#024 Why the Modern Shelter System is Built to Let Addicts Fail

What happens to the people who are too broken for a standard homeless shelter?

In this high-stakes interview, recovery expert Chris Budnick pulls back the curtain on a brutal systemic paradox: standard institutional shelters automatically disqualify the exact individuals trapped under the influence, forcing a volatile cycle between first responders and emergency rooms. From his raw personal battle with "baseline pain" as a teenager to managing one of the most successful peer-led recovery ecosystems in North Carolina, Chris exposes why society's approach to addiction fails—and reveals the radical blueprint required to help people truly flourish.

🔔 Subscribe for more high-end, cinematic interviews on exploring our full potential and overcoming the odds.

CHANNELS MENTIONED:
Learn more about Healing Transitions: [https://healingtransitions.org/](https://www.google.com/search?q=https://healingtransitions.org/)
Support Recovery Alive: [https://recoveryalive.com/](https://recoveryalive.com/)

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - I Did Not Want to Live
1:06 - Automatically Disqualified From the Shelter
2:45 - Who Is More Deserving of a Bed?
3:55 - The Origin of Healing Transitions
4:49 - Scared Straight Confrontational Models
6:33 - The Fear of Being Left With the Pain
7:47 - The Relapse of a Role Model
8:56 - Finding My Recovery Ancestor in a Kitchen
10:57 - From Inpatient Case Management to Executive Director
12:53 - Reevaluating Without Severing the Relationship
14:12 - Breaking the Barrier of Learned Helplessness
16:03 - Reconciling and Sticking With the Lifelong Journey
17:50 - The Evolution of the Always Tagline
19:11 - What Do People Need to Flourish?
21:15 - Building Apartments for Women and Children
22:25 - Facing Crowding and Overdose Surges During COVID
23:48 - Developing Alumni Into Tomorrow's Leaders
25:58 - The Challenge of Cleaning Up Cities Through Trespassing
27:11 - Burnout, Vicarious Trauma, and Staff Sustainability
29:04 - How to Tour and Support the Mission

#HomelessnessSolutions #AddictionRecovery #SystemicFailure #MentalHealthMatters #LivingOnIncline


Listen and Follow Living on Incline

Listen on your favorite platform:
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/living-on-incline/id1828304603
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/78HwNrRWZHGAHL8Zv90nO0?si=e4b5d032e9214deb
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZdyfS2K4OE4WFJRWSuAgsQ
RSS Feed: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2521959.rss
Website: https://www.livingonincline.com



Sponsored by Recovery Alive

Living on Incline is proudly sponsored by Recovery Alive, a Christ-centered recovery program helping people find hope, healing, and purpose through authentic community and biblical transformation.

Learn more: https://www.recoveryalive.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/recoveryaliveinc/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/recoveryaliveinc
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@recoveryalive

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I did not want to live. I did not feel any joy. I dealt with intense internal pain kind of all the time. I had lots of experiences of kind of deep alienation and isolation. So my baseline kind of existence was um just not a happy person. Like it was not so much the pain of using that was the issue. It was the fear of what happens if I take this away and I'm left with this pain. He is the executive director of one of our favorite resources, Healing Transitions. Wake County specifically in the 90s has said we've got an issue with homelessness. And they uh looked into it and they determined that alcohol and other drugs were part of a large percentage of folks with homelessness. Huge. If there was no shelter that existed that would allow somebody to come in if they were under the influence. So a lot of people were automatically kind of disqualified from shelters. So at the time, there was nothing out there that if you'd been drinking, you can't come in. You can't come in all this time. Because we've been utilizing our community room and our even our admin lobby uh to accommodate folks coming in.

SPEAKER_04 1:17

Executive director Chris Budnik says the facility doesn't turn people away who want help for substance use disorders, but he wants to see more facilities, more options.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

And unfortunately, society tends to blame the individual in the medicine. And we haven't, you know, like we're kind of asking him to perform miracles by saying here's this like short duration of engagement we're doing with you and go back into your community.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

And it can organically happen like it did with you, yeah. But yeah, but not systemically. Right, exactly. I think emotional. I mean whenever. Ooh. That's it, man. That's that's the work, is is looking people in the eye be like, We got you, and it's not gonna change.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

We see recovery every day, we know it is possible, we know it can't wait, and we also know that there's more to do.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Um, he is the executive director of one of our favorite resources, Healing Transitions. Um I love you guys, I love what you do. I love the ministry, the connection, the help that you give. Uh, we're just talking about your always statements that apparently you we gotta keep working on. Yeah, but saying that it's always free, always open, always community, and there's always second chances, always everybody. You and you like some people can claim those things, but you guys are doing it. Welcome. And truly, like, sincerely thank you for your passion. Another social worker. Nice to have a fellow social worker, uh, worker in the in the room. Um, tell us about uh this thing called healing transitions. Just give us like a 30,000-foot view of what you guys are doing up in Raleigh and uh the second campus that you have uh that's under construction. Tell us a little bit about what's going on with healing transitions.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

Sure. Thanks for having uh me here to talk about topics of recovery, transformation, um, you know, second chances, third chances.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Uh at a hundredth chances.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

At a very, very high level, uh, what healing transitions exist to do is to help people initiate recovery, sustain recovery, and then find and build a life in recovery. Yeah. The specifics are the community, Way County specifically, in the 90s has said, we've got an issue with homelessness. We need to better understand. And they uh looked into it and they determined that alcohol and other drugs were part of a large percentage of folks with homelessness. Huge. That there was no shelter that existed that would allow somebody to come in if they were under the influence. So a lot of people were automatically kind of disqualified from shelter. So at the time there was nothing out there that if you'd been drinking, you can't come in. You can't come in. Holy smokes. And they said we think, you know, 65% of the folks who are homeless of the 2,000 people that they thought were homeless at the time, alcohol and other drugs was part of that presentation.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 4:43

And uh so what would happen then is folks were then um, you know, unsheltered, often publicly intoxicated, and became a huge first responder emergency department issue. People being transported to largely WakeMed. Wake Med saying, you know, we can't, you know, discharge this person until they're sobered up just for liability. And this you were talking about kind of uh, you know, always another chance type thing. Like it took me a long time to see this. I I worked part-time for the county when I was going to ECU for my MSW. And we would do evaluations of people coming in. Sometimes those were people that were brought in voluntarily, just showed up. Sometimes they were brought in for involuntary commitment, but it would assess and then link to the right service. So at the time you had the alcoholism treatment center and you had 16 publicly funded detox beds there. And when I worked there, it was not uncommon for somebody to come in and they meet all the criteria for admission. And you go to the nurse and you say, want to refer over to ATC for detox. And the response was, they've already been here before. And there's not uncommon for this pattern to start where as soon you told the person you don't have a place to stay, they learned the lingo. What do you what do I need to say now to have a place to say? Yeah. You know, I don't feel safe. Well, what do you mean you don't feel safe? I've been having thoughts that life's not worth living. Tell me more about that. And then all of a sudden you've had somebody that's voluntarily showed up, not being involuntarily committed at that time to Darthia Dick's hospital.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Because it's a liability for them to be.

SPEAKER_02 6:25

Yeah. So they're they would kind of voluntarily seek services, involuntarily end up at Darthia Dix Hospital. And then I was also had been an intern and then worked at Darthea Dix Hospital. And you get folks at Darthia Dick's hospital and you say, hey, we don't treat substance use issues here, or we need to get them out of the hospital. So it was often this Friday, Saturday kind of cycle. It took me a really long time to kind of um separate from the individual, the nurse, you know, there's more than one nurse, but I'll just say the nurse who would say they've been here before.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

And my, you know, what is the thought behind that? Like what when you when you say that, why are they saying they've been here before? What's the so there's their message?

SPEAKER_02 7:10

They're providing a uh a rationale for why this person shouldn't get services. Right. And uh initially, you know, I thought, man, uh jaded, sure, kind of burned out, you know, lost compassion, right? Nurse. The nurse. Yeah. And then it took my friend Jimmy pointing out, like, hey, Chris, and this is years later, Chris, do you recognize the tough decisions that they were having to make? Good. They have a finite number of resources, and you know, you know 16 beds got more demand than beds. How do we choose? That's good. How do we choose? How do we choose who gets who's more deserving? The person that's never been here, the person that's been here before. And it allowed me that that was pivotal for me to start pulling back and saying, oh. Having some empathy and understanding. There's systems here, right? And we tend, I tend maybe to focus on the individual that I encounter in the system and attribute the problem to that individual without drawing back and saying, well, actually, the community doesn't invest enough money into creating solutions. So healing transitions came about because the community said, we need a place to so for folks to sober up who are homeless that are not emergency departments and not jails. And uh a woman who just passed uh recently named Linda Strother was a public health nurse for Wake County in '97. She likes trying to understand how the uh worldwide web works and kind of just typing in some stuff and comes across the healing place in Louisville, Kentucky, back when their website, when websites used to have counters for the number of visitors. Yeah, right, right, right. So it would take a while for the picture to she connects and discovers this model and spends a couple hours talking to one of the the kind of architects behind the model. And that led to people saying, hey, we're looking just to have a kind of a relief solution, being a place for people to sober up. But this model has a restoration piece, not just a relief. And so folks are really motivated and interested in that. And um, and so those are our origins. So our origins started from trying to take a burden off first responders and and emergency departments.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

You didn't come on too much like it was a short time after this wonderful thing called healing transitions came into existence that you jumped on. You've been on for 20 plus years.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

Yeah, so I um, you know, real quickly, I uh things that you were talking about resonated with me before we started recording depression, substance use, suicidal thoughts, you know, self-harm, get into recovery in Rhode Island in 1990, um, majored in psychology because I was just familiar with being sent to counselors.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

How did you like I'm interested in that story? I want you to quickly get through that. I'd love to hear more about it. Like, so what got you to that moment where you said, Man, I need I need to do something about this.

SPEAKER_02 10:10

Yeah, and and I love the variety of stories, you know. Like um, I was at a recovery um uh conference up in uh Calgary a couple weeks ago, and you know, I was sharing like you know, there's some people that come in and it's like they just know. They just they just know. I was different. I came in and I had all sorts of doubts and questions. I was young, you know, what is the issue and so forth. Um, so it wasn't so much a matter of me knowing that I wanted this change, it was more of a matter of um I was just so unhappy. And I remember, you know, like things start eroding. Mom says, you know, like you're too disruptive in the house, you you can't stay here, you know. Uh 80s was a time where there was treatment exploding, right? There was growth of treatment. Uh and that also meant adolescent programs. My friend who I started using with um you know, in middle school, his parents sent him to told him that he was going to see a doctor, and he ended up at a program called Straight, which was really kind of like a confrontational model. Scared straight kind of a thing. Well like drill sergeant kind of well, yeah, like like if you look at the history of recovery, one of the things is that you know, society hasn't often believed that people could recover. Society's often placed the responsibility on the individual for having the problem. So you're you chose this, you're less deserving of our kind of empathy and support. And then systems that didn't ever work real well to help them. So most of our kind of existing recovery institutions came about because folks mobilized among themselves to help one another.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Yeah. And uh motivational interviewing really helped me to understand this like the history of motivational interviewing, and the founder is being confronted with a methodology of addiction treatment that is like you're saying, is just like in your face. And I remember that. I remember being in these treatment centers, and it was like, you guys suck, you know. Only 2% are you gonna make it out of here. I'm like, how is this helpful? Yeah, but it was so in your face, like you, you know, just personal responsibility, but it felt so aggressive. But and that's changed.

SPEAKER_02 12:39

Yeah, so one of those kind of approaches that emerged of trying to help uh, you know, folks from from within that community was something that became Cynadon. Oh, yeah. Cynadon had a tre tremendous influence on therapeutic communities, very confrontational, behavior change. So anyway, straight was a kind of uh offspring of that for adolescents. Um so just those resources were going on. So it was more common for parents to say, let me send somebody to get help or let me so those are some of the ways that I got introduced to it. I get into I went to a recovery meeting when I'm 16 to support my friend. I go to an outpatient treatment program when I'm 18. Oh wow, okay. I'm admitted into an adult inpatient treatment program as I'm turning 19.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

What was going on in your life? Like how how bad how bad did things get?

SPEAKER_02 13:35

I mean, the way the way that I describe it is um I did not want to live. I did not feel any joy. I dealt with intense internal pain kind of all the time. I had lots of experiences of kind of deep alienation and isolation, uh, starting with a head injury uh when I was eight, continuing through um father leaving the family, being uh isolated and alienated among peer groups and and so forth. So my baseline kind of existence was um just not a happy person, somebody with a lot of pain. And so it was interesting, like it was not so much the pain of using that was the issue, it was the fear of what happens if I take this away and I'm left with this pain. Sure. And the outpatient counselor I had, I I said, I said to her, when if if I make this decision, stop using, right? When will I be happy? Yeah. And what a question. And she said, I don't know. And that's not the answer that I wanted, but it was honest. The uh an impactful statement that she made. Like it made me trust her. That's good. It made me trust her, and I don't know why that made me kind of decide, okay, I I'll I'll give this inpatient treatment, you know, a shot. Um, but when I look when I look at my you know, my my story, right? I see the hand of something greater in my life without me knowing it, mostly understanding it by looking back. So I end up in a program called Edge Hill in Newport, Rhode Island, which was kind of like a Betty Ford of the East Coast. Okay. Uh they'd want to send they were gonna send me to an outward bound program because I'm at this odd age, you know, like leaving adolescence, entering young adulthood, and uh the outward bound fell apart, ended up with this inpatient treatment. And I don't I wouldn't say it was like anything to do with uh what they taught us, uh any counseling breakthroughs that happened. The two most significant things that happened when I was in inpatient treatment was the one small role model I had for recovery relapsed, which was a guy that lived next to my mom. And what I liked about his recovery was that he went to some recovery meetings for a while, but he'd stopped doing that and just kind of was like had a job and a girlfriend.

SPEAKER_03 16:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:13

And I was looking for like a real easy, you know, like what's what's the fix? I don't want to commit to something, you know, I don't want to do long, you know. I just couldn't even comprehend that. And so when this guy, John, you know, relapsed and I I started realizing, oh, maybe there's something like ongoing continued effort, like this requires like intentionality and not just they're gonna do something that fixes you, you know. And so that was helpful. And then the second thing that was even more helpful was the day I got out of treatment, my counselor's woman Ann said, Will you come to my recovery meeting tonight and give me my 17-year medallion?

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

And so for a kid who again was terribly uh withdrawn, introverted, contained all of his pain inside to be asked to be a part of something was just like that is cool, that is huge. Next day I go to this restaurant and I ask the uh guy, I said, I need I need a job. And he says, I can give you part-time hours. Uh he brings me in to help clean the kitchen when they're closed on a Sunday. And he says, I've been sober for 13 years and I can look another person in the eye today. That's out of the blue, he said that to me. I said, I got out of treatment four days ago. He's oh good, we got a recovery meeting here on Tuesdays. Oh, wow. And there's people who are in recovery that hang out in the kitchen. The dishwasher, he's in recovery. I pick him up and bring him in. So all of a sudden I find myself at this restaurant at the University of Rhode Island uh with somebody looking after me. And he would do the things like a couple years into recovery, he'd say, Hey Chris, the students that you guys work here and you did this intermediaral softball team. I know they're doing a party at the end of the semester. Take my car, go to the first hour at four o'clock, come back at five with my car. You know, like I know that you need to have connections with other people your age. You don't need to be there after they've been drinking. What a gift. I'm gonna trust you with trust you with my car. Like and so um yeah. When I go back to Rhode Island, you know, I I uh went to a recovery meeting with Bernie this summer. And uh That's the guy. Yeah, that's uh my my plans are to be up there in August if he's still living because he'll be marking 50 years of recovery, and I want to go to his meeting with him. And and and so I I remember how impactful. I remember telling his emailing his daughter years ago, I said, you know, like my ability to um have a positive, kind of productive role in my local community goes back to people like your dad. Sure. So when people thank me, uh thanks for your help, we also need to thank that recovery ancestor.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

Hey, life is very difficult sometimes. You could be going through relationship problems, you could be having issues at work, you could be struggling with an addiction, depression, anxiety. Um, there are all kinds of reasons why we struggle. And there aren't a lot of resources out there at times when we need immediate help. Yes, there are therapists, yes, there are psychiatrists, but sometimes those waiting lists are long. And just to reach out to somebody, it can be overwhelming. And so I want to recommend to Recovery Alive. Recovery Alive is this faith-based program that you can immediately engage with a community of people who are going to love you and walk you through your struggle. One of the first things you want to do if you want to get involved in this program is get a hold of the Recovery Alive handbook. You can work on this handbook one-on-one with one safe and supportive person, or you could get online, uh, recoveryalive.com, and get into some of our communities. We have groups of gender-specific recovery 12-step processes that you can walk through with safe and supportive people, connect to those folks. Or maybe you're somebody who is trying to get out of a difficult situation, whether you've come out of a rehabilitation uh clinic or we have folks who are coming out of jails and prisons. We have recovery alive homes, safe transition homes. We have all kinds of programming to help you. But if you're watching this or listening to Living on Incline, connect with Recovery Alive. Get a hold of this book, get a hold of maybe one safe and supportive person. Check out our online programming and get the help that you need and get it today. You don't have to suffer alone. Recovery Ancestor. I'm gonna borrow that. That's brilliant.

SPEAKER_02 21:02

And um, and so yeah, so so Bernie's playing this important role, and then other people in the local recovery community. And what is Bernie owns the restaurant? He it was the faculty club at the University of Rhode Island.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

So here's this guy that is managing a faculty club. And I just don't think people know the kind of impact they can have wherever they are. I just think it's a good moment to stop and be like, wherever you are, you're saying the the reason I'm here is that guy.

SPEAKER_03 21:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

And and when I when I whenever I talk to him about this, he says, It's that guy. Aha You know, is what he's saying.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

I like this fellow, Bernie. Yeah. Okay. I love that. Yeah. And so you it's just most people, you know, I think that's the stories that people have is like this person who wasn't like a therapist or Like some guru, but just yeah, a guy who ran, managed a restaurant basically. He was one of the most impactful people just because he he saw me and he poured into me. That's beautiful. Yeah. And I'm sure there's people along the way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:16

So I I end up uh you know, kind of continuing at the University of Rhode Island. I'm majoring in psychology because I'm used to going to see counselors and stuff.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

But that's where your that's where your uh passion was. And so that's what you did. You have anything before that that you wanted to do that, or did it came on?

SPEAKER_02 22:35

I didn't, uh, you know, I didn't envision being alive too long, you know. I mean, it was hard to envision. Didn't have a few future planning going on. Yeah. It was survival, you know, emotional survival and and just getting through. And so with a little bit of recovery, going to meetings, um, got this, you know, building this network. I say, I don't know what a psychology degree means. And the university says, Well, you know, good news is you could take your last semester and just do an internship. There's three places. I interviewed a uh police station that has an education program that was like, I'm not choosing, they're saying here, you can interview at a police station, you can interview at this psychiatric unit for children, and you can interview at this residential recovery program. The residential recovery program is the only one that gave me an internship. Started in September of 1993, four days a week interning at this place, graduate in December of 93, and they hire me. And the field's so bad, you know, like that within a couple months I'm the senior guy on second on second shift. Yeah, everybody's gone.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Yeah, a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

I get that. So that that was kind of the introduction to the field. Start dating a girl that's going to school down in uh North Carolina. So in August of 94, I come down and I interview at a few places, interview at a um a wilderness program for kids. Doesn't exist. It was called Three Springs interview at Orange Person Chat and Mental Health interview at uh someplace out in Alamance and then interviewed a place in Raleigh called Charter Northridge. It used to be on Newton Road. And the director of nursing is underwhelmed by me. You know, I am 23. I am uh, you know, four years in recovery. Uh I don't have an addiction credential. I've got a bachelor's degree. And on my resume, I put that I, you know, administered meds. And she said, Are you a registered nurse? I'm like, no. She's like, I don't know. What in our state, you have to be a registered nurse. I'm like, I don't know. I mean, uh, they tell me the physician assistant tells me to give people Librium when they show up. So that's what I do. Oh, yeah. So she is like not impressed. Yeah. But get this the woman whose physician is being posted, her name's Nancy. Nancy's moving from inpatient case management to intensive outpatient treatment with charter. Nancy's from Rhode Island. Nancy's homesick. Oh, okay. So come back and meet Nancy. Within 90 seconds, you know, Nancy worked at the treatment center I went through. She knew the outpatient council. No way. Right? No way. So all of a sudden I get this job.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 25:15

The person she goes to work for becomes the founding executive director for the healing place, which is what our name was when we opened. So I meet Dennis Parnell in September of 94. I watched him go to ECU to get his master's of social work 1998. I start at ECU, kind of following his experience. He reaches out in 99 and says, Hey, I'm leaving WakeMed. I'm being hired to replicate this model from Louisville called the Healing Place. Let's try to get your second year internship set up. So in August of 99, I start interning uh with the Healing Place of Wake County. Um, graduate in May of 2000, work at Darthia Dix for the summer. And in September of 2000, Dennis hires me as a director of programs, and we open up our men's campus uh January 15th, 2001. And then five years later, he led the effort to open a women's campus uh actually January 16th, 2006, five years, and one day later a women's campus opens up. And so we're marking 25 years of operations at our men's, we're marking 20 years of operations at our women's, or had a board meeting last night was saying, hey, since our last boarding board meeting in March, three men have marked 25 years of recovery. You know, men who'd come in 2001, one woman's marked 20 years of recovery who showed up in March of uh 2006. Um, and I can say that um it has been a blessing. Uh, and it's also been an incredible learning opportunity, like the continuous learning about how to do this. Like, there's nuance to uh always, again, you know, or always a second chance. There's nuance like how do we evaluate when we may need to say maybe another resource is better, right? But what we're not doing is we're not severing the relationship. That's great. We're not telling you like we don't want you anymore, or we don't think you're the right um, you know, we don't believe that you can't get into recovery, but we may have to reevaluate, may not be right for us to say, let's just keep doing the same thing over and over again. So there's just there, I mean, there's tons of nuance. So the other thing I'll say is uh I've you know, I think the work that that a lot of us do in these spaces is very unique, very challenging, sometimes very difficult for people to understand, like the difficult intersection of decisions you have to make, um, the tremendous grief that there can be um with loss, uh, the incredible celebrations, you know, like all just all bundled into one. Yep, you know. And so I've I've watched from afar uh Father Gregory Boyle and Homeboy Industries out in Los Angeles and visited twice and just finished reading a book written by um somebody that came in and helped that organization. But it was helpful in reading this book, The Homeboy Way, because you know, the issues that we're experiencing are not necessarily unique. They come with working with a population that has uh not just substance use disorders, but is often coming with trauma, tons of barriers, you know, uh difficulty in visioning a future, needing a lot of support to overcome those obstacles and barriers to getting um to building a life that they can flourish in and so forth.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

That learned helplessness of just it's not gonna work. It's just not gonna work. Um I I feel like I'm facing that a lot as a therapist and working with folks in in recovery, just breaking that somewhat imaginary barrier. It's real to them, but like going like it's just doesn't matter what I do, nothing works. I feel like that is a hard that might be the hardest thing to convince people to your point when you said, man, I don't feel I wasn't planning my future. I was lizard brain, I was like survival. How do how do we help people see that there's you really do have a future? There there is a tomorrow and it looks like it it could be better than than your current situation. Because I I think that isn't it not not just the the struggle with substance use disorders where it's just like I just just get me to my next coping. I think your story's so good to understand someone like yourself who was you gotta tell me how giving this up is going to be better than what you know, how what are you gonna what am I gonna do with this pain? Yeah, I think Carl Jung said all neurosis is a replacement for legit legitimate suffering. Legitimate suffering is something that I think addiction is a lot about. It's like I just I have to choose this way of suffering without this self-medication. How do you help someone, especially in homelessness, to to believe that they have a future?

SPEAKER_02 30:39

Yeah, I I often describe it as, you know, folks come in and the first kind of challenge is, do I think I can stop using? Like, can I really sustain this? And then sometimes I'll answer that question, like, yeah, I think I can stop using. And then there's kind of like surveying their life and saying, Well, how the hell do I get out of that? Right. How do I survive this? You know, like, all right, I can stop using, but is there a solution to this stuff? Yeah. Um, and so I I've always known that it's been examples of others that help people start to believe, they start seeing it. But I think what I've said recently is that it fosters enough belief to take some action, right? So you got to go from believing to some sort of action.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Isn't that the importance of the steps? Like a pro I talked about this the other Friday night was it's great to have this power greater than yourself where you're like, I believe that I can put my trust in something bigger than me. I need to, I need to surrender this way I'm doing things. It's insanity. And then having safe and supportive people. But how I think, to your point, how important is it to go like, I have a next step for you? I have a process, just a baby step you can take.

SPEAKER_02 31:58

That's huge, right? Yeah, that that initial step and what that can look like is anything from I'm gonna go ahead and make that appointment with that provider, you know, or I'm gonna, you know, choose to this problem been neglecting for a long time. I'm gonna choose to address it. Or I'm gonna go to that meeting with that person, or I'm gonna sit down and actually make that call and figure out are there warrants out there for me? You know, like like that's tough. You you get it, you see with others that you start to believe that it's working for them, maybe it can work for me. And do I believe that enough to take that, whatever that step may look like for that person? And you know, I think of people like Tisha and Casey, and you know, like their ability and all the kind of wounded healers out there, right? The all the people who can take this is where I was, this is where I am, this is how I'm living today. And to your point, when we were talking before we started, uh, not forgetting yourself in the process.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

I was gonna ask you about that because you you said I had a an initial thought of like, I want to fix this and then move on and have a life and a girlfriend, and not like this is when I would needed recovery and then the rest of my life. And like we say in our program that recovery, surrender is a lifestyle, it's a lifestyle that you live. Um, is that something you're you're still doing? Is uh it sounds like you're connecting to people who have been influential in your life and still seeking that guidance, going to meetings. Um, how is recovery still a part of your ongoing life, yours? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:47

You know, like I think this is a thing that I often think about um like when I was speaking uh at this uh event, like could 18, 19 year old Chris recognize himself in this Chris who's speaking. Wow. Like because that Chris really immature in a lot of ways, like just in how life works and kind of wanting quick solutions, where today's Chris says, Hey, this is a lifelong journey. And guess what? There are different gifts and freedoms that come from sticking with this. Yeah. And at some point, like I just there were things that I just wanted to be fixed and done with. And I don't know if somebody said, like, hey, Chris, this will never be fixed, but it will get better. Like, I don't know if somebody, if somebody had said that to me, if that would have scared me off or not. So I sometimes in mentoring other men in recovery, I'm like, I hope I'm not scaring you off by saying, like, yeah, with this much recovery, I struggle with this. You know, I'm having a tough time uh, you know, reconciling whatever. Or I just had uh, you know, over the last somebody asked me, what's been impactful over the last year? Well, what's been impactful is further healing with my family and the recognition of how lucky I am that they are so uh they have given me so much grace. They're not like, yeah, you were difficult brother, you were a difficult son, were resentful. They're like very generous with me about those things. And like, yeah, we just want you to be happy. We're glad that you're a part of our lives and so forth. Those types of things that are still happening today, you know. Um, like I'm a little bit mindful, like, I don't know about for you, but like for me, this is a continuous process. I don't mean to scare you by saying that in 15 years from now you're still gonna be wrestling through issues and trying to get peace and trying to find healing. But the the my experience is simply, and if I guess truthfully to that counselor's question that I asked, when am I gonna be happy? If you make this decision each day, what you're doing is you're making a decision to pursue that answer. Whereas staying in your addiction and using and things like that is and that lady told you.

SPEAKER_00 36:18

I'm not sure. I think that's refreshing to you. That was like something connected. It was truthful. So I I don't know how to answer the question of whether that's intimidating or overwhelming to it, but I think authenticity and honesty in a relationship with a mentor, a sponsor, or counselor is like gold to have somebody not give you platitudes or the writ answer, but go like, yeah, man, it's hard. And to be able to say it's hard for me still. I think that's it's that me too movement stuff, man. It's it is like we're in this together, man. I'm still a person who needs a higher power. I'm more than ever before. I'm you know, I'm going through a daily inventory, going like, uh, sometimes I don't like eat. And I'm seriously saying this out loud as it like right now. I look at the myself and look at the mirror and go like, man, I don't, I've got a lot of work to do. I've been at this a while. And um, and so I do, I think that's refreshing to hear other people say that. You know, I I just sitting here talking to you, like it I used to go to a Thursday lunch meeting in Smithfield, and um I probably need to go back to that. It is so refreshing just to to be in a group and not be the guy I'm sure you know you're known in the community, yeah. Um, and just to go somewhere else and just be a guy in uh in a in a circle of chairs, and I I here's where I'm struggling still.

SPEAKER_02 37:50

Um my friend Dan always emphasizes that he says just be another bozo on the bus, you know, like people can see you as that. And and because we are, you know.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Oh, that's a good thing. So you're right now at I think one of the great models for uh not just one specific issue, like struggling with substance use disorder, but like the whole person walking in who's homeless, who can have a true experience with people who are committed to all these always is like it's gonna be free for you, and it always will be. There's always room for you and there's second chances here, and there's community. I um what's next for you guys? Because you're doing some amazing things, but you what I love about what you what you do is you're like, well, how many more people I think can we serve? I think that's a big focus right now. Uh, because I don't think that you've hit a place where you're like, I think we're serving everybody who needs help right now. Right. There's always room for uh we'll never work to the place where we don't have customers, right? Right. And so how are you expanding what you guys are doing? What's what's the future look like for healing transitions?

SPEAKER_02 39:17

Before I answer that, I just want to thank you because you're helping me think about this always tagline and love it. And like the what is it, what belief does that encompass? And I think the evolution sitting here right now is that you know, we're always gonna believe that you're deserving of recovery. We're always gonna believe that you're deserving of uh transformation and restoration and healing. Like that resonates. I think like I'm gonna take that back to work and say we need to think about like they that's all we're always gonna be in your corner wanting, you know.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

I get emotional. Like when I read that, ooh, that's it, man. That's that's the work, is is looking people in the eye and be like, we got you, and it's not gonna change, you know.

SPEAKER_02 40:02

I think that's because there's there's there's one guy that is kind of a connection for Tisha and I, you know, and and so she's like talking about him. He made this decision, but so I assume he's back at the men's campus, right? This is like his third time, and um it's like love you one, I love you. They told me in social work school, don't say that. I love you, man, and I'm glad that you're here. And I believe that you're learning from each thing, right? Each time, each each previous attempt has been practiced for today, and you're gonna get better and you're here. And so this idea of how we think about success, how we think about progress, how we celebrate um the good moments and the you know, steps forward and how we don't shame or judge people for when they're struggling or have a setback. So that's one. But as I look at, all right, we've been in operations for 25 years. What's 25 years look like from now? Two biggest things. Number one is how do we go further in supporting people, right? Like it's one thing to bring them to here and say, we've helped you stop using and get an entry-level job and get into recovery housing, you know. Yeah. What do you need to flourish in your life? You know, flourish. That's a word, that's a that's an important word. Yeah. So I'm recovery ancestors, flourishing. These are not my concepts. Bill White, you know, so when what you're decide to borrow, I'm borrowing. There we go. Right. Um, but Bill's recently challenged our field to think about flourishing, like in how do we think about um staying with people long enough and having kind of strategic intentional efforts to create conditions in which people can do that. Right. And so I think we never stay with people long enough to help them be as successful as they can be. This year I've focused on like, okay, what is it that our alumni need? So I watched. Oh, that's good. I watched uh, you know, our workforce model is largely hiring people who've been through the program, right? So I watched one of our uh staff members uh recently just get her MSW just a couple weeks ago. First person to go to school in her family. When she was working on her undergraduate, she hit a roadblock, didn't have enough money to finish the semester. Yeah, my last semester don't have enough money to finish it. And helped solve the problem. You know, I went to people in the F3 community, the fitness fellowship faith community, and got money pulled together to help her finish her semester. But it's like that can't be the one-off solution for each. So, like, how do we think about the dreams that people have, the support that they need to get there? So good. And, you know, like over the last week, you know, I've had two people reach out to me saying, hey man, I'm really concerned about uh moving forward in this company and what my criminal record looks like. And at what point does my criminal background stop progression in my career?

SPEAKER_00 43:27

I hit a ceiling.

SPEAKER_02 43:28

Yeah. What can we do with expunctions? You know, how do we how do we start looking at what is it that people need once they get out of our program to help them live as fully and pause as possible?

SPEAKER_00 43:46

Where did that come from? Uh like talk about for me with Recovery Live, I'm I'm like, I I haven't spent enough time thinking about that. Like it's great, people get through the process and they get sober and they But then yeah, how do we how yeah, how do we follow up and have a system to do that? So how does it go where did that come from for you? Where did that just recovering marriage is a game changer if you want to either save your marriage or simply strengthen it? If you want to take your marriage from good to great, or if your marriage is in real trouble, either way, recovering marriage can be extremely beneficial. One of the ways that you can use this resource, recovering marriage, is you can get involved in our online recovering marriage groups. You can plug into those groups at recoveryalive.com. Also, if your church wants to get a group started, you can get a hold of this book and our leadership material of how to run a recovering marriage group in your church. These groups take about 14 to 16 weeks. They're based on the 12 commitments of recovering marriage. And I'm telling you, so far, everything we've heard about these things is we are seeing marriages saved. We're seeing divorce papers being torn up, we're seeing recommitments, vow renewals. It's been absolutely epic what we've seen happen as people work through the 12 commitments of recovering marriage. We also are having weekend intensives. If your church is interested in having a full day intensive of recovering marriage, for us to come in and lead an entire day of working through the 12 commitments, we'd love to come to your church and your community and run one of those intensives. You can get all of this information at recoveryalive.com. You can go on uh Amazon and get this book as well if you just want to research it a little bit. The 12 commitments of recovering marriage are changing lives. Check it out today.

SPEAKER_02 45:49

There's two things that have been helpful to me. One is, you know, the obvious of just watching stuff over years and kind of thing. But what's been incredibly helpful to me, particularly over the last decade, is becoming part of a, in some ways, like a peer, like a mentor group for one another. So my friends Jason and Matt up in Michigan, who've been doing this work in a different state with, you know, my friend Brian, my friend Shane, you know, and us spending time regularly communicating, sharing readings, you know, there's daily text going on, you know, here's this thing that's happening, you know, this article that just came out. And getting out of my silo and learning from uh, you know, has been one of the most beneficial things for healing transitions. And it's what I encourage our staff to do is, you know, get out of your lane and interact with people doing other stuff so that you can see and learn. And so, you know, from this group of men that have become really important to me, it's, you know, uh I mean, even to the point that we now meet um once a year over the last four years at St. Francis Springs Retreat Center up in Stoneville. That's great. And we do a three-day kind of addiction recovery retreat retreat, which is some continuing education, but mostly just like spending time together, you know, is learning from them that we've never really stuck with people long enough for them just to be successful with recovery, let alone to kind of build a life. And unfortunately, society tends to blame the individual when they're not successful. And we haven't, you know, like we're kind of asking them to perform miracles by saying, Here's this like short duration of engagement we're doing with you, and go back into your community.

SPEAKER_00 47:40

And it can organically happen like it did with you.

SPEAKER_02 47:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:44

But yeah, but not systemically. Right.

SPEAKER_02 47:46

Exactly. So one of the kind of ways we're doing this also specifically at our uh women's campus is we we faced a dilemma as a as an organization, which was uh population's growing, demand for services is growing. If you have a model that says you don't turn people away, eventually like your aquarium gets too full. Yep. And it becomes unhealthy for everyone in the aquarium. So we're like, do we start turning people away or do we increase our capacity? So we we launched this campaign called Recovery Can't Wait. There's an urgency. There's an urgency because the amount of people showing up is growing, and we don't have we got mats on the floor, we got people sleeping on the floor, you know, and this just isn't sustainable long term. So in the process of that campaign, we approach a family foundation asking for support for it. This may resonate with you. You've got a personal connection to this. And they were generous and they were like, Yeah, we'll help that, but really we're we're interested in your women's community and and what you're doing for women. What do you need at your women's campus that's separate from this? And we'd spent time thinking about it, and we said, you know, like recovery housing apartments, like apartments for women when they finish our program that's located at our women's campus that allows their children to be there with them. That's because and short short answer is we're not even done one fundraising for the last campaign. Construction is what a few years from being done. And they're already coming saying, Well, we'll pledge a million dollars to this idea. So it was kind of hard to say no, we won't do this. So a million dollars is enough to say we're gonna we're gonna seriously look at it into this. Yeah. So the the vision became like, particularly for women when they finish the program, like, and if they have kids, it just becomes exponentially just more challenging. Yeah. Right. So reunifying, huge, often public transportation, getting to work, taking care of your own recovery, you get stretched real thin, you lose connection with our women's campus because there's no recovery housing nearby. You got to catch buses, like more than one connection to get out there. So we just said if we have something here, we can then extend the amount of time where we're supporting women with a different phase of their journey. Okay. Right. And there's going to be this benefit of think of the woman that's in detox or in the recovery program who's like wondering at today would be wondering, where do I go from here? Yep. You know, and we, you know, we love the resources that are out there. We love Oxford House. We love, but a lot of times women are like, I'm moving back to my local community. Sure. Or they'll go to a place like Passage Home, which is a wonderful nonprofit. But the apartments at a passage home, they give you your own place, but the culture is not recovery oriented. So how do you blend more housing? Yeah. How do you blend like the strengths of different resources out there? So you have an apartment style solution that's in a recovery-oriented environment. And so what what could that mean? Like, what could that mean? What will we discover about how to better support those women and their children? And does that have any impact on the kids? Does it help them be more successful at school? Does it reduce their risk for, you know, behavioral health, substance use, other health issues going forward? How do we be more intentional about that? So that's so we've got this uh construction project going on, should be done in early 2027. 17 units with 42 beds, so they're two bedroom, four-bedroom units. Um special. Yeah, but you know, how how can we how can we help people build a build a life, you know.

SPEAKER_00 52:02

And that happened. You you weren't necessarily going like this is our next step, but with your donors, yeah, it's almost this thing begin begins to take priority, becomes a front burner, and all of a sudden you're going like, Yeah, this is what something we should do.

SPEAKER_02 52:16

Yeah, and and the you know, like the context is like one dealing with overcrowding and how long can we do this. And this happening during COVID.

SPEAKER_00 52:27

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:28

And this happening during a time when overdose deaths are surging, suicides are increasing, and the amount of I mean, it you're so focused as a s organization. We uh me staff are so focused on the crisis at hand that there's like not a capacity to think more strategically long term. Putting out fires. So this this donor's family foundation, their forward thinking helped kind of pull us away from what's the immediate need to what could be, which is a great thing.

SPEAKER_00 53:02

Well, it's great to have all these entities. And I that was another part of the webpage I thought that was great, is all the partnerships. It wasn't specific. I mean, you have those things taken apart, specific churches and specific fitness communities, but you have those categories of partners. Well, I think that's beautiful. So it's these community partnerships that are equally important with the faith community or the business community or the you know the fitness community. I I think that's key to all of this. And the I'll say the the word is humility to be able to listen to other perspectives and not to get myopic and like this is this is how we do it, and you guys don't know what you're talking about. Just go, huh? We hadn't thought about that before.

SPEAKER_02 53:49

Yeah, I think our organization uh had ended up in that spot in the mid-2010s. Okay, you know, like uh we know what we're doing. This is our lane, this is our lane, you know, and um and then kind of discovering like you know, we're really shortchanging ourselves by not looking outward, you know, not learning from others. And I think the culture has changed tremendously um around that in in a lot of ways. The second, like the next thing, you know, there's the service, what's next with services, what's next with thinking about how we serve people. There's also how do we think about the sustainability of the organization? And again, some of this kind of like reading this Homeboy Way book recently kind of validated some of my recent kind of instincts, which is we're we're a really unique organization. You you know, very few organizations out there are comprised of former customers, right? Yeah, oh yeah, that's right. You know, and and the yeah, we're not making ice, you know, right? There's a lot of variables. It's not a simple process. You're often deciding, you know, things that can be life and death for people. How do we balance safety of the group for the welfare of the individual and all those sort of things? But for what I've come to believe, and it's not that folks who didn't come through the program or didn't have that experience aren't important in the organization, but I see the future of healing transitions coming from developing the alumni who work for us into leaders. And so we've invested this year in an emerging leaders journey program uh facilitated by this guy, uh Bill Peterson, who's a entrepreneurial operating system EOS consultant and is working with us around EOS for the organization. But it's like we need to invest, you know, like we take you as somebody, you get through the program, you're looking for a job, you want to give back, you want to be helpful, you come to work in our program, and then a position opens up that requires you to supervise services or and you've moved into that, but you're never getting any training along the way. You're never getting any kind of and doing and doing this emerging leaders' journey cohort is you're creating uh a shared um culture and a shared uh framework for thinking among this layer of leaders that want to roll into the next layer put them through this training. I love that. So you know, like uh I'm I'm grateful to be where I am, but like this needs to go beyond current leadership and and so I think this sustainability with a with a blend of folks coming from business experience and so forth, but is developing those people with the the passion for the mission.

SPEAKER_00 57:02

Yeah, and I was just talking to somebody this morning about legacy and the legacy of an organization or a ministry and how the how do we leave whatever organization that we are involved with better than when we started, and that it's going to not just maintain beyond us, but grow beyond us and have folks who are uh free to take risks and try new things because this culture, like to your point, this culture that we're in of addiction and mental health is just constantly changing. And uh I get we're gonna be talking about uh this with Sam Kinones here in the next uh podcast about and he wrote Dreamland, which was the opioid crisis. Well, then the least of us was like, okay, and well now meth, fentanyl, xylosine, and just how fast things change. It's great. We almost put the thumb in the damn here, and then out comes another one. What what are you seeing right now? What's what are your biggest challenges today? Talking about putting out fires. What do you see right now as like your the biggest challenges people on the street are facing or who are homeless? Um folks who are struggling with addictions, um people coming in. What what are the things you're seeing today that are like this is what this is what we're seeing, this is what our our the people we're serving are really struggling with today.

SPEAKER_02 58:34

I think a coup a couple things, and one of the ways I want to answer this is a little bit different than different focus, but like we've done some community programs over the last eight years. One has been a post-overdose response program with uh EMS. Yep, I love that. Yeah, I love what they do. The other has been a pilot project with the city of Raleigh for uh folks who are unsheltered. So one of the things that the us participating in those two types of services has raised my awareness of and maybe the the organization's awareness of is the challenges of people who are less likely to show up at your doorstep. Yep. Uh the isolation, the in also intrusion of society in a sense like there's a lot of executive orders and focus on cleaning up cities and public safety, and all those things are incredibly legitimate and important, but are challenging at a time where, you know, do we just want to keep trespassing people and moving them the problem somewhere else in the community? So there's those things. I mean, in a lot of ways, you know, there is been improvement with overdose. Um, we know that things go in cycles and so forth. When I first hear the question, like, what's the number one thing that, you know, like that I'm worried about or I'm focused on? And it's really like the sustainability of the people doing the work. That's exactly right. And, you know, like I don't want to take somebody with a lot of passion enthusiasm and then squeeze every last bit out of it, and then they're back kind of.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:23

It's great to have that awareness, man. I I just part of my CU process, you know, we gotta get eight um 40 hours every two years, right? I had to do uh something on burnout but vicarious trauma.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:38

And boy, did that, I was like, I gotta work on that part. Yeah, people Tara Tucker was on our our uh Living on Incline and uh port team stuff, and just like paramedics, and like they're saying, man, I've I've hit this guy with Narcan like four times last week, and here we are again. And just like, oh geez, it I get it. You just you have so you have these folks who are your alumni who are the people who are they're next. How do you take care of those folks? I I that's a that's a wonderful answer.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:15

Yeah, yeah. And so the thing that causes me the most kind of pain or pressure right now is around, you know, it's been difficult finance season for just operations, you know, a lot of federal cuts have had downstream effects. Um, and so I've always wanna strive to be a living wage organization. My friend Steve Swain says, hey, you want your people to be able to afford to live in the community where they that they serve. And if that's not happening, you're gonna have people moving out into surrounding communities, and they're not part they're not embedded in the community that they're serving. So like really trying to focus on how do we get to uh a living wage for our staff, how do we that that the financial part's a big one, and then there's the how do you survive the vicarious trauma, the secondary trauma, the and like remembering like you know, you've got your own kind of responsibility to your own well-being. You know. So we do we do we've done lots of different things to try to kind of figure out solutions to that. So we've got a retreat program for people to get some respite at St. Francis. We've got a mentor program where we'll pay somebody to be an external mentor who can kind of coach you and be a sounding board that's not your paid supervisor, actually, and things like that. So genius.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:47

Well, I it's a good uh opportunity for us to close out by saying we want to support those efforts, man. And um, how can people who are watching support you financially? What are some opportunities, ways for for folks to give to this organization that just it's worth it? It is a phenomenal investment. How can they give to your all this organization?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:13

Yeah, one of the one of the if you live nearby uh our men's campus is near uh the farmer's market or women's campus is out off 70, come by and take a tour. It doesn't need doesn't need to be scheduled. You know, if you just drop in, say, and it's told I could get a tour around here. We love people to kind of see what's going on because just like as I was making myself late here, it was because I was doing a construction walkthrough and it's going from the dr drawings, which give you one reality, to being in the space. And so you can go to our website or you can listen to this and you'll get some understanding, but you know, coming and seeing is a different understanding. Good. We have uh you know different events, so this um probably be past, but we've got uh a carry the light memorial walk going on. We've got in the fall, we'll have a uh dinner that Chef uh Scott Crawford is doing on uh October 4th. Uh we've got an alumni that's put on. This will be year nine of the Oakwood 24, which is a 24-hour walk run. You don't have to walk a run for 24 hours, but hopefully you can come out and pass the baton. Be part of that community. Uh we have people that sign up to be monthly donors. We have different campaigns that go on, and then we also have an endowment. So we have a board of trustees that is comprised largely of former board chairs, but not exclusively. And they manage an endowment, which they're trying to grow and get to a place where folks, well, that money can return on that can be put back into operations, or even do things like, you know, some grants or some micro loans to alumni to help them build out their life. So plan giving around that uh isn't is another way people can get involved. But I always just mainly like to say that the most useful thing that people can do is, you know, kind of come to believe in recovery, you know, and uh and and believe that that's possible and that people are deserving of that.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:18

Deserving of that. It's beautiful. And I believe you. Yeah, I do, man. This is good. I I feel like I've I don't know, it's been a while. We have great people on the podcast, but it's been a while since I feel like I've learned so much. And I'm gonna take a lot away from us. I'm just grateful for you and the work that you do. I there's a lot of worthy organizations, but man, you guys are special. So thank you for what you're doing in our community, my community, and uh thanks for doing this, spending some time, and uh I'll take you up on that tour. Absolutely. I haven't been yet, so I'm gonna show up and hang out, man. Thank you very much, Chris. Thank you for helping. Hope we come back, man. This is Living Hunning Climate. Share, like, all that kind of stuff. Subscribe. We appreciate you guys. And thanks again to Chris. Hey, thanks again for joining us the Living On Incline sponsor by recovery like. Would you do us a favor and just hit that subscribe button share with your friends again? We wanna make it more again.