Dr. Adam Downs: What Good Fraternity Culture Looks Like

Mar 7

In September 2022, Dr. Adam Downs celebrated 21 years of sobriety. After struggling with addiction in his early adult life, he made it his mission to foster and develop mental health services for college students transitioning into young adulthood. That led him to get his Ph.D., become a licensed therapist and co-found What Good Looks Like (WGLL). Adam and WGLL partner with Greek organizations on a daily basis, helping them to support their members, navigate the pressures of college life and establish structures to support mental wellness.

Host David Magee, like Adam, has seen how drug addiction and transitions can affect a young adult's life. In this episode of The Mayo Lab Podcast, David and Adam talk about how brotherly love has to be reimagined in order to save the lives of young people struggling with substance misuse or mental health concerns.

“You leave home with your car packed and your parents; you land on campus; you hug and cry. Then, your parents pull off and your life has suddenly changed forever. In the flip of a switch. The expectation, the structure and the safety nets are completely lowered.”

- Dr. Adams Downs on the transition to college

Dr. Adam Downs is an advocate and academic dedicated to addressing mental health and substance misuse concerns on college campuses. Over 20 years sober himself, Adam focuses his work on establishing wellness practices, building healthy communities and supporting individual development for young people. In 2020, Adam co-founded What Good Looks Like (WGLL), an organization encouraging and fostering mental wellness within the Greek system. Adam earned both his master's and Ph.D. from Michigan State University and is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Alabama. Before founding WGLL, he was the Chief Clinical Officer for Bradford Health Services headquartered in Birmingham. Adam has also served as Director of Substance Abuse Services at the University of Alabama, as well as a professor at the University of Alabama's School of Medicine — Tuscaloosa Campus.

Watch the podcast on YouTube:

David Magee: I'm David Magee, and this is the Mayo Lab Podcast. Welcome to the Mayo Lab Podcast, and we're so appreciative you have joined us at this place that brings solutions for parents as they're trying to help students find solutions in the mental health and substance misuse crisis that they face across this country today. And as always, glad to welcome Alexis Lee. Hello, Alexis.
Alexis Lee: Hello.
Magee: Alexis, there's few cultures I think that parents maybe have a lack of understanding about. It's really the fraternity and sorority culture on many campuses today, and I find that a lot of parents that were even a part of that culture, like I was, don't really understand everything that's involved today. So many times organizations are larger and they just face different challenges. It's rare that you have somebody you can turn to help delve into this conversation about what they faced and what kind of solutions are there, but we found just that person.
Lee: We did. Dr. Adam Downs, who's the founder of What Good Looks Like, and it's a mental wellness consulting firm that partners with university, student organizations, specifically fraternities, and student athletes to empower students to create the collegiate experience it was meant to be, life changing, life enriching, all the things. Dr. Adam Downs is the first to really go there with fraternities and go deep in hands-on approach with these guys. It's going to be such a great conversation. David, I know this is a very personal one for you.
Magee: Oh yes. So much of my people that read my book, Dear William, my memoir that came out in late 2021, will find that really my whole life story and with my children revolved around a fraternity house on, in this instance, for us it was the University of Mississippi campus. Truthfully, it is and has been one of the more important aspects of my life and my children's life, but also my children face some issues that they brought into that environment, and really I did too.
I think Dr. Downs helps us take a look at this in a different way. I think this is something that every parent, if you've got a student that's in middle school, high school, going to college and may involve themselves in a Greek organization or as a student athlete, this is an episode you will not want to miss.
The Integrative Life Network was created as a family of intimate trauma-focused treatment centers for mental health, substance use, and intimacy disorders. With locations in Nashville, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Oxford, Mississippi, in Boulder, Colorado, the Integrative Life Network's specialized programs aim not just to treat the problematic behaviors you can see, but also the underlying trauma that's driving that behavior. If you feel like your mental health and behavior are around substances, pornography or sex, is becoming unmanageable, it may be time to seek help. Call the experts at Integrative Life Network today for a free phone consultation to see if they have a program that may be right for you.
They work with most major insurances on an out of network basis and have a full continuum of inpatient programs, from two-week intensives, 30 day residential options to extended care programming. Talk to an admission specialist today at 615-610-5399 or email them directly at info@integrativelifenetwork.com and see our website at themayolab.com for more information. Dr. Adam Downs, welcome to the Mayo Lab Podcast.
Dr. Adam Downs: Thank you very much. So glad to be here.
Magee: Yeah, I appreciate it. 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 forum to have this conversation and to be able to get into schools and universities and figure out how do we meet students where they are in finding their best selves and their well-being. 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."
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, you know my story with fraternities. 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 and checked straight into substance treatment. Unfortunately, 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. I'll have people say to me, "I'm sure you're just so over the fraternity culture." I say, "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. 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.
Dr. Downs: That's right. Absolutely. 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. I personally believe that is there some problems in fraternity chapters across the country? Yeah, there are. There's problems on college campuses. There's problems in every organization, but I also believe that there's a lot of solutions there too.
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. If it's a culture thing, if it's just all bad, why are so many great successful leaders coming out of there too? My question is, what's one person getting out of it that the other is not? 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? Because it's obviously there. These organizations have been around for hundreds of years. Something's working.
Magee: You see leaders. 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. Me, my own story today as 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. But we battled the culture when we were there also, because there are some perhaps expectations, if you will. Speaking of resumes, you... I don't think you'll mind me saying this.
Dr. Downs: Hey, I'm an open book. Open book.
Magee: That's what I love about you. You have this impressive resume yourself. You are Dr. Adam Downs with a PhD and 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 PhD and you're going to go change the world in fraternity culture across America.
Dr. Downs: How did I choose that avenue?
Magee: How did that happen? You jump in on that anywhere you want.
Dr. Downs: I mean, did I choose it or did it choose me, I think is the better question. I mean, yes, I do. I have had accomplishments. I've been educated. Sometimes my dad tells me I'm educated beyond my means. 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. What I mean by that, first and foremost, is my recovery. I just celebrated last September 21 years of sobriety and 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. My wife, nor my daughters have ever seen me intoxicated.
It actually started bigger than fraternities. It started with just my dedication to serving the emerging adult population. I probably did that, to be honest with you, in somewhat of a self-centered kind of way. I think I made a career out of figuring out what the hell was wrong with me, what happened to me, because I developed my addiction in early adulthood. I started using well before that, but it didn't get really dark until 19, 20, 21. Trying to understand what happened and what happens to so many others... Because look, I'm blessed. I survived. My last use of my drug of choice was an overdose.
And for some reason, I woke up. I woke up with my friends slapping my face and dumping ice water on me. This was back before Narcan was readily available. It was by the grace of God I was spared. It was, why me? Why was I the lucky one? And since I was, what do I do with that now? Do I go into investment banking? I can't do that. So many people believed in me and served me and poured into me and fought for my ability to walk this earth. I just wanted to figure out how to give that back. I started trying to understand that emerging adult population.
The more I did that, and that's where my research took me, and then my first job in academia was at the University of Alabama where I was developing programs for students, and then faculty in the school of medicine, and that kind of stuff. I started working with these young men in the fraternity system and I saw all this potential. This notion of the fraternity culture, they didn't like that. Was there some not great things happening in their fraternities? Yeah. But you know what? 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.
I just sat with them and listened to them and said, "What do you..." I didn't go in there with some preconceived notion like I had a solution for them.
Magee: Telling them, "Don't do this. Don't do that."
Dr. Downs: Do not think of the color red.
Magee: Red.
Dr. Downs: That's the first thing you think of is red. You start noticing all the red things in the room, right? You can't do that. I just 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. It started with one chapter.
Magee: 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 validating. What do you want? Where does it go from there?
Dr. Downs: It's about not judging them and not having any authority to get them in trouble. They're not going to be honest with me if they feel like I have the ability to be punitive, and I don't believe in punitive measures anyway.
Magee: They haven't worked.
Dr. Downs: I mean, show me a system they have.
Magee: We got people filled up in prisons with that.
Dr. Downs: That's obviously not working. They just wanted to be heard and supported. And then it's just about helping them realize on a very individualized basis, not just individualized on per member, but per organization, what the solutions are there for them and how to just put some parameters up and help guide them toward that. This is the biggest thing, they will surprise you. They are smarter. They're more dedicated. They care more than the majority of people give them credit for. Their capacity to lead and their capacity to care is so much higher than people give them credit for. The people don't give it credit for them, and so they don't actually engage in that.
It's there. It's in them. But because no one necessarily expects that from them or looks to them for it, they don't nurture it. What I try to do and what we try to do at my company is we try to nurture that. You love this organization. You love your brothers. I tell the guys all the time, we use the word fraternity brothers, not fraternity friends, not fraternity pals, but fraternity brothers. Act like it. Act like it. If this was your brother, what would you do?
Magee: 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. I was like, "Oh, it's 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." They're like, "Mr. Magee, I mean, that's what we do because he's our brother. We'd 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, he might need some help because he's been on something for a while." At that moment, I know exactly what you're talking about.
I understand the leadership that you, Adam Downs, that you, 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're bragging on how we sped to the hospital because his heart wasn't working and he wasn't breathing, but 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.
Dr. Downs: And not only recognize it, but have a true protocol on how to do something about it. Here's the thing, we as humans typically know how to handle 911 emergency situations. We have a number. We can pick up the phone call 911. We can throw in the car and rush to the emergency room. But more times than not, especially when we're dealing with mental health and substance abuse, the emergency actually happens way before the emergency happens.
Magee: Bingo.
Dr. Downs: The question is, why didn't they rush eight weeks before, actually before the heart stopped? You know what? I don't blame the guys because they didn't have an instrument.
Magee: They didn't know.
Dr. Downs: They didn't know. Either they knew something was up, they knew something was off, but did they actually have a system put into place? Because I mean, let's call a spade a spade, they're probably not going to pick up the phone and call his dad.
Magee: That's right.
Dr. Downs: They're definitely not going to call the university.
Magee: No.
Dr. Downs: Because that just brings so much attention to the organization and everything else. What do they do? Who do they call? They call their chapter advisor who's probably an accountant and has no idea how to... Look, I love chapter advisors. I'm trying to think of all the chapter advisors we work with. Do any of them have any background in mental health? I don't think any of them do. I'm sure there's plenty of them out there, but most of them don't know how to handle mental health situations when they come up. Now, we look at these guys and we expect them to be a brother, act like a brother.
Somebody's struggling. Reach out for help. To who? Reach out to who? What is the mechanism? That's the problem. As a system, as a country, as a Greek system as a whole, they're recognizing this issue. But the problem is they're falling short because what they're doing is they're saying, "Well, all our chapters need a mental health chair." Great idea. Do you know how many mental health chairs I've sat down with?
Magee: I've sat down with a few too. I know what you're saying. I mean, they're unprepared.
Dr. Downs: They're like, "I don't know what to do. I'm a psychology major."
Magee: They've anointed me this office. It used to be when you were the chaplain, they could at least hand you a bible.
Dr. Downs: Bless the will every the book.
Magee: Where's the book? Where's the book?
Dr. Downs: Say the prayer before chapter, something like that. But what's the mechanism to actually rush to be that brother, to be that brother's keeper before we're on the way to the hospital? That's where What Good Looks Like comes in. We are trying to be that system. When we go in and we partner with a chapter, the first thing we do, the very first thing do is we build up a wellness commission. 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. But what they can do is know what it looks like. I call them the check engine lights. They can know what the check engine lights are. Hey, if he stops coming around. One of the things I ask the guys all the time, do you know what the depression looks like in a 19-year-old? Well, they don't bathe and they're sad. Sometimes. Do you know what else it looks like? Aggression. Aggression is a big sign of depression in the adolescent and in emerging adult population.
All of a sudden, you got a guy who's just starting to fight everybody and picking fights and punching holes in walls, is it because he is drinking too much? Maybe. Is he drinking too much because maybe there's something going on?
Magee: There's some underlying issue, right?
Dr. Downs: Yeah. I tell the guys all the time, they'll be like, yeah, he punched a hole in the wall. I'm like, okay. Yeah, he was really drunk. Okay, was it a Friday night? Were there other people drunk there? Yeah. How many people drunk punched holes in walls? Well, just him. It's probably not the beer. It's probably not the alcohol. If it's alcohol, then all of you all would have been punching holes in walls. There's something else.
Magee: I laugh and it's not even funny, but your point is so well-made. 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, the other day. I almost laughed out loud because I thought, see, this is a news story because everybody doesn't know. I think, Alexis, maybe I'd come into the office and we laughed about it. The study was talk therapy reduces depression and anxiety, and it was this groundbreaking thing. I'm like, but didn't we already know that?
Dr. Downs: Rainwater helps crops grow.
Magee: The concept that we are going to take this group of students, young men in particular, their DNA and the culture of how they've come up, 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 resilience in a Stoic face. But the reality is, what you have the chance to do is break barriers to help them identify more quickly, get them into that talk therapy.
Like you're talking about punching a wall, look, if somebody had gone to one meeting that previous week and been 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. I mean, were these issues a part of... Is that part of what an athletic team faces as well, this culture within? What do you do with that?
Lee: Absolutely. You're an athlete. You're on this stage. You're looking at people. People are looking at you. At the end of the day, if you're sore from an injury, rehab can only do so much. But you're sore from the pressure of all of it too. It just is there. It's available. It's how you numb. 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 on your head. Absolutely. It crosses barriers. Athletes and fraternity parties and all that, they're together. They go hand in hand, and it's just an easy place to go to. You just feel alone in it, but you're not. That's where people start. They want to talk about it. I know I wanted to talk about it. I just felt so alone in it or felt like people aren't going to understand.
Magee: Hi, I'm David Magee. Now more than ever before, parents need better information about the challenges facing their children, what sorts of issues to expect and when, and the warning signs to look for. From anxiety and depression to addiction, eating disorder, and loneliness, students and their families are facing a mental health and substance misuse epidemic that requires new guidance. My new book, Things Have Changed: What Every Parent (and Educator) Should Know About the Student Mental Health and Substance Misuse Crisis, offers a clear roadmap for helping students find the joy they want and deserve.
Head over to themayolab.com to sign up for our newsletter and find a link to pre-order my new book. Everyone who signs up for our newsletter and pre-orders a copy of Things Have Changed will receive a digital copy of my expanded student toolbox. Visit themayolab.com today.
Lee: You are listening to The Mayo Lab Podcast with David Magee. Now, back to the episode.
Magee: Do you know, on most every major college campus, studies show the two highest at risk groups, your athletes and your Greek system students? My son William was both. 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. He was active in his fraternity. It really shed a lot of light on me. That's a great point you talk about, Alexis, because in athletics... Now, I will say, I think our athletics departments, the big ones at least, are ahead of maybe the overall university culture of universities everywhere.
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 and what they're doing. Your company has begun to do some of that work as well, right, Adam?
Dr. Downs: Yeah, we do partner with a university, with their athletic department, do some programming with all of their student athletes, but primarily the football team. Because I mean, the football team makes up a third of the student athletes anyway. But yeah, we do. I mean, yeah, we see it all the time. The other thing, the pressure, I mean, you've got a whole new... The NIL thing is a whole new. I think a lot of athletic departments are very well-intentioned in trying to stay ahead. I think that sometimes they could do a much better job in some of their non-verbal communication. I'm trying to be a little bit delicate around this, but a very prominent university was giving me a tour of their athletic facilities.
I was looking at their weight rooms and their hot tubs and cold tubs and recovery rooms and the nutrition stations and all of these things. And then they took me and showed me where they do some of the mental health stuff. It was this little room in the corner with folding chairs and boxes of old t-shirts in the corner. I went and sat down with one of the head trainers that worked in the AD's office and I just said, "I just want to make you aware of something of just what you're communicating to your athletes." He's kind of like, "What are you talking about?" I was like, "I just walked in a weight room that I could build four houses in. Just the budget of it. And cold tubs with waterfalls."
I was like, "Well, you're communicating that you care so deeply about their body, so deeply about their body, state-of-the-art everything, their muscle mass, their tone, their structure, their ability to recover from injury, which they get 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 leftover boxes in it and folding chairs."
Magee: Could we get you to tour around to every athletic department in the United States of America? That is such an important message. Look, if I had been a college athlete today and I've got a million dollars of NIL money in my pocket, I would be dead. Let me be clear.
Dr. Downs: You and me both.
Magee: Knowing your story, I mean, your odds would've been high for sure. I think you're speaking such an important truth. 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. You can't just expect a child to be born, to be thrust out into school and told to make A's, told to excel. Then they either join a team and/or go join a social group in college. 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 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 holistic wellbeing 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 perfection. We have to get in as you are doing and help them learn about themselves and, in the fraternity case, their brothers, so that they can take that next step in emotional development.
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, "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 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 a scale of four or five years, it went from here to here in terms of grades. Tell us about what went down with that.
Dr. Downs: I mean, I can give you an example of our very first chapter, which is the one we've been working with the longest, because listen, What Good Looks Like, it didn't start as me going, "Hey, I'm going to start a company that works with fraternities." It started when I left the university, a president of a fraternity called me and said, "Hey, doc, now that you're not with the university, can you come help us?" The reason he did that is because he needed me to be independent, third party, unemotional, unbiased. He needed to me have that neutral stance, which I completely understand. For two years, it was just me.
And then I had a guy that was helping me work with this one chapter. When we started working with the chapter, they were not dead last academically, but they were second to last, or they were 23rd out of 25, second to second to last. Either way, stinking it up pretty good. They had three members living in the house. The 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 surviving, just floating around.
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. They could actually leave their legacy and their imprint on that chapter. What they inherited didn't have to be what they left behind. That's what a lot of people had done. If they wanted to continue on that carousel, they could, but they could also do something different. It was just like, hey, what do you want? We want our GPA to come up. Okay, how do we do that? We came up with a plan on how to support them doing that.
We want to stay out of trouble. Okay, well, to do that, you got to stop doing the things that get you in trouble. 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. Because I can't come in there and say, "Don't do that," 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." 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 backed. Their retention rate when we started was at 54%. 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 GPA is higher than the all men's GPA at the university. It's higher than the all Greek GPA. 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 awards, service award, most improved chapter.
Magee: Wow. Wow.
Dr. Downs: Listen, we didn't do anything unbelievable. We didn't go in there and strip anything down. We just went in there and just supported the guys and helped them achieve what they wanted. 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 2.75, then they need to go through a wellness plan. What does that look like? 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.
But if they're below another certain milestone that they set, not us, then the fraternity's going to provide tutoring for them. 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 mandatory study hall hours.
Magee: Can I get this on the professional level?
Dr. Downs: You want to know how they did it.
Magee: That's exactly what I wanted to know.
Dr. Downs: But they do it all.
Magee: 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. 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." 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 I was like, "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, in high school around substances. I spent so much time in fear punishing them, what I did not do." What I'll say is even in university cultures administratively, what they know 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 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. 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.
Dr. Downs: I mean, I like to tell the guys, we got to move out of hope and into wish. That's what I tell the leaders. I sure hope the party doesn't get shut down this weekend. I sure hope we don't get sanctions. No, it needs to be, I wish one of these idiots would screw this up for us because we've got a plan. I wish he would. I wish he would come show up drunk to chapter. I wish he would skip his tutoring session because I got something for him. And not in a hateful mean way, but like a, no, no, no, no, no.
Magee: We're prepared.
Dr. Downs: We're prepared. We stay ready. That is one of the most important things that I think these guys can do. Look, this goes all the way back to the 911 call, the heart stopping. What Good Looks Like is there to try to intervene before that happens. But you know what intervenes in it even before that? With your son, six to eight weeks before he overdosed, things took a turn. Well, I would say that things probably took a turn well before that. That's just when people started seeing it.
Magee: That's when they saw the visible sign.
Dr. Downs: Right. But what I say is if you have an organization that's built around wellness and you have a wellness interwoven throughout the chapter and you have a standard of academic excellence, of behavioral excellence, of brotherhood excellence, of mental wellness excellence, the likelihood of it starting to teeter sideways goes down. But if it does, it's noticed.
With us, we have wellness coaches that are at the houses. Our wellness coaches are at the house a couple times a week spending time with the guys. If one of those brothers that was concerned about your son eight weeks before he overdosed, he didn't have to call his dad. He didn't have to call you. He didn't have to call the university. He can pull the wellness coach aside and say, "Hey, I'm worried about."
Magee: This wellness coach has been in the fraternity house shooting pool with them maybe, having coffee with them.
Dr. Downs: 100%.
Magee: They're engaged with them. I call it the college young life model. They're engaged with them, so there is some level of trust. It could be like, "Hey, I'm pretty worried about Hudson." What's interesting is today, and it's worth noting to those 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 nearly dead, not breathing, no heartbeat at the fraternity house, he was in a coma, but he did wake up two days later. As 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 as 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. What's so special is I adapted my parenting because I had to, because I realized this hasn't been working. What I began to do is have conversations with my son and he would 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? He would share with me, and we grew trust and honesty, and now he's kind of like my coin in my pocket.
I carry him everywhere I go. I won't make assumptions, so I just know what he's telling me. 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. That sounds like what you're doing. I have to tell you, it works. I mean, I think 750,000 say Greek, 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. We have large Greek organizations here, of course. I got to speak to all of the pledges. We did it about substance misuse.
I couched it in, how to find and keep the joy you want and deserve. These things will steal it. But I added up when I talk to the guys and the women, it was like 2,700. We have this just extraordinary number of college freshman engaging in Greek organizations. 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 you've also I think focused largely on the freshmen, if I'm not right.
Dr. Downs: Yeah. I mean, that takes up such a big part. If you look at risk factors, 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. They're automatically at a higher risk level. It doesn't matter. And then you take 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 freshman in the Greek system, the risk factor goes up even more. These are your more volatile high risk students that are experiencing... Think about how different life is in the matter of 24 hours.
You leave home with your car packed and your parents and you land on campus. You get checked into your dorm room and you hug and cry, and then the parents pull off and your life has suddenly changed forever in the flip of a switch. The expectation and structure and safety nets and all that are completely lowered. And you all of a sudden, for probably the first time for the majority of them, have to reinvent all of that from the inside out. They have to develop that self-structure, self-motivation, self-mentorship.
They have to build all of that up within themselves while trying to figure out where English 101 is, while walking around campus going, "Oh my gosh, I've never seen this many cute girls or cute guys all at the same place before." There's no bell that tells them where to go next. When class is over, they may not have class again for another day. Everything is structured different, and they've got to figure all of that out.
Magee: There's this study that revealed 87% of college students will feel very, very lonely at some point during the career. That's hard for parents to understand, right, Alexis? I mean, they're surrounded by friends. 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 log onto one of your apps and you see all your friends out at the neighborhood establishment in your watering hole, and I think, but I'm kind of alone and I'm not a part of that because I'm just trying to do this thing. They're not just facing all of that, but they may also feel alone. It's like, what do you do? How do you know?
Dr. Downs: That's the perpetual comparing your insides to other people's outsides. Because what you don't see is people posting on Facebook or Instagram or any of these things and being like, "Calling it a study night. Taking in calculus tonight." No. They're like, "Hey! Woo! Proud Larry's." They're showing a different side and you're only getting a snapshot. That can be problematic. With our freshmen, we take all of the freshmen in the chapters we work with through a very specialized program, educational program, where we talk to them about just the adjustment to college and just making that adjustment to all the things that are new, which is literally everything.
Every single part of their life is new. And then it's how do you find an academic social life balance? What are some of the stressors and potential speed bumps along your way? How can you manage this experience and be okay with the ups and the downs and the stresses and the wins and the losses of the whole experience? We do that through whole freshman class education modules. We call them crews. We break them down into crews, because it's hard to have a real meaningful conversation with 45 guys all at once.
But if we break them down into eight groups of five, then we can sit down and really process what's going on. We meet with the crews every week, every other week, and then we do the education modules every week. That way the majority of their first semester there is a lot of support coming their way.
Magee: With that young you, if I'm right, I believe that there was a day that you pledged a fraternity.
Dr. Downs: That's correct.
Magee: Would that young you at that time ever been able to conceive that 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. That young you, what was that young you thinking at the time?
Dr. Downs: Well, he wasn't thinking, that was the problem. I built this for the young me. I think about it all the time constantly, 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.
Magee: That was here at the University of Mississippi?
Dr. Downs: That was here at the University of Mississippi. Now, did they do anything wrong by kicking me out? No, I'm not saying that. 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, "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, because you got something going on here, big guy."
Magee: There's a reason.
Dr. Downs: You've been literally in Oxford for a week and you're in the upstairs of the fraternity house doing cocaine and offering it to the president.
Magee: There's something wrong.
Dr. Downs: Excuse me, you came here with something. Get that figured out and come back in the spring and let's see if we can work something out. But instead it was, "You're not allowed in the house. You're not allowed on property. I know your two best friends you came to college with are here, you can't affiliate with them while they're here." Not only did I feel alone, I was alone. I was completely cut off from everything socially I knew here.
Magee: And at that point, statistics show there's one direction you're headed.
Dr. Downs: 100%.
Magee: And I think that's what happened, right?
Dr. Downs: 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. I showed up at my parents' house for Christmas break with a futon strapped to the top of my explorer. My mom was like, "What in the world?" I was like, "Yeah, I'm not going back. There's nothing there for me." That was in '96 and I didn't get sober until 2001. It took four more institutions later, multiple treatment, and a tour in prison to get it figured out. Now, I'm not blaming, but what if?
Magee: What if? What if?
Dr. Downs: Let me have that experience for the other guys. You know what I mean? Let me serve that time for them. Let me suffer that misery for them. Let my parents suffer that for theirs. 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. 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 the car and drove him to the hospital.
Just in this conversation, the focus has been on your son and the tragedy and the horrible thing that happened to your son and to your family around that. What about those four young men that were traumatized by putting their dying brother in the car?
Magee: 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.
Dr. Downs: That's fantastic.
Magee: 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 really, at the essence, humans suffer. But 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 and more open and recognize it quicker. Statistics show if we get into counseling or treatment earlier, it makes all the difference in the world. It's really taking that barrier down.
Dr. Downs: And connection. These four guys, did anybody sit down with them and talk to them about, how are you doing? You just lifted your best friend and put him in your car, and you did not know if he was going to live or die. That is trauma.
Magee: What they told us later is then the party cranks back up a couple of days later, and they're back out there and they've got all these guilt feelings. I've been through that. As we move toward the end of this time, I mean, we could go on for hours here, but I do want to mention, this is the Mayo Lab Podcast. At 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.
I knew Thomas and people involved here with this knew Thomas. His family won't mind me saying, I'd gotten him into treatment. When he came back, so much of the problem was 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.
Dr. Downs: Well, exactly. It's ignorant.
Magee: It just doesn't know. It doesn't know. That's so much of our challenge here at the heart of it, and I think that's part of the good work you're doing. It doesn't mean you're going to walk in some fraternity house and save every human every minute, but it's about how do we give them a chance. It's that power of possibility by knowing.
Dr. Downs: The cool thing is, it's so doable. In one of our fraternities in Texas, there's two brothers that are in long-term sobriety. One just celebrated over a year. The other one who just graduated, graduated about two and a half years sober. When they entered into the fraternity, they were not sober. They got sober, engaged a recovery program. We educated the chapter, educated the people. The chapter ended up becoming an incredible support mechanism for their sobriety.
It's not the chapter's responsibility to protect these guys' sobriety, but if your brothers, it's to be aware of it and to love them through it and to love them for it. 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 young men and call them brothers.
Magee: Yes.
Dr. Downs: It's very doable.
Magee: It is very doable.
Dr. Downs: But it's about education and it's about love. It's about brotherly love.
Magee: I had that same experience once. I spoke at Baylor University last spring, and it was to a lot of Greek leaders at one panel I was at. I looked out there on the front row and I could just see this real kinship among these guys. It was just this special thing. I went over after it. I'm like, "What's this?" They were like, "Well, honestly," they waited and they paused because it wasn't their job to speak for their friend. Their friend said, "Okay, I'll tell you, so I'm now 12 months sober. This is the first talk that we've all been to together."
They're just looking at me. I think it's helping him understand what I faced. They were celebrating him. They were like low fiving during the talk because it helped them understand, oh, you have faced something. But what he's telling them is, well, I have, but I've done it because you've been here with me.
Dr. Downs: They say I didn't face it alone because of you.
Magee: And that really is what brotherhood is about.
Dr. Downs: That young man that just graduated just over two years, he was our very first head of the wellness commission. It was such a great cheat sheet to have a guy in there with double digit years of sobriety as a wellness commission. But since he was the head, we've had two other wellness commission heads since him that were not in recovery, but they learned from the model that he set. They've just continued to grow and hold a standard of excellence and a standard of wellness in their chapter that a lot of us rooted in recovery principles.
Lee: That's how you change a culture.
Dr. Downs: That's right.
Magee: Culture is evolving. We cannot sit flatfooted and expect young people in this day and age to be able to just walk in this tougher world without being engaged with, without open-ended questions, without tools and guidance for holistic education. It's much a part of the process as the importance of teaching algebra in elementary school.
Dr. Downs: And without listening to them. That's the biggest one that I find higher education, anybody that works with this population, it's like they always tend to leave out is just to listen to them.
Lee: How do you listen without trying to be their counselor, without trying to be their therapist, without trying to solve their problems, as a brother, as a sister, as a friend?
Dr. Downs: You're talking about from... Okay, so like a peer?
Lee: Yes, peer.
Dr. Downs: 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 ones is creating space for them to know that they can talk to each other. A lot of times it's just them just being present. One of the things with one of our wellness commissions I was meeting with the other day, one of the younger guys is going through it right now. I mean, nothing catastrophic. I mean, he broke up with his girlfriend and he's super down in the dumps about it. I just was talking to the wellness commission. They were like, "Yeah, we've told him to reach out," blah, blah, blah. I was like, okay, who's going to go take him to get a burrito?
Magee: That's listening. That burrito is about listening.
Dr. Downs: They were like, "I'll do it tomorrow," one of the guys was. Good. Go take him to get a burrito. I was like, you know what you need to not talk about is his girlfriend, but you need to get his ass out of the room and take him and go eat a burrito that's the size of your face and just be a brother. Just do something like that and you'll be okay. 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 them do this. They're at Georgia Tech.
Georgia Tech is a pressure cooker when it comes to academics. It was finals week. I mean, I could feel the tension from Alabama. These guys were so stressed. When I was talking to the wellness commission, they were like, "You can hear a needle drop in the house. Everybody's just buried in their computer." I said, "Okay, here's the deal. Tomorrow you're issuing a mandatory 45-minute game of tag."
Magee: I love it.
Dr. Downs: They were like, "What?" One of the guys was like, "What are we 12?" I was like, "You need to act like you are just for 45 minutes."
Magee: Wow. Good advice.
Dr. Downs: They just buried into these aerospace engineering quantum mechanics. They're just eating themselves alive. They were like, "Okay, I guess," and they did it. It started with five guys. 10 minutes in, there's 45 guys. 20 minutes in, there's 65 guys 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 like, "This was unbelievable." 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. They were like, "It felt so stupid, but it only took 10 minutes and it was the coolest thing we've ever done." I was like, yeah, you just needed to shake it out for a second and then go back and study. I tell them all the time, don't be afraid to be silly. Don't be afraid to-
Magee: You're in college.
Dr. Downs: -just be. That's what I tell them. Trust your gut. Talk to them. Be present. Sometimes eat a burrito and don't talk about the elephant. Just be there. It's not your job to fix this guy's sadness. Just be there.
Magee: Just be there. I think the lesson, take him to get a burrito, play tag, that'll be the toolbox we'll start with.
Dr. Downs: I know, I'm very sophisticated in my methodology.
Magee: Really I can see you. You really earned that PhD.
Dr. Downs: I'm telling you what.
Magee: Adam Downs, Dr. Adam Downs, 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. Thank you for the work you're doing to help other students and digging into an important culture. Thank you so much.
Dr. Downs: Thanks for having me.
Lee: Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Mayo Lab Podcast. The Mayo Lab Podcast is produced by Dr. Natasha Jeter, Dr. Megan 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, we need your help. Tell others about it, and we'd love for you to subscribe, rate, and give us a review on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you are listening to this podcast. This podcast represents the opinions of David Magee and guests of the show. This podcast is not intended to be a substitute for the medical advice of a licensed counselor or physician. The listeners should consult with their mental health professional in any matters relating to his or her health or the health of a child.