70: What To Do and Not Do if You’re Thinking About Intervention with Stan McKnight
“The real key to success is what happens after they leave treatment.” -Stan McKnight
Technological advancement has really brought the world to a new era. Communication, education, travel and even relationships are not how they used to be decades ago. If you’re contemplating on finding an intervention that’s compatible with your situation and conditions, there are things that you must consider. Stan McKnight shares his expertise on navigating addiction and recovery. It’s rather imperative to know the do’s and don’ts before jumping in to a decision. The life of your loved one is at stake, hence, an uneducated or partially educated judgment can be very detrimental. This conversation is full of wisdom that can help you and your family before, during and after treatment. Stan also shares a useful tool to aid in developing accountability and trust in the family nucleus. Today’s episode is for everyone who is determined to get to recovery and change their life forever.
Highlights:
02:48 Getting a Vital Lesson From Interventions and Recovery
07:38 Addiction- 2000 and Beyond
09:07 What NOT To Do
16:03 How to Diagnose Denial
17:24 What To Do
21:59 The Accountability Tool
27:29 Send the Right Message
32:42 Try IAM!
The real journey to sobriety happens after treatment. Tune in as @TFRSolution and Stan McKnight talks about the Do’s and Don'ts when you’re looking for effective intervention. #addiction #denial #expectations #fellowship #program #reunite… Share on X
Quotes:
05:11 “Not every intervention turns out the way you want it to turn out, what you think it should be, because you’re dealing with… an addicted brain that doesn’t think the way logic is.” –Stan McKnight
12:31 “The real key to success is what happens after they leave treatment.” -Stan McKnight
14:01 “A family unit is not the outside world. It’s supposed to be a nucleus.” -Stan McKnight
14:26 “It doesn’t matter what you put in your body to change how you feel. It’s how you get to how you’re feeling.” -Stan McKnight
16:45 “When a person understands that… they can only be who they can be and it doesn’t matter what other people think of them… there’s a chance that maybe they can learn about sobriety.” -Stan McKnight
18:36 “If your goal is to hang out with sober people, chances are you’re going to stay sober. If you’re going to hang out with people who are users, chances are you’re going to relapse.” -Stan McKnight
18:57 “Not everybody is ready when you want them to be ready.” -Stan McKnight
21:59 “We are living in a world where pretty soon everything’s going to be done on your phone.” -Stan McKnight
27:15 “When you have honesty in your life, then you have accountability.” -Stan McKnight
27:26 “Trust isn’t spoken; you have to show the people can trust you.” -Stan McKnight
30:01 “Working with an addiction professional… who can help them navigate through this process is money very, very well spent.” -Jeff Jones
30:23 “No family signed up for the journey of addiction… It’s helpful to have a guide.” -Jeff Jones
About Stan
Stan McKnight is a Certified Addiction Therapist/Interventionist. Having been sober for over 30 years, Stan understands addiction and sobriety on a personal level. He is also the author of the DUI Mentor/Monitor Program which provides court approved alternatives to incarceration. He leveraged this program through the IAM app, which helps patients stay accountable and support them to keep sober. For 25 years, Stan has seen countless individuals win their battle against addiction. Therefore, he is more passionate than ever before to continue in this path of giving hope to people who are committed to changing their lives.
Telephone: (561) 308-7515
Got ideas? Perhaps a future podcast? Schedule time with Jeff here: https://meetme.so/jeffjones
Transcriptions:
Jeff Jones: Welcome everyone, this is Jeff Jones on the podcast Families Navigating Addiction and Recovery. And today, my guest is Stan McKnight. I just met Stan, he has very interesting lifetime or career in the addiction recovery field that we’re going to hear about. And I’m really inspired to have this conversation because one of the things that he did is he came up with an app, which he’s gonna talk more about, an app that really supports people in recovery to stay accountable to the program that they agreed to that can best support them to keep them sober. So welcome Stan McKnight.
Stan McKnight: Hello Jeff, and thank you for having me on your podcast today.
Jeff Jones: Yeah, you’re welcome. And so, if we could start with you just sharing about yourself so the people who are listening start to get a good flavor of who you are and who they’re listening to here.
Stan McKnight: Okay. I have been helping families of addicts and alcoholics for more than 25 years. I’ve done that because I got sober myself 30 years ago, and I started, you know, really saying that there was a need for me and for others to provide housing in Palm beach County, which is where I live, for people who are coming out of treatment and there were no aftercare of housing units available. So I began by buying houses, and there were male houses in the area, but no female houses. So I opened the first female aftercare program for women in Palm beach County in 1999, and we started with one house and we had six ladies in that house. And the idea was for them to [inaudible] not use and go to meetings every day. And I kind of made sure that they did that because I took them to the meeting. I had no way of knowing other than listening to them say that they went to meetings. And one thing I learned early on in talking with alcoholics, or with addicts, or substance abusers is you really can’t believe what they say. So that’s how I kinda got started in dealing with this industry. And from there, I started getting interested. I met a guy by the name of John Southworth. He was the lead interventionist for the Betty Ford center back in around 2001, and I trained under him how to do interventions. When I did my very first intervention with John, I learned a lot because we were doing an intervention on a family member of a therapist at Betty Ford, and this guy was a paraplegic and lived on the streets in Palm Springs, and the parents and the family were able to get him to the house. And John and I show up to tell him that we’re going to take him to treatment in Tarzana, which is about a two and a half hour drive from Palm Springs, and he gives us no problems, probably doesn’t say a word. We get him in the back of the car, put his wheelchair on the truck and off we go, and we’re headed to treatment. And I get a call from John that night and said: “Do you know where our guy is?” I said: “Yeah, we just took him to Tarzana.” He says: “No, he’s back on the streets in Palm Springs. He didn’t like treatment. He just wants to be the King of the streets.” So I learned that not every intervention turns out the way you want it to turn out what you think it should be because you’re dealing with a mind, an alcoholic, an addicted brain that doesn’t think the way logic is.
“Not every intervention turns out the way you want it to turn out, what you think it should be, because you're dealing with... an addicted brain that doesn't think the way logic is.” -Stan McKnight Share on XJeff Jones: Yes, yes, I get it. Wow. And so, that was early 2000.
Stan McKnight: That was early 2000, and from there I started doing interventions on a local level. And because I live in Palm Beach County, and I live, my office is in downtown West Palm Beach, which is right across the bridge, the Intracoastal Waterway, from some very wealthy families. I started doing interventions, and there was a detox facility, one of our local hospitals that had a private detox facility that was an all cash pay, no insurance taken. I would see patients, I would put patients in that hospital that I would intervene on. And they felt that that was wonderful because they had lobster and Filet Mignon for dinner instead of hospital food, and yet it was in a hospital and we were able to do a medical detox. So what it turned out to be was just drying out place for wealthy addict and alcohol, you know, you try to talk to people on getting, even though it’s very worst that they can feel that they are and they just don’t think they have a problem. So I’ve been, the detox was my favorite because I got to really see the despair of what the disease can do when a family just says, what do we do now?
Jeff Jones: Right, right. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So you really have seen numerous angles here from the sober living aspect to intervention to detox.
Stan McKnight: That’s pretty much the three different areas. And the detox, for some reason, detox seemed to appeal to me more, I learned more. I went back to school to Nova Southeastern University, and got certified as an addiction professional.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Stan McKnight: I learned a lot about pharmacology that I didn’t know. I mean, I knew about alcohol, having my own problems with it prior, but I really didn’t know about drugs and what people, why they were taking them, et cetera, so I’ve got a good lesson. And in detox, especially these days today, you see a myriad of all kinds of drugs. I mean, it’s just like a smorgasbord of who’s taking what?
Jeff Jones: Right, yeah. Times have changed quite a bit, and it’s early 2000.
Stan McKnight: Oh, absolutely. And you know, we all know about the opioid epidemic and it’s been terrible in Palm Beach County. We probably talked the nation until recently. We’re in Ohio and West Virginia started, we experienced it five years ago. We had pill mills here, there was a terrible fentanyl outbreak, and we’ve lost thousands of young people in Palm Beach County.
Jeff Jones: Oh, my God.
Stan McKnight: So, you know, this industry too started popping up in Palm Beach County about 10 years ago, and it gave the treatment industry a bad name. There’s some bad characters got involved and started abusing the drug testing and urine testing, and the Palm Beach County became known as the drug rehab capital of the world, and then they’ve got some terrible publicity recently. The majority of those centers have been shut down, and indictments have been given to some of them, and the good ones are still here, and the good ones stay alive and do what they’re supposed to do.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. So Stan, thank you very much for naming that there are some bad actors in the addiction recovery space, and I’m just wondering, from your perspective, do you have some suggestions? I mean, I’m kind of thinking, you know, maybe Stan has a magic wand, but on all seriousness here, how can family members or parents, you know, do you have some criteria that they can use?
Stan McKnight: Well, the first thing they should probably not do is Google treatment centers. The internet is not always full of good information, but it is full of advertisements, people that know how to talk and know how to lure you into what they can do for your addicted or a sick family member. And it’s a shame but it does go on, and usually they’re looking for just insurance. They run out, they don’t really care about your family. That’s the hard truth.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. So what about, for instance like family members who all they really have is the internet. They don’t have addiction is, you know, it may be foreign to them, but then they’re watching this problem grow, and a crisis happened, and then hearing I can handle this myself, and maybe hearing that for a third or fourth time or whatever.
Stan McKnight: Well, the first thing I would suggest is to ask their family doctor. He has recommendations. Most communities have mental health organizations. That’s a resource to just look up your local mental health resource organizations, psychiatrists that are in your area, psychologist. Because these physicians, these doctors have been called on by the best treatment facilities. They don’t get calls from these fly by night people.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Stan McKnight: So they have a one-on-one working relationship with an outreach director from these treatment centers that are legitimate. And so, that would be my, I’m going to be leery of the internet, and call and ask questions, don’t believe everything you see on the internet.
Jeff Jones: Right, right, right. Call and ask questions. Yeah. I mean, right now, I’m involved in a situation where I’ve been calling peers, and there’s probably eight different treatment centers I’ve called to help with placement. I know what you’re talking about is very real and very challenging. And family members can’t really be expected to do this by themselves. And so oftentimes, their nervous system is elevated and activated. And in some ways it seems like treatment centers can, they have a script that they go through, and there’s nothing wrong with scripts, it’s like when they’re not straight and they say they have medical detox, when in reality they have residential detox, the consequences can be someone dying.
Stan McKnight: Absolutely. But again, unless you understand it, I mean, it is a billion industry. And people want to heads in beds, that’s the term that they all use. Put heads in beds. You know, that doesn’t always reflect back to the clinical people, the staff are the ones that the family works with after they’ve paid for their stay. And so, it’s important if you do have someone that’s in treatment that you stay connected, obviously your family member has signed a release and you’re able to talk to the therapist, but ask questions, there’s also this guided thought that when they leave treatment they’re going to be okay, now that they’ve been to treatment, everything’s going to change.
Jeff Jones: They’re fix.
Stan McKnight: That’s not the way it is. Yeah, they’re fixed, they’re not fixed. The real key to success is what happens after they leave treatment.
“The real key to success is what happens after they leave treatment.” -Stan McKnight Share on XJeff Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So thank you for saying that because one thing I really hope family members are hearing here is that it’s important to set realistic expectations.
Stan McKnight: Absolutely.
Jeff Jones: That your loved one going to treatment, and realistic expectations of what is going to happen after 30 days, or 90, or whatever. And them being engaged can really, you know, really, really be important. And I mean, one thing I’ve seen is so oftentimes, family members don’t change the way they’ve related to their loved one. They don’t change any of the structure of their family, or how they are a family together. So if their loved one comes back in to the same situation, they don’t really have the tools and the support to hold the changes that they learned in treatment and they go back into the family, the family can actually be an environment that’s going to be more problematic for them to relapse.
Stan McKnight: Absolutely.
Jeff Jones: I’m sure. Yeah, yeah.
Stan McKnight: People I’ve heard it said: “You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family.” And you have to understand that a family unity is not the outside world, it’s supposed to be a nucleus, it’s supposed to be people that you were with when you grew up. Now, obviously some people have grown up in bad family situations where there’s been a lot of drugs and alcohol use in the house, or violence, or shouting. And usually people like that are the most vulnerable and they’re the ones that you see that have to be in treatment because it’s not so much the substance. I mean, it doesn’t matter what you put in your body to change how you feel, it’s how you feel, how did you get to how you’re feeling, what happened?
“A family unit is not the outside world. It's supposed to be a nucleus.” -Stan McKnight Share on X “It doesn't matter what you put in your body to change how you feel. It's how you get to how you're feeling.” -Stan McKnight Share on XJeff Jones: Yeah.
Stan McKnight: And there’s so much trauma involved right away.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. That’s such an important question. What happened? And so oftentimes, that question doesn’t even get asked, you know? And what I’ve seen before is different people in the family had different stories as to what happened, or the story of addiction is taken through their family, and they’re operating from different beliefs.
Stan McKnight: And in a lot of cases, they’ve already spent close to half a million dollars in little Johnny’s not fixed yet. And they can’t figure out what’s going on.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Hence the reason why I’m doing what I’m doing with the family services that I have here. But it takes a village, it takes many teams of professionals around a family that really wants to change. And everybody has heard over and over again, families enable addiction. And kind of the way I see this is our culture enables addiction because our culture isn’t really able to solve the problem that it trickles down to families and they’re left to deal with it.
Stan McKnight: Well, people who have to have a substance in their body because they don’t like the way they feel, that’s our patient.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Stan McKnight: It’s not the guy that goes out and has around a golf and sits and has a beer with his buddies and then goes home. That’s not what we’re talking about when it comes to alcohol and addiction, you know, use, I don’t like the way I feel, I don’t like the way she treats me, I don’t like to wait, he makes me do this, blah, blah, blah. And it’s always usually blaming someone, which is really one of the main diagnoses, and denial is blaming other people, minimizing and rationalizing, and there you have full scale denial. And it’s always, you know, being the victim or the judge, and eventually, when a person understands that they can’t be a victim, and they can’t be a judge, and they can only be who they can be, and it doesn’t matter what other people think of them. When you get to that point, there’s a chance that maybe they can learn about sobriety.
“When a person understands that… they can only be who they can be and it doesn't matter what other people think of them... there's a chance that maybe they can learn about sobriety.” -Stan McKnight Share on XJeff Jones: Right, yeah. I really liked the way you frame that Stan, the victim or the judge, and the thing that I would add to that is that they can flip back and forth from one to the other in a heartbeat.
Stan McKnight: Yeah.
Jeff Jones: And people in the family can get sucked in.
Stan McKnight: If I had one piece of advice for a family of an addict or an alcoholic, one of most important things is do not believe anything that’s said.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. So then, what do they do?
Stan McKnight: You know, treatment, whether it’s 30 days, 45 days or whatever. It’s really just a respite from the situation that the family was in. Removing the addict/alcoholic from the household, putting them away for 30 to 45 days gives both the family and the user a chance to get away from each other and to take a big sigh, a big breath. And what are the expectations when they’re reunited? That’s where family therapy really comes in when you do, I’m sure I’ll make difference of jobs, letting families know what to expect, and that’s kind of how I came up with this app, this idea from what I’ve seen, and I don’t promote the support group that I go to because it’s against the traditions to do it, but it is a 12 step based program. And what that teaches me is that there’s three parts to that. There’s the fellowship, which are the other people that you see. The program itself is the 12 steps. And then the third part of it is the meeting itself. And it’s never the same. But you see a lot of the same people there and they’re sober. And if your goal is to hang out with sober people, chances are you’re going to stay sober. If you’re going to hang out with people who are users, chances are you’re going to relapse.
“If your goal is to hang out with sober people, chances are you're going to stay sober. If you're going to hang out with people who are users, chances are you're going to relapse.” -Stan McKnight Share on XJeff Jones: Right.
Stan McKnight: So to me, just having somewhere to go, not to have to be around the family and to make new friends, but you really have to want that. The user really has to want it. And from what I’ve observed, not everybody is just ready when you want them to be ready.
“Not everybody is ready when you want them to be ready.” -Stan McKnight Share on XJeff Jones: Yeah. Right. Exactly. Exactly. The point you’re making, and I would say it a little bit differently, but it’s definitely the same thing, human connection with people who understand, so the piece of community, honesty, and human connection is so important. And programs like you mentioned that are all around the world, they offer that, and there’s a wide range on how people can experience those programs and stuff. But to have something around the world that offers human connection, community, and alignment with thinking, and I’ve been there too. This is such a valuable step, and people being honest with them, self speaking truth, you know? And that in itself can be a very powerful wake up to be around people who are actually speaking the truth.
Stan McKnight: The most famous therapists of all with Freud and Carl Jung. Carl Jung was his protege, and Carl Jung prescribed that what Bill Wilson was starting back in the 1930’s, since he’d been prescribing that he’d never seen anything like this, and here it is, 2019, and it’s still going strong in whatever way. I mean, there are other programs, I mean, there’s Smart Recovery meetings, there’s not as many as there are on the AA meetings.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Stan McKnight: You know, there’s the Refuge Recovery, Lifelong Learning, there’s church, our church groups if you go to church, that offer fellowship, I mean, it’s just getting out and being with people instead of being with people who like to dress.
Jeff Jones: Yeah, absolutely. That is so huge. And then the other piece, and with this is people knowing what they need to do that is going to give them the best chances to stay clean and sober. And so, when you talked about that app, I got real excited because everybody or so many people have a phone in their pocket and being able to connect and stay in alignment and feel accountable just by reaching into your pocket, grabbing your phone and pulling up the app, and checking what do I do now, and to help people stay on track.
Stan McKnight: We are living in a world where pretty soon everything’s going to be done on your phone. I mean, Amazon has created another economy of empty retail stores, and I don’t know what technology will do to a lot of industries. I think it’s probably going to affect the treatment center industry as well. But again, you can’t escape into your phone for 30 to 45 days. You have to go somewhere to be different than where you are. But what you can do with your phone is be accountable. And I learned that because a few years ago, about seven years ago, a local defense attorney asked me, he said: “You know, I really care about my clients and they drink too much. And now they’ve had their second DUI, and they’re looking at 10 days in jail.” But if they go to treatment, the judge will allow them to suspend the 10 days in jail and they’ll just lose their license for a year, but they’ll do no jail time. So I said: “Okay, let’s detox them at the hospital and then put them on a program called Mentor Monitor, where I will mentor them and I will monitor them, and they will have to take a picture every day of themselves taking an Antabuse tablet, which is a drug that if you drink on it, you’ll get very sick. So they agreed to take the drug, and they’d take a picture of themselves taking the drug every morning, and then they would text that to me. And then when they would go to some kind of a support group meeting, or yoga class, or gym, they would take a picture of where they were and they would submit that to me. And it started working very well with these people even when their legal problems were over with, they would say: “Can I still send you my pictures? I like that medicine. I don’t want to drink.” And I still have people to this day who seven years later, now they don’t send me the text because I created an app where they can just go to one app and do the video and the location of where they are, and it’s working. I mean, you know, it’s just working with my patients so I don’t have outcome studies, I don’t have any of that. This is brand new, and I found a young man out in Silicon Valley, when I explained what I wanted to do, he came up with it and he did it. It’s just now coming on the market being launched next year in 2020, been the Apple store and Google, and let’s see how it goes, I don’t know. But what it does is that the patient has to be accountable, and having been sober for 30 years and going to meetings, I hear all the time, if you don’t drink or you don’t use and you just keep coming to meetings, your life will get better. And I’ve seen so many people where that just, that happened, that’s true.
“We are living in a world where pretty soon everything's going to be done on your phone.” -Stan McKnight Share on XJeff Jones: Aha.
Stan McKnight: Life got better for them, and thinking that, you know, they got their family back in their life, they got jobs, all and all they did was not drink, go to meetings, and put the steps into their lives. In other words, change the way they see the world and behave. So in the early days though, when people are just coming into those types of meetings, you know, they’re scared, and they keep hearing that term sponsor, and they don’t know anything about that or that I want anybody bothering them. But they truly need to be accountable to someone that they are not drinking and that they’re really going to meetings. And so with this app, it’s an accountability monitor. You take a picture in the morning, and if you’re not taking medication, you just simply say, hi, good morning, have a good night’s sleep, today this is what I’m going to do and we’ll talk to you later. And then you may send it and it goes by email to their monitor, and the monitor can be a professional like you, or myself, or it can be a family member, or both. And when they go to one of these places, like a meeting or whatever, they hit the app again and it shows a GPS exactly where they are, and they type in why they’re there. So on a daily basis, this monitor is getting visual evidence of someone who is really trying to get sober.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. You know Stan, thank you very much for that explanation. And what I really love about what you’re saying, ONE is the feeling the individual has that someone else is paying attention.
Stan McKnight: Yes. I will tell you how important that is to the person who’s doing this. When I get these notices of their videos that they make or that they’ve gone to a meeting somewhere and they sent me a GPS location, I know that I have to answer them back right away with a thumbs up, emoji, or I’ve got it, good job, something like that. Because they expect that and they know that someone’s on the other end of what I’m doing and they’re paying attention to me.
Jeff Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The other thing that I thought of that I just really, really love about your explanation here, and having family members be able to get some of this information, this seems like a very beautiful practical way that contributes to building trust back with their family. And it’s not the only thing, but so often times, it’s really hard to rebuild trust, and trust needs to be rebuilt. And what I hear you talking about seems like a beautiful tool to do that.
Stan McKnight: Well, the app is based on honesty. When you have honesty in your life, then you have accountability and then you have credibility, and now there’s trust that gets involved. And of course, trust isn’t spoken, you’d have to show that people can trust you.
“When you have honesty in your life, then you have accountability.” -Stan McKnight Share on X “Trust isn't spoken; you have to show the people can trust you.” -Stan McKnight Share on XJeff Jones: Right. I mean, one of the, I’m sure you’ve seen this too, but for families that don’t really understand what addiction is or what to expect, their loved one goes away for 30 days and they’re really believing that the problem is behind them. And I mean, I’ve seen families buy their daughter, or son, or something like that a brand new BMW–
Stan McKnight: I’ve seen that too.
Jeff Jones: That’s not a good message. I mean, that’s why you’re chuckling. I’m sure–
Stan McKnight: Well, I live in Palm Beach, and that’s quite a lot of expensive gifts given to kids here.
Jeff Jones: Right, right. Like the trust doesn’t come just like on day 30, or whenever they discharge, or whatever, trust is built up slowly. That’s why, that idea of buying your loved one a BMW or something, and I’ve heard that, you’ve heard that this has happened so many times, and I think, so for families who may have a propensity to do that, from your perspective, what would you suggest?
Stan McKnight: I would suggest that they take the BMW back, and call them on their stuff, and tell them this is pure enabling and it sends mixed messages, and it’s just not the right thing to do. And if maybe someday down the road after you’re not mad at me anymore for telling you this, you’ll understand what I’m saying. Take it back.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. Well, I mean, ideally, they don’t even spend their money, their resources on a brand new vehicle.
Stan McKnight: The other thing is that the same people that give the BMW, they’re the ones that sent their loved one to $100,000 a month facility.
Jeff Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Stan McKnight: Where they had kept their phone, and they kept their iPad, and they had Equine therapy.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. And there’s some very good treatment out there that charge a lot of money. And the amount of money is not the only criteria to determine what’s good treatment and what isn’t. So I’m hoping that family members who hear this can, ONE, know that working with an addiction professional like yourself, or myself, or numerous other people who can help them navigate through this process is money very well spent.
“Working with an addiction professional… who can help them navigate through this process is money very, very well spent.” -Jeff Jones Share on XStan McKnight: Very good point, Jeff.
Jeff Jones: I mean, one of the metaphors that I’ve used for years is about, no family signed up for the journey of addiction that I compare it to going on a river trip, and a river trip we planned for, we have the right equipment, hopefully we have the right equipment, we have life jackets, we have a guide, we have a safety talk at the beginning of each day or at the beginning of the trip, and there’s a structure and we all know it, and we all use it and abide by it, and we’re going to have the best chance to smoothly get down the river. And even if there’s a big rapid many miles down the river, we’re going to be in a lot better shape to get through that rapid if we’re working together, if we have some skills, if we’re with some other people. And it’s the same way with addiction, that it’s helpful to have a guide. It’s helpful for everybody to be communicating with one another beyond the same page and work together, support one another. So yeah, there’s a lot of different ways to talk about that, but I really hoping that family members HEAR the importance of some of the tools and resources that are available, not only for the individual but for the family as well.
“No family signed up for the journey of addiction… It's helpful to have a guide.” -Jeff Jones Share on XStan McKnight: Correct.
Jeff Jones: And they complement one another. And your app, I really love the story, and you just trying things and seeing what works and when you realize that taking pictures and texting them to you really work and how important that was to people, you worked with someone to make that an actually functional app.
Stan McKnight: I can try to also really enjoyed that effort was the defense attorney who, when he goes to the prosecutor and the judge says: “Your honor, I had visual evidence of this person’s taking his medication as prescribed and attending AA meetings, and if you’d like to see the visual evidence we can provide it.” Not one of his clients and has been on my program has gone to jail.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. Wow. That’s a very powerful piece and it works.
Stan McKnight: It works, it does.
Jeff Jones: Congratulations.
Stan McKnight: I’m going to tell you, you can go to useiam.com. The app is called IAM, I-A-M, Interactive Accountability Monitor. That’s what it is, and it also, for instance, I AM taking a video, I AM taking my medication, I AM attending a meeting, I AM attending yoga classes, I AM, so when you’re doing IAM you’re using IAM, and it’s a very easy app to use, and they wanted, it just goes on to useiam.com, and get on and sign up. The key here though is the monitor of the person who’s going to be on the other end because they form a team with the addict, alcoholic, they’re on the other end, they’re their coach, and they are the ones that it’s important because if a video doesn’t come in when it’s supposed to come in then you can assume that there’s something wrong, and you can intervene by contacting the person, what’s wrong? I didn’t receive your video. That’s another good tool of it. It creates an instant intervention.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So the IAM is interactive, say it again, please Stan.
Stan McKnight: Interactive Accountability Manager.
Jeff Jones: Accountability Manager, wow. Beautiful, beautiful. And when does this become available?
Stan McKnight: Well, actually if you do it before January 1st, you can sign on for free, right now, it’s in the beta stage. You just go to useiam.com, and there’s a place there that says “Try IAM,” you just hit that button and sign up, and try it, it will be available in the app store starting in January, 2020, that time it will be a small subscription fee on a monthly basis. It really only needs to be 90 days to be used because by that time the person has had 90 days of clean time, sober time, and they’ve also been doing things that they should be doing. And by that time, but again, I still have people that are doing this with me that have been doing it for over a year.
Jeff Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And timing wise, you just gave us the website and said that people can go on there and get it for free before the end of the year.
Stan McKnight: Right.
Jeff Jones: But is this appropriate for someone who is, you know, maybe in the, kind of going back and forth the precontemplation kind of stage?
Stan McKnight: Yes. I mean, there’s no failure here. I mean, if you’re not able to send a video in and it’s just, that means right away, look, you’re just not ready. You are not committed to doing this. We’re not going to waste your time or ours. You know, people that really want to do this have to be committed to their sobriety for it to work, otherwise it doesn’t work. But that kind of eliminates a lot of pain for a lot of people because if you say, look, they’re just not done yet, so don’t get your hopes up.
Jeff Jones: So then what I’m hearing, if someone has the commitment, even though they still maybe using heroin, or drinking, or whatever–
Stan McKnight: Then they don’t have a commitment. This is about stopping.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. So it’s someone who has the detox, at least.
Stan McKnight: Someone who has at least a day or two of clean time.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. Got it. Okay.
Stan McKnight: And says, I’m tired of living like this. I don’t want to do this anymore. What do I have to do? Maybe it’s somebody that’s been in treatment for 10 times. Well, they could teach treatment. Go on this app and show us that you can stay sober, don’t drink, go to the meetings, go to the gym, go to yoga, go to work. Just be accountable and tell us every day what you’re doing and where you’re going. If we know what you’re doing and where you’re going for your best interest, then that will let us know that we’ve got hope.
Jeff Jones: Beautiful. Wow. So is there anything that you wanted to say here that we haven’t gone over?
Stan McKnight: No. Other than you make a great point. If you need to find help, don’t go on the internet and just click the first thing you see. Call someone like Jeff or myself, and let us guide you through it.
Jeff Jones: Great. And for maybe someone who’s in Florida listening to this, how would they get ahold of you?
Stan McKnight: They can go to my website. It’s a LaPaz Palm Beach, L-A-P-A-Z and then spell out the words Palm Beach, lapazpalmbeach.com, and that will give you phone numbers and how to contact me, and LaPaz by the way in Spanish means peace.
Jeff Jones: Yeah, yeah. Beautiful. We’ll, Stan, thank you very much. I really appreciate it.
Stan McKnight: Jeff, it’s been my pleasure being with you today and keep doing the good work pal.
Jeff Jones: Alrighty. Thank you.