Video Transcript

Eric Harris:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Game Plan. I'm your host, Eric Harris with Disability Rights California. We have a special episode today where we recorded in honor of May, which is Mental Health Awareness Month. I speak with Jason Robison, who is the director of advocacy at SHARE!, the Self-Help and Recovery Exchange, which is a peer run organization in LA County. Jason talks about his work, what it means to be a peer with lived experience with mental health and substance use disorder. He talks about his hopes for the next governor of California and about how nature grounds him. Please enjoy my conversation with Jason.

[Triumphant music begins]

Voiceover:
The Game Plan is a production of Disability Rights California, a space to strategize, organize, and posterize for the future of the disability rights movement. For more information on our work, please visit us at disabilityrightsca.org.

Eric:
Hello everyone, this is Eric Harris with The Game Plan with Disability Rights California. We're really thrilled to have another special guest with us, Jason Robison. Robison I'm sorry. [Jason and Eric laugh] Of course we we go over that right before recording and then and then Paul Robison is on my mind. So, so Robison comes out. But Jason Robison is with us from SHARE! We're really thrilled to have you, Jason.

Jason Robison:
Thank you. I'm really thrilled to be here. I'm really a fan of the podcast and a fan of Disability Rights California. So thanks for everything you're doing.

Eric:
Fantastic. Wonderful. And now let's go ahead and get going. So May is Mental Health Awareness month. And your work is very deeply involved, with issues relating to mental health. What were your experiences growing up or even in early adulthood, where mental health was, was a big key? And how has your awareness and kind of understanding shifted over time?

Jason:
Great question. I think the when I look back, the overall experience for me growing up in terms of exacerbating issues, and I'm, I'm a person with lived experience in mental health and substance use, and I'm also somebody who has, overcome a speech impediment. I couldn't say R's when I was young, right? So shock and like, I would just say whale instead of shark, you know? So, I think isolation was the thing that stands out for me growing up. With that way, I felt isolated and alone and cut off and, and, and so peer services speak to me and have been important in my life because they allowed me to connect to community, to other people, to social networks, and then have a deeper relationship with myself and understanding of myself and how I fit in and really fully, you know, not only move forward in my life, but connect to the world and communities in a way that's meaningful to me. And, and, and an experience that when I was already in recovery. So I've, I've been in recovery, from mental health and substance use for 30 years. And, I was going back and forth between New York and Los Angeles in 2001, and I, I had a self-help support group that I attended in Los Angeles that I had a commitment for. And so on Monday, September 10th, 2001, I flew from yeah, I flew from New York to Los Angeles on that New York to Los Angeles flight. Normally I would have flown on Tuesday, but I flew Monday because I had a commitment. And then 9/11 happened, and I flew back to New York as soon as I could. And, it took a couple of weeks. And by the time I was able to get back there, I went to all the meetings that I was going to in New York. And I was, it was the most profound experience of healing I'd ever been a part of because it was, you know, two weeks 9/11, I'm going to 12 step and other meetings in New York, and people are showing up whether they've got 30 days or 30 months or 30 years, they're showing up to their recovery meetings. They're going to the site and volunteering. They're going to funerals, they're healing, and nobody's talking about who to bomb. It's just healing. They're showing up and they're supporting each other. And I thought if everybody had access to this kind of healing in our society, we'd really have a different culture. So I became interested in self-help support groups and peer work. You know, even though it was already part of my life to that and then found a way through share to really elevate how we do peer services and self-help support groups.

Eric:
Wow, that is fascinating. It's such a wild story in terms of in terms of the timing. What do you think some of the most kind of persistent or even frustrating misconceptions of mental health are? I mean, you will see and hear so many different stories on whether it's the media, elected officials, just kind of the general public. What are some that that really stick out to you? Oh, there are so many.

Jason:
Oh, well, let me start with the thing that, like other culture, other modern day cultures don't have a word for mental illness, right? Like that is so, understanding it within the construct of our society and how we organize things and how we've created a very narrow lane for quote unquote, normative behavior and experience. I think that's one of the biggest problems that we have. Many people in our society and culture have a very difficult time experiencing themselves as fully human, whatever their physical, mental, behavioral manifestations are, being able to experience oneself as a capable, contributing human being is very difficult in this culture. And so, from that perspective, some of the most, you know, the thing that leads from that is that we've got all these systems, we call them systems of care. They're they were never designed to care for people. They were designed, you know, best case scenario to manage symptoms, often at inception, to control behavior that didn't fit in or things that others didn't like. And so people experience them as controlling and coercive because they are.

Eric:
Yeah. Yeah. And it's fascinating. You know, especially those of us who are in the disability space, it's like very little of what we experience is, is normal. And I know, you know, there's, there are folks who, who try to do everything that they can to appear normal or to fit in, you know, in a normal circumstance. But as we know, disabled folks especially, it's like we're just trying to get through. And it being normal isn't really highest on the priority list as much as as just kind of getting through and getting what we need and getting, you know, the services and supports that, that are necessary. So I appreciate that perspective very much.

Jason:
And I would also say to that point, like getting the getting the services we need, our systems are very bad at getting our input about what we want and what we need and what works for us. And so those kinds of things are, you know, we have systems that are often prescriptive rather than responsive.

Eric:
That's right, that's right. So you mentioned SHARE!

Jason:
Yeah.

Eric:
And I assume of course you're not talking about the singer. [Jason and Eric laugh]

Jason:
Not the first time that associations have been made.

Eric:
[still laughing] But what what would you how would you describe, what SHARE! is, and your role at SHARE!?

Jason:
SHARE!, capital share with an exclamation mark. Thank you to the cease and desist order, is a product of the Emotional Health Association, which is a nonprofit, and we are a group of people with lived experience that all have experience in self-help support groups that have. We started in 1993, and it was people going to self-help support groups, and people started losing their meeting space and said, hey, there's got to be one space where people can get all the meetings and nobody loses meeting space because they can't afford the rent and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And people came together and created SHARE! I joined SHARE! in 2006, November 6th, 2006. And and so I've been here for almost 20 years. When I started, we were four people were now, about 70 to 80 people. We do all all of this. So we're a peer run organization. That means everybody has lived experience with a mental health, substance use, physical health or experience with homelessness or as a family member. And, I'm also a family member, and, and we're trained in how to use that lived experience to connect with other people who are going through that. And so then we put that kind of behavioral health intervention into practice in our program. So we have, recovery and wellness communities in Culver City and downtown. We have a peer run respite, which is an alternative to psychiatric hospitalization for people in crisis. And then we have peer run, recovery residencies, which are our answer to housing and homelessness. So we have about 50 houses throughout Los Angeles County. And last year we have 700 over 700 people experiencing homelessness. Right from the street into housing. People run the houses themselves. They live next to neighbors. They're a nice neighborhoods, right? It's not like a project based housing they're in single family homes in a nice neighborhood. They determine what the rules are. They manage the house themselves and people do marvelously. And then we're also a trainer for the state of California for, the Peer Specialist Certification, where people who have lived experience can take, you know, there are a number of vendors, but people get trained by a vendor, they pass a state exam, and then they are able to bill Medi-Cal for peer services. Not that that's the best delivery system.

Eric:
Right.

Jason:
But, you know, it, it is the the it's the way that California is moving and funding more and more behavioral health.

Eric:
Wow. Man, and and I know that you you talked a little bit about this. But you deal in your own with your own lived experience of, dealing with addiction and substance use recovery programs. How do you see peer services operating differently for mental health, substance use and other disability communities? You mentioned homelessness and...

Jason:
Yeah. I think it's really important to understand, you know, the heart of peer services is, peer listening and disclosing. So peer specialists are uniquely, trained to tap into the lived experience they have to support what somebody else is going through. So I'm not, you know, in my work as a peer, I'm not just telling my story of recovery because that's not going to apply to everybody else, right? I'm listening to what's going on in somebody's life, and then I'm accessing my experience of that and bring it in so I can establish mutual mutuality and build trust in the relationship. And then, you know, you know, we could we could literally talk, we could do this podcast every week or every month for a year to talk about how have these services work across behavioral health and substance use. One thing I'll say is that, you know, the substance use silo of things is more recovery oriented than the mental health side of the silo because, on the substance use side, even drug and alcohol counselors, most of them are people who have lived experience with substance use, and they're in recovery themselves. They're doing something different as a drug and alcohol counselor than a peer specialist would do. A peer specialist on that side is going to be able to use their lived experience. There's difficulty on that side because because of the billing rates that kind of incentivize providers and people with the lived experience to be a drug and alcohol counselor rather than a peer specialist, because you can make more money as a drug and alcohol counselor, right? So those kinds of things go into the workforce and like, and the services that people receive, right. Because that system's less likely to scale peer specialists. So people are not going to get that on that side of things. At the same time, our what I've, what I've learned from kind of my work on the substance use side and working with people on the front lines is that our, our substance use system is really good at, supporting people that want recovery and want abstinence. And most people into that system are, you know, getting deferred into that system through our criminal justice system or some other system. So it's like there's this referral process. And and if you don't want recovery or abstinence, the system's not as good. So there's, there's, you know, slots are taken up for people that want it, that can't get it by people who don't really want it but don't want the alternative. And for people that, you know, want don't want the alternative. So they're in that system. We're not good at finding out what people do want. For most of my life, like I, I've now, I have more lived years in recovery than I do have in active addiction. So, having said that, drugs and alcohol were my solution long before they were my problem. And we're not good at finding out what issue those things are serving or are solving for people, and then finding other ways to meet that need.

Eric:
Wow. Wow, I really appreciate that break down. So I've been, at DRC in this role specifically, since 2021. And a lot of the work that I do involves policy advocacy, at the state Capitol and, and, and other spaces, but largely at the Capitol and I'd say the majority of my time, or at least in the plurality of my time, has been spent, dealing with and fighting against CARE Court, the expansion of the definition of gravely disabled, Proposition 1, all of these policies that peers, and others in the community have said, this isn't what we want. This won't work, for a number of reasons, and we can get into all that. But as somebody who's on the ground, as somebody who's working directly with folks, what what are your kind of general thoughts of these issues and and what would you if you could, you know, what would you say to, the powers that be that are making some of these decisions?

Jason:
Oh, I you know, I think that. It's so hard to develop, efficacious, functional policies when we're not really seeing this as a community issue, right? The whole community has to bear, you know, the the creation of the policy. And if the whole community's not involved in that, in a way that meets every aspect of the community and individual need, we're going to have policies and systems that don't speak to the need or the people in those systems. So, you know, I see CARE Court as coming out of what is this perceived failure of the Mental Health Services Act. And in my experience, the Mental Health Services Act, has funded most of our programming up until now. It's been very effective. It was not effective statewide because right after it passed, California went into the Great Recession along with everybody else. And that money was used to make sure we didn't lose this system that came before the Mental Health Services Act. So there was, you know, there was transplantation of services and programs in a way that MHSA money was used as a safety net for the system, rather than the way it was designed to be used to implement innovation, recovery-oriented systems, peer services and anti-stigma. Like that didn't happen because we used it for a purpose it wasn't created for and and the inability for us to be transparent about that process led to the misconception that it wasn't successful. The reality is what wasn't successful is what existed before it. And we were not successful because we never really fully implemented it, and because we couldn't have a transparent policy and political conversation, we weren't able to address those ideas and, and, and really make sure we could scale the vision of the Mental Health Services Act. And so what do I see on the ground? On the ground I see a lot of suffering here, right? I see a lot of and and don't get me wrong, right? Like I, I, we have a community wellness and recovery community on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. And we, we opened on Broadway specifically so that we could be halfway between the heart of Skid Row and Bunker Hill, which has all the law firms and the and the accounting firms, because when we have a meeting, you know, on Friday night on Broadway, we get people who live on the hardest, in the heart of Skid Row and people that come from the law firms, and the accounting firms, and nobody knows where anybody comes from. And the guy that is working as an accountant who can't get ten days of sobriety, hears somebody speak, who's got ten years of sobriety but lives in an SRO in Skid Row. And the accountant hears that story and goes, I want to know that guy. I want what he's got. And they become friends without knowing all of the things. And then a year later, the guys moved out of the SRO because he's got a job with a friend of the accountant, and the accountants got a year of sobriety because he's got a sponsor he relates to. So, at the same time, there are people that come in who, you know, are, you know, their liver is is done, they're at end of life stage liver disease because of chronic and persistent substance use issues. And, they lose consciousness. The ambulance is called and the ambulance gets there. They wake up, the paramedics say, who's the president? Do you know where you are? And they answer those questions and they say, yeah, no, I don't want to go to the hospital. And the health department says, okay, not our problem. And the Department of Mental Health says, substance use. That's not us. And the person has a physical dependency on something that is actively killing them, right? And and we haven't figured out a way to support that process effectively. And we need to. So I think that in part CARE Court does, or the the urge for CARE Court also speaks to this need that we have to better support people that are not connected to our systems in any way.

Eric:
Right.

Jason:
And we've we've got to do a better job of addressing that. And part of that is hearing from those people.

Eric:
Right, right. And I think, you know, that's something that that we often see, is the folks who are making the policies aren't talking directly to the folks at SHARE! or talking to the direct, you know, directly to other peer run organizations in a meaningful way. You know, they they do the kind of let's check the box and say that we talked to you.

Jason:
They will absolutely invite us to a meeting after they've they've made the decision. [Jason laughs]

Eric:
Right, right. That that is is kind of how these things tend to go. And the thing is, especially for all of us that I know you have been around long enough to to know what that feels like. It's like, yeah, I know I don't have any actual authority to make a change here. You guys are just kind of letting me know what's already been decided.

Jason:
Yeah. And, you know, on that policy perspective and I really, you know, over the years I have it's been such a gift to be able to know you and work with you and be in spaces together. I really appreciate your work. You know, I think I, I, I try to approach it with grace and to approach it like with an understanding of, okay, you know, this is what the state can do. This is what an agency can do. It has certain parameters right over here on this side. We might need a legislative fix. And so we might need to educate some some legislators about the need and bring some community to legislative offices to get that. And then this is what, you know, this is what we can do in the advocacy space and all of those needs. It's like a Venn diagram, a pie chart kind of coming together to address the whole issue. And, you know, I know the state, for example, has, you know, with the Behavioral Health Services Act, they're trying to create some accountability and outcomes that they can give to the counties because, hey, you know, the state doesn't have a statewide mental health department, other states do. So trying to create accountability across counties when there are, you know, like 58 counties in California, that's a big lift for the state. And it falls on the Department of Health Care Services that are, you know, that didn't have the kind of stakeholder process that was developed within the Department of Mental Health at the county level systems. And so they're they're they're being prescriptive. They've they've given counties, okay. "You got to meet these criteria" on a timeline that doesn't allow counties a lot of process to really learn from what the community's saying, right? And and it's not that the state's, you know, malicious in that timeline, it's that there's a state need to have that timeline. It's that it's it's connected to there have been, the ability to get money out the door and do this stuff. So so I would say we need, you know, more statewide coordination. I've been trying to advocate, for example, for a statewide Office of Recovery and Peer Support or state office of, you know, like a center for excellence for peer and family services so that, you know, we can support each county in their local need and what they have available and how they can kind of, I guess, uplift best practices with the local need and the local providers that they have.

Eric:
Yeah. No, those are, that all sounds wonderful. And I think one of and I know you mentioned other misconceptions, but one of the misconceptions, I think that that we have tried to navigate and I know you all, do as well. There's often this like, put those with lived experience against family members, and family members want X and and the peers and folks with lived experience want Y, they're against each other. Let them fight and see who rises to the top. And I think that 90 whatever percent of, of the issues we agree on when it comes to family members, peers, what's failing, what what's working. Can you talk to us a little bit about that element? I know you all have folks

Jason:
Yeah.

Eric:
with lived experience and family members as a part of share. You mentioned that you're also a family member, but could you talk just a little bit about that.

Jason:
I could talk all day about that Eric. [Jason laughs] Yeah, absolutely. You know, yeah, I'm a family member and I'm somebody with lived experience. I'm up here and, you know, what I know is a family member is that these are issues that affect every member of the family. And the way it affects me is different than the way it affects my loved one who might have particular lived experience in a certain area. And my role is to learn how I can get the support I need in my experience of that, so that I can support them in their experience in what they need so that I don't, damage the relationship by trying to control them and getting them to do what I think they need or what I want them to do. And that's often what happens in family systems. And it's not unique to, you know, people with disabilities. This is this is like a cultural norm under patriarchy, okay, you're going to do that and you need to do that and you need to do that. And so again, this speaks to the larger kind of like conception of how we come together as family and community in a way that speaks to everybody's need, rather than kind of one element of the need. And and so the way that we can build partnerships is, you know, I can learn, I need to learn. I need to learn from the experience of family members. You know, when we talk about CARE Court and the need for people whose loved one keeps getting caught in this system, that winds up in them in jail, and people talk to them and they say, no, I don't have any problems. I don't need any issues. That family member needs support. That family member needs to have a network of people that can relate to them, that can support them in their process, and they also need a system. They can deal with the needs of their loved ones in a way that is not coercive and controlling. And so I think if we can strengthen that relationship, we can build a better system.

Eric:
Yeah. No that's that's right on point. And I have one more kind of policy like question. We're in a gubernatorial race. We're going to have a new governor starting next year. What would you want to say to whoever that person ends up being? If you had, you know, one minute to kind of give them an elevator speech on mental health policy, kind of what their approach should be? Any recommendation?

Jason:
Well, I would I would say that that recovery happens in community. And we all we often think about treatment without community. And we have to start thinking about what happens to the person when all the treatment is closed right after 5 p.m., before 8 a.m., there's all this community and, you know, peer run organizations on the mental health side are particularly good at connecting people to that community. Peer specialists are designed to kind of build trust so that people can be part of community on their terms, in communities that work for them, whether they're faith communities or self-help support groups or culturally affiliated communities. Like that's where people get recovery, that's where people get agency. And we can do that within things like peer run housing and peer respite and, and community centers. And I would also say that, we talk about systems that have dignity and people don't experience dignity unless they have the experience that they are adding value to the relationship and group that they are part of. If I'm if I'm in a relationship and it's only somebody else helping me, if I'm not helping them, that's not dignity, right? So we have to think about these as relational things that where we intentionally nurture opportunities for people to offer their expertise and their skills, because then they experience themselves as fully human.

Eric:
Appreciate that, that context. And I think that that's right on point. So whoever the next governor is, I really hope that they pay close attention to that point. So the last couple of questions are kind of more, artistic pop culture.

Jason:
Yeah. Yeah.

Eric:
What have you. Music is a big part of your life. And I know we talk a lot about art and joy in life and, on this program often. Anything you'd like to share about music? It's impact on your life, its impact on your mental health journey. And how it's kind of tied into some of your work.

Jason:
Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. You know, consciousness has always been creating music, whether it's through humans or through whales or, you know, or through birds. Music is a part of this thing. And, and music helps us transcend, my, you know, there's this Deadhead sticker, there by my head, you know, my first experience of the Grateful Dead was when I was 16, and it was a it was a it's a transformational experience for me because I found that I could be part of something that was larger than me, that loved me for who I was at that time, and how I experienced things and didn't try to change me or have me interact in any kind of way. And, and there are moments in music, whether, you know, you know, I, I play a guitar. I've tried to, you know, you know, play songs for my kids and they'll hear me practice and say, "Dad, don't you know any other songs?" [Jason and Eric laugh] But, but, or I'm listening that take me to a different place and, and I think that, you know, that works in a similar way that prayer works, whatever somebody's faith is the act of, of the sacred and of seeking something else changes our thinking in that moment. And that can be very helpful. Other things that I like, for me, the experience of nature is fundamental to my being. I ate a salad today that I had lettuce from my garden box and it was like, that was awesome. You know, like, that was amazing. I planted those myself and and I tended them. And, I also am, I'm, I'm privileged to be able to surf. I'm privileged in many ways, right? I, I'm able to surf. I live in a place where I can surf. And for me, being in the ocean is like, that's an essential part of what I do. It's it's part of being part of the whole world. And I think that, when we talk about recovery, when we talk about wellness, bringing in that is essential. I also I'll, you know, I also I'm a published poet. And I went, you know, I sought a master's in fine arts in creative writing because I wanted to find a way to elevate stories of recovery that didn't objectify the person in recovery, right?

Eric:
Right.

Jason:
Instead of like, here, you're the poster child! Great. Yeah. And and so, you know, that act of of opening myself for an idea that is, that is coming through me to others, that's also a sacred process.

Eric:
Fantastic, fantastic. Wow. That's that's a wonderful, piece of information. And, and I love the story about about the, the salad because I feel like sometimes we get so caught up in so many different things that it's just like some of the things that you can have to, like, nourish yourself, are in the earth, and you can create it yourself. And you don't need external this and that, and you know, all, all the things. So that's wonderful.

Jason:
Yeah. I stand in my front yard, you know, on a regular basis, you know, and just just with gratitude.

Eric:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No that's wonderful. And I know, especially after you've gone through some things, it's like, man,I just got like, just being able to breathe the air, look up in the sky, be in the ocean, see the ocean. Being with people, like all the things. Do you have any current media that you're take, either that you're currently taking in or that you would recommend based on just kind of where we are in the moment? It could be TV show, movie, music, book, anything.

Jason:
Yeah, I will say it. It's a podcast and it's yeah, it's the Disability Rights California Game Plan. [Jason and Eric laugh] No, I'm joking, but but I have been listening to more podcasts, but I, The Telepathy Tapes, is a podcast that season one started with an exploration of, non-speaking youth mainly, some young adults, mainly youth and kids who have been diagnosed with autism. And, turns out for decades people have experienced them as being telepathic. And so it starts from there and continues on this exploration of how that manifests in different ways and how there are these other experiences of consciousness that are more common than we thought. And that's that's really opened my mind, in, in beautiful in new ways. And also because I, you know, my first career out of college was as, as a, a special education teacher, right?

Eric:
Wow.

Jason:
And then and before that, like, as a freshman in high school, my, my freshman football coach saw that I probably liked hitting people more than was good for anybody, including me. And he said, "Hey, Jason, why don't you be the aide in my classroom?" And I said, "Sure. Great. Okay." And so I get to his classroom, and his classroom was this special ed classroom, and that was a school that was not integrated, right? So all of the special ed kids were in his class all day. And I had the beautiful experience that is still with me every day. I've seen every single individual there as a genius that had something that everybody benefited from.

Eric:
Wow, that's so cool, so cool. And then the last question that I have for you.

Jason:
Yeah.

Eric:
What is your game plan for 2026? What is something that you're really focused on trying to accomplish? Yeah, it could be work related, family related, personal, whatever you feel like.

Jason:
Wow. You know, the family is the day to day thing. I've got two daughters, one's finishing her first year in college, the others finishing up eighth grade. So strengthening those relationships on a day to day basis is always the game plan. [Jason and Eric laugh]

Eric:
That's right. That's right.

Jason:
I just mean being there is a dad that they can rely on is, is priority number one. There's a whiteboard on the other side of this monitor that has goals for the year. Two of the top ones are moving the state toward really creating a statewide Office of Peer Support and recovery. And the other is really trying to create a strategy for the state and all the counties to be able to figure out how to do effective peer services within this ever evolving Medi-Cal framework. If Medi-Cal is going to be the thing, we've got to figure out a way to elevate not only peer services, also peer run organizations in the delivery of those services and how to supervise those services for, so that we elevate competency and practice and that we create a a career path for a peer specialist, right? So because right now, the only way to advance within behavioral health, if you're a peer specialist, if you want to, you're a great peer specialist. You might be making $25 an hour if you want to make 10,000, 20,000 more dollars a year, you've got to go get a license and do something else. So we lose that expertise, and we've got to create a system that has, you know, a few levels of peer specialists, supervisors, program coordinators, program managers, directors and executives that are specifically working within the delivery of peer services across all these systems.

Eric:
I love that. And I think DRC and all of our partners would be super excited to collaborate with you on any of that work. And elevate it to, to all levels of government and decision making folks. So that's a that's a wonderful goal.

Jason:
Yeah. Thank you. Well, you've been very you've been very supportive and and opening the door and hearing I, I'm, you know, I am grateful every day for the work of DRC and for you.

Eric:
Thank you so much. Thank you. Jason, we we appreciate having you and, look forward to more collaboration going forward.

Jason:
I do too, thank you so much for everything you do.

Voiceover:
This has been the Game Plan a production of Disability Rights. California, please like subscribe, comment on the platform of your choice. See you next time.