Bridging the Gaps: Reimagining Opioid Recovery
A podcast where we confront disparities, challenge outdated approaches, and reimagine a future where opioid addiction treatment is equitable, accessible, and effective for all communities."
Bridging the Gaps: Reimagining Opioid Recovery
Empowering Healing with Shared Narratives
Cat Johnson Certified Peer Recovery Specialist, Dr. Cuong Pham and Raj bring powerful personal stories that shed light on the transformative journey of opioid recovery, challenging conventional methods and offering fresh perspectives shaped by rich cultural identities. Hear from Cat Johnson, a Native American woman tirelessly working at a women's treatment center in St. Paul, Minnesota, Cuong Pham, a refugee from Vietnam contributing to the Community University Health Care Center, and Raj, who supports youth exposed to violence and gangs. Together, they underscore the importance of storytelling, community engagement, and cultural celebration as essential elements of healing and recovery.
This episode invites you to reflect on the complex interplay between cultural identity and addiction recovery. We explore how cultural resilience can be a pillar in personal recovery journeys and why traditional treatment models often fail to address the unique needs of individuals from diverse backgrounds. Discussions highlight the significance of integrating personal stories and cultural practices into treatment, advocating for an empathetic and inclusive approach to joy and celebration as part of the healing process.
Our guests emphasize the necessity of community-led healing and how spiritual practices can enrich recovery. Focusing on breaking free from rigid medical models, we explore how understanding cultural roots and fostering spiritual connections can transform addiction care. This episode concludes with a powerful call to action, encouraging listeners to engage actively in community support systems and reminding us that recovery is a shared journey enriched by diverse experiences and collective effort.
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Welcome to the Bridging the Gaps Reimagining Opioid Recovery the podcast where we confront disparities, challenge outdated approaches and reimagine a future where opioid addiction treatment is equitable, accessible and effective for all communities Across Minnesota and beyond. Opioid addiction continues to devastate lives, especially in marginalized and underserved communities, but here we're not just talking about the problem. We're bringing together experts, community leaders and lived experience voices to drive real solutions. Join us as we explore groundbreaking strategies, highlight innovative recovery models and amplify the voices of those fighting for equity in addiction care, because when we bridge the gaps, we build pathways to healing. This is Joanna Rosa, a duly licensed therapist, and I'm interested in chatting with community members about the intersections of well-being, recovery and living our daily lives. Join us for a conversation with members of Project Echo Fellowship, a group of community leaders working at the intersections of healthcare, substance use treatment and recovery. Enjoy our conversation. All right, everyone Welcome. Could we start with introductions please? That's right.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm Kat. I'm in recovery. I battled my addiction with fentanyl, alcohol and methamphetamines for a very long time. I've been sober for the last four years. Yeah, I work at a women's treatment center on the east side of St Paul, helping others get sober and really join our path to recovery. I'm a Native American woman. I follow my traditions, I'm very a part of this community and I'm grateful to be here with you guys today.
Speaker 3:My name is Koo Pham. That's right. I hold a lot of identities too, and I think, as I'm trying to think about what to share here, one is I'm a refugee from Vietnam, grew up in Minnesota is I'm a refugee from Vietnam, grew up in Minnesota, have been in Golden Gould for my entire life. I always question why I never left this place. It's snowing here today, even though we haven't had a lot of snow. In general.
Speaker 3:I work at the University of Minnesota. I'm part of the medical school there, but I also work at Community University Health Care Center, which is known as COOC. We serve a lot of immigrants, refugees and asylees. My heart is at COOK. That's where I identified my work as a physician. In the last several years, I've been taking care of people who have use disorders, addictions. Never thought about doing that work at all personally because I'd never had any lived experiences, but those around me have suffered from addiction. That's why I do that work here. I'm excited here to have this conversation as we continue today, as we learn more about each other too. So I'm going to pass it on to Raj.
Speaker 4:Yeah, y'all Give it up for Kat, give it up for Koo, right, amazing people to work with, right To be around and surrounded by. Because I'm also in addiction over a decade of alcohol mixed with a lot of drugs, right. So I mean, the pathway to recovery was never easy, right. I should have died like three times, I think, 0.4 level alcohol poisoning, with ending up in a farm in Lesueur, minnesota, was not easy, waking up and totally in the car, right A few other such incidents, right. So that's why I'm glad that I'm surrounded with people who understand this as a form of disease and a lifestyle, right. So I don't want to take this for granted.
Speaker 4:The pathway to recovery for each one of us is different, right. But want to honor where you are if you're listening to it and recognize that you too can be in this path, right, if you seek help. So I'm hoping that whatever we say today will be encouraging to you and to family members who are, who are witnessing addictions in their in their lives and their families also work with a lot of youth, right, who are who are exposed to a lot of violence and gangs and in other ways, uh, lifestyles that could be addictive, right, a process that was started in St Quentin Prison right Father and son recognizing they're addicted to gang life and also violence, and so they started to talk about 12-step recovery from addiction to gangs and addictions to violence. And those are part and parcel of how I bring, how I show up with that type of knowledge and knowledge to work towards repairing harm, towards realizing one's humanity and transforming the way we show up, so show up in those processes. So thank you all for listening.
Speaker 1:Can you tell us about?
Speaker 4:Project.
Speaker 3:ECHO, project ECHO. When we got together recently we tried to figure out an acronym for the name of Project ECHO and try to be clever and we came up with, for now the title is Eliminating Racism in Substance Use in Community Care Fellowship. It's a mouthful, but really what this Project ECHO is about is sharing our stories, listening to the voices of people that have been silenced and marginalized for years. The original idea of Project ECHO is very academic, where it starts with experts sharing their knowledge to people who don't have that knowledge. But in reality, you know, it's like. You know I talk about me from the University of Minnesota Medical School presumed knowledge in education of addiction, but the lived experiences, those who know about addiction from a lived.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry I'm watching Raj here. Raj is a guy as we kind of talk about stories. Overall I'm learning about stories from each of us and I'm rambling about Project Echo, but really, again, it goes back to storytelling and what I'm excited about is it's the first time I actually heard a little bit about Raj and his past. I want to know more about that and I want to know more about the stories from Kat, from each of our fellows, from Joanna, from Cedric these are names and people that are going to be significant in my life and the work that we do.
Speaker 3:And I can ramble about the titles and what it means to put this academic spin to this work, but it's about our lives and sharing these lives so we can make impact in our community. And so, as I hear the stuff that Raj does, I'm going to always be in awe of that work because that's the stuff that I've always. I'm going to always be in awe of that work Because that's the stuff that I've always wanted to learn about in medical school, that I never had that training done at all. And so keep telling me these stories, keep sharing, keep being vulnerable. I'm going to try my best to do that. It's hard to do, but that is where we're going to bring impact to the world again.
Speaker 1:Thank you. So I think I want to draw for the audience how these stories help shape the work you do. Could each of you explain how you're hoping that these experiences, these stories, shape your work in community?
Speaker 2:I need you to go.
Speaker 4:Sure you know. Thank you, kat. I know your story is going to be sobering for many of us. I mean I, you know, I never thought this is the work that I will do.
Speaker 4:I was mostly aiming just to be an academic and talk about criminology, but realize that, right, many of us have been failed as a result of being in this sort of academic arena. Sort of this intellectual masturbation has to come to an end because we have not integrated community lived experiences in such a way to understand how theory truly applies versus theory applies in academic arena but doesn't translate into the trenches. So today I am so fortunate to be around or surrounded by scholars in the trenches, not scholars in academia. Right, and these scholars in the trenches have said right, oftentimes, right narratives and stories are so important. Those are the, as Koo said, like this idea of like touch points versus data points, that are going to really make a difference For me. I have moved out of the academic arena and tried to be in the trenches so that it will continue to inform how I show up in academia.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that you know that you you said it like this like there's a lot of power.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of power in education and academics, but there is even more power in being understood by somebody that's actually been through it, by somebody that actually feels the same feelings that you've been through and have had some of the same life experiences that you have had. My work as a certified peer recovery specialist at ANEW helps a lot of my clients greatly. You know they feel like they're comfortable more comfortable to come to me about certain things than, say, they would like to their therapist or their counselor because for them they know like okay, maybe this person's not in recovery or they can't like share the same things with me as I'm telling them. So I feel like the work that I do personally is very valuable. You know I'm not just working, it's not just my job. This is, you know, my life. My life is helping others and, yeah, I work very hard to change, to change the, to just to have any sort of change actually for the better to actually for the better.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for me about sharing stories is I think we live in a world of isolation and, despite the fact that we have access to media news constantly hitting us, we're still very much alone and I think as humans we need a place of trust and it starts with sharing our stories, our lives. I think I've lived in a place where especially growing up an Asian household, a Vietnamese household I live with a bunch of introverts, so it'd be funny if you would come to like my holidays. It's us just kind of sitting around and I think part of it my family. We feel very comfortable in our space, that we don't have to tell much to each other, that we love each other. We communicate in a certain way through our vibes of our, how we look at each other, hold space together, and so for me to actually speak words, especially in English.
Speaker 3:My native language growing up was Vietnamese. My primary language now is English and I've learned in a very Minnesota culture way to share my story, even though it kind of is different in my own head of how it should be shared too, but that learning of sharing this story with others, I've learned to appreciate trauma, the hard experiences that others have lived, that I don't have never lived myself. But at the same time I get to share people the story of my life, what it means to be a refugee, what it means to be Vietnamese, what it means to be a male in this world at this point Not saying that I'm superior, but just different. That sharing brings me joy more than anything else and it brings me that sense of appreciation when people are different, I can learn from them and that we can share that space together. And it makes me proud to be in a room here where I clearly we all look different, we embody different bodies, different spirits, but we get to share it together and we become family and community here.
Speaker 4:I just want to quickly add I think we read Kat said she's a indigenous woman and who referred to him, right, his identity I don't want to just name right, I mean, in this culture of challenge to DEI, I want to just say, right, like when you have a clear understanding of diversity, equity, right, and sort of like liberation work, right, you truly understand the challenge of addiction in relation to trauma that some of our communities have experienced.
Speaker 4:Right, like our Indigenous communities have gone through genocide and genocidal practices.
Speaker 4:That is ongoing and how that impacts our Indigenous communities here and in other parts of the world At the same time. Right, how diversity equity also impacts black voices and black addictions and black recovery. Right, black communities recovery is much more nuanced than just simply going through the 12 steps. One has to understand the impact and the depth of enslavement and how enslavement and Jim Crow and mass incarceration and underemployment and sort of, you know, communities that have been left out in the buildup of wealth have impacted and continues to impact the Black community and we can't just simply say, you know, be in recovery. Right, we got to figure out how to integrate that understanding of the impact of trauma and I know I'm surrounded by a group of people who are experts in understanding and integrating trauma, but I think the listener, whoever you, are right. I just want to be mindful that if you understand or don't right seeking help to understand how trauma is impacting, how you show up in your addiction, that will be phenomenal to have a launch pad to recovery.
Speaker 1:Thank you, raj. Yeah, can you each paint a picture of the cultural work that you're doing when it comes to substance use treatment and the opioid use disorders?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, you know, as I was listening to Raj and just myself talking about trauma, I also want to think about the beauty of each of our cultures, the power of each of our cultures, how we share our celebrations and bring joy. And so to remove the depth of the trauma and go to a place where how do we highlight all the fun things that we're doing together? And that's where I bring those practices, where when I come to a person, they come to my clinic room and they talk about the hard stuff that they've experienced. I listen to that, I embrace that, I take that moment. But how do we actually, when we think about recovery, how do we celebrate you?
Speaker 3:And often it is about their culture and often is it about their families or communities. They all blend together and I lean on that person when they talk about identity, what that means to them. It doesn't always have to be a cultural piece to that. If that's important to them, let's lean on that, let's celebrate that. But I go back to put place of joy for folks and often it is very much connected to that piece of culture of their past, their families, their parents, their siblings.
Speaker 3:And for me, when I talk about culture, it's always been about what it means to be Vietnamese, what it means to be Minnesotan and what does that blend look like Gets very confusing to me, in my own head too. Sometimes I feel like I'm in that place of the Vietnamese, being a Vietnamese person. Other times I don't feel connected to that at all and I think that's okay. It feels okay to feel messy with my own identity and that again it's like this, this place of how do we bring it all together and realize we're all experiencing a culture together. It's different, it's always changing, it's not stable, it's but it can be really fun too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think personally, even just working in the community, just like finding, you know, connection Like that's the huge piece of it is being either connected to your culture, connected to your family, as you were saying, just us sitting here feeling connection I think that's all that anybody really wants. A big piece of addiction is being isolated and being alone and feeling like you have nobody. But once you reach recovery and you reach that point where you're like you know what I'm done, I am ready to change my life. I want more for myself, I want to feel joy again. Once you reach that, it's just, it's unbelievable how this community really surrounds you and you know you don't feel alone anymore and you have people that truly understand you and know what you've been through know what you've been through.
Speaker 4:I want to just add a couple of things that Kuz talked about and what Kat is talking about. Right, this idea of like. For me I think Garbo Marte often talks about this idea of like. You know, being in addiction and sobriety are two different things. Right, like, when you work towards sort of this idea of like I don't want to drink anymore, so I'm going to abstain, then you are still staying in that spot in the place of suffering, because you're like, okay, I don't want to drink a beer, but nothing about me changes.
Speaker 4:Right, sobriety is a pathway, right, and you've got to take. Take, it's a journey, and when you're on that journey, you are in sort of this struggle mode. Right, and to me, staying in the struggle helps me lean on each other. Right, and and be, and and connect to those cultural components that make me resilient. Right, like, and if you think about all of the ways that our ancestors have stayed in this struggle and we are standing on their shoulders and they wished and hoped for the best for all of us, right, and what does that? Their dream is what I am today and I need to continue to keep that dream alive.
Speaker 4:So I want to appreciate that conversation about resilience and understanding. There is such thing as cultural resilience, and then there is sort of physiological, biological resilience, and so self-care in the process of sobriety and working on your sobriety is so important. Taking care of yourself right, knowing when to rest, when to sleep, when to work out, eat right All of those things are part and parcel of staying in that sobriety struggle. Otherwise you are in a mode of suffering right and suffering eventually you will implode, right. So I want to invite us to think about how we are staying in that space of struggle and you say being in relationship. Those are all roots work. I'm seeing this picture of tree here and I love it because I see the roots. How do we foster and nurture the roots?
Speaker 1:Thank you, you know. I want to tie in a few things that each of you said. We know that Minnesota created, right, the Minnesota model in terms of substance use treatment and the blueprint that really went national. Yet that doesn't holistically reach the whole person. Yeah, yet that doesn't holistically reach the whole person. How do each of you, in your work, adapt what you do, culturally speaking, right from a treatment standpoint, adapt what you do in order to fill those gaps that the Minnesota model doesn't necessarily reach? Why do you have to ask?
Speaker 4:such tough questions.
Speaker 2:I feel that, you know, I feel that there is, uh, there is a barrier between um, between how we treat somebody, that, um, that is of, that is, that isn't white. Honestly, um, there is a barrier, you know, because there is, like you guys were talking about. Is that generational trauma With a lot of indigenous people? Like there's not a lot of trust. Honestly, like you know, when the settlers came here, they got our people drunk and they tricked us to sign treaties, and that's the fact of it.
Speaker 2:I think, in order to cover those barriers, there has to be education around different cultures and just speaking and having an open mind and asking the questions that you're afraid to ask. I really strive to learn about other people, um, about other cultures, and I really try to fill those gaps, because I know it's hard and I know, I know that, you know that we've all been through stuff growing up, um, whether that's not being understood, looked at differently, mistreated, misguided, or even in some of our cultures, where we don't talk about these things, where it's looked at as like, where addiction isn't even necessarily looked at as a disease, maybe it's more looked at as like a spiritual problem and it's, you know, people in an older generation might not have known how to treat it or talk about it, and that's why we're doing that now.
Speaker 3:I would say the industrial medical complex has been built on one specific identity and that's been built for multiple decades, hundreds of years, and not with an idea that they were going to be racist or discriminatory. It's just one identity, one viewpoint, and it didn't branch out with other viewpoints. And so when we enter a space that is not a white male, it means a different perspective, means different care. And so when I have a patient that is not a white male, when I have a patient that is not a white male, that basically has not lived a life, that is built for that type of treatment that others have built over the years, I have to take where they come from, what trauma they experience, how they celebrate their own life. It matters in terms of their sobriety and recovery. If I ignore that piece of their identity, we're not going to bring them to a place they want to be. It brings them to a place of.
Speaker 3:Maybe I send them some medication that I've learned about in medical school or some sort of therapy that might be that I referred to. It's a template, it's a cookie cutter way of doing work, but it's not a person-centered or family-centered or community-centered or culturally-centered whatever is centered beyond what we experience now in the medical industrial complex. So for me it really is taking that moment, that breath with the individual and throwing away all the things I learned in medical school residency and starting square one. It's like what do you need? Well, how do I meet you where you're at and how do we grow together?
Speaker 3:And a lot of that comes back to trust and sharing my own story with them too, because I can't separate my own lived experiences, my own trauma, and not expect it to affect my care for that person too. So I'm willing to share who I am with individuals when I take care of them. I don't think that's a common thing for a lot of professionals to do. That they very much. You know. A person comes in for a 15, 20-minute visit I give them. Most people would just give them a script and go on with it. But I'm going to take that space with that individual and really learn about them.
Speaker 4:I love that idea. I think quantum physics talks about this idea of how the observer influences and impacts what they are observing. It's never just what they're observing is captured, it's the observer. And what you just said, like I mean we all impact how recovery processes are carried out. I want to recognize my own prejudices, my implicit biases and explicit biases that I have and grown up and male privileges and stuff like that that I've grown up with and how that impacts, right, how I show up. And so there are models that you can sort of take but don't just fully embrace the model without understanding the context within which you are trying to implant the model. So I want to you know. So if you are listening to the idea of like, oh, there has to be one way of working through recovery that I think will eventually undo our desire to get a better understanding of how chemicals and drugs in our society impacts our body. You know society impacts our body and it is not just that but the stresses of jobs, the stresses of growing up in a culture that is discriminatory, that has a lot of prejudices outwardly, and how that impacts how I show up, right. So I want to just recognize right, like this idea of like, of the many complex processes that brings one to to addiction, and then and then, when you are encountered with that, that individual who is in front of you there's also. You know, what we see is also mental health crisis that is also embedded in in addiction. So you have this sort of dual problems that are shown. Now you know spaces, and all of that right is complex and deeper than just simply what textbooks often put in bullet points, right? So models are good, but don't just fully embrace the model without understanding the context.
Speaker 4:And Akus amazingly humble humble because he's like I'm going to throw out everything I know. Learn. That's a beautiful, beautiful concept I like to throw out. I mean, I, as a recovering criminologist, have thrown out all of those stupid theories that I've learned out, all of those stupid theories that I've learned. But I also recognize, right, like many of us struggle with this on a day-to-day basis.
Speaker 4:And one thing, something Kat said that I really want to lift up right, there are many cultures that have come to now talk about addiction from the aspect of the lack of spiritual connection. And in many native cultures and indigenous cultures you see that they assign spirituality to everything around them, whether it's the mountains, whether it's the rocks, whether it's the wood, the tree, right, there's spirit in them, and that sort of spiritual connection has been lost in our fast-paced life, right. And so we are in a constant struggle to survive, versus in a prefrontal cortex where we want to, right, excel in our survival and not just be in a survival space but in a thriving space. And how do we get? There is one day at a time, right, it's a one day at a time.
Speaker 4:So if you are, if you're in recovery today and tomorrow, you slide and you use, don't? I mean, that's not the biggest problem, right? The idea is that you were in one day, you, you were free of chemicals. What does that mean? Right? So, one day at a time, yeah, one day at a time.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I want to amplify an element that each of you spoke to was the power of relationships. Yes, tell me some of that beauty that you see. The power of relationships, yeah, the power of relationships.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, as I was saying before, you know how addiction really puts us in the isolation. But recovery, recovery, you know they say connection equals recovery. You know I have people around me that actually care. I have friends. I have a great, a great romantic relationship. Um, I have great relationships with my coworkers, relationships with my, with the participants, with my clients. Um, you know, I feel like just by having people around me that love and support me and uplift me is really what gets me through and, as Raj was saying, it is one day at a time. If somebody does happen to slip up, it's not a big deal. There's people that are going to be around you that will lift you back up on your feet and you'll get right back onto the red road. We're walking this red road together.
Speaker 3:For some reason the first thing that came to my mind is food, and for me food has always been a part of cultural identity. I share that with everything I do, with everyone. So I enjoy cooked Vietnamese food. It's very much very adapted to Minnesota style of it, but what I've learned from my mom just being in this space with her allows me to sit down and share stories with people when I'm eating too. I wish I was able, like in my clinical room. I had food there with my patients.
Speaker 3:I think it would be very much a very different experience if we could just sit down, share bread, share the foods that we care about, and we talk about our own stories too. That helps build a relationship. And so when I get to make something like banh xeo, which is a Vietnamese food that people don't get to experience a lot in Minnesota it's a savory crepe. It's a savory crepe. It's crispy inside of it, usually has bean sprouts, maybe some sort of protein, and then you cover it with all this lovely vegetation to it, vegetables and nuoc mam with fish sauce to it. When I get to share that with someone, I can see their smile, and it's a different conversation when we're smiling together and bringing that joy of practice of food too.
Speaker 4:So any opportunity where I can bring something else that makes it more real, rather than some serious stuff that we always have to talk about. Food's that place of a relationship. For me, relationships, wow, that's really, really cool, I mean. That's why I think 12 Steps is successful, because it allows for us to know each other's story and brings us to a place where we are vulnerable and yet safe, right, so kind of creating a safe and a brave space allow us to build deeper relationship, and that's absent in a lot of, you know so, medicalized spaces where there's, like you know, I don't know if I can trust this doctor right, doctor right, and in the name of doing medical work, people's bodies have been experimented with, right, whether indigenous communities have been experimented with, black communities have been experimented with and, as a result, that historical mistrust right has been built.
Speaker 4:So relationships don't exist. I'm just going to come here to you for my knee pain. I don't want to talk to you about anything else when your knee pain actually is related to your lifestyle, right, and yet medically we are not oriented to kind of build relationship to understand, like, how far do you walk, how much running do you do? What kind of sports did you do in the past, right. All of those things are like let me take an x-ray, let me tell you exactly what is going on with your knee, when it's not connected to your head, to your body and to your lived experience.
Speaker 4:So I think you know, in medical school people are trained to think liver, think heart, think lungs, versus the whole body, and that's lost oftentimes. And so I think relationship to oneself is very important. Often enough, we don't even build relationship with our own self, and so I want to invite us to think about how we are building relationship with ourself and then with our own self, right? And so I want to invite us to think about how we are building relationship with ourself and then with our community, because once that relationship is built, it becomes the nutrient for that development of the person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you make a really good point. You know that what they always say is the opposite of addiction is connection. And if I'm not even connected to myself, if I don't even know who I am, then how am I supposed to connect or relate to anybody else? Honestly, you guys, I am a pretty shy person, pretty introverted. At times and especially in early recovery, it was really hard for me to talk to people. I had to put a timer on my phone to even respond to my texts, Um. And it took work to to really connect with people and build true genuine connections and friendships, Um. But I took a lot of time to myself to really get to know who I am, what I like, what my favorite color is, what my favorite foods are. And now I live a really full life and, like I said, there's people that I relate to, people that I have different hobbies that I enjoy with and, yeah, recovery's been great all around.
Speaker 3:It takes time, awesome. Yeah, I love that you guys are talking about relationship with self, because I think that there's the expectation that we we talk about it externally and the things are motivation for recovery. Um, because someone else tells you you should do it, or someone is telling you that this is the path of righteousness or goodness, what's good and bad, but you're not really attending to your own needs too, and that self-care is really much ignored in our culture and you don't even know how to do it or how to even start doing it too. And I think that's true for almost anyone, not just those in use disorders, us health professionals in the work. We don't even attend to our own needs.
Speaker 3:In medical school residency, all I did was study. Right, I didn't think about what it meant for me to study for many, many hours just focusing on my books, not focusing on myself at all. But nowadays, a lot of you get to know my hobbies. I love cycling. I have a sauna. Cedric's been in my sauna. Y'all are going to be in my sauna. My friend Nico would tell me it should be sauna. I'm learning that correctly Sauna.
Speaker 3:The reason I have that is it is a place where we can just sit and just unwind.
Speaker 3:You can talk about all the stuff that's happened that day, but you are releasing so much of that that heat is inside yourself to the outside world. You don't have to even talk, be an introvert, and in fact I'm actually an introvert too, so it's a lot of hard work. It's giving me this face that doesn't believe me, but I'm telling you like I grew up in a family where we didn't share a whole lot. It's not instinctive and natural for me to be talking like this continuously. I'm usually that person in the corner just listening. Then I will self-reflect, maybe share a few words, but for me to be the focal point can be really hard. But you guys are making it easy for me that I can share together, and so, yes, share food, be in the sauna with me, go on a bike ride. Those are the places where it brings me joy and hopefully someday I can, I can share that joy with you all yeah, I just want to highlight, like, one of the things that often in the uh, audrey lord often talks about.
Speaker 4:right, because people hear the word self-care and it's like ah, whatever I say, you know, ari Lord reminds us that self-care is never about self-indulgence. Right, there is such thing as self-indulgence you indulge in things but self-care is about self-preservation. How are you preserving your humanity? And once you start to learn how to preserve your humanity, right, people get scared. Right, because they can't control you once you know how you're preserving humanity, right? So that's why she reminds us self-preservation is a political warfare, right? So let us work on self-care and community care. Love y'all.
Speaker 1:That dovetails perfectly with my next question. Thank you for opening that up. So I want to talk about spiritual practices, because it's been said directly, it's been described in the way you work, but I want to get some examples from you of how you prioritize or weave in spiritual practices not only to your work but your own life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for me I didn't necessarily believe in like a God or a higher power or creator. It took me a while. It took me a while to figure out, like I said, my own culture. You know, once I started to really practice, like praying to this thing in the sky that I have no name for, no idea of all I had to do was like, have faith that, okay, like whatever I'm praying to is going to work, once I started doing that and really learning about my own culture say like going to sweats and cedar ceremonies and being around other indigenous people and asking other people from different cultures what they do that's when my spiritual guide really started to grow.
Speaker 2:Also, you know, just working with a sponsor, my sponsor was able to really point out like, like okay, look at, look at all these times that you should have died honestly, um, and you didn't, um, she kind of pointed out, you know, like you've always had these guides, you've always had these angels, you've always had a higher power looking out for you and you're here today for a reason. And once I was able to see that, I really started to believe and just introducing other people to these cedar ceremonies and the sweats that we go to every other week. Once we started to practice that, then it really, like you know, my spiritual, my spiritualness really started to grow. And it's just amazing, once, once you have that faith and a higher power, it just everything changes. You know, it's like I don't have to control everything anymore.
Speaker 3:I did not grow up religious. I'm not even sure what spiritual is. To be honest, my family, our religion, is called Cao Dai. It's a minority religion in Vietnam. Majority of people in Vietnam are probably Buddhists or practice some sort of form of Taoism. My dad came from a Buddhist family but he didn't really practice.
Speaker 3:And Gaudism is a universal religion, monotheistic God, but universal that you can technically practice being a Muslim or Catholic and still be in our religion, with the idea that religions evolved over time and that's why we have different religions. But there was one unifying religion originally, maybe my religion God. I realize that, I don't know. I don't know that's true or not. I think it's cool in that way that we all came from the same space and same people together and so we are very united in that. So I believe in that. But my spirituality is sharing that story again.
Speaker 3:And so for me growing up we did go to a Buddhist temple. Again, I'm not Buddhist at all, but the reasons my family brought me to the Buddhist temple growing up was I would go to Sunday Vietnamese class and force me to learn Vietnamese. I speak with a funny Vietnamese accent now, or I guess, an English accent to my Vietnamese. That's where I got to hang out with the other Vietnamese kids. That's where I got to see my Vietnamese elders and I would do, you know this, buddhist ceremonies there and actually when I go back and I think about it, there was a sin. That parts of my life too, even though not at all Buddhist and don't practice at all. But I think it goes back to the cultural pieces too. It's Kat telling us about the journey of what it means to be indigenous, and for me, what is my journey to be Vietnamese, and Raj's story too, what it means to be going back to your roots in general. I think that's the spiritual part that I think about when you ask that question.
Speaker 4:Yeah, spirituality is a very I don't know. For me it's complex, right, because I think in the Armstrong I think it's a name she writes the history of God and interesting capture of how the formation of God in various monotheistic religions came about. In Karen Armstrong, right, it's a fascinating concept of like how societies and communities and cultures create this concept of God. Right, how in the indigenous cultures they often talk about grandfather right as being the creator right, the concept of creator right, and in other cultures, in other religions, have all these concepts of God, I think. But there are these sort of intersections in the values that we give to this godhood and for me, understanding those religions and practices allows me to understand the wisdom of these practices.
Speaker 4:In Islam, right, when I converted but never really practiced, understood like fasting is a fascinating spiritual awakening. Right, like the month of fasting for me is the most important month in the calendar, best right I realized my entire body changes and there is like values of giving right in the month of fasting practiced a lot more than throughout the lunar calendar. So there are ways that you can take lessons from various cultures and communities and understand the spiritual impact. Spiritual to me is when it impacts your body, because your body is a deposit of past and it keeps course. And when you understand how that history impacts you is when you are embedding spirituality in your recovery. I want to pivot just a little bit.
Speaker 1:I wanted to get back to talking about Project ECHO and how you're challenging institutional norms when it comes to substance use treatment.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So at ANU, the Women's Treatment Center again, that I work at, we have just incorporated a DEI committee. Dei stands for diversity, equity and inclusion. You know equity it goes back to you know how are we, how are our treatments? Person-centered. Base, the way that treatment is set up is, you know, like it was talked about before, is for, you know, one person. This way, you know, we're teaching everybody different ways. Everybody has their own treatment plan, but ultimately we're all going to reach the same goal. Ultimately, we're all going to get back to health. We're going to all get back to recovery. We're all going to be happy in the end. Health, we're going to all get back to recovery. We're all going to be happy in the end, even if our path to that looks different.
Speaker 3:You know I'm thinking about going back to again my usual day in clinic at a community university healthcare center, cooc in South Minneapolis in the Phillips neighborhood is I. You know I have maybe around eight to 10 patients in a half day. I'm booked at you know 20-minute settings for each individual and then I have to think the billing, what their diagnosis is and all the computer stuff I do with Epic. But it removes all that person that we have to work with and where they're coming from. Medications are great Hands down. They work. There's a science behind that. When I'm talking about buprenorphine, suboxone, methad down, they work. There's a science behind that. When I'm talking about buprenorphine, suboxone, methadone, they work. It changes the chemistry in their brain. It's what they need. Individuals need it who are dealing with use disorders with opioids. But it's not the end of the story, right? And so the medical industry tells me give them medication, then move on to the next person. Write that script, move on to the next person. But that's not the end of the story for the individual. It's the healing. Afterwards I can change all the chemicals in their body, but it doesn't help with the healing and the recovery. It doesn't change what their life is like when they go outside the clinic. It doesn't change what their life is like when they go outside the clinic. And so for me, as a physician, to stay in that room, that clinical room, and not actually know what's happening in the individual's life, I'm not helping that person. At the end of the day, I'm just removing that bandage from them, and now they're just suffering from their wounds. So I have to be in the community. I have to break down those walls, I have to share that story. I have to understand that trauma. It takes a lot of work for me. I don't get paid for that. Project Echo is not paying a whole lot for this work. I get a lot of joy being in space together for you. So it's okay for me not to be paid for it because I get paid in other ways. That's okay at this very moment in time. But I think if we're going to do this work right, you know people need to be paid for their work, maybe financially, monetarily. But there's a lot of other ways that we can support each other and I think sometimes we have to think outside the box, and that's okay. We're going to be pioneers in this and going back to saying that, hey, I'm not the expert in this at all. I'm very much a learner in this space with you all, tell me what I'm doing wrong, tell me how I can do better. If I'm doing it right. I'm going to keep on doing that work too.
Speaker 4:But we're going to share this work together. I think, right. Thanks, doc, the way you talk and the way you were talking about, you know, project ECHO to me is a process of decolonizing the practice. Right, like when we think about addiction, there's always sort of a rudimentary fundamental science behind it. This is, these are the steps you take, you know, in order to break down, break away from uh dependency on chemicals, but then realize, like you know, there is not just uh science to it, there's a culture to it. Right, and how these cultures in the indigenous communities. There is no like alcohol presence here. It was forced on the indigenous communities and now some of the, some of the communities that are impacted by alcoholism are our indigenous communities. Right, large presence of of drugs and and alcohol in our indigenous when it wasn't part and parcel of their culture, it was forced. So, coming rooting back to the culture allows them to break free from what has been imposed, so sort of the process of decolonizing, right, decolonizing from those practices.
Speaker 4:So I appreciate what you just said, right, and if you know, people were listening to it. Right, don't get caught up in this highfalutin terms. Right, decolonizing for me is about right, allowing my body to be free, right, liberated from the tentacles of sort of the white supremacist ideologies, ideologies that tell me I need to be an expert, I need to work like 40 hours, 50 hours, 60 hours a day, right, and have a house. You know, all of those type of like white supremacist ideology and practices of success keeps me wedded to my addiction right. And if I break away from it and really enjoy what I do truly and come to work with joy right and be in the community with joy and connections and relationships and trust right, I can easily break away from the dependence for drugs because I have my community to lean on and swim in, but otherwise I was swimming in addictions, swimming in drugs. So I appreciate the idea of decolonizing how we show up and ECHO allowing us to do that.
Speaker 1:What are you looking forward to with Project ECHO allowing us to do that? What are you?
Speaker 4:looking forward to with Project ECHO. I will just quickly say I'm really excited about really sitting in a circle with the communities of color, especially Black communities and our Indigenous communities, our East African communities and others who are caught up in addiction, to allow them to create a safe and a brave space where they can share their stories and once they share their stories and finding the beauty in their stories and connecting that beauty, sort of like growth mindset, allowing for the resilience in their stories to come and weave a fiber around them to allow them to heal from addiction.
Speaker 3:Now we are here together because of Project Echo. I don't know if I would have known each of you at this point in time without this project at all, and I've gotten to know Cedric over the last couple years and just newly learning about Raj here, and then Kat now coming into the picture, and Joanna you all are cool people 100%. And the funny thing is when I talk to Cedric, cedric is a tall man. I'm a short man, and it is funny when we are together, it's a sight, and it's especially a sight when we're on bicycles too. So there are going to be so many stories to be had when we talk about Project Echo.
Speaker 3:It's going to be just fun outside the work we do, definitely going to share bread together, and so I think that the relationships that we build from this, the friendships that we build from this and that we're just going to spread out from there too, certainly there's going to be a lot of learning that's going to be had too. I'm going to learn so much from each of you as individuals. I'm going to be excited to see the projects that come out of it, that's from the community, built by the community rather than even built by the medical school or by the institutions, the healthcare system I'm part of too. Real work, real impact. That's the amazing part I'm really excited about Is the sauna built for this big man to enter.
Speaker 3:The man's been in it, you will be in it, we'll all be in it at some point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know if it was even talked about yet, but some of the most affected communities are the indigenous and black communities, the most affected by fentanyl, specifically, or, or and other opioids. So I'm most excited to learn from you guys, my colleagues and also you guys that are listening on. You know how, what can we do? How can we really think outside of the box? What can we do to help fight this, because you know our people are struggling out there. When I drive around the cities, you know it's it's mostly minorities that I see on the corner and I really feel for that. You know I have a lot of empathy. You know I've been there, I've been through this and you know I just really want to do something to help and I think it takes all of us to do that.
Speaker 1:Tell us Koo about the communities that Project ECHO hopes to impact.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think the original idea is to work with three specific communities. We've been talking about the Indigenous community, the East African community and the African American Black community too. I think that's just a starting point. Honestly, the idea is to be going beyond those communities, but it's overwhelming to really do that focal point of change and impact. Those are the communities I think we identify initially as the communities that we can serve and make those changes and on, because I think at the end of the day is, it goes back to those families, those communities, how each person wants to see their life, how to be seen, how we can make those changes and learn more about that. I think this is just really a starting point of those three communities open to have other communities involved in these discussions too.
Speaker 3:So I don't want to be exclusive just on that. My connections over time in those communities is part of the work. Why those three communities have been set forward too. It's also kind of the communities that we have talked about from, I think, from Minnesota state level. If you talk about the data in general, those are the three communities that are probably suffering the most. That's easily the most seen and that we're collecting on. The truth is, I know there's other communities of color that are suffering just as much too, that have just as much needs in that. So, starting point, not the end point Welcome more individuals to bring some of those stories together so we can think about how we can best serve Minnesota.
Speaker 1:How does Project ECHO propose helping these communities?
Speaker 3:So the infrastructure of Project ECHO is built on those three communities where we have community facilitators. Raj is one of them. He's serving the African-American community. We have two other community facilitators that have those identities from those communities. They're connected and networked in those communities, are one of the voices for those communities too. The idea is, again, the expertise is within the community. I don't have all those lived experiences, and that's okay. I don't expect anyone to have that. But what we can do is lean on the work that's actually happening in the community rather than reinventing that. We are welcomed into that community. Sharing, collaborating I can bring is my expertise in the healthcare system, how to navigate some of that, the complicated parts of that. How do we connect the physicians, the healthcare providers who have those, that knowledge, some of that power, and bring it together with people who are in the community, the leaders who actually know what's happening and we can actually make changes together.
Speaker 1:So how do listeners connect to Project Echo?
Speaker 3:Gosh, I'm not great with social media. I think I need a LinkedIn account or something like that. Don't use TikTok a whole lot Instagram. I have my email. Y'all welcome to email me. Fom P-H-A-M-0-0-7-9 at umnedu. Send me an email. Joanna Cedric, you got your information. With Empower, too, I work also with Minnesota Doctors for Health Equity. That's a nonprofit group with a working board of healthcare providers and others in the community. Yeah, send me an email is probably a first start, but maybe we should build a social media presence so you can connect us that way. The Project Echo is a larger group, a consortium of other topics too, and there's leadership with Hennepin Health there that you can reach out to. But yeah, send me a message. Happy to be that center point.
Speaker 2:And look out for our TikTok, tiktok yeah.
Speaker 4:And also, you know, I think it's important that you recognize people in recovery in your own sort of neighborhood, in your own communities. And Project ECHO is not the be all end all, but it is a way of connecting, understanding people's stories and narratives. But there are stories and narratives in your own community, so how do you connect with them? Right, through connections and attending events and starting to talk about addiction and recovery? Right, and unless you talk about it, other people are not going to come out and say they're in recovery. It seems like saying it is still not welcome in many of our communities.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then Kat is one of our fellows too, ooh yes, and we have several other fellows with different identities and backgrounds and experiences, where there are healthcare providers of lived experiences too, I'm assuming we'll probably publish their names and able to share their information in the future. So certainly those are folks that we can reach out to, or you can reach out to for the listeners.
Speaker 1:Tell us a little bit about the fellowship and the goal of the fellowship.
Speaker 3:My idea and maybe Kat can fill this in too what she's thinking about is that it goes back to the idea that I have my own ideas that may work in terms of helping those with addiction.
Speaker 3:Again, I don't have lived experiences my identity as a physician and how I function of prescribing medications or referring people to the right networks or therapy or organizations, or therapy or organizations, but there's a lot more ideas out there that I'm not conscious of or know anything about, and what I recognize is we need to build a team of people that are already doing the work and have ideas beyond me too, and so that's why we have fellows.
Speaker 3:We um they're basically people that are just Brad right, um that can share with me other ways of experiences of what it means to recover, what it means to support each other overall. So my hope is I'm just going to let them do the work. Some of this work that we're doing is kind of building a plan as we fly it, feeling a little bit uncomfortable where that's going to lead us, but trusting that process of leaning on each other and support of whatever you're going to offer up to us. We're going to push forward on that, but I'll kind of give it to Kat. What do you think what that means to be a fellow?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I think that each of us are all experts at our own thing. We all have something to share, we all have our own experiences and, for me, being a fellow is working with each of you and, you know, hopefully like being more out in the community, doing outreach, getting to know like, okay, where are these people struggling at and how can we help. You know, we all have something to bring to the table, no matter, like, what our background is. Yeah, being a fellow is really just learning and I like the fact that we're learning as we go. I am somebody that I'm very type B, unorganized, but I get things done. You know, I'm also a recovering addict and I feel us recovering addicts, we get stuff done, like we just do, you know, um.
Speaker 4:So yeah, I'll pass it on to Raj no, I'm I'm excited because I'm kind of working with uh Sophie, who is one of the fellows right, and Sophie's running a East African community circle every Friday. Uh, at 1100 is uh Lake Street, so if you ever want to show up, everybody is welcome. So it's mostly focused on east african communities and food is provided, right, uh, and good, amazing stories from our young adults who are in recovery and how they share and how they show up with their vulnerability, with their joy, with their connection to their religion. Right, it's like wow, you are surrounded by people who are really doing the practice versus just the verbiage of recovery.
Speaker 1:Anything else you care to share before we end recovery, anything else you care to share.
Speaker 4:Before we end, I just want to say you know, I think, just you feel, if you are listening and you're in recovery or thinking about what does that mean? Right, ask, seek help. Like you know, unless you use your voice, you're not going to be heard. Like you know, unless you use your voice, you're not going to be heard. And you're not the only one who is in struggle. There are many judges that I know who are in recovery, physicians that I know in recovery, there are police and lawyers. I mean there are so many multiple ways where addiction has consumed the lives of many different professions, professionals. So no, there's no. Shame and guilt will not get us there, right, and so shame and guilt. There's one elder in Oakland once told us you know his like book covers, right, the purpose of book covers are to shut you down. So tear those book covers away and expose yourself.
Speaker 3:I don't want Project Echo to be an academic exercise. I want it to be beyond just something we wrote down on paper and we did someday and we just look back there. I want us to be present together. I want you, as a listener, to be engaged and activated, excited. Realize that you are empowered to make change. We are part of your connection here. Please reach out to us. You are important in this work, and so it is beyond just a few of us in this room sharing our stories right now. You are part of that work, and so when you hear something, you're excited about it. Let us know. If you hear something and that's completely wrong and we need to make some changes, let us know we're not perfect beings. We're here to share our stories and I want to hear your story too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the one thing about the addiction, about the disease of addiction, is it does not discriminate. It will creep. It will creep up on you at any time. It'll whisper in your ear, no matter who you are. If you're an addict, it's there. And I think the most important thing that I could tell you is to reach out when you need help. Email Koo, he got my email, he has my email. He'll pass it on to you. If you feel like you need to reach out for help, I'm here as well.
Speaker 1:We hope you enjoyed this conversation on Bridging the Gaps Reimagining Opioid Recovery podcast. Don't forget to subscribe to hear more stories about hope in recovery and see the links in our bio for more information on the fellowship and resources in our community.
