Ryan Hampton | The Opioid Crisis, The Sackler Family, & The Purdue Pharma Case

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01:37 In the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the nation through a series of radio broadcast known as the Fireside Chats. His aim was to reassure the common man that our society would recover from its troubled times. From 1930 and I deal with a different kind of fire For a new era of worldly frustration we offer a fresh conversation. I'm Greg Carlwood These are The Hireside Chats Well, this is the way Hireside Chatters doing what we do from sunny San Diego. I'm Greg Carlwood and with nearly all the cascading problems facing the world when you dig deeper into each one You can usually find that a multi-generational billionaire family of the propped up parasite class is responsible or at least has found a way to seize the opportunity To suck up some profits out of the massive fallout of our misfortunes while the rest of us pay the cost

02:31 Education, media, healthcare technology for-profit prisons food oil energy and of course medicine all have their designated cabals and corporations carving out a piece of the pie. And today we're going to talk about the Sackler family Purdue Pharma the opioid crisis and how we see several underlying infrastructural mechanisms actually serving the interests in the nefarious few while the victims and society at large are left holding the bag And breaking it all down today is our guest Ryan Hampton, who knows this subject as well as anyone from a personal and professional perspective. Ryan has seen the struggle firsthand as the prescription pain medication given to him after a hiking injury severely derailed his life to the point of homelessness but he has risen up to be one of the most powerful voices and advocates in the recovery movement, a commendable mission he is thoroughly dedicated to

03:25 He's also the author of 2018 American Fix, Inside the Opioid Addiction Crisis and How to End It. As well as the recently released Unsettled how the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy failed the victims of the American overdose crisis which was written in real time as he served as co-chair of the official unsecured creditors committee that acted as a watchdog during the court proceedings as Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy to protect itself from over 2600 lawsuits stemming from its role in fueling the U.S overdose crisis it's a topic well worth our time so let's get into it the addiction recovery advocate opioid crisis commentator and thorn in the sackler side Ryan welcome to The Higher Side Greg thanks for having me really excited to be here, to be able to talk about this topic and thank you for giving airtime because it certainly isn't getting enough so I appreciate you and all your listeners

04:22 Kind of you to say, and we are lucky to have you here. I appreciate your dedication to this issue that everyone seems to know about but it just seems to keep snowballing So many people know at least a few folks who have fallen into this trap Three or four guys I went to high school with are no longer with us And i'm sure a lot of people out there can say something similar I really enjoyed both your books, so much to talk about. But if we were to start with an overview of the opioid crisis and the size and scope of how it's affected the country and the world at large what are these statistics and data that you could give us to get the ball rolling?

05:01 Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question so you know the opioid overdose crisis today looks very different from what it looked like just a few years ago when I found recovery you know i got into recovery in 2015 and I can remember hearing the numbers you know we were talking somewhere in the range of 47 000 49 000 deaths to overdose and at that time in 2015 they were talking about it being historic highs right like this being a massive crisis that needed to be dealt with Just last week actually the federal government updated their numbers just specific to drug overdose and it is now over a hundred and one thousand Americans who have lost their lives to a preventable Drug overdose, and I say preventable because there's so much that The government could be doing and that local governments could be doing that would prevent these overdoses But they're not doing. Now to give you just the size in scope

06:00 We believe I believe folks in my community believe that that hundred and one thousand number is actually Grossly under reported. I have friends who died of overdose but on their death certificates it shows Not overdoses the primary cause of death, but something else so it's not really necessarily reported as an overdose So we believe that data is tragically underreported and it is probably much more. It also doesn't include alcohol poisoning or alcohol overdose, if you were to include those numbers you'd probably be looking at closer to 375-400 thousand Americans but just to keep it simple

06:43 We're talking about 101,000 mostly now coming from illicit fentanyl overdoses that are involved in these numbers. But right now in the United States there's actually two federally declared public health crises one being COVID the other one being drug overdose right? If you look at the reported numbers, right? Just what the government gives us. Right in terms of numbers you're looking somewhere around 7 to 800 thousand COVID deaths maybe a little bit more based on their data based on their data 101 thousand overdose numbers so you're looking for about every seven to eight reported federal government data COVID deaths You're looking at one drug overdose death yet Federal spending

07:30 on addressing the overdose crisis in this country is about 800 times less than what it is with COVID. Like we get the sideline left and right It has a tremendous impact on our communities. It has somewhere near $2.5 trillion dollar impact on the economy in terms of lost productivity, wages and healthcare costs. It has a huge impact on our criminal justice system and education system Even if you identify as someone who doesn't know someone who struggles with addiction or You don't know someone who's died of an overdose I can guarantee one way or another. You are impacted either through your insurance rates, the services your community is providing to your taxes It impacts all of us yet we are seen as kind of this redheaded stepchild

08:25 when it comes to providing services. And I still believe that has a lot to do with generational and systemic stigma against people who use drugs, against people who are in recovery. And if the government doesn't get their act together, if local communities don't get their act together to start addressing drug overdose like the national crisis that is, that number's gonna continue to just skyrocket Yes, that is a great overview and good points too. There are a lot of ways to move numbers the way you want them to go and data isn't always as neutral as we're told it is in really any case. And not to talk too much about COVID but it's also interesting that very companies were told to trust get us out of that mess are some of those same companies complicit in the opioid crisis right?

09:19 Absolutely, it's frustrating. I mean it's absolutely frustrating. I'll just pivot to this. We also have seen situations and even in Purdue Pharma, I write about it in Unsettled they unleashed Oxycontin to an unsuspecting market they were in cohorts with the FDA to get it approved They have pled guilty twice in federal court to crimes as a company yet they also were in development for an addiction treatment drug right. They were just approved for no locks on drugs which is the anti overdose anecdote just a couple of months ago right so it's like,

10:01 Add to the problem and then create the cure. You know, so I mean we've seen this happen time and again with pharmaceutical manufacturing distributing companies Pfizer right now making the vaccine, they have really dropped the ball in terms of production for naloxone. And we have communities that are dying because they can't get that anti-overdose response measure because of all of the problems and the pipeline problems and production problems Because they're so focused on the vaccine and it makes us really angry because I think you can walk and chew gum at the same time, especially when you're a multi-billion dollar company like some of these pharmaceutical companies.

10:43 Mm-hmm. And I learned from your book that Pfizer is largely a household name today because of the deceptive marketing tactics of Arthur Sackler, and Johnson & Johnson is the company who synthesized or introduced fentanyl and you told me they actually have a hand in controlling some poppy fields in Afghanistan? Yep! Yeah, a dirty world. Arthur Sackler who's like the patriarch of the Sackler family got his first gig really big gig with Pfizer around marketing right? And I write about it in Unsettled at length but Arthur Sackler figured out a way to turn medicine into marketing

11:28 He figured out how to market medicine the same way that we market McDonald's, Coca-Cola. You know he can kind of be known as like the Don Draper of pills if you want to draw that type of analogy but Pfizer was his first major client. Yeah I had that quote from your book The Don Draper of Pills very good He apparently, to quote the book, he built his toxic empire through the magic of advertising. Through the magic of repeating the name of the drug and a claim about the drug and a lie about the drug over and over. His brothers did it too and their kids did it in the company those kids owned Purdue Pharma built the world's most wildly ambitious marketing machine and sales force to push a single pill Oxycontin

12:15 Yeah, and I mean Greg like one of the more frustrating things too is even today right in 2022. You know there's certain things that federal government regulators could do to prevent this and something that i have pushed for and many advocates in the drug policy community have pushed for, and even pain advocates who rely on Oxycontin and other opioids for massive chronic pain issues is a prohibition on marketing of these harmful substances. Right? Like what we're pushing for isn't to abolish opioids so that's not the solution I mean there are people who rely on these medications for extraordinary pain

12:56 The problem was the weaponization of the American medicine cabinet with Oxycontin, right? The problem was the marketing and flooding of these medications and pills into these communities with lies. So we need to figure out how we can have some sort of prohibition on marketing that has been a very very tough job with Congress, right? And the FDA. And you can only imagine why because of the massive amount of political influence that these companies have on, you know, the federal government state governments even local governments it should really

13:34 piss anybody off who looks under the hood for how this system works. I had no idea what i was getting into when i signed up to be co-chair of that committee and was appointed by the DOJ What i saw, was nothing other than a sham like a process of a sham from how we got into this mess to how it was dealt with in bankruptcy court. The system was stacked against normal everyday people from day one." That is a common theme around here, whatever the subject we are talking about is and when it comes to the marketing what are some of the biggest lies in that marketing? That's non-addictive and safe and effective I would assume but maybe there are some others that aren't quite as obvious

14:24 Sure. So like, let's start really quick with going back into the 90s right? Late 90s when the FDA gave the drug approval new drug approval known as an NDA to Purdue Pharma The drug was approved by a NDA officer that worked for the FDA called Curtis Wright Dr. Curtis Wright. Doctor Wright actually invited Purdue Pharma to a hotel in Rockville, Maryland that was only about a couple blocks away from the FDA to meet with him and essentially let Purdue Pharma write their own new drug approval recommendation to the FDA that Curtis Wright submitted under his own name.

15:15 Surprise, surprise. Dr Wright left the FDA shortly after Oxycontin was approved and put onto the market and took a $400,000 job at Purdue right? So I mean if that doesn't scream corruption to you, I don't know what does where Purdue was really able to Sneak into the market under the claim that it was less than 1% addictive to folks who took it. Was something called the delayed absorption statement, right? It was on the black box warning that the FDA approved. The delayed absorption statement basically said that because OxyContin had this protective coating on it, that it would be released into the bloodstream over 12 hours. It wouldn't be something that would be instant release or also otherwise known as IR.

16:10 And because of this delayed absorption of the product, it was less than 1% addictive. The FDA allowed that right? Allowed that marketing. Curtis Wright wrote it and Purdue really doubled down on that messaging hired doctors, they had massive amounts of television ads. They did educational forums with different pain management folks here in the United States and abroad where they hammered that messaging into them that it was less than 1% addictive, that this was a revolutionary drug that was going to just change the course of how we treated pain Now what we saw as a result of that

16:53 was a market, right? That was craving the medication because they were being prescribed to it for things like fibromyalgia and minor back pain and minor surgeries and sport injuries for kids who are in high school. And the market continued to grow. And then we started to see this ballooning pill mill epidemic, which is how I got caught up in it. In the early 2000s doctors literally coming out of retirement who were ophthalmologists and gynecologists and we're not paying specific doctors saw the dollar sign saw the incentives that were coming from Purdue and companies like it and we're opening these clinics everywhere And before you knew it

17:39 Oxycontin became a cure-all pill for everything. I can remember my doctor telling me that it even would help with my depression! I had a doctor that told me not to worry, that if i felt kind of woozy or I was feeling a little sick... If I didn't have the medication That this was just very normal for people who were on these and It didn't mean that I was drug dependent Or I was addicted It just meant that I was quote-unquote pseudo addicted which was a term coined by Dr. David Haddix at Purdue Pharma who worked for Purdue, who just made this term up out of nowhere printed it in medical journals that said that pseudo addiction is just it feels like addiction but it's not really addiction because you have a significant pain issue. The whole thing was a racket

18:32 Now underneath this though, the federal government and state governments didn't just allow this to happen. They almost incentivized it to happen right? It's frustrating because it was just a fix all 360. Yeah and good point about what doctors tell their patients because I think with this issue there is a lot of Maybe victim blaming or just a lack of empathy people say things like well if you're stupid enough to get hooked on Oxycontin I don't know what to tell ya and The reality is that? People in the early stages before this drug had the reputation it has they're told by their doctors that it's not addictive That'll help with depression all kinds of things, and that's obviously because they're getting their kickbacks but

19:23 You gotta have some empathy for people who are straight up lied to maybe if someone gets hooked on oxycontin today with all the things we know about it maybe you wouldn't have the same level of sympathy but the reason i got the reputation that did is because it did so much damage before people really knew. Right and i mean its hard for me to, Sometimes look back to 2003, 2004 when I really started using these medications a lot particularly Oxycontin. And I feel naive, right? Because I wish I would have known then what I know now. And sometimes have to look back and try and put myself in my shoes where I was in 2003-2004. And I can tell you –and I know it sounds a little ridiculous if you're new to this subject– but at the time, I really did not make the connection between OxyContin and then potentially

20:22 losing my life, being unemployed becoming homeless becoming dependent like my entire survival part of my brain just dependent on this one medication. I thought that it was as normal as aspirin as crazy as that sounds. I can remember getting my first prescription and being told like this is going to provide a tremendous amount alleviating of pain symptoms and other symptoms that I have, and it's going to make me more productive. And I remember having that pill bottle with my name on it I was not shy about it. I mean, I used to keep it on my desk when I was at the office. I had other colleagues who were on it and like isn't that Oxycontin just a miracle drug? And I was working in politics at the time right? I can remember family members of mine who had headaches and asked me if they could have half of an oxy because it will solve it and they've heard so many great things about the drug.

21:19 We just didn't know and this was happening in millions of households across the country. And it just spread like wildfire part of the crime though, was that the DEA right who many will lift up and say look at all the great work that the DEA has done on this issue? Well yeah I mean they're a little Johnny come lately but if you ask me the DEA kind of gas lit this as well because the DEA had the data They had the data, the prescribing data that showed how much oxy was being prescribed in these communities and they did nothing about it. They just allowed it to happen. Purdue knew what was happening and when these drugs started showing up in the mid 2000's in the pockets of coal miners in Appalachia who were overdosing or ending up dead

22:15 And data started to come in that these deaths were possibly connected to this pill, this medication. Nobody did anything! We could imagine a different world wherein 2004-2005 the DEA's got this data and Purdue's got this data and they decide hey This is a problem. This medication's killing people! We should do something about it, maybe we need to scale back? Maybe we need to look at the formulation? Maybe we need not look at this claim around delayed absorption and 1% of folks getting addicted?" No that's not what happened

22:54 They pled guilty in 2007, three executives pled guilty of which none of them served any jail time. It was just massive civil criminal fines with the Department of Justice and I think it was about $600 million and you would think hey it would end right there right? We're going to do something about this we're going to change this no instead they doubled down They doubled down, right? They kept doing what they were doing except worse and more people continued to die. Ugh!

23:29 Man, and just to elaborate on your personal story a little bit more. Yeah you used to work in the White House You were at a very high level doing what you do Oxycontin also wasn't the first thing you were prescribed anyway Right And I'm just curious when you knew it was a problem because the transition that seems difficult for me to understand from an outsider perspective is moving from a prescription medication To shooting up heroin with a needle and having it run your life Is that just what happens when they won't give you the pills anymore? Talk to us about that real rock bottom place and how you really get there. Yeah, that's a great question Greg so I mean you're right

24:12 I was very interested in politics from a young age. I did land a job in the White House when I was in college, left that job in the early 2000's and took up political organizing jobs in DC and had a really bad slip-and-fall like you said in 2003 which cracked my ankle and my knee and ended up in the care of an urgent care physician right outside of Maryland and that physician wrapped my leg and said, hey you're going to need to get an MRI here and get this checked out but in the meantime here's a prescription help with the pain. And it was Dilaudid which is for folks who don't know is very high grade opioid its kind of strong morphine in a pill what I didn't know at the time actually was a Purdue product as well Dilaudit is a brand Purdue product

24:58 And it didn't, my journey to homelessness and to overdose and loss of employment in apartment and almost losing my life wasn't too much of a protracted journey. It did happen over time I had to move back home to Florida shortly after that injury because my father had passed away And I remember going into my primary care physician and saying, hey doc. I've got this problem with my knee in my ankle. I was seeing this urgent care position in Maryland you know what do I do? My dog was like oh no I don't do pain management but if you look in the back of the Miami New Times You'll see there's like hundreds of places that do

25:37 And that's what I did. I looked in the back of The New Times and, I mean, I remember the ads it was like we prescribe oxy we take care of your pain We guarantee you'll be pain free within 48 hours Call us see doctor so-and-so and when you look at the amount of pain clinics that existed And this is a real number. There were more pain clinics where I lived in Broward County, Florida Miami-Dade and Broward County, Florida than there were 7-Elevens and McDonald's. I mean there we're that many. And after my first visit with my first pain doctor which was a woman named Dr Julia she had prescribed me my first Oxycontin

26:17 And over time, I started to develop a physical dependence. Although I didn't really again connect the dots because I was taking them as prescribed. I was taking them every 12 hours but my body if I didn't have them every 12 hours would start to go into what we know is withdrawal but I didn't know what withdrawal was at the time and I can remember late 2004 I was sitting in my office I had missed my doctor's appointment that morning and I thought, no problem. You know, I'll just make another appointment tomorrow or the next day and I'll get to see the doc and get my medication refilled it will be fine you know just trudge through And by about five o'clock when the day ended I started to feel really sick and I started to sweat in my stomach was really upset

27:12 And I went into the bathroom and splashed some water on my face. And I looked at myself and said, could this maybe have anything to do with the medication? They came back to my desk and Googled it. Sure enough, yeah! It was a result of not having my meds. And I was so sick at that time that my first thought wasn't Hey ryan you might have a problem you may need to go to rehab or you may need to talk your doctor something no my first thought was i need more medication so i called another doctor got another script. And before you know it my tolerance kept going up and it got to a point where in order for me to function over the course of three four years,

27:55 I needed those pills. If i didn't have those pills, for anybody who's listening if you haven't been through withdrawal or seen somebody you love go through opioid withdrawal it is single-handedly one of the worst experiences a human being physically can go through You can't get out of bed your mind doesn't work your entire survival system of your brain is hijacked having the medication is more important to you than basic needs such as food and shelter It's impossible to work if you don't have the medication. I was completely hooked and I was already beyond the point of just being able to stop it. So fast forward two or three years, I was at a point where I knew I had a problem. I had identified that I had a problem but I was unable to get help. It just wasn't available to me and I started seeing more than one doctor

28:53 I write about it in Unsettled. I was doing things like trading my pills so that I could get things like food, I was doing things I'm not proud of so that I could get the prescription medication. The fall from working in the White House to being a hustler on the side of the Dixie Highway in Hollywood Florida was very quick for me and I was not proud of it But the state of Florida decided and started seeing this uptick in overdose numbers, and decided they were going to do something about it. That there were all of these pill mills, and there were all these people that were taking these medications, and they were seeing overdose numbers spike. And the state of Florida legislature decided the way to do it was just to cut off the supply

29:40 They were going to create this prescription drug monitoring database, which is now known as a PDMP. Which does a lot of good right now in 2022 because it provides us some needed data but when it first started It was all about just kind of tracking the people who are using the medications using too many of the medications seeing more than one doctor which I was and cutting them off right basically saying it's the patient's problem. It's the addicts problem. It's definitely not the doctor And I showed up at one of my doctor's appointments coming to the late 2000s, around 2008-2009. And the doctor who knew that I had been misusing the medications... The doctor I was seeing was actually misusing the medications themselves. I had seen her high multiple times in the office and I walked in to get my script and she pulls out this long rap sheet and she's like you're getting too much medication You're seeing too many doctors

30:39 We have this new law in the state of Florida. I could lose my license if I prescribe this to you today, you're a junkie, you're a drug seeker. I shouldn't be treating you get the hell out of my office if you ever come back here, I'm going to have you arrested for trespassing right? Mind you, This is after she took my $200 cash from my appointment and I remember looking at her and saying what do you mean how am I supposed to survive What am I supposed to do? I need this medication. I was sick, I was in withdrawal." She said, "'I don't care get the hell out of my office.'" And this wasn't just happening to me, this was happening to thousands of people all across the state at the same time and when i walked out of that office you know people think seeking help is easy it's not particularly when you're in withdrawal all you want is that next hit

31:34 And there was a heroin dealer right there in that parking lot who was willing to get me well right there. And heroin was cheaper, way cheaper than medication it was more available I didn't need to go to a doctor and it did the trick for what I was looking for at the time and thats how I ended up addicted to heroin thats how I almost lost my life thats how I became an IV user And it's scary when I think back, you know. Thank God! I say to my partner and my family all the time that this didn't happen to me now in 2022 because the drug supply is poisoned with fentanyl. I probably would not be here today tell this story but that's how it happened to me and that's how it happened to many others across this country. Damn damn... That guy knew right where to be

32:29 It's like the old joke of looking for loose women at an abortion clinic because you just know that they get down it's like well this is the place to find your customers if you're trying to sell heroin because they're trying to get treatment here and you know there being cut off. Man that's really sad and i've known someone who had fiber myalgia so you're already dealing with pain they didn't have support from their parents they didn't have insurance they couldn't really work because of the pain and then they started getting heroin there like look it's cheaper And it makes the pain stop. Yeah, and it's just really sad to someone who sees heroin is so dirty and a bridge so far from their reality. It's like well you don't wake up every day with pain So what do you know about it? But let me just say something about that though really quick because you make an important point like part of the way that addiction in pain both right? It's kind of two sides of the same pill

33:27 Pain in this country has been stigmatized. People with addiction have been stigmatized. People with addiction can't get adequate care or support once they're identified as having an addiction, they can't get the right types of supports to keep them alive and people with pain suffer because they can't get adequate types of medication or therapeutics right? So like both the pain community and the addiction community have been harmed tremendously by pharmaceutical companies and by the government. And we've been traditionally pitted up against each other, which has been to the benefit of the government and the benefit to these pharmaceutical companies when in fact we should be working together right? We've seen it play out time and again you can see in the history

34:20 overdose crisis, like the amount of money that these pharmaceutical companies put in to create these fake pain advocacy groups right? To fight the addiction community and say we're nothing but dirty addicts right and it's all our fault. And they weren't even real groups like this were like shadow or this was like dark money I mean these are tactics that pharmaceutical companies still use today Yeah, well said. Definitely a point worth highlighting and let's get into that Purdue trial talk to us about all the lawsuits that were coming at the company and the Sacklers and what changed when they filed for bankruptcy? Wow so this is where I get like really wound up in thanks for letting me take a little bit of time to talk about it So I had you know set my target on Purdue Pharma early on in my recovery

35:14 I was one of the biggest thorns and continue to be one of the biggest thorns, not just in the company but in the Sackler side for quite some time. I started to connect the dots between the Sackler family and Purdue and the deaths of my friends and what I experienced sometime around 2016. And then 2018 had the largest protest direct action in front of Purdue Pharma headquarters with 500 people really demanding accountability. And we had always thought that maybe our day would come, maybe our day would come when the Sacklers would face the same sort of justice system that everyday Americans have to face which is before a jury of their peers

36:00 And they got wrapped up in something called the multi-district litigation, which is still being negotiated in Ohio and Judge Polster's courtroom. Which is where all of the pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors right? So like McKesson and Johnson & Johnson AmerisourceBurgin and CVS Caremark Pharmacy and some of the other pharmacies and Purdue Pharma were all lumped together in this one massive Test trial in ohio to see if they can come up with some sort of settlement and purdue. Was being sued by so many different states i mean there were twenty seven hundred different lawsuits between states and municipalities and cities against purdue pharma, add a decided in september of twenty nineteen they were gonna pull the ripcord

36:51 to get out of the multi-district litigation because of how many lawsuits against them they had against them, their liability was so high that they figured they would claim bankruptcy. But it wasn't just about claiming bankruptcy for them by claiming bankruptcy, they were able to remove themselves from the Ohio test trial and some of the other bellwether trials across the nation and essentially pick their judge, and pause all of the litigation. Pause the 2700 lawsuits." So they went overnight in September of 2019 by filing for Chapter 11 from Polster's courtroom who was a pretty stern judge to be able to pick their venue

37:35 which was White Plains, New York for them under bankruptcy judge Robert D. Drane who is incredibly debtor friendly and when I say debtor friendly that's kind of a bankruptcy term that i've learned the last couple years which means company friendly right like he has known that if there's you know an issue where there's a tie between creditors and the company that the company usually wins but Judge Drane was also very well known for issuing something called a non-consensual third party release which in layman's terms meant if the Sackler family wrote a big check to cover creditors' assets, the money owed to creditors that they could receive civil immunity from any sort of litigation related to the opioid crisis. It is the biggest scam in the world right? So if you get caught with a crime and I get caught with a crime

38:29 we don't have the option of saying, huh? Let me look around the map and figure out what judge would be best suited to my needs. And what judge is most likely to be able to like get me immunity so I'm never sued for anything ever again related to the crimes that I've committed that doesn't exist but in bankruptcy court it does and that's what put Purdue Pharma and essentially the Sacklers into Chapter 11 in White Plains, New York under Judge Drain. The big caveat here though is that the Sacklers never had to file for bankruptcy themselves so they were able and continue to be able to benefit from the bankruptcy system by

39:13 by writing a check under the plan that was developed without having to forfeit all of their money, right? There's models out there that show that the Sacklers if these non-consensual releases are actually upheld in the Second Circuit which is where it's at right now because they were just recently vacated by district judge. That they could actually be richer than they are before assuming their investments in a healthy interest rate. It's all very complex stuff that I detail in Unsettled and great length, but in a nutshell it is billionaire justice in this country. It is complete billionaire justice now. It's important for the audience to know that this case is actually playing out in real time right now there was a plan bankruptcy plan approved by Judge Drain in September just this past September

40:07 It was overturned on appeal by a district court, by Judge Colleen McMahon in the Southern District of New York District Court. And now it's headed to the Second Circuit for hopefully what will be a final decision. So it's been back and forth constantly but I got involved in this and really started to peek under the hood when I heard they filed for bankruptcy in September of 2019, and I had been talking to some lawyers about potential class action lawsuits against the Sacklers prior to that. And one of them reached out to me and said, you know, hey Ryan now that they're in bankruptcy court this changes the game completely it kind of moves the whole process if you're a sports fan from a basketball court where attorneys general are really good at playing legal games

40:54 On to an ice hockey rink which is in bankruptcy court this completely different set of rules. That most lawyers are aware of and there's a committee very powerful committee called the unsecured creditors committee that's appointed by the department justice will be a nine member committee, that you can apply to be a part of. And what that committee serves as is pretty much the watchdog of the process, but it also has the ability to negotiate the settlement on behalf of 600,000 creditors. It has the ability to get into the Sackler's financials to see if the settlements fair. It has the ability to conduct depositions and has the ability to take discovery which means I'd be able to see Sackler emails and see a lot of the things that we thought we knew

41:41 And maybe get some proof. I thought it would be cathartic for me to go through this process, to represent families and victims who have been harmed so much and to be there to use my voice right? I was actually hopeful in the beginning because i envisioned this process where it was all these state attorney generals and the United States Department of Justice, and the victims and the companies. And like all of us on one side of the table, and then the Sacklers in Purdue on the other side of the table. At that at end of day justice would be done right? That Purdue would be reduced to nothing but this crappy company with no money, and they'd have to give the dollars to the victims. The Sacklers would see some real justice and maybe just maybe

42:28 we could do some good here. And boy, was I mistaken." The whole process was set up to benefit everybody but the people who were harmed the most. Victims were sidelined every step of the way and two years ago if you would have asked me that one of my larger banners that I'd be carrying coming out of this process would be massive bankruptcy reform I would have said, you're crazy. I know nothing about bankruptcy." The bankruptcy system in this country is one of the most corrupt rigged systems that I think exists.

43:08 Wow and there's a lot of competition for the most corrupt system in this country but I wanted to make sure that we fit into the first hour. This thing we talked about a couple weeks ago where you had mentioned that you found another villain in this story, in these state attorney generals and then it's not really very popular narrative well tell us a little bit more about this and why isn't popular talk about or why people don't like to look at this? Greg, it's probably like one of the most unpopular narratives that I've put out there. And it hasn't gotten much coverage in mainstream media because folks don't like to hear it and It's really angered me because I write...it's actually-I believe the state attorneys general in Unsettled are as much of a villain as some of these pharmaceutical companies not only because they were complicit

44:01 but really what they do behind closed doors. So when I again came to this process with this thought that victims should be first always, and when I say victims, I mean the actual individuals who were harmed that the individuals who lost their loved ones or folks like me and my mom, right? My mother who spent on our family who spent close to probably a half a million dollars in money we didn't have on treatment. Right because of Oxycontin credit card bills mortgages that are still being paid off today and the state attorneys general and they did this behind closed doors

44:46 First, they would go out into the public and they would grab the mic and say we're doing this for the victims. We're taking all of the money. We are going to make sure that the Sacklers get what's coming to them. We are doing this for their families. We are doing it for accountability. And behind closed doors though in negotiations they did every single thing possible to keep money away from victims that they could I sat in mediation sessions during the settlement negotiations where the deputy attorney general for the state of New York who was leading those negotiations and i'll name his name David Nachman actually said to us that victims deserved nothing. We deserve nothing because we did this to ourselves and that the state

45:35 bore all the burden of the overdose crisis because they're the ones that had to pay for the police. They are the ones that had to pay for the health care, they are the ones who had to pay for the societal costs that Purdue brought on these communities and completely just sidestepped the death and destruction to our personal lives. And they had a argument in actual theory that victims should get zero dollars Because we did this to ourselves now the outcome of the settlement as it stands right now and it is on appeal, right? In the 2nd circuit. You know, it's about a 10Billion dollar plan and that includes 4.5Billion dollars from the Sacklers in their substantial contribution.

46:21 97.5% of that settlement, as it stands goes to the government and goes to corporations. Wow! 7.5% of the settlement goes to individual victims The payouts for individual victims range from $3,500 to $48,000 max if you can prove you lost someone close to you from an overdose directly caused by a Purdue product. For comparison there was a car manufacturer bankruptcy a few years ago

46:59 where creditors who were in people who are harmed by the seat belts in these cars, who filed claims and the bankruptcy. Who had as much of a bruise on their left arm from these faulty seat belts received more money than a mother will who lost her child to an overdose by a Purdue product? It's a scam it's a crime. These attorneys general I believe at their heart, you know we've got to think like who is their clients right? Their client's the state. Their clients' the state treasury when you hear an attorney general go out there and say they're doing this for the victims they are lying! They are full of crap! I have plenty of evidence that i have documented within the book that shows that they are completely full of crap

47:49 The abatement dollars, you know we tried to get involved in conversations and when you talk about abatement that's preventing future harm. How are they going to use these dollars? Are they gonna go to community-based organizations? Are they gonna go to provide evidence based recovery supports that we know work? Or are they gonna support harm reduction? And we were told left and right like we have no business in those discussions the state is gonna decide how to spend this money and we're just gonna deal with it It's angering because that myth is still perpetrated today by some of these attorneys general. You see some of them on television talking about it and it's enough to make my blood boil, I just had an action last week against the attorney general of Connecticut William Tong because he keeps saying we're going to keep fighting the Sacklers for more money

48:40 and we're going to hold them accountable. And what we really want are criminal charges, right? So like all of the victims in this case and victims who have been harmed by the Sacklers, we want criminal charges. We want the United States Department of Justice or at least one of these 50 attorney generals who claim such egregious crimes by Purdue Pharma to put their money where their mouth is and make the Sackler sit for a grand jury, indict them criminally investigate them. No, you know what? Not one single state in this country

49:16 has filed a criminal charge against any member of the Sackler family because this is all about money. This is not about real justice and so when we hear an attorney general talking about holding the Sackler family accountable, that is not what they're doing. All they are doing is trying to get more money but money for who? Money for their state because they have pushed us aside, they have chewed us up, They have spit us out and they have discarded the victims when every single one of their claims wouldn't even exist without without the victims claims. Every government claim, every insurance company claim, every corporation claim in this bankruptcy wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the death and destruction of families and individuals who have carried the burden to produce crimes for far too long and the injustice just continues. And mainstream media will not give a

50:12 that subject the airtime. They do not want to talk about it, it is one of the most frustrating narratives coming out of writing Unsettled and participating in this process. Man well i'm glad you broke that down it is important for people to know these state a g's they're just trying to capture that money put in the budget there's no guarantee it'll go where it supposed to go at all they can't can just do whatever they want with it i've heard you talk about that before yeah i mean and they say their gonna do the right thing with it they say they're gonna spend on abatement But there's no real mechanism that guarantees how for them to spend the dollars. I mean, they've been so broad they're like yes we'll spend it on prevention yes we'll spend it on treatment yes we'll spend it on law enforcement but like 99% of it could go to law enforcement right? On body cams and stuff and they can claim it for the opioid crisis part of the problem here is the lack of transparency good luck trying to track down how a state spending their abatement dollars. I've tried it

51:11 Like if you don't have two PhDs and like a reading room of five people who can go through tens of thousands of pages of documents and understand government coding, You're not going to be able to figure out how these dollars are spent. There's no real easy way to break it down. We saw this happen with the tobacco settlements some time ago It's my firm belief that the opioid abatement dollars is going to be more of a catastrophic failure than how the tobacco dollars went down. And not to mention, Greg like one of things I haven't really been able to talk about are the lawyers in this? Like at the end of the day, the only ones getting rich are the lawyers! I didn't realize that going into the process. I have a whole chapter about it in Unsettled

51:56 Under 1,000 lawyers in the Purdue farm of bankruptcy will collectively take home after contingency fees and professional fees over $1.3 billion dollars! This includes contingency lawyers that work for the states this includes contingency lawyers that work and professional lawyers that are fee-based hourly lawyers That work for Purdue and that worked for the creditors committee And that worked for different creditor groups Under a thousand over 1.3 billion dollars to the billionaire millionaire class out of this bankruptcy yet 138,000 victims will have to share in 750 million dollars now tell me the system isn't set up for us to get screwed

52:42 under those calculations. Yes, I'm glad you made the point about the lawyers it's just a whole big show victims get the shaft and the criminals just get to cut a check and i've also heard you say that the way the settlement is structured is so to the Sackler's benefit they might actually make more money over this time Is that right? yes That's absolutely correct Right now even if this deal goes through They will contribute $4.5 billion over 10 years in chunks, a couple hundred million dollars each year and the estimates right now are they're worth about 11 you know ten to eleven billion dollars as a family and at the end of 10 years with just the dollars that they have in investments and assuming us standard healthy interest rate on those investments

53:37 their worth would go up to $16 billion, which means after paying back the four and a half billion dollar settlement they may net a billion to two billion dollars if they never worked another day in their life. I mean it's insane! Yeah, it really is. Man! And so as we're kind of coming to the end of the line if we know addicts who are suffering with exactly these kinds of issues and we don't know what to do how would you advise us to help the right way? Because in my experience they don't want to listen there's a lot of denial and hostility when you try to broach the topic but you can see they're on a road to ruin So what do we do? Oh...

54:18 One of my favorite questions, Greg. You know with people who are struggling from addiction I would just say coerced help and coerced treatment will never work okay? If they're in your family if it's someone in your family It is important to have boundaries with them because it can be devastating to you and it can be devastating to those around you but it is important to always if it's a loved one, to love them and to listen to them. You know I was that guy that people told my mother never to take my phone call that they would find me dead in the ditch somewhere if she helped me or was too nice to me that I was just going to steal from her and stuff like that. And honestly, I didn't want help most of the time. I wanted to keep using. I didn't know any other way. My brain was completely hijacked but there comes a point

55:21 And there came a point with me where I did need help and my mom answered my phone. Someday she would just listen to me, you know? She would encourage me to get help. She wouldn't force me but she encouraged me and if you have someone that you know more importantly is if you think they are struggling ask them if they're okay. Ask them if they would like to get some help be open to having a conversation with them and they may say no But have healthy boundaries with them. Healthy boundaries means not just shutting them out of your life completely because the next step may be they end up dead and I think for a lot of us who go through severe substance use disorder and addiction issues, beyond the drug what we're all really trying to

56:13 grasp a hold to is something that we're missing in our human lives, right? Something that we're missing deep down inside. And for a lot of us it's a lot of trauma that may have existed for quite some time It can be very hard To love a loved one who is going through this particularly if they've harmed you somehow Not knowing everybody's unique circumstances have some healthy boundaries, but don't shut them out of your life and there are Resources available out there right like if someone's on Medicaid has insurance doesn't have insurance The federal government has a treatment locator called fine treatment gov

56:53 Folks can reach out to me on my website. I'm always happy to have just a conversation with someone, and I don't refer anywhere or anything like that but i'm happy to offer my lived experience there's a great model called recovery community organizations they're non-profits that exist in many towns across the country called RCOs where they offer peer recovery support services where it's a peer with lived experience such as you know someone like me Who's been through this who can help that loved one kind of navigate what their options are and kind of try to take that burden off the family. It's also incredibly important that if you're a family member,

57:33 that has a loved one struggling, that you get help too. You know because it affects everybody there are resources for families out there and it is just as important for families to talk to a peer specialist as it is for the person who's struggling because it has an entire impact in ripple effect both in active addiction and even in recovery with the family dynamics right on Yes, I also wanted to mention you blogged about the mobilize recovery event. The 3rd annual conference for recovery advocates and they have a broader vision for recovery and I know you have the nonprofit facing addiction and you work with not facing addiction it's the nonprofits the voices project it's called the voice is project

58:17 Right on. And then there's recovery advocacy project, the terms and words get a little redundant and confusing but in terms of the organizations that you endorse that you're involved with and their approaches to these things that you think are doing it the right way what should we leave people with? Listen, I take a little different approach on this. I believe that we know what works we know what we need to do. I set out that agenda earlier to you that's just kind of a peek behind the curtain of all the things we need to be looking at what we're missing is a vocal active community

58:55 That's holding policy makers accountable and an effective constituency of consequence because I believe our elected officials need to start answering some really hard questions as to how we got here, and why things aren't getting better when we know what to do. So our entire model at Mobilize Recovery, at the Voices Project and Recovery Advocacy Project is about building people with lived experience, family members, people impacted by addiction. People in recovery giving them the skills to organize their communities locally for new policies but also to kind of call BS on a lot of these legislators and members of Congress and governors and folks in powerful decision-making authorities who say they care about ending the overdose crisis but aren't really doing much to do it so

59:43 I believe we need a little bit more of a robust civic engagement model if we're ever to really get more action similar to what we saw with ACT UP during the AIDS crisis and other health care issues in this country. Yeah, I've heard there are three pharmaceutical lobbyists for every member of Congress and of course they will just keep doing whatever they're doing to make that money and they'll sweep all the dirty stuff under the rug as long as they can. So the pressure is very important as you say. Absolutely! And your website is ryanhampton.com You got the blog, you got other resources there for people so that's probably important

1:00:22 Man, just thanks for doing the work you do and for talking to me today. It can't be easy to have to work in the realm of all this after you dealt with it yourself. You constantly are being reminded of it so I imagine that's very difficult but you're doing amazing work in the world and that's a beautiful thing take care out there! Thanks Greg appreciate it And boom goes the dynamite people, beating the drum of an issue we all know is there but THC has never really dedicated an episode to it and it's probably long overdue. I mean just listen to those statistics again 400 thousand have died since 1999 100 thousand in the last 12 months for the first time

1:01:07 Even that ratio seems weird, I bet it's a lot more than 400 thousand since 1999 if 100 thousand have died in the last 12 months but i'm just the messenger reading statistics. One in three American households affected in some way and from April 2020 to April 2021 fentanyl claimed the lives of 40 000 Americans aged 18-45 to make it the leading cause of death for that age group And to put that number in perspective, car accidents 22000 suicide 21000 covid 21000 and cancer 17000. So you could basically put car accidents and COVID together and you'd get the number of deaths from fentanyl alone. That's not even the topic of the day! It's messed up this is an issue where there is a lot of judgment and assumption it can never happen to you

1:02:02 Kind of like factory workers who lose their job. I've heard a lot of people say, well you shouldn't depend on one factory to make your living or prop up a town and that's easy to say when you didn't grow up in Detroit And this is similar in that if you don't live with pain If you do not have a car accident that breaks a dozen of your bones It's easy to judge people who get caught up in this and just look down on them But in so many areas of life, corporations have figured out how to hijack systems of the body. Look at aspartame and sugar and processed foods in general I guess we can judge the obese too and say well stop eating hostess cupcakes and Cheetos And that's true but we should also throw equal shade at the creators of these things

1:02:49 Because why should every aspect of life end up being a battle between our willpower and our biological circuitry? Shouldn't there be some responsibility for the makers of manipulative and addicting products, I say so. I watched a food science documentary once and they asked leaders in the field what they thought was the crowning achievement And they said the Cheeto Puff Which stuck with me because it was so surprising, but it's because nothing in it is real and they engineered to have an attractive color. To kind of melt in your mouth in a satisfying way And to leave the Cheeto dust on your fingers tempting you to eat more All these things have little effect that builds up into people not being able to stop The Cheeto I mean its mundane yet pretty insidious and thats basically every food product

1:03:43 Plus video games, social media, cigarettes. Everywhere you look there's a witch offering you a poison apple and big pharma and opioids are probably the scariest one So I thank Ryan for doing this and being able to talk so eloquently from a personal AND professional perspective! I like him alot and appreciate his story and how he turned it around And I know you guys are gonna beat me up if i don't say something about it, but yes he is still a bit optimistic about intentions of government and big pharma in areas that aren't the opioid crisis specifically. And we all know I'm not as optimistic or trusting in any of those other areas but to each their own! That wasn't even the theme of this episode

1:04:28 I have to say Ryan is a good sport though because i made the decision that we needed an opioid crisis episode and i sent out a few emails to the top dogs, And not only did he get back to me first but he also does focus on the billionaire family at the head of this thing which we value quite a bit of course. But he also told me he listened to a few episodes and was still willing to come on Which I always think is a big deal because who knows what those episodes were and whatever it was that he listened to but it didn't turn him off. At least not enough to reject my interview request And with it being such a serious and personal issue, I could see him seeing our show as a little silly Oh the higher side Chatz wants to talk about drug addiction? Hmm So kudos to him for trusting me to take the issue seriously

1:05:21 I also thought he made a really good point about nerfing the numbers a bit for how bad this really is by putting down a different cause of death like heart failure or asphyxiation or something that doesn't specifically mention an overdose. And hey, why wouldn't the medical establishment work that way? We've had several guests break down how they pad COVID numbers as a component of this full court press we're experiencing. And we're talking about two different issues but within the same system with different incentives and different desires when it comes to perception management. I will admit i probably do drift into being a bit cold towards those struggling with addiction an example would be Jordan Peterson

1:06:03 I don't know if it's straight up addiction, but i learned a lot from Jordan Peterson over the years. I found him to be a compelling thoughtful speaker on a number of subjects not everything of course But when he started taking SSRIs and had this downward spiral and his life completely upended... ...I was just really disappointed to see that because a clinical psychologist whose kind of gone rogue should know how to avoid these drugs And maybe a clinical psychologist has blinders on for the solutions proposed in their industry. But I found myself thinking, if you aren't smart enough to avoid SSRIs do you really have anything to teach me? I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying that's what i thought because It's very clear to me You don't fuck with SSRIs or opioids If ya do well good luck to ya

1:06:54 But I also have no idea what it's like to have chronic pain. I have no idea what it's like to suffer the kind of life events that send you spiraling into a deep depression, so I try to check myself and remember that it's easy to avoid these pills when they're the solutions to problems you don't have. I avoid chemotherapy too! Another dangerous practice but I also don't have cancer so there's nothing really to be proud of there When you have one of these serious problems and the only experts allowed to practice have whittled away and suppressed alternatives, and given you one solitary solution that is extremely risky for you. And they get paid to offer it! It's a fucked up system. We need to help those who've been turned out by it." At one point talking about the settlement Ryan said 97.5% goes to governments & corporations and 7% goes to victims

1:07:50 Pretty sure he meant ninety two point five percent and seven percent because i know that the seven percent is right from reading the book and i think keep set it correctly later but just to address that possible confusion those numbers are still insane in the state of lawyers made a billion it's like what the hell. And I know people really don't want to have more COVID shows, but that doesn't stop me from trying to get a bit creative and in a roundabout way make larger points about why FDA approval doesn't mean shit to me and why companies like Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson can't be trusted when they talk about their products.

1:08:28 Even holistic medicine is hard to navigate because for so much of it you'll find negative articles that try to repeatedly highlight a lack of FDA approval, To make something sound scary or extra risky. And sometimes it is but sometimes it isn't So I appreciate Ryan's work and mission I'm sure many of us listening are not nearly as dedicated to anything involving the public good so I salute him for it Also, I think I took a few lines from Ryan's bio in previous interviews that had the incorrect names of his nonprofit and organizations he has been involved with. Or maybe it was just an outdated one? You know I hate to get that stuff wrong! But the right stuff is the Mobilize Recovery Conference, The Voices Project—that is his nonprofit—and Recovery Advocacy Project is another one that he supports and is involved with

1:09:20 Obviously, use his website as the portal to reach these other things if you have the need. And I appreciate the solutions he offers and i'm completely ignorant of what these drugs feel like and what addiction is like at that level but I would probably push back on the idea that we don't need to get rid of these drugs entirely. I'm sure if we spent more time on that Ryan could present me with scenarios that would lead me to see things differently But if I had chronic pain, I like to think that i would seek out every and all alternative treatment before I went to those pills. Shamans, dietary changes, acupuncture, exercise, biofield tuning... We are conditioned to think these so-called alternative options are silly or they only work for low level issues but I've heard some transformative things coming from people who work in these areas and they don't use the pills

1:10:16 But life is about nuance, and I appreciate Ryan's ability to say hey this stuff turned my life upside down. The Sackler family is evil but let's not go scorched earth because some people are able to get out of bed because of this stuff so difficult questions difficult answers but I know people who have gone down this dark path I receive emails from listeners too that say THC helped them through an addiction phase The first time I heard that, I was really surprised. But now it comes up in people's correspondence with me maybe a dozen times a year! I wouldn't say anyone super close to me has died from this kind of stuff It's been on the outside edges of my circle but there was a dude named Brian who I really liked in high school I thought he was a lot of fun and definitely jealous about his athletic abilities He was charismatic

1:11:10 Having not seen him since maybe the high school reunion I found out that he ended up having some kind of injury getting on opioids and he died alone in The public restroom of the local park back in Arnold, Missouri And that kind of stuck with me just because it's such a sad way to die and obviously is very young But after hearing Ryan's personal story, the jump from pills to needles... I empathize. I always struggled to see how that jump was made. I never really had it explained to me like that but now it seems pretty obvious even though its still one hell of a leap! I guess the lesson is there are predators in the corner offices of big sky rises as well as in the back alleys and parking lots of treatment centers

1:12:06 Anyway, in the second hour for Plus People we got into other huge settlements from pharmaceutical companies, culpable agencies and co-conspirators and all this. The PR message control elements the Sacklers used something we see from billionaire families all the time This I thought was interesting but hacking and corrupting Ryan's internet and email inbox Now, I just started watching the show Goliath with Billy Bob Thornton and right in the pilot episode it shows a good example of corporate intimidation and surveillance techniques. And Ryan may never really know but i would speculate that they have the power to do the things that he mentioned We talked about who else was on that committee and why CVS was there Ryan's right-and-wrong solutions for the opioid crisis how Big Pharma profits from the black market as well

1:12:57 Another great show, but the latest season of Ozark is all about this. Very nuts! Succession was also mentioned and hey you add in Righteous Gemstones and you got all my favorite shows right there We also talked about Ryan's one-on-one meeting with David Sackler And the general Sackler family psychology All good stuff thanks to those who support the show and hear it in its entirety In higher side news, we did get an event added to the meetup calendar for next weekend. It's going to be in Louisville Kentucky at 1020 Craft Brewery So thanks for adding something so I didn't seem like a fool in the wrap-up with nothing to say But we did get some support tickets about the Meetups Calendar, so there is some confusion that I should clear up

1:13:44 People tend to think that it's part of the THC website that they just can't find and it's not. It's its own domain at highersidemeetups.com And I'll do a better job of building that bridge, but you should know it is its own separate thing and Plus members have been confused because when they try to log in with their plus account credentials, it doesn't work Well, that's because it's a totally separate website I didn't port over the Plus Member Database because i don't want to assume that all plus members want to be in that database or wanna create events, or engage this way. It's just its own separate thing and plus members have to remember that there are tens of thousands of non-plus members listening to every show

1:14:27 And I know another site with another registration process is annoying, but it's the only way it works. We can't just let anyone make events because it'd be all spam and bots and untrusted sources We want to make sure there's at least a person and an email attached to every event so that there is somebody running point if the event needs to change or more details need to be given, etc. So to make an event you go to highersidemeetups.com take a second to make an account then the calendar is open for you to make events whenever you want I've mentioned this before but i'm going to be road tripping with the family in March and I would love to make several stops between San Diego and Chicago that are THC meetups. It's nice to see that some of these meetups are recurring now, and I know that there's good stable communities forming in places so those would be areas I'd want to hit and there's one more month available to start making that happen

1:15:26 But if you're going out for a few drinks with buddies anyway, put it on the calendar and bring in a few more locals that you'd probably enjoy meeting. I guess in terms of news that's really it! And no news is good news as they say just stayin' the course and trying to bring you entertaining informative off-the radar important episodes. Hope your all doing well despite the wider concerns out there but thats it for me thank Ryan if you appreciate his time and work as much as I do im getting outta here Your move, opioid offerers addiction dismissors and drug damage downplayers. The truth has been hidden from me Did it myself Got lizard people on top of the world And I wish it was somebody else Believe or not the truth is out there For people who have the eyes to see

1:16:32 My favorite show makes me more oh Could it be The High Side Chats THC? Just watch the TV and obey Take some more pills when you're blue Or we'll break you out of the spell that you're in Together, we will make it through Believe or not The truth is out there For people who have the eyes to see

1:17:22 My favorite show makes me Who could it be? The High Side Chat THC THC is here for you Believe it or not Believe it or not Believe it or not Believe it or not The truth is out there For people who have the eyes to see

1:18:14 My favorite show makes me more aware Who could it be? The Higher Side Chats Believe it or not, the truth is out there For people who have the eyes to see My favorite show makes me more aware Who could it be? The Higher Side Chats THC And that is another show complete! Remember, as much as you enjoyed this which is just the free first hour I hope you'll become a Plus Member to hear the full two-hour interviews. You also can engage with other Plus Members in the comments and the forums and you'll find your answer to one of the most common questions I get which is where can I find those cover songs that you use at the end of the show? Well they are free downloads for Plus Members too

1:19:22 And without Plus Members, I can't hire the occasional musician to bring these odd cover song ideas to fruition. Plus members are how I'm able to do what I do without ads and without the big machine being on my back! We can fit so much more into a two-hour interview and I'd do my best to make it worth your time and money." The conversation only gets deeper, weirder, and more controversial in that private hour. How could it not be the way things are going? But the best way to sign up is at TheHigherSideChats.com, where new first-time subscribers always get a free 7 day trial because I'm just that confident! There's no PayPal on the website but if you need to use PayPal then sign up through Patreon and you get all of the same episodes

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1:20:57 We're trained to tip a waitress for bringing us a sandwich, but that tip doesn't give you access to a second sandwich. Really I'm not asking for any more than that and think I offer better service. Come get your second serving of tasty conspiracy goodness in exchange for that small token of your appreciation! Beyond that let it also be known we have grown and survived as long as we have by word-of-mouth I don't care so much about social media likes or follows, but tell the right people about THC. And not just listeners but the high level figures who are better suited to sit down with me than most other hosts. And if you can help me with any of these things, I can work to bring you better shows which is just a win-win for both us! Informative, entertaining and action packed

1:21:41 It also never hurts to thank a guest you liked if you have the time either. We want them to know people are listening so they're willing to come back down the road too! Thank YOU for spending some time with me and cheers to a better tomorrow!