173- WEEKEND RAMBLE - MICHAEL TOURVILLE

Chuck (00:01.345)
Hello everybody. Welcome to another edition of the weekend ramble on the Ashes to Awesome podcast. I'm your host Chuck LaFlandre joining me in virtual studio today. Of course, my two lovely co-hosts, Dr. Lisa, how you doing today?

Lisa (00:11.409)
I'm very good Chuck, how are you?

Chuck (00:13.102)
I am fantastic. Attica, how we doing this morning?

Atika (00:17.775)
Hi, good. How are you, Chuck?

Chuck (00:18.893)
Good, excellent. You look bright eyed, ready to go, and yeah, it's good, it's good. And of course, our guest this weekend is Mike Tourville, who has a book called the, Ah, Now the Name Escaped Me Again, because I'm like that. Ha ha ha. Hey Mike, what's the name of your book and how you doing this morning?

Mike Tourville (00:38.857)
Doing good, Chuck. Thanks for having me. And sure, I do remember the name of the book. It's called it's called Voices from the Fallen.

Chuck (00:43.854)
I would hope, I would hope, yeah, all right.

Okay, okay. I'm just pulling it up on screen here if, you know, if the software would catch up. See, it was supposed to be much more suave than that. I had it, it was like, it was ready to go. And now it's not coming up, so that sucks. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay, there we go. There we go. Right. Okay, I'm gonna try doing this anyway for the editing process. Maybe I'm gonna just give it one more crack, but you know, yeah. Okay, so.

Mike Tourville (01:03.505)
I can hold it up for a second here.

Yep, voices from the fallen. Yeah, you may get it, yeah.

Chuck (01:18.821)
Lisa is having some technical issues. Lisa, if you just jump out and come back in, it'll be okay. Yeah, yeah, all right. Her microphone switched on her from her headset to the laptop and laptop microphones are no good. So anyway, Mike, so this is your book, Voices from the Fallen. I did have a chance to get through a good chunk of it. Of course, my co-host never did receive it for me as they were supposed to. Thank you ADHD for that.

Lisa (01:26.237)
Okay.

Atika (01:36.054)
nerd.

Chuck (01:49.36)
Why don't you tell us a bit about the book and we'll go from there.

Mike Tourville (01:53.129)
Sure. And again, thanks for having me on to talk about this, Chuck. So in early 2021, this is when we were in the midst of all the pandemic, I had begun to write this book. And it's like eight books. There's eight different stories in this book, all very diverse. Each of these stories are true stories, most of them from Western Massachusetts. And many of them are people I've known for.

Chuck (02:19.423)
Okay.

Mike Tourville (02:22.961)
most of my life so I had an intimate knowledge of what they had gone through. And also too, like many people, I've had addiction in my family, alcoholism in my family, I've known too many people who have succumbed to addiction, too many friends who have passed away or my friend's children were passed away. And yet I still didn't know a lot about it.

So when my friend's son, 19 year old son, Jack Jonah, passed away from a heroin overdose in April of 2016, my friend Kirk Jonah started the Jack Jonah Foundation and with the work he was doing, I thought, Jesus, there's gotta be something more we could do here. So I contacted a movie producer that had done a movie about a previous book I had written called A Promise to Astrid. I'd become friends with Jason Campbell at JC Films,

Mike Tourville (03:23.151)
and a few of the other people that were involved. And I, you know, I just suggested to Jason, I said, you know, you do all these movies with JC Films, all these movies, purposeful movies about internet safety, high school bullying, things like that. I said, you know what, maybe you ought to do something about the problem of addiction. And I told him about Kirk and his son and what's happening here in western Massachusetts.

And I thought he'd say something like, yeah, I'll put it on the list. We'll get to it next year. We'll talk about it then kind of a thing. But his response was not what I expected. He says, you know, Mike, that is an urgent problem. Let's get to it. Let's do a movie. Let's do it now. And boom, that was in May of 2019. In June, we started scripting auditions in July, filming in August. The movie was done by November.

Chuck (03:56.259)
Hmm.

Chuck (04:05.909)
Wow.

Chuck (04:09.571)
Yeah.

Chuck (04:19.649)
That's some sort of record in the movie world, eh? No kidding. Yeah.

Mike Tourville (04:19.668)
Um...

It sure was. So he saw the urgency of this, right? And this is where I was a little blown away. Now in the process of that movie, and it pro, because it was filmed here in Western Mass and so I was intimately involved with the whole production and everything. But I started talking to people who in our community that volunteered, a few people who I became friends with and is still friends with now, uh, who got involved because of their, because of a loss they had gone through.

So many people said, gee, I'm involved with this because I lost my brother, or I lost a friend or a family member. And I was overwhelmed with this. So I thought, wow, this is happening to everybody. It was just beyond what I really knew. And I was naive, ignorant, whatever. I learned a lot. And.

Chuck (05:11.393)
really is, right? Yeah.

Mike Tourville (05:22.185)
So, and also too, I had some friends, but still, I still didn't know enough. So, I started talking to people and I said, you know, these stories need to be told. So, I started off small and I just, one story led to the other. And I thought the impact of their voice telling me, first person, what they went through, and also interviewing family members, their voices matter too. So, how do we make this happen?

Chuck (05:47.153)
Yeah, they do.

Mike Tourville (05:49.573)
So it's why it's called voices from the fallen. It's all the stories are told in a first person point of view. I think that's always more personal, more impactful. And also there's perspectives from family members in there told from their voices as well. And as you know, sometimes that family member's perspective contradicts, or at least it's a different perspective altogether. So we mix that in.

Chuck (06:14.204)
Right.

Chuck (06:17.803)
Yep.

Mike Tourville (06:18.565)
And all these eight stories are different. And I think I mentioned to you when we spoke before is the purpose of this was to make the book or each of the stories relatable. So there's not a movie star. It's not a rock star's addiction problem that people can't relate to. These are everyday people. These are what families had gone through. And so what I hope is a reader reads it and says, you know, this is us. This is me. This is what I felt.

Chuck (06:36.723)
Yeah.

Chuck (06:46.306)
right.

Mike Tourville (06:48.025)
And that connectivity helps people maybe, you know, accomplish many things. A greater awareness, reducing the stigma, and maybe making better decisions as a family. So anyway, that was a long answer to your short question, but that's where, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Chuck (06:59.809)
Yeah, yeah, right. No, it was a great answer. It was absolutely a great answer, right? And I couldn't agree more, Mike, on the reasoning behind it. It's something that we've done right from the get-go here. You know, Lisa's story is one of a family member as well.

Mike Tourville (07:12.894)
Mm-hmm.

Chuck (07:18.909)
And it's a gripping, it really is, what a fantastic story she has that goes along with it. So I'm sure she can really relate to the need for something like that, right? Lisa, if you wanna comment on that.

Chuck (07:35.473)
Oh, you're, can't hear you, oh. Oh, I had you muted, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah.

Mike Tourville (07:36.861)
Your audio is out. Oh, you are good now.

Lisa (07:37.847)
mute. There we go. Sorry, I'd muted myself. Yeah, I think that because our journey as a family started about 23 years ago or so. And really, I think the main form of support that I was aware of for families were things like Al-Anon. And

You know, just like I don't think AA is the only answer for all of the people, I don't think Al-Anon is the only answer for all loved ones or family members either.

I'm sure for some people it's incredible and it's supportive and you know I don't say this to speak badly of Al-Anon, but my own personal experience and again this was a very long time ago. I should probably try again and see if I feel differently, but I had gone to an Al-Anon meeting about 23 years ago when this had began and I was actually sitting in a meeting in the same building where my brother had gone into detox upstairs

And he was calling me and the people in the meeting were telling me not to answer his call.

Chuck (08:44.722)
Oh wow.

Lisa (08:54.315)
and I got up and walked out and said, this is not for me. Because again, for me, the answer was never going to be, don't answer his call. And so, you know, and it's just like with an AA meeting, every AA meeting you go to is going to be heavily dependent on the people in that particular meeting and Al-Anon is no different. And so I could have gone to an Al-Anon meeting down the hall and maybe I would have had a lovely experience, but.

For me, it was kind of the only thing I knew of. And I do think, you know, and I'm like speaking for my whole family here, but I like, I did feel alone in the process. Like I didn't know where to go. I didn't know where to get support. I didn't know who to talk to. You know, we had a good family physician at the time who was just a good support and he was close to my family. And you know, he was someone I felt I could talk to, but outside of that, like I really didn't know where to go.

okay go to Al-Anon. I went to Al-Anon and they told me not to answer my brother's phone call so I left Al-Anon. I was like now where do I go? And so when I hear about a book like yours the first thought I had was to make families know they're not alone and that there are other families. You know because you do you feel alone, you feel scared, you feel helpless, you feel hopeless, you feel lost, you know and you don't know what to do.

Atika (09:53.486)
Thanks for watching.

Chuck (09:55.457)
Right, yeah.

Mike Tourville (10:03.785)
Yeah.

Chuck (10:13.985)
The stigma, the stigma hits you too, right? You know, right?

Lisa (10:17.895)
Yeah, it's funny stigma like you do, but I feel like, and this is just a personal thing. It's like even at work, like I'll talk about, you know, it comes up in the fact that I have lived experience. So when I have someone in the emergency department who's struggling with addiction and a family member, a mom in the hallway was crying about the son who's in the room who's high on some sort of substance. I'm pretty open. And I've even had people say to me like, you know, are you comfortable sharing?

with people that you have a loved one. And it's not, they're not asking about whether my brother is comfortable that I talk about things, but it's about me. Like, am I embarrassed to talk about it? And I'm always like, what? Like, no, I'm not embarrassed. What a stupid question. It's a stupid question. What?

Chuck (10:58.429)
Oh. See, and you have a unique, that right there, you have this unique way of thinking about that and addressing that, Lisa, that again, I think for a lot of people, the stigma is something, is a real challenge, right? I love that you say, to hell with that, right? You know, that actually means quite a bit, right? So, yeah, that's something else.

Lisa (11:16.81)
Yeah.

Mike Tourville (11:19.91)
Yeah.

Lisa (11:23.219)
Yeah. Because the thing is, I'm not embarrassed that my brother has addiction. I'm not embarrassed of that. Why would I be embarrassed of that? Like, I feel like looking at people and going, do you have a loved one with diabetes? Are you embarrassed to tell people that your auntie has diabetes? Like, what the hell? Like, I'm not embarrassed of this.

Chuck (11:28.521)
No, no. Yep, right.

Atika (11:28.856)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Chuck (11:35.309)
Hahaha

Mike Tourville (11:36.467)
Right.

Atika (11:37.13)
Yeah. Right?

Mike Tourville (11:40.515)
Yeah.

Chuck (11:40.781)
Right, so it's books like yours Mike that make all the difference, right, you know And and I hope that it is reaching people anyway, right? So, you know, yeah. Yeah, right Go ahead

Lisa (11:47.462)
Yeah.

Mike Tourville (11:49.253)
I hope so. Yeah. And you said something Lisa in the beginning, not to interrupt to Chuck, but one of the reasons why we start doing the podcast, which we'll talk a little bit about is people don't know what to do when they're confronted with this and so many people says, okay, now that, and as a result of that, they, they make decisions that are counterproductive or they hear from people, they get advice from people that doesn't work out so well.

Lisa (12:12.211)
Yeah, I agree.

Lisa (12:17.448)
Mm-hmm.

Chuck (12:18.137)
through story, right?

Lisa (12:18.355)
And I think sometimes I struggle a little bit to try to put myself back to 20 year old me, do you know what I mean? It's like I've now got 23 years of being a sibling, of doing like independent exploring and learning and then going through medical school and becoming a psychiatrist. So it's sometimes I do find it hard to think back, but if I could take myself and just imagine all the things I would need to remove that I have gathered and collected over 23

Like it does remind me of just how scary and intimidating, you know, it was back then. Um, yeah.

Mike Tourville (12:55.038)
Mm-hmm.

Chuck (12:55.128)
No kidding, no kidding. Attica, what are your thoughts on what you're hearing so far? Oh, you're muted. Oh, there you are.

Atika (13:05.678)
Okay, okay, yeah, I'm eating myself. So I think with addiction, usually people feel very isolated. I know supervising users, the big thing is basically knowing that they're not alone, that it's such a very lonely disease, that they feel very isolated and being cognizant of the stigma, it's very important to do that storytelling, which is...

Basically, I also do that with the documentary, but it's just telling the story from their point of view. How do you see things? And that first point of view is really just kind of bridging the gap between everyday's conversation and basically what's going on the street and what's going on with people who are on the street and battling with addiction. So, yeah, it's really, really important to bring those stories out.

in first person point of view, because that's how they feel like they're seen and they are and they matter. They matter. And like Lisa said, addiction is a disease. It's not a moral failing. It doesn't make you a bad person. You're just you, but you have a disease. And for some reason, it's really stigmatized. So having first person point of view,

person point of view is very away forward because then we see from their point of view. It does humanize. Yeah.

Lisa (14:37.991)
And it humanizes. Yeah, and all of these stories humanize people, right? Like I feel like, you know.

people suffering in addiction are people, they're people. But I think that particularly when you're completely ignorant to this, be it you don't have a loved one, you don't have lived experience, you don't work in a field where you're exposed to it and you get to know the person underneath, I feel like they're objectified as these things, these addicts. I don't use the word addicts, hence. But it's like they're objectified as these things. And it's like they're not things, they're people.

Mike Tourville (15:15.845)
Yes.

Lisa (15:16.621)
are people, you know? And that's something like that I've touched on a few times in old podcasts, but is I feel like that that's a unique experience that when you have, you know, when you have a loved one, is that I could look at my brother at his worst in addiction and would see the things that he would do.

And I know who he really is. And I have this firsthand, very clear awareness of just how far addiction can make people go. And I actually think in a lot of ways as a family, we were still very lucky. Like my brother didn't harass us and steal from us and blame us and yell at us and show up banging at the door at two o'clock in the morning. He actually distanced himself trying to protect us. So I think we were luckier than a lot of families are.

But I still feel like I know who he is. And obviously years have passed, but I don't think at your core, you ever really, really change. I know who the little brother was when he was five years old and when he was 10 years old, when he was 15 years old. I know who he is. And when you see how far people go in their addictions, it just, being able to understand that. And so I think when you hear firsthand stories like what Attica.

you know, deals with day in and day out, or like what Mike's book is doing, telling the stories of families who, again, they humanize their loved one, you know? Because it's like, he's not my addict, he's my brother. You know?

Mike Tourville (16:46.689)
And you're right, you're right. In fact, you said it's the right word, humanizing this. And when I spoke with, met with these families, I'm gonna tell you something, I was a mess writing this. I can't tell you how many times I cried. I can't tell you how many times I said, I can't do this anymore, I cannot do this anymore. I was a mess. And I felt like I was going through it myself. I became almost part of the family and what was happening. And I was just immersed myself too much, honestly.

Chuck (16:46.946)
Right.

Chuck (17:02.621)
I can.

Chuck (17:08.351)
Yeah.

Mike Tourville (17:16.543)
And I had to put it down for months at a time and then get back into it, get back into it. And it did humanize. And I often say these stories are not like case studies. They're so personal. They're very deep, emotional. We've all read case studies. They're dry, you know, male 24, blah, blah. These, these are intimate stories that messed me up so much.

Chuck (17:37.998)
right.

Mike Tourville (17:43.101)
When I talk about it still, I start crying. So it had that lasting impact. Yeah, my goodness. So it was rough. So, but you're, you're so right, Lisa. It, the humanizing this really makes a difference. And I think going back to the relatability and connectivity is where people say, yeah, that's, that's how I felt. That's exactly what I was going through. And I want, hopefully that's the connection it makes.

Chuck (17:47.038)
We are kindred spirits, Mike. You're saying it now and I'm like, oh shit, here it goes.

Chuck (18:14.813)
Last night I was like Tammy Preston who contributes to our Shattered Stigma project with her real-time updates about having a daughter who's in it. I was like, hey, she's kind of overdue for a post, right? So I just means, you know, something shiny. I had three open projects at the time, but what's going on with Tammy? So I started and I rewatched all of the videos and read the blog post that she had posted and I found myself bawling.

It's like two o'clock in the morning. And I had to message her. I know it was midnight, because I remember thinking, oh, she's gonna be pissed off. It's like 2 a.m. there. But I just messaged her and said, what's going on with you? Like, you haven't submitted, so now I'm worried about you, Tammy. Right? Like, what's going on in your story? And then she's saying, as the mother of somebody who's suffering in it, she just needs to take a break for a week or two or whatever it is, and just take a, because it's all just so overwhelming all the time.

So, you know, it's something else. But I just, I found a new appreciation for her and the struggle and all the families again, you know, right? And so I just wanted to reach out to her. So.

Lisa (19:22.335)
And it makes me think of, you know, there's another, prior to us starting this recording, right, we talked a little bit about Ryan and with Mike, and Ryan will talk about how apathy is like a duvet, right? I'm not suggesting that Tammy's apathetic per se, but it's just like, you know, I think any one of us knows that.

Chuck (19:35.233)
That's right. Yeah.

Lisa (19:43.019)
you're, you know, you get exhausted and the empathy just drains you. And then, you know, the way Ryan describes it is that sometimes you need to step away and it's almost like a form of apathy and but it's this comforting duvet that you need to just temporarily go and huddle yourself into so that you can eventually come back with renewed empathy. Yeah.

Mike Tourville (19:47.283)
Yeah.

Chuck (19:48.921)
All right.

Chuck (20:04.939)
As Attica pulls up this big... Perfect timing.

Atika (20:06.534)
Yeah. Oh, I use that all the time. I use that. Like going into the alleys, I would say that, and that's probably your next project, Mike, but alleys are very depressing if you go into there and like just even like for harm reduction, I distribute harm reduction. So crack pipe, math pipes, snort pipes, you name it.

Mike Tourville (20:09.221)
Hehehehehehehehehehe Hehehehehehe

Lisa (20:10.848)
That was so symbolic. That was awesome.

Mm-hmm.

Mike Tourville (20:21.133)
Mwahahahaha

Atika (20:33.834)
And I'm like, okay, hum reduction, outreach, who needs it? But even that opener opens a whole lot of stories and I can make books for every single one of them and they're hard, okay? Like it's years that I've like doing that. And like sometimes in my nonprofit organization, I would bring my volunteer with me into the alleys. Like you need to learn. There's a lot to things to learn in the alleys. It's...

Chuck (21:03.149)
So to put this in context, Mike, sorry to interrupt Attica, but I just, I wanna give Mike some context to what you're saying. She's in Vancouver's downtown East side, which is equivalent to Skid Row in LA, or San Francisco, I guess, is kind of one of the worst. Okay, yeah, you've got your own spots in the US, of course, that are similar, right? In Canada, I think...

Atika (21:03.446)
depressing and it's wrong. But, oh, it's fine.

Mike Tourville (21:17.161)
Kensington Street and yeah Philadelphia yeah

Lisa (21:25.771)
But I think East Tastings is one of the worst in North America. You know, like there's lots of similar places in the US, but I think that it's absolutely the worst in Canada, but I would say that it strikes up there even in the worst in all of North America.

Chuck (21:29.804)
Without a doubt. Yep.

Chuck (21:36.941)
By far, yep.

Mike Tourville (21:41.417)
Hmm. Wow.

Chuck (21:41.753)
It's blocks and blocks of people living in tarps and tents and right out on Open Street. It's something else to see. So when Attica talks about going into the alleys, that's where she's going. So it's a pretty intense environment there that she's talking about. And I just, I wanted to give Mike some context to what you were saying, Attica, so sorry to interrupt, but yeah, yeah.

Atika (21:58.506)
Always, always in touch. Yeah, so about the apathy being a duvet, I've gone through a lot of that, like the compassion fatigue when you're like hearing about serious deep messed up trauma. And like I'm traumatized myself. Like I've been abused for 20 years and psychosis. Like I had all of that. But so I have like a good like, you know, tolerance for trauma, but.

Mike Tourville (22:02.021)
Yeah, okay, thanks.

Atika (22:27.666)
Even then, it's like in times when someone just like say something, I'm like, I don't care. You know, like there's like that part of me just like, I don't care. It's summer and you're homeless, but at least it's hot outside. It's nice. You know, no, there's it's legit. Like it's a problem. And like, it's really important for us to just kind of like.

Chuck (22:35.001)
Oh.

Mike Tourville (22:37.938)
Yeah.

Chuck (22:43.449)
What did you say? Yeah.

Mike Tourville (22:44.373)
Hahaha

Lisa (22:46.802)
Yeah.

Chuck (22:49.053)
Yeah.

Mike Tourville (22:50.292)
Yeah.

Atika (22:55.558)
have a kind of like a boundary. So with me, like, I would say that the maximum number of days I would be in the alleys would be three days in, in like a week, you know, there's no such thing as going into the alleys five days a week for 12 hours, because that's, you're gonna be cuckoo. Like, and then I remember when I was doing the interview in the alleys, my friend said,

Chuck (23:07.157)
Yeah.

Lisa (23:11.915)
Mm-hmm.

Chuck (23:15.946)
Yeah.

Mike Tourville (23:16.006)
Hmm.

Atika (23:21.566)
make sure you take care of yourself so you don't end up like people being interviewed. Like you're turning into people being interviewed. Yeah so.

Chuck (23:27.549)
Yeah, right. Yeah. Right. So, yeah, absolutely.

Mike Tourville (23:29.685)
True. Yeah.

Lisa (23:29.819)
Yeah, it's true. Mike, can I ask a question? Can, I'm curious what led you, I mean you talked a little bit about how you knew a lot of families. Was that sort of what got you passionate about this, interested in this? Was having friends, was it, who've suffered with loved ones and addiction?

Mike Tourville (23:35.445)
sure.

Mike Tourville (23:52.285)
Well, part of it, yes. Um, we've had alcoholism in my family, my grandfather, uh, who it was just a horrible, one thing after the next with my grandfather and particularly it was hard on my mom and her, her sisters. But even as a child, I remember my grandfather was probably 12 and we're at some friend's house and somehow my grandfather was there and he had to bring me home.

And he was as drunk as can be. And looking back, this is probably the early 70s, probably 1972-ish, right? The family just watched out the window. The mother, father, kids watched out the window as my drunk grandfather staggered out to scar to take me home. And it...

What was wrong with that, first of all? But somehow they just said, yeah, good luck, hope you make it. And I'm a 12 year old, I get in the car and my grandfather starts driving erratically on the wrong side of the road. I'm scared, I'm crying, I can't do anything about it. I'm captive in the car. He wanted this kind of a, I call it a highway, but a busy road in the wrong way. Turned a void, car swerving off the road. It was just the most horrible thing. I don't know how he didn't get hit. Somehow I finally got home.

Chuck (24:43.625)
times have changed.

Mike Tourville (25:13.171)
to the house crying because it was just a mess. And my grandfather sat out in the car for a while. He somehow just maybe passed out. I don't know. But that's my grandfather. Going through that and the memories of that certainly linger. My aunt, my mom's sister, drugs and alcohol for the last 30 years of her life ended up

just a mess and put into a home that just got ugly. So that's in my family. And I had my best friend shot himself in the head under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Several friends have had children who've died, 19, 20, 21 years old that have died, seven, eight, I don't know, lost track now. One guy who's, yeah.

Chuck (26:07.989)
Isn't that, I'll interrupt you on that Mike. Recently we had over NOSA awareness day, you know on August 31st, and I made a list and my worst fear came to be so many people on the list that I forgot somebody, right? And to put that into perspective, what you just said, seven, eight, I don't, and that sounds almost dismissive of what's a really important number, but that's the reality now, is so many people are on those lists.

Mike Tourville (26:10.289)
Yeah.

Mike Tourville (26:13.804)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Tourville (26:23.891)
Yes. You start. Mm-hmm.

Mike Tourville (26:35.925)
Yes. That's awful. You...

Chuck (26:36.193)
that you risk forgetting somebody. Like, I've lost count, I've lost count of the people that have died as a result of this epidemic, right? You know, right, yeah. Yeah.

Mike Tourville (26:44.073)
That's true. And it's just in my community. Right. And I had a, one guy in his story is in the book. Um, anyway, he was friends of our family. He came over, we live on a small little lake and he came over and he was repairing some of my boats. There was a thing and he was sitting there. I'm like, I got fixed this. I fixed that. I said, Oh, great, great. Thanks Frank. You know, um, two days later he was dead of an overdose.

I thought he had stopped using a couple years before, but he didn't stop using, but he hit it. And his wife had two small children and, you know, he died in the bathroom while his wife was feeding her kids breakfast in the kitchen. So anyway, yeah.

Lisa (27:11.571)
Wanted to give your story a check.

Chuck (27:14.958)
right.

Chuck (27:21.496)
alone.

Chuck (27:25.709)
So a couple of things that brings to my mind very recently, the day before overdose awareness day, so August 30th, a friend of mine brought his brother over here who's a known fentanyl addict, but I had to work on humanizing him, even me, the guy who freaks out about stigma and cries and carries on. I still had found myself having to intentionally humanize this guy who had never wronged me in any way, shape or form.

Mike Tourville (27:46.078)
Mm-hmm.

Chuck (27:55.213)
He's sitting here, they helped me hang this green screen behind me, that's why they had come over. And then overdose awareness stays the next day, the next day he's dead of an overdose. Just like that, right? And just like he said, he's there giving you a hand, you think, hey, you know, times out. Just like that, right? The bathroom thing, so being in it, and of course the rest of you guys are kind of muggles as far as living the addiction life goes.

Mike Tourville (28:10.331)
then yeah you're almost in disbelief like how did that happen?

Chuck (28:26.021)
In my house, if you're in the bathroom for longer than 10 minutes, I just break the door down. It was a rule, absolutely. No, nope, you're not allowed to be in there for longer. I don't care. If you're a fentanyl user and you're in the bathroom, nope. And that's why, right? My cousin who started the Memorial Monday kind of saga that we were having here for a long time died alone in a bathroom, right? And so many people die alone in a bathroom, in a house full of people.

Lisa (28:30.103)
Hmm, yeah.

Lisa (28:52.359)
I feel like bathrooms, what is it? Bathrooms, do you know what I mean? Like I, yeah, even it's like public bathrooms. Like, you know, they go into the gas station and they go to the public bathrooms. Or they go, even the story recently, Chuck, that you and I talked about offline, but you know, somebody's in the shop in the bathroom. It's like, damn bathrooms, like, yeah.

Chuck (28:54.389)
Right? I know. Right? I know.

Chuck (29:09.289)
in the grocery store. Yeah, right, yeah. Yeah, yeah, right.

Mike Tourville (29:12.081)
Hmm. Yeah, it's...

Atika (29:13.454)
Actually, so a few days ago or one week ago, I had to supervise someone in person and this is outside of the ghetto, okay? But I knew he was a user. I knew like, okay, you're using fentanyl and he was like, yeah, I'm using fentanyl, just got out of jail today. And I was like, okay, well, that's like a red flag because you are going to overdose.

statistically like super high over there. So like I was like, okay, um When's your next? Like once the next time you were doing maintenance and he was like well in an hour. I'm like, okay Well, I'm sitting there for an hour. There's not enough safe consumption site close to the place that I live. So We had to find the bush in which he would use doing his fentanyl and tranquilizer Well, sure enough he overdosed

But it's so, it's just because there's not enough safe consumption aside for this people that they cannot use safely. And then if they overdose, if I weren't there, he would have been dead, right? I was there with the Narcan because he just like throw Narcan at me. I was like, I catch the Narcan and I, you know, like I did jab him, I had to, but.

Chuck (30:26.09)
Yeah, right.

Atika (30:36.526)
He was lucky that there was someone knowing how to supervise him while he was using. The problem is that a lot of people don't have access to that. And so they just use alone. And when they use alone and there's like some drug poisoning inside, tranquilizer, benzoanalog, nitazines, whatever that is, then they just have a drug poisoning and died, which is super tragic.

Chuck (30:46.105)
Thanks for watching.

Chuck (30:59.489)
which is a perfect time to cut to a quick commercial for Norris, so I'll cut that in right now. Edit, edit, edit. I say that so I can find it in the texting there, Mike. Okay, okay, so we're back from the break. Norris, now you guys have a couple programs down there like Norris, Mike. I don't know if you've ever heard of them. Attica is a volunteer for Norris here. It's a national overdose response system.

Mike Tourville (30:59.661)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mike Tourville (31:27.807)
Mm-hmm.

Atika (31:28.066)
service.

Chuck (31:29.181)
service, sorry, National Overdose Response Service, where users can call in when they're using a loan and have an emergency plan kind of ready to go that they helped design, of course. And should something go wrong? And so when Atticus has supervised, you know she qualified that within person when she was telling this story, because quite often that would be on the phone with the clients of Norrist, right? So, yeah.

Yeah, we work on spreading the word for them and letting people know that they need volunteers. So if you're listening and you're in Canada, Norris is, yeah, please give them a shot. You can have a huge impact on somebody's life with a really small footprint on your own because you work from home and over the phone and when you're available to do so, right?

Atika (32:14.45)
Yeah, and in Vancouver, it's just me and another girl. It's just two of us and our overdose. Because we have a lot of overdoses over here.

Chuck (32:19.413)
which just blows my mind in Vancouver, right?

Chuck (32:25.977)
85% of them happened between Alberta and BC, right? Between your province and mine for the whole country of Canada, right? Yeah, yeah, so. Oh, yeah, yeah. Were you about to say that, Mike? Is that where you were going? Yeah, yeah.

Atika (32:29.586)
Yeah. So, oh yeah. So in the U S it's called brave. Yeah. Brave app. Oh, sorry.

Mike Tourville (32:30.565)
Wow, wow, yeah. I was going to mention something because, oh, go ahead. That's all right. I'm just going to mention something because you all three confirmed something that to me was a, call it a slow realization, but I realized something just as a person who's not.

um, in recovery myself, but I realized when I mentioned earlier about the people I knew that have passed and how it impacted my family, um, what really the realization was, unfortunately, I'm not any different from anybody else because everyone else has similar stories. Everyone else I spoke with said, yeah, in my family. Yes, I knew and, and I thought, I'm not unique at all. It.

Chuck (33:11.585)
Right?

Mike Tourville (33:19.685)
I wish it was unique, but it's not. And even after I had written the book, a neighbor of mine, who by the way, lived in a couple of houses down from me for 15 years, he found out I wrote the book. He says, Mike, I had no idea you were involved with addiction. He says, you know, I'm going to meetings every day for 15 years.

Lisa (33:39.895)
Yeah.

Chuck (33:40.181)
Right? Right.

Mike Tourville (33:41.549)
I know I've known him for 15 years we never talked about it. And I thought and then after that we were talking about how what and all the stuff we had to talk about we just never did because neither one of us knew the other had any connection to that. And the more I speak with people the more they open up.

And the more I see that, a lot of it's just not talked about. But I wish it was unique, but all three of you confirmed because all three of you have personal stories, just like my neighbor, my coworkers, my friends. Yes.

Chuck (34:13.033)
Yep, yep. The guy you walk past, the barista at Starbucks, all of them, right? All of them do. And you know, my thoughts on stigma, we talked about this when I was, you know, recording for your show yesterday. I get pretty riled up about it. And the reason you don't know is because of the stigma. Because it's a dirty little secret, right? And we've come so far in recent decades, but I think we have a long ways to go still.

Lisa (34:19.18)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Tourville (34:31.057)
Yeah.

Chuck (34:40.213)
you know, right? And I've like a long ways to go. You're gonna say some place? Yeah, yeah.

Lisa (34:44.643)
Mike, I was gonna ask and you kind of, maybe you've already answered this, but I was curious in doing, because there was eight family stories in the book, is that right? Exploring them, was there anything else that stood out to you that surprised you? Working with the families and hearing the stories?

Mike Tourville (35:06.865)
Yeah, there was a few things that how some families, one, there's a few things. As I mentioned earlier, when people don't have the right information, they make decisions that have the opposite of the intended effect, right?

They make decisions that push people away. And so many times I heard from people, we didn't know what to do. Or I kicked, I stopped answering calls like you were talking about, or I kicked my son out or, and it made things worse. So a lot of times that's what I recognize. People were doing things that made the situation worse over and over and over again. Another thing is what I found is the amount of, um,

Chuck (35:35.251)
Oh

Mike Tourville (35:54.485)
Call it determination with some families It was a mom whose two sons were addicted one after the other one for seven years the other for eight years 15 years of this and she just went through it day after day after day after day a wife who's 53 year old husband grandfather of four became a heroin addict Productive guy in the community grandfather of four

He became a heroin addict due to the painkiller issue there. And he's in an alleyway overdosing. And how she, despite the years of this, stuck with it, stuck with it, stuck with it. And that amount of love, that amount of determination, that a lot of loyalty and so on just impressed me that because a lot of people would just give up. There's a lot of things. What's that?

Chuck (36:46.165)
We have a name for that, Mike. We have a name for that. What do we call that, Lisa? Yes, we do, right? Totally different way of looking at things and not even a different way. A lot of people, Lisa's family, sounds like your friend's family, were already in tune with that. But what we started to do is we started to call that the love model as a way to counter the moral model, for instance, or, you know, right?

Lisa (36:51.979)
The love model.

Mike Tourville (36:56.871)
Yeah.

Mike Tourville (37:05.186)
Mm.

Mike Tourville (37:14.014)
Yeah.

Chuck (37:15.429)
And it's, yeah, it's that love that, all this shit, right? And that's what it is, is shit, all those things. When you said, Mike, just now, with the wrong information, people, you know, I'm glad that Lisa had asked you that question because earlier on in the episode when you said that, I did mean to kind of tap into that for a second. Programs like yours, and we still need to talk about your podcast, so let's move into that next. But.

Lisa (37:16.927)
blame model or the punishment model or the rejection model or the, you know.

Mike Tourville (37:22.393)
Yeah

Chuck (37:45.473)
Your book, your podcast, what we're doing, what I believe, what I believe to the core of my being is that there's a ton of podcasts out in the world doing recovery episodes, and those are super important. People need those, and I don't mean to take away from a recovery podcast, per se. However, I think our best shot at helping people based on our particular skill sets and experiences are to help families understand, to help families make better choices.

And by extension, that's how we're going to help the people that are suffering in addiction, right? And I firmly, to the core of my being, I believe that, and that's what drives me to do what we're doing every day, you know, is to help people. Even the perceived lack of connection, and I've said this a thousand times, but even the perceived lack of connection on my part was the boot on my neck for the last two years of active addiction. I believed I wasn't loved. I believed I wasn't lovable, which is worse.

Mike Tourville (38:19.047)
Yes.

Chuck (38:44.549)
than not being loved. And that was enough to keep me in it. You know, the shame of it and all of those things, right? So what you're doing is really important. On that note, Mike, tell us about the podcast. How'd that get started, you know?

Mike Tourville (38:58.009)
Yeah. You know, after writing the book and believe me, there was actually about 10, there was a few more stories that we just couldn't finish because one person.

Mike Tourville (39:14.289)
went on a different way in the middle of it ended up in Kensington Philadelphia so I never got to finish that story and there was another one that just because it was very hard to nail people down we're going through this but anyway as we've got this finished

And then sort of our community, there was some exposure to the book and people were contacting me and saying, hey, you know, I have so-and-so has a story too. And there's endless stories. We all know that. So a lot of people said, hey, here's a story you should share. You should write about this one. And I sort of seriously but jokingly said, hold on, time out here. I said, you know, writing is hard work. Putting a book together. I mean, it was a lot of effort there. And do I want to go through that emotional drain again? I wanted to. But realized, you know,

So I said, there's got to be a better way. So speaking with a few people, I said, hey, what about a podcast? And almost like you, Chuck, I don't know a first thing about it. So one of the guys that was involved, he runs the media for the town of Agawam, the town I'm from, I asked him, I said, hey, Les,

Chuck (40:14.078)
Yeah.

Mike Tourville (40:25.341)
I'm thinking about doing a podcast. I don't know anything about it. So what kind of equipment do I need? A microphone, do I need editing? How do I get started? And he said, Mike, you don't need any of that stuff. None of it. I go, well, what are you? He goes, we have it all.

Lisa (40:42.943)
Hahaha

Chuck (40:44.061)
Okay, yeah, yeah.

Mike Tourville (40:45.889)
I have the microphones, I have the software, I'll do the editing, I'll do everything. All you have to do is show up with the content because we as the town need this kind of content. It's important. I'll take care of all that." I'm like, wow. Okay. And then I said, well, I work full time. I don't know how I'm going to do it. He said, well.

Lisa (40:57.707)
Hmm.

Mike Tourville (41:07.253)
If you're able to make it Friday mornings, I usually have Friday mornings, we could record on Friday mornings. I said, well, yeah, I got to see if I can work that out. Well, wouldn't you know? I don't know if God was looking down at something. I went into work a day or so later and the owner of our company said, hey, you know what? Let's go Monday through Thursday. We'll start taking Fridays off. I go, really? Just like that. I had no excuses not to do this, right?

Lisa (41:27.671)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Atika (41:29.406)
Oh my God.

Chuck (41:31.053)
Ha ha ha.

Mike Tourville (41:35.577)
So, okay, so this is all being set up. So I said, okay, so we do our couple, we were just at first going to share stories. Let's share stories. Let's do what an extension of the book into a podcast. But as I heard these stories and again, from writing, I said, all this is good, but

How do we get people to share the information that they need to know? That useful information to guide them to say who's the first call you make? How do you save life? How do you use Narcan? What are the resources available and so on? So let's start having some professionals on, some caretakers on, some treatment recovery centers on. So we started mixing it up.

And having some art community, our state senator who was going through recovery, he came on and started talking about some of the initiatives. So we started mixing it up and saying, all right, wow, we have almost categories here. It's useful information. It's education mixed in with the stories. So it started evolving and we got involved with our district attorney's office, the sheriff's department saying, okay, hey, which, and you're right, there's a.

Chuck (42:17.505)
Wow.

Mike Tourville (42:37.833)
thousand podcasts, but they said, Mike, there's not a program like this in Western Mass. I said, are you kidding me? Well, there ought to be. I thought I'm assuming I would be one of a hundred. And so, so here we go. It just evolved that way. So now, uh, we said, well, if we're going to do this, let's, let's do it right. Let's do it better. Let's get the, the information that's needed out there. So that's how it all evolved.

Chuck (42:43.917)
Right? Yep, yep. Yep. Ha ha ha.

Chuck (43:08.269)
And again, the show is called...

Mike Tourville (43:10.161)
It's called Healing Voices Project. The theme off the book, the voices from the fallen. But yeah, that's, that's where that all began. And, you know, there's still a lot of work in doing a podcast, as you know, and doing all that, however, we've had, I'm at the 55 episode level right now.

Chuck (43:12.797)
project right yes okay so of course yeah

Chuck (43:26.139)
Yeah.

Mike Tourville (43:35.221)
And I can't imagine writing 55 stories. So this in one respect is a little easier. So that helps. Yeah.

Chuck (43:39.145)
Hahaha

Chuck (43:45.31)
And how many episodes a week are you doing? Are you, once a week?

Mike Tourville (43:47.545)
We usually do one a week. One a week. Yeah. So I give you credit for I don't know how you keep up with what you're doing. That's a, that's a tough schedule to maintain. You know. Yeah.

Chuck (43:51.629)
Kidding.

Chuck (43:56.241)
It is a tough schedule, it is a tough schedule, but well worth it, you know? Yeah, yeah, now I have, so what happened was we went from audio to video as well, right? And I thought that was gonna be more work editing, and it turns out actually, and there's some behind the curtains kind of people, people would never even realize, editing video is actually easier than editing audio. And the reason for that is, you know, we've got programs like this Riverside where it's text editing, right?

Lisa (43:59.035)
Hey, you've slowed down.

Mike Tourville (44:05.394)
Mm-hmm.

Chuck (44:26.081)
when you're immersed in nothing but audio and you don't have the visual cues, every little noise has to go, right? The ums, people say um way more often than you realize, right, we all do it. Right, you actually, you say it a lot, let me tell you. I remember when we were still just doing voice episodes or audio only, you say it a lot Lisa, geez, let me tell you, right? But, I'm just kidding. But here's the thing, when you're watching

Lisa (44:38.555)
I just did it.

Lisa (44:47.338)
Yeah.

Okay, don't give me a complex here, come on now.

Mike Tourville (44:51.591)
Yeah, now. Yeah.

Chuck (44:55.957)
You don't realize that, right? Because you have all these visual cues. But when you're listening, let me tell you, everything, right, the breath noises, when somebody takes a breath into the microphone, you hear all these little things. So when it comes to video editing, all of a sudden it becomes much more, you don't realize that stuff's happening. So the content editing became less, but now I've got video to use in short form media. Well, that blew up my world, right? So now I spend a massive amount of time

Mike Tourville (45:22.761)
Yeah.

Chuck (45:25.729)
making one minute reels or two minute reels or three minute reels, right? So it countered that in a hurry. They do, right? Attica and I have spoken about this offline and kind of an appreciation, watching some of what she's done, I see those little things and go, oh, that's really cool. But if you're doing your job right, the average person doesn't even think that. The average person just sees something that they're compelled to watch, right? So, right, yeah, right? It's a...

Lisa (45:27.72)
Yeah.

Atika (45:30.322)
Those reels take a lot of time to make.

Mike Tourville (45:35.7)
Mm-hmm.

Atika (45:35.95)
Oh my god.

Lisa (45:43.072)
Yeah.

Lisa (45:47.222)
No.

Atika (45:47.403)
Yeah.

Mike Tourville (45:49.895)
Yeah.

Atika (45:53.436)
I like to say this thing, one minute of what you see is like an hour of editing for a reel. It's so much.

Chuck (45:58.881)
For sure, for sure, right? And now I have, I'm gonna do a shout out to a good friend of mine, Lena, who contributes to the show in a thousand ways. She's a very close friend of mine. She, I'll send her a reel, and now she goes through the captions, and she's like, oh, well there's a typo there, there's a punctuation there. Like, are you kidding me? Like, the captions are auto-generated, like seriously? So for the last, like, and this is new, for the last two days now, I go through the captions, and I like.

Mike Tourville (46:01.237)
Thanks for watching!

Lisa (46:02.133)
Yeah.

Lisa (46:16.269)
Hahaha

Atika (46:19.662)
Thank you.

Chuck (46:25.661)
I obsess over getting the spelling and punctuation right. And it's like, oh, so I sent her a message at like midnight last night saying, I hate you. Like I hate you for bringing that to my attention because now it's like one more goddamn thing, right? You know, right? Right.

Lisa (46:28.817)
you

Lisa (46:34.984)
Hahaha. Cause now you can't unsee it. Yeah.

Mike Tourville (46:36.421)
Yeah. You could do both. Yeah.

Atika (46:37.05)
I hate you and I love you.

Atika (46:41.43)
Um, what helps? Yeah. What helps for me though, like having this like one app that they do AI generated texts, and then I just go through it so quickly and like just fix, and that's it.

Chuck (46:54.377)
Yeah, yeah, right, which is in theory what happens with this too, but here we are. Mike, are you doing video and audio, or are you still on audio only, or where are you at with that? Okay, oh, I guess, yeah, wait a minute, I knew that, because yeah, right.

Mike Tourville (47:05.661)
No, we've been doing video right from the get-go. Yeah. But again, thanks to Les, I give a shout out to Les, he's just a wonderful guy and he does the video recording in the studio, so that's very helpful, yeah. He saves me a lot of editing time, yeah, yeah. Sure.

Atika (47:09.86)
Oh nice.

Chuck (47:22.737)
Okay, okay, okay. Right, yeah.

Atika (47:23.33)
Wow, that's great.

Lisa (47:24.808)
Can I ask you another question, Mike? Can you share with us some of the things that maybe you were seeing more consistently through these stories, where you described that people were doing things that were having counterproductive outcomes? Were there similarities in the different families of things that they were doing that seemed to not be?

Mike Tourville (47:46.277)
I think a lot of it is the emotional reactions people would have. Okay. Um, it just is a common theme, I guess, you know, when, when there's a family member, most cases in our, in the ones I've done, mostly it's the young men, um, who get the behavior changes. Um, the family reacts emotionally to it and suspects or thinks they're doing drugs or do something and they, they kick them out, out of anger.

disappears for three days at a time, comes back, desperation says, no, I'm sorry. I will never do that again. And then of course, in one of the stories is a woman who I've known most of my life, she's in bed. And after her son came home, after being away three days, she found out the reason why he came home.

Chuck (48:16.422)
Yeah.

Mike Tourville (48:42.461)
She's laying in bed at three o'clock in the morning. She senses something. She wakes up and she sees him. He's crawling like a Navy seal in the bedroom and reaches up for the pocketbook on her dresser and he's trying to steal the money from her pocketbook in her bedroom while she's sleeping. That was why he came home.

Chuck (49:01.845)
Yeah, yeah, right.

Mike Tourville (49:03.381)
And those are the types of things that, you know, this family's recognized, oh boy, this person's being manipulative and out of anger. They kick him out again and the cycle just continues and continues because there's a lot of, well, people who are naive and don't know how to react to it. Things like that. And then there's a family who's, you know, they said, oh, we're going to test your urine. We're going to test your urine. And that's what we're going to do. We're going to make sure so clever.

The guy, the kid, he's 18, 19 years old, has a friend peeing a cup. Stores it in the back of the toilet, so his dad says, go in there and pee in this cup. So he goes in there, comes out with the cup. Here dad, defiantly says, test it, I dare you. The dad picks up the cup, puts it down and he says, and he starts to get in a big fight. What's the problem? He says,

Really think I'm gonna test cold urine? Do you think I'm stupid? So that's an example of how the parents start to learn how much they're being manipulated and have their antennas up for things like this, but it's a slow process. And after being manipulated, tricked, deceived, time after time after time, they finally wake up and say,

Chuck (50:02.553)
It's not warm. Heh. Right? Yep, yep.

Mike Tourville (50:28.625)
Things like that and I think when families say, okay, did we approach, did we react to this incorrectly the first time? How would we have, what would we have done different? Had we had some coaching, some therapy, some, you know, group meetings, that we would have said, oh, okay. What's the likely outcome if we do this? Well, let's just try to work this differently. That's the kind of a thing that seemed to happen over and over.

Chuck (50:56.877)
Fair enough, eh? Fair enough. And the thing is, there is no right answer, unfortunately, because every situation is so unique, right? Sometimes kicking the person out of the home has to happen. Sometimes it does, for the safety of everybody involved, for the sanity of everybody involved, right? But I think Lisa, some time ago, I had asked her, hey, in less than a minute, describe the love model to me. And what it had come down to was,

Mike Tourville (50:56.981)
I don't know if that answers your question, but yeah.

Yeah.

Mike Tourville (51:07.925)
it. Yeah.

Mike Tourville (51:12.117)
Mm-hmm.

Chuck (51:24.649)
making decisions out of love, not out of frustration or anger or any of those things, right? So as long as you're making those decisions out of love, then you're doing the right thing, I think, in, you know.

Lisa (51:35.327)
And I think it's communicating it too, right? It's communicating to the person that you're doing what you're doing out of love, right? Because it's true, like you do get frustrated, you get angry, you feel deceived, you feel lied to, and it's easy to feel angry towards that. And I think just being a loved one, like you do feel helpless and hopeless and vulnerable and.

And I always say to people, anger is powerful, right? So when we feel scared, when we feel vulnerable, when we feel hopeless, it's very easy to outwardly show anger, because anger makes us feel powerful. No one likes to feel scared and helpless and hopeless and vulnerable. So we'll often, when we're feeling all of those things, it comes out as anger. Like if I say to a patient, how do you feel right now? And they're like, angry. I'm like, okay, but that's not how you feel.

right? So I think it's families often respond with anger for those reasons. So I feel like it's important when you're working with someone, yes you make decisions out of love, but I think you need to be explicit. I'm doing this because I love you. I'm doing this because I'm scared. I'm doing this because I feel lost.

Because as you said, someone who's suffering an addiction is so shame-filled that I think when families come at them angry, that just is kind of, it reinforces that I'm not lovable, I'm not loved, I'm not worthy. And I think that then they just wanna numb those shitty feelings and so they go and they use more. Whereas I think if you were to say to a loved one,

Mike Tourville (53:06.879)
Mm-hmm.

Lisa (53:16.903)
you know, you can't live here anymore. And it's not because I'm mad at you, it's not because I don't love you, it's because I do love you. And I'm worried that, you know, I'm just giving an example, but I'm worried that, you know, I'm enabling you by allowing you to sleep in a warm bed and do drugs every day. I'm doing this because I love you. I think it's that expression and that reminder and that explicitness that is also so critical to it.

Mike Tourville (53:31.028)
Yeah.

Mike Tourville (53:35.318)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Tourville (53:45.093)
Yes, and I absolutely in the way you can communicate the difference between saying you love somebody you care your concern Versus saying you useless piece of shit get out of here There's a little difference in that so Yeah

Chuck (53:45.205)
Absolutely it is.

Chuck (53:58.925)
really is, right? There really is. Listen, you said something there that I want to jump on. The anger is rarely really angry, right? Like what's driving that? We just did on Kaleidoscope Wednesday that three piece or that three series, three episode series on an emotional lexicon, Mike. I don't know if you've ever heard that term. Basically it's defining your feelings, right? So I'm going to attempt to share the feeling wheel again here thing. Let's see if this works out.

Mike Tourville (54:21.009)
Mm-hmm.

Chuck (54:28.141)
I think every family should have one of these up. I really do. And not just about addiction, but especially in extenuating circumstances like that, but I think they are, it's such a powerful thing. I think you should be teaching it in school, really. Hopefully this just pops up. Yeah, it does, right? So, a feeling wheel. Have you ever seen one of these, Mike?

Mike Tourville (54:48.852)
Not this particular one, no.

Chuck (54:50.645)
No, no, so they're all the same premise anyway, right? So when you see mad, for instance, right? We can break that out and we can really get into defining what's driving that. Is it irritated, is it skeptical, frustrated, sarcastic, distant? As you branch out, you can really understand what's driving your feelings, right? And then of course, on the other side of the feeling wheel, you have powerful. So.

Mike Tourville (54:53.969)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike Tourville (55:13.14)
Yeah.

Chuck (55:21.277)
Ryan often talks about the joy line, right? In this case, the joy line is any one of these lines that's cutting through the distance of this chart, right? The other side of the joy line for mad is powerful, sad and joyful. Basically the same things driving them, but different interpretations of it take you to either side of the joy line, right? If that makes sense to you, right? It's the dichotomy and emotions, right? So.

Mike Tourville (55:45.743)
Yes.

Chuck (55:50.077)
I would highly suggest anybody, everybody, get a feeling wheel. Get one for your computer, put one up on your wall. If you've got kids, start explaining that shit to them early because this is stuff they should be teaching us in school. The history of Russia or the economy in China or whatever means nothing compared to knowing this stuff at an early age.

Mike Tourville (55:58.866)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Atika (56:02.05)
That's true.

Mike Tourville (56:07.021)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Tourville (56:10.637)
Mm. I agree.

Atika (56:12.586)
Yeah, I learned about that feeling wheel at 22 years old in a therapist's office. And I wish I learned it. Oh man. Yeah. I wish I learned it sooner. Yeah.

Chuck (56:18.505)
Yeah, yeah. I was 42, right? So, no, 44 actually, yeah, right? Yeah, yeah. What a difference, right? What a huge difference, right? And it's in detox and in treatment centers, they use that as a tool quite a bit. Well, I don't know if quite a bit's right, they definitely touch on it. I've never gone to actual treatment, so I don't know how deeply into it. In social detox is where I was exposed to it the first time. And I often say early...

Mike Tourville (56:23.929)
Yeah, yeah.

Chuck (56:45.953)
Had I realized the importance of that when I learned it, my journey would have been very different. It wasn't until some time later, a year later, that I really started to understand how important that was, right, to have an understanding.

Lisa (56:58.471)
And I think it's because your behaviors are driven by how you feel. And if you don't know how you feel, and if you don't know to take the time to sit with feelings and identify feelings, then you're just kind of like a loose cannon. You know, you're just kind of... Yeah.

Chuck (57:02.561)
without a doubt. Right? Yeah. Right?

Chuck (57:11.926)
Yeah, right, and I got a coping mechanism that never lets me down, right? You know, right? That's drug use and whatever, right? Substance use in general, so, you know, yeah, right. I think that's super important.

Mike Tourville (57:12.171)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Tourville (57:16.698)
Yeah.

Mike Tourville (57:20.517)
Yeah, you know, and along with that too, and you guys are making me think of something because this is another thing that seemed to come up often is when somebody in a family suspects that there's something wrong and it's through behavior changes, attitude changes, for example, and I remember one, the mother said, gosh, my son's 18, he's working full time. Yet, he has no money. He has no energy.

and he's anti-social. Well, an 18-year-old should be very social, have a lot of energy interviews, working full-time. How come none of these things are happening? What's wrong? Something's not right. And then when you want to approach that person initially, and let's just say, you know, you suspect because of behavior changes, maybe there's some drug use in there because something just doesn't seem right.

The way to approach without getting an angry reaction and you know saying, how do you initially say, Hey, is everything okay? Are you doing drugs? What's wrong with you? Or something that's not right. I'm concerned. How do you approach a person when you first are suspicious without getting that angry reactive pushback? It's a tough one.

Lisa (58:43.351)
To me it's curiosity, right? It's not accusation, it's curiosity. And it's transparency and it's shared observation. So to me it would be, you know, hey, I've been noticing these things. And it's just, I find myself wondering kind of what's going on. Like, are you okay? You know, is there anything, you know, do you need to talk about anything? Is there, you know, and just literally it's to be curious, non-judgmental.

Mike Tourville (58:45.36)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Tourville (59:02.055)
Yeah.

Lisa (59:12.171)
And again, to say, like, I'm curious because I'm kind of worried. You know, these things are, when I put them together, I don't know what's going on. But it's definitely making me feel concerned, you know, and I'm wondering what's going on for you.

Mike Tourville (59:27.03)
Mm-hmm. It often, yep. Go ahead.

Atika (59:28.41)
Um, with... sorry, with one of, uh, some of the clients that we have, um, he's... he relapsed. And I knew it. And I look into the pupil of his eyes, like it's so, like, he has, like, bright eyes, so it's like, duh, I know, like, okay, you're, like, hot, okay, on cocaine. So he, uh, so his drug of choice is cocaine, and he's been, like, five years sober, and then...

eight years sober and then he just relapsed. And I was just like, okay, I'm not counting like no days are gone. Just really building a rapport. When someone just use uppers, especially they, they get very nervous. They get very defensive. And, um, I find that building a rapport is always number one priority when addressing those things. And then after building a rapport, which usually about an hour or two,

depends on the person and then we can talk about, okay, like, what's the truth here? You know, like you have a chance to come clean and if you do, I'll take care of you, I'll take care of you doing cocaine, but like I will supervise you, but I need to know like what is it, you know? So I would say that the harder one is to basically having this conversation with people who are

who are younger, so female about 13, 14 years old, I find that to be very...

Chuck (01:01:04.473)
because there's nothing more rational than a 13 or 14 year old female anyway, right? You know, right? Imagine, I know, right?

Lisa (01:01:10.06)
Hahaha!

Atika (01:01:12.22)
It's so... oh my god. Like I...

Mike Tourville (01:01:13.567)
Yeah.

Atika (01:01:17.718)
Like I already intervene in like suicidal ideations. Okay, like I've had like moments where there's like, you know, some medical doctors like, okay, I have like a gun beside my head, convince me I'm not gonna shoot it. But it's harder to talk to people who are young, like 13, 14 years old on math, math. And so it's so hard, okay? It's like,

Chuck (01:01:21.077)
Yeah.

Chuck (01:01:39.401)
Yeah. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, there's Yeah. Right, right. Without a doubt. Yeah.

Mike Tourville (01:01:40.191)
Mm.

Atika (01:01:46.35)
I don't need your help. I don't need your help. I'm like, okay, let's get McDonald's. Let's get ice cream and we'll talk. So it's always that game. Yeah.

Mike Tourville (01:01:52.149)
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Chuck (01:01:52.419)
Yeah.

Lisa (01:01:55.975)
I love that. Jeez.

Chuck (01:02:00.249)
Absolutely, absolutely. So Mike, we are, I'm actually, I have no problem going longer, but I do have another recording this morning. I went back to back on a Saturday, which is rare for me. So I do have to kind of taper off here. And of course, so I'd like to give everybody a chance to speak to anything that they would like to say before we move into the next segment. That's the daily gratitudes. Ladies, is there anything that you would like to?

Mike Tourville (01:02:01.219)
Yeah, yeah.

Mike Tourville (01:02:09.843)
Yeah.

Mike Tourville (01:02:15.157)
Sure.

Lisa (01:02:28.667)
No, just want to thank you Mike for writing that book. You know, I feel like that book's probably got one of my stories in there. And so, thank you for giving a voice to that. I look forward to reading it.

Mike Tourville (01:02:33.693)
Thanks. Thank you.

Chuck (01:02:34.146)
Right.

Chuck (01:02:38.017)
Yeah.

Chuck (01:02:42.441)
Absolutely right, absolutely. Erica, anything to say on the outcrop?

Mike Tourville (01:02:43.078)
Thank you.

Atika (01:02:49.386)
I would say just like the previous episode, I'm so thankful to be the co-host in this amazing podcast. Oh shit, shit. Sorry.

Chuck (01:02:56.657)
We're not doing gratitudes yet. We're doing the things to say or ask Mike first, and then we'll go into that, right? And now you cussed. Oh, now you cussed again. Jeez, right? Why don't I, I don't know. So the Ash is Awesome co-host, or podcast, is looking for a part-time co-host for Weekend Rambo. And, no. No.

Lisa (01:03:00.073)
Hahaha!

Mike Tourville (01:03:01.969)
Save it.

Atika (01:03:04.766)
rock sorry oh sorry

Mike Tourville (01:03:13.809)
hahahaha

Atika (01:03:15.234)
Ehh, didn't I graduate from probation? I don't get probation. Okay, Mike, I think I at least get one.

Mike Tourville (01:03:21.045)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Chuck (01:03:24.245)
Mike, are you interested in a job? It's just once a week, you know, so the weekends, you know, right? No, I'm just, I'm just, yeah.

Lisa (01:03:26.999)
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

Atika (01:03:29.534)
It's so funny. Okay. Sorry. Um, yeah, Mike, I thank you for humanizing the people that you know, we work with me and Lisa work with because it's like this problem of addiction. It's like you have to be really collaborative. There are some people doing the outreach some people like Lisa being in a hospital and just

Mike Tourville (01:03:31.607)
I'm sorry.

Atika (01:03:58.122)
treating people and then there's you Mike who's writing the story, bringing the story up into the surface, into the public. So yeah, thank you so much and keep doing the podcast because it's super important that we humanize these people. I've never seen a group of population that are this stigmatized.

Chuck (01:04:20.929)
Right, right, absolutely. Mike, where can a website for the podcast, where can we find you that way? And of course this will be in the show notes as well, but.

Mike Tourville (01:04:21.621)
I agree, yeah.

Mike Tourville (01:04:29.001)
Yeah, website for the podcast. It's a nonprofit. We just formed a 501c3 nonprofit in August. So that's a new aspect of this, but it's healingvoicesproject.org.

Chuck (01:04:44.649)
Okay, okay. Absolutely, absolutely. And the book, where can we find voices of the Fallen?

Mike Tourville (01:04:50.397)
The book, probably the easiest place is on Amazon, of course, and that's Voices from the Fallen, and it's available on Amazon. Of course, it's on the website too, and there's a link to Amazon, so at least it's one less place to go. But both are there. But I appreciate you having me on and talking about this very much. Yeah.

Chuck (01:04:56.63)
Yeah, okay.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. And of course both will be in the show notes as well.

Yeah, no, we're lucky to have you, Mike. We are. I do enjoy finding people that we find that are kind of on the same page, you know? It's getting the families involved and, you know. So, and to me, anytime I talk to what I call a muggle with loving, you know, I say that lovingly, it's that that's involved as heavily as you are. It's a win.

in my mind, right? So that means that there's people out there that care and that goes a long way. So that brings us to my favorite part of the show and that's the Daily Gratitudes. Do the thing, edit, edit. Let's start with you, Mike. What you got for us, Daily Gratitudes?

Mike Tourville (01:05:31.881)
Yeah.

Mike Tourville (01:05:46.305)
Oh, well, you know, honestly, there's a lot of things I'm grateful for. But in light of what we talked about and having lost friends, family, I'm grateful for my family and friends that are here, the friends and family I'm surrounded with.

love them all to death and so I'm always grateful for that. My mom, she's 83 years old, she lives a mile from me and I'm grateful for that too. So and then the other thing I will have to say this because it's something that I've realized over the course of the last year.

Chuck (01:06:11.157)
Oh wow, yeah, that's nice, that's nice.

Mike Tourville (01:06:21.221)
What I'm grateful for is the people who work in this field every single day. I wrote this book and I was emotionally drained, exhausted, wiped out. And yet, there's people who do this every single day. I go to these monthly meetings with the Hampton County Addiction Task Force and I see the most wonderful people there who just have the passion, drive, and they do this.

shows us what to do for their jobs and I just have to commend them and I'm grateful that they do it because it makes all the difference in the world.

Chuck (01:06:55.341)
Well said, well said. Attica, what you got for us?

Atika (01:07:01.544)
Okay, am I allowed?

Chuck (01:07:03.369)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would suggest by being thankful for being a cohost on the Ash is Awesome podcast. I'm just saying, right? Yeah.

Mike Tourville (01:07:03.601)
Ha ha

Lisa (01:07:08.613)
Hahaha

Atika (01:07:09.426)
Yeah, I'm thankful for being a cohost on this awesome podcast. Oh my God, I am so fired from this. Are you gonna ask for a refund or what? And I'm thankful to work with

Chuck (01:07:13.945)
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

Chuck (01:07:26.224)
Yeah.

Atika (01:07:32.15)
people from the alleys and being in harm reduction, working in harm reduction, because people who thank me are usually people who are not the clients. So I take all that base and I just give the gratitude back because yeah, it can be emotionally taxing, but I find that there's no dull moment ever.

Chuck (01:07:43.138)
Yeah

Mike Tourville (01:07:45.039)
Hehehehe

Atika (01:07:58.358)
I'm thankful in being in this part of harm reduction. And yeah.

Chuck (01:08:06.875)
Lisa, what you got for us?

Lisa (01:08:10.063)
I am I'm grateful that I get to do the work I get to do. You know I'm grateful that I'm in a position where I get to help people. I get to make a difference hopefully in some people's lives and it's you know it's a privilege because of the job I have. So I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful to have the brother that I have.

You know, I've learned lessons thanks to my brother that I don't think I could learn out of a book. And so I'm grateful that he's my brother. Yeah, and I'm grateful for this podcast always. And people like Mike who are doing something very similar, but just telling these stories and humanizing people. Yeah, I feel very lucky to be here.

Chuck (01:09:01.841)
Awesome, awesome. Of course, I am thankful to my co-hosts as I am every weekend, more and more all the time. Specifically, I'm gonna give you a shout out, Lisa, for helping with the situation that you have in this last week. Getting closer and closer to a little win, and that is pretty huge right now, right? So, you know, it's a big deal. Mike, very grateful for you for coming on. Thank you, thank you so much, and thank you for everything that you're doing. You're just, you're on the clear other side of the continent.

and you're doing the same thing, so maybe a few more people in the middle and we'll start making a big difference, right? So, you know, right? That's something else, right? That's something else. And my finally, I am grateful to the listeners, watchers, supporters, whatever we are calling you all now. Whatever you're doing, please keep doing it. If you see us on any of the social medias, we're on all of them. I don't listen anymore.

Mike Tourville (01:09:31.27)
Yeah.

Mike Tourville (01:09:36.081)
Yeah, thanks.

Chuck (01:09:51.725)
Please keep, you know, like, share, comment, all those things, specifically on Spotify. Throw up a comment there, guys. I do publish all the comments, so long as they are appropriate and not, you know, over the line. I do put them up and it means a lot to me every time we see any one of those things. Every time you do these things, you're getting me a little bit closer to living my best life. My best life is to make a humble living, spreading the message. The message is this. If you're in active addiction right now, today could be the day. Today could be the day that you start that lifelong journey.

Reach out to a friend, reach out to a family member, call into detox, go to a meeting. Do whatever the hell it is you need to do to get that journey started, because it is so much better than the alternative. And if you are the loved one of somebody who's suffering an addiction right now, you're just taking the time to listen to the weekend ramble here. You just take one more minute out of your day and text that person, let them know they're loved. Use the words.

Lisa (01:10:41.968)
You are loved.

Atika (01:10:42.187)
You are loved.

Mike Tourville (01:10:43.002)
I loved.

Chuck (01:10:44.493)
That little glimmer of hope just might be the thing that brings them back.