Dr. Matt Sherrer (Host): Here we go. Fresh Flow Podcast. Thank you for joining us on this special episode. Special, why? Because on this one, Mitchell's not here. That's the best part of this episode. No, I'm kidding. Mitchell isn't here today. He's post-call and not feeling well. But you know what? It's going to work out just fine because this episode is special to me in that I get to have one of my friends, a fellow faculty member here at UAB on the show.

So, it's my pleasure to introduce my friend, Dr. Chris Godlewski. Chris is an anesthesiologist here at UAB. If you said, "What's his clinical focus outside of just your standard general anesthesia operating room stuff?" It would be regional anesthesia. He's won teaching awards for his work in that arena.

But that's not why I asked him to be on the show today. The reason I asked him to be on the show today is that he did a Grand Rounds presentation for our department a few months back. And he discussed something that is perhaps not the most fun topic to talk about in the perioperative world. However, I think it's potentially the most important topic that we can talk about, and that is addiction in the perioperative space for anesthesiologists in general.

Chris has been incredibly open and transparent about his addiction journey. And in our world, sometimes these journeys don't end well. In fact, maybe oftentimes they don't end well just because of the strength and the power of the drugs that we use on a daily basis. This is a success story, and this is a story of overcoming addiction and continuing to thrive. And when I heard him give the Grand Rounds presentation, I said, "The world needs to hear this story." And so, it's my pleasure to bring my friend, Chris Godlewski, on the show. Chris, welcome in to the Fresh Flow Podcast, man.

Dr. Chris Godlewski: Thanks. Honored to be here. I appreciate you asking me to be on it.

Host: Yeah, man, you got it. So first things first, let me get the heck out of the way and let me just let you tell your story. You know, you had the opportunity to talk about this in various outlets, and you're transparent and you are raw, and that to me is the value of this. So, let it rip, man. Tell us your story about overcoming addiction and thriving.

Dr. Chris Godlewski: Yeah, this may be the only time in my work as a physician that being raw and gritty is actually for my benefit.

Host: It's going to be great.

Dr. Chris Godlewski: Any time you go, you're a newcomer into the rooms of AA or NA or addiction, you know, you always got to kind of tell your origin story. So, that's kind of what this is. It's what happened in your life to get you where you are. And to be perfectly honest with you, my childhood—we all have read how childhood trauma, all those kinds of things, your socioeconomic upbringing can contribute to addiction.

But in contrast to that, mine was incredibly benign. My parents are both, immigrants to this country from Poland who fled the horrors of communism. And if you want to hear stories about bravery and overcoming adversity, they've got it in spades. I mean, this pales in comparison to them.

Great parents, exposed us to a lot of things. You know, we maybe didn't have all the things that a lot of other kids had, but they worked hard. They instilled us with good Catholic upbringing. And they were both bootstrap-type people. So, I wouldn't say it was brutal, but it was tough. You're expected to work hard and be responsible and all that. And I watched my dad, he's now retired, but he's a guy who worked as a physician and worked 14 hours on the day that he retired.

So, both of them were medical, I had an older brother. And things just rocked along when we were kids, and it was fine and it was normal for the most part. When I was in kindergarten, I was diagnosed with Legg-Calve-Perthes disease, so hip dysplasia. And the long and short of that is that I had to wear a brace Forrest Gump style for two years.

And my mom will tell you that it didn't slow me down in the least. You know, I didn't really have that grand perception that I was very different from other kids, but it was there. But she used to tell me how terrified she would be that she'd come in the backyard. And I've got this brace on and I'm hanging by my legs upside down in a tree. I played soccer with that thing on. I was the one guy you could never nutmeg, because I this big metal bar in between my legs. But I think unconsciously or consciously that that's sort of my family is chip-on-the-shoulder people. Like, I'm not the smartest guy in the room, nor will I ever be, but I'm probably the guy that's going to show up early and just outwork you and be dogged about it.

And I think this whole childhood experience sort of kicked all of that off. My brother was an artist. And he had all the accoutrement of being an artist and developed a little bit of a drug problem kind of after high school. And we went through periods where we hated each other, we loved each other. You know, he caused a lot of problems for my parents who just kind of didn't know what to do with this kid.

I played sports in high school. I was kind of a scholar athlete, went to a pretty competitive high school. I wasn't really into the whole popular kid crowd thing. I mean, I sort of being an athlete, I transcended all of those things, but wasn't really into hanging out on the weekends and drinking beer with all my jock buddies.

I did start smoking a little marijuana in high school. You know, it wasn't excessive or crazy or risky behavior in terms of cutting class. I was still very responsible. I was making good grades. I got into a good college and all the rest of that stuff. But again, kind of the trajectory is marked by this semi-obsessive work ethic into just, you know, that was what my dad wanted out of us is just be the best. Be the best you can be.

I went through college did well. I played lacrosse in college, was pretty successful in that. Got into med school. And then, a month into my first year of med school, my older brother who had epilepsy and being an artist was a pretty non-compliant patient, he had a fatal seizure. I remember thinking, "What do I do with this? How do I deal with this? Do I quit? Do I take time off?" Like, "What do I do?" And I convinced myself that my brother, you know, had the roles been reversed, you know, my brother would've kind of soldiered on, and I feel like us being sort of tough Central European stock that it would almost be a dishonor to quit something I had worked so hard to get.

So, you know, I took a few days off from med school, went to the funeral, did all that kind of stuff, and just went right back to school and probably could have used some therapy because there was all kinds of issues that I didn't deal with at the time.

I'll never forget, like, my parents are very, very tough people, and having people like that, that I still say it to this day, my parents are the only people that I really call my heroes and idolize. They're that special to me. But seeing people who were so tough and who had been through so much, like, seeing your port in the storm sort of come apart, it's profoundly impactful. And we almost switched roles. I felt like I had to be kind of the anchor and maintain normalcy in that.

So, I did pretty well in med school. I will say that my sort of inclination to partying once all my responsibilities were done definitely went up. I was definitely smoking more pot, definitely drinking more. Towards the end of med school, I had sort of settled on anesthesia versus orthopedics, and I applied to both. And I think orthopedics was probably for the wrong reason. I think it was very vaunted and highly competitive and lucrative and a lot of prestige. Anesthesia definitely cerebrally was more appealing to me. But my best friend in med school also, he was one of those guys that came out of the womb knowing he was going to be a pediatric orthopod.

So, applied to both. Eventually, I had to do a year of research, but then got into orthopedics. And this is where I would say things really started to head south for me. I did really well in my first few years of orthopedic residency. Just to sum it up, it wasn't the best fit. I don't want to, you know, sort of besmirch reputations, but it was known for its malignancy. Being a kid who sort of believed that right is right, wrong is wrong, and that you should speak up when things aren't right, I didn't really have the best emotional intelligence to read the room and keep my head down. There was a lot of misogyny and homophobia and racism. And that wasn't great for me.

And, you know, after sort of getting a spot in a competitive fellowship, it really made me examine, is this something I want to do in 10 years? Because I was already sort of like, "Maybe this isn't for me." So, I went into anesthesia, but I think a lot of what had gone on during that orthopedic residency, you know, talking about that chip on the shoulder and having not dealt with the effects of losing my brother, I think there was just this whole gigantic ball of trauma and psychological things that hadn't been dealt with.

So, I went into anesthesia, and it was a great fit. I loved it. I knew I was in the right place. But that workaholism, you know, there had been sort of residual damage to my psyche, I think, from going through that orthopedic experience, really making you wonder if you were doctor material and that kind of thing. And so, I took that and just went off the deep end with it, and I was going to be chief resident. I was going to outscore everybody on the IT, all of those things. And I did it. I did. I was elected chief resident, scored very, very well, was just like the cream of the crop in the anesthesia residency.

It came with a price. Over time, my relationships became very difficult, even with my parents who I was very close with. And then, a couple of things I think sort of set it off. my dog that I had had for years and years and years got really sick. And I mean, there was a winter where I didn't pay the heat bill because I had to pay for the vet bills. And I was eating ramen and she was eating, you know, whatever. And one of my really, really close friends that I had met during my orthopedic time there, a nurse, at a very young age died from complications from cancer. There was just a lot of stuff going on with me.

And one day, on our obstetric anesthesia rotation, you know, wasting of narcotics was fairly Wild West, stat C-sections, this kind of thing. And I got home after an overnight shift. And lo and behold, there in my bag is a vial of morphine. It had happened before. You just go back and you waste it, and on you go. And for whatever reason, on the day, I was like, "You know, I think I'm going to give this a try." I don't know why. I think I was just exhausted. We always in addiction world talk about the acronym HALT, hungry, angry, lonely, tired. These are the things that sort of weaken your resolve. So, I tried it. I enjoyed it. I went straight IV with it, because I'm anesthesia. This is like pharmaceutical grade stuff. This isn't dirty street heroin. Anyway, immediately, I knew that was a really bad idea.

And so, I resolved like, "Okay, this is not going to happen again." Six, nine months pass and I'm kind of in the same situation. Things aren't going great in my life. And same thing, came home, I didn't even have a plan to sort of divert or anything like that. Just came home and realized I had some, and tried it again. And this time, it took root.

And I had a fairly short career in opiate abuse, let's say. Less than probably a year, I would say. And fortunately, I didn't get to the point where I wasn't doing it at work. I wasn't missing work because of it. I was still highly, highly functional. And one of my anesthesia mentors in substance abuse. He always made the argument that addicts actually have to be brilliant to continue to take really good care of patients, as most of us do, and manage this massively needy substance abuse issue. You have to think about how you can get it, how you can do it without getting caught, all those kinds of things. I got elected chief resident in that time. And I ultimately don't know what raised the flag on the radar, but I got called into the admin office. And I was told, you know, "We're going to, talk about scheduling for next year." I come in, and, there's my PD sitting there and my associate PD and some guy I'd never seen before who says, "Do you know who I am?" And I said, "No. Am I supposed to know who you are? Like, what's going on here?" And he told me that he was the head of the physicians' health program. He asked me, "Have you been using drugs?" And of course, like anybody would in that moment, I said, "No, absolutely not," you know, with my righteous indignation, "How dare you?" And then, he said, "You know, I can test your hair and nails and all that stuff, and we can get to the bottom of this."

And in that moment, in addiction, they call it a God moment or however you want to look at it, the universe or just dumb luck. Having seen my parents go through losing a child, I was smart enough to know that opiate abuse or addiction in general has one endpoint, whether it be over decades or an overdose in a bathroom. And I thought, "I can't let my parents lose another child." I told them, "Look, yes, I've been doing this," and blah, blah, blah.

And within three days, I was in a treatment center out in California. This was a place that specialized in dealing with professionals with substance abuse issues and a great place, if you can call a rehab great, I guess. It was full of basically other physicians. And there's a couple of things I noticed very quickly, and that is most of these guys are frequent flyers. This is not their first trip. That scared the hell out of me. And a lot of them really struggled. And I mean, there were folks there who had been there six, nine months who just couldn't deal with this problem.

So for whatever reason, be it a God thing, be it a just dumb luck thing, whatever I learned in rehab really, really sort of took root and stuck, I sort of vowed to myself this is my one and only time. Also, because the statistics for anesthesia are not great, a lot of us are found dead in bathrooms as our first evidence of relapse.

And so, I did my time there. I was discharged. I was incredibly lucky to have the then chair of the ASA as my chairwoman of the department and my program director as an exceptional individual. Both felt strongly about letting me come back to anesthesia, which is a very controversial topic nowadays.

Came back, did a little bit of extra time for bad behavior, so to speak, for the ABA and graduated. And you come back from treatment and you think, "Okay, you know, like I've spent two or three months or six months doing the hard work on myself." And you have therapy every day and all that kind of jazz. You get back. And in your mind, you think, "Okay, I'm ready for my ticker-tape parade," right? "I'm healed. I'm better." And what you don't realize when you come back and this is why I realize that a lot of physicians relapse, it's incredibly—and I'm not saying this to garner any sort of like sympathy. Look, we're victims of our own choices, but it's incredibly hard as a physician when you get back. There's so many things you don't realize. you have to sign a contract with a physician's health program.

You have to do aftercare. You have to do extra time in your residency like I did, or you might have licensure issues, legal issues, all these things. And fundamentally, you've destroyed a lot of trust with your residency program if you're still a resident, with your spouse, with your partners at work, with everybody you work with. It's rather difficult. You don't realize how many hoops you have to jump through to continue practicing medicine.

I joke about it, but it's true, I was drug tested and watched more closely than any released felon. Arguably with good reason. I'm given the awesome responsibility to ferry patients across the river Styx of anesthesia and bring them back. And so, yeah. But it's not easy. And a lot of that is mentally self-imposed. Because look, we live in a very fast-paced society. You come back, you think that everybody is wanting to burn you at the stake, and some people are, but it doesn't last long. But it's a lot. I fully understand why it's so difficult for a lot of physicians to come back and sort of stay sober and reenter practice and all of that stuff.

By the grace of God or the universe or Zoroaster or whomever you want to say, almost 14 years later, I am still in recovery and sober. And it's an odd thing. A lot of people who get this much time, and one of my old mentors was one of these people. He didn't want to forget about it, but just kind of get to a point where you want to be a normal person like everybody else. And I was living that life for a while. But then about two years ago, something just kind of said, "You know, you need to get involved with this. This is poorly understood. We live in a world where we have a lot of empathy for certain things, but not for others."

And I think it was that we're still in the dark ages, I feel, when it comes to being understanding and empathetic to not just physicians, because there's a lot of people that would say, "I don't feel sorry for you at all. Look, you're a physician with addiction, and you got to go back to being a physician. That is not fair." I get that. That's a legitimate argument because especially in Southern states, drug sentences are much stiffer in Southern states.

But at any rate, we as a world, I think, are very ADHD, very anxious, very oppositional, and I felt like addiction was something I knew a little bit about. And we still have a long way to go with doing a better job for fellow physicians, for our patients, for just being good and decent people, which I think should be the ultimate goal of any physician. And so, I decided, look, you need to kind of break the code of silence and put yourself out there and start trying to help people.

Host: I'm glad you did. You make it, for a podcaster, the way you tell your story, and can describe it so eloquently, just has me on the edge of my seat every time I hear it, even though I've heard it before. Tell us about that kind of the rehab process, what it took. You mentioned the Physicians Health Program. What did that look like? What is the kind of the day-to-day of the AANA world? What does all that look like after you kind of reemerge from the rehab and kind of come back into the world?

Dr. Chris Godlewski: For people who don't know this stuff, and why would you? There's now, I believe, a sort of national federation of these PHP programs or physicians' health programs. And typically, whereas in the old days, the medical board would sort of hand down whatever you needed to do to maintain your license, they have sort of recruited these individuals who are experts in addiction and physicians with issues, and sort of defer to them on should this person practice, what do they need to do?

And so, when you come back from treatment, it's mandatory that you sign up with these programs, and they will come up when you're discharged from treatment, it's like a post-surgical plan. You know, these are the things that it's prescribed by another physician. It can range from to see a therapist every week. In my case, I didn't need to see a therapist because they felt like I had sort of adequately dealt with whatever issues I had. The frequency of drug testing, what kind of drug testing is going to be done.

So in my particular case, I had to do weekly urine drug tests. And for a while, I was doing monthly—monthly? No, quarterly hair follicle tests. So, I used to laugh about it, and these are random. And so, you wake up in the morning and you check in on this program. And you're like, "Okay, I've got a big day, but I have to figure out a way to go and, do this drug test." It almost turned into not a game, but you have to make sense of your world, right? And I always used to joke with the folks that worked at the lab that they were giving me a very, very expensive armpit waxing when I went in for my follicle test. My first couple of years I was weekly urines, sometimes biweekly. They'll try and not trick you, but they want to make sure that you're sober. Quarterly hair.

The worst part for me was the Vivitrol or, I guess that's the trade name, IM naltrexone. That is 5 ccs of naltrexone deposited into your bottom every month. And it sounds fairly benign, but you have to find a physician who will do it. You have to find the time to go get it done. You have to pay for it. And when you think about, you know, that was the world before, you know, we have all these GLP-1 drugs now where people are self-injecting every week. But having a nurse slam 5 ccs into your bottom every month and you're thinking, "Oh my God, I have to do this for the rest of my life," it's no picnic. Luckily, I did really well in my recovery, they eventually transitioned me to daily PO, and then I got to get off of it altogether.

But to boil it back to what you're asking about, so everybody's treatment plan is individualized, but a part of it is required. I had to go to a certain amount of, 12 AA meetings every month. On Mondays we had something called Caduceus, which is basically the PHP would put on for its participants, basically an AA meeting that dealt with the more specific issues.

And I loved the Caduceus meeting. I looked forward to it. It was fantastic. Probably one of the strongest components of my recovery. Oklahoma had a really robust PHP, a guy named Dr. Robert Westcott. He's not the director anymore, but I still keep in touch with him. Fantastic human being.

So, typically, it was you'd get a one-year plan, you'd get a five-year plan. More and more, I think they're moving towards lifetime participation because we're starting to realize that you don't just get over the peak and it just goes away. We've had enough people relapse where you realize like, depending on how bad your problem was when you went in, you need to commit to this for life.

And that's the mantra of recovery, is that while you're sober, your disease is out in the parking lot doing push-ups, just waiting for you to mess up. I don't necessarily agree with all the cute axioms that you hear in AA, but things become trite and cliché for a reason, largely because they're frequently true.

Host: I've unfortunately dealt with addiction in a really close friend of mine, and one of the things that my friend that I'm hoping he can get to is this kind of mental transition that it seems like you have done of initially it seems like, "Oh my gosh, I'm giving something up. There's something that I need that I'm going to have to give up. I can't imagine being on the other side of having to live life having given that thing up." And then, there's the transition of, "No, I actually gained something."

And when I see you, I see a guy who is on the other side of this now, whose career is going well, who is thriving, who is joyful, who appreciates the beauty of the sunshine that came up this morning, and appreciates his family and just the beautiful life you have. Was there kind of a mental shift that happened along the way there, and how did you get from one place to the other?

Dr. Chris Godlewski: There's people in recovery who can quote you chapter and verse of the big book of alcoholics, the kind of the Bible. I am not one of those people. But one of the fundamental concepts recovery is that you undergo that psychic change, be it through therapy, whatever that you change, you deal with your garbage, and you change the way you think, such that you are then able to get sober and stay sober.

And, I think I was very lucky that that shift took place for me. It started in treatment. And another one of the big core concepts of recovery is gratitude. And in early recovery, especially coming back as a physician, though we have so much to be grateful for because it is so difficult, it is hard to be grateful at times.

But I think having that, dealing with your nonsense and reframing your life in such a way that you can get through it without having to use these substances as a crutch, I think it's absolutely the key to staying sober. There's a term called white-knuckling, okay? And basically, what that means is that the people who are sober, but not because they're internalizing these crucial things and changing their behavior and outlook, they're basically just gripping the arms of a chair and forcing themselves to not take a drink or use a drug. And sometimes it works. A lot of times, it doesn't.

But my sponsor/mentor was a big gratitude guy, more so than he was a 12-step guy, and that's where I hang my hat. And I think that the blocks were laid in treatment. But it was just you know, I don't think getting sober and staying sober was any great individual achievement of my own. I think I was lucky to be surrounded by fantastic people who were very supportive. But it is that, again, going back to my critique of society nowadays. You and I have talked about this, Matt, the anxious generation, and how we're so bombarded by bad news all the time, and we're not evolutionarily equipped to deal with our access to all these terrible things, and we just live on edge all the time, and we forget to literally stop and smell the roses, I think, for me, was one of the biggest things in recovery, and just making it a point to celebrate the small wins.

And then, as you do that, the other things they say in AA are, you know, keep coming back. If you've had a bad day, if you've relapsed, if you're not seeing the point, get up, keep doing your thing, go to a meeting the next day, just keep working the deal. And eventually, if you do that, most of the time, you will shift from this, "All I see are all the things I'm missing or all the things that are wrong or terrible," into this more of a "I don't have to do this stuff. I get to do this stuff." Like, yeah, being volunteered—

And that's what I think is, also for me—I remember those early days, the feeling that, "Oh my God, I may have worked 12 years and not get to actually be a physician." It's very easy to forget those terrifying thoughts, be that the way your psyche deals with it. But I always try to remember when I get grumpy and I'm like, "Great, I just got voluntold for call again," there was a time in my life where I was afraid that that would never be my reality. I always try to frame things as not I have to, but I get to.

And I always try to remind our residents when I'm teaching them or when we're hanging out, like, "Look, you could go downstairs right now and find five people who would not think twice about trampling you to have what you're calling to be such a disadvantage. And I'm not saying that anesthesia residents and physicians don't have real problems and real drama. We absolutely do.

But the whole point is, like it says in—my dad gave me, I think it's on the wall behind me, the Desiderata, found in a cathedral in Baltimore. And I always remember the last line, "With all its sham, drudgery, broken dreams, it's still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy." And look, man, we live in a world where we literally can make ourselves as miserable as we want to be. We're human beings. Implicitly, we manufacture our own drama and negativity. And I think the fight is fighting against that and fighting to be positive and be a beacon and be one of those people that are like people talk about you and they're like, "I like being around that guy." Like you are. Luckily, you didn't have to do what I do. But clearly, I mean, look at your career trajectory. You're a person that effectively and positively impacts people, and people want to be around You. and I think for me, that's my goal is to just—anybody can complain. That's easy.

Host: You're very kind, man. I think the same of you



Host: mentioned that kind of the gratitude, the thankfulness thing. We could geek out on neuroplasticity for here. I wish we had one of those four-hour-long podcasts. And unfortunately, we don't. But I find myself walking around the hospital now doing gratitude walks and literally just thanking God for all the amazing things that I have in my life.

And it does change things. It does absolutely change your perspective. And we got there different ways, man, but I view you the same. So to that end, I've seen you I've been here for seven-plus, almost eight years now. And I've seen a shift in you just over that time of moving to this different kind of view of career, and you kind of get to go out and talk about it a little bit now and talk about wellness.

And I've seen you go from, as you described, being that chip on the shoulder, soldier on, you know, be the best, workaholism thing you've talked about. You said you only took a few days off when your brother passed away, I mean, good grief, to now a guy who has completely changed his schedule because other things are important to him, like family, like the fact that you're a husband, you're a dad, you have a young, beautiful child at home.

Tell us about that and just kind of transition as we kind of close our time into the wellness aspect from your perspective, and then maybe what other physicians can glean from that.

Dr. Chris Godlewski: my two cents on wellness is that there's no metric to measure it. It's something that everybody is struggling with in sort of the fast-paced, difficult world we live in. On the corporate level or sort of the big group level, we're not doing a great job with it, even on the individual level.

And I think for me, I had gotten so burnt out and frustrated and irritated with all the real problems, but they were as big as I was letting them be. They tell you in recovery that if your job or if there is anything in your life that you perceive could potentially trigger you to relapse, you need to change it and you need to change it immediately.

And so, after thinking about it, and post-COVID, look, I mean, we went through the wringer as anesthesia in COVID. I'd had enough. I was done. My goose was cooked. So, I took a little time away from the academic world and sort of reexamined my priorities. And I love being a physician. It is one of the greatest honors besides being a husband and father. Like, it's amazing. It still blows my mind that we get to do what we do, and that we can do what we do.

But I decided to take some time and shift my frame and put my energy in things that, reaped reward for me. When I sort of came back to academics, the mountain is always going to be there. And I'm not saying we shouldn't chip away at the mountain of difficulties that face us, but we can do it with a joyful abandon we can do it without being a miserable human being for everybody else.

And so, I decided, for me, it was boundaries. I'm a guy that didn't do well with boundaries growing up. Like, my parents, God, I ove them. I mean, they told me what to do and I did it. When I came back, I decided, when I'm in doctor mode, you're going to get 2,000% of me. My joy in being a physician is patients. I'm a clinical guy. My dad was a clinical guy. All I ever wanted to be was a good doctor and nothing more. And so, when I'm here at work, you're getting all plus 0.5 of me. But when I go home, I'm at home. And I'm off the clock, I'm off the books. I'm not going to write papers at home.

Look, this is not the fast track for anybody to get promoted. That's my disclaimer. But the problem was is that when I was a resident, that's what led to my addiction in the first place. I was at work, then I came home and I was studying and this and that. Same thing before I sort of reframed things. I was writing papers on my time off. I was ignoring all the things that you should be grateful for. The irony of this, and I was talking to my wife about this the other day, when I stopped cut-throating it and making it such a priority to get X title or Y or whatever, and just strip it back to being a good human being, my successes have trebled. I'm a much better teacher. I'm a better physician. I care more about my patients. I am able to leave all the bullcorn to the side and not let it influence what I'm doing. It's like the less I chase the things that are important but aren't, like, the life things, the more I get rewarded with them, and I think that's the secret.

It's like you should care about them, and by God, you should chase it with everything. I'm an all-or-nothing guy. So if I'm chasing something, I'm going to run until, you know, my ankles are broken. And that's good, and we should do that. Half measures avail us nothing, as the big book says.

But, early on, my mentor taught me that the most important thing in this world is love in people and your love for people, and nothing should surpass that. And I think when I started focusing on that, it inherently neuroplasticity, like you say. I mean, this is a proven thing with addiction and positivity in that your frame shifts and being more positive, you're more effective. If I were to give any advice to the world of medicine and just the world of people in general, it's we need to do a much better job about being less judgmental, because I think a huge problem with addiction is the remaining stigma. And it sounds so dumb and simple, but trying to be a good human being and care for the other human beings. Because most people don't set out to be a miserable human being that does terrible things to another human being. I don't know a lot of people that grew up thinking that way.

But I think that it is a force multiplier if you are the kind of person that Matt Shearer is or somebody that people want to be around and engage with and have that like—it's one thing to tell a person or a resident to do something. It's another thing and so much more powerful when you approach them with compassion, empathy, and love, and the spirit of truly wanting them to be better. I mean, that's the butterfly effect, man. And that's what I think we need to do in medicine, is It's not an expensive corporate retreat. It's not we all need to go to family therapy once a week as a department, though that probably wouldn't be a bad idea. It's like they say, like, a naked man in an empty room can practice kung fu. Same idea. Like, it starts with you. It has to start with you. Nobody can make you do it, but It's waves. It's ripples. I mean, they've done the studies on a room full of negative people, how toxic that is and how it spreads like wildfire. I strongly feel we need to be doing the other way

Host: Come on. Amen. Man, you make me smile. I wish people could see my face on this one because it's been great, to watch you talk about this, and I'm so thankful for you and thankful for you sharing this. I will tell people, I've already invited you to AACD 2027. This is something we're going to hear from at the meeting in 2027.

Last thing, you've said a lot about supportive, good people, and you've had those along the way. What do you say to that person out there listening who may suspect that somebody in their department, friend, residency program is struggling with addiction but is maybe scared to speak up? That's a hard thing to do, a hard thing to bring up to someone. You've shared how unbelievably important it was to you. What do you say to that person about overcoming that fear and saying something?

Dr. Chris Godlewski: It's a sticky wicket because the data is there you see them in movies and TV, these interventions, they typically don't go well. When I was in treatment, people would tell stories about how their spouses would try to get them sober. They would drug test them randomly or throw out their oxy or, you know, whatever. But the fact of the matter is that these people are not trained to do these jobs, and putting the mantle of that responsibility on them, even if they willingly have sort of decided this is what they're going to do, it's unfair and very often doomed to failure.

I think it's very complicated because people don't speak up in these arenas, not because they don't care, but I think because they don't know what to do. And we've seen the long-reaching effects that even an accusation that's proved false can have nowadays. You can literally ruin somebody's life if you try to out them, and there's nothing wrong with them.

So, I think to that end, I think, that you care enough about somebody is a great first step because it's very easy to just say, "Well, it doesn't affect me. That's their own personal problem," but I think taking that on yourself is probably not the best idea, especially now in the day and age of physicians' health programs. I mean, these are organizations that are designed to sort of navigate this process. I'm not saying you have to throw a full-blown intervention. But something as simple as saying like, you know, "Hey, Chris, I love you, man. I respect you. It seems like there's some stuff going on with you right now. Like, do you want to talk about it? Do you want to..." You know, like even that small spark may trigger that individual to go seek help.

Part of the problem is, as physicians, if we are privy to information that another physician may cause patient harm, we're legally obligated to report it. And again, nobody wants to be the agent of someone's demise or their career. And I don't think there's any conspiracy or good old boys' club where people are saying like, "Oh, you know, this is the code of silence. We're physicians. We're better than everybody else. We're going to save our brethren."

No, I think it's just we don't know how to deal with it effectively. So to that end, I would say the onus of actually intervening is not on us unless you're trained to do that. I would say the onus on you is to be an empathetic, compassionate human being. You can express concern. And if you're really worried about it, worried enough that you think somebody needs treatment or would need an intervention, I think you tap your resources.

PHPs work anonymously. You could call them and not give your name and say, "I'm worried about somebody." It may not end great for them because they're sort of obliged by law to investigate those sorts of things. And look, they're human too. There have been instances where physicians who have done nothing wrong have had negative outcomes.

That's a fact. But going back to the ultimate endpoint of any addiction being death, fundamentally as human beings, especially as physicians, our obligation is to try to prevent that. And so, I think engaging with these PHPs and whatever is at your disposal, be it your hospital wellness people, be it the PHP, whomever, I think, we owe it to each other as human beings.

Host: Chris, man, your story is compelling, it's powerful. I think it will save lives. I hope that you get to be on much bigger podcasts than the Fresh Flow podcast. I hope Joe Rogan calls. So, we'll pepper his email inbox with this episode when it comes out. But, man, thank you for doing this. Thank you for sharing this message in such a transparent way. I know that's not easy. I do think it's going to be impactful and the more you get out and do it, and however I can help do that, brother, I'll do it because I think it matters. So thanks for being with us, man.

Dr. Chris Godlewski: Yeah, thanks giving me a podium.

Host: You got it, brother. All right. Another episode of the Fresh Flow Podcast. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.