AI Edits from Making Choices You Can Live With For People With Addicted Loved Ones
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[00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome to the live for Facebook. Today ~we are talking about something we hardly ever talk about, and ~we are talking about navigating the gray areas of addiction support. When you think about it, or in my mind at least it's all gray, right? Because. There's a billion different ways that we can handle this with our loved ones.
There are some that we would recommend over others, but it can be very ~gray. But the, what we're gonna talk about today, I find the most ~gray. For those of you who know me, I talk about constantly like this funnel of unmanageability that we have to work our loved ones through, and that's allowing natural consequences to happen, allowing their life to become unmanageable.
At the bottom of this funnel are three exit points. The first exit point is I realize that substances are causing unmanageability in my life and I decide to quit. That's door number one. We don't see that very much at hope for families, but it definitely exists. Door number two is very similar, which is I realize I have a problem with substances and I cannot stop.
And [00:01:00] so I reach out for help and I either go to treatment or go to counseling, or I get some level of support. And then door number three is the one that we don't like. No one likes door Number three is what we're talking about today. And door number three is I realize I have a problem with substances. I don't care.
I could care less and I let my life fall apart and I keep using, and that's the one we don't like. We don't see that much of it, but it does exist. And I wanna talk about that because I have some clients every now and then, I've got a couple right now that are fairly new, that ~are, that have, ~are living with door number three.
And door number three, frankly just makes us, it's the one that makes us the saddest, the loneliest, the most fearful, most. Tired. The most hopeless because the bottom has fallen out of our loved one's life and they don't care. So things that can contribute to that would be they've become homeless and they're comfortable with that.
They have a drug dealing boyfriend, girlfriend or spouse [00:02:00] who is completely piling drugs into their lives, and there's nothing we can do to stop that. Maybe there's a spouse that won't hold her boundaries, whether it's someone we're married to or. It could be a brother-in-law, a sister-in-law, a mother-in-law, grandmother.
It could be anyone that sometimes goes behind our back and enables this. It could be another person providing shelter. And I had this in, when I was dealing with this with my son, which was a friend of his mom. Let him live there and let them just run rampant doing drugs, not going to school. And she ~just ~was completely heedless to my request to stop doing that.
She just didn't care. Could be a previous death of another child or sibling or friend. Which is, I can't hold any boundaries because I'm terrified that this other child, if I said you can't live here would die on the streets. And I can't live with that. Mental health issues absolutely are a factor in someone exiting door number three, I.
Sometimes it's [00:03:00] trust in professionals that are telling you things that might not be right or just basically, I don't really trust this person in general, so I'm not gonna do what they recommend. Therefore, my kid ends up out there. And popular opinion definitely makes it, I. It happened for that kid.
Like we hear this a lot from kids in the West, which is drugs are legal. I have housing provided by the government. My life is not just, there's no problem and the parents are just helpless. So basically what I think if you're looking at this door, number three exit point, and your loved one is just.
Going at it hard and there's nothing you can do to stop them, then I think we need to move from non-intuitive love, which I talk about all the time. Non-intuitive love is to not protect, manage make your child's life easier or simpler. And I always say with addiction that you have to go to non-intuitive parenting, non-intuitive spousing, non-intuitive loving in general.
But I think when we're door number three, [00:04:00] that would be the only time I would say it is time. Okay. To revert to back to Intuitive, which is to do the opposite of what I just described. Intuitive loving is to protect, manage, control, make their lives easier. And in this case, we're reverting to intuitive love to help ourselves, okay?
This is when enabling is okay. And even advisable. I've advised two new clients this week ~to. ~To do it ~is good for them. It's not good. ~It's not gonna help cure their disease, but they're past that right now. ~They just, ~I want them to be able to put their head on their pillow at night and feel good about themselves.
And I think this is really just not talked about, this is really not advocated in our profession. There's all this tough love. There's the craftman, there's all these things, but at the bottom of that, there's boundaries and. Things that we do are no longer willing to do, which I'm a massive advocate of.
But when we get into this I just don't think that we need to hold that. And this is where I just think [00:05:00] one size fits all isn't appropriate. So what I like to do is encourage whoever I'm dealing with, if there's two parents, is let's look at who, where everybody's heart is. I always work with the softer heart.
And the softer heart is the one that just cannot. Help themselves. They keep giving money or they keep doing whatever. And that's the one we always work with because we don't wanna work with a harder heart because the softer heart might be mad ~at the har ~at the harder ~or ~heart. So we always work with that.
So I think that it's fine to build a plan, develop some sort of system that works for. Either the spouse or the parents, whoever we're talking about according to that heart, because that heart is what's connected to your ability to put your head on your own pillow at night and say to yourself, regardless of the outcome, I did all I could.
We did all that we could. And I think [00:06:00] often that really just becomes. The goal we have to hang onto and the only goal we can have and the only thing we can achieve. And I think that, as sad as that is, I think we need to make it okay for people who get there. So there's a song it's by the emotions and Luther Ingram sang it, and the line is, I cannot sing it all, so I'm not even gonna hum it.
But the line is, if loving you is wrong, I don't wanna be right. It's a pretty good song. It was big in the early seventies. Listen to it in college a lot, but to me this is a really good example of if what I'm advocating here is wrong in the profession, in popular opinion, in your head even you don't have to be right.
~You, ~you can be wrong. So I think what you have to do is you have to give yourself permission to follow your own instincts. I think you have to disregard popular opinion, popular thinking, [00:07:00] and maybe even professional opinion. Like sometimes you just have to go against and if your child has.
Gone through all the unmanageability and still is determined to use, the outcome is not gonna be good. It's gonna be jail or something negative, and you just have to morph and go back to this intuitive way of loving. ~So I think this point, like you disregard popular thinking. ~Disregard traditional codependency thinking.
And remember, codependency is an anxiety disorder based upon fear. So when I say traditional codependency thinking, I mean that you can't not hold boundaries because of your fear in this case. I think you should just embrace your codependency and recognize that my anxiety is going to cause me to do, to go against the grain to do what's not recommended, but I need to do that for myself.
So go against other people's advice. ~So what this could mean you guys, it could mean a lot of different things. It could mean ~for the couple I talked to earlier this week ~is ~they're going to. Move to a different [00:08:00] state where their child is living homeless, and they're gonna rent an Airbnb and whatever time they can get with this child they're gonna offer home cooked meals and a bed to sleep in.
They're fully prepared. She will come and go that she will be out on the streets using, she may opt to sleep in the tent every now and then where she's currently living, but they want to offer this so she knows they're there. She knows she's loved and they see her some. It could be doing that, it could be paying for an apartment or a mobile home or a hotel room, just providing somewhere for your child or loved one to live or to have ~the ~the ability to sleep.
It could be even giving them cash. ~And I say all the time, don't give 'em cash. Amber says all the time, Kim says all the time, ~but in this case, if you gotta give them cash because you want them to have. Money for food, and you don't care if they spend it on drugs because they're doing it anyway.
But you want to at least know that they've got 20 bucks in their pocket that they could buy a cheeseburger. Whether they do or not, doesn't matter. [00:09:00] You want them to have the 20 bucks. It could be buying them a car to live in that sounds bizarre, but at least your child or your loved one is not sleeping in the elements.
They're not freezing to death, they're not being poured on. They have a place they could opt to go to and sleep. I think sometimes it even means like going to look for 'em and there's all kinds of stories out there. I can't remember. What book it was a famous guy and his son was a cocaine addict somewhere in, I think Chicago.
And he, his whole book was about his journey to find his son, and he found him in a flop house eventually and got him to treatment. I don't know, I can't remember if it was successful at the end, but this guy decided I cannot let my child not be known. I have to know where he is. I don't care how bad the news is.
I just cannot sit in my house and not know where my child is. So it could be. Going to look for them. It could be letting them live with you. And I'm not a big fan of that door number [00:10:00] one and door number two strategies. But door number three, if that's what you gotta do, that's what you gotta do. I used to have a client years ago whose older son had died of an overdose.
Her 50-year-old son was using and stealing from her. And she not only let him live there, but she continued to buy tools. That she knew he was going to steal and pawn for drugs and she would come in every other week, every third week and say, I know. I know what you're going to say, but I just can't do it.
And I said, you don't know what I'm going to say because I'm not going to tell you to stop buying weed whackers, and I'm not gonna tell you he can't live there. If that's what you need to do for your heart, then buy God. Buy him new sheets and buy weed. Whackers. It's okay. So I think, the tagline for today's talk is making choices you can live with and in this gray area that we're talking about today, that's what it's [00:11:00] all about.
I think that we absolutely have to be able to live with ourselves and I. This is a family disease. This journey is as much ours as it is theirs, unfortunately. And all the effort seems to be focused on what do they need? What should we do for them? What should we not do for them? How do we try to get this to our end goal?
And if the end goal may not be possible now or ever, then you, your job is to take care of yourself, and I am hereby. Given the blessing that it's okay to do that, and for all of you out there who are struggling with this decision or getting crap from other people who are telling you, you're doing it wrong, or what you need to do is blank.
Watch this video. And live with yourselves and be peaceful. And that sometimes is all we can get. And that would be my hope and prayer for you guys, is that you can find that peace in this crappy journey that we're on if that's where you end up. So that's what I have to say on that. Let's [00:12:00] see what kind of questions we have for the next 18 minutes.
All right. ~Jennifer Baker. Oh, I have a cousin named ~Jennifer Baker. What about the wall between door number two and three? They know, they acknowledge and they say they want to quit, but they won't have the conversation because they have failed in the past and say, I can't do it. I think for them, door number two is still an option.
I think that's part of the bargaining process. I've heard this last week from someone who said that. They didn't wanna go to treatment because they had heard that ~when they, ~if they came out and they used again, that they were more likely to overdose. And I just think that's bargaining talk.
~And I'm thinking, Jennifer, that's what your question is about. ~I think that's the disease talking, to be honest, I can't do it, is I just didn't do it the right way. Not, I can't do it. I didn't do it right. Remember a hundred percent of the people who do what they're asked to do, recommended to do, told to do for several years, those people stay sober.
And the people that, yeah, but, or I'm not like that, or I don't need that, which is the bulk of 'em really then those are the people that have to go back over and [00:13:00] over or have those kind of conversations that you put into this place between door number two and three. But I think it's door number two still.
~Is that it for me? I would just tell my name a bunch more. Wow. No more questions. I'm gonna give it a minute.~
~I also, while we're maybe hopeful, hoping someone else will ask a question, is let's talk again about non-intuitive parenting, which I came up with the term. I made it up years ago. So I'm gonna go back over this again 'cause this is really important. Intuitive parenting is again, to control, protect, manage, make my child's life easier.~
Most of us were parented intuitively, and most of us intuitively parent, as our peers do, as our neighbors do, as our children's friends do. And for about 75% of the children make them made that number up. But for a lot of the children, intuitive parenting works. Fine. Most kids figure out how to take care of themselves and they do well with addiction.
Intuitive parenting kicks the can down the field, postpones the stopping it's just. Totally not gonna work because as we control, protect, manage, make our children's lives easier, we are enabling or slowing down the process that is going on anyway behind the scenes or whatever. Like I talk to people all the time, they're like I'm just gonna make him come home at nine and I'm gonna drive him to school and.
I'm gonna drive him to work and he won't use, and I'm like, that's insane. He absolutely will [00:14:00] use, despite all that, so that intuitive parenting is not going to work. So intuitive parenting, wonderful parenting, non-intuitive parenting is really what you have to focus on. And it doesn't feel good. It doesn't.
Look good. People don't like it. I was a huge non-intuitive parenting person. I literally didn't even log, have a log into the parent portal. The school was like, I'm not giving you my email because I don't want to log in the parent portal. They're like how are you gonna check their grades? I'm like, I'm not, I don't go to high school.
They know their grades and they can take care of their own work, that's the bulk of it is you just allow your child to make mistakes, to deal with the consequences, to learn to grow. And if we parented like that from four on, our children would really figure life out pretty solidly by 12.
But we don't, and so then we send them off into the wild at college and we are shocked that they don't know what they're doing.
You missed [00:15:00] the first second. So hang on. I'm gonna do this one real quick, Bri. The third door is they recognize that substances are a problem, but they don't care and they continue to use despite utter unmanageability. So they're homeless or they just the unmanageability is not mattering to them 'cause the addiction is so strong.
All right, Tracy trying to decide if I should let my addicted son live with me while waiting for a bed in rehab. That's a good question. I guess it would depend on how long you're waiting for the bed. If it's a couple days, probably the problem is the longer between. ~Yes. I will go. I. Going, ~the longer that timeframe is the most likely or more likely that addiction will pop back in and say, oh hell, to the, no, we are.
We are absolutely not going. So if he's pleasant and it's a short amount of time, it is worth giving it a whirl. But I would definitely put the end of a parentheses on how long you were willing to do that. Because [00:16:00] otherwise he now lives with you and he is out using and you're back into the turmoil. So if you're gonna do that, ~I always say always, ~whether you're paying rent for X amount of time on door numbers, one or two, if you are gonna pay rent for so much time, help them out financially so much.
This put a. Put an endpoint on it, otherwise you're just sucked right back into it. And they remember, you know this, you guys, they two weeks is gonna be testing it, Tracy. But I would do it personally just thinking about it. If this was my child, I would do it. Mine always went really quickly 'cause they went from detox and we just kept them in detox until they were going straight into sober living or long-term treatment.
So just be careful that you don't box yourself into, now he's here and we're back into square one. All right, Dale. Can you get substance use dependent individuals to address an underlying issue, anxiety, et cetera, to prevent them from going door? To door number three. Yeah. That's the secret right there is can you [00:17:00] get 'em sober enough to deal with those things to prevent them from going back out and going to door numbers one, two, or even three.
Again, you cannot really address an underlying issue, anxiety, negative narrative, those kind of things while someone is using, because the disease likes that narrative. The disease wants them to feel. Bad about themselves, anxious, sad, lonely. And the disease likes that because that's how it gets 'em. You watch this, the disease isolates them.
The disease steals their humanity. The disease does all these negative things so that it's got them. And if it's said, oh, let's take a break here and let you figure out why you're anxious and what's going on in your life, then it loses its power ~and it probably would lose. ~A lot of people, it would lose its ability to even exist in that person.
So those issues ultimately I feel very strongly have to be dealt with. 'cause most people who have a substance abuse [00:18:00] problem, an addiction they have, ~they're using their substance to cope initially. ~They're using their substance to cope. Versus I just enjoy a glass of wine. I enjoy the flavor of a beer or ~having ~being high every now and then.
It's just funny. But if you're doing it because you're anxious or your life is overwhelming or you don't like yourself, or you have a crappy job and you don't, you can't change. If you are using it to cope, this is gonna be where, if addiction sits on three legs, if it were a stool, the first is genetic predisposition.
That's pretty common. I don't know anyone who doesn't have any level of addiction in their family, even if the word addiction is not being used. ~Second is access to, and this is America. ~This is the world it's in every middle school, every high school, at every gas station. It's everywhere. So the third thing though is do I use this substance as a way to cope?
And if I do, then what's gonna happen is I'm gonna get preoccupied with feeling the relief that whatever the substance. Is COPE is [00:19:00] fixing the coping for, and so those are the three legs that addiction spins on and gets traction. Just like the three legs of breaking addiction are time for the brain to heal.
Serotonin pride and oxytocin connection. Those are the three legs that, those are the three legs that start it and the three legs that end it.
Suzanne, my son had a non-fatal fentanyl poisoning from using cocaine on Tuesday, and I had performed CPR with my neighbor. Oh, poor Suzanne, as well as I gave him Narcan until help arrived. ~I'm glad you had Narcan. ~He went to the hospital but is home now and is going to treatment in a few days. I think Is scared the life out of him personally.
He thinks he's coming home after the 28 days, but I'm not at that point of agreeing to that. He hasn't mentioned it, or do we just not mention anything till it gets time to tell him that we would like, as I'm assuming for him to not come home. ~I'm gonna finish that sentence for you, Suzanne. ~I wouldn't tell him right now, but I would tell him very quickly after getting into the 28 day place so that he has the staff, that [00:20:00] therapist, and that time to acclimate.
Families, I see this all the time. Make the they know this going in, but they don't say anything until the last week and then it's just a nightmare and it turns into a huge fight and people leave a MA and it was all lost. So I'm a big believer of, in that first week, you let the staff know, Hey, coming home's not an option.
You have that conversation with him and hopefully a staff member or therapist in the room. And then you begin to build, we would like him to go to long-term sober living. I'm a big fan, to be honest of working, finding out, asking the treatment center upfront, do you have a transition? ~Do you automatically go from the 30 day, 45 day, whatever it is to.~
A step down to a sober living house. And then what does that look like? ~It's not the end of the world if that, if the answer to that is no, but ~will they help you find one? Will they help you find one that's within two, two and a half hours of you so that you can go visit when it's appropriate, when he's allowed to have guests?
You can take 'em out for dinner, [00:21:00] whatever, when that's allowed, but when he goes in a few days, hopefully, then I would have that conversation with a therapist, with the staff, and let them help you tell him that. And then they can be selling quote unquote, the options. We have this great sober living house we work with.
Or, look, we're gonna help you get, help you find one, we'll take a look at them. And so there's lots, there's that last two, three and a half. Weeks to sell it and then as long as he, if this child actually believes coming home isn't an option, if he doesn't think there's wiggle room, then he will, he'll stay.
The tag your IT message. I talk about this all the time. I did it a couple weeks ago. That's imperative. So you've got to sell that to the facility and to him and use their help. So that would be my timeline. My son has been in five or six different live-in treatment centers since February. He wants to move to a less restrictive place, but wants money for rent.
He's out [00:22:00] of state. How should I handle it? ~If you're asking, ~if he's looking to go to a sober living and he would like for you to pay for that, I would pay for that. But if he's looking to move out on his own and he wants you to pay the rent hard, no. ~Series pass on that. ~Remember, if we provide the living expenses outside of sober living, outside of treatment, then we are really inviting addiction to move back in, unpack, ~put their cute stuff in the drawers, ~and we don't want that.
So the purpose of ~good, long quality, ~good quality, long-term sober living is that they work starting in phase two all the way through. They save their money, they have their launch money, their TAGit money. When they finish the program, whether that's six months, seven months, eight months in, but that's our goal always is to emerge financially independent.
So whatever plan he's building for less restrictive, in my opinion, should only be sober living. And then, yes, I would cover that. While he's in sober living, but with the message of [00:23:00] when you leave, you're financially independent, I'll buy new shirts, take you to dinner, not paying your rent, not paying your car insurance, not paying in.
I'm not paying any of those things because you're emerging. As a financially independent young man, ~I.~
All right, Kim, my husband is in between door number two and three. Jail court date, no work for two months. Still drinking. Take benzos for anxiety. Addicted to it too. Inpatient and outpatient treatment. Won't try again. Intuitive or non-intuitive? Best,
I would still stick with non-intuitive at this point. 'Cause he won't try again.
I still think there's hope for this guy. ~I don't know the enough details, Kim, but I think I would be use that empowerment triangle. ~Be kind, be empathetic, be use nice words, nice tones, but be empowering, encouraging and hold a boundary, which is, I don't wanna live like this. I certainly hope that you change your mind.
~I. ~Because if you enable that then you're just gonna have a life you don't want to have 'cause he's an adult. That's a tough question. I need probably a lot more nuanced information [00:24:00] behind that to answer it fully to the best of my ability, but I'm gonna stick with that. All right, Christie, is there ever a time that a person that may have a drinking problem can continue drinking occasionally?
Or do they always need to completely abstain. He uses alcohol to cope with stress and depression. I can't answer that question, but here's my pat answer. Probably not, but I can't say absolutely never. But my suggestions to all my clients are, let's wait till we've hit, gone way past the two year mark.
And you have your, you got some neuro. Receptor recovery, but more importantly is you have a lot of pride and you have a lot of connection to yourself and to the world and to others. If at that point, two years or later, with all this pride and connection in place, if you still wanna do it, then let's have a conversation about what that could look like, what some flags would look like, so we can abort mission quickly if we need to, but [00:25:00] not for a while, ~not.~
Not initially that I've never seen it work. I have seen it work with the caveats I just talked about in place, but other than that, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. All right. We have time for one more. This is from Jonie. We had a cut contact with our addicted son, but he still emails us to try to get us to take his phone calls, et cetera.
He claims he is sober other than pop, but he's still blaming us and making excuses, accusing us of terrible things, which is usually an indication that he's using. This has been going on for 12 years and we've reached our point and want to protect our peace. What do we do? Take the phone calls or keep ignoring?
I think what I would do, and I'm not in your boat, but I think I would let him know, we will speak to you if the conversations are pleasant and you're just checking in. You just wanna say, hi, ~how are we? ~How are you? Then we'll take your phone calls. The minute that it goes south, then we're going to say, Hey, this conversation's gone south.
We'll give it a whirl [00:26:00] later on. We love you very much. We're hanging up and hang up. That would be my. Best case approach, but if he's abusing that, if that's not possible, then ~you just ~you have the ability, and it's all right for you to protect your peace a hundred percent. Like 12 years is a long time.
Alright, thanks a bunch of you guys. I hope this was helpful on any front. ~But ~absolutely for those of you in the dark gray zone of this, I hope this was helpful. All right, I'll see you in two weeks.
All right, have a great week. Bye guys.
