World Resiliency Day: A Global Movement You Need to Know About

In this eye-opening episode, we sit down with Shane Varcoe, a leading voice in the world of prevention and resiliency. Ever wondered why some people bounce back from adversity while others struggle? The answer might lie in understanding your 'why.' Shane takes us on a transformative journey, revealing how knowing your 'why' can be a game-changer in life, prevention, and recovery. Plus, get an exclusive first look at World Resiliency Day, an initiative that aims to make resiliency a global conversation. Don't miss this episode if you're looking to build a life of purpose, strength, and resilience!

Key Takeaways:

• The importance of knowing your 'why' and how it can shape your life.
• The role of resiliency in prevention and recovery.
• The launch and mission of World Resiliency Day.
• The impact of culture and leadership on resiliency.

How to Get Involved:

• Visit the World Resiliency Day website and sign up for the newsletter.
• Share your journey and lived experience to help others.
• Become a part of the conversation on social media.

Episode Links:

•  https://www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au/ 
•  https://worldresiliencyday.com.au/resources/ 
• https://www.facebook.com/DalgarnosNB
• https://twitter.com/nobrainer_drugs
• https://www.youtube.com/@DalgarnoInstituteEducation
• info@worldresiliencyday.com.au 

Drug Free America Foundation Links:

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram
• YouTube
• Twitter

Transcript

Dave: 0:00

Welcome to another riveting episode of Pathways to Prevention, a podcast that delves into the issues that truly matter in today's world. Today, we're thrilled to have a very special guest with us, Shane Varcoe, an expert in resilience, prevention and community building. Shane is here to share his wealth of knowledge on how understanding your why can be a game changer in your life and the lives of those around you. In this episode, we'll discuss everything from the importance of resilience and combating substance misuse to the ways in which each of us can be a leader in our own communities. Shane will also give us an exclusive look at World Resiliency Day, an initiative aimed at fostering resilience on a global scale. This is not just another episode. It is a deep dive into topics that could redefine how you approach life's challenges and opportunities. So if you're looking for actionable insights, transformative ideas, And a fresh perspective on resilience and prevention, you've come to the right place. This episode is packed to the brim with wisdom you won't want to miss. So grab your notepad, settle in, and let's get this conversation started. The Vision, a world where all people live free of the burden of drug abuse. This is the Drug Free America Foundation's Pathway to Prevention podcast, where we are committed to developing strategies that prevent drug use and promote sustained recovery. Thank you for not only tuning in, but your continued support and efforts to help make this world a better place. We hope you enjoy this episode. All right. Podcast listeners. We are back for another episode of the pathways to prevention podcast. And I've got a, a new friend, Shane joining me today and wonderful, wonderful bio and backstory here, but rather than me get into it, Shane, welcome to the podcast. And, uh, you gotta tell us all about who is shane,

Shane: 2:16

David, thank you so much for having me on, man. It's a, it's a privilege actually, a real honor to be here. Thank you for that. And yeah, the bio is a lot of gravy for a very small potato, man. I, there's not a lot, not a lot to say about my journey. been in this particular post for about, well, 15 years. And when I initially joined this very small not for profit charity, I expected to only be there five years. I was kind of As a last, the terms used were, uh, you're our last stitch effort. If this doesn't work, we're shutting the program down now. So that was no pressure, like no pressure no pressure at all. Yeah. Okay. If you don't make it work, dude, you're going to be the, you're going to be the last CEO of 160 year old organization. Have at it, my friend, have at it. So it was, um, yeah, that was kind of a bit of a pressure, but I, what I'd done, if you're interested in the journey of how we sort of

Dave: 3:16

That was the next question.

Shane: 3:18

in this space here was, uh, I was working for another charity, which was an affective domain education group, uh, started by an Australian icon actually, by the name of Dr. John Smith, that was called Values for Life. And, uh, It was the first affective domain education vehicle in the country, in fact, uh, so we were basically going into schools and go across the country, uh, talking about things, building sustainable values into kids lives, helping them navigate culture and all that sort of stuff, you know, in healthy, healthy ways and included, you know, everything from drug education right through to peer pressure, bullying, all that kind of, every, any subject you can think of was kind of the space I was in and I was managing that for a while. I was asked to come in and. And, uh, takeover from someone who'd left that and, and we kind of rebooted that program. And as the, the drug issue was becoming more and more of a problem, it was, you know, it was always there. Australia's always had a, had a drug issue as most countries did have, and particularly in the sixties and seventies and then the counterculture revolution that could have kicked off that, the reemergence of substance use, although it's always been there at some level. But the, the program we'd started with, with, uh, the organization I was working for previously was called Stand4 and it was around, around drug, drug education specifically. And we were starting to deploy that and this organization, uh, were, had, had a bit of money behind them, but they had no operational presence. They didn't even have a website and the gentleman that was in there was a retired, basically. So it was dead in the water and they, they, and I wasn't aware how dead it was. And so what I did was simply presented them with our existing Stanford program and said, look, what we'd like to do is offer this program to you. You funded and we'll deploy this program in schools, in communities, in society on your behalf while you, and you fund it. So it's kind of like a. Uh, a fundraising exercise, if you like, to, to, to license out this. And the gentleman who was, uh, in an interim, uh, overseer of the, of the now dormant, uh, not for profit, he, uh, he said, well, give me a business plan. So I wrote literally my first business plan and unbeknownst to me, this is, this is what, this is, I'm saying this because of the, uh, the, the kind of irony here. Never, never written a business plan. I understood them, but I never had written one. So I wrote one and he said to me, so, you know what, this is one of the best business plans I've ever seen. I said, oh, yeah, no, I didn't think, you know, that's nice. That's a bit of a pat on the back. But then he, then he told me, well, you realize that I'm a professor of, uh, that I lecture at universities on business and, and I went, oh, so it's like, oh, it. Oh, I had, I think if I had any idea that that was who I was presenting to, I probably would have freaked out. So, but he really liked the idea that he handed me, this is, this is literally what happened. He handed me a CV and, and I said, and he said, I want you to look at this and get back to me. I went, okay. So I took the document. I didn't have a CV, a document. I took it away, got home and I read it. I said, this is a, uh, CV for the CEO's role of this, uh, now dormant organization. So I rang him and said, um, Hey, and what's, what's the document? He says. So what do you mean? I said, well, this is a CV. What do you want to do? He said, what do you think I want you to do with it? I want you to apply for the job of CEO. I went, okay. Um, he said, look, what you presented is really good. I think you need to run this organization and reboot it. I think you need to come in. So that was kind of the invitation and that was, I was quite shocked because I was, you know, obviously working with this other organization, I was enjoying the work. It was, it was productive and successful and had, you know, it was making a difference. So it wasn't something I was as keen to leave. But there was a genuine, uh, sense that this was the next step and I didn't realize how difficult that step was going to be until I took it, of course. But, and hence, if you know all the details before you jump, you usually don't jump.

Dave: 7:20

Mm hmm. Yep.

Shane: 7:21

So, uh, so, uh, I took the role, um, and it, uh, it, I won't go into all the difficult details of the first couple of years, but it, it, it's proven to be a, a robust journey, let's put it that way, uh, in, in, in moving forward, taking a... an organization and I say this with absolutely no self aggrandizement at all. It's, it's nothing, it's just a great board, great people, good vision, you know, and just really focusing on helping Australians, particularly, and all now Southeast Asians and other, other areas now, understand what's really going on. And helping them make better decisions and building, trying to build resilient communities. That's, that's where we've kind of landed now, but that's kind of that, if that makes sense, that's kind of the journey of the synoptic overview anyway, if that helps.

Dave: 8:14

Yeah. No, that's a fun little journey. And I, I could only imagine being a fly on the wall and seeing Your face when you realized who you presented the business plan to and what they do it.

Shane: 8:29

exactly. It was,

Dave: 8:31

Yeah. So tell me about this organization that you've been mentioning. It's a little mysterious.

Shane: 8:38

the one I'm working for now, obviously. Yeah. Interestingly enough, the Delgarno Institute, we, when I came in, The, the existing board at that time was looking at obviously rebranding because we, now any listener here who's kind of over the age of 45, maybe, Would understand this language. Maybe not. It's, it, it tend to be more of an English, uh, a Commonwealth based driver, although, uh, the, the Americans, you know, certainly had their own, their own, Aspects of this, but, uh, it's the work that I came into the dormant word I came into was a basically a, a dying temperance movement. And to give you some context for the U S um, a gentleman by the name of Wayne Wheeler. Wayne Wheeler. It's good for your history. Um, he was, uh, the, the, the, they called, I think they called him the presidential whisperer back in the 19, 1910s, 1920s. He basically, he was such a high profile activist, but he was also part of the temperance movement and he was a very big, big driver behind the prohibition movement. in the US. Now you guys, you know, to your credit, the US, the prohibition experiment, which has been railed against by the so called, you know, new bad actors in the marketplace, don't understand the history of prohibition, constitutional, sorry, prohibition. A lot of countries have had prohibition. A lot of them have had prohibition. And Australia's had, and after World War I, we had a national prohibition as well. And it wasn't constitutionally based, but it was legally instituted because of the post, they didn't understand PTSD after World War I. All they knew was that all these returning soldiers were being drunk all the time, seven days a week. So they had to curtail Spending and alcohol. So anyway, but going back in Wayne Wheeler bounced off groups like the women's Christian Temperance Union and Temperance Alliances and different groups like that, and he literally, Wayne Wheeler owned the Midwest of America. Basically owned it from a lobbying perspective. And if you wanted to become president, if your party wanted to be elected, you had to have Wayne Wheeler in your camp. This is how much power he had. He was the, and, and, uh, the leverage this guy had because he could move. Sways of voting blocks, you know, towards the Republican or the Democrat, depending on who's going to, so that whatever group was going to say, well, we're going to curtail alcohol, ban alcohol. Okay. Well, I'll get these guys to vote for you, regardless of whatever other policies are in play, they would vote for him. So Wayne Wheeler was a key, key actor, and he was one of the driving forces along with all these other small not for profits, but they had a lot of leverage because they were not just anti alcohol, they were anti. The, the wrecking ball that this stuff was to culture, to families, and particularly to women who had, at that stage, had little rights. And it's interesting to note that, you know, a lot of people give credit to the suffragettes for the women's right to vote, but in fact, as I understand it, and again, I'm happy for you listeners to check, fact check me on this. Is, uh, the, the women's first right to vote was in Australia, in South Australia, and it was done under the petitioning of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. They're the ones who got it up, wasn't the suffragettes, it was them. So it's interesting to note that these organizations that have been around as long as ours has, because ours was, uh, It was an old, very old temperature, and some of the temperature changes were religious. Some of them were not religious. They were just anti alcohol. So it wasn't like a religious moralist thing always, it was part of the equation. But it was this incredible move because society was just being undone, hello, undone by a wanton, reckless, off the lead alcohol policy. And so one of the first drivers behind the, the, the prohibition movement was the, uh, your indigenous Americans, the native Americans. They were the ones who first enlisted a alcohol free zones in their own turf. And Wayne Wheeler got behind that as well. So these are the, these are, this is some of the history in America and your prohibition, what happened when you had a constitutional prohibition in America, which everybody goes, Oh, you started with, you know, all you got was Al Capone. Oh, that was just absolute BS, mate. It, Al Capone was operating before Booze, right? Way before Booze, organized crime. Years, decades before, and after the prohibition ended, it was still doing. You know, organized crime. So, but what happened in the U S and I'm digressing on this, but I think it's a very powerful example of what can be done is that the, the change in society, and I've got the, actually the original documents in my office, uh, 19, uh, 1930s documents of the parliamentary debrief, congressional, sorry, congressional debrief on the constitutional impact. And the amount of organizations that said, this is the best thing that's ever happened to our business. It's the best thing that's ever happened to our employees. Cirrhosis of the liver almost, it plummeted. Domestic violence plummeted, um, it, you know, um, because, you know, all, all that's tied up with, with alcohol and misuse of alcohol. And so this, this was an incredible impact and, and the argument about the whole, you know, uh, what's, uh, Elliot Ness, you know, the, the Untouchables, these guys. What I didn't understand was that they were also dealing with a corrupt police force, because unfortunately the Irish Catholics had a big leverage in the police force, and they loved it, loved the sauce. So there's a lot of corruption in the, in the police force as well. So they were fighting corrupt police, they were fighting corrupt politicians who had, and there was all sorts of horrible things going on during this period. And of course you could drink, people didn't understand, you could drink alcohol during prohibition. You were allowed to drink, you just weren't allowed to buy it publicly, you know, you manufacture it publicly and you weren't allowed to drink it publicly. But you can still make your own alcohol at home because they understood a lot of immigrants like Irish and Italians like their wine. So you can make your own wine at home as long as you just drank it at home and you were not intoxicated in public. So it wasn't like there was no alcohol, but you weren't allowed to have it in public square. And so, it was very powerful to watch a grassroots movement move. And this is the, I think the key point of here Dave. It moved, and that's why they need for political activism. It moved out of the grassroots. Uh, dynamic from the community, but community grassroots, which you see in America, a lot of guys are doing that, but it also had to be top down, not just bottom up. And I think that's one of the reasons why we've done what we've done. As a historically grassroots movement, we've now moved into the top down agenda because, you know, politics is downstream from culture, and unfortunately, culture is informing politics to a negative level and without another alternative voice, giving rationale and reason and clarity to why this continual unleashing or letting off the leash of use of psychotropic toxins is a real concern. And that damage has been done short and long term is horrific. So just that juxtapose, I'll throw that out there. You just see that the extent to which this can go and the difference it can make despite the bad politics, sorry, the bad press given it by propaganda machines. It works. It just works. We've done it in Australia with tobacco. We've basically prohibited tobacco in real terms, even though it's a legal drug. And that's worked. So that's another story.

Dave: 16:23

So if I were to ask you, how do you describe what the Dalgarno Institute does? What would you say?

Shane: 16:32

Okay. Well, now we're going to institute to parrot our mission statement. We're not we're not doing that. I won't do that to you. It's basically an alcohol and other drug education. Advocacy and resourcing group. Our agenda is to shift community attitudes, but from top down to bottom up around substitutes, engagement with substitutes, as if, as the, the idea, particularly around the illegal drug of alcohol, this is normal. This is what you do. This is what Australians do. We, you know, you drink, everyone drinks, you know, so shifting that attitude of a predetermined expectation of engagement, I think to the option of not having to And why not having two is best practice. And so it's not just saying, Oh, alcohol is bad. Don't use alcohol. Drugs is bad. Don't use drugs. It's, hang on a minute. What's going on here? Why are you engaging? What's going on? And, and what are the impacts of this? And so have other options been presented to you? And why haven't they been presented to you? And, and so understanding some of the drivers behind that is really important. So a lot of people don't get. Um, some of the drivers that influence their decision making and obviously cultural predisposition is one of those drivers, the expectation that this is normal behavior. So one of the reasons we exist is to present a different norm, uh, without being necessarily combative or adversarial, but saying, well, yeah, guys, really, this is the best you got to offer. We're going to get plastered every second night of the week because this is the deal. Now, okay, trauma, you know, self medication aside, trauma informed drug use aside, I get all that. But most of that's not, most use in, in, in particular illicit substances in our country is uptake between sort of 44 and 72% of uptake is based on experimentation and my friend offered to me, curiosity basically. Let's see what happens. It sounds good. Everyone's doing it. Let's have a go. So it's not trauma informed drug use, um, which, which I understand people would self medicate for all sorts of reasons. But the alcohol one is kind of like, we've had the last 15 years of working hard to shift that. This is the Aussie thing to do, you know, having a few beers after work and footy and, you know, go down and get plastered in the pub and get hammered and all that kind of, you know, macho, they call blokey, blokey rhetoric. Uh, and that kind of led, lent into a toxic masculinity issue, which. Masculinity is a great thing, it's a wonderful thing and it needs to be celebrated, but when it's harnessed by substances and the masculinity is expressed in, I'll be kind here, unhelpful ways. It's a dangerous combination. Drunk, drunk macho men are just awful to be around. Not just for women either, for men. So it's, uh, that kind of, that was really quite toxic. And then the last 15 years we've seen a big shift in that. And we've been, certainly not solely involved in the ones contributing to that, but we've been a big part of pushing that back and helping people have different options to move forward. And being with dads and men and And just giving them more healthy options, I think, about expressing who they are as men. You know, being a bloke's great, awesome, but how do you express that in a healthy way? And, uh, and does drug use, substance use, alcohol, particularly the legal drug, uh, is that going to be useful for you? Um, and certainly. Is weed and, and meth and, and coke and, and they are going to be helpful. It's just going to add value to you as a man and to those to take from you. So that's kind of the, you know, it's top down, bottom up and, and it's education and it's advocacy. So we're, you know, we're, we're working and we're also, also resourcing. So we try and develop resources both online and in situ that, that can be deployed by people. To shift their culture and again, finding context and the latest offering for that is actually emerging at the moment. We're developing an internationally accredited training program on being a culture change agent, basically. So, uh, working on building resiliency into communities again and what that looks like. So, and hopefully indigenizing that in whatever setting that we find ourselves. So we're using universal principles. Uh, anthropological principles, I won't go into all the details, but, uh, but also prevention principles, primary prevention principles, and recovery principles, which ironically are very similar to primary prevention. Um, so, uh, but then equipping people and helping them find ways to be strategic, to just strategically get it out, show strategically deploy. Being a change agent within their context. So indigenizing it to, to a subcontinent, to an Indian context, to a European context, to an American context, to an Islander context. So what does that look like for you? Help you. So the principles are solid and sound for every culture, for the most part, but then finding the touchstones within the culture and helping them take those. Preventative principles, those recovery principles, those resiliency building principles and sowing them back into their culture to, to create again, uh, what we, what we call fence building in, into the community.

Dave: 21:54

I could just spend all day talking about this because so much of what you just shared hits really close to home for me. I mean, I fell, I was, I fell into the, I'm a combat vet, I'm, I'm an army guy, like, drinkning, it's just what you do, like. Yeah, whiskey, you drink, you drink hard alcohol, you drink beer just because, and and it, yeah, like it just took me away from who I really wanted to be and the lessons that I've learned though to help me achieve and maintain sobriety are about really being clear about who do I want to be and what's going to help me be that person and what's going to take me away from being that person, bringing my A game. And, uh, actually one of the presentations that I give is titled culture is the strategy because I've experienced the, the toxic impacts of culture, but I've also felt and experienced the beauty that is positive culture too. And yeah, yeah, I, yeah, I could just, we could just riff on that for, for hours on end.

Shane: 23:04

Well, and that, look, and that interesting there, if you don't mind me chiming in on that, on that insight, uh, my friend, I think this is, and this is an interesting sidebar, but I think it's an important one, uh, that people with lived experienced and earned resiliency, like yourself, uh, incredible assets, if, and resources, if engaged well, now what we've got in Australia is an active, proactive, anti, you know, anti push against people who are in recovery, being involved in any community educating exercise. And what they've done is they've picked a few, Cherry picked a few, and the evidence is there, Cherry picked a few. evidence based, evidence based papers around the misuse of recovering drug users in the education space and what they can do. Now we know that when I, um, that it was what they, one of the problems with that is called the hero worship phenomena. In other words, uh, the young, the young 15 year olds watching the, the returned vet talk about his drug, drug issue. Maybe not, no, that's not fair because the return vet's a different story. It was just talking about a guy who's been on drugs, regardless. He's just. You know, lived a crappy life, got on drugs, got clean, great guy, and he's telling all these horror stories, right? And, and again, recounting one's experience is part of the lived experience and earned resiliency dynamic and very important. But if it's not harnessed to a affective and cognitive domain education vehicle, it's just a glorified rant. And what happens, a kid, the 15 year old kid watches the guy, he goes, Oh, look at this room of people. They're all fixated on this story. Oh wow, he's got so much attention. Oh wow, I wish I could get that attention. Oh I know, I'll do drugs and then I'll get clean and then I'll tell my story. Now that's a really horrible distilled version of the, of the overall paper, but unfortunately that's true. So what the bad actors have done is they've harnessed that particular piece of evidence and said, oh, you never use drug, ex drug users in education. Yet the same people will happily put a battered woman up in front of a group of women. They'll happily put a survivor of a road toll up in front of car drivers, drunk car drivers. So again, the cognitive dissonance in this is stagnant because in our country, the bad actors have actually engaged the policy space and they're controlling the levers now. So they're trying to keep out as many, uh, again, preventative factors that can do this. And the best people to do this, if. Like you, like exactly what you're doing Dave, you're a, you're a, an icon of, of, of what is best practice in this space. You're a recovering vet, trauma informed drug use. Yeah. Yeah. You're, you're, you're not talking about drug use solely. Drug use is a symptom of your problem. It's a symptom of a greater issue. Your, your toxic masculinity was informed by a whole bunch of factors, um, and, and bad factors. Your masculinity, sound masculinity was informed by very good factors, but they got mixed up with the bad stuff. Substances got thrown in the mix. All of a sudden you become the guy you didn't want to be. The culture that you wanted to express was awful, and you had to back, walk back out of that. And one of the key factors walking back out of that is excising substances from your journey so that you can discover best practice and then teach preventatively best practice. That is the goal that we have as an organization. And we want to engage with people like yourself and others, but we have to do it in this country. We have to do it so carefully, whereas in the U. S. we still see a freedom of that expression. You can still go in and talk about that, you know, cleverly done, wisely done, educatively done, but in this country, they, they work really hard to shut you down, but it's interesting. Every school, every community group, every family conference we go to. When, and we know the power of storytelling and the science behind that, but when the narrative is introduced into the cognitive domain, evidence based education, it not just adds value, it multiplies impact. And people just not, don't just remember the story. Oh, that was a powerful story, Shane. Thanks for sharing that kind of, if you hear that you've missed the mark. They say, wow, that was an informative, informative seminar, man. I did not know this about, uh, uh, uh, and by the way, that story you told really made the point clear to me. This is now that's the response you want. And that's the response we trained to get. So, they're the kind of mechanisms that we want to help people engage in because we want to maximize the ability of, of cultural change agents to make the difference that they are rightly seeking to make.

Dave: 28:07

Absolutely. And for me, I had to, well, had to understand my own story before I could even start talking about it. And I'm still understanding it more and more, but I also had to learn how to talk about it in. A healthy way, both for my own mental health, but also for what you were just talking about, the, the hero complex and, you know, not just getting up there telling horror stories, war stories. And I feel like I've honed that fairly well in that I tell parts of my, my dark periods, one. To other veterans that might be struggling. So they know that they're not alone, but I don't highlight or celebrate the dark periods or dark stories. And I really do like to focus on the positive and the post traumatic growth. And then when I give talks, I will relate back to my learning points to, Hey, you remember in the story I talked about, I was older than all the other college students when I got back and I didn't feel like I fit in sense of belonging. And tie it, anchor it to, uh, a pillar or a learning point. But, uh, yeah, I can see how those, those bad actors could definitely take that and run with it though.

Shane: 29:23

Yeah. And, and that's, and now they're writing, trying to write opinion pieces to that end. So we're actually developing a, have developed a paper, which is about to be, we've got several journals looking at some of the, again, The realities around, because the learned, the lived experience of recovering drug users and the principles of prevention, primary prevention are almost inseparable. And that's what we say to, you know, guys walking back out of drug addiction or dependency, whatever language you want to use, walking back out of that. How much fun was that? How much fun was that guys? Was that fun? You know, you enjoy that? That sucked, man. Yeah, I know it sucked. It really sucked. Sucked big time. So, you know, walk it back out. And if someone had told you how not to walk into that in the first place, now knowing what you know now, would you, Oh, absolutely. Okay. So now you're on the other side of trauma and recovery. You go, Oh, I would have listened. Yeah. But back then what, what would have stopped you from listening? You know, you know, but what would have helped you here? They're both important elements of, of, of communication, um, you know, mechanism. I mean, it's, it's, you know, audience focused communication is, is very, very important. But obviously when you walk into a room of strangers, like you, you, you moved from one town to another and you've got 800 kids in an auditorium, you don't know how they tick. You've got an idea of the basic demographic and some of the overviews of, you know, but, so therefore you've got to understand, you know, communication theory. Yeah. And. And what's important about getting the right data, not just spectacularly heard, but listened to. And I think that's what we're, you know, and that's where the papers come in. So we're developing evidence based research. That backs our, our educative models, which we, we've got already evidence that does that, but this particularly around using, uh, recovery theory and recovery alumni in that process is really, really important. So how does seeing that incredible resource, human resource, To be prevention as specialists, not recovery specialists. Now it's a different language. Now you're, you're Dave. Look, you've mastered that. Well, master is a very strong word, but you're mastering that. Now that I think that's a celebration point for you. You've mastering that because a lot of recovery people, uh, and this is not a criticism at all. In fact, we've, we engage with a lot of recovery alumni now and try to help them become prevention people. And nine out of 10 can't do it. They can't make the leap. They're happy to talk to a recovering drug user about their experience. They're happy to, but trying to, to, to move into a prevention space, into a prevention mindset where they don't just talk about the, the stuff that's happened and, and I can identify, I can identify, I can relate, I can relate, all those important, absolutely vital in the recovery sector. But how can I prevent, how can I harness that experience and, and invert it? Now that's a, that's an art form that's, that's got, it's got to be taught and it can be learned and, and something that you're developing. And I think that's a. You know, and so in a certain way, you know, moving forward, we'd love to be able to engage with you. But I think that's a, uh, I think that's part of what we want to do is, is that taking that recovery alumni and incredible, again, reiterating for a purpose here, incredible human resource that can be an incredible catalyst change in a community, particularly a community that's lacks resilience. And we have a, we have a saying at Delgarno Institute, you know. Resilient communities don't use drugs, resilient families don't want them. It's that simple.

Dave: 33:02

Yes. And talking about recovery and prevention, one last little tidbit here. And I want to come back to the, the saying. Um, actually one of my, my good friends and fellow prevention leaders, Karie Terhark, was talking with me two weeks ago, actually, and we weren't talking about addiction. You're talking about just self care and that there's a, an increased awareness and focus and talk of self care these days, post COVID pandemic and all that. Folks tend to think of self care as, Oh, I'm really stressed out. I need to hit pause and go exercise, go for a walk. And Karie's like, that's treatment. What if we look at self care from a prevention perspective and self care are preventive activities, not okay I'm over maxed overloaded. I need to hit pause and take a break.

Shane: 34:00

No, that, that, that, I think, uh, it's, uh, I'll use a, I'll use a term that a prevenient act. And I think, um, the, uh, that context is really important and, and things like developing as obviously in that space, developing mindfulness. Is a mindful and these are meditative practices that are millennia old that all most religions have some sort of context for this and we just kind of hijack those ancient wisdoms and trying to make them new. Are we clever? It's like, dude, you're going back 2000 years, get a grip. It's okay. The old sometimes works. Let's run with it. But I think the, um, I think that it's important that this is part of the part of the resiliency developing. And so what, what is resilience? Is it earned? Is it learned? And you made a comment before about, you know, who am I? And that sort of things. And one of the, one of the things that we throw up in our resiliency space is the why. W A Y. Who are, who are you? Why are you? Who are you? Why are you? Why? You know, what's your way? What's your way? We talk about resiliency scripts, you know, and, and, and, uh, I use a cheeky term. I say, if you haven't got an RS. Uh, and that means if you haven't got a resiliency script, you're really stuck. You were going somewhere else, weren't you? So, uh, so, and again, the resiliency script is again, prevenient is okay. Uh, this is, I'm building this in place. So when these I'm, I'm watching these things emerge, I'm, I'm, I'm already hitting them off or I don't actually go there anymore. I don't get oversubscribed and overtaxed because I'm already aware of this mechanism or, and often people think the resiliency, and I'm a victim of this, this is, this is a confession time here though, uh, I'm, I, can I increase my capacity to do more? What, what more can I cram into my no margin schedule? What more load can I put on my back to carry? And then I get to the point where I'm going to collapse. Like, Oh, it's not fair. There's too much going on. a bailout. I need help. You know, and you go to that mode and you say, well, dude, hang on a minute. It's like, why'd you keep loading yourself up? Oh, because I could, because I felt okay. And then I didn't feel okay. Like you said, and then I'm going to take a pause. Whereas my pause tends to be kind of a, uh, kind of an, ah, you know, and, and then, and then you start complaining about, you know, the lack of resources and you've got to go, oh, dude, you know, just back it down a bit, man. You know, come on. You saw this coming. You still chose to load yourself up. So I think. Building resiliency, um, and, and again, part of what we, we talk about the resiliency definition is like a bungee rope. Resiliency doesn't stop you from falling because you will fall. Everyone falls. We all, we all do. I think that's one of the things that we say to young people and, you know, say, you know what guys, here's some reality checks for you. Just, just a couple of pointers here. Um, life's going to get tough. You're going to have some really messy stuff happen. In fact, you're going to have some tragedies. And then you'll die. It's like, what? What's this all about? I said, dude, you know, what have you been told? Yeah. You can be anything. Life is grand. If it's not working for you, you're doing something wrong. You can make it better. If you feel lousy, just take a pill and you'll be okay. That's it. That's the narrative they've been given. So there's absolutely no prevenient work in regard to, to building resiliency. It's like, well, hang on. There's an expectation, not, not of harm and damage. It's But a real expectation of a reality that we live in a world that is broken and, and stuff's going on. And in the old argument, you know, this yourself, Dave, as a recovery drug user, hurting people hurt people. And you, if you don't hurt someone, someone's going to hurt you. So how do you manage that? What does that look like? If there's an expectation of pain, but there's an expectation, you know what? Things can go wrong and I'm okay with it. I'm not going to avoid that. I'm ready for that. What does it really look like? I'm going to fall. Thank But is my bungee rope going to help me spring back or am I going to go splat? And, and that's kind of the agenda, the underlying agenda of what we do. And as I said before, alcohol and other drug use is a symptom of a bigger problem. It's, it creates its own milestone. It's, and it's a, it's such a shocking milestone that it takes all our attention. But we've got to get back using, using, uh, the Covey's quadrants. We've got to get back to the, the, the, the, the first quadrant, important and urgent. Not the, sorry, the important and not urgent quadrant, the strategic quadrant. What's really going on here? Sure, I can go after the symptom and it's horrendous and it's horrific and it needs to be addressed. No argument. But all I'm doing is symptom management. I'm not dealing with the disease. I'm not dealing with the cause. I'm not dealing with the dysfunction. So again, building into the culture, the very things that recovery people learn as they walk back out of this stuff. So that people don't walk into this space, they don't have to self medicate. Well, they don't get bored and say, Oh, I'm bored. You know, it's another story we get in that line. But I say, I think that's really important. That resiliency is, it's a learned thing. You know, some people are naturally resilient and I'm not one of those people. I am, people would argue that I should have been in a nut house a long time ago because I'm emotionally very fragile person. Cognitively very capable and able and my agency is very strong. But emotionally, I'm very fragile though, and my personality belies that, unfortunately. Uh, but yeah, I, stress and, and anxiety, and I've had two bouts of depression in my life. This just came out of left field, and um, you know, sometimes there's reasons for it, you know, the old principle about anxiety, you become anxious when you don't know what's coming next, you become depressed when you can't control what's coming next. So they're identifiable. Factors, but you know, I've had a couple of things that really knocked the socks off you. I mean, they, you know, it is shattering and you've no doubt experienced it as well. So, you know, some people are naturally half glass full, buoyant. They're always up beat. I've got friends like that, you know, nothing ever phases them. Genuinely, I'm not like that. So my, my resiliency has to be learned. It has to be intentional. And I have to understand strategies and act, enact those strategies. And I think for a larger and ever increasing number of our population, that's a reality that needs supporting. And I think part of our movement is to build that back into society. We're not solely responsible for that, but we are part of that architecture, I think that we need to, to invest in, so

Dave: 40:35

I can relate. Uh, I like to say that I can handle physical pain. I've got a high pain tolerance when it comes to that, but, uh, emotions, but I've had to, to learn a lot and still learning as well. Um, yeah, we should talk more about that, uh, offline as well. Uh, you, you mentioned your, your sort of slogan or saying, and. You included community resiliency. Can you unpack that for me a little bit?

Shane: 41:08

this, this can open up, um, quite a big brief. Uh, and look, I don't, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to make things too complicated, but, but, but I think one of the difficulties about a culture that continues to making, making things. And understanding accessible doesn't mean equal, sorry, does not equal necessarily equal dumbing it down. I think we do a great disservice, particularly the young people, we do a great disservice by dumbing stuff down. Deconstruction should, should never ever, this is where it's important in every education model, it should never ever undermine the whole of what you're trying to do. So when you deconstruct something down to its components and basically you, in so doing, you enable a person to understand a component. That's great. They've got that component, but they haven't got the whole. So basically they haven't learned anything. They've just picked up on an idea. They haven't understood what you're trying to teach. So good educators really get young people particularly and families to understand what it looks like to build. A resiliency script, a resiliency framework. So resilient communities. Now, if we go, we move out of, I hope some of the listeners will get this. Hopefully all of them will. And again, this is his communication theory at work, Shane. Are you going to dumb it down or are you going to deconstruct it or are you going to make it accessible? So probably theories in play here, people. In the comment section, be kind, all right? If I missed the mark, be kind. Um, if we look at things sociologically, and sociology is a very important, observational tool. It's, it's, it's an emerging science. I understand that. So, It tends to look cross sectionally at a society, at how it's functioning at any given time, and what's going on, some of the behaviors, some of the, some of the manifestations, some of the phenomena, some of the patterns. Perfect. We need to see that and understand what's going on, but getting behind that as to, you know, what, and again, this is where the, your cognitive domain. And your affective domain are both important. So cognitive domain deals with who, what, when, where, how, but affective domain deals with why. Now we say to young people, to families, and this is part of our standard narrative, uh, if you don't have a, if you don't know why, you are fodder for the system. A person without a sustainable because is easy to manipulate, coerce, seduce, and intimidate. A person with a sustainable because is harder to move. Not immovable. But harder to move. So what's your because, man? Now, the person who doesn't have a sustainable why often shifts to the, why not? Why not? Why not? You see? Now, the why not is a lovely cultural cliche that young people go, why not, man? Okay. So that's a hole you don't want to start digging, especially when 15. You don't want to dig that hole because that's a hole that leads to the place where you've been and then you've got to dig your way out of it. And that's a pig. Digging your way out of that why not hole is a pig. So let's talk about the why. Now resilient communities, and this is where it's important, anthropologically, now we move into the anthropological space, which is basically all the anthropology, study of all of humanity. So it deals with the, not just cross sections of phenomena and behavior and certain environments. It deals with start to finish. So it's, it's, it's all of life experience, including what you believe, you know, what's your paradigm? What's your worldview? Are you subject to meta narratives? If there's no meta narrative, what narrative are you subject to? What's informing your resiliency script? So where, where do you derive your principles for, for sound decision making from? Where do you derive your decisions for, you know, basic epistemology? How we know things to be true, you know, basically cohesion, coherence, and this is a very basic one. And those who are in this field will go, Oh, you're using the basic one, yeah I am. Cohesion, coherence, and pragmatism. In other words, does it hold together, does it make sense, and does it work, you know? Not just does it work, as William James, I think the father of American psychology, well truth is what works. Well, that's a very limited statement and it's misused by, by many, but the truth is what works, what is coherent, and what is cohesive. So this, yeah, this is logical and it makes sense. It holds together and it does actually work. It's empirically adequate, right? So that's really important. So I'm using some terms here, but my, my point is that when, when, when a community isn't resilient and it doesn't offer the emerging citizen a framework to develop their understanding of the world, then that creates a dissonance. This is really powerful though. Now, when I use it, when I say, and I'm sorry to some of you listeners, you might. This might trigger them. I do, I honestly do apologize. I don't want to do that. But if I throw out the term sexual abuse, automatically that triggers something in your head. When I say physical abuse, and you'll probably, this one for you, you know, I get that straight away. If I say verbal abuse, well, you know, straight away we get that. But if I say cultural abuse, what does that mean? What does that look like? And one of the biggest deconstructors of a human being, particularly males, is neglect. Science tells us that the evidence is out there that, and again, uh, apologies in advance for listeners and sufferers of sexual abuse. This is, this is awful. But when a girl is sexually abused, what it does to the amygdala and that's the emotional memory, if you like, of the brain, it does all sorts of horrible things. PTSD is in this space as well, as you, you're aware that trauma, that impact on that girl, as you can imagine is horrific, right? We're not going to go down that road. However, what they found the science. You do the same to get the same impact on a 12, 13 year old boy or a child, a male child. Same impact as sexual abuse on a girl. All you have to do is neglect him, just leave him alone, ignore him. Same trauma, same deep amygdala brain trauma. Now that is cultural abuse. Now you want to, when you're, when you're suffering from that, you don't have any resiliency capacity. You don't have the basics of, you know, without even going into the belief systems and values and worldviews, going to the fundamentals of loving family, family that's set well, a family that sets boundaries. Hopefully they've got a worldview that informs those boundaries. Rules. Why? Because something else is informing those rules. We just made it up as we went along, which is what the Nazis did in World War ii. Of. It was utterly barbaric, immoral. But to them it was, no, this is, this is our rules, this is, this is our worldview. So again, what's informing the behavior? So when it comes to building resilient communities, we need to be talking to. Not just the family, it's important, but what's informing the family and what's informing the culture, because, you know, who's, who's crafting. And as I said, , rules don't change society, society changes rules. So whoever's controlling the levers of policy starts to say, like in Australia, the, the, the stoners want to take charge, want to get the government, they get the government, then they throw a, let's legalize weed bill into the, and hey, everyone wants weed, and they start their propaganda campaign, and they push their agenda and their narrative, and then people are informed by that. And if there's no other informing narrative in the marketplace, so why is, why, why not use weed? Why not use drugs ? They make you feel good. Sure, there's some downsides, but as long as you don't hurt anybody, what's the harm? But we know that all drug use is a wrecking ball, and again, societal wrecking ball, cultural wrecking ball. This doesn't add to culture. This creates a destructive culture. So that's important distinction. So what we be building resilient communities, we need to visit every aspect. So, you know, what do people think and why do they believe the way they believe? What are the, you know, what's informing that? And once you get people into that space, Dave, they all suddenly go, Oh, I never thought of that. In other words, you know, if I, you don't want to be a, we use the term wheelbarrow. I don't know if you're familiar with that term. One of our website, no brand of website. We've got a page called the wheelbarrows. Now wheelbarrows are empty, powerless vessels that are filled by someone else and pushed by someone else. Every single person on the planet born today, up to the age of around 10, is a wheelbarrow. Someone else is filling them, and someone else is pushing them. Now when you hit adolescence, your brain kicks into a new level, you start to be self determining, they call it rebellion, it's not rebellion, we're designed to seek reward and exploration, not rebellion and experimentation. And so what happens is, if they're not informed properly, properly, they will pursue experimentation. and rebellion rather than reward and exploration. And so what happens is this, this person's a wheelbarrow. So who's pushing you and who's filling you guys. And as adults, you got to go, Hey man, you, you, you're like a wheelbarrow, man. Well, what do you mean by this? Well, someone's filling him and pushing you, man. Cause you know, you're just a parrot. You just, you just bark and what you've heard from social media is, is, is, you know, and again, a person without a sustainable because it was easy to manipulate, coerce, seduce and intimidate. And so young people want to be empowered. Oh, I'm in charge. I'm in control. Now you're noisy on social media, dude, but let's push a few buttons and see what comes out, you know? It's like, are you an influencer or are you simply, are you a thermometer or are you a thermostat? Yeah. That's the other one. Thermostats set the temperature, thermometers just follow it. So anyway, I hope all that's a lot of words there, but I hope that kind of makes sense because we want to, we have, you have to go bigger than just tactical ideas. You have to move into more strategic space when it comes to building resiliency into culture.

Dave: 51:33

yes. I mean, I'm going to say it again, culture is the strategy. And one of my little, uh, soap boxes or rants is that I feel like in prevention, we get so focused on what are actually tactics, the programs, the initiatives. We don't step back and look at what is the big picture strategy as a whole. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we've, you've talked a little bit about, uh, RS resiliency scripts. Can you, can you hit us with like a, an example or what could one look like?

Shane: 52:06

Oh, now, now you're asking for some trade craft secrets and some, some, uh, some, some deep copyrighted. Proprietary information. Absolutely. Look, I think again, these things coalesce together. I think that's really important. And as we know, you know, we, we talk about it. You guys have ever used the, the, the five, you know, the five, uh, the hand, the hand model of support. Have you heard that one before? Basically, you've got five people in your life that are, that are for you. So you, you've got, you know, a, a, you know, a caring parent, um, it helps you get a grip if you like, you know, you get the caring parent, you've got a medical professional, whether medical or, you know, that you can trust that it, that it wants to, it looks after your health, well being. Hopefully you've got both parents love you and it's obviously various family constellations don't permit that, but at least one parent that actually cares about you, cares about your development, sets boundaries, you know, has expectations. And invest in you, uh, one helpful friend who gets you to understand you and supportive of you not to do bad things, but you know, and one other, um, preferably, uh, an adult, a mentor of some kind. So those, those factors work together, but when those are in play and they're helping you understand what it's like, okay. So building goals. So we got purpose and you got meaning, and this is what we want to distinguish between the two. And I think both are important. Absolutely. But one, one layer is higher again. And I think this is where one of the, one of the biggest, um, and it's a good, it's a good strategy you have in place and we hear people using it all the time. What's your purpose? And, and, and so finding purpose in life is very important. So causes become the thing, everyone's got a cause, you know, and they're going to rant and rave about their cause. And some of those causes can be very good, others can be very, very toxic, uh, but that's their thing. You know, and all of a sudden their identity is in their cause. So, crafting identity without being cause focused is important, and therefore you go one level back because meaning should umbrella purpose. Because purpose can be taken away from you, sadly, for all sorts of reasons. And therefore, I think it was Bainbridge and Stark, two of the world's leading sociologists 90s, they wrote a very, very good textbook which was used when in and out of Uh, use because it's an older data, but it was called religion, deviance, and social control. You know, they were looking at, at the, the, the sort of metafactors in culture. The Bainbridge and Stark, you know, and there's lots of different internal and external factors. You've heard all these before for resiliency and, and they're all great. They're wonderful. But they basically distilled it down, this is going back seminal work, this is a seminal work done to four key elements. Um, every child, every developing person needs, , good education. Now we've, we've touched on that. It's not just cognitive domain. It's affective domain. They enjoy being at school. They enjoy it. They learn how to learn. That's it. So they are lifelong learners. Not just parroting information to pass an exam and move on to the next thing. Uh, and that their experience at school is, it's socially enjoyable. It's therefore bullying and, and stress and all those things can be a real, real impediment to, to enjoying the learning education experience. Second one is. Uh, family, your family, as I said before, I won't go into the details again. You can imagine loving, caring, supportive, invested your family. You know, that's really important. So equipping them to do that. And so then kids involved in community groups, right? For example, sporting clubs, um, you know, sport is a huge, uh, has a huge capacity to, to build resiliency and build capacity and build agency and people. It's fantastic. The downside of sport is that it does have a performance component to it. And at some point, your performance is not going to match the expectation and that ends your connection with that level of community, and that's always a tough one. So that can be a, and particularly, particularly if people have invested their whole sense of resiliency around the success in that arena, they are undone and they're the ones who usually go hit the bottle or, you know, want to feel better or, you know. Because their identity was tied up in their achievement or their purpose. So, but, so, but don't, don't get me wrong, very important, but, but meaning. And then they said the last one's interesting meaning. And this is a, we say that to students when we're talking to them and the parents, in fact, who has said, I think I mentioned this previously on other events, but who has said or thought in the last five to 24 hours that they say the last 10 minutes. I'm bored. Every hand in the place goes up. Every hand. I said, it's interesting. This is going back to Bainbridge and Stark, their work. And they said, you know what, you're the most entertained generation that's ever lived on the planet, bar none. Bar none. You are entertained to the max. You've got every kind of gadget and idea and potential. I said, yet you're simultaneously the most bored. What's going on? Boredom, according to Bainbridge and Stark and their sociological, uh, spelunking of the data. Said, It's got very little to do with the lack of entertainment and everything to do with the lack of meaning. That is the key issue here. And in fact, a person with a, again, get back to the sustainable why, the sustainable because, if you've got a strong, immovable, sustainable why, your family can be dysfunctional and gone, your friends can be dysfunctional and gone, and your purpose can go. But you can still hold that. That's missing from the equation at the moment in the culture. That's been excised because when you want to deconstruct culture and you want it to go a certain way, you've got it. And, and, and Karl Marx, you know, he was, he was in, and he talked about religion. He said, religion is the opiate of the masses. In other words, we need to disconnect them from religion because it's, it's just a, it's another drug. But he had an agenda. So what, you know, using that, using religion as a meaning, for example, using it as a meaning platform, there are other meaning platforms, but that, that, that's one of them. So the idea is. Okay. Well, what are you going to replace it with? Well, we'll replace it with our ideology. So an ideology then takes up place and the question is, that's fine. There's lots of ideologies. There's lots of ideas. There's lots of, but which one is sustainable? Which one is going to build healthy, safe, productive, caring, supportive, mutually affirming communities and which one's going to deconstruct them and which one is a cultural abuse and which one is a cultural. Um, uh, cultural, uh, salve is the word, salve. And I think they're the, they're the, they're the questions that need to be brought into play. So when we're talking to young people, we don't just talk about, you know, okay, you can do this. You enjoy a sporting club. Um, you can join a community of faith. You can do, you can, uh, you know, have a religion, have a philosophy, have a, have a whatever, um, you, you, you want to build a family. You want to find that five connection network. So all those things, it's not necessarily a series of tactics you engage, but it is a series of relationships and involvements that you embrace. And that's where, this is the big kicker. We need help to do that. I'm sure your journey, Dave, out of your, your, uh, your recovery wasn't done without support and facilitation at some point. And that's it. And that's it. And that's a human experience. That's the human experience. So what we do in a digital age where we disconnect personally to the whole, you know, here's my phone, which app, which app will help me do this. Don't get me wrong. There's some really good apps out there and they're great and they're supportive and they can help you, but at the end of the day. We're, we're human, the human animal needs meaningful connection. It needs it and it flourishes on it. It builds on it. And that flourishing is what we want to help facilitate in community. So therefore, in all those words, I haven't given you, here's five quick, easy answers, but I've given you the key that, that are necessary. And it is labor intensive in one sense. And that's why the, you know, the digital digital age has. It's basically disempowered us to be the change agents we want to be. We want to try and switch that around again, using technology to help us be a change agent, not take away from our capacity to be a change agent.

Dave: 1:00:52

Absolutely. Using it as a tool on the mean and talking about the why or the because, I know you can't see it from your perspective, but my computer wallpaper is my why statement. Uh, it's my nice little reminder every day why I do what I do. Uh, just to be a nice little, yeah, just a reminder. It's so important. It's my, my, my compass

Shane: 1:01:16

Perfect. That's it. Yep. Compass. Perfect. That's, that's, and that's giving communities back compasses. Really important.

Dave: 1:01:26

we've been chatting for a little while now, so before we wrap up, I've got to hear about World Resiliency Day. Tell me all the things about it.

Shane: 1:01:38

Sure. What, what, what we had in abeyance for some time is this, again, obviously we talked about it at length today and. And thanks for letting me parrot on, uh, appreciate that. Um, the, the resiliency dynamic is really important. Again, we, it's a key element to all the things that, that we, we talk about, not the only element, but it's a key element. And it's one of the, again, using your terms of foundational pillar and what we do and, and what it did sat there for a long time. And this year we decided. Looking again at World Drug Day, well, with the World Day Against Drug Trafficking and Drug Misuse in the United Nations set up, it's June 26th, kind of important and absolutely vital, we support it, we, we speak into that from a prevention and recovery perspective, uh, and again, there's lots of different angles around that, which we understand and value, but our, our primary focus is prevention and drug use exiting recovery, so that's kind of our, our, our priority, but we thought A lot of the language around that space was very much about, and understandably, that's not a critical thing at all. Please, please hear that. It's about pushing back against bad stuff and we need to do that again. Pushing back against the bad is a key element, but at the same time, you've got to. sew something in and, there's an old, again, what sort of an anthrological principle, you know, it's where you stand determines what you look at and what you look at determines what you see. So the, the question about perspective is, you know, where are you standing, man? Where are you standing? Come on. Okay. I get it. That's why you're seeing what you see. Come, come this way. Just come, come this way. Now have a, have another look. What do you see now? Oh. Okay, you know, paradigms are important and we've all, we've all got our confirmation biases and we all get our little things that we go on, but, but looking at different perspectives is important. So we wanted to do to, rather than being a reactive and reaction is important to push back against the bad is vital, but at the same time, part of that pushing back is adding value. Throwing in a proactive and a protective element. So we talk about risk issues, risk factors. We also want to talk about protective factors. So World Resiliency, we created World Resiliency Week internationally. Um, no one else had done it. So we thought, well, let's, let's launch it. So we, we launched it. Soft, soft launch, I must admit. Because it was just after World Drug Day we did this. And we've created a, a new web platform and we're developing that. And we were, we're opening that up to our international partners in prevention. And, uh, we want them to be, uh, guest bloggers and we'll do bits and pieces and we'll, we'll do podcasts around that as well. But the idea is to really help still, we're still obviously looking at the, the, the drug issue, but again, treating the drug issue seriously, but as a symptom, again, going back to that symptom model, it is a symptom, okay? And it's a symptom we have to address, but we address it by looking at causes. So let's go back to causes, you know, and trauma informed drug use, that's a clear and easy one. Okay, we need to deal with trauma, you know, bad environments, kids growing up in poverty and in abuse, you know, all those things. That's, that's, that's an easy, easy is the wrong word. That's an easy understander, not an easy fix. I get it. We need to help them get out of poverty. We need to get them employed, educated, good healthcare. That makes sense. Perfect. That's easy. Sorry. It's an easy, you know, you understand what I'm saying. It's, it's a hard thing to do. But it's an easy one to understand. But when it comes to the Western culture, where we live pretty much in luxury by comparison to a lot of the developing countries, we don't have the trauma of abject poverty, you know, slum living. We don't have the trauma of. Yeah, parental neglect and abuse, uh, sexual abuse, you know, we, we, we have this kind of comfortable lifestyle that keeps informing us that we try and be as pain free as possible. I think Freud, Freud got one thing right. He said, you know, most of human behavior can be distilled down to maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. Now that was an observation, not an affirmation by the way, but he was calling it out, you know, I think basically that, so, but we know it doesn't, doesn't develop us. It's a nice thing and it can give us, it can alleviate and it can. And can amuse, but pleasure does not develop us ultimately does not develop us, the things that have shaped your life. I think you mentioned before were, and as ugly as have been is a lot of the trauma you've experienced. It's you are stronger, better, wiser. A more robust, more capable than ever been before, not because of pleasure, but because of trauma. So, and again, tasking resiliency to engage that negative resource proactively to bring about change is something we want to see through Resiliency, World Resiliency Week. And that's kind of the, the big driver. And of course, there's lots of viewpoints, yours, and obviously they can speak into that and we will, we will harness those and glean from those. And that's what we want to do. We don't, it's not just about Delgarno, it's our thing. Although we, Auspice and we own the domains. It really is about, yeah, well, you had to register them. You know, the bad guys get in and they do their thing. Uh, but we want to create a resource that, uh, that, that helps people look at more proactive ways of, of, of doing things and again, How do we move, and what do we do to shift that rather than leave you in that space and resilient people bounce back. Non resilient people have real trouble bouncing back if they bounce back at all. They fall without a bungee rope. And I bungee it's fun. Uh, but if I've got no bungee rope, I fall and the fall's great. Falls awesome. It's the, uh, deceleration trauma that does the damage. It's the sudden thud at the end. And if I haven't got a bungee rope, I'm in trouble. And so we want to give communities, young people, families, bungee ropes. We want to give them bungee ropes. So yeah, when they do fall, and they will fall, because we all fall. Life is, life's tough, but we can bounce back. And drug use is not part of that, that bungee rope. Drug use is, is that the default position of, I feel like crap. I want to engage a substance, I feel better, even if just for a minute. And as Dr. John Smith said, I feel better, but I'm only getting worse. I feel better, but I'm only getting worse. I feel better. I'm only getting worse. So each little high just takes us to a deeper hole. So again, we want to, you know, it's not just telling people that's a problem. How do we avoid that problem and how do we become the people that, you know, if we need to transition from victimhood, how do we do that to prevent, to prevent us from entering into whatever reason into a substance use, how can we do that? Prevention is better than cure every single day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Dave: 1:08:22

How, how can our listeners get involved the next World Resiliency Day? How can they get involved with the resources? What all you got?

Shane: 1:08:32

Sure. Look, we'd like to, uh, firstly, obviously provide the website, not just so you go along and tag in, obviously become a member, sign up for the newsletter, which we're developing like this is an emerging resource, but also, um, and again, everyone wants to pitch their stuff. So I'm gonna be careful about this kind of offer, but, uh, you know, if, if again, people like the people in your journey, you're on Dave. Rather than, uh, you know, a psychologist, and again, I'm not here to be critical, but a psychologist says, Oh, I've got a great resiliency program. I might be able to sell it through this website. If that's, if that's your agenda, that really approaches me, you know, you've got your work. It's great. And, you know, we can, if you're doing a great job and it's working to help people become resilient, stay away from drugs, we might, you know, stick you on our website as a partner, you know, great, knock yourself out. But we're really interested in people's. Uh, journey and, and, and again, lived experience and earned resiliency that can be harnessed to equip. And so how that frames, it could be a blog post, it could be a, a tactical, uh, you know, a series of tactical things that you talked about or, or strategic things, or maybe just a story, you know, that, you know, that not just tells a horror story and all of a sudden I got happy and life is good, but it's like, you know, these are the things that helped me journey out of that. And, and really creating an empowering vehicle that it is again, the digital space that it's one dimensional in that sense. So, and so it's not the answer. It is a component in a, hopefully an overall strategy where people are building that five finger network of support, mentors, good families, stronger communities, you know, good mental health and health professionals that are helping them make smarter decisions and friends that care about their wellbeing, not just having a good time together, you know, that's kind of. Those kind of things we want to foster and then that's the one of the reasons why we created the space and of course ultimately to keep people away from substance use because all substance use no matter how the initial buzz gives you is a wrecking ball to your humanity and the pro drug advocates and the psycho noughts that love to to lord this stuff as their new religion It's, it's undoing them. And if it doesn't kill them now, it'll kill them later. And I think one recovering drug, uh, drug group says drug use, you either quit or you die, and that's pretty much distilled down to its raw essence. And that's not to pick on, please not here to say denigrate drug users. You're all bunch of, that's not the narrative we're using here. We know that this is undoing you. We know this is unraveling you and your defense mechanisms, like first person that told you, Hey Dave, you're an alcoholic. Oh, screw you, man. I'm not an alcoholic. Drop dead. I don't have a problem. You got a problem. You know, it's like there's a wall up. We get that. And then that drug use is a, is a, is a terrible master. And it's a jealous master mistress. It's jealous. And it will protect that addiction. It'll protect it with everything it's got to your detriment, sadly. But that's another, that's a whole different journey and recovery, which we won't do

Dave: 1:11:45

Well, I see the, the creation, the launch, the promotion of world resiliency day is just elevating that, that conversation or creating opportunities to have that resiliency conversation. And through those conversations, you'll create ripples or we will create ripples and those ripples will start to create culture change.

Shane: 1:12:08

What wonderfully said, man. I, beautiful. Thank you. And I think that's, that's what we're aiming to do. And I think again, collectively, that's what we want to do. I think it's not, and not just a Delgarno. What's it our initiative, but it's not a Delgarno issue. It's, it's us. And there's already Drug Free America is one of our partners already on the, on the website. Uh, we've got, uh, other ambassadors that are in, uh, in different spaces in our, in Australian community that are on board. So, you know, we're really, um, yeah, we're really keen to see not our resource used, but the resource grow and become the tool that can be for communities.

Dave: 1:12:47

Beautiful. And in one of my other kind of, kind of rants or big passion points is that in prevention, we are all leaders. It doesn't matter what your title is. You could be a parent, a friend, a colleague, a director, a boss. We're all leaders. And from the book, The Culture Code, uh, the author talks about, um, he calls it the bad apple story. And it was research done where they had an actor secretly He was a member of this group of students. They're tasked with creating like a marketing plan for a business. They had a specific amount of time. They're all strangers, but this actor would play different roles in the groups to see the impact. That, that would have on the group dynamics, the group culture, and he would play like Eeyore, Wah, Bah, Humbug, he'd be a slacker, he'd be a jerk and in all of the groups, how he acted would shape or shift the culture. If he was just kind of the slacker, the group would slack off and wouldn't perform as well. They'd say, Oh yeah, we did great. We did awesome. But really it was rather subpar performance. If he was the jerk, they would all end up going after each other. And there was one group though, that was the outlier group. And it's because no matter what role the actor played, there was one individual there that would simply deflect, disarm and create safe space and invite everybody else in. And the moral of that story is that one person, no matter your position, how you show up, how you interact with others, can help shape and influence culture. And us as prevention leaders, how we show up, how we interact, how we carry ourselves can have positive impacts in culture.

Shane: 1:14:43

No,

Dave: 1:14:43

Really can.

Shane: 1:14:44

absolutely no, I think that's it. Vital. And I think that's where they're getting the thermometer versus thermostat model comes in. Now are you a thermostat? And 'cause if you're a thermostat, you set temperature. Now, good or bad, I think about, uh, Dr. Bill Clinton, not the president, Dr. Bill Clinton wrote a book on leadership. He said Leadership is influence, uh, and influence is leadership. So whatever influence you have, is your, your leading. So again, what influence are you bringing to the city? And that you've just indicated. So what influence are you bringing? And people think, oh, you have to be a strong personality, a. A, a directive coercive, you know, or seductive, and you carry yourself again with that, the things you've just indicated beautifully, though, I think that's a really important distinction. And so when, and that's what we say to people, parents are kind of in despair because their kids are subject to this cultural bombardment around substance use and all kids are doing it. And this is normal behavior. And the normalization, uh, mantra is one of the key issues to undermine culture. Creating a new normal is really, really, really important. And families still have a good, solid family. Maybe a single parent family, maybe a blended family. But if they have a good, strong narrative, they've got very clear scripts in their home, and they hold those scripts in loving, caring, supportive, empowering vibes, then you're going to have a huge influence on how your kids see the world, how they place themselves in it, how they act in it. And, uh, again, those other influences trying to come at them, they'll be like, my, my wife's pretty solid, dude. You know, I'm, I'm okay. I'm okay. Yeah. They get bounced around. Look, the peer pressure is awful. I know what that's like. And, uh, but to watch, to watch grown men fold does my head in, just does my head in. Especially in the alcohol space, I'm thinking, dude, what is going on here? This is the grown up space. Can you be a grown up? Can you? Anyway, that's another conversation.

Dave: 1:16:47

I would say, that'll have to be a whole nother podcast episode..Well, um, I'm gonna put a lot of links to, to your websites in the show notes for listeners, uh, so they can all get connected and, and be a part of World Resiliency Day. And I've got one last question for you. Before we, uh, hit stop record and this, uh, I, I didn't prep you for it. So take your time.

Shane: 1:17:11

sure.

Dave: 1:17:12

If you were to tell our listeners, if you're going to remember one thing from this episode, remember this, what would that be?

Shane: 1:17:22

I think for the purposes of today, know your why. Know your why. And some, for some people that's going to be a little easier than others. But understanding, you know, why, why am I, first order questions are often ignored by our culture. Second order questions are quite common. Now where am I going? Who's going with me? What's in it for me? What am I going to do? What am I going to become? They're important questions. No argument there. But the first order question is why am I here? Where did I come from? What is my purpose? What of, what of evil? Yeah. What, you know, they're the, they're the first order questions. And if we engage with those, that helps us discover the why that we are. And I think if people engage actively rather than, and this is, this is really important Dave for your listeners, don't, don't bump this question and it bump you back and you walk away from it because it will bump you back because the initial, if you're not used to asking why. This is not in your world. It's just another thing you have to do. And I just, I'm too tired, I'm too busy. I'm like, ah, I just... What I'm doing is working and every now and then I have a few drinks, you know, take the edge off, you know. Okay, I don't need to think about the big, the big issues here. It's too complicated, you know. So that's, that, that's what you hear coming back. Can I encourage listeners to push again? No, no. This is not just about me. It's about my family. It's about my future. It's about the future of my community. And I think once you start engaging in that space, then your capacity to build a, to create a resiliency script is exponentially enhanced. And that is not, remember, it's not just about your resiliency. You become, as you said beautifully before, you become that leader. And our culture like never before needs leaders, 13 year old leaders, 18 year old leaders. 45 year old leaders, 96 year old leaders. We need people who can speak, you know, resiliency, bring resiliency, because they know why, and they know how to help people move forward. And I think that, and I, again, fact check me on the quote here, Carl Ward or Carl Adams is a, some sort of academic who said, he who knows how will always have a job. He who knows why will always be his boss. So I think if, if you want to be a person that's going to shape influence, not just for your success, but for those around you, then know your why. Sustainable, defendable why. Know it.

Dave: 1:20:11

And with that last bit of wisdom there, I will simply say. It's been an honor. Truly grateful for our conversation and hopefully future collaborations because prevention is better together. So thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule

Shane: 1:20:29

Thank you. Thank you very much. That is absolute joy.

Dave: 1:20:35

That concludes this episode. Thanks for tuning in. Be sure to hit the subscribe button and share this episode with a friend before you leave. And we look forward to seeing you on social media because prevention is better together. Together we are stronger.