5 Things You Should Never Say To An Addict/Alcoholic

It's not that these statements aren't true at all, but more is just not helpful. Today we're going to talk about five statements or five things that you should never say to someone struggling with an addiction to drugs or alcohol. For those of you who are new here, I'm Amber Hollingsworth, and you are watching the YouTube channel, put the Shovel Down. This channel is all about helping you to understand the science and psychology of addiction. Because. Because be an addiction is to be smart about it. You have to be strategic. And it's my job to give you all the information that you need in order to beat it. And that's what we're going to do today. Now, I've been doing this work for coming on 20 years. I think I'm like 19 years now. And it's my mission to basically tell you everything that I know then. One of the big reasons for that is because I know that a lot of people struggling with an addiction may never, ever walk into a treatment center or even talk to a counselor. Or if you have a love, loved one who you're worried about, who has an addiction, maybe you can't get them to get help. And the thing of it is, is you can have all the. If you have all the right information, you can help yourself get better without even going to treatment. So today's video focuses specifically. This is kind of one of the videos that are for family members. Although if you are a person in recovery, you struggle with an addiction, or you are struggling with addiction, never fails. The dog barks. Then definitely we want to hear you weigh in. If you. If I say something you disagree with, feel free to go ahead and call me out. And if I don't say something that I should have definitely added in there. All right, the dog has embarked. All day till I went live. Just so y' all know that. All right, here we go. The first statement, which. And all of these are, like, really, really common ones. There's obviously many more statements, but I picked, like, the top ones that I hear a lot. The first statement is, if you loved me, you wouldn't drink. If you loved me, you wouldn't do drugs. If you loved me, you wouldn't do X, Y, or Z. And the thing of it, the thing about this statement is when the person does whatever it is that they're doing, they don't think that it's going to hurt you. And I know that's hard to believe, but they're thinking about it one instant in and of itself, by the next, by the next like drinking a couple of beers today, that's not going to hurt her. You know, that kind of thing. That's the thought that they're thinking. It's very difficult for them to back up and see the big picture because when you're in an addicted state, you're in survival mode. And so you really don't back up and see the big picture very much. You're literally in the moment trying to, like, survive day to day, today. And so when you're making those decisions to, to, you know, take that next drink or, you know, go purchase your next, whatever you're purchasing, you think to yourself, nothing bad's going to happen this time or it's not going to hurt them, or I'm only hurting myself. And so the thing of it is, is that you can say that to someone and maybe there's a tiny bit of truth in it, but the person at the time isn't making that connection. They're not connecting that dot together. They're. And they're not purposefully trying to hurt you. They're just convincing themselves that they can do both, that they can, you know, be, you know, a good husband, a good son, a good father, whatever, and, you know, partake in X, Y or Z or whatever it is that they want to partake in. So it's a, it's a rationalization thing that they do. And it comes from that survival mode. And when you say that, you're not going to get anything but defensiveness and more. You're probably just going to get more lying because in their mind, if you don't know it, it's definitely not hurting you. So that's, that's the way they're going to deal with that statement. Let me know if you've ever said that or had that said to you. Give me like a little emoji or something in the comments if you've heard that or said that. Number two, you need to choose me or the, whatever they're addicted to me or the coke game, me or the alcohol, whatever it is, you know, choose. That's sort of the big, the big ultimatum. And the problem with this statement is if you're saying it because you're, Most of the time when you make the statement, you're saying it because you're like the spouse or the partner. Parents don't always, Parents don't usually say this one. This is more like a, like I'm in a romantic relationship with you and, and you end up saying like, it's either me or the drugs or What? They may not say this to you out loud, but part of them, or sometimes a large part, is thinking it's the drugs. Because by the time you get to the point where you're saying this to the person, you guys have been fighting for a long time about it. There's been a lot of ugliness and difficulty going on. And in their mind, you are the problem, not the substance. A lot of times that's the case. A lot of times they view the partner or the spouse as a problem. It's like, it's not the fact that I drink this promise fact that you freaking can't handle it and you're so uptight and you like, make a big deal out of everything. That's what they're thinking. And they don't usually say out loud, okay, I choose the drug or I choose the addiction or whatever. But in their mind, if you could read inside that mind, if it's like, if I'm have to choose, they may choose the other. So you got to be really careful when you. When you throw this out there. And sometimes people are really surprised by that. But the reason is not because they don't love you or care about you. But the reason is long before you've said this, things have gotten really bad between you. And so the timing of saying it is usually not great. If you're gonna say this, say this after you've done a lot of the, like the repair and the things that we teach on this channel, after you've gotten yourself out of the bad guy roll and this and that, and then you say it. You might. You might have. The scale is tipped in your direction a lot more. But if you say this and it's been a lot of fighting and stuff, it's not. It's not. They're not going to choose what you think they're going to choose. So don't put it out there unless you're really ready for it. Number three, you need to be going to meetings. Now. It's not that. That's not true. That's probably true, but it's not helpful. And if there's one thing that most family members do, it's this push. It's like, I'm pushing you to go to treatment. I'm pushing you to talk to the counselor. I'm pushing you to go to 12 meetings. I want you to get a sponsor. And families are doing that for obvious reasons. And those are good obvious reasons, but no one likes to be pushed into something. And even if they maybe even were thinking about doing it or maybe they're even okay with doing it once you say this to them like that there's this natural rebellious part of our that we all have that now wants to think of why we don't need to go or why it makes us worse or why it just doesn't work for our schedule. Like there's a oppositionalness that immediately they start coming up with all these things against what you are saying, what you're saying. And so you're getting them to go in the wrong direction when you're telling them you should do this. You need to ask the right questions that will pull that answer out of them, which I know is harder and takes more time and takes more strategy. That's why you're watching this channel because I'm going to teach it to you. You, you need to ask the question. You need to say, well, what do you, what do you think would be most helpful for you? And you can even give a multiple choice. And if they say that's not going to be helpful for me, then find out why they're saying it. And, and they may have a legitimate reason and they may have a full of bull reason but you, but nonetheless it's their thought process and regardless of whether or not you agree with it, that is their roadblock. And you're going to have to figure out another way to get them to come up may be would be helpful for them. Sometimes when I have people who don't want to go to meetings or you know, they don't want to do IOP or this or that, I'll say, you know, will you listen to a video where you listen to a podcast, Will you read a book? You know, any little buy in will be helpful and if you just phrase it as a question, they're more likely to say yes and want to do that than they are to be forced because no one likes to be forced. And one of the, one of the worst things about it is a lot of times as family members are saying that and you don't like to go to your AL9 meetings. In fact maybe you haven't been going to your meetings and you just have a million reasons why too. So and I'm not saying that that's not okay either. I mean sometimes I get why that you feel that way, but I'm just saying use that part of you to have a little empathy for the other person. And, and when you say it despite, I mean everything I just said, plus it also feels like a judgment and an accusation. I always Say it's like saying, did you ever take your medicine? Because that's what you may not said it with that attitude, but that's what it feels like to the other person when you say it. It's like saying, you are crazy. I hope you took your crazy pills today. Not helpful. It's just not helpful. Unless they asked you to ask them. If they asked you to ask them for accountability, you're cool. But other than that, don't do it. See, my number four statement is you don't care about anyone but yourself. And there are obviously different versions of this, but essentially what you're saying is you're a selfish SOB or whatever it is you know. And you know, you, you just don't care about anyone but you. The reason, there may be a little truth in it at the time when someone's addicted, because addiction brings you to that survival state where you're at such a primitive level in your humanness that you, you're, you're. It's not so much like I only care about me, but it's like the person's in survival mode. And when you're in survival mode, you just can't care about much else. And it's hard to explain if you haven't experienced that. But the best way I know how to tell you that is, is like, if you've ever been really, really, really, really sick with like maybe like the stomach bug, like throw up virus, when you are that sick, you don't care what your hair looks like. You don't care if dinner's being cooked downstairs for your family. You don't care about the promotion at work. You're literally laying in that bed thinking, don't puke. That's about as far as you can get. And that's all you can think about. And when you're in that state, you'll just do anything to feel better from that state. Now once you feel better from that state and that is stabilized, then you can care about the next thing and the next thing. This actually goes back to an old psychological concept called Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You guys remember that if you've studied it in psychology with the pyramid, it brings people really low in those needs in the pyramid. And so that's why they can't, they don't seem to care about those other things that most of us care about. It's because they're not, they're not getting their most basic needs met, at least not consistently. I'm not saying that's your fault. I'm saying physically, that's what they're doing to themselves. And so they don't. They don't reach those higher levels. And that's why they're doing that and saying it to the person, which might feel very, very true to you. It's just not helpful. And the biggest reason is, is because all you're doing is, is you're hitting their shame button. And shame is what addiction eats for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And so you don't want to try to press that button. All the statements that I'm giving you today, every single one of them, the reason why, the big reason why you shouldn't say them is because it hits the shame button. And addiction needs shame to live. And so every time you're trying to shame button, you're literally feeding the addiction. Because what is keeping the person stuck is trying to avoid that feeling. Because shame is such an uncomfortable emotion that we'll do almost anything to make it go away. And so what you're doing at that moment when you're hitting that button is you're immediately putting that person in the position to do whatever possible to make that go away. Whether that say something nasty to you or blame you, justify, rationalize, go out, get drunk again, whatever it is, they're going to do whatever they got to do to make that feeling go away. You think if I can get them to, like, wake up and see what they're doing and they're killing themselves and they're killing our family and stuff, it's going to make them stop. But it's not. What. What you do want to get them to do is wake up and see that their life could be better and that they could get out of this and that there's actually something much, much, much better over here on this side. So instead of trying to convince the person, you're a terrible person, you got to stop doing this. You gotta convince the person, hey, it's really kind of great over here. I think you could come over here with us, you know, and there are different ways to do that. We talk about all those ways, you know, on this channel, but you got to switch your thinking. Making them, Trying to make them feel bad about it isn't going to get you a good response. Now, sometimes they do agree with you, and they can see what you're saying, but they're not likely to say it to you. Yesterday, I saw an new client in my office, and Camel said, oh, you're gonna like this client, because she saw the family or whatever. She's like, oh, he, he doesn't care. He, you know, he's like, he didn't care what he does. You know, he's like, whatever, you know, I'll do what I want to do. He came sitting office and was completely humble, was completely insightful and admitted it all to me, but wasn't about to admit it to his family. You know, he was just being defensive to them. So even if they do get it, when you press that button, you're not going to get a good response. So your, your whole goal is to learn how to side step that button. If what you're trying to do is get them to stop using. If, if what you're trying to do is just trying to make them feel bad, then go ahead and hit it. But it's not going to solve the addiction issue. Promise. All right, number five button. And this is a button that really, really, really, I'm telling you, do not hit this button. It's never, ever helpful. And it is in any version of. I'm going to tell blank whether that's. I'm going to tell your parents. I'm gonna call up your drug dealing best friend and tell him not to come over here. I'm gonna tell your sister what you've been doing. I'm going to tell your girlfriend what happened. This I'm going to tell thing. Sledgehammers, the shame and fear button. And you're going to get all of those responses that I just said. Like, if there's one thing that your addicted loved one will not forgive you for, it's this one. Because it feels like a complete betrayal. It's humiliating, and it will make them be very, very angry, especially if this is your kid. And when I say kid, obviously they're not like a little kid because they're old enough to have an addiction issue to drugs or alcohol, but they're your son or your daughter. A lot of times parents want to say, you know, I'm gonna tell your friend's parents what are happening, or I'm gonna call your friends or what, whatever, and I'm telling you, you do not want to hit this button. And not only that, but it will most likely backfire on you because in most cases when this happens, the person that you're telling that to doesn't want to hear it. So, for example, like, when I have parents who want to call up, like their son's friend because they've been using drugs together, I totally get, totally get why you want to do that. I understand it. 100 but those parents don't want to hear that. And you're is. You're going to be putting yourself in, like, the messing, like the person that has the bad message roll, don't shoot the messenger kind of thing. And they're not going to want to believe that. And so not only is the. Your loved one going to be furious with you, but the other people aren't going to respond to you well. And then you're going to be really upset because I promise you, they're not going to like it. A lot of times they don't even believe you. And then to put the big cherry on the top, the addictive person goes over there and tells that person, yeah.

Can you believe that?

And they tell that person a bunch of junk about you. And what ends up happening is the person that you're telling aligns with the addictive person against you. And you're like, are you freaking serious? But that's what's gonna happen. Raise your hand in the comments or chats if that. If anything like that has happened to you before. Because sometimes it's like, well, maybe it's your husband or your wife who's doing this. And you're like, well, I need to tell your parents or whatever. Or if you, you know, if that happens one more time, I'm. I'm telling you, mom, I'm not gonna keep your secret. I'm telling you it's a bad idea. Now, I don't think you should do anything to keep other people from finding it out. I don't think that you should, you know, protect them or lie to other people for them. But I also don't think that you should be the one that outs their secret like that. Oh, here's a good one. Like, I'm going to tell your probation officer any of the. I'm gonna tells. It's just a bad thing to do. I'm gonna say something really bad. Y' all ready? If you are gonna tell it, you better make sure they don't find out it was you that told it. That's all I'm gonna say. I had a parent one time, and she. She took her daughter's cell phone to go through it. And then the daughter was like, did you take my cell phone? And the mom was like, no, or whatever. And then she just immediately lied because she was on the hot seat. And that's what people do when they're on the hot seat. And then it had been, like, weeks, and the mom still wasn't admitting it. And the mom was in my office, and she admitted it to me, she's like, I got that cell phone. I said, you better throw that thing in the ocean. Like, you better get rid of that thing and hope it never comes back, because if it gets found out, you're never getting forgiven. So I know that sounds terrible. So what I would tell you is don't take the cell phone. Don't. Like, sometimes. Sometimes parents ask me, should I call the cops and get my person arrested? Which I understand why you want to do that, too. And it's not the worst thing ever for your loved one to get arrested. I promise you. It really isn't. But I usually say, if you're going to do that, which I don't know that you should. I don't think you should fix it for them. They get themselves arrested. But, like, sometimes you might have to call the cops and get them arrested because they're, like, going crazy in your house and you're protecting yourself. Okay, that's a different story. But I'm talking about, like, maybe you got a friend who's a cop or a neighbor, a friend of a friend, and you're like, hey, can you help pull my kid over? You know, arrest them or whatever. If you're going to do that, you had darn well make sure that they never find out that was you, because they definitely won't learn the lesson then, and they will hold it against you for the rest of your life, and they'll hold that resentment, and then they'll use that resentment as a reason to continue to make bad choices. So I know it's tempting, but don't do it. If you're gonna do it, definitely don't say, I'm gonna have you arrested. I'm gonna tell so and so and so and so. You're not helping the addiction when you're doing that. You're just saying something because you're mad, which is understandable, but not helpful. All right, we have a lot of people watching. I see some smiley faces over here in the chat. I see a couple little hands raised up. I appreciate that. Gonna take some comments and questions from you guys. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put the link to join in the chat over there, and you can click it, and we'll take. We'll try to get a few people on today. I can't promise we'll get to everyone, but if you click it, what I'll do is I'll take you in order that you clicked it until we run out of time. So let me go and put that and I'll give you guys a minute to pop on. Remember, you are on public here on YouTube and Facebook, so don't say anything that you don't want out there. You're gonna need decent Internet connection. And if you. If you have a pair of headphones, sometimes that's helpful. And what you may want to do sometimes, if you're, like, talking on one device but you also have YouTube on or something, it'll have this, like, weird feedback thing. So sometimes there's none of those issues. I'm just telling you it could happen because we. We had it happen like a couple times yesterday. As I'm saying it, don't. Melissa says don't give them a ammo. Amen, Melissa. Don't give them ammo. That's all I'm saying. Is the things, those statements I told you, they may be partially truthful, some of them. Mostly truthful. It. A lot of it is completely fair that you should be able to say that, but it's not effective if your goal is to get this person to turn the corner. It's just not. Empathy is a much better strategy for getting them figured out. You get impatient and you want to shove it down their throat, but that's what's slowing the process down. Empathy speeds the process up. It just doesn't seem like it. Kind of like we say it's like not hitting the brakes when you're sliding on ice. That sounds like. Which apparently people in the north can do. We don't have enough ice around here for me to have learned that skill yet, but apparently that's doable. If you're watching on the playback, then we do this on most Thursdays. So hop on here next Thursday at 1 Eastern, and we'll get you on here if you want to. And while we're waiting for our people to join us, we have a couple of people in the waiting room there. I will tell you that if you want to talk to me or any of our recovery family, recovery specialists, the links for that are in the description. If you want to support this channel, you can think about joining the membership and you get even access to our advanced skills and all that kind of stuff. All right, let's take some more people, some questions, some comments.

Great.

Thank you. Wonderful. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you. No, I'm a member. I'm a member and I'm actually living in Spain usually, but I'm in Colombia today. I'm a member of your great family. Parenting, whole deal.

Oh, yeah.

Very excited. I finally made it.

You finally made it. Glad to have you.

Yes.

Yeah.

I finally get to talk to you. I'm so excited.

Do you have a question or comment or a statement and what you got for us?

Yes, I do. My son, 22, he's suffers with substance abuse. He's been in different programs and talking about the statements, you're saying last summer, he spent the summer with some friends. And I consciously didn't tell my friends that he suffered from substance abuse. But what happened to me, it backfired on me. She noticed it. She saw it, and she, at the beginning, told me. I was very upset. I was actually gonna confront you because why didn't you tell me? And I'm like, I had to lie because I didn't know what to say. I said, I know Thomas has a substance abuse, but I wasn't aware that he was actually using. Kind of.

Okay. Like, he was. I thought he was, like, being sober or something. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I could see that. And I could see how sometimes it might backfire on, especially if it's a close friend of yours. You know, if it's like your best friend and your kid is using with their kid, I think that is a slightly different. But you also still, sometimes, even in that kind of case, it doesn't go well. And even if you would have told it, your son would have been furious. So somebody was going to end up mad at you one way or the other, and it puts you in a stuck spot. So I guess the way I think about it is if you had a big battle that you were struggling with that you felt shameful about, how would you feel if your, you know, husband, wife, mother was telling other people about that? It just hits that button inside that feels terrible. So I'm sorry that backfired on you with your friend. Yeah.

But everything's fine because she understands. She understands the problem. She was aware. I told her, you know, I didn't know, which is actually. Which is the truth. Because when I left Thomas, I said, hey, behave. And you know what I mean, you know, just be smart. You're gonna stay here for a week. They're your friends. You know, go have fun. But, you know, be smart.

That's all I said.

And he knows, because we are. We do have a good relationship. But then, of course, Lola came and asked me, and she said, why didn't you tell me? And that's all I could say, is like, I wasn't aware. Which is, in a way, it's.

It's.

It's a white lie. He was supposedly. But you know how things are. Substance abuse and substance. Substance abuse. So my friend is okay, Everything's fine. She's. No, we have no problems. But I, I did.

Your friend will forgive you faster than your son.

Absolutely. Yeah. Exactly, exactly, exactly. And of course my, my son knows that she knows because I told him. I told him. Lola told me. Lola knows. And she says you told her. And I'm like, no, no way. She noticed. And he says, yes, I know, I know the exact moment they noticed. I know.

Like, I'm glad you said that, Caroline, because that's actually makes me think of the fact that if, if, let's say if you tell another person that there's a problem and that person starts to get on their case again, the person with the substance abuse problem doesn't learn their lesson. They don't see that this person thinks what I'm doing is a problem. They see that you told on them. That's the only thing they're going to see. And if that person notices on their own and says something, it gets through a lot more. So glad you said that. And you also, one other thing which I just thought of when you were talking is if your loved one is going to put someone else in a very unsafe situation, like if you know your loved one is doing meth and gets paranoid and crazy and they're going to be in someone's house with small kids, I might would break the rule then because y' all know, those of you that watch, you know, safety always comes before any rule that I have. But I just thought I might just say that because it reminded me when you talking about your friend.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah, yeah.

His substance abuse is basically kind of like it's hashish in Spain. Thank you very much.

All right, we're gonna bring on Cindy. Hello, can you hear me, Cindy? Hi, Amber.

Loud and clear, all the way from South Africa.

Wow, look at that. I have, like both of you guys are from different countries. That's so cool.

Yes. Thank you so much for picking me. I have a 23 year old daughter that's in recovery at the moment. She's busy with her step down program. And you know that they got to do 90 meetings in 90 days. When they start with their step down program. What do you do in a case where they start lacking on that and she's concentrating more on. She's very positive. I see totally different person. The recovery is working wonderfully for her and. But I find that she's lacking on the, on the meeting. She's actually at one right now, okay, She's wanting to do a lot of volunteer work now. So tonight, just before a meeting, she.

Went to.

A place, Phoenix, where there's disadvantaged community and everything else. And she's going to be volunteering there now to help the children that can't study properly and all of that. But I'm just a bit worried about getting these meetings in and keeping her focus on her program.

This is a really good question by.

You know what I'm saying? By. By things that I know that are good for her, but who. I've always told her that her recovery comes first.

Right. Well, I don't know if that's usually the 90 meetings and 90 days thing is a general good suggestion. Like, it's a common piece of advice. It's not. It's not always a requirement, but it can be like if she's staying in a sober living or something like that, it's possibly like a requirement for the program. He. And you got to do what the program tells you to do. But here's how I count it. In my book, when someone's trying to do this, if someone's got this rule about going to a meeting every day, which sometimes they do, in my book of recovery, if they come to see me for a session, I think that counts. If they go to church in Sunday school and they feel like that helps them, I think that counts. I feel like I'm starting to hear you a bit. Okay, can you hear me now?

I'm not sure how to get this volume up.

Okay. I was just saying that in my book, whenever a person does something purposefully that's good for their recovery, I kind of count it. So I'm a little bit more flex on what I count as going to a meeting every day. Like, I count a counseling session as a meeting, or if you have an appointment with your doctor, I'll count that as a meeting, an iop, anything like that, even if it's not specifically a trusted meeting, I usually count it. That's just the way I do it. But the treatment center she's in may or may not count it that way. Regardless of how they count it, you're gonna do a better job if you just be the cheerleader on the sideline because it sounds like she's doing really good right now. And. And you're gonna get more out of her from just encouragement. You're gonna say, I am so impressed with you. To me, the volunteering thing is a thing she's doing that's good for her recovery. In my mind, It's a good choice that she's making, and I would personally count it, but we can't make them count it. So you just want to be the cheerleader and say, I'm so impressed with you. You've come such a long way. You know, I'm. I'm. You're getting all these meetings in. You're doing this, and. And I think that's fabulous. I think she's more likely to go to more meetings from you saying that than she would be from you saying, you know, you're. You're three behind on your meetings. You know, what are you going to do? Because it just. That puts people in that defensiveness zone, and we want to put them. We. The positive reinforcement. So much more effective. Perfect.

Thank you. That's really given me a big outlook on that. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you for your program. I've been following it ever since New Journey has put it out there, and they use it in the program.

Okay.

And you're absolutely wonderful, and I listen to everything that comes out just for advice as parents, myself and my fiance. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. Thanks for being willing to share. And congratulations to you and your daughter. I think that's fantastic.

Thank you very much.

All right, we'll see you next Thursday at 1, everybody. Bye. Oh, up next, I'm going to put the playlist for you called say this, not that, because it goes perfectly with this video.