From Bar Owner Alcoholic to Sober Treatment Center Creator- the 12th Step

Hi and welcome to the You World Order Showcase podcast. Today we have with us Brice Hancock and Brice hold on just a second. Brice is a person in long term recovery and a serial entrepreneur. He built a treatment center from the ground up.

Called them the Mile High Recovery center. It's in Colorado and he helps clients heal and create a foundation for long term recovery. They specialize in individualized, thoughtful and supportive treatment plans geared towards every client specific.

Needs. It's really our honor to have you here with us, Bryce. To chat about addiction and recovery. And it's such an important topic right now. And I'm, I'm.

It's just.

Like I said, it's our pleasure to have you here. So tell us your story. How did you get started? Tell us about why you decided to build this treatment center.

Tell us, yeah.

Well, thanks for having me. First of all, it is an honor to be here. Yeah, I'm a person in long term recovery, which really just means I haven't drank or done drugs in a long time. I've been sober for.

10 years.

Basically, I grew up in an environment where my emotional health was. It was hard. It was hard for me to like.

Have an emotionally healthy like as a child. There's a lot of stonewalling and things like that, and so when I turned 18 and left the house, I immediately became a daily blackout drinker. Yeah. And so. And it seemed OK because it was college, right? But when I graduated college and most of my friends.

You know, matriculated to regular life and got careers and families. I moved to Baltimore, MD and.

Within a few years, was addicted to heroin and crack.

And so I crashed and burned in Baltimore because it got real weird real fast. And I followed my parents to Denver and they they had moved out to Colorado. And so I moved out.

Kind of with them, and spent the next two years.

Just kind of dragging the bottom as a mostly an alcoholic. I am a musician and I always was able to kind of dial back my drug use and just drink.

And So what happened is I was booking, I was playing music, I'm booking my band and I'm booking. Then I started to realize I was good at it. So I started to book other bands and lo and behold, now I'm a booking agent. I'm booking national Blues tours, and I'm booking different clubs. One of the clubs I was booking, he said, would you like to buy the bar?

And I said I would love to buy the bar, but I don't have any money and he he carried the loan. So again, lo and behold, I am a horrible alcohol.

Call it.

And a hopeless drug addict. And now I own a bar and it gets worse and worse and worse. So seven years into that, I am.

Comma.

Really physically dependent on alcohol. I'm drinking from sun up to sundown by the half gallon of vodka a day. I have all these health problems and eventually I'm in and out of the doctor and the doctor does a blood test.

Calls me back in, shows me his chart, it says alcohol abuse, severe. He looks me right in the eye and he says you're late. Stage alcoholic. Your liver is cirrhotic. Your pancreas is stressed. That I'm surprised your heart hasn't stopped.

I give you a year to live. If you can't stop drinking, I could not stop drinking. I drink for well over a year.

And I knew I was dying. But every day it was like I'm not going to die today. I'm just going to get drunk today. Like I've been doing for 25 years.

Eventually it got so bad that I started going to AA meetings.

Not seriously, but like onesie Tuesday, a meetings and then one day I.

Was able to stop.

So I stopped for 90 days about. I didn't do any work on myself. I just went to meetings.

And so it was not a lasting sustainable.

Recovery. I had this horrible relapse. I ended up in a psych ward and while I was in the psych ward, I had a lot of very.

Aha moments distinct like, you know, a psychic change, a spiritual experience. And when I got out of there, I dove head first back into my 12 step program. I did the work. I did therapy, I did outpatient treatment and.

Navigated that successfully, so I've been sober for 11 years now. Here's the part where it got cool because I owned a bar and then I decided I'd be a realtor in early recovery, which was a good job, a fun job, but was not my passion. So around two years sober, I was very depressed.

And it was kind of like a dark night of the soul depression, where I didn't know how to get out of it. Nothing I was doing was working. And I I said to this guy, I said I am depressed. I don't want to wake up in the morning, and he said.

Are you?

Meditating and I said I'm not that depressed.

And.

I, he laughed. I heard myself say it and I was like, what is wrong with you, you know? And so.

It was time to do more work, and so I started meditating. I.

That my the therapist at the time, she said. She asked me what is your purpose?

And I was like, what do you? I'm a realtor. You know. What do you mean? She said, why are you here? What is it? What is it all about? For you? And so I started to wonder, what is it all about for me? Who am I as a sober man?

What do I want to do? Like what kind of impact do I?

Want to make on the world and?

Through this odd series of events, I ended up at a meeting.

And I stayed after the meeting and I asked the therapist that ran.

What?

What can I do? What can I do in recovery? I love addicts, I love Alcoholics, he said. We need sober houses, and I didn't really even know what it was, but I knew I was gonna do it like something. Just hit me. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna be the sober house.

Guy.

I opened up one house and my depression lifted.

And I I had a new career on my hands. And so I kept opening houses. I got to 9 house.

And you know several employees in the city, Denver said. You have got to stop opening houses.

We don't, we don't have the zoning for it. You can't do this. And I said, well, the Supreme Court says I can't. So I lawyered up. And while I was fighting the city of Denver.

Someone suggested I go I open a treatment center and I again. I had no idea how to do it, but man, it sounded like a good idea. So I opened up an IOP which is outpatient treatment.

Hired some therapists just a few started charging insurance. And then so I kept adding things. So the whole thing started not as a grand vision. It was just like an organic process of adding different levels of care and hiring people and attracting people. And so now today we.

Have.

Residential treatment in all levels of outpatient care, there's seven sober houses that go along with it, and 35 employees. And so that's just that's the nickel version of the story for you.

That is pretty amazing. It I I have known people in the place where you were when you got sober. And I've known people who have died of alcoholism, they just couldn't quit. I've known people that lost most of their liver and if they ever drink again, they will probably die.

And people that were in my family. So when when you talk about these things, it's it's bad when you get to that point, when the doctor tells you you're going to die, you're you're like on.

Yeah, it's the old.

Your way out and then.

Pretty amazing that you were able to to just pull it all together and found your mission at point in life, and now you're just like helping other people who are in the same situation.

Yeah. And so that's the 12th step is giving back what was given to you. Right. I got to give it away to keep it. And the whole thing kind of happened out of my own knee to heal, which is super cool. You know, I just took one step forward and then the universe rearranged the way it needed to to allow me to continue going. And it's not been easy all the time.

But it's definitely worth it.

And the big question is, do you meditate? Do you?

I.

That's a good one, because this morning I woke up and I immediately I was late and I was like, Oh my God, I'm late. And so I ran. I got my kids up and I can feel unsettled. And. And before I took them to school, I went back upstairs to my room, and I meditated. I just 5 minutes just to touch base, get centered.

And I believe in it the whole morning routine is so important to me.

Ed.

It.

Once you get, it's like another addiction.

Yeah, it.

Is.

Kind of addiction.

For sure, but it's like as long as I'm grounded, I can do anything I believe.

Yeah. Yeah, it's like you. You plug it into the energy source.

And.

And you're ready to go get charged up.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And as long as I do that like, I'm good if I.

Can't do that.

I don't know, it just doesn't. I'm not. I'm not surfing the wave at that point. I'm just kind of you.

No.

Chugging along, yeah, chugging along.

Yeah, I I totally get that. And you actually feel differently. I mean, it is, it's it's a tangible difference. Yeah, in how your body is functioning when you meditate.

Yeah, you can get into that flow. You know, life is so much easier.

Yeah. Then things manifest for you. Getting this facility up and running is a perfect example. And now you don't just help Alcoholics, you help people recovering from all kinds of addictions, right?

Yeah, well, you know, it's there's a lot. So when I started to add to clinical services, I.

When it was just sober living and it was just me and my friends, and it was like, go to meetings and do this, I realized that people have clinical needs.

And they need therapy like, I believe heavily in therapy. I was doing it myself. And so when I added those services, people started like I was able to help people in a more profound way. And, you know, my whole thing is I am not a therapist, but my vision was to set it up and hope people find their own magic. Right.

And so we help people with mental health problems, you know.

We help people. I mean, when I was a kid, it was mostly drinking and maybe smoking a little weed here and there and then it got worse and worse and worse. And now we have a fentanyl crisis. The epidemic of fentanyl and.

Kids that aren't addicts are dying because of they use it one time, and so it's a whole other ball game. You know, like when I was a kid on the party scene.

I had every every reasonable expectation. I wasn't going to overdose that day, but it's scary for kids now. And so yeah, there's a whole thing going on and it's.

Even pot.

He.

Well, the pie is crazy strong. Crazy strong.

Yeah, it's not like you know, when I was in high school, you could get like this much for $5, yeah.

Yeah.

OK, I didn't personally smoke it, but.

Of course not.

I knew I knew people who did. You have to smoke like the whole bag in order to get high, too. I mean, there there was fat.

Well, I definitely did.

No, it's so strong. It's so strong now. It's like, there's like all kinds of things like uh, in psychosis, cannabis psychosis and there's a withdrawal symptom.

And all kinds of things are going on. I have kids that show up in treatment. That's their drug of choice.

Yeah, but it's it's they did something to it.

Yeah, well, as soon as they legalized it, they started working on it, making it stronger. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of like the difference between, you know, 3-2 beer, which is mostly water and.

In hard liquor, Everclear or something I just like.

Yeah, right.

11 is going to kill you much faster than the other.

Yeah, it's a real science that it's botany, I guess is what you call it, making those making that raising the THC content to.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I don't know how I feel about all of that.

Yeah.

I've gotten into not asking. I just start. I just put the help out there and hopefully they get it. I think our ideal client is usually a.

A young person in their 20s and it's, uh, a combination of things besides drugs. It's failure to launch. Failure to connect, find their own purpose.

Yeah.

So we do we help with that whole thing. You know we offer case management and our our goal is to get them to a year if we can.

That is really great. His kids in their 20s, they're either.

They're either really like focused and they have an idea of how to go forward, but I think the COVID epidemic caused a whole group of people to.

Yeah.

Miss out on some really strategic things that kids need to go through in order to set themselves up to launch.

Better. And then you've got all the gaming stuff that goes on in that age group that it's like they disconnect and they don't really know how to connect with people.

Yeah, the gaming, social media, all that stuff. I mean, it's hard enough being a young person.

Just being that age and kind of, you know, coming of age now, you have this whole other addiction with the screens and it's like we've elevated.

The worst qualities.

And instead of, you know what I'm saying?

It's just like.

But again, it's always been hard. It's always been hard to be a young person and so we just.

Help them connect to themselves. Help them connect to their peer group, you know, and we just try to foster, like, a a culture and a community in our houses and.

Isolation kills addicts. It kills Alcoholics.

Yeah, it does. And and helping them to understand the the games that you can play with people, you know, card games and board games and.

Yeah.

Reading a book and reading books in groups and just things that you can do in community with people that you know we we've.

It doesn't happen anymore the way it used to.

We've gotten away from it. I think it's all about dopamine because you get a dopamine hit from these devices, right? And I mean, if you think about it, like, life should be a game, interacting with people should be a game. You know what I mean? Like, you should be able to enjoy those things.

I believe they, you know, I have kids myself, but and my 12 year old I believe shrinks away from that sometimes that social anxiety and there's almost no reason to face it because.

You don't have.

To yeah.

You're a game, right?

I can. I don't have to be bored. I can go and stare at something. It's the lack of having to be bored in the world.

Oh, you're so funny.

You're so right because like, how else are you gonna learn to be creative if you're never, ever bored? Literally.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that.

Right.

Yeah.

I I've had five kids. I have one that's still in her 20s, and I have one that's in her 40s. Three in between.

OK.

So they're they're.

They're grown up into real people now.

They are.

They've they've all launched really well.

But I see a huge difference in the way society is around the 20 year old versus the 40 year olds they.

Yeah.

They they're in different parts.

Of their lives, for one thing. But and.

And the the stages of alcohol that they all go through.

And you know, I do come from a family of Alcoholics, and the two older ones. Dad was an alcoholic and I left him. And then.

When my daughter had her first child, he quit drinking and he's been sober for like 15.

No 16 years now.

That it was because my daughter told him he would never see his grandchildren if he didn't stop drinking and that he's an amazing man. Now we go and see him and we all do stuff together, even though you know my other, my other husband.

Children.

Yeah.

OK.

That's I think most people are are able to pull themselves out of it, you know, even real heavy drinkers, if they're given a good enough reason, can.

Yeah.

Stop.

Yeah.

You know.

And it doesn't even have to be. You're going to die it. It can be as simple as. You're not going to see your grandkids and.

My.

You know if.

You're really connected to your family then? That's a big that's a big thing.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, I mean, I my son's story was supposed to be. My dad died when I was two. He owned a bar. He knew all these crazy people. And you know what? A tragedy? And. And so that's one of the things I'm most grateful for is being able to be a dad.

Just kind of be there for my kids and enjoy the the experience of being a dad. No, the dad, I.

Want to be?

Yeah.

Kids teach you so much.

Too, yes. Yeah. They keep you young too.

Just.

Yeah, they do. And they keep you tuned in to what's happening.

Yeah. And at some point, they just become people that you like to spend time with.

Yeah, I'm waiting for that to happen.

It will. It'll happen before you blink and you'll be like, oh, yeah, I I long for those days and we could just sit down around the.

Table and chat.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

It is pretty awesome.

They're kind of different in that from other people that I interview and and you are in a lot of ways they coach you coach people to have a life without.

Addictions, but.

You you mostly deal with people that are in the.

Denver area, correct?

No, I'd say about anywhere from, I don't know, 25 to 50% depending on the time are from out of.

A lot of people that are struggling with substances need to relocate because they got to get away from, you know, all their friends and their the environment they're in. And so sometimes relocating is a really good way to.

Facilitate that process.

Well, that's really interesting. So you work with insurance companies also, how would how does that look?

Well, let's say you're struggling with alcoholism and you know you need help and it's bad. You probably need a medical detox. You just get the insurance card out of your wallet. You call the number.

The back.

And or you can get on Google or you can ask some people or whatever and just make that phone call and you will come in and we will determine the services with your insurance companies help that they are going to pay for. We'll provide those services and then they will pay us.

To provide those services.

Do you work with the government at all? Any like Medicare or Medicaid, whatever that is?

We don't.

We're going to start doing that soon, but that is not the way that I originally set it up.

There there are places that do that. I just like. We kind of settled into this like, this is our wheelhouse, is the failure to launch crowd mostly the early to mid 20s is our typical client and that's just kind of the way that worked out for us.

And how do?

You. How do they find you? I guess it's a better way.

To ask, I mean, you know, like how do they do anything these days? They wake up and they feel horrible from the night before or there's been an overdose.

Or a they get kicked out of school or an arrest and they pick up their phone and they open the browser and they type in treatment center Denver or treatment center Colorado. And we pop up and then they give us a call and then that's the beginning of the conversation.

I guess that's the way we think.

That's the way it goes. You know, that's the way most of it happens. Sometimes they talk to like an alumni person or a family member that went here or knows someone that went.

Here.

But usually it's they get on that browser and they type it in and then navigate that and with any luck they find us that.

So how do people that are out of state find you? Do you show up and out of state searches too?

Yeah, we will. We'll show up in out-of-state searches, and oftentimes it's such a nasty disease addiction that sometimes they will go to a place close to home, do 30 days there, go home relapse, do it again, and then the family is like, OK.

We're gonna send you out of state now. I've heard that Denver's nice. And so that's how they'll find us.

Really interesting, I don't.

I haven't ever met anyone who's gone.

Well, that's not true. My brother-in-law went to a treatment center because he was dying.

We sent him a he he's.

We found him under a bridge, OK. And we literally under a bridge and we we got him all cleaned up and then he ended up and we got him a career. He he he was sober and able to like function for a little while long enough to get a truck driving career going and then he decided that wasn't the life for him.

He wanted to drink and do drugs, so he moved back to Missouri and he's been living in a trailer in somebody's backyard for years and years and every once in a while we would send him some money.

But the last couple of times we've sent him any money, he's just drunk so much, he would just take it and spend it all on booze, and he's ended up in the hospital twice. And they did send him to rehab because they were like, you know, you keep doing this and you're gonna die.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's heartbreaking. But some people really need help to quit. I did. I I was unable to quit on my own. I had to reach out for help.

If that's the way it is, that's the.

I think the fact that he doesn't work.

Way it looks.

And it doesn't make any money is what has kept him alive. All this this time. Otherwise he would have.

Just you know.

If he'd had access to, you know, unlimited resources, he would.

Keith killed himself by now, which is really sad.

Yes.

Yeah, for sure it is. It's heartbreaking. It's a fatal disease.

It it really is and it can kill you slower. It'll kill you fast. It just depends on how, how quickly you're consuming the the poison.

Yeah. And it is poison and an alcoholic death is gnarly. I've seen it. Uh, that's cirrhosis kicks in and then it.

Goes into your organs and your organs eventually shut down and looks really painful.

Your skin turns yellow, your eyes turn yellow, and then your oftentimes your heart stops.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's really.

It's really an awful disease.

Yeah. And and.

It it can happen to people who aren't.

Aren't.

Like drinking all the time.

It you know.

Maybe you have two or three or four glasses of wine a night.

And you're lying to yourself when you say ohh. I only have one.

You know.

It adds up.

Over time, and it you're going to have those consequences. There's you just cannot continually poison yourself and think that there's not going to be anything that's going to happen to you.

Sure.

Yeah. And I you know.

I.

People will say moderation, and that's true. And I'm not here to stop anybody from enjoying their life. I'm not. We're here to for people that are unable to stop on their own and cannot moderate. I mean you, we all know somebody.

That it's like.

They keep getting in trouble and then they keep drinking. And if they have one drink, you know they're not going to stop until they pass out. No, not everybody's like that. Fortunately, there's a.

A lot of people in the middle and a lot of people that can moderate and you know, I don't know the the myth of the functioning alcoholic, right. I mean, somebody suffering from that, if that's a functioning alcoholic, it's it's probably not the.

The best dad he could be.

Right. And if you drink even drinking just a little bit and and I can say this on this side of it.

Even drinking just a little bit in moderation, you are always nursing a hangover. You might not acknowledge that it's a hangover because it might not be like your head's pounding and you feel like you're going to throw up and you're really dehydrated. But there is some low level of hangover that you're you're coping with. You may be sleeping too long in the morning.

You may just.

Not be getting enough water in your life and it does. It does impact you and.

Yeah.

And it gets worse. The older you get.

Too, doesn't it?

Yeah, so many people are suffering from, you know, bad sleep. And, you know, if you just quit drinking, you might find you sleep.

Better. That's right. You call that Gray area drinking. I think you don't need rehab. But you know, you could do better if you weren't.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think it's easier for those people. I I know it wasn't.

I'm one of those kinds of people that when I make a decision to quit an addiction like, I quit smoking twice just once wasn't enough. I just stop and then I just never do it again. And the same thing with drinking is I I just chose to embrace sobriety.

Other than quit drinking.

Because when you're pushing away from something, you're always gonna want that. But when you're pushing towards something, it feels like you're empowered. So I phrase it as I've embraced sobriety, and it's a choice I make. I I don't have any desire to not be sober.

Yeah.

That's true. What you focus on grows, right? So if you're resisting drinking, it's just like becomes more powerful. But if you're, like, going towards, you know, a healthier lifestyle or feeling better.

There's so many more options.

Probably feels better and it's easier to do it that way.

Yeah, at at least it was for me. I understand for everybody. And it makes meditation so much more powerful because you you really can TuneIn to like the physiological changes that are happening in your body while you're meditating and.

That's better than any other.

Yeah, and is being present like that is the new addiction for me for sure.

Yeah, yeah, I'm all about it. Which is why I had to laugh when you said that. I'm not that depressed.

Yeah, right. God forbid.

Because I remember at the beginning.

Right. Yeah. God forbid I meditate, right?

2 minutes was like hell.

Yeah, right.

Quiet the voices in my head. No, they're like unruly children screaming for attention.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

Ohh my goodness. So Bryce.

How do people get in touch with you if they want to want to look at your facility? Or are there other facilities out there?

What?

There's hundreds, probably thousands, of other facilities. We are located on the web at www.milehighrecoverycenter.com, but like I said, there's hundreds, thousands. There are resources out there and they're filled with people that got these jobs because they want to help.

They didn't. Nobody falls into this because.

Anything other than wanting to help you know.

So if anybody is struggling and and it's OK, you don't know what level you need to be at, you don't know what the help's gonna look like. It's OK to not know. Well, it's not OK. It's not asking for help if you're struggling.

And even if you're struggling just a little bit.

You know, if you're, if you're.

Thinking what am I doing? It feels like I'm drinking too much, but maybe nobody else has said anything to you or.

Or maybe you haven't, you know, even really looked at it yourself. Call call and get help. Talk to somebody there.

Yeah.

You know, I remember when I got sober, like the like, coach just didn't exist. Coaches like yourself like and it's.

Ask a coach, talk to a coach. Try to stop for 30 days. If you can't stop for 30 days, you might have a bigger problem than you think, right? And so, like I said, doing nothing is not OK do something you know one step, 1 positive step is is always better than nothing.

Yeah. And if you fail, try again.

Try again. Always try again. I had many, many relapses until I finally was able to stop.

Thank you so much for joining me. Bryce. What's the one thing you hope the audience takes away from this conversation?

That that helps out there that you don't if you're really struggling, like if you're like I was. You do not have to live that way there. There is a better way to live and you know A is free. There you go. You just again always reach out for help.

So.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for joining me.

You're welcome. Thank you.