7. A Joyous Meaningful Life

Hey guys, welcome to the seventh edition of This Is Your Wake Up Call. I'm your host, Jerry Bisbee, and this is an open invitation to all who are pursuing recovery, or maybe, like me, love someone who is, or desperately needs to be. Maybe you too have had a wake up call or two along the way. What I most want to share through this podcast is a message of hope and help and healing. Given my own history with this insidious disease, I'm looking to shift legacies.

which is why I'm so excited to be interviewing a variety of guests along the way, both professionals and regular folks like you and me, as well as sharing some helpful resources along the way. Today, the educator in me is thrilled to be introducing you to an incredibly accomplished colleague of mine in the professional world and one whose own story of recovery launched her into opening an extraordinary high school for students seeking recovery. Imagine a peer recovery high school.

The implications of this idea are long overdue. Let me introduce you to Melissa Mouton, founder and executive director of 5280 High School in Denver, Colorado. Hey, Melissa, I'm so excited to be with you today here at 5280 High School. I can't believe you're in a new building since I saw you last. Thank you for the tour. I know students haven't started yet. That's next week. And y'all, we're recording this at whatever time we're recording this. So kids will be here by the time this comes out.

Thank you for having me. I'm really so honored. Melissa, just for the sake of our audience, I'm going to give a little bit of backstory as to how I even know you. You know, I was at the Department of Education, I think when we met and there was a federal grant that you all had qualified for to get some funding to get this vision even off the ground. So we're super excited to get to be.

assigned to your school to get to know you back in the day and to hear the vision behind the school that's supporting students who are in recovery or are seeking recovery. And as we've just been visiting before we start recording to hear how the demand is what it is. So to kick us off, I'm going to hand it to you and say, tell us a little bit about your founding vision, how and why.

How and why did you start this school? Sure. Thanks, Jerry. I'm so glad you stopped by today. It's good to see you because I haven't seen you in a couple years since we finished that grant up. So it's great. I think...

The vision for 5280 High School, it was a journey for me. It didn't just come to me all in one shot. But the seed of... The high school started when I met a 16-year-old kid from a well-known Denver high school who was talking about how he was celebrating six months of clean time off of heroin.

Oh my. And I was talking to the kid and I said, Oh my gosh, how did you do that? What, what did you do? And he listed off a few things, but one of the most pronounced things that he said was, well, what eventually did it for me was I had to drop out of school. meaning there were too many drugs and too many friends who did drugs at school that he could not, even though he wanted to stop using heroin, that environment at his high school, it pretty much prevented him from making that decision.

Wow. And so it was crazy. I never thought that dropping out of school would, would be part of what he said. And I had been a former educator at the time. So really I had two thoughts stuck in my head, like one. That's not good for his long-term future. Right. Like, it's good to graduate high school. There's that. That's a good thing. That's a good start. Yeah. And then secondly, I...

I'm also in personal recovery, and I know that even though you can... stay sober for a limited time on your own, you can't really have sustained recovery or even a joyous, meaningful life unless you do it surrounded by people. And so his plan of dropping out of high school to be homeschooled by his mom in his basement, it was working for him at the time, but I knew that it wouldn't provide the long term.

support that he needed and as a former educator i i just knew we could do better come on yes please wow so that was a start that was in gosh that would have been Spring of 2013, I was graduating from medical school. I was attending the University of Colorado Medical School over there at Anschutz. I had matched with a residency. I was well on my way to a phenomenal career. I forgot this part of your story. This is so good. It's so wild. People are like, what?

Yeah, no, I was set and life was good. And I came into recovery from addiction about that time. And many people are not aware of this, but there is a program that exists in the state of Colorado called the Colorado Physicians Health Program. CPHP for short. And luckily it's still around. There was a legislative challenge either last year or the year before that they were going to get rid of CPHP and have it run by the medical board. And luckily it didn't pass.

But CPHP is a kind of an independent agency that monitors physicians across the state who may be experiencing some sort of mental or physical issue that might impair their ability to. to serve patients. And so addiction is one of those issues. It could also be Alzheimer's or tremors, anything that would impact your ability to care for patients. CPHP will come in and kind of say,

we need to support you here to make sure you're safe with patients. And so CPH became involved with my life and I didn't know it at the time, but the suggested and recommended, uh, treatment and course of plan for me was what is largely considered to be gold star treatment for how you handle addiction. So let me get some clarity here.

Can you self-identify or somebody identifies you and then they reach out to you and go, Hey, we think you might have a need for some support. Either one. Okay. CPHP will take referrals from anybody that calls. And the important thing is that CPHP will work with you and make sure that you're safe and patients are safe while also keeping it confidential, specifically with...

the medical board that is involved in your licensure. And so for states that do not have a physician health program, there is no shield. So if you do struggle with addiction, say in California, I think, well, I don't know, honestly, if California has changed it, but at the time, like 10 years ago, California did not have a PHP. And- So you were trying to get help for your stuff, but you were also incentivized to not be honest and open because you didn't want your medical license at risk. Yeah.

So I really give a lot of props to the state of Colorado for having this program and for the legislature. I think it was a year or two ago where they, it went under challenge and they maintain it because it's important that physicians. And there's one that exists for nurses as well. Like it's out there, but people in those fields should have a place to go if they need help without being concerned about the future.

Absolutely. I mean, I'm thinking of some staff I had that could have benefited from that in the education field. Is there something for educators? Okay. Okay. No. In fact, call your senator.

There's another story that, you know, one thing, this is kind of off topic. I'll get back on topic in a minute. But I met, I heard about an educator in Denver in the last year. who had an alcoholic incident, and he was fired. Just like that. And the incident did not involve kids. No kids were put at risk. It didn't happen. campus and

I don't know the particulars of this incident, but I tell you what came to my mind was, and the reason I heard about it was because this was by far the most gifted, loved teacher in the building. Wow. So there was a lot of... of discussion about you know this is our best teacher why are you letting him go and then hr was like well this is what happened we need to let him go so that tension there the idea that came to me was like man we need something for educators to help them 100 right yes like

Do we really have to, like, is that really the best practice for HR is that if anybody stumbles in any problem, then it's better for us to just cut them loose, even though it's the best educator we have and all this. Anyways, that was a little bit off topic. Episode two coming up. Wow, that's so great. You're spot on right. And we need to make it okay to ask for help and to have that need met and not just...

Okay. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's, yeah, that's fundamentally. And then after this, I'll get back on this on track, but you know, the vision for 5280 high school was not only to be a high school to help kids. who are seeking recovery, but it has a much broader vision of changing the narrative around these issues in our society. And I'm not going to be able to do that in one lifetime.

Right. But I think we can make a lot of progress. And that's fundamentally what we're trying to do here is if we can have a high school with these kids who are struggling with this. quasi taboo topic that nobody wants to talk about and we want to shove it under the rug. And if our kids can graduate, go to college, produce these great works of art, start their own businesses, like do all the things that our students are doing.

then we can change the narrative about what addiction truly is, how we handle it. And really, it's a gem. of society. I mean, anybody that walks into our school and starts talking to our students, they leave here like amazed because they're like, oh my gosh, your students are so intelligent. thoughtful and they're, they're so mature. And, you know, there's a gem there that we, as a society, we're missing out on that positive benefit because we are not talking about raising the issue.

Absolutely. And I mean, we could talk on this all day. Melissa, you've touched a hotspot for me, because I remember my first time visiting and talking with one of the students. And having had a son of my own, I have a question for you. Do you have a predominantly gifted set of kids in your program? Because that's what I continue to come across is people who are...

Brilliant. My son's, you know, whatever, I won't get into his IQ range, but he was gifted early on and just excelled. But by fifth grade, he's shutting down because he doesn't want to be that smart kid, you know, and so... all of the messages that we send internally, externally, whatever, we've got to make it okay to be smart.

And yeah, all the things. Anyway, so I'm not surprised that you would have a lot of gifted kids who are struggling because they're numbing or whatever. So I'm sorry. Our rate of... In education, it's called gifted and talented, as you know. Yep. Our rate is three to four times the district average. Wow. Wow. Our rate for students with special education needs is twice the district average. So while most...

School populations have kind of a normal curve with a few over here on the left, the majority of people in the average range and a few over on the right. Here at 5280, it is not. a normal curve at all. It is very spread across. It's very eclectic. It's, we've got all sorts of gifts in all different areas. It's twice exceptional. Yeah. Kind of what I hear you saying. Yeah. That's, that's a big piece of it. And I think.

It's for a couple reasons. One, honestly, and I know this is not an education podcast, but I can go all day long about... Our education system being completely irrelevant today. Most of these kids who are super sharp, they're just bored. 100%. They don't want to read another chapter and answer 20 questions. No. They've done that 50 times before and they're done. It's like, please give me something I can think about. And we've lowered the bar.

I remember a decade ago getting my master's and reading about the statistics to that very point. Kids are bored to tears. We've lowered the bar and there's no challenge and there's, yeah.

Before computers, sure, education was about assimilating knowledge and acquiring facts. And the more you know, the more you can... be aware about but now information is at our fingertips you pick up google is free you you ask google anything you want and you got to be smart about assessing the information you read and all that but like we Education is still trying to make kids memorize a bunch of information, and that's just not practical in today's world. Agreed. So with a...

A kid who's sharp, they're entrepreneurial, they're maybe a bit of a risk taker, they go out and try things. No wonder. that they get into some trouble because they're being challenged and they're, they feel like they're living life and they find passion somewhere because school's not doing it for them. And it's not being nurtured in the classroom. So therefore, yeah. Okay. Maybe we start an education podcast.

Back to your story. Back to the story. So CPHP was instrumental in my life. It is a five-year program, and you do all these things. And it's very individualized. Not every person has the same path. But it put me on a path that I haven't had a drink or a drug since I started. That's my story. And so while I was...

engaging in my own path, I was also meeting people who are also in recovery, similar to this 16 year old kid that I talked about, who didn't get the same resources I got. And the statistics of of successful intervention and recovery programs are pretty dismal for adults especially. I don't know what it is. It's something like 10% success rate or something. I don't even know.

But for physicians, it's more like an 80% or 90% success rate. Okay. And that's a multifactorial reason. Like, you're more likely to maintain your recovery if you have a strong career that you're... you're working on there's a purpose for it right but also the treatment and the support that i got was gold star and so my vision for 5280 really when i met this 16 year old kid who said he had to drop out

And I'd been a former educator and I knew we could do better. And I compared that to my resources that I was accessing simply because I'm a physician. Right. For no other real reason about me being. more qualified or skilled it was just literally because of my position then it just didn't seem right to me and the seed for 5280 was born and um i was like you know what what if we can catch these kids early yeah

And provide them with the gold star. This is how you maintain your sobriety and you live in recovery. And it's not. It's not lame. It's awesome. Yes. If we can do that and then we can really change the world because these people will not only be living. in recovery, but they'll be going to college. They'll be saving their careers. They'll be saving their marriages. They won't be getting

arrested and the economic value to society instead of being an economic drain. Yes. Now productive members of society. And so going from just surviving to thriving. Yes. Right. All that thought. So I want to circle back. You've talked about this five-star gold program. We've talked a little bit about the economic impact of giving these kids an opportunity before they reach medical school and hit the wall, such as was your story. But you had an intervention when you were in a crisis.

Talk about how that impact or how does that guide, I guess, kind of your programmatic thinking and what you want to provide for these students. Tell me what is five star gold for these kids? Sure. Would love to. So here at.

At 5280, there's a few pillars of our recovery program. And first and foremost, it's the peer community. Every student who attends 5280 is wanting to live a substance-free life, and they're willing to engage in the work that it takes to do that. And there's no... negative peer pressure, there's not any bullying. Everybody here is trying to swim up the same stream, and they've got...

100 friends or 120 friends right next to them swimming upstream. And so I think it's a real safe place to be able to be vulnerable, to be yourself and to meet people who are living that life. Because for a teenager, if you don't have a community of like-minded friends who... need something to do on friday night saturday night then you're going to be stuck sitting at home wondering what can i be doing

without going to a party and getting wasted. And so these kids hang out with each other on the weekends. They do all the things that teens do, but they do it without the influence of substances. The peer community is our number one pillar. While many teenagers can...

can not drink and not use drugs. If it's a lonely, isolated lifestyle, they're just going to be surviving. They're not going to be thriving. They're not going to be out till three in the morning on a Saturday, loving their life. Right. And I think that's big for a teen. They have to.

think they're they're living life absolutely you know and the thing that i just have to circle back to um I don't know that you've had an opportunity to listen yet, but one of my last interviews was with the director of the Men's Center at 180 Ministries, where my son went through their program, and he fell into this trap in high school.

Essentially, Melissa, the thing that I learned in that conversation, and no big secret, it's everywhere. If you're prone to this, you're going to get your hands on it. It's going to find you. or you're easily going to seek it out. So I want to go back to this idea of a peer community. I think the power in that is beyond substantive in terms of...

You're not alone. Me too. I'm in it with you. And that's a massive message, again, that I want to get out to every listener. So pause for that hot moment. I want to talk to the parent who's out here pulling their hair out because they don't know what to do. They don't know where.

to go, or the student who's like, man, I don't want to be trapped in this cycle. What would be a next step? Like, how do they find you? How do students come here? And kind of what is that process? What's the roadmap to that end? And then once they get here, talk about that. Sure. We partner closely with recovery groups in Denver.

And a lot of our kids come from those recovery groups. They meet our students and the students are like, oh, you got to go to 5280. And so they, next day they call up at the school or they swing by the school and within five minutes, they're like, oh man. I got to go here. I found my home. Yeah. So a lot of it's through word of mouth. We get referrals from treatment centers, wilderness programs. therapists, other schools, education consultants. We get it.

We get referrals are by far our number one. We also get some people who just find us on Google. And we've had actually, I would think, five to ten. families over the over our very short time of being around we've had five to ten families move from out of state to denver colorado So their kid could attend our school because the level of desperation out there is so extreme. Like if you think your child's going to die and you feel like you don't know what to do and you see this, this hope.

In Denver, you're going to do whatever you can to save a kid's life. They move here. They love it. The kids go from trying to be the only one sober in their community to... walking into a healthy, robust, rambunctious peer group. And so they could be a teen again.

Melissa, when they come in the doors, like they've typically been in recovery. So they've got some sobriety. They've got some clean time. Not necessarily. But nobody's going to come to our door unless there's something there. Some of them come through like Denver Juvenile Drug Court. So there's some sort of red flag that has shown up for a parent to even...

come to our door because they would not come here if they didn't think their kid had an issue. So if a kid shows up on the front door, not every teenager needs an inpatient treatment and it depends. So a big part of what we do, I call it kind of case management. And a lot of schools don't do this, but we have to do this. Whether a student is showing up at our front door or if they've been with us a minute, but there's issues or there's problems going on or maybe a relapse, we...

help the family figure out, do we need treatment? Do we need inpatient outpatient? What's going on? Like, what does this kid need to get back on the right track? And so when kids show up without any treatment background, um, Oftentimes we enroll them and if they can stay sober with the new community and with recovery supports, then great. If they can't.

get sober, even with that, then we start having conversations about you might need an inpatient stay to get your footing under you so you can move forward. Yeah, have a measure of success. Yeah, we're not a treatment school. A lot of people think we do treatment. We don't do all that. We are kind of like the bridge from...

an inpatient or outpatient, what I call the padded room. Like a lot of kids, if they really struggle with substance use and get heavy into drugs and alcohol, they need a padded room environment that is separated from the world where they can... get their feet back under them and have a chance. They get out of the rat race of daily drug use. We're the bridge from that setting.

to the real world and so once once they step out of that padded room if they go straight back into their traditional high school that they came from we are throwing them right back into the people places and things that got them in trouble in the first place. All their friends use drugs. They know where to get drugs on their high school campus. That's a challenge that every teenager will...

Statistically, about 96% of teens who do that will return to drug use within the first couple of weeks. And so they need a... more of an on-ramp before they get thrown into the real world and kind of that's where 5280 steps in is like hey we're not a treatment center you can leave if you want to go get high and Skip school and walk downtown and do it fine. We're not here to bar you in or lock you in, but we're going to provide the support you need so that you learn how to be.

live in recovery in the real world. So when you're walking down the street past a dispensary, you're going to be able to keep walking. Exactly. And go to class. Melissa, it's everywhere. Are you kidding me?

Yeah, that was just, you just nailed a massive piece of this. Like what level of internal mode of, I want to be clean. I want to have a different life. This isn't what I want to be in anymore. Like, are they in that state when they come in the door? Is that a piece of what you help them get to? Like, there's such a continuum. How do I get to that place where I can walk past a dispensary and not be like, going in?

We have what I have termed the 51% rule. Okay. So we have two admission requirements, and one of them is that you have a desire to live a substance-free life. That's it. This is not a place where people are like sent against their will. Exactly. I'm not a court ordered case. Yeah. And so. The 51% rule is that, you know, 51% of the teenager has to want to be sober. As long as they reach that threshold, then...

they're good to go, then they meet that requirement. It's really hard to tell, but our director of recovery, Keith Hayes, is able to really tell within 20 minutes of talking to a kid where they're at. Can I tell you what, you know this better than anybody. I just remember we went to, I remember being in a counseling situation and the gal that was counseling my, my first husband and I.

Like she could call him on his crap because she's been there, done that. She can read between the lines. I'm the gullible, believe anything. See the best in you. We got this. So that's so awesome. You've got the supports in place who've been there, done that. They're going to know. Yeah, they can't get anything by us here. We've got multiple staff who know addiction and know the manipulation, and they can't get anything by us.

it's funny because they try they think they're being slick but no and at their old high school they could because nobody's aware nobody is even looking for that and so it's easy to get away with stuff And you're right about the parents. The parents are typically clueless. And it's funny because when the parent calls, they're like, yeah, my son's been smoking weed for about three months.

Can we come by your school? Well, then the kid gets here. And usually the parents are about a year to two years behind of what the kid's actually doing. Wow. It's funny. You know, yes, I was that parent. No, it's common. I mean, we have blinders on. You know, I want to believe the best about my kid. And I've heard too many stories along that line. Yes. It's common. But no, it's pretty common that.

When the first time a family comes to the school, the kid will kind of reluctantly come in the door. The parents are just like, just give it a try. We're going to look at three schools.

This is going to be one of them, right? And so the kid's a little bit reluctant, but the parents get him to the door. And that's the big thing. If they can get him to the door, then we'll take over from there. Well, then by the time that kid gets... around the school and does the tour, which is about 20 minutes, 95% of the time they want to enroll. Because they see the kids. These are cool kids. They're just like me. They understand me. I feel safe here. They see.

the potential of a life that they want to have. And they can see it with their eyes. Do they interface with other students in that tour? So they kind of get a conversation. I know that was one thing my son spoke about when he took the tour at his...

treatment facility. And granted, he was past college at that point, but was like getting to talk to some of the other guys, getting to see the facility and understand, again, that sense of I'm not alone. These people are just like me. They're seeking what I want. That's massive.

Yeah. What are the supports are in-house? I know you've got some folks on staff who help in that regard. What does that look like? Yeah. I mean, the peer community is by far our biggest weapon, right? If a kid is getting off track a little bit. Their friends will come tell us, right? Like it's the accountability in the peer network is, it's irreplaceable. No staff member, no counselor, no curriculum will ever replace that. Yeah.

So that's our number one, but we do have, we have a director of recovery and we have a peer recovery coach and they are here to assist kids throughout the day. So, I mean, the kids spend half their day here. And if you're in early recovery, you may have a crisis come up or you may have a dilemma that you don't know how to work through. And those two staff members are here.

to assist in anything that happens. And when they're not working one-on-one with a teenager, they're doing a lot of case management. Like we've always got kids who we might need to... to get into like trauma therapy or a counselor or, you know, there's always things we're looking at. And so they're working on doing that case management and they also run our recovery class. So every morning for 45 minutes.

the kids first class is this recovery meeting and they run that meeting and that's awesome. Yeah. So now my brain goes to parent mode. Cause I'm like, okay, I'm, I'm, exhaling, I'm breathing again, I've got some hope. My students got some supports. Is there anything for the family side of this equation? Because you and I both know, there's likely something going on there that there's a correlation.

It's huge. We partner very strongly with local recovery groups who do this, and they have family meetings. And so we don't require the parents to attend the family meeting, but a lot of these groups do. We do require that our students attend some sort of outside recovery program. It could be 12-step free. It could be a paid...

It could be seeing a counselor. It could be one of these recovery groups that we talk about. Like the point is we do require the kids to do something outside of school because we know that we can't lift it all. We can't do it all. We can't do the school. and the recovery piece 24-7. And so we require that, and many of these groups have parent resources, and our parent community is phenomenal.

Really? Oh, it's awesome. So great. Hey, so to the parents listening out there again, I got to just pop in because I'm like, had I only known, like, if you're the parent thinking, well, I'm not the problem. My kid's got the problem. As a codependent, I'm just going to tell you, we are a part of the problem. My enabling bone runs strong, girl, like I got this, you know, and so to hear that and know that I just want to put it out there that, you know,

If you're the parent or the loved one of an, of an addict in some capacity, like get help for you too. That was some of the best advice my, my former mother-in-law gave me early on. It's like, you take care of you. And so I just wanted to throw that in. It is so massive. It is massive. I can say that for the students who don't...

thrive here at 5280. I mean, maybe they're just barely passing their classes or their attendance is in that grade. I mean, a very common denominator among those students is that their parents are not. working on their program. And like, it's almost like the piece, the missing piece that that kid needs to thrive. Say that again. We do. We all play a part. That's really significant. Well, so, um,

You're the bridge. Now I'm going to go, okay, so how many kids have you graduated so far? What does graduation look like? What are the next steps for those kids who are... Looking at going out into the real world now. Well, last year we graduated our founding class. So it was the biggest class so far. I think it was about 30 graduates. How exciting. Congratulations. Before that, we had only had like maybe 20.

over the three years like our first year we had two graduates yeah yeah because we only had a handful of seniors and so and we've graduated maybe maybe 50 kids about and from here on out we'll graduate 35 to 40, maybe even 50 a year. Because we keep growing. The demand is coming at us real strong. And so we're doing our best to increase our capacity to keep these kids. But we have students who graduate and go to...

a four-year college, a two-year college. They start their own businesses. They take a gap year. They work. We have some that come back and work for us as recovery coaches. That's been a nice little trend. Yeah, so we're not a college-only type of school. I think... That is a more, you know, it's kind of scary to be an educator and say that because the state of education today is pretty much if you're not sending kids to college, then you're not doing your job. And I think that.

that status quo needs to change to respond to not only the changing economy, but also to just acknowledge that that's not the only path. And I think if K-12 schools would be more focused on... and providing a more well-rounded education versus just college preparatory work, then I think our society would be much higher functioning. We might have to have another session on education. I think, you know, Melissa, you and I might start an education podcast. I'm just saying. Okay.

Well, I'm so excited. You know, again, my heart behind this podcast at all is about providing hope about providing a message that you're not alone. So for our listeners today, man, I hope they heard that. it's not just an adult problem. We've got students. I mean, I think that's where it starts for a lot of us. And so to that end, are there any resources that you would want to share out there?

What would be your message to those listening? Yeah, sure. I think, first off, if you're in a family impacted by teenage substance use, just know you're not alone. People feel alone. They don't know where to go for help. feel free to call 5280 and we can help you. We can connect you to all sorts of resources, no matter what type of health insurance you have, no matter how old your kid is, no matter if they want to be sober, if they don't want to be sober, like we are wizards.

with helping those kids come to a moment of clarity. So feel free to give us a call, reach out anytime. And other resources, I think... You know, it's so dependent on the family situation. Like we work with so many different groups in Denver that just give us a call. For sure. What's your number? How do they get a hold of you? Is there a website? Well, our school number is 720-919-1056. And my personal number is 303-525-2771.

Wow. But look us up on the web. You'll find us and our website and all of our contact information. Is it 5280? 5280highschool.org. Dot org. Yep. 5280. 5280 means obviously it's the mile high city. And so it's kind of a play on words where we're mile high without being high. Hello. So good. Yeah. Hey, you know, and this is just a silly recap, but I know.

outside of this podcast wall we have spoken to. And I've shared this in a couple of conversations to say, if this was a restaurant, you know, we'd be franchising you. We need to grow this. The need is legit, not just in Denver. So again, I like to say if you're listening and you've got a philanthropic bone or you've got some capacity, get a hold of Melissa. We want to do something to expand.

this program. It's phenomenal. And I'm so grateful that, you know, sorry, you walked through the journey that you did, but look where you are. And I'm so unbelievably thrilled that you are filled with a vision that's giving hope to so many students and their families. Well, thank you. Thanks for everything you do. And thanks for taking time to connect. Thank you. I appreciate you.