Steve Martorano 
The Behavioral Corner is produced in partnership with Retreat Behavioral Health -- where healing happens.

The Behavioral Corner 
Hi, and welcome. I'm Steve Martorano, and this is the Behavioral Corner. You're invited to hang with us as we discuss how we live today, the choices we make, what we do, and how they affect our health and well-being. So you're on the corner, the Behavioral Corner. Please hang around for a while.

Steve Martorano 
Hi, everybody. Welcome again to the Behavioral Corner. It's me, Steve Martorano, your host, and guide, as we hang here and wait for interesting people who can inform and instruct us on all kinds of things. The Behavioral Corner is a podcast about everything because everything affects our behavioral health, made possible, incidentally, by the great partners we have as underwriters, and that's Retreat Behavioral Health. They not only keep the lights going on here, but very often, they will avail us of their people, their expert people in this field of both mental health treatment and substance abuse treatment. I remind you, I haven't done this often enough. I was just with Peter Shore last week, who is the founder and CEO of Retreat, and without hesitation, he always reminds me where he was reminding someone else in my presence. We wanted to get involved in this not so much because it's an infomercial, which it is not because it's information or which we hope it is. So we do have somebody for Retreat with us. And I'll introduce Alysha in just a second. But first and tell you what this is about this time on the Corner. We've talked about substance abuse disorder endlessly, many, many times here in the program. And we have often talked about treatment. Its myriad forms. And we have talked about what gets you there. How do you get there? How do you get to treatment? Two recent newspaper articles in the New York Times struck my interest because they came practically on top of each other. And they were about the issue of how you get somebody into treatment. I mean, that's the first step, get them into treatment. How do you do that? And one was from the father's point of view, his guests' essay centered on his son's struggle. The father, at various points, felt that his son wasn't going to get to the bottom he was going to die before he got to treatment. And he wondered in the essay whether or not we as a society need more options, one of which was mandatory treatment. Now there are some situations where that is the case. But he was saying in a broader term, go and find somebody using sweep them off the streets and put them in a facility and mandatory forced treatment. The other article, which was diametrically opposite of that by a good friend of the program by the name of Maia Szalavitz, who covers substance abuse issues and mental health issues, the title of her article, which we didn't go into because it says it in the title, Why Forced Addiction Treatment Fails. Okay, so here's our dichotomy. Good idea, bad idea effective, not effective. That's what we're going to be talking about on the Corner today. And we have a great person who has a wonderful perspective on this. Alysha Gingrich is a primary therapist with Retreat Behavioral Health, and she is also someone who has had struggles with substance abuse issues. And she is now obviously in long-term recovery. So she's going to give us the perspective from being there, done that. And now, how that experience and this idea of how you get people to treatment has been shaped by her experience. Boy, do I take a long time to introduce people? I apologize, Alysha. Thanks for joining us on the Behavioral Corner.

Alysha Gingerich 
Yeah, no. Thanks for having me.

Steve Martorano 
Let's talk about you. Before we get into this issue of whether can you lead a horse to water and forced them to drink, which is probably the simplest way to think about this. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Alysha Gingerich 
I was raised in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Good family, right? My father was a police officer. My mother was a bartender. My mom did plenty of jobs and I have a younger sister. So I grew up with like really close family, right? Really close-knit family. And at the age of four was when sports were my life. I was gung ho set on being the first woman to play professional baseball until I found that they already did that back then the war days when the men were are war. I saw the movie A League of Their Own and was like, Ah, man, will I still want to do that? So, you know, grew up very much surrounded by the values that come with sports. Teamwork, dedication, very competitive. And yeah, you know, I would like to say it was what you'd call me, I guess in a normal childhood.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, Dad was a cop?

Alysha Gingerich 
Dad was a police officer. So his credentials are out there, which actually makes it a little bit funnier, but I don't think he finds it funny. He was a dare officer, you know, say no to drugs.

Steve Martorano 
He used to go to the schools and do the DARE program. Wow. Talk about a perfect storm. I mean, you, I guess it's fair to say is, was not exactly the way he thought his daughter was going to turn out, right?

Alysha Gingerich 
Yeah, probably not. Because like, I used to go with him to the schools and listen to the kids, like read their essays, as I guess in their program, they had to like to write an essay, I was never actually in the DARE program, but of why they're never going to touch drugs and alcohol. And I used to go with and listen to these stories. And just like it would be like, why the children moved stories about how their parents were addicts and alcoholics.

Steve Martorano 
You had none of that in your family. Right?

Alysha Gingerich 
I would say that my mom's side of the family definitely struggles with alcoholism, and I didn't grow up around them...

Steve Martorano 
But it was there, yeah. How did you, you know, what was your introduction to substances? When and what were you doing?

Alysha Gingerich  
Ah, so I was 13 when I had my first drink. And I think I fell in love instantly. I was in a fight with someone and I couldn't manage my emotions. And so I gave a nice FU and I'm gonna take a drink to show everybody and then that happened once but then high school came. You know, I grew up getting bullied a lot and wasn't really part of the popular crowd. And then I did the high school and I'm the only freshman on any of the varsity teams. Right? So like, I hung out with juniors and seniors and what do juniors and seniors in high school do? They party and so wanting to fit in I started drinking. I actually remember it was homecoming night of my freshman year, and so drinking good old Bacardi 151. And I think it was just that summer, I started smoking weed. And it was just it was off to the races. By the time I was a junior in high school. I was very highly addicted to alcohol, and marijuana. I started getting into cocaine. I started getting into ecstasy. I thank my lucky stars opiates were never introduced to me in high school, because if they were I would have used them. You know, so it's one of those like a blessing in disguise. But I also got just like, a lot of things started really going downhill for me in high school.

Steve Martorano 
Athletics and academics as well?

Alysha Gingerich 
Academics went downhill. I think I tried really hard to stay in sports like I graduated high school with nine varsity letters forwards for like my big thing. But junior year when heavy stuff like cocaine and ecstasy came into the picture. My behaviors in school like I wasn't going to school. So that means I wasn't playing the games and was very rebellious. And I think junior years when I realized the sad truth of some realities was that like, I wasn't going to play professional sports. And so like, why bother?

Steve Martorano 
You weren't looking for a division one scholarship. You were looking to go to the pros, some sport?

Alysha Gingerich 
Yeah, yeah. And I remember like, I was an all-star catcher. I was probably one of the best catchers that came from my high school. I could have gone to V1 softball, and I just...yeah.

Steve Martorano 
Wow. I'm sorry, back up to your siblings. You had siblings. What were boys or...

Alysha Gingerich 
I have a younger sister. She's four years younger than I am.

Steve Martorano 
Okay. So it's how you grew up amongst a bunch of boys. And where did all your athleticism come from? Who's the athlete? Where's that gene come from?

Alysha Gingerich 
I mean, my family's very competitive. Right? So like family picnics. Like you're not playing cornhole or anything without putting $5 on the table.

Steve Martorano 
I know that...I know that family.

Alysha Gingerich 
Love to smack talking. Right. And so I my dad was a soccer player in high school, but like...

Steve Martorano 
You were an elite athlete. It sounds like you were at the top of your game. Certainly, in your high school. Probably the state, right?

Alysha Gingerich 
Yeah. And at least in the district, you know, I was getting awards. I mean, the only sport that I will openly admit that I was not good at was basketball. But I played soccer baseball I played softball, I played field hockey, I did tennis. I did cheerleading for a year. Softball, I think I mentioned that like, but I just fell in love with baseball and I am still.

Steve Martorano 
You would pick the sport that's toughest for women I don't even know that there is a woman's professional baseball team. I'm sure there is.

Alysha Gingerich 
So when I was well, I tried out for a teenager baseball team. And the coach after tryouts looked at me and he goes, you're better than all like almost all the guys. And I was like, awesome, you guys, but like, I'm not going to play you over the dice. Like you have to go play softball.

Steve Martorano 
Oh, you tried out for the boys' baseball team? And he said you were good enough to play but he would but couldn't put you on the team with boys.

Alysha Gingerich 
He said that he couldn't play me over some of the boys because,...

Steve Martorano 
You bet the parents would have gotten upset. How did you get along with the other guys? Were they intimidated by how good you were?

Alysha Gingerich 
Yeah, I mean, I've always been good friends with guys more than girls. But yeah, I'm a big. I have a big mouth. So like, I talk a lot of smack. And...

Steve Martorano 
Can I ask you how old you are? I want to find out how long ago this occurred.

Alysha Gingerich 
Actually, I just turned 35 this month.

Steve Martorano 
Congratulations. So we're talking about 20 years ago, almost 20 years ago, when you're 15...16...17. You're an elite athlete. And you're drinking and doing drugs. You know, you're not the first elite athlete we've had on the program who went down this road, we had a couple of women who have called and similar thing, the context of the team, which most people think isolates people from temptations can really be an accelerator because everybody's so tight. And it's a little group when you began using heavily and it became a problem. Were you still doing the drugs in the context of the team or had you moved on to a different crowd?

Alysha Gingerich 
Well, my crowd still where still the athletes at my school. Our crew, definitely all kinds of use, but like we had this as I had, and like looking back on it, I don't understand it. But like we still have like this, like high motivation to just like be so good at the sports that it was like, you know, we were weekend warriors.

Steve Martorano 
Well, you know, you again, I've heard this story before you we were, unfortunately, high functioning substance abusers. You know, that's a curse because, you know, if it doesn't interfere with the things that you really care about, you're gonna keep using it? I say that all stories of substance abuse and treatment recovery are the same, except they're different. You know, let's talk about when you first recognize, I have a problem. I mean, I gotta do something about it. Or was that realization imposed upon you by, for instance the law? What was your father...your father was completely oblivious to this, right?

Alysha Gingerich 
Ahhh, no. They told me now that they always knew they just didn't, I don't I just don't know if they knew how to...I was not a fun teenager. So like, I'm not gonna I will never bash my parents. I actually apologized to them every day for how I was, but they knew. I just don't know if they knew what to do.

Steve Martorano 
Right? A little bit of denial to probably. You'll outgrow it and all that stuff, right?

Alysha Gingerich 
It's just a phase. We're gonna go to college. Right. But college, I did go to college. And I don't think that that helped my substance use in any way, shape, or form.

Steve Martorano 
What did help? How did you get...how did you get the treatment initially?

Alysha Gingerich 
So um, I did have a DUI when I was 22. And I was mandated to go to an outpatient program and individual substance abuse counseling. And I can tell you that that was not even close to being a wake-up call, like the day after my DUI, I blew a point three one, I totaled my car. I had 16 stitches in my eyelid. And I can tell you that I was drinking again within two days after that accident.

Steve Martorano 
That's a pretty apparent way that you're forced into treatment. It's mandated so that you can, you know, satisfy the court. And I've always felt that in that context, most people are there to clear the record. Not to do anything other than to clear the record. Is that the way you approached it?

Alysha Gingerich  
Oh, for sure. Um, luckily, I was bartending. And so I started bartending when I was 21. And I didn't stop bartending until I was 29...about 29. And so I would go into outpatient and the DUI classes and individual counseling, and I was drunk, and like, the counselors be like, I smell alcohol on you. And I'm like, Oh, I'm a bartender. I just haven't...I didn't get to wash alcohol off me from the night before.

Steve Martorano 
And then, of course, he's sitting there just trying to check the boxes on the form.

Alysha Gingerich 
I don't remember much from those counseling sessions. I know that lady did try to get me to, like, realize that my drinking was out of hand, but like, I was also there drunk. So like, to be honest, I don't remember anything from that counseling.

Steve Martorano 
So there we have a perfect example of you getting in trouble. You got a DUI, the court says, you know, you got to do this. It didn't work. Right. Didn't work. Did you go to a residential facility? Ultimately?

Alysha Gingerich 
Yes. So when I turned 30, is when I ended up going into treatment. To be honest, I think, for a long time before it was asked upon me to go. I was at the point where like, I knew that, like, I wasn't okay. I was at the point where I was living alone and wondering who was going to find my body. Like, I was like, that bad. But like, I wasn't going to tell anyone that because if I told anyone that like it was that bad when they were going to make me go to rehab, well, my best friend asked me to go and I was like, You know what? I'm, like, I remember verbatim, I was like, I'm gonna go to rehab, and I'm gonna learn how to drink like a normal person. Right? Like, I'm not going to quit. So I ended up going into inpatient into...April 17 of 201.

Steve Martorano 
Do you say you went there at the urging of your friend? And so that's not I mean, that's not being imposed upon you. She, you know, there was no ultimatum, you know, do this or else you, you were tired of what was going on, I thought this would be a rest. Maybe you could handle this if you just did that.

Alysha Gingerich 
I'm gonna learn how to join.

Steve Martorano 
People don't appreciate what goes on. When folks get to treatment. You know, I've had people come in and say, I went to treatment the first six times because I just needed a rest. I just needed to get off the street and get in there and get something to eat. So you go back out and get high again. So I'm not surprised to hear that. How many times were you in treatment?

Alysha Gingerich 
I've only gone once.

Steve Martorano 
We'll see this. This is terrific. So that 2018 trip was the beginning of the sobriety?

Alysha Gingerich 
Yep.

Steve Martorano 
And so what we're talking about seven, six years now, going on...

Alysha Gingerich  
Actually just celebrated five years sober on the 17th of this month.

Steve Martorano 
Oh, congratulations. That's great. I mean, five years is quite an achievement. All right. Now, on the other side of the ledger, you're now, and you come out, and you went into this field, got your certification, you are now a primary therapist. For Retreat Behavioral Health, what do you deal with in that capacity?

Alysha Gingerich 
So what I do as a primary is I get a caseload of about a mine, at the most, maybe ten individuals that are, that are in treatment with a primary diagnosis of substance use disorder. They, as most individuals, also have secondary mental health diagnoses as well. But their primary substance use disorder.

Steve Martorano 
And so you bring to that, and I know lots of not all but several clinicians, I've spoken to have a similar backstory, and then decided to go into the field. And sometimes, and I'll ask you this, sometimes I think the motivation to go into the field of substance abuse treatment, after having suffered from it is a result of how miraculous people who recover feel, how incredible it is to be out from under that disorder and need to tell other people they can do it too. Is that what it was for you?

Alysha Gingerich 
Yeah, um, thankfully, when I went to undergrad, I went for psychology. I've always been interested in why people do what they do, right? Not anything specific, I guess. People are interesting creatures. And so I already had an undergrad degree in psychology. And so when I got sober, I was like, I never knew what I wanted to do with that degree. I just went to cuz I was like, whatever. And so after I got sober, I was like, Oh, wow, I was like, I might be able to use my degree for something that actually like, means a lot to me.

Steve Martorano  
That's a degree, and bartending, except for the abuse, makes sense. Pretty much the same thing. You just take the alcohol out of it. I mean, that's interesting. So you were on the path whether you knew it or not. So what is your feeling about this notion of the bottom? Do people talk about? Well, you know what? They're never going to get treatment and never going to get sober until they hit bottom. Does that have any meaning for you the term the bottom?

Alysha Gingerich 
So I really believe that the bottom for any addict or alcoholic is that and so when I hear individuals or other just anybody just say like, oh, well, they just need to hit bottom. I'm like, no, because, like, the bottom is six feet under, like, they can't survive that bottom. And also, like, through my personal experience, and also through the stories that I've heard in, in the rooms and you know, in treatment, is that what people think should be someone's bottom? is never that right. Like my DUI was like, I told her the car like I should have lost my eye. Like that should have been my bottom like that should have been my wake-up call. And so like I truly believe that like, just when you think you hit a bottom there's a trapdoor what ready and waiting for you to open up to show you that there's a whole another bottom and then a whole nother bottom. So like, I don't think that there's like this, like one miraculous thing that's going to open someone's eyes to, like, it's time to get help.

Steve Martorano 
If you agree that in terms of what's best for the substance abuser and his family, the idea that you should be waiting around to identify what the bottom is, is very, very risky.

Alysha Gingerich 
Well, yeah, like someone's bottom could just be losing a job. Right? Like, it doesn't have to be like jail and homelessness and a DUI and a totaled car, right? Like, it doesn't have to be something huge. It could be someone just saying, hey, like, if you don't get home, right online, your life anymore like that can be a bottom,

Steve Martorano 
I felt similarly about that. It sounds like something that the, you know, the general media would toss around, certainly motion pictures and fiction creates an image of the bottom, this desperate place you have to be before you get help. And then the experiences are vastly different. I agree with you, though, that waiting for the bottom is a scary thing. Now you treat people all the time. And they are there. I would I mean, Retreat is not a psych hospital there. No. No one's there against their will. How do you feel about the idea that some people are advocating for forced treatment? Would that work in any way you can imagine?

Alysha Gingerich 
No. And my opinion? No, because here's, and here, I'm a very honest and transparent individual. The doors aren't locked here, right? Like, as human beings, we have we have free will, right? We have the ability to make whatever choices we make. So you could get someone in the door. Right? You can get someone to maybe like answer the intake questions. Right. But the minute they have the opportunity to use a cell phone or a landline and want to leave, they can call and leave as they can walk down this hill. I mean, could it possibly work? Just to get them in the door? Maybe, but like, what's keeping them here?

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, yeah, I mean, there are plenty of people who are getting, I guess, I shouldn't say plenty. But there are people who are getting substance abuse treatment who are incarcerated, but they're not there to get the treatment. They're there because they broke some law. And by the way, you can be treated for substance abuse here. They may benefit from it, but the idea that you could coerce somebody into believing they need treatment is kind of crazy, right? And when you said it perfectly, you when your girlfriend said, You got to go get help, you thought, well, good, I gotta learn to drink. I'll learn to handle it, you know? Well, I guess in the final analysis, and I'm sort of sum up on this, this notion of mandatory treatment, I think comes out of not so much the substance abusers who I think if we took a poll would agree with you and me that it's not you can't do but it does come out of my guess, the family and loved ones of someone who's in trouble using drugs or alcohol. They're desperate, and they dread the phone call in the middle of the night. Your daughter's in an automobile accident, your son's dead, whatever. If they were to come to you and say, I gotta get him or her, I gotta get him in the treatment. What do you say to them? How do you counsel them?

Alysha Gingerich 
You know, it's, it's not that's probably communicating with families about that as one of the hardest parts of my job. Because at the end of the day, all I can tell them is that, like, let them know their resources, right? When you are ready, this is the support you're going to get. Here are the numbers, you know, but it's such a difficult thing because I know awareness of how much substance use actually affects other people. Right? And so, like I've talked about this, about myself and with my patients, is that we, as addicts, at least for myself, I was stuck very much in the cycle of addiction because I didn't think I was hurting anyone else other than myself. Right? And even if my family and loved ones would look me in the eye and say that I was hurting them, I'd be like, but I'm not, right? Like, I'm not doing anything. I'm just, I'm hurting myself. I have to put it in the addicts and alcoholics hands and it's a scary thing. And it's not what family members want to hear. But at least like the ability to let the addict and the alcoholic know that there is support, there is no judgment, there's no shame, right, and here are the numbers that we can call together. But one of the biggest things that drives people away from wanting to get help is judgment and shame.

Steve Martorano 
And the other thing, and we'll end on this, and I think you'll agree one way or another, people have to get to sobriety under their own power, and that's a helpless position to be in if you're the family it feels like the frustration of not being able to do anything but look you're you know you're a testament to you never know when the next trip to treatment is going to take in your case it you know took one.

Alysha Gingerich 
Thank God. Knock on wood.

Steve Martorano 
Knock on wood. Thanks so much. You still have sports you still...

Alysha Gingerich 
Actually, I'm leaving work to coach a 14-and-under softball team, and starting in May, I will still play softball in the summer league with women.

Steve Martorano 
I know Retreat used to have that dopey kickball...baseball games, which I'm sure would offend you as an athlete.

Alysha Gingerich 
I'm down. Let's do it.

Steve Martorano 
 I was gonna say be careful; they're gonna draft you. Alysha Gingrich, thanks so much for joining us. And congratulations on the work you've done and for sharing your story with us. We appreciate it.

Alysha Gingerich 
Yes, thank you so much for having me. I could talk about sobriety and recovery all day.

Steve Martorano 
Thanks for what you do. As a matter of fact. Thank you, guys, as well. Look for us wherever you know podcasts are being hawked. And when you find us push the subscription button. We appreciate it. See you next time on the Behavioral Corner, bye-bye.

Retreat Behavioral Health 
Retreat Behavioral Health has proudly been serving the community for over ten years. Here at Retreat, we believe in the power of connection and quality care. We offer comprehensive, holistic, and compassionate treatment from industry-leading experts. Call 855-802-6600 or visit us at www.retreatbehavioralhealth.com to begin your journey today.

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