Teaching Sustainability To Improve Life – Seth Silverton

Dr. Mark Leeds [00:09] Welcome to The Rehab on the Mental Health News Radio Network. I am Dr. Mark Leeds and I will be your host. Join me in exploring the world of addiction treatment. How can we improve the ways that we help individuals to overcome addiction? The goal of treatment is to save lives and help people to get back on track to a path towards success and happiness in life. Seth Silverton is a senior level executive and business consultant with expertise in the fields of business operations, communication, team building, energy and natural resources management. Seth has a decades-long history of producing outstanding bottom-line results. Throughout his career, he has been engaged in thought leadership that combines the power of narrative with exploitation of trends to create sustainable organizations and promote healthy, productive working groups. Seth is an experienced and sought after speaker. He has presented on the TEDx red carpet as well as numerous corporate and community events. Over the past decade, he has worked as a sustainability educator and been a leader in corporate and community sustainability. He’s a creator and driving force behind a number of community-based organizations. Of particular note is Forktale, a stage-based story slam series which encourages the creation of community through personal narrative and locally sourced and prepared foods. Seth is also the founder of Village Roots, a 100% anonymous charity, which has so far delivered over $250,000 worth of organic foods to at-risk families and individuals in Midcoast Maine. Seth is an active community leader and sits on the board of directors of the Maine Energy Marketers Association and the Camden Windjammer Festival. Seth, thank you for joining me today and welcome to the Rehab Podcast. Yeah so yeah I wanted to start with Forktale Forktale is really interesting and I watched some of the videos and I listened to your story about the two guys or the three guys on the subway train that was yeah that was really entertaining and

Seth Silverton [02:26] Well if anybody if anybody wants to see those you can go to forktale.com f-o-r-k-t-a-l-e.com And thank you for your kind words about that. I did. I got I was fortunate enough to do a TED Talk about one of the programs that I’d started. Oh, I guess it’s about five years ago now. And the great thing about, you know, doing a TED Talk is well, they delineate, actually, it’s a TEDx talk. So it’s an independently organized TED Talk. It wasn’t organized by Big Ted, as they call it was organized by a TEDx in Maine. And the great thing about that is that you get to meet all sorts of amazing people in your community, which is really kind of what my work is all about in the first place. And I realized as I’m, as I, you know, that I’d gone through the process and the talks are kind of really carefully constructed and coached. And I realized as I was going through that process, that I kind of really became attached to the community of people that were, that were involved in creating the event. And as I’m standing on the stage, kind of, you know, looking out at, at, you know, three or four or 500 people or however many people were in the audience, I realized that it was kind of like an electronic campfire. You know, they were recording this and everybody was there and we were all sitting around in our village telling stories, you know, but the only thing that was missing was food. I was like, you know, what would be really great is if we were all like noshing while like telling stories, you know, if we were all just eating a community meal. And I thought, well, why don’t we just do that? So I created Forktale, which is an effort to bring a community together around stories that center on a theme. And we pair local foods with the theme. And really, when you think about it, my work is about bringing groups together to work more efficiently to deal with what’s popularly known in the nomenclature of the times as a paradigm shift, you know, where all the changes that we’re going through as a culture. And so that’s what ForkTales was. I thought, well, how do humans get together? We tell stories, right? And we eat. And lacking, you know, a campfire, we have our little electronic campfire. So that’s what ForkTales was. And so I started that and we’re doing another one. We’ve done two so far and we’re doing another one this summer. And the one that you referred to was stories about getting from point A to point B, you know, traveling stories. And that was a lot of fun. And it was it was really, really well received. And a lot of people went that went to it. And the next one is going to be called Waiter Check, Please, Stories from Bars and Restaurants. Well, of course, given today’s topic, maybe stories from restaurants would be more appropriate. But this one is going to be stories from bars and restaurants about, you know, the way in which any any intersection with a meeting of people around a restaurant or a bar. So the stories in Forktale Road Trip, which was the last one, was about how to featured stories that were based on getting from point A to point B. And an example of that would be one man told a story about he took a trip in his uncle’s Model T Ford with his uncle across country ending in Alaska. And so they got that was a wonderful story. And I encourage people to go see it on Forktale.com.

Dr. Mark Leeds [06:51] Oh, that’s great. And the food is prepared by by top chefs. I saw two of the chefs that has been featured.

Seth Silverton [07:00] Yes, yes. And, you know, one thing about this part of the world, I live in the mid coast of Maine. And one thing about the wonderful nature of this part of the world is that we have attracted a tremendous foodie culture to this part of the world. And there are I think we have more James Beard award winning and nominated chefs per capita than any other state. You know, we have a bunch of great restaurants here and people that come to visit us are always kind of swept off their feet. So in my circle of friends, I happen to be fortunate enough to have, you know, former Culinary Institute of America instructors and, you know, James Beard Award winners and just a wonderful collection of people that have tremendous skills. So, yeah, we dip into that. And so the food is great. And we typically try to do it so that as many people can attend as possible. It’s more of a community event than it is a dining destination. So we ask for a suggested donation. We don’t demand a ticket price.

Dr. Mark Leeds [08:17] Okay and I actually I wanted to ask you a question that came from one of my patients yeah she works on a local yacht and I guess it’s a privately owned yacht and I and she was telling me about you know all the places they travel to and she I think she does like the food service or whatever they do servicing a yacht and you know I guess they go to the hamptons and all those kind of places and I said have you ever been to camden maine You know, because I just learned about Camden through you and I thought, well, looks like there’s a lot of boating there. But I don’t know. Is it only these 19th century schooners or can like, you know, modern yachts actually go there and visit Camden?

Seth Silverton [08:56] No, Dr. Leeds, we actually have our fair share of Russian oligarchs that park their yachts out in the deep water as well. And harbormaster stephen pixley in camden will be happy to tell you that he can accommodate all manner of waterborne transportation in the harbor we have plenty of plenty of mooring available and it’s all taken advantage of however the camden windjammer festival is a festival which is held on Labor Day weekend every year. And we have the, as part of the organizing committee, our job is to keep the schooner culture and the working waterfront alive and accessible because it’s an important part of our national and local history. And so we have a number of schooners that are based out of Camden, Maine, and people take day trips on them and they also take longer overnight trips on them. And much like your patient’s job, food is what these things are famous for. So it’s a great vacation idea to take a schooner trip out of Camden, Maine, or certainly in the wintertime I think they all go down south. Many of them go to Key West.

Dr. Mark Leeds [10:16] Yeah, actually I saw that when you go to the website, There’s a website where they describe the Windjammer Festival for 2018, and there’s a link where you can visit the individual ship sites. And you can actually have the Louis R. French, Mary Day, American Eagle. So there’s actually these old, I guess, 19th century schooners with names, and they look almost like bed and breakfast type things where you can go on three- and four-day cruises and eat great food with the captains.

Seth Silverton [10:46] Yeah, yeah. And for instance, you have all different shapes and sizes. The Olat is a really nice little boat that you can take a day cruise on. Or if you wanted to go out for an overnight, there are ships like the La Donna, which is a recently refurbished schooner. And they have the executive chef. And the La Donna is a woman named Anna Miller. And she is a good friend of ours. And during the wintertime, she works at a local restaurant here called Point and McKay, which is one of my favorite morning time breakfast spots. Really, really experienced crew and staff. And what a wonderful experience to sail on a 19th century schooner that’s been refurbished off the coast of Maine. My job is my job at the Windjammer Festival just by the way is to organize the National Crate Racing Association Lobster Crate Race which is where we string lobster crates together, people run across the lobster crates in the water trying not to fall in and the person that does the most lobster crates in two minutes wins it’s a big event

Dr. Mark Leeds [12:02] Oh wow well that’s And you catch a lot of lobsters when you do that?

Seth Silverton [12:11] No, but you catch a lot of good video when you do it.

Dr. Mark Leeds [12:14] Oh, wow. Now, I wanted to ask you about the Woodshop School. Now, you have a farm. You live on a farm? Oh, okay.

Seth Silverton [12:27] Yeah. So the Woodshop School turned into, you know, I’m a business consultant now. But the idea of sustainability as a philosophy for how to run a business or how to engage in your daily life is really the idea of how to deal with cultural changes. I know that many people have a difficulty making their lives sustainable. And this manifests itself in a number of different ways. The Woodshop School was an effort to have people engage in sustainability practices with regard to their relationship with their place and their food. And to, you know, to experientially inform what it is that people, the relationship that people have with their food on a daily basis and in their environment on a daily basis and with their relationship with energy on a daily basis. So it was really an effort to inform decision making and build skills that would be not only useful in how to conduct one’s daily living, but also the broader point is to inform a worldview which is healthier in order. And the way it manifested itself, the Woodshop School turned into one of the offshoots of it was a project that I started called Village Roots, which I talked about, which you talked about in the introduction. And Village Roots was actually what got me into the TED Talk. I was able to grow organic food and deliver it to at-risk people here on the Midcoast. And I didn’t do it because I’m a nice guy. I did it philosophically to have the greatest impact with people that were most at risk. Because if you think about it, you know, informing dietary choices with people who typically absorb the worst possible calories available is a way in which you can have the greatest economic impact on the on the well, not the least of which on the public health system. So people who understand about the fact that they’re not roped into the food that’s available on their WIC card or on their EBT card from the supermarket with limited funds that they have. People who understand the experientially the difference between food that they grow themselves and food that they buy from the shelves which might not be healthy for them if you engage in that process you disrupt all sorts of unhealthy behaviors and so that was my goal with village roots and you know I always tell the story One time we were making a delivery. I had managed to fund a portion of the budget through my local Masonic chapter. And I was able to strike a deal where I was able to buy from a local organic distributor late as short dated items and all sorts of food that was going to be otherwise composted or thrown in the dumpster. And I would go pick it up from the distributor and then deliver it to food pantries and soup kitchens. And I was making a delivery to a soup kitchen one day, excuse me, to a food pantry one day, the Camden Christian Food Pantry here in Camden, Maine. And there was just a mom and a daughter there and I was delivering broccoli, organic broccoli. And this six-year-old kid said, ooh, broccoli, can we have some broccoli? And so that kind of, you know, that kind of stuck with me. You know, you think about all the food choices that a six-year-old kid that hadn’t been introduced to all of that, everything that’s floating around in our culture. You know, all of the different information influences that kid has now. I felt good that the process of cheap calories and high fructose corn syrup and a high carb diet was being disrupted. And so I wanted to engage in this disruption of that as well. And it’s a successful program. It’s a great feeling. And it’s not an isolated thing. There are people now in this area that are doing it as well. So I’m very proud of that.

Dr. Mark Leeds [17:40] Okay. And what was the name of that program again?

Seth Silverton [17:43] Village Roots. Village Roots. Village Roots. Yeah. Okay. But essentially, you know, just delivering. And that’s something that, you know, I was thinking about the nature of, you know, the nature of your practice and the nature of the people who I’m engaged with now, what their practices are. And to me, the idea of recovery in general has to do with, and, you know, I’m not involved, I’m not a doctor, and I’m not involved in any clinical applications whatsoever or any clinical jobs. And I don’t interface with patients. But I do interface with people. And I know that when people are engaged in their community and people have the experience of acting compassionately towards other human beings and helping them with their lives, that has a physiological biochemical effect on people for the positive. And I know that people like the author and public speaker Andrew Solomon, who did a wonderful moth podcast called Notes on an Exorcism. And he was a man who was depressed. He was living in New York and he was writing a book on depression and the root causes of depression. And he said that he wanted to travel to Africa to find out how different cultures dealt with depression. And he realized that I’ll urge anybody listening to this podcast to go and listen to Andrew Solomon’s podcast and read his books. But he realized that this story that I’m about to tell summarized his experiences. He went to Africa and he was talking with the person who was essentially the surgeon general that was involved in the Tutsis and the Hutus genocide. And he said, you know, we had after the genocide, we had American psychiatrists come over. He said Western psychiatrists come over to our country. But we had to ask them to leave. He said, well, why did you have to ask them to leave? He said, well, the first thing is they took people and they put them in a room and they talked about bad things and they didn’t have them outside where the sun is shining, where people typically feel better. He says, and then and then they, you know, they gave them medicines and as opposed to all the natural cures that we had. And all they wanted to do was talk about bad things instead of talking about good things. Finally, we had to ask them to leave. It’s a completely different cultural understanding of how people start to feel better, you know. And I was kind of like, well, that’s kind of an indictment of Western medicine. But even so, you know, the way that humans feel better about themselves sometimes is when they’re involved with other humans in groups. And so I think there’s a value to that. And I am a big proponent of that in my work, and it’s a driving force of my worldview. I think that we should act, consciously act to promote in the business world. I think that we should constantly act to promote people and to go out of our way to help people who we associate with. And I think that if you put that energy out there, it comes back to you tenfold. And so that’s my worldview. If I had to do a subheading of what my consulting business would be, I would call myself the business rabbi.

Dr. Mark Leeds [21:44] Yeah, yeah, that sounds great. Actually, when I was imagining the whole thing, I was imagining the woodshop school and the farm and village roots and everything. I imagined actually something. I’m always thinking of alternate therapies for addiction treatment, not just putting people, like you said, in a room with a psychiatrist or even in a group meeting. Groups are great. 12-step meetings are great. But yeah, I mean, some of these residential treatment centers, they have some really great programs like equine therapy, where you get to go out and ride horses, music therapy, art therapy, or even just getting outside and walking on the beach and into the water and nature. Sure there’s a program near us at a I think a church runs it and they actually they put the people to work in a I think they have a thrift shop and if you go into the thrift shop the residents who are recovering from addiction are actually working in the thrift shop you know selling televisions and couches and you know it’s a good place and they’re doing good work and you know that people get to live there and I don’t think they have to pay anything for that program you know but they put them to work and I just so I just kind of put it together I was imagining, you know, this farm where, and I don’t know if you were doing this or not, if you had people recovering from addiction who were in the woodshop school at that time or working on the farm. And I understand that.

Seth Silverton [23:15] I absolutely feel, I absolutely understand exactly where you’re going. I didn’t is the answer. But I wonder, Mark, whether you will see the logic of what I’m about to say or not. It seems to me that the continuation or the narrative or the tangent of that person’s story who’s in recovery. So that person is going to go into a group setting and that person is going to interact with a group. And then because that person’s recovery in rehab is over, that person is going to move on with their lives and hopefully take the lessons of that experience and move forward with them. But what I think what we’re saying is that there it’s a truncated effort. In other words, that person has an experience that lasts 30, 60 or 90 days. They begin to metabolize the idea of what it is to heal in a group setting. They hopefully will compost and plant and grow food and begin to experience maybe a biochemical effect from the soil and the composting and all of the experiential parts of that process that we talk about but we can’t really experience because it has a biochemical effect on the brain, in my opinion, as does, by the way, I think, laughter in a group. And so then that ends and that person is on their own again. And I think that is the challenge of what it is that you’re describing. We have to be able to figure out a way to have that person who is continually in recovery for the rest of their life engage in that process on an ongoing basis. And that means that I think it’s incumbent upon us as leaders to turn them into leaders in that field. They should continue to create that feeling of fellowship as they move forward in their life and adopt upon themselves the idea that they need to create a community a healthy community in order to progress with their own recovery and that it’s an essential part of their own recovery in many ways I think this is what a 12-step based program is all about and that’s I mean I’ve not that I have any personal experience with a 12-step program but I understand the concepts of a 12-step program and I know that the people that I meet that have been through 12-step programs are emotional that I just think of them as emotional leaders if they successfully go through these programs. So they turn into the village elders that, you know, you go to for advice.

Dr. Mark Leeds [26:29] Yeah. Yeah. And building a network or building a village is part of that where, you know, they say, you know, get rid of your, stop going to the places you’re going to, get rid of the old phone numbers. But when you go to a meeting, ask for phone numbers, you know, they need to get in the habit of, you know, when you go into a meeting, talk to people, ask for their phone number their name and start calling them and, you know, start building that new network and, you know, that support system that you’ll have to lean on and fall back on. And, you know, and if you’re in the habit of calling somebody every day and saying, you know, for example, I’m okay, I’m clean 10 days, I’m clean 20 days. And, you know, when something bad happens, you’re in that habit already. Rather than reaching for a drug, you reach for the phone and call somebody that can help you. And, you know, having a large network of people, you know, if that first person doesn’t answer, you’ve got another 30, 50 people you can call after that.

Seth Silverton [27:21] Yeah, and that’s the big, I think sometimes, you know, that even in any world, sometimes people are just, it’s a big hump to get over, you know. People asking for something of somebody else, that’s a big hump to get over for a lot of people. And once you do it, I think it really sets the preconditions for success. Yeah. But, you know, my feeling is it not only sets the preconditions for success, but it sets the preconditions for success in so many other elements of life. Because, you know, when somebody becomes conversant in helping other people, it doesn’t just stop with other members of a 12-step program. You know, you become that person in your community that could conceivably help other people. You become the person that could conceivably be dropping off broccoli for a little girl who likes broccoli instead of burgers, you know?

Dr. Mark Leeds [28:21] Right, right. And I think you said as part of that program, the second condition after being anonymous is that they give back and pay it forward by continuing that program where that same little girl who got the broccoli might be providing broccoli for other little girls in the future and that she might be the one planting and growing and giving out the broccoli.

Seth Silverton [28:42] Hopefully. And but you know from from the 50 000 foot perspective then you think about you know with or you know getting outside of our own heads a little bit if you think about it from a public policy perspective think about the impact on a public health system that’s stressed economically like MaineCare you know in my state think about the fewer visits to the emergency room later on in life. If that caught fire in this state, what would the impact on our state’s economy be? It would be tremendous. And you’d have better decision making across the board. And it’s almost impossible to identify the positive impacts that you would get from popular adoption of this type of worldview.

Dr. Mark Leeds [29:40] Yeah. I was curious just with the, in the woodshop school when you’re doing it and with the sustainability in general, did you at any point address water quality? Because I know, for example, in Michigan, they have the issue with lead in the water.

Seth Silverton [29:53] I’m really glad, yeah.

Dr. Mark Leeds [29:57] Yeah, and I was kind of imagining that, in a way, this is disaster preparation. Instead of like building your own shelter underground, you’re kind of making the community into your shelter.

Seth Silverton [30:05] And it’s exactly, yeah, that’s exactly the point.

Dr. Mark Leeds [30:07] Yes. I mean, so then how did you address the issue of water, you know, clean water?

Seth Silverton [30:12] Yeah. So I’m glad you asked that because I’ve I’ve spoken on this subject publicly a number of times. I’ve most my most recent speech on the subject focused on demographic shift. And I think, you know, Dr. Leeds, the things that we’re dealing with as a nation are, you know, so profound in their implications just in terms of water scarcity alone. Water scarcity, I think, is the resource problem of the next millennium. In Maine, we have nothing but water. Geologically, our state is like a giant sponge. We have several trillion gallons of runoff a year in the state of Maine. In other parts of the country, we discover that climate shift is making water a big issue for many people. Water equals food, by the way. As an example, the aquifer that the nation’s breadbasket sits on top of is in distress and decline in many areas. It’s called the Ogallala Aquifer, and it branches out from, well, essentially from east to west and north to south. And in many places, it’s in great distress. They’re pumping mud out of it. And it’ll take 10,000 years to replenish the Ogallala Aquifer. It doesn’t replenish immediately. So our nation’s food sources is in distress. And my thesis is, my central thesis is that as water becomes more scarce in other parts of the country, you’ll begin to see demographic shifts north. The last great demographic shift in this country came as a result of World War II, when the skilled working force went off to Europe to fight, and the skilled working force in the United States was replaced largely by women and by African Americans who migrated to the industrial centers of the United States. And this great skills building in those two communities with women and with African-Americans really set the preconditions for equal rights and civil rights and the way that our country looks today. If it weren’t for World War II, we would still have a we’d have a much different looking cultural tableau. My point about that is that it is going to be the next great demographic shift is going to be people in search of potable water. You always have people from California window shopping here for housing in Maine And you have people from your state who have residents in both states in the Northeast and in Florida And so that’s the great next demographic shift is going to be because of water scarcity. And you’ll, I mean, climate change is something that is hopefully reversible, but it’s not something that we’re making any great progress with now. And we have some very real public health and social issues coming as a result of climate change and water scarcity in other parts of the world. And then you have the issue that you spoke about earlier in Michigan is an issue really of crumbling infrastructure as opposed to climate change but it just so happens that it’s they’re related to each other they’re just not direct there’s no direct correlation yeah

Dr. Mark Leeds [34:54] And when you talk about migration it reminds me of I know there’s a trend now towards smaller living spaces tiny houses I mean you see it all over online you know people living in a tiny little house that’s like several square feet. And in Miami, I know that there’s like these condos where they’re bragging about these tiny, I think they call them tiny condos, where it costs as much as a regular condo, but now you’re living in a little efficiency. And they’re packing as many as they can into these buildings. And there’s actually a movie coming out this month, I think, where they show, if you look in the trailer, the beginning, it’s called Ready Player One. And you see these trailer homes stacked up on these towers, you know, towering up to the sky, but they’re trailer homes. I mean, just, I mean, that I’m sure would be very scary for you to see in Camden, Maine. You know, everybody’s packing in there in these tiny little homes stacked up.

Seth Silverton [35:44] I’m 52 years old, and I don’t think I’ll see it in my lifetime. But the idea is, and yeah, I think that’s a Steven Spielberg film. Yeah. And they have another thing floating around on Twitter now where you have 3D printed homes. In other words, a construction site scaled 3D printer can print a home for, you know, $40,000, you know, on a cement platform. That’s a fascinating thing. And maybe all homes in the future will be printed instead of constructed.

Dr. Mark Leeds [36:21] Yeah. Maybe, I mean, I don’t know. I know for a lot of men could probably would be fine living, you know, if you ask them, they’re like, well, even if they live in a mansion, they’d be fine living in a little room. I don’t know. I don’t know if that would work for everybody. But, you know, that’s I mean, you see that in a lot of science fiction. Everybody lives in a little tiny capsule because there’s no more space. And it seems unrealistic. You know, maybe if the population grows or maybe if we all have to crowd into the one little area that still has good, clean water. Yeah yeah

Seth Silverton [36:51] I just you know I hesitate to make predictions about that kind of thing but it’s important to be mindful of the circumstances around us and that not only issues of water scarcity and you know by the time things stop showing up on your supermarket shelf it’s already too late. But it’s important to understand that we’re in a time of tremendous change. And the Hopi, I remember reading this message from the elders of the Hopi nation, and they talked it’s actually quite compelling. They said, you know, that it seems as if the river of change is picking up pace. And there’s going to be two kinds of people. There will be the kinds of people that cling to the shore with their hands and hold on as hard as they can. And the current will pick up and pick up and just tear them apart because the change is happening too quickly. And the ones that will be able to deal with it are the ones that will push off from the river’s edge and meet in the middle and forge the river together. And so that kind of is the idea behind my worldview and my work, that we are stronger together. It’s incumbent upon us to help people. And if failing helping people, if at least you can’t help people, then try not to hurt anybody.

Dr. Mark Leeds [38:30] Yeah and there’s a there’s a thing I heard somewhere recently you know about it’s important to have all different kinds of worldviews and people and like you know I might not agree with the politics of somebody else or somebody to you know in society might not look successful to us at this point but that might be a competitive advantage in the future one thing I actually was thinking about that was that was interesting I don’t know if you watch the show, they have Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead. In Fear the Walking Dead, one of the main characters is a heroin addict, which does not seem like a competitive advantage. Obviously, in today’s society, it’s a very deadly thing to have because of the poisoning of the heroin supply with fentanyl and carfentanil. But in the story, apparently in a world of the post-apocalyptic world of zombies walking everywhere. Apparently being a heroin addict is a competitive advantage, where he’s comfortable with covering himself in the guts of zombies and appearing invisible. And I remember there’s one scene where one of the characters, he says, well, what am I going to do? I’m an addict. And the guy says, don’t sell yourself short. You’re the gold standard of addicts. You’re a heroin addict. And it’s true throughout the show. He’s the one that survives while everybody else is one by one going down. And you know so it’s just I mean that’s just to tie it in with addiction but it’s true I mean that you know that you’ve got the liberals and conservatives and all kinds of different people and you never know what we’re going to need in the future and what kind of people today are going to be the ones that carry us through you know and when things change

Seth Silverton [40:13] I think you know the interesting thing about our political conversation now our national political conversation now, is that it’s not a conversation so much about policy as it is about change. And you have people that have embraced Donald Trump because of their disenfranchisement. They seem to have been absolutely disenfranchised. And that is true. You have an entire group of people that cannot process what’s happening to them in their lives. Much of it has to do with their economic circumstance prior to the emergence of Donald Trump as a political entity. And so it’s not really a question of political policy, in my opinion as it is so much people not being able to emotionally process this cultural change that’s happening around us the cultural change which is being accelerated by advances in technology and what the job market looks like as a result of that and the desperation that these people feel also manifests itself in your field, which is a flight to opioids as an anesthetic against this tremendous change that maybe can’t be dealt with. And we see people having more and more problems processing it. But the political conversation, that’s another one hour.

Dr. Mark Leeds [42:03] Oh, yeah. One issue that we have that’s a big problem in the treatment of opioid addiction specifically is the fact that there’s an addiction support community that’s been around for probably a century. And NA was founded in 1952 and became a large, much more organized organization in, I think, 1982. And throughout the 80s, they developed their literature. And then when methadone became a thing, they had an official, in 1996, they came out with a pamphlet called Bulletin 29 on their opinion on drug replacement programs. And they now have a more recent literature on suboxone and buprenorphine treatment. And so there’s kind of a disconnect between medical treatment and the 12-step recovery community where, you know, they, And in general, probably the best thing we have for the treatment of addiction is maybe the 12-step program. And the 12 steps are excellent, and NA is a great program. And maybe one of the best things about NA is whether you agree or disagree with the way they do things. In almost any city in the world, you can find an NA meeting almost any day of the week. I mean, where I live, you could probably find 20 of them a day. So overall, it’s a great program. But on the other hand, I’ve had patients who have relapsed because they went to meetings and they were told that they have to come off their medication because they’re not clean and they can’t participate or do service or get involved until they’re off their medication. And, you know, so just in that case, you know, it’s just an issue maybe of a traditional program not being up to date with modern medical technology. And, you know, it’s a difficult situation.

Seth Silverton [43:46] Yeah, it’s a difficult situation. And I don’t know that the answers are provided in any kind of rigid, you know, exclusive approach. I can’t imagine going to a meeting of people looking for help and then asking somebody not to participate in the meeting. That seems kind of counterintuitive to me. But I understand the place that it comes from. These are the people that need help the most.

Dr. Mark Leeds [44:25] There’s actually a more recent pamphlet. I think they updated the policy where they originally said you can’t share in a meeting. Now they say it’s up to the individual group to allow people on medication if they want to let them share or not, which is an improvement.

Seth Silverton [44:39] I think that’s probably right. Of course, I don’t really have a tremendous amount of experience with that. So I, you know, I’m a business consultant and my, you know, my interface with this industry is connecting people with each other because that’s what I do. So I don’t really have any experience on the clinical end, so I can’t really speak to it. But I do know that human beings tend to flourish when they’re helped by other human beings.

Dr. Mark Leeds [45:11] Yeah. Yeah. And it’s a difficult situation for all of us. Like, for example, there’s a new medication coming out, which may be very, you know, it may change everything in medical treatment as far as it’s a monthly injectable buprenorphine. And it’ll help with compliance. And it looks, I mean, we’ll know when it comes out because they do studies of like 200 people at a time. And, you know, when a drug is released, then you see the study out in public of millions of people. And you’ll see, you know, what the real consequences are when you give thousands or millions of people a drug. But the problem is I went to a lecture provided by the company, and they say, well, the best thing for patients is to put them on this for life, just indefinitely every month come back for your injection. And, well, on one hand, we want to keep our patients alive and safe. I’m like, well, that sounds great. Let’s keep them safe. If they keep getting their monthly injection, they won’t relapse. But on the other hand, is it just a drug company trying to sell more injections, and should we be trying to get them off? I mean, ideally, if we could get all this fentanyl off the streets and cut off the supply, it’s a difficult situation because, I mean, is it the drug companies? Are we just playing into their advertising or is it really the best and safest thing? It’s a complicated issue all around, even for us. I mean, we don’t always know the best thing, what to do in the medical profession.

Seth Silverton [46:32] I think this is where the idea of faith comes in. You have to have faith that there will be a path forward if you keep doing the right things for your patients. And you have to have faith that if you keep doing what you’re doing and to the best of your ability, that medical technology will provide an answer.

Dr. Mark Leeds [47:06] Yeah

Seth Silverton [47:07] And of course you know and of course there that’s I can’t imagine that’s an answer for every patient so you know a monthly injection in perpetuity just to me you know there are people that talking therapy seems like would be the right answer

Dr. Mark Leeds [47:28] Oh well that yeah and just to just to be clear about that’s officially always part of a medication assisted program, when a person takes any form of suboxone, buprenorphine, or methadone, there’s always supposed to be talking therapy required and group therapy is recommended. So yeah, it’s not just medication alone. But then with therapy, you hope you get the best therapist for that particular person and they connect and actually come up with a good solution going forward. And, you know, it’s a difficult situation. And ideally, if we could just get all, I mean, I don’t know how realistic it is to get all these deadly poisons and drugs off the streets. But that would help a lot.

Seth Silverton [48:11] You know, Mark, I’m also reminded of the work of Dr. Anna Yusim, Y-U-S-I-M. And she recently wrote a book called Fulfilled, which I think should be required reading for anybody seeking to improve their understanding of how recovery happens. She approaches her practice through the idea of connecting people with a spiritual place in relation to her work as a psychiatrist. So I that’s a great that’s a great book that I won’t talk more about it because I’m it’s yet another hour of work I’ve I’ve I’ve heard her speak and she is an extraordinarily compelling figure and I liken her to a rising Deepak Chopra so Dr. Anna Yusim is somebody who I would also point to in terms of expanding my base of knowledge in this field.

Dr. Mark Leeds [49:36] Yeah, and I’ll just say quickly, that reminds me, and I’m going to put links for that into the show notes so people can find her book and videos. And it reminds me, I had read some books. Are you familiar with the author Michael Singer, Mickey Singer? Really interesting person. He was featured with Oprah. He was one of her featured authors for a while. And he writes about meditation and silencing the voice that you hear in your head all the time. And actually he had founded a meditation temple in the woods in Alachua, Florida. But he also is known for building up, I think, a billion-dollar company, Medical Manager, which was a popular software program used by medical offices for a long time. […] And so he wrote a book called The Untethered Soul. And he wrote another one. I don’t see the title here. Anyway, his place, I actually had visited it. I was in Gainesville, and I was just a few miles away, so I thought, let me just drive out in the woods and find the place. It’s called The Temple of the Universe. And it’s you know you can actually sit down and listen to Mickey lecture and you know he’s right there and they’re meditating they’re doing yoga they’re living out the woods and you know when it was over I told him I said this place is great I said I wish I could come back more often he said well why don’t you know and I looked around I see there’s people who are there all the time they’re serving they’re part of the community and you know spirituality I think is a maybe a protected area of the brain and when addiction hits a person, it takes over a person’s thinking and uses their best thinking against them. But the spiritual part of the brain, I think, is protected. And that’s a place a person can go to be safe from addiction. And, you know, it kind of brings back, you know, being outside in the sunshine, you know, going to these places in the woods and to the beach and growing foods and meditation. I mean, you know, these are the kind of things when a person’s like alone in a dark room shooting up heroin, you know, maybe they just don’t realize that all this life is out there.

Seth Silverton [51:46] I agree with you. I agree with you. I think that, and that is a process of experiential knowledge. You have to know that it’s there.

Dr. Mark Leeds [51:55] Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, and I recommend if you ever are in Florida, if you happen to be passing through Gainesville, look that place up to tou.org, Temple of the Universe. It’s, you know, a great place to visit. I actually, before I went to his lecture that night, I kind of wandered around the woods of my own and there’s nobody, nobody approaches you, nobody to stop you can kind of just wander around, look at the deer. And, you know, and then at some point when the lecture came up, I went up to the hand-built wooden house where the temple is and just people sitting out and, you know, it was raining and, you know, the people are coming out from the yoga and meditation classes. You know, it was a really nice place.

Seth Silverton [52:32] Oh, cool. What a nice discovery.

Dr. Mark Leeds [52:35] Oh, yeah, yeah. And I’m sure there’s a lot of places out there like that. Just, you know, So I definitely want to come visit Camden. I was going to ask you, are you involved or are you familiar with the harp community? I read that there’s a harp community in Camden. You know, harp players. H-A-R-P. H-A-R-P. Yeah, the instrument, the harp, you know, like playing the harp. Yeah, that might be something interesting to look into also. I looked that up and I guess there’s a society of harp players or, you know, they have their own festivals or gatherings or something like that.

Seth Silverton [53:09] Oh, that’s interesting. Well, no, I, my, unfortunately, my not-for-profit dance card is fully punched.

Dr. Mark Leeds [53:20] Oh, yeah, yeah. So, okay, yeah, so anyway, I think we’re at about an hour. I don’t want to take up too much of your time, and I would love it if you could come back again in the future and we can talk more, because we could talk for hours, I think. Seth Silverton. You can find his website at SethSilverton.com. Yeah, and we’re going to put all those links in the show notes so you can follow Seth and communicate. And thank you again. It’s been a great show. Thank you for joining us today on The Rehab on the Mental Health News Radio Network. I hope that you have found this show to be interesting and useful. If so, please subscribe to the Rehab Podcast and share on social media. I appreciate your taking the time to listen to the Rehab.