sherman and i am your host my guest today is larry mylan larry is the former chief of police of west long branch his son died of a drug overdose and fortunately he was able to be revived but that was a life altering experience for larry and he's here to talk about his story and his mission welcome thank you so you know one of the first things that comes to mind as a former chief of police you have a certain image to maintain and i would suspect that as most of us on some level unless it's really impacted us there's still some remnant of that story of drug addiction is really those people whoever those people are very much and there is this kind of maybe even an discerned cynicism about it where you know let them handle it or just a loser she so i think it must have been doubly confronting for you i'm guessing that you know you're this very public figure you represent the  straight and narrow that clean and squeaky and and your son overdoses so tell me about what led up to that and what awareness is you had along the way well that the person that you're you're speaking about the the person the you know not my kid doesn't happen in my life i was that person on all the way up till april twelfth of two thousand and thirteen they were junkies dirtbags they were they weren't people who i associated with this certainly were people in my family and there's a concept that always comes to mind when i think about this especially when i read a lot about what goes on today where there are for instance there are some law enforcement agencies in this country right now who are now refusing to administer narcan to people who overdose after the third overdose and what i say all the time about that is that to me is reflective of someone who does not have skin in the game right in other words their perspective was mine as of april twelfth two thousand and thirteen april thirteenth two thousand and thirteen at eight am my wife who was on your show previously told me that she thought that my son was asleep in front of the t v point having played video games all night and he was snoring so i went down to downstairs to investigate and having at that point been a police officer for thirty years is posturing his iran over to the to him and again i mean if you have any experience dealing with people who are no longer alive the soon as you touch them you can you can really tell you have the sensation that that very unique pupils were not responsive that really drove it home for me so my wife called nine one one and of course when she's on the phone with the nine one one operator i find out that all this out after the fact but when she's on the phone with an i want to operate or she also told them who i was and we got a substantial response and thank god for it from the long branch police department which is where i lived at the time i still live in long branch and he says i have to quit you have this tremendous sense of oh my god thank god thank god thank god then what happened well it was that was the tip of the iceberg because they were the paramedics in the in the ambulance took him to the hospital and one of the things i'm having been a cop of so long one of the things i knew that i needed was if i could get it was the packaging of whatever he took so i started to do a little bit of background there trying to contact the the jurisdiction where i believe that he'd been the night before to try to get them to basically secure this stuff  raid the place really try to get it so he goes to the hospital they didn't realize at the time and they were trying to determine the extent of the damage that he did to his heart as lungs and in order to do that one of the things they did was they put him in a coma in the hospital so he was on a ventilator for a week and i will tell you that if you've ever seen anybody especially somebody who means anything to you if you've ever seen them on a ventilator that's something you'll never never forget i say this i use this all the time so i figure i heard it but sometimes i wish my mind was an etch a sketch that i could just go like this and make the images go away i can't on some of these they'll be with me for the rest of my life so he's in a coma they they tell us that they're going to bring him out of the coma deceiving him breathe on his own and determine the the extent of the damage and fortunately he came out of the coma and he ended up going to rehab a little story just to let you know about the difference then to now about the stigma associated with people who do heroin yes i remember the the cardiologist at the hospital a cardiologist and a pulmonary doctor told me aside to let me know who to give me an update and the i'm still angry when i think about this guy the cardiologist looked me in the eye and just said well just so you know your son's probably going to die no cushioning it catching it in terminology any that's what he said and it turns out that the reason he said that was and again the prevailing specially then the prevailing attitude was if you do drugs you get we deserve yeah that's a biggie which at getting back to my skin in the game thomas people who say that i didn't see or go through what i've been through and when certainly not what some of the other folks who have who actually permanently and for good lost their their their friends and loved ones what kind of what kind of human being would say well you get what you deserve if it's their son or their daughter so and again i mean thanks to a lot of the awareness that's happened since two thousand and thirteen to two today it ha s changed it's changed a lot it's it's something that we collectively everybody even the people that skin in the game and even those who don't have skin and game we have to keep keep the momentum going on this issue because as we all know people who never short memory you know what was what was horrible last week is not horrible to this week what were we talking about you know that yes and i think also it's hard to shift that it's  people are being more aware but as you said until that impacts you you know just to put that aspect of it this doesn't really affect me this is not you know again it's something that other people have right and i'm not sure what it takes other than building more awareness and also the numbers are starting to be staggering but that's a tough one and then you know your son is probably going to die i mean well they have it to have a doctor look you in the eye and tell you that with zero caring as in his delivery or his eyes because it was more like well what he expect hospital one of my fellow chiefs of police called me and i saw his telephone number on the caller id on my cell phone and i basically just answered a tell him no look i've been here and i really can't talk to about this right now or whatever with his and one of the things he was calling to tell me was that a recently retired police chief his son actually died basically the same time my son died and was  so i made time during the time that my son was in the hospital to go to the funeral and to connect with him to extend him the kind of condolence and sympathy  something like that deserves and right from the funeral home i went right back to the hospital walked into my son's hospital room and said you're going to rehab and he said yeah i know and the good thing is you know a lot of these folks my son included very often they they know they know they want to help they know they need the help but they need a push and it could be a big push to be a little push but they they need some support and some some affirmation that that's the correct thing to do and a good thing for them to do and even some coercion well yes yeah sometimes yeah so so he went to rehab that was one of three times that he he went to rehab and i'm happy to report at this point that he's doing pretty well so you know you and i were talking about this before this whole  concept of addiction because we're all addicted to something and but most of it doesn't kill us but i think we can expand our level of compassion by looking at our own lives where we're addicted some of us have health issues and we don't pay attention to the rules and it's a form of addiction and you know we talked about the doctor in vancouver who works with addicts and he kind of compares it to this reference in buddhism of the hungry ghosts and the hungry ghost with the big bellies and the tiny little miles and the tiny little neck so that no matter how much they put in it's never enough the belly is never full and i think for me as i was thinking about it is we all have that at some point the belly not being full like some emptiness lack of fullness and i think part of it it's just learning to be ok with the emptiness or with the feeling of that and not making it wrong and not making it feel like we have to do something about it i don't think we're taught that i think what we're taught is you have an itch scratch it immediately reach for whatever it's going to take i'm glad you said that because i think that one of the you know i'm not i'm personally i'm not an addict but through my wife's organization the family the action at work i've had the opportunity to meet and work with a few people who are recovering addicts and  one of the things that happens is the people who get involved in the abuse or proper use of opioids and opiates it's self medication and they're like you said they're trying to fill a hole or trying to deal with something they they have a poor self image is a and when i call in x or bill nexus between  psychological issues and people people always get all upset about that and everybody have psychological issues it's just how you deal with it so and these folks need some help in determining and then guidance  n seeing that they're the way that they are doing it through drugs is bad so life threatening yeah yeah know and so let's talk about what you're doing now well because you made a deal with god that's well yeah i left that out of my story that morning when i found him there i very literally looked up and i and i made a deal with god as if you give him back make it worth your while and i got him back so i've been holding on my end of the bargain ever since and how i do that is  you know when i became chief of police and even before that when i was a captain sometimes you had the opportunity to you know when you come to work you were super you wear civilian clothes instead of a uniform what i did quite a bit once this happened was i would if i appeared in public the speak about this issue i made sure to wear my uniform and with all of my medals and paraphernalia only uniform be cause i wanted to do everything i could to address the stigma of addiction you know when we were younger the perception was that it was inner city people homeless people it was the folk of the fringe right not the case anymore i have you know when it happened or if it was ever even the case right away the truth i mean there were there were people all over the place i mean we see all the time celebrities dying to doing this but rolled out the deployment of narcan and for law enforcement in ocean county at the time i was asked to tell my story very briefly that the role that seminar but governor christie when he heard my story he was particularly taken by the story and he in fact during his his speech right afterwards he had never met me before that but in his speech right after that he he applauded my speaking about it in public and he said more people should do that and i agree so since then i have done it quite a bit and i anybody that asks me to talk about it i ablow yeah god forbid so looking back and you know this is not to look back should what occurred and how come but it's kind of you know what wisdom  could i have used at the time or what is there any place along the way that you think there were queues you missed you know and also what would you have  from the environment that you didn't have access to or didn't think you had access to well that that that's actually question because it actually gives you the opportunity of a couple things one of the things i say quite often is as deadly as the drugs were to my son so was my denial that he was using them i knew better trained police officer ten years of my thirty four years as a police officer i spent as a detective i knew the signs but that couldn't be it's my be wow and even when i yeah and even when i knew that he was using drugs heroin specifically when he would exhibit the signs of going through withdrawal he's got the flu he's not going through withdrawal he's got a fever he doesn't feel good he need to take a bath at three o'clock in the morning because he doesn't feel good that's this can't be withdrawal over and over and over and over again so i tell people about that is take the example for me and other folks and don't let that be the case you don't always have to assume the worst but look forward do something about what would you have actually done or what would you suggest that people do because it's one thing to say ok i'm in denial i see these signs then what well one of the questions i got a lot when this was happening was well you're a cop why don't you get a drug dog get one of the drug dogs bring him into your house that sounds like a really good idea but that's actually misappropriation and of government assets you know unless it's an actual thought unless it's an active investigation i can just call up one of the hey why the way bring the dog over because i didn't know at the time and i do now that there is a private service out there that is they're not cops but it's a fully trained drug dog i have since met and be friended the guy who runs this and i tell people all the time do it if youth if you really think that your loved one or  friend is using illegal drugs and you want to know where it is well first of all if it's your kid that's not his room that's your room search it take it apart find the drugs look if you were going to hide it where would it be under a drawer something under it in something anywhere to find it and get it out of there and get your you're your friend or your relative yours son or your daughter help and what if they refuse  we did to a degree but again i mean unfortunately for me it really drove home when there was no heartbeat you know you don't you don't you don't want to come that far before you do something about it so but yes so that that's what i would say is that you know take action do something and the other thing is there's a big argument that goes on in this whole community about tough love m n i won't get into too much of it but you know there are those people who say books kick him out kick him out on the street that will show him men you might not like the result  over and over i've heard addicts say that they recovered and you know the reason recovery that they are so grateful that their mother their father their aunt their grandmother whoever never gave up on them wow that's very powerful absolutely and so the real message is therefore don't give up on them it's hard don't give up on them though be there for him you're going to it's one of the reasons that my wife started with her friends started family diction that work was you feel alone you don't want to you don't want to do these things you know them even further and yeah but the families and the friends of those addiction go through excruciating pain but thanks to organizations like family to if you network that offer a gathering place where you can go with people who are going through the same thing or worse than the you're going through and at least you can be heard or you can just sit there and listen and be assured and comforted to know that you're not the only ones going through it i think that's a pivotal point and you know one of the things that i think a lot of us have been kind of programmed to think just because of the way it's been up until now is that there's kind of just one way to do this is see the got to be a twelve step program or and i think it's all really nice vital to know yeah i think it's vital to know that there are twelve step programs there are rehabs there are groups that support groups or places to go just to be listened to there are places to go where you hear other people's stories but that there are more and more resources and i think because for somebody you know a family or an addict to say you have to get into a twelve step program you know that may not be the most acceptable or the best thing for them or the most viable for them so i think this one size fits all is one thing that we have to pay attention to and you know you talk about the psychological issues and i you know we are human beings and all of our emotions that are physicality are all tied in together so it's not like oh you know you must've been abused if you you know or a drug addict that has happened in some cases but you know it's like somebody wrote it may not be what happened to the child it may have been what didn't happen right you know it may have been the stressor is around them it may have you know so it's not like i think we have to stop looking and playing the blame game i think it's really ok this is what we're dealing with and then there are good jillian things that we can reach for or at least we hope there are that many but not to pigeonhole it into it has to be this way well that like you said one size fits it might not you need to see if it fits you it's going to work for you not everybody eats the same thing that everybody dresses like that and then the other thing you said the to me really resonates is the again the connection between addiction the lack of a better term psychological issues stop with the stigma yeah of i don't want to get help if i get help people think i'm crazy they think there's something wrong with me as i said i absolutely believe there's nobody that doesn't have an issue somehow absolutely have have the courage and have the not only have the courage to do something about it but have the courage to support your friend or loved one when they say they need help yeah you know and you know despite how funny it seems on social media to make fun of somebody to who goes for help get over it support these people you know do good don't do not only do no harm but do some good yeah you know support somebody in in their pursuit of trying to get through an issue you know we're at the end of our time but i think one of the things that  as a coach i work with my clients and my students when i teach is you know when you talk about social media start questioning where your thought came from am i doing this because it  me in my character in who i am or am i doing it because i've been all these conversations and i've been brainwashed and you know look at life a particular way in order to fit it really comes back to kind of who do i want to be and the heart of it you know don't think what you think because somebody said you should say yeah exactly larry thank you so much thank you for a time great thank you my name is natasha sherman thank you for joining us