45: Teens & Parents, Mental Health, Drugs, & Healing as a Family Unit // The Story of Aaron Huey

I had already made my Ten Commandments and broke them all. Within 24 hours, I had already almost killed my daughter while I was getting high in my truck, driving down the highway and had to swerve off the road. And in that moment, she woke up in the car seat and said, are you okay, Daddy? And I'm like, good God, I'm a terrible person. I finally just said, you have to make me quit. And on May 21, 1998, rock bottom, they made me quit. What if the focus became how we did it? What if it mattered less what we did and more how we did it? Do you love it so much that you're giving your heart to the work? Passion sells. Passion sells so much. And if your passion is for laundry detergent, then go sell laundry detergent. If your passion is for teaching orphans that you've rescued from human trafficking, then go do it.

Welcome to From Rock Bottom to Rockin It. I'm your host, Eric Gilbert Williams, and this is the podcast where we explore personal stories of people who hit absolute rock bottom, then got back up, wiped off the dust, kicked failure to the curb, and now they're rocking it like you'd never believe if you didn't hear it. Live Right here, we cover subjects in business, sports, and life in general. If you like this podcast, please share it. These interviews are intended to inspire, to motivate, to give hope and vision. So please share this episode with someone who needs it. Use your Instagram account, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. Hand signals, trained pigeon sent smoke signals up in the air. Use Morse code, whatever you like. Just share the love and share this episode. Also, email me anytime. Podcastricilbertwilliams. Send me questions you would like to have asked of future guests and I will incorporate them. Or just send me some suggestions on how to run a better podcast. Or just say hello, I'd love to hear from you. That's podcasterrickgilbertwilliams.com I know you're going to love today's interview, so let's get started. With us here today on From a Rock Bottom to Rockin, it is Aaron Huey. Aaron is a internationally known lecturer on archetypal imagery, body language and martial arts. And he. He's the founder and president of Fire Mountain Programs, which has had a lot of interesting and sudden things happen to it, which we're going to talk about on the show here. And since 2004, Aaron has been running kids camps, teen camps, and family programming. In 2009, he and his wife Christine, opened a residential mental health and dependency Recovery treatment center for teens ages 12 to 17 in Colorado. I do wish they had one of those in my hometown of Ontario. I probably would have been there either way. Fire Mountain Residential Treatment center was named in 2019 one of the top 50 healthcare providers in the United States. And in 2020, it was named one of the top 100 innovators in healthcare all across. Aaron, welcome to the show. Really glad to have you here and so much to talk about. I relate so much to a lot of the initiatives that you do and some of your past as well. So I don't even know where to get started. Let's just get started anywhere. What's going on, man? How are you doing today?

I'm doing great, Eric. Thanks for having me on your show. I really appreciate it. Yeah, this has been a trip, 2021 for us. I thought we were going to make it through 2021 unscathed. We did really well in 2019 just being a good, strong community sport. And then in 2021, I got blindsided by global warming. It's just the last thing. Running a treatment center for children, a mental health and addiction treatment center, a school winning all these awards, top of the game out here. And a small mom and pop shop. My wife and I owned it. We started it in our home. It grew and grew and grew. It's just a great story with one of the highest success rates in the United States. And then all of a sudden, my insurance policy, my property insurance policy killed my business. I went from 20,000 a year to $470,000 a year. And that cost still didn't cover the value of my property. And it was because of the fires in Colorado. And that's what insurance companies do. They find a high fire zone and they start raising rates. They price people out. And of course, because we have children in our facility and 33 staff and staff that live on, no one was willing to take the risk with us. And So I closed September 27th. I shut my doors to my treatment facility that my wife and I began, like I said, in our home in 2009. And it was something that I never thought I would do is run a treatment center, be a healthcare administrator, run a school. And it became something I didn't know how to live without. But since September, you do it. I'm not done doing the work. I'm not done helping families. And I think the biggest lesson I walked away with was the ability to look back at 2009-2021 and say, what did we do really well? How did we get this success? And the first thing was we did good stuff with kids. I mean, we did great stuff with kids. We worked extensively with LGBTQA kids and their families with kids who weren't lgbtqa. Like, the kids work with wolves. Once a month, they would go out, they would be in the enclosures at a wolf sanctuary, learning how to settle their nervous systems and regulate their energy so that wolves would eat out of their hands. Like, we did really kick ass stuff. But it was the stuff we did with parents that made us as successful as we were. Our success rate came from interviewing parents 3 months, 6 months and years later. And it was the work that the parents had done while they were with us that was keeping the family system in recovery. Not just my kids making bad choices. I got to send them to treatment and they better make better choices. And then they come home and the whole family goes, yay, you're different. That's not how recovery works. That's not how we worked. We put the entire family into a recovery program and parents recovered. And because the parents recovered, the majority, 89% of our graduates, the kids followed their parents into recovery. That is what we've said. Okay, in this hustle 2.0, we're doing the parent thing and we're focusing there.

So for context here, for everyone listening, this is the first time this ever happened for me. But I'm recording the intro here for Aaron and it turns out I got it all wrong. And the reason I got it all wrong was because I wasn't aware of some of the current facts and situations that happen. People who live in a fire zone or that were affected by some of the major fires that happened, you know, literally all across North America, United States, Canada, both. So what's happened is these fires that raged around Colorado specifically in this case, ended up obviously wrecking havoc all over the place. And that havoc triggers a lot of insurance and insurance claims. And insurance companies have to come out and pay for all that damage. And coincidentally, I used to be in construction, residential construction, and I had a lot of insurance clients. So I really, you know, have a hands on working understanding of how, you know, some of that process and procedure works. And when there's a big event, whether it's hail or fire, and it just wrecks havoc, then insurance companies have to fork out all this money. Once they fork out all of this money, then it changes their risk assessments. Their risk assessments, rightly or wrongly, or fairly or unfairly, I should say, end up affecting the insurance rates for people in those areas. If they're lucky enough to even still be able to get insurance for, you know, some places in Calgary, here after the flood, if you lived in a zone, insurance was not even available. If you were in an area of certain hail risks, you were not allowed to get insurance at all. So if you were even allowed to get insurance, which of course you need insurance to operate any business, if you could, then it's going to be at an extraordinarily higher rate than it was before. And I hadn't bumped into a case yet where it put a company out of business. And that's what happened here. And I didn't know that. I had absolutely no idea. So we had to, I had to rerecord this intro because I was learning on the fly and this is such a moment for people to consider that the effects of major storms, whatever that source may be, if it's global warming, that's always something that we're probably going to be faced with more and more these types of random acts of whatever you want to call it, strike in moments when we don't anticipate it and what are we going to do about it? Right. And Aaron's just described it, what he is going to do about it. So this is the context of what's happening today on the show which is so much embodying the name of rock bottom to rockin it. So Aaron, there's my little context for you there.

You know you talk about the left hook out of left field however you want to say it. I think back because I had to let 33 staff go. I had to let 16 children and their families know that their treatment was going to be cut short. And I think back hindsight, trying to use this 2020 hindsight, nobody planned put in their five year business strategy. They didn't plan for Covid. And once we got hit by Covid out here, we vaccinated every staff member. We expected parents and children to work with the program to be vaccinated and we got vaccinated. Regardless of what I think about vaccines, it's irrelevant. These are other people's children, these are other people's families and we are literally a health clinic. And so we were very clear, this is what it is. And we had some staff push back and we said you're welcome to work elsewhere but if you're going to work here, we're going to do this. And we had buy in. The staff said no, we're here to do this thing for other families. And then all of a sudden I've Gotten so much support from people saying, have you thought about this? I know an insurance agent, we tried so much. We had seven different brokers looking for policies. And then the biggest feedback I got was, why don't you just move the program? And the answer is, because I own that property. That was an investment into our business. The future of our business was going to grow on this 40 acre facility that had four houses and a huge lodge with individual 17 rooms and private bathrooms in each room, and hiking trails and horse pasture and a garden and a basketball court, and on and on and on. And I still have to own and pay for that mortgage, even though the kids and the income is gone. And so this has been an absolute trust turn in life. But like I said, when this happened, all I knew is that I wasn't done doing this work. Like, I knew that I had to find another way to make sure that everybody, not just the people who could afford treatment for their children or had the insurance policies that could help them afford treatment for the children, but that everybody can have access to. The information that we found was our best tool, tactic and trick and technique for recovery. And that was teaching the parents how to recover. So that's been the focus since. And it's going amazing. It's going extremely well. I really miss having a facility. I miss having a home for teenagers, a school.

I wonder when people are struck with. When I'm struck with a disaster, and anyone who knows me knows I've been hit by a few. But when I'm struck with a disaster, there's this moment where it's either over or it's just getting started. And in some instances, depending on the situation, that thing might be over for me. But in other instances, no, no, no, no. You know, I'm just getting this started. You know, they could do this all day. And other people in more severe situations maybe crumble under the pressure or under the weight of whatever it is that you want to call it, and it leads them down into a darker path. And I'm wondering about, you know, you're describing the let's just keep going attitude. Let's keep rebuilding. You're demonstrating resiliency here. And I'm wondering how much of that is a choice versus a byproduct in our DNA and how much influence do we have? You know, because this is such a pivotal thing. When people are hit with a rock bottom or a disaster, why do some people crumble and other people get stronger?

You know, obviously, I'm just going to give my opinion through this but you asked about the hammers and the swords on my wall behind me and the hammers around my neck.

And everyone listening here and not watching the video, you got to know I'm looking at an amazing array, an amazing collection of looks like samurai swords. We got Thor's hammer. You know, I don't even know which one's going to outdo the other here. This is an amazing setup.

So. So this one I also have sitting over here for all my kid and teen clients. I have about 17 throwing axes over.

Here, because why not?

Brand new spear tips for.

There you go.

Coming up here. This and. And the.

I have a USB stick.

The reason why I bring that up is because spiritually, a lot of people's spiritual input and advice. For me, when this. When this dream had suddenly ended, it didn't collapse. It didn't get taken from me. I don't see it like that. I see that it ended abruptly and it was not the way I wanted it to end. And so I certainly had my control issues come up, which launched out my adhd, which set my triggers into space, which means I wanted sugar, and then I wanted to get high, and then I wanted to drink, and then I. Like there was a domino effect, but as an addict, I can stand outside my own dominoes and go, woo, those are falling. You better remove some down the line and give some people some heads up. And going to my wife and saying, I'm really struggling right now and I'm not going to be much help for the next month, because I am. I'm going into complete impulse and compulsion, and this is where I relapse. This is where I break. But philosophically, a lot of people were saying spiritually, philosophically, Aaron, when God closes one door, he opens another, or closes a window and opens a breezeway or whatever. Well, the spiritual path and the philosophy of the Norse spiritual path would dictate to me that if someone closes a door on you, you kick a hole in the wall. And I gave myself three days to say, you can mourn this, you can let this go. You can be with this death, this shadow time, this dark night of the soul for three days, but you can't afford four. And now I'm sure stuff will come up later in life because that's what happens when we pack things in the closet. We find it later. But I gave myself three days to be in misery and to complain and to vent and to cry on Facebook and to get that overwhelming love and support. But then it was back to work. I have a Mortgage. I have two young adults as kids. I've got a wife, I got a legacy, I got a dream, I got a battle to fight. I got a war to win. And I'm not done fighting yet. And I didn't feel it break my back. And my spiritual path of the Norse practice of the Freemason spiritual belief system, this is not about you asking for intervention. This is about you asking to be witnessed. Will you step into that next layer of work? And that's it. It's like you carry this, this sucks. This fucking sucks. Carry it forward because this wound is your way, These tears are your trail. This pain is your path. This wreckage is your fucking resume. Get to work. And that's what I got from getting sober 23 years ago, was coming out with this guilt and this shame of who am I at 28 and what am I doing with my life, living in my parents basement to wait a second, I can use this. I have to use this because after 14 years of using drugs and now I don't have those things to use. What do I have to use? Well, you have your pain, your wounds, your tears and your wreckage. That's what you get. And in the Air Force they've got this old survival manual. It said, work with what you have and where you are, not with what you don't have and where you're not, this is what you get. Make it work. And that watching my daughter and my son do that growing up as they were little kids, watching how they just made things worth both of them, that was inspiring. And so that's the lesson. It's be strong, you can cry, you'll come back to this later when you have time and space. But right now you don't. There's another wave coming over that hill. Get your ax, get your shield, let's go.

That's powerful, man. That really is. And it reminds me. And you don't know much about me yet, so both for your benefit and other people that are listening too, I opened up today by saying that there's some similarities here. And one of the stories that comes to mind is when I was an early teenager, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, I was very depressed and shy and alone, did bad in school, had no friends, overwhelm, anxiety, depression, all that kind of stuff. And I cracked. In my opinion anyways. And actually I'm curious to hear your opinion too. In my opinion, when a kid cracks, there's generally one of three directions that it goes. And one is an outlashing or a harm of others. And that could be bullying or in the worst case, bringing a gun to school. That would be sort of the extreme. The second one would be a self harm. So maybe not hurting other people, maybe that's not in their nature, but maybe self harm. And that could turn into, in the worst case, suicide, which is, you know, again, an extreme. And the third one is what I call avoidance. And avoidance is a way of hiding and burying whether it's pain or whatever it happens to be, which in the extreme cases leads to drug use and going down that path. And for me, I didn't have it in me for harm to others. I didn't understand what self harm even was. And now with social media, it's such a more popular concept, it just blows my mind. And so my natural go to was avoidance. And that's what led me into going down with drugs and becoming a drug dealer and ultimately running away from home and quitting school and living in this sort of drug party house for a year. That was my path that I went. And there was this moment inside that house where one of the best parts about it in my mind back then was that there was a lot of adults there too. These adults at the time to me were way cooler than my parents. These adults got my back, right? They tell me it's okay to skip school. You know, they give me a joint, they give me booze, they give me whatever I want. These are the kind of adults I want to be with for the rest of my life. That was the mentality or the mindset that I had at the time because I had never experienced being welcomed somewhere before. It's this old quote back from, if you remember the Goodwill hunting movie. And you know, this brilliant kid, you know, Matt Damon, was surrounded by whatever you want to call it, thugs, gangsters, whatever you want to call it. But the point is, they had his back. They loved him, they accepted him, they cherished him, they made him feel good, they gave him a self worth that he did not have in society. And that's something that I found with this group that I didn't get in society. I found a self worth. I found people that actually did care about me in their own sort of different way. And it's the first time I felt special and hurt and that was so powerful. But there was a moment when we're sitting, it's like three in the morning, and one of these adults was drunk as a skunk and you know, because he had a major alcohol addiction problem and he tripped and he puked and he broke things and he fell over on this table and he chipped on my leg. This one moment I'm talking about. And it struck me that this is where I'm going, this is my future. He is me, I am him on that path. And now it's my choice to do something about it. And since then, I think I was 18 when I discovered the first 80, 90, 100 hour work weeks. That's maybe not healthy, but it's probably more healthy than the alternative of where I was going before. And it's been this path of get up, go, drive, push, kick a hole in that wall. And I haven't really stopped. It's only, well, it's only probably three or four years ago I realized I was still working this hard to find who I was and find my own identity because I had to be recreated. So anyways, I'm just sharing here because I resonate with so much of what you say and, and what sort of comes to mind when I share that story. I'm curious about your story, to be honest. What is your story? Tell me more.

So I was born and my biological father was not involved at all. Never was, never wrote, emailed, called, not once my whole life. I was diagnosed ADHD at a very young age and this was back in the 70s, I was born in 1969, so this was still a, a new thing, even though it wasn't. But just the understanding and then the decision to use low grade methamphetamines to treat adhd. And I understand that now I'm still extremely adhd. But you know, that also led to not being included, not being likable, not being normal, not being you, not being anybody. That's what ADHD means to me, means I'm not you. I don't think like you and I don't act like you. And I become hyper vigilant because I really, really want to fit in with you and I don't. And that led to a lot of bullying. My first year away from home after high school, I was sexually assaulted by my best friend who had the same name as my biological father. So there's my psyche laid bare, right? And all of this had turned my pretty natural, normal teen experimentation with drugs and alcohol into. After that sexual assault happened, it became an all day every day. And my love affair with cannabis and LSD and alcohol was nurtured by avoiding my problems and issues. That went on until my daughter was 2 years old and I had traded drugs for my relationship with her and my relationship with my wife, my relationship with the landlord, my relationship with employers. I had traded all of it away. And this is just a trade. I just kept trading down. Right when we're supposed to trade up, I just kept trading down. But what I didn't have the words for is, was when I was high, I was happy. And when I was sober, I was suicidal. I had a lot of really amazing people telling me I should get sober for my wife, for my kids, for my property, for my work. But I didn't have the words to say, I'm dead if I do. Not because of withdrawal symptoms, but because I could not face the pain I had grown up with. I was not resilient. It was May 20, 1998, that I hit my knees and I prayed for the miracle. And I just said to any God or goddess that would listen, you have to stop me, because I'm not gonna stop. And I don't know how much more clear that I can make that. So when you stop me, I need it to be crystal fucking clear that this is over, that this is done. Because I had already called the 12 step meeting room and the line was busy. And I took that from a sign of God. I had already made my 10 commandments and broke them all within 24 hours. I had already almost killed my daughter while I was getting high in my truck, driving down the highway and had to swerve off the road. And in that moment, she woke up in the car seat and said, are you okay, daddy? And I'm like, good God, I'm a terrible person. And it still took me another two and a half weeks. And I finally just said, you have to make me quit. And on May 21, 1998, rock bottom, they made me quit. And they did it with love. I had three experiences within a 24 hour period of unconditional love. One from a divine entity, one from a stranger, and then one from the man who raised me, my dad. And it was this thing that I had been searching for my whole life, unconditional love that I, I realized had been searching for me. What you seek is seeking you. Anybody who's listening to this. Who still struggles with the cravings. Me too. Who still struggles with the trauma of being sexually assaulted or abandoned or abused. Me too. And what you seek is seeking you. And there is a point where you gotta stop looking. I kind of liken it to hide and seek. Like, you search and you search and you search for this hidden thing. And at some point, if you just sit and become open to it, it gets bored. Hiding from you. And it allows itself to be seen, right? And then you let it in. And it's. Letting love in was way harder than searching for it. But the moment I did, the moment that that secret died, my sickness died, right? And that was the key, is that I was so desperate to be loved and everybody was just trying to love me. I just had to let him. And so that led to working at kids camps and working and just wanting to be that guy that no matter how I looked or no matter what kind of music I listened to, and no matter what God I worshiped that I was going to be the man with eight arms, who lived in a lighthouse at the edge of time, who just embraced the whole world because that's all I ever desired. And not having a father, but having an amazing dad who said, you just gotta give what you've never received, that's how you become complete. When you've got a hole that can't be filled, then you give what's supposed to be in that hole. And I just stopped trying to get from the world and I just started to give to the world. And about a year and a half into recovery, because I had stopped weed and alcohol and lsd. And then the toxic relationships show up and those horrible recovery relationships that are screaming matches and. And then I was like, well, women, you know, bitches be tripping, so I'm, I gotta get out of relationships because women, women, women. The moment I was out of relationships, the food issues started and I was like, oh shit, it's me. That's where I. The moment you're like, it's me. That this, this recovery is even more selfish than that addiction. And I have to embrace this, that I got to make this about me because it's me. I don't ask me if cannabis is addictive. I don't fucking know. I know I acted like a junkie around it. So maybe it's not cannabis, maybe it's Aaron. All these women, all those employers, all those landlords, all of them, man, I was the factor that was a present in every single sit. That's me. So that's where the work lays. And it's incredibly arrogant, it's incredibly selfish. And both my kids grew up with an incredibly arrogant and selfish dad. But that's recovery. And I also see both my kids now at 25 and 26, prioritizing their self care, their own emotional needs, their own physical health and their loyalty is to themselves. And that is the best thing I could have asked for.

I have so many questions, but your grasp of the English language combined with your passion and self awareness. I mean, I see you on a TED Talk for sure. I don't know, have you done one? Did I not see it? Did I research that?

No. I have applied for so many, but I think I just keep missing it. But like I said, Eric, I've spent my life on stage. I am the consummate bard connection, communication and creativity. That's why I love podcasting. That's why I love teaching. That's why I love getting up on.

Stage and saying, this is the world of content creation. We don't need a centralized entity like a TED Talk in order to have a voice be heard and connect with audiences globally. This is a whole new era. And people that know me know that. I mean, I used to have a construction company for exterior construction. I was in construction for like 15 years and to a degree is always going to be part of my blood. I'm a roofer at heart. Roofing is a hardcore trade and there's nothing weak about it. And now I spend all my time in technology and doing software work and working with communities and daos and organizations and Web3 and crypto and all this stuff. And it's a fascinating world. And this whole concept of a web3 is about connecting people to people and removing centralized organizations. So it's just an accidental segue here. Anyone listening right now. You don't need a TED Talk or a TV channel or someone else to validate your voice and bring you to a public stage. If you got something to say, you can say it right now and you can put it out on any number of social media platforms and have your voice heard. So anyway, just. That's a accidental segue here.

Yeah. Grab a hammer and a bucket of nails and build a stage, baby. Nothing's stopping you. Nowadays you need a computer and they.

Come in your pocket.

Like you log in and turn people on, man, 100%.

There's so much. And maybe we should chat later about some things we could do in the web 3 space and mental health. I don't know. I've been talking a lot about it with my friends and we haven't really come to conclusions yet. It's just a thought subject, but bringing us back on track, which is my job today, I'm bringing myself back on track is what I mean to say. I'm on the random tangent here, but when we go back. So I related a lot to what you just said about when you were a kid and you really wanted to fit in and you didn't and for me, I described it a little bit. My experience was perhaps a different one than yours, but parallel in end result for me. I consider myself a sensitive. I could feel people's energy and their emotions and I would walk around all day feeling everything that people are feeling. And I can't explain it better than that. If someone's sad, I'll cry. If someone's angry, I'll start yelling. If someone's laughing, I'll laugh. I don't even know what the joke is. I'll just start laughing. That's how it was when I was a kid. Unrestricted, unrestrained, unfiltered, raw, emotional internalization of my surroundings. And being locked up in my mind, being locked up in a room, a cube of 25 other kids, and a teacher for that long in a day was just completely overwhelming. And when I picked up my first cigarette, when I was I think 14 years old or 15, I think it was when I picked up my first cigarette. I worked at a gas station. I sold drugs at the gas station. It was very convenient at the time. People came in and out all the time. There was nothing conspicuous. You just pay for the gas, pay for the drugs. That's how I did it back then. And people at the station smoked cigarettes. Very ironic. Why would you smoke cigarettes at a gas station? But that's how it was. And they were cool in my eyes. So I just picked up a pack of smokes because I mean, I'm running the till, of course I can buy smokes. So bought a pack of smokes, brought it to school, went outside, smoked a cigarette just like the cool guys at the gas station. And next thing I know, people come up to me like, hey, who are you? Where'd you come from? What's your name? And I respond, hey, I'm Eric. I've been going to school with you since grade two. We've been in the same school forever. And they didn't believe me. They did not believe me. I made friends for the first time in my life in an overwhelming abundance, quantity. If it took me 10 years to make three friends previously, then I made 10 friends in three minutes right there. And that instant gratification reward was unparalleled to anything else I'd experienced in my life. And it was addictive. Attention welcomed, you know, being heard, wanted, being wanted. This was a self worth soft spot that I had no idea that I had at the time. And it led of course to, you know, that's what the gateway was. It wasn't the cigarette, it Wasn't the marijuana. The gateway was that I had a wound internally that wasn't being recognized and treated. And that's what led me.

Yeah, gateways are unmet needs. It's not cannabis, it's not alcohol, it's not video games or razor blades. It's an unmet need that these things facilitate, you know, and when you talk about self worth, self esteem, those are byproducts of self concept. There's a McLaren in the garage of my condo, and if I say that to someone, hey, that's a McLaren. It's a $600,000 car. There are people who go, yeah, yeah, that one. That's probably about how much it is. And there are people who go, why? Why would you pay that much for a car? And what I say to the people who say, why would you pay that much for a car? Is that you don't understand the concept of that car. And if you did, you may or may not like the price, but you can justify it. And that's the same when. Especially when I'm working with parents and they say, my kid has low self esteem, my kid has low self worth. No, they don't. Your kid has no self concept. You can't establish value in something that you can't conceptualize. So if you can't understand what that thing actually is, how can you put a value to it? How can you put a. A marker on it says, I'm a good person, I'm a bad person. If you don't have a concept of person, and all of a sudden, when you have a group of friends, you have concept. And that's why you identify. That's why we identify with unique subcultures all the time. I'm a freemason, I'm a Norse practitioner. I'm a this, I'm a martial artist, I'm a that. We consistently quantify and qualify ourselves so that we remain in concept, not in value, not in esteem, not in worth, not in. Those are the fruits, the roots. The moment you sit down with a group of friends and you get high or smoke cigarettes or have a beer and you're laughing in a way you haven't laughed before, you're facilitating one of the five basic human needs. Safety, power, connection, freedom, and worth. Safety, power, connection, freedom and worth. Getting high made me safe because I wasn't suicidal. It gave me a feeling of power because I was bucking the man. I was bucking the system. I was going against the flow. Gave me connection. And a group of friends who came up to My place every night gave me freedom because my mind felt expansive. I was laying on the couch, but my mind felt expansive. And then worse, I was dealing drugs. People called me all day and night. I was important in their community. That one action facilitated five of the five, 100% basic human needs. Tell me what's addictive? Cannabis? Oh, hell no. It's that I was facilitating everything that I was starving for before I found cannabis. And is it bad? Well, what I did with it was. What I did with it was horrible. I was responsible for violence in my community. I abandoned my daughter after being abandoned as a child. I knew better. I couldn't keep a job and support my family. I was a terrible husband. So tell me what's addictive. Tell me what it is. Razor blades. Are razor blades addictive? I know kids who act like junkies around self harm. I've worked with them for 15 years now. I think we still we deal with the fruits when we should be looking at the roots. Self esteem, self worth. That's self concept. Who are you that derives value?

Eric here. I hope you're enjoying the episode today. This is a passion project that I put together. I really wanted to do this. I really want to help people out there. I had so many people reach out to me when I was younger and when I was having a tough time and struggling. I've written a book about it. You can check it out on my website. Please do. But most importantly, reach. Reach out to me. Give me some feedback. What could I do better with this podcast? What am I doing that I should stop? What am I not doing that I should do? Tell me your experience. Give me some tips and suggestions. I really want to design this to suit your needs and all you got to do is send me an email. It's ericericgilbertwilliams.com or use the contact me button that you'll find on my website. Just send me an email. We'll have a phone call or we'll chat online. Doesn't really matter. I would love to hear from you and figure out how to make this show even better with your help. So please reach out and don't be shy. So many powerful words. Again. I was about to ask you what would you do with a kid like me at that time, but it occurred to me that the parents come into play perhaps more than I do. And when is it too late? Let's just use my example because we're talking and I shared with you a bunch of stuff. When is it too late? I mean, when I Run away from home and school, it's probably too late. I mean, because if a parent doesn't have control over me anymore and I'm already gone, it's very difficult to harness me back in, actually. Am I right on that or is that an assumption? Is that a false assumption? After I've, you know, dropped out of school and ran away from home, is it fair to say that it's too late to, you know, bring this kid in and work with him? Or is that not true?

It's too late when you give up, that's when it's too late for a child. That's when it's too late for a family. When you give up on the child, when you give up on the family. Now, in a facility type scenario, we're also talking the technicality of can you make the kid stay? Can you keep the kid in the room? I was not a lockdown facility. Someone who has run away as prolific as you did. Because kids run away all the time, but that means they've spent the night at a friend's house for two days and you didn't know which friend they were spending the night out and they yelled at you before they left, but you ran away where you're literally living somewhere else or living on the street. Those types of situations might require a lockdown scenario where the kid can't leave and they keep the kid there long enough to get them to buy into the treatment process. There is a process of buy in at treatment that can be used with locks, you know, locking, having a lockdown facility so the kids can't leave. And just by proxy of being in the building of recovery, you start the recovery process. We also do it medically when we use, you know, naltrexone therapy or methadone or suboxone with opioid addicts so that they can at least get through the painful part and try to embrace recovery. Some people use verbal coercion, like the buy in process. We began with a family by interviewing the kid and just saying things like, nope, we're just going to love you and believe in you until you love and believe in yourself. And we're going to make your family do as much work as you're doing. And the kid would be like, well, that sounds better than me being sent away. And then we go like. And we don't lock kids in because if you treat a kid like a prisoner or a mental patient, guess how they're going to act. So we're going to actually treat you like you're A teenager who's struggling to find out who you are and what you're going to do with it. And guess what? You'll act like that. And then you'll start to find out. And then we'll stop treating you like you're struggling. And it worked. I mean, we worked, but this was a heart project. It came from the heart. My wife and I didn't take a raise the entire time we were open. We had 33 staff for a max of 18 kids. We were not some. Let's fill as many beds as possible. We didn't take kids who got brought by transport. So what Paris Hilton is talking about, about all these facilities and all these abusive wilderness programs, yeah, those exist, but that wasn't us. And there are a lot of people who are in this work to save lives. And it works. We've saved families. We've helped families recover from. From. I'm working with a family right now whose dad held his dead daughter until the paramedics arrived and revived her. And what needs to be understood in a situation like this is that when those parents came to me to say, we need help, they knew that I was going to. Yes, of course. Work with their teen daughter. Tell me that didn't traumatize the parents. Tell me that they don't wake up in the middle of the night or hear a noise or their amygdala shot because they walked in on their dead daughter and are terrified that any risky decision she makes means she's on the path to death. Right. She puts up a TikTok video. That's just a bunch of bullshit. They're like, we're back at it. I'm like, no, back at it is that your kids is sneaking drugs and ODing. That's back addict shitty TikTok videos. That's just teen. And they can't tell the difference. Why? Because they're traumatized. And so we've got to treat the parents, We've got to treat the children. Patch Adams was one of my very early mentors for a very, very short time. But he said, your grandmother does not have Alzheimer's. Your family has Alzheimer's. Treat the family. And if you think about it, if one family member has cancer, the whole family is dealing with cancer, whole family's in recovery, the whole family is facing a death. You have to treat the family. And Covid, you have to treat the country, you have to treat the world now. Because we're all going through it. Even if, knock on wood, even if you didn't have it, even if you haven't gotten it, you've gotten it. You've been affected and traumatized by Covid, and so have the children.

Let's talk about the parents for a second here. And I'll say for myself again, as a kid, I had no idea what my mom was going through, specifically, my biological dad was out of the picture. Never paid child support. He existed. You know, we had communication. And as a little kid, you know, I love and adored him because I didn't realize, you know, I didn't realize who he was, really. My stepdad is just a source of love, and my mom's always been a source of love. There's no story in my history about, you know, a bad upbringing, so to say. Yeah, you know, my dad was a, you know, not really there, but. But that's. It could have been a lot worse, and certainly it is a lot worse for a lot of people. Now, wait a second.

I want to address what you just said, because right there is the first thing that families and addicts do to try to say that that didn't, you know, it could have been worse. It could have been worse, Eric. You're right. But it also could have been better. And you've already described how sensitive you were to the fact that your dad didn't support your mom just in that conversation. If you were to go take the adverse childhood experiences quiz, you're coming up on three of them right there already.

Oh, yeah. Oh, it's still there. Yeah, of course it is.

So we cannot look at the roots and look at the fruits and say, well, those are not the fruits I wanted. But those roots are good. Those are stable roots. No, in fact, the reason why we have the fruit is because of the root. Does this mean I'm blaming parents? Absolutely not. Just because you have a computer doesn't mean you deserve to be hacked. Just because you wear a short skirt doesn't mean you deserve to be raped. But just because it could be better or could have been worse doesn't mean you don't deserve to say, that sucked for me. And I really, really struggled with that, and it hurt me a lot. That's the secret. That's part of our sickness when we start to deny just how bad it actually was for us.

You gave me lots to think about. And, you know, my mom listens to every episode that I record. We're going to be having a lot of after discussions on this episode, too. I can guarantee it's happening.

Like I said, this is not fault of the parents. It's Fault of the genealogy in current epigenetic study, they're saying that the things we are dealing with is up to 12 generations of gene expression changing. What that means is that some of the trauma and the traumatizing things that has affected your family's gene pool goes back to Genghis Khan. Genetic expression. The way I see it, this just for mom's sake to say that the work you have to do will affect your son, your healing work. Because if grandma lost grandpa to a snake bite, Grandma doesn't trust snakes anymore. And she's got a little girl and they're walking in the field and grandma sees a snake and she grabs her daughter and she screams and she cries and she thinks about her love that she lost for this. Well, now Mom's afraid of snakes, too. And even if mom is just getting tense, even if mom is just breathing, her breathing tightens up and little Eric is going, oh, what's. Snakes are bad. That's genetic expression. And that's a very layman's way of saying that's how addiction gets passed down, is that traumatized people act a certain way and it changes how their children are born and raised. And it keeps going. And somewhere the legacy can get broken. And it takes one person to start breaking the legacy and then the children to carry on the legacy breaking. So it's not a blame game. It's not a. Tell me about your mother, Eric, because I'm going to find that that's the roots. Roots is prime influence. This is a systemic failure that we are all living and recovering from. Not bad parenting systemic failure. That's a marriage failure. That's an education system failure. That's a political system failure. That's a religious system failure. That's a human neurobiological system failure. It's an environmental system failure. It's much bigger than Tell me about your mom.

Where do we draw the line? As a parent, and I'm not a parent, so I have to imagine, but just imagine that I am a parent and I'm going through my own version of my own healing. And that's part of the initiative to help make a better family and perhaps help my child in part of my healing. Maybe I didn't have boundaries in the past. Maybe I let people take, take advantage of me and abuse me in different ways or however that may, whether it's emotional, physical, whatever it happens to be. And in my own healing, I'm establishing new boundaries, new borders that I have to set. And what if my kid is crossing those boundaries? What if my kid is hurting me, right, as a parent and I want to help my kid on one side, you could say, no, no, you have to set yourself aside and help your kid. On the other side, you have to say, no, no, you have to have boundaries, and the kids can't cross those boundaries. And that might mean they'll leave. What are your thoughts on that?

Well, in the 80s and 90s, we came up with these philosophies like tough love, you know, that have by and large failed. And then we had the scared straight of the 90s that failed. The really, the new tough love is transparency. Transparency is the new tough love. Now, this is what I mean about being transparent. It is too diverse to give any parent a singular piece of advice and call it a tool and say, hey, you know, if your kid says this, then you say this and cut them off. Because you have parents ask what you've just asked all the time. What do I do if? What do I do if? And as a parent coach, as a family consultant, I am constantly asked this question. And my clients who've been with me longer than a year only stop because they know the answer. Do I take away my kid's cell phone? I caught my kid looking at porn. Do I shut off the Internet? I don't care what you do. I care how you do it. Where you cut your child off, where you set a boundary has but one requirement. It must be self care first. So when a parent says, what do I do? Because I had a woman write me yesterday off of Facebook, downloaded this horrible story to me. Kids living in her home, her grandkids are living there, her kids are abusive to her on and on and on. And she's tried everything. So I know she's not sleeping, I know she's not eating well, I know she's not drinking enough water. I know she's not moving her body, and I know she's not breathing on purpose. Those are the five foundations of self care. And if you don't do those five things well and on purpose, you will die. Right? We cannot accidentally be a good parent when our child is in crisis. So good parenting starts with self care. Sleep, drink water, eat healthy food, move your body, and breathe on purpose. Get your head together. You cannot do that when you're furious, fatigue, or fearful. And your best parenting, when you're in survival mode is your worst parenting. And your worst parenting, when you're using your prefrontal cortex is your best parenting. And to use all of your brain to make parenting decisions, good or bad. You have to sleep, you have to move your body, you've got to drink water, you've got to eat nutritious food and you've got to breathe on purpose. So when a parent says, what do I do? When my response is, what does taking care of yourself look like? And that's where they get stumped. That's the work. Because knowing that to do my day I have to start at 5am at the gym. That's not a bragging point. That's not a. Well, all rich people are wealthy people. I don't give a shit about that. I know as an extremely ADHD man, my day must start at the gym, must start with multiple glasses of water, must follow that up with three or four cups of coffee and must have a scoop of super greens and a scoop of super red powder in a glass. And then I have to use my daytimer that I created for myself. Because if I don't create my day, my day is going to create me. And that's self care. And people can call me selfish and arrogant all they want, I don't care. Because I have to create this world. Because when I leave it to the world, I use drugs, I drink. So always when a parent says, where do I put my boundary? Put it wherever you're going to sleep better tonight. I don't care what it is. I'll bet I've known parents who have bought their children heroin. And I have worked with those parents and their shame and their guilt. And I said, why would any parent do that? And the mom said, because I know what my daughter would do to get it. I said, that makes sense to me. We can work with that. So it's not what we do, it's how we do it. Do it from your best place. Take care of yourself first, your adult relationship second, your support group, your marriage, your parenting partners. Then go take care of your kids. Because if self care and adult relationship care have failed, you tell me, what can you do for your kids? So that's why the family has to go into recovery.

You know, for everyone listening, Aaron just held up his workbook, his morning workbook. And this is a little takeaway that everyone can. I've definitely had my own version of a workbook that I used for many, many years. Some of it worked, some of it didn't. But you know what? It worked a lot more than it didn't. And it kept me on track and it helped me make progress and I learned from it. And anyone that's listening, if you're not doing this routine you could if you wanted. It's just open for consideration here. Make a little checklist of these five points that Aaron just listed out. And you can check in every morning on yourself. Put it on the fridge, put it in your, in your car. Put it on wherever it is that you're going to see it every single day without question, wherever that happens to be in your pocket, you know, on your computer as a pop up, a calendar, recurring event. Do what you got to do. But you could do something like that. And you can start with the basics. It's like this reminds me of the Mr. Miyagi. You know, there's a big crisis going on and Daniel's son says, oh, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? And Miyagi says, we're going to go eat some food. Can't solve a problem on empty stomach. And this is a takeaway you guys can all do right now. I'm curious to hear how it goes. Give it a shot. Message me in 30 days. Let me know what you think. Let me know how it goes. Message, Aaron. Aaron, how do people find you and get a hold of you if they wanted to?

Yeah, you can always. I have a group called Parenting Teens that Struggle on Facebook. Obviously it's free. I moderate it. My daughter moderates it. You can always find me there and reach out to me there. Parenting Teens that Struggle. My podcast is called Beyond Risk and Back. That is for parents of teens who are struggling. And you can go to firemountainprograms.com the website is under a reconstruction and a reinvention. Then if you are really interested in working directly with me, I want you to go to Brabapp B R A B A P P.com Brabapp.com for beyond risk and back application. Brabapp.com and I have a parenting masterclass and it is $37 and it is 56 classes, really high quality filming. It actually just won a telly. And it's everything I've ever taught parents. And it's the basics of the red, the extreme crisis behavior, the yellow, the at risk behavior, and the green, the good stuff and what to do to make it great. And you get all three courses. You take this little quiz to find out which one you should start in. But like I said, I want every parent to be able to say, I can afford a week's worth of coffee to learn from a parenting masterclass. And that's it. Two free things. The podcast Beyond Risk and Back Parenting Teens that Struggle on Facebook. And then Brabapp.com for a week's worth of coffee.

I'll put these links in the show notes to this episode for everyone to find and not have to worry about writing it down. Scrambling while you're listening to this. It'll all be there. You can click the link you can find Aaron, you can reach out to him. I've listened to a few episodes of his podcast. They're powerful, they're similar to what he's saying right now, but focus often on niche subjects, one at a time, going down the list. And it's an endless list, so it's a pretty cool resource. Aaron, thank you so much for being on the show here. I really appreciate your time. I wonder if you have any sort of final thoughts in your mind here just as we're wrapping up. Want to make sure that anything in your mind has the opportunity to come out. Or maybe you've already tapped into all of it. Somehow I doubt that.

Though I'm going to say that. Please remember what I said about self concept versus self worth and self esteem. Concept context is more important than content. What you do, you can fart. Content is the easy thing, but everybody gets focused on that, whether it's with at risk children or what we do with our lives and work is what do you do? What do you do? What if the focus became how we did it? What if it mattered less what we did and more how we did it? Do you love it so much that you're giving your heart to the work? Passion sells. Passion sells so much. And if your passion is for laundry detergent, then go sell laundry detergent. If your passion is for teaching orphans that you've rescued from human trafficking, then go do it. Because it's the passion that's going to make it. It's the passion that keeps you in the line of abundance. It's the passion you have for living and life. That's the key. And when you're dealing with depression and anxiety and that passion comes and goes in waves, just go back to the basics. Sleep, drink water, eat nutritious food, move your body and breathe on purpose. And I know, please understand that I know when you're in the depths of anxiety and depression that that is everything because your brain has gone into auxiliary power mode. That's what depression actually means, is that your brain functioning has gone from auxiliary power now down to life support. So do your best in that moment to do one thing. When you're in the anxiety attack or you're in the depression attack, do one thing Today of those five, water, food, sleep, movement, breathe. Do one thing and then you can go back to bed. But just keep doing one thing every day. That's context. That's keep swinging. Keep kicking a hole in the. In the wall when the door gets slammed. Even if they're little kicks, you'll wear a hole. You'll wear a hole.

Thank you, Aaron. These are words of wisdom I'm taking with me and I have some conversations with my own mom and everyone listening. I hope that you took a little golden nugget from this. And the only thing I ask, I mean, I pay for this episode. I pay for this show. There's no sponsors. I do it because I like to. This is one of my passions. So my only ask of you is to please just share this episode. Share it with someone that you think needs to hear it. It's my only ask. It's been my only ask forever and it probably will always be my only ask on this show. So if you enjoyed the content and even if you didn't, someone needs to hear this. You know that I know that you know that. And you know that I know that you know that. So share it off. I appreciate Aaron again, your time, everyone. We will see you next time on From Rock Bottom to Rockin it. Until then, keep on Rockin it. And that's it, my friends. For this episode. We will see you next time. Please send me an email, say hello, give me some feedback, let me know what you think, give me some tips and suggestions. I'd love to hear from you. Also, please share this episode with whoever think needs to hear it. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, doesn't matter. Just get it out there. I really appreciate it. And we'll see you next time on From Rock Bottom to Rockin It. Have a Rockin it day.