Sam Simmons

Well, thank you for having me and allowing me to be on your show.

Let's see if we can live up to all that which you just said.

How about that?

Oh, that's, you know, that's, yeah, okay.

I am a behavioral consultant, a licensed chemical dependency counselor.

I often tell people I'm semi-retired, but for some reason, lately, I seem to be just as busy as when I called myself working.

And so I've been doing work around chemical health and behavioral health probably over 35 years.

And my focus...

over the last probably 17, 18 years has been on trauma and focusing more so, at least initially, on black male trauma and how that affects the community as a whole and what kind of, why is it important to really acknowledge and address that trauma?

and really look at how it shows up.

Okay.

Well, you know, the thing is, over the years, some of my initial work, I

Also worked in the past at Abbott North Washington Hospital in their lock unit many years ago.

And then I also had a background where I worked initially in terms of what got me interested in leaning towards focusing on trauma.

Really probably was ignited when I went through the chronic pain clinic.

I believe it was in the 80s.

Initially, I used to be a truck driver for the University of Minnesota and was injured, went through the pain clinic, and actually later on became a consultant to the pain clinic.

One of the things I observed and learned in terms of working with clients in the pain clinic is that

uh, you know, everybody suffers, you know, people suffer pain, uh, and have difficulty with pain.

Not everybody, uh, is, uh, considered having chronic pain.