How do you help an addicted loved one when another family member keeps enabling?

What do I do if my addicted loved one has a severe medical problem but continues to use anyway? What do I do if there are other family members still enabling? How about if they have bad self esteem and they won't talk to a counselor? What do I do if they want to go to a methadone clinic? Or how do I deal with it if my addicted spouse has caused trauma to our children or tries to emotionally blackmail me or just plain isn't doing what they said they were going to do? We're going to cover those questions and more in today's live video and some of these questions or some of the solutions or advice I'm going to give, I think it's going to be pretty unexpected, so make sure you stay tuned. Now we're going to do our very best to cover all the questions that were sent in to me for today's video, but I'm guessing we probably won't get through all of them. And if that's the case, then we will make a part 2 of this video so that we make sure and address the questions that you guys so kindly submitted. If you didn't get to submit questions and you want questions answered on a live video, then you can always email me@amberffrc.com and let me know. Put in the subject line that this is for a live video, live video question. That way I'll know that that's what you want and I will try to address your question the next time. 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 that you can get your life and your family back on track and get back out there and live the life that you want to live. Now I want to show you these questions just because I think it helps if you read them along with me. Some of them are short, some of them are long, some of them have quick answers and some of them have complic answers. But together we will go through these and figure it out. All right, let's see here. Here we go. Here is our first question. Should I tell his friends or family? I'm pretty sure my spouse is a functioning alcoholic. His family and friends don't know because he mostly sneak drinks at home. Should I tell them? He won't agree with me that he has a problem, but I think he's in denial. Should I tell the friends? This is a really great question that comes up a lot, especially when someone has A drinking problem. Because usually a person with a drinking problem can hide that for quite a long time from everybody else. And the spouse is normally the first one to sort of catch on and be frustrated about the problem. I do have a solid, clear answer for you here. The answer to this question is no, you do not. This is only going to backfire on you because it's going to make your spouse furious with you because they're going to be humiliated and they're, it's going to take a long time for them to get over that if they do ever get over that. And that's going to be a distraction and a block from them seeing that they have a problem. Additionally, a lot of the people that you might try to tell may not believe you and your spouse may go behind your back and tell them that you're just a crazy controlling lunatic and they start and then you get spooky splitting that starts between you and the rest of the people. And lastly, if you need one more reason not to do this is because you're just going to get really frustrated when you don't get the response from them that you want to get. So I would definitely say no, you do not need to tell them. Now if your spouse does something and it comes out itself and other people just find out, that's a different story. You don't have to protect it, you don't have to keep it a secret, but I wouldn't go out and announce it for the most part. That just backfires on you. All right, let's, let's take a look at our next question. This one is a little bit longer, so let's go through it together. Everything I've seen in my research indicates that drug abuse can often be caused by the person not addressing emotional or mental health problems. I noticed a lot of young people who struggle with addiction have an incredibly low self esteem, but when you ask them about it, they tend to clam up. How do you encourage a loved one to explore some of the reasons they might be abusing drugs? And how about when they are resistant to talking to professionals? Is it wise to try and address it with them? Can they be in denial about it? How do you get them out of denial? Seems like if you don't address the core issue, you will continue to make the same mistake. I've heard that I do it because of boredom and for fun, but that makes no sense. Addiction is not fun and an adult can choose many other options for boredom if that's the problem. Actually, boredom is a huge trigger for using substances. And I've heard that that one a lot and I do think that that's a legitimate thing. Is it the best way to deal with boredom? No. Using substances to deal with any problem isn't the best way to deal with any problem. You can throw out any problem out there and using substances is probably the worst solution that you could find. Or at least up there with the top worst solutions that you could find. Now to go back to what I think is the bigger question here is the question about self esteem and which kind of goes to the what if they have underlying core issues? The deal with someone using substances having a self esteem problem is that's probably the case in almost all of them. The reason is is because when you have a substance abuse problem, you are very likely to be engaging behaviors that you are not proud of and so the substance then causes the self esteem problem. Now some people have self esteem issues before the substance abuse issue takes over, but if you didn't before, you probably will as a result of. And I'm not a big fan of trying to get to core issues until you address the substance use problem because you just can't get to them if the substance use is still going on. So if someone has bad self esteem and you can talk to them, try to build them up and try to get them confidence and this and that and the other, but you can't feel good about yourself when you're stuck engaging in an addictive behavior. It's just not going to happen. So you're not gonna get anywhere with it. So I wouldn't really push so much on that button if there's an active addiction still going on. And I would say the same to other kinds of addictions underlying core issues as well. We do have some more questions coming up about that. Now you can, I will say this, you can use some motivational interviewing. I'm going to have to get my dog up here because he's fussing. I guess he wants to be on live. You can ask some motivational interview style questions for you to maybe help them explore that issue and uncover maybe what some of those things are. If you want to know how to do that, you can find that I have a free workshop on that kind of way of questioning people and I'll put a link to it in the description. This question is about medication assisted treatment. It says, can you do a video on methadone clinics? What to expect from this kind of treatment and how to best support my partner through it. For those of you who don't know what methadone is. It's an opiate replacement medication. So it's given to people who are dependent on pain pills or heroin and it, it's an opiate itself. Typically when you go to a methadone clinic, methadone isn't the only kind of medication for this. The other medications that are used a lot these days are Suboxone and Subutex, which is just a different form of Suboxone. Methadone clinics usually require a person, at least in the beginning to show up every day to get the dose of medicine. And a lot of times that's super early in the morning. So one of the frustrating things about methadone is, is literally you're, you're sort of tied to the cl having to go back every day to get that dose because if you don't go, you're going to be very sick. I'm not, I'm not a doctor. I can't really prescribe meds and I can't really give you advice on medicines. But when I read this question, one of the first things that popped into my mind is why choose methadone when there are newer options out there that seem to be, seem, seem to be in a lot of ways better options? Like I said, I'm not the doctor, I can't tell you what to take. But if it's a, if it's a choice between meth and Suboxone, most people these days are choosing Suboxone, I think, and it may have to do with where you live and what's available and, and there could be other things involved in that as well. All right, I'm titled this question what the hell does that mean? My 25 year old son struggles with addiction to marijuana use and gambling. He's been in a non 12 step program three times in a short period. We've seen improvements. But he struggles to get a job and sometimes I wonder if my husband and I can get, can help him too much. We are currently paying his rent, power and phone. So that's the backstory. My question is, however, it's about me. My counselor asked me yesterday what is the meaning of my worry surrounding my son. I can usually answer anything she throws at me, but this time I'm stumped. It's probably something profound as she's asked me to think about my answer for the next session. I'm asking what could possibly be the meaning for a mother's worry. To be honest with you, I have no idea what that question means either. I'm like, what does. That sounds like a counselor question, doesn't it? We sometimes as counselors, we ask these questions and we're not clear about it. If I were you, I would go back to the counselor and I would say, can you answer that question in another way? Because I'm not sure what they mean by. I mean, I could have some guesses, like, maybe, like, what purpose does the worrying serve? That that might be what they're saying here, but. But I'm not 100 sure, to be honest. That was your question. Now back up to the backstory that you put in there, which was about your kid not wanting to keep jobs, but you guys are paying for everything. I would probably say there is a connection between those two things. So it sounds like there might not be adequate motivation for your son to get and keep a steady job. So that's definitely something to look at. All right, here's our next question. Opioid addiction and medical problems. Is it possible to overcome opioid addiction with Ehlers Danlos syndrome? I know I probably did not say that right. I've never heard it before. And also, how do you do it safely without going to rehab? I'd never heard of that particular syndrome before I looked it up and have a vague understanding about what it is. But I'm not sure what kind of pain is involved in that syndrome. I'm sure it's some because I think it has to do with connective tissues or tendons and things like that. But like I said, I haven't really heard of it before. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to answer this question in a more general sense when saying, like, can you overcome an opioid addiction if you have true medical pain? And what I'm going to say to that is, yes, many people have medical issues. That might have even been the start of an opioid dependency. The thing of it is, typically once people get off of an opioid long enough, their natural pain defense mechanism kicks in and they actually have less pain than they did when they were on the opioids. Because when you're on the opioids, you don't have any pain defense, and you keep in that cycle of, you know, feeling better, being in withdrawal, feeling better being in withdrawal. Now, I will say that it is very hard to convince people of that because when they're not using, they feel terrible. So they. They don't usually like that answer. But you kind of have to get out of the using long enough to figure out what is the baseline of pain. Now the second part of your question is how do you do that safely without going to rehab? And that's a little bit of a complex issue. If someone's dependent on opioids, they probably are going to need some kind of help medically detoxing and so you can there. But there are plenty of outpatient places that will help you do that. So when you say going to rehab, I'm assuming that you mean can you do that without going to inpatient rehab? And I'm going to say the answer to that question is yes. There are actually a lot of outpatient opioid treatment programs and they can help you with the balancing of pain and the addiction. If you talk with them about it, hopefully that helps. Someone out there knows what that syndrome is. You can definitely let me know that in the comments. This question is about enabling family members. My brother is addicted and has admitted to a few family members that he does take Percocets and has off and on for around 12 years. At one point he was up to 22 a day. His wife knows that he's taken them off and on and they were never from a doctor, yet she believes that he has it under control. He has manipulated her into thinking to trust him because what is a marriage without trust? That is kind of a manipulative question. He has tried to stop several times but keeps having to go back. In recent years he started picking at his skin, has convinced her that he has a rare disease called mor Morgelion. Probably didn't say that one right either, which if you look it up, doctors believe is a delusion. He made excellent money at his job, yet they've had to take out numerous loans to remortgage their house several times. She is blind to all of it no matter how much we try to show her. We are planning to do an intervention and she doesn't want to be there because she doesn't like confront. But without her on her, without her on our side, he doesn't have much to lose because he has already withdrawn from us. He sleeps all day, has no job, drives around all night and does nothing and recently sold a house that is now over $300,000. His wife and now his children, ages 16 and 13 and 11 make excuses for his behavior, his stomach hurts, he's so tired, etc. The family is very concerned. If you need more information, let me know. I don't want to ramble. Excuse my grammar areas. Any advice is greatly appreciated. So this one I can answer pretty clearly for you as well. And that is if this guy has a bunch of money because he has a good job and he just sold a house and if his wife and children just can't see it or won't see it for whatever reason, you, you are not going to be helping by trying to do an intervention without a spouse. Especially if you do one of those confrontation type interventions like the kind you see on tv. For that to work, there has to be no other place to run to. You literally have to have all the major key players involved in a person's life on board. Because if there's someone else that's going to give that addictive person an escape hatch, they're going to take the escape hatch. Meanwhile, you've damaged your relationship with them, they don't trust you even more. So I would. And you may have already have that emotion, you may have even paid interventionist to come on out, but based on what I'm reading here, I would not do that. Not only is it not going to work because there's an escape hatch, but the person has a ton of money and he's not going to quit using while he's got money and somebody that's going to enable him. It's just not going to happen. You can try some of the craft method techniques and some of the motivational interviewing techniques like we talked about earlier, to maybe pull his motivation out of him. But the first thing you'll have to do is develop some kind of trust and rapport with them. And we teach those techniques in our online course called the Edible Intervention. I'll put the links to all of that in the description. And I don't know if I answered this, but how do we. The wife is blonde, so how do we get her to see it? We. The more you try to push, the more she's not seeing it. You need to stop pushing the wife to see it. You just need to back up out of the way and let it show itself and she will eventually see it when the money runs out and the $300,000 is spent and they can't pay their bills and stuff like that. That, that might be when she can see it. But the harder you push, someone has an addiction to see that they have a problem, the more you're slowing it down, actually. And the same thing with like, if they have family member or friends who are in denial, it works the same way. Severe medical problems. Nick has possible sepsis for the third time and won't go to the hospital. Our son is an IV drug user using both heroin and crack. He's 38. Just before the COVID lockdown in the UK, he got sepsis which resulted in open heart surgery. He managed to get drugs while still in the hospital. He recovered until a few months later when he got sepsis again. On the other side of his heart is damaged, resulting in severe permanent cellulitis. He h. He was told to leave the hospital early due to the drug use. He got into treatment at another hospital, but has not stopped using. He has a fear of going to rehab, saying that if he, if he doesn't think he can get, he doesn't think he can get through it without methanone. He says he doesn't want to die. Is there anywhere in the world we can take him to get for help? Now the hard thing for me about this particular question is because it looks like you guys are in the UK and I don't, I don't know what kinds of addiction services are available there. Compared to what's here. I'm guessing it's pretty similar and that, that the options are very similar. How you go about accessing those options might be slightly different though. In this case, I might would suggest looking at something like medication assisted treatment, because this drug use is very, very dangerous. Not just because of what he's using, but because of the medical problems it's causing. Clearly at this point it is life threatening. And he says he doesn't want to go to rehab because he doesn't want to do it. And I don't know if he's already on methadone because he doesn't want to do it without methadone, but it's probably a fear of withdrawal that's going on here and that's why they're using in the hospital. Because when you're that deep into an opioid addiction, if you stop using, you go into severe withdrawal even if you're in the hospital. Like that happens a lot to people who have alcoholism. Like if, if they end up having to go in for surgery or they get hurt and they end up in the hospital for a few days, most of the time they, they don't tell their medical providers that they have alcoholism for numerous reasons that you could come up with. And a lot of times they'll go into withdrawal and that can be a super scary bad thing. And my guess is that's what's going on in your situation. I would suggest for this, considering medication assistance, treatment that may not solve the problem completely, but it might get you a few steps in the right direction. Trauma to children. Do you have a recommendation for families with a parent in early recovery from alcoholism after successful rehab and sober one year we wear There have been extended periods of emotional and verbal abuse towards the non addicted spouse and school age children during the active addiction. The lying, the yelling, the intense criticism, the threats, the extreme irritability, the inappropriate behavior, the years spent sleeping off the nights and missing the kids growing up and threatening suicide still hang in the air. How can you repair this? This is a great question and this is obviously a big issue that probably happens in a lot of families. So clearly one of the spouses has one of the parents, the mayor people has an adult, has an addiction and that's the addiction has gone on for a long time and during the time when it went on, a lot of damage has been done. And so this sounds like it's coming from the other spouse from what I can tell, maybe asking about and this may be coming from the addictors, I'm not sure, asking about how to repair the relationships. If this question is coming from this, the spouse, the non addicted spouse, then what I would say is you're trying to solve the other person's problem by asking how to, you know, how do you repair? If this question is coming from the person who's in early recovery, and it may be because it doesn't really say here, then I think it's really different for each kid. If there are three kids, all three of those kids are going to need something different from you and the, and the non addicted spouse is going to need something different from you. So instead of trying to come up with what's the blanket solution to fix my relationship, you're going to have to address it individually with each one of them. And overall it's going to take time and consistency to win the trust back. For some people that's going to come back faster than for others. So I would expect that there may be one or two people in your life that it takes a lot longer to get that trust back from and you may not get it completely for a very long time. So my biggest answer to this is go about it on an individual basis rather than trying to think of a general way to address it. Because each person has different personality, wants, needs, they may have felt hurt in different ways and you're going to have to kind of figure that out on a case by case basis. I will say this, you definitely the first thing you gotta do is acknowledge what happened. That one is, is across the board, everyone needs that. That's literally the first step that the person needs to heal is, is for you to acknowledge what happened and acknowledge how your decisions or behavior have hurt the other person. This is the second part of that same question. And when the addiction relates to childhood attachment trauma and neglectful narcissistic parents, how do you help your spouse connect their pain with their unhelpful coping, especially when continued contact with the family causes significant stress and repair or verbal abuse Help, I want to say also your channel has been a lifeline during the most difficult years of my life. You are doing God's work by translating the horrors of addiction into engaging, relatable, understandable lesson. I've spent hundreds of hours watching and re watching them between you and my therapist. Your efforts have saved my family. Well, first let me say thank you so much for your positive, kind words of support. I really do appreciate that. And that is exactly why I do this. Knowing that it's helping people keeps me going. All right, what I'm hearing in this part of this question is that this is the non addicted spouse asking about how to deal with the addicted spouse. What I'm understanding, what I think I'm understanding that you're saying is that you think their addiction relates to their own childhood trauma and that they had not so great parents maybe, and that they still have contact with this family which you feel like continues to re trigger your spouse. I would say on this issue, you need to focus more on how the addicted spouse's behavior is affecting your kids. Because while you're going to run around and chase trying to heal your spouse's childhood trauma, your children are being traumatized. And so if we're going to stop that cycle somewhere, that's where we need to stop that is to make sure that your children's trauma gets dealt with. And you did put that in the first part of your question. So I'm not saying like you're ignoring that. I'm just saying like that part about trying to control your spouse's relationship with their family, that's really hard to get someone to cut off relationship with their family, even if their family is toxic and unhelpful. And you kind of have to let your spouse come to that themselves. But most of all, you need to be protecting your children from continued trauma because, and I've got a video coming out about this soon, but these things are generational. Like it's generational trauma trauma, right. It's like one, you know, a kid gets traumatized, grows up, develops addiction issues, traumatizes the next generation, and on and on. So that's where I would put my energy if I were you. How to deal with lying. My son must be lying to me over something he can't control. When I ask him, he yells at me. I don't understand his behavior. This one is a little simpler question. He's yelling at you as a way of deflecting the energy away from the lie or the, the behavior or whatever you've busted them with. He's yelling as a way to start an argument. He's yelling as a way to make something your fault when they've done something wrong. It's a manipulative tactic and have some videos on that. And I actually put the link in the description for you how like starting arguments as a way of diversion basically is what that is. Dealing with delusional behavior. I would be interested in you doing a video when your addicted loved one is delusional due to drug use and how to deal with this. I have a loved one that has been non stop delusional after meth use for more than a year now. He has persecutory delusions and thinks he is the Messiah. He does not see the connection between his drug use and the delusions. In fact, he doesn't even think he has delusions and they seem very real to him. It is very scary. Scary at times as persecutory delusions are sometimes about the family members. This is definitely a serious issue that you're asking me about here. And when you said that he doesn't connect the drug use to the delusion and then you followed up by saying in fact he doesn't know he's delusional. The There you go. He doesn't know he's delusional. And the thing with delusions is you can't reason with someone about them. You can't talk someone out of it. You can't try to show them evidence to prove them where their thinking is flawed. And the more that you try to do that, the more intricate the delusion becomes because it's like a spider web. Like I sometimes give an example like if the person says there are snakes on the floor and you say look, no, really, there's not. Look, I'm barefoot, I'm walking on the floor. Like I would get bit. If there are snakes, then they would say, well they're invisible alien snakes that only bite you if you have blood type A or something. Like they'll literally, they're the, the thinking will sort of take what you're saying and find a workaround about it. And you're it's actually like expanding the delusion when you try to reason and rationalize with them. The. The thing that's going to help this is going to have to be stop the meth use and or get some treatment for the delusion in which a lot of times requires a medication like an antipsychotic. But there is nothing that you can do as a person, not even me as a therapist. I couldn't talk someone out of this. This. It just doesn't work that way. This is something that's happening because of some brain chemistry and the brain chemistry is going to have to be addressed. Hope that's helpful for you. Emotional blackmail all right, this is probably our last one. We'll get to cover in this one. My son has been struggling with substance use disorder for over a decade. He's 27. He's not using at the moment, but feels overwhelmed and buried in the aftermath path. Everything is hard. He has two pending court cases, has a large fine due to get his license back, a new baby, and a very volatile relationship with the mom. Living in a sober living house that he doesn't like. Wants to move home, but that is not an option. He manipulates with emotional blackmail, threatens to kill himself regularly and is going to meetings, but tends to trust the wrong people. From reading this, I feel like the person who wrote this actually has their own answer because on in the beginning of it, there's a, you know, you, you clearly do have some empathy for your son and for the situation he's in, and he has dug a pretty good hole, right? And you can kind of see why things would be hard for him. But you're also insightful and you realize that he is hiding behind some of that and that he's using a lot of that as emotional blackmail, trying to, to force you into making decisions. Maybe that decision is trying to force you to let him come home and live in your house or trying to force you to pay the lawyer or fix some of these problems for him. So I think that you, that you have your answer as far as the tendency to threaten to kill himself. I have a video specifically about that and I will link that up in the description as well and try to put it at the end of this video about what to do if that keeps happening. But essentially what you want to do is you want to take that serious every time because you don't know if it's a manipulation tactic for sure or if they're serious. And so you want to take action on that by calling the authorities Having him evaluated every time he does it. And so if he is just manipulating with that and you call the authorities out every time, he'll learn that it's not getting him the desired result. And if it's a manipulation, it'll go away. If he really doesn't mean it, then you have helped get him in contact with the right resources and help that he needs. This is just one of those things that you don't want to try to make a decision on because you don't want to be wrong about this one. So always err on the side of caution. And like I said, even if it's manipulative, if, if the only thing that happens every time is some police officer, mental health worker, somebody comes up and evaluates them or takes them to the emergency room and has an evaluated. If it is manipulation, that'll get old quick, right? And they'll, they'll realize they need a new tactic that's not the best one to use. We won't give him money. This is continued. We won't give him money. Paid the first two weeks at sober house. He threatens all the time that he's going to leave and would prefer to be homeless. We are in looks like maybe Massachusetts and it's a cold emoji, so I'm guessing it's really cold there right now. He's lost many friends to overdose and thinks he has to be overly dramatic to get his point across. He is burned through his friends and my husband isn't coping and his brothers are in avoidance. I'm the only person he has and he is currently not seeing a therapist. He needs to. He acts entitled, threatens me poorly. We are worried that he will die if things become too difficult. He's become very close. He's come very close several times in the past. Help. How can we become more patient, resilient and kind and not so self centered. Like I said before, I think you have the insight here. This is emotional manipulation. And it looks like you're probably pulled in even more because you feel like you're the last line and he's using those like I'm not gonna be okay. And that really works on your mom's heart. And I'm not saying that he will. There may be some truth in that, but your son has to learn to sort of step up and start to address some of these issues himself. And I'm. If he takes a step and he helps himself, you can take a step. You know, if he, if he helps himself financially and you want to help him a Little bit financially, you can do that. What you don't want to do is you don't want to be the one taking all the steps and him not taking any of the steps. You want to match it. He does something for himself. You can do something. He does something, you can do something. If you stay at that rate, then you're actually helping, not enabling, and you'll feel good about it. It if you feel like you're being forced to do it because you're being emotionally blackmailed or you feel like you're taking all the steps and they're not, you're going to end up resentful. And that's probably why he's burned so many of the bridges that he's burned. So that emotionally emotional blackmail, manipulation behavior. That behavior needs to be addressed specifically, not just the drug use, because even if he's being clean and sober, but that behavior is continuing. Maybe that's an old addict behavior that needs to be addressed and we need to retrain that. That is not the way to get your needs met. So I would target it. Like if it were a little kid and had a specific bad behavior, I would target that emotional manipulation because it's just not okay. It's out of bounds if you ask me. Alrighty, let's see. Did we have more questions? Oh, we did have more questions. We are out of time. We're not gonna be able to get to the rest of them. But I will make you a part two to this video and get to the rest of the questions. I really appreciate everyone who is here watching live. I know I didn't get a chance to talk to you live, but I'm going to go back and read through your comments and I will leave some responses in the main comments below. So I don't want you to feel ignored. I do. See you there. We are just out of time and I have a client waiting on me. I'll see you next week and I will post part two of this sometime, probably between now and Monday. See you soon. Bye.