Help! My son and husband are both struggling with addiction 😥 (True Story)

What in the world do you do when you have more than one addictive person in a household? Unfortunately, it's not that uncommon. For those of you who are new here, welcome to Put the Shovel Down. I'm Amber Hollingsworth and this YouTube channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction so you can get your life or your family back on track, get back out there and live the life that you want to live. As always, we try to look at addiction from every angle and today we're actually going to be answering a viewer letter about a situation where there's more than one person having an addiction issue in the house. So first we're going to take a look at the letter and then I'll give my response, feedback, maybe even a little advice about the situation. So if you see me looking over here, it's because I'm reading the letter. So you can read along with me if you want. My husband is currently in rehab for alcoholism for the second time. He was in law enforcement for 15 years and had a very public DUI. Several years ago he went to rehab for the first time and stayed sober for over two years. He's been a binge closet drinker. He would hide it from me. In the last two years, he will fall into a depression and drink and leave for days at a time and to the woods with no communication. On December 30, he left for five days. When he came back, he asked me for help and decided he should go to rehab. He's now been there for a week. He sounds good and I'm hoping he is gaining what he needs to help himself get through this. For our relationship, it's obvious we do not have any trust. He is a good man, a hard worker, loving when he doesn't drink the person we all want him to be. Again, he's a binge drinker and does it by himself. I love him so very much because I know what a good heart he has and he is my best friend. I'm also afraid of getting hurt again, but I also want to have faith that he's going to do this and we can move on with our lives together. And I'm scared to death of going through another binge and him drinking and driving or going out to the woods and never coming back again. I honestly don't know where to put myself, which leads me to my son. My son is currently 16. When Covid hit, he stopped doing sports and school and started hanging out with some of the kids that did a lot of Drugs. He was sneaking out, lying, stealing and violent towards us. There was a suicide attempt as well last March. I sent him to wilderness therapy for three months to clean his system out and to help him process his own behavior. His father went on a binge for eight days the week after our son left. When our son came back, he was doing fantastic. Getting school caught back up, playing football and being great at communicating about what he was doing and where he was going. We were going to therapy and working very hard to maintain our communication. We saw a light in him we hadn't seen. About three months ago. Football ended and he started hanging out with the kids that I don't know very well and started smoking weed. He refused to go to therapy because he didn't need it and he doesn't have a problem. We have a problem. He has now changed his path and stopped trying at school. He's also constantly just leaving and not coming home except for short bursts of time. He's also smoking weed all of the time. He's very angry with me all of the time. I've set my boundaries with him. I know he's going to smoke. I don't approve. We have advised that we will no longer help him. We getting a driver's license due to the liability. He is barely passing his classes due to always ditching and also for a lack of effort as he doesn't need it. He's also just mean. He hasn't become violent. He just leaves and doesn't come back and there's usually an F you on the way out the door. I do want to do therapy with him or for him to have therapy on his own but he refuses. I know there's likely a correlation between my husband and my son. I want to be honest with my husband if he is sober. I want to have my kind, kind, good natured son back. I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to do. I love them both very much. We also have a daughter in college so she doesn't have to be around this most of the time and she's going down her own path. She's pretty easy going and hasn't had any of these behaviors. She also surrounds herself with positivity and I keep her from being around or dealing with any of this. With all that being said, it would be great if you could lead me to videos classes that might help me in the long run how to process my own thoughts and reactions. That would be great. FYI, I do go to my own therapist, do Al anon and religiously have been watching your videos for the last month since I came across them. Thank you for taking the time to read this. All right, so as you can see, this viewer has a pretty complicated situation. Not only is her husband struggling with an alcohol problem, but her son is clearly struggling with an addiction as well. Now, as you might imagine, having more than one addicted person living in the house can make things a bit complicated. So let's sort through this and take it piece by piece, because one of the main things that I'm going to recommend to this viewer is to try hard to separate the two situations and make strategic choices about those situations separately. I can see where it would be really easy to get overwhelmed dealing with both of these situations at the same time. So since you started by writing about your husband, let's take a look at that situation first. One of the really positive things that caught my attention about this scenario is the fact that he's previously been to rehab and got two years sober. I like to say once you've had recovery, you can't unknow it. You can try to shove it way down and forget it and pretend it doesn't apply to you, but once you know the truth, you can't unknow the truth. Probably what happened somewhere in that two year period, your husband maybe started thinking, oh, I might can have a drink every now and then, or, you know, I'm not going to let it get out of control like it did before, even though I'm sure he was taught in rehab that it won't work that way. Almost everyone, or I might say everyone that I've ever treated in the past eventually has this thought process that this time will be different. And I'm guessing that had something to do with where the relapsing started from. Now, you mentioned in what you wrote that your husband has these periods of depression and then will go off for days at a time and drink in the woods with no communication, which I'm sure is scary and maddening at the same time. But I'm kind of wondering, you know, what comes first? Is it the depression and then the drinking? Is it the drinking and then depression? You're saying that he's a binge drinker. I'm also wondering how long in between the binges. A lot of the people that we see in our office really don't drink every day, but once they start, they have a hard time stopping. And this is another thing that can contribute to someone being in denial about having alcoholism because they think, I don't drink every Day, you know, I don't need to drink in the morning. I don't have the shakes if I don't drink. What. What a lot of people don't realize is that this is actually just a stage of alcoholism. In fact, it's stage three, which is kind of hallmarked by binge drinking and difficulty stopping once you start and it causing all kinds of problems in your life, which I think we could all agree, definitely this situation meets that criteria. Now, the other really, really positive thing is that your husband is decided again that he needs to get this under control and has become willing to take the steps necessary to do it. The fact that he's taking himself back to rehab is a really good sign. And I know it sucks, but unfortunately it is the case in most situations that people sort of like, go to rehab or they go to counseling, they learn all the stuff, but they think it's going to be different or it doesn't apply to them, or somehow their situation is special and unique. And most of them, kind of like your husband, end up having to go out there and sort of prove that, yes, the universal laws of addiction apply to them as well. Hopefully that's what's happening in the case with your husband. Now moving on to your son, I think that one is going to be a bit more complicated, mostly because of his age, because his brain is still developing and he doesn't have the emotional maturity, he's likely to be even less insightful about the situation. Although I will say he has a very similar positive, as I said before about your husband, he has been to treatment and you've seen what he's like when he's not using. He's a whole different person. What stands out to me about your son is how dramatically his personality changes, how his priorities change. And honestly, that's what lets me know that this probably likely is addiction and not just a phase of life. Obviously, I've never talked to your son or your husband, so I can't really make these diagnosis. But what I'm doing is sort of speculating based on what you're saying. The fact that he started smoking weed again and then his whole life fell apart. And not just teenager stuff. Now, what you didn't talk about in the letter that you wrote is the dynamics between your husband and your son. And honestly, that's probably the part I would be most interested in hearing. Do they blame each other for the relapsing? Do they use each other's addiction issues as a way to rationalize or justify their own behavior? I don't know if this is going on in your house, but I have to say that in situations where there's more than one person in a house with an addiction, it's commonly the case. Now, while your husband is clearly in an active stage of change, your son, probably the pre contemplation stage. Yes. What he learned from rehab is still in there. But at this point, based on what you're writing, it's shoved way down there. And at this point, he's trying to ignore it. When you're dealing with someone who's back in denial like that, you have to kind of change your strategy with dealing with them. I know it's really hard because not that long ago they were like a different person and they were saying different things. And now everything they're doing is against what they said and what they believed not that long ago. So it's hard to have that switch with them now. The best, at least most proven, effective way to get someone out of denial is to use the craft method. That's C, R A F T. And we talk about that and teach that actually in our Invisible Intervention course, which I will leave a link to in the description below. But that's all about how to get someone out of denial or into recovery. And I think additionally it can be useful even in your husband's situation where maybe he's moving out of denial and into action steps because it's all about using positive reinforcement and how to support someone through the change process. So in your situation, the thing I would recommend is looking into the craft method approach because you can use it in both cases. Now, I know that your big question at the end was how do I process my own feelings? But it does sound like you have some really good outlets for that. You have a therapist and you're going to Al Anon and you're watching my video. So you're really using the tools at your disposal. So hopefully all this helps you get a little perspective and maybe even a little strategy on the situation. Thank you so very much for taking the time to write in and for allowing all of us to learn from your situation. I'll put those links that we talked about in the description below. And up next, I'm going to connect you to this video about the craft method.