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This episode is brought to you by Thorne and I have some incredible news for any of you

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Joel Titoro and Wes Barnett.

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This episode is sponsored by a company I've literally been using for over 15 years now

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of my civilian gear, the clothes that I wear are also 511.

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So if you want to hear more about 511 and their origin story, go to episode 338 of Behind

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the Shield podcast with their CEO Francisco Morales.

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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast as always my name is James Gearing and this week

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it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show the woman behind End It for Good and

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author of Curious, Christina Dent.

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Now Christina described herself as a homeschool conservative Christian and it was only in

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2014 after becoming foster parents that she began to reframe the way she looked at addiction.

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So we discuss a host of topics.

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From her journey into fostering, meeting a mother named Joanne that would reframe the

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way she looked at mental health, chasing the scream, decriminalization in Portugal, the

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prison system, how psychedelics are healing our first responders and military members,

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multi-generational trauma and so much more.

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Now before we get to this incredible conversation as I say every week, please just take a moment,

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go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and

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leave a rating.

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Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast therefore making it easier for

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others to find and this is a free library of over 950 episodes now.

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So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so

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I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.

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So with that being said, I introduce to you Christina Dent.

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Enjoy.

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Well, Christina, I want to start by saying two things.

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Firstly, thank you to Johan Hari for connecting us and obviously we'll get into the connection

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there.

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And secondly, I want to welcome you to the Behind the Shield podcast.

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Thanks so much, James.

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It's really great to be here with you.

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So where on planet earth are we finding you this afternoon?

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I am in Mississippi in the US.

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So born and raised here, lived here my whole life in the southeastern part of the country.

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Brilliant.

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I want to start at the beginning of that life then.

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So tell me exactly where you were born and then tell me a little bit about the family

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dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings.

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Yeah, I was born in Jackson, Mississippi.

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I've lived in the Jackson area my whole life.

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I grew up in a wonderful, warm family, great family environment.

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My dad worked at a Christian school.

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My mom was a stay at home mom.

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She homeschooled me and my three older brothers, kindergarten through high school back in the

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1980s, which was kind of the beginning of the homeschooling movement in the US.

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And she just wanted to spend time with us.

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It wasn't like a big anti-world move or anything like that.

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She just really thought she would rather be there for education.

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And so we ended up doing that.

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So we lived in a tiny little house, about 800 square feet, my whole growing up, which

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allowed for my dad to work for not very much money at a school and for my mom to be home

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with us.

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But we had a really warm childhood, wonderful Christian home.

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Conservative community that I grew up in.

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All of my friends' families were conservative Christians also.

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So it was very much the culture that I saw the world through also.

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Now you're doing the academics at home.

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What about sports and exercise?

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What were you doing physically through those ages?

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We never did any kind of organized sports.

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We played volleyball and basketball every week at my church.

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My parents would chaperone and all the kids in the church would come and we would play

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together for a couple of hours every weekend.

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And a lot of running through the woods around our house.

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I grew up in the city, but on some property that our landlord owned.

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And so we had a lot of space to kind of roam, ride bikes.

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My mom was big on send us outside and don't come in for six, seven, eight hours.

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Just be out there building things, building forts in the woods.

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We had a, there was an old barn on his, our landlord's property that he let us turn into

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a clubhouse, the whole loft of it.

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So my dad would go with my brothers like dumpster diving to find remnants of carpet and old

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couches and just random things that people were getting rid of.

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And they turned the whole loft area into basically a little house that we could use for our clubhouse.

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So lots of time, many, many hours went into those kinds of projects.

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When you look back at the childhood in, you know, arguably quite a small home, and then

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you look at what we are sold as the kind of place that we should be living in 2024, what

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are your thoughts?

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Yeah, it's interesting because I haven't chosen that life for my own children.

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I have three boys.

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I don't live in an 800 square foot house.

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I live in a 2000 square foot house.

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And so I can, I take so much of that as such a great example.

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I think a lot of the reason why I'm able to work on the issue that I do today, which

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is a controversial issue, and I have a controversial opinion about it and do that very publicly.

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I think a lot of that came from seeing my parents make decisions that were different

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from other people and realizing, hey, you don't, you don't die if you do something

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different from other people.

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Like it's really okay to follow what your convictions are.

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And even if people don't agree with you, they tend to respect that you're living out

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of your values and you're living out of your convictions.

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And so, you know, it hasn't been in some ways I've taken the way that I grew up into

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my adult life and continue to live in some ways that way.

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And yet in other ways, it was a really unique kind of calling that they felt.

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As Christians, they felt like it was kind of part of the calling God had given them

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was to just live a very simple life.

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They gave really generously.

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My mom kept journals her whole adult life.

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And so all through there is kind of financial information, what things were costing, what

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they were giving to, how much my dad was making.

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And when you kind of look at the percentage that they were giving to charity, it's pretty

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astounding.

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So they just really lived out of this different set of values of, you know what?

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The big house is not going to make us happy and it's going to add a lot of stress to

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our lives.

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And we're going to have to have two working parents.

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And my mom wanted to be home.

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And they just said, you know, we're going to give that up and we're going to live a

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much simpler life and focus on the intangibles of family time and living in this, you know,

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house that still gave us a lot of yard space because of the land that it was on and really

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just leaning into the intangibles.

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And they found so much fulfillment in that.

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They were very happy.

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My dad had two master's degrees.

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He could have been making a lot more money.

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And yet it really was just this choice for a simple life.

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And they never regretted that.

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All through my mom's journals are this delight in the life that she has and in the family

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that she has.

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And, you know, there's certainly times as we grow up that a lot of, you know, six people

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in the 800 square feet gets a little dicey sometimes.

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But that was a price she was willing to pay for what it was able to give us.

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And she used to say, everything I have in this house takes up mental space.

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It's something I have to clean.

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It's something I have to worry about getting broken.

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It's something I have to repair.

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And so when you have a space that's that small, you can only fit very few things in it, which

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just she felt gave her so much more mental space not to have to be worrying about so

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much of those kind of possessions.

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And she spent a lot of that time reading classic literature and all kinds of other pursuits.

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She was an avid bird watcher and she had time for those things, even homeschooling us.

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And she loved that.

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Beautiful.

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I think it's an important perspective.

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I traveled around the world for a year and I had literally a guitar and a backpack and

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then I got hired in Japan.

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I wish I could remember exactly how many square feet but it was but it was a tiny little apartment,

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but very, very efficient.

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And I spent 15 months living there and it really reframed between those two things.

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What do I actually need?

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A couple of pairs of jeans, some board shorts, a guitar, a walkman back then.

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And then, yeah, just like you said, I look around and I kind of groan at parts of my

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house that we hardly ever inhabit.

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It's like, why is this even there?

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It's just tax and AC and everything else.

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My home is humble compared to what a lot of Americans are actually told we're supposed

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to have.

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So it is an important conversation in the financial and the mental health conversation.

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So what about the addiction side?

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Obviously, we're going to get into that.

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Did you have any exposure to anyone who was struggling when you were younger?

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And then were there any kind of philosophies that were being taught to you back then that

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now in 2024, you've kind of reviewed and changed?

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Yeah.

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I didn't have any personal experience with drug use growing up.

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Even when I was in high school, my friends weren't drinking alcohol.

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I knew people were and I knew people who did, but they weren't in my kind of inner circle

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of friendships.

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And so it just was not a part of my personal experience.

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I definitely looked down on people who were using anything, whether it was even alcohol

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in high school.

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I very much had this kind of a perfectionistic personality and learned very quickly sort

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of how people pat you on the back.

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And I loved that.

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So I thought, you know, here I am, be a good girl.

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I'm going to make all the right decisions and the adults love me.

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And you know, this is how you do well in the world.

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And so my lack of kind of personal experience plus my judgmentalness towards other people

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who were using whatever the substance may be.

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And really, alcohol was about all I had knowledge of.

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I mean, I would have been hard pressed to name anybody, you know, who was using much

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else than that.

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But the messaging around people who were using substances was very clear, even though I cannot

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point to a specific instance where I remember being taught a particular way of thinking.

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It was very much just part of the cultural messaging.

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And now that I'm more aware of it, I still hear that messaging all around me.

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We don't even realize that we do it.

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But we often use someone struggling with addiction as sort of the far end of, you know, if we're

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saying, you know, well, so and so is making some bad decisions, but they're not a junkie.

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We do things like that.

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We don't even realize it.

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It's so much a part of just the terminology of culture where we kind of make comparisons

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and how often that negative comparison is made towards somebody who is struggling with

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an addiction.

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And so I think those kinds of things were very much internalized, along with, you know,

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I grew up in the South in a conservative Christian home and culture in the 80s and 90s where

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it was moral majority and very much behavior focused, you know, we want to get people to

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act right.

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And it was very clear that using drugs was definitely not acting right.

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And so I picked up a lot of that in the way that I thought about people.

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And it took me until my 30s, really until I started this journey of learning after we

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became foster parents.

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It took me that long to realize that the empathy that I had a lot of in many ways, I always

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thought of myself as an empathetic person, but that the empathy was always conditional,

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even though I didn't recognize it.

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It was conditional for people whose suffering seemed random, suffering that was not brought

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on by their own decisions.

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You know, somebody gets in a car accident or somebody has cancer or somebody, you know,

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loses a parent or a friend's parents divorce, like those kinds of things that were outside

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of their control.

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I could have a lot of compassion for that and didn't even realize that I was kind of

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making these decisions based on what I perceive to be your own, whether you're responsible

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or not for the suffering that you are enduring.

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And so for people who were using drugs, that was clearly in my mind, a category of, hey,

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you're making a bad decision.

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And so that empathy just switched off completely.

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I could immediately not engage with that at all.

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And I really think what I saw in my home is certainly my parents could be judgmental also.

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I mean, part of the decisions that they made, there was certainly a part of kind of judging

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people who didn't make those same decisions, you know, people who are living in these massive

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houses or people who, you know, whatever it was, that certainly came through sometimes

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because when you live in 800 square feet, you can hear everything.

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So I overheard a lot of conversations of my parents, even if they didn't expect that I

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was listening.

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But, you know, my dad, when I was growing up, would meet at the local library with a man

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named George.

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And George had struggled with alcoholism for I have no idea how long.

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My whole childhood, I have memories of answering the phone.

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And there's George on the other end, always drunk, always slurring, asking to talk to

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my dad.

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And, you know, I'd put my dad on the phone and every now and then he would go meet George

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at the local library and just try to listen and help.

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And my dad didn't know anything about alcoholism or addiction or, you know, recovery or anything

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like that.

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And I don't even know how they got connected.

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All I remember is throughout my childhood, I would answer the phone sometimes and George

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would be on the other end asking for my dad.

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So I saw this consistent showing up for my dad, for somebody who's struggling.

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My mom agreed to babysit for a neighbor.

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So the street that we lived on, there was a house on either side of us.

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And often there was a lot of dysfunction in the people that rented those houses.

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And there was a young woman that moved in and had a baby and needed child care.

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And my mom agreed to watch the baby for I think it was like a dollar fifty an hour.

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And she thought, well, you know, hey, I'll make a little money.

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I'll help this mom out.

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I know she's in a really tough position.

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That turned into this disaster of the mom leaving the baby with us for hours and hours

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of unplanned time.

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Just wouldn't come home from work to get the baby, et cetera.

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So I could see, you know, even there, this from my parents, sometimes I could hear some

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judgment, but I was also seeing them try to push into those areas of suffering in other

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people's lives and try to be to be a compassionate presence and a support for them.

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But it was not enough to really deeply draw me into that.

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I very much the the push of kind of black and white thinking that I was already kind

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of geared towards.

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That's where I went was just it's it's just a lot easier.

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It's a lot easier to just categorize people and and move on rather than having to really

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sit with this gray area, which is where I think most of life really falls is into this

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lots of complexity, lots of nuance, lots of reasons behind the behavior.

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And that really is what my journey as a foster parent finally broke through that wall of

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black and white thinking and brought me into that gray area.

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Well I want to get to that.

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But one more area that the phrase has been used so often and in this conversation, I

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always go back to parents, maybe sometimes grandparents, because the impact of multi-generational

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trauma is glaring.

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Now I think that's the next conversation when it comes to mental health is unpacking not

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just parents, but grandparents, maybe even further back than that.

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And so the phrase they did the best with what they had, I think is a very important one.

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You can't judge these generations and be like, why didn't you think about this when we're

301
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thinking with it with the 2024 lens?

302
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However, it's important to understand what happened, reverse engineer it so we can unpack

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it.

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Where I really struggle in America with being such a faith based country is, and I'll just

305
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take Christianity because that was kind of the route that I was brought up in, is you

306
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have this prophet who was out there amongst the community anointing sex workers and lepers

307
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and all kinds of people.

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And yet people learn about the story and then leave their holy buildings and want homeless

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moved away from their communities and think that Narcan's a waste of money on drug addicts.

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And I'm trying to figure out where is that disconnect because I never really aligned

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to one religion, but I kept those core values and it resonated.

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These are people, these are human beings that were toddlers once that were giggling and

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chasing balls and now they're living under a bridge with a needle in their arm.

314
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They're still human beings.

315
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So when you look back now and not just specifically your church, your family, but at America's,

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let's say Christianity for this example, how did we deviate from the actual altruism that

317
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was taught to us in the Bible to this, as you mentioned, this kind of judgmental element

318
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that actually has done the polar opposite of many of these prophets teachings?

319
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It is such a good question.

320
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I spent a lot of time thinking about that in my own life of how I was in church.

321
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I was not just sitting in a pew, but reading my Bible, studying my Bible in junior high,

322
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in high school, in young adult life.

323
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I was part of Bible studies.

324
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I was part of really trying to understand how to live faithfully.

325
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A big part of my own journey of seeing that I didn't know everything and I wasn't quite

326
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living as faithfully as I thought was becoming part of a church that was a very intentionally

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multi-ethnic church in my early 20s when my husband and I got married.

328
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Over the years that we were there, that was a really transformative experience just being

329
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in proximity and being in relationships with people who had different upbringings than

330
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I did, different views of the world, different politics.

331
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We were aligned on this one issue of loving Jesus and that's why we were there and wanting

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to come and be part of this community of people who were following him.

333
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And yet, seeing so much that was just culture that I had thought was gospel was actually

334
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part of Christianity and realizing, wow, there is a lot here that I think of as normal that

335
00:23:32,820 --> 00:23:41,140
maybe isn't so normal, that maybe is just cultural things that I took in.

336
00:23:41,140 --> 00:23:44,780
Timothy King wrote a book called Addiction Nation and one of the things that he talks

337
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about in there, and he's a Christian as well, he talks about in there this long history

338
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in Christianity of scapegoating, of kind of through the years, through the centuries,

339
00:24:00,740 --> 00:24:05,500
it will be different things, but there are, for a long time it has been drugs that has

340
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been kind of the thing that we, it goes beyond Christianity as well, but really in a culture

341
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when there's something that you don't like and you don't want to be there or something

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you're afraid of, that you are finding sort of an easy thing to blame for that.

343
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And so drugs is an easy thing to blame for all sorts of things and when we see the external

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suffering and the external chaos in someone's life, it's easy to just pin that back on

345
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the drugs or bad decisions or whatever and we can sort of move on instead of saying,

346
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wait, like you said, what happened that brought a person who used to be playing and laughing

347
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in their yard with their friends to now being under the bridge with the needle in their

348
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arm?

349
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What was the trajectory that led to such a different outcome in their life?

350
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So I feel simultaneously convicted as a Christian who still has so much learning and growth

351
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to do in my own fidelity to what I say that I believe in my own really living out the

352
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values that Jesus lived and brought to us and also looking back and saying, how did

353
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I not see the disconnect there?

354
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And I would say, I definitely think Christians can have different views on some of the policy

355
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sides of what do we do with drugs and that sort of thing.

356
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I don't think there's only one approach that you can support.

357
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But in terms of the overarching thought process of how do we look at people who are suffering

358
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and struggling and how can we more frequently see them as Jesus sees them, which is what

359
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we say that we believe is that He came for everyone, that He loves everyone, that every

360
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person is made in the image of God.

361
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So I feel both.

362
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I feel both kind of uncertain of why I couldn't see that earlier, convicted that I still have

363
00:26:17,820 --> 00:26:25,140
so many blind spots now, wanting to help other Christians think more deeply about how we

364
00:26:25,140 --> 00:26:29,780
think about the value of life and where that value ends.

365
00:26:29,780 --> 00:26:37,060
We wouldn't say it ends anywhere, but our actions sometimes belie a very different sort

366
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of functional belief about that.

367
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It's something that is continually on my mind because my faith is such a core part of who

368
00:26:47,780 --> 00:26:54,860
I am and yet I'm shocked at my own ability to be blind to the things that aren't consistent

369
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with it.

370
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And I even think now, it's so easy to look back on previous generations and go, what

371
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were they thinking?

372
00:27:00,420 --> 00:27:02,580
How could they not see?

373
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And we see that all through.

374
00:27:04,380 --> 00:27:11,460
Look at slavery, look at Jim Crow, look at women's rights, all kinds of things and go,

375
00:27:11,460 --> 00:27:13,940
gosh, how could they be so blind?

376
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And yet that also means that us right now have lots of blind spots that in 20 or 30

377
00:27:19,420 --> 00:27:21,860
years, people are going to say, how could you not see?

378
00:27:21,860 --> 00:27:24,120
And I have no idea.

379
00:27:24,120 --> 00:27:28,300
Maybe it's going to be my 2000 square foot house and Christians in 30 years are going

380
00:27:28,300 --> 00:27:33,980
to be living in much smaller homes and giving away like my parents did, so much of their

381
00:27:33,980 --> 00:27:34,980
income.

382
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And they're going to say, isn't this what scripture says?

383
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Don't lay up for yourself treasures on earth, but in heaven and invest in future things.

384
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It might be.

385
00:27:44,540 --> 00:27:50,780
So I am right there in the wrestling of how can I be more faithful?

386
00:27:50,780 --> 00:27:54,380
How can I try to see what I might be blind to?

387
00:27:54,380 --> 00:28:01,820
And how can I have grace for where people are and also be trying to dig deeply into

388
00:28:01,820 --> 00:28:03,780
where we've lost our way?

389
00:28:03,780 --> 00:28:08,940
Well, speaking of altruism, you mentioned about the foster care story kind of being

390
00:28:08,940 --> 00:28:10,220
a pivotal moment in your life.

391
00:28:10,220 --> 00:28:15,820
So kind of walk me through your mindset prior and then the metamorphosis that happened through

392
00:28:15,820 --> 00:28:17,820
that experience.

393
00:28:17,820 --> 00:28:26,140
Yes, and my husband and I in 2014 became foster parents.

394
00:28:26,140 --> 00:28:31,020
And that process for us was that was not a lifelong dream that I had had.

395
00:28:31,020 --> 00:28:34,700
We had talked about adoption, but we had never talked about foster care.

396
00:28:34,700 --> 00:28:42,260
To me, that sounded very messy, very local, very uncertain.

397
00:28:42,260 --> 00:28:47,140
And I thought I just I don't want any part of that.

398
00:28:47,140 --> 00:28:52,020
I want to just adopt a child from somewhere where there's a very clear kind of break in

399
00:28:52,020 --> 00:28:55,460
relationship from previous to now.

400
00:28:55,460 --> 00:28:57,220
And we can move on from there.

401
00:28:57,220 --> 00:29:02,980
I did not know anything about childhood trauma, about bonding, about all of the things that

402
00:29:02,980 --> 00:29:08,420
are part of adoption, even if it is an adoption from birth.

403
00:29:08,420 --> 00:29:15,400
And so we became foster parents really as a in between while we were kind of figuring

404
00:29:15,400 --> 00:29:17,580
out the path of adoption.

405
00:29:17,580 --> 00:29:21,020
We thought, well, we'll foster for a little while while we're figuring out kind of what

406
00:29:21,020 --> 00:29:26,020
this adoption path is going to what that path is going to be for us.

407
00:29:26,020 --> 00:29:33,780
So we became foster parents and we had one child placed with us who ended up staying

408
00:29:33,780 --> 00:29:35,140
with us permanently.

409
00:29:35,140 --> 00:29:36,140
We adopted him.

410
00:29:36,140 --> 00:29:40,280
He was never able to return to his birth family.

411
00:29:40,280 --> 00:29:42,940
And about 18 months after he came to us, because he came as a baby.

412
00:29:42,940 --> 00:29:48,260
So I said absolutely not to any more children while he was in his baby stage.

413
00:29:48,260 --> 00:29:50,860
That was I was I had my hands full.

414
00:29:50,860 --> 00:29:54,660
I was homeschooling our other two boys and it was a it was a busy time.

415
00:29:54,660 --> 00:29:59,180
But when he was about 18 months old, we got a call for another baby.

416
00:29:59,180 --> 00:30:05,160
And my husband called me and he said, Christina, I just got a call for another baby.

417
00:30:05,160 --> 00:30:08,660
And I really feel like we're supposed to say yes.

418
00:30:08,660 --> 00:30:11,420
And I think, well, that's well and good for you.

419
00:30:11,420 --> 00:30:16,820
You're sitting at your office in the quiet 40 hours a week while you're at home trying

420
00:30:16,820 --> 00:30:22,820
to homeschool these two older boys and raise this toddler and keep food on the table and

421
00:30:22,820 --> 00:30:25,820
clothes on everybody that are clean.

422
00:30:25,820 --> 00:30:30,740
And I did not feel at all that we needed to say yes to this baby.

423
00:30:30,740 --> 00:30:32,780
So I tried not to shut him down.

424
00:30:32,780 --> 00:30:35,060
I tried to just ask a few questions.

425
00:30:35,060 --> 00:30:36,380
How old is this child?

426
00:30:36,380 --> 00:30:37,740
Well, he didn't know.

427
00:30:37,740 --> 00:30:41,260
And how long were they anticipating this placement?

428
00:30:41,260 --> 00:30:42,260
He didn't know.

429
00:30:42,260 --> 00:30:47,720
And so I said, OK, I'll I'll call the social worker and get some more information and we'll

430
00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:48,780
go from there.

431
00:30:48,780 --> 00:30:51,960
So I talked with her and she said it should be a short term placement.

432
00:30:51,960 --> 00:30:55,740
His mom seems really motivated to regain custody.

433
00:30:55,740 --> 00:30:58,940
But he was removed because she was using drugs while she was pregnant.

434
00:30:58,940 --> 00:31:02,540
And so he's being released from the hospital after his birth.

435
00:31:02,540 --> 00:31:04,900
And he needs a foster family.

436
00:31:04,900 --> 00:31:07,660
And I asked her when that would be needed.

437
00:31:07,660 --> 00:31:13,660
And she said this afternoon in just a couple of hours and we ended up saying yes.

438
00:31:13,660 --> 00:31:18,060
And Beckham came to our house that afternoon straight from the hospital.

439
00:31:18,060 --> 00:31:23,900
He had been born premature and so he was five pounds, nine ounces and just this adorable

440
00:31:23,900 --> 00:31:27,100
little little bundle.

441
00:31:27,100 --> 00:31:32,380
And a few days after that, I took him to his first visit with his mom at the local child

442
00:31:32,380 --> 00:31:36,700
welfare office and popped his car seat out of my van.

443
00:31:36,700 --> 00:31:41,620
I had not met her yet at this point, turned around in the parking lot to walk in.

444
00:31:41,620 --> 00:31:50,100
And here comes this woman running across the parking lot, weeping, which runs over to me

445
00:31:50,100 --> 00:31:55,460
and just starts kissing this baby while I'm holding his car seat.

446
00:31:55,460 --> 00:31:57,460
And I feel very awkward.

447
00:31:57,460 --> 00:31:59,420
I'm not sure what to do.

448
00:31:59,420 --> 00:32:04,480
I was not expecting this at all.

449
00:32:04,480 --> 00:32:10,380
And so we walk into the child welfare office and in my mind, my first response to that

450
00:32:10,380 --> 00:32:14,500
is just suspicion that this is a ploy.

451
00:32:14,500 --> 00:32:17,460
She's just trying to get me to put in a good word with the social worker.

452
00:32:17,460 --> 00:32:21,940
It's not real.

453
00:32:21,940 --> 00:32:27,900
I couldn't formulate at that point why that was so important to me to believe.

454
00:32:27,900 --> 00:32:32,460
But what I realized in reflection is that everything I believed about people like her

455
00:32:32,460 --> 00:32:35,020
hinged on that not being real.

456
00:32:35,020 --> 00:32:40,760
It hinged on her being a bad person who didn't care about her son, who was not a mom like

457
00:32:40,760 --> 00:32:44,060
me because she was using drugs while she was pregnant.

458
00:32:44,060 --> 00:32:48,860
But at the time, I just thought, this just feels really uncomfortable.

459
00:32:48,860 --> 00:32:52,320
So she had one hour of visitation with him.

460
00:32:52,320 --> 00:32:56,180
She came back or I came back to pick him up.

461
00:32:56,180 --> 00:33:02,380
And she's sitting in the little tiny visitation room at the child welfare office.

462
00:33:02,380 --> 00:33:05,580
There's an old couch in there that spans one whole wall.

463
00:33:05,580 --> 00:33:07,220
It's just this tiny little room.

464
00:33:07,220 --> 00:33:11,660
And she's sitting in the corner on the edge of that couch and has Beckham sleeping on

465
00:33:11,660 --> 00:33:13,300
her shoulder.

466
00:33:13,300 --> 00:33:18,540
And she's just sitting there with her eyes closed, just enjoying this one hour that she

467
00:33:18,540 --> 00:33:21,100
gets to spend with him.

468
00:33:21,100 --> 00:33:28,320
Not scrolling on her phone, not doing anything, just really trying to enjoy the time.

469
00:33:28,320 --> 00:33:32,940
And that stuck in my mind along with many of these other experiences with her.

470
00:33:32,940 --> 00:33:35,640
She left for inpatient drug treatment.

471
00:33:35,640 --> 00:33:40,420
And I had agreed that she could have my phone number and call me once a day and check in

472
00:33:40,420 --> 00:33:42,020
on Beckham.

473
00:33:42,020 --> 00:33:43,020
And she would.

474
00:33:43,020 --> 00:33:44,020
Her name is Joanne.

475
00:33:44,020 --> 00:33:46,520
So Joanne would call once a day.

476
00:33:46,520 --> 00:33:49,320
She would ask me anything I could tell her about him.

477
00:33:49,320 --> 00:33:51,620
And then she would ask me to put her on speakerphone.

478
00:33:51,620 --> 00:33:55,400
And she would sing to him over the phone.

479
00:33:55,400 --> 00:34:05,180
It was just this powerful experience because the more I got to know her, the more I realized

480
00:34:05,180 --> 00:34:08,140
all of these things are real and true.

481
00:34:08,140 --> 00:34:14,420
This is a mom who deeply loves her son, who wants to be there for him, who wants to parent

482
00:34:14,420 --> 00:34:15,980
him.

483
00:34:15,980 --> 00:34:21,540
And she's struggling with this health crisis.

484
00:34:21,540 --> 00:34:26,820
And that's what I began to see that it was, was not a moral crisis.

485
00:34:26,820 --> 00:34:29,060
It wasn't a character crisis.

486
00:34:29,060 --> 00:34:34,220
It was this really complex health crisis that she had struggled with for 20 years by the

487
00:34:34,220 --> 00:34:37,420
time that I met her.

488
00:34:37,420 --> 00:34:46,220
And that started me on this learning journey because I was finally able to really believe

489
00:34:46,220 --> 00:34:49,720
what was true, which is that she is a mom like me.

490
00:34:49,720 --> 00:34:54,100
She loves her son just as much as I love my sons.

491
00:34:54,100 --> 00:35:01,060
And so when I was able to recognize that, I had to start putting that together with

492
00:35:01,060 --> 00:35:05,860
the other things I believed and it didn't fit because what I had supported up to that

493
00:35:05,860 --> 00:35:10,620
point was people like her needed to be in jail and they didn't need to be with their

494
00:35:10,620 --> 00:35:15,420
children and they needed to be punished because they were bad people.

495
00:35:15,420 --> 00:35:21,620
And so that started this learning journey of, wait a second, have we misunderstood something

496
00:35:21,620 --> 00:35:23,620
about the nature of addiction?

497
00:35:23,620 --> 00:35:27,940
And that turned into this much bigger learning journey about, have we misunderstood this

498
00:35:27,940 --> 00:35:32,140
whole issue of drugs and how to reduce harm from them?

499
00:35:32,140 --> 00:35:35,660
Well, as I mentioned before, Johan was the one that connected us.

500
00:35:35,660 --> 00:35:39,980
And I heard him, I think initially on, I think it was a Joe Rogan show and I was driving

501
00:35:39,980 --> 00:35:43,380
long going, this is everything.

502
00:35:43,380 --> 00:35:49,020
And ironically, before that, my mom who'd moved to Portugal had told me, hey, do you

503
00:35:49,020 --> 00:35:51,820
know about what they did about drugs and decriminalization?

504
00:35:51,820 --> 00:35:57,340
So I went, when I was visiting my family one time up to Lisbon and sat with Zhao Gu Lao

505
00:35:57,340 --> 00:36:01,820
and interviewed him about what they did and heard about how they reframed the way they

506
00:36:01,820 --> 00:36:07,780
looked at addiction and they had this horrendous opioid epidemic from one of the wars.

507
00:36:07,780 --> 00:36:09,780
And I think at the time they had the worst addiction.

508
00:36:09,780 --> 00:36:14,580
I always forget if it's Europe or even greater than that, but certainly in Europe.

509
00:36:14,580 --> 00:36:21,140
And by simply looking at this as a mental health issue rather than a criminal issue,

510
00:36:21,140 --> 00:36:24,060
they took away their kind of war on addicts.

511
00:36:24,060 --> 00:36:29,340
They absolutely had a war on dealers and smugglers as continues to this day, but they introduced

512
00:36:29,340 --> 00:36:36,020
simultaneously with the budget, addiction counseling, job creation, mental health counseling,

513
00:36:36,020 --> 00:36:40,300
less than 10 years, they had gone from the worst addiction to the lowest at that point,

514
00:36:40,300 --> 00:36:41,300
I believe.

515
00:36:41,300 --> 00:36:45,780
So, you know, and then I sat with him virtually this time, just a few weeks ago and kind of

516
00:36:45,780 --> 00:36:47,100
revisited it.

517
00:36:47,100 --> 00:36:48,980
And the actual philosophy is beautiful.

518
00:36:48,980 --> 00:36:53,720
But again, politics come in, some of the financial support had been pulled away and they immediately

519
00:36:53,720 --> 00:36:55,500
saw some of the issues creeping back.

520
00:36:55,500 --> 00:36:58,380
So again, they're going to re bolster it now.

521
00:36:58,380 --> 00:37:03,220
So that was a huge aha moment for me from what intrinsically made perfect sense.

522
00:37:03,220 --> 00:37:07,980
But now you had these people proving it in another country and then Johan articulating

523
00:37:07,980 --> 00:37:11,080
it so beautifully in his book, Chasing the Scream.

524
00:37:11,080 --> 00:37:19,920
So what was your kind of journey to discovery from the origin of drug prohibition to where

525
00:37:19,920 --> 00:37:23,060
you sat 10 years ago?

526
00:37:23,060 --> 00:37:31,220
Yeah, it felt like being kind of strapped into a rocket and shot into outer space, basically.

527
00:37:31,220 --> 00:37:36,420
It was a, you know, it is not comfortable rethinking something that you've believed

528
00:37:36,420 --> 00:37:38,140
for a long time.

529
00:37:38,140 --> 00:37:40,160
It's why we don't do it very often.

530
00:37:40,160 --> 00:37:48,100
It is not fun to be confronted with something that challenges a deeply held belief.

531
00:37:48,100 --> 00:37:55,440
And in conservative Christian culture, the way that drugs have been positioned so deeply

532
00:37:55,440 --> 00:38:04,060
as a moral issue, it has sort of set them side by side with something like abortion,

533
00:38:04,060 --> 00:38:15,500
where very different issue, but the same sense that the weight and the morality and the what

534
00:38:15,500 --> 00:38:22,660
is at stake if we change anything to sort of begin to think about, you know, pragmatic

535
00:38:22,660 --> 00:38:24,940
solutions and that sort of thing.

536
00:38:24,940 --> 00:38:26,380
I felt that very much.

537
00:38:26,380 --> 00:38:34,460
I remember having a specific memory after I had started learning Johan's book, Chasing

538
00:38:34,460 --> 00:38:38,220
the Scream was one of the things that I read on my own learning journey that was super

539
00:38:38,220 --> 00:38:41,340
helpful to me to kind of really understand that big picture.

540
00:38:41,340 --> 00:38:48,120
But I remember having this moment of thinking, wait a second, this approach of kind of ending

541
00:38:48,120 --> 00:38:54,220
prohibition, moving back to health centered approaches to drug markets and drug use, can

542
00:38:54,220 --> 00:38:58,260
I even support that and be a Christian?

543
00:38:58,260 --> 00:39:06,580
This feels like somehow I'm giving up because it has been so deeply tied to this issue of

544
00:39:06,580 --> 00:39:09,780
morality.

545
00:39:09,780 --> 00:39:15,540
It took me a long time to pull those pieces apart because even a book like Chasing the

546
00:39:15,540 --> 00:39:21,400
Scream was super helpful, but Johan is not a Christian and he doesn't come from my sort

547
00:39:21,400 --> 00:39:23,780
of political value system either.

548
00:39:23,780 --> 00:39:26,860
And so there was a part of me that I got to the end of that book.

549
00:39:26,860 --> 00:39:30,220
It's part of the reason why I wrote a book, Curious, which is my learning journey, because

550
00:39:30,220 --> 00:39:36,180
I wanted to provide that kind of extra piece to people who are maybe coming from a conservative

551
00:39:36,180 --> 00:39:44,740
perspective or are people who are people of faith that how the conclusions that he comes

552
00:39:44,740 --> 00:39:51,020
to in that book based on kind of the research are also compatible no matter where you're

553
00:39:51,020 --> 00:39:56,900
coming from on the religious or political spectrum.

554
00:39:56,900 --> 00:39:58,820
And that was important to me.

555
00:39:58,820 --> 00:40:06,020
So I started learning and it was kind of this beginning learning because of Johan and wanting

556
00:40:06,020 --> 00:40:10,980
to know how we can help kids in foster care like Beckham and people like her.

557
00:40:10,980 --> 00:40:18,100
And that opened up this whole other side of beginning to learn about drug markets and

558
00:40:18,100 --> 00:40:23,200
that when they're pushed underground, they increase crime and violence and they introduce

559
00:40:23,200 --> 00:40:26,800
contamination and lack of quality control.

560
00:40:26,800 --> 00:40:34,080
And so that part of it was even harder to rethink because I remember the first time

561
00:40:34,080 --> 00:40:37,940
that somebody asked me, do you think drugs should be legal?

562
00:40:37,940 --> 00:40:39,460
I literally left the room.

563
00:40:39,460 --> 00:40:40,620
I thought it was so insane.

564
00:40:40,620 --> 00:40:50,420
I couldn't even conceive of how somebody could entertain that idea and be a normal person.

565
00:40:50,420 --> 00:40:53,740
It just seemed crazy to me.

566
00:40:53,740 --> 00:40:57,840
Now that's also, I would say, probably the worst approach to asking somebody to kind

567
00:40:57,840 --> 00:41:02,420
of enter a conversation about this issue because I didn't know anything about it.

568
00:41:02,420 --> 00:41:09,240
I had no idea what that question really even meant or what the cost is of the current approach

569
00:41:09,240 --> 00:41:11,580
of prohibition and criminalization.

570
00:41:11,580 --> 00:41:14,180
I had no none of that context at all.

571
00:41:14,180 --> 00:41:17,820
And so all it did was make me angry.

572
00:41:17,820 --> 00:41:25,320
And then a few years later, I started this curiosity of learning journey, trying to understand

573
00:41:25,320 --> 00:41:30,620
and started really my goal was, wait a second, how can we reduce harm?

574
00:41:30,620 --> 00:41:37,220
And I think that took me a while to figure out what was happening there, which what was

575
00:41:37,220 --> 00:41:44,500
happening is this shift in my thinking from this is a moral issue.

576
00:41:44,500 --> 00:41:52,460
So there's no great area here to thinking about the actual pragmatic outcomes of policy

577
00:41:52,460 --> 00:41:55,700
and what they were, the harm it was actually causing.

578
00:41:55,700 --> 00:41:58,580
I didn't know anything about underground markets.

579
00:41:58,580 --> 00:42:03,700
It's a concept you can explain in three minutes, but I just hadn't been exposed to that.

580
00:42:03,700 --> 00:42:05,660
I didn't take an economics class.

581
00:42:05,660 --> 00:42:08,420
I didn't understand about that.

582
00:42:08,420 --> 00:42:14,620
And so as I started learning about that and realizing the pragmatic harm of how many people

583
00:42:14,620 --> 00:42:19,500
are dying from contaminated drugs, how many people are living in communities that are

584
00:42:19,500 --> 00:42:25,220
wrecked by violent crime from the underground drug market, how many consumers are sitting

585
00:42:25,220 --> 00:42:30,660
in jails and prisons, not because they hurt anyone else or committed any other crime,

586
00:42:30,660 --> 00:42:35,580
but just because they were in possession of a drug that we have labeled illegal.

587
00:42:35,580 --> 00:42:43,380
So as I started to kind of rack up those harms, I started wrestling with, wait a second, this

588
00:42:43,380 --> 00:42:45,940
is doing so much harm.

589
00:42:45,940 --> 00:42:53,020
Is it really the moral position to keep holding this policy perspective?

590
00:42:53,020 --> 00:42:57,860
Because it began to feel like, I actually wonder if the moral high ground is on the

591
00:42:57,860 --> 00:43:04,780
other side, where we look at how do we actually save lives and help people get the help that

592
00:43:04,780 --> 00:43:09,700
they need if they are struggling with an addiction, but we don't increase the amount of crime

593
00:43:09,700 --> 00:43:15,540
and overdose and family destabilization that comes from the criminal justice system.

594
00:43:15,540 --> 00:43:22,420
And so that was a real wrestling for me and just realizing that just because something

595
00:43:22,420 --> 00:43:26,020
might not be healthy to do doesn't mean it should be illegal.

596
00:43:26,020 --> 00:43:29,420
Just because something can harm you doesn't mean it's illegal.

597
00:43:29,420 --> 00:43:34,620
Even if you think something is religiously wrong, you look at the 10 Commandments in

598
00:43:34,620 --> 00:43:40,260
the Bible, only two of them are criminally illegal, murder and theft, and the rest of

599
00:43:40,260 --> 00:43:43,040
them we teach in other ways.

600
00:43:43,040 --> 00:43:49,860
We don't use the law to try to force people not to covet or force people even not to commit

601
00:43:49,860 --> 00:43:50,860
adultery.

602
00:43:50,860 --> 00:43:54,020
We don't put people in jail for that.

603
00:43:54,020 --> 00:43:56,500
So I started kind of pulling these things apart.

604
00:43:56,500 --> 00:44:00,100
Those were all things I had never thought about before.

605
00:44:00,100 --> 00:44:07,380
The culture I grew up in, the idea I had was, again, I don't remember anybody teaching

606
00:44:07,380 --> 00:44:14,480
me this, but my thought process was I think the goal is that we sort of make sin illegal.

607
00:44:14,480 --> 00:44:21,380
We're kind of on this trying to make the culture more moral, and the way we do that is through

608
00:44:21,380 --> 00:44:23,820
the law.

609
00:44:23,820 --> 00:44:28,660
And it really took this learning journey to begin to pull that apart and say, no, that's

610
00:44:28,660 --> 00:44:31,980
not the role of government.

611
00:44:31,980 --> 00:44:36,020
That's not the way that we teach values.

612
00:44:36,020 --> 00:44:43,000
And there are real costs to using the law to try to teach something that it is not designed

613
00:44:43,000 --> 00:44:45,380
to teach.

614
00:44:45,380 --> 00:44:49,660
I think what's so haunting about the origin story of drug prohibition is it comes at the

615
00:44:49,660 --> 00:44:53,140
very end of the complete failure of alcohol prohibition.

616
00:44:53,140 --> 00:44:57,260
And the only reason we know Al Capone's name is because of alcohol prohibition and the

617
00:44:57,260 --> 00:44:58,740
horrendous crime.

618
00:44:58,740 --> 00:45:03,380
So then you have Harry Anslinger trying to justify his job, screaming racist because

619
00:45:03,380 --> 00:45:09,140
of his own mental ill health, and then he starts Reef of Madness, and that's the beginning.

620
00:45:09,140 --> 00:45:15,700
My perspective as a firefighter paramedic is in the 2000s, I get to see the impact of

621
00:45:15,700 --> 00:45:16,700
drug prohibition.

622
00:45:16,700 --> 00:45:21,900
Now we're talking about 60 years later, and the homelessness and the addiction and the

623
00:45:21,900 --> 00:45:26,260
gang membership and the overdoses and the sex work and all these other things, that

624
00:45:26,260 --> 00:45:32,540
are all directly or indirectly a product of this ridiculous prohibition law.

625
00:45:32,540 --> 00:45:37,180
And what's interesting is if all the police officers, for example, I've interviewed, 90,

626
00:45:37,180 --> 00:45:43,660
95% of them have said the war on drugs is an epic failure because even if you do end

627
00:45:43,660 --> 00:45:47,080
up taking someone off a street corner, it's like whack-a-mole, another one just shows

628
00:45:47,080 --> 00:45:48,080
up and fills the place.

629
00:45:48,080 --> 00:45:52,540
In fact, sometimes you can start a turf war again and more people die.

630
00:45:52,540 --> 00:45:59,220
And we look at the science that's touted to us more in modern day and the sample size

631
00:45:59,220 --> 00:46:01,740
might be 14 people.

632
00:46:01,740 --> 00:46:07,060
Well when it comes to the war on drugs, it's a 100-year longitudinal study with arguably

633
00:46:07,060 --> 00:46:09,320
billions of subjects.

634
00:46:09,320 --> 00:46:10,980
And so we know it's not working.

635
00:46:10,980 --> 00:46:13,920
I mean, I would talk about this all the time.

636
00:46:13,920 --> 00:46:18,820
Why is it that there aren't gangs and homelessness everywhere and addicts everywhere on the streets

637
00:46:18,820 --> 00:46:21,540
of Oslo or Reykjavik?

638
00:46:21,540 --> 00:46:25,100
They're human beings too, but they've got slightly different ways of looking at society

639
00:46:25,100 --> 00:46:26,340
and systems.

640
00:46:26,340 --> 00:46:27,920
Same with Portugal.

641
00:46:27,920 --> 00:46:36,420
So this is such an important lens today for us to have the humility to take a step back

642
00:46:36,420 --> 00:46:38,620
and go, it is not working.

643
00:46:38,620 --> 00:46:42,860
Our police officers look like they're going to Fallujah now.

644
00:46:42,860 --> 00:46:47,940
We have gangs and this horrendous thing at the border and that's just economics.

645
00:46:47,940 --> 00:46:49,660
That's supply and demand.

646
00:46:49,660 --> 00:46:53,920
If you have addicts in America, we're empowering the underworld in Mexico.

647
00:46:53,920 --> 00:46:56,420
So for me, that was a huge aha.

648
00:46:56,420 --> 00:47:01,940
This is the enormous elephant in the room for not just the addiction conversation, but

649
00:47:01,940 --> 00:47:04,020
the crime conversation as well.

650
00:47:04,020 --> 00:47:05,020
Yeah.

651
00:47:05,020 --> 00:47:09,420
I talk about it sometimes like it's a blanket that covers the world.

652
00:47:09,420 --> 00:47:12,700
Think of it kind of like a Gotham City.

653
00:47:12,700 --> 00:47:14,900
It's something we're all breathing.

654
00:47:14,900 --> 00:47:17,120
We've breathed it our whole lives.

655
00:47:17,120 --> 00:47:23,480
We don't even recognize until we take a little time to learn that the world we live in is

656
00:47:23,480 --> 00:47:27,380
marked by drug prohibition, whether you use drugs or not.

657
00:47:27,380 --> 00:47:32,660
You live in a world where the level of crime and violence is much higher than it would

658
00:47:32,660 --> 00:47:35,320
be without prohibition.

659
00:47:35,320 --> 00:47:40,120
We live in a world where the rates of death among people who use drugs are much higher

660
00:47:40,120 --> 00:47:45,800
than they would be without the contamination and lack of dosing that prohibition brings.

661
00:47:45,800 --> 00:47:51,120
We live in a world where in my home state of Mississippi, one in four adults has a criminal

662
00:47:51,120 --> 00:47:54,580
conviction of some kind on their record.

663
00:47:54,580 --> 00:47:59,100
Not all of that is drug related, but drugs is the easiest way that people enter our prison

664
00:47:59,100 --> 00:48:00,100
system.

665
00:48:00,100 --> 00:48:06,780
It's the number one offense at sentencing for people who are entering prison in Mississippi.

666
00:48:06,780 --> 00:48:09,580
We have the highest imprisonment rate in the country.

667
00:48:09,580 --> 00:48:13,060
In the country that has the highest imprisonment rate in the world, if the drug war worked,

668
00:48:13,060 --> 00:48:15,580
it should be working right here in Mississippi.

669
00:48:15,580 --> 00:48:16,580
And yet it's not.

670
00:48:16,580 --> 00:48:19,760
Our rates of illegal drug use have doubled in the last 20 years.

671
00:48:19,760 --> 00:48:20,880
That's true here in Mississippi.

672
00:48:20,880 --> 00:48:23,100
It's true across the United States.

673
00:48:23,100 --> 00:48:32,460
So when we look at just outcomes, it is a disaster and it is so much a part of our world

674
00:48:32,460 --> 00:48:38,840
that we don't have a cultural memory anymore of what it could be like without that.

675
00:48:38,840 --> 00:48:45,260
We've lost that vision of the world that prohibition is a really new idea in the history

676
00:48:45,260 --> 00:48:46,260
of the world.

677
00:48:46,260 --> 00:48:50,100
I mean, this has only been just over 100 years that we have been experimenting with this

678
00:48:50,100 --> 00:48:57,320
idea that you can ban drugs and you can incarcerate consumers and that that's somehow going to

679
00:48:57,320 --> 00:49:00,140
fix all of the problems.

680
00:49:00,140 --> 00:49:05,220
And instead, we've just become accustomed to living with the problems and we keep blaming

681
00:49:05,220 --> 00:49:11,120
drugs for the problems when really it is drug policy that is creating most of the problems.

682
00:49:11,120 --> 00:49:16,100
Certainly there are some problems with substance use itself, but the way we've chosen to handle

683
00:49:16,100 --> 00:49:19,860
it has made dealing with the real problems much, much harder.

684
00:49:19,860 --> 00:49:27,100
It's made them much, much worse because you now have places where you think about what

685
00:49:27,100 --> 00:49:32,640
creates risk factors in a child's life for them to become addicted to drugs.

686
00:49:32,640 --> 00:49:37,160
The drug war creates those risk factors in children's lives.

687
00:49:37,160 --> 00:49:41,460
Living up in an unsafe neighborhood is one of the risk factors.

688
00:49:41,460 --> 00:49:48,100
Well, prohibition creates lots of unsafe neighborhoods because of the amount of crime that it creates.

689
00:49:48,100 --> 00:49:54,300
You have things like being in the foster care system is another risk factor for developing

690
00:49:54,300 --> 00:49:55,300
an addiction.

691
00:49:55,300 --> 00:50:02,380
Well, the way that we have demonized people who use substances has created lots of children

692
00:50:02,380 --> 00:50:08,220
entering foster care here in Mississippi for years and years simply a positive drug test.

693
00:50:08,220 --> 00:50:10,540
It could be a positive marijuana test.

694
00:50:10,540 --> 00:50:14,420
That was all you needed to remove a child from their parent's custody.

695
00:50:14,420 --> 00:50:17,620
You didn't need evidence of abuse or neglect.

696
00:50:17,620 --> 00:50:19,860
Just testing positive was evidence enough.

697
00:50:19,860 --> 00:50:25,240
So how many children have we created those risk factors for?

698
00:50:25,240 --> 00:50:28,860
And then when they become addicted, we say, oh my goodness, here's another person who

699
00:50:28,860 --> 00:50:31,500
just is making those bad choices.

700
00:50:31,500 --> 00:50:38,180
And the way we have approached this has created so much harm, many children now losing parents

701
00:50:38,180 --> 00:50:42,860
to overdose or brothers and sisters to overdose.

702
00:50:42,860 --> 00:50:46,980
Prohibition is this trauma production machine on so many fronts.

703
00:50:46,980 --> 00:50:52,340
And then that trauma increases the likelihood that the people who experience it are going

704
00:50:52,340 --> 00:50:54,720
to use drugs and become addicted to them.

705
00:50:54,720 --> 00:51:01,420
And so we just keep going down this same path and the harm continues expounding, compounding,

706
00:51:01,420 --> 00:51:06,900
and we just continue to go down it a little further, hoping that at some point we're going

707
00:51:06,900 --> 00:51:08,940
to kind of win.

708
00:51:08,940 --> 00:51:13,900
And I say this in my book and curious that I really think this term drug war has been

709
00:51:13,900 --> 00:51:20,380
really harmful for us to understand why it doesn't work because wars can be won.

710
00:51:20,380 --> 00:51:25,780
If you have enough manpower, if you put enough money into it, if you've got enough tanks

711
00:51:25,780 --> 00:51:32,420
and guns and whatever, you can forcibly win a war, but you can't win the drug war.

712
00:51:32,420 --> 00:51:33,860
It's not a war.

713
00:51:33,860 --> 00:51:40,500
It is a fight against economics, which is an unwinnable war.

714
00:51:40,500 --> 00:51:41,500
It can't be won.

715
00:51:41,500 --> 00:51:50,280
It is not something that enough resources can possibly be used to win because as long

716
00:51:50,280 --> 00:51:57,140
as we have demand, we will have supply and we can choose who is supplying, whether that's

717
00:51:57,140 --> 00:52:00,420
legal or illegal pathways.

718
00:52:00,420 --> 00:52:05,140
But as long as that demand is there and we are creating more demand by the trauma that

719
00:52:05,140 --> 00:52:10,260
comes through this criminal justice approach, as long as it's there, we're going to have

720
00:52:10,260 --> 00:52:15,420
people that choose to use substances and some of them will develop addictions and we are

721
00:52:15,420 --> 00:52:20,100
right back where we started with trying to help people heal.

722
00:52:20,100 --> 00:52:24,460
They need healing, not more punishment.

723
00:52:24,460 --> 00:52:30,620
One of the most judgmental things I hear thrown about when it comes to the issue in the states

724
00:52:30,620 --> 00:52:32,900
at the moment is, oh, it's those broken homes.

725
00:52:32,900 --> 00:52:36,780
I was like, well, what do you think is breaking these homes?

726
00:52:36,780 --> 00:52:42,140
Whether it was addiction, whether it was crime associated with addiction, how many families

727
00:52:42,140 --> 00:52:47,140
do you hear that either aunties and uncles or grandparents are raising kids and there's

728
00:52:47,140 --> 00:52:50,500
that multi-generational trauma, just like you said.

729
00:52:50,500 --> 00:52:56,580
By putting the empathy and compassion that most holy doctrine actually teaches back into

730
00:52:56,580 --> 00:53:01,700
this issue and understanding that people are hurting and they're filling it with whatever.

731
00:53:01,700 --> 00:53:06,460
We're talking about something that's deemed illegal, but alcoholism is rife in this country,

732
00:53:06,460 --> 00:53:08,860
in my profession and that's perfectly fine.

733
00:53:08,860 --> 00:53:11,780
In fact, some drunk guy just tried to kick in my wife's door the other day.

734
00:53:11,780 --> 00:53:15,740
He was the wrong apartment building and they just brushed it off.

735
00:53:15,740 --> 00:53:16,980
Oh, well, he was just drunk.

736
00:53:16,980 --> 00:53:18,380
They literally put him to bed.

737
00:53:18,380 --> 00:53:20,980
The police officers scared the hell out of my wife.

738
00:53:20,980 --> 00:53:25,460
Had that been someone on an illicit drug, he would have been carted off.

739
00:53:25,460 --> 00:53:30,780
That's how little we care about the massive alcohol problem that's facing us, staring

740
00:53:30,780 --> 00:53:32,060
us in the eye.

741
00:53:32,060 --> 00:53:35,260
The pandemic shut the world down, but God forbid, you got to give everyone an alcohol

742
00:53:35,260 --> 00:53:36,260
still.

743
00:53:36,260 --> 00:53:41,140
There's so much hypocrisy in this conversation and we have to break the cycle, but it's

744
00:53:41,140 --> 00:53:44,980
going to take all of us to stop that next domino from falling.

745
00:53:44,980 --> 00:53:52,820
Yeah, I think when I think about alcohol, I'm so glad you brought that up because we

746
00:53:52,820 --> 00:53:58,300
were hosting an event in North Mississippi a couple of years ago and a woman came out

747
00:53:58,300 --> 00:54:02,740
to me afterwards and she said, I appreciate all of this.

748
00:54:02,740 --> 00:54:07,540
This is helping me think differently about drugs and how we approach them and how we

749
00:54:07,540 --> 00:54:09,140
could get better outcomes.

750
00:54:09,140 --> 00:54:16,620
She said, but it just makes me sad how little we take seriously alcohol misuse because her

751
00:54:16,620 --> 00:54:23,460
dad had struggled with alcoholism her whole childhood and was an elder in their church,

752
00:54:23,460 --> 00:54:26,940
in a conservative Christian church.

753
00:54:26,940 --> 00:54:31,420
She said, either people don't realize it and the ones who do just sort of turn a blind

754
00:54:31,420 --> 00:54:32,420
eye.

755
00:54:32,420 --> 00:54:35,220
It's just kind of like, well…

756
00:54:35,220 --> 00:54:39,020
It's almost like we've relied on the law.

757
00:54:39,020 --> 00:54:45,300
We don't really want to address the very difficult deep roots of why people's substance

758
00:54:45,300 --> 00:54:47,580
use is so problematic and chaotic.

759
00:54:47,580 --> 00:54:51,180
What's the underlying cause in their life?

760
00:54:51,180 --> 00:54:53,580
What's the thing that they need to deal with?

761
00:54:53,580 --> 00:54:58,140
How can we help them deal with that so that the substance is not causing so much problem?

762
00:54:58,140 --> 00:55:00,700
Instead, we've just relied on the law.

763
00:55:00,700 --> 00:55:04,900
We say, well, if you're using some illegal drug, we just focus on that.

764
00:55:04,900 --> 00:55:07,720
We shouldn't be breaking the law.

765
00:55:07,720 --> 00:55:09,460
It's bad because you're breaking the law.

766
00:55:09,460 --> 00:55:12,820
Then alcohol is legal.

767
00:55:12,820 --> 00:55:16,780
We kind of just say, well, I don't know.

768
00:55:16,780 --> 00:55:20,820
Let's just look the other way and not really deal with it.

769
00:55:20,820 --> 00:55:23,300
Meanwhile, families are really suffering.

770
00:55:23,300 --> 00:55:29,900
I think we need to stop relying on the law to give us some reason to tell people not

771
00:55:29,900 --> 00:55:30,900
to use drugs.

772
00:55:30,900 --> 00:55:37,180
We know we can teach people not to use substances like we have with tobacco and cigarettes.

773
00:55:37,180 --> 00:55:39,660
We haven't criminalized that.

774
00:55:39,660 --> 00:55:41,240
We've educated people.

775
00:55:41,240 --> 00:55:45,980
We've incentivized them to make healthier choices through better insurance rates, through

776
00:55:45,980 --> 00:55:51,180
making it harder to find places to smoke cigarettes.

777
00:55:51,180 --> 00:55:55,700
We've increased the number of people making healthy choices around tobacco without using

778
00:55:55,700 --> 00:55:57,900
the criminal justice system.

779
00:55:57,900 --> 00:56:00,140
We can do that with other substances.

780
00:56:00,140 --> 00:56:06,580
We can do that with alcohol by recognizing that a lot of people who drink do have a problem

781
00:56:06,580 --> 00:56:08,300
with their drinking.

782
00:56:08,300 --> 00:56:18,060
We need to address that more fully and to address the use of illegal substances as the

783
00:56:18,060 --> 00:56:23,380
same thing that it is, which is this very complex health crisis.

784
00:56:23,380 --> 00:56:27,940
Instead of just offloading the crisis as a criminal justice issue, well, the real issue

785
00:56:27,940 --> 00:56:29,500
is that they're breaking the law.

786
00:56:29,500 --> 00:56:30,500
No.

787
00:56:30,500 --> 00:56:34,560
The real issue, if they're struggling with an addiction, is whatever that deep pain in

788
00:56:34,560 --> 00:56:40,660
their life is that's driving their need to numb the way that they feel.

789
00:56:40,660 --> 00:56:44,460
It's the easy way out to just say, let's just make it illegal.

790
00:56:44,460 --> 00:56:45,820
We really don't have to deal with it.

791
00:56:45,820 --> 00:56:48,060
We can just say, don't do it because it's not illegal.

792
00:56:48,060 --> 00:56:52,700
If people do, we can say, well, you shouldn't be doing it because it's illegal.

793
00:56:52,700 --> 00:56:57,540
I think we're taking the easy way out on both fronts.

794
00:56:57,540 --> 00:57:03,820
We just don't want to deal with the very difficult realities of why people change the way that

795
00:57:03,820 --> 00:57:04,900
they feel.

796
00:57:04,900 --> 00:57:10,060
Why do they not want to be present fully in their own life?

797
00:57:10,060 --> 00:57:18,400
How can we help build communities that are much more open where people can admit the

798
00:57:18,400 --> 00:57:23,300
struggles that they have, where they can find people to walk with them through whatever

799
00:57:23,300 --> 00:57:28,020
healing journey they need for however long that might take?

800
00:57:28,020 --> 00:57:35,740
That I think is a big area where the church can really, whatever faith practice it is,

801
00:57:35,740 --> 00:57:40,260
whatever community or group it might be, can really play a huge role because people are

802
00:57:40,260 --> 00:57:41,260
lonely.

803
00:57:41,260 --> 00:57:44,140
There are so many people.

804
00:57:44,140 --> 00:57:45,560
You see these studies out now.

805
00:57:45,560 --> 00:57:50,540
It's like how many people don't even have one person that they say they could rely on

806
00:57:50,540 --> 00:57:53,280
if they had a crisis.

807
00:57:53,280 --> 00:57:57,660
That's just tragic.

808
00:57:57,660 --> 00:58:00,420
We are in need of community.

809
00:58:00,420 --> 00:58:03,140
It's how we flourish.

810
00:58:03,140 --> 00:58:08,180
If we can begin to shift our thinking towards how do we build communities where people can

811
00:58:08,180 --> 00:58:15,260
be known and accepted and loved and supported and walked with, that's how we're going to

812
00:58:15,260 --> 00:58:21,220
deal with the addiction crisis that we're in, not by punishing people more and hoping

813
00:58:21,220 --> 00:58:27,380
that the adult version of a spanking is going to be the thing that turns their life around.

814
00:58:27,380 --> 00:58:31,220
I've been talking about this now for about eight years.

815
00:58:31,220 --> 00:58:34,940
Again, that was the beginning of my, not so much about the way I viewed addiction because

816
00:58:34,940 --> 00:58:39,460
I've always had a pretty empathetic view to that, but certainly understanding behind the

817
00:58:39,460 --> 00:58:40,460
curtain.

818
00:58:40,460 --> 00:58:44,620
Again, we see behind the curtain and the ripple effects and the trauma that's created.

819
00:58:44,620 --> 00:58:49,860
Again, the devolution of law enforcement, the fact that they're blamed for trying to

820
00:58:49,860 --> 00:58:52,700
work in an environment that we've just destroyed.

821
00:58:52,700 --> 00:58:57,660
One of the big ironies, speaking to a lot of special forces and SEALs and those kind

822
00:58:57,660 --> 00:59:04,780
of people, is you start hearing, oh, MDMA and psilocybin and some of these other so-called

823
00:59:04,780 --> 00:59:10,860
air quotes, illegal drugs are actually healing first responders and military members, but

824
00:59:10,860 --> 00:59:14,740
they're having to go overseas to heal from the things that they did here in the United

825
00:59:14,740 --> 00:59:17,820
States of America or for the United States.

826
00:59:17,820 --> 00:59:20,140
There's that complete irony there.

827
00:59:20,140 --> 00:59:25,940
Again, you look at the way that Portugal did it.

828
00:59:25,940 --> 00:59:32,140
When you create decriminalization, for example, you have to pour all the money into the solutions.

829
00:59:32,140 --> 00:59:35,420
As Johan said, the opposite of addiction is not sobriety.

830
00:59:35,420 --> 00:59:37,700
The opposite of addiction is connection.

831
00:59:37,700 --> 00:59:41,620
You have to be able to fill that void in these people that are struggling.

832
00:59:41,620 --> 00:59:48,460
Now, as we've progressed a bit further, I'm seeing a huge resistance from, I'm assuming,

833
00:59:48,460 --> 00:59:56,220
the pharmaceutical companies fighting against psilocybin, MDMA, CBD, all these plant-based

834
00:59:56,220 --> 01:00:00,780
or very therapeutic compounds that are working.

835
01:00:00,780 --> 01:00:06,420
They are working and they're being kept from the men and women and arguably children that

836
01:00:06,420 --> 01:00:12,000
need them, that can use these plants or these compounds to actually heal their trauma and

837
01:00:12,000 --> 01:00:14,100
then thrive in society.

838
01:00:14,100 --> 01:00:21,740
What are you seeing from any kind of area at all as far as the resistance to this decriminalization

839
01:00:21,740 --> 01:00:27,020
conversation from a self-serving perspective?

840
01:00:27,020 --> 01:00:32,820
I think a lot of it is there are a lot of self-serving perspectives.

841
01:00:32,820 --> 01:00:36,780
There's a lot of people who make a lot of money off of the current approach, whether

842
01:00:36,780 --> 01:00:40,780
that is in the prison system.

843
01:00:40,780 --> 01:00:45,900
I think it is much too short-sighted to say private prisons.

844
01:00:45,900 --> 01:00:51,380
Most prisons are not private prisons, but all of them operate with the same need for

845
01:00:51,380 --> 01:00:56,220
budget money, the same need for services of various sorts.

846
01:00:56,220 --> 01:01:02,100
There's all kinds of businesses that provide phone service and uniforms and food and all

847
01:01:02,100 --> 01:01:05,460
kinds of things to prisons.

848
01:01:05,460 --> 01:01:10,700
It's not just private prisons that are incentivized to keep our incarceration numbers high.

849
01:01:10,700 --> 01:01:18,220
There are lots of businesses that are incentivized and then are lobbying to keep those numbers

850
01:01:18,220 --> 01:01:19,580
high.

851
01:01:19,580 --> 01:01:26,020
On the other side, there's a lot of incentive to keep different types of treatment out of

852
01:01:26,020 --> 01:01:27,800
the hands of people.

853
01:01:27,800 --> 01:01:32,140
When you think about something like PTSD, and this is a newer issue area for me because

854
01:01:32,140 --> 01:01:39,060
I was on the psychedelic therapy front because I was convinced of the failure of drug prohibition

855
01:01:39,060 --> 01:01:40,980
at large.

856
01:01:40,980 --> 01:01:45,740
I was already working on inviting people to book discussions on Chasing the Scream.

857
01:01:45,740 --> 01:01:49,900
I was founding End It for Good, the nonprofit that I still work for today.

858
01:01:49,900 --> 01:01:55,380
I was doing all of that before I ever heard that there was such a thing as psychedelic

859
01:01:55,380 --> 01:02:00,340
therapy because I was just convinced that prohibition at all was just very damaging

860
01:02:00,340 --> 01:02:05,260
to the whole world, not just to my local community.

861
01:02:05,260 --> 01:02:10,980
I was introduced to that conversation by a man who sent me a Facebook message and said,

862
01:02:10,980 --> 01:02:12,540
hey, I saw your TEDx talk.

863
01:02:12,540 --> 01:02:15,780
A friend of mine at church shared it with me because he thought I would think it was

864
01:02:15,780 --> 01:02:16,780
interesting.

865
01:02:16,780 --> 01:02:17,780
He doesn't live in Mississippi.

866
01:02:17,780 --> 01:02:19,660
He's in another state.

867
01:02:19,660 --> 01:02:22,660
He said, this is my story.

868
01:02:22,660 --> 01:02:23,660
He's a Christian.

869
01:02:23,660 --> 01:02:30,380
He was working at a church at the time, father of four children, him and his wife, wonderful

870
01:02:30,380 --> 01:02:31,380
marriage.

871
01:02:31,380 --> 01:02:36,660
But he struggled with debilitating depression to the point where he was worried that he

872
01:02:36,660 --> 01:02:39,100
was going to take his own life.

873
01:02:39,100 --> 01:02:43,620
It got so bad, he just started Googling anything that could potentially help.

874
01:02:43,620 --> 01:02:46,580
They thought they had tried everything.

875
01:02:46,580 --> 01:02:51,860
He started learning about psilocybin for the treatment of depression.

876
01:02:51,860 --> 01:02:59,420
He talked with his pastor and the pastor said, I think it's okay to try.

877
01:02:59,420 --> 01:03:01,700
If you feel like that's the right thing to do.

878
01:03:01,700 --> 01:03:03,420
His wife was up for it.

879
01:03:03,420 --> 01:03:08,540
He ordered some mushroom spores and he grew them in his basement.

880
01:03:08,540 --> 01:03:11,500
This is a very conservative guy.

881
01:03:11,500 --> 01:03:14,420
He says, I was desperate at that point.

882
01:03:14,420 --> 01:03:15,420
I was desperate.

883
01:03:15,420 --> 01:03:18,700
I wanted to be there to see my children grow up and I was afraid that I wouldn't be if

884
01:03:18,700 --> 01:03:22,140
I didn't find something soon.

885
01:03:22,140 --> 01:03:31,900
He took the mushrooms and experienced a psychedelic experience on them, had people with him.

886
01:03:31,900 --> 01:03:32,900
His wife was there.

887
01:03:32,900 --> 01:03:37,980
I think his pastor was one of the people maybe who was there with him also.

888
01:03:37,980 --> 01:03:44,100
The depression was gone for the next nine months, just gone.

889
01:03:44,100 --> 01:03:49,500
It was unbelievable to him that something could have that effect.

890
01:03:49,500 --> 01:03:53,220
About nine months later, he started to feel it coming back again.

891
01:03:53,220 --> 01:03:57,340
For the last several years, about every nine months, he said usually his wife is the one

892
01:03:57,340 --> 01:04:05,300
who says, I kind of feel like you're headed down again, feel like you're struggling again.

893
01:04:05,300 --> 01:04:09,860
He'll take mushrooms about every nine months.

894
01:04:09,860 --> 01:04:17,740
He says, it's now the thing that has helped me to be fully present and able to live and

895
01:04:17,740 --> 01:04:25,460
able to continue for him in ministry, doing a lot of ministry things that he does.

896
01:04:25,460 --> 01:04:26,460
I'm reading this.

897
01:04:26,460 --> 01:04:28,140
I had no idea about this at the time.

898
01:04:28,140 --> 01:04:29,900
This was a couple of years ago.

899
01:04:29,900 --> 01:04:32,700
Thinking, what on earth?

900
01:04:32,700 --> 01:04:35,020
This is crazy.

901
01:04:35,020 --> 01:04:36,340
Is this real?

902
01:04:36,340 --> 01:04:37,340
I asked him about that.

903
01:04:37,340 --> 01:04:42,300
He starts sending me all of these articles and studies and videos on YouTube and all

904
01:04:42,300 --> 01:04:45,180
this stuff about psychedelic therapy.

905
01:04:45,180 --> 01:04:48,620
Just continuing to learn.

906
01:04:48,620 --> 01:04:53,660
My mind is just blown by the potential.

907
01:04:53,660 --> 01:04:54,820
Certainly they don't work for everyone.

908
01:04:54,820 --> 01:04:59,340
They certainly can have adverse effects.

909
01:04:59,340 --> 01:05:02,980
You need to be sure that you don't have the risk factors that would make it particularly

910
01:05:02,980 --> 01:05:04,940
risky for you to use them.

911
01:05:04,940 --> 01:05:08,580
Some of them can kill you if you don't use them appropriately like Ibogaine.

912
01:05:08,580 --> 01:05:13,580
You need to be under the care of people who know what they're doing.

913
01:05:13,580 --> 01:05:15,340
That really shocked me.

914
01:05:15,340 --> 01:05:21,300
It was another piece of, to your point about who doesn't want people to have access to

915
01:05:21,300 --> 01:05:22,300
those things.

916
01:05:22,300 --> 01:05:30,060
When we think about something like PTSD, which now research is showing that MDMA can have

917
01:05:30,060 --> 01:05:35,540
significant impact on PTSD and can actually, for some people who use it, they no longer

918
01:05:35,540 --> 01:05:39,700
qualify as having the diagnosis of PTSD.

919
01:05:39,700 --> 01:05:42,060
We think about PTSD management.

920
01:05:42,060 --> 01:05:43,320
It's not management.

921
01:05:43,320 --> 01:05:46,060
It really is cure for some people.

922
01:05:46,060 --> 01:05:52,500
Well, as you can imagine, people who are making drugs for people with PTSD to take for the

923
01:05:52,500 --> 01:05:57,940
rest of their lives, that's not a good thing if it can be actually cured rather than you

924
01:05:57,940 --> 01:06:03,540
just need to continue taking prescriptions of something for the rest of your life.

925
01:06:03,540 --> 01:06:11,020
I'm not one who's big on conspiracies or anything like that, but you can follow the

926
01:06:11,020 --> 01:06:21,780
money in most of life and see that what you think of as maybe a moral conviction is sometimes

927
01:06:21,780 --> 01:06:28,180
really a financial conviction that is being sold as something else.

928
01:06:28,180 --> 01:06:32,020
Certainly here on this whole issue of drugs.

929
01:06:32,020 --> 01:06:38,820
I'm one too that feels this tension between pharmaceutical companies because if we don't

930
01:06:38,820 --> 01:06:45,700
want people buying drugs on the street and we see that opening some sort of legal pathway

931
01:06:45,700 --> 01:06:52,220
is going to be the best path to reduce harm, well, somebody is going to be making money

932
01:06:52,220 --> 01:06:54,140
from that legal pathway.

933
01:06:54,140 --> 01:06:55,940
We can't demonize everyone.

934
01:06:55,940 --> 01:07:01,200
We can't demonize the illegal market and the legal market because then we're stuck with

935
01:07:01,200 --> 01:07:04,660
no solution.

936
01:07:04,660 --> 01:07:06,780
I think of it as responsible regulation.

937
01:07:06,780 --> 01:07:11,900
How can we have some responsible regulations but open those markets up where it's not just

938
01:07:11,900 --> 01:07:17,580
one company that's got a patent and nobody else can have access to the product, but we

939
01:07:17,580 --> 01:07:20,840
actually offer people what could really help them.

940
01:07:20,840 --> 01:07:28,140
For some people, psychedelic therapy is absolutely life-saving, life-transforming.

941
01:07:28,140 --> 01:07:34,380
I've never used a psychedelic, but I absolutely believe people should have access to make

942
01:07:34,380 --> 01:07:38,340
whatever choices they feel like could help improve their lives.

943
01:07:38,340 --> 01:07:41,240
In some instances, save their lives.

944
01:07:41,240 --> 01:07:46,340
That is tragic to me that we have made it so difficult for people to even know that

945
01:07:46,340 --> 01:07:47,820
other options exist.

946
01:07:47,820 --> 01:07:52,720
Well, there's an irony as well when you think about what you would imagine a classic drug

947
01:07:52,720 --> 01:07:57,740
dealer would do to a potential junkie, use that term again, someone that's trying to

948
01:07:57,740 --> 01:07:58,880
get hooked.

949
01:07:58,880 --> 01:07:59,880
First one is free.

950
01:07:59,880 --> 01:08:02,460
Well, what happened during the Oxycontin crisis?

951
01:08:02,460 --> 01:08:04,340
The first one was free.

952
01:08:04,340 --> 01:08:08,020
These companies are doing exactly the same thing and arguably prescription meds were

953
01:08:08,020 --> 01:08:13,460
the precursor to the opioid epidemic that we're seeing now if you look at the pill mills.

954
01:08:13,460 --> 01:08:18,100
There is that element of, yeah, if you give these organizations too much power, these

955
01:08:18,100 --> 01:08:21,820
corporations, should I say, they'll abuse it the same way as the crack dealer on the

956
01:08:21,820 --> 01:08:22,820
corner.

957
01:08:22,820 --> 01:08:28,180
Ultimately, that's the same practice, the predatory practice.

958
01:08:28,180 --> 01:08:29,420
Regulation is absolutely a thing.

959
01:08:29,420 --> 01:08:33,820
I think one of the real issues is if it's a plant, leave it as a plant.

960
01:08:33,820 --> 01:08:37,980
Don't develop a synthetic version and then say no one can sell it but you.

961
01:08:37,980 --> 01:08:39,700
Go find something else to make.

962
01:08:39,700 --> 01:08:40,700
You know what I mean?

963
01:08:40,700 --> 01:08:42,500
If it's CBD, leave it alone.

964
01:08:42,500 --> 01:08:49,260
Let the best CBD growers develop the best tinctures and allow them to sell it holistically.

965
01:08:49,260 --> 01:08:51,140
This is the other issue I see.

966
01:08:51,140 --> 01:08:52,140
I want to get to the nonprofits.

967
01:08:52,140 --> 01:08:55,940
I know we're getting close to the end of the time.

968
01:08:55,940 --> 01:09:01,740
If you were queen for a day and you could move the chess pieces and change everything,

969
01:09:01,740 --> 01:09:06,500
what would be the dynamic that you would want to use to try and move the needle back to

970
01:09:06,500 --> 01:09:10,140
mental and physical health in this country?

971
01:09:10,140 --> 01:09:18,940
I would want to start shifting resources from the money that we spend on enforcement of

972
01:09:18,940 --> 01:09:25,960
drug possession right now, moving that to how can we use that for helping people get

973
01:09:25,960 --> 01:09:28,800
the help that they need who are struggling with an addiction.

974
01:09:28,800 --> 01:09:31,180
People say, well, I don't want to give more tax money.

975
01:09:31,180 --> 01:09:32,180
Let's not talk about more.

976
01:09:32,180 --> 01:09:35,980
Let's just talk about shifting the resources we've already allocated and using them more

977
01:09:35,980 --> 01:09:37,300
effectively.

978
01:09:37,300 --> 01:09:43,820
Shifting away from enforcement towards more better mental health treatment including emerging

979
01:09:43,820 --> 01:09:47,900
therapies like psychedelic therapy.

980
01:09:47,900 --> 01:09:50,060
And also beginning to shift markets.

981
01:09:50,060 --> 01:09:52,820
Now market shifting is really difficult to do.

982
01:09:52,820 --> 01:09:57,500
It's very painful to roll back failed policy on drugs.

983
01:09:57,500 --> 01:09:59,540
So you see with cannabis.

984
01:09:59,540 --> 01:10:05,320
Some states have implemented legal markets much more effectively than other states have.

985
01:10:05,320 --> 01:10:10,020
Some states have technically legal markets, but the regulations are so tight and the taxes

986
01:10:10,020 --> 01:10:14,060
are so high that legal businesses can't even function.

987
01:10:14,060 --> 01:10:16,140
People are just buying from the underground market.

988
01:10:16,140 --> 01:10:23,820
So there is this need to be able to experiment with different kinds of policies and see what

989
01:10:23,820 --> 01:10:26,300
works in various places.

990
01:10:26,300 --> 01:10:30,300
I'm not one who would just say, well, open the doors and just let people buy whatever

991
01:10:30,300 --> 01:10:31,300
they want to.

992
01:10:31,300 --> 01:10:33,820
I don't think that is healthy.

993
01:10:33,820 --> 01:10:40,820
And because prohibition has been around for so long, we don't know yet what the best regulatory

994
01:10:40,820 --> 01:10:43,300
models are for various substances.

995
01:10:43,300 --> 01:10:46,260
And they should be different just like they are today for different substances.

996
01:10:46,260 --> 01:10:52,040
We have prescription models, pharmacy models, on-site models like a bar for alcohol.

997
01:10:52,040 --> 01:10:54,420
We have take-home models.

998
01:10:54,420 --> 01:10:59,620
There's already different regulatory structures that should be based on the risk factor of

999
01:10:59,620 --> 01:11:04,100
a particular drug and how we can reduce the risks of that particular drug.

1000
01:11:04,100 --> 01:11:07,540
And there's going to be some trial and error in there figuring that out.

1001
01:11:07,540 --> 01:11:12,020
But I think the sooner we begin that process of trial and error on other substances, the

1002
01:11:12,020 --> 01:11:13,140
better it will be.

1003
01:11:13,140 --> 01:11:18,000
And the first way to do that, I think, is to open a pathway for people already addicted

1004
01:11:18,000 --> 01:11:22,480
to opioids to be able to receive them under the care of a doctor.

1005
01:11:22,480 --> 01:11:27,280
There is just nothing healthy about somebody going to the street to buy a contaminated

1006
01:11:27,280 --> 01:11:32,540
drug that they're much more likely to die from an overdose because they can't dose it appropriately.

1007
01:11:32,540 --> 01:11:38,260
So in the short term, we can allow people to come back under the oversight of health

1008
01:11:38,260 --> 01:11:46,100
care and receive opioids that are at least a known quantity and potency and they can

1009
01:11:46,100 --> 01:11:47,720
be dosed appropriately.

1010
01:11:47,720 --> 01:11:51,920
And also begin that process of moving markets back legally, figuring out what those best

1011
01:11:51,920 --> 01:11:58,300
regulatory structures are, and beginning to develop the social norms that we have lost

1012
01:11:58,300 --> 01:12:00,540
around other kinds of substance use.

1013
01:12:00,540 --> 01:12:06,400
So because it has been pushed underground for so long, we don't have the kinds of social

1014
01:12:06,400 --> 01:12:13,560
norms for something like cocaine use that we do for something like alcohol use, where

1015
01:12:13,560 --> 01:12:16,140
you're legally allowed to drink at 9 a.m.

1016
01:12:16,140 --> 01:12:18,580
It's not socially acceptable to drink at 9 a.m.

1017
01:12:18,580 --> 01:12:24,320
And most people don't because it is not part of our cultural understanding of what's appropriate

1018
01:12:24,320 --> 01:12:25,720
with alcohol.

1019
01:12:25,720 --> 01:12:28,200
Now, is there a lot of harm from alcohol?

1020
01:12:28,200 --> 01:12:29,200
Yes.

1021
01:12:29,200 --> 01:12:32,000
But we at least have some social norms around that.

1022
01:12:32,000 --> 01:12:37,120
We have been very effective at changing social norms around cigarette smoking.

1023
01:12:37,120 --> 01:12:40,840
And that has very effectively decreased the number of people who are smoking.

1024
01:12:40,840 --> 01:12:48,600
So we can help people make healthy choices and we can help society have healthier outcomes

1025
01:12:48,600 --> 01:12:51,780
through influence, not enforcement.

1026
01:12:51,780 --> 01:12:57,760
And I think that's what we need to begin thinking about on the policy front as well as on the

1027
01:12:57,760 --> 01:13:06,600
culture front of how do we allow people to access a substance legally and really honestly

1028
01:13:06,600 --> 01:13:12,460
teach people about the risks and make it where it is not celebrated, where we don't want

1029
01:13:12,460 --> 01:13:14,540
everybody using cocaine and heroin.

1030
01:13:14,540 --> 01:13:21,080
We want to minimize use, but allow those markets to operate in some form of legal way where

1031
01:13:21,080 --> 01:13:28,120
we don't have all of the harms of prohibition, plus all of the harms of the substances.

1032
01:13:28,120 --> 01:13:32,160
When people talk about Vancouver and some of these other places, oh, they tried it.

1033
01:13:32,160 --> 01:13:34,280
It was an epic failure.

1034
01:13:34,280 --> 01:13:37,020
It's not apples to apples at all.

1035
01:13:37,020 --> 01:13:41,340
They tried a piecemeal version the same way as Obamacare was nothing like National Health

1036
01:13:41,340 --> 01:13:43,180
back in England.

1037
01:13:43,180 --> 01:13:44,760
It was just a part of it.

1038
01:13:44,760 --> 01:13:49,680
So if you decriminalize but don't put in addiction counseling, job creation, et cetera, you're

1039
01:13:49,680 --> 01:13:51,120
not solving the issue.

1040
01:13:51,120 --> 01:13:52,380
So I think this is the first thing.

1041
01:13:52,380 --> 01:13:58,320
The second thing when you're asked about legalizing drugs, and I like the decriminalization model,

1042
01:13:58,320 --> 01:14:01,320
they think, oh, you just go in the store and buy.

1043
01:14:01,320 --> 01:14:05,260
Like, no, you can't just go into your grocery store and buy PCP.

1044
01:14:05,260 --> 01:14:06,520
It's not how it works.

1045
01:14:06,520 --> 01:14:10,880
But if you're caught with PCP, you get educated on all the resources that are available to

1046
01:14:10,880 --> 01:14:11,880
you.

1047
01:14:11,880 --> 01:14:13,360
You get told that you're not going to have a criminal record.

1048
01:14:13,360 --> 01:14:16,360
Therefore, the chances of getting employed are a lot higher.

1049
01:14:16,360 --> 01:14:20,640
And then most importantly, with the law enforcement model, if you're not arresting addicts all

1050
01:14:20,640 --> 01:14:25,640
day, the legal system frees up, the prisons open up, and the number of officers that can

1051
01:14:25,640 --> 01:14:30,600
chase all the real horrible people of the world now have magnified.

1052
01:14:30,600 --> 01:14:35,880
So you've helped everyone and every single chain from the civilians themselves all the

1053
01:14:35,880 --> 01:14:37,880
way through to the prisons.

1054
01:14:37,880 --> 01:14:39,560
Yes, absolutely.

1055
01:14:39,560 --> 01:14:46,520
And we look at the amount of violent crime in the United States that is never solved.

1056
01:14:46,520 --> 01:14:48,560
There's never an arrest made in it.

1057
01:14:48,560 --> 01:14:53,240
It's almost 50% of violent crime that there's never an arrest made.

1058
01:14:53,240 --> 01:14:58,800
So when we think about the allocation of resources, like you were just talking about for law enforcement,

1059
01:14:58,800 --> 01:15:05,560
and how we think about what actually keeps our communities safer, we know that the number

1060
01:15:05,560 --> 01:15:13,400
one reason that people will not commit crime in the first place is if they believe that

1061
01:15:13,400 --> 01:15:14,520
they'll be caught.

1062
01:15:14,520 --> 01:15:17,160
It's not how much time they're going to spend behind bars.

1063
01:15:17,160 --> 01:15:21,420
Nobody has any idea what the sentencing statutes are for the thing they're about to do.

1064
01:15:21,420 --> 01:15:25,800
So if you say, well, we'll increase the penalty from 10 years to 20 years or 20 years to 50

1065
01:15:25,800 --> 01:15:29,860
years, that doesn't impact people's choice to commit a crime.

1066
01:15:29,860 --> 01:15:33,440
What does impact it is whether or not they believe they'll be caught.

1067
01:15:33,440 --> 01:15:42,240
So can we stop allocating so much of our resources to policing this drugs?

1068
01:15:42,240 --> 01:15:46,500
And we have, in America, there's one in 10 adults that's used an illegal drug recently.

1069
01:15:46,500 --> 01:15:49,120
That's like government data.

1070
01:15:49,120 --> 01:15:53,600
So any random person you stopped on the street, you've got a one in 10 chance that they might

1071
01:15:53,600 --> 01:15:56,920
be in possession of an illegal drug.

1072
01:15:56,920 --> 01:16:01,680
So in some ways, it's an easier type of policing because when you have a crime that was committed,

1073
01:16:01,680 --> 01:16:05,920
somebody stole something, there's one person you're looking for who did that crime.

1074
01:16:05,920 --> 01:16:11,760
That's a lot harder to find that person than it is to stop a random person who you have

1075
01:16:11,760 --> 01:16:17,360
a one in 10 chance of discovering has committed a criminal act by being in possession of a

1076
01:16:17,360 --> 01:16:18,360
drug.

1077
01:16:18,360 --> 01:16:26,600
But when you look at community safety, are we most wanting for justice to be done for

1078
01:16:26,600 --> 01:16:32,360
people who have had a crime committed against them, whether that's murder, rape, assault,

1079
01:16:32,360 --> 01:16:37,600
theft, crimes that are serious that we want people to be held accountable for?

1080
01:16:37,600 --> 01:16:43,760
I think it's really tragic that we're at a 50% arrest rate for crimes like that where

1081
01:16:43,760 --> 01:16:50,400
there is a victim waiting for justice and yet we have here in Mississippi drug possession

1082
01:16:50,400 --> 01:16:56,420
being the biggest reason, the most people heading into prison on a possession charge.

1083
01:16:56,420 --> 01:16:59,040
Sometimes those are pled down certainly.

1084
01:16:59,040 --> 01:17:02,840
So I think we really have to think about what is important to us on the public safety front.

1085
01:17:02,840 --> 01:17:07,200
What's actually going to make our communities safer and what's actually going to incentivize

1086
01:17:07,200 --> 01:17:10,440
people not to commit crime in the first place, which is believing that they're going to

1087
01:17:10,440 --> 01:17:16,120
be caught if they go assault someone or if they go steal something.

1088
01:17:16,120 --> 01:17:20,800
And right now, very few of them are on theft in particular property crimes have a very,

1089
01:17:20,800 --> 01:17:23,200
very low arrest rate.

1090
01:17:23,200 --> 01:17:27,400
You're far more likely not to be arrested than arrested if you commit a property crime

1091
01:17:27,400 --> 01:17:28,400
of some sort.

1092
01:17:28,400 --> 01:17:36,260
So I think most of the public probably doesn't realize how many of the resources are going

1093
01:17:36,260 --> 01:17:42,400
into drug policing and how many of the crimes are remaining unsolved.

1094
01:17:42,400 --> 01:17:44,840
And I think that I don't blame law enforcement for that.

1095
01:17:44,840 --> 01:17:48,760
I think that is a, they are responding to the incentives in front of them.

1096
01:17:48,760 --> 01:17:54,360
We have given lots of incentives culturally and monetarily to law enforcement to police

1097
01:17:54,360 --> 01:17:56,760
drug crimes.

1098
01:17:56,760 --> 01:18:03,020
And if we want more resources to be spent on solving violent crime, then we need to

1099
01:18:03,020 --> 01:18:06,000
incentivize that.

1100
01:18:06,000 --> 01:18:10,360
Speaking of becoming part of the solution, I want to get to the nonprofit, but just before

1101
01:18:10,360 --> 01:18:14,760
we do, you mentioned about Joanne and Beckham at the beginning.

1102
01:18:14,760 --> 01:18:16,960
Talk to me about where they're at now.

1103
01:18:16,960 --> 01:18:22,560
And then I heard you speaking again on the PUD podcast, you mentioned Nikki as well.

1104
01:18:22,560 --> 01:18:26,260
So that kind of contrast between those two stories, I think really illustrates what we've

1105
01:18:26,260 --> 01:18:28,240
discussed for the last hour.

1106
01:18:28,240 --> 01:18:29,240
Yeah.

1107
01:18:29,240 --> 01:18:33,720
So Joanne today is doing amazingly well.

1108
01:18:33,720 --> 01:18:40,160
Beckham is eight years old now and she's been sober since he was a baby, which is really

1109
01:18:40,160 --> 01:18:41,160
shocking.

1110
01:18:41,160 --> 01:18:47,800
We went to his one year old birthday party and I tell that story in the book and I walk

1111
01:18:47,800 --> 01:18:53,200
in and we're with family and there's some of the nurses from the NICU came, her social

1112
01:18:53,200 --> 01:18:57,080
worker from when Beckham was in foster care was there.

1113
01:18:57,080 --> 01:19:01,920
These people from this year of her life and I was sitting across from one of her family

1114
01:19:01,920 --> 01:19:10,080
members and her family member looked at me and said, can you believe that we are here?

1115
01:19:10,080 --> 01:19:14,280
Can you believe that this has actually happened?

1116
01:19:14,280 --> 01:19:18,100
And for me, I've only been part of her life for a year and I've only gotten to see the

1117
01:19:18,100 --> 01:19:19,820
positive side of it.

1118
01:19:19,820 --> 01:19:24,840
Her addiction for the 20 years prior to that was before I knew her.

1119
01:19:24,840 --> 01:19:31,280
And so her family though has been with her for that whole time, so frustrated, wanting

1120
01:19:31,280 --> 01:19:39,960
to pull their hair out, very strange relationships, just chaos in her life for so long.

1121
01:19:39,960 --> 01:19:48,560
And she was able to find recovery and able to parent her son and is now working at the

1122
01:19:48,560 --> 01:19:50,680
treatment center that she got sober at.

1123
01:19:50,680 --> 01:19:52,040
She works there part time.

1124
01:19:52,040 --> 01:19:54,680
She works at a drug court part time.

1125
01:19:54,680 --> 01:19:59,560
She's opening a sober living home for moms with children to give people who are in a

1126
01:19:59,560 --> 01:20:02,420
similar situation help.

1127
01:20:02,420 --> 01:20:03,420
She started a nonprofit.

1128
01:20:03,420 --> 01:20:06,280
I mean, she's just an incredible person.

1129
01:20:06,280 --> 01:20:10,200
She is, she's unbelievable.

1130
01:20:10,200 --> 01:20:12,600
That's not always the pathway.

1131
01:20:12,600 --> 01:20:15,420
It's not that everyone has a Joanne story.

1132
01:20:15,420 --> 01:20:22,520
Some people, just recently I met a guy who had been to treatment 19 times, 19 times before

1133
01:20:22,520 --> 01:20:23,800
he was able to get sober.

1134
01:20:23,800 --> 01:20:26,840
He's probably my age and I'm 40.

1135
01:20:26,840 --> 01:20:31,160
And yet he has now found sobriety and has been working.

1136
01:20:31,160 --> 01:20:36,280
He's rebuilt his relationship with his son, helping other people get sober now.

1137
01:20:36,280 --> 01:20:40,380
So there's no guaranteed outcome like Joanne.

1138
01:20:40,380 --> 01:20:44,600
That's not to hold her up and say, look, if you just don't arrest her, she will have this

1139
01:20:44,600 --> 01:20:45,800
outcome.

1140
01:20:45,800 --> 01:20:50,340
But it could only happen because she's not sitting in prison while Beckham is growing

1141
01:20:50,340 --> 01:20:51,520
up without her.

1142
01:20:51,520 --> 01:20:56,120
So we don't have a guarantee on the positive side, but we absolutely know what will happen

1143
01:20:56,120 --> 01:21:01,960
if we put her in prison for the next 10 years and Beckham is growing up without her.

1144
01:21:01,960 --> 01:21:06,040
We know that that's going to increase all kinds of risk factors in her life, for her

1145
01:21:06,040 --> 01:21:11,880
addiction, in his life, for his own trauma that he would experience and would give him

1146
01:21:11,880 --> 01:21:15,120
a greater risk factor for addiction.

1147
01:21:15,120 --> 01:21:16,760
So they're doing really amazingly well.

1148
01:21:16,760 --> 01:21:20,240
And Beckham, I have to tell you this because it is adorable.

1149
01:21:20,240 --> 01:21:21,520
He is a drummer.

1150
01:21:21,520 --> 01:21:25,420
He loves music, started learning drums when he was very young.

1151
01:21:25,420 --> 01:21:30,920
And now he will play drums with local bands at blues festivals where they live.

1152
01:21:30,920 --> 01:21:31,920
It's incredible.

1153
01:21:31,920 --> 01:21:35,520
This little eight-year-old back there just hammering away.

1154
01:21:35,520 --> 01:21:37,280
He's really, really gifted.

1155
01:21:37,280 --> 01:21:41,080
And it's just so neat to see.

1156
01:21:41,080 --> 01:21:47,960
And it's heartbreaking to realize how many people are sitting in prison, not because

1157
01:21:47,960 --> 01:21:53,680
they're different from Joanne, but because they just happen to get caught.

1158
01:21:53,680 --> 01:22:00,600
And I think that's what we do not allow ourselves to sit with long enough.

1159
01:22:00,600 --> 01:22:06,020
We want to believe that there is something intrinsically different about the people who

1160
01:22:06,020 --> 01:22:13,080
are on the outside and getting help and building their life back and look at the amazing success

1161
01:22:13,080 --> 01:22:14,080
story.

1162
01:22:14,080 --> 01:22:18,880
And it's the newspaper articles at Christmas time, rags to riches.

1163
01:22:18,880 --> 01:22:19,880
Look what used to be.

1164
01:22:19,880 --> 01:22:26,440
It was, I spent my last dollar on heroin and now I'm running a business or whatever.

1165
01:22:26,440 --> 01:22:31,040
And those are amazing stories, but they give us an unrealistic view of what the majority

1166
01:22:31,040 --> 01:22:33,320
of people experience.

1167
01:22:33,320 --> 01:22:37,120
And there's nothing different about that person than there is about the person who's sitting

1168
01:22:37,120 --> 01:22:38,920
in prison for 10 years.

1169
01:22:38,920 --> 01:22:44,760
We had friends who were fostering at the same time that we were, and they fostered a little

1170
01:22:44,760 --> 01:22:46,880
baby, very similar situation.

1171
01:22:46,880 --> 01:22:52,440
Mom had relapsed during her pregnancy, but she had been caught and arrested because she

1172
01:22:52,440 --> 01:22:57,440
relapsed on prescription medication, which came up in the prescription drug monitoring

1173
01:22:57,440 --> 01:22:58,440
system.

1174
01:22:58,440 --> 01:22:59,440
Joanne was using drugs.

1175
01:22:59,440 --> 01:23:00,440
She got on the streets.

1176
01:23:00,440 --> 01:23:03,240
So there was no monitoring system for that.

1177
01:23:03,240 --> 01:23:05,680
So this mom was arrested.

1178
01:23:05,680 --> 01:23:10,500
She spent a year working before her sentencing hearing.

1179
01:23:10,500 --> 01:23:12,880
She completed everything that was asked of her.

1180
01:23:12,880 --> 01:23:16,660
She had regained custody of her son from Child Protection Services.

1181
01:23:16,660 --> 01:23:22,500
She had completed, was in drug court, had had no problems, and got to her sentencing

1182
01:23:22,500 --> 01:23:26,920
hearing and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

1183
01:23:26,920 --> 01:23:31,260
Just unbelievably heartbreaking.

1184
01:23:31,260 --> 01:23:32,260
She had other children.

1185
01:23:32,260 --> 01:23:37,660
So now you've got four children who are growing up, separated from their mom, trying to be

1186
01:23:37,660 --> 01:23:40,180
parented in the family system.

1187
01:23:40,180 --> 01:23:45,960
But you think about, that's an awful lot for even a set of very committed grandparents

1188
01:23:45,960 --> 01:23:50,460
to suddenly be raising four small children.

1189
01:23:50,460 --> 01:23:52,440
It just was so heartbreaking.

1190
01:23:52,440 --> 01:23:58,520
I ended up connecting with her mom after her sentencing hearing.

1191
01:23:58,520 --> 01:24:03,200
Her mom said, thank you for not forgetting us.

1192
01:24:03,200 --> 01:24:09,020
That's the reality of 20,000 families here in Mississippi right now who have a loved

1193
01:24:09,020 --> 01:24:10,020
one in prison.

1194
01:24:10,020 --> 01:24:12,580
Now, some of that can't be avoided.

1195
01:24:12,580 --> 01:24:13,580
Prison has a place.

1196
01:24:13,580 --> 01:24:19,100
There are some people who cannot be out in the community because of what they have done.

1197
01:24:19,100 --> 01:24:26,460
But we've used prison as this slap on the wrist for everything that's wrong in the

1198
01:24:26,460 --> 01:24:27,460
world.

1199
01:24:27,460 --> 01:24:30,620
Something's not going right and we say, let's get law enforcement on it.

1200
01:24:30,620 --> 01:24:34,860
Law enforcement are frustrated because they're going, we're not trained.

1201
01:24:34,860 --> 01:24:36,500
We're not mental health professionals.

1202
01:24:36,500 --> 01:24:38,020
We're not doctors.

1203
01:24:38,020 --> 01:24:40,100
We can't solve every problem.

1204
01:24:40,100 --> 01:24:43,980
Testing someone doesn't solve the problems in their lives.

1205
01:24:43,980 --> 01:24:49,300
In many cases, it makes it a whole lot more challenging.

1206
01:24:49,300 --> 01:24:55,780
You have the opportunity, we have the opportunity to make a different choice than we have made

1207
01:24:55,780 --> 01:24:57,860
for the last couple of decades.

1208
01:24:57,860 --> 01:25:02,540
We chose to go down this path of prohibition and criminalization.

1209
01:25:02,540 --> 01:25:04,500
We can choose a different path.

1210
01:25:04,500 --> 01:25:10,060
That is something that many generations have done before us on hard things where they realized

1211
01:25:10,060 --> 01:25:16,220
I think we have lost our way and they have made a change and it's been really hard.

1212
01:25:16,220 --> 01:25:18,260
It's hard to change the way you think.

1213
01:25:18,260 --> 01:25:22,660
It's hard to admit that maybe you haven't been right about everything and it's hard

1214
01:25:22,660 --> 01:25:25,100
to change culture and change policy.

1215
01:25:25,100 --> 01:25:26,660
That's a hard path.

1216
01:25:26,660 --> 01:25:32,300
But I can only vote today because people before me said, hey, wait a second.

1217
01:25:32,300 --> 01:25:34,580
Why can't women vote?

1218
01:25:34,580 --> 01:25:39,260
They did a lot of hard work over a lot of years to open that pathway.

1219
01:25:39,260 --> 01:25:40,620
That's how change happens.

1220
01:25:40,620 --> 01:25:44,100
It's a lot of hard work by people who say there's a better pathway and we're going

1221
01:25:44,100 --> 01:25:45,580
to go pursue that.

1222
01:25:45,580 --> 01:25:50,220
Well, I mean, that's such a powerful parallel perspective.

1223
01:25:50,220 --> 01:25:54,140
There's a term the Green Berets use, force multiplier, and I love that.

1224
01:25:54,140 --> 01:25:57,940
The way that they work rather than kicking indoors is more often than not they're training

1225
01:25:57,940 --> 01:25:59,620
local militia.

1226
01:25:59,620 --> 01:26:06,560
If you look at Joanne's story, she became a force multiplier in the side of the solution.

1227
01:26:06,560 --> 01:26:09,580
She was mentoring other people who are struggling with addiction.

1228
01:26:09,580 --> 01:26:10,740
She's helping out in the drug court.

1229
01:26:10,740 --> 01:26:13,220
She's starting an addiction program.

1230
01:26:13,220 --> 01:26:19,380
Then you take the other story, I'm assuming that was Nikki, and now you've got someone

1231
01:26:19,380 --> 01:26:20,980
who's using tax money.

1232
01:26:20,980 --> 01:26:22,200
You've locked her away.

1233
01:26:22,200 --> 01:26:26,660
You've kept her away from her children and now they're going to probably struggle.

1234
01:26:26,660 --> 01:26:30,140
Even economically, it makes sense to help people heal.

1235
01:26:30,140 --> 01:26:31,780
The same with the immigration thing.

1236
01:26:31,780 --> 01:26:35,100
If someone's been here for a while and they've proven that they're a great human being and

1237
01:26:35,100 --> 01:26:39,620
they're here to work, then legalize them, let them pay taxes, and therefore they're

1238
01:26:39,620 --> 01:26:44,300
another member of our organization or our country.

1239
01:26:44,300 --> 01:26:50,540
By locking people away, again, like so many of these conversations, someone's making a

1240
01:26:50,540 --> 01:26:56,020
lot of money with that person being in that cage, but it doesn't benefit us as a community,

1241
01:26:56,020 --> 01:27:01,220
as the communal human experience, or even economically.

1242
01:27:01,220 --> 01:27:05,620
Our taxpayers' money is going into the war on drugs, it's going into the prison, and

1243
01:27:05,620 --> 01:27:07,540
someone's sitting there counting it.

1244
01:27:07,540 --> 01:27:13,180
Do you want the person who's drawing the tax money away, or do you want the person who's

1245
01:27:13,180 --> 01:27:15,420
adding to the value of the country?

1246
01:27:15,420 --> 01:27:18,980
The human compassion story obviously is the most powerful one.

1247
01:27:18,980 --> 01:27:23,140
Do you want that person suffering, or do you want that person healed, the thing that Buddha,

1248
01:27:23,140 --> 01:27:26,020
Jesus, and Muhammad would teach anyway.

1249
01:27:26,020 --> 01:27:32,020
That aside, economically, when your teachers are begging you for school supplies because

1250
01:27:32,020 --> 01:27:36,940
they don't have enough money to even put pens and tissues in the classroom, ask yourself,

1251
01:27:36,940 --> 01:27:38,180
well, where is that money going?

1252
01:27:38,180 --> 01:27:39,620
We don't need more tax money.

1253
01:27:39,620 --> 01:27:43,860
Just like you said, we're just bleeding money and some of these corporations are getting

1254
01:27:43,860 --> 01:27:49,220
it, at the expense of Americans, the men, women, and children that are supposed to be

1255
01:27:49,220 --> 01:27:55,100
our brothers and sisters in this country that are being dragged into these dynamics that

1256
01:27:55,100 --> 01:28:01,740
are completely against any real religious belief, if you look at its core, just because

1257
01:28:01,740 --> 01:28:04,060
it benefits someone.

1258
01:28:04,060 --> 01:28:09,900
I think this is such an important conversation to look at those two and who do you want,

1259
01:28:09,900 --> 01:28:13,380
not only in your community, but who do you want moving back into your neighborhood one

1260
01:28:13,380 --> 01:28:18,300
day when they've completed their sentence, the person that was in the box, or a person

1261
01:28:18,300 --> 01:28:20,580
who's truly rehabilitated?

1262
01:28:20,580 --> 01:28:23,420
Yeah, absolutely.

1263
01:28:23,420 --> 01:28:29,460
If we think about even that there is no guarantee and that maybe we will offer someone a chance

1264
01:28:29,460 --> 01:28:34,420
at rehabilitation and they won't take it, I love some of the stories in Chasing the

1265
01:28:34,420 --> 01:28:40,380
Scream and other stories that I've heard since then about the sort of in-between of

1266
01:28:40,380 --> 01:28:48,540
that addiction does not have to look as harmful and chaotic if a person is physically dependent

1267
01:28:48,540 --> 01:28:55,100
on a substance, but they're able to get it from their doctor and they're able to not

1268
01:28:55,100 --> 01:28:59,620
have to participate in the underground market, not have to pay the inflated rates of an underground

1269
01:28:59,620 --> 01:29:06,420
market, that they can actually manage that addiction in a way that allows them to work

1270
01:29:06,420 --> 01:29:11,860
and to parent and to be present in their life in many other ways.

1271
01:29:11,860 --> 01:29:15,700
That's not to say that it wouldn't be even better for them or that they might be even

1272
01:29:15,700 --> 01:29:21,420
more present or an even better parent if they weren't struggling with a dependence to something.

1273
01:29:21,420 --> 01:29:27,740
The way that we have approached addiction has maximized the pain and the suffering of

1274
01:29:27,740 --> 01:29:32,100
the addiction, not just for the person who's experiencing it, but for their whole family

1275
01:29:32,100 --> 01:29:36,420
unit as they're pulled into that along with that person.

1276
01:29:36,420 --> 01:29:41,660
I think that has come in large part because of this deeply held belief that people must

1277
01:29:41,660 --> 01:29:43,180
hit rock bottom.

1278
01:29:43,180 --> 01:29:48,860
They must have a life changing painful experience before they're ever going to get help for

1279
01:29:48,860 --> 01:29:51,180
their addiction.

1280
01:29:51,180 --> 01:29:55,620
Research just does not bear out that that is true.

1281
01:29:55,620 --> 01:29:59,940
Most people who recover from addiction don't go to treatment for it.

1282
01:29:59,940 --> 01:30:01,980
They end up, it's called spontaneous recovery.

1283
01:30:01,980 --> 01:30:06,020
They age out of their addiction.

1284
01:30:06,020 --> 01:30:11,340
It's hard to believe because when we think addiction, we think person living on the street

1285
01:30:11,340 --> 01:30:15,740
with a needle in their arm, that's kind of the picture of addiction that we have.

1286
01:30:15,740 --> 01:30:20,460
Addiction encompasses all kinds of different levels of substance use.

1287
01:30:20,460 --> 01:30:25,300
Some people, depending on their economic level, can hide their addiction because they have

1288
01:30:25,300 --> 01:30:30,620
enough money to buy drugs without losing their job.

1289
01:30:30,620 --> 01:30:36,800
They are able to maybe manage that addiction a little more so that they're able to still

1290
01:30:36,800 --> 01:30:43,500
show up for work even if they are high or whatever it is and maybe are able to still

1291
01:30:43,500 --> 01:30:45,060
do a good job at their work.

1292
01:30:45,060 --> 01:30:49,020
There's lots of levels of substance use.

1293
01:30:49,020 --> 01:30:55,140
When we cut people off from, incarceration is a trauma production experience.

1294
01:30:55,140 --> 01:30:58,900
We cut people off from their employment, from their housing, from their family.

1295
01:30:58,900 --> 01:31:03,740
We put them in an environment where they're very likely to experience physical, sexual,

1296
01:31:03,740 --> 01:31:06,420
psychological, mental abuse.

1297
01:31:06,420 --> 01:31:07,420
They come back out.

1298
01:31:07,420 --> 01:31:11,620
Like you said, about 95% of people who are incarcerated are going to come back home.

1299
01:31:11,620 --> 01:31:15,940
Now they're coming home with all of this additional trauma.

1300
01:31:15,940 --> 01:31:21,500
We've made their life much more painful as well as made their family's lives much more

1301
01:31:21,500 --> 01:31:23,580
challenging.

1302
01:31:23,580 --> 01:31:30,500
I was in a courtroom one day and there was a man who was, I was there not for this particular

1303
01:31:30,500 --> 01:31:35,140
case, but you just sit through all the cases if you're there because they go very quickly.

1304
01:31:35,140 --> 01:31:42,180
It was a sentencing hearings and this man came in and his lawyer was asking the judge

1305
01:31:42,180 --> 01:31:47,780
to reduce the amount of bail that he had to post to be able to get out.

1306
01:31:47,780 --> 01:31:49,580
They're talking through the charges.

1307
01:31:49,580 --> 01:31:53,460
He had been brought in, he was probably in his early 20s, he had been brought in on a

1308
01:31:53,460 --> 01:31:57,020
heroin possession charge, so non-trafficking possession.

1309
01:31:57,020 --> 01:32:00,380
Very first time he'd ever had criminal justice involvement.

1310
01:32:00,380 --> 01:32:03,740
There was no, he wasn't assaulting anyone or anything like that.

1311
01:32:03,740 --> 01:32:07,980
First time charge, heroin possession, I can't remember what the, I think it was $10,000

1312
01:32:07,980 --> 01:32:09,500
or something like that that had been said.

1313
01:32:09,500 --> 01:32:11,620
Well, he didn't have that money.

1314
01:32:11,620 --> 01:32:16,140
And so the judge, he had been sitting in jail at this point for four months already because

1315
01:32:16,140 --> 01:32:21,940
he could not pay enough money to get out until his sentencing hearing.

1316
01:32:21,940 --> 01:32:27,020
So he comes in and the judge says, well, what if I lower it to 5,000?

1317
01:32:27,020 --> 01:32:28,020
Could you do that?

1318
01:32:28,020 --> 01:32:31,260
And the guy's like, I don't know, maybe.

1319
01:32:31,260 --> 01:32:34,900
I don't, you know, that's better than 10.

1320
01:32:34,900 --> 01:32:37,860
So this guy had a really unique name.

1321
01:32:37,860 --> 01:32:41,340
So I thought, I wonder if I can find him on Facebook.

1322
01:32:41,340 --> 01:32:42,340
And I went and looked him up.

1323
01:32:42,340 --> 01:32:44,640
Sure enough, there he is on Facebook.

1324
01:32:44,640 --> 01:32:47,580
And you can easily, you can scroll and see immediately he's married.

1325
01:32:47,580 --> 01:32:49,120
He's got a toddler daughter.

1326
01:32:49,120 --> 01:32:52,140
He worked at, was an electrician.

1327
01:32:52,140 --> 01:32:57,100
And you just start to think what has happened to this family over the four months that he

1328
01:32:57,100 --> 01:32:58,920
has been incarcerated.

1329
01:32:58,920 --> 01:33:00,540
He had a job, he had a wife.

1330
01:33:00,540 --> 01:33:02,540
He has a daughter.

1331
01:33:02,540 --> 01:33:04,460
What if she was a stay at home mom?

1332
01:33:04,460 --> 01:33:06,620
I don't, I don't have any idea.

1333
01:33:06,620 --> 01:33:13,100
What if they were barely making it with two incomes and suddenly bam, your, your probably

1334
01:33:13,100 --> 01:33:16,100
primary income is gone.

1335
01:33:16,100 --> 01:33:17,900
How are you going to survive?

1336
01:33:17,900 --> 01:33:19,500
How are you going to keep your house?

1337
01:33:19,500 --> 01:33:24,180
How are you going to try to manage childcare and all of the other things?

1338
01:33:24,180 --> 01:33:25,180
We don't think about that.

1339
01:33:25,180 --> 01:33:28,100
All we think is just, Hey, shouldn't have been using heroin.

1340
01:33:28,100 --> 01:33:31,540
If he hadn't have been using heroin, he wouldn't be in jail.

1341
01:33:31,540 --> 01:33:37,500
Well, the level of harm that's happening because we approached his heroin use through the criminal

1342
01:33:37,500 --> 01:33:40,420
justice system is just gigantic.

1343
01:33:40,420 --> 01:33:45,220
And so we have made it, even if he's struggling with an addiction, we have made it much harder

1344
01:33:45,220 --> 01:33:52,300
now for him to stop because we have destabilized every area of his life and, and his family's

1345
01:33:52,300 --> 01:33:53,300
life.

1346
01:33:53,300 --> 01:33:57,020
And so now we've got to deal with all of these other harms that are happening at the same

1347
01:33:57,020 --> 01:33:58,020
time.

1348
01:33:58,020 --> 01:34:05,300
Um, so I think we don't realize that we don't have to traumatize people that that's really

1349
01:34:05,300 --> 01:34:06,300
the approach we take.

1350
01:34:06,300 --> 01:34:08,700
We try to traumatize them into healing.

1351
01:34:08,700 --> 01:34:13,300
We try to, we try to make their life so painful that they will change.

1352
01:34:13,300 --> 01:34:18,780
Um, and every family on earth who has had someone struggling with addiction can, can

1353
01:34:18,780 --> 01:34:24,460
testify to the fact that no matter how much you try to force someone to stop what they're

1354
01:34:24,460 --> 01:34:32,720
doing, they will not stop until they are ready to take that journey for themselves.

1355
01:34:32,720 --> 01:34:36,340
Sometimes a painful experience is part of that journey, but for most people it happens

1356
01:34:36,340 --> 01:34:39,020
as they get older, their life stabilizes.

1357
01:34:39,020 --> 01:34:42,660
They're able to get some perspective, some reflection, maybe find some healing, maybe

1358
01:34:42,660 --> 01:34:47,340
go to some therapy, um, and be able to exit that addiction.

1359
01:34:47,340 --> 01:34:53,940
And we don't have to make addiction so chaotic for so many people.

1360
01:34:53,940 --> 01:34:58,100
Some people's addiction is going to spiral into that anyway, but there are a lot of people,

1361
01:34:58,100 --> 01:35:03,820
um, Tim King, whose book Addiction Nation, his, his own addiction, his doctor was able

1362
01:35:03,820 --> 01:35:05,660
to manage it the whole time.

1363
01:35:05,660 --> 01:35:10,500
His doctor sat him down and said, Tim, these opioids that you've been taking that used

1364
01:35:10,500 --> 01:35:16,260
to be helping you after this life threatening illness that you had are now actually hurting

1365
01:35:16,260 --> 01:35:20,320
you and you have become dependent on them, but it's not your fault.

1366
01:35:20,320 --> 01:35:25,100
This is just something that's happened in your, in your body and your brain, and I'm

1367
01:35:25,100 --> 01:35:30,560
going to walk with you through this and we're going to get on the other side and work together

1368
01:35:30,560 --> 01:35:31,560
towards that.

1369
01:35:31,560 --> 01:35:37,540
And so his addiction was able to be managed early on and it was, he wasn't shamed for

1370
01:35:37,540 --> 01:35:38,540
it.

1371
01:35:38,540 --> 01:35:42,480
He wasn't cut off from medical care and that's how most people experience it.

1372
01:35:42,480 --> 01:35:47,460
As soon as their doctor realizes that they have a problem, they're, they're forced in

1373
01:35:47,460 --> 01:35:53,060
many places to cut them off of the, whatever prescription it is that they're giving them

1374
01:35:53,060 --> 01:35:56,540
for opioids because they can't be prescribing for an addiction.

1375
01:35:56,540 --> 01:36:02,380
So we're cutting people off from healthcare and from a regulated supply of something they're

1376
01:36:02,380 --> 01:36:07,560
already dependent on at the very moment when they're most vulnerable and where they need

1377
01:36:07,560 --> 01:36:12,100
that healthcare the absolute most, which is, it's just crazy.

1378
01:36:12,100 --> 01:36:18,780
You've got to rethink how we think about healing and helping more people find that journey.

1379
01:36:18,780 --> 01:36:19,980
Absolutely.

1380
01:36:19,980 --> 01:36:23,900
When you mentioned about the kind of secret addiction, I don't know if that's the right

1381
01:36:23,900 --> 01:36:28,540
term, but you know, the, the functional addict that is able to be present with their family

1382
01:36:28,540 --> 01:36:30,000
and go to work.

1383
01:36:30,000 --> 01:36:31,180
That's most of us.

1384
01:36:31,180 --> 01:36:36,800
Like I'm literally just began a year of no alcohol starting last week after a great conversation

1385
01:36:36,800 --> 01:36:39,660
with the guy who's his whole platform is about that.

1386
01:36:39,660 --> 01:36:44,140
He's got a thing called one year, no beer, but how many of us drink a glass or two of

1387
01:36:44,140 --> 01:36:48,640
wine or a bourbon or whatever it is, you know, one, two, three, four times a week.

1388
01:36:48,640 --> 01:36:50,460
That's exactly what we're talking about.

1389
01:36:50,460 --> 01:36:52,300
That's a functional addiction.

1390
01:36:52,300 --> 01:36:54,540
And yet there's so much judgment.

1391
01:36:54,540 --> 01:36:57,300
I want to get to your nonprofit before we run out of time.

1392
01:36:57,300 --> 01:36:59,940
So talk to me about the creation of end it for good.

1393
01:36:59,940 --> 01:37:02,740
And what are the resources that people can find there?

1394
01:37:02,740 --> 01:37:04,100
Yeah.

1395
01:37:04,100 --> 01:37:09,700
So I took this passion as you can tell, I'm kind of passionate about this issue.

1396
01:37:09,700 --> 01:37:15,300
And I, I wondered if other people would be interested in rethinking something as, as

1397
01:37:15,300 --> 01:37:20,860
broad as where I had ended up on completely changing the way that I think about solutions

1398
01:37:20,860 --> 01:37:25,300
to drugs and addiction and how we approach those things.

1399
01:37:25,300 --> 01:37:29,960
And so I started hosting book discussions using Johan Hari's book because it's story,

1400
01:37:29,960 --> 01:37:32,340
it's very well researched, but it's very story driven.

1401
01:37:32,340 --> 01:37:37,340
So I thought it would be the most accessible thing for people to kind of engage with.

1402
01:37:37,340 --> 01:37:42,260
And people came the first discussion, I had 12 people that came the next one, it was 25

1403
01:37:42,260 --> 01:37:43,260
people.

1404
01:37:43,260 --> 01:37:44,740
The next one was 50 people.

1405
01:37:44,740 --> 01:37:47,980
And at that point, it really was a lot of people I didn't even know.

1406
01:37:47,980 --> 01:37:51,380
They had heard about it from someone else that were coming.

1407
01:37:51,380 --> 01:37:52,940
And they were just kind of one off events.

1408
01:37:52,940 --> 01:37:54,460
It was not a series of them.

1409
01:37:54,460 --> 01:37:58,060
It was just, you know, come and read the book and come for an evening and let's have dinner

1410
01:37:58,060 --> 01:38:00,680
and discuss this.

1411
01:38:00,680 --> 01:38:05,120
And so I thought, wow, here in Mississippi, Mississippi is one of the most conservative

1412
01:38:05,120 --> 01:38:08,100
religious places in the United States.

1413
01:38:08,100 --> 01:38:12,620
And so people are interested in this here.

1414
01:38:12,620 --> 01:38:17,900
And that that grew into I wrote a couple of opinion articles that were published in our

1415
01:38:17,900 --> 01:38:22,660
statewide newspaper and then more people learned about it through that and contacted me.

1416
01:38:22,660 --> 01:38:27,060
And so in 2017, I started hosting those discussions in 2019.

1417
01:38:27,060 --> 01:38:36,300
I founded Ender for Good, which is a 501c3 nonprofit to give some legs to this work that

1418
01:38:36,300 --> 01:38:40,700
we continue, which is inviting people into this conversation.

1419
01:38:40,700 --> 01:38:45,660
I wanted to provide a way for people to learn.

1420
01:38:45,660 --> 01:38:48,860
That's kind of like what Christina 10 years ago needed.

1421
01:38:48,860 --> 01:38:52,860
How could I have come into this issue?

1422
01:38:52,860 --> 01:38:58,340
If I didn't have an experience like Joanne that prompted my curiosity, how could I help

1423
01:38:58,340 --> 01:39:04,360
more people realize the harm they're living with even if they didn't feel directly impacted

1424
01:39:04,360 --> 01:39:05,500
by it?

1425
01:39:05,500 --> 01:39:10,860
Or how could I help someone who is directly impacted understand the real root causes that

1426
01:39:10,860 --> 01:39:15,780
are impacting them instead of just blaming the drugs, start to think about what caused

1427
01:39:15,780 --> 01:39:20,300
that overdose, the contamination that was at the root of that, the policies that introduced

1428
01:39:20,300 --> 01:39:22,180
that contamination.

1429
01:39:22,180 --> 01:39:27,700
And so Ender for Good has been going now for almost five years and we host events.

1430
01:39:27,700 --> 01:39:30,820
We've hosted about 50 events at this point.

1431
01:39:30,820 --> 01:39:39,300
We do publications, we do media, do lots of interviews and speaking and all on this platform

1432
01:39:39,300 --> 01:39:46,640
of bringing education and an opportunity for respectful dialogue about these ideas to people.

1433
01:39:46,640 --> 01:39:48,340
I'm deeply committed to that.

1434
01:39:48,340 --> 01:39:57,380
I am deeply troubled by the amount of polarization and hate that people have for someone who

1435
01:39:57,380 --> 01:40:01,820
has a different way of thinking, different mindset than they do.

1436
01:40:01,820 --> 01:40:05,380
And I don't think that's how people engage with ideas.

1437
01:40:05,380 --> 01:40:10,300
We don't engage with ideas when we're angry or when we're feeling defensive.

1438
01:40:10,300 --> 01:40:12,100
We're not in a learning state.

1439
01:40:12,100 --> 01:40:16,500
We're not in a state of openness at that point.

1440
01:40:16,500 --> 01:40:22,180
And what I've always wanted is not to, you know, I don't own anyone's mind.

1441
01:40:22,180 --> 01:40:24,980
I can't force anyone to change their mind.

1442
01:40:24,980 --> 01:40:30,780
But can we provide opportunities to learn in a way that people can come to with an open

1443
01:40:30,780 --> 01:40:40,540
mind and maybe move from opposed to change to curious about change?

1444
01:40:40,540 --> 01:40:45,820
And at that point of curiosity is where people begin to read research, where they begin to

1445
01:40:45,820 --> 01:40:51,660
listen to stories, where they begin to consider maybe there is more to this than I thought

1446
01:40:51,660 --> 01:40:53,460
there was.

1447
01:40:53,460 --> 01:41:00,220
And we've done it, you know, everywhere from rotary clubs to university classes to conferences,

1448
01:41:00,220 --> 01:41:03,860
national, state, in different parts of the country.

1449
01:41:03,860 --> 01:41:09,380
I did a book discussion on my book, Curious, recently with a sheriff's department in North

1450
01:41:09,380 --> 01:41:10,380
Mississippi.

1451
01:41:10,380 --> 01:41:15,600
The sheriff had come to one of our events and read my book and asked me if I would come

1452
01:41:15,600 --> 01:41:18,420
and lead a book discussion with all of his deputies.

1453
01:41:18,420 --> 01:41:20,220
And I thought, well, that's a little intimidating.

1454
01:41:20,220 --> 01:41:22,260
But yes, I definitely want to do that.

1455
01:41:22,260 --> 01:41:25,900
So I went up there and there was about 30 of them, all of his deputies, all their support

1456
01:41:25,900 --> 01:41:28,540
and office staff.

1457
01:41:28,540 --> 01:41:33,380
And just a great, I spent about three hours with them just wrestling with these ideas

1458
01:41:33,380 --> 01:41:41,660
and they're trying to think through, are there better solutions than what we're using?

1459
01:41:41,660 --> 01:41:46,940
They're all universally frustrated by the lack of effectiveness of what they've been

1460
01:41:46,940 --> 01:41:47,940
doing.

1461
01:41:47,940 --> 01:41:53,740
But it's just this thinking about a solution that is so different from what they've been

1462
01:41:53,740 --> 01:41:55,740
doing previously.

1463
01:41:55,740 --> 01:42:01,580
And really, really wrestling through that when we say not arresting someone for drug

1464
01:42:01,580 --> 01:42:06,260
possession, we're not saying don't arrest them because they're abusing their children.

1465
01:42:06,260 --> 01:42:07,940
Like that's a very different thing.

1466
01:42:07,940 --> 01:42:10,820
And that I think gets lumped together a lot.

1467
01:42:10,820 --> 01:42:18,580
We think of drug possession as anything anybody using that drug might be engaged in.

1468
01:42:18,580 --> 01:42:24,900
And our take it and it for good is no, we make very clear distinctions between drug

1469
01:42:24,900 --> 01:42:32,900
possession and public intoxication, public drug use, abuse, assault, whatever else somebody

1470
01:42:32,900 --> 01:42:34,580
might be engaged in.

1471
01:42:34,580 --> 01:42:38,980
That's a totally separate crime than drug possession.

1472
01:42:38,980 --> 01:42:44,880
And so we need to be careful not to swing that pendulum too far and say, well, we used

1473
01:42:44,880 --> 01:42:49,820
to arrest everyone for abusing drugs and now we're not going to arrest them no matter

1474
01:42:49,820 --> 01:42:51,040
what they're doing.

1475
01:42:51,040 --> 01:42:56,180
If they're using a drug, we're just going to try to kind of be compassionate to what

1476
01:42:56,180 --> 01:42:58,100
might be going on in their life.

1477
01:42:58,100 --> 01:43:04,100
I think there needs to be a really clear pushback against that perspective to say, no, we can't

1478
01:43:04,100 --> 01:43:08,580
just allow people to go do whatever they want to as long as they're using drugs.

1479
01:43:08,580 --> 01:43:09,920
It's not healthy for society.

1480
01:43:09,920 --> 01:43:10,920
It's not healthy for them.

1481
01:43:10,920 --> 01:43:14,980
It's not healthy for the people that they're harming if they're harming other people in

1482
01:43:14,980 --> 01:43:16,320
that situation.

1483
01:43:16,320 --> 01:43:24,240
So we do a lot of education, some policy advocacy, but most of our work really is on bringing

1484
01:43:24,240 --> 01:43:32,060
these ideas to people who aren't already considering them and helping people rethink and understand

1485
01:43:32,060 --> 01:43:34,220
what the root cause of harm is.

1486
01:43:34,220 --> 01:43:38,020
And wherever they land on solutions, that's okay.

1487
01:43:38,020 --> 01:43:41,900
We're not going to shame you or blame you or tell you you're wrong.

1488
01:43:41,900 --> 01:43:46,180
I think I respect people's intellectual autonomy.

1489
01:43:46,180 --> 01:43:50,300
We get to engage with ideas and then we get to decide what we think about them.

1490
01:43:50,300 --> 01:43:55,380
And nobody else can force us to think anything that we don't think on our own.

1491
01:43:55,380 --> 01:44:02,420
And so that sheriff is still not convinced himself that we are right about ending prohibition,

1492
01:44:02,420 --> 01:44:04,420
moving towards regulated markets.

1493
01:44:04,420 --> 01:44:09,420
But he said, I think we've got to do something differently.

1494
01:44:09,420 --> 01:44:11,980
I'm open to ideas.

1495
01:44:11,980 --> 01:44:13,100
I want to learn.

1496
01:44:13,100 --> 01:44:15,800
I want my guys to be learning.

1497
01:44:15,800 --> 01:44:22,100
And I think we need to shift from a lock them up mentality towards a little more nuanced

1498
01:44:22,100 --> 01:44:26,180
approach to how we think about drugs and drug use.

1499
01:44:26,180 --> 01:44:27,180
Yeah.

1500
01:44:27,180 --> 01:44:30,560
I always go back to just that hundred year longitudinal study.

1501
01:44:30,560 --> 01:44:33,580
If you drew a line, is it going up or is it going down?

1502
01:44:33,580 --> 01:44:35,180
If it's going up, it's time to change.

1503
01:44:35,180 --> 01:44:36,180
It's that simple.

1504
01:44:36,180 --> 01:44:40,340
Well, speaking of which, the way that you really engage people, I think, is through

1505
01:44:40,340 --> 01:44:42,220
story, just like this conversation today.

1506
01:44:42,220 --> 01:44:46,220
So talk to me about Curious and then let's talk about where people can find that and

1507
01:44:46,220 --> 01:44:47,820
end it for good.

1508
01:44:47,820 --> 01:44:49,020
Yep.

1509
01:44:49,020 --> 01:44:50,020
So I wrote Curious.

1510
01:44:50,020 --> 01:44:55,900
I started in 2020 thinking, hey, while events are shut down, because we host a lot of events,

1511
01:44:55,900 --> 01:45:00,020
I'll just write a book real quick over the course of a couple of months.

1512
01:45:00,020 --> 01:45:01,900
And that wasn't quite how it worked.

1513
01:45:01,900 --> 01:45:06,380
It ended up being a four year project, but it just came out.

1514
01:45:06,380 --> 01:45:11,460
It's called Curious, a foster mom's discovery of an unexpected solution to drugs and addiction.

1515
01:45:11,460 --> 01:45:16,260
And I wrote it for people who aren't yet curious or people who maybe have heard a little bit

1516
01:45:16,260 --> 01:45:17,260
here and there.

1517
01:45:17,260 --> 01:45:20,260
Maybe they've heard a podcast that sparked their curiosity, but they're not really sure

1518
01:45:20,260 --> 01:45:22,300
what they think.

1519
01:45:22,300 --> 01:45:23,900
It's short chapters.

1520
01:45:23,900 --> 01:45:28,020
It is written in memoir style, very story driven.

1521
01:45:28,020 --> 01:45:32,780
Every chapter starts with a story and tells my own story starting when I'm nine years

1522
01:45:32,780 --> 01:45:38,700
old and how I developed the way that I think about drugs and addiction until the point

1523
01:45:38,700 --> 01:45:43,820
where Joanne helps put me on a different learning trajectory.

1524
01:45:43,820 --> 01:45:46,620
And I always say too, she changed my heart.

1525
01:45:46,620 --> 01:45:49,940
That needed to happen, but research and evidence changed my mind.

1526
01:45:49,940 --> 01:45:55,140
I think it is really important that we don't just have a life experience and say, hey,

1527
01:45:55,140 --> 01:45:59,340
I know what laws need to change based on my one personal life experience.

1528
01:45:59,340 --> 01:46:04,420
That's a really dangerous thing, but I think the research and evidence backs this up.

1529
01:46:04,420 --> 01:46:08,300
So I wrote the book to bring people along on my learning journey with me.

1530
01:46:08,300 --> 01:46:10,740
So it's written first person, real time.

1531
01:46:10,740 --> 01:46:14,820
It's like they're living those years with me through foster care, through Joanne, through

1532
01:46:14,820 --> 01:46:19,480
wrestling with these ideas as a Christian, as a conservative, as a mother who has teenagers

1533
01:46:19,480 --> 01:46:20,980
myself now.

1534
01:46:20,980 --> 01:46:22,220
How do I keep them safe?

1535
01:46:22,220 --> 01:46:25,020
I don't want them using drugs.

1536
01:46:25,020 --> 01:46:30,940
And then what I learned about the harms that happen through the stories of other people

1537
01:46:30,940 --> 01:46:34,340
who have lived some of those harms that I haven't lived.

1538
01:46:34,340 --> 01:46:37,840
And then what are some of the solutions to that?

1539
01:46:37,840 --> 01:46:44,300
And talk through the challenges of faith-based recovery versus allowing people to really

1540
01:46:44,300 --> 01:46:49,900
have a wide open pathway of multiple pathways to recovery.

1541
01:46:49,900 --> 01:46:54,720
I talk also about the way that we think of recovery as this quantum leap to sobriety.

1542
01:46:54,720 --> 01:46:59,440
One day you're using and the next day you have started your abstinence.

1543
01:46:59,440 --> 01:47:05,100
And is that really the most effective way for people to change the way that they're

1544
01:47:05,100 --> 01:47:06,100
living?

1545
01:47:06,100 --> 01:47:10,500
Or are there other pathways that we could take that would be a little more in keeping

1546
01:47:10,500 --> 01:47:13,660
with what people are most able to do?

1547
01:47:13,660 --> 01:47:20,140
What research says is most effective for people to change the way that they are living.

1548
01:47:20,140 --> 01:47:27,340
And maybe most importantly, to help preserve life from people not dying from an unintentional

1549
01:47:27,340 --> 01:47:28,340
overdose.

1550
01:47:28,340 --> 01:47:31,580
So people can get a copy of Curious on Amazon.

1551
01:47:31,580 --> 01:47:36,120
You can learn more about it on our website at enditforgood.com.

1552
01:47:36,120 --> 01:47:38,100
And we would love to dialogue with you.

1553
01:47:38,100 --> 01:47:42,540
So you can always shoot me an email at curious at enditforgood.com.

1554
01:47:42,540 --> 01:47:44,980
I love talking with people about this.

1555
01:47:44,980 --> 01:47:48,700
I love people sending in, this is why I don't think it could work.

1556
01:47:48,700 --> 01:47:52,060
And then having a great dialogue about those ideas.

1557
01:47:52,060 --> 01:47:54,420
I'm always still learning.

1558
01:47:54,420 --> 01:48:00,420
And this is a really complicated topic with a lot of moving parts.

1559
01:48:00,420 --> 01:48:07,740
And I think the way that we get a better path forward is by diving into that complexity

1560
01:48:07,740 --> 01:48:15,300
and being willing to see the nuance where it exists and not throw out the whole thing

1561
01:48:15,300 --> 01:48:19,340
just because there are hard parts of it.

1562
01:48:19,340 --> 01:48:24,140
When you look at the world right now, are there hard parts about how we handle drugs

1563
01:48:24,140 --> 01:48:25,140
today?

1564
01:48:25,140 --> 01:48:26,140
Yeah, there are.

1565
01:48:26,140 --> 01:48:27,700
There's all kinds of harm from it.

1566
01:48:27,700 --> 01:48:32,940
So let's consider how we could address those kinds of harm.

1567
01:48:32,940 --> 01:48:34,960
We've also got some other resources on the website.

1568
01:48:34,960 --> 01:48:39,660
We have one that is what we've learned about having productive conversations on polarizing

1569
01:48:39,660 --> 01:48:40,740
topics.

1570
01:48:40,740 --> 01:48:44,820
So maybe the issue of drugs is not your thing, listener.

1571
01:48:44,820 --> 01:48:49,020
Maybe it's something else that you think, gosh, if I could just help the world understand

1572
01:48:49,020 --> 01:48:52,780
this, they would all come to see the light.

1573
01:48:52,780 --> 01:48:58,220
We've learned a lot after talking with about 10,000 people in person at presentations and

1574
01:48:58,220 --> 01:49:03,180
events and so much of our events revolve around dialogue.

1575
01:49:03,180 --> 01:49:08,900
Most of the time is spent in audience participation and talking, not us talking.

1576
01:49:08,900 --> 01:49:13,780
So we've learned a lot about what people are thinking, what they're worried about,

1577
01:49:13,780 --> 01:49:18,380
and how they can engage with something that's really difficult and that people tend to have

1578
01:49:18,380 --> 01:49:21,500
a very emotional response to.

1579
01:49:21,500 --> 01:49:26,420
And also if you are a person who has a loved one who's struggling with an addiction, I'd

1580
01:49:26,420 --> 01:49:27,980
encourage you to do two things.

1581
01:49:27,980 --> 01:49:32,860
We have a freebie on our website at endofreggood.com slash freebies called three ways to help someone

1582
01:49:32,860 --> 01:49:34,100
struggling with an addiction.

1583
01:49:34,100 --> 01:49:35,460
You can go grab that.

1584
01:49:35,460 --> 01:49:40,380
But also one of those ways that I'll tell you in case you don't make it over there,

1585
01:49:40,380 --> 01:49:42,460
go and learn about craft.

1586
01:49:42,460 --> 01:49:45,460
It's community reinforcement and family training.

1587
01:49:45,460 --> 01:49:51,220
It is done most effectively through training through online virtual trainings and support

1588
01:49:51,220 --> 01:49:55,380
groups by a organization called allies in recovery.

1589
01:49:55,380 --> 01:49:58,580
We're not connected to them other than that I know them and am friends with them and I

1590
01:49:58,580 --> 01:50:00,700
think they do amazing work.

1591
01:50:00,700 --> 01:50:06,300
But they are passionate about helping families better engage with their loved one who is

1592
01:50:06,300 --> 01:50:07,860
struggling with an addiction.

1593
01:50:07,860 --> 01:50:14,660
Craft has been studied and been proven to help families stay healthy themselves while

1594
01:50:14,660 --> 01:50:17,380
they're trying to walk with their loved one.

1595
01:50:17,380 --> 01:50:22,180
And it teaches ways of interacting with your loved one that have been shown to increase

1596
01:50:22,180 --> 01:50:27,460
their likelihood of getting help and making a positive change in their life.

1597
01:50:27,460 --> 01:50:33,640
So I know that people often feel like they are just being, you know, they've been stuck

1598
01:50:33,640 --> 01:50:38,220
on a Ferris wheel going a thousand miles an hour and it just is crazy.

1599
01:50:38,220 --> 01:50:41,980
I want families to at least know this is out there.

1600
01:50:41,980 --> 01:50:43,620
There are support groups.

1601
01:50:43,620 --> 01:50:47,660
There's great support in places like Al-Anon or Nara-Nan.

1602
01:50:47,660 --> 01:50:53,340
They mostly teach families how to disengage enough to stay healthy.

1603
01:50:53,340 --> 01:50:58,300
Craft teaches people how to stay healthy and engage with their loved one in a way that

1604
01:50:58,300 --> 01:51:03,780
is positive and increases the chances that their loved one will get help.

1605
01:51:03,780 --> 01:51:06,860
And so it's a really incredible program.

1606
01:51:06,860 --> 01:51:10,480
Allies in Recovery offers it virtually so that wherever you are in the world you can

1607
01:51:10,480 --> 01:51:12,480
participate in it.

1608
01:51:12,480 --> 01:51:14,460
It is very cheap.

1609
01:51:14,460 --> 01:51:18,180
They're a nonprofit that's just trying to keep the doors open so they can help more

1610
01:51:18,180 --> 01:51:23,660
families and encourage you to just come on the journey.

1611
01:51:23,660 --> 01:51:26,900
Get on the journey with Allies in Recovery if you're a family member.

1612
01:51:26,900 --> 01:51:31,220
Grab a copy of Curious, come on the journey with me and learn about these ideas.

1613
01:51:31,220 --> 01:51:34,500
Or maybe you're already on board but there's somebody in your life you think could really

1614
01:51:34,500 --> 01:51:42,020
benefit from hearing a perspective like this from someone who is coming from a conservative

1615
01:51:42,020 --> 01:51:44,460
or faith-based background.

1616
01:51:44,460 --> 01:51:45,460
It's a great tool.

1617
01:51:45,460 --> 01:51:49,980
We've had a lot of people say, oh, my mom needs to read this or my dad needs to read

1618
01:51:49,980 --> 01:51:50,980
this.

1619
01:51:50,980 --> 01:51:57,340
There's somebody who I think this could reach maybe that other types of messaging haven't

1620
01:51:57,340 --> 01:52:00,420
reached so far and help them kind of rethink things.

1621
01:52:00,420 --> 01:52:01,420
Beautiful.

1622
01:52:01,420 --> 01:52:05,980
Well, I mean, again, thank you so much for all those resources because they're needed.

1623
01:52:05,980 --> 01:52:13,660
I think just to kind of cap the Christian conversation, people say about how complex

1624
01:52:13,660 --> 01:52:14,660
issues are.

1625
01:52:14,660 --> 01:52:18,820
And that's fine as long as you're using them just to analyze it and figure out how to fix

1626
01:52:18,820 --> 01:52:19,820
it.

1627
01:52:19,820 --> 01:52:23,060
And I think people use that, oh, it's complicated as a dismissive term.

1628
01:52:23,060 --> 01:52:30,020
But I think at its core, to pick a phrase that I know the Christian world loves to use,

1629
01:52:30,020 --> 01:52:31,700
what would Jesus do?

1630
01:52:31,700 --> 01:52:36,460
What would Jesus do if he came down here right now and saw the addicts and the homelessness

1631
01:52:36,460 --> 01:52:39,000
and all the things that we mentioned today?

1632
01:52:39,000 --> 01:52:42,820
Would he tell them to go to prison or would he pull them together with their family and

1633
01:52:42,820 --> 01:52:46,700
create that community that person needs to fix their healing?

1634
01:52:46,700 --> 01:52:47,700
Absolutely.

1635
01:52:47,700 --> 01:52:55,980
I think we've got a lot of work to do to figure out how we truly help people solve

1636
01:52:55,980 --> 01:53:00,620
and heal from the problems and the suffering in their lives.

1637
01:53:00,620 --> 01:53:01,860
We're all suffering.

1638
01:53:01,860 --> 01:53:02,960
We all need each other.

1639
01:53:02,960 --> 01:53:10,660
We need support and we can offer that to more people and find ways to meet people where

1640
01:53:10,660 --> 01:53:15,420
they are, not where we wish they would be, but where they actually are and help them

1641
01:53:15,420 --> 01:53:19,460
take whatever the next step is for them towards a thriving life.

1642
01:53:19,460 --> 01:53:20,460
Absolutely.

1643
01:53:20,460 --> 01:53:22,220
Well, Christina, I want to thank you so much.

1644
01:53:22,220 --> 01:53:23,460
We started off with less time.

1645
01:53:23,460 --> 01:53:27,900
I've been able to steal another 30 minutes from you, so I appreciate the flexibility,

1646
01:53:27,900 --> 01:53:30,220
but it's such an important conversation.

1647
01:53:30,220 --> 01:53:33,300
And obviously we're kindred spirits when it comes to this topic.

1648
01:53:33,300 --> 01:53:37,660
But I want to thank you so, so much for being so generous with your time and creating these

1649
01:53:37,660 --> 01:53:42,440
resources that will help so many people listening, whether it's their personal journey or members

1650
01:53:42,440 --> 01:53:43,440
of their family.

1651
01:53:43,440 --> 01:53:44,440
Thanks so much, James.

1652
01:53:44,440 --> 01:53:47,780
I really appreciate you and hosting this conversation.

1653
01:53:47,780 --> 01:53:53,540
It's been amazing and I hope very helpful to listeners and hope they'll take advantage

1654
01:53:53,540 --> 01:53:56,060
of some of those resources we are here to serve.

1655
01:53:56,060 --> 01:54:18,940
That's why we exist.