Andrew Sossin – Music, Recovery & a Giant Helping Heart (444)

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Episode transcript below:

0:00:00 – Mike Malatesta

Hi everyone. Mike Malatesta here and welcome back to the how it Happened podcast. On this podcast, I dig in deep with every guest to explore the roots of their success, to discover not just how it happened but why it matters. My mission is to find and share stories that inspire, activate and maximize the greatness in you. 

On today’s episode, you are going to meet a man with a giant heart who is changing the game and the music around addiction recovery. Andrew Saucin created his company because he was tired of sending his family members to recovery facilities that did not work. We talked about so many things, like how his partner, richie Supa, wrote a song Amazing for Aerosmith and why he wrote it. How Andrew grew the business to employ more than 450 team members that have helped more than 13,000 people in just 10 years. How his two-year plan became a 10-year plan and is still counting Almost going bankrupt twice. And we even touched on the Israeli Hamas situation and his perspective on why Jews make the best demons. 

0:01:10 – Andrew Sossin

You now have the ability to actually positively impact people that wouldn’t have been able to do it before, where they were in a program, right, they got a DUI or they got arrested. They went to a detox in some area that doesn’t have resources and they have a probably a 95% chance of relapsing in those areas because of no resources. Now, through our program and others, they can come and be part of this ecosystem. They could go to group therapy on Zoom and they could get help. 

0:01:39 – Mike Malatesta

This episode is sponsored by the Dream Exit. The Dream Exit is a private, bespoke program for successful entrepreneurs with annual revenue between $5 million and $100 million who realize that they have one chance to get their Dream Exit right and that the odds of realizing that dream by themselves, all alone or at the last minute are stacked against them. In less than 90 days, we teach you how to design, build and execute a customized Dream Exit playbook that gets your business ready for sale at its maximum value and gets you ready to maximize your meaning and purpose in your post-exit life, even if today you are not ready to sell. You see, dream Exits just don’t happen. They are the result of early, professional and proven planning. So if you’re an entrepreneur with annual sales between $5 million and $100 million and you want to learn how to 10X to 100X your chances of achieving the Dream Exit you deserve, go to dreamexitplaybookcom today. And now here’s Andrew Sassan. Hey, andrew, welcome to the how to Happen podcast. 

0:02:51 – Andrew Sossin

Hey good afternoon, mike, great to be here. 

0:02:54 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, I’m very excited to have this conversation. I think I’ve had one or two people on before to talk about addiction and recovery, but all from different angles, and I think your angle, plus all the other stuff you’re involved in, is going to be just a super informative and fun conversation. So let me tell you all a little bit more about Andrew. Andrew Sassan is the co-founder and CEO of Recovery Unplugged, a company that combines evidence-based addiction treatment with innovative music-focused practices to restore hope and healing. His professional focus on financial services and business development has allowed Andrew to establish multiple successful ventures in several fields, including addiction care, customer service, music management and insurance. In addition, Andrew has established or been a board member for many nonprofits, including the Jewish Center for Science, the American Cancer Society and the Face, the Music Foundation. You can learn more about Andrew on LinkedIn, which is his name, Andrew Sassan, Instagram at AndrewSassan and at recoveryunpluggedcom. Andrew, let’s just get started here. How did it happen for you? 

0:04:26 – Andrew Sossin

Well, when you look at some of the different things you just said, not all of them normally go together. 

0:04:31 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah. 

0:04:33 – Andrew Sossin

Well, how did Recovery Unplugged happen? Was over. I’ve been married 17 years now Since my wife and I got married and I grew up with my wife. I’ve known my wife since we were 12 years old in middle school, went to college together and she had several family members throughout our lives battling addiction. I’ve known that part of the story since we were younger. After we got married, we found ourselves helping people and basically paying for rehab over and over again for several different people. That culminated into a lot of frustration to which one family member got arrested. Another family member, odine, lived. 

I made a comment that’d be cheaper for me to open up my own treatment center for my family and friends than to keep paying for other ones. That conversation with my friend Marshall, who I met in a Tony Robbins seminar 23 years ago, led to a lunch with a gentleman that helped create the mental health and drug court system in South Florida 30 years ago. Then a conversation with him and a guy named Richie Supa who started the idea of Recovery Unplugged. We came together and said, hey, there’s got to be a better way. There is no cure, there is no silver bullet, but what’s going on right now? It’s not working. 

The idea behind Recovery Unplugged was just me trying to help some family members differently. It started out 10 years ago October. We took our first client. It was not something I thought I’d be doing, not something that I had planned to be doing. As you had mentioned, I was in the insurance industry 17 years. I started an outsourcing call center in America and in San Diego. I left both of those businesses to make Recovery Unplugged what it is today. 

The first year Recovery Unplugged, it wasn’t even full time. We were still trying to figure out what we were doing. We had a small operation in Fort Lauderdale and just trying to see how much good we could do and how this could actually work. When I had my own family members successfully complete treatment and start speaking and looking at acting differently than they have in my whole life with them, I said wait, we have something. I gave everything else up to run Recovery Unplugged full time. It started in Florida in 2013, then led to Austin in 2016, the DC Metro area at the end of 2017, and the Nashville area in 2020. 

Timing wasn’t so good there. It opened up right before COVID, but now one of our most successful locations. Over the last decade, we’ve grown. We’ve been able to start treating 20 people a month to now 450 people a month. We just celebrated our 10th year 13,000 people We’ve positively impacted, including several of my family members and friends who are alive today because of what we do. It really happened because I was frustrated with the system that wasn’t working and decided that I could talk and complain or do something about it. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, but I knew people that did. We got a world-class team, our medical director, who was an addiction psychiatrist with decades of experience, combined with the music program that Richie was doing for several years and took that to the level that we have today. 

0:08:27 – Mike Malatesta

When you were funding your family members going through treatment and then having to go back through treatment and back through treatment. Like you said, what was going on? That wasn’t working. What wasn’t working. 

0:08:44 – Andrew Sossin

One of the things again not knowing back then, knowing now, 90% of people that go to treatment relapse Okay, well, why? There’s many reasons, but if you’re going to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result, that’s called insanity. That’s really how a lot of systems are run in, not just addiction care, but mental health and schools. There’s a whole other conversation with that. If you want a different outcome, you have to start from a different place. We realized early on that utilizing music to break down defenses and build rapport will actually allow people to get the treatment they need. We don’t have revolutionary treatment. The way we do it is. What I mean by that is we have traditional evidence-based cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing, edmrt and all of the facets of traditional psychology and psychiatry. But in a traditional setting people go to rehab for a 28-day program the famous 28-day program and in most situations they spend the first 27 of 28 days not wanting to be there, closed off and upset, and they get about 24 hours of treatment With us again. Nothing’s perfect and it doesn’t work for everybody, but we’ve seen statistically proven now 10 years, 13,000 people, a seven-year outcome study from Nova South Eastern University on why we’re doing works and, as of right now, we are at a 50.3,. Just over a half of all of our clients are clean. It’s over after one year and that’s their party. Verified why? One of the reasons is because we utilize music early on and that allows us to connect with people within the first 24 to 48 hours. Instead of getting one day of treatment, they’re getting 27 of the 28 days because we’ve connected with them. 

How do we do that? Many different ways. One great example when somebody calls us and says themselves or their family member needs help, we don’t just find out what’s their name and their social and their insurance and all that stuff. Obviously we do. We find out the music that they love and that they hate, what they associate to getting high, what they associate to sobriety. If they married, maybe it’s a wedding song. If they’re not, maybe it’s a song they associate to their mom or their child, for that matter. 

The first time we see them, when they come to us, we have a song that they can associate to playing. For the first time in days, weeks, months or even years, they are seen, they are heard and what they say matters. Subconsciously. They will say to us every time. This is one of my favorite songs and our therapist, whoever it’s it, we know, and Right off the bat. That doesn’t mean that everything is gonna work perfectly right. That’s just the first layer that we are a lot. With that we are able to break down to build that rapport, to have a little bit of Okay, maybe, maybe there’s something here. This place is different. 

Hmm and so again, we then stack upon that all of our groups you know we have morning mic check groups. We don’t Tell people you need to be open-minded. We teach them open-mindedness through songs and, again, 99% of all of our clients have no musical ability, not whatsoever. They’re regular people like you and I, and you may have more musical ability to me I am not. I’m attempted and can play the piano Really bad maybe, and I’ll continue to try and learn and go to my lessons. 

But we utilize the music in ways that is different, meaning Somebody comes in and they’re detoxing Now they’re gonna have to get volume or at a van, and we still believe in that. We believe in medication assisted treatment, which is MAT, which is, you know, verified, evidence-based medical treatment. We also believe in MAT, music assisted treatment and we do both. So somebody needs 10 milligrams of value normally, but they come in and they get five milligrams of value and they go into a sound and frequency room in our Austin location when they’re detoxing and those vibrations that are speakers in the floor allow their body To process better and heal better while still using medication. But less. Everybody wins. 

Hmm and then, once they’re done detoxing, they go to our process groups whereby they’re able to use and write the lyrics of their life again not to sing a song or perform, but we Understand the therapeutic nature of the songwriting process when it’s your life. And those are just a few examples of how we do this and and how we make it work and Andrew, how did Richie’s super Come up with this, or whomever he maybe was working with, or whatever? 

0:13:55 – Mike Malatesta

How was this developed? Where there was this connection made or what I mean? Was it a clinical thing or was it more like, hey, it just makes sense to Meet people where they are? 

0:14:08 – Andrew Sossin

Yeah, so tell me about that so Richie again, you know, singer-songwriter has some of the most amazing stories you know over the last Almost 60 years. Now will be 80 soon, whether he likes me to say that or not. Okay, and it’s in better shape than a lot of people. He’ll be 39 years, clean now. But you know he had his struggles and and and tremendous struggles. And so After he got clean and sober in the 80s, you know he wrote the song amazing With Aerosmith and when he wrote that song that you know that was the impetus of him taking this to another level on Utilizing the songwriting process and music in recovery. Because back then, before Facebook and social media, he got letters, thousands of letters, on how that song Allowed people to think differently, act differently and go get help because of that song. And so that he took that process In his own life. He was doing, you know, still writing, still does date, still writes and still does things with different artists, you know and start going into treatment centers Back in the late 90s and early 2000s with this little one-hour program that it became a two-hour program and then he was meeting with different doctors and different therapists and tailoring it. 

But it was like a small thing when we met Together and understood the grand vision of what I wanted to do, which is I wanted this to be the basis of everything that we did. You know we wanted people to be able to Really immerse themselves in evidence-based treatment, with music and a catalyst for every single thing that they did. He got excited, we got excited. We brought in psychiatrists, we brought in therapists. You know we built the program from there and I I believe, and always have and will believe in constant and never ending improvement. So Anytime I see anything and we see anything that is working, we do more of it. Anytime we see something that could be done or enhance better, we also do that. 

And so it started, you know, in in Fort Lauderdale. You know has grown around the country, and the only reason why that’s been able to grow around the country is because of a its success and B everybody’s bought into it from a staff perspective. And so the people that opened up Austin started working in Florida. The people open up DC Started in Florida and Austin. The people open up Nashville started in Austin and these and so everywhere we have a recovery unplugged. No matter where you are in the country, you’re getting the same treatment with the same program and the people have all some of them now, ten years later, have been through our program and if you, if you come through a program, you stay clean and sober for at least a year, will allow you to potentially work for us, depending on what it is, and two of my Leadership executive leadership team now are people that were our program, you know, ten years ago. 

0:17:15 – Mike Malatesta

Oh, no kidding, that’s fantastic. It’s amazing to see, yeah, so that I mean you talked about this 90% relapse before you got to your statistic. Revolving door 28 day program. What, in your having you know being fully immersed in this now and me not being fully immersed in it? Why? What’s? What’s making programs that aren’t effective and I would say anything with a less than 10% Success rate non successful, right? Any, I think any business would say that. What’s what keeps those programs moving, funded full? Why? 

0:18:03 – Andrew Sossin

oh, there’s lots of reasons. Number one a lot of them aren’t here anymore. Why? If I just look at in the last decade, the people that were around ten years ago that aren’t around now? Because it’s not working as far as the private facilities, public facilities to do we do correctly is really expensive. I Tell this to people all the time I’ve had so many covered. 

I’ve talked probably more people out of getting into this business Than anything else. Because I explain yes, it’s a business. Yes, you know, I have people that work. We have almost 400 full-time team members that recovery unplugged. They have to get paid every week. But if you’re coming into this to make money, go do something else. There’s lots of ways to make money. Yes, this is a business and businesses could be profitable and you have to be profitable to keep going. 

But people’s lives are at stake here and so I think, to answer your question, you know those programs, and we are not the only one. There are other great programs out there. You know that are actually Doing whatever they can to increase the chances of people staying clean and sober, are gonna be there on the on the government, public side. You know the resources unfortunately have never been there still aren’t, and so you just have more of a. I would say it’s almost like a jail right? You know, we already know that. You know, just putting people in jail doesn’t work, right. Right, somebody’s good now if they’re, if they’re given the proper tools in jail to be rehabilitated, depending on what it is right, and I’m a big fan of nonviolent drug offenders. You know, getting treatment, not jail right. My own family members that’s how I started recovery and plugged they were, you know, when Paul and Marshall were advocating. They were. There were addicts, not criminals. And and if I fast forward today, you know my sister-in-law and others are, you know, wonderful, productive members of society doing fantastic. That you know got caught up in a drug loop, and so, to answer your question, though, you have a lot of places that just exist to house people for a temporary time, and and it’s unfortunate, it’s it’s Finally changing, and what is changing that is technology, and so One of the things that I we thought about doing but didn’t know how to, and I would say, one of the greatest things for us that came out of COVID a lot of horrible stuff with COVID. 

We almost went out business during COVID. It’s very challenging time for a lot of people and for us. You know you can’t we have group therapy. You can have people in the same room or that group, but what we’re doing right now, you know, if you would have said to the world in 2019 that you know Half of what you do would be on a, on a zoom, and nobody would know what zoom is right. 

Yeah, but we are now able to help people in our recovery, unplugged virtual services in our outpatient program All over right. We’re in Florida, texas, tennessee, virginia and now New Jersey. Obviously, in the major areas it’s easy, but in the rural areas it’s hard. But now we are able to get to people and they can come to our program virtually, and so you now have the ability to actually positively impact people that wouldn’t have been able to do it before, where they were in a program. Right, they, they got a DUI or they got arrested, they went to a detox in some area that doesn’t have resources and they have a Probably a 95% chance of relapsing in those areas because of the resources. 

Now, through our program and others, they could come and be part of this ecosystem. They could go to group therapy on zoom and they could get help that they need. So why are a lot of the places allowed to operate With such horrible success rates? The same reason why a lot of institutions are there just because they’ve been. You know, and and I think finally the tide Is changing to where, especially on the, on the, on the nonprofit side, people want actual impact and results, and so in the past you just give money. 

0:22:19 – Mike Malatesta

You mean, donors want that. 

0:22:21 – Andrew Sossin

Yeah, don’t yeah and also and also, municipalities want that. Yeah, governments want that, governors want that. You know I’ve met with several On on both the right. You know both sides the are Republicans, democrats, in Florida, in Texas, over the last several years that they want a difference. They want, they want programs that are actually going to just not exist but provide results, real results. And so I think over the next, over the next decade, you’ll see. You know, things that are working will get more funding and things that are what will subside. 

Now you know the challenge is going to be who decides what successes? Right, because if we’re at a 50% success rate and that’s five times better than the national average and it is, and people think that’s fantastic and it is well, I’m still not satisfied with that. Yeah, right, I want that to be better, and so you know, on on the addiction side, you know an alcohol abuse side, it’s easier. On the mental health side, it’s much more abstract and difficult, and you know we’re opening our first inpatient mental health facility in the beginning of 2024. We’ve only been focused on addiction therapy, but the same thing that we do with addiction works as well as mental health, and we’ve been doing it outpatient for the last two years. Now we’re gonna do inpatient, and so there’s gonna be um Much harder, much easier to measure. 

Are you cleaner, sober? Right, rather than if somebody’s battling the present anxiety or PTSD. The measurement tools for that, I believe, need to be changed, because not are you happy or are you sad? Right, it’s if this program and this work allows you to go to work, allows you to interact with others, allows you to function better, right, you may. They may not be, you know, a hundred eighty degree change, but is a thirty or forty degree change which, as you and I both know, fast forward that over two or three years, and it’s positively impacted somebody’s life. You know how’s that going to be, and so I think that’s the next iteration of how you define what success is on the mental health side. 

0:24:36 – Mike Malatesta

And you’re gonna start that in Florida or the inpatient. 

0:24:41 – Andrew Sossin

Inpatient mental health is in Florida. We currently have right now, if anybody needed, online intensive outpatient for mental health, which we launched over a year ago. We currently have programs online for specifically addiction, specifically people without addiction that are battling depression, anxiety, ptsd. We have another program which just launched Today, november 1st just checking the calendar we are now in network with tricare for active military that was as of October, but the VA retired military as of today. Ian, starting this week, we launched our first program for people who’s Spanish as a first language so that they could also, if they have addiction or mental health issues, but feel more comfortable in Spanish. We have that as well. 

0:25:36 – Mike Malatesta

It sounds like you’re not afraid to take on a lot of stuff now that we know what works. 

0:25:43 – Andrew Sossin

My goal and focus, you know, in the beginning it was is this going to work? We were a fully out of network private pay facility. It is very expensive to what we do. I have one of the highest client To staff ratios of anyone in this industry, you know, which makes our margins really small, and that’s okay as long as there is a margin, because we’re actually, you know, saving lives and I believe that as we grew over the last couple years, we’ve gone a hundred percent in network. So we’re in network with every insurance company. We’re now in network of tricare in the VA. We’re now in network in Texas, in Virginia, sorry, tennessee in Virginia with Medicaid, soon to be Texas and Florida as well. And now all I’d like to do, and we are going to do, is positively impact a tremendous amount of more people by being able to help more people. 

0:26:37 – Mike Malatesta

Hmm, and so are you still private pay for people who are outside of those networks, who yeah, I mean. 

0:26:45 – Andrew Sossin

I mean at this point we’re in every insurance and the and the military and Medicaid, but if somebody has not any of those, we take private pay as well. Just well, you know, normally if you’re, you follow the one of those categories. 

0:26:58 – Mike Malatesta

Okay, I wasn’t sure if someone from, like you know, wisconsin or something with the healthcare that they have at their employer or something, would be able to use it. 

0:27:08 – Andrew Sossin

Yes, yes, we have people that fly. We have about About 40 percent in our inpatient facilities come from, you know, surrounding areas, especially in our Nashville facility. Everywhere around Nashville people could come into our Nashville facility. Same thing in Virginia, florida. We’ve always had, you know, around this time of year Somebody has to go to treatment. 

0:27:35 – Mike Malatesta

If, they want to go in. 

0:27:36 – Andrew Sossin

Florida in November or December or January, or Pennsylvania Florida seems to be a. 

0:27:44 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, not a bad choice, yeah. 

0:27:47 – Andrew Sossin

But yes, we could take people from you know anywhere that has really any insurance at this point. 

0:27:51 – Mike Malatesta

So do you this 50.3 percent one year Clean sober after coming through. I’m curious Do you track or do you know how many people come into your program that have been one of the, been through another program not and had succession your program versus the others? I’m trying to get a sense of like how many people coming into your program or say first time, first time versus multiple time. 

0:28:22 – Andrew Sossin

So it’s a project we’re working on right now, okay, which I’ll happy to update you with results in about eight weeks. Give me January to get them, because so it’s interesting, we didn’t start everywhere all the time, right, so we had one place in a couple years and a couple years and a couple years. Yeah, it’s a little hard with some of this I do know. 

You know for a fact that for the first almost six years that we were in existence we were 90% of the people that came to us had been to rehab before Because we were in people’s first choices, because they didn’t know we existed and it didn’t make sense to them. And it was different Over the last two years and I’ll get more concrete data when the studies done. Okay, we are. We are a lot more people’s first first choice because now I’m in network. I wasn’t a network before. It was expensive to come to us. I have studies on what we’re doing. That’s working. People know we are, they’ve seen who we are. 

You know everywhere from drug court judges to you know therapists now can say I, you know they can now give hundreds of people that went through our program that you know may have had success and so it’s different. 

So I know for the first many years Almost everybody got some. We were, we were the second, third, fourth, fifth choice for a lot of people. And now People want to skip the five places or two places and coming to us and one of the reasons why we actually got some of our contracts recently was certain insurance companies was because I was able to provide data where they would say, yeah, 90% of people are gonna relapse, and I’ll say, okay, here’s your clients. They came to us out of network and you know, we just we just did one with 50 people. They expected five people to be sober, it was 28 After a year. And that litter, that conversation, which they didn’t believe, I said you go verify, you go call these people, you go check them out. They’re your, your, your people that have your policies that allowed us to get that agreement, because you know the truth, the truth speaks. 

0:30:35 – Mike Malatesta

The, the mental health program that you’re starting, the. Maybe this is an unfair question too, but I ask it how Do you know what percentage of people that come through your facilities now that have a substance abuse issue also have a mental health issue and you have a way of evaluating that presently? It’s easy. Actually it’s not. It’s a very fair question. It’s the answer is 100% Okay. 

0:31:01 – Andrew Sossin

So so you know one of the things that a lot of people are with nobody. 

Everybody has a dual diagnosis, meaning nobody that I’ve met or seen yet wakes up and says I want to go shoot heroin today, I want to drink myself. You know, to the point where I blackout right. There’s a always an underlie, there’s something that happened, a traumatic event, depression, anxiety, ptsd, trauma in some Former shape or another, an accident that occurred, that drove. So people get driven down a path which allows them to start taking a substance right, alcohol or or different substances, and then both of those have to be addressed right. So you have the, the, the physical component of Addiction right, and the most dangerous is alcohol. A lot of people don’t, don’t realize that the hardest thing to detox from is alcohol. And what? Why is that? 

0:31:56 – Mike Malatesta

medically, you could have DT, you could go into seizures and then go into cardiac arrest easier than Then almost anything else. 

0:32:05 – Andrew Sossin

You know, ironically, a lot of insurance companies won’t even won’t even Certify you to get detox for meth, which is just crazy to me, but they won’t. You know there are lots of rock-paper-scissors that will tell you stories about being handcuffed to a bed while they were detoxing from heroin in the 80s, and those are all true stories because that’s how you did it back. Then you give them a bucket to throw up. 

Alcohol is basically the most dangerous. So once you get past the physical component right with with a substance, then you go into the mental component, and so there always is a mental challenge for anybody On that side, and that’s why, you know, after the last decade we decided that we have enough data on what we’re doing on the mental health side to be able to just do that, because there’s more people, unfortunately now than ever that are struggling on the mental health side, that aren’t Abusing drugs or alcohol, but they’re struggling every day to get up to deal with their families to go to, just to get out of there Today, to get up to deal with their families, to go to survive. And so we’re now going to use the same thing that we used in our, in our method, in our process For the substance abuse side, with the mental health side as well. 

0:33:24 – Mike Malatesta

Okay, and is them? Is the mental health treatment going to be music based as well, assuming so right everything’s? 

0:33:32 – Andrew Sossin

everything is the same. It’s the same therapy. It’s the same process. It’s the same groups. Right, it’s just okay, it’s for this instead of that. Right, it’s, it’s, it’s almost Identical, except for the you know. Take away the story of I blacked out because of this, or I was shooting dope because of that, or I stole this to buy this drug, or I lied to this person. It’s but the same, you know, reason for being upset every day. The same reasons for being suicidal, the same reasons for, you know, you know having, you know, debilitating, depressive or social anxiety disorder, whatever it may be, those are still Same on your side. 

0:34:14 – Mike Malatesta

Okay, so let me just go back to the Connection between mental health and an addiction. You said a hundred percent and I’m curious and I’ve heard lots of stories about I mean, we can talk about Matthew Perry. He’s sort of the most recent high profile where he just, you know, I’ll leave that for right now. I want to get back to it. But yeah, this, you, you hear these stories, or I’ve heard these stories Maybe they’re false stories where someone Takes a drug and say they shoot heroin and they become addicted right away. 

In those cases I’m wondering, like some, so someone wouldn’t, like you say, be like, do I want to shoot heroin all day? No, but they might be like, oh, that might be kind of cool, try it. They may not have any trauma they’re trying to resolve. It might just be like, hey, my friends are doing it and they might try it and they get you know, addicted right away. I guess my point was going to be there’s something physical inside. Some of us right that when you take a substance, you have something inside your body that or your brain that reacts with that chemical that you’ve taken and you are addicted, a receptor like an opioid receptor or something like that. So I’m just curious. It seems like there’s a pathway to becoming addicted that may not be mental health. 

0:35:45 – Andrew Sossin

There’s okay, so that’s what. 

0:35:46 – Mike Malatesta

I’m trying to get at. 

0:35:47 – Andrew Sossin

So there’s a pathway, for sure. If I look at a friend of mine, okay, who athlete in college, never drank, you know, woke up every morning, worked out, hurt his back, okay, Got addicted to got prescription medicine, got addicted to pills, you know, and went down that path. Now there was also a crossover in that addiction, that addiction spiraling out of control, on a mental health side as well. So he did get addicted to the pills because he was giving to them for his back right and he ended up, you know, ODing and living with, you know, a coating blue with a needle on his arm and lived and thank God it was okay today and we were able to help him. 

But there was a, there was that process, you know, during that time where that addiction fueled a, you know, mental instability, right, and both had to be addressed when he came to us. But yes, a lot of people, you know, don’t? I don’t think I’ve heard one, and I sit in our groups a lot just to meet, listen here Nobody wakes up and says I’m gonna just shoot dope today, right, it’s normally, especially over the last 15 years, an accident. They got prescribed medicine and then it spiraled out of control. But it spiraled out of control because they didn’t know how to handle it as well, because there was an underlying something in their life that was not properly addressed which allowed it also to spiral out of control. Because you know you, depending on who you are, you could still have that physical dependency. But overcome that if you understand it’s happening, and then other people may understand it’s happening but wanna go down that path because it’s just easier to deal with at that time in their life until it’s not. 

0:37:47 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, okay, is there? Is there a and this might not be the right word, but is there a willpower or some other type of mindset component to recovery Meaning? Yeah, just is in your experiences, cause I hear it. You know, I’m just like out on the periphery right, I’m just sort of observing, reading what I read, hearing what I hear, and it, you know, it’s kind of like well, 50% of the people get through it in your program. So 50% get through, stay clean and sober for a year after and 50% don’t. Is there in your experience? Is there something more to it than the treatment? 

0:38:33 – Andrew Sossin

Yes, there’s a lot more to it. So there’s you have to have, there is no, this is it. And this is where it gets very difficult for a lot of people. So, first and foremost, you have to be ready for it. And so there are people that come and they’re not ready for it. Now there’s the debate that will go on forever. Well, if somebody’s not ready for it, why would I force them to go into it? Well, I’ve seen plenty of people that weren’t ready for it, that wanted to leave on the first day, that are clean and sober five years later. So they have to internally have the will to want it, and that’s where leverage points come in right. And then with everybody it’s different. Do they have a spouse? Do they have a child? Do they have a mother? That you know they actually care about more than their addiction. That’s one part of it. 

0:39:25 – Mike Malatesta

So there has to be a willpower to it. 

0:39:28 – Andrew Sossin

And there are just some people that, no matter what you do, forget the treatment and they’ll go back until they’re ready to, or on these days, until they die, and so, and that’s happening more now than ever. I mean, you know, when we first started this and again, I had never, you know, I had been around people that drank, I had seen drugs. I had never seen heroin in my life where I didn’t know that it existed. I knew it existed. I’d never seen it before. 

You know, until I got into this industry, when we first started and I hear you know stories somebody would relapse, they’d go on a run for a month or two, they’d come back to rehab. Now, unfortunately, they relapse, they die. Fentanyl today is the most dangerous substance ever, and so people they’re not, you know, getting sick, they just die. So that’s also caused certain people on both sides. Some people are going that route because they wanna get to that level right before death, and other people it’s scaring them into getting help. You know, but to answer your question, you do have to want, you do have to, you know, wanna have recovery, but sometimes you don’t know you want it until you’ve had it a little bit. 

In addition, it’s not just the treatment Actually, it’s not, in my opinion. The treatment is only the beginning. Nobody gets high when they’re with us, right, it’s when they go home. And that’s the most important thing that we could have done on our Zoom program, because we’ve always had an outpatient program, right, but you have to drive, you have to sit in the room for three hours. It’s fun, it’s a lot of fun. We have music, we have food, all that kind of stuff. 

But if you live far away or you have a family or you have work, now what happens is most people relapse after they leave, or all people relapse after they leave, if they relapse, and so now the idea is staying in the ecosystem. So one of the things that we have, obviously, is our outpatient program that people join for, you know, two months, three months, four months after they leave. And then we have an alumni program that we started early on. We had one person. Now I have 16 full-time people and their sole purpose every day, seven days a week. 

For old people like me, as they call, because I still like to talk to people on a phone. For younger people, they text snapchat, instagram message, whatever it may be, and they stay in contact with every person that’s ever come into our program forever. And we have monthly events, we have monthly meetings, we have sober bowling nights, laser tag moving nights, whatever it may be, throughout all of our locations. We had a Halloween party this past week, we have a Thanksgiving party next month, a Christmas party after that, and it’s keeping people around other people in a sober environment, and that’s just really the key going forward, you know, is if you, once you are out of recovery, out of a treatment center, you know if you end up going back to the same places and around the same people you were before, you may end up in the same result. So part of it is wanting rehab and then part of it is, you know, understanding how your life is gonna be afterwards. 

0:42:44 – Mike Malatesta

You use the term MAT, allow back medically assisted treatment, music assisted treatment. You said medical assisted treatment. I believe in that, which made me think are there other programs that don’t believe in? Medical assistance wins, you know, for recovery. 

0:43:06 – Andrew Sossin

There are other programs that only believe in abstinence, and so early on, we were one of the first. We were the first and the largest provider of Vivitrol in Florida and Texas for many years. Vivitrol is a shot that when you get that shot, you cannot get high. So it’s a shot. It lasts for 28 days and in those 28 days you cannot get high. And then they have a new one or newer one for alcohol, where you can’t get drunk, just get sick. And so early on, you know, people were vilifying us that we were replacing one drug once another. It was equivalent to methadone, we were just drugging people. 

Now it’s standard protocol that you can’t even get insurance contracts if you would offer it. 

You know, fast forwarded decade, we’ve always believed that you need to sometimes for a lot of people teach them how to stay clean, and so if you give somebody a shot, I don’t want them to have to be on that shot forever. 

Okay, so if we teach somebody to stay clean for 28 days and we give them that shot once a month for, let’s say, four months, and now they’ve learned how to be clean, right, I think that’s fantastic. Some people may have to take it for 12 months, some people have to be on it for years, and so, again, the goal is for people to be able to live a productive, healthy whatever they define as healthy lifestyle, you know, going forward for themselves, their family and society. And so if that requires some sort of medication to keep them clean, if the choice is that or death, it’s an easy choice for me. So somebody needs Vivitrol or Suboxone, and, again, I am not a fan of people being on for medicine or having to take this, especially Suboxone, forever. But if the choice is that or death, it’s very simple to me. 

0:45:08 – Mike Malatesta

And this may be an ignorant question, but can someone, instead of going to recovery, get a doctor to prescribe a shot of Vivitrol every once a month and that keeps them out of recovery and not high or drunk, or is that not possible? 

0:45:26 – Andrew Sossin

So the idea is sure, except when people are on Suboxone or Vivitrol or any medication since treatment, there has to be a treatment program there has to be some sort of therapy involved, because they could also misuse it, get sick. 

You have people that have, you know, tried to time out when it’s gonna run out so they could get high real quick before they get the next shot and give themselves a heart attack. I mean there’s lots of you know we’re talking about science and medicine here, so it’s not just you know. There has to be a plan in place with a licensed psychiatrist, psychologist and provider. Yes, you know, you don’t have to do anything. The idea that I’ve always said is, whether it’s us or anywhere else, you know, make sure you have a treatment plan. 

But if you’re gonna utilize, you know, mat client, I’ve always believed in both medically assisted treatment and music assisted treatment. We’ve seen it work and it does Doesn’t mean you have to do it with us. Go somewhere else and do it, that’s fine. Just make sure that there’s an actual licensed provider that’s not just allowing you to show up once a month to get your medicine right, because there are people that again and if this is how they choose, you know that for years could just get their medicine every month and never do anything about it, and they could do that. But, statistically speaking, it’s only a matter of time before that stops working. 

0:46:58 – Mike Malatesta

I got it and I mentioned Matthew Perry. 

I don’t know if you read his book or if you’re familiar with his story, but in where, when you were just talking earlier, you said you know they can’t get high in here, they can’t get drugs in here. In his book he described multiple stays at facilities where he could get any drug he wanted inside the facility, which I mean that reading that book was one of the. It was cringing to me as a person who’s never been in recovery or addicted, because I just couldn’t understand what’s going on with. You know why you would first of all go into recovery and spend all this money and still to do that while you were in there, before you even get out. I mean, you fail before you get out, or why. Well, we talked about the revolving door earlier and it seemed like he went to a bunch of places where you know, as long as he could pay the freight, they’d take him in, put him through the program wouldn’t do really anything for him and he’d leave whenever he felt like it or whatever. You know it just. 

0:48:12 – Andrew Sossin

I will say a few things and I’ll think about how I’m gonna say this. Okay, there are really great people in our industry doing a wonderful work trying to save people’s lives and, just like every other industry, there are really bad people that have also been in this industry. That don’t care. That’s just the fact, no sugarcoating about it. I’ve watched over the last decade in certain parts of the country maybe California where he’s at a lot of people that were in this industry that are no longer in this industry. Some of them may be away for a while and should be, and in South Florida as well, and so there’s a lot less of that today. I don’t believe it’s 100%, but it is tremendously better than it’s ever been. As far as the bad actors that just allow people to pay a bunch of money, show up, tell the judge or whoever what they’re doing and get what they want, that did happen. It’s a fact. We’ve turned away people over the years that may have wanted to dictate their treatment plan or who is allowed to visit them or what they can bring. I don’t care who you are. We have a protocol, we have a plan. Don’t care how much money you have. That’s not who we are or what we do, but yes, there are people out there that have enablers and managers and teams around them who’s going to do whatever they can for that musician or actor to live the life that they want. 

I know Matthew Perry’s story. It’s a sad story. I didn’t know him personally but I know that he did a tremendous amount of good for a lot of people. He really wanted to be okay. He spent millions of dollars on surgeries, on sober coaches. He spent also millions of dollars. He paid for a lot of people. 

There are certain people out there that are just always doing bad and he unfortunately I’m running his report but just understanding that when you’re 50, you don’t normally just die you know he succumbed to his demons and it was. You know whether it was the 12 surgeries he had because of the insides of his stomach with all the opiates, but he spent a lot of money paying for other people to go to treatment. He really tried and wanted to do good, wanted to get help, but unfortunately, you know, wasn’t able to get past. You know his own challenges over the years but yes, there were places that existed that you know allowed him to pay a bunch of money to say he went somewhere that also allowed him to do what he wanted. I believe most of those places aren’t around anymore and those of us that are in the industry actually want people to get help and get better and stay clean. 

0:51:23 – Mike Malatesta

And you so unique. You know you’re in insurance, you’re in these different industries, you have this family connection. You explained well the reason why you decided to get into this, chose to get into this. You took us through some of the dark times in COVID and you know, are we gonna survive? And then now you’ve got 400 and some people working for you 13,000 people you’ve served. I’m wondering, when you got into this, andrew, if you, where did you think you would be? Or this would be 10 years from now? And then, is it where, like, is it anything close to that? And you, as a leader, anything close to what you thought you would be? 

0:52:07 – Andrew Sossin

I definitely did not follow what I normally do when I do things as far as business plans, projections, ideas, goals. In everything else that I’ve done, there was a plan in place when I built my insurance agencies, when I built my call center. I’ve been involved in other businesses that I’ve invested in and helped with as well. Some have succeeded and some have failed. This was a little different. This was not going to be what it is right now. This was gonna be something that I helped start, I consulted on. You know, we helped some people over a couple of years and somebody else would do it A year later. I gave up everything else to run it and then it was just gonna be okay, we’ll just build this in Florida. Then we got to Austin and okay, now we’re gonna be in two states and we’re gonna build it. And then, you know, I’ll do this for three years. My two-year plan turned into a three-year plan, turned into a five-year plan, turned into a seven-year plan, which is now a 10-year 10 years now this month. So, yes, over the last several years, we’ve, you know, I’ve done strategic plans. I met with my coach, I met with, you know, our team and built models. So you know we didn’t just wake up and get here the last couple of years, especially, you know, coming out of COVID and growing Nashville, opening up Jersey, which we just did, opening up our mental health facility, that’s part of the plan. 

How we got here right now, you know, was a lot of pure will, prayer, hope, good luck, overcoming challenges. I mean, you know I won’t trigger code it, I won’t tell you that I knew we’d be here right now today. There are several different times over the last several years that I questioned why I did this. You know, before we were in network fighting insurance companies to be paid, almost going out of business twice, fighting to get paid for work. That we did, you know, and that’s life. 

And so we become much more strategic in what we do, how we do it, why we do it, who we do it with. We modeled everything out possible, but we’re still dealing with people’s lives. So at the end of the day, you know we have projections of what we’re going to do, but you know we originally were going to only give out, you know, a couple of scholarships a year. And then, you know, I decided to give out a couple of months. And you know, when the holidays come around, when somebody calls me and says their family member or friend has nothing in need to help, you know what am I going to say. 

No that’s not who we are. That’s not who I am. If I’m able to help somebody, I’m going to. If we have an available bed, we’re going to use it, if you know, if you know that’s people’s lives are at stake. People’s families are at stake. I know that with my own, and so you know we’re going to move forward. But now again, over the last couple of years, we become much more strategic. Where we are, you know, november 2023. Yeah, where I thought I’d be. You know, if I look at my 12 month plan, yes, we’re on track for what we were going to do for the 12 month, the 12 month plan. If you would have asked me 10 years ago or five years ago, I didn’t plan on being here. I didn’t plan on. This wasn’t what I was going to do with my life. 

0:55:27 – Mike Malatesta

Right, you had a giant heart. That’s what it sounds like to me. Do you mind if we switch gears for the last couple of minutes we have? When I understand that your, if my facts are correct, I understand that your son had his bar mitzvah in Israel, at Masada, right, yeah, and when we first talked, it was just after October 7th at some point and you were, you had, you were taking me through some of the things you were concerned about protests and stuff around your. I think it was your synagogue I’m not exactly sure, but I think it was. So you’ve got two perspectives that I don’t have. First, we’ve been through most of the time with recovery and you’ve done a great job helping, helping educate me and everyone else who’s listening. How are you feeling about Israel right now and you and your family and your yeah. 

0:56:40 – Andrew Sossin

So this flag is next to my desk. 

0:56:45 – Mike Malatesta

Really flag. 

0:56:46 – Andrew Sossin

Really flag. I’m always out there, I’m. How do I feel? So right now? You know I’m I’m proud to be Jewish. I’m proud to be American. I’m proud of the people that are standing up for good over evil. I’m proud of the sacrifices that my own family and friends are currently making for the future survival of my people. I’m concerned for the world. I’m concerned for America. I’m concerned for the colleges around the campus, around the country. I’m concerned for my children because I’m not surprised at the just absolute hate and misinformation and propaganda that is being spewed. 

I was when I was much younger. I traveled with a backpack to 30,. I’ve been to 70 countries, half before I made a dollar, where I slept on benches and slept in hostels and got to see the world and hear the world from a different perspective, and half from when I’ve actually been more successful. And one of the things that I’ve seen around the world is here’s where the Jews were, here’s where the Jews were, here’s where the Jews were killed. So there’s a great book Jews Make the Best Demons, the 3000 year history of anti-Semitism, which is now anti-Zionism. So none of this surprised me. It upsets me. So at one point, part of me is proud and not afraid. Part of me is extremely concerned for the person yesterday who was driving around I won’t use the words that he used, but he was arrested right in my neighborhood and by the synagogue spewing hate. 

Very, very, very concerned for the hundreds now of college-age kids that are ripping down posters of people that were kidnapped and not understanding truth, meaning they don’t understand what the word apartheid is, they don’t understand what the word genocide is, they don’t understand what the colonizer is. You know, I was on my flight to Nashville last week and Austin the week before, and on both flights I was wearing a bracelet. You know I stand with Israel bracelet started the conversation. I’m not afraid to have a conversation and I’m not afraid to speak. I’m not afraid to listen to and I wanna listen to other sides. I have friends at my table for Passover. I have an African-American brother-in-law. I have a friend from Tehran. I have a friend from India. I have another best friend who’s Greek. I’m like the League of Nations here, that’s how I’m going to go. 

I do believe, right, my brother-in-law’s Christmas dinner, you know. My other friend, you know, prays Muslim every day and we all get along. So the point being to answer your question, what really concerns me right now is the lack of education that most people forget. Uneducated people, educated people. They don’t know how Israel started, they don’t realize that in 1947, there was Jews that were living out of land for 4,000 years and Arabs, and they gave them both lands and the Arabs said no. 

You have a lot of people today saying, oh, because I asked people on an airplane what’s your understanding of this before I started the conversation. Oh, I thought after World War II, because of the Holocaust, the UN gave, or the world gave, jews land. I’m like, no, that’s not what happened. But now, if that’s the prism that people come from, you know that doesn’t allow the hate but it also explains it. So right now, to answer your question, you know I’m doing everything I can. We’ve helped fill hundreds of duffel bags full of toys, clothes, coloring books for kids. We’ve helped get supplies to soldiers. 

I am currently spearheading the fundraising for the psychological trauma support for the 2,200 survivors of the Music Festival Massacre. You know it’s all started at the Music Festival 2,200 kids at a Peace Love two-day Music Festival, 260 were murdered, 28th give or take were kidnapped and the rest are traumatized for life. So I’m working with Sheba Medical Center to raise the money to provide the psychological trauma support for them. And you know, all I can do now is be proud of who I am and where I’m from. Educate those that are willing to be educated. I’m very proud of my own team at Recovery Unplugged. 

I’ve had dozens of calls from people around the country that have called me and said hey, I don’t, I’m not Jewish, I don’t know where this. I don’t know anything. Just tell me. You know, I want to understand this. So I thank everybody that actually wants to understand not my side, but a truthful side and is willing to hear both sides. 

But I am very concerned for America because Hamas is ISIS and some of the young people don’t remember that from 20 years ago and they don’t realize. You know the slope we’re going down. So you know I pray for everybody, right? I don’t want one innocent person killed on any side. 

I don’t believe that Palestinians are evil. I don’t believe that Muslims are evil. I think that you know they’re trapped by Hamas and I hope that those in America that are confusing Palestinians with Hamas need to get better educated, because if you’re going to advocate for a terror group that is going to murder my friend’s family was murdered Like this is not news to me my friend’s sister, husband, three children, mother-in-law and dog were murdered three weeks ago, and so you know it’s real to me. But I understand there’s a lot of misinformed, uneducated people and I hope that they get educated. And then I also realize there are just people that you know choose to believe what they want and we have to do our best, you know, here in America to you know, keep our freedom and our liberty and not be overrun by terrorism. 

1:03:40 – Mike Malatesta

So, hopefully, yeah, I appreciate you going there and helping give us that perspective, because I think it’s valuable, important, meaningful, and I’m glad that you did it. And I will say I do think and it may not just be young people, but many of us we choose not to educate ourselves on issues, whether it be this issue or a lot of issues, but we take a position nonetheless, and I’m not sure how that makes anyone feel good about themselves or whatever position they’re taking, but I feel like that’s something that happens far too much and if people would like you described at your, at the table, you know, if you would just dig in a little bit, dig in and really try to educate yourself on whatever it is before you have a strong, firm opinion about it, I think we’d all be better served. I think that the other challenge that we live in in a very. 

1:04:53 – Andrew Sossin

Everybody wants everything right now. They want a solution right now, they want information right now. They don’t want to take the time. It’s not easy to learn history, and so you know that’s also. It’s inconvenient too sometimes. 

1:05:07 – Mike Malatesta

Very inconvenient, but I do. 

1:05:08 – Andrew Sossin

Look, I’m a hopeful person, and not just because I close my eyes and be hopeful. I do believe that, you know, in a flourishing, positive future, there will always be, you know, evil and bad, but I believe good prevails over evil and light over darkness. I believe that. I believe that, but at the same time, you know, I see the truth right. I unfortunately, you know, have to arm and train, you know, my family for us to be able to walk to synagogue, and I never thought that would happen in America, but that’s a fact right now in life. And so, okay, you know I’m fine with that as well, but I will tell you that you know I still have my family over. I still have my family over. I will tell you that, you know I still have my family over. I still have all my friends from all over the world and you know, we will still, at least we will get together and have discussions, and I just hope other people can do the same. 

1:06:10 – Mike Malatesta

So thank you for that, andrew. Thank you so much for making time for me today and helping us understand not just the work you’re doing at Recovery Unplugged but the whole nature of recovery, and I’m sure I asked some not so brilliant questions. They were all fantastic questions. You were very kind with your responses on the last slide. So, all things, recovery Unplugged and Andrew will be in the show notes. Andrew, is there anything that I haven’t asked you or that you would like to leave us with before we call it a day here? 

1:06:46 – Andrew Sossin

I mean, the only thing I’ll just reiterate is that you know, in 2023 and now going into 2024, and what’s going on in the world, all over the world Israel, ukraine, america, life everybody’s struggling with something. I haven’t met anybody that’s not or doesn’t have somebody to do it. So you know RecoveryUnpluggedcom, one of the things that I’ve tried ourselves on. I’m only in five states, right, so people call us from all over. If we can’t help you, we will help you find some place. That will. You know. With our online programs, we can help a lot more people with mental health, with addiction, but you know, all I would say is there’s a. You know we are not the only ones. There’s a lot of great people out there doing great things, and if you are struggling, you know there is help out there, and I’ve got thousands of examples now of people my own friends and family that have been to the darkest places. They’re living happy, successful, productive lives today and if they can, so can you. 

1:07:44 – Mike Malatesta

That’s beautiful. Okay, andrew, thank you so much, and for you, the listener, thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you got a lot out of this conversation. I hope you learned something. I hope you check out, andrew, I hope you check out Recovery Unplugged and what I would like you to do. Please maximize the greatness that’s inside of you today, until next time. 

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