 Hi, and welcome to another episode of Recover Loud. I'm your host, Mike Paddleford, and I, Recover Loud. Over the last couple weeks, we've been making some moves to try to make this show better for you. We've been lining up some great guests, coming up with some new and innovative ideas and opportunities for you to get involved in supporting Recover Loud. This summer, you'll be able to join us as we film live shows on location. We can't wait to bring our recovery on the road and Recover Loud with all of you. Welcome back to another episode of Recover Loud. Tonight's a special episode, and we're going to take a look back at some of our earlier shows to remind people of the resources and the stories that we've been able to share along the way. Back in December, Lori and I had the opportunity to start this show as a way to spread hope, share resources, and try to help save lives. Even though we've learned a lot along the way, I want to remind everybody of the powerful stories that we shared early on in this journey of Recover Loud. The first episode came together pretty well for our first try. I was able to speak to my friend John Hollerberg over a Zoom interview where he shared his story of strength, courage, and hope to get out of the darkness. Let's take a look at some of what he had to share. You know, I tell them a little bit about my story. Of course, I was 119 pounds at a, you know, 50-cent piece sore on my face, long hair, dripping sweat. It was a disaster. I was complete. I've always had one foot in and one foot out. You know, and this time, if I really want change, I'm going to have to have both feet in on the good side. You know, I'm going to have to have both feet in on the clean side. There ain't no hitting a joint. There ain't no sipping a Budweiser. There ain't nothing for me, because I know where it ends up. It's the weirdest thing. I drink a beer next to, you know, I'm in the parking lot, snow and meth. I don't know how it works, but it works like that. In that first episode, we also shared some valuable tools that people can use to protect themselves over a holiday weekend. Being Memorial Day weekend in the start of summer, I just want to remind everybody of some of the things we can do to keep ourselves safe. In our second episode, Randy Beard shared his emotional story of overcoming a 35-year substance use disorder, all while being unhoused in the Portland area. Today, Randy has turned his life around, contributing to the society that he took from for all those years. It was my daughter's birthday, and I was going to take her to Bingo, and I'm not a Bingo player, but it's something she enjoys. There was no way I was going to go sit there for three hours or not. Be high. So I stopped on the way so I could get high before I went, and some random person found me in my vehicle three or four hours later and gave me CPR until the EMTs got there. For me to be sitting here doing this now, because when I ran the streets as being a hustler, you don't put yourself out there. And this had just started, and we had every news station and newspaper there, and they all wanted to talk to me, and I was like, Ryan, you go do this, I'm not doing that. And I'm sitting here now doing this. So to see the complete 180 since that time, it's miraculous. I made a promise to every person that came that day, I would not let these people be forgotten, and I would be their voice, and we would recover loud and say their names loud, and until I get called to go to my next life, I will be their voice, I will. How much money are you making for all this stuff you're doing? Nothing. I take everything out of my own pocket. I know you do. And that's important, you know? A lot of us in the recovery community, we're doing it out of the kindness of our heart, but what's your why? Why are you doing this? Why do you put in your own time, your own money? Because I know what I've been through. And kids today, they don't need to go through that. And now with the new drugs and fat garlic, everything, it's been a one-killer of people under 50. It has to be stopped. I've seen a thing the other day that said there's going to be more kids in junior high in the next two or three years that are raised by their grandparents than that are raised by their own parents. And that's a sad truth. And I missed out on most of my daughter's life because of my addiction. And now my granddaughter is three years old, she's almost exactly incoherent with my recovery. And she's my best friend. Yeah, yeah. Tell us a little bit about your relationship today with your daughter and your granddaughters. I could not be, actually I should have said that earlier, I could not be more proud of them, my daughter. When I was homeless, both her and both myself and her mother were both people with substance use disorder and mental illness. And we were both unhoused. And my daughter would come down on holidays. As often as she could, she would come down to the shelter. Not knowing I was going to be there, but she would put together 50 bags out of her own pocket to people from the unhoused community. She's going to become a nurse and she's the one who talked me into going to college and helping and giving back. And she could have very easily hated me and pushed me away and then as well not let me see my granddaughter and be jealous of my granddaughter because of the relationship I have with my granddaughter. But she's not. And I'm a strong believer that substance use disorder is a hereditary thing. And I thank my higher power that it skipped over. And now hopefully we broke the cycle and my granddaughter won't have to deal with it. Yeah. On episode three, I was joined by my wife Lori and our daughter Taylor via Zoom. Taylor shared with everyone what it was like for her living with two parents who were suffering with substance use disorder. She then turned around and asked us some tough questions. It was pretty emotional for us. And it's one of our most viewed stories. There was a day that I had found some paraphernalia hidden under the couch at the Bustry House. I had known before then that something wasn't right. Why were we not enough sooner? I didn't know how to love you would be my honest answer. We talk about the generational trauma. And again, I'm grateful now to be able to learn how to be your mom and be your mom. I had to choose comfort, peace and stability. And I was always choosing chaos because it's all I ever knew. Like Dad said, you are and always have been enough. Your brothers are enough. I was not able to stop. I don't even know if I knew that I wasn't putting you first because in my justification of my brain was as long as I have a substance, I can run you guys all over town and do your sports. I could hide behind my sunglasses and my makeup and nobody would know. The day that I realized I was choosing substances over you was when I spent time digging through your room to take your hard earned money and go buy drugs. And for that, I am so sorry. In our fourth episode, Lori joined me again to discuss what unconditional love can mean for us in the recovery community. And Lori got to spend some time at the Church of Safe Injection. Hi, Jerry. Hi, Lori. How are you? I'm doing alright. What's it mean for you today to have Kosi open up here in Western East? I think for me, it was emotional and symbolic at the same time. I remember being three months over with Jesse running syringes out of the back of his car. We knew that we needed to keep the organization alive when we really wanted to. And so with the support of our community partners, we just kind of kept plugging along. If you need harm reduction supplies, please contact Kosi in Lewiston or some of the other resources we've been sharing along the way. Episode five features Tyler Jones at Rooster County. Tyler shared his recovery and re-entry story with us and told us about a program he started in Rooster County training service dogs to help support people inside the courtrooms of Rooster County. In my right, and there was black people, Spanish people, white people, and we were all in the same struggle. And at that moment, I realized I was on an even playing field for the first time in my life. Because even if you had all the millions of dollars left, you still had $360 a month you could pay. You could still only go to the laundry and get khakis and close the fork in the road. I chose to take the right. And then when I got out, I took the path less traveled and look where I am today, you know, because I took the chance. I was not scared to say, oh, okay, this is what happened. This is what I can do. I can go this way and I can create a better man that I worked so hard to create while I was inside. And then let people say, hey, this is this guy. He went to prison, but he's a fantastic dog trainer. Oh, and by the way, he always gives back to the community with holiday oil drives. Right now we're running a special where if you buy one box of Girl Scout cookies, Purpose Pups will match you a box of Girl Scout cookies. Then we give it to either a homeless person or somebody less fortunate that could use that little oomph to say, hey, life isn't so bad. Let's have a carnal delight or let's have a peanut butter tag along, you know, and just give somebody a reason to smile. I know you're struggling right now, but there's always a better way. It's up to you to take it. But hey, look, here's a recovery community. Come over to the meeting. It's on Wednesday. It's seven o'clock. You know, take the initiative. Even if you just sitting back and you don't say anything, that's fine. Just come, see the fellowship, embrace the new change, get away from the people, places and things that are your triggers because that's the only way you're going to ever change. Shortly after appearing on our show, Tyler's story got picked up by the national news and was given some great recognition. We're proud of Tyler for the work he does. Episode six was shot shortly after Lori and I returned from a trip to visit our son Dylan in North Carolina. Our recovery story with Dylan is much different than the story we had with our other children because Dylan was not around the last four years of his high school years. After graduation, Dylan joined the Marines and is currently stationed in North Carolina with his wife living in their new home. It was a healing experience for Lori and I to spend the week with Dylan at his new home. Afterwards, I sat down with him and found out what it was like for him growing up with us as parents. There were times obviously if I was being dumb, I'd get yelled at or get punished, but as far as being loved by my parents, I definitely felt that. I definitely felt like I thought you guys just didn't have a well-paying job. So that's why you couldn't always give everything to us, which was fine by me. I understood it. I accepted it. And I just felt like you guys were doing everything you could for us with the money that you did have. And I mean, I definitely felt loved by both of you. You guys both taught me very important lessons in life and that's kind of how a lot of my younger years were. I just did my own thing. And when you get home, we do something together. We do the play catch in the yard. We build a fire. We go to the garden or something like that. It was never like you guys just, that you were home and like, it was never that you guys would come home and just never be there for us because you always were. Like once the communication broke down and it would be like a month to two months before I'd hear anything, I kind of just figured, I was like, they're doing their thing and I'm doing my thing. And then after another few, another like couple months of that happening, I'd be like, oh, I guess they just don't care. It's not that I didn't care, but I didn't need the distraction while I was trying to focus on myself and do my own type of growth because I didn't have like my parents there to teach me. Episode seven is one of our most watched episodes. Robert shared how he does whatever he can to help feed the unhoused on a daily basis. He provides sleeping bags, blankets, socks, tents, and other things, whatever he can do to give back to the community that he lives in. Which I'll be honest, if I can share save one person, I'm golden, but saving dozens is just a miracle. And I thank you for training me for Narcan. I mean, when I first heard about the needle exchanges and Narcan and all that, I was just as stubborn as everyone else, even though I'm an addict. I've been educated by this experience of doing the People's Streetlight Outreach. I know so much more now than I did as an addict and then getting sober, going through all the programs and all that. I had so much in my toolbox. I see myself and I'm so happy now. I wanted to live by example and I was thinking that would be enough, but I'm not that handsome. So it didn't work out. So I needed to spread the information and let people know that, okay, relapse, let's try this again. Never giving up. Never giving up on someone, I think, is building these friendships. And like I said, with like 40,000 people on these sites, I know a couple thousand are pretty good friends of mine that we met through this process. And I keep track of them the best I can in the city of Bangor and all these organizations, the Bangor Area Recovery Network, the organizations coming together, the Bangor Area Recovery Network and the Together Plays and CHCS are all coming together. The city of Bangor has flipped the script on the way they were two years ago. In episode eight, I introduced you to the hope dealer himself, Ryan Page. Him and his wife, Cynthia, have started AccessDirect Recovery Network to help connect people to recovery resources as soon as they want to. Ryan's been providing a great service to the community, and I'm happy to have him as a friend. Let's watch some of Ryan's episode now. My wife and I started a nonprofit called AccessDirect Recovery Network, and our mission is to connect people suffering with substance use disorder to early recovery resources, those being things like detox, residential treatment, sober living, in a real amount of time. What we found is that, through lots of experience with this, is that there's a severe lack of resources in me and even the ones that are here, when we're out there and we're doing the thing, we don't understand where they are and on our honeymoon, we took some time to go up and down the eastern seaboard, and while we were there, we decided to reach out to facilities that we could meet with and view facilities and try to put them in network to try to save lives back at home. So I'm a 12-step guy. I work a program, I have a sponsor, I sponsor other guys, and I still, part of what I do really is really a core part of what that 12-step program looks like, which is, you know, which is helping others to find their way to recovery. So, you know, when I have struggles, I have those resources that I've learned through the program that I've worked. I, you know, I always have my sponsor to bounce things off of. I practice rigorous honesty. Man, I think that it's important to know, you know, your surroundings and know your situations, and I know that when it gets too heavy that I can lighten the load, man, and I don't have to use a substance to do that. I'm a father, I am a husband, I am a friend, and outside of all those things, I am also a board member on the Charter of Safety Injection, which is a harm reduction organization. I am an organizer with the Main Recovery Advocacy Project. I am also a board member. Randy Beard would like to say that I'm the president of Recovery Together, which is a Facebook recovery group that does amazing things in the process of turning that to a nonprofit 501c3 now. If we talk about going from a dope dealer to a hope dealer, it's a similar principle, right? People are out there looking for something. You know, I was out there looking for hope. That's what I wanted, hope. I just wanted to not be sick another day. I wanted hope that I can get better. And, you know, and we're all hope dealers. The whole community of us, you know, you, Recovery Allowed, Recovery On The Road, Rising Grind, like all of us that are out here really doing some work, man, we have that thing, right, that one thing that people want, that we wanted so badly. I just wanted to be sober for a day. And because I'm able to stay sober today for somebody that can't or cannot find their way there, that's hope. So we got that on deck all day. If you need any reminder that there is hope, look at people that are in recovery. We are living, walking proof that hope does exist. And in that way, we're all hope dealers. Thanks for watching another episode of Recovery Allowed. You can find our shows on YouTube with new episodes premiering Saturday nights at 8 o'clock. You can also find our show on PMC Channel 5 in the Greater Portland area. New shows premiering Thursday nights at 7 o'clock and rerunning throughout the week. We want to take a second and wish everybody a happy Memorial Day. And thank you to all the veterans who have served on our behalf. And remember, Recovery Allowed. Hi, guys. Welcome to Tea Talk. I'm standing here with Tommy Hayes. And he's going to show me and all of you how to administer naloxone if ever needed. And it's important for everyone to know, not just people in recovery or in addiction, everyone, because chances are, you're going to see someone, unfortunately, and you're going to need to know what to do. So he's going to show us. I had a recent event where unfortunately, I wasn't properly shown how to do it in the past and I kind of panicked. Luckily, the police was there and I was embarrassed and that will never happen again. So do not let yourself get in that situation. And I want to also say pay attention because you are going to panic when it happens and you need to know what to do. So let's get started. All right. Thank you, team. So we're going to first start out with this here is how nasal narcan comes. It comes in a box and it has two kits, two doses. This here is the two doses. One big thing I get when I train people is naloxone and narcan. They may be two different names, but they are the same exact thing. One is the actual medicine name and then narcan is the company name for it. So this with nasal here, the steps to be taken with this, we're going to first give the person narcan, we're going to call 911, and then we're going to give them air. This will be called rescue breathing. First, what we're going to do is out of this package here, it's simply we just peel this open and when we do, we have this right here. This is one dose of naloxone. There are a couple other forms of this, but the nasal here is by far the easiest to use. All types of naloxone have the same effectiveness and roughly the same amount of time of when they're going to become effective. So if you have it, use it. Whether it be an expiration date or whatever the case may be, you can use it no matter what. See, I thought there was a piece missing because I didn't know that just was good. Yes, with this here, the nasal, there's nothing to do once you take it out of this case right here. It's good to go and you can use it. The way we're going to use this is we're going to have our fingers and our thumb in place like this and we're going to put this into one nostril while we're plugging the other nostril. When we do this, we're going to push up on this red plunger and it's going to aerosol. Once we have this aerosol, this will be absorbed in the mucus membrane of somebody's nose and that's how it gets into somebody's system. What this does is when it gets into your system, the opioids in somebody's system is no longer effective. Your body does not see it in your system. So from this point on, if you're the only one at the scene, this is when you're going to call 911. If you have somebody else on the scene, they could be calling 911 at the same time and then give you a location of a best area where to find you. Now, if someone's not overdosing and you assume they are and you give this to them, are they safe? As far as I've been trained, you can give naloxone even if you're not sure about if they have opioids in their system and you can give multiple doses of naloxone as well. So if they're not coming around with the first dose, I'll get into that in just a second, but you can give multiple doses. I myself have heard of a case of a person needing 12 doses, so that's six kits of Narcan from people at the scene, as well as the ambulance attendants on the way to the hospital. So once we have given the Narcan and we've called 911, this is when we're going to do rescue breathing. So this isn't CPR. We're not doing chest compressions on somebody, but we are providing oxygen to them. So what we're going to do is tip the head back and making sure that the airway is clear, plugging their nose, and then providing air from mouth to mouth. You do want to go full mouth to mouth contact. During COVID times right now, if they have a CPR shield, which is something as a plastic barrier between you and the other person, that allows airflow, but you can also use a t-shirt, some other type of fabric in the case so you don't have to be exactly physical contact to contact during this time. Okay. Yeah, that's good advice, but I don't know if I would think to do that in that situation, but I hope people will think about that, so that's good to know. It can be quite hectic in the situation. Yes. Once we have given Narcan to somebody and the paramedics have arrived, everybody does have the right to refuse treatment from an ambulance of being shipped to a hospital, but at that time we generally ask somebody to stay with that person for at least an hour and a half after this Narcan here and any type of Narcan medicine wears off after about 45 minutes. So if the person has, depending on the amount of opioids in somebody's system, there is the possibility of a second overdose once this medicine wears off. So that's why we ask you to stay with them for at least an hour and a half. If you have more Narcan after the fact, use that again. Call an ambulance again. They will come back and they will give that person Narcan. A big thing about Narcan is we want to give a person at another chance at recovery. It doesn't matter what they do with that at the chance, but as long as we keep giving them that chance to recovery. Even if I'm lost, you're helping me like a wave. And even in the dark, you're always keeping me safe. And everything I've lost, don't compare to what I've gained. So no matter what it costs, I'll be willing to pay. Cause every time I call, you pick up the phone. Always reminding me that I'm not alone. Even when I'm scared and my feet are frozen, you help me keep it going like a semi-colon. So I'mma follow your steps for all of the way up on my faith in you. Walk on the waves and if I stumble a bit and fall on my face, you're gonna save me with all of your grace, yeah. Thank God.