Episode 173 Brandon Roman Facing Addiction Recovery Together
This transcript is from episode 173 with guest Brandon Roman.
Scott DeLuzio 00:00:00 Thanks for tuning into the Drive On Podcast, where we’re focused on giving hope and strength to the entire military community. Whether you’re a veteran, active duty, guard, reserve, or family member, this podcast will share inspirational stories and resources that are useful to you. I’m your host, Scott DeLuzio. Now let’s get on with the show. Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Drive On Podcast. Today, my guest is Brandon Roman. Brandon works with Face It Together which is an addiction resource center that works to help get people with addiction and their loved ones. Welcome to the show. Brandon, why don’t you go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.
Brandon Roman 00:00:42 First I’d like to say thank you for having me. My name is Brandon Roman. I served in the army for seven and a half years. In that time I deployed once to Afghanistan, back in 2018. I worked for an organization called Faces Together. I recently started working here about a year ago. We work with people who are struggling with addiction and their loved ones. My main focus was to get to other people who struggled with this addiction. Whether it be a substance or alcohol, to get well as I did. I went on my journey of wellness and sobriety back in 2019, the year after my deployment. I have been well ever since. I’m going on my third year now. I am a father of four. I just really love the field of addiction and, and helping people who struggle just like I have. I have a really soft spot for other veterans because I understand how difficult it is for us to feel comfortable to get that help. That’s really where my passion lies, in my career field.
Scott DeLuzio 00:01:58 That’s great because I think a lot of veterans probably feel uncomfortable with reaching out to get help. Whether it’s a sign of weakness or whatever it is. There’s that stigma right around all sorts of things; mental health treatment, drugs and alcohol treatments, and others. Having someone like yourself who has literally walked the walk and now is talking the talk and is out there helping people. I’d love to kind of hear your story a little bit. What your journey was like. What brought you to deciding to seek out the treatment that you ended up with?
Brandon Roman 00:02:57 Of course, I’m always going to share my story. It’s going to be a little bit long-winded because it starts off pretty young. At the age of 16, I was a pretty rebellious teen like most of us were at that age. and during that time. I actually got my first taste of alcohol and some drugs, marijuana, mostly alcohol. During that time, my mom actually kicked me out when I was about 17 years old. She told me I can’t really do that anymore in her house, which is understandable. She told me to figure it out, but don’t figure it out here. I went to a place called Job Corps. If many people don’t know it’s a trade school. Usually, they have some on-campus opportunities.
Brandon Roman 00:03:48 At 17 years old, I went to that job Corps. I graduated with the certification of brick masonry, but my addiction never really halted. I was still drinking and smoking during that time. After I got out of the Job Corps, I was still a little too young to go into the brick masonry field. I joined the military at 17 years old. I enlisted and saw the movie at the Valor if I’m being specific. That was the movie that really made me gung ho and really made me want to go get after it. I watched that movie, went to the recruiter station, and enlisted. It wasn’t until a month after my 18th birthday that I actually shipped out and went to basic training.
Brandon Roman 00:04:37 Still during this time, my addiction never really halted. It just kind of subsided a little at the times that you couldn’t drink like an AIT or basic training. What others know is the AIT.I went and did hometown recruiting from there, for a month or so. That was when I had my first real situation with alcohol. I guess you would say, where I got so drunk that I forgot to go to work, in the military, which as we all know is not the greatest idea. I was pretty heavily chastised, but I was given an attaboy pretty much at that time, which didn’t really help. It just kind of helped the influence. Then from there, later on moving on into my military career, I was stationed at Fort Wright and I was in Alaska for about three years.
Brandon Roman 00:05:31 I was an infringement as well. I didn’t mention my MOS, but it was an infringement. A lot of people know that MOS is embodied in the face of alcohol. We always said alcohol, caffeine, and tobacco is what fuels us. We lived in Alaska and I had some pretty wild and bad stories back then. Took off, back in 2016. My ex-wife, I moved to Fort Wainwright, Alaska, and or from Fort Wayne, Alaska to Fort Carson. And then in 2016 during that time my ex-wife pretty much said she had enough. She got up and left and took my oldest daughter now, took her and went to California. That’s when my alcoholism really, really ballooned.
Brandon Roman 00:06:27 At that point I was drinking about a fifth a day and a 12 pack to wash it down. Just to kind of be numb to the whole situation. I lived in the sober day Mondays, as they call it where you’re supposed to sweat out all that alcohol. Well, I did that pretty much all five days of the week, and every PT session. Then she did return, for a short period of time. When I did deploy my alcoholism never really slowed down. But then I did deploy back in 2018 where I had that full-year or a full nine months of sobriety. But during those nine months, it wasn’t really a sober point for me.
Brandon Roman 00:07:17 It was a break. It wasn’t me wanting to get well. It was me not having the opportunity to use, which for a lot of us, who have deployed, we understand, was one of the first things that we do when we get home. I was no exception to that rule. I got home and continued to use At one point in time, I had a really, really great Lieutenant who was my XO. He’s a really, really good guy, still, a good friend of mine, who acknowledged that, [I had a problem] Hey man, you have a problem. I also acknowledged it but I was in fear. I understood the ASAP program at the time. I believe it’s changed now. I believe the ASAP program at the time was counterproductive.
Brandon Roman 00:08:06 I was scared to go into it and then be chastised for failing. I just kinda ate, right. I ate, I ate the addiction. I dealt with it, how I dealt with it. In 2019, I finally admitted that I really, really needed some help. Through the help of myself, a couple of friends, and my ex-wife at the time, I decided to do a cold turkey. I was scared of reaching out and getting that help that so many of us really, really need. In January of 2020, I had to exit the military. I began my journey as a civilian, which was a very difficult time during that time, COVID had hit literally the month after I got out, and a whole bunch of other things that happened. I hung strong. I’m still hanging on strong now. Then I found this job opportunity to reach out and help other veterans and other people like myself, and I just reached this level of wellness. That’s kinda my story. That’s kind of what got me here. I’m always free and willing to share that story. It’s fairly similar to a lot of other veterans like myself.
Scott DeLuzio 00:09:29 I think that’s why I wanted to ask you to share the story if you are comfortable doing so. There’s probably other people who might be listening to this episode right now, and they might hear a little bit of themselves in that story. Obviously, everyone has their own journey, their own story. every situation’s kind of unique, but you might hear some similarities in your story versus their story and everything. Looking at you now three years later, it’s something that’s possible and it’s something that you can do. Maybe not the exact same steps that you took. Maybe that’s not gonna work for somebody else, but it is there.
Scott DeLuzio 00:10:23 I like having that there because that gives someone hope and saying I feel like I’m throwing things away. My marriage has fallen apart. My kids don’t want to talk to me. Whatever the situation is. If they realize that there is some hope out there for them, then maybe they can repair that marriage. Maybe they can build a better relationship with their kids and their family and their coworkers and their friends and everything like that. There’s hope. I’m glad that you were able to share that story. Now tell us about Face It Together. What is that organization all about and where did it get started? What’s the mission?
Brandon Roman 00:11:04 There’s a really unique organization because we are one of the few who also focus on loved ones as well. But back in 2009, a great man decided that he wanted to help people who are struggling with addiction like himself and get this organization put together. They started in South Dakota and it kind of blossoms. Our goal is to use the data that we actually received. We use what we call an RCI. We use the RCI, and it’s pretty much a questionnaire that kind of tells us about you, your journey, what your level of life is like. Then from there, we focus on those areas in your life. We’re not focusing on your addiction. We’re focusing on what are the things that put you in the position that make you struggle?
Brandon Roman 00:12:04 How can we better those situations to ultimately help with your addiction?A perfect example. We have people come in from all walks of life from Fortune 500 companies, employees to people who are homeless and really struggling. Each one of them has fairly similar situations. They’re stressed from work or home life or finances. And we’ll focus on those things. We focus on the finance portion of your life. Let’s better get you a job. Let’s focus on building your resume and doing those things because if that’s one of the main reasons why you’re using if that’s one of the main reasons why you’re leaning towards the substance, let’s focus on that. we’re not going to tell you not to use it.
Brandon Roman 00:12:51 We’re not going to tell you don’t struggle. We’re not going to tell you to cut it all off, right. We’re going to focus on those things that ultimately guide you to your own level of wellness, whatever wellness level that is. We’re not a 12 step program. We focus on a harm reduction approach. Whatever your level of use is, whether you’re using a fifth of a bottle a day and you want to cut it down to just a beer at dinner, if that’s what your goal is, that’s what we’re working to achieve. During that time that we’re achieving that we’re fixing and working on things like your marital issues. We’re working on things like your relationship with your children, working on communication skills, and things like that. That really does help other loved ones or other PWAs or persons with addictions really get themselves to a better and clearer place.
Brandon Roman 00:13:48 That’s always our goal. As far as loved ones go, I’m also a loved one coach. I’m a PWA and a loved one’s coach. As addiction has run rampant through my family, to include myself, with loved ones, we really just want you to focus on you getting better.. A big thing that I always tell our loved ones is when the ship is going down or when the plane is going down. They tell you to put your mask on first. They tell you that for a reason because if you’re out here trying to put everyone else’s mask on and you pass out, no one gets their mask put on. That’s ultimately what we focus on with the loved one is, Hey, what are you doing to take care of yourself?
Brandon Roman 00:14:33 Are you doing the things that you still love and you still enjoy, and not putting their addiction before your own needs. With the combination of using the loved ones approach with the combination of focusing on the PWA approach and just focusing on taking better care of yourself and others around you. It’s a great one, two punch that really hits home and really sticks with our loved ones and our PWAs because they understand that through their addiction they still have a life. Their loved ones understand that, Hey, through this addiction, I still have a life. I still have things. I still have things that I need to care about. And people who love me and people who still need my attention. That’s what I really loved to focus on.
Brandon Roman 00:15:21 I say it every day, in every meeting that we have a meeting just about every other Tuesday. We have one and I say it every time. I really love my job. I thoroughly enjoy it, because of the people that I work with. Everyone’s mission here is to get people well, there’s no ulterior motive. There’s no, ”we hate you”. Or, we hate addiction. No, we understand what addiction has done to our community. We understand that it is a majority of people who struggled with their S at some point in time, whether it be themselves or it’d be their loved ones. We understand that and that’s how we approach it. We approach it with love and caring and kindness. I think it really sticks inwards with our levels.
Scott DeLuzio 00:16:05 I like the holistic approach that you take to this, where you’re looking at the causes of what is causing someone to cope. The way they’re coping by using these substances, whether it’s alcohol or whatever. Is it finances or is it their job or their family life or whatever it is, let’s focus on that. Let’s try to get to the root of the cause because you can wean someone off of using something. But if the root of the cause why they turn to that substance in the first place isn’t being addressed either they’re gonna fall back to whatever it was that they were using, or find something else to numb that pain or get them through whatever it is that they’re going through.
Scott DeLuzio 00:16:58 I like that holistic approach. It’s not just focused on the substance that they’re using. It’s focused on that big picture. Also, working with loved ones. You’re absolutely right with that. The analogy that you used with the plane, with the mask coming down. If you can’t take care of yourself, how can you possibly expect that you’re going to take care of somebody else? That’s a perfect analogy. I’ve used that several times myself, with various things. But you do really have to look out for yourself, in order to be able to help out somebody else. Even the same in the military, being an infantry guy,if you got someone who is out in the open and they were there, they got shot or something like that you can’t go run in and just go grab them.
Scott DeLuzio 00:17:56 Drag them to safety as much as you want to you gotta take care of whatever that threat was. The enemy that was shooting at them, you got to take care of that first before you can go help that other person because otherwise, you’re just going to be laying there too. Then somebody else is going to have to put their neck out there to try to save you too.it really is important to first off take that holistic approach with the individuals. Working with the loved ones I think is important as well, so that they can be of use to help their loved one get through whatever they’re going through. What can someone expect from Face It Together from that, maybe that initial outreach that the first time they reach out and make a phone call, to Face It Together. Could you walk us through that? What is it that you do with them? How is it that you help?
Brandon Roman 00:19:01 Yeah, of course. That first initial phone call, you’re going to be greeted by one of our many coaches/our first impressions team. That first impression team is going to be the first people that you meet. As their name says, they’re going to give you their first impression of Face It Together. They’re just immediately going to bring you positivity, right? That’s our main focus is always positivity. They’re going to greet you with some positivity. They’re going to give you as much information and answer whatever questions you might have, as far as financial issues. We are grant-funded. Depending on many locations, we service all areas of all 50 states in the United States. We even have a couple of members up in Canada.
Brandon Roman 00:19:48 We service pretty much everywhere. We’re grant-funded and we’ll be able to get you squared away. However, we can still help if finances are an issue. The mass majority of our members are taken care of through grants. That’s one of the first things that most people’s questions are when they call in. Do I have to pay for this? That’s the first question. They want to know what brings you here. They asked you the same question that you asked me, Hey what’s your story?
Brandon Roman 00:20:30 What brings you here? What are you willing to share? It ranges from, Hey, I just want help to, I had this DUI case, I have questions to ask about how to get through, dealing with this DUI, right? We don’t judge nonjudgmental places. Then from there, we will send you out a few emails. In one of those emails, it’s a few assessments. In those assessments, it’s going to build this profile for you. What we talked about earlier that RCI, we’ll build that together. You’ll go through an answer about a 60 question questionnaire, and it asks you about your addiction, what you’re struggling with for loved ones. It asks you about your role in the addiction, and what it looks like for you.
Brandon Roman 00:21:24 RCI is different from what our PWAs are, but more or less they have about the same amount of questions. Then from there in those questions, you’ll answer all those deep questions. It gives us a cognitive score. I like to tell people that this number is quantifiable and this is the number that we’ll use moving forward to help show you exactly where you were in life and where you are now. How many times have you thought to yourself about things going really great better than last month, but like, can’t really tell you how or where or what it is that I’m better at.
Brandon Roman 00:22:12 I feel a little bit better. Well, we put a number to it. We put data to it. We show you, Hey, you answered this question like this last month. This is what your score was, you got a 75 last month, Hey, this month you’re, you’re rocking in 80 ADA. This is how much better you’ve gone from this time to this time. You complete that score. Then after that, you’ll do the wellness consultation. You’ll then next week or another couple of days, depending on what your scheduling looks like.
Brandon Roman 00:22:57 You’ll sit down with that same person that you talked with in your first impressions group. and you’ll do what we call a wellness consultation. They’ll go over that score that I just talked about. Then they pair you up with a coach that matches your story. We have coaches that range in that range from experiencing meth to marijuana, to alcohol, to opiates, court, and legal system. Just the entire thing. members are coaches who have been in prison, and actually have gone through the system. We have a wide range of coaches who are going to be able to match you up with your experience because everyone experiences something different, but they match you up with a similar story.
Brandon Roman 00:23:49 From there, you’ll get scheduled again, but this time you’ll get scheduled with that individual coach. That coach will reach out to you within that week of your next scheduled appointment, just on a kind of touch basis. and then from there, you guys start your coaching, you’ll sit down and you talk about your story, talk about what your goals are per everyone’s coaching styles, the difference, I like to, I like to set goals and things ahead. Personally, I can only talk about how I started my first sessions. I’ll ask you, what are three goals that you have? What are the goals that you have with your life right now? Then they’ll tell me that, and then I ask, what is one goal outside of your addiction that you want to achieve?
Brandon Roman 00:24:36 That’s because I want you to focus on something else. I want you to be goal-oriented towards something positive. That could be anywhere from, Hey, I want to open up my own business to, I want to finally get my license and learn to drive and all of those things. Whatever that goal is, that’s what we will focus on. We’ll do that through straight positivity and communication skills and all of those things that come with it. But that’s kinda how it looks. Usually depending on the crisis of a member, sometimes you’re in a crisis mode and some things are really hitting the fan and you just really need to get in. Usually, that happens within that week. If you come in on Monday, by Friday, depending on availability for yourself, then we can get you in and, anywhere in between there, depending on how severe your crisis mode is or your crisis situation is. That’s how it looks for us.
Scott DeLuzio 00:25:41 This doesn’t sound like it’s exactly like a medical treatment necessarily. It’s more like a support network of sorts. Is that kind of along the lines, of what it is?
Brandon Roman 00:25:53 Yeah, of course. I call them coaches because none of us are, we’re not psychologists. We’re not certified in that way. But we all speak from personal experience. All of our coaches have only experiences that we speak through. I’m always a big supporter of mental health, and clinicians and things like that. If that’s what you want your services to be, we’re going to guide you to that. We’re going to your coaching sessions or when you’re even in the first impressions team, or in your wellness console, I want to find a good therapist in my area, right? We’ll do our due diligence.
Brandon Roman 00:26:35 We will look up areas that take your insurance or whatever the case may be, and we will get you directed to the right place. And that goes for inpatient treatment facilities as well. Some people come here and their goal is to go from here to getting into inpatient treatment. What does that look like if you want it? If that’s what your goal is, that’s where you want to go. We’re set to give you the resources that we have available to get you to that right place, where we’re great at helping people. And I love what I do, but I understand that there is never too much help. you can always go. If you want to try an AA meeting if you want to go to an hour and a meeting or whatever the case may be, Hey, we got you.
Brandon Roman 00:27:23 We actually have a community liaison here who isn’t a coach but has her own story of addiction that she struggled with she goes to active meetings all the time. I have a member who wants to go to a meeting here in Colorado.I have a member who wants to go to a meeting for you. Hey, here you go. Here’s all of the meetings in your area. We’re not just limited to what we do here. We don’t need to be partnered with someone to send you somewhere. Our only goal is to get you to where you want to be. And whatever that looks like is what we want to achieve for you.
Scott DeLuzio 00:28:06 And I think that’s good too because it keeps the doors open for these various other resources that may seem like it’s the right way to go for certain individuals. I like that kind of collaborative effort. Like you said, there can’t be too much help out there. The more options that are available that are left on the table to jump into, I think the better. That sounds like exactly what you guys are doing. I think with some of the people that listen to this podcast, it’s really just a matter of education. If they don’t know that a certain option even exists, then, they may just not research and look to see if that thing exists, because it’s like, why would you, if it’s something that in your mind doesn’t exist, why are you going to look to see if it exists?
Scott DeLuzio 00:29:09 Now if we plant that seed and talk about organizations like Face It Together, or other organizations that are out there and you guys have some resources that you may be aware of that are in a certain local area. Then you can plant those seeds too and say, look, maybe this is what you’re looking for. I think the more research sources that we have available, but just overall the better. I know you talked a little bit about your story and how you’ve gone through your addiction and recovery process, but do you have any other success stories that you’d be able to share? Obviously not sharing names and breaking confidentiality and all that kind of stuff, but do you have, any success stories that you could share about people who’ve gone through this process and came out on the other side in a better place by meeting their goals?
Brandon Roman 00:30:15 Yes, of course. I have a couple of success stories. Some of them are so personal. I probably can’t share too much without giving away who the person is. A perfect example is one of my very first members here that I started with. She was a loved one. Her son struggled with injecting heroin. She had dealt with overdoses. She had dealt with car stealing things and wallets gone, like just the stereotypical addiction story that you hear from many, many loved ones. And she was fed up. She was tired. She was compassionate but fatigued. She was pretty much just ready to wipe her hands with the whole situation. We talked twice a week. Once at what we call our craft meetings which I also run.
Brandon Roman 00:31:18 Then another time we’ll do our own individual meetings. And in those meetings, we discussed every time every meeting we discussed. How can we better communicate with them? How can we better understand what he’s going through? How can you love him regardless of his disease and understand that the disease is the thing that we were fighting against together? Just recently, she had kind of gotten really busy. Things kind of went its ways, and she kind of stepped away from coaching for a month or two, which happens sometimes when life gets ahead of us. She continued what we talked about all the time. She reached out to me, and said, Hey, I have one more session that I want to have. I just want to talk to Roman and just catch him up on all things.
Brandon Roman 00:32:10 We sat down and we’re talking and here comes her son. Her son had never wanted anything to do with any coaching. Anything to do with seeing me on camera, anything to do with talking to me, anything of the sorts. And he comes in. She stops and she says, Hey, come in, Hey, come here, come talk to Roman, and in comes in this guy. He’s well in his early thirties. Smile on his face, gleaming, happy as ever. And he comes in and he speaks to me. He says, Hey, how’s it going? And we hold a conversation. I offer Face It Together to him. I say, Hey, whenever you’re available.
Brandon Roman 00:33:07 Whenever you’re ready, we’re here. I’d love to sit down and talk to you and catch up. He walks away. She proceeds to tell me that he actually went to treatment the month before, and he was on his 30th day of being well. She said he hadn’t had many times before he had tried this treatment process, and we have talked about it many times before and he had not succeeded in the way that he was succeeding today. She wanted to point that out and say, I really wanted to thank you personally for what you were able to talk to me about, and walk me through this process. But, it’s never me that gets you through it.
Brandon Roman 00:33:50 It’s always you. I just always tell people I’m just an angel on your shoulder. I just talked to you about how you should be talked to. You go and take those words and you make them into action. Words are nothing until they’re placed into action. And that’s what loved ones do. That’s one of my loved ones’ stories. I have several good loved ones stories. As far as a PWA story, I had a service member like ourselves. He came down and he had a very tragic accident that happened to him. It was severely tragic. It was one of those things, but when you hear those kinds of stories, you think to yourself, man I understand why you, why you chose to drink and I get it.
Brandon Roman 00:34:39 It was a very tragic accident. and because he drank heavily. We sat down and we set goals for ourselves and we said, Hey, what’s our goal for us, right. What do we want to accomplish? He started to focus on himself. He continued to drink for them for a good portion of our coaching, which was okay. During that time he started going to the gym. He lost some significant weight. So much weight that he had to get a new prosthetic because he lost so much weight that it no longer fit. Awesome story. Right towards the end. I’m still actively talking to this member, but he’s well, he’s going on like four or five months of sobriety right now, where he’s completely away from alcohol and he left alcohol alone because he wanted to. We never set that goal.
Brandon Roman 00:35:38 Our goal was to just get him to a better mental and happier place. We talked about getting him into the VA. We got them into the VA. Got him seeing a psychologist. Got talking to the right people. Got himself ready to go. He’s ready to get back into work. He was working for a pretty good organization that we’re also partnered up with and he did all of those things and he did it on his own. That’s one of my PWA stories. There’s many stories that I have, or that I like. There’s several stories that I have where I even have a person who struggled with addiction who came in. She lost custody of her kids., and we were able to get her to a solid foundation where she wasn’t using anymore.
Brandon Roman 00:36:27 She was able to get some form of custody with her children and get her life together. She was couch hopping at the time and she was able to get herself into a stable living environment. She ended up getting a job at Amazon. She was really set in that happened over the years of time. I also have a wonderful story and I mentioned the Fortune 500 company, because I worked with a member who’s pretty high up in one of the Fortune 500 companies out. He struggled with alcohol, and he struggled silently. No one else around him knew, and no one else understood it. Probably million dollars in his bank account as we speak.
Brandon Roman 00:37:18 He was talking to me and we set goals. It was never to leave alcohol alone. It was to figure out why we chose the addiction that we chose and what we could do to not focus on that addiction anymore. So we set some goals for ourselves. We bought a bunch of NAA beers. We tried a whole bunch of different beers, and we tried a whole bunch of different, non-alcoholic options just in general. I always say, my favorite non-alcoholic drink is a gin and tonic with just seltzer water. The lime tastes horrendous, but it gives you that same state. He embodied that. Within about four or five months of us talking, he reached out to me again and said, I’m doing really well.
Brandon Roman 00:38:06 I got it from here. and that also happened. Whether it be someone struggling with homelessness and trying to get themselves off of the floor to a veteran who’s struggling with their own demons and things that accidents and things that happened to them, It might be a well-off wealthier person, who’s struggling on and really trying to find his own balance. I have a story for pretty much all of them and all of them found their own walls.
Scott DeLuzio 00:38:39 I liked that there are so many of these stories, and I’m sure there’s more stories that you haven’t even shared. I’m sure we could sit through and, and go over all, all these stories. It shows that there’s hope that there’s something out there. I liked that first story with the loved one. The mother who reached out and she was kind of at her wit’s end. She didn’t know what to do. Through working with her, it seems like maybe this guy just didn’t have the support he needed at home with his family to be successful in the treatment that he was pursuing. By helping out, this mother figures out how to be there for her son. That might’ve been the difference between another failed treatment and being successful and getting through the whole process, and continuing to stay sober afterwards.
Scott DeLuzio 00:39:49 I think that there are many problems that people are dealing with and, sometimes we just get so laser-focused on the addiction side of it we don’t look at the big picture. It seems like you guys are looking at their overall picture in their life. What’s going on with their loved ones, what’s going on with their job, what’s going on with their finances, what’s going on just in general in their life. Through pulling that, those threads to kind of get to the core of what’s going on it seems like you’re able to pinpoint some of the issues and, and get these people that the help that they need, and lead them in that right direction so that they can kick this addiction if, if that’s what their goal is, or, just get to a better place mentally. You mentioned that you work with people all over the country, even in Canada. Do you have physical locations throughout the country, or are a lot of these like remote-type things through like a zoom or something like that?
Brandon Roman 00:41:01 We have two physical locations. One in South Dakota, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. That is our founding location. That one sees probably the most amount of foot traffic here in Colorado Springs. We just opened up a physical location here in Colorado Springs, Colorado. That opened up in April of last year. We’re still getting some newer foot traffic here, but we have these physical locations for people who want to do some in-person meetings. In fact, they’re encouraged because there’s nothing like face-to-face interaction. Since we’ve had two years of lack of physical interaction. If you’re not comfortable with seeing someone in person, and you want to just do a phone call, we do phone calls. If you want to just do a video call, we do video calls. However you want, to get that level of wellness, we have those three different ways of communication to really help each other out.
Scott DeLuzio 00:42:20 Yeah, that’s great. Having all those options available, even if someone’s right down the street, but just doesn’t want the face-to-face, you still have the option to jump on the phone or a video call or something like that. I think that there’s a lot of options and that the services are available across the country. It doesn’t matter where you’re located as long as you have basically a phone or a computer or something that you can get access to, you basically could have out of this kind of consultation. Brandon, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you today., I’m glad that you came on and shared this resource with me and my audience. Before we go, can you let people know where they can go to find out more about Face It Together and to be able to reach out and make that initial consultation?
Brandon Roman 00:43:19 If you guys are interested in just learning a little bit more about Face It Together and what we do here or you want to look into it for your loved one or yourself, you can go to WeFaceItTogether.org. If you’re interested in getting started, there’s a little green button, up at the top. You press that green button and it’ll direct you to all of the prompted information that we’ll need to contact you, and then we’ll reach out to you within 24 hours. Then if you’re just wanting to learn a little bit more about Face It Together we have coaches profiles on there, so you can read each individual coach’s story, and find out what coach even matches you before you go and talk to your wellness.
Brandon Roman 00:44:16 Before you go talk to the first impressions team and get your wellness console you can read all those profiles and all those things and it has all the background you need to know about Face It Together. We also offer craft meetings on Wednesdays, for loved ones, and that is directed and guided towards strictly getting our loved ones their loved one into their PWA into treatment. If you’re interested in that, you go through our resources tab and it should be in there as well. if you’re interested in joining and Face It together, and wanting to learn a little bit more, wfaceittogether.org/work
Scott DeLuzio 00:44:56 Perfect. And I’ll have links to all of this in the show notes. Everyone who’s listening now that you can go check out the show notes and find out more about Face It Together through their website. Again, Brandon, thanks for coming on the show. I really appreciate being able to chat with you and finding out more about what you guys are doing for addiction recovery.
Brandon Roman 00:45:20 Well, thank you, Scott. Thank you for having me and, to all those who are listening, thank you guys for spending the time listening to us. I appreciate your time.
Scott DeLuzio 00:45:29 Thanks for listening to the Drive On Podcast. If you want to check out more episodes or learn more about the show, you can visit our website DriveOnPodcast.com. We’re also on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube at Drive On Podcast.