Angela Kennecke: 0:06

Welcome to Grieving Out Loud. I'm your host, Angela Kennecke. Since my 21 year old daughter Emily died from fentanyl poisoning in 2018, I've been turning my pain into purpose, trying to prevent other deaths from substances. I've had the privilege of sharing the stories of dozens of other grieving parents who, like me, are trying to raise awareness for about our nation's drug crisis.

Amy Neville: 0:32

Death blindsided us. Like death was not on the radar. We thought we were still dealing with the narrative that was still being promoted at the time is that, you know, someone is stealing grandma's pills and selling it to friends.

Angela Kennecke: 0:42

The United States is currently in its deadliest drug epidemic in history. More than 107, 500 people have died. Over the past year due to drug overdoses and fentanyl poisoning, according to the CDC. At the same time, our country is facing a mental health crisis.

Stephanie Marquesano: 1:01

They're saying that 49. 5 percent of U. S. teens have a mental health disorder, 22 percent with significant impact.

Angela Kennecke: 1:09

How do we turn this tide around? Today's guest, Rodney Wambeam is a senior research scientist at the Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center. He's also served as Health and Human Services Advisor to the Governor of Nebraska and has devoted much of his life to figuring out how to prevent substance use and abuse.

Rodney Wambeam: 1:29

Underage drinking specifically, we just know that the further you push that first drink for kids away from what is now generally in most states and across the country around 13, but the older they get, the less likely they're going to have that use disorder. And so that's part of the goal.

Angela Kennecke: 1:47

Thanks for listening to this episode of Grieving Out Loud. If you or a loved one is suffering from substance abuse, there is help available. Please check out our website, emilyshope. charity, for a list of resources. You can find a link in the show notes. Rodney, thank you so much for joining me. I had the privilege of hearing you speak at a very entertaining and informative presentation at a prevention conference that I was at. And you drove all the way there. I know you had a long distance that you came from, but it was, I met you there and I'm so happy to have you on the podcast.

Rodney Wambeam: 2:28

Oh, thank you for having me. This is great.

Angela Kennecke: 2:30

Tell me how long you've been working in this area of study of prevention.

Rodney Wambeam: 2:37

This is my 25th year. I started in the late 90s. I was in the state of Nebraska and I needed. Some work to do while I was finishing my dissertation and just got a small job for a nonprofit doing substance use and abuse prevention work and research and evaluation. And I just fell in love with it. It just filled my personality.

Angela Kennecke: 2:58

Yeah, I was going to ask you substance use disorder. What attracted you to this field of study? Because many of us, we have a personal connection, right? Either we've had a loved one who suffered or we lost or people have suffered themselves. What brought you to it?

Rodney Wambeam: 3:14

Yeah, so for me, it was almost coincidence. I actually don't come from a background of having family or anyone with substance use disorders. I grew up in a house that didn't have substances. In fact, my mom was very unpopular with her family for not letting my uncle Chuck smoke in the house in the 1970s. She was really ahead of her time. So, it was more coincidence that I was a social science researcher. I had been working for the governor of Nebraska when I was finishing my PhD as a kind of part time policy advisor. And I kind of fell in love with working with regular people. You know, I mean, it's one thing to be at universities and to sort of write and publish papers and things like that. But to be sitting with a coalition where you take what you do and the research you do and put it into practice right there and then, I really enjoyed it. And so I got this small job, part time as an evaluator for a little non profit, and it just, it fit my personality. Prevention is kind of how I live my life, and so I just quickly became passionate about it.

Angela Kennecke: 4:23

When you say prevention is how you live your life, explain that to me.

Rodney Wambeam: 4:27

And I should say my wife probably gets some of the credit for this, but I eat healthy. I exercise. I live for the moment, but I plan for the future. I've always, I think, deep down felt like that old Benjamin Franklin quote, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of

Angela Kennecke: 4:41

cure. And you're talking about a lifestyle, you know, to prevent future diseases of the body where substance use disorder really is a disease of the brain. And so many people are susceptible and may never realize how susceptible they are until they. Try that first substance, right? Right. Several guests on Grieving Out Loud have shared how they became almost immediately addicted after experimenting with opioids. One of them is Sarah Speyer. who seemed destined for success at a young age. At just 18, she landed a job as a film specialist for the Academy Award winning movie No Country for Old Men. However, her Hollywood dreams quickly spiraled into a nightmare of heroin addiction. Here's Sarah, talking about the first time

Sarah Spier: 5:38

she tried heroin. It was like, dropped to my knees. And then it's what they say, chasing the dragon. I mean, once you do it, you chase that high. I don't know. Until your death. It's just the best feeling you ever had, right? It was like the worst and the best feeling you ever had. It's both. I mean, you're sick, you're vomiting. Yeah. I mean, it's horrible, but it's, it's a rush. And again, this is why I want to push this industry towards neuroscience and brain health. Yes. It was in my brain. I was hijacked. There was something that met my dopamine or serotonin levels that mixed with that. And there was no stopping me.

Angela Kennecke: 6:22

Whether it's opioids, alcohol, or marijuana, how do we prevent our loved ones from becoming addicted? Rodney says the research is clear on this. Delaying the start of substance use is crucial.

Rodney Wambeam: 6:37

I've done so much work in alcohol and underage drinking. Specifically, we just know that the further you push that first drink for kids away from what is now generally in most states and across the country around 13, But the older they get, the less likely they're going to have that use disorder. And so that's part of the goal.

Angela Kennecke: 6:58

The same could be said for first use of marijuana, too, because first use of any kind of right mind altering.

Rodney Wambeam: 7:04

Nicotine as well. Right. You know, I think alcohol, nicotine, those are the tops that people start with. Then marijuana, especially as it medicinally and recreationally around the country. Those are the big ones, right? And so if we can begin to push back people's use, for alcohol until they're adults, the likelihood of problems with those drugs or other drugs later on goes down so far, right?

Angela Kennecke: 7:29

Well, my passion aligns with yours because I am convinced that prevention, like an ounce of prevention, right? I am convinced that prevention is the key to stopping this horrible drug epidemic that we're in. And that's why the nonprofit that I founded, Emily's Hope, has designed K through five substance use prevention curriculum, and we're rolling out six through 12 as well, but I just think we have to start these conversations with kids at a young age to teach them how to protect their bodies and brains, right? That's what we're talking about.

Rodney Wambeam: 8:01

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I was looking through your stuff. What you're teaching kids isn't about alcohol or heroin or it's about just making a healthy choice, right? I have five kids, Angela, and we do this with all our kids, just teaching them healthy sorts of behaviors and choices to make and the dangers of something small like alcohol. bleach or laundry detergent or like limit the amount of candy you eat. And so you start with those making healthy choices as an ingrained way for kids. To understand as they grow up that they have efficacy over their own health. And then as they get older, then you start, as you guys are doing with your program, you start thinking more about middle school ages and saying, okay, so now you're to an age where you're going to be presented with some of these things that may be nicotine or alcohol. And how do you make the choice and what do you say? And. We

Angela Kennecke: 9:00

all know that school programs can only do so much. Rodney says parents and the community also have to embrace the idea of preventing underage substance use.

Rodney Wambeam: 9:11

Every kid deserves a great program or multiple great programs, but they also deserve to live in a community where parents don't throw a kegger on graduation, where people aren't giving their kids cigarettes, you know. So they, environment is important also. And then the other thing is that notion of norming. I really, if I were to design it, and to be fair, I'm a researcher, so I don't run coalitions, but I would have a social norming component to a lot of what I do, so that kids know that most people aren't drinking or vaping. You know, because it simplifies the issue, but peer pressure itself is so powerful.

PSA Actor: 9:48

Yeah.

Rodney Wambeam: 9:49

But even at most colleges, I venture almost all colleges in America, if not everyone. On any given weekend, most students at colleges don't binge drink.

Angela Kennecke: 10:00

Most don't, even though I think the idea in people's heads. So let's talk about this. When we were growing up, right, drinking was kind of considered a rite of passage, I believe, by most people. You know, you tried it in high school or you did it. And many parents do turn a blind eye when their kids start drinking. And a lot of people think everyone at college is drinking all the time.

Rodney Wambeam: 10:18

They do. I, uh, do not envy my friends who work in college prevention programs and college prevention coalitions because, you know, they work all year long to sort of change the norm and to teach people and then every fall, a whole nother slew of people come with this other expectation about what college is, which is binge drinking and all these kinds of things. And so they're constantly having to start over again, but that normalization is really curious. I don't think that what we grew up with this idea that. Drinking is sort of normal, that it's a rite of passage, that everybody does it. I don't think we've lost that. I do think we've made huge strides in America with underage drinking. Underage drinking is half of what it used to be.

Angela Kennecke: 11:05

According to the monitoring The future survey. Alcohol use among people ages 12 to 20, dropped by nearly 50% from 2002 to 2022. Fewer teens are also using tobacco, but Rodney points out that many young adults are still experimenting with illegal substances. which could negatively affect their lives for years to come.

Rodney Wambeam: 11:31

Lots of people have a glass of wine with dinner and it's okay and alcohol is a legal substance, but the reality is it is the substance that is most often the first experience that kids have with a mind altering drug and the number one source of alcohol in most states and across the country is their parents.

Angela Kennecke: 11:49

They're getting it from their homes, right?

Rodney Wambeam: 11:51

Yeah.

Angela Kennecke: 11:51

And if you've got 49 million people in this country suffering from some form of substance use disorder, I would say the majority of that is probably alcohol,

Rodney Wambeam: 12:01

right? It's the number one.

Angela Kennecke: 12:06

Rodney says it's important for kids to avoid mind altering substances when their brains are still developing. But what else can be done to fight back against our nation's addiction crisis? He believes we need to take a stand against the companies promoting these addictive substances.

Rodney Wambeam: 12:24

We don't like to say this very often in prevention, because it's not popular to say, but we're at war. We are fighting against the alcohol industry, big tobacco, big marijuana, big pharma, and drug cartels. Cartels, yeah. They just have so much more money and so many better scientists than we do. Here's 500 ways to synthesize methamphetamine now, and really for most of human history, drugs have come from plants of different types. And now we're in a phase where we don't need the plants. We don't need the ephedra. We don't need the poppies. We can make these dangerous drugs, and they're so much stronger because of it.

Angela Kennecke: 13:05

What's interesting to me is that When people die, and they do die, whether it's a slow death or a sudden death from alcohol and or drugs such as fentanyl, we typically as a culture blame the user. We don't blame the businesses. We don't blame the alcohol manufacturers. We don't blame the drug cartels necessarily, although I think the drug cartels are more vilified than the alcohol manufacturers or the nicotine manufacturers, but they are to blame. Thank you.

Rodney Wambeam: 13:37

They are. And it is an amazing thing. I saw a data recently that the number one investment over the history of the New York Stock Exchange, the biggest growth is tobacco companies, right? It's the number one place you could have made money over the last more than a hundred years. But no, we don't vilify them. Just anecdotally, Angela, I was at a board meeting of the National Opioid Litigation Settlement for a southern state that I work in. I was at this board meeting and they were putting out like where the money's coming from and how it's being spent, you know, the stuff you would do for transparency at this board. And I was shocked to see so many suppliers on the list. And by suppliers, I mean the pharmacies, Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, those places, right? I was looking at that list. I'm like, where's the big pharma? And it's coming later, more. But it was surprising to me because we all kind of associate certain pharmaceutical companies with the opioid crisis. Purdue

Angela Kennecke: 14:44

especially, yeah.

Rodney Wambeam: 14:46

And I think a lot of us don't think about the suppliers, but they were in there as well. Right. You know, they're getting their pills, because you don't get them straight from Purdue, you get them from a pharmacy. And at some point, those pharmacies are sending these people millions of OxyContin to like an address that's in a strip mall in Florida. And you think that there was nobody? Yeah.

Angela Kennecke: 15:13

Who's questioning that? Because of money. Because of money, right? It all comes down to making money off of a disease of the brain. Really. It does. So, I want to ask you though, with all these years of working on prevention and studying it, and I'm sure writing lots of papers on it, what works and what doesn't work? Does it matter what the substance is for what's effective and what's not effective?

Rodney Wambeam: 15:39

Let me start by saying I've been asked more than one time by community members or state people what should we tell our elected officials? I said if you have one thing you could tell them, tell them prevention works, treatment works, and recovery is possible. Because until people actually believe that, nothing will change, right? But there is really good evidence for all three of those things. I am not as versed in treatment and recovery, so I'll just start there really quickly. I certainly have seen peer recovery programs work really, really well. And if for nobody else, it works for the peers. The number of people I know that are in recovery for methamphetamine or opioids, that find so much purpose in their life, helping other people be in recovery is incredible.

Angela Kennecke: 16:28

Plus, they often cannot get a job if they have any kind of felony on their record because of their drug use. And this also helps employ them, gives them purpose, like you said.

Rodney Wambeam: 16:38

It's really good. And then, with treatment, I'm not an expert in treatment. I don't provide treatment, but I do have seen medical assisted treatment work. I have seen people in different therapies and what I've experienced from the people I work with is that it really is a combination of those things. Like you can't just do MAT, you can't just do TALK, like you have to do all of it. I've heard that before too, right? MAT, help is possible and it works and it works all the time, all over the country. Now, with that said, I'm much more versed in what works in prevention. I work with a lot of prevention coalitions, and I tell them all sort of the same thing, that the goal isn't just to change one person, you know, Betty or John or Susan or Tim, it's to change your community, and to make population level change. And to do that, you have to be very comprehensive. And so, there are lots of models for that, but comprehensiveness to me means you have to put the right policies in place, if you don't have them, You have to have programs for you, like the one you guys created, Angela, and you have to do effective media and all of those things need to be done understanding the community and the culture you live in, right? So I'll just use My state where I work a lot. As an example, I live in Wyoming. I work at, and I'm a graduate of, the only four year university in the state, the University of Wyoming. So that means that the town I live in, Laramie, Wyoming, has a very specific culture of young adults. Much of Wyoming, every fall, send their highest risk young adults to us, right? It means there's a lot of bars, it means that Our teenagers are mingling with those high risk adults. It means that a lot of people work at the university. You know, it means we have massive sporting events where alcohol is sold. So very different. Then three hours to the west, Rock Springs, Wyoming, which is an incredibly big energy community that Jonah Field right above Rock Springs is the biggest on land natural gas site. So tons of young people that are roughnecks that, you know, a lot of the pastime isn't going to coffee shops and reading books, but going out on four wheelers and, you know, and everybody goes to bars. all the time for a different reason than college. And so the point of all that isn't that one community is better than the other, but that when you're doing prevention and you're looking at a comprehensive approach, you need to understand the community that you're part of. And I really, truly believe that prevention happens 95 percent of the time locally. And every now and then, the federal government can raise the drinking age from 18 to 21 like that happened when we were young, Angela. Right.

Angela Kennecke: 19:37

And I wish it was 25. I really do. That's because even though someone may look like an adult, their brain isn't fully developed until age 25. This makes them especially vulnerable to the effects of alcohol and drugs.

Rodney Wambeam: 19:56

I think every kid deserves a really good program.

Angela Kennecke: 19:59

And they're not getting it. Every kid is not getting a program. In fact, it's, Severely lacking.

Rodney Wambeam: 20:04

Yeah, yeah. So this is not me just advertising for your program, but I do think programs need to start younger. There are things like yours. I think the good behavior game. There are other things for younger kids. Even if it's just making sure there are health classes that people are getting those things, right? Right. I think that prevention programs are critical. So that would be a start. I think the second thing is to do something around We'll just talk about alcohol, but I think it applies to nicotine and tobacco in their own ways. Do something around retail availability. No community should have any location where a child can buy a cigarette, a vape, or alcohol without an ID. If kids can buy stuff, they will abuse it. Right. It's illegal, we should just shut it down. That should be there. And I have worked with communities. There was a community, Evanston, Wyoming, just to the far west, almost to Utah, a decade ago, there was a youth coalition in the high school, and they came to the prevention coordinator who works in the high school, they came to her office, all of them, and she said, it's great to hear her tell the story, but she said, what's up, and they're like, we need to talk to you, and they went to the library, they all sat down, and they said, we think the problem is that the teenagers are buying all this alcohol through drive thru windows. And she said, wow, so they went to the city council and they said, we got to shut down these drive through windows and the city council says, well, you don't know that's real. So the teenagers went out and they got data on it. They did research. They came back to the city council and said, here's the data to show you that kids are saying when we get our alcohol, we're buying them through drive throughs. And so the city council outlawed drive through alcohol windows and that youth coalition went and helped the liquor license holders board up those windows. That is kids working to make the community better to shut down that retail availability of alcohol.

Angela Kennecke: 22:05

And I'm sure it made a big difference, too. And it wasn't probably something anybody was thinking about at the time, and the adults were thinking about, right?

Rodney Wambeam: 22:12

No, but then again, it's a comprehensive approach, right? So that is one good thing to do. You should also have a program for the kids. And I think you should have effective media. I think effective media isn't a billboard that says, don't do this.

Angela Kennecke: 22:24

Yeah, what is effective media?

Rodney Wambeam: 22:26

Because sometimes I think it's hard to know. There's two sides to the effect of media. One side is how you reach people, and the other side is the message you reach people with. So we talked for a minute about social norming. It's been shown in the literature to be pretty effective, especially on college campuses and stuff. A social norming media campaign would be like, did you know that 84 percent of your classmates The best way I've heard it described is if the weatherman came on and said there's a 30 percent chance of rain today, he could have come on and said it's 70 percent chance it's going to be sunny all day. And that's, that would be one, but I've seen other effective media, which I think does two things really well. The first is, It understands the culture that it's talking to. So it's not just some national campaign where they just assume somebody in New York City and somebody in Wyoming will react the same to the same message. It really understands the culture. The other thing it does, it updates itself a lot so that it stays fresh and new. Right. A really great example of that, Angela, have you ever seen that Parents Empowered campaign out of Utah? No. You can go watch some of those commercials on YouTube, but it's called Parents Empowered. The company that created that campaign, they really went into depth of what are the core values of people in Utah. And one of them was family.

PSA Actor: 23:52

You know, there's a magic window in a kid's life where they start forming their own beliefs about alcohol.

Rodney Wambeam: 23:56

A window?

PSA Actor: 23:57

Age 9 to 13. It's the best time for you to communicate. Underage drinking is very wrong.

Rodney Wambeam: 24:02

And so they really did create commercials that say, you're the parent, we're empowering you to know where your kids are, to tell them what your expectations are around alcohol and things like that really affected. Proud of you for never drinking underage. But it was very Utah based. In fact, there's one guy who's on a ski machine, you know, things like that.

Angela Kennecke: 24:26

You may think that campaigns like these are pointless, that some issues are too ingrained in our culture, such as underage drinking, which has been a part of American society for generations. But Rodney says that's simply not true.

Rodney Wambeam: 24:44

It's not that culture can change, but culture will change. I mean, culture constantly changes and the culture around something like alcohol or cigarettes or vaping, it's not the same as, but it's similar to fashion, you know? And if we as prevention people don't start pushing that culture toward different types of change, then who will, right? So that's kind of my message. I think there are lots of really good examples of when and where culture has changed and maybe it's slower. But certainly when I mention my mom not letting my uncle Chuck smoke in the house, nobody would let their relatives smoke in the house anymore. You know, I mean, every now and then, but it's so rare, right? That culture has shifted a lot. Or if you look at the culture of children wearing bicycle helmets when they ride bikes. If you go back 20, 30 years and bike helmets came out.

Angela Kennecke: 25:35

It was an uphill battle. It was. I remember. Yeah,

Rodney Wambeam: 25:38

what? You're weird. You're wearing a helmet. Yeah, but think about prevention. Think about those things. Think about those moments where you have a farmer's market or I'm just thinking about my town, but I don't think we're the only ones where there's a table and all of a sudden there's the police and they're giving out free bike helmets. I can't tell you how many kids haven't had, you know, a brain injury or gone to an emergency room because of it, but I know it's good. I know it's good prevention and we've normalized it. So I think culture can change and we have seen it change. It isn't as easy to do with substances, but we are moving in the right direction often.

Angela Kennecke: 26:12

I hope so. At least overdose deaths were down by 5 percent in 2023, still well over 100, 000 people, but you could credit that to some harm reduction and prevention efforts such as the distribution of Narcan, right? Yeah. Wider distribution. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or. At least it's going in the right direction, where for several years here, I have felt like, Oh, my gosh,

Rodney Wambeam: 26:38

you know, and I actually think when we started this conversation around the idea that addiction was disease, I think in my 25 year career, I have not only seen that. I haven't experienced it myself. If I went back 15 years, I don't think that would be something that would come out of my mouth. That addiction is a disease. Oh, the documentaries, the research articles don't really show that now. I don't think we have a question anymore that a substance use disorder is a disease, that it's a medical condition, because I think it qualifies for all the things that define it as a disease, right? But I think that, Actually, this changed within our field itself in the last 20 years.

Angela Kennecke: 27:19

Well, that's good. That's good. And now if we could convince the entire population of that. I'm breathing out loud. We've heard from dozens of guests about the stigma they faced while battling substance use disorder. This stigma often comes from others, but it can also involve self shaming. Here's Tom Wolfe, a middle class family man who became addicted to opioids after doctors prescribed him painkillers following foot surgery.

Tom Wolfe: 27:54

Addiction actually implants itself in your basic brain functions of your survival instincts. And of course, every time that I would prioritize that I felt more and more guilt, more and more shame, stigmatizing myself, wasn't that anyone was stigmatizing me, I was stigmatizing myself. I was beating myself up because I felt bad that I couldn't be there for my kids. I felt bad that when it was time to read a bedtime story to my daughter, I was passing out. and not able to do it. And they would ask me questions like, Dad, Daddy, why are you sleeping all the time?

Angela Kennecke: 28:24

I know my daughter was ashamed because I found a writing in her journal after she died addressing shame. So I think most people who are using, I mean, they don't want to be using, they know it's not right. A part of them knows, right? That's right. And so there's so much self shame that they don't even need anybody else to shame them.

Tom Wolfe: 28:41

And the irony is, is that, you know, I wanted to stop, but I couldn't stop. Couldn't. I can't stress that enough to anyone out there that's never experienced addiction. Imagine trying to stop something that, if you do, your body has a visceral reaction to actually stopping it.

Angela Kennecke: 28:56

The stigma around substance use disorder is still strong, but Rodney says things are slowly improving. He believes this change is happening not only because of the growing amount of research showing that addiction is a disease of the brain, but also that more people are realizing it affects a wide range of people across many different backgrounds.

Rodney Wambeam: 29:24

You can go back to the data of the 1990s when we were throwing African American men in jail like crazy for crack cocaine possession. But we also know that white, Men were using crack cocaine more often than African American men. And so I think the other side of that is that part of why I think our culture is changing is because the opioid crisis hit the population more generally, right? There was, I think, if you go back to the 90s, people would call, Someone with an opioid use disorder or junkie. Thanks. But then all of a sudden with OxyContin and a high school volleyball player who's white gets hooked on OxyContin, becomes a heroin addict and dies, now it's my problem too. We are no longer able to say that's everybody else's problem. That's some other small population in an urban area where I don't live. Because it is impacting all of us now. I know. I go to small

Angela Kennecke: 30:26

communities and they have the problem there. No one can really escape from it. While we're making great strides in destigmatizing substance use disorder and getting people the help they need, still, there's a lot of work to be done. Last year alone, nearly 108, 000 Americans died from drug overdoses. And the latest data from the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services shows that nearly 49 million people Are more than one in six. Americans struggle with addiction. So how do we move forward? Rodney thinks it's crucial that we start by acknowledging the close link between mental health and addiction.

Rodney Wambeam: 31:20

This is where I'm really, really interested now as a researcher, is dealing with the mental health crisis in this country,

Angela Kennecke: 31:27

right? Because they go hand in hand. It all goes hand in hand.

Rodney Wambeam: 31:31

They're connected. And 20 years ago it was about kids partying, experimentation. And that's not to say people didn't have a mental health problem. We just didn't know it or talk about it. And so there's two sides. One is that we are having a mental health crisis. Yes. But the other is I think we're acknowledging the connection. And so I think the future of prevention is to look at the things we're doing, whether it's your program, whether it's a policy, whether it's a media campaign, and say, how do we view those strategies? through the lens of mental health. So I truly believe that we're going to be doing that for quite a while into the future when it comes to prevention. And I think that's a good thing. I really think we need to understand that.

Angela Kennecke: 32:18

And it's going to take a big shift because right now we do criminalize much of the behavior associated with addiction when it's actually associated with mental health,

Rodney Wambeam: 32:27

right? You know, we talked about Sam Quinones who wrote Dreamland and The Least of Us and I was talking to him and he said, you know, it's not that we arrest people. It's what we do after we arrest them. That's the problem.

Angela Kennecke: 32:41

I just talked to somebody who had lived on the streets, San Francisco, and he said it did take accountability. It took treatment, it took other things for him to find recovery, and he's doing great now. But he said there had to be some accountability in there, and that's what we talk about. That's what the legal system is, right? Accountability. Nobody wants to be held accountable for anything in this country anymore, but I mean, that's what it is, so it has its place.

Rodney Wambeam: 33:07

Right. And without question, but we have to help people,

Angela Kennecke: 33:11

right? And we're not doing that. That's where it falls through the cracks is once we hold them accountable, we're not getting them the proper help that they need.

Rodney Wambeam: 33:18

Right. And also invest in our people who do have a use disorder and say to them, you're worthwhile and we're going to help you. Now. I don't, I'm not fooled into thinking that helping someone with a methamphetamine use disorder or an opioid is easy. It's not. Yeah. But if we don't invest in them, they're definitely not coming out of it.

Angela Kennecke: 33:42

Right. And I think all the time, Rodney, about All of the lost potential to the world from all the young people, mostly all young people, not everybody, but mostly who've died from fentanyl or overdose.

PSA Actor: 33:54

You

Angela Kennecke: 33:55

know, everything they could have brought to the world, we'll never know because we've lost all that. We're talking hundreds of thousands of people.

Rodney Wambeam: 34:03

That potential doesn't mean they have to have made like the next great Academy Award winning movie potential. It could just be that they have a good. Job in a restaurant and people are eating out and are happy in there and they're contributing to the economy or it could be that they turn out to be a really good parent and all that potential is lost and it's not just people who die of an overdose either. It's people whose lives are torn apart. Right? Do you want to talk about it in like physics term? It's like potential energy, right? As it's waiting there for something to happen and it's, it is lost and that's too bad because So many good things could happen.

Angela Kennecke: 34:42

I know. That's what makes me the saddest and that's Why I do what I do, but appreciate everything that you do. And since we're going along these same lines, I'm sure I'll see you again. I'll run into you again.

Rodney Wambeam: 34:54

We'll work through each other. I don't know which of the national conferences you'll be at, but we'll be there together. I'm sure so.

Angela Kennecke: 35:00

Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for all of your wisdom and knowledge.

Rodney Wambeam: 35:04

Thank you.

Angela Kennecke: 35:07

And thank you for listening to this episode of Grieving Out Loud. Join us again next week for a powerful new episode featuring ESPN sports broadcaster Lauren Sissler. Known for her sideline shimmy and big smile, Sissler was privately grappling with a painful secret for years. Both of her parents died from fentanyl overdoses within hours of each other, while she was pursuing her dream of becoming a college gymnast.

Lauren Sisler: 35:35

I could still literally close my eyes and see them in the stands at Rutgers as they're cheering for me after I'd finished my floor routine and saluted the judges and I could just hear my dad. He had this whistle that was just piercing and I mean they were just so proud and I'm like, man, I'm living my dream. Tune in to hear Sisler's tragic story,

Angela Kennecke: 35:53

how she has dealt with her grief, and why she is now sharing her journey publicly. That's next week on Grieving Out Loud. Until then, wishing you faith, hope. This podcast is produced by Casey Wannenberg King.