Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. At almost every recovery meeting I go to we close with the Serenity Prayer, which says, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” When I practice acceptance I find an abundance of serenity and inner peace.
As a part of our series about “Heroes Of The Addiction Crisis” I had the pleasure of interviewing Alex Shohet . Alex is a serial “social entrepreneur” and started my first technology company in 1989 that developed systems and applications for the major entertainment companies including Warner Bros. Fox. MGM, and Disney. In 2005, he left technology and partnered with his wife, Bernadine Fried, LMFT, to create their first treatment center. Over the last 14 years, Bernadine and Alex have built three successful and socially responsible addiction and mental health organizations including ONE80 Center™, Wonderland Center™, and a 501c3 Nonprofit, Evergreen Fund, dba “Red Door Life.”
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a bit of your backstory? Is there a particular story or incident that inspired you to get involved in your work with opioid and drug addiction?
I started using IV drugs at the age of 19 while I was a student at UCLA. My addiction progressed and I dropped out in 1984. And as they say now, I was “housing insecure” by 1988. I was dealing drugs and doing petty crimes to afford my habit. Bernadine, who was my girlfriend at the time and now my wife, had a brother, Danny, who got clean. He in turn helped Bernadine get clean. Six months after Bernadine stopped using, I went to a county-funded long-term rehab center in Los Angeles.
A series of events led to a relapse in 2001. I struggled to find my recovery again. I entered treatment for the last time on May 4, 2004. Unlike the first time, I got clean. This time I had money, a business, a wife, daughter, and a successful entrepreneur’s lifestyle. I hadn’t hit “bottom” financially, but I damaged my relationship with my wife, daughter, friends, partners, coworkers, and family. As I sat in rehab I was wondering what went wrong and why I couldn’t seem to stay clean for any significant length of time.
I found helping the other clients in the program made me feel better. In my third month, as my psychotherapist wife says, I found the “organizing principle” that changed my life. I loved entrepreneurship and believed I was pretty good at it. I wondered if I could use my entrepreneurial gifts and apply them to helping alleviate the damage done to our society by addiction.
In 2005 I launched a 501c3 nonprofit organization to foster entrepreneurship in the recovery community and I’ve been doing that work ever since.
In the meantime, Bernadine became a well-respected and successful psychotherapist specializing in trauma and addiction. She started working in the treatment industry when she was a year sober and now has over 25 years of experience in the field.
Can you describe how your work is making an impact in the addiction/recovery world?
Since 2005, I’ve been able to help create lots of opportunities for people in the recovery community and help many individuals on their recovery journey. I’ve launched a non-profit, started three rehabs and co-founded a company developing technology to prevent overdose deaths.
Without sharing real names, can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted by your initiative?
In 2019 I met a young man who had been using heroin and other hard drugs for a long time. At the time, he was clean for less than a month. I started sponsoring him. We used to talk about him starting his own business and doing something he was passionate about. He was obsessed with plant medicine and the importance it has on helping people with mental health difficulties. Unfortunately, over the next couple of years, the young man relapsed and ended up back on skid row using drugs in a tent. He was a really smart guy. He just had this addiction thing really bad. In December of 2020, we had moved our sober living to a new location where we had additional space. I invited him in on a scholarship. Over the last 8 months, I’ve had the pleasure to see him blossom in his recovery and as an entrepreneur. He began building his own plant medicine business. The business is showing promise and he is being challenged to figure out the ingredients for his tea, the packaging, marketing, promotions, fulfillment, and sales. At first, I was reluctant to taste his tea, I wasn’t sure what to expect. His tea turned out to be the best tea I’ve ever tasted. I was blown away.
Can you share something about your work that makes you most proud? Is there a particular story or incident that you found most uplifting?
When we started our second rehab, I hired this bigger than life, handsome, charismatic, guy from England with about four years of recovery. He appeared to me to be the James Bond of the recovery community. He would run all over Los Angeles swooping up addicts and getting them into treatment. I started working with this English guy and he would invite me out into the community to intervene on individuals in active drug and alcohol use. One of our former clients had relapsed and we had found out where he was using. We went to the client’s girlfriend’s apartment. When we got there our client was shooting heroin. We asked him if he was ready to go back to treatment and he said yes but he wanted to get high one more time. He went into the bathroom and when he came out he could barely walk. We just about had to carry him to the car and when we got him in he turned blue and stopped breathing. We were lucky that Cedars Sinai hospital was a couple of blocks away. We rushed him to the ER. When the doctor came to talk to us, he said he was doing fine, but his heart had stopped, and if we would not have gotten him to the hospital he would have probably died. This taught me that treatment is not what happens within the center, it is the continued commitment to maintain the connection to your clients. Since that time, I’ve been all over the world staying connected to our clients. It is not possible for me or our team to help everyone but we do everything we can to stay connected to our clients even if they leave treatment.
Can you share three things that the community and society can do to help you address the root of this problem? Can you give some examples?
Do not wait until a person hits bottom. Get professional help for the person as soon as possible. I understand that helping a person with acute stages of addiction is really hard and I do not expect their family, friends, or coworkers to do this alone. It takes a village and recovery care is a “team sport.” The formula for professionals helping a person with a substance use disorder is the following:
- Meet them where they are today and do a holistic assessment
- Based on the resources available build an experienced multidisciplinary team (“MDT”) around the person
- The MDT and the person set goals and agree on steps to take
- If the person cannot achieve the goals break the goals down into smaller steps and try again
- The MDT and the person together will acquire the resources, skills, and support to find their recovery
- Plan for relapses and when they happen help coach the person into healthier thinking and behaviors
- As they say, rinse and repeat.
We need to treat mental health as seriously as we do physical health. It is incredible to see that schools are beginning to help students talk about their emotional health. It’s crucial that students learn how to eat healthier, practice mindfulness and meditation, and get involved with helping others. Many schools have been doing these things for a long time and others are just getting started. If our educational institutions implement evidence-based practices of supporting our children’s mental health, society will reap the benefits.
I would like to see a more expansive view of the concept of treatment. We’ve confused crisis intervention with recovery. We waste a significant amount of money and time sending our loved ones away to treatment believing they will return home fixed. Many treatment centers are designed like car washes;send them in and expect them to come out clean and sober. What we are seeing is people going to rehab ten, twenty, thirty times, and still being unable to stay clean and sober. Recovery is a way of living. Our suggestion is start recovery where you are going to put your roots down. If you are going to rehab to get “fixed” your chances of achieving recovery are significantly lower. I’ve seen people with late stage addiction achieve sobriety in the same neighborhoods where they used drugs. Be surrounded by people in recovery, live in healthy environments, build trust with peer support and mental health professionals, find psychiatric and medical care, eat healthy, and get exercise.
I know that this is not easy work. What keeps you going?
Everyday I get to tell people that they matter and they are not alone. Substance abuse and mental health issues rob people of their sense of self worth, physical and emotional health, they damage their relationships with their family and friends, and steal their ability to choose how they spend their time. I care deeply about my community and the work we do is important. I have family and friends, coworkers, and community members who I cherish, which make my life very special. I can’t imagine doing anything else for as long as I live.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why.
There will never be enough. One of the greatest things about being an addict is our insatiable appetite for more. I equated more drugs, sex, love, food, money, success, with more happiness. I was very wrong. In recovery, I came to understand that endless amounts of pleasure lead to rapidly declining amounts of happiness. The more I consume the more I need and I never seem to be able to satisfy my hunger for more. Today, when I find myself wanting more, I tell myself more is never enough and happiness is exactly what you have at this very moment.
Go slow, to go fast. Looking back, my biggest mistakes came when I acted too quickly. I make much better decisions when I pause before taking action.
Don’t fall in love too fast. I’ve always liked the underdogs, misfits, and renegades. I see the gifts in people shunned or excluded by the majority. Many times I focus too much on a person’s exceptional qualities instead of their unhealthy traits. I’m learning to take time to get to know people before inviting them into the important areas and relationships in my life.
Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. At almost every recovery meeting I go to we close with the Serenity Prayer, which says, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” When I practice acceptance I find an abundance of serenity and inner peace.
Everyone is an entrepreneur. Whether they sell their time to a company or a customer they are an entrepreneur. If they are a sole proprietor or they own a small or large business, they are an entrepreneur. I believe everyone would be better off if we were taught at a young age that we are all entrepreneurs and we will all have a far greater chance of living a life we choose instead of settling for a life someone told us we could have.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
We have tons of untapped potential for unleashing entrepreneurship in the recovery community. With an informed approach of helping our community members unleash their entrepreneurial talents we can change the world.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Albert Einstein said, “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”
When I was in rehab, I wondered what the hell happened to my life. I started using drugs when my wife was 6 months pregnant and for the first two years of my daughters life I was in and out of recovery. I was struggling to find meaning in my life. I then had the thought that changed my life: My life and the people I love have been profoundly impacted by addiction and mental health issues and I am an entrepreneur having started three tech companies. What if I apply my entrepreneurial gifts to helping alleviate some of the horrible damage addiction and mental health is doing to our society. It immediately gave me a way to look at my life with meaning.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why?
I would like to meet with Elon Musk and talk to him about how entrepreneurs can help improve the lives of the 50 million people suffering in the United States from addiction and mental health disorders.
I watched an interview many years ago when Elon Musk was struggling. He was getting divorced, Tesla was on the verge of bankruptcy, and he was struggling to get SpaceX off the ground. He was asked by the reporter if he will ever give up and he said, “NEVER.” I admire Elon Musk for his commitment to bringing innovation related to the earth’s survival. He continues to walk through adversity to create companies that exponentially make a difference.
This was very meaningful, thank you so much!
How Alex Shohet of Red Door Life Is Helping To Battle One of Our Most Serious Epidemics was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.