Dr Mark: Flipping the Switch

Dr. Mark Winsberg shares how he inadvertently became addicted to Tramadol while coping with the pressures of a demanding emergency medicine career. After a seizure forced him to confront the problem, he faced the possibility of losing everything and began a recovery journey that changed his life.

Transcript

Welcome to Recovery Rounds

Mark 0:00

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. Welcome back to Recovery Rounds, Healers Helping Healers One Story at a

Mark Gets Interviewed

Mark 1:22

time. And today we're going to do something a little different. I'm not going to be the one asking questions. I'm going to be interrogated by Marcy and Dr. Ed, who was brave enough to do the very first episode of Recovery Rounds. So without further ado, I'm going to subject myself to their interrogation.

Marcy 1:47

We will be nice.

Mark 1:48

Speak for yourself.

Marcy 1:51

So, like we usually do, Mark, before addiction became a problem in your life, just tell us a little bit about how you started out, how your family was, and kind of how you were before you were a big guy.

Farm Roots and Identity

Mark 2:03

Well, before I was a big guy, I was born and raised in South Florida. I was the fourth of four kids, the baby of the family, and don't call me baby to this day. That pisses me off. My father was a vegetable farmer in South Florida. And my mom was a housewife taking care of us four kids. We were all born in a span of six years, so she had her hands full. And medicine was never on my radar. I grew up thinking I wanted to be like my dad. I was going to be a farmer too. And it was just a matter of time before that happened. I carried through with that through grade school, high school. And when I went to college, ostensibly I went to college to do pre-ag. The truth is that I followed my girlfriend to the college that she went to. And so I did the pre-ag courses, which happened to coincide with pre-med courses. So when I finally got to the decision to get into medicine, I had a fair amount of the prereqs to do that. As far as the rest of my life, it was kind of strange because I grew up outside of town, and my playmates were the Puerto Rican kids next door on the farm that was just half a mile away from us. I went to school in town, was in the advanced classes, and was with the doctor's kids, the lawyer's kids, and all that. So there was, there's always been a constant dichotomy in the people that I end up relating with. And I've always been good at finding my place in whatever social situation that I've been in. I've never felt that I belong in any of those situations. And that's another thing. A lot of us addicts and alcoholics feel that way or find ourselves feeling that way. But I was very good at, you know, if I was playing with the Puerto Rican kids or the black kids on the farm near farms near us, did fine. If it was the kids in town, did fine. And, you know, fast forward to medical school and all that, I was able to adjust to all those situations. Did you do well in school? Was it easy for you? It wasn't easy. I did do well in school, but I'm a people pleaser. And so my MO was to first please the teacher. And I did that by, you know, doing my assignments, getting good grades, being a good boy in class. And I also would sort of modify my behaviors such that I wouldn't get rejected by my classmates. If I was a total teacher's pet, you know, the other kids would reject me. But I was always on this sort of tightrope of how to keep in with my friends and in with my friends that were in the advanced classes, and in with my friends that were from the farming area. So it was quite a balancing act. I would think. Yeah.

Marcy 5:43

So were there people with alcohol problems around you at that time when you were growing up?

Mark 5:48

No. There's no I mean, my brother got into marijuana and weed. And I mean, this was the 70s. And I had long hair at that time. My brother had long hair. And uh we would go to rock concerts in Hollywood and Miami, Fort Lauderdale. But no, my parents didn't drink. My grandfather, her dad, would have a whiskey sour in the evenings, sometimes, and when they'd play Pinockle, which they like to do, my mom and my older sister, and my grandfather, he would have a whiskey sour, but no alcohol, no major drug problems or anything in the family.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

You mentioned how growing up you had these different poles of existence, the kids next door, the kids in town, being good with your teachers, but also being in with your classmates, and how you would frameshift to accomplish that.

Work Ethic and Imposter Feelings

SPEAKER_01 6:57

Do you think that and you mentioned that not feeling like you belong necessarily in any of those groups at a very early age, and how that potentially contributes to addiction, but were there other things that you recall that really helped when you were going through college, going through medical school, training to be a doctor that were really important and helpful for achieving that goal, but may have also played a part in, contributed to, or set you up for addiction?

Mark 7:30

It's kind of a complicated question. Having been brought up on a farm with a father who didn't want us sitting around during the summer, my sisters got to go to the beach, but my brother and I, there's always work to be done on the farm. So he instilled begrudgingly on my part a really strong work ethic. He was actually effectively an orphan. He and my uncle were, when they were born, their mother died from preeclampsia, and their father, who I never met, was I think in his 40s and had no clue what to do with two twin baby boys. And they got raised by my dad's aunt until they were school age, and then my dad and uncle were sent to this non-denominational boarding school, secular boarding school, from kindergarten through high school. So my dad never really had parent models. They would go and visit their father on weekends or you know, every couple weeks, but they never what they had was the the teachers and whoever at the boarding school. So I mentioned that because somehow he absorbed the messages that you you work hard, you do well, and you don't complain, and he learned a lot all along the way. So in my upbringing on the farm, I got taught these values that I didn't realize I was getting, such as he would borrow a tractor from one of the other farmers. He would not only return it with a full tank of diesel and having washed it, sometimes he would even repaint the tractor and give it back. And he always had that attitude that you honor your commitments and you just do right by people and do unto others as you would have them do unto you. So how does that relate to your question? I think those values really helped me. All the way through school, I didn't absorb academic material. I feel like I was a stone and I had to really it was water, I had to keep pushing it in, and I would be able to do that in order to get good grades. The part that was different that I think led to my feeling different, not as good as other people, was basically my position in the family. I was the youngest of four, and I always felt weaker, stupider, just not equal to them. And I think I kind of carried that over into life after that, that no matter how hard I tried, I would never be able to beat up my brother or out talk my sister, who was valedictorian of her high school class. So again, I developed the go-along to get along approach, and that was helpful in every situation through my life. I worked on the farm as a kid. When I went to college, I worked really hard and did well in my courses there, and when I went to medical school, I don't know how, but I did well in that situation. But in all of them, I carried that I don't belong here. Everybody else here is better than me, knows more than me, and that I'm gonna be found out at some point. That was detrimental, and that I think was the foundation for addiction part because I remember this loop in my brain that was constantly telling me you're not good enough, you're not, or you're never gonna be, that kind of thing. It got really loud. And I don't know how I was a ED doc for 17 years, and the stresses that go along with that, I don't know how they fed into it. But when I was the medical director of the ED, and I would have to go to all the executive committee meetings, the same sort of feelings that I had in grade school and high school, these guys are real doctors. I'm not. And they're just letting me come to these meetings, and I hated the meetings anyway. And that loop in my brain, I think, really contributed or made me vulnerable to addiction.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

So the syndrome was a motivator to work hard, but also something that chipped away at your soul.

Mark 13:03

Yeah. Very much so.

Finding Joy in Medicine

SPEAKER_01 13:05

Aaron Ross Powell When you think back about the struggles of education and then doing what it is that we do as physicians, what did you love most about being a doctor?

Mark 13:15

It was the thing that I got criticized most for at Stanford. I started off medical school at University of Miami, and then my wife, who's an internist, was two years ahead of me. She got a Stanford affiliated residency, internal medicine residency, and I was accepted into Stanford as a transfer student in my third year. And right off the bat, I think my first rotation was internal medicine. And Stanford gets the weirdest of the weird. I didn't have a clue of anything about hospital culture. I didn't know what orders were. I didn't know a patient comes to the emergency room. How do they end up going from there to a room on the floor? I just did not understand the culture at all. But what I connected with was talking to patients. That's what I'm good at. I'm good at making people feel comfortable in uncomfortable situations. But what I was not good at was getting pimped on rounds about which chemotherapy was used on this weird cancer that a patient with that would only turn up at Stanford. I didn't know about congestive heart failure, much less the chemotherapy regimens for some weird-ass cancers. But when I got evaluated on that particular part of my internal medicine rotation, I got criticized for not being prepared for rounds. When I was on call, the residents wouldn't tell me, they wouldn't explain to me where they were, what they were doing. And I think they get rid of me. They would say, well, you can stay in the call room and and we'll let you know if we get an admission or whatever. They never called me, never let me know. And then I got criticized for not doing what I was supposed to be doing as a medical student. But I was able to talk to patients and I really enjoyed that. And it was recognized a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Sounds like there's still a little resentment there.

Mark 15:45

Yeah, a tiny bit. The saving grace was I did the second part of my internal medicine rotation was at a local affiliated hospital. And there they needed the help. And so the residents included me. They wanted me to do anything to help them out. And I loved it, and they loved me. And so I got called into the dean's office, and they were looking at the two evaluations from the two different parts of the rotation and asked, What is this? I said, You tell me.

Marcy 16:23

Yeah, that's pretty lousy, though. Yeah. They really need to take you under your wing. And when residents would come in or interns would come in and start explaining to us about how sodium works in the brain and how you get to do this and that. And I'm like, you know, this is new information for him. I'll let him tell me what it is about. I could probably give the lecture he was giving, but it encouraged them to kind of do their

ED Burnout and Tramadol

Marcy 16:46

thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

So then looking back at your journey, when did substances first become more than something that was casual or recreational?

Mark 16:58

I was in my ninth or tenth year of my emergency medicine career. Everything was going great. I'm the medical director. I love the people that I was working with, the nurses, the medical staff. I really liked them. This was an outlying hospital here in Rochester. There were some amazing specialists that were there. And I could call them any time if I had a question. So I loved the atmosphere and how things were going. But medicine was changing. And what used to be really fun about that ED was it wasn't always super busy. So I had time to BS with the farmers who were coming in for whatever broken arm or whatever they were coming in for, and also do the medical part. But as medicine progressed, we all know that the hospital started getting hospitalists that would admit the patients. And the specialists and the attendings that I used to get along with so well were getting older and were pulling back. And it just changed. And whereas I used to be excited when the ambulance tones would go off, like, what's coming? I would start to dread hearing those tones. And I could see from the ED out into the waiting room. And I could also see out into the parking lot. And when I would see people lining up to come in, or I would see the waiting room full, I'd just get this feeling of dread because I knew that I would not be getting to those people for hours. And I knew that when I did get to them, they'd be pissed off. They'd been waiting all this time with whatever the problem was. And it changed. And I think those pressures contributed to the addiction part. And where it came in was in the mid-90s when Tramadol was released on the market as a non-addicting analgesic.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

And they were wrong.

Mark 19:24

Yeah, they were wrong. It's now controlled, but did they know that at the time? I don't know. But the drug reps would bring grocery bags full of samples to the ED and the doctor's offices and want us to give a few samples and then write the prescription for the rest of the course of the tramadol. And I do not remember when the first time I took that medication was, but it was probably because I had an ache or a pain. I played a lot of racquetball and I might have been hurting in my shoulder or whatever. And that was the switch flipper for my addiction. It did nothing for the pain, but I realized that my 12 and 14-hour ED shifts were going a little easier. In retrospect, maybe it's because Tramadol has opioid effects, has SSRI type effects, and God knows what else. In my brain, I thought that, well, if one is good, two's probably better. And if two's good, and then it just went from there. I was taking handfuls of Tramadol, and then I would get too speedy on the tramadol and all the caffeine and sugar that we lived on in the ED. So I discovered soma, Caras Protol, the old muscle relaxant whose first metabolite is for all the world a benzo. And don't you know that I was living better through chemistry? I was doing this chemical balancing act to try and keep it together. So it really came out of the blue, and I had no clue what was happening. I did not see what was happening with me. 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 winsburg.com. M D.com. That's W-I-N-S-B-E-R-G-M-D.com.

Marcy 22:09

It's interesting that you didn't associate the fact that you'd been working in an ED for 10 years, and maybe that was the problem. It wasn't the waiting room filling up or the hospital changing, that maybe it was all the stress you'd been eating all those years.

Mark 22:24

Yeah, and I knew the stats that most ED docs burn out around the 10-year mark and start looking for something else to do, either go into administration or urgent care or get out of the ED. But it's one thing to know about an illness or disease, but when it started affecting me, I didn't have a clue. I didn't recognize it.

Marcy 22:53

So you were using a lot of different drugs to keep yourself stable. And how long do you think that went on?

Mark 22:59

It went on for about three and a half or four years. And it was a totally solo endeavor. In retrospect, the the reason I was taking these drugs was to get away from that old loop of you're not good enough, you're stupid, you're this, you're that. And also probably the pressures and I don't like the way I'm feeling, and I don't want to have my feelings get expressed in my practice. So rather than change practice, these drugs appeared and seemed like a good answer. Not really, it turns

Seizure Wake Up Call

Mark 23:47

out.

Marcy 23:47

So when did you first realize that you had a big problem and what were you going to do about it?

Mark 23:56

It wasn't till the end that it really came home to me that I had a problem. So the combination of lots of caffeine, lack of sleep, because I was switching day and night shifts all the time, and a small ED, that's what you have to do. As the medical director, if I had claimed all day shifts, I would have had a mutiny. So every week I would do a couple 12-hour day shifts and then do a night shift and sleep a day or two and go back to days. And so lack of sleep and soma and tramadol and occasional alcohol. I tried, I never liked alcohol because I didn't like that feeling of being out of control when I'd have too much. And I didn't feel that way with the drugs that I was using. What brought it to my attention was I had a seizure in front of my wife and two daughters and my parents in a restaurant in Montreal that was in 2003, which is January 9th, 2003. 10th is my sober date. So January 9th was when that happened. But prior to that, I think I had probably had seizures because I would get to the end of my 12, 14-hour shifts and go back into my office and pop a handful of pills and wake up an hour later, two hours later, throwing up, or I don't know what was going on. And there was one time I remember very clearly, I was on a night shift and doing my usual pills, and I could feel a seizure coming on. And I told the nurses that I was going to go back to the call room. I'd just need to lay down. And the seizures, I guess they were grand mall, but they only lasted seconds. So I was able to go back to the call room and rest and came out. And scary. Yeah. Very scary. It is scary. But it wasn't until that episode in Montreal that when I saw the look on my daughter's faces, my parents didn't have a clue what was going on. My wife, the internist, who had had suspicions previously, asked me, Was I taking anything? Of course not. But thankfully, she drove the rest of the way to the hotel we were staying at. And I laid awake that whole night. And I felt like there was a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. And we're in an argument all night about what do I do. And fortunately, the angel went out, and I just realized that I was done. I didn't know what was happening with me, but I knew I couldn't keep doing it. So the next day I told my wife what had been going on for the last three and a half years. And she didn't leave me, she didn't take the kids, and I don't know if I would have been as strong as she was, but that was when I finally came to realize what was going on. And at that point, I didn't understand addiction. All I knew was I'd been doing this behavior and it had to stop.

The Devil on Your Shoulder

SPEAKER_01 27:42

I'm wondering or trying to get to know that devil a little bit more. What were the biggest fears or concerns about asking for help or realizing you had this addiction and now something had to be done? What was the devil trying to tell you?

Mark 28:00

That what it tells all of us, medical people, medical professionals, which gets to the reason why I wanted to do this this podcast. The devil is saying, if you tell you're gonna lose your job, you're gonna lose your family, you know, all hell is gonna break loose, and you can keep it together. It was just this mantra of license. Yeah, I lose my license, don't do it. Yeah, that was what the devil was saying to me. And I've seen so many other people with that same devil, the disease, sitting there telling them, don't do it, don't get help, because it's gonna be the death of you, it's gonna be the end of you when it's exactly the opposite. If you admit to having the problem, that's the start of being able to get better.

Getting Help Through CPH

SPEAKER_01 29:01

When you think now about the journey that you've had in recovery, talk a little bit more about how you were able to seek help, who were the best resources or the best assistance as you were getting into recovery. What was the journey you had in early recovery?

Mark 29:21

I was fortunate because I had a friend who was an internist. He had a very good friend who was an internist as well who had this disease and had tried forever. I met him along the way. He worked at the hospital where I was at for a little while, but he never got it. And he got walked out of one of the major hospitals here on Christmas Eve. He had been stealing morphine out of somebody's IV, and they walked him out of the hospital. He got in his car, went and got drunk, and jumped in the Niagara River. And I knew about that. I also knew that he was involved with CPH, the Committee for Physician Health, which is New York State's Physician Health Program. And I also had a primary doc who was an addiction medicine specialist, one of the first and MD specialists in the Rochester area. So a lot of these things coalesced to be able to, with some nudging from my wife, call CPH. I didn't do it willingly at first. I told her, why don't you call them and tell them you have a resident who's having these problems and what a friend. Yeah, exactly. And when she did that, I was listening to her on the call, and I thought, this is bullshit. I just gotta call them and talk to them. And my experience was fantastic. At that point, if they said jump, my question was how high? So I did my interview with them and I was assigned a case manager. But I wanted to be very secretive about this. I didn't want anybody in Rochester to find out that I had this problem. So they had the option of sending me to inpatient treatment or intensive outpatient treatment. And I would have had no choice. I would just say, yeah, okay, I'll go. They made this decision because us doctor types and medical people are such good liars and rationalizers, how they came to the decision that outpatient treatment would probably be enough for me. But turns out, knock on wood, it was the right decision. So I was mandated to intensive outpatient treatment. They didn't take me out of my role as the medical director in the ED. They didn't take me out of my job in the ED, which they could have done. So I had to figure out how am I gonna do this treatment and this job, and it worked out. I went to the CEO of the hospital and small hospital, and we all knew each other in the executive committee. I went to him and I told him what was going on, and then I went to the medical director, same thing. I went to the ED docs that were working under me, told them, and everyone just responded positively. So I just feel like I was blessed or lucky or whatever. So I was able to arrange my schedule such that I could fulfill the obligations of CPH and continue doing my job. And I never thought that I'd be able to do that, but it worked out, and that's where I learned about the problem that I have, what active addiction is, and all the manifestations that I was exhibiting, that's the disease. So my understanding of it has been slow and growing.

AA Resistance to Lifeline

Mark 33:47

And one of the things that they did was they mandated that I go to 12-step meetings, and it was the only thing that I bucked at. And I'm thinking, I'm a doctor, I'm not gonna go hang out with once they're drunks and addicts and all that stuff. It turns out it was probably the best gift that was ever given me. And I still go to AA meetings four or five times, sometimes six times a week. I have a home group that I absolutely love. Why do I keep doing it? There's so many days when I'm sitting in a meeting and thinking, ah, blah, blah, blah, I've heard all this shit before. But there are those days where the magic happens and you just hear things that are really magical about other people's journeys and able to connect with that. So it's really kept my connection to the disease alive.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

It's interesting you brought up the initial resistance to AA meetings and then how the reality was the polar opposite. Because I went through that same experience initially thinking this is not what I need, only to find out once I was really in it that I'd finally found all the people who think like I do, and suddenly felt connection and relationship. And in fact, it was at the first AA meeting I attended in Rochester that I heard someone in the back of the room pipe up and say, Well, here's what's going on in my life. I'm an ED physician, and my head could not have whipped around faster because that's when I first got to know you. And, you know, you talk about it as a blessing. It truly is, it's a gift of the program, but also a gift of God that these connections form. And none of it's an accident. There are no coincidences in AA. It was clearly meant for me to meet you there, and is part of the reason you've been so important in my own journey.

Marcy 36:01

I know. I think we we feel so lousy about ourselves, like we don't fit in and nobody understands us. And it's kind of shocking to go to a place where there's 30 or 40 people that have the same experience you had before they came in and have found sobriety and don't tell you what to do, just say this is what worked for me and give you some suggestions. But to the person that's been someone who accepted me even though I was a blackout drunk every night and they helped me get sober, and it's just it's I I I want to say it's magical. It is but it's because I can't figure out how it works, but it just does.

Mark 36:46

I could have been talked out of the AA rooms, but it was not something that I really wanted to do. And early on, I'm glad I was mandated. So quitting wasn't an option. Early on, this guy came up to me in the meeting that I was going to and said, Well, you can come to the meetings, you're welcome, and you can come to the group conscience meetings, but because alcohol wasn't your major substance, you are not a member, you are not a voting member in the group conscience. And he was showing me this pamphlet from the 30s that was talking about if you're using something besides alcohol, then go somewhere else. Fortunately, there was this old timer who I grew to love. He's long gone now, but he heard this guy talking to me. And when the guy went away, the old timer came up to me and said, That's bullshit. You belong here, stay here. And that was, I think, a life-saving moment that I didn't recognize at the time, but turns out it was really valuable.

Marcy 38:09

Yeah.

Life Today and New Purpose

Marcy 38:11

So where are you today?

Mark 38:15

So it's interesting. I didn't quit the ED once I got into treatment and into recovery. It took me another five years to realize that this is a young person's game, and I don't like the way medicine is going. And coincidentally, again, a friend of mine was working at a local state rehab here in Rochester, and he had a part-time job there, and the contract for the ED group that I was part of at the time had run out at the hospital. So he said, I'm leaving this job at the rehab. Would you want to do it? And what the hell? I'll go interview. I don't have anything better to do. And the medical director of that rehab, Charlie Morgan, and I'm very happy to mention his name, turned into my mentor and teacher and taught me all about addiction medicine to the point that I decided to get boarded in addiction medicine. And even though I swore I would never take an administrative position again, I took a job as the clinical director of one of the addiction treatment programs in town and even made it to the medical director position for one of the major hospital systems in town, their addiction treatment programs. I realized I hated administrative positions. I knew that when I was in the ED director position. So what happened is I got boarded. I've done addiction medicine now for 17 years. I semi-retired from the hospital system and had always wanted to start a solo addiction medicine practice, part-time, private pay. I don't accept insurance, geared towards medical professionals in particular, but professionals in general, because we seem to want to protect ourselves a lot. So I did it. I just enjoy the work. I don't need to do it for the money. Also, years ago at one of the ASAM conventions, I became part of a group called Like-minded docs, they're addiction medicine specialists in recovery. And I had the idea of wouldn't it be cool if if I got some sort of thing together where we could tell our stories and put it out there? I looked into it half-heartedly and then didn't follow up on it. And lo and behold, the idea came back to me. And I thought about doing this podcast and used Chat GPT and whatever else I could find to figure out how do you record these things, what sort of equipment do you need. And that was the genesis of this project. And I've been through really difficult and really wonderful things in recovery at this point. And all I can say is I'm not getting older, I'm getting better. Not necessarily body-wise. You know, I just had rotator cuff surgery. I've got two hip replacements, I've got rods in my back, but life is getting better, and this project is part of it.

Marcy 42:09

And you got through that without mentioning your grandson, who's a little over a year old and you're talking about.

Mark 42:14

That was one of the wonderful things that happened a little over a year ago.

Marcy 42:17

I think this is great. Did you have any other questions, Ed?

Message to Struggling Clinicians

SPEAKER_01 42:21

I guess when you think about the target audience for this podcast, and I'm sure we've hit on some of the points, but what would you say to a physician, nurse, PA, respiratory tech, anybody you know who's got licensure or credentialing in the healthcare field who's struggling now with addiction and currently is living in the world with the devil sitting on your shoulder, what would you say to that person?

Mark 42:55

What I would hope for them is that they somehow come in contact with us, with other healthcare professionals in recovery, who can shepherd them and try to help them learn to accept this disease as a disease, not as a character flaw or weakness or whatever. Just that hopefully the message can get through when the devil is saying, Don't do it, don't do it, you're gonna lose everything that one of us somehow, some way can can break through that addiction defense system.

Marcy 43:45

Yeah, there's life in sobriety that is more than you realize you have. Get back all the things you feel like you've lost.

SPEAKER_01 43:53

Yeah, I've heard the saying we don't live to get sober, we get sober to live.

Mark 44:01

Yeah. It's really true.

unknown 44:03

Yep.

Mark 44:04

Well, thank you guys. You done good for doing this interview with me.

SPEAKER_01 44:09

I resisted asking all the hard questions.

Mark 44:12

Okay, when I turn this thing off, you can ask them. Good chat.

Closing Resources and Hope

Mark 44:16

Thanks a lot. 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.