"What Are They Actually Reaching For? Navigating Teen Substance Use with Curiosity and Connection"

LAST EPISODE OF SEASON 4

In this episode, I’m sitting down with my friend Kim Porter, a Certified Family Recovery Specialist and a mom who has navigated the long, vulnerable road of her own child's recovery. Kim flips the script on how we talk to our kids about drugs, alcohol, and lifestyle choices. Instead of coming in as a "vigilante" in your own home, Kim teaches us the power of curiosity over judgment.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The "Why" Behind the High: Why kids are often "using the external to deal with the internal" and how to ask the powerful question: "What is it that you like about [substance]?"
• The Power of Body Language: How open hands and uncrossed arms can change the entire energy of a difficult conversation.
• Protecting the Child vs. Protecting the Addiction: Why making the "bad things go away" for our kids can actually keep them stuck in the cycle.
• The Divided Front: How a disagreement between parents on how to handle substance use can inadvertently create space for the addiction to thrive.
• Connection as Prevention: Understanding that at the core of most substance use is a deep desire for connection and a way to cope with internal pain.
• The Long Game: Accepting that addiction is a chronic, relapsing disease that requires a journey of vulnerability and learning, not a quick fix.

Kim reminds us that while addiction doesn’t happen overnight, neither does recovery. This conversation is an invitation to put down the armor, lead with love, and start truly listening to what our kids are reaching for.

Connect with Kim & Her Work:

• Organization: Be a Part of the Conversation
• Resources: Discover community programs, support groups, and educational tools for families in Pennsylvania and beyond.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Keep Em Healthy with Jamie, your go-to classroom for integrative kids' health and wellness. I'm Jamie, a biology professor, an integrative health coach, and most importantly, a mom who's been through it all. When the conventional medical system couldn't provide the answers my own child needed, I took my background in anatomy, physiology, and nutrition and went looking for a better way. Join me as I chat with experts and physicians to help you decode your child's biology and psychology from childhood through young adulthood. If you're ready to stop guessing and start understanding, you're in the right place. Let's keep them healthy together. Welcome back to the show, everyone. So we often hear the headlines about the latest trends or epidemics affecting our youth. And this is what this podcast is about kids and keeping health. But what we're gonna be talking about today is what are kids actually reaching for. Today we are diving into the heart of substances. And the vital role of the family. And to help us know to welcome the home with the co-founder and the director of the heart of the conversation. She spent over a decade creating programs that turn fear into awareness and isolation into community, which is beautiful. Today she is here to help us understand this landscape of adolescent substance use and how we can better support families moving through it. So, Kim, thank you so much for being here. So, Kim, I'm gonna start you off here. What inspired you to start the be part or be a part of the conversation back in 2011?

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Right. Well, I I call myself the co-founder because it wasn't just me. I was actually working as a marketing consultant for a nonprofit that worked with the school district, a K-12 school district in Montgomery County called Hapro Horsham. And they wanted to revamp their drug and alcohol program and talk with community members about the impact of addiction on the community and young people and their families and so on. And because I worked very closely with that district and my children were were students there in their young lives, I said, hey, I'd really love to help with this. My son at that time, that was in 2011, and at that time, my son had one year in recovery. Today he has 16 years in recovery. So that that explains the longevity of the organization and my son's healthy journey. But uh I was really a graphic designer, marketer, and so I just wanted to help get the word out. But what I realized pretty quickly was there's a lot of uh hunger for information about this because 2011, around that time was when opioid use was really ramping up from prescribed opioids into illicit opioids, such as heroin and which has morphed into a whole lot of other uh uh drug supply. But there was a lot of interest in talking about this and trying to for people trying to understand how this is happening. I mean, we were seeing heroin in high schools at that time. Thankfully, that has been shifting. Well, some good news and some bad news, which we can talk more about, but it was just a sort of a um fertile ground for a lot of need for information about about addiction, how it happens, and how to intervene and hopefully help people find a path to recovery.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

Well, first of all, congratulations on your son's healthy journey. That's awesome. And and thank you for being an active member in the community to help educate students. Um, you know, I have kids that are teens and younger now, so this is super important for the entire community. But I wanted to ask you, because be part of the conversation and what you talk about is, you know, as a parent, when you were going through this, like when did you realize that the impact was on the whole family and not just the individual?

SPEAKER_01 4:13

You know, as when you're going through it as the parent, and let me just back up to say I'm also the daughter of someone in recovery. I've got a dad well into his 90s who got sober at the age of 66. So I grew up around alcoholism. And uh it really is a very different dynamic when it's your child. So to see the impact it was having on our family, it really took a long time for me to see that because I was so hyper-focused on him. You know, I'm his parent. I'm his, you know, his dad and I were both pretty dysfunctional at the time because all we could think about was how we can help Daniel, what's going on with this behavior. And it doesn't happen overnight necessarily. I mean, it can, but usually the first exposure that we have or the first real acceptance that something's going on here is well down the road. After because, you know, when a young person initially picks up a substance, whether they're dipping into their parents' liquor cabinet kind of thing, or where their friend offers them, you know, a hit from their vape, and whether it's nicotine or cannabis, whatever, it doesn't have this instant addiction, you know, that not everybody has a problem with it. They they can try it once in a while and go on managing their young lives. But for some folks like my son, they love it, they want more of it, more frequency, more potency, and that sort of thing. But that takes some time quite often because they're having to keep it under the radar so much. So by the time things really escalated, our son was really hurting, really addicted, and we were panicked and not sure where to turn. So I can tell you, looking back about the impact, was that dysfunction that, and we were fortunate that we didn't have this in our family, but I've seen it hundreds of times since then, where families are very divided because one parent is saying, This is just what kids do, it's not a big deal. I I messed around with this stuff too, and I'm fine, where the other parent might be kind of with our hair on fire, saying, like, we have to do something, we have to do something. So it creates so much discord confusion, and I always say fear was my number one emotion for those really rough years before Daniel found recovery.

SPEAKER_02 6:23

Absolutely. So, so when you, as a parent, when you are starting to see the trends, and and like you said, you're you said it wasn't just like a one day and he chose to do that and you figured it out. It was a long period of time by the time that you saw the impact, it had been a long period of time. So I'm just curious, um, because the title of your episode is what the kids are actually reaching for. So, you know, when they reach for that substance, whether it was your son or someone else, what are they usually trying to find or escape?

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Well, it's it can be a lot of different things. I think probably, at least in my son's case, it was connection, which is probably pretty common.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Young people want to connect, they want to fit in, they want to be accepted. If there's any kind of social anxiety, they're looking for that way to feel like they're part of the I'll tell you this quick story. Uh, someone who works in the treatment field and he's a he's a grown adult with who's in recovery, but he try describes himself as a 13-year-old, all elbows and braces, as he described himself, which I love that visual, going to his first dance. And he was not a cool kid, but the cool kids offered him a shot of vodka. And he tried it and he had he loved the feeling. It was his first time having any kind of mood-altering substance. Now these cool guys were talking to him. Now a cute girl might have even been talking to him, and he felt less intimidated. And he said, What's not to love? I was off to the races. So that's that's a big one. But again, that doesn't mean that everyone who has that initial experience is going to want more and more and bigger and and to keep going. So it's just sort of a bit of Russian roulette when that very vulnerable neuroplastic brain introduces that kind of substance to know how this is going to go from here. Um, and of course, they don't have the executive function to say, this might be a bad idea. You know, that's just not there yet. So it's it's a very vulnerable time. Yes, and I think that for others, what they're reaching for is either an escape, like there's some trauma, there's some mental health challenge. So it might be, I just want to feel differently. Um, I want to feel less if it's trauma. If it's someone like my son who's extremely creative and artistic and musical, and he wanted more, so he was reaching for a different kind of substance, which ultimately later became he does not have ADHD, but he was using Adderall illegally. You know, he was getting it illegally and using it and snorting it, which you're definitely not supposed to do. But it's an amphetamine, so he liked the feeling of more. He also got into club drugs, so what he was reaching for was very different from someone who wanted to numb the pain of trauma, of family discord, of that social anxiety, whatever that might be. So there it's it's the ages, you know, is it it's a timeless kind of a thing where um problems come about when we're using an external to deal with an internal. And that could be you know, doom scrolling on TikTok or cell phones or whatever, you know, it could be so many things that are just a way to escape what's in front of us.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Absolutely. I like that statement when you said it's an external to deal with something internal. And I think right now, when you talk even about connection, which of them like kind of peeling back a little bit from earlier here, when you talk about connection, I think that is something that as teenagers and you're in these awkward stages, that's something that um I think is hard in this moment for teenagers because of all the phone use, and so there's a lot of disconnect because they're thinking that their connection is coming through messaging or social media and things like that. And then when they're out together, they're awkward, so they're putting phones in their faces as a blockade of having to deal with the awkwardness. And so I could see how that story you told about the young man who decided once he had a shot of vodka, he felt he found it easier to socialize. You know, I can see how whether it's a phone, whether it's vodka, whether whatever it is, these children are making these connections without, like you said, that executive functioning, making these connections of like, oh, that was easy. So all I need is A for B and C to happen. So it was like whether A is alcohol or A is that phone, then B and C will happen. And that's how you can get caught up in bad habits. What do you think about that?

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Exactly. I agree 100% with the way you lay that out. That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_02 10:36

Okay, awesome. So then my next question would be is okay, so we have parents that are listening right now, and maybe some of them are listening, being like, oh gosh, like I connect my child with the wanting more or maybe wanting less. What would you say is their first step in moving from fear that you mentioned to conversation?

SPEAKER_01 10:51

So first you want to put the oxygen mask on yourself before your child, right? So to take care of ourselves is counterintuitive, but we do need to sort of take a breath. I would definitely try to align with the other parent as much as possible, whether you're under the same roof or not, to just sort of say, look, here's what I'm experiencing. What are you experiencing? How do we want to go forward with this? What's really important is be curious rather than what I did, which way before I really understood a lot of these challenges, Daniel's father and I would lecture him, which was not necessarily effective because while I'm lecturing him about these bad decisions he's making, he's probably thinking, could just want to go get high right now. So um it really comes down to like, I'd really like to understand why this is a choice you're making right now. Like, what is it that that has you interested in this? Let's let's just say it's it's THC, right? Because vaping is a big thing right now, and there's nicotine or it could be THC. So why is it that you what what is it about this that you like that you feel might be helping you? Is there anything that you think might be hurting you? And just get curious, and even to be using body language that, you know, arms are not folded, maybe we're even our hands are open, sort of like help me understand this. So we're empowering our child to help us understand. So that way we're and now we're listening without judgment and hopefully without emotion, because it can be pretty scary. And if they tell us something that sounds like they're being truthful, validate that and and show some appreciation for that. Like, hey, I'm so glad you're being honest with me. Because we want to keep that going. We want to keep that conversation open so that if I suddenly am like, what were you thinking? Now I've shut down the conversation. Now they're not going to be so honest with me. So we want to invite that conversation and then say, can we can we look at some alternatives to like a lot of times a young pre person will say, it really helps me with stress, or it really helps me to get to sleep at night, or it who knows, it depends on the substance and again what they're looking for. But okay, so what are some things that you could be doing differently from that? If it's in a situation where the use has really become pretty consistent, problematic. There have even been some consequences where maybe they got in trouble at school, they got caught with a vape pen, whatever that is, to invite them to talk to someone other than you. So I know that I don't understand all of this. Even if I'm a parent who is in this field and understand, you know, whether it's mental health or or any kind of substance use field, I'm not necessarily the person for them to talk to about this because I'm their parent and that's gonna really complicate things. So I would really love for you to talk to someone because I don't have all the answers for this. And I would really love for us to work together to find a better way for you to cope with some of these things, or um if it's really just about fitting in. And it's a really tall order to say to a young person if all of their best friends are doing this, and kids definitely think if they if they're making this choice, they want to believe that everybody does this. And I hear this all the time. And my son absolutely said this to me. You're you're overreacting, mom. Everybody gets high, everybody does this. And they actually don't. You know, we know that from data, from research, that it's really only roughly a third of kids who even experiment, and it's a smaller percentage of that of kids who have problems with it, you know, to to kind of work, reinforce the um these these are social norms that are that are not real. They're bedded in you're you're wanting to validate this. And so just to help them understand that this is not what everybody's doing, despite what you might think. And we could sit there and argue and look at websites all day long, and I can show my child one thing that says this might be harmful, and they can show me another website that says, no, this is really helpful. It's really like, okay, this is going against our value system as a family. We're not gonna allow illicit substances into our home. And by the way, alcohol is an illicit substance if you're under 21. You're not allowed to be using that. So that's not not allowed, it's not legal, and I'm not gonna provide it to you. So why is it that we're we're violating the law basically because you want to feel a certain way? We can't do that. So it's a very delicate um kind of process where we want to be honest about our values and and our integrity as a parent, yet keep that conversation going. And Jamie, even before all of this is a preventative measure to not use disparaging language when you hear about a family member, a neighbor, something like, or even a celebrity who's having a problem with or who's using substances was under the influence, whatever it looks like. And you know, I've heard stories where like people will say, like, oh my God, this kid down the street, the ambulance or the police have been there three times in the last six months. You know, let's not use disparaging language about that person because our kids hear that and they're like, they can't find out that I'm doing this too, or that I just saw my big brother doing this, or my best friend wants me to try this with them. We want to say, you know, wonder why that neighbor is having so many problems. What do you think? You know, so to invite those kinds of conversations.

SPEAKER_02 16:12

Wow, this is really helpful and um great information, Kim. Thank you so much for that. I was I have a question. You mentioned that your dad had alcohol abuse um during your life as well. Did that help set you up as a parent for success in knowing the signs and symptoms? Or do you think that made you more fearful? Like how did that work in your dynamic?

SPEAKER_01 16:32

Thanks for asking that. It's a really interesting it's just shift for me because no, when I was younger and my father was visibly intoxicated, I was embarrassed, I was angry. Um, I wanted him to just get it together. I didn't understand this at all, what this behavior was. I was worried about my mother, but it's just so honestly, the biggest benefit that came from that experience was that when my dad was at his breaking point, I was in my mid-20s, I guess. I'm 64 now, so this is a long time ago. But I wanted to try to help get him into treatment. And so when he had some consequences like a DUI and a bleeding ulcer, he ended up with a counselor, thankfully, who asked me to write him a letter to explain how this impacted me because I can't try to convince somebody that I'm worried about your alcohol use, your drug use. They're just gonna say, Don't worry, I'm fine. So, what I had to say was, Dad, this is how it's affecting me. I can't sleep when I hear your voice on the phone and I know you're drunk, then I'm wrecked for the rest of the day. I'm worried about mom, you know, like he can't argue with me about how this is impacting me. So that helped a lot. The other thing that helped was through a dear friend, I was told about adult children of alcoholics. So again, in my is now it's my late 20s, I now have my son Daniel as a baby. And I was taking him in a car carrier to go to these, these are 12-step meetings that are similar to an AA meeting, except the people going are adult children of alcoholics. And that helped me so much to understand the family dynamic. So that fast forward to when my son was 21 and entered treatment for his drug addiction, I was now very willing to go to an Al-Anon meeting or a Nar-Anon meeting. And these are 12-step meetings for families who are impacted by their loved ones' addiction. And I was so willing because I knew it worked. I knew it worked for my dad and I knew it worked for me. But then since then, we've created these parent partnership meetings through our organization. And so we have all these opportunities for parents in particular to come together because as much as I advocate for Al-Anon and Naranon, you're there with spouses and other family members. The parental role is really unique in this because of the fear, because I've been this child's advocate from the time they came into my life. And now I'm supposed to behave very differently and not fix this for them and not make all the consequences go away. That doesn't mean I'm not going to support them appropriately, but it's a different dynamic. So the juxtaposition of my relationship to my dad and his alcohol use history is just so different, but at least it prepared me for being open to getting help from myself.

SPEAKER_02 19:27

So interesting. So it did give you some the positive of that whole experience was it helped prepare you for your next experience, which how could you predict? And then obviously moving forward, you became a certified family recovery specialist. So, with doing that, what do you do to help that family heal together?

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Sure. So that's a peer specialist certification that's overseen by the Pennsylvania Certification Board. So the only requirement to do the training and receive that certification is to have lived experience, and um, which I do. And so other there's another certification, CRS, the certified recovery specialist. They work with they're people who have lived experience with addiction and they're now in recovery and they're kind of a coach for others who are seeking that. Whereas I'm working with the family member who's going through this. And so we are very different from a therapeutic process, which is where a clinician is not necessarily going to disclose their own history. They're going to focus on the patient or the client. I am actually bringing in my own personal experience so that not all the time, but just as a way to be relatable to say, like, yes, I've been through this. When I make myself vulnerable by saying when my son was in college before he got sober, you know, he was heavily addicted, was um, he got in trouble out in the University of Arizona. I jumped on a plane and went out there and hired a lawyer and and found him another place to live when he got kicked out of his dorm. I was doing all these things to try to make the bad stuff go away. And when I say that, I'm kind of throwing myself under the bus a little bit so that they'll be honest with me about some of the things that they're doing that are what we call protecting addiction. We're not actually protecting our child, we're protecting the addiction that that's growing in them. And so when I share that, it hopefully helps take away the shame a little bit to say, like, I'm like so many other parents who have done this because all we want is what's best for our kid. And we do things that we think are helping them, and it's not necessarily helping them. And so it does bring up a lot of their honesty about this, but also um, I've been down this road. I can shine a light for you. It's a dark, scary place. It's going to be okay. You know, we can at least get you sleeping better at night and maybe not mortgaging your house for the second or third time, you know, so that you can pay for yet another treatment. Maybe there's some things you haven't considered because we've got this vast network of recovery support systems. Out here that I certainly did not know about. Um, that why would anyone know about this? And even a lot of healthcare professionals, if you go to a pediatrician or primary health physician, they don't always know, it's not necessarily their lane to understand all of this. And so sometimes it's people who've been through it who are gonna help you the most.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

Absolutely. And like you said, you shine a light in this dark, scary time, and you also shown your vulnerability with being like, hey, it's a journey. I am here helping you today, but I was also you at one point. And I had to figure, you know, I people helped me, so now I'm helping you. And so when you are having these conversations with the parents, what are some of the biggest myths or some of the biggest things that you tackle basically that are consistent with a lot of the families that you see about the teen drug use and what's going on in their family?

SPEAKER_01 22:48

Quite often, and I kind of alluded to this earlier, quite often there is a parent, one parent who is is trying to minimize this. It's not a big deal, it's not a big deal. But there's a lot of denial here because who wants to believe their child has an addiction, right? And so what, and I fell prey to this in a way too, because when when Daniel first got into some trouble in college, as I mentioned, when he was an undergraduate, we took him to see a therapist who was not an addiction. She did not specialize in addiction, she was a mood and anxiety disorder specialist, who actually our daughter happened to see, you know, and so we thought, oh, she's great, you know, we'll take Daniel see her. Well, she didn't know the right questions to ask. So he he completely uh, you know, eluded the right kinds of things to say or the things that that she needed to hear because he wanted to keep using. Of course he wasn't honest, and of course he made up stories about, like, oh, well, there's one other time that I got high that my parents don't know about, so that she could feel like she was really getting something out of this. And so he said, Oh, yeah, you can talk with my parents. So she brought us into the room with him, and we were all together after they met, and she said to his dad and me right in front of him, Come on, didn't you guys get high when you were young? You know, just didn't understand it. We we took him to the wrong person. She's not a bad therapist, she just wasn't the right one for him. So I think that that denial, um, I don't think that's necessarily a myth that you're looking for or whatever, but it's like that denial is a barrier, the not being on the same page, um, and also just believing that if they will um go to therapy, they'll stop doing this immediately, everything's gonna be okay, and we don't have to worry anymore. But we all need to make changes in that family. So there could be other siblings who've been impacted. We're still sitting with all of that fear waiting for the other shoe to drop. So thinking that it's just about the person using the substance who needs to get the help, it's not, it's all of us because unfortunately, addiction is a chronic relapsing disease. This means that it is not one and done. Often many of us will talk about the analogy of diabetes. If you're diagnosed with diabetes, you don't go to one treatment program, you know, one doctor's appointment, get your medication, and like you're good for life. You're gonna need to monitor this and check your diet and check are you on the right level of medication, whatever that looks like, or heart disease or anything. It's it's chronic, it's ongoing, and you need to keep ahead of it. And that's the same with substance use, especially once it has progressed into addiction. It is something that needs to be addressed for a very long time. And we can't expect our loved one to do this alone. We need to understand it so that we can support them in an appropriate way going forward.

SPEAKER_02 25:34

Absolutely. And so with the the family having to keep up chronically, like as you're what what is the what would you say the parent's role is that? Because you don't want to be the like always checking in, being like, are you getting high now? Are you not? You know, what would you say is the appropriate parent role? Let's just say they went through therapy and at this point in time they've been sober and clean for six months, whatever it is. Like, what is the parent's role at this point?

SPEAKER_01 26:00

Would you say right? Yeah, I don't want any parent to live as a vigilante in their own home, you know. And and we often get asked the question, like, should I be drug testing them? You know, there's some cases where that might be appropriate, but if, you know, really, do I want that kind of when you're drug testing someone, you have to watch them urinate into a cup, you know? That is, you have to watch them because there's so many ways to to fool those tests and things. And nobody really wants to have that kind of relationship with their child. So if they have agreed to go to some kind of treatment, inpatient or outpatient, almost all of those outpatient programs in particular, which can follow inpatient too, have a way to maintain or monitor going forward. Like let the professionals do this. Tell your child this is part of the deal, right? You're going to continue to be checked up on. So it's mental hygiene, not just just like this. Is one of our therapists, Mike Blanche, who says this. It's not just like we have dental hygiene where every six months we go and get our teeth cleaned or whatever. We also should have mental hygiene. Like kind of all of us should have this, right? Where we where we take a look at these challenging relationships or whatever. So, in the case with children in this situation, we're gonna keep checking in on this because obviously there was something going on in your psyche where you wanted to feel differently. Now you're you're abstaining from that. That's great, but we want to make sure that there's not um a desire to go back to that, making that choice or that behavior. So just in and modeling it and saying, you know, I'm gonna keep taking care of myself by going to these support group meetings or by um seeing a therapist myself because this was really hard on me. And so just to encourage that ongoing oversight, not vigilanteism, not, you know, and just to say, if we have a child who has been using some of these things, like it's absolutely appropriate to say, like, hey, I'm gonna need to take a look inside your backpack, or I'm gonna need to, you know, you know, check out your room or something like that. It doesn't have to be all the time. It's not a police state, and kids will tell you they need privacy, and we certainly want to respect their privacy, but we also know that this is my home, and there were some things in our our home that were not supposed to be here. So I might need to check on this once in a while. And this is not about trust, this is about love because I love you and I don't want you um to be hurt and and have our family go through this again. So we can find a balance with that. Um, you know, we we get a spidey sense after a while of when things are not really looking too healthy with our child. And so we can say, like, okay, I think it might be time um to go and visit, you know, the therapist again or whatever, or I might need to check your room or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 28:42

Absolutely. And I you're completely right about the spidey sense. Even just when I ask my children if they brush their teeth in the morning, you can tell by their face reaction, even just the way that their eyes are. You're like, I know the answer, whatever comes out of your mouth may or may not be, you know, incongruence with your face, but um you do know. And so I do think it's it's um responding and paying attention. Um but I also I love the way you communicate these things, you know, and the way your posture is that you've explained how important that is to create a safe place to talk about these things and to say, like state your needs as a parent. Hey, I need to check a room every once in a while because it's good for you, it's good for me, you know. And so I wanted to pull back and just you know, all this information has been so important for families who are listening and maybe have had children and who had had children struggle. But what let's just say that you are now embarking on raising teenagers that are entering high school and you already have some fear in general just from hearsay of what from the community of what's going on in the community, and and just you know, you're trying to be aware as well that you want to communicate that with your child without scaring them, or so what would your advice be communication-wise, just as a family conversation opener about what's happening in the community and right.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

Well, I think it's back to that curiosity. What are you hearing? What do you think? Um I'm hearing a lot about so you know, Jamie, we have so many programs throughout the year that are educational for communities at whole, at large, or um within specific school districts, and a lot of them are on our YouTube channel. So for a parent to say, you know, I just watched this recording of a program that was all about vaping, and I was surprised to learn this. Or nicotine is something that more and more kids are using, apparently. These are these zin mints that are dissolvable and they go along the gum line and they're really high, high levels of nicotine in them. Are you hearing about that? So just to be curious about it. And did you know that nicotine is really addictive and that nicotine can be in a lot of these vape products and all that kind of stuff? So just to open up those conversations and again to be really mindful of our body language as we're hearing what they say and the way we respond to it. And if they say something to us that is very upsetting, just take a breath as the parent and say, okay, well, we need to think about that a little bit. I want to talk with you more about this, but um, that's that's really I'm so glad you shared that with me. So just that curiosity and validation and absence of any judgmental language. And to, you know, I think if we have concerns about a friend group or anything like that, just to ask them how they're feeling about it. You know, how are you feeling about some of the changes and their choices, that sort of thing? Um, I really do think it's that, you know, when when they're getting to be into the high school years, we really are there. We have another clinician that we work with, Caroline Fenkel, who talks about how our role changes. So if by this time, we're a consultant, you know, they're they're an emerging adult, and we're here to just sort of be there as the adult who's got the um the frontal lobe fully myelinated and ready to uh talk about hard, hard decisions. We can even invite some role play. So, like, hey, have you ever gone to a friend's house or a party or anything where you're being offered something and you don't know how to handle it or how to say you don't want it? Because, you know, kids do talk about getting pressured or feel just even feeling the pressure. You know, it's not they say now it's not peer pressure, it's peer presence, just being around it. You feel like you need to do this to fit in. You know, well, let's kind of talk through how would you handle it if somebody's like was really insisting that you have a beer or or hit a vape or whatever. Um, how would you handle that? And because that's experiential learning to think it through and prepare for that question to come up. Or have you seen that happen or whatever? Just to again get curious.

SPEAKER_02 32:43

Absolutely. And and then for parents, that's super uncomfortable too, because half the time we still struggle in our peer dynamics of just even being like a woman, and and when you come out with friends and you're like, everyone gets a drink, and maybe you're not really feeling having a drink right now, but you're like, everyone else has one, so I have it, you know, and just even I think sharing that with your child to be like this is something that's going to be in your life now and like for forever. So, you know, we start practicing these skills now, and it gets easier as you state your boundaries or whatever it is that you're gonna explain to them. That's really good. I also just think as parents listening, you just have to take the time to have these conversations. I think that's half the battle because we're running all over creation for these sports and whatnot, and drop-offs and pickups and work, and you know, you have maybe have other children, and so just making the time to talk about certain subjects when they are relevant into your child, I think that's half the battle. But I wanted to ask you as we close up this conversation, Kim, because I think with all these topics, I think you could continue to dive deeper. Um, and I will really, really urge parents to go and find more information about you, Kim and what you're doing, and to include all that in the show notes so that they can, if there's something they want to look up and or be a part of when it comes to your offerings, that would be awesome. But, you know, we talk about a lot of things, but in your experience, you started in 2011 with this journey of of being a specialist and um and starting to be part of the conversation. What is the good news that you have seen throughout these these years?

SPEAKER_01 34:11

Um, a lot of good things. Um I will say that you know, the the silver line, there are a few silver linings that came from the pandemic. One is that I noticed we a lot of us talk about this um even on social media, which we could talk all day long about that type of addiction as well, because we do talk about process addictions.

SPEAKER_02 34:27

Like, maybe I'll have you on next season because you're my last episode right now for this season, but next season I'm sure I'll follow up with you on that if you're open to it for sure.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Absolutely. Absolutely. But you know, one of the good things that has happened is people got a lot more transparent about mental health, you know. So they were they're posting things about their either their struggle with isolation or their total comfort with isolation. And what does that mean? So I think that's some good news. I mentioned when we started out talking about opioids that that has really shifted. We do not see nearly the opioid use in the younger years. It's absolutely still an epidemic. It is still a problem. The adult population is in a lot of pain right now with the drug supply. That's a whole nother subject for sure. Um, but with regard to young people, that is shifting. There's less alcohol use. That's national stats as well as Pennsylvania. Those numbers are coming down. There's less binge drinking, less drinking under the driving under the influence. So those are good things. I could mention some things that are not so good, like isolation and tech and so on. And I will say I have to say, cannabis is problematic right now. Um, I know you were looking for the all all good news.

SPEAKER_02 35:35

Yeah, no, but it's okay. I'm here for awareness too.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

So that's it's important to note this that THC levels, the potency is entirely different than 10, 15 years ago. Absolutely different because of concentrates, because of vapes, dabbing, wax shatter, all those kinds of products. And the availability, Delta 8 is out there, you know. So there are Kratom is another substance. So there are new things happening. We don't know that there are necessarily more young people using them. There are some more using them. The problem is the kids who are using them are having bigger problems. Whereas it was not as potent, it was not as problematic necessarily. There it is more problematic now because it's exacerbating some aggression, some anxiety while people are using it for anxiety. It's actually accelerating that over time if they're using regularly. Um, and it's actually acting as a catalyst for some psychoses and schizophrenia and things like that. So sorry for the it's an important note though. But good news definitely with regard to other substances like alcohol and harder drugs are definitely getting a bit better in the adolescent and young adult population to some degree.

SPEAKER_02 36:48

Thank you, Kim, so much for your expertise and everything today. Um, I would love for you to tell us how we can find you or um, you know, basically where you are doing all your work, and then um if there's anything new that you're doing that you want to share with my listeners.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

Great. Thank you. Yes, our website is conversation.zone, Z-O-N-E. That's the website, and you'll find all sorts of information. I want to definitely point out um our parent partnership meetings. We have 22 meetings every week. About half of those take place in person, and the rest are on Zoom. Of the Zoom meetings, three of them are specifically for parents of adolescents and young adults because it is a different set of challenges. We also have a family recovery course that's a three-part course, peer-led by instructors like myself. I'm one of 22 instructors, two instructors per class. We can't cap that at 12 individuals. They're all parents or guardians who've been through that, going through this, and those are offered mostly virtually. All of that is free to attend. We also have community programs. We have a lot coming up on our calendar, which you can find on the website. I mentioned the YouTube channel. Our programs range from prevention to intervention, pathways to recovery, and supporting families. And going forward, yes, we have a new director of family support who's going to be introducing a warm line soon where parents can call and just get information. But frankly, they can call us now. They can talk to us now or email or however they want to reach out. But I hope that the most important thing is you can't do this alone. Please reach out for help and know that we're here for you and there's no judgment, and we just want to be of service to another family.

SPEAKER_02 38:28

Thank you so much, Kim. Listeners, I hope that you took away some good insights today and um you now have resources. And I love Kim's last message you can't do this alone. And um, the community is out there for you, so reach out and thank you for listening. And I hope everybody comes back, and um, and I'm hopeful that Kim Porter will be back next season, um, because this is the last interview for season four. So, listeners, thank you for coming, and uh, we will be back talking to you soon. Listeners, thanks for hanging out with me in the classroom today. If today's episode sparked a new idea for you, please make sure to click follow on your podcast app so you never miss a conversation. If you know a parent who is currently struggling to find answers, please share this episode with them. You just might be that link to help them on their journey. And finally, if you're a wellness expert or mom with a story to share, email me. I'd love to have you on the show. Until next time, keep them healthy.