Navigating the LEGAL SYSTEM When You Have An ADDICTED LOVED ONE 👮‍♀️

This is the do's and don'ts of dealing with the legal system as it relates to addiction and ultimately, recovery. We're going to cover several really important topics in this video. We're going to talk about how to interact with the legal system, being the loved one of someone who has an addiction. We're going to talk about what to do if your loved one gets arrested. We're going to talk about sort of a general philosophy about the legal system as it relates to addiction. And lastly, we're going to talk about, in recovery, how do you overcome your legal history once you've gotten into recovery and you want to be a regular person and get a job and do all of those things that of course, you need to be doing. For those of you who are new here, welcome to Put the Shovel Down. I'm Amber Hollingsworth, and this YouTube channel is to help you understand the science and psychology of addiction so that you can recover your loved one, if possible, and ultimately get your life back on track. It's my goal to keep you five steps ahead of addiction at all times. Okay, so let's just start with a general philosophical viewpoint about how the legal system interacts with addiction. I gotta tell you, this is a really messy area that, honestly, I have pretty sort of grayish opinions on. On one hand, it feels sort of contradictory that we say addiction is disease. Most people say that, and they say it's like a medical problem, but we lock you up for having it. So that doesn't really make sense. But on the other hand, I have seen where when people get threatened with a legal issue, that that is the very thing that kind of gets them to do something different. Now, all in all, I do not think locking someone up for an addiction, especially for long periods of time, is helpful at all when it comes to that person's own personal recovery. Because let's face it, being in prison is not about rehabilitation. It's about punished for bad things that you've done. And when you come out of that, you likely have all of this stuff on your record. You likely don't have any good contacts or resources or supports to help you stay on the right foot, if you even got on the right foot while you were in there, which is why so many times people coming out of prison or if they've been in jail for a really long time, they just fall right back in it. Now, some of the reason is because of the addiction, and they just keep going back to it. But another big thing is they don't feel like they Have a way to make a living. They don't see a way out. And so they get trapped in the system, in the legal system and in addiction. And it's a ugly mass of a trap to try to get out of. But those are big, giant world problems which I know that I can't really solve. And right now, that's the system that we're in. So I want to give you some practical advice about navigating that system. If you have a loved one with an addiction, now, you may have experienced this already for yourself, but if you haven't, I want to give you a heads up. You're going to be very surprised about the inconsistency in which the legal system deals with your addicted loved one. Because a lot of times you may get to the point where you want your loved one to be arrested because just that bad, you're scared for their safety, or you think maybe this will wake them up. There are reasons why you may be thinking, I wish they would get arrested, or I wish the, you know, wish their probation officer would do something to them or something like that. And what you're going to find is it's really inconsistent. And a lot of times it has everything to do with the actual person that's standing in front of you, as in like the officer, the police officer, the probation officer, the judge. It's about that person. And a lot of it is their own personal beliefs about addiction. A lot of times you have people that come at it too hard and too harsh, and they just. It's like overkill. But a lot of times you have people who are just like, whatever you call them, out of desperation. You think that they're going to help you, Especially if you have, like, an addicted child. This happens a lot. You think they're gonna help you, and they don't. In fact, sometimes they look at you like you're the problem and why don't you get control of your kid? And it just. It makes you feel even ten times worse. And so a lot of times people get really surprised by that. Now, I will tell you, in the state we're in, which is South Carolina, and I think in a lot of other states, too, there is a legal charge if this is your kid you're dealing with, and like, let's say they're a teenager, There is a legal charge called incorrigible behavior. That's what it's called here and basically means kind of like this out of kid that you can't do anything with. And here in this state, I Think you have to go up to like family corps and you can sort of like press the charge. And you might be thinking, God, why would someone do that to their own kid? Because sometimes it's that bad. Like sometimes the kid is literally destroying the house. They're coming in and out, they're bringing drugs in and out, they're bringing the drug dealing friends in and out. You don't even feel safe and you're like completely out of control. And sometimes getting something like that to happen, it's not so much that you want your kid locked up, but it's more like you want something to leverage and push to either get your kid to get some help or to get them under control or something, because you just need some help because you're desperate in the situation. And so that's something that you can consider doing. I think here what the process is, you go up to family court, you talk to someone, you have to like write out this like affidavit or something like that, sort of telling about what's going on and they can sort of make that happen for you. But overall, don't be surprised at the inconsistency and the lack of helpfulness that you may very well run into. One other little tidbit advice I want to give you right in this category is that if for whatever reason you are in a crisis and there's addiction and there's mental health and there's a lot of other stuff going on, it's like an immediate crisis like oh my gosh, have to call the cops over here right now. This situation is out of control. You can ask for like a mental health trained police officer in a lot of cities. And these are police officers that have special training with situations where there's mental health issues that may be impairing someone's functioning and they just have more training in how to like verbally de escalate and deal the situation and get help and that kind of thing. So always keep that in the back of your mind in case you need it for emergency situation. Okay, moving on to what to do if your loved one gets arrested. This is my general philosophy about it. Do I think it's going to be helpful for your loved one to sit in prison forever and ever and ever? No, that's not gonna be helpful for their addiction. Now there may come a time where you've tried everything else. They have been arrested 15 times and there's nothing you can do about it. And you just kind of eventually use have to save yourself. And that's okay. But early on in the process, you know, the first few times they're arrested, here's the way I want you to think about it. I don't want you to go get them immediately. I do want you to leave them in there long enough to feel the uncomfortableness. Because especially like if you're dealing with a young person, if you just leave them in there five min, they probably don't even like go behind the bars. They're just sitting in the like booking room or whatever. I don't know how it works. Then they just like leave with street credibility as far as how they're concerned and their friends are concerned. You've got to leave them in there long enough for them to feel it. And then I don't care if you go get them, but you need to leverage it. You need to say, okay, I'll pick you up, but here's the deal. Not a home contract. You guys know how I feel about that. Don't do that if you don't know how I feel about that. Make sure you watch that video. But more like, okay, I'm gonna come get you, but you have to get this kind of help or go to this kind of treatment. If that is going to be some kind of like residential or inpatient treatment, then I don't even want you to bring them home first. If you're gonna go pick them up, you pick them up, you pack their bag, you take them from there to treatment. Do not stop in the middle, don't bring them home. Because all kind of things can happen in between. So essentially, if they get arrested, you want to leave them long enough that they agree to do something to help fix the situation. If they're calling you from jail and they're just being nasty and ugly and blaming you and saying a bunch of nasty things, which believe it or not, I've seen a lot of times it's not time to get them yet. They're just not quite ready, humble and willing, as we would say in the recovery arena. So you need to get them to the point where they're like, okay, I know it's prom, I'll do it, whatever. They don't have to be happy about it. They do have to agree to it. Then you can go get them and take them straight from where they are to where they need to be. Now, I know you're probably worried about, well, how will they ever overcome these addiction related legal charges? Maybe it's possession, maybe it's like distribution, maybe it's something even bigger. And what I can tell you is I have a ton of friends and professional colleagues in recovery that have all kind of legal backgrounds. And I'm not saying like, don't worry about it, doesn't mean anything. But what I am saying is it is overcomeable. And a lot of times when it's our clients and they're sort of worried about that and they're worried about trying to get a job and there's something on the record, then we just talk to them about being honest up front by saying, you know what, I went through a rough patch, my life got out of line, but, you know, I'm in recovery and better, you know, a lot of times you're just going to have to be upfront about it. That is the typical advice that I give to the people in our office that we see. There are a few situations where it might not be something you want to come out with out there, the gate, but if you know they're going to run a background check on you and you know it's going to come up, you're going to need to meet that, head that off of the past. You be the one to say it before that happens. Now, to learn more about what to do with your addicted loved one in an urgent emergency crisis type situation, I want you to watch this video next.