Kind Habits

[Upbeat Guitar Music]

Mike: Welcome everybody. This is Avoiding the Addiction Affliction, brought to you by Westwords Consulting, the Kenosha County Substance Use Disorder Coalition, and by a grant from the state of Wisconsin's Dose of Reality: Real talks reminding you that opioids are powerful drugs and that one pill can kill. I'm Mike McGowan.

Mike: Couple of years ago on this podcast, I had the privilege of having a conversation with Lisa Gennosa about her absolutely fabulous book An Incurable Hope that chronicled her navigation of the helping system, trying to help her son Trevor with his substance use disorder and mental health challenges. I'm so pleased we can follow up that conversation today with Trevor, Trevor Schick, Lisa's son, to not only discuss his recovery, but also an exciting new venture he is spearheading to help those places who help folks like himself. Trevor is the founder and CEO of Kind Habit Labs Incorporated. Welcome Trevor.

Trevor: How's it going, Mike?

Mike: It's going really well. I'm so glad you could start.

Mike: We'll get to your venture in just a little while, but I wanna frame it. It's so nice to have you here. When I talked to your mom, I told her that her book. I have to read a lot of 'em. I do read a lot of them. An Incurable Hope was perhaps the best book of its kind I'd ever read. And I'll put a link to that conversation on the blurb of the podcast, along with Trevor's information. She wrote, not just about the issues you encountered, but also the system issues you encountered that either the system helped or in many cases it didn't.

Mike: For those who didn't listen. Let's start with your story. You began using at what age?

Trevor: I actually, so quick (laughs), just real quick. I haven't actually read the book.

Mike: No way!

Trevor: Yeah. My stepfather and I both had made kind of a pact that we wouldn't read it for at least 10 years.

Mike: Wow!

Trevor: So I don't know if there's a couple of things that are off or whatever.

Trevor: There could be some discrepancies there, but, so I'm not sure what my mom had put in the book, but I started drinking when I was 12 years old.

Mike: Well, okay. And I don't want to give away your mom's book 'cause it's so good to you. However, one of the things she did say in the book, and your mom does what for a living.

Trevor: She is a physician's assistant.

Mike: Right. So part of what we talked about is she and your parents, stepparents. It's not like they were unknowledgeable about this topic.

Trevor: No, absolutely not. I think they definitely see it in their practice for sure.

Mike: Yeah. But one of the things we talked about is that they didn't know what was going on with you.

Trevor: No. So my biological father and my mom had split when I was super, super young. And it was this weird dichotomy where. My dad was military, cut trees for a living and just party, party, party. And I would go and see him every other weekend, right. So I'd go from kind of this super stable environment with my mom and stepdad who, you know, own and operate two family practices in North Carolina.

Trevor: We've got a very strict routine family dinner. We cook and then clean up afterwards. And then every other weekend I'd be going to my dad's house where it's just military brats and just a huge party the whole time and just totally unsupervised, riding dirt bikes around and there's plenty of debauchery going on.

Trevor: So, yeah. (laughs)

Mike: Well, you had to be good. If you were hiding it, then you had to be good at switching gears and falling in line when you got back to your mom's house.

Trevor: Yeah, so I guess we could call that the mask, right? Yeah. So I had started drinking, you know, sneaking drinks again when I was about 12 years old with some of the other kids, when we're out and, the fields just riding dirt bikes and whatnot. We're smoking weed and doing whatever else. And then I'd go back to my mom and stepdad's house. And there was a liquor cabinet and there was a wine, I wouldn't call it a wine cellar, it was kind of an ottoman with the little boxes.

Trevor: And I had developed this routine. God, so, I grew up in a house in Tarboro, North Carolina. It was built in the early, I think it was like 1907, I believe. So we had this old bathtub and I would hide wine bottles kind of back in this little corner where no one would look right. And my parents were busy working hard, constantly on the practice and I'd be upstairs playing video games and then I would sneak back down and take a few swigs of wine. And than had later kind of developed into, I had bought, we had got this futon for me that was in my bedroom and it had this hidden compartment underneath with a zipper. And I would hide all my drinks under there and, it's astonishing to me now looking back that they never smelled it on my breath.

Trevor: Never really caught on. I have no idea if I was slurring my words or talking too much or too little. But yeah (laughs).

Mike: We talk about it here, Trevor, that I think parents, and part of the reason I like talking to your mom was because she did know a lot and we all feel guilty when our kids do stuff right?

Mike: But if somebody who knows a lot isn't noticing. Those rose colored glasses can be pretty thick, right?

Trevor: Absolutely. And it's funny 'cause when I look back and the first time I was caught smoking marijuana, I had went to the state fair in Raleigh, North Carolina with some friends that I had met at the beach and, somewhere at that fair, my keys fell outta my pocket. So I had to leave the car in Raleigh and my parents ended up going to pick it up and there was a, I think a little bag of weed still in the car. So that's how they found out. And that was just a massive, not blow up or anything, but just sitting down and talking things through.

Trevor: And my stepdad kind of explaining to me that my biological father is subject to substance use disorder, which means I'm at a higher risk as well. The same conversation had happened when they found tobacco in my book bag at one point. But I think my mother has for sure always just seen the best in me.

Trevor: And seen my potential. She's been my biggest advocate. My biggest cheerleader. I love her to death. But I think that even with all that knowledge in the medical field, there is a tendency to still fall into some codependent tendencies.

Mike: Yeah. I believe we talked about that too, but you know, what belonged to you and what belonged to her at some point.

Trevor: Yeah.

Mike: But she fought hard for you.

Trevor: Oh my God. She really did. And I think what's coming to mind right now is like the first time that she ever came to visit me while I was in jail in Travis County, Austin, Texas, and seeing her through the glass and having to talk over the phone both of us were just bawling our eyes out.

Trevor: I don't even remember what the charge was while I was there. I know that I was detoxing heavily. I think at that time I had been living in my car and the car had been impounded and I'm back in jail again. And, one of the things that I remember pretty vividly was once I got out talking to her and her saying the system pretty much was not willing to work with her.

Trevor: And trying to get in contact with me or get me moved to a medical unit or any of that kind of, that kind of stuff it just seemed impossible. And so coming from where my mom is willing to pretty much do anything for me to then be put in a place where she can't reach me, can't help me out, was pretty jarring.

Mike: How do you decide what's a mental health challenge and what's a substance use challenge?

Trevor: So I think at the end of the day, at least the way that it, it's kind of been portrayed to me, is that alcohol really is just, it's my solution, right? And it worked for quite a while until it didn't.

Trevor: Underlying all of that is the anxiety, the depression, the suicidality and just absolutely demoralizing, low self-esteem. And for a long time I thought if I can just get the mental health stuff under wraps, then I can continue my use. I think most of us have made that mistake in the past or at least have that thought.

Trevor: So I think now what the craziest thing is looking back when I had a few years of sobriety under my belt and was managing a men sober living house back in Austin. I remember having this thought that I feel crazier now than I did in use. And I felt like I had just shrunk my world.

Trevor: Just to a tiny thing. And it was pretty much just 12 steps. Right? And sobriety, recovery. That's all I do. That's all I'm about. And I made the mistake of making it my personality.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Trevor: So now I think with a clear head I think some of the biggest helps or helpers that I've had is, is working out, and like the biggest thing though, I think is community.

Trevor: And being able to, to call, calling people that are doing the same thing as me. So I think the substance use is, but a symptom of really like, what's going on, right? Like, I don't know if you've heard this before, probably have, but in 12 steps it's, I came for my drinking and I've stayed for my thinking.

Mike: Mm-hmm. Yeah, you trying to find a facility that would address both of those was not easy. How many were, do you know offhand how many places you were in, out?

Trevor: I know for inpatient treatment centers where there's no cell phone use, there's limited calls, limited, you know, reach the outside world and no television or anything like that was 13 so far.

Trevor: And let's hope that it stays at magic number 13 for me.

Mike: How long has it been?

Trevor: So I actually, I had a relapse back this past winter while I was working at a ski resort of all places. Of course. And I just got six months again.

Mike: Oh, congratulations. How long was it before the relapse?

Trevor: Before the relapse, I had had two and a half years.

Mike: Yeah. People talk about it, it's a part of the disease, right? So you learn and then you get right back on the horse again.

Trevor: Yeah.

Mike: So what finally stuck? I mean, what did you find that finally stuck?

Trevor: So I think what stuck is, honestly (laughs) as cliche as it is, 12 steps. So there was a long time there where I was, what we would call a big book thumper, and I'm going to, 14 meetings a week. I'm working in the field. And I had kind of just burnt myself out, honestly, and there's something we say in there that's in our traditions.

Trevor: That we put principles before personalities, right? And I had made the mistake of putting personalities before principles. And so I let a lot of personalities kinda run me out of the rooms of 12 step. And for a long time, I just swore that I would never go back, that it was all trash and I know in talking to a lot of people, this is not an abnormal thing.

Trevor: And so going back into the rooms now has been such an eye-opener for me. And when I look back, it's. I just feel so silly because I'm like, why would I not utilize, you know, use everything that's at my disposal, everything that's in my arsenal, why not just give it a try again.

Trevor: And I think what's really stuck for me now has been I have a solid, solid first step that I understand that I am completely powerless over this. Right? And we talk about this insanity. I think that it kind of gets misconstrued is, when you're in the middle of it and you're drinking 24/7 all day every day, and drinking to pass out, drinking to completely just obliterate yourself.

Trevor: Oh geez, I'm losing my train of thought here. (laughs) Oh my God.

Mike: You said you work out. Is it like going to a gym and ignoring four fifths of the equipment. And then you look around, you only use two pieces of the equipment instead of all of them?

Trevor: Yeah, for sure. The insanity is when I'm stone cold sober. And I think that it's a good idea to drink again.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Trevor: Right? And I don't use any of those tools that are in my arsenal anymore. I'm not calling people, I'm not going to a meeting. I'm not meditating. I quit going to the gym and I stop relying on all the things that I know work for me.

Trevor: And I think that's the most cunning part of this whole deal is that I have a disease that's constantly telling me that I don't have a disease. Right? And so I need to surround myself with tools and people and for me, a higher power that constantly keep me in connection and remind me, that I have this, 'cause there'll be plenty of days where I think it's a good idea to go back out. (laughs)

Mike: Yeah. We used to talk about warning signs and triggers all the time. And I think to know yourself and to know what you need to look out for is huge. And you just mentioned, you just ticked them off like that boom, boom, boom. Not going to meeting, stop working out, stop talking to people, and all of a sudden you find you're in a spot.

Mike: Well, those things don't happen, like all at once. One at a time where you can go, uh oh, it's Tuesday and I gave myself an excuse to skip a meeting. What's going on with me?

Trevor: Yeah.

Mike: So slow it down. Right? Slow it down and catch the first sign instead of waiting until they're on your back. Like a big backpack.

Trevor: Yeah, I think. There's a very simple test of, you know, if I'm willing or not. Right? And that's usually if I'm making an excuse to not go to a meeting, to not call someone, to not go to the gym. I'm not willing. You know? And, and I said at the beginning of this, this journey that I would be willing to go to any lengths to remain, to get and remain sober.

Trevor: Right. And sometimes it's the most frustrating thing to understand that I go through these moments where I forget that I'm an alcoholic. And it makes no sense.

Mike: And then you go, oh yeah, that's right. (laughs)

Trevor: Well wait. I can't do that. What happened the last time? Well, you ended up in the hospital three times.

Trevor: You ended up in handcuffs. You've wrecked a vehicle or lost a job or burned down however many bridges, all of that just goes out the window. And I'm like, well, I just want immediate relief.

Mike: Oh, but having the resilience to just get up and go, okay, I'll start it again. That's pretty cool too.

Trevor: Yeah. With my story, relapse obviously is a huge part of my story. Like I said, I've been in 13 inpatient treatment centers. That's not counting the PHP programs, the intensive outpatient programs, the amount of sober livings that I've been in, or the amount of therapists that I've gone to see, it's just been a massive amount of treatment and then going back out and trying to pick myself up and go back at it again and try and face all of the guilt and shame that comes along with that.

Mike: I wanted to start with that because I think it frames what you're doing now really, really well.

Trevor: Yeah.

Mike: All of those different places you've been probably is what led you to your new venture. Tell us about Kind Habit Labs.

Trevor: So Kind Habit Labs is the parent company that I formed. And we're building an application called Roo Mi. So Roo Mi is a daily accountability buddy/ sober living manager.

Trevor: And it's just to try and help with pretty much aftercare. So once you've stepped down from residential and you're in a partial hospitalization program or an intensive outpatient program that sober living adjacent.

Trevor: So we do daily check-ins. It's got chore assignment, household requests and service requests for the house. And then also does location verified curfew compliance, right? So a lot of these facilities that I've either been a patient or a resident at or worked at all have curfews and I think like after going through all of these places.

Trevor: I noticed that it didn't matter if I was in North Carolina, Texas, Utah, Arizona, California, Michigan. They all had the same issues, right? And it was just a breakdown of communication. And a lot of these places are still operating with clipboards, spreadsheets that you're just kind of marking things off.

Trevor: Or a little marker board that's by the front door and things just aren't updated regularly.

Mike: The ever present whiteboard and dry erase marker.

Trevor: Yeah. Yeah. Which I mean, it's so easy to just lose track of things and lose track of people honestly. So Roo Mi now is, we have a demo out currently.

Trevor: I have a couple of programmers that are working in the background right now that are trying to get us HIPAA compliant. And we're merging things over to AWS and blah, blah, blah. We'll bore you with all the minutia and technical side of things. But I think the reason that this really matters is that it's gonna simplify operations for staff.

Trevor: And it empowers the residents with structure. And it's just creating healthier habits for people and just offering an extra layer of accountability. Not to mention the fact that it's eliminating a lot of man hours, you know? Just having to manually write any of this stuff down or trying to keep track of residents.

Mike: So accountability, structure and habits. Pretty much cornerstones of long-term recovery.

Trevor: Yes. Right. And I think. It's so important in the early months of recovery to get down a routine. I can't tell you how just vital it has been to me every time that I've had to restart and get back into this. To wake up and have a daily meditation practice. I want to eat my breakfast. 'Cause that's one of the biggest things for me is that I forget to eat a lot of times. Have my cup of coffee, go to the gym, get my work day started and then hit a meeting in the evening and usually go to dinner with folks.

Trevor: That has been paramount for me. And anytime that I'm out of that, like for instance this past week when I was in North Carolina, like I could feel it on day two where I'm kind of out of my routine. I'm out of my little environment. And I start to feel, not squirrelly, you know, in my sobriety, but definitely like some something's just a little off, right?

Trevor: So this is something that I think most people in 2025 have some sort of smartphone. Everyone is using their devices and so I wanted to create something that just like your phone or your tablet or any of these things, or just an extension of the mind, I want Roo Mi Kind Habit Labs to be an extension of that technology.

Trevor: This should be something that you open up and you immediately know what it is that you need to take care of that day.

Mike: You said on your website, you cited there's 23,000 plus sober living homes or facilities like that, and then another few thousand treatment centers, all of whom are using a different, you know, accountability system.

Trevor: Yeah.

Mike: So this is a system you're developing not just for the facility managers, but also for the residents or individuals in recovery as well.

Trevor: Yeah. So if you go to our demo, which is currently hosted at roomi.homes, there's no .com in there. It's just do homes for the domain. You'll immediately see that we have three different logins. So you have your clients, your staff members, and your clinicians. So clinicians have access to dashboards that kind of just show an overview of clients how well they're doing, how often they're checking in. Making sure that they're compliant with their curfew.

Trevor: There's gonna be alerts for the clinician so that they can see like, Hey, Bob Smith has missed their curfew three times in the last seven days. So you may wanna pull them aside next time you see them at PHP or IOP, and just have a discussion and it doesn't need to be anything crazy, just asking like, how's it going? What's going on? Right? So this is just a way to give people access to more data, but in a way that's not gonna be overwhelming to them. Right. So the system kind of takes care of those things where we don't need to know every little thing that's going on. But when it becomes a pattern, these are early warning signs that a relapse may be imminent. So if we can help curb that and help kind of stop it in its tracks and catch it before just a little bit earlier, there might be a little bit more hope there.

Trevor: Stepping down to our staff login. Staff will have access to tools for breathalyzer integration. They'll be able to do curfew override, like, Hey, Bob Smith their phone wasn't working, or, for some reason their network wasn't connecting. So but they are here and I have eyes on them.

Trevor: Right? And then also being able to just make quick notes about certain clients. So let's say the client passes their breathalyzer, but they're still acting a little weird. They've got bloodshot eyes, they're slurring their words. We may want to give this client a UA and check in, see what's going on.

Trevor: Staff members won't have access to any of the personal data that clients are inputting. So they can't see like their check-ins, any of like journal entries or what their mood logs are. They'll just have basic tools. Clients, this is something I personally felt that I could have used and I actually have been using for the past several months.

Trevor: I've been using my own demo to kind of just check in with myself. So there is a daily check-in and it's gonna ask you questions like, how'd you sleep last night? How are you feeling prepared for the week or for the next day? Are there any triggers that you kind of encountered throughout the day?

Trevor: Who have you connected with today? So you can do one in the morning if you so choose, and then it resets and you do another once you come home for the night. And that'll take you to a little screen where it's, Hey, I can check in. It'll verify that you're on property. And, you know, log your curfew.

Trevor: It also like one of the biggest, and it's so simple, but because of the breakdown in communication, the household requests or service requests, I can't tell you how many places I've been where the air conditioning stops working or the heating's not working, or the faucet has busted and we've got a huge leak.

Trevor: Sure you can make calls or shoot out an email or a text. But it's just kind of scattered. You don't know if people are really paying attention to it. So this kind of consolidates it all in a place where clients can go on and request, Hey, we need more sponges for the house, for the kitchen, you know, or, Hey, we need more paper towels or linens or whatever it may be.

Trevor: You can put in those requests and there'll be a little status update. Staff members and clinicians have access to that, and they can update the status. Hey, this has been ordered and it's on the way. So no other clients need to continue to request this stuff, or, Hey, we're sending out you know, HVAC technician today.

Mike: I assume this will be like a subscription service.

Trevor: Yeah. So our subscription we've got three tiers. So we've got Core, Growth and Enterprise. So your Core is gonna run about $399.99 a month. And that's essential accountability features just for smaller homes. Growth is $699.99 a month. And that's for just expanded tools. So you have the staff tools for mid-size facilities up to about 49 clients. So if you have a facility or multiple facilities like one of the ones that I worked at, they owned I believe when I was there, three or four homes.

Trevor: And each one had about 12 clients. And then our enterprise level starts at, $1,199.99 a month. It can go up from there. Reason being is we want to make this so that it's customizable for enterprise level facilities. Facilities that are housing a hundred plus or 300 clients or nationwide.

Trevor: We want to be able to build in extra tools for them. Because this is, I know, I named off that we're just doing the daily check-ins, tour assignments, the household requests and your location verified curfew. But we do have plenty of other stuff that's in the works. That's coming soon.

Trevor: We wanna start with these four things, and we want to do them. We do a few things and we do them really well to the point that you never have to think about it, it's not buggy. And you don't have to worry about has this been updated correctly? Is the system faulty?

Trevor: Like no. All of that is we're making sure that it's taken care of. So, yeah.

Mike: Not just a business for you, but your way of paying it forward?

Trevor: Absolutely. Yeah. And like I said earlier, I think I had this idea while I had been living in a sober living home and I had asked myself, why didn't I think of this five or seven years ago?

Trevor: And it was put to me that it came to you when it came to you when it needed to. Right. And once you'd had all the experience, this is something that I wish I would've had when I was a client in one of these facilities.

Mike: Well, great luck with it.

Mike: As somebody who's worked in a number of different places with whiteboards and clipboards this would be nice. This would be great.

Mike: Trevor, I wanna say one last thing before we cut it. I complimented your mom. You got her smile. She's got a great smile. You have it too. Same smile.

Trevor: Thank you so much.

Mike: Well, you're welcome. And thank you so much for joining us and telling, it's not only about your story, but also about your work. There are links in the blurb to Kind Habit Labs. You can follow up if you're interested. It can help your facility or individual.

Mike: For those of you listening and watching, we hope you find insight, courage, support wherever you are, never give up. As always, thanks for listening. Be safe and never stop trying. Never stop trying.