Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. This is Bloomberg Business Week,
Speaker 1: Daily reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay
Speaker 1: ahead with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping
Speaker 1: today's complex economy. Plus global business finance and tech news
Speaker 1: as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast with
Speaker 1: Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: I've never really had faith in myself that I could
Speaker 2: stay sober. A lot of people in my life had
Speaker 2: given up hope on me and didn't think I was
Speaker 2: going to make it. You don't know what your life's
Speaker 2: going to be like in a year. If you choose recovery,
Speaker 2: if you take the suggestions, you could be living this big,
Speaker 2: beautiful life.
Speaker 3: It's been so life changing and it's the best decision
Speaker 3: I ever made.
Speaker 2: You're hearing there from people featured in a short film
Speaker 2: called No More Secret. It's a short film that's going
Speaker 2: to debut to that focuses on addiction and recovery. We're
Speaker 2: going to talk about that here with Jenna Wouh. She's
Speaker 2: a senior clinician at Mountainside A Treatment Center. Doctor Manasahni
Speaker 2: is with us as well, director of Addiction Psychology at Northwell.
Speaker 2: He's a psychiatrist. And Jenna, let me start with you
Speaker 2: and kind of the driving thrust of this short film
Speaker 2: which centers on two individuals, one named Peter, one named Rachel,
Speaker 2: and they're talking, yes, about addiction, but about the process
Speaker 2: by which they sought help and went into recovery. And
Speaker 2: I wonder if you could talk a bit about that,
Speaker 2: the forcing mechanism, that the way by which people decide
Speaker 2: it's something that they need to do, that they have
Speaker 2: to seek out recovery.
Speaker 4: Oh, thank you, David Well. I think for most people
Speaker 4: it's not a choice. Usually, life gets to a point
Speaker 4: where it is so uncomfortable and unbearable for not just
Speaker 4: them but their family, community, productivity at work, that they
Speaker 4: have got to make a change and the only way
Speaker 4: is in the other direction. And we really wanted to
Speaker 4: explore two different family relationships and two different d visuals
Speaker 4: that made that change, that decided that they had to
Speaker 4: do something differently, and that meant asking for help, being
Speaker 4: more public about their struggle. You know, we all struggle
Speaker 4: with something, but addiction is something that is still riddled
Speaker 4: with shame and tremendous amount of stigma, both from the
Speaker 4: community and often internally in the family system. So we
Speaker 4: wanted to take this opportunity to really share with people
Speaker 4: openly what we saw as a call for action to
Speaker 4: end the stigma around addiction. So making this film and
Speaker 4: collaborating with Shatterproof was a natural segue there called action,
Speaker 4: you know, in that they focused completely on breaking the
Speaker 4: stigma of addiction nationwide, so that sort of had this
Speaker 4: game to be I.
Speaker 3: Want to stick with you, Janna. I did get a
Speaker 3: chance to look at the short film to take a look,
Speaker 3: and I thought that it was very, very emotional. I
Speaker 3: felt like it was tear jerking and all the sort
Speaker 3: But what I did notice from it was the importance
Speaker 3: of community. Can you just speak a bit more about
Speaker 3: the purpose and the importance of community for those that
Speaker 3: are recovering from addiction.
Speaker 4: Yes, I'm glad you saw that. I think it's absolutely essential. Actually,
Speaker 4: evidence based practice finds that group therapy is far more
Speaker 4: effective than individual therapy for substance us to serves. We
Speaker 4: know other things are also very important, like medicaid assistant treatment.
Speaker 4: But going back to the question of community, it's actually
Speaker 4: related having a community that understands and supports you and
Speaker 4: again doesn't judge you. You know, with addiction, unfortunately, the
Speaker 4: behaviors that come with it are typically pretty reprehensible and
Speaker 4: really affect relationships, and it's very difficult when you love
Speaker 4: someone to separate that person from those behaviors. So having
Speaker 4: a community that's not going to judge you, where you
Speaker 4: can share some things that you've done that you might
Speaker 4: not understand with maybe an appropriate clinical guide in this
Speaker 4: process or a pure support recovery coach, and a community
Speaker 4: heals people in ways I can't see anything else. You know,
Speaker 4: that community and ability to say what I've done where
Speaker 4: I'm struggling and have other people here respect you, understand
Speaker 4: and help you process. That is invaluable, doctor Harney.
Speaker 2: Watching this film, you hear from these two individuals. You
Speaker 2: hear from members of their family as well. So in
Speaker 2: the case of Peter, you hear from his wife who
Speaker 2: wrote him a letter at some point. You hear from
Speaker 2: Rachel's father who was worried about her, And there's kind
Speaker 2: of a through line between both of them that they
Speaker 2: were each wrestling with the fact that they thought that
Speaker 2: this story might end with the death of their spouse
Speaker 2: or their child. What is your counsel to family members
Speaker 2: who are seeing somebody in their families a spouse, a
Speaker 2: child going through this and want something catalytic to happen
Speaker 2: by which they could seek health.
Speaker 5: Well, it is really a challenge and disease in that
Speaker 5: sense that it not only affects people's lives, but also
Speaker 5: affects their significant others as well, affects their kids, affects
Speaker 5: their significant others, family members, and others. Now, the issue
Speaker 5: with the addiction as it is is it does affects
Speaker 5: people behavior. It makes a bit of a change in
Speaker 5: their personality and their behavior that upsets the support system.
Speaker 5: And speaking of the support system that Norah was asking about,
Speaker 5: whenever we do an evaluation and a new patient, one
Speaker 5: of the most important predictive factor of their recovery is
Speaker 5: how big is your support system who is existing around
Speaker 5: in your sphere to provide support for you. Now, we
Speaker 5: come to the support system and we provide the advice
Speaker 5: is stay supportive, stay there, stay there for them. They're struggling.
Speaker 5: They're not doing that by choice. As we say, addiction
Speaker 5: is not a choice.
Speaker 2: How challenging is that? Not to interrupt, but I mean,
Speaker 2: how challenging is it to convey that message to the family.
Speaker 5: It is not easy. It is not easy, and it's
Speaker 5: not a straightforward things. Some days you're willing and happy
Speaker 5: to support your spouse or kid, other days you're really tired,
Speaker 5: And we continue to provide that. Now there are groups
Speaker 5: that we have specially for significant others. Also, if you
Speaker 5: hear about the l on on that that's for the
Speaker 5: family and the kids of those who suffer from addictive disorders.
Speaker 3: Well, addiction is very clearly a disease, as we've been
Speaker 3: pointing out on this conversation. Can you speak to the
Speaker 3: resources available from a medical standpoint in terms of treating
Speaker 3: this as a medical concern.
Speaker 5: Well, we know about it way more than we did
Speaker 5: in the past. This is one we know that the
Speaker 5: chemicals that are implicated, and the mechanism of happening, how
Speaker 5: it affects, Where does that affect the brain, what the
Speaker 5: retrans method that implicates, So we know how it works.
Speaker 5: It's a chronic brain disease. You can compare it to diabetes,
Speaker 5: it can compare it to hypertension and so forth. Now
Speaker 5: it does also have medication that affects it and helps
Speaker 5: you with it. We have so many medications if you're
Speaker 5: going to talk about, let's say opoid use or we
Speaker 5: do have evidence that we have methadone that helps with
Speaker 5: it a lot. We have upernorphine, which has been helping
Speaker 5: for ages since the year two thousand and three. We
Speaker 5: have noxon on narcan that can revive and get people
Speaker 5: from overdose. So we have the medical model. We know
Speaker 5: how it works, we know the process, and we know
Speaker 5: that it has some kind of management that can help
Speaker 5: people do your own recovery as well.
Speaker 2: Just in the minute that we have left. This is
Speaker 2: a business finance economic show. A lot of folks who
Speaker 2: listen are on Wall Street working on Wall Street, and
Speaker 2: I gat this is a community that has been historically
Speaker 2: at least resistant to talking with or confronting at these issues.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I think there's a high cost to acknowledging that
Speaker 4: you need help. But we do see a lot of
Speaker 4: people that are in very high stress jobs and this
Speaker 4: becomes an outlet and it's very difficult then to ask
Speaker 4: for help. We also know, too, if they have a
Speaker 4: partner that's struggling, their own productivity is affected and that
Speaker 4: can be very difficult too. These aren't the types of
Speaker 4: things you might tell your colleague at work, or other
Speaker 4: parents at the parent pick up. Oh, my wife's drinking
Speaker 4: too much. These are things that are very painful to
Speaker 4: hold and can be very consuming. So I think lastly,
Speaker 4: one important thing I wanted to put out there is
Speaker 4: we know that recovery is out there, There is hope,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of joy in life, but not just
Speaker 4: for the individual, but for the entire family system. We
Speaker 4: have a whole program at Mountainside, particularly just for family
Speaker 4: members that they don't have a substance use disorder diagnoses,
Speaker 4: but they love someone that does, and it's been essential
Speaker 4: to work with them from that lens of people that
Speaker 4: specialize in this, that see them and see the disease
Speaker 4: and want to be with them.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you both for being here, really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: That's Jenna Wous, senior clinician at Mountainside, doctor Manassahni joining
Speaker 2: us as well, Director of Addiction Psychology at Northwell, a
Speaker 2: practicing psychiatrist, and just noting again that the short film
Speaker 2: is called No More Secrets Than It's going to make
Speaker 2: its debut at Mountain Sides New York City Center at
Speaker 2: six o'clock. It's about ten twelve minutes long. And would
Speaker 2: catalyze a conversation like the one that we've had here,
Speaker 2: just surrounding the issue of ad and recovery. This is
Speaker 2: the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, and
Speaker 2: anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons
Speaker 2: from two to five pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot com,
Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, tune In, and the Bloomberg Business App.
Speaker 2: You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube
Speaker 2: and always on the Bloomberg terminal