Warning Signs You Can’t Beat Addiction Without Help | Chris Doyle

I grew up in a recovery household, so I know firsthand the experience of what winds up happening inside the mind of a person who struggles with addiction.

What is your definition of addiction?

The fastest tour definition is can't stop. As soon as you recognize that addiction requires help and your loved one is not going to seek help on their own, you're like 95% of the way there. Now it's okay. Who can help us? If I'm really doing a good job in a successful intervention, I want at least one, if not two or three, or everybody on the intervention team to be engaging in their own form of recovery.

Hello, everyone, this is Joe Polish with Genius Recovery. And I've got my friend Chris Doyle, who I've got a bio of him that I'm actually going to read so you know who this guy is. And then, Chris, I'm going to ask you to say anything else that this does not cover. So. Christopher Doyle is the host of the why Intervention podcast and a seasoned interventionist specializing in helping families deal with addiction. Drawing from his own journey of long term recovery from alcoholism and addiction, Chris offers a profound understanding of the obstacles faced by both individuals struggling with substance use and their impacted loved ones. In 2023, Chris retired from the New York City Fire Department where he served as a firefighter and the head substance abuse counselor and interventionist, providing critical support to his fellow first responders and their families. Chris. Currently, Chris delivers personalized patient parent coaching and intervention services, having guided hundreds of individuals to achieve sobriety. His unique blend of professional expertise and personal experience in overcoming addiction ensures the families receive compassion and effective support tailored to their specific needs. So compassionate and effective support, which who doesn't want that? So, Chris, great to have you here. Great to be talking with you. And how this came about is we were talking the other day with a group of people and just about some of the stuff that you have put together and how do you get it out to more people in the world? Because most of the way that you do what you do is people hire you personally and you're there literally in the difficult, worst conditions for most people. But this is right up your alley, being a firefighter. This is another way of fighting fires, but just not the ones that have attached to them. But certainly. So what didn't I say about you that would be good for people to know before we get into sharing some, you know, some insights on how to deal with addiction for those that have it and their loved ones.

I don't think that we just mentioned my personal recovery Background. I have over 17 years sober now. I grew up in a recovery household. Both of my parents are sober. Well, my father passed away with 23 years sober. My mother is approaching 50 years of sobriety now. She'll be sober in the next couple of months. 50 years. And so, you know, growing up in that environment, I was exposed to, you know, all the picnics, all the parties, all of the. All of the friends, everybody was sober. And despite having that experience growing up, and despite knowing that there was a place that people go to get help for alcohol or drugs, it still did not discriminate. When I, you know, tested the waters and started drinking for the first time, I still then became an alcoholic. And so I know firsthand the experience of what winds up happening inside the mind of a person who struggles with addiction, because my mind immediately started trying to convince me that I didn't have a problem and I wasn't going to be like mom and dad. And so even knowing that there was a place to go to get help, it never occurred to me to do that. So despite how bad my, you know, my substance use became and how bad my addiction became, it never crossed my mind to ask anyone for help or to seek help or do anything about that. And so if it wasn't for my mother taking action, you know, when she did, to get me to go to my first recovery program, it's not like I would have gotten sober that day on my own. And, of course, that's what I'm all about is what's the external motivating factor that really ends up getting people sober initially. And. And we'll talk more about that as we go, I'm sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, what do you. What do you think about the thought of if you see sober parents, and I'm not going to be like that, but I'm going to test the water anyway.

How.

How much do you think of that played in from a rebellious state or just like, oh, well, they had trouble with it, but I'm not going to have trouble with it. So let me. Let me see, because I. That's always been an interesting thing about the human psyche, about the psychology of how do people, even when they're surrounded by maybe, I don't know if you would call it good role models or whatever, there's a certain sort of rebellion. There's a certain. I want to separate myself from the parents that. That causes people to go down a particular path because we, you know, both of us meet people that don't seem to have A lot of trauma in their lives, at least physical or sexual, and they still have addictions. And there's other people that I believe addiction is a response to trauma. And, you know, you know, a lot of my views, I. I don't think it's the drugs that are the problem. I think it's the drugs or the behavior of the solution. The question is, what's causing them to use that in the first place? So, anyway, to not go down a total tangent, how do you think that that plays in for not only yourself, but other people? Because I, you know, I'm. I'm. I'm the only reason. I. I'll just say this to make sure I'm framing the question properly. I remember a friend that I had where her parents were, you know, really ministers. Her father ran a church, and she was one of the most rebellious sort of individuals. And it was because of how she was raised in this constant behave yourself sort of environment. And there was a part of her that just said, screw this. I don't want to behave. It's.

So, yeah, I mean, in my personal experience, I grew up in Rockaway Beach, New York, which is a big Irish Catholic drinking town. And so I certainly fit right in as far as the demographic goes because of both of my parents being in sobriety. The only leg up I had there was that I did have some kind of healthy fear about what might happen if I were to drink or use drugs. And so I actually delayed that, you know, comparatively to my peers, you know, by two or three years. And I didn't start drinking until I was 15. Most of my, you know, friends started when they were 12, 13. And so on the front end, there was a little bit more respect. To your point, though, as soon as I started drinking, that's when the thinking came in of, I'm not going to be like my parents. I don't have a problem. That's essentially the main delusion of somebody who's struggling with an addiction. The initial delusion is, this is not a problem. I don't have a problem. I'm going to make this work. I'm going to figure this out. You know, like, this is great, but I just need to figure it. Figure out how I'm going to, you know, manage this, but we're in good shape. And then that delusion progresses to, I don't need any help. And that can be present with someone, you know, all the way up until they die. They're. They're believing I don't need any help because I don't have a problem. Yeah, that's, that's the real delusion that, that, that needs to be challenged and addressed. You know, when, when we're talking about how do you help somebody with addiction?

Well, I guess I'll go to, because I've asked this question many times. What, what is your definition of a, of addiction versus someone that's just a heavy drinker and, but they're not really an addict or they, you know, maybe have binging periods of, of life, maybe on a frequent basis, but they have not yet their life is not out of control because there's, this is confusing, especially for many people that often listen to these things that seek it out. They're, they're functional addicts, people that are so down and out there or so struggling or oftentimes not the ones that are hearing this. And most people that would hear this conversation are frankly, family members or people that would be trying to figure out how to help one of their kids or one of their loved ones that's struggling with addiction. So how would you define it?

The fastest two word definition is can't stop. And of course, every definition that you're going to find from anybody that you've interviewed, and if you do a Google search and look at all the different organizations and their definition, they're going to have some sentence fragment that relates to continued use despite negative consequences. So the difference between dependence and addiction is that person who might be dependent and might be relying on it in troubled times or whatever it may be, they never lose the ability to decide to stop if they want to. So their life may be getting out of control and they might have some issues that, you know, like they really shouldn't be drinking or they shouldn't be using drugs. But if somebody were to come to them and they were prompted in some way to have a conversation and say, like, you know, like, we're worried about you. We're concerned they'll take that seriously. You know, like someone who doesn't have an addiction. The addicted person is going to be in denial. That's where the fight's going to come, you know, and I use the term fight kind of loosely. The, the disagreement you're going to be faced with the denial and the delusion of, I don't have a problem and I don't need any help, I'm fine, I got this under control, I can handle it, I can stop whenever I want, this is not a big deal. And however that conversation is going to go, but I think that can't stop is the Easiest definition to use because it's not just about what's happening when the person is under the influence. It's also what's happening when they're not. So, you know, they're hungover on Sunday morning, and when they come to, they say to themselves, I'm never going to do this ever again. Like, I can't live this way. And we're talking about someone now, by definition, let's just say we're talking about someone who's addicted. Okay. And this addicted person is waking up on a regular basis all by themselves, saying, I can't live like this anymore. I don't want to do this anymore. I have to stop.

That's it.

I'm done. And then by Thursday or Tuesday or sometimes later that day, they are drinking or using drugs again. So the can't stop feature is not only when the person is using the substances, it's also when they're not, despite the fact that they're promising themselves, I'm not going to do this anymore. There they are doing it again. And that feature is why it kind of flies in the face of some of the common misconceptions of they have to want it, they have to be ready, they have to hit bottom. What I'm saying is that Keith Cunningham has a quote in his book where the conventional wisdom rarely passes the sniff test on common sense.

Yeah.

And so most people's experience of the conclusions they arrive at is you can't help someone with an addiction until they want it, until they're ready, until they hit bottom. But they are regularly at the bottom. They are regularly having frequent moments of clarity all on their own, where they're saying, I don't want to live this way anymore. But they can't stop, by definition. And so getting that person sober is not going to be something that they're going to initiate on their own because of the very nature of addiction itself.

Yeah, yeah, it's a very good point. I also want to say things too, because the. The addicts, I think in active addiction, you lie, you cheat, you steal, oftentimes a lot. And sometimes you knowingly do it. Other times it's just a protective mechanism, and they're so lost in it, they don't even know. And I think one thing that's very confusing is people like, well, you must want this. You must want this. And you'll oftentimes be like, in their defending state, well, yeah, I do want it. I want, you know, I want to. And I am yet to meet a true addict. That is Literally living the consequences of pain and suffering that really wants to be there. Now. They'll often say just in a lost state that, you know, screw you. Yes, I want to do that. And convince even the person trying to help them that they don't give a. But most of them give a shit. They just don't know what to do. They're just so consumed by the can't stop that you're just going to hear the most crazy things come out of their mouth. And the people that love them the most often are the ones that are dealing with the, you know, the shrapnel because they're so close to them in the. In the proximity. So it's. It's a lot easier for me to help other people with their addiction problems than it was for me to help me with my own right or to help. It goes back to even what, you know, my. My real business of teaching people, you know, how to build and run businesses and marketing and stuff. It's. It's a lot easier to deal with someone else's marketing problem than deal with your own. And. And that applies, I think, to almost anything, right? That's why you got a lot of unhealthy doctors that could dispense good health advice, but they have a hard time actually taking it. So the reason I. I bring this up is I want to let a lot of the people that are listening know that if you weren't so close to, say, if it was your son or your daughter that's struggling with addiction, and you're in there saying things to you that you can't even believe are coming out of their mouth, or they're not able to see what you see, and you love them and care about them, and you see someone in front of you just what you perceive as destroying their life as a result of their addiction. And I believe addiction is just the symptom of a deeper pain. Like my friend Gabor Mate says, the question's not why the addiction, but why the pain? You know, why do they have this pain? Why do they have this loneliness or this emptiness that they're looking for some way to scratch this itch? Why does it exist? And that is why getting outside help when you seek it out is so damn important. Like, because I look, I know this from firsthand experience of people struggling with addiction that I've referred that you help them, and you have. Because you're not the father, you're not the, you know, the mother, you're not the brother. You're, you know, you're not even someone that may even know this person, but you are a person that can come in with your own experience and your own knowledge and things like that. So for you, how much of your recovery was kicking and screaming and everything in your life in the beginning till you got to the. To the state where you're at? Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

Well, that's a great question, Joe. And it flies in the face of what we're talking about here with what parents are dealing with and why I'm so passionate about what I do is my mother. After I had a particularly bad night, I came home on a Sunday morning feeling hungover, feeling embarrassed about whatever it was that happened. I come walking in the door and my mother Again, Sunday morning, 11:00am, I come walking in. My mother very easily could have said, where the F were you? It could have been an angry conversation. It could have been a frantic, worried conversation. None of those things happened. What my mother said in that moment, very simply, was, would you like to go to a meeting with me? And I said, okay. My mother didn't have any idea what happened the night before. She didn't bother to have a conversation with me, as you just described. So my advice to parents is stop trying to have a reasonable conversation with an irrational person. Right. If you're talking about their substance use, they cannot help but. But to defend it. They cannot help but to lie about it. They are incapable of connecting the dots between the circumstances of their life and their substance use. I had a guy once tell me that his DWI arrest had nothing to do with the fact that he was drinking. Now, when you think about that is so extreme a rationalization that I almost wanted to be like, okay, hold on one second, let me just go get my. Let me get a coffee, I'll come back. And I want to hear this one, because this is going to be incredible you've arrived at this conclusion. But of course, I was counseling and I just said, tell me more about that. And then he started to just reveal all these details as to why he really believed that this dwi, it was the cop's fault. It was entrapment. It was 1:30 in the morning. I wasn't even that bad. I hardly even drank that much. I only blew a.0908 is the limit. Right. I've had far worse nights driving home. He's admitting to driving drunk in other instances where he hasn't been arrested, where it's been worse. But he's trying to convince me, with all the rationalization he possibly has, that he does not have a problem and he does not need help and he doesn't have to go to rehab, he doesn't need to be here, he doesn't have to be sitting across from me. This is all a big overreaction. If that cop didn't have it out for me. All of that is the thinking that is typical of someone who is struggling with addiction. So as a parent or a family member, you might be listening to that and thinking like, oh my God, like, that's so extreme. That's the thinking that's taking root in your child right now. If they have it, if they're 17 years old. I got sober at 17 years old the first time and I was a full blown addict and alcoholic. That doesn't have anything to do with the quantity. It doesn't have anything to do with the, with, with, you know, some kind of, you know, like that. I had dozens and dozens of consequences. It just has to do with the reaction of, of alcohol and the substances that I was addicted to on my body and what happens in my brain. And that's what's going on in the brain. And so once you identify that, you go, okay, my kid has an addiction, so I'm not going to have direct conversations where I'm trying to reason with him and get him to see it, because that's not going to be effective. What you want to focus on is what's the practical, tangible step you can get them to take when you can see that they're in pain, when they might be having a moment of clarity and they might be saying, you know what, I don't want to do this anymore. Because again, that thought is happening frequently. And if you can learn how to identify that, then it's as simple as presenting an opportunity for recovery. Expecting that someone is going to stop using or stop drinking and be sober, get sober, stay sober forever without them actually getting help and being connected to a helpful resource. That's irrational for us as a society and as families to have that expectation. If we understand that this person is dealing with addiction, which means they're not going to stop, it's continued use despite negative consequences. So waiting for some big major Consequence to happen in the hopes that that's going to wake them up and they're going to realize, oh my God, I have a problem, I'm going to stop now. That's kind of happening all the time, but it doesn't lead to them stopping. They drink and they do drugs again. So they have to be connected to the helpful resource. And that's what an intervention is all about.

Yeah, I mean one of the things that you've told me too is oftentimes if I just give someone, someone's number in your, your particular case for an intervention or for someone that is a therapist, sometimes they'll call a therapist, but rarely do they want to call an interventionist unless you put them together. Even when someone is seeking out like a parent or a family member or a husband or a wife, it's like you got to talk to this person. And even then, you know what's funny for a lot of people you need to realize is that you think the addict is being resistant. Oftentimes the people that are trying to help it, they're, they're resistant as heck too. And on one hand it's, you know, I have a friend that wrote a, a book called Come Here Go Away, Ralph Earl. And then Marilyn Murray, another friend of mine, she's an 87 year old therapist who is wrote Prisoner of Another War and then the Murray Method, which is all about trauma. And to go back to the line, come here, go away, you know, now that's really spoken in the context of sex addiction, love addiction where want someone to come here but you're also pushing them away. And the come here go away behavior for help is just notorious for people that struggle with addiction. So how does someone, how would you recommend? Because you explained it. But I want to go a little deeper with this because I think it's really good. How do they need to show up? How could they show up? What are some. And I know there's no perfect way because their, their decisions, I mean this is a very complex sort of issue. So to enroll or invite someone into getting help that has all kinds of barriers to resistance and all kinds of rationalizations. And like you mentioned, you know, try to talk rationally to an irrational person is very difficult. And so your mom, your, your, you, you obviously didn't feel threatened or attacked or accosted or you know, being accused of anything when you walked in and your mother said would you like to go to a meeting? So what state did your, was your mother in that allowed her to do that? Because you Know that that is a place of demonstrating her own recovery. And I think it's really important for people to hear in peace apart, what is going on there.

Yeah, I mean a lot of. So I just, I just spent the last couple of months writing a book and so I have about 130 pages or so that's discussing what, it's an answer to that question. So what were the critical things that were different about my mother? Let's say, well, number one, she's not in denial about the fact that her little boy could maybe have alcoholism. That it's not something that she's going to deny. It's like if the house is on fire, you're able to say that's a fire. No one is going to spend any time denying that that's a fire. And you're going to call for help as soon as you notice it. Even if you just see signs of smoke, you're not going to say, oh, let's see if it gets worse before we call for help. You know, it's only a little bit of fire. It's not, it hasn't really extended to the, to the upper floors yet. I mean, you know, let's wait until it's a five alarm blaze before we call someone. So my mother had the advantage of never blaming herself for the possibility of me having alcoholism and addiction. She wasn't going to be guilty about it because she understands it from personal experience and she knows it's a possibility. It's not something that she's afraid of. If the conventional wisdom, back to what we said before, that doesn't really pass the sniff test of common sense. If you are consistently told that there's nothing that you can do to help someone who has an addiction and you're a parent, I cannot arrive at the conclusion that my son or my daughter has an addiction because that would mean saying there's nothing I can do to help. And so if you are of the belief that there's nothing you can do to help, then you just can't. You, you can't allow yourself to think that this is addiction, so it must be something else. And that's where all of the, and so we think it's anxiety, it's social anxiety, it's depression, it might be bipolar disorder, it's ADHD related, it's, it's ptsd. Maybe they do have trauma and maybe they're, you know, all of these various different things are on the list of possibilities of what's wrong. The starting point here is just put addiction on the list as a possibility, you have to be willing to also have addiction be a consideration. Okay. And all. All that means is, is it's. It's like a peanut allergy. Like, some kids just have it. It's not about how they were raised. You would never say, like, oh, no, my kid's too smart to have a peanut allergy. He knows better. He's, you know, we raised him right. You would never say that. It's just a reaction to a substance that, in like, amounts, doesn't affect other people. Right? So other people can have a handful of peanuts. No big deal. Other people can have three beers. No big deal. For someone who's an alcoholic, they have three beers. And the reaction, the physical reaction is, I need more beer now. What winds up happening after that is irrelevant. It's just about the fact that there's a reaction. And the reaction has nothing to do with your parenting. The reaction has nothing to do with anything that you did or didn't do. And my mother understood that fundamentally, so she wasn't afraid of it. And the other key thing is that my mother had the belief that recovery is possible. It was never hopeless. She knows that there's a place to go. She knows that there's something that people can do if they do have this problem. It worked for her. It's worked for countless people that she knows from her personal experience. And so she knows that there's a solution for this and that there's a place that she can bring me to. And I think that that's probably the reason why I spend probably so much time on this. And, well, explaining this piece of it. As an interventionist, one of the key things, one of the key strengths is that as soon as you start telling me some of the details about what's going on with your addicted loved ones, I start cycling through the rolodex in my brain of what potential recovery programs are going to be right for that person. So I think about 30% of it is that I know where to bring them.

Right?

So as a parent, the first step, then I have to admit that this is addiction. I got to be okay with it, acknowledge it, accept it. That means that they can't stop and that they're not going to get help on their own. Just let go of the idea that they're going to seek help on their own. Only 10% of people with addictions ever get help for it. 90% of people who struggle with addictions never get help. And that's because they don't perceive the need for it. And that's backed up by the National Home Survey on Drug Use and Health. It's a survey that's been going on for over 50 years. Started in 1971, the last one in 2022. 94.7% of people who meet the criteria for a substance use disorder do not perceive the need for help. That's what you're up against. So if you're thinking, well, let's just sit, let's sit back and wait for him, we can't take it upon us. Who are we to step in to say something about what this person should be doing? They have something that's going on in their brain that's convincing them that this is not a problem, and this is a problem that can kill them. And that's why we have more people dying today than ever before. And that's why we have the same percentage of people getting help for it. And really, the ones who get help are the ones who were intervened on. Now, sometimes those interventions, we're not talking about family, although that's often the case, but they can be unpleasant. It could be jail systems, it could be overdoses. You're in the hospital, all sorts of terrible things can happen that wind up being the external factor without which that person would not have gotten sober the day that they did. But it's not about that person initiating the process on their own. It's not about them being ready. It's almost always like hide and seek. Ready or not, here it comes. Always that that person just winds up in treatment despite the fact that they don't want it. They're not necessarily ready. They haven't necessarily hit bottom because last night might not even been that bad a night. I just happened to get arrested, and the judge says, would you like to go to jail? Would you like to go to treatment? I'll go to treatment, your honor. That's how people get started. And oftentimes that's how people get started from the family perspective as well. When a wife or a mom or a dad, they just had enough. That's it. We can't have the car anymore. We can't do this. We can't. Like, I'm not going to be able to live this way. You can't be around the kids, drunk, whatever it might be, that ends up being this precipitating factor that if it wasn't for that, that person doesn't get sober that day. And so really, it's about the opportunity for recovery that's being presented while at the same time that person is facing a moment of clarity where they're being kind of confronted with the reality of the situation in a way that they're not able and capable to do on their own.

Yeah, no, that's very good. That's very good. The term substance use disorder, do you know the origin of when that first started being used? I mean, and I'd like to get your perspective on the use of that term versus addiction, because, you know, I. I work in the world of not just substance substances, but also behaviors and process addictions, which, you know, consist of workaholism and sex addiction and gambling and gaming and food and codependency and all of the other elements of things that they can manifest themselves into. Can't stop, right?

Yes. Substance use disorder, I believe, first came into effect with the DSM 4, the diagnostic statistics manual, the fourth version. And they looked for 11 criteria. And what they did was instead of saying, it's kind of like an either or pass fail, you're an addict or you're not kind of thing, it became, let's take a look at substance use disorder in a way of mild, moderate, or severe. So if you had two or three of these criteria, mild, four or five, moderate, more than that, severe, I think that it's, you know, kind of like a helpful perspective shift. But at the same time, it does miss a bit of, you know, it misses the can't stop feature of what's happening when the person is not on substances. And of course, the DSM is used for insurance purposes. It's billing codes. Right. And so it becomes, like, doctrine for what our treatment model looks like, what they're. What they're hoping to see is if we don't meet these criteria in a year's time. Great. And it's not necessarily really addressing the. The addictive kind of idea. Right. There's. You can make a. An argument, if you felt like it, where substance use disorder does not necessarily translate to what most people's, you know, some people's definition of what addiction really looks like. But it's still. It's helpful in the sense of just knowing that, you know, people with it still, the people with it don't believe they have it.

Yeah, right. So the term dry drunk, I'd love to get your perspective on that because. And it doesn't just apply to drinking. I know a lot of, you know, to use that term, dry drunk. There's a lot of people out there. I. I've always liked stage two Recovery by Ernie Larson, written years ago, where stage, you Know, one, recoveries, get sober, stop the drinking or the drugs. Stage two is dealing with the underlying issues that cause you to drink or drug in the first place, which is mostly the ability to have relationships with others and relationships with yourself and to be, you know, in the world and feel okay in the world and not littered with shame and guilt and craving and white knuckling and challenges and anger and all of the other things that come with it. So there's a lot of people that are, quote, unquote sober, but I would not say their lives are working all that well. And there's a lot of people that quit drinking, but they, you know, there's all kinds of other behaviors that, that, that show up that weren't there when they were drinking because they replaced the drinking with something else. And there is this idea of I got to replace my addiction with whatever. And people will try to come up with positive addictions, which I've never really liked associating the word addiction with anything in a positive way. Although I cannot tell you, not a day goes by where I don't have someone going, yeah, I'm addicted to my taking care of my children. I'm addicted to exercise in a good way. I'm addicted to, you know, positive thinking. And I'm like, okay, I kind of know what you're kind of saying. But, you know, I view, I view addiction to suffering. So I don't, I don't really buy the whole positive suffering aspect is the way my brain looks at it. So I want to get your views on that. Dry drunks, people that are sober, they're not consuming the substances, but they, they certainly still have a very difficult, you know, life.

Yeah. So I mean, by definition, right, like, there's a difference between sobriety and abstinence. And so dry drunk. I've known a lot of them and I've been one of them at various different times. And, you know, I think that if I were, if I were going to personalize the question from the ages of, from 17 to 23, I was mostly sober. I had half a dozen relapses over that period of time. And of course, from my parents perspective and the people who love and care about me, they would have liked to have not been on that roller coaster, Right? They would have liked to. I got sober at 17 and I stayed sober, and that would have been the end of it. And of course that would have been lovely, but grand total, if you looked at. And so this is like on a long enough time horizon. And this kind of answers the question of, well, we tried that and it didn't work. We sent him to rehab and it didn't work. He went to meetings, he tried that. He says it doesn't work for him on a long enough time Horizon. Right. From 17 to 23, I was mostly sober. I mean, combined, total, all of the relapses were less than a year's worth of actual substance use. And while my addiction, the active use, it got much worse and much like it was severe and you know, like, I don't wish anybody to have to go through that. You know, like towards the end it was, you know, I had almost, you know, 42 straight days of drinking and, you know, drug use every single day. It certainly didn't start out that way. And so there's your progression of how bad it can get. But I needed every bit of the help that I received over that six year period. And, and so while I was a dry drunk for, you know, probably half that time because I was, I never faced the causes and conditions, I never faced the traumatic instances, I never faced the pain. And you know, all of those things that were kind of driving, driving the addictive behavior. Right. As you say, and as we say a lot, right. Like the addiction is not the problem, it's the indication that there is a problem. Right. The substance use is the solution for the problem. The problem needs to get addressed. And if somebody wants to convey that as. And so now I'm addicted to something else, well, does that address that core problem or not? Does going to the gym address the, you know, the core trauma maybe that was fueling your addiction or is that just something that makes it feel better? You know, what we want to do is really address it so that you're making the need for a solution obsolete. It's now you're just living a sober lifestyle because you appreciate it and you're not insane anymore. I'm not. I'm not crazy enough today to believe the thought that if I have one drink, it's just going to be one drink and I'll take the edge off if that thought comes to mind. That's as crazy as the thought of, you know, when I, when I look over the edge of a building and, you know, and a little voice in my head says jump. Well, I've never done it. I've never actually jumped anytime I've ever looked down from a height. But even if my brain says it, but there used to be a time I was so insane that if my brain said drink or get high, I would just do that instantaneously because the thought came to mind right now. Now I'm sober, and if the thought comes to mind, it's just like any old thought. It just comes and it goes. And that's what recovery is like for me because I've actually addressed those core issues, because I actually am in a deeper way, I've experiencing sobriety on a daily basis. Not just abstinent, not just dry, not just white knuckling it, but sober today.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joefreebook.com and you can get a copy there. I like it. Now, there's some really great insight into everything that you just shared. And I. One thing I want to highlight is that every step of the way, it was important. Let me say it in a way, because I hear this, as do you all the time. We tried this and it doesn't work. And they think it's like, was all wasted. And I could understand how people would feel very frustrated, very hopeless in situations, especially families that have exhausted all their financial means trying to get a family member sober, and they're still in the soup of chaos, right? And that's a very difficult thing to come to grips with. And I will say, speaking from my own experience, it took me years, the, the drugs and alcohol, although I was so bad that I easily could have died. I mean, I was a wreck. I was an absolute wreck when I was a drug addict. And when I got sober from doing drugs, I still drank for periods of time, you know, and even to this day, I've never considered myself, quote, unquote, an alcoholic. And I will say anytime I was acting out sexually, workaholism, anytime that alcohol was introduced into the mix, it made it a hell of a lot easier, you know, to, to do all the other stuff. And getting sober from the drugs and the alcohol was one thing, but then the sexual trauma from the abuse as a child was the really core addiction for me. And it was years. And it wasn't really until I had done so many meetings, so much therapy, inpatient treatment, plant medicines, where the, the, the grip, where the periods of time just started getting longer and longer and longer, and the white knuckling that pretty much was most of my early adult life. Later, all the way up into my mid-40s, because I'm 56 years old now, where it just really had a grip on me. And there would be moments and times and months at a time, but it would just something would come back. And then finally, you know, I, I just started realizing, wow, I, I've gone a really long time and then a year goes by and then two years and seven years, you know, and now it's a different ball game, right. And all that being said, had I not done all this other stuff before, every little thing that I did was a domino, every little bit. And, and I'll give an example. So there was a period of time where I was going to meetings and I was going for sex addiction, Sex Addicts Anonymous. And they had a brown paper bag which was like a 12 step sort of newsletter. And, and I remember reading something in there that said the line, you're, you're not here in meetings, you're not here for where you've been, you're here for where you want to go. And I didn't get to where I wanted to go for years, you know, after I had read that. But I always kept that in my mind. So every time I was like, it's going to be a waste. I've been there, done that before. I would always remember, I'm not going to the therapist, I'm not doing this thing because of where I've been. I'm doing it for where I want to go. And I always wanted to go to a place that was not. I just wanted to go to a place of being connected. And that one line I held with me for years and it just. Now if I would have said it was a total waste, you know, I've, obviously I've acted out, I have challenges, then you know, I could have easily given up. And believe me, there's a million times that I wanted to give up. And there are times where I gave up in the moment, just said, okay, I succumbed to it. I can't control it, I can't stop. You know, just, you know, every addict understands what I'm saying here. For non addicts or people that don't realize they're an addict or they're trying to help an addict, all the things you're doing is not for where they've been, it's where you want them to go and where they ultimately want to go. And so the point is, do you believe that relapse is part of recovery? Because I've heard that term a lot and it can be very confusing because it could be Used as a, as a, is a cop, cop out. It could be used as an excuse for, you know what, I better drink. You know, Rick, relapse is part of recovery. And I also, it's very rare that I've ever met someone that just went to treatment, just went to a therapist, just went to a 12 step group and smooth sailing from there. You know, it's. So what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, relapse. Relapse isn't a part of recovery. Relapse is a part of addiction. So if that person doesn't have, isn't connected to the resources that they need for the potential for ongoing sobriety, then it's inevitable that we're going to go back to the only thing that works. I mean, as we're discussing, right? I mean, white knuckling leads to succumbing. The longer you white knuckle, if you, I'm just picturing a guy, you know, like you're doing a dead hang. They got like the carnival thing. Like if you can hang on this thing for two minutes, you'll get a thousand dollars. They know it's, you know, like it's going to be tough for you to just hang, hang in there. You know, eventually you're going to slip. It's just inevitable, right? But if you have the right support, if you have the right resources and it's just like, okay, when you let go, you're not going to fall. We got you. And so part of it is the right resources. And that's why so much of what I do also is just the pre selection. It's the pre research. It's not scrambling to get someone into a rehab when all of a sudden an opportunity presents itself. And now we're just going to Google the first 1,800number that comes up and send them anywhere we think that might work. You really want to make it as closely applicable to the individual specialized as possible to meet their needs. If they're going to be sitting in a place anyway, you might as well have them getting access to the resources that are going to be the most helpful and the most most effective. And if in that, in that period of time, you know what needs to be overcome with addiction, the way that I see it, right, is that, is that delusion. If someone's sitting in treatment, what you're really hoping happens is that before they leave they're going to have a better than a 51% grasp on reality. They're going to know like, oh, I was, I had a problem this whole time. I really did need help. I really need to do what these people are suggesting I do. I see it now. Right. That's why someone's in rehab. They're not going to rehab willingly, having come to that realization on their own that I have a problem that requires help. They're in rehab. When they have that realization, they're already there. So the key is what's keeping their butt in the seat.

Right.

Right. There are meetings right now and rehabs all across the country filled with people who do not want to be there. They don't think they need to be there. They are like, I don't need this. These people have a problem. I don't have a problem. But they're sitting there because of whatever external factors are at play. They know if I don't do this, then my job is on the line. Or if I don't do this. My wife was. She was serious last time. She said, I really do believe that she's not going to put up with this anymore. Those types of factors keep the person's butt in the seat. And then all of a sudden, there's a popping sound, and that's the head. That's the sound of their head popping out of their s. And they suddenly realize, like, oh, my God, I've had a problem this whole time. I've been drinking for the last 15 years, and I didn't think I had a problem. And now I can see it. And once that happens, now the recovery journey can begin. Because now you're motivated by this understanding of, oh, I really have this thing, and I do have to do this, otherwise I'm going to go back to doing the only thing I know works. So I better get involved with doing this stuff and start addressing all of those things that I was drinking and using drugs over in the first place. But if a person doesn't have that moment of epiphany, well, that's where the white knuckling comes in. Because they don't connect that I have to do this. My life is on the line here. They think I'm just doing this because I have to right now. But I'm going to just go back, you know, to drinking whenever I. Whenever I can or, you know, whatever the circumstances. That's kind of putting them there. They're not. They just haven't had that epiphany moment. They haven't had that. That small little awakening, that shift that says, I really do have this problem and I need to be here and I got to do this.

That is a great point. That's a great point. You know, something I've said to myself a lot when I was going through recovery. Even though I could intellectualize it, I had not yet had that epiphany. And then what I've said to a lot of people that I'm trying to encourage and help, that ask for help or that I'm asked to meet with is that anything you put ahead of your recovery, you're going to lose. You know, if you put your Instagram account ahead of your doing your recovery work, you know, one day you probably won't have your Instagram account. If you're going to put your relationship or your marriage ahead of your recovery, you're probably going to lose your marriage. If you're going to put even your career ahead of your recovery, you're going to lose your career, money, everything, you know, health, everything. I got to work out, I got to work out, but I'm going to go get hammered and do drugs after I'm done working. You know, you're going to lose your health. And so the, the epiphany moment. What's funny is it made me think of, because I have no idea where this person is at right now. But years ago, Dr. Drew, who wrote the forward to the book I did with Anna David and Hal Elrod, the Miracle Morning for addiction recovery. So Dr. Drew wrote the forward for our book and he was doing a celebrity rehab sort of on sex addiction. And there was one of the, the people there, her name was Jenny, she was a porn star. And she went on the show and agreed to go on the show thinking it would help build her porn career. And that was her full blown intention of getting media because it would give her exposure and she had no intention of stopping. And in the midst of doing the treatment, she literally, it occurred to her that, oh my God, I am a complete sex addict and I have a major problem. And not just a sex addict, but an addict. And she ended up, you know, getting clean. And she wrote a book called I Am Jenny I believe was the name of it. And again, this is several years ago, so I have no idea where she's at right now in her life or whatever. But it, a lot of people end up kicking and screaming. They have no intention of being there. They don't. They think they're judging everyone else, but they're not even looking at their own situation. But something does happen, you know, very similar to, you know, who my, my friend Andre Norman, who I've been working with now for six years, who's spent 14 years in maximum security prison. He was the number three gang leader in prison. He was there for armed robbery, and then once in prison, two counts of attempt attempted murder. And he was a, you know, just a tough guy, right? And he was, you know, just a badass. And he spent two years in solitary confinement. And he talks about how he had a spiritual awakening. And it just, it came to him finally, like, I am on the road to nowhere, that what the hell? My life is like, everything that I believe, just nothing about my life works here. I'm sitting in prison and, you know, I think I'm, you know, so he changed and now, you know, we've done incredible work together. That said, though, how does one get to that point? And, well, let me say this because that's, you know, that could be a week long conversation. You know, there's many ways someone gets to play. Let me, let me say it this way. You're an interventionist. That's what you do. Let's get into it from that perspective. Like, why do you do what you do? How did you get into that? What is. And I want to go into details of, like, how does one. When is the time to intervene? So there's the position of being an interventionist. But there is a, you know, there is a point where someone needs help, where a family member needs help. They don't know what to do. I mean, me and you have conversations every freaking day practically with people that reach out. They don't know what to do, and they're looking, you know, and a lot of times I don't know what to do. So I'll refer people to you. I'll refer people to different people in those situations. So let's, let's, let's take my question from the standpoint of intervening into being an interventionist.

Yeah. So, I mean, there's a lot of practical answers that we can go over here. I think of it as kind of like a natural progression. You know, this is kind of silly, but this is how I'm thinking about it in this moment right now. A professional intervention should really be like, the last resort, should be the last thing that you're doing. You know, like, there should have been a lot of things that you've exhausted before then. Most families wait an average of seven years before they begin seeking any kind of professional help. If someone they love is struggling with an addiction at the same time, you know, you just had an interview with Dr. Anna Lemke, who wrote Dopamine Nation, and she said she's confirming Right. So she works at Stanford and she's confirming the idea that we know very well that they're the last to know. I was the last to know. You were the last to know. Right. We were the last to know that we had a problem because that's the very nature of addiction itself. Well, who was the first to know? Who knew first and who knew second? Who knew third? Whenever anybody meets me, and I'm not talking about, you know, like clients or people that are calling or like referrals, like people that are just at a party and you do the natural kind of thing of just like, you know, where you from and what do you do? And I tell them I'm an addiction interventionist. And they go, oh my God. And they go, wow, that's, you know, like it's fine, you know, unique. But then they also go, inevitably they're going to launch into a story of someone they know. And when they start talking about that someone, they are then going to arrive at that conclusion though, that everybody typically does where they go, but, you know, what can you do? Right? Until he wants it, there's nothing you can really do, right? He's got to want to help himself. He's got to hit bottom. And they land at that conventional wisdom, which is not common sense, right? So very. If, if, as we said earlier, if you admit that it's addiction and you can acknowledge that this person that you know has an addiction, then that means they require help, they need to have resources in order to actually stop and get help, to have this epiphany that we're talking about. They're not going to have that on their own from a state of active addiction. Okay? They're not going to keep themselves sober from a state of active addiction. And as you say, often the opposite of addiction is connection, understand? They are not going to make that connection on their own. They have to be connected to the helpful resource. So my first intervention strategy is the four part connection formula, which is you're maintaining singular focus as a parent. Let's just say for a parent, you have your 17 year old and you know that they've been drinking and using substances in the same way that my mother did with me. And your singular focus is, is that I'm going to have to connect him with the program of recovery. He's going to need a helpful resource. Something is going to have to happen that could look like rehab, it could look like an outpatient treatment program, it could look like an addictions counselor, it could look like 12 step meetings, local 12 step meetings. Right. That's how I got started. You know, I'm here with over 17 years sober today, and I'm talking to Joe Polish about recovery. And we're planning on, you know, like, like having paradigm shifting conversations. We're really looking to make a difference. This is because of recovery, you know, and that started with me going to a single meeting, you know, a couple blocks away from my house. Right. For free. Okay. And I could, and very well, you could make the case should be dead today. So that's an availability. Maintain singular focus. That that's something that's going to need to happen. And then you begin to shift the dynamic in your home. This is maybe an oversimplification, but for parents, if you can enable addiction, you can disable addiction. And so there are actions that you have inadvertently been taking that are inadvertently contributing to the addiction continuing. If you can begin to disable addiction, just become more mindfully aware of what makes this addiction more difficult. And you can do in a covert kind of way. It's clandestine. You're not overtly having any conversation. To hearken back to what my mother, she didn't talk to me about. Chris, do you have a problem? Chris, do you think you have a problem with alcohol? Chris, you're an alcoholic. She didn't say any of those things. She said, would you like to go to a meeting with me? I said, oh, okay. She bypassed that entire conversation. So in shifting the dynamic in your home, you're just doing things that make it difficult for addiction to just go on unabated and uninterrupted. The next step in the four part connection formula is to seize that leverageable moment. The moments of clarity are happening frequently. The problem is that they're fleeting, but if you know what to look for, they are frequent. And in that. So the sobriety equation, as I lay out in my book, is a moment of clarity plus an opportunity for recovery times. Positive leverage. That's how people get sober. It's the leverage. The leverage is the last piece of the puzzle. Right? But without an opportunity for recovery being presented again, we're not just going to get sober out of the clear blue sky. If my mom doesn't ask me to go to the meeting that day, it's not like I'm going to wander into the meeting all by myself. Later that day, she had to ask me, which meant, here's the opportunity, and I took it. So she saw the moment of clarity that I was having. She presents the opportunity and then, you know, at 17 years old, there Wasn't really that much leverage occasionally, you know, and then this is what will happen when I'm talking to parents. I can go. We can definitely get sideways on a tangent here, and I don't want to go too deep, but put it this way, everyone has leverage. You're definitely going to find those things that matter to your addicted loved one and matter in a positive way. It doesn't necessarily have to be consequential. It could just be like, you want to go to college, you want to have this car, you want to do that. You just start presenting these things and you imply the consequence of what's going to happen if this substance use continues, that all of these things that you want are threatened. So it doesn't even have to necessarily be about these hard boundaries and things that you're taking away. You can just kind of present it almost like a thinking out loud kind of, you know, like, I mean, what's going to happen if you, if you go to school and you wind up, you know, having to drop out because of, you know, whatever, whatever you can like relate to, you know, to their particular, you know, circumstances. And so that's the, that's the, the, the first kind of intervention. And then the next is sometimes there's going to be a situation where it's, you're just going to, you're going to have to have a conversation that's going to have to be a little bit more formal, but still it's, it's just a natural progression. So let's say your kid gets into a car accident or something and you know that it was because they were drinking, right. Or you know, they were drinking at the time. That's now elevated to we have to have a serious talk. You shouldn't just fly into that conversation, you know, without any kind of guidance whatsoever. You can take a. Circumstance like that and use that to get them the help that they need. If you are, if you're sharp about it, you know, and it doesn't, and then that doesn't have to turn into this, this major thing. But what I, what I'd really like to kind of emphasize is that there are a number of solutions available that you can be utilizing so that it doesn't have to be a five alarm blaze before you do something about it.

Yeah, I want to ask you a question. Yeah, that's very good, very helpful. And I want to go a little deeper in some of these things. So I'm assuming you've probably watched quite a few of the intervention shows on television.

I Haven't.

No, you haven't? Okay. Okay.

No. And.

And I. And I have some. That's been a while, though. I usually don't watch. You know, again, things change, and oftentimes there's some really valuable things that are put together. But I remember one of these celebrity rehab shows. I looked up who was behind it, and at the time, it was. I won't even mention the names. People can do the research if they want, but I couldn't believe it. It was one of the guys that put together one of those celebrity rehab programs for drugs was also. Also one of the founders of, at the time, one of the biggest porn production companies in the world. And I was like, Jesus Christ. You know, it's like, are you serious? And so, so much of human suffering is turned into, you know, online now, but back in the day, television entertainment, right? Shows like To Catch a Predator and all these things, and it's like, let's witness and. And be voyers of these, you know, scoundrels and these criminals, and let's watch someone go through an intervention thing. And, you know, it occurred to me that if, if any of the shows, which maybe they do have good resources and solutions because I've not watched all of them, right? So I can only speak to what I have seen in my interpretation of it. If they would have shared, like, well, here's how to think about it. You just watch this intervention. Now, if you're dealing with this in your own life, here's what to do, here's the lessons, here's the resources. How much more helpful. But again, that wouldn't be as entertaining as watching the train wreck, right? And that's the challenge with, with this is people, you know, they will witness and view the news. You know, I remember I interviewed Ryan Holiday years ago on his book Trust Me, I'm Lying. And he, you know, confessions of a Media Manipulator was the subtitle. And what was his name? Oh, God, it's slipping my mind. The person that owned most of the newspapers, like a hundred years ago in the media, in, in. In the United States, he. He had a line where he said, the purpose of the news is not to inform. It's to startle. You know, it's. It's not to inform people or even give news. It's to startle people. And if you keep people in a startled state. Well, I think in a lot of ways, how would you compare the way that you, you, you do your process, your intervention process versus a traditional approach, if there even Is such a thing as a traditional approach to intervention?

My approach is different in the sense of I get excited to present as much information as I can for free, and then if I can give you just a little bit of extra oomph in a single phone call, that's my. Nothing brings me more joy, to be honest with you. I really want to have intervention be ubiquitous, that families should, as soon as they identify that our loved one is struggling with an addiction, the next thought should be, okay, what are we going to do to intervene and not have it be the sensationalized TV version of intervention? Because it never has to get that far if they see it early. Some cases, of course, there's complexity, there's co occurring mental health disorders, there's lots of various different situations. And we can't assume that the addicted person is the sickest person in the room.

Right. That is. Say a little more about that. That's a really good point because, man, I cannot tell you how many. And you've, you've dealt with this countless times. And, and it comes a lot from successful families. When I mean successful, meaning they have money and there's like, well, we got the messed up alcoholic son and everyone's enabling the person, everyone's contributing to it. The person's living in pain and shame, but they still are totally fine with drinking around him in droves at the parties, but then simultaneously telling me in a half drunken state at times that their son has a drinking problem. And it's. So yeah. Elaborate a little bit on what you.

Well, the way that I'm thinking about it in this moment is again, addiction is not the problem. It's the indication that there is a problem. And so the way that addiction manifests itself can be very different, as you've already described in all the various different ways that people have, you know, these behaviors that, that you can see from gambling and sex to love addictions and money addictions and everything. But at the core, very many people are being driven by the same sorts of, you know, concerns, the self centeredness and the fears and the guilt and the shame and the remorse and the various different things that are driving them. Their own delusions and their own, you know, their own struggles, their own pain, their own suffering. And they're not consciously aware of how their behaviors are potentially negatively impacting the people around them. Right. And so when I say they're not necessarily the sickest person in the room, the addicted person, they, they can be the, the addiction itself can be an indication that the entire family system has Issues. Right. And so sometimes an intervention is. I mean, not sometimes. Oftentimes it's kind of like a staggered thing. It's like I'm helping each person as we go, as we lead up to this conversation that's going to happen with their addicted loved one. But if I'm really doing a good job in a successful intervention, I want at least one, if not two or three, or everybody on the intervention team to be engaging in their own form of recovery and some kind of support resource for every individual person and to have them arrive at the conclusion that I'm not going to this recovery program for them. I'm doing this for me. I'm doing this because I can use this. And if the starting point is just at the very least you have been negatively impacted by your loved one's addiction, that has had a serious effect. And it would be tremendously helpful for you to get help to connect with peers that have been through the same circumstances at the very least, and then move that up to therapists, move that up to workshops, move that up to intensive workshops or therapies that may be going on. And usually there are intensive codependency workshops and things like that that may be going on for, you know, four to seven day periods that I've recommended. And of course, you know, just like people who go away for rehabs, oftentimes it's. They're not interested in going initially, and then when they come back, they go, that was the greatest thing I ever did. Right. Thanks so much for. For recommending that. And the other added piece of leverage for any family members, you know, like, so it's like, if the addict is the last to know and you're the first to know. Well, as it was with my mother's case, there is no better way to help your addicted loved one than for you to go through the paces yourself. If you have entered a recovery program yourself and you're able to model recovery and you're able to model going through the very same resistance and challenges that they're going to feel. Because oftentimes I'll recommend it to parents and say, let's say go to Al Anon and. And they're going to come back and say, I don't think that was for me. I didn't like it. They're just talking about this and they're talking about that, and it's like, yeah, that's exactly what your son is about to go through. So if you can overcome it, then when they say it, you can, then you get to Have a very different conversation. You get to have an empathetic conversation where you go, yeah, I know exactly what that's like. I had to get through that too. But if I just sit through the hour, usually I hear one or two things that are really helpful and I find it valuable. So that's why I keep going. If you can say that to your kid versus my kid says he doesn't want to go to meetings, they're not going to work. It's entirely different. And it doesn't give them the ground to stand on.

You're absolutely right. Well, what advice would you give family members that feel, you know, hopeless or helpless in the face of, you know, a loved one's addiction?

That it's not hopeless, that, you know, the cliche, it's, it's darkest before the dawn. I mean, that's the really, you know, every single person, me and you included, right here on this call. But everybody I know that is, is, is sober today, had family members around them the day before they got sober that thought, this is hopeless. You know, like the day before we all got sober, it looked bad, it was hopeless, it was helpless. And here we are. There's 20 plus million people that are in recovery today. And sobriety is just as likely for your loved one as anybody else that's achieved it. Because there is a solution. I mean, there is an answer for starts with separating your loved one from the addiction. Identify that what's going on here is addiction and start thinking about, okay, how can we deal with the addiction? Not how do we fix my kid, how do I, you know, if you can't solve for, you know, he's a jerk, there's no way that you can solve for, he's a jerk, but you can solve for his addiction, you know, leads to some of these jerk like behaviors, right? And so separating your loved one from their addiction is really conceptually one of the biggest things. And then from there you're able to treat them with empathy rather than all of the various different things that we see with stigma. And you just wouldn't be using language like, you know, you're a screw up. How could you do this? You're disrespecting us. You're, you know, you don't, you don't care about us. How could you do this if, if you loved us, you would stop, you would never use any language like that because you've separated them from the addiction. And so addiction has an answer, addiction has a solution. And, and, and as soon as you get there, and as soon as you recognize that addiction requires help and your loved one is not going to seek help on their own, well, you're like 95% of the way there now. It's okay. Who can help us? Who can help us have the conversation that's going to lead them to go get help? And it's my, my, you know, my estimation that probably 8 out of every 10 parents who are struggling with an addicted child can likely get their kid started in a recovery program simply with a little bit of guidance, a little bit of extra information and, you know, education around addiction recovery and how to have this kind of conversation right now.

That's great. So let's just say someone happened to come across this conversation we're having right now, and either they're an. They're struggling with addiction themselves, or they have a loved one, a family member, you know, a child, young, old, whatever that is struggling with addiction, and they just. So they've gotten some ideas. They're hearing us. We've planted a seed, which is pretty much everything that I do with Genius recovery is I want to plant seeds. You know, I don't run treatment centers. We just. It's an educational platform. The goal is to change the global conversation about how people view and treat addicts with compassion instead of judgment and find the best forms of treatment that have efficacy and share that with the world. Which is, hence the reason for, you know, talking with you is putting just education out there to guide people. So what would you say? Where. What do they do first? Where do they start? You. You. You get these conversations and calls all the time. I don't know what to do. What do I do? And, you know, that's. I always like hearing people that have been there, done that. What do they do? Where do you go first? I mean, how would you answer that question?

What I tend to use is something I call the severity and worry scale. And so on a scale of 1 to 10, I'm just saying how. How severe is whatever it is that's happened most recently? Like what. Whatever the circumstances is, like a scale of 1 to 10. How bad is it and how worried are you? And now typically, parents are just. It's always a 10 on worry. But you have to actually kind of just like, use a little bit of discretion here and just be like, you know, like, how worried should I be about whatever thing that just happened? You know? And if you wind up at a 10 on severity and a 10 on worry, if you're somewhere around 18 to 20, then I would speak to a professional Interventionist, just speak with someone. You know, if you Visit my website, whyintervention.com why intervention.com as of right now, we offer, you know, like, free clarity calls and we just get a little bit of strategy and guidance about what the situation is. Like, just get it, get a handle on it. But otherwise, anything less than that, severity wise, it's, it's just get started on learning more about addiction and recovery, doing your research on what recovery resource you can connect your child or your addicted loved one to. Where would I bring them if they were to come to me right now and say, mom, dad, I have a serious problem and I need help? You need to know what to do next. Be ready for that. Because what I do. And initially, Joe, like, I was really surprised by this. Not surprised. I was like, pleasantly surprised. And now it's become more routine, of course, but in the early days, I couldn't believe how well it was going when I would just be talking to someone over the phone after I had gotten trained in intervention. And then I start just giving them, okay, here's what you're going to stop doing. Don't say this. Say this instead of next time you see them. And then he's on his way to rehab. I'd be like, oh, my God, like, I couldn't even believe that it worked so well, you know, and so you have to have the resource lined up. You have to have your plan abc, have it. Know what you're doing. I think that's probably like really legitimately about 30% of it is that now you have a tangible place in mind. You have a tangible outcome, you know, and, and you don't not research it because you say, well, I know he's just going to say no. He's just going to refuse anyway. So why would I even. That's. That's a bad idea. Like, do the research and find the place. You know, consider your insurance information or, or whatever it might be, but find the resource, even if it is a local 12 step meeting, whatever it is, have it in mind. And then you're already really, as soon as you start educating, then you can go to your own 12 step recovery program. Also, and I have the why Intervention podcast. There's a genius recovery podcast. There are literally dozens, hundreds of free resources available that are going to give you more insight into addiction from the minds of people who actually were dealing with it, you know, so that you can, you can navigate this thing in a different way. And of course, get your own support. Getting support from people that have Been in your shoes is invaluable. And everybody has a program that works for them, you know, so if you, if you try Al Anon, and Al Anon's not the one. Recently I worked with a mom who, as soon as I found out that her father was an addict, I suggested adult children of alcoholics. And then it was like, she was like, this is the best thing that ever happened to me. You know, like, this is. Because now it's, it's so narrowly identified to her now, where it's like, this is what is going to help me. So once you're working whatever program of recovery that, that might be beneficial for you, that can't help but to have a positive impact on the people around you.

Yeah, yeah, no, that, that, that's, that's really good. I want to get Your views on 12 steps and groups in general. You know, there's, there's always, there's always the people that say 12 steps don't work. I don't like meetings. They didn't work for me. They didn't, you know, and I always have to kind of say, well, that's like saying gyms don't work. If you go to the gym and you sit on the bench and you don't lift the weights or you don't do the class, the gym is not going to work. So I say 12 steps are not attendance meetings. They're step meetings. If you ever actually go to the meetings, learn about them, which will take some time in the beginning, then you get a sponsor, temporary sponsor. There's all these people that are there with the whole purpose of sharing experience, strength and hope. A bunch of addicts loosely held together by a bunch of voluntary, you know, contributions of the members. And you don't even have to pay. They're free. If you don't have any money, you can sit in on a, a free 12 step meeting. You know, they're step meetings. They're, they're, they're for doing the steps, but they still have a lot of misunderstanding about them. And the latest research that's come out about 12 steps is that they are highly successful. There was so much propaganda around how they don't work, but they actually work quite well for most people. And they're just one part of the recovery process. You know, we, you know, I talk about, there's community, there's biochemical with supplements, nutrition, there's the underlying trauma work, there's the environment. You know, those are four different things. 12 steps to a really good job with the community aspect. Of recovery. So I wanted to get your views, pros and cons of how you feel about meetings.

I agree with everything that you just said. So they are highly effective. It's the best game in town, it's down the street, it's local. You know, you're not going to find a neighborhood in America that doesn't have a 12 step meeting. There's, you know, there's 130,000 plus Alcoholics Anonymous groups worldwide. You know, for context, there's 30,000 Starbucks locations, okay? So there's not 130,000 worldwide locations of this place because it doesn't work. Okay? That's all organic, it's from the ground up and with no promotion, no advertising, no fees, no dues, and it's been working for 80 plus years. And that's just 12 step, that's alcoholics Anonymous that I'm discussing. That doesn't have anything to do with the other 250/12 step based organizations that spawned as a result of Alcoholics Anonymous coming into formation. So, and you know, there's a difference between recovery and treatment. Treatment is, as you've discussed, all of the medical necessity and requirements and like that's where, yeah, whatever kind of doctor help you might need and whatever kind of issues and safe detox and various different things that may truly need to be addressed in some circumstances. But once that 28 day period is over, they're coming home. And when they come home, each and every single one of those places that are worth their weight in, you know what they're, they're recommending that you engage with a 12 step recovery program when you leave. Now. There are so many more pathways to recovery today than at any other time in human history. And, and at the same time, you know what I like to say about, you know, like a lot of the social media influencers and all of that, it's like they don't issue a retraction on any of the statements when they say AA doesn't work for everybody. It didn't work for me. And then three years later you find out that they're six months sober in AA now, hey, remember when you said it didn't work for everybody? Did you let everybody know that now it's working for you? And so that sometimes happens. The other thing is, of course you do have people that it, quote unquote, doesn't work for. I like to use the example of yoga. It's like, yoga's not for me. You watched a bunch of people do the stretches. You haven't. You didn't do any stretching with them, you know, so. But there are some people that will say, yeah, I found AA didn't work for me. And then so now I do yoga and I have therapy and I do, you know, like, Kundalini yoga, and I do this and I do that, and it's like, that's great. I don't care. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's wonderful. But what often gets left out of the conversation is the four months of AA meetings you went to initially. Right. That helped you. Here you are, sober today. Just give credit where it's due. Don't leave out the parts that are inconvenient for your current position.

Yep. You know, you're absolutely right. I mean, I know several people that are holding themselves out as experts on addiction recovery that would not even be sober and would have not gotten to where they've gotten without early 12 steps in their life. And they get to the point where they're like, yeah, but there's so much more and there's so much better. Here's the evolved level of it. As if. And it's just sort of this weird. I mean, I would have to call it narcissism. You know, it's. It's just a form of, oh, I. You know, there was all this stuff it didn't do for me, so I had. It's like, yeah, but give credit where credit is due. It got you on the path. You know, it's like, you know, if you add. If you had a sailboat and all of a sudden, you know, and you're sailing along, you're not going as far as you like. But then all of a sudden, you strap a motor onto the boat, and it just makes it go a lot faster. You wouldn't discount all the wind. I mean, you wouldn't say, well, yeah, you know, it's the motor that really got me to where I want to go. But, you know, it was probably the water, it was probably the boat, it was probably the sail. It was probably the way it was a whole bunch of elements, which I think is really key to what it is. We're saying, you know, there's a lot of resources out there. And even, you know, I've said this a lot, and the people that do it, and most don't like how to understand addiction, how to. And I'm like, go to Genius Recovery and just read the blogs that. Written not by AI but written by a real amazing therapist by the name of Ken Wells, who twice a week we put up new, you know, new blogs on genius recovery. I'm like, just read a few of them. And people that do, they're like, man, that really helped me think. Watch some of the interviews, you know, anyone, this will be one more interview that I'm like, okay, what do I do? Watch this with Chris. Then you'll have a perspective on it. And some people will, like you said, the average seven years before they get help, right. And it's like oftentimes these people will struggle for years daily, but they won't take a few hours to watch a few interviews or to read a book or something. It's. It's mind boggling. But if they do. And, and again, the people that are listening to this are not one of those people because they're the ones that aren't hearing this that probably would benefit from it the most. So the ones that are, congratulations for educating yourself. So in your experience, what are the most effective ways for someone in recovery to maintain sobriety long term?

I mean, again, that's an easy answer also. And it does come back to 12 step. Not to belabor the point. When I was so I was a firefighter with the New York City Fire Department. And halfway through my career, because of the number of knee surgeries I had, I wound up working at the counseling service unit, which is internal to the New York City Fire Department. Essentially our eap, right. EAP programs exist all over the country in various different jobs, but ours functioned as an in house iop. It was like we were doing our own counseling, our own group counseling. And so I was a firefighter, but I was also someone in recovery and I was able to help these guys. And, and that's where I, you know, really learned how to do this. I had the, you know, defiant, hard headed heels dug in. I don't have a problem, never giving up drinking kind of people. And you know, in a session I'd be getting them into or getting them to agree to go to rehab or getting them to agree to, you know, start our program. And so, and was able to do that often. Right. When I left, before I left. This is a bit of a personal aside, but I can go here. My, my intention in leaving, I had like about a month left before I was retiring and I was the only AA person on staff. And I, and so I asked everybody, all of the clinicians that I worked with inside the office who were very caring, I mean, phenomenal at what they do. Right. And it's not even true what I just said. There was someone on staff that had AA experience. But inside, in the clinical space, of course, it's, you know, where any, anybody's pathway is going to be their own. It's not like we're locking anybody into one significant like, kind of thing. Like, what is it that you want to do? It's totally, you know, like we're going to work with you. You know, we don't even want to make any kind of hard line suggestions, but we are going to make the suggestions, you know, as we see fit. Right. But in this, this private clinical meeting, you know, I just asked everybody, I said of the people that, you know, who are doing really well, that have three years, five years, who are involved, who come back and, and sit with guys and meet with them and, and you know, that, you know, are really doing well in sobriety today. What are they doing? Are they doing anything other than 12 step? Nobody was able to come up with anybody.

Right.

You know that. I don't, I'm not, I don't want to go. I feel like that could get you in trouble. Right. You know, to say that. But in this particular meeting and that particular experience and having asked that question, it's like of the people that come back with, with numerous years who are gonna, who are still involved and helpful, all of them are engaged with a 12 step process recovery program.

You know, that, that's, that's pretty wild. Like I was at a event. I'm one of these weirdos that is not a quote unquote, addiction therapist. You know, I'm not a therapist. I'm just a guy who's been in recovery for many years. I think I've probably spent more time and money and effort in my own recovery journey than many people that have gotten trained as therapists. But all that being said, and I know some of the top in the world and what I also know and also respect are the ones that have actually don't have quote, unquote credentials, but have a life that shows they have figured out what to do and how to live a life that works versus a past life that was just chaotic and traumatized and whatnot. And I was at a event, oh man, this must have been at least a decade ago. And it was mostly for behavior addictions, a lot of CSATs, you know, sex addiction therapists and certified sex addiction therapist csats. And I went up to the mic and there's about 220 people that were there. And everyone's like, are you a doctor? You know, and I'm like, no, I'm just. Everyone There was like trying to figure out how to run their practice and be a therapist. And all the sponsors are treatment centers, hoping that these therapists will refer people to their treatment facilities. And some of the treatment centers are great, others are I just consider super exploitive. And so that's, that's all we could do a whole nother conversation just on the business of rehab. That being said, I went up to the mic, I said, has anyone here ever seen a patient or addict that, you know, that has ever gotten sober and stayed sober without 12 step groups? Not a single person raised their hand. And I was like, that is really interesting. Now today I know people that don't, don't go to meetings that seem to live a, you know, good life or recovery from medicine journeys and doing stuff. But what I find though is they all have community. And so if you call it a 12 step or whatever, but the ones that do not, silent battles are the hardest battles to fight. You're sick of your secrets. No one that's a true addict that I've ever met ever does it in isolation. If they have, I've never met them. So that's my views. And so I agree with everything you're saying. And I think it just reinforces a really important point that I think most people don't realize and it minimizes that. So this as a firefighter and counselor for first responders, you know, I guess what are the unique challenges do you see in addressing addiction with these high stress careers and professions? I mean, police officers, a lot of people in these intense things have a lot of addiction issues. Drinking, drugs, oftentimes gambling, high risk, you know, sexual behavior.

So.

What challenges come with those sort of businesses and those sort of careers?

Well, given what I've discovered along the way here, I don't think that there's as much challenge as I thought to getting sober again. I think that that's just the solution. There is leverage. The issue is the staying sober part. And as we've discussed, the staying sober comes down to am I willing to face those things within me that need healing? Am I willing to go deep on those issues? And so the challenges in those types of professions are there are going to be things that they don't want to look at. There are things that are maybe personal to them as well as things that are extreme circumstances that they may have been party to, that they push down with, with drinking, you know, and, and, and all of the other things that might happen. So I don't, I, I don't necessarily think that it's it's that much of a different challenge as far as, you know, the professions themselves. I think that that's just a recovery journey for pretty much most everyone. It's, it's a readiness to face those things that are driving whatever these behaviors are that are giving me these momentary pops of relief. And instead of just drinking or using drugs or the sex behavior or whatever it may be, just to get a little bit of relief, those things need to be addressed. And a lot of people, they're just not willing to face that. And you're not going to do that on your own, like you said. So I think that the challenge is really the capability of the people around them to get them there, to have them feel safe enough to open up, to go there, you know, and, but so it's all, it all comes down to safety initially, you know, really. And, and I think to that, to that point too, you know, 12 step recovery is not a panacea in that way. It's, it is an avenue to do that, that work, you know, so when I alluded to before, right, there's as many pathways to recovery today as there are people who are sober, meaning everyone has an individualized path. But we do have something that like, is the bulk dominant thing that it is that we do on a regular basis that kind of instills the discipline and the support and the resources and the connection that we no doubt need if we're going to have any success at all. But once we have that, then, yeah, the world's open to you. What books do you want to explore? What people do you want to get involved with? What kind of different modalities and various different things? Is it going to be therapy? Is it going to be yoga? Is it going to be, be, you know, spiritualists and spiritual books? Is it going to be the motivational speakers? I mean, what's it going to be? But everybody is, is when we're talking about addiction and this is the other challenging part of the conversation, just as an aside, but some people are saying, yeah, I don't really do the 12 step stuff because I don't really need to. And maybe they don't because they weren't really in, they didn't need it, you know, but, but for the, for the ones who do, man, it works pretty well, you know. So the real challenge to staying sober is just getting comfortable with facing those things that you're too afraid to face and recognizing that once you get on the other side of it, or at least I can just say in my Personal experience. Every single thing that I didn't want to do. As soon as I did it, I thought, what took me so long in doing that? Why was I. Why was I so afraid to do that thing? You know? And then as soon as I faced it, it was better. As soon as I faced the next thing, it was better. And then the next. As soon as I was challenged by somebody, okay, now it's time to do this, I'd be like, no, I don't want to do that. And. And it would be. And that was the way it went. I say, no, I'm not doing that. I don't want to do that. And then I would do it and I'd go, what took me so long? But eventually I got all the way through and, you know, I faced a lot of those things, you know, so I don't have those. The. The old solutions are no longer solutions. That's it.

No, that's. That's really good. You know, the Joseph Campbell line. The cave we fear to enter holds the treasure that we seek. I will often tell people that are a little gun shy of going to a 12 step group if they want to help, say a family member. I'm like, go to an open one. Just. Open 12 step groups are available to anyone. Closed ones are for people that identify as an alcoholic or whatever the 12 step group happens to be around. But just go to one and see and you, you will. There's enormous amounts of support that's out there if you simply avail yourselves of it. So what did I not ask you that I should have or could have asked your. Any particular topic that you would like to bring up? If there's any that we did not discuss.

I think we have it pretty well covered for today. I'm really, you know, excited for this conversation to reach, you know, as many families as possible. Hopefully just give a little bit of hope that, you know, recovery is possible and that it's not hopeless, that recovery is possible for your loved one too, and that there's a real answer for it, you know, that you don't have to buy into that. To the foregone conclusion that most people who have dealt with someone that they love, who struggles with addiction, they're going to arrive at the conclusion that nothing works. You know, that everything we've tried doesn't work. It hasn't worked. And yeah, because it was never going to work. That's the unfortunate truth. That was. None of that stuff was going to work because you were dealing with addiction this whole time. You know, there's a lot of the. A lot of. We talked about boundaries, for instance, earlier. And the entire boundary conversation. Most people struggle with setting boundaries in general. Most people have difficulty with boundaries, period. But then when you're dealing with addiction, it's a whole different set of boundaries. Your typical boundary conversation does not apply when you're talking about addiction. So once you've crossed the threshold into we're dealing with addiction here, that's where everything can change. So it's just a matter of, like my mother just being okay with the possibility that my loved one can even have one. If I can believe, like my loved one can have an addiction and I can believe that recovery is possible from it, then you are like 95% of the way there. It's just, now get the guidance, just get a little bit of direction, a little bit more information. How do you have this conversation and then get them sober? I think this is what I would like to end with, Joe, actually, now I have a metaphor coming to mind. Your role as a family member is not to be the person who's going to have the conversation that you and I would have have with someone who's struggling with addiction. Right? You and I can have a conversation from that peer to peer place. We can have the conversation that, that get that, that helps them stay sober. You as the family member, you're having the conversation that helps them get sober. If you don't help them get sober, there's no possibility of them having the conversation with us to stay stay sober. So your role is get them to the diner, get them to the meeting, get them to the rehab, get them to the counselor. You know, that's the role that family members can play. And once they get, once they get that skill set down, they got it. That's where the relapse part of being a friend of mine just recently was describing a guy who, he celebrated a year in Rockaway and then he relapsed and he relapsed on opiates. I don't know if opiates was his issue. He was in rehab within 30 days because the entire community and his family and everybody, there was no way that he was going to be able to get away with this. That's the difference between a relapse and a recurrence. Right? It recurred. And then you're able to just, boom, bounce into action and play the role that you're able to play here if you have the skill set. And so I've frequently had calls from family members who are, you know, Wives and parents who are calling me to ask me a question about something and I'll, and I'll hear from them and they'll say something like, yeah, well, he slipped, but now he's back in rehab. And I was just curious about this, you know, think it's like you didn't even call me to get them back into rehab. They have the skill set now that they can get them back engaged. And so one particular wife I'm thinking of, it's like her husband was suffering from severe trauma, childhood abuse, serious stuff. Drank every day. And in the last three years and she was calling me, he had just relapsed, but his relapse was a day. It was a day. And she was able to spring into action and get him back connected with his sponsor and the recovery research and he was back. So in a three year period, he, he had three relapses, but the total time frame was like a month. Yeah, right. And so that's what again, on the long enough time horizon that maybe people don't really value and they might take it for granted, but it is, it doesn't have to be this way where we're losing as many people. If families realize that the role that they can play is I help my loved one get sober. And I leave the staying sober part up to the people that are behind the door marked help. I get them through the door marked help. Let the people on the other side do the helping.

That's so good. Yeah, so valuable. So, Chris, so here's what I would say. So for everyone that is watching, listening, Chris Dole, his organization is called why Intervention. I'll ask you one more time to say, let people know how they can find you, follow you, and what resources you have available for them and if they do need this particular help.

Yeah. So. Whyintervention.com whyintervention.com I'm on Instagram. That's the handle why Intervention? You can follow me there. I have a lot of free resources on the website that you can access. I have the why Intervention podcast. We have over 80 episodes. Interviews and education on very niche intervention process conversation and what you're dealing with. And of course I think we still have the free clarity calls available now. I wrote a book recently that should come out at some point, I don't know when. Actually I think I might make it available for to have some people do some beta reading. Follow me on Instagram if you want to have the pre release version of my book. Let's say that if this will be a time, you know, if you're, if you're watching this, within a couple of months of it posting, follow me on Instagram and you'll find out how to get a pre release. Perfect. Perfect.

And what I will say is that this is not going to be the last time you'll hear from Chris. I mean, we've got a whole great team of people at Genius Recovery and we're going to be, you know, at the time that we're having this conversation, we're about to put our recovery kits out into the world and we're going to direct people to resources, including even a recovery clone where you can dialogue and ask questions. And this conversation and some of Chris's material will be fed into that. And you know, our goal here is just to help people that struggle with addiction. So if you found this valuable and useful, then utilize what we talked about. And if there's anyone in your life or you know, someone that doesn't know what to do, and certainly I'm yet to meet someone that does not have someone close to them that is impacted by addiction because I think it's the greatest global crisis and so many of the problems in the world, if you go to the core of the stem from it, it is from untreated addiction. And there's a lot of resources available, as you clearly just heard with Chris. And so I want to wish everyone the very best and hope that you found this super, super useful and super valuable. So thank you, Chris. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Joe. You're the best, man. Thanks.

Okay, I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead, you're over here. Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you. Watch him.