Ep44 Addiction Treatment Career progression for employees in recovery

Ep44 Addiction Treatment Career progression for employees in recovery

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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 Eric Ekberg. Eric is the CEO of Granite Recovery Centers based in New Hampshire and Maine. Eric is a successful CEO with three decades of experience in financial services and addiction recovery. Eric changed careers about 18 years ago to fulfill his passion to help others affected by mental health and substance use disorders. Welcome to Addiction Recovery Plays podcast, Eric. It's great to have you with us today.

Eric Eckberg: Thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me.

Chris Langley: I really appreciate you accepting the invitation to come on today. I'm, really excited to talk to you and hear about your work and about your recovery center. So firstly, can you tell us about yourself and your journey to becoming the CEO of Granite Recovery, please?

Eric Eckberg: You hit on it a little bit. I've been doing this work for about 18 years now in a substance use disorder treatment. It's a second career for me. I started many moons ago. I hate to admit how long it's been, but I was in finance, investment management, banking, was my first career and along about 20 plus years ago, I found myself needing treatment myself. Things got a little rough. I didn't treat myself very well in the sort of mid-late nineties. I was fortunate enough to have a lot of good people around me, and I found myself needing treatment. And I pursued that. It wasn't a one and done, unfortunately. I wasn't one of those lucky people. It was a few treatment episodes. Finally, the light went off. When I landed on my feet, I said, "you know what? I want to do something different." I decided to get into this career because so many people helped me out. I thought it was a purpose to my life to give back and to pursue working in this field. I literally started at the bottom. I I, was at a state funded detox, facility in Massachusetts, started as a case manager, rough and tumble getting people into treatment and helping them navigate Because of my background, I moved in the direction of management and over time. I started running those programs. I ran a residential program in the same facility shortly thereafter. I think four or five years after, starting at that site. Then I ran a couple of other residential inpatient facilities in the state of Massachusetts and really found my niche of treating people that need inpatient level of care.

Three years ago, there was a change at Granite. It was privately owned or sole-ownership. There was an acquisition, and they needed somebody to come in and navigate that as the leadership left. I'm very fortunate to now run, Granite Recovery Centers. It's coming up on three years right now.

Chris Langley: Wow, goodness me, that's, one incredible journey that you've been through. Going from financial services to going through treatment yourself and then now you're CEO of an incredibly successful recovery center. That's, really impressive stuff. I'd just like to talk about the program at Granite and what makes it so different.

So can you tell us about some of the programs that you provide?

Eric Eckberg: Yeah, so Granite, we operate four, facilities in the state of New Hampshire, two in the southern part of the state of New Hampshire, one sort of in the middle of the state, and then our, I would call our flagship, location is up in the White Mountains in the northern part of the state, and that's called Green Mountain Treatment Center.

It's where we do, quite frankly, the most treatment. It's, where we have the most beds, where we have the most employees, and it's a full continuum of care, a detox level of care, residential, and then we offer, partial hospitalization as well as intensive outpatient treatment. So the, beauty of that is we can keep people in treatment

upwards of 60, 90 days . As you know Chris, as people who have been working in this field and on all the evidence, all the research points to this, the longer we can keep people in treatment, the better the outcome. We're a strong proponent of getting people not only in the door, but to let them hang in treatment for a reasonable amount of time, to drive those better outcomes.

So we do that up a fair amount at Green Mountain Treatment Center. We have two locations in Southern New Hampshire. One is called the Granite House. It's in Derry and that provides a detox level of care and residential, and it's mainly for Medicaid population. So we get people, it's 38 beds total.

We can flex between detox and residential. Again, the beauty there is we created another facility actually where I'm sitting today in Salem, New Hampshire, which is outpatients, partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient. So you go to Granite, the Granite House in Derry for detox, residential, and then ideally you step down to our program in Salem. It's called New Freedom Academy and do outpatient treatment. So again, ideally we're hanging on to our clients for 60, 90 days, full continuum of care, and the outcomes are so much better when people really stick in treatment, versus, and we've all heard the stories.

I'm going to treatment and they go to a detox for 5-6 days and they're back out, and that's not treatment. Some of the terms we use, and I'm sure you've heard it, "spin dry" and unfortunately that cycle just continues.

So we're trying to break those cycles.

Chris Langley: So you offer a very extensive, service from detox all the way to, do you do aftercare as well?

Eric Eckberg: Absolutely. That's the key to it all right.

Where I see that the most, for the most part, people go to Green Mountain, it's, commercial insurance or private pay. Most people that enter that facility, those levels of care traditionally have a job, have families still in their corner, have a place to go when they ultimately leave treatment.

Clearly we're still setting up aftercare, whether it's ensuring that they're pursuing whether 12-Step work other modalities or continuing outpatient, ensure they have a network to be connected to when they leave, but where we really see the need for, in my opinion, stronger aftercare is with our Medicaid population in our places in Derry and Salem.

And the reason I say that is, and I've had meetings with, for instance, the Mayor of Manchester, where we have 6 recovery residents. People go to our treatment facility in Derry, and again, most of this population, some of them are homeless when they come to us or out of work; things aren't going well.

We do a pretty good job keeping them in treatment. We step them down to Salem. They're staying in outpatient. We can house them in our sober living facilities in the city of Manchester. So they're with us for 60 days. However, once they leave our security and bubble, if they don't have a job, if they don't have transportation, if they don't have a network, it's it's, sometimes very self defeating.

We see these folks saying, "What the heck, what's the purpose? What do I got to do now?" We really work with getting people connected, ideally getting them back to work, helping them, to get to a job market, getting in front of people, meaning transportation, et cetera.

There's a lot that goes into this, and we do our best to make sure things are done appropriately.

Chris Langley: It certainly sounds like you're doing the right thing. That's for sure because it's always the frustrating part, like you said, finishing treatment and then what? So that's, wonderful to hear that you provide that.

Eric Eckberg: We've all heard and seen the stories, heard they are just back in the same spot. People get the F-its, and we all know what that stands for. And then they're back in treatment. Hopefully back in treatment. Sometimes we're not as fortunate, and they don't make it back to treatment and the outcomes are horrific.

Chris Langley: Yeah, I've looked on your website, and you have an extensive team in your facilities. It just looks amazing. Can you tell us about some of your team members who are working at Granite Recovery and some of their roles, please?

Eric Eckberg: Sure. yeah, that's, it's funny. I've been here about three years and one of the things that attracted me to Granite, I was down in Massachusetts, not that it's that far away, but Granite always had a really good reputation for the work they did, the staff. We have a very high percentage, it's not unusual that people work in this field are in recovery themselves. In most cases, it's the majority of the staff. At Granite, I would argue it's the vast majority. So we have a lot of really dedicated, committed individuals, and not to say if you're not in recovery, you're not doing great work because we have plenty of those folks as well.

But we have a lot of people that are in recovery that are just committed to our mission. We have a couple of key areas and, at all of our locations, we've seen people advance. People come to us, and I'll give you a couple of examples. Our Director of Admissions was a recovery specialist at the Green Mountain Treatment Center. That was his start, and he was a go getter, really smart, really good with managing data, et cetera, and lo and behold, he's now, the Director of Admissions. Our Director of Nursing, similar situation started as a nurse, worked her way up as a supervisor, here. Lo and behold, she's now Director of Nursing. Our Executive Director, at our Granite House started as an RSS, became a Case Manager, became a Director of Operations, and it's now the Executive Director. A lot of examples of that, where people just work hard, are committed, and now they're leadership.

When I have a leadership meeting, most of the folks have been with us a fair amount of time, but not only that they've held many different roles, which is again, similar to my story, but I didn't do it all at Granite, whereas many of these people did. It's really a good story,

Chris Langley: Most definitely. It's always inspiring to hear these stories and obviously yours, and you've just told me about a couple of your other team members that have done the same thing. It's always nice to hear because there's always a certain passion, extra passion behind someone who's gone through the treatment themselves and they know exactly the feelings and it's always very empowering, I think for clients to hear that as well.

Chris Langley: I

Eric Eckberg: couldn't

agree more. It's a difficult job, but the people come to us. You've got to take a step back. People are coming into treatment, and so many things are going wrong for them, right? Not only do they feel horrible physically, the chances are they have, employment problems, they have financial problems.

Many have legal problems, probably medical problems. Certainly relationship, family issues. So they come in our door, and we're smiling and saying, "come on in. This is going to be great." They're not buying into it right away. They're miserable. Like, "I got to be here and this intervention in my life. And. Oh, my God." They've got the world on their shoulders. Somehow we've got to, we've got to change that narrative and say, "no, this isn't the worst day of your life. In fact, this could be the best day of your life." That needs to be the message because it's so critical when we get our people that come into our door to hang on to them. It's not uncommon for people after 2, 3 days, they're feeling, "Hey, I got to get back to work. I got to get back to my family." We know that cycle will just repeat itself. If we can't hang on to them and say, "listen, stay the course. There's a lot to learn. Stay in this bubble of safety while we work some things out, so you can make the necessary changes to not come back. That's the ultimate

Chris Langley: Yeah, I love that. I love that. You just mentioned families, Eric, as well, so do you work with family members of people that you care for? Is there a family program or support that you offer?

Eric Eckberg: 100% It's critical. As we all know, the disease of addiction is a family disease. It affects not only that person that's abusing, drugs and alcohol, but everybody around them. When the family is still in their corner, many cases, if not the majority, they are,. They may be angry, or just had enough, et cetera, but

if somebody is willing to go to treatment and be committed to a longer-term stay, generally find out the family's like, "yeah, I'm supportive as long as they stay in treatment, what can we do?" So we'll work with those family members as best we can with weekly calls, updates, family visits, if necessary, family interventions, counseling with their client's, clinician, make sure everybody's on the same page.

We try to communicate people or with family members to let them know what their progress is, what we recommend as far as, the next steps. It's really important to bridge those gaps, because sometimes our clients aren't telling their family members everything they probably should.

So it's, a healthy way to reconnect people.

Chris Langley: It must be a big, must feel like a big weight off the shoulders for a family member to find such a wonderful service as yours that offers all of these services that you do. It must be very lovely.

Eric Eckberg: It is. We always always say to clients that they may want to leave early. "Hey, I've been here for two weeks." It's one of the things we say is" you know what? Your parents are finally sleeping well. They haven't had a good night's rest and God knows how long.

Let them be. Their level of anxieties come down significantly since you've entered treatment. Just stay. Give them a break." Conversely is when people do leave, nobody is nobody's cured, right? We know it's the disease of addiction. We can put it in remission.

People can be sober and in recovery for the rest of their lives. And that's the name of the game. However, they're not cured. So they've got to be vigilant, and we need to make sure the expectations of the family members are in check. It's not just all roses when they leave, so to speak.

Again, making sure expectations are defined when when, a client goes back home,

Chris Langley: Yeah. Yeah, most definitely. Most definitely. So, if someone wants to enter, if someone wants to come to your treatment center, what's the process for someone , and how and how do you receive referrals?

Eric Eckberg: Yeah, it's real simple. The best way, in my opinion, just go to our website, graniterecoverycenters.com. Right on the front page is an 800 phone number. You'll be immediately connected to a live person, admissions person, who is very knowledgeable, not only what treatment we can offer somebody, and help them navigate whether we're the right spot for them, which if it's traditional SUD, then I would argue we're one of the best.

But even if it's something else, if they just have questions, what other services, where else can I go? we're, answering that phone so we can help people.

Chris Langley: So if someone wanted to enter treatment, how soon could they get through the, process? the process for that.

Eric Eckberg: Same day. We'll make it happen. Verifying benefits on their insurance. We'll make arrangements to get them here transportation wise if needed. We want to make it, simple and as easy as possible.

Chris Langley: I love that. That's amazing. I'd like to ask you about a service that you recently celebrated, the grand opening of New Hampshire's first and only residential primary mental health program at New Freedom Academy in Canterbury. Can you tell us about this and why you opened this and what were some of the challenges that you experienced with opening this wonderful sounding service?

Eric Eckberg: I said at the beginning, we have the four centers in New Hampshire, and I left that one out, New Freedom Academy in Canterbury. We just changed the name. It's called Canterbury Behavioral Health. We did that to make it more aptly named for the services we provide, which is primary mental health at a residential level.

So as you know Chris, when people come into treatment, they come with a diagnosis or they meet the criteria of substance use disorder, the vast majority of the time there's probably some underlying, other mental health, diagnosis going on, whether it's depression or anxiety, bipolar, et cetera.

Obviously they come to us, SUD is what got them there, which we're trying to treat both disorders at the same time. Dual diagnosis is another that we all hear about. At Canterbury, what we did is flipped it a little bit. We said, why can't we just treat folks that have a primary diagnosis of mental health, knowing that they probably have an underlying addiction disorder as well, but the primary diagnosis would be depression or anxiety or bipolar.

Get them into treatment at a residential level of care. We saw it too often, and especially with all the crisis going on in, not only in New Hampshire, but throughout the country, and I think a lot to do with COVID, post-COVID a lot of people ending up in EDs. in sort of crisis. They may get admitted into an inpatient mental health facility. In New Hampshire, it's places like New Hampshire Hospital or Concord Hospital. Then they're there for, let's say 5 days, 10 days, maybe longer. There was no step down that would be similar to substance use disorder, where you go detox residential outpatient and mental health.

It was just, crisis intervention, inpatient and then outpatient. No sort of in between. We recognize that. We said, "let's provide a residential level of care for those people leaving an inpatient facility or perhaps their symptoms weren't enough to warrant an inpatient admission, but they could use residential.

So they come to Canterbury and we can hang on. It's a spot out in the woods. Serene environment where we can hang on to people for 15, 30 days. It's just medication monitoring, adjustments, but it's just time. Give people a little bit more time before they go back in the community, or do outpatient treatment.

It's a small facility. It's, 20 beds, and as we predicted when we opened it up, we were full. It's eased up. We're running 90% utilization right now, meaning, 90% of our beds are traditionally full. It's really been a nice service for those people that have made it to our doors.

Chris Langley: Congratulations on opening that.

That's clearly a much needed service.

Eric Eckberg: It was difficult logistically getting it open, but as far as going to the state and getting the licensing, not only did the state recognize that, "wow this is something that we need," and we were able to get a license fairly quickly and kudos to the state to recognize the need for the service and help us move that along.

So that part was easy, but it was just logistics and making sure the facility was up to snuff, so to speak.

Chris Langley: Yeah. You mentioned that you're able to open the facility relatively easily. So you obviously work with other agencies in the community. So who else do you work with? Do you have other partnerships in the community that you work with?

Eric Eckberg: Yeah, it's many. Granite is the largest provider of residential inpatient SUD in the state. So over the years we've developed really good relationship with, again, I just mentioned on the mental health side, EDs, hospitals, many police departments, many of the local politicians, right up at higher levels at the state house, places like Neami, which helps us on the mental health side.

Many folks we call friends, including other treatment providers. We talk a lot. At a certain level, it's business and maybe there's some sort of competition. There's plenty of people that need help. So it really, it's a matter of making sure we're all doing the right thing,

and I think by and large, at least what I see in New Hampshire, we've got a lot of genuine, not only good partners, but, good citizens that are doing the right thing. We're providing a Medicaid level of care at two of our sites because quite frankly, the margins aren't great. Everybody knows it. Reimbursement rates aren't all that terrific. But it's the right thing to do, and, helping that, population. I know a lot of our, " competitors" feel the same way. It's a good environment to, to do what we do. Yeah,

Chris Langley:

What would you say are some of the biggest challenges that you face in running your centers, Eric? We've heard so much about postive. Everything's wonderful, but what would you say are the biggest challenges that you face on a daily basis?

Eric Eckberg: Staffing.

Espescially on clinical and nursing. I talk about the state of New Hampshire and, and Green Mountain up in the white mountains, it's in a rural location, meaning there's not a big population up there. We've got to bind and recruit really good individuals, so it's sometimes difficult to find enough clinicians or nurses, that are looking for employment that want to work in Effingham, New Hampshire, which, isn't down the street.

So that's a challenge.

we do fairly well with it.

I think we've done better over the last year or so. I think coming out of COVID, there was a lot of telehealth stuff going on and it continues to be that. Especially on the clinical side, a lot of the outpatient providers that are doing telehealth, that would gobble up our, they would hire away our clinicians, say, "Hey, you can work remote and do this treatment from your living room and just have a book of clients that you can work with."

It's not the same as in person. We lost, clinicians that way. There was a lot of, I think in general on the nursing side, I don't think we have enough nurses entering the system to keep up with all the demand, not just SUD, but all the hospitals and primary care.

Chris Langley: We need more nurses, trained and educated. So we've reached out to some of the local colleges to see if we can do internships and get people up and running and into this field that way. We've been relatively successful with it. I think we can do better.

I can imagine that's a really good idea about contacting colleges with internships. That must be very attractive to students.

Eric Eckberg: Yeah, it's a win-win right? They get the experience, they get, especially for clinicians, they get hours they can use towards their license, and we get good, hungry, ambitious young people that want to get into this field. iAgain, it's a win-win. We do the best we can with that.

Chris Langley: So where do you advertise your vacancies? Is it all on the website or do you advertise?

Eric Eckberg: On the website. All the job postings that are out there. All the traditional ones. We do our best to recruit and find good people.

Chris Langley: It certainly sounds it. I just want to ask about, New Hampshire just for, a minute. How would you say your state is dealing with, the obvious opioid crisis that's going on? What's going on?

Eric Eckberg: Great question. I think you probably know this four or five years ago, I'm trying to get the timing right. Not so well. New Hampshire is known as per capita, one of the worst places for opiate and overdoses. We made national news based on those numbers.

And, I think the response at the state house at, the governor's office was good. Maybe it took too long, but I think they've done a nice job and a lot of this just comes down to education, communication, getting the word out on what the available services were and what exactly the crisis was.

I think it was like, "Oh, my God, why? Why is this happening?" And cities like the city of Manchester, which kind of led the negativity of a lot of overdoses per the population. It was a heavy lift, but I think what they've done much, better. Again, I mentioned it earlier, a lot of this, so it seemed to come out of the lockdowns and COVID and the mental health stuff that was going on.

There wasn't enough services. There wasn't enough education outreach, to affect all those people that would seek opiates and heroin and all the alike. They've done a nice job and then lo and behold, we've had this sort of fentanyl crisis that seemed to have happened two years ago, 18 months ago, and that just spiked things up again.

Again, it was a revamp of, more communication, more outreach. So I think in general, it's done a nice job over, over the last 12 months, 18 months, to curb it. Look, we still have a long way to go. We still have a long way to go. Yeah, there was a hundred thousand deaths last year for overdoses.

Fentanyl still continues to be the number one killer of adults ages 18 to 43, I believe. Number one killer. Think about it. It should be on the front page of every newspaper every day. And yet, unless it's some big event, it finds its way to the back pages. It's important to stay on top of this stuff.

It's our young people. It's our young people that are the ones that are dying. We can all do better. Yeah. that's the name of the game is to get the word out.

Chris Langley: Yeah. Yeah. it's great to hear that your state is actually, trying to deal with this head on as well. So I've spoken to some people around the country and some states aren't quite as on the ball, should we say. And it's always nice to hear feedback from people like yourself that's, you're at the forefront of this and, your state and your governor actually trying to help.

So that's really good to hear. Why do you think in this day and age stigma can have such a negative effect on someone wanting to enter treatment? Because I hear this time and time again. Stigma is still around, and it's mind boggling.

Eric Eckberg: I agree. It's funny. I think it's gotten better.

I really do. I think, I've been at this game for. I shouldn't call it a game, but I've been at this for 20 years, and it seemed like it was really, if you were a heroin user, opiate user 20 years ago, it was different than it is today. The stigma was more significant, and I think the reason why that's changed is because so many people are affected by it.

Talk to anybody and chances are some, whether it's their immediate family or extended family or their neighbor, somebody has been impacted by addiction. So it's no longer, in the rough neighborhoods of the inner city. It's in the suburbs. It's in the affluent communities and by its very nature, if it's happening, and it's that prevalent, then the stigma itself just, "oh my God, I can't believe our neighbor, Johnny and his wife are struggling with this. They're such good people and they do well financially." The stigma naturally loses what it used to be. So I think it's gotten better, but it still exists. We see a lot more men come to treatment than women.

Why is that? Is it because women aren't supposed to have these problems, and they don't want to admit to it? That's probably part of it, which doesn't make sense because they suffer from this I think if you look at the statistic just as much as men do but they're not coming to treatment. We've got to fix that and that still bears itself up if I look at Green Mountain census. It's typically 20 to 30% female and, the rest, 70% are male. It seems to me it should be 50/50, people that need treatment.

Chris Langley: Yeah. That's an interesting observation. yeah, I'd agree with that actually, definitely. It's nice to know though that things are at least getting somewhat easier on the stigma front. But sadly, as you said, because so many people have been affected by this.

Eric Eckberg: It's true, I think we open up the mental health facility, and that has less stigma to it than addiction, right?

But they're both a disorder, an addiction, a mental health disorder. They shouldn't. People are more empathetic. "Oh, they suffer from depression. Oh, how sad that is." Versus, "oh, they're using heroin? Nah." so I, think it's getting better, but we still gotta way to go.

Chris Langley: yeah, most definitely. Last question for you today. I ask all of my guests because I get such an interest in a varied answer. But can you tell me your opinion of harm reduction and how it can play a role in recovery?

Chris Langley: great question. I think, it's huge. I think medicated assistant treatment has come so far as education and the research and the statistics that you can show the average person on why it works because we have, we now have the evidence that it works.

I'll be honest, I've evolved in this, I was an old school, a guy 20 years ago, like it was abstinence based and you just stopped and maybe,12 step work or what have you. I was educated by people that were doing the work, mainly on the provider side. With me, it started with things like Vivitrol and Suboxone, where at one of our treatment centers I was working in Massachusetts, we really made a, an effort to get people that were leaving our treatment, whether it was alcohol or opiates, or whatever disorder, to take Vivitrol.

My argument at that point was it will buy you 30 days. For 30 days, you don't have to worry about this stuff. Maybe it will be longer term, but at least that, that window when you leave treatment, which is when somebody is the most vulnerable, if they have that medication that will work, so they don't want to use or won't be effective to use, whether Suboxone, Vivitrol, et cetera, it just, and I saw the results.

I would have people call me two weeks later or a month later and say, "Hey, I'm doing well." I saw that firsthand and I saw other people that stayed on Suboxone or stayed on Vivitrol. There's, other medications like methadone that have worked wonders for years. I think some of those, we talked about stigma, people don't pursue that because of the stigma.

"Oh, I can't be connected to a clinic." If it's making your life functional, and you're participating, and you're in recovery, so be it, you got this other medication working, so what? You're back with your family, you're doing well, you're participating again. Short answer, harm reduction, all for it, at certain levels.

I

love that answer. Thank you very much. Do you have a message for anyone who's listening to this podcast who is going through addiction?

Eric Eckberg: Yeah, you gotta deal with it. It's not going away. It's easy to say. It only gets worse. It's a progressive disease, the AMA called it a disease because it's chronic, progressive, and fatal if left untreated. And by "left untreated" means you continue to use. It just doesn't mean you go to treatment.

It means you need to end the abuse of illicit drugs and alcohol. Deal with it. Your life gets so much better. I talked to so many people in recovery. Not everything's wonderful. Stuff still happens and life is hard, but it's so much better than when you're in the throes of addiction.

It's just light years away from those, I said, the mid-late 90s, man, never going back there. Things, are so much better.

Wonderful. last question. Can you tell our listeners how to best contact you and to find your service online? Yeah, I touched on it early. I think the best thing is graniterecoverycenters.com Go on our website. and there's an 800 number, there's all kinds of pages to, review what we're all about and, what we offer, but the 800 number is the best way to, talk to admission rep. if you are one of those people that are in the throes of addiction, we'll get you treatment.

Chris Langley: If you're a family member. that's trying to get a loved one into treatment. We can navigate that as well.

wonderful. last question. Can you tell our listeners how to best contact you and to find your service online?

Yeah, I touched on it early. I think the best thing is graniterecoverycenters.com. Go on our website and there's an 800 number, there's all kinds of pages to review what we're all about and what we offer, but the 800 number is the best way to talk to admission rep. If you are one of those people that are in the throes of addiction, we'll get you treatment.

If you're a family member that's trying to get a loved one into treatment. We can navigate that as well.

Wonderful. Eric, thank you so much for your time today. It's been a real privilege and an honor to talk to you and to hear about your own journey as well, and to hear about the amazing services that you and all of your team provide the community. It's been very inspiring. Thank you for your time today.

Thank you, Chris. I, appreciate your time. Thanks for having me.

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