Destigmatizing Mental Health in Construction W/ Rich Jones – DT 324

Summary

Podcast Summary: Dirt Talk by BuildWitt – Episode DT 324: Destigmatizing Mental Health in Construction with Rich Jones

Release Date: March 27, 2025
Host: Aaron (BuildWitt)
Guest: Rich Jones

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Introduction

In Episode DT 324 of Dirt Talk by BuildWitt, host Aaron engages in an in-depth conversation with Rich Jones, a mental health advocate and recovery coach. The episode centers on destigmatizing mental health issues within the construction industry, exploring the unique challenges faced by workers, the pervasive stigma surrounding mental health and addiction, and effective strategies for fostering a supportive workplace environment.

The Changing World and Its Impact on Mental Health

Timestamp: [01:30] – [03:08]

Aaron and Rich open the discussion by reflecting on the rapid and exponential changes in the world over the past century. They express concern that societal evolution has outpaced human psychological adaptation, leading to significant disconnects in understanding mental health.

Rich Jones ([02:09] – [02:16]): “We don't even have the capacity or we haven't evolved as a species to be able to even integrate that.”

The Opioid Epidemic in Construction

Timestamp: [03:51] – [06:23]

The conversation shifts to the opioid crisis, particularly its devastating impact on the construction sector. Both speakers highlight how traditional models of addressing addiction—such as waiting for individuals to hit rock bottom—are inadequate in the face of potent synthetic opioids like fentanyl.

Rich Jones ([04:16]): “How could anyone say that the best way to handle addiction is to wait for people to hit bottom in 2025?”

Rich shares his personal battle with opioid addiction, detailing how easily prescriptions were obtained and the rapid escalation to dependency.

Rich Jones ([09:54]): “I had seven or eight different doctors prescribing me these opioids, man.”

Stigma and Stereotypes Surrounding Mental Health

Timestamp: [12:50] – [21:44]

Aaron and Rich delve into the deep-seated stigma associated with mental health and addiction. They challenge the misconception that addiction only affects the "worst of the worst," emphasizing that mental health issues are widespread and affect a vast majority of individuals.

Rich Jones ([21:08] – [21:12]): “For 93% of Americans to report yes to that, it tells you that the reality is if you're out there saying, I never dealt with this, you're actually the weirdo.”

They discuss how media portrayals reinforce negative stereotypes, limiting societal empathy and support for those struggling with these issues.

Rich Jones ([17:14] – [17:34]): “There’s a lot of negative stories from TV, movies, and parents growing up that run so deep in our culture.”

Recovery and Support Systems

Timestamp: [27:16] – [35:10]

Rich elucidates his journey to recovery, highlighting that recovery doesn't necessitate complete willingness to change from the outset. He stresses the importance of perseverance and finding the right support systems, noting that progress often comes incrementally.

Rich Jones ([32:09] – [32:23]): “The biggest thing is perseverance and don't quit the process.”

Aaron and Rich also address misconceptions surrounding therapy, particularly within the blue-collar community, advocating for more practical and immediate support mechanisms over traditional therapy sessions.

Rich Jones ([81:08]): “These guys are looking for real, practical support, not just clinical therapy.”

Family and Intergenerational Trauma

Timestamp: [115:21] – [118:24]

The discussion moves to the role of family and intergenerational trauma in mental health. Rich emphasizes how unresolved issues from previous generations can impact current behaviors and relationships, advocating for empathy and understanding within familial dynamics.

Rich Jones ([120:30] – [120:47]): “We made this assumption that everybody walking in the door is like that, but the majority of people aren't.”

Workplace Responsibilities and Support

Timestamp: [57:16] – [80:35]

Aaron and Rich debate the extent of employers' moral responsibility towards employees' mental health outside of work hours. They argue that fostering a supportive work environment can significantly benefit both employees and businesses by reducing absenteeism, improving productivity, and enhancing overall well-being.

Rich Jones ([58:53]): “Take a step back and just look at the numbers and understand how that impacts your workplace.”

Rich introduces Build Well Health’s approach, contrasting it with traditional Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) that often have high barriers to access. He advocates for more accessible and confidential support systems tailored to the construction industry's unique needs.

Rich Jones ([55:32]): “We have a contract with the ABC Employee Assistance Program... but our solution is more accessible and user-friendly.”

Conclusions and Takeaways

Timestamp: [118:37] – [125:11]

In their concluding remarks, Aaron and Rich emphasize the necessity of cultural change within industries to destigmatize mental health issues. They express optimism that through open dialogue, education, and practical support systems like Build Well Health, the construction industry can become more supportive and understanding.

Rich Jones ([124:32] – [124:34]): “You got to raise your hand, come get help. You're always only going to get 1 to 3% of the employee population.”

Aaron ([124:58] – [125:11]): “I could not be a bigger supporter of it. We've tried to support it in every which way possible.”

Notable Quotes

• Rich Jones ([32:09] – [32:23]): “The biggest thing is perseverance and don't quit the process.”
• Rich Jones ([21:08] – [21:12]): “For 93% of Americans to report yes to that, it tells you that the reality is if you're out there saying, I never dealt with this, you're actually the weirdo.”
• Rich Jones ([19:13] – [19:19]): “We're not going to rest our way out of this. We're not going to punish our way out of it.”
• Aaron ([05:20] – [05:21]): “It breaks the whole model.”
• Rich Jones ([55:33] – [55:36]): “I'm not a professional counselor. Who am I to be able to.”
• Rich Jones ([69:07] – [69:13]): “Let’s go make a message about mental health. But it’s going to be scripted. I’m going to be reading off teleprompter.”

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the key discussions, insights, and conclusions from Episode DT 324, providing an informative and engaging overview for those who have not listened to the episode. By highlighting the critical issues of mental health stigma, the opioid epidemic in construction, and effective recovery strategies, Aaron and Rich offer valuable perspectives aimed at fostering a more supportive and understanding industry environment.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's like, this wasn't even 100 years ago.

[B]

It's unbelievable when you think about it.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And so it's like this wasn't even a century ago.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And then you go back. Yeah. Pre Industrial revolution to how we were living back then. It is so different to today's reality. And I think that's like. I think that's one of the root problems that we're facing in societies. Not that there's the core root problems. There's a million of them. I think people are just so disconnected from how the world works and how psychology works and how they're wired. They're so far removed from it in.

[B]

This really weird land, and we don't even have the capacity or we haven't evolved as a species to be able to even integrate that.

[A]

No, no, it's impossible. Yeah.

[B]

And so. And that curve that you're talking about with the way the world has changed, it's. It's like exponential. Exponential change.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, even if you think about your life, or I think about my life, like, I graduated high school in 1986, so I'm Gen X. And I definitely remember a time when there wasn't the Internet. I definitely remember a time when we had, like, bones on the wall. And stuff like that. And so. But that's gone. Like any kind. Like think about it. After our generation, that reality is gone. And now everybody has come into this cyber world that none of us really know how to assimilate.

[A]

No. Well, and I think that's where the younger generation. I think that's one of the big disconnects is in a way, the previous generation's like, well, it's just like how I grew up. Yet the world, there's. There's almost no, there's something different. No similarities.

[B]

Right. To that world. And people will say that all the time. Like rich. Older generations have always been saying this about younger generations. They've always said that this is going to be the, you know, this is too much. But I don't think that that's a fair analogy or a fair comparison. I think that like tech, this technological change that we're in the middle of, is impossible to comprehend for anybody. To put it into any kind of context. You can't compare it to anything. It's not like the printing press. It's not like, I mean, I guess in some ways of printing press, you could say, like, had some similar impact, but it didn't connect 7 billion people at once.

[A]

And not to get like right in the weeds right away. But that's where. When I spoke with Hamilton originally, you know, something people will say is like, well, people have to hit rock bottom before they get themselves squared away. And now we have these synthetic opioids, which. Fentanyl and everything like that that's killing people at such a fast rate, like all of a sudden.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That it's like, well, that doesn't apply anymore. Because if they're dead, you can't, you.

[B]

Can'T solve the problems that we have with the same model.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That we've been. Because the problem has changed.

[A]

It breaks the whole model.

[B]

Yes, exactly.

[A]

And it's happened so fast.

[B]

And it's happened so fast. And honestly, like, that's one of my biggest frustrations. And that's where like u turn and build. Well, health and stuff comes from. Is out of FR around trying to work within that system to change it. Because the system itself is not going to change. It exists by definition to perpetuate itself. And all of a sudden all this stuff isn't working. Your analogy with the synthetic opioids and fentanyl and stuff like that is the perfect analogy. How could anyone say that the best way to handle addiction is to wait for people to hit bottom in 2025? I mean, you'd have to be out of your mind to make a statement like that. So most people won't even say it, but the problem is nobody's making a change on the back end to address it.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Just sort of like acknowledging we need to do something different, but yet we're still going to continue to roll out these same programs, these same fixes, so on and so forth.

[A]

And you can argue in a lot of ways, this system itself created the problem.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

With opioids and with, like. I just got into the weeds about the whole Purdue Pharma thing.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It is a crazy story.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

And the data, like, you match up what they were doing with the data on how quickly the deaths, the fatalities ramped up and the stuff that was happening within the government. And, well, we're gonna, you know, require the doctors, like, change up how they. How they prescribe stuff, and that's going to get rid of the problem, which then just forces everybody into the. The like. It doesn't solve the addiction problem. They're addicted now, so they have to go get it from somewhere. Now they're getting it from anywhere, which.

[B]

Is more often than they're not getting what they think they're getting.

[A]

No, no. And so it's like, holy cow, this is Purdue Pharma.

[B]

There's a book called Painkiller, and it was one of the first ones that I read on the opioid epidemic. So this is years ago, but it lays out the Purdue pharma stuff really, really interestingly. What they. So there's a. There's a. I forget what it's called, but it's basically like a database that keeps track of all the prescriptions. So you can. If you're a pharmaceutical company, you can access this database and you can look at any region of the country and see what's being prescribed. Yeah, so what they did when they rolled out OxyContin was they concentrated on my, you know, my hometown on the Rust Belt. They went down through Pittsburgh, like, eastern Ohio, Steubenville area, down through Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, and they went to pain doctors there, and they gave them this line about, first of all, opioids aren't addictive. I don't know if you ever heard the story behind that statement. There was never a study that said opioids weren't addictive. What it was is there was a letter to the editor for the New England Journal that this doctor had written. This is like decades ago, he wrote a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, and it said, hey, I just Want people to know I'm a doctor at this hospital, and We've treated over 10,000 patients, and only three have ever become addicted to pain pills. What it didn't mention was we only treated them while they were in the hospital. None of them went home with a prescription. And it wasn't a study. It was a. It was this dude's observation. Yeah. Well, Purdue Pharma grabs that from the New England Journal of Medicine. And that is the horse that they ride through the FDA to get the FDA to say that it's not addictive.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Unbelievable.

[A]

Well, and what the. They targeted those specific states because they didn't have the same standards for prescriptions that. Like a. California or New York.

[B]

And you knew you could get it through.

[A]

Yeah. You could get it through easier. And then they targeted. At least based on what I just read, they targeted very specific doctors.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

They. Because they hired. They went out and hired McKinsey.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Big, big consulting firm.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

To figure out how to sell more pain medication. And they said, hey, hey, hey. You're doing it wrong.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You're trying to sell to all the doctors.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You've got to sell. You've got to find the super, super, super prescribing doctors.

[B]

That's the.

[A]

And just give them whatever they want and have, like, the amount of visits they had, their salespeople. I mean, it was like 15 times a month or whatever, visiting these doctors, and they were just prescribing this drug.

[B]

They were the heavy hitters.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. And it was their whole sales strategy.

[B]

Well, I was. You can make an argument that I was sort of like an early adopter of the opioid epidemic. So I'm in recovery from an opioid use disorder, and I've been in recovery since 2001. And so 99. I was in a car accident. And it was. I mean, I cannot tell you how easy it was to get these prescriptions. I can't even describe it. When I say it out loud, it sounds like I'm making it up because it sounds like something out of a movie. You know, I would just go from doctor to doctor, man. And I knew, even though I didn't really, like, consciously know I was doing something wrong. It's very hard to explain. Like, I told myself that I was in real pain and I needed to get extra meds, but I still knew it was wrong. Right. And so I would go in sometimes and lie to these doctors. And then I realized I didn't have to. I realized I didn't even have to I didn't have to go in and tell them it was stolen out of my car. When I ran out early, I could just go in and say, hey, I couldn't sleep and I had to take extra. And they would be like, yep, yep. And I'm. And I. Looking back on it, it is the wildest thing, the wildest ride, man. I had seven or eight different doctors prescribing me these opioids, man.

[A]

What were you taking?

[B]

It was mainly so I was even before oxycontin really hit. So it would be oxys occasionally, but it would be more hydrocodone based. So it'd be lortabs, Vicodins, things like that, Percocetin. You get to a point where you're taking whatever you can kind of get your hands on, to be honest with you.

[A]

What makes it so addictive?

[B]

You know, what they find with opioids is it really is. It's an individualized experience. You'll find folks where opioids hit like, if you like them, you like them. It's like a hand and glove kind of thing. So when I take an opioid, I have a very euphoric response to it. I actually get energy from those. Now if I take them for a longer period of time, then I'll start like what you typically see is people nodding out and stuff. But that happens down the road a little bit when you first start taking these. It's like, holy cow, I have found the solution to all my problems.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

But other people will take an opioid and have a different response. They'll either get sick or they don't like the way they feel.

[A]

I get sick.

[B]

Yeah. Well, you're fortunate. And I'm not an expert at this part of it, but apparently there's some work being done to be able to develop a profile of a person who's more at risk. Right. So now we could do some proactive kind of like coaching or proactive kind of intervention for somebody like that. But it's semi random on why did it hit me the way it hit me. But I'm telling you, I didn't know anything about pills. I hadn't taken any pills when I was in high school. It wasn't a thing in my high school. You know, I was kind of before that. Basically it was alcohol and marijuana in our school. And I got a hold of these pills, man, and it just like, holy cow.

[A]

What were you doing professionally at that time?

[B]

My undergraduate degree is in business management. So I was doing like training and recruitment and Working for like HR in a hospital system.

[A]

So you had a job.

[B]

I was doing very, very well, quite frankly. And I was. It was funny. There was like, part of my job was I had to interact with behavioral health. Like I had to like recruit psychiatrists and things like that and train people and stuff. And so I was working around behavioral health, but not. I didn't know what, what the heck it was. Do you know what I mean? Like, I wasn't paying attention to it. I was just full blown into my own addiction. But I. Nobody at work really knew what was going on.

[A]

It's. That's the crazy thing about it is it's. It's really easy to hide. And this is. So, this is. I've. I've gone down this rabbit hole too. A construction number. As you probably know. They started studying professions. Overdose death based on profession construction. Number one, 16 times on the job fatalities for overdose death. So I go and publish this and I just start. Because I had never heard that before. I'd never seen that anywhere. And it is terrifying. It is absolutely terrifying. I go put it on the Internet. And the comments were fascinating because a lot of people were just like, well, they're addicts. That's what they get.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

But then it's like, well, are these all just addicts? Like, is this just the bottom of the barrel that the industry is attracting and they were gonna die no matter where they were? Or is it because oftentimes of their profession, which is what I found is probably the case.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They go get injured or just wear and tear. My back has. After 23 years of lifting. Shit is just worked out, man. Or my knee, or my hip, or my elbow, shoulder, whatever it is. They go get a legal prescription for whatever. And then 1, 2, 6, they're dead.

[B]

Yeah. And it takes on. I could tell you, I'm not exaggerating this when I say this. Within seven days, I was physically dependent on these pills and I didn't know what was going on. So it doesn't take long to get that physical tolerance built up and probably psychologically compulsively using these things within 30 days. And within a year, standing on a corner in Pittsburgh, like thinking about stepping in front of a bus. I don't know if I was actively suicidal, but I remember having thoughts like if I stepped in front of one of these buses, something would be different. The whole time. Going to work the whole time, being promoted the whole time, nobody's saying anything about that. But my family watching me self destruct, me going to bed Every night and saying, like people who want to say they're just damn addicts and they're just like weak willed people and stuff. Like, I never had a problem doing anything that I said I was going to do. You know what I mean? I'm a disciplined person. But I would go to bed every night. I'm not doing that again. I feel like a terrible husband. I feel like a terrible father. By the time I would wake up the next morning, it was all over me. So what people have to understand is, and this isn't really open for debate anymore because we can now take pictures of people's brains and there are these things called functional MRIs. This is a neurological brain disorder. You can literally show pictures of before and after. Now, did we do it to ourselves? That's the other part of the argument. Okay, Rich, we'll give you that. Something happened to your brain after you compulsively did these substances, but you did it to yourself. Well, what disease do we not do to ourselves? You know what I mean? Like, name another disease that our behavior didn't contribute to, ranging from diabetes type 2 to a heart condition.

[A]

Well, in that. And that doesn't solve anything.

[B]

That doesn't do us any good.

[A]

Yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't.

[B]

You know, it just makes everything. Like, it makes the person more. Less likely to seek help.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's. I mean, I've seen it similar with like alcoholism. Like, yeah, there's an alcoholic.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But it's like, well, okay, like maybe they go and destroy their lives and that's what they deserve. But if you were to argue that. Right, but in doing so, they also destroy a lot of other people's lives.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Like if they have children, they're not unscathed. Spouse, they're not unscathed. Parents, coworkers, whatever it is, there is this path of destruction that can follow, that can harm people that have nothing to do with it, but like significantly harm.

[B]

Oh, no, it sucks the life out of like everybody around you.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it does it in. And so even at the. In terms of the business, like there's business impacts. If you have somebody who's, you know, misusing substances. Let's not even use the word alcoholic or addict. Let's just say somebody who's maybe overdoing it, that person is costing the company about $15,000 a year through presenteeism and kind of like absenteeism and increased healthcare costs. So like, it isn't the type of thing that doesn't impact everybody, you know, we used to say when I was running the nonprofits that recovery benefits everyone. So even if you're a cynical person and you say to yourself, you did this to yourself, Rich, and so on and so forth, it doesn't matter. To your point, it's going to be better if we can support these folks. Everything about your business, everything about your community, everything about your world is going to be better if we find. Because what's not going to happen is we're not going to rest our way out of this. We're not going to punish our way out of it. It's not like all of a sudden people are going to wake up tomorrow and say, you know what? They're drug testing me at work. I'm not going to do this anymore. That's not how this works.

[A]

Yeah, because it's not. It is criminal in a sense, because at some point you'll probably be buying stuff you shouldn't.

[B]

Yeah, there's.

[A]

But it's not really derived from any criminal activity.

[B]

No.

[A]

I mean, you just being a delinquent on the street, like it can happen to anybody, any social class, anywhere we like.

[B]

And when people talk about the stigma and the stereotypes and stuff, I don't think people really understand how deep that runs in society. We really like to talk about the very worst part of addiction. Like, if you. If you look at any given 60 minutes, for example, if they do a news special about the opioid epidemic, they're not going to show my story.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They're going to show the person living on the streets of Kensington, Philadelphia, the person living in the Tenderloin in San Francisco. And that's like less than 1% of the addiction pie.

[A]

And a lot of that is straight up mental disorder.

[B]

And there's a lot going on with those folks. Like, it's not just addiction. Right. Like, there's a lot going on. On. There's homelessness, there's mental health conditions, so on and so forth. But they like to use that as the face of addiction. Because you want to know why it makes us feel damn good about ourselves? Because that's not what I got going on in my house. Sure. You know, my husband's not living on the streets of Kensington. My daughter's not living on the streets of Kensington. And the problem is, is it leaves out the overwhelming majority of people with these issues. So picture yourself as somebody who has a drinking problem, but maybe it hasn't progressed to full blown alcoholism. And you're also starting to become dependent on these pills and you're waking up every morning and you're going through a little bit of withdrawal. And you realize if I take two of these pills, I'm gonna be okay, and I can get to work and I can get paid today. And you're still. That person deserves just as much help as the person on the streets of Kensington. That's my argument. But that doesn't seem to be the way the world thinks about it. The way the world thinks about this guy is he needs to just like, raise his hand and say, hey, can you come help me? My point would be no. We're figuring out ways to help these folks. Like, we do really creative things to help people on the streets of Kensington, Philadelphia, like we have. And I, and God bless these people. Street. I've done this work, street outreach programs, you know, going out into the world and finding people. We don't do anything like that. For the average person who has these type of issues. We just ignore it.

[A]

But, but I, I, I think that's like, like you were saying, it's self preservation in a way. Because to acknowledge it means you must acknowledge whatever you're addicted to.

[B]

You're gonna have to take a hard look at something.

[A]

And there's a lot of addictions.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Beyond pills.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

There's food, there's porn, there's alcohol, there's gambling. There's all kinds of stuff in that camp. And most people have waded into some of those waters at some point.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

Or if you haven't, you have to acknowledge it somewhere within your world. And maybe there's people out there that are unscathed by it. I don't know of. I haven't met any of those people, though. Like, somebody I haven't either has had a run in with addiction somewhere at some point. And usually it's a pretty harsh run in. Like, I grew up in a household, Alcoholism, very prevalent. I don't struggle with it. I haven't drank in the past year. I've just, I didn't have a problem with it. I just wanted to steer clear of it. But I'm terrified of it. And I view it very differently. Had I not had that experience. And now I'm very great. Not at the time, it was horrible at the time. But now I'm extremely grateful for that experience because I can at least have a different level of understanding of whoever is.

[B]

I think that this is, I think this is one of the most stunning points that we could ever like, really talk about. How many people are actually in reality impacted by either a mental health condition or Substance use. There was a Gallup poll that was done, and don't quote me on how they phrased, but they listed 13 different things. It was like, have you ever had any emotional problems? Have you ever had any psychological distress? Any toxic. They had a list of the most common kind of things that people could deal with. And 93% of Americans reported yes.

[A]

Yeah. And the other 7%, I don't know.

[B]

And the other 7% are lying.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But even with that, for 93% of Americans to report yes to that, it tells you that the reality is, if you're out there saying, I never dealt with this, you're actually the weirdo. Like, statistically speaking, you're the outlier. It's the rest of us who have had these skeletons in the closet that.

[A]

Are the norm, but you feel like the outlier.

[B]

You feel like the outlier because of.

[A]

That societal pressure and how it's not portrayed anywhere. So, yeah, you must be the only one that's an alcoholic living around alcoholism, addicted to pills, whatever it is.

[B]

This is honestly, like, one of the most difficult things about what we're trying to do when we get the word out. You hear a lot about stigma reduction, and I don't think people really understand how much more work has to be done around stigma reduction because these societal attitudes run so deep, and we don't realize that they're there. We don't realize that they're there. Most people have their opinions on alcoholism and mental health conditions. They get them from tv, they get them from the movies. They don't even really know where they get them from. Maybe they heard stories from their parents growing up, but they're not positive stories. They're very, very negative. And that runs so deep in our culture, and we're so far away from where we need to be with that. We're making progress because we're finally talking about it, but we're. We're not. We're not where we need to be with it.

[A]

Well, even like something like alcohol, it's so ingrained in culture.

[B]

Oh, my gosh. Yes.

[A]

It is everywhere.

[B]

Yeah, it is.

[A]

I mean, it is really a cornerstone of modern society in the Western world. I know there's other realms where drinking isn't a thing, but it's everywhere.

[B]

It's everywhere. It's part of the process. Right. You go out, you go to a networking event, people drinking.

[A]

Yeah. Dating. I mean, anything social probably has alcohol involved.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

And when you're taking part in it, I don't think you are as aware. But then when you step out of it, you start to then, or at least that's how it's been for me. You just see it, it's like, wow, this is everywhere.

[B]

Well, and something interesting might be happening, I think, with some of the younger generations because I just read a study the other day that was sent to me. It was around prevention. And teen drug use is actually at a record low. When I say that to people they like, no way. But here's what's interesting. The kids that are using are using more dangerous stuff than they ever have before. And it's more problematic for that group than ever before. Do you know what I mean? But overall, the number of kids using marijuana and alcohol, for example, has gone steadily down.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

So, so there is something about maybe this younger generation where they are. And you'll also see things like dry January.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Sober October.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, that was never a thing. Yeah, we never heard, I heard of that, you know, back in the day.

[A]

But I, I, I, people have said like, yeah, I think, I think alcohol is becoming less and less prevalent. But I'm like, I don't know, it's.

[B]

Hard to say that whenever you're out.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know what I mean? Like you said, it's everywhere. Very hard for me to look around and say it's becoming less prevalent.

[A]

Yeah, I, I, I haven't, I don't know. I, I don't have any anecdotal evidence to substantiate that. But I know like 2020 really was like, it was already an out of control fire. But that just, I feel like took everything to a different level.

[B]

My favorite statistic from the pandemic was 700% increase in online alcohol sales. Wow, nice. And what they found was, and this is very troubling, it wasn't so much that just like the world started drinking that much more. It was heavy drinkers started drinking that much more.

[A]

Sure, yeah.

[B]

So if you were already. So I think that like in general, people started drinking more during the pandemic, but if you were already a drinker, you really turned it up. I mean, think I could think about me back in the day? Because the thing about my story is I always say opioids drove me to my knees. And they absolutely did. But in a way they were a blessing because I probably would have kept drinking for a long time. I was a functional alcoholic, but alcohol was always present, man. It was just always part of my story. And I can't imagine if I'd have been drinking during the pandemic. It would have Almost been this subconscious permission to go at it harder. Does that make sense? Well, hey, it's the end of the world, man.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And then also other people are doing it, and you don't have any of those constraints that you had before people were at home. So people start day drinking. And then what happens to that group? One of the other things with the pandemic is we've kind of stopped talking about it. I don't think the fallout from that is done by any means.

[A]

I think it's gonna.

[B]

You know what I mean? I don't think that that's a dead issue in any kind of way. Well.

[A]

And I don't think we've really even seen the. In the younger generation. Like the children.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And adolescents and everything. Teenagers, schools, as they move into adult years.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Who knows, right? No one knows.

[B]

Right.

[A]

No one has any. And maybe there's.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

No, everything's normal. This and that. But it's like you can't remove children from like two or three of their most important developmental years.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Of their entire life and just assume everything's going to be fine. Yeah. There's just like.

[B]

Yeah. Well, I think that we're. I think that we're doing what we do as a country. We're waiting to see. Let's. We're not gonna, you know, let's. If it hits the fan, then we'll have to come up with something, but we're just waiting and seeing.

[A]

So with. I've said this just a hundred times over, like, the U turn health stuff, the videos are unbelievable. They're the most effective videos I've seen. And yours are fantastic because, like, content's great, but I feel like you just come right out. Yep. I recovered from this. I've been here. Like, you're not there to lecture anybody.

[B]

No, you're.

[A]

You're. And it gives you so much credibility. At what point did you have to get yourself back on the rails or what got you back on the rails?

[B]

So what got me back on the rails, honestly, was so there had been an intervention. I. I started on. On the opioids in 99, and things fell apart relatively quick from there. And so my family had tried to do interventions and try to, you know, you need help kind of stuff, but that never worked. And honestly, I did try a couple times, you know, probably like 2000, but it was 2001, and they did an intervention. And the thing that was different was they included two people from my work, and I was sharing about this at an event the other day, and There was something different when I walked into that room. Cause they did one of those old school interventions that you've ever seen on TV where you get surprised. They tell you you're going over to grandma's for birthday party. You're like, I thought Grandma's birthday was in December. This is July. You walk in and, like, everybody's there, all solemn. And as soon as I saw these two guys from work, though, my psychology was such that I respected these guys. See, you have a different type of relationship with people at work. They don't know everything about you. Right. So I didn't want these guys to know all my dirty little. You know what I mean? Like, I had too much respect. So them being in the room, I literally was like, where am I going? What am I doing? Like, I knew.

[A]

Did they know or did your family have to go tell them?

[B]

They're like, wow, they knew, these two guys. Here's what was interesting. They weren't talking about it, but if you asked them, they knew. Does that make sense? Like, when my family got them involved, they knew, but they weren't gonna say anything. You know, this was 99, 2000. Like, it was even worse back then.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You didn't get in anybody's business, man. Like, you. But whenever my. When my family reached out, then they were like. But they didn't even have to do anything, honestly. And like, it's kind of like a running joke. I was just like, where am I going? And then that's. And then what happened for me was. And I want to go on the record with this. If you're out there and you're struggling in any kind of way with anything, you don't have to be a hundred percent willing to change in order to start changing. This was the. My experience with recovery was that's one of the most enlightening things. All I did was go show up. Does that make. I had no desire to stop drinking. I had no desire. I knew I needed to get off these pills, so I was kind of like, let me get off these pills, but I'm going to keep drinking kind of thing. What happened was, is once you start the process, you start to gather positive momentum that you can't even conceive what it feels like. So when you're in the middle of, like, substance misuse, you get so used to doing life that way that you don't. You can't even conceive the payoff from not doing life that way. Like, simple little things like showing up for work without a hangover. Like, that may sound like a silly little thing, but for me, that was a big. I was like, this feels different, man.

[A]

Well, but you don't know any better because that's just your constant state.

[B]

It's your constant state. So if you're always in this state where you're scrambling, you know, picture like, this guy who's always, like, running late or doing whatever, and he's just scrambling, but he's getting by, and he's always feeling a little bit sick from maybe withdrawal or maybe from. Then all of a sudden, I start to not feel that way. Right. I start to. We always say that addiction takes things away from you spiritually, emotionally, and then physically, in that order. The first thing that goes is your spiritual or your moral commitment. You'll start to do things in addiction that you wouldn't do otherwise. Like, I stole people's pills. I would never do that. The next thing is your emotional capability goes. And then the last thing that goes is your physical health starts to deteriorate. But when you get into recovery, it comes back in the opposite direction. Your physical health improves initially, like sleeping at night and not having a hangover, that stuff worked for me. And so what happened was I got this positive momentum where, to your point, I started getting myself back on the rails because I liked the way I was feeling. But it's real important for me to highlight this. I did not wake up one day and say, I want to go get better. I did not hit bottom. I did not have. Honestly, you can make an argument that when I went to rehab, I was on the way up. In some ways. It was probably six months earlier was really when I was in a worse position. So it's like, how do you get the person to start taking the steps is really the key part of the process. How do you get. And any steps are better than no steps.

[A]

Sure. And I think there's a misconception around the recovery process being. Once you go in, it's just. You go through the process. It's a nice, tidy process. You go out at the other end and you're recovered.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Based on what I've seen, it's very rarely that way.

[B]

I wish it was like that, man. I mean, I wish it was like, we dipped you in the waters of rehab and you're good to go, man.

[A]

But no, he gets baptized again. At least based on what I've seen. It can be very chaotic.

[B]

It can be very chaotic.

[A]

Up and down and all around and this way and that way. But as long as there's Progress over time.

[B]

The biggest thing is, and this may sound completely cliche, but the biggest thing is perseverance and don't quit the process. There was a study at a Harvard medical school where they looked at, you know, folks seeking recovery. And what they found was if people stayed engaged in some type of program for at least six to 12 months, there was about a 75% success rate. Now, that didn't mean that 75% were stone cold sober. What it meant was, is that their symptoms were in remission. The amount that they were using went substantially down. They were no longer at a critical area. So my point with that is that most people will figure this out. This has even been my personal experience, sponsoring people, counseling people, coaching people. I'm very optimistic for everybody I talk to. But the biggest thing is don't quit. Something's gonna happen here. You're gonna start going to meetings, or you're gonna start going to see your therapist, or maybe you're gonna go to the rehab and somebody's gonna say something sideways to you, or you're not gonna like the way this person talked to you. And you're gonna have all these reasons you wanna quit the process. Don't give in to that. Because if you keep going forward, what'll happen is, and I believe this, most people want the best for themselves. Most people. And they just can't conceive that there's another way out. And the cool thing is there's many different ways to do it. You don't have to do it the way I did it. You don't have to go to rehab and then go to 12 step meetings. That's just what I did. There are people who do it through CrossFit. There are people who do it through church groups or people who do it through. I know many people who see an individual therapist, and that's sort of like their way of. But you got. You got to kind of have to do something. It's not just going to miraculously fall upon you.

[A]

It's interesting you bring up the physical side of things, because that's what. Despite all of my negative experiences with alcohol, that's what got me to just be like, I don't want to do this anymore. Because I'm at such a good physical state that if I had one drink right now, or even half a beer right now, all day tomorrow, it'd be like the dimmer switch is down to, like, 70%.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which just drives me nuts.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so it just. It just got to a point where it's Like, I don't. Why am I walking back physically? Like, why am I intentionally.

[B]

That is a great point.

[A]

Taking from my physical health and wellbeing and at that point just personally just was not worth it right at anymore. But like, once it started to take from my physical well being, I was like, I don't, I don't need to be doing this.

[B]

And if you're sitting out there and you, and you're, and you can't like conceive that because I think that's one of the. Even though it's incredibly obvious that you're going to feel better if you stop drinking, you know, just from logically speaking, most people can't wrap their mind around that. They can't. It's too, like the payoff seems too far away. Like if I, if I drink today, I know what I'm going to get. I'm going to get a buzz. I'm going to be able to quit thinking about some of these things at work.

[A]

It's just. Yeah, relief.

[B]

It's relief. It's short term. It's immediate gratification. The problem with recovery is it's going to take a couple weeks for you to start to feel these benefits. But if people knew, because that was the part that was so interesting. I remember consciously thinking, so one of the problems with me when I was in addiction was sleep. My main symptom around withdrawal was I would never sleep. And so I came into recovery just with this desire to sleep. And so I remember, you know, feeling like crap, but being able to sleep. And I was just like, whatever, I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing because I'm finally sleeping again. But how do you. But the problem is, you know, I go out to these site visits and I talk to these guys, these construction workers, man, and they're just, they're working so hard and they can't, they can't conceive. Getting there. Does that make sense?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All they can conceive is getting to the end of the day and drinking six beers at night.

[A]

Well, and it's been in a lot of cases years and sometimes decades since they've been anywhere near there.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

So they just, they don't even have a memory of what that would be like.

[B]

No. That's a good way to put it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You don't even have a conception of it. That, that, that would be the way I would describe it for me because I was an athlete in high school and stuff like that. And it's really weird. Like it creeps up on you, too. Like, that's the other thing with addiction. It's not like, on Wednesday you were fine, and on Thursday, all of a sudden, like, the addiction fairy came into your bedroom and said, you're addicted now. It's like being in a fog when you're driving. You don't know where it started. You just know when you're in the middle of it. Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so that's. It's progressive, and it creeps in over time, and it sneaks up on you.

[A]

Yeah, I. And this is me being vulnerable. I definitely had an addiction for a while, and I'm not going to get into what. Yeah, but I didn't even know that it was a problem.

[B]

That's very common.

[A]

Yeah. And then it started to just, like, come up in conversations and listening to podcasts and interviews and this and that, and I started to think, like, wait, this is a fucking problem.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then it took me a while to even, like, come to terms with that. Be like, oh, I had no idea.

[B]

Well, you know, that's the one thing that Freud got right. So I'm not a Sigmund Freud fan. Not to, like, go down a rabbit hole here, but, like, so Sigmund Freud, the father of psychotherapy, like, I think there's a lot of stuff that he. That he wrote about and talked about is kind of weird, to be honest with you. And if he was alive today, he might be on the receiving side of some treatment.

[A]

Yeah, he was wild.

[B]

He was way out.

[A]

But he got a lot of stuff right, too.

[B]

What he got right was the defense mechanisms, our ability as human beings to do what you just described, to create, like, these. These firewalls between us and reality. So the idea is our psyche can't handle this look at taking a true look at ourselves because it's too emotionally damaging. Right. So I have this addiction. I'm ashamed of it, or whatever it is. And so I'll create these defense mechanisms. Rationalization, denial, intellectualizing, whatever it may be. You know what I mean? And I'll hear stories of people who have talked to me about that. Like, I'll have in my private practice, I'll work a lot. I work a lot with young guys who are dealing with pornography addiction. Very, very diabolical.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, and. And so they'll talk about how they would go on and then they would research different articles about pornography until they found what they wanted to.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

Until they found some statistic that, like, backed them up.

[A]

I've done that with all kinds of stuff.

[B]

Yeah. Like, you find what you. Confirmation bias.

[A]

Yeah, confirmation bias.

[B]

You go until you find, like, what you're looking for. And the human brain is amazing at that. How did you. So the question becomes, how does one. In recovery rooms, they call it the moment of clarity. How do you have that moment of time when you did see it really becomes a question. And how do we help people see it?

[A]

I think people do that. I've seen that all the time with alcohol. No, they said, wine is good for you. Here's X, Y, Z. And then the next month, the study comes out. It's like, wine's actually killing you. And then the next month, I study. Hey, it's actually really good for you.

[B]

It's good for you now. Yeah, Yeah.

[A]

A glass of red wine causes cancer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just like. It's like every month there's a different. But you hear that all the time. Like, well, it's actually. It's actually good for you in certain. And we've done it forever, you know, for thousands of years. Tens of thousands of years. Who knows?

[B]

But if you think about your point, I think you're capturing, like, a lot of probably what's going on with a lot of people in a lot of different ways. Right. There's something going on. How do we get information to them outside of their system that will make them realize, like, hey, maybe there's another way to look at this. Yeah, we got to be careful. You can't preach to people. That will not work. I'll tell you from my own personal experience, as soon as somebody started waving their finger at me, I shut down.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, if you were telling me how I was doing wrong and how I needed to go to rehab or how I needed help, I immediately was not listening to you.

[A]

But. But again, I think that's what makes you so effective, is you just come right out and say, listen, been there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's just, like, right away gives you so much credibility.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I've done that with other things, because I'm not. It's interesting. I've found myself in a leadership position at a younger age while I'm still figuring out just being a human being, a man, et cetera. But since I don't know what I'm doing, if I just say I don't know what I'm doing, it disarms people.

[B]

Oh, yeah. Yes.

[A]

And it is so effective. And I don't do it to disarm people, but that's, like, one of the best tools I have to just Completely change a conversation or interaction with somebody.

[B]

That is so interesting.

[A]

And I feel like your story, in a way, it's just so disarming. Like, wow, he just comes right out. He's vulnerable. And I think that's it. When you're vulnerable, it then gives people permission to follow suit.

[B]

It is. It does. Also, though, I don't know what you think. I think it's, you know, you hear people talk a lot about authenticity and vulnerability and things like that and leadership and stuff like that. I. I've had some interesting experiences like that. I work in a field where, you know, in the recovery world, especially on, like, the recovery advocacy side, like, everybody's pretty open about stuff. Do you know what I mean? But I've. I've also seen some pushback where peop. Like, people don't want to hear it. It's interesting, like, where people will. Will send a message. Like, you're talking. You're telling us too much. And I have an issue with that. Like, I have. I still think that that's, like, old school. So I think the vulnerability and our willingness to talk openly is changing as a society. But I also think that we have some ways to go. But if you look at things like the Olympics, for example, when Simone Biles came out with her issues around, you'll see it in society too. Right. So people are finally starting to talk about this. I guess I just want to make sure that as somebody who has a perspective on this issue for 25 years, we're not done. There's no spike in a football like. Like, you know, we've been talking about it for whatever number of years in the construction industry now, but it's not. This isn't as good as it gets.

[A]

No. But even suicide, the construction industry, it's a relatively new conversation. Like, just two years ago, three years ago, I didn't hear about it. Talked like, anywhere.

[B]

And then stunning, though, man.

[A]

Vince comes around. Vincifelli, Ajax. I think he was the one that really got the conversation going. There was a bunch.

[B]

And that was all about his vulnerability.

[A]

But driven by his vulnerability. Exactly. Like, when, even when I last spoke with him, he brings it up regularly. And it's just like, how could I not be on this guy's team? He just comes right out and says it and it's like, damn, that's effective. And that's where like. And his message is so effective too, because he just tells people straight up, if you're not serious about this, don't do it.

[B]

Yeah, that's a great point.

[A]

And I've. And I've seen, like, a lot of people. I feel like everybody has the right intention, but I see it at, like the big company executive level. They don't even know how to talk like a human.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so we're going to go make a message about mental health.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But it's going to be scripted. I'm going to be reading off teleprompter.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm not actually going to say anything of value.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I'm going to say the all. All the standard talking points that have been vetted by PR, legal, etc.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And we're going to check the box. Yep. And they care. They do genuinely care. Like, if I were asked, hey, do you care about your people? And if they're killing themselves, like, of course. Like they're a human being. I mean, 99% would. Maybe there's the 1%. That's insane. That has been proven through history. But then I see that and it's like, you're almost better off not. I think you're doing it.

[B]

I think 100% correct, man.

[A]

Cause it just.

[B]

To me, I love the business. Like, if you're not in, you're not in.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, it's almost like, get out of the way and let those. And I hate to. I hate to come off like that, but, like, there's so much truth to that, because there is. Like, I say this about my company all the time. You know, we will never go give a sales pitch to anybody and have the person sitting across from us say, this sounds terrible. Like, we're build well health, man. We're here to help your people. We're here to counsel your people. We're here to, like, provide education and resources. Nobody will look at you and say, that's not a good idea. Do you follow me? Because even if it's just from a PR standpoint, they know that they're supposed to be behind their people. But how many people are actually behind it?

[A]

Well, I.

[B]

And willing to invest and so on and so forth.

[A]

I think they're not actually behind it because it requires them to be vulnerable.

[B]

And that's too much of a. That's a. That's a bridge too far for some people.

[A]

And if I'm 63 years old, I've made it this far.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

I'm not. I'm probably not gonna go into the closet with skeletons.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But then I just don't think. I think until you do that you can only be so effective.

[B]

You can only be so effective.

[A]

Is my Opinion. And I still think you can do stuff, provide support, this and that. But that's where it starts.

[B]

It's so true. Because the solution to this is a culture change. Right. See, people think that it's a. It's things like we need to build another rehab or we need to hire a new EAP provider who has a different type of counselor or something. Or maybe we need to add four more counseling sessions to our package. None of that has anything to do with it. That'll still help the same people that are already getting help. It's very clear what'll happen about. Depending on the study you look at, between 10 to 30% of people will get some help. That's not the problem, guys. The problem is that it's. Most of us fly under the radar like I did. Most of these guys are not causing problems.

[A]

Yeah, right. I'm not. I'm not an alcoholic.

[B]

They're not really getting looked at that hard.

[A]

Yeah, I'm not.

[B]

Well, but everybody knows that. The interesting thing is people know.

[A]

Yeah. But the. Like, we're talking about gymnastics.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. I'm not. I'm not abusing my wife.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it's not a problem.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You know?

[B]

Right. I'm not like that guy on tv.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I'm not like that guy on TV or the. Whatever. You know, think about where people get their messaging around. Let's just say addiction. For example, think about the movies and the TV shows that were out there. There was a TV show in the 50s called Andy Griffith, and he had a town drunk on it. They had a town drunk on it. And this guy was. His name was Otis, and he was like. And these are like. A lot of older generation guys would have grown up watching this TV show after school and stuff like that. And Otis, the town drunk, did not engender anybody's sympathy. He was made fun of. You know, he was a character repeating a recurring character. At no point in the TV show did anybody help Otis. So what does that send? That sends a mess. That's where. That's how we get fed as Americans. People can say whatever you want. You know, we're not getting taught this in school. Nobody taught you about addiction in school. You learned it from TV or the TV show mash. I don't know if you. If you ever remember that show. That was probably before your time, but there was a TV show mash, and there was a character on it called Klinger, and he was all about getting a Section 8 discharge from the army. So he was going to prove that he was crazy. So again, this is. And so he would dress up in women's clothing and go see the psychiatrist and try to get kicked out of the army again. That's our messaging. And then you could rewind that or fast forward that to today. Now, this is where the hope is. The hope is that we do have a new generation coming up behind us. Right. That are, for better or for worse, more open than ever before. Think about it, right? They put their stuff out there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, I had a, I, I had a. I'll never forget this. I do a family group. I, When I was running the nonprofits, I did a family education group. And we had a girl that went to rehab, right. And she, her parents were very distraught because she put a picture of herself on, on Instagram or whatever with her certificate of completion from rehab. And the parents were like, why would she do that? You know, what's her grandmother going to say? What's her aunt going to. But the girl was like, I'm proud of this.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And so I wonder about. I actually have a lot of hope in terms of like, if we can do this right and capture the anti stigma momentum and really and also offer people good solutions that you might see some different results.

[A]

Well, and from an employment standpoint, this isn't why I've done it. I've done it for myself first and foremost. But being open, honest, vulnerable, transparent has actually been very good for employment.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. It's the truth.

[A]

It's, it's, it's people. People want to be part of an organization that they can talk about shit at and be themselves at. And that's. It's rare. There's not a lot of organizations like that.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I want to be an organization like that. But again, it starts with me.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And when. It's when, when, when, then it starts with you, it again gives everybody else that permission. And they come in and they're like, this is different.

[B]

This is different.

[A]

This is.

[B]

And you can't fake that.

[A]

No, no.

[B]

You can try to. Like you said earlier, you could get your scripts and you could do your teleprompting, but you can't really fake that.

[A]

No. And it's as simple as like, hey, guys. Yeah. Pretty fucked up.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Me, really, really fucked up, for lack of a better term.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

You're not the only one. The, you know, whoever you are. Listen, I've got my problems. It's a long list, laundry list. This is how I'm working through them. This is what's worked out for me.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

There you go.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I've been more and more aggressive with that over the past few years, too, because I've watched people close to me much later in life. Finally, that shit finally sneaks up on them. And they can be 60s, 70s. I mean, they can be down the track battling with this stuff because they've put it off their entire life.

[B]

You just stuff it, dude. You just layer after layer over top of it.

[A]

But then the further you push it down, the more pressure and force there is. And when it comes up, it is crazy what comes up.

[B]

And a lot of times it'll come up in people's lives and they won't even know it's coming up. Yes, yes. It'll be like influencing their behavior, dictating some of their actions.

[A]

But you're on the outside. Who is this person?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, what is going. None of this makes sense.

[B]

None of it.

[A]

And it's just like that. To me, it scared the shit out of me because it's like, I better figure out, I think everybody's screwed up from their childhood.

[B]

That's just the baseline human condition.

[A]

Everybody.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You could be war zone. You can be the daughter of some king. You're going to be, I think, an equal amount of screwed up in a lot of ways. No one gets out unscathed. And it's like, to me, being an adult now, it's my job to figure out how was I screwed up.

[B]

Right. And what do I need to do to make that a little bit better? Yes.

[A]

Yeah. How can I unwind that so that it doesn't dictate the rest of my life and behavior? But there's. Everybody has this shadow following around, following them around.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And on the outside, like, to you, especially dealing with so many people, you can probably see it very clearly. With other people, you can see it.

[B]

You can see it mainly through their behaviors.

[A]

Yeah, But. But they.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

No. No idea.

[B]

No. And you're on the inside of it. You can't. You're totally, 100% disconnected from it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's like you were saying earlier, like, all those defense mechanisms are kicking in and they. And so people can't. But I think the interesting thing to consider, and this is more like an intellectual exercise, is how do we help people? So what do we do as a society to help? If we know this, let's pretend we all kind of agree. We're all walking around and we got some baggage in our world right now. What we've done is we've created these very specialized sort of people we call them licensed counselors or psychologists or psychiatrists who are supposed to. To fix these. This is where I think we have it wrong. I think the solution to this is more of a mutual support kind of an angle. It's. We're all part of the solution. So.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So one of the things. There's a book out by a sociologist. The name is Robert Putnam, and it's called Bowling Alone. And it's all about what you were talking about earlier, the disconnection in America that we can be connected to a million people on the Internet, but not have anybody that we're really connected to and how society used to function. So we would be in a neighborhood. Right. And we would all be. A lot of the people would be working similar shifts. Maybe we worked at the factory or maybe. And there were probably some real downsides to life back then, but one of the good sides was that there was a sense of community and people did things like they had. The title for the book was Bowling Alone because they used to have these things called bowling leagues where people would go. And they had volunteer fire departments and they had church functions. But the point was you had a community of people and people worked out their problems.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

You talk like you were my neighbor. We would talk over the fence after work and I'd be like, aaron, dude, my son is like effing up in school again. And you'd be like, yeah, man. And it wasn't like a therapy session, but there was something going on.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Now all of a sudden, we all just stay in our houses.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And we look at the Internet and we look at Facebook, and we're not seeing reality of life there. So we get more and more introvert. We go deeper into ourselves and we're not going to talk about our problems.

[A]

I feel like what's also happened. I'm just thinking about this now. It's like the parallel between the clergy. Back in the day, they were the only ones that could translate the Bible.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

And then the Bible was translated and that opened up like, wait, I don't actually need the clergy to understand this religious text. I can go do it on my own. And I think there is an industry built upon this as well that is paid based on how many times people are seeing them. There is money to be made. And I think universities have done this too. And I'm not saying everybody that's a doctor is bad, but there also is. They've gotta be a doctor or a clinical psychologist or whatever it is. They're the ones with the code. They have the text deciphered, and they're the ones to tell me how to decipher. To decipher what I'm trying to figure out.

[B]

And if the person doesn't want to see one of those folks, then let's not even really worry about it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's not on us as a company to worry about this guy. It's on him. We have a contract with the ABC Employee Assistance Program. Aaron can go see somebody if he wants.

[A]

And I could even take it a step further. I could argue it's illegal for me to even talk to somebody within the company. That's their outside problems.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I, you know, litigation. And they're going to. They're going to.

[B]

I'm not a professional counselor. Who am I to be able to.

[A]

And what. What happens if they do go kill themselves?

[B]

Right.

[A]

And then the family comes back on me and, you know.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And all that's happened, and I can quickly start to.

[B]

It's like. It's like we. This is a. This is. I won't name the university, but we were looking at doing some business with the university, and they literally said, well, if we bring recovery coaches on campus, won't we be acknowledging that we have a drug and alcohol problem? And I thought to myself, like, are you really saying that out loud? Do you think by the virtue of you not bringing them on, that you don't. Like, everybody in the whole community laughs at you As a university, with the number of incidents you had, there were 200 people at a football game. They had so many college students show up at this emergency department that they shut down. They had to shut down, like, basically the emergency department because of these drinking incidents. But it was to that point, like, if we acknowledge this, if I ask Aaron if he has a problem now, have I opened up a box of worms?

[A]

Sure.

[B]

That I can't handle.

[A]

Yeah. It's an interesting phenomenon, too, because going back to construction, safety is obviously taken down very seriously now. The industry is spending who knows how much on safety. You could argue it's one of the key reasons why the industry has gotten less efficient substantially over the past few years. But that's good. We're killing a lot less people on job sites. But I think it's masked in the fact. And again, anybody, Any rational, caring person would say it's because we care, but we started to get safer because it was good for business.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And killing people is bad for business.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And that it's. It's. It seems cold, and it is cold. But that is what drove the change was.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Legal repercussions.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And financial repercussions. And that is what has really driven it. However, if people are dying by suicide or dying by overdose, they're not on my job sites, they're outside of work.

[B]

That's a key thing. Yeah.

[A]

I'm not fiscally liable. Hey, I'm not. I can't tell people what to do on their spare time. Like, it's just. I couldn't do something if I wanted to do something about it.

[B]

That's the argument that I think a lot of people have. And I think. And so, you know, when you think about that, if you take a step back and you think about that. So the idea that we're not responsible for what's going on outside of work, I mean, I guess I get that, but is work contributing to that in any kind of way or the other flip side to it would be like, well, what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do otherwise? Do you know what I mean? Are you just gonna ignore this? Yeah, let's philosophically get out of our own way on whether or not we have some kind of moral responsibility to the employee when he leaves work. Okay. I can wrap my mind around that argument, to be honest with you. I get it, and I know where that comes from, and stuff. But can you take a look at the big picture and just look at the numbers and understand how that impacts your workplace? How that ripple effect of a suicide impacts your workplace, how the ripple effect of an overdose impacts the workplace, or.

[A]

Just alcoholism and the message, addiction in general, the cost of it.

[B]

So the message that it sends is, as an industry, we're aware of this, but we're not really willing to double down and try to help you all.

[A]

But I think to defend everybody, I just don't think people have been aware of it.

[B]

No, they're starting to become aware of it.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. Because I. The overdose statistics, I had no idea until about a year ago, and I found those numbers. And it's somewhat preliminary research. Like, it looks to be pretty good research when I was looking through it, but it's still early on. They've only been studying this by occupation for only a few years, so it's still early. It's not as defined as suicide is, but once you see it, it's like, now you can't unsee it now. Now you can't claim ignorance.

[B]

And it's so much higher than the general population. So, like, the other thing about the overdose number, that's really really troubling is whenever they look at, like, groups to focus on and stuff, that's how they'll do it. Like, if there's a certain demographic that's getting hit by a drug epidemic more, they'll throw a lot of resources at that. So if there was a minority community where overdoses were going through the. We would be focusing on that. I look at this in a very similar way. You have a group of people that we've identified at being 16 times higher than the general population. I mean, that's like stunning. And so what are we doing specifically to. There's a problem over here, guys, with this. And the other thing is, even when I do my talk, a lot of times I do a talk about this and I'll talk about contributing factors. Right. But here's what's interesting. We really don't know the contributing factors because we haven't studied this yet. All we know is what we think they are, Long work hours, being away from home, the nature of jobs, injuries, so on and so forth. So had a very fascinating. I sit on the advisory board for the National Institute on Drug Abuse. And every year they have to. They have to set their research agenda. And so part of our job is when we go to these fall events, we have to. If you have any ideas for research, you have to throw it out there. And I threw out the construction issue. The only thing I have to do is just sort of throw it out there as a big picture. These academic researchers get ahold of it then, and then they run with it. So I said, I don't know if you guys are aware of these numbers in the construction industry. Their minds were blown. They didn't know it. This is the federal government. This is the people who set our drug policy in our nation. This is the people who set our funding initiatives in our nation. They didn't know anything like this. And their reaction to it was very heartening for me because they were like, we definitely want to pursue this. They're going to look at possibly studying it and trying to find out why. Because in their words, it's over the top. How much higher it is.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. It's just way beyond.

[B]

It's way beyond the pill. You can't really look at that and brush that off.

[A]

Yeah. What I've started to struggle with too is, you know, safety, safety, safety, safety, safety, safety, safety, safety, safety, safety. But nowhere within safety is mental health or physical health and wellness. And it's just like, to me, that's completely insane. It does not make it Defies logic. It is so far beyond. I mean, a kindergartner could figure out the math. Doesn't math here?

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like, wait a minute, one plus one does not equal seven. Like there's, there's something off and I think it's at the best in class companies. It is starting to become something that's being looked at is like, why are people so unhealthy? What's going on mentally here?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If they're not right. Mentally, can they be safe? Or is somebody that's 100 pounds overweight more at risk for, for an injury? Yeah, yeah, I'd say so.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, yes, of course.

[B]

Obviously. Right, obviously.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think.

[B]

And so it's, there's a term for it. There's a psychological term for it. They call it generalized incompetence. And it's whenever you're dealing with like either chronic stress or a mental health condition or even anything, like, even if you had a health condition in your family, like if your loved one was diagnosed with cancer or whatever, it's this inability. You can't be present. Everything that you do, it's the dimmer switch. What you see is turned way down. So you got the guy who is very conscious of all the safety protocols. He's got the latest ladder, you know what I mean? Because there's all these different ways to set up a ladder and there's all these different hard hats and he has all the greatest equipment and the protocols are tight. Right. But his son was admitted to the hospital last night. What's that guy going to be like at work today? Is he going to be actually thinking about, like making sure he's checking the checklist whenever. He doesn't even know if his kid's going to be, you know, especially if it's a mental health condition. Because the other thing is, is then that that's even harder for people to wrap their mind around.

[A]

Sure. And there's like, there's very well known policies where, hey, you bang a piece of equipment into something, you're fired.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's just like, all right, well, yeah, if he is. If his wife just asked for a divorce three days ago, how are you even like. And he goes and back something into something like. Of course he back something into something like, yes, of course. Like, yeah, that makes perfect sense.

[B]

I mean, dude, I went through some stuff with my daughter, with my adult D. Daughter were like. And it was brutal, man. And it was right when we first launched U Turn and Hamilton, he knows me very, very well. And so I was okay. Like, he would call me out when he would see me like this. But I gotta tell you, when I was at work, I was 25% present. I was not there. Dude. I was like, thinking about her doctor, her next doctor appointment, thinking about her next trip to the hospital, thinking about her next. Whatever.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And, but, but, but at the same time, I'm sitting at a computer. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm not out operating a piece of equipment where someone could get killed if I'm not paying attention.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, this is very, very serious stuff.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't know how anybody would ever equate this or figure this out, but I would love to know, like, how much did the distraction and mental fatigue contribute to accidents? I don't know how we would ever even know that. Like, you know what I mean?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

This is also part of the problem, Aaron, is if you can't connect the dots directly, people ignore it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I, like, I don't want this to come off like, blaming anybody, because like I said, I think the industry is built upon the most caring people I've ever been around.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It's an extraordinary world.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I just think it's largely just been a matter of information. Like, I just don't think people have even thought about this kind of stuff.

[B]

No. And why would they?

[A]

And why would they.

[B]

Why would they even. Yeah.

[A]

And every profession, every company is probably led by somebody from a previous generation.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And that comes with a different perspective. And, and listen, this was, you know, nowhere in the conversation when I was coming up.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And for good reason. We just, we're just here to work.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so they don't even know how to. And even talking about it.

[B]

Yeah. Or even to consider that they should. But that part of it is interestingly starting to get talked about. I probably do three to four talks a month on stigma reduction and companies bring me out. They'll bring me out to safety events. And I mean, it's my favorite thing to do.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And, and, and what I've noticed is the guys and the girls on, on the job sites and stuff like that, they are receptive to what we're saying. I do think it's. To your point. You got to do it in a certain way. You know, I can't come in there and give like, a clinical talk. You know what I mean? I got to be real. I got to be. But like, it is definitely start. Get. Starting to get talked about.

[A]

Well, and you. I feel like I've I've fallen into this trouble a time with people in the construction industry or blue collar people in general. It's a tougher looking crowd.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, some of these, some of these people, they're big people, they've got tattoos, they've got beards, they're just rough and tumble. They're getting shit done.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And so you, you're almost fooled into thinking like they're not humans and some.

[B]

Too tough to have this problem.

[A]

Yeah, they're too tough. And then every once in a while, like, I'll, I'll, I'll still be intimidated all the time by these people.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then they'll start talking and I'll remember, like, wait a minute, there's a six year old kid inside of this.

[B]

That's exactly right.

[A]

Six foot seven giants. Same emotions, same desires. He's just trying to support his family, whatever it is. But it's easy just to even get caught up in the look of this world.

[B]

Oh, for sure.

[A]

These are a bunch of tough people.

[B]

They're good. That's been my experience therapeutically too, because I've had a couple incidents where we do critical incident stress management where we'll go out if there's a workplace accident or a fatality, God forbid. And never forget, went to the one company and these guys, none of these old timers wanted to talk to me. Okay. Because like what I do is I go in and I do a group, but then I'm also, I just hang out if you want. And. But the owner of the company. And this was like to your point, these companies are real tight knit, man. They're like a family almost. And he's like, no, you're gonna go see them. And what was interesting was every single one of them opened up, every single one of those guys. And you could just. And I felt so like as a therapist, you know, it was a very fulfilling experience, man, because it was like you were def. I was definitely like, man, I'm in the right place right now, being with these guys. And you could see like years of like all this stuff, layers and layers of like emotional pain. And they were talking about an incident that had occurred. So the incident. But that really wasn't even what they wound up talking about. It was also the incident that occurred 10 years earlier or just the nature of the job over the years or even some other stuff that they had going on at home. But it was getting it started that was the hardest part. It was getting the person. It's. How do we get people comfortable with saying Something in the beginning.

[A]

How do you do that? It's kind of like, I'm thinking through law enforcement too. Like, you see the uniform.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You don't see the human being, but then the uniform. How do you, how do you get them?

[B]

So we. Yeah, I think what. One of the strategies that if I had a magic wand, what would happen is, is like mental health training would start to become like mandatory in some kind of way across the company. Because I believe the first thing you have to do, and whether you do it through videos like we did, or we do a combination of videos and site visits, somehow you gotta get to your point, the information out there, but you have to make people see it. Yeah, it's like sexual harassment training in some other parts of the world. Sexual harassment training is ubiquitous now. Everybody has to do it. Right. It wasn't a thing always. It's only been around for about 25 years. Where did it come from? Well, there were all these problems that were coming up and people started to talk about it and people started to get sued and somebody said, we better develop a mandatory. And now whether everybody wants to or not, they at least have to have their awareness raised around. You better be careful when you're talking this way around women.

[A]

And some of it, I think a lot of it's ridiculous. Some of it's good information though, right? Oh, I had no idea. That could get me in a lawsuit. Yeah. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. But I feel like some of it's also worked against people.

[B]

And you would have.

[A]

Hey, I'm not even going to fucking talk.

[B]

That's exactly right.

[A]

I'm going to go there. I'm out, dude.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But anyway, that's a different.

[B]

Well, but so you would have to. The trainings themselves, this is the other part of it would have to be engaging.

[A]

They.

[B]

You'd have to, you'd have to have the training, would have to have enough in it that the person would say, I might want to know more about this.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And you wouldn't reach everybody. But what we know is, is if, if you make it like this voluntary, you have to raise your hand, come get help. You're always only going to get 1 to 3% of the employee population. It's just nobody will come forward.

[A]

It's kind of like open door policy. My door is always open. Come on in. Like, I realized that doesn't work.

[B]

That doesn't work. Like how do you get it to the next level? And so what we're thinking around the mental Health stuff is. Is. It's so taboo and it's so stigmatized that if you made people go through it and then they. And then. And then what we think you could. And I see this happen all the time. I just got back from. I was in Oregon speaking at an event. And I could see it in the audience as I was speaking. I could see it all over their faces. They were 100% resonating with what I was saying, that they were almost to a person thinking of their own experiences like this. But how do you get them in front of that to begin with? So could you make that. And I've heard things like OSHA's talked about, but I think the last thing we need to do is have OSHA have a mental health training. You know what I mean? Maybe it's them. Maybe they farm it out, but somehow you make it mandatory. Or maybe you make it mandatory for leadership and then leadership tries to drive.

[A]

It down, which is what we did here via U Turn. And that's where I saw a lot of your videos. And a lot of it was information that I had never even thought about. Like, no. How do you have a conversation? Like one like you talked a lot about. How do you notice somebody's off?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, what do you look for? How do you even pick up on this? Okay, cool. I've noticed there's. They've never been late. And they're repeatedly late.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

All right. That I need to pay attention. But then it persists. How do I. I know something's probably off. There's an unusual behavior here. How do I even broach the subject?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And how do I tee it up and offer them the off ramp but not force the off ramp.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So you can keep going. But hey, here's the off ramp. Let's go. And then how do I follow up?

[B]

And you can see why people wouldn't talk about it.

[A]

Yeah. But it's very tactical. I think people. This is a hard topic because it's complex and it's squishy. But I think you guys break it down to be here. This isn't the approach for every situation. But here's the fundamentals of how to tee up this kind of conversation. It's like, that's brilliant. I've never been taught that.

[B]

And we don't in our world. We're not really even thinking about checklists and symptom lists. What we say is that you go to work. So people show up to different places in their life in different ways. And so we all have A role we play at work. And so I show up to work a certain way every day, and it's not even conscious. We just interact. And if I'm an extroverted person and I'm always sitting with the guys at lunch, you get used to that. But then all of a sudden, like you were suggesting, I'm off sitting by myself. It's a change in baseline behavior. That's all you're looking for. Because my experience has been every time I've been involved with a major league, especially a substance related issue within a company. So for example, an executive gets himself in a jam with a DUI or something like that, and I get involved and I'm debriefing it. Everybody always says the same thing. We saw it coming, but again, nothing in particular. So if I said. If Aaron said, I saw it coming, I said, well, what do you mean? You would be like, well, I'm not. It wasn't anything in particular. It's just like, this isn't surprising to.

[A]

Kind of like your co workers.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. Like we know. And that's just how we work as human beings, because that's how we're wired. Remember, like, you know, not to go too far off, but from an evolutionary psychology point of view, we are conditioned to pick up on our different cues and to see whether we're doing okay around each other and where do we fit in in the. And so all that stuff, like our brain is an unbelievable computer that just assimilates all this information. And now all of a sudden, Aaron's showing up for work and he's not talking to anybody, or he's sitting by himself at lunch, or he's real grumpy and that just wasn't who he was. And it would be all these series of things that'll make you start. I always say your Jedi senses will start to go off. We say, trust your gut. The other thing that we say is it is okay to bring this stuff up. There may be people who get their feelings hurt. There may be people who say, why are you getting in my business? My experience has been that is very, very rare. Most people are flattered that you care.

[A]

And if it does go south, you can just back off.

[B]

I'm done.

[A]

Yeah, noted. And just you can ease up. I feel like you don't even have to get that bar into it.

[B]

You do not have to be the counselor. You do not have to do. It's literally like even just reinforcing that the services are there. So, like, if your company has an EAP or if your company is working with us or whoever it might be, you just, you know that those resources are there and all. Your only objective is to give that information to the person you know and feel like you tried to do something. You're trying to do something. You don't have to like throw them in the van and drive them to rehab or down to the emergency department because I understand that's intimidating.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Here's the other thing around. And this is related to suicide. I was thinking about this before I came in. I wanted to share this. The other thing is that breaks my heart is suicide and overdose. But suicide in the moment is very preventable. It's a very preventable. I ran a mobile crisis unit in the city of Pittsburgh where like what we did all day was take suicide calls and we never lost anybody in like four or five years. And that wasn't unusual. That wasn't because we were like exceptional. Once people call in, what you find is the results are pretty good. That's the heartbreaking part. People think that we couldn't have done anything about Joe or we couldn't have done anything about Rich. No, actually guys, it's pretty good results if you can get them on the phone. So these are preventable deaths that are. There was. And, and I could tell that like this company, they don't even know, like they don't even know how to process this. And I don't even know what I'll be able to do to help them. But they had a guy who came in, he was an apprentice, he had only been on the job for like two weeks. He was like 24 years old and he killed himself. Now, now that person doesn't even, didn't even really know anybody yet. And so the impact on the company is not going to be quite as deep as if we worked together for four or five years. But what's going on is it's impacting a lot of people because people don't know how to make sense of that. Does that make sense? Like even though I didn't know this guy that well, how could this 24 year old kid just do this? Sure. What does this mean for my 24 year old kid?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or maybe you had something in your life that happened before where you knew somebody that killed themselves. Now all of a sudden all that's coming back up. It is not an innocent issue.

[A]

Well, and it's interesting you bring that up too, because sometimes I've had a greater emotional response to a fatality of some sort a little further away yeah. Than closer.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Like, so I've really stopped in my tracks with a few of them that are, like, pretty far away. Like, I don't even know the person.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But it's. There's just a lot of similarities.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's just like, damn it. It really makes it really mess. It at least it's messed me up.

[B]

Like a part of life that you don't want to be in touch with.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. At this point, you've talked to, like, many, many, many thousands of people.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Probably.

[B]

Probably tens of thousands. Yeah.

[A]

Pretty big sample size. What do you hear? Like, what are the common themes? Yeah, because it's probably. There's probably some pretty similar conversations you have.

[B]

The common themes are kind of what we've been talking about. The most common thing I hear is, I didn't know. Or as you were saying, like, we weren't aware, that kind of thing. And then after that, there's sort of. It depends a lot. Like, sometimes, rarely. I will say, this is the exception, the rule. But you will get some pushback. You will get some people who will say, I had a guy the other day say to me, well, I think we should study these numbers around suicide and overdose and see if it's actually happened in construction or. What do they mean by that? Do they mean construction or other trades? It was almost like he was trying to say, it's not happening.

[A]

Yeah, it's not in our world.

[B]

Yeah, it's not in our world. World. It's like they're putting everybody in one bucket, and we shouldn't do that. And there might be some truth to that. I don't know. As you said, the research is kind of, like, preliminary, but you get a little bit of that. But most of the time you get this reaction of, like, yeah, we should do something. Where it gets really interesting is the people who are really down to, like, make the change are definitely like, the early adopters. Does that make sense? Like, what we're not seeing is where we thought. What we thought we would see is a lot of people who wanted to take action and it. And I don't think we're not really seeing as much of that. And what does that mean? I'll just be real honest. That's like, are you willing to invest in the mental wellness of your people? That kind of thing? It starts to break down a little bit after that.

[A]

I think there's probably. We've talked about the blocks. Like, I bet a lot of people fall into the camp of, hey, if we invest in this. That's us admitting that there could be a problem here. Or that's us taking on potential liability we don't need to take on. Or that's not our business. This is not our.

[B]

Or it's just so, like, out there, and it's just so, like. It's just so much what we weren't thinking of.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And then I've seen the opposite where I've seen people just run with it, too.

[A]

Yep, yep, yep.

[B]

It's very. It's. There's a. There's a variety of responses. You know, on that end, definitely the theme would be people stunned and we need to do something about this. But then it's very interesting as you start to walk that out. And a lot of we need to know more. And can you come back and talk a little bit more about this? And there's a curiosity around it, too. Can we get to the bottom of this and that kind of thing?

[A]

What about in conversations with people in frontline positions? How do those conversations spread pan out?

[B]

The most interesting thing that from a professional standpoint, working with the construction industry has been incredibly empowering and insightful. The theme that we heard loud and clear was that these guys do not want regular therapy sessions. They want to be able to call somebody when they have a question. They want to be able to call somebody when they're having a bad day. They want to be able to call when their wife started talking about divorce or something like that. But what they're not interested in is a once a week, let's get on a phone and talk for the sake of talking. Sure.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So that was very, very enlightening because that's a little different than what I was taught when I went to school. Like, how I was taught it works is Aaron says he has a problem, and he comes in to sees me once a week, and we work it out. That's not really the reality. I had an experience where I was actually coaching this guy myself. And I. We have a stress management program. And I got him on the phone. We had a weekly call, right. And it was like a Wednesday, Weekly, every Wednesday. And I got him on the call, and he didn't have anything to say. And so I got this little method that I'll use. Like, well, what was the most stressful thing that happened this week? And he's like, I can't really think of anything. And I'm like, what was the most stressful thing that happened today? And he said, the most stressful thing today is trying to figure out what I'm going to talk to you about. And I said, well, let's pause there for a minute and we gotta talk about this. That is the exact opposite of like the stated intent of what we're trying to do. And so on the front lines is it's a different type of support. And we heard it loud and clear. We heard it loud and clear that you do not want. And I'm just gonna say this, like if you look at like your typical kind of like provider, like an EAP provider, employee assistance program, and I'm a certified employee assistance professional, I want to make sure. I don't want to come off like I'm criticizing my, my industry, but I guess I am. They're not going to talk to like Your average like 26 year old grat who just came out of grad school, like social worker.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They don't want that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They want like more practical, actionable, like everybody who, who they talk to on our end is somebody in recovery themselves, either from mental health or substance use kind of situation. These are people who worked in construction themselves. These are people who now lead a certain lifestyle where they have a program in their life and they're able to share their experiences. That's what they're looking for. But more than anything they want it to be sensible. They want to feel like they got off the phone with you and something was solved. I don't think they're real into the insight oriented therapy, I guess would be a way of saying it.

[A]

Sure. I, I think there's a lot of misconceptions with therapy in general as well.

[B]

For sure.

[A]

I think a lot of people just think it's like you, you sit down in like the big chair across from the doctor and the other big chair.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And they have a notepad. There's a cup of coffee there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And you have a box of tissues next to you and you start talking about your traumatic childhood issues and you're, you're crying and they're, but they're just pulling it out of you. It's like.

[B]

And you have this cathartic moment and you're healed. That doesn't, I mean I'm not saying that never happens, but like that is not the common experience at all.

[A]

Yeah. At least my experiences have been like most of the time it's a conversation.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

With somebody that's paid to listen to you. Which is actually quite nice. Like somebody not related to you. With no context other than the context you provide them.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And that is there with just non stop Attention to just you for the hour.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

I see there to be a lot of value in that. I've done it for five years and.

[B]

I think that like, you know, depending on the issue that a person's dealing with, that that is absolutely the approach that you have to take. So I'll give you an example of what I mean by that. So let's say like childhood trauma, for example. I went through some things growing up in a home. My father was a binge drinker and he could be very violent. And so I have some trauma in my background that needed to be addressed through a trauma therapist. That was a very specific type of intervention that he did. And it was very much for that issue where I think we get it kind of wrong is not everything that people are dealing with in life is on that level. Even drinking, for example, not all drinking situations are like, you need to go to rehab. Not all drinking situations are you're diagnostically an alcoholic. It's not like that. There's like all this area. But unfortunately the only way that we the perception is the only way for you to get help is therapy. So you can see why somebody who was over here wouldn't want to go over and jump in a therapy office because maybe he's not quite there yet. That's where the whole hit bottom thing came from. It's semi logical, but it's not. It no longer works at all. It no longer fits what we're dealing with in any kind of way.

[A]

Yeah. It's interesting too, with the recovery programs. I just heard someone talk about it the other day about how they really enjoy the recovery going to. They've been recovered for a decade and they keep going. Plus almost two decades. They go because the people there are honest.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Because it self selects for people that are honest with themselves and have admitted that they have an issue.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Which is. It's something I'd never even considered. It's like, well, yeah, that's so rare in society.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

That must be such an interesting experience to be in a room full of these people that have at least said, I've got an issue here and I want to be better.

[B]

But the problem is all the people who can't get there. So you're absolutely right. When I go to my men's meeting or something like that. This is a groom full of people who are probably average. The sobriety in there is probably 12 to 15 years. And I have coming up on 25 years. And so we're all in. Do you know what I mean? There's some pretty deep conversations going on in there. But the problem is we make that assumption that everybody walking in the door is like that and the majority of people aren't. That's where we got to figure out another way to help. Yeah, I don't think we should get rid of anything that we're doing. I mean, for goodness sake. I mean, I'm absolutely proponent of 12 step abstinence based, traditional kind of, you know, programming and stuff like that. I just think we need to, like, we gotta figure out other strategies to widen the door to get more people in.

[A]

Well, and going back to the numbers, it's like if what was going on was working, the numbers would be going down.

[B]

That's the truth.

[A]

Or staying the same, if nothing else.

[B]

And we wouldn't even be talking about it.

[A]

We wouldn't have that conversation.

[B]

Nobody would have noticed this. It wouldn't be an issue. It wouldn't be. And that's actually a really good point if you think about it. I mean, this has gotten to a point where it was on the COVID of the New York Times. They had an article about construction overdoses.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yeah. So, I mean, it's starting to gather.

[A]

National attention to going from, from suicide to overdose. Is there a significant correlation there?

[B]

Yeah, it's about 60 to 80% of suicides will either involve alcohol or drugs at the time of the suicide or a history of alcohol and drug problems.

[A]

Okay, so a majority.

[B]

Yeah, the overwhelming majority.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it's. Wow.

[B]

One of the other things about overdoses is there's a large debate right now on whether overdoses are actually suicides because you'll hear a lot of people, you hear overdose survivors will say this frequently, like, I didn't care whether I woke up or not. So it's like a passive. And those will never get really included with the suicide numbers because it's impossible to know somebody's intent unless they left a note. But there's like, how is that different? Like, if I'm using drugs to a point where I'm like, I don't care if I live or I die.

[A]

It's interesting too, because the fentanyl thing has been talked about quite a bit. It's still a newer thing, but it's made some pretty significant headlines. Like, what for men my age, is it now the leading cause of accidental death in the United States?

[B]

It's the leading cause, yeah.

[A]

Which is just again, sickening. But the fact that people are still going and getting pills on the street, knowing that says a lot. Knowing that it could potentially kill them. Like, it's not even probably, to your earlier point, an ignorance thing.

[B]

No, it's not.

[A]

They might know. This could kill me.

[B]

And they know. So what? And you'll hear people talk. So the way that it was told to me is we have a. We have a poison drug supply as a way of thinking about it, and people shouldn't even be really be surprised if there's fentanyl in whatever they're using from the streets. You know, whether it's methamphetamine, anything that's a powder, or anything that can be smoked like that. Now, the marijuana, you can't. People will say, you can put fentanyl in marijuana. You can't. But, like, methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, all of that has fentanyl in it. And, you know, it's just. It's sort of like the new product. And one of the things, like, you've seen some of the overdose numbers nationally. Like, whereas in construction, they're continuing to rise at an overall level, they plateaued. And so a lot of people are saying, are we finally getting ahead of this? Well, the reason we might be getting ahead of it is that a lot of the people that are left using have very high tolerance and have been using fentanyl. Because there are people who can. Like, I. I had a guy that I worked with in Seattle. I, I. This dude freaked me out, man. I used to be like, I know you're gonna die. Like, stop, man. Like, he was one of the very few people that I would preach to because I was so concerned about him. And I remember, I'll never forget him saying, he's like, rich, I'm not gonna die, dude. And I'm like, how can you say that, man? Cause I was in a stage at that time when I, like, people were dying too much. This was like, right at the height of the opioid epidemic. And as therapists, we were all freaked out. Like, we're not. That was never how it was. Like, when I learned how to do therapy and I first started working in the field, people weren't dying like that. So I would get real worked up, you know, and he said, my tolerance is so high. And then I started looking into it, and there's, like, a lot of truth to that. Like, like, the people that are dying are not necessarily the veterans that have been doing it forever.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

It's like, if. If you or me went out, let's pretend we. We blew a knee out or whatever, and we were on parks for 30 days, and then we ran out because our doctor shut us off. And we found out from Bill on the job site that he has a friend, Joe, who has something. And we're a little bit dope sick. Right. I'm getting a little bit dope sick. I'm going through withdrawal. And also, I like the way these things make me feel. Yeah. How much is it? 50 bucks. Give me what you can from Joe. And that's not really Percocet. That is Fentanyl.

[A]

Well, yeah. And who knows what it is? You don't even. Any clue.

[B]

Right? Or even. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Like, what else is in it? You know?

[B]

Oh, there's a person that I. That's buying some stuff off the. Off the dark web from India that I know. Like, she does not know what it is.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

Like, she does not know what it is. I got an argument with her the other night. I'm like, you don't know what that. Let's just agree that we don't know what this is.

[A]

Yeah. There's no nutrition facts.

[B]

Right, Right. This is not coming with, like, a label on it where you can, like, check this out. No, not at all.

[A]

That's terrifying.

[B]

And. And that's also one of those things where if we need to stretch our imagination on how we help people, this is one of the reasons we can't do it the way that we've done it for 70 years, because the world is not the same. And we didn't have people buying stuff off the Internet back in the day.

[A]

That's so nice. You can buy this stuff off the Internet now.

[B]

Oh, yeah. You can cheat. This is a professional woman, too.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, this is.

[A]

That's how.

[B]

Straightforward, employed, going to work every day. Because that's.

[A]

Because that's the other thing. Like me being naive. It's like, how could I ever get to a point where I'm, like, going to the sketchiest part of town and doing drug deals? Like, I'd never. I would never do that. I don't even have to do that. Or I could just buy them from somebody else at work. You know, that.

[B]

And the dealer. The dealer angle, if you will, is different. It's not like always going to the sketchy part of town.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

It will be somebody's buddy who has it, who has his extra prescription. And those guys will. They're not trying to, quote, unquote, kill anybody, of course. And you start to supplement your income with that, too. It becomes a cycle. It becomes like, it's. But it's not the drug dealer in a Classic sense. A lot of times somebody's buddy who has a, like I said, has an extra prescription and stuff like that, they.

[A]

Could have a family, and they could have a family member house, you know, or just like normal life.

[B]

And you don't know where. Like, again, there's no label with this. There's no controls. It's not so much about where this guy got it, but where did he get it and where did that guy get it from?

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And how do you, you know, you can't trace this stuff back to anything.

[A]

And this is the result of decades and I don't know how many hundreds of billions of dollars in the war.

[B]

On crazy, crazy rules and laws and stuff and things. Like, you can. You can buy a pill press if you want. We could, any one of us could start our own business in this industry and selling pills tonight, you can buy a pill press off of ebay or Amazon.

[A]

So I guess where. Where do I go one, if I have an issue, where do I even start?

[B]

So every company should have some type of, you know, support program. Now let me take that back. Every company, in theory, should have some type of program. Now, you'll hear the most common thing. You'll hear people talk about employee assistance programs. So the first thing would be to find out whether or not your company has that service. Yeah. And who would you talk to for that would be HR or your safety professional or whoever's there. And this is the part that sucks because a lot of times people don't know about these services, and it feels very uncomfortable to go ask somebody about this.

[A]

That's the problem.

[B]

This is why we got to start talking about it, because they don't even know. Like, you'll go to a company and you'll say, like, do you have an eap? And first of all, they may or may not, but many times it's just attached to, like, their life insurance policy or their disability insurance policy. It's like nobody has talked about it. So that sucks, man. Having that much courage to go up and ask somebody for that. That's a rare person.

[A]

Well, and like you were saying, that could be the difference between life and death.

[B]

That's the difference between life and death. Yeah, that's the difference. When I was in active addiction, I went to reap at the university. I was working at the University of Pittsburgh Medical center, and. But I didn't say anything about substance use. She never asked me. I walked out of there with a career plan.

[A]

Yeah, but that's what I love about u turn and now Built well is that you can publish to the company. Here's the phone number you call. Yeah, you don't have to talk to anybody here at this company.

[B]

No, you don't have to, you don't have to have anything to do with that.

[A]

You don't have to talk to hr. You don't have to talk to. You don't talk to me. Here's the number.

[B]

It's a. We have it. We have an independent like call in line. And so if you became involved with. So U turn has been rebranded to Build well Health. And the reason we changed the name to Build well Health is because we're focused on the, on the blue collar industry, on the construction industry, so on and so forth. The way that we set it up is you have a 1, 800 number that you can call into that is manned by. We have coaches that man. That we don't even have. Like, that's not, you're not going to get a, you're not going to get a diagnosis.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You're not going to get a bunch of questions about what your, you know, your relationship with your mom when you were five years old. It's literally what's going on today. How can I help? And that can get you started. And that's just, that's as simple as having that phone number to distribute to people. Now that's if they have Build well Health. The tricky part of that is if you're sitting out there and you're listening and you don't have Build well Health right now, who is your EAP provider or who do you have? We would love you to call Buildwell Health, obviously, but how are you gonna find that out? And that's the really tricky part, Aaron, because that's where people are gonna have to go and dig and nobody wants to dig when they're feeling this way.

[A]

Well, and we have the EAP stuff, but honestly it sucks.

[B]

It's very hard to.

[A]

I've never heard of somebody having a great experience with a lot of these programs and that's why I'm so bullish on what you guys are doing. I do want this to be a sales pitch in a lot of ways. Not that we get anything for it, but it's one of the products that I have seen that is so much of a no brainer. And we've, we've, we've been on board for maybe a year now.

[B]

Yeah, a little over a year.

[A]

We, we regularly remind people about the number they can call, their family can call, which is the. Just the Genius. Really genius. Part of of it, and that's how.

[B]

We get hooked up with a lot of people is when the family calls.

[A]

Oh, yeah. But that's. That to me is incredible. And then me as an employer, I have nobody who's. No idea who's using it. I just pay based on whatever usage is. Which to me is just a no brainer.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. And the thing is that when people call in. So there's this principle around when people talk about why do people not get help? One of the theories is that there's a high threshold for engagement for people to get help.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You have to do a lot to get the help.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You got to get out your insurance card. You got to like call somebody and get a screening done. You got to talk to rude receptionist. So what we said was we want to be the opposite of that. We want to have like as low as possible threshold for engagement. So when you call in, we would love to eat. And we struggle with this because we can't just have this call in number for anybody. Right. It has to be a subscribing company. But we don't even make you identify your employee because sometimes that'll be the thing that'll keep the person from talking. So now we just trust the process that if they have this number, it's. They're one of our employees, they're one of our companies because that number doesn't get published anywhere else. Interesting. But do you get where I'm coming from? Like, we didn't even want to have that because we noticed that when we started asking that you would hear it in their voice and we can say whatever we want. Oh, come on, get over that, Mr. Construction Guy. They're not going to tell anybody. You could say that all day. But if the person feels that way, that's how they feel.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And why would they not feel that way? They probably have never gone to therapy before. Again, they probably have gotten all these crazy messages on what therapy is.

[A]

They're ashamed of what they're doing.

[B]

So you call in and hey, it's Rich. Nice to talk to you, Bill. Well, health, how can I help? What company are you from? What? I thought, I didn't like, I thought this was confidential. So we try to figure out all of those type of things. Interesting. That we can do anything we can do to make it easier to get the person. And then what happens is once we get them engaged, we can ask all the questions we need to ask. Once I get to know you a little bit, if I need to find out some stuff. I can find out some stuff.

[A]

But you're finding out the stuff to.

[B]

Help the individual in the context of a relationship. And it doesn't feel like this antiseptic sort of experience.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

It's like I look at the drug and alcohol assessments that I had to do when I ran rehabs, man, and it was like, I'm not kidding, it was like 17 pages worth of questions. And you would sit across from me and I would just be. I had to fill it out because it was the only way we got paid by insurance. And dude, the whole time while I'm doing it, I'm thinking like, no wonder. Like, what is this?

[A]

Yeah, that's. And that's where you're doing. Like this to me is so important. I don't have time to wait for insurance and all that.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It's just hopeless. And so maybe it gets resolved one day. I'm not optimistic. But it's like that is the worst excuse.

[B]

It's the worst. And it's the worst experience. Again, I haven't gone through it and people, I. I went through it as a mental health professional seeking reimbursement for my daughter's treatment and. And they still haven't. I've, I've. They still haven't reimbursed me.

[A]

Yeah, well, the whole UnitedHealth stuff, it's like. Yep, I'm one of those people. They just told me to kick rocks.

[B]

Kick rocks, man.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And in mental health they can tell you to kick rocks in a lot of different ways.

[A]

Yeah. But they, but they offered. We'll give you non stop pain medication. Yeah, whatever you want.

[B]

Right.

[A]

We'll pay for that, no question.

[B]

Yeah, that's not a problem.

[A]

Yeah, liver goes out, not a problem.

[B]

That's not a problem.

[A]

We'll solve that too. Kidney, whatever you need. But we cannot fix the problem.

[B]

There's some hope on that end. We've had Blue Cross Blue Shield in South Carolina has brought us on to help serve their patients.

[A]

That's good.

[B]

So that helps on the employer side as well. So there's some hope out there. But these kind of situations are sort of like very isolated when you look at the big picture. It doesn't seem like there's not a lot of big moves happening.

[A]

No, I still think, like we talked before, I still just think it's not part of the conversation. It has to be part of the conversation.

[B]

It has to be part of the conversation.

[A]

You guys also have if, say my company's not involved with this, but I'M curious, you guys also have videos that are available?

[B]

Yeah. And the video stuff is the way that we try to introduce the employee to the process. And so literally, it's the idea of if they watch some of these videos, will they get more comfortable with calling in if they need support? But also, there's a DIY part of mental health. There are people who watch our videos, we have a stress management series, for example, who will watch those and report that they instituted some of these suggested interventions in their life and that they started to feel better. So one of the things that we don't know on the mental health side, for example, is that how much sleep you get, the food you eat, the people you hang out with, whether or not you get outside every day is just as important as whether or not you take medication.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And so we get into this state of mind where people are thinking, I can't do anything about my mental wellness unless I go see a psychiatrist or whatever. But we have these videos that are saying, no, no, guys, this is the research behind this. For example, there's a thing that we call the Free three, and there's overwhelming research in these areas. There are three things that you can do in your life that have been shown to decrease stress and improve life satisfaction. One is get outside for at least 15 minutes a day. Now, if you can get out in nature, that's even better. But even if you're walking around the building outside, the second is laugh. Now, when they did the research, you actually programmed it into your day. Like, I'm going to make sure I'm watching some funny videos today.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And the other one is listen to upbeat music. Now, I say that to people and they'll be like, is this like, is that therapy? What is that like? Yes, guys, that is therapeutic. That is something. Even if you went outside, even if you're sitting there listening to this podcast right now and you're not feeling it, you're feeling depressed and you're feeling like you're drinking too much and you're like, I can't. Even if you institute a practice where you're gonna go outside and go for a walk every day, I guarantee that in and of itself will start to make you feel better.

[A]

That's where I go first with like, say, I have terrible anxiety. What do you eat? Do you exercise? What does your sleep look like? That's the lowest hanging fruit. And maybe you need something to tame the anxiety while you're getting the other stuff under control. I understand that. I'm not saying I'M too good for medication or anything like that. But if you're 100 pounds overweight, sleeping like shit, drinking a lot and just.

[B]

Not healthy and the medication is not going to help if that's what you're doing.

[A]

No, no, no, no, no.

[B]

That's part you said earlier, like, they're very willing to pay for meds. And we live in a world, like, I like to say, we live in a diagnostic, prescriptive system.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Where like my job is to diagnose Aaron and then give him a pill for it.

[A]

Yep. And then I get. I get paid.

[B]

And that's how the world works.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And we get to do our doctor appointments in seven and a half minutes. And next, next, next.

[A]

And it's. And it's. But it's. And it's not even. It's not the doctors that are the. Just within this system, you can't even.

[B]

Get mad at the providers.

[A]

No, no. It's all gamed to do that.

[B]

I mean, I know people get mad at me when I speak out against rehabs, for example, because I've been critical about rehabs, because for the most part, I don't think that they're like, first of all, they're not the answer that everyone thinks that they are. And are they necessary? Absolutely. There are people who need to go somewhere. But this idea that everybody needs to go to rehab, I reject that out of hand. Only about 13% of us required rehab. So people will get mad about that. But I'm not criticizing them. I'm not even criticizing that particular rehab. I'm criticizing the system. The system, this thing that we've created. And it's like any other system, it just happened over time. It's like, why do we do it this way? Because it's just the way we do it. Well, that's not working anymore.

[A]

Yeah, but the point to all this is, like you were saying, you don't even have to call anybody to get help. You don't have to go to rehab to get help. You don't have to sit down at a doctor's office to get help. You don't have to call anybody to get help. You can still do a lot of help for yourself.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

Without even spending a dollar.

[B]

And that's where those videos come in. And that's where even getting educated on what your condition is. So, for example, we have an opioid use disorder series on there. If I was a person who was taking pain pills, I would want to watch that. Just so I understood physiologically what's going on with me because you think you're losing your mind whenever you start, like, feeling that way when you don't have these pills. But if I would have known. I don't know that I would have. I want to go on the record here and say, I don't know that I would have made different decisions because I really like the way these pills made me feel. But I did not know what withdrawal was. I did not know that physiologically my brain was acclimating itself to these pills so that when I didn't have them, I was going to feel sick. If I would have known that, would that have changed some of these outcomes? I think it would have. I think at least I would have been like, oh, that's what this is called. And then you instinctually realize that if I go get a pill, I don't feel this way anymore. So you just get into this weird cycle where you're just, like, chasing these pills. Right. And you're not even thinking about it. If you can get the person to step back and look at these and get educated on this, or depression or from the family perspective, having the family members being able to watch this and understand what's going on. One of the things that. Just one example would be a lot of work with couples. And when a husband is struggling with depression, when men are struggling with depression, it really fucks up the whole family system. They don't know what to make of it.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And people can say whatever they want. I'm not trying to get politically incorrect or whatever, but there's a difference in the way genders respond to depression. And for men, you isolate, you shut down, you get irritable. So it just looks like Dad's being a crabby asshole. But to be able to educate the family on, no, this is what's going on here, and this will pass. And there's ways for him to. But this isn't just. Dad is in a bad mood. How much could. How much of a difference could that make? But if you don't have resources for that, where would people get that info? You know?

[A]

And that then opens the door to potentially a greater level of understanding. Because. Because if without that information, Dad's just a crabby asshole.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then I start to resent dad.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

And because he's an asshole.

[B]

He's just an asshole.

[A]

Why does it. We've got, you know, everything's good.

[B]

Right.

[A]

He doesn't need to be that way. He's an asshole to me. Like, I start to build that resentment and hatred in A lot of ways.

[B]

That'S just which fuels the fire, right?

[A]

Oh, it just poisons everything. Starting with you.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But then if you instead develop, and this is way easier said than done, but at least some sense of understanding.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

It's so much better for everybody.

[B]

The one thing that I have noticed, because I've seen this in a lot of cases, I've seen this a lot of times with parents to a child. I've had a situation where you have like a mom and a dad and maybe like a 20 something kid who's struggling with like an opioid addiction or whatever. Mom will kind of be like supportive and sort of like understanding. Dad will be a hard ass, get his shit together. And I've seen the light bulb go on for dads like that. When I've shown him like pictures of the brain and I've done these educational series. That was actually why we started the U turn project in the beginning was because of what we were doing for families. I was working at a nonprofit and we had about 5 to 7,000 families a year come through our different centers and we literally couldn't meet the demand for the education. So we went to the Internet to just try to curate some videos and there was nothing there. So that's where we created it from. I have seen the light bulb go off for people. I've seen that hard ass dad go from like, my son's just a lazy piece of shit to like, oh, wait a minute, this is a brain problem. And it didn't make everything great. Don't get me wrong. It didn't take away from the fact that the parents were still in pain and that this kid's still. But it changed the whole dynamic around how they were going to deal with it, how they were going to talk about it, and also how this guy interacted with his son. Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because when you're dealing with a mental health or a substance use problem, you will not berate the person into change, you will not confront the person into change, you will not yell at them. And you can call them all the names in the book and you can tell them they're a lazy junkie or whatever you want to do. And none of that is going to actually make the change occur. And to get people to understand that where do they go to get that information? And we feel like the employers can be key to that. Right. Because how else would you get it to people? That was the other. That was the second part of the question. Now we have these videos because Uturn Health we Weren't even sure what to do with them after we got the videos going. Right. Let's go to employers and see if we can get it distributed that way.

[A]

Well, that's what I think the value of employers are in society or can be in society, is you're not getting it from school, you're not getting it from school, you're not getting it from your parents, because your parents are probably the problem in a lot of ways. You're not getting it anywhere. Anywhere else.

[B]

Nope. It's not being talked about.

[A]

No. So you go, employer is the natural pathway, you could argue, probably the only effective pathway.

[B]

Yeah. I would make that argument for sure. I don't think you're going to see. It's not the type of thing that you could just push out to the world and try to market directly to people. We've already tried that. Rehabs have been trying out for decades. That's how they fill their beds. It's not. And that's when I also start thinking about if you make it feel like it's mandatory and there's a reason for people go. And then the trainer, whether it's live or on these videos better be engaging.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So, you know, but can you get them there under like this idea of, hey, this is our annual sexual harassment training and this is our annual mental health awareness training. That kind of thing.

[A]

But that's, again, I cannot say enough good things about your videos because they are engaging you.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You do want to watch them, like, face value. It's. It's a shit subject to teach and to talk about.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's oftentimes not exciting to, like. There's no.

[B]

It's like, how do you. Yeah.

[A]

Pretty flavorless in a lot of ways.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And yet, I mean, I've. I've watched like 50 plus videos.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I don't know how many videos I've watched with you and some others.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they're. They're all really, really, really extraordinary.

[B]

I appreciate that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It.

[A]

It is engaging.

[B]

That was our main intent. Like, our main intent. That was also one of the reasons why the way that we talk about it, the fact that we try to come more at it from a. Been there, done that angle now. We try to bring in some of the technical aspects. Because I do think people. One of the things I've noticed in the mental health and substance use world is people do want to know what they're dealing with. And I think maybe that's healthcare in general. Right. Like, what's this called? What is this condition. What are the prognosis here? So people do want to know that stuff. It's just. You got to do it in a way that kind of like, well, once.

[A]

This has happened with both my parents in very different ways, but once I understood where my parents are coming from, it has. With one parent right now, has not changed the relationship or situation, but it's at least allowed me to understand and change how I hold onto it. Like, I haven't been able to affect the actual situation, but I'm at least not carrying it around with me in this very negative sense that I was for a long time. With this greater sense of understanding, it's like, okay, if I were in that position, I'd probably be doing the exact same shit.

[B]

No, I know. And that's so important. That is. And it's such a healthy way to kind of, like, approach life. And, you know, people would say, like, don't, Don't. What's the saying? Don't attribute to malice what you can attribute to ignorance. Right. Like, they didn't know better, that kind of thing. But also, when you start learning about mental health conditions and intergenerational trauma and stuff like that, you really will get an attitude where you're like, I can give this guy a break.

[A]

Well, in the intergenerational trauma thing, I read a book, it's not yout or something along those lines, and the guy has researched just intergenerational trauma, and he goes through, like, I kind of thought, like, all right, this is kind of bullshit. Like, your grandfather froze to death. And so all of a sudden, at the same age, you get these crazy nightmares at night. You can't fucking sleep anymore. You know, And. And. But. But there were enough examples through that book to substantiate, like, whoa.

[B]

Oh, that. That's generally accepted now. Yeah.

[A]

Your parents could be as, like, two peas in a podcast. Happily married, no alcoholism, no abuse. Perfect in every way. But then their parents could have had some crazy shit happen to them, which is like, the odds of your parents not being screwed up, pretty low. But the odds of multiple generations, especially previous generations, went through world wars and all that kind of stuff. No way.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that can skip over your parents and go right to you. It's just like, I had. No. I didn't even know that was a thing.

[B]

No. And you look at, like, think about what people live through and think about, like, just the intergenerational trauma. I was taught this intervention method called Arise. And I'll give this person credit. Her name is Judith Landau, and she created this system. It's probably the coolest, like, intervention system I've ever seen. It's all a very positive approach. It's not sneaking up on anybody. But her main goal when she sits down with a family is to get the family to understand the intergenerational trauma in their family from a big picture standpoint. And she does it through this very particular exercise called a genogram. And so you go back and you're basically going through your family history. And I've seen her do it with countless people. She can trace it literally. I've seen it go back as far as to whenever the parents came over to America from Ireland or something crazy. And what it does is it doesn't give anybody an excuse. It doesn't say, it's okay to dad, hit me.

[A]

Yeah, sure.

[B]

But it, it just gives you a different perspective on it that, like, I didn't know that dad was living in a shed out back when he was 14 and having to go to work down at the factory. And like, I didn't. I never thought of that and how that may have impacted him. And again, it's not like bad behavior is bad behavior and people need to be held accountable for that. And it doesn't necessarily change anything in the immediate. Right. Because change is hard. But that awareness can make all the difference, man. And people don't think of life that way.

[A]

And I think you can still support somebody. I know somebody. There were some serious consequences with what they did.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And not fun. I would never want to do it. Ever, ever, ever.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But I still felt like I could support them through that experience. Like, I didn't want to negate the experience. We didn't pitter patter around the fact that, like, hey, your decisions got you here and, and this isn't good 100 on you.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But I can still have some empathy here to acknowledge, like, yeah. That that really sucks. And, like, I can still be here to help you through it in a sense.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

But also, like, without while acknowledging, like, the reality of the situation that, like, you're still, you're. You're here because. Because you got yourself here.

[B]

Yeah. And is. And you can have both. And.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

This could be unacceptable and acceptable.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a, it was a. Yeah, it was a few years ago and it was. I. It was just something I never thought I would experience in my life.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like, a lot of things I think we experience.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It's like, wow, I didn't have this on my bingo card, but but yeah, it was an interesting experience to be like, wow, I can, I can be in both camps here. It's. This is not black and white.

[B]

The other thing that it can do is I think it can make it more effective for you in navigating your relationships with the person then. Because if you're aware of some of that stuff, it's also tactical in a way because it's like, it's going to help with the way you interact. It's going to help with what you expect. Because a lot of times where we get in the jam is when we expect something from people that they're not capable of doing for us. You know what I mean? And if we understand maybe where that's coming from and where that came from. But it also goes back and I think, Aaron, it ties in a lot to what we're talking about with the construction industry. And I think it's also highlighted in the construction industry because think about that old school generation that is still in the industry. A lot of leadership position. This is not what they were taught. No, they were taught the opposite of this. Don't talk about this stuff. Don't get in anybody else's business. Do you know what I mean?

[A]

Well, when you go down the abuse rabbit hole, it's not just at home, it's definitely in the workplace.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I think a lot of people have just been abused.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they were just abused coming up in different ways. Like not physically beat, but they were definitely like. I think most people have been abused by employers at a certain point or.

[B]

Like harassed or whatever you want to call it. Hazed.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, just like, not even, like, not even in an acute sense. Just, just treated in an almost inhuman manner.

[B]

Right, right.

[A]

And, and, and so I, that's, that's where I think it's really diabolical because it's not like. Well, no, I've never been abused or anything like that. But, but you have like your tails between your legs.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And they've just been so. Just piled on.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They don't have any tools and you.

[B]

Don'T have any conception of it.

[A]

Yeah, they don't have any conception of it. They don't see it themselves.

[B]

Right.

[A]

They just think, listen, this generation, they're soft. They don't work. They want to talk about their feelings. I'm sick of this shit. We just have work to do.

[B]

Like that dynamic right there that you just captured it.

[A]

Yes. And all. But all they have is a sledgehammer.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, that's the Only tool in their toolbox is just brute force. Let's just suck it up and let's just get the fucking job done.

[B]

And then you. And then you'll have people and you've run into these people, and there's quite a few that I've run into that will. That even though they're of an older generation, they will absolutely get where we're coming from.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And you can see it. And you know it. Do you know what I mean? And you know, and maybe it's because they had their own personal experience, perhaps they had a child that went through something or maybe they went through something or whatever. But you will find those absolute diamonds in the rough that. And so I am optimistic that the industry can get there because you can see examples of it.

[A]

But I think those guys are the ones that have the most influence. They're of the former generation, but they understand the need to change and because they've had their own experiences, are leading that change. I just spent a lot of time with one of those guys recently. But I also do want to say that the construction industry, you do just need a sledgehammer sometimes.

[B]

Yeah, true.

[A]

It is. Really. It's a brutal world. And I think because of the need to recruit people, they've watered it down. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. It's just fucking miserable.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And we need people that are just going to get out there when there's a blizzard, you know. You know, work 24 hours a day, work overnight. Like all of those. All of those realities don't go away.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But that can't be the only tool. So it's like, I think the incoming generation also needs a little bit more sledgehammer. Like previous generation needs less sledgehammer.

[B]

That's a very good point.

[A]

At least that's how it was for me. Like, I had to. I had to belly up to the bar quick when I got into this world. Like, holy shit. All right. This is real. I've gotta. I've gotta deliver.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

In a sense that I've never had to deliver for in my life.

[B]

No. There's a reality to that.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And you can't. You can't make that part go away.

[A]

No, no, no. It will never go away.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So there's like a. There. There is a harsh reality to this, but that's also where the pride comes from. I think, too.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is because they know they're working harder than most of society. Right. The rest of society is on their shoulders.

[B]

Right, Right.

[A]

Which I think is Great. But that can also work against you.

[B]

Right. And you don't really think of. I was thinking about this the other day, or we were talking about it. I'm like, something goes wrong at my house, I call somebody, they come and fix it. Yeah. Like, no one thinks about this stuff. Or the water main breaks out here on, on Main Street. Somebody has to go fix it, you know, or like the snowstorms come out east. And like every, like that is. There's a reality of that job and that life that you have to acknowledge. And it is going to be. And it's wild to kind of be in the middle of this. Like, if you think about it like this time period right now that we're watching, it's kind of, it's kind of interesting to be in the middle of this because you are seeing sort of like that tension between two generations.

[A]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[B]

You know what I mean? And how does that get reconciled? I love the way you said it. Like a little bit more sledgehammer, a little bit less sledgehammer.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Well.

[A]

And then you can go down the whole economic situation of like, yeah, you know, my dad's saying, well, you know, I bought this house, I'm making all this money and this and that.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Sitting around looking at home prices like you.

[B]

I'm not. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

I can't even think about it. Your generation, you bought a house.

[B]

It was $1,300.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good for you. Yeah, yeah. But that's, that's a different, different conversation. Well, I, I wholeheartedly appreciate what you guys have going on. Absolutely. I could not be a bigger supporter of it.

[B]

Yeah. Thank you.

[A]

We've tried to support it in every which way possible.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And. And hopefully we can just keep preaching the gospel because it's. This is. There's, there's few topics that are more important.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Than doing the work itself.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Man, I feel like.

[B]

Yeah, definitely, Definitely.

[A]

How do people find your guys stuff?

[B]

So we, we just, as I said, we rebranded to Bill well Health. So we have our new website up. It's www.billwellhealth.com. but if they hit up the U turn Health website, they'll still find me on there and everything. And so U turn Health is still doing what they're doing in some other parts of the. Some other divisions, I guess would be a way of saying it. I've kind of taken over and I'm going to run the construction division and that's why we, we rebranded it. And so billwell health.com Excellent. All right. Awesome. Thanks for having me, brother.

[A]

Yeah, thanks for being here.