This month is my cousin Alex’s birthday, and it’s also when Stable Recovery hosts their spring gala. It felt like the right time to revisit this powerful conversation I had with Christian Countzler of Stable Recovery, along with my aunt and uncle, Alex’s parents, Sandy and Dave Schimizzi.

When I first visited Stable Recovery, I knew something meaningful was happening there: not just treatment, but transformation. In this episode, Christian shares his journey from addiction to building a place designed to remove the barriers he faced when trying to get well. You’ll also hear from my aunt and uncle, who speak openly about losing their son and the heartbreaking gaps they encountered while trying to help him.

Together, we talk about the individuality of addiction, the pressures families aren’t prepared for, and the moments that make long-term recovery so difficult without real support. This is an emotional episode, but it’s also hopeful, a reminder that change is possible when communities, not just individuals, show up.

What You’ll Discover:

1. Christian’s story and the origins of Stable Recovery (08:46)
2. Alex’s journey and early emotional struggles (12:54)
3. The fear and uncertainty families live with daily (20:55)
4. The depth of despair people can experience (24:09)
5. The limitations of sentencing and current treatment options (24:42)
6. Why it’s important to not give up on loved ones (25:34)
7. The critical need for purpose and follow-up care (26:22)

This conversation doesn’t offer easy answers. But it does offer truth, the kind that helps people feel less alone.

You can watch this interview on YouTube: https://youtu.be/8QlHl7iDrVk

For a full transcript and more, check out our blog post: https://www.lindsaycz.com/show-notes/stable-recovery-43

Check out more from Stable Recovery:

See their website: https://www.stablerecovery.net/

Follow Stable Recovery on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stable_recovery/

Donate today: https://www.stablerecovery.net/make-a-difference#Donate

Learn more about Lindsay’s visits to Stable Recovery from these videos:

Horses Hold the Power on Path to Lasting Sobriety

The Healing Power of Horses ‘Putting People Back Together’

Mike Lowery’s Passion for Horses and Gratitude for a New Lease on Life

Read more from Christian Countzler about navigating sobriety during the holidays with his article: “If you’re navigating sobriety during the holidays, know you’re not alone”

If you are in the US and need immediate help, connect with treatment and mental health referrals near you by:

1. Calling 1-800-662-HELP (4357)
2. Texting your zip code to HELP4U (435748)

Support this podcast:

Follow Things No One Tells You on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thingsnoonetellsyoupod/

Stay connected with Lindsay https://www.lindsaycz.com/ and follow her on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lindsaycz/

Subscribe to my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@lindsaycz

[00:00:20] Lindsay: Hey, guys, and welcome to Things No One Tells You. This episode is a conversation that I really wanted to share because something that has been on my mind lately. And I know this is gonna sound strange, but if it's the disease of addiction, you're probably wondering why. Well, it's because I've been thinking a lot about my friends at Stable Recovery, and Stable Recovery is the recovery program in Lexington, Kentucky, where I've spent some time around it.

[00:01:08] Ironically, they're about to have their spring gala, which is huge and it falls in the same week of my cousin Alex's birthday, and we lost my cousin Alex, more than two years ago, to addiction to a drug overdose. So. I took my Aunt Sandy and my Uncle Dave to Lexington, and they were willing to join me to have a conversation for this podcast with Christian, who is a counselor at Stable Recovery.

[00:01:57] But also, he believes in what he learned, that there's gotta be something that you're working towards to help with longevity. So they've seen so much success already, but, you know, as I was thinking about my cousin's birthday, and we think about him all the time, I just, I miss his kindness, his curiosity.

[00:02:36] So I thought maybe one thing that I could do is just re-release this conversation because I found it so interesting, so impactful. There are stories my aunt and uncle shared about going through this journey with Alex, how they tried to save him, what people were saying to them, what they didn't know, what they wished they had done, and what they wished they had known.

[00:03:11] Here we are. So the thing no one tells you about addiction is what?

[00:03:22] It's different for every single person who's affected. And I've been working in addiction recovery for, quite some time now, and what I found, especially early on, was that people who were addicted were being treated the same way. And so we were using kind of this blanket coverage to help people get better, and it would work for one or two of those people, right?

[00:04:10] Some people are getting better, and lots of people are working in this field and doing good work in this field, but. We don't highlight the problem of addiction enough in this country. It, it, competes with lots of other diseases and stuff. It kills people every single day. Someone is overdosing in a hospital right now in Lexington.

[00:04:36] Lindsay: Sandy and Dave, what would you say is your,

[00:04:58] Even when selecting facilities, we didn't even know what to look for. Probably thinking about coming here and about what we didn't know? Yeah. You know, we didn't realize at that time that when our son, who had been suffering from depression and anxiety and was in treatment, therapists were not permitted to tell us that our son was suffering from a drug addiction because it was illegal for them to provide that information.

[00:06:05] You go in, you go through all that. Coursework, and then you're out.

[00:06:30] Never happened. Right. You know, they were pretty much told, go out, find a job, and it was usually something very low-level, entry-level, that really didn't do too much for self-esteem or ambition. And that's sometimes the beginning of relapse. Yeah.

[00:06:51] Dave: Yeah. Well, not having experience with addiction growing up or any relative or friend that I had, it was just an eye-opener for me.

[00:07:12] And without having experienced the difficulties of that, it was just a situation where we just felt helpless. I just felt helpless.

[00:07:25] Christian: Very little support, right? And it's not just support for that individual. There needs to be support for the family as well, because eventually that individual is gonna get outta treatment and go back to the family. And if we're not also preparing and helping the family to receive that individual, well, we just end up right back at square one.

[00:08:05] You didn't know what to do once he came home. And, you know, why were we not educating folks on that?

[00:08:28] And, you know, and the reason, in my opinion, it was a game changer was you've got the horses, which are a thing of their own, because that connection is helpful. You cannot deny that. But it also is Christian, it's you, and it's the way that you have embraced this program and the message that you're delivering.

[00:09:01] Christian: Sure. Well, I struggled most of my adult life.

[00:09:24] I

[00:09:53] And that, that the progression I was just talking about, it began, then, and it, you know, this is back during the OxyContin craze and all of that was, it was very easy to go to a doctor and get prescribed opiates, right? And so that was how I fed my addiction for a long time because I could literally walk into an emergency room and leave with what I needed to feel better.

[00:10:39] At that point, I was so bad off that I had to get high. And so I I chose to use needles, and that's when things got really bad for me. I lost my family. I lost my job. I lost my house. I ended up homeless, for three years, in and outta jail, in and outta treatment. But nobody was really.

[00:11:26] And it wasn't until I removed myself into a long-term recovery program that I was, you know, thank God was able to surround myself with good people that pushed me to do the right thing, not the wrong thing. A lot of you know, I'm sure your son was introduced to a lot of the wrong people in a lot of the situations that he came to.

[00:12:07] And I, just, anything that had become a barrier to my recovery. I tried to remove that here at Stable Recovery, and that looks like fellowship and purpose and motivation and all of these things. It's really hard for any human being to get up daily and grind at a job, whatever that is.

[00:12:50] and folks seem to be getting better because of it.

[00:13:09] Sandy: In high school, I knew that he was using marijuana. And I really did not know that he was using anything else until he was out of high school. And, at that point, he said to me that he started to use opioids, and he needed help. Wow. And so we started the cycle.

[00:13:38] Sandy: But he, as a child, was very bright, but he did have some learning issues.

[00:14:11] He started to be treated for depression at an early age. And so he was on some medications, and nothing was helping. And he just explained that he tried an opioid one time, and he said it made him feel so wonderful. He never felt that good. Yeah. Yeah. And it beat all the psychotropic medications that the doctors were giving.

[00:14:49] Christian: Well, I was telling you guys, and it was kind of an aha moment when we were speaking earlier. You know, I can remember being seven or eight years old and looking in the mirror and not liking what I saw.

[00:15:18] And I guess I was born with that, and I talked to lots of other people who suffer from addiction and don't mention the same thing, that there was just something about being in a room full of people, but feeling absolutely alone as a child, you know? So then we start to grow up, and we find these substances that remove that feeling of difference in all of that.

[00:15:53] Dave: I think he, remember he wanted to, when he wasn't fitting in, He wanted to dress differently.

[00:16:00] Dave: He wanted to become gothic. Okay. And, in our area where we're from, that was not a good thing in that high school that he was in. Because that just made him more different. More different and more of an outcast. And so therefore it just, you know, it just starts, with something like that, and it just proceeds to, you know, more depression, and then yeah.

[00:16:27] Christian: It's striking that you would say that because, my entire childhood, teenage years stuff, I looked for outside solutions to make the inside of me better, whether it was that pair of shoes or if I could make that sports team, or if I could get that girlfriend.

[00:16:47] Dave: he's reaching out to anyone.

[00:16:50] Dave: Who will accept him?

[00:16:52] Dave: He was not athletic, and that, you know, and in the high school that he attended,

[00:16:57] Dave: That just put way down on the pecking order to begin with.

[00:17:03] Christian: It just compounds.

[00:17:09] Dave: Exactly.

[00:17:10] Christian: Or he never had that, or Unacceptance Right. Is the better one that you're trying to, you know,

[00:17:15] Christian: Feeling less than, feeling different, feeling, you know?

[00:17:32] Dave: He used to tell us about that. He would always say, You would never let me do that.

[00:17:41] Lindsay: Sure. For not letting him dress the way he wanted.

[00:17:51] Lindsay: Yeah.

[00:17:54] Dave: Loved, he felt that being in the band was nerdy. Yeah. And then that was just another thing that knocked him down on Sure. The social pecking.

[00:18:17] Like, Dave, what are your thoughts on that part of it?

[00:18:22] Lindsay: And how that played out for you guys as well.

[00:18:37] We also, then we had him in Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts. That didn't go well. It's just one thing after another. We tried everything that we possibly could think of to do.

[00:19:00] Christian: Yeah

[00:19:29] Christian: Right?

[00:19:34] Christian: If you already feel like an outcast, you're gonna gravitate towards the outcast, and that's where peer pressure can come in, you know, and where I never thought I would do this. Well, all of a sudden, my only group of friends.

[00:19:52] Dave: So that's what we were afraid of, and that's exactly what happened.

[00:20:05] It can be mom and dad's medicine cabinet. And for some reason, you know? Yeah. There are so many. But once you've crossed over and begun using that substance, then the physical addiction takes over. And that's when things start to get really bad. That's where we hurt mom and dad, and we commit crimes, and we do these things that we never thought we would do.

[00:20:50] So the second I get outta jail, I'm going right back to that thing that takes away.

[00:21:04] Sandy: Oh, we, I think we were in a constant state of being distraught. Again, you know, I kept my cell phone with me continuously twenty-four-seven because I was always waiting for the call.

[00:21:33] Yeah. Just to see if it would answer.

[00:21:36] Dave: Just to see if it would answer. That's the way it was. Yeah. And then after a couple of times, we had to resuscitate him. I said that, I said, we just can't do this anymore. We have to get him his own place. We just have to, I can't go through this anymore. Yeah.

[00:22:07] Lindsay: At that point, what did you know that he was using?

[00:22:12] Lindsay: Okay.

[00:22:15] Lindsay: But in his good moments, oh, was it just when he was Alex

[00:22:21] Lindsay: Yeah.

[00:22:32] Christian: You were talking about Trivial Pursuit and that, too. Yeah. That stuff. You know,

[00:22:36] Christian: Yeah.

[00:22:37] Dave: He was well-read. He read he would, that's what he did all day, would read books. Wow. Yeah. Anything.

[00:22:47] Sandy: No question. And, I guess what we found was, and what happens was, so the opioids are so, were so readily available, but then came heroin because it was cheaper.

[00:23:03] Sandy: And shocking.

[00:23:06] Sandy: We never thought our son would do that.

[00:23:23] Yeah. That's not anything. And you know, we were talking about it. There was never a point as a child where I thought, I wonder what that's like. I might try that one of these days. It was not, it was, that is bad. I won't do that, right? That's what I was, that's what I knew. Right. But through life and these feelings of worthlessness and, then the shame and the guilt and the remorse and all of that, we're gonna do whatever it takes to not feel those feelings.

[00:24:09] and let's see what I can't do. There is no handbook for the stricken, you know, when it comes to that. There's just nothing that I can, you know, we pray that they reach a level, and this sounds awful, but it's true. We pray that they reach a level of pain that will produce the willingness to do the really hard things to get better.

[00:24:40] Dave: We were told the opposite.

[00:24:42] Dave: You know?

[00:24:43] Dave: Yeah. Get him.

[00:24:46] Dave: Kick him out. Don't let him come back in.

[00:24:53] Lindsay: What was the thought process behind that for people who were telling you that

[00:25:01] Sandy: Or do you mean they just thought that

[00:25:05] Sandy: That he just has to quit and that it's a, it's simple. And that if he's still using, just get rid of him. I think that the police, the attorneys, the law, they considered them lesser people, that's, you know, they are considered to be lesser people.

[00:25:34] Just give up on that, right? Basically, that's what I'm hearing from you all.

[00:25:37] Christian: And I'm here to tell you right now, and Lindsay, you met some of them when you were here the last time, and I was as bad as you could get. You know, I'm living in an abandoned house. I'm not showering for weeks.

[00:26:08] That's what needs to be said today: that you can and will get better. But we gotta find the right resources to, for the parents, for the individual themselves. They have to have access to the right resources.

[00:26:33] Am I saying that right? Yeah. Like the amount of time that

[00:26:39] Lindsay: and then to have a purpose, meaning that's why this with the horses is so

[00:26:53] You can't fix that in 30 days. Right. You can't fix that in 60 days.

[00:26:59] Christian: You know, you can't fix years of rehab damage in 30 days. You just can't do that.

[00:27:08] Dave: Well then, you go to a halfway house

[00:27:11] Dave: You meet a lot of people who are,yeahh. Doing the same thing as you're doing.

[00:27:48] Eventually, they succumb to those feelings again 'cause they're not being supported. And for us, you know, as addicts, when we make a bad choice, some really bad stuff's gonna happen. And then it's just that downward spiral all over again. We talk about, you know,

[00:28:07] And Alex always seemed to be under so much stress after he would get out of a treatment, a halfway house, he'd be on his own.

[00:28:19] Sandy: And yeah, there are some meetings you can go to, but there's not a big support system. And he was the one who had to find jobs for himself, and usually they were very low-level.

[00:28:57] Wow. He did, he really was trying. And then I noticed, he started to get really frustrated, and life is hard. He was feeling it was so hard to pay the rent.

[00:29:11] Sandy: You can't pay the rent. Hopeless.

[00:29:18] Christian: Yeah.

[00:29:21] Christian: Cycle. And that's another, I can't do it. A very important aspect of the year, you know, because yes, six months, it's hard enough to get to six months, but that's when things get really tough. Yes. Because now you've got bills, now you have a responsibility that you obviously couldn't handle beforehand.

[00:29:53] Well, you need to get down to the DMV and get your ID, and then you gotta take your ID to get your social security card, and then you know, that can be overwhelming for somebody,absolutely overwhelming. And so if they don't receive support in these very basic things, it's much easier just to make a bad choice and go back to where you were

[00:30:13] Christian: Exactly.

[00:30:14] Christian: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:30:27] Christian: Yeah.

[00:30:39] You need, if you can't get to work, how can you get your self- esteem back? How can you? That's it. How can you support your family? These people end up divorcing if they're not divorced before. Yeah. They can't support their kids. They don't even see their kids. Yeah. But yeah, it's just, it's a horrible cycle.

[00:31:07] Lindsay: Yeah. Well, it's a disease. It is. It is a disease. Right. And so in terms of how much progress that's been made, what do you guys think, or what do you think is the most important thing for people to take away in terms of the stigma?

[00:31:43] And that's a huge number. Don't think people understand how large a number that is. And, you know, where we live in Western Pennsylvania, it's a weekly thing, or it was a daily thing for a while. Yeah. Now it's cut back a little bit, but it's still a weekly thing. People in their twenties and thirties are dying.

[00:32:01] Dave: And then like, people are like, well, okay, they chose to die. So there it is. I mean, you've gotta change the way people view this situation. It has to be given a name, it has to be given a reason. And research has to go into the development of some kind of cure. Treatment, cure. Yeah. Not just sitting down and talking to someone.

[00:32:30] Christian: Right. One of the really important things we do here at Stable Recovery is ensuring that, you know, everybody here is motivated towards doing what they need to do to not only get out of the hole that they dug for themselves. Okay. They've dug themselves into a hole. It's not about just getting out of the hole because then you're out of the hole, but you have no car, you don't have a job, you don't have any of that. It, you've gotta overcome that, you know, and so I. A large way I think it should be done is you find something that you wanna be successful at, right?

[00:33:26] That's, you know, it's an altruistic thing. And it's necessary. This is a community problem that needs to be solved by the community, not just individual treatment centers. And, you know, a few, you know, this needs to be, we need state and federal level help. This crisis, this is a hundred thousand people a year, you heard about it, it was headline news, a few years ago.

[00:34:02] Lindsay: Uncle Dave and I just wanna ask you this, and I understand if it's too personal, but you're a dentist. Dentist by trade.

[00:34:15] Dave: Well, the first time we did not have Narcan, so I had to do CPR and keep him alive.

[00:34:26] Dave: EMTs arrived. Yeah, but they had Narcan. We did not have it, but after that first thing, that first occurrence, we had Narcan in the house, and we had to do it at least, I don't know, at least twice more. At least twice more with Narcan.

[00:34:47] Dave: Well, I, you know, that was a shock to me because I really didn't know. He was a teenager then. He was a teenager. I didn't really know what he was using. I mean, as I said, we were very naive.

[00:35:05] Lindsay: And there are men who I watched in this program share their stories that were in the same situation.

[00:35:12] Lindsay: Oh yeah. Yeah. You know, which is what they do.

[00:35:16] Sandy: Yeah. Dave kept him alive.

[00:35:37] Yeah. If I were not a light slipper, he would've died that night. Wow.

[00:36:04] Christian: Yeah.

[00:36:16] You put a, you hit, not hit a person like that with Narcan. They're sitting up and talking to you in 10 seconds. They are in 10 seconds. They are 10 seconds long.

[00:36:24] Dave: He could be on the floor. On the floor, like you were thinking, he's dead. You hit him with a Narc, and in 10 seconds, he's talking to you.

[00:37:07] But if you don't get that individual the help they need after they've been brought back to life, guess what? You're just gonna end up having a Narcan 'em again.

[00:37:17] Dave: You know? He, every time we had to do that, he went to rehab.

[00:37:23] Dave: Just said, okay, we got him back.

[00:37:30] Christian: But did he receive the care he needed in rehab? Apparently not. Yeah.

[00:37:33] Christian: Yeah.

[00:37:48] And that was a moment that was just so eye-opening to me, hearing each of their personal accounts, the rock bottom. What is the answer there? Because you guys brought up a good point. You aren't ready to let Alex hit rock bottom. And I don't know as a parent how you make the decision that you're going to do that.

[00:38:11] Sandy: Well, I don't wanna

[00:38:12] that we didn't want him to hit rock bottom. We didn't want to keep him out of our lives. Okay. So

[00:38:21] Sandy: We decided that we would stay close. Our relationship.

[00:38:27] Sandy: We wanted to keep a relationship.

[00:38:46] Don't let him in. But he was an addict, and they told her that she was being mad. They had a codependent relationship. Sure.

[00:39:18] Dave: Well, I didn't,

[00:39:19] Dave: We didn't want him homeless. We didn't want him sleeping on the streets under a bridge somewhere. I don't know.

[00:39:28] Dave: We just decided that's not what we wanted to do with our only child.

[00:39:37] Lindsay: To be honest, even if he's not, yeah.

[00:39:43] Sandy: I don't think either of us would ever turn anybody away.

[00:39:48] Sandy: And, in our heart, we wanna help. Of course, when he was in the states like that, we always made sure, or said you're gonna rehab, which he did.

[00:39:59] Oh yeah, you're lucky he doesn't have brothers and sisters because he would poison them. And so if you have an addict. Who's a teenager or something, and he has younger siblings.

[00:40:11] Dave: A lot of people recommend you get him out, get him,

[00:40:13] Dave: The house, get him out, because he'll influence the other ones, and you'll have more than that on your hands.

[00:40:19] Lindsay: Yeah, Okay.

[.00:40:24] Sandy: The other thing.

[00:40:27] Sandy: There is in the statistics. Even then, I could not find, because this whole time I just kept reading everything I could, trying to study everything I could.

[00:40:53] Christian: No, you probably won't. You know, and that, that's the other thing is there aren't enough statistics.

[00:41:03] Dave: We're thinking rock bottom is death. Well, so, I mean, that's not a solution. And well, that wasn't a solution for us.

[00:41:17] Dave: Sure.

[00:41:18] Dave: And when he apologized to me over and over again, Oh.

[00:41:22] Dave: Every time he came outta rehab, he's apologized.

[00:41:28] Sandy: But he, just his journals from when he was in treatment. Certainly sounded like somebody who had hit rock bottom.

[00:41:44] Sandy: So I, that's just it.

[00:41:55] and that's, ultimately, where every one of us goes untreated.

[00:42:16] Sandy: Stressors.

[00:42:19] Sandy: People in the community. And he's able to get it again, people, places, and things that start a fire.

[00:42:30] Christian: Yeah,

[00:42:31] Christian: You know, and especially on a restaurant scene, you know, I used alcohol to quit drugs and drugs to quit alcohol.

[00:42:46] Dave: For those people, having a beer is not partying.

[00:42:54] Lindsay: You talked about yourself having the needle in your arm. Yeah. And just realizing that maybe that would be better if the outcome was not to be here anymore.

[00:43:17] I didn't wanna wake up and burden society. I didn't wanna wake up and, you know, go through the grueling aspects of finding. The money to get what I needed, finding the dope dealer to spend the money at, and then finding a place to go do the dope. It was just there. It is really hard work to stay high once you've lost your rent, once you've lost money, and mom and dad aren't supporting the habit anymore, all of that kind of stuff, it becomes work.

[00:44:10] You know? And so that, you know, but there were many nights that I lay down, and I thought, man, please let this be the last time that I,

[00:44:26] Sandy: 11 months.

[00:44:45] Christian: It's a checkout.

[00:44:47] Christian: No, when you were describing

[00:44:50] No one was around, no one was there to save him. Yeah. I wasn't there to save him.

[00:44:54] Dave: he didn't do the test strip for the fentanyl.

[00:44:55] Dave: He had those. And, yeah. And I remember the judge saying, Next time you come before me, it's 11 months in jail.

[00:45:12] Sandy: I said to Dave when the judge said that and wrote that down, and in his recommendations said, Well, the judge just put a death sentence on our son.

[00:45:24] Sandy: Because it's so easy to relapse.

[00:45:29] Sandy: And to threaten that.

[00:45:37] Sandy: Right. For a mental illness, serves

[00:45:40] Christian: None. No.

[00:46:01] Christian: That's a great overeat. That's a great way to put it.

[00:46:19] Lindsay: For all the advancements in medicine, why can't there be an advancement? That is something that can be helpful for, I think it was interesting, Christian, when you were talking about even the way you felt like a need for acceptance, who, it seems that the trigger for some of this stuff is similar. Right? True. So just there's so much I think to explore,

[00:46:50] Because there is research being done by the NIH, and I was feeling really optimistic. There are some good things. Things: Programs, good research. There, there's one where they were testing it all on rats and ready to start on humans. Yeah.A vaccine that would help. Just recently, with alcoholism, and I know I'm gonna say the wrong word, but they have identified the synapse where the brain wants to seek the pleasure of alcohol.

[00:47:53] Addiction, and I put it, and they were looking for human beings to be part of it. And I put him on the list, and you know, I have, I used my email address, and he still hasn't been called, which means to me that there are other people out there that I'm sure are on that list, that are hoping to get,

[00:48:16] There, there's actually, you know, and I don't know it well, but it's something that they can place. Yes. And it helps with the withdrawal symptoms of it. And then hopefully it will help sustain the curb, the cravings that go along with that kind of stuff, you know. So I think they're making some progress with that.

[00:49:00] Dave: Well, they, you know, they always went with the methadone. Yeah. They're thinking, well, methadone is gonna do this instead of using heroin. Yeah. Yeah. You can just give them a little bit of methadone every day, and that'll be fine.

[00:49:10] Dave: Well, maybe you could attest to that. I don't know if you ever went to the clinic.

[00:49:20] Sandy: They get addicted to methadone. It doesn't,

[00:49:25] Dave: We drove him 20 miles every day.

[00:49:29] Dave: yeah,

[00:49:47] It's some sort of reaction in the brain or something like choking that. Choking, but exactly. It's helping human beings release the right chemicals, or whatever that is, which gives us time to work on the other things so that these folks have a chance to get better. Right. That is true.

[00:50:40] They can sustain that. You know, here's, I tell my guys and girls this all the time, the very thing that tells your heart to beat and your lungs to breathe is also telling you that it's okay to stick a needle in your arm. It's your brain. You know, the very same thing, like the disease of addiction will literally whisper to you late at night when you're feeling really lonely, and nobody's, you know, that type of stuff.

[00:51:27] help me through this, or whatever that is, you know? But a lot of these places where you end up, these halfway houses and sober livings and stuff like that, one. Bad egg. One individual coming into that environment that is not motivated towards change, that is not really there to get better, be around that individual for any amount of time at all, and all the progress that you've made, all the progress that you've made through treatment and therapy and whatever that is, sitting on the couch with a guy talking about, Hey, I'm gonna go get high tonight.

[00:52:16] Lindsay: So Alex, you know, I described a little bit about him, but he was.

[00:52:38] It wasn't just, you know, not just relatives, not friends, but my aunt, you found his, some of his writings. Yeah. And so did he just always journal? Because I wanna share one.

[00:52:55] Lindsay: So he's, like I said, just so smart.

[00:53:21] underachieving with nothing to show. Feed the animals in the cafe. Institutionalize the strays. If you don't do what we say, it's back to jail. Enjoy your stay, condescension at its finest. We are human beings. Dignity, short supply, and lack of human kindness. Most of us will die like dogs lying in the streets.

[00:54:03] Sandy: I had just read that one. Yeah. I knew that he had several things, but it took a while for me to be able to. To read his things. So

[00:54:30] and it's exactly the opposite of what this program is, preaching and lying. This is the scenario that so many people fall into. And I just think for one person to hear this, who is a family member of someone who has someone going through this, you know? Right.

[00:55:02] Sandy: Right. And that's what he would say when he was in treatment. He really had a hard time. And, in the group homes, he really had a hard time feeling good about himself.

[00:55:15] Sandy: Because there were rules that were made for I'm sure to keep it running smoothly.

[00:55:27] Lindsay: Yeah. And I mean, there is so much more. I mean, I don't say that to put this out there and to just have it be like, oh, look at what he's saying about his horrible experience. But I think that there's so much value in understanding what's going through someone's mind.

[00:55:44] Christian: Yes. Yeah.

[00:55:45] Christian: That's,

[00:56:01] And obviously that's not going on in that situation.

[00:56:16] Sandy: But that's the hard part of parenting someone who has this disease.'Because I, it's what do you do?

[00:56:37] Dave: We said that,

[00:56:42] Dave: I told you every time, if you're feeling like you wanna use, call me.

[00:56:48] Lindsay: Yeah. Well, I mean, so Christian for, you know, you guys have the good problem of having so many people now, especially since people know ..Sure. What's going on here, of wanting to be here for people that don't have access for whatever reason, to here, to stable recovery or places like this, want, can they do?

[00:57:11] Christian: Well, they've gotta find someone, you know, and whether that's a sponsor or mentor or someone, you know, around that, that, you know, can help them. And I, you know, I wish we could take everybody to a stable recovery. Yeah. But, you know, we have gotta get better, in the treatment realm, in the recovery realm, at producing places that.

[00:58:01 Studies have shown that we stop maturing at the age at which we start using. So he's really not an adult, maturity-wise. Right, right, and you'll see that in just about every recovery home around, you know. I, myself, was probably a 14-year-old boy whenever, and I was 40 years old when I finally started to get treatment.

[00:58:39] And it will work for a few. But what about those alexes that it doesn't? And here we are sitting with two very distraught parents who did everything in their power to save their son, but had nobody help them save their son. That's, you know, that's wrong on every level, right? it, takes

[00:59:09] Christian: Yeah. You know, and I know, the unfortunate fact of the matter. Right now, the current state of treatment in our country, is that it has been recognized that you can make money off of these individuals. And so I wish I could give you a long list of good places that wanna support PE individuals and help get them better.

[01:00:01] Dave: So, I don't think there's ever been anything proven out there that actually works for everybody. That's the,

[01:00:09] Dave: And so therefore, yeah. You can send somebody to a place where you're paying $15,000 a month. That's right. For them to be in rehab.

[01:00:18] Dave: And they'll come out and they'll use them again.

[01:00:24] Dave: There are some very expensive places out there.

[01:00:26] Dave: That's the Hollywood actors

[01:00:30] Dave: Who has children that have gone through this?

[01:00:51] That's not good enough. It's not like we've got to come up with better ways to help support the family first, because that's where this starts. You know? I mean, mom, dad, they need the knowledge. You guys have said it several times. You didn't know what to do. Well, we gotta do better about letting them know what to do.

[01:01:32] And so, you know, we're post-COVID now, and we're just now feeling the effects that it had on people in addiction and alcoholism and stuff like that. Yeah. There were a lot of people who never would've become addicted until COVID came around. And so now we have this explosion of individuals that never intended to ever be an alcoholic or drug addict, but they were locked inside their home, isolated for long periods of time, with zero support, and they are now. Starting to struggle with these substances, you know? So, we have a lot of work to do.

[01:02:28] and it felt like he was, you know, he didn't lose the sense of wanting people to be proud of him, you know? Yeah. And I know you guys were so proud of him. If there were, what would you say through the whole journey makes you the most proud of, Alex?

[01:02:54] Dave: Yeah. I, you know, I don't know what else to say except that it was a struggle. And, he admitted this, and he apologized profusely many times, but couldn't overcome. Yeah. And, but that's a sad thing.

[01:03:23] Christian: Yeah. And that's where, which is fabulous, you know, no amount of willpower.

[01:03:45] They don't need to go work at a fast food restaurant or at a car wash or something like that and be asked to feel better about themselves. Well, now you're 35 years old, making minimum wage, that's not gonna help anybody, right? We've gotta find ways to help support these folks. And again, it's a community problem, and unless the community is willing to help, it's not gonna get any better, you know?

[01:04:08] Christian: We're always gonna have these barriers.

[01:04:14] Christian: That's it. A moving statement

[01:04:18] Christian: Yeah.

[01:04:25] I feel like I'm 10. Dave, you mentioned just feeling hopeless and that you feel such a level of guilt, and I assume that this is something that just goes along with it, you know, but I hope that you find peace, and just knowing how much you did.

[01:04:52] Yeah. No matter what I did. I wasn't able,

[01:05:14] She was actually dying of cancer and she was still worried about me, you know, and, even going, you know, seeing and going through that, I wanted so badly for her to stop worrying and being scared and, you know, and I could not do it. I just couldn't do it. I tried everything I could. So I'm certain that Alex was the same way.

[01:06:11] And, you know, that feeling of what am I about to do? How in the world did you ever become such a heinous person that you're literally gonna take your kids' Christmas presents back because you're outta money? You know, that is not who I am. It is not who I am. That's who I had become because of the drugs.

[01:06:43] Christian: There were many times that I, you know, had that very, you know. I mean,

[01:06:56] Lindsay: And he found happiness.

[01:06:58] Dave: Yeah. I think he did with her for a while anyway.

[01:07:04] Dave: He was married once, too. Yeah.

[01:07:18] Christian: It is.

[01:07:33] Christian: Yeah. Yeah. And I can give you an example. You know, you're a mom who lost a child, but I know addicted moms.

[01:08:03] So, I mean, I hope that puts it into perspective. Yeah. That is literally, you know, hundreds of thousands of years of humanity, and that maternal instinct, which is literally encoded into your DNA addiction can overcome that. It's unreal. It's the most powerful force out there.

[01:08:29] Christian: Yeah, and I don't have the words for it, but you've met Josh Franks, and he's the example I used just because it was in the very beginning of stable recovery, and it was one of the more profound changes that I saw in how quickly that was.

[01:09:05] And, there's something about horses that puts broken people back together and, you know, we need to find out what that is. We need to replicate it, and we need to get it out there to the people that need it so that, you know, we can help more people.

[01:09:28] Sandy: That's a really good question because you, we, went through many years of frustration. I guess I still believe in staying close. And I still believe that, well, somebody is struggling as hard as they are with their self-esteem and guilt and all those other things that they need to know that there are people who still love them.

[01:10:27] I don't think he felt like he could.

[01:10:31] Sandy: And I think that he was tired.

[01:10:38] Sandy: And I think a lot of people do that

[01:10:46] But the thought of not having to wake up was the only thing that would bring me any peace.

[01:11:13] Christian: Ignorance. That's the only word you can put on top. We're not taking the time to understand. There's just, there you go. You know, just not putting in the time, and, you know, we're guilty of that. How many hundreds of thousands of people died before we realized OxyContin was killing them?

[01:11:47] Like we had done a really good job of moving away from heroin, until OxyContin came on the scene, and then heroin came back and overdose, and now fentanyl. You know, and it's just like, how are we letting this get worse and not making it any better? Yeah. Like, that's insane to me.

[01:12:36] Dave: I don't think we have a halfway house in our entire county.

[01:12:40] Dave: We do now. We didn't for a long time.

[01:12:44] Christian: Kentucky has actually done a good job with the opioid money. they,

[01:12:47] Christian: They set up Kentucky to do a good job with the opioid.

[01:12:59] Sandy: So they did that also. But I'm talking about the people who are suffering. Yeah. Like when No, like to help them after they're done with the treatment.

[01:13:08] Sandy: Yeah. You go, I remember the last time, well, not the last time, he was in treatment, and he wanted to come back to Greensburg, and he didn't have an apartment. And mom, would you help me? Yeah. They told me I could stay at the halfway house or that I couldn't use their phone for an hour every day.

[01:13:36] Christian: Well, think about what you just said. So we're asking somebody to completely rebuild their life. To completely, yeah. And you get to use a phone for an hour a day. Yeah. That's the resource he was given. Here's a phone for an hour a day.

[01:13:48] Christian: Rebuild your life with that.

[01:13:53] Christian: To find one is hard to even limit the amount of time that somebody can try to rebuild their life.

[01:14:02] Lindsay: Are there, are there small, like possibly meaningful things that you think could be done for families that suspect someone is using or that think that they could have something like this happening?

[01:14:37] You know, but I literally get off the phone with moms all the time, and they say Oh my God, I'm so lucky. You know, they just happened to call the right number where they heard the right things and stuff like that. That's wrong in and of itself. Yeah. It should not be luck on whether you get to support your son or help your son, you know?

[01:15:07] Christian: They have to have a bed. That's the other thing.

[01:15:09] Christian: Yeah, no, that's a problem for every treatment provider, yeah.

[01:15:22] Sandy: Right.

[01:15:28] But we're not even doing that.

[01:15:43] Christian: There are good places out there,

[01:15:55] But, you know, maybe the initial steps. Yeah. Other than that, I'm not really sure, and I have to just say I've been out of the entry or the beginning steps for so long. Yeah. That I really haven't kept up. Yeah. In my area. In our area, what's available for that age group?

[01:16:16] Sandy: Yeah.

[01:16:22] Dave: It was a huge, it was a huge donation. And they couldn't thank us enough for that. The Don, oh God, they're the Sages' army. Very appreciated. How would you remember there were 300 people at his funeral?

[01:16:34] And that was so, that struck me so much because there were people who were all ages who really cared about Alex, and had great stories about parts of his life I never knew about, but like, people who were in the band with him when he was in high school, his band that he made.

[01:17:08] Dave: He touched a lot of people.

[01:17:14] It really could happen to anybody, is what we keep saying. And it doesn't discriminate, as we've seen, as we've talked about. But the people who were coming up saying, I worked with Alex at this restaurant, I worked with him at this restaurant. And he just because of how,

[01:17:29] Lindsay: How was he? How would you describe what Alex was like?

[01:17:54] Sandy: You know, I think one of the best illustrations is if we went out to eat, if he saw an elderly person walking into a restaurant, he'd go up and hold the door for them.

[01:19:20] Lindsay: You guys are doing a lot of good by sharing your story.

[01:19:23] Lindsay: Thank you. Yeah, it will help. Thank you.

[01:19:30] Lindsay: Yeah,

[01:19:33] It's not easy sitting here, noo. Tell you that.

[01:20:24] And then all of a sudden, the wrong set of circumstances causes them to make one bad choice, one bad choice. And here we are, right back at square one, and now we've gotta go back and redo every bit of the work that we just went through. You know, it's, you talk about disheartening. You guys have been through it; it's a tough deal.

[01:20:49] Lindsay: Thank you, guys.

[01:20:51] Lindsay: Anything else you wanna say? You, I'm not shaking your hand. No, thank you. No, I'm closing. No, you good? Is there anything else that you

[01:21:13] For the 31 years that we had him, he was a wonderful person, a nd I would go through the same thing again. Yeah,

[01:21:32] Dave: Almost made it.

[01:21:35] Christian: Wow. Almost. I can't believe you did as well as you did, both of you, to be honest.

[01:21:42] Christian: It's super important,

[01:21:44] Christian: These are good people.

[01:21:53] Yeah. And there are still wonderful things about your child.

[01:21:56] Sandy: The addiction is a bad thing, but there are so many wonderful things about them, and I'm grateful we had him in our lives.

[01:22:10] went into a pool in the Marriott at Saratoga with my son and was jumping off the side of the pool. And this was recent, and just, they had their own amazing play date. And it is the one thing my son talks about. So, you know, I think for people that are listening to this that are just never expecting anything like your circumstances, it really can happen to anyone.

[01:22:42] Christian: Yeah.

[01:21:35] Lindsay: There were so many different things in that conversation that just struck me really hard, to be honest.

[01:22:07] So that's something that really makes them pleased with the direction that the program is growing. They have acquired more land so they're hoping to expand. They have 70 in the program now, but they have goals to certainly make it even bigger. But again, they reiterate that one of the biggest things is open family dialogue.

[01:22:48] So thank you so much for listening to this episode, for watching it. You can go to our show notes for more information on stable recovery and other helpful information. Thanks as always for tuning in. And as we always say, please like, rate, and review, subscribe. Maybe the best way you can help us is by sharing an episode with a friend.

[01:23:24] Listeners, we would love to grow this community. We are so grateful that you're a part of it. See you next time.