Okay, welcome to the AdaptX Podcast where we have conversations with individuals who
are building accessible businesses, advocating for inclusion or excelling in adaptive sports.
Our intention is never to speak on behalf of those with disabilities, but give them
a platform to amplify their voice and share insights so we can make a more accessible
world.
Today we are joined by Dr. Jacki Hillios.
Jackie holds an MSW and PhD in social work from Boston College and worked as a clinician
with at-risk youth and families for 20 years before becoming a researcher and co-founding
the Phoenix.
As a clinician, Jackie knew the Phoenix's community approach to recovery and healing
would transform people's lives and society forever.
She has led the organization since 2007, overseeing expansion of the Phoenix to 185 communities
in 45 states.
That might be updated by now even maybe, we'll touch on that, with new communities being
activated in Canada, the UK, and several other countries.
As Deputy Executive Director for the Phoenix, Dr. Helios oversees research and evaluation,
strategy, innovation, and growth.
She's an active public speaker who enthusiastically shares what she has learned from developing
and scaling the Phoenix's healing community model.
In 2013, Jackie presented Transcending Addiction and Redefining Recovery at TEDx Boulder.
Her talk has been watched by nearly a million people and is being shared in university classrooms
across the country.
Jackie, thank you for joining me today.
Thanks for having me, I'm excited to be here.
We'll likely focus the majority of this conversation on the Phoenix, but before your time with
the organizations, you were a practicing clinician that worked with youth and families struggling
with mental illness and substance abuse.
What was the hardest part of that job?
Well, watching people suffer and running into challenges accessing the care that they needed.
You know, as a social worker who was supposed to be working with children, what you often
saw is a whole family and a family system that was struggling and suffering.
And most of our services are sort of aimed at individuals.
And so what I saw was a lot of times folks just couldn't access what they needed.
And it's one of those things that really opened up my eyes to some of the challenges
in the addiction treatment realm in particular.
When you have a mom or a dad who's struggling with a substance use disorder, often the sort
of first kind of line of intervention is when child welfare gets involved.
And that can be entirely disruptive.
And it was really, I think, startling to see how little was available to people who were
struggling in order to help keep families together, recognizing that the people wanted
to be able to raise their kids.
They wanted to be able to have positive lives.
And so it just helped me see that there was something bigger out there that was problematic.
And it really got me interested in looking at systems and systems of care.
I would imagine you embody some of the challenges and pain of your clients.
How were you able to dissociate between your time at work and maybe your time at home?
Well, for me, I climbed a lot.
I would pretty much climb every day after work.
And I met a community of people who on weekends we would go out climbing.
We did vacations together.
We traveled in Canada and Mexico, kind of all over, frankly.
Leveraging climbing is our way to sort of help fuel our own souls and kind of balance
our own challenges.
So for me, that's where I found my own way of self-care and nurturing.
It might be a heavy question to kind of front load in this conversation, but what advice
could you give to someone who's supporting a family member going through addiction?
I think the first thing is you got to help yourself.
If we've learned anything, it's just like when you're on an airplane, you have to put
your mask on before you can help your child put their mask on.
And if you're not taking care of yourself, it becomes really hard to help someone else.
And it is a really complicated and challenging condition that can take years, frankly, for
folks to overcome, often because of access challenges.
And so I think building your own stamina and kind of taking care of your own health and
mental health is really essential in these situations.
Yeah, in your TEDx talk, you mentioned how running or sport could be perceived as an
addiction as well, obviously, substitute with more positive outcomes.
But how do you define addiction and how do you differentiate between maybe positive and
negative ones maybe?
Yeah, I think this is one of those things where people—well, let me just pause and
say I think in the industry right now, there's major debates.
There's a New York Times article that recently came out and they spent an awful lot of time
talking about what is the definition of sobriety in the industry.
People are trying to define recovery.
And I think it's frankly a distraction from what is really what we need to be talking
about and that is that our current approach is failing and we need to do something different.
And so I think this idea of trading one addiction for another, it's kind of a sexy conversation
starter but ultimately we're talking about people trying to take control of their lives.
And this idea of taking a stepwise approach where even if you're trading addiction for
a running addiction, for running maybe too much, it's a step in the right direction
and helping people recognize that they're going in that right direction but that in
and of itself may not be the end point, I think is really important.
And I think the other thing that is really essential to kind of wellness overall is this
idea of community and we see it in the 12-step world and we see it in other industries as
well where people will talk about helping others is actually the path forward to healing
when you're so focused on yourself.
So maybe the first step again is stopping the addiction, starting the running and maybe
you're running too much but you're just thinking about yourself.
In that moment you are not necessarily living your best life but when you step back and
start to imagine your life in relation to those around you, how can you maybe help other
people get into running?
How do you run as part of a club?
Now you move from the me to the we and there's something really magical about that process.
But I think this idea of getting stuck in the definition is maybe the wrong question
and we should be thinking about how are people taking those steps towards health and wellness
and how can we support them on that journey?
So if it's verbiage or terminology, is there really an end point or definitive end to recovery?
You know, I don't think so and I think that what we're really talking about is people
living their best lives and when I say there's not an end point, I don't mean like somebody
is going to be addicted and they're going to be pained by addiction for the rest of
their lives.
We've seen millions of people who overcome their addictions to live very full and prospering
lives, but life is a journey and wellness is a journey and there's no distinct end
point.
And so I think if we can look at it as a pathway that we're walking where when we walk it
together we're stronger and when we give back to one another and support others, we're
stronger on that journey, that that helps to be a reframe instead of thinking of it
as like a cure or a destination.
Yeah, maybe it's a little bit of a reach but I think of like spinal cord injury and
how you could define recovery as being able to walk again but there's so many people
that thrive in the absence of being able to walk and that's not everyone's goal.
So it's like how can you define what the end point is if it's individual for each
person?
It's so true and I think in the addiction recovery world it's the same thing.
Historically we've defined success as sobriety and an absence-based sobriety in particular
but what we're seeing is that there are folks again who are taking these steps where maybe
they're choosing to or they're stepping away from their opioid addiction but they're
still smoking marijuana and I think that's where that debate kind of comes into play
around like well are they really sober?
You know and it's a waste of our time having that debate when really they've taken a step
towards improving their life and there's going to be many more steps to come in that
journey.
Yeah, absolutely.
You mentioned peer professionals and kind of this volunteer support network.
Can you define maybe what the process of becoming a peer professional is?
Is there some sort of onboarding or are there some sort of prerequisites that someone must
meet?
Yeah, you know our kind of thoughts around this idea of peer professional has evolved
significantly over the last five years.
I'll say that the Phoenix started out as an organization that provided services.
We would hire instructors who would teach a class or they would take people hiking or
camping and what we realized is that sort of peer professional role there were lots
of people actually doing that same thing who were not employed.
They were actually doing it because it was adding to their self-worth and it was helping
them kind of strengthen their own recovery and we started shifting away from thinking
of our folks as peer professionals and really thinking them as peers helping peers and have
since sort of thought about how can we mobilize a movement of millions of people who are helping
one another.
And so while I think like in the industry there are jobs there you could be a recovery
coach for example and that tends to be a peer professional role and there are certifications
that come along with that.
But the Phoenix we've started shifting our thinking to how can we more mainstream healing
through community sort of in a natural way and have modeled that off of other institutions
and organizations that have had similar approaches.
If you look at the reach of 12 step or you look at churches for example like their communities
are giving back to society in a number of different ways and so how can we learn from
those folks and start to shift our approach.
So now we're really focusing again on this mobilization of millions and recognizing that
within each individual is sort of the inherent capacity to give back and that we all have
something to give and that when we lean into that that we can actually transform society
in a much bigger way.
Yeah and you mentioned how helping others is a large part of that recovery process so
it seems like it's a natural progression.
Maybe just to back up since I guess we didn't really touch on it initially for people who
aren't familiar with the Phoenix can you maybe give a little bit of background as to the
conception of it and kind of how it operates today.
Sure sure.
So the Phoenix is a sober active community that is revolutionizing how people take control
of their health and their lives.
We are built on a community model and we leverage the inherent transformational kind of characteristics
of meaningful activities things like running or CrossFit but also music and book clubs
like this.
There's something about coming together that really fuels the soul and when you do it in
that way where you're thinking about how can you be of service to others as much as you
are in service to your own life and your own transformation.
It's pretty powerful and the Phoenix launched about 17 years ago almost 18 now.
Scott Strode is the executive director and my co-founder.
He came at it from as he was a person in recovery who was thinking about his own recovery journey
and how he could take what he had been successful doing and share that with others and he and
I were climbing partners.
And so as we started climbing I would be thinking about like how could we mainstream some of
the things that we do in the clinical world.
What's the science that we could leverage towards that that would actually bolster our
success in helping people.
And so it became this really interesting collaboration and over the years has grown now to where
we've served over 350,000 people and are really focusing next on what we call an empowerment
platform where we're bringing in partners to expand our impact recognizing what the
Phoenix does we do extremely well but that people need what they need when they need
it and if we can help them access other types of services and supports that we can actually
have a much bigger impact.
So Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in the 1930s or maybe around that time.
What have they done well and where have they fallen short and kind of what aspects of previously
existing programs that you guys adopt and which how did you kind of carve out your own
lane?
Yeah you know I think AA and all the many many different sort of peer support groups
that have sort of kind of spun off or spawned from the 12 steps.
They've changed a lot of lives and they're remarkably powerful healing modality for a
community that is not clinically based and I think there's something I really want
to praise kind of the impact that they've had.
I think what we have realized over the years is that there's just no one right way to
recover and to live your best life and that there's a need to provide alternatives and
options to people so that they can find what resonates most with them and I think there
are aspects of the 12 steps that just don't sit well with some folks.
Some of the things I've heard about is you know folks who aren't interested in the sort
of spiritual pathway that the 12 steps follows.
Now it doesn't mean that what they're doing doesn't work and that it isn't for the
right you know the right kind of group of folks but there's got to be other things
out there and I think we've seen that sort of spin up over the last decade in particular
with different types of organizations like the Phoenix starting to evolve and so 12 step
one of the things they do really well is it is a community and it is a consistent place
where people feel safe and supported.
I think the sponsor is something that has been proven scientifically to be exceedingly
helpful for people having that one person who you can go to no matter what day or night
there's something really powerful about that and then I think the thing that is most remarkable
about 12 step is the access with 12 step you can go anywhere in the world and find a meeting.
You can find it online you can find a meeting for men for women one that's talking about
the big book or about how to cope there's all kinds different topics and so they're
really meeting a lot of people where they're at and where they need to be and so there's
some real remarkable advantages there and for the Phoenix I think some of the things
that really resonated with us around the learning from 12 step was the power of people helping
people and this idea that you know we have to make it accessible and so what can we learn
from 12 step that maybe the Phoenix can do differently well we don't care if you have
a religious preference or not you can just show up and anybody is welcomed and because
we're leveraging this this volunteer strategy as well what you see is people are kind of
finding what works for them and their communities because when you share what works for you
and what you're passionate about maybe it's art maybe it's running you can feel that and
you can sense that and it's in those moments where people can come together and then I'll
say from the clinical realm one of the things that I thought a lot about when we were designing
the Phoenix is this idea of sort of parallel play it worked a lot with kids and if anybody
has ever worked with kids you know like you sit down and ask them a question even if it's
simple like how was school today it'll be fine like fine great it's fine and then they
kind of plays over right but when you're in the car listening to Pearl Jam as you drive
down the road or you're playing basketball or Uno like in those moments kids have the
ability to be vulnerable and so when we were building the Phoenix we thought well why is
that just something we do with kids like why can't we leverage those same sorts of meaningful
activities with our adults and see them you know create that space where they can feel
safe first because trust has to be there at the essence of it all and so with running
and CrossFit you're out doing your thing you have your personal goals you're running alongside
someone else but over time as you do that you build trust with the person who's running
with you and in those moments you can say I had a really hard time yesterday I'm having
a really hard time today I really feel like I want to drink and that person can say hey
let's do this or what about that or have you tried this treatment or let you know maybe
go and volunteer they can because they know you they can shape their response to what
is right for you and so anyway I think I would say Twilstead has a lot to offer but so does
the clinical world and so we really lean in on relationships and these sorts of ideas
of these activities becoming a place where people can build trust.
Yeah one of the ways to kind of rewrite the narrative and I'm more so in the disability
space is like through that shared interest and through that like shared recreation when
you're when you're in environments and you see someone in a wheelchair doing the same
activities as you you you see the wheelchair a little less or you don't see it as as much
of a barrier as you might have beforehand so there's something definitely powerful about
recreation and fitness and when you mentioned the peer professionals I kind of thought of
like the sponsors type of thing so it's that community and having that relationship the
relationship seemed to be key.
Absolutely.
There's more than 20 million people that struggle with addiction and I think the stats that
you had referenced were about a half that go to treatment stay sober but about three
quarters of those who participate in Phoenix's programs do.
Why do you think then that this isn't readily adopted everywhere or why isn't this like
the new standard?
Yeah and I'll back up and say too and maybe in the data that we shared over but stats
have really changed.
A year or two ago SAMHSA released some new stats and it looks like about 48 million people
are struggling with alcohol and drugs and less than six and a half percent of those
folks are able to access care and so the challenge here is that the system of care and let's
layer on to this that there's a talent shortage in the treatment industry where they can't
find enough clinicians to actually do the work so you can imagine that even if we pay
double we couldn't actually scale that approach to address the issues that are at hand and
so I think the challenge for the Phoenix and being adopted more broadly is that what we're
talking about is really simple but it's not easy.
When you talk about connection being the answer to some of society's greatest challenges you
know Vivek Murthy our Surgeon General recently released a report calling or suggesting that
we're facing an epidemic of loneliness right that loneliness that disconnect is actually
the problem we should be solving for and addiction, mental health challenges, increased rates
of suicide, violence, crime, all of these things are frankly symptoms of that underlying
condition and so when the Phoenix is talking about connection being the way forward it's
much like going to the doctor when you're dealing with a diabetes or a heart condition
and having your doctor say well diet you know change your diet and exercise right like these
things are really simple but our society is so built on like well there's got to be a
pill for it or a quick fix and really this is up to us and so there's this cultural shift
that has to happen where people recognize that actually we have the power to change
a lot of these things and it's up to us to create these environments that are nurturing
to you know get active to connect with one another because frankly the answer to a lot
of these challenges have been hiding in plain sight all along and again they're simple but
not easy because our society is not they're not looking for that as an answer you know
it's really hard to get up and exercise you know in the morning or to reach out to that
friend and have a conversation when we are taught time and time again that we have to
take care of ourselves.
How do you determine kind of going off of that looking for a pharmacological intervention
how do you determine whether someone needs that type of intervention versus a more active
personal relationship sort of intervention?
So I think that like there are there are a lot of people who need pharmaceutical sort
of interventions for their mental health and their wellness who are at heightened risk.
I think the challenge here is that when everybody is going through that system the folks who
need it most may not actually be able to access it and so the Phoenix and our approach around
leveraging community and meaningful activities in an environment that's psychologically
safe it's something that can really offset that demand and you know imagine a day when
the vast majority of people can build a community and find wellness and then those folks who
really need those added services can access them and so I don't ever want to say that
you know Phoenix is a treatment or it's going to replace that system it's just not.
I mean there are things that we don't know but we do know is that it's a very low risk
high reward sort of approach that can have a mass effect on society and frankly redefine
or kind of reshape the way in which our treatment industry works.
You mentioned psychologically safe during that portion that's an area that you guys
are researching correct?
Yep.
What does that work kind of entail or consist of?
Yeah so psychological safety is the concept that actually evolved out of business.
There was a time when folks over at Google were trying to figure out like how do I optimize
my team's performance and they started you know mucking around with lots of different
experiments to figure out what that was and what they ended up finding is that when folks
who were part of a team could show up to that team and be who they were perfectly imperfect
and they felt safe and supported so they could take risks and speak their mind and offer
insights that those were the teams that frankly were most effective and when we started building
the Phoenix we immediately and instinctively and I think it comes from you know this idea
of understanding that trauma is often underneath an addiction.
We really leaned into this idea of nurturing community as a aspect of the organization
that we thought was going to be really critical and over the years we started looking at this
idea of psychological safety that again came out from some of this research that Google
had done and we started building our own metrics to evaluate the role of psychological safety
in our community and how that impacts people overall and what we found is when folks felt
psychologically safe they had more hope, their mental health improved, their physical health
improved and they were significantly more likely to keep coming back and so we're really
kind of advancing that lane of research because we think that there's something there you
know in the therapeutic environment when I was a clinician it's all about creating a
nurturing environment where people can be you know feel safe and take risks.
It's really applying that thing that we knew in the clinical world that they learned at
Google in the business world to how we operate as an organization and a community but if
we could take that and frankly you know align it to all the other types of human service
industries, you know everything from schools to job training programs to you know gyms,
you know I think we would see some pretty interesting outcomes and a ripple effect of
that psychological safety not just in improving people's you know one domain of outcome that
that particular organization is trying to achieve but actually more broadly their life
and their health and their wellness more again more broadly.
Is the stigma associated with addiction one of the things that compromises psychological
safety?
I think it definitely compromises it at a societal level and you know what we find at
the Phoenix because we do create this environment where the moment you walk in the door you
feel welcomed that people come into the Phoenix and that stigma is sort of flipped.
I'll give you an example we had a young man who came to the Phoenix a few years ago
frankly he was a college-age kid and he made the decision to get sober and somebody told
him about the Phoenix.
He walked in he did his first event I'm pretty sure it was CrossFit and as he was walking
out the door he asked if he could buy one of our t-shirts that says sober on it and
one of the other folks were there for the class said wow dude that's really brave of
you like you just got sober and you're gonna put on a sober shirt and go out and like share
it and he's like well why wouldn't I?
Why wouldn't I?
In that environment he realized like very quickly like it's okay to be sober and so
why should I be defined by how people outside would be judging me and I think it's having
more of those experiences the larger an organization like the Phoenix gets and we're not the only
organization that's really kind of flipping the script on stigma but the larger an organization
like the Phoenix gets the more it's going to be easy for folks the more you know musicians
and sports figures who come out as being sober the more that we start understanding that
you know lots of people have struggled with a substance use disorder the easier it's going
to be so I do see us as making progress and you know one of the things that we judge our
success on frankly and this maybe not the most optimal way to judge your success is
that there are hundreds if not thousands of people out there with Phoenix tattoos so if
you're willing to put this on your body and say like actually I'm claiming my health and
I don't care I think that's a pretty pretty interesting signal that we're going in the
right direction.
Absolutely and it just reiterates to the person how important it is they have that visual
reminder like I'm committed to this but what is the biggest misconception that people have
about addiction?
I think that the biggest misconception is that it's an individual's problem again if we look
at kind of what is the root cause here this idea of disconnect blaming a person for their
addiction I think is is a huge mess you know there are people who are numbing out in an
array of different ways you know whether it's somebody who has an evolving eating disorder
or they become distant and a bit antisocial or people who are overworking you know these
are all things people do to kind of cope with the stress in their lives and so it's really
an indicator again of that kind of cultural societal societal challenge and so it's really
important not to just blame the individual and the fact that the system of care is so
flawed again clinical treatment works I'm a clinician I believe in it but if you can't
access it it frankly just doesn't matter and so we have to stop looking at the individual
as a problem and look at the culture and the systems that we have available for people.
Is there evidence on like nature versus nurture?
Oh my gosh I don't I think that's probably a question for someone else I think you know
if you look at the science there's there's evidence for both and so I don't I wouldn't
be able to say to you it's you know this percentage of people will have and are naturally
inclined to it versus society but I do think that we all are inclined to find ways out
of pain and what that ends up looking like may be different but that's really more what
it's about is a way to cope with the pain the stress the challenges of society of kind
of our lives more so than the drug itself.
Are all volunteers individuals who are in recovery or if someone isn't in recovery do
you find that they're able to relate as well or be as effective as a peer?
Yeah we've actually done a little bit of looking at this as well and a number of years
ago we realized that there were volunteers that we had working for the Phoenix who were
not people who had a background having been addicted to an alcohol or drug themselves
but frankly we're having tremendous impact in their programs are having tremendous impact
on those who are attending and so over the years we've really evolved to create a more
inclusive community and we think of the Phoenix is something for people who have struggled
with alcohol and drugs or mental health challenges but frankly for anyone who's looking for
nurturing community and I'll give you another example there's a young woman who was coming
to our programming in Boston and she had a family member who had struggled with alcohol
and drugs and actually lost his life it was her father and she came to the Phoenix because
the Phoenix was a reminder that not everyone had to lose their lives and it gave her hope
and it also provided a place where she felt you know meaningful connection and hope and
kind of like could recharge her own mental health.
Similarly we've had lots of veterans who come to the Phoenix who have struggled with
trauma who maybe never even struggled with addiction but in coming to the Phoenix they
find this ability to be of service as a way to help advance their meaning and purpose
in life and so people are opting into the Phoenix who've never had a substance use
disorder at all and so similarly in our volunteer volunteers we understand that everyone has
a role to play and we welcome all so if you want to start volunteering we'll get you signed
up today.
Do you have to train volunteers in any way?
I know like sometimes with our like Special Olympic volunteers it's important to share
some aspects of etiquette and just language and communication strategies that you use
when communicating with someone with a disability are there specific like aspects of etiquette
that you try to communicate with them?
Yeah there are a couple of things that we do I think the first one for the entire community
but it is also extremely relevant for our volunteers is that we have an ethos and that
ethos really kind of describes what is valued at the Phoenix and what we strive for that
understanding that everybody is welcome for example is at the heart of that ethos and
then for volunteers specifically we do have some videos that we ask our volunteers to
watch and kind of get signed off on we ask them to attend a Phoenix event so they can
see for themselves what it's like and what it you know what start to imagine what they
might do and how they might lead their different classes or activities or ways in which they
support and then we offer additional training kind of along the way there's times where
we might invite our volunteers to we had a conference we called it RISE we invited about
150 volunteers to that event to help them figure out how to do things like social media
and advertising of their own programs and we also talked about how to have difficult
conversations and so we layer in the video content with the actual training with this
sort of overarching ethos as a way to help kind of set expectations for what is acceptable
in the environment.
Absolutely yeah I really liked in your in your talk your TEDx talk you you mentioned
how people are not their disease it's a piece of who they are but that's it and kind of
the same way with disability and the evolution of language over time from identity first
to people first language person first language that goes a long way I guess in terms of rewriting
the narrative and how people understand and see disability or see addiction has that conversation
around language evolved over the last five or ten years what are the biggest like shifts
that you've seen?
Yeah I think it is constantly evolving and I think you know at the heart of it is that
sort of person first language is you know like you know people not labeling people as
addicts you know but people have had a struggle and they've struggled maybe with a particular
substance but we really avoid that sort of language that perpetuates the stigma.
Yeah I mean I think that the idea that you know behind our ethos is really anchored in
that language and we offer some of the examples there and then frankly the kind of the trying
to integrate the science in real time so we've worked really closely with folks like John
Kelly over at the Recovery Research Institute at Harvard and he's done some studies on
the different you know language and how it can be seen as stigmatizing and leveraging
more empowering language and so we bring that information to our volunteers and to our staff
as a way to help empower them as well.
If I look at like one of my missions of hopefully creating a lot of fitness environments where
people with disabilities are supported as you attempt to grow Phoenix to more chapters
more locations how do you ensure quality is maintained or are there any consistent like
sort of like franchise type of model things that you adopt what's the process of kind
of vetting people that want to start programs?
Yeah this is something we think about all the time and we're really you know leaning
in on some of the learning that folks from like Airbnb and Uber have used in their processes
because if we can get real time feedback from folks who are attending these different activities
that helps us ensure kind of that the environment is really representing Phoenix's commitment
to psychological safety inclusivity and that the activities themselves are safe and supportive
and so I think that's as we've scaled models that we've really focused on and tried to
learn from.
Yeah that's a good idea just the consistent feedback from the users is a good way to ensure
that you're hitting the mark there.
I was told that one of your focuses is on expanding the Phoenix's partnerships specifically
in kind of music and innovation what direction do you see that going?
Yeah I'll speak to music first and then I'll get into innovation second.
I think with the music industry you know what we know to be true is that music is really
a representation of culture and there's an opportunity I think in the music industry
right now where more and more artists are starting to be vocal about their struggles
and their challenges you know they have experienced exponential loss.
Artists in the music industry are significantly more likely to struggle with a substance use
disorder with mental health challenges and frankly overdose and die than the general
population and there's just an increased awareness I think amongst the industry that something
has to shift and so we've been partnering with a number of different organizations as
well as different festivals and venues around the country to start to look at the sort of
sober inclusive and recovery supportive practices that they're employing in their environments
both for the folks who are you know back of house so artists and people who work in the
industry but also for fans and looking at the environments and I think that there's
a you know it's a long road frankly to evolving you know and supporting the music industry
in the direction in which we hear they want to go because you know the industry is so
tied to revenue generated from alcohol distribution and so I think the more that we see you know
zero proof beverages and NA beverages evolving in popularity and accessibility I think the
easier some of the shift is going to be but we really see this as an opportunity to partner
with the industry to start to change the narrative and start to realign expectations in a way
that are going to be more inclusive and supportive for all Americans because I know for myself
as a mom and wanting to be able to bring my daughter to enjoy music that even if I wanted
to have alcohol there I don't necessarily want it to be in my face or you know all encompassing
and I think that that that is something that a lot of Americans think about not just folks
who are thinking about how they're going to create a sober sober safe and supportive
environment and so for the Phoenix we're leveraging music to provide programming so
we have some songwriting sorts of workshops we offer sort of meetups around music we're
hosting large events partnering with an organization called secret dance addiction to host these
major kind of dance events around the country because dance like fitness or you know music
like fitness is intrinsically transformational for people the science tells us it improves
your mental health it improves your wellness improves your physical health and so we're
really leaning into that both as a program that we can offer through our volunteers but
also as a strategy to partner with the music industry more broadly so that they can lead
the change they want to see not that we want to see but they're the ones who are leading
it and we can come alongside and support them does it does the evidence show that people
are starting to drink and use substances at a younger age and like is it becoming more
prevalent it feels like anecdotally that it is but I don't have anything to really back
that up I think with the legalization of marijuana like alcohol it just opens the door to if
it's fine for somebody who's over 21 why wouldn't it be fine for me and so I don't
doubt and I think the evidence does show that there is an increase I think the biggest challenge
around you know kind of alcohol and drug use is really the kind of the norms that are teaching
our kids that that if you have a stressful day you should go grab a beer with a friend
instead of actually going for a run right similarly with the drugs I think it's the
same thing when you're experiencing pain this will help to numb and disconnect and so I
think kids are stressed more than they've ever been rates of anxiety are on the rise
social media is perpetuating you know eating disorders amongst our young women you know
I think that there's a lot there that is really challenging and if they're not reaching for
alcohol or drugs they're gonna be reaching for something else it's gonna help them feel
better yeah absolutely what influenced you to become a clinician in the first place whoo
that's a big one I grew up in home where I had a mom who both she struggled with alcohol
use herself she drank every single day but when she wasn't drinking she would get up
and she would be there for us in a way that I still can't understand why or how you
know she made sure that we sold more cookies than any other girl in the Girl Scouts troop
she showed up for every one of my volleyball games but at night she medicated and and she
had a pretty extensive trauma history that I learned about kind of over time and so I
think growing up in that environment I I just wanted to figure out how to help other people
because she was always helping other people she would bring people home she used to call
it bring it home strays and you know she you know her this woman from work who had been
beat up by her husband this other woman who her kids were homeless like they were always
there so I have these influences I think in my life that just got me constantly thinking
about how to help and I started working with other kids I was a peer helper in my school
when I was I think a sophomore junior in high school I joined the Delinquency Prevention
Commission and my town to help kids who are incarcerated before I was even seventeen and
so I think it is something that was rooted in me deeply and something I couldn't frankly
step away from but I always had I wanted to understand why people did what they did kind
of what they needed and I wanted to figure out how I could help if the one thing I learned
from my dad was he he solved problems all the time and we used to play these you know
logic games as something we just did for fun and so for me this idea of leveraging this
like problem-solving kind of way of thinking to help society and people heal was just something
I couldn't escape it called to me.
Why do some people adopt the behaviors of their family and others are able to kind of
separate themselves from that environment?
I think it's you know there's more to us than just what we experience in our family and
you know there's this concept of an enlightened witness where you know there's a moment in
time where you have that person who just offers a slightly different perspective or they see
you differently than your family did and they can offer a reframe.
I think there's lots of those moments in life where things just start to shift and I remember
for myself you know going over to a boyfriend's house in college and his parents they were
making dinner together and they loved each other it was so obvious and they they set
the table and there were flowers and you felt special right like you felt special and that
was just very different than the home that I had grown up in my family loved me but it
was a I think a constant tension when you know my dad had OCD my mom struggled with
depression like people were just sort of getting by and I think in those moments you start
to be exposed to things you never thought of things that you may choose to adopt for
yourself and so I think you know that the role that whether it's a teacher or a neighbor
or others play in our lives is critical and then being able to see kind of how other people
choose to live their lives because you can't imagine it if you don't see it and you or
if you don't hear it or if you don't have that person who's standing up for you or
helping you and in fact the every kid deserves that and it's why we have to think about
ourselves more of a community than you know just what's right in front of us.
Yeah I think you'd be hard-pressed to not have someone in your life who has struggled
with something like this so I'm sure everyone can relate in some way maybe to encourage
people to get involved can you highlight a memorable moment over the last five or ten
years or something that really sticks out as to the impact that the Phoenix has.
I'm sure it's yeah I'm sure there's not just one.
I can definitely come up with a really good example and I'm hoping that we can actually
chat about the technology thing again I'll circle back to that because I have something
really exciting to share there.
Yeah but if I think about a specific moment or an example of a person we were in Denver
Colorado and there was this gentleman who had been frankly living in the alleyway behind
the building for quite some time.
There's a lot of folks who struggle with homelessness in and around kind of where our
building is there and there was a day where he took a risk and he opened the door and
he came in you know when folks are homeless they don't have the right shoes to do a crossfit
workout their clothes may be really uncomfortable I think he had some work boots on people very
quickly scooped him up they got him shoes they got him clothes and they created a you
know they welcomed him back they said are we going to see you tomorrow.
So he came in he was met with that kind of psychological safety where he was welcomed
the moment he walked in the door he was treated with respect and dignity that he deserved
he had a fun positive experience and he came back and he came back and he started really
getting into this thing called Olympic lifting for whatever reason that was his jam.
So fast forward about six months and we're standing around at a high top table a bunch
of us were in town for some meetings and he came in and he walked over to the table and
Scott and I were there and a number of other folks and he said I went to a job fair today
and I got a job offer I haven't worked in 10 years and he said I know it's going to
sound crazy but the reason I did that was because I realized if I could do Olympic lifting
I could do anything and it was like in his mind it was the Olympic lifting right like
and it was it really was but if he didn't have the community and the psychological safety
he never would have succeeded at that Olympic lifting and so I think it's moments like that
that happen every single day when you realize that there is more to community connection
and meaningful activities and people attribute and if that's all they really thought about
if everybody stopped for a moment and thought about like how can I get a little more connected
how can I ensure that people feel welcomed and supported in any engagement that I have
with them that could go a really long way.
Yeah I had jotted down employment and I wasn't sure where exactly to kind of weave it in
but like I was curious if there was any like step towards employment for participants or
whether you were able to support that process in any way as well.
You know we don't necessarily have a formal process for that we did play around with doing
our own sort of job training type programming but what we realized is that it actually was
more effective to just get a lot of folks volunteering and I'll use CrossFit as an
example because they've been an extraordinary partner for us.
They've been you know we were I think we're in about 140 gyms around the country are the
Phoenix programming is but the CrossFit organization has given us a lot of like level one certifications
so we have folks who come in and they want to start volunteering we're actually able
to refer them for a free cert and then they could come back and lead CrossFit programming
within their community and so this is just one example of ways in which people who maybe
they're fresh out of being incarcerated or they're new to recovery and just trying to
build back their lives where they can get practice doing it as a volunteer but they
also build certifications where it actually can ladder up to employment and we see that
happening in you know a lot of our yoga partnerships we see that kind of in lots of different lanes
and that's just one example.
Yeah there's another cool program in Boston called Inner City Weightlifting that you might
be familiar with and John does something very similar where he takes formerly incarcerated
individuals and gets them into a position to be employed and work as trainers so it's
always been a program that I've really admired but can any gym become a Phoenix chapter does
it have to be a CrossFit affiliate?
No any so Phoenix is not just fitness it really is anything and we don't have chapters per
se but we have volunteers who are creating community around the country and frankly starting
to be global and so if you are someone who likes camping you can raise your hand become
a volunteer and take a bunch of people camping if you want to teach music classes you can
teach music classes if you want to lead CrossFit you can lead CrossFit but it really is what
is most meaningful for you and how can we support you in taking that gift and sharing
it with other people and so really there are kind of innumerable ways that people can give
back and really start to build their own path and so for gym settings a lot of times it
helps when the manager or the owner is bought in and so it could be a yoga studio you know
a regular gym CrossFit gym you name it.
Yeah because I'm just thinking like I own a gym here in Lancaster Mass and then also
passionate about running, marathoning, etc. and I just so if I were to reach out to you
and say hey I don't have any immediate community of individuals in recovery but I have this
facility I have this expertise what's the next step do you have do you have people that
you reach out to like what's kind of the process to get that ball rolling?
Yeah there's a lot of different ways it can go so if you yourself want to volunteer then
we would just get you trained and you could start and we come alongside you with marketing
materials we have staff that kind of start to get people connected we post it and advertise
it so that people now know that you're running these activities so we help drive people to
the activities that you're offering.
If you want someone to come alongside you as a volunteer because you're not the person
who's actually going to do it but you want to open up your facility in the so in our
app you can go to the volunteer side and choose to volunteer now and inside that app after
you go through the basic video training is what we call it's a meetup so you can connect
with other volunteers and then you know you can say hey I need a volunteer who can help
teach whatever or I'd like to have you know I'll open my space we could have CrossFit
or yoga or fitness whatever you know like is there anybody out there and so we create
that environment where people just raise their hand and so there's those two ways one way
is sort of more organically through the app and the other way is by partnering with the
volunteer coordinators in your region to kind of identify and pull people in.
Awesome great to know you want to circle back to technology and kind of innovations in that
space.
Yeah so this is the thing that frankly I'm more excited about than anything else I've
ever done in my life.
During the pandemic we within 48 hours launched virtual programming and realized that we needed
like the technology was going to be the door opener to increasing access for people to
access not just the Phoenix but a lot of different types of services and supports and so we built
the Phoenix first our app for the Phoenix to be able to serve our members serve our
volunteers it was very practical but we realized that the same thing that we were needing lots
of other nonprofits were also needing so we're now creating these micro sites within the
Phoenix app so that another organization whether it's a job training organization or housing
support organization or an alumni group that's trying to reach their constituencies these
other organizations can come onto the app and be able to have their own micro site and
right now it's free of charge.
We are wanting to ensure access and our goal is to keep things keep money as kind of low
a restriction as possible so by creating these micro sites you know we have organizations
like SheRecovers we also have another organization called CCAR a Connecticut Community for Addiction
Recovery who does a lot of recovery coaching so you come in the Phoenix door and you can
actually access these other partner organizations or you can access the Phoenix community more
generally but it creates this broader community of care now where people can access what they
need when they need it and so you may be on a wait list that's going to take you two weeks
to get into that treatment center but in the meantime you can access all of these other
things to support you in your recovery and frankly in your mental health challenges as
well and I'm really excited about it we have we've been piloting it for the last several
months we've got I think 10 to 15 pilot organizations on there we have a goal of getting 150 organizations
on there by the end of the year but what we think is possible here is that we can create
a pathway a single point of entrance through which people can access pretty much anything
that they need to you know get themselves going in the direction that is right for them
recognizing there's no one right way or one exact pathway and by providing that access
I think it's going to be game-changing for people who have been struggling.
So is that just in the App Store under the Phoenix?
The Phoenix, yeah.
Yeah and then you can also access it through our website.
And an organization that wants to get involved with that would just reach out to you generically?
Yeah, yeah they can just shoot over an email they can email me if they hear this podcast
it's Jackie J. C. K. I. at the Phoenix dot org and I'm happy to kind of get their requests
for being a part of the app kind of over to the right folks.
Perfect yeah we'll include the app download and the show notes and we can include your
email as well in the show notes if people want to reach out directly obviously as well
as the website and all those generic links as well.
Maybe as a question that we ask and we've kind of already touched upon it but we finish
we wrap up most of the podcast kind of with the question of what do you think needs to
be done to make fitness more accessible for people and that could be in my population
it's a lot of individual intellectual and physical disabilities but it could be people
with mental health challenges as well.
You know I think it just I'd hammer home on this idea of psychological safety you know
it's something you strive for I know Brene Brown talks about creating brave spaces because
to ensure psychological safety is a really hard thing but if we're all striving to create
an environment where everybody feels welcomed and they feel empowered to take risks and
try new things and I'm sure you've seen it in the disability space as well you know somebody
when people come in they're scared they don't even know if they can do something and when
you can kind of open the environment and create this nurturing kind of environment where they
can take the chance and try that thing it's just going to transform their lives and people
can do the most amazing things when they have that psychological safety so in terms of accessibility
and you know inclusivity I think psychological safety is the magic in the middle.
Yeah we talk about how like my gym was opened initially for my Special Olympic athletes
but an unintended consequence has been a lot of people perceive our business as empathetic
and welcoming and there's a lot of people that probably never would have stepped foot
in a gym with free weights and turf and sleds and stuff like that if they hadn't had that
outward facing public perception of inclusivity so whether people want to train a lot of athletes
with disabilities or not I think kind of adopting those premises and those principles opens
you up to a lot more potential customers clients than you would otherwise.
Jackie it was awesome to hear about the organization always admired from afar so it was nice to
get a closer up view into it.
We'll include all the relevant links in the show notes so people can learn more about
it and reach out to you directly but thanks so much for your time we'll include the TED
talk as well because I really enjoyed listening to that a couple of times in anticipation
of this conversation so again Jackie thank you.
Thank you.