Mental Health and Addiction Recovery - Mark Manderson

This is the Beyond the Story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now, Sebastian Rusk

Sebastian Rusk

Mark, welcome to the show, brother. Thank you so much for having me on, Sebastian.

Mark Manderson

It's great to have you here, man. You sound like a podcaster.

Sebastian Rusk

Well, I do have a face for radio. My mom used to say, so.

Mark Manderson

I've gotten that many times as well. I would say I have a face for podcasting, but these days there's lots of video in the mix. That's right. They're keeping it spicy these days. They are. They are. Well, great to connect with you. I love where we were chopping it up about my Orange County days here before the interview. Good times in Southern California. Fond memories of my, what I refer to as my 10 year Southern California vacation. So, you and I connected through the great Dan Martell's elite coaching mastermind. What a human being, huh?

Sebastian Rusk

Yeah, the stuff that he shares is just so incredible. And then the people that are affiliated in there, like you, just meeting and getting to come together to do some great things. I'm glad I found my way in there.

Yeah, me too. I'm glad he slid into my DMs. And here we are. I always like to say, you know, Dan's like a hug with a slap on the back of the head. But it's what we all need. And ripped, rich, and rare are hard qualities to argue with these days. Yeah. Not many people have any of those, let alone all three. This is true. This is true. You know, Mark, I love telling people stories on this show and for some context for our listeners, let's back up a little bit to the beginning of the story, wherever the beginning is for you. I know you're doing great work work that really matters in the recovery world. So I'm excited to hear about that, but let's back up a little bit to the beginning of the story where it all started and what really brought you to present day with the work you're doing.

Yeah, and I appreciate that. At the time, I had no idea the impact this would have on me. So I was eight years old, mom, dad divorced, living primarily with my mom. My sister is six years old at this time. My aunt just got kicked out of rehab and was staying with us. She was the fun, outspoken aunt. We just loved spending time with her. She was basically a big kid. And I was stoked because she got to stay. I had bunk beds in my room, so she got to sleep in my room. Well, I remember coming home one day, and I can still remember it where I'm walking across. I'm sure my memory is a little distorted, but I'm feeling like thousands of pills crunching underneath my feet as I'm walking towards her. She's lying on the floor, and she's just lying there. And so I remember going up and just rocking her like, you know, Aunt Steffi, wake up, wake up. And just something didn't feel right. So I remember walking out and grabbing my mom and my mom came in and ended up reviving her fortunately, but she'd OD'd. And so me being an eight year old child, finding my aunt overdose, my mom saved her, but because there's two of us kids, she said, I can't have you using in the house. She said, I'm, I got to ask you to leave. And though, even though it breaks my heart a few months later in the town, one town over, um, same thing happened, but there was no eight year old boy there to save her. And so she actually died of an overdose. So I didn't know this at the time, but I guess my unconscious said, Hey, just stuff everything. And it kind of feels normal. So I became a really good stuffer all through junior high, high school, college, and it worked incredibly well until it didn't work anymore. So because of that, I never touched a drug and thought, okay, drugs take our family. I've had other family members die of alcoholism as well. And so I thought I was kind of like in the clear and then started making some horrific decisions out of, out of college, became extremely depressed. eventually suicidal and thought like, I don't get it. Like we were talking about before, growing up in Orange County, I mean, we have everything we need. You look anywhere else in the world, it's like, it's a place like no other. And so, I just felt this, this calling from within. I couldn't, I couldn't even tell you what it was other than it was like this burning sensation, like in my solo plex. Um, and so just started, started helping people out. So we started sober livings at the time. This was gosh, back in like late, late nineties, early 2000. And I'd see people come from other treatment centers and come to us for living to reintegrate back into society. And they were struggling. And my ignorance was kind of like, I don't understand. You're cured. You just graduated a program. And so just by being the guy that's never been afraid to ask the dumb questions, I started asking questions of how can help more and just started seeing unmet needs and so started filling those needs and then eventually said, well, what if we started doing treatment and really got to the core issue? Because I saw so many people are just straight education, which is fantastic, but education without execution just continues to create the cycle of chaos and sedation. And so over time, I just started looking of how to meet the people in the pit of pain, where they are, help them expose the core lie of what's building all that, because the symptoms are the alcohol, the drug use. I don't even really, I mean, we do address that in our medical detox and different things like that, but we really focus on what is the primary driver That is causing this. And then that's led us to now what we do. We do the full spectrum from, from detox to make sure they're safe to inpatient residential, which means they actually live here 24 seven while they're getting help. And then eventually transition to outpatient, which is they go to work and then they still program in the evening time or in the morning, just to make sure that we're, we're hitting it from all sides so they can get back to loving their life again. So that's kind of starting at the start until what we do now.

I love that because a lot of people that worked in the world of recovery needed recovery. So you were able to leverage depression and own your own life experience and seeing it actually happen and being exposed and hearing stories about it to doing it. I love how you really tapped into you and what, hey, what could we possibly do? And I mean, not that any place is a great place for sober living and recovery homes, but Southern California and South Florida seem to be the capitals.

Yeah, well, from the weather wise, you can look at it because especially in the early stages. Like if you look at it, and I haven't run the data, but I've heard this so many times, like in Seattle where it rains all the time, it's one of the biggest capitals of suicide and different things. So when we understand we really are like sun-driven people, we gotta be outside. So when you see these places that are naturally beautiful, we get the sun rays, people tend to feel better when they're taking care of themselves and getting out in the nature. So two of the things that we do is nature and water. For some reason, there's this beautiful rebirth. When I'm out in nature doing the work, and when I'm getting in the water, and literally right across the street is the Pacific Ocean. So actually, we're going to be grabbing our clients, heading out there in about 45 minutes. So we get to enjoy all this stuff. Because if you don't have fun in recovery, then what's the point?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that makes sense. That actually tracks to being able to create a healthy forward-looking environment, really, for people to get in tune on what they need to do. So you own sober living facilities out there, or you run them, or how does it all work?

Yeah, so we have an inpatient detox facility so people will fly from all over all over the nation to come in to make sure that they're safe for medical detox and then that's where we go into the residential program where they actually live on site and and it's basically it's 24 seven of really diving deep. We have doctors nurses, but we also have. psychologists and therapists that will really, really pull back the sheets to find out what is driving this behavior. What is it because what we look for is unprocessed trauma continues to create pain. And as we can can unpack it and help them through an organic byproduct is is clients don't want to use anymore. I mean, nobody goes, Hey, I want to drink or use the point where I get all these horrific consequences. And so once we address the point of pain and we help them fix that, now they're able to go back to life of what they love and they enjoy and their purpose and their passion. And that to me is what, what this whole experience of life is all about.

Yeah. They got, they got to get to the core of why they're getting, Why they're trying to escape in the first place, because usually that's the root of it all. And once we can get to why are we doing what we're doing, what happened in the past that we can go and heal, typically we're able to move into a newer space on here. Now, when this starts to happen, you know, they say that addictions is literally a disease. So it's hard to have, it's hard to overcome for some people. So relapsing and going back into old patterns, et cetera, seem to be very, very common. What's your guys' approach to try and divert that as much as possible?

And so I'm glad you asked that because I've been doing this for coming up on just, just around a quarter of a century. So it's been a while and probably 15 years ago, maybe 16 years ago, as I was doing followup with those that started businesses, started families were just thriving in life. Again, being the guy that's not afraid to ask the dumb questions. I'm like, Hey, what are you doing? That led to when you came through our program and where you are now, because man, what a beautiful life. And I just started writing things down. And I would actually call and follow up with other people who are struggling. And like you said, just kind of doing, doing the same thing again and again. And I asked, you know, what are you doing or what are you not doing? And I started seeing this direct correlation of my, I mean, I call it first fruits, it's daily disciplines. And so as I started, started just looking at the sample size and going bigger and bigger and bigger, I thought. Oh my gosh, there's five areas in life that those that are thriving and absolutely love life are just doing a little bit of work each day. And there were specific things. And those that were struggling were either doing none, or some of them were doing one or two things very, very well, but neglecting the other three or four things. And so that was what led me to writing my book, The Recovery Way, actually. Yeah. I actually got it right here, which led me to writing this book to say, I want people to get this information because these are the daily disciplines and they're so simple. And what happens with most people when something is simple, they think, oh, that can't be it. And so they neglect doing the simple things. But after working with thousands and thousands and thousands of clients over the decades, like I broke it down to these five things and it's just, it's wild.

Yeah. really is. What's the most exciting thing other than seeing someone get sober about what you do?

one of my favorite things and and I still do it to this day. I run a group once a week and I love to be on the front lines with the clients. It's I call it the aha moment. It's the part where there's still that part of them that they're holding on to and they're able to see something completely different or it's like you it's like they expose something just from a simple question that is asked and all of a sudden they see life from a complete different lens or filter that that literally opens up their entire future to them. Yeah, absolutely. Love that. So, and how many facilities do you have there? So we just have our inpatient, we have our outpatient. So we're very small, we're family owned and operated. We've always wanted quality over quantity. And so we've stayed very small. So it's just the inpatient, outpatient, and then we have sober living. And then we do virtual online. But as far as brick and mortar, there's just three places right here.

Love it, love it. Well, man, it's been so great to understand more of what you're doing. I love when I get the opportunity to connect with people that are, doing work that really matters. I don't help people get sober. I help people start a podcast because I know that if you start a podcast, you'll radically change your life and your business because you're stepping into a completely different version of yourself. I'm qualified to say that because I've lived that. So I too feel that I'm doing work that matters. I feel that I leave people different. based on them being able to do business with me, do life with me, do all the above. So I'm really encouraged by the work that you do. I look forward to us being able to meet in real life next time I'm out in your neck of the woods in Orange County and being able to see what we can come up with. You clearly got the podcast thing going on here. I love that. Yeah.

Well, it's funny you say that because for the, I kept hearing about podcasts. I'm like, nobody cares what we have to say. And it was just last year. So we've only been doing a podcast maybe six months, but I remember hearing this from someone. They're like, how dare you be so selfish that you make this about you? you need to go ahead and get all these people that are coming through and where they are now and get that out. And so when we started, like we had a 20-year follow-up, a 16-year follow-up, a seven-year follow-up, and they were coming and just sharing their stories of where they were before and how incredibly beautiful life is now. And it was amazing because people were starting to watch and say, that resonates with me because where they were is where I am now. And it's actually we have people reaching out to us now, which blows my mind. Well, well known people actually in the industry asking, can they come on the podcast? And there's still this, this, this part of me is kind of like, Oh, you have the wrong number. Like, I'm just, I'm just the guy at this treatment center just wants to help remove the stigma and help this world heal. And they're like, no, no, you're, you're the guy I saw that episode. I'm like, podcasts are the coolest thing. I had no idea.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and that happens to me from time to time, but I've learned to just lean in. Cause if that person's reaching out, there's a, there's a rhyme and reason for that. But like I start every single one of my talks with the same question and that is who's missing out because you're not showing up. And I was asked that question 14 years ago and it radically changed my life and helped me better understand, wow. So I guess it's not all about me and everything to do with everyone else on there. And I think that if a lot more of us, especially those listening, I hope this resonates with you. If we realize that if we're willing to get off the bench, and into the game, we can help others win the game. And in my opinion, I've only been on the planet 46 years. I look forward to another 46 plus, but what I've learned thus far is that it's kind of tied back into the model of success. If you want to be successful, start doing shit that helps other people become successful and be the best version of themselves. So I love that. I love to hear that incredible story of podcast transformation on where it's all at, because You sharing these stories could get someone else sober. You sharing these stories could get someone off. the addiction bench and into the sobriety game to be able to one day be on the podcast. And then, I mean, what, when does that ever end? I don't know. Never. Cause people aren't going to stop getting fucked up. People aren't going to stop getting sober. People aren't going to start improving their stories is what I found. And that's really what resonates with people. You know, I just love the work that you do. It takes, uh, it takes a strong, brave effort to do that. I'm sure you run a great business. That's the bride product, right? Got a great successful business in Newport beach, California. And it's all of that is, is possible and happening because I tapped into my heart. I tapped into my calling of doing something that matters. So just want to encourage you to keep doing, um, the great work that you are doing, the work that matters. And it's a privilege to now call you a friend. And of course, have you on the podcast, any final thoughts for our listeners, Mark?

Would you mind if I share a gift with your listeners in case they want to learn what these habits are? Yes. So I'm the one that actually runs the social media. I shouldn't say run, but I'm, I'm on there actually responding to every single person. So you can find me at Pacific shores recovery on Instagram. If you DM me habits, I actually put together just a Google documents, totally free. And it's those five foundational freedoms of those habits of the people that are just thriving and able to overcome their addiction. So I just want to get that out there to your people, man.

Yeah, absolutely. I'll be sure to include that link in the show notes of this episode. That's the description in case you're wondering what the hell a show note is, so you can click it, make it easy on you. Mark, hey, listen, God bless you, my brother. Keep doing the great work that you're doing. Like I said, stoked to be connected with you. Anything I can do to serve you on my side of the podcast fence, don't hesitate to reach out, but thanks again for your time.

Ditto, appreciate you, man. Look forward to meeting you next time you come out here to Newport. Likewise, my brother. All right, see ya.

Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story podcast. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. We sure do appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, launchlab.com studios. We'll talk to you next time.