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** WARNING - this episode could permanently change your life ** · Aired Out

0:48
Speaker 1: Stop stettin.
1:26
Speaker 2: Stott all right because of that water main installation, Seminary
2:13
Speaker 2: Street this morning closed to through traffic from North Maine
2:17
Speaker 2: to Summer Street. Posted it up yesterday reminding you this morning.
2:23
Speaker 2: This summer there's going to be on and off construction
2:26
Speaker 2: there and traffic interruptions are going to be frequent, So
2:32
Speaker 2: keep watch, stay tuned for updates. We'll have them for you.
2:35
Speaker 2: A very good morning. Hey, what qualities and priorities would
2:40
Speaker 2: you like to see in the next Berry City manager?
2:45
Speaker 2: That's been the Facebook question of the day and I
2:51
Speaker 2: want to hear from you on that. I know Josh
2:55
Speaker 2: Jerome is doing a great job with the Bury area
2:58
Speaker 2: development out in the park last night speaking with folks
3:04
Speaker 2: about that and getting their feedback, their input, their opinions.
3:08
Speaker 2: Thanks for sharing your morning with us this morn I'm
3:10
Speaker 2: gonna have a great one. Sun is shining, It is beautiful.
3:13
Speaker 2: Flying the Wall Productions bringing you the aired Out podcast
3:16
Speaker 2: live on Facebook and YouTube, streamed everywhere you get your
3:20
Speaker 2: podcasts on the web at aired out vt dot com.
3:24
Speaker 2: Birthday shouts this morning. You bet it's Vic Candiaz Yaouba
3:31
Speaker 2: Garcia very talented on the concas understatement Shannon gets Bethany
3:37
Speaker 2: Kim Amber Haley. Happy birthday to each of you. What
3:41
Speaker 2: an absolutely incredible weather night it was at curry of
3:45
Speaker 2: Park last night with Randy Beer. Amazing. We're at sixty
3:48
Speaker 2: four degrees right now. We got sun and clouds eighty
3:51
Speaker 2: later today tonight, some showers moving in. We'll get down
3:54
Speaker 2: about sixty Friday morning, thunderstorms they're saying for tomorrow morning
4:02
Speaker 2: weekend kickoff. It is going to be fantastic and the
4:08
Speaker 2: weather is going to be great. Some sun, some clouds.
4:12
Speaker 2: We're going to get the best of both worlds and
4:16
Speaker 2: right around eighty degrees either side of it. Later this
4:19
Speaker 2: morning Athletics Podcast right here, Logan Loose is going to
4:22
Speaker 2: be diving into some of the latest sports headlines, not
4:28
Speaker 2: only from Vermont in the Vermont Mountaineers and Vermont Ravens,
4:32
Speaker 2: but he's also going to be breaking down some of
4:34
Speaker 2: the big stories with the NBA Draft, the discussion of
4:40
Speaker 2: NFL free agency moves, which are the talk of the
4:44
Speaker 2: town right now, especially if you're a football fan, and
4:50
Speaker 2: what it means for the upcoming season. Join us Live
4:52
Speaker 2: this morning at about eleven o'clock. He's going to break
4:55
Speaker 2: it all down for you and give you some local
4:57
Speaker 2: perspective as well. Eleven o'clock right here where you are now,
5:00
Speaker 2: Tomorrow your weekend jumpstart with your weekly mental floss with Gee.
5:07
Speaker 2: He's going to light it up tomorrow morning. These two
5:10
Speaker 2: guys on the air with us right now, Brandon and
5:14
Speaker 2: Ron from Upper Valley Sports Cards and Collectibles, have something
5:20
Speaker 2: really cool going on this weekend. What's going on, boys,
5:22
Speaker 2: how are you doing well? How are you hey? Well,
5:26
Speaker 2: tell us about what's happening over there where Hartford High School? Right,
5:31
Speaker 2: Harford High School? It is, well, what's going on there?
5:35
Speaker 3: So we've been trying for several years to get a
5:38
Speaker 3: gathering together of collectibles and vendors, and finally we had
5:43
Speaker 3: a plan that came together. So we've got sixteen vendors,
5:47
Speaker 3: We've got a food food distributor there, so it's just
5:50
Speaker 3: going to be a whole lot of fun.
5:52
Speaker 2: Nice. So, I mean, the whole trading card thing, I
5:57
Speaker 2: don't know if it was COVID or what the deal is,
6:00
Speaker 2: but it seems like it's just kind of popped a
6:01
Speaker 2: little bit. Right.
6:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, in the nineties, it slowed down after the junk
6:06
Speaker 3: wax era, it really slowed down people weren't buying as much,
6:10
Speaker 3: and then COVID people had the extra money, so they
6:12
Speaker 3: were buying crazy stuff. And the card makers knew it
6:17
Speaker 3: because they were just pushing quantities of cards out and
6:21
Speaker 3: you could get your hands on anything if you could
6:23
Speaker 3: find it.
6:24
Speaker 4: Of course.
6:25
Speaker 2: Wow, so buy and selling trading, you're gonna you'll have
6:29
Speaker 2: cards that have been autographed one of the kind stuff.
6:31
Speaker 2: I'm guessing five bucks gets you in.
6:33
Speaker 5: Huh, yes, it does.
6:37
Speaker 4: All of this five bucks entry and enjoyed the show
6:41
Speaker 4: a whole day from ten to five o'clock.
6:44
Speaker 2: You got raffles going on that this is gonna be
6:46
Speaker 2: really cool. Is there space still for vendors?
6:51
Speaker 3: I think we could fit a couple more in. I
6:54
Speaker 3: went up Sunday actually to measure what we had for space,
6:58
Speaker 3: and there was an AA clinic going on, so I
7:01
Speaker 3: didn't exactly get measurements, but I looked around and I said,
7:04
Speaker 3: I think we could possibly get twenty in here.
7:06
Speaker 2: Wow, that's really this is amazing for year number one.
7:10
Speaker 2: And you guys are going to make this an annual thing,
7:11
Speaker 2: you think, we.
7:13
Speaker 3: Hope, So we hope if it goes well enough, we
7:15
Speaker 3: can even do one in the fall. But you know,
7:17
Speaker 3: we have to coordinate with the high school, and if
7:19
Speaker 3: that doesn't pan out, you know, if they've got other
7:21
Speaker 3: things going on, we'll have to find a different venue.
7:23
Speaker 3: But yeah, we'd like to do it brand again.
7:26
Speaker 2: Brandon and Ron from the Upper Valley Sports Cards and
7:31
Speaker 2: Collectibles Sports Card and Memorabilia Show coming up when.
7:36
Speaker 3: Saturday, Saturday ten am, be there.
7:40
Speaker 2: Hartford High School. Great stuff. Thanks guys, thanks for hopping
7:42
Speaker 2: on with us this morning. I love stuff like this.
7:45
Speaker 2: I love things that are going on in the community.
7:49
Speaker 2: My guest, who is sitting right next to me here
7:52
Speaker 2: on the curvy couch, is such a freaking rock star powerhouse.
7:58
Speaker 2: I don't know where and when I've met you will,
8:02
Speaker 2: but man, oh man, dude, it is about damn time.
8:07
Speaker 2: You and I were texting what was it a couple
8:10
Speaker 2: of years ago, I think absolute, and we were like,
8:13
Speaker 2: got to get together, gotta make it happen. We have to.
8:15
Speaker 2: We have to collaborate on on your stuff, your message,
8:19
Speaker 2: what you're doing. You're literally a famous guy dude in Vermont.
8:25
Speaker 4: I appreciate that. Thank you.
8:27
Speaker 2: I mean, what's your what your You have devoted your
8:31
Speaker 2: your life to helping people hear in Vermont.
8:35
Speaker 4: Thank you.
8:36
Speaker 2: Before we go an in further, I ask you this,
8:40
Speaker 2: what are you doing to help yourself? Because you're I mean,
8:43
Speaker 2: look at look at your resume here, it's insane. Uh
8:48
Speaker 2: what's your what you have going on? But are you
8:50
Speaker 2: what do you do for for will Leperley?
8:52
Speaker 5: Well, thank you so much, Jady. I mean, it's just
8:54
Speaker 5: such a such a joy to be here, and thank
8:56
Speaker 5: you so much for the kind words. I basically bike
8:59
Speaker 5: and run my face off for will everly, so I
9:03
Speaker 5: like to mountain bike, and I like to trail run,
9:05
Speaker 5: and I like to to fish, and so I do
9:07
Speaker 5: that as much as I can, and it's it's a
9:10
Speaker 5: lot of fun.
9:11
Speaker 2: Now I'm guessing that Texas Falls is coming into play
9:16
Speaker 2: here at some point.
9:16
Speaker 4: You gotta you gotta believe that.
9:18
Speaker 2: Absolutely what a place man.
9:20
Speaker 4: Absolutely wow.
9:22
Speaker 2: So let's let's talk about Rochester, Vermont. You're the executive
9:26
Speaker 2: director of Asylum.
9:28
Speaker 5: I listen, list it's an easy thing that happens all
9:33
Speaker 5: the time. But it's a flower. It's just slightly different
9:35
Speaker 5: from the from the.
9:36
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, all right, So what is this? Yeah?
9:41
Speaker 5: So so that is what's called a peer respite, and
9:44
Speaker 5: we're celebrating our fifteenth anniversary. This summer there started to
9:48
Speaker 5: be another one with the sister program from Pathways Vermont, Yeah,
9:52
Speaker 5: which is Rosewidge Rosewood Cottage, which is amazing. But up
9:56
Speaker 5: until they started, we were the only one in the
9:57
Speaker 5: state of Vermont, and there's really just a handful of
10:00
Speaker 5: around the country. And what that means is, say you
10:02
Speaker 5: were having a mental health crisis and it got to
10:05
Speaker 5: the point where you needed to go to a psychiatric
10:08
Speaker 5: hospital if you wanted to. Instead of doing that, you
10:12
Speaker 5: could go to a listen and you could guarden with
10:15
Speaker 5: us and play the piano and play the guitar and
10:18
Speaker 5: take walks and have incredible meals and critically, you could
10:22
Speaker 5: talk to people who had been through that same thing themselves,
10:26
Speaker 5: and you could stay for up to a week five
10:28
Speaker 5: daysshes about average. You can come back as many times
10:30
Speaker 5: as you need to if you're a Vermonter. It is
10:33
Speaker 5: one hundred percent free, zero dollars, and then you still
10:36
Speaker 5: could go to the hospital or go here after the
10:38
Speaker 5: hospital if you want. But it's an incredible resource for
10:40
Speaker 5: people that have a mental health crisis, which happens to
10:43
Speaker 5: everybody all the time, and there's nothing to feel bad
10:45
Speaker 5: about or ashamed of in that at all. So it's
10:47
Speaker 5: such an honor to be able to be part of that.
10:49
Speaker 5: But that's one of the things I do. And I
10:52
Speaker 5: also work for Round Tree Construction as an estimator and
10:56
Speaker 5: a project manager and they're an incredible, incredible company and
11:00
Speaker 5: we build just magnificent houses. So it's a nice balance
11:03
Speaker 5: of those two things.
11:04
Speaker 2: Holy moly. Yeah, I mean, I'm guessing that when your
11:08
Speaker 2: head hits the pillow, we're talking like what thirty seconds,
11:12
Speaker 2: maybe forty.
11:14
Speaker 5: The Nigerians have a beautiful saying. It's kind of a
11:17
Speaker 5: mantra that says nothing happens when you sleep, and I've
11:22
Speaker 5: taken that to heart.
11:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, now hang on a second, now, brother, we need
11:27
Speaker 2: to reset, recharge the batteries there.
11:29
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I do. I do the two sleeps thing.
11:32
Speaker 5: I'll go to sleep for a couple hours and I'll
11:35
Speaker 5: pop awake for a minute and you know, write or
11:38
Speaker 5: do something, and then go to sleep again for a while.
11:41
Speaker 4: But I like to hit it early.
11:42
Speaker 5: I like to get up and be out there and
11:44
Speaker 5: biking and running and get myself together for the morning.
11:46
Speaker 4: You know, before you get that sunrise in your face.
11:49
Speaker 2: Is that part of the morning routine. Yeah, how early you.
11:52
Speaker 5: Are we talking depends on the day, just kind of
11:54
Speaker 5: when you wake up. But I tend to wake about
11:56
Speaker 5: four four thirty and take some time to kind of
11:59
Speaker 5: get your head in the game with the calendar. What
12:00
Speaker 5: you're gonna do that morning and that week and that month.
12:04
Speaker 5: Maybe do a little writing, make the coffee, and then
12:07
Speaker 5: you know, bike up the steepest thing you can find,
12:10
Speaker 5: and then you know, just have some some breakfast at
12:13
Speaker 5: a waterfall. What I like to do is bike with
12:16
Speaker 5: my granola and milk and fruit and then coffee in
12:20
Speaker 5: a thermos. I'll bike up like Dual Hill, get to
12:22
Speaker 5: the top, take some selfies, bike up Steel Hill, and
12:25
Speaker 5: then go to Stonybrook, hit the waterfall, have some coffee,
12:28
Speaker 5: have some granola, and then just coast back home like
12:30
Speaker 5: seven miles.
12:30
Speaker 4: It's beautiful. It's a great day.
12:32
Speaker 2: That's how you start.
12:33
Speaker 4: Not every day, but on the good days, on the
12:34
Speaker 4: good days.
12:35
Speaker 2: Wow, was was today one of the good days?
12:38
Speaker 4: Today?
12:38
Speaker 5: It was a good day in a different way. I
12:40
Speaker 5: didn't do that, but it was. It's been a good
12:42
Speaker 5: day so far, especially being here.
12:43
Speaker 2: Man, you are so passionate about homelessness, poverty. There's a
12:54
Speaker 2: lot of people that are walking around. And I mean
12:57
Speaker 2: Tom Verano was on yesterday and we were talking talking
13:00
Speaker 2: about this emotion into art. If you if you miss
13:03
Speaker 2: that episode, it's it's definitely one to watch. This is
13:08
Speaker 2: a guy who basically takes a blank canvas in front
13:12
Speaker 2: of a huge crowd and speaks of the motion of resiliency,
13:18
Speaker 2: of recovery of whatever it is. And as he's speaking,
13:22
Speaker 2: his hands are going to the paint, going to the canvas,
13:26
Speaker 2: and it's unbelievable. You you must, you must stop at
13:35
Speaker 2: some points and think what an impact I've had on
13:41
Speaker 2: so many people. But man, how much more work is
13:46
Speaker 2: there to be done? I mean there's a lot of
13:49
Speaker 2: broken folks that are walking around. Not just for honors, man,
13:53
Speaker 2: I mean the mental health crisis. And you can point
13:56
Speaker 2: the finger and play the blame game all day on COVID,
13:59
Speaker 2: but bottom line is that was six years ago. We've
14:02
Speaker 2: got some real problems. Dude.
14:04
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, no, you put it. It's just it's really
14:08
Speaker 5: well said. And the only thing I'd really add is
14:11
Speaker 5: my motivation to do that comes from a deep well
14:14
Speaker 5: of empathy because I've experienced each of those things in
14:17
Speaker 5: my own life. So having been homeless for a good
14:19
Speaker 5: chunk of my life. Having run through my own challenges
14:23
Speaker 5: with mental health and trauma and addiction and things like
14:25
Speaker 5: that gives me a tremendous feeling of gratitude that I
14:30
Speaker 5: made it through that other side. And also personally, I
14:33
Speaker 5: feel a deep responsibility to pay that forward, and I
14:36
Speaker 5: feel so fortunate that I now have the leverage the
14:39
Speaker 5: social capital to influence the connections to really make some
14:43
Speaker 5: positive changes on a systemic level, but also especially in
14:46
Speaker 5: the lives of just individual people.
14:48
Speaker 4: And so it doesn't feel like a job.
14:49
Speaker 5: It just is a calling and a thing that deeply
14:52
Speaker 5: nourishes and heals me in the process of doing it.
14:55
Speaker 5: So it's just always going to be a part of
14:57
Speaker 5: my life. It doesn't really matter where I'm working or
14:59
Speaker 5: what the job tip. It's just part of how I operate.
15:02
Speaker 2: You were just the CCV commencement keynote speaker, and I've
15:07
Speaker 2: had a few people reach out to me and ask
15:12
Speaker 2: me if I was there. I wasn't, And as soon
15:16
Speaker 2: as I said I wasn't, they were like, dude, you
15:20
Speaker 2: missed it. I want to I want to talk with
15:26
Speaker 2: with you this morning about what that commencement speech was about,
15:31
Speaker 2: and maybe you can kind of echo on some of
15:33
Speaker 2: the key points. But before we go there, let's go
15:37
Speaker 2: let's go back. Where were you, Where were you born?
15:40
Speaker 2: Where are you from? Where's mom and dad?
15:43
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a I appreciate all that.
15:46
Speaker 5: So technically I'm from Golita, California, where I was born
15:51
Speaker 5: outside of out of Santa Barbara. But I moved when
15:55
Speaker 5: I was two and have very few memories. The smell
15:58
Speaker 5: of oranges, the ocean, some of those little things.
16:00
Speaker 4: Really.
16:00
Speaker 5: I grew up in Idaho in the Mountain West or
16:03
Speaker 5: the upper left or the tip of the Panhandle on
16:05
Speaker 5: the British Columbia border, and a little logging town called
16:08
Speaker 5: Bonners Ferry, Idaho. Ultimately, I dropped out of high school
16:12
Speaker 5: and ran away and moved across the country as far
16:15
Speaker 5: as I could, did a bunch of wild stuff, ended
16:17
Speaker 5: up in down East main on the other side of
16:20
Speaker 5: the country, and then spent most of my adult life
16:23
Speaker 5: in in Vermont, typically around building building houses, being involved
16:28
Speaker 5: in different ways in building houses, and then ultimately in
16:31
Speaker 5: human services, migrating to mental health and addiction recovery work,
16:35
Speaker 5: work on homelessness policy issues. Things have been written by
16:37
Speaker 5: real passion, I did have opportunity to start a consultancy,
16:41
Speaker 5: and I do a lot of strategic planning and organizational
16:43
Speaker 5: development and executive coaching through Mission driver consulting. The way
16:47
Speaker 5: to reach out about any of this is eight two
16:49
Speaker 5: two seven nine nine zer six nine. That's how you
16:52
Speaker 5: could find out about building through round tree construction. You
16:56
Speaker 5: could find out more about a list, and you could
16:57
Speaker 5: find out about consulting ATOO two two seven nine nine
17:01
Speaker 5: or A six nine, a text or a call.
17:03
Speaker 4: But in terms of where I'm from, JD.
17:05
Speaker 5: At this point, I do deeply feel like I'm from here,
17:08
Speaker 5: and I feel deeply connected here. I've been here since
17:10
Speaker 5: I was about eighteen. I'm forty four now. So Vermont
17:13
Speaker 5: certainly feels like home and a place I want to
17:15
Speaker 5: be for the long haul. And it's the place my
17:17
Speaker 5: kids were born and are gonna are gonna be.
17:19
Speaker 4: As far as I can tell.
17:20
Speaker 2: How many kids do you have.
17:21
Speaker 4: I've got three, three, three beautiful kids married until ever
17:25
Speaker 4: so recently.
17:26
Speaker 2: Wow, wow. Yeah.
17:27
Speaker 5: I've got a Franny who's six and eight of who's eleven,
17:31
Speaker 5: and Ragnar who's fourteen, and they're incredible, incredible.
17:34
Speaker 4: Wow.
17:34
Speaker 2: I've got one eleven years old, little girl crazy. I
17:39
Speaker 2: don't know how you do it? Three? So what what?
17:42
Speaker 2: What made you?
17:42
Speaker 1: Uh?
17:42
Speaker 2: What made you take off? What made you uh run
17:45
Speaker 2: away and drop out of high school?
17:47
Speaker 5: Ultimately, it's it's a really I've thought about it quite
17:52
Speaker 5: a bit, and my feeling about it was that I
17:57
Speaker 5: had quite a bit of unresolved trauma at that point
17:59
Speaker 5: in my life. My dad had died when I was
18:01
Speaker 5: quite young, and I grew up in a pretty unorthodox
18:05
Speaker 5: way with a lot of hippies in the woods doing
18:08
Speaker 5: some wild stuff and pretty great life, lot of cool
18:11
Speaker 5: stuff involved, but ultimately it didn't feel like my scene,
18:15
Speaker 5: and I wanted to see the rest of the world and.
18:17
Speaker 4: Figure out who I was more. And so I had
18:18
Speaker 4: an opportunity.
18:19
Speaker 5: To go to cities, be different places, work different places,
18:23
Speaker 5: meet different people, things like that, and this has always
18:27
Speaker 5: felt like home. School itself has been an incredible resource.
18:30
Speaker 5: As an adult. I had an opportunity to go back
18:33
Speaker 5: to school as a twenty six year old, go to CCV,
18:35
Speaker 5: initially get the Fxternal Degree Program degree from Johnson State
18:40
Speaker 5: College as a result of doing classes at CCV, and
18:43
Speaker 5: then I was able to go to Norwich University to
18:45
Speaker 5: get a master's degree in public administration and then go
18:49
Speaker 5: to the Harvard Kennedy School to do some executive education
18:53
Speaker 5: stuff and in the Vermont Leadership Institude and things like that.
18:55
Speaker 5: So just the chance to go from dropping out of
18:57
Speaker 5: high school to go on to Harvard Kennedy or doing
18:59
Speaker 5: the commence and it's pretty real to me. I've been
19:01
Speaker 5: on the school board for a bunch of years and
19:03
Speaker 5: just it's an incredible feeling to be able to pay
19:04
Speaker 5: that forward as the kid who school didn't work for it,
19:06
Speaker 5: to try to make it work for more people.
19:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, look at this Master of Public Administration at Norwich,
19:12
Speaker 2: bachelor's degree in psychology at Northern Vermont University, Johnson, graduate
19:18
Speaker 2: of the Harvard Kennedy School Public Narrative Program, graduate of
19:22
Speaker 2: the Vermont Leadership Institute, and the Vermont Agency of Human
19:26
Speaker 2: Services Leadership Academy.
19:29
Speaker 4: Sacks.
19:31
Speaker 5: It's just stuff on a piece of pay for the thing.
19:34
Speaker 5: I can use a saws all, I can make you
19:35
Speaker 5: a nice wall. I can use a nail gun. We
19:37
Speaker 5: can catch a big trout, we can bike up the
19:39
Speaker 5: pain Mountain. I mean, we could talk about MPAs and
19:42
Speaker 5: stuff if you want, but let's go catch a trout.
19:45
Speaker 2: Dude. Listen, I know somebody very he was his early
19:56
Speaker 2: life in his teens, very similar to yours, did the
20:02
Speaker 2: same thing you did, punched out, checked out, said I'm
20:05
Speaker 2: out of here. I'm going to go see this world.
20:09
Speaker 2: I'm going to experience life. This isn't my scene anymore. However,
20:13
Speaker 2: and you and I heard you say you wanted to
20:16
Speaker 2: see some cities. You wanted to immerse yourself into some culture.
20:22
Speaker 2: Let's be honest, that's not always the greatest path. There's
20:28
Speaker 2: temptations and things that happen where if you don't have
20:33
Speaker 2: that deep inert spirit in your gut, in your soul
20:40
Speaker 2: to be better, to do more, to have a positive
20:44
Speaker 2: influence on others, it's so so easy to slip into
20:49
Speaker 2: the cracks, which this guy did, and big ambitions, clean
20:56
Speaker 2: as a whistle, went to la. Now he's homeless on
21:00
Speaker 2: skid row. What kept you on the right road, brother?
21:12
Speaker 5: It's such an interesting question, and it's controversial and debatable,
21:15
Speaker 5: and I think about it a lot, and so for
21:18
Speaker 5: a long time, what I would say is that I
21:21
Speaker 5: did it and you can do it too, and try
21:23
Speaker 5: to use my own self as an example. But the
21:25
Speaker 5: more I think about it, and the more honest I am,
21:27
Speaker 5: I think that there is a very individually different response.
21:31
Speaker 5: That people have two traumatic events, and some people are
21:34
Speaker 5: able to be very resilient, and some people are very
21:38
Speaker 5: internally driven and others aren't. And so what I believe
21:41
Speaker 5: deeply my core value is that every single person has
21:45
Speaker 5: the potential to do incredible things in the world, make
21:48
Speaker 5: incredible contributions to the community, and has an amazing potential.
21:52
Speaker 5: And I think of it as like a pack of
21:54
Speaker 5: seeds you got from a friend from last gardening season,
21:57
Speaker 5: and you know that a lot of them are still
21:59
Speaker 5: going to be able to germinate and flower and become
22:02
Speaker 5: incredible and it's probably the case that some of them won't,
22:04
Speaker 5: but you don't know which one is which. So when
22:06
Speaker 5: we have the opportunity to work with people, to me,
22:09
Speaker 5: the thing that's so important is to create a beautiful
22:11
Speaker 5: bed of soil and compost and light and sunrise, make
22:14
Speaker 5: sure that everything has the opportunity to grow, and don't
22:17
Speaker 5: worry about which ones will and which ones won't, but
22:19
Speaker 5: give them all that same chance. What they do can
22:21
Speaker 5: astonish you, and don't worry if some of them don't.
22:24
Speaker 5: But that doesn't mean, you stop putting the compost and
22:26
Speaker 5: the good soil out next year. You just keep making
22:28
Speaker 5: it possible that that might happen someday. And so why
22:30
Speaker 5: do some of them grow and why don't some of
22:32
Speaker 5: the others. It's an age old question. Epigenetics, trauma and resilience,
22:37
Speaker 5: the people you have around you, the role models, the examples,
22:40
Speaker 5: and ultimately, if you have the opportunity to have things
22:44
Speaker 5: like stable housing, if you have the social determinants of
22:47
Speaker 5: health in place, you have good transportation, you have childcare,
22:50
Speaker 5: you can go to work, you have support, you have
22:52
Speaker 5: resources for recovery. Those things can change everything. If they're
22:55
Speaker 5: not in place, no matter how good you are, how
22:57
Speaker 5: hard you try, it might never happen for you. So
23:00
Speaker 5: it's always complicated, is how I answer it.
23:02
Speaker 2: I'm so, I'm so curious to know. Are you still
23:08
Speaker 2: Are your mom and dad still alive? Are you still
23:10
Speaker 2: connected with them? Do you still have friends from Idaho?
23:12
Speaker 2: Are you are you still are you still rooted somewhat
23:16
Speaker 2: over there a little bit?
23:17
Speaker 4: Yeah? So my mom and I are quite close. She's alive.
23:21
Speaker 5: She's a yoga teacher and a cello teacher, really cool person.
23:25
Speaker 5: My dad died when I was quite young is about
23:26
Speaker 5: seven Rob and then my stepdad Bob is alive and
23:30
Speaker 5: we're quite close. He's an amazing artist and was kind
23:33
Speaker 5: of the first fitness influence in my life. He's really
23:35
Speaker 5: interested in weightlifting and different exercise which kind of put
23:38
Speaker 5: me on a path of having that be part of
23:40
Speaker 5: my life. To you, So, long story short, Yeah, we're close.
23:44
Speaker 5: I visit when I can. Went out last summer for
23:46
Speaker 5: visiting the cell Kirks and did some huckleberry picking and
23:50
Speaker 5: some mountain bike and swam and some waterfalls and just
23:52
Speaker 5: hung out with them and my sister for a long
23:54
Speaker 5: time and it was a great visit.
23:56
Speaker 2: So you've you've directly experienced poverty, some homelessness, substance use.
24:04
Speaker 2: What are we talking about now?
24:06
Speaker 5: So my main issue was was alcohol and at a
24:11
Speaker 5: time in my life when I was they say experiencing homelessness.
24:16
Speaker 5: It's supposed to be the politically correct thing that is
24:18
Speaker 5: putting the value on the person, so that you're not
24:21
Speaker 5: referring to a person as a condition, but that it's
24:23
Speaker 5: an experience happening to you. That sounds great in a
24:26
Speaker 5: PhD thesis, if you talk to a person on the
24:28
Speaker 5: street and you said, oh, I notice you're experiencing homelessness.
24:30
Speaker 5: Can I whatever. They'll be like, bro, what are you
24:32
Speaker 5: talking about. I'm homeless, dude. So I don't love that term,
24:36
Speaker 5: but if people use it, it's fine. All of that
24:38
Speaker 5: to say, when I was homeless, I drank a lot,
24:41
Speaker 5: and often when I would end up doing is just
24:43
Speaker 5: drink until I passed out, and during the day I'd
24:46
Speaker 5: fly assigned to get enough money to get enough alcohol
24:49
Speaker 5: to pass out. And that was a vicious cycle for
24:52
Speaker 5: quite a while. For me personally, I always wanted to
24:55
Speaker 5: do other things. I wanted to play piano, I wanted
24:57
Speaker 5: to build houses. I wanted to blacksmith. I wanted to
25:00
Speaker 5: have a family, and I couldn't do that shit when
25:02
Speaker 5: I was flying a sign and getting wasted. So I
25:05
Speaker 5: had some goals that were stronger, and I put it
25:08
Speaker 5: together and changed it. But a lot of people don't
25:11
Speaker 5: for a lot of complicated, good reasons, and I have
25:13
Speaker 5: a lot of empathy for them because there are so
25:15
Speaker 5: many people that I was with then who are dead
25:17
Speaker 5: and tried their hardest to change things and couldn't. I've
25:20
Speaker 5: got a close friend who's a physician who let me
25:25
Speaker 5: know that his way of thinking about it is that
25:28
Speaker 5: why should he get credit for having won at life
25:31
Speaker 5: or succeeded if he's essentially doing things the way he's wired.
25:35
Speaker 4: You know, his inner drive always.
25:36
Speaker 5: Said, go to school, try the hardest, be the best,
25:40
Speaker 5: be driven, don't sleep.
25:41
Speaker 4: Do the thing that was how he's wired. He was
25:42
Speaker 4: always going to do that. He did it.
25:44
Speaker 5: He became the doctor, the medical director, all of the things,
25:47
Speaker 5: and he says, that's great, but don't give me too
25:49
Speaker 5: much credit. Similarly, why should the person who's wired to
25:52
Speaker 5: do the other thing, that does the things the way
25:54
Speaker 5: they're wired. Why should we feel too bad about them?
25:56
Speaker 5: We're all kind of wired the way we are. And
25:58
Speaker 5: that really changed my thinking. I still think we want
26:00
Speaker 5: to give everybody every chance and support them and help them,
26:03
Speaker 5: but I don't think we should feel too bad if
26:05
Speaker 5: they do things that we think aren't the best choice,
26:07
Speaker 5: and we shouldn't necessarily hold it against them too much
26:09
Speaker 5: because there's some some really complicated reasons and some really
26:12
Speaker 5: complex epigenetics involved.
26:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, every everyone's got a unique story. Yeah, and it's
26:19
Speaker 2: it's so easy for so many folks to cast judgment.
26:24
Speaker 2: We've all done it. We're all humans, you know. We
26:28
Speaker 2: we see things, we we we draw our own conclusions.
26:39
Speaker 2: Was it a switch for you where you you just
26:46
Speaker 2: woke up one day and you were like, I just
26:50
Speaker 2: can't do this anymore. Or did you have a long
26:56
Speaker 2: line of people and resources that were constant banging on
27:01
Speaker 2: your door saying, will we're right here, We're right here?
27:05
Speaker 2: Or was it you?
27:07
Speaker 5: This is why I stopped saying you can do it too,
27:10
Speaker 5: because I did it because it was me. It was
27:12
Speaker 5: just me, and I worked my ass off to make
27:15
Speaker 5: it happen with no help, and it was real, real hard.
27:19
Speaker 5: And now I do everything I can to make sure
27:21
Speaker 5: every person I encounter has those resources that would have
27:24
Speaker 5: helped me and made a difference for me.
27:27
Speaker 4: I didn't have them, and I was I was.
27:29
Speaker 5: Lucky to have a lot of drive and grit and
27:32
Speaker 5: resilience and ability to tearn chicken shit into chicken sandwich
27:36
Speaker 5: or whatever.
27:37
Speaker 4: But and that's not always the case, you know. So yeah, yeah, So.
27:42
Speaker 2: Tell me about CCV. You went to CCV. You were
27:47
Speaker 2: the commencement keynote speaker. That's massive.
27:55
Speaker 4: It was the honor of my career. I couldn't believe it.
27:57
Speaker 5: I was sitting there at my desk in president of
28:00
Speaker 5: CCV Joyce Judy, calls me up and says, this is
28:03
Speaker 5: the ultimate ultimate cold call.
28:06
Speaker 4: But we have some people over here who.
28:08
Speaker 5: Heard you speak at VLI training and they think you'd
28:11
Speaker 5: crash it. Do you think you'd want to be your
28:13
Speaker 5: commencement speaker? And I was like, this is a frank call, surely,
28:17
Speaker 5: And it was real and I was honored, and we
28:19
Speaker 5: met and talked about it some more, met with Katie,
28:21
Speaker 5: their communications director a few times, and got some guidance
28:25
Speaker 5: for what they were looking for, and it was. It
28:26
Speaker 5: was an incredible honor. It was also a nightmare of
28:29
Speaker 5: public speaking scenario because it was already going to be
28:33
Speaker 5: bad enough that I had to follow our governor, who
28:36
Speaker 5: was an incredible public speaker. He writes all his own speeches,
28:39
Speaker 5: and he did again that would have sucked already, but
28:42
Speaker 5: his daughter was graduating that same day there, and nobody
28:46
Speaker 5: bothered to tell me that. So he gives a speech
28:48
Speaker 5: and then turns his daughter and then hugs or everybody
28:50
Speaker 5: goes ape shit, of course, like they should. It was
28:52
Speaker 5: an incredible moment. That would have been enough, but no,
28:55
Speaker 5: the next speaker is the student speaker. And he starts
28:58
Speaker 5: his remarks in about twenty seconds sin he rips off
29:01
Speaker 5: his graduation cap and says, you know, I'd like to
29:04
Speaker 5: identify from my my green beret identity today puts on
29:07
Speaker 5: his fucking green beret and the crowd goes nuts like
29:11
Speaker 5: they should.
29:12
Speaker 4: I mean, it was a beautiful, beautiful moment.
29:13
Speaker 5: Wow, And I thought, oh great, I gotta follow both
29:17
Speaker 5: of them.
29:18
Speaker 4: Fuck my life.
29:19
Speaker 5: It was a tough, tough moment and it worked out alright,
29:21
Speaker 5: but it was definitely a night mere scenario.
29:24
Speaker 2: But you were you scored a touchdown.
29:28
Speaker 4: Though, thank you.
29:29
Speaker 2: You know, honestly, it's like, I haven't I didn't know
29:34
Speaker 2: what what you just said. All I've heard is Will
29:38
Speaker 2: Ebery's commencement speech. You've got to fall in some parameters
29:45
Speaker 2: in some guidelines. What did they tell you? Forty five minutes,
29:48
Speaker 2: thirty minutes, twenty minutes? What was that?
29:50
Speaker 4: Was the thing?
29:51
Speaker 5: It was like seven seven minutes, seven seven minutes. I
29:54
Speaker 5: was like no, and I was like, I need.
29:58
Speaker 2: Are you joking right now?
29:59
Speaker 4: No?
29:59
Speaker 2: No, you're not choking.
30:01
Speaker 4: Seven minutes. So I did it. I did it.
30:04
Speaker 5: I wrote a draft I shared with their communications director.
30:07
Speaker 5: She's like, this is fire, but could you cover these
30:10
Speaker 5: like five more points? And I mean, and I was like,
30:12
Speaker 5: I'd be honored to, but you got to give me
30:14
Speaker 5: some time. I'm gonna need ten minutes. And they're like, fine,
30:16
Speaker 5: run it so a minute ten.
30:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm thinking forty five.
30:21
Speaker 5: To be honest, I rewrote most of the second half,
30:25
Speaker 5: and I'd be lying if I told you I had
30:26
Speaker 5: timed it again. I actually have no idea how long
30:28
Speaker 5: it was to this moment. I have no idea how
30:30
Speaker 5: long it was. It might have been. It could have
30:32
Speaker 5: been forty five. They said seven, then they said ten, and.
30:35
Speaker 4: Then they honestly said, just just run it full set.
30:37
Speaker 2: And I was like, yeah, yeah, that's you know what, man, listen,
30:41
Speaker 2: that's what people want. They want they just want authenticity. Man,
30:46
Speaker 2: What did you say?
30:48
Speaker 6: Man?
30:48
Speaker 5: I mean, I started off by just letting people know
30:52
Speaker 5: how proud they should be that they didn't give up,
30:54
Speaker 5: because it would have been so easy to do. And
30:56
Speaker 5: I thought about the times when I was there, how
30:59
Speaker 5: it would have been so easy for me to do,
31:00
Speaker 5: and how tempting it was. Kind of talked about some
31:03
Speaker 5: of those moments where I was just so close to
31:05
Speaker 5: throwing in the towel and then how psyched I was
31:08
Speaker 5: that I hadn't, and then encouraged them to just look
31:10
Speaker 5: around the room and know that everybody there was so
31:15
Speaker 5: damn proud of them for having seen that through. And
31:18
Speaker 5: I talked about how that what they had was a
31:20
Speaker 5: set of keys. It wasn't a degree, it wasn't a diploma.
31:22
Speaker 5: It was a set of keys to just any ticket
31:25
Speaker 5: they wanted to write. Now they could just brick and
31:28
Speaker 5: punch it, and you know, this is just the first step.
31:31
Speaker 5: And everything it took to get through that process, they
31:35
Speaker 5: still had. It wasn't going anywhere, and they could reach
31:37
Speaker 5: down to the bottom of grab it and use that
31:38
Speaker 5: for anything else they ever did the whole rest of
31:40
Speaker 5: their life.
31:41
Speaker 2: That's the thing. Man, It's like, you know, we hear
31:44
Speaker 2: of commencement at high school, at college, whatever it is,
31:49
Speaker 2: and I did it. It's the end. It is like
31:53
Speaker 2: the furthest thing from the end.
31:56
Speaker 4: Vinga he is like a.
31:58
Speaker 2: Hundred percent, this is the beginning. You're at the start
32:02
Speaker 2: of the road. You're at the start line in honor
32:07
Speaker 2: to get there. But that's where you are. And man,
32:11
Speaker 2: you say keys, there's a lot of doors that you
32:16
Speaker 2: can open, and some of them are going to be
32:18
Speaker 2: just nothing but shit.
32:20
Speaker 4: Yep.
32:21
Speaker 2: But be ready for that though, be ready for that
32:26
Speaker 2: what's behind door number three? And man, if I could
32:30
Speaker 2: go back to when I graduated, if I could have
32:34
Speaker 2: realized how many surprises I would have had. You think
32:41
Speaker 2: you can see the whole road in front of you.
32:44
Speaker 2: But man, you've got to be ready for things in
32:48
Speaker 2: your life, good and bad and differences. Did you did
32:55
Speaker 2: you get into when you were in a house?
33:01
Speaker 4: You know, I'll have to go back and read it.
33:04
Speaker 4: It's all a blur.
33:05
Speaker 5: I was in sort of a trance state, to be honest,
33:08
Speaker 5: at this point, I don't remember the whole thing.
33:10
Speaker 4: It is a strong chance I did. Probably.
33:12
Speaker 5: I had an honor of doing a keynote for the
33:15
Speaker 5: New England's Education Opportunity Association, which is the organization nationally
33:21
Speaker 5: that make sure that people can go to college that
33:24
Speaker 5: otherwise wouldn't have been able to. So if you're the
33:26
Speaker 5: first generation, the first person in your whole family to
33:28
Speaker 5: do it, and or if you had major barriers too
33:32
Speaker 5: to make it happen, there for you and they have
33:34
Speaker 5: me do their keynote, And in that one I explicitly
33:37
Speaker 5: referenced it because I used to fly the sign on
33:40
Speaker 5: the media exactly in front of.
33:42
Speaker 4: Where we're doing the New England Wide.
33:44
Speaker 5: Conference, and so i'd let them know that, and I
33:46
Speaker 5: let them know that if someone was doing that when
33:48
Speaker 5: they left, that they should fucking stop and give them
33:50
Speaker 5: some money, because it might have been the next keynote
33:53
Speaker 5: speaker that they had next time, and they never never
33:55
Speaker 5: could have known.
33:56
Speaker 4: So I mentioned it a fair amount.
33:58
Speaker 5: I don't dance around it, but I try not to
34:00
Speaker 5: make that the focus, you know, I really like to
34:03
Speaker 5: have an assets framework where you can focus on what
34:07
Speaker 5: people have to offer and what they've done. You can
34:09
Speaker 5: spiral back into some of the barriers that they've overcome,
34:11
Speaker 5: But I try not to define people in terms of
34:14
Speaker 5: those barriers. I think we're a lot better than our
34:16
Speaker 5: worst moments.
34:17
Speaker 2: What do you uh? You don't want to mention here
34:20
Speaker 2: that you were the executive director of Another Way for
34:25
Speaker 2: about six years or so, right from Odd Agency of
34:29
Speaker 2: Human Services field director executive director of what is it
34:34
Speaker 2: the Vermont Association of Mental Health, Awareness and Recovery, Get
34:38
Speaker 2: that right.
34:38
Speaker 5: Vam hire the Association for Mental Health and Diction, Recovery
34:41
Speaker 5: or Recovery verm.
34:42
Speaker 2: Okay, what goes through your mind when you walk up
34:50
Speaker 2: and down North Main Street here in barri What goes
34:55
Speaker 2: through your mind? Yeah, when you hit church or anywhere waterfront,
35:02
Speaker 2: no matter what, yep, February and July.
35:08
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean not to be too reductionist about it,
35:11
Speaker 5: but it is a housing and jobs issue and a
35:14
Speaker 5: peer support issue, and the whole system of care is
35:17
Speaker 5: important foreshore, and I just want to do a shout
35:19
Speaker 5: out for everybody involved in every node of it, regardless
35:22
Speaker 5: of if your law enforcement, emergency services, nurse, you're in
35:26
Speaker 5: a hospital program, you're doing. You know, there's so many
35:29
Speaker 5: incredible places that are needed, and people work so hard.
35:31
Speaker 5: And that said, peer support, which is the art of
35:34
Speaker 5: a person who's been through the shit helping and encouraging
35:38
Speaker 5: another person actively going through it to walk a different
35:41
Speaker 5: path that they get to be in the driver's eve
35:44
Speaker 5: their own life and describe for themselves. You're in service
35:46
Speaker 5: of achieving their goals as a transformational and powerful thing,
35:50
Speaker 5: and I've seen it save and transform lives.
35:52
Speaker 4: And so that's what I'm the most focused.
35:54
Speaker 5: On, the combination of peer support and supported housing, and
35:58
Speaker 5: those two things are at a fabulously low supply in
36:01
Speaker 5: Vermont and nationally. And so if I go down North Maine,
36:04
Speaker 5: I go to the waterfront, I see a whole lot
36:06
Speaker 5: of people who need a.
36:08
Speaker 4: Whole lot of peer support and supported housing. Work.
36:11
Speaker 5: Sometimes employment can be a huge part of the mix,
36:13
Speaker 5: if that's a goal, if people want it, if they're
36:15
Speaker 5: ready for it, if they have a car and a phone,
36:17
Speaker 5: and they can wash their clothes and they can microwave
36:19
Speaker 5: a sandwich or whatever. But if you're living in a
36:22
Speaker 5: tarp under the bridge, it's pretty hard to put it
36:24
Speaker 5: together to get to work every day until you got
36:26
Speaker 5: a place you can put your head. So housing and
36:28
Speaker 5: support are what we need more of, and what we
36:31
Speaker 5: need less of is judgment and stigma and shame, because
36:35
Speaker 5: if you lead with that, it does not help at all.
36:41
Speaker 2: You know, I had Kevin Ellis in here not too
36:43
Speaker 2: long ago, former board chair of Downstreet Housing and Community Development.
36:50
Speaker 2: What they've done, it's pretty remarkable. And I said to them,
36:56
Speaker 2: you know, you guys are brave over there Downstreet because
37:01
Speaker 2: in a lot of ways you're willing to kind of
37:06
Speaker 2: paddle up the stream here. I mean, they're taken on
37:13
Speaker 2: and there's other agencies too. They're taking on a huge task.
37:17
Speaker 2: You know, I think of the Lund family, and I
37:20
Speaker 2: think of Washington County Mental Health and the whole foster
37:23
Speaker 2: program what they're taking on. But then there's there's the
37:28
Speaker 2: whole housing thing. There is no simple solution to this.
37:34
Speaker 4: It's not simple. You're right about that, JD.
37:36
Speaker 2: What was it Maslow's hierarchy of needs? Right?
37:39
Speaker 4: This guy's paying attention, man, you know this guy takes
37:41
Speaker 4: some good notes.
37:42
Speaker 2: Man. Yeah, that's it starts there, though, I mean, I mean,
37:47
Speaker 2: if it starts there, and if if we don't have
37:50
Speaker 2: food and shelter, other things are going to be creeping in.
37:54
Speaker 2: It's a guarantee they're gonna get magnetized towards you since
38:00
Speaker 2: your mental health, right, and the two of those feed
38:04
Speaker 2: off each other, yep. And it's a spiral and it
38:07
Speaker 2: picks up at some own momentum. That's a really tough
38:11
Speaker 2: cycle to break, man, And then it comes back and
38:15
Speaker 2: then almost the housing thing is pretty much a guarantee
38:18
Speaker 2: that it's not going to happen if you've got those
38:20
Speaker 2: other two that have consumed you.
38:24
Speaker 4: Yep.
38:26
Speaker 2: Wow.
38:27
Speaker 5: So it's really well put. And it's also the case
38:31
Speaker 5: that there is a pretty simple solution, which is really
38:35
Speaker 5: literally just building enough housing that people can afford. And
38:38
Speaker 5: there's this very smart person who wrote this book called
38:40
Speaker 5: Homelessness is a Housing Problem that everybody should just go
38:45
Speaker 5: and read at least the cliff notes from their AI
38:48
Speaker 5: little what does this book say thing? Because he's he's smart,
38:51
Speaker 5: it's a banger. Mike Peacheck, our state treasurer, had invited
38:54
Speaker 5: me to be on this panel about housing solutions a
38:57
Speaker 5: number of years back, and it was all about that
38:59
Speaker 5: particular approach because honestly, there are only a limited amount
39:03
Speaker 5: of people who are experiencing homelessness in our state and
39:07
Speaker 5: they just need a place to live that they can afford.
39:10
Speaker 5: And until we have enough of those, nothing's going to change.
39:12
Speaker 5: And really we should make more of those to anticipate
39:14
Speaker 5: the next folks that are going to be going through that,
39:16
Speaker 5: so we don't just respond to that exact situation, but
39:20
Speaker 5: start to build some capacity for for the next larger thing.
39:23
Speaker 4: And there's ways to do it that are that.
39:25
Speaker 5: Are profitable for the people operating the housing, that subsidized
39:29
Speaker 5: that use vouchers that you know great, other funding sources
39:32
Speaker 5: that do mixed use development, more business door fronts, make
39:35
Speaker 5: downtowns more vibrant. There's ways you can do it to
39:38
Speaker 5: make money and make your community stronger in every way
39:41
Speaker 5: and then also just save and transform lives of people
39:44
Speaker 5: in that process. So to me, it's a failure of
39:46
Speaker 5: imagination and it isn't the case that we don't know
39:49
Speaker 5: what would work. Every place that has started to do
39:51
Speaker 5: that has been very, very successful. So there's a roadmap
39:54
Speaker 5: to replicate.
39:55
Speaker 4: For sure.
39:56
Speaker 2: You know, we've we've we both have heard. I hear
39:59
Speaker 2: it all the time that we're putting the cart before
40:03
Speaker 2: the horse, and that a lot of these folks what
40:10
Speaker 2: they want as a free handout. What they're doing is
40:14
Speaker 2: they're they're surviving in Vermont by essentially to put a
40:20
Speaker 2: bluntly leeching off the system. Should housing be first or
40:25
Speaker 2: should recovery mental health come before it?
40:31
Speaker 4: Oh man, we could debate all day. So here's the thing.
40:36
Speaker 5: Housing first is in evidence based practice which has been
40:39
Speaker 5: validated and proven with international replicated peer review over and
40:44
Speaker 5: over and over every time it's been challenged, and what's
40:46
Speaker 5: been definitively determined is that if you are actively experiencing
40:50
Speaker 5: homelessness while managing a substance use disorder and or a
40:54
Speaker 5: mental health challenge or a co occurring condition, you will
40:58
Speaker 5: have virtually no opportunities to succeed in your recovery goals
41:03
Speaker 5: while churning through the ringer of where am I going
41:04
Speaker 5: to sleep? Am I going to get robbed tonight? While
41:06
Speaker 5: I get assaulted? Can I charge my phone? Is there
41:09
Speaker 5: a place I can use indoor plumbing? If I apply
41:12
Speaker 5: for a job, do I have a way to get
41:13
Speaker 5: a call back? All of those types of things. So
41:16
Speaker 5: if you just cut right to the chase and say, okay,
41:18
Speaker 5: if you have a goal of managing mental health challenges
41:21
Speaker 5: or moving in a positive direction with your mental wellness,
41:23
Speaker 5: or you're trying to stop using substances in a certain way,
41:26
Speaker 5: if that's something you want to do, then if we
41:28
Speaker 5: want that to happen for you, there's just no chance
41:31
Speaker 5: of that happening unless we get you the stable housing
41:33
Speaker 5: as the foundation of everything that's been proven over and
41:35
Speaker 5: over it's not debatable. So really, us not doing it
41:38
Speaker 5: here at scale isn't because we don't know it works.
41:41
Speaker 5: It's because we've lacked the courage and leadership to make
41:43
Speaker 5: the investment at the scale needed to overcome the problem,
41:46
Speaker 5: both at the local level and at the state wide
41:49
Speaker 5: level and honestly at the national level.
41:52
Speaker 2: However, you know what you're kind of describing is not
41:57
Speaker 2: necessarily the the same story as will eparly, right, It's
42:04
Speaker 2: very true.
42:05
Speaker 4: Same with recovery.
42:06
Speaker 5: So I am the same hand, on the one hand,
42:09
Speaker 5: really think that there needs to be a vibrant network
42:11
Speaker 5: of recovery centers.
42:13
Speaker 4: I'm so glad we have them. We need to fund
42:14
Speaker 4: them adequately.
42:15
Speaker 5: People need that resource, more recovery coaching, more recovery residence
42:19
Speaker 5: is incredible. I didn't ever meet any of them or
42:22
Speaker 5: talk to any of them until I was in recovery myself.
42:24
Speaker 5: They were never part of my story, and so many
42:26
Speaker 5: other people that I know that made it through also
42:29
Speaker 5: had never heard about any of that stuff. And so
42:31
Speaker 5: it's one of those things where just because the one
42:34
Speaker 5: thing that's helpful for some people wasn't part of what
42:36
Speaker 5: you got to benefit from, doesn't mean it shouldn't exist.
42:39
Speaker 5: So if you go to the hospital with chest pains,
42:42
Speaker 5: and you know, they look at you and say, well,
42:43
Speaker 5: did you eat a lot of cheeseburgers this month, and
42:45
Speaker 5: did you not go to the gym and whatever? Even
42:47
Speaker 5: if you say yes, they're not going to say we're
42:49
Speaker 5: so sorry, we can't operate on you just die in
42:51
Speaker 5: the lobby. They'll say, well, you could maybe work on that,
42:53
Speaker 5: but let's go ahead and stop you from dying first.
42:56
Speaker 5: And then say you came back again, and they're like,
42:57
Speaker 5: did you go and need some more cheeseburgers? And they're
42:59
Speaker 5: like more. They're like, well, I guess we'll save you again,
43:02
Speaker 5: but you should really knock that out. So with addiction,
43:05
Speaker 5: we say, geez, you're out there doing the addiction thing.
43:07
Speaker 5: You better just die in the corner because you did
43:09
Speaker 5: the wrong things. And that is not the approach, honestly.
43:12
Speaker 5: If you think of it economically, what you have is
43:14
Speaker 5: a potential workforce of people who could be contributing to
43:17
Speaker 5: the economy, paying taxes, starting businesses, paying for things that
43:21
Speaker 5: your businesses that exist, growing the base of your economic
43:24
Speaker 5: engine that you're totally eliminating from the math equation, and
43:27
Speaker 5: instead you're spending your time and money paying for emergency services,
43:31
Speaker 5: wasting their time turning through this loop that wouldn't have
43:34
Speaker 5: to exist if they have the right support in the
43:35
Speaker 5: housing taking the taxes. You do have to go through
43:38
Speaker 5: this band aid process. It's much more economically advantageous to
43:42
Speaker 5: invest in people in a way that you see an
43:43
Speaker 5: incredible return on if you give them the right support,
43:47
Speaker 5: which can be very individually different, but requires a real
43:50
Speaker 5: courage of saying we're going to actually find the right
43:52
Speaker 5: thing to help this person get to the next place.
43:54
Speaker 5: It doesn't always work, and we see iconic examples of
43:57
Speaker 5: people in our communities that it doesn't seem either they're
44:00
Speaker 5: making any progress and we're trying everything. But again, it's
44:03
Speaker 5: those garden packet seeds. If we didn't put that compost out,
44:06
Speaker 5: we would have missed out on the fifteen other seeds
44:08
Speaker 5: that flowered and are beautiful.
44:11
Speaker 1: Wow.
44:11
Speaker 2: Wow, some of the uh so well said thank you.
44:16
Speaker 2: Some of the comments that are coming in, I'm over
44:19
Speaker 2: here taking notes from this guy incredible. Taylor says, just
44:26
Speaker 2: like I said last week, with vincent empathy as everything,
44:29
Speaker 2: why be so reactive or even proactive when we could
44:34
Speaker 2: be preventative and try to help avoid these problems and
44:37
Speaker 2: struggles from occurring in the first place. And this is
44:42
Speaker 2: there are so many Can.
44:44
Speaker 4: I speak to that last time?
44:45
Speaker 1: Yeah?
44:45
Speaker 5: Please, that's a banger of a comment. So I used
44:48
Speaker 5: to run the Vermont Association for Mental.
44:50
Speaker 4: Health and Addiction Recovery.
44:52
Speaker 5: Right, that's the organization that does all of the training
44:54
Speaker 5: and licensing for all of recovery coaching and all of Vermont.
44:57
Speaker 2: Then I got to say that one more time.
44:59
Speaker 5: Vermont, the Vermont Association for Mental Health and Addiction Recovery.
45:04
Speaker 5: The shorthand of that is Recovery Vermont. A lot of
45:07
Speaker 5: people know it is that, but if you google the
45:10
Speaker 5: Vermont Association for Mental Health and Addiction Recovery, it'll pop
45:13
Speaker 5: right up.
45:13
Speaker 4: Powerful amazing organization. The reason that I mention.
45:17
Speaker 5: It is because when you have a job like that,
45:20
Speaker 5: you get invited to Prevention Day and you get to
45:24
Speaker 5: host Recovery Day, and you go nationally to DC and
45:28
Speaker 5: hear about what they're doing in every other state. The
45:30
Speaker 5: thing that became clear to me is that what we
45:33
Speaker 5: rely on for recovery we call recovery capital, and those
45:38
Speaker 5: are things like you have some things you do to
45:40
Speaker 5: feel better. Maybe you take a walk, maybe you go fishing,
45:43
Speaker 5: maybe you play your guitar, maybe you play with your kids.
45:45
Speaker 5: That's recovery capital on the prevent, which is what you
45:48
Speaker 5: need to maintain recovery. Once you got to active addiction
45:52
Speaker 5: and now you're doing well and you want to keep
45:53
Speaker 5: doing well. However, in that storyline, way on the other
45:57
Speaker 5: side of it, before you ever got to the acuity
45:59
Speaker 5: that would required recovery to even happen. On the prevention
46:02
Speaker 5: side of things, what you need to stop it from
46:05
Speaker 5: happening are called protective factors. Turns out it's the same
46:09
Speaker 5: damn shit. What are the protective factors?
46:12
Speaker 4: Friends?
46:12
Speaker 5: That are helpful? Stuff you can do, moving your body,
46:15
Speaker 5: getting outside, having your guard and barbecue and watching your
46:18
Speaker 5: favorite shoo.
46:18
Speaker 4: It doesn't matter.
46:19
Speaker 5: Stuff that makes you feel good, it doesn't fuck stuff
46:21
Speaker 5: up for the people around you. That's the same stuff
46:24
Speaker 5: that stops things you can change exactly exactly. So by
46:28
Speaker 5: providing more of the resources that help when it gets
46:30
Speaker 5: as bad as it gets, you're also preventing it from
46:33
Speaker 5: ever getting that bad for a ton of other people.
46:35
Speaker 5: So that investment is like a double return on investment,
46:39
Speaker 5: probably a triple or a.
46:40
Speaker 4: Quadruple if we really break it down. But it's a
46:42
Speaker 4: really good investment.
46:43
Speaker 2: I gotta say this because it's on my head right now.
46:46
Speaker 2: Your kids are lucky that they've got you as a dad.
46:49
Speaker 2: Thank you, because if this is the kind of message
46:53
Speaker 2: that you're going to be instilling in your your own
46:57
Speaker 2: children going to be on a great road. Dude.
47:01
Speaker 4: I mean that's so touching. I really appreciate that, brother.
47:04
Speaker 2: Thank you. I mean it's it's a guarantee they're going
47:07
Speaker 2: to be on a great road. Thank you. Wow, thank you.
47:14
Speaker 2: There's a guy named Vincent who has been in here twice.
47:22
Speaker 2: The beginning of May. His son, who had been sober
47:29
Speaker 2: for several years, really on a great road, doing well.
47:37
Speaker 2: In the beginning of May, was handed a pill turned
47:45
Speaker 2: out to be fentanyl. I don't know what he thought
47:51
Speaker 2: that it was or what he was told that it was,
47:55
Speaker 2: don't know, and he took that pill how to relapse
48:03
Speaker 2: and died. The father, Vincent, and you'll see that poster
48:11
Speaker 2: right there, is trying to create an annual event. His
48:20
Speaker 2: son was a musician. He's bringing together bands. They're going
48:24
Speaker 2: to be performing in Royalton on July eleventh. Big event,
48:31
Speaker 2: live music, food, incredible prizes, awareness. Vincent's battle dot Org
48:41
Speaker 2: as a dad who's in mourning and grieving real hard.
48:48
Speaker 2: He is diving in headfirst and burying his pain in
48:58
Speaker 2: trying to wake up our government to maybe establish some
49:08
Speaker 2: stricter guidelines and laws surrounding overdose, so on and so forth.
49:17
Speaker 2: This is not substance use like it was in the seventies.
49:25
Speaker 2: There's so much shit that's going around synthetic otherwise, it's
49:35
Speaker 2: more dangerous than ever now twenty twenty six, to be
49:41
Speaker 2: in recovery as a former addict than ever before. Here's
49:46
Speaker 2: an example of that. It is his hope, it is
49:49
Speaker 2: his passion and desire to make to affect some change
49:53
Speaker 2: as a result of this event. And I've got a
49:58
Speaker 2: poster there on the couch next to you that and
50:00
Speaker 2: you'll take with.
50:01
Speaker 4: You hold too. It's an incredible thing.
50:04
Speaker 2: I mean, what an event.
50:05
Speaker 4: I'll I'll do what I can to be there. That's incredible.
50:08
Speaker 2: I'm hoping you will you will be I'll be there.
50:10
Speaker 2: And if you are playing on being on stage, because
50:16
Speaker 2: you'll have a microphone thrown at you. But man, it's
50:20
Speaker 2: like there's a lot of hope here. Obviously there's some angersome, discouragement, accountability.
50:33
Speaker 2: We need legislators to know this story and that this
50:37
Speaker 2: isn't one of a kind. This this has happened several
50:41
Speaker 2: times in our community. I could tell you right now,
50:45
Speaker 2: off the top of my head five other situations that
50:49
Speaker 2: are almost identical tech.
50:50
Speaker 4: Actually something really controversial. Yeah, show can I really.
50:53
Speaker 2: Of course you can. That's why you're here.
50:55
Speaker 4: Man, That's what I'm going to do right now.
50:56
Speaker 5: So yes, and so everybody, when they finished reading Homelessness
51:02
Speaker 5: as a Housing Problem should go to the library and
51:06
Speaker 5: get Chasing the Scream by Johann Harri again. Just take Yeah,
51:13
Speaker 5: Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari right, incredible book. He
51:19
Speaker 5: has the most famous Ted Talk that's been viewed the
51:22
Speaker 5: most times in the history of the world on rat Park.
51:25
Speaker 5: Watch people to see rat Park YouTube Ted Talk. Just
51:29
Speaker 5: watch a couple minute things It'll blow your mind. He
51:32
Speaker 5: basically talked about all these dudes were in Vietnam, and
51:36
Speaker 5: they were coming from every place in the world in
51:38
Speaker 5: North America, and they were on farms, and they were
51:41
Speaker 5: football players, and they were assaulted the earth, whatever the.
51:43
Speaker 4: Case might be.
51:44
Speaker 5: They go to Vietnam and a bunch of wild stuff happens,
51:47
Speaker 5: and a lot of them got crazy, addicted to heroin,
51:50
Speaker 5: fucking addicted as shit to heroin. And then they came
51:53
Speaker 5: back to where they were from, and then they weren't
51:56
Speaker 5: on heroin anymore, and they went back to the farm
51:59
Speaker 5: and played football unlogged and did whatever they did, and
52:01
Speaker 5: everybody's like, what the fuck was that?
52:03
Speaker 4: How is That's not supposed to happen? How did that happen? What?
52:06
Speaker 5: And so he wrote this whole theory on it and
52:09
Speaker 5: had this incredible yes and why it worked and yeah,
52:13
Speaker 5: I'm not going to blow it. I'm not going to
52:15
Speaker 5: spoil it. Everybody go and watch it. It's seven minutes
52:17
Speaker 5: or something. Watch you know the rat park ted talk.
52:19
Speaker 5: It's ridiculous. So, anyway, that is a really important framework
52:25
Speaker 5: for people to think about. And basically he wrote this
52:28
Speaker 5: thesis about that, which is.
52:29
Speaker 4: Like the opposite of addiction is connection.
52:33
Speaker 5: And the reason it had worked is that people when
52:35
Speaker 5: they're isolated in the jungle in a traumatic environment, not
52:37
Speaker 5: sure if you're going to live or die, you need
52:39
Speaker 5: something to get through that moment.
52:41
Speaker 4: And when they got back, what.
52:42
Speaker 5: They needed was their families and their friends and a
52:45
Speaker 5: job and a feeling that they were important and valuable
52:47
Speaker 5: parts of the community. And that was the stronger pull.
52:50
Speaker 5: Same with the rat park thing. They had a bottle
52:52
Speaker 5: of cocaine water and a bottle of just straight up water.
52:55
Speaker 5: If they put a rat in an empty cage and
52:58
Speaker 5: the two bottles of water were there, they'd figure out
53:00
Speaker 5: one had the cocaine water, and they'd guzzle it until
53:02
Speaker 5: they'd died. Every single time, no matter how many times
53:04
Speaker 5: they've replicated that experience. Overdosed on cocaine, dead mouse, rat
53:08
Speaker 5: in the corner. Then they made a fantastical environment called
53:12
Speaker 5: rat park with other rats and cool shit to do
53:15
Speaker 5: and rat slides and foods and rat hammock and rats.
53:18
Speaker 4: To hang with and whatever.
53:19
Speaker 5: And none of the rats drank the cocaine water, and
53:22
Speaker 5: none of the rats die, and they're like, that can't
53:23
Speaker 5: be right.
53:24
Speaker 4: So they replicated it.
53:25
Speaker 5: Over and over and over and over and over, and
53:27
Speaker 5: the same thing happened. They'd all die with no friends
53:29
Speaker 5: or anything to do. None of them would die when
53:31
Speaker 5: they head all the shit. And it's not that simple,
53:33
Speaker 5: but it kind of is that simple that when you
53:35
Speaker 5: see that dude out in the corner and your worried
53:37
Speaker 5: is going to stab your stuff or knife you're tires
53:39
Speaker 5: or take your purse or whatever, most of the time
53:42
Speaker 5: he just needs an actual way to feel okay, like
53:46
Speaker 5: somebody cares about him, He has something to do of value.
53:49
Speaker 5: He isn't just leeching off of the world but that
53:51
Speaker 5: there was some reason for him to wake up in
53:53
Speaker 5: a way that people will appreciate him again. And you
53:55
Speaker 5: almost never get that chance. And so when we help people,
53:58
Speaker 5: I always try.
53:58
Speaker 4: To do it in a way where you don't just
54:00
Speaker 4: get the help.
54:01
Speaker 5: Because any person could need help at any point, and
54:03
Speaker 5: there's no shame ever in needing that. And it's a
54:06
Speaker 5: beautiful thing to ask. The sooner you ask, the better
54:09
Speaker 5: of a gift it is to your community, because the
54:11
Speaker 5: better of a chance we have of actually getting you
54:12
Speaker 5: where you need to be. And you can be that father,
54:15
Speaker 5: you can be that business owner, you.
54:16
Speaker 4: Can be that employer, you can be that whoever it is.
54:18
Speaker 5: And if you waited till it got as bad as
54:20
Speaker 5: it was gonna get, there's a good chance that we
54:21
Speaker 5: couldn't have helped. You could have killed yourself, you could
54:24
Speaker 5: have died. It could have happened in a way that
54:26
Speaker 5: it didn't work out the way we helped. But you
54:27
Speaker 5: ask early, we're there, we can help. All of that said,
54:31
Speaker 5: the other thing that people need, I believe deeply, is
54:34
Speaker 5: a chance to feel like they're contributing to the community
54:37
Speaker 5: in a positive way, that they're not only just getting help.
54:40
Speaker 5: Because that can feel bad, you can feel like you're
54:44
Speaker 5: taking taking and people see you in the way as
54:46
Speaker 5: some type of elitch, and you want the chance to
54:48
Speaker 5: give back.
54:49
Speaker 4: So I don't think we should require.
54:50
Speaker 5: People to have to give back to get that help,
54:52
Speaker 5: but I think we should make the opportunity to do
54:55
Speaker 5: it if somebody wants to. And my experience has been
54:57
Speaker 5: that overwhelmingly people do want to. The thing we give
55:00
Speaker 5: them to help may or may not actually help, but
55:03
Speaker 5: the opportunity we give them to contribute.
55:05
Speaker 4: To the community helps so much.
55:07
Speaker 5: So that is a thing that we often miss, and
55:10
Speaker 5: it's integral to I think the approaches we need in
55:12
Speaker 5: our downtowns, and what science about neuroplasticity and trauma and
55:16
Speaker 5: resilience and brain chemistry tells us.
55:17
Speaker 4: If you look at the.
55:18
Speaker 2: Literature, Wow, that's the teflon right there. Man, that's the
55:23
Speaker 2: protective layer right there. I hope you go back and
55:26
Speaker 2: read the comments from our episode this morning, just got
55:30
Speaker 2: one another one. This is not just a drug addiction problem,
55:33
Speaker 2: it's an everyone problem. We need to be advocating for
55:36
Speaker 2: change and supporting people who are experiencing these problems, even
55:40
Speaker 2: if we can't relate, don't have any connection to addiction,
55:45
Speaker 2: or think we can make a difference on our own.
55:49
Speaker 2: Those who need the help most usually have the hardest
55:53
Speaker 2: time advocating for what they need. But together we can
55:57
Speaker 2: help our communities get better.
56:00
Speaker 4: Banger, that is a fire comment. I mean, well, put.
56:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you think will that? You know? Vermont has
56:11
Speaker 2: been called the go to state, the go to state
56:15
Speaker 2: for drugs, the go to state for heroin, the words
56:20
Speaker 2: out hard for Connecticut, Springfield, Albany other points in New England.
56:30
Speaker 2: Vermont's where the business is.
56:31
Speaker 5: So I didn't say the controversial thing yet, I'll say
56:34
Speaker 5: it now and this will respond to that exactly. So,
56:36
Speaker 5: Chasing the scream is about the war on drugs and
56:39
Speaker 5: it basically conclusively shows that it has been the biggest
56:41
Speaker 5: failure we've ever attempted. From any metric that you attempt
56:45
Speaker 5: to look at it through. You can say, well, how
56:47
Speaker 5: about deaths climbing through the sky constantly every year? Accidental
56:51
Speaker 5: opioid related overdose fatalities are climbing. As we get stronger
56:55
Speaker 5: substances fentanyl, carafentanyl, other things like that, it gets worse.
56:59
Speaker 5: You talked about experience menation. It's different than it used
57:01
Speaker 5: to be. That couldn't be more true. As a result,
57:04
Speaker 5: the stigma should be lower. I feel because back in
57:07
Speaker 5: the day, everybody experimented and tried stuff. Talk to somebody
57:09
Speaker 5: who didn't try whatever. Now you try stuff, you'd die.
57:13
Speaker 5: Back then you tried stuff, you had some other chances,
57:15
Speaker 5: So you would think we'd have more empathy and stigma
57:17
Speaker 5: now than we ever have, especially because people themselves maybe
57:20
Speaker 5: did some of that. Somehow we don't. So I think
57:23
Speaker 5: that's a thing that we need to really look inside
57:24
Speaker 5: and try to change. That said, what he basically did
57:27
Speaker 5: with Chasing the Scream is make it really clear that
57:30
Speaker 5: as a policy issue, criminalizing addiction essentially is not helpful.
57:35
Speaker 5: And in places where they eliminated that, they had a
57:39
Speaker 5: much much better rate of people not dying, of people
57:42
Speaker 5: successfully being in recovery, a better use of money, et cetera.
57:45
Speaker 4: That iconic example is Brazil.
57:47
Speaker 5: They were gonna make drugs legal in Brazil, and the
57:51
Speaker 5: police community, law enforcement community came forward and said, you're nuts,
57:54
Speaker 5: there's no way you should do this, this is nuts,
57:57
Speaker 5: don't do this, please.
57:59
Speaker 4: They did it.
58:00
Speaker 5: Those same people, the same chiefs of police in Brazil
58:02
Speaker 5: came back and said, we would never go back, we
58:05
Speaker 5: would never do anything different. Thank you so much. We
58:07
Speaker 5: didn't want this, You were right. And why is because
58:10
Speaker 5: if two friends are in an alley back in the
58:12
Speaker 5: day when heroin is illegal, and one of them is
58:14
Speaker 5: overdosing and we drive by, the other friend says, holy shit,
58:18
Speaker 5: there's the cops, and they run and they hide and
58:20
Speaker 5: their friend dies. Now, when drugs aren't illegal, if their
58:24
Speaker 5: friend's overdosing, they've run to the street and bang in
58:26
Speaker 5: our window and say, holy shit, my friend is overdosing.
58:28
Speaker 5: Get the naracan and they do, and they.
58:31
Speaker 4: Save their life.
58:32
Speaker 5: And then eventually maybe they find recovery and treatment and
58:35
Speaker 5: everything else. Maybe it takes five, six, seven, eight, nine,
58:37
Speaker 5: ten times, and then on the eleventh time, oh look
58:40
Speaker 5: they're the mayor. Oh look, they started a business that
58:42
Speaker 5: employs three hundred people.
58:43
Speaker 4: You don't know.
58:44
Speaker 5: But that's the kind of stuff that was happening for them,
58:46
Speaker 5: to the point where the same law enforcement community said,
58:49
Speaker 5: oh my god, we would never change this. And every
58:51
Speaker 5: place that they've tried some version of real harm reduction
58:53
Speaker 5: and real support, they've seen an incredible reduction in the fatalities,
58:57
Speaker 5: and they've seen an incredible increase in harnessing the human
59:00
Speaker 5: potential of the people in the community.
59:03
Speaker 4: That's hugely controversial. Our whole society is built on this approach.
59:06
Speaker 5: That it's deeply illegal and stigmatic and terrible and we
59:08
Speaker 5: should double, triple, quadruple down on that if we care
59:11
Speaker 5: about data. It's telling us that increasing that approach is
59:14
Speaker 5: increasing death. And it's that classic quote about trying the
59:17
Speaker 5: same thing and hoping for a different outcome, and we
59:20
Speaker 5: know how that one ends.
59:21
Speaker 2: So yeah, right, do you what's your take on the divide?
59:28
Speaker 2: That's everywhere, man, It's in the Burlington Free Press, it's
59:31
Speaker 2: it's it's it's all over the internet. It's in the
59:34
Speaker 2: news about safe injection sites and what's happening in Burlington
59:39
Speaker 2: and now the the safe injection sites, the concept of
59:46
Speaker 2: a safe injection fan.
59:48
Speaker 4: I'm going to speak on this that's traveling around it.
59:52
Speaker 4: Do it.
59:53
Speaker 5: If you want to save people's lives, that's what you do.
59:55
Speaker 5: And you probably do want to save their life. If
59:57
Speaker 5: it's your sister or their daughter, or your mom or
59:59
Speaker 5: your on or your uncle or you or your kid.
1:00:02
Speaker 5: And once that's happened for you, you probably want to
1:00:04
Speaker 5: make it not happen again ever again. Vincent probably doesn't
1:00:07
Speaker 5: want to make that happen again. I don't know how
1:00:08
Speaker 5: you feel specifically about this idea. Also, the safe injection
1:00:13
Speaker 5: site is one of the terms that had initially started
1:00:16
Speaker 5: as the way that we're talking about.
1:00:18
Speaker 4: Overdose prevention.
1:00:19
Speaker 5: Site is the preferred idea, and the idea is that
1:00:22
Speaker 5: what you do is you find a heat map of
1:00:24
Speaker 5: where most of the people in your community are dying,
1:00:26
Speaker 5: and then that's where you co locate a facility and
1:00:29
Speaker 5: there you have people that can miss your medication in
1:00:31
Speaker 5: a way that's safe and provide oversight.
1:00:33
Speaker 4: And if people are actively addicted to the.
1:00:35
Speaker 5: Place where they're going to be using it to the
1:00:37
Speaker 5: point of death, you work with those same people and
1:00:40
Speaker 5: stop them from dying, provide the red carpet for recovery
1:00:43
Speaker 5: resources and support, reduce the stigma. What you see around
1:00:46
Speaker 5: the country where this has happened overwhelmingly is that people
1:00:49
Speaker 5: find recovery, people don't die. You provide incredible jobs, and
1:00:53
Speaker 5: you turn this place of filtered, broken needles and people
1:00:55
Speaker 5: dead on the streets still look, there's a park.
1:00:57
Speaker 2: Again.
1:00:58
Speaker 5: So that's what happens when you invent and that it's controversial, sure,
1:01:01
Speaker 5: but again, the data is super clear about that.
1:01:03
Speaker 2: But what do you say to folks that are like, well,
1:01:05
Speaker 2: come on, man, what you're talking about is enabled enabling.
1:01:09
Speaker 5: Yeah, I say, talk to me when it's your brother
1:01:12
Speaker 5: that done, and tell me if you still think that.
1:01:15
Speaker 2: M you know, just recently, yeah, there were there was
1:01:22
Speaker 2: a photo that surfaced just a couple of days ago
1:01:25
Speaker 2: of some folks allegedly shooting up right in the front
1:01:31
Speaker 2: lawn of the library here in Berry City. It's not
1:01:39
Speaker 2: happening anymore. Under bridges, in apartments, in cars, it's happening more.
1:01:49
Speaker 2: I saw a guy a couple of days ago, just
1:01:55
Speaker 2: just right down here on South Main Street who was
1:01:58
Speaker 2: hit in a bong in the middle of the after yep.
1:02:01
Speaker 4: So what I would say about that?
1:02:02
Speaker 5: And again, you're talking to a person who's super controversial,
1:02:06
Speaker 5: So I'm just going to be controversial, and that's kind
1:02:08
Speaker 5: of the package deal.
1:02:09
Speaker 2: So why you're here, breath.
1:02:10
Speaker 5: I appreciate that. I appreciate that. So say that person
1:02:14
Speaker 5: had a needle in their hands and they were injecting
1:02:17
Speaker 5: it in a different person without their consent, then I'd
1:02:19
Speaker 5: be seriously concerned and I'd like to talk about that,
1:02:21
Speaker 5: and we could think about a way to stop that
1:02:23
Speaker 5: for other people. But if we're talking about an adult
1:02:26
Speaker 5: who's making a choice about their own behavior, their own
1:02:29
Speaker 5: things they're going to put in their body, their own
1:02:31
Speaker 5: bodily autonomy, that's not something I want to intervene with.
1:02:34
Speaker 5: So you know, am I going to stop you from
1:02:36
Speaker 5: smoking that cigarette that's giving you cancer. Am I going
1:02:39
Speaker 5: to stop you from meeting that big mac that's not
1:02:41
Speaker 5: helping you out? Am I going to stop you from
1:02:42
Speaker 5: whatever the case may be. No, because we have all
1:02:45
Speaker 5: of the stigma associated with the use of psychoacap substances,
1:02:49
Speaker 5: which in every culture of the world and all of
1:02:51
Speaker 5: human recorded history, have been a huge part of life.
1:02:53
Speaker 5: You can't point to any community in any country in
1:02:55
Speaker 5: any time period where people weren't using some version of
1:02:58
Speaker 5: drugs or alcohol. And so for us to just pretend
1:03:00
Speaker 5: that's the wrong thing, that's the bad thing, don't do that.
1:03:03
Speaker 4: It's a naive. It's going to be part of our communities.
1:03:06
Speaker 5: And so because we know that, then it becomes a
1:03:09
Speaker 5: question of do we want the people that live in
1:03:10
Speaker 5: our communities to continue to live or not? In Over time,
1:03:14
Speaker 5: we can provide resources and support that maybe we'll change
1:03:17
Speaker 5: that story. But what doesn't change that story is to
1:03:20
Speaker 5: say you're doing it wrong, lay in the bed that
1:03:22
Speaker 5: you made and let the cards fallow where they do.
1:03:25
Speaker 5: We know that for sure, and the data couldn't be
1:03:27
Speaker 5: more clear about that.
1:03:28
Speaker 2: Listen. Yeah, let's jump back to that. Let's close out
1:03:32
Speaker 2: with that. Yeah, I love it because you are the
1:03:35
Speaker 2: executive director of this. You've created this grassroots in its
1:03:43
Speaker 2: purest form.
1:03:46
Speaker 5: I didn't create it. I've been the executive director for
1:03:48
Speaker 5: two years. Where celebrating our fifteenth anniversary, which.
1:03:52
Speaker 4: Is a big deal.
1:03:53
Speaker 5: Gloria Vandenberg, the founding director, is the og who created it.
1:03:57
Speaker 5: Deserves all the credits. She's incredible Florida now, and she's amazing.
1:04:00
Speaker 5: I've been there for two years. I've been on the
1:04:02
Speaker 5: board for a bunch of years before. That is an
1:04:04
Speaker 5: incredible place. But I just want to be clear, I
1:04:06
Speaker 5: didn't I didn't create it, all right.
1:04:07
Speaker 2: It's a statewide holistic mental health respite program where people
1:04:13
Speaker 2: can unplug completely, you know, one of the worst things,
1:04:19
Speaker 2: one of the worst drugs that we have in our culture.
1:04:26
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, he's holding up his phone. Guys, that I mean,
1:04:29
Speaker 4: I was gonna say it, but you did.
1:04:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, right, right, here right, there's a shit ton
1:04:38
Speaker 2: bad news on this and inaccurate information, and we love
1:04:47
Speaker 2: to drink from this. There's a ship ton of kool
1:04:51
Speaker 2: aid in here.
1:04:52
Speaker 4: Bro, mm hmm.
1:04:54
Speaker 2: Find out what's real. Shut this fucking thing off, go out,
1:05:00
Speaker 2: go out.
1:05:00
Speaker 5: To your data is spitting guys. Let's take your notebook
1:05:02
Speaker 5: out and start writing the ship down.
1:05:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and go out and meet your neighbors in
1:05:07
Speaker 2: the park, Go for a walk with your kids.
1:05:09
Speaker 4: Go for that bell. Can you hit your bell right now? Yeah? Yeah?
1:05:13
Speaker 2: Go for a walk by yourself, right if you If
1:05:17
Speaker 2: you are not connected to yourself, it's completely fucking impossible
1:05:23
Speaker 2: to connect with anybody else. Yes, And if you do,
1:05:27
Speaker 2: you're doing it on a superficial level. Yes, bro, Bro,
1:05:33
Speaker 2: I feel like I've known you for one hundred years.
1:05:35
Speaker 2: May will you get your ass back in here?
1:05:38
Speaker 4: I'd love to. I hope you do, man, Yeah, I'd
1:05:41
Speaker 4: love to.
1:05:41
Speaker 2: How do we learn more about what you're doing, your
1:05:46
Speaker 2: miss your mission? I mean, how do people get in
1:05:48
Speaker 2: touch with you? One of the people that are listening
1:05:51
Speaker 2: right now that are well me.
1:05:52
Speaker 4: If you really have to.
1:05:53
Speaker 5: But the thing would be so much cooler is if
1:05:55
Speaker 5: you just texted me just text me ato two two
1:05:59
Speaker 5: seven nine nine zero six nine. And then we could
1:06:02
Speaker 5: talk about alyssum or peer support. We could talk about
1:06:05
Speaker 5: building your dreamhouse on like Champlain. We could talk about
1:06:07
Speaker 5: how I need to come to Sweden to help your
1:06:09
Speaker 5: organization do collabortive leadership.
1:06:11
Speaker 4: I don't care, just.
1:06:12
Speaker 5: Text me, text me whatever it is A two two
1:06:15
Speaker 5: seven nine nine zero six nine. There's websites for all
1:06:18
Speaker 5: these places. You go on the internet. A listen, it's
1:06:21
Speaker 5: right there www dot a lissam s org, Www dot
1:06:26
Speaker 5: a l y s s u m at org.
1:06:31
Speaker 2: And you saying teach me now, that's a flower.
1:06:34
Speaker 5: Yeah, And honestly, what is so it signifies that there
1:06:40
Speaker 5: used to be something called an asylum and that used
1:06:43
Speaker 5: to be a prison where you would go if you
1:06:44
Speaker 5: were different, and people with it right right, And so
1:06:48
Speaker 5: we might want to change the name because that still
1:06:50
Speaker 5: often is the connotation. But what we were trying to do,
1:06:53
Speaker 5: what Gloria was trying to do, was say, okay, no,
1:06:55
Speaker 5: think about it instead as here's this beautiful blooming flower.
1:06:59
Speaker 5: When you're in that samee in place, we don't want
1:07:00
Speaker 5: to throw you in a cage. We want to help
1:07:03
Speaker 5: you find out what's really going on and get to
1:07:05
Speaker 5: a place in your life where you feel like you're
1:07:07
Speaker 5: in bloom and you're giving back to the community and
1:07:09
Speaker 5: yourself and your family and your friends and the way
1:07:10
Speaker 5: you want to. And there's no shame in going through
1:07:13
Speaker 5: that process. So yeah, this is free for every Vermonor.
1:07:16
Speaker 4: Come on down.
1:07:16
Speaker 5: You can come as many times as you need to.
1:07:18
Speaker 5: We do have entry criteria. We have to talk about
1:07:21
Speaker 5: safety and things like that. There's an intake process, but
1:07:23
Speaker 5: you know, google it whatever.
1:07:25
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:07:26
Speaker 5: And then Round Tree Construction. You know, we're custom home builders.
1:07:29
Speaker 5: We build beautiful, beautiful homes.
1:07:31
Speaker 4: Whatever you want. I mean, we'll we'll build whatever you want.
1:07:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, sweet.
1:07:35
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:07:36
Speaker 5: So we have a website, we're on Instagram. If you're
1:07:39
Speaker 5: interested in a project, you can text me there too.
1:07:41
Speaker 5: And then if it's an organizational development thing, check out
1:07:44
Speaker 5: Mission Driver Consulting and I can help you out there too.
1:07:47
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, so impressed.
1:07:50
Speaker 4: Thank you, Thank you.
1:07:52
Speaker 2: Get back in here soon, all right, you got it.
1:07:54
Speaker 4: JD you rock. Keep up the amazing work. Thanks for
1:07:56
Speaker 4: the opportunity. I see you soon.
1:07:57
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:07:58
Speaker 6: Man.
1:08:00
Speaker 1: Tate text.
1:08:08
Speaker 6: Boo boot stop the story the back text
1:09:18
Speaker 5: O assass