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Representative Leslie Herod knows what it’s like to have a family member struggle with addiction and incarceration. But she also knows that this is more a failure of a greater system than a failure of a sibling, and that’s informed the policy and programs she’s spearheaded around mental health, substance misuse, and the criminal justice system. Nzinga and Representative Herod talk about how current systems of policing and treating substance misuse not only bypass treating mental health, but often make it worse. Luckily, Representative Herod has a program in Denver, Colorado that has actually worked.

 

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Rep. Leslie Herod, Dr. Nzinga Harrison & Claire Jones

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  00:03

Hey, everybody, this is IN RECOVERY. The news has been, shall we say a lot for a long time. And when you see traumatic events happen over and over and over again to Black and Brown people at the hands of the police, it’s hard not to feel hopeless about our options for policing in this country. Do we abolish? Do we reform? It might be impossible to even imagine a solution that exists. But it does. In Denver, Colorado. The STAR Program dispatches health care workers when responding to incidents involving mental health, poverty, homelessness or substance use. And it’s spearheaded by this woman, Representative Leslie Herod, she was elected to Colorado’s the 8th district as the first black LGBTQ woman in the General Assembly in 2016. And was just re-elected this last year. And she’s our guest today on IN RECOVERY.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

Representative Herod, so happy to have you on the show. Thank you for joining us.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

Thanks so much for having me.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

Why don’t we jump in? I’ll tell you a little bit like we’ve dedicated this season to the show, to really taking a look back over the past year, and all of the trauma that all of us have survived, and that we’re trying to navigate our way out of into recovery in this upcoming year, and really hearing the stories of a lot of different people and how our early lives contributed to how we navigated the last year and ideas for navigating the upcoming year. So I would love for you to just start out by helping our listeners get to know you. Who are you? How did you become who you are?

Rep. Leslie Herod

Well, that is a very loaded question. I am state representative Leslie Herod, I represent Denver out here in Colorado, I’d say who am I? I mean, I do identify a lot by my work, I work very hard to reform the criminal justice system, but also to really break down and dismantle the war on drugs and the stigma around those who have a substance misuse challenge, and really try to humanize people and ensure that our laws that dehumanize people are eradicated, I come at this work because my sister is formerly incarcerated, and has struggled with substance misuse since I knew her, and it all came from trauma, mental health and trauma and sexual abuse. And I think if we start to treat people like people and get at the root causes of what’s going on, we could actually grow as a community and as a society, we can stop throwing away people and really see that people are valued people, like my sister, myself, my family, but also, you know, all of our families. So that’s really what I try to work on.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  03:11

I absolutely love what you said, if we can get to the root causes, then we can actually start to grow. And kind of like that blossoming imagery of a tree, I think is exactly how probably many of us feel coming out of this last year into what has to be a new concept of ourselves, given what we navigated last year, but to double click on what you said, if we can stop throwing people away. You did like took me to church with that one line. Yeah, I think that motivates like, the war on people who use drugs, which is really what it has been as much as it’s been a war on drugs, has been throwing people away.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

And so can you talk to us about how your sister and the trauma that you all experienced and the difficulties that she had with substance misuse, thank you for choosing your words intentionally there and not saying substance abuse, because abuse is a crime, right? It’s those little things that matter. But can you talk to us about how your work, then you mentioned juvenile justice, and I know you’ve done a lot of other work outside of for young people also, is really trying to walk us towards not throwing people away, but instead pouring into people to help climb out of the darkness that can be addiction.

Rep. Leslie Herod  04:33

Absolutely. I mean, it’s so fascinating to me, because I think as I when I was growing up, I thought of folks who are struggling with addiction, to have made bad choices in their lives and maybe even kind of deserve incarceration or the stigma or the isolation and definitely shouldn’t be seen or even acknowledged even by my own family, right? We didn’t know how to deal with this. And as I’ve gotten older, though, I’ve seen very wealthy white men struggling with depression and mental health challenges, other mental health challenges as well as substance misuse and take their own lives. And then I realized that it’s not just us. But, the way that we are treated is different. And it could be based on which drug is used.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

But it’s definitely based on your income level and how well you are able and willing to hide it. You know, Colorado is unique in that we have chosen to be one of the first states to come out and legalize marijuana. But Denver is even more unique in that we have decided to decriminalize the use of mushrooms. And this is all very new. But as we have gone into decriminalization, I realized how many people who are what I would see as wealthy and successful are actually dealing with their mental health challenges through the use of mushrooms, right? And I find that really fascinating. Because if you juxtaposition that with someone like my sister, who also treated her trauma and mental health challenges with drugs, but face very different consequences, she faced incarceration, and they’re looking at legalization and de-stigmatization, which is really fascinating to me.

Rep. Leslie Herod  06:27

And so for this work, it’s really important that we start to get at the base of it, whatever drug it has been chosen to be used, that’s not really the issue, the issue is what’s going on underneath, you know? Why are people feeling like they need to, to self-medicate in a way that could be harmful? is self-medicating maybe in some instances, not harmful, you know, let’s have real conversations about what we need, as a society, what we need and what we don’t need, and not have stigma around that, what you choose, might be different than what I choose. But if we are doing no harm to others, we should be able to go on that journey together and with honesty.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

Absolutely. And you mentioned that, like, how do we get to the next step and start seeing people and that even as you were going through it with your sister growing up, you have this mindset, which we all sort of were trained into with the war on drugs, which was, maybe she didn’t deserve compassion, maybe she did deserve to go to jail, or people who were using drugs. And that that concept for you really started to change when you saw rich, powerful white men, also using drugs. And then when I noticed when you talked about how your sister was treated differently than the way you saw these rich, powerful white men being treated, you drew every distinction, except that am I making an assumption that your sister is black?

Rep. Leslie Herod 

That is accurate.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

And so it’s interesting to me, I don’t know, I can ask you, did you consciously leave that out? What I do know, is that before the last year, when we’ve had kind of this racial equity, reckoning, following the murder of George Floyd, we’ve been trained into not bringing up the differences that we see that we experience when we’re black, because that hasn’t been acceptable. And so how do you think you left that out about your sister?

Rep. Leslie Herod  08:30

Well, you know, I think calling out Whiteness is something that we don’t do enough. And we call out Blackness a lot, you know, and to show that substance misuse is not just a Black issue, right? It’s not just a Black woman or man issue, that White people are using substances and misusing substances at even higher rates, but really we the ones who are stigmatized, as Black people, as these drug users, you know, and that is something that I think we need to address. And so do I intentionally leave out her race? Maybe, maybe not? Do I intentionally call out the Whiteness and the privilege that is inherent in this conversation? I definitely try to.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

I love that so much. I want to say more, but it is time for a quick break.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

So one of the things I think, very parallel to the I guess, development that you went through to this place of compassion and looking at the root causes and understanding, substance misuse and substance use disorders as an illness is what the country went through with the opioid crisis. Right. So when the face of addiction was people who are poor people who are Black people of color people in urban settings, Then there was this criminal assumption and lack of compassion. That was the air that breathed around that. And then when it started to become younger, you know, suburban White young people with their whole lives ahead of them is the concept, then this, you know, the emotional environment started to change to compassion, and what can we do differently? And how can we understand and how can we slide to prevention.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  10:29

And so one of the things that I often try to call out is, you said, we don’t often call out Whiteness. And I think part of that is because in this country, Whiteness is the default, right? We call out the opposite of the default. So man-ness to use a word that doesn’t exist, is the default, Whiteness is the default, right? Like those are where our privilege lines fall. And so even you look at the public face of the opioid crisis. And you don’t see Black faces. And so I think in that way, whiteness is being called out as what’s important about the opioid crisis. And it’s another one of those ways while we’re raising our voices to the mountains, right now, Black Lives Matter, that you actually see how we have to fight against Black lives not mattering and Black lives being invisible.

Claire Jones 

I think the opioid epidemic is like a prime example of our country and society, saying, like, White lives matter more.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

You know, I think it’s been very clear that whiteness has been centered in the opioid epidemic, you know, even calling it an epidemic, it like kind of places faults on someone else, you know. And it makes it this global or community wide issue, instead of that dehumanizing personal issue, that sometimes people of color who are facing substance misuse challenges are kind of put on them, it’s put on them. And so for me, I actually saw this as an opportunity to create a dialogue around what needed to change. And so when I noticed that my white middle class, middle aged friends were concerned that their children, were going to try opioids or are already struggling with an opioid addiction, or their partners, and they wanted to start talking about the issue, it gave me an opportunity to start working on the drug war from a different angle.

Rep. Leslie Herod  12:47

And I think that is unique and is only happening because it’s happening across the country. But it’s only happening because there are Black women who are now at the table to be a part of these conversations. And so while we see the parallels and the differences of how we’re treated, we’re able to create programs and policies and laws that actually dismantle the war on drugs that we’ve been fighting against, for, quite frankly, decades. Community wide across ages, across races, and even across party lines are saying that we have to do something to ensure that Little Timmy is not addicted to an opioid after he breaks his whatever from football practice or something like that, you know.

Rep. Leslie Herod

And so, I worked on this effort and started this effort here in Denver called Caring for Denver, where I asked Denverites to put 25 cents on $100 sales tax increase. So every $100 you spend 25 cents of it would go to dealing with substance misuse and mental health crises in our communities. And even before it gets to crisis, I should say. And I was told it cannot be done. I was told nothing like this had ever happened. We cannot do it; people will not support those people. And I said those people are us, and Denver will. And quite frankly, 70% of Denverites did and we got that ballot measure passed with broad day support. Thank you. And I didn’t shy away from the incarceration aspect. I didn’t shy away from communities of color.

Rep. Leslie Herod  14:17

But I told stories that were universally understood by many folks, regardless of who was telling the story, maybe because of who was telling the story. But we made sure it came from folks like me, made sure it came from folks, like you know, White male business owners and moms and all different folks to say this is why we need it. And now we have one of the largest mental health foundation’s definitely in the state but possibly in the country that only focuses on this issue.

Rep. Leslie Herod

And it’s being funded by the taxpayers were able to give out about $35 million worth of grants across the city. But one thing I want to add about that is that there have been a lot of laws and policies that have I’ve been passed across the country in response to the opioid epidemic. But unless you have people who truly understand how intertwined and related it is to the war on drugs, and the disproportionate treatment and impact on people of color, you get policies and programs that only benefit White people.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

Absolutely. And I want to put a fine point on that last sentence that you just said, it doesn’t happen to someone at the table is not there to drive that to happen. I don’t want that to land on people like an accusation. I talked about privilege a lot when I’m teaching about diversity and equity and initiatives towards equality. And part of it is the way our brains work as humans, it is so much easier for us to see what is inside our own experience, what is outside our own experience, we’re actually quite blind to it’s just the way kind of like the human experience and the brain works. And so it’s not an indictment that if nobody’s at the table, certain groups won’t be thought about, it’s an opportunity to understand how humans work how the human brain works, so that we’re putting people at the table, so that we’re not leaving out those very important experiences in those different groups, right?

Rep. Leslie Herod  16:18

It’s not an indictment on anybody, you know, it’s just an acknowledgement that our system is set up for those blinders to stay on. And we’ve got to intentionally take them off on a regular basis.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

The indictment comes in when we don’t have that intention, when we don’t look at our data cut by all of the different ways we marginalize people, right? When we don’t look at our outcomes, and when we don’t make sure that we have voices other than our own at the table. That’s where the indictment comes in. Not by trying and making a mistake, but by not trying.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

Absolutely.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

So representative Herod, this has been I’m gonna do a little bit. I mean, it’s still very much related, but it’s a little bit of a pivot. A hard few weeks for everybody in this country, Black folks, especially, I’m talking about the Derrick Chauvin verdict, and then the police killings that came like very quickly after Ma’Khia Bryant, Andrew Brown, just you know, it has been an emotional, emotionally tumultuous time. And so if we look back, even just at the last couple of weeks, what do you think this is telling us about what we’ve done wrong in this country, as it relates to the intersection of mental health and substance misuse and substance use disorders and the criminal justice system, and then also the opportunities that presents for us to, as you say, do better.

Rep. Leslie Herod  18:00

I agree that it has been a very tough time to be a Black person in society right now. You know, what I will say is, it’s not hard to be Black, right? Like being Black is amazing. It’s beautiful. It’s empowering. But it is difficult to see Black people being murdered, and people to excuse that murder, time and time again, you know. That’s where the trauma lies. And so, you know, as we look at these things, we see people being shot by law enforcement, because they are maybe having a mental health crisis. But we also can see video after video of law enforcement, treating other people, non-Black people, non-people of color differently when they’re in that same crisis situation and, and them surviving through it, you know, to get that help they need.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

And so for me, it is a time of a lot of trauma for Black people. But it’s also a time for opportunity to continue to tell our stories to continue to demand better, but it’s not without it being draining, you know. And so, when I think of things like Caring for Denver, when I think of programs that we’re looking at, to support each other, I got to say, like, we don’t need to be in crisis to get help. We are dealing with trauma right now. And it’s imperative that as individuals, we do get that help. But as a country, we get that help. We need to, because if you can’t look at the, see the video of George Floyd being murdered, and you can’t see that as wrong, that we are fundamentally broken, you know?

Rep. Leslie Herod 

We have so much more work to do as a society when I see that over 40% of White Republicans or Republicans believe that the verdict was wrong. You know, when I thought all agreed that George Floyd was murdered, or at least the vast majority of us. So I feel like we are being bombarded with this information every day that Black people are different and that we’re not enough, right? We’re not worthy of the same type of compassion as our White counterparts. And I know that some of these people who were murdered just this week or last week, if they were not Black, they would have survived, you know.

Rep. Leslie Herod  20:25

We had a woman in Loveland, who was in her 70s, a white woman who was assaulted by the police for stealing, I think it was like $12, or $17 worth of goods out of a store, and she had dementia. So it was highly problematic scenario. She never should have been assaulted by the police in that way. Thankfully, she lived. And I do believe that that is in part because of her Whiteness. But additionally, the compassion for her is resounding the demand for that police department to do better and get training and go through all of this stuff is just astounding, when we as Black people have to literally lose our lives, and our children have to become hashtags.

Rep. Leslie Herod

Before even a portion of America can say this is wrong. We have so much more work to do. And even as the verdict came out, I say that, and I think I’ve heard a lot of us say that that’s not that’s not justice. Maybe we’ve gotten that credibility in this instant, but we are still holding our breath because since the verdict has come down, more of us have been killed, you know, more injustice has been done. And we need to change the systems that continue to allow that injustice to perpetuate.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

All of that. I feel like I don’t even have anything to say after all of that. So let’s revel in that for a minute while we take a quick break.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

We’re back. So my husband and I were actually just talking about this over the weekend. And I said the policing system without question is failing black people in this country. But the policing system is also failing police in this country. So like you look at not the Derrick Chauvin incident which falls outside of what I’m about to say you look at the woman police officer who pulled her gun and thought it was her taser and killed this man. Or you look at the police officer who shot the woman’s one year old in the head at the gas station. And really policing has failed them also, right? I have my cousin Brett was killed by police a few years ago he had schizophrenia.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  24:18

And I firmly believe if that police officer had been trained other than to pull his gun first. My cousin probably could be alive and that police officer could not be traumatized for the rest of his life. Or that police officer that shot the one-year-old in the head. If he had been trained in a different mindset with a different set of skills. Maybe that one year old wouldn’t still be in the ICU and that police officer wouldn’t be traumatized for the rest of his life. And so it’s like, as you know, even the people who are trying to protect the individual policeman in these narratives is like do you also realize that this police this them is failing the individual police officers.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

Absolutely. And I think one of the best kept secrets, although I talk about all the time, is my father is law enforcement. And he is one of the best men I know. He’s retired law enforcement. And he is, you know, someone who took me into his family, when my family was struggling, you know, he’s not my biological father, my biological father has passed away, but he’s a man of color. And, you know, we talk often about how he never had to pull his firearm on anyone in his entire career. But he knows, he knows that if he was in an altercation with law enforcement, even though he’s trained, that he has a 50/50 chance of making it out, to explain what happened, you know, of making it out of that scenario.

Rep. Leslie Herod

And what I remember so distinctly, as I kind of was growing up, and you know, kind of went into high school and college was, you know, my dad stopped wearing his uniform home, because he didn’t want people to know that he was law enforcement. Because if they knew, they might think of him as someone who would shoot first and ask later, or someone who was doing harm in community, and when he joined law enforcement, it wasn’t that at all. When he joined back when he did, it was because he wanted to do something better for the community. And so when we are not training people, not acknowledging our bias, not training to see beyond our bias, and having these very intentional conversations, we do everyone injustice, and you’re right, you know, when I do ride along with law enforcement, I think they often intentionally pair me up with the law enforcement officer of color.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

But when you’re in that car for 8 hours, and you know, definitely have seen some very troubling situations, for sure, stuff starts to come out, you know, and the trauma starts to boil up to the top. And as you speak to them, you realize that that one or two incidences where maybe they thought they could have made a different decision. Or maybe they thought they could step it, they should have stepped in when they didn’t, or whatever happened to them, it’s still sitting with them, it’s still traumatizing them. And that’s why they need that care, too, you know?

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

That’s right.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

It’s an interesting conversation, because I created a model here in Denver called STAR— Support Team Assisted Response. And that is very much based on this conversation that the movement for Black Lives is having about how to have a non-law enforcement officer respond on mental health calls, it’s probably going to be my most proudest accomplishment, and I gotta get my chief Pay’s in here, Chief Paul Payson a shout out because he’s the one that made me see the program out in Eugene, Oregon, and bring it back to Denver. And he is a Latino man who grew up on the west side of Denver. And so he saw the benefit of this.

Rep. Leslie Herod  28:15

But it is now being pitted against what we call co-responders. So co responders are what a mental health professional rides along with a law enforcement operator. And I might be getting in the weeds here. But I have always been a champion of both the alternative response and the co-response. Because even in the alternative response, if someone has a box cutter or knife, some type of weapon, the police are coming, you know, they’re going to be there. And they should have, they should be able to respond in a way that is also de-escalating and that acknowledges trauma. And the only way that you’re going to do that is if law enforcement officers themselves get help and get treated. And responders are a very low barrier for those law enforcement officers to get help and treatment when they otherwise wouldn’t seek it.

Rep. Leslie Herod

And that is so very important when we’ve seen studies that have shown that when co responders are a part of a police department that you have less uses of force in that department. You have less domestic violence among the law enforcement officers, and you have more trauma informed responses. I think that is just as important as an alternative response. And we have to put them alongside each other. We have to do policing extremely, extremely differently. Yeah, and right now, we’re just we’re not stepping up. We’ve got to do more, to make sure that everyone in our community has access to that help that they need. And it’s low barrier. I mean, could you imagine, you know it, if you had to sit with a therapist, and we guys might be everything single day, you’re going to start talking about your own stuff. And you’re going to…

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  30:06

There’s no way not to.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

That’s all. That’s what we’re asking for our teachers need co-responders, too, right? Like, we make sure that people actually are, are not only getting the help that they need, but actually have the tools that they need to respond when someone needs help, you know? So that’s what we’re trying to do here.

Claire Jones 

Do you think that this is a program that can be implemented elsewhere? Like, is this a realistic alternative in a city like Minneapolis or in cities like Atlanta or New York or in states like Florida?

Rep. Leslie Herod 

Absolutely. And you know, there are places and pockets around the country that are doing it, right. So we got our model from Eugene, Oregon, the Cahoots model. And that’s been in place for like 30 years, and it took 20 of those 30 years for it to be really acknowledged and embraced by the community and by the elected officials that are working within that community, and setting those budgets. Caring for Denver started STAR, not because the city couldn’t afford it, but because we were the only ones that stepped up and did it. And it took us $200 about $300,000 to start the star model. Come on.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

Yeah, that’s chump change.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

We can do that. And, and we did it and now it’s being matched because we’ve had zero negative instances of a STAR response ending in something bad. That’s not happened.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

I’m sorry, how many?

Rep. Leslie Herod 

Zero. Zero times has STAR had to call police for backup. Zero times had STAR had to ticket or symptom when a ticket be ticketed or arrested. Zero times have STAR had to send someone to jail.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

And so why would we not? Why would we not be clamoring? So how to? Because I know we’re getting close to the end of our time together. So hearing you know, I’m all about my data on my outcomes. And hearing 000 is very motivating. How do people talk to their own district representative? Or talk to their own police department? Like what is the first step for folks to start raising their voices to try to get a Care Denver and a STAR program in their local community?

Rep. Leslie Herod  32:29

Well, I think you do have to keep asking and saying that we want to do something different, but then show the data. But you know, CAHOOTS was standing alone for so long. But Denver, we are a major city that people want to talk about and see come to Denver and see our response, you know, I changed because I went and saw Cahoots, I wasn’t anti Kahoot I just didn’t get it, you know, I just didn’t get what do you mean, someone’s gonna respond. Because, you know, people think that they have alternative responses, because they might have a mental health plan that goes around town, that’s a great thing.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

But for the most part, people in our communities, if they’re afraid, if they think something is wrong, they are calling 911. And unless it’s STAR, a STAR like model is integrated into the city into the systems that people are used to calling for help, you’re not going to have the same kind of response. So it does take buy in, across leadership levels. And so what I would say is, you know, match your chief of police up with mine, you know, Chief Payson will have that conversation, match your elected official up with me, I will have that conversation, match your 911 dispatch officer with ours, you know, that is what we need to do to so people can really understand how these things can work, you know?

Rep. Leslie Herod 

And yes, we’ll still have the naysayers who will say that, you know, wait, just wait till something bad happens? Well, something bad is happening every single day, every day. And it’s not providing the right response for the issues, you know, and that’s what we need to do. And so what I would say is start having the conversation. Denver is more than willing to match up or meet up with whomever is interested in recreating what we’re doing here. And then also challenge us to do better, because we have not it’s not a panacea, right.

Rep. Leslie Herod  34:23

We are not done. We have not stopped all excessive use of force in Colorado, right? We still have work to do. But I think as we start to hold ourselves to a higher standard, we can do better. And then at the end of the day, we are saving money in jails and prisons. We are saving officer time, and we are saving the taxpayers, literally millions of dollars, because we are not paying out these excessive use of force cases. So now we can reinvest that money into models that actually work.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

In case saving wasn’t enough, also saves money.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

Absolutely.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

Oh, man, I could talk to you for 45 more minutes.

Rep. Leslie Herod

Well, I can’t wait to hear the part two and to have that conversation with you.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

Yes, yes, thank you so much for just the one the work that you do every day, I should say, one the person who you are, which shines through the work that you do, two, just find that very clear call to action, and empowering set of like, these are next steps that you can take, because I’ll bring it back to what you said at the very beginning of the show, which was, we have to stop throwing people away, we have to. And we don’t have to figure it out from scratch, because at least in Denver, there’s a program that has already started to make a difference. So let’s try it. Right?

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

Let’s take the first step and try that. And then just be continuously improving. If we’re making the commitment, what I heard over and over in the Derek Chauvin trial, from police officers, as they described their training was the importance to respect the sanctity of life, the importance to respect the sanctity of life. And so if we can all make that commitment to the sanctity of every life, then I think we’ll be going in the right direction.

Rep. Leslie Herod  36:23

Absolutely. And I had to say, thanks so much for having me, these conversations are the kinds of conversations that move the needle. And so I hope that anyone who’s listening feels empowered to have this conversation and whatever space they feel comfortable and safe in that they know can make a difference. And maybe just keep talking, you know, keep talking. That is a step in and towards action, right? So keep talking, take action, we can crack this net, we can do better. We can grow as a society, and it’s gonna take all of us. Yeah,

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

I love it. Thank you.

Claire Jones 

That’s it for this week’s episode. Thanks, everyone for listening. If you want to find out more about what representative Herod does in Denver, we will have information in our show notes and we will see you next week.

CREDITS

IN RECOVERY is a Lemonada Media Original. This show is produced by Claire Jones and edited by Ivan Kuraev. Jackie Danziger is our supervising producer. Our theme was composed by Dan Molad with additional music by Kuraev. Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer are our executive producers. Rate us, review us, and say nice things. Follow us at @LemonadaMedia across all social platforms, or find me on Twitter at @naharrisonmd. If you’ve learned from us, share the show with your others. Let’s help to stigmatize addiction together.