When does "bad habit" become addiction?

Is it just a bad habit… or something more?

Most people think of addiction as something extreme, something that only applies to drugs or alcohol at their worst. But what if the same clinical criteria used to define addiction also showed up in everyday behaviors like scrolling your phone, gaming, binge-watching, or even that nightly glass of wine?

In this episode, Amber breaks down what addiction actually is, using real, clinical standards, and then puts those criteria side-by-side with some of the most common habits people don’t usually question. The comparison is eye-opening.

If you’ve ever wondered whether something in your life (or someone else’s) has crossed the line from harmless to hard-to-control, this conversation will help you see it more clearly without labels, judgment, or overreaction.

You’ll walk away with a better understanding of where the line really is… and how to recognize it sooner rather than later.

✅Take our free quiz to find out where you stand and what to do next: https://hffrc-sud.scoreapp.com/

✅Denial Breakthrough Challenge https://www.familyrecoveryacademy.online/motivation-unlocked-challenge

✅Website: https://www.familyrecoveryacademy.online/

Episode Transcript

AI Edits from When does _bad habit_ become addiction_
===

[00:00:00] What if I told you that the same thing that makes someone an alcoholic is the same thing that has your kid unable to put their phone down or the same thing has you checking Instagram at 2:00 AM in the morning when you probably shouldn't. Let's take the word probably out, but you definitely shouldn't.

At 2:00 AM today, we're gonna look at the actual criteria. That mental health professionals use to diagnose addiction, and we're gonna hold it next to some of the most common everyday habits that people have. ~You hear this all the time. ~You hear people say my kid's addicted to their phone, or I'm addicted to social media, or My husband's addicted to gaming.

And while these addictions aren't officially listed in what we call the DSM, ~which is the Diagnostic statistical Manual. ~Which is what clinical professionals use to actually diagnose. ~These are not addictions listed in there. ~We all kinda have this thought that they are addictions because the pattern holds pretty consistent.

Even with substance use addiction, things like gaming, things [00:01:00] like pornography or sex addiction. You can see some very similar patterns between all these genres. Today we're gonna break down. What makes something a bad habit versus what makes something addiction. And the line between those things where you cross that line, it can be kinda gray.

So we're gonna pull apart some of those pieces and talk about what is actually an addiction and what falls more into the bad habit category. ~And. ~I think some of you are gonna be pretty surprised by how that actually lays out. Some of you that may be using the word addiction for some of these habits are gonna realize that maybe it's not addiction, and some of you may realize when you thought you had a bad habit, that you actually do meet the criteria for someone who has an addiction.

~Now one of the things that got me thinking about this, honestly, I was listening to a podcaster or a YouTuber that I listen to a lot. Her name is Lisa Biu. I don't know if anybody watches her or knows who that is. If you do put your hand up in the chat. I really like her. She has a great guest.~

And yesterday I was watching one of her guests and this was a sexology expert and I really liked. What she had to say. I thought it was [00:02:00] super interesting. I agreed with almost everything she said, but at some point she made this comment, which wasn't really necessarily what the topic or the show was about.

It was just a side comment that she made, and I was like about that 'cause the comment that this guest made. But she said I don't think that sex is an addiction, that I don't think you can have a sex addiction. And the reasoning she gave for that was that she said, think about it.

You don't go into withdrawal if you don't have sex. How to stop and think about that for just a moment, because the actual criteria for addiction withdrawal, we're gonna talk about the criteria. That's one of them. But they're actually 11 criteria, and that's just one of them. And you don't need all 11 to meet the criteria for addiction.

~If it was a substance. So don't even really feel like that reasoning holds solid. ~But beyond that, I'm not totally sure that there's not any withdrawal from that. And we'll talk about that too in just a second. About, about why that is. That's what prompted me to wanna talk [00:03:00] about this because it's not just specifically sex addiction, but other behavioral type, non substance addictions like gambling, gaming, social media, these things that we're hearing talked about all the time.

So whether ~you're watching this because you think maybe. I have a problem with one of those things or my loved one, or maybe ~you're watching this because you think maybe I have a problem with a substance, drugs, alcohol, or something like that. By the end of this video, you're gonna have clarity on what makes someone something an addiction, what makes something a habit, what makes something a bad habit?

Where do these lines fall? And hopefully this gives you a little bit of clarity. And I also have. A link in the description, which I'll remind you of again later. But it will let you take our quiz on how severe an addiction is. And so if you still want even more clarity than what we're talking about, we got that down there for you, and that'll help you even more.

~Before we dig in too much, I wanna say hello to all of our people watching live, and I wanna say hello to all of you that are watching on the playback. ~For those of you who are new here, my name is Amber Hollingsworth. I'm an addiction expert. I've been working with people struggling with an addiction for more than 20 years, and.

This YouTube channel, put the shovel [00:04:00] down, is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction so that you can get ahead of it, so that you can actually stay five steps ahead of it and get your life back on track or help your loved one get their life back on track. All right. So today let's dig into it.

~If you are watching live, go ahead and put your comments and your questions up in chat. 'cause after we go through these criteria and talk about this a little bit, I'm gonna be taking your questions and your comments. So go ahead and put them in there. We have our moderator in the back, Bree, she's watching out for them and she's gonna pop them up on the screen so we can look at them together and you can get some feedback.~

~All right, so let's start with that. ~DSM, the Diagnostic statistical manual that healthcare professionals use to diagnose substance use disorder. And one thing I'll tell you about this is that with a substance use disorder, when you look in the official manual. They have it broken down. They have alcohol use disorder, cocaine use disorder, marijuana.

You have all the different substances broken down, but if you looked at the criteria, there are little differences, but not much. So we're gonna talk about the criteria in general, and you can just take. The blank and insert the word there that you wanna put, whether it's a substance, a drug, a behavior, whatever it is, you can actually interchange those words because the criteria that you're looking at for addiction, [00:05:00] they're not a hundred percent the same, but they're probably like 98% the same.

~As far as what makes something an addiction and what doesn't. So feel free to interchange those words now. ~Before you tune out, I want you to know that this isn't just about a substance use. This can be about gaming, it can be about your husband's drinking. It can be about your own tendency to go into an Instagram vortex or a TikTok what do they call it, the black hole of TikTok, where you can't get out.

You can apply these criteria to any of those, and you actually only need two of these criteria to qualify as an addiction. So the way this works is you count how many of them you have. There's 11 of them. You count how many you have. If you have more than two, you're in the category of addiction. If you have three or four, it's like a moderate addiction.

If you have five or more, that qualifies as a severe addiction. ~So as we go along, you can count on your fingers, whatever thing that you're thinking of, insert your word there, and you'll figure out. Whether or not you or the person you love actually would qualify for addiction level if they were talking to a clinical professional.~

~Now, keep in mind their behavioral addictions are not officially in the manual now, but I think that they probably will be pretty soon. All right, ~here are the 11 criteria. Number one, using more than was [00:06:00] intended. For example, if you, if the issue is drinking, you tell yourself, I'm just gonna have a couple of glasses of wine at dinner, and then that's it.

~It is just to relax me at the end of the day or something like that. ~And so you make these little promises to yourself or you say I'm only gonna smoke when I'm with my friends, at a social event, but you. Break your promises to yourself so you end up using more than you intended. Now we can apply that to behavioral addictions, right?

End up like spending a lot more time on social media than was intended. You tell yourself, oh, I got five minutes to kill. You're just scrolling through, you're looking at whatever, and the next thing you know, it's. Two hours later, and you're late to your event or you haven't gotten any work done, or you're stayed up all night and now you're not gonna get the sleep you need to function well for tomorrow.

So you can see how these sort of apply across genres, right? You can look at this no matter what the issue is and figure out am I doing more than intended? Am I making promises to myself? And then breaking those promises. Now let's look at what the second [00:07:00] criteria is. ~Gimme just one second. I'm looking at my notes here because I remember 'em, but when I try to do 'em off the top of my head, I get lost.~

All right. Criteria number two is the persistent desire or failed attempts to control it. Stop or cut back. So it's you make even more promises to yourself that you're not gonna do it anymore, or that you're gonna stop for 30 days, like you're gonna do dry January or sober October or something like that.

And you make these promises that you're gonna either not do it as much anymore. You're only gonna do it on certain days or in social events or in certain situations, and you're not gonna do it longer than a certain amount of time or bypass a certain amount of money you're spending on it. ~Something like that.~

And you. May get some success in that, some short-term success. It's not like you can't get any success, but you don't get consistent success and so you go back to it and that's why it says persistent desire. It's like I keep wanting to get this under control, but it keeps passing and crossing over those lines and I'm really don't have control of it as much as I want to with drinkings, with drinking, you can think of it like how many [00:08:00] times have you, or your loved one says, I'm gonna slow down or I'm not gonna drink this week.

~How many times has that actually happened, right? Sometimes it might happen, but a lot of times it don't. ~With things like social media, screens, gaming, how many times have you told yourself that you are gonna spend less time on your phone, or your kids said they'd limit their gaming to an hour? How did that go?

Does that consistently play out that way? Or a lot of times, does it not? Our criteria. Number three is spending a lot of time obtaining, using and recovering in the manual from the effects of the substance, basically. But you can apply these to other things as well. So for example, with drinking, this is a person who plans their whole day around drinking or smoking or whatever it is.

It's like, when can I have my first drink? ~And everything is, everything else you're doing is basically just like stuff that you're doing. In between till you can get to what you really want to do. ~And because in the, when the, in the idea of like drinking or substance use, it's like how long until I'm gonna feel normal, right?

And so everything else is just the stuff that you're trying to rush through, you're not really all that present for, because [00:09:00] most of your thought process in your time and energy is around using, obtaining, engaging in whatever this is, this addictive behavior. Now with something like social media, gaming screens, those behavioral addictions, think about how much of your mental energy goes towards those screens.

~Planning when you can check your phone, thinking about what you're gonna post, staying up late, because you can't stop scrolling. So again, you can apply this criteria if it's pornography, if it's sex, if it's gambling. It's the same criteria, right? ~Let's look at criteria number four. This time. Cravings are strong urges to use with drinking or drugs.

It looks like you're almost like you're white knuckling it. You really want to, you probably feel irritable when you're not. You're watching the clock and everything else feels wrong and crappy until you get that substance. With like social media type addictions, you know that feeling when your phone is in the other room and you feel really unsettled, or when you can't get on social media and you feel really anxious about it, that's like a craving, right?

Like maybe you made a post on [00:10:00] social media and you're at work, or you're in the middle of a conversation with someone and you're like obsessing about Wonder how many likes I had, or wonder how many views I have, or wonder how many po people commented on my post. You have this urge. It's like a, it's like a craving, right?

And it's hard to resist going to look at that, right? And sometimes you might find yourself doing that at times when you shouldn't, which is gonna be one of the other criteria. ~So stay tuned and keep listening. ~All right, next criteria that, now this one is, number five, is a failure to fulfill major role obligations.

Now, major role obligations, I like to put them in buckets, right? You can look at family obligations, work obligations, school obligations, community obligations. These are basically like your responsibilities or the things that you've agreed to do or the things that you're expected to do, right? ~And you're dropping.~

The ball on some of these, you, it's not, maybe not be that you're dropping the ball all the times, but you're missing work. You're forgetting to pick up the kids. You forgot that your son had the soccer game that you were supposed to show up to, or that [00:11:00] you're supposed to bring snacks, not just once, right?

That can happen anyone, but frequently on a decently regular basis, like way more than you should, way more than the average person. We can all drop the ball sometimes, but you are gonna find that when it's an addiction, you're dropping the ball and it's something related to the substance maybe. You were told about that event when you were drinking and you don't remember it because you were intoxicated at the time, or maybe you're feeling really hung over all day ~and you forget about it ~and you drop the ball because you just don't feel up to it.

Or you're feeling so bad that you're in the bed all day, or maybe it's because you're in withdrawal. If it's a pain pill addiction, maybe you remember it, but you can't show up to work consistently because when you have the drug, you can function. And when you don't have the drug, you can't function.

And so ~you're, work life. ~Your work performance, ~that's the word I'm looking for, ~is really inconsistent or unstable. That's what it looks like when I say failure to fulfill a major role. Obligation. That can be because of the using, because of being hangover, 'cause of the stress it causes because you're locked up in jail.

Any of those reasons, with some of the behavioral addictions. It might be [00:12:00] homework that doesn't get done. It might be a parent who's physically present, but constantly scrolling through their phone and the job performance slips because of it. Now, moving on to criteria number six is continued use despite social or interpersonal problems.

To me, this is another bucket of one of those major life role sort of things. It's not necessarily like a responsibility obligation, but it's like a responsibility that you have to your friends. These are your social responsibilities, right? Basically what it means is, are you screwing up your relationships?

Because of this addiction is someone, or more than someone upset with you because of your drinking, using your gambling, your gaming, your pornography, use, something like that. Maybe you've had arguments with them over and over. You've had lots of conversations, and these conversations are when you do all those promises that you break.

~Remember that was one of the other criteria. When it's drinking, you've had the conversation multiple times. ~The relationship is suffering. [00:13:00] They know ~it's a problem. As in the person, as in, ~it's a problem, but you still keep doing it. Now you're making the promises, ~you're telling yourself we're gonna come back, ~but it just doesn't really play out.

With some of these other behavioral addictions, maybe you told your kid that the, their gaming is affecting the family. Maybe mom and dad are constantly fighting with each other about how much time the son can be on the video games. Maybe you're wife just had a baby and she's constantly frustrated with you because you're not helping out the baby because you're always gambling.

~You've been told to put your phone down at dinner a hundred times and it's causing problems in those relationships. So that's the one about interpersonal relationship. ~Now, moving on to, let's look at number seven, and that's giving up important activities because of this addictive behavior like.

Things that you used to like to do, like hobbies and interests, ~like you used to maybe always go bowling or you're always into baseball or collecting stamps, ~it doesn't matter, whatever it is. Or maybe you're a craft kind of person, or you used to write music or play guitar, or do pottery, whatever these things are that used to bring you a lot of joy.

You either stop doing them completely or you slow down doing them, or [00:14:00] you, maybe you still do them, ~but you try to bring either the substance on board if it's a substance addiction or maybe you're doing 'em, ~but you're constantly interrupted so you're not doing it as well at it anymore. So you just start to see all these other things that used to bring you joy, start to kinda wean away.

It's not an overnight thing, but it's, these things start to drop off just a little bit at a time. As time goes on and pretty soon, you've quit the softball team, pretty soon you quit. Showing up to dodge ball or whatever the thing was, and maybe you have a lot of excuses and maybe some of those excuses make sense and it seems reasonable, but this is where you gotta check in with yourself.

Here's the thing I would tell you to ask. Do you have a hard time enjoying things that don't involve the addiction? That's the case, and that's why these hobbies drop off. And that has to do with brain chemicals, right? You don't get the same brain chemical, the good brain chemical jolt when you do these things anymore.

~The dopamines, the serotonins, all the good things. You don't get them anymore. So you become less and less interested in them. ~You stop seeing the friends. You used to see the care, the things you care about, just slowly get replaced by the addiction. If it's somebody that's addicted to [00:15:00] a screen, maybe they used to play sports, they used to have friends over, but now they just wanna stay home and game, ~like they don't even wanna go on family vacation.~

~They don't even wanna go to the amusement park anymore. They just want to game and whatever amount of time they're using, they make these promises again and they're breaking 'em. ~All right. Criteria number eight is continues. Or engaging in a behavior in situations where it's physically hazardous. Now, when it comes to substances, that's a little cleaner, clear, easier to way out. 'cause it's if you're drinking and driving that's pretty clear. If you're getting really high and you're operating heavy machinery at work. Another way to think about that though is if you are really intoxicated and you're supposed to be watching small children, I would consider that using or engaging in the behavior in situations that can be dangerous.

~Especially with small children. ~So when it comes to substances, like I said, it's a little clearer. ~To figure out ~When it comes to behavioral addictions though, it still counts. You can still have this criteria, like for example, like compulsively checking your phone while you're driving. And you know you shouldn't be doing [00:16:00] it, but you can't.

Or gaming until three when you have to be up at 6:00 AM and you have a physically a job where I don't know, like you fly airplanes or something. ~I don't know. Something really important. ~You're a truck driver and now that's. Put you in danger. Maybe not because you're doing it in that moment, but because you're withdraw from it or you couldn't put it down in time and now you haven't had any sleep.

~You can see how this can play out like in a number of ways. ~All right, we're moving on to number nine and remember there are 11 of these. So criteria number nine is continued use despite knowing it's causing problems. It's I know this is causing me maybe physical health problem, psychological problems, emotional problems, but I keep doing it anyway.

So examples of that could be that your drinking is causing your blood pressure to be terrible. You know that your pornography use is causing your depression and your anxiety to get out of control, right? You know that this is making some problem. You have [00:17:00] worse, and you're continuing to do that.

Sometimes in the beginning it's making a problem worse, but you don't even recognize that's why it's happening, like you don't recognize that it's the gaming, pornography, the gambling, or whatever it is, it's causing your physical or emotional problems to get worse. But at some point you start to figure that out.

And even when you have that insight, you're still doing it right? That's what it's like. You're knowingly doing it when it's causing you a lot of problems. Now with social media screens, gaming, stuff like that, it could be your kids know that gaming is affecting their grades, right? Or that doom scrolling before bed is wrecking your sleep, but knowing it just doesn't stop you from doing it.

~Moving on to number 10. Okay. ~10 is about tolerance, and it means needing more of something to get the same effect. When it comes to substances, that's a little clearer, right? Used to, I could drink four beers and get this effect, but now it [00:18:00] takes me six beers to get that same effect. It's pretty easy to see.

I need more of it, or I need to use it more frequently, right? That's clear and easy. To look at, but these things also apply to any kind of behavioral addiction too. Like with pornography, the way that you see tolerance happening is people tend to go to more and more what I would call like.

Out there like extreme, more and more extreme types of pornography that they're looking at, which would be similar to someone going from drinking beer to drinking liquor to drinking, whatever it is. ~And eventually they're drinking straight vodka 'cause it's clear and they think people can't smell it.~

And anyway, that's a whole nother talk, but it's like an escalation. To getting, like maybe if you're using cocaine and then you just move to using crack cocaine or, and sometimes with the substances, it's like you go to using it one way, like opiates. Maybe you're swallowing a pill, but now all of a sudden you're snorting it or you're smoking it, or you're injecting it.

~That's, that also counts as tolerance. ~It's like [00:19:00] I'm changing the way I'm using it to get it in my system faster. I'm using more like intense versions of it. And so it can be the same thing with. Gaming, pornography, you can absolutely apply this to sexual behaviors, right? You get more and more extreme.

You need it more frequently. You can see that when it comes to sex addiction. ~Going back to that hazardous situations, you can see where these behavioral addictions follow pretty cleanly. ~These same lines that substance addictions follow, the amount just starts creeping up on you, right? Whether it's the behavior, whether it's the substance, it feels like, remember when 30 minutes of social media might felt like a lot and now it's two hours go by and it barely registers.

~The stimulation threshold just keeps going up. ~Moving on to number 11. ~Now I need more than two 10 and one 11, right? ~Physical or emotional symptoms, stop or start. If you stop doing it. This is the withdrawal category. ~This is the one that I mentioned before when I was listening to Lisa's podcast that the sex addiction person was talking about, that you don't have withdrawal symptoms now.~

Again, with substances, just easier to cleanly see, right? If you stop drinking, you're gonna be shaking, sweating, you may be vomiting. Heck with alcohol, you [00:20:00] could be having hallucinations with opiates, you have like restless leg, you have pain, you have flu-like symptoms. Those are easier to imagine because we know with chemical addictions you have this certain set of physical withdrawal symptoms, but you.

Can definitely have those with non substance addictions as well, right? 'cause you're gonna notice that you can't sleep, that you're anxious, that you're irritable. That you're edgy, right? That you don't want to eat. And you may not even be counting those in the category of physical withdrawal symptoms. But you just ask yourself to this, if I'm not doing it, do I feel really terrible?

Because. Depending on what like substance you're doing, that's gonna determine what those withdrawal symptoms are. So the withdrawal from alcohol is different from the withdrawal from opiates, which is different than the withdrawal from marijuana. But the point is like your body is so used to doing it, it literally doesn't function properly physically when you don't have that [00:21:00] anymore.

And if you ask anyone who considers themself, like a gambling addict or a pornography addict, they'll tell you that there is a level of withdrawal. Now, maybe they don't need to go to medical detox, they don't need to necessarily check into detox facility. But a lot of times we can underestimate or, minimize these other withdrawal symptoms.

We, maybe we don't even. Recognize them as withdrawal symptoms, but that irritability, edginess, anxiety, restlessness, can't sleep, can't eat. All of those things count. And it's like when you're not doing it, you feel these things start to come on. ~Now those are the 11. Those there 11, right? ~What does your score mean?

So now that you've heard 'em all, I want you to count in your head. How many of them that do you have? Or if you're watching this 'cause you're concerned about someone, how many do you feel like your loved one has? But little, public announcement here, right? If you are watching this 'cause you're concerned about someone else, here's what I don't want you to do.

I don't want you to call them up and say, Hey, I heard the 11 criteria [00:22:00] and you have all 11 of 'em, you have 10 of 'em, you have eight of 'em, whatever it is. It's not gonna be helpful for you to confront someone that way. ~And if you're not new to this channel, then you already know that if you're here watching 'cause you're concerned about someone else.~

There are a ton of videos on this channel that talk about how to help someone who has an addiction. And if you check out those videos, you'll know that I would not ever advise you to use like a video to be directly confronted with people. ~So if you have it in your head like, oh, I'm gonna send this video over my son 'cause he's got a gaming problem, he's gonna, then he's gonna listen to Amber and name these off and then he's gonna know he has it.~

It's not what's gonna happen. There's just gonna get defensive. ~It's gonna put you in the bag, I roll and ~it's gonna make things worse. So don't do that. Okay? Unless they're asking you, unless they say, I think I have a problem. What do you think? And the window's open for it. Here the video, but don't use my videos as a weapon.

'cause it's just gonna backfire ~my little public service announcement. I have to throw that in there every now and then when I know I'm talking about something and I can just imagine somebody being like, oh, I'm gonna send this over to so and 'cause now they're gonna hear all this and they're gonna get it right.~

~I told you how to score this at the beginning, but let's go over it again. If you have two, ~if you have two or three of these, that's a mild. Addictive disorder. If you have four or five, it's a moderate addictive. If you have six or more, that's a severe problem. You really only need have half of these to be qualified as having a severe problem.

And that's why I said, when I watched that interview with the sexologist and she [00:23:00] was saying sex can't be an addiction 'cause you don't have withdrawal number one. I'm really not, I'm not sold on the idea that you don't have any withdrawal. ~That's a whole, we could probably do a whole like video on that one day, ~but even if that's the case, even if we say, okay, you don't have a draw, that's really just one of the 11 criteria and you don't need all 11 of 'em to have an addiction.

So hopefully this helps you frame in your mind a little bit better bad habit versus addiction. ~The thing I want you to understand, ~this isn't about labeling someone. This isn't about calling your loved one an addict or telling your kid that they're broken. It's about understanding what's actually happening in your brain so you can respond to it correctly.

'cause the thing is, when you treat a bad habit like it's an addiction, you'll make it worse. Let's say you have a bad habit, but it really isn't an addiction, but you're tallying yourself in. It's an addiction. ~It. ~It makes you feel like you can't solve the problem, right? When you have an addiction, but you're minimizing it and you won't admit this addiction, you're calling it a bad habit or something like that, then you're making it worse because you're not [00:24:00] recognizing it or dealing with it.

So it is important to figure out exactly what am I dealing with, right? Because that's gonna determine what do you need to do about it. You don't wanna come in too hard on these things because it's just gonna create shame and defensiveness. It's gonna push you into addictive behavior more or possibly your loved one.

But if you underestimate it and you think a conversation or a willpower should fix it, and then it doesn't, you get more frustrated and feel even more shame, and that just continues the cycle. So knowing the difference changes everything about how you respond to the problem. ~Having a correct label can be helpful in a lot of ways.~

What does this mean for family? If you're watching this because someone you love is struggling, whether it's drinking, gaming, their phone, whatever it is, ~I want you to hear this, right? ~I want you to understand the reason that your conversations haven't worked. It's probably not because what you said was wrong.

~It's probably more because. ~You didn't know what [00:25:00] you're actually dealing with, or you don't understand that when you confront it that way, you're really just causing someone to defend their actions to actually keeps people stuck in denial even more. Speaking of that, we have every month or two we have something called the denial breakthrough Challenge.

So if you feel like. Your loved one has an addiction, but they're still functioning and you can't get them to see it's a problem. The denial breakthrough challenge is definitely for you because we talk about how do you address these issues, what do you say and what do you not say To get someone to see that it's a problem, which I think is particularly important, and it's different when someone is still really functional.

If someone is. Going to work and they're paying their bills, or they're a highly successful athlete, or something like that, and you're trying to tell them to have a problem directly. They're just gonna look at you like you're crazy if you have a loved one in that situation and you wanna know what to do without starting an argument, getting in a fight, making it worse.

Then check out [00:26:00] our denial breakthrough challenge. I set the dates for the next one. It depends on when you're watching this, but ~the next one, if you're watching this in real time, ~the next one is coming up in June. June 1st to the fourth. ~I think if you're watching this at some later date and maybe it's way past that time, that's okay.~

~We have it every so many weeks. ~Take the description, you'll get the link, and it'll tell you when the next one is, and you can get your spot, you can hold your spot for that. ~Alright. It's a lot of information I've given you. ~Don't forget you have the link in the description to the quiz. If you want to take the quiz and find out exactly where you're at, that can be really helpful.

It's probably hard to remember all the 11 that I just went through, but it'll walk you through the situation and help you think through, how many of these do I have? Where am I at on this continuum? Alright, we're about to that time where we're gonna. Have some conversations with our people that are watching Live Breeze back there behind the scenes.

~So hopefully you've popped your questions, your comments, your concerns up in the chat, and let's have some conversations about it. Love to hear what you think, what your experience with these things are. Go ahead and get 'em up there. And if you're watching on the playback and you have questions, concerns, and you wanna be live, we are live every Thursday at one and we would love to have you here to join.~

All right, Bri, what do we got? We got some good questions right there. All right. Here's our first one. Here we go. Question is it possible for me to be addicted to keeping up with my husband, keeping up with my husband, drinking? How much he's drinking? Is he hiding it? [00:27:00] And how much has he had while he drank today?

~We say all the time, you've probably heard me say it on this channel, if you've been around for a while, ~you can absolutely be addicted to your loved one's addictions. Because what happens is you get obsessed with figuring out what the problem is. ~And if you were listening to those criteria, and you could probably relate to someone, right?~

~You could probably count, yeah, I got some of those, right? ~It's get, maybe it's interfering any relationship, right? It's making them mad, or maybe it's making other people in the family mad. Are you spending a lot of time in it? Are you like literally driving down the road and you're putting yourself at risk 'cause you're stopping and checking the bank account to see if they spent money on alcohol or whatever it is.

So is it officially diagnosable? No. But if you ask anyone in the addiction field, is that a thing? I think you're gonna hear yes. 'cause I would say, yeah, that's the thing. You can be addicted to that and it can cause you just as much distress in life problems as having a chemical addiction has. Official answer is no.

Unofficial answer for Amber is for sure. Yes. ~I bet there's some people on here. Raise your hand if you feel like that's a yes for you. If you can relate to being addicted to chasing down someone else's addiction. What else are we at, Brie? ~Next question is it completely off the table to ask your loved one how things are going in sobriety?

I [00:28:00] believe the answer is not at all, but can I ask, ~this is a good question and I'm glad that you're asking me this question. 'cause ~this can be delicate, right? I think it depends on your relationship with that loved one. And is this a conversation that you can have or do you know that if you bring it up, it's gonna.

Blow up on you. The other thing is you don't really even need to ask the question if, especially if you live with this person, right? Just like you can look at what's going on with someone and their behaviors and their unmanageability, and just all those cues that you probably know how it's going because you said, even in this question, you said, I believe the answer's not at all, but can I ask?

And one of the kind of guidelines or rules that I have is, or recommendations, I guess not a rule, but don't ask a question that you know the answer to someone who has an addiction. 'cause you're just gonna get lied to and then you're gonna get angry, right? If you really ~wanna bring it up, which I want you to think about whether it's gonna be helpful or not.~

~But if you ~wanna bring it up, just say it seems like, fill in the blank. It seems like maybe this is happening or whatever. And make a [00:29:00] statement as opposed to a question. 'cause almost immediately people just have a. Like a self-protection reflex to lie, and that's just gonna make you mad or like it's gonna make you even more mad when you get lied to.

~What else we got? Brie? All right, here's one. ~Any advice for helping my son's dad understand addiction without making it seem like I think my son is innocent? Let me think about that for a second. 'cause usually I get asked this question, like when there's two parents, it's usually the parent that's asking the question is I know it's an addiction, but my partner or my ex-partner, they just won't get on board.

They're in denial. They think it's not an addiction, but the way you're asking this question makes me think that you feel like it's not an addiction. Any advice for helping my son's dad understand addiction without making it seem like I think my son is innocent

~here. ~Here's the way I advise when there's. Other family members involved, which is usually the case, and maybe one person's been doing a lot of studying and understanding about it, but other people in the family are either making it [00:30:00] worse by whatever it is that they're doing, and you really want them to understand.

What I would do is I would approach it. The same way I tell you to approach a person with an addiction that's in denial. I would use those same strategies towards the family member. ~So you can go back and look at my videos and my advice on recommendations on how do you deal with someone in denial.~

~'cause it's the same, right? ~If it's a family member and they're in denial, maybe they. Whichever way that denial is. They think it's a problem, it's not, or whatever that is. You wanna approach them in those same denial techniques because deny these techniques work no matter what the issue is, whether it's substance addiction or the family making it worse or whatever.

If you come at them directly, they're gonna get defensive and it's not gonna go well. The same as if you're dealing with an addict or an alcoholic. ~What else do we got, Brie? All right. ~Question. Can you speak to food addiction? It's hard when you need to eat to live. I totally agree with you here, Kaylin.

Some of the addictions, like for example, like own addiction, sex addiction, food addiction, these are things that we, in our minds, we put it in that addiction category. But the answer is [00:31:00] not so simple because when it comes to like substances, typically we think the answer is just to quit. Which you can't quit with food now, ~officially, like I said before like food addiction isn't in the.~

The DSM is in the clinical manual. There are eating disorders in there, but there's nothing in there like that. They're calling food addiction. They have anorexia, bulimia, those kind of things, but not something called food addiction. But if you can go through those criteria and you feel like, yeah, I'm meeting a lot of those criteria, or my loved one is related to food, then I would in my mind think about it as it can be an addiction.

I think particularly sugary foods. I don't think you have the same. Spiky, like burst of the good chemicals and then the withdrawal symptoms like you do with sugar food. You don't get that with things like protein foods or even fat foods. You don't crave them the same way. Yeah, I think that's definitely a real thing and it is complicated on how you treat that.

'cause you need to eat to live. So I don't talk about food addiction on here a lot. I also don't talk about like nicotine and some of those because I just don't feel like it's my [00:32:00] wheelhouse. But what I would say is. I think mostly with food addiction, a lot of it revolves around sugar. And so when it's food addiction, it's about either staying away from or really managing those carbohydrates in the, in that sugar, because it's usually not all food.

Here's our next question. How difficult is it to get into coaching? My husband has had change talk and mentioned wanting to pursue coaching, but I haven't seen any action and I'm trying to wait patiently and not push. ~This is a really good question and you're really thinking about this in a smart, strategic, insightful way, right?~

And I can tell, something about what's talking about, 'cause you're using words here like change talk, right? I know. You're either learn from this channel or somewhere else and you're on it here. When your person mentions it, when you're having that sort of moment of clarity or that change talk is out that's a really good moment for you to hey, do you think this would help?

Or What kind of coach do you think would help? Or you can say, oh, I heard about this coaching program over here. I'll send you some information if you want. So I think it's okay to or even [00:33:00] you can even say, oh, like I know someone that's really good. If you want, I'll call 'em, find out if they have an appointment.

~You can even help. ~With the setting it up. As long as you're asking if that would be helpful to them, and then they're like, yeah, that's okay. Then go ahead and put some of those things in place. It's kinda like that little window of change, that change talk, it opens and it doesn't stay very long, right?

Like it can stay from a few hours to maybe a few days, and you need to, the person needs to take action in that window if they really want to solve this problem. So you can help with that, but just be not overly pushy about it, ~which I know that you already know. ~But it's okay to say, Hey, let me, send you some information on this coach or this video from this coach or something like that.

~Tell me, lemme know what you think if you like them. This might push into action a little bit further than just saying, yeah, I know I need to do that, or that would be helpful. It moves the ball a little bit further down the field.~

Next question is, when is it appropriate to push. You are addicted. Your alcoholic partner or loved one to take Anabuse. All his docs recommend it, but he's scared. I think all the other meds have failed. Okay, so a lot of you watching this, you may not know what an abuse is, not a doctor. I cannot make [00:34:00] recommendations on medicines, but I can tell you guys what anabuse is.

I've had a lot of clients on abuse and it's a medicine that you. Can't drink on. It's basically a chemical that doesn't interact with alcohol well, and if you take this medicine and you drink on it, it'll make you sick, right? So people take an abuse as a prevention methodology. So it's like they know if they're taking the medicine, they're not gonna drink on it.

~Now people can decide that they wanna drink and stop taking the medicine and come off over it, like so many days or whatever, and then decide to drink. That's what I call that a premeditated relapse. ~It's really great for helping with the impulsive relapse. Just if you're just having a bad day or you just have an opportunity or whatever in that moment and you know you're taking the medicine, you're not likely to drink on it 'cause it's unpleasant.

~It's like food poisoning. So that's what it is. ~For those of you who don't know when is it appropriate to push? It's only really appropriate to pushing and even then really gently when that window is open and they're talking about it. ~And I would do that in the same way. The advice I would give you on that would be the same advice as I just gave the other person with the coaching question, how you handle that is, is really difficult.~

And if they have concerns. It's important to listen to their concerns and take it seriously and say, yeah, you could be right. Let's figure out what this is. We don't wanna jump into something and then maybe collect some information if they're [00:35:00] open to seeing it and send it to 'em if they're open to it.

But it could be they're just saying, I don't wanna take this medicine. I'm scared of a side effect when they really don't wanna take it 'cause they wanna keep drinking. It's hard to know because some people, they really are like, I don't know about that. What if I accidentally, eat a salad dressing that has alcohol in it or something like that.

And I have a bad reaction. I've not really seen that happen. I can tell you that the ~clients I've had that take interviews, like I said, I can't tell you what medicine take or not take. I can tell you that clients I've had, ~like occasionally you might, ~I don't know, ~I don't know, get something in your system, has a little alcohol mouthwash, I don't know, tequila on chicken wings.

~So I don't know. ~And but you're not really gonna. Get yourself super sick on just that. 'cause you get what I've been told is you get like a warning. If you get something that has alcohol in it, it's gonna taste really funny. You start to feel hot, your face gets red, you get flushed.

It's almost like warning it, whatever this is, don't do it. That's what I've been told. I haven't had anyone use a shampoo with some something in it and have any kind of crazy reaction. But people do worry about that, especially if your person tends to be anxious and they tend to worry about things like that in general.

That could be totally legit. Sometimes they [00:36:00] just need to talk that through with people.

Next question. My 33-year-old son is addicted to alcohol and cocaine. He never has enough to pay his rent. His rent is eating into my retirement, but if I don't pay, he will be on the street. Should I pay or not? This is a good question, and we run into this all the time with people with addicted loved ones particularly.

Parents of like young adults who have addicted children, sons and daughters. The thing of it is like I'm never gonna tell someone to put their kid out on the street, but I'm just listening to you and you're telling me this is eating to my retirement, which sounds like I can't just keep doing this forever and ever.

And it's probably causing you to have a lot of resentment, right? Because you're dealing with their responsibilities, ~helping someone occasionally. That's your kid. Of course you're gonna do that. ~But when it's a constant problem, it's gonna ruin your relationship with him. You're gonna be resentful.

And the worst part about it is not that you're gonna be resentful with him, but he's gonna be resentful with you and you're [00:37:00] gonna end up in the bad guy role, even though you're the one paying the freaking rent. ~That's the worst part about it. ~It's like, how am I the bad guy and they're mad at me and I'm the one paying it.

~But that's the thing that happens almost always in every situation. ~So I think at some point you're gonna come to the line where you're just like, this just isn't. Feasible for me, ~even if you could afford it, ~and I say this all the time to people I don't care if you're a bazillionaire. At some point you're gonna feel resentful about doing that and sometimes it's about money because you just can't afford it.

And sometimes it's not about money, but either which way when you have conversation with someone about it and you've decided to either stop doing it or only do so much or whatever it is I would advise you not to say, I can't afford it. And the reason I do that is because let's say you go on vacation next month or you buy a purse, or you pay a lot for a haircut, then your person's gonna be like, I thought you couldn't afford it, and they're gonna be confronting you about spending your own money.

~And that's not what it's about, right? It's about, I don't think that. I'm responsible for that, or I feel like it's enabling you. You don't have to say those things. I'm just encouraging you not to say necessarily I can't afford it. ~The issue, if you do need to draw that boundary is just to say, Hey, not comfortable with it, or, I'm willing to do this much, but not this much, or whatever, to set that boundary.

But you keep paying it, and the problem isn't getting better. So eventually you're gonna run into needing to set a [00:38:00] boundary. I think if you really want some help on this, Campbell is the. Perfect one to help you with this. She's really good at these situations. This whole tapering my adult child off of the financial support.

~She's really good at it. ~So if you haven't ever talked to Campbell, I would suggest that you do you can figure out how to get like a consult with Campbell from our website, which is Family Recovery Academy online. I'll put that in the description for you. Everybody. That's all the time we have for today.

You guys ask excellent questions. Thank you for everyone who showed up live and we appreciate those of you who showed up here for the playback as well. And maybe we'll see you next time on the live videos every Thursday at one. There are resources for you in the description and we release videos every Tuesday morning.

I'll see you guys soon. Bye everybody.

When does "bad habit" become addiction?

Two Step