Dr. Adam Downs. Welcome to the Mayo Lab Podcast. Thank you very much. So glad to be here. Yeah, I appreciate it. You know, we’re based at the University of Mississippi, where we work out of the William Magee Institute for Student Wellbeing, which has this Mayo Lab that we’re so proud of
Because it’s giving us the, you know, the forum to have this kind of conversation and to be able to get into schools and universities and figure out how do we meet students where they are in in finding their best selves and their well-being. And we’ve been so impressed by your work.
I’ve got to tell you, I’ve had multiple folks say to me over the past year, you got to meet Adam Downs. You got to hear of the work he’s doing in fraternities on major university campuses and I don’t know how you earn a reputation like that,
But we’re going to dig in on that today. But first, let me tell you, Adam, so you know my story with fraternities. You know, I was in one myself. My sons followed me, joined the same fraternity. My oldest son, William, he had a great experience in so many ways. He graduated from College
Honors College, ran track at the University of Mississippi in the same fraternity that I was in. He graduated in check straight into substance treatment. Unfortunately, he had some successes and he died eight months later of an accidental drug overdose. My son, Hudson William’s younger brother at the same fraternity house,
He followed his older brother and he followed me there. And he was found nearly dead inside the grounds of the fraternity house from an accidental drug overdose. And I’ll have people say to me, I’m sure you’re just so over the fraternity culture. And I say, you know, I’d do it all over again
Because that’s what my son struggled with. And I struggled with much the same thing when I was in college. And so I’m not sure that it’s the fraternity culture’s fault. However, I think perhaps we can improve it. And that’s what you’re trying to do. That’s right. Absolutely.
And I think we have to be careful with putting this overarching culture on a group of people. I think we have to be careful when tragedy happens in a certain environment that we just chalk it up to. Well, that’s just that culture. Unfortunately, in the world
We live in, it’s just not that simple and it’s not that black or white. And so I personally believe that. Is there some problems in fraternity chapters across the country? Yeah, there are. There are problems on college campuses. There’s problems in every organization. And there’s but I also believe that there’s
A lot of solutions there too and some of the most intelligent, bright, gifted, caring, compassionate, empathetic, smart, driven men that I’ve met have come out of the same chapter that have had men that have struggled. Right. And so if it’s a culture thing, if it’s just all bad, why are so many great
Successful leaders coming out of there, too? Hmm. And so my question is like, what’s one person getting out of it that the other does not? And if one person has that type of experience and cares that much about it and can give so much to it and receive so much from it,
What can we do to help cultivate that and make that an opportunity for everybody? Mm hmm. Because it’s obviously there. Right. You know, these organizations have been around for hundreds of years. Something is working. You see leaders like if you look down the list of corporate CEOs,
If you look down the list of leaders in Congress and so forth, so many of them come out of the Greek system. My own story today is a 50 something year old professional. Some of the friends that I rely on the most were my fraternity brothers. And I can count on them.
And they are, you know, but but we battled the culture when we were there also, because there there are some perhaps expectations, if you will. So so, you know, speaking of resumes. You. I don’t think you will mind me saying. Dr. Downs: Hey, I am an open book.
That’s what I love about you. You have this impressive resumé yourself. You are Dr. Adam Downs with a Ph.D. in other degrees. You’ve been a chief clinical counselor at a very large group. But if you run on down that bio of yours, you’ve also got a rap sheet.
You spent some time in prison. And bless you for the life turnaround you had. But help me understand how you, Adam Downs, go to Ph.D. and you’re going to go change the world in fraternity culture across America. So how did I choose that avenue? How did that happen?
Like you jump in on that anywhere. Yeah. You know, I mean, did I choose it or choose me? You know, I think is the is the better question. You know, I you know, my whole journey. I mean, Yes, I do. I do. I have had accomplishments. I’ve been educated.
Sometimes my dad tells me I’m educated beyond my means. You know, I’ve been able to achieve some things professionally that I’m proud of, but all pale in comparison to what I’ve been able to achieve personally and what I’m in. What I mean by that, first and foremost, is my recovery. You know,
I just celebrated last September, 21 years of sobriety. Yes. And, you know, actively work a recovery program. It means everything to me. I’ve been able to marry the love of my life and have two beautiful daughters. And my wife nor my daughters have ever seen me, you know, intoxicated. And so,
You know, it’s the whole fraternity world. And actually, it actually started bigger than fraternities. It started with just my my dedication to serving the emerging adult population. You know, and I probably did that. And to be honest with you, in some of what I was self-centered kind of way, I think I
Kind of made a career out of figuring out like, what the hell was wrong with me, you know, like, Right. Like what happened to me because I developed, you know, my my addiction in early adulthood. I started using well before that, but it didn’t get really dark until, you know, 19, 20, 21.
And so trying to understand what happened and what happens to so many others, because, look, I’m blessed. Like, I’m I survived. My last use of my drug of choice was an overdose. And for some reason, I woke up. Wow. You know, like, I woke up with my friends slapping my face and dumping
Ice water on me. You know, that’s was back before Narcan was readily available. And, you know, it was, you know, by the grace of God, I was spared. And so it was why me? Like, why was I the lucky one? And since I was, what do I do with that now? You know,
Do I go into investment banking? You know, that I can’t do that. You know, so many people believed in me and served me and poured into me and fought for my ability to walk this earth. And so I just kind of wanted to figure out how do I give that back?
And so I started trying to understand that emerging adult population. And the more I did that and that’s kind of where my research took me. And then, you know, my first job in academia was at the University of Alabama, where I was developing programs for students and then in the faculty
In the School of Medicine and that kind of stuff. And, you know, but it it you know, I started working with these young men in the fraternity system, and I saw all this potential and I saw these young men that also, like they didn’t like this this notion of the fraternity culture.
Mm hmm. Like, they didn’t like that. You know, And was there some some, you know, not great things happening in their fraternities. Yeah, but you know what? Like, they were like, they didn’t want that anymore. They wanted something to be different. They wanted some opportunity, and they didn’t
Necessarily know how to do that. And so, like, I just sat with them and listened to them and said, well, what do you you know, I didn’t go in there with some preconceived notion, like I had a solution for them. Telling them, Don’t do this, don’t do. That. Yeah.
I mean, it’s like I mean, firstly, right now you do not think of the color red. Right. And red. Yeah. That’s the first thing you think of is red. You start noticing all the red things in the room, right. Yeah. So you can’t do that, you know.
So I had to sit down and listen to them. What do you want? What do you want to change? Why do you want it to change? How can I empower you to create that change? Not just change it for you, but empower you to create the change within your own chapter.
And it started with one chapter. So you get that call. You get that call. Come help us at this fraternity. You sit down and you have that conversation. You make them seen. You make them heard. You’re. You’re validating that. What do you want? Where does it go from there? Yeah, well,
And it’s and it’s about not judging them, you know, and not having any authority to get them in trouble like this. That’s like they’re not going to be honest with me if they feel like I have the ability to be punitive. Right. You know, and I don’t believe in punitive measures anyway.
They haven’t worked. Well. I mean, show me a system they have. Yeah. We got people filled up in prisons. Yeah. Like, that’s obviously not working. And so, you know, I just. I just wanted to. They just wanted to be heard and supported. And then it’s just about helping them realize
On a very individualized basis, not just individuals and like per member, but per organization, like what the solutions are there for them and how to just kind of put some parameters up and help guide them toward that because they will this is the biggest thing. Like they will surprise you. Yeah.
Yeah. Like, they are smarter. They’re more dedicated. They care more than the majority of people give them credit for. And their capacity to lead and their capacity to care is so much higher than people give them credit for. And they and the people don’t give it credit to them.
And so they don’t actually engage in that like it’s there. It’s in them. But because no one like necessarily expects that from them or looks to them for it, they don’t nurture it. And so, like what what I try to do and what we try to do at my company
Is we try to nurture that. Like, you love this organization. You love your brothers. And I tell the guys all the time, we use the word fraternity brothers, not fraternity friends. Right? Not fraternity pals, but fraternity brothers. So act like it. Hmm. I like it. Yeah. If this was your brother,
What would you do? So when my son Hudson was found dead at the fraternity house, I was at the hospital where he’s in a coma. And all of his fraternity brothers had gathered around, and they were. I was like, Oh, this just amazing… The ambulance couldn’t get here in time.
And you guys threw Hudson in the back of your truck and sped to the hospital. And they are like… Mr. Magee, I mean, that’s what we do because he’s our brother. We do anything for our brother. They called me off to the side a little while later, and they said, Hey, Mr.
Magee, if Hudson wakes up, you know, he might need some help because he’s been on something for a while. And at that moment, I know exactly what you’re talking about. I understand the leadership that you Adam Downs and that, What Good Looks Like your company is aiming to do
And deliver in these fraternities that sign you up to help them get there. Because at that moment, I look back at those young men and they saw the reflection in my face. Right. We we’re bragging on how we sped to the hospital because his heart wasn’t working and he wasn’t breathing.
But we’re we didn’t take action when we saw him drowning in substances before our eyes for what they were saying was six weeks. Plus they saw the decline. But in that culture, and maybe that’s just the young culture in general, they couldn’t differentiate. That’s part of the education process, how to recognize
When someone is struggling. Well, that’s well, and not only like recognize it, but have a true protocol on how to do something about it. Like, here’s the thing. Like we typically we as humans typically know how to handle like 911 emergency situations. Yeah, right. Like, we have a number
We can pick up the phone, call 911. We can throw in the car and rushed to the emergency room. But more times than not, especially, we’re dealing with like mental health and substance abuse. Like the the emergency actually happens way before the emergency happens. Bingo. And so, you know, the question is,
Why didn’t they rush a eight weeks before it actually before the heart stopped? Yeah, you know why? Well, you know what? I don’t blame the guys, right? Because they didn’t have an instrument. They didn’t know. They didn’t know either. They knew something was up. They knew something was off. Yeah, but
Did they actually have a system put into place? Because, I mean, listen, let’s call a spade a spade. They’re probably not going to pick up the phone and call his dad. That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. They’re probably neither. They’re definitely not going to, like, call the university. No. You know, because that
Just brings so much attention to that organization and everything else. So what what do they do? All right. Who do they call? Do they call their, you know, like their chapter advisor who’s probably like an accountant and has no idea how to. You know, and I love chapter advisors.
I know I get it, but it’s like I’ve yet to I’ve I’m trying think of all the chapter advisors we work with, do any of them have any background in mental health? Right. I don’t think I don’t think any of them do. And I’m sure there’s I’m sure
There’s plenty of them out there. But most of them don’t know how to handle like mental health situations when they come up. And so now we look at these guys and we expect them to act like, you know, be a brother, act like a brother, somebody struggle and reach out for help.
To who? Right. Reach out to who? Like, what is the mechanism? Mm hmm. Like, that’s the problem. And we’re starting to as a system, as a country, as a Greek system as a whole, they’re recognizing this issue. Right. And so but the problem is their fallen short because their what they’re doing
Is they’re saying, well, all our chapters need a mental health chair. Hmm. A great idea. Yeah. Do you know how many mental health chairs I’ve sat down with? And they’re like. I’ve sat down with a few too. Yeah, I know what you’re saying. I mean. They don’t know what to do.
Like, I’m a psychology major. Yeah. Yeah. And they’ve anointed me this office. But it used to be when you were the chaplain, they could at least hand you a Bible. Yeah. Here. Bless them, Bill. Every night, like. Yeah. You know, say the prayer before chapter or something like that. But what.
What’s the mechanism to actually rush to be that brother, to be that brother’s keeper? Mm hmm. Before we’re on the way to the hospital. Yeah. So that’s what What Good Looks Like comes in like we are trying to be that system. Right. We So, like, when we go
In, we partner with a chapter. Like the first thing we do. Like the very first thing to do to build up a wellness commission. Mm hmm. And you take, depending on the size of the chapter, you take one or two members from each class, and we take them through a training on
Mental health awareness, not a training on how to intervene or how to be a counselor. That’s not their responsibility. That’s not their job. They’re college students. Yeah, but what they can do is know what it looks like. They can know what they’re calling the check engine lights.
Yeah, they can know what the check engine lights are like. Hey, if you know, he stops coming around, like, Hey, you know, one of the things I ask the guys all the time, do you know what depression looks like in a 19 year old? Well, like, they don’t bathe and they’re sad sometimes.
Right. You know what else It looks like? Aggression. Mm hmm. Aggression is a big sign of depression in the adolescent and emerging adult population. So, like, all of a sudden, you got a guy who’s just starting to fight everybody? Mm hmm. And picking fights and punching holes in walls. Right. Like, is it
Because he’s drinking too much? Maybe because he drinks too much? Because maybe there’s something going on. Underlying issue. Right. Yeah. You know, I tell the guys all the time, like, they’ll be like, Yeah, you know, he punched a hole in the wall. I’m like, Okay, yeah, He was really drunk. Okay.
Was it a Friday night or were there other people drunk there? Yeah. How many people just punched holes in walls? Well, just him. Okay, so it’s probably not the beer, right? It’s probably not the alcohol with alcohol at all. They all would have been punching holes in walls. Right. So there’s some.
Laugh and it’s not even funny. Right. But. But your point is so. Well made. And it you know, I saw a study the other day that circulated in all the news outlets on all the apps on your phone, Apple News and so forth of the day. And I almost laughed out loud
Because I thought, see, this is a news story because everybody doesn’t know. And it was I think, Alexis, maybe I’d come into the office and we laughed, but it was like the study was talk therapy reduces depression and anxiety and it was this groundbreaking thing. And I’m like,
But then we already know that. I mean. Rain water helps crops grow. Well, right. And so the concept that we’re going to take this group of students in so young men in particular their their DNA and the culture of how they’ve come up, they they’re not they weren’t taught to show their tears.
I mean, we’ve made progress, but come on. I mean, it’s still more cool to show your big truck or your your your your your resilience in the stoic face. You know? But the reality is talk what you have the chance to do is break barriers to help them identify more quickly,
Get them in to that talk therapy. And like you’re talking about punching a wall. Look, if somebody had gone to one meeting that previous week but able to really get things off their chest, they could have felt differently. Alexis, you were an athlete in college, an athlete in high school,
And you played college volleyball here at the University of Mississippi. In fact, did you I mean, were these kind of issues a part of is that part of what an athletic team faces as well, kind of this culture within? And what do you do with it? You know? Oh, absolutely.
And it’s a lot of you know, you’re an athlete, you’re on the stage. You people feel you’re looking at people. People are looking at you. And you just at the end of the day, if you’re sore from an injury, you know, rehab can only do so much, but you’re sore from the pressure
Of all of it, too. And so it just is there. It’s available. It’s it’s how you numb it’s it’s what else is going on that you’re trying to hide behind, that you don’t want to face yourself, that you don’t want to talk about with your teammates because you don’t think
They’re going through it either. It’s just you. It’s all in your head. Absolutely. It’s and it crosses barriers, you know, athletes and fraternity parties and all that. They’re there together. They go hand in hand. And it’s just an easy place to go to. And you just feel alone in it, but you’re not.
And that’s where people start. They want to talk about it. And I think I know I wanted to talk about it, just felt so alone in it or felt like people aren’t going to understand. Do you know, on most every major college campus study show the two most high risk,
Highest at risk groups. You’re athletes and your Greek system, students. And in my student, my son William was both Yeah, my son William, who died shortly after graduation of an accidental drug overdose. He was a track athlete at Ole Miss. 300 hurdles, as you both know. And and he was,
You know, active in his fraternity. And it really shed a lot of light on me. And it’s a great point. You talk about, Alexis, because like in athletics now, I will say I think our athletics departments, the big ones at least are get are ahead of maybe the overall university
Culture of universities everywhere. Because where I think things with NIL adding even more pressure and as you talk about the pressure of injury versus performance, it adds a whole mental health layer. I think though, athletic departments by necessity have maybe been a little ahead of the game
In reaching out in what they’re doing. Your company has has begun to do some of that work as well, right? Yeah. So, yeah, we do partner with a university with their athletic department, do some programing with all of their student athletes. But you know, primarily the football team because, I mean,
The football team makes up like a third of the student athletes anyway, right. But yeah yeah. So we do in and I mean yeah we see it, you know all the time. The other thing the the pressure I mean you got Yeah. I mean you’ve got a whole new
The NIL thing, is a whole new I think, I think a lot of athletic departments are very well-intentioned. Right. In trying to sort of stay ahead. And I think that sometimes they could do a much better job in some of their nonverbal communication. And I’m trying to be
A little bit delicate around this, but like I, I a very prominent university was giving me a tour of their athletic facilities and I was looking at their weight rooms and their hot tubs and cold tubs and recovery rooms. And, you know, all of these, you know, the nutrition station AIDS
And all of these things. And then they took me and showed me like where they do, like some of the like the mental health stuff. And it was like this little room in the corner with folding chairs and likes to have like boxes of old T-shirts in the corner.
And I went and sat down with one of the trainers, one of the head trainers in there worked in the AIDS office. And I just said, I just want to make you aware of something like of just what you’re communicating to your athletes. And he’s kind of like, what are you talking about?
And I was like, you know, I just walked in a weight room that you could I could build four houses in. Right, right. Just the budget of it. Right. You know, and, and cold tubs with waterfalls. And and I was like, were you communicating that you care so deeply about their body,
So deeply about their body, state of the art, everything, their muscle mass, their their tone, their structure, their ability to recover from injury, which they get before performing for you, is so second to none. But the part where you actually talk to them about their mind, and their heart, and their soul,
Has left over boxes in it and folding chairs. Wow. could you to to around to every athletic department in the United States of America. And that is such an important message. And could you imagine, like if I had been a college athlete today and I’ve got $1,000,000 of NIL money
In my pocket, I would be dead? Let me be clear. Yeah, I’m I think knowing your story, I mean, your odds would have been higher for sure. Yeah, Well, you know, so I think you’re speaking such an important truth and it’s it’s, you know, I’m so proud of what we’ve
Been able to do here in the beginning steps with the William Magee Institute for Student Wellbeing and the conversation, this Mayo Lab Podcast and other work we’re doing is allowing us to really start to have a conversation of let’s not keep our head in the sand because, you know,
You can’t just expect a child to be born to be thrust out into school and told to make A’s, is told to excel. Then they either join a team and or go join a social group in college and all they’ve been told is just go make A’s, do your chores, excel
And don’t do this, don’t do that. And and that’s really a lot of time, the bulk of what we’re doing around just some family love, we hope. But that’s the demand on them and yet we really haven’t provided them in schools. The whole being, the whole, you know, holistic well-being, education,
They don’t really understand how to channel their feelings and then they all show up in groups of clusters, in males and females, in sororities or on sports teams. And we expect like perfection, Right. They we we have to get in is you were doing and help them learn about themselves lives
And in the fraternity case they’re brothers so they can take that next step in emotional development. And then so I’m so curious about some of the results because what I’m told what I’ve heard is a friend told me when they were first saying, like, you got to talk to Adam Downs.
He’s got this company. They got this company. What Good Looks Like. I’m telling you, if you go check into this, they brought him in, brought his company in to start working with his fraternity and started listing off these results. I mean, I don’t want to embarrass you, but apparently in like a
Scale of like four or five years, it went from here to here in terms of grades. Tell us about kind of what went down with that. Yeah. So, I mean, I can give you an example of the like our very first chapter, which is the one we’ve been working with the longest,
Because, you know, listen to What Good Looks Like, It didn’t start as me going, Hey, I’m going to start a company that works with fraternities like it started when I when I left the university president of a fraternity, he called me and said, Hey, doc, now that you’re not with the university,
Can you come help us? And the reason he did that is because he needed to me, he needed me to be, you know, independent third party, you know, unemotional, unbiased. He needed to me have that neutral stance, which I completely understand. And so for two years it was just me, you know?
And then, you know, I had a guy that was helping me, you know, work with this one chapter. And when we started working with the chapter, they were not dead last academically, but they were second to last, okay? Or they were 23rd out of 25. Okay. Yeah. Second to second Asked. Yeah.
Either way, stinking it up pretty good. Yeah. You know, they had like three members living in the house. House was in shambles. Alumni relations were in shambles. Constantly in trouble with the university and with the national organization. I mean, they were just kind of surviving, just kind of floating around.
And when we got in there and we started to empower these young men to take ownership of their chapter back and that they didn’t have to accept the way that it was that they could actually make it whatever they wanted to be like. They could actually leave their legacy
And their imprint on that chapter. And so it didn’t like what they inherited. It didn’t have to be what they left behind. And that’s what a lot of people had done. And if they wanted to continue on that carousel, they could, but they could also do something different.
And so it was just like, Hey, what do you want? We want our GPA to come up. Okay, how do we do that? So we came up with a plan on how to support them doing that. You know, we want to stay out of trouble. Okay. Well, you know, to do that,
You have to stop doing the things that get you in trouble. So. But how do you do that? Well, you don’t just stop doing the things right. What you do is you set an expectation that those things aren’t okay. And you let that because I can’t come in there
And say, Don’t do that right, then they’re going to do it. But if they as a leadership come in and say, We’re better than this, and this isn’t what we’re going to leave behind. And so, you know, it’s been five years since we’ve been with that organization
For the past two and a half years. They’ve been in the top six academically, made it all the way up to number two and as low as seven. I think they’ve done a $3 million renovation on the house, which just shows the alumni engagement and how it’s back. Right. Their retention rate.
When we started, was it 54%. So one out of every two guys dropped out of the fraternity before they were seniors. Their retention rate today is at 92%. Guys are sticking around their GPAs higher than the all men’s GPA at the university. It’s higher than all Greek GPA. You know, they have
Not received a university or national sanction in almost two years. They’ve won multiple local campus awards. President of the year, Chapter of the Year, Alumni of the Year, as well as national awards. Most improved Philanthropy Award Service Award. Most Improved Chapter. Wow. Yeah. And listen, we didn’t do anything like, unbelievable.
We didn’t go in there and strip anything down. We just went in there and just supported the guys in, helped them achieve what they wanted. Hmm. We didn’t tell them how to do it. We didn’t tell them, If you do these things, this is what your GPA will be.
We said, What are your standards? Oh, if somebody has below a to 75, then they need to be go through a wellness plan. And what does that look like? So you’re going to actually take them through the wellness board, have them meet with the wellness coach to come up with a success plan
Around their academics. And they’re going to have mandatory study halls. And if they’re below another certain milestone that they set, not us, then the fraternities going to provide tutoring for them. Wow. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a freshman, sophomore, junior or senior. If you have a 2.5 GPA, your social restrictions
Are going to kick in until you get it up. You’re going to be placed with a brother who’s in the same major as you that’s doing well. And you’re going to have an academic mentor. You’re going to meet with a wellness coach who’s going to help you form an academic success plan,
And you’re going to have mand… you are going to have mandatory study hall hours. Can I get this on the professional level? But this is how this is how like you want to know how they did it like that. Like, that’s exactly what I wanted to know. But they do it all.
And what I’m here to tell you is I have been so blessed that over the past couple of years, as we’ve launched this institute here, as I’ve put my story out of my journey and my family’s journey, I’ve been so blessed that so many schools and so many parents
Have invited me into the conversation. And I can tell you the number one thing I get from parents and I get it all the time is can you please help me? Tell me if there’s one thing I should know and what I’m listening to you describe about what you’re putting in place
In the fraternity system. I’m thinking about every child in middle school and high school across the country. That’s a model. That’s a system. Because what I tell parents is, as I look, I wrote a book on this. It’s okay. I’m not judging you because I’m telling you what I did.
I spent so much time out of fear when my children began to struggle in middle school and high school around substances, I spent so much time in fear, punishing them. What I did not do, and we even bring what I’ll say is, even in the in university cultures administratively,
What they know how to do is punish. I mean, I’m not pointing fingers. It’s collective across the system. But what you’re talking about is what I tell parents today, what I learned is what I learned is the first thing. Have a conversation with your child. Begin to ask them open ended questions.
Begin to ask them how do they feel? What do they want? And if I have any major applause and if there’s any top lesson from this episode of this podcast that we leave with parents, that we leave with other fraternity advisors, other fraternity leaders, it’s what you’re talking about.
You are teaching young people. I’m here to listen to you and I can learn from you. Then I can be a part of your team and help guide you there. Yeah, I mean, I like to tell the guys like, we got to move or got to move out of hope and into wish
That’s what I tell the leaders. Like, I sure hope the party doesn’t get shut down this weekend. I sure hope we don’t get sanctions right. No, it needs to be. I wish one of these idiots would screw this up for us. Right? Right. Like because we’ve got a plan.
Like I wish he would. I wish he would come show up drunk, at chapter like, I wish he would skip his tutoring session because I got something for him and not in, like, a hateful, mean way, but like a no, no, no, no. Yeah. Like, we are prepared.
We have we. Yeah, we’re prepared. We stay ready and and that is one of the most important things that I think these guys can do. And look, this goes all the way back to the 911 call the heart stopping like What Good Looks Like is there to try to it
To intervene before that happens but you know what intervenes in it even before that. So before the eight so like with your son, you know, 6 to 8 weeks before he overdosed, things took a turn. Yes. Well, I would say that things probably took a turn well before that. That’s just when people.
Started, when they saw the visible sign. Right. But what I say is, if you have an organization that’s built around wellness and you have a wellness inner woven throughout the chapter and you have a standard of academic excellence, of behavioral excellence, of brotherhood and excellence of mental wellness excellence,
The likelihood of it starting to teeter sideways goes down. Right? But if it does, it’s noticed. Yeah, right. You know, and then if you have. So with us we have wellness coaches that are at the houses. So like our wellness coaches are at the house a couple times a week,
You know, spending time with the guys. And, you know, if one of those brothers that was concerned about your son, eight weeks before he overdosed, he didn’t have to call his dad. Right. He didn’t have to call you. He didn’t have to call university. He can pull the wellness coach aside
And say, hey, I’m worried about. Yeah, this wellness coach has been in the fraternity house shooting pool with him, maybe having coffee with them. They’re they’re they’re they’re engaged with him. I call it the the college kind of young life model right there. They’re engaged with them.
So there is some level of trust. So it could be like, hey, you know, I’m pretty worried about Hudson. Yeah. What’s interesting is today and it’s worth noting that those that don’t know the story, yes, we did lose our son William after he graduated and he died from an accidental drug overdose.
But our son Hudson, who was found dead, nearly did not breathing. No heartbeat, the fraternity house. He was in a coma, but he did wake up two days later and is I’m listening to you talk about your method of engaging with students. I know it works because what happened in our family,
What happened in my life is a father. First of all, today I’m sober and now my son Hudson, the one who was nearly dead, came back to life. He’s now going nearly 11 years sober. Right. And and what’s so special is I adapted my parenting because I had to because I realized this
Hasn’t been working. And and what I began to do is have conversations with my son and he had have conversations with me. Do you feel comfortable? How do you feel going into this event? How do you feel? How does this make you feel? And he would share with me.
And we grew trust in honesty and now he’s kind of like my coin in my pocket. I carry him everywhere I go and I won’t make assumptions. I just know what he’s telling me. He’s I’m doing the same for him. Where that engaged listening relationship. What do you want?
How do we get there? Some expectation of role model. But I’m engaged with you and that sounds like what you’re doing. I have to tell you, it works. I mean, yeah, I think like, you know, 750,000, say, Greek or whatever the number is across America today. Here at the University
Of Mississippi, for example, we had our largest freshman class ever this past year. And we’re a very we have large Greek organizations here, of course. Right. And we I got to speak to all of the pledges. We did it about substance misuse and I couch it in how to find and keep
The joy you want and deserve these things will steal it right. And but I add it up when I talk to the guys and the women, it was like 2700. So we have this just extraordinary number of college freshmen engaging in Greek organizations. And so the work you’re doing, being an assist
To these organizations, to the chapter, really to the national, but I see it is to the universities, because you can do some things they don’t do and because you’re outside, you’re not the system, so to speak. But but you’ve also, I think, focus largely on the freshmen, if I’m not right. Yeah.
I mean, that that takes up such a big part because you know one in a any so if you look at risk factors right every college student walking on the face of the earth is a risk factor just because they’re between the ages of 18 and 22, like they’re automatically
At a higher risk level. Sure. Right. And then you take in them and put them into the Greek system and the risk factor goes up a little bit. And then you take them and make them a freshmen in the Greek system. There is a factor goes up even more.
So these are you’re more volatile like high risk students, you know, that are experiencing I mean, like think about how different life is in a matter of 24 hours. Like you leave home with your car packed and your parents and you land on campus and you get checked in your dorm room
And you hug and cry and and then the parents pull off and your life has suddenly changed forever, right In the flip of a switch, like the expectation and structure and safety nets and all of that are completely lowered. And you all of a sudden for the probably the first time
For the majority of them, have to reinvent all of that from the inside out. Right. Like they have to develop that self structure, self-motivation, self mentorship, like they have to build all of that up within themselves while trying to figure out where English 101 is, like while walking around campus going,
Oh my gosh, I’ve never seen this many cute girls like you guys are at the same place before, like, you know, and there’s no bell that tells them where to go next, right? So in classes over there may not have class again for another day. Mm hmm. Like, everything is structured different,
And they’ve got to figure all of that out, and. And they have influential friends. Because you feel alone. Alexis and I talk about that all the time. You know, there’s this stat that a study that revealed 87% of college students will feel very, very lonely at some point during their career.
And it’s hard for parents to understand, right, Alexis? I mean, they’re surrounded by friends. They’re surrounded by, you know, But the reality is, if you decide I’m going to stay in and study this night because that’s why I came to college, you’d log on to one of your apps
And you see all your friends out in the neighborhood. Yeah, establishment water like watering hole. And I think, like, but I’m kind of alone and I’m not a part of that because I’m just trying to do thing. So they’re not just facing all of that, but they, they may also feel alone
And it’s like, what do you do? Well, and that’s a perpetual like comparing your insides to other people’s outsides, right? I mean, it’s like you look, because what you don’t see is people posting, posting on text, you know, on, you know, Facebook or Instagram or any of these things and being like,
You know, calling in a study night, you know, like, you know it in calculus tonight, like, no, they are like, hey, woo. Yeah, no problem is, you know, like they’re they’re doing it and they’re showing a different side and you only getting like a, a snap shot, you know,
And and that’s that can be problematic. But so with our freshmen, you know we so we take we take all of the freshmen in the chapters we work with through a very specialized program, an educational program where we talk to them about just the adjustment to college. Right.
And like just making that adjustment to all the things that are new, which is literally everything. Yeah, right. Every single part of their life is new. And then it’s how do you find an academic social life balance? Hey, know, what are some of the stressors and potential speed bumps along your way?
And how can you manage, you know, this experience and be okay with the ups and the downs and the stresses and the wins and the losses of the whole experience. Right? And we do that through like whole like whole freshman class education modules. We we call them cruise,
We break them down into cruise because it’s hard to have a real meaningful conversation with like 45 guys all at once. But if we break them down into like eight groups of five, then we can sit down and like really, like process this, what’s going on? And so we meet with the cruise,
You know, every week, every other week, and then we do the education modules every week. So that way the majority of their first semester is, is is there is a lot of support coming their way with that. Would that young you at that time ever been able to conceive that you
If now you’re in this mission to get into fraternity houses, which is for a lot of people, this mysterious culture, even a lot of parents don’t really understand. I dare say a lot of educators really don’t understand what that’s about. Yeah. Would you if would that young you what? What was that young
You thinking at the time? Well, he wasn’t thinking and that was the problem. And now, you know, it’s like it’s, you know, I sort of build this for the young me, you know, like I think about it all the time, like, constantly, you know, because my story was,
I got kicked out the very first weekend and I got kicked out for being someplace I wasn’t supposed to be and doing drugs in the fraternity house. And and that was here at the university. I mean. That was University of Mississippi. Now, did they do anything wrong by kicking me out?
No, I’m not saying. But I’m saying, what if there had been an option that instead of going, you can’t come anymore, you can’t be around here anymore? What if it was like, Hey, we want you to like, we’re going to pause this for this semester, but we want you to meet
With our wellness coach. We want you to meet with Dr. Downs and try to like because you got something going on here, big guy. Like, Yeah. There’s a reason, you are right. You’ve been literally in Oxford for a week. Yeah. And you’re in the upstairs of a fraternity house doing cocaine
And offering it to the president. Wow. So, so like. Like you came here with. Excuse me? Like you came here with something. Hmm? So get that figured out and come back in the spring, and let’s see if we can’t work something out. But instead, it was. You’re not allowed in the house.
Not allowed on property. And I know your two best friends. you came to college with are here. You can’t, like, affiliate with them while they are here. So then not only did I feel alone, like I was alone, right? I was completely cut off from everything. Like socially I knew here.
And at that point, statistics show there’s one direction you’re headed at. 100 percent. And I think that’s what happened, right? Yeah. Oh, no, absolutely. I started the beginning of a spiral. I went home for Christmas break and I just took everything I owned with me. Like I showed up at my parents house
For Christmas break with a futon strapped to the top of my Explorer. Like, I was like, my mom was like, What in the world? I was like, Yeah, I’m not going back. Oh, wow. Hi. There’s nothing there for me, right? You know, that was in 96. You know, I didn’t get sober until
2001. Wow. You know, so it took four more institutions later. Multiple treatments and a tour in prison. Wow. To get it figured out. Now, I’m not blaming. No, you know, but what if. What if. So let me let me have that experience for the other guys, right? You know what I mean?
Like, let me serve that time for them, right? Let me suffer that misery for them. Like, let my parents. Yeah. Suffer that for theirs. Right? And like, let me share some of my experience, strength and hope and some of the things that I’ve learned along the journey to help shift that,
You know, and I think about and I don’t want to jump too much here from this conversation, but I think back to your son and the four or five guys that put him in a car and drove him to the hospital. Right. Like just in this conversation,
The focus has been on your son in the end and the tragedy and the horrible thing that happened to your son, into your family around that. What about those four young men that were traumatized by putting their dying brother in the car and the car. And and even also,
As they mentioned in the hospital, what he faced? I want to be I’m so glad you brought that up, because we know them. We love them we have such a great relationship with them. And I’m proud to tell you that at least two of them are now also sober themselves. That’s fantastic.
It took them some years to get there, but we don’t blame them, for example, that they said, oh, but he was also on something for a while. But we didn’t tell anybody because it’s what you said. That was the part that really at the essence, humans suffer.
But one of the thing that I like about your messaging so much is what you’re helping us understand is, yeah, humans suffer, but so much of it is breaking the stigma and bringing down the walls so that we can be more aware, more open and recognize it quicker. Statistic to show
If we get into counseling or treatment earlier, it makes all the difference in the world and it’s really taken. That barrier down and connection like these for guys like, you know, did anybody sit down with them and talk to them about how are you doing? Yeah, like you just lifted
Your best friend, right, and put him in your car. Yeah. And you did not know if he was going to live or die. And then they were like, that is trauma. And what they told us later is then the party cranks back up a couple of days later. Yeah. Oh yeah.
And they’re back out there and they’ve got all these guilt feelings. I’ve been through that this really is we move toward the end of this time. I mean, we could go on for hours here, but I don’t. I do want to mention, you know, this is the Mayo Lab Podcast, and here it
The William Magee Institute for Student Wellbeing. We’re launching the Thomas Hayes Mayo Lab, and it’s allowing this podcast to help break the stigma to help, you know, I knew Thomas and people involved here with this knew Thomas. And you know he his family will not mind me saying I’d gotten him into treatment
When he came back so much of the problem was he’s he wants a life and he wants friends and he wants fun, but he walks into a culture. It’s not that it’s not caring. It’s unknowing. Right? Well, exactly. I right. It just doesn’t know. Yeah, it doesn’t know.
And that’s so much of our challenge here at the heart of it. And I think that’s part of the good work you doing. It doesn’t mean you’re going to walk in some fraternity house and save every human every minute. Right. But it’s about how do we give them a chance?
It’s that power of possibility by knowing. But it’s and the the cool thing is, is it’s so doable. Like in one of our fraternities in Texas, there’s two brothers that are in long term sobriety. You know, one just celebrated over a year and the other one who just graduated, graduated with
About two and a half years sober. Wow. Like when they entered into the fraternity, they were not sober right? They got sober. Yes. Engaged a recovery program. We educated the chapter, educate the people around the chapter, ended up becoming an incredible support mechanism for their sobriety. And by it’s not the chapter’s responsibility
To protect these guys. Sobriety. But if your brother’s hmm is to be aware of it, then yes, it’s to be aware of it and to love them through it and to love them for it. Right. And that’s been both of these young men’s experience as they’ve had an incredible fraternity experience
While being sober and actively working a 12 step program and still can look at every one of those, you know, young men and call them brothers. Yes. And it’s very doable. It is very. Doable. But it’s about education and it’s about love him. It’s about brotherly love. I had that same experience once
I spoke at Baylor University last spring, and it was to a lot of Greek leaders at one I was at and I looked out there on the front row and I could just see this real kinship among these guys. And they were kind of it was just this special thing.
And I went over after it. I’m like, What’s this? And they were like, Well, honestly, they waited and they paused because it wasn’t their job to speak for their friend. And their friend said, okay, I’ll tell you like, so I’m now 12 months sober and, you know,
This is the first kind of talk we’ve I mean, this kind of talk that we’ve all been to together in they’re just looking at me. I think it’s helping him understand like, what our faced. And they were celebrating him. That’s all they were like, like high five, low five and during the talk,
Because it helped them understand, Oh, you have faced something. Yeah, but what he’s telling them is, well, I have, but I’ve done it because you’ve been here with me and say. I didn’t face it alone because of you. In that, in that really is what brotherhood is about. Yeah. And so like that
Young man, that grad that just graduated with just over two years. So he was our very first head of the Wellness commission. And so it was such a great cheatsheet to have a guy in there with, you know, Yeah, double digit, you know, years of sobriety as a wellness commission.
But since he was the head every week we’ve had two other wellness commission had since him that were not in recovery, but they learned from the model that he set. And so they’ve been they’ve just continued to grow and and hold a standard of excellence and a standard of wellness in their chapter
That a lot of is rooted in like recovery principles. Well, that’s right. And and that’s really, you know, culture is evolving and we cannot sit flatfooted and expect young people in this day and age to be able to just walk in this tough a world without being engaged with without open ended questions,
Without tools, engage sense for holistic education. It is is much a part of the process. Is the importance of teaching algebra in elementary school. And without listening to them. Right. Like that’s the that’s the biggest one that I find the higher education. Anybody that works with this population
Like like they always tend to leave out, it’s just to listen to them. How do you how do you listen without trying to be their counselor, without trying to be their therapist, without trying to solve their problems as a as a as a brother, as a sister, as a friend.
So you’re talking about from. Okay, so like a peer? Yes, peer. So they actually do a really good job of listening to each other. They really do. But it’s about creating space. I think that’s one of the biggest wins is creating space for for them to
Know that they can talk to each other. And a lot of times it’s just like them just being present and, you know, like one of the things that with one of our wellness commissions I was meeting with the other day, like one of the younger guys is going through it right now.
I mean, nothing like catastrophic. I mean, he’s like broke up with his girlfriend and he’s super down in the dumps about it. And I just we’re talking about his commission. They were like, yeah, you know, he’s you know, we’ve told him to reach out. And I was like, okay, who’s going to go
Take him to get a burrito? You? Yeah. That’s listening. That burrito is about listening. Yeah. And they were like, Oh, I’ll do it tomorrow. Like one of the guys was and I was good. Just as I just go take him to get a burrito. And I was like,
You know what you need to not talk about is his girlfriend, right? But you need to, you know, get his ass out of the room and take him and go eat a burrito. This is sides of your face and just be a brother, right? You know, like, just do something like that
And you’ll be okay. And I mean. I mean, we do other silly things. I mean, one of our fraternities and they all looked at me like I was so crazy when I had him do this. So this is it’s Georgia Tech. And Georgia Tech is a pressure cooker
When it comes to academics. I understand. And these guys, it was it was finals week. And I mean, like I could feel the tension like from Alabama, you know? Right. And like, these guys were so stressed and I was talking to the wellness commission. They were like, everybody’s like,
You can hear a needle drop in the house. Everybody’s just buried in their computer. And I said, okay, here’s the deal. Tomorrow you’re issuing a mandatory 45 minute game of tag. Yeah. I love it. And they were like, What? And one of the guys was like, What are we, 12? I was like,
You need to act like you are right. Just for 45 minutes. How good. Advice. I was like, they’re just buried into these eyes like this aerospace engineering, like quantum mechanics. And they’re just like, you know, like, just, just eating alive. And they’re like, okay, I guess. And they did it.
And it started with like five guys and 10 minutes in. There’s 45 guys, 20 minutes, and there’s 65 guys ranting, running frantically around the front yard, backyard deck inside the house, playing this massive game of tag. They called me the next day. They were they were like, This was unbelievable. Wow.
And they were like, oh, this is an annual thing. We’re going to get a trophy made for next year. I was like, I love it. And they were like, It felt so stupid, but it only took 10 minutes and it was like the coolest thing we’ve ever done.
I was like, Yeah, you just needed to, like, shake it out for a second and then go back and study like, like, you know, some of the time, like, don’t be afraid to be psyched to be silly, right? Like, don’t be afraid to, like, just college. Yeah. Just be, you know?
And so that’s what I tell them, you know, like, trust your gut, talk to them, be present sometimes. Eat a burrito. Yeah. And don’t talk about the elephant. Like, just be there. It’s not your job to fix this guy’s sadness. Just be there. Just be there. I think the lesson.
Take him to get a burrito play tag. Let’s. That’ll be the toolbox we’ll start with. I know I’m very sophisticated in my methodology. And really, I can see you. You really earn that Ph.D.. Yeah, I’m telling you what you know. Adam Downs. Dr. Adam Downs. So what good looks like
This has been incredible. I hope others will dig in and learn more about you and the work you’re doing. And thank you for the work you’re doing to help other students and digging into an important culture. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Thank you for joining us
On this episode of the Mayo Lab Podcast. The Mayo Lab podcast is produced by Dr. Natasha Jeter Dr. Meagen Rosenthal David Magee, Alexis Lee and Slade Lewis. This podcast was recorded at Broadcast Studio in Oxford, Mississippi. The show was mixed and mastered by Clay Jones, and our original music
Was composed by Slade Lewis, The Mayo Lab Podcast is brought to you by the William Magee Institute for Student Wellbeing. For more information on the Mayo Lab, head over to TheMayoLab.com and follow us on social media @TheMayoLab If you enjoyed listening to the Mayo Lab Podcast with David Magee,
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