Interview with Adrienne Tichy

EP. 22

In Episode 22 of the podcast, I had a great interview with Adrienne Tichy, Co-founder of The Lodge at Delay Beach, in Delray Beach, Florida, which is a recovery residence for those with substance and process addictions.

Addiction, alcoholism and overdoses are up to 40% since the start of the pandemic. Now, Jim and Adrienne Tichy are speaking out for the first time about the impact of addition on our communities.

Here at The Green Chameleon Collective, we work a lot with people that are in different kinds of transition, mostly people that are coming out of university and going into the workforce. And this topic is very relevant for them because I know many of them come out with all sorts of different addictions, either binge drinking from college parties, or taking things to help them stay awake to study.

Need a break from reading articles? Want to just listen instead? Below is a transcript of Episode 22 of my podcast, Stand Up & Stand Out. If you’d prefer to listen, head over to our website or find us wherever the cool kids hang out that do podcasts!

Adrienne met her husband, Jim, in church in 2006 and they became fast friends because in the Episcopal Church almost everybody has gray hair and they didn’t. Adrienne, Jim, and another member without gray hair congregated together and found that their birthdays were all on the 13th of different months. The other two were both in recovery from addiction and alcoholism. Adrienne had had some limited exposure from when her brother had gone to a treatment center, but she really had no idea that Delray beach, with a population of only 68,000 had about 20 to 25% of its citizens in recovery.

So they opened their homes. They started with one, a men’s house, because they wanted to raise the bar on the recovery residences in Delray beach. It’s a shady industry and the Tichys have been committed to bringing morals, ethics, and values to the people that treat these marginalized people. Now they have seven houses.

This service is especially important for college kids. They are starting to speak at colleges and universities because at FAU, they have dorms that are sobriety dorms because addiction is so prevalent, even at younger and younger ages. What they realized is that the parents don’t have the tools necessary to really warn their children about the dangers of alcohol or drugs, especially on a developing brain. It just adds to the trepidation that college kids have going into the real world. The responsibility. We find that people have a lack of basic living skills. And they think that if they were struggling through college, a semi-protected environment, when they go into the work world, it’s a world that they’re not prepared for. That could be a very slippery slope, as they struggle to pay bills and all those adulting types of things.

Then they’re going into industries like advertising or entertainment, where people will be congregated and then they have to worry about how they don’t drink. It’s the strangest thing, that if you don’t drink, you’re always like the odd person out at a party. Or you become the designated driver. That’s no fun and it’s not as interesting to talk to drunk people when you’re sober. The things you used to find funny, just aren’t anymore, and that’s also part of growing up too.

I didn’t drink for health reasons. I didn’t drink at all throughout college. And then I started going to work and there was this peer pressure. You need to go to happy hours, you need to socialize and network. And all of a sudden you’re put into a situation where this is your livelihood. Now it’s not just school where I’m trying to blow off some steam, but there’s this pressure from your boss and your coworkers. And if that’s not a good scene for you, or you already had problems in the past, how do you transition back?

One of the things they teach people is to have something ready to answer the question, “why don’t you drink?” Some people don’t want to disclose they’re alcoholic. There’s plenty of people now that aren’t drinking for health reasons. One of the easiest reasons is that you’re worried about sugar in your diet, because one of the main ways you get sugar into your body is alcohol. And sugar can lead to all sorts of other health problems, like diabetes.

Adrienne comes from a family where her dad worked for TWA for 37 years before he retired. We don’t have that anymore. Employers aren’t beholden to their employees and employees aren’t beholden to their employers these days.

There’s no reciprocal agreement now. Adrienne’s background is in communications, but she was also a restaurant corporate trainer after college. She trained the staff and managers on new computer systems. So now she can train people on how to train people.

She had a very multidisciplinary background, starting out in communications, but then at 23, she was playing co-ed softball and got taken out by the runner. That led to being in hospitals for pretty much the better part of the last 27 years.

So it’s just overcoming adversity of any kind, but it brings a different perspective to the addiction because you can be a victim. We know that our young people have trouble even going into a job and asking for an application, much less looking an interviewer in the eyes.

That whole social experience becomes overwhelming and you just start shrinking back into yourself and you stay in the house and these days it’s even easier to shrink back into the house and forget how to be social. That anxiety has almost tripled in the last year, because it’s not the original thing that was holding you in, now there’s layers of COVID and everything else on top of it.

Adrienne’s youngest nephew is about ready to graduate and he is petrified. He’s so shy. And if the social anxiety didn’t get you before, if you were a person that is nervous walking into the boss’s office or the principal’s office, it’s already hard. But if you don’t know and really have a good command of what to say and to look them in the eye, it’s even harder. What they noticed the most with their young people (23 years old is the average coming out of treatment), is they just don’t have living skills.

And, working from home (I know everyone’s advocating: let me just work from home and I’ll be on video all day or turn off the video and just be on audio) doesn’t help. I think that the forced socialization going into the office is good for young people. It’s the best way for them to network and actually get to know people because they get on a virtual meeting and it’s like, here’s your task, go do this, get off the meeting, and it’s always very task oriented instead of building that relationship. There’s no ‘grab a cup of coffee, have lunch together’ mentality. It’s not easy to find other ways to get to know your coworkers, especially on a smaller scale when you’re an introverted person where, you know, you need to be one-on-one with someone rather than be so overwhelmed with major meetings.

If people want to get in contact with Adrienne and Jim, they can go to their website, which is www.thelodgedelray.com And all of their contact information is there. The phone number that you find on there is for Adrienne and her husband, and they’ll answer it pretty much any hour of the day.

I appreciate the work that Adrienne and Jim are doing to support people in their community.

They are helping people that need this, especially right now. And if you are in need of help and fortunate enough to be in the south Florida area, you should look up The Lodge at Delray beach. I’m sure there are other similar facilities in your area. If you have experience with a place that has helped you, let us know, so we can continue to pay it forward, to provide others love and support that they may need during these difficult times.

I hope you guys have enjoyed season three and all the blogs so far, and there are lots more thought provoking shows to come. If you liked our shows, don’t forget to subscribe through your favorite podcast platform or through our YouTube channel.

My email is Nikki@thenikkigreen.com. I am here to help.

Thank you all for your time to listen. I can’t wait to chat with you next time. More fun episodes to come. Bye everyone.