Voices for Voices®

Reclaiming Lives from Addiction with MODE | Episode 187

• Founder of Voices for Voices®, Justin Alan Hayes • Season 4 • Episode 187

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Reclaiming Lives from Addiction with MODE | Episode 187

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Lisa Petrarca-Gamido's journey is nothing short of inspiring. As a mental health and substance abuse counselor who transitioned from a business background, Lisa's passion for helping those in recovery led her to establish MODE, an organization dedicated to empowering individuals to reclaim their lives from addiction. Through her personal story of recovery beginning in 2003, Lisa shares the importance of listening as a therapeutic tool and a leadership skill. She shines a light on the underserved, emphasizing the need for basic support services to help formerly incarcerated individuals reintegrate into society with dignity and respect.

Balancing professional and personal life isn't easy, especially in the demanding field of mental health and recovery. Join us as Lisa reflects on her own challenges in creating healthier boundaries between work and home life, highlighting the transformative power of faith and spirituality. Together, we explore the importance of achieving balance across financial, spiritual, social, emotional, and mental well-being. Discover more about the services offered at Miracles Occur, including their outpatient and intensive outpatient programs, designed to support individuals on their journey to recovery.

We explore the vital connections between listening, recovery, and mental health. Lisa Petrarca-Gamido, a substance abuse counselor and executive director of MODE, discusses her journey and the essential role of empathy in healing.

• Emphasis on listening as a critical component of recovery
• Importance of addressing basic needs before treatment
• Overview of the differences between mental health and substance abuse counseling
• Role of family involvement in the recovery process
• Challenges faced during the creation of MODE amid the pandemic
• Discussion on medication management and support resources
• Reflection on personal growth and setting professional boundaries
• Highlighting the community's role in providing comprehensive care
• Encouragement for listeners to seek help and get informed

Please be a voice for you or somebody in need.

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Chapter Markers

0:01 Supporting Mental Health and Recovery

16:54 Finding Balance and Faith in Recovery

#recoveringfromaddiction #recoveryjourney #addictionawareness #sobrietyrocks #addictionrecovery #lifeafteraddiction #recoverednotcured #addictionsupport #healthylifestyle #addictionfree #mentalwellness #liveschanged #recoveryispossible #addictiontreatment #newbeginnings #italy #vaticancity #popefrancis #jubilee2025 #Newepisode #newpodcastalert #podcastseries #podcastcommunity #voicesforvoicespodcast #donatetoday #501c3 #charityorganization #Podcast #donatetoday #nonprofitorganization #help3billionpeople #help3billion

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to another episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. I am your host, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, justin Allen Hayes. Thank you for joining us, whether you're tuning in on the audio podcast or whether you're tuning in on the video. So Hudson Community Television or YouTube Rumble all those great video platform partners that we have. We have reached 50 countries, 500 cities outside here in Northeast Ohio, and we can't thank you enough for the support. Ohio, and we can't thank you enough for the support and we would ask if you would be so inclined to like, share, subscribe to our show. We have over 150 episodes. We're probably in the 160s by the time we will be airing this show and we can't do this without you, and we just wanna thank you for allowing us to come into your homes or into your earbuds to share some knowledge, some education, some information with you.

Speaker 1:

Today we have an in-studio guest. We're pleased to be able to bring more attention to what she does with her organization and how she helps people, because my big goal is to help three billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond, and I'm going to need a lot of help and this is a wonderful guest to be able to share what, what she does. And if we can be a link to you or somebody you know maybe needing services or want to learn more about, that would be a big goal that we would have. If you or somebody you know is ready to step forward and say I've had enough of where I'm at, I want to continue to not only live, but I'm going to continue to grow as a person, that people like our guests is going to be crucial to be able to do that.

Speaker 1:

So our guest, lisa Petrarca-Gamito she is with us in studio and she is a mental health and a substance abuse counselor, which is huge because the substance abuse side of things we know or we have read in the news or heard in the past how the opioid epidemic has affected individuals in our state of Ohio, northeast Ohio, but also across the nation and, unfortunately, also across the world. So her unique skill set to be able to really hone in on that is special. Lisa is also the executive director of the MODE, and MODE stands for Miracles, occur, days, enriched. So she founded this organization and she is a big believer in helping and giving back to the community, which is why she's here with us today. So, lisa, thank you for joining us.

Speaker 2:

Thanks, justin, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:

You're welcome. So where did the idea of wanting to help others come from in your life and then deciding I want to look at some licensing and then potentially an organization?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I got into recovery in 2003. And I finished my degrees in recovery and I was interested in international business. You know, I come from a business background in my family and I just I was feeling out all these different degrees and nothing felt right. Um, so I just I I started steering towards counseling, I started leaning towards counseling. I knew I wanted to help people and it just kind of my process of elimination, kind of like everybody else, I just started doing that X-ray thing and found that counseling was my passion. And after graduate school I started working at agencies and realized I wanted to take things into my own hands. I saw gaps in the community that needed filled and I saw that addicts needed a voice and I wanted them to be heard and I wanted to treat addicts and alcoholics with respect and just kind of took it from there and then opened the mode during the pandemic, which wasn't easy, no, nothing was easy during the pandemic.

Speaker 1:

Okay, which wasn't easy? No, nothing was easy.

Speaker 2:

Nothing was easy during the pandemic, exactly Especially that. But I didn't plan on doing it during the pandemic. I planned on doing it in 2019.

Speaker 1:

And then the pandemic hit, okay, so yeah, I mean you have definitely a helping mind and background. How important is listening to individuals share their story to you and to the work that you do in specific, as you're sitting down and having conversations?

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh, Listening is a huge component of it, not just in recovery but in relationships as a business owner. Listening is huge. Listening is huge with my clients. I've noticed. You know, listening is huge in being a good leader, in having a good staff, you know, just in helping clients.

Speaker 2:

You know I was just having a conversation with a colleague the other day about how many clients are imprisoned and shouldn't be, Because unfortunately I don't know, I want to say this the right way we have a lot of good therapists out there, but unfortunately we have a lot of bad therapists out there too that are in the field for the wrong reasons or are in the field and are not properly healed yet. And we have a lot of clients and people that are imprisoned that shouldn't be because staff doesn't listen to them or doesn't take the time they need to take with them. You know, I had a client just a few months ago and he just needed help with his insurance. He just needed someone to be on the phone with him and help him with his insurance and no one took the time to help him with his insurance. And you know it's it's, it's a need.

Speaker 1:

It's a need out there just to take time and to listen people, to listen to people properly and to dovetail on where I ran into you again, the Summit County Citizen Circle of sitting and listening to the needs of individuals that have been incarcerated and to help them get their feet under them and become a member of society again. And you talk about insurance, insurance, birth certificates, things that I know I say overlook. But we're looking for these grandiose ideas on how we can heal this person or help them when we think of this top line. But then we and that unfortunately causes us to overlook some of the basic things like, oh, I need insurance. If I'm going to be a truck driver, I need this particular license, and how am I going to do it and how much is it? And how do I get my license reinstated? Instead of looking at the big picture, it's like get these small things taken care of and then we can look at some of the bigger things.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes it's just a matter of baby steps with the little things and then the big things will be solved. I was so happy to see you at Citizen Circle. I think Citizen Circle is a wonderful outfit.

Speaker 1:

I wish I could make it more often, but right now I'm wearing lots of hats in my agency, um, but I love Citizen Circle it's one of those things where, sitting and actually being there, I've done the Zoom and then the in-person, and then obviously this depends on if schedules allow to be either in-person or through Zoom or not. It just really depends from month to month with the scheduling. And I remember my first time it brought me to tears hearing just some of these, I'll say, like smaller requests, like I don't know where I'm going to get my next meal from, and it's lunchtime and we're speaking and listening. And then then this person they don't know where they're going to get their next meal from. And here I'm thinking that having I don't know this big, grandiose ideas of, oh, here we're gonna be able to heal them and do all these things. It's like well, but they're not going to be able to do that if they're not able to find food for dinner or lunch.

Speaker 2:

Right, and you're absolutely right. If we just listen, the solution's not that difficult.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and the specialty that you bring to your organization, not only being the the founder and executive director of the mode. Can you talk to the chemical dependency counseling side of things and how that's a little bit different than maybe the mental health counseling that you still offer at your at your organization, but that's just not your specialty. So you can help individuals on either side of the right side of the fence, but the chemical dependency. That's something that is. It's different and unique and very much needed, I think right and you're absolutely right.

Speaker 2:

My specialty is more the substance abuse than mental health and we have folks right now they happen to be all ladies that do the mental health at the mode. Yeah, the chemical dependency. It's very much a dance between tough love and nurturing and we do a lot of cognitive, behavioral and motivational interviewing. I also like some other things. I kind of go a little bit of the tough love route and DBT, you know, opposite action therapy, Gestalt I was trying to think of the therapy A little bit of gestalt, but you kind of have to meet the client where they're at. You know the client has to be willing. They need a pinky full of willingness. I always say I like that and they do have to hit bottom, but their bottom can be any kind of bottom, they can get off at any time.

Speaker 2:

The biggest thing, think, is we work a lot with the families, because if you have people still enabling the client, that can be detrimental. So we're very active with the families. The chemical dependency piece can be tricky because you have clients coming in saying I'm drinking and I don't want to be drinking. I need your help. It's that teaching the disease concept and teaching new coping mechanisms and helping them understand that they're not at fault and it's just, it's very, very individualized. So it's talking to them about what's going on and what their needs and wants and expectations of treatment are and helping them not lie to themselves. You know that justification, rationalization, those character defects, it's all of that. So it's a lot of diving into a treatment plan tailored just for them and are you and I don't know.

Speaker 1:

are you able to diagnose and or if an individual needs? Or if an individual needs? I know we're talking about chemical dependency and want to obviously steer away from that, but if there is that mental health side where they may need some type of medication, is that something that you and your staff are able to do or how does that work?

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, great question. So we have a nurse practitioner on staff she's very good with medication and then we also have a medical director, dr Girdar, so he also oversees everything, everything and we we have whatever. So we have all of that at the mode and then whatever we don't have, we refer out. Okay, but we do have a nurse and a doctor.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and that's big to all the individuals there at your facility because, as we know, a referral sometimes may take a while to get an appointment. And if you're able to and it depends on scheduling and there's a lot of things that go into it but if you're able to help that individual like okay, okay, we just had this conversation, and they can walk down the hall and and be able to feel like they almost took like two steps forward and said like okay, now I got a call, or uh, and then each situation's a little bit different, absolutely, but just from a, you know, I don't know what I'm going to do for a month.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. And also regarding medication, medication-assisted treatment, mat. We do not do MAT in-house, but we do MAT at Access Point. Access Point is located in several different areas in portage county and summit county. We've been working with access point for a couple years for our mat um, so if they need suboxone or naltrexone or anything like that, we have that at our fingertips through access point oh wow, that's huge so we get that for them too.

Speaker 1:

So a little bit of a different question, because you know you're listening and the conversations, you know sometimes it's hard to separate I'll say separate your mind from work and then home. You know personal, not to bring those experiences and those stories home, because that's the only thing I would think of. And why I haven't gone forward with any type of licensing is because I'm like, oh my God, like I don't know if I'm I got things going on with myself. So if I'm listening to other people, which I wouldn't help, that I'd be afraid that I'd be bringing that home.

Speaker 2:

Can you maybe just describe that's a really good comment question and you know what, justin, I used to. I used to when I first started. I can remember my first couple jobs in the field back in well, I got my LICDC in 2011. So I can remember back then. Back then I remember seeing the first gentleman that the police came in to the treatment center I was working at and took him to jail in handcuffs and I went in my office and I cried. I don't think I would do that now. It's just so different now. It's just I'm much more detached now and I'm able to set better boundaries now with the clients. It's just I'm more of a vessel now for the clients and I know I'm a vessel for God. So it's just so different now I'm more confident in my work.

Speaker 1:

That's great, and having the faith as well to be able to lean on is something that I was missing coming out of my mental health crisis, where I was having the counseling and medication and I wasn't. I still wasn't feeling like I was all there, and I know it takes time, but the faith was something that I I felt almost instantaneously once I went back to church and spoke to the priests and and joined a men's group, that that and those individuals were helping me just as much or maybe more than I knew, than the therapy and medications, and that Can you just share. Maybe that side of like how that has enriched yourself over, you know, from, say, your start to kind of where you're at now, like you mentioned, that you're able to, you know, compartmentalize a little bit.

Speaker 2:

Like, what exactly Like?

Speaker 1:

just the faith and God and how that plays a role in your life.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, just, I mean, I've grown so much in recovery and in my business and in my personal and professional life I've grown astronomically and just with my family and my friends and my husband, I work a really good program. Today I don't have to fix everything overnight anymore and I take baby steps now and it's a journey. It's not a destination, truly, and it's a holistic approach with the clients and I know I always say this like we're about the client, we're not about the dollar, and we truly are. And I think I live my life the way I work my business, okay, and I'm grateful and proud of that. Yeah, and I treat my clients the way I live my life and it's very spiritual and I make a lot things happen and I make amends where I need to and I'm okay with imperfection today. I think when I first got sober, I wasn't okay with imperfection and the longer I'm sober, the less I know, yeah, and I'm going to be growing until the day I die and that's a good thing.

Speaker 1:

It is yeah, yeah, and I feel the same way with myself. It's a pretty mental health. Mental illness diagnosis was very much like that. It was like the perfection. I had to do things a certain way.

Speaker 1:

My wife will probably say now that I still do things my way or how I like things, and I'm just a creature of habit on a lot of things, but I don't worry as much about the mistakes. I know that at some point when I get the Cheerios out of the cupboard that sometimes there might be a bunch that fall on the floor like little things like that, and before I'd be like, oh, I can't believe this. And then something else little would happen and it would just start building and building and building. And now I'm like, okay, well, there's a little bit of a hole, it's more talk through it in my mind and, like you said, just take baby steps, baby steps. Not that we don't worry, but I worry a little bit less about that perfection, like we're striving, I think, for a more or less like balance of just being able to, like you said, with your practice, you take things as they come and instead of maybe you take things as they come and instead of maybe worrying about things like that and it could happen in the future.

Speaker 1:

It's like why would I spend a lot of my mental capacity or mind worrying Now if you're doing business planning, and that's one thing. But on a day to day there's going to be things that are going to go good, then there's going to be times where things going to go good, then there's going to be times where you know things are going to, like, trip up a little bit and be like okay, well, I'm still going to continue on, and it's not going to bother me as much.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I love you just nailed it. You just you said balance that's. I have much more balance in my life today than I used to have, and that's what it takes, you know balance financially, spiritually, socially, emotionally, mentally. We have to have balance in our life to have serenity.

Speaker 1:

yeah, so, as we're coming to a close episode, how can people learn more about the mode?

Speaker 2:

The best way is to go to our website, miraclesoccurredorg, or call the Google cell number 216-772-3188, and one of our spiritual advisor recovery people will be there for you to do an intake and schedule you for an assessment. We have two levels of care open right now outpatient and intensive outpatient and the IOP is seven weeks and the OP is 14 to 16 weeks. We take drugs and alcohol. It has to be primary. The mental health can be secondary and we do have gamblers right now too. So but you do need to have a substance abuse as far as drinking or drugging as primary.

Speaker 2:

Our PHP is currently shut down, but we're ramping up the OP and the IOP and those are the best ways to contact us on the website or the Google cell. We're doing really well right now. If we're not the right agency for you, that's okay. We'll find the right agency for you. You know we don't do detox or residential, but I have a lot of connections in the area and I know where I could send you. If we're not the right agency for you, I don't know what camera to look at.

Speaker 1:

Oh no, you don't have to look, Don't mind me, okay.

Speaker 2:

But we'll be happy to. You know, there's a lot of great people in the community. So if we're not the right agency for you, we'll find the right agency for you and we're a good step down place. You know, I was just this week, I was just at other larger agencies and there's great skilled nursing facilities and other places, that things that we don't do and so we're a good step down place for after those agencies. So we'll figure it out if we're not the right place.

Speaker 1:

Well, Lisa, thank you for joining us. It was a pleasure having you. Thank you, Justin, You're welcome, and thank you, our listeners, our viewers. We can't do this without your support. Again, if you're able to like, subscribe, share. Let everybody know about our TV show and podcast. We have a lot of great content, especially as you saw, with our guest today, Lisa Petrarca-Gamito. She is the executive director of the Mode Miracles Occur Days Enriched. And until next time, I am Justin Allen Hayes, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, and please be a voice for you or somebody in need.

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