Amber Hollingsworth (addiction counselor) reviews the controversy around Demi Lovato describing herself as "California Sober." She defines the term (abstinent except for occasional marijuana — Demi also reports occasional moderate drinking), summarizes why many addiction clinicians criticize the approach (moderation often fails and can lead to relapse), and offers a more sympathetic perspective: Demi is a young person (Amber notes Demi is 28) who survived a near-fatal overdose and has tried abstinence without success. Amber frames this behavior as a common ‘‘bargaining’’ stage in recovery and encourages compassion while noting the method rarely works for most people; she directs viewers to another video on stages of change.
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Okay. Some of you may have heard about the controversy around Demi Lovato, specifically around her doing something that she's calling California Sober. She actually has a song about this called California Sober. For those of you who aren't familiar with the term California Sober, basically it means that you're sober with the exception of smoking marijuana on some kind of moderate level. And for Demi Lovato, she also adds in drinking in moderation occasionally. Now, she's gotten a ton of bad press and a lot of people have had a lot of negative things to say about this, and I thought I would weigh in on the topic. What I'd like to say first is I feel like everybody's really beating her up about this, and on some level I can understand why, but on another level, I really don't. So let's look at both sides of that issue. The reason why she's getting so much bad press about this is because people in the field of addiction recovery, or at least most people in the field of addiction recovery, really don't believe in the idea of someone continuing to use some other kind of mood or mind altering substances if they're really in recovery, I guess, as they would probably put it. And there's real good reason for this. The reason is because even in my experience as an addiction counselor who's been doing this for a very long time, that rarely, rarely, rarely, rarely, rarely ever, ever, ever works. In fact, pretty much most all the time, that kind of thinking ends in disaster. Because it's this sort of daydream that anyone who's in addiction recovery, you've had this, it's that, like, thought that you'll be able to drink in moderation one day or use in moderation. And in a lot of ways, the California Sober method is really just kind of like another way of living trying to live out that fantasy which if you're in this field of addiction recovery, you've seen that crash and burn so many times. So people get frustrated with her about it. She's also getting a lot of flack from people in recovery because other people in recovery are basically saying the same thing. You know, that doesn't work. That's ridiculous. And the reason why she's getting so much hate or shade because of it is because people feel like you're putting out the wrong message. I heard another, like, clinician on some kind of video interview say, you know, she's probably killing people with that information and that kind of thing. And on one hand, I can see where people are coming from. Do I think that the California method works well, I'm sure it does work for a few people, but in my experience, it probably isn't the best idea. And it's pretty risky because a lot of times these kinds of trying to keep substances in your life in moderation, a lot of times that just blows up on you. In fact, I have some videos about that if you want to watch it. I will put them up here for you so you can just take a look at them. However, here's what I want to say in defense of this situation. Demi Lovato, I looked it up. She is 28 years old. She had an addiction. I believe it was to heroin or pain pills or something. She had a really bad overdose, nearly died, has some lasting pretty serious repercussions from it. And in her mind, she's tried to do the abstinence thing. It wasn't working. And so she's trying this new method. And here's the deal. Pretty much every single person I've ever treated early on in the recovery process tries this method. Now, there's a new term for it, California sober. There wasn't always this term for it, but I promise you, pretty much everyone I know that's gotten clean and sober has tried this. And for some reason, that's why she's getting so much flack from people in recovery, because they've tried it and it didn't work. And so they're frustrated that she's out there saying this. But I feel like people need to have a little compassion. Remember, this is a young girl who's trying to find her way in recovery, and she's going about the process pretty much like anybody else that I've ever seen do this. The frustrating thing is just that we all feel like because she's a celebrity, anything she says is to be taken, like. Like she's a role model or something like that. And I get that. I get that she's a celebrity and people listen to her and people might hear the song and they think, if Demi does it, I can do it, whatever. But the truth of it is, she's just a young girl. People know who she is. She's trying to figure out her way, and she's honestly not doing anything that everyone else in the recovery process hasn't tried. Now, obviously, I hope the whole thing works out for her. Like I said, I've seen it work on some occasions for people. Most of the time it doesn't. But I'd like to encourage all of you to have a little compassion and empathy for what's going on, because really, it's just a sign and symptom of the actual stages of changes of addiction. I call it bargaining. So if you want to learn more about the stages of change and what that looks like so you can have a reasonable expectation about what the recovery process should look like for yourself or for a loved one, watch this video next.
