CHAPTER THREE

ADDICTION IS AN EQUAL-OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

TODAY'S WORLD IS A CONNECTED WORLD

In a comfortable, suburban home in Raleigh, North Carolina, Pam Katchuk sat at her computer and typed the words “volunteer and stigma” into Google. That's how she discovered the Heroes in Recovery community, which led to her becoming a guest blogger on the website, and later a lead advocate for the movement. Lee Pepper, the Chief Marketing Officer of Foundations Recovery Network (FRN), met Katchuk in person for the first time at an advocate retreat in Nashville in February of 2013. (FRN's well-known dual-diagnostic treatment facilities include The Canyon in Malibu, Michael's House in Palm Springs, La Paloma in Memphis, and an outpatient facility in Atlanta.) At that meeting, Pam told the story of how she had lost her son Andy almost two years ago to the day.

Spend even a tiny bit of time with Lee and you'll most likely hear stories about his own two boys, his beautiful wife, or his love of running. You're almost sure to also hear his heartfelt personal and professional mission. He repeats it often and with a force that sticks: “Twenty-three million people each year need help for addiction; only 3 million actually seek treatment. We're looking for the other 20 million.”

We have to break the stigma.

Like Pam, Lee believes with all his heart that the overwhelming stigma often associated with addiction and mental illnesses is what stops those other 20 million from reaching out for help. That stigma is what kept Pam in denial at times about her own son. “I now know that I didn't want to believe that Andy was taking drugs,” Pam writes on her first blog post on December 26, 2012. She assumed, as she admitted later, that overdoses happen to other people who were “poor, had no loving family, and lived in tough urban areas.” She was wrong.

While Andy's Mom and Dad were struggling with their son's health in 2010, Lee and his marketing team happened to see Geno Church speak at a Social Fresh conference in Nashville. “We were missing something and on to something at the same time,” says Lee, “and Geno's stories of the Love146 movement to end child sex slavery helped put some words around some of the thoughts we were having at Foundations Recovery Network.”

Society likes labels, and these labels deter many people—especially those afflicted with disease—from reaching out for assistance and treatment. For years, people afflicted with AIDS suffered needlessly due to the shame associated with the disease. They felt that it was just too painful to admit the truth. When perceptions change, an amazing thing happens: progress.

This is something Lee understands very well: “When former first lady Betty Ford passed away, we held an internal meeting where we read her obituary and discussed her impact on behavioral health. She had ‘come out’ with her struggles with alcoholism in 1976. Two years prior to that, she had openly shared her struggles with breast cancer. It really made an impact on us to look at how breast cancer and seeking treatment became a national movement—and how not much progress has been made in creating a movement to get treatment for addiction or to break the stigma associated with it. During those 40 years, those two medical issues went on two completely different paths.

It's true. Think about it. Studies have found that helping employees recover is more cost effective than termination, yet some employers believe that firing an employee with a drinking or drug problem is a lot easier than providing or facilitating rehab. Can you imagine the protest that would erupt if employers treated workers with cancer or heart disease the same way? Insurance companies get away with refusing to pay for alcohol or drug treatment, or with charging higher deductibles and co-pays than for treating any other disease. People who need the help for addiction for families with loved ones who are addicted are often afraid to speak up. They hide in shame. And that's created a big mess.^*

Lee continues, “A lot of the social ills we have stem from shame. People forget how far breast cancer awareness—and cancer awareness in general—has come. I heard an interview with comedian Bernie Mac years ago on Howard Stern. He was talking about how when he was a child in the 70s, his mother went away for six weeks—and he was just told she was ‘away.’ She was actually in the hospital having a double mastectomy. But you didn't talk about that back then. Getting breast cancer was a shameful thing—like she had done something wrong.”

“This is 2013!” Lee exclaims, “Why are we still repeating the same mistakes that we learned from these other social movements? We have got to take action now. We must be able to talk about addiction and the mental illness that often comes with it openly and without shame, or else we're still going to have not only thousands of people each year dying from this disease, but also impacting millions of lives needlessly … in a negative way.”

Lee's stories create an anxiety about the injustice and trigger emotional conversation inside and outside of FRN's walls.

We have to reach “the other 20 million.”

FRN hired Brains on Fire to help them find a way to talk with—not at—people struggling with addiction. We started the process by visiting each of FRN's residential and outpatient centers and talking to the clinical staff as well as the cooks, therapists, and call-center teams. What struck us was how much everyone cared—and care is actually an understatement. These people were passionate about their goal to help people struggling with addiction. In fact, many of FRN's employees are in recovery themselves. They are living the better lives they are helping others find. Their work is actually part of their recovery.

Since people often turn to search engines online in times of need, FRN's marketing task was simple and clear: Be at the other end of that search. With solid information and a big, bold phone number. We found out in listening in on the calls at the call center that come in from these various “content driven websites” that the marketing team produces, that FRN has a “spider web” network. This means that if an employee can't provide the right solution for the person on the other end of the line, then they'll find someone in their vast and interconnected network of addiction and health care specialists who can help. Every person who works at FRN understands that these callers are searching for real people with real information—and when someone is reaching out for help, you don't let them go.

We began to wonder if we could create an online community of real people to help those struggling to find answers. Could we speak powerfully with people, through people? Could we help moms who were finally facing the truth that the marks on their son's arms are heroin tracks, or help daughters who are desperately trying to save a parent? Could we support someone who is taking that first, tentative step after realizing they have a problem that's gotten out of hand? Could we create a functional tool for people to share and seek information? How could FRN reach the other 20 million, and, more importantly, give those who love and care for them a place to step into a meaningful conversation that would break the stigma of addiction?

When we first met FRN's marketing team, they were exploring the role loved ones play in a person's decision to get help. They had just created and were beginning to run a series of television spots that recognized the family members of those in recovery as heroes, and it was hitting an emotional nerve. Individuals working towards recovery themselves are often called heroes for their brave choices and hard work, and rightfully so. But aren't their supportive family members and loved ones heroes as well? Don't they deserve to be recognized and empowered as well?

Imagine what could be.

Together with the team at FRN, we started dreaming. We know that addiction doesn't just affect those with the addiction—not by a long shot. Most of you reading this book can likely tell stories of addiction's strong impact in your own lives. Could we engage new, provocative, informed conversations outside of those seeking treatment? Could we inject new perspectives, ideas, and expressions into the mainstream? Could we make recovery, not addiction, the newsworthy topic? Could we break the stigma associated with addiction by celebrating the everyday heroes affected by this disease: the dads, the sons and daughters, the neighbors next door? Could we create a new voice of hope and recovery with a quilt of shared stories and a community called Heroes in Recovery?

THE HEROES IN RECOVERY COMMUNITY BEGINS INTERNALLY

We went back to the core groups at FRN, who helped us capture such meaningful insights, to celebrate how their involvement could bring the idea of Heroes in Recovery to life. First, we made a plan to share the word of mouth marketing strategy internally with each of the facilities' leaders. We invited people within FRN to share their own stories online and with each other. We needed them to help us find hand-raisers, people who were powerful in recovery and willing to share their journey with the world.

We also created an identity mark for the community that reflects real-life, heroic stories. Greg Ramsey from Brains on Fire and the FRN team poured themselves into finding six stories from FRN alumni and even from people they stumbled upon online who were bravely sharing their personal tales of recovery.

Greg speaks so quietly and thoughtfully you have to lean in to hear him at times, but every word is fueled by passion: “As a designer, I began to see that the word heroes could take on a life of its own. Each letter represents a real person's story. I got to speak personally with people who were struggling with addiction or had come through it and were on the other side. Some had a loved one in the process of recovery. I helped them highlight the parts of their journey that were most important. I tried to take those meaningful events and mold them into something you could look at and touch and feel. These people became so very real to me in the process. And personally, I was at a place in my life where recovery had touched my family. The process of designing the Heroes logo—[one] that told real stories about people in recovery or who were touched by recovery—helped me make sense of what my own family was experiencing.”

THE JOURNEY BOX

The passion inside an organization has to match the passion outside. Heroes in Recovery is an internal movement as much as an external movement.

Greg continues on with the story of how Heroes in Recovery began to evolve and come to life within the walls of FRN: “The idea for the Journey Box grew out of our visits to the facilities. We saw staff encouraging patients to keep a visual journal of their recovery. Everyone also saw the beauty and the magic of the letters logo, and witnessed firsthand how capturing visuals could help people express their stories. We created a beautiful box that FRN could use at their treatment centers. Now when someone arrives at a center, they receive a Journey Box. They use it to collect pictures and other little things to help them chronicle their own journey to recovery—capturing where they have been, and, most importantly, where they are going. Making it visual in this way seems to help them talk about it differently—and honor their journey in a different way.”

The Journey Box is a tangible and physical reminder of someone's heroic journey of recovery. It's a keepsake that each person can fill with anything and everything that is a part of their story: photos, reminders of good days, bad days, a good luck charm, a letter, a rock, a key—anything that helps them tell the world about their journey to recovery. We used this conversation tool internally with staff and patients to inspire and celebrate stories that they could share, not just in person, but also online at www.heroesinrecovery.com.

“To me the Journey Box was a big key,” Lee says. “Being able to tie these stories and this effort to our actual treatment model isn't something we've been able to accomplish overnight. But it's crucial to the staff to see how we can and are integrating the Heroes community into the company. The Journey Box allows us to build a bridge between the clinical work that is being done and this community, this social movement called Heroes in Recovery. It's important that Heroes doesn't just sit as some website off to the side that we support. We are integrating it into our company's culture. In one of our early internal meetings, where we emphasized the need to bring this community to life, one of the clinical staff from Florida was present. She was cutting magazine pictures out and gluing them to her Journey Box. She then told those of us in the room her story, which is so powerful. People were crying.” Lee takes a long breath and searches for just the right words, “Okay, here we go. Now we are really connecting everybody.”

LEAD THE WAY

What is a hero? A man or woman distinguished by exceptional courage, strength, and fortitude; someone who fights for a cause.

Who is a hero? A client. A parent. A therapist. A friend. A sibling. A treatment facility. You. Me. Them. Us.

Those words are in our initial presentation to the FRN leadership team. We believe strongly that a community must be in place before you can ever ignite a movement or create social change. And all great communities (and movements) have leaders to guide the conversation. We poured a lot of discussion and a lot of thought into how we might find the right leaders, the original six heroes, for the Heroes in Recovery movement.

Lee remembers approaching the search carefully: “We were a little concerned that we were going to put out this call for Advocates and were going to get a lot of people who wanted to help and we could only choose so many. We didn't want people to feel like if they weren't selected they had done something wrong. We also wanted to go beyond our own foundation alumni to represent an even broader voice of recovery.”

The first six lead advocates, Sue, Vanessa, Sean, Jordan, Sidney, and Nate, were hand selected. After an intense and emotional training session in Nashville, they began sharing their personal stories of recovery. Those six very diverse advocates were the starting point for over 300 other people to share their voice of recovery online within a year's time.

ANONYMITY IS NOT SECRECY

That first year's number of shared stories (and the people who have since engaged with those stories) might seem low to some, but for Heroes, it's real and solid progress, especially given the stigma and secrecy surrounding addiction. Since 1936, when Alcoholics Anonymous first shared The Big Book of 12 steps as a path to recovery, anonymity has been upheld and honored as a key covenant.

“I think we have been confused about what anonymity means,” Lee says. “We have come to understand it as meaning secrecy. But we are challenging the whole notion of secrecy with Heroes. One of our leads in this last training retreat in Nashville shared her feeling about this as we went around the room sharing stories. She said, ‘This is my second year being involved as a lead advocate and I have been conflicted at times because of my relationship with AA, NA, and Alanon.’ But she went on to say, ‘I have come 180 degrees.’”

“We were so happy to hear that. We could feel a certain hesitation from her in our weekly advocate calls at times. When she announced her 180-degree shift, I realized we can't reach every-body in the same timeframe, and that's okay. It's taken other people six months; and there are people within our own walls who still don't get the importance of talking openly. And that's all right because we will get to them eventually.”

Ask me about my Journey.

In addition to the Journey Box, we also created buttons and palm cards that staff and advocates use to start offline conversations. These conversation tools don't attempt to tell the whole story of Heroes in Recovery; however, they create enough visual interest to spark a question. Buttons with just one of the beautiful logo letters on them or invitations to “Ask me about my Journey” were all developed with a single purpose in mind: to spark a face-to-face, meaningful conversation. These tools empower people in recovery to quietly send a social signal that they are part of the Heroes in Recovery movement. We believe that social signaling at its best is done quietly.

THERE'S POWER IN JUST BEING THERE

In order to break the stigma of addiction and celebrate our growing community of Heroes in Recovery, we knew we had to hit the road and present the message in person at a broader community level. As we stated previously, 90 percent of all brand conversations take place offline—and we don't take that fact lightly. In order to reach “the other 20 million,” FRN knew that Heroes couldn't be just a website.

FRN created the Heroes in Recovery 6K races to serve as an educational tool for the community at large, and to remind individuals that while they are on a personal journey of recovery, they aren't going it alone. Many others are on that road with them. We disrupted the norm of 5K races and introduced a 6K race for Heroes in Recovery. The number six is meaningful, not only because it represents the six heroic lives woven into the word heroes; it also underscores the significance of pushing yourself just a little bit harder and propelling oneself just a little bit further down the road to recovery.

FRN's inaugural 6K was held in 2011 on a racecourse in Leiper's Fork, Tennessee, during the month of September, National Recovery Month. It was sold out with 250 participants and around 100 volunteers. Since then, FRN has organized a number of successful races across the country, and the number of races and participants continues to grow.

It's hard to measure how many lives are touched and conversations sparked by the 6K races across the country. Most of the conversation takes place quietly between two or three people. Greg Ramsey and his family participated in a Heroes race held in a park in Greenville, South Carolina. A man who happened to be walking in the park that morning approached Greg after the race to ask what the race was for. After Greg explained the Heroes in Recovery movement, the man revealed that he was in early recovery himself and just getting back on his feet. He seemed anxious to connect with someone, so Greg gave him a palm card with the Heroes web address and invited the man to share his story and join the community. “I don't know his name,” says Greg, “and I will never know where that simple conversation led or the impact it had on his life. But I know it would have never happened if FRN wasn't there that day.”

In addition to raising awareness, each race raises money that's given to a local charity. Greg and his family also attended a 6K race in Boulder, Colorado, that gave proceeds to Phoenix Multisport, an organization that supports people recovering from addiction by providing them with a sober community to take part in physical and social recreation. Members of Phoenix Multisport came out en masse for the Heroes 6K.

Greg remembers the day: “It's cool to see people cheering each other on, becoming fans of each other. These races really create a real sense of community for a day. They are also symbolic of recovery itself, and capture what it's all about. It's hard work, and everyone is participating at different levels. Some are walking. Some are running fast. But no one is alone. I also loved that the race gave a platform for a local group to be an inspiration to their community. It was amazing to hear the leader of Phoenix Multisport tell his group's story and connect with others in such a meaningful way.”

As Greg points out, the 6Ks are perfect metaphors for the road to recovery: a group of individuals moving at different paces but supporting one another and cheering each other on toward a common goal.

The 6Ks are just one example of events that are bringing the Heroes movement face-to-face with broader communities. FRN is open to all types of events that help spread the word. “We had a guy visit us from Santa Monica,” says Lee. “We were talking about Heroes and he told us that he wanted to hold an event. And I asked, ‘Do you want us to organize a 6K in Santa Monica?’ He said ‘Well, what about a surfing competition?’ So we are going to do a surfing competition in Venice Beach in October. That's the model for Heroes. People have different passions and talents. If you want to do an art night, like we did in Memphis, if you want to do a trivia night like we did in Nashville, if you want to do a surfing competition, let's do it! And you can do it with the goal of growing the Heroes in Recovery community. We can reach so many people that way.”

Share it with Sean.

In his early twenties, Sean Morrison was one of the youngest of the original six Advocates selected for Heroes in Recovery. He told his story of recovery in his first blog post, which he ended with these final remarks:

One exciting sign of word of mouth–powered momentum becomes evident when ideas to grow a community start emerging from the community itself. In the summer of 2012, Sean had an idea. What if he hit the road on his summer vacation from college and captured 60 heroic stories in 30 days? He presented the concept to FRN, and together we helped Sean bring his idea to life. He started in New York and zigzagged across the country to his final destination in Nashville. It was a remarkable journey, and the 60-plus stories he captured in person were nothing short of amazing, including the one that follows.

CONNECTIONS ARE A POWERFUL FORCE

Greg and his family met and made fast friends with Sean at the 6K in Colorado while he was doing his road trip across the states. Sean met a man at that same race named Tarr, with whom he had the following inspiring interaction:

In order to help more people, we have to grow and open more facilities.

FRN is a for-profit business with a very purpose-driven, lofty goal: to break the stigma of addiction and mental illness so that more people—“the other 20 million”—will seek help. They have to continue to grow and be profitable as an organization to make that goal a reality. And like every organization, they have to spend their marketing dollars wisely, and see a return on investment.

HOW DO YOU MEASURE SUCCESS?

“A lot of companies struggle with how they measure.” Lee says. “I wasn't going to let the inability to provide our board with real numbers stop me though. People nowadays often get caught up in the sex appeal of social media and the web. But before you go rolling down a path, you need to establish what your metrics are and figure out how and what to measure.”

Lee continues, “We have been really fortunate in that regard. One simple thing we look at is Facebook engagement. The Heroes page is growing at three times the rate of any of our facilities' pages, which is a clear testimony to the fact that people are more likely to identify with a social movement than they are with a business.

“We have also been able to connect with other businesses that want to sponsor our races and community events. There's hard numbers associated with that. I'm projecting that this year, we'll have two of our races completely sponsored, and over half of them sponsored in 2014.

“Heroes in Recovery has now become a top-10 site for us—essentially over the course of a year and a few months. That is incredible growth from an SEO perspective. The stories that people submit … we can't write those kinds of quality articles as marketers. I can't pay people to write those compelling stories.”

Because Lee's background is in the IT field, he feels especially connected to this growth. He continues excitedly, “It's interesting that our top three referring sites to www.heroesinrecovery.com are Facebook, Twitter, and StumbleUpon. We are generating and growing numbers based on social media and word of mouth conversations, just as we designed it to be.

“Heroes definitely generates calls. It's a top-ten website as far as visitors go, but it's in the bottom quarter as far as phone calls. However, those calls are growing every month, which is amazing, because we're not even promoting FRN on the site. Only one page in the whole site has a phone number. This site was not created as a lead-generating site. The fact that we get calls at all is a side benefit.

“When someone calls to talk to a counselor after finding us on any type of search, our counselors are able to reference the stories they have read on the Heroes site and refer people to do more research. We have a place to keep people engaged and that has a value.

“We were lucky that we were very data and metric-driven from the beginning. We built this community with the question in mind: How are we going to pay for this? That was a critical part of our success. We have been able to justify shifting a lot of our traditional marketing dollars into this movement.”

Lee stops for a moment to reflect. “I have to be honest; if we can get those 20 million to convert to the 3 [million already seeking help], that's the win. They may not do that on the Heroes site, and we are fine with that. We just want them to be inspired and search in their local area. We want them to go talk to their doctor, go talk to their pastor, go talk to someone. That's the real win.”

“I feel sorry for anyone who isn't sober.”

Those words recently came out of the mouth of a beautiful, 21-year-old woman who is taking charge of her own recovery. If you spend any amount of time with the group from FRN—many of who are in recovery themselves—and the Heroes lead advocates, you quickly understand how heartfelt a statement that really is. Recovery is not a sad or somber way to live. It can be and is joyful, and often both funny and fun. That is a story that must be told if we are to reach “the other 20 million” and their family members. The other side of addiction is full of hope, peace, power, and freedom—freedom from stigma, from shame, and from silence.

“We are a leader when it comes to education and a leader in research,” says Lee. “We can be a leader in breaking the stigma.”

UNCOVERING THE PASSIONS WITHIN YOUR TEAM

Ask employees to bring one thing from their office or home to your next team meeting. It should be a personal artifact that they will use to share a story about something they get enthusiastic about; something that energizes their soul, something they can't seem to get enough of. We've had people bring stuffed dogs, their running shoes, or photos of their kids. Ask them to tell you why they brought their artifact, how they demonstrate that enthusiasm and what being able to share it means to them. You'll also want to hear if and how their work with your organization nurtures this passion.

ASK THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS TO HELP SPARK A MEANINGFUL DISCUSSION

What do we know about our customers' passions?

How do we help to collect and display, then amplify and celebrate their passions?

How can we make it easier for them to share their stories?

What do we do to let others know what our organization (and our people) care most about?

How could we become best friends and kindred spirits with our customers?

DEAR ________, YOU ARE MY HERO

Collect love letters that your customers and advocates have sent you and put them in a shoebox. Set up a regular time (once a month or twice a year, for example) to gather a group of senior and junior employees in a room together. Have each person read one of the love letters out loud.

ASK THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS TO HELP SPARK A MEANINGFUL DISCUSSION

How should we respond to this letter to let this customer know how much it means to us? (Be creative!)

What is the most important thing these customers should know about us?

What do we admire most about customers like this?

Who will take responsibility for loving them back?

What might happen if we treated all our customers like we will treat these—even the ones who haven't sent letters?

What product or service innovations does this letter inspire us to consider?

Love letters are a tremendous opportunity to engage these hand raisers. What's our plan to reply to let them know we appreciate their feedback?

WHAT'S OUR CAUSE?

Gather a large group of employees together and split them into smaller groups of five people. Find markers, index cards, and large poster paper. Take everyone offsite if possible; outside is ideal. (Fresh air always does you some good!) Have each small group work together to draw a picture of your brand as a superhero. Make sure they assign their superhero a superpower.

ASK THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS TO HELP SPARK A MEANINGFUL DISCUSSION

What wrongs does our superhero right? (What's our hero's cause?)

Who does she/he protect?

Why do people admire him/her?

Who are the arch villains?

What is our hero's kryptonite? (What can render him or her powerless?)

How might this cause stand alone from our brand? (How is it about far more than just us?)

What are some stories that tell us that this fight is something people care a lot about?

How might we invite people to join our superhero's fight?