The Hidden Struggle: Inside the Life of High-Functioning Addicts

It is entirely possible to look like you have your whole life together from the outside for the most part, but be struggling on the inside. That is what it looks like and feels like to be a functioning alcoholic or addict. We're going to be talking mostly about functional alcoholism today, mostly just because I don't want to say both words both times, but everything I'm going to say applies on both ends of the spectrum. If there's any differentiation about something that might be different, I will be sure to Clarify that, bring it up and let you know. But let's talk about what it looks like on the outside. For the most part, when you have a functional— you're functional and you have an addiction problem, your outward appearance may look great. You could look totally put together. You can be charming. Maybe your career is going okay. Maybe you're in school and your grades are still okay. Maybe you're still somewhat functional as far as Taking care of bills or kids, but usually there's at least one area of life that's going not so great. And it's possible that that area of life is maybe not at its A-game, but not to the— it's not struggling to the extreme that you would think of when you think of an addict or an alcoholic. Like maybe you still have your job, but you're not bringing your A-game. Like maybe, yeah, you're still taking care of your kids, you're driving them back and forth to sporting events, but you know deep in your heart that you're not really present in the moment with your kids and that secretly you just feel annoyed and distracted all the time. That's what I mean when I say the difference between the outside and the inside. In this video, we're going to be pulling back the curtain on what it looks like to have that huge discrepancy from the outside and the inside, how that feels and looks to the person who's struggling with it and how that feels and looks to the people around them. We're also going to be talking about how to take steps to pull yourself out of that. I would say that the majority of the clients that we work with in our office, as far as the ones who have addiction, they fit this category of functional addict or alcoholic. In fact, I would definitely I would put the highly functional addict or alcoholic on there. Most of the ones that we see are not just functional, but successful. Maybe we should call it successful addict or an alcoholic, but that gives a little bit of a false impression, like the addiction is being successful when what's really happening is usually this happens because someone had their life together going pretty well at some point and addiction came in a little later. You don't usually see functional addicts and alcoholics from really young people. Usually you see it from somebody whose addiction really didn't start to ramp up until a little later in life when they had some things already going for them, like a career, or they had been a parent for a while. So they kind of had it down how to be a functional adult. Then the addiction comes into play. And for a while, when you have an addiction, you're able to Balance both things. The problem is the longer an addiction goes on, the more of your mental energy, time, and resources it begins to take, and little cracks start to show through. So it really is sort of an illusion for a long time. You look like you're together. You know how to say the right things. You know what the right answers are. You know, The bare minimum that you have to show up. Maybe you're not showing up to work every day, but you may not, but you're not missing more than your allowed missed days or something like that, right? But you're definitely not bringing your best. And the people around you might not take notice of that at first. And when they do take notice of that, there's a million reasons. You know, they may think, oh, you know, they're going through a hard time right now, or, um, they just lost a parent, or they're having struggles in their marriage, or, you know, it's easy to find some reason. Yeah. For yourself as far as an explanation, and even for other people as far as an explanation. And for a long time, they can just kind of like push that off. Maybe you're not getting your work in in time. Maybe you're not showing up as on time as you did before. Maybe you're not, or maybe you're missing more days than you used to. There's, like I said, there's little cracks, but they're not big enough to be extreme or obvious. You haven't lost your job yet. Maybe you've not even been called in and kind of given the, um, whatever, what do they call the talks where they give you a performance improvement plan or something? Maybe it's not even to that point, but you know in your heart that you're just barely getting by. You're doing what you have to do to stay afloat, but you're not happy doing it. You don't really feel motivated or excited about anything, even though you, you can look like that because you know the right things to say. Like I said, functional addiction usually happens to people who were functional for a long time and then the addiction came into play. And so because they, it's kind of like when you've driven or when you've done something so long, you can say, I can do it in my sleep. That's pretty much what functional addiction is. It's like they're doing it in their sleep. So the things that they can do without requiring an extreme amount of purposeful energy and thought, they can keep going. It's like spinning plates. They can spin those plates for a long time, but inside they feel different. So let's talk about what it looks like, what it feels like, or looks like, I guess, on the inside of a person struggling with this. There's this roller coaster of emotions. It's a combination of Stress, exhaustion, desperation, self-loathing, and resentment. Those are the biggies. So let's break those down and pull them apart a little bit. When you have an addiction, it's not even as— and I tell this to clients all the time— having an addiction to drugs or alcohol, it's not about what or how much you're using. It's about how much you're Thinking about it? How much energy is it taking up in your mind? So like, for example, we, I see a lot of people who would label them, you know, there's, it's not a clinical, just so you know, it's not a clinical diagnosis to be functional addict or alcoholic. It's like not a real thing, but we mostly understand that term. So I would say the people I see would label themselves that way if they're going to use the word alcoholic or addict at all, honestly, but they would definitely say they're highly functional. On the— what happens is as this is building, it takes a lot of time and energy planning on how to, especially when you're functional, because you got to get away with it and you got to keep your act going. So the amount of energy and effort that goes into it, which other people can't see on the outside, is enormous. When I think of it, when I'm talking to people in my mind and they're telling me what life is like, it's in my mind. I'm imagining them, you know, like Like almost like at the circus, like someone that's standing on a ball, juggling knives, balancing plates on their nose or something. That's what it feels like on the inside as far as the energy, because you're constantly trying to keep things moving in your life. And for most adults, you know, keeping up with life takes everything you got. So adding another huge, ginormous obsession and time Suck into your life. Start things start to fall apart, and it's very stressful. You're constantly planning how am I going to get it? How am I gonna either use it without anyone knowing, or how am I gonna use and keep it under control? Because there's this whole game that you're playing with yourself about these little deals that you're making with yourself. Some of you guys have probably heard me talk about bargaining before in other videos. You know, you're promising yourself you're only going to do this much. You're not gonna. Get yourself in this bad situation. You're not going to call or text your ex. You're not going to do any of those bad behavior things that usually happen when you do too much or go too far, or you're in a certain type of intoxicated state. You promise yourself you're not going to do these. So there's all this time and energy and effort that goes into trying to keep it in the limits, but also feeling like The rest of life kind of sucks. And so everything else you're doing is just sort of stuff you're doing in between drinks or in between hits or whatever the addiction is. Use the right words. And you're just checking boxes off. So you're doing it, but you're not present. And if you're not engaging in your addiction, you're wanting to be engaging in your addiction. So a lot of people I see, They may, they don't, most of the people I see don't drink every day. They may drink only a few days a week, but it feels to them on the inside like it's just waiting until, like everything else is just waiting until then. And so even if it's not something that's consuming you every day, as far as you're doing it every day, are you thinking about it every day? How often are you thinking about it? If you're doing better as far as managing it or moderating it, how much energy does it take you to manage it or moderate it, right? It becomes all-consuming whether you're using all the time or not. That's the thing is it is all-consuming and those cracks will get bigger and bigger and bigger and eventually the dam will break. So not only do you have this stress of how much time and energy, mental thought that it takes. But you have this alternation between guilt, resentment, and self-loathing. Because as you're doing all this bargaining and you're promising yourself you're not going to let it go this far, you're not going to mess up again at work, you're not going to miss your kids, this or that, you're going to do better about X, Y, or Z. You're making all these promises to yourself and you're not able to be consistent with what you say you're going to do or how you say you're going to show up. And because of that, you feel guilty about it, obviously, and you're angry at yourself, but you also at the same time feel sorry for yourself. Because when we start to beat ourselves up, just like if someone else starts to be negative towards us, we Instinctually, immediately feel defensive. We do that when we beat ourselves up too. When we say negative things to ourselves, we sort of, yeah, but, and it's almost like this argument that happens inside of our head. Yeah, but I do a lot of things and the things I do, I don't get appreciation for and it's just never enough. And we start to have this back and forth thing between hating ourselves, being mad at ourselves. But then feeling sorry for ourselves, which then leads to resentment. Maybe it's resentment about your job. Maybe it's resentment about your spouse, your kids, your finances, the government. I don't know, whatever. But you start to feel like it's not completely my fault. And so because we have all that guilt and self-loathing and we can't seem to stop engaging in that behavior, we start Figuring out all the reasons why. And we usually externalize those reasons and we make it other people or other situations' fault, or we help it feel better by minimizing it, by saying it's not that bad. Everyone does this from time to time. It's no big deal. Yes, I messed up, but— and then we take our mess-ups, but then we help those feel better because we remind ourselves of all the really good things that we do. And Generally, when it comes to self-esteem, that's not a bad plan, right? Like sometimes we mess up, sometimes we're not perfect, but we remind ourselves, hey, yes, I messed up, but I did all these things right too. And that kind of balances out with self-esteem in general. When it comes to addiction though, that defense mechanism, that process can get so powerful that we really do lose sight of the truth about what's happening. You got all that going on, this whole being mad at yourself, and eventually someone else is going to start being mad at you too. Usually it's the person closest to you, like your spouse or your parent or somebody that— usually it's somebody that lives in the house with you. Or maybe it's your business partner because it's kind of like your work wife or your work husband or whatever, you know, they're very close to you, you work closely together. They're going to start getting mad at you because some of the balls are going to start to drop. Those cracks are getting bigger, and no matter how much you Promise, you can't stay consistent about it. It's not like you never come through, but you're not consistently coming through. And people let you off the hook for a while. They can understand you're going through a hard time. They can give you chances, but eventually they get compassion fatigue, whether or not they know it's because you're managing some sort of addiction. They may or may not know that, but regardless of that, they get Mad at you. They get irritated at you because they start, they start to build resentments and self-pity because they start to feel like they're picking up extra pieces, being responsible for things that you should be responsible for. And when that happens, they start to be negative towards you. Maybe they're just very direct in their negativity and they outright tell you how you're not measuring up or you're falling or failing. Or maybe if they're a non-direct kind of person, they're just sort of being Passive aggressive with you, or they're withdrawing from you emotionally, and you can feel their energy one way or the other, that you're in the doghouse. And then that makes you feel even more defensive. And a way that you guard against that is you start to think about that person's all their flaws, right? It's like, you know, they're, you feel like they're being critical of you. They're on your case all the time. It feels like they're being unfair. And so you, you manage that by thinking about all their flaws. To kind of bring that self-esteem back into balance. It's this war between resentment and self-pity, self-loathing. It's a bad place to be. Just managing all of those thoughts, as you can imagine, is exhausting. Just having that whole conversation in your head, like all the time, takes up way too much energy. And that's not even including Getting ahold of whatever it is you're addicted to, engaging in it, coming down from it, making promises not to do it anymore, the managing it. As you can see, this is why things eventually become unmanageable. Things eventually become nonfunctional. Most people that are in that functional stage probably at first wouldn't even call themselves an addict or an alcoholic. They may say things or think things like, I drink too much sometimes, or I've got a bad habit, but they don't usually use those terms addict or alcoholic because when we start using those terms in our own head, we, it comes along with kind of like an assumption that we need to stop completely. So people resist having those labels for a very long time. I mean, some of it is we resist having the labels because of stigma. But more than that, we resist having the labels because now if we acknowledge to ourselves that it is an addiction, like we're a drug addict or an alcoholic or a gambling addict or whatever it is, then that means we have to acknowledge that we need to do something about it. And for most, most people kind of understand that it's been a— if it's an addiction, there probably isn't going to be a lot of cutting it back, that you probably need to stop. So we really Turn a blind eye to that. We want to call it anything and everything else. And it's not that hard to do, honestly, because it's really easy to think of people that you know that are addicts or alcoholics or who identify themselves as addict or alcoholics. If you don't know someone, then you go to a meeting or something, and then you see a lot of other people and you look at what was either going on in their life now because they're in active addiction or was going on in their life. Because they in the past were in active addiction and you're like, man, they were a mess. They lost their family, they lost their job, they filed bankruptcy. They weren't living up to any expectations. They had all these legal troubles, whatever. And you think, I'm not like that, so I'm not an addict or an alcoholic. The problem with looking at it that way is that person that you're thinking of who is way worse than you, and sure, there are plenty of them. They didn't get way worse than you overnight. There was a time when they were functional too. There was a time when they had their life together and this addiction. It's a progressive problem. And for so many people, they won't acknowledge it. They won't do something about it. They won't get help because they won't recognize the problem until it's Stage 4 until they lost everything, until they're dependent and they can't go days without it. And then they're so far out of control at that point, they realize that they might start thinking of themselves as an addict or an alcoholic, but now it's so far gone that they really can't get ahold of it, at least not very easily. If people could realize it sooner, you can grab ahold of it sooner. That's why this channel is called Put the Shovel Down. It means you hit your bottom when you put your shovel down. You can decide where that is. You do not have to keep digging further and further in. You don't have to lose everything. You don't have to wait till you are in that stereotypical place of what you're thinking of as addict or alcoholic. You just have to know you're headed that way. And if you don't do something, you will end up there, which is a big reason why I still use the words addict and alcoholic, because I think that there's something there about acknowledging that. That's therapeutic and important. It's not about thinking badly of yourself. It's about accepting that you've got to do something different, that you've got to really address this problem and you can't keep minimizing it. And that's the problem with the term functional addict and alcoholic is because just the term itself is a way of minimizing the issue. A better way to think of it, I think, is to think of like saying If someone said that you had cancer, but they said you were only stage 2, you wouldn't think, I don't have cancer. You might think, oh my gosh, I'm so glad I caught it early. But you wouldn't think to yourself, I don't have that problem. It would be a much more accurate way to think about when it comes to addiction, drugs or alcohol or any other kind of addiction really, is to say, okay, I may not be at that worst level of it, but I definitely have this issue and I need to take it serious and I need to address it now. Before I hit bottom, before I lose everything. And all it takes to do that really is just honesty, self-honesty. I know that's easier said than done, but if you are feeling this rollercoaster of remorse, guilt, resentment, self-loathing, shame, embarrassment, bargaining, if you're experiencing that rollercoaster inside, That's the indicator that you have this problem. It's a much better measure than what or how much you're doing or you're engaging in, in your addiction. I don't care if you're just drinking beer. I don't care if you don't drink every day. I don't care if you just gamble twice a year. Maybe you just gamble twice a year, but if when you gamble, you gamble so badly, you wreck your life and you go through that whole scenario of emotions I was just talking about, it's a problem, right? When you're promising yourself certain things are not going to happen, but they keep happening, that's the sign of addiction. It's a much, I want to say earlier sign. That sign is always there, but you can detect that sign so much earlier than waiting until your spouse leaves, than waiting until you're in jail, than waiting until you've ruined your career or you've destroyed your school or your grades or your opportunities. When you have these feelings inside, these are the indicators that this is the problem. Because people that don't have an addiction problem, they really just don't have those feelings. At least maybe they've had them before, but they don't have them consistently. And when you feel like you keep making these promises and you keep breaking these promises to yourself and bad things keep happening to you, things that you regret, that you're embarrassed of, that you're not proud of related to this behavior that you have, then you're stuck in the cycle. And a big part of my reason for wanting to talk about this today is because I really do want to help people connect to it earlier. The other reason why we don't want to connect to those terms, addict and alcoholic, is because we think Like I said before, there's an assumption that goes with it. If I say I'm an addict, that means now I know that I need to quit. But if we take that a step further, is there's another assumption that's there that's not accurate. And that assumption is life is going to suck without it. That I'll never— it'll never be fun again. I won't have anything to look forward to. You may think to yourself, I won't be a fun person because sometimes it's, we worry How it will change us to be sober and how people are going to respond to that. But you have all these ideas in your head about what it's going to feel like to be sober, and that's where the resistance comes in. Luckily, that's not usually true, or at least it's not usually true for long. I won't say it's not true at all because there are some times that you'll go through where it won't be the same and you will feel like you're missing out, and you may be missing out on a few things. But you get so much more in return that it's worth it. Now, when you start to take steps to address this problem, the first step that most people take is they try to cut it back or moderate it. And I do think that it's important to start there. If you can cut it back or moderate it, that's great. If you really truly are in that sort of Continuum of having an addiction, chances are you won't be able to do that consistently. And that's going to keep you in that cycle of being upset with yourself. I see so many people that get stuck in like the 3 or 4 day cycle. They go overboard with whatever it is. They feel miserable the next day. They promise themselves they're going to be on good behavior. Then they clean it up. They sober up for a couple of days, they start to feel so much better, but then they start to feel so much better, in fact, that they forget how bad they felt yesterday or the day before that, and they fall back in it. And they're just constantly in this every 3 or 4 day cycle where they're promising. I've dealt with other people who were in that same cycle, but it wasn't every 3 or 4 days. It was every 3 or 4 weeks. Like they would do really good for weeks at a time. Then something would happen. The dam would break. They would fall back into it excessively. They would make decisions that they regret. They would let people down. They would go MIA for days. They would not turn in their responsibilities. They just don't show up. Then they beat themselves up and they make all the promises and the whole thing starts over again. If you were in that beat myself up, making promises cycle, you can keep going in that cycle. People stay in it for years and years and years. But as you're in that cycle, you're slowly eroding your sense of self. You're even, I want to say slowly, but it's not really slowly. You're more quickly destroying your relationships. And you, if you keep on that, you will burn bridges that you just cannot come back from. So catching it earlier is better. Stop while you still can stop. The crazy thing is when people can stop, they feel like they don't need to stop because if they can stop, it means they're not an addict or an alcoholic. But that's not necessarily true, right? But if you wait until you can't stop, usually you've burned some bridges that you can't come back from, some really important ones that you care about a lot. And when you get to the point where you want to stop, it's really hard. Now you're going to have to go to treatment. Now you got to go to detox. Now you got to Take all that 6 weeks off of work. Now you got to do all those things when if you just catch it sooner, it's— I'm not going to say it's easy to get out of, but it's a lot easier to get out of. And you get out of it, the hole that you've dug is just not nearly as deep. And so it's not easy to get out of the hole, but it's shorter and you can recover faster. Stop waiting until you lose everything. If you're having these feelings on the inside, you have this problem. Don't worry about how much or how often. Don't worry about if someone else has it worse than you have it. Isn't it bad enough? Isn't it bad enough to really be so mad at yourself all the time, to let yourself down, to know that you're just living barely with your head above water? And sometimes not even that, because deep down, the reason you're so mad at yourself is because you know you can do better. You know that your behavior doesn't align with your values. You know that your effort doesn't align with your goals of who you want to be. And no matter what, when you're in that situation, you're going to feel crappy about yourself. You're going to feel a lot of self-hatred, and that self-hatred That's not even the worst part about it. The worst part about the self-hatred is that turns into other hatred. We don't like ourselves, we don't like anyone else. When we're mad at ourselves, we're mad at everyone else too. And so you become this different person that you don't even recognize anymore and that you definitely don't like anymore. The good news is there's a way out of it. For so many people that we run into, they spend years wanting to call it anything and everything else. It's my past trauma. It's my depression. It's my anxiety. It's my ADD. And usually people that say that do have those things. I'm not saying that those are not things. I'm saying that they're putting all of this addictive symptoms into those boxes as a way of not dealing with the addiction. And it doesn't work. In my mind, it's like, I don't really even understand why people want to grab ahold of those other labels because most of those other labels are not really solvable. They might be kind of manageable, but they're not really solvable, right? Like if you have bad depression, you can kind of regulate it, but it's not always curable. Addiction is sort of curable, not in the way that you ever become like, I'm not an addict, like I can manage it, but in the way that there is a very clear, simple solution that if you just do it, almost all of it gets better. Not saying you won't have any depression left or you won't have any complex trauma symptoms left, but it gets way better. But if you keep hiding behind, I want to call it this, I want to call it that, I want to say it's my job, I want to say it's my marriage, I want to say it's my anxiety, you're not going to fix the real problem and it's just going to keep going and getting bigger and bigger and bigger. For most people, when they stop, those other issues, for 90% of the people, those other issues go away almost 100%. For the rest of the people, those issues go away 60, 70, 80%, and they still have to do a lot of work on it, a little work on it. But it's way manageable. So don't keep tricking yourself with making these promises, with hiding behind these other issues, right? With hiding behind making yourself feel better because you're like, well, I'm not totally bad. I do all these good things. Of course you do all these good things. You're not totally bad. But if you keep ignoring this problem, those things you don't like about yourself are going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. They're going to take over more and more of who you are. And it's going to be harder to get out of it. So I hope today that if you're listening to this and you're struggling, am I an addict or an alcoholic? Well, if I'm functional, what does that mean? Does that mean I can keep going or I can moderate it? If you're functional, what that means is that you haven't lost everything yet. What I know about addiction is it does not stabilize. It does not plateau. It progresses. So if you're functional now and you keep going with it and you don't address it, You're going to get to the nonfunctional. You're going to get to the stereotypical place, right? You're going to become one of those people that you're looking at now thinking, man, they really got it bad, right? Now's the time to address it. It's easier. The faster and sooner you address it, the easier it is to address it. All right, we're about to come to our point in our talk today where we're going to take some questions and some comments. So if you're here live, go ahead and throw those in chat. If you're watching the replay, go ahead and throw them in the comments. Bree is back there moderating for us, so she's going to throw some questions up here. I'll remind you that we have resources in the description. If you are dealing with, as in you have a loved one who's a functional addict or an alcoholic, we have a lot of resources for you, like our Invisible Intervention. If you want to get through to someone who's a functional addict or an alcoholic, do not do an old school intervention. It is going to backfire on you. And I have videos about that if you want to understand why. If you're dealing with a functional addict or an alcoholic, you need the Invisible Intervention. Because this person is probably in denial. Their life is not unmanageable to the point that even if you did an intervention and forced them to go to treatment, that they're really going to think that they need that. So it's not going to stick. They may go. A lot of times they won't go, but even the ones that do go, they come back to it because they're not there in their mind yet. So if you're dealing with a functional addict or alcoholic, you need the invisible intervention. If you already have that, And you have some questions or concerns, you can make an appointment with one of our family specialists who can help you figure out how to get someone out of denial. If you are the person who has this problem and you're like raising your hand as in, that's me, I feel like that, then there are resources in there for you too. If you don't want to enroll in anything and you just want to start, I have a free program called the 30-Day Jumpstart. It's just little 2 or 3 minute video messages that come to you every day that help you you can stay motivated and overcome roadblocks and conquer those first 30 days. If you want to take a bigger step than that, there's resources for that too. Let's take some questions, some comments. Let's hear what you have to say. What should loved ones do when we see the cycle starting again? That's a good question, Erica. It's a— it's— I'm trying to put the word on it to what it feels like, but there's too many words. It's maddening. It's saddening. It's infuriating. It's everything, right? Especially when you're dealing with someone who's in that bargaining stage and they're just saying the same thing and they're staying stuck in that cycle. As far as what the other person needs, I can tell you what to do. That's most effective for the other person. But then there's what's most effective for you, and those things don't always line up. What's most effective for the other person is for you to have empathy for what they're going through. And if you have the kind of relationship where you can talk about it in a way that doesn't make them feel judgmental, you can actually help them to see the cycle and get out of the cycle faster. That's what works for the person who has the addiction. That's what they need. However, that's not always what you need. Kim and Campbell, they come on here every other Thursday for you. They're a lot better at helping you with what you need because maybe you're wore out, maybe you're exhausted, maybe they're not done but you're done, and that's okay too, right? And so there is the question, are you asking me what do I do for them, or what do I ask you to do for myself? If you're looking for, for yourself, get some support. for yourself. You don't have to always do what I tell you to do for them. I have videos on here that are called When to Walk Away to make those decisions, when to set boundaries, and how to protect yourself too. What's next, Bri? Me and my kids leave at night as soon as he starts drinking and stay at a friend's house. He claims he has demons when he drinks that scare us. Will this keep me out of the bad guy role? Well, if he has demons when he drinks and it scares you, it'll keep you out of the being in danger role. So I'm going to answer your question about the bad guy, but when it's safety or something like that, and you said kids, so even if it's just emotional safety, it doesn't matter if you get in the bad guy role, you need to leave. So the leaving, if it's a safety situation, it's unsafe physically or emotionally, then that's fine. As far as bad guy role, what's interesting in your statement is you said, I think, Pisha, that he says he has demons when he drinks, which is the reason that's interesting is because it, that tells me he realizes that it's scary or unsafe in some way. If he gets that, then probably your leaving isn't going to put you in a bad guy role. If he doesn't get that, Then probably you're leaving, he's going to see as you being ridiculous and overreacting. Because the thought process is this, the thought process is, oh my God, I had one beer and she's like taking my kids away from me. And in his mind or her mind or person's mind, whatever, they're thinking that you're being an overreactor. And that in their mind discredits any of your judgments or opinions. It's your rushing judgment that you're making a big deal. It's one beer. But if this person is more insightful than that and they realize that There's a good reason why you're doing that, then you might not be in the back of the room. But regardless, if it's unsafe, still leave. We clean up— I don't know how to say the name. If it— the question is, how fast does it progress in the mid-60s? I've seen my parents in the past few years get grumpier, more forgetful, and their home is gross and smelly. They have 5 cats. I'm in recovery myself, so I'm the bad guy. They won't speak to me. You know what's really sucky is being in recovery. You now you got to be on both sides, right? It's bad enough to be on either one of those sides. On both is no good. So I feel for you. I don't know that it's as much of an age issue as far as progression, but a lifestyle issue as far as progression. Because in my experience, and I know you said they're in their 60s, so I don't know if they're retired, if they're Disabled, if they still work every day. I don't know those pieces of the story, but the progression probably is more about those pieces than the age. In my experience, people tend to move out of functional into nonfunctional when one of the things that's kind of keeping the dam intact breaks. And that usually is either the spouse leaves, like the spouse was keeping it somewhat under control because they were nagging all the time, or Or monitoring or something like that. So the spouse leaves, you retire, you go out on a disability, you lose your job. Like those things that are making you have to stay functional. When one or more of those things go, then the whole thing gets on the fast track. So in the 60s, if they're in their 60s, they could very well be at one of those points of retirement or slowing down work. And when those things go, the problem escalates. It's actually very similar during COVID Even though a lot of people were still working, they were working from home, so they didn't have to wait until a certain time of day to drink. So they started drinking earlier and earlier in the day, and the whole problem just like fast-tracked on them much faster than it would have. So it's a lifestyle circumstance issue more than an age issue. Married a long time says their life changed, forced retirement. He is lost. What can we do to help him figure out his next steps? He is borderline drinking again, very secretive, and we almost had it. When you say borderline drinking again, what I'm assuming, I'm assuming what you're saying is that they were problematic drinker. They went for a period of time where they were not drinking. But they're going back to drinking a little bit, maybe sneak drinking it because you're saying they're being secretive. The thing that you have to do, and I know you're not going to like this, Married a Long Time, but the best thing to do is to hands off it and let it spiral. Let the drinking become problematic quickly. Don't try to help them keep it moderated. The only way you can get someone out of the idea that they can moderate or manage it is to hands off it and let it go faster instead of trying to say, well, you said you were only going to drink just 2, or calling them out every time you see it. Like, if you take your hands off of it, it'll go faster and they'll figure it out faster. I know that's scary, but trying to control it usually just slows it down, slows down them figuring out what they need to do. Denial ruled my life as an alcoholic. It's an acronym for don't even notice I'm lying. Oh, I haven't heard that before. That's good. I'm gonna have to— I'm gonna steal that from you. Don't even notice I'm lying. I like it. In 4-month rehab, or is 4 months of rehab a good time for an addict or an alcoholic to recover for a long-time cocaine addiction? 4 months in an inpatient setting, it is a long time. And that will definitely get you a very good start. So yes, what's important I think is the follow-up. If someone's in 4 months of like really strict, like really monitored, maybe even lockdown treatment for it, and then they go from that to total freedom, it doesn't even matter how long they've been. It doesn't matter if they've spent 4 months, 1 month, 1 year, the going from the total lockdown to the total freedom is usually not a great plan. So yes, that's a great amount of time for someone to recover, especially if it's followed up by like a good outpatient program or monitoring or sober living. Like you don't want to go all the way in and all the way out, I guess what I'm saying. That doesn't work well. But yes, 4 months is, it is a good time because you can start getting your dopamines back, start creating new habits and routines, but you still have to figure out how to have those habits and routines in normal life. That's why you need those like gray area plans, like the outpatient, the ongoing things. Um, Marta, Marta, Marta says, Amber, I'm thinking about sending today's talk to my son who has lost everything. It's up to him to listen or not. I don't see any harm in texting the link to you. Yes, I see harm. So I'm glad you're asking me. Don't do it. Okay. Because my guess is you're— this video is a confrontation of sorts. It's something that you're trying to make him see that he's probably not going to want to see. So instead of sending this video, go and find one of my videos that's not going to feel like you're calling him out. Maybe something that he'll agree with, maybe something that's uplifting, maybe something that he already knows that's going to feel validating and send that. It's kind of like this. If a new person was walking into my office, I wouldn't start by a confrontation. So don't, don't, don't start by sending them a video of mine that you're sending because it's like, oh, you need this message. Find, find a message, and I'm sure that I have them, that it's maybe something that they're open to hearing or maybe even that they want to hear. The reason that works is because if you, you are initiate When you do that, you're initiating my relationship with that person. So if I were meeting them, I would start off on a good foot. I would eventually come to the hard stuff, but I wouldn't start out the gate with it. So start with some of the things that he's more open to hearing. That'll make him more open to hearing from you in general, from me in general. And then eventually he'll probably be to the point where he's ready to hear the harder stuff. Thank you for asking. Other people were probably thinking that too. All right, we're about to run out of time. Thank you so much for all of you who showed up live and for those of you who are watching on the playback. If you want to show up live, we are live every Thursday at 1 PM Eastern. We release videos every Tuesday, and as always, there are plenty of resources in the description, and I'll see you next time. Bye, everybody.