. I found my sweet recipe that was uh bliss. Um but having that conversation in July of 02, it pierced the veil of secrecy that had really kept me in the addiction for so long because I think like most people who suffer with mental health or substance use, uh I would have just plugged away and suffered and never got help. You know, most people that that need help will never get help. Right. And so I I was tired. I was I felt sick. I also, Pam, you you know that I have been an advocate for nicotine cessation. Yes, but I smoked two packs a day. I was just, I had become this person that was so uh, I wasn't just prone to addiction, it was really defined by my addictions that I was ready to get off the stop, you know, and and I was uh I was hungry for it. So I was open to trying different things. I tried 12-step meetings, I'd got a therapist, and ultimately I went to rehab because uh I couldn't, I found that I couldn't stay stopped. That was the trouble.

SPEAKER_02 11:30

I was curious how the path was for your recovery. Um, because some people go right into rehab and some people start out, like you say, you did. What brought the the point to what was the turning point for you for you to realize you needed to go into an inpatient or residential rehab?

SPEAKER_01 11:49

I had I had become uh accountable to that business partner and very close friend, uh Eric Little. And he drank a lot too. We drank a lot together, but I drank more. And my life was falling apart where he kept his together. Uh we laughed a lot, um, but I was accountable to him and vulnerable to him. And so when he said, Hey, are you still not drinking? You know, Q, the sad song of me having vodka in the office, you know, he saw that I had alcohol in the office again. Um he said, Well, you gave me your word that you would go impatient if you if you didn't uh put put this to bed for a while at least. It wasn't like gotta stop drinking forever, but it was clear, and I had made a promise to him that I was gonna give it, give it my all. And if it didn't work on my own, uh with different different things that I was trying. Um one, I would be honest with him of how I was doing. And two, if it didn't work, I would go into residential treatment, which I thought, well, gosh, that's gonna be such a motivation for me to fix it because I definitely don't want to go to rehab.

SPEAKER_03 12:59

Right.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Um, I'd never been to rehab. I thought it unlike, I thought it was very unlikely to work. Uh and and then I did have a really remarkable experience when I when I went to treatment, even though, you know, I look back on it now and I like the place I went, I don't send people, I don't, I don't send clients to because I have a different view of the place now than I did then. But it helped me a lot.

SPEAKER_02 13:26

So it could have been and it could have been the right place for you then and now, you know, yeah, now, right?

SPEAKER_03 13:32

Fair enough.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

I won't ask you what what treatment center that was.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

So it's still around, but it it it clicked. Uh recovery clicked for me. I was introduced to 12-step fellowship. I was introduced, and there I met this woman called Muriel Zink that became sort of um this human angel that cared about me. And when I cried, she put her hand on my shoulder and she'd give me a hug. And she was in her 80s and she'd been sober for so long, I couldn't believe it, but I believed it.

SPEAKER_03 14:05

Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

And uh yeah, I met a fella who became a temporary sponsor for me in that 12-step fellowship. And uh, and it was really hard, bam. It was not one of those, you know, I stopped drinking and everything got better, and I white light went off, and I was on a, you know, this is great cloud. Uh, it was super hard. I wanted to die.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

It was well, I would imagine for most people, it is super hard. I had I don't know that I've heard from any one person. It's it's one of the hardest things that anybody can go through. Right? All the interventions that you've done, which could are thousands over the years. Um have you met any one person that says, oh, this is gonna be easy, and they fly through it and they're they're like on to their next life in this beautiful, you know, it it's it definitely is hard.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Yeah. Yes, and one one thing I learned early on, Pam, and I wonder if you can relate to this, is not that you bet on the likelihood of somebody's success in recovery, but it occurs to you, oh, this person has it, they got it, they're they're gonna f run with this like I did. Um just meaning it's it was sustainable and it I I didn't get interrupted and uh I didn't have relapse and life got better and a life emerged, you know, and then but I learned early on that sometimes the ones that are most likely on paper are the ones that fall apart on the way home from treatment. And then often the ones that are the biggest knuckleheads, case in point. I mean, in the beginning, Pam, I would wear Miller Light hats or absolute vodka hats to 12-step meetings just to get kicked out. I'd get kicked out, you know, asked to leave and take take this stupid hat off. But I was so angry. Uh, you know, I was looking for a reason to be disinvited to this great new party that I was going to. Um uh so there are things that I for no doubt there are things that when I look at a person I'm working to help, if they have these different ingredients of a recipe for success that I think, oh, the odds are better. That's great. Sure. Um but uh yeah, my hope for everybody is that they have a delicious, long, satisfying recovery.

SPEAKER_02 16:39

Um get that. There are a lot of um factors that can be put in uh that could be stated that will lead somebody for to a more successful outcome, uh, such as family involvement, stop holding secrets away from your family, embrace your family into this, be vulnerable. All of those, and many, many more, can help, don't you think?

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Yes. And there's also a tool that I found that's been so important for me that I didn't hear early on, which is avoidance. That there are some people in our lives and some institutions in our lives that we need not revisit. If they're the source of our wounding uh and still cause us pain, I don't need to make peace with that. I need to avoid that because it's not for me. Life is short, time is the thing. I want to not have days in uh self-caused agony because I'm telling myself I've got to be in relationship with this person or this institution.

SPEAKER_02 17:57

It happened, the other person needs to be in a relationship with you too, in a different way. So it's not about one-sided. So if that cannot happen, of course, you have to avoid them because things don't change.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Yeah. And I'll I'll I'll share another thing that comes to mind uh as far as avoidance. Uh early in recovery, I hear I I was told, hey, if you don't get down on your knees and pray every morning, this prayer, you're not gonna stay sober. I was like, well, actually, that prayer doesn't give me any peace. It actually causes me discomfort. So I'm not gonna do that, but I'll write a prayer that is in my language that I can understand that my you know, my my consciousness, or you know, I'm I'm a very diffuse idea of spirituality, but that I can tolerate it, that I like it, that I dig it, that I want that in my life.

SPEAKER_02 18:55

And so well, having one way only for people is not gonna work because there are, and this is why I want to bring so many people onto Resilient Butterfly, is to talk about many ways, because everyone, it doesn't, everyone doesn't get sober the same way. The prayer, the uh the um the treatment center they the one person was in is not gonna necessarily work for another person and on and on and on because we are individual people and we have to look at what it is that impacts us. If you have a triggering effect for a prayer, which I have a similar situation for myself, and I think spirituality is going to be different for you as it is for myself and for other people. But that person who says this is the only way to stay sober can't look at a various, it's still a black and white. That's probably what it is about black, the black and white situation that was in your life before, I would imagine being evangelical. You either do this.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

Yeah, there's there's not just there's not just one one way. And uh there are good ways, and I I do have judgment on good and bad and good ways and bad ways.

SPEAKER_02 20:16

And yeah, I think we all do.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Boy, that's a very bad way. Or hey, that's a really good way. Let's try that. Uh, but to this day, I avoid uh 12-step meetings that use um our father, which is the Lord's Prayer. I avoid meetings that are in churches because I was uh wounded uh greatly, like no child should be wounded there. And so I don't need to build tolerance for that. I I'm good with I'll find that somewhere else. And that's that's great. Uh so I when when I work with people and they they think, hey, I need a workaround for this, I I try to see if I can support it because uh, you know, I don't want to mandate recovery like it's jail. You know, my hope is that uh the the life that they get or start to see emerging from recovery is good enough that they want more of that and less of you know the echo of the before, no matter how enticing that was and how it made everything, all the hurt go away, which you know is a lot of people's story.

SPEAKER_02 21:28

Sure. Well, uh my biggest belief is that addiction comes from trauma. One way or another, could be multiple trauma, it could be, you know, a big trauma that has occurred, whatever that trauma may be, and it is either abandonment of somebody or whatever that may be. That's where it comes from, the loneliness or the fear or the the pain of emotional pain, right? So what brought you into starting to do Interventions and you have intervention.com that you also founded and uh breakfree intervention training. What brought you into doing interventions and the style of interventions that you do for yourself for you?

SPEAKER_01 22:17

I I I think that one of the things that I love the most about growing up in the Quaker uh theology or community, it's very it's very community-based. Um is the notion of service and um reaching out your hand to a person who's suffering, and that maybe that's the highest calling. I I think had I not been an alcoholic, an addict, I would have gone into some I don't know, I probably wouldn't have been a pastor. My father and a couple of my brothers are pastors. It's like a lamb family thing. Uh I don't know that that I would have done that. Um, but I I bet I would have been some something more similar to my dad than than I am. Um but I I think I had a gentle nudging of spirit. That's how I think of it now. And I don't even know exactly what that means, other than I felt a tug like, oh, I want I want to do that. I want to see if I can do that. And maybe, Pam, it wasn't spiritual at all. Maybe it was just the boomerang of having wasted in my mind as a person in early recovery. I was at 35, uh thinking, gosh, I've wasted so much time. What might I do that will give me value? And and doing interventions and and learning that that work, uh, it gave me the framework to get involved and do something. And it and I felt great doing it. It was high intensity, uh, it was rewarding, it was uh beautiful and fun. Uh interventions don't stress me out, actually. I love the work. And so I took to it and I thought this is pretty great. Uh I it was not my first job in recovery, though. Meaning, when I got into recovery, I had another job. I started a school food business in DC. I had this nightclub with a a commercial kitchen, and and I had read in the Washington Post about how charter schools were having a really hard time getting nutritious meals catered. And so that was my first it wasn't a boon, it wasn't a boondoggle because it was successful and I was able to sell it. Uh uh, but the best part about it was it let me go to lots of 12-step meetings. And I would go to work at 4 a.m. and I'd be done by noon, and I'd go to bed early. And it was uh it was a good schedule for me to have some success, but also stay the track. Um it it forced me not to be a vampire, you know, living that sort of night focused uh life.

SPEAKER_02 25:21

How soon after treatment did you start this?

SPEAKER_01 25:25

Literally on the plane, because uh I I'm that way. You're such a flying home.

SPEAKER_02 25:30

You're such a creator. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

Thinking, what in the world am I gonna do with my life if I go back to the nightclub and and do that? You know, I built that office so that I could do drugs with impunity. And I built that bathroom so that people couldn't hear me snorting methamphetamine. And I knew that if if I went back into that, and my recovery was super tenuous. I did not feel firm in it. It did not feel like it had legs on it yet. I thought, well, you know, gosh, what could I do? And I knew I had this commercial kitchen, and and I thought, well, I could try that. And so I wrote uh a bid for it and got my first school and soon after had three schools and five schools, and and it was so not glorious, but it felt really good because most of the kids that uh ate the breakfast, lunch, and snack were brown or black. They were uh getting free or reduced lunches and meals, and that was the majority of their meals was at the at the school. So in that way, it felt really good. I felt good. I like kids too. So getting to deliver and be involved in the actual experience of of doing that felt good. And then I at some point, and it was only maybe 18 months into it, bam. I thought, okay, enough of this. Uh what might I do next? Um because I I did want a life that was not getting up at 3 a.m.

SPEAKER_02 27:09

And I wanted something different, and so I was it still was isolating though, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Oh, no doubt. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was beautiful though, I gotta say. You know, I've never talked about uh that part of my recovery, and it it really was so it was so it was such a great recovery job for me, early recovery job.

SPEAKER_02 27:32

And you created it yourself instead of someone saying, hey, go down to the laundromat and work the desk at the laundromat or whatever that may be for today.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Uh a colleague uh asked to have breakfast with me, so I caught up with him. And he at the end of the breakfast, what he really wanted to ask me was, should I open a treatment center? And uh I'm thinking of opening a treatment center, he told me. And I thought, oh my gosh, you know, tell him no, whatever you do, don't do it. But but uh I understand the impulse for sure.

SPEAKER_03 28:11

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

Uh, but it's that beautiful part of remaking life where you have a blank slate in some ways. If if you do, some people don't have a blank slate. Um, I I had no inheritance. I had I didn't have a trust fund. I just I was scrappy. I'm still scrappy, less scrappy, but scrappy.

SPEAKER_02 28:34

So when did you talk about treatment centers? When did you found Breathe Life Healing Center? How long has that been?

SPEAKER_01 28:43

That was about 14 years ago. And then uh 54-bed, subacute residential center that takes insurance, treats mostly women and queer people, which is important to me. And we treated over 6,000 patients. Uh and it's the best part in a beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 29:05

Uh and do you remember the day that I came to see you there?

SPEAKER_01 29:10

It feels like it was three minutes ago.

SPEAKER_02 29:12

I know. It was, I believe, in January of 2015. I could have it totally wrong, but coming from Orange County from a funeral of a friend's son who died of an overdose, and one of the gentlemen, one of the young men was there who was also addicted, and you said if he was willing to come, I'll scholarship him.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

I forgot that, man. Yeah. I forgot that part of it. And then I always forget the good part.

SPEAKER_02 29:43

What blew me away was everything fell in place. So I I was eventually he didn't want to go eventually initially until he was put in a motel by his father and say, This is the end, this is all you've got, and a hundred bucks or whatever. And he reached out to someone who called me and said he's ready. And then I called you and you said he needs detox. And I was able to find within 30 minutes of detox center in Orange County that took him and detoxed him, and then they came to your uh center. So there, you know, talk about the spiritual life of what happens sometimes in this mental health and addiction. This was definitely all because I was out there by I don't live in Los Angeles, but a lot of beautiful things have happened in Los Angeles, including that. And I was so impressed by you being able to immediately said, without question, I'll scholarship him. So I just wanted to bring that up and thanks.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

I appreciate you reminding me of that. I remember it now. I remember you visiting, but I don't, I didn't remember that part of the story. I'm uh really good at forgetting things, which is good in some ways too. Uh I don't hold grudges because I forget that I'm supposed to have a grudge really so often. But um having said all that, and there were thousands of those moments, Pam, that I could if I remembered all of them. They were touchstones of just like the divinity of the universe, like the goodness of the universe and the best of people. Um, and I'm so grateful that I gotta have that experience. And it really de derailed me or put me on another path for 14 years. And my primary work, and I'd written two books already by the time I opened Breathe in 2013, had been invitational intervention. And I thought that was really my path. And and I I was struck, though, by the lack of a treatment option for trauma work uh that took insurance. And that that it was really that simple. That was the thing that it was so easy to create a treatment experience for people that were resourced and for people dependent on insurance. Sure. Um, you know, it was it was hard. And so Brief came out of that deficit just in my day-to-day work, and and it it was a wonderful sidetrack. And when I sold it September 17th, 2025, it was an incredible exhale, too. You know, I was no longer the employer of 50 full-time employees. I was no longer the person in charge when the huge campus in Laurel Canyon with 10 homes needed to be evacuated because of a mudslide or a wildfire on Christmas Eve. Or you know, just all the stuff that is normal life stuff uh that we get to do day to day. So I was so grateful to have been part of it and so grateful to have it live live on really with a a group that is probably much better at operating than I am, and just in terms of the nuts and bolts of the financial part and the insurance part. Um but wow, it's it's it's very sweet that you I I appreciate that you brought that story up. There's so many stories like that that's you know, it just reminded me of.

SPEAKER_02 33:29

I have another one that is quite interesting because I actually just remembered it this morning that you were trying to s uh create a treatment center in Detroit.

SPEAKER_01 33:41

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_02 33:42

And you were and uh unfortunately these people just couldn't wrap their heads around having treatment and or having a uh a home that people were living in to go to treatment in there in the neighborhood of Detroit. But um I was so excited to be.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

And it wasn't just any home.

SPEAKER_02 34:04

The Fisher Mansion, I think. Swimming pool inside, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:13

Yeah. Yeah, and that was such a failure, but you kept trying.

SPEAKER_02 34:19

You kept trying.

SPEAKER_01 34:20

I met some people like you, and I met Stephanie Christie, and I got closer with Jeff and Deborah J. And there were other people that I met there too, including a family that saw the story in the Detroit, you know, you think of Detroit 10 years ago, and it it was parts that were uninhabitable, and you think, really? They didn't want a rehab. Right. Um, but the headline was new age entrepreneur trying to, you know, make a rehab in Tony neighborhood. And uh and I bumped up against what many people bump up against, which is that neighbor, you know, neighborhoods that don't want their uh property value and quality of life to be negatively impacted. And so I but the headline in the paper had a family reach out then and they said, Hey, could you help our daughter? She's been missing.

SPEAKER_02 35:15

And that's right. So that's part of the story that I remembered this morning. And one of our employees, Karen, went with you to find looking for her on the streets.

SPEAKER_01 35:27

Yes. Because Karen knew the the the the layout of downtown and the stroll, like the the tenderloin sort of of Detroit, more than I did. I didn't know it at all. And we went out and it was a snowstorm, and we scooped that girl up, and she was a precious person that had a child, and her life had fallen apart because of just because of addiction, you know, and trauma.

SPEAKER_02 35:52

And uh yeah, like maybe where did you end up taking her to breathe?

SPEAKER_01 35:58

I I request I sent her to breathe on scholarship, and uh, and there there were times when that failed, the business venture failed, that I thought it was just for her. Like maybe it was just so that that family could, you know, taste recovery. Yeah, and that uh but you know, there's so many of those stories that you know that I that that speaks to the the value of what we do with our time. And breathe was such a gift to me, and uh and 97% less stress since I sold it. I went all gray since you met me, and and I I'm so grateful for it. Sure. And even the emotion that I just had, if I had gone with it, I would have really given you a a flood of tears. But there it's you know, gosh, I really I do not have to question if I've done something important with my life now. No, absolutely gotten no awards. Uh yeah, not important like that. Um, like my husband has won awards. I am not an award winner, but I feel I'm my father's son. I feel so grateful to have the life that I have today. So gosh, I'm thank you for reminding me that.

SPEAKER_02 37:27

I will send you some award. I will figure this out.

SPEAKER_01 37:32

I don't I don't mean that as a I know I know you don't. But uh it feels it sure feels good.

SPEAKER_02 37:39

And his your husband is in a different um environment, you know, an environment, a whole different, you know, thank God show business is a little bit different than your get awards for it.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

So yeah. Fair enough. But I also met Steve Feldman. Um I met yeah, I met some I made some beautiful relationships from that failure. And uh yeah, but thank you for reminding me of that, that particular story.

SPEAKER_02 38:09

And we did we were doing the intervention training for breakfree at Wayne State at campus at the time, too. Oh, that's right. There's a lot of memories here that I I come flooding back with. And your training is so much different because what I felt in your training is that you really deep dive into your own family history to see how it impacted how it impacted my life, my my family tree. When I looked at that, I had a break free event or breakthrough of like, oh my goodness, what you know, now I can look at it in the tree. Not the tree behind you, but the family tree. The family tree. But having the and having the invitation for families to embrace what has happened without shame and and learn from it and be able to break through it and be able to have um a more uh a beautiful life in front of them. So um your uh your training and your way about having interventions was impactful on our on Feinberg Consulting because of you know just being there and having that ability to really see through a different lens of things.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

Right on.

SPEAKER_02 39:33

And there's so many different ways that people do intervention.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

And um it's their style, and our style But there is a good way and a bad way. I wasn't gonna say that, but there is a snatch and grab way and a and a very volatile increasing intensity way. And so the the way that I learned it was from uh a remarkable series of uh studies from the University of Pennsylvania and Judith Landau, who is one of the original authors uh with James Garrett. And they shared their work with me. Uh, and it became my life's work, really. Uh, I find no higher calling than helping a family. Sure. Doing away with some of the myths that we get stuck on, like a person has to want the help for them to get the help. Right. They have to hit rock bottom. Oh my God, if I hear rock bottom, if I hear another story telling me why they they need to stay stop because their loved one needs.

SPEAKER_02 40:37

Right. Rock bottom to me is it ultimately can be death, and a lot of times is death based on the drugs that are being utilized right now, or for a decade at least, or 20 two decades maybe.

SPEAKER_01 40:52

But there's this drug called xylazine PAM, and I had never encountered it. I'd read about it. Uh its street name is Trank, but it's uh it's an opioid-like agonist that often has fentanyl in it, but it's known for dissolving the skin on your limbs. And I thought, I remember reading about it maybe five or six years ago in in the tinderloin in San Francisco. It was popping up, and then in Philly, and I thought, why would anybody do that drug if they had any opportunity to do something better like heroin? Uh, you know, that's it, it gives you a high, but doesn't make you your legs fall get amputated. And so I I had my first case last week in San Francisco, and it was so interesting to get to know the drug, and it I mean, not personally get to know it, but uh but to learn more about it, and all it does is well, it gives a great high and it's super addictive, and the detox is really hard, and it depletes oxygen supply to your extremities, to the skin. And so I for for years I thought, gosh, how does that drug do that to you? What what are people doing with it? And they're just smoking it, and that's well, that's very similar to huffing huffing, right?

SPEAKER_02 42:16

Where people are huffing and they're losing their ability to their brain function so that they literally are in wheelchairs because they can't walk or they can't talk. Yeah. I mean, why would people, but that's shows you how powerful addiction is.

SPEAKER_01 42:31

It sure feels good, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:34

Except when it doesn't.

SPEAKER_02 42:36

You know, except when it doesn't, and your end your life.

SPEAKER_01 42:39

It makes me think of like the first time I drank, I told you about the best time I drank, I remember it. I had cases of alcohol that was misdelivered for a party to my house. I was supposed to get seven bottles each of uh doers, absolute uh absolute, like a a group of like 150 bottles were accidentally delivered instead of 10.

SPEAKER_03 43:06

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 43:07

And I I remember I felt so safe. And I remember sitting in my living room and thinking, oh my god, this will last me all year. And then and then the the last time I drank, uh, first time, the best time, the last time was on a flight flying to rehab, and I ordered two double bloody Marys, and there was a little boy sitting next to me. And when the the flight attendant brought me the little alcohol bottles, he went and I said, And I thought, wow, it's me just drinking here, and I wonder if this will be the last. And it that that wasn't the last so far. Twenty three years ago.

SPEAKER_02 43:54

So now what, Brad?

SPEAKER_01 43:58

Oh gosh. do an intervention again and enjoying that more as a avocate as my main sure focus uh but also reading again like having a hobby i've started taking music lessons which is a thing for me it i like it that's uh and uh i used to play play the piano myself many many years ago i i do i play the piano but this i've always wanted to i've had a native flute that i've wanted to learn to play well for a few years so i just started lessons for that and just simpler you know quieter yeah that's beautiful that's my goal well those are the really nice goals you know you deserve it and i hope that you can continue to stay connected despite the fact that you're taking music lessons and not even despite because um because i'm doing the things that i enjoy as well um and it comes a time when we all can take a breath and relieve and sit and be able to be at peace with what we've already done and don't have to do anything more than be in our life so I honor you thank you thank you for joining the conversation today if you are seeking help for yourself or a loved one please reach out to our Feinberg Consulting team at 248 538 5425 that's 248 538 5425 and check out our website at feinbergcare dot com.

SPEAKER_02 45:48

I'm grateful for our guests and all who have joined us today. Make sure you follow us on Apple, Spotify or anywhere you listen to podcasts