Episode Transcript
STEVE: Hello and welcome to another episode of the PPI podcast brought to you by the Purposeful Planning Institute. My name is Steve Legler, and I'm happy to be hosting this episode. Today's guest is a relatively new member of the PPI community, and I look forward to helping him share some of his work with our other members. John Campbell is an addiction recovery specialist based in Texas and the founder of Campbell Recovery Services in Dallas. John, welcome to the PPI podcast.
JOHN: Thanks, Steve. Really happy to be here today, and I'm hopeful to provide a message to those out there and educate some people on a topic that not a lot of people like to talk about.
STEVE: Okay, so you chose an interesting title for this topic that I found intriguing, "Affluence and Addiction." So let's start there. Is it just me, or is there a correlation? It seems that a lot of the stories we hear about addiction are somehow connected to affluence.
JOHN: Yeah, I mean, I think there's definitely a strong correlation. There aren't a ton of studies out there for this particular subject, but in my experience, and I've been working in the mental health field for 14 years in different capacities, I’d say 80% of my clientele—thousands of people and families I've worked with—have wealth and success. So, there's a strong correlation. I would estimate over 70% of families have some kind of addiction or mental health struggle within their family, if I were to guess.
STEVE: So you're bringing me into an interesting area here about addiction and mental health. Are they side by side? Is one a complete subset of the other, or how do you look at these two subjects?
JOHN: It's all kind of under the category of mental health disorders, mental health struggles, or mental health issues—however you want to phrase it. But yes, addiction is just one part of mental health. Sometimes we separate them when we're talking about them because you have addictions, which people often think of as just drugs and alcohol. Those are the most common we talk about. But I also deal with process addictions, so I also work with compulsive behaviors around things like sex, gambling, work, technology, video games, and compulsive spending. When I say "addictions," I'm talking about any kind of behavior or substance that someone is overindulging in to the point it causes consequences in their personal life. Now, when I say "mental health struggles," I'm usually talking about conditions like depression, anxiety, maybe bipolar disorder, OCD, and those types of diagnoses. So, I hope that answers your question. It's really all under the umbrella of mental health.
STEVE: Okay. So, there are a lot of different things under mental health. Most people in the PPI community are serving affluent families in some form or another, and you happen to be serving in an area that I think, for most of the rest of us—I count myself in that group—when we hear about the struggles you specialize in, we kind of think, "Ooh, I don't know if I'm qualified to deal with that." And I think it's interesting to know that there are people out there like you who work in that area. But I think we still have a long way to go to help other advisors know how to handle these issues, how to make referrals in this area, and how to have productive discussions with the families we serve. Can you shed some light on how we might think about dealing with these tricky topics?
JOHN: Yeah, it can definitely be—if you don't have the personal or professional background—tough to take on yourself. So, I would encourage everybody to at least seek out a consultation from an expert or to hire an expert on the case to help, just so you have that support and someone who has been through it before, so you're not doing or saying the wrong thing. Even if you have personal experience—and a lot of people do, maybe not themselves but within their family—that can be helpful, but I would still recommend having a professional as a guide. Someone like myself, and if it's not me, I help people find the right resources all across the country.
STEVE: So, let me just jump on what I found interesting in what you just said—that's new to me and that I hadn't thought of. But I think I heard you say to bring someone like you in to consult about how to handle it, as opposed to telling the designated patient that they should contact you, but to actually bring in someone with your skill set and background to help the family figure out how to make this referral. Did I get that right?
JOHN: Yeah, I think that's a great way to do it. I mean, because a lot of times, it's really hard for—I mean, you can make the referral and give them phone numbers and emails, but it's hard for them to take that initial step. I mean, I get at least a phone call every day from someone new who needs help, or a family that needs help and they say, "We really needed to call you several months ago, or years ago. We just—the phone weighed 1,000 pounds"—something to that effect.
STEVE: Okay, these are difficult conversations for families to have. They know that somebody has an issue, and they don't know how to get some positive movement out of it. And so they struggle with it, and they sort of run around in their own heads and run in circles without some advice from someone who could actually help them take that step so that the person who needs the help will actually contact the resources they need. Correct? Yeah, yeah, that's, that's actually, I think, very helpful, because I know that for most of the people in my position, where we deal with families, and then we hear about something, as soon as we hear about it, we kind of want to just change the subject and talk about something else that we're more comfortable dealing with, kind of burying our heads in the sand and hoping that the problem will just go away on its own. You mentioned something about people who've had the lived experience, and I understand that you have a background that's particularly useful for people in the kinds of families you work with. You said you're a second generation of a family of wealth, and that you've also gone through some addiction and recovery yourself. Can you share a little bit more about both of those areas for us?
JOHN: Sure. So, my dad has done very, very well, and so he's the first generation, and my brother and I are the second generation. I grew up in a very, very nice, affluent area here in Dallas. I struggled with drugs and alcohol from a very young age—started in high school—and it eventually led to my family. This is partly why I do what I do. They finally hired the right expert who worked with my family, referred me to a treatment center, and helped coach my family through the whole first year of my process—what the next steps were, how to help me be on my own, all those things. I've been in recovery for 16 years now. So, I have the personal background of struggling with addiction, coming from a wealthy family, and also all the professional training and experience, and I draw on all that to help families.
STEVE: Okay. I looked at your LinkedIn earlier, and I think you got more letters after your name than in your name, which I think other people at PPI, myself included, suffer from that as well. But no, on a more serious note, though, you said something. You used a phrase that just completed the loop of what I had said before, but you said that you got the right treatment back then, and the people coached your family, correct? It just underscores to me that I think most people look at addiction as one person's problem. It might have started as one person's problem, but it feels like the solution is rarely just in that one person—the family has a huge role to play, potentially, at least, and hopefully in recovery in situations like that.
JOHN: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a lot of families, when I work with them and refer them to treatment, they think that their son, their daughter, mom, dad, whoever it is, is going there to get help. Then all of a sudden they're like, "John, why are we having to do all this therapy? We're having to go to these family programs, we're having to do these intensives." Yeah, while it is the person who needs to get help because they're the one suffering, the whole system usually needs to make some changes, not just for that person to thrive, but for everybody to thrive.
STEVE: So I'm glad you used the word "system" because I've done some training in Bowen family systems theory, and I've learned that if you look at everything as a system, you can often see a lot more solutions and ways that people are interrelated that help you actually get to a better result. So is that part of the hesitancy of people referring someone in? Are they afraid that they're going to have to do some of the work, or do they only realize that after they kind of think they're shipping someone off to, quote, unquote, "get fixed," but then they realize, when somebody explains it to them, that the system has to make changes as well?
JOHN: Yeah. I think there's definitely some hesitancy on parents' part. For example, I've talked to plenty of dads who say, "John, I wasn't around much because I had a successful business. I was traveling in the country." They might have had their own issues with working too much—often the case. And so I know I wasn't around, and there were times I wasn't there when my son needed me. And I know I've talked about the three C's: you didn't cause it, you can't cure it, and you can't control it. But you can contribute. That's the fourth C. Families know, like, "Hey, I think I have contributed in some shape or fashion to my son's ailment."
STEVE: Okay, wait a sec. You just went through some C's there, and I was trying to jot them down. You went too fast for me, and we're recording this. If you're listening to this, you could go back, but I don't want people to have to go back. So you said you didn't cause it, you didn't cure it, you can't control it. Was that it?
JOHN: Yep, but the fourth C is you can contribute. Okay? Because a lot of families place blame on themselves. They think, "By doing this, I caused him to drink too much," which that's not true, but maybe you did something that contributed to it.
STEVE: So now maybe—so that's where you try to plant in them the impetus that, "Okay, wait a sec, you may have contributed to the down part of it." Now, how about you make some changes to help contribute with everyone else in the system to the ride back up, correct? Okay, very cool. That affluence and addiction part, I think a lot of people, the first instinct is to say, "Well, yes, because of availability, and you have the resources, so therefore it's available." And I think that's certainly part of it, but the part about the dad not being around—and it could be mom too, but it's just more often the dad—is how much does that play into it? I mean, it's hard to put a number on it, but I guess you see stories of that regularly.
JOHN: Yeah, absolutely. I hear sometimes both parents—Dad might be working, Mom's kind of a socialite, out and about. And kids are being raised with Uber accounts, Amazon accounts, and DoorDash accounts, and taking care of themselves in a lot of ways. And yeah, we all are human beings. We inherently need our mom and dad. We have an attachment there. There's attachment formed there from birth, and there's nothing you can do to not have that formed. Even in kids that are adopted or, never meet their parents, they still inherently have that attachment to their biological parents.
STEVE: That's interesting because you talked about the Uber and the Amazon and the DoorDash, and that is such a current reference, but I started to think about if you go back 20 or 30 years—not that there aren't still any—but people who have nannies, the kids who are ready to play with nannies, at least they have some kind of an attachment to some responsible adult. So now, I guess it's so much easier to, quote, unquote, raise your kids remotely with, "You take care of this." They're able to take care of so many more things on their own, and that just makes that lack of attachment with the parent even more glaring. Is that something that's really going on, that it's happening at younger ages? Are you seeing that?
JOHN: I was speaking to a father the other day, and I was working with his son and trying to help him change his family system. I mean, they spent $100,000 in a year on DoorDash food for the family.
STEVE: That is, that is a number that, I'm a fan of DoorDash, but like, 100—no, that's crazy. Okay, you mentioned we were talking earlier about mental health being the overall umbrella of these issues. We've been hearing so much more in the last 5 to 10 years about mental health to try to remove some of the stigma that mental health issues carry with them. Yeah, we're making progress there.
JOHN: I think so. A lot more people have a therapist today than they ever have. Some kids, younger kids I talk to think it's cool. Hey, I got my therapist. I'm talking to him. So that definitely helps. I think, with affluent families, it's a little harder because of the fear of, like, judgment and things getting out to the media, in the news all that, which I deal with here. That's in Dallas. It's why I office by myself. I try to provide as much privacy as I can for my clients.
STEVE: Interesting. So that's actually part of the—can become part of the hesitation to reach out for help, is the fear that this will become a story that then the family has to feel embarrassed about, as opposed to feeling good about the fact that they're working towards solving a problem. They're worried about the other side of that.
JOHN: Yeah, reputations and all of that. Yes.
STEVE: The way that people are treated who have these issues today? Has it evolved a lot compared to 10 or 20 years ago? Or are there still places that are still doing the same thing as they have for a long time, but then other people are coming at it with a new approach? Like, what's the lay of the land of the different options that are out there for people?
JOHN: I would say today that one of the great things is there's a pretty wide menu out there of treatment options. And one of the things that, of course, you have your traditional 30-day residential treatment model. And they even have longer— longer term, which is often better. You've got the whole continuum of care, where you go, 30, 60, or 90 days to residential, then you have, like, step-down, where you live in the housing they provide, and you get a job, go back to work, go back to college. That's my story. I went back to work and college, and then, they kind of helped me learn how to live life and all that, be on my own, and be financially independent and things like that. So they have everything in between. Then, one thing that I think has grown a lot over the years is kind of that concierge-type treatment for folks which can work. Now, the chance of success might not be quite as high as residential, but you can hire someone. I've done the work before, and I work with people all across the country that do it, where they'll go into your home and they'll treat you there. They'll hold you accountable. They'll make sure you're following through with your plan of care. There's all kinds of technology now with remote drug testing and breathalyzers—I mean, all that stuff—and accountability for your phone and making sure you can't access certain things that could lead to certain behaviors that we want to avoid. So, yeah, technology and that concierge model have become very prominent.
STEVE: I'm intrigued by, like, I had never thought of the technology angle. But clearly, yeah, there are, and I guess there are certain addictions for which the technology plays an even more important role. But so you're saying that the field of how to treat people has continued to evolve and get broader. And I mean, that sounds good—that there's more choice—but sometimes more choice just makes people hesitate more because they're scratching their heads and they don't know whether to choose door number one, two, or three. How to…? And then the other thing that strikes me is that do different treatment models exist because there are different kinds of people that react better to one or the other? So just finding the right fit becomes, I guess, a large part of it. Because it's finding the right therapist, or a problem well-defined is half solved, or just finding the right resource can be such a tricky thing that if someone has one false start with one kind of treatment, they might swear off all treatments, and really they just kind of had a false start because they chose the wrong door. Is that what happens sometimes?
JOHN: Absolutely. I mean, if you leave a family up to their own devices, sometimes bad decisions are made. I mean, you can get on Google and find anything and the wrong thing. But again, that’s what I echo what I said earlier. If you hire an expert like myself, I can say, "Okay, here’s your menu of options." and I’m like your doctor—here’s your percent chance of success. Here’s the treatment plan. This is the highest chance of success. Now, this one's going to be the longer, usually more invasive method, which means you've got to kind of put your life on hold, go away, or whatever it is we decide. Or you've got to hire someone that’s going to be coming to your house every day, checking on you—did you follow through Zoom meetings and phone calls, and all that. So I basically give them the options. And I always tell families this: this is what I was told 16 years ago—do it right the first time, so you don’t ever have to do it again. Like, do the more invasive less comfortable route where you might have to put your job on hold. You might have to be separated from your wife and kids for a little bit, or whatever the case is but do it right the first time; you’re going to have to do it again.
STEVE: Because I think the stories that we hear about people being, "Oh, he's in rehab again," or whatever time—I think that, and I don't know how pervasive that is, and maybe some people are just more prone to that. But you're—do it once and do it right, and maybe take the plan that you can afford. And bringing this back to the affluence, yeah, I think the saving grace here is that the affluent families really have the most choices. So their ability to choose from whichever part of the menu that they want should probably be shown to them as a plus. Because of this, you're actually able to afford things that have a higher probability of success.
JOHN: And afford—you can afford anything. And also too, I mean it’s okay if you miss work for nine days. You’re going to be okay.
STEVE: It’s not going to put too much of a dent in you're not going to fall behind too much on your mortgage. So that is really interesting. So let me just bring this back to how other PPI members, who deal with families, when we start to hear about—and maybe it's that we just hear it tangentially because we're not really involved with a certain thing—but we know that from talking to one of the family members that there's somebody who's struggling with an addiction. How do we best show concern or offer to help them find resources in a way that we can do it confidently, but that we're not being more intrusive than we need to be? Like, how do we walk that line to be best in service of those clients?
JOHN: I think the first thing is just saying, "Hey, I'm not an expert in this." And typically, how we handle things, if we don't know how to handle a certain problem, we outsource it, and we bring in an expert. If you've got a water leak at your house, are you going to fix it yourself? No, you're going to hire a plumber, an expert, to come in there and fix it. And it's the same thing—the same plan. So let's bring in an expert, and let's get some outside opinions, maybe get some assessments done and start to put together a plan. And sometimes, "Hey, right now we don't have to do anything, but let's keep an eye on this, and then if this happens and this happens, then we're going to bring in either more experts or a different plan of attack," and let's have a strategic plan just in case. And sometimes you're also dealing with trust and distributions and all that, and you've got to consider all that.
STEVE: It gets pretty complex pretty quickly in some of these families with the way they are organized. And I think the takeaway here is that if we see something and we want to help the family, we should at least help them have the courage to start taking it seriously and help them to get the resources and make the plans that they need to see their way through.
JOHN: Yep.
STEVE: All right, well, we're getting near the end of our time here together. John, I want to thank you, but I also want to ask you if there are any final thoughts that you'd like to share with our audience.
JOHN: Probably just echo that you don't have to do it alone. You'd be surprised, once you start talking about addiction and mental health struggles, how many people can relate to you.
STEVE: Excellent. All right. John Campbell, this was fascinating. I learned a lot today. I'm sure that people who listen to this will learn a lot as well. I know the show notes will have ways for people who listen to this to figure out how to contact you. But John Campbell, thanks for being my guest today.
JOHN: Hey, thanks, Steve. Have a great weekend.
STEVE: All right, listeners, thanks for joining us. I'm Steve Legler. Until next time.
