Addiction recovery expert: Natasha Silver Bell

I was in Madison Square park and I ended up getting back inside and I woke up from my blackout on the couch with my son strapped in the high chair, eating Cheerios, watching Nemo. And I saw the Diet Cokes and coffee and the jacket on the stroller and I was like, oh, shit, I have a problem.

Hello and welcome to Crisis what Crisis? The podcast that explores life's toughest moments with the people who've lived them, learned from them, and come back stronger. I'm Andy Coulson, and if you've been through or are facing a crisis or just want to be better prepared for life's inevitable difficulties, these conversations are all about providing those useful practical lessons that will help you survive, rebuild, and thrive again. My guest today is Natasha Silverbell, a woman who's walked through or down the darkest corridors of addiction, trauma and family breakdown and come out the other side, not just sober, but stronger, wiser, and radically generous. Natasha's journey began in the spotlight, first as a beauty queen, then a successful international model. But behind the glamour, she was battling a near perfect storm of personal crisis, addictions and eating disorder and trauma as a result of her strict religious upbringing. Her moment of reckoning came when she blacked out whilst carrying or caring for her 13 month old son. That was the crisis that changed everything. Since achieving sobriety in 2008, Natasha has dedicated her life to helping others do the same. She's the founder and CEO of silverbell Global, a renowned international recovery coaching company. She's worked with well known and less known troubled individuals and families. And the nature of the crises she helps navigate are rich and varied and may even involve the help of the former US Navy seals who are part of her global network of consultants. But the common theme in her work is a loss of control. And Natasha has built a stellar reputation as someone who can help coach her clients back to a place of stability, of meaning, and of productivity. She's also the driving force behind a number of initiatives that support families, adolescents and those without the means through tailored trauma informed recovery. What sets Natasha apart, I think, is that she doesn't just talk about crisis. She maps it. She lives it. She walks beside others as a guide to help them through it. Her approach blends structure, discipline, deep empathy. And she does all this while raising three children as a single mother. If you're in the thick of something painful or standing at the edge of change, Natasha's story offers something rare. Truth without judgment, tools without dogma, and an unshakable belief that even our lowest moments can become the foundation for something redemptive and something powerful.

There's nothing I could say that you don't already know. It's all behind you.

Natasha Silverbell welcome to Crisis. What crisis?

Oh wow, Andy, thank you for that really eloquent, beautiful, poetic introduction. Thank you for doing what you do and creating an opening here where we can really be of maximum help and service to those who might lean into this conversation.

Well, thank you Natasha. Every word of truth. I'd like to begin where on this podcast and ask for your definition of crisis.

Sure. I think the best way for me to answer that at this stage in my life is looking back and recognizing that there was crisis bubbling up when I didn't realize I should have been paying attention to it. So what do I mean by that? Recognizing lack of clear communication with people. I loved understanding that I was operating from a fear based response versus a genuine what do I want, what do I need in a relationship or conversation? And that was the creation of the crisis on my part. So I would say to answer fully, when there is fear present in a response to a person, place or thing in a situation, the crisis is happening.

Do you think we use the word too often? Are you a fan of the word crisis?

I am for this conversation. But yes, I would say just like the word trauma is overused, the word narcissist is overused, the word toxic is overused. So yeah, being mindful about our language is actually really helpful to preventing crises.

Do you often find yourself with clients where you pointing out that actually where you are is difficult? There is definitely a problem that requires thought, help, support, but you're not in crisis?

Well, I wouldn't say it like that, but yeah, I would say over our 13, almost 14 years now, helping people manage a crisis, typically people will come to us when we say when the roof is on fire, the house is on fire and it doesn't need to be that way, it doesn't need to get there. And I would. Consumers who then retain us are very wise now versus 10 years ago when they would come with the crisis versus coming with this doesn't feel right. This doesn't look right. There's lack of communication. I know this isn't going to end well. What can we do to get ahead of it? So I'm seeing a little bit more of that now as a shift in retaining us.

You were Miss Michigan, you competed in Miss usa, you went on to become an international model as I mentioned in the intro, and then you are now, you know, a recovery pioneer. I want to talk about all of that, but can we, can we start at the, at the beginning with your upbringing? Tell us a little bit about it because obviously it came to inform, you know, so much of what you went through, if you like, but just give us a. Just give us a flavor of your. Of your childhood.

Sure. Thank you. You know, I'm here at our family cattle ranch in Montana and where my parents, they're the first college graduates from. They were ranchers in, in Livingston, Montana. And when they had us, I'm the youngest of three girls, they wanted to bring a moral structure into our upbringing, which I think is wise of any young parent to actually consider. How do we want to raise our children together? What environment do. Safety is important. Moral structure. And so they chose an organized religion, which was really beautiful and at the same time very dogmatic and structured and shaming. And so it's called Seventh Day Adventism. Not all Seventh Day Adventists are shaming, so please let me put that disclaimer out there. But we all try really hard to do the right thing and sometimes we might get lost. Can't see the forest through the trees. And so as a teenager growing up, although as a young girl, it was really helpful. I think rhythm, structure, routine and discipline are, are helpful. I think as a teenager, when rebellion sets in is where kind of the rails came off. And there was no gray arena. It was all or nothing. And I think an all or nothing mindset can be very troublesome and create more problems than it needs sometimes.

So give us an idea of what that sort of meant for you as a young girl, perhaps pre or teenage years, day to day, week to week, it was especially strict, it was dogmatic. But what did that actually mean for you? What was life like as a.

As a Seventh Day Adventist you are. You know, we weren't allowed to drink, you know, alcohol or caffeine for that matter. We were raised vegetarian. Friday sundown to Saturday, sundown. Like Judaism was Shabbos. And so we observed Sabbath. You know, we didn't drive our cars. And if we did, if we had to, there was always an extreme example. We would walk to church and, you know, you would play bible, Pictionary vs. Pictionary, if you get what I'm saying. And there was a comfort. There was. It was a day of rest and reflection and there was community. So I really appreciated. We would have potluck after church all the time and play with, you know, our parents, you know, kids, friends. And that, that was comforting because you knew what was coming next. And that has a lot to do with safety for a young child because they don't know how to tell time until much later in their formative years. And so it was just like you always know what day of the week it is, you know what's coming next. And it had to do with connection to others. So there's a lot of safety in that, which I did like. But of course, as a teenager, you're telling me I can't play Bible Pictionary, I have to play Bible Pictionary on Sabbath. And so those are the little tiny micro things that you start to push against.

And yeah, I mean, we're going to talk about your faith, which is important to you, but in relation to, you know, your early years and your family's commitment to Seventh Day Adventists Church, it became very complicated. And we'll talk and we'll talk about that. Are you now able to look back on that period of your, of your life, your younger years? Are you able to sort of extract still the big positives as well as the complications and the complexity that came?

Yeah, I prefer to. I like in what can be done, not what can't done or what I. We always have a saying in recovery world, the victim never recovers. And if you have a victim mindset, then and then there are times to recognize that been harmed or wronged, but we don't stay there. We can recognize it, see it, and then move through it. And so I love that they exposed me to that, to the Scriptures, to discernment, to insight. And I think those are invaluable assets that I wouldn't have gotten maybe from a secular upbringing. Certainly, I don't know, a lot of schools, they try to teach that, but there's something about reading in scripture that helps aid in that mindset.

Yeah, there was another complication, I think, in your sort of younger years. Undiagnosed dyslexia. Tell us first of all how that sort of manifested itself and the problems that created for you.

Yeah, I don't mind sharing my age. I was, I think in second grade in 1982, and I wasn't able to read as proficiently as my peers. And when the teachers, you know, called in my parents and kind of shared the idea that I should begin tutoring to understand something called phonics, I'm not able still to this day to. It's just the way my brain is set up to sound out words very well. Thank goodness for technology because I can play how to speak the word and then I know it. So I used to have to slow down and look it up in the dictionary and phonetically try and sound it out, which is. Is still to this day challenging unless I can hear the word spoken. And so I was very slow in my reading. My comprehension was great, but it took me, you know, 10 times the length of reading a paragraph that my peers. So my self esteem shot down. So like if you're doing a spelling test or you're doing a. Read this paragraph and turn it in. You know, in class, I remember in third grade all friends were turning in their papers within 10 minutes and I was a half an hour. So it was quite devastating to me to be so slow when I knew I wasn't stupid. But I. But I felt like it, you know, I knew I material but I. I wasn't fast, so I wasn't good I guess in my head.

And at that stage the school system just wasn't set up for it. And even with the best will in the world, parents really, you know, unless it's the difficult thing to I suppose come to terms with and to do something about.

Well, we all learn so differently and I think there's a lot of now movement in the States for sure happening and certainly in the UK about teaching different ways to people doesn't minimize their ability to be helpful in society just because they can't finish their exam at a certain amount of time.

So tell us about the. The road that led you towards modeling and your first career. So take us the sort of teenage years into New York and the Ford Model Agency.

Sure. When I was 17 there was a hometown beauty pageant called Miss Berrien Springs. I grew up for the schooling here in Berrien Springs, Michigan. We're the world headquarters for Andrews University where my father was professor at the Seventh Day Adventist University in architecture. And my grandmother who raised me out here in Montana in the summers was a very. She was called the Queen of the Valley. So there was this always this ring and she was very proper and she. Although it was a cattle ra. There's something about holding yourself. Well, she grew up in the Depression, so it was funny. You were making a joke about. You sound like my father before we got on. Not me, but someone was having you sit up or what have you. And my grandmother used to always say sit up straight, put your shoulders back in a very loving way. I could hear it from her and eat. We practiced etiquette. We wore her fancy jewelry and because we couldn't do that as Adventists. So the summers I kind of cheated. If you Will on the religion with her. And it was really fun. And there was a camaraderie I had with my grandmother where she really could elevate my way of being seen in the world. And so then when a beauty pageant in our high school came available, I went out as a junior because that's how old you had to be. 17. And I was 17 as a junior and benoist to everyone. I won. And, you know, I'd never worn heels before that actually never had done my own makeup. And I won. And then it actually.

Can I ask, Sorry. Were your parents encouraging of it? I mean, given the sort of the picture that you've painted?

Yeah, but by then.

Yeah, but by then they did become more relaxed and their attitudes had become more relaxed.

Yeah. We ended up moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan, because they got their masters and PhDs in their. My father got in architecture, My mom is a social worker. And so we were exposed to a secular way of life. And my parents realized the dogmatic approach that was happening and the pushback from three teenage girls on it. And so they. When we came back to Barons Ring, Michigan, after three years there and I entered the local beauty pageant and then they had. They were encouraging of it. You know, they realized this is a wonderful, great, wonderful way to have gained self confidence. And I think they knew also I was struggling in school still, so I had that less than feeling. And so they're like, yeah, let her do a beauty pageant if she wants to do it. And, you know, they all said they didn't think I would win. And I did. And then I went on and won the next one to that and then the next one. And then it led me to Miss Michigan usa and I did quite well at Miss Miss USA in the top five. And, you know, that was all by the time I was 19. So it went very fast.

So at this stage in your life, you are, you know, experiencing, you know, that success as you've described, you know, almost for the first time. But running alongside that is your faith is your involvement with the Seventh Day Adventist Church, which is strict and dogmatic in the way that you've explained. And when, as you know, when competing in Miss usa, you're asked the question, what couldn't you live without? Your answer was Christ. An answer that in fact, created another layer of complexity. So just tell us, tell us, tell us what happened.

Thank you. I haven't been asked this question in a while, so. Thank you. When I won Miss Michigan at 18, and then, you know, you go the following six months or whatever later to Miss USA in South Padre Island, Texas. I had to take two weeks off of university and I was a student at Andrews University, the Seventh Day Adventist, you know, where my father was a professor and we had grown up and so I had to do that. It was a live show. And so in preparation for that, because you're wearing jewelry and you're wearing a swimsuit on national television, you're revealing your body and you're glorifying yourself in a gown and all these things. And the filming, actually the day of the filming for the live broadcast, Miss USA was on a Friday night. And I didn't know at the time that I was being questioned to be basically denounced from the Seventh Day Adventist religion. There was a, because I was so prominent and I was publicly out there as an Adventist. I was on the COVID of the Lake Union Herald. It was a magazine that promoted, you know, 7th Amentist religion and local papers. And I was doing, you know, book signings with Muhammad Ali at the time because that's when he, 1996, he had lit in the torch and he'd come out of the shadows, so to speak. And so he lived in Berrien Springs, Michigan, that's where his home was. And so we did a lot of events together and so there was a lot of attention. And so when I came back from usa, a dear friend of mine who was a pastor, the youth pastor had sat me down, he said, I just want you to know I advocated for you not to be denounced from the Seventh Day Adventist religion. They were going to dismember you, I guess. And I said why would they do that? And he said because you were glorifying, you were glorifying your body. You were wearing beautiful dresses and one shouldn't, you know, wear a swimsuit on national television. And I said oh. And he said but that didn't happen when I advocated for you before that, the night of the pageant and then when you glorified Christ on stage, they obviously realized that Christ had you in a position for a reason because it was very live, not pre rehearsed. I had no idea what I was going to say, but that's really where my heart was. But I have to say that put a bitter taste in my mouth and it really was disappointing, disconcerting to me. At 19. What does a 19 year old know? No disrespect to the 19 year olds listening, but what does a 19 year old know really? And, and so I, I, that actually was a great excuse for me to fuel my Addiction as I ran off to New York City to become a model. So a little complexities, but the university then wanted to use me. This is the bitter part. They wanted to use me to raise money for them and speak at fundraisers. So I never actually ended up doing that. I kind of checked out of university and went in a different prodigal son direction, if you will.

How did your family react to that decision?

You know, it's interesting. They, at the time, I mean, my father was very busy building his practice, his personal private architecture practice outside of the university. And he actually left the university around that time because it became very challenging for him. Not because of me, because of the own bureaucracies he was building. Their architecture department, I think it's still. There's only two five year accreditation programs to get a master's in architecture and it's the University of Michigan and Andrews University that he built. And he was having such a hard time with doing that that he just said, I'm going to start my own practice. And I think he left the university too, actually, around that time.

Right. So was he having his own struggles, if you like, with the church?

Very much so, yeah.

So supportive as a result.

Yeah, my parents are very supportive. You know, the Midwest farm people. I mean, granted they had their degrees, but the worldly things of New York City and modeling were not something they were familiar with. So they were like, great, go be a model.

So how did that come about? I mean, one assumes that being a Miss USA you kind of, you know, the modeling agencies are obviously alive and around that event and scouting and looking for talent. That presumably is what happened.

Yes, pretty much with. In indirect, I think elite models came in. I went to LA first and then was like, you don't belong in LA because I'm six foot and you need to be on the runways in New York and pivoted.

Wonderful. Natasha, you touched there. You used the word addictions. When did they start to sort of take hold? If you like, when did you. When did your problems in that regard begin?

Well, I think it begins so subtly when we talk about, you know, how do these behaviors and patterns turn into a crisis. It doesn't all happen at once. It seduces you. It's fun, it's exciting. And I think there's an experimental time for all teenagers and young adults. I say the 18 to 22 year old age is the time when, I mean, they're the first ones to go in the front line of a war.

Right.

You send the 18 year olds in first, there's a reason for that, because they're willing to take risks. They're willing to jeopardize the way that they experience the world. And you can hopefully learn from that. And I think with designer drugs in particular, alcohol and weed are very seductive because they're very slow. But when you put designer drugs in place, and the faster cities typically do that, and certainly the entertainment and modeling worlds, it's like lighting a fuse and it just starts to go really fast and you don't even know what happened. So when I ended up in New York and traveling for modeling, it happened very fast.

Do you remember. Do you remember the beginning? You must remember the beginnings of it. And do you apportion sort of blame to that period? Because obviously others were involved. One assumes that culture. Do you kind of look back on it and think, well, that shouldn't have happened, or do you take a different view?

I take a different view. I think that when I do have a genetic predisposition for addiction, my uncle passed away from this disease at 43. My dad's older brother and my great grandparents, Norwegian bloodline. There's. They were drinking in the morning. I mean, that's just the way life was. And before the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous was created in 1935, there was no real solution for alcoholism. Or, you know, there was monasteries in insane asylums. But that's not a solution. You know, that's a temporary situation. So how do you. How do you. If you have a genetic predisposition that, yes, is. I will say that different environments exacerbate an addiction. They can light it on fire. Certainly if everyone's using around you. When in Rome, you're always going to usually lean into, especially as a young person who hasn't identified who they really are in the world. And if you're valued for what you look like, that's a pretty vapid existence that you don't realize it. It's bright lights, big city, and it's fun for a while, but it's certainly not lasting. And so I. I don't blame anyone. I certainly not blame myself. But know that I. Whether I was in New York City, Paris, London, or if I was just on the ranch, I would have found a way to escape my feelings, I don't think. Although I've never used at the ranch. That's my one, like, little disclaimer. I always came out here to detox. I realize now from New York City I would come back and see grandma, and I didn't realize I would come out for two Weeks. And then I would get that itch again. And that's when you think you've got it and everything's fine. But I think wherever you are, when people say to us, when they hire us, oh well, let's get him out of the city, he'll be fine. Yeah, maybe temporarily, but if he has to go back to the city, we have to get him back. Because they think the pressures are the availability of substances are more extreme. Yes. And if that's where their home is going to be, they're going to need to learn how to stabilize there. So you can also have things shipped online today. And I started doing that in the late 90s. Online Internet. I started having drugs shipped to me and FedEx was a big deal in the 90s. So things really moved a lot faster in the 90s.

Can I ask, Natasha, are these prescription drugs? Are they or all street drugs?

Prescription drugs for people who have resources are a lot safer because they're quote unquote cleaner, but you know, still overdose on excessive amounts. So it's not a foolproof way to avoid a fentanyl crisis, if you will.

Right, but you were also taking street drugs.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And you were having them sent to.

You to really understand what addiction is all about is about control. And my relationship with drugs was everything. And so if I could have it directly sent to me and I didn't have a middleman, then I was in control.

Give us a feel for how you were living at that stage. Because on one level you were clearly, you're a high performing model. You were veneer of a very successful life and operationally still very successful. And yet with this issue slowly building, as you say, over time, how are you getting through the days? Just tell me how you, what you know, when you are dealing with all of that, how did you, how did you manage your, how did you manage yourself?

It was really hard, actually. I could have been, quote, unquote, more successful. But I think, you know, God always has a path for us. And so I would miss castings all the time. I would miss showing up for designers, but because people really valued when I did show up, how things went. You know, the designers really asked for me or the casting agents knew that, like, just get Natasha here. But it was pretty bad. I ended up getting fired from Ford models right before 9 11. And I remember when they handed me back in the day when we had big modeling portfolios, it was down in Soho and it was up this fourth flight of stairs. I went up and met with my booker for the 10th time. And she's like, can you get your act together? Are you using drugs? And I was like, no, I'm fine. I'm fine, I'm fine. She's like, well, Natasha, we're going to give you your books now. We're done. And I said, well, that's okay. I'll just go over to Wilhelmina and I'll get on their roster. But. And I did think I could. I was that ostentatious to think that, you know, they didn't all talk. They all talk. Nobody wants a rejected model from one agency. Like, if Silver Bell, or my name was Natasha Bell back then, you know, if Natasha comes over, you know, they were like, no, I got blacklisted pretty much.

Goodness. I mean, you're laughing now because you've got it all in the right place in your. In your. In your mind at the time. It must have been. Been incredibly. It must have been incredibly difficult or not.

I was checked out, and my drugs were more important to me, and I was running off to the south of France anyways. You know, it was August in Saint Tropez, so, like, what did it matter? And, you know, I was playing with my life. And then 911 happened, and pretty much everything changed.

So tell us what happened. What happened next?

So we come back and 911 happens. And that was a crisis for sure. That it. Without question. And so much so that you become frozen in time. And I remember watching the second plane hit, looking at CNN to confirm that what I was seeing was real. Ironically, how we do that. And then I watched both towers fall. I was about 50 blocks north, so I was on 22nd street from the World Trade Centers. And I remember that was the first night that I actually had enough agency. Interesting how a crisis can create change for somebody's patterns and behaviors, Right?

Prior to that, there had been moments when you tried to kind of break from your addictions. You attempted sobriety. And as is more often than not the case, there's no. There's no instant moment. It is a. It is about slowly working towards it. There have been a few of those moments before. Before that moment.

There certainly was. Thank you. This is such an important question for those actually listening. I want to really help them lean in. How do you know you have a problem? How do you know that internal private conversation you have with yourself? And I wanted to stop the hard drugs. I was probably 23, 24, 25 at this time, and I had been trying to stop the last two years privately, I would have never admitted that to anyone, that would have been embarrassing because that would have meant like, you didn't want the life you had. You didn't want to be doing what you were doing, but yet you were doing it. And I would remember thinking to myself, well, I'll stop cocaine now. If I just stop cocaine, I'll be okay. And what I noticed is that I didn't ever think I had a problem with alcohol. After I had a drink of alcohol, I would want another drink. And after I had two drinks of alcohol, I would always call my dealer. And that I started paying attention to and I realized, crap, I can't drink. And I was like, I am never giving up drinking. Like I, I wouldn't even see myself as an alcoholic. When I came into the rooms of 12 steps, I was an addict. I had a problem with hard drugs. I don't have a problem with alcohol. But I also did admit that if I didn't drink alcohol, I knew I wouldn't call my dealer. So I had to. This conundrum I was wrestling with. But I again to your point, I didn't enter the rooms of AA until after I gave birth to my son. Although I did get sober for his pregnancy when I found out.

We'll be right back after this crisis. What crisis is brought to you by Mindstream, the company which puts your health and well being first with music. Cleverly designed to regulate your body's response to stressful situations, it helps you take back control and guides you towards a calmer state of mind. Whether you're navigating a crisis or just dealing with day to day pressures, getting your mindset right is the absolute key. You'll find them@mindstream.com that's mind with a Y or wherever you stream your music from from Mindstream, the personal well being music company. Your family. You'd become estranged from your family, you know, given and we'll get onto this. The work that you do now is so much about helping families through these situations. Just tell us a little bit more about that experience. It must obviously been incredibly painful for you all, but just give us a sense of what happened between you all during those years.

Yeah, this, this 18 to let's say 2224 window is such a pivotal time for young adults when they want to separate from their families and flee the nest and they want to find. There's a really great psychologist named Wendy mogul. She's a PhD. She wrote several books. I've read all of them and two of my favorites are the Blessing of a Skinned Knee Parenting. She's a parenting expert and she talks about, you know, allowing our children to fail and make mistakes and suffer that blessing of the skinned knee. Let them get up by themselves. And so my parents did have a lot of that. And I am grateful that they weren't helicopter parents and they weren't coming after me. I mean, there's, of course, pieces of me that wishes they would have done an intervention, but I probably wasn't ready for one. And so what happens in that. That window of time period is that there's a lot of trying to find what it is I stand for, what is it that I believe. And yeah, I was angry and resentful at my parents because they were parenting me. You know, there's. I love them now. I'm here with them now. And I love you, mom and dad. You did a great job doing the best you could, you know, and I don't think they could have done anything different. And I think there's a magical thinking with young adults that, oh, if my mom and dad had done this different, I wouldn't be where I'm at. I actually don't agree with that. I think we're all always meant to end up where we are. Sure, there are violent transgressions that should never occur, but I would say on a general scale, parents do the best they can with where they are. And that's the work. That's the lens I bring into the work today. Because we do work with the entire family system, at some point, it is so essential to have them involved. And we don't know what we don't know. And when we do, we try to do better.

What about your relationship with your sister?

They. I was really good at telling people what they wanted to hear. So I had one sister that would reach out to me that I would actually respond to, and she would know when to call me at 4pm in the afternoon, because that's when I would have been waking up, having some food in me before I would start partying again. I literally partied every day of the week for years. It was pathetic. It was awful. It's so painful to think about. I did that to myself and ostracized my family. But. But I don't think she knew the extent, but she knew something was wrong.

There's a moment we're jumping around a little here with a story, but there's a moment, I think, when your son Sam was 13 months old, where you blacked out whilst he was in your care. Just, if you can just paint a Bit of a picture for us of what happened that day and the sort of hours that followed.

Sure, I was able to sober up when I found out I was pregnant with Sam at 26. And then I remained sober for a few months after I gave birth to him. But my desire to be thin, I had gained a lot of weight, was increasing significantly. And I started using amphetamines and alcohol again. And from he was two and a half months old until he was 13 months old. I took him to the park. We lived in 22nd Street, Madison Square park. And I took him out in the stroller. I had been up all night and I was in Madison Square park. And I ended up getting back inside and I woke up from my blackout on the couch with my son strapped in the high chair, eating Cheerios, watching Nemo. And I saw the Diet Cokes and coffee and the jacket on the stroller and I was like, oh shit, I have a problem. And so I marched, I went into my, I was still seeing a therapist like once a week and I marched the father of my child in and said, if you would treat me better, I wouldn't have to drink or use. And that was what I really believed, that if my external circumstances were different, I would be different. But that's actually a big blind spot that a lot of people have when they try to overcome their struggle, whatever it might be, self harm, eating disorders, mindset of patterns that keep yielding the result they don't want. It doesn't have to do with anything of your external circumstances. And it's a pretty profound statement to say that. But there are a lot of people who come to that reality while they're in jail or they come to that reality while they're still married to the person that they don't want to be married too. That they have the ability to change the way they see things and the change the way they experience the world, no matter who's around them. Now, if there's abuse and there's safety at risk, then yeah, we need to start making those changes and we do. And that was something that I had to do as well.

So the period thereafter that phasing in and out that we've already discussed follows. But then in 2008, your recovery sticks, if I can put it that unsubtly. Just tell us then how that came about and what you think as you look back on it now caused you to get to the point where you were really ready to recover.

Bless you for asking. There was a four year window after that experience with My son Sam, where I was able to maintain sobriety and have two more beautiful, healthy children in that window and no nurse them and become Mother Earth. To beat one addiction, you have to usually replace it with something else. Leaves a big hole and you need to fill it with healthy behaviors, you know, working out, you know, Mother Earth. And so I became. And that's where I read a lot and about parenting. And then I thought I had it all figured out. I thought I didn't have a problem anymore. And this is a common theme in a lot of people in recovery. And a lot of grace should be given to them as long as they're not putting, you know, the children in harm's way, which, of course, I would have never done that. I would never put my children in harm's way again. I don't have a problem. I thought I was just a party girl. I'm a mom now. I've got it sorted. And on August 4th of 2008, it became so toxic and scary in the home from my using. I used for about six months. I started. I had been in a 12 step program, and I checked myself out of that, so to speak, and I started using for six months and it snowballed quite fast. And so on August 4th of 2008, it was so toxic that I had to call the police. And they came and shined a flashlight in my eyes at the house in the Hamptons and said, do you have a problem with alcohol, ma'? Am? And I said, yes, I do. I'm going to go back to 12 step program. And that was the next day. And for me, what we say in recovery is that I had done more research. I had to really uncover each stone to make sure I had a problem. And yeah, sometimes it takes that, unfortunately.

Natasha, let me just understand. I don't want to pry, but just so we understand, you know, for the listener and the viewer, when you say things have become so toxic, you mean the. The life at home have become so toxic. And the arguments to the point where you felt you needed to call the police.

Correct.

Well, I mean, because. Because you were at risk, because it become violent.

There was risk in the house of being in harm's way. And I think that's what drugs and alcohol do. I'm not going to blame my partner. I was a part. Takes two to tango. And, you know, although, yes, violence should never happen. Harm, physical harm should never happen. You know, yelling and screaming and arguing, I don't take every invitation to a fight now. And I think that's something that you just don't know how to put the gavel down. How do I put. But I don't need to respond. I don't need to engage. I don't need to have that fight back that could then make it escalate. And I'm not saying I'm responsible for people harming me, but I do know that there's a way to diffuse things and navigate now, obviously, so that we don't get into physical harm.

Your father at the time, I think accused you in front of your own children of loving, sort of recovery, of loving AA meetings more than your family. I mean, it's incredibly cruel, frankly, thing to say.

What I will say about that, that I think would be helpful to the listeners if you're identifying with any piece of this conversation. Thank you for staying and listening because this is an important moment to really say, if this is a piece of my life, what can I learn from this? So I want to be as helpful as I can, responsible with my story as possible is that our common denominator was substances. That's what attracted us. We used together, we met together. And so therefore, when I got sober, the partner he knew was ceasing to exist. And so I don't blame him for being angry. I wasn't the person that he fell in love with. I was becoming a sober person who was putting her recovery first. And yes, there was some pretty harmful words that were shared in order to scare me from staying sober.

The sobriety from that moment, again unsubtly put, stuck. Incredible achievement, actually, Natasha, and I do think, I don't know if you agree, is achievement the right word to use there? I mean, what word do you use? I mean, do you feel a sense of pride about what you've achieved in terms of your sobriety?

I think it's a very tricky word to use, pride. Because what we'll say in the rooms is the longest record is the person who woke up first in the morning. And so I'm sober today. It's 10:00am here in Montana and I hope to make it to midnight tonight without being a harm to myself or others. And that is my goal today. And so although in August I'll have 17 years of continuous sobriety, I don't look at that. We say no fronts. It's important to stay and be where my feet are. I'm here in the present moment with you and really enjoying this conversation and being of maximum service in use. And that is what motivates me to want to stay sober today.

Well, I'm going to say congratulations and I'll take it. I hope it's appropriate. Tell us then, Natasha, how that moment leads us to your work. 2012 is when you established Silverbell Global. But just talk to me about how you got. How you reached the conclusion that as you've just eloquently put that, your life now is going to be about putting all of this experience, the good and the bad, to use for others. When did that moment kind of become clear?

I got out of my own way and I tried on a lot of different hats, right? Becoming an event planner or, you know, gala fundraiser, you know, soul cycle instructor. And nothing was really lighting me up. And I had a clear mind so I could really be honest with myself. What felt good to me, what was integral to me and where I was. And then a lot of professionals are in the rooms of AA in New York City and judges, lawyers, clinicians, you know, quite esteemed clinicians. And I was sponsoring a lot of women. And some of these clinicians would watch me with these women and they pulled me individually. They would pull me over about a year's time and say, you need to do this professionally. I was like, what do you mean? This is aa. We don't charge for our services. They're like, no. We know there's a whole arena of recovery coaching and professional support systems for people who have the lived experience of overcoming their adversity, like you and you can go get certified. And they gave me the programs to go and get certified in. And then initially I thought it was like, kind of lame, like this is what losers do. And they haven't amounted to much. They become a coach and I had to really get out of my own. They said, get out of your own way. Just stop judging yourself. There's a whole arena where the is a really effective tool. It's the bridge really, from treatment and out of treatment to help people stabilize in life and live life on life's terms. So I went through those programs and got my first gig and began.

Tell me about the first gig and how did that feel?

Oh, thank you. It was through a lawyer friend of mine, Arthur Ettinger. You know, I was successfully divorced by then and, you know, with majority custody of my three small children, eight, six and three. Thank you, Sam, Ben and Sarah, for helping me build a career as a working mom. There's always a sacrifice there. And Arthur said, I have your first client. It was a mother of two coming out of treatment. And he said, she's going to lose custody of her kids if she doesn't maintain her sobriety. And as Arthur always says, elephants don't marry giraffes. And so she was the better custodial parent option at the time. Hence, the partner wasn't as stable. And so I started going and visiting her when my kids were at school a couple hours, three times, three, four times a week. And after six weeks, Arthur said, now you're going to go in and speak to the forensic psychologist that's been overseeing your work. And I said, what do you mean, overseeing my work? You think you could have helped a sister out and told me I was being supervised by a forensic psychologist, like, top level? He said, yeah, she's in a custody battle, and we are going to determine who's the better custodial parent. And he wants to speak to you about your work with her. I was like, gee, thanks. He's like, you're doing fine. Just go in and speak to him. So I did very scaredly in imposter syndrome. I knock on the door. I come in. He says, sit down. He barely looks at me with his little spectacles. Little man sitting in his big leather chair like Freudian. And he says, what are you doing? Tell me what you're doing. He doesn't look at me. What are you doing with my patient? So I start telling him. I said, we are playing board games together. We're doing sticker charts, reward systems, chores. We're going to the grocery store, learning how to not walk down the alcohol aisle. We are learning how to deal with a crying child, a snotty nose child, when their zipper won't. Or the. Their shoes won't go on. These are small children and not become activated. And I was modeling to her how to be present with our children and not have that shame of knowing that you've been drunk with your kids. You've been. There's a lot of shame as a new sober mom to take on. And he puts his pin down and he looks up at me and he says, because it's working. And it was like this moment that I obviously will never forget, and my whole nervous system, just relax. And he said, I asked her what has been the most helpful to her as she's gotten better over these last six weeks, because she'd been in treatment a few times and she had said, natasha. And she shows me what to do. She doesn't tell me. And I think there's a lot to modeling healthy and appropriate behavior, which is what we still do today in our treatment teams. And there's a lot of good that can come from just being present with a person.

That's wonderful. Complete validation.

Yeah. And then he started handing me case after case and he supervised me. And that the process we still have today is what we learned back then.

Tell me about your model then, sort of concierge recovery, a focus on the identified patient. Tell us what you mean by that and how your work kind of is structured from a practical perspective.

Well, this is another provocative thing to share, but I think it's important that we speak the truth here. In the behavioral health world, there is a term called the identified patient. The identified patient most of the time is a symptom of the dysfunction of the family system. And I'm not here to judge what is dysfunction or not. However, if I am contracted and our teams are contracted to aid in a healthier solution, we certainly want to aid in all the family members that are ready and willing to make some changes in their life to help that identified patient not be in that pattern. And so we are different ways in which we go about assessing, treating and creating new plans to help them move in a way that is sustainable consistently.

And how do you do that?

Well, there's usually a two to three week observation period where we're gathering information, we're working with the family, consultating in zooms, or we have the therapeutic companion going in the home. And then after the two to three week assessment period, we all decide. The family members, our treatment team decide is this. We present a plan going forward after we've gathered information. We don't just offer that on the front end. That would be actually negligent. You can't know how to treat somebody until you get to know the family. It's like popping the hood of a car. You can't fix the problem until you see how the parts are working. And so then we put together what we feel will be helpful in collaboration with that identified patient and the family members. Here's what we think the next 90 day cycle should look like. We do it in Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4. And so it's typically a year long, long process once we all agree after that assessment period. But oftentimes we're only staying present in the work at hand in that day because it yields the results for the next day. So as much as we can have these best laid plans, things pivot and change quite quickly and you have to be flexible on teams to go with it.

So you're embedded really in the family, you and the advisors who work with with you. This is not a Kind of come and see me in my office, you know, once, twice a week. You're fully immersed. Correct.

We go into the homes. We don't have a brick and mortar. We used to have a townhouse in New York City that we would do treatments at, assessments initially if they were in New York City. But during COVID that became very clear that we didn't need to do that and we would, we do send people into homes wherever they are around the world.

And I touched on it in the intro. Some of the situations in which you are immersed are dramatic, you know, extractions of young people from difficult situations in which they've found themselves some highly sort of toxic and stressful situations for them and for their families. And you, as I think I understand the model correctly, will identify precisely what is required to bring some stability to that situation. And in some cases that may well be deploying for a US Navy SEAL to intervene. Just keep it anonymized, of course, but just give us a sense of the scale of sort of complexity that you're working with.

There's a wide range. I'll start with. There are three verticals in the company from primary eating disorders, primary mental health and primary substance abuse. And within those arenas there's a varying degree of extreme crises and also beginning crises. So we have different entry points. And I would say one of the most extreme entry points that we were asked to help manage and create a healthy solution, which we were able to do was a man in his 30s in a psychotic state of mind, unable to living in their parents home. And the parents had left the home because they were so unsafe, in a delusional state of mind. And anytime the police were called, he was able to come to enough, enough to explain himself to not be taken in. And even if he was taken in a time or two, it's only a 72 hour psych hold. And then, you know, you're given meds and you're, you know, it's a hot potato in the United States. You know, I think when you're sectioned in the UK it can be similar. You, you're overloaded and you want to just get people off and on their way and discharged. There's a lot of red tape you have to go through to maintain people in those situations. So what we were able to do was bring in some Navy seals to do an involuntary extraction because we had the parents approval on their property, which of course he didn't have ownership of. And we were able to get him into a psych. A psych Hospital and a psych hold for several weeks in order to stabilize and to create a pathway where he wanted to get better. And that's exactly what we did.

Amazing. That story ends happily.

It does not always. I'm not perfect in what we can deliver. It's really a sense of readiness with all the family members. But that wasn't a good outcome.

Super. You've said, Natasha, that recovery isn't selfish, that it's essential. So for someone listening who might be in that place of, I don't know, choosing between their recovery, maybe in their relationships in the way that you've described, what would be your message to them?

Well, I'll try to narrow that down to be more specific. If one is afraid of losing, let's say, a partner in a relationship and choosing between staying sober, please choose to stay sober. It will yield a healthier relationship or an opportunity for that partner to come back when you're in a better place. If it's even a question. Because in order to be your best self in a relationship and you have an issue that needs recovery, if you don't have that recovery in first place, you will lose everything else.

I feel we should finish the sort of faith story for the listener and viewer because you did rediscover your faith, but very much on your own terms. Am I right?

Very much so, yeah. When I got sober for real this time, I was exposed to a relationship with a higher power through 12 steps, which I give my full support of. And I think that the way that that 12 step program is organized is so non threatening for people with religious trauma because you get to choose a higher power. It doesn't have to be Jesus, it doesn't have to be Buddha, it doesn't have to be anything. It could be, they say, could be a good orderly direction, which is an acronym for God. Right. And so if I have the free agency to choose how I believe, that to me is what a relationship with a higher power is all about. The ability to willingly come at your own pace. And so with that safety net of cast wide enough without telling me what to believe, it was as if, you know, the dark forces of the universe couldn't get to me because nobody was commanding that I believe a certain way. And I think that's essential for people with religious trauma and being so dogmatic in any religion to come freely to a belief system that feels safe and healthy to them. And it did. I started reading CS Lewis, Mere Christianity and Case for Christ. And I was really curious and I studied a lot with Judaism I studied a lot with rabbis and I really wanted to explore, you know, I did a lot of yoga and I wanted to understand, you know, Hinduism and freely experiment and understand what is calling on my heart. And I kept coming back to books about Christ and as I started this conversation, it's something that I. I never want anyone to feel pushed on, judged in any way. But if they are curious about my journey, I am more than happy to share.

Wonderful. Well, I'm so glad that you chose us to do that today. Thank you for joining us. Find your higher power, whoever it is, whatever it is. I love that. Natasha Silverbell, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for your eloquence and your honesty and your insight. It's really appreciated.

Well, I appreciate that you have a space where this can be freely spoken about with integrity and dignity.

Crisis what? Crisis is a podcast, really, that's all about coming back from the brink to a place of strength. So if you know someone who needs that, please, please do share it. As always, full transcripts along with helpful links are available on our website. Just head to crisiswhattcrisis.com thanks as ever to the Crisis what Crisis Team Jane Sankey, Hannah Walker Brown, Rex Fisherman, Mabel Pickering, and the brilliant people at Global. Thank you so much for listening.