[00:00:00] Dan Schneider: Had I not lost my son and been through the trauma and been so committed to try to prevent these tragedies, had that not happened, I would not have gotten involved in putting doctors out of business 

[00:00:11] Angela Kennecke: In our last episode, we introduced you to the central character of the Netflix documentary, the pharmacist Dan Schneider. Dan told us he had no idea his son was using crack before he was murdered in New Orleans in the late nineties. While police didn't show much interest in his son's case, Dan took it upon himself to use every investigative tool at the time to find his son's killer. But the story doesn't end there. In his role as a pharmacist, Dan was among the first to spot the opioid epidemic in this country and actually do something about it shutting down pill mill doctors and pushing for a prescription monitoring program in his state. 

[00:00:57] Dan Schneider: I said, you know what technology is available to prevent this from happening. There's going to be a parent that loses a kid that is sue a board and you better get ready immediately. They go to work on a pharmacy monitoring program. 

[00:01:14] Angela Kennecke: Dan has never stopped pushing for changes to save lives lost unnecessarily to. Now he's turning his attention to the availability of medically assisted treatment, or MAT. Here's the second half of our conversation on his latest advocacy work. 

I know when you were starting, when you were noticing the Oxycontin prescriptions and you were able to get, , one doctor stopped and then maybe another one, you were hearing about the number of overdose deaths and they were probably, I'm guessing, 50, 60,000 a year. I know when my daughter died in 2018, it was 72,000 deaths a year. Now it's 107,000 

[00:01:54] Dan Schneider: the year my son died, overdose deaths was 16,000. Three years later, when Oxycontin started percolating, that jumped to huge 25,000. I thought it was the end of the freaking world. Now that would be nothing. If we could get it, 25,000, we would celebrate. But I didn't see it that way. See, I knew I wasn't gonna stop at 25,000. I almost could envision a hundred thousand I couldn't see how it would end, but I was enlightened, aware, alert, protective. God was on my side. I don't know. Okay. Now, there was only so much I could do about it. 

[00:02:33] Angela Kennecke: You're one person. And I think, yeah, you did a lot. and systems have changed. Doctors aren't prescribing as freely as they once were. Some of that's going back a little bit, sliding back. I've seen that. I've witnessed that a little bit. But, they are more aware. We have these prescription monitoring things in place, but the, you know, people have gone to the streets. To get their drugs. Fentanyl is a huge, huge factor. So what do we, what, what do we do now? What, what God telling you to do. Now, I don't mean to laugh when I say that, but seriously, I kind of feel like it's on you 

[00:03:08] Dan Schneider: I'm glad you asked that question. For a while after the pharmacist, you do get a little bit of a big head. I will always pray to God, God, don't let my ego get in the way of this thing. Okay? I, I still have work to do. But, but it kind does. People ask for your autograph . Want to be in pictures with you, you know? It wasn't a crazy idea, but I initially said, You know what? I don't know if I wanna investigate again. I don't even know if I wanna run a nonprofit. That, that I got. Meetings with people. I'm 70 years old now. Okay. Where, where do I fit in here? Well, I got this kinda national stature and I really believe we haven't been able to get the politicians to do what they have to do, and that there's some truth in that. So I start thinking that I can develop a, what I'm gonna call a lobby. Okay. Or a, an association. And I'm gonna use my name and my platform right now to get people to sign up. And, and once I get like a hundred thousand people signed up, Or 500,000 people signed up. And of course I wanna sign up all advocacy groups and nonprofits and all that, but I wanna get some of the general public involved. Cause I think that's necessary. It's missing. You need more than the choir. Okay. You need the whole church. So it's a great idea and I think I can do it, you know, Hey, I've been to everything to, and God's on my side, so why can't I do this? For a year and a half I worked, and about six months ago, I finally gave up on it. I didn't totally give up on it. And it was taking energy away. I wasn't speaking at schools as much, I wasn't doing a lot of the things. I was so involved in trying to recruit and trying to make this happen and begging people to join. So about six months I was almost burnt and so I started looking for solutions. Where else can I fit in? Okay. You, you're going to, This is kind of radical. It's gonna be radical to you; It would've been radical to me two years ago. What do we have to do now? I've toyed with decriminalization and I think that has some merits. So anyway, I, I've toyed with a bunch of things. But now all of a sudden I get another frustration and I'm a little guilty of myself in the documentary and they kind of set me up for this. Okay. And they didn't play, the whole story didn't put the context. You know what happened after we did tighten up on the prescription opioids, a lot of people went to heroin.

[00:05:34] Angela Kennecke: Yes. Cause people couldn't afford the pills anymore. If they were addicted to the pills, they couldn't afford the pills. Then they went to heroin cuz it was cheaper. And then the heroin became laced with fentanyl.

[00:05:43] Dan Schneider: Well at least you were a little bit more honest in the way you say it. Many people started claiming because they couldn't even get the doctor to write the prescription because they started tighten them up. And there was a little bit of truth of that. People started going to heroin mainly because of price, mainly because it was still a little bit better high than prescription drugs. So it wasn't a matter that we really tightened up. No. Might have had some impact, but it was only a partial impact. They were gonna go there anywhere. But there are people out there that say, and I even said it in a documentary. I don't know if what I did was right. I got them to tighten down on the prescription opioids and they went to heroin and they started dying. And I even conceded in there that I had kind of mixed feelings about maybe what I had accomplished, what, what they took out context was. I said more than that. I, I qualified it. I qualified it that again. But there was a lot of people gave up drugs. 

[00:06:34] Angela Kennecke: Well and there was some people that never became addicted in the first place cuz they didn't get that prescription. 

[00:06:39] Dan Schneider: It's a shame now. Almost got to defend what the hell I did. Because some people were saying, did you really do the right thing? And I was even saying it a little bit and, and I guess there's even still a trace of truth, but any, that now I'm in this mode, now I'm looking for solutions and the CDC now wants a loosen up to prescription opioids. Now I have to admit, some doctors went too far. There are a few cases where maybe in some strange cases people really needed opioids and it's kinda hard for them to get 'em. But in general, they need these kind of restrictions, okay? It it is working unless people become addicted, . But in this time, where they dying. Some people think, Well, wouldn't it be better to give them Oxycontin because well, yeah, but don't have fentanyl in it. You ain't gonna kill daughter taking Oxycontin. She'd be alive today. 

[00:07:26] Angela Kennecke: Yes. 

[00:07:26] Dan Schneider: There's logic to that. And I'm not totally against this cuz you really wanna save a person's life any kinda way you can. They start having these harm reduction sites and, you know, I never forget about needles. Now they want to actually set up a place where people can bring their illegal drugs, 

[00:07:41] Angela Kennecke: Fentanyl strips.

[00:07:42] Dan Schneider: Take them safely. Save some lives. At least there are some arguments. But this is crazy. Ok. You know, in a sense you sort of condone it. 

[00:07:50] Angela Kennecke: Add Line here1: Dan says, Instead of promoting taking illegal drugs safely, there is another way to save lives. One that has been available for some time, but it's not widely used. 

[00:08:04] Dan Schneider: I started to understand that we have something legal that we can give them that's Suboxone-- medically assisted treatment. MAT: we have it. These people can get by on this. Is it the perfect treatment? Probably not, but they can get by on it. I started looking at not only as a treatment, it's harm reduction. Some people can actually just take this thing. Some can even wean themselves off. When I start getting onto this, I start looking around and I read a book by Dr. Aaron Gupta. 

[00:08:45] Angela Kennecke: NEw line2 Dr. Aaron Gupta wrote the book, The Preventable Epidemic, A Frontline Doctor's Experience and Recommendations to Resolve America's Opioid Crisis. A Specialist in Addiction Medicine, Dr. Gupta says the United States must do more to train and incentivize physicians to go into addiction medicine as well as promote medically assisted treatment. Or Matt, you can listen to my conversation with Dr. Gupta and episode 59 of this podcast. Meanwhile, back to Dan and Dr. Gupta's partnership.

[00:09:22] Dan Schneider: And he starts tell me that doctors don't wanna deal with this. They have restrictions, they have hurdles, they don't get paid enough. And he starts putting this out to me. And then even the pharmacies have hurdles in this, and I make up few phone calls to different pharmacies and I start saying, you know, I always looked at this as maybe a tool in the toolbox. Kinda like, lesser of the evils. Kind of like, not ideal, but maybe in some places. No, no, I, I don't look at it that way anymore. I, I think that's the only way we can significantly can reduce. But if we wanna get the masses involved in this, we gotta get it to now, coincidentally now, right when this is happening, Congress has an act before them called Mainstreaming MAT they removed the x waiver for Suboxone, 

[00:10:14] Angela Kennecke: making it easier for doctors to prescribe it.

[00:10:17] Dan Schneider: And, and Dr. Gupta agrees that that's gonna help. I said, yeah, but they're not going far enough. We gotta incentivize doctors, we gotta detail doctors. We gotta convince 'em that this is not half ass treatment, this is treatment, and in the meantime it's harm reduction. I've even studied this. There are people that's on it for five or 10 years now, do I want them on one for five or 10 years would I rather them go to abstinence? Okay. But if they functioning and raising their kids, and I'll give you an example of what happened. I call a local pharmacy that I know guy that I went school with and whatnot. And he says, Dan, I tell you what, I used to kind look down on these people. I would fill a prescription Suboxone. He was a conscientious guy. He would go out there, Well, how are you doing? And are you, are you going to 12 step? Are you in therapy? And he says, more and more, either they were lying to me and they weren't doing, or they even start admitting to me they weren't doing that. Okay. And he said, You know, I got so angry. I almost say one time I almost reported a couple of them and I was gonna talk with the doctor about maybe threatening to discontinue them if they didn't do some of these other things. And he said, I almost did that. He said, But you know what? I, why I'm busy. It wasn't my place. . He says, I've got grandkids. I go to one of my grandkids, little league baseball games. Guess who's coaching? Suboxone patients. They've been on it for five years at my pharmacy. They are functioning, It's almost like high blood pressure medicine. It's a new way of thinking. 

[00:11:43] Angela Kennecke: Well, if you look at addiction as the disease of the brain, just like diabetes is the disease,hypertension is a disease and it makes sense.

[00:11:50] Dan Schneider: It does make sense. Now, how do we break through these barriers? 

[00:11:54] Angela Kennecke: Add line:3 Dan says all the connections he's made through filming the pharmacist docu-series began to pay off. 

[00:12:03] Dan Schneider: Well, this is another Godsend. The House passes the MAT Bill that's critical to everything that I'm talking about doing. And I got a coalition now of about 50 or 60, many of them, doctors, pharmacists, law enforcement people, Beth Macy, who wrote Dope Sick, Danny Strong, who produced Dope Sick. People involved in Fed Up that, that have kind of been pushing this for years. I've got some other nonprofit groups and, and I have some grass root followers that are in this with me, and, and it's growing day by day. I wanna do something called, I call it m-c, It's E M M C: Enchanced Mainstreaming Math Coalition. I'm putting everything that I've learned into this. I hope it works. It's still theoretical. You don't know. Okay. But any event, I get so excited about this with Dr. Aaron and all, I shoot for the top. I'll write a letter to the Drug Czar so, and and, and it gets there because Danny Strong is a believer in this. Danny Strong called me up when Dope Sick came out and he told him, he says, If it wasn't for the pharmacist, I wouldn't have done dope sick. And if you watch Dope Sick and you know the stories, he put some nods in there to the pharmacists. And, and it goes beyond what my story did. Well, guess what? It emphasizes MAT. It saves a doctor and it almost saves one of the main characters in this. Had that person been on MAT. Now, by the way, For novices. Now, your daughter wasn't a novice now she was doing heroin. 

[00:13:44] Angela Kennecke: Right. But I didn't know, So I much like you, I thought we were planning an intervention cuz I knew she was doing more than weed and Xanax, which is what I thought she was doing up to that point. But I would never have imagined heroin. 

[00:13:56] Dan Schneider: And the same thing with my son with crack. So I didn't mean to be derogatory. 

[00:14:01] Angela Kennecke: But No, you're right. She was, she, her disease had progressed severely much beyond my knowledge.

[00:14:07] Dan Schneider: She had disease and guess what? MAT would not have helped my son, he was not opioid addicted. MAT only works for OUD. It doesn't work for SUD. So number one, there's plenty of substance abuse disorder means treatment by holistic care, methamphetamine, alcohol, cocaine, maybe in some cases opioid combines with that. But there are plenty of people that are strictly opioid addicts. And MAT is a treatment and we're not using it. So then I start looking at statistics on that. Less than twenty percent of the people are being treated with this, why? There's a stigma about this. It's swapping one drug for another drug. It kind of make people bad if they didn't get off, and then what a lot of 'em would do, they felt so bad that they would get off and try to make it and relapse and in this environment they would die.

[00:14:53] Angela Kennecke: Right, right. You're a hundred percent correct. Yes. 

[00:14:55] Dan Schneider: So the timing, now, this wouldn't always been the case that MAT fits the bill, but because of harm reduction and because of fentanyl and because of the magnitude of the problem, it could possibly be a major, major factor in significantly reducing the problem. I go to the top, well, Rahul Gupta is the drug czar . I'm supposed to meet with him on a Zoom. Well, winds up. He doesn't show up, but he's got his first assistant and the staff. He's a busy man. I lay all my stuff out to him, give him good arguments. and, we, we get some lip service like, Yeah. It, it's interesting and we were kinda working with that to some extent, but, you know, you get lip service. So then I know Ryan Hampton. Ryan Hampton's a, a big advocate. He's written a couple of books. He has a fairly big organization around the country, one of the biggest ones. And so, Ryan, I talked to Ryan about this cuz he knows a lady named Regina LaBelle. Regina LaBelle has been in, addiction for years and she's a, a scholar in this. She gets appointed drug czar; acting drug czar-- all when Biden comes in and she has hope that she's going become the drug czar Well, he winds up choosing Rahul Gupta,for whatever reason, so she's a little bit more touchable and Ryan knows her. So Ryan puts a call up and say, Talk to this guy, a pharmacist.

[00:16:17] Angela Kennecke: Add line here line 4 The former acting drugs are Regina LaBelle gives Dan some valuable advice that he immediately takes to heart. 

[00:16:28] Dan Schneider: So I'll call Regina up and she takes my call and she says, Dan, let me tell you, I was almost a drug czar. You gotta issue here. You always go on to the top. That's not how you do this, okay? What you have to do is you've gotta go out in the field and create some pilot programs. Institute your pilot programs on the ground level. Find communities that are willing to pitch in and you develop a planning system. And once you get these things going, if the theory works and you seeing significant benefits, okay, then you go to Congress and you have something to back it up with. Because my goal is during Covid, the government all went all in. I know there's some controversy about that, but they spent billions dollars on vaccines. They spent billions dollars paying for people to get the vaccine. And believe it or not, some people say we'd had a much higher mortality rate if we wouldn't have did all that. And the mortality rate during covid was 1.2%. That's what it averaged out. Well, I study now what is the mortality rate with O U D. Opioid Use Disorder. If you really looked at the entire age bracket, they close. Okay. And in fact Covid's worse. But if you look at 15 to 54, well guess what? 15 to 54 in, the two and years that we've had COVID since my pharmacist came out in that period of time 15-54, about 110,000 people have died from COVID, in that age bracket. 160,000 died from OUD. 

[00:18:14] Angela Kennecke: You're preaching to the choir here because this is something I'm always telling people is that. This is an epidemic and it is killing so many people. I think because of the stigma. There isn't stigma around catching covid. 

[00:18:26] Dan Schneider: That is a big part of it. But I will say the stigma is coming down. Congressman losing kids now timing is everything ok? If I'd had this idea two years ago, there ain't no chance in hell it would've worked. I was looking for a solution, something that I could focus on. Now what are we gonna do with this enhanced thing? We gonna cover everything. Why doctors don't do this, if we gotta pay extra money, if they don't have insurance, we gonna pay for this. I see that you trying to get donations to help give people treatment. Well, timing is everything. If you watch the pharmacist at the very end of it, I meet with an old high school buddy in a local cafe. This is a guy I went to high school with. He has become a prominent attorney. He was involved in the tobacco litigation. And he doesn't know what I've been doing. Now he knows I lost the son, but he really doesn't know that I've been advocate for 20 years. So the producers of the pharmacists, this guy, and the reason why they this guy is because he's leading the opioid settlement money and go through him and they wanna interview him. And normally he doesn't take interviews and they push their way in and they start saying, Well, they got this pharmacist, Dan Schneider. Well, we graduated together. 

[00:19:50] Angela Kennecke: I can't think of a better use of the opioid settlement money than to go for MAT. 

[00:19:55] Dan Schneider: Exactly. We are gonna get some charity money involved in this or some corporate money in this, Okay. If we need it. And we're gonna find a way to pay these doctors extra money or bonuses. It's gonna be some structure. The other thing is we're gonna pay people to detail these doctors. The pharmaceutical industry details these doctors on their drugs. We're gonna detail these doctors on the need to write MAT. And now that they mainstreaming act came in, now they can actually do it and we're gonna make sure to get paid properly and we're gonna motivate them. And then we're gonna make sure that the patient doesn't have to pay a nickle no questions asked. If we can get it partly covered by insurance or, or, such and such fund. If not, we're gonna make up the difference. They're gonna be able to go to the doctor or they're gonna be able to go to the pharmacy. No cost, zero cost. And we're gonna tell a drug dealers, you can't beat zero cost. 

[00:20:43] Angela Kennecke: That's true. You cannot beat zero cost. So you let me know how Emily's Hope can get behind this too. Cuz I think this is fantastic. 

[00:20:49] Dan Schneider: MAT is important, but it doesn't cover SUD. There's 40 million people that have SUD. Inside that circle. There's only, some people say it's as little as 3 million. I think it's more like 5 million. But it's only a small percentage. Alcohol is the overwhelming biggest. But methamphetamines big, uh, Inhalants, you name it. but guess what? 80 percent of the deaths are OUD. 

[00:21:14] Angela Kennecke: That's true. But now people who buy meth that has fentanyl in it, people who buy cocaine, it has fentanyl in it. And the pharmaceutical companies were tasked to come up with a way to relieve pain that wasn't addictive to come with alternative pain. That hasn't happened that I've heard of. 

[00:21:29] Dan Schneider: They working on that supposedly. That's a dream of, of everybody or pill that with some kinda way prevent you from getting addicted. But in the meantime, MAT is the best we got. And we've had it for years. But the scenario wasn't right. There was a stigma involved. You were still giving the drug to get off of drug. Who would think that that's the right thing to do? But now when I'm dying on this, they thinking about letting them shoot illegal drugs. They thinking about reducing, letting have Oxycontin. I mean, you know, the timing is right for this. And guess what? We even got Congress. Bipartisan overwhelmingly passed the Mainstreaming MAT Act. Maybe you could try to develop a piloting area. You can get together on that. Maybe you could put it as a link on your site for those with o u d, this is the direction we'd like to focus on. We cannot try to say it's not the right thing just to put 'em on mat. And if they wanna stay on it, fine. And if you can get them to do other treatment involved in it, it will increase their chances. I might even try to motivate, We might even pay the patient. We might actually say, every time you go to 12 Step and prove that you went to 12 Step, we'll give you $25. I want MAT to work better than just taking the damn pill and forgetting about it. But if that's all they do and they live and they coach Little League and they pay taxes and they don't die, I'm all for it.

[00:22:53] Angela Kennecke: Dan says he spent a long time thinking about the downside of more Suboxone prescriptions based on his own experience as a pharmacist when the drug first came out. 

[00:23:04] Dan Schneider: I had to change my thinking. I don't know if I could have convinced myself a year ago and by the way, now it's not perfect. Or some people could still die yet, or some people are gonna sell their Suboxone. But let me tell you, I've even covered that. I thought about that. And in fact, early on, 20 years ago, I started people on Suboxone. When it first came out, I had some success, but I was very naive at that time too. I had one third success with it, okay? And two thirds failure. And then I heard some people were find and raise crazy ways to abuse it or taken with all the drugs and having problems and, and then I found some, were selling it. So I started looking at the, the glass half empty. Not the one third that made , now some of them did it with just the drug and they weaned off. Now almost nobody stayed on it long term. They weaned themselves off. It is . So any event after that happened, I started to developing a stigma about MAT and so for years I cooled my heels. I mean, I would never speak against it, but I would say, Well, maybe it's a tool in the toolbox . And, and that's some truth in it. But we in a different era now. These people need to get something that their brains are diseased. Now, this drug helps their brain normalize. It helps get control of things, and while we're at it, maybe we can get some of 'em to get more advanced treatment, which increases the success. And guess what? If some of them wanna beat the system, some of them might get suboxone then go sell it so they could buy something stronger, because it don't give a big high, okay? It does reduce cravings and whatnot. Well, okay, that person's hurting himself. But what about the person that buys the Suboxone on the street? What did it do for them? If they wouldn't have got the Suboxone on the street, what were they gonna do? 

[00:24:51] Angela Kennecke: And I think nobody should have to go to the street to get it right.

[00:24:54] Dan Schneider: Wow. You hit on something. But just even still, if they not even thinking about going to a doctor that day, they saying, I'm afraid to take Fentanyl. I know Suboxone is relatively safe now. They're not thinking about getting well on Suboxone. They surviving a day and somebody gives them Suboxone home and I can take this. They don't gotta worry about dying. Now if they knew they could also go to a doctor, they might actually get in a program Okay. But so, I mean, even when it's diverted, it's to save a life. 

[00:25:22] Angela Kennecke: And that's what we need to do here. I think with the death numbers, the way that they are, and this is the tool we have at our disposal, until something better comes along... 

[00:25:32] Dan Schneider: You hit the nail on the head. If, if there was something better, maybe there is a better way of doing nothing is perfect. But God, we gotta give it a try. We only got 20% of the people utilizing this. Let's get 80%. And then let's see what happens to the numbers now. Now I got some big dream just to give you an idea. And maybe this is just shooting for the moon. I not only think in two, three years if we could get this moving fairly quick and I don't know if, if I can do that ok. But maybe if we get this moving really quick and get some movement going, I think we can cut O U D deaths in half. 

[00:26:05] Angela Kennecke: That would be incredible. 

[00:26:06] Dan Schneider: That'd be a 40,000 drop. Now understand now. We had 110,000 almost. So that only brings it down to what, 70,000, Which at one time might have been horrible-- a big goal. If you could do that, that would be unbelievable. Now what about the drug dealers? The drug dealers used to have this readily available product for them, easier than getting Suboxone. And cheap. 10, 15, 20. Now, over the month, it was not that cheap, but for that night, the cheapest thing for them, if they went to a Suboxone doc, then it cost a hundred bucks. They didn't have a hundred bucks that night. Now they go to the doctor and get Suboxone. So all of a sudden the street dealers now have to compete with something that's free and safe. You start disrupting the demand. A lot of people wanna say supply pushes, demand. It does. But marginally. If they ship this stuff here and it won't sell, they ain't gonna keep shipping it. They're not gonna invest to lose money. They know it's an insatiable thing right now, and nobody has any alternatives. I think it's a solution and there's so many ramifications and, and one thing I found, and I'm sure you found too, is there's so many grandparents raising their kids. 

[00:27:23] Angela Kennecke: I just recorded a podcast with the grandmother raising her granddaughter.

[00:27:27] Dan Schneider: There's so many kids that have lost parents and that parents that have lost kids . 

[00:27:31] Angela Kennecke: Line 6 Dan has thought a lot about the criticism of his MAT plan and has come up with solutions like this one.

[00:27:39] Dan Schneider: Now I'll probably miss something, but I, I'm used to trying to figure out what could go wrong. And one of the things that's gonna happen is they're gonna say, Oh, you creating Suboxone welfare? We're gonna sunset it in one year. Now it's gonna be tough. I hate to end it in a year. Now, remember, they don't have to stop taking Suboxone, They just gotta start paying for it. I have insurance or have Medicaid or whatever. But we're gonna give it to him for year. We're gonna give them a leg up; we're gonna give them a running in start. I can define the program to the Congress to say, You don't have to worry about starting something that's gonna be a thing. Now may, maybe there'll make some exceptions if, if they feel like they need to do it, okay? But I wanna sell it as a one year sunset so that I don't have these people saying, we don't pay for insulin for everybody. Why should we say just Suboxone for everybody? Well, they got a crisis right now. We're gonna do it for year to see if we can bend the curve. We're gonna see if we can reduce this type of thing. So my program would have a sunset clause in it. 

[00:28:39] Angela Kennecke: Add line 7 here Getting Suboxone in clinics across the country is key. 

[00:28:46] Dan Schneider: We're gonna have to get regular doctors that have maybe treat people for blood pressure, okay? Not just clinics. But we're gonna have to, in rural sittings, we're gonna have to have some regular country doctors that say, I'll take on a few MAT patients. I'll try this thing out.

[00:28:59] Angela Kennecke: And I think if we just have doctors in general screening for addiction, In the first place, the first time a patient goes to any kind of doctor, if they're screening for addiction, if that's just standard protocol in this country, we'll get more people help more quickly

[00:29:15] Dan Schneider: I agree. I, I don't really have all answers. I probably have missed something in this picture. I think it's an educated experiment. I don't think it'll do harm . Hey, we gotta try. 

[00:29:27] Angela Kennecke: We have to do something. I'm so glad that you still have so much passion. Even after everything you've been through, you still have so much passion for this. And I think that's, lovely. 

[00:29:37] Dan Schneider: Let me tell you what gave help. Give me the passion. I'm 71 years old. Remember I told you about God. God's been all over this thing. I'm not the biggest Christian in the world. I go to church like maybe two or three Sundays. I'm Catholic, but you know, I'm cafeteria Catholic, so to speak. In a way, maybe a little bit more than that. Okay. I am a believer, but I've been a doubter and every now and then I still have doubt. Even though I've seen these miracles, which had basically told me it can't be anything other than this. There's still this scientific part of you that she can't quite totally accept it. I'm close, just like I'm close to forgiving Jeffrey. I'm close to really, totally buying in to Jesus. Now, Funny thing. The pharmacist breaks. Remember I already tell you, it breaks during Covid. Okay. Which I think is a disaster, but it's a godsend. A lot of these little things turn into Godsends. Well, another thing happens. And I know it's big, I'm getting letters in and emails, TV stations calling me about this story. I'm laying in bed with my wife at 10 30 at night, and I get this call and I get this woman on the phone. And I don't know who this woman is. She knows me, but I don't know her. So I finally gotta say I'm sorry, oh no, this is, this is Suzette, your attorney. Now it sounded like how could you forget your own attorney? And I had a hire attorney last negotiate the contract with Netflix. So now she's on the phone telling me this. Then she says something else. She says, I just signed Miss America? And I said, so. Well she a pharmacy student. She's got the same platform as you. And so me and her get together. We tour a country talking. 

[00:31:26] Angela Kennecke: Line 8 Dan's partnership and national tour with Miss America 2020. Camille Schrier helped boost his confidence that he would continue to make a difference and save lives.

[00:31:39] Dan Schneider: Yeah. I feel like I've done something. A lot of people, I used to be an unsung hero. Now, I guess I'm a sung hero . But when I look at what's happened to this crisis, it's hard to feel really positive about this. When overdose deaths gone for 25,000 to 110,000. My goal is to move the needle significantly. So Camille wrote on her picture. She put an album together of all the events that we did. She surprised me. She took all the photos and made a photo album with me. And she signed it. And in it, she said, And I know this guy is gonna move the needle. 

[00:32:17] Angela Kennecke: I think you're gonna move the needle.

[00:32:19] Dan Schneider: But we gonna give it a shot. It's probably the pharmacist last hurrah. 

[00:32:23] Angela Kennecke: All you can do is try and as long as you continue to find greater purpose in your son's death. That's all we can do. 

 I joined Dan's enhanced mainstream MAT coalition to try to help in the efforts to make medically assisted treatment for opioid addiction more widely available. And I'll bring you updates on this podcast. 

Thanks for listening to Grieving Out Loud. If you like what you're hearing, please consider leaving us a positive review. You can listen to all of our episodes and read my blogs on our website, Emily's Hope dot charity. Until next time, wishing you faith, hope, and courage.