Recovery Through Music and Harm Reduction with This Must Be the Place’s William Perry

Speaker A: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Heart of the Matter. I'm your host, Elizabeth Vargas. It's great to have you with us. I have a really interesting guest today. His name is William Perry. And for everybody who thinks, oh, my gosh, that guy's a drug addict, that woman, she doesn't, you know, she's a hopeless case. Perry's story is truly inspiring and revelatory. He was severely addicted to opioids for many, many years. Began taking them as a teenager. He went on to sell them. He was actually arrested, sent to prison, and it was while he was in prison that he decided he wanted to be free of this addiction. What was so amazing and surprising to me is that while he was in prison, we've heard, you know, we've all heard, oh, the prisons are the best way to get sober because you have, you know, obviously limited access to substances, and you have the resources of recovery meetings. Perry tells me there was a long, long waiting list of inmates trying to get into recovery meetings. It took forever for him to be able to get into one, but once he did, he got sober. He's out of prison. He has earned a college degree. This fall, he started law school, and he's started a foundation, a nonprofit, with his wife. It's called this Must be the Place where. Where he tries to help other people with their addiction. It's an, um, extraordinary life story and truly inspiring. So without further ado, here's my conversation with William Perry. William Perry, welcome to Heart of the Matter. You go by Perry, so I will be calling you Perry. Tell me about this organization. This must be the place and how you got the idea to start it.

Speaker B: Well, our organization is based in recovery through the arts, and my own personal recovery journey. Arts, and specifically music, was extremely important and integral to it.

Speaker A: How so?

Speaker B: Well, I think a lot of my childhood growing up and traumas and things that I had to go through that maybe were unfair or unfortunate caused me to push a lot of emotions down to places where I wouldn't have to feel them. Maybe I couldn't even identify them because of that, because it had become such a habit. And then when I, you know, became. Began my. My journey of recovery, I. I knew I was feeling these new things, but I didn't quite know how to put words to them. And a lot of times there's people in songs that are really emotional. Um, and it's like, oh, my God. That's the feeling that I've been trying. It might be one lyric in a song, and it's. That's that feeling that I've been trying to identify, that really speaks to exactly what I felt either right now, what I'm feeling right now, or what I felt during this certain period of heartache in my life. And this also means that there's someone else out there that felt it because they were able to write about it. Um, and it was through that that I was able to start my own emotional exploration that I think is extremely important and maintaining a solid foundation of recovery. And so when I, you know, fast forward to the point where I was able to begin to give back to the community and take my knowledge, strength and hope and be able to go out and help, the one place that I knew that I was familiar with and was of extreme comfort to me was within, was within the world of arts and music.

Speaker A: So I, I don't want to pry too much, but can you talk a little bit about the trauma that you suffered and why, as so many people do, they pick up a substance, whether it's a drug or alcohol, to numb the pain or to somehow, you know, give you the courage to get through life?

Speaker B: Yeah, I can. I grew up in a poor family, I guess we call them low income families now. We were, we were freaking poor. And I had an extremely abusive alcoholic father who did some really unfortunate things to myself, to my mother and my brother, to the point that I almost oftentimes, I think I acted out so that I would be the one that would be on the receiving end. Because it was better to receive pain than to watch it be inflicted upon another.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And that taught me, that taught me also though, that I was deserving of those things. And as I grew, um, I needed to cover up that pain. I found different coping mechanisms and, and then I found drugs. And those became the easiest path to covering, not just covering those up, but finding. Because of the fractured element of my family, I didn't feel like I belonged within that group. And thankfully, eventually my mom left, left my father and took me with her. That doesn't mean that things got any easier. We spent a long time living place to place and I slept on a lot of couches. And yeah, I felt like I never really felt like I belonged. But when you find a circle of, uh, people, when you have, when you have drugs and you're a teenager, it's easy to find a circle of people who will accept you. And so you get that duality of both feeling like you belong in a group that maybe they don't really like you for your. For you, but they like you for what you got and, and also being able to forget what's, what's going on at home. And for me, that, yeah, that was, that was, that was my, that was my way of coping, that was my way of escaping and that was my way of finding, finding some belonging in the world. Where.

Speaker A: Did your mom know that you were doing these drugs?

Speaker B: So my mom was busy working through a lot of her own stuff, I would say by the time I was 16 years old. Yes, she very much knew and she had, she had entered me in, in treatment. I did treatment for the first time at age 14.

Speaker A: Gosh, that's so young.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was young and it was not, I don't really think that that treatment was helpful.

Speaker A: Clearly not.

Speaker B: By the time I was 16, I think that I had used up all of my strikes within my, within my family. Um, and that's when I left home.

Speaker A: And at 16, you, you were on your own?

Speaker B: Yes, at 16 I left home and

Speaker A: I

Speaker B: lived from, from place to place, friend to friend. Um, and I did not have, I don't think I lived in the same place for longer than an entire year. Up until, I would say up until just recently, up until age 35 or. Well, besides prison, I lived in the same place while I prison. But you know, yeah, I, I left home at 16 and um, found, I found camaraderie and people that, uh, you know, a lot of them were much older than me, but I still had this need to belong. And unfortunately the friend group that I chose, they didn't really care about my age. They just cared about me doing the same things that they did to belong. And it was actually then that I was introduced to heroin. It was a, a, a 24 year old given a 16 year old heroin, in fact.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Shooting, Shooting me up with heroin for the very first time. And that started off an um, an adventure with opioids that lasted up until, up until I turned 30.

Speaker A: At what point you were arrested for what exactly?

Speaker B: I mean, I've been arrested dozens of times.

Speaker A: Went to prison for.

Speaker B: Yeah, so in 2000, in 2007, I was arrested on a drug trafficking charge. I.

Speaker A: Drugs?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I did, I did 18 months and was released, but I was released in the way that they do in Ohio, which is they give you 50 and drop you off at the bus stop and you know, it's kind of, they don't, there's no plan, no plan in place. And I went back to all that I knew, which was the streets. And by 2011 I had racked Up a plethora of charges, but essentially I was caught with a car that was not mine, two laptops and a small amount of heroin, and I was sent away for, for ten years.

Speaker A: Wow. Um, yeah, it's worth noting you were in Ohio, which, you know, that was. The. Ohio was in many ways the epicenter of the opioid crisis.

Speaker B: That's correct. You know, I think we, and I, I, you know, I am, um, I am a child of the opioid epidemic. We didn't know what it was until, until people started putting a name on it around 2008, 2009 was the first time people were saying, we have a, we have something going on with heroin here. But you know, the very first pill mill is. It was in Portsmouth, Ohio for the, the Percocets and the oxycontins. That's what started the template for all the pill mills across the country. But I always say, like, you know, Huntington, West Virginia got quite a bit of coverage for the amount of overdoses in West Virginia has. Had, has been devastated as well. But Huntington is just under a hundred miles from Columbus, where I grew up. And I always say, you know, where do you think it was coming from? Yeah, it was, it was right here. It was in every neighborhood. It's. It was, it was what we knew. It was just a part of life was the pills and the heroin. And unfortunately, a lot of the friends and associates that I had from that time period are no longer with us. And I think that's, that's what drives me quite a bit today is the fact that, you know, I was just thinking about it. I've got a, I've got, you know, I just graduated college.

Speaker A: Uh, you're on your way to law school?

Speaker B: Yeah, and I'm on my way to law school. And like, you know, I have my family and I have my wife who supports me to the fullest. And I. But unfortunately, it was kind of, it was kind of bittersweet because I wish that there were some of, some of, some of those friends could see, could be here to see these moments and what became of, you know, what became of this person who nobody ever thought would, would straighten his life out.

Speaker A: How much do you think being in prison for 10 years helped set you on the track you're on now?

Speaker B: Let me start that off by saying prison is not a place where recovery is easily accessible. Um, no drugs are easily accessible. Recovery has a waiting list. Yeah. In prison, in fact, one of the most eye opening things, and this is long after I got sober But. And right before my release was when. When Covid happened. Uh, I was still. I was still incarcerated then. In fact, the prison that I was at had 44 people die.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: Yeah. We had 1600 positive cases in April of 2020. And we went on complete lockdown. Uh, there was very minimal staff that was coming in, and obviously no visits, no anything. In fact, the National Guard at one point had to take control of our prison because of just the, The. The extreme circumstances. However, there was no shortage of drug supply, even under lockdown, even on lockdown. In fact, some would argue there was more than there had ever been.

Speaker A: Because how are the drugs getting in?

Speaker B: Well, the CEOs bring it in, and they were. And. And no one wanted to touch anyone, so.

Speaker A: Meaning commanding officers.

Speaker B: Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the. The prison staff brings it in and they, you know, they make money off of it, and they use the inmates to sell it for them. So I always say that, or. I don't know, I guess it's a kind of eye opening. I've been asked before, you know, how long after I got into the, uh, the prison in the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, you know, how. How. How long did it take until I was able to get my hands on an illicit substance? And I actually had just gotten to my institution and had not yet made it to my bed and saw someone who recognized me and said, hey, Perry, when you put your stuff down, come see me. I have something for you.

Speaker A: No, that fast?

Speaker B: That fast. So I had, I had been. I had been there maybe a couple

Speaker A: hours before somebody sold you drugs?

Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, actually, the first one was free. First one's always free. That's how they. That's how they get you. And, you know, I was in a place of misery. I was starting a fresh 10 year sentence. What, what motivation did I have not to. Not to get high? Also, when I did start seeking out recovery services, uh, there's actually really long waiting lists to get into those classes, even to go to something as simple as na, which I love and which is probably one of the most important parts of my own personal recovery. I spent about three months on a waiting list before I could go to my very first NA meeting.

Speaker A: Really?

Speaker B: Yeah. And you needed to also, you know, maintain a time out, a certain amount of time out of truck, not being in trouble or anything like that, which you would think someone. Someone's seeking NA like, uh, you know, odds are they probably are getting, Getting into.

Speaker A: I mean, going. I mean, we. In the outside world. You spend all this time Trying to coax people to come to an AA or in a meeting as the first step toward even just recognizing you have an issue. And in prison there's a three month waiting list.

Speaker B: Yes, easily three month waiting list because there's limited space and you have, you have one meeting a week and you have, you know, a prison of 3,000 people who want to go to this meeting. Uh, wow. Well, not all of them obviously want to go to this meeting, but, but yeah, there's limited space in the, in the tiny room that they allot to it on a Tuesday night. And yeah, so I, you know, I waited, I waited my turn and thankfully, thankfully my number came up eventually and I was able to, able to start going to those meetings. But I think like that, that contrast there of how quickly I was able to get my hands on drugs versus how long it took me to get my hands on something that would give me some recovery or guidance from anyone, um, really speaks to what happens inside of a prison.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Now that's not to say that it wasn't once I, once I got, once I got my foot in the door, I took full advantage of every thing that I possibly could. And that doesn't mean I got sober all in one day. I didn't get addicted all in one day. So, you know, it's a process that's kind of, in thinking about that, that's what's led me to harm, to doing harm reduction for a living is, you know, knowing that, hey, these things happen in tiny increments and we just try to like, reduce harm little by little. And that's actually how I got clean, was by little by little, taking, taking these classes. And hey, sometimes I would slip up, but then there'd be someone to tell me, okay, well, we're glad that. We're glad you were able to admit that, admit, uh, that to us and, and talk about it and talk about the reasons why you did. And uh, eventually, by the end of, by the end of 2017, I was pretty well on my recovery. New year's, New Year's Eve 2017, I smoked a joint with a buddy in the shower.

Speaker A: I think the water would be a problem, but go on.

Speaker B: Well, you need to cover up the smell so you don't get caught. Uh, but yes, so yes, the water is a problem, but, but you're just. And that, that actually led to the smell factor, actually led to quite a bit of paranoia and ruined, completely ruined my, my New Year's. And also I had had a, I had had about a month of Sobriety previous to that, and the recognition that I had just lost that just to. Just to feel paranoid all night. You know, I. I woke up on New Year's Day 2018, and I made a promise to myself that if I was ever going to have a crappy night ever again, it was going to be on my own volition and not because of some drugs and I haven't used since then.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And that's. And that's kind of the way. Even through those hardships of COVID in prison and all of the. It's so. Coming home is so hard. It's just so hard to get reused. Reused, adjusted to the world. But no matter what, I. I made that decision that I wasn't going to use anymore. And I began to. To see life through. Through a different lens and see. See life for. For the beauty. The beauty that it has and like these magical moments that. That you get to. That you get to have. And I wouldn't have it any other way, but I also don't believe that I would be the person who's sitting here talking to you right now if I hadn't gone through these things. I am this person because of those things, not in spite of those things.

Speaker A: How did you meet your wife? I'm curious.

Speaker B: So she actually was a documentary producer for quite some time. My wife is amazing. She was working actually on a story on the. She was doing in some preliminary investigation on the potential of a story on that covet outbreak at the Ohio prisons,

Speaker A: how nobody would come to work and the National Guard had to come in and make sure you guys had food. But go on.

Speaker B: Yeah, Even. Even into. Going into, I believe, going into 2021.

Speaker A: Huh.

Speaker B: Actually the most concentrated and largest outbreak of COVID in America at, uh, your prison. Both mine and there was Marion Correctional in Ohio simultaneously had outbreaks. I believe Marion had slightly more cases than ours, but they were two. Number one and number two on the most concentrated outbreaks in America, going all the way into 2021. But it was this blip on the news that people quickly moved on from because it's just some prisoners dying, you know, and she was doing an investigation on. Hey, is there potential for doing a. Doing a short documentary on this or. Or making sure that this isn't a story that just goes away forever.

Speaker A: Who was she working for at the time?

Speaker B: Uh, so she was actually freelancing at the time. She.

Speaker A: She.

Speaker B: Okay, she was freelancing. She had actually just left her position. She worked at Great Big Story with cnn, where she won an Emmy but she had left CNN to go freelance where she did a. She did a whole bunch of documentaries as a freelancer. But yeah, that led her to. During COVID obviously a lot of production stopped. And so she was. She was just, you know, rooting around for stories and ideas and had come across Ohio. She'd never been to Ohio. Since I actually was one of. I. I was hospitalized while I was incarcerated. A Masmatic that, uh, it really affected me really badly. I was in the hospital for five days. And this was just a couple months before I was getting out. It was after all this time, am I going to make it home? Kind of deal. But my release to the halfway house coincided with the time that she was coming out to do her investigation, that story. And although my part in it, she was connected to me because it was well known that I was one of the first cases in my prison and an extreme case.

Speaker A: Covid case.

Speaker B: Yeah, Covid case. So she was connected to me through that, but I wasn't really part of the way she was trying to tell the story. But I did become kind of a de facto tour guide for Ohio because I love this place and uh, you know, and was able to explain how the prison system works here and different things of that nature. And we became very, very good friends. And then we became more than friends. And next thing you know, I was fully released from the halfway house she took me. She was actually covering Joe Biden's inauguration. So the day after I was released from, from the custody of the state of Ohio, she actually took me to Washington D.C. with her. And I got to. I got to see the inauguration. And then we went to New York City and packed up her apartment and she moved into her own apartment here in Columbus, Ohio. And I guess, you know, she was willing to take a big chance on me. And I'm. I'm ever grateful for that. A year and a half later we were married and started a non profit that, that does its little part to

Speaker A: try and help the world, this nonprofit. You know, getting back to my original question about music and how, how powerful it can be, especially for. I think a lot of people who are addicted to some sort of substance can sometimes have difficulty. You know, of course everybody in their life is like, why? Why, why? You know, why are you doing this? Why are you taking these drugs? Why are you drinking too much? Why won't you stop? And that can actually be a really hard question to answer. Sometimes the person in the grip of addiction doesn't even know him or herself. Why? And the fact that the answer so often can come from something you read or something you hear, like a song. And when you realize, oh, that's what I'm feeling. And as you said, and I'm not the only one who feels this, because there's nothing more isolating or lonely than addiction. And the whole process of coming out of addiction is connection to other people. That's why NA worked. That's why AA works. Because you're in a room with a bunch of other people who did exactly the same thing and felt in many cases, exactly the same way. Circumstances may be completely different. What got you there may be wildly different, but you still got to the point where you felt the exact same way. I can't. I can't live without numbing part. And of course, what tragically ends up happening is you numb all. You can't just numb part.

Speaker B: I can walk into an NA meeting in any city in this country, probably any country, because they occur across the world, but I can walk into an NA meeting in any city and I can tell a group of strangers exactly how sick I am and the thoughts that I am having today. And they will understand it completely, although they've never seen me before in their lives. And that is one of the most beautiful things in the entire world. To be able to let that off your shoulders. And a burden shared is a burden lifted, you know, and that's what. That's what those exist for. And I think that that's what we try to offer to people. And music, um, provides a safe space. People's guards about this topic are down a little bit, because if you just bring up matters of addiction and trying to get into the specifics of it in a more sterilized environment, people's defense mechanisms are up. Whether it's the person who's struggling with a substance use problem or the family member or someone or friend who's connected to that person. They don't even realize that they have defense mechanisms because of what they've been through or maybe enabling factors or whatever. There's a lot of different things that play into that. And what we've been able to develop is this method of outreach that allows individuals to just come up and have a conversation with somebody.

Speaker A: Well, let's set this up, because this method of outreach of yours, you have like, what are they, booths or a table or something? You and your wife and. And you actually dispense harm reduction kits. Naloxone. Yeah, you wouldn't think. I mean, this is obviously a person going up to your booth is A person who's planning on doing drugs at the music festival or at the concert or they're with somebody who's going to be doing drugs, and they want to make sure they're safe because fentanyl is in everything right now. It's in everything. No drug, no pill is safe because fentanyl could be in it. Yes. And you have these booths where you give naloxone in case there's an overdose. So it's not like you've got a shingle out there saying, clean and sober is the way to go or, you know, don't do drugs. Your shingle in effect says, if you're going to do drugs, be safe. Uh, but that opens the door. You say to other conversations.

Speaker B: We like to call ourselves the gateway drug to recovery.

Speaker A: Perfect.

Speaker B: So, yeah, you know, these conversations happen in a whole lot of different ways. None of them are the same, and I've had tens of thousands of them over the past four years. But what it boils down to is you have to. The method of the 80s and 90s, the white knuckle, just say no method. Like we've learned, we, we can please, please acknowledge by now that that just doesn't.

Speaker A: Didn't work.

Speaker B: No, it's not based in reality. In fact, people are very complicated. So you cannot boil it down into this one statement and say, this is gonna work. But what you can do is you can keep your loved ones safe in the meantime as they work through their stuff, you know, and that's what

Speaker A: what

Speaker B: we do is all about. It's about keeping yourself safe. If it is yourself who's choosing to partake in a substance or a large majority of the people who come up

Speaker A: just know that they're going to be

Speaker B: around someone and that might even be strangers that they're going to be around. But they know that those people deserve to be kept safe as well. But for the ones who have people that are closer to them, they do have specific questions. For the people who do use, they have a specific set of questions. How can I use safely? How can I lower my usage? What are these? And, and this is where we employ harm reduction strategies, you know? Huh. Like, you don't have to do it all at once. You can make, you can set goals for yourself. You can, you know, going low and slow is okay. Letting someone else know that you're going to use is also, uh, okay. Instead of hiding and using alone in shame. That's how people die.

Speaker A: Yeah. You've been to all sorts of concerts, all sorts of music Festivals, Burning man, for example. Ah. Many, many bands have. Have entered into partnerships. The Talking Heads, Love them, Interpol, the Black Angels. And Since March of 2022, you've distributed 85,000 naloxone kits. Do you have any idea how many lives you might have saved?

Speaker B: So actually, that, that number is now up because we started this year where we are up over 100,000 kits that we've distributed. Wow. And we have confirmed over 1,500 opioid overdose reversals.

Speaker A: That's incredible. You just. That's. That's incredible. You saved 1500 people's lives, you know, or helped save them.

Speaker B: Yeah, we were just, uh, we were just the conduit. We just put the stuff in people's hands. And I look around and that's, that's part of why we do this very active and, uh, mobile and hard thing, you know, when I look around and yes, there's all kinds of awareness campaigns about fentanyl. There's one pill can kill slogans on billboards and things of that or no, the time of plausible deniability for fentanyl has long passed. Everyone knows about it. However, the problem with this specific drug is if you don't have the tool, the medicine that can counteract it.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: None of that stuff has any point. And so you have to be able to give it to people. And we also believe firmly that you have to be able to give it to people for free because it should not cost you money to save someone else's life. And so by making it low barrier, accessible and free and removing any judgment, we've been able to get this stuff into these hands. And like, a lot of people thought, hey, you're going to get pushback. You're going to Huntsville, Alabama and handing out Narcan. You know, they're not. They are knocking down our door is what they're. What they were doing. Lexington, Kentucky, they love us there because we are coming with exactly what they want, what people want to take back into their neighborhood because they know what's going on a couple doors down. They know what's going on at the gas station down the street. And they, they hope maybe they're there to help someone. Maybe they know what's going on within their family. Uh, and like, it's in those places that we have had this just welcoming of folks. It doesn't matter.

Speaker A: William Perry, the organization is. This must be the place. You have an incredible story and it's been a real honor to talk to you. Thank you so much. Thank you. And thank you for all the lives you're saving. Thank you so much for listening to Heart of the Matter. If your child is struggling, our trained helpline specialist can help you navigate the challenges and find solutions. Visit our website@drugfree.org support for more info. As a reminder, you can find Heart of the Matter on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and@, uh, drugfree.org podcast. And if you enjoy what you hear, please consider leaving us a rating on your favorite podcast platform. We'll talk to you soon.