treat the scars of trauma

to help treat addiction

and chronic pain

season 2 Episode 5: Treating PTSD

Trauma and pain and addiction are tightly woven together. But, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is treatable and treating the wounds of trauma can help treat pain and addiction, too. We must pay attention to the sometimes toxic effects of trauma if we really want to help people stay away from drugs, if we want to really help people with chronic pain. 

In this episode, we hear personal stories from three women that show just how tightly woven together trauma, pain and addiction are. Also, we hear their stories of post-traumatic growth, and their strategies for moving beyond the pain of the past to fully embrace the present.

LINKS TO MORE INFORMATION AND RESOURCES:

The National Sexual Assault Hotline: 800.656.HOPE (4673)

Find a clinician who can help with PTSD.

The VA’s tool to help choose what kind of treatment you want for PTSD.

The VA’s PTSD coach website.

The VA has a lot of apps to help people getting treatment for PTSD.

If you want help finding local drug treatment, support groups, or organizations in your community for yourself or someone else, you can call 1-800-662-HELP (4357) and speak with someone at the national helpline run by SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. It’s free, confidential, and open 24 hours a day/365 days a year, available in English and Spanish. More information here.

TRANSCRIPT

Anna Boiko-Weyrauch: This is Finding Fixes—season two, episode five. 

I’m Anna Boiko-Weyrauch. 

First off, a reminder to listen to this season starting with episode one.

This episode we’re looking at a common problem shared by many people in our proverbial swimming pool. That is post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. 

Katerina Canyon: I am very anxious especially around a lot of people. I can’t stand thunderstorms because of the noise. Smells, with cigarette smoke, it's very hard for me to breathe. And I just have to get out of there.

Boiko-Weyrauch: People in all sections of the swimming pool may have PTSD—but the place where it can cause problems especially, is in the middle and deep end. For people with opioid dependence or addiction. Many people who suffer from chronic pain or addiction also suffer from PTSD.

Treating the scars of trauma is a big way to help people with addiction and chronic pain. 

Canyon: Once you let them go that's when you find the value not in those secrets but in yourself.

Boiko-Weyrauch: Living through trauma can hurt people in ways that can lead to addiction. Often people with chronic pain have undiagnosed PTSD, and that makes the pain feel worse.

This episode, we’re focusing on trauma and PTSD because really, we have to. As we've reported on this project and interviewed more than 50 people, we have noticed trauma is everywhere. The more we talk to people with addiction and chronic pain the more that experiences of trauma keep popping up. 

This is a podcast about solutions to the opioid epidemic. In this episode, we’re going to turn away from the specific drugs—prescription pills, heroin, fentanyl—for a moment, and look deeper. 

So now, here we go. In this episode—we’re going to hear tales of trauma and healing. There’s some therapeutic heavy metal music, and this really distracting office magnet.

Boiko-Weyrauch: So as you've been talking I've been like catching glimpses of—behind you—is that Freud? 

Debra Kaysen: (laughs) It is Freud. 

Boiko-Weyrauch: Dr. Debra Kaysen is an expert on PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder

Debra Kaysen: My kid gave me a Freud dress up magnet when he was younger. Yeah. So I can put Freud in drag. I can do all kinds of fun things with Freud. 

Boiko-Weyrauch: Her research office in Seattle—not where she sees patients—was filled with other treasures—gargoyles, comic book art, African sculptures. 

Dr. Kaysen says she’s what happens when little goth girls grow up.

I interviewed her at the University of Washington, where she was a psychiatry researcher with UW Medicine. Now she works at Stanford.

Dr. Kaysen shares a lesson with me that she wishes more people knew. That PTSD is a very treatable condition. 

Debra Kaysen: The idea for a long time was this was a chronic and untreatable disorder. And as we've gotten more and more research what we've seen is that's just not the case even in really difficult places. Some of my work has taken place in the Democratic Republic of Congo working with sexual assault survivors in conflict settings. And even there, what we've seen is that women get a whole lot better. 

Boiko-Weyrauch: And, it doesn’t take years of therapy either—anywhere from 6 to 15 sessions doing the kinds of therapies that work. 

Kaysen: The ones that have the most research support are prolonged exposure, cognitive processing therapy, and EMDR, and all three of those are what are called sort of frontline evidence-based therapies. 

Boiko-Weyrauch: EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It’s where a therapist has a patient focus their eyes on a moving object as the therapist walks them through painful memories. It might sound strange, but it’s been shown to work. 

These treatments Dr. Kaysen mentioned have been around for decades. They’re are all about going back to the painful memories in a controlled, safe way and reexamining what happened. 

Dr. Kaysen says healing from trauma usually means you have to dig into the hard stuff. 

Kaysen: PTSD I think hangs out in the fear of the memory. And so if you can get people to really look at the memory no matter how bad it is with someone who is safe and accepting to really look at some of the assumptions they've made about the event, the symptoms actually do get better and they get better really profoundly and sometimes really quickly. 

Boiko-Weyrauch: Dr. Kaysen says she’s seen it with her patients.

Kaysen: I've seen people re-enter the workforce. I've seen people who never thought that they would date or have a love relationship, go back and start dating again fall in love. I've seen people go back to school. I've seen people regain getting back into art and hobbies and the parts of their lives that they thought they would never, never do again. 

Boiko-Weyrauch: Trauma, PTSD, chronic pain and addiction are tightly knotted together. It’s all kind of confusing—sometimes it’s hard to know where each one ends and another one begins. 

But treating the wounds of trauma can help treat pain and addiction, too. 

We’re going to hear how these different strands wind their way through the lives of three women. 

I’ll warn you now, there are some disturbing details coming up and we talk about sexual assault. These are stories about trauma. But, these are also stories about growth. 

And, by the way if you need support—you can call the the National Sexual Assault Hotline. At 800-656-4673—we’ll have links to resources in our show notes. 

Here’s the first story. 

Katerina Canyon lived through severe abuse growing up. Katerina is part of a group of survivors of abuse that share their experiences with the public—it’s organized by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.

That’s how I got in touch with Katerina. 

Nowadays, she is in a pretty good place. 

Boiko-Weyrauch: What are some words that you would use to describe your life now?

Katerina Canyon: I believe my life now I would say is happy, idealistic, busy.

Boiko-Weyrauch: Katerina writes essays and poetry, goes to therapy, and every morning, she watches the sun rise. 

Katerina’s childhood was filled with many terrible moments. 

Canyon: Because of all the things that happened to me in my life. I'm pretty sure my guardian angel is somewhere betting on horses.

Boiko-Weyrauch: Katrina’s father caused her a lot of pain. She put her anger towards her guardian angel in a poem. Here’s part of it—

Canyon: When you reach hell, there will be millions of men who beat their wives and rape their daughters. You will recognize him by the old school shag Afro, big belly, gold chain and the don't mess with Texas belt buckle, you and I will not play hopscotch or make daisy chains for you tossed my childhood into the fire. Now I toss you. 

Boiko-Weyrauch: Writing down her experiences and struggles has been Katerina’s salvation—that’s a word she used. Growing up, her life was full of secrets. She used to burn her journals because she was afraid her father would find them. 

Canyon:I was afraid a lot.

Boiko-Weyrauch: Anything would set off her father’s temper. A grimy glass, bread crumbs on the butter—

Canyon: Back when I was a kid they'd have price labels and you still see that sometimes. and we were supposed to take all of the labels off. And if he saw a label—a price tag—on like a jar of jam he would take that jar of jam and throw it against the wall saying, “What kind of people are you that you leave these labels on the jars?”

Boiko-Weyrauch: Katerina’s father passed away, but a brother confirms Katerina’s memories

Katerina knows what her father did to her is not her fault. She knows she has nothing to be ashamed of. 

Canyon: I remember helping my mother bake a sweet potato pie and I was really excited about this pie and I remember my father picking me up and telling me I needed to take a nap. And he took me in to bed with him. And that was the first time I remember being sexually abused by him. 

Boiko-Weyrauch: In her 20s repressed memories started popping up as nightmares. 

Canyon: I ended up feeling suicidal and I wanted to jump off of a building. But I ended up in the hospital and I was put on Prozac and I went through a lot of therapy. I painted a lot of watercolors like those paint by number things and and and I started to learn that the things that happened to me had nothing to do with me. It had to do with something that my father was going through and that's how I deal with it today is that I say that I have nothing to be ashamed of.

Boiko-Weyrauch: About 20 years ago, Katerina was diagnosed with Lupus. It’s an autoimmune disorder, which means that the immune system doesn’t just attack outside invaders like germs, it attacks Katerina’s own body. 

And that hurts. 

Canyon: This morning I—my husband is away and I was talking to him on facetime and I was sitting on the sofa and I kind of adjusted my body in a certain way and my hips caused me to scream out, “Ouch.” And my husband says, “What happened?” I said, “I moved a little to the left.”

Boiko-Weyrauch: The pain is mostly in her joints, sometimes her head and her eyes. 

Katerina could take opioid painkillers, but she prefers to avoid them. She says her parents were addicted to drugs, and she doesn’t want to get addicted too. 

Besides the physical pain, Katetina’s body reacts in ways that catch her off guard sometimes. 

She has PTSD, and that puts her body on high alert.

Canyon:  I am very anxious especially around a lot of people. I can't stand thunderstorms because of the noise. Sometimes if my husband touches me in a certain way it causes me to have anxiety. Smells. Cigarette smoke. It's very hard for me to breathe. And I just have to get out of there.

Boiko-Weyrauch: She still has nightmares too. 

Kaysen: So the main clusters of symptoms that you see with PTSD the first are intrusive symptoms.

Boiko-Weyrauch: Here’s post-traumatic stress disorder specialist, Dr. Debra Kaysen again. 

Kaysen: Those are things like nightmares, intrusive memories, getting really distressed at reminders.

Boiko-Weyrauch: The memories can intrude into daily life, and put you on edge. 

Kaysen: The next set of symptoms are what are known as hyperarousal symptoms. So those are the things like having trouble sleeping, having trouble concentrating startling really easily, some of the anger. And aggressive behavior that you can see comes up in that as well. In some ways we think some of that is from, if you are constantly attuned to threat or danger it's like having your house alarm too sensitive it's going off all the time. It's exhausting.

Boiko-Weyrauch: For some people, stress from traumatic events doesn’t go away. For people with PTSD it’s like being in fight or flight mode all the time.

That kind of chronic stress is bad for your health. Katerina suspects her traumatic past contributed to her lupus. 

Dr. Kaysen says there’s a link. 

Kaysen: There actually is strong research that has found that people with PTSD are higher risk for a number of different inflammatory disorders. So chronic fatigue lupus some specific kinds of cancer in part because of just that chronic stress response and how it affects your body.

Boiko-Weyrauch: To be clear, trauma and chronic stress do not cause chronic pain. And actually, most people who live through traumatic experiences do not develop PTSD.

But for the many people who do have PTSD—that stress can put you at a higher risk for developing certain health problems—there’s a correlation.

There’s another important connection here too—and it offers hope for people with PTSD and chronic pain.

Dr. Sharon Hsu is a pain psychologist with Swedish Medical Center in Seattle. She shared a big takeaway. 

Sharon Hsu: I want to emphasize that it's not stress itself but rather how you cope.

Boiko-Weyrauch: Coping—in healthy ways—with the symptoms of PTSD, can cross over. 

Hsu: Being able to cope better with trauma is going to help coping with pain.

Boiko-Weyrauch: For Katerina—she sees how trauma and pain are interwoven through her life. She says she’s not surprised that she developed an autoimmune disorder, given all the trauma she experienced. She has a lot of tools to deal with both the pain and the PTSD. 

One is yoga

Boiko-Weyrauch: How do you feel when you do these poses?

Canyon: Powerful.

Boiko-Weyrauch: They soothe the physical pain. Nightmares of her father recede.

Canyon: In an uncontrollable world these poses bring a sense of order into my life.

Boiko-Weyrauch: Other tools for her pain are a support group, a heating pad, and watching the three stooges. 

Canyon: You know maybe my way is not going to be a way that helps everyone but that everyone has some sort of outlet to which they can direct their pain.

Boiko-Weyrauch: Letting it out is important. She knows she doesn’t have to keep her pain, or her past to herself. 

Canyon: When you're abused and when you grow up in a household, it's a house of secrets. your whole world is just being held together by it like fragile tissue paper. And if you let go of that secret you feel like it's all going to fall apart. And maybe it will fall apart but the only way that you're going to feel whole is by letting go of all of these secrets these things that you feel are so valuable. Once you let them go that's when you find the value not in those secrets but in yourself

Boiko-Weyrauch: There are healthy outlets for pain and trauma—and there are unhealthy outlets. 

Drugs and alcohol are common ways people learn to cope with the terrible things that have happened to them.

Justina Bauthues: It 100 percent played into my addiction.

Boiko-Weyrauch: Justina Bauthues was sexually abused when she was 11. 

Bauthues: I wanted to numb myself of my thoughts my feelings and it started out with alcohol and graduated to marijuana. And then from marijuana I have dabbled into using speed crank and meth. And then from there I actually was prescribed my prescription medication and started taking more than prescribed and graduated to using heroin. So for sure 100 percent is go they go hand-in-hand.

Boiko-Weyrauch: PTSD puts you at much higher risk for becoming addicted—somewhere around two to four times as likely, according to some researchers. 

Justina is doing well now—after a needle broke off in her neck, a doctor she met in the emergency room helped her change her life. You can hear that story in the next episode.

Like Justina says, trauma and addiction go hand in hand. If we, as a society, or individuals want to help people with addiction—we have to pay attention to their trauma. 

And they have to pay attention to their trauma too—without drugs and alcohol numbing it out. 

Our expert, Dr. Debra Kaysen again.

Kaysen: By trying really hard not to have those emotions not to have the memories you don't ever learn that you can tolerate it you don't ever go back to the memory to look at whether the beliefs that you have about what happened and how it happened are accurate. And so you're left with all of these symptoms carrying you around. 

Boiko-Weyrauch: She says to treat PTSD, you have to go back. Back to the emotions and back to the memories and back to beliefs around what happened and why. 

Research suggests drug treatment—like medication and 12 step groups—will work better if people with PTSD get help specifically for the PTSD, not just the drug addiction. 

Kaysen: You know sometimes my patients actually say it to me the best. I had a patient who has referred to me who had PTSD and a substance use disorder. And she said, “People keep treating me for the addiction and then they set me loose. And every time, the PTSD symptoms come back. And I don't have anything to use to manage those. And until someone treats the PTSD I'm going to keep relapsing.” And I think that's part of it is if we don't want people to have a revolving door, we have to help them treat the PTSD.

Boiko-Weyrauch: Now for another story of healing. 

Becka Baker is at band practice in a basement in Tacoma, Washington. 

She’s the lead singer of the band, Showing Teeth.

(Showing Teeth band playing with Becka Baker singing)

Boiko-Weyrauch: She grabs at the air as she sings. Her hand is tattooed with an x-ray view of her bones and tendons. 

She wrote this song—the chorus is, “The path to happiness was paved in hell.”

Becka Baker: It's not really appropriate in a lot of conversations like, “Hey, so I've been through some really traumatic things and this is my life and now here I am now and it's great you know and I'm really happy and things are good and la dee da.” 

Boiko-Weyrauch: For Becka, music is a way to express her truth. 

Baker: So it's a good it's a free I guess it's a way to give myself permission to speak to anyone who's going to hear me.

Becka is another volunteer with the national network of survivors of rape, incest and abuse. She wants to tell her story to help others—it also helps her process the past, too. 

For most of her life, Becka grappled with addiction. On her journey, she found help treating her PTSD—and that breakthrough has helped her grow stronger, helped her tackle the issues that fueled her addiction. 

Before band practice, I met Becka at home. She says she’s over-caffeinated and nervous—

Baker: Just a couple more stirs and then I’m done.

(spoon clicking against a cup)

Boiko-Weyrauch: She stirs honey into some fruity tea. 

Before she became sober, Becka tried different drugs, but mostly her drug of choice was alcohol. 

I know this is a podcast about solutions to the opioid epidemic—and I know alcohol and opioids are different substances. 

But, don’t get hung up on that. The same things we’re talking about apply to opioid addiction because addictions to different things share a tremendous amount in common. 

The building blocks are the same: you go into withdrawal if you don’t have the substance, you can’t control your use, and you continue to use even though it hurts your health and your life.

And PTSD plays a role in addiction to drugs and alcohol. 

We’re bringing you Becka’s story because we think there’s a lot to learn from it—no matter what specific drug we’re talking about. 

This is a slice of her story.

Baker: I had this mentality for a long time that because everyone who had hurt me was close to me that you couldn't do anything to me like this was like this. It was like I was like daring people like “Yeah, everybody I love has abandoned me. I wasn't wanted, I wasn't loved, I wasn't cared for. So what can you possibly do to mess me up even more?”

Boiko-Weyrauch: When she was three, a thirteen year-old babysitter started abusing her. 

Baker: I remember sitting on the bed in my room and I remember that his pants were down and he kept telling me, “It's just like a lollipop. You just put your mouth on it.” I remember him getting really nervous every time a car would drive by and he’d jump on the bed and look through the blinds you know to see who it was to see if his parents or my grandparents were coming back.

Boiko-Weyrauch: Her life at home was often violent and chaotic. 

She learned to cope by watching what the adults did.

Baker: And how everybody dealt with it was you sweep it under the rug and you just keep drinking and you look the other way. So you know naturally that's what I did.

Boiko-Weyrauch: The alcohol fueled the chaos even more as she got older. 

Baker: You know I was that girl who was everybody's friend, and then you get a few shots in me and the bartenders who knew me were already like starting to look at each other because they knew you know like I'm if there's gonna be a scene that night and some trigger goes off, I'm the one trying to punch somebody or slap someone or shove someone into a table because something just fucking rubbed me the wrong way.

(heavy metal music)

Boiko-Weyrauch: And Becka says blind rage would overcome her.

And she did things she hated. Like one night, on stage with a bandmate. 

Baker: When he smacked me in the back of the head I saw red and I was pissed and when I opened my eyes and realized what was happening I was hitting him with my bass. When I—my eyes met his eyes and I saw that he was afraid of me again I like retreat like no no no no. He was one of my best friends, and I was hurting him.

Boiko-Weyrauch: She hated this part of herself.

Baker: I’m not a violent person, I don’t like being violent.

Boiko-Weyrauch: But Becka didn’t really know how to change. She took breaks from drinking, went to therapy on and off. 

And there, Becka experienced one of the evidence-based therapies that our expert Dr. Debra Kaysen recommended earlier. 

Baker: The way my therapist would describe it to me. He said that it's like watching a train go by. Your brain just kind of zones out. 

Boiko-Weyrauch: Becka’s therapist took her through something called EMDR—it stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. 

Baker: He would hold up a pen or he'd put two fingers up and just move it back and forth in a rhythmic way in front of my eyes.

Boiko-Weyrauch: Kind of like watching a train go by. 

Baker: And he would ask me questions.

Boiko-Weyrauch: Becka remembers this one visit in particular—she had a breakthrough. 

First the therapist wrote down two lists. 

Baker: He asked me for a list of words that I felt when thinking about baby Becka, you know, in my childhood thinking about that 3-year-old girl what negative words came up. And so I gave him my list of words like no good, horrible, awful, unwanted, unloved, and all these things that I felt at that time in my life. And then he asked me for a list of words of things that I would tell her as an adult. If I were an adult coming in on this child's life what would I tell her that would be uplifting and positive. So it’s like you're good. It's okay you're gonna get through this. You're beautiful, you're smart, you're capable, essentially all the things I didn't believe about myself at the time.

Boiko-Weyrauch: Then the therapist brought two fingers in front of Becka’s eyes. And moved them back and forth.

Baker: So as he's doing this, he reads me these words. First the negative ones. And then the positive ones. And I don't know what it was about that—I've been in and out of therapy all my life. in that particular session, it shifted something inside of me. I really wanted to believe those words and when he read them back it felt so so undeserving. And I felt like the scum of the earth. 

Boiko-Weyrauch: Becka started to understand her self-destructive behavior.

Baker: I felt like I pretty much deserved to be abused I felt like I deserved to be hurt. I felt like I deserved to be raped. I felt like I deserved to have all these horrible things happen to me because it wasn't worth anything I wasn't worth anything to myself.

Boiko-Weyrauch: Becka remembers what the therapist said next. 

Baker: He goes this is good. You know he told me goes this is good. I'm very excited. We finally have this is real—because I started crying. I was like stone cold—I didn't cry about anything and I was bawling.

Boiko-Weyrauch: It took years for Becka to stop drinking for good—and longer to learn to deal with emotions. 

Baker: When I quit drinking, the first year and a half I cried over everything.

Boiko-Weyrauch: She got self-help books, watched YouTube videos, went back to therapy. With alcohol as her main way to cope—Becka couldn’t learn how to handle emotions, how to handle her pain in healthy ways. When Becka finally quit drinking in 2012, she learned a lot. 

Baker: I would get these headaches and it felt like my brain was splitting in half where like like I was trying to understand a new concept that I never learned before and I could feel the shift in my brain of like no this is—that's old behavior that's an old idea that doesn’t fit anymore. So what does fit?

Boiko-Weyrauch: Becka expresses her pain now. It becomes music.

(Becka’s music)

Boiko-Weyrauch: When Becka was growing up, the people around her taught her lessons—wrong lessons. Like that alcohol is how you deal with emotions. That Becka deserved to be hurt. 

Now, she knows the truth—

Baker: I feel like there must have been something that I did that brought me here. And the truth of the matter is there's some really messed up people out there that do things that hurt other people. And when you get hurt it's not your fault. That's the most important thing I think out of anything that could come out of me is that it's not your fault. 

(Music)

Band Member: Wow, that was like the best band practice we’ve literally ever had.

Boiko-Weyrauch: We’ve been talking about healing from trauma. We’re going to transition now back to a story you heard in a previous episode. It’s the last story of healing before we close out. 

You met Kimberly Bergrud in Episode 3—she’s a patient at a mini-boot camp for people with chronic pain in Seattle. 

Kimberly Bergrud: Before my shoulders used to just be upright like this and they were in a constant spasm hard as a rock and they're not that way anymore.

Boiko-Weyrauch: It’s now the last week of the mini-boot camp—March 2019. 

At the beginning she could hardly walk for six minutes straight, she was in constant pain.

Today, Kimberly looks great—she’s practically glowing. 

Bergrud: I've had basically three weeks of pain that's been reduced by probably 80 percent. Yeah major.

Boiko-Weyrauch: And, on her own, she decided to take half as much of the opioid painkiller Tramadol that she was taking three weeks ago. 

Now, Kimberly is using other tools to manage her pain. 

Bergrud: If I start getting grouchy, I have to check in with my body, stop what I'm doing and do some of the techniques that I've learned here like diaphragmatic breathing, the body scan because it's just kind of simmers my nervous system down and then I can kind of go on with the rest of that evening or day.

Boiko-Weyrauch: This is a life-changing transformation. The way she’s taking control of her situation is not a first for her, though. It’s kind of like what happened over 30 years ago. 

Bergrud: When I gave up alcohol it was like I had an epiphany that I didn't have to live this way anymore.

Boiko-Weyrauch: That’s right, Kimberly struggled with an addiction to alcohol in her 20’s. At the time, a friend she was cleaning houses with suggested Alcoholics Anonymous and Kimberly started going to meetings. 

Bergrud: They give you tools to manage your life rather than just saying, “Well you have to put the plug in the jug.” But when you get upset you don't run to the bottle. You call somebody.

Boiko-Weyrauch: Kimberly has been sober for 33 years—she’s good at that. But at this point when I talk to her, she’s a novice at the new pain management tools. She’s been at them for just three weeks. 

Bergrud: And one of the things I fear is that I will backslide so I'm glad we have you know another group in a month to see how we're all doing. And I've exchanged phone numbers with one of the women and I think I'm going to exchange numbers with others so that I can call and say you know how are you doing and or I'm not doing well or whatever because that's one of the things in AA that we do. And I think that would be helpful for me.

Boiko-Weyrauch: We’ll check back in with her in a few episodes. Getting a whole set of new tools is one thing, but remembering to use them at the right times, well, that’s even harder. 

On the next episode of Finding Fixes. 

Shawna Laursen: Honestly, I remember the triage nurse coming back and rolling her eyes like, “Oh my god. This woman's got a needle in her neck. Here, you do it, Shawna.” And I'm like, “OK. I can do that.” 

Boiko-Weyrauch: A hypodermic needle breaks off in a woman’s neck while she’s using heroin. 

What could have been really bad for her, ends up being really good. 

We look at how hospital emergency rooms can help people get off heroin. 

If you need support around a sexual assault you or someone you know experienced, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673. We’ll also have links to resources in our show notes. 

Finding Fixes is a project of Investigate West, a nonprofit journalism organization working in the public interest. 

Financial support comes from the Philadelphia Foundation, Moccasin Lake Foundation, and listeners like you.Thank you so much to our donors, we couldn’t do it without you. And if you’d like to join them and support this podcast, make a tax deductible donation at findingfixes.com. 

While you’re there, you can drop us a note or you can send us an email at fixes@findingfixes.com.

This episode was created by me, Anna Boiko-Weyrauch, along with producers Nicolle Galteland and Kyle Norris. Alisa Barba is our editor. Music by Zebrana Bastard, Showing Teeth, and Jake Weholt.

Special thanks to Becka Baker, Katerina Canyon, Kimberly Bergrud, and Drs Debra Kaysen and Sharon Hsu.

And thank you so much for listening.