Mary Beth O'Connor-From Junkie to Judge

Show Transcript

From Junkie to Judge

[00:00:00] Bob Gatty: According to the National Institutes of Health, 20 million Americans suffer from substance abuse at some point in their lives. Mary Beth O'Connor, our guest today, was one of those, but since 1994 has been sober from methamphetamine use disorder. She wrote about her journey in an award winning memoir from Junkie the Judge, One Woman's Triumph Over Trauma and Addiction.

[00:00:28] Marybeth will share her story with us in just a moment, so stay with us. 

[00:00:35] Within a week of being born, Mary Beth was dropped off at a convent. Eventually, she moved in with her mom, but she was more focused on her own needs, her mom was, and desires, than her young child. At age nine, her stepfather kicked her in the stomach for spilling milk, beat her when she displeased him, and molested her at age 12.

[00:01:02] A few months later, Marybeth took a sip of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill Wine, and that made her feel euphoric and relaxed, so she drank as much as possible, added pot, then pills, then acid. At 16, she found methamphetamine and experienced joy, but when this high was no longer sufficient, she turned to the needle and shot up.

[00:01:32] That began 16 years of severe addiction, resulting in destroyed relationships, problems at work, and damage to her physical and mental health. But today, Mary Beth O'Connor is a retired federal administrative law judge. She's director, secretary, and founding investor for the She Recovers Foundation, a director for the Life Ring Secular Recovery.

[00:02:01] And a member of the advisory council for the higher calling foundation. Her opinion pieces have appeared in the wall street journal, the Los Angeles times, the Philadelphia inquire recovery today and other publications. Six years into her recovery, Mary Beth attended Berkeley Law. She worked at a large firm, then litigated class actions for the federal government, leading to her appointment as a federal administrative law judge in 2014.

[00:02:34] That's a position from which she retired. in 2020. Mary Beth, thanks so much for joining us on the Lean to the Left podcast. 

[00:02:44] Mary Beth O'Connor: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate 

[00:02:45] Bob Gatty: it. How about telling us more about your background, Mary Beth, and what prompted you to turn to meth? 

[00:02:53] Mary Beth O'Connor: I think there's an underappreciated connection between trauma and substance use disorder that the data actually shows that someone who has a traumatic history has about three to four times the odds of developing a substance use disorder.

[00:03:07] And that's also true for mental health. And for me, I actually had PTSD, and I didn't even know that until I got into recovery, both from the child, the abuse at home, physical, sexual, verbal. But I also had some sexual assaults later in my life. And so when I found that alcohol, which was my first drug what I noticed was that the stress seemed to leave me because my home environment was a situation where you just never knew what was going to happen.

[00:03:35] I was really walking around on eggshells. I realized quickly. I couldn't control what he was going to do or even my mother could be violent at times. And so the substances that, warm glow of the alcohol really caught my attention because for the first time in my memory, I actually felt like I could take a deep breath.

[00:03:56] Bob Gatty: So why did you move on from Boone's Farm wine to 

[00:04:01] Mary Beth O'Connor: Alcohol is a drug. Sometimes we seem to forget it is the most, abused drug in America. It actually still kills over a hundred thousand people a year. But I did move on to other drugs because they, the alcohol.

[00:04:14] It was fine, but pot we would call it today or cannabis had a different impact and that was readily available. This is the 70s. There were pills around. I did some uppers, but a lot of more downer type pills. Acid was really around. I did a lot of LSD. my sophomore year of high school.

[00:04:31] And then meth was relatively new in my central Jersey area at the volume that it was in. It had been around before, but there was a wave of meth in the mid seventies and I was part of that wave. And so it was really readily available and it was just a more intense high, a more extreme high.

[00:04:51] But also with meth, what I liked was that when you stay up for a couple days, without sleeping, when you do go to sleep, there's this deep, dark crash. And I had always had trouble sleeping because of my anxiety. And for me, it's suddenly I wasn't tossing and turning. I wasn't having nightmares. So I almost, I like that crash sleep as well as the extreme high.

[00:05:16] Bob Gatty: So what did all of this do? You were doing this while you were in high school, right? Yes. Yes. What does this do to your high school grades and your high school experience? 

[00:05:26] Mary Beth O'Connor: I'd always done well in school. School was my one positive experience in my childhood. I got a lot of positive attention.

[00:05:32] I always did well. I always excelled. And I was really seen, in a way that I wasn't seen at home. My sort of natural attributes were valued. But by the time I was in high school and doing a lot of drugs, I did, I was able to manage it up until the my senior year when I was really shooting meth at that point and doing it on a very regular basis.

[00:05:54] But as I was mostly missing school and so my grades dropped, I'd miss, doing the homework or the lab test or whatever. But remember, with college, you get accepted based on your grades up to your junior year, right? And so by the time my grades started dropping, I already had been accepted to college.

[00:06:12] Plus, I had a good reputation at school, and the teachers always let me make up the work. And so I was able to make up a lot of it, and it didn't have a massive impact on me. But I was missing a lot of school toward the end. Okay, 

[00:06:24] Bob Gatty: so how about in college 

[00:06:26] Mary Beth O'Connor: in college? I did. I did better. So I moved from central Jersey to California.

[00:06:30] I ended up graduating from Berkeley and I did better and I always emphasize better and good are two different things. Okay, but I did better for the first 3. 5 years. I did mostly alcohol, although in excess, sometimes coke, sometimes pills, mostly on the weekend, sometimes into the week, but always chaotically.

[00:06:49] Always. doing way too much crazy stories. But I had that a really life threatening kidnapping and rape by three men that lasted six hours when I was in college. And then I moved in with a violent boyfriend and it was like, I just lost my grip again. And in January of my senior year of college, I started doing meth on a daily basis again, and I didn't get sober until I was 32.

[00:07:12] So it was a really long haul. 

[00:07:15] Bob Gatty: Holy mackerel. What happened that prompted you to seek help then? 

[00:07:21] Mary Beth O'Connor: It was really a combination of factors. I couldn't hold a job. I say I worked my way down the corporate ladder, I couldn't get to work, and and but also I was starting to have physical problems by 32.

[00:07:31] Meth is toxic and it was showing. Also, I was really just, exhausted and in despair and my partner was ready to throw me out. And so it was all of those things in combination that made me really say, what if I go to rehab? Yeah. And so that was really the impetus was the combination of events.

[00:07:49] Bob Gatty: It looks like it's worked for you because you're looking pretty good today. 

[00:07:52] Mary Beth O'Connor: Thank you. Thank you. I will have 30 years in January, so it's been quite a while. But but it's also was a process, right? I went to rehab. My rehab was actually not the best fit for me because it was a 12 step focused, which is, 12 steps are.

[00:08:06] Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and all of the Anonymouses. But I did end up building a sort of an individual plan pulling from different sources that worked for me. And I also had to address my mental health, my PTSD, and my trauma to be able to get to be really happy in my life, to get to be in the best place that I could.

[00:08:26] Well, 

[00:08:26] Bob Gatty: why didn't the 12 step programs work for 

[00:08:29] Mary Beth O'Connor: you? So it wasn't a good fit for multiple reasons. And let me just say, I respect 12 steps. When it's a good fit for people, it can work really well, but it's definitely not the right option for many. And for me, one of them was the higher power. I don't believe I'm an atheist.

[00:08:45] I don't believe in God or higher power. But it was also beyond that in 12 steps. It's you turn your will on your life over, right? That's part of the ideology. You have to agree. You're powerless. There's a real focus on defects, and it's a very structured program. It's you know, everyone does it this way.

[00:09:02] Now, don't get me wrong. For some people, those exact same attributes are helpful, but they weren't a good fit for me. And the problem was that when I said these things, I was told that this was the only way and that if I didn't do it, I was going to fail, which wasn't true. But that's what they said. And so it was a real problem when I went into rehab.

[00:09:23] Bob Gatty: Yeah. All right. I can see that. What, what was the program that you, that finally worked for you and where did it come 

[00:09:30] Mary Beth O'Connor: from? I emphasize that, it's 94 and there's no Google. Okay. So when I got home from rehab and I was in for five months it was a while, but I thought, is it really true?

[00:09:40] That there aren't any other options. Is that true? And so I got my car and I went to the library and I found other options, even in 1994 and there's more today. So I found women for sobriety, which still exists today. They're the first modern secular option. I found rational recovery, which exists a little, but today is mostly smart recovery.

[00:10:01] And I found secular organization for sobriety, which exists. a little bit. Today is mostly life ring. It's secular recovery. And so I actually never adopted any one program. I've read all the books. I've read all the 12 step books. I read the AA big book and the NA techs. I went to meetings for all of them and I just pulled the parts I thought would help me.

[00:10:20] And today we would call that building a patchwork or a hybrid plan. But in 94. That terminology didn't exist, but that's what I did. I always was listening and keeping my ears open and proactively looking for techniques and strategies and things that I thought might be useful. So I wasn't just rejecting, I was really actively looking for good ideas that I thought I could use.

[00:10:45] Bob Gatty: Okay what peer support options are available today to help those seeking recovery? And why is it important for the recovering addict to find some peer support help? 

[00:10:59] Mary Beth O'Connor: Yeah, so I'll start with the second half. So look... There's not with peer support. It's not like there's this hard line that all the faith based people go to 12 steps and all the non faith based go to the other options.

[00:11:10] The reality is that there are a lot of agnostics and atheists that make 12 steps work, but there are a lot of religious and spiritual people that look for other choices for different reasons than higher power. So it's not like there's this hard line, but there are numerous choices today. Women for sobriety still exist.

[00:11:29] I'm on the board for life and secular recovery, and she recovers. Smart recovery is offers a different option. Dharma recovery. Dharma is Buddhist based and there are numerous other options. If you Google them, some of them just in your local community and some of them are national, and so there's good choice.

[00:11:46] And the other thing is there's the internet now, right? And people can look all these programs up. And one of the things I emphasize is. I wouldn't read, not just read the philosophy. What are the principles? What's their approach? Say life, right? We focus on self empowerment rather than turning over our will in our life.

[00:12:02] That's a key component. So look at the principles and the philosophy, but also the meeting formats vary. And so I would look at the meeting format and see which one seems like it's a good fit and then try them out. And know that you can actually attend more than one and she recovers. For example, a large percentage of our members also do 12 steps and that and we're okay with that.

[00:12:24] So people can mix and match and they can attend multiple programs. 

[00:12:29] Bob Gatty: Okay. How can your book from Junkie to Judge help these individuals in their battle? Yeah. 

[00:12:38] Mary Beth O'Connor: So one of the things I talk about in my book is that interplay between the mental health and trauma and substance use disorder because that so for me, I felt like, okay, so when I looked at memoirs, recovery memoirs, one of the things that I saw was that a lot of them leap into the chaos of the addiction, but they don't show where it came from.

[00:12:57] And so I really wanted to show why picking up drugs at that young age and really pursuing them, earnestly pursuing them, why that made sense to me at the time. And so I do show events in my childhood. I talk about, how they impacted me and what they meant to help the reader understand that progression into drugs and to keep pushing through all the drugs.

[00:13:20] I do have, stories about what my drug use was like and how it impacted me. But then 30 percent of the book is recovery. And it's my first three years, because I felt like a lot of recovery memoirs are like I went to a couple meetings and it was great. And it's that's not how recovery works.

[00:13:36] Recovery is a process and it takes time. And for many of us, we have to address trauma and mental health as well as our substance use disorder. And I talk about all of those things in my book. 

[00:13:48] Bob Gatty: Do you want to share some of the stories, some of the incidents, maybe one or two that you refer to in the book about your own substance abuse?

[00:13:58] Sure. 

[00:13:59] Mary Beth O'Connor: Yeah, for example, when I was using meth, I, even in high school, I had abscesses and bruising, all over me. I was in really bad physical shape. And, but the other thing is there's a lot of risk taking around it, right? So I grew up in a household where I didn't know how to value my own safety.

[00:14:19] I didn't know how to value my own sort of bodily integrity. And so like many young women, I would go with men I barely knew. There were numerous risky situations that I put myself in, and that was all tied to that sort of the way that I was not valued as a child, the way I didn't know how to value myself.

[00:14:38] And that's a common pattern for women in in substance use in the choices that they make. But also when I was using those last 10 years, it was really. It was really feeling trapped. I really believed at the time that I had three choices. I could either use drugs, or I could commit suicide, or I would end up in a mental institution for a psychotic break.

[00:15:02] I believe my pain was so deep and so vast that those were my choices, and so you I felt no way out, like this is the best of bad options. And so it's like on one hand, I knew that my drug use was having a negative impact on my life. And on the other hand, I didn't really see a way forward.

[00:15:21] And that's how that's a common experience as well, that it turns out that there was a way out, but it didn't seem like it at the time. And so there's that feeling of being trapped. 

[00:15:31] How did you find that way out? 

[00:15:34] One of the things I emphasize is that it's often a process. I think there's this false belief that when we walk, that when we walk into the rooms of recovery, peer support meetings or, or rehab, that somehow we're 100 percent committed to our, to abstinence or to, to staying sober.

[00:15:51] That's usually not true. When I went into rehab, it's not that I wanted to keep using. But I couldn't imagine stopping; like I had been using for 20 years. It was beyond my imagination. What I wanted to do was to figure out how to use less. So my life was less chaotic because that's the best I could think of.

[00:16:09] Maybe if I learned to use less, that was as far as I could think. But over time when you see when you learn things, hopefully in treatment, you're taught things about what substance use disorder is and how it affects the brain. And you start, usually there's some trauma work or mental health work today.

[00:16:28] You should do them at the same time, but also when you see other people that succeeded, that can start to give you hope, look at her. She, I know her story. She was as bad as I am. And now it's a year later or two years later, and she looks healthy and she has a job and she's paying off her debt and she's getting visitation with her kids.

[00:16:49] And so it starts to, you can start to absorb the possibility that maybe that is there for you, too, if you do the work, and so it's usually a process to get to that belief. 

[00:17:01] Bob Gatty: Okay. Did did you work your way through this? Did you work your way through the traumatic situation with men? Did you find peace?

[00:17:10] Did you end up finding someone yourself? 

[00:17:13] Mary Beth O'Connor: Yeah. When I went, when I got home from rehab, I had my substance use issues to deal with and but I knew that I had to deal with my trauma history that for me to be well. For me to be well and to have less risk of succumbing back to drugs, I had to deal with my trauma.

[00:17:29] And so I did therapy for a long time. I started out with individual therapy with a therapist who had expertise in trauma. And that was the first time I was diagnosed with PTSD. I didn't even know you could have PTSD if you weren't a war vet, like it wasn't on my radar but she was right. And for me, it should have had severe anxiety.

[00:17:48] Severe anxiety. I could obsess and. been, and I was always waiting for the worst case scenario. And so I had to do all of that work as well. It's hard to stay sober if your mental health is out of control, and it's hard to get your mental health under control if you're using drugs, right? And so those two usually have to be attacked simultaneously to give you the best chance of success.

[00:18:11] And so I spent years in therapy, individual, and then I was in a group of women with trauma histories, and that was really helpful for me. It took me longer to get my PTSD and anxiety under control than to get my substance use under control. It was a longer process because it was more complicated and it was older.

[00:18:28] It came first. 

[00:18:29] Bob Gatty: Okay. All right. Did you end up are you married? Do you have kids? 

[00:18:35] Mary Beth O'Connor: What? So my partner that almost threw me out when I was, when I was 32 years old, I had been with him for a number of years, but he was really done. When they would do family therapy for us once a week in rehab, which is common, and he would tell the therapist things like, I don't think I can get past this.

[00:18:51] I think she's, burnt this bridge to the ground. But but he did let me come home and we started couples counseling as well when I got home and and it took a while, but we actually did hard work and we made it through. And in fact, in April we will have our 40th anniversary of being together.

[00:19:09] And so that's been a real unexpected joy in my life. I never. The way I grew up, I didn't even know like a happy, supportive, loving partner. I didn't even know that was an option that existed on earth, so I, it was a real surprise. And don't get me wrong. He changed too, right? When I was sober, he was able to relax more.

[00:19:30] He was able to be more amiable and more supportive. We both changed through that process in order to stay together, but we are still together all these years later. That's 

[00:19:40] Bob Gatty: awesome. He must be a really great guy to to be with you all that time and help you through all of that, all of those difficulties.

[00:19:49] Yes. Tell me now about She Recovers, the She Recovers Foundation. Why was it started and what does it do? 

[00:19:58] Mary Beth O'Connor: So she recovers. The founders felt that there was a missing link in the recovery space. And so because of the common connection, especially for women of trauma history, which can often lead to mental health challenges, whether it's depression or anxiety or whatever it is they, she recovers is for recovery from all of it.

[00:20:18] So it's not just substance use recovery. So when she recovers, it's also recovery from trauma, from mental health, from behavioral disorders, like eating disorders or gambling, things like that, as well as grief, overwork, perfectionism. It's all in one place because the reality is they often go together, they often go together on the negative side about why we develop these these problematic behaviors, but they also go together on the recovery side. There's an interplay between your substance recovery or your trauma recovery or your perfectionism recovery. There's an interplay with that. And and she recovers, you can talk about all of it. You're not siphon like in AA I'm only allowed to talk about my alcohol. In she recovers you talk about the whole picture and a lot of the women find that really helpful that they can talk about the interplay on the negative side as well as on their on their healing side. 

[00:21:14] Bob Gatty: Okay, so she recovers is a program similar to AA that has meetings and counseling and that kind of 

[00:21:23] Mary Beth O'Connor: thing, right?

[00:21:24] AA doesn't have counseling. So AA is peer support. It's just, people with a substance problem helping each other. And she recovers does have pure support. We have several two meetings a day. We have local chapters where we can have face to face events, but we also have things like there's also a focus on the mind body connections.

[00:21:42] So there are dance meetings and meditation meetings. We have retreats and conferences, any events like that. Mental health Mondays where different topics get discussed. So it's a wide variety of options as far as things that people, women can participate in, but one of them is peer support.

[00:22:00] Bob Gatty: Okay. Now, is this all in person or online like we're doing or what? 

[00:22:07] Mary Beth O'Connor: So it's online. It started online, but in in there are also local chapters around the country, not in every location, but in many locations, I'm in the San Francisco Bay area. We have a local chapter here, so we usually have monthly meetings.

[00:22:21] And so it depends on where you live. But if you don't have a in person option, there's always the online option as well. There's also a private Facebook group where the women can Post, I'm having a hard day, can somebody offer me help? And so there's a lot of support on a daily basis through the private Facebook group as well.

[00:22:38] Okay, 

[00:22:38] Bob Gatty: so how do people get involved with SheRecovers? 

[00:22:42] Mary Beth O'Connor: So the website is sherecovers. org and that's where you can find the meeting list and how to join and how to participate. There's also a list of coaches that they train to help people through their recovery. People often today hire peer support specialists or coaches to help them build a plan and offer support and SheRecovers has a list of coaches as well.

[00:23:02] Bob Gatty: Is there a charge for participating in SheRecovers? 

[00:23:06] Mary Beth O'Connor: Not for She Recovers. It's by, it's by donation for the peer support side. The retreats, of course, and the coaching, those things would have charges, but just to get the support of the women to participate in the meetings, those things are all free.

[00:23:22] Bob Gatty: Okay, so how about the life ring secular recovery that you're involved 

[00:23:27] Mary Beth O'Connor: with. So life rings has been around since 95 and SOS our parent was around before that. So we've been around for quite a while and we call our philosophy the 3S philosophy and S the S is our sobriety. secularity and self empowerment.

[00:23:43] And so on the sobriety side we really we are abstinence based, but for life freeing, if people are taking medication that's medically indicated, and we always emphasize taken as prescribed. Okay, that counts as sober for us. And so if someone is on medication assisted treatment for alcohol use disorder, for example, people can take meds to help them.

[00:24:06] That counts as sober for us. If it's taken as prescribed mental health meds, that counts as sober for us. And then secularity just means there is no religion in meetings. But a lot of our members do have personal, religious or spiritual beliefs, and we don't have any opinion about that at all. And then it's really focused on self empowerment.

[00:24:24] It's really the idea that each person's recovery plan will be unique to them. So it's called a personal recovery plan that what you need and what works for you may be different than what I need and that what will work for me. And so the group is there to help support and to provide ideas. And we emphasize suggestions, , but it's only that it's each person builds a plan that will work for them, and that can include also going to 12 step meetings or other programs. So we, we help people help, we try to help them build a plan that will consider the different areas of life. We have a workbook that can help, but the plan is really tailored to your individual needs and your individual situation.

[00:25:04] Bob Gatty: Okay, so can people be involved in both programs? She recovers and life ring. Yes. 

[00:25:11] Mary Beth O'Connor: Yes. Yeah, both life ring and she recovers are open to a hybrid or Patrick plans. In other words, their members can do whatever they want. And so it's part of the philosophy that it's a self empowered program. And so that's absolutely on the table.

[00:25:25] You don't have to high. I think really, I think well over 25 or 30 percent of she recovers members also are 12 step members. So it's a high percentage. 

[00:25:34] Bob Gatty: Okay. So back when you were struggling as a drug addict, did you ever dream that you'd be in the position that you're in today published author, counselor, a retired federal judge, somebody that runs around the country making speeches and helping people through all their trauma and everything?

[00:25:54] Did you ever think you'd be doing that? 

[00:25:56] Mary Beth O'Connor: No, and and I, of course, and I always like to emphasize the timeline as well. I went to law school when I had six years sober and I became a judge at 20 years sober, right? And so when I got sober, as I, we talked about, I had that horrible resume. I had a Berkeley degree.

[00:26:13] In good grace and a horrible resume. So my only first focus was, can I get a job and keep it? So my first job when I got home from rehab was a part time temporary low level admin job because for me to get up every day and go to work on time and stay all the hours and not leave at lunch and not go back and do a good job and do it the next day and the next, I was 32 and I had never done it.

[00:26:40] I really needed to get that habit before I could move on. And so I, I gradually moved up. It was always what's the right next step, right? So with that temporary part time job, my right next step was a full time permanent mid level job, and then the next job was supervisory and I got a promotion and then at six years, I went to law school.

[00:27:01] So I was never I think. In early recovery in particular, five year plans, I wouldn't focus on that. I think it's really important to think about what's my first plan and then what is my next step after that? Because we really need to start to rebuild our lives in a more. incremental approach.

[00:27:20] It doesn't really help us to look too far forward. For one thing, when you're, you don't know when you first get sober who you're even going to be a two years sober or five years sober, you're going to grow so much in that time and change so much. But I really did. I really felt that I did a good job of being realistic about what I was ready for and thinking then when I got that what's my next step going to be and how do I prepare myself for that next step?

[00:27:48] Okay, 

[00:27:48] Bob Gatty: well, given the successes that you've had in all of this it certainly should be an inspiration for other people to indicate that, hey, she could do it. I could do 

[00:28:00] Mary Beth O'Connor: it right. That's right. I want it to be a couple things. One of them is to be a reassurance. I shot meth. I used until I was 32.

[00:28:10] I was in really bad shape and look in recovery, I was able to not just get a good job, but be happy, repair my pain; be a good wife and a good aunt and a, be of service to my community. And that's an option if you're able to, if you do the hard work and progress. But the other thing is, I really wanted it to be a stigma reducer to really talk about sometimes I think when we see people on television that are shooting meth, they're presented like they're hopeless, like they'll never get well.

[00:28:40] They're beyond our help. And I really wanted to say, I shot meth and look where I am now. Let's help the people that are still struggling. They deserve our help. They will be worthy of our help if we can get them to move forward. 

[00:28:53] Bob Gatty: Yeah, okay. You certainly don't look like anybody that's ever shot meth.

[00:28:59] Mary Beth O'Connor: Yeah I will say I saw a few track marks on my arms. I could show you if we were in person, but yeah.

[00:29:04] Bob Gatty: Okay. So look, I want to change the subject just a little bit. The other day I interviewed a guest for my podcast who spent Five years in prison for a white collar crime, he ripped off some investors and he went to jail and he told me he deserved it. After his experience in prison where most inmates were incarcerated because of illegal drugs, he now believes that all such drugs should be legalized, that this would drastically reduce crime and save billions of dollars. Now, how do you feel about that? I 

[00:29:44] Mary Beth O'Connor: agree. Look, we've had the war on drugs since the sixties, and we just had the highest overdose death rate in our history last year, right? 100 and over 110, 000 Americans died. So I think there's a couple problems with I would decriminalize personal use, and here's why.

[00:30:01] First of all, the federal government itself categorizes substance use disorder as a disease. or brain disorder, and yet we criminalize it. Most of the people in jail for drug offenses actually do have a substance use disorder, and we're putting them in jail instead of treating them. The other side of it is jail is much more expensive than treatment.

[00:30:22] We could treat three or four people for every one person that we put in jail, and that would be a much better use of resources. It would reduce the long term impact and it would reduce crime if people aren't don't have a substance use disorder. They're less likely to do other things to support that habit. But there is also the fact that our criminal drug laws are not enforced in a fair way.

[00:30:46] There is a radical racial disparity in the way we enforce our drug laws. People of color use drugs basically at the same level as white people do. And yet they are charged and prosecuted and put in jail at a much, much higher rate than a person of my color who is doing the same exact thing.

[00:31:06] And those, that kind of disparity has an impact, not just on the years you're in jail, but it impacts you when you get out your employment opportunities, your housing opportunities, your rights of federal benefits. And so for all of those reasons, I agree. I would decriminalize personal use of all drugs.

[00:31:24] Bob Gatty: Okay, so you told me before we began this discussion that you have some traveling coming up, some speaking appearances. Tell us about some of those. 

[00:31:37] Mary Beth O'Connor: Yeah, so I'm going to be in Canada in Saint John. I'm doing there's gonna be a fundraiser for women's recovery houses, two of them, and I'm going to be the keynote there.

[00:31:46] I'm going to be speaking in Jackson, Mississippi in November at a harm reduction conference. I'm going to be doing some lawyer training I actually train lawyers and judges now and substance use disorder, what it really is and you know what the treatment options are and all of that. And I'm doing I'm doing a memoir training class in in the Bay area where I live in January.

[00:32:07] But I speak at a lot of different conferences, a lot of different organizations. If anyone's interested, they can always message me through my website, junkietojudge. com. I try to keep myself really informed on a wide variety of recovery topics. But but yeah, I do a wide variety and I'm always happy to do things like the fundraiser for the Women's Recovery House that those kinds of events are near and dear to my heart.

[00:32:30] That's awesome. 

[00:32:31] Bob Gatty: So where can people go to find more about your work and to obtain 

[00:32:36] Mary Beth O'Connor: your book? So the book is on Amazon and all the usual sites, and your bookstore will either have it or they can get it. And again, it's from junkie to judge one woman's triumph over trauma and addiction.

[00:32:47] Then my website has a lot of information and also the opinion pieces that you mentioned the Wall Street Journal piece and all of those are on my website. And then I'm on Twitter. And I do not argue with people on Twitter. I actually provide information. I'll provide links to new studies about substance use disorder or recovery or opinion pieces and my thoughts.

[00:33:08] And I'm at marybetho underscore. I'm also on LinkedIn. If anybody's there, I'm easy to find. Just you don't even have to remember my name. Just remember junkie to judge. And you there's that Google thing now and you will find me. I'm very Google able at this point. 

[00:33:24] Bob Gatty: I know that you are because I Googled you junkie to judge and you came right up.

[00:33:29] Yes, we had no problem. So I guess nobody else has that one. All right, Mary Beth, anything else you'd like to add before we sign off? 

[00:33:40] Mary Beth O'Connor: I just, I really do appreciate the opportunity to talk about these issues. I think that people don't always fully appreciate what substance use disorder is, but also so many friends and family members struggle and are in pain because one of their family members is, really in the depths of it.

[00:33:57] And so I guess I get just one thing I would add is if you are a. family member or a friend who has someone that you love struggling. I would really recommend that they look at the technique. It's called CRAFT-- community reinforcement and family training. And there's a book called Beyond Addiction that is the best book for friends and family that I've ever read. And it can help them really understand what's happening, but also how to possibly use some positive reinforcement techniques to move things forward. So that's the one thing I know a lot of your viewers won't have a substance use disorder themselves.

[00:34:29] But most people in America today love someone who does. Yes, 

[00:34:33] Bob Gatty: that's true. All right. Thanks so much for that. I appreciate it. And good luck with all that you do, 

[00:34:39] Mary Beth O'Connor: Maribel. Thank you. Thanks for having me.