Innovating Recovery: Sam Bierman's Quest to Redefine Addiction Treatment

Have you ever wondered what navigating the complex journey from addiction to recovery truly means? Join us as we sit down with Sam Bierman, the CEO of Maryland Addiction Recovery Center & Innovo Detox. A respected leader and veteran in the field, Sam takes us through his experience battling addiction and transformation into a beacon of hope in the recovery community. This episode is an enlightening exploration of addiction, packed with practical insights and resources.

We dive deeper into the intricate industry of addiction recovery, busting common myths like the sufficiency of a few days of detox. Sam highlights the importance of a long-term, holistic recovery approach encompassing aspects like employment, education, family dynamics, and co-occurring mental health conditions. He shares invaluable insights on the role of long-term treatment centers and the significance of a sense of belonging in the recovery process.

As we wrap up our candid conversation, we evaluate various treatment options, deliberate on future possibilities in recovery, and leave you with an inspiring message of hope. Whether you're in recovery, supporting someone who is, or simply looking to understand addiction better, this episode is a treasure trove of information, insights, and encouragement. Tune in, and let's walk this enlightening path together.

Watch this Episode on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/o-f2YKt34g4

Guest: Sam Bierman- CEO
Maryland Addiction Recovery Center | Substance Abuse Treatment
Alcohol Detox & Drug Detox in Pennsylvania | Innovo Detox

Visit our website!
Recovery Collective — Annapolis, MD (recoverycollectivemd.com)
Zaw Maw — Recovery Collective — Annapolis, MD (recoverycollectivemd.com)
Luke DeBoy — Recovery Collective — Annapolis, MD (recoverycollectivemd.com)

New Episodes are released every Monday.
Please send your questions to luke@recoverycollectivemd.com

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the fourth and final episode of our four-part series dedicated to National Recovery Awareness Month. Throughout this series, we've journeyed through the complexities of addiction suicide prevention and awareness, the family recovery, hope and empowerment. Today we are privileged to have a true luminary in the field of addiction recovery. Join us. Our guest today is Sam Bierman, the chief executive officer of the Maryland Addiction Recovery Center. We'll call it Mark for short and a Novo detox. Sam is not just a leader in the world of addiction recovery. He's a passionate advocate for change, a visionary who has dedicated his life to helping individuals and their families find hope in healing amidst the challenges of addiction.

Speaker 1: 0:40

Now, if you or someone you know has been touched by addiction, this episode is an invaluable resource. Sam Bierman's expertise is a guiding light through the often complex and daunting world of addiction recovery. Whether you're seeking a deeper understanding of addiction, exploring treatment options or looking to build a resilient path towards long term recovery, this episode holds the key. Join us for a conversation that not only explores the nuances of addiction, but also offers practical insights, resources and hope. Sam Bierman's journey and contributions to the field of addiction recovery are nothing short of inspiring, and today you have the opportunity to tap into his wisdom. This episode, as usual, is brought to the Recovery Collective in Annapolis, maryland, and, of course, brought to you by my confidant and cohort, zommal hey Zommal.

Speaker 2: 1:32

Hey, luke, we did it.

Speaker 1: 1:34

This is the fourth of the four part series, and thank you all for listening. If you've liked what you've heard over these past four weeks during Recovery Awareness Month, share it with others, and if you want to say thanks, give it a like, a share. There's a comment, you name it. Those things can certainly help other people find a collective solution to health and wellness. So thank you all for being part of this, and this one's also on YouTube, so feel free to check us out if you want to see our faces. Well, with that said, welcome Sam.

Speaker 3: 2:06

Thank you for joining us. Thanks, luke. Thanks. Sam An honor to be here, really.

Speaker 1: 2:12

So let's kick right into it. Let's get going. Sam, what inspired you to enter the field of addiction recovery and how has your journey led you to your current role as CEO of Maryland Addiction Recovery Center in Annanobo?

Speaker 3: 2:27

I have a pretty typical story about how I got in this field. I struggled with my own addiction for a very long time and when I finally found sobriety and found some stability in my life, I had a couple of choices of a career path, of what I wanted to do. My dad was my dad's an attorney and my mom was a therapist, and so I was kind of leading in either of those directions. And then when I got sober and got into recovery, the therapist that I was seeing at the time his name was Tom Dukes and he was the one that really encouraged me to go the more therapeutic route and try my hand in the recovery field.

Speaker 1: 3:14

So you've got the world of black and white, or trying to make things black and white, maybe, so you took the road of living in the gray constantly. But both have complexities, right.

Speaker 3: 3:26

They do, of course. But obviously I wanted to help people, I wanted to share my experience, I wanted to learn from professionals, I wanted to get additional education, so on and so forth, and I was very lucky that I landed one of the first treatment centers I worked for. I landed with a treatment center that was very invested in my development, that was very invested in the development of the field in general, and they were really the ones that kind of took my hand and guided me to making this a career and what that would look like.

Speaker 1: 4:01

So you went from and I have a similar path getting sober yourself, working at a treatment facility and then sparking a whole new level of compassion and passion beyond your own recovery. So how did that lead to Mark and Inova?

Speaker 3: 4:18

So Mark and Inova were really we like to say we try to look at where the needs are in the community and try to fill those needs. And so when I was starting out my career and I've been in the field a little while a good friend of mine, zach Snitzer, that I had previously gotten sober with, who was from Maryland originally, kind of saw the landscape of what was going on in Maryland at the time, what the available treatment options were, and thought that we could bring something unique and special and different to what the options that were available at that time. And so Zach approached me and said you know, baltimore is kind of ground zero for the opioid epidemic right now. There's no better place that needs help than here. Would you consider moving up to Baltimore and starting this treatment center with me? And that was the kind of origins of that story.

Speaker 1: 5:14

Yeah, so the vision and mission became a reality there in here. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 5:18

Yeah, I guess to begin with it will be helpful for ourselves and also to some listeners too, about kind of unpacking what addiction is before talking about the treatment, because from my own personal experience too, there was a lot of confusion and treating just the symptoms, not the actual cause of addiction, and struggling with that. So I think starting out with that would be quite helpful from your experience as well.

Speaker 3: 5:47

Sure. So in my experience, just like you said, what society sees and what a lot of people look at is addiction in layman's terms, what a lot of people define it as is people that drink too much alcohol or use too many drugs. That's a lot of what society sees and what they define addiction as. However, addiction is a very complex chronic illness and probably the best way I could describe it is if we look at the medical definition of chronic illnesses, they have multiple properties, but all chronic illnesses, whether medical, behavioral, mental, have these same properties, which are they last longer than three months. They are progressive in nature, meaning that left untreated, they will naturally get progressively worse and oftentimes, left untreated, they will end up fatal Right. And so those are the three properties that a lot of medical illnesses, like cancers or diabetes, other chronic illnesses, are defined by, and that is one of the biggest things that we need to start looking at addiction as a true chronic illness.

Speaker 3: 6:55

Probably the best definition that I've ever heard of what really addiction is is that addiction is this three-part illness. It consists of a physical allergy, a physical component, a mental component and a spiritual component, and a lot of people, like we say, just really know this physical component and when we have patients that are coming into treatment for the first time, that's what a lot of our patients are focused on that physical component. If I could physically just get my body physiologically not dependent on drugs or alcohol, I'm going to be okay. And we hear that a lot, especially at the detox level of care, that if you just do your job and separate me from the drugs and alcohol, everything in my life will go back to normal and everything will be okay. We know that's obviously not true.

Speaker 3: 7:46

Addiction is much more complex than that. There was a major mental component of this, of not just this consistent obsession for drugs and alcohol, but it goes way, way deeper than that. And then there's, of course, what I would consider is the biggest part of my life and my own recovery is this spiritual component of feeling this complete feeling of utter hopelessness, loneliness and disconnect from other humans, from any type of higher power, just from this world in general. And so those are the three components that when we get somebody, a new patient, coming in, that I try to describe it and try to get them to understand that.

Speaker 1: 8:30

So we can look at all the things that you said. And the identified client, the person struggling with substances, they can have a denial in one of those three or four aspects, whether it's the spiritual, emotional, mental. So that's one reason why they're stigma, the people that we treat as people in this field. They have this resistance or denial. Why else is their stigma with this chronic disease, do you think?

Speaker 3: 9:00

I think there's a lot of reasons, but mostly because the symptoms of the disease manifest themselves in these external behaviors that are not accepted in our society. The symptoms of the illness has people that are suffering with addiction steal from others, lie to others, they leave jobs abruptly. They're not great employees, usually when they're under the influence, committing crimes, so on and so forth. So there is a lot of misunderstanding from people that those behaviors are symptoms of what they're suffering from, that they are not really trying to harm people, they are not really trying to commit crimes or do those things. They are doing them because internally the illness is telling them out of necessity they have to do those things to survive.

Speaker 1: 9:57

Span on that a little bit more, because I'm sure there's some listeners that go necessity the whole choice argument, right? So we talk about the pleasure center. Expand on that just a little bit more for our listeners.

Speaker 3: 10:08

So when people are in active addiction, like we said, there is this mental, spiritual and physical component and the choice versus non-choice debate is a very easy one for somebody like me in recovery and a professional that does this on a day-to-day basis. The people that I treat they do not have a malintent to harm others in their body. What they do have is this mental component that is consistently telling their brain you need to get this drug, you need to get this alcohol to feel okay. If you do not get that, you are not going to feel okay, you're not going to feel like a whole person, you are not going to feel welcome at your family, you are not going to feel welcome at your job, so on and so forth. The illness causes an intense amount of emotional, spiritual and mental pain. Person suffering knows to ease that pain is with drugs and alcohol and the pain is so unbearable that they are willing to do anything possible to ease that internal pain. Do you think that makes more sense?

Speaker 1: 11:18

Yeah, and I think that can be the relatable piece to this chronic disease that when the person struggling with addiction or abusing substances, when their actions and behaviors affect you or me directly, I get angry. But if someone with diabetes chooses to eat sugar, that's more likely to have a direct effect on them.

Speaker 3: 11:43

That's right.

Speaker 1: 11:44

Which we can.

Speaker 3: 11:45

Yeah, that's a really good way to describe it. There's a lot of the things that people suffering with SUD have to do is going to negatively affect somebody around them, whether it's a family member an employer, society at large, so on and so forth. Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 12:02

And that's how they're similar that someone would always say that diabetes is not the silent killer. There is this level of denial that they can have these behaviors. There can be physical symptoms, diabetic coma, diabetic shock, all these emotions and behaviors and denial. That can happen with other diseases, but I think with this one substance use disorder, SUD, it can be manifested times 10 in every aspect of someone's life, which can be really challenging.

Speaker 3: 12:31

Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of like saying imagine if glucose tabs and sugar were illegal, but if somebody with diabetes knew that was the only thing that was going to regulate their sugar, the behaviors and the steps they would have to take to go get it.

Speaker 1: 12:53

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 12:54

Yeah, so I like what you said earlier about when you started it out, there was like an identification of like need, like where is the need and what is the need, and I want to hear more about that and also looking at what the need is for today too, because I'm like relating it from my Buddhist perspective of like the first noble truth is like it is translated as life is suffering, but it also means that life is problematic. So it's not about eliminating a problem, but it's more about how do I solve the problem better? That's more practical. And also it's more about efficiency and also doing it effectively. So I'm curious about some of the treatment method or system from Mark, because that's also what we're interested in, luke and I as well to make recovery as effective and efficient as possible.

Speaker 3: 13:42

So, yeah, I mean how to solve the problem better. That was our mission, right? How do we help people better? One of the things that I've been a firm believer in, that I've done extensive research on and I've used John Kelly from Harvard's research for years about this is that the longer somebody is engaged in treatment, the better the results are usually going to be if they're engaged in the right treatment, and so we wanted to create a long term treatment center. That was one of the needs that we saw when we kind of looked at the landscape of a lot that was going on.

Speaker 3: 14:16

A lot of treatment centers were doing short-term care, and short-term care doesn't work very well for chronic illnesses. It doesn't work well for any chronic illness. For a diabetic, it's not like you're on insulin for one month and then you're all better. That's not how it works For cancer patients, too that have chronic cancers. It's not one round of chemo, it's 12 rounds of chemo, followed by radiation, followed by multiple scans, followed by someone, and so forth.

Speaker 3: 14:45

And so one of the things that I saw in our industry that we were lacking was truly comprehensive transitional, long-term treatment, meaning starting somebody at an intense structure, an intense therapeutic level, and then, as they progress and their self-sufficiency in their own recovery increases, the therapeutic services slowly decrease.

Speaker 3: 15:08

In addition to that, when I say comprehensive, we really look at treatment as kind of this 10-spoke wheel of things that we want to address while someone's in treatment, it's not just getting them away from the drugs and the alcohol. It's looking at their employment history and what's gone wrong in jobs and how are we going to get you back into the workforce more effectively. It's looking at their academic history and getting them back into higher education, if that's what they're looking for. It's looking at their family system dynamic and seeing where their family system needs to be restructured or supported to better support their loved one in recovery. It's looking at their co-occurring mental health conditions and seeing where has your trauma PTSD, bipolar, your other conditions negatively affected your chances at long-term sustained recovery. So we want to look at all of those aspects and treat the person as a whole. We felt that there were certain things in that that were sorely lacking, sam.

Speaker 1: 16:11

I just need to get off the drugs and alcohol and I'm going to be okay. How do you counteract what is probably? This is just thrown out a number majority let's say majority that our clients say that. They say that to their family members and their loved ones. I just need to stop. Let me just stop using whether it's five days, three days, 10, whatever it is. How do you deal with that? Because we see that all the time.

Speaker 3: 16:40

Absolutely, and we see that all the time. And that's one of the things that makes addiction such a difficult illness to treat, because there is that mental component going on in my head, in our patient's head, saying Sam's overreacting, mark's overreacting, I don't need this much treatment, I don't need everything, all those tools that Sam said, I just need to get off the drugs and alcohol Right. So we believe that through our therapeutic process they will start. That humans inherently have the ability to have self-reflection and insight into their own behaviors and thoughts once they are sober, that their thinking starts to turn. Once that happens and our therapeutic process supports that, sometimes it does come down to okay, go ahead and try that, let's see how this works out. We're going to put some structure around you so that if it doesn't work out, we're going to be there to get you back on the right track.

Speaker 3: 17:43

But sometimes people are stubborn and the illness is very, very apparent in them and they'll say I don't need all the therapy, I don't need the spiritual component, I don't need anything, I just need you to detox me. I'm going to go home and be totally okay. And sometimes we have to say okay, if that's really where you're at, then go ahead and try that, and we'll be here when, if that doesn't work out and you're ready to try something different. More than likely, though, we try really hard through sometimes external pressure and external leverage to get them into long-term treatment anyway, and hope that the process will take form and they'll have some internalization during that process and they'll start to realize that they actually need more help than what they were seeking originally.

Speaker 1: 18:32

We learned about that from Jill and Lisa. The Balm Recovery Coach has shared a lot about that leverage and you said inherently and two things that you mentioned as well One of the reasons why you have a robust, complex treatment program. You're addressing the dual diagnoses, you're addressing the family piece, the work piece. That might not be inherent for a while.

Speaker 1: 19:00

And there may be some denial or not, sound logic and reasoning yet. So the more that they're in treatment and the treatment facility has the ability and is addressing all those things, that's when those light bulbs and processing can go off. That's right. Yeah, that's exactly right.

Speaker 2: 19:19

That really piggybacked really valuable information you shared earlier to Sam about I guess I forgot how you worded it, but like the longer you stay engaged in recovery, the higher chances you do have at recovery, which is what I have seen in my experience as well that there's just so many spiritual program, you know, recovery program, but there is no wrong way to do recovery.

Speaker 2: 19:42

But if there is such thing as a wrong way, it will be to stop. You know, like to disengage and not to give up completely, but as long as putting the like interacting and a big part for me from what I have seen and from what I'm hearing is also like having a sense of belonging, right, like I had all these crazy thoughts and when I verbalized it I was like, oh, this is what I've been thinking about, you know. And then there are people who are listening and then who are also relating. You know that to me is a very useful information for anybody who is out there suffering that. Oh yeah, you know this is okay. You know I can share about it and I can get better.

Speaker 3: 20:20

Yeah, we're. You know, obviously we recommend our patients to do self-help groups outside of treatment. Whether that's any type of recovery, self-help group is better than none, just like you said. If we look at the gentleman I mentioned before, dr John Kelly out of Harvard, all of his research shows that at six months of sobriety there is a huge dip in recovery capital Huge. And one of the ways he attributes that to is that rarely do people get services post six months right. Most of the services, the vast majority of the services that they are receiving, whether it's treatment, peer support, so on and so forth, is heavily front-loaded for the first couple of months. But all of his research shows this huge dip right at that six month mark and a lot of that is attributed to is that's when a lot of people, you know the services kind of stop for a lot of people.

Speaker 1: 21:24

So how? We'll talk about a lot of forms of treatment, but how does Mark address that? What is your guys model to address that issue?

Speaker 3: 21:33

Sure, so we're really well known for we want people in treatment longer than six months. So that's what we're trying to keep them in treatment past that point. But we know that there is going to be this. A lot of people, when they first get into recovery, they get on a pink cloud, right. They've come out of this really dark place that finally physically feeling better, maybe mentally they're feeling a lot better. Just like Zao said, they met a lot of people that not finally understand them. They're related to people, they're forming some connection with the recovery communities that they're in and they get on this pink cloud that life is good, and that starts to trickle around six months as well.

Speaker 3: 22:19

And so one of the things that we try to do is not just keep them in treatment post. That time is during our transitional process. They are starting to gain things back right around that time period and those certain things that they gain back boost their self-esteem in a lot of ways and that remotivates them, right. So I'm a firm believer that there is very small replacement for a young adult, especially that is just gotten into recovery, to boost their self-esteem then to go out, interview for a job, get a job, have a little bit of money in their pockets, have this fellowship around them and start doing these things as an adult, and so we have a full vocational process or a college success process. That right around that six month period patients are pushing patients towards and they're regaining a lot of that stuff that they had lost previously throughout their addiction and that kind of remotivates them through all that.

Speaker 1: 23:25

You humbly, just kind of shared. Oh yes, we have a vocational program that's treatment oriented. What is that? Because we're talking about access, all parts of an individual, whether it's schooling, education, whether it's work. I always say that addiction is a disease between interpersonal relationships and, of course, happens with family and there's a family portion that should happen and treatment process for addiction. Well, guess where we spend most of our other time? It's either in education, schooling or work.

Speaker 1: 24:01

So the disease can certainly affect that. So tell us a little bit more about your vocational and or work portion of the treatment. That's that six month mark.

Speaker 3: 24:11

So a lot of our patients, as you guys must realize, come to us with little work experience or not a ton of work experience, or they were working in occupations previously to coming into recovery that are probably not conducive to their recovery Might be alcohol ridden environment or drug ridden environment, or off hours, so on and so forth. And so when our patients get into the vocational process they go through a pretty rigorous track with our staff, which is they do. We help them with resume building. We help them identify jobs that are going to be conducive to recovery, meaning the hours to pay. So we really encourage or discourage patients from taking jobs that are purely commission based. We want patients taking jobs that they have an hourly rate or straight salary so that they can budget appropriately in their recovery. We don't we discourage patients from taking jobs that are overnight or that have really off hours. We obviously discourage patients from taking jobs in bars or in restaurants that are open till 3 am and serving liquor culture, exactly. And so we really try to walk them through that process and give them the skills necessary to re enter the professional world as a new person. One of the what I think cooler aspects of our program with that is we have them do mock interviews. Our patients do mock interviews, interview prep with our human resource department at Mark and we kind of thought about that like what better way for us to be able to prepare them than our HR department that interviews and hires people all day long right and knows what they're looking for? And I think the patients really take to that. We have them get dressed up like they're going to a real interview and really kind of hold their hand through that and then the HR department gives them feedback hey, you came in and your shirt was untucked. You really need to tuck your shirt in act professional. You didn't shave today. Why didn't you shave? You know? So on and so forth. And so they do. Our HR department does a wonderful job at doing that. It also benefits our HR department because they rarely get interaction with our patients, so this kind of connects them to them.

Speaker 3: 26:34

College, our college success program, where patients can finish high school or re enter the collegiate communities. As you guys can imagine, getting into recovery, wanting a higher education and walking onto a college campus newly sober has got to be pretty overwhelming, not just because college can be difficult but also because a lot of college campuses, their social life, the connection on college campuses made a little drugs and alcohol. And this young person is saying I just started this whole new life away from drugs and alcohol. Where do I fit in on this college campus? So not only do we help them reenroll in college and help them select the college that's going to be right for them, but a lot of colleges now have collegiate recovery communities, which are really wonderful places for people that are sober and connect with other people that are sober on that college campus. We connect them with those collegiate recovery communities. We make sure that they have the support around them While they go back to college, that they have that social support around them, that they feel connected to the people there without using drugs and alcohol.

Speaker 2: 27:45

Yeah, that's a very well thought out technique or a tool for long term sobriety. I love hearing about that, because also the thing about addiction too, is like, as human beings as you have mentioned we have a reward system, we are motivated, we get pleasure out of accomplishment and success, but then as addicts, though, that rewarding system is messed up. We've either over rewarded or under rewarded. Recovery process is also about like okay, how do I set myself up with a series of esteemable things and then boost self-esteem by doing that?

Speaker 3: 28:26

And those esteemable things sometimes are delayed gratification, which oftentimes we forget about. That that's really important and we want the instinct gratification consistently.

Speaker 2: 28:36

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:37

I think back to probably was right around that six month mark. I have to ask my family. But I went after handful of months of residential treatment IOP therapy support group I went back to treatment and I failed sober and luckily I was sober through it. But right around that six month mark, my ability to process and all that wasn't where it should be. So I struggled. Luckily I stayed sober through that. But that rocked my world and I didn't know that it was the brain disease, that my processing and my short attention spanned and I got used to rewiring in an altered state and everything I did and all of a sudden that was gone and now I had to use my brain that way. So, having passed that six month mark or when you're going to work, there's life skills, whether it's working underneath a car hood, whether it's on a computer, whatever it is, that treatment support through that is vital for a lot of people. I was a lucky one. I stayed sober through that. Many don't, because of that stress One of the biggest physical ailments.

Speaker 3: 29:45

where this manifests itself externally, where we see it make a lot of sense is sleep patterns for people that are getting into recovery. So if you're addicted to opiates or alcohol or benzodiazepines, you get used to inactive addiction not falling asleep. You get used to being put to sleep and then when you get sober, so many of our patients come to us and in their first couple months they are struggling so hard with sleep and they don't understand why. Well, you kind of lost the ability to fall asleep naturally and that takes some time for your brain to reset and for you to gain that back. And of course we help them with some medicine and stuff. But we also don't want them to become dependent on another medicine for sleep. The brain is such an elastic part of the body that it will regulate itself and your sleep will regulate itself. It just takes some time.

Speaker 1: 30:54

Absolutely Great example. We certainly talked about how Mark provides a complex treatment, long-term treatment approach. Now, when someone is seeking addiction treatment, it can be overwhelming by the variety and the options and every place whether it's a website or you get on a phone they make themselves look really good. They've been trained. So what advice can you offer to treatment facility when people are looking to help themselves or their loved ones?

Speaker 3: 31:26

Probably the best advice I think I could give people is stop going to Google. Google is really great for a lot of things. I don't think it's great for finding an addiction treatment provider. I usually try to tell people you know, everybody knows somebody that's been afflicted by addiction these days, right, because it is still heavily stigmatized, but it's much less stigmatized than it was 10, 20 years ago and people are much more open and talking about it like we're talking about it tonight. And so I always tell them either get a recommendation from somebody that you know has been to a certain facility or reach out to certain professionals and make sure you get that recommendation. Our industry, unfortunately, is very similar to others where people have definitely capitalized on the ability to kind of mislead and misguide consumers through marketing tactics on Google. So I would certainly say find somebody with direct experience, whether a professional or friend, a family friend, somebody you know, and make sure you're getting a direct experience referral from someone.

Speaker 1: 32:42

And I think that's another example of the powers in our experiences. So just like there's a thousand self-help books out there, doesn't mean you're going to get better. The same thing is true for the recovery process. You know, seeking experience, perspective and taking in that data and going, okay, what's the next right thing. Here's another example. It works for recovery. It also works for how do I get the help I need?

Speaker 2: 33:09

Yeah, you also grabbed my attention, sam, when you mentioned about self-reflection and insight, a part of the recovery process, and I want to hear more about that, but also more of like what you see in the current, you know state of things of like if there is some innovation coming around, that, because the way I relate, that is like that's what meditation is about, you know, and that's also what recovery is about too that there are just so many things and feelings that we suppressed or never looked at, but now we're looking at it and then cultivating it and then finding joy in life that way. And so what? Yeah, how is the process like at Mark? And also, what do you see for the future in that aspect?

Speaker 3: 33:52

So, like I said, I think that humans have this innate ability right when they kind of get out of their own way. When I get out of my own way, I, you know, I have the ability to kind of look at my behaviors and look at myself and have some decent perspective. What, what we see in treatment is that our therapy focuses on the underlying causes and conditions. And if you look at the underlying causes and conditions, conditions of addiction, you know a lot of it is centered around past traumas or, you know, like we said, a lack of connection, a lack of holistic connection. And so as we start to introduce healing in our center whether it's healing from trauma or mental health disorders or family discord or any of that, through all the modalities we use holistic, therapeutic self-help the patient's internal dialogue with themselves starts to change. And it starts to change.

Speaker 3: 34:55

Usually people in addiction have this internal dialogue of I'm not good enough, I don't deserve this good thing happening to me, being bad that has happened to anybody, has happened to me a very victim mentality, a very low self-esteem, usually people that are, you know, first coming into recovery of really, really big egos and very, very low self-esteem, right, and that's a really bad combination for this world. And so we're trying to dim the ego and raise the self-esteem consistently through everything that we try to do. And, like we've said, it's not easy, it takes a lot of time, and so you can't undo 20 years of active addiction in two weeks. It just the math just doesn't add up there. But as we start to introduce, like you said, meditation, breath works, a belief in spiritual connection, a belief in themselves, slowly they start to gain those insights.

Speaker 1: 36:04

Yeah, I think the thing that has always made me passionate and understanding the processing and not always being inherent at first for our clients and people's substance use in the early process. If you look at any other chronic disease, you have stage five cancer and someone in a white lab coat comes to you and says here's your diagnosis. And then they say wait, but you're in luck. All you have to do is take all my suggestions and continue this treatment process. Not only will you not die, you'll have a life beyond your wildest dreams. People will be in all fours. What do you want me to do?

Speaker 1: 36:46

They would surrender. They would surrender to the process, but with this one it's a little bit more complex and the denial is there and not seeing it, it's the whole. You can't feel your way into good thinking. You can't think your way into good feeling. You have to act, you have to do the recovery, you have to do the change, you have to do the treatment and then you start thinking and feeling and processing and getting that a haze, and that's one of the reasons why this thing is an epidemic and a pandemic.

Speaker 3: 37:18

Faith without works is dead, and I'm really glad you pointed that out. One of the things I think that is a little bit unique to us is that a lot of people, I think take a lot of providers I think, take the stance of well, what does success look like in addiction treatment? What is success? And I think a lot of providers settle on sobriety, abstinence. I should say Abstinence equals success. Our expectation per hour patients is that they're. Yes, of course it starts with separating them from the drugs and alcohol. But quality of life Every other chronic illness is measured based on quality of life measures, and so we measure our patients based on improvement of quality of life, whether that's improving in interpersonal relationships or relationships with your family, so on and so forth. There was so much more to sobriety than just staying sober, which a lot of people in long terms sobriety recognize, and so we try to set the expectation on. But it's not just sobriety you're after, it's for a really incredible, awesome quality of life.

Speaker 1: 38:33

And I was going to ask you that. I hate when people say relapse is part of recovery. No, relapse is a part of the disease and addiction. There's no part of the recovery that wants you to relapse. You can use that relapse for your recovery, but only your addiction and the disease wants you to relapse. But that's a great example of when challenges, when slips, when relapses happen, okay, you can use that to have a better quality of life and learn from it.

Speaker 1: 39:00

And treatment can help you with that Going to a treatment facility and processing that and getting the awareness and other people's experiences and then doing something different. That's what treatment's about.

Speaker 3: 39:14

It really is.

Speaker 3: 39:15

I love the. You know I get a lot of patients that say to me well, sam, I know somebody that just went to alcoholics anonymous or dormant recovery and guns over without all this, and so why do I have to do treatment Right? And that's kind of their line of thinking and I say, is it possible? It's possible. My job is to give you the best treatment plan, to give you the best possible prognosis for your illness. I would be selling you way, way short if I said, you know what? You can just leave here and just go to a self-help meeting once a week and get sober Again here.

Speaker 3: 39:52

You know, the other thing is like 12 step meetings and self-help groups are absolutely wonderful and they've saved a lot of people's lives, including mine. There are aspects of that that 12 step groups or Dharma recovery or any of the other recoveries don't really touch right. And so for me being in long-term recovery and working in treatment I can't tell you the amount of this is the other way that we kind of develop more, the amount of friends that I've had call me with five, 10, 15, 20 years sober, that have said, sam, I've been sober a long time and I'm doing all this stuff that everybody's telling me to do and so on and so forth, but my anxiety is debilitating and I haven't gotten out of bed in the past three weeks and I don't know what to do about it, you know.

Speaker 1: 40:39

So people I see with five, 10, 15 years, sobriety, and therapy, yeah.

Speaker 3: 40:45

My point, my point and my point in saying that is, a lot of them were sent this message that if you just stay sober, all of your problems will miraculously vanish. All of your worries, all of your traumas, all of those things will kind of go away. And what we say at Mark is we want you to start healing from all of this stuff now, so that, one, it doesn't prevent you from sustaining long-term sobriety, and even if you do find long-term sobriety, without dealing with your traumas and your co-occurring disorders, that at five years, 10 years, 15 years sober, it doesn't come back to bite you in the butt and then you're back at square one. So we want to put you on a path to heal from all of these different aspects.

Speaker 1: 41:38

Now, that's holistic treatment, that's holistic recovery. Looking at all aspects. Yeah well said. What do you think Zo?

Speaker 2: 41:50

Yeah, I love it. You mentioned about the quality of life, which I relate to. That that's also another part of being human, that it's not just feeling good, feeling bad. I don't feel anything. That's all I knew. That's all an attic. No, I don't feel good, so I'm gonna get high. I feel good, I want to feel better, so I want to get more high. But being a human is like oh, I feel sad, I feel grief, I feel worry, I feel love, gratitude, all these range of emotions that we get to feel, and then sitting with it and being okay with it, and for me, that's the essence of recovery. When you mentioned about quality of life, that life is meaningful. Meaningful, as in like, oh, it's just great. Meaningful, as in that there are just so many aspects that I'm experiencing and fully experiencing it. And that's what I'm hearing and that sounds like that's the approach of what you provide at Mark as well.

Speaker 3: 42:42

Yeah, it's such a great point especially. I don't know if you guys want to cross this, but I'll make myself vulnerable for a minute and then I'll go back to putting my wall up. But I'm a therapist, Be careful now.

Speaker 3: 42:58

But just what you said, zo, I mean so many of us like I I didn't want to feel. When I was an addict, right, I didn't want to feel. I felt sadness. I went to immediately suppress that with a substance, with money, gambling, sex, alcohol, drugs, doesn't matter what. It is something to suppress that feeling. And what that did was when I got into early recovery I like I like lost the ability to sit in emotion right, and I like almost lost the ability to like cry over things because I numbed for so long and I was like yearning for so long, like in early recovery, like to cry over something, because I just like had this built up tense emotion internally and my like body wasn't letting it out. If that makes sense and so it's such an important point you make is that we have to kind of relearn how to sit with these natural human emotions and let them come and go as they should.

Speaker 1: 44:06

Sometimes that doesn't come back until month five, six, seven, eight nine.

Speaker 1: 44:11

Yeah, because it literally affects the hippocampus, the mid part of the brain responsible for memory and emotion, and that takes time to come back. Another, another hit for treatment. I'd like to go back just a little bit about searching for treatment and good treatment. Are there some pros, cons, things that you can give some of the listeners that to be mindful of? Or just we can hit on just a little bit more when it comes to the ethical, unethical things that a treatment facility could or should have to help yourself or your loved ones?

Speaker 3: 44:49

Absolutely. I would really just advise people to really do their research right. So, making sure most states have directories of what treatments what levels of care treatment centers are licensed for. Making sure that you double check those directories or SAMHSA's directory, and if the treatment center is saying, oh yeah, we have an inpatient detox, we do residential treatment, making sure that their license matches up to the service they're telling you that they can provide. Making sure that their staff is on their website and their credentialed staff is all very clear to you.

Speaker 3: 45:28

Making sure that you understand who is going to be treating your loved one. Who is a part of their treatment team. Do they have a therapist? Do they have a doctor? Do they have a nurse? Do they appear? Support who is? Who are the ones that are actually affecting your loved one? And then, are the decision makers accessible to you? Are the people that are making decisions about your loved ones care going to respond to you? Are they accessible? Are they on site? Are they there running the treatment program as they should? So on and so forth.

Speaker 3: 46:00

You know, I think one of the things that we run into a lot is we get calls and a mom or a dad or a spouse says to us you know, sam, my loved one is really, really into art. Do you have an art program for them? And if I say no, we do not, there will certainly be a treatment center out there or somebody that will say, yes, we have this art program for them. And so I would just stress people heavily your loved ones are there to recover from a very, very serious illness, while certain ancillary things like art and gym and massages or whatever the treatment centers are offering these days, can somehow benefit your loved one. They are there.

Speaker 3: 46:53

Ask yourself the question if my loved one had cancer, would I be asking the cancer hospital these same questions? Right? If my loved one had cancer, what would I want to see in a cancer hospital? I would want to know who's treating my loved one. What is their experience, what are their credentials? What kind of philosophy are they going to take in treating my loved one? Do I have access to them, to talk to them, someone, and so forth. And so I think sometimes people get wrapped up in kind of the amenities driven treatment and it's not nearly as important as people make it out to be.

Speaker 1: 47:32

Well said and also which I get because the disease does not want to be uncomfortable.

Speaker 1: 47:37

So anything I can do to either buy time or be as little discomfort as possible. But part of my philosophy is any form of treatment, there is going to be discomfort. If you break your bone, your muscle is going to atrophy, it's going to itch, it's going to stink. There's a reason why there's. If you do chemo, there's a lot of discomfort and there can seem like negatives. But why do people still do that? Because the pros by far outweigh any con. But every physical therapy.

Speaker 1: 48:09

You got ACL injury. You got a range of motion swelling. It's painful. So any form of treatment there's going to be discomfort and if there is, you're probably doing it right, because then you get to process and go through that.

Speaker 3: 48:22

That's the beauty of it, well said.

Speaker 1: 48:23

Yeah, good stuff. Well, we can keep going, but I'm not going to. I like to keep things close to an hour. Future of addiction recovery. Looking ahead, what do you see as some promising developments in addiction recovery, whether it's in the meadow way, whether it's at Mark or take it where you want to?

Speaker 3: 48:46

I really think you know pleasantly surprised at how integrative care is kind of coming into the mix.

Speaker 3: 48:52

It used to be that treatment centers were very kind of siloed Treatment center A over here only treats alcoholic men, treatment center B over here only treats pregnant women, so on and so forth.

Speaker 3: 49:07

And now what I'm seeing is treatment centers are getting smarter and really doing full integrative care, like we spoke about being able to treat physical comorbid conditions, being able to treat their substance use disorder, being able to treat color-curring mental health disorders, being able to treat other process addictions that that person may have. So I really think, if you look at the treatment system, the future of the treatment system is integrative care, very similar to how medical is integrated. We're in Maryland and so Johns Hopkins is the biggest medical center in Maryland and you could go to Hopkins for a wide variety of diseases, right, including substance use disorders. They have, you know, different things for kind of whatever you're suffering from, and I think that type of integrative care I also think us, the industry, being judged more on a value-based system, as the value that the treatment center is providing and that is then supported by measurement-based outcomes is really the future of where the industry is going as well Research.

Speaker 1: 50:24

More measurable specs for evidence base is important, for sure. Yeah, that's great, thank you so much, Sam.

Speaker 2: 50:34

This is really good, very useful conversation for us and for the listeners too.

Speaker 3: 50:41

Thank you guys for having me. I would love to be here all night, but I've been saying I'm quite tomorrow.

Speaker 1: 50:47

Thanks for fitting us in.

Speaker 3: 50:48

I really do appreciate it so well thank you, I really appreciate you guys seriously.

Speaker 1: 50:55

Thank you, and is there as we conclude as a series of National Recovery Awareness Month, do you have a message of hope or inspiration you'd like to leave to our listeners as we wrap up?

Speaker 3: 51:09

Yeah, I mean I think I would just like to say that you know, recovery is difficult and it is worth it, and the people that I've connected with in recovery have made being sober more attractive than getting drunk, and that is one of the main reasons why it stays sober today, and so find yourself people that do the same for you.

Speaker 1: 51:40

Thanks, sam. And in conclusion, our conversation with Sam Bierman marks the finale of our Recovery Awareness Month series. We've delved deep into understanding addictions impact, choosing the right treatment approach and the importance of long-term relapse prevention. So as we wrap up this month long exploration, remember that knowledge and support are essential in the recovery journey. Sam's insights have illuminated the path to recovery and we hope you've gained viable knowledge that will continue to inspire positive change in the world of addiction and mental health. Thank you for joining us throughout this series and remember that journey toward understanding and support is ongoing. My name is Luke.

Speaker 2: 52:23

And this is.

Speaker 1: 52:23

Al. Thank you all for listening and we'll see you next time. Thanks,