Connection Over Isolation: The Real Path to Recovery with Sam Peterson

It’s about the past and the future. This time actually doesn’t exist. And that’s where the suffering lives. We need to get away from this idea that talk therapy and med management can that are more effective than they are at treating acute mental health disorders cuz they’re not. They do not address the underlying neurobiology of PTSD, depression, anxiety, but especially not TBI. The things that are most important in my life today are more near and dear to my heart and I’m more connected with than I’ve ever been. The real hard thing is to look and go, “Wait, why is my son, daughter, significant other anesthetizing themselves against their reality? A reality that I am a part of.
Hey everybody and welcome to another amazing and exciting episode of Finding Peaks, yours truly. President and founder, chief executive officer, Christopher Michael Burns. So grateful to be here today in our new digs new studio. I got Pikes Peak over my left shoulder here and grateful to be joined by the first episode in the new studio, my great friend and colleague Sam Peterson, Denver Mind Spa. Let’s go, man. Great to have you here, dude. So happy to be here. Love the new place. Thanks, man. Grateful to have you. Sam was just uh a couple weeks ago, two, three weeks ago, we were down at um the winter symposium kind of chopping it up and walking around and we were inspired again to kind of get together and talk shop about mental health, stress, um sleep, diet, exercise, how all these things play into uh physical well-being and optimization of physical health. So, um there’s no other person I’d rather have on the show talking about this stuff. What is going on in your world, my friend? Well, you know, we uh we were talking a little bit before the show about, you know, entrepreneurship and about how chronic stress can just tank performance. And, you know, in both of our lines of work as CEOs, we have to be at the top of our game at all times because you never know when all of the sudden life or the universe is going to take a hatchet to your plans. And that became really apparent, you know, full disclosure, yesterday, I got I got kicked between the legs a couple different times in my business. And this morning, I was in the gym just having a really hard time focusing, thinking about all of the different things that could go wrong in my business and how it could just tank everything. And I had this quick moment of clarity. It was just like, “Hey man, be where your feet are because if you don’t focus on this workout, you’re not going to be able to perform later.” And that just brought up uh a lot of thoughts about how we as entrepreneurs do this all the time. And by ruminating and using our creativity negatively, we’re really shooting ourselves in the foot from a neurobiological perspective. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It actually brings up for me back in early 2023 when we got hit with what would eventually be the stream of about 10 different curve balls over two years. And I remember I was reading a book at the time and um I’ve mentioned it on the podcast before but it’s called the power of now and it’s um by a spiritual teacher and later named Eertl and he talks about suffering um outside of the present moment. So I love what you said because you were like if I can be where my feet are I can accomplish what I need to do today and that inflection point is something serious but really difficult under a tremendous amount of stress to come by. But he talks about the past and the future. This time actually doesn’t exist. And that’s where the suffering lives. And so, not only with ourselves as entrepreneurs, but our guests, our clients, the people we have the opportunity to serve. It really is um about getting them back into the present moment and getting them back into their shoes. And through that focus over the last few years, I’ve been really able to experience a tremendous amount of gratitude because I can be where my feet are in those moments when I jump into suffering as an entrepreneur, which is very very common because we’re thinking five years ahead and what we did a year ago that could have been different. But that inflection point of the present moment is a really powerful source of which over the last nine months have helped kind of propel me personally and professionally in a way that I never thought possible. Now, it doesn’t mean necessarily that anything’s better. It just means that I’m showing up and doing the best I can every day. Well, I think you you touched on it like it sounds like your mental state is better. Mhm. And that ability to divorce yourself from the constant catastrophizing is allowing you to be in the present moment and to perform at a higher level so that your next 2, three, five years are looking forward in a much more positive direction. That’s what it sounds like to me. Yeah. No, 100%. like as far as the professional side progressing, yeah, we’ve made incremental steps, but it’s like turning the Titanic, you know, very, very slow. But to your point, from a mental health perspective, and I’ve said this, I think even on the last show, was the things that are most important in my life today are more near and dear to my heart and I’m more connected with than I’ve ever been. And I wonder if it takes us as entrepreneurs sometimes kind of paying that luxury tax of like really being on the cliff’s edge and holding everything up and then looking down and looking back at what’s really important. And I wonder if it really takes that to have the gratitude for and to be within or to exercise the opportunity that is the present moment. Like it’s difficult it took for me like into the edge to really realize that everything I’ve ever wanted was there all along, you know, and I just don’t want to lose that. That’s I mean that’s really powerful. Yeah. It’s it’s so easy to look over and just catastrophize about the fall and not realize like hey actually look around. Mhm. one, I’ve got a great life, great relationships. They they fill my cup every single day. And if I look back historically, every time that I’ve been on the edge of this cliff, I figured it out. Mhm. Yeah. And I think being able to do that is the next level of human performance at the highest level because no matter what, there will always be these stressors and these existential crises that are going to throw you right back on that edge. And the cliff face always looks like a larger drop than it is. Mhm. And that plays into how our neurology works with that cuz we we are constantly as leaders, as CEOs, we have to have a little bit more of that neuroticism, that pension for feeling negative emotions more acutely. It’s what keeps us alive. Patrick Bet David says all the time, only the paranoid survive. And as much as I as much as I wanted to hate him for saying that, it is so true. For sure. You got to be on the edge a little bit. You got to be on the edge a little bit. You got to be looking forward. You have to You have to give in to that little dark passenger that’s like, “Hey, what about this?” Like, I’m going to think about that for an hour. Yeah. Or an hour or two or three or five. Or seven days. Or seven days. Exactly. And then being able to pull back from that or just like, hey, all right. I I did all that ruminating in the car. I’m home with my wife now. It’s time to click that off. I’m gonna be where my feet are now. And that bleeds into how we experience both our relationships and how we show up in our business. Cuz at the end of the day, all of that rumination and catastrophizing drives up cortisol levels. And we know that long exposure to long-term stress increases inflammation. And this kind of goes back to kind of back to like depression, anxiety, and and PTSD. When you are in a state of chronic stress like that, your blood vessels in your prefrontal cortex are being choked off. So your the part of your brain that’s responsible for telling your limbic brain to shut the hell up isn’t able to do it all the time. That’s wild. So, the impact of stress, which we don’t often times talk about. It’s it’s not in the the six dimensions of ASAM. Um there it’s it’s that’s not it’s not very clear to me where where it’s in there. But the impact of stress has an impact on uh any sort of pharmacological approach you’re trying to take, any holistic approach you’re trying to take. It’s we were talking before the show. It’s like I have folks up at the facility right now in our acute mental health space that can’t sleep and the medications aren’t working and nothing is working. Would you say that’s simply because of the foundation that sleep provides or doesn’t? It’s certainly a part of it cuz the thing that sleep does, one of the many things that it does is it’s the time when our brain actually cleans itself. And if you’re not able to clean out all of the dritis or abnormal operating, um, your brain gets gked up, inflammation gets driven up, and all of these different knock-on effects happen because the system is not able to perform routine maintenance. What do you think outside of sleep for people that are, you know, whether they’re engaged in your clinic or they’re moving into the outpatient setting in our clinic, what are some of the things we can do in addition to great sleep holistically that help inform a decreasing of inflammation? Yeah, I think tried and true diet and exercise just cannot be understated. You have to get your heart rate up, lift heavy things, and eat natural whole foods. If you’re not doing that, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Especially, you know, if you’re in an acute mental health situation, incredibly important. And on the other side, if you’re in a high performance situation, it I mean, hell, I’ve seen the I’ve seen the pictures. I’ve seen I’ve seen the pictures uh that you showed me from when you were in that, hey, high performance from a business perspective, but less than high performance from a personal perspective. But I mean, how how were you able to cope with all these curve balls that you’ve been thrown during that period versus now? Yeah, much much differently. I remember looking at things and being like, I don’t know what to do. And now things are so much more clear, so much more concise. And the same hose, the same uh um fire hose is still firing. I’m just able to digest it kind of more molecule by molecule as opposed to just seeing the whole thing at once and not knowing what to do and being paralyzed. But it’s interesting you say that too because I think it takes I mean I’ve heard before and I’m not a doctor or anything but like your your brain’s this muscle and so we have to activate it and put it through trials and tribulation and face intensity um with authenticity and presence and through doing that day after day after day. It’s the same fires. It’s the same hose. It’s just my ability to interpret the information is quite a bit different. I I like how Alex Ramoszi says it that entrepreneurship never gets easy, but it’s like climbing a mountain, finding finding your peak, if you will. It’s not that going up the mountain ever gets that much easier. You get used to the altitude. Yeah. Cuz I I you know, we we had, you know, something this week. I I remember very vividly when a similar problem happened. It was a couple of years ago and it took me down like in bed crying, couldn’t get out for like a day and a half and as soon as the the message got delivered, we we knew this negative thing happened in the business. It uh just took a breath and I was like, “Okay, it’s another one of those.” Mhm. I know how to deal with this. All right, it’s going to cut into our bottom line this much. We’re going to be okay. And that kind of resilience is a muscle. M you’re it is a network in your brain that’s like hey I’ve seen this before and it’s going to be okay. That is using your prefrontal cortex to calm down your amydala. M how do you I don’t know why it made me think of this when you said that but how do you as an entrepreneur with somebody who cares right because we’ve talked about that a lot you know we’re at the symposium there’s hundreds of people and you know every third conversation you can be like oh this this person’s in it like like right here you know but what is it like or how do you know as an entrepreneur and people like us when to keep fighting and when to stop because there’s Like we always talk about, you and I have talked about it like when things actually happen, when the impossible becomes possible, it’s because we got rid of the backup plan. And that backup plan is that ambiguity that keeps us overnight like what if, what if, what if, what if, what if? How do you how do you get through that? Well, I was I was just in South Carolina at a an event called Patriot Boot Camp, and it’s an event for, you know, newer entrepreneurs. I I went there as a more seasoned uh entrepreneur. They wanted me to go there as a mentor. And what I found is the people ahead of me, we all shared something in common. We all had these same stories, these curve balls that just hit us straight in the face over and over and over again. And I’m not going to make payroll, and I’m going to have to sell my house. And oh my god, what did I do? I ruined my marriage. Mhm. Every single successful person who was in that ultra wealthy centiionaire category had the exact same story. And not only did they have those exact same stories, but they had that exact same story of resilience. They either figured out that something they were doing wasn’t quite working. There was too much resistance that wasn’t giving and they took a side step and pivoted. or and this is where where I find myself is despite the challenges what we see is are these incredible results we’re seeing you know incredible results in symptom remission like 14 to 17 days you like that doesn’t that doesn’t exist anywhere else in mental health so despite the challenges people don’t feel that way in inatient treatment no with the volume turned to zero yeah like in the best therapeutic setting yeah I mean we just uh we just had an army veteran with with PTSD who wasn’t sleeping, couldn’t hold a job, couldn’t focus. And hell, in 3 weeks, she she’s applying for a position. She feels great. She’s able to reconnect with her kids. And it’s it’s those stories. It’s knowing that you’re making an impact in other people’s lives that that drives me to keep going every day. And you know, not not everybody who listens to this is going to be in mental health and they’re making huge impacts. They could be selling widgets, right? That doesn’t mean that there’s any less of an impact in the environment you create for your employees. You know, the greatest contributor to someone’s mental health isn’t your therapist, it’s who you work for. Mhm. So even in those situations, there is a ton of value, intrinsic value to be derived from providing that sort of space and that sort of value to the people around you. Yeah. Yeah. That’s impactful. It’s um the stories for me are an incredible thing. You know, we had a uh we had a guy come through our program in 2021 and he did pretty well and then he went back. He’s from New York City. real good kid, man. Like [  ] just one of the most talented. Like wrote a song while he was at Peaks. He sang and um you could tell that we were spending the best days of this young man’s life with him. Whether that was going to continue or not, I don’t know. It’s above my pay grade. So he comes back most recently in 2025, spends about 6 months in and out of outpatient primary care, decides to stay in Colorado and um he ended up passing away last week from an overdose. And so um not in our program, but he was out in the community and very good kid, man. Touched a lot of people. And I was able to call his dad and you he talked to a father who lost his son. You know, it’s a it’s a difficult conversation. um one of which I hope I never have to face. But um he found himself like in gratitude and his son had just passed away four or five days ago for the time and that we gave him and we got to spend with him at peaks. And in that moment I knew every bit of blood, sweat, tears, energy, stress that goes into this mission is meaningful and it matters to people and guys like us. Why I love that we care so much and why I know that we’re going to be successful in our endeavors is because there is no backup plan. We don’t we don’t quit or we don’t turn it over to shareholders. We go until our last breath. And you and I have committed to that in one way or another for the people that we serve, which is very, very powerful and something that comes through in conversation and energy um in the work that we do on a daily basis. So, I love that you brought up those stories cuz it’s I get a few of them every week and I’m like, “All right, I’m just going to go work harder. I’m just going to keep working hard, you know?” So, I love that about Mind Inspa. I love that about your crew. I love that about the way that you show up in community cuz it seems to me after being a part of my 13th annual winter symposium that those relationships and those types of providers are very few and far between these days. I do. I think you’re right. I mean, it’s it’s very rare to find founder-ledd organizations that are just mission first, outcomes first. There’s there’s so much of this industry that’s been rolled up by private equity and it’s let’s play the cost cutting game and so we can drive the bottom line up, drive our expenses down and sell to the next private equity is going to do the same thing and just bringing the value out of treatment and in doing so cheapening it for everyone and it it gives a lot of us a bad name. Mhm. I could think of a couple places uh you know in Denver that that do that on the outpatient side and it’s it’s frankly disheartening, a little disgusting. Um but it also gives it gives founder organizations a real place to shine as well. Y and that’s that is the the balm for constantly getting punched in the face by regulatory agencies, insurance companies, the the oneoff pissed-off patient. Yeah. these owner occupied situ. I mean, it’s interesting you say that because at uh the symposium and just in normal kind of day-to-day business development stuff when we talk about being a legacy program, you know, over 10 years and last I checked there was three of us that are Raleigh House, Rose House, and Peaks Recovery over 10 years, owner occupied and owner led. And um there’s some special sauce to that because when we do our Thursday director meetings, we’re not despondent to shareholders. Not that some shareholders, not that they’re all created even, but we’re outcomes driven. We’re human driven. You know, we’re patient driven. And I think that shows up in a market today to your point as kind of like a bright light. The only problem is is that families are left kind of trying to find a needle in a hay stack because it’s uh it’s my website verse yours and ours verse theirs. And it’s it’s a difficult mountain to climb sometimes. But I think these differentiators that you and I are talking about over time, one day at a time will eventually kind of rise to the top and people see that clearly. Yeah. And I think that there’s also a there’s an opening door with, you know, psychedelic therapies with neurom modulation. I mean, what you guys are doing with with TMS with your clients is is pretty incredible. And hell, nobody’s doing it. Mhm. And you know there there’s so much more that even could be done like when you add in all of these different modalities like this stuff works and it works fast. Yep. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. We haven’t even we haven’t even scratched the surface of like what um EEG guided or personalized TMS can do for people. It’s incredible. Or you know I gain being legalized in the states. I’m really excited about that one. Heard they’re going to have a spot in Boulder here in the next 6 months. Yeah. The same one that’s out in um one of the providers I know locally here use them. It’s the same one out of uh Tijana. Yeah. Apparently it’s great great shop. I don’t know the name though. Am talking about Ambio? It sounds familiar. Oh anyway, could be. Yeah. I mean, there there’s so much. This is such a great time to be in psychiatry because we’re just knocking on the door of understanding the brain and using these new tools and using these new neuroplastic tools along with culturally competent therapy to like heal and rewire the brain simultaneously. the I mean I I really think that in the next 1015 years we could drastically reduce if not eliminate the drug abuse problem in America and then you know next step from there is neurodeenerative disease. Yeah, for sure man. I love what you’re talking about too because we’ve been able to a lot like like your guys’ hyperbaric chamber that’s just an add-on for people because it decreases inflammation. The studies are there. We don’t need insurance to pay for it to tell us that it’s good for people and yeah, it’s going to be good for their healing. It’s another thing with this tryare tri west contract is like nobody does inatient treatment. Nobody wants to do impatient treatment because they don’t get paid a lot. But if we can, Peaks has decided to take this low rate, stabilize our veterans, get them into the ambulatory levels of care for some of these lifesaving measures after we stabilize their AUD or their acute mental health. And so I think a lot like you guys, we’ve created these service lines that really inform like regulation and then getting into some of these life-saving things, which is really, really cool. So, it’s been um it’s been fun working with this population and we just started to step into it. Um but I’m really excited about the impact we can make because there’s not a lot of residential doing any sort of TMS step down or anything like that. There’s only three that I can think of across the nation off the top of my head. Yeah. And that’s what needs to happen. We need to get away from this idea that talk therapy and med management can that are more effective than they are at treating acute mental health disorders because they’re not right. They do not address the underlying neurobiology of PTSD, depression, anxiety, and especially not TBI. No. No way. Like because if you are not addressing the inflammatory cascade that is going on in the brain, you are wasting the patient’s time. Period. End of story. Right? And you are certainly wasting their money and the money of the insurance companies that are paying because at the end of the day if as a treatment center, as an outpatient clinic, our goal collectively and individually should be to make it so the patient never has to come to our level of care again. Right. Heal. Heal. Yeah. It’s such a such a dirty four-letter word. I know, man. Like, what did you say? Did you say did you say cure? Yeah. Don’t say that. Don’t say that word. I think it’s called remission. Say it is. Yeah, it’s called remission instead of cure because our entire system is set up to create lifelong patients instead of just directly targeting that root cause and and helping our patients get over it permanently. Why I mean, why can’t the goal, oh, there’s no money in it? Well, good. Let’s Let’s work so hard, solve one of society’s biggest problems, and put oursel out of business. And while we’re doing that, I’m sure we’ll figure we’ll figure out some other problems, right? Yeah, dude. It’s so funny, man. But next global warming. Let’s go. Yeah. Everybody’s in the business for refeed business. And don’t get me wrong, you know, we have guests come back and our goal is lifelong healing. And at the same time, we want to plant a seed because not everybody’s in a right spot to go down the path they need to that’s necessary for their recovery. And so I think at the very least you plant a seed um for a future opportunity as well. So um I wanted to chat with you about something. We weren’t talking about it before the show, but it’s been on my mind this week. Um I’ve just been hearing a lot about it. What is your take on specifically people who cope with substances and the old kind of approach with substance abusers, addiction in general, especially on the family side of things was to um not love them into recovery, but ultimately like the show intervention, set a boundary, tell them if you don’t get your [  ] together, you don’t have a family anymore. What do you think where do you think that inflection point is? is and how would you point which direction would you point somebody and a family if they came to you asking about their loved one who was struggling with substances and of course they’re associated and connected with a lot of high-risisk behaviors at Yeah. You know, not to tell anybody what to do with their family cuz every situation is different. Um I can tell you what happened with mine. Yeah. Uh because my little brother caught a meth addiction early in life, kicked that and then caught a cocaine addiction like so much so that he doesn’t have a septum anymore. Damn. Yeah. and we were able to, you know, put him through uh one of our programs and he now he’s not sober, but I watched him uh have a responsible association with substances. And like I don’t want to say that’s the goal for everybody, but if it’s a choice between using until you die and using a small amount once a month, right? I think we all know what the better option is. So I I think it’s a mix of both. You have to set boundaries with people. um especially when it comes to substances because what we noticed is that he didn’t really develop past a certain point. It was like dealing with a 30-year-old 16-year-old. Yeah. The the prefrontal cortex was just not there. And he wasn’t able to cognitively understand the impact that his actions had on the people around him. And so that’s we’re like, hey, this is done. you’re going to treatment. Um, we’re going to do the the TMS and the hyperbaric oxygen therapy and it it made huge strides. He gained more functional control over his impulses and then he moved in with us for a little bit and I thought, and this is, you know, my my ignorance on display here. So, I thought, hey, me and my wife are both high performers. We work out every day. We eat right. We have a very very balanced life. this example should be enough. And it wasn’t. It it became very clear, you know, after 9 months that even though the he was able to put on the brakes for substance abuse, the development of habits and discipline was still not there and I didn’t have the bandwidth to do that. So, you know, I found a really good friend of mine who used to be a a Delta Force operator who wanted who had a pension for for helping young kids uh get to the next level. And I was like, “Hey, this is the best thing for you.” So, I think that there to go back to your question, it starts with boundaries, but there needs to be compassionate treatment that addresses the root cause. And then we need to look at like where is this person in their developmental cycle? Is this someone who is a 35, 45year-old, 16year-old? Because we need to do something different with that individual. There needs to be a lot more one-on-one coaching, a lot more handholding, a lot more teaching them how to be an adult human. And for men, teaching them how to be a man, that doesn’t happen. That doesn’t happen in treatment. That doesn’t happen in inatient. That’s not something we really talk about. that the the road to proper rehabilitation has many peaks and valleys and we have to meet people where they are and just get them on the damn path. Yeah. I love what you said there cuz not once when you identified what you would say to a family did you say, “Well, we need to tell them to stop using drugs. Just stop doing the thing.” Right? You didn’t say that once in any of that. Oh, well, I because a lot of this is like somehow now sobriety is considered success that you know I I have you ever read uh Johan Hari Chasing the Scream? No, but I love his quotes. Uh yeah, that for anybody who hasn’t that he uses the Mamillian model of addiction if you you know they did the experiment the rat park experiment. Experiment number one. Take rat. Put the rat in cage. Food, water, heroin. Rat does heroin till it dies. Oh no. These drugs have chemical hooks. These hooks are going to get into you and they’re going to pull you in and you’re never going to be able to get out forever. Forever.
So that was the running hypothesis for years, for decades. Then someone decided to run a different experiment. They got a bigger cage. Rat Park baby. Rat Park baby. Yeah, they got a bigger cage. All the rats went in it. There were a ton of them. They got to run around, have sex, food, water, heroin. What What does our model tell us about what’s going to go on in this experiment? What is the hypothesis that this is going to become the rat trap house? Yep. They’re going to start playing nasty rap music and they’re all going to get high on heroin on the porch. That’s right. Other rats are going to roll up. The other rats are going to roll up. There’s going to be drivebys in rat park. It’s going to be awful. Rats will go extinct. Rats will all go extinct. Yeah. What happens the exact opposite of that? They do it once and then never do it again. The same the same thing goes for mammals. It is not about the chemical hooks of some drug. If that was true, anybody who ever went and got surgery would be addicted to opiates. Yep. Yep. Right. Anybody who ever anybody who ever who is a pediatric patient or beriatric patient who got ketamine would be addicted to ketamine. Not the case. That’s not what we see. Addict, especially if you’re an addict. not what we see. Yeah. So, it’s it’s not about the hooks, it’s about the cage. The opposite the the opposite of addiction is not sobbriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. And that is something that we forget at our peril. Yep. I love that, man. It’s so true. And I I love that we’re reframing that for our industry. I still felt a lot of that kind of old school energy, especially on the family side, man. I watch a lot of our these family therapists and, you know, they’re 20 years sober, but they’re also not taking great care of themselves and things of that nature. But they come out and they do, and I think providers do this, inatient treatment programs do this because it’s easier or easier is is a is an interesting term for it, but it they tell the families, “We’re going to do these big rigid boundaries. is the family doesn’t have to do any work. Client does the work, family builds the boundaries, he’ll be back fixed. Sorry, my bad. He’ll be there for his amen’s trip. But there’s no family recovery. There’s none of that. And so I see a lot of these treatment programs, they push this like narrative on families to be like, “Tell your son if he leaves treatment.” Often times, I think it’s nothing more than a retention model to make money. Um because the family doesn’t grow, they don’t show, and if they don’t show, the young adult doesn’t go. And it’s a very tough thing because we know family recovery is everything. So, I love what you’re talking about because it’s so easy to hit the easy button today, but the hard thing comes 20 years from now. Yeah. Well, the whole the the entire idea that again, we go back to the chemical hooks thing that this person’s just broken and they found something that got got hooks into them and they need they need to stop it. That is the easy button. That is the lack of logic easy way out. The real hard thing is to look and go, wait, why is my son, daughter, significant other anesthetizing themselves against their reality? A reality that I am a part of. Mhm. Right. [  ] That’s a tough question. That’s a real tough question. A lot of people don’t want to ask that. I mean that’s that is why the the rates of sobriety in the in programs and overall if you really look it out I think what 2% of people stay sober. Yeah. It’s alarming. Yeah. Because we’re not getting to the root cause. Now there’s a lot of neurob biological stuff we can do. You know reinforce the prefrontal cortex, use things like TMS. It’s great. But if the rat comes out of rat park and goes back in to the isolation isol isolation cage, what is going to happen? The same thing that happened last time. Hard to get enough sun that almost works. I love that. It’s so interesting, too. We had a guest come in yesterday and I toured him and his family last week. He’s got a ton of anxiety, man. Real young guy standing off in the corner, but you can tell all he wants is connection. We got the best medical team and everything’s wrapped around him, all this stuff. And he’s like, last night he’s like, I don’t know, maybe it’s not the spot for me. I need to go. This morning we got on a chat. We’re like, hey, let’s grab him. Let’s just move him to the house right away. Let’s get three of his peers, um, like-minded peers, young adults to come over who are kind of senior members, and just share with them. Let them know what they’re connecting with tonight. Let them know they’re going on a hike in the Garden of the Gods. I saw him this morning after that happened over the first hour’s day. He’s just like, “Yeah, man. Like, I don’t need to leave. This is going to be great cuz I got these guy and it’s just like it’s everything, dude. It is everything, dude. I mean, Ron Ron says it all the time, my my business partner. Be a good mammal. You can solve a lot of the world’s problems just being a good mammal. You can solve a lot of yours, too. Yeah. You see miracles happen just by someone with 20 days into the program going up to someone with four days and being like, “Hey, man. I see you. I care about you. and your outcome matters to me. Come with me. It just is better than any therapy. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. And then if I got somewhere to go on Saturday night where I’m expected to be and it’s a barbecue, like maybe I won’t sit there and do heroin. Maybe I’ll take a rain check on that. Well, I mean, at the end of the day, where are you getting your dopamine? Right. Yeah. Are you getting it you getting an IV mainline in your dopamine or you getting it through human connection? Yeah. One after another. Yeah. one after another reinforcing those loops. Being a good mammal, if you flex that muscle enough times, it becomes a lot easier to use. But so often and so easily, I mean, and this goes for entrepreneurs, too. [  ] I find myself doing it. When you’re in the hole, you find yourself isolating. Yeah, man. Closing the door, door closed, blinds open, just trying. Yeah, man. Just grab I grab my Xbox controller and I’m like, I don’t want to talk to anybody right now cuz I’m in a lot of pain. And that very very easily becomes a self-reinforcing cycle where you’re like, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go see anybody at all. I I don’t even like people actually. I don’t. Turns out Turns out. And then I go into treatment, they’re like, you have antisocial personality disorder. I’m like, “Yeah, that’s what somebody who’s not curious would say, you know.” Yeah. I bet you’re going to call me a narcissist. Yeah, I guarantee you. Yeah, cuz you’re entrepreneur. You’re guy. All that stuff, man. You’re saying I’m highly neurotic. You’re highly neurotic. You’re You got it coming. Exactly, man. Oh, man. I love it, man. Always a pleasure having you on the show. Before we wrap up, anything? Yeah. Anything you want to update the viewers on? Anything fun you guys got going on there at Denver Mind Spa? It is always um I hold that you guys in highest regard and what you’re doing from an innovation perspective alone is cutting edge. So Oh thanks man. Well you know like you we are really focused on you know working with veterans and first responders. Um we’ve you know recently become a part of the path for EMS program. So now any first responder who has a EMT or paramedics license has an $1,850 grant uh attached to them for the treatment of mental health disorders. Uh our clinic is the only place you can do hyperaric and uh ketamine through that grant. No way. Yeah. That’s When did you guys get that? Oh, that’s been that’s been in the works for a while. Okay. Yeah. So that that happened. So they can come get their services there and then get the hyperbaric as well. Yeah. So, they can get up to 24 sessions of hyperbaric for for no cost just using that grant. Um, and it also can take up to 60% off the cost of ketamine infusion therapy. Oh, nice. Yeah. How long from, you know, let’s say a first responder has an issue or a mental health crisis or something come up. How long is it to get that grant and then to come see you guys? I can have it in an hour. Okay. So, they call you first? Yeah, they call us. Yeah, they call us first. Uh, just do the do um our intake paperwork. my staff gives them a call and then we put it into the grant program and it’s very fast. So we’re, you know, we’re able to get them in within the next week or two right now. Um, yeah. And then, you know, we relaunched our our Triricare program. So if any Triricare beneficiaries, uh, especially in the northern Colorado Springs or Denver areas are struggling. If you have failed at least three anti-depressants, so you’ve tried them and they didn’t work for you, you know, that doesn’t make you a failure. that means the medicine didn’t work. But if that’s the case, then you qualify for transcranial magnetic stimulation. And through our program, we are able to grant uh ketamine infusion therapy and hyperbaric oxygen therapy at uh super super low cost. So patients are able to get, you know, $20,000 plus worth of of cutting edged mental health treatment for a very very low cost. So, we’re really working on bringing down the barriers to treatment for our veteran and first responder population that just so often get left out in the cold. Yeah. Yeah. I love that you mentioned that, man, and I’ll continue to say it. There’s nobody that I know offering those types of resources in addition to what their insurance pays for. And um so if you’re looking to get in, you’re a first responder, you’re a military service member, active duty, combat veteran, or your family, and you’re in Northern Colorado, even Northern Colorado Springs outside of Peaks Recovery down here, I think Mind Spa is absolutely the is absolutely my choice for outpatient um clinical services with respect to the opportunity our service members and first responders have to actually healing and getting back into the day-to-day. And I think that’s something that you guys do better than anybody and something that’s been um valued at the in the highest regard of the service members that I’ve been talking to is like how do we get people back to work better than ever? Right. That’s it. Back to work better than how do we take our $510 million Green Berets and get them back to work better than ever? And you guys do that in an amazing way, man. And I couldn’t be more grateful to have you as a friend, as a colleague, back on the show. Looking forward to having a phenomenal 2026. One day at a time. One day at a time, baby. All right, man. Appreciate you, bro. All my beautiful listeners out there, welcome to the new studio. Check out Ps. Let’s go, baby. Onward and upward, baby. Saving lives. Mission critical. Until next time. Peace.