welcome my name is natasha sherman and i am your host and today show is a continuation of the exploration of the opioid epidemic particularly in new jersey so i have two guests today my first guest is john broken he is a recovering addict and currently he's affiliated with two i think different organizations yes ma'am lifeline recovery support services and it was kind of prosecutor's office blue harp program ok great and we're going to talk more about that because we've got people to know what's lot of time talking about this subject but i want to ask you a little bit about your story of addiction you grew up in toms river and how you know again for some people there is some pivotal moment for other people it's kind of they just slipped into a slippery slope so what got you into full blown addiction we believe that you know it was kind of always there  condition was always there i was it was not unique i came from a divorced family grew up in love lead during the week and then tom's ever on the weekends with my father and you know just confused like a lot of kids  went into the marine corps rated high school and that was really where i had found drinking and the way we like to explain it as i look at it now is once i found drinking it treated what was wrong with me all the confusion i was wrong with thought was wrong with me the low self esteem that you know walking into a room with feeling less than everyone else in the room and so once i found the drinking to start it really made me feel like i fit in like i had arrived yeah oh you know i interviewed someone who's worked who's i think thirty or forty years and recover and he still works with addicts and i was saying you know like what's the commonality if there is any and he said you know when we go to sleep at night it's kind of we want to relax we want to feel good and he said people want to feel good and so it's really like the the soothing getting away from me and then of course there's that confusion when you're a teenager and you know parents divorced i interviewed this guy who was a former white area and supremacist who ran a hate line and he is part of an organization called life after hate but i said to him in the midst of all of that again confusing childhood and you know identity and i said was there anything anybody could have said to you anywhere along the way that would been pivotal in you shifting and he said no because what it gave me was so powerful nothing could beat that a sense of belonging and identity and again you know to fill the void do i belong you know a loss of tribe kind of so so now you come back you've been in the marines you love to drink what then you know my family was really pushing me to join the state trooper academy because that was that would have been a breeze at that point and i really i just wanted to i wanted to smoke pot and i wanted to hang out in the bars the jersey shore the summertime surf i wanted to kind of let loose because i had felt as though  i had been even though i got to school i was in the marine corps and i had spent all that time i've i felt that i missed my college years the difference was i was a little bit older than i you know it was so and it just that was where the disease and the progression of the disease really caught hold because it was just there was so much there and i i couldn't you know you can't stop once you start and you didn't see yourself going downhill know i guess i i felt i was hiding out it's easy to hide out on the island you know with with my peers you know we in the winter time you know the crowds go away you know you can fit into the local scene you can bartending you kind of hiding get away with it in the summertime from april when the weather breaks you know through october november and it is party time the problem is is you know you start to get older and you start to see your peers moving on in your life and you're stunted and that's really where the addiction you know crosses the line so how did you segue from alcohol and pot into full blown heroin or fat and all or whatever the like most kids you know i got into a fight and my parents were trying to get me out of some trouble and i went to detox and you go to detox and you learn about the better drugs and you know you just  little bit more about that you tells you about those that you're in your mixed in with the crowd you know you're mixed in with the crowd and ironic part about with with me is i didn't i learned it and it stores and that where we really you go to the addict alcoholic addiction part because well people wouldn't register you know shooting cocaine is going to be fun and they try to years later you know it kind of would go in and out of your head and if i wasn't the addict or the alcoholic i would have i would gone to that detox shook it off or you know for a couple days and be like that's really bad i don't want to go back to that place problem is we have a forgetter in our brain and you know we understand that the or we think that the only treatment for our internal condition is that substance so that's where it really starts to kick in and you know it was the rock set started with the pills i was introduced after a football injury playing football and you know some i tore my l and someone gave me some of the blues or the rocks a set and offend a lollipop and you know just just like that it was kind of off that i don't even i knew nothing about i knew i didn't know you could detox from i knew nothing about it  but that's that's where it started wow and i want to get back to more of your story we seem to have this flying thing on the set hopefully we can explore it wants to join the conversation so you are the ocean county prosecutor and ocean county has you know it shows up in the news as having like one of the highest drug problems and overdose rates so as a prosecutor you know it's very easy for you to just push people into the system or you can take a look at what do we do about this so tell me about that well i guess the story starts became the prosecutor died who was eighteen years old died in a motel room who was doing fifty packs of heroin in day twenty five in the morning and twenty five a night and just being new on the job i was not only taken aback but shell shocked you know what did they get myself into right so i started looking at the results to start looking at so i went back to two thousand and twelve and i saw the ocean getting at fifty six overdosed and as we progressed to two thousand and thirteen it was certainly look like we were going to eclipse that  so you know i gathered my my staff together started looking around then you know as i knew as we went through tobar november we are already had fifty six over those tests in the force in two thousand and thirteen we end up with one hundred twelve so we take a look at the legislation that had been passed by the both by the by the legislature and by the by the governor and we turned out nor can which was we were the first county to turn out mark and we did it started the training at the end of two thousand and so that's something that you get when somebody has overdosed and it can bring them out of that and what we were really looking to do was to save the lives of gravity had gone from fifty six to one hundred twelve and now i was looking just to get my death toll down saying i have to do something yeah so you know we realized it was growing it was developing and you know we need to stay on the cutting edge of so to speak as to what to do so we were the first cat in the state to first to use law enforcement  can and fortunate two thousand and fourteen or does toll went down to one hundred one but the problem wasn't going away obviously that's just a temporary measure we weren't right drilling down on the breaking the cycle the dictionary was just looking to to control the death rate so to speak and up until that point did you have any familiarity with addiction i absolutely know i mean you know you know would read something in the paper or knew that there was there know there's this whole distinct sense of and i've talked about this in my other interviews that if you're not addicted to something i mean i think we're all addicted to something some things are behaviors or whatever but end drug and you know that's killing people is it possible to understand and it's because what we do is we start going there are those people that's not us that's not part of our life unless of course you're in the position where you have to deal with it but do you have to have been an addict to work recovery the short answer no we're finding in our family groups from the families that are affected by the individual suffering from substance usis order when we get into the disciplines of recovery we find out that it's kind of a human condition i always  always make a comment about my grandmother before she passed she was always driving into us you know got to go to mass got to go to mass whether you believe in that or not the structure of going to mass you know and we talk about the family system all the time the family i love my grandparents generation there was something to it they had their problems but there was something to it the breakdown of the family with what we look at every single day in real time today two thousand and eighteen where you have a mother and father have both overdosed the grandparents are raising the children there's no family system there so i do think it's a human condition and i always like to go to the old  school they they had most things right you know so yeah i like to make that correlation a lot yes there is a family condition and you know the families that are coming to our groups are looking for something they're looking for those disciplines and routines to get into right so you overdosed four times right four times wasn't from fat not a lot of time because of the work we're in and where we're at now i would often i would drink a lot and i hated to be hung the we're drinking drinking i think i done a little bit of cocaine that night but mostly drinking and blacked out though remember how i passed out and i woke up the next morning in stole some xanax from of relative's pill bottle and i wasn't a big benzo die as a peeing guy but i didn't like being hung over so i took the handful of xanax which with my education now a very very dangerous oh i didn't know that i'm still drunk you know right you know i passed out most of for thirty five o'clock in the morning i'm up at seven thirty and i'm on my way out to philadelphia after taking a handful of xanax to go cop drugs heroin cocaine that mixture because in toms river at that point it wasn't as prevalent and so i hear i'm driving so intoxicated now the benzo dies appeals are hitting the system and then i go in and take a concoction of cocaine and heroin where i inject it in a bathroom at a burger king rate rate in north philadelphia and i'm out for the count so that was the commonality when i overdosed that many times it was because of the combination the fentanyl i believe today the way that i used i would be dead there's no doubt about it i would be dead so i have a question and we're going to keep trying for a round because there are so many questions you overdose four times and you know it's interesting for our survival than food so when your overdose thing you almost die you know that the person who is not an addict says well why don't you wake up what is it that thought did you ever say wake up did you think you were going to die there's several things there so overall i didn't want to be like that especially towards the end i didn't want to be living anymore i was kind of hoping that i wouldn't wake up i had actually had a suicide attempt after it it's there's no description to the way that you're walking around it's like you're walking around the earth in a bubble everyone's having the time of their life especially and i have three daughters so it was even it's even compounded with that thought process and you're in this bubble that you just cannot get out of that that last overdose that we're talking about in the burger king i remember them they came in they  had sprayed me with nor can i woke up and my first thought was did they take my drugs and they didn't take my drugs and i pushed through the paramedics and i was out the door on my way try having on my back and that goes to the prosecutor core not us we want to call him st joe sunday because had he not you know told all of his officers and made in an order to to perform nor can you know and bring them to the hospital here i am in north philadelphia pushing right past the paramedics out the door and behind the vehicle driving back to new jersey that's the thought process of where i was that it's here thought process is totally messed up you know it's interesting someone i read somewhere it's like you know giving up an addiction it's like you are trying to do the hardest thing you've ever had to do in your life when you feel the worst you've ever felt in your life if you want to give it up i mean it's it's didn't even want to get that i didn't know that i could i had heard all the cliches i had heard all that you didn't believe them i didn't know that i had the ability to i was never directed in the manner to to if you do this this will happen until ok that's important but i want to ask you the same question i asked the white area and supremacist is there anything anyone could have said or done at any point along the way that would have been the tough question we try to apply this discipline with the younger kids that are dying today the old that a cliche which there's a lot of truth to which is you know you really got to hit rock bottom today the kids aren't hitting rock bottom yes there is a lot you have to be as desperate and willing as the dying can be we like to say in order for the willingness to really take hold and i'm going to i'm going to walk across the road backwards naked right if that is what i don't want in the snow to get sober right yeah that's true however you can if you can buy into the culture of recovery and sobriety and see that there's a better way of life we do have success in our programs with that but it's a culture thing you have to get them in at a younger age that you've got to believe on an internal core when i'm sitting across from one of these young kids they have they don't see john in the suit they see john in the short sleeve shirt with the tattoos so they can buy into that language of the heart we call it yeah so joe i'm going to ask you like this if someone insurmountable so what is it that you are doing in the prosecutor's office and this may not be the best question but to shift that culture to create that culture where people actually see a possibility first of they have to know that it's a human being they have to understand they also the san's the disease and it's important for law enforcement to understand it's a disease as well as a public and i think that's a biggie is to change that perception absolutely in somebody's son and somebody's his daughter someone's loved one that's being affected here and i think to to help john out a little bit at the stanwood opiates to the opiates go to the brain and attach to nor septa's the brain so they're actually changing the brain function and what happens is the body then needs this opiate in there and  the once the body becomes acclimated to that particular opiate they want more they need more and they don't feel right unless they do it's a truly a sickness so what happens is once you become and you don't realize that you've become addicted to it everybody thinks they're in control of the body because what really happens is that they self medicate and they learn how to self medicate and they're going to self medicate with not only take and kills they're going to be taken they can be taken to heroin and then they don't know what kind of concoction they're taken anyway when they buy it because  not buying it from a pharmaceutical company when they first start me most people don't wake up one day say on the do heroin they will start with prescription pills you have to understand that and a lot of times they get introduced to some sort of injury or some sort of event that has taken place in their life that they're now prescribe to and as a result if we know they're overtaken without knowing it and then what happens one thing leads to another where now they have an addiction problem but they all think they can handle it and i think that's all part of the problem as we go through yeah i think that's that false perception of thinking they can handle it you know i mean look at i don't need to get on a soapbox but i will tell you that we train our kids right from day one when they're born if you're so if you're sick we're going to take you to die there's going to be some pill that we're going to be able to give you that's going to make you feel better and then after a while we'll say to him wait a minute you know it says here on the bottle that you have to be twenty five pounds or this age but your big kid or your big person i've been able to take two and you say well you can take two instead of waiting one every four hours and before you know it you're training your child you're training yourself to you could take more and then you could say well you know what i have a bad headache but it says i can take two but i know that i have to wait four hours i could take another couple two and we live in a drug culture i mean every advertisement is about drugs and and take a pill you know to cure everything i was just listening to this series webb in our series called broken brain and they're talking about how the med medical field is behind like a hundred years where now new functional medicine doctors are you know operating from the position of you have to look for the underlying causes of the illness whereas now one of them said right now every time after we called the superman syndrome i felt like i could solve every single problem in the world and there was nothing or and like and it wasn't it was you just  care of every single issue and the minute you walk up to the next day or you're past that it was like the four horsemen you know to be well they're meant the terror the fear it's  been trained to be ok with feeling bad right you know and i think that's part of the issue i don't know if you heard i just heard the other day on n p r new york city is suing eight pharmaceutical eight to ten pharmaceutical companies for half a attack what i'm really looking is to just try to solve the problem do you know the good out of the problem that we're in and again what we really need to do is understand first off the problem is a disease understand that from the very beginning and then what we really need to do is break the cycle of addiction i believe people have to be held accountable yes so that means if somebody who does have this illness but has either robbed a store or has held somebody up or has committed theft that they need to be accountable for their actions but that putting put aside i still think to it we're concerned about their life yes if we can save their life i think that we should what we really want to do is make them viable citizens again yeah get them off the diction that the cycle of addiction that they have which is what the law really alternately ideally should be doing is make them viable citizens but you were saying before the show about how in ocean county and you know when you mention like one hundred twelve deaths so one hundred twelve you think  parents and then they get put into a system so that hundred twelve up to two hundred eleven is hugely significant but you said that last year ocean county had a twenty five percent drop but what happened was is that the numbers you know and like i said in two thousand and fourteen went down to a hundred to one in two thousand and fifteen because of the threat no being in the drug went up to one hundred eighteen and two thousand and sixteen unfortunately we had two hundred eleven people die from overdoses but we put several programs in that i think have made a difference one is we had dark hair then we had or program which means that once they were sprayed and brought to the hospital that to be a recovery coach and there was a mechanism through or w that they would be able to have both a nurse navigator and that they would go into detox and go into into treatment but then the issue became well the only way we're really treat these people were when they overdose and almost died right so we start a blog or program which means you can walk into a police station it was in two thousand and seventeen and two thousand and seventeen one hundred ninety four people walked into a police station in ocean county asking for help and we helped them so out so that's amazing so when they walk in and they say i think i have a problem what immediately done well first thing you have to look at is this one hundred ninety four people walked into a police station not walking into a hospital not walking into a doctor's office for help how desperate must those people  because if they have to go to do that you take the hundred ninety four that walked into the police station in the or program and just five hundred fifty people in ocean case of approximately eight hundred people were dressed our numbers came down in two thousand and seventeen so we went down one hundred sixty three so we went from two eleven down to one hundred sixty three which is a twenty five percent reduction more importantly we had spread these are people that we used narky and five hundred eleven times in two thousand and eleven but was only three hundred forty and forty nine times in two thousand and seventeen so you could see that the spray imposes sprays went down also so i think we're on to something i mean i think that this is a trend that we need to look at i think our programs need to to continue to develop drill down a little bit more on them but i think ron to something yeah you know i went on the line and the c d c i think it was there were like sixty four thousand overdoses last year or the year before i don't think last year's numbers are fully in and you know one of the things is like sixty four thousand and i had thought to talk about this on another show the vietnam war over fourteen years only fifty two thousand and i don't want to say only fifty two thousand over fourteen years and that left the country reeling to this day now we're losing sixty four thousand a year system that the heart can take it anymore and they put on this put on they did put on the desert to figure it was a heart attack so there are many different reasons why i'm not so sure the total accuracy of those numbers i go across the entire country behind what happened to that individual why did that person drive off the road bottom line is that this is overtaking our society it really goes right to the family elements the heart of the family here and i think that that's why we need to look at this address it appropriately right on all levels so we're going to and this half hour but i'm hoping you'll stay for the next half hour because i want to talk about solutions action plans who needs to be invited to the table who's not coming to the table when they should be so i hope you're willing to stay for that great my name is the taj sherman thank you for joining us and please stay tuned for part t