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Is you or someone you love struggling with getting into a detox or rehab for alcohol use? Have you felt like you’ve been getting the run around? Does it seem like people who are entering treatment for other substances have an easier time getting in? Not to go too conspiracy theory on you, but we have Charlie on to talk about the problems people face when trying to gain access to treatment for alcohol use disorder. Spoiler alert: it all comes down to profit, money, and capitalism. Listen in and share your thoughts and experiences with us.
How to find us and join the conversation:
Email: RecoverySortOf@gmail.com
Episodes mentioned:
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Is you or someone you love struggling with getting into a detox or rehab for alcohol use? Have you felt like you’ve been getting the run around? Does it seem like people who are entering treatment for other substances have an easier time getting in? Not to go too conspiracy theory on you, but we have Charlie on to talk about the problems people face when trying to gain access to treatment for alcohol use disorder. Spoiler alert: it all comes down to profit, money, and capitalism. Listen in and share your thoughts and experiences with us.
How to find us and join the conversation:
Email: RecoverySortOf@gmail.com
Episodes mentioned:
Transcript:
recovery sort of is a podcast where we discuss recovery topics from the perspective of people living in long-term recovery this podcast does not intend to represent the views of any particular group organization or Fellowship the attitudes expressed are solely the opinion of its contributors be advised there may be strong language or topics of an adult nature
welcome back it’s recovery sort of I am Jason a guy who has never been to treatment for alcohol and I’m Billy I’m a person in long-term recovery I’m Jenny I’m also a person in long-term recovery and I’m Charlie I think I’m a recovered person welcome Charlie oh hi the difference in terminology I love it we won’t uh we won’t waste the whole episode talking about that though so we’re going to talk about treatment for alcoholism and maybe more specifically uh why that seems more difficult in 2022 to find as opposed to treatment for you know an opioid uh use disorder so Charlie why don’t you just take five to eight minutes tell us about yourself tell us about how you got here tell us why you’re here today to talk about alcohol treatment sure hey I’m Charlie B if saying this on film you can see that I’m old um I have been involved either directly or peripherally in drug treatments since it was invented in about 1984. uh that’s when people realize they could make money off of it and at that time I was a union officer and nobody wanted to get involved in that stuff so they said Gerhard take care of this so from the days of the corner store rehab uh through AAA and all that kind of stuff I’ve been involved at one level or another since 84. and I’m an alcoholic uh I’ve started with AAA that did AA really usually hated it it was probably one of the biggest obstacles of getting sober that I had to overcome and um my involvement with voices uh basically uh started somebody asked me to go to a fundraiser and I’m I’m expecting like these 12 people and we get there and there’s like 312 people and when I asked what do you guys do because I have had non-profits of my own and I’ve worked for a lot of non-profits and labor unions are technically non-profits yada yada and I don’t have a lot of faith in non-profits so when I asked what do you do here it is somebody said basically we give money to people and I thought damn that’s what I want to hear that they put the rubber on the road um and and I have been involved and impressed ever since then so what brings what brings me here today is I honey bunny is my girlfriend and yes all guys have girlfriends uh and she’s an active alcoholic and she has wants to quit you know everybody knows how that works and she’s done it a million times we all know how that works I could not think of a better place to get help than voices so when she said that’s enough of this um yeah I need help I need treatment and we’ve both done 12-step programs we we on a personal level you just they don’t work for us so what we knew she needed was detox we tried outpatient detox uh and the results of that were basically that yeah she got through it it’s yeah four or five days and really feeling shitty and then this was um you know drug assisted medically assisted and it also doesn’t involve the commitment if you’re if um that that in inpatient treatment involves it makes it you go in it makes an impression in your brain um something’s different I’m doing something different and when you come out you can think clearer so we knew she needed an Inpatient Detox and we came up here and I know most of the people here and I have a lot of respect for them and we came up here said okay we need she’s on Medicare we need a detox well the only place they could find at the moment and these issues change moment to moment but the only place they could find then was Sun Delaware I don’t know if you guys want to hear hard stories or you just want to go through are you interested in Horror Story let me put it this way it was a true two-day Horror Story resulting in nothing but gross incompetence puking in trash cans and then being told at the end of two days of [ ] that oh I’m sorry our doctor says that she can’t come in because she’s too old and during that two days we watched obvious junkies I’m going to say junkie because I don’t know what the guys are on this guy this guy was all peppered up so he yeah we’ll call him Ralph and uh he comes in flops there hey Ralph detox here okay Ralph goes in gets whatever he needs I assume because he’s obviously a frequent fire meanwhile we have spent two days throwing up and waiting for her to help and the end of the two days we’re told and no it’s missed two and a half hour drive each way too that matters and at the end of the two days she got nothing except have a nice trip drive careful uh and that was a recommendation that we got from voices which I can’t you know I couldn’t think of a better place to get a recommendation one to two later we come back try it again no wait I’m gonna stop you stop me so why wouldn’t they take her oh that’s a whole other story about what they said was she’s too old now is that legal yeah can I so for people that don’t know um alcohol withdrawal is one of the few withdrawals that can literally kill you so it a lot of times requires like medical supervision you know because it can be incredibly dangerous if you’re a long-term alcoholic I don’t know if they still use the firm fourth stage or whatever the stages are anymore but yeah if you’re a long-term alcoholic and you’ve been drinking for a lot of years that can be a fatal it’s one of the few actually withdrawals that’s fatal I mean even with you know I withdrew from from heroin that didn’t kill me I laid on a couch for a couple days felt like [ ] for a week you know I wanted to kill myself probably but I survived it and I didn’t have to worry about literal death um so alcohol does should be more medically supervised if you’re exactly and in my years AAA and just generally bouncing around in the drug treatment uh Community I have had a number of people I don’t know anybody who died from it from detoxing but I’ve had a number of people who got in terrible terrible condition because they tried to do it at home they tried to do it without assistance and uh so yeah it’s a it’s a medical I uh if it can be a medical emergency and it certainly is a serious medical condition alcohol withdrawal so I flipped out there in the process and you know the doctor says she can’t come in let me the doctor oh he’s remote you can’t talk to the doctor who are you well I’m staff and I’m yelling at yourself you know and can you explain that part about the remote doctor thing did you guys know about this like oh this is common okay yeah I can certainly explain it that this also covers hospitals they do the same thing for all admissions okay um well I’m not a hospital guy but I know that they do this for many and many hospitals do it for all and I’ve been bounced out on my ear too of hospitals you don’t have an on-site doctor because you got to pay that dude so instead you pick a doctor and I’m not I I’m prepared to say they’re all a bunch of quacks but you know there’s probably a good one I sound like uh the last orange president talking about Mexicans but at any rate you want the cheapest possible way to go on everything so you hire a doctor and that doctor consults online you and I’ve seen this happen in hospitals where the doctor’s sitting here and a patient sitting there when the doctor just doesn’t even look at the patient just diagnosis and treats by computer you hire the cheapest thing you can get I worked for one organization a recovery organization uh and they had a strange Doctor Who had some strange problems and I said why do you guys bring this bozo up here and the answer I got was because he’s the only one who will come here for what we’re willing to pay now that’s what I call careful research from an economic perspective at any rate so they hire people who they don’t necessarily even know or have any relationship with they type a report and I watched I’ve seen the reports the reports are typed they’re worded defensively so that you can’t take Israel this report that they wrote and call back later and sue them hospitals do that individual doctors do that um don’t let me ramble that’s why they have the off-site Doctors Hospitals have what is known as hospitalists however the hospitalists don’t work in a hospital okay they are part of a separate group I had somebody I was admitting and this was this was sort of not a drug issue and who admitted her because the thing was bonkers the whole situation was weird who admitted here oh well I’m sure it was a hospitalist oh who’s the hospital oh we wouldn’t know well can I talk to the hospitals oh the hospital is just remote so there are little practices out there that just admit people you used to be your family physician admitted you but they don’t do that anymore now you go to hospitals to admit you and he makes decisions based on whatever the hospital itself tells him so that’s the deal with the remote doctors and it’s a terrible deal having a doctor on site would have been more beneficial to your girlfriend oh absolutely well no she was she was an active withdrawal I mean she’s shaking and puking um and uh yeah so this remote doctor business they couldn’t see that and they wouldn’t it was not there was a it depended entirely on what the staff that I might add I don’t like the name names but this is son Delaware it’s totally incompetent Steph we spent out of that two days that we were down there we came back down and back we spent all but maybe an hour and a half all by ourselves looking for staff trying to find out what’s going on so I asked the nurse they sent the nurse are you a nurse yes are you a registered nurse yes does this look like alcohol withdrawal oh yes and would you consider that to be a medical problem yes and is this a medical facility yes uh well then she needs help doesn’t she oh yes she does well where shall we go for that I don’t know that’s the response we got and did it just seem like they weren’t educated in alcohol these are for-profit businesses okay if I get on my socialist thing you shut me up these are for profit businesses and the the economic model for a business today used to be make a profit now it is maximize profit okay so you want the cheapest possible task which in this case they have chosen with uh alcohol and drug treatment and the results of it are really of no uh no interest they don’t want liability uh so we won’t because an alcoholic could die here and that could be if iffy uh we’d really rather not treat alcoholics the fact that insurance companies reimburse psychiatric care which is what we call alcohol withdrawal and and acute which are always physical it’s not psychiatric it’s physical and um about 20 percent of what they would pay for a normal medical procedure of the same intensity and so they really don’t want people with insurance now this is also true of the local hospitals uh it is true of Christiana Care which owns most everything it is true of Union I got thrown out years ago it’s really not relevant because it was so long they refused me treatment at um Upper Chesapeake and it’s not profitable bottom line alcoholics aren’t profitable you can take your average cookie and if I drunks that make that makes it even alcohol drunk it’s wrong you can take your average stick them in a bed give them whatever you want to give them the ease the paint a little bit and put them to shut them up and you don’t really have to worry about that person you don’t need to have competent medical staff on site I have not researched and these are freestanding clinics that I’m talking about and I haven’t researched the regulations on those um the hospitals that I just mentioned in general will not take a detox person they will do go to any length they uh to avoid actually admitting them they they have what they call discharge protocols that they wrote Because the uh the state saw the need for regulations today well you write down what what you want and we’ll implement it so they have a discharge protocol that basically allows them to stabilize you I mean that could mean giving you a Xanax literally and stabilize you they give you a pamphlet and out the door you go if you go in and a lot of people will say they’re suicidal because they will always take a person who claims suicidal ideation what you get for that you get locked up in a lockdown unit with a bunch of other crazy people sorry excuse me crazy people but that’s the way it is um and you get your shoelaces lost and if they find out while you’re in there that you are withdrawing from a drug they decided suddenly that whoa wait a minute this person isn’t suicidal and out the door you go yeah and when I first got into recovery that was the way that you got people into treatment if it was to to say they were suicidal and then hopefully they would get well but you don’t get treatment not anymore yeah no I mean
I have a pinch offer hanging around with Disturbed people I suppose but that’s how we met yeah yeah now that you mention it they lock you up they drug you mildly they take away your shoelaces and that’s it and you will see a psychi that’s today’s treatment yeah today it’s yeah very few people who go I always call it the sixth floor because the places are down the head psych units were always they were always on the sixth floor but all you do is sit around you don’t get any treatment you once again get maybe maybe stabilized now there is a population that uh definitely needs that for openers and then we’ll go on through the system for mental health care or treatment whatever they need I’m not saying they don’t do anything but they don’t do much so that’s what you get if you’re suicidal and also if you are if you go in that way you are basically waving your right to check out at will yeah okay 48 hours I think it used to be it used to be 48 hours I think they could yeah and I’m not sure where the hours and I’m not legally positive that what I’m saying is correct but yes once you say you’re suicidal you’re no longer competent therefore you can’t check out AMA that’s the state of of treatment right now um they are what has happened to both times we’ve tried it with honey bunny is that they have lied in our faces they have lied to voices and we have jumped through all the first time it was very heavily assisted by Voices That was on Delaware and uh we did they did everything they could do we did everything you know it was all pre-arranged blah blah blah sorry come back later hospitals will no longer treat people for withdrawal so as a result of that those people have to go to these freestanding clinics now when we go to the freestanding clinics we have Ralph the skateboarder who I told you about who walks in flops on the sofa walks right through the door okay so the next shot was Meadowood because they took at that time they stopped at Tennessee but at that time which was a couple months ago uh they took Medicare so we got there bright and early everything’s cool they made us wait on the porch you all have to wait outside because we’re still on coven procedures well it sounded like [ ] it was [ ] but okay we might have challenged that so we sit outside it’s hot summer today we’re on a porch okay for five and a half hours um while we’re on the porch as the day wears on The Walking Dead come up the sidewalk I mean these guys were wet and clearly you can tell a junkie from an alcoholic from a distance at least I can and so yeah ten maybe eight ten people something like that come on come walking up and sit on the porch and we were the first ones there so we’re there’s watching these guys come in there was a phone for admittance pick up the phone the phone doesn’t work okay you knock on the door you don’t get an answer eventually I realized what was going on I had a camera up there and they were monitoring who sat down and one by one by one by one over the course of like five and a half hours they took all of the addicts in everybody came out they picked up their paperwork they stuck a Q-Tip up their nose and said okay and you go we sat and they even came out and looked for one guy he he got bored and went and sat in his car and they even came out from one guy and looked in all the cars to take him in while we’re still sitting there and uh at the end of the our patients I asked for our oh I think I said you know we’re not sitting here anymore and we’d like our cards back and they said well what we can do is she can go sit inside in the lobby you can leave and we’ll figure out what we’re going to do with her uh that you’re not going to I’m not going to leave somebody under those conditions you know uh we’ll figure out what we’re going to do with her sorry so we decided to leave we couldn’t get our cards back and that that’s a whole other story but they would not give respect her insurance cards and her Medicare card and finally she found the uh staff member they all have red shirts so she found a staff member going into work and she said would you please I when I called for the cards they hung up on me uh the admissions did and um second time I don’t blame him because I thought well you’re gonna have to call the cops in a minute we can do that click that guy who she flagged down went in and got her cars and gave us the cards and we went home now the biggest this despite all the [ ] that just put us through the biggest problem is that what would happen if a to you to your standard person looking for treatment who really doesn’t want to go into treatment anyway hardly anybody is all excited about it and if you got that treatment twice once if you got that treatment once would you come back to voices they’re not going to separate they’re saying that you got a bunch of line jerks on the one end okay it is a major discouragement for anybody who seeks alcohol treatment and it is system-wide and I and you we did a voices did not touched something I didn’t have anything to do with it I just listened but they did an excellent webinar uh based on a report from the legal action center which is a great big legal action center National outfit and on exactly this subject so what one of the things that does is I think we had 4 attendees or something like that I’m not sure but it ain’t just me thinking this okay the the they documented each state uh who does the treatments who will do detox and what it’s like what are the state laws in detail and that was directed at hospitals that was not directed at the at freestanding clinics but that problem is endemic it’s not a local thing it’s not my imagination and if you happen to be a family member trying to get Dad into detox you’re just going to assume that that’s the way it is it’s abusive to say the least what I was what I want to mention is and I’ve mentioned it I’m repeating it okay while we were sitting on a porch and the junkies are going Marching In I suddenly realize that they have a camera out there and they’re looking at who they decide to admit now why would you have that kind of prejudice is it just because we hate alcoholics now junkies are cheaper to treat and by and large a lot of them at any rate are on Medicaid not Medicare Medicaid which pays very well and is very dependable so what they are looking for is addicts non-alcoholic addicts to other things who are on Medicaid that’s the right at this moment that is the most profitable Bunch now Meadowood just recently since we were there just I’m told by people here voices just stop taking any mayor on insurance if you’ve got insurance in Maryland that you can’t get in there uh the reason for that would be that Maryland has somewhere in their laws Maryland is fairly well regulated compared to other states the medical kind of things and they found something in Maryland law that required them to to since this is all guesswork that the Maryland law that required them to perform a service that they didn’t want to perform so that you said to hell with it and uh we don’t take their own insurance anymore this is a matter to the whole issue in the hospitals and the freestanding clinics that I’ve been exposed to okay the the whole issue is we have beds we want to fill them as profitably as we can which is why when you call up and say do you treat do you do you do alcohol withdrawal oh yes sir and blah blah blah uh and you go through we jump through the Hoops do everything you’re told to do confirm reconfirm show up and then you know won’t let you in there are problems that I’m not I’m just talking to people around here they’ll do anything to get rid of you we can’t treat her her blood pressure is too high well we we can’t treat him he’s got COPD pick one they’ll dump your ass out for whatever reason you’re untreatable sorry and it’s all about how much money can we make on a bed the reason that they don’t sell you no we don’t do alcohol withdrawal is because they might have a vacant bed so if they got to bed that they haven’t been able to fill that day they’d rather fill it with an alcoholic than than have it go empty so that’s why they run you all over hell’s half acre that’s not all I got but that’s enough I think that’s a start just a just a point of clarification you know often in the opioid recovery Community there we hear this backlash of like why are we given free needles out for harm reduction when people with diabetes can’t you know have to pay so much for their needles or whatever and I think the argument has been for a long time let’s take the people who are getting the free needles and the treatment they deserve out of it why aren’t people with diabetes also getting free needles is really the question and I just don’t want this to come across as like bashing of people who are struggling with substance use disorder in any way shape or form like it’s not it’s not a oh well they’re preferring these people so now we hate them because they’re getting treatment it’s like oh okay well they can access treatment why can’t we also right we we don’t want to like demonize a group who is getting some services at this moment um so I just wanted to make sure that was point of clarification good point but that was never my intention what um I was never big on saving alcoholics I was never big on saving drug addicts because I take was the same as the rest of the world I drink this [ ] I buy the [ ] you know uh why is it your job to take care of me but I changed that when I got when I became familiar with voices because what the thing that impressed me the most is how far the founders and I know I’m just saying Founders because I don’t know anybody currently I don’t know their history at all that kind of stuff but every time they have a seminar training everybody tells you the people who do the training generally end up telling you their story a little bit how far they have come from where they were to where they are um I got a lifetime of seminars and trainings and it goes on forever the guys here are the best that I’ve ever seen on any subject and I looked at that and I thought these people have become really really good Educators trainers people okay and where they’re telling me where they were five years ago or three years ago I changed my mind as far as as far as uh do these lives have value um so I got nothing against addicts I got nothing against Alcoholics when they do nasty things I don’t like the nasty things and I will certainly call them out on it so the Prejudice that you’re trying to address is not just the prejudice against Alcoholics versus addicts both of them are addictions um it’s the prejudice against Mental Health and I dealt with this on a national level for years and there is why would you only pay 20 for a bed in an alcohol detox but if that was the ICU you you paid a whole thing or you’ll pay whatever your contract costs why would you pay why would you reimburse at a lower level um they have always done that with mental health issues and for things like talk therapy where you’re going to see a psychologist every week because because of your mommy issues I can understand limiting that because it’ll go on forever a lot of people don’t have anybody to talk to so they’ll talk on your dime forever but it’s a prejudice against mental health issues are mental it’s against mental health okay they people are crazy and uh that existed since I got involved in 83 was when I first got involved in medical insurance that has existed since then and it was in full bloom and it’s just getting bloomier and the reason it’s getting bloomier is because largely because of the the opioid situation and because alcoholism is not as accepted as it used to be no big deal if you came to work drunk in in industrial Baltimore you know uh nobody gave a damn then somebody decided they could Mark they could Market employee assistance and that way you wouldn’t have to work worry about Fred Falling on the steel at Sparrow’s Point and uh it became a marketable product it was complete [ ] but a lot of people made a lot of money on it and now you have that same Prejudice that is applied to people who use other substances applied to alcoholics now if you come to work drunk you’re getting sent home 30 years ago I mean if you came if you were a crane operator who could wipe out everything on the ground and came to work drunken years ago okay generally you know here leave your bottle down here to you yeah to lunchtime and and so the acceptance acceptance social acceptance or actually the industrial or employment uh acceptance of alcoholism has changed so you have a much larger pot you got alcoholics and you have a certainly a whole lot hell of a lot more people with other substance problems and it has become more expensive I wonder if part of the problem or maybe would where this stems from is the fact that we’re such a reactive Society instead of a proactive Society because you know we’re not giving people the things they need we were talking about the the Mommy and Me episode you know and on there I’m just thinking through we we have the research to show the importance in the of the first two years of a child’s life like the huge importance and not that the rest of it doesn’t matter or it doesn’t impact them but we’re seeing the research that shows the first two years and really the first two months and it’s like we have the opportunity to provide services to all moms not just moms in recovery why don’t we just Finance them and support them for two years with all kinds of services about how to make healthy food and how to be educated and how to parent better and you know what what we know so we have the we have the ability to know what needs to be invested up front and yet instead what we do is just as a society we react to everything so you know maybe 30 years ago it was probably equally difficult to get in for alcohol or heroin or fentanyl or any opiate but now we have all this grant funding that is supporting people getting in for opiates which is great because we need it and yet when we are reactive Society we’re reacting to like the the tragedy in front of us which is skipping over the other tragedies that are also in front of us but not making as huge of an impact right like I mean alcohol deaths people dying from alcohol it’s way up there and yet we don’t have the same response because it’s more like oh this is all happening at once and it’s new for opioids we got to do something now and I guess just if we were more proactive society that had whatever service you needed available to whoever needed it that would be much easier yeah and then who would make the profit this episode has been brought to you in part by Voices of Hope Inc a non-profit recovery organization made up of people in recovery family members and allies together members strive to protect the Dignity of those that use drugs and those in recovery by advocating for treatment harm reduction and support resources and mentoring please visit us at
www.voicesofhopemaryland.org and consider donating to our calls
thank you yeah and that was a thing I recently heard about just the the healthcare system in general being being broke and I won’t take up too much time with this but now it’s all funded through insurance so it’s like the insurance at the top almost dictates
the care that’s coming down later so if things aren’t insurance reimbursable if they aren’t you know something the insurance is going to company are going to cover the doctors aren’t even recommended or telling people about it and not only that they aren’t invested in your long-term health care because most people turn over their insurance often so it’s likely you’re going to turn over your insurance or get a different insurance provider in the next five to six years so they figure if they can just get you through this next couple years and kick the can down the road there’s no preventative care there’s no long-term concern for your health or none of that there’s not right so is anyone doing alcohol detox well or is anybody out there providing a decent service ever did okay in what the hell yeah about 14 years ago or so 2009 2008 I went into GBMC I was so swapped for the five days of I was in a lockdown unit I cannot say I was treated well but I cannot say I was treated badly they checked me for a stroke because I couldn’t talk right and kept me I had Librium legs it took me two weeks to before I went to Ashley afterwards and it took me two weeks before I could get around without a walk or just from Librium legs but uh that was a unfortunate unpleasant experience but I can’t say I was mistreated I can’t say that I was humiliated um I had to ask for a mattress uh because all they had was a bolted down recliner but I live with that okay nobody called me any names nobody made me sit in the heat nobody made me drive five hours one way just to tell me that you’re back and forth to just to tell me that I can’t come in um that was my experience people I have been close enough to this is prior this has ended maybe 2014 2050. I did not have bad experiences in the hospital at detox but the the bad experiences that I’m seeing now because I don’t get into the detox right that nobody goes uh it is the lines that they go to to keep you out and I think we all know how much energy goes into making the decision to get Charlie sober making the decision to get into so at least don’t at least you stop [ ] in the bed it’s a big deal for most people they don’t do this every day it’s not it’s not like frequent flyers uh they get one or two chances to try to get well and when you take those chances and try to get well and you are abused there’s no other term I’m sorry and you are abused before you even get into the place how are you going to react the next time you know I mean are you going to come back and I’ve asked that question and nobody knows now I got to admit tracking of any kind is a big problem just put a tag in their ear like this yeah the one that was in the virus antivirus in a vaccine just use that one I’m talking success rates okay yeah how was your withdrawal did you complete it and what is your Aftercare now Ashley was meticulous with that kind of stuff okay so funny enough recently we have a someone I’m close with that is ju I mean actually just going into Ashley agreed to do a detox for this person versus making them stay for the 20 for alcohol specifically for alcohol they’re going to do a detox a seven day detox and not we weren’t even aware that they did that sort of thing this this isn’t a person that came through voices or anything else this is a private individual who has insurance and whatever insurance doesn’t cover they have enough money to cover whatever they need and he probably uh right so they have a driver in the past to tell you the truth yeah no he wasn’t a donor in the past but he did somebody maybe but somebody in a family might have been but I yeah I don’t want to be hard on actually they saved my ass they really did but yeah they were they’re going to do a d to which again we didn’t even know they did but yeah well maybe we should ask right now here is the problem with Ashley and I have asked voices why why don’t we deal with Ashley and the problem is hey you got to have the money up front and they won’t take any government insurance yeah insurance so my sister paid for me to go twenty thousand dollars I was in a wheelchair because I still had the Librium leagues and uh she wrote a check for 20 grand and I if I’d have been stronger I mean that wheelchair would have been out of there yeah uh so which is always the case if you have money you can find treatment but if you don’t yeah it’ll be pleasant yeah you can get your twice a day massage um I’m not kidding you really can so I don’t I don’t know if this I mean I didn’t realize it was more of a universal program I’ve had my thoughts when I was working at voices just knowing what the grant funded if somebody came in to talk and seek help for fentanyl versus if somebody came in for alcohol like knowing the grant doesn’t cover that at all like it’s still part of my job to help them but also knowing that the funding isn’t there necessarily to help them which is interesting and it limits what facilities they can go to what beds they can get so I I know that I know that I know an individual whose son has struggled with alcohol and their son has tried to find recovery in Maryland and in Florida at different points and times and when they you know have a slip or a relapse or whatever it is like basically this individual goes you know what we would say goes hard like they’re like obliterated about to die on a beach haven’t eaten in days like just been drinking binge drinking the whole time and so the police will be called and they get found and the paramedics come and they take them to a hospital and within hours they’re back out on the street in a stupor in a [ ] stupor like the hospital’s releasing them when they’re not even not drunk yet like they’re still drunk getting sent out and this happened this person’s son this went on for like two weeks straight partially in Maryland partially in Florida and this was like five six seven different hospital visits nobody’s doing a [ ] thing except sending this kid back out he’s not a kid he’s like in his 30s but whatever he’s just getting sent back out still [ ] impaired so it’s like I I do know this story is real to some extent like this is happening in Maryland in Florida probably everywhere else nobody wants to deal with the ship yeah in the Health Care system I mean in general in this area I can’t speak for too many other areas but always there’s been a ton of stigma around addiction any kind of addiction if you go there looking for help or looking for treatment they’ve never been a good resource for people and and you think they would be because it’s such a health they don’t care about hindrance on our community you know it’s such it has such a big impact in this small community you think the hospital would be the place to care and they could act like most of the time they could give a [ __ ] and you and you remind me of the further point of that story of this person’s son is that even when they did the sun did get into treatment right he had a list of like there was a couple of the recovery or halfway housing places that looked really good he went and toured him he was like this one would be great and they were the ones his insurance wouldn’t cover right so then he sent to these other ones that are like in areas you don’t want to be in around types of people that aren’t really recovering and it’s like it’s almost like he’s set up to fail by the lack of Assistance or ways that we step in to intervene it’s opposite filters okay you you guys aren’t jaded enough yet to see the reality I swear to God um it is all about money and it’s all about maximizing profit today it’s not about maximizing profit tomorrow okay we as a nation because of the on I’m not against capitalism if we had a Socialist Party I’d be the president but capitalism functions but it’s got to be regulated in some way because otherwise you end up with what we got now only it’ll get worse on your health care System shouldn’t be oh
unless you know even government things are ruled by the budget and our Health Care system is totally capitalist if you have a good doctor and I have had several if you have a good doctor he is deliberately handicapped and doing what he wants to do for instance doctors who want to make rounds they don’t want doctors in there making rounds anymore they make it as hard as they can for them to you know come in the morning check with your patients they haven’t admitted to patients that patient’s out there he’s a hospital in the hospital was admitted that patient but it’s entirely capitalist space it’s rampant unbridled capitalism and it is also unfortunately a big part of human nature uh which has recently been demonstrated with the the student loan forgiveness I got friends who are good people who went nuts because somebody got a break on their student loans they’re 70 years old nobody gave me a break I suffered so you should too yes really yeah so it is a from a humanist perspective from a social perspective this is a failed system okay and I didn’t used to be this hardcore about it okay I this is many years of of fighting the system or trying to make the system work without believing these people were as profit oriented as they are so it’s it’s it’s unbridled capitalism now it is obvious and if you think back we have so much more Medical Technology we have are able to treat so many more conditions and back in the olden days your insurance was to pay for Mom’s operation right before she died yeah and it’s just a huge heartless industry that’s what it is that’s the Health Care system I don’t care if it’s mental health it’s worse for mental health yeah mental health is terrible but I don’t really care what your condition is and I’ve also had a lot of experience this is where my non-profit prejudices came in with like the Cancer Society and the American Heart Association and and the Alzheimer’s Association in trying to deal with asking them for help with things I used to do all I had a full-time job getting people to health care for like many years and those organizations don’t really give a damn when you when it comes down to what do you do I’ve had them get mad I asked if there was any potential treatments one time in the in the pipeline for Alzheimer’s we don’t do that Sarah click that was cancer that was Alzheimer’s so my wife now when there’s the people standing on the corners you know collecting money from the different churches for different services or whatever she’ll sit there and ask him before she’ll give him any money she’ll say well what do you you know what do you actually do and then what areas do you serve and you’ll find out like they’ll be collecting money like here in Elkton and they don’t even provide services in this area they provide services you know up in like Newcastle or Wilmington or somewhere else it’s like so you’re gonna come take donations from people in this area to help people that don’t even live here
quickly I mean if you’re talking about God to God through the buckets and stuff like that I mean that perspective at least somebody in New Jersey is getting helped yeah um we need to focus now and I’m willing to shut up as soon as I go too long the one of the things that would be handy for you guys to take a look at would be the transcript of the webinar and and and and the legal action uh committee or legal action Council whatever the hell is a report because your action center fails down the fact that this is global we’re in better shape Maryland’s in better shape than almost any other state in the country that’s the other thing that’s frightening so well I guess the question for me becomes like if this was just uh we’re not recognizing the need for alcohol treatment enough or you know we mistakenly missed this or it got overlooked during the opioid epidemic I feel like there’s an easier solution but when the problem behind it all is maximizing profits I feel like the solution becomes changing our entire society which is not necessarily something that I know how to do um you don’t have to change the society to make progress okay what uh voices also has a very active advocacy group I was part of it but they use so much uh so many acronyms I couldn’t understand what was going on meeting so I gave up uh but I’ll go back again because that’s what these buttons are about um you can regulate hospitals you can regulate insurance companies you can you can regulate freestanding clinics by law okay and that’s what needs to be done uh not impossible what you need is truckloads of dead babies I mean uh there ain’t nothing like waving a picture of the Dead kid around Indianapolis you know that’ll get you a vote um they’re working on legislation it takes years to get a piece of legislation through but you can change system change systems politically it can be done I have done it I have seen it Don I don’t mean revamp everything I mean repair problems well it’s slow it’s very slow maybe for a little change it’d be fine it’d be five years uh and the hospital Association has money uh I used to work around the AMA I never seen a more useless bunch of [ ] in my life okay your job is to see to it that we make more money that’s what if somebody would come up with a suggestion like well why don’t we move you know why don’t we take care of this segment of the population your job is to take care of us you know this is from the doctors you know um so but you can change it it can be changed locally I’ve been involved in that stuff before Marcus is a little genius he’s ramrodden that thing and so there are things to be done there are things that can be done I I don’t disagree with that and I think there can be improvements made through legislation but I guess my take you know it kind of goes back to the story um I was in college there was a lady who was from one of the countries in Africa and we were talking about the differences and she’s like well you know one of the differences if you want a major health care procedure like an operation you want to be here not in my country she said but you know if you uh if one of our community members doesn’t have a house we just all take a day and build them one and she’s like that’s not what it’s like here at all and just thinking about that like when we talk about the problems of homelessness and hunger there’s more food thrown away each day than than people who are hungry and there’s more houses available than there are homeless people and the reason we don’t have people in homes and fed is just because as a society we’ve chosen to accept that we won’t like if we all just decided tomorrow that’s not going to happen anymore we would go out and build them all houses or put them in houses that are already built and we would give them the food off our tables that we throw away every night and it would just end tomorrow you know what I mean so it’s like it’s really going to take a societal shift to stop thinking the guy with the billion dollars is the place we all want to get to and we never will that’s the other thing okay and yeah economically the Americans aren’t poor anymore they are temporarily inconvenienced because they just know that that stop they just Bartered it job they just got or something they’re on their way they’re not going to accept the fact that hey I worked all my life I mean I’m a good example I worked all my life and hard intelligently blah blah blah and I’m wonderful I’m poor now okay that was a result of actually government uh intervention into the pension systems but we want to look at you are you are your other okay everything is other I am me I’m the center of the universe and that guy on this clear bear he’s something else I I you know and uh we want to differentiate ourselves from people with problems because it’s got to be their fault because if it ain’t their fault that same thing could happen to me and I don’t do that so it’s it’s a it’s a protective mechanism it’s stupid as hell but it is true and anything that you don’t identify immediately look at the eight look at the age uh crisis back in the day I mean first it was chicken blood eating Haitians you know that’s what we were blaming and then praise the Lord that’s gay as well praise the lord it’s anybody who has sex okay and uh we just disassociate deliberately and consciously from people with problems because if we don’t disassociate that could happen to us yeah well that’s exactly what happened with the opioid problem is enough middle class and upper class you know white people that are in high positions realize it was their family members too and all of a sudden money started pouring out from everyone it’s true and this is a bit of an aside but during the early years of the AIDS crisis there were no effective treatments in 1996 they came out with protease Inhibitors they were the minute they came out with a working treatment nothing else had up to that point the minute they came out with a working treatment man the money was rolling in yeah I mean because here’s something we can sell and all of it all of a sudden the doctor’s attitude saying I can’t blame them because it’s hard saying oh you’re going to throw nothing to do about it but as soon as they could monetize HIV there was grants and money coming out of the woodwork that’s just an example of the way this stupid ass country Works somewhere I’ve read and I might even be in the in the um I don’t know where it is but what means in Sweden and if she finds all up in her breasts I mean this is this is a reporter talking you know and faddle up in her breast say oh [ ] she goes and gets a mammogram and yes you got a lump okay we can take biopsy right now and tell you what it is well it was a benign Rudder and two hours after she went to the doctor she knew what she didn’t have okay and at the door the nurse says I’m sorry but you’re not a citizen uh I’m going to have to charge you eleven dollars okay for a mammogram and a biopsy and the things that people used to use I can’t get an appointment with a doctor in less than six weeks okay those who will tell us what a wonderful Health Care system I think they’re fewer than it used to be but it used to be you got to wait for care and die in uh Canada you gotta you gotta wait to six six weeks to get an appointment with your regular doctor in this country and that’s because they have to carry huge patient loads to make as much money as possible to so the insurance companies will keep them on their list yeah the amount the insurance companies paying per visitors went down so much that if they don’t see 30 people in a day or whatever they can’t even keep the lights on a minute now yeah they really are so that’s America exactly right if we were exposed to this idea on the the gambling podcast when we talked to the individual from gambling and the casinos put a percentage of whatever it is they make into a fund that pays for any gambling treatment that is needed in Maryland and so like why have we let big alcohol who’s making record profits off the hook like why isn’t there a similar system of just anybody who wants alcohol and it’s paid for yeah he was saying there was plenty of money he’s like oh yeah we got money we can send anybody to treatment yeah a lack of money is not the problem it’s where the money is it’s where the people want the money is um right but if big alcohol is funding a fund that treatment I’m going to take a guess but I know a little bit about foundations and nonprofits here’s what yeah uh here’s what the game the casinos are doing they don’t the casinos don’t want me showing up in Annapolis saying I lost my house and daddy died in a car wreck because he didn’t have any money blah blah blah he spends all his time at the casino they don’t want that to happen so we admittedly there are problem gamblers we will help those people because we are good leave us alone and we’ll do the right thing what they’ll do is they’ll set up a non-profit they’ll set up a foundation okay and under the law to be a tax free or a non-profit untaxable Foundation you only have to give five percent of your net of the worth of the foundation per year to charitable purposes okay five percent the rest of it is a tax shelter so there is there are two reasons why they do that one is for Goodwill apparent Goodwill and the other one is they can shelter 272 billion dollars somewhere and a foundation to to cure the gamblers and it’s to their benefit uh nothing I don’t believe it I don’t believe it anything in America at this time is driven by anything but profit and the other thing is it doesn’t most of the people don’t realize that the [ __ ] show takes care that takes place at the top the the the incompetent people who we’ve dealt with at the rehabs they don’t know they’re incompetent they’ve been told what to say they’ve been told what to do and that’s what they you know that’s as far as their job and that’s all they do it I mean that’s so well this podcast does not run for profit yeah we run at a steady deficit every month me too no but I you’re right and I don’t disagree that there’s you know there’s good uh public-facing reasons for the gambling industry to do this right and it keeps people off of their back and that’s wonderful but we could retroactively do this with big alcohol we could have this and and you know what maybe it doesn’t change a lot but there’s services available and you’re not sitting on that goddamn porch for five and a half hours or driving the Sun for two days right if you don’t choose to take advantage of the services then that is your business but to be discouraged actively discouraged from seeking help is a whole different thing uh I have always thought yeah you keep do you keep raising your hands no I wanna what happened to your girlfriend like what’s her story now okay right now right now she’s drinking like a fish and he wants to get get into an inpatient deep talk she wants to stop she really wants to stop she’s got it she’s at the point where six hours before she goes into the shakes and stuff and we’re gonna have to go now we’re stepping on toes can we turn off the mic for a minute well let’s uh let’s let’s wrap this up because we I’m keeping an eye on time here Charlie is there any final points you wanted to make before we had to end anything we didn’t get to today well I can go on forever with final points right now today I want to get over that the fact that there is a gross prejudice a systemic prejudice against treating detoxing alcoholics as opposed to treating and detoxing people with other drug problems and it’s because alcohol is more expensive to treat well we thank you so much for coming on today Charlie and spending your Sunday morning with us you know support things get involved in local policy right that’s where these changes happen local policy and try to start getting changes man you know this affects a lot of people alcohol is very rampant in our culture and we need the services out there to help people so get involved do something stay safe out there and uh we’ll see you next week okay bye guys did you like this episode share it with people you think might get something out of it check out the rest of our episodes at recoverysortup.com also while you’re there you can find ways to link up with us on Facebook Twitter Instagram Reddit YouTube anything we’re always looking for new ideas got an idea you want us to look into reach out to us