Amber Hollingsworth (master addiction counselor, founder of Hope for Families Recovery Center) explains a manipulation tactic addicts and alcoholics use: deliberately starting or escalating arguments to make others walk on eggshells and justify leaving to use. She dubs this the "puffer fish tactic" — becoming spiky to deter confrontation — and describes related behaviors (planned escalation, gaslighting, nitpicking small details, using a target’s anger against them, and deliberately provoking to gain an excuse to drink/use). Multiple speakers provide anecdotes, including counselor experiences of clients intentionally provoking fights and using anger as justification ('I'll get drunk at you' episodes).
Chapters
This video is part four in our series on how addicts and alcoholics manipulate their families and everyone else around them. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Amber Hollingsworth, master addiction counselor, founder of Hope for Families Recovery center. And I've been working with addicts and alcoholics for the past 15 years. And I'm taking all that information, insight, and secret knowledge to help you conquer addiction once and for all. I think I'm going to call this tactic the puffer fish tactic, because basically when this happens, it's when the addict or the alcoholic becomes so difficult to deal with, they puff up like a pufferfish with spikes everywhere. And eventually the family and the friends and everyone else just says, it's not worth it. And you start walking on eggshells because you. You don't want to deal with the drama that's going to ensue if you confront that person. Because eventually addicts and alcoholics figure out if they can puff up and be spiky enough, you will leave them alone.
Yeah.
Find some reason why you're not right or whatever.
And the deal is, you know that generally if I raise my voice with somebody or anyone raises their voice with anybody, that person's going to raise their voice back, and it's just going to keep escalating. So if I can start that going, it's almost just like lighting a fuse now. I just got to wait, and it's just gonna keep going back and forth, higher and higher and higher until it blows up. So there's definitely some planning in that. And then. Yeah, for sure. Then I could use that person's anger against them. That if I can stay cool during that whole thing after I get them riled up, then it's like, wow, you have an anger problem. I think we're done with this conversation, and I'm gonna leave because you obviously need to cool off.
Then you can take the high road out.
Yeah, man. And I mean, that's really. The gaslighting to me is just planning to make someone feel crazy mad, all that, and then using it against them.
No, I didn't skip lunch. I skipped dinner. And so. And then automatically, it's kind of like your argument is invalid because it wasn't lunch, it was dinner. Absolutely.
Sort of goes way down left field.
Yeah. And. And before you know it, you get more. You spend more energy going back and forth about the lunch.
It's just important to recognize that this is a manipulation tactic. And they're well aware that they're doing it Addicts and alcoholics will most definitely start a fight with you in order to feel justified to walk out the door and go use I like to refer to that as a I'll get drunk at you episode. And other times, if you get them backed into the corner, they'll just be plain out mean. They know exactly what your buttons are and they're going to push them. This has even happened to me in counseling session. I've had addicts and alcoholics come into my session and I can tell from the get go they're trying to start a fight with me. It's like there's nothing that I can say that's right when I would break.
A rule because like, that never stopped. Like that. That whole I'm the boss, I'm the boss thing, that didn't stop for a long time. But they would yell at me, all right, perfect. Thank you very much. I'm gonna go break some more rules because you made me angry and I acted emotionally because of you.
And now, now I don't respect you, so I don't care what you have to say, that kind of thing.
So it was a house and their offices were in the basement. It was him and one other case manager. And then our. And I would go down there every morning after he woke me up and told me something I needed to do. And we would get in literal, like top decibel screaming matches for like 10 minutes.
Wow.
And then I would go upstairs and I'd be like, perfect. Got my, you know, got my excuse for the day. And they went on like that for seven months where I was just three or four months, where I was just constant yelling. And like, I went back after.
And as soon as I sense that this is what's happening, it's time to get strategic. Sometimes I'll call it out, I'll say, dude, are you trying to start an argument with me? Like, what is happening here? Call attention to what's happening. The dynamic between me and the person. And other times I'll say something like, you know what? Today you are having a bad day. I get. Everybody has a bad day. I'm gonna give you a do over. Give you a couple days. You'll feel better. Maybe you'll feel more like talking. We'll bring you back in here on Friday. Now when I do those things, those are strategic maneuvers. That's not me backing off because I think, oh, it's not worth it, or this person's just being mean or starting to fight or something like that. That's me making a strategic decision to not bite the fish hook. Now, your situation might be a little different. There are different strategies you want to use in this scenario. Sometimes you need to let them know, hey, you can be as ugly as you want to. This isn't going to go away. So sometimes you just call it straight out for what it is. Other times you just decide, I'm just going to disengage in this. We'll come back to this conversation. This is one of those situations where it's like real different depending on the person and the personality and some of the other factors. If you haven't already seen Campbell and I's video on how to not bite the fish hook, you definitely need to see that because it goes hand in hand with this topic right here.
