MAT, Recovery & Finding Common Ground | Benjamin Lerner

In this episode of Never Alone Live, Johnny Hayes and Krista "Sober Barbie" Flanders sit down with recovery advocate, musician, and content creator Benjamin Lerner for an honest conversation about medication-assisted treatment (MAT), recovery pathways, stigma, and the importance of meeting people where they are.

Drawing from both personal experience and years of advocacy, Benjamin shares his perspective on Suboxone, abstinence-based recovery, harm reduction, recovery culture, and why the recovery community is often stronger when it focuses on helping people rather than debating who is doing recovery "the right way."

Whether you're in recovery, supporting a loved one, or simply interested in understanding the evolving landscape of addiction recovery, this episode offers a thoughtful and compassionate discussion about hope, recovery, and saving lives.

Never Alone Live shares real conversations about addiction, recovery, mental health, and the stories that remind us we are never alone.

Transcript

0:08

Welcome, welcome, welcome everyone to Never Alone Live, where we get a new intro every week, and that's gonna be the intro for a while, I think. Uh um, as usual, I'm Johnny, and this is uh Krista, the sober Barbie. And today we are honored to have our guest uh Benjamin Lerner here. Benjamin Lerner is a uh is a recovery out loud uh you know and musician, and uh his music is phenomenal, and he is an advocate for everything recovery, just like us. And uh and Ben, how are you, my friend? Oh, God bless y'all. You guys are too kind. I'm just a tired dude who forgot to shave today and is overwhelmed, but you guys are the best. I'm doing good, man. I'm tired but inspired. How about y'all? Tired but inspired. That sounds like uh sounds like a lot of us. Um very fitting for today. Very fitting for today. You know, uh, Ben, this month we are focused specifically on talking about Matt. Um, spicy, let's go. I know, uh medically assisted treatment. It's a very controversial topic, but uh, you know, we uh this is something that I think everybody needs to talk about because it is uh it is saving lives. And uh last week, last week we shared some numbers, and uh the numbers were staggering, you know, all about um you know mortality rates, and you know, there's is recovery is one thing, but keeping people alive is another thing, and uh you know Matt has is specifically helped people to stay alive. Um so let's get into this. Tell me your experience with uh medically assisted treatment. I think we have to sharply make a distinction at the beginning. If you're down with it, your show. I'm humbled, grateful to be here. But let's differentiate my lived experience from my lived experience seeing other people who have succeeded on medication-assisted treatment. I want to make a very clear delineation, demarcation line in the sand between what happened with me and what I have overarchingly seen in terms of people with multiple relapses, attempts at traditional Minnesota abstinence-based treatment, who have been on medication-assisted treatment, meaning Suboxin methadone, vivitrol, sublicade, brixati, naltrexone, vivitrol injections, all of those things. I always like to say medication-assisted treatment did not fail me, and I am not in abstinence-based recovery because medication-assisted treatment failed me. I was not the right candidate for medication-assisted treatment. Now, what I mean by this is the first time I went to treatment was New Year's Eve of 2012 into January of 2013. And after that, a year and a half later, and that was not a Suboxan or MAT treatment thing. It was an inpatient Father Martin's Ashley, super old school, like semi-religious, definitely 12-step-based treatment center. Didn't work for me. I wasn't ready. A year and a half later, I was much more desperate. I had graduated to IV use, and in the fall of 2014, I went into an outpatient treatment facility and they onboarded me because I was shooting multiple grams of dope a day on 24 milligrams of suboxing. And what ended up happening is that it stated my cravings and made it so that I wasn't throwing up. It made me able to function in my daily life, but I kept relapsing. And it wasn't the fault of the Suboxan or the MAT program because there were multiple people who got onboarded boarded on lower doses or the same dose, IV, intranasal, oral tablet, opioid takers, heroin users, fentanyl hadn't really hit on the East Coast yet. So it was heroin at that point. Um, and they were all successful because for them, for whatever reason, the chemical dependency element being met was enough that with treatment, therapy, some of them going to the rooms on top of that, they were able to taper down or go on extended dosage or whatever and stay sober from their drugs of choice. And a lot of them ultimately ended up going to abstinence. But for me, the pure chemical dependency thing was not enough. I would still be shooting dope in the parking lot on the break between the two therapy groups, not because suboxin is a bad medication. It's a flawed medication, like all medications. There's no medications that have no side effects. There's no substances that have no side effects. It's a miracle for some people, it's not for others. But I didn't even have any bad side effects from Suboxin other than precipitated withdrawal when I onboarded too quickly after a couple of my relapses at treatment. And that was gnarly, but um outpatient treatment, I mean. But I say all that complicated stuff to say that my experience with suboxin, and the reason I am a person who's proud of being chemically absent recovery, is not that I consider suboxin recovery not sober, not recovery, but I could not stay off my drugs of choice purely on suboxin because in order to address the underlying mental health, neurodivergency issues, and ultimately, I believe, emotional and spiritual issues that were making me, even when my receptors were full from this medication, go and shoot dope and smoke crack in the parking lot. Um, I had to do a traditional abstinence recovery-based thing. Now, and and I'm sorry if I'm gonna go on on this, but again, I have to double down for anybody who's watching, they're gonna, oh, he's an MAT hater. I'm not. Because in that same breath, as you said, it keeps people alive. But more than that, I think something that doesn't get talked about enough is if abstinence is somebody's goal in their recovery, but they're a parent, they work a job, their insurance doesn't cover a traditional 30, 60, 90, or one-year inpatient stay. And if you work a job or you don't have like elite-level blue cross insurance or etna or whatever it is, you're not gonna get into a like a year-long or 90-day treatment center to be able to pay for that. And you're not gonna be able to have like sober housing, take time away from your job, like curfews and all this stuff. So, especially with fentanyl, carfentanyl, nidosines, xylazine, tranch dope, metatomidine, all these things, even though I got sober in 2016, Tranc wasn't in at the level it is. FEDI was hit in the streets. I shot a fair share of FEDI dope for a couple months, but it's a completely different landscape. And so to expect people who are in critical fentanyl, xylazine, metatomidine, any type of illicit, like high-level, 50 times morphine plus dependency with a seven to 14-day detox program and no taper or medication after that, to have the same shot at abstinence that you know, dope users or alcoholics or like prescription pill users were having in the 90s or the 2000s, is I think regardless of your thoughts on what's clean and sober and what isn't, pragmatically, you have to look at the outcomes and the statistics and and see MAT as a valid form of recovery. I'm sorry if I went way too far with that spiel, but I just wanted to make sure people know not at all. And I thank you, thank you for clarifying. I want to ask a question, Ben. And I was never on any form of Matt. And I hear in the streets, you know, that you're not considered clean if you're on Matt because it's uh it gives you some sort of high. I want to ask the question, what it what does it do? What does Suboxin do? What did Suboxen do? I know that you didn't you didn't stay clean or you didn't get your your sobriety because of it, but you you were an H user, and let's say that you know for on a zero to 10 scale, H is a 10, okay? You take Suboxin to get off the H. What is that on that scale? I didn't even really feel anything other than not puking. Like, like, listen, okay? I I gotta be real about this, and and I don't care who I piss off because people on the harm reduction side hate me because they think I'm harm reduction light. People on the abstinence side hate me because some of them think I'm he must be on Matt for him to support Matt. So I really don't care what people think of me. Um, I'm just gonna tell the truth. I've seen people get high on diverted buprenorphine and methadone, but that is a very, very small minority. Um, the one instance of it, funnily enough, I actually saw was in rehab that I actually witnessed. There was a kid who was in there for alcohol because he had really strict parents, and he clearly, I mean, you know, you never know, but he was clearly not an alcoholic. He didn't go through any withdrawal at all. He was just a party drug user, and it was like a joke that who's this 18-year-old kid is his super strict parents sent him here. Anyway, long story short, um, he traded a carton of cigarettes for someone's cheeked subutex, and he took it with no previous opioid experience, and he got skyrocketed, six flags like Sandusky, Ohio 400-foot roller coaster high. He was tweaking, he was he was he was on a tweak and he was bugged out like zombie. But that's not the person who is a candidate to receive Suboxin. Okay. So when I was shooting multiple grams of dope a day, when they put me on my first eight milligram strip and the precipitated withdrawal, because I'm gonna take a break from this to explain what suboxin is, and and I'm not the best scientist. So anybody who's in the comments who's actually a medical practitioner, feel free to comment and say he got this right, he got this wrong. But there's in terms of opioids, what opioids do is they mimic um endogenous morphine. If anybody has ever heard endorphin, that's that is shorthand for endogenous morphine. And so your brain already produces, I believe, thebane, different codeine alkaloids, different morphine and morphanine alkaloids within your brain that release different chemicals for the brain's function and the body's overall function. So the same way that benzoycognine, aka cocaine, and mDMA replicate high levels of dopamine and serotonin, respectively, when you use any opioid, be it a mu opioid or a delta opioid, like kratomin 70H or one type, and then there's the opium poppy and synthetic stuff that hits the other receptors. I'm not sure which is mu and which is delta. I'm not going to go there, but there's two basic types of opioids. What suboxin is, is it is a partial agonist. Okay? So dope, fai, all those things are full-on agonists. They trick the um the neurological system into releasing high amounts of opioid chemicals by replicating a synaptic thing that gets all these chemicals to drop. What suboxin, and then it fills these receptors and you feel a certain amount of euphoria, your depression, your nervous system depression, your respiratory depression goes down. What suboxin does is it is a partial agonist. So what it does is it basically is a, in many ways, a miracle drug because it states these, when you go into opioid withdrawal, your opioid receptors are essentially like crying out in hunger or thirst, needing to be filled to achieve homeostasis in your body. So what Suboxin does is it goes on to those receptors and it doesn't get you high if those receptors are already crying out, because it's only there to meet like a homeostatic equilibrium and bring you back. It is not capable of inducing high states of euphoria in an opioid tolerant user. And so on the continuum, you have opioid agonists like dopemorphine, diluted, like viking, whatever. Then you have suboxin. And then actually, if you look on this graph from agonist, partial agonist, antagonist, you have narcane. So the reason suboxen is called suboxone and not subutext or just buprenorphine, which is the chemical, is because suboxone is actually sublingual buprenorphine and naloxone. And if you get the name brand strips, what you actually get is either if it's a two-milligram strip or an eight milligram strip, you get a ratio of naloxone in the actual strip, which prevents any excess opioid receptor stimulation from happening. So every single person who's getting stabilized is getting a simultaneous dose of oral and sublingual narcan, naloxone, essentially. So that actually prevents you from reaching a dopamine or endogenous morphine peak and getting high. So when I was taking this strip, what it honestly felt like is it felt like I had I had shot dope like six hours earlier and I was at the point where I was about to be sick, but I wasn't quite sick yet. There was no euphoria, there was no craving. It was it was purgatory, essentially. My my system had been brought back to a homeostatic medium where I was not craving, I was not euphoric. And personally, for me, um it actually sapped my ability to feel, and everybody's different. Don't take this as gospel, it sapped my ability to feel like normal dopamine peaks. Like smoking cigarettes didn't hit the same, eating meals and exercising didn't hit the same because my system had been equalized through this opioid system. And that might not be for everybody, but it it nullified my body's excitatory response to being an opioid withdrawal, but it didn't get me high. So if someone, if someone has like never taken opioids and they take an eight milligram suboxin strip, they're gonna be loaded. But if someone has any type of opioid habit and they take the amount of Suboxin that a clinical physician or like detox specialist prescribes relative to them being honest about their habit, you're not gonna get high at all. You're just not. And and anybody who is using that as an excuse that diverted bupe is like a way to get high, uh lived experience aside, I think doesn't really have a grasp of the science. Their intentions might be good in wanting people to have the same sobriety, spiritual experience, life-changing, whatever, and and that's up to them. But within the science, it's it's it's literally not doing the same thing as dope or fetti or like pills are doing. That is that's amazing. And thank, dude, Ben, you're I love you, brother. You are easier, man. I'm sorry, I'm gonna get long drawn out because we need to talk about these things. This is, I'm telling you, I am so excited that you're here and and you're so knowledgeable about this. And you know, this is like like we talked about, we started off. This is a controversial topic, and I honestly think that people are scared of it because they don't know about it, they don't know these facts. Here I am, I'm an old man, you know. I've been in I've been in recovery for a long time, but I've been straight AA and straight fed the book, and you know, and I'll be honest, I was judgmental towards Matt. I didn't know anything about Suboxing, I didn't know nothing about methadone, I don't know nothing about opiates, but here I am. I'm gonna judge based off of you know popular opinion, which says that the, you know, oh well, you're just gonna get high on something else, you're gonna just uh switch addictions, you know, and uh by actually coming on here and talking and hearing you talk so eloquently, but be honestly, about this stuff um is uh is crucial to I think everybody involved in recovery. Well, thank you. And I want to make one key difference here as well, which is I think that although people would still feel stigmatized and maybe the harm reduction and MAT community don't want to take the conversation here, for the sake of transparency and objective clarity, let's make the difference between switching one addiction to another to switching one dependency to another. Let me put it this way. So when I switched from dope and fatty dope, depending on whether it was 2014, 2016, at the end I was shooting fentanyl and like Trank from like New York or Philly. At the end, well, not tank, but fentanyl, fentanyl, fentanyl's dope when it was hitting with the supply. But in 2014, when I first onboarded, it was just heroin. Um, when I switched heroin for subs, the chemical dependency was being sated, but the whole reason I wasn't able to stay sober on it is because the addiction part was not like some people do abuse the boxing or subutex, usually subutext, not suboxing, um, and they shoot it or they snippet it or whatever. It's not pleasurable to do that. I haven't done it. It's not an usually an addict's preference to do that, because it's not the most euphoric thing. Some people do, but but the point is the reason I think it's kind of a catch 22, right? Is because if someone who is an an addict like me does not have the addiction part, like let's say someone who is even like an AA big book thumper is like, okay, well, yeah, they're away from their drug of choice, but they're not sober. In this objective experiment, someone gets off a dope, stops drinking too, right? And then they get on Suboxin, but then they go shoot dope, that's still considered a relapse on their drug of choice. You see what I'm saying here? Like, if someone's on psych meds, if someone's on like Depacode or like lithium or something, and then they go like smoke, smoke meth, that that that would be it's a completely different thing, but that meth relapse would be different from their chemical dependency on a substance that is supposed to regulate their stuff. So, yes, it is swapping one dependency out for another, but unless someone is using Suboxin, misusing it, and intentionally like IVing it or sniffing it with like emotional and spiritual, like addictive tendencies, it's kind of apples and oranges because I understand the whole NAA thing of like the allergy, one is too many, like I understand that. And for some people's lived experience, that is certainly true, and there's validity to those people's lived experiences. But I find it interesting that if you look at like the um the stories throughout, you know, the big books different editions, you will find people who do use psych meds in those in those things, and they don't, they're not like the the gentleman with the ounce of whiskey and the milk. It's not like they take one depicote pill and they're off to the races. Like there is a separate thing for that because it is prescribed by a physician to really allow them to be sober. And also in the big book, you have the chapter about the gentleman, it's when one of the stories, or or it, or it might be in, I forget, um, but you have the gentleman who was drinking a pot of coffee a day and chain smoking cigarettes, and his wife told him to stop, and then he relapsed. And then it says in the book that because he was able to go back to drinking the coffee and smoking the cigarettes, that he then was able to become a good member of the fellowship. So extending that logic that you have pharmacokinetically active, dopamineergic, and acetylcholinergic, like cigarettes do acetylcholine and dopamine, coffee does dopamine, and those are accepted by the fellowship, and psych meds are accepted, and those things are not seen as relapses, nor are they seen as like chemical dependency that takes away from your active recovery. I think the real question is whether you see someone is clean or not, should, and this is my question, should Suboxin and these medications, when used correctly, be put in the same thing for people in the fellowship, as people who take pain pills and AA to manage their pain, as people with psychological and psychiatric diagnoses that take psych meds? And and and I'd love to hear your thoughts on that because when you take it out of the addiction sphere, the same way you see like a psych med, I would be interested to know from people who are who who are like open and proud about their like you know, 12-step recovery, what would your thoughts be on the difference between addiction and dependency, understanding those big book stories and like the weight that they hold in context with Subox and use to say the chemical dependency rather than tend to an addiction? Like, what would your take be on that? You know, looking back at the history, right? Um, you know, because uh, you know, people in the program, you know, they they push everything away and they say that if you're taking anything, it's bad. I am a proponent of if it is prescribed and you're taking it according to the prescription and you are not keeping it a secret, that's another big one, is not keeping it a secret because a lot of people will go and get a pain pill and say, oh boy, because that's uh that's it, right? You know, we have to be honest about it. The biggest thing I think about this whole this whole thing that we're talking about is why why do I feel the need to judge someone else's recovery? This is this is where I I want to kind of draw the line in the sand when uh when it comes to recovery, uh everybody drank different, everybody used different, therefore everybody's going to recover different. And you know, and I I only why do I have to worry about other people's what they're doing? And you know, if anybody, if someone's on mat, if someone's taking a pain pill, if someone's got psych meds, if someone's doing all this and all that, that's none of my business. My business is my business. If I am trying to stay sober, I have to not drink, I have to not use drugs. And if uh if I did get injured and needed to be on a pain pill, I would have to, you know, tell on myself. I'd call Ben up and I'd say, Ben, dude, I uh I busted my ankle. They got me on the norcs and uh and let me uh I'm gonna tell you exactly when I'm taking them. Be accountable. Sure, be accountable. And that's the thing, is there's so much stigma behind the whole clean, sober recovery that everybody's scared to even talk about it. Oh my goodness, I uh I'm getting put on uh Norcos for three days. I kind of I can't do it. They're scared, and everybody's scared because they don't know. Totally. I think that one thing I would also say is when you look at, and I'm and I'm gonna get kind of outside of the recovery parameter for this analogy, which is very flawed. So don't don't don't come at me for this, right? Okay, but I know they will. But for the COVID pandemic, for example, you had people who were culturally split along different lines, conservative, you know, uh woke, and then kind of pro-big pharma, anti-big pharma, and there was kind of this cultural cross-pollination where you would have people who were traditionally very um against the industry the pharmaceutical industry, like anti-what happened in the opioid epidemic, but they got the shot. And then you would have people who were traditionally um very pro-um medicine for like their conditions, but but the shot and the way it was forced on people, however you want to see that, um, it didn't sit right with them. So a lot of people for MAT specifically see it as a pharmaceutical conspiracy because they see that a lot of the same companies that were participants in the opioid epidemic either hold stake, like the remaining stake of Purdue in Vineyard or whatever the Suboxan thing is, and you hear about the kickbacks the same way that, and I've dealt with this because you know I work with the treatment center, there is a lot of corruption in the pharmaceutical industry. Let's not gloss that over. Pharmaceutical companies are inherently corrupt in the way that they're regulated in all of these things. And the same way that just because AA helps people and the steps and the Minnesota model helps people, that doesn't mean that there can't be a shady treatment facility that is doing horrible things that they need to be held accountable for. But by that same meter, if there are shady treatment centers, it doesn't mean that abstinence recovery is awful in the sum of its parts. So the same thing for me applies to MAC. It's like, yes, the Sackler family in Purdue, it's been proven through HBO shows and write-ups and New York Times and open public things and the opioid response settlement that they don't screwed up. Okay. But that in the same way a treatment center screwing up and being run poorly, like an abstinence one, doesn't necessarily reflect on the power of abstinence recovery. The pharmaceutical industry being corrupt and maybe not having the best interest in making Suboxin as easily prescribed, paid for through prescriptions and insurance networks, that doesn't invalidate MAT recovery. Because, and I make this point and people lose it, but it's the truth. If you think that one thing in recovery is less corrupt or incorruptible or morally superior to another, not just based on the how the recovery plays out, but the associated institutions. Like if you're like the steps in the Minnesota model are incorruptible, it's the only way. I refuse to call out corruption in any abstinence-based treatment center because they're life-saving, you're cooked. If you're like MAT's the only way, the science doesn't lie, I refuse to call out any clinic getting kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies for prescribing people to boxing, you're cooked. They do that. And if you look at harm reduction organizations and you're like, harm reduction saves lives and the statistics don't lie. I refuse to call out any greedy NGO nonprofit executives who take from all of these federal block grants that are supposed to help homeless people and people struggling with addiction and dress their wounds and keep them from dying in Narcanum and use it to buy a beach house in Laguna. You're cooked. There is corruption, there is mismanagement, and there is absolutely hundreds of instances, if not thousands, across the board in all of these pedagogies and aspects of recovery that are inherently corrupt, that are inherently problematic, but it doesn't matter if they're corrupt treatment centers or facilities, these paths of recovery are still saving people's lives. So I guess I guess what I would say, not just to people who are abstinent looking at MAT, but people whose lives were saved by matter cali sober harm reduction looking at abstinence is if you only look at the idiotic and self-serving and egotistic and exclusionary actions of a certain subset of people who really usually have the biggest voices. The people from the abstinence community who yell at people on MAT, it gets a lot of traction on social because people like to fight about it. And the problem with this whole thing is that we've created this echo chamber where people go viral for talking about why they hate other people. I'm not going to call any creators out, but there have been creators recently who get to the top of the pile. Abstinence people hating on MAT, MAT people hating on abstinence and traditional treatment centers, harm reduction people hating traditional treatment centers and abstinence, and abstinence people hating harm reduction. It's all cooked. Because at the end of the day, the same people who were helped by MI MAT when I wasn't, and me being helped by a traditional abstinence thing when they weren't, neither of those things invalidate each other. So the whole thing about, like you said, and this is such a crucial thing, your lived experience and you seeing people be honest. And the whole reason I went on this tangent is because when someone gets prescribed NORCOS, right? That's inherent distrust of the physician who prescribes them. That's distrust of the friends in their recovery circle that they may want to talk about it. And like you said, transparency is the key to overcoming someone having a potential slip because they're taking those pills in secret, right? So if you look at the overall community and you see that there's no way we're going to know how many people in the rooms right now who are claiming abstinence recovery are not actually abstinent and are on psychmeds, MAT are taking THC or CBD-based stuff for their pain, but because of the stigma, they're not being honest. So my next question to you would be do you think that there's a happy medium in which, in which case, maybe not even the rooms, but just the abstinence recovery community can play in kind of encouraging openness for the people who are prescribed painkillers or Suboxing? Like, like kind of like maybe this isn't our definition of sober, but but we can still talk about this and welcome you in and have respect. Because I think the real part of this where people accuse the abstinence community of, to be honest, killing, not killing people, but um Robbie, maybe leading people towards losing their lives, is that when people get excluded from meetings because they're on Zaboxin or they're Cali Sober and not allowed to share or work with anybody, that's essentially shutting the door on people who are struggling. So, so how do you propose as people who are very openly active, doing life-saving work in the abstinence community, how would you say you should welcome not just the people who are taking prescribed medications, you know, but people who are maybe on alternate paths of recovery but might be interested in becoming abstinent? Like, like how do you bridge that gap without without sacrificing a place where people in abstinence recovery can thrive? Because that's what I would love to see is people from other paths of recovery being welcomed into the abstinence community the same way that all these people are flocking to like Quinn Le Pierce, Cali Sober community, because it's it's not exclusive. How do you think that could work? You know, I think the key is is open lines of communication and people recovering out loud and people, you know, kind of rejoicing in all forms of recovery. And you know, that's the thing is rejoicing in all forms of recovery is ultimately the key. Instead of saying, and and it and it's human nature, man, uh, and the way we're raised, we're raised to be to say whatever I'm doing is the best. And and you know, and that's not always the case. And when uh when we're raised in that that that that way, we're never gonna look at the other ways. And you know, open-mindedness, honest communication. I had a Zoom meeting the other night, and and we brought up Matt, and there were six people in it, and a few people had their their minds set on what they thought Matt was all about and what they after the conversation, minds were changed, and it was open dialogue, it was able to ask questions, it was able to voice concerns. You know, what are the concerns that someone is off of these powerful, deadly drugs and on something that has been found by doctors to help? Why is this your concern? Why is this your issue? This shouldn't be your issue, this should be open and and and you know, hugged because you know these uh these drugs out there are killing people. Yeah, and I think that's a very mature outlook. And and here's the part where it gets to me, and this is and this is the part where it goes from oh, he's breaking this stuff down, he's taking a non-objective standpoint, where I am gonna get objective, but I'm not gonna praise anybody. Like the Caesar, like the Shakespeare play. I I came, I've come to bury Caesar not to praise him. I'm not trying to praise any facet of recovery. I think the problem, like I said before, and this is the truth with all media today, not just social media, and you're seeing it interlinked. Like, I'm again, I'm gonna get out of recovery, so forgive me for going on this tangent. I know everybody's like this guy's had way too much coffee, but I'm just trying to say what I think needs to be said in like our time before I get to go like do dad stuff. So forgive me. I know I've had too much coffee. This needs to be said. So when you see like Piers Morgan, who's taking his show from like a network, long time, I think it was CNN or BBC, I forget what, but legacy media anchor, he's now going to YouTube because he sees the way the wind is blowing. And he has like a controversial figure on there, like clavicular, for example, who shout out to clavicular. I hope he gets sober. We saw what happened today. I don't know if you guys even know who clavicular is. He's a huge Gen Z figure, big uh looks maxim guy. He was we went to the hospital for an OD. I hope everybody's hating on him. I hope he gets sober. But a couple weeks ago, clavicular went on Piers Morgan, and it seemed like it was already structured from the time it came on to create these kind of artificial argument points for viral content. So, what I mean by this is even outside of the recovery community, the way the algorithm goes, whether it's political differences, cultural differences, this type of music is corny, this creator did this. Like there's this whole echo chamber where the content that people consume on their phones and their screens or whatever is optimized when people have an argumentative angry point where both people who agree with them and disagree with them can co-engage, reshare, and make that the prevalent take that not always, sometimes you see positive stuff. But as recovery creators, tell me if I'm wrong about this. Spicy content does better in the algorithm than positive content nine times out of ten. Am I wrong? You are 100% correct. Okay, and then knowing this, when you think about the way that social media connects people, and you think about what goes to the top of the FYP, it's not the whole, it's sometimes it is occasionally, and I love to see it when that happens. Uplifting stuff, lived experience stories, or informative stuff from people in the MAT thing. Like, I love it when people do that. But nine times out of ten for anything, not just recovery, it's the argumentative stuff. So then you start seeing people who build their whole platform. Like eight out of ten posts at least, whether it's abstinence people bashing MAT and harm reduction, harm reduction or alternative recovery bashing abstinence. People are literally being incentivized, not like they used to be in the rooms where people would have going, oh, I don't like these methadone clinics, or people who would be out doing harm reduction work in the streets of Portland, like I don't like these meetings where they don't let people in who are still in active use and speak. That's what it used to be before the phones in the earlier days of the Kraken like heroin epidemic, when it was the rooms, it was treatment, and yeah, there were methadone. The beginning of the boxing clinics, but it wasn't being lived experience, it was not televised on the phone with people agreeing and disagreeing. And and and the online recovery community is so beautiful because people can connect in different ways, but the echo chamber gets amplified when the biggest voices on both sides are the people who are not lifting people up but tearing each other down. And so, what I really want to say to people on this is not, is MAT valid? I believe it is. I used to get mad when people on the other side didn't. I think it can be stigmatizing and harmful. I think it can push people out, not just of the rooms, but of even considering abstinence because they have these cultural prejudices when they have lived experience of people in abstinence pushing them out for being on MAT or Cali Sober. I think that's all problematic. But I think what's really problematic is that you have the celebration of amplified argumentative debate and discourse that really doesn't push anything forward at all. And so that's why I'm so grateful that you guys are doing this with me today. And I hope you do it with other creators too, regardless of whether they have the same viewpoint as I do. Like, like I'd be interested for you to get um, you know, someone in the harm reduction or MAT space back on. And even if you disagree with them and they have a vehemently opposed take to abstinence recovery, let them talk. And then if someone who's super hardcore abstinence comes on and says why they don't believe in MAT, have them on too. Because in this incredibly polarized world we're living in, like you said, when the people in that small closed like meeting or like open like Zoom group you were doing talked about it, a new consensus was reached. And it didn't happen from viral angry videos, it happened from people relating to each other as people. And so whenever somebody comes on one of my videos and says, you're this, you're that, you're a thumper, you're blah, blah, blah, I'm like, I asked them an honest and sincere question, which is, would you like to have a conversation here and actually talk about the nuance and subtlety here? Or with respect, is your agenda and your aim to create a platform on attacking me and people on this side to grow your own influence? Because if that's what you want to do, if that's what's gonna feed your family and give you validation and purpose, who am I to stop you? But if you actually want to talk about why all paths of recovery can work together and why we don't have to be siloed in our thought bubbles and hate each other, here's your chance. And I've actually had people, both hardcore abstinence and hardcore harm reduction, either DM me or talk to me in the comments respectfully. And although we might not emerge completely agreeing all the time, we have more respect and a little bit more of a shared compromise of opinion and thought and transparency in the discussion. So people have asked me, what do you think the secret is to unite the recovery community and get everybody on the same page? I don't think it's possible to get everybody on the same page anymore, and that's okay. I think what is possible though is putting bookmarks on different pages of the same like metaphoric book and having people be able to like turn another page and look at what people are saying and thinking and be like, nah, that didn't work for me. I don't believe that, but it's helping them. I now have that stored understanding to inform my own view. Um, and and I I guess what I would ask y'all is what would you like to see as people who run are doing the frontline digital work of running these groups? Like, what would what do you think can help people like within this space kind of like get to a point where they're even willing to like listen to an opposing viewpoint at all? Because that was hard for me to do. I think there's a um if we could get people to stop bullying and taking other people's inventory is really what it comes down to. I went through a uh experience a couple days ago. I posted a video of a clean drug test 100% clean, and I got kind of attacked because I was stigmatizing, and um like and it I said this is my experience, and for my household, it's very important. And why can't we celebrate? It's hard to have a clean, a complete clean drug eating screen, and I'm not I eat like I don't hate people who do or caliphate or like whatever works for you, but like with my my husband and I, it's very important to us that we are we have a clean drug test, and he is on MAT and I support that. Like I'm I'm right there with you, but um, it's just the attacking that comes out of it, and it's like you're wrong, and I I I celebrate everybody, and that's the key to it. We gotta celebrate everybody and everybody's journey, and if your life is manageable and you're you have somewhat control of what you can control and you are happy and an active member in society, let's celebrate that. Whether you are Cali Sober or on MAT, and you're not we're not visiting you in a grave. Yeah, I agree with uh Johnny, what are you saying? I mean, I think if we're gonna if we're gonna get this out there, it's gotta be it's just open communications. But you know, and it's it's I like that both of you guys have brought up the fact that you've had negative comments. You know, anybody in recovery, the three pillars are all the same: honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness. I have to be willing to be honest, I have to be willing to be open-minded. If I am closed-minded about this subject, I what I am not doing what I'm supposed to be doing, you know, and I think that that people need to be reminded that every now and then. And that's the see, this is what happens when you get sober and you're sober for a long time, is your mind starts to close a little bit because you get further away from your gift of desperation, you get a lot closer to thinking that you know something. And I don't know shit, I don't know shit about Matt. I don't know shit about about I'm clapping it up for you being real, you know, and and and the fact that I have an opinion is crazy. You know what? It took it took Ben, it was on here on Never Alone Live. We interviewed a woman, and uh, she was telling her story about being sexually assaulted, and that sexual assault, I have no experience, I don't know what a woman feels like after being sexually assaulted, but I know that it it fucking hurts and it's harmful and blah blah. But she took heroin to to eliminate those pains and those feelings, and so then uh then she went to prison where there was another assault, and and all the drugs just kept getting more and more, and then she wanted to quit. And when she finally wanted to quit, she was introduced to Methadone, and Methadone helped her get off of the heroin after all of these years of living with trauma and dealing with the trauma by using drugs, and then wanting to have a better life and do better and do more, and methadone saved her life. And I'm telling you, dude, I'm I'm getting a little emotional just talking about this because this is this is ultimately what it was like getting a club in the head of me, Johnny. You don't know shit. And open your mind up and recognize that we that these things are needed, and everybody's recovery is different because everybody's life is different, and not everybody is going to recover the same way. Can they? Is my program's a great program, and I think if you're gonna be on Matt, you should work some sort of program as well because it helps you clean out the insides, look at our character defects, our shortcuts, yada, yada, all that stuff. But you know, by by doing this simultaneously, working together, we will save lives. Amen. I mean, I love Khalici's take on it. When I was up in Maine doing a show with him like a couple months back, he told me about the peer counselor work he was doing. And you know, Chaz isn't fellowship specific, although you can probably read between the lines with his language, but he he's an active proponent of traditional recovery, let's put it that way. But he's also getting into like peer work, which is based on like meeting people where they're at. And I was like, How do you reconcile those two things? And he said in his Khalichi has Chaz has a has a great way of like saying what I do in like 20 million sentences in like one. He's like, I believe that I believe everybody can get sober through a 12-step program, but I'm not everybody. And I was just like, wow. So here's an example of a guy, literally the the before social media, before TikTok, the social media internet face of recovery content culture, abstinence-based to the core. Jimmy Kay references in his music from like the uh the other fellowship is is literally greenlighting harm reduction in MAT. And he says it in the song, Rest in Peace to Joe Nesser, Recovery and God. He's like, Abstinence or Matt, I'll accept you where you're at, find solutions, heal from trauma, and the wreckage of your past. And that was such a powerful moment for me because one thing we're really not talking about here today, and I know, you know, Chris, I know I know you're uh a woman of Christ, I'm a man of Christ. And there's a whole thing to the in the faith community of like people saying, okay, yeah, you're in recovery, but you're not an addict, and like the language around that, and then how faith communities celebrate versus like the step. So so even within the abstinence community, there's the faith versus the rooms thing. There's like all of these different things, and and the Oh no, what happened? Oh no, oh no. Now what he was on a roll. Oh my goodness. I didn't know what he was gonna say. Come back. He's back. Where's that? Where is he at? I'm on the edge of my seat. I can we I think we can all agree. I hate technology. Yes. Oh no. He'll come back. He'll pop out. He wants to get that out. He's passionate. So passionate, and I love it. Oh, he's back. Wait. Sorry, I got a call, and that's what it does in StreamYard. So we were like, I'm not gonna call my fiance back in a second because I'm gonna I'm gonna finish it. And that's what I said about the dad. Are we are we going now? Are we good? Yeah, we're good. Okay, so a lot of people say in, and I'm gonna call out both the abstinence and the harm reduction side. Hopefully, this is the last thing I'm gonna do with it, but I but I have to say this. The thing that the harm reduction side says, and and I agree with this um objectively, subjective circumstances maybe not, but it's not 1935 anymore. In response to Bill's book being written in the 30s, everything's different. I agree with that. That's the whole fentanyl, you know, nitocines, it being different from even 10 years ago thing. I'm with them on that. And then they say, I follow the science. Now, here's where that gets interesting because what Bill and Dr. Bob and Silkworth and the Minnesota model and the Hazeldon folks were doing, and the Betty Ford were doing in the 1930s, was following the science, not just the addiction recovery science, the Belladonna treatment and all that. They were following the Jungian and Freudian psychoanalysis conventions of the time. So all of this scientific study of recovery is built on that initial thing. And yes, it has to evolve. But what I will caution about, understanding that at one point, A-A-N-A, Freud, Young, you know, all that was the science. That science is gonna evolve too. Harm reduction, MAT, all of this stuff is not a static thing. And it might come out in a couple decades that although, yes, MAT and I haven't said this yet, MAT and harm reduction reduces recidivism and not only saves lives, but gets people towards recovery and out of criminal and toxic cycles. I don't think that's debatable anymore. The statistics do not lie. However, I will say one thing. If people on the MAT and harm reduction side magically want to convince, separate from politics, when I use this word, I'm not saying everyone in abstinence recovery is um conservative politically, although there seems to be a conservative slant in the abstinence recovery and a progressive slant in the harm reductive community. I'm just calling it how it is. But when I say conservative, I mean conservative in terms of recovery ideology. So if you're gonna go to all the conservative, I don't think MAT is recovery folks, and say, you must change to meet this thing. I do want to bring up the fact that a lot of proponents of harm reduction and like safe supply, drug decriminalization and legalization, point to countries like Portugal and Switzerland, where they have safe use rooms like they do in some cities here in America, like on point in New York City and in Canada, where they're recently dismantling some, but they've basically had places where people don't get prosecuted and get medically overseen, whether it's through medical dimorphine or shooting what they got on the street, they can get Narcan, they can receive medical care, wound dressing at these state-sponsored harm reduction facilities. And that's based off of models they have in Portugal and Switzerland where harm reduction stuff is integrated with the mental health care system, which I agree with. What I'm saying is I don't think in the same way you can't get everybody in the harm reduction community to accept people in the AA old school recovery community where they're at, the one flaw in the harm reduction thing for me is thinking that we can automatically become Portugal or Switzerland overnight. Because the same way the AA people have to understand that it's not 1935 anymore. And even if someone doesn't live up to the tenets of NA or AA or like any of those abstinence-based fellowship things, maybe they're not clean or sober by bills, standards, or whatever interpretation of the first 164 or the stories you want to use or the stepwork charts, maybe they're not. It's really irrelevant to me. But in that same thing where you're trying to bring that reality into where you're at now, what I tell people who are harm reduction proponents who say, well, the whole thing is the system screwed up and it should be legal. And if only everything were legal, and if only this and if only that, that's not gonna happen. So building a system of care around the expectation that the American criminal justice system and treatment system is going to remove corruption and automatically legalize drugs and even put safe use and harm reduction sites in every city and make it legal is is, I believe, a bit flawed and problematic. It is the same energy as people thinking that the rooms work for everybody. And I guess what I'm saying here is whether your end goal is to get everybody in abstinence recovery, or your end goal is to get every single state and medical system to overnight convert to a harm reduction safe supply model, modeled after Switzerland or Portugal here in America, those are unrealistic goals. You're not gonna get everybody AA abstinence sober and in the rooms because the rooms aren't big enough. Even in virtual meetings, that that would not work. You do not have the capacity. You you do not have the capacity to do that, nor would that even be a good thing. And you can't get every single Minnesota treatment model to convert to an MAT-friendly harm reduction facility and get drugs legal and do what they tried to do in Portland everywhere, and it didn't work because we're not Switzerland and we're not Portugal. So the moral of the story for me is this whether you believe MAT is sober or not, you're not gonna be able to magically get everybody on MAT into the rooms happy to be practicing the program. Because as they say, open-mindedness and willingness, you can't magically make someone open-minded and willing, no matter how much you want, and force them to work AA or NA. You wouldn't even want to do that. And on the harm reduction side, to temper that, it's like you do not have the power to change the system overnight, no matter how good of an advocate you are. So expecting everyone in the rooms and everyone who, like you guys, got sober a decade and change ago when things were different, to automatically get everything they're trying to say and move their whole understanding forward overnight is similarly irresponsible and quite frankly, um a bit arrogant. It's it's arrogant of the AA people to try to get everybody 12 steps over it. It's arrogant of the hardline harm reduction people to think they know exactly what has to happen for the system, and to say, I base it on the science or I base it on the steps. My whole thing is why can't both things work for different people in different circumstances and coexist in a nuanced way where we don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater on either way. We can have overdose prevention centers and abstinence treatment centers. We can have the rooms and Cali Sober peer support groups. I mean, I I hope I'm not just like an angry old man screaming at a cloud, but it just seems everything's gotten so polarized and people are so up in their own heads that that people would rather talk about realities that wouldn't even be good if they existed, these fake utopias, than actually address what's there. Am I wrong or do you did you even just does that even make any sense? Ben, this makes complete sense. And you know, when when talking solution based, you know, the conversation is always going to be it forever. It doesn't matter. It's going to be forever, that it's going to be like this, until people's eyes are opened more. And unfortunately, you know, the the the dealers are winning, the cartels are winning. And they are they are far more advanced than they ever were before. And the fact that they are making pills now that look and feel just like every pill out there, anything that any pill anybody is taking, they are making replicas. And those replicas are not Adderalls, they're not Norcos, they're not percassets, they're fentanyl. And they are making people that are on one on one prescription addicted to opiates. And when these same old AA guys, their their kids are in college and they're coming home addicted to opiates because they were trying to get Adderall so they could do better on their tests. This is when things are going to change. This is when minds are going to have to change. And, you know, so um as much as we want to talk solution and we want to talk about men, I think that the conversation has to be about prevention as well. We have to be talking about this stuff. We have to be talking to the kids about this. We have to be putting this message out there that there is no more experimentation, there is no more idea of, oh, you know, I might my buddies are all smoking weed. I'm gonna try smoking weed. People are dying because there is fentanyl-laced weed now, and and it is much stronger, and it is I I may may I say something about this? Of course, of course, of course. I I real quick, so I know I was jumping subjects on. No, you're good. I just want to say this because I know this is gonna be like a thing where we we gotta we gotta footnote this. So there's a very big debate about whether or not weed is actually laced with fan. I knew it was gonna go about combustion temperature. Listen, I've heard stories from people, I'm never gonna tell an angel family that's not the case, but I'm gonna take it a step further. My whole thing is whether or not the friend told who supplied someone with a pill, told them that it was weed and it was really a pill or whether it's weed, I've heard different things. It doesn't matter to me, okay? The fact is that elicit fentanyl is killing people. And regardless of whether you use the scare tactic thing, it's in the weed or not, the fact is it's in the supply. And it doesn't matter if the kid smokes weed that isn't laced with fentanyl or is, but that couldn't kill him, and then goes to drink and goes to do whatever. My whole thing is whatever the hyperbolic degree of the scare tactic, and well, not scare tactic, but truth about Fetty being in the in the supply is whether it's in the weed or it's not, if you're an addict or an alcoholic, by the harm reduction MAT DSM definition or the Bill Wilson definition, if you have a propensity for chemical dependency and chemical escape, regardless of whether the weed's laced with Fetty, you might end up taking a pill that's pressed and it might take your life. So I just wanted to put that nuance in there so that people won't say this, oh, they're so misinformed. They're saying Fetty's in the weed, it's not, because a lot of people say it's not. My whole thing is, I'm not gonna say it doesn't matter because the people who've lost their kids who who swear on a stack of Bibles that that is what it is, I'm not gonna tell you your truth is wrong. But what I'm also going to say is even if it was like a wrong story or something got in their system and like a spike drink or something else and it wasn't the weed, which I don't know, I'm not gonna claim to know. It doesn't matter because the the real thing is that due to the fact that the system is flawed and we're not addressing this the right way through treatment and recovery and prevention and enforcement and like all of these different things, legalization, it's in the supply. So I sorry sorry for interjecting. I knew that if we didn't leave that thing, like sorry, just had to do that because that's been such a hot button thing, you know. And that conversation, people that disagree or want to make it all about well, that's not how it works with fentanyl being in weed or whatever. It takes away from the whole thing that's actually happening. Like there's a death here. There's a you know, it and that's what I'm saying. For me, the exact circumstances of how the substance or ROA was in the death doesn't matter. The fact is it's in the supply regardless of how it happens, and that and that needs to be addressed in the prevention. What does good prevention look like for you? Because I got my thoughts on it. I got the way I handle it when I speak to students and stuff like that. What does it look like to y'all? Well, real life stories, real life stories is my thing. Like, we gotta talk about it. We gotta everyone's story is different. And if I heard my story early on, I think I my journey would have started a lot sooner. Or hearing um from parents who lost children, or like the stuff that makes you uncomfortable. I think that's a big part of it. The big part, a big part for me is just the educating what's out there. Educating what's out there, you know, uh these these kids are uh there's so many kids on prescription medicine right now. It's just it's crazy, you know. The the the Adderalls, the uh the vivances, the ADHD medicine. There's there's so many different kids that are being put on in medicine so early in life that it's becoming norm. It's normalized. And and granted, it's for mental health, you know, and mental health, you know, kids are getting diagnosed as uh depression and anxiety and PTSD and bipolar and ADHD and all these things early. And that it makes them feel good. And they and we all know as as recovering addicts, if it makes me feel good, I want more of it, even though it was prescribed, and I'm gonna go and get more, and I'm gonna try other things. I want to educate these kids what's out there, and that that this this the cartel is really catering towards them right now, and they are looking for this next generation of addicts. And if you're not an addict already, they're gonna help you get there. And and that's this is the education I want to put out there to the kids. And what I and what I would say about the cartel is um whether it's Juarez Sinaloa like Zetas, like whether it's Dominicans, like whether it's American gangs, whether it's Canadians, whether it's China, which I I have my whole spiel on that. Go and look on the Stop Chinese Fenton Act and all the supplementary documents supplied by Mike Gallagher and Rajna Krishna Morthy. You'll you'll see that this this gets deep. It's not just the cartel, it's an international synthetic organization that honestly our own government was complicit in like allowing to happen in multiple administrations, both the Trump and Biden thing. Don't get me started on that, okay? I can do a whole three-hour podcast with supplementary documents on that. But when you say the cartel, here's the problem. One cartel with one pressed machine gets knocked down. Cool. You got a couple metric tons of fentanyl not hitting Albuquerque or hitting Atlanta or hitting Charleston, South Carolina, whatever. Here's the problem. One kid with a computer can order a pill press and a brick of fed for the same price as a used Toyota on the internet and be in business stocking their whole city, regardless of any cartel. So what I'm grateful for is that there are people working to like actually reduce that, which is kind of like a hydra, you cut one head off. But that's why you say prevention and recovery is the key. I support large-scale fentanyl enforcement. I support it and I support recovery and overdose prevention in Narcan too. And I was saying that before. That's the thing that blows people's heads off with me is that I can be pro-large-scale fentanyl enforcement and international organizations stopping that and getting people sober abstinence and MAT and harm reduction. But but the truth is, from prevention to enforcement, harm reduction, abstinence, and MAT and Cali, you need everything. People want to say one lone soldier of abstinence recovery and prevention on the battlefield is all that will be needed. And people like, one soldier of harm reduction and MAT is all that is needed. And I'm just like, how about everything? How about all of it, fully funded and full buy-in from everybody, regardless of political or cultural affiliation or faith or lack thereof? How about all of it? And people are like, Well, then my team won't win. And I'm like, get over it. Let's save some lives. Let's save some lives. So good. You're so right. Ben, Ben, I'm telling you, we've been on for an hour now, and uh, I appreciate you so much. And uh, if anybody wants to get in touch with Ben, Ben, what's the best way to get in touch with you? Um, look for the pretentious guy with the 90s blockbuster clerk hair coming up on your FYP and go to BenjaminLerner.com, look at the cringe rap dad recovery rap videos and Turk Street and Price of Addiction. And if I ain't the creator you like, go through your FYP and find someone who's not as cringe worthy as me. I would rather you find someone who resonates with you and your generational outlook and your path to recovery than be stuck with me walking my dog around the block. But if you want to hear some lived experience, rippity raps and content, Benjamin Lerner is everywhere. You can't get rid of me. God bless you. And he has a website, he has got a website with his name. I do. I have a dot com. Look at me. We put your website in the comments. You have a new song that just dropped. Uh, and uh we're some events, yes, sequence of events is uh is on YouTube right now. We put the link to sequence of events right here. My favorite song is still Turk Street. I love it, and uh I can't get enough of it. Um, so if it Megan, if you can put in Turk Street in there as well, just so everybody can know my favorite song that Ben does, um, that would be phenomenal. You've also done music with uh with our friend Skyler Ray, who just married. I'm wearing congrats to him on getting married, by the way. I know to him and Tails and uh and we love him and uh and love you, my brother. I'm so you too, Ben. Both of y'all you came here and joined us for this conversation. We're probably gonna need to talk more about it. We're gonna need like 17 sessions with Ben. He's gonna be spicy. Bring me back whenever you want to put the spice meter up to ghost pepper. If you just want the Hall of Then, just get somebody else. I'm about to keep it too spicy. You know how I get that. We we like it spicy around here because this is the conversation that will open ears and uh and hopefully, hopefully change people. And you know, our whole key here is we want to help and we want to save lives. And and Ben, thank you for being the voice that you are. Everybody, thank you for tuning in this week. And we'll be back next week, and uh I can't wait.