[00:00:00] Angela Kennecke:  Welcome to Grieving Out Loud. I'm journalist Angela Kennecke, your host of this podcast. I started the charity, Emily's Hope, after my 21 year old daughter Emily died from Fentanyl poisoning. On this episode, we hear from another parent who is turning his pain into purpose and has created a national platform to shatter the stigma surrounding addiction and to advocate for change.

[00:00:32] Gary Mendell: I miss my son, but I can deal with that. What kills me is knowing what he felt, well, how hard this must have been for him. 

[00:00:43] Angela Kennecke: Gary Mendel founded a multi-billion dollar company, which oversaw 85 first class hotels. He left all that behind after his son who battled substance use disorder for a decade.

[00:01:00] Gary Mendell:  He took his own life,

and he wrote a note about no one listening to what he really needed, and he said, check my blood. I haven't used drugs. He wrote about the shame he had brought our family. And the shame that he felt himself and just not wanting to live anymore.

[00:01:19] Angela Kennecke: Hear how Mendel's pain pivoted into a father's promise. Stopped the stigma from millions of Americans battling substance use disorder.

[00:01:45] Gary Mendell: but they're living with a substance use disorder feeling horrible about themselves, not getting a good job cuz they don't think they're worth it, not dating cause they don't think they're worthy of it. 

There's people listening to you and I speaking right now who have a family member with a substance use disorder who feels horrible about themselves,

and doesn't deserve to be. 

 (MUSIC UP!) 

[00:02:07] Angela Kennecke: Gary, I appreciate you joining me on the podcast. And I am also very sorry that the deaths of our children and similar missions following their deaths have brought us together. 

[00:02:21] Gary Mendell: Well, thank you Angela, for having me. And I'm so sorry about the loss of of Emily as well. 

[00:02:28] Angela Kennecke: You are a few years ahead of me in this grief journey, and you've done so much in such a short period of time.

But I want to start off talking about your son, Brian, and a little bit about what you went through with him and his battle with substance use disorder. 

[00:02:46] Gary Mendell: Sure. It all started related to substance use disorder with Brian when he was a junior in high school, where we got called by the school and said, you know, your son is really causing some issues.

He's using drugs and. , you know, he needs to leave and you are either gonna pull him out or we're gonna have to expel him right now or suspend him. so obviously we agreed to pull him out. This was toward the end of his junior year. And the school psychologist recommended that he go out to a wilderness program and That started it all 

[00:03:25] Angela Kennecke: What year was that, that he, because those wilderness programs were really popular for a while with troubled youth, so to speak. 

[00:03:32] Gary Mendell: Sure. 

[00:03:32] Angela Kennecke: I was just curious. 

[00:03:34] Gary Mendell: He was 17. 

It was 2002. 

[00:03:37] Angela Kennecke: 2002, Did the wilderness program help or hurt 

[00:03:41] Gary Mendell: Both. It helped him a lot because it stabilized him.

He actually loved the outdoors, so him being outdoors was not a bad thing at all. So the actual experience, even though I've now learned that there's no research that shows that they work at all. Right, right. For him personally, it was fine. Where it really hurt him was, his mother and I. Not knowing anything about the disease of addiction, not even knowing it was a disease, really just thinking it was not trying hard enough, poor character type issues.

 you know, at the end of the two months we thought we were picking him up and bringing him home and they said, oh, no, no, no, no. This is just a start. We just stabilized him. We recommend that he go to a Residential high school in the Atlanta area, even though we lived in Connecticut.

[00:04:32] Gary Mendell: And he retake his junior year there and do his senior year there in a residential program, high school program that dealt with kids who were using drugs. So we didn't know anything. We took their advice. . And again, this is not like you can go talk to your doctor about this. The medical, the healthcare system doesn't know anything about this.

This is right. Still don't. But now take this back 20 years, they knew even less. So we took their advice. They sounded like they knew what they were talking about. We took their advice. Brian was like flabbergasted. He thought he was coming home too. We flew him out to this place in Atlanta and He was there four or five months and he came home for his brother's bar mitzvah actually.

And he was like, I can't stay here. I mean, I'm telling you, the kids fight. , I can never talk to you dad on the phone. I can never call you dad on, on my phone. I have to be with somebody from the school sitting next to me. So I'm guarded about what I say. I can't say the truth.

They don't know what they're doing here, blah, blah, blah. What was I gonna do? Listen to my son or listen to the treatment program. I listened to the treatment program and I kept them there. Literally weeks later, I get a phone call from my son, Brian. He was at a pay booth and he said, dad, I just left either please let me come home. I want to do my senior year at home of high school. So I sent him a bus ticket. He came home and he did his senior year at high school, at home living, a year later, the treatment program was closed down by a civil lawsuit by many parents suing this place.

[00:06:10] Angela Kennecke: Oh my. Oh my goodness. So it, it was no good. It, it was just a bad place. 

[00:06:15] Gary Mendell: It got him down a path, a path of eight years, Him always doing well in the treatment program, getting out and relapsing of all, he went to eight different treatment programs. The first six never mentioned any kind of medication to use. In fact, several of those six, I said, are you also treating him for anxiety? And the answer I got was, no, we don't. No, he's just gotta stop using drugs.

We'll worry about anxiety down the road . I mean, one treatment program. Brian called me one day. He was scrubbing toilets to build his character, scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush. Anyway, skipping forward the seventh treatment program. Said, your son is addicted to opioids.

We're gonna put him on Suboxone. they did 

[00:06:59] Angela Kennecke: pretty progressive for the time, actually. 

[00:07:01] Gary Mendell: Yeah. This is 2010. he was just like doing great. In fact, he asked to stay at the treatment program an extra month because he said, dad, it's the first treatment program that's dealing with my anxiety and I'm on the medication.

I feel great. This, I'm learning every day. This is wonderful. The treatment program was phenomenal in that way where the treatment program was not very good. They had a very junior person basically recommending next steps, who was basically just looking at a database and there was no sophistication into recommending the next step as far as where to go.

 they recommended an outpatient program in la and they said it was one of the few they could find that was accepting someone on Suboxone. . Okay. They actually recommended two. I went to a consultant that I'd hired and he said, forget one of 'em. They're horrible, but the other one's pretty good.

[00:07:58] Gary Mendell: He went to the other one. Brian called me crying. I mean, he was there 12 hours. 12 hours. He said, dad, I thought you said I could stay in my Suboxone. He met with the psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist said, I don't believe in Suboxone. You gotta get off right away. I called and we worked it out that they would titrate him down over a period of a few months, and they did, and I didn't know any better.

I should have never even allowed any to keep him on it. 

[00:08:30] Angela Kennecke: How would you know? I mean, the attitudes at the time were you can't substitute one drug, you know, for another drug, and you need to be off everything. 

[00:08:39] Gary Mendell: Let me agree with you and disagree. The attitudes at the time. Correct. I'm agreeing with you, but the attitudes today are also the same way.

[00:08:47] Angela Kennecke: Yes. Well, they haven't changed much. They're just starting to . 

[00:08:52] Gary Mendell: Can you imagine someone with diabetes? 

[00:08:55] Angela Kennecke: No. 

[00:08:56] Gary Mendell: Being told you can't go on insulin 

[00:08:59] Angela Kennecke: No. 

Or heart disease being told they couldn't have, you know, or high cholesterol or whatever, you know? Yeah, 

correct. And so long story, short answer to your question, they took him and a few months later he took his own life. (MUSIC UP!) At the time of Brian's death, he had finished inpatient treatment, but was still living in Los Angeles and getting outpatient help. (MUSIC UP!) 

[00:09:26] Gary Mendell: he took his own life,

and he wrote a note about no one listening to what he really needed, and he said, check my blood. I haven't used drugs. And he wrote about the shame and the stigma, and he didn't use the word stigma. He wrote about the shame he had brought our family. And the shame that he felt himself and just not wanting to live anymore.

He said, dad, I've worked so hard to get back to normal and I don't feel that way.

So that's how Brian passed away. 

[00:10:01] Angela Kennecke: Well, I'm so sorry. It's so tragic. I found writings in my daughter's journal after she died about shame too. Yeah. I think this is very common among people who suffer from substance use disorder as well. Suicide is common. 

[00:10:16] Gary Mendell: Absolutely. 107,000 people died of an overdose last year is in the news a lot.

[00:10:22] Angela Kennecke: Mm-hmm. 

[00:10:22] Gary Mendell: what's not talked about is number one, there's also a hundred thousand people that died last year related to alcohol. So it's really over 200,000, right? And number, the other thing that's not spoken about is what about the 40 million who don't die? And half of those are living with shame and judgment and not, they're not a statistic that they died.

 but they're living with a substance use disorder feeling horrible about themselves, not getting a good job cuz they don't think they're worth it, not dating cause they don't think they're worthy of it. 

Those don't show up in the articles. But 

there's people listening to you and I speaking right now who have a family member with a substance use disorder who feels horrible about themselves,

and doesn't deserve to be, there's no one with cancer that feels worthless. 

[00:11:15] Angela Kennecke: Right. And I think that is a ripple effect. I mean, the one life affects so many others, whether they're living with it in shame or they've died from it, that affects so many people around them, 

So everybody is affected by this. Absolutely. 

It makes me so sad to think of what he was probably going through during all of that. 

[00:11:36] Gary Mendell: You are so perceptive. People ask me, how you doing? And I used to say, up until about a year ago, I missed my son terribly. And now I say, which you're way ahead of me on the fact that you asked that question, you're way ahead of me because I now answer it.

yes, 

I miss my son, but I can deal with that. What kills me is knowing what he felt, well, how hard this must have been for him. And this has been a journey for me 

right after Brian passed away. Well, I, I can go on and on, but this has been a journey for me, how I have evolved, how I've thought about it, 

[00:12:21] Angela Kennecke: something just went, clicked in my mind when you said that because Yes, I, I'm a few years behind you in this journey. My daughter died in 2018. What year was it that Brian died? 

[00:12:32] Gary Mendell: 2011. 

[00:12:33] Angela Kennecke: 2011. Right. So I'm a few years behind you, and that's what I always say. I I miss Emily horribly. But you're right. You can live with the missing.

But when I think about, when I really think about some of the things she went through and some of the the some of the problems even I caused trying to help her, right? and unknowingly as a parent and some of the hurt and the separation because now we know, I know you know that one of the solutions to addiction is connection, right?

And your son yanked out of your house. My daughter, some of those same kinds of things happened. Not the exact same scenario, but similar things. And I just, it makes me ill to think about what she went through and. all of the ways she felt like she had let right her parents down. 

[00:13:21] Gary Mendell: Exactly. 

Especially me, 

which she down two trains of thought Feeling so horrible about what he felt the last six or seven years of his life. It wasn't like he had this wonderful life and that he died instantly by an accident. No. Right. He was suffering internally. for seven, eight years of the last eight years of his life, and that kills me. On the other hand, I'm so thrilled about what we've been creating at Shatterproof and knowing that this doesn't have to be for the next parent, for the next child.

We're changing this, and this is so changeable. It feels so great to be changing it and meeting people every day that we're helping. It feels wonderful . 

[00:14:08] Angela Kennecke: Right. I get that cuz we're doing the same thing at Emily's Hope. Right. And I think how do you balance that if your child hadn't died, you'd never be doing these things to help other people and of course you would not do any of it just to have your kid back, but to balance the sadness, the, the sadness that you will always carry with the joy of turning that into something that can help others.

Right. It's a, it's a balancing act. I think 

[00:14:34] Gary Mendell: One of the ways that I help balance it is to look at the same prayer. I asked him always to read God, give me the serenity to accept what I can't change. I cannot change the fact that he's not coming home. So accept it as best I can and use that to help others.

And I know Brian would love that, and I suspect Emily would've loved that as. 

[00:15:02] Angela Kennecke: And personally, I've always been drawn to the Serenity Prayer. I think it's a good prayer for anybody in life because there's so many things we all have to accept that are out of our control.

Right? Yeah. 

[00:15:14] Gary Mendell: And change what you can. Mm-hmm. . And the good news is the really good news for anybody listening. This is not about some rare situation that happened that can't be fixed, right? Yes. It can't be fixed to bring our loved ones back, Emily and Brian, but there is no question that we can change this for future families.

There's no question the research exists. What we're doing is already working. Things that you're doing are already working. We can change this. We already are . 

[00:15:49] Angela Kennecke: So one of the most rewarding things that happened in my journey with our nonprofit was a man that we had helped get into treatment, had received an Emily's Hope treatment scholarship.

We thought we helped him, and he's been in sobriety for a couple of years now, but been in recovery. His wife came up to me and told me that we actually saved their whole family, which just blew me away. I can't take credit for all that of course. But it just was an amazing moment.

And she's a very shy and reserved woman, so for her to say that was something else. 

 (MUSIC UP!) 

[00:16:20] Angela Kennecke: Gary is also saving lives after his son's death. He founded Shatterproof, a national nonprofit focused on reversing the deadly drug epidemic At Shatterproof, they're using research to find better treatment options and working to stop the stigma and shame associated with substance use disorder.

 (MUSIC UP!) 

 we studied this for a year.

[00:16:50] Gary Mendell: We studied all the literature. We studied 11 social movements that had created change. We looked at the key success factors of what things work and what things didn't work. a couple prominent ones were changes in marriage equality, right? You literally could not join the Boy Scouts if you were gay.

 when Bill Clinton was president. Now you can run for president if you're gay. Well, it didn't happen overnight. So what things did people do that worked? What people think people do that didn't work . we looked at 11 social movements. We pulled out six key success factors that would relate to removing the stigma related to addiction.

[00:17:33] Gary Mendell: And we built a national business plan to do that. It is three actions that need to be done. It is educating in a certain way It's changing language and it's changing policies. And then if you want these three things changed, pick segments of society that could have the most impact in reducing shame and stigma.

There's three types of stigma. There is what the public feels . There's what's internalized by those with this disease called self-stigma, and then there's structural stigma policies. You know, can you rent an apartment if you have this disease? Can you get fired from a job because you have this disease on and on?

 is it taught medical schools? These are policies, 

[00:18:18] Angela Kennecke: right? 

[00:18:19] Gary Mendell: Structural stigma. So three things, six key sectors of society to implement these, the healthcare system, local communities, educating media and entertainment, criminal justice system, employers,and we're now doing public stigma, partnering with states, changing how local communities think about this disease.

And it's really working cause we're doing it with contact based education, which is basically, approximately a 90 second video of someone who's in recovery. and says, hi, I'm Joey. I'm 33 years old. I work at Walmart. I've been there 10 years. I've been promoted four times. I'm now store manager.

I have a family. Everything's great. I coach Little League on Tuesday nights. I have barbecues on the weekends in my neighborhood for the families in the neighborhood and the kids, and I'm addicted to heroin, but it's okay. I've been treated the right way. I'm on medication. I haven't touched a drug in nine years.

My life is beautiful. And that changes the perception of the public. Mm-hmm. of someone with who's addicted to heroin, to someone that's in a back alley, sticking a needle in their arm to someone that lives next door to you or you work with, that is absolutely normal. And there's tens of millions of people in this country living in recovery doing fine.

[00:19:53] Angela Kennecke: And it works. That's what the research showed. We're now expanding this program from one state to five states. Next year, we'll be implementing literally more than one fifth of the United States population, (MUSIC UP!) While Gary says there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to change the public perception of substance use disorder, he has seen victories since he started shatterproof in 2013.  (MUSIC UP!) 

[00:20:20] Gary Mendell: we have gotten. 34 pieces of legislation passed in states, which is saving thousands of lives today. There's just no question about that. That's a fact. And that is legislation related to good Samaritan laws. So if someone is, a bunch of college kids are at a party drinking and popping pills, and somebody drops to the ground, are they going to be afraid to call for an ambulance or not.

If the state has passed a Good Samaritan law and the kids know about that, it's passed that law that anyone can call for an ambulance and not worry about anybody getting arrested. 

[00:20:56] Angela Kennecke: So that's, that's the key of the awareness. Several states. Yeah. Right. 

[00:20:59] Gary Mendell: Secondly, we got laws passed in many states related to the use of Naloxone.

So if a state has not passed the law that we've gotten passed in many states, you have a lot of pharmacists, a lot of doctors and a lot of ambulance drivers that are afraid to do anything with Naloxone, or Narcan because they're afraid of getting sued. But if we pass legislation that says, yes, you can prescribe Naloxone, yes you can, fill the prescription.

As a pharmacist, yes, as an ambulance driver. You could administer it. Well then it gets used, and I can't tell you how many stories of parents I've met who say the law you passed in my state saved my son and daughter's life. 

[00:21:39] Angela Kennecke: Wow. 

 (MUSIC UP!) 

Mendel has also worked on policies to end prior authorization requirements for addiction treatments. That means patients don't have to wait two or three weeks to get approval from their insurance company before getting medication.

Another recent big win, more states expanding their prescription drug monitoring programs.

 (MUSIC UP!) 

[00:22:04] Gary Mendell: Where doctors cannot prescribe an opioid unless they check the database to see what else that person has been prescribed in the last three months. And that's huge. We got that passed in many states. No question it's saving lives because what most doctors don't know until they start working with the prescription drug monitoring program, not only are you going to see that wait a minute.

you know, Johnny comes in and says, I just got hurt playing soccer. Will you prescribe a week's worth of Oxycontin? Well, if you check the database, you'll see what you could see. Wait a minute, Johnny, you just got prescribed two weeks verse of Oxycontin across the street, another doctor last week.

So you got an issue. I can't prescribe it and let me help you versus prescribe it. But the other big thing is, Johnny, I see that you're taking Xanax Appropriately from a psychiatrist, and you should because you have anxiety and you need it. But do you know that Xanax and Oxycontin can kill you if you take the two together?

First of all, most doctors didn't even know that till we started getting this out. And now they know this and they have to check the prescription Drug monitoring programs. They're aware of it and they go to Johnny and say, Hmm, I checked the database. You're not getting Oxycontin anywhere else. You probably did hurt yourself playing soccer, but I can't give it to you because you're taking Xanax.

You either gotta wean you off the Xanax and I will give it to. or you're going to have to get through the pain without it with Tylenol because if you take Oxycontin with Xanax, you could die and many people do. So that's a big thing. And now we're getting policies changed around the state on payment models that have been proven to improve outcomes if you pay for addiction treatment for a team versus individuals 

[00:23:56] Angela Kennecke: For a team? 

[00:23:57] Gary Mendell: You pay for a team of three people versus paying for the people individually. It's the same cost, but now the team is working together versus independently, and there's been 80 randomly controlled trials, 80 that have proven it improves outcomes for substance use disorder by almost 50%. 

[00:24:16] Angela Kennecke: That's pretty incredible.

Well that's fantastic. 

[00:24:19] Gary Mendell: So there's a lot that we have done I'll be honest and say as much as we've done, it's still the tip of the iceberg that what can be done. , if there's one takeaway from this conversation, this is fixable.

My son and your daughter did not have to die. This is not a rare disease or any disease without a medication to treat it or different types of therapies to treat it. This is treatable. This is preventable sometimes, not all the time. The research exists and it's been sitting there unused and we are now implementing it.

And I know you're helping a lot as well. 

[00:25:01] Angela Kennecke: Right? Reduce the number, reduce the number, because there's so many factors, genetic factors, environmental, I mean, you know all this, but I do think that we have to work together. It's going to take all of us, it's going to take Shatterproof, it's going to take Emily's Hope, it's going to take, there's a lot of people like you and I out there now who've lost someone who are trying to do something and it's going to take all of us to change hearts and minds and systems, but it can be done.

well. You give me hope. So I appreciate that thank you so much for joining me for the podcast. I really appreciate you taking the time. And thank you for all that you're doing with Shatterproof. 

[00:25:37] Angela Kennecke: It's wonderful. 

[00:25:39] Gary Mendell: It's really a pleasure to be connected to you (MUSIC UP AND ON LOW THROUGHOUT ANGELA SPEAKING)

[00:25:44] Angela Kennecke: Thanks for listening to this episode of Grieving Out Loud. We believe that by sharing our suffering, we can learn from each other and lessen the pain. You can find more information about how to get involved with Shatterproof and Emily's hope on our website, Emily's Hope Charity. We'd also appreciate it if you'd rate and review this podcast.

Until next time, wishing you faith, hope, and courage.

(MUSIC UP!