Human Up Season 1 Ep 12: Transforming the Homelessness Narrative with Grant Denton

This is a transcript of Human Up Podcast Season 1, Episode 12 with Grant Denton, which you can watch and listen to here:

Dave: Welcome to the Human Up Podcast. My name's Dave Marlon, your host, and it's a huge honor to have Grant Denton in studio today. Welcome Grant, right here. Thanks for having me, David. It's an honor. Now Grant Denton is both a homeless and a recovery advocate. He happens to be in recovery himself. He's the founder of the Karma Box, which is a nonprofit in Reno, and he actively runs a homelessness program in Reno. Welcome, grant.

Grant: Welcome. Thank you for having me.

Dave: Alright, before we get going, could you tell us what's Karma Box?

Grant: So Karma Box originated as a grassroots community effort. I was working at a methadone clinic and I was taking to clients. We were going out and volunteering and we started building these little library box type things and we would paint it, build them up, paint 'em, stick 'em in front of stores, and we would fill it with non-perishable food hygiene items. This is in 2018 and August of 2018. And then from there, the community really grabbed onto it. We had one in Carson City, and then the community really, they did a story about it and it just really ran with it. Folks wanted to, we built a few, but after that it was just a community driven thing. And now we have about 60 Karma boxes. We got one out here in front.

Dave: Yeah, one in front of Vegas strong. I love that. And to me, whenever I see extra food, I'm leaving for the day. I go and I drop it in the box and it's pretty cool that the next day it's never there.

Grant: Yeah. Well, and that's the gig, right? This is the one thing where if your box is empty, it's you're succeeding. It's grassroots, community effort, reciprocal relationship, people giving to those in need, and its small acts of kindness. And then in 2020, June, may of 2020, turned it into a nonprofit and started doing homeless outreach. And then from there did a safe camp. And then from there we did a workforce program. And then now we do reentry, sheltering, resource center and all that up in Reno, Carson City and Sparks.

Dave: That's a lot.

Grant: Yeah. Lot of

Dave: Work. It's interesting to me because I am still newish to the homelessness treatment space. I've been doing this for eight years. There is a very small list of people who I consider the experts in this area. And you are one of those experts.

Grant: Well, and what makes you an expert, right? I'll go to speaking places in a room of professionals and I'll be like everybody, my name's Grant Denton, I'm the founder of the Carbox Project, and I have my master's degree from University of Reno in Homeless solutions. And people will clap and I'll be like, I'm just joking. There's no such thing. It doesn't exist. There's what makes a person an expert. There's not a single thing that'll show that you're an expert and what makes you an expert is who's working in it and who's actually solving problems and how long have you been there? And how I got to where I was at was starting at the methadone, working in the recovery field and working at a shelter. And then from working at the shelter, I got an opportunity to work at a business improvement district. So how does homelessness interact with community from there? That's where we get started with transitioning people from the streets out, which is a lot of it takes recovery.

Dave: It really does. You've taught me tons of really critical lessons. The recent one that the Pearl you dropped is that we could help people get off fentanyl or get off stop injecting methamphetamines. But if we take them from drug use to recovery, but they stay in poverty,

Grant: That

Dave: We haven't actually solved the problem. So homelessness, treating homelessness, it's more than just getting a recovery

Grant: For sure. Well, homelessness is a symptom of something else. So in order to address homelessness, you got to address how we got here and not just how we got here. What happened when we were here. So a lot of people, there's two kinds of homelessness. There's situational and there's behavioral. And a lot of people will situationally become homeless. That's the issue we're having right now with the baby boomer crisis. Seniors are getting, and you're going to see this is going to blow up. Baby boomers are getting price out of their benefits, so they're becoming situationally homeless. Then when you're homeless, the longer you're on the streets, the more likely you are to develop a mental illness, develop a substance abuse issue. And so yeah, homelessness is just a symptom of something, but the longer you're there, the harder it gets to address. Does that make sense?

Dave: It totally makes sense. And I like your delineation of situational versus behavioral. However, I've treated over 2,500 unhoused in Las Vegas, and every single one of them explained to me that they were in the situational category.

Grant: Yep. Well, what's interesting is we identify this when we're working with the homeless or working with anybody that's had to develop stories to survive. So anybody that's in order to survive, they had to create stories or learn how to manipulate or learn how to work their way around the system. It's going to be difficult to work with because we have what we call the hologram. So a lot of people, well, when you work with somebody that's been on the streets for a while, you're not really working with that person unless they're telling you the truth. And it takes a while for them to tell you the truth. So they'll tell you a story and they might be a few holograms based on what service providers they work with. So for this service provider, I got to say this, to be able to get that for this service provider, I got to be able to say this to get that. And so it takes a while to actually work with the individual and not the hologram.

Dave: Oh, that's interesting.

Grant: Yeah.

Dave: Alright, so I got situational and I got behavioral. Most of them say they're situational, but most of them are truly behavioral.

Grant: Well, maybe they started out situational, but it turned into behavioral. They did a study so that it takes about 130 days of living on the streets for someone to develop a mental illness could be less, but living on the streets.

The reason for that is the constants in homelessness, there's four constants. You're subject to the elements, your things are going to get stolen. How we shop, you're, you're going to be subject to violence because that's how we resolve conflicts. And you're always on someone else's property. And then you take these things that always put you in a condition of fight or flight, and you're always cortisol. You're always pumping cortisol out, you're always guarded. You're not sleeping well. Your diet kind of sucks, and your hygiene is taking a dip. All these things together are the perfect ingredient to develop a mental illness. And if you look at it once somebody's developing a mental illness or if you've been on the streets long enough, man, nothing in your life is consistent. Right? Your housing isn't consistent. Where you're staying isn't consistent. Relationships aren't consistent. So what's consistent? Alcohol? Every time I drink, I get drunk. Every time I use, I get high. The one thing that shows up for me that I have control of substance and it is hard to say it, and you can only whisper it, and there are times where it makes sense or substance use makes sense. So we can start out situational that end up behavioral.

Dave: Wow, that's very well put. And I love how you structured that. I've always acknowledged that substance use disorders are both a cause of homelessness and an effect of homelessness. So many people become unhoused due to a substance use disorder, but even if they didn't have one, you're indicating that after 130 days, the likelihood of developing a substance use disorder as well as other behavioral health problems, whether it's anxiety disorders, psychosis, those will be exacerbated over time.

Grant: For sure. If you didn't already have it, you might get it. So if you had anxiety problems before, we all do anxiety, you should be anxious. Sometimes it's fine. Part of the gig too is like folks on the streets, we become depressed. But that's not necessarily, I would work with guys in recovery and dudes are in recovery or on the streets and they're like, man, I'm depressed, bro. I'm not doing too well. And I'm like, well, you should be. Life sucks right now. Right? If you were happy, then we'd have a problem. The fact that you're depressed, the fact that you

Dave: Feel as an appropriate emotion for you to be

Grant: Experiencing right now, that's exactly what we should be. Now we leverage this right now, you'll leverage this depression,

Dave: Maybe some willing to change

Grant: Some

Dave: Motivation. Now, your TEDx that you did was probably my most favorite TEDx I've ever seen. If you haven't seen it, I encourage you. Go check it out. Could you tell me real quick what's not so helpful? Help,

Grant: Right? I bro, I could dig it. So there's a few things. So the definition of help is where you make things something easier for someone, right? You're making something easier for someone when you're helping them. But people always want to help the homeless. But it's, the question is help them do what. And a lot of times when I was working out in the camps, I had an opportunity, there was a camp, the CDC, it was during Covid put out this thing where they had to shelter in place so you couldn't move the camps. So we had a camp in Reno that had about 250 people, sometimes 300, sometimes less big camp. Oh, it was huge, dude. And I would watch while I was going out there and doing my outreach and cleaning up, I would watch all the groups of people come out and give and give and dump things. And dump things. I'm saying dump, because that's what it seemed like to me. When people would come out, they would set up these banquet tables and they would put all the things on it. And the thing is, when you have to look at what problem you're solving, what are you helping them to do easier and what problem are you solving? So if you come out with a banquet table and you put things on it, if your whole mission is to give things away, a measure of success is

Dave: How many sandwiches you give away.

Grant: If they, well, they take it right? And people take stuff. So when you come out to a camp, they put things on the table, put all the things on it. Now, you have to keep in mind too that when you're homeless and you don't have an income, everything is currency. So people aren't taking stuff because they need it. They taking stuff because they could barter it later. And so you're actually contributing to the street economy, let's say. You don't care about that. But what we're saying is what I am saying, not that you don't care who knows what people care about, but if you really want to help, who knows. But if you really want to help, you have to ask yourself, and what am I helping people do? And you break it down. There's a spectrum of help. There's an impact of help. There's three ways you can help. So we'll go on the spectrum of help, right in the middle of help is a kind gesture. For example, if somebody's hungry, a kind gesture would be giving 'em a granola bar, but in two hours they might be hungry again. And so you didn't solve the problem. The far end of the spectrum is actually solving the problem to where they'll never ask for food again. And that takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of time, a lot of programming, all the things. But this is what we want to do.

But on the other end of the spectrum, so middle, you have kind gesture solving the problem. And on the other end of the spectrum is what we call pathological altruism to where you help somebody so much pathological altruism to where you help someone so much, you actually cause a problem.

Dave: Disease being good pathological altruism.

Grant: Yeah,

Dave: I'll remember that one.

Grant: Where you're helping so much, you're hurting somebody. And then you look at the impact of help, right? It's micro meso, macro, micro way to help somebody is the individual. Meso is you help the group. Macro is you help society. And so what we do often when we help the homeless is we help on a micro level. You help that person. But often when you help a person, you could do damage to the group. What does that look like? Well, you look at, so if I was working with this guy in a park, I asked him, I was like, he's camping in the park. I asked him, I'm like, Hey man, what can I do to help you improve your situation? He was like, give me 20 bucks. Fair enough. It's a logical answer. I would've helped him. But if he would've used that money to buy dope, then I would've helped him while at the same time doing damage to the group. And it didn't help the group. And it didn't help the society. Society altogether. So when you look to help people, you have to ask yourself, what kind of impact will this help? And it is very real that you can help an individual and you damage to the group in society.

So it's my way of helping this person going to not only help him but the group. And a lot of times when you're helping all three, it doesn't feel like it to the person. It doesn't feel like help right now,

Dave: But later thank me. Yes. Yeah. That's a lot of what we're trying to do with Vegas stronger, where we're trying to help both the individuals get, well, get off the streets by addressing a fentanyl dependency. And it also helps their meso as well as the macro because they end up becoming self-supporting and being able to be contributing members of society.

Grant: Yeah. Well, and that's it, right? The idea is it's not just about the guy. Right? When I got better, my kids got a dad, their dad came back, bro, when I got better, my mom got her son. My granny lived long enough to see me become a man. Man, I mean a man brother. Believe you. Look at it. I wasn't an adult until I got into recovery. I was doing all these childish things, right? Define adult without using age. There's some things you got to do to actually be an adult, but you don't just help the individual. You're helping the whole community when you get somebody into places like renal stronger or Vegas stronger.

Dave: Amen. And renal. You talked about your personal recovery journey a little bit. Could you give us, when did you get clean?

Grant: December 28th, 2014.

Dave: Wow. 10 years

Grant: Ago. Yep. Yep. A little more than 10. And I remember it like yesterday. I remember the last day I used, I remember How

Dave: Long did you use up until then?

Grant: When do you count when your life went to shit? Right. So there was the buildup and there was the managing it and all the, I've done drugs my whole life. Right.

Dave: Okay. So you use drugs for 10, 15, 20 years.

Grant: Yeah. Ever since I was 14 years old,

Dave: High 14. It's an orphan age that it starts.

Grant: Yeah.

Dave: Okay. And at some point between 14 and in your mid thirties, I believe you crossed an invisible line where you entered into a substance use disorder or you developed addiction. I remember that

Grant: Day. Oh my goodness. I remember the day I broke my hand and when I broke my hand, I was getting these oxys. It was back in the day when we were doctor shopping,

Dave:

Doing

Grant:

A lot of

Dave: Doctor shopping, still prescribing oxys,

Grant: And I was selling 'em before I developed. And when I broke my hand, I started taking 'em and I started taking 'em more. And then I ended up, I would sell 'em to people and then up buying 'em back. Not the best businessman, but I would sell 'em for three bucks and buy 'em back for five, this whole gig. But then I remember at one point I left my house that morning, I was driving to work. I didn't lost my job. I hadn't lost my wife or kid yet, but I left my house and I was living about 45 minutes from where I had to work, and I drove. I was about two minutes. I was the right turn away from my job, and I realized that I left my midday Roxy at home. I turned around

Dave: And went Terror. Terror. Absolutely not possible. Panic

Grant: Bro. Panic dude. I totally panicked. And I remember driving when I was driving there. I'm speeding. I'm driving past people. I remember when I was doing that, I was like, this is it an addict? You knew it and you had caught yourself. I knew it. Yeah. And I was okay with it though.

Dave: Right. No, I get it. You had acceptance. That's so funny because I remember the time for me as well, and I used from a teenager, about 14, I went in the woods and smoked some weed with some friends,

Grant: And

Dave: Then I drank and used progressively more and more until I was 41 years old. Now, when I first got clean, I decided that I really wasn't bad until my late thirties. But the longer that I've been clean and sober, the earlier I realized the line occurred. And then the fact that I was regularly blacking out in high school was kind of a bad indication.

Grant: The longer you're in, the more you're like, wait a minute. When I was three years old, and I overhanded that when you're a parent, I remember my son woke up and he just wanted to have a donut. And I was like, ah, we got a problem here, kid.

Dave: We see the symptomology. I had the same thing. My kid came home from a birthday party at about eight years old, and I looked at him, what is wrong with you? And he looked at me big eyes and said, I had four cokes. And I was like, oh, here we go. Oh God. Yeah. Alright, so I had cut you off. You were telling me the moment that you got clean.

Grant: Yeah, I remember it. It was yesterday. I was up at a, well, remember the last time I used, I knew I was going to turn myself in.

Dave: Oh, you had a PO or something?

Grant: Yeah, I was on the run. And usually when you get high, our brains aren't broken. Our brains are just fine. We're just really efficient problem solvers.

Dave: My primary problem was how do I get high?

Grant: Yes, I solved it efficiently every day. No, no fail. I was on it. I was the best. And that was it. And I knew I'm going to turn myself in and that's it. Right? If you talk to any guy that's a convict or on the streets and they got warrants and they're going to turn themselves in, they're banging out, bro. And I remember that was the one time that I didn't get high. It didn't matter how much dope I used because I knew that was it.

Dave: Oh, see, this sense of defeated

Grant: That

Dave: It overcome, you knew you were turning yourself in. It didn't allow the substances to work to get you euphoria.

Grant: No, dude. And I was ready to die. Anyways, when you're drug dealer or a drug addict on the streets, you do a risk assessment. Every day is a risk, right? And you do a risk assessment. This could kill me. And you accept that because I'm doing this to numb out pain, and if I'm dead, no more pain or that's part of the gig, and they're going to either die or you're going to end up in prison. Prison's a retirement plan if you're actively committing crimes to support this. And so it's just part of the gig. And I remember one time I went to detox, and in detox they had you do this exercise where they had you. It was two part exercise. The first part is you write an obituary. If you were to die right now, what would your obituary look like? And then you think if everything goes right, a state, would you like Everything goes right.

What would your obituary look like if you die of a rip old age and successful? I couldn't get to the second one. The first one was so depressing. I knew that the people would show up who were my family or people that I took advantage of. I stole from. I wasn't the best son. I always tried to punish my mom and my brothers. I would steal, I mean, wasn't a good dude. And if people showed up to my funeral would be of obligation, and I could see my kids there, what would I do to my kid? It was just terrible, man. So I left a MA.

Dave: Oh, so you didn't want to stay and go through that exercise?

Grant: No, dude. I couldn't even visualize being five years from now, I don't want to go five years like this. I couldn't even visualize it. So I was

Dave: Like, we call that pitiful, incomprehensible demoralization.

Grant: It's exactly, that's exactly what it was. And I remember I had this fantasy from then. I was on the streets a couple more, and from then I would fantasize about, because when would die on the streets. I knew that I accepted that. But I would fantasize that maybe I would see an old lady getting robbed somewhere and I could run up,

Dave: Save the day,

Grant: Save her and die,

Dave: Be the hero

Grant: Doing something admirable, or a puppy wanders into the street and I save this puppy and I get hit by a truck. And they're like, that granny was a drug addict, but he really did save that puppy one day. So I would fantasize about dying, but dying, doing something admirable. The only good thing someone will remember from it. And then when I used that last day, my mindset was, you're going to die no matter what, dude, at least die giving it a shot. Use the same energy to screw yourself off as you would to climb out. Right? You're going to suffer anyways. You can suffer down here or suffer on your way up to something. And there was an acceptance there, got high, but didn't get high. And then that was part of the process.

Dave: Yeah. And then you said you turned yourself in. Did you do a period of incarceration?

Grant: Yeah. Well, not through prison. I was facing prison five to seven, and then I caught another charge when I was in there, which is great. When I first got it, I thought it was a letter. Nobody's writing me. They call my name. I'm like, oh, somebody cares about me. And I go up and it's a freaking charge for some shit that I stole. Anyways, what's funny is when you on the street and you do this much crime, they're only catching you for this much. You're willing to exchange, what do you want to give me? A couple years, whatever. But then I went back to court for sentencing. When I went back to court for sentencing, they offered me drug court to go to drug court to go to rehab up on the mountain, Harris Springs, and I took it, man,

Dave: I'm amazing.

Grant: Oh dude. And I was there.

Dave: You do four months up there, three months, three months. Three months up in Harris Springs Ranch. The west here. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. That place saved my life for sure. You changed during that

Grant: Stay, not just that stay, but the wait in Joe. The wait in Joe was about eight months. And I had had a paradigm shift in there where it started reading. And of course I'm exercising. I thought I was dumb. So if I'm going to be dumb, I'm going to be the best smart, best dumb dude. Strong. Be strong. If I'm going to be dumb, I'm going to be strong. Strong. Yeah. And that was it, man. I had a little paradigm shift in there. Went to rehab. When I came out, I was just as aggressive as I was. And they'll tell you, you'll hear this at meetings and stuff that be as aggressive as I was at screw my life up and getting high. That's how aggressive I was on staying clean. I was a little monster.

Dave: And you still are today. Oh

Grant: Yeah.

Dave: Oh yeah. Yeah. It's amazing seeing you strive to help improve yourself on a micro, a mezo and a macro basis. That's beautiful.

Grant: Yeah.

Dave: Now, you mentioned stronger, and it made me think of boxing. And both of us have somehow intertwined boxing into recovery. Oh,

Grant: Yeah. I think that's What is that?

Here's what it's in Reno, we started a program. I started a program called Grit, grow, refine, integrate, thrive. The whole gig, I believe, with boxing is that, I mean, the number one, of course, it's fitness, right? It is mental hygiene, right? You're coming in, you're getting fit, and your body's a byproduct. Your body's just going to happen no matter what. But what gets you in there is the mental hygiene. And what it was for me, and what I preach to the guys that come into our program is it teaches us how to chill the fuck out, how to stay calm, right? We're always panicking. We're always like this, always like this. And there's two things you can't do at once. You can't protect yourself and grow at the same time, because when you grow, your underbelly is exposed. And so when you're guarded, you don't learn anything when you're guarded.

So at some point, you have to relax and chill. And that's from boxing. I've learned to just chill out. And how do you breathe through a panic? And how do you slow your heart down? It's not just about being in a ring. It's about out there. How do you breathe through a panic? Terrible shit's going to happen. That's it. How do you respond to life properly? And I think boxing trains folks more than just punching, more than just moving more than just the exercise. It teaches you how to chill the out and stay calm in a panic.

Dave: Yeah. That's very zen. And I agree. To me, I put on boxing gloves after I got clean, and now I've had seven amateur fights. I love the sport. I still train every week despite being 60 years old. And to me, another benefit besides that chilling out is I found that during a good boxing workout, I get a better rush than I got from any drug I ever did, for sure. And it lasts longer, and it's natural. It feels good. I mean, totally. Especially when I noticed myself being able to do something that I wasn't able to do six months before.

Grant: Oh, dude, that's it. That's it. And the high is when you landed without trying,

Dave: Right.

Grant: Whatever that was. Whatever that was, yeah.

Dave: Oh, right. He just threw it. And I just naturally threw this combination. Didn't even think, and I just engaged. That's such a beautiful feeling.

Grant: Oh, that's great, dude. Yeah.

Dave: Well, this is the Human Up Podcast grant. Could you tell us what Human Up means to you?

Grant: Look, dude, I'm going to share a story, and it comes down to help. And I think what goes wrong in the bigger picture in the world is that we get so focused on us. You get so focused on you, whatever you're doing might

Dave: Grow.

Grant: Yeah. It's hard to see the picture when you're in the frame. You're focused on your shit and whatever's going on with you and growing. And unless we make other, helping other people, part of a pillar of our existence, a pillar, you have to understand your role in the community. I think often we help for the, and this is where it comes to human up. You should do things not to reserve your condo in heaven. You should do things not just to balance out your karma. You should do things. You have to. That's your role. And understanding the bigger picture and the impact that you have on the me macro in the world. So I think when you talk about human up, it's about all of us. For example, I mean, my story with you is I used to, you don't even know me, and somebody told me about you.

They asked me if I had a male mentor, a male role model, and I was like, absolutely not. There's not a single male that I know. True. All of these guys, there's not a single male that I know that I would look up to. And they showed me Dave on Facebook, and I was working in recovery. It's kind of, oh, okay. I know who this guy is. And I followed him. And what Dave didn't know is you just being who you were and staying clean and being driven. You were athletic, you were running shit. You were boss. I want to be a boss. One day I would watch what you wear. I went to Goodwill and bought a jacket, and I still have it. That looked like a jacket you wore somewhere, but what I'm

Dave: Saying, pin stripes. I remember

Grant: You pin stripes, bro, pinstripe. But the point that I'm making is you weren't trying to help me, but by being a good human, you bled right. You influenced me. And so human up is just being good, not just for yourself, but being a good person and growing and evolving and elevating because people are watching

Dave: Wow. That's awesome. That's awesome. I love the fact that you are now running Reno Stronger. I'm down here running Vegas stronger. I love the fact that we've both punched each other in the face multiple times. You're actually the only guy who's ever knocked me out, which is to me, something beautiful that we share. We've both punched each other pretty hard. Don't try this at home. I was listening to Dave. No, but what we do, what we actively do in our life is try to help elevate our community by reaching out our hand, by modeling good behavior, by helping people address their substance use, their mental health issues, their homelessness to rise up, and hopefully we all human up and become

Grant: Better. Yep. Yep.

Dave: It was a total honor having Grant Denton on the Human Up Podcast. Thank you. Grant, my brother.