Dr Charlie: Farmer, Singer, Doctor, Addict

Dr. Charlie, an anesthesiologist and addiction medicine specialist with more than 44 years in recovery, shares his journey through opioid and alcohol addiction, drug diversion during residency, and a suicide attempt. He discusses how treatment, AA, sponsorship, and the 12 steps helped him rebuild his life and career—and why asking for help can be the first step toward hope, connection, and recovery.

Transcript

Dr Charlie

Mark 0:07

Welcome to Recovery Rounds, Healers Helping Healers, One Story at a Time. I'm your co-host, Dr. Mark Winsburg, a former emergency medicine physician and current addiction medicine specialist with more than 23 years in recovery. And I'm joined by my co-host, Marcy, a retired ICU nurse with over 48 years of bedside experience and more than 10 years in recovery herself. Every two weeks, we sit down with someone from the healthcare world who's willing to share their own story about addiction and recovery, disconnection and reconnection, and the path back to reclaiming both the love for themselves and their profession. Our goal is simple but ambitious. By openly telling our stories, we hope to lessen and maybe even eliminate some of the stigma and shame that so often surround the disease of addiction. Shame keeps us silent, silence keeps us sick, and too often that delay in getting help comes at a very high cost. So again, welcome, and let's get started.

Meet Dr Charlie

Mark 1:25

Today we're talking to Dr. Charlie, and I have a special relationship to Charlie. He's been a friend and mentor through all of my life in addiction medicine, and it's just a pleasure to have him here, willing to tell his story. So how would you describe your path into medicine?

Dr Charlie 1:52

Well, first of all, let me thank you and Marcy for having me here. Mark has been somebody in my life that has been an inspiration to me. And to watch you carry this forward with trying to do something that could help people like me means everything to me. I got into my recovery because of a doctor who was willing to share his story. And for you to do this, Mark, is remarkable. So

Why Medicine Called

Dr Charlie 2:16

thank you. So how I got into medicine, I grew up in an environment where there was alcoholism. And I think what's really telling about that, it's something that I realized when I had to tell my Al-Anon story. What happened was my college roommate asked me, why do you want to be a doctor? He was a math major. He turned out to be a great dermatologist from our area and is now retired. But my reply to him is really telling about what was wrong with Charlie before he ever got into recovery. Because what I said to him was, Because if I do that, I won't have any time to myself. I won't have any time to think, and I won't have any time to feel anything. And I think that probably had more to do with it at that particular time in the 19-year-old's life or whatever, how old I was, I knew more about myself than I was ever able to be conscious about. But I wanted to be a doctor since I was eight years old. I grew up on a farm as an undergrad. I also did some study at Eastman and music, and I discovered bourbon in my freshman year. And after that, the music went by this wayside. And I never deviated from wanting to be a doctor. I never gave it much thought.

Mark 3:32

Where did that come from? If you brought up on a farm, how did doctor enter into it? Did you have any relatives?

Dr Charlie 3:38

My older cousin, my oldest cousin on my mother's side wanted to be a doctor at that point. He did not turn out to be a doctor, a medical doctor. He turned out to be a PhD, maybe the real kind of doctors. I don't know. But anyway, but something got into me at that point. I wanted to do something to help people, that was for sure. If I couldn't be a concert pianist or a backup rock singer, I wanted to do something. I wanted to be a missionary. I grew up in a church. And so those feelings were there. When I was little, I used to watch TV. And if there was a kid that was having trouble, I'd actually sob. I'd cry, except for Sky King, because Penny got into such trouble. You can look that up anybody who wants to, that she really annoyed me. I couldn't understand why she'd cause her uncle so much trouble. So I was a codependent and caretaker from a very early age, honestly. And so I went on and and was single-minded about being a doctor, honestly. I never deviated from that.

Mark 4:38

How did that go over with the rest of your family?

Dr Charlie 4:41

Oh, they were very supportive, very happy about that, yeah. And uh really supported me all the way through. I'm one of those people that's probably educated beyond his intelligence and and did undergraduate, did graduate school, then went to medical school, did a residency, did two fellowships, and it goes on and on.

Mark 5:00

Another triple A personality.

Farm Life Work Ethic

Marcy 5:03

So you grew up on a farm? Yeah. Was it a big farm or just a family farm?

Dr Charlie 5:07

Well, at that time, hundred-acre farms were big. The farm became much bigger uh after I left. I I had a great upbringing on that farm. Lots of uh hard work, which has been valuable to me throughout my life, a work ethic that's like that.

Marcy 5:24

I think people don't realize how much time of the day outside of your shift the doctors put in to being current on things and looking at what's going on through the day or patients that have gotten sicker overnight. So I think being a farmer would be something where you always have chores that have to be done. That's probably a good and easily transferable work ethic.

Dr Charlie 5:45

During harvest season, we would harvest all day and then we would spray all night. It was not unlike being a resident or an intern or on call where you'd work all day and then work all night. That was not foreign to me at all.

Mark 5:58

I forgot to mention that Charlie and I also share the farm boy background. But that's for my story.

Dr Charlie 6:09

It wasn't until I got sober, honestly, that everything made sense about being a doctor. Suddenly, the thing that had been the tyrant in my life, medical school, residency, fellowships, graduate, all of that made sense because I realized that the things that I had been so that had been such a chore for me and an ordeal. I think anybody who could say that those kinds of things, some parts of medical school, are not an ordeal. You have to be, you really do have to. It's like being an athlete. You have to put so much time into it. And nurses do this. I've never seen anybody who's more dedicated to their profession than nurses, honestly. Oh, thank you. It's true. And uh so if you look at that kind of thing, all of a sudden it all became clear why, why this had happened. I had a purpose in my life from recovery.

Alcohol Enters Early

Mark 7:05

So where the hell did alcohol and drugs come from?

Dr Charlie 7:11

Oh picked up my first drink at the age of seven, swore off, didn't drink again until I was 12. Old man of 12. Things were three.

Mark 7:21

No program, no anything.

Speaker 7:22

No things and dry drug. So things went were rolling at that point. The symptoms of my disease were almost immediate: lying, blackouts, stealing, manipulation. I was a singer, uh, involved in music and things like that in school, and we'd have rehearsal at night. This was way back in the 60s. Things were much different in the 60s than they are today with controls and stuff. So I'd stop in at the local pharmacy, get myself a bottle of elixir of terpinhydrate with codeine, drink it on the way to my rehearsal, and have a great time. My addiction before I ever picked up a drink, I didn't feel like I thought other kids felt. I felt different. And I'm gay. And so one of the things that probably added to that was back in the 50s and 60s, that was an illegal thing. After it was illegal, it had a psychiatric diagnosis. So it that contributed to it. But that's not the only thing that that made me feel different. I felt kindergarten was a very uncomfortable time for me because it wasn't structured. I was expected to play with other children. And I knew how to do something when I had a task to do, but to be turned loose to interact with other people. It was one of the worst years of my life, kindergarten. And so those symptoms were there way before I picked up a drink. So when I found alcohol in high school and that other stuff, all of a sudden the doors opened. And I felt, I thought everybody else looked like they felt I could interact, I could be popular, and I could be with all of the kids that I had never been able to be with before. I got to the point where I was a great student, a really good student. And by the time I was a senior, my math teacher, it was some level advanced math, said, Whatever what happened to you, Charlie? You used to be such a good kid, so my behavior had changed as well. All of that stuff came very early in my addiction. Those symptoms were right there.

Mark 9:21

So it's amazing to me that those symptoms could be there that early, and that you could carry on through all this training, all the schooling, all successfully do all this stuff.

Dr Charlie 9:38

I I kept falling uphill. It almost killed

Addiction in Residency

Dr Charlie 9:42

me. And I'm not a high-bottom drunk, but when I got sober, I was in my second year of residency at the University of Pennsylvania in anesthesiology and in the last year of residency. And uh and by that time I had continued to do better and better. My marks when I discovered that bourbon in the second in the second semester of my freshman year in college, my my grades went way up after that.

Mark 10:12

And well, a lot of people say that when they discovered alcohol or whatever the drug was, that that was the answer, that was the key. It was and it sounds like it lasted a hell of a long time.

Dr Charlie 10:24

Yeah, and like I said, it almost killed me. When I got sober, it was in but it was a different time than it is now. Drugs weren't controlled. You could go sign out cocaine in the emergency room, and the 5% was green and the red was 10%. But you could just sign them out. And the narcotics, when you'd have leftovers at the end of the day, I was an anesthesiologist. So when you have leftovers at the end of the day, they just kept them for the next day. I didn't keep them. Kept them until you got home. But but nevertheless, you know, that so uh one of the things that they said to me after the other residents said to me after I got sober was we knew somebody was taking the drugs from the operating room. We just didn't think it was you. We thought it was one of the cleaning people. Now there's the stigma coming out right there. No. Yeah. And uh not that the cleaning people are should be stigmatized, they shouldn't be part of stigma at all. So there's a lot of stuff wrong with that statement. But but yeah, nobody could believe it had been me. I was a nice guy. Got me by with a lot of stuff that that almost killed me to be nice and to be capable.

unknown 11:32

Yeah.

Dr Charlie 11:32

And I was miserable.

Suicidality and Survival

Dr Charlie 11:34

I had wanted, I had this suicide attempt when I was 21, and I got sober when I was 29. So I had to live eight years with being suicidal.

Mark 11:45

What were you doing at 21?

Dr Charlie 11:47

I was an undergrad at the University of Rochester. And what was were you becoming aware of the addiction? No, no, I wasn't aware of my addiction at that point. My I can there was a woman, she's an old, she's dead, so I can disclose her last name. Her name was Dot Money, and Dot was a Southern lady. She had been sober more than 50 years when she passed away. And Dot used to say, I thank God for every pill that I ever took because they kept me alive until I could find a place where I could get some help. And I relate to that. Alcohol was life-sustaining for me. Drugs were life-sustaining for me, and they fixed what was wrong with me, which is the disease, the ism part of the alcohol is the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous, talks about where it says our drinking was but a symptom of our underlying illness. And my underlying illness is alcoholism or drug addiction, whatever you want to call it. I don't care. But the alcohol fixed that first. And so I had nothing else to rely on except for the alcohol and drugs, and yet they weren't working anymore and they were killing me. No, I had not identified addiction at that point, but the depression, the misery of active addiction was right there. And once I took a drink of bourbon or a blick brum, whatever it was at that point, I decided that why just get drunk? Why not kill yourself? Follows naturally.

Marcy 13:07

You said earlier that you weren't aware that you were addicted when you were in your early 20s. When did you come to be aware that you were addicted and had a problem and needed to

Caught at CHOP

Marcy 13:16

do something about it?

Dr Charlie 13:16

December of 1980. I had stolen a bunch of drugs from uh this is all a matter of record. So they aren't gonna come at you from children's hospital in Philadelphia and use them. And and my attending became aware of that we were missing. The nurses at CHOP are amazing at children's hospital. All nurses are amazing, but they kept they could tell that there was a two-milliliter vial of fentanyl that was missing. They kept track of it. None of the other nurses had anything to do, but they did. And so anyway, they they told me that they had to report that to the DEA. And and they didn't know it was me. I'd gotten on the floor and helped them look for the fentanyl in the operating room. I love it. And I knew exactly where it was. I knew we wouldn't find it, but anyway, you never know. So I was down there looking, and and they they told me that they were so I got off of I got off of narcotics. I went through withdrawal. I called turkey. That's one of the things that withdrawal from opioids is terrible. But people think that it's the, I hear this all the time, that it is the terrible withdrawal that they can't get through. And what's important to get the blame distributed? I just want everybody to know that's not my phone.

Mark 14:34

Yeah, that was my phone. I'm supposed to be in charge of this thing and be responsible.

Marcy 14:42

Who gave you the appropriate stink eye monitor?

Dr Charlie 14:44

I love it. That's what Sandy Beach. He passed away this last year. And he used to say that it's important to get the

Withdrawal and Denial

Speaker 14:51

blame distributed. But but I swore off and I went through the withdrawal. I flopped around in bed like a fish, and I sweat, and I cried. All of these things that happened. And I went through that withdrawal. And I hear people say it's a terrible withdrawal they can't get through. That is just not true. We go through withdrawal all of the time. Oh, yeah. And we get through it. It's the disease of addiction that we can't take care of ourselves. So I got through that and I thought I won't have to use drugs anymore. That's my naivete. No one knew that. And what happened was I got back into the hospital again and I was on call and I used again. I didn't know that's what addiction was, but I knew there was something terribly wrong with me. And I didn't know what it was. And I hadn't no knowledge of addiction, no knowledge of AA or anything else at that point. And I just decided that I gave up hope. And I thought I'm just gonna have to go ahead and use drugs as quietly as and not hurt any more people, and just die as quietly as I can.

Marcy 15:55

Isn't it amazing that with all your education and experience that you didn't know anything about alcoholism and how to have it treated? Because that's how I was. I'd been a nurse for 40 years when I was started drinking alcoholically, and I had no idea what happened out in the world because I'd always worked in a hospital at the bedside. So I think even the idea that we know what's going on, that we or that we don't know what's going on, that it's hard for us to swallow. If I don't know about it, then it can't be something worth knowing about. If I'm a doctor and I or if I'm a nurse and I know all this stuff, it seems impossible that what now appears to me to be fairly simple solution of talking with other people and finding my way out.

Dr Charlie 16:39

So it's huge, isn't it? Yeah, huge gap in knowledge. I I think they're doing better with it now, perhaps in school. And I know Strong sent its people over to U RMC sent its people over to Norris for a rotation. The family medicine residents would come. But it was always remarkable. I think they thought it was remarkable that there was a way for people to get better. And thank gosh, thank God they were being exposed to hooks of the hope.

Hope and Recovery Message

Dr Charlie 17:11

I think that's where we lack an addiction medication, uh not addiction medication. We don't lack an addiction medication. It would be good to have some other agents available to us always. But but in education, we lack, you always hear suffering with addiction, suffering with addiction. I've been sober for 44 plus years, and I am not suffering with addiction. I have a great life. Sometimes I'm in misery, sometimes in joy, but I have every single thing in my life that it's supposed to be. And and I haven't suffered with addiction for many years. And we don't let that be known that there recovery is not suffering. It's a great way to live.

Marcy 17:53

Yeah.

Mark 17:54

I wonder though, even with medical students and residents learning more about addiction from addicts, whether that will overcome the denial aspect. Because as Marcy was saying, we have all this knowledge and but what we don't have is self-knowledge of when it's happening to me. I had the same experience. I didn't know what I was doing when I was taking handfuls of pills all day long, working ED, and thinking that there's nothing wrong with this. That denial is just such an incredible hurdle to get past.

Dr Charlie 18:43

I think that's one of the reasons why that's that you're what you're doing here, Marcy and Mark, is so important. It could help maybe to break through because when that other doctor talked with me, all of a sudden I was able to open up in a way that I had never been able to open up before. And uh George Valent was a Class A trustee of AA. He was also a professor of psychiatry at Harvard. And he wrote a tome on alcoholism and published much, much literature. He was a great psychiatrist, but he, being a Class A trustee, wrote some articles for the grapevine as well. And he encouraged those of us who are doctors who are in recovery to 12-step, not doctors, those of us who are in recovery and to 12-step are doctors. And what he meant by that was tell your doctors about your addiction, tell them that you are available to help if there's anything that you can do and let them know about recovery, because what doctors hate is not being able to help people. Yeah. And if doctors have a feeling that no hope is available for people with addiction, if that we let that continue to be the case, they're not going to want to treat that illness. It's hard to treat the illnesses that are difficult to treat. So that was way back in the I don't know, 70s that he wrote that article, maybe 80s, something like that.

Self Disclosure in Care

Mark 20:11

You were a great example for me when I started working under you at Norris Clinic. It's a local inpatient rehab that we have here in Rochester, that you would frequently self-disclose about your disease with patients that were coming in. And at first I thought that was strange, but as I've gotten more recovered or more time in recovery, and more time in addiction medicine, I found that it is a really useful tool as long as I'm aware that I'm not taking over the interview, but it's a useful tool to be able to say to somebody who's in the darkest place of their life and they see no way out to be able to say, hold on a minute, don't give up yet. I've been there, did that, and it is possible to get out.

Marcy 21:16

So it's helpful to use your own personal experience with your patients because they understand then that you're not talking out your butt. You're talking about something that happened with you personally. I've seen doctors who are trying to help families make decisions about end-of-life stuff, who said, When my dad passed away, this is what happened, and they get teary-eyed. And so their words are gonna have more power for those that family member. And I think it does for our patients and for our colleagues if we say, I've done that myself. And I think it makes them feel like it's okay for them to be sick, because clearly if they're someone as respectful and brilliant as myself is can have this problem. maybe they can get better from it too.

Dr Charlie 22:02

I think as long as I'm doing it to help the patient, as you said, Mark, that as long as I'm doing it for that reason and not to fulfill some sort of ego or something that I have or some kind of I we're out at the Mayo Clinic now with my sister who has terrible pain. And the doctor who's taking care of her out there in on the web in in his Mayo Clinic thing disclosed that the way he got interested in helping people with headaches is because he had them himself and no one was helping him. Like you said, Marcy, whatever it is, if there's something, but it I have to also have the credential. I can't present myself as an expert in this if I don't have the it would so when my patients say to me in the past when they've said I'm retired now, but when they've said oh doctor I I'm not going to say my last name, but when they said that, you can help me because you have this too and I would say to them if that's my only credential you better run far away because what you really should be asking is what have you done for your education? My cardiologist is only credentialed is that he had a heart attack once I better get out of there. Yeah. Yeah.

Life After Treatment

Mark 23:10

This episode is produced and sponsored by Mark Winsburg MD Medical Services PLLC, my private addiction medicine practice here in Rochester, New York. I provide confidential, individualized care for people with substance use issues, especially professionals who value their privacy and prefer care independent of hospital systems and insurance company involvement. Learn more at my website winsburgmd.com. That's W-I-N-S-B-E-R-G M D dot So clearly having this disease has affected your life in a huge way and hugely positive ways. Can you tell us some about what's happened since you recognized this illness in yourself and got it treated continue to get it treated and how your arc as a person in medicine changed.

Dr Charlie 24:20

Wow everything I had no no way to live I watched other people live I watched other people make decisions do things as I said I had one thing and I did that that's what I did. And I didn't get derailed because I was at Eastman and because I wanted to learn to sing or play the piano which I can sing wouldn't have done a bunch of stuff with music professionally and but that didn't rail me I had one way of doing things and so I didn't have a blueprint for how to live. And I remember when somewhere in treatment when I realized that these steps that we were studying I went I was lucky I went blessed is a better word. I went to a place that we studied the steps I had a chance in that treatment center. You didn't have to but I had a chance to go all the way through the fifth step. You're talking about the steps of the 12th program

Following The Steps

Dr Charlie 25:17

of yeah and I had a chance to do that and I I think that was life changing but I realized these steps provided me a way to live then I came home from treatment and I had a job in anesthesiology that I had gotten and and I was supposed to be finishing up my residency soon and was going to go take that job and and I kept saying to my sponsor who was also in who was also a a physician Kenny I've got to I've got to let those people in Rochester know and he'd say do you have to do it today and I'd say no I don't have to do it today but I got to let him know and then he ten minutes later I'd be right back at him again when am I going to let these and he said by not by following the program and by just doing what I was told what happened was I was walking down the hall one day and at Penn and they said Charlie would you like to stay on and do a fellowship next year? And the last thing I wanted to do was academic medicine. And yet that's what I ended up in at Ivy League. So it was not a low pressure thing but that's what I ended up doing. And it was all through pro following the program and following the recommendations of my sponsor and working those steps and living it a day at a time and and trusting a higher power and all of the and cleaning house trust God clean house doing all that stuff and that's how I've lived my life ever since I do plenty of work and I do re I am responsible with all kinds of different things but it's always about doing the next right thing and it's always about keeping the house clean it's always about practicing the steps and it's always about about trusting my higher power. And that's how I live my life and as a result of that I've had remarkable opportunities and in both medicine and in music and in my family

Recovery Brings Freedom

Dr Charlie 27:10

life I'm retired now. Since I've been retired I got to take care of my mom when she had dementia I got to be with her the day she died. I got to take care of my dog my 12 year old great dame who died and I got to be responsible in the last years of her life. Now I'm helping my sister with things and my brother-in-law with these massive medical problems that she has right now. But in the meantime I've also bought myself a BMW sports car. So it's not like I I did a musical this last this last summer with a group here in Rochester called Artists Unlimited. So it life is that way and it's all because of my sobriety and because of the way that I live that I can

Called Back To Rochester

Dr Charlie 27:58

do that. And moved up to New York I had a drive to move up here. I couldn't figure it out because I was living in Philadelphia I had a great job in Philly in addiction medicine. I was doing all kinds of other things with the city to transform the the Arthur Evans had moved there and we were transforming the behavioral health system in Philadelphia when I was moving up here. I lived right near the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia the Academy of Music the Walnut Street all places that I worked in music and then the stuff that I was doing in medicine and and I was doing a houseover all kinds of things were happening and I had a drive to come up to Rochester. I couldn't explain it because I expected to retire in Philadelphia and probably someday stop practicing medicine and continue to perform okay and and yet I got up here and started the job at Norris and I felt this is where I grew up in Rochester. I left when I was 17 but I grew up here and I felt like I had to pinch myself to realize that I had come back home. I couldn't even imagine that and then my dad got sick he ended up at a nursing home and I could and then he came home but I could be with my dad when he died I we could have repair of some tension in our relationship and had a peaceful time. I met Mark I went on they hired me and I couldn't believe they were doing this to be I'd been the deputy medical director for New York State OASIS but they hired me to be the medical director and it was beyond they didn't have a CMO and they had only a medical director now they've got three people doing the same job I did with one shouldn't say that. But it's part of the responsibility of what I was able to do but it's all because of my recovery and God if God could use me that's all I want I don't want anything else except to be doing God's will and to be of use to people and whatever that means. And yet look at that I'm going to drive a BMW convertible this summer once I get it out of the garage I'm not driving it right now. I'm driving my 2013 Ford CMAX hybrid it's got 2025 2025 miles on it or something like that. It's great. It is isn't it amazing life is good it can be agony and still be good.

Learning To Accept Help

Mark 30:24

I'm doing this work professionally now I have been in addiction medicine for about 18 years and I'm seeing mostly professionals in my little practice here and the thing that I find is almost universal is that inability to accept help that we've been so trained through our lives to accomplish I've got this problem in front of me I've got this project in front of me okay let's get the outlines let's do whatever and we'll solve it and that's worked through my life most of my life and through farm boy going to Stanford medical school how the hell did that happen I was able to accomplish that but I could not accomplish my own recovery without learning how to accept help.

Dr Charlie 31:34

I've been thinking about this and there were I want to talk about this if I may

Doctors Helping Doctors

Dr Charlie 31:40

it somehow what you said Mark makes me think of this and the people that I'm going to mention are dead. But when I got into recovery in Philly there were no physicians health programs it was before them and what happened what used to happen was that the they'd call the county medical society when they had one of us we've got one and the and then some people would go out from the county medical society and do a 12-step call basically and bring the doctor in if the doctor would come otherwise you'd end up with the medical board and and my people I can't mention their names because they're not dead yet but Steve, Kenny and Diana stayed after the first meeting that I went to and they because I had heard from all these doctors in this meeting the Delaware Valley Doctor Group and that was started by a guy named Sam Haddon who was not in recovery. Sam was just a good hearted psychiatrist who wanted to help us. He had been at Philadelphia General which is no longer there. It's where the parking garage is for the University of Pennsylvania now. But there were two people one was Dave Morris Dave Morris was an aerospace medicine doc living in Bucks County who'd come up from Cocoa Beach and he had at 1.7 patients and Dave was in recovery and the seven patients he had were the seven original astronauts. So Dave and a guy named Ed Cardin and Ed was a surgeon in Philadelphia started with Sam Haddon the Stelaware Valley doctor's group and those people who were in that group were the people who stayed after the three people stayed after to help me get into treatment the following

From Self Reliance To Honesty

Dr Charlie 33:23

day. And I grew up and my dad was from a generation and this was not uncommon. So I'm not bashing my father for this is what people said back in those days. When I'd cry he'd say stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about so that's not it's not the same as it would have been today. My dad was dead and anyway so I grew up thinking that you solve your own problems and you you dig yourself out of your hole and if you've done anything wrong you hide behind the refrigerator or something like that. You know find a place where you could get it fixed and or you lie about it or something like that. I did plenty of lying when I broke the lawnmower and stuff like that or when I lift the four three point hitch on the back of the tractor too far up and it would smash the cab on the tractor or something like that. Anyway, those are farm boy stories that Mark is nodding about when I backed my dad's truck in into the side of the barn. I don't know who did who did that. That's right. If I had a kid like me I probably would have killed him honestly but anyway so that's how I grew up when I was from that generation that was like that too we were and those strengths that I had back then though have served me well too. They've just had to be treated by the sixth and the seventh step in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous to be able to become something that doesn't destroy other people and myself. And yet those strengths aren't all bad. The codependency I had wasn't completely bad the what I talked about originally for going it turned out to be a good thing. I've been able to do things that hopefully have made a difference in people's lives. And now what happened when I first got into the program was that I'd try to solve my problems first, then I'd go to a meeting and talk to my sponsor and say, here's what I had wrong with me but this is what I've done about it. It was like I was doing a psychiatric formulation for them before I got there. And now I just am pretty raw and I just say the way things are and the guys in the program will come up to me and they'll say stuff like you need to learn to keep your mouth shut. Your family doesn't really want your opinion and that has served me really well too so I've gotten better at asking for help. But it's been a it's been a road for me to do that.

Crises And Outside Help

Dr Charlie 35:41

It's it's ended up with not asking for help has ended up in some terrible crises in my in my sobriety but they've been growing experience I ended up in treatment when I was year and a half sober basically for untreated alcoholism for not saying what was really going on with me and have for having some dishonesty about that. And a lack of willingness and that took a while to get out of that I had some more problems when I was nine years sober and took some time off from work to get some additional outside help. Outside help has been necessary for me. My religious beliefs have been helpful to me all of these things have been but without the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is the basis I don't think I could have benefited from any of that. But I have learned probably through those crises that nine years was one and then a year and a half to be more forthright and let people in who can help me. And I find the answers that I need honestly not AA is not a panacea. It doesn't solve all my problems. It says that clearly in the big book that it's not somewhere in our literature that it's not a panacea but it is it is the basis for those things that I can get help from. And most of the answers are actually in the big book for me. There's a look or in the program where people are that I can identify with who've been through it and I get so much help from the new people.

Marcy 37:05

Yeah.

Dr Charlie 37:05

So much help for them because there is absolutely no reason why or on earth when you understand this disease and you know about the denial you were talking about and you know about the lack of trust and all of that stuff these people come into the program and all of a sudden they do what we tell them. And we're just these old screwballs sitting around and when I see that happen I think oh my gosh there's another miracle it's absolutely incredible. It's preposterous that they would trust me.

Marcy 37:33

I think it was helpful when I came in that I knew nothing about what was going on. I didn't know anything about AA I didn't know anything about how it worked. So I was really I had surrendered months before I came into my first meeting so as soon as I came in and they said make coffee it'll help you stay sober and I'll be like okay I'll make coffee and I was willing to do whatever they said.

Dr Charlie 37:54

Same here.

Mark 37:55

Yeah it was very open yeah

Why Meetings Work

Mark 37:58

I was mandated to go to AA or NA go to a 12-step meeting by CPH the Committee for Physician Health our physician health program in New York State when they could do that I guess they can't mandate that anymore but I'm I'm really glad they did that because otherwise I wouldn't have learned how to get back to communicating normally with people. It's it was just it was very useful. And I can't tell you how many people I've seen that are trying to get control of this disease that say yeah I went to an AA meeting I felt more like drinking when I left there than I did when I came in and yeah that's true but I think they just don't aren't able to see what's underneath that there's something extremely powerful that's going on there spiritually that you don't get when from one meeting early on when you've just quit drinking or quit using.

Dr Charlie 39:13

In that Valent article that's in the grap grapevine he talks about when we take our doctors to the meeting with us that we need to take them to more than one because when they go at first they're going to hear all of the stories that oh I can't believe they actually did this and lived through it or that they're not incarcerated or that they got out of incarceration or whatever it was. Because you don't hear the recovery until later. And I think that's one of the geniuses. There's so much wisdom in the sayings of AA in the slogan where they say 90 and 90. It's not only about getting my brain rewired because my brain did need to be rewired the pathways in my brain naturally go towards nobody showed me how to stop and get or nobody told me what else turpinhydrate with codeine really was. I found that on my own and I didn't read about it. I just my brain knew what it was when I experienced it and nobody told me how to go and manipulate the pharmacist into giving me that bottle or drinking it on that's hardwired into me to know how to do that stuff. And but what's not hardwired into me is the recovery and the directions of from neuroplasticity that my brain goes in now. But because of the genetic disease that I have the other stuff could come back really easily. And so I have to work at this all the time. So part of the 90 and 90 part of the sponsorship part of continuing in the meetings and John Kelly just published an article about relapse. John Kelly had published something a while ago that shows that Alcoholics Anonymous actually has better recovery rates for alcoholism that are longer lasting than any than motivational interviewing, motivational enhancement therapy or CBT. And it's a lot cheaper it saves about $10,000 a case as a matter of fact. But how often do we hear about that in academic circles or in regulatory circles or any no we don't ever hear about that.

Marcy 41:16

Yeah I I feel like we start every day with I go to a 6 30 in the morning meeting every day. And so I start every day with a group therapy session. Yeah to set me on a road of trying to be positive and understanding that other people are having worse problems than me and all kinds of things that set me off on a day where I'm not going to even be thinking about drinking. Do I need to do laundry? Those are the things I'm thinking about all day long. I'm not thinking about alcohol but I think it's because I get the reminder in the morning that I'm alcoholic and then I can just go about my day.

Dr Charlie 41:49

It's true. And so what he showed in the new article it was I don't know if it was a meta-analysis or what it was I can't remember but it was a pretty large end that that when people stop their basically when people stop their recovery process is when they relapse isn't that something I have hypertension and guess what I did a few years ago with my hypertensive medication. Stopped it I did and guess what happened? You broke it yes and then when I went to my doctor guess what he told me to do start taking absolutely it's just the same as any other disease. Oh my God. It's so true though.

Mark 42:25

Yeah but I guess I don't know if it's just because we're medical people that it's not a pill and you can't have a surgery to fix it. That the fix is very simple and it's just hard to believe that going and talking with other alcoholics and addicts is going to make me better.

Dr Charlie 42:50

My sponsor in Georgia he passed away his name was C.D Collins you can get his talk on on there's an online now and I can say his name too because he's passed away now but C D in his talk would say the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is so simple it will blow your mind. It's a very simple program and that's true. It does absolutely blow my mind how simple this is for a simple program for complicated people.

Mark 43:18

So they say unfortunately the little timer here says we're getting towards the end

Addiction As A Disease

Mark 43:26

I'm wondering if there is any way to come up your experience of addiction as a disease but it doesn't sound when you say disease it implies suffering.

Dr Charlie 43:45

And it doesn't sound like there if my sister who suffers with incredible pain it's absolute agony that she lives in 247 or somebody with cancer could have A disease that responded to as well to treatment as this disease that we have responds. They'd give anything for that. And that's the truly sad it's happy, but it's a sad thing that more people haven't been told that and been offered that. I know that the denial exists and everything, but somehow it got through to me when that doctor, when Steve talked to me. And I have to thank the University of Pennsylvania too, because they were the ones who confronted me and put me through treatment and then had me back. They didn't fire me. They had me back to complete my residency and all of that stuff. But if so that's true about the recovery from addiction, but the disease itself is horrible. The disease is if there is a hell, I've been there, I feel like. Remember, I used to say that it not only took me down, but it took people that I love down. And and I don't I didn't kill anybody, but I was giving them anesthetics when I was completely intoxicated, taking responsibility for another human being's life and for surgical condition, for everything like that.

Marcy 45:20

Although we do that whenever we drink and drive.

Dr Charlie 45:24

It's that way too, isn't it? And it's devastating. It is very painful. And it can be physically painful, but it certainly is spiritually and mentally painful to live without the ability to feel love, even if people love you and even if you know that you love them. To live without the ability to feel compassion or empathy, and just to want to die and drag yourself to work every day and smile and know that you probably don't smell good because you weren't able to shower or shave or anything like that. It's awful. And then to go home and know that you're going to do it all over again. It's just a bad way to live. But it doesn't have to be that way. Right. And so there is agony with the disease. Yes. Unthinkable agony.

Marcy 46:13

I think it makes the recovery and the sobriety all that much more wonderful.

Mark 46:18

Yeah. Yeah.

Hope And Realistic Stats

Mark 46:19

The, as you said, the reason behind doing this podcast is to hopefully reach one or two or three or four or maybe even more people in the healthcare professions and beyond. I mean, I'll use it, but just that the solution is there, that recovery is possible, and you don't have to commit suicide, you don't have to lose yourself. It's exactly the opposite. That confronting this disease has so many rewards as we read in the AA meetings frequently, that it's just, I'm hoping that we can share that.

Dr Charlie 47:12

And there's one more thing that I want to say too. They say that AA doesn't have statistics. And when you go to a treatment center, sometimes they'll say these dismal things like 7% of you will make it, and the rest of you will be out there. The truth of the matter is that we can look at John Kelly's work more recently, but we can also look at the foreword to the first edition of the big book, which says that 55-0% of those who came into the program and did gave it a real honest, diligent effort stayed sober. Of those who didn't, 50% of those stayed sober. So that's a 75% stat right there. But it requires the effort. It's not just that you can come and not do the effort. And of the remaining few that didn't stay sober, many of them did improve with occasional relapses.

Service Work And Harm Reduction

Dr Charlie 48:03

Now, in one of the meetings I go to, they have this statistic. And I'm not exactly sure where it came from, but they say 98% of people who do service work that day will stay sober. And it's huge. That's a great statistics.

Mark 48:20

And that's how they keep the coffee coming. The chairs set up and everything.

Marcy 48:25

The service work is not digging a hole to put a swimming pool in. The service work is making coffee or putting chairs away or greeting people in the morning. Yes, you have to stand there for 15 minutes and say hello to people. And your chances of staying sober that day are that much better.

Dr Charlie 48:42

It is. And there are other ways to stay sober too. And I know people who stay sober without meetings and all of them. But I want to go with the one that's got the great stats.

Mark 48:49

Yep. I I've heard that statistic. Lots of people will say, look around the room, and practically 90% of us won't make it. But the truth is I don't have those exact stats. But if this disease killed everybody that got it, we would we'd be working on it a lot harder than we are. The fact is, I know some people who came into the program, did well for a while, relapsed, came back, and then have found some sort of equilibrium of continuing to use but have some sort of control over it. So it isn't true that if you don't get it in AA or whatever, that you're necessarily going to die. It does mean you're probably shorting yourself from the just the incredibly amazing things that you might be able to find out and recover. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Dr Charlie 49:54

We talk a lot about harm reduction these days. I think I was the first one in OASIS that mentioned harm reduction, and I thought I might be fired because Oasis was not about harm reduction then. But I think it's great to do harm reduction. The thing is, if you want to see real harm reduction, go to an AA meeting because the person who just walks in, who's been drinking, or who comes back after will get the loudest round of applause of anybody, the most hugs and the most love.

Speaker 2 50:20

Yeah.

Dr Charlie 50:21

There's never a time you can do something there and get ostracized. It's just a great organization.

Marcy 50:26

Yeah.

Mark 50:27

Charlie, thank you so much for being willing to do this. Thank you for having me. And it's always great to have a chance to see you and be with you. You too. You too, Marcy. Thanks.

Closing Resources And Invitation

Mark 50:39

As we come to the end of today's episode, we want to leave you with this. There is no single path to recovery. For some, it's 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous. Others find support through outpatient and inpatient treatment programs, individual and group therapy, religious communities, and other forms of spirituality, just to name a few. What matters most is finding a path that works for you, a reliable way out of the isolation of addiction, to reconnection with yourself, your loved ones, your profession, and the world around you. If you're a healthcare professional in the Rochester area, we invite you to Healers Helping Healers, a confidential 12-step-based meeting every Tuesday evening at 6.30 for medical professionals who are in recovery or simply beginning to consider it. Go to recoveryrounds.com for more episodes, comments, and resources. And let us know if you'd like to share your own story of addiction and recovery. We'd love to have you on. Lastly, Recovery Rounds is supported by My Practice, Mark Windsburg MD Medical Services, PLLC, where I provide private, discrete care for professionals seeking help with substance use. Thank you for listening. Until next time, keep showing up, keep reaching out, and remember, recovery is possible.