Beyond Just ‘Saying No’: Rethinking Strategies for Youth Substance Prevention

Inspired by Clare Waismann‘s enlightening blog post on the profound impact of substance use on emotional maturity in young adults, hosts Dwight Hurst, LPC and David Livingston, LMFT, Waismann Method’s psychotherapist dive deep into the discussion surrounding substance use prevention among young individuals.

Emphasizing the age-old nature of curiosity, even towards potentially harmful things, they address the balance between directly discussing substance use and focusing on non-drug-related activities as prevention. The episode delves into the importance of community engagement and how activities like sports or clubs act as protective barriers against substance misuse.

The concept of “positive rebellion” from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is introduced, illustrating how channeling one’s unique personality and creativity can be a powerful tool against drug abuse. The conversation concludes on a hopeful note, underscoring the significance of caring and supportive figures in a young person’s life and how their presence boosts resilience against addiction and mental health challenges. As always, the hosts point listeners to the resources available at opiates.com for further exploration and assistance.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: Welcome back to Addiction, Recovery and Mental Health, a podcast by Waismann Method Opioid Treatment Specialists. I’m your co-host, Dwight Hurst, and today I am joined by David Livingston. Welcome back, everybody. And hello to David. Good to be here with you today as we’re talking about this topic.

David Livingston, LMFT: Good to be with you.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: We are careless today, meaning Claire Wiseman, who is usually here with us, is not today. We do this periodically where David and I cut loose and go wild with no supervision. So get ready for that today. Don’t report us if we get too out of line. You just. But we got something really interesting, actually. This topic is one that Claire recently wrote about. Um, as I always try to plug at the end of each episode, you know, opiates.com is the website for Waismann Method specialists and the rapid detox center and a lot of materials there, you know, a lot of things that are available. Obviously, we go through this podcast and there are some blog entries and things, all free resources for anyone out there who wants to learn. But the topic we’re talking about is the way that addiction and really even just the way that we use substances can have an impact on development, particularly the development of emotional maturity in young adults. And how does that work? So it’s a very important topic. And and I think there’s a lot of interesting things both with research and social trends that we’ll talk about today. But David, let me kind of we both have pulled from this article and looked at this article that Clare’s written, but also working with people, whether we’re working directly with young adults or we’re working with people who were young adults, that encompasses most people on earth. So what are your initial thoughts about how substance use can impact developing maturity, especially emotional maturity in people?

David Livingston, LMFT: I think you have to first delineate what amount of substance use, if it’s chronic and consistent, and it becomes really habituated like on a daily basis or even as consistent part of someone’s life, it will inhibit other parts of their development. You know, I’ve seen this from my own private practice when I’ve when I’m working with somebody, the ability to internalize and really feel a depth of what they are, of who they are, what matters to them, the connection that where you internalize from each other gets inhibited by whatever the substance is because remember substances at some level are an inhibiting agent, right? So it doesn’t matter what they are, they will inhibit some aspect of who we are. So it affects development.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: Particularly where we we talk a lot on this. Obviously the Waismann Method Center is primarily focused on detoxification, which we’re looking at opiate abuse and things, opiates, alcohol, even marijuana. I’ve got some stuff about that that’s very interesting. Those are what we call downers, right? They are literally inhibitors. There is such a thing as stimulant abuse, but you could even say in a way that is inhibiting emotional pain or whatever it is I’m trying to get away from. Right. And sometimes that’s inhibiting mental health symptoms, as you put it. That’s the intention. But then we see kind of like, you know, if you ingest a chemical depressant and you think of depression, usually when we say depression, we mean sadness, right? But I think clinical depression is better described as like depressing a button. It’s being pushed down, right? Everything’s depressed. And if we depress our system over and over again, particularly at a young age, or particularly with a chronic use, it can inhibit things that we weren’t intending to inhibit or that we don’t think about while we’re while we’re using the neurological development of young people really goes up into the 20s, maybe even as late as 25, that when adolescence starts, the brain is going through all kinds of development growth, shaping all that kind of stuff.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: And in the article that Clare wrote, there’s a couple of points here of how it can affect I’m going to read through the titles of these and then we can kind of talk about them. But the interruption of neural pathways, right? Those pathways are forming when we’re young and that can inhibit and change the growth and how that’s going to work, hindering cognitive abilities, our ability to reason and think through things. Interestingly enough, that is already impaired by adolescence, right? I mean, you see it take the cognitive abilities. The brain is so busy and oftentimes we interpret this as like either bad behavior or just people get mad at teens, but their brain is already developing so much with cognitive abilities. So throwing something else in the mix can be very difficult. Impaired decision-making, the emotional imbalance, difficulty regulating emotions. I know teenagers don’t usually struggle with that one, but wait.

David Livingston, LMFT: Yeah.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: And once again, we’re throwing things into the mix that can get involved with things that are already happening. Right? Is that make sense?

David Livingston, LMFT: Right. I mean, if you think about part of the normal developmental phase of teenagers, you know, they go through a period as they’re getting ready to leave home and whatever capacity they might be is, is they’re often very irritable. There’s usually an increase in their aggressiveness, especially with their parents. And actually that’s a healthy phase. And part of that is they’re preparing themselves to be able to go into the world with a stronger sense of self where you know, where they can assert themselves when needed and they practice. And so if you’re in if you’re you know, it doesn’t matter if it’s a stimulant or a downer, it doesn’t matter what the medication or what the drug is, it inhibits that that function because you’re kind of getting out of what would be a normal developmental process. And you’re also not depending on the experience with others as the developmental process. You’re escaping it in some way. And so there is a developmental process just from a psychological and that developmental phase, just using that as one. And there are many others before that and after that too.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: The big role that or something that plays a big role in these things is avoidance as you’re talking about really. It’s like here’s the struggles and here are the ways to check out of the struggles. And interestingly enough, I think that that can be healthy. If it’s like if I’m a teenager who’s been big fights with my parents and I find a way to go, you know, I’m going to go chill out with some friends, that’s developmentally appropriate and normal. We and we all need that. It’s like I’m going to go watch a movie and not think about my taxes right now or something like that for a little bit of time because I’m burned out. But I think when you have like supernaturally enhanced, if we want to call it, I say supernatural meaning beyond our natural abilities, not magic. But it can feel like it to say, I’m going to check out, I’m going to smoke some pot, or maybe I’m going to take that pill somebody gave me or I’m going to drink whatever it is to escape that. That’s a much more hard-core method of escaping. It works. People can’t hear the air quotes I’m making. It works in the sense that I escape from the stress and trauma and I’m not having to deal with it. But it’s so powerful. It is rewarding my avoidance and then that can get into the habitual part of drug use, even just beyond the chemical is I need to check out, I have to and I have to do it in such a way that it will force my system to not engage with the problems. Right.

David Livingston, LMFT: Exactly. I mean, because one of the one of the things we have to learn to do and overall is bear ambivalence. And we have to learn to bear ourselves. And which means that we have to be able to bear our love and hate, like the things that, you know, and and and pleasure and pain. And, you know, it goes on and on. The whole dynamic of what it is to be a human being. We have to learn how to bear and not only just bear, but become creative with those aspects of it, create a language for it, you know, create a language that has a sense of self and other. And so one of the things that happens is once you start to get too far into any substance use, you start to lose a sense of self and other. So the self is who you are, but the other becomes the chemical. That’s a problem.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: And if we use healthy escape, if I go to my friends and either don’t talk about anything serious and just watch, you know, binge-watch Doctor Who, or maybe I complain about my parents the whole time. Right? But then ultimately, when it’s a healthy type of avoidance, it’s short. It it. Helps a bit. But then I go home and I still have to hash it out, right. And facing that need to hash it out with my parents one way or another and figure things out. That’s developmentally healthy as opposed to being able to avoid at all costs kind of things, if that makes sense.

David Livingston, LMFT: Yeah, perfectly right. Right. So. So a bunch of teenagers get together and they start to talk about how terrible their parents are and this and that and they’re both sharing it. And there’s a sense of, yeah, this is a hard phase and you’re going through it, too. I’m going through it, too, right? There’s a whole sense of like and you also hear things from each other that that probably reinforce and normalize. But even more than that, you’re speaking, the importance of speaking and development, I don’t think you can underestimate it. You know, a lot of what is therapeutic is just speaking because when you speak, you actually discover and you, you discover who you are. It becomes more real. You’re managing it with another human being while you’re speaking about it. Then they’re speaking about and you’re managing, right? So there’s this interactive quality and um, you know, and you lose all that when all the dependency is with the substance.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: Yeah.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: Absolutely. It’s and that is an important thing, I think when we’re parenting kids, especially adolescents who are going through this. I heard an old saying once that, you know, adolescence is harder on them than it is on us said by a parent, by the way. And, you know, that can be hard to believe that when you’re a parent. But we look back and you think about that difficulty and then you look at all the things that they’re kind of facing now, along with some of the dangerous crises that we just had that live show. We talked about the fentanyl crisis. We talk about that a lot on this show. I wanted to share something, speaking of development. And this is something that’s being seen not just in adolescence, but in adults as well. Speaking of chronic use, there’s something I was able to talk to Sherry Corbett, who’s like a nurse practitioner. I was able to interview her on my podcast and she was talking about this dynamic they’re seeing and they’re just starting to research it and we can research it better now because of some of the either medical laws or legalization of cannabis. So what they’re seeing is the use of marijuana is tying into incidents of psychotic episodes. And so for anyone who doesn’t know, like a psychotic episode, we’re talking like a break from reality. That’s the definition, right? Is a delusion or hallucination often comes with that. And interestingly enough, they’re seeing this among a very specific type of use. Now, I’ll be interested to see what you think. David. I’m one of those I feel like I’ve worked with lots of people who, you know, who who who will get a medical prescription card. And if they go to a real dispensary that’s actually involved with a real medical doctor, not just a weed doctor, and take things in small amounts, and they have a gummy now and again so they can do something or it helps with anxiety.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: And they’re also working therapeutically. I’ve seen people handle that in a healthy way. However, I’m going to say, and I want to check in with you on that too, but however, it almost when legalization comes along, there’s this big green light that everyone’s like, oh, and no pun intended when I say green light. But anyway, because I’m talking marijuana, but everyone’s like, Oh, okay, awesome. Gates are open. We can just use it. It’s fine now. And what they’re finding is for people that use and we’re talking about daily use for at least a year and and and a chronic high use each of those days in particular the higher the use the higher the risk that seems to be the population that will experience or be more likely to start experiencing symptoms of a psychotic disorder. And some of them have never displayed that before in their lives. They have no history of psychotic disorder or breaks from reality. So this is something that who knows, it may have always been around, probably always has been around. But we’re seeing it more pronounced with people because we can sort of measure their use a little bit more and there’s more incentive to be honest about it in a way, because there’s not the criminal part as much. So that’s a long-winded way of saying just because it’s legal, that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for everyone and it doesn’t mean you should. You can do as much as you want, right? Alcohol has been legal for a long time and people die from that every day, right?

Speaker3: Yeah, that’s right. Right.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: So it’s I kind of went on and on there a bit. But it’s interesting. I don’t know if you guys have come across that as much or if you’ve seen some of those effects, but they’re just really starting to study it in some treatment centers.

David Livingston, LMFT: I have heard of it. And individuals who have had psychotic breaks and it’s been attributed to, you know, consistent marijuana use. I don’t know the the specifics of what creates the the actual break. And, you know, if it’s accumulation, if it’s a tainted substance, I don’t I don’t know. I don’t have any real understanding of that. But I also do know that when it comes to chemistry, I mean, if you look at I don’t know how many antidepressants there are, but there’s a lot and a lot of different classifications. Um, and you’ll, you and I know this from all my years in practicing as a psychotherapist is that you’ll see one person who gets on an antidepressant who’s like, oh my gosh, this is like so helpful to me. I can’t tell you. I feel like myself again. Other people get on it and it’s they do terribly on it. And so chemistry varies. And, you know, I think that we have to keep that in mind with all chemicals.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: Yeah.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: I think that’s huge. And I don’t I don’t know if you’ve seen the same thing. I was just saying like where I’ve seen some I’m going to I’m going to add on adults because I think the risk is even higher. Of course, when you’re going through that high developmental stage. And unfortunately, that’s often where people do get introduced to some drug use and alcohol use in those ages as very detrimental. Do you see that, though, where some adults with a sort of minimal controlled use when they have a doctor, they have a therapist they’re working with for their mental health needs, occasionally small uses of cannabis that are not problematic, I guess, is what I’m trying to say. I see that sometimes.

David Livingston, LMFT: Sure. I look, I mean, if you, if you like drinking a glass of wine, you come home and it’s a reward. You look forward to it. You like maybe it relaxes you a little bit. You know, there is there is use. I mean, we’re putting every single thing we put in our body is a chemical and a substance of some form. You know, we just have to be really clear and honest with ourselves as to is this truly healthy for me? And at what level is it and at what amount? And, you know, and I’m not sure that’s being thought through well enough. And I think you’re bringing it up, right?

Dwight Hurst, LPC: Yeah. And I think that tying in with our topic today, that parents who have that glass of wine or maybe they you know legally use and they don’t necessarily hide it, they might say like oh you know I have a have these gummies you’re not allowed to have them but they’re locked up somewhere hopefully, or whatever. But I think that when we have those things, the necessity to talk to kids about what we’re talking about, which is both chemical, neurological and social developmental things that are much different for a teen. So even that, let’s say healthy, subjectively healthy amount of intoxicant use, even that is is potentially quite dangerous to the development of a young person. And so it’s not just, oh, dad isn’t going to dad, mom, mom and dad are going to let me have any fun. So I got to sneak a, you know, a watered down the whiskey bottle or whatever. Teenage stuff where teenagers are trying to rebel, as you put it. So that’s appropriate. But are we communicating the whole picture of just it’s not just that you’re not allowed to because you’re young. There’s medical dangers that you’re putting yourself at risk for more than an adult, particularly if they’re a non-problematic user.

David Livingston, LMFT: Right. Because. Because. And this goes on our whole lives. This isn’t just only developmental, it’s certainly developmental. And the better it gets, the better developed we are, the easier it is to find the right balance. But, you know, it’s an unending dynamic. We, you know, we want to break, but we need to take responsibility and handle things when we need to. We need to seek pleasure. We also need to learn that pain is a part of life, that you cannot just escape. You have to understand it and learn from it. And in so doing, you actually, as you get comfortable enough with emotional difficulties and so forth, you actually don’t suffer as much from it, which is one of the major things that it’s one of the great insights and discoveries is that actually if you lean into the discomfort, you can get comfortable with it and you actually don’t suffer much from it. It actually can become part of your wisdom, your creativity. It becomes a whole other dimension to who you are. You’re better related to other people because everybody else has it too. And on and on.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: As Clare points out, some interesting things about ways to intervene and look at healthy social development and to encourage that. It’s funny, the first one, she said, was awareness and also education. And I think sometimes we have to have conversations with young people that go beyond just don’t, right? I mean, for all a lot of a lot of topics we’re used to just saying like, no, don’t do that. No, we’re not going to talk about it anymore. You’re just not going to do it. Don’t do it. And that’s it. And prevention goes deeper than that. I would like to suggest kind of like what we’re saying now, which is as a young person, you know, did I know you know, did I know not to do things because I was told they’re bad somehow or vaguely unhealthy? Or did I know specifically like, hey, you know, this is these are the exact risks you’re taking and this is where it could damage and this is what it means for the rest of your life and, you know, all those kinds of things? I remember a friend in high school who never thought twice about smoking cigarettes. It was his little secret excitement. But after a while that he’d been doing that, he started to be short of breath when he would run. And as a 17-year-old, that’s not a great feeling. Or maybe 16. I don’t remember exactly. But he he started to notice that and all of a sudden it was this, oh, wait, health consequences. They’re not just for old people.

David Livingston, LMFT: Right, right, right. Development is a is a discovery process. And I think it’s so much better to ask questions and get, you know, kids talking. It’s it’s they learn when they’re talking far more than they do when you’re talking now, it helps to model a healthy sense of balance, that matters. But it is far more important when they’re talking than it is when we’re talking. They already know what you think. I promise you that. Yeah.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: I have found that when we lapse into lecture mode and there’s not… The more amount of time that is gone between the last back and forth we had with them and the more we were talking during that time, it’s so interesting because I think inside our own head we’re thinking, if I can just say it this way, oh, I got to add this. Oh, I got to add that this is great. This is going well. And in reality, all we’re doing is really making our trying to make ourselves feel better. Right. Because the kids checked out, you know, they’re like, huh, I wonder. I’m grateful that I am no longer required to talk in this interaction, but I wonder how much longer it will last. That’s usually the main thought that a teenager is having. You know, during that exchange.

David Livingston, LMFT: You’re so right. If someone said to me years and years ago, the therapy’s only happening when the patient’s talking, yeah, that’s not entirely true, but it’s significantly true. And it’s the same in… When we’re talking we actually get to know who we are. And when it comes to since we’re talking about development, um, create an environment where kids, kids can, you know, young adults, younger, younger people are comfortable speaking and talking to you.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: Absolutely. And that leads into one of the other points here is that if we can create safe spaces for kids where they can talk about things, that’s really interesting. I’ll use my example of my friend Jimmy. That’s not really his name, but my friend Jimmy, he wasn’t going to go at that point. I don’t believe he was going to go to his parents and say, I think my smoking is affecting my lung health. You know, he wasn’t going to do that. Why not, though? Right? Isn’t that what we’d hope for, is that we have a way to talk? So do we, can we create a safe space in our home or maybe in a therapist’s office? But also, do we as a community provide places where kids can go and say, Yeah, I can talk about this, I wanted to use some drugs, or I went to a party and I smoked a joint and here’s how I feel about it. And kind of piggybacking off of that, you know, the developmental-“ness”, the developmental stages of adolescence, I, you know, I have met a lot of young people who’ve done a lot of things.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: And mostly if it’s a new thing and if it’s especially if it’s kind of taboo or if they know that it’s unhealthy, which most of them do, they have feelings about it. It’s not just how’s dope, right? No, they want to talk about it. Young people are saying dope, right? We’re going to have some people out there respond to my characterization of a young person, but you know what I mean? It’s like, where can I go to actually talk about that feeling of why did this? And I don’t know how to feel about it, and I don’t think I can talk to my parents about it. What do you think about another kid or, you know, an adult facilitating this discussion or both? Maybe I should talk to my parents. How would I do that? Anyone got any ideas? All of that stuff. If we don’t have a space for that, how can we be surprised that kids are just kind of figuring it out themselves? Right?

David Livingston, LMFT: If you tell 50 kids there’s a monster in the forest over there and it’ll eat you alive by the end of the day, you got 40 of the kids hanging on the fence and 20 jump over. Right.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: And absolutely.

David Livingston, LMFT: Right. So. So curiosity, even around things that are taboo or dangerous has been there forever. So I think being able to talk about it in a way that doesn’t threaten their ability to explore but tempers it and helps them realize that there actually are real dangers. And then also just good modeling. And I mean, kids see what you do far more than they listen to you, I think, for the most part. And so.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: Absolutely.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: Well, and what are your thoughts about this balance between talking directly about substance use and and the other the other side of that is doing things that are actually very much not focused on substance abuse? So, I mean, for example, having a community outreach where there are activities and appropriate social development and we try to fill up our schedule and help our kids to do more activities and things that are not conducive to getting high or whatever, that that can be very helpful. But we don’t always think of that as prevention. Right? There’s a balance there between talking about drugs and just not having drugs around even in a topic. You know what I mean?

David Livingston, LMFT: So many young people I’ve spoken to over years, young or girls on the soccer team, she’s like, well, I quit the soccer team. And then next thing I know, I’m into drugs Or, you know, a young man says the same thing about whatever he’s doing and they drop out of these clubs or these sports or whatever are the, the, the engaging processes. And they don’t know where to go. They don’t know how to be connected and they end up then somewhere. So what you’re saying is right, there’s a, I think it is a pretty high correlation.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: Yeah, it’s it really gets down to the fundamental thing of do we expect this to be an issue of health management, right? Because we hope to teach kids health management and do we just make this a part of it? I may have mentioned this here on the show before, but I find that people who are in some kind of a treatment or recovery or sober trying to remain so they think a lot about what they ingest oftentimes because that’s something you have to learn. They may be read labels a bit. If someone’s like, Hey, kombucha is healthy and they’re like, then you get someone who’s had a problematic relation with alcohol and they’re like, Well, it’s a little fermented. Is that okay? Is it not okay? And some people decide it’s okay, give it a try. Others don’t. And that to me, the thing, though, that I’m focused on here is not so much the final word on that because there’s probably some subjectivity to the person, but the decision-making process that’s healthy and it would be healthy and is healthy for all of us, even if no one’s ever abused intoxicants or ever had that problem, you know, that life skill of thinking about what I ingest or don’t ingest based upon my own health and value system for myself, that’s pretty that’s a pretty good skill, right?

David Livingston, LMFT: It look… I mean, it’s…

Dwight Hurst, LPC: So I need to learn it.

David Livingston, LMFT: Look, I mean, we all have to pay attention forever. But and but, I mean, one of the things I’ll say that I get, I tend to get the most relaxed response from when I’m working with people is usually there’s a sense of “I did something wrong” and there’s a feeling that they’re in a confessional and, you know, they’ve got to tell me this and that. And at some point I’ll usually say to them, I’ll say like, “Listen, I’m not interested in getting rid of the wild man or the wild woman in you. I have no interest in that.” And they relax and then I also say, look, but I want you to be healthy. And so let’s figure out what that looks like because you and one of the things that happens in high schools and early development, there’s so much pressure on kids and they want to be more wild. Right? And then it comes out in sort of ways that aren’t great. And I think you have to… I think parents fear that side of them too much rather than embracing it and then tempering it with health. Right. And using the right verbiage to really sort of delineate it. And I know from my years of working with people, they relax and then they open up to me. We’re talking. They don’t. Right. And okay, so it’s.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: Yeah.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: Yeah, I like that very much. It’s there’s a, there’s a concept that comes from, I mentioned it in like dialectical behavioral therapy. “DBT” for those who are aware what that is it, it’s a concept of a healthy or sometimes called positive rebellion. And the idea being like, what can I find in my life that it might break some rules and more. So when we say “rules”, it’s just what you’re saying, which is being a little different or passionate or bringing your own creativity to a situation. Am I supposed to reach out to someone and talk to someone in this situation on the bus? Maybe I’m not supposed to buy like social expectations, but maybe I do. That’s an example of positive rebellion. Or I go in. I don’t know. I mean, I actually knew somebody who would do this, who would go in and they would visit a couple of they were retired and they’d visit a couple of different gas stations almost every day. And they didn’t need gas all the time because it was like 3 or 4 different stations. And they made sure to just stop in and basically wish a good day to people who were because they’re like, I’m retired. I don’t have a lot to do. These people get verbally abused all day or they it’s a very hard job. I’m going to drop by and say, Hey, you’re doing a good job. I saw you yesterday and you really stocked the shelves. Well, how are you today? Are you okay? And it was this like now that’s positive rebellion because we’re kind of pushing back on the expectations of how we have those preprogramed interactions. So it’s like trying to find ways that are healthy for ourselves and others that are like, This is how I’m different, this is how I put me into the mix. And, and if you’re doing that, I think you run into the fact that drug abuse actually inhibits that we go back to inhibiting. I’m not as clever at things like that if I’m high, right?

David Livingston, LMFT: Right. And I just think we have to think of life as an ongoing dynamic. And because it is, there’s there’s no escaping that. And so you can do too much of anything. You can drink too much water and drown. So the idea of having to really kind of understand that you don’t crush the wild person in somebody. So it’s terrible. It also deadens them. They’ll rebel against it in ways it can go. It can go bad at the same time, if you overindulge that it can go bad, too. But you can be creative with it and you can relax around it and you can talk about the sides of it and okay, now, now you’re moving towards, you know, a richer life.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: Excellent points. I think let’s I wanted to peek over here. And it was something I wanted to bring up here and this blog post before we wrap up for today. One of the things that’s nice is that this is all about hope, actually, that we should have. And I think that if we have attachments and if we reach out to young people, Clare makes this point in here, that basically we should expect that it will have an effect. I mean, there’s been research around for years that for every interested adult that a young person has their resiliency to trauma and their resiliency to mental health problems or interruptions, their resiliency to addiction, those types of things go up. They go up exponentially. The more people you have in your life who care about you or are interested in you is what they usually say in the research right into development. And so, you know, even if home life isn’t great, an interested teacher or scoutmaster or someone else in my life, even a boss maybe, or somebody like that, who is healthy, interested, supportive and all of those things, that amplifies the likelihood of someone basically being okay. If we want to boil it down to the idea of being okay.

David Livingston, LMFT: That makes so much sense. Just caring and bringing some enthusiasm for young people, for old people and everybody in between.

Dwight Hurst, LPC: Well, let’s see. We’re so grateful to all of you out there. Young, old or. Well, we’re all young at heart, aren’t we? At least, hopefully that’s an option. I’m young at heart, at least every other day. It depends how I feel when I get out of bed with all those reminders. But thank you so much, everybody, for being out there. And yeah, let me real quick if you go to opiates.com/blog or just go to opiates.com you can you can read our blog there and I would encourage everybody to read this article and to look at some of the materials that we have there. So thanks everybody out there and we’re going to leave it there for today. Thank you so much for joining us once again. David, myself and Clare will be back at you again soon to talk about these things. Once again, go to opiates.com to read more about Waismann Method Opioid Treatment Specialists and more about addiction and mental health treatment in general, please feel free to reach out through email at info@opiates.com or you can find us anywhere on social media @opiates. This show is a production of the Waismann Method opioid treatment specialists and Popped Collar Productions. Our music is the song Medical by Clean Mind Sounds on behalf of David and Clare and all of us here, I just want to thank you again for listening and let you know out there to continue to ask questions. Because if you ask questions, you can find answers. And if you find answers, you can find hope. Goodbye for now. We’ll be back with you again soon.