Ep60 Addiction Treatment Detox leave shame at the door

Ep60 Addiction Treatment Detox, leave shame at the door

boom, boom,

Chris Langley: Hi. Welcome to Addiction Recovery Place Podcast, the podcast championing addiction treatment professionals around the world. I'm your host Chris Langley, and I'm very pleased to introduce today's guest, Chris Seer and Sam Doyle from South Carolina Addiction Treatment, which is located in Simpsonville, South Carolina. Chris is a Certified Peer Support Specialist, and Sam is the Director of Operations and Marketing. Welcome to the Addiction Recovery Place Podcast. Chris and Sam, it's so good to have you with us today.

Sam Doyle she/her: Thank you

so much for having us.

Chris Seemer: you so

Chris Langley: No, We're really excited to hear about the great work that you are doing in your state. So we're just gonna kick the podcast off with a question. So Chris or Sam, you can start first. So tell us about yourself and your journey to being in the position that you are in now.

Chris Seemer: I guess I'll Excellent. Thanks Chris. basically I, have eight years recovery that I just celebrated about three weeks ago. yeah, no,

Sam Doyle she/her: And um.

Chris Seemer: really the first several years of my recovery, I switched from working in the restaurant industry to manufacturing. Because the restaurant industry just really wasn't conducive for me in recovery.

but about two years ago, I just felt like a different pole in my life. I just felt like a little bit empty with what I was doing. Like sure I was doing good work, I was making good money, but I really wasn't feeling like I was doing everything I feel God created me to do because I work as a worship leader and I work with people all the time through my church, but I just felt like there was more for me.

And, one of my friends just suggested I think you'd be a really good peer support specialist. so I looked into it and was like, man, this is awesome. And, took the course, got certified, working in the field shortly after, about almost two years ago. I was working for a different facility for a while, I got to speaking with Keaton, which is our site director and Sam.

And, just really fell in love with the attitude of this place and the heart that they have and the way that they go about treating the clients and just jumped right in. And I've

Chris Langley: Yeah.

Chris Seemer: right at home ever since, and I love every day that I get to come to work and

Chris Langley: Wow.

Chris Seemer: I do.

Chris Langley: Yeah. Firstly, Chris, congratulations. Eight years sober.

Chris Seemer: Thank you.

Chris Langley: That journey is fantastic. Within eight years, you've gone from there to, where you are now, and I bet you'll thank your friend every day for suggesting to become a peer support specialist.  That, that's wonderful.

Chris Seemer: absolutely.

Chris Langley: Thank you for sharing that journey. That's incredible. And, what about yourself, Sam? what's your journey?

Sam Doyle she/her: Yeah, so I started professionally teaching. So my background is actually in education. I've always had a passion for helping people no matter what age. Where I am in the world. I've gone from teaching, high school in America, art history, world history to teaching abroad in China for a couple of years, and then I started working in nonprofit when I came back to the States and worked with homeless youth in Portland. I've worked in healthcare for vision and hearing healthcare, and then made a transition to recovery because, I have a loved one, my oldest brother, he has struggled with addiction for many years. That was a great impact on my life and my family's life and his loved ones. And finding ways to connect those two pieces to me was incredibly valuable. One of recovery and two of just helping others. So when this, opportunity came up to work in recovery, I couldn't imagine saying no, and let me tell you, every single day you learn something new.

And as a former teacher, Yep. that's

important to me, and I love every bit of working recovery in recovery just because of the impact that you see.

Yeah.

team makes in every single person's life when they walk through our door, which is huge, a huge step for people to take literally and emotionally to watch them have that transformative moment where they start to meet our team on site and see that they are going to get cared for.

They're going to have compassionate care people who really see them and understand because a lot of our staff are either in recovery themselves, like Chris. Or have loved ones in recovery like myself. It is deeply passionate thing that we do every single day here at South Carolina Addiction Treatment.

Chris Langley: I could just hear the passion in your voice there, Sam. That's incredible. Both of you obviously, but it's just wonderful to hear. That's why I always start these podcasts with that question because it's very important is to find out why is someone doing this work? And it's just wonderful to hear this. So can you just tell us about some of the services that you've provided at your Treatment. center?

Sam Doyle she/her: Yeah. Chris, do you

want

to take that one?

Chris Seemer: I can, I could speak on what I do and I was just figuring

Chris Langley: Sure,

Chris Seemer: jump in with what

Sam Doyle she/her: Go

Chris Seemer: So what I do is, I get to be a peer support specialist here, but I also work in kind of a dual role as a Tech. I really get to spend a lot of time with them on the day-to-day stuff, for them, with their stuff and helping them

on their day-to-day needs. But I also get to spend a lot of time with them talking about their lives, talking about their story, their journey. I do some group facilitation and, I really just I feel like our job here is to love on them, care on care for them, and encourage them to get over the hump of their detox and then start preparing them for the next steps, whether that's IOP PHP, a longer term facility, or if they're just gonna go out and start going to meetings,

and I love that we get to do that here. yeah, so that's what I get to do.

Chris Langley: Yeah, Marvelous. Yeah, How about yourself, Sam?

Sam Doyle she/her: In terms of what we do specifically at South Carolina Addiction Treatment or SCAT. As you're going to hear us probably say throughout the interview, we offer detox and residential levels of care. So we're truly just the first stop on many Yep. recovery journeys. So what we do is try to provide people the most amount of comfort that we can.

We're a Medication Assisted Treatment facility as well, so we're giving them meds while they're with us to help them reach back to, baseline in terms of their physical health for that first week they're with us. And then. also offer aftercare planning for them as well. So if they do want to, as Chris mentioned, go to further aftercare for PHP level of care, IOP level of care, or as Chris mentioned, going home and trying out meetings, we will want to do our best to set them up for success and see that they're gonna be successful in their recovery journey.

So we're truly, we're step one,

Chris Langley: Yeah.

Sam Doyle she/her: we wanna see people be successful and with our alumni program that we've kicked off in the last year. We are seeing about a 90% success rate of people who graduate from our program and also go to an aftercare program too. So it's just, it's amazing. It is amazing the feedback that we get from people who are still living their lives and going about and sharing their light with others.

Chris Langley: So you just mentioned your alumni, Sam. you've been doing this for a year And you've, found out that 90% of the people are still engaging with services past leaving your Wow. That's some number

that,

Sam Doyle she/her: amazing because sometimes, and it happens, it's inevitably going to happen where we get people who walk back through our door again

happen. It's the reality of recovery.

Sam Doyle she/her: Yeah. But we didn't have those figures and those numbers to point to. We saw the relapses, but we didn't see the successes.

So now that we've started this alumni program, which one of our, Behavioral Health Tech Supervisor Will Burnside, he facilitates the alumni program. He picks up that phone at 90 days. He's calling every single person that graduated from our program to check Yeah. in with them. And sometimes we don't hear back.

But from the ones we do hear back from again, many of them are doing incredibly well. So it's those successes that help us each day when we have a tough day, like morning those successes make it so worth it.

Chris Langley: Yeah, it's, it is just amazing, isn't it.

When you, see the results of the work, the hard work that you put into each client, and it's just those small little bits of information and things that clients remember years down the line that just, this is a wonderful trigger. That's, a great story.

Thank you so much. You just mentioned a couple of members of staff and I'd just like to just touch on and it's, can you tell us about, I've looked on your website, you've got a very extensive team where you are, which is just wonderful to see. Can you just tell us about some of your team members and a couple of their roles please?

Sam Doyle she/her: Yeah. Chris, why don't you go ahead and I'll fill in blanks.

Chris Seemer: Sure. The, cool thing about here everybody has that attitude of, you'll never hear somebody say, that's not my job I doesn't matter if they're in the clinical team, the nursing team, the, even the kitchen, and it's almost like family. we have this attitude that we're all in the, same goals. Everybody's here for the right reasons ,

due to our kitchen team, to our nursing team, and even our administrative team, we're all, really qualified and, it's just an amazing place to work. I've never worked at a place that's celebrated part of my life with recovery.

Recovery as they do here . I had to keep that part hidden and here it's brought forefront and it's because all of us passive or direct experience in recovery.

Chris Langley: Yeah, sounds, incredible. It really does. Have you got anything to add at all, Sam?

Sam Doyle she/her: Yeah, I think Chris, it's so funny you said that it's totally a cliche when we talk about it's, like family here in that sense, yes it is. It feels like family, but. We are also a family business. That's one of our very unique traits in the recovery world where it is becoming very corporate. We want to make sure that people feel seen and validated when they come in because what looks like a pretty extensive team list, on our website, it's actually missing quite a few people.

We've got about 50 employees because we're a 24 7 facility, we are

All hours of the day. So four o'clock on a Friday for me is just any other time of the week for me.

We've got everything from administration. We've got our admissions team, we've got our medical team, our provider, clinical team for our therapists, our nurses.

We've got techs like Chris, our group facilitators, our kitchen team. We have an amazing kitchen team. By the way, our food is phenomenal and we also have transportation, so we always try to. From the very first touch point, we wanna make sure that clients are being taken care of because again, it's a scary decision to come

to and to get in the car someone you don't know is also a very scary experience because there's not a lot of trust there.

But we hire drivers who do this every day, and they have those conversations to make sure that drive from home or wherever they are to treatment is gonna be a comfortable one to set them up for success when they walk in our door.

Chris Langley: Wow. So you have a driver that can go and pick up a, client and Wow, I've never heard that. So that's, incredible because that can really alleviate, you have two drivers, Chris, so that can really alleviate a lot of those. Last minute panics. Perhaps there's someone there that is able to engage with the client properly and to make them more relaxed and say, look, you're gonna be treated as family here.

That's, wonderful. That's so good to hear. So you touched on something earlier, Sam, so how are clients referred to you and what is the process for someone who wishes to enter your treatment facility?

Sam Doyle she/her: So a lot of the times. many of our referrals come from other programs, so other aftercare programs. So oftentimes when someone is looking for treatment, they want it now, they need it,

want it, they're gonna pick up that phone, they're gonna start calling around for different facilities. So oftentimes if, a facility receives a phone call from someone, and it's a, let's say a partial hospitalization program or a PHP program, which

lower step in terms of, treatment, the person will say, Hey, I really need treatment. I need to go to rehab. These are my substances. This is how much I'm using. I used as recently as two minutes before I picked up this phone

They need detox, so because a lot of other facilities don't offer detox, I. Oftentimes we are the ones who get contacted so that we can help to facilitate that detox period and then get them to that aftercare program after they've been safely detoxed off of their substances.

So a lot of the times we do receive referrals from other partners that we have in the community all throughout the Carolinas. We also have programs in Georgia and in Tennesse that we work with as well.

Just trying to get people back to where they wanted to initially go for treatment. We also get a lot of organic folks who are just again, looking for alcohol addiction, detox

and then we come up.

Sam Doyle she/her: So a pretty healthy mix, which is great for a business of course, as you can imagine. But yeah, referrals sometimes from the hospital, sometimes from local organizations.

But again, a lot of people just find us

naturally which is nice.

Chris Langley: so if someone picked up the phone and said, I need help,

how soon can someone engage with your service?

Sam Doyle she/her: Same day. If we

Chris Langley: Wow.

Sam Doyle she/her: we have 16 beds, which is a pretty small facility, but

we have the bed availability, our admissions team is gonna get them rolling as soon as possible. Because that

Chris Langley: Yep. Yep,

Sam Doyle she/her: for someone to pick up that phone, and Chris, I'm sure you can relate to this, right?

Someone could change their mind a minute later. So the

sooner get them into treatment, the better.

Chris Langley: yep. Do you have someone manning the phones 24 hours a day?

Sam Doyle she/her: like a lot of other facilities. We do not have a call center that's

Yes.

an admission team, an team of about I think three or four, people. uh, at times

we have, admissions reps that are on call for the day because we don't have a call center. we do miss calls in the middle of the night, but we do

always follow up and pick up that phone as

soon as that person is ready and just

Yep,

that we follow up because oftentimes, someone asks for help in one moment and then they

don't an answer back.

yep, Try again unless we try to do that reach out on our, on their behalf.

Chris Langley: Yep. Goodness me. It sounds like you've got everything covered.

Sam Doyle she/her: We try.

Chris Langley: It really does. Chris, when we first met you told me that you have other agencies come to your, service, to engage with your clients. Can you tell me about some of the external agencies that you work with? That sounded really interesting to me.

Chris Seemer: We also have, FAVOR, which it's a statewide, it's called Faces and Voices of Recovery.

They do a lot of 12 step groups. Recovery coaching and CPSS stuff. So basically it's, they they come in and help twice a month, give or take, and they just help the, clients be aware of their services.

I get to do celebrate recovery . every week. We try to really give people the foundation for all types of recovery. What it's important is that you're plugging into figure out what's gonna connect with the client .

We also have our. Main group facilitator, April and Smart recovery as well. we're trying our best to have a little bit of everything for everybody. So it's, wait,

Sam Doyle she/her: Chris, you didn't even mention the art therapy that also occurs once a month. Who facilitates that?

Chris Seemer: Oh, my wife. So yes, my wife is actually. currently finishing her degree to be an art teacher, art therapy Hey baby. I'm sorry, I forgot. don't get mad at me please...

Chris Langley: Thank you for adding that, Sam.

Sam Doyle she/her: It's always on my mind.

Chris Langley: I'm sure. It's so nice to hear that you have, it is so nice to hear that you have external agencies come in and work with you as well, because it's not, this isn't about competition. This is about working together for the cause of helping people through treatment and recovery.

Because I hear so many times of competitiveness within the sector and it's just. It's, all about networking and it's, so nice to hear that you have so many, agencies come in and engage with you as well. Can I just ask you something? How long has South Carolina Addiction treatment been in service?

How long have you been running?

Sam Doyle she/her: Chris, do you know her birthday?

I don't know the, do you remember her birthday? Exact birthday, but I know, I wanna say it's been three years is what happened. It has been three years. It's November 15th, 2021 is when we opened.

I used to teach only three years.

Chris Langley: Only three years you've been in, wow. Congratulations. That's just incredible. Goodness me.

Sam Doyle she/her: To be perfectly clear too. So while our site here in, South Carolina has been open for three years, we do have a sister site that's been open in

Charlotte, north Carolina in

2018. So we are a sister or a branch off of that site.

Sam Doyle she/her: Yep.

site is called Carolina Center for Recovery, and they've been open since 2018 and have experienced a lot of growth since they opened up.

And

that's actually in Charlotte right now, sitting inside of CCR. And then Chris is on site right now at scat, South Carolina.

Chris Langley: Okay. Excellent. Oh, wow. thank, you for pointing that out. so last question about your service today, but what are the future plans? Because you're, you are doing everything. what, do what, where would you like to be this time next year? Say what have you, got planned for, your service,

Sam Doyle she/her: I will say, I'll start off by giving you our mission statement at Scat. Our mission statement

is to help individuals overcome the disease of addiction. Plain and simple. That is our goal. Every decision that we make day to day, whether it's on the floor with Chris as a tech, making a decision to the administrative side of the more big picture decisions, it all comes back to that mission statement.

our vision statement, what we is, our absolute vision. What we'd like to see five years down the road, however many years down the road, is to become the premier addiction treatment facility here in the state of South Carolina. That is our absolute goal. what we'd like to see. So, like I mentioned, we have 16 beds.

We're a pretty small facility. It's like coming to grandma's house is how different people have described it before. What we'd like to do is actually expand our building. We'd like to, we own a lot of the land behind our building. We'd

like Build out

Yeah,

our residential program. like I'd mentioned, we're detox and a residential program.

What we'd like to do, we do detox really well. Again, tooting our own horn. I'm gonna do it.

please. Like to do is to build out residential and offer people a longer term treatment so it's not just one week or two weeks to

out to maybe be a month. and give people that opportunity to stabilize and build some structure before they step down to a low, lower level of care.

So expansion,

That's our, goal.

Chris Langley: Yeah. Oh, I think you are certainly ready for that's for sure. I'd just like to move on and just speak, ask you a couple of questions about. South Carolina as a state, because obviously nationwide, everyone, it seems to be worldwide now that there's a, massive opioid crisis. And when obviously with the Fentanyl, how's South Carolina been coping with this and what, things has the state been doing or hasn't been doing to, help this?

Sam Doyle she/her: Yeah. Chris, you wanna answer to

Chris Seemer: South Carolina I think there's a lot more to be done. I think the stigma that is around, addiction I what it is, and the reality is that addiction these days, especially with fentanyl, especially with opioids, is affecting more people. And people from every demographic, how privileged or unprivileged they are. we're still seeing disorders across the board, every demographic I don't think there's enough help.

and then we could always use more. So that's just what I'm seeing,

Sam Doyle she/her: Yeah, so as we've seen across the country. I was, yeah. As we've seen across the country that, opioid drug overdose deaths have skyrocketed since Covid,

a result of. The drugs that are coming into our country. But, I think what South Carolina is a little bit behind on the game on is just education in general around substance use disorder.

again, I used to work in education, so in schools our. Curriculum was incredibly mandated towards very specific areas, and there wasn't a lot of focus on how are drugs impacting or just substances in general impacting people every single day. I'm seeing now, especially in Greenville, South Carolina, I.

There's a huge opportunity for growth in terms of, city in general, but also just for, different recovery resources to exist. If you look up at North Carolina and Charlotte in particular, you'll start to see that there are a lot more services and recovery resources in North Carolina, and I think South Carolina's starting to follow up on that trend because they're seeing a huge need for other recovery resources, whether it's.

State mandated it's Medicaid or

for people who are able to afford very affordable marketplace insurance plans. I think that it's gonna be really interesting to see what South Carolina looks like in about 10 years to see if we've started to blossom and grow as Charlotte has. I would hope so.

I think that, again, there's a huge need and oftentimes when people are looking around for help in South Carolina, especially the rural parts, A, they don't always have the transportation to get to those places, and b, they don't always have a very robust community to help to facilitate. Offering those resources for now, but it's, I think substance use disorder is still very much underrepresented in the everyday media in general.

Not to mention for South Carolina, where again, I think that there's a lot of room for growth.

Chris Langley: Yeah. Yeah, most definitely. Most definitely. Chris, you touched on a word just saying stigma, which I'd like just to ask you both a question on, because the stigma of addiction and mental health is still such a huge issue, as you've just pointed out. So why do you think in this day and age we're still experiencing stigma when it comes to attending a service to help those who are going through an addiction or a mental health trauma?

It just seems very backward to me.

Honestly, through decades we've looked at it, our society as a whole has looked disorder as something use that was matter of choice . Choice, a matter of, this person made really that decisions and that's the consequences of their actions. and.

It's really Sad because I wish I could say it was a choice on my end, but the reality it wasn't. I was finding a very unhealthy way to deal with deep trauma and I didn't know how to cope with it well, and that's what I tell. clients here is that, hopefully we can, once we get you on ,detox we start putting in the work, we can actually dig down what it is that drove you, you to drug and drink in the first place.

And hopefully we can deal with it in more healthy way. but I'm think that changes. as I said before, with fentanyl and the opioid epidemic, it's starting to really cross demographic

and it's affecting everyone, and I think hopefully we're gonna take a more serious look at it. And not see it as just a consequence of, someone's actions,

Yep. Yeah, most definitely. And what about yourself, Sam? What would you say about that?

Sam Doyle she/her: I would echo everything Chris

just He nailed it.

yeah,

education and lack of education.

Sam Doyle she/her: it started with just the way that addiction was presented to the wider world. Ages for ages about it being a choice instead of a disease. Something

over the brain and literally changes the neurochemistry of it that results in constant and consistent usage to the point that it affects your day-to-day life. Even in the medical field, it's shocking meeting providers who do not work in the field of addiction treatment, who don't understand the impact of addiction and how it impacts their patients and their wellbeing and their health, and the choices that they make as a result of the neurochemical changes that have taken place in their brain.

it's. I do think that education will help. and as Chris mentioned, because of this epidemic that we're living in through the opioid crisis, people are starting to understand what addiction really looks like. That's what happened with my family. A loved one was touched by addiction, and we had to learn.

We had to better educate ourselves. We had to understand what exactly it was, and it forced us to better understand. We're gonna see that happen bit by bit, but I think it would just help if we started educating. Across the board to begin with, so people don't have to go through confusion and that pain and that resentment that comes with having a loved one who is suffering from addiction.

So think that education is really the only way forward in order to fight that stigma of addiction

see that there is an other side to it, which is recovery and the light it brings.

Chris Langley: Wow. I love both of those answers, And so thank you so much for that. It's, it's, we've, moved somewhere I think with stigma, but we are nowhere near getting to the end, getting the, just to move on from this whole stigma thing, it's, I've been, I've worked in this field for many years and stigma was the number one thing that stopped people engaging with, services.

And it's just tragic when I hear this, still a problem, but it's services, great services like yours that, that are just, welcoming their clients and treating them as they should be treated, you know? So

Sam Doyle she/her: And if

Sam Doyle she/her: thing to

Chris Langley: please.

Sam Doyle she/her: We'll see that stigma impacts different people of different cultural backgrounds a lot, especially in this day and age where it feels more normalized to certain communities. For example, when we look at our census and we look at our demographic data from the year 2024, the majority of our clients that come in are white males that come in seeking treatment.

But that doesn't mean other communities of people and other demographics are not experiencing addiction.

Sam Doyle she/her: Yeah. So it's fascinating to see the difference between who's experiencing addiction and substance use disorder and who's seeking treatment. And then the bigger question is, who's not seeking treatment and who are we missing as a result of that stigma?

and you'll also see too, if, I'm sure you've seen this yourself, Chris, if you're looking at different organizations throughout the country and you're looking at their teams that they have. not a lot of diversity in many parts of the country on addiction treatment teams, and that I think, is a detriment to the clients that come in looking for help and are already very anxious and nervous and they look at the staff around them and don't see themselves represented.

So something we always, we are always conscientious of as well, and wanting to have that representation on our team so people can connect in a way that they might not be able to connect in other spaces.

Chris Langley: Of course. No, I appreciate that extra thought, Sam. That was, fascinating. It's really interesting. It's, I asked this question of everyone, and you are the first person to speak about this, and I've done 59 of these podcasts. it's true. it's so obvious. It, really is. And, no, thank you for that.

I ask all my guests this question because I get some really interesting and varied answers, but can you tell me what your opinion of harm reduction is in how it can play a role in recovery?

Sam Doyle she/her: Sure. so harm reduction, it really matters person or, reduction really differs from person to person about who you ask.

You can ask

Team about their

Sam Doyle she/her: About harm reduction. You can ask people on our thin, our clinical or therapeutic team about their thoughts about harm reduction. It really is gonna differ. we talk about it day to day. talk about harm reduction in a couple of different ways. We want people overcome the disease of addiction. That's what it comes down to, depending on what substances they're coming in on. We want to help give them medication since we are a medication assisted treatment facility.

Give them medication to help them come off of their, their withdrawal syn symptoms as effectively as possible. we do that in a very measured way where we create a taper specifically for them based on their, use history, depending on who they are, their own, health history. So finding a way to do that safely while also making sure we are setting them up for success because we do offer Suboxone, we offer Subutex as options for people coming off.

We don't offer methadone, but we do offer methadone detox. So depending on what that person needs to get better, those are, that's just simply what our, facility offers. We, leave shame at the door. We leave any kind of about what addiction and recovery should look like, because it's gonna differ from person to person.

If someone comes in saying that they wanna get off of fentanyl. We can help them do that. We can help them get onto Suboxone if they'd like to do that, we can help them get onto, Subutex. And I know that there are differing opinions about, if you need to take another substance to get off another substance, is that really recovery?

Yes, it is. Again, recovery to To

person.

Yeah. We just wanna set people up for success in any way that we possibly can, whether it is medication assisted treatment, or if someone starts to pick up smoking nicotine while they're in our facility. We encourage you to find what works for you in order to take a step at a time, because that's the reality.

Addiction results in almost a lateral movement. Sometimes we see this with clients who come in coming off of meth and they start smoking more, or

Sam Doyle she/her: Their eating habits change. But again, it's a step at a time. It is a stpe at a time, and

Sam Doyle she/her: Yeah. That. It's beneficial to take that step at a time.

And I lived in Portland, Oregon for a few years where I saw varying, definitions of harm reduction there as well that differ from South Carolina. But again, we just want people to feel and get better

Chris Langley: Yeah, most definitely. Last question really. Do you have a message for anyone who's listening to this podcast who is going through an addiction, what would you say to them?

Sam Doyle she/her: Yeah, absolutely. we do this every day at South Carolina Addiction Treatment. know what it's like from our side of things. We have the benefit of having people on our team who also understand what it's like to walk in our doors for the first time. Understands what it's like to feel like you've lost all hope.

To feel like there is no way that your life is gonna get any better because of where you're at right now. But I can guarantee you hope is always there are people who care about you and there are people who want to help you get better. Pick up the phone, for help. Seek the treatment that you need, because truly, 100% you are not alone in this.

Chris Langley: Yeah.

Sam Doyle she/her: Addiction is a lonely disease, but you'll find that on the other side of it, there is community. There is light and recovery will help for you to find

for you the other side of addiction.

find help.

of

addiction.

Sam Doyle she/her: Find help.

Chris Langley: Hey Chris.

do you have a

message anyone who's going for an addiction?

Chris Seemer: Just that there's hope. I've, learned in my life experience that, most things are not as bad as they seem. I. I spent about a 33 years of my life, just kicking the can down the road and avoiding, dealing with situations and dealing with the consequences that I've, rendered for myself.

really just because I felt it was the end of the world if I did, and if I just avoided it and avoided it, it would just go away. But what ended up happening was. It was worse and much more difficult to deal with. but yet I found that when I faced my problems head on and when I faced things that I needed to, as daunting as it seemed, when I got to the other side of it, I became a better person because of it.

And that really, that's what I really feel like, we go through some of these things in life for, is when we go through 'em and we actually deal with them and we get to the other side of them. get, walk away with a set of tools. We walk away with a set of knowledge that we would've never had otherwise.

And I really believe the purpose in that is turn around and help the next person. So our pain can have purpose, our mess can be, become a message. and really just, the first step is. to steal a line from aa, the first step is admitting that there is a problem, and it's not admitting that you are the problem, it's admitting that there is a problem so we can address it and put in the work and roll up our sleeves and get, start putting in the work to, fix the problem.

and it's a long road and, I'm eight years in and I'm still learning something every day, and I'm still not perfect. But if I'm doing better today than I was doing yesterday, I'm moving in the right direction.

Chris Langley: Wow. thank, you for that, Chris. last question. And how if someone was to look up your service, how would they best find you online?

Sam Doyle she/her: you'll see that we have the most generic name ever, South Carolina Addiction Treatment. But if you were to go type that into Google, we are one of the first folks that pop up.

Sam Doyle she/her: Yep. I always like to hype up our Facebook page, so if you're looking for some fun as well, and to see a little bit more behind the scenes of our awesome team, you can look us up on Facebook.

Where South Carolina Addiction Treatment, where like a purple gradient you can't miss us with a tree is our, logo. But we have a lot of, fun stuff that we post on there. Whether it's silly shenanigans, we do day to day pictures of our staff, highlighting our employees of the month,

and just sharing stories of hope because we think that is the best way to spread that message.

Yeah, and just putting this out there. Sam, she wears many hats.

She does a lot that sounds, and she is also our social media director extraordinaire. but she does amazing, like she does really good video editing. It's one of those things that like most people don't think about as being important, but it's very important because. again, it puts us in a good light.

And it also, she likes, she's not looking to make everything look buttoned up. She's very, when she puts out on social media is pretty much the reality of our day to day. Unfortunately, for us, the reality of our day to day is pretty lighthearted. It's pretty fun. And we. We have a lot of fun with each other.

We, we mess with each other in a good way. but it's, and it's great that she is able to find those moments and put it together in a very professional looking and, accessible way for people. So I think that's something that she deserves a lot of credit for.

Chris Langley: Excellent. Chris and Sam, I'd like to thank both of you. For coming on today to tell us about the great work that you are doing in your state and for your community and for every one of your clients. It's so nice to hear the dedication that you both have and obviously every team, member has.

I'd just like to Thank you for your time today. It's, I've really enjoyed talking to you both. Thank you so much

Sam Doyle she/her: Thank you so much for having us.

Chris Langley: No, it's been great. Thank you.