The Dark Truth About The Profit-Driven Rehab Industry (Ep. 173)

Speaker 1 (00:00): We conducted an audit survey of 613 residential programs, nationally posing as uninsured cash paying individuals are using heroin and seeking addiction treatment. One third of callers were offered admission before clinical evaluation that's

Speaker 2 (00:17): Well, so one ethical it's ridiculous. And there are a lot of people and even rehab centers that will take advantage of people and say, look, you know, you don't have you forfeited the right to everything for yourself. We're feel empowered because of, because you're an addict and you're always will. And you're defective. Let us tell you how to do you, by the way, you need to stay here another six weeks or you're going to die, and that's going to cost you $45,000. So you can see how there is a potential, at least for abuse here. And I'm not accusing the entire industry of fraud or abuse, but I think it does exist.

Speaker 1 (00:51): Thanks for tuning in to the elevation recovery podcast, your hub for addiction, recovery strategies hosted by Chris Scott. Welcome everyone to episode one 73 of the show today's episode. We're going to talk about a new release on NPR stating as addiction, deaths, surge, profit driven,

Speaker 3 (01:15): The industry faces severe ethical crisis. This is really short and really good. Let me just go over the key points and we can talk about it as the nation's addiction crisis deepened to Beetham who studies health policy at Yale university set out to answer a simple question. What happens when people try to get help? Her first step was to create a kind of undercover identity, a 26 year old using heroin daily using this fictitional persona. Her research team called more than 600 residential treatment programs all over the country. We kind of call and say, I'm looking to you, you know, to start treatment and kind of go from there. Uh, for people suffering addiction, this can be a life or death moment. What Beetham his team found was troubling. Here's where it gets interesting American rehab and the dark history of rehabilitative treatment. A lot of people believe instilling a work ethic in people with substance abuse disorders will cure them.

Speaker 3 (02:15): But what we found is that these programs don't work for most people says, report it anyways. I'll just go to the peer reviewed study right here. Here's the peer reviewed study. This is from February, 2021. So this is brand new. So more than 600 residential treatment program, that's a lot. Here's the abstract. It's just a paragraph. The use of acute short-term residential care for opioid use disorder has grown rapidly with policy makers advocating to increase the availability availability of treatment beds. However, there are concerns about high costs and misleading recruitment practices. We conducted an audit survey of 613 residential programs, nationally posing as uninsured cash, paying individuals heroin and seeking addiction treatment. One third of callers were offered admission before clinical evaluation. That's so one ethical it's ridiculous. Uh, let's see. Usually within one day, most programs required, required upfront payments with for-profit programs charging more than twice as much, 17,000 versus 5,000 recruitment techniques.

Speaker 3 (03:24): For example, offering paid transportation were used frequently by for-profit, but not for nonprofit programs practices, including admission offers during the call, high upfront payments and recruitment techniques were common. Even among programs with third-party creditation and state licenses. These findings raise concerns that residential programs, including accredited and licensed ones may be admitting a clinically and financially vulnerable population for costly treatment without assessing appropriateness for other care settings. So I would see this, I worked as a substance abuse counselor at an outpatient treatment program. It was a methadone, Suboxone, Subutex, Vivitrol, and outpatient clinic. And they would do the most fraudulent stuff. It wasn't about getting people the right type of care. For instance, here's an example. If someone came in on like 30 milligrams of Tramadol a day, or like a hundred milligrams of Tramadol, something small, even that's a very, very weak opioid, especially at that dose.

Speaker 3 (04:29): And I would see people like this, the doctor, uh, had the ability to wave, wave something and get them into methadone treatment. So a lot of the times there, I was hoping that I was doing the assessments because if I was doing the assessments, I would make sure people would get, if, if it wasn't a good fit for them, I would refer them somewhere else. I'd tell them what they'd actually qualify for. What would be a better fit. Uh, if, if admissions people were answering the phone, if the clinical director was answering the phone, um, it was, it was, or if someone else was doing assessments in the intakes downstairs, they didn't give a. They wanted to get, especially the people that own the company and the people that were running it. They wanted to get everybody enrolled in their treatment as fast as possible before they changed their mind.

Speaker 3 (05:19): Even if methadone, outpatient or Suboxone, wasn't the best fit for them, even if they really didn't even qualify. Um, and so the article goes much deeper into it. I'll show in the show notes, but it was very disheartening because you and I know this stuff has been going on, but now here's a very large brand new study with over 600 inpatient places. The amount of fraudulent stuff, the NPR episode goes way deeper into some of the shady stuff that they do. Um, and, and I remember when that started, the affordable care act, uh, made it, this was many years ago now they made it much easier for people to get treatment because they pay. Then all of a sudden insurers insurance companies had to pay for substance treatment, but at the place I worked at, and many of the residential inpatients that affordable care act became an easy way for them to enroll a whole bunch of people and just super bill the insurance, like crazy the place I worked at, I won't name any names.

Speaker 3 (06:21): They were doing medical fraud, Medi-Cal fraud like crazy. They were doing, it was so much medical fraud billing sessions that weren't even done or sessions where there was no therapeutic stuff going on. It was just talking. It was just so I've been on the front lines and actually seen what all this is about, but I haven't seen it at an inpatient place. And that's what the study was on. And I know you went to inpatient. And so the moral of this whole story is that so many people are like, let's, let's expand treatment, let's expand access to treatment. But most of these rehab facilities, the inpatient ones, and even the outpatient ones, most of them are trying to do whatever they can to get people into their facility. So their main concern is not getting people to the right type of treatment. That's perfect for them. It's when you get someone on the phone, they're not doctors or counselors or therapists that doing the admissions calls, it's trained salespeople doing aggressive sales tactics without even clinically evaluating the person demanding $17,000 cash upfront. So it's just really sad for me to, to read that and know that this is going on and it's an epidemic, it's a epidemic. Uh, so it's, that's why I get so mad when people say, Oh, we just need to expand access to treatment. That's one problem in this huge broken system, but

Speaker 2 (07:50): Right. And one of the roots of this systemic issues here is that there's only really one type of treatment that's acceptable for the mainstream. And that's the traditional 12 step model based in 1930 science, which is, um, useful for some people. But if that's all that's offered for most people, then there's going to be no qualms about getting people into that rehab. I mean, it really does. If, whether if you're, if you're choosing between six different rehabs and they're all the same thing, then they may as well all aggressively try to get you to go to theirs, you know, and they're not going to be like, Oh, well, you know what? They do the 12 steps a little differently down there. You know, it's not there. I have seen an increasing amount of lip service given to customize treatment. And there are some good rehab centers like health recovery center in Minnesota.

Speaker 2 (08:46): And I've had, uh, the weight and great Joan Matthews Larson son on our podcast. I don't remember what episode that was probably a hundred episodes ago, but it was a really good one. And, um, inner balance, I think is a, is another one founded by, uh, someone who is like us a, uh, affiliated with the Alliance for addiction solutions and, you know, has a commitment to real biochemical repair to the science. But I've, I see so many like sales pages for rehab centers online, where they talk about the importance. They might even have articles about the importance of nutrient repair, but if you call them up and you say, Hey, I'd like to do a nutrient repair. Like, ah, yeah, well, we're a 12 step program. You can come here and we'll talk about it. And I guarantee you, it's not talked about, it's just a way for them to, uh, cannibalize rankings.

Speaker 2 (09:35): So, uh, and that's just a very cynical way to look at it. The bottom line is that a lot of people who work at these places are good people. When you have a systemic problem, it doesn't mean that everyone's bad. It means that the system's broken. So, you know, the place I went, 12 step based center, there were some really fundamentally good human beings there who were just missing because of the nature of treatment in the us for a variety of reasons that can be traced back to our puritanical history, uh, and also the influence of big pharma and lobbying in DC for so many ridiculous reasons. They're just stuck in a system where they're convinced that only their model works. And it just happens to be the case that, you know, you go somewhere to, to beat addiction and you have some group settings and a basic bed with a sheet and a pillow, and you get bused to free AA meetings.

Speaker 2 (10:29): And it's, um, $500 a day with a minimum stay of, you know, two weeks or 30 days or whatever it is. Uh, and, and that's, that's, if you're not detoxing, if you're in the detox unit actively coming off of alcohol or drugs with medications, then that's more like a thousand dollars a day. So these things are expensive. And I'm not saying that things shouldn't be expensive if it's worthwhile, but it is a bit bizarre sometimes when you look at the services offered compared to the price tag. Uh, and one thing that I think is compelling is the fact that there is a push now in part due to the pandemic towards, uh, telecon sling or over the phone recovery coaching that you and I have been doing for some time. And, uh, I think that as that becomes more available to people and as people start looking even more for solutions online than they have in the past, uh, you know, there's going to be an obvious array of treatment options for people.

Speaker 2 (11:34): People will have more choice. There'll be aware of their choices, I guess is a better way to say it so they can decide whether they, whether the 12 step route works for them. And some, I have some people in my course who really love the 12 steps they do, they go to AA meetings and they also realize that they have biochemical missing links and they want to feel empowered. And they have a great group of like fitness oriented AI people. And so that works for them. And that's awesome. What I think is a problem is when people are just pigeonholed into one thing, and they're told that if they're not doing that one system and they don't do it exactly how, uh, someone else has laid it out for them, that they are bad, which is essentially what happens, you know, and there are a lot of people and even rehab centers that will take advantage of people and say, look, you know, you don't have you forfeited the right to ever think for yourself, we're feel empowered because of, because you're an addict and you always will be, and you're defective.

Speaker 2 (12:30): Let us tell you how to do this. And by the way, you need to stay here another six weeks. So you're going to die and that's going to cost you $45,000. So you can see how there is a potential, at least for abuse here, and I'm not accusing the entire industry of fraud or abuse, but I think it does exist. Uh, and you know, it goes also to show that having external certifications and all these credentials and in-state licenses is not necessarily the cure for a broken system, because if all of the in-state licensing, uh, forces everyone to use a broken model or a model that doesn't work for everyone, uh, and excludes treatment modalities that actually worked really well, such as the Sinclair method for alcohol addiction or biochemical nutrient repair, uh, then you have a serious problem or you're stifling innovation. And so now we're seeing with, uh, say, you know, Google and Facebook, they're relying on something called legit script. And that helps to essentially certify websites for, uh, making ads, running ads on YouTube or Google. And it's very hard to get it right, at least until recently, it was very hard to get it unless you were a big rehab center. So not to make this too much about, about our business here, but I was trying to run some Google ads for my book, drinking sucks for awhile. And they were disapproved because I wasn't a real Senate, which is kind of ridiculous.

Speaker 4 (13:54): I'm like, no, you can't even, it's just a book. Isn't that freedom my book. And they were like, well, we can't,

Speaker 2 (14:00): We want to, um, we want more information about how you treat inpatients. I'm like, I'm not a doctor. I don't treat it plan and motivate people. Now

Speaker 4 (14:08): They have,

Speaker 2 (14:10): And they would offense. They have loosened restrictions. That's not a good way to put it cause it's still probably difficult to get what they really wanted to do or sensibly. The goal was to keep really fraudulent, uh, like sober living homes that were run by managers who weren't even they're just collecting money or were downright abusive and taking advantage of people financially, sexually. Otherwise there was bad stuff going on with sober living homes. They wanted to keep them from advertising and they wanted to keep similar shady inpatient rehab centers that were there were letting people die of withdrawal without treatment. They wanted to keep them from running ads, which is understandable. There are bad actors in any industry and in, in this industry, bad are really bad, but it's a, it's a tough line to straddle when you're trying to prevent that from happening. But you also don't want to keep people from running ads about books, where you're sharing information and your own experience, and it's really your, your freedom of speech.

Speaker 2 (15:05): So, you know, I think as we've said, the good news is that there seems to be a push in the direction of tele counseling and, um, you know, hopefully information and access to innovation, innovative information is protected where people can make up their own minds. They can get books, they can get, uh, coaching with the coach of their choice, um, certified in the modality of their choice, not just some monolithic certification, 12 step system, and they can get online courses with the information, that's what they would, they would like to get. I don't subscribe to the idea that all consumers are stupid. I think, you know, the it's easy to get skeptical and go, well, everyone's dumb, but if that's the case, then so are the people running the programs and soar the people running the certifications. And so are the powers that be, um, and you know, I'd rather people have access to the modalities that resonate with them, uh, than not.

Speaker 2 (16:01): And, you know, the solution to bad actors, I would think is obviously you have to, there has to be legal consequences for people that are taking advantage of people, um, in the ways that their sober living homes were in the ways. And I'm not saying all sober living homes are bad, but some of them were, uh, and in the way, poorly managed, uh, treatment centers, letting people die of withdrawal where like that's a serious problem, but, uh, we have to, we have to allow people access to things that, uh, resonate with, with their own, uh, identities and not, not assume that they don't know what they want.

Speaker 3 (16:39): I interviewed, uh, old ultra Tim Davis the other day, who is a, he has bipolar two disorder and he had some serious trauma from when he was a kid, especially when his father had a freak accident and died when he was only 11. And then he would got into drugs and alcohol became very addicted and he got sober through AA. And he also got on medicines for bipolar and to therapy and psychiatry. And, you know, he was doing real good as far as staying off drugs and alcohol. But when he first started to go to AA, um, all of his sponsors and all of his friends there would say, Oh, don't worry about your diet. Don't worry about exercise. And, you know, just go to meetings, call your sponsor, read the book, you know, that whole thing. And then he was morbidly obese like a six months or a year later.

Speaker 3 (17:33): Um, he was like 250 pounds at five foot nine. And I saw a picture of him. He was giant. So at that point he realized, huh? He also said he was eating all the cakes and cookies and snacks and everything. Cause that's what everyone was doing. And that's what they encouraged him to do. Instead, he was just totally addicted to sugar, probably hypoglycemic like crazy. So fortunately he, that health crisis, he used to be very fit and he said, I can't do this anymore. He made some new rules about no more eating seconds, no more snacking. And he couldn't watch Netflix or sit on the couch and play video games or snack or anything that day until he'd done his exercise for the day. And he's maintained that rule for over, I think, over a decade now. So then he had the missing ingredient. He had the body before he had the mind and the spirit with his 12 step.

Speaker 3 (18:27): And to, to an extent he was supporting his body by taking medicines for bipolar and finally got the right combo that worked, but that's not really healing. That's just covering up the symptoms. So with the fitness, he started to do triathlons, ultra marathons and just all these physical challenges, outdoor physical challenges. And now his life's awesome and it has been for a long time. So that's what I really want to continue to hammer home is that we have no problem with 12 step whatsoever. It's probably responsible for millions and millions and millions of people saving their lives, saving their families, you know, having a great life. But when you also add exercise, supplements, nutrition, that type of thing. When you support your actual physical brain and body with the mind and spirit too, then you have mind body spirit that's holistic. And when you do holistic recovery, whether it's at an inpatient or outpatient, or whether it's with a coach telemedicine telepsychiatry, or whether you go to someplace and do payoti, you know, out in South Texas with, you know, the national, uh, uh, native American church, rather because they can actually do payoti legally through their religious freedoms.

Speaker 3 (19:46): So there's so many different therapies for people to recover. And since we all have such different models of the world models of reality, different beliefs, different experiences, just different mentors, different, different ideas. Why would there be, you know, such a monopoly, like everyone goes to 12 step in counseling. So I'm glad that more and more people, us and many others, its themes are shouting out. There's so many articles now, not really on nutrient repair, but kind of dissing the, the war on drugs, this new study on inpatient rehab. So there's a lot of us that know the system's broken and know things that could do to fix it. So I'm hopeful that maybe five or 10 years from now, things will start getting better in Oregon. They mimicked Portugal. I'm not sure if you heard about this crisp, but last November, Oregon decriminalized all, all illicit drugs, everything.

Speaker 3 (20:47): Now it's still a crime to manufacture and also, uh, transport these, right. But for personal use, it's just not the most you could ever get as a hundred dollar fine. You'll never get a criminal record from it. You'll never go to jail or it's just so that I think is going to be really good. It's just mimicking exactly what Portugal did. And so now people now the state has to pay for the treatment with all the money that they're going to be saving from all the public defenders and the judges and the Sheriff's arresting people and the police officers. It's just such an expensive thing to criminalize that. So I'm very helpful that other States will follow suit with that because we could just save so much money and just, Oh, lots of good stuff happening it's taken forever.

Speaker 2 (21:38): I would love to legally micro-dosing psilocybin in Georgia. I have a, a tincture with, uh, uh, the tiniest amount of THC you've ever seen since. I'm pretty sure, uh, an edible would probably send me to Mars or something, and that's not what I'm trying to do, but, uh, yeah, it seems, it seems dumb. It's always been fundamentally offensive to me on a very basic level that the government could throw me in a cell for a plant that I had decided to cultivate or seems medieval. Um, and, uh, I think that's people, that's, that's something that a lot of people, not everyone, but a lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum send to, to get, um, people on the left because they're, you know, they have a higher degree of openness in terms of personality traits and the people on the right, because they value freedom fundamentally.

Speaker 2 (22:27): So it seems like it shouldn't be that controversial. Uh, yeah. And as far as I thought, that was interesting about your friend who had clearly had a biochemical missing link in his recovery program. And, you know, at some point there, there is a place for discipline self-reliance self-efficacy and the pride that comes from that, it seems counterintuitive to people who go through the 12 step program, as you did at one point, as I did at one point, uh, not, it doesn't seem counterintuitive to us now, but it would have back then, because all you do in those early phases is basher ego. Uh, and some people unfortunately live their entire lives, thinking that they are anything they desire or want or expect from themselves is a bad thing. But I think once you rebalance yourself, biochemically, rewire your brain, start forging a new personality. Well, it's really the best version of the person you've always been.

Speaker 2 (23:26): So you retain those best elements of your personality while, while fusing it with some, some new aspects that come from your continuing adventure in this world. And, and the self-efficacy that comes from transcending addiction. I found that quitting drinking was something that then made it easier for me to in shape, which then made it easier for me to believe in myself enough to start a block, uh, which you know, and so there's a cumulative building of, of, uh, independence. That's a really fun project. Cause it's, clear-minded independence, it's not muddled thinking or stinking thinking independence. You know, there's a certain brand of independence that I thought I had when I drank that was like, you know what, I'm going to go to a bar at 11:00 AM on a Tuesday and have a bottle of wine because I'm just different. I don't follow the rules. I'm just independent.

Speaker 2 (24:19): Uh, and that's a phony, false muddled minded by a rebel balanced independence. Yeah. I mean, that's the kind of thing where you wouldn't want that if you had a balanced brand and a proper set of hierarchies, I don't mean more with proper. I just mean like rational. So once you get those things, you can start trusting your mind a bit more and you can set goals for yourself. You can be hard on yourself to some degree. There's always a balance between self discipline and self compassion, but I think it's a lot easier to find that balance. So you don't need to be all self-compassionate all the time. There's there is some benefit I got, especially, and I've talked about this before for what I called managed discomfort. So I would go, I would force myself when I had severe cravings for alcohol or if I just was just feeling blocked and, you know, I couldn't be present in the moment.

Speaker 2 (25:16): I would force myself to go for a jog at midnight and the dark. Uh, and I, you know, not in a dangerous area most of the time I was, I was careful about that. I wasn't trying to be masochistic. I was trying to do something that other people wouldn't do to prove that I could be the kind of person that does things that others refuse to do. You know? So I thought to myself, well, if I'm going to defy the odds with addiction with recovery had already been told that nine out of 10 people relapse and that it wasn't going to be in a different for me. And I was still working my way through the basic traditional conditioning that people tend to get at the centers and trying to, um, figure out what I really believed, but there was a sense of bleakness. And, you know, it helped for me to think of myself as someone who could defy the odds by doing things that were uncomfortable, uh, and achieving things, having something to be proud of and trying to enjoy the process of doing it as opposed to just living in the future in the space of my desired outcome, right?

Speaker 2 (26:24): Because we don't want to live in the past. And I like that saying if we live in the past, we're depressed. If we live in the future, we're anxious, right. We need to live in the here and now, but we can't live in the here and now, and now all the time, otherwise we'll just be in the shower for three days straight or whatever. And then we have to do things with your life. I think the key is to live in the present while being aware of the past, preparing for the future and being excited to make your future better than your past and enjoy the whole process. So I would, I would sometimes make myself smile like an idiot when I was going for those jobs and very uncomfortable because I was enjoying the fact that in the present moment I was, I was being someone who would do things that maybe made me, you know, the type that, that defies the odds.

Speaker 2 (27:15): Maybe there was something exceptional about me and I don't mean that in a megalomaniac way, but I think everyone's exceptional in some ways at that time, it wasn't clear to me, maybe the only possible way I would ever be above average or exceptional was in my pain tolerance. And if, if, if that's the case, then so be it, you know, maybe I will, I will get, I maybe I'll do all this work and not actually getting great, but at least I will have done the work and I'll know, deep down that I can do the work. Maybe I'll do all this work on this blog and no one will ever read it and it'll fail. But at least I will I'll know that I, I I'd done everything I could. And that, that was kind of how I started taking pleasure in the, in the present. So that was a long digression from your friend's journey, but I would bet that if you were listening, he'd be able to relate to something because there is reward to be found in deferring gratification. And I think it's to be found in the kind of identity that you're forging along the way you get more inner peace from that than you would external, uh, satisfaction or were base pleasure from distractions in the present.

Speaker 3 (28:27): Yeah. When what I found is when I was, and this is even past addiction, right? Cause when I was addicted to everything was wrong with my life, that's easy for me to remember. But after addiction, there would still be phases of life where I was in a rut, whether it was a health rep or a relationship or a spirituality, rut, financial rut, different type of RA or combination of ruts. And I would, okay, tomorrow, here's what I'm going to do to get out of this rut or this evening, I'm going to do this since. And a lot of times I'd write it down. And I found that at least for myself, when I didn't do the things that I promised myself I'd do, it would make me feel really. And I wouldn't even trust myself. I would lose respect for myself. I would start to search for escaping and numbing behaviors, TV, comfort, food, all sorts of stuff, caffeine, sugar, whatever I was going through at the time.

Speaker 3 (29:32): And so these days, I'm much more careful about what I say I'm going to do. I really, really get into it like, okay, I want each day to be a fun day. So it's a combination of things that I do for work for business, things that I do for the home and family and things like for my own creativity, of course, business is creativity, but I'll play music or I'll do art or something, or I'll go for a walk at the beach and imagine a story in my head of some inspirational recovery movie or something that could be. So I didn't do that stuff before. I was always thinking about the future. How can I build a bigger, better future? How can I, I didn't think about the past too much, but I did think about the future a lot. And it was because I was so jacked up on caffeine and go, go, go stress hormones.

Speaker 3 (30:27): That since you're living life with those stress hormones, that's going to make you addicted to thinking anger, prone, to things like anger, resentment, jealousy, envy, um, hyper criticism judgment. And nowadays, when I'm much more peaceful about it, don't push my, I don't push myself nearly as hard as I used to. As far as working out business, I finally taking this new path where it's so much more gentle, also disciplined, but in a much gentler way. But, um, but this way I'm not getting burned out this way. I'm staying healthy and I'm making slow progress back in the day. I'd make fast progress with business or whatever I was trying to do with relationship. Cause I would just go fast, fast, fast. I was still bipolar too back then undiagnosed and not knowing the hell's going on. So now I don't have those hypomanic episodes, no depressed episodes.

Speaker 3 (31:25): So what I want people to realize is all of us are different. We each have our own unique struggles in life, life lessons. We have our own personalities. We have our own top strengths. That's a big one too. You've heard of this. I gave you that test a long time ago, the StrengthsFinder 2.0 where you take this quiz and you learn your top five strengths. There's a lot of research into leading with your strengths as far as work, as far as creativity, as far as entrepreneurship, I like to teach people to lead with their strengths and what fits their personality for addiction recovery too. Like some people look at 12 step and go, Oh my God, that's just so you're telling me I have to do this, but that just doesn't make any sense because their personalities different, their strengths are different. Their weaknesses are different.

Speaker 3 (32:17): Their ideas about things are different. So my whole thing is let it, let's just talk about potentially everything or anything that could help. And then, like you say, trust people to be intelligent enough to read something and figure out whether it's or not, or to do more research. I mean, aren't, we all grown ups and regarding the government making lots of substances, illegal, even plant ones like, you know, uh, the peyote cactus and the psilocybin containing mushrooms and other ones. When the bill, uh, when the declaration of independence and the bill of rights were formulated hundreds of years ago, I really wish that a bill got passed in there that to have cognitive Liberty to where each American citizen can take whatever substance they want, at least natural at minimum natural plant, they can take as long as it's not going to hurt anybody else. And they're going to do it in a safe way.

Speaker 3 (33:22): That's like taking away our freedom of consciousness, our freedom of conscious consciousness, referential index. It feels like the government is trying to control who can have these mystical experiences that wake people up from being grouped thinking, fearful lemmings, that just listen to the media and do what the government says at all times without questioning anything. So I'm a big cognitive Liberty person. And that's really my main thing while I'm loving learning about psychedelics so much. I did an episode with my dad recently on psychedelic shamanism and psychedelics. I found this show on Amazon prime, uh, three, uh, three seasons of a docu-series called Hamilton's Pharmacopia Chris, you would love this. It's by vice. And they're amazing at addiction and drug documentaries. And so this is it's like investigative journalism and he even tries out many of these things. And it's basically the history, the media, the drug laws and the cultural aspects of using many of these different drugs.

Speaker 3 (34:32): Most of them are psychedelics. Some are not. And it has some of the most great Epic footage of not only people doing these in traditional shaman settings, like in Mexico and in South Texas with the payoti, uh, and in many other countries with lots of different substances, he did. What was it? He did Iowasca in, I'm not sure if it was Peru or somewhere else, but anyway, so he's a scientist. This Hamilton, I think his last name is Morris. Um, just our Justin Jordan Peterson's daughter, McKayla Peterson. She just interviewed Hamilton on her podcast and Mikayla Peterson podcast. And it's all about psychedelics. So there's like the psychedelic resurgence because decades, many decades ago when they were there, they were illegal. All the psychiatrists and therapists. Well, the psychiatrists were enlisting help of therapists and they were helping people make breakthroughs 15 years of psychotherapy in 15 minutes on a DMT trip or something or on MTMA or on LSD.

Speaker 3 (35:35): Some people, these hidden labs in the desert where they blew up K, where they blew up these rocks and make clandestine cave laboratories to create novel compounds from LSD and from MDME that were different. And they'd go out and try it on themselves and, and do therapy. So now with all these new biotech companies researching psychedelic assisted therapy, and next-generation psychedelics, there's kind of like this resurgence and this new excitement, but I don't think the federal government will ever approve it for anything other than FDA approved for certain things, right. Addiction, depression. But it's very interesting. All the players, the FDA, big pharma, the war on drugs, imagine how many people are employed by the war on drugs. Imagine ending the war on drugs overnight, the unemployment, the, so like you said, this stuff is so systemic in, in literally every part of addiction. And it's going to take a hell of a lot of people and a hell of a lot of work and a hell of a lot of time. And unfortunately, a hell of a lot more suffering before we get to a place that looks at least sane right now, everything looks kind of insane the laws at least, but, um, we're moving slowly there.

Speaker 2 (36:59): Yeah. And I think the silver lining, which I'm always obligated to step in with is that there is a digital recovery revolution. As long as we do have freedom of expression. Well, to a large degree, freedom of expression online, uh, you know, we can get messages out to people who need to hear them. And you and I both hear from so many people who are, it's not always a similar story. Like I've been to rehab seven times or 10 times, like nothing clicks. I need to get it right this time. I don't have $40,000 to spend on rehab or whatever they spent before. Can you please help? And S and for some of these people that the tragedy is sometimes sending them a link to a free article is all they need. I know it's like, you just went through all of that. Um, here's the information you were looking for the first time around, and if you want a community, you know, there's online courses, or if you need some accountability, have some coaching, we do it over the phone.

Speaker 2 (37:58): We're not going to stick you in a bunk bed. Now, some people do need to go away for awhile. So I think there always will be a place for inpatient treatment, but it's always tragic when someone goes away for awhile, which is part of what they need. And then they they're missing out on 80% of what else they need while they're doing that. It's like a missed opportunity. So, um, you know, and it's not just 12 step oriented programs. They're also like luxury ones where you go and you get massages, and then you, uh, Richard and there's nothing wrong with massages. Honestly, it's a huge part of my lifestyle optimization, but it's not enough for someone who's detoxing off alcohol or drugs to get a massage every day. And then, you know, go hang out by a pool, um, you know, drink like, you know, Rose penalty or whatever. That's fine. All of that can be part of the program, but we need to address the fundamental root causes. And I think often biochemical root causes with specific therapists that do that. So I don't have anything to add to your last, uh, rant. I think it was awesome. Um, as usual, we tend to be on the same page and we'll keep this one short, cause we both have, uh, some phone calls coming up, but, uh, I think there's a lot of birds out here.

Speaker 5 (39:32): [inaudible].