Mental Health conversation centered around 12 step recovery and related topics. We talk about spiritual living, living with addiction and growing in the 12 steps. Find us on our home at https://recoverysortof.com/. If you want to join the conversation, email us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com, find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RecoverySortOf, Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/recovery_sort_of/, or Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Recovery-Sort-Of-112376247161866/?view_public_for=112376247161866.
Tradition Eight: Narcotics Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers. We delve into the Eighth Tradition and what it means to NA. Or any 12 step program. What is the purpose of not having professionals? We identify the definition of professional in the context of the 8th Tradition, and also the definition of special worker. We talk about the reasoning we can allow special workers and how they differ from professionals. We also speak to a few instances that we know of where we don’t seem to be following this tradition. Something as basic as getting flyers printed up. Special workers are supposed to operate within the traditions, and the printing companies that we use do not follow our traditions, they are outside entities. Then, to cap it off, Billy and Jason argue about recovery. Join the conversation by leaving a message, emailing us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com, or find us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, or find us on our website at www.recoverysortof.com.
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Tradition Eight: Narcotics Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers. We delve into the Eighth Tradition and what it means to NA. Or any 12 step program. What is the purpose of not having professionals? We identify the definition of professional in the context of the 8th Tradition, and also the definition of special worker. We talk about the reasoning we can allow special workers and how they differ from professionals. We also speak to a few instances that we know of where we don’t seem to be following this tradition. Something as basic as getting flyers printed up. Special workers are supposed to operate within the traditions, and the printing companies that we use do not follow our traditions, they are outside entities. Then, to cap it off, Billy and Jason argue about recovery. Join the conversation by leaving a message, emailing us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com, or find us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, or find us on our website at www.recoverysortof.com.
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’m jason i’m a guy that follows the traditions and i’m billy i’m a person in long-term recovery i only follow the traditions because now i realize that they don’t mean anything that’s great there’s just loose suggestions yeah yeah we just you know things to think about and i think about a lot of [ __ ] so that’s perfect um so tradition eight this is gonna be interesting right not because it’s all that interesting but because i don’t know what in the world we’re gonna say about it um
Tradition 8
tradition eight narcotics anonymous of course n a specific narcotics anonymous should remain forever non-professional but our service centers may employ special workers i have no idea i mean that sounds so simple i’m like i think i have no idea what it means because i look for something deeper in it like what does that mean to us right that we should remain forever non-professional but our service centers may employ special workers and i i will say i did actually in the reading learn a little something i don’t know if i learned it or just never really paid attention to it before about this and that’s that like when we say we don’t hire professionals and that’s why we call them special workers right they’re just we can pay people apparently at some way shape or form but they’re not professionals right and we only pay people within the service structure you know it’s not within the groups we don’t even use special workers in groups it says in the reading that is only for carrying out service work so what is the importance of this tradition i guess the idea is that we well i i think honestly this first reading that i i got says the eighth tradition is vital to the stability of na as a whole uh in order to understand this tradition we need to define non-professional service centers and special workers with an understanding of these terms this important tradition is self-explanatory and then it goes on to say in this tradition we say that we have no professionals by this we mean we have no staff psychiatrists doctors lawyers or counselors our program works by one addict helping another if we employed professionals in n a groups we would destroy our unity we are simply addicts of equal status freely helping one another and i think that gets to the gist of why right like we can’t have professional counselors in our meetings telling people the right way to recover because then their authority would outweigh the authority of whoever’s sponsoring somebody else or we can’t like pay professional speakers to come in because then they would have more clout is that the purpose for this yes or even having like uh you know psychiatrists come in and change things about the program because the new modern science says this or that you know we have this this program that we follow and we’re all equal we’re all the same we come in with the same i don’t know status you know no one’s better than or less than did you think you were equal when you got here i mean there’s always a hierarchy of social pecking order but i definitely think i felt like i had a place here you know like like that it was a safe place to be i guess or a place that i belonged i definitely did not feel like like i felt like clean time changed the quality level of people and then i felt like you know if you were sponsoring somebody the the sponsy i know it’s not supposed to be but it felt like a not subservient position but you know a lower position where you were seeking something i mean if if you didn’t hold that guy in a higher regard then what did you need him for right and i don’t know i’ve found over time that the more i stay clean and the more i work on myself the less importance i put on the clean time and the amount of time that someone’s been clean that’s because i see how sick i still right
so now that guy with a bunch of years he didn’t know anything right these people with these more years they’re just faking it better right right so i i think interestingly enough this tradition i think impacted me when i first got here more than i realized and that’s in the sense that i would i ended up in a detox there was these professionals there who had this schoolbook learning and they had a lot of information and i’m not saying it was bad information but i wasn’t sold on the idea that they really understood right because i was still caught up in this terminally unique like you don’t get what i go through inside internally like you don’t understand why i use because i didn’t understand why i used i just kept doing it right it felt like things were so hard when i didn’t and i didn’t feel like the person coming out with a college degree really got that and so coming into this 12-step world it felt like these were people with the lived experience right and i really when they shared i identified so much with what they were talking about the way we felt inside the ways we hated ourselves some of the actual physical things they did in their addiction to get more like i it just felt way more relevant that they had been there and now we’re doing something else that felt like a a symbol of what could possibly happen in my life whereas had the 12-step world just been full of professionals like the detox was that i don’t think would have sold me on the possibility of it for me yeah and there’s that level of empathy that comes with someone who’s been you know at least in familiar spots that you’ve been in right that a professional may come at with sympathy but those are different concepts that sympathy empathy thing and of course in our literature there’s always that saying you know the therapeutic value of one addict helping another is without parallel it’s like that experience that we have of being out there you know knowing you want to stop knowing you don’t know why you keep doing what you’re doing but yet you do it anyway like that’s a feeling that addicts can identify that i don’t think people that aren’t addicts can’t necessarily recognize and and i agree with that but i i think where my mind starts to wonder about how useful this is in today’s world of 12-step is not so much in the sense that i agree i still think that we need the people who’ve been there right i think that’s hugely important i just also question and i’m sure i’m biased in this way because i went to school and got this education but people who’ve been there and are currently also the professionals i feel like they do bring something i don’t want to say more to the table but they have some other information that they’ve spent years learning so it’s like they have the lived experience and they have this ability that they’ve learned some tools along the way whether that’s a peer whether that’s a social worker whether that’s a psychiatrist whoever it is right they’ve also got a special set of skills that can assist in helping people that maybe the average sponsor doesn’t have and so i i don’t know that we would need to bring in specialists or you know professionals but i feel like there’s so many of us in that professional field now that a lot of that ends up coming into our space anyway um i think it does i mean i i think that’s partially true but it’s important that like i don’t have that education and i don’t feel like maybe because i’m a [ _ ] egomaniac but i don’t feel like that makes me any less of a sponsor than you would be able to be you know what i mean right like so what you and your fancy education you know well and that’s where it gets tricky right so i my first real therapist in recovery was also in recovery and she had like 30 years and we talked a little bit about that sometimes like i was just interested like well do you when you’re sponsoring people do you do they get the same thing that i’m getting here that i pay for like could you just sponsor me instead and i get it for free right and she’s like no they don’t right and i thought that was interesting yeah and i guess to some extent uh being on the other side of that i see that now like i wouldn’t say i don’t do therapy with my sponsees that’s for sure but at the same time there are some practices and skills that i try to give people in therapy that i do try to give people like before i was a therapist i was not given any of my sponsors breathing techniques or you know ways to try to body scan and [ _ ] and so like a lot of my suggestions now do incorporate some of those things like hey this is useful uh people who struggle with trauma or whatever because a lot of us do we know that now these are things those people do in in professional counseling that help i i will say there are things my sponsees bring to me that i have said that might be something you want to see a professional counselor about right yeah i think that’s beneficial twofold one i no longer think i can help them with everything and two i do try to make sure i distinguish and don’t take on like hey i i can’t be your therapist like this is a different relationship than that so i don’t know that it makes us more qualified i just i look back and i wonder if i was giving people the right direction like i thought i was at the time because it was what i had it was my experience i don’t i don’t know that it was the best thing that they needed at that time i have no idea oh that’s i mean for sure through uh we’re just sitting before this podcast outside talking about some things that i’ve changed in my approach to sponsorship over the years and that i think that’s always going to be the case where the more information we have and the more we learn we can look back on old behaviors and kind of
you know i don’t know maybe i wasn’t you know so great then but that’s part of life experience too and trusting that in this process we’re all human beings and we have to give ourselves some permission to grow and change and make mistakes along the way and maybe that’s where a professional loses you’re like if i’m paying somebody or they’re a quote-unquote professional at something i don’t expect them to be able to make mistakes like if you make mistakes that’s [ _ ] up and that’s why i could never be your therapist i’m gonna make mistakes now and and so to to what you just said i think that makes a lot of sense right i don’t come into any of my program information i don’t go walk into a meeting and think that i know better than people because i’m a professional it has very little to do with that it’s just that my life experience has tended to have me take classes that taught me a lot about how to deal with people who are struggling with past trauma or this set and the other so i it’s basically just that i’ve added some life experience that helps me you know feel like i’m a little more competent at what i’m doing it doesn’t mean that i’m more competent than the next guy or that his life experience isn’t also bringing a high level of confidence to what he’s doing i just i guess i the life experiences i had make me feel like i’m more useful not than other people more useful than i used to be um but i still don’t come in and think oh i’m the professional here i know better than these other people in this meeting like no like we all need something different right and that’s great for two reasons one i mean for yourself it should hopefully relieve some pressure like you’re not you know the professional therapist jason who now has some you know extra demands put on you because of your education you’re just another addict in here trying to help somebody get another day right but then it’s also good for the individual because you know hopefully they’ll find a sponsor or support group or peers that they can relate to and connect to and and they aren’t looking past other people because oh well they don’t have the qualifications of this guy or they don’t have the same education so maybe they won’t be as good a sponsor i mean just like we talked about with sponsorship earlier like i don’t know i don’t think there’s any right way or any right thing that i can say to anybody that’s gonna keep them clean or keep them from relapsing or whatever it’s just that hopefully that connection of spirits and that connection of of just being able to relate and communicate with somebody in a way that’s going to support their growth right i actually think i found this to be harder in the other direction and that’s that my goal was to not do therapy with people who were trying to get sober or clean like i was like no i want to work with other mental health stuff i don’t really want to work with that aspect of it but i have found just because we are also people that struggle with other mental health stuff that i have a a couple people that struggle uh or have struggled at least at some point in time with alcohol and it’s tricky for me in the therapy world to try and to still be a therapist and not a sponsor which is weird for me it’s like am i just giving this guy sponsorship suggestions or are we doing therapy like i sometimes it’s hard to figure out because some of those basic early on tools of just trying not to do one more seem very like i’m like man is this actual therapy information or am i just telling them what i heard in a meeting like i don’t know at this point sometimes so that gets a little weird for me yeah and even if it wasn’t in sponsorship i mean just think of like meetings and the person who you know runs a meeting that meets every week like a your regular group meeting like those aren’t professional people either and in fact i used to have a sponsor that would say if you were in that position of service you weren’t supposed to like share like a normal person like that was that was a service position because you don’t want to come off as some authority or some you know professional like oh i’m the one at the head of the room that’s got the book and the gavel and you know i’m running [ _ ] like you actively had to go out of your way to not give that you know what do you call that presentation right right if you’ve never been to a meeting some of them actually do have gavels where they shut people up with them too it’s funny other people just slam their hand on the table so curiously this does bring up a couple of things i believe that na world services does have lawyers like we’ve definitely gone to court about the you know who owns the literature and who can print it and if they got to buy it and copyrights like there’s some lawyers involved there so i guess they’re not members of n a and aren’t trying to help people recover with their expertise but we have professionals employed yeah and i don’t know enough about that uh side of world services i know there’s definitely been lots of debate and and controversy over what you know hiring professionals to do different things i know we’ve had professional involvement in some of our literature from time to time that’s been very controversial um in the reading in the basic text it does differentiate a special worker from a professional uh there’s a line in there about professionals i don’t know if you had it yeah it’s down here somewhere it says uh tradition states service centers may employ special workers this statement means that service centers may employ workers for special skills such as phone answering clerical work or printing such employees are directly responsible to a service committee as na grows the demand for these workers will grow special workers are necessary to ensure efficiency in an ever expanding fellowship interestingly though that says that the special employees are direct response are directly responsible to a service committee and i feel like when n a world service takes some member or group to court over copyright claims they are no longer responsible to a service committee they’re responsible to any world services yeah so there’s been some discussion over that and i don’t know the ins and outs of whether n a world services is like really even its own separate business or entity from in a the fellowship i know that’s why there have been some areas that have sort of branched off or or broke off or don’t really pay much attention to what happens at world service right they kind of print their own literature and do their own thing and and sort of don’t necessarily follow that direction because they feel like that’s become a separate like incorporated business it’s it’s not even a service body anymore ah you know and i i don’t know how useful that episode will be when we finally do it i want to get one of these people that knows a whole lot more about it than i do to talk about but it would be fascinating because i just want to see the the break like what happened like where did this you know chasm appear between the people of na the groups of na who supposedly run it and this n a world service body that seems to not completely follow what the people want it’s interesting so when i read a lot of things that the world puts out you know a lot of their statements and things they really sound pretty good but then of course it’s like well that was probably written by a professional so how wouldn’t they sound good i hired a professional pr person to write that [ _ ] out so that it sounds really good but a little bit i think the next statement after what you just read in the basic text talks about talked about these special workers i think are supposed to follow the traditions still and i don’t know how that plays out when it comes to some of that business stuff i really don’t know how you could fit that in yeah there’s no tradition about suing people for copyright infringement for copyright tradition thou shalt not you know that’s the big one who owns the literature so that piece you’re talking about says the difference between professionals and special workers should be defined for clarity professionals work in specific professions that do not directly service n a but are for personal gain professionals do not follow the n a traditions our special workers on the other hand work within our traditions and are always directly responsible to those they serve to the fellowship so i guess my only qualm there would even be at like a let’s say an area level it’s like we use professional printing services i mean to print schedules or flyers or things like that is that different i mean yeah they’re not working within our traditions no we don’t even ever ask it’s like how much does it cost to print this [ _ ] flyer right eight cents okay get me honored
are you following the traditions would you print these papers yeah maybe we need uh we need i’m gonna bring what is your primary purpose yeah you can’t print this unless you uh your primary purpose is uh next time you go to kinkos you better ask them which step they’re on that’s right god damn it that’s interesting i i mean and and to go back to where we talk about not having professionals and not paying people it doesn’t say this specifically but we do kind of in a backwards way the same way you say that churches give groups a discount we finance some of our speakers to fly out and stay for our conventions which i know here we go back to the conventions aren’t really part of na which is the weirdest [ _ ] ever but how does that work we’re kind of financing to get a speaker there like that’s kind of a paid professional isn’t the definition a professional that you’re paid to do a job yeah i would say that’s you know well in there it says for personal gain or something yeah i mean maybe you could clarify that the speaker is doing it for other people’s benefit too is that really i mean yeah but they’re also getting their cd they don’t even give out cds anymore so the recent convention we went to they don’t give out cds and all of the speakers stuff is available for free yeah but that’s not i don’t think that’s it everyone yeah it’s going to put those guys who manage recovery houses and record speaker jams out of business they won’t have a job in it do you think they still record cds and print cds i don’t know i mean they gotta be going away they gave me one last year that whatever the hell we went to was that camp but even still that’s a that’s a whole thing of you know are they special workers people that record at events and speaker jams because we’ve had that same thing at like uh marathon you know speaker jams and like our christmas marathon they’ve had them recorded at different times right i’m sure that shit’s paid oh yeah those are professionals that should ain’t free i mean if you’re the speaker you get a cd for free uh what happened when we did it at a speaker jam a long time ago we didn’t pay them to come they just sold speaker cds and tapes and [ _ ] like they sold ones from that day and then old stock they had so they made money but we didn’t pay for them to be there like they came and we’re just there yeah i can’t imagine they made a lot of money well even that i was like yo isn’t that some sort of weird affiliation or well it was a speaker game so it wasn’t technically part of that no i’m just kidding i don’t know i’m making that [ __ ] up in other words we’re just ignoring this tradition all over the place except for groups yeah so the only other quote i had to help define some of this was a service center is defined as a place where n a service committees operate the world services office or local regional and area offices are examples of service centers a clubhouse or halfway house or similar facility is not an n a service center and is not affiliated with n a a service center is very simply a place where n a services are offered on a continuing basis i don’t know exactly what that clarifies but that actually makes it more confusing because like in our area we don’t have an office yeah at a facility and they don’t i guess you could say they provide ongoing services through h and i and stuff and phone line yeah that’s a little bit tricky right so yeah we have it in a service center where anyone can walk into and get any services and and i feel like this specific tradition for sure like and it seems like the first few were able to we were like oh what would this look like in our local neighborhood or our community or our government like this i don’t feel like this translates to anything outside of the 12-step fellowship well the only part i would say ties in is sort of the autonomy from the group and just like you had pointed out you know you don’t you don’t try to go into your profession you know as a therapist and be like so my experience in n a tells me blah blah blah blah and start sponsoring people as you would in n a right it’s like trying to establish that professional line of like maintaining your anonymity from the fellowship for the production of the fellowship and the protection of the individual you know yeah i’ve always kind of thought the purpose was we didn’t want anybody coming in and being more important than anybody else i really thought that was the goalless tradition i had no idea what i was thinking i guess there’s some of that in there i i don’t know like what is the well the spiritual principle i think at the base of it is autonomy that’s where i went with is that we’re all just equal right we’re all just equal members we come in we’re we’re just another addict nobody’s greater than or more important than the old cliche there’s no big eyes and little users yeah never really like that anymore nah but yeah is it just so we can feel equal is it just for the protection of na’s message getting through that sounds like a cult again yeah just na’s message we don’t want any powerful people within it well like if we have professionals running things is that going to divert us from our primary purpose you know and and are they going to go along with the latest trends of science or education or philosophy are they going to stick with you know the clear message of what we’ve been doing you just made it sound more like a cult do we want to follow the sciencey stuff that’s out there right now or do we just want to stick to what we’ve had forever i kind of want to follow we did what one of our early episodes is is it a cult was it the first one the first one so we did one of our very early episodes about is it a cult and i think we came up with it pretty much was did we i thought we said it wasn’t that’s funny but it was pretty close and this is how two people talk for an hour and a half and still come up with the opposite conclusions and think we both agree yes we agreed it wasn’t a cult billy’s like yeah we agreed it was a call it feels more and more like a cult every week we talk about it yeah it’s got cultish pieces to it like there’s it could be a cult let’s say that yeah it definitely could be i don’t know that it is i think it only gets into cult world when it gets weird and harmful like really weird isn’t the right word but like harmful and like dangerous is called a derogatory i think so oh i think we’ve made it out to be but i i would think a cult occult either way i mean we could be a cult of like healthy eating uh you know exercising wellness people and we’re still occult if we say outside information isn’t welcome if someone says they’re a vegetarian that’s different than like a vegan or says they’re part of the vegan cult like that has a more sinister i think really you don’t think so the vegans are occult well that’s they can be quite cultish oh maybe they’re all cult maybe everything’s a cult well and i don’t necessarily mean one is right or wrong i’m just saying that word cult i think is synonymous with negativity with a with a bad experience my take on it is that cults are only cults when you’re on the outside of them when you’re on the inside it’s just your friends so there’s my my great advice for the week join a cult once you’re on the inside it’s great but yeah we’re just supposed to be a fellowship of you know one addict helping another i am just another guy here trying to get another day i don’t have any professional education i’m not you know any smarter well i don’t know people are smarter and people are personally smarter have different skill sets that’s for sure but as far as when it comes to the program or recovery we’re all equal
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so that’s tradition eight but i that’s an extremely short episode so i was in jamaica and i was down there and there’s people selling weed on every beach right and i’m like this would be the ideal place to try this which is interesting so okay back history i went to st lucia with four years clean on my honeymoon only other time i’ve been to the caribbean ran into the same thing with the weed didn’t really want to smoke weed but i did decide in st lucia i was like you know what i’m gonna drink everybody’s here drinking it’s an all-inclusive resort all this shit’s paid for anyway i want a drink too like [ _ ] that and it ended up i sat there with this decision i said i was gonna do it we were getting ready to leave my wife took like 45 minutes to get ready to leave the little you know apartment we were in and uh by the time she had finally got ready i had convinced myself not to i don’t even know what happened during that time but i decided not to so i didn’t but i’m down there this time and i’m like there’s all this weed down here i’ve been thinking about being more open-minded yeah like this is the safe place to try this right like if i do this at home well i know where to buy weed at home now because i did it at home and and it’s part of my normal routine if i do it in the island that’s totally different because it’s like i’ll go home and it won’t feel the same it’ll be like no that’s the thing i did to relax on the island that’s what i do in my life and i i thought that was a weird thought to have and i don’t know if that’s just one of those like addict type thoughts or if there’s actually some sense behind that i did decide that i’m going to get 20 years clean before i do any of this experimenting that i said i might want to do in the future so there will be no hallucinogens for at least uh uh two years plus going on there for me but i i don’t know why i guess that my ego wants to be able to say i had that 20 years at some point but i don’t know like what do you think about that would that be the safe place to do something like that like if i was going to try hallucinogens one day should i go to another [ _ ] country and do it because it’s safer uh i don’t think the other country i would definitely think a safe environment with you know doing them in someone’s backyard with no real professional supervision probably isn’t the place you want to do it but i think in general the concept is it’s nice to be able to like go on vacation and forget all your responsibilities and let go of the [ _ ] trappings of everyday life and be free and that a lot of times has been my motivation for using at least the excuses i wanted to tell myself man i just want to not care and let go of [ _ ] and and relax and have a good time and using seems to be a part of that right um that isn’t what it really looked like in real life but that was the lie that i told myself right right and so it’s easy to see you know because that’s what normal healthy people do you know they go out for the weekend with some friends they go to the beach they have a good time and then they come home and they can maintain normal life but as addicts i’ve never been able to do that so so i think that’s why it looks appealing right it might be it might be that uh there’s definitely like some jealousy for people that could like because i thought about it my wife i don’t think she’s ever smoked weed maybe she did it once a long time ago and and didn’t like it or whatever but we were down there and i was like well do you want to try it like do you do you want to like you’re down here you don’t have any rules like i do like not that they’re rules but you don’t have this kind of thing that i have like do you want to try over down here like why not right dirt cheap it’s everywhere and she’s like no not really and i’m like all right and and she interesting i mean like she is somebody who drinks alcohol but she didn’t really drink a whole lot while we were down there i felt like saying you’re not getting our money’s worth god damn you got a drink for you gotta drink for eight like all these [ _ ] kids yeah but i i don’t know there’s something to it i have this supervisor at work who’s like a trauma specialist and i and i love her and she’s got great information and she presents the idea that people who are traumatized generally we search for ways to be outside of our body it does not feel safe to be in our body right and we do this in a a billion ways it’s not just drugs or alcohol we do it with like you know phone addiction so to speak or or just anything that takes us outside of ourself being busy and her belief is basically the idea that like anxiety depression all these things are kind of things to take us out of what it would be like to just be in our body right so these coping skills which are terrible you know nobody wants anxiety or depression but we evolve them over time because they are better than dealing with what it feels like normally and she says that when you meet people who’ve done trauma work and who’ve gotten way healthier they don’t generally hope to be outside of their bodies all that often like that’s not their goal in life they kind of once you feel comfortable in your body that’s where you want to be and going with that idea i look at her and i say but that doesn’t mean always right i don’t think anybody particularly wants to be in their body all the time yeah people who are healthy in their body want to be there more often and i get that and i buy into that but if i’m healthier if i’ve done a lot of this work if i feel comfortable in my body most of the time wouldn’t i also still benefit from this not in my body for a period of time place that i can go to once in a while and that’s where this thinking of like and not to mention i mean with the psychedelics there’s also the research that’s saying there’s more to it than just being outside of your body like they’re talking about new brain uh formations and and networks forming when you do these things that are beneficial for people so there’s more to it than that not just i’m talking about the weed here with just being outside of the body right and i’m like is this gonna be a bad i don’t know right i don’t know i don’t have those answers but i also don’t want to fool myself into going back to the life i used to live because that’s not a good idea for me at all yeah so i would say she’s i mean part i would agree with her partially i think what she’s talking about tends to lean more towards abusive use of drugs and the compulsion to want to be out of your body you know as a result of trauma but if you look back historically i mean people have used drugs and hallucinogenics in all kinds of ritual you know practices they’ve used them in religious practices like altering your state of mind is not something that has just been done for traumatic reasons you know religious experience is what’s you know the eucharist or whatever is centered around drinking wine right you know there’s a sort of i’m going to call this really minor belief that that had to do with the little bit of euphoric feeling you would get from that you know drinking alcohol like you get a little bit of a euphoric feeling from it that’s great that’s what you want to assimilate with jesus you know and that even going back further they’ve you know native americans have used peyote and different hallucinogenics and tobacco which not like the tobacco we use now but that has a mind-altering effect but it’s not used in abusive ways and in fact it’s used as like a spiritual experience because you are opening your mind and and trying to um almost like you said like open new patterns of thinking or disrupt old patterns of thinking you know those kind of practice those kind of ideas behind some of the reasons why people would use drugs in any form right i think as addicts for me at least the danger is can’t speak for all addicts but for me the danger is i have ingrained a sense of obsession and compulsion with that type of behavior and the fear and i don’t know if it’s true and i don’t really want to [ _ ] find out is that if i start it once i won’t be able to turn it back off that once i turn that coping mechanism back on like it will [ __ ] stay on and i won’t be able to just do it occasionally or once in a while so what is that life is hard and sometimes i turn to jesus and sometimes i turn to whiskey but either way i’m guided by the spirit
yeah no i i think what you said actually ties in exactly to what she’s saying and she’s saying that healthy people don’t choose it all the time like that’s not what their their goal is like people who are struggling with that underlying uh you know unrest inside their body and turmoil they’re always going to want the escape right and that’s how we turn into addicts alcoholics or whatever we’re constantly searching to be outside of our body but healthy people don’t they don’t generally want that that doesn’t mean that they’re not going to pursue it for a spiritual experience or for something over here like they do it but they don’t feel the need to constantly do it because they’re very comfortable in their body on a regular basis so it’s like they can go have this experience at these times in their life for spiritual reasons for other purposes and it doesn’t make them want it to do it all the time because they also appreciate the rest of their life while they are in their body i think that’s her point and that’s kind of what i’m like somewhat i don’t wanna say buying into but i i’m a believer in her information i’m a believer in science and i look and i say i do have that fear i have that same fear you have if i didn’t have that fear i would already done it right i just don’t know if that’s an old fear that’s not warranted in actual science today like if there has been this amount of healing do we need to still have that fear like if we are generally comfortable in our bodies on most days like are we gonna fall back into this obsession and compulsion and i’m not saying it’s impossible i just i just don’t know and i don’t want to be missing out on something that i don’t i guess i i kind of think there’s a healthy part of this if we’re using it for a spiritual experience if we’re using it to seek interesting new brain growth and development if we’re using these things for i guess positive reasons or what we’re learning that the research shows that is available from some of these experiences is that the same like is my body gonna react the same is that some of our 12-step information like the the we have a what do they call it uh uh allergic reaction right to what happens when we use well yeah but is our new science explaining that that allergic reaction is really the fact that we like hate being inside of our bodies and that’s what escapes us for a time and when we no longer hate being outside of our bodies that does change you know what i mean well my own personal experience has been with pain medications and when i’ve had to take them for you know medical reasons while i’ve been clean right that [ _ ] obsession came back that compulsive thinking crept right in pretty quickly and scared the [ _ ] out of me and i flushed them down the [ _ ] toilet or got rid of them you know because again i mean i was taking them for the right reasons i felt like i was in a good place in my life i did all the right things talk to my wife talk to my sponsor you know what i mean i got to get this surgery i’m going to be on these medications i mean it wasn’t like i just fell into those situations and yet within a few days of having to take them or deciding to take them i i found for me that compulsion coming back so that fear is not unwarranted it’s definitely a fear that’s worth keeping right out in front of that my two arguments for this one i have not had to take pain medications since i went through some pretty intensive therapy um all my pain medication use was pre that and so i don’t have any experience on what i’d consider the healthier side of a lot of that healing that i’ve done so i i can’t relate it i don’t know yet right i don’t have that experience and two i would say i think opiates might not be the thing that i would want to try like that doesn’t come across as like oh maybe i’ll recreationally take some percocets every once in a while like that’s not right and i don’t know if that’s a difference in the drug types and and what they do to you and maybe that’s just one that doesn’t have like i’m definitely not gonna think man you know i think once every three months i’m gonna smoke crack for a night like that’s probably not the drug that’s gonna do any mind opening for me or any relaxation or any of that right like i i’m definitely thinking mostly in the hallucinogenic category is where i’m going the weed is kind of just like i feel like it’s such i don’t want to say it but uh in my interval form it’s pretty hallucinogenic yeah so maybe that’s what i want to do i don’t know if i could have ate them and i’ve had the same thoughts too so i am totally i mean i would call myself if anything i’m pro-drug i think it should all be legal i think there’s benefits to all of it i think abusive use of anything is a problem so i am not an anti-drug person um this is gonna be terrible to say somebody’s probably gonna wanna come take my kids but i’ve actually joked around with my kids about needing to try to smoke weed at some point in their life so they have the experience because it’s going to be legal here pretty soon but i feel the same thing with alcohol like i’m like look i’d rather you just like try it and have the experience than to be like oh this is so terrible i’m never gonna do it and then the first time you do it find yourself you know addicted or whatever i don’t know it’s just i don’t think experiences in life are bad i think being open-minded and and upfront about what you’re doing it like it becomes dangerous when it becomes secretive and uh something that you’re shameful of or something that you’re embarrassed by like then it can become unhealthy or dangerous i’m definitely calling child services but i thought the same with hallucinogenics i thought wow like later in my life that might be something i want to try and i guess i’ve fallen into the place right now where i’m like one they really need to do a lot more studies on it to know a lot of what they’re doing now is very very uh cursory studies because all the science is just now coming out because it got ignored for so long and the research was so uh unperf un supported by professional medical goddamn government right because they made it illegal which which is a major setback i mean when my mom was going through her and a lifetime i was joking but half serious i’m like you should see about trying some you know hallucinogenics they say that really helps people with their end of life experience like i was totally on board with i mean [ _ ] if i’m dying i want anything that’s gonna make that transition better you know who wants to lay around in fear and agony all that but for me personally um i don’t know if that’s gonna set off an obsessive compulsive thing that i have and i’d rather not try yet when i’m not really sure that the benefits are there you know but if if five or ten years from now they came up with a thing that said hey we believe this is the best therapy for this form of issue that i have i might be willing to do it i mean right now i’m willing to take uh opiates for pain because they tell me that’s the best that they got and if i’m in pain i’m gonna take that even though i know it’s a substance i have an issue with but i’m gonna try to follow it as prescribed and do it you know in that vein and if i get to a point in my life where i feel like i’m struggling with anxiety or some issue that they know that hallucinogenic is the fix for i would probably consider it yeah see i don’t even think i want to wait to have some [ _ ] problem that they need to solve with it like i just think it’s from what i’ve seen in the research and and from where i’m coming from it’s like a a beneficial thing to to you know brain expansion and brain growth and it triggers the same thing that happens during your younger years where your brains develop in new channels and new routes to talk to itself and other pieces of it and so it’s like kind of not it’s not like one of these oh it’s going to unlock things and i’ll be able to fly and [ _ ] you know levitate and [ _ ] like that no it’s just i’m gonna be able to create all this new open-mindedness i guess to some extent and i’m i’m not gonna be like oh well let me find a therapist that’s gonna prescribe this i want it to be like a an experience like so the counter argument i heard to that and it’s not saying that it’s wrong it’s just saying you have to look at this as part of the counter argument is typically the people that are trying those experiments and participating in those studies are already open-minded and they have a certain type of personality to be willing to go into those situations and have that experience so what’s that control bias it’s a control bias now if you said we have a bunch of like uptight anxious [ _ ] [ _ ] and they went and took this stuff and now all of a sudden they’re more open-minded and they’re more spiritual and they’ve grown some enlightenment like well then that well that’s the research they’re doing where they’re treating the people that’s the ones who are just going for anxiety like i just want to not be so anxious because i’m so uptight and they’re finding the growth to not be anxious anymore right but that’s very preliminary and again i’m not against it i think it sounds great but it’s just knowing like well wait a minute if you’re already this open-minded person that’s looking for spiritual growth and new spiritual avenues you need that psychedelic and is that the safest way to go for someone that’s had a substance use issue so when i i’m already open-minded i might not need it when i take my ayahuasca i will make sure billy can be my designated watcher to keep me safe and not jump off any houses or anything because he will not be taking it i mean there’s always that you know discussion people have had too is like is the best of those experiences like would you be better to have that experience with some shaman out in the middle of the jungle somewhere or you know peyote with a yeah with a native american you know medicine man like is that the way to have those experiences versus in a lab somewhere with a doctor in that kind of controlled environment and you know i don’t know it’s fascinating it’s very interesting i actually have to tone down my research and exploration into some of that information because it does get me really wanting to [ _ ] do it
yeah yeah i don’t know you know you talked about when we keep it secretive and it becomes shameful and stuff and i feel like that’s one of the issues i come up against not that i necessarily feel ashamed about it and i feel like i have other channels and places where i could talk about that experience freely and not be shamed for it or judged or anything and those people would be like oh tell us about it like maybe that’s something we want to try it’s really interesting right and that’s more in like my professional setting which is interesting that that’s my professional setting they would cheer that on but the community of recovery people that i have been around for so long now i feel like i would be shunned there and i would have to monitor where i set it and i almost feel like that’s a shame-based cult in itself for sure if i was going to do that stuff i would definitely look at that as giving up my you know 12-step recovery yeah uh whatever you want to call it clean time or status or membership like if i decided i was going to go do some peyote with a native american you know medicine man i part of that decision-making process would be giving up my participation in 12-step fellowship or at least being able to come back and say i used and then whether i’d do that i think for me that kind of means and i had to ask this i asked this to jenny early on when she did the uh the episode about recovery dharma where she kind of left the aaa fellowship to be in recovery dharma because that seemed more fitting for her like was there guilt or or a problem with leaving this place that you had been for years to go to this other place and i guess you kind of told me something right there that i didn’t realize is that i kinda if i’m ever gonna do that i will probably have to be in some other group of recovery and established and connected and and maybe that’s part of my experience with the 12-step world right now is that i don’t feel super connected anyway um but i still do kind of rely on it here and there for this little bit of connection and maybe i need to be connected somewhere else before i do that because yeah i don’t know that i would want to come back and be like oh hey i gave up my clean time like the way we talk about it right i relapse like that’s not how i would look at it and it would be very it would be hard to exist in that community of those types of words when that’s not the view i have of what i did and i don’t think you’d get you wouldn’t like i wouldn’t go into that expecting to get support you know what i mean like right or wrong you’re not going to get support like for that experience no no and i think that’s interesting and i wonder if that doesn’t like bring up a topic in itself of like our vocabulary and the way we speak of things in that world right if that doesn’t really do some harm to some people who are and i’m not talking about now the people who are trying but even people who who go out and struggle to stay clean repeatedly right we have chronic relapses and [ _ ] like this like these labels and these judgments and this vocabulary that’s full of judgment-based words right suboxone and and all this [ _ ] maintenance and i wonder if that really doesn’t negatively impact a lot of people trying to find recovery it could but i i believe that’s sort of the why we have so many different a fellowships and why there are so many different pathways for recovery it’s like you know the 12 step fellowship that we go to has one model and one way that works for a lot of [ _ ] people and the danger of expecting them to change isn’t worth you know what i mean like like yes they could change but should they like that’s why those traditions are there is to protect them from well science today says it’s okay to use hallucinogenics so hallucinogenics are okay and so you know and that’s why we don’t let the professionals change but i i feel like there’s a piece you miss when you say that right and i hear i agree right if n a was just uh another a that was out there then yes i think that makes total sense n a is the total abstinence root that’s an option that’s over there but and i don’t know what it’s like in detox today i have not been through detox in a long time when i went to detox it was go to n a or a a that was it right that’s what the [ _ ] was out there these other things weren’t as popular they weren’t everywhere they’re still not everywhere you’ve talked about places n a doesn’t even exist they definitely don’t have a lot of these other a’s right does the virtual world make them a little more accessible yeah but you’re still not in person creating community and so n a whether it asks for it or not by default has become the recovery community does that mean that there’s not little tiny specks of recovery community in some of these other fellowships no there is right yeah of course there’s a smart recovery community somewhere but a lot of these people who do other ones in order to sustain their recovery also do n a or also do a a a right so it’s the hub it’s the hub of everybody and i’m not saying that they need to change but we as a culture need to change where the hub is in order to have an a just allowed to be its own thing as long as na is the hub where everybody’s coming first and getting shuffled to there’s a lot of damage being done to people who are choosing other methods of recovery right they’re choosing other recovery paths and they’re coming to the hub and the hub is shaming them saying it’s wrong yeah i think culture’s changing though around that i don’t know that the 12-step fellowships predominantly a and n a are the i wouldn’t call them the hub anymore you don’t think so i think no well you’re seeing more community based organizations coming out that are sort of doing that stuff the recovery cafe and those kind of models and ideas are becoming a lot more popular uh the harm reduction models a lot of those are based around recovery based community centers and community organizations that are not just 12-step okay based i don’t mean to interrupt you here right but a lot more available in terms of percentage of popularity to what they used to be i completely agree a lot more widely available where’s the closest recovery cafe dc yeah well why well that’s what i mean though this is all changing with the culture i mean all this science behind using uh hallucinogenics for growth and all that’s all brand new too so you can’t expect the culture to change before science you know what i mean like it’s it’s gotta catch up and the culture 15 years ago even before suboxone and all that was drug recovery is abstinence-based like that’s how you treat drug recovery now the science has slowly changed over the last what 15 years you know since i’ve been clean when i first got clean there wasn’t suboxone there wasn’t right there was methadone and that was kind of shameful for even people on methadone it was [ _ ] shameful so you know it was abstinence base was the the model the the main model but that’s changed in the last 15 years and these things are again they’re not as widely available but that’s because na’s been around since 1953 and aaa since the 1930s i think so you can’t fault the programs for not keeping up with the science like that’s not well no i’m not saying that but you were talking about like uh maintenance you know is a big pathway to recovery at this point in time it’s one of the the ways we know percentage-wise keeps people from doing more harm as far as i understand you don’t go and get your suboxone from your doctor and then they recommend you to go to suboxone groups three nights a week or something like that doesn’t exist maybe they have one group there a week i don’t know maybe that’s a thing i don’t think it is i haven’t heard about people all those people come to n a because n a is the hub right they still push people that direction or that’s still the only place people know to go to if you go to baltimore and there’s 600 n a meetings a week and whatever 800 aaa meetings a week how many suboxone type recovery meetings or groups or connections can you make with recovery people whereas those groups right maybe there is one or two but still the comparison we’re still i feel like we’re harming so many people by this language and vocabulary that that absinthe space is still the only way because that’s na’s belief and that’s fine but that’s where everybody’s coming and so anybody on a different path is still getting that shame and that shunning from that community true well that’s partially true i would agree with most of that the problem is i think you’re looking at the if you’re looking to see who’s at fault i would say that’s the fault of the doctors and the treatment centers for being uneducated on what they’re telling their participants if there’s a doctor that’s prescribing suboxone to people and then telling them to go to a a or n a that’s their fault i mean that’s not the fault of the fellowship that the [ _ ] doctor and this this gets back to why we have these traditions that say we don’t endorse you know lend any name to outside facilities and enterprises because you have these [ _ ] people that don’t know anything about n a never been to a [ _ ] meeting in their whole life and they’re sending people that are on maintenance programs telling them you can go there and be clean and that’s not na’s fault that’s the [ _ ] doctor’s fault that’s the recovery center’s fault maybe they are not educated and they’re misinforming people but maybe they’re not telling people they can go there and be clean maybe some are but maybe people are just saying this is where other people in recovery are right and why is that happening because n a public relations decided to go out there and make their presence known and have presentations to different doctors and communities and officials and people in these professional stances and say hey n.a is here we’re available we’re a recovery community we did that we wanted the growth we wanted people to come here so we’ve made our name known i mean maybe maybe uh you know suboxone recovery anonymous or whatever the [ _ ] it is hasn’t had the ability to have public relations to go to all these world seminars and speak to hundreds of doctors at a time and tell them that they exist and that they’re a place to go so n a by putting itself out there as the recovery community has put itself in position to be this hub we’ve had the growth we’ve made our name known to the professionals now the professionals send people there i mean i i think we’re partly responsible for that i think n a is partly responsible for that not we yeah i would totally just i mean because in our literature it’s pretty clear if you read any little bits of literature we are a program of complete abstinence from all drugs we consider alcohol you know like i mean i i don’t think there’s some hiding of what the program is based in or some hiding of of what so where the model is where do you send people that want uh recovery support or other people like them that are living a life without heroin and cocaine use now where would you send them if you’re not going to send them to na or aaa meetings to find fellowship where would i send them yeah well there’s smart recovery or some other meetings they can start meeting i mean the answer to your question is i don’t know that’s not my [ _ ] problem i mean you know what i’m just i’m just saying if if i decide i want to and this is that goes back to what you’re talking about with the you know me if i decide i want to take hallucinogenics i don’t go take hallucinogenics and then come to na and start pointing fingers and yelling at people and telling them they need to open their [ _ ] minds and change what they’re doing to suit a decision that i just made for myself i go into that decision going oh that’s what these guys believe if i’m going to go make that decision that means i am walking away from this group of people and the support that i have in my life because they don’t see it that way right but to answer your fir well to respond to your first statement it wasn’t a question but you don’t know where to send them because there is nowhere else to send them can you send them to a smart recovery meeting in our area sure yeah there’s no therapists there’s counsellors where’s that’s not a connection to a community that’s a professional talking about where are they going to find other people like them so why don’t these doctors or places that [ _ ] prescribe that [ _ ] take some responsibility for that well and maybe they could start some meetings but i just think that i think n a has put itself out there as it’s the leader in community of recovery i think that’s what its goal has been forever and it’s accomplished it well it is the big name out there it is where people know where to send people i don’t see all this public relations [ _ ] that you’re talking about like well some of this is is on a higher level but that’s i mean if you read the public relations workbook or the handbook or whatever it tells you that i did public relations for years yeah the handbook talks about this is why we’ve reached out to the professionals in our community to let them know that we’re here and this that and the other like it’s the name it’s kind of like uh you know we call them kleenex instead of facial tissues like we know it by that because that’s what’s been out there right or or huggies instead of diapers or whatever like it’s we know the recovery community by the n a name it’s big it’s known now it’s not a secret but i think you even spoke to more of it it’s not about coming back and finger-pointing but it’s about why have we set up the culture to be one of shame instead of support even if somebody did in our eyes use why is it not more supportive conversations with them why is it more shunning and i think that is a change and i was thinking that when you talked about like the the medicated assisted stuff and whether i have an opinion on where we should go or shouldn’t go doesn’t matter as much for this point i think if you hold people now about what they think about suboxone compared to what people thought 10 years ago about suboxone and then 10 years before that you’d see that the it’s people are becoming more open-minded people are becoming more accepting and there are a small percentage of people and i’ll still say it’s still a small percentage of people that are accepting of people being on a maintenance program which is growth it’s not perfection or whatever and like say regardless of my opinion on whether we should or shouldn’t that is generally what’s happening people are more even if they don’t agree with it as a form of treatment the shaming isn’t near as bad as it was i would say a few years ago at least in this immediate area i can’t speak for any area outside of here right i can tell you there was a point a few years ago where it was pretty you would people would say some pretty mean [ _ ] to people that came in on suboxone or methadone or any of those stuff they would be sure to point out that they’re not clean and that will still happen but it’s very different than what it was 10 years ago and and i agree with that i think it is growing i think it is changing i think unfortunately that still means there’s a lot of people still catching the flack and the harm done to them along the way until we get there but culture ever keep up with the science of anything like the sciences and the understanding of the you know the brain and you know addiction and all that is just totally what i would say evolved in the last even 10 years with understanding the effects of trauma and all that like oh that’s brand new [ _ ] that we didn’t really make those links or at least mainstream those links weren’t being made you know it was the same old shame and guilt you’re an addict because you got no moral [ _ ] character you know i’ve said this before on here and i say it again and i think it’s the the only thing i have left to say about this personally is that n a to me whether it asks for it or not and i think it asks for it has become the hub for recovery and even people who don’t really want n a’s version of what recovery means or their definition of it don’t have a better place to go to meet other recovery people like them and that means either n a has to change or where the [ _ ] hub is has to change one of those two has got to give because everybody can’t be funneled somewhere and then that same place stick to well we’re just about this and and i don’t know what the answer is i mean ideally in my head the answer is that there becomes a new recovery hub where everybody gets sent and n a is just an option on the side i think that’s the best idea but i don’t see that happening because everybody already goes to [ _ ] any i don’t think everybody does i mean i don’t know maybe they don’t i don’t know yeah i don’t have any place to meet the people who don’t goddamn people that are coming out of treatment or coming through these programs if if these programs are pushing them to n a whether it’s the programs pushing them there or whether it’s just that’s what’s known like everybody’s heard of it by now yeah but that’s like saying you blame kleenex for kleenex like that’s not their fault well for in kleenex’s case they did their job well they put their name out there and got their name known and now they’re the one that are associated with it they said this is what we are and this is what we do it’s different if kleenex said you know if you rub your nose with this you’re going to get a bigger dick and huge breasts and everybody went oh that’s why we need kleenex but that’s not what they did at all or do i only get the 101 you know they said this is what we are and this is what we do and if you got a stuffy nose and you know you want to rub it we’re soft and we have aloe and [ _ ] whatever else they say and people went oh that’s great we love that look they made them in these convenient packages that’s awesome but it’s not like these things happen through like i mean if it’s through manipulation and that’s again back to the traditions just to tie back to the traditions that’s why we don’t promote and endorse the program i mean i guess you’re saying we did we didn’t yeah public relations definitely has gone and speaking to professionals about what we have to offer you got to take into consideration how those messages were delivered the fact that those messages were delivered by non-professionals which means they might have been skewed because they were not professional people giving these messages to the professionals right they were just n a people given these ideas that n a works we don’t hire professionals i’ve been involved in n a and p r in this area for 20 plus years i know jen could tell you even longer i’ve actually done these whatever not seminars but where you go and at these health fairs and stuff like i’ve done some of that not one organization doctor rehab has ever reached out to us and asked us to do a presentation on what we have to offer or an advertisement as to what we do well i don’t think that’s at the area level i think that’s at upper levels where they’re they’re doing these things for you know say you’re saying a world service went to harbor a grace that just opened over in haverty grace and said let me tell you all about n a and h i think there’s been times where there’s been conventions of you know hey we’re having the addiction summit uh to talk about how to help the addiction problem and it’s a thousand doctors here and they’ve probably given some kind of talk a day like this at these health seminars and stuff right and so the more we put our name out there how many other recovery communities were putting their name out there to give another option probably zero n a is the main player uh i mean that’s not really true you don’t think so i can’t say what other free recovery community was there given a presentation besides that if you could show me any of these presentations even one that you know of that’s happened anywhere okay all the health fairs you’ve gone to and set up a table at how many other recovery communities had a table there uh i never paid attention i know like aa’s been there um yeah yeah there’s the other big one what’s the i’m gonna say christians in recovery that’s not is that their name what’s the 12th day celebrate recovery is ones that have been they got money they got church funding right but i’m just saying like because we show up at a health fair to let people know that n a exists in our area is not i mean this is where it gets back to the advertising and why we don’t endorse finance or lend the n a name that’s like saying if we put a billboard up on 95 that says hey you have a drug problem need to talk call this 800 number i don’t think that makes us responsible for being the hub for recovery okay if i go to the the local fair every year for 20 years and i see hillside hvac there every year and then i have an hvac problem who the [ _ ] do you think i’m gonna call here’s the difference though if you came to hillside and said i have a business and i have a commercial air conditioner and i want you to fix it and we said oh we don’t fix commercial air conditioners we just do residential and you said what you’re [ _ ] advertising said you do hvac i have hvac and now you need to [ _ ] fix it that’s a different thing we don’t specifically say you know we say this is what we do if you ask us what we do we do hvac heating air conditioning we don’t do geothermal either that’s another type of hvac that we don’t actually work on so if people call and say i have a geothermal system we say oh i’m sorry that’s not what we do we do something else maybe you could call somebody else and they say well who the [ _ ] am i supposed to call like i don’t know somebody that does geothermal is it my job to tell you and hey don’t say that we say this is what our program is but we also in our traditions try to help the still suffering addict each and every one of them it never says like help the still suffering addict that only wants the path to recovery that we offer it doesn’t say that in our traditions right so when people walk in the door we say oh i want to help get this person clean we don’t say hey we don’t offer services to people on maintenance you go to well we say our primary purpose is to carry them and i guess that would be when you talk about the message that i’m thinking it would be the n a message right and it might be but if somebody calls hillside you’re not gonna say oh hey look uh i know we don’t do commercial but but let us try to help you with your problem that’s what we do in n a it’s what we’ve always done so we’re not just easily readily at the door turning people away and telling them to go find help somewhere else that’s not what’s happening we’ve seen these these n a people at fairs the name is out there it’s what people have heard of they say oh it’s n a the people who help addicts i’m [ _ ] struggling with drugs i’m choosing a maintenance way to deal with it but i’m going to go to n a because they’re the people that help with addicts we’ve just seen the name the name is big enough so we’ve seen them at the fairs every time there’s no alternatives to say oh should i do n a or that other place i saw at the fair because there was no [ _ ] other place at the fair it was just n a and then we go there and the people still try to help us they just tell us we’re doing it wrong they’re not saying we don’t offer those services here that’s where your business equation breaks down for me like you guys just say it off the bat that’s not what we do yeah well i think that’s what we do in it i mean really anybody that’s in the meetings no i don’t tell them to stop but i never hide the fact that we are abstinence-based and that you know that’s what like working steps and [ _ ] i don’t i wouldn’t work steps with somebody that was on a maintenance not at least n a steps i would do something else and that’s just my personal thing and i would do that outside of n a i mean people have asked me to sponsor them outside of n a and i’ve told them yeah but you know we’ll do something confusing is that look we won’t we’re we don’t do commercial but uh we can work on something outside of hillside where we’ll still work on your hvac like that’s but i’m not n a i understand really the recovery person but that’s happening everywhere that’s what’s going on with everybody the people are being welcomed in but then being told they’re wrong we’re not turning people away from n a we’re not saying hey if your own suboxone just don’t come to our meetings we don’t offer those services we’re saying hey we’re here to help her still suffering addict come on in but you’re doing it wrong
maybe i mean yeah i don’t know i just don’t think it works but we’ve rambled on this is supposed to be tradition eight all right so uh i don’t know uh have your own arguments about what the [ __ ] needs to do uh keep doing what it’s doing no become a recovery hub fold i don’t know where people are going because it works are they i don’t know i have a membership anywhere i’ve been goings up yeah but are they clean
anyway uh i don’t know have a good week out there i guess
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