The Productive Dentist Academy Podcast Network.
That's how this works.
You know, addiction is, you don't get to pick and choose the parts of addiction.
Addiction takes over.
It really does.
It is what it is.
And that's what it was for me.
Now, 22 plus years later, it's like talking about a different person.
Welcome to the Everyday Practices Dental Podcast.
I'm Regan Robertson and my cohost, Dr.
Chad Johnson, Dr.
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Welcome everybody to Everyday Practices Dental Podcast.
This is co host Chad Johnson here, and I'm here with co host Regan
Robertson and co host Maggie Augustin.
Maggie, Regan, how are you both doing today?
I'm great.
Thank you for asking.
I am excited to rip the bandaid off and dive into a really good discussion today.
That's serious.
That's
right.
Today we have Alan Mead with us.
Dr.
Alan Mead.
You're practicing up in Michigan, but is it near Detroit?
Tell me where you are, Alan.
My practice is
in Saginaw, Michigan, which is about an hour and a half,
almost due north of Detroit.
Okay.
And I live in Midland, Michigan, which is a couple hours north of Detroit.
Got it.
And I first met you as a fellow podcaster.
Mm-hmm . And Facebooker.
We were diving.
into this topic today.
And I thought, you know what?
Alan's been forthright before.
It would be healthy to have him on if he were so inclined to humor us to join.
And sure enough, you were.
So thank you very much for joining us today.
Of course.
I want to kind of give some backdrop.
We were wanting to talk about addiction on multiple episodes and you came to
mind because you've overcome that.
Can you kind of give a synopsis as long or as short as you want?
And then our goal is to talk about how you go about being healthy after your
history and making it stay as history and being healthy in a community with
others and also being a good example to others because it's not something
that anyone necessarily chooses other than the choices that you make.
Sure.
So I graduated from the University of Minnesota in
1997.
Okay.
I was not through college.
You know, for definitely high school and through college, I
was not really a big drinker.
I turned 21 when I was a senior in college, right before
I started my senior year.
And I, I drank like a college student then it never was a huge deal in college.
I got to dental school and a couple of things happened.
First off, college wasn't very hard for me.
Like I didn't struggle to get grades and stuff in college, but dental
school was a whole different animal.
I was fine with the academics, but there was a fair amount of hazing involved and I
wasn't naturally good at the dental stuff.
You know, I didn't have hands of gold or anything like that.
It was kind of like a dull normal that way.
And I mean, And that was, that was everything, right?
Like it was the first time I'd hit a challenge where I was like, wow,
this is, and, and, and they were, you know, in dental school, they
weren't super kind about that stuff.
So I, I'd never really developed a lot of coping mechanisms prior to that cause
I didn't really need them in the city.
You didn't have any need.
Yeah.
I mean, and I, everyone needs it, but I just really, I really hadn't.
And the other thing is then you pour the, the culture of, of
drinking in dental school and in dentistry in general, actually.
And so I, I mean, I got into it.
So I lived at a, uh, at the Psi Omega house at University
of Minnesota for three years.
And then I lived in an apartment.
All of these places were places you'd walk everywhere.
I never had to drive anywhere.
I mean, I had a car, but I didn't, you know, I didn't find myself.
I walked to school.
I walked to, so this interesting thing about drinking like an alcoholic.
I don't think I was probably an alcoholic then, but I drank like an alcoholic.
I never had to drive anywhere.
So a lot of times the consequences of drinking a lot are because you drive.
Drinking is pretty socially acceptable.
For the most part, just don't get the DUI and you're fine on some level.
And I mean, that's an oversimplification to be sure.
But so I didn't really find consequences of my drinking in
dental school really at all.
And I drank like everyone else did, or at least it felt like that at the time.
I didn't know this, but I mean, like drinking was a coping mechanism for me.
And I mean, I kind of stumbled through dental school, you know,
using that as a, as a crutch.
And so I graduated from dental school in 1997.
I came home, my dad's a dentist and I, I was, I was an associate for him.
It's a whole new different.
heap of problems and I didn't come out feeling like a clinical rockstar,
like some of these young dentists seem like they, they seem like now.
I didn't have any podcasts to listen to.
I didn't, I didn't have any kind of grounding at all.
And my dad was a good mentor, but I don't think he realized that I had been
using alcohol as a coping mechanism.
And I, I just, I didn't hit the ground running and I would, drinking
alone is a little weird kind of thing, you know, not that I didn't in
retrospect, not that I didn't, but like drinking was not, sort of the thing.
But in 1997, this medication called Vicaprofen, I don't
know if you know how old.
Yeah.
Okay.
So people remember that Vicaprofen was brand new and it was pointed hard
at dentists because it was a, um,
it was a beautiful marriage of ibuprofen and Vicodin.
Yeah.
And hydrocodone exactly.
And so it was, it was pointed towards, you know, surgical stuff and everything.
I laughed about this before because they'd send you samples.
You could send away, they'd send you a box of 20 or something like that.
Send you a couple of boxes of 20.
I tried one.
I'd love to tell you that it's because I turned my ankle or something like that.
I mean, I just want to try one and see what it's like.
And I realized right off the bat, this was, this was the thing for me.
This was definitely.
So I didn't have to drink and all the downsides of drinking.
It did not take me long.
I could go in more depth, but I was, it was not long before I was off.
the races and I was using opiates to as my coping mechanism and you
find that the samples didn't last.
So I literally bought a practice, the same practice I'm in now, partly
because I could then get away from my dad so I could like order with
my own DEA number and it is, it was shockingly easy to order all this stuff.
They were not, I think they do a better job now.
Yes.
That stuff, but they didn't really back then, and it was about four years
worth where I was in active addiction.
It got worse and worse.
And I was taking an awful lot.
I was using it while I was working, I was doing everything that you're
not supposed to do, obviously.
And it was a coping mechanism, and frankly, it wasn't,
didn't do a very good job.
I didn't cope that well, but by the time I was, you know, physically and
emotionally and I guess mentally addicted to it, I, there was no one goes in
thinking that they'll become addicted.
That's the other thing, like
there's not a, a
question.
Yeah.
So, um, you know, you're starting to enjoy it and go down that path.
Can you recall any boundaries where you were like, you know what, if
it gets to this, then it'll be a problem, but it's not right now.
No, I mean, I know there were occasionally you would have what they call in
recovering communities, a moment of clarity where you're, you kind of stick
your head up and go, wow, this is insane.
I can't believe this is happening, but, but no.
And I, I, all the boundaries you'd.
think that one would cross, I cross quite quickly, like, and you talk
particularly physicians and dentists that get into these kind of drugs.
They justify a lot and basically look, I'm better.
I'm better when I'm, when I'm on, I'm better when I'm using, like, that's what I
wondered is if you, if you had a, an issue and like that you said, okay, here's my
boundary, even if you crossed it after one week, if you said, you know what, I'm
not going to use it during the workday.
But then the
people, yeah, most people do.
I didn't, I didn't.
That was one of the reasons that it was, I
think when people that.
I don't know that they're being really honest because no, no, no, no.
You can't just do it on the weekend or in the afternoons.
Correct.
Um, I have a question for you though.
Did anybody know
later on?
They did earlier on.
I think people didn't know, but I mean, I, my behavior was bizarre.
Like I, I mean, but you're a dentist.
So
But, but I mean, like, cause I was using opiates.
I had some of the classic things.
Have you ever heard of opiate nod where you're like, literally
like you're kind of out of it.
I, that was kind of classic for me.
I missed a lot of work, um, whether that was because I was in withdrawal
or because I just want to stay home and use or whatever, I missed a lot of work.
It was sort of, sort of the classic opiate things I had towards the end.
They all knew I was ordering it and, and I would get real desperate knowing
when it was, and I was ordering a lot.
And quite often because I ran through it so quickly.
So like my days would always get better if I was going to
get a delivery and all that.
a hot mess.
It really was.
This
was like, what's Henry Schein or one of the, yeah, it's funny.
Darby and Henry Schein were kind of my go to, but I also, after a while I'd use
so much then I would, Oh, this is not, it's not a great situation, but I would,
I would fake scripts to pharmacies.
All the, there are pharmacies all across the, my, my region that
I would, I would do that too.
I would write a script for my wife or something like that and go pick it up.
Just so, and each, each time you do that, that's a felony, by the
way, just, you know, so like I.
If, if I had ever been prosecuted, I would probably still be in prison right now.
I did that so many times.
So the reality is, is it's like, Wait, Alan,
Alan, what makes you brave enough to say this on the air?
I mean, that, that makes me go, oh my gosh, why you're, you're sharing
a story that that's, that's serious.
22 years ago is when I got clean.
So I figured that, uh, I figured that the statute of limitations are probably done.
Do
you figure or did you look it up?
It has never crossed my mind.
Not worried about it at all.
You're incredible.
And I don't know that you give yourself enough credit
standing where we're standing.
I know there's so many people that struggle with this to hear your
story is just incredible to hear and to admit what you've been through.
And you right now are minimizing what you've been through and
how hard you've Uh, I'm gonna,
I'm gonna push back a little on that Maggie because here's the thing.
The first time I told my story in public, it was probably five years after I got
clean, which would be probably 2007, the Michigan Dental Association meeting.
It's emotional every time I tell the story, particularly in front of
a group, you know, where I've been talking about addiction, where I
used to talk about addiction a lot.
I really, I really haven't for a while, but and it was emotional and
it was tough and people would ask, I can't believe you're saying this.
I'm like, well, if, if no one says it, if no one is open and honest about the kind
of Crazy stuff that was happening that no one believes that it could happen.
And no one talks about this stuff still to this day.
I always thought that people would start being open and they aren't.
I was on the committee for the Michigan dental association that helped dentists
and team members that have addiction.
And there was never a time I would run across these people and they would own it.
Like, I am in trouble.
I need help.
No.
Oh, they constantly push back.
I ended up quitting the committee because I was so tired of people
luring up and running away when we were trying to offer help.
I won't lie to you.
That's, and that's a little dark that I say that it's true.
I mean, the reality is that that's how this works.
You know, addiction is you don't get to pick and choose the parts of addiction.
Addiction takes over.
It really does.
It is what it is.
And that's what it was for me.
Now, 22 plus years later, it's like talking about a different person.
So on some level, when you guys are asking, aren't you
worried about the felonies?
I'm like, nah, I'm fine.
Cause you know, they haven't come for me at this point.
I figured, I figured that they can use me as a terrible warning instead of,
you know, getting my lesson taught.
I mean, we'll see.
I know, I, I think I'm probably pretty safe.
Yeah.
And
that was going to be a series of my questions, which we can't really get to
because as you know, the president of the ADA, Brett Kessler, uh, very bravely
talks about his addiction to alcoholism.
And the question that I have for him, which I haven't been able to have answered
is, I know that when you admit your addiction and I thought that I heard
you, or maybe it was Gary Katie that talked about, you know, when you start.
to talk about your addiction and, and, and, you know, you have to
start proving whether I think it's to whatever regulatory body, they,
they, they come and visit you or do whatever they need to do to make
sure that you can keep your license.
Um, and I, and some of the, some of the, Questions that I wanted to ask you is what
that looked like for you, but it sounds like it never got to that point with you.
Oh, no, no,
it totally did.
Yeah.
Let me fast forward.
So I, I don't have to go into deep, you know, it was a mess.
It was, my life was driven by the needing to get more to use.
That was it for four years or so.
And can I ask you a question?
How much money did you spend on your addiction?
Well, you know what's interesting?
It could have been a lot worse if I was into illicit stuff, because I was buying,
I was buying stuff from supply companies.
So yeah,
under your DA license, right?
So it's not that expensive.
Yeah,
it's, I mean, you're, you're buying, you buy wholesale.
What the heck?
On some level, if you were into cocaine, if you were into illicit
stuff, You're going to be paying a lot more and there's, mind you, you
don't get a DEA number and you're not really allowed to buy it for yourself.
So that's, that's clearly not, not part of the deal either,
but that's what I was doing.
Um, the money was something, but it was more like, it was more just the shoot.
I got married while I was using, I got everything.
Like I bought a practice while I was using, I did everything.
While I was using my entire life was completely affected by it, of course.
But there came a day, interestingly, um, one of my really good buddies,
he's an oral surgeon in town.
I went in, I had like a, I had like an ingrown hair, a lipoma on my neck,
and I wanted him to take it off.
And part of it was cause I wanted, he was going to sedate me to do it.
And then he'd write me a script.
I would, I would basically have done anything to, uh, to get a script or
whatever it was, it was, it was pretty desperate, but also I had this thing on
my neck and so he did it and he was the first one that figured out what was really
going on cause he tried to sedate me.
And he couldn't because when you, when you have a, when you have a
tolerance, like I did, there's not enough, you know, he, he, he was
going to drop a big bolus of fentanyl on me and like, okay, here it comes.
And I was like, nothing, you know, he realized that there was
something right with me, you know?
So like, whether or not I was just stupid or asking for help, I don't know exactly.
I can't quite remember, but the reality is, is like, he's
the one who figured it out.
And he's the one who kind of twisted my arm and got my family on
board who, who knew something was going on, but didn't realize it.
And they got me into treatment.
So they, they came in.
If you've ever seen those shows that are like, um,
intervention, intervention,
intervention, my intervention would have made terrible television.
I can say that right now because I was at the office alone.
My team was kind of in on it and they didn't come back after lunch that day.
And so my family and some people came in to intervene.
But in the meantime, I have to tell you, I had been trying to stop in different ways.
Like I, I literally, by that time I had kind of given up trying to
stop, but throughout all this, you're like, this is crazy.
I need to stop doing this.
But I couldn't, I didn't.
I couldn't.
And, and mind you, I never thought to try going to a narcotics anonymous meeting.
I never thought to try and go to an AA meeting.
I never thought, I never thought to talk to anyone about it.
I, this was my Was it shame?
Yeah, I wondered the same.
I mean, there's always a lot of shame with it, but I also,
I, I'm not gonna lie to you.
I, I wasn't going to talk to anyone about it.
I wasn't going to admit anything to anyone.
To get help, you kind of have to admit a little bit, you know?
But did you, did you, like, were you sure you had a problem or were you scared?
Still at that point was like, yeah, totally.
I was,
yeah, there's no doubt.
I mean, not that I was looking for help, but I knew I had a problem.
I had stopped trying to quit.
That's the scary thing.
So I'd stopped.
Mm.
And with as much as I was using what it took to get me high or what it took to get
me where I wanted to go, the, the amount that I was having to do was probably close
to the, the dose that you'd overdose.
So frankly, I probably overdose or was close to overdose
every time I used at that.
Do you remember how much that was?
Oh, yeah.
Oh yeah.
The last, very last day that I used, I, I didn't really do.
anything where you had to shoot.
I didn't know how.
I didn't know how to do IV.
So I took pills.
I took, uh, my regular dose when it came.
And that was the day I was waiting for a delivery.
I got the delivery.
I took 26 Lorset on an empty stomach.
And that was really good.
Now, if you do the math on that, 26 So that's no 15 I'm sorry, 15 10 6 50s.
It's 26 grams of acetaminophen at a time.
26 grams, not milligrams, 26 grams of acetaminophen.
So everyone's liver is sort of frying.
I was just going to say,
RID or organs.
Well, interestingly, the guy that I went into treatment with convinced
that there are some people that can catalyze acetaminophen better than
others because I, I came in and my liver enzymes were slightly elevated.
Slightly elevated.
That was all it was.
Like, can you freaking imagine?
That was a lot of acetaminophen.
But then I was, 150 milligrams of hydrocodone, which is, which is a lot.
That's what it took to get me feeling okay.
You know, that was because I was in withdrawal constantly and all that stuff.
So that's, that's the last time I used, yes.
Well, there was, I wanted to back up one point because there is an underbelly,
like there's a softer side of addiction that I think that people don't address
and what you're sharing with us.
I mean, that is an extreme case to me, meaning it's common, but
it's, you know, a substance.
And there are other forms of addiction that we can pull ourselves
into that happen every single day.
Like I was talking to our co hosts here right before we hit record,
there's shopping, there's smart form use, there's being a workaholic.
So there's things that we do to cope.
And you said something really, really fascinating that I want to go back to.
And it was, they will justify, like you will justify to keep using and you
justified and not only did you do that, you knew, you knew you were addicted,
but you kept going on and, and I wanted to go back to it was, it was your,
your friend who got you into treatment.
What was that definitive moment and made you flip and change your behavior
and say, I'm, I will go into treatment because otherwise you're just on that
wheel constantly over and over again.
And some forms of addiction, Alan, can go a lifetime.
It's either going to kill you or you're just going to keep
hurting yourself in other ways.
In some ways being addicted to opiates, first off, no one.
No one does what I was doing and can look someone else in the eye
and go, this is totally normal.
No big deal.
So on some level it was helpful that it was so crazy, right?
Because the reality is, is like, yes, buying stuff that you don't need.
That's it's all pushing the dopamine button.
The question is addiction is actually doesn't even have to do
with the substance or the activity.
Addiction is what is it doing to your life?
So one of the screens that they use is like, you know, What are the
consequences of this in your life?
Okay.
So if you like to shop an awful lot, is it affecting your life?
How's it affecting your life?
Is it, is it, is it making it so you can't pay other bills
or are you're all those things?
Addiction has a lot less to do with what you're doing or,
or the substance you're using.
It has a lot more to do with how it's affecting your life.
And that's, I mean, there were no parts of my life left unaffected.
But the reality is there's plenty of other addictions that, that
could, that could affect your life.
And I, I kind of believe in all of it.
It's all about the same thing.
Cause it all deals with the dopamine.
It all deals with the feel good system, the, the do it again system.
You know, it's all, it's all that, you know, the rush you get from,
um, I mean, the rush you get from buying something new and the package
coming and that sort of thing.
I mean, I, I, I'm familiar with that.
I know that story.
Do
you find yourself in a position that because of this?
particular kind of past, and the way that your brain has been rewired as
a result of this addiction, you are more vulnerable to the possibility of
becoming addicted to something else.
Yes.
And then do you take precautions in your life to protect yourself from that?
Yes, but I, to simplify, I don't use any, any drugs or alcohol.
And I haven't for almost 23 years.
I just don't, I don't do it at all.
I don't try.
I mean, maybe it wouldn't affect me, but I do, I just don't.
So that simplifies a lot of the, the, those kinds of addictions.
And I got to tell you, what's interesting is that a process
addiction, your, your dopamine is getting hit with your own dopamine.
That's your own brain chemical.
The problem with drugs and alcohol is it's actually, you're adding brain chemicals.
You know what I'm saying?
Like it's a little, there's a slight difference between substance addictions
and process addictions because the process addictions, all the chemistry
in your brain is getting stimulated by your own brain chemical versus mine
was getting stimulated by opiates.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
So there's a, there's a little difference between the two of them, but process.
If you've talked to anyone who's a serious gambling addict, I mean,
that's, that's like cocaine, like people, they can't stop there.
It's, it's really, and so, but gambling, the, the, the brain
chemistry is all internal.
It's all dopamine, but those people get hooked just as, just as hard as anyone.
So the reality is that all that's real.
And I don't know that I'm not sure that it's important.
The how, you know, one main precaution is I don't drink and I don't use drugs.
Um, that part has been on some level, it's really funny because that
was a lot harder in the beginning.
I'll say this, getting clean, a lot harder than staying clean.
Like, and I'm not gonna say that, that in the beginning it wasn't really
tempting, but there reached a point with me that, and I've asked a lot of,
uh, recovering people this, and some of them, some of them are, struggle with it.
I'm like, okay, if I could use whatever I, whatever, whatever I was into, if
I could use anything and get away with it with no consequences, would I do it?
And, and in other words, like, if you could just avoid all consequences and use
what you wanted, I don't want to anymore.
Doesn't, doesn't really thrill me.
The idea doesn't thrill me because I'm kind of interested in taking life
on life's terms a little bit rather.
I don't, I don't want to change, you know, my, my perceptions are
already not so great as a human being.
I don't need to, I don't need to make it any worse by pouring,
pouring that gasoline on the fire.
And I, and I mean, that's sort of, it took me a while to get there.
I'm not saying that it could never, I wouldn't ever, but I
don't, it's not very hard anymore.
It doesn't, doesn't cry.
And honestly, I'm even around it sometimes.
Like I'm even around people who are drinking, I don't like to be around
people who are drinking, but I don't have to not be around them because it
just doesn't, It just doesn't really do anything to me anymore that way.
But
you found yourself in a position where somebody was holding, you
know, Vicoprofen in front of you.
And, and this is the matrix scenario.
Your wife and kids are not around.
Alcohol is alcohol, but, you know, as an addict of, of an opioid, that,
that is what we're presenting to you.
I'll, I'll get here.
Let me give you a scenario.
I have a friend who's an addict and she's been clean for 12 years.
Now all of a sudden, And she goes to Mexico and in the hotel lobby,
they're selling the, the drug that she's addicted to, which is Valium.
Okay.
And her husband's not with her and, um, she's 12 years clean
and she doesn't need the Valium.
But now she's like, well, you know what?
Maybe one day, I mean, I've had some nights that I can't
sleep when I'm traveling.
It'd be, it sure would be nice just to have a little bit of Valium.
And she's tempted.
Um, does that happen?
What would you What would you do?
Like, how tempted would that be?
Would you, would you be affected by that if you were in Mexico and they
were, and they were selling narco?
Yeah, they probably are, by the way.
I,
I will say this, I still count my clean time every year on 10th of January.
I go out on Facebook and I say another year, 23 years will be
this coming, this coming January, you know, I still count it.
So the reality is I've, I've got too much riding on it to
do something stupid like that.
I guess if I didn't take it that seriously, if I didn't, if I didn't think
it would be that big of a deal, maybe, but it just doesn't appeal to me at all.
And I mean, I've been in situations where I could have, okay, so I
got hit by a truck on my bike.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, you
literally did get hit by a truck.
It's not a metaphor.
I
got, I got hit by a pickup truck on my bike and I broke my back in two places.
Now, that sounds worse than it actually was.
I walked away from it.
And I mean, like, we only found out that I broke my back from the MRI.
But, uh, I had to wear a brace.
I didn't have to do surgery.
I had to wear a brace.
But like, so I was in there and I.
Um, it hurt, you can imagine, uh, and they offered me medication.
I didn't take it.
I'm like, you know, I I'm doing okay with this.
I mean, you know, and it, it sucked, but it wasn't that bad.
And, and I'm like, I really don't even, cause the concern is I'm
sitting in a hospital room all alone.
This is right during the pandemic too, by the way, which is an absolute trip.
You know, hospital, it's like a horror movie.
There's no one there.
It's just, the place is empty.
I'm in a hospital bed and I'm not allowed to get up because
the neurosurgeon hasn't come.
So I have to stay in the bed.
So all I got is me in a bed and I have the opportunity to take this
stuff and I didn't do it because I'm like, you know, it's not, I'm going to
look back and be glad that I didn't.
Now, if it But they offered
this to you knowing that you were an addict?
Yeah,
yeah.
But I mean, here's the thing.
It's not their responsibility, Maggie.
It's my responsibility.
There's no one, no one's gonna, no one's gonna call the cops on me if I, if I
take a Norco because I got my back.
No,
they're not.
But then you become a walking liability if they, if you take the Norco and
then you're back in addiction and then you can sue them for becoming
an ad, for, well, I don't know if you want to call it an active ad.
Well,
no, I mean, I, yeah.
Okay, well, in today's litigious
society.
Yeah,
I don't, I don't live that way.
I can't live that way, to be honest.
Well, you don't, you,
you don't, but there's plenty of people that would.
I know, and they have worse lives for it.
I'm going to tell you that right now.
They really do.
And that's a whole other story.
But, but I mean, like the whole idea of I'm waiting for someone to sue me is
a really bad spot to be, but I get it.
I know a lot of people like that.
I didn't take it and it didn't, it ended up working out.
Okay.
I'm pretty glad that I didn't.
Right.
And I don't, I have to say I work with a sponsor.
I have a lot of 12 step background and all that stuff.
And so if I had decided I was really going to, I would have
talked to my sponsor about it.
I would have made sure that if it would have been an accountability thing, whether
that's, I'm going to just take it in the hospital and I won't take it out.
Cause the other thing is, is, you know, it'd been.
I mean, I was pretty serious about it, and I mean, obviously people
need to take pain medications enough.
There's legitimate reasons to take pain medication.
That probably would have even been one, except I was like, ah, I think
I'm okay, and I did fine without it.
But the reality is, though, like, Yeah, it becomes, and I
remember when I was in treatment, that's all we ever talked about.
Oh man, what happens if we are in a situation when it could, because of
course we, at the time you're like, man, I hope I'm in a situation like that,
so I can try to, you know, and, and you come to realize like, nah, not really,
nah, you don't really want to do that.
And I will say this too, something else, Maggie, the few times when I,
when I have like a using dream or if I have a really bad day and I'm like,
you know, man, it'd be pretty good to have some of this, you know what it is.
It's a beer that I want because that was, that's where I
started in dental school, man.
As a beer, a beer could change the way my day went in dental school.
Now, mind you, yes, of course, all the opiates could do that too.
But for whatever reason, that's where my brain goes now, even
though that opiates were my problem.
So the reality is I'm kind of unsafe at any speed with that stuff.
So I just don't, I, I, I try none of it.
And that keeps me, keeps me pretty sane.
Can we talk about treatment?
And here's some context around that.
I think addiction is far more prevalent than we give it credit.
I think kids.
far more prevalent than we track scientifically.
I think alcoholism and drug addiction, those things get
the biggest um, attention.
But you know, since all of us are in dentistry, we all know there are a lot
of life coaching opportunities out there.
There's, there's constant bring balance to your life over and over again.
And I'd like to go underneath the surface because you can hire a life
coach to help you bring more balance into your life so that you stay healthy.
more time at home and you're not as much in the office.
There's, there's practical ways you can apply that, but not if you are
addicted, if you are addicted to work.
So if you are getting your dopamine hits because of the value you see, that's
presented to you when you are working, it's not going to solve the problem.
So you're going to waste thousands of dollars trying to figure out different
frameworks and you're applying them.
But if the addiction is there and it's untreated, I hear treatment facilities.
I don't know, personally, I haven't Googled it.
I don't know if there's treatment facilities.
If you have a spending problem, a gambling, probably gambling.
But shopping, smartphone use, and you can't get off the
phone, those types of things.
I don't know that there's treatment for that.
So could you be our eyes and ears and walk us through how treatment
helped you rewire your brain?
Like what things did you have to put in place to get to the point today
where you can say, I'm fictitiously in Mexico, this drugs presented to
me and I can say I'm too stupid and I can walk away because that's a very,
um, it's awesome that you can do that.
I don't know that people are that strong, especially if they
haven't gone through treatment.
Well, it's interesting.
Okay, so I went to a place, it was called West Michigan Addiction Consultants,
it's based on a model, the Talbot model, which is actually in Atlanta,
and it's, it's, it's very specific, it's quite specific to healthcare providers.
So I was in treatment with, there was like one other dentist there when I was there.
It was a whole bunch of anesthesiologists and nurses, as you can imagine,
because they Keys to the candy store, if you know what I'm saying.
Um, there's, there were some surgeons, there were some, a lot of physicians,
different types of physicians, but a ton of more anesthesiologists.
I would argue that dentists, dentists are particularly susceptible to drug
addictions because we don't have much supervision and we have, we have You
think so?
Still?
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
I mean, like, no, I'm saying still most dentists work alone.
What I'm talking, I'm talking like human, you know, you're the boss and, you
know, my, my team didn't feel like they could, you know, call the cops on me.
I was writing a paychecks, right?
Like that's, that was, I was, you know, I was the, the sole.
But I
think ordering drugs is far more difficult now and so is writing scripts.
It probably is.
I don't know.
I haven't tried, so I don't know.
I mean, you wouldn't have, you wouldn't have expected it to be as easy as it was.
I will say that at the time.
I I'm in like, for instance, most people don't realize that you have to
have a federal drug control license and probably a state drug control license
to have controlled substances on your, on your property and you handle, you
have to, if you're dispensing, not administering, but dispensing, you
have to dispense like a pharmacist.
You know, you have to dispense like a pharmacy.
There's a lot of rules to it.
Not that, but no one's checking.
I'm telling you back then they weren't, maybe they are now.
I don't know though.
There's a lot, there's, there's, we are still not very well.
Um, I don't think dental offices are sort of, they don't have the
same kind of administration as hospital and medical situations.
There's no doubt about that.
And, and mostly the dentists that might be in trouble are the ones
that are doing the administration.
And that could be different now.
That's what definitely that is with me.
Uh, they're probably not going to audit.
your chart audits until you're being audited for something, you know, but
until then it's honor system is what
I remember.
There was a time that, that maybe when this was happening to you, Alan, that
there would be people coming to my office that were like many pharmacies
that were like, okay, here's a cabinet that we're going to sell you
with a little lock and please buy.
Um, Codine and Vicodin and, uh, Acetaminophen and, um, Antibiotics.
And please stock them.
And here's a bunch of stickers.
And here's a book.
And
they were actually, they were actually telling you how to do it like a pharmacy.
It sounds like,
but they really wanted us to dispense that at 20 to the patient.
Oh jeez.
Um, you know, per bottle and whatever and the patients didn't want to, didn't
want to do that because they were getting it free with their insurance from the
pharmacy so then like two years later you're stuck with all these drugs.
We were.
That's
great.
Right.
I mean, I mean, I, I never ran into that.
Thank God, honestly, but I never ran into that.
But I also was not someone who was following all the rules
on clearly on, on that stuff.
So I, I, what I would say is that dentists are probably susceptible for the fact
that a lot of us still work alone.
A lot of, we have a lot of access if we want it, if we choose to.
And that's the other thing, most dentists don't choose to.
So probably one of the reasons they don't audit so hard is because dentists probably
for the most part, don't do this stuff.
But, but the ones that do can get away with it because, I mean, I don't know.
I did.
I don't know.
And again, that's 22 years ago, so I don't know how it is now.
I'd like to think that it's a lot, a lot harder to do what I was doing.
Uh, and the other thing is, is that there's a lot more
illicit stuff out there.
Like, thank God I, I wasn't, you know, in trouble at the time that
fentanyl was all over the place.
Apparently it's easier to get fentanyl than it isn't,
you know, it's, I don't know.
So it's, so stuff changes, but.
As far as treatment, I, I went into, uh, this place, it was a
lot of healthcare professionals.
If I was in treatment for four and a half months, my dad covered
my office while I was gone.
I was in, I wasn't in treatment part time, I was full time.
So I was gone from my office for essentially four and a half months.
That's another reason people are not willing to do treatment because, you know,
their livelihood doesn't stand up to it.
And I will tell you what, uh, when they lawyer up, when a guy, when a
guy gets confronted with the fact that he, you know, he drinks too much
in the office or he, or he's gotten in trouble with drugs, the lawyers
are like, what are you going to do?
You're going to make it so this guy, he can't, he can't possibly
go to treatment this long.
He'll never make it.
I mean, his office will go under and there's a lot to that.
There's a lot to that.
But so I was there, we did, um, two therapy sessions.
Like it was group therapy.
It was everyone, we went to a 12 step meeting every day.
And I lived in a community situation where we lived in apartments,
four people in an apartment and it was other people in treatment.
So we were kind of, the community was kind of therapeutic on its own.
Cause you got to know these people and you were trying to all do this.
together.
And frankly, not everyone was in it for the right reasons.
And not everyone was, you know, I'm saying it's sort of a, it was
a bit of a mess, but I was there.
What does that mean?
Does that mean they were forced in?
They had no choice?
A lot.
Yeah.
Most of them were forced in.
Most of the, most of them were in trouble for something.
When you go into treatment, your, your ass is on fire and
you're trying to put it out.
That's what's happening in a lot of cases.
Some people might find that.
Unfair, but the reality is, it doesn't matter how you got there.
Um, a lot of times you'll go to an AA meeting and they're like, it
doesn't matter how you got there.
If you stick around long enough, it's going to start
sticking to you a little bit.
So I was there for four and a half months.
I also, the day that I went in, this is really funny.
It's, it's funny to me now.
It's funny at the time.
We better laugh.
The guy, right?
We're laughing now.
, the guy who was running the place handed me the phone and, uh, dialed
the number of the Michigan HPRP, the Health Professionals Recovery Program.
And, uh, I admitted to them what I was doing.
So I was on contract the day I walked in.
I'll tell you, I didn't know who I was talking to, and you were, you're supposed
to self, you're supposed to self-report.
I did self-report on his phone when he handed it to me and I
didn't know what was going on.
So I self-reported and I was so, I was gonna be on contract.
So I was on contract for three years.
Uh, a lot of,
what does that mean on contract?
I was gonna say, I have no idea what that means.
Okay, so this is very typical.
Most states have some kind of a program like this.
It's a diversion program where when I'm done with treatment, I'm on a contract.
So each, I would, I, when I started on contract, I had to call every
weekday morning to see if I was going to do a random drug screen.
I had to, I had to, uh, did you
say every day?
Every, every, every
Monday through Friday.
Yeah.
Um, so, and, and I mean, you know, you, you screened a lot.
You screen probably, I mean, in the beginning, it was usually at least
once a week, but it was random.
So you didn't know when you were going to screen.
I got a great story with that.
I'd had drug screens in treatment.
They do that.
Uh, but the very first time I went in for a drug screening, I, I found
the place where I needed to go.
I was, I was motivated and I'm like, I don't want this to, I figured if I
went to work knowing I had to screen and I didn't know when I was going to
get my be able to get away to screen.
It was going to drive me crazy all day.
So I wanted to get there first thing before work started.
So I would call, I think five o'clock in the morning was when
you'd find out your number, if your number was up, you had to screen.
And so if I screen, I get right up, take a quick shower.
And I both over there, cause I think that I think they opened
at six or six 30 or whatever.
So I made sure I was the first person in line.
So I didn't have to get it done so I could go on without my day, without
worrying about whether or not I was going to get there, uh, the very first
day I went in there, I was the first person in there, the person that called
me to collect my specimen was a patient.
You can imagine that.
So that was, uh, Fancy
meeting you here.
Yeah.
In recovery, humility is given to you.
You don't have to ask.
It comes for you.
That was a humiliating experience.
But, but honestly, I look back and like, well, you know, Hey, it was one
of the things that helped keep me clean.
So it worked, you know?
Right.
I kind of wear it on my sleeve now.
It's not a secret to anyone anymore, but, and, and I, it's better
that way as far as I'm concerned.
But so I was, you had to drug screen, you had to, there was a, there were
group therapy sessions once a week, it was Tuesdays after work I'd go in.
It was a bunch of local people that were healthcare professions that
do a, do a group therapy session.
You do at least three meetings a day.
I did more than that.
I was a meetings guy for, For years and years.
For
the four and a half months you do the meetings three
times a day or is this after?
The four
and a half months I was in treatment you did a meeting every day.
That was part of it.
Yeah, okay.
And you have a card and you have to have it signed and that sounds a little
silly but there's a lot of mockery that goes around in, in long term recovering
groups where the, the kids come in and they gotta have their card signed.
I was that guy for three years.
I was leading Narcotics Anonymous meetings.
I still had to have my card signed.
It was kind of funny.
So, in any case, so they, there's a lot, basically they, they, give you
all these things, you have to go to an addiction specialist every three months
to make sure and I I was on Naltrexone, which is a medication that it's it's
like a basically an opiate agonist.
So supposedly, if you used an opiate, it wouldn't work, you know, wouldn't
it wouldn't it basically blocked the mu receptors that You know, that started
the fireworks when you had the opiate.
So, so, and so I took that again, I took that for years.
My wife would witness me taking it and sign my card and all that stuff.
So there's a lot of accountability they build into it.
Can I ask you, when you went through withdrawal, yeah,
does that hurt?
That was terrible.
I mean, but here's the thing you look at it, you know, if you've ever seen the
basketball, basketball diaries, you see a Leonardo DiCaprio going through horrible
opiate withdrawal, blah, blah, blah.
It sucks.
It's terrible.
It feels like you have the flu.
I was in, I was in withdrawal constantly.
I used up my stuff so fast that I was in withdrawal.
As much as I was using.
So I walked around with a runny nose and feeling terrible.
And, you know, you know, the sweats and, you know, body aches
and stuff like that constantly.
It's, you know, it sucks, but it's also like, you know, I, and actually
I probably, so opiates tend to, if you've ever been on an opiate, it
makes your GI slow down a little bit.
It caused constipation.
If you use it like I was using, you were normal when you were using.
So when you didn't have it, it was the other way.
It was like, I had diarrhea for months at a time because
my GI system was all messed up.
And I've heard other people that used as much as I did say the same thing.
So, I mean, like, yeah, your body's all messed up from
this stuff, but did it hurt?
Yeah.
Was it the most regular thing that happened to me at any time?
Absolutely.
It was constant.
So for me, I know that it's very dramatic to, Oh, lots of people say,
I don't want to get clean because then I'll have to go through withdrawal.
I'm like, dude, I'm going through withdrawal all the time.
It sucks.
It's terrible.
But I mean, like, it's also, that's what these things do to you.
And, yeah, so you just kind of gut through it.
There's ways to make it better, but, uh, I didn't.
I, I just, it sucked for a while.
You know, it was, I, I was pretty serious.
When I got to treatment, I'll tell you this.
I had not been honest with anyone about what I was doing.
Well, when they dragged me off to treatment, everyone knew
what I was, what was going on.
For the first time, people realized what I had been doing for all this time.
And it was kind of freeing.
You're like, okay, I'm going to take advantage of this and, and
stop, you know, and it wasn't easy.
There were times when it was a little scary, times when I was thinking about
screwing up, but I really didn't.
I never did.
Once I started treatment, I never relapsed.
So it's like I've never been back to it.
And I mean, I'm not going to say it's easy, but that's,
that's the program that I ran.
And it was, and it worked really well for me.
The treatment center was awesome because When you get to take four
months and just work on yourself, my poor office, my dad and my team, they
had no idea what's going on with me.
They didn't even know if I was going to come back.
And I didn't want to talk about it.
And the people in treatment, they didn't want me to talk about it
because they wanted me to focus on my recovery all the time.
So it was like, it was a little crazy.
My poor dad still, still to this day is like, man, you know, you'd
never talk about the office.
She never talked about it.
I didn't know if you're gonna come back and be a dentist.
I didn't even know.
And I didn't, I feel bad, but I didn't, you know, at the time, you don't get
to focus on yourself like that for four months at a time on anything.
And so I think that helped a lot.
It helped a lot to kind of build that lifestyle.
Did your patients know and then do your patients know?
Lots of my patients know because I put it up on Facebook every year that
I've got another year, but at the time I was told this really sucks
too because, uh, you know, it's supposed to be an honest program.
If anyone that's going into treatment, patients just need to
know you're on a medical leave.
They don't need to know any more than that.
My patients thought I had a back problem, which ironically, 18 years
later, I technically had a back problem after getting hit by a
truck, but they thought I had a back problem and I was gone for that.
I wouldn't have chosen that.
And interestingly, someone from the Michigan committee that I was later
on and later the chairperson of said, just say it's a back problem because
that could be that you could be gone.
You could be out that long for a back prop.
But the reality is, is like, it's not really your patient's business.
But on the other hand, I've had no regrets in talking about it with my patients.
It's a really odd marketing choice because I have a ton of
recovering people that come to me because they know I'm in recovery.
So it's an interesting choice, but, and I, like I said, transparency
has worked really well for me.
So that's, that's been my choice.
And I know that's really scary.
And I know most recovering people don't feel okay about that.
But I can say this, I have no regrets.
I've never once been the guy that said, Oh, I wish I hadn't said that.
So I, I, it's worked out pretty good for me.
On the topic of transparency, I'm really curious if you're open to sharing what
relief underneath everything made you pull that trigger and choose yourself.
What was the motivator for you that said, I'm going to change
the way I'm doing things and I'm going to give treatment a try.
I had never been offered treatment.
The intervention, I just said, okay, I mean, let's go.
That was it.
You know, like, just the fact that people knew what I was doing after
all that time was pretty much it.
It's, it's much less dramatic than Was it
like a
five minute conversation, just like They came in, they came in
and they said that, you know, they, they said, we're here to help.
We can, I'm like, let's do it.
You know, let's go.
I, I said, I've been, I've tried so many times on my own.
I couldn't do it.
So, you know, and it was not, it was not glorious.
It was not, it sounds like it was easy.
It wasn't easy, but I was like, I didn't have a lot of other choices.
So
But you did, but you did have a choice.
So you were forced into the intervention and you were like, okay, let's do it.
I get that piece, but you're there.
You still have to make a choice to show up.
You still have to make a choice to go through treatment.
So there was something there that made you say, okay, now I'm here.
I'm going to do it.
I'm a people pleaser and I'm a striver.
And what's really funny to say this, I'm a rule follower.
Which is bizarre, because I obviously wasn't following any rules then,
but technically I'm a rule follower.
You give me a rule, and I'll follow it.
I'll follow it better than anyone.
But you almost
wanted back into the boundaries.
Yeah.
Like you had gone out of boundaries, and you wanted back in.
It was a
lot of structure, and I did really well with it.
Now I gotta tell you, a lot of the people I was in treatment
with fought it like crazy.
Yeah.
And what's really funny is that was one more reason for me not to.
Because it was like, you know, there's an easy way and there's a hard way.
I think I'll take the easy way.
So I kind of did my, the guy that ran the treatment center
couldn't fricking believe me.
He, he still couldn't believe me.
So I, when they had a coin out ceremony, which is, which is when you leave the
treatment center, they have this big, the whole treatment center gets together
and they, they, they send a coin around, everyone wishes you well and all that
stuff, and it got back to him and he said, you know, I don't know what to do with
you because you hit the ground running.
He said, he'd never seen anything like that.
Hmm.
Did you, uh, did you transfer your dopamine hits to, uh, another source?
So I've heard with alcoholism they might move their addiction to exercise, so
they might move it to something that would be considered a healthy addiction.
Did that happen for you?
Yeah, there's a lot of things over the years that it's done.
I do a lot of exercise now.
I, uh, I have a lot of bikes.
Would you consider it like an addiction, like a transfer of addiction, or
would you consider it like you're in a healthy balance with it?
At
times.
At times.
Podcasting has been the same thing.
Oh, I've heard that so many times, Alan, how cycling is, like with
my triathlon buddies and stuff.
They're just like, have you ever heard like this?
The Lance Armstrong, you know, every cyclist is trying
to ride away from something,
but more than that, every cyclist is looking for their next bike to like,
like cycling, cycling hits a lot.
It checks a lot of the boxes.
Cause there's a lot of gadgets you can buy.
There's always another fancier bike you can buy.
It's like envy of someone else's exactly.
Exactly.
I mean, it's, it's, it's kind of wild that pretty colors.
Even before, and podcasting is the same way, you know, it's like, I have more
recording equipment than any four people, you know, for no good reason mind.
You don't need that much recording equipment for the longest time.
It was, I was really into the technical side of the podcasting and not, not so
much anymore, but I think the cycling is probably, if I have an addiction
that I'm, I'm kind of giving into, it's probably that, but even before the
podcasting, I, for a while, I got into baking, not a great thing for a diabetic.
But here we are, and I love baking.
I was baking bread.
I was baking these beautiful, like artisan loaves.
I would like, think about it during the day.
It was crazy.
It was just like the, like, I'm trying to plan my dental practice day about,
okay, so it's going to rise for this long.
It's going to be a slow rise.
It'll be ready to go.
And like, I'm trying to cook during the week or trying to bake during the week.
And so they're just waiting for the weekend because I
was, I was obsessed with it.
So I still have that.
I still know I can do that.
Probably cycling is the thing that does it the most.
And I buy a lot of gadgets on my bikes.
There's never enough time to ride as much as I would like to, like I would like
to ride, I'd probably ride twice a day every day if I could with kids and stuff.
I just don't, I'm not able to do it.
But yeah, I think my mind is a little bit like that.
And I will say that I've, I've had some ease on that since then.
Like it's not as bad now as it used to be, but there's times.
There's times.
So, you know,
I do have a question, which is a strange question to ask, but is
there any part of this journey that you feel you are grateful for
all of it?
People don't understand how someone can say this, but I'm grateful that I
am an addict because here's the thing.
I could realize that what was going on with me had a label and
had something I could do about it.
And I was 30 when I got clean.
I mean, I was able, I was relatively young.
I was able to do something about it.
So I'm wildly grateful that it was addiction.
I mean, I'm wildly grateful that it was something that was
treatable and that I chose to treat.
And frankly, it's a lot easier to deal with it now than it was then.
So gratitude is basically the core of my life.
I'm grateful for a lot of things.
And that's one of the reasons I can, I can kind of like walk around and
not worry about the litigious society we're in or walk about, you know, I,
social media is a complete show and it's, and it's self administered poison.
I do it more than I should, but I also am able to not soak that much in.
I don't take it as personally as a lot of people, honestly.
This
particular, uh, episode or in this particular part of the podcast
has to do with opening up the eyes of our listeners to the more
challenging parts of our lives.
And you are an example of what is possible in the most difficult
and the most challenging and the darkest parts of our lives.
And you just having expressed something, I don't know, I don't want
to call it bizarre, but it's true.
But I think some people might, to me, it's just so beautiful that out of the
truly darkest rock bottom places that would make you take away your will to
live out of that depth of darkness could come purpose and passion and gratitude
could give someone that might be on the brink of not wanting to take another
step in their life, an opportunity, perhaps gain hope in taking that step.
that next step.
And I sincerely mean it when I tell you that you don't give yourself enough
credit and not just how far you've come, but quite possibly at the hope that you
are bringing to the audience of this particular podcast and quite possibly
to the audiences of your podcast, but maybe even to your patients and the
people that you come in contact with and into the people that you are honest.
With about your transformation and, and, and the ability that you've had and the
hard work that you've put into overcoming your addiction because people die every
single day, not being able to overcome it.
And maybe the reason why they can't overcome it is
because they have lost hope.
Yeah.
I mean, probably I tend to not take myself very seriously.
And I think that goes, well, I think it goes a long ways to do that.
I mean, like on some level it's like, do I do it?
Cause I, I hope it helps.
Sure.
But I also think that it takes away a lot of the power and the scariness,
if you're just freaking open sunshine is the strongest disinfectant.
Being open about it is like I said, I've got no regrets and that it helps.
I think I don't, I haven't found that other people are okay with that.
I I'd love to see more people talk about like Brett and I are the
only two that I know of really.
Dug in like that publicly.
And I, and you mentioned Brett.
I mean, I, I've known Brett for years and we've, we've done a lot of work
together in different places and it's always had to do with addiction.
So it's kind of being open about, it's important, but I
also am like, I good to do it.
And I always forget that not everyone has hurt all this stuff
'cause it's just my life, you know?
Just, it's just what, what I've experienced.
So I forget that it's not, I probably should talk about it more because it's,
it, it's just a commonplace in my life, but you kind of, you kind of forget that
it's not commonplace in everyone's life.
Alan, thank you so much for opening up yourself, uh, your
heart, your story, bringing in.
your humor as well as is great.
Um, this has been a very powerful episode and I think it's, it's going
to open up a lot of people's eyes.
If people want to hear more of you, they're, they're enticed.
Where can people find you?
I do three episodes a week on the Very Dental Podcast Network.
Um, not all of them are me.
We have, we have a group of people that do it, but I've been
doing the podcast years now.
It started out as the Dental Hacks Podcast and now it's
called the Very Dental Podcast.
So I'm on that a lot.
We have a Very Dental Facebook group and I'm on Facebook quite often.
I also have an easy to remember email.
My email is Simple, but not easy at gmail.
com.
It's one of these things where, um, I mean, if there's people who
are actually having trouble with addiction, email me, cause I can help.
I mean, I've got resources.
I can talk about it.
It's, it's, uh, I get a lot of people hearing these, you forget how
commonplace it is, but it doesn't have to be because it doesn't have to be.
I say that because it's like literally not something I, I would
have never believed it, but I don't really even think about it.
It's not even, I don't really, it's.
Not something that, that affects me the same way that it used to.
I know it's there.
I know it's important, but I also realized, you know, after a while,
it doesn't rule your life, you know?
Well, thank you, Alan.
Uh, this has been a powerful episode.
Thank you, Maggie.
Thank you, Chad.
Thank you.
Let's go out and keep making great impacts.
Thanks Doc.
Yep.
You bet.
Thank you.
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