Addiction and Recovery in the Dental World with Dr. Alan Mead

Yeah, shamed. And the other thing is when your other classmates did well with it and you didn't? I remember thinking myself: "one step forward, three steps back!" Always, for everything in dental school. It was just a mess! And it was only... It wasn't the academic stuff. You know, everyone had gotten through that stuff in college. So they had a handle on how to do that.

Dennis 12:53  

See, I was just the opposite. So clinical, I loved the idea of doing that stuff. So I would work my ass off! Just like I said in the first part of our session, was I would just practice! I just kept on -- practice and practice and practice. I loved it. So, it got easier because I just loved it. The academics is where I struggled. And, you know, I went to Michigan undergrad. I did okay, but I worked hard.

And then I got into Michigan Dental School, and these people were just way smarter than I was. It just came easier to them. They could read something, and retain it. And I'm a guy that I've got to read it three or four times, I've got to reread it, I've got to write it down. I've got to look back at it. I'm good at like... I can problem solve, but like strict memorization is really challenging for me.

Alan 13:39  

I'm gifted or cursed with that kind of memory. I know I said it before... I know that that sounds arrogant. I don't even mean it as arrogant because I literally don't know where it comes from. Like I am the guy you want on your trivia team. I'm creepy about that stuff. I really am. And I don't even know where it comes from. So, I have a memory like that. As I get older, I think... I remember stuff from a long time ago really well. I don't necessarily remember what I did earlier today as well. But I mean, like I have... I definitely would... I could go to class...

And the other thing is, as I mentioned, I had a laptop, and I can type like the wind. So, I'd take pretty good notes. But I typically didn't even have to really go over the notes because usually if it went in my brain, usually it was kind of there. And so the academics for me wasn't super... It's not that I didn't study, but you remember second year, when you'd have four tests in a week. You never even had enough time to really study that stuff because you just got crushed by the last one, and the next one is tomorrow, or you have multiple tests in a day.

How much can one study for that stuff? And that's where having a memory like mine really helped because you literally only had so much time to study this stuff, and I... But it was in there. So it's kind of a... I lucked out that way! Honestly, that might have been what carried me because I, you know, clinically, I struggled so hard with the with the hand and eye stuffso bad.

Dennis 14:51  

So I've got a story for you. When I was in dental school... I've told this story before. At Michigan they have this law library which is this very Oxfordian looking library, it's really beautiful. It's like out of Harry Potter. And the study tables, they're not pews, they're study tables. And they are just lined up the length of the library. And I was a Saturday night... I'll never forget this!

It was Saturday night. I was studying gross anatomy, I was charting the veins in the hand. I was seated all the way into the very back of the library, facing the back wall, so I wouldn't be distracted. And at Michigan, on a Saturday night , if it was a football Saturday, libraries would be packed. This is just sort of Michigan was. And so it's midnight, I'm facing the back of the library, and all the sudden I hear people laughing.

And I'm like, "I don't know what this is about, but I think it's about me." Because there's never any laughter in the Michigan library... So I started folding up my books. And for my classmates came in. They had nylons over their face. You couldn't do this today, but this was a long time ago. They had hoodies on. And they literally picked me up out of my chair, grabbed my backpack. I had my shoes off. They grabbed my shoes, they carried me out into the back of a jeep, literally threw me into the back of the jeep, and said, "This is the last time you're studying on a Saturday night for school!" 

Alan 16:03  

Saturday night? Yeah, yeah. 

Dennis 16:05  

And truly, and it wasn't for these... But they were all a lot smarter than me. A lot of them were sort of like you; they had incredible retention with knowledge. But it did save me. And it was quite the experience. So

Alan 16:18  

I had, in college, in undergrad. I had had, in high school... Probably the best teacher I've ever had in my entire life and all of my education was a high school Advanced Biology teacher. And I... Advanced Biology in high school was two hours. He was tough! Mr. Kosky. He was also the track coach, and I ran track. I sucked at track. But Mr. Kosky is literally one of the biggest... He looms large in my life.

And anyhow... With Advanced Biology in high school, there wasn't anything in my Zoology curriculum at Miami that I hadn't seen before. Anything! Unreal, unreal. So I'm like, well, so I kind of came in preloaded with the right stuff for one thing, but then... But the one thing I'll say. In high school, I never took physics in high school. I took geoscience. I took geoscience my 10th grade year, even though everyone else was taking chemistry, because my parents... My sister had had a hard time with chemistry, so my parents made me wait to take chemistry to 11th grade. So I took geoscience, which I love. Geology is great.

But anyhow, so I never got take physics in high school. I took physics in college, and everyone in physics had had physics before but me. And I'd go to the lectures, you know, I was... I didn't skip much of that stuff. But what would happen for the test. Two other guys and I would study for a couple days in advance of the test. We'd go to one of the... I remember this vividly, and they should have murdered me. They would teach me the stuff; they would teach me how to do it. And then I would crush the test. And they would, they may or may not have crushed the test.

But I think I did better than them on the test a lot of times, and they literally like... They spoon fed me. Oh, my gosh. I mean, I understand making it through course because of someone else, because I had never had physics before. And they had had it, and they and they were... So it was, it's funny, and I really value the fact that they were there for me, but I also could see why they wouldn't want to study with me anymore, because I would... I basically would sponge off them that way. But again, I think it's helpful. It has been helpful to have the kind of memory that I have. It's a weird, weird thing.

Dennis 18:21  

So let me ask you, with your struggles with the clinical portion of dental school and stuff? So, what was your coping mechanism? How'd you like how do you deal with the stresses?

Alan 18:32  

So, in college, I turned 21, summer before my senior year. And so I hadn't really drank that much, but I caught up pretty good my senior year. I drank. I was kind of a wild and crazy senior. And senior year in college... I got accepted to Minnesota on Christmas break... Actually, it might have been New Year's Eve on Christmas break when I was a senior, so my second semester senior year, I knew I was in dental school. I had to finish up and had to not fail out or whatever, but the pressure was kind of off, and so I had a pretty wild and crazy second semester my senior year of college but frankly nothing like what a lot of people had the entire time. I wasn't a fraternity guy. I was not...

I was in the marching band. I will say this. Marching band, they drank like fish, too. So I wasn't social with marching. I have regrets about that. Not necessarily because of the alcohol but like I know a lot of these marching band people on Facebook now, and they're great, and I was not sociable with them because I didn't do that kind of stuff. You know? In any case, I kind of started drinking like a college student when I was a senior, so I was kind of behind on that deal. But I got to dental school, moved into the Psi-O house, and literally the day before...

Now they call it a white coat ceremony. They didn't call it that when I was there, but the first day of school, you go in, and you get talked to about how amazing the... Blah, blah, blah. The night before that, a bunch of the Psi-O guys and I went out and got hammered, like really hammered! I showed up, and I'm like, "Oh, so this is how it's going to be!" You know, that's kind of... So I was hung over my very first day of dental school! It sort of set the tone a little bit for me. But I didn't you know...

Even then, I didn't know what I was getting into. But what I realized was that my coping mechanisms... I didn't realize this at the time; it's only afterwards that I could see why dental school was like this. I didn't come in with any coping mechanisms because I hadn't faced the kind of challenges, not only the academic challenges, which, clearly it's more rigorous in college, but like I said, I had some skill set to manage that... But the whole concept of going into something brand new, like the preclinical stuff, and actually having a hand and eye skill, because let's be honest -- dentistry, on some level, is a surgical....

Dennis 20:53  

Absolutely! 

Alan 20:54  

I mean, a dentist who can diagnose but doesn't do the surgery? You're not a dentist. I mean, it's reality is like, it's great that you know the Krebs cycle, but can you spin handpiece?

Dennis 21:06  

We're micro-surgeons! Yeah.

Alan 21:07  

Exactly! No one even really walks in... It's not like, my dad was a dentist, so I got to practice prepping teeth! I never did that! I wish that I had for crying out loud. I will say I poured some models in my dad's office. That was about it.

Dennis 21:23  

But that's macro. 

Alan 21:25  

It is! In any case, so you see go in there. It's like a whole new skill set. And I wasn't good at it. There are other people around me that were... seemed naturally good at it. I wasn't. So that was a first for me. And I was like, wow, this is like... I'm not such. I'm not such great shakes anymore. You know, like... And that was tough on my ego.

But what I found was that, okay, so at the Psi Omega house, we had a pop machine. It was 50 cents for a can of pop. They had like... a pool table and where we hung all the bikes... it was sort of a living room area. And right next to the pop machine was a kegerator. And the kegerator was free. Yeah. So the story is it was 50 cents for a pop or all the beer you could drink for free! You know, that sort of set the culture. 

Dennis 22:03  

Yep. 

Alan 22:04  

And dentistry is no different now than it was then. I mean, like, which meeting do you want to go to? Do you want to go to the meeting that has a bar where you can buy drinks? Or do you want the open bar? The open bar is for an hour. You know, that's that's how things sort of are. You're sort of like... I mean, that hasn't changed very much, to be perfectly honest. So, I had... My coping mechanism was that I knew I could change these feelings. And I never...

This is in fine focus now, but at the time, I mean, it just made me feel better to know that I could have a few. I wasn't a blackout drunk in dental school. It's not like I drank so much that I, you know, didn't show up for school or whatever. But I drank. I mean, by the time I was a junior, I was the guy who was trying to drag people out to Stub and Herb's on Tuesday, you know? Like, wait a second, it's Tuesday! Okay, I understand Friday, maybe even Thursday afternoon. But Tuesday?

Oh, yeah, you know? And so... And maybe because I didn't struggle so much with the academic stuff, and I was like, just trying to make myself feel better for sucking and everything else. I don't know. But I mean, like, I sort of realized that this could make me feel better. And I remember vividly ninth floor labs, you know... By the time we were in clinic, like, I remember vividly going, "You know, what'd be right good right now is a beer!" A beer would go pretty good right now...

Like the little voice in the back of my head... And that voice kind of never went away after a while. And like, you know, when I'm feeling this way, that voice was there. And so when I had those feelings, it was just I knew that I could change the way I felt. And it's not like the problems went away after I got back from my little trip to being being drunk, you know? But somehow just making myself feel better from it was enough maybe. I don't know. But so, I developed that as a coping skill! Drinking was my coping skill!

Dennis 23:51  

Probably the most common. Maybe marijuana? You know, pot, but certainly one of those has got to be the most common 

Alan 23:58  

Well, partly because it's socially acceptable. I didn't... I don't know how everyone else drank. I can't make that judgment. But I looked like everyone else. I drank like everyone else. It's not like I drank 10 times as much as everyone else and fell on the floor and passed out. So, I didn't... But in retrospect, I drank because I wanted to change the way I felt. It did make me more sociable for sure. It did make me... it made me more funny. It made me more sociable for sure. And I did not probably have a drinking problem in dental school.

But one of the reasons I didn't was because a lot of the... I lived close enough to walk to school. I lived... The entire four years of dental school, I never had to drive anywhere. I didn't have to drive in from home and park to go to school. I either lived at the Psi-O house, which was walking distance, or there was an apartment complex over a horrible convenience store, The Food Basket, which no longer exists. And we called it the Psi Omega Retirement Home. It was all the people who lived in Psi-O for three years.

We all got our own apartment. And we thought it was great. The apartments were not good, but they were they were better than living in a tiny room at the Psi-O house, but the bottom line is I could walk to class. So it's not like I was driving drunk because I didn't have to. It's not like I was... And the other thing is I could stumble home from anywhere, and it was not a big deal, and it was the campus, so it was relatively safe... So, on some level, you don't realize you have a problem until there's consequences of your actions, and I just didn't really have that, you know? I didn't have that.

So, I don't know that I was a problem drinker at that time. But so, when I graduated from dental school, I got home. I got an apartment. I started work with my dad after I got my license, and you realize that, for one thing, you've got to drive everywhere around here. I didn't have a neighborhood that I could just walk. It's also weird to just just drink all the time, like people thought that was kind of weird, you know? And I will say, in retrospect, my wife pointed out the fact that I had a lot of empty bottles around my apartment, so I did still drink, but I probably did it alone in my apartment, which is also pretty weird.

Dennis 25:59  

That's a problem. 

When you're... when this is all happening, is there... And I'm just asking because I don't know. Is there there's somewhat of like an impostor syndrome you're trying to like overcome? Like I'm a dentist... First of all, like, so if you struggle with the clinical aspect, so then it's like, should I even be doing this? Then you've got all the stresses of running the practice, and all the other things that are associated with that, is there some of that that was going on?
 

Alan 34:34

Yeah! I will say this. First off, when this was all going on, social media didn't exist. I got into Dental Town, literally, like the year I got clean. So I got into Dental Town in 2002. But prior to that, I didn't know what everyone else was doing. Part of the imposter syndrome was knowing what other... You know, comparing yourself to what other people do. I didn't even know! I didn't know, and I certainly wasn't paying attention. That's for sure.

But the imposter syndrome was part of it, I'm sure. And I didn't... It's funny, my dad ran my practice while I was in rehab, and he said he didn't see anything too awful bad with what was going on. So it's one of those things where like, I don't know if I was bad, good or otherwise. But, I mean, I knew I struggled with clinical stuff. But I also, still to this day, I'm not someone who does stuff that I'm not pretty confident about. I'm not the most adventurous dentist. So I guess maybe I had that going for me. I wasn't out there doing stuff that I didn't know what I was doing, for the most part. But I think there was partly some of that.

But I think most of it was, I got started with this stuff because I liked to get high. And then I got so sucked into it that I was sick if I didn't have this stuff. So the stress of owning and running a practice and being a dentist was almost just the sidelight of my addiction. I hate to say it, but I mean... I'd love to say that... Being a dentist is hard enough, but being a dentist while trying to have an active addiction going, and...

Because the other thing is, you know, I spent all kinds of money on stuff that I didn't have. I spent... You don't make great choices when you're in the middle of addiction for a lot of things, so that made it more stressful money was always stress. You know, trying to keep a relationship going while you're... Basically everything in your life is sort of on the back burner compared to your addiction, but you're putting out to the world that you've got it all together. Right? And that gets harder and harder the worse your addiction gets.

Dennis 37:13  

You're 20 years sober now, right?

Alan 37:16  

I am. January 10, 2002 was when I got intervened on and went into treatment. So, yes, it is 20 years this year.

Dennis 37:27  

What was your intervention like? How did that all... How did that all roll in?

Alan 37:29  

So one of my really good friends, he's an oral surgeon, he still is. He's an oral surgeon in town. We actually started in Saganaw the same day. He figured out what was going on. Long story short, I think he figured it out first. Because I had like this... It was either an ingrown hair or something like that. It was a big knot on my neck. And I asked him to take it out. And, of course, I also wanted to be sedated, and I knew he'd write me a prescription. So I was doing all kinds of stuff. If there was a way to score a prescription, I was going to probably do it. So this was in my mind. Little did I know... I mean, this is a cry for help.

When a dude tries to sedate someone who's got a wicked opiate habit with fentanyl, and he said he's ready to drop a bowl of fentanyl on you, and it doesn't do anything, and then the second one, and it doesn't do anything... You're kind of telegraphing what's going on a little bit. So he dug in a little deeper and figured out what's going on. And then he went to my family, and they kind of planned the intervention from there. And he kind of got my team involved. My team knew was going on, but it's tough because... A lot of people say your team should have really... No! I'm writing their paycheck, you know?

I can't expect... you can't expect them to... I've had so many people say oh, the licensed members of your team, they had a... I'm like, that's great. It's great that you understand that if you have a license, you have an obligation. But you know what? Real life is a lot more complicated than that, and punishing them for not turning me in. That's not going to work. That's not going to work anywhere.

Bottom line, they would have loved to help me, but they also knew that like... They kind of... I think they felt like they helped me by messing this... You know, crashing the schedule if I was in a really bad spot or making sure that I was going in the right direction. They sort of like... Just like a spouse with a drinking husband, you know? They kind of make up for... It becomes more of a codependency thing where you're kind of trying to make up for the addiction instead of confront it face on. If it had happened like...

I have two members of my team right now who were there while I was doing it, like they're still with me. So they were they actually went into treatment with me and did that like family day stuff, all this. They've been there. They know it, and they would call me on it now, but they wouldn't... They didn't know that then. Why are they? So on some level it took someone from the outside to realize how messed up it was, to get it... And my parents, I snowed them pretty good too. I mean, in retrospect, they can kind of see some of the stuff, but... So once they figured it out, they all came in on...

Basically they came in on an afternoon and took me away. They took me to a Treatment Center in Grand Rapids, which couple hours from Saginaw, and it was a it was a treatment center that was mostly for healthcare professionals. 

Dennis 40:09  

Oh, interesting. 

Alan 40:10  

The first night, the first several nights, I spent in a detox center. And I saw some real stuff there. I saw some real street addiction there. That was nuts. Man, I was like, in a room with a dude who was like literally dying of cirrhosis of the liver, he was regularly bleeding out because he had drank so much. I saw like actual street addicts from heroin. Here's this guy who came in and the clothes he wore to work, you know, khakis and a nice shirt. That's all the clothes I had, who was addicted to pills, and they're... Part of me felt like I didn't qualify because I was different than them.

And it's one of the reasons... One of the things about recovery is that everyone qualifies! Don't worry, you qualify. But so I mean, it was pretty raw. And then I moved into this... it was an inpatient/ outpatient. So we lived in apartments. And then we did the therapy at the building. And a lot of... I was in with a bunch of nurses and anesthesiologists, physicians, and stuff. A few lawyers, you know... But I was in with a couple of other dentists and stuff like that. So it was a four and a half, almost five month program that I was in. 

Dennis 41:10  

Wow. 

Alan 41:10  

And I was gone from the office then... So my dad kind of ran my office and helped it limp along, you know... 

Dennis 41:16  

And what did they tell your patients where you're were at rehab? 

Alan 41:19  

You know, it's really funny. The guy who was running the committee that I eventually was running, told them, "Tell them there's a back problem." So everyone... They told everyone I had a back problem. While meanwhile, how many years later? 20 some years later, I got hit by a truck and actually broke my back, which is ironic, and I didn't take any opiates! But anyhow, really, that used to frustrate me because you're not supposed to lie on stuff like that. You don't have to tell the world everything, but you're not supposed to lie. So that was always a struggle.

But like people years later, people asked me how my back was doing after that. So they told them that. But, you know, if you're in that situation, understand that no matter how well you know your patients, you don't owe them an explanation. A lot of my patients know that I'm in recovery. I'm pretty public about it. But, you know, I didn't necessarily wave a flag about it when I was... But I will say this. When I got back from from treatment, I was on a contract, a pretty tight contract. The very first time I ever did a random drug screen, the person who came out to administer the drug screen was a patient of mine. 

Dennis 42:20  

Oh, come on. 

Alan 42:21  

No, I'm serious. So that was real, that actually happened. So humility? You get humility, whether you want it or not. sort of happens. 

Dennis 42:30  

Wow. Hmm. 

Alan 42:31  

Yeah. So in any case, yeah. So I was in treatment for four and a half months. And honestly, I've never relapsed. That was an interesting thing. A lot of people. I will say this, that I... Every once in a while I was using, while I was in trouble, you'd be like... Your head would come up above the water. And you're like, "This is crazy. I can't do this! This is insane. I've got to stop!" I can't... So, there were times that I tried to stop. I just was never able to do it on my own. But as soon as I admitted, you know, in a treatment center, I admitted my problem, I was ready to start working. You know, I didn't want to go back. So that was...

So interestingly, I'm an odd duck that way because I was ready to stop. I just didn't... I had never literally... I mean, I probably heard of Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous. I never went. I didn't know anything about it. So like, on some level, I just didn't know! I had no idea that there was an option to not do this. I was in... And I had... the brakes had come off. I wasn't even trying to stop anymore. That was when I got intervened.

Dennis 43:29  

When you're in the rehab experience... Because I've never been, and I think probably a lot of the listeners haven't been through that. What's it like?

Alan 43:39  

Well, it's funny because I can say this. First off. This is awful. But true. If you don't want to get better, it doesn't work.

Dennis 43:49  

Sure, like anything! 

Alan 43:50  

In the same way that, you know, if you've got gum disease and you're not willing to work a little harder and do a little better, you're going to probably have gum disease forever. You'll probably lose some teeth, you know. If you don't want to get... you don't want to get better, the more...

Sometimes being around it long enough, you'll decide you want to get better. So, like a treatment center where you're there for a while and you're not going anywhere, some people can... decide they want to get better. And, like, that's why, on some level, having AA meetings or NA meetings or something like that, where you can build a community around people who kind of have what you want, which is to say sobriety, and a little peace of mind... That's hugely powerful.

Basically, treatment was like living around that for four and a half, five months straight. It was it's bordering on cultish, the way that you just changed everything about your life. The problem is that when you're in treatment, you can get to a point where it's very safe; you're around safe people and stuff there. But, so the treatment center I worked with understood that, and they made a big effort to make sure that you had a good start back where you... in your community, to build a safe space around yourself back home rather than... 

Dennis 44:16
That's a big issue. 

Alan 44:17
It is THE issue, actually, honestly. Because anyone can be in a treatment center. And... Well, not anyone. There are people that relapsed in treatment when I was there to be perfectly honest.
 

Dennis 44:23  

Oh, no kidding. 

Alan 44:38  

Oh, yeah, I had one of my friends who was an anesthesiologist, hung himself in one of the apartments. 

Dennis 44:50

I'm sorry to hear that. 

Alan 44:51

Yeah, it was unbelievable. Like, I saw a lot of stuff and four and a half months. And it was a lot of stuff that I didn't want to... I didn't want any part of that anymore. So it was like, I had a really powerful experience. And it was kind of important to... I think it was the right place, the right time, and the right people for me. But, I mean, I know tons of people that go in, they're dragging their feet, and they don't think they have a problem. That's... Most often, that's what it is. "The problems is you. It's not me." You know, it's one of those things. I was pretty quick to see that I had a problem, but maybe because what I was doing was so crazy. 

Dennis 45:44  

When you had your intervention, and so they're sitting down with you, are you like, "Yeah, let's go. I understand. I've been waiting for that. Thank God you showed up." 

Alan 45:53  

The TV shows where they show the person fighting and yelling and screaming, I would have been horrible TV. I was like "I've tried. I can't do it. Let's go." I didn't fight at all. I just... I was ready to go, which I think is pretty rare. But interestingly, my family... it was my family and Scott, the guy who kind of figured it out. They're the ones who came for me. They didn't have an interventionist or anything like that. And I just went. So, on some level, I mean...

I will say this, my brother in law parked my car in Starsky and Hutch style, so I couldn't leave, you know? It was one of those things, but I was ready to go. They took me to Grand Rapids, right from there. So I started off on the right foot that way. It's crazy to think that that was like 20 years ago was when I was in treatment. I was until May of 2002. So I would have been right in the middle of it right now 20 years ago.

What was it like when you went back to the dental office for the first time?

Alan 46:41  

Oh, it's great. Well, first off, they did it so that you'd go back while you were in treatment for like a short day... You know, it's not like you go in, and... I don't even know if I... I might have just done exams or something relatively light, because my dad had been working there for a long time. And so they made it... they kind of set the guideposts so you could get back and comfortable. But in the meantime, you know, my team had been coming to Grand Rapids and doing group therapy with me.

Everyone else that was in treatment with me hated my guts. Because I was... At first, I was the only person who would bring their team in. And so everyone else was bugging them to bring their team in. Because it was really important and helpful for everyone.

But I think my team was freaked out, and my dad was freaked out, because they also didn't want you to be... They didn't want you to be thinking about work. They didn't want you to be thinking about the office. And they're like, "You've got to concentrate on you!" And I did. And so the office and my dad working in my office thought that I didn't want to come back. I wouldn't talk about because they didn't think they thought I didn't want anything to do with it!

Dennis 47:43  

You took your advice to heart, and then they were like...

Alan 47:46  

I did! I don't think the people that were at the treatment center, let the people that lived with and worked with know that that was part of the deal. You know? In my mind, I'm like, Yeah, I'll get back there eventually. But then the other thing is a lot of people I was in treatment with, they were making big changes in their life! Like "I'm going to move to Florida. I'm going to move with it." And of course, that's a terrible thing to do when... Don't make big choices when you're in rehab. You're not... You were making... You came in making terrible choices. Guess what, you're still making pretty terrible choices without some help.

So, on some level, having having a comfortable place, you know... So it was wild to come back. I think that... I'm sure it was really uncomfortable, but the bottom line is that I had... I would go back for like a day at a time. And then at one point, they had what's called an extended therapeutic leave, and I was there for a week, you know, and I was going to meetings... So it was, they knew what they were doing with regard to getting you back into it. But I also, I'm not going to lie, I brought everything to the table. And I made...

Like I said, I did therapy with my team. I made sure I knew exactly where I was going for meetings. I made sure there are people checking, and I... There was a ton of accountability built into it. Because I didn't want to fail! I didn't want to... Looking back, I mean I'd love to take all the credit for it, but I was just did what everyone else said. I'm like, "Oh, okay, this is what I have to do!"

You know, I took nitrous out of the office. I didn't have nitrous in the office. I literally... I talked with a guy a year or so after I got out who said nitrous is such an important part of my practice. I can't... He was in treatment. I was like, "You've got to not use nitrous. You can't do it." "Oh, no, I got it. It's too important to my practice." Guess what? He went back and went out, and relapsed on it. I mean, so, like many things, if it's as obvious as that, yeah, it's going to happen that way. So I just took their advice. 

Dennis 49:29  

Did you have kids at that point? Or were you...

Alan 49:32  

I was married but didn't have kids. Didn't have kids until... My first son was born in 2007. So, I had been six years... Well, five years clean sober by then. So they've never seen me while I was using.

Dennis 49:46  

Did the team have a lot of guilt when as you guys were going through therapy?

Alan 49:50  

No. 

Dennis 49:51  

They were okay?

Alan 49:52  

The therapy was mostly about them explaining to me the effect that I had had on them.

Dennis 49:57  

What a piece of shit you were? 

Alan 49:59  

Pretty much, yeah. And I mean, like, we can joke about it now. I mean, just imagine working with a team that knew you before this, but also now understanding what you've been through. They know a lot. I mean, there's probably no team that knows more about addiction and stuff than my team, because they've kind of been through all of it. I don't think they felt guilty. They were pulling for me! They wanted me to come back. So that was good! It could have been worse, they could have not wanted me to come back. So it was... I mean, it was it was a good situation that way.

Dennis 50:28  

When you look at it, and I'm sure you've been asked this question a lot... What do you advise to young dentists who maybe might be on the precipice? Or who might just...?

Alan 50:38  

I have to tell you, I've changed how I feel about this, and I have actually become... First off, you know, alcohol and now marijuana are terrible choices that everyone should be allowed to make, I guess. I think alcohol as a whole, just societally? I think it's a negative. I think it's a net negative. I think more people can't handle alcohol than can. And I think we spend a lot of time as a society thinking we can... That the alcohol is more benign than it actually is. I really do. I've come to that. I'm like, I think, on net, if I could do a Thanos snap and make it so alcohol never existed, I would. I would because I think I think it's such a net negative.

So here's my challenge. You shouldn't drink. You shouldn't drink! Because it's too easy to fall into it. I know so many people who've gotten in trouble with it, you know? And, of course, you can't watch the Superbowl. You can't have a meeting with your friends and stuff where alcohol isn't involved. So obviously, it's not very realistic. But the bottom line is, I think it's terrible. I think it's terrible. Which is not... I'm supposed to say, "Well, you just need to make sure you handle it." First off, people don't handle it in general very well. So I think it's a bad thing.

But I also live in the same world that you live live in. So, I mean, I realize that it's a thing. If people understand that if you're asking if you think you drink too much. Normal people don't ask if they drink too much. If you think you drink too much, you probably do. I've advised people this: "Here, go for a month without alcohol, and see how hard it is. Is it hard for you to go for a month without drinking? Because if it is, you need to take a look at that." But I mean, I also tend to think that I was addicted to opiates the same way that cigarette smokers are addicted to cigarettes. 

Dennis 50:39  

Sure.

Alan 50:42  

I mean, it has that physical... I mean, people can be physically addicted to alcohol. But it's more about... You've got to drink an awful lot before you're having really bad consequences of physical... Nicotine, on the other hand, if you're really addicted to cigarettes, it's very, very uncomfortable. Withdrawal, which is what I had. So on some level, alcohol... It's kind of too bad that alcohol doesn't have that because that's a red flag that you kind of can't live without this. You need to take a look at that.

But again, I've got to say, if you think you have a problem with alcohol, you probably should try 30 days without it and see what it's like. Because it depends on how much of your life it's become a part of. That's how I feel about it. Now, it's funny to think 20 years later, I've become like more, more of a teetotaller than I was when I started, you know. I just think there's a net negative in general in society with alcohol, but so, you need to be careful. And, frankly, if you think that dentistry doesn't have a culture of alcohol and drinking, you're not looking hard. It's there. 

Dennis 53:21  

Go go to a meeting! 

Alan 53:22  

Exactly. Exactly. Absolutely. Yeah.

Dennis 53:26  

I want to finish talking about coping mechanisms. Because I think that obviously is is an issue. So, you're... I know... I mean, I've followed you for long enough. I you have at least one horse. I don't know how many horses you have.

Alan 53:39  

Yeah, well, I don't... Okay, so my wife is the horse person. We feed... we have a boarding farm, so we feed like 12 horses. We have a miniature donkey. We have bunch of goats, chickens, and stuff. My wife is kind of the horse person. I have sort of... I don't mind feeding them, although I have this injury on my foot. I haven't fed for a long time, but I also haven't ridden my damn bike. So, we have horses. We live on a farm, we live out in the country, so we have some cool stuff that way. But if I need to remind myself that I do have a problem with addiction and addictive thinking, I don't have to go very far. The way I...

For a while, it was with the podcast. Before that, it was a baking bread. Like, for a long time I was baking bread. You know, it was a weekend thing, and all of a sudden, I had to do it during the week because I was so obsessed with it. I was like a bread guy. And then I got into the podcast, and like I said, I still, to this day, I buy way more audio equipment than I ever need. It's a... And the other thing is being a dentist and having this podcast allows me to indulge that in a way that is... Other podcasters don't or wouldn't...

So in other words, I can make some pretty dumb choices and the consequences... I'm sort of I'm sort of protected from the consequences because financially investing in that stuff is not such a horrible thing. But but I've really gotten into cycling recently. And I mean, until this wound on my foot came along, I was pretty much riding every day. In even in Michigan in wintertime. I never realized you could ride your bike. 

Dennis 55:19  

As long as you've got the right bike!

Alan 55:20  

I got a fat tire bike with studs on it! I can ride every day; I can ride upside a tree! And I've got trails that are literally just a left turn out of my driveway. So it's like, that's become an obsession. And so, on some level, that's... And actually, even in 2005, I lost a bunch of weight, too. And it was an obsessive thing, too. It's kind of an addictive thing. So clearly I have that gene in me...

Dennis 55:46  

Do you have gloves for your winter bicycling?

Alan 55:48  

Of course I do. But I also have big ass pogies, too. I got the big... I've got both. And I've got... Like I said, I've got two bikes. And I figured, Well, both of them probably need studded tires." And these are things... And the thing is if you don't know anything about cycling in 2022, they're not giving that stuff away! They're not given that stuff away! I mean, like, you can't even get into a decent bike for like less than $4,000 at this point. And they make bikes a lot different than they did 20 years ago. Let's just say your swing. 

Dennis 56:17  

You're not riding your dad's Schwinn. 

Alan 56:18  

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, the mid 80s. Schwinn is not... You might be able to get a bunch of money for that as a collector's item. But the reality is, yeah, you're not... And, of course, the other thing about cyclists and Instagram, and all the social media, and the poison that that stuff is, my entire Instagram feed is full of beautiful teeth and killer bikes. Killer bikes! I mean, and I can't stop... I'm obsessed, you know. The other thing is, I want to... So I've got kind of a gravel bike. It's a cyclocross gravel bike, and then I've got the fat tire bike. I mean, I just bought the gravel bike last August. I bought the fat tire bike, I think in October, or something like that.

I already want a full suspension mountain bike because I'm not a road guy. Not a road guy. Because I got hit by a truck on the road. I don't really need that. I've not seen any pickup trucks on the trail, so I'm kind of that way. But yeah, I mean, I'm obsessed with that. It's probably a better obsession than what I was doing. But I still have to take a look at myself a little bit!

Dennis 57:16  

Well, what I like about cycling is that I have plenty of time to talk to myself. And while the advice is not good, it's free. So I like the free content. I've got plenty of time, so...

Alan 57:25  

Well, it's a good way to be alone, too. I know, There's tons of people that are like, "Oh, yeah, we should go riding." I'm like, "Are you kidding? I ride alone, because I can ride alone!" I can be alone. It's sort of a thing. I like to live in my head.

Dennis 57:37  

That's where I am also. Alan, I can't thank you enough. I think, you know, obviously the issue with addiction in in medicine and dentistry. It's pervasive. I mean, you talked about the anesthesiologist. I did the GPR at Mount Sinai Hospital. I saw it firsthand. I saw people who had access, taking advantage of that access. I've had patients in that realm, and I've known dentists that have had these struggles. And I've borderlined on these struggles for sure.

Alan 58:11  

Sure. What's funny is the access is an interesting thing. Because honestly, I mean, the suggestion... The statistics, depending on where you're looking... Probably 20% of of people are going to have a problem with problem drug and alcohol use in their life. 20% of people. So that's a huge number, except it's not really when you think about it. You're like, Yeah, that's probably about right. But I suspect that in medical fields, particularly dentistry, and other medical fields, that number is probably higher, and mostly in dentistry, particularly, because a lot of us work alone.

So we're isolated from other colleagues, and we have access. I hope that -- I haven't tried, but I hope access is a little harder than it was for me when I was using. I'd just buy it. I'd just go online and buy it, you know, as a matter. But I hope that it's a little bit harder. But also the isolation is, on some level, part of the problem. And yeah, there's a ton of dentists that struggle with this, and a lot of them don't... A lot of them haven't come out of it as nicely as me on some level. A lot of them don't think it's as much of a problem as it probably is.

And I just... For someone who is worried about it... First off, my email is simplebutnoteasy@gmail.com. And I I'm always confidential about that stuff if you have any questions, but also there's a lot of resources. Most states have have a confidential part of their State Dental Association that has a committee that can help you with this stuff. And they're the right people to go to because they don't have... They don't discipline; they only are there to help.

In other words, it's better to get in touch with them than to be reported to your board. Although if you get reported to the Board, it's very likely they're going to refer you to them anyhow. No dental board out there wants an addicted dentist to go to prison; they want them to get treatment. That is just... I will say in 2022, that's a good thing. That's what's really happening. But the other thing is is like a willingness to to look at yourself is what it takes on some level.