Transcript of Teen Drug Crisis Explained with Dr. Katie Held & John Lieberman: Fentanyl, Vaping & Recovery

It is so helpful when parents get their kids into therapy, when they ask for help, because then they're teaching their kids, right? They're teaching the kids. It's okay to ask for help.

This is how responsible adults deal with their stressors.

Yes. I don't have all the answers. Let's get somebody involved here to help us.

If someone has a problem with substance use disorder, please call One Call Placement. That's 888-831-1580. One. If we can't help you, we'll make a referral to someone who can. One Call Placement is affiliated with Carrera Treatment, Wellness & Spa, and One Method Treatment centers. We're living through the deadliest drug crisis in American history, and It's not just adults, it's kids. My guests today are John Lieberman and Katie Held from Visions Teen Center, where every single day they see what's really happening with adolescents, fed up in their system, parents terrified at home, and kids making choices that can mean life or death. Today, we're pulling back the curtain on what our teenagers are facing and what it takes to save them. John, Katie, thanks for coming.

Excited to be here.

Yeah, thanks for having us.

That's nice. It's very sweet. All right, let's dive right in, shall we? What substances are teenagers walking into treatment with most often today?

Katie, I would say anything and everything we're seeing today, definitely alcohol, as you stated. Unknowingly, they're ingesting Foual.

A lot of them?

Not all of them.

Correct. But some of them swear up and down that they're not using, and they test positive. Correct.

Unknowingly. A lot of marijuana use escalating over the last six years, I would say. Sure. Nicotine, almost all of them. A lot of alcohol, cocaine use. We see a lot of drug addiction, substance use. It's escalating. It's increasing with legalization, with just more access. I think with glamorization of drug use, we're seeing a lot of increase.

I didn't tell the viewers that you're the clinical director there.

Chief Clinical Officer. Okay.

Yes. Chief Clinical Officer. Okay. And what do you do there, buddy?

I'm the CEO. Okay. I get to see things from a bird's-eye view, and I still take calls from parents when they're in crisis. And it is really terrifying what's going on out there. Katie said marijuana, but THC is probably causing the initial worst impacts we're seeing with kids. How so? Well, because THC is so powerful in today's day and age, because it's been hybrided and because of extracts and things like that, that we see kids as early as 13 years old having psychosis as a result of THC.

Okay, that's what I want to talk about, because I've smoked a lot of pot my day, and I didn't smoke a little bit of pot. I'm smoking an ounce of pot every day when I was smoking it. Now, again, wasn't as strong as today?

Yeah.

Okay. But, man, I smoked so much pot from morning till night, and I smoked for at least a decade and a half. I smoked, no, from 12 to Let's call it 30. That's almost two decades like a fiend. I never had psychosis. What is this?

Not everybody has psychosis. Not everybody reacts the same way. But if I'm going to say, because I did it, it doesn't make... So we should be asking- No, I understand that it's anecdotal.

I get it. But I've run a treatment center, too, for a long time. Some people I think I'm pretty good at this. I'm telling you, I've never seen it. So what is it?

What it is, is this really high potency, 50% THC, 90% THC that's been extracted. You have 12, 13-year-olds who have this in a vape pan that they're using during school, when they get up in the morning before they go to bed at night. I would venture to say that what THC is today is street drugs. We don't know how much of THC is.

No, it's not. Hold on a second. Hold on a If you're buying marijuana from a dispensary, it's not going to be laced with Facebook. It's not.

But kids aren't buying it from a dispensary. Where are they buying it? They're buying it from their friends. They're buying it on TikTok. They're buying it on Instagram. They're buying it on Discord.

Then they're going to die because if you're buying anything on the street, it's got to be in it. I don't care what it is. Exactly. Or an online pharmacy.

And then they say, Well, I got this pill, too. I could bring you. Because if you're a drug dealer, then your job is sell more, and these kids will try anything. And we have kids whose parents buy them the test kits to say, if you get something with fail, don't take it. So they literally have that. So then the kids test for the final pill, and they'll say, I'm going to save that one till later Until I really want to get high. They don't see it as a risk because kids, their brains are wrapped up in, I'm going to take a risk, right?

Also, their frontal cortex isn't fully developed, and you mix that with feeling indestructible, and that's a bad combination. I mean, I can't believe I'm alive.

The perfect word is with kids, they feel indestructible. That's right. Then when we come to them with logic, Don't do this, they're like, My friend did it. I did it. My friend did it, and they still got an A in school. So it must not be a problem. You guys are a bunch of liars.

Right. No, I get it. But how often are you seeing female in toxicology screens on admission? Like, what percentage? I know what my percentage is.

Maybe 10%. Yeah.

10%? 10 to Okay, we're about 40 %.

So it climbs with adolescents as they find a new... So here's the thing. Like kids, they start with something. They usually have their first drink between 10 and a half to 12 years old. Then they try pot, then they try this, and then they find something that works for, let's say, they have anxiety. What kid in junior high school doesn't have some anxiety? All of them. So it's a setup. It's a setup for that frontal cortex to say, this works, This works because the brain is just trying to figure out how to get through life.

Have you had any cases yet where kids showed up positive for Trankxylizine?

No. No. No.

Okay, well, that's coming.

Yeah.

You know what that is, right? We do. Okay. It's the flesh-eating drug. Okay. All right. Yeah. It's a zombie flesh-eating drug coming to a suburb near you. All right. What trends are you seeing with vaping counterfeit pills and street Xanax? And really, press the perks.

I think vaping is just a complete epidemic for our kids. In general, I think our kids are coming in earlier and earlier.

Okay, but hold on a second. That's smoking. Every bad kid smoked. Every rebellious kid in high school smoked when I was a kid. Sure. Okay. The vapes are more dangerous because of the popcorn lung.

Every kid smoked cigarettes, but they didn't smoke cigarettes in their room 12 hours a day, right?

Right. That's true. Yeah. That's true, too. I I've heard, and I've heard this from a talk by the Florida attorney general, and she said that you're getting vape. You're getting in vapes Sure.

That's the cross of what we're talking about. Our kids, virtually, are all vaping. Then all it takes is a different cartridge, a different thing to have alcohol in it, to have whatever chemical, anything that could be liquid.

You're going to get that on the street. You're going to get that thing on the street.

Well, I was talking to a kid one day, and he was out for a walk with his counselor, and he found what they call a cartridge for vapes. He found one on the ground, snuck it in his pocket to bring in. I said, What are you doing? What's going on there that you're in a treatment center, you see a cart on the ground, and you pick it up and put it in your pocket? He said, and I quote, Because any day you find a cart, a good day. In his mind, he's just like, That just sounds bullshit that one of his friends said that thought was cool and just pared it to you.

He doesn't even know.

But I mean, there's so much danger attached to the idea of just getting a vape. I have so many girls starting as young as 13, buying vapes from drug dealers, vape dealers, getting into the back of a car with an older man drug dealer. I had one who got sexually assaulted, one who got taken around the corner, got away, but was almost sexually assaulted. It's not just about the dangers of the substance.

No. You know any of that? Have you guys... This is really critical. I'm getting involved in this now, the sex trafficking. You guys have experience with that? Yeah. Tell me about it.

I can think just off the top of my head, about five teenage girls who we've had, and just thinking just off the top of my head, who got involved and were trafficked.

And these are all girls under 18? Yeah.

Yeah. And families that They're coming from good neighborhood.

Like high-resource families.

Yeah, high-resource families.

Of course, they're all high-resource families when you are concerned.

We see a higher number in the programs, like our AeroHouse program. It's higher numbers where kids just have found it becomes their avenue for more free access to drugs, and they think this is just the way it is. This is just the way it is, which is sad. And they'll say that. They'll say, when we say to them, So you A-walled. You found some guys. You said that you were sexually involved with them. We need to make a report. And the girl says, No, that's what you do if you want to get drugs. No, that's what you do. And she's 15 years old. Her friend that went with her overdosed in the Carl's Junior bathroom, and they had to break down the door. And this happened within just about 24 hours of not any drug.

I cannot imagine what a parent goes through when it's- I know.

And we work with the families around this. I mean, it is devastating.

So I have, when I'm treating somebody and I've got someone who's a young adult. The parents are out of their minds. I can only imagine how much worse it is for you guys.

A lot of times for us, the person who calls when you pick up the phone the first time with a parent, it's a lot of times their first time they've reached out for help. The pain in their voice, the frustration, the mistrust, because we live in a world of mistrust, so how they know they could trust us or anybody for that matter.

Well, let me just say that Edvisions is the only place that I would ever refer. You guys aren't paying me for this. I don't even have sponsors. Can you imagine? Sponsored by. No, thank Yeah. Okay. We get called all the time for that stuff. We just said no every time. If NARCAN calls, we'll do NARCAN. Thank God. Vivitrol calls, we'll do Vivitrol. Okay.

Parents come in with, Well, what if it's not just drugs? My answer is, It's never just drugs. The kids are dealing with their social issues, emotional issues. We find kids with anxiety disorders and things or There's just high anxiety underneath the surface that is just ramped up. Because if I went into a room, if you were there, and I asked 100 adults, How many of you smoked pot? However many raise it. Seventy-five. Seventy-five %. And then I asked those same parents, How many of you quit smoking pot because you got paranoid? It's about half. It's about half the number. So you're a little different, didn't do the same thing for you. But paranoia is a symptom. Oh, no, no, no.

It did happen to me. It's I'd rather push through that, okay, and not have to deal with the life I was dealing with and feel accepted for the first time ever.

And I think from my point of view, I'm passionate about this. I got sober at 17. Right. So 1985.

And how long have you been a rabbi?

Sorry. I'm sorry. That's all right. But I've been working in the field when I had 103 days sober. So I got hired to work in an adolescent program at 103 days sober. So for 40 years. Kids, kids, kids, kids, kids, and families, and working with them. Good.

That's why you guys are here, because this is why I came back. I came back because you're going to think this is insane. I felt like if I didn't do this podcast, then I was going to be punished.

We got a scream it from the rooftop, and podcast is screaming it from the rooftop today.

And I got lucky. We just passed 100,000 subscribers, so thank you. Keep the messages coming, okay? Because I answer all of them. Okay, the stupid ones, I have Dylan answer. But anytime you're in crisis, I answer, okay? I'm always available for that. All right, let's do this. How many of your alumni have died of family overdoses? Get the CEO hat. No, Okay, because it happens everywhere.

It absolutely happens. We get the call from a parent who says, Johnny just died. Kids will also use FDL to support a suicide. They'll find the drugs to do that. I don't have an exact number, but we get calls. It's probably about twice a year that we get the call.

How many times... This used to happen to me all the time, where people make an appointment to come into treatment. They'll schedule it on three weeks out, and then they die during those three weeks. Does that ever happen to you?

We've had kids who've... The answer is probably, those parents may not ever call us, but we absolutely have the cases where a parent says, Let's plan this in three weeks. They call me three days later, and they say, They're on a 5150 hold because they either had an overdose or Or they had tried to kill themselves or they ran away, can't find them.

Has anyone ever killed themselves in visions? No. Has anyone ever died in visions? No. Do you know how rare that is?

Yes.

It takes a lot of supervision, a lot of time. You got to have enough staff. You have to have protocols. And look, something could still happen. It only takes a few minutes if somebody really is serious. Oh, yeah.

No, we're lucky. We're not cocky.

You're lucky. No, it's the fear and terror because we tell parents, We're here to take care of your child.

And if something got, Oh, my God. It's too much, right? Mm-hmm. Okay, move on. All right. What's the scariest story you've seen firsthand about the dangers of today's street drugs?

Either one of Well, this goes to the family, how the family's hurt and angst and terror and not understanding how serious this is. We had a dad. He wrote us a letter and he said, Thank God you were there for me. They called from the hospital while their son was in convulsions from Foucault and benzodiazopines, which were mixed together. He was frothing at the mouth, shook out of the girney. This dad's telling us the whole story. And he said, Thank God you were there for me. We were able to get him into treatment because you guys answered. So right from the hospital, a direct transfer to the center. It's a week later when he writes this and he says to me, well, he writes in there, We've really got to get his school on track. And the poor dad doesn't know what to hold on to because the pain of losing his son is so great. So then- He reflects it, and now he's talking about school. Yes. I want to be sensitive.

You don't want to say- You don't just look at them and say, Dude, your kid just almost died.

I mean, sometimes... Yes, we do. Sometimes it's absolutely that.

Oh, I make them say it out loud three times and then ask them how fucking stupid that sounded. No, I'm not kidding.

At the same time, we don't want to say that because that happened, that they shouldn't focus on school and things like that. Helps repair how the brain works and a lot of things. But if we don't focus on the basics of their relationships and their recovery and the road that got them there, we're missing it.

Well, right. If your kid's not alive, they're not going to have a school to go to. They're not going to have a child.

They don't know anything, and they've got to be taught. And then they're so dug in to, Oh, well, it's the school. No, babe, it ain't the school. You're going to lose a semester, okay? That's the way it is. Now, you guys keep up with their school work at your place, right? We do. They can do all that stuff there. It's not an and or.

No, I think it's just tough. It's managing the parents' expectations. It's locking to... The parents are just terrified, and I think they're coming from this place of managing what other people think about them, the stigma of their child, the treatment.

I don't have an ear for it.

I I know. But it's like, how can you access that and then redirect them to, We have to do this with your child.

You let them know. Well, I always have them close their eyes and I take them through something real quick that gets them insane, okay, and just they fall apart. And then I get them into a state of reasonableness.

Yeah, exactly.

One of the ways that that happens for adolescents is having those kids and families in treatment long long enough so that when parents show up, they see that little sparkle, that glimmer in their child's eye. If it's the rambunctuousness, a little the defiance that isn't evil, that isn't about hurting themselves, it's about being a kid, and the parent sees that, and they will invest anything in the continued success of their child.

As it should because it's your child. Yes. Yeah. Unbelievable. Yeah.

And all the families that are with us, I mean, our Our main rule out is parent engagement. If parents are not willing to do groups to come out- What do you do? We don't take them.

Oh, you don't take the kids? Yeah.

Yeah. Our requirement is family involvement because everybody wants to know what's your rule out. Is it psychosis? Is it this? Is it that? Our number one is you have parent involvement. We know that it is family, family, family, family. And so that's on one side. The other side from a parent being terrified is I was in group one day and I asked, So how are you doing today? And the mom says to me, I just hear the sirens. I just keep hearing the sirens every time I close my eyes because she was holding her son who had just overdosed, and she'd called 911, and all she could hear in the background was the sirens, and can they get here fast enough? Can they get here fast enough to save my son? And what that does for a parent is just crushing. Because then they feel like it's their fault. The next question I ask the group is- It is.

Yes. It is. Let me tell you something. We have the kids. They don't have us. They didn't ask to be here. If something bad happens to my children, it's my fault. You got to be present. You know this. If you do the work from the gate, you don't have your phone, you're down on their level, you're connecting, they go, They know what they're saying, but they can't get it out. So you go, wow. You're making these kids feel important. So that way, when they're older, you can have the conversation because you've done the work. If you haven't done the work, the conversation falls on deaf ears.

And I think this is where we look at things where we're seeing kids with significant depression, struggling with anxiety, Society and essay levels.

Sure. Okay. Because that's a controversial statement that I just made, and I'm going to double down.

Okay.

Okay? Just because it's your fault doesn't mean you can't repair this thing.

That's right.

Okay? But if you don't accept responsibility for your child's failures or failings or struggles, you're not on track to fix it. You have to be accountable. This is my child. He's struggling. I didn't do my job. That's reality. Now, I'm not talking about a sick kid, somebody born- Like a medically sick kid. I'm talking about a psychologically sick kid. Sure. Okay. I'm not talking about that. That is a different deal. But I'm talking about your average run-of-the-mill kid, us as children. Not okay. I'm sorry, man. I interrupted you, but I just couldn't If you don't accept responsibility, you're in a victim position. If you accept responsibility, you're in a powerful position, and now you can change it.

Isn't that what happens with that phone call when a parent says, I'm looking for treatment for my child? It's some of the first steps in the process for those parents, and it might be really difficult. Yeah.

Yeah. You know what would have been great at the first sign of a problem to get your child a therapist and then have a family therapist where you could go in and deal with it. That would have been great.

I want to follow up with something that you said there because it's so important. It is so helpful when parents get their kids into therapy, when ask for help, because then they're teaching their kids, right? They're teaching the kids. It's okay to ask for help. I don't have to know everything.

And this is how responsible adults deal with their stressors.

Yes. I don't have all the answers. Let's get somebody involved here to help us. That's right.

That's exactly right.

And it's not always easy to find therapists to understand substance abuse and things like that. But it doesn't mean we don't reach out for help. And we live in a world today where there's the more experience, letters behind somebody's name, it's almost like we trust them less when the reality is trusting them more would be more helpful for our kids.

Yeah. Well, it It's hard to trust when it's your child. All right. What's the biggest myth parents or kids still believe about these street drugs? Or about any drugs.

That it's not going to happen to me. That's exactly right. There's two things. It's not going to happen to me. Or the other part is that we tend as parents-Not my kids. Not my kids. Or we paste our experience onto them and say, Well, I smoked a little bit of pot, or I did this, or I did that, not realizing that they're an individual and there is a negative effect. So So from that point of view, the myth is that it's okay. I have a parent tell me, I know my son just he smokes a little pot before he goes to school. I said, he's 13, and he's not smoking a little pot. He's dabbing. He's dabbing 98% THC at 13 years old before he goes to school. And he says, and I quote, at 13, I need this to cope. That's just terrifying.

I did, too.

Yes, and it's true. So then that It goes back to, We need therapy. We need to understand what's going on with my son.

And I certainly didn't have that.

And there's kids that we're seeing, too. I think the myth of everyone's doing it, why can't I do it? And we're seeing kids with severe mental health disorders. There's a difference between someone with one, two, three mental health diagnosis and a kid without. Not that any of them really at 13, 12 or 13 should be doing it, but there is a difference. There someone who's really predisposed to what we were talking about earlier, like psychosis, dabbing and having really, really concentrated THC versus someone who's not.

I think the biggest myth is, right? And we went over, is, I don't know anybody who's died of feeling good. My kid's not going to die of feeling good. He's just being a kid. And It's not if, it's when now, because everybody's dropping from this.

All right.

This is a good one. Where are teenagers heads today? Where are they at? What's their mental and emotional state compared to 5-10 years ago? It's an excellent question.

I think I've seen a huge difference in the last six years. I mean, post-COVID, huge change. Their social-emotional ability to interact with each other is super different. Coming out of COVID, a lot of them- What's the stare?

The stare? The stare.

Like the literal stare? Yeah.

So today, if you're going to talk to kids and you ask them a question or you'll say something, then they'll just do this. Yeah. I think- What is that?

Post-covid, a lot of them didn't want to take their masks off. They have trouble interacting face-to-face because I think they were on Zoom for so long. They were behind masks for so long. They didn't want to take their masks off. It was really hard to get them to even take it.

But it's more than that. But it's more I'm not. I've noticed over the last... Since I've been back, because remember, I was gone five years, and I'm back, too. In the last seven years, this is what I've noticed. I even had this experience with one of my employees. I was asking questions, and she's dissembling. It's like a dissembling is like you're talking about, Isn't it a great day today? And somebody screams Thursday. Okay, that's dissembling. Or they start talking about their dog. You're like, Dude, I just asked you this question. Why are you talking to me about your dog? She's dissembling. Then finally, I get her cornered because I'm going to ask, Why is that? Why is that? Why is that? Why is that? How did this happen? I'm going through the thing. Then finally, I've got her. Now, I'm speaking at a whisper. I'm speaking lower than I am now. She started and she said to me, Stop screaming at me. I had other people on the phone. There were six of us. I said, Get off the phone. Hang up. She hangs up, and everybody's in shock because I've got a 20-something kid that said, Stop screaming at me.

It was so bizarre. What is going on with these kids? You see them all day long. That is totally different. What's going on with that?

I think there's a lot. I think that the parenting is different. I think that there's such a desire to protect kids from, I need to feel safe all the time. There's so much like, I don't feel safe here.

Do you know what I think it is? Social media.

I think it's also social media, right? But I think that there's the parenting. I think it's the social media. I think it was COVID.

There's so much that's been right. No, it's definitely COVID. It's definitely COVID. I don't know how much different parents you would know better than I would, how they've changed. I know that we've remained consistent Okay. But again, that doesn't have anything to do with me. It has to do with who taught me how to be a better man.

I think parents don't want kids to feel discomfort anymore. Kids are like, I'm unsafe. You're attacking me. It's helpful for kids to feel discomfort. They need to be able to go out in the real world and say, I have resilience. I was able to have this challenge.

That's so beautiful that you say that because nobody... It's the benefit of a skinny, right? Yeah. Who wrote that again?

The benefit...

The benefit of a skinny.

I don't know. Was it...

Beatle.

Also, there's also... This goes back to the social media piece, which is that, one, is we're dealing with parents who have difficulty themselves with uncomfortability. Then when it comes to, as really as parents, our job is to frustrate our kids, so to speak. Help them learn things, clean their room, have rules, expectations. If we look at, so there's a book I'll just talk about, Anxious Generation. One of the statistics in there for young boys between 14, I think, and 22 years old, their minor injuries, like broken finger, broken wrist, stitches, things like that, have gone down by up to 60% over... That will What he talks about this is those kids aren't out there playing the same way. They're not having the same failures. They're not having the same repairs. What you talked about with parents, a lot of what happens in treatment is repair.

It's the pacification of America.

I didn't put it that way. Well, it is. But yeah, it does not be uncomfortable. I think that the generations of parents that we're seeing now, they have such a hard time when we say the answer is no, and that's a complete sentence. You'll see their eyes glazed it's over because they're afraid of the reaction to their child.

It's okay to show respect for your child. Absolutely. I go ahead and I'll ask my kid to do something. Sometimes he'll go, Yeah, dad, I'm not really feeling that right now. I'm cool with it, right? But there are sometimes where I'm not cool with it. I'll say, Yeah, I need you to do that. I know you don't want to do it, but I need it. I'll be like, Why? Sometimes I'll tell him why. And then he'll look at me and go, Yeah, but why? And I said, Because I've been said so, that's why. Okay? And he's like, Oh, cool. It's like you go down that You exhaust all your legislative remedies. And then it's like at the end of the day, it's like, Okay, I really like the whole negotiating thing. You're really very good at it. Unfortunately, my will is stronger than yours, and this is how we're going to do it.

Because the I'm asking you to. And that is showing your kid respect. It's like, this is what happens in the real world. That's right. There is a rule, I'm asking you to do it. That is respect. Yeah.

It's so weird when you have two kids, isn't it? They're so different. You think they're going to be the same, and they're completely different.

My daughters are 36 and 37, and both of them have children. It is not easy to be a parent, but to watch them now on the other end. I have four grandchildren, and in their process, and my kids working on their own recovery also. So my youngest has eight years sober, and her and her husband are running a little treatment center up in Utah. You're kidding. Yeah. And she said, I will never get involved in what you're doing.

Right.

And she met the man of her dreams, actually during COVID. But the process was not easy. And she would tell you it was nine treatment centers for her. It It was a lot. It was some of the most painful times that our family went through.

Were you in this field when you were putting her in treatment? Yes. How did you deal with your own kid being in treatment when you're actually running a treatment center? How did you deal with that?

Well, first, it probably goes back to my mom when she put me in treatment. In 1984, 1985, she just said, I put the combat boots on. It didn't matter.

Oh, you were 17.

I was 17.

So we're the same age. Yeah. I'm 59. I'm 58.

Right. Okay. There was something in me. I believed in treatment, and probably working at visions helped because I was like, this thing is good. These interventions are good. I chose places where I knew the staff were good, 45 days. Then she came home and started lying, manipulating, going out. She hadn't used. She was sober, but being a shithead. I took her back to treatment to an extended care program at eight months, sober.

Because she was dry.

She wasn't living a lot. She was dry because it's not just about whether she was using or not. It was what was going on with her emotionally. That's right.

It's only a matter of time. Let me just explain this for them. Because it's only a matter of time when you're that uncomfortable to where You have to self-medicate. That's why he took her before the wheels fell off to get the after care she needed.

You get so much further more quickly when you haven't gone all down the road of all the complications of somebody. Of course.

You nip it in the bud.

But most people, it's hard to do that.

It's hard to do that because the kids don't understand it. But I always say the same thing to my clients. I don't really I care what you think about me today. I care about what you think about me next year and the year after that. Absolutely.

Now it's dad, when you're coming up to spend a couple of days in Utah with your grandson.

See? Right? Well, more importantly, Now she's capable of having a child and being a good mother.

Absolutely.

I mean, can you imagine? We've seen so many times these drug-addicted kids have their own child, and now, how the hell do you take care of that child when you can't take care of yourself.

It's a difficult thing. I was a single dad at 21 with two daughters in diapers. I understand the process of trying to figure out how to raise kids, bring them to daycare, deal with their mom who was out of control at the time.

How is she doing now?

She's okay.

Do the kids have a relationship with her? They do. Good.

A lot of that is by their doing, they learned. They learned in their process of their own recovery, their own process, going to therapy, putting me in the middle of the room so they could talk. That's the biggest smile on their face ever, probably. Not a gift. It's when we all went to family therapy together and Dr. Allen Berger said, Would you like to put your dad in the middle today? Their eyes just lit up. What that means is that dad's going to be the focus and everything in here is safe for us to talk about.

So that's where they shit on you.

Yeah, and they could ask questions. Then they had a mediator, right? Then a mediator to help with the process.

So if they get too aggressive, the guy looks at them and says, What was your intent by that statement?

It was more like, So, John, are you going to really answer that question? It came back to me because it was uncomfortable. When you're a parent, when you look at things like when they say, Dad, when you said this, it hurt. Dad, when you did this, I was afraid. Why did you do these things? That's the biggest gift you could give your kids.

That was the most beautiful thing, literally. That's great because that's hard for a parent to hear. Somebody asked me the other day, Are you a good father? I said, You'll have to ask by kids. That's not for me because if you asked my mother and my father if they were good, well, not my dad. My dad would have told you the truth. But if you would have asked my mother if she was a good mother to her three children, she would have said, Absolutely. No, but she would have said, Absolutely. That's how she would have done it, right? I mean, horrible mother.

When we talk about things like therapy and our own process as a family, they point to that event.

It's beautiful. It's the most beautiful thing. I cannot I cannot wait to do that. I cannot wait to sit in the middle and have my kids do me. I can't wait. That is going to be the best day of my life because I'm going to get clarity on what I did to my kids.

I had helped to show up in a way that was authentic. The therapist would stop me and say, What are you feeling right now? Because I can get into my head pretty quickly. It It was a process that was- What did you say? I had to stop. I would ask them questions because sometimes my emotions were so big because all I wanted to do was protect my kids. In protecting my kids, I said and did things sometimes that either they didn't understand or that I need to apologize for. Repair goes back to that's for kids when they can repair with a parent, a coach, a teacher, we're setting the foundation for how they can work out in their lives, like with their partners, in their marriage.

Yeah, we show them that you can make repairs. Yes. That that's how adults do it. Right. Okay. They don't double They double down. Okay, they're mistakes. They double down when they know they're correct. Right. All right. How often do you see depression, anxiety, or trauma alongside substance use disorder? Okay, the answer is everything. Yeah, every single time. Okay, every single time. Yeah. Okay, great question. Okay. What's the biggest difference in treating adolescents versus adults? Wow. Great question.

I think definitely the family piece. Still with adults, yes, it's useful to bring in the family piece. But adolescents, like we talked about, like the- Can I tell you what I think?

Yes. They're a hostage.

The kids are a hostage? Yeah. Because they don't have a choice.

They don't have a choice. For me, if I could keep people against their own will, we'd have 100%. I mean, think about it. If you could keep someone- Absolutely. Until they were ready to go, it'd be 100%.

With kids, they do and say things that the adults think about and don't say, or it takes them a lot longer.

The kids will- Give me an example.

The kids will throw the chair, flip They'll give you the finger. They're on a family session with their parents, and they just get up and- Hold on. Hold on.

You kids will never do that.

We're on a whole family session, and the kid just gets up and closes the computer just gets up and closes the computer. Or they run down the street. They're running down the street.

And their parents don't take the computer and throw it in the pool?

No, I don't. No, I'm asking. No, because they're on the other end. So they're having a session, maybe a family session or something like that. On a computer. On a computer, the therapist is there. They're maybe doing something.

Have you ever had a parent just come right into the place, grab the kid's computer and rehab, say, You don't need that. You don't need that. That's bullshit.

It's the other way around for us. We tell the parents, they don't get their computer. That's a therapist's computer. They don't get their computer. They don't get their cell phone. There's no social media. We need a clean slate to start from. It has to be that way. And we have parents saying, What are they going to do without their phone? But most parents say, You're really going to do that?

Yeah, we're really- Because they don't have the stones to do it. They're afraid of their kid. They're walking around on eggshells.

Yeah, absolutely. And then they need the stone. So a lot of our work, our family work, is Getting there. And also with kids- You know what they tell parents? What do you tell them?

I tell them, If you listen to me, you get your kid back, and if you don't, you don't.

We had a therapist. It's that simple. We had a therapist who used to say to dads directly, In the back of my office, I have extra spines and testicles. We can do implants here.

Do you know it's great? Here. You know what I used to say? Thank you, because I'm going to break this one out of archives. Okay, I haven't said this in 20 years. Take your hand and touch the back of your neck. Do it. Feel that bump? You know what that is? It's a spine. I need you to have a spine.

It's a good one.

It's so good.

But the kids have been breaking us down since the day they open their eyes, right?

Yeah. It's just the way they negotiate and trying to navigate the world. It's helpful.

I tell people when my daughter was 15 years old, right? This is my oldest Justine. I said, She could spin me on her little finger, and I was 270 pounds, bench pressing 405 pounds. And she could immediately, just with a look or anything like that, I had to get help. That's part of the therapy so that I could sit in there and help support her her to get the help she needed.

How do you navigate working with parents who are terrified, angry, or in denial?

I think they're all like that. I think all of them are like that. Well, maybe not all of them in denial, but most of them in some way.

Well, they're not in denial because they just sent the kid into treatment. So now they're not in precontemplation. They're not even in contemplation. These people are into action.

Somewhat. I think they can They get them there.

You get them there and then they pull back. And then they're like, oh, they're going to take their will back.

It's like buyer's remorse. They get there and they're like, wait a second, you want us to do this? You want us to do that? You want us to hold this boundary with our kid? We see our kid uncomfortable. We don't like that.

You know what I found? People don't like the word boundary. They don't even know what the hell that means.

Well, they set a boundary, but they don't hold the boundary. So it's like teaching them that setting the boundary and not holding the boundary is actually worse than... No, way worse. It's better if you just don't set the boundary at all because then you're just teaching them that your boundary means nothing. Exactly right. And you've started this whole thing in the first place.

On the cheating side of things when it comes to adolescents?

On the cheating thing?

Cheating side. When people say, why do you work with adolescents? They're this, they're that, and they're the other thing. We get to see changes take place so quickly. Yeah. So quickly. That's right. Kids, like I said, that gleam in their eye comes back. They're talking to their parents about, oh, you know what? I have a sponsor now, and he said, I talked to my friend last night when we were getting ready to go to sleep, and we talked about maybe after we go home, that maybe we could go to that AA convention together, or maybe we can go and do this as a family.

Those were a great time. Do you remember those AA conventions?

As kids?

Amazing. The best time ever, remember? Yep.

Best time ever. And these kids, because they get to find like people who are talking in their language about their life.

Who are sexually active.

Well, yeah, there's that. So a couple of weeks ago, me and somebody else were in New York, and we just called this kid up that we knew was there to see if he wanted to hang out or do something with us or something like that.

Oh, that's so bitching.

And he was so choked up. He said, You're calling me? I said, Yeah, we're in New York. I heard that you're working on some things. He's like, What do you want to do? And he's like, Well, don't you guys to meetings? Yes. So we all went to a men's tag together. That's nice. It was really sweet. You went to a men's tag? That's so cool. She wasn't there. I wish.

She wasn't there. To tell him you identify as a man.

Those connections.

It's so awesome.

He was a kid who was while he was at Visions, I saw him, and he was just like a puddle on the ground who would just scream for 30 minutes. I can't be here. I can't be here. I can't be here with a hoodie on.

How long did it take him to to come around?

A couple of months. Yeah. A couple of months. But to go from that to being, You guys actually called me? Yeah. He wanted to hear from the stupid CEO that was trying to hold boundaries with him and help his parents hold boundaries. And the intake person that set the limit when his parents were leaving him there, he's like, You guys called me? You want to hang out?

I love that story. I love that story. That's beautiful. Okay, we did it. All right, guys, is there anything left unsaid?

I just wanted to thank you. Thank you for what you're doing. Here, like I said, shot her from the rooftop. We have to shot her from the rooftop. Kids are dying, kids are suffering. Parents are suffering. Families are suffering. There's a different way. There's absolutely hope. See you next Tuesday.

They said it. We're out of time. Please subscribe on YouTube, click the thumbs up, and leave a comment. On Apple podcast and Spotify, and leave a rating and a review, and share the We're Out of Time podcast with others you know who will get value out of it. See you next Tuesday.