The Furniture That Fixes Lives: Jeremy French and the Making Whole Story

Jeremy French

[00:00:00] Everybody has to suffer. You don’t grow without suffering. Right. And so if we look closely at what the model of being a parent is, in today’s world, it’s about saving our kids from suffering. Yet we know every success story. A success story is 10 chapters long. Nine chapters are about failure. Yes. And the 10 chapters about success.
So we’re actually robbing and handicapping our kids from success at the point that we’re taking away their right to suffer. It is really important to say is that we’re all gonna die. We are all gonna die, and your kid might die. And that is unavoidable. There’s nothing you will do as a parent that will keep your child from dying. And there is nothing as a parent you can do that will keep your kid from suffering. And those are facts, undeniable facts.  Mm-hmm. And so part of the job of being a parent, and this was part of the message in that dream, is like I don’t get a say of when my kid’s time is. Wow. The only thing I have to say about is what 
[00:01:00] happens while they’re here.
Welcome to Hope Stream, the podcast for parents of teens and young adults struggling with substance use and mental health. I’m Brenda Zane. I’ve walked this path with my own child’s addiction and high risk lifestyle. Each week we help you gain clarity, learn new skills, and most importantly, find real hope in what might feel helpless. You are not helpless, and you’re not alone anymore. Find more resources@stringcommunity.org.
Hey, friend, I cannot tell you how glad I am to be sitting down with you today. My feet planted in my office after a lot of travel and being able to take a few minutes to reflect on the conversation that I’ll be sharing with you today. And before I do that, please take a few deep breaths with me.
[00:02:00]  Feel yourself, stop for just a few seconds. Know that you are okay, right in this moment that you’re here. You’re not alone, you’re not swirling, and know that despite what it might look like today in your world, you are exactly where you’re supposed to be. And that things are going to be different.
Tomorrow, different might look better, or it could be a downturn, but just for the next hour, know that you’re here, you’re okay, and you’re not alone. You are so lucky that you tuned into this episode today. I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with Jeremy French, founder of making whole. A non-traditional addiction recovery program designed within the framework of a classical woodworking apprenticeship. They’re a community of 
[00:03:00] men who are learning to live, build, and share their days in an effort to become whole. And yes, you heard me right, I did say a woodworking apprenticeship where they literally make gorgeous high-end furniture with their hands together every day. They also cook and eat a meal together with each other and with the broader community of Asheville, North Carolina, and no one is forced to stay. Can you see why I was super excited to get some time with the creator of this unique program? Jeremy opened Making Hole in 2018, and it resides in an 8,000 square foot studio, housed below a wine shop and shares a parking lot with one of the 30 plus breweries that give the artsy mountain town of Asheville, the nickname of Beer City USA 
[00:04:00] interesting location for a recovery program, right? Making whole apprentices work five days a week and they’re asked to make a one year commitment to the program. They live locally in sober living homes or in their own apartment, and other than working 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM five days a week, and sharing a daily meal together. There’s no set daily schedule, no formal curriculum, and no mandatory commitment to meetings.
Jeremy has nearly 30 years in recovery himself, but is a high school dropout and defies all expectations of an addiction counselor. Enrollment in the making whole program is capped at 10 individuals, and as apprentices learn to build furniture, they also learn to gradually rebuild their lives. It is non-traditional in every way you can imagine.
It’s the living proof of something you have heard me say for six plus
[00:05:00] years. There is no one size fits all when it comes to recovery. And what you’ll hear from Jeremy today proves that in spades you’ll hear the hair-brained and dangerous things he did as a young person struggling with addiction and how he radically changed his life, you’ll also hear how while he was using drugs, he credited those drugs for solving nine outta 10 problems in his life, and how the combination of being highly sensitive and highly intelligent did not do him any favors as a young man. This my friend, is a deep, insightful and wildly inspiring conversation that I cannot wait for you to hear, please, a single task so you don’t miss any of what I talked about with making holes. Jeremy French, enjoy. Hey Jeremy. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today for an episode of Hope
[00:06:00] Stream. I’m very excited for this conversation. I know we know a lot of people in common, but we’ve never had a chance to meet and chat, so thank you for coming on.  It’s an honor privilege. I appreciate you inviting me. Absolutely. We have a group of parents who follow this podcast, who are part of our community, who are desperately trying to understand. They’re a young person, whether that’s a child, maybe it’s a cousin or a niece or nephew, somebody in their life is hurting usually with mental health and substance use issues.
And you know, I speak from experience. I came into that with my son having zero experience or understanding with either substance use addiction. And so that’s why I love these conversations because I learn so much from folks who have been through it and we will get your story. And it’s just so eyeopening for us to hear all these different perspectives.
[00:07:00] And I know a bit about what you guys do at Making whole, and I just absolutely love it. And so wanted to nab some of you and your insight and wisdom and story to really bring understanding our parents, you know, who are. Sponges for like, tell me more. Tell me more. So we appreciate it.  Yeah, my pleasure. Looking forward to that. 
So I read on your website a little story and you can decide if it’s appropriate to start there or more of the origin story of your experience, your lived experience. But there was a story that you wrote about an owl, which I just love all that stuff. Like I am a big person now.
You know what’s gonna happen later today, I’m gonna go somewhere, I’m gonna see an owl. You’ll so would love to have you talk about that. But you choose whether you’d like to start there or with your story and just sort of fill us in on why we are sitting here talking today.  Yeah. I think all the stories 
[00:08:00] will tie back to an origin story, so that’s probably as good a place to to begin as any. In 2015, my brother-in-law and close friend committed suicide and I had spent a week. A funeral and being engaged in the things that come after that sort of tragedy. And I was exhausted it, like it really took it out of me. And it was not the first time. He is the second person who was actually a member of my wedding party to die. And I have lost count of the number of acquaintances and a lot of close friends who have died either from suicide or from overdose.  Mm. 
And so it’s this, you know, I could have gone into the eulogy business as well as I could. Um, the business I’m in, because that, particularly from about 2015 to, you know, the years tap.
[00:09:00]  It’s one of the things about death is it, it really kind of puts a fine edge on the experience of being present in that day. Right? And so one of the things I like to say about funerals and about that moment after death is that those were some of the richest and most important moments in my life. They were intense, but they were real.
And it’s as real as it gets, and it’s a lot. And so when I came home from that week, I woke up in the morning and I was just out of it. I was struggling to kind of make sense of I was gonna spend my day and kind of put things together. And I heard this big commotion out in my front yard and it sounded like a bunch of crows kind of going mad.
And I was kind of dazed and confused. I went out to see what was going on, and the crows were on the roof raising hell, and there was a owl sitting right by my front stoop. 
[00:10:00] The story of the owl, the story of this experience is sitting down with this owl at this moment where I’m kind of like at my end. And trying not to make too much of it. You know, I live in Asheville and there’s a lot of crystal liquors and hippies here that will immediately see an animal and, and like that means something. And it’s to the point that it’s like hyperbole and I don’t wanna contribute to that. So I’m thinking to myself like, oh, I’ve had this experience, this all, and I sat together on my front porch for a long time.
You know, a couple feet from each other. This thing just staring at me and me staring back and trying to make sense of it. And al some of the significance of an owls, they usually, they are surround deaths, you know, and old mythology and folklore. They’re strangely a creature that has a very, like, dark story.
You know, a lot of times you read a story about a spirit animal or something and it’s like, oh, this, this animal represents, and everything that comes after that is good and whole. You’ve seen, you know, 
[00:11:00] you’ve seen an animal on the side of the road and you think, oh man, the, the world’s sending me good os It’s not the case with an owl, you know, an owl’s all over the map, you know, but there oftentimes around this and so.
I don’t wanna make too much of this. I kind of go on about my day. I’ve taken the day off of work and so I don’t often get to pick my children up from school. And so my wife says, you, you wanna come and get the kids? And the kids are in two schools right next to each other. And my daughter walks through the woods to get to where my son is so we can pick them up at the same time.
And so we’re sitting there waiting and my daughter pops up out of the woods and has a sticker of an owl right here on her forehead. And that’s when I realized like there’s, this is, I didn’t make this up. I had not told anybody this story at that point. So anyway, there’s a longer story you can read. It’s on the website about that.
But one of the things that that did for me is it helped me to recognize that it was time for me to explore why are these people dying and is there anything I can do? I got sober in 1995, so this, I would’ve been sober 20 
[00:12:00] years. And that part of the reason I know so many people who are dead is ’cause I know a lot of people with addiction. Yeah. Mental health issues. And one of the things I felt overwhelmingly is that there’s not a place. The, the people that I knew the best, I knew a lot of them wanted to get better and were receptive to a certain type of help that didn’t exist in the world. And that felt like a big hole. Like there’s a big hole in the world where the way we treat addiction is like a medical thing, but it doesn’t feel like that to me.
I feel like that’s a gross assessment of what the experience of addiction is like and what the experience of recovery is like. And so as these guys were in their kind of darkest moments, where do they go? I dunno where you send these people. And even if I did, like what is it that those places are doing that’s gonna inspired making, which is.
[00:13:00] And how to build furniture effectively. And so where that originates from is when I started going through this exercise of like, why do people get better or not get better? Is it a fluke? Is it a crap shoot? Is it magic? What is it? You know, the first thing I start doing is going back through my history and considering who do I know that’s gotten better and what are the common denominators amongst those people, right?
So at this point in my life, it’s not outta the question. Say, I know thousands of people that have entered into recovery from addiction, and so I’ve gotta see these people now for decades. See them through their ups and downs and kind of level out, look at the whole of their experience and, and see who’s getting better and who’s not.
And at that point, my metric of getting better is that this is somebody that at 20 years I would trade for what they have, right? Mm-hmm. These are that I want what they have, right? And even people that are maybe don’t have as much time or haven’t arrived at the sort of abundance that I have in my life, you can see that they’re on that trajectory.
[00:14:00] So that’s the group of people. What makes them all the same? And there’s two things that was true in every one of their lives, and one of them is that they all have a story about a person at the beginning. Without exception, and I don’t know any stories about transformation where there’s not a guide.
I’ve never really heard a story. There’s always a story when somebody’s embarking on transformation, where there’s a guide, there’s a mentor, there’s somebody, you know, and it’s not always a formal version of that, you know? It’s not always somebody that calls themselves a mentor coach. Mm-hmm. But it’s that these people latched on to what they had.
They wanted what that person had. Were willing to do something to get it. The other thing that was more interesting to me is that all of these people, either as their profession or their principal hobby, spent their day solving complicated problems. And so they were creative people, they were entrepreneurs.
You know, athletes, mothers, like a lot of these people were mothers, you know, and, and there’s, there’s mother 
[00:15:00] by right of the fact that you’ve given birth. And then there’s this group of mothers who are like, this is what I’m doing. I’m raising kids. That’s what I do. Right? And so I couldn’t find somebody that didn’t have this thing that introduced new, complicated problems every day.
And there was this thing that would happen in their lives where they would enter into recovery and they would kind of like. Get their feet solid, and then they would embark on this profession or hobby or principle sort of vocation in their life. And then something about what they learned in their vocation transferred back to their recovery.
And that’s when recovery got real and authentic and meaningful for them. And it’s almost like they needed something that belonged to them, like their own lens to figure out how do I navigate through life? They needed something that was meaningful to teach them how to do that. 
Right? And so what transformation is, is that everything I’m doing is new, right?
When I was early in recovery, got sober young, everything was new. And so the real question for me is when 
[00:16:00] somebody’s early in recovery, what tools are they equipping themselves with to negotiate something that’s un. Predictable. That’s really the question, right? Because no matter who somebody’s, no matter what somebody’s circumstances, who they are, where they come from, what their list of diagnoses are, what their financial circumstances are, we can be certain that every day this person’s gonna negotiate with something new for which they previously didn’t have tools to negotiate.
And so how are you gonna give them those tools? So. That’s when that became clear. One of the other things that became clear is I’ve been a studio craftsman for a long time, pushing 30 years, and I had a studio for a long time. Majority of the people I hired were new to recovery. ’cause that was who I knew to hire and that’s who would work, do shitty work for not a lot of money, you know?
Mm-hmm. And every year for a decade, following that studio being sold and me going on to other things, somebody would come to me and say, you know, I just need to tell you that working in your shop is what changed my life. That was the
[00:17:00] moment. And I heard that so many times from so many different types of people. People that showed up to me that didn’t have teeth, literally. That have PhDs now, and as they reflect back on their life, what they’re saying is this, this was the moment, you know, it was about every day something was fresh and new. It was about being socially among a group of men, about having a principal task that everybody had to accomplish.
It was about the uncertainty that we don’t know if we’re gonna get there. All the work that the shop that I ran did was people came to me when they didn’t have an obvious solution to a problem. They would bring it to all, we would come up with a new solution. We didn’t make the same thing twice. You know, I’ve, I’ve made very few things twice in my life and so they were always seeing something different.
It was fresh, it was interesting. But there was this fabric that in the structure of this place that was changing peak. And so that all brings me back to why I started this place, is that it? What I realized is that I have a sense of what got me better. I have a sense of what got other people better. And what I need is an A structure and an environment 
[00:18:00] where those things can take place, right? And when we talk about those things, we’re talking about having a place where people can learn to fail and suffer among other people kind of being, having a scaffolding around them as they fail and suffer, having lots of opportunities to learn how to negotiate with problems that they’re not familiar with, with tools that they’re not familiar with.
Lots of opportunities to have social connection. That’s both challenging and rewarding. And opportunities just to learn how to do simple things. Wildlife, sit down, take time to eat, take time to clean up after yourself. These basic things that we all successful people learn how to do. And so that’s what the sort of seed for this place is.
Can we create an environment where people come? And they’re exposed to that. And most importantly, people wanna be here. And this isn’t jail. People can leave whenever they want and the people who stay here wanna be here. And it’s evolved a lot. I’ve learned a lot over the, I. 
[00:19:00] Is that we’ve had 55 people in a role here over, we opened in 2018, and of those 55 people, 33 have completed the program. And completion is different for different people. Basically, we all arrived. Their team that’s around them myself, them arrived at a point where it’s like, this is the moment to move on. And for some guys that’s nine months. For some guys that’s been four years. You know, it’s a big range.  Mm-hmm.  Not a definitive date, there’s not a certificate.
But of the 33 people that have completed this program, 30 of them will tell you in their own words that they’re where they want to be at their life. And so what I know about this place is that the people who show up here, a large majority of them stay, and of the people who stay, they get better. You know, the people that don’t get better, an exception to the world. Incredible. I just, when I think about what the typical. Journey is for a person, and I’m curious to 
[00:20:00] know a little bit about the age group that you tend to work with, but for, let’s just say young adults, maybe they’re in their twenties, you know, if they are able to go to detox and maybe they sort of do a 30 day, you know, program where they’ve gotten the drugs outta their system and they’re getting some therapy and then there’s just so little available for like, okay, the drugs are out of the system, but that’s, you know, you may be sober, but you’re in no way in recovery or equipped to even know how to build a life of recovery.
I think you said it’s such a gap. There’s just this. I see this cliff where some people can’t afford to go to sober living, which maybe provides some structure and you know, some guardrails, but a lot can’t. Most can’t, 
[00:21:00] 90% can’t afford that. And so what you say about this need for community, for a purpose, for solving problems, for doing the basics over and over and over is. Really hard to find, right? I mean, it’s such a simple thing, but it’s also such a thing that’s so hard to find. Does that make sense? It’s strange, but it makes sense, you know? Okay. No matter what the model is. And we could talk about the medical model and the traditional model of treatment or the work that we’re doing. All of it requires a lot of time, which in today’s world equates the money,  right? Yes. Yes.  One of the holes we’re filling is social fabric that kind of started to dissolve in our society long ago. That’s hard to find now, right? And so maybe the things that we offer would’ve been more easily found and different types of groups, church groups, boy scouts, whatever, you know, at a time
[00:22:00] before social media, right? So those places don’t exist, and those are the only places along with 12 step programs that the exchange of time is not financial.  Right? Yes. Otherwise it’s financial. And so as a result, this comes back, I think I’ll step back and say, you know, what’s the problem that we’re trying to solve? And so as you say, like, oh, recovery, you know, they get all these things and they’re sober and they’re in recovery.
But there’s something missing implies to some extent that the problem is drug use and the problem’s, not drug use. Right. It’s never been drug use. The the solution is drug use. And so as we identify what is addiction and what’s the problem for me, you know, I have an older sister and a younger sister.
They both use drugs. I have two children, they’ve both used drugs. My wife and I both have experience with addiction. So raising two kids who are a lot like us. 
Oh boy. Yeah. Right? Yeah. You know, I know what it means to be a parent and like, oh shit, where are
[00:23:00] we going? And I know where we’re going, right? Yeah. You’ve been there. I’ve been there. Right. But these people didn’t have the same experience. Immediately tail off into addiction the way I did. And so historically, we’ve thought about this as a genetic thing. There’s a real desire to tie this to something chemically imbalanced inside of me. Right? And part of what that sources from is when AA starts the thirties, addiction was moral.
You’re just a piece of shit. Yeah. That’s why you drink. Right. And nobody’s gonna get better if that’s the problem. Because the more you feel shame about being morally bankrupt, the more it feels good to drink. Right? So that’s a catch 22 and Bill and the people that started a recognize that and there’s a doctor that says, I think this is a disease.
I’ve got no proof for that. There’s no science behind it. That’s like the best explanation I have for what the phenomenon you’re experiencing is. And Bill, and this is all written pretty plainly. Bill’s like, I don’t know if that is real or not, but I’m gonna run with that 
[00:24:00] because it solves this other problem. It takes us off the moral hook. And from that point forward, this is like a placeholder, which happens in a lot of science. You know, Hey, maybe it’s something like this. Let’s see what the world looks like through that lens. And then it stuck. And then you fast forward to the, now it needs to be a disease because insurance is not paying for it for any other reason.
Right? And so a lot of our understanding of where this comes from begins at that story, which was never intended to be considered science, right? So is it genetic? Is it chemical? What’s going on? What I know is that when I did drugs, if you gimme a list of the top 10 problems in my life, doing drugs solved nine of them instantly.
Now when my sisters did it, it solved three of them, right? And at the same time, it might have made two of them worse, right? And so most people who experience the euphoria that comes from drinking or getting high or whatever, it’s, there’s the scales, right? And there’s some qualities to it, and then there’s some other aspects to it.Ah, it just doesn’t quite do it. 
[00:25:00] But here, I’m way too sensitive. I experience everything physically, right? Everything that happens, you look at me away. And I have a feeling that connects to that with everything that’s going on. People that I’m not even close to across the room from me can look away and I can have a feeling. And it was debilitating for me.  Yeah. 
Even though I could socially hold that and look, you know, put together, it was a debilitating experience for me. So I’m hypersensitive. I’m probably too intelligent for my own good. And the combination of being a really smart and a really sensitive, it’s pretty like devastating experience to have.And then I have all these other things. I’ve got anxiety, I’ve got all the things that come with being a kid, right? Yeah. Yeah. 
Socially awkward. I don’t know where I fit. I’ve got no sense of like drive and purpose. I did fine in school. I did all the things that society asked me to do and I was empty. And when I got high, all those things changed. It like leveled out my sensitivity and replaced it with euphoria, right? Mm-hmm. So instead of feeling, oh, like this 
[00:26:00] knot in my gut, that knot like dissolved instantly, right? I had a reason to be social, right? It gave me a social purpose. Right? Now we can all kind of band together around this thing. There’s a big social component, right? Right. 
These things solved for me, right? And it wasn’t for other people. Now here’s what I know about my brain. Is that our brain is looking for things that work, you know? And if we’re doing something new, we’re using a lot of brain energy to do that thing. Doesn’t matter what it’s, you know, learn to throw a ball with your left hand and your brain hurts at the end of the day.
Right? And then your brain figures out the rhythm and then it doesn’t have to have the same thought process. It just thinks that works. I’m just gonna do it. No thought required. Right? And that’s a basic human survival, like animal survival thing. The brain uses a lot of fuel. We gotta conserve fuel in order to survive.
So as soon as something becomes functionally solving the problem, brain puts that in the back. Now, puts it into like a little, the Excel spreadsheet. It makes a code out of it. And you don’t have to see the code ever again. You don’t have to remember how you wrote the code. 
[00:27:00] Every time you plug something in that, that spits out that number. Right?  Yeah.  And so for me, and I think this is true for every humor, when something works, our brain’s like, got to do that again, right? And so instantly, for me, when I get high, it’s like, oh shit, we just solved. Find problems, right? Yeah. But now, anytime any one of those things comes up, what I’m gonna tell you is that that like starts to put you on the level where you just met God, right?
All problems disappear with one thing. I promise anybody that has that experience, their brain’s gonna do with that. What brains do, and they’re gonna struggle with addiction, right? A lot of people won’t have that experience and they’re not gonna struggle with addiction. So I think it’s a very normal response.
I do not believe it’s a disorder. Now, what happens is when, that’s the only solution I have, there’s natural problems that occur in life where problems are more nuanced and complex and they change, and life changes. And if this is your only tool and that tool actually has negative 
[00:28:00] impacts on both yourself and the people around you, it’s gonna become a problem. But it’s not a disorder. My brain did that, right? It did what it was supposed to do. And so here’s the problem, is that the only solution I have for existing in the world is drugs. And one of the reasons why. Got to the point where I was willing to address that problem is because it was increasingly not working.
So I would do this thing and it wouldn’t produce the results. Right. And it got me to a point where I was huddled in the corner of a room in a flop house that if I explained it to somebody, they, it would sound like hyperbole. It would sound like Hollywood got ahold of a script, right? And blew up a flop house.
Right. This kind of place’s a Netflix series. 
It’s a Netflix series. It’s horrible. It’s like one of those series where you watch it and you’re like, man, y’all overdid that a little bit. That’s not real life. That was the kind of place that I was in huddled, in a corner that was the corner where I could see somebody come in the room from any entrance before they could see me, because that was the safest place to be. And I was like, in paralysis and no amount of drugs were fixing it. And so there, to me, at that point, I’m like open 
[00:29:00] in a way. I hadn’t been prior to that, to something being, so this problem is I have no tools to exist in life. You know, I’ve got no tools. I’ve got. There’s increasingly not an invitation in the world to become a man when you’re a boy.
Right? So here, I’m, I’m a boy in a man’s body. There’s no invitation to grow up and enter into the world of men, and I’ve got no tools to exist. That’s the problem that we need to solve now. So if we look at the solutions that are on offer for that, there’s not a lot of great solutions, right? I believe in detox.
I believe that for a couple of reasons. Even if the drug that somebody’s addicted to is not medically, there’s not a medical necessity for detox. It just hits the pause button for five minutes and give somebody a chance to breathe. That is a medical reality for a moment there. We just need the chemistry to calm down, get some food in your body. I’m 1 75, now is 125 pounds when I got sober.  Wow.  I was wrecked 
[00:30:00] and I just needed to eat, sleep a little bit and just calm down. Right? I think that that’s great. I think having a period of time where there’s an education. I’m up against, which happens in treatment and certain types of therapies was really valuable intellectually to start to recognize like, oh shit, they told me about that.
That’s useful. I think having that be the principle fuel for recovery is a wild mis assessment of what the problem is. Right. So I got some of those things when I got sober and went to a treatment center, it took me a decade to recover from the trauma I experienced in the first treatment center I went to.
It was a really not a great place to be. And then here I was left with no ability to live, um, no desire to stay sober for a moment. Not a particular desire to get high ’cause it was so difficult for me. But no real purpose in life. And so, yeah, there’s not a lot of options on, well, how do you get from here to there? Somebody that has no skills to exist. Right? And those skills are broad, you know, 
[00:31:00] there’s, there’s plenty of people that excel in certain areas, whether that be school or work or relationships. But the skills to live, which is this dynamic experience, social, emotional, cultural, all the responsibilities that come with surviving, you know, that’s what I have to learn how to do.
So much in there. You just said, I’m like madly taking notes because yeah. My brain is like all of it. A couple of things that I just wanted to trace back to. One is what you said about the hypersensitivity, it is the common denominator that  a hundred percent I see in all  100%  Yep. Says to and the intelligence.Mm-hmm.  The, the high level of giftedness, I’m guessing maybe some learning differences. Mm-hmm. It’s like that is the template for these young folks who are, you know. Mellows, you the fuck out. 
[00:32:00] Cocaine pushes she passed. It’s a great medicine. It’s a hundred percent medicine. If you look at historically, why do we take Ritalin and not cocaine?
Why do we take, you know, any given thing and not weed? It’s like sociopolitical. It’s not because chemistry doesn’t make sense, right. It’s sociopolitical. So, and that’s okay. It’s what it is. We don’t really know how to do this collectively, but absolutely it’s medicine and it works. 
Yes, it totally works.
And also what you said about that kind of, that tipping point that you got to of, well, it was solving more problems than it was creating, so that’s cool. But then. The scales start to tip the other way. And when you’re in the flop house, curled up in the corner, paralyzed, and you’re realizing, oh, actually not solving as many problems. What I wonder, I’m so curious about that moment that you have the clarity of mind as sick as you, I’m sure you were horribly 
[00:33:00] sick, and all the things that you can be in a position where you’re that ill and emotionally, spiritually, physically, everything and still have the wherewithal to say. I need something different.
So I wanna explain what that something different was. I kind of like lost the plot on New Year’s Eve. Took a list of drugs that like really flipped out and it’s a long story. I don’t wanna get into it. I woke up the next day, I was like, something’s gotta change. Something’s gotta change. When I woke up, I was search, something’s gotta change.
And by lunchtime I was fucking blasted. And I don’t have much recollection of what happened over the next nine days, but during that period of time, I have fashioned that it would be a good idea for me and two of my friends to steal somebody’s car and drive to Florida to sell a bunch of drugs so we can make enough money to then drive a VW bus to New York.
This is all from Atlanta, and sell a bunch of drugs. And we were gonna make, because we’d heard that Syracuse was dry and we were gonna make 
[00:34:00] like $10,000 and in 1995, $10,000, like in my mind, the logic is like, that’s. The golden sunset, right? So we stole a car. We went down to Florida, we bought a bunch of drugs. We were driving back. The person driving didn’t have a license, and then the two of us that were in this stolen car full of drugs were both on probation in a different state.  Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. That was my solution was this, and it made perfect sense in my mind that if I get 10,000, I’m like, that’s the end of this.That’s golden sunsets. Yeah.  That’s it. Right. It’s hilarious. It nothing I thought made sense. So anyway, I get thrown in jail in Florida, probation in Atlanta. I was in some truck, right? And so my mom and grandparents come down to pick me up. My mom from Atlanta, my grandparents from South Georgia, and they got me. And I was so vile and for like a couple 
[00:35:00] of hours I just, it was just a tirade I was on. I don’t know what I was on about, but I know even though, here’s the real issue is that even though my solution wasn’t working, nobody had ever presented a solution to me that seemed reasonable. And the people that had presented the solution that I should stop doing what worked for my family and authorities.
So what I was certain about, even though I was certain that this isn’t working like I needed to, I was also certain the biggest enemy. This group of people. And so even though I’m broken, I’m terrified. I’m scared of jail. What my parents and grandparents for me for the next couple hours is like, makes my gut turn, you know? Yeah. 
And, and I ended up in a treatment center. So I ended up in a treatment center like three days in, and I was facing as much time in jail as I had been alive at that point. And I’m freaking out about it. And one of the orderlies or whatever you wanna call ’em in this place, this place ended up getting shut down ’cause they were like abusive to people at 
[00:36:00] end But it was one of these places, you know, I was locked up in this building. It was like a central room where you had to pull your mattress out into the room to sleep every night underneath fluorescent lights so that you didn’t hang yourself with shoe laces or whatever. And so I told this woman really like, look, I’m freaking out. I’m about to spend as much time in jail as I’ve been alive. This is ridiculous. What do I do? And he said, why don’t you pray about it? And I told him like, why don’t you fuck off?  Yeah,  you come on man. 
Pray about it. Right? So anyway, I’m pouring my mattress out of the room to put it out in the hallway that night and I’m on my knees getting my mattress situated.
And I said a prayer. I was like, what? What the fuck? That was the prayer whatcha gonna do? The next day I got a call from my mom. She said, look, I just talked to the judge in Florida and. That your files have disappeared. There’s no record of your files, and they never found out you got thrown on probation in Atlanta. What? 
So that was like the bell ringing. Like, oh, there’s something to this right now. I’ll tell you a thing about storytelling and about parents, mothers, there’s a lot of mothers listening to this. Yes, there are. As soon as I told that story, 
[00:37:00] like my mom car salesman hate my mom because she’s not leaving until she get, gets what she wants. Right. This is, this is what I’m gonna buy this car for. Yes. 
And she, the tactics that work with every normal human being, don’t work with them. And so there’s a lot of moms that heard this story that said, your files didn’t disappear. Your mom made that, made a deal with the judge. And that deal was either I’m not getting off the phone until they disappear, or, Hey, let me take this.
And the judge was like, I wanna deal with this kid anyway. But my experience of that story is that the files disappear. And there was no good explanation for that story. So anyway, I was like, wow, this is amazing. Something that’s gotta happen. My very next plan, which was slightly more favorable to the go sell a bunch of drugs in Florida and take them to New York, was that I was, I dunno, half an hour outside of Atlanta.
There’s no public transit to where I was gonna get outta this treatment center. I was gonna walk to Atlanta and I was gonna rent a house and get a job and live happily ever after. And that was totally sensible to me. 
[00:38:00] And everybody would look at me like they often did when I was newly sober. Like, what are talking about man? Like, nothing made sense that I said, right. It made perfect sense to me. Didn’t sense. And I’m like, no, that’s what I’m gonna do. Like why are you trying to stop me? And they said, well the other thing you could do is you go to this other place and we’ll just pick you up and take you there. Do you wanna do that?
And I was like, well, you know, and the truth of the matter is it was. It was easier. That’s why I did it. That’s why I went to the next place and eventually ended up in a sober living underneath the mentorship of a man who saved my life was because that option was provided to me and it was easier than my other option.
But when I’m getting sober, going back to the experience I, I have with drugs, the value proposition is the Monty Python skit cake or death. And the guy’s like, ah, lemme think about that. And that’s what it was for me too. And that’s the way it appears to people. Like, here’s the real experience I’m having is that I’ve only experienced ease in this really specific environment. And the place I’ve 
[00:39:00] experienced the most discomfort in my life is around these authority figures for society. I don’t believe in society. I don’t problem. My resistance to the world is really a survival instinct to try to protect the thing that works.  Sure.  And so what people are saying is, you gotta get sober, you gotta quit doing drugs and be sober. And what that sounds like is like you gotta give up the only thing that’s ever made you feel okay in your own skin. And what you get in exchange for that is to go back to how you felt before you had it. And that’s a bad value proposition. That is a bad value proposition right there.  What I experience with every drug addict is that every drug addict has a cost benefit analysis calculator in their head that is completely dialed in. Yeah.  And if the cost benefit doesn’t make sense to you, it’s because you don’t understand the benefit that they get. That’s the only reason why it doesn’t make sense. Their cost benefit analysis works perfectly based on 
[00:40:00] my experience when I get high, even in the worst places where I’m huddled up in the corner, I feel safer there in a place that they would write a movie about how unsafe it’s, I. I feel safer than I do at college or than I do in a church or that I do anywhere else. That’s how I, so when people see me trying to protect my right to stay in this place, that’s nasty. Graffiti on the wall, dogs shit on the floor, dishes piled up, people shooting guns out, you know, randomly in the house, cops breaking in fires set like this place was pure chaos.
I felt safer there. And so why I’m protecting my right to stay in that chaos is ’cause I’ve never experienced anything better. But as soon as you offer me something better, I take it. And I’ve never met somebody with addiction problems for whom that wasn’t the case. The challenge is how do you fashion a value proposition that somebody’s willing take? That’s the real dilemma. Yes. And as we’re talking about treatment. That’s the only real valid conversation I believe we need to be. 
[00:41:00] Hey, I wanna pause for just a sec to talk about something that has been life changing for so many women who started right where you might be by listening to the show. If you’re feeling the isolation, the exhaustion, like nobody gets what you’re going through, there is a place designed specifically for you.
The stream is our private community for moms and female caregivers for parenting teens and young adults through substance use and mental health struggles. And when I say private, I mean completely confidential. It is not connected to Facebook or any other platform, or your business could become everyone’s business.
What members love about this stream is that you can be as visible or as anonymous as you want. Someones jump right into conversations and calls. Others like to read and learn quietly in the background. Both are perfect. It’s not social media. It’s genuine community focused on learning growth and breaking through the isolation that might be keeping you from moving forward.Right 
[00:42:00] now. Whether your child is in active use in treatment or early recovery, you’ll find practical strategies and tools that actually help motivate healthier choices because we know you wanna see positive change in your family. Check it out@hopestreamcommunity.org. We would love to welcome you into this village of support and understanding.
Okay, back to the show. Yeah, I was good. Oh gosh. I love the the cost benefit calculator. It’s so true, and I think what’s so mind numbingly difficult for parents to understand is because we don’t have the same experience as our kid. We are looking at this situation. It. And we’re thinking in our mind that you have a beautiful home, but you have a beautiful family.
You have a caring community around you. You have a private school that we pay $20,000 a year for you to go to. Right. 
[00:43:00] We’re we’re ticking the list. Your cost benefit. Your cost benefit. Exactly. Exactly. And we can’t understand and wrap our head around how is that not what you need?  Mm-hmm. Right. It’s so obvious.Right. Because I, because that would be my benefit.  You say that to me and then I say to you, look, I do this one thing that solves all my problems. Why wouldn’t you do that? And you’re basically saying there’s a fight. And if you were to go back and get the stenographers to translate, you know what’s happening.
You’re saying the same thing. Why aren’t you doing what works for me? Yeah. And they’re, well, why are you trying to take away what works for me? It doesn’t, it doesn’t make any sense. My experience is when people recognize that the conversation changes. What I’ll say, one of the issues with treatment is metrics.
Right? There’s no metrics for any of the work that’s being done. And, and the reason why is ’cause it’s complicated. Like how do you measure success, you know?  Yeah.  It’s tough. So as I’m developing the work 
[00:44:00] I’m doing and I’m deciding how, what’s my litmus test for whether what I’m doing is work or not? One of the principle things that I want to be certain of is that anytime somebody walks out the door here, that the questions they’re asking are different. So if I’ve equipped you with a set of tools and you are asking different questions about your life,  Hmm.  There’s a chance that’s something you’re gonna carry with you the rest of your life, right?  Right. There is no treatment on the planet that can be done in a year period. Nobody’s coming out of a year of treatment or two years or four years of treatment.Yeah. Yeah, 
it’s not possible. So if you’ve only got somebody for a year, the question is what do you want ’em to leave with? And so what I know is that you’re gonna be running up against problems that I can’t even anticipate. How are you gonna address those problems? And that’s gonna be reflected in the questions that you’re asked, right?
And so, while that’s applicable for. The person that’s suffering with addiction is also applicable to the parents. Right? Yeah. And so if you find yourself as a parent describing what you just described, which is like, this doesn’t make sense to me, right? Yeah. It’s you’re asking the wrong questions. Why is somebody so 
[00:45:00] protective of this thing?Now, historically, if this is a disorder in a disease and this person just broken, then that’s the explanation for Right? And as a result, the parent never finds out who the kid is. Right? Right, right. It, it takes everybody off the hook. And we can just point at this thing. We can point at this like singularity and what we are really good as a society at solving this problems that are a singularity. If there’s a tumor that we can find, we can solve it. Yes. 
But as soon as things become decentralized and complex, we can’t solve it. Right? So that singularity is a really useful thing in feeling safe because there’s not as much uncertainty. But that’s the problem with addiction is it’s not a singularity.
It’s this whole experience. It’s our whole brain, mind, body and spirit’s all connected. So we’re gonna need a more complex mechanism to solve that problem. So my experience, I’ll tell you a story. This is a useful story for a lot of people. I’m sure there are parents who are experiencing this. One of the things I found out after I’ve been sober quite some time is that my parents and I were talking, my parents and I 
[00:46:00] have a great relationship now and we have, since I got sober, and they had been counseling, they had been doing parent groups back in the nineties trying to figure out what to do. But they were a therapist. And the therapist, it comes out in therapy that they’re on the verge of this situation with me destroying their marriage. Mm-hmm. And the therapist gave them value, uh, a proposition. You’re either gonna save your son or you’re gonna save your marriage and you need to choose which, and what I’m here to tell you is that you can’t save your son, so whatcha gonna do?
And they went back and like talked about it and decided we’re gonna focus on our marriage. And it was the most. If there’s one thing that’s changed my life from an external source more than anything else, it’s that decision that they made at the time that they made it. And the reason why is ’cause they took their eyes off of me.
And one of the things about inviting a boy to be a man, and if you read mythology about this journey, there is this moment where the, you are on your own. And every rite of passage has this kind of moment where the elders look away and lead you in the wild, right? And that’s 
[00:47:00] in a sense, what my parents did is they left me in the wild. And so what they got really good at is that they are focused on themselves and building their life together and figuring out what they needed to do for themselves. And then as I needed support and help, which young adults need, there was a a really specific negotiation that would take place where I would come and ask for help.
They didn’t offer help to me. They didn’t see something falling apart in my life and offer help. They only offered help when I asked for it. I would go ask for help and they would stop the conversation and say, we’re gonna go talk and we’ll come back to you. I’ll tell you what we’ve decided, and there were so many messages in that, and this was at a time in my life where I was incapable of making a living.
I was incapable of bathing myself. I was incapable of doing laundry, buying clothes, anything. All the basic things you think somebody needs in order to be an adult. I was incapable of any of it. And their response to that was, when you need help, you ask for, and until then. You got this and that message. One of the things that I took from 
[00:48:00] that is that, oh, I’ve got this right. It’s a little bit like when a kid falls and scrapes their knee. There’s a certain parent, oh God, what’s happened? And the kid’s horrified. The kid’s like, what am I supposed to do? Right? Am I broken or is everything okay? And then there’s the parent’s like, oh, you’re okay.
Dust yourself off. Let’s go. And the kid kind of, oh, okay. And they get up and if they’re really hurt, they’ll say as much. Right. It was a similar thing that my parents did by saying, you got this. And I heard that message was like, oh, I got this. I’m gonna go do that. And so as a result, this, I got sober at 17.
At 17 years old, I was given an invitation to be a man unknowingly, right? Yeah. It wasn’t like defined, right? It was that my parents decided they needed to take care of the themselves. And that’s the most important thing. I think so much as we look back at this problem, so much of the problem seems to be its safest if the singularity is the individual.
And that’s not the truth, right? There’s a dynamic that’s taken place that supports all the dysfunction and everybody’s a part of that. And so like my invitation to any parent 
[00:49:00] is, who are you meant to be? So ultimately what I believe my work is to do, I believe everybody walks through my doors, has a message that’s been with them since they were born, about who they were meant to be. And that message is either kind of clear, not clear, but it’s, everybody recognizes that every human, I’ve got this sense I’m supposed to be this, right? I believe that’s what we’re here to do, is just to become that. Right now, the most powerful thing is somebody who is becoming that. If you see somebody who is becoming who they were meant to be, there’s something so profound about being in the presence of those people, and you might not be able to picture that.
That’s what it’s, but they’re in their own skin. The way they carry themselves, the way they carry their body. Everything is reflective of the fact that this person is focused on becoming who they were meant to be. That’s all our job. The most powerful thing you can do for your child is to do that. More important than everything else that we’re being taught to do as parents is be that person. Humans, especially drug acts who are so sensitive, pick up on 
[00:50:00] everything. That right there is such a beacon to say, this is what it looks like to become. Who you’re meant to be. You know? And so it’s like, I think for me, and I suspect every mother can relate with a son can relate to this, is that my mom’s fear was revulsive to me. Yeah. Her panic. And part of the reason why is that I need help. And so what I need to do is I need to find somebody who’s not afraid.  Yes.  Right. If you know, you see a war movie and everything starts going sideways, and there’s that one person that’s going around crazy like, ah, shit, what do we do? And then there’s the one person that’s quiet and assessing the situation and calm the person you wanna run to is not the person that’s freaking out.Yeah. 
Right. And that’s what you know, that energy is. And so much of the violence between young men and their mothers is about that. Hey, I need you to fucking pick yourself up by your bootstraps. Yeah.  I need you to pull it together and like, we gotta figure this out. 
[00:51:00] Right. Yeah. Hundred percent. So again, it’s that signal.And so my parents did a massive service to me to give me the signal that it’s time for me to be an adult. And it’s not because they meant to do that, it’s because they listened to a professional and did what that professional said. Yeah. I also know that one of the most important parts of that is that it told me in the way they negotiated with help is that they weren’t gonna, like, I couldn’t manipulate them for the things I needed. Yes. Right. And so in my scale, my cost benefit analysis, right, if there’s always an escape hatch, right. If I can always pull the escape hatch and parachute away and, and land comfortably, why not take a risk? Heck yeah. Let’s, let’s take a and out, right? Let’s do broken. Um, I’ve met very few people to get better who didn’t receive that message from their parents. Yeah. There’s no escape patch, dude, you, you’re on your own. I’m focused on me. I’ll 
[00:52:00] support you in these ways. Right? Yeah. And that support is, you know, oftentimes financial. A lot of times where we had that discussion, it was financial. And part of the reason for that is that the other needs that I had, I didn’t need to get a met from my parents at that. Right. You, part of being an adult is going out into the world and finding the people who can meet those needs for you. There’s like 11 things I wanna say about all of that. But the first is when you talk about we need to let them become who they are. And that’s the process that you get to see. I think there’s a big problem. From the parent standpoint is that many of us don’t know who we are  a hundred percent. 
We are lost. We never got to become who we wanted to be and needed to be. Mm-hmm. So we’re living in this tension of, wow, this, and this was exactly true for my son. I so hated the fact that he was not willing to bend to what I wanted him to be. He was like, oh, hell no, I’m not, 
[00:53:00] I’m not gonna be the, and I hated that about him. And it wasn’t until I worked with some the good therapist to understand that. They said to me, because you want that, you want to be what he is being right now, you wanna say, no, I’m not gonna be.
The perfect this or the whatever. So while we’re over here trying to control and morph and mold, you know, and contain our kids into what we think they should be and they’re fighting against that, we’re fighting the same battle inside ourselves. Mm-hmm. I think a lot of times, not everybody obviously, but I think a lot of times we are.
Mm-hmm. So getting, I think it is so important for us to have that professional help ourselves to start peeling away at our own onion layers. Like we gotta peel this back and find out why do I look at what he’s doing, which is admirable to be his own person, to be unique. You know, he beats to his own drumbeat and I hated that.And now I just 
[00:54:00] admire it so much in him, you know, that no one’s gonna, I  think one of the Pete about being a parent, when I was maybe like nine, me and a buddy went down to the park. ’cause that’s what we did. You know, I was a couple blocks away from our house. You know, you go to the park and you just come back when it’s kind of dark or you go a bell ring or something. You know, that was like me growing up, right? You see these memes about growing up in the seventies and the eighties, right?  Feral, feral kids. 
We were all feral, right? Yeah. And parents were like, like, shit. Yeah. Get outta the house. Like, we don’t want you here sticking the place up. So we go build this wooden ramp for bikes.
It was about as absurd as my plan to go sell drugs in Florida and first jump off the ramp. Justin just nose dives and breaks his arm, like breaks his arm in half to the point that you can make out the bone sticking through his skin, right? And so we go back, we’re like, mom, Justin hurt himself. We think it’s bad, you know?
And she looks at it, she’s like, ah, it’s not that bad, but we’ll, we’ll just take you to the doctor, you know? And she was like, oh, you know, you can see his bone sticking us.
[00:55:00] And we took him to the doctor and he got a brace and he went home. That was it. That’s the end of the story. Now I want you to picture, that’s not the end of the story today. Like you let my kid break his arm. Like what kind of parent are you? Yeah. Right. Like the whole point is we gotta keep our kids safe, right? So I think about how I grew up versus how my children and the dialogue around my children and the other parents with the kids the same age and you’re not allowed to fuck up. Yeah. Like you’ll get cast outta society, you’ll get cast out if you’re. The overseer of somebody that hurts themselves.  Mm-hmm. 
And so that’s a kind of a widespread notion now about being a pair. Now when you put that up against, oh, my kid is like, might rob you, my kid might rob you. And so like a kid, just like saying a bad word is bad and my kid might rob you. Oh god. That’s a, yeah. 
That puts us in a panic. Right? Totally. It’s a part of like what it means to be a parent, what it means to be an individual, what it means to be a 
[00:56:00] parent is changing. Everything’s changing in society. The rules are changing in society so quickly.  Yes.  So we don’t know what to do, you know? And being a parent is terrifying. So when, when my son was born for two years, you know, virtually every night I had a reoccurring dream that he drowns and dies and I didn’t save him one single time. And I would wake up in a panic every night for two years. My wife had the same dream. We’ve got a debate currently about who had the dream first, but it was intense.
So what does a parent do? You know, we’re like, oh shit, we gotta teach this kid to swim, you know? So we’re like throwing him in the pool in the YMCA when he is like two, you know, like the videos and he’s swimming. And it turns out that that dream’s got nothing to do with swimming. Like you don’t have to be a big dream analyst to figure that out, right? It was my invitation to be a parent. Of what it meant to be a parent. You know, I’m not in control of this kid’s outcome. Yeah. 
I’m a steward and that’s taught me a lot about how do I negotiate my son’s use, what do I do about that? Right. Who am I supposed to be? What’s my role in, how do I 
[00:57:00] negotiate with this? Right. And it’s challenging and luckily my wife and I and my kids, we’ve had a dialogue about these things enough. And my wife and I have very different stances, but we both give each other space to have our different stances about this. Mm-hmm. And partly I think because there’s such an honest dialogue and there’s such a difference in how we are, right.
My kids are figuring out how to have a relationship with this thing that we never learned how to do. And part of the reason for that is because we’re just talking about it. Right? Yeah. And, and it’s kind of an open dialogue and part of the reason is ’cause I’m not trying to save my kids, you know? Mm-hmm.
And that’s, I’ll tell you what, man, there’s like, I still today, my son’s 19, my daughter’s 21. I still today get that same knot in my gut. I had in that dream. So it’s totally alive for me that my desire is still there to protect my kids, but my, what I’m being asked to do as a parent is not that.  Yeah. Well, I wanna learn a little bit more about making whole, but before I ask you 
[00:58:00] that, the other thing when you went on that amazing conversation about your, a little bit, about your story and your parents is that I think as parents, when we decide to look away, or if somebody tells us, a therapist or a coach says, okay, you need to look away and focus on doing this for yourself.
We think our kids are gonna think we don’t love them, right? Like if I’m over here focused on my marriage and my own wellbeing and my own mental health and all of that, because you’re gonna figure it out. You got this. Come to me if you need help, but I believe in you. You’ve got this. We think we’re sending this message of I don’t love you. I’m gonna focus on me and what I heard you say is the message you  finish before you finish.  Yeah. Will you, will you gimme your definition of what it means for a parent to love their kid y yours, whatever that looks like. Yes. We’re using the same words. Love, meaning I’m gonna take care of you. I’m gonna watch out for you. I’m gonna help you solve your problems because that’s the message that we’ve gotten 
[00:59:00] as you talk about this messed up weird sense of parenting, is that we have to do all the things for them and that equates to love. Mm-hmm. And I don’t know where that happened. What’s your definition of love in your son today?Letting him run his life and getting the heck out of the way. Because why is that love? ’cause he does it so much better on his own. Then what I would do, sorry Matt, I interrupted. Now you can finish your question. Yeah, no, no, no. I love that. So I just, I’m so glad that you said that because it gives us permission as parents to take the focus off of trying to solve all their problems and trying to step in and trying to rearrange their life and trying and have the confidence.
And it’s so funny ’cause I’ll hear mom say, oh my gosh, my kid’s so smart and they’re so this and that, and in the next breath, but I have to do this and I have to do that and I have to solve this problem. And it’s like, but those two things, those aren’t, they don’t work.  No. And so when you said, what I heard when my parents said, we’re gonna save our marriage, do your thing, 
[01:00:00] you got, this is so helpful to know that the message can be very positive and empowering if we’re willing to let them figure it out.
I think that the challenge, the panic, you know, I had this, I believe that there’s two things that make decisions for us. One is instinct and the other is mythology. That’s how we inform what’s safe and what’s not safe. Mm-hmm. And so one of the things I’ve been thinking about is the girl who’s got a stain on a prom dress and just loses the plot, has a panic attack.
It freaks out like, what’s that about? Right. And the message is, if you don’t show up into the community in the right way, you’ll get discarded. And the reason why that’s that message is deadly is that we’re pack animals. Yeah. You can’t survive alone. And so at a very instinctual level, these stories we have about what it means to stay a part of society, our life and death.Mm-hmm. 
That’s how they get internalized in our brain. Right. So our brain gets this message, this is safe, or this is not safe. And then we internalize that experience of, if I don’t do this right, I’m gonna get 
[01:01:00] cast out. And so as with the advent, I think in particular social media, but I think this has always been present for parents, is when there’s more messaging about how you have to be or you’ll be discarded, it puts us into a survival instinct around parenting.
And being in a survival instinct is very exhausting. And we don’t use our highest minds. And at the moment we start asking the right questions about what does it mean to be a parent and why the whole dialogue changes, you know? And so just saying it out loud, you know, there’s so many movies, you know, where the person that’s in the panic doing everything for the person, like it’s, when it’s shown hyperbolically, that person looks crazy.Yes. 
Yeah. It’s very easy when we say that out loud, what is my job as a parent to become that? Me? But if we say, what does it mean for a boy to become a man, that’s a different conversation. And 
Oh yeah. One of the things we know about everybody is that everybody 
[01:02:00] has to suffer. You don’t grow without suffering.Right. And so if we look closely at what the model of being a parent is, in today’s world, it’s about saving our kids from suffering. Yet we know every success story. A success story is 10 chapters long. Nine chapters are about failure. Yes. The 10 chapters about success. Yes. So we’re actually robbing and handicapping our kids from success at the point that we’re taking away their right to suffer. Yes. 
I think the other thing, one of the things that is really important to say is that we’re all gonna die. We’re all gonna die, and your kid might die. And that is unavoidable. There’s nothing you’ll do as a parent that will keep your child from dying. And there’s nothing as a parent you can do that will keep your kid from suffering. And those are facts, undeniable facts. Mm-hmm. 
And so part of the job of being a parent, this was part of the message in that dream, is like I don’t get a say of when my kids’ time is on. Wow. The 
[01:03:00] only thing I have to say about is what happens while they’re here. And so who do I want to be when my kid’s not dead? Yeah,  right. If, if what I’m trying to do is prevent what is an inevitability? I miss this moment. Right? I miss this moment. So we have a memorial wall here from all my friends and other colleagues who are dead parents of these people come here frequently, you know, and see them and still will shed tears, you know?
Mm. The guy that was the earliest on that was probably 2 0 9 and their parents are still wrecked by this, right? Yeah. You don’t recover from that fully, but what every one of the parents of people on that wall would give to have the struggle that any parent that’s listening to this is in the midst stuff is everything.Mm-hmm. 
They would get everything to be in the crisis that you’re in right now. And what they would give that for is for the opportunity to say some things that are really kind of like easy to say. Like, I love you. I see you. 
[01:04:00] They would take that opportunity to ask questions about who their kid is. What their kid needs, and, and I don’t think it’s a terribly difficult exercise to put yourself in the shoes of somebody who’s lost a child. Right. 
And really ease into that and then consider, what would I want? Were my kid not here. And so rather than this exercise to prevent my kid from dying, the exercise of what do I do before that happens? It generates a whole different list of questions. Yeah. Whole different list of curiosities. And if anything, this meditation on the fact that your kid’s gonna die breeds so much more opportunity and freedom.
And I think our panic to prevent that from happening just robs us of what is. Amazing, amazing enrich in life. And I guarantee you, all the parents who have lost children, like none of them deserve that. You know, like none of us deserve that. But it’s a fact and there’s no reason necessarily why it happened to them and not me. You know, like the number of times where I’ve faced death in hindsight is like, there’s no reason why my 
[01:05:00] parents have me alive today and their grandchildren and one of any one of these guys who passed away before having children that their parents don’t, you know?  No, it’s so senseless. It’s just there’s no, but it’s a fact.
Yeah, totally. Totally. Tell us a little bit about the people that work in your program. Who is it for? Who is it not for? So, and we’ll obviously put links in the show notes to everything, but just give us an idea of who’s a good fit, when’s the right time so that people have an understanding of that for making whole.
So the only requirement to be here is. That A, you don’t wanna have sex with men. So people ask me this a lot. Females allowed, and the the general answer is no. But if a woman was genuinely unattracted to men, I would absolutely consider her. Okay. Because I don’t want people having sex in the shop. Yeah. That complicates when men and women get together, if early recovery, they have sex and it doesn’t make sense. Yes. And cost you much anyway. It’s 
[01:06:00] generally speaking, it’s men. We’ve had men here as young as 17 and as old as 64. Wow. I do everything I can to keep a diverse age here. One of the things that happens when a bunch of 20 somethings get together, I think this is a huge problem with treatment, is that it creates this monocrop where the social rewards and hierarchy is kind of, it matches the maturity of whoever’s there, right?
Mm-hmm. And so if it’s a bunch of 20 something year olds, the things that they identify and relate about has this self-fulfilling prophecy about it. Mm-hmm. One of the things we’ve been, we have a family style meal for lunch every day, and we’ve had as many as 10 apprentices and as few as two at any given time and, and staff.
So you know, anywhere from five to 15 people sitting at lunch. The number of times since 2018 where the conversation has been about drug use, I can probably count on my hands. And there’s not a rule that You can’t talk about that. Yeah. It’s that what happens when you get into a group of people where everybody has a different. Experience is you have to find the common ground in that sort of the number of times where I’ve 
[01:07:00] been in, around sober living or treatment centers where everybody’s the same age, that’s like the easiest thing to talk about. Mm-hmm.  So anyway, it’s an age range. It’s a big age range. I’m agnostic about most things when it comes to somebody’s orientation of recovery.
So like I don’t require much what I require of everybody. And there’s no rules here. There’s not a rule book. The only rule is that you act like a man. And obviously people dunno how to do that when they get here. But that’s the suggestion. And it turns out, if you say that, if put a man and a group of men and say, act like a man. It turns out they all. Figure out a way.  They figure it out. 
It’s like, you know, and they look at what other people do and they, you know, typically behave accordingly. So the only requirement is somebody wants to be here and that they’re willing to ask the questions about who they’re meant to be. Mm. And so we have people that have sort of a traditional sort of treatment skeleton around them, whether that be therapists, sober living, AA meetings, or NA meetings or whatever. And then we have other people that have a wholly different skeleton around them. And, 
[01:08:00] and I’m agnostic about which one of those they’re provided the role that all those things serve in your life. Those roles are for a reason. Right. The suggestion to go to a 12 step meeting is for a reason. And, and if somebody says, I don’t wanna go to 12 step meeting, I don’t like 12 step meetings, I, I don’t care.
A couple of things that come through 12 steps. One of them is a directive about work, personal work you need to do. One of them is a social network and one of them is a level of rhythm and accountability in your life. Right. So if you don’t wanna do that, that’s fine. But those things are necessities in your life. Where are they coming from?  Mm-hmm. Just a question. Mm-hmm. 
I find that a lot of people that get here are treatment fatigue. The reason why that’s the case is because I’m not easy to find on the internet. I don’t pay a hundred thousand dollars a month to be at the top of Google. Like most people that are at the top of Google have to do.
So as a result, people find me. ’cause they’re outta options and they’ve done it too many times and their kids don’t wanna go to treatment anymore. So I’m fine with somebody who’s treatment fatigued. I was treatment fatigued. I get it. We also have people that have never had treatment experience 
[01:09:00] before. Come here. Those aren’t the requisites necessarily. Right? We’ve had plenty of people that have been duly diagnosed. You know, again, there have been some complicated cases. You know, one of the 33 guys that I mentioned that I wouldn’t classify as doing well, there was a real conversation with his family and his treatment team at the beginning about who is this guy and what can we do for him?
And there was conclusions come amongst all of us. And I think that that’s one of the things. We try to bring as a dialogue with anybody that wants to have it, and just an honest dialogue about how to participate in this journey of recovery. So a typical thing is people will come to this town and land in sober living ’cause that’s the easiest place to land and get a community and get a house and get a rhythm so that they come here every day. Right? Right.  And then they follow whatever rules that are, or I’m agnostic about what sober living you go to, right. 
There are guys who don’t live in sober living that come here, but what it always is. And this is true. Everything that we do is this conversation about what are we trying to accomplish, right?
[01:10:00]  Mm. So I don’t have a rule structure based on a methodology that I believe is gonna make everybody better. And in fact, I don’t think methodologies make people better. I think practitioners get people better, and I think practitioners need methodologies to use to help people get better. I think that’s one of the things that’s broken about treatment.
I think people confuse methodology with efficacy. I don’t think it’s true. I think practitioners is what gets people better. So I’m willing to be, use whatever method is necessary. The conversation needs to be about who are you meant to be? What I know is that people who become, who they were meant to be, they don’t have to return to addiction ’cause they got better solutions in their life, right?
And so that’s what the entire conversation’s gonna be about. So people say, do I need to be sober? You know, we’ve had people here who maybe they don’t identify drugs as their principal problem, right? I’m anxious, I got anxious attachment or whatever, will this fit? And, but you know, I can get high and not, it’s not a big deal or whatever.
And my suggestion to them, and this is a typical time kind of dialogue, is that when you’re here you respect the other people who 
[01:11:00] are here. And if you walk into a room where everybody is negotiating what it means to be sober, you show up. So, and for the period of time you’re here, you live as the, just like you would if you’re in a Buddhist community and you say, well I don’t need to wear those. Monk outfits, right? Like, no, when you’re here, you do that. 
Yeah. And what you’ll find out real quickly, if you’ve got an issue with that, perhaps this drugs aren’t, my problem is not a truthful thing, and so that’s what we’re gonna uncover. We’re gonna have a conversation, right? Right. If somebody’s curious, they call me up and then we just have a conversation.
What everybody’s case is a series of, more often than not straightforward problems that don’t always have easy solutions, but there’s always a simple solution when you look at all that problem, all the set of problems in progression and talk about them individually. Right? Yeah. And so that’s what we do.
That’s the method that I’ll use with anybody that’s here is. Let’s talk about what the problem is, you know, for the family, for the individual, and then we’re gonna figure out how to meet that problem. And the way it looks on a day-to-day basis is that we 
[01:12:00] build furniture. That’s what we do. We build very nice furniture. I’ve been doing this for a long time. The other master craftsmen here are people with legitimate cvs who do high-end work. And the work that we produce is magazine quality work. We’ve been featured in lots of magazines. We have work. It’s literally all over the world and we continue to basically build very nice things.
And so guys that are coming here that don’t know how to read a tape measure in two weeks, we’re gonna be driving to West Palm Beach to put like to upfit an entire house that’s like, got a $800,000 TV that comes out of the ground. So that’s the kind, that’s the work that we’re doing. It’s expensive work.
It’s nice work and it’s complicated work. It’s work that stretches me. I fail regularly and guys get to see that. So it’s one thing to tell somebody to fail. It’s another thing. Guys will absolutely see me and every other staff member here fail and they get to see what happens. Yeah. It’s like the kid that scraped their knee, that looks up when, when I scrape my knee, they’re gonna look at me and 
[01:13:00] say, you know, how did Jeremy behave about that? And, and they’re gonna see the truth. You know, I’m not manufacturing. I’m, you know, I’m gonna, I’m gonna be truthful about what that is, and they get to decide what it is they wanna do with that. And so that’s true of like, if I fail and I’m a child about it, they’re gonna see that. And that’s one of the things I trust about people here.
I’m not pretending. Perfection. Right. If I behave like a child, what I trust is that everybody here sees I behave like a child. And equally true, if I fail and I behave like somebody that believes there’s opportunities and failure, then they’re gonna see that and they’re gonna, more often than not, that’s a much more attractive path to take in life. If failure is not something to be afraid of, instead it’s an opportunity to succeed. Mm-hmm. 
And if they see that, that’s true for me, it’s not something that I’m telling them from, you know, a PowerPoint presentation. Yeah. They actually see that I’ve got risk and money on the line and reputation on the line, and I’ve broken something and what do I do with it? And they see my response to that be that I recognize that as an opportunity, then they’re gonna, they’re gonna carry that with them for the rest of their 
[01:14:00] lives. Amazing. Well, I would say, going back to the very first thing that you said, there’s a story of a person, a guide, or a mentor in people’s. Success and I have a feeling that in many people’s stories, your name or making whole would be in that slot just based on what we’ve talked about.
It’s really incredible and I appreciate the depth of the conversation to really understand why these young people are continuing to struggle despite many, many, many treatment rounds. And I’m just so glad to know that there is something different and I can’t thank you enough for the conversation. Thank you.
Yeah, we’re gonna put links to your website in there and it’s really incredible. You can read the story of the Owl. Everybody go look for an owl now at the end. As the rest of your day, don’t show up. It’s a fun story. Yes. Well, thank you Jeremy. I just appreciate it so, so much. Thank you. Okay, my friend. If you want the transcript or the show 
[01:15:00] notes and resources from this episode, just go to our website, hope Stream community.org, and click podcast.That’ll take you to all things podcast related. We even have a start here playlist that we created, so if you’re new here, be sure to check that out. Also, if you’re feeling anxious and confused about how to approach your child’s substance use, we have got a free ebook for you. It’s called Worried Sick, A Compassionate Guide for Parents of Teens and Young Adults Misusing Drugs and Alcohol.
It’ll introduce you to ways that you can build connection and relationship with your child versus distancing and letting them hit rock bottom. It is a game changer and it’s totally free. Just go to Hope Stream community.org/worried to download that. You are amazing, my friend. You are such an elite level parent. It is an honor to be here with you, and please know you’re not doing this alone. You’ve got 
[01:16:00] this tribe and you will be okay sending all my love and light and I will meet you right back here next week.