welcome my name is natasha sherman and i am your host and this is part two of an interview with john brogan who is the chief recovery specialist at lifeline recovery support services and j who is the ocean county prosecutor welcome back both of you so we've been talking you know about your journey and about things that are being done i want to ask some very specific questions for a mother out there who is watching this show or a family member or you know just someone in a school and i know there's no easy answer there's no one size fits all but i think that most people haven't got a clue like if your child comes home young adult whatever and says i think i have a problem with drugs now you want to you can take this what do do you well they say this i don't think a child is going to come home and say that that's the first thing i mean i think i think you have to be a little bit more quiz of i think part of it is the fact is that steerage of the family people you know don't sit down at the dinner table together anymore talk and have that conversation those families are better off in the room separated not really understanding what's going on that's part of the issue that has happened here i think but one from one comes and says ok i think your son or daughter is doing too i think you should be the one or some or should really if you're clueless you haven't noticed the signs well what you find out that there is a problem then you really truly do have a problem and you need to be able to take that individual ok hopefully and go someplace that they can address and that's the issue as to whether you're going to call new jersey reach but whether you're going to go out to in our case go to one of our blue heart you know stations bottom line is do you want to take it someplace and that goes back to what we were saying before that's why john is so important in the recovery coaches are so important you need somebody who's walked the walk because a parent talking to a child or a loved one talking to another loved one most likely is not going to convince a person they have a problem you need somebody who has been in the throes of that problem who can recognize recognize it can relate to again they can help that person and that's why that's why there is this issue there's that breakdown that's why i'm abetted with the recovery coaches because i could see the success that they have in reaching that person right and convincing the person that they almost walked into the light and this is becomes a dramatic moment in their life where they need to be able to change that effort and get the help that they need then you need to be able to get them to the right individual that's what you know after it's like you know step one so first of all i think stigma to prevents people from reaching  out you know not my child but i interviewed the former chief of police of west long branch and his son was an addict and didn't come to him at no point and say you know i have a problem but again there was no kind of that i think he at one point he overdosed they did not can when they released him i think they gave him a list from the hospital a list of places so what would need to happen so i mean that's the crisis management piece that's the crisis intervention piece where lined up with them all day long with where with lifeline and blue are you know there needs to be an intervention the first piece is always we talk about leverage you know what leverage you have is  emotional leverage is it legal leverage is it the family leverage they need to be separated almost immediately because the person suffering from substance use disorder on a very subconscious level and this is why it's so delicate because if i come at them and say you know you blah blah blah blah blah you know they're going to run and you have to talk to them and let them know you walk the walk like the prosecutor was saying but then once you get them convinced and this is where the breakdown happened this is where we really got it right with blue heart is where you're going to go with that individual once you yes once you have won their trust over and you're grabbing them by the hand where you're going to go with them and you have to go into a true continuum of care where that recovery coach is with them the entire time you're tracking them through the entire system that's where we're finding the success of this program just what is that what is that path it looks different for every individual they come in all shapes and sizes the key is the recovery the disciplines of the recovery so when he talks is just the first step detox is not recover no you know because i think people i mean there were yeah it's actually it's complicated right what i mean by complicated is that you need somebody clinically break down that person they probably not only have a substance abuse problem it most likely have a mental health problem they probably have a legal problem and they probably have a social problem so it has to be almost like a holistic event and then you add on to all that that they're broke they have absolutely no money w mean is it is when i say complicated it is very complicated and so let's say all those things are in place what do you do and that's the problem we need to address to address it and for my stamp it make a good run right from the very and what we've done in our system so far from my standpoint has had a soft handoff where we all are in our own silos where just the detox take of it and then is supposed to be some sort of handoff to treatment and treatment takes it and that is are true is a true handoff to let's say sober living and the problem really is are they are they being tracked and are they interested in outcomes and how is that handoff and how are they filed as a human being that's following them all the way through so is that happening what we're trying to do what we're trying to do is change the face of how we address these people how to help them ok and from my standpoint make a good run at it from the very very beginning because otherwise what we're doing is recycling them and going over and over again the cost preventive and also you're going to lose human life so what is important for us is to continue to drill down on the procedures on our methodology of what we're going to do with those individuals and then ultimately what we need to do is find out the outcomes whether we've been successful and if we haven't been successful why haven't we been successful to answer your question yes yes for the last year for with blue heart really it started before that with the or program with blue heart we have got her hands around the tracking and we're not out of the weeds by any stretch at all but since january eleventh of two thousand and seventeen was when we started we are tracking at about fifty sixty percent success ratio when i say success i mean we've tracked about one hundred fifteen people that are still clean and sober they're not dead which is the most important part of the success and they've tracked through a continuum a detox a treatment continuum on to sober living attacking their legal problems into governor mcgreevey re entry program where we're helping them get their bank accounts their licenses the holistic approach and becoming viable members of society now that can happen in new jersey that the odds are against you because of the you're in the same demographic and location sometimes they go to texas sometimes they go to minnesota sometimes they go up to maine it depends on where our resources are on the national level to get that scholarship but it's like changing the culture of the person and also in some crude but it's almost like rebooting the continued or changing their mind set sometimes we consider raising a child yes yeah it is changing taking now the culture that the red and when you say success i mean i don't know of any you know for me i look at every six month point you know that i want to look at you know when you make it six months it's a somewhat of a success when you make it a year that's a great success when you make it eighteen months you know from my standpoint and i'm not a health care specialist but i think two years is the year that i will look at that if i think that if you've made it to to your point the chance of you actually staying in recovery and addressing is something you can sit with for the rest of your life but i think you have a really good chance that you're not going to relapse the bottom line is eighteen months to two  area that i'm looking for yeah and i do i think again you know people are so confronted by this if it if it hits their family they're just looking quick at detox and not all those steps that have to parlay here's what happens what i  want to interrupt what keeps you clean and sober almost eleven years it's the disciplines of recovery i'm a fundamentalist i mean i am and that's what we try to that's the second the successful parts of the clients that we send to the  fundamentals of the twelve steps which is the basics that our grandparents always taught us you know don't lie don't steal don't cheat this is how you do it like it's a there's a funny saying they always say well how do i not lie anymore well you don't lie right you know that it's pretty simple but it's these things it's become habit routine you know and it's a growing process where inside those disciplines of the twelve steps you can really you know you can really latch on and get some accountability in your life and grow and most important part of the twelve step you're going background is step one by helping others that's the whole glue to this thing the key to our problem is selfish self centered nature right so how do we overcome that we do self less things and i think what you said joe before was that the idea is to make them viable members of society purpose absolutely i mean you know my crime rates for the benefit are going to be you know they're going to be working in society supporting themselves becoming again viable members of society that's our whole team of goal you know it's not necessarily look at again i believe in accountability and some of the individuals have to go to jail because of they have to be held accountable for their actions but putting that aside at some point once they've done their time once they've once they've concluded to pay their debt to society so to speak ok we need to make sure they get back into society and become viable we have to understand is that from the law enforcement standpoint we need to partner up and i kind of broke it down into three blocks apart at the educational community because i strongly believe in prevention i think we need to be imbedded in the schools i think we need to show that this is a road that we don't need to go down the second block of strong law enforcement or we come in that we hold the predators together you know i have my you know we lead to stay in an overdose deaths in the sense that we hold accountability strict liability so if you are a drug dealer and you sold drugs and kill somebody we're going to hold you for the homicide in the back and charges so i believe in strong wall foresman and then the third block is breaking the cycle of addiction so if you just if you just work on one block you're not going to be able to address properly address it you have to do all three blocks and you need to drive all three blocks hard and if you do that i think in the end i think you'll see some success it makes sense  think for me one of the most challenging things probably is the prevention aspect because i think you know the context in which we live doesn't support wellbeing for the most part it doesn't support community you know we live in the age of technology and people are more and more separating from each other you know we give up what we long for most which is connection and then it's the whole like then the tribe the and it's funny you know because in this broken brain series they talked about you know there are some basic things and i don't know if you deal with this in in recovery you know diet sleep exercise all of that but one of the things that they said and there studies done all over the world about longevity that the thing that contributes more to longevity then medicine is community connection and i think that's what gets us in trouble in the first place is this a lack of connection and then that you know whole you keep trying to feel like do i belong and you know what it could be simple little programs at the school where you're not going in and talking about addiction but you're teaching them to love one another and you're choosing them yes actually things you're talking about that are very important says goes to the you know getting it's a book a tale of the raccoon we're talking about a raccoon that's leaving its family coming back feeling part of my youngest daughter i mean my wife talk about it all the time the struggles we go through with our daughter because she always wants to be with her two older sisters you know that's when she's the it's the hardest to manage because she when they need their time by themselves the you should see to a man and to a woman when we have a blue or any client for that matter that's in crisis management and we take we say come with us and they believe leave it and we bring them back to our recovery center and they they feel a sense of belonging that's all that and that's all everyone's looking for he should be doing that it's a religious family unit and i would have a hundred percent but you know i guess the the family unit has fallen apart and it may continue to fall apart it's like you can create community you know because you don't want to hold it just down that narrow funnel you can create community like they have in some of the schools you know i see these things on line usually in scandinavian countries these things happen where they have this you know where if you see someone sitting alone on a playground you're trained to immediately go hey can i be your friend or can i you know what's going on or they are taking them out into nature and nature walks and and young adults are moving into senior centers free education free room and board but they interact with it's all about interaction so it doesn't have to be don't do drugs we know how that works and it's just developing a sense of belonging whether you're in a family or a classroom or a boy scout troop i think people think when we talk about education we're talking about high school and i'm not even talking about middle school because we definitely need to be in the middle school right i'm actually talking about going into grammar school right and i'm talking about taking them in the professor told me with the whole idea is the raccoon is the the body is is is is a child so most of you we want to put good things into your body you would what you really want to do is teach the younger generation that your body is a temple and that you only want to do the right things for your body and that putting drugs or putting other stuff that you don't know what it is is not the right thing to do and i think that you can do that at the grammar school level but there's a disconnect because they watch television and they're telling you to take drugs well  sixth grade you just can't come in and say we're going to do the seventh grade and that we're going to do the eleventh grade that's not going to work i think the bottom line is something that has to be a philosophy that's going to be carried right through those years the path that you don't want to go down the philosophy of embracing one another and loving one another it's like you know it's somewhere you language of the whole anguish of the hard time i mean that's it and we do not do heart centered education it is what worked when that man talk about chris brown and all the time he sat across from me and he told me about what my problem was and how to fix it and it works the same thing in a work tonight in our family group that we have it works every single time in the beginning he thought we were going to shoot for like i was like eighteen or twenty percent success ratio and i said we're going to go higher and it's because of now where you go with them is a different story and having that continuum but if i had the perfect continuum to then let's talk about now we would have a seventy eighty ninety percent because they don't this is this is how it is when i'm in active addiction you know people are saying to me you have so much potential you know you served the country you know you're so smart you're athletic why can't you just stop doing it and on the inside i'm saying i want to stop and i can't and that is the issue and because of my ego and self centered nature i'm never going to tell you that but i'm going to keep trying and i just keep it in a wall over and over again it was until someone reach across and said now i would never have but it was same thing as parasolid in the marine corps if i had known what i was going into and passed on i would never in a million years right but i did it you know and i would i wouldn't trade it for a million million dollars so is of because you're going inside you're going internal you're looking at all those scary ghosts that you never want to look at and you know you find out at the end of the day they weren't really that scary right that is the whole it's like my i love i love my my seven year old is our biggest challenge and we love her so much but you know she is you know we in the downstairs of her room is downstairs right by our room and a lot of times we're up stairs and you'll hear her you know when she's downstairs and same thing what are you scared of you know what are you scared of yeah scared of being human being there you go yeah and then as you said if you're willing to take the journey because you know i'm a life coach and so again it's always i tell them the news is really good i mean when we can't get inside and we look at what's there everybody is afraid they're going to find out how yucky they are but you're really going to find out it's the good news we'll be chasing after peace of mind yeah so forth  that's the bottom line the self worth and you know again from the law enforcement standpoint we just need to know that we can't do it by ourselves that we need to form the partnerships for the partnerships with the educational community with the health care community and the biggest is to be able to communicate and as long as we're able to communicate you know i think that we have a shot at this here's the thing that really on thrilled that you're here is because i've interviewed you know people who have been wrongfully convicted prosecutorial misconduct and i mean you can make a case for there are a lot of really uncaring people in the legal field but you're sitting here and you're talking about like really caring about people and really seeing them as human beings and really like caring that one hundred twelve or two hundred eleven overdosed and you're doing something about it so i think that's pretty amazing the question is who else should be doing this and isn't and what partners do you need that you don't have yet but from my standpoint people are listening people are talking there's a new approach that's going to address look at law enforcement are going to do their job we've always done our job we're going to work hard to try to address this but we realize now that we can't do it by ourselves and i think that we have to understand like i said that these are people to the human they're human beings and we need to adjust that someone's loved one ok and we need to make an attempt to try to get him out of that at that addiction now again i don't want people to misunderstand you still as part of recovery is that you have to be account amends and if you're in a true program of recovery i can come to you because i've wronged you and a man means to make right it's not i'm sorry so when i sit across from you and say how do i make this right and you say you owe me one hundred dollars i  have to pay you back the one hundred dollars whether it's twenty five cents a week or the whole hundred in one shot and you're entitled to tell me your real you know what and i'm supposed to take that into consideration say god bless you say a prayer for you and on my way and now i'm free yes i don't carry that around anymore that is me same thing if i go on rob a bank i have to be accountable for that may not like it i may not like it but guess what i'm going to have a program of recovery to deal with it and maybe god's got a job for me to go inside the jail and take start you know talking to guys about recovery and their hundred ninety four people have walked in we've not made any promises to any of those individuals they came in they all knew that they came in they wanted to help we said we're going to help you ok you know asking for money you know asking for anything you want help we're going to help it no promises i think it's up to me though in my judgment that later on when we review the charges not that i'm going to pass a wife and forgive them for what they write i'll take into it the accountability that they stepped up to the plate and that they want to help themselves but that doesn't exonerate them forever for what they totally get it the program works and you could see it in their life and the bottom line is people are thanking us years and you know that the family units take of the husbands and wives the mothers the fathers they realize that now there's a source there's a place that we can turn to that maybe there is a lifeline so to speak right so then i have another question you know money is an issue yeah you need to get grants and support and everything else also it occurs to me like people then start to compete for a slice of the pot no really really you know we did so and again you know you look at you know like the national government you know the f b i doesn't tell the cia and the cia now that's our piece of information our piece of the pie and we're not going to tell you this and you know it's like we're all little children in the playground protecting our little you know popsicle and we still have an elevated that conversation so i'm assuming that that's going on in the world of getting money for marriage and accountability it's like you were talking of the philosophy in the schools it's change people don't like it but it clearly has to happen based on the numbers and from my perspective when you do the right thing the right thing happens may not happen in the timeframe you want to be there's been a whole lot of money for a long period of time flowing into the same system so is that changing i think it's going to have to start to change just and i also think that what we really need to do is to wisely i mean i think you make it like i say for good sake make a good one initially and look at it it's a complex problem that needs to be looked at and but i think they are looking at it now and i think that i think again we're not going to buy or ways out of this problem you know too many ways we think if we just throw lot of money at the problem it's going to solve itself in this case it's not it's much more complex than that but do i think that money has to be placed in the right  house red are you going to pay me for the job probably not that's that's that's what has to have your pay me when i finally paint the house the color he asked me to paint it and that is the simplest form and it's  i have we're painting the house blue several times right now because we have you have to look take a look take a look you know that's that's an essence of it right so if i were going to call around table here to make you know so that top people who and i don't mean top in position but people who have the wisdom and the commitment to work together who would you want to be at that round table who would need to be here i think you need educators and i think you need health care socials i think you need certainly hospitals and some and some doctors as a result of it i think you need legislators because i think that that there has to be reimbursements and i think that you would need  i think you need some law enforcement people to begin to be a big table it's a big complex yet is not something that's something that's easy but i think if you sit down i mean they have to develop a best practice ok and they have to be looking at outcomes you know we just have a short period of time i just want to mention one thing because clearly things are changing that quickly i recently met a physician networking event and we were talking about the opioid epidemic and whatever and i said you know i had shown up at the emergency room and they immediately i was in pain and the doctor didn't even see me the nurse took down the notes and then they said ok we're going to have you morphine and i said well excuse me what and so i said no thank you why are we starting with a narcotic and they said oh well you know what do you suggest and i said how about tylenol or something like that so anyway he said that when anyone shows up into the emergency room and they're in pain the protocol mediately is either morphine or dead and thought it a lot ok so that's it he said if he's in the emergency room he was since those orders but that's it you want to know why it's like yes it's to health care and we have one minute it's the health grading system i mean so so who's in charge of the electoral college of the doctors you know the ninety's in the early two thousand and two pm that we're now paying the price after that type of procedure that went through the fact is they were looking at alternatives everybody was then put on this protocol which was what it was really happening but we are at the end of our time it's gone by so quickly thank you for being here for providing such really valuable information and things for people to think about so thank you and thank you both for being heartfelt you know  contributors and really your commitment to make a difference to pleasure and on absolutely same here thank you thank you my name is natasha sherman thank you for joining u