Addictions Connection to Brain Injury with Evan Veron
Show Notes:
Life has a way of throwing curveballs, and today's guest, Evan Veron, former Division 1 football player and now brain injury advocate, certainly knows a thing or two about that. Evan's journey from the football field to becoming a resource for concussion survivors is marked with overwhelming obstacles, personal demons, and the power of resilience. He provides a look into the world of sports injuries, sharing his struggle with post concussion syndrome and the crucial role hyperbaric oxygen therapy played in his recovery.
Drawing a critical connection between brain injuries and addictive behaviors, we engage in a discussion that's often overlooked – the impact of altered judgment and impulse control that may increase the susceptibility to addiction. Alongside, we delve into the significance of a supportive network like Concussion Connect and the need for open communication with medical professionals and loved ones. Listen in and become a part of a vital conversation that fosters awareness and understanding, making everyone part of the solution.
HBOT Latest Research:
https://hyperbaricexperts.com/
Louisiana Clinic for TBI/PCS Concussion Management
https://www.axiamedclinics.com/
Ascension Hyperbarics Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/ascensionhyperbaricso2/
Evan’s Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/e_veron44
Ascension Hyperbarics Website
https://www.AscensionHBOT.life
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Bella
Host
00:03
Hi everyone. I'm your host, Bella Paige, and after suffering from post concussion syndrome for years, it was time to do something about it. So welcome to the post concussion podcast, where we dig deep into life when it doesn't go back to normal. Be sure to share the podcast and join our support network, Concussion Connect. Let's make this invisible injury become visible.
00:29
The Post Concussion Podcast is strictly an information podcast about concussions and post concussion syndrome. It does not provide nor substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or another qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast. The opinions expressed in this podcast are simply intended to spark discussion about concussions and post concussion syndrome. Do you feel constantly overwhelmed by your concussion symptoms and life changes? This is where Wombat. Wombat can help you A new breathwork and somatic therapy app powered by neuroscience. Let's slow down those racing thoughts and give ourselves the ability to breathe. Wombat is designed with an understanding of the impact of trauma on individuals, ensuring a safe and supportive environment for users dealing with stress, anxiety or post traumatic experiences. Go to their website today at hellowombatcom.
01:40
Welcome to episode number 109 of the post concussion podcast with my self-built page and today's guest, Evan Veron. Evan is a former concussion survivor and brain injury advocate. He is the owner of Ascension Hyperbarics, a company specializing in the distribution of hyper-eric oxygen chambers. He has a background as a former D1 athlete, having plain linebacker at Nicholls State University. Evan is passionate about advocating for brain injury awareness and is an enthusiast of H-Bot hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Having personally experienced over two undiagnosed concussions and suffering from post concussion syndrome for nearly two years, evan recognized the opportunity to provide hope and awareness to others based on his own complete recovery. Evan's journey took a significant turn when multiple concussions forced him to retire early from his competitive athletic career at the Division 1 football player at Nicholls State University. This transition required him to prioritize his health, leading to a newly formed purpose for his life in helping to bring healing to others. Welcome to the show, evan.
Evan
Guest
02:47
Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here.
Bella
Host
02:50
So to start, do you want to talk and kind of walk us through your concussion injuries?
Evan
Guest
02:55
Absolutely so. My whole life, since second grade, I've been playing football and played linebacker on the defensive side. So obviously you're more prone I mean playing football regardless, but more on the defensive side you're more prone to head injury. So high school really started to disinfell at myself in terms of I was obsessed with the game and I'd say throughout high school I probably had like three mile concussions that never really got diagnosed, but also that it didn't have much effect on like my everyday life, right. However, when I went to college, I played football at Nicholls State University, played linebacker, and that's when I experienced a way more damaging incident.
03:41
It was on October 6, 2018, saturday night, first quarter. While playing the game, I delivered a pretty violent hit on the opposing teams running back and in doing that, I knocked myself completely unconscious for 11 seconds, and that's when we were talking previously about the fencers response. So that's when, essentially, my body, my brainstem, got jolted and I was fundamentally unconscious for 11 seconds. But my body all those on my back and you'll see in that video that I sent it's like my arms were locked out. So my body was in fight or flight mode and unfortunately so I got up, get to my feet. I thought I was this machine at the time. Right, like, oh, I can't be heard. Pick me up instantly. That's my first thing. I got up to my feet, like my motor skills and disability to stand was totally wiped out. Unfortunately, going back to the sideline the athletic trainer at the time they didn't follow the right concussion protocol and, being the player that I was, I was like, look, I'm good and they let me go back in and play the rest of the game. I believe it was player of that game and I went on to play the rest of the 2018 season. That was my last season of football and after this season, it's really when I started experiencing a wide range of severe symptoms, which we'll get into in a little bit.
05:11
But going into the spring semester, I was seeking help from various doctors and specialists, but they didn't really provide any real answers. I mean, they provided temporary relief through pain medicine and benzodiazepine sleeping medicine, which ended up developing a dependent zone, but no real concrete answers as to why I was exhibiting these mental health disorder-like symptoms when my whole life I have it. And then, eight months after that hit, I was in a hospital June 28th 2019, that following summer, I was stopped at a red light in my Mustang that I miss so very much, by the way, but that's another story. So I'm stopped at a red light and a truck hits me, going like 55 miles an hour from the back, and I remember hitting my head on the steering wheel as well, and everywhere I went after that I had to wear sunglasses and a bucket hat and be doped up on pain medicine Because if not, I couldn't do, I was not functional, but I couldn't get out of my bed.
06:16
Then, like four months after that, so the neurologist I was seeing at the time basically his plan was okay, just, we're gonna redshirt this season like my senior season, that 2019 fall. You're still gonna do school, still stress your brain out, do all this accounting, don't do nothing, don't work out, and in eight months come see me again, like that was his plan of recovery and I'm like really impaired cognitive functioning self. I'm like, okay, you know, I just all right, this doctor knows what the heck to do, so I'm just gonna listen to him. But unfortunately, things just like all my symptoms just got entirely exacerbated. It was quite the experience, but I was blessed to have crossed paths with Dr Kelly Ryder. God rest his soul. He passed away about a year and a half ago, but he was a world renowned concussion specialist. It's such a silent epidemic that here in the West, really the world is experiencing, with people with brain injury like people are walking around exhibiting all of these mental health disorder like symptoms, but in reality at the root of it it's brain injury.
Bella
Host
07:35
Absolutely. I kind of like that. You mentioned the word obsessed, because that's what I was super obsessed of, like with being an athlete. Like it, 100% was an addiction. It's all I did from like the books I read, where I've out-show jumping horses. When I went to university I was sitting and watching riding horses. I'd watch horse shows, I'd study them. It's all I did. Even in class, it was the only thing I thought about. I didn't watch regular TV. Really that's what I did. I was obsessed. It's all I could think about every day and it's where I spent most of my time. So I get the obsession and it's really hard.
08:15
We're supposed to trust medical professionals and this has come up on the podcast over and over and over again about people when they first start out is finding the right person is really hard because you don't know who to look for, you don't know where to look. Half the time you talk to people, they don't know what you're talking about, they act like they do, they don't believe half of your symptoms because they can't see it and you look okay. Like you said, that's silent epidemic problem which kind of keeps going with this, and we have so many survivors that are just super lost, trying to find help that they need. You know you're in North America, so am I, but overseas in Europe I have the same problem with tons of people they can't find help, and so when you find somebody it can really change your life and I'm very glad that you found someone and that you are able to be here today to talk about all this. You mentioned the prescription.
09:13
We've talked about the merry-go-round of meds on the podcast before. We haven't addressed addiction a ton. I've been addicted to meds in a small dose, definitely not as extreme as your situation, but I've definitely felt we're getting off of them. It's very difficult because your body is telling you that this makes it all go away. So I definitely get that. So do you wanna talk? You know we need to talk about this because I think it's really important. Do you wanna talk about kind of how the addiction started, like what symptoms led you to needing the medications? Cause I think a lot of people you know we get thrown these medications. Sometimes they're really strong, they're really addictive, but you don't know what else to do. You know you don't have anywhere else to go. So you end up addicted to them and it's really challenging to overcome as somebody who is healthy. It's very challenging to overcome as somebody with a brain injury. So you wanna kind of talk about how that started and kind of its relationship to your head injuries.
Evan
Guest
10:10
Absolutely so I started getting prescribed percocet 10 milligrams, so 30 of them a month during that football season actually. So my freshman year I fractured two bones in both of my feet and it was really painful. I had to get a cortisone injections like in the ball of my foot, which was so fun, so fun to get. Just that was a big joke. On top of that I was getting prescribed the pain pills, and so that was for my podiatrist at the time and I finished the season, got off of them. But the symptoms that I was experiencing it was like, like I said, these massive tension headaches. I was a had severe sleep deprivation, it was an insomniac, I had tinnitus in my ear, disturbances in mood and thought I had mood swings, very oppositional behavior, anger, aggression, anger, control problems too, Like, as crazy as it sounds like, in that wrapped up identity crisis of being the athlete because your whole life, like you said, you're brought up to essential. I mean, this is all you know, it's all you wanna do and really to be at the top tier of whatever athletic profession you wanna obviously reach to. It takes that obsession, it takes that making it a part of your identity. But just back to the symptoms. I was very compulsive in my thoughts and my behaviors, hyperactive, easily distracted. The Asian had major depression and all these things. So after the season that in 2018, I went see my primary care physician and just explaining him my neck pain my foot was still hurting with every walk but also I told him about my sleep deprivation and he basically gave me the diagnosis of insomnia, being an insomniac, and he prescribed me benzodiazepine very addictive, by the way but with that I got prescribed more percocetamilograms 30 of them a month and I wasn't able to articulate all those symptoms that I just explained to you at the time, just my insomnia, my neck pain. I didn't tell nobody about major depression because, like I said, I had to be big macho man and not tell nobody. Vulnerability was just a weakness for me. How I thought?
12:41
So the next four to five months, I was prescribed those percocets and, while going see all these other specialists, a total of like seven of them during the spring 2019 semester. But after, like the second script, I was eating them like skittles. I could not go to class without eating like at least five of them and that's insane. Like five, that's 50 milligrams of oxycodone. But also the Tylenol in the percocet just not good for your liver. But that never crossed my mind. It was, like you said, what could give me the relief and the only thing that I knew of was that. So if it would last for two hours, okay, I'd have to eat more, and that kept going on, and then I stopped getting the pain pill prescription and then I'm like, okay, I really can't function and operate without this. So that's when I turned to the streets and met people that I shouldn't have met.
13:44
But in my brain, hardware dysfunction it wasn't in my realm, like my moral, my decision-making, like I said. It was so out of whack that I just needed to feel better. So instead of the percocets that I was taking, I started getting it's called Roxy, so I'm not sure if you ever heard of that it's Roxycodone, so it's essentially the Oxycodone, but these pills were 30 milligrams and they were a lot smaller. But they didn't have no Tylenol in it, so different from the percocets, and I was buying just an absurd amount of these to get through my week, spending lots of money, sometimes money that I didn't even have, was just in the depths of the dependence. It was okay, I need this right now.
14:39
I noticed sometimes when I take it, it would knock, it would make me nod out, and then sometimes it wouldn't even do nothing to me, and then sometimes it'd be like what I would expect. And then I'd ask the person that I was dealing with when I was in that phase of my life, like, what's going on with these pills? He's like, oh bro, I didn't tell you that's fentanyl because they looked the same, it was just they were pressed and I'm like oh dang. But in my head at the time I'm like, all right, cool, well, just for now on, just give me the good ones. Like it didn't cross my mind that oh dang Because, like I said, I needed relief from all of these symptoms and that's when it got crazy in terms of my dependence.
Bella
Host
15:29
You know, I appreciate your openness with this because addiction is one of those things that is kind of like a boulder and once it starts rolling it doesn't stop until there's something that makes it stop, and sometimes that's rock bottom. Sometimes that's the right person that walks into your life. You know, there's a lot of different scenarios. Sometimes it needs to have a combination of things, sometimes you have to hit the bottom and all these things. So you know, these medications are really strong and I am going to talk a little bit more on what you talked about, but we're going to take a quick break and then we'll get back into. You know how you overcame it and all that. Does that sound good? It's good. Cognitive FX is a research-driven clinic that has successfully treated thousands of patients who have long-lasting symptoms from concussions or other brain-related injuries. Cognitive FX has an innovative approach to recovery that uses an advanced FMRI scan to map the function in your brain. Treatment at Cognitive FX takes five days to complete and uses your FMRI scan as a guide and baseline to ensure that your treatment is personalized and effective. This means that you won't need to schedule and keep track of multiple specialists, locations, dates, times or therapies, because it will all be prepared for you when you arrive. Once you've completed their treatment, you receive a personalized at home plan to continue your recovery and gain access to their online patient portal that has instructional videos and resources for your continued recovery. Conveniently, cognitive FX also offers free consultations, so both you and the doctors can ensure that treatment is a good choice for you and your injury. Visit their website at CognitiveFXUSAcom. Don't delay your recovery any longer. Find solutions at Cognitive FX today.
17:13
Welcome back to the Post Concussion Podcast with myself Bella Paige and today's guest, Evan Veron. So something we're gonna talk about more is the addiction, and I wanna talk about a few things that you mentioned and that's kind of like that. You mentioned getting through your week, and I think that's something where addiction can come into place. It's where it came in for me Originally. It starts as you're just trying to function like everybody else. You're just trying to go to school, you're just trying to go to work, you're just trying to get out of bed. It starts small, which is why I think it can catapult into such a large problem, because you're not healing your brain, you're just coping and you're coping, and the more you take it, the more you need it and it just grows and grows and grows and you ended up on the path of not being prescribed it. So you end up abusing it in a different way, in a more dangerous way, and that's why I wanna talk about it today, because I want people to realize that if you start to feel like you need it, if you start to feel like you're taking that medication before you're supposed to, you can catch yourself before it gets to that point if you're educated on it.
18:19
Sometimes, if you knew that, okay, I'm supposed to take this twice a day or four times a day, and all of a sudden you're taking it an hour too soon, then two hours too soon. That's when you can start talking to your doctor that you need more, but mention your dependency on it, mention that you're needing it. Maybe there's something else. They can do that kind of thing and you talked about not knowing what you were taking. That's really common in the drug world, and so it's really important to be open with your doctors, open with this stuff. It's really tough. I've had people reach out to me about it, about how they're being really dependent on medications and what to do, and really the first step is talking to someone that's giving you it because they can't know how dependent you are on it until you start talking about it.
19:08
But the other thing is these are really strong meds. If you're being prescribed these meds, there's other things you can do. There is alternatives. You don't need to be on these meds as much as you think. I call them rescue medications. If you have to be on a really strong med, use it as a rescue. Use it on your worst day. A lot of the time.
19:29
My doctors they used to have a rule that was like 10 a month. So you are allowed to take this rescue medication 10 times in this month. If you are going over 10 times in a month, that's when you need help. That's when there's other options. That's when it's no longer a rescue medication, it's a codependency and that's really in the headache world and the concussion world. I believe there's a lot more options. This is something that there is treatments for. There is something where we can find other solutions for you to kind of get through this. So do you want to talk about kind of how started to get better? What brought you to where you are right now? Because you're clearly not that person anymore and it's amazing to see, but do you want to talk about that?
Evan
Guest
20:11
Absolutely so. It was an evolving process, obviously, but the day that there was a shift and there was hope, at a time where I was fundamentally distrustful of hope itself, which is the definition of hopelessness I did a quantitative EEG, so a QEEG brain health scan. So it was different from the five MRIs and CT scans that I got. That's more structural imaging, which I think is always good to get. But the difference with the QEEG it's not structural imaging, it's functional imaging, so it's objective data based off the functionality in every region of your brain. That holds up in a court of law too, believe it or not Just identifying markers where it can identify so many other things than just traumatic brain injury. But for me it was indicative of I had a. Basically it said I had a 30% functioning prefrontal cortex and due to bruising in my brain that had accumulated over time, due to the lack of assessment and basically diagnosis of the concussion, when I had both of them and then just this time in the interim, where I wasn't able to allow myself to heal or get the help to be guided in the direction to heal, and that blew me away because Dr Kelly was like, hey, if there's anything going on that you haven't told me yet. Let me know, because this scan it's going to tell me. And I was so delusional and at the time I'm like, nope, nothing's wrong, I'm good, like totally lying which I was doing a lot at the time, with all so many people my family, the girlfriend I had at the time, but really fundamentally myself and I got the scans back and I just started bawling, crying, like God I'm not as fat. Now every day I'm lying doing this and, like you said, it was such a breakdown moment that looking back especially having Dr Kelly there to open that door to let light come in and hope, and like a real, feasible plan to restore my brain function, and looking back, it was absolutely that Now it wasn't overnight, but now I can be. Now in that moment too, I realized how impivile it is to be vulnerable and real with your medical professional but also people you're close to, because my whole life I thought vulnerability was a weakness and it's all these programs from whether it's the way I was brought up and raised or society, the culture, like you can't feel weakness, you can't cry, you can't tell people what's going on, and in that moment, like looking back, that's when it all kind of crystallized for me and it was a daily process.
23:23
It was a combination of three things. So first was hyperbaric oxygen therapy and that is essentially, to put it simply, us breathing right here at this atmospheric pressure we're at, there's 21% of failability of oxygen, 79% nitrogen, but due to the atmospheric pressure we're at, we're only getting about 6% with every breath. When you get in these hyperbaric chambers, the atmospheric pressures increase, comparable to 30 to 60 feet below sea level. And when your body's in that environment, mixed with that pressure, with 90 to 100% oxygen, with every breath you're able to intake that going right into the so 90 to 100% oxygen going into the blood plasma.
24:15
And I was doing that twice a day, four days a week really started seeing just differences in my thinking, my sleep, my ability to process, and that was a process as well. But every day I'd be there after I'd do the chamber in the morning I'd do what's called neurofeedback. It's like this brain wave entrainment manipulates the brain a good manipulation, not a bad manipulation to get your brain back in harmony in whatever regions that it's too low function or too high function. And on top of that I do what's called NAD plus IV therapy. And there's so much data out on that now for what it does for people in substance abuse in detoxing, but it was so revolutionary for my life truly to get off of it.
Bella
Host
25:06
Oh for sure, I totally believe that it's. You mentioned something really important and that was like at the beginning when you talked about getting that scan, and so sometimes people need that and a lot of people feel like they're really crazy through all this, and so there's kind of two different paths. You can get, like, of course, like I agree with MRI CT you have to rule out the scary stuff. It's really important. Of course there's functional MRIs and more things like that, but it is really important to some people to see it. That visual component of like I'm not okay, and sometimes that's what you need and that is okay that some people need to see it. For myself, I knew I wasn't okay. You could have given me every test and told me I was okay and I would tell you I wasn't, because I knew my body and I knew what was going on. But we're not all like that, we're not all wired that way. Some of us need to see it, which is 100% okay. And so I think that ability to see something and confirm that like not crazy, feeling that like I'm not making this all up, that this is real, it's a really big thing and it can really make a big difference in, like your mindset and all that. That you're not making it up, because I think the world sometimes makes us feel that way.
26:24
All these symptoms oh, a headache doesn't seem that bad. Oh, dizziness doesn't seem that bad. Oh, you know, if you break them down separately, they don't seem that bad. But when you add it together, if you realize how severe these symptoms are, it is a lot to deal with and so it's a lot more than people realize. When they hear about it, they're like oh a headache. I get headaches all the time. It's like, yeah, does your headache prevent you from thinking, walking, talking? There's a lot to it. So sometimes just seeing it is really beneficial. And I do recommend people, if that is something you need, that is okay and that is something to definitely seek out to go so that you can see this.
26:59
And you mentioned lying to yourself. That's something I did, it's something a lot of survivors do and I find athletes do it the most. And that's because we're programmed to be okay. You're programmed to. You know, I have seen professionals when I was younger, ride with broken hands and broken wrists and arm braces and all these things just to be keep going, you know, and it's the same thing. So you get programmed to kind of be okay, to shrug it off, to tell your coaches that it's not that bad. So that becomes a habit in everyday life where you're just lying to everyone else. And so you know that lying habit is something a lot of us get into because you know we don't want to be a burden on people, we don't want them to worry about us. You know there's a lot of factors that go into it and so.
27:45
I'm very glad that you found things that helped and worked for you. Just in support group before we recorded this, we were talking about someone who's doing vestibular therapy and somebody else in support group had done it and had no luck. And you know, it's really that trial and error thing. You have to keep trying these things because something will work. It's just you have to be willing to keep trying, and you have honestly shared so much a lot of vulnerability, and you know addiction is a very powerful thing to talk about, and so is there anything else you would like to add before we end today's episode?
Evan
Guest
28:18
And so the addiction, and I think this is my belief. I believe there's such a tie in with people who are exhibiting these addiction type symptoms or just behaviors. There's such a tie in. It's like TBI or PCS any brain injury and addiction. I feel like they're first cousins, if not brother and sister, and it's affecting your judgment, the impulse control, decision-making abilities which can ultimately make individuals more susceptible to engaging in, you know, substance abuse or developing any addictive type behaviors.
28:58
It really is a way to cope right With the physical and the psychological challenges that they face. They might use drugs or alcohol to alleviate pain and reduce anxiety or escape from this emotional distress caused by their injury. So it's very complex, like it's way more than it seems just on the surface, right? Don't ever lose hope. There is so much hope out there. You know you can either hang on to the pain or you can hang on to what the pain taught you and it's all. Everything's meant to happen for reasons with people and that the main drive for the engine to get, I think, many people through is just the hope. Even if everything around you is denying your hope, you let that be the soundtrack to your mind to always seek, always seek the different answers Okay, if this one didn't work, boom, we gotta go to the next one. It's very discouraging at times, but it builds this perseverance if the soundtrack of your mind is that there's hope.
Bella
Host
30:03
For sure. Well, I wanna thank you so much for joining us today and sharing some of your post-concussion life.
Evan
Guest
30:11
Thank you so much. It was an honor. I really enjoyed it and thank you for everything you're doing. It's really amazing this whole the concussion connect. Once I saw that I was like, oh my gosh, this is so needed because there's so many people out there. I'm just so grateful for everything you've done for this movement because it's making traction. There's the best is yet to come. I really think you, everybody, even in the group that have been through it and who are struggling with it, there's hope that lies ahead, that I really think the best is yet to come.
Bella
Host
30:45
Thank you so much. If anyone wants to join Concussion Connect, as you just talked about, it's on our website and in the episode description. But, thank you very much, need more than just this podcast. Be sure to check out our website, postconcussioninccom to see how we can help you in your post concussion life, from a support network to one-on-one coaching. I believe life can get better because I've lived through it. Make sure you take it one day at a time.
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