This Innovation Will Help More People Recover Than Ever Before

This new innovation is going to help more people get into recovery than ever has before. We all know someone, maybe even yourself, who's struggled to get into recovery because of all the barriers. Yes, there are a lot of practical and logistical and psychological barriers for getting into recovery. The first one that comes to mind is people have a hard time getting into recovery because they don't know that they need to. We call that being in denial sometimes, and we talk about that a lot on this channel. But even beyond that, even for people who know and they want to do something about it, there are still some very legitimate, very realistic, practical roadblocks for overcoming addiction beyond the fact that, you know, it takes work and it's difficult. There's just practical things in the way. Like, for example, one of the first things that comes to my mind is when people hit this moment, I call it a moment of clarity. They hit a wall and it's this moment when they decide, I'm done with this. I'm sick of feeling this way. I don't ever want to do this again. I'm done. And if you've struggled with any addiction in the past, or hey, if you've just struggled with a problem in the past and it's hard to get that one problem to go away, it just keeps coming back in your life, you've had this feeling or this moment, this moment of clarity, and you're really sincere, you're really genuine, and you really want to change. Well, maybe that happens on a Sunday. Maybe that happens at 2 o'clock in the morning. Maybe that happens on a Wednesday as you're driving to work or on a Thursday night as you're watching the ballgame. It doesn't always happen at the most convenient times. And when it happens, it's so important to take action because unfortunately these little moments of clarity, they don't last super long. If you don't take some action on them and start putting some things in place, like pretty quickly, you're probably going to miss your window. I would say most moments of clarity tend to last between hours to a few days, a week max. Because if it, especially if it's a pretty serious addiction, one of two things is going to happen. If you make it a day or two and you don't engage in the addiction, then you're going to think, I'm fine, I got this. And you're probably not fine. But it, or if you don't make it a couple, a couple of days, then It's probably because you're so stuck in the addictive cycle or you're in withdrawal or something like that. And before you know it, you're back off to the races before you can put something in place. It's not easy to get a lot of things lined up, especially if you start thinking about something like going into a treatment center or even just making a new patient psychiatrist appointment or counseling appointment somewhere. You've got to call during Regular office hours. You've got to wait for them to call you back. You've got to see if they have an opening, and if they have an opening, and if they're accepting new patients, then you might can get in. You know, in two, three, four, sometimes five or six weeks. What's going to happen to your readiness and your big moment of clarity by the time we get there? You're probably not even going to show up for that appointment because you missed your little window, right? So you got to take. You got to take steps when you're in that frame of mind. It's like a little fire is lit, a little spark. And you need to put some oxygen on that spark to keep it going, to keep that flame building to something bigger and bigger and bigger. You have to nurture that flame or it is going to die out like a fire in your backyard, right? You got to nurture that thing. And it can be hard to put a lot of things in place in those moments. And sometimes you have these moments when you feel physically terrible, or maybe when something really bad is happening and your life is falling apart. It's just not easy to do all the things you need to do to To like look for your insurance card and call the number on the back. It's a lot of work to put these things in place. Even for me who works in the field, who kind of knows what's out there and has some idea about where to start and what I'm looking for, I still think it's a giant pain in the butt. It's difficult for me to put something in place for somebody who's not already in a system. So it's extremely difficult for somebody who's Not all that familiar with it, doesn't have like contacts and stuff, and honestly doesn't feel very great at the moment. You can imagine that's a huge wall to climb. All right, but let's say you climb that wall. That's right. The next barrier would be, how about how expensive it is? It's expensive to get help. If you're going to inpatient treatment, it's going to cost you. A pretty penny. Now, sometimes insurance pays for it. Sometimes you just have to pay like your copay or your out-of-pocket. But if you're paying for inpatient treatment out-of-pocket, you're probably looking at, for 30 days, you're probably looking at $30,000 and up. And you may need even more than 30 days. And even if you just need 30 days inpatient, then you're going to need to follow up with some intensive outpatient and counseling and blah, blah, blah, blah. It's expensive. Even if all you're paying for is just copays for for going to appointments. And that can be a huge barrier for people because guess what? A lot of the consequences for addiction are financial. So a lot of times the symptom of the problem could be financial distress. So if the addiction itself is causing serious financial distress and you need money and resources to get the help you need, as you can see, that's a pretty big barrier.

Barrier.

Another huge barrier is even just beyond just like getting in somewhere as a new person, even just making appointments regularly. If you're working, if you're taking care of your children, maybe it's not appointments. Maybe it's just 12-step meetings. Maybe you decide, I'm just going to go to 12-step meetings. They're free. They're right here in my community. They're easy to access, but you've got children to take care of. You've got a work schedule. You've got a school schedule. Maybe you got a DUI and you don't have a driver's license. Right now, so it's hard for you to get transportation. These are just the practical logistical barriers that people face that are trying to get help and trying to get better, even when they want to, right? And that's imagining that we've already dealt with the denial and a person's ready. These are just the practical steps. Now, if that didn't stop you, there's some other barriers that might get in your way. One of them being Privacy. Let's think about it. If you're like a professional in the community, or hey, if you're just a private person, or maybe you're just a shy person and you don't want to talk about all your business in front of everybody, did you know that most addiction treatment, the majority of addiction treatment is done in group settings? So even if it's just community support group, even if it's a group at your church, even if it's inpatient treatment, Almost all of it is done in a group setting. And tomorrow I'm going to do a special live. We're going to talk about group settings, what's really good about them and what makes them not the best fit for everybody. So we'll go into that specifically a little bit more tomorrow. But you could imagine that it's hard to talk about all your most private, most uncomfortable personal business in front of a lot of people. A lot of people, even if they can get to meetings and get to group therapy and stuff like that, they don't want to share because they, maybe they have some social anxiety. Maybe they just don't want to talk about it in front of everyone. It's hard for some people to talk about it, even just one-to-one with like their own personal counselor. I promise you that because I see people every day for addiction one-on-one, and I promise you none of them tell me the whole story. None of them. And I don't blame them. And I get it because sometimes it's embarrassing. Sometimes you're just ashamed. Sometimes you just are afraid. Even though I like to say I'm like literally the nicest addiction counselor, I don't know that I could find a nicer addiction counselor than me because a lot of addiction counselors are kind of hardasses. I'm being honest. They're there to like whip you into shape. Even if I could be as nice as I can be, you just don't want to tell it because saying it out loud, Just sucks. It's not even so much about what I'm going to say or what I'm going to think. It's about like literally saying the words out loud of the things that you're most shameful and uncomfortable about. You don't want to feel your own anxiety, shame, guilt, nasty feelings bubble up just from talking about it. Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't. I think that it is helpful to do that, even if it is uncomfortable, but that stops a lot of people. From talking about the things that they need to talk about. So you can see there's a lot of barriers here, even for things like— I see this one a lot, even for people that are like in coaching with me or whatever. Maybe they're going to 12-step meetings and they want to get a sponsor. The whole idea of asking someone to be their sponsor For some people feels so intimidating. It's kind of like, it's honestly, it's kind of like asking someone out on a date. It's really intimidating. It's like, oh, will you be my sponsor? And I have heard stories where, you know, it's uncomfortable enough to ask someone where they actually get turned down. Now, I always warn people about this because there's a lot of reasons why someone might say, hey, I can't be. They're not usually mean about it. They usually say, I can't, but let me tell you somebody else. But still, it takes up a lot of courage to. You have to work up a lot of courage to even ask. And so, sometimes if people have too many sponsors, they won't take on someone. Sometimes if someone doesn't feel they have enough recovery time, they won't take on someone. Sometimes if someone feels like they have too much stuff going on in their own life, and they know they won't have time to dedicate to someone to really be you know there for them like they need to, they won't. So there's a lot of really good reasons why someone would say no. It's not quite like a date, like they're thinking ew, I don't want to talk to you or whatever. There. other reasons that are, that are more practical, but it's a lot to work up the courage to ask someone. And then you ask someone to be your sponsor, and then you gotta like call them and you gotta chase them down and you gotta say, hey, will you work this step with me? And you gotta get in again to all your most personal, deepest, darkest secrets. And that is quite intimidating. I have a lot of clients who really struggle with the whole sponsor thing because of that very thing. Like they want a sponsor. They've been going to meetings. They've even like identified some people they think might be a good sponsor. But the whole asking someone to be the sponsor can be kind of scary, right? If you've ever had that experience, put the little hand emoji in the comments or in the chat. And that goes the same if you're a family member in recovery, right? Because family members, they go to meetings too, and the sponsorship game is just the same, right? And sometimes you just, you don't want to ask. Another reason why people resist sort of talking to a sponsor or counselor or coach is because they don't want to get themselves in a position where they feel pressured into taking some kind of step they don't want to take, whether it's family recovery, personal recovery. It doesn't matter what the addiction is because in almost any situation with addiction, we all have some ambivalence. And ambivalence is just a fancy word for mixed up feelings. Like we feel this way and we feel this way and we're not really sure what we want to do about it yet. And We're reluctant to talking about it because we don't want someone to start pushing us towards something that we're not ready to do. So as you can see, this is just the tip of the iceberg of logistical, practical reasons why people don't get the help that they need. And that's what I want to talk to you about today, which is what I think is probably The thing, the newest tool in addiction recovery that is going to break through those barriers the fastest possible. And that is AI, artificial intelligence. If you've ever had any experience talking to like ChatGPT about anything, ChatGPT is like my new best friend. I love ChatGPT. I ask ChatGPT everything. It's like right there on my sidebar on my My little laptop. It's just when I got the internet up, I got ChatGPT right there on the side because I'm going back and forth. In fact, I talk to AI these days a lot more than I'm on the internet. I have multiple AI programs that I personally use every day of my life that help me figure stuff out. For me, it feels like with AI, I can take what I could normally do at this fast of a pace, like really slow, and with AI, I can put it on maximum overdrive. Like if I need to have a hard conversation with someone, I'll say, here's this hard conversation I need to have. Here are the points I want to make. Here's the points I think they're going to make. Tell me what I should say. And it'll tell me what to say. I'll say, I need to write this really hard email. Help me write this email. It'll, it'll write the email. Maybe I gotta write a letter for someone going to court. And those of you that know me, know me, I'm not fancy. I'm not fancy. I don't know fancy words. I can't spell. I don't know how to talk fancy talk. And I gotta write like a fancy professional looking letter for someone that I want to look really good because they're going to court and I'm like in their corner. I'll say, Help me write this letter and make it sound good, and here's the points I want you to put in there. And it'll come out and I'll be like, dang, that sounds good. I feel all good about it because AI helped me. And you may be thinking, well, I don't know what ChatGPT is. I don't use any of that. But you actually probably do. You use AI in little small ways every day. You just don't even realize that you're using AI. It might. In fact, when I was getting ready to make this video, I went on. And I asked Amber AI, I said, Amber AI, help me explain what AI is for someone who doesn't really understand AI. And she gave me a really good answer. In fact, I'll show it to you right here on the screen. I'll let Amber AI tell you herself the answer to that question because she did it way better than I did it naturally. All right, I'm going to put this up on my screen for you here. You can see right here, I asked Amber AI, can you explain AI to someone who doesn't really understand it? Let's see what she has to say about it. It's late.

All right, so let's break this down in a way that's super simple and relatable. AI, or artificial intelligence, is basically like a really smart computer program that can learn and make decisions. Think of it like this: if a regular computer is like a calculator, it follows exact instructions to solve a problem, AI is more like a really clever assistant Who can figure things out on its own based on what it's learned. For example, when you use something like Google Maps, it's not just giving you directions, it's analyzing traffic patterns, figuring out the fastest route, and even adjusting if there's an accident ahead. That's AI at work. Or think about Netflix recommending shows you might like. It's not magic, it's AI learning your preferences based on what you've watched before. Now, In the case of Amber AI, it's like having a recovery coach in your pocket. It's been trained on everything I know— my strategies, my insights, my approach to addiction and family dynamics. So when you ask it a question, it's not just spitting out random advice. It's tailoring its response to your specific situation, just like I would if we were sitting down together. It's personal, it's private, and it's always there when you need it. Does that help make it a little clearer?

All right, what do you guys think? I think Amber did a better job of explaining it than I do. And one of the things, I mean, I just think it's funny because Amber is trained on all my philosophies and strategies, and I'm like, how's she better at it than me? When you watch those sci-fi movies that are like everywhere these days, they're always like smarter, better, and faster, right? Humans. I, I kind of have to agree when it comes to Amber. However, when you watch those movies, they always like develop this weird, like, I want to be human and I want to like take over the universe and kill humans or something. That's not really the case with Amber AI or any of the AIs that I know of. They just make it that way on the movies. A lot of people are really scared of it, but you've actually been using it for a long time. I really like the example she gave about like Google Maps. Because what AI does is like when you go to Google and you type in like, I want information about a certain plant you want to plant in your yard this spring. It'll basically take those keywords and it'll pull up 10,000 articles or places on the internet where you can read about it, right? AI is like a million times more powerful than that because AI is going to say, well, tell me what region you live in. Well, are you really good at plants or you're not good at plants? Like, it's going to take in a lot of data And then help you come up with answers. And then not only that, but you can go back and forth with it. You could say, I don't think so, because I really wanted something that flowers or blooms, that's pink or whatever. And it will narrow down, narrow down, and it learns from you as you have this ongoing conversation. And that's what I love about AI is that it's there for you. It breaks these barriers. Let's talk about how it breaks the barriers. As far as price goes, you can't even compare apples and oranges. Some AI is free, but even if it's not free, even other AIs, it's comparatively pennies on the dollar compared to what it would cost you to talk to someone professionally, to get to treatment, to do intensive outpatient. And I'm not even saying that you shouldn't do those things. Maybe you're doing those things and you want AI in the mix as well, which I think is a great way to use it as a supplement. I'm not saying you, you can just completely use it instead, but if you're one of these people who maybe you're wanting to take some steps, or maybe you're just wanting some help to help a loved one, but you don't want to pay a big consultation fee, or you don't want to wait 7 or 10 days for an appointment because you got an issue that happened right now and you need to deal with it like yesterday and you want to know what to do, this AI process is is a perfect resource for you. When you have that moment of clarity, when you're ready and you decide to do something, you can access it immediately. You don't have to wait for the appointments. It's not a ton of money. You don't have to worry about being judged or embarrassed because this is not a human being that's judging you. That's one of the things I really like. I find that I tell AIs, the ones that I use, things that I probably wouldn't ask. in real life, in person, because I might feel embarrassed to ask the question, or I might feel awkward because I don't know some certain piece of information, because it's like, I should know that, but I don't. And so I find that I'm a lot more open with it. And you have privacy because it's not like you're sharing in front of some big group of people. I just think that AI is the thing that's going to break so many barriers. barriers and help people that want help and help them in the way that they want it tailored to their situation, which is why I created Amber AI. Now, the difference in Amber AI and maybe like ChatGPT is that she's trained on my philosophies. And I call her she because she's Amber AI, so I call her she. All of the videos I've ever made, all the content I've ever written, every blog post I've ever made, every online course, every free downloadable, paid downloadable, every workbook, every Everything I've ever made is fed into Amber AI, and she uses that information to learn from. And then she takes all of that. She won't just spit out to you some kind of quote from a video. That's not, that's not the deal. You could watch the videos and get that. She's interacting with the information you're giving her, and she's pulling in all the facts about your situation, the personalities involved, the resources involved, the limitations involved, all of the things that you're dealing with, your emotions that are involved are taken into account to help come up with solutions for you. You can even use her to like write out difficult conversations you need to have or text message or give you a list or help you think through resources. I'm telling you, I've had a group of beta testers in there and they are using AI. Like the ones that are using it, they're in there using it like every day back and forth. They're talking to her and the conversations they have with her, Reach way beyond just recovery stuff, but it's, it's pretty cool. They talk about relationships, they talk about work and everything because you just feel open. And when you're talking to a person in real life or in a group, you're, you're always worried, like, am I monopolizing their time? You know, is it my turn to speak up in the group? And it's just this awkward. And then you talk and the other person talks at the same time, then you feel awkward and uncomfortable. It's just, there's so many little things that you don't have to worry about. When you're talking to any kind of AI, but especially with Amber AI, she remembers the conversation you've had with her before. So just like if you were talking to me and we got to know each other, you wouldn't have to start from scratch every time because I'm tracking the conversation here. I'm on board. I remember what you've told me in the past, and I'm calculating all of that into our current and future conversations. That's what Amber AI Does now just think about a situation, or I was just thinking about a situation as I was preparing to make this video. I was thinking about a case that I had. This was last year, actually. I had this case. This is not his name, but we're going to call him Mark for this purpose. And Mark was a pharmacist in the community where he lived, but he lived in one of these like really small communities where everybody knows everybody else, and it was like this. family-owned business and his dad had started the pharmacy and now he owns the pharmacy and his dad's retired, but he's the only pharmacist. And he realized that he had trouble with alcohol and he wanted to get help, but he couldn't really go away to treatment because if he didn't show up to work, the whole business didn't run. So not just, I'm going to miss a couple of paychecks, like all of my employees won't work. The whole business might go under. Like there was some for real legitimate reasons why Mark couldn't just take off 30 days and go to treatment somewhere. But beyond that, he was even scared about going to an AA meeting because he felt like everyone in the community knew him. And he's like, am I going to ruin my professional reputation? Am I going to lose my professional license if I go to these meetings and talk? There was a lot of very legitimate fears about seeking help. In fact, later this month, I've got a video coming out about, it's specifically about how healthcare workers face some additional challenges from getting help because of this whole professional licensing thing. So keep your eye out for that. That's a totally different topic that's coming out later this month, but it's a real thing, right? And so Mark was facing a lot of these challenges. Now, This was before AI was super popular, so it wasn't an option for him. But man, if it would've been, would that not have like broke some of those walls down? Now, obviously a big piece of recovery in my mind, you guys hear me talk about all the time, is connection. And I do think that having peer support, having a coach, having a counselor, having all these supports is super important. And I don't think AI is ever going to like take that over and make it to where you don't need those things. But what I do think it is, it is a solution to help you think through something in the moment while it's happening, where you don't feel judged, where you can kind of go back and forth as long as you want to, like a great sounding board that understands you, understands the concepts of addiction, of recovery, of relationships, of communication, to help you think through how to deal with Everyday life obstacles. How do I get started? What's the best way for me to stop drinking? You know, that's probably what Mark would've asked if AI would've been around back then. For those of you who are live, we're going to take some questions and some comments here in just a second, but I am going to be coming on several times this week extra. I'm always live on Thursdays and I'll be live on this Thursday at 1 like I always am, but I'm going to go live tomorrow. And I'm going to go live on Thursday and Friday. I mean, Friday as well. I always go on Thursday. And then there's going to be a video that's released on Tuesday. So almost every day this week will be on and we're going to deal with specific things that have to do with AI. Like I said, tomorrow we're going to talk about group and privacy and just some of the reasons why group recovery isn't the best for everyone. I'm not against it. I love it. I've ran groups forever and ever, but I can definitely see why there's a lot of barriers. First one is it's really hard to get people to go. Really hard for lots of reasons, and we'll talk about all that tomorrow. So if you're interested in that, you want to know more about that, I will be same time tomorrow night, which is 8 Eastern because I'm in the Eastern. So let's take some questions, some comments. I have put the link to learn more about Amber AI. She is— we are launching her this week. It is the big premiere, so I am super excited. We've run the beta test. We've Worked through some kinks. We fixed some things. We've got a lot of good feedback. So check out the link in the description if you want to learn more specifically about Amber AI, because this week for our big premiere, our big launch, we're offering like a massive, humongous discount that it won't be after Friday is the last day for that. It's coming Friday. So check that out if you're interested. Let's take some questions and some comments. All right, I see you up there, Marilyn and Nicole and Donald. Thank you, thank you for being here. Let's see here. Nicole says, and it's frustrating when rehabs aren't available or hospitals won't admit people because they're not drunk. Oh my gosh, Nicole, I know. And when you go to rehab, if you're too drunk— let me tell you this because I worked in rehab for a long time— if I worked in detox. If you're too intoxicated, like if your level's like scary high, rehab won't admit you because they're going to send you to the ER because they're like, dude, this person might die of alcohol poisoning or something like that. So if you're too medically complicated, rehab won't even accept you. But if you don't come in intoxicated and you haven't drank today, or maybe you decided to quit and you didn't drink yesterday and you didn't drink today, They'll be like, oh, you haven't drank in 2 days. You probably don't even need rehab. You probably don't even need detox. I've had a lot of people turned away for that reason. It's like, are you kidding me? The person finally decides they want help. They reach out, they call the insurance company, they do all the things, they go through the assessment, and then they're like, oh, you're not bad enough to be here. Let me tell you what, if somebody is talking to the rehab facility doing an intake assessment, they need to be there. People don't accidentally Show up to try to get into rehab who don't need to be there. Trust me, it's the last place they want to be. They've done a lot of thinking about it. They've tried a lot of other things, and if there was another option, they wouldn't be there. So I think it's ridiculous. I'm with you, Nicole. Don't get me started. You and I can have our own little support group about that. It would make you crazy. All right, let's see what Marilyn has to say. Marilyn says, How should I get my alcoholic husband to do rehab? He goes to AA meetings but is still actively drinking. This is a really great question. And we teach these things. I don't know if you're familiar, Marilyn, maybe you're even in it, but we teach these things in our Invisible Intervention course where it's like, how do I structure conversations in a way that leads people to where they want to go? So what I would say is if your husband's in AA and he's still actively drinking, it could mean several scenarios. So let's talk about what those might be. It could either mean That he has no intention to stop or slow down or quit. He's just going to get people off his behind. That could be it, right? But that's not always it. It could be that he's going to AA and he really wants to stop or fix the situation, but he can't stop drinking because maybe he needs medical detox or something like that. Maybe it is like a physical, I can't do it kind of issue. Or it could be somewhere in between. It could be that he's in like a bargaining stage and he's like, yes, I know I've got a problem and I need to do something about it, but I don't want to quit completely. I just want to slow down. So he's going to go to AA. Some people actually go to addiction treatment or AA or get help to learn how to rein it in, to manage it. I'm going to tell you a little secret that you probably already know, Marilyn, that doesn't work so good, but it is a stage that people go through and it is overall, it's a good indicator that they're trying to get better. So what you want to do, Marilyn, is you want to make sure that you Positively reinforce any of the right steps that they're taking. Like, for example, if you think your husband is still drinking because, um, he is in that bargaining stage, you're going to want to, your instinct is going to be to be like, look, that's not working. Why are we still doing this? Okay. Maybe your instinct wouldn't, Marilyn. My instinct would be to say that because it's like, okay, come on. This isn't going to work. We've tried this 100 times. Can we get on with business? Don't do that though, because that won't work. What you want to do is positively reinforce and you just want to ask questions and have conversations in such a way that will help your husband to figure it out faster. I've got a ton of videos on this channel that talk about that. Amber, I can tell you about that. Invisible Intervention can tell you about that. And you can tell a lot of specifics, a lot more than just this question. Like if you're talking to Amber, you could say, how long has it been going on? What are the things they've tried? Why do you think the alcohol is still in play? What's the personalities like? You know, are there any outside consequences? These are all the different pieces of information that you could sort and get so much of a better answer, like from a session or consultation or an embryo visit. But those are just my initial thoughts on why someone could be going and not making progress. If you think, Marilyn, that your husband is just going to the meetings just to like check a box to get you or somebody else, maybe there's a legal charge or something off of his case or something, then what that means is that we've pushed someone to take a step before they're out of denial, before they realize they need to take a step. So we put the cart before the horse. And so if that's the case, Marilyn, then what we need to do is back up and not talk about going to rehab, not talk about going to AA, and use the techniques that I teach as far as getting someone out of denial. Because that's probably the number one mistake that families make is they start pushing a person to get help before the person realizes that they have a problem or that they need help. And you end up Paying for a lot of treatment, going to a lot of meetings, and it doesn't work because the person's like, this is ridiculous, I don't even need this. So there's a lot of reasons. You got to figure out what that reason is, and then you can target whatever that reason is. Um, Christopher says shame is absolutely a barrier. Couldn't agree more. Yeah, it definitely is. I'm telling you, Christopher, like, I know that the people I see don't even tell me the whole story. You know how I know it? Because their families usually see one of the family counselors and they'll always be like, did they tell you so-and-so? And I'll be like, no, they didn't tell me so-and-so. Luckily, I don't really need to know all the dirty down details of it to help someone because addiction is addiction. And as long as a person's telling me I've got this problem and I'm getting the big pieces of the puzzle, I don't always need all the teeny tiny pieces of it because I know what kind of things happen in active addiction, right? And it's just embarrassing to say, but talking to an AI, it really sort of alleviates that. You don't have to worry about it, which just takes one of those barriers away. Hey Donald, thank you for the compliment. You like my red glasses? Let's see. Meta AI is my best friend. I'm telling you, if you haven't been using any of these little chat AIs, you're missing out. I'm not even just talking about for recovery. I'm just talking about in regular life. I'm a I'm a huge fan. Like I hardly even Google anything anymore. I'm like, what's the point? I don't want to like go through 500 articles to maybe eventually sort of find the answer to what I'm looking for. It's like skip that. Let's talk to an AI. Let's get there a thousand times faster. Hey Jade.

Hey Sharon.

Thank you for the sweet compliment, Daisy. This is your first live stream. I'm glad you made it. I decided to put it at night for a reason because I know I usually live stream during the day and I'm like. A lot of people work, they can't do that. So I'm gonna put Mondays at night and I'll put Fridays in the, um, in the afternoon too, so that maybe more people— maybe you can come again. Glad to see you. Glad you're here. Can multiple people use Ambria at the same time? I'm glad you asked this, Jody. A bazillion people can use Ambria at the same time. In fact, that's the whole thing, is that Ambria— I can be talking to as many people as want to be talking to her at the same time, anytime. Because you know what? Sometimes we need a little advice and we need a little help at a time when it's not convenient, you know, like on a weekend or at 2 o'clock in the morning when the you know what hits the fan. So that's what I love about it. Always available. She doesn't get tired. She doesn't need a break. She doesn't need caffeine. She's like me on steroids and lots of amphetamines or something because she never gets tired. Um, can I put the link in the chat? Hmm, let me see, let me see if I can grab that for you and I'll, and I'll try to put that. I have to go behind my scenes here. Give me just one sec. Here we go. I'm getting it. I'm going to copy paste it over there for you. There you go. Coming your way. It is uploading into the chat right this second. Katie, I'm excited about Amber Eye too. I'm glad you're excited with me. Leslie, this is your first live. Welcome, welcome. Donald says, "My girlfriend is a people pleaser." That video was spot on. She says she's ashamed of her addiction, is ashamed of the way she has been treating our relationship. It's probably nice to hear that you know that your girlfriend is has some insight and some humility and wants to get better. But yeah, it's uncomfortable. It's embarrassing even when. Even when you're talking to someone and you know they're not judging you, the thing of it is, is you're judging yourself is what it is. And so it just brings up all those uncomfortable emotions, which is kind of what happens when you get honest with yourself and you start looking at the truth. It makes you squirmy. Paisley says, how do you get someone to stop drinking before passing out in the parking lot? The car Is at the bar. I'm not 100% sure, Paisley, if you mean like how do I get drinking? How do I get someone to stop drinking before they're too drunk to drive home? If they're an alcoholic, I would say good luck to that. What you want to focus on is more how do I get them to see this whole drinking thing is a problem, and how do I get them to stop drinking? Like completely. Not, not, um, what, what probably won't work is how do I get someone to drink less, or how do I get someone to slow down, or how do I get someone to make a better decision about driving once they're drunk? I wish I had a better answer for that, um, to that for you, but once it's already in play, it's very difficult to stop, like once they're already at the bar. So the question is, how do I get them to not go to the bar? And there's a long answer to that, but it is right here on the YouTube channel. I would probably, listening to this, I would think that Your person's in denial. So I would start with the playlist, How Do I Get Someone Out of Denial? Or you can talk to Amber and you can feed all of the details, more than just the one sentence into there, and she can help you figure that out step by step. So appreciative. My loved one knows about his issue, but has given up on quitting. I am learning your method of letting him learn it. It's so hard because I'm a manager. Detaching is super hard. It really is. It really is, Leslie. And it's been a hard lesson for me to learn, even as an addiction counselor, because I get invested in people too. And I really want people to figure it out faster too. But luckily I've done this so long that I sort of have faith in the process. I know how it's going to go. And it's like I've driven down this scary road so many times that you do get a little bit more faith in it. And hopefully if you're trying some of these methods and you're getting even just a little bit of change talk and positive result and the relationships get better, you start to Believe in it more and more, and it gets easier and easier. You're still managing, Leslie. You're just managing with more powerful tools. Indirectly works better. All right, let's see. Coltrane and Rain says, "Is it bad that I don't want my addicted loved one to get out of rehab? It's been five weeks. I'm just tired of endless circle." I don't think it's bad at all. I think that is quite common, and. If you guys can relate to what she is saying here, raise your little hand in the chat because I promise you, you're not alone because it probably took you a long months or years to get that person in rehab and it was probably wreaking havoc on your life the whole time. And this is probably the first time you've been able to sleep good at night and just relax and let your fight or flight turn off and just freaking Breathe, right? We get you. We understand. They are going to come back eventually, but I totally, totally get where you're coming from. In fact, if you feel like you think you feel bad, like a lot of people feel like that when their loved one gets arrested. So because it's like, finally I can sleep at night because I know that they're safe because that's how bad and scary it gets. So no, I don't think that's bad at all. In fact, I think it's a normal reaction. To want and need a break. Totally relatable, Christine. I'm glad you found my page too. I'm so glad you're here. The car—the car is the bar. Hold on, let me go back. That's what Paisley is trying to clarify for me here. The car is the bar. How can you get someone to stop drinking before passing out in the parking lot? Lots. The car is the bar. Oh, I see what you're saying. They don't go to the bar, they go to the car and drink. I'm slow over here, Paisley. I got you. Finally, I got you. Yeah, a lot of my people that have drinking problems, they all drink in the car. Every single— I shouldn't say a lot. I should say every single one of them drink in the car, especially if their partner or spouse or whatever is on their case about drinking because they moved to the sneak drinking. And so what they're trying to do is get away with it. And a lot of times that's in the car. It's on the way home from work. It's, let me stop in the neighborhood, up at the common area, the park, the pavilion, the pool or something like that. Let me have some drinks there. So I normally only drive like one street to get home. Oh, it's in the car. That's exactly what happens when people start snake drinking. It becomes always drinking and driving. I know that is scary. I am not promoting that at all. But I hear you. And one thing that you can do, Paisley, is you can— if the person is trying to sneak drink because they know you disapprove, then what you may have to do, and this still may not work, but what you may have to do is you may have to say, look, I know you're going to drink, just drink here. So they're not hiding it because the hiding definitely leads to the car. But you got to be prepared for then they're just going to drink out in the open and you may not want them to do that. You may need a different situation, but that's exactly what happens when people start sneak drinking. That's why it's in the car. I got you. I was slow on that. I didn't know exactly what you were saying, but I do now. Let's see. MC says, wait, let's see. MC, here's MC. I'm trying to put you up there. There we go. Husband didn't want rehab or AA for privacy. Think I pushed him to work with a doctor one-on-one in marital counseling before he was ready and finding your channel. He's still actively drinking in denial. That's all right, MC. You got, you got, they're still alive. They're still in the game. You got, you're here another day, right? I mess it up all the time. Sometimes I push people and luckily I get another chance at it. So it's all right. You're gonna, at least you got him talking. You've got him in some counseling and some one-on-one and you're watching the channel. You're learning techniques. And once you learn all these strategies, he's done for. It's just a matter of time. Because now you got the superpower, so you got this. Let's see. Christine says, "Our addicted loved one has struggled with alcohol addiction for years. He's lost several jobs and a girlfriend because of it. He finally decided to join the Marine Corps and Marine Corps in hopes of that helping the drinking." I was thinking there's more. He did 13 weeks of boot camp successfully, and then he came home on a break and all hell broke loose. 2 inpatient treatments, finally separated from the Marines because of it. Um, yes, so, so this person, your person, I think it's your son maybe, um, knew they had a substance abuse problem, and they— this is very similar to what I call, or what Not alcohol, but it's a common recovery term. It's called the geographical cure. It's if I just get out of this town, out of the school, away from these bad influences, a fresh start, I can nip this problem and I can get it under control. And as you can imagine, just like what you saw, that doesn't really work. You cannot outrun your problems, whether it's drinking or any other problem that you have. Now, sometimes I will say that geographical cure can work if you do some other things along with it. Like if you're in recovery, you're going to meetings and getting some help, and you change your situation or location, the combination of the things can work. But just the whole like, I'm going to try to outrun this problem, isn't going to work. And definitely it's not going to work to outrun it to the Marines, because guess what the Marines love to do? They love to drink. And so I would imagine it would make it worse. But the fact that they were trying to fix the problem that way, it's a bargain. It's what I call bargaining. I talk about bargaining all the time on this channel. And so it's, even though it's not the right answer, the fact that they're looking for an answer, I see as a very positive step. And people are going to try a lot of wrong answers before they find the right one. And that's okay. It means we're on the process. And it sounds like he tried that, it didn't work. And then he went to treatment and he gained enough insight to separate from the Marines because he said, I can't do this and be in the Marines because it's a drinking party in there. I'm sure you knew that before he went. I'm sure, I'm sure he maybe thought it would be different, but it probably wasn't. Um, let's see here. Paisley says this is the drinking in the car. He's not snake drinking. He thinks he's above the law and superhuman and can handle it. My guess is he probably does think he's superhuman and can handle it because he's been doing it so often. You get Um, overconfident and you— and it just becomes your norm and you just like literally do it so regularly and everyone you know does it that you forget that it's out of bounds. But my guess is it's not just that. That I, I think there's probably some sneaking because why wouldn't he just drink in the house? Maybe he's drinking in the house and he's drinking on the way home too. I could see that. But if they're parking their car and drinking somewhere, I feel like there's a little bit of sneak in that. I could be wrong, but Otherwise, why wouldn't you just drink in the house? You know, in the air conditioning where it's more comfortable. Christine says sober nine days and working full time. I'm trying to be a cheerleader for him. That's fantastic. Good for you. Here's a really good question: Do I need to put relationship issues on hold, trust and unreliability while my loved one is working on his addiction? I think. That probably the more that your loved one works on the addiction, the better the trust and the reliability issues are going to get. Because my guess is the addiction is the root cause of them. Probably what you're really asking me is, should I put on hold bringing it up? And the answer to that is yes, you should put on hold bringing it up. And even, and I don't even, because sometimes people are like, when can I get them to talk about this? That's iffy. I would find other ways to address those issues because, and this just comes from years of seeing the person with the addiction, what they feel like is that their loved one and their family is like never going to get over it. They're constantly bringing it up. They still have shame. And so even when you try to bring up the conversation when they're doing really good, they can get defensive or avoidant. So the best thing to do, MKR, is to ask for what you need instead of trying to bring up the topic. And what I mean by that is to say something along the lines of, hey, it really helps me when you let me know what time you're coming home. It really helps me if X, Y, or Z. Just ask for what you need to help your trust and reliability heal, as opposed to wanting to bring up what's happened in the past or get them to talk about it. It works a lot better, especially if they really are trying. They do want to make it better. They just don't want to feel that heat of that shame boil up when you want to talk about it, but they do want to fix it. So talk about it in a proactive way, in a fixing way, instead of a let me bring up your mistakes way, and that'll help you heal it faster. ET Phone Home, I like your username. I have no interest in reconciliation. He did finally go to rehab and is in there now, but I have no interest in going through any of it ever again. I will not go back. Too much damage I bet you're not the only one to feel that way. It's sad, but sometimes it's just too little too late, and you probably are you know still hopeful for them in their recovery. That's why you're probably watching this channel. But you can be done for yourself personally, and I certainly understand. Here we go. Christine says our 22-year-old son has been in treatment now. And now in sober living, he is now doing only three days per week and has more downtime. How long should he stay in sober living? What do the statistics show? The statistics show the longer the better. I like to think about like having a baby in the belly. The longer they're in the little oven to cook, the better. So as long as you can reasonably, you know, the family can reasonably afford. I don't know if it's expensive for him to be there, and he's. Willing to stay, then that's great. And then what I think works best for young adults, especially Christine, is like instead of getting out of sober living and coming back home, which I'm not a fan of, if you watch this channel, you've probably heard me talk about that, is to maybe find someone else who's in recovery as a roommate and kind of launch out into young adult life. And hopefully still in the same community where they're in sober living because they already have Like recovery supports and probably meetings and recovery friends and all that stuff established. And it's really hard to like move to a different community and put all that stuff back in place. So statistically, and just in my own experience, I think it works best when they do move out to find someone else, a young adult in recovery, and stay connected to those recovery supports that they've built because keeping the momentum is so much easier than having to. Be the new kid at different meetings and get a new sponsor and a new counselor. If you can keep going what's working, then do that. I know it's not always possible, but if it's possible, that's what you want to do. Donald says, "How can I be supportive and present in my loved one's life when their addiction is saying leave me alone?" This is a really good question, Donald, and. To give you the best answer, I would need more information. Do they mean leave me alone about my addiction or do they just mean leave me alone? I don't want to talk to you, period. Because sometimes that's the case. If they're saying, don't talk to me, don't call me, don't text me, do not communicate with me, then you have to listen to that boundary. You always have to listen to a boundary someone sets with you when they say, stop reaching out to me. That's probably not the case. Probably it's like, I don't want to talk about the addiction. They just don't want to talk about the uncomfortable topic. That's my guess. That's usually the case. And what you want to do then is just create some trust and credibility on them where you're just able to have conversations with them about anything that are safe topics. And so what you're doing, like when I get new clients that I know are really nervous, I'll just talk to them about safe topics until there's enough comfortability, right? Until I've built some trust and credibility that they're not going to push or something like that. If they won't talk to you about serious stuff, back up and just get them to talk to you about anything. Not responding to calls or texts. There's not a lot you can do when they won't respond to calls or texts. If you want to, every now and then you can send just a nice message, and I would probably keep it light and just like maybe like if you have an inside joke or like, hey, I saw this funny meme and I thought of you, or you're not going to believe what Aunt Rita said last week. She said that thing, you know, because you have like all these inside, just trying to keep some kind of just, you're just trying to let them know that the door is open and it doesn't have to be a heavy conversation. Now, some people will tell you to send a message every now and then that says, I love you and I'm praying for you and I'm thinking for you. And we're here when you want to get help. And you can do that if you think your loved one will respond to that. A lot of people that will trigger their button because it's too direct. And so You, that's where I want you to think about your specific loved one, Donald, and decide their personality, you know, and what's the best. But I wouldn't do it very much because the harder you push, the harder they may clam up. But if you're just saying, I just want them to know that this door is open and that I love them, then you can say it without being super, especially if it's, if your person is a guy, like maybe you just want to say it without being super smushy. I deal mostly with guys, and if you use humor and you're light, you can actually get them to talk about really hard stuff as long as they don't feel like you're trying to really press on those deep emotions because they get squirmy when you do that. So try those things and see if that helps. All right, everybody, we are out of time. This was so much fun. I like to be here with you in the evenings, and I can tell I got some different names in the profile names up here. So that's kind of exciting to get to see some of you come to a live for the first We'll be on here tomorrow night too. The link to Amber AI is in the description. And if you have some experience with AI of any kind, doesn't have to be Amber AI, I would love to hear about that. Do you use AI? What do you think? Do you like it? Are you scared of it? Do you think it's going to turn into killer robots? It's going to destroy the Earth? What's your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below. I'll see you guys tomorrow. Bye.

Bye.