Amber HollingsworthRecovery Conversation Simulator, Amber's Recovery Practice Lab · Interactive learning tool trained on Amber methodoloy

BROKEN Promises of ADDICTS' & How To Handle It #addictionrecovery #gettingsober #sobercurious

18 Aug 2025 · 1 min

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In this excerpt, Amber Hollingsworth discusses a common pattern among people struggling with addiction: they make promises to reduce or change their substance use (e.g., swapping hard liquor for wine or beer) but often fall back into old habits. She explains why directly confronting them about these broken promises usually backfires. Calling someone out puts the speaker in a "bad guy" role, triggering the person's natural defensive, fight‑or‑flight response. The individual may shut down, become hostile, or lie, making the confrontation ineffective. The segment serves as a brief advisory on the psychological dynamics that hinder straightforward accountability in addiction recovery.

Chapters

They promised they're not going to drink hard liquor anymore. They're just going to drink wine or beer, whatever the promise was. You can apply this to any addiction. If you bring it up, there's a couple of problems with that. Number one, and some of y'all know what I'm going to say, you're going to be in a bad guy role because people are going to be defensive. It's our natural instinct and reflex to be defensive, even if we know you're right. No one likes to be called out. It makes us defensive. Even if we know, I mean, it's just, you can't, you can't hardly help it. You get into that fight or flight reflex and you either shut down or you say nasty, mean things back to the other person, or you're defensive about it, or you lie about it, and it doesn't work out well.