The Other Side Academy:

What We Actually Do and What We Actually Believe

The Salt Lake Tribune raised some worthwhile questions in its most recent article about us. However, their curious editing inhibited readers from getting our real response.

Here’s the rest of the story.

First, their questions. In essence, they asked:

1. Do you abuse vulnerable people by yelling at and berating them?

2. Do most people fail at The Other Side Academy?

3. Do you exploit people in recovery by forcing them to work? And perhaps enrich yourself in the bargain?

4. Do you violate people’s privacy by broadcasting their mistakes?

5. Do you share embarrassing personal information about people with their employers?

6. Do you threaten and coerce people into doing what you want?

7. Is the Academy lying when it says it doesn’t take government funding?

1. Do you abuse vulnerable people by yelling at and berating them?

Do we yell? Yes. Occasionally. That isn’t a revelation to anyone who has visited our campus, and most especially to anyone who was accepted as a student. Prospective students have two weeks to live in our house before committing to the 2.5-year program. When they are formally accepted, they know exactly how we work and the directness we all expect of each other. Occasional yelling happens peer-to-peer, leaders-to-student, and happily, student-to-leaders.

Most of our students are long-time veterans of prison, jail and the streets. The vast majority have both endured unspeakable trauma and perpetrated it on others. Most have been addicts and alcoholics for 10-40 years. The average student at the Academy has tried and failed 8-10 other programs where people spoke kindly and traditional counseling was offered. That didn’t work for them.

Each day at the Academy is life and death. We have buried over 40 of our beloved former students in the past decade. We have found that the surest path to a better life for our people is radical honesty. That means helping people who don’t think about consequences to think about consequences.

To that end, on many occasions as a student is about to make a self-destructive decision that could end their life we have yelled, “Are you seriously thinking that if you walk away now you will survive? If you leave, you might die this time!” Damn right. Is it done to shame? No, it is done out of love-- to warn. Sometimes that slows them down and they stick around. Sometimes, they leave and blame us for yelling. When time is of the essence, we believe it’s better to risk hurting feelings than miss saving a life.

And a correction to the Trib story – the headline of the story was: “Just go down the street and die”. That is not the complete statement that was said. That would be cruel. We don’t issue curses, we yell cautions. The complete statement was “If you keep living the way you have been living, you will just go down the street and die.” That is love. And by the way, the Tribune affirms that within hours of that conversation, he overdosed and almost died.

2. Do most students at The Other Side Academy fail?

The Tribune article states that: “about 40% of participants have completed the program.” This number includes every person ever accepted, whether they stayed an hour or longer after becoming a Freshman. For some reason they left out an additional datum: 70% of those who complete the program remain DCE (drug free, crime free and employed) for the 3+ years that we track following graduation. After eleven years of research to find programs we can learn from, we haven’t found any who appear better.

DCE is how we hold ourselves accountable. Since September 2015 when we accepted our first student, we have practiced complete transparency about both our success and our failures. 40% means a 60% failure rate. We accept that. We hate it. In the past 10 years our team has traveled the world to learn from any program that had compelling evidence that it did something better than we do. Then we came home and improved.

What you should note about the Tribune article is that they throw out a number like 40% with no context. Perhaps their reporters are naïve about the need to offer context? Or perhaps there was an agenda? You decide. If their goal was to enlighten readers, you’d have thought they would have said, “40% of Academy students graduate, as compared to X% of those who participate in Program X, Y% at Program Y or Z% at Program Z.”

Why didn’t they do that? Because no other service provider in the State publishes outcomes. We have urged them to for eleven years. Not to make us look better, but to invite us all into collaborative self-improvement. We crave any information we can get about groups who produce better outcomes. To date, none have done so. Oh sure, you’ll find an occasional rehab that publishes self-serving “client satisfaction” or “self-reported improvement” surveys that no one should find credible. Those numbers typically come with a tiny asterisk explaining, for example, that they sent out 1,000 surveys to former clients and received 97 back. The number reported is the from the 97 who were sober enough to fill out the survey. You draw your own conclusion.

A few years back when some service providers claimed we were lying about our numbers, we submitted all of our data to the State Auditor who performed an independent review. He said not only were the numbers valid, but that this was the only program who had ever subjected itself to that scrutiny.

Sad.

But of no apparent interest to these reporters.

Tribune: Now that we’ve talked about yelling, can we talk about outcomes? We’ve shown our data, please do a little more work and ask those who disagree with our approach to show theirs.

Warning: Don’t fall for the fancy “Evidence Based” footwork: In the ongoing debate about outcomes, some of our critics try to change the subject by claiming The Other Side Academy is not “evidence based.” Can you see the subterfuge there? If not, you lose. Utah loses. And lives are lost. “Evidence based” means that someone’s program follows findings of a handful of academic papers that suggested under certain conditions certain people do better if providers follow certain procedures. We have two responses to those making this claim:

• We are evidence based. We have spent 11 years offering robust evidence that our peer-run therapeutic community has stood up to 50 years of rigorous efficacy research. If you don’t want to read the literature, we offer a summary white paper with plenty of citations at our website.

• Evidence based does not equal outcomes. No one should care that either you or we are “evidence-based.” They should care that you have put evidence to such skillful use that your clients are becoming DCE (drug free, crime free and employed) in impressive numbers. Please stop hiding behind academic papers and start showing your results. I say in complete sincerity that I would love to learn that you are saving twice as many lives as we are! And I promise you that the instant I learn that, The Other Side Academy will change.

3. Do you exploit people in recovery by forcing them to work? And perhaps enrich yourself in the bargain?

The Tribune’s previous article hinted at a story of people who just need “treatment” but are forced to work instead.

Fair enough. Here’s our view.

There is no published evidence in the world that demonstrates that the perfect “treatment” for someone who has shot dope for 25 years is a 90-day program with a few months of outpatient follow-up. And yet, the entire rehab world is chock-a-block with 30, 60 and 90-day programs. Why? Because that’s what the market will bear, not because that’s what the market needs.

The Other Side Academy started with the question: What does someone who has been an addict for 10-40 years really need to live a happy, fulfilling life? Then we set about to figure out how to offer that. And what do they need? We contend that if you’ve been using drugs for 20 years, your problem is no longer just drugs. Your problem is your entire lifestyle. During that time you’ve inevitably become lazy, dishonest, selfish, manipulative and impulsive. Evidence for that point-of-view comes from the fact that our students have “detoxed” dozens of times. It’s called Jail. They get arrested and spend a year (or many years) locked up without easy access to drugs. In other words, they’re sober, right? And yet when they exit, they relapse within hours. “Out the gate by eight, in the spoon by noon” goes the adage. The real problem is that they don’t know how to live in a healthy community.

The Other Side Academy offers students a chance to learn to live in a healthy community by practicing living in a healthy community. That means they pay their own way rather than depending on family or the government to do so. That means learning to be in a stressful, challenging workplace. It means learning to get up in the morning, go to work, have a good attitude, solve problems with colleagues, go to bed, rinse and repeat – for a long time.

And it appears to work. Of those who complete the minimum 2.5-year program, over 70% remain DCE. And to answer the “exploited” assertion directly: of those who complete 2.5 years, more than half, having no court-mandate to stay, ask to stay an extra year. Why? Oddly, the Tribune didn’t ask them.

As far as personal enrichment goes, we are a 501(c)(3) and share our audited information on our website. All are welcome to examine senior staff salaries and use of funds—and compare them to senior staff of other service providers. You’ll note that as Board Chair I receive no compensation, nor have my wife nor I accepted a single service without market-rate payment. We have hired The Other Side Movers a dozen times, shopped at The Other Side Thrift Boutiques, gorged on The Other Side Donuts, and paid for every privilege.

The Other Side social enterprises bring in millions of dollars in revenue, which allows students to stay for as many years as they need to… for free.

4. Do you violate people’s privacy by broadcasting their mistakes?

No. But we definitely broadcast mistakes. We are a therapeutic community. That means that the “community” is the therapist. It’s your older, younger and similarly tenured peers who help you learn to see yourself honestly and live a better life. We have senior staff who are experts in our model because they have lived in this kind of community for 10-20 years.

The essence of a therapeutic community is transparency. Everyone knows what anyone knows. We keep no secrets, which means we can practice social learning. We learn by watching the consequences others experience from their good and bad choices. We talk about them openly.

The Tribune reporters were either suborning manipulation, or were suckers for the former students who claimed shock that their story of leaving and overdosing might be shared within our community. They would have seen that practice every day they were with us, and consented to it in writing after their two-week orientation.

5. Do you share embarrassing personal information about people with their employers?

I was asked recently what could be done to help more people transitioning out of prison or jail to get jobs. My response: “Make them better candidates.” We seem to think the key to more people getting second chances is stupid employers. Employers want good employees. They know from experience that if you hire someone coming straight out of prison or jail, the smart money is on them ripping you off… or worse.

Every graduate of The Other Side Academy gets a job. Every. Single. One. We don’t know of any other service provider who can say this. This isn’t a brag on us, this is a brag on our graduates. Most universities can’t claim this. Some of our graduates have multiple offers. Many are leaders in their workplaces. An employer told me recently, “I learned that I should never hire just one TOSA graduate, I should always hire three.” “Why?” I asked. “Because if you get only one they’re a great individual contributor. But if you hire three, they raise the work ethic of all of their colleagues.” He’s right. Our students spend 2-4 years developing a monster work ethic, rock-solid integrity, and the habit of holding everyone around them to higher standards.

And yet some of our graduates fail. Thus, in order to create more opportunity for our graduates, TOSA makes a commitment to the employer: “If we see signs of trouble, we will let you know.” Every TOSA graduate knows that we must keep this trust or the door will close for future students. We won’t allow one person’s failure to foreclose on everyone else’s opportunity. That’s not how our community works.

The Tribune article offered innuendo that we do this out of spite or to get a petty revenge on graduates who relapse. Nothing could be further from the truth. We do this because we care about how our people affect employers, and because we care about the prospects of every future graduate. At the same time, we reach out relentlessly to those who relapse with offers to help them come back and get what they missed. Any former student who complains that we didn’t keep their dirty secrets is pretending not to know what they signed up for.

6. Do you threaten and coerce people into doing what you want?

We can’t. We have no standing to threaten. Our doors are open 24 hours a day. Many people walk away. We grieve every time. It’s personal. Do we try to influence them to stay? Yes. We plead. We run down the street next to them. We yell. We warn them colorfully of the risks and dangers. It’s a life-or-death choice that they are making. And in that sense, we’re no different than any other service provider. Should you listen in on an AA sponsor and a “sponsee” declaring their intent to get loaded, you’ll likely hear every note we sing as well. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t deserve the trust of our students.

If they leave or relapse, do we tell those we’ve promised to notify? Yes. And every student gave us a release to do so. We report to Adult Probation and Parole. We notify an employer we have pledged to inform. Is that coercion? We call it integrity. We don’t keep dirty secrets. Addicts love secrets and are geniuses at reframing their bad decisions as someone else’s wickedness. We’ve been called mean, abusive, manipulative, selfish, every name in the book. But coincidentally only by those who haven’t yet given up the old lifestyle. The rest write thank you notes.

7. Is the Academy lying when it says it doesn’t take government funding?

This false narrative was not mentioned in this latest Tribune article, but it has gotten traction online, so it merits an explanation. The Other Side Academy in Salt Lake City has received zero dollars of taxpayer funds. None for capital expenses and none for operational expenses. None from the City, County, or State. The Other Side Academy operates with no funding from government at all. In fact, we estimate we save the taxpayers of the State over $9 million a year because our students are at the Academy as an alternative to incarceration. There is room for honest misunderstanding on this point. The Academy’s sister organization, The Other Side Village, has received $17 million from the State of Utah and 100% of that has gone directly to build low-income housing for those who have experienced chronic homelessness, The official nonprofit for both the Academy and the Village was called The Other Side Academy (now called The Other Side Foundation).

Thus, when the State awarded those funds to the Village, the legislative bill referenced the Academy. However, those funds were used exclusively by The Other Side Village. Not a penny went to the Academy.

The State pays other service providers $70 per night to house someone who is homeless. The Academy charges nothing to house anyone. If we were to charge to house our population, we could charge the State over $4 million a year at our current full capacity. We don’t.

A Final Happy and Sad Note

When I finished reading the Tribune article, I was thrilled about one thing. They made no accusations that people can find drugs in our house. They said nothing about staff members getting high with students. There was no claim that students and staff members were having sex with each other. Not a scrap of evidence that we commit Medicaid or insurance fraud. The worst they had was that we’re impolite, make people work and tell on them.

I would invite the Tribune to use the same “investigative” strategy on the five largest treatment providers in the State and publish unedited findings as they did with us:

1. Search for four disgruntled former clients

2. Interview only them

3. Report the worst dirt you can find.

Seems that should have been done as part of this article, but it’s never too late! What saddened me was a copy of a text thread I received a few days ago between the communications director of another service provider who was apparently helping the Tribune shop for former TOSA students who might have something negative to say. Apparently that data set met the Tribune’s editorial requirements.

Thanks for listening.