How can I help my kids through hard things?

Lindsay Miller  0:23  
Hey, this is Lindsay, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast, I'm excited to share this episode with you. One of the things that I hear when I'm talking to parents is just how stressful it is to watch kids navigate adversity, and whether that's from an experience that's happened that's kind of out of our control, or whether it's because of the choices that they're making. It can be really, really hard to watch kids struggle through those moments. So my guest today, John Huber is going to speak to both of those things. He's going to talk about experiences where we kind of just have to let our kids struggle and stumble and make mistakes in order to like deepen their confidence in themselves, and also to create a strong family connection with them, and let them know that we're there for them, no matter what they're going through. He's also going to talk about a modality that he uses for instances of trauma. So like when something happens out of the realm of our control, that is really, really hard for our kids. This is a solution that he uses and sees a lot of results in with his patients. So I'm excited to share the episode with you. It's brought to you by the essential calendar, which is the large format wall calendar to help moms keep family life organized. It's available at www.thecentralcalendar.com. Now onto the episode. 

Welcome to The Stress Nanny podcast. I'm your host, Lindsay Miller. And I'm delighted that you're here for our conversation today with John Huber. Dr. John Huber is the CEO of Trip Setter Clinic as well as a mental health professional for over 20 years. He's a clinical forensic psychologist and practitioner with privileges at two long term acute care hospitals. He's a regular on various media all over the country talking about mental health issues. And we're gonna dive into some fascinating ones today. John, thank you so much for joining me. 

Dr. John Huber  2:08  
Well, thank you, Lindsey for having me on.

Lindsay Miller  2:11  
So we're going to talk about a few different things. One is this idea of ketamine, which is an up and coming way to treat some pretty severe mental health struggles, right, and we're going to talk about that. We're also going to talk about the idea of letting kids face adversity and providing opportunities to kind of scaffold their experience with it in a way that doesn't just like plow down everything in front of them, right. But it enables them to kind of grow through it. And you phrase this as lawnmower parenting. Can you talk about that?

Dr. John Huber  2:40  
Well, everybody's pretty much familiar with helicopter parenting where, where mom and dad look over the kid's shoulders and just watch. And, you know, they let the kid kind of face a little bit of adversity, and then they jump in before the child starts crying or gets upset and things like that a lot more parenting is virtually where the parents go out in front of the kid, and cut down any kind of adversity. I mean, and I've seen it like in three year old kids out there playing. And the parents see, oh, there's only one ball and they run and get three other balls so that they don't fight over the ball. But, you know, I know development means a lot of trial and error. If you really want to learn how to deal with the world. You have to learn to deal with adversity. And this is creating, I think a problem with a lot of our entitlement with our kids and things like that, as I grew up. Well, you know, I've always gotten what I've wanted. It's not, it's not the way the world war works.

Lindsay Miller  3:44  
Yeah, well, and I think it's easy as parents to really take on that role, right? And think that our job is to kind of clear the way and just make it smooth sailing. And sometimes as parents, we can actually feel a level of guilt or frustration or angst if we don't do that, right. And if we watch our kids face adversity, but really what you're saying is actually that's the whole point is to guide them through.

Dr. John Huber  4:07  
Exactly. That's our responsibility is to take that adversity, and some people may call it a failure. It's not a failure, if they learn from it. It's it's the school of hard knocks, you know, we always talked about that growing up. Well, you know, and I remember several times, I mean, my oldest son is 19, my daughter's 16. And they would go through and they get some assignment in like, second or third grade. And then I don't know why I don't want to do this. And I go, Well, you know, you have choices, you know, we would like you to do this. And they're like, Oh, well, if I don't have to do it, and they just don't do it, and then all sudden they get a zero. And my kids are like, Oh my god, I got that and they're like, oh, wait, you made a choice. Now how do we recover from this? What do we need to do? And I would much rather have my kids figure this out now, instead of you know, when they're when they're 19 years old, instead of when they're 20 He getting ready to graduate and they walk in they go, you know, that's a stupid assignment, I'm not going to do it. And then they don't get the credit they need to graduate and they have to delay graduation till it because they have to re re enroll and take the class over again to get the college credit, to graduate and go on to medical school or graduate school, law school, whatever they've got going. They need to learn that now. And so you go back and you talk to my friends. And my kids friends and their parents always jumped in. And well, let's know, let's hear I'll help you do that. Well, you just did the homework for they might as well not done it. At least my kid learned from the situation, you know. And now as my son is 19, it's funny watching how he is navigating through the system. He's a gifted musician. And I mean, he's had he's had some amazing opportunities, gotten to play with some great entertainers in New York City, and all this kind of stuff. And his other friends are all like, oh, well, why aren't you in college. And I'm like, you know, I taught professor, I was a professor for 21 years, I stopped teaching in 2017. And I know from day one, college is going to be there, when he's 55, if he really wants to go back to school, but his interests are on music right now, I also have friends who are professional musicians. And you talk to them, you listen to interviews of people like Ben Folds, and all these, you know, amazing musicians, and they talk about, you know, music was my option A, but it was also my option B, C, D, E, I had no other options. So I either made it, or I didn't. And again, it's that life lesson, we talked about that a lot more apparently. So what we've done is, we're told my kid, as long as you're working on your music, you're writing you're playing, you're going to the recording studio, you can live here, like you were in college, the minute that stops, your stuffs gonna be on the curb. Or, or if you stopped and you walk in and say, Hey, I got my acceptance letter to go to college over here that, you know, and, and that's what he's doing. And it's kind of it's kind of a structural change for us. Because you know, what happens with the music industry, he's up, you know, recording and doing stuff until three in the morning. And it's kind of he lives a nightlife. And we live in daylight. And it's, it's, it's been a shock to us. But he's working on it. And he's doing, he's following through with that commitment. And we're here to help him through those struggles, because he's still learning and he realizes that, and whereas, you know, his friends, they're off at this college campus, and that college campus, and they're struggling every day, they don't understand that, you know, he gets and he works a part time job to help pay for the recording time to pay for instruments, he's a piano player, and up to upkeep is very expensive. And he does all that. And those people, you know, paying their cell phone doesn't get paid, they don't know what to do. So there's an in text, he's like, Okay, you call the cell phone company? And I'm like, Wait, you're not the college student? You're not, you know. And, and though, you know, it's a choice we have to make as parents, you know, do we make our kids struggle? You know, it would be really easy for me to say, No, you know, I've got four advanced degrees and 18 years in graduate school, you need to go look at me, look what I've done. But if that's my life, that's not his life. So what I've got to do is take my life experiences and my life knowledge, and every parent should be doing this. Look at what your kids really wants and needs our I was, I was fascinated by sports growing up, I wanted to do sports. And my brother wasn't, he didn't do that. And, you know, so I watched my parents go through this, well, you know, what, what do you want to do? And I would say, I want to do this. And my dad might say something like, well, if it was my life, that's not what I would choose, but I'm going to support you, because that's your choice. It's not my choice to make that call for you. But I will do everything I can to support you. And then I watched him do the same thing with my little brother, and my older sister. And, you know, I kinda incorporated that. And now I've got the formal education behind me to say Yes, look, this is actually what works. So I was blessed on both ends kind of a thing. I mean, my dad still doesn't understand why I went back to school after I got my college degree. Like, why you got a degree? You're done? No, no, no. And, yeah,

Lindsay Miller  9:35  
yeah, I appreciate you sharing that because I think it can be really challenging, especially from a parenting perspective, to imbue your child's life with a sense of structure, right? The structure being the principles with which you parent and the principles with which you guide them with also that level of flexibility that you're describing where you can work with a variety of choices that they make, right and it's it is challenging to do if you have haven't seen it modeled. So I appreciate you sharing the way you see you saw that model. Because I think that when we can access stories like that, it's a lot easier for us to be like, Oh, okay, so it doesn't have to look exactly like this, I can be a successful parent or a really strong, supportive parent, even if my child doesn't choose to go to college, even if my child chooses to do this or that and not, not feel like our sense of worth is kind of tied up in their choices. Right?

Dr. John Huber  10:27  
Right, their choices and your presses on your child. See, I have friends that I played football with college football, were things like that. And I watched them forced their kids down that athlete role, and their kids had no interest in it at all. But they did it to keep mom and dad happy. And the minute they got out of the house. They stopped all sports. That's not what they wanted to do. And they basically had to go back in some cases, go back to school and get a whole different college degree because they were being Hey, we'll pay for your college, but you got to stay on the baseball team, you got to stay on the track team, you got to keep playing football, you got to you know, and the turnaround. Why did I do that for it? Because that's not who I am. And, you know, it's kind of like deciding you want your child to be a musician, and getting them into classes, so they can be a concert pianist. Okay, concert pianists are amazing skilled technicians, they read music, they can look at a new piece of music they've never seen before, sit down and play it instantly. And they play with orchestras and they do the opera. And they do. But if you look at how many orchestra piano jobs there are, there's not very many. So the reality of it is, you're kind of pushing your child into a situation where I'm going to take this skill set. And I'm either gonna become an after school piano teacher, a high school piano or choir teacher. Because the number of true concert pianist jobs out there are very small, it's much, much less than, say, a professional basketball player. And, you know, we look how much we pay them while they pay concert pianists. All right, it's not great like, like the pros, athletes and stuff. But wouldn't it be better if you want your child to do that, wouldn't it be better to teach them to play the music the kid loves, and play music so that maybe they can be the person who writes the music, not necessarily playing everybody else's music because you can read it really well and play it perfect timing and that type of stuff, you know, and that's what we do with my kid. And in fact, when we got his piano, I also got him a bunch of video games at the same time. And he walked out to play his piano, he was so excited. And he had no lessons at all. And we let him just kind of bang on the piano for 10 or 15 minutes. And then I blew up. I'm like, Jesus, man, I paid all that money for your video games, get in there, play your video. And so he gets up and he goes in plays a video game just about an hour, hour and a half later, he's back out on the plant piano for 10 or 15 minutes, and the same time, and it was either me or my wife get back in to this day. He plays his piano to three or four o'clock in the morning. Everybody goes to bed. And luckily if we thought this out, we got a digital piano and it's got way too cheap. It's it's got weighted keys. So you know, the harder he strikes, the louder it is. And and he can go from that piano to any other piano and it feels like he's playing a real piano all the time. But he puts on his headphones, and he plays until three or four o'clock in the morning. And he got that Christmas Eve, march 15. He played an open mic with 400 people. He played Billy Joel's Piano Man with played the harmonica and sang it. Wow. And the next show he did had over 900 people in May. And he did Elton John covers and Billy Joel covers at that point. And I still got the recording. It's just and and, you know, he's been lucky enough to play with part of Billy Joel's band. And I mean, yeah, and he didn't even realize I mean, he was 16 years old. We're in New York City. And he got invited up on stage by by Billy Joel's band, and actually part of Steely Dan was in in the band playing that night. And he's up there playing with these guys. Just having a blast has no clue who he's playing with. And, you know, it was about six months ago when he goes, you know, that that experience in New York, you know, I was so blessed. And I go, What do you mean it goes, well, at that point, I thought everybody gotta go do this. I got no, no, no, that's so you know, push your kids, but you got to know how to work your child. and kids, you know, they don't hear what you say they hear what you do. You know, oh, you should do this, this, this, and then they watch you walk outside and go be rude to somebody at a grocery store. And they go, Oh, it's good talk. But that's all that matters, I don't really have to do this in real life. So by telling my son, you know, you have to practice I knew he wasn't going to practice, he, you know, because the whole idea of practicing, if it comes from an intrinsic value, it blossoms like a flower in a rose garden. But if it comes from this pressure, you know, yeah, you can make it grow, you put enough lights on something, grow lights, and you put enough fertilizer in there, it's gonna grow and be beautiful. But the minute all that support goes away, it withers and dies. So you've got to, and that's where that lawnmower parenting, you take away all those, all those barriers for the child, and then you pull away when they turn 18 or 20, or 25, or whatever age it is, you know, they move out on their own. And the Grow lights not there anymore, the fertilizers not there anymore, and they have to figure out how to make their own. long, boring parenting just cuts all that down. And they never learned those skills, parents should be back on the sideline, cheering their kids on. And then when they fail, pick them up, help help hold their hand, literally and figuratively, if they're young enough, you know, and I'll tell you to this day, both of my children, it doesn't matter who's around, if he's getting ready to walk on stage or anything. If I'm standing there, they'll give me a hug and a kiss before they walk away. And to say that a 19, almost 20 year old man will hug and kiss his dad before he goes somewhere. I mean, he gets he goes out and does. He comes in at four o'clock in the morning. And you know, Hey, Dad, I'm home, you know, and he wants to tell me about what he just did. And I love him to death. Sometimes I can't do that. I mean, I've been I've been, you know, working since sixth this morning. And I was up very late doing other stuff all night last night. So I never, he never was able to wake me up this morning in the short amount of time I got to sleep. So I know what's going to happen when he gets up this afternoon. It's like, Oh, my God, that he's got to come down and sit down and tell me everything that happened. That's the reward. I'm reaping. Back then when he was little. And I was watching the struggle, it was tearing my heart apart. I wanted him to not ever face any adversity, not see things like like racism, and sexism, and ageism. But he learned about it. And now I watch him. In fact, while he was in school, over the years, he had 10 or 11 kids that he brought to my attention, Dad, this person needs help, like mental health, psychological health. And in each case, they were suicidal kids. And the parents didn't know what was going on. And my son calls me up. And you know, we had we volunteered at our school all the time. So we knew parents, we knew teachers. And I, as the psychologist could pick up the phone and say, hey, you know, my son was telling me about your son or your daughter, and this is going on. And, you know, I think it's great that your child shares with my kid. But as as a psychologist, there's actually legal issues I have to deal with. And I'd like to help you. You know, I don't want to pick up the phone and call Child Protective Services. I'd rather go to mom and dad, and we were able to get every one of those kids hell, my daughter has brought to me five or six kids the same way. You know, and it doesn't hurt that I'm a psychologist, and I lectured. And when they were little, you know, we I would take them with me to university and they'd sit out in the in the audience. And you know, they've heard some very adult conversations when they were little bitty. But I always follow that up, you know, hey, do you understand what I was talking about today? And did any of that scare you did a Friday? Do you have your own questions? And you know, my kids at three or four years old would go and borrow paper from the college student next to them and sit down and take their own little notes,

raise hands and ask questions and model appropriate college behavior for my students. And my not one student ever complained, in fact, they would come to me and say, hey, you know, I'm a working mom. And sometimes I go bring up bring your child. You know, they're going to learn but I want I want, you know, I'm not going to dumb down or make my lecture any softer. And as a forensic psychologist, some of my lectures are pretty rough when I get into rape and incest and violent murders and serial killers and things like that, but it's on my syllabus. So the parents knew before what I was what I was going to be talking about, and I never got complaints at that point. from, you know, parents who brought their kids in, and they learned and then the now now I get, you know, so many of my students still stay in touch with me. It's amazing. And I get responses, hey, remember when I brought my kid, he's in graduate school becoming a forensic psychologist. And it's like, it's because he heard you and he left and I'm like, wow, you know, that's just amazing. And that, you know, I'm here to make people's lives better. You know, if, if I get paid for it, man, that makes my life better, because now I can feed my kids. But, but I got into this to help people. That's, you know, my dad's like, why are you going in that area doesn't pay? Well, I mean, look at how much you know, research and college, you have to get, you know, why didn't you go in and beat you know, for the same amount of time, you could be a thoracic surgeon, and, you know, make 1,000,005 a year and do it, you know, it's like, you know, what, a thoracic surgeon you see, there they go, their general practitioner, you never really build a relationship with your patient. The general practitioner gets, oh, you have appendicitis, or you have this and you need to see a surgeon, they send you over to my office, I do an evaluation, I look at all your medical records, we set a date for the surgery. And then I follow up with you three or four times after the surgery, and I never see you again. And, you know, some people that's perfect for them. That's not me. So, and I had to learn from from watching that I watched my brother, who was had had that whole perspective, but he was he wanted to learn about religion and religiosity. He has degrees in theology and all this kind of stuff. And what does he do now? He actually teaches in American history in foreign countries. And he loves it. I mean, he gets to go, and he does the same thing I do. Only he's in doing it in a different world and different realm. He does it in education, and he awakens people's ideas and watches them go in sometimes third world countries where they're really oppressed. And all of a sudden, you know, he takes us those oppression, that oppression. And he says, Now, how can we change this now look at what happened to the American people when we were colonies, and we're being oppressed, and it takes risk, and it takes, you know, it takes having had enough? And what do we learn from that? And he's, you know, I like to think that I'm some kind of a parent to a lot of these people. And in fact, I call most of my kids, my college students, kiddos. I mean, even today, and they've got kids almost as old as mine. And Hey, kiddo, how you do? You know, and it's like, the first time I say to him, I think they're a little offended. But after they have talked to me for five minutes, they realize that I'm calling them out, because I'm taking responsibility for for what I'm teaching them, just like I do for my kids. And I think every one of us as as a human being in this country needs to do that. Quit allowing people to not fail. But even if you don't know that person from Adam, lift them up. Help them learn from that. Now, I said this 100 times you can take a kid to the library, but you can't make them think. And and you have to realize, you have to realize that, that sometimes, you know, they're not ready yet. And that's okay. Be there when they are? Don't get upset. Yes, it's frustrating. But that frustration is yours, not theirs. Don't put that on them. Yeah, realize that, you know, there are distractors in this world. And they make life more difficult than it has to be. And if you can learn to weed out those distractions, you can actually start focusing on what's really important, and that's what parents need to be able to do is the distraction is it's crushing my heart to watch my kid be picked last on the on the basketball team out on the playground, the lawnmower parents goes out there and picks the teams for the kids. So then there's none of that going on. Well, that doesn't teach the child how to interact. It also doesn't teach the child that everybody has different skill levels. And if you don't like where your skill set is, you need to do something to change that. Now, we all have genetic limitations. We have biological limitations, you're in a car accident, you break your back, that kind of stuff. But it doesn't mean your life is over. You take those limitations and you take quit focusing on those focus on your strengths. And it kills me as somebody who feels very empathetic and responsible for the people I work with, to watch my patients, my students, my children, struggle with those types of of life challenges. But the fact is, I can sit there and focus on that struggle with them and we can have our pity party, or I can focus on Hey, A look at your upper body strength, you know, you're paralyzed, you're in a wheelchair, look at your upper body strength, look what's happening to you. And you can do things so many people can't do. And you have access and a perspective on the world that very few people have changed the world, write a book, teach the world, what it's like to overcome adversity, even adversity, where there's zero chance of you recovering from the initial assault. And it's a beautiful thing. It really is.

Lindsay Miller  25:35  
Yeah, well, and what I'm hearing you say, in so many of these stories is that when we give ourselves the opportunity to normalize struggle, and adversity, we then do our children in the favor of giving them that same gift as they can normalize it for themselves for other people. And it's not a space where we're broken or less than, it's just an opportunity to reframe, which, as you spoke to so beautifully, just now is really what we're going to do throughout our lives, right, no matter what we face. And so as we can guide our children in that in their youth, it becomes a pattern of thinking for them, and they can employ it as needed throughout their life.

Dr. John Huber  26:11  
And I loved your phrase earlier, you talked about a scaffold, you know, you're building a framework that they can work around, and it doesn't matter, if you're gone in five years, and they get a new challenge they've never, ever seen before, they've still got that scaffolding in place, and they'll make it work. You stay with them the rest of their lives, if you do it, right.

Lindsay Miller  26:34  
That's powerful. And what I'm also hearing you say is, as we kind of support the individual flourishing of our children, it makes our job as parents easier, because we're not having to fight motivation. Because when kids are doing things they love, they're motivated. And when kids are, you know, following a path that's meaningful to them, they find reasons to keep engaging with it, and they find ways to make it work.

Dr. John Huber  26:58  
Absolutely. And I giggled, because I just don't think there's anything easy in parenting. I just, it's, it's the hardest, best job you'll ever have in your life. And you'll have struggles and there will be days, there will be moments when you experience heaven and hell in the exact same moment. I mean, I mean, how do you get well, let's see, for example, I have a 10 year old was brought into my office by very distraught parents, and what's going on? Well, you know, my kiddos facing expulsion and criminal charges, he hacked into the school district's grade program and change grades, he didn't change his he changed all these other people's grades. And in one side, the parents like oh my god, my kids, a genius, he's a brilliant he was able to go through, I mean, adults who have been working for their whole life putting on firewalls, and he was able at 10 years old, to figure out a way into that whole thing. And they're ecstatic. And at the exact same moment, they're like, his life's over, he's gonna go to heaven and hell at the exact same moment. And, and so I had to go through and kind of reframe, and start building the scaffold for the parents to do that for their child. And, and now the kids great. He's, you know, almost as old as my son get looking at graduation. And he has a gun, but he never was charged for any kind of felonies and stuff at that point. And he stayed out of doing those kinds of things. But he's, he's created some amazing software he's done, you know, how you go on and do apps and put them up on the app stores and stuff like that. He's done all that kind of stuff. And he's reframed it, and he doesn't have to work a regular job, he gets excited about something, and hey, I can go do this. And now you have a way to schedule, you know, your date next week, you know, and, yeah, and, you know, and the parents are ecstatic that they were able to go from that shock and awe, that Heaven and Hell and actually build on it and not focus on the negative because, you know, we're human beings. And that's what we tend to do really well. You know, when somebody screws up, and a parent comes in there, don't you know how dumb that was, and that the kid already went through, and they've said, 10 times worse stuff to themselves than you can ever say to them. They don't need to hear that they need to hear, hey, we're gonna figure out a way to get around this, and we're gonna pay if we have to pay a price for it, you know, you pay the price for it. But you get on with your life and you put one foot in front of the other and you keep your nose up, and you stay clean, and you get on with life and you're going to have an amazing experience.

Lindsay Miller  29:52  
Yeah, that's so powerful, so powerful. Now let's dive into ketamine for a minute because I think There are some things that you've seen throughout your career, right? Where you've seen people have a really hard time just reframing, and they seem to kind of get stuck, or they're struggling to move through a trauma or an physical or emotional struggle that has put them in a place where they just feel like kind of incapacitated, right. And I know in your own story, you have navigated long, long term opioid abuse. And that really kind of impacted your your thoughts and your feelings on how to help people get out of some of these struggles that just feel chronic and that we can't kind of reframe and just put ourselves forward in a different trajectory. Talk to us a little bit about how you kind of had your own relationship with ketamine and then how you support others now?

Dr. John Huber  30:49  
Well, okay, my my relationship with ketamine actually, the my first occurrence with that was, my son was in an accident, did his tongue off, and we had to go into the emergency room and have it sewn back on. And I had privileges at some hospitals when we walked in there. And, you know, he was two and a half, three years old, something like that. And the emergency room doctor is like, well, you know, we're slammed, and I don't have any support, but I know you got privileges and other hospital, if you come in and help me, we can do this right now. And you guys can get out of here. So I'm like, okay, so we go in, and he starts telling me he's going to use ketamine to, you know, put my child asleep, so we can so his tongue together, and he's telling me how it's a dissociative anesthesia. And the child, you know, if he was if he had the vocabulary for it would tell us that he felt like he was leaving his body kind of a thing. And, but when he starts coming to, he's probably going to hallucinate. I'm like, Okay, well, you know, yeah, I can help with that. And so, you know, I help hold his mouth open, run a few stitches after the doctor shows me, you know, because I'm a psychologist, I'm not a medical doctor. But, you know, he was he was very excited that he could teach somebody who, you know, some of this stuff, and we didn't have to go do follow up, I could go in there, I cut the stitches and pull them out. And, you know, it was it was a lot less traumatic for my child having to go back into that situation to people he really doesn't know. And, but when my child started coming out of the anesthesia, which I asked him why he was using this, and he goes, Well, one of the benefits is it doesn't suppress your respiratory system. So you don't have to intubate a kid. And, well, you don't have to with adults either. Then so they use it with adults. And I did a little more research. And it was used in animal veterinary medicine, because they could use large animals, and they could do surgeries on them, they didn't have to wait for an anecdote to wake the elephant up or the horse up. And as they start coming to, they get enough strength that they can lift their body weight off their lungs, and actually start breathing freely again, so they don't suffocate before the antidote kicks in. So it's really highly popular in the veterinary medicine world. And it's actually since 1970 been very highly popular in the child surgery world because they don't have to intubate kids. And it has very few lasting issues, anything else like that. And so going forward, you know, I had broken my shoulder playing football. And you know, and I told you that before we came on the air and, and I was dealing with the chronic pain and the steel pins on my shoulder. And yes, I broken the same shoulder several times to this date since the original time. I just, I just can't sit still I want to be doing things you know. And I'm a third degree black belt now. So I go and I get beat up by a fifth degree black belt or sixth degree black belt and I hurt and I take a microdose Academy and the pains gone. opiates, all they ever did was make me not care about the pain. It never took the pain away. But what we found out and the research out of Johns Hopkins and Yale Medical School is that the ketamine resets different centers in your brain. And that resetting allows your brain to turn on filters. Hey, that pain signal. It's there all the time. So it's not really pain anymore. It's done its job, we know you've injured it. Now it's your new normal so it resets your brain. So it stops taking that pain signal and send it to the pain centers. It now just stops it right there. So when I reinjure it the pain signals come back. Yeah, so it doesn't take away the protection of pain providers pains there for a reason. It keeps us healthy, keeps us safe. So I don't want to like you know, cauterize a nerve and so I don't feel any pain anymore, because then I can hurt it again and not know I've heard it and then do irreparable damage and never use my arm again. But what we do is we give sub sedation doses I see Okay, and so you're awake, but it boosts your glutamate, which is a communication neurotransmitter. And it stimulates new neuron cell growth through a brain derived neuropathic factor, which is stimulated by the glutamate. So we can actually make the brain more plastic like it was when you were a little kid, it can actually create new nerve cells and new connections, that after about 25, it's very difficult for your brain to do. And then we create new pathways. But the side effect that it's the one way we know that we've got the right dose is we cause a psychedelic experience, we cause you to have a trip. But it's unlike LSD, or mushrooms or anything else, those use serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine. So once you start that trip, you can't stop it. With ketamine, it's half life is five to 15 minutes. So maximum trip is an hour long. And all if you start having an intense trip, all you have to do really is start talking to somebody or turn on a light or look at the light on your on your LED clock. And that's enough stimuli to shut that psychedelic experience down. So it's a really pleasant I, I do over 400 patients a year in my office, and I've had two patients have a bad trip. Okay. So it's an end those were on patients were on Trip number five or six with IV infusion. So so it's not, it's generally a very pleasant, fun experience. Because it there's not monkeys coming out of walls and devils popping up everywhere. So yeah, you get colors, you get rainbows, you get cityscapes, and then you kind of fly around and you disassociate, you leave your body into that psychedelic experience. And that change in perspective, is a psychedelic representation of what your consciousness is thinking about separating from all the other distractors in your life, I starting this and being a psychologist since 1992 94, or something like that. I finally found something that has quick, effective results, instead of years of filling, like almost drudgery, psychotherapy. I mean, it's great, and it's perfect. And psychotherapy itself can be very addicting. But, you know, I want results. I want my people to have a life. And there's one thing we can't buy. And that's time. So if I can figure out a way to have somebody's life start three years earlier than if they just stayed in therapy. I want to do it.

Lindsay Miller  37:37  
Yeah. And is it is it kid friendly, or only adults, because I

Dr. John Huber  37:41  
get it. I use it. I get a lot of adolescents and young teenage women who have been sexually assaulted oftentimes by a father, uncle or older brother, who are in this totally emo goth. You can't touch me and I'm wearing I'm wearing other stuff. And it's kind of a self defense. But if I make myself kind of look disgusting and gross, nobody's gonna want to have sex with me and that kind of stuff. And I, it's like, every time they come in on the first infusion, it's like a miracle. It's like they walk out of there. They're hugging everybody, half the time, about halfway through, they look up and go, Can I hold your hand? And it's like, it's like, Oh, my goodness, this is amazing. And, and, you know, I had one and this one I'll probably never ever forget, it was Monday before Christmas last year in the office. And this woman, I mean, 16 year old girl sexually assaulted since she was six years old by her dad. It fight, you know, she somehow was able to let mom know. And so by the time she was 12, he was incarcerated. And he's still incarcerated. But for four years, they looked for all this type of therapy, they brought him in her brought her in. And, you know, wouldn't, you know, she she kind of fist bumps and wouldn't hug or shake hands, didn't hug your mom, anything like that? Told her mom to leave. And so mom goes out in the waiting room, and we come in there and I had probably one of my best physicians that I work with. I told her and so she actually had her nurse practitioner go see the rest of her patients the rest of the day. She came in, and we sat there and about 10 minutes in, she asked to hold my hands. So I scooted over and held her hand and she looked over at Eleanor Womack, the Doctor, can I hold your hand too. And so we're on either side of her holding her hands, and all of a sudden she just starts telling her story stuff that nobody's heard. We cried for three hours. And she all of a sudden she like starts talking about what she loves in life, which was her she draws anime and you can flip books and stuff like that and she wants to be an artist. And then she goes, Can I see my mom now? And I'm like, okay, so I go and get her mom and literally, before the door even opens this girl is jumping into our moms aren't a 16 year old almost full size woman is jumping in literally off the ground. And Mom is having this girl. And the next three days, my phone blew up with all her family members going, you give us our Christmas miracle our six year old girl's back, she loves to hug, she won't shut up. And we love her voice. She just and, and I see her every couple of months, she comes in for support infusion. And her concern now is it's going to go away and she'll lose that what she's gotten back. And I'm like, Look, you follow my treatment plan, you're going to be fine. And so she's she's a new world, a new world. And that that happens. So often. I I can't I mean, it still feels like a miracle every time but it's the medication. And the kids get that faster response because their brains are still are pretty plastic. So it's really easy for the glutamate just above that. When I started using ketamine, psychotropic Lee with my patients, it was it was tied up with some situations in the court where a judge called me on a sentencing hearing, he called me and said, you know, there's something about this client, that I don't like sending this person to jail, there's something, you know, if I think if I send him to jail, he's gonna He's gonna end up dead, he's gonna whatever. And so he challenged me and he reset the hearing date for 30 days, you give me 30 days to come back with some alternative. He's like, look, we put you know, you get paid enough for this. You're the expert, bring me something you have 30 days. So I came back 30 days later, and I walked in, and I had been exposed to a ketamine doctor. And he's actually he at the time, he was like, one of the high level er coordinators for the Veterans Administration. And I said, I'm looking for information on XY and Z. And he goes, Well, I don't have that exactly. But what I've got is a database. And the military does one thing extremely well, they collect data. So he had all these patients who'd come through the VA, who had been treated been treated for post traumatic stress disorder with ketamine, but they had all the bio psychosocial data before, and all the bio psychosocial data after the treatment. And what we saw was 80% of them stopped drinking, whether they were alcoholics, teetotallers social drinkers 80%, across the board, after they had the PTSD treating treatment, well, this person had gotten involved in crime because of his alcoholism. And he'd been through 14 or 15, rehab facilities. And the judge felt like all he had was prison, but the person was approaching 70 years of age, and, you know, had some medical issues going on, and all this kind of stuff. He also had a source of income. So I walked into the judge's chambers. And I'd done my whole analysis of variance, all my statistics that all my advanced degrees taught me because I don't particularly love math, but I've learned to use it, you know, and that's that, I love the psychology side of it. So I learned how to do all this stuff. And so we ran all or a novice. And we found out that that that estimate of 80% was exactly true. 80% of those patients stopped drinking, so and they were being treated for something not related to alcoholism, right. So with the help of this doctor, Dr. Bonnet, we were able to sit down and make a treatment plan he and I did so I had it with him. And I had a letter from this doctor, and sit this down on the on the judge's table, and the judge is like, wow. And he goes, Well, how come he went through all these rehab programs? And they didn't fix him? And I, I knew that question was coming. You know, it's my job, right? So I come out. And I said, Well, here's here's research, the research on most rehab programs, they're basically run off 12 Step programs. And when a person is ready to quit drinking, they're perfect. They work well. But a lot of people, that is their coping mechanism, that's why they're drinking. You know, that's why they're using these drugs, they're coping, and they get physiologically addicted to that. And that's the end of the story. Well, in this case, the guy liked drinking, but he that was his coping mechanism for everything. Yeah. And so the data on regular programs is two to 16% effective. So that means up to 98% of people fail those 12 Step programs. Now for the people that works for it, they're amazing and it is a life changer. I don't want to minimize those. We need them out there because they're mostly you know, a lot of them are free of charge. Some of them are very expensive, though. Well, we put together and proposed a specific modality based on literally 10s of 1000s of individuals that we had data on from the VA, under the supervision of Dr. Bonnet, and the judge says, Great brings in the client says, Okay, here's what I'd like to offer you, I want you to do this program. And there are estimates on how much it's going to cost. And, you know, if you're willing to pay for it, I'll send you to be treated that way, as opposed to going to jail. And of course, the guy's like, yeah, all right to check today, you know. And, you know, he's clean and sober to this day, I actually have talked to him this week, as a matter of fact, I mean, he's it because I changed his life. And he, he's, you know, and I ran into some ethical issues at that point, because, as an expert witness, if I recommend a treatment, ethically, I can't be the supervisor of that treatment, because now I'm gaining from that I'm making money from that. So when we went forward, and he asked me how much it would cost, I asked him, Are you asking me to do this? And he goes, we nobody else knows how to do it. I mean, this is like, okay. So I said, I have some issues with that. So I can't make money off of this. And I'm asking you to order me to give this treatment, because ethically, I can't. And I explained to my issues as a licensed professional. So he put all that in the thing. And he said he would defend me if somebody ever calls and says that I had to do that I was, and I didn't make money on it. Now, you know, I hired people, and they made money. And we, you know, but I didn't, I didn't make any money on it. Other than what I'd already done as an expert witness for this guy.

Dr. Bonner came in and he got, I think I may have paid $500 for everything he did over the next 75 days, something like that. It wasn't much. And, you know, he wasn't the quote, unquote, expert witness. And so he didn't have the issues that I had, but I knew he actually had to fly in a couple of times. So whatever I paid him, I'm sure it was eaten up by travel expenses and, and things like that. And all of a sudden, I'm getting calls from judges in Dallas and Fort Worth, and Midland and San Angelo, all over the state of Texas, because they started hearing about this. And so Dr. bonnet and I started working a lot more together. And we started seeing research out of Russia, from the 70s talking about how this is a great, you know, program for this and for that, and depression and anxiety. And then we started finding researchers who are actually researching this stuff at Johns Hopkins at Yale Medical School, and got together and worked with the American Society of ketamine physicians, and held our first conference right here in Austin, Texas, we had almost 100 physicians. And the next year, we had 900 physicians. And, you know, it's just, it's taken off, and it's expensive. So that's what trip center dot clinic is about, is finding an affordable way to do it. There's no needles involved with trips that are dot clinic, you do it in the comfort of your own home, and you're medically supervised by us in the safest possible way. We go slow and we build you up and till we hit therapeutic levels, and then we maintain that and the ketamine allows your brain to basically start growing again and changing and reframing itself. So it's, it's been an amazing blessing for my life with my chronic pain. I mean, there's so many things that I probably wouldn't be able to do today if I if I was not involved with ketamine treatment for myself for my pain. And, but for my patients, it's it's why I got into treating people I love to see people recover and get on with their lives. That's my job if I do my job, right. I don't have a job anymore.

Lindsay Miller  49:04  
Yeah, well, and I think as parents or like you're describing it, you know, as a practitioner, the tools that you've shared today are those things right? Like we work ourselves out of a job by building resilience and building the tools to move through adversity skillfully. And then when we need additional support you provide that with with ketamine and other ways that you offer treatment. So thank you so much, John, for coming today. Dr. Hooper, I appreciate your wisdom and insights that you've shared.

Dr. John Huber  49:32  
Well, thank you, Lindsay. You have an amazing show. I think what you're doing, you know, I think if we started with you and these kids in kindergarten, by the time they were old enough to have kids, they would know how to how to raise their kids and we'd have a lot better, better world out there for the kids coming up behind them. Well, thank

Lindsay Miller  49:49  
you for that. Thanks again for listening. I'm so grateful that you were here and I hope you were able to pull some things from this episode to support your own journey. I think when we're watching and others navigate stress and adversity, it can be hard because we doubt ourselves or think maybe there was something I could do. You know, we spin forward and back. What is this going to look like five years from now? 20 years from now. And really just being present with our kids as they're navigating struggle is such a gift. And it's so hard sometimes I get it. And also, it's the place where we can just offer them compassionate support, and scaffold their learning. And so I'm right there with you on the journey. If you enjoyed this episode, I would really appreciate it if you would leave a review. I'm trying to get some more reviews so that people can find the podcast I'm hoping to help as many families as possible, navigate stress with more ease. And then if there's someone that you thought of as you were listening, please share the episode with him. I think John's words can be resonant for a variety of situations and I would love for his message to find the people that that need it. Thanks again for being here. Until next time!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai