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Out of the funny papers, New Jersey! Presenting the grading! Defending! Undisputed, podcast champion of the world! Jersey! The dawn! Jerry All right, welcome back episode 34 special guests today We had Josh Peck last week that one amazing he was a great guest. We have another great guest today Most of you guys I'm sure we'll know who is. Candy Finnegan from the show Intervention.

One of my favorite shows that I still watch to this day, it's crazy Candy watching the show and then having you here. It's like, wow, this is really happening, but super excited for you to be here. So happy you're joining us today. How's everything going? Well, just be grateful I'm not gonna run your door. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not sadder to most people.

Oh my God. Well, just be grateful I'm not not going on your door. Yeah.

I'm not I'm not sad of the most people. I'm doing really well. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I really I love podcasts so I'm tickled with death you're doing that. Yeah, awesome. That's great. Yeah, we started this a couple of months back, candy. We've had some great guests on. Oh my god. I did Gerald Strawberry. I did Elle about it.

I don't know, Candy. We've had some great guests on. Oh my God, you had Gerald Strawberry. I did Elle about, I don't know, maybe five or six years ago. I did an event down in Florida and he was there and when my son was young, he went to a baseball camp and he would always say, and who is your favorite player? and he go mark my player and Darryl Strawberry and I was going, oh, I don't know. Yeah. It's hopping teams a lot, but I guess that there were people that were suspicious of his what he was doing to his life. But he was, I mean, it was, I was thrilling for me that he's turned his life around. Yes. I mean, think about smoking crack in a dugout. I mean, that's, that's right. I'm an oxy moron. So, um, but you know, yeah, you said wonderful guests, but I'm such a big fan of his. Yeah. Us too. He was actually one of our first guests,v right we were trying to get hit I know you can you had a problem coming in with the zoom our problem was our on our end last time when we were with Darryl it took us about 40 minutes remember that yeah We couldn't get the TV behind you to turn on it and he was sitting there for about 15 minutes Yeah, and he was so nice. He was like hey don't worry man And you know, think about that. Think about how impatient he was sitting there for about 15 minutes. Yeah, and he was so nice. He was like, hey, don't worry, man. Oh, man, you know, think about that. Think about how impatient he was and about how impatient he is. Yes, for sure. So, Candy, I am, I still to this day, I watch intervention over and over again. I watch reruns. I love it. I really, really do. Now, how did you, and I want to get back to this a little later about, you know, you overcoming addiction and whatnot? How did you start this? How did you get on the cast to this show? How did you become a professional interventionist? Well, those are two very different stories. I've been an interventionist for 30 years. Okay.

And I was one of about four or five women.

It was a man's world, you know.

That doesn't set very well with me.

And so I got a call, which I have many times,

saying hi, we're gonna do a show on addiction

and we think you'd be perfect and blah, blah, blah. And I always go, sure. Uh-huh. Please call me, you know. And oddly enough, I've done a treatment about five or six years before that that had been optioned by one reality thing. But, you know, it's the first thing we said and we don, we don't wanna be around drug addicts. Yeah. And I went, of course you don't. And they didn't understand the process. And so Sam Metler, this wonderful guy, was trying to figure out how he could help his dad. And oddly enough, he was going to start it out as a comedy show. Like, you work too much cloner. You dress your dog up in too many outfits. And I guess Annie didn't think it was as funny as he did. And then he started thinking about it. And he had some friends that had been in trouble. And so he reached out to me. And I helped guide him because I wasn't quite sure how you were going to get clients or get people to go on the show. What do you do? Put an ad up in a newspaper? Got somebody? I mean, because you really do area dirty laundry. Yes. And so I guess it was in June, June or July of 04. I went in and met them. And here's what happened, they went, well you're so old. I went, old. I'm not old. And I mean, I said, if you're expecting somebody that five foot 11 and has big tips on his blonde, you've got the wrong profession. This isn't happening, folks. If you want to hollywood dang at it, you're missing the boat. They went, no, no, no. So I think they interviewed three or four other people, only one other woman. And she kind of looked like that. And they call me back and so, you know, it's like, do you want to do a test, run, and do like a mock intervention? And I said, no, I don't. Who's going to know how to act like an addict? And so, but I went into GRB, which is a production company here. And first thing they said is you have to dye your hair. I said, why? Because I've always been a redhead, but it's too dull. Wow. And I went, you're paying for it? You dyed your hair? At that point, I didn't know once you started. You can't ever stop, you know? Yeah. And I really liked, well, Sam was very involved. And I really took this seriously. And then executive producer who. She was very knowledgeable. She was very knowledgeable. She didn't know a lot about

Not reality TV. This was like a Dr. drama.

Dr.

There was no script and

I'll get into it in a minute what you had to do to get on the show. It was bizarre.

And so

they hired Jeff on Vongrant and Jeff

was recovering. He was, he was sober, but he wasn't recovered. Gotcha. And he was a Christian interventionist for a place called Pacific Hills. That was a primarily Christian. How long were you sober when you started the show? I'm 36 years sober. So, 16 years, you know, 20 years maybe, a little over 20 years. Awesome. So, so I started talking to him about it. And there were some, you know, I said, I won't do it unless you give him 90 days for it's a treatment. And then they hear some magical word, well, we're not gonna pay for treatment. They're gonna scholar said, I said, good luck buddy. Yeah. And you know, what are you paying for? And guess what we're gonna pay you? And I have to tell you now barely. And I said, well, that's here and makeup and they went, no, I said, well, you're a favorite, no. I mean, there was so many knows that I thought, I don't know how you're gonna, but they had such a low budget. So there was two handheld cameras. Sam would go out on a lot of these interventions as the field producer. Then they got a wonderful woman, who was excellent. And they just kind of kept adding really people that weren't they were an addict or alcoholism, themselves, but didn't touch touched by it. So they were very empathetic and set as sympathetic, but they also believed in the process. And then I had to lay down the wrong. You know, if I'm gonna break my anonymity, I had to give them sheets of paper that said, you know, I'll talk about my own recovery, you don't talk about my recovery. I'm not fixing alcohol, it's synonymous, press radio, you know, and I said, but I'll talk about 12 steps. And I will, as we go along, explain what that is. I don't want you to get into a treatment center. They just don't tell a step based not that that's their treatment program, but they will learn about it as their support. So just going and it took a while. How the first one they did was a gambling one. And that's really a mental illness that has to do with OCD and maybe, I mean, so I had certainly been invested in trained and all different kinds of intervention, but that isn't the first one you show. Yeah. But that's the first one that applies. And the other one was a woman who was a shopping addict. Now a word from our sponsor, Better. BetterHelp is the largest online therapy platform worldwide, changing the way people get help with facing life challenges by providing convenient, discrete, and affordable access to a licensed therapist. BetterHelp makes professional therapy available online anytime, anywhere through a computer, tablet, or smartphone When you want to be a better problem solver, therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com slash Jerry to get 10% off your first month. That's better H-E-L-P dot com slash Jerry. She would come on periodically and at the end of treatment, you know, she couldn't go someplace that somebody was going to say they were heroin addict. She would have, you know, grabbed her robe and I mean, so it was very difficult. I refused to do that one because I didn't think there was a solution and nobody would be involved in it. Nobody. he never Nobody She never would give the parents name and I mean we learned a lot of lessons from it But they could never rerun it because they got to pay residuals. Oh, I got you She got out and got a $35,000 check and went shopping so So we learned the hard way and the first couple of Jeff Weaver, this magical, wonderful man, started being a field producer and he was just wonderful. I mean, getting a car and travel from Texas to Arizona and, you know, and be filming the whole time. And, you know, when someone would apply for the casting of this, you know, most people that love an adic alcoholic only know about that much. And it's usually about that big. So we would get out there and there would be a lot of surprises. And We had some funny ones where this guy painted on velvet. And he loved crocodiles. And you know, if they made it sound like he was dying, and we get out there, and the whole room is covered with velvet painted crocodiles. She was trying to, and she said, well, he does about $5 with a hero on a teddy. No such a animal. So, I mean, we learned the hard way. I'll tell you. Oh, yeah. If anybody ever leaked that this was this show, it was very easy in the beginning because no one had heard of the show. It got more difficult this time went on. But as say your grandfather goes, you'd be nice now they're going to get you free treatment. You're on that show. I'm telling you within two hours we were packed and gone. Wow. And it made me sad always because it didn't the addicts fault. He needed help. It's grandpa's. What are we going to do? You're mad at grandpa? We always found an alternative treatment, but you know, there were really strict guidelines. Did you did you go to college? When you were in college, did you know this is what you wanted to do? Oh my God, no, I'm 73 years old. I just knew I wanted to go party and have a good time. There was no such word. Gotcha. I went to college and I had about eight majors. I attended a house trip to guys. And I went to Kansas University. I'm a proud J-Hawker. And I grew up in a really privileged family. I'm adopted. OK. And so I had everything in every color. And was the kind of the first breed

in my ever had.

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