4 Things You Should KNOW About FUNCTIONAL ALCOHOLICS | A Compilation of Amber's Eye-opening Moments

For most adults, keeping up with life takes everything you got. So adding another huge ginormous obsession and time suck into your life, things start to fall apart and it's very stressful. You're constantly planning, how am I going to get it? How am I going to either use it without anyone knowing, or how am I going to use and keep it under control? Because there's this whole game that you're playing with yourself about these little deals that you're making with yourself. Some of you guys have probably heard me talk about bargaining before in other videos. You know, you're promising yourself you're only going to do this much. You're not going to get yourself in this bad situation. You're not going to do any of those bad behavior things. So there's all this time and energy and effort that goes into trying to keep it in the limits, but also feeling like the rest of life kind of sucks. And so everything else you're doing is just of stuff you're doing in between drinks or in between hits or whatever the addiction is. You're just checking boxes off. So you're doing it, but you're not present. And if you're not engaging in your addiction, you're wanting to be engaging in your addiction. So a lot of people I see, they may, they don't, most of the people I see don't drink every day.

They may drink only a few days a week.

But it feels to them on the inside like it's just waiting until, like everything else is just waiting until then. And so even if it's not something that's consuming you every day, are you thinking about it every day? How often are you thinking about it? If you are doing better as far as managing it or moderating it, how much energy does it take you to manage it or moderate it?

Right?

It becomes all-consuming whether you're using all the time or not. That's the thing. Is it is all-consuming and those cracks will get bigger and bigger and bigger, and eventually the dam will break. So not only do you have this stress of how much time and energy, mental thought that it takes, but you have this alternation between guilt, resentment, and self-loathing. Because as you're doing all this bargaining and you're promising yourself you're not going to let it go this far, you're not going to mess up again at work, you're not going to miss your kids this or that, you're going to do better about X, Y, or Z, you're making all these promises to yourself and you're not able to be consistent with what you say you're going to do or how you say you're going to show up. And because of that, you feel guilty about it, obviously. And you're angry at yourself, but you also at the same time feel sorry for yourself. Because when we start to beat ourselves up, just like if someone else starts to be negative towards us, we instinctually immediately feel defensive. We do that when we beat ourselves up too. And we start to have this back and forth thing between hating ourselves, being mad at ourselves, But then feeling sorry for ourselves, which then leads to resentment. Maybe it's resentment about your job. Maybe it's resentment about your spouse, your kids, your finances, the government. I don't know, whatever. But you start to feel like it's not completely my fault. And so because we have all that guilt and self-loathing and we can't seem to stop engaging in that behavior, we start Figuring out all the reasons why. And we usually externalize those reasons and we make it other people or other situations' fault, or we help it feel better by minimizing it. Another thing that you'll see when people are in denial is that they'll focus on their functionality. They'll say, well, and I see this one all the time, I still go to work every day. I made $300,000 last year. I don't know how I could possibly have a problem. You know, I'm fine.

I support you.

And they'll say things or feel things like that. Or I take care of this whole house. I take care of the kids. I cook you every meal. How could I possibly have a problem? So they'll focus on areas that they'll, that they function in. And what's interesting about that, and I've heard this so many times when people come out of denial and they're just being real with me and being honest with me, they'll say, you know, I, they'll purposely do things that are very functional and very helpful. So that they can either drink while they do those things. Like, like maybe they always cook dinner, but it's because they drink when they cook dinner. They always mow the lawn, but it's because they drink when they mow the lawn. So there, it's almost like a cover thing. And in addition to the fact that it's like a cover story, it also helps them to feel good or better about the fact that they're drinking. Like I've heard a lot of times, like, People will talk to me about drinking and then they'll say, and I would go to the gym every day because in my mind, as long as I was going to the gym every day, then, then I was still doing really good. I have had, I have worked with people who, who were Ironmen.

Do you know what Ironman is?

It's like the marathon race. That's like a triple. It's like the running, the swimming, the biking. They literally trained and trained other people to do that and was full-fledged alcoholic.

So yes.

You can be super physically active and still have an alcohol problem. That is definitely a thing. And they will blame others. Usually the person who's pointing it out to them is going to be the first target of who's going to get blamed.

These are all—

this is not all the signs of them, but all of these things, if you're seeing these things, then you're probably dealing with someone in some level of denial. Now, like I said, sometimes people will deny it to you because they just don't want to admit it out loud because they have some ambivalence about it. They're not sure what they want to do about it, but you can kind of tell when someone's just trying to convince you and when someone's trying to convince themselves. And that's when you're dealing with true, real denial. Now, when it comes to alcoholic denial specifically, Someone who is a functional alcoholic, you have a double whammy of a roadblock to get through here.

Two huge ones.

Firstly, the fact that they're still functioning in most areas of their life is going to continue to give this person the impression that they're fine. And especially when the situation is, is that like their spouse or their parent or the this one other person. Is really the only place that they feel grief about their drinking or drug use, then they really do feel like they don't have a problem. Or I guess they say they do have a problem. Their problem is you, not the substance use or whatever. If if it's only coming from you, and usually it's going to come from that person who lives with you first and foremost long before it comes from anywhere else. Like most alcoholics, especially if If someone became an alcoholic when they were really young, this might not apply. But if someone was like an adult already kind of functioning when they became an alcoholic, they'll work and function at work forever for years and years and years. Like the last place it's going to impact is their work. And in their mind, they go to work every day. And one of the things about alcoholics is when you drink, You end up needing to drink or take a sleeping pill or something like that to go to sleep because your body gets so dependent on the central nervous system depressant to be able to go to sleep. But the problem is, is that once you're— once you go to sleep, your liver is processing all of that alcohol out. And then you wake up at some ungodly time in the morning. I call the middle of the night, you know, like 3 or 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning. And your head is racing because now you're having that rebound effect from the alcohol. I'm going to be doing a 5-day live coaching challenge. I've never done this before. It's a totally new program that I've designed for you.

It is specifically for people who have functional alcoholic partners who are in denial.

What we're— it's going to be called Motivation Unlocked, and we're going to walk you through the process of Finding your loved one's motivators, identifying the values, identifying the things about what they're doing that they don't like. You guys hear me say all the time to do these things, and I realize that sometimes it might just be hard to figure that out on your own. So I'm going to walk you through that whole process. If you're interested in that, it's a live event.

You have to have a seat.

Live as in like live, like this video is live right now, but not live as in like you have to be sitting in my office, but you do need to have a ticket to be able to come. So you can do it virtually, but it's like you have to be there at the time of the thing. I've put the link in the description if that sounds like you, or if that sounds like somebody you know has that issue, feel free to share it with them.

When you're dealing with a functional addict or alcoholic, the family is doing so much to like prop this person up and keep them functional that again, That's what's keeping them stuck. It's kind of scary to take your hands off of it and let those consequences come in because some of the consequences are kind of big. But if you don't stop shielding all the consequences, then why are you so surprised and angry that they don't see that there's a problem? You're mad because you're doing all the work. You're handling all the responsibilities. You're fixing everything.

You're running interference.

You're doing all the stuff and then mad that they can't see the problem. When you step back and you look at it that way, you're like, oh, that does make sense because I'm functioning for them. If you're watching live or even on the playback, put in the comments or chat, like, what are some things, if you're the family member, that you have done or are doing that's propping your loved one up and keeping them functional? And if you're watching this and you are the person who has or does struggle with an addiction, what are some of the things that your family is doing or has done that propped you up that sort of kept you in that denial. How about cleaning up their messes?

Now that can be their messes, like literally their physical messes in the house.

Like they get drunk, they get up, they go in the kitchen, they start making all this food. They pull out all this mess and put their dishes everywhere and their alcohol cans and their paraphernalia of other sorts, all that stuff. You're cleaning it all up. Well, depending on what substance they're using, a lot of times they don't even remember how crazy they acted the night before. And if when they finally wake up, they get up and the place is clean, guess what? You're helping them to not see the problem. But you can also be cleaning up other kinds of messes. You know the kind of messes I'm talking about. Financial messes, interpersonal messes, work messes, school messes. Anytime you're cleaning up the messes, Again, you're making the picture look a way that it's really not, and that's not helping the situation. Not only that, but when you do that, when you're cleaning up the messes and you're being responsible and doing all this stuff, makes you so mad at the person and you're so frustrated because you're at your wit's end and you're exhausted and you're tired and you're wore out from it that not only are you painting this picture for them that's not real, But you're also, you're acting ugly because you're frustrated. You've been ran over. You feel taken advantage of. You're holding up all of the responsibilities, yours, theirs, and everybody else's. And that causes you to have these resentments and act out in a really negative way. Now, sometimes it's saying negative things and being nasty and being sarcastic, but sometimes it's just being passive-aggressive and making these little dig comments every now and then. Either which way, it's making you act nasty, which if you guys have seen my videos on the most enabling thing you can do, that's the thing. It's the acting nasty, the being passive-aggressive, the being sarcastic because it puts you in the bad guy role. So it's sort of a double whammy when you're doing all the responsibilities, you're painting the bad picture or not the bad picture, but the irrational picture, the not realistic picture for the person and You're acting mad because you're mad that you have to do all that. Now you painted the exact wrong— you created the exact wrong scenario to get someone out of denial because all they're going to see is that you're a crazy lunatic. And they don't know why you're so upset because they're still doing all the stuff, like grades aren't that bad, or they're still going to work or whatever it is.

Typically what you see with a functional alcoholic is everyone on the outside might not see the problem at all, But the people who live in the house with the person, they're the ones that are going to see the issue. Many times someone who is very functional at work does not function well at home because they either start drinking late in the afternoon at work or as soon as they get off. So their functionality at home is little to none. Either they come home and they sort of hide out in the garage or wherever they go so they can drink, or they drink and then they pass out, or they drink and they cause problems. But you're usually going to see nonfunctional at home, and it's easy to Convince yourself like, I'm totally fine because I go to work, I make a lot of money, my grades are fine, but it's not necessarily the case. If you are having these symptoms of alcoholism, even if they are in the moderate category, please do take it seriously because if you don't address it, you are going to move down in there into what you in your mind probably think of when you think of what an alcoholic is. As in, I have to drink every day. I get sick if I don't drink. I wake up and drink. I have the shakes, all of those things. In fact, a lot of people who even consider themselves functional alcoholic, they have those withdrawal symptoms, but because they're still going to work or they're still maintaining some level of functionality in one area or the other, it's easy to convince yourself that you're fine or that you've got it under control. But deep down inside, you know, it's not really the case. In fact, you've probably already tried several ways to either cut back your drinking, control your drinking, or maybe you've even tried to stop your drinking altogether. And maybe you've had some success with that, but No matter what, in the end, it just keeps sliding back to the same amount as before and probably getting a little worse and a little worse along the way. The good news here is that if you are in this functional alcoholic category, you probably can stop drinking, which is really great because most people won't recognize the problem until they can't stop, which requires a lot more treatment, a lot more intervention, and honestly, a lot more pain and suffering for yourself and everyone around you in the process. So if you're considering yourself or your loved one a functional alcoholic, now's the time to deal with it while you still can. Just because you can deal with it, you shouldn't excuse it away and say, I don't have this problem the same way as you would say, well, I don't have stage 4 cancer, so I'm totally fine. I can keep doing what I'm doing. Now's the time to address it. You'll have a lot better outcome. This channel is called Put the Shovel Down. The reason it's called that is our saying is you hit your bottom when you put your shovel down. And our goal is to get people to recognize that they have an addiction issue. to drugs or alcohol long before they lose everything. This idea of waiting until you hit bottom to do something is kind of silly, right? It's unnecessary. All you have to do is see the writing on the wall. If you're an adult who considers yourself a functional alcoholic and you're married and you have children, I do want you to be a good partner and it is affecting your ability to be the best parent you can be. And I'm not saying you're abusive to your partner or to your kids, but I am saying You know you could be doing better, and chances are you are causing some damage and some harm that you might not want to admit to. You cannot hide behind the excuse of, well, I make good money, or I go to work every day, or my grades are fine. Now, I know this was a lot of hard truths to take in, but I don't want you to beat yourself up too much because you don't have this problem because you're a bad person. Here's the thing. If you put enough of an addictive chemical in your body, you're going to get addicted. I don't care who you are, what your background is. If you put enough alcohol in your body, you're going to develop a problem with alcohol the same way as with nicotine or any other substance. It has nothing to do with being a bad person. It has a lot to do with the way our bodies work. And essentially alcohol is a poison and you're pouring that poison into your brain and into your body over and over again. And alcohol specifically does something that some of the other drugs don't, and that is it shuts off the front part of your brain, and that's where your off valve lives, the part of your brain that allows you to stop or control it or cut it back, it lives in the front part and alcohol deactivates that part. And so that is why it is very difficult to stop once you get started. A lot of people don't think that they're a real alcoholic if they can still stop or if they don't drink every day. But the truth is, if you're the kind of person that has a ton of difficulty stopping once you start and you make promises and you break those promises to yourself and to other people, and you end up doing things you regret and you feel embarrassed about and And your family's upset with you and life's getting harder and harder and you feel more stressed and more anxiety, then it's time to take a good hard look at it.