Being In A Relationship With An Addicted Person...

Can a relationship with someone who has a substance abuse problem really work? I mean, for real, what are the chances that things are going to get better? Essentially, what we're going to be answering today is, is there hope for your situation? And when I say relationship with someone who has a drug and alcohol problem, I really mean pretty much any type of relationship. I know when you hear that, your automatic thought might be like, your partner or your spouse, which is definitely included in what we're going to talk about. But everything I'm telling you today is going to apply to really any type of close relationship with someone who has a substance abuse problem, whether that's your kid or your sibling or your parent or your spouse or your boyfriend or your girlfriend, Anybody that's sort of that really close person. We're just going to take a look at those relationships and we're going to examine the reality of the situation. And. And so before we do that, I want to. Or as we do that, I guess I should say I want to give you three truths about the reality of this situation. And I know when you're in this situation, it's so. It's. It's like a trap, I guess, is the best way to explain it, because there's just no good answer ever. And whatever you do, it's always like it's kind of a crappy situation. If you leave or you put them out or whatever, if you separate yourself from them, that really is crappy. You don't want to do that. If you stay, also really crappy. There's just no good solution. Well, there's one good solution. And that solution is if the person actually will get better. That's really the only ending to this story that can go in a way that's going to make you feel okay about it. Because even if you get to the point where you say, I can't do this anymore, I'm gonna separate myself, you. You can do that, but you really lose a huge piece of your heart. It's kind of like when I deal with parents that I say, you know, you can put your kid out, like, but that's not really going to make you feel better. I mean, think about the emptiness inside that you feel when you have your kid out on the street. You don't know if they're okay. You don't know where they are. You know, could you be whole like that? It's. It's pretty hard. I do think you can get better from that. It gets a little better, but it's not ideal. And it's not what anyone ever really wants to do. If it's your spouse. You know, the idea of leaving your marriage is pretty freaking scary because, number one, you took a vow and you meant it. You took it seriously. And you've built this life together or this family together. And if you make the choice to leave that relationship, it's not just I walk away, but it really sort of destroys everything that you've built. I mean, it turns your whole life upside down. And so that's what I mean when I say being in this relationship, it just makes you feel trapped. A no win situation. Dara says. That's right, Dara. Many of you know that a lot. Most. I'll say most everybody, except maybe two or three people in my family have substance abuse problems. And one of those people particularly is my sister. My older sister. She's my half sister, and she's about four years older than me. I remember she got pregnant when she was about. I think she was 15. She turned 16 shortly after that. And so she had a child really young. And that's really where the problems started. And so if she was like, 15, I must have been, like, 11. And even though I come from a family where there's substance abuse problems, I probably wasn't that aware of it, except for my sister. That was sort of the situation that felt the most, like, glaring and in your face. And I can remember all the way up until just a few years ago, honestly, I mean, well into being an addiction counselor, like, way into it. If I saw her name come up on my phone or if I even saw her area code come up on my phone, I felt sick to my stomach. Like, literally sick to my stomach. And I couldn't even answer the phone because I knew whatever was about to happen on that phone call, I was about to have to do something I didn't want to do. No matter what, you're. You're just held hostage in that way because it was always, you know, can you send me some money? You know, I have. I can't pay my electric bill. She had children at the time, you know, and then I'm sitting there thinking about my nieces and nephews, like, being in the cold and in the dark, you know? And so it's like, if I don't send it to her, then I have to live with that, you know? And then if I do send it to her, then I have to live with the idea that, like, what, the crowd just sent her $300 a pair of electric bill? And trust me, I've Sent her a lot of money over the years, and I've never got any of it back. So it's not even like I think I'm gonna get that back. Like, I know I'm not getting that back. But, you know, then you're left with that resentment. And not only that, but, you know, that takes away from my family. And so that's one of the truths that I told you I want to take a look at. So the first truth, this kind of situation is this. You can never be better than second best if you're in a relationship with someone with a substance abuse problem. What I mean is the substance or the addiction, it doesn't have to be a drug or alcohol addiction is addiction. The addiction is always going to be ahead of you. And so if this is your spouse per se, that's going to be a little bit frustrating because it's going to be like they can take care of your needs or do what they need to do with you only after those appetites have been satisfied. The problem with it is those appetites are never satisfied. So the best you can be in this relationship as long as the addiction is active, if they're an active addiction, is second. That's the best. And you're probably not even second. Okay, but that's like, in the best case scenario. The other truth that I want to tell you is that it's probably not just gonna magically vanish, you know, I know we have, like this secret hope that, you know, maybe once they get a new job, you know, this will go away. Maybe once they, you know, finish college, maybe it's just a phase and this is just gonna go away. It's not gonna go away. And in fact, as long as someone is actively engaging in addiction, it only ever gets worse. It is a progressive illness. And so even. It's not even that it won't go away, but it won't even, like, stabilize. It just continuously gets worse and worse and worse. I know I'm depressing you. Just hang on. Kind of depressing myself saying all this, but we're gonna have to look at the reality of it. You know, we gotta be honest with ourselves here, because the title of this is Can It Really Work? So as long as they're actively pursuing this addiction, it's only going to get worse. The third truth that I want to talk a little bit about is I'm looking at my notes over here. If. If you are, and this is one you might not have thought of before, if you are in a relationship with someone with a substance abuse problem. You know that this is killing you. You know that this is literally sucking the life out of you financially, emotionally, just every which way. And so what that means is, is that the people around you are also being negatively affected. So if you have children, it's affecting your children. If, or, you know, maybe even if, even if the addicted person is one of your children, it's affecting your other children because you're so consumed with this major trap that you're in with this person that you can't be bringing your best self to the world either. And just like when that addicted person, whatever's going on with them comes, you know, it's sort of like a dominoes down onto you. Whatever's going on with you, dominoes down to the people around you. Hey, Paige, thanks for joining us. Let me know what if you're here watching, let me know if you're watching because you're an addict or you're in early recovery. Let me know if you're watching because you're got a spouse with a problem or a child with a problem or a sibling with a problem or parent with a problem. And when I know that information, I know maybe how to like where to focus our talks. It just helps me to know who's watching and who needs what. So let me know that in the chat or the comments and the you might be thinking after hearing all that, like, gosh, just get out and just leave. But it's just not quite that easy. Like I said before, there's just no easy answer to it. Thanks, Stacy. She's watching first spouse and so is it says Jenna Blair. I'm best. I'm guessing that's a Jennifer and Nancy is watching as a parent. So like, you just you. It's not only that there's no good answer, but the other thing that really keeps you caught in this trap is the fact that there are these moments where you can see these little glimpses of who that person really is on the inside or who that person was that you remember. And it makes it hard because it just feels like if you could just grab onto that version of them and hold on to it and it would just stick around, you'd be okay. And it's like you have these moments where it's like completely horrible and you're just like, I'm done. I'm walking away. I can't take it anymore. But then something happens. Either something bad happens to them and it just pulls on your heartstrings too much and you just, you know, you just can't let it go down. Like, you send them the electric bill money or you bail them out of jail or whatever it is. And by the way, like, don't feel guilty if you've done those things, because I'm telling you, I've done all of those things. Like, literally, my sister I was talking about, I have worked. I like to work, but I have worked since I was, like, 14. And literally from my whole teenage years, I would work, and then I would cover her bad checks. So if you've. If you feel guilty because you've been able, I've done it. And I have done it even being an addiction counselor. So you can't. You can't feel any worse than that, because I know better, and I still did it. Hey, Pamela. So, honestly, the best bet here is if your loved one can get better, that's really the only way this situation is going to turn out in a way that's going to leave you feeling whole and okay. Hey, Dana and Tina and Pamela, enjoy. Thank you guys for like, joining us and interacting in the conversation. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that sometimes when you're talking to the camera, you just feel like you're all by yourself. And so when you guys interact with me, I really do. Like, that makes me feel like, okay, it's like a conversation. So the question is, can they get better? And so when you're trying to make these decisions about how much do I pour into this, how long do I stay, how much do I help? All of those things, the real question is whether or not do you think that the situation has any hope? Can it get better? And even though I've just said a bunch of really kind of dirty, depressing statements, I see people get better from this every single day. Thousands of people get into recovery every single day. You just don't hear those statistics. But people really do get better from this. Many of them get better from this without having to go away to, like, inpatient treatment. Because I know some of you think that that's the only way people get better, but that's not actually true. In fact, most people that do get better don't ever go to inpatient treatment. So I do want you to know that people can get better. And the reason why I'm telling you this is if you are in a relationship with someone who has an addiction and you're trapped in that relationship, and for now, you just can't get out of it for whatever reasons, there are a lot of them, then you need to focus your energy on trying to make the situation better. Because the prospects of just staying in that relationship with that person like it is and not doing anything and just keeping on the same path as you've been on, as this addiction gets worse and worse and worse and consumes them and consumes you, that's not a good outlet. Right. That's probably the worst. So what you don't want to do is continue to stay really closely connected to someone who has an addiction that's just not getting better. That you know that there's no hope that they're going to get better. That you know, know they. You just know in your heart of hearts, like this is just a no win situation, like it's not gonna get better. That's the worst. If you stay attached to that. That's a life of misery. I hate to say it, but you guys know it's true because you've already been there. I know you have. If you're gonna be in that relationship, then you need to start trying at least to change the dynamic. And it's not your fault that they're like that. It is not your necessarily even responsibility to fix them. But the issue is, is that they're impacting your life. And I know you feel trapped. I know there are 10,000 other people out there that'll tell you, just be done with them. In fact, all the people I know in recovery, they're the first ones to tell you, just kick them out. That's what they need. Kick them out. You know, let them hit their bottoms or whatever. But coming from the family perspective, I understand completely that that is not easily done. Right. If it's your spouse, you can eventually get mad at him enough to kick them out. If it's your kid, you just. You get mad at them enough, but you can't ever get let go of it. You just can't. Like they're just part of you. It's literally like your body part. You can't just sort of be done with it and put it out. Yeah. And. And so when people say that, I think, you know what? That's just not, you know, it's a complicated problem and there's no easy answer like that. Emily says that she has endorsed some. I mean, I'm not saying if you have to detach yourself, you have to do it. And sometimes there comes a point you gotta do it. Like sometimes if you get an infection in your legs fat enough, you gotta cut it off. Right. Like that's what's gotta be done. But, but if you're gonna be staying, all I'm saying is let's try to do something different. Let's put some energy into changing the dynamics. And even if you're in the situation and it feels like completely hopeless, the interesting thing about that is I see people change all the time. And the ones that I think are never gonna get it, get it. I swear, like, I can't predict for you who's gonna ultimately get it in the long run any better or than like 50, 50 chance. I can tell you, as in, in the moment when I'm interact with someone, I can say, hey, we're on the like right road, we're headed in the right direction, or we're headed in the wrong direction. But as far as like, long term, you know, I've dealt with people who've been in treatment 10 times, 15 times, and you may think they're never gonna get better. And they get better, like way better. And the good news about this is when people get better from this, they, they just, they're not just like, oh, they're their selves again. They're way better versions of who they used to be. Because you don't beat this problem without building some serious muscles, emotional muscles that you wouldn't have had otherwise. You think of it as like training for the Olympics. You don't get to the Olympics without building some muscle. You don't get on the other side of addiction without building some serious self reflection skills, humility skills, work willingness skills. And the people I know in recovery, they're just, they're my favorite people. They're remarkable. They're just, in some ways, they're just better human beings. And so there is this thing that can happen on this side, this silver lining. And I feel like if you're gonna stay in it, then at least be shooting for that. Don't just keep going around the same circles. Don't just keep doing what you've been doing with the, you know, the, where they promise and then you say this is the last time, or you threaten or you beg and all that kind of stuff. Don't stay in that cycle because that's not going to get better. It's not like, and I'm hover families, my practice is called hover families. And if I'm telling you it's not gonna get better, it's not gonna get better. It can, but not doing that same old stuff, you're gonna have to do something different. And what science and research shows is there are ways to influence people to get sober and you guys hear me say it all the time. There are ways that you can influence people. And as weird as it sounds, if you. The softer you push, the more chances that they're gonna get better. Because what's interesting is, you know, most people so focus on, like, getting their loved one in to, like, come see me. I'm telling you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna build a relationship with them. That is all I'm gonna do. If you saw what went on in my office, you'd be like, we're paying you how much to do what? Like, I. You would not want a secret camera in there. Because you were like, I can't believe we're paying her for that. Because I'm just hanging out with these people, and we have great conversations, and I just build a relationship with them. And when they trust me and they eventually sort of open up to me about whatever's going on, and they usually. It doesn't happen all at once. It's like, they'll tell me, yeah, I smoked weed a couple times. They don't. They don't even begin to tell me the whole situation until after I've built that relationship. But it is the relationship itself that causes the change in the person. That's it. It's not any kind of, like, special, like, piece of information that I have that I tell them. And then they're like, oh, my God. See the light. You know, that's not what happens. It's the relationship itself. Connection is the cure for addiction. And so a lot of what I teach in, like, are, like, invisible intervent. Is how to do that. Because I know that you can't always get them in front of a counselor. And you. If you can do what I do, I'm telling you, if you saw it, I'm just telling you, like, hang out. We're comfortable. I have ways of helping people sort of develop that trust faster. And a lot of the ways I do that is just showing all my cards. I'm not sneaky. I don't trick you. If you say something dumb, I'll tell you that was dumb. You know, but in a fun way, not in a mean way. There are ways that I do that, and I can teach you how to do that, because it's not magic. It really is relationship building, trust building. And what happens is their fear and their walls come down. They start to see the problem differently, and they start to be less scared about fixing it. And so that's it. That's all there is to it. Now, if you have a young adult, like let's say this is your kid. You may, your goal may be to try to build that relationship because you're trying to get them to like go to treatment or something like that. I think with young people, by young, I mean like less than 30, sometimes maybe a little more than 30, but like a young adult anywhere from teenager to there, they're honestly more likely to have to go to treatment. As far as like go somewhere. When we deal with young people, most of them eventually have to go to at least like a sober living or something like that. Because with young people you've got the complications of like the friends, the people, places and things as we call them, that even when they want to get better, they got to get some distance from that in order to make that possible. And also the other thing is, is for young adults, they gotta learn how to be young adults because most of them have been using since like junior high school or something crazy and they don't have regular young adult skills. A lot of them just haven't developed those. So not only do they have to get clean and sober, but they have to like gain all those skills that they've missed. If you're dealing with an adult who's previously been pretty functional at some point and you know, could do all those things, the we, we tend to see a lot of the adults that we see are able to get better without having to go away to like a, to stay somewhere else kind of treatment. There's just a lot of reasons for that. Like I said, not every young person I know has to go away, but a lot of them do. And a lot of it's just because their identity is tied up into it. Their friends know them for that reputation. They have all these contacts all over the place. It's just more complicated for young people, as you could probably imagine. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to kind of go through some of the comments and questions here and if you've got a comment or question that you want me to address, I don't know that I can address them all, but go ahead and put them up there. It takes a. There's a few, probably about a 10 second lag or something. So go ahead and get them in there and I will try to do my best to answer them for you. So let's move back up and I'll let you guys see the ones that I'm seeing. Joy says what happens if they never get better? What physically happens to an alcoholic or Heavy drinker. He's in his 40s and has been drinking for the better part of 20 years. Well, Joy, as far as, like, what happens to their body if they keep drinking, the answer to that is pretty bleak. Did you know that even drinking, like, not even moderately, like, minimally, if you drink a few beers a week, it, like, pretty, like it. It takes a bunch of years off your life. So you know how you used to hear, like, having a couple of glasses of wine's good for your health. It is not like the science does not say that at all. I don't even know where that came from. But it's. It's not good for your health. If you're a woman and you drink at all, your chances of getting cancer are like twice as much. You know, they're a lot or maybe like 30% higher is significant. And so when you're putting alcohol in your body, it's a poison. Even if you're not alcoholically drinking, it's a poison. It's doing not good stuff in there. But ultimately, what happens to people if they're drinking for a long period of time and they don't get. They don't stop is usually their blood pressure goes way up, their anxiety goes way up, their sleep gets way off. Even though it may look like they're sleeping, they're really passed out and they're not really getting, like, restorative sleep. Their skin gets bad and their liver gets overworked and can stop being able to sort of filter out all that alcohol. And so there are many cancers that are caused by alcohol. So their chances of getting one of those go up dramatically. And if it just goes on and on and on and nothing else gets you first, if you just sort of go down because of the liver stuff, it's a pretty bad way to go. I don't want to get graphic, but it's kind of one of the worst ways to go. So it ain't pretty. I know that's kind of depressing. Question. Let's see here. I'm trying to look for the question marks to see if there's actual question. Let's see what Tara has to say. My therapist, who's in long term recovery, has a who my son was sealing, seeing taught us to kick him out, as did his sponsor. He went off the deep end, threatened suicide. It was the hardest decision I ever made to put him in the corner. I mean, there are times when we tell families, too, to sort of leverage it harder. We hardly ever tell families to kick someone out, but we tell them to hold them accountable by doing things like charging them rent, you know, and it kind of backs them into a corner about whether they want to stay or not stay. Because it really is hard as a parent to just throw your kid out. Although we've had parents that had to do that. And usually when they do that, it's not because we think they need to do that for the person to eat better. If we've told a parent to do that, it's because. Because the young person is like wreaking so much havoc in the house. Like they're unsafe in the house. Like they're just aggressive or intimidating or stealing or there's younger siblings in the house that don't need to be around that. Like it's causing like chaos that's just not doable and they need to go for that reason. So I'm not saying that. We never say that. But it is a hard decision. I can't imagine anything harder. See, what Shannon has to say, sober isn't just putting down the liquid. It's a new way of thinking. Absolutely. I don't know why so many people get caught up in the substance part of substance abuse. They should probably just not even call it that because it's not, you know, you can be addicted and not even be putting a substance in your body. Right. You can be addicted to things that don't involve substances. Addiction is something else, something else entirely. This has got to be addressed. It's more than the physical brain stuff stuff. It's some psychological stuff, some emotional stuff. It's complicated. Let's see here. See what Melissa says. Joy. Oh, she's talking to Joy. My husband's alcoholic. Induced brain damage to his cerebellum. Impaired mobility. That's pretty severe. Melissa. Another thing since Melissa said that reminds me is another thing you can get from alcohol is something called Korskoff's Dise. It's not that common. I've really only ever seen it one time. And I've seen a lot of alcoholics worked in like detox for a long time. And that's where they literally lose their short term memory. And so it's. It's almost like being in one of those movies of like, like that old movie 20 First Dates where it's like the. She really is the same day over and over and over. It's like that they. I can remember the patient. I knew that had it. I would introduce myself. It was an inpatient when I worked in an inpatient center. And I was like, hey, I'm Amber, you know, I'm your therapist, but I would literally pass her in the hall, introduce myself, walk, talk to a nurse, come back by and she'd be like, hey, I'm Susan or whatever, introduce herself to me. Like didn't remember in that short of a time span. So there are lots of different physical things that can happen. See, Kendra says, what do you think of PHP for a young adult alcoholic? For those of you who don't know what PHP stands for, it stands for partial hospitalization program. And it's kind of like day treatment. So usually what it means is the person goes to like a facility of some sort and does. They're there almost like a school day. They go in the morning, 8, 8:30, 9 o', clock, something like that. And they're there for, you know, until the afternoon. They have groups, they see counselors, sometimes they see psychiatrists or a doctor if they to stuff like that. If it's a young person who's pretty motivated to get better, that might can work. If it's a young person who's pretty ambivalent and maybe there's a part of them that isn't sure if they want to get better, which by the way is okay and totally normal, then it may be better if they do like a PHP program, but they're also in like a young people's sober living program while they do it. And that's actually a really good way to put together what is almost like residential treatment in a much more cost effective way and usually in a way that is more appealing to the person because it's not nearly as like lockdownish. What to do if your boundaries have been crossed. That's a really good question, Alicia. What you do is you protect your boundaries. You decide what you're going to deal with and what you're not. You don't tell them what they're going to do and what they're not going to do because that's their boundaries. You, you've got to look out for you. It means you're going to have to change some behavior you're doing of some sort, like someone screaming at you and yelling at you. You're going to need to remove yourself, that kind of thing. And I do have several videos about that. Alicia, I don't want to not answer your question fully, but it's a big question and there's several videos on that. Physical withdrawal. Paige says physical withdrawal is the earliest part of recovery. That's right, Paige. And honestly the simplest part, you know, that part is over in About a week, two weeks max. Then recovery starts from there. So so many people put a lot of emphasis on that, which some, I mean, you got to do that. But it's definitely not the whole big picture. I'm going to take one or two more questions. Lisa. Lisa says her significant other is in rehab right now, but wants to come, wants to come after the required stay, wants to come home, I'm guessing after the car stay. What happens there? Will he be different or better? Lisa, since you said significant other, I'm going to say that's an adult person. And so if they will come home and have some accountability in place and then do some follow up, like an, like an intensive outpatient program or, or a PHP like we just talked about, then I think that kind of thing can work. But there, it doesn't need to be like, I'm just away and now I'm fixed and now I'm home. And that's good, you know, like, I might go to a meeting or something like that won't cut it. So if they're going to come out of a treatment center, then you need some kind of like, step down plan. If it's an adult, that's, that's a little more likely to work. If it was a young adult, I would tell you not to let that happen. All right, Dana says, what do I think about naltrexone or Vivitrol? Naltrexone is a medication that's an opioid blocker. And Vivitrol is just similar to that medication, but it's in an injection form. It lasts all month. I'm a, I'm a pretty big fan of those kind of things. I feel like that provides some accountability. A lot of our clients use those things to either help them to not relapse on opioids, and sometimes people use those things to help manage alcohol use disorder as well. So those are all really good questions. If any of you are watching this and you're like, okay, Amber, I get it. We got to get this situation turned around. We got to get better, then you may want to consider looking at our invisible intervention course. Because it's in there that I teach the craft method. It's in there that I teach the motivational interviewing techniques, which are the actual, like, real life counselor skills that work. So basically it's like the step by step process to take you through, say this, do this, ask this question, say this, do this, ask this question, you know, positively reinforce this, ignore that, you know, all the little specific, tiny details. To get you all the way from dealing with someone in denial to getting on the other side into recovery and then how, and then how to maintain that once you get there. And so some of you may know this already, but I've been updating that course, moving it to a new platform. I'm super excited about it. It's so much better. Like, I am loving it and it's a, it's an online learning platform, so it's so much more just user friendly and you can interact with it better. So I am putting the last finishing touches on that. Probably it's going to be the new version, the 3.0 version, be released in probably about a week. If you would like to get access to that, early access to that, I'll put a L in the description for you. And you can still get early access to that now, which, I mean, you can have access to the old one if you want to, but you can go ahead and be in the new one because there's actually enough stuff in there. The, the rest of the stuff I'm putting in there is, is like bonus stuff, but every, the, the main stuff is in there now so you can get early access to that. And I think you get a lot, you'll get, for a lot less money if you get it now. So it's up, it's, it's in there. I'm pretty excited about it and hope some of you will take a look at it. Let's take one last question. Brianne says, how does safety first work with boundaries and kicking someone out? That's a good question because it seems to be in conflict, Right? Right. Brianne, when I'm saying if you've gotten to the point that you're having to kick someone out, probably what's happened is not safe for you, right? Or your kid or someone else in the house. And so that is in alignment with safety first. Sometimes you've got to take care of your safety. When I. Because Brianne's probably saying this because she's heard me say, like before, when you're making decisions, you think about what's safe and then what's therapeutic and then like what's fun. I'm guessing that's why Brianne's asking that. When I'm saying that, what I'm saying is like, if someone's suicidal, if someone's in a imminent threat or danger, right? Then you, you want to take care of that, right? If, if your loved ones passed out and they're, and they're laying on their stomach and they're laying in their vomit and they're going to aspirate from vomit. Deal with that. Like, normally I say, if your loved one passed out and they're just laying there, let them lay there. Let them wake up in the yard and feel a fool in the morning when they wake up. That's what's therapeutic. But if, if it's unsafe, if they're in the road laying there and they're gonna get run over, then I. Then I would not let that natural consequence happen. That's what I mean when I say that. But that's a really good question. Thank you guys for joining us. I will be back on here live next Thursday, as always, and I'll see you then. Thanks, everybody.