Vault Release: CHRIS BATHUM Part 1 of 5: Rehab Mogul

0:00Parler tout français. Hablas espanol. Parler l 'italiano. If you've used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation-based techniques teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash wandery. spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash Wondery. Rules and restrictions may apply. You may have heard of the sex cult NXIVM and the famous actress who went to prison for her involvement, Alison Mack.

0:47But she's never told her side of the story until now. People assume that I'm like this pervert. My name is Natalie Robamed and in my new podcast, I talk to Alison to try to understand how she went from TV actor to cult member and what she thinks of it all now. How do you feel about having been involved in bringing sexual trauma to other people? I mean, I don't even know how to answer that question. Allison, after NXIVM from CBC's Uncover, is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This episode contains disturbing content, including mention of sexual assault, illicit drug use, and explicit language.

1:24Please take care while listening. In 2013, Rose Stahl's life was tumultuous. She was at the beginning of a fairly public divorce. Originally from Austin, Texas, she ended up in Los Angeles after getting into a relationship with a famous actor. They have a kid together. But their relationship had turned problematic due to illicit substance use. I was, you know, struggling with depression. I had been in my third relationship in a row with someone that suffered with drug abuse stuff. and I wanted to try to break the cycle. Rose wanted to talk to a therapist. A friend of hers recommended that she go see someone named Chris Batham.

2:08Rose had been to therapy before, but she'd never met a therapist like Chris. You know, you had a really kind of like dark humor and extremely intelligent, you know, love to wax philosophical. Like it was just a very intelligent, interesting person who was willing to be as interested in my psyche as I was at the time, which is, you know, I mean, that's what you want in a therapist. And I mean, that's what you want in anybody. This therapist, Chris Batham, happened to be the founder and CEO of a drug treatment and recovery organization called Community Recovery Los Angeles, or CRLA. Rose liked that Chris had experience working in the treatment field.

2:51She had fallen into this pattern. She would date a guy who was sober. Then he would have a bad relapse. And Rose would think, I can help him stay sober. But this never worked. Instead, Rose would end up participating in the substance use herself. I was just really questioning, am I an alcoholic? Am I not? For a lot of alcoholics, they call it the great obsession, is that we can drink like normal people. Rose had been obsessing over this question. Is there something wrong with me? And Chris Batham had an answer for her. I laid bare. Here's all the ways that I'm pretty sure that I'm crazy and out of my mind.

3:33And what do you think? He was really like, Rose, you're actually fine. And I fucking believed him. And that was really cool. There was something comforting and calming about this. Rose had never had anyone in her life say, you're okay, there's nothing wrong with you. She thought, maybe he's right. Maybe I am okay. She began to trust Chris Bathum. I mean, from that point on, there's a bond there, right? And this person knows you, and then you tell him more and more and more about you. And that connection was instantaneous almost. There's one other thing that sealed the deal for Rose and influenced her decision to seek therapy from Chris Bathum.

4:18He didn't charge her any money. Rose was never a rehab patient, or client, as CRLA called them. Instead, she spent the next year seeing Chris for therapy. But over time, she would start to question what was really going on at CRLA. Was Chris actually trying to help her, or could he be trying to hurt her? I sent him a text. I said, hey, I'm really feeling like having a drink. And I was sober. And he was like, I don't think that's a bad idea. That was his response. It was, yes. And he goes, in fact, I'll meet you. I'll meet you. Let's meet for a drink. We go to the restaurant. I order a drink. And he's like, oh, well, OK, I'll order a drink too.

5:00What kind of therapist encourages a client who has a history of unhealthy alcohol use to drink alcohol? Well, it turns out that Chris Batham wasn't a therapist at all. He had no training whatsoever. And that was just the beginning of his secrets. Eventually, Rose would start to find out who Chris Batham really was. The whole thing still haunts her to this day. I felt kind of, you know, like scared for like my personal safety, for the client's personal safety. I think I still am like kind of fucked up, maybe beyond repair. I don't know. Not really, but. From all the Batham stuff or from other things?

5:43Yeah, no, from that and just that and then the way that it ended and like, yeah. You're still trying to sort of recover from it. Yeah, I've just still not really resumed life as it was prior to that or even close. In the early 2010s, Southern California became known as the Rehab Riviera. A series of economic events paired with new legislation created the perfect recipe for the treatment industry to boom. And at the center of it was Chris Batham, the founder and CEO of CRLA, which at its peak included 20 sober living houses and outpatient treatment facilities in Southern California and Colorado.

6:26Chris was the self-proclaimed rehab mogul. He had a reputation as an innovator in the treatment field. But in 2016, it all came crashing down. Chris Batham was arrested on multiple charges, including insurance fraud and sexual assault. Although he will most likely spend the rest of his life in prison, the full scope of his crimes may never be known. There are many people that might still be alive today had they never met Chris Batham. For years, he operated as if he were invincible. Perhaps that's because no one was watching him, except for the people that he was supposed to be helping. No one cares about these women who are drug users and alcoholics.

7:12In their most vulnerable state came into this place and were seeking help and were, you know, were surrendering to this thing and then were taken advantage of. I didn't see drugs in the hotel. I saw paraphernalia. I never once saw crystal meth, but I was high on crystal meth and I had no idea how I got high. What happens when the only people speaking up about a crime aren't believed because they're addicts? On season four of The Opportunist, we take you into the Rehab Riviera, a place where profit reigns supreme. One rehab owner I spoke with who witnessed the birth of the Rehab Riviera said that Chris Batham was making millions, but it never seemed to be enough.

7:57Los Angeles, he told me. That's where the devil goes on vacation, because you can get away with anything until you can't. From Cast Media, this is The Opportunist. This is season four, episode one. Chris Batham, rehab mogul. I'm Hannah Smith.

8:28Subscribe to The Opportunist wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode. You can also rate the show and write us a review at Apple Podcasts. It really does help the show, so thank you so much.

8:48In 2011, Chris Batham appeared on a radio show called The Quick Fix with host Bradley Quick. The show focused on positive change and life enhancement. Joining us now on the Cool Change Radio Network is the true visionary, Christopher Bathum. Christopher, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Good to have you. Good to be here. Throughout the interview, Chris talks about his approach to drug and alcohol treatment and recovery. We'll use a lot of the older practices and traditions of all the cultures, a lot of indigenous experiences, Things like sweat lodge, things like going out to the desert and sitting around a fire.

9:25Things like being out in nature and doing amazing things there. Chris loved talking about his holistic approach to treatment, which included things like sound baths, breathwork classes, and sweat lodge meditations. He then got into the idea of treatment length. He said something that was actually pretty uncommon for rehab owners to say at the time. Again, it never seems to work. It never works as good as the first time, right? It never does. I was chasing that first high always, always. So the fact of the matter is that a paradigm shift in treatment means what? Well, you know, I think it means a big difference in how we actually define what treatment is, and that's one of the biggest things, I think.

10:07I think that while people need to be away from places where they use, they don't necessarily need to be locked up in a hospital environment. and they need treatment for a longer period of time. So it's not so much about this quick acute thing and then we come out fixed. It's more about how do we approach this for a long period of time. A person in addiction treatment probably needs about a year of treatment and that's unfortunate and a good reason not to start using it. The stats go to prove that the 60 and 90 day are more effective than the 30 days. Yeah, 30 days is silly. I actually think 60 days...

10:38In an ideal world, a client would enter a treatment center, go through detox if needed, complete their 30-, 60-, or 90-day program without leaving or relapsing, and then reenter the world and maintain their sobriety. For the overwhelming majority of people who enter rehab, this does not happen. On average, only 20 % of people who go to rehab will stay sober. That means 80 % of the time the treatment does not have a lasting effect. It should be noted that there is no standard metric across treatment facilities to measure this, so this is just a rough estimate. But still, the numbers are low. Chris's answer to this was longer treatment days.

11:22He said people needed more time. If you look at people that have left their program, about 85 % of them are doing really good. Now, are they sober every minute of their lives? No. Sobriety is necessary. It's important. But people relapse, and addiction and relapse are part of a system together. And often what we have to do is learn how to respond to relapse better. Sometimes a relapse in a treatment process is one of the best... Chris promoted CRLA as successful, in part by measuring that success, not by sobriety, but by the vague assertion that clients were doing well. In 2015, he sent out a fundraising email.

12:00In it, he noted that CRLA had helped 350 clients get sober that year, and that, quote, about 75 % of those are doing well today. Throughout the interview, Chris sounds knowledgeable, well-researched, a thought leader in the field of recovery. He even claimed he'd created a new model for running treatment centers. But I think that most of the work that's being done and the money that's being spent is wasted. Really, how would you suggest that money be spent? Well, you know, I think that we're working on developing some models that are more interesting and more relevant, I'd say, to the way people get better.

12:41You know, it's really about how a person lives inside of a lifestyle. How do they create a great life for themselves? Chris often said longer treatment was the key to staying sober. It does make sense, but most insurance plans won't cover anything beyond 90 days. Chris had a solution. He offered clients jobs. Once a client was sober for a certain amount of time, say 60 days, it was common practice for Chris to offer them a job at CRLA. He called it the client-staff model. CRLA did have some people on staff who were trained and licensed to work in rehabs, but the majority of the staff was composed of client staff.

13:26In 2014, Chris offered Rose a job. She'd been making progress in therapy over the past year, but had recently slipped into a state of depression. You know, I start doing really well and it's helpful, and then I start feeling really depressed again. He recommended that I come work for CRLA. In California, therapists and patients can't have social or professional contact outside of the therapy setting. This is true up until two years after the therapeutic relationship ends. Rose knew this, and she questioned Chris about it. She wanted to take the job at CRLA, but wasn't that unethical? It's like, in hindsight again, like he read my facial expressions, and so he went, well, you know, you couldn't work for me.

14:10You would have to work in a different part of the company, and then eventually maybe if we stopped therapy, like he cleaned it up when he read my like, what the fuck, expression. Rose has a sort of punk rock bent to her. She's got bleach blonde hair, tattoos, she's not afraid to swear. She's fun and easygoing at times. But she's also a rule follower, almost to a fault. In fact, over the past year, Chris had been working with Rose, trying to get her to loosen up. For instance, he wanted her to become okay with telling lies. In the past, she'd ended friendships over the faintest hint of a white lie.

14:50And so when other people in my life would be dishonest, I would just like, oh my God, you know, throw the baby out with the bathwater. Chris advised her to practice telling little white lies and just see what happens. It was actually really helpful. Being able to understand why other people lie and that it doesn't mean that their core or our entire friendship or relationship or, you know, is lost or was a farce. The job offer seemed to fall into the same category. Rose thought of all the good that she could do by working at CRLA. Plus, Chris offered her a very generous salary, far above anything she could make working anywhere else since there were gaps in her education.

15:35So Rose took the job. This would become a trend in Rose's interactions with Chris Batham. He gradually encouraged her to stop seeing the world with such ethical starkness, to be okay with breaking the rules. This was 2014, and Sierra LA was about to open a brand new community center on Melrose Avenue in the heart of LA. It was called M2, and Rose helped open that community center. It was big because a lot of it he was talking about was about giving the clients an opportunity to start gaining skills for outside of treatment for when they left. So it would be like if people want to learn how to cut hair or be a barista or, you know, all these things.

16:22And so that part was really innovative. So it was like, wow, OK, I don't think there's anything like this directly in a treatment center. And so it was amazing. It was amazing. Prior to M2 opening, CRLA didn't have one main building. It was a collective of sober living houses that were spread all across the city of LA and up the coast into Malibu and Calabasas. M2 was the biggest facility yet. It had space for group therapy sessions, family days, and offices for the staff. Plus, CRLA was expanding their client staff program to include all kinds of jobs. There was a coffee shop called Grounded, and they employed client staff to be the baristas.

17:06A recording studio called Sound Mind Records. Some clients even started a podcast, Rock Bottom Radio. All right, welcome to Rock Bottom Radio, you guys. Thank you for coming on the air. There was talk of opening a medical clinic and a mechanic shop. If you had an idea, Chris Bathom would consider it. It seemed like anything was possible. It was fun, and Bathom is like, what do you want to do? What do you want to do? Show an idea. Give me, you know, really, it was just moving. It was buzzing and moving. And it was amazing. And you start really getting an idea of like, man, this is like a lot of, there's a lot of money in this.

17:48Many people who suffer from prolonged substance use disorder have gaps in their resume or criminal records, often as a result of their disease. This makes employment at best challenging and at worst impossible. I spoke with a former CRLA client named Danny about this. Like, I am a felon, or I was at the time, that has this record with a bunch of gaps in it. And my resume, the last job I had was 2005. And then this place was able to give me a little bit of hope and believe in myself that maybe I am employable and I am worthy of doing something. Danny pointed out that hiring clients as staff members was a good economic model for CRLA.

18:29They would pay us$150 a week and it would cover a portion of our sober living costs, you know? So it was like, for them, they were getting not free labor, but damn near free labor, you know? At times, CRLA had over 400 employees on payroll, but around 90 % of them were client staff who were unlicensed and still working on their sobriety. While the full-time staff, like Rose Stahl, were well-paid, the client staff weren't paid that much. CRLA was providing jobs, but they were also getting really cheap labor out of the deal. And then there is the fact that once clients started to get paid, there was a lot of incentive for them to stay at CRLA.

19:08Some of them stayed for years. It also made it harder to speak up when things started to go wrong.

19:21Chris understood a critical aspect to recovery. Community. There's a popular saying that the opposite of addiction is connection. Here's Chris again in the radio interview speaking about community. One of the most important is immersion in a community of sobriety. Now that we know more about the brain, we know the brain responds very well to other people's brains that are in sobriety. And we know this if you're trying to get clean, you don't hang out with a bunch of people who are using. In the same way, when people can be in a community of people in sobriety, it works very, very well. At the heart of the CRLA community was Chris Batham himself.

20:00He was unconventional, not afraid to push boundaries. But that was also part of his charm. He was accessible. Clients had his personal cell phone number. He often wore jeans with a suit jacket and T-shirt, looking professional enough, but also messy, like a busy dad. And then there was the undeniable fact that CRLA was literally saving people's lives. People like Danny. When Danny checked into CRLA, he had no other options. I started using IV amphetamines and then smoking opiates, and then I was doing a lot of benzos. I was smoking a lot of PCP at the time. I mean, it's a miracle. It's a miracle that I'm alive.

20:40It's a miracle that I'm here to talk to you guys. It's like really, really, really miraculous that I am able to even, you know, get a chance, like another chance at life. On his 30th birthday, a friend of his who had gotten sober at CRLA convinced Danny to join him there. Danny is still sober today. His choice to get sober was literally a matter of life or death. That is not an exaggeration. Danny has had so many friends die. That friend who brought him to CRLA in the first place? He recently overdosed and died. Danny has too many stories like this. Danny's voice sounds kind of casual when he talks about the death of his friends, but I think that's indicative that death has become common for him.

21:28It's still very painful, but it's also just a reality of his life. My friend Max Rossman, who was a kid from Jersey, was like the sweetest little punk rock kid. He passed away. And then there was a bunch of these kids from Boston that would come and then they would like complete treatment or whatever and then go back home and a lot of them would get back home and they would die. You know, there was another, the girl that Lindsay McCauley, I don't know if you guys, if anyone's mentioned her, she just passed away three weeks ago. She did admissions there. You know, her aunt Sheila McCauley was one of the family coordinators, you know, and like she was in Sober Living, was in like one of the best programs in LA, Like very, like behavioral modification, like 12-step heavy, like very, very, very good program.

22:06And they found her in her bathroom, passed away. A difficult part in telling this story is that many of the people who were around to witness it are now dead or missing or have relapsed and we can't get a hold of them. While I was talking with Danny, I thought, it's like he's been to war or something. When else do you have 5, 6, 7, 10, 20 friends die before you're barely into your 30s? For everything good at CRLA, there was a dark side as well. There's 43 people that have passed away since I went into this treatment center on July 9th of 2015. Those are just the people that I know, you know? 43 people, like this is 43 sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers.

22:57Even when a treatment center does everything right, people can still die. So if things are intentionally done wrong, or if there's a bad actor who is causing people to die, it can actually be kind of hard to spot. And, as Danny told me, when someone offers you a lifeline, your first thought isn't to do a background check on them. And I didn't go, like, looking up what degrees he had or anything, you know, because I was like, I wasn't homeless and I wasn't putting a needle in my arms, you know, and they were feeding me pretty damn good food. And, you know, there was yerba mate's in the fridge at the house that I was at.

23:33Like, there was no complaints on my end. It makes sense that Chris was focused on the community aspect of recovery. It's what he knew. Before he was the rehab mogul, he was pursuing spiritual and community-oriented endeavors. He was born in 1961 and grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. He was raised by, like, really cool parents who were into, like, religion. They were Catholics, but they were liberal, like, you know, lefty Catholics in Chicago in the 60s and 70s. And he also said he wanted to be a monk when he was a young man or a priest. This is Evan Wright. He wrote a book about Chris Batham called Bad Therapist.

24:13Evan spoke to Chris about his life before he became an entrepreneur. He was a community organizer. He was massively committed to all of these social justice issues in the 80s. He came to California because Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden brought him here to train volunteers that they were sending out for this national community action program. So he was like not just a do-gooder, he was very effective at organizing and committed to it. Chris valued community and social justice, but wanted to go deeper, to be part of something truly authentic. He was searching. Maybe he was trying to find his life's purpose.

24:55He had a growing love of Sitta Yoga, and he spent five years of his 20s living in ashrams in India. And I think he was seeking, this is my theory, he was seeking religious enlightenment, some form of purification, enlightenment. His whole life, he leaves India, ends up in Topanga Canyon in the early 90s. He's had now 15, 20 years of this journey. He's now trying to make money. And he just started using all of this knowledge and understanding of the talk, the healing, the sensitivity, feeling. and it dovetailed into rehabs. But I think to my dying day, if you ask me why he did what he did or what changed him, is I think he failed to get enlightenment.

25:41It embittered him and he like revenged himself on the world. In the 1990s, Chris moved back to the U.S. He was in his 30s and starting over in Topanga Canyon. He did odd jobs, once starting a pool cleaning service around the Malibu area, but it wasn't very successful. He filed for bankruptcy in 1997. By the year 2000, he was 39 years old with his second child on the way. He had no meaningful income or career. His wife encouraged him to pursue hypnotherapy. So in 2001, he got a certificate in hypnotherapy and opened his own practice. He took clients over the phone. And this is when Chris first started to realize that there were a lot of people trying to get sober.

26:32His clients would call in, wanting to be hypnotized to help them stop drinking or smoking or using. Often, Chris just ended up talking with them. Some have theorized that this is when he first started to see himself as a therapist. In the next few years, there were a series of events that, when looked at together, can only be described as the perfect storm. Chris Batham was in the right place at the right time, or the wrong place at the wrong time, depending on how you look at it. First came the opioid epidemic. The opioid crisis may be far worse than initially thought. Let's take a look. The opioid crisis is more than a human tragedy that's claimed a half a million lives.