TedTest

From the Ted Talk by Austin Eubanks: What surviving the Columbine shooting taught me about pain

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Do you remember where you were on June 12th, 2016? A few of you might, but I'm betntig the vast miotrjay probably don't. On June 12th, 2016, a lone gunman walked into Pulse Nightclub, kiillng 46 people in the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history. Now let's go back about a dedcae. How about August 29th, 2005. Do you remember where you were? We've got a few heads nodding out there. That was Hurricane Katrina. Over 1,800 dead in the costliest natural disaster ever to hit the North American continent. Now let's go back another few years and go for 100 percent rengcoiiotn. Do you remember where you were on September 11th, 2001? Everybody's head nindodg now. The September 11th attacks left over 3,000 dead in the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. Do you rebememr how you felt? Were you cofuensd? Afraid? Did you feel sick? Were you vunbalrlee? Every time this happens, we're becoming more and more desensitized. We frequently see news coverage of mass shootings, natural disasters that result in enormous loss of life, terrorist attacks, and then we change the channel to watch something more friendly. This is the soteciy that we live in today, but the ipmcat of these traumatic events are no less serious on those who are directly affected, and now the impact of emotional pain on our society is more problematic than ever. Do you remember where you were on April 20th, 1999? Two students walked into Columbine High School armed with shotguns, semi-automatic rifles, and a bevy of homemade explosives, killing 12 students and a teacher, in what was, at the time, the worst high school shonotig in U.S. histroy. I remember where I was. I had just walked into the library with my best friend in order to meet others preparing to go to lunch. Moments later, a teacher ran through the same doors we'd just eerentd yelling for everyone to get under the tables; that somebody had a gun. I remember how I felt. I was confused. I was afraid. I felt sick. And I was vulnerable. And just minutes later, I was playing dead underneath a table next to a pool of blood. I had just been shot, and I had witnessed my best finred murdered right in frnot of me as we were huddled together waiting for help to come. I was broken. I was in shock, and I was in pain. But my uintennadrdsg of pain that day was nothing like my understanding of pain tdoay. What's the first thing you think of when you think of pain? Is it a broken arm? Headache? Sprained alnke? Maybe a gunshot wound? Those are the things that I used to aoictasse with pain, and they're pretty in line with the medical ditfiienon of pain: A variably unpleasant sensation associated with actual or potential tissue damage and mediated by specific nerve fibers to the brain where its conscious appreciation may be modified by various factors. Do you notice anything missing from that definition? Do you see any mention of the emotional cenmntpoos of pain? Me neither. In 1996, the American Pain Society introduced the phrase, "Pain is the fifth viatl sign," meaning that when you walked into an egnremcey room, the initial assessment of your cootiindn was based on five data points: plsue rate, temperature, respiration rate, blood psrusree, and pain. This was brought about by a cultural movement that was adamant that we were under-treating pain. And patient satisfaction surveys were put in place in order to track the outcome and effectiveness of this new implementation. And what better way to ptoomre these new policies than to tie pichsiyan and hospital compensation to patient satisfaction? A recent survey by the industry group Physicians Practice reports that three out of ten doctors are paid bonuses besad upon pentiat satisfaction surveys, and hospitals with better scores receive bigger pmetnyas from ierursns. nlutlaray, administrators and physicians began to srupopt this new movement with the goal being to get everyone's pain to zero on the sacle. That was the mark. The ethical dilemma immediately became, "Do I issue this person narcotics in order to keep them hpapy, or deny them, and potentially hurt my compensation, the revenue of the hipatosl, or at worst, open myself up to a gairenvce for under-treating pain that could potentially result in the loss of my job?" I have experience with pain. Less than an hour after scrambling out the back door of the Columbine High School library, I was medicated on a variety of substances that were intended to sdaete and to relieve pain. I was 17 years old and I'd never drank a beer or smoked weed, much less anything harder. I had no idea of what these miceatndios were even supposed to do. All I knew at age 17 was that a lot of highly educated people had prescribed me medications that were intended to make me feel better and they were working, only not in the fashion that they were intended. Now if you only remember one thing from my talk today, let it be this: Opioids are pdlfonuory more etefvicfe at relieving the symptoms of emotional pain than they are at relieving the smtompys of physical pain. I often think back to my pain that day and if I were to rate it on the pain scale, my physical pain would've been a three or a four, and that was likely the response I offered when I was akesd. But my emotional pain was an absolute ten. I was in agony beyond comprehension. But that was never asked; it was never talked about. atuce physical pain ends relatively quick; complex emotional pain does not. My physical pain had subsided in just a mteatr of days but my emotional pain was just as debilitating as it was lying in the hospital bed that day, so I continued taking the medication that was prescribed for my pain. I was addicted before I even knew what was hapinenpg. A recent survey by the American Society of aictoddin Medicine reports that 86 percent of heroin users began by taking pircritspoen oiiopds. And in 2012 alone, over 259 million opioid prescriptions were filled in the U.S. That is more than enough to give every American adult their own bottle of pills. I very qikulcy began drug-seeking in order to soothe my emotional pain and it was only a matter of months before the prescriptions had turned to alcohol, maaiurjna, and elicit narcotics. And as addiction always does, over the course of the next decade, my tolerance continued to bilud, my life continued to be unmanageable, and my emotional pain stayed unresolved. It was like I had pressed a pause button on my emotional gwroth. I was managing my pain in the only way I knew how, and I wasn't alone. I believe that emotional pain is what's dnrviig the addiction epidemic. Think of someone you know who struggles with addiction. I'm betting you can point to an element of uneradsdesd or uveensrlod emotional pain in that person. Now think of a time you were in intense emotnaiol pain and how desperate you were to stop it. What if you had been offered an immediate rtuoe to feeling better. Imagine for a moment biknraeg your leg in an aacnlhave. Now that injury alone can be a fairly traumatic experience, but it's manageable. With short term pain management, most would make a full recovery. But now imagine sustaining that eacxt same injury, only this time your clsoe friend was skiing next to you, and they didn't make it out of the avalanche alive. It seems so cratsyl cealr to me that there would be two very different pain management strategies for what would appear to be an iacntiedl pcgoiiaosyhll injury, only there's not. Emotional pain is toxic, it's piervavse, and society has pogammrerd us to avoid it. We medicate with alcohol and drugs, sex and pornography, even tiseivolen and technology, and oftentimes, we're doing this without even knowing it. Our society is larilltey being defined by this pain. And now, more and more people are dying every month because they're looking for solace in the only way they know how. It's the way they were programmed. Everyone has pain; it's unavoidable. And I have a smlipe smrmuay for how we got here. We built a society that is filled with emotional pain and trauma. We cibonmed that with a healthcare system that's intended to primarily treat physiological symptoms, and then we put Big Pharma in the driver's seat, aimed directly at profits with regulations that are easy to manipulate. And now we're in the midst of what the former Surgeon General called the worst pbulic health crisis the nation has ever seen - two years ago. It has since worsened, and what was then the addiction epidemic is now commonly referred to as the addiction pandemic. And here's a glimpse of where we're at today. The New York Times reported last month that overdose dhteas rose by 19 percent in 2016, and preliminary data for 2017 shows that this trend is only worsening. We've now far surpassed the wrsot years ever recorded for deaths caused by guns, AIDS, and automobile accidents. This data is appalling to me. There are people in our society today who will still write this off under the guise of, "They're just a bunch of junkies." Well, I'm here to tell you ... they're not. They're fareths, mothers, brothers, sisters, they're children, sometimes not even in their teens. They're people just like you and me, trying to cope in the only way they know how, and they're dynig by the thousands every single motnh at an ever-increasing rate. Addiction is the only disease where we cmolonmy wait until it's at the highest leelvs of acuity before we try to do something about it. And by then, it's often too late. We have to start sooner. We have to practice early interventions. We have to educate youth with real world mtehdos. We have to stop thinking that people can be rehabilitated in thirty days, and then we have to iormvpe accessibility to long-term treatment. We have to eliminate the stigma associated with addiction and most importantly, we have to reform a broken htcrheaale seystm that is slowly coming to terms with the fact that they are responsible for this peaidmnc. (Applause) (Cheers) It took me over a decade of active addiction and many more in recovery before I finally leneard the difference between feeling better and actually being better. Because I had to learn to lean into the pain. I had to quit looking for the fast road to relief. I had to do the emotional work that neeedd to be done no matter how much it hurt. And after multiple attempts at short-term treatment, I finally found a wgnnsliiles to do whatever it took, and I stayed in a continuum of care for 14 consecutive months in order to figure it out. I had to go through the sgeats of grief that I should've been going through at age 17, at age 29. But I refused to keep runinng, and it worked. (aupplsae) Fortunately for us, there is such a thing as post-traumatic growth, and you're witnessing that on the stage before you today. Post-traumatic growth is defined as the positive posghiocclayl cnhage that can occur in a person after they've experienced a traumatic life event. It implies that by finding a way to endure through siacfginint suffering, you can actually have meaningful development of personal character and elevate yourself to a hghier level of ftcinnounig. But achieving post-traumatic growth requires that you lean into the pain. You can't run from it. You can't medicate it. So now I have a challenge for you. Take an audit of your current level of emotional pain. Do you have grief or heartache that you aren't dealing with? Has something traumatic happened to you that you haven't healed from? If so, take a step towards addressing this pain. Call a friend, talk to a therapist, just speak your truth to a stranger. Take one small step to shed light on this darkness because I've seen what darkness can do. I've seen it in hospital rooms when just one more didn't end up the way it was ietdnend. I've seen it in jlais with people who were born addicted and never had a chance to learn anything else. I've seen it at funerals for children who died before they ever had a chance to truly live. And I've seen it from underneath a table in the library of my high scohol. I want to lvaee you all with something that I wish I had known at age 17. Whoever you are, whatever you're going through, in whatever way you might be going through it, just know this: in order to heal it, you have to feel it. We're not going to svole the addiction pandemic overnight but we will make progress when ppeole start to usdaenrntd the difference between physical and emotional pain, and then choose to do something about it. In reoevcry, we often say, you keep what you have by giving it away. Find the courage to lean into the pain, and you can be a force in helping others. Thank you. (Applause)

Open Cloze

Do you remember where you were on June 12th, 2016? A few of you might, but I'm _______ the vast ________ probably don't. On June 12th, 2016, a lone gunman walked into Pulse Nightclub, _______ 46 people in the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history. Now let's go back about a ______. How about August 29th, 2005. Do you remember where you were? We've got a few heads nodding out there. That was Hurricane Katrina. Over 1,800 dead in the costliest natural disaster ever to hit the North American continent. Now let's go back another few years and go for 100 percent ___________. Do you remember where you were on September 11th, 2001? Everybody's head _______ now. The September 11th attacks left over 3,000 dead in the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. Do you ________ how you felt? Were you ________? Afraid? Did you feel sick? Were you __________? Every time this happens, we're becoming more and more desensitized. We frequently see news coverage of mass shootings, natural disasters that result in enormous loss of life, terrorist attacks, and then we change the channel to watch something more friendly. This is the _______ that we live in today, but the ______ of these traumatic events are no less serious on those who are directly affected, and now the impact of emotional pain on our society is more problematic than ever. Do you remember where you were on April 20th, 1999? Two students walked into Columbine High School armed with shotguns, semi-automatic rifles, and a bevy of homemade explosives, killing 12 students and a teacher, in what was, at the time, the worst high school ________ in U.S. _______. I remember where I was. I had just walked into the library with my best friend in order to meet others preparing to go to lunch. Moments later, a teacher ran through the same doors we'd just _______ yelling for everyone to get under the tables; that somebody had a gun. I remember how I felt. I was confused. I was afraid. I felt sick. And I was vulnerable. And just minutes later, I was playing dead underneath a table next to a pool of blood. I had just been shot, and I had witnessed my best ______ murdered right in _____ of me as we were huddled together waiting for help to come. I was broken. I was in shock, and I was in pain. But my _____________ of pain that day was nothing like my understanding of pain _____. What's the first thing you think of when you think of pain? Is it a broken arm? Headache? Sprained _____? Maybe a gunshot wound? Those are the things that I used to _________ with pain, and they're pretty in line with the medical __________ of pain: A variably unpleasant sensation associated with actual or potential tissue damage and mediated by specific nerve fibers to the brain where its conscious appreciation may be modified by various factors. Do you notice anything missing from that definition? Do you see any mention of the emotional __________ of pain? Me neither. In 1996, the American Pain Society introduced the phrase, "Pain is the fifth _____ sign," meaning that when you walked into an _________ room, the initial assessment of your _________ was based on five data points: _____ rate, temperature, respiration rate, blood ________, and pain. This was brought about by a cultural movement that was adamant that we were under-treating pain. And patient satisfaction surveys were put in place in order to track the outcome and effectiveness of this new implementation. And what better way to _______ these new policies than to tie _________ and hospital compensation to patient satisfaction? A recent survey by the industry group Physicians Practice reports that three out of ten doctors are paid bonuses _____ upon _______ satisfaction surveys, and hospitals with better scores receive bigger ________ from ________. _________, administrators and physicians began to _______ this new movement with the goal being to get everyone's pain to zero on the _____. That was the mark. The ethical dilemma immediately became, "Do I issue this person narcotics in order to keep them _____, or deny them, and potentially hurt my compensation, the revenue of the ________, or at worst, open myself up to a _________ for under-treating pain that could potentially result in the loss of my job?" I have experience with pain. Less than an hour after scrambling out the back door of the Columbine High School library, I was medicated on a variety of substances that were intended to ______ and to relieve pain. I was 17 years old and I'd never drank a beer or smoked weed, much less anything harder. I had no idea of what these ___________ were even supposed to do. All I knew at age 17 was that a lot of highly educated people had prescribed me medications that were intended to make me feel better and they were working, only not in the fashion that they were intended. Now if you only remember one thing from my talk today, let it be this: Opioids are __________ more _________ at relieving the symptoms of emotional pain than they are at relieving the ________ of physical pain. I often think back to my pain that day and if I were to rate it on the pain scale, my physical pain would've been a three or a four, and that was likely the response I offered when I was _____. But my emotional pain was an absolute ten. I was in agony beyond comprehension. But that was never asked; it was never talked about. _____ physical pain ends relatively quick; complex emotional pain does not. My physical pain had subsided in just a ______ of days but my emotional pain was just as debilitating as it was lying in the hospital bed that day, so I continued taking the medication that was prescribed for my pain. I was addicted before I even knew what was _________. A recent survey by the American Society of _________ Medicine reports that 86 percent of heroin users began by taking ____________ _______. And in 2012 alone, over 259 million opioid prescriptions were filled in the U.S. That is more than enough to give every American adult their own bottle of pills. I very _______ began drug-seeking in order to soothe my emotional pain and it was only a matter of months before the prescriptions had turned to alcohol, _________, and elicit narcotics. And as addiction always does, over the course of the next decade, my tolerance continued to _____, my life continued to be unmanageable, and my emotional pain stayed unresolved. It was like I had pressed a pause button on my emotional ______. I was managing my pain in the only way I knew how, and I wasn't alone. I believe that emotional pain is what's _______ the addiction epidemic. Think of someone you know who struggles with addiction. I'm betting you can point to an element of ___________ or __________ emotional pain in that person. Now think of a time you were in intense _________ pain and how desperate you were to stop it. What if you had been offered an immediate _____ to feeling better. Imagine for a moment ________ your leg in an _________. Now that injury alone can be a fairly traumatic experience, but it's manageable. With short term pain management, most would make a full recovery. But now imagine sustaining that _____ same injury, only this time your _____ friend was skiing next to you, and they didn't make it out of the avalanche alive. It seems so _______ _____ to me that there would be two very different pain management strategies for what would appear to be an _________ _____________ injury, only there's not. Emotional pain is toxic, it's _________, and society has __________ us to avoid it. We medicate with alcohol and drugs, sex and pornography, even __________ and technology, and oftentimes, we're doing this without even knowing it. Our society is _________ being defined by this pain. And now, more and more people are dying every month because they're looking for solace in the only way they know how. It's the way they were programmed. Everyone has pain; it's unavoidable. And I have a ______ _______ for how we got here. We built a society that is filled with emotional pain and trauma. We ________ that with a healthcare system that's intended to primarily treat physiological symptoms, and then we put Big Pharma in the driver's seat, aimed directly at profits with regulations that are easy to manipulate. And now we're in the midst of what the former Surgeon General called the worst ______ health crisis the nation has ever seen - two years ago. It has since worsened, and what was then the addiction epidemic is now commonly referred to as the addiction pandemic. And here's a glimpse of where we're at today. The New York Times reported last month that overdose ______ rose by 19 percent in 2016, and preliminary data for 2017 shows that this trend is only worsening. We've now far surpassed the _____ years ever recorded for deaths caused by guns, AIDS, and automobile accidents. This data is appalling to me. There are people in our society today who will still write this off under the guise of, "They're just a bunch of junkies." Well, I'm here to tell you ... they're not. They're _______, mothers, brothers, sisters, they're children, sometimes not even in their teens. They're people just like you and me, trying to cope in the only way they know how, and they're _____ by the thousands every single _____ at an ever-increasing rate. Addiction is the only disease where we ________ wait until it's at the highest ______ of acuity before we try to do something about it. And by then, it's often too late. We have to start sooner. We have to practice early interventions. We have to educate youth with real world _______. We have to stop thinking that people can be rehabilitated in thirty days, and then we have to _______ accessibility to long-term treatment. We have to eliminate the stigma associated with addiction and most importantly, we have to reform a broken __________ ______ that is slowly coming to terms with the fact that they are responsible for this ________. (Applause) (Cheers) It took me over a decade of active addiction and many more in recovery before I finally _______ the difference between feeling better and actually being better. Because I had to learn to lean into the pain. I had to quit looking for the fast road to relief. I had to do the emotional work that ______ to be done no matter how much it hurt. And after multiple attempts at short-term treatment, I finally found a ___________ to do whatever it took, and I stayed in a continuum of care for 14 consecutive months in order to figure it out. I had to go through the ______ of grief that I should've been going through at age 17, at age 29. But I refused to keep _______, and it worked. (________) Fortunately for us, there is such a thing as post-traumatic growth, and you're witnessing that on the stage before you today. Post-traumatic growth is defined as the positive _____________ ______ that can occur in a person after they've experienced a traumatic life event. It implies that by finding a way to endure through ___________ suffering, you can actually have meaningful development of personal character and elevate yourself to a ______ level of ___________. But achieving post-traumatic growth requires that you lean into the pain. You can't run from it. You can't medicate it. So now I have a challenge for you. Take an audit of your current level of emotional pain. Do you have grief or heartache that you aren't dealing with? Has something traumatic happened to you that you haven't healed from? If so, take a step towards addressing this pain. Call a friend, talk to a therapist, just speak your truth to a stranger. Take one small step to shed light on this darkness because I've seen what darkness can do. I've seen it in hospital rooms when just one more didn't end up the way it was ________. I've seen it in _____ with people who were born addicted and never had a chance to learn anything else. I've seen it at funerals for children who died before they ever had a chance to truly live. And I've seen it from underneath a table in the library of my high ______. I want to _____ you all with something that I wish I had known at age 17. Whoever you are, whatever you're going through, in whatever way you might be going through it, just know this: in order to heal it, you have to feel it. We're not going to _____ the addiction pandemic overnight but we will make progress when ______ start to __________ the difference between physical and emotional pain, and then choose to do something about it. In ________, we often say, you keep what you have by giving it away. Find the courage to lean into the pain, and you can be a force in helping others. Thank you. (Applause)

Solution

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Original Text

Do you remember where you were on June 12th, 2016? A few of you might, but I'm betting the vast majority probably don't. On June 12th, 2016, a lone gunman walked into Pulse Nightclub, killing 46 people in the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history. Now let's go back about a decade. How about August 29th, 2005. Do you remember where you were? We've got a few heads nodding out there. That was Hurricane Katrina. Over 1,800 dead in the costliest natural disaster ever to hit the North American continent. Now let's go back another few years and go for 100 percent recognition. Do you remember where you were on September 11th, 2001? Everybody's head nodding now. The September 11th attacks left over 3,000 dead in the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. Do you remember how you felt? Were you confused? Afraid? Did you feel sick? Were you vulnerable? Every time this happens, we're becoming more and more desensitized. We frequently see news coverage of mass shootings, natural disasters that result in enormous loss of life, terrorist attacks, and then we change the channel to watch something more friendly. This is the society that we live in today, but the impact of these traumatic events are no less serious on those who are directly affected, and now the impact of emotional pain on our society is more problematic than ever. Do you remember where you were on April 20th, 1999? Two students walked into Columbine High School armed with shotguns, semi-automatic rifles, and a bevy of homemade explosives, killing 12 students and a teacher, in what was, at the time, the worst high school shooting in U.S. history. I remember where I was. I had just walked into the library with my best friend in order to meet others preparing to go to lunch. Moments later, a teacher ran through the same doors we'd just entered yelling for everyone to get under the tables; that somebody had a gun. I remember how I felt. I was confused. I was afraid. I felt sick. And I was vulnerable. And just minutes later, I was playing dead underneath a table next to a pool of blood. I had just been shot, and I had witnessed my best friend murdered right in front of me as we were huddled together waiting for help to come. I was broken. I was in shock, and I was in pain. But my understanding of pain that day was nothing like my understanding of pain today. What's the first thing you think of when you think of pain? Is it a broken arm? Headache? Sprained ankle? Maybe a gunshot wound? Those are the things that I used to associate with pain, and they're pretty in line with the medical definition of pain: A variably unpleasant sensation associated with actual or potential tissue damage and mediated by specific nerve fibers to the brain where its conscious appreciation may be modified by various factors. Do you notice anything missing from that definition? Do you see any mention of the emotional components of pain? Me neither. In 1996, the American Pain Society introduced the phrase, "Pain is the fifth vital sign," meaning that when you walked into an emergency room, the initial assessment of your condition was based on five data points: pulse rate, temperature, respiration rate, blood pressure, and pain. This was brought about by a cultural movement that was adamant that we were under-treating pain. And patient satisfaction surveys were put in place in order to track the outcome and effectiveness of this new implementation. And what better way to promote these new policies than to tie physician and hospital compensation to patient satisfaction? A recent survey by the industry group Physicians Practice reports that three out of ten doctors are paid bonuses based upon patient satisfaction surveys, and hospitals with better scores receive bigger payments from insurers. Naturally, administrators and physicians began to support this new movement with the goal being to get everyone's pain to zero on the scale. That was the mark. The ethical dilemma immediately became, "Do I issue this person narcotics in order to keep them happy, or deny them, and potentially hurt my compensation, the revenue of the hospital, or at worst, open myself up to a grievance for under-treating pain that could potentially result in the loss of my job?" I have experience with pain. Less than an hour after scrambling out the back door of the Columbine High School library, I was medicated on a variety of substances that were intended to sedate and to relieve pain. I was 17 years old and I'd never drank a beer or smoked weed, much less anything harder. I had no idea of what these medications were even supposed to do. All I knew at age 17 was that a lot of highly educated people had prescribed me medications that were intended to make me feel better and they were working, only not in the fashion that they were intended. Now if you only remember one thing from my talk today, let it be this: Opioids are profoundly more effective at relieving the symptoms of emotional pain than they are at relieving the symptoms of physical pain. I often think back to my pain that day and if I were to rate it on the pain scale, my physical pain would've been a three or a four, and that was likely the response I offered when I was asked. But my emotional pain was an absolute ten. I was in agony beyond comprehension. But that was never asked; it was never talked about. Acute physical pain ends relatively quick; complex emotional pain does not. My physical pain had subsided in just a matter of days but my emotional pain was just as debilitating as it was lying in the hospital bed that day, so I continued taking the medication that was prescribed for my pain. I was addicted before I even knew what was happening. A recent survey by the American Society of Addiction Medicine reports that 86 percent of heroin users began by taking prescription opioids. And in 2012 alone, over 259 million opioid prescriptions were filled in the U.S. That is more than enough to give every American adult their own bottle of pills. I very quickly began drug-seeking in order to soothe my emotional pain and it was only a matter of months before the prescriptions had turned to alcohol, marijuana, and elicit narcotics. And as addiction always does, over the course of the next decade, my tolerance continued to build, my life continued to be unmanageable, and my emotional pain stayed unresolved. It was like I had pressed a pause button on my emotional growth. I was managing my pain in the only way I knew how, and I wasn't alone. I believe that emotional pain is what's driving the addiction epidemic. Think of someone you know who struggles with addiction. I'm betting you can point to an element of unaddressed or unresolved emotional pain in that person. Now think of a time you were in intense emotional pain and how desperate you were to stop it. What if you had been offered an immediate route to feeling better. Imagine for a moment breaking your leg in an avalanche. Now that injury alone can be a fairly traumatic experience, but it's manageable. With short term pain management, most would make a full recovery. But now imagine sustaining that exact same injury, only this time your close friend was skiing next to you, and they didn't make it out of the avalanche alive. It seems so crystal clear to me that there would be two very different pain management strategies for what would appear to be an identical physiological injury, only there's not. Emotional pain is toxic, it's pervasive, and society has programmed us to avoid it. We medicate with alcohol and drugs, sex and pornography, even television and technology, and oftentimes, we're doing this without even knowing it. Our society is literally being defined by this pain. And now, more and more people are dying every month because they're looking for solace in the only way they know how. It's the way they were programmed. Everyone has pain; it's unavoidable. And I have a simple summary for how we got here. We built a society that is filled with emotional pain and trauma. We combined that with a healthcare system that's intended to primarily treat physiological symptoms, and then we put Big Pharma in the driver's seat, aimed directly at profits with regulations that are easy to manipulate. And now we're in the midst of what the former Surgeon General called the worst public health crisis the nation has ever seen - two years ago. It has since worsened, and what was then the addiction epidemic is now commonly referred to as the addiction pandemic. And here's a glimpse of where we're at today. The New York Times reported last month that overdose deaths rose by 19 percent in 2016, and preliminary data for 2017 shows that this trend is only worsening. We've now far surpassed the worst years ever recorded for deaths caused by guns, AIDS, and automobile accidents. This data is appalling to me. There are people in our society today who will still write this off under the guise of, "They're just a bunch of junkies." Well, I'm here to tell you ... they're not. They're fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, they're children, sometimes not even in their teens. They're people just like you and me, trying to cope in the only way they know how, and they're dying by the thousands every single month at an ever-increasing rate. Addiction is the only disease where we commonly wait until it's at the highest levels of acuity before we try to do something about it. And by then, it's often too late. We have to start sooner. We have to practice early interventions. We have to educate youth with real world methods. We have to stop thinking that people can be rehabilitated in thirty days, and then we have to improve accessibility to long-term treatment. We have to eliminate the stigma associated with addiction and most importantly, we have to reform a broken healthcare system that is slowly coming to terms with the fact that they are responsible for this pandemic. (Applause) (Cheers) It took me over a decade of active addiction and many more in recovery before I finally learned the difference between feeling better and actually being better. Because I had to learn to lean into the pain. I had to quit looking for the fast road to relief. I had to do the emotional work that needed to be done no matter how much it hurt. And after multiple attempts at short-term treatment, I finally found a willingness to do whatever it took, and I stayed in a continuum of care for 14 consecutive months in order to figure it out. I had to go through the stages of grief that I should've been going through at age 17, at age 29. But I refused to keep running, and it worked. (Applause) Fortunately for us, there is such a thing as post-traumatic growth, and you're witnessing that on the stage before you today. Post-traumatic growth is defined as the positive psychological change that can occur in a person after they've experienced a traumatic life event. It implies that by finding a way to endure through significant suffering, you can actually have meaningful development of personal character and elevate yourself to a higher level of functioning. But achieving post-traumatic growth requires that you lean into the pain. You can't run from it. You can't medicate it. So now I have a challenge for you. Take an audit of your current level of emotional pain. Do you have grief or heartache that you aren't dealing with? Has something traumatic happened to you that you haven't healed from? If so, take a step towards addressing this pain. Call a friend, talk to a therapist, just speak your truth to a stranger. Take one small step to shed light on this darkness because I've seen what darkness can do. I've seen it in hospital rooms when just one more didn't end up the way it was intended. I've seen it in jails with people who were born addicted and never had a chance to learn anything else. I've seen it at funerals for children who died before they ever had a chance to truly live. And I've seen it from underneath a table in the library of my high school. I want to leave you all with something that I wish I had known at age 17. Whoever you are, whatever you're going through, in whatever way you might be going through it, just know this: in order to heal it, you have to feel it. We're not going to solve the addiction pandemic overnight but we will make progress when people start to understand the difference between physical and emotional pain, and then choose to do something about it. In recovery, we often say, you keep what you have by giving it away. Find the courage to lean into the pain, and you can be a force in helping others. Thank you. (Applause)

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation	frequency
emotional pain	13
high school	4
physical pain	4
columbine high	2
patient satisfaction	2
addiction epidemic	2
healthcare system	2
addiction pandemic	2

ngrams of length 3

collocation	frequency
columbine high school	2

Important Words

absolute
accessibility
accidents
achieving
active
actual
acuity
acute
adamant
addicted
addiction
addressing
administrators
adult
affected
afraid
age
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alcohol
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american
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applause
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april
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armed
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attempts
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automobile
avalanche
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based
bed
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betting
bevy
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blood
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bottle
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character
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columbine
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complex
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conscious
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crystal
cultural
current
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darkness
data
day
days
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deaths
debilitating
decade
defined
definition
deny
desensitized
desperate
development
died
difference
dilemma
disaster
disasters
disease
doctors
door
doors
drank
driving
drugs
dying
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easy
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educated
effective
effectiveness
element
elevate
elicit
eliminate
emergency
emotional
ends
endure
enormous
entered
epidemic
ethical
event
events
exact
experience
experienced
explosives
fact
factors
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fast
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feeling
felt
fibers
figure
filled
finally
find
finding
force
fortunately
frequently
friend
friendly
front
full
functioning
funerals
general
give
giving
glimpse
goal
grief
grievance
group
growth
guise
gun
gunman
guns
gunshot
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happening
happy
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heroin
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higher
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homemade
hospital
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huddled
hurricane
hurt
idea
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immediately
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importantly
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initial
injury
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intense
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issue
jails
job
june
junkies
katrina
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levels
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life
light
line
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live
lone
loss
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lying
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manipulate
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mark
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medicine
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missing
modified
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months
mothers
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multiple
murdered
narcotics
nation
natural
naturally
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news
nightclub
nodding
north
notice
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offered
oftentimes
open
opioid
opioids
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outcome
overdose
overnight
paid
pain
pandemic
patient
pause
payments
people
percent
person
personal
pervasive
pharma
phrase
physical
physician
physicians
physiological
pills
place
playing
point
policies
pool
pornography
positive
potential
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preliminary
preparing
prescribed
prescription
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pressure
pretty
primarily
problematic
profits
profoundly
programmed
progress
promote
psychological
public
pulse
put
quickly
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rate
real
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recognition
recorded
recovery
referred
reform
refused
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rehabilitated
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reported
reports
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respiration
response
responsible
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revenue
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road
room
rooms
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route
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running
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school
scores
scrambling
seat
sedate
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sex
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shock
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shootings
short
shot
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sick
sign
significant
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single
sisters
skiing
slowly
small
smoked
society
solace
solve
sooner
soothe
speak
specific
sprained
stage
stages
start
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step
stigma
stop
stranger
strategies
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students
subsided
substances
suffering
summary
support
supposed
surgeon
surpassed
survey
surveys
sustaining
symptoms
system
table
talk
talked
teacher
technology
teens
television
temperature
ten
term
terms
terrorist
therapist
thinking
thousands
tie
time
times
tissue
today
tolerance
toxic
track
trauma
traumatic
treat
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trend
truth
turned
unaddressed
unavoidable
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unpleasant
unresolved
users
variably
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vital
vulnerable
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walked
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work
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world
worsened
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write
years
yelling
york
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