Thriving Beyond Addiction: Real Stories of Hope and Transformation

Relapse doesn't mean that you're never going to get recovery. In fact, for most people, it takes several rounds before they ever get recovery. So just because nine out of 10 people relapse when they got out of treatment, it doesn't mean none of those people failed. Most people take a little trial and error to get this thing better. Now, I'm not saying that to give you permission to go out there and relapse and say, well, everybody relapses. I just want you to have a realistic view on how this process works. So I'm going to tell you a few little case studies, if you will, to help you understand what the reality of recovery really looks like. Now, in each of these stories that I'm about to tell you, there was a point in the story that even I thought, this person, this ain't going to work. There was a part in each of these stories where I literally thought about throwing in the towel. Every single one of these stories involves relapses, more than one relapse. But the key factor in the glue that holds all these stories together is that in each one of these situations that I'm going to tell you, the person who's struggling with an addiction, continue to engage and work on it, and their family also continue to engage and work on it. If both sides of this equation can realize that there is going to be some trial and error, can have a little bit of flexibility, I know that's hard, but can give the other side a little grace and a little room to learn and to grow. We can come out the other side of this. Take for example, my client, Barry. Well, his name, his real name isn't Barry, but we'll call him Barry. Barry was my client about 10 years or so ago. And when I first met Barry, it was in an IOP program. And Barry, even though he signed up for iop, he didn't want to be there. He was still drinking. Him and his wife weren't even talking. In fact, they weren't even like living in the same house. Now, when he was an ip, he would get a few days sober here and there, but nothing really consistent. He just wasn't getting very far. And eventually one of these lapses kind of spun a little bit out of control and Barry relented and he agreed to go to treatment. He actually agreed to do like a 30 day inpatient treatment recovery program. At this point, we didn't even know if Barry and his wife could make it through this, even if he did get sober, because there was A lot of water under the bridge. She was actually, to the point where she was actually planning the divorce. She was talking to lawyers. Now she was still continuing to engage it with one of our family support specialists because she knew that even if they got divorced or separated, that she was still going to have to interact with this person and at least co parent. And she wanted to make sure, sure she was doing the right thing. Now when Barry was in this 30 day treatment program, she did have some contact with him, but not a whole lot. And to be honest, he fought the treatment the whole way. He didn't like it. He was argumentative. I mean, Barry, I gotta say, he's a little bit rebellious. He's not the kind of guy that's just gonna go along to get along kind of person. He didn't like it. He didn't like his counselors. He wanted to fight with all the rules. But he did stay and complete the program. And when he came out of that program, I can remember when I saw him for the first time when he got back, he was still kind of in a mo. If I had to put my money on it in a bet, I said, oh yeah, we're not done with this yet. This guy, he still wasn't sure about the whole thing. Now Barry was trying to quit drinking and using cocaine and he was, I think, pretty decently good on the cocaine part because he knew that was really messing his life up. But he wasn't so sure about the drinking part. But basically he knew he was in hot water. He knew his marriage was about to fall apart and he didn't want to get to the point where he lost custody of his girls. So he kept trying, we kept working together. He stayed sober for a while, reluctantly at times, but he still did it. We had to have some very difficult together sessions where Barry and I met together with his wife and her counselor. It definitely wasn't easy. There were some difficult conversations, but slowly but surely things started to come around. Barry did remain sober for I think like more than a month. And then he had a lapse. It was one lapse. It happened, but then he did have a lapse. Fortunately, he came right into session. He told me about it. We processed what happened. He talked about the triggers and how it all went down and that was the end of that lapse. And then I think there was maybe another lapse about three months after. That was one day after work was really hard, stressful day. And he stopped and bought some alcohol on the way home. And you know what? That didn't end well either. But fortunately, he was able to contain that. And since then, Barry has been sober from alcohol. It's been several, several years now. I still occasionally see Barry. He comes in and he talks to me about things, but mostly it's just about regular life things. Things going on at work or things going on with his kids or with his. And he likes to have a sounding board, you know, somebody that knows the whole big picture and the whole history and all that kind of stuff. Now, I promise you, if you had met Barry in this journey, in any of those beginning days, you would not have thought he was the one that was going to get sober because he had such a tough guy attitude, because he was so rebellious. He was definitely not the kind of guy to say what you wanted him to say. But in the end, that was his superpower when it came to recovery, because he was strong, he was courageous, he was willful. He wasn't easy to influen, which means once he made his mind up on something, he made his mind up, and he had that strong, willful thing about him, which, in the end, worked in his favor. Now, let me tell you about Shawn. Shawn was a little bit of a different character. Shawn was kind of fancy, I would say a little entitled. I would say. I'd even say a little tiny bit spoiled. Shawn actually became sort of a big shot in his career arena, but by the time I met him, he was a mess. There were several times when I was working with Shawn in session that I was literally like, oh, my gosh, I hope this guy doesn't, like, overdose on my sofa. Oh, my God. Like, I was really scared. There were some very, very difficult moments, and there were some other complications, of course. You know, Sean was married. His wife was pretty upset, as you can imagine. Luckily, she was working with Campbell. As we went through this, Campbell's one of our family counselors. If you haven't seen any of her videos, you should definitely check them out. And camp was able to sort of hold her hand a little bit, kind of coach her through it. I call it the sort of when to hold them, when to fold them, when to walk away kind of situation. And it was probably like a year of not really making progress before things started to turn around. Shawn went to detox two or three times during that whole situation, but literally, some of those times, he even used while on detox, and the other times he used immediately after. And because I'm trying to be really honest with you, I'll tell you, I was thinking to myself, like, I don't know why this guy's wife is still with him. And he was my client. I was on his side. It was that bad. It had gotten to the point where even Sean's son, he had a son who was like a young teenager, was so mad, he didn't even want to talk to him. Like, he didn't even like want the parents to stay together because he was just so furious at the situation. Now, for Sean, eventually what helped him was he decided to try medication assisted treatment, which if you don't know what that is, I have some videos out there about it. But it's like a. It's like a opioid replacement therapy kind of program actually went. And he got on a medication that helped to stabilize his dependency. And once that happened, it was almost like night and day. Now, when it comes to MAT or medication assisted treatment, I have mixed feelings about it. It works when people want it to work and it doesn't work when people aren't really trying to be serious. And if you'd asked me, I said, oh yeah, I don't think this guy's going to be serious because he was sneaky as could be. But actually it stabilized him very quickly and he has been doing awesome every since then. He's got about three years sober. He does still take the medication assist treatment, but he doesn't abuse it. He has hang trouble. He's like back in his career doing awesome. He and his son are getting along great and the marriage is doing wonderful. Now the reason I tell you these stories is because I want you to know that even when it looks like there's no hope, things can and do turn around. And not only do people get better, like I said, they get infinitely better. Like if you talk to either of these fellas now as opposed to then you wouldn't even believe that it was the same person. Let me tell you about Cindy. When I first met Cindy, she was just out of treatment program for, I don't know, she must have been home like maybe a week, 10 days or something like that, but she was already back out there drinking. She'd actually got kicked out of the rehab program that she was in, so it wasn't looking good. And when I saw Cindy, she was so furious and upset about everything that had happened in treatment. Her husband was basically saying, this is your final chance, you better get it together. Else Cindy was secretly thinking, hey, whatever, I don't care. Because she felt like he had been so controlling, she was so angry with him. I don't think she was really, honestly overly worried about him leaving. I think that she didn't really say this, but I think there might have been, like a secret little part in there that was like, I wish he would. Like I said, she didn't say it, but I have that impression now. Cindy was a little bit like Barry in the beginning because she would get a few days sober, two or three, but then fall back, especially if her husband went out of town for a work meeting, for some kind of family event or work event if there was no one around watching. She usually did relapse. But eventually, Cindy agreed to do soberlink. Some of you might have heard me talk about Soberly before. Those of you that have, you know, I am a big fan. Soberlink is an alcohol monitoring recovery device. It's like a high tech breathalyzer, basically, but it's got like facial recognition in it. Like, there's no cheating it. And the best thing about it is you set it up on this automatic system where the person comes up with or agrees to a time, usually like three times a day. Well, they'll be tested for alcohol. They get text messages that remind them, and they also set up a person that they are accountable to. So if they miss the test or they're late or they're positive, the other person gets a message. Now, Soberlink is a sponsor of this channel, but I want to tell you a real story here, okay? Like, I've been using Soberly long before I was doing YouTube. So I got Cindy on this soberlink device. She agreed to do it kind of reluctantly, but her husband was going to go out of town again, and he was like, listen, I'm so done with this. I don't trust you. I got to have my eye on you every single second. He was like, literally had a tracker on her car, on her phone. He was like, doing all the spying things we're trying to get him to stop, but he wasn't. He was doing them. And so he said, all right, will you relieve all of those as Cindy does a Sober Link? And then I, as in Amber, get the accountability messages. Not the husband, but me, trying to help sort of soothe the tension in this relationship a little bit. So Cindy agrees and he agrees and he leaves for his trip. And she does okay on the soberlink for the first week or so, and things are going fine, but then it was like holidays time. And so Cindy was going to go, I think it was like for Thanksgiving or something, to her family. And her husband was going to join a little bit later because he had A business trip or something. So she goes up to her family. Guess what happens. Yes. And Cindy's family, they were drinkers, and didn't take long before Cindy had relapsed back into drinking. And the sober link called it pretty quickly. So, you know, I called Cindy, I said, what's going on? We talked about it. We talked our way through it. She kind of got it under control. The drinking stopped, the husband came down. They had, like, their holiday together, and things were okay, and the rest of that holiday went fine. Then they came back home. But when Cindy got home, soberlink testing. I said, hey, Cindy, what's going on? You, Mr. Test? And she's like, oh, I forgot it at my mom's house. House. She's gonna ship it to me, but it's gonna take like, a week. And I was like, cindy, that's not gonna be good. You're just barely coming off of a relapse. Like, you do not need to go no whole week without it. And so I was like, can I get you one overnight, or would you agree to do that? If so, I can. I can get you one to you quickly, and then we can trade it out for the other one once it gets back from your mom's. And she did actually agree to do that. Was kind of surprised, because in my mind, I thought she probably purposely left it at her mom's, to be honest. But she did agree to it, and actually she did really well with it. She was compliant with all of her tests, like she was staying sober. And it did take a while for her to kind of find herself again, to get back into hobbies and interest and passion. And the relationship didn't fix immediately. But within a few months, Cindy's life was turned around to a very large degree. And because of the silver link, the marriage was able to sort of make it through some very difficult times, which I don't really think the marriage would have made it through without of all of the business traveling between, actually, both of them. I just don't think that there was enough trust for that relationship to have sustained it without the sober link. So in Cindy's case, I think her willingness to do the soberling was the biggest factor. And these days, Cindy is doing really, really well. She's actually very open about her recovery process and even does some speaking about it. Now, the last little story I'm going to tell you about is Jeff. Now, when I first met Jeff, Jeff was a very sort of quiet meat kind of guy, and he wouldn't even hardly tell you, like, what he thought about anything for real. Anytime I'd ask Jeff any kind of question, he would just give me some kind of answer that I know he was just trying to figure out what was the right answer kind of thing. And I would even say, you know, you don't have to say that. And I would try really hard to get him to be real with me. And I'd say, listen, I'm not going to be up mad. I'm not going to be upset, like there's no right answer. But for months, Jeff would only give me sort of right answers. And during that whole time, he kept relapsing. In fact, the situation with Jeff was he was pretty much addicted to anything and everything. Be honest, Jeff, to abuse some stuff that I was like, Jeff, I never even heard of someone abusing that. Like, why are you abusing that? That's not even fun. Like, what are you doing? It was one of those situations where it was just like, I'm just addicted across the board. But he was very mild mannered, kind of meek, very sort of conflict avoidant, but very, very smart guy, introverted, kind of kept to himself, but also sort of secretly underneath all that people pleasing and conflict of wanting it. Jeff was actually a very motivated and driven person. But because of the addiction and because of his people pleasing and conflict avoidance, he just wasn't getting very far. His marriage was in a mess, his business was in a mess, Things were not good. And on top of all that, Jeff's mom also had a sort of a chronic illness that required her to take medication. And Jeff had a history of sneaking over there and stealing and taking his mom's medication. This happened multiple times. We even included mom in the process and talked to mom about locking it up in a lockbox. And she did. And Jeff got into that lockbox. And just like all these other stories, eventually I started thinking, oh my gosh, this just is not going to work. Because eventually Jeff's mom decided she was going to press charges against him for stealing her medication. And honestly, no one could really blame her. Believe it or not, Jeff actually shut up to his court date. He actually owned what was happening. He admitted he was having a problem and he stayed committed to coming to therapy that whole time. Now he was another one of those situations where he would get some days sober and then relapse. He would actually get longer periods sober and relapse because he would get like a few weeks, usually like two weeks, and then fall back. Two weeks and then fall back. But eventually after this whole court thing, happened, he actually pulled it together and began to get better. And he was sober. And we started working on his assertive and after about six months of being sober working on assertiveness, he started to work on his marriage, and his marriage started to get better. And then eventually his business started to take off. Now, Jeff has been sober for I think, like two and a half years. He's still married, he has a great relationship with his kids, his business is doing awesome, and he's back on track with his life. Now. In every one of those stories that I just told you, you would have definitely thought this person is never going to get it. You would have probably advised their loved one to just give up on them and walk away. Because from the outside looking in, it would have looked like this person's not even trying. You know, they keep relapsing. They're just never going to get it. In every single one of these cases, they figured it out. And honestly, for the people I've worked with, this is the general way it goes. This is not like the exceptions to the rules. There's always some ups and downs. But if you stick with it, if both sides are willing to kind of hang in there, in most of the situations I deal with, they do come out the other end. I hope this renews your sense of hope in the recovery process. Now I'm going to put a link to some more real, really inspiring recovery stories up next. And I'm also going to put a link to soberlink in the description in case you want to learn more about that.