Trying To Find The Motivation To Stop Drinking?- You found it!

I'm sure you already know that drinking alcohol is bad for your health. Even if you're not like alcoholic but just a regular drinker. We all know that it's not the greatest thing to do for our health. But there may be other cost to drinking alcohol that you're not calculating in some things that maybe you're not even associating that are connected to the drinking. This is a price that you're paying is sort of like a secret interest payment that the bank snuck in on you, right? Or like a, like an insufficient fees fund or something like that that they snuck in on your checking account and you don't even know it was there. We're going to talk about some of those things that you're probably not even paying attention to because when you think about, you know, okay, well, I know drinking is not great for my health, but you're like, oh, but you got to die from something. You know, we start rationalizing and excusing all these things in our head, but some of these other prices that we're paying, these little fees that we're paying, you might not be so willing and okay to live with once they sort of move up into your conscious thinking. Now, I'm going to warn you now, once you're aware of these things, if you listen to this video, you're not going to be able to be unaware of them. So if you want to stay in blissful denial and you don't want to hear these truths, now is the time to click away. Because once you know it, once you see it happening, you're going to recognize that's what's happening and this is why it's happening. Now if you, if you go to YouTube and you Google stop drinking motivation or quit drinking motivation, there is a list of a tons of videos that come up. You're going to see like Jordan Peterson videos and you're going to see like Andrew Huberman videos, all these great videos, which they're actually pretty good because a lot, a lot of them are like montages. They have cool music, they throw all these stats at you that it does make you think. So I would actually suggest that you watch some of their good videos, but some of the more subtle things I think get missed. You know, they focus a lot on the physical things and stuff like that. But, but there's these little subtle fees and interest that you're paying that you're probably not aware you're paying. And you need to stop and think, is it worth it to me to pay this price for Example, I have clients sometimes who will say, well, I want to reduce my drinking, which is a great goal. And they'll say, you know, I want to be able to drink just like three days a week. Which on the surface doesn't sound bad actually. So there's really a couple of questions. There's one is like, can the person really pull that off? Sometimes they can, a lot of times they can't. It's hard to sort of back it down. So, so that's the first question is, is that possible? But the other question that they may not be, or the other thing that they may not be considering is this. And, and this got brought up to me that we were seeing a couple. This was, this was probably a year or two ago. And when this person said, I was like, I don't really think about that, but it makes sense. So this was a husband and a wife. And the wife's goal was to, to bring back the drinking to only three days a week. And the husband's upset because he said, okay, yeah, so you drink three days a week. So when I get home, you're already drinking, so you're not accessible. You know, I can't talk to you. We don't have good conversations. It's not great, okay, three days a week. But then it takes you a day or two to recover every time you have one of those days. So then the next day you're super irritable, you're not really available, can't really talk to you about anything. So really if, if I'm only drinking three days a week and it takes, and the next day I feel crappy, I'm hungover, I'm not my best self, you know, I can barely get myself through work or whatever, then that's another day that you're adding to it. So those three days a week then become six days a week at a minimum. That's what I'm talking about when I say those sneaky little fees that are coming in there sometimes without you knowing. And the way those fees affect us, affects us in our relationships, it affects us in our self esteem, it affects our mindset. And I want to go through each of those categories and take a little closer look at just exactly how alcohol slowly starts to change these things in your life. And sometimes it happens so slowly you don't recognize that it is actually coming from the alcohol. First and foremost is your relationships. Usually the first relationship to get messed up from drinking is your primary, like romantic relationship. So like if you're married or if you're dating someone, that's the first relationship to start to be impacted. And usually it's that other person that's the first one to start saying something. And so what happens is, like, you've got this significant other person who's saying, hey, you know, I think you need to cut it back. I think you're drinking too much. Or, you know, then it gets to the point where they're saying, hey, promise me you won't drink when we go to my family event. And, and what it feels like to you as the person, it feels like, oh, my God, they're ridiculous. Like, no one else thinks this is a big deal. No one else cares about this. You know, when you're with your friends, they drink, they think you're drinking is great. Everybody's for it. And you think it makes you think it's just my spouse, it's just my boyfriend, my girlfriend, or whatever. And you want to put all the blame on them because they're the only ones that seem to have a problem with it. Well, they're the only ones that are seeing the repercussions of it. They're the only ones that are seeing the total picture of it. It's easy to sort of excuse away that person's opinion because you think they're just controlling or they're just nagging or they're just mean, or they're just a perfectionist or someone in their family had an alcohol problem, so they're just uptight about it or whatever. It's easy to kind of, especially when it's like your, your partner, your spouse, because, you know, there are other things that they do that irritate you, you know, just like normal things. And so it's easy to throw this into one of those categories and then you sort of miss it. Your partner is the first one that's going to notice it. But that's not the only relationship that gets affected. It's just the part first one, usually. But your, your drinking can also affect your work relationships. So you, you go out, you drink with your work buddies, or maybe part of your job is to take people out to, like, fancy dinners and stuff like that. And so drinking is almost like part of the job description. And then when you, you get to that point, you drink more than you thought you were going to drink. And then you end up saying something that you regret, whether that was, like, embarrassing or maybe you got really angry and said something nasty. And there's nothing worse than that feeling of waking up the next day. First of all, you feel like crap already. And then you're trying to even remember what happened and what you said. And then the first thing you do is like, look at your phone to see what the messages are to see if there's like any clues about what happened the night before. It's that moment of embarrassment. And then when you see those people again, you just feel so, like uncomfortable inside because you're thinking, I can't remember what happened. And that is an awful feeling. It's no good. It's like you almost get to where you just want to avoid certain people because things that they've seen happened while you were drinking. And then there are places you stop wanting to go. There are people you stop wanting to be around. And it's just a terrible feeling. It's like you have to walk around with this embarrassed, uncomfortable feeling a lot of time. That's one of those secret prices that you're paying that you're, you may be kind of like sort of conscious of, but not quite. And I want to raise that feeling to the top, if you know what I'm talking about with that. Put a little hand up emoji in the chat or the comments. So I know that you, that you're tracking here with me. Then the next category that you're going to see, the relationship kind of rolls down into this next category, which is self esteem. What happens to you is you eventually you feel embarrassed, right? Which then leads to feeling shameful about yourself. Especially when you get into the cycle of this like stage three alcohol problem where you're promising yourself I'm not going to drink more than X amount or more than X amount of times a week or whatever. And then you keep breaking your own rules. And that leads you to feel bad about yourself. And then the more people start to get on you about that and you already feel bad about yourself, then you start to feel bad about other people. And so now you start to add more people to your life. You've got your spouse or your partner you don't want to be around because they're always on your butt and they're just aggravating. You've got people you don't want to see because you did something that you regret you feel bad about. You got another section of people that you want to avoid and you feel guilty about it. But when other people start to hit that guilt button and this happens so fast, we don't recognize we do it. And we all do this. It's like a defense mechanism. It's just a button that gets hit more Often if there's an alcohol problem is that when someone starts to hit on that button something that you actually do feel really self conscious about or feel guilty about, it's like immediately it provokes like an anger response. Anger is like a protective emotion. So someone is hitting that sore spot inside. It brings up this resentment, this anger, this defensiveness pretty immediately. And so now we have bad feelings about a lot of people around us. So it's more relationships we're avoiding, we don't like ourselves. And eventually, and this is the part that really, really, really people almost always cannot see. Like, like really very few of the people that I see that are like early in the process truly understand how much alcohol is affecting their thinking, their filter and their mindset. And that's usually because it's, it's happened sort of slowly over a period of time that you, you don't quite recognize that that's what's going on. But eventually you turn into this other person that's not yourself, this other person that anxious, this sort of high strung, that's sort of uptight, slightly defensive, kind of mad at the world, holding a lot of resentments, replaying bad things that have happened to you. Whether it's like bad things like trauma things, or bad things like uncomfortable bad conversations or breakups or things like that. You start holding those in your head, you start replaying them over and over and over again because that is the effect of the alcohol. And a lot of times when, when you're actually drinking, your filter sort of turns down. I like to say the volume on your frontal lobe, the volume on your filter turns way down. And so if you've got these bad emotional memories hovering around and you turn the filter down on, what happens is those memories start replaying and they replay like in slow motion because alcohol slows everything down. And so it's like you're reliving bad things. You're re watching it like, like a movie in slow motion over and over and over. You're like literally re traumatizing yourself over and over and over. And every time you re watch that movie, it gets worse, it gets scarier, it gets nastier. Some it, it, the emotion around it ramps up. And just because even you're having those thoughts, those uncomfortable, negative, sometimes even like traumatic thoughts, your brain is then producing more chemical because you're having those thoughts, which is then reinforcing a lot of negative body chemistry and brain chemistry. And those effects don't just go away once the alcohol is out of your system. Your liver can filter the alcohol out of your system enough so that you're not intoxicated. But all these other brain changes and effects and dopamine changes and serotonin changes, negative thoughts and chemicals, that stuff takes a while to dissipate to get out of your system. And so that's what I say. If you're, even if you're not drinking every day you're drinking one day, you have a recovery day. Sometimes people have like a second day, they have a second day cycle. I hear like, because like on that second day I start to feel better and then I forget how bad it was like two days ago and that I can't remember exactly why I promised myself I wasn't going to do that again. And then they go back into it. And so around and around we go. We're literally only getting every third or fourth day where we feel mostly like ourselves. And after that goes on for a very long time, who we are as a person begins to change. Now with alcohol, a lot of people can stay very functional on the outside for a very long time. Only 5% of alcoholics are like, what you have in your mind, like the non functional, not going to work, can't take care of themselves. Like, only 5% of alcoholics fall into that category. So it's like the way minority research shows that most alcoholics are actually, if you look at their functionality, like their income level, their education level, stuff like that, they actually are higher than the average. So, and that's another thing that keeps, keeps you in denial because like I go to work, I make good money, I take care of my family, I pay my taxes. What's your problem? Right? Which I, I can understand that on, on some level because it's part of that defensiveness. It's like, I work hard, you know, I get up early every morning, I do all this stuff. What is your problem? But the problem is, is that you are changing as a person. Most people I see that have alcohol problem, they can work for years. I mean, people don't get to the point with alcohol that they can't function and go to work and stuff till like late stages. So if you're waiting until that point before or you want to recognize this problem, I'm like, why would you do that to yourself? Because the further you dig this hole, the further and longer and harder it is to get out of the hole, right? You just have to recognize, and sometimes once you can become aware of these subtle little things that are starting to happen and you're watching your behaviors change and you're watching yourself rationalize making bad decisions, and you're watching yourself treat the people that you actually love and care about the most. Not great. And you find yourself lying and you find yourself manipulating and you find yourself, like, gaslighting other people. Once you bring those behaviors and thinking patterns into the conscious, it's really hard to ignore. There's an old, like, AA saying it's like a head full of AA and a belly full of beer or something doesn't mix. Right. It's like once you know these things, it's really hard to unknow, and it kind of messes it all up. So that's why I said you should have clicked away from this video if you didn't want to hear these things. It takes a lot of courage to look at it honestly. And like I said, because most of the time it's like, well, I just want to bring it back. I just want to drink less. But even if you are able to do that, which I'm telling you, most people aren't by the time they're watching these videos, I'm not saying most people can't control their drinking. I'm saying most people have an alcohol problem that watch my videos can't do that. So you're. You're not just drinking two days. You're not just drinking three days. You're in that recovery cycle. And it takes actually a week or two or three or really like four weeks to get really good back brain chemistry. So you're never really out of that cycle. You're thinking to myself, well, I'm only drinking this many days, and I'm not even getting that intoxicated. But you're not taking into consideration all the after effects, all the time that it takes to heal just after one binge drinking session. Right. I'm not even. This doesn't even just apply to someone who would even qualify for an alcohol use disorder. Like, literally, they used to say things like, you know, a couple of glasses of wine or a little bit of alcohol is good for you, but that's actually not true at all. Like, even slight drinking increases your chances of cancer by, like, a lot. Alcohol actually kills significantly, like, way more people than all the other drugs combined. So it's like if you combine all the other deaths related to other drugs, like, this much alcohol is like this much, and it's so much. So this is a statistic I heard. Actually, I heard it on Recovery Elevator, which is another YouTube channel. It's pretty good. You should check it out. And he got the Guy that was on there, I think he got this from the cdc. But he said, which really shocked me. I was like, wow, the tax burden. So the amount of money that every, every single taxpayer pays is $2.66 per drink sold, per drink consumed, not per person that has an alcohol problem. Per drink consumed, the tax burden is $2.66. I mean, when you start to like think about that, it gives you a tiny glimpse about just what a massive problem and issue it is. And you know, you're dealing with alcohol companies who like make a ton of, ton of profit to be made. I'm not against profit at all, but there's a ton of profit to be made. And you're, but you're doing something in order to make that profit that's like killing people. Like all the celebrities these days, they have like a alcohol company. There's like several celebrities in recovery that actually have big businesses with alcohol, which is like confusing to me. I don't know, maybe, maybe I can explain it. Like I said, I'm not against like having a business or making money, but I'm just like, really? And you're in recovery. It just doesn't make any sense to me. And I think a lot of that is because it's old school thinking of, well, alcohol is actually fine. It's just if you're an alcoholic, yeah, if you're an alcoholic, it's going to affect you worse. But actually many, many, many, many more people are alcoholic that don't quite realize that they're alcoholic because they only think that 5%. So they don't recognize that I'm in that really high functioning percent that's paying some of these prices on the regular without even realizing it. If you have experience, if you've paid any of those fees anytime in your life, give me a hands up emoji in the comments or in the chat. And I also want to say before we take comments, we're about to take questions and comments. So put them in there because there's a little delay every time we do a live and I hit in broadcast, like three or four questions pop up there. So put them in there now because Bree's on here backstage and she's going to help find your questions. I see that some of you are putting the little question marks before your question, which is super helpful. I like it. I put in the description, there's always resources for you. And today I put in there the link so that you can download like the official clinical for real deal criteria for alcohol use disorder. And it'll show you exactly what the criteria are. It'll show you sort of how to measure and count and figure out like clinically where you at on, on the scale. And you can even think about it for a loved one. Now if you're going to download it and you're going through the list and you're thinking about someone else in your life, I'm cool with that. But don't just like, shove the list in their face and be like, so you got like 10 of these. Don't do that. I don't even do that. The way I do that in my office is someone say, well, I don't know if I'm alcoholic or not. I say, I don't know. Let's get the book out. I'll read you the criteria. There are 11 of them. I'm going to read you 11 of them. And you count them on your fingers as I read them to you. And they'll say, well, sort of on that one. And I'll say, let me give you a half. So I let them literally count their own criteria. Usually they count about half as many as probably really do apply. But I let them count it even when they. Even by their own count, when they count up the number and then I tell them how to score, they're like, holy moly. They're like really shocked. So don't shove it in someone else's face. Try to tell them that they are or not alcoholic. I'm licensed to do it and I don't even do it. So don't do it. It will backfire on you and it's a bad idea. So in the description, you can get that link for that download. It's free. And then also, if you are watching this or your loved one is thinking about stopping drinking, if you're alcohol dependent, it can be dangerous to just quit cold turkey. That's not me saying, okay, well, Amber said, I can't stop anyway. I keep wanting. I'm just telling you you need to be careful about it. Sometimes you need some medical intervention to help sort of taper you off the alcohol because you can have a seizure. It can be dangerous, it can be life threatening. So another link, I put it in the description for you is a link to download. It's like a real clinical assessment that like medical professionals use to assess withdrawal. And I'm not giving you that. I'm not saying like, oh, you don't need to go to the doctor. You got the piece of paper here. But I just want you to know what those symptoms are. So once you read those scales, at least you'll have an idea about like, oh my gosh, I'm having some of those. I should go get evaluated by the doctor. Or my loved one is. So I don't want you to use that in, like, in place of. I just want you to use that as sort of like a. A guide. God. Postmarks. All right. I hope you got your questions up there, Bri. Give us. Give us something good. Sarah says, does addiction cause someone to act in disrespectful ways towards their partner, like infidelity, or is that a choice made by their true self, addiction? When someone is in active addiction, and I mean anywhere in the cycle, not just if they're intoxicated or not intoxicated or high or not high, not that like if they're in an addictive cycle, their thinking is not reasonable or rational. Like I said, when their mindset shifts, they're holding resentments, they feel anxious, they usually blame their partner. So the. I want to say the answer to your question is yes, addiction will trigger those kinds of behaviors. But I'm hesitant to say that to you, Sarah, because I also, I'm not totally saying, well, that person isn't to blame. That's just not. That's just not who I am. And I think even if it's an addiction and you didn't mean to have it and it's causing your thinking to be warped, it's your responsibility to do something. So, yes, it can. Does that mean that person holds. No. You know, they can't help at all. No, it's. It's sort of a grayish blend in there. Question. My husband has been sober for a month using soberlink. You guys know I'm a silverlink fan. Thank you so much for recommending it. How long does it take for the brain chemicals to rebalance? He is sober, but is still withdrawn and cranky. I mean, the, like acute withdrawal, like the physically feeling sick part can last two weeks or so. The first week is the roughest, like physically, but it takes. It can take a good long while before the sleep cycles restore. And that has a lot to do with like the mood and the good brain, brain chemical levels and all that kind of stuff. So if your husband is still having some sleep issues. Most people that are quitting any kind of addiction have a sleep issue. It's part of the process. Then they're not going to have their normal, like, resilience. It's like they're thin skinned, right. Because they're not getting. It's kind of like you, if you haven't slept or you're hangry or something, they're kind of in that state until things can level out. I can't give you a number. After 30 days I found people feel significantly better. And every day after that better and better and better. Six months out, it's like a whole new person. Exactly how do you determine whether you drink enough to make cold turkey dangerous? Well, I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you an answer, Debbie, but I did want to say I got to put my disclaimers. I'm not a doctor. Consult your doctor. I won't get myself in trouble. But if you find that you can't go past three days without drinking, like you keep trying to stop drinking and on that third day you always go back. That's a pretty good indicator that you can't get through the withdrawal cycle. Now it doesn't necessarily mean you have to be hospitalized, but it probably because that second and third day is really hard in the withdrawal cycle. So if you found that you just can't get past that, that's when I would definitely like look into it and consider it. Now if you can't even get past one day, you already know that you don't even, you're not even questioning. So some of you who don't drink all the time, you're the ones that are thinking like, can I stop cold checking. If you can stop for five, six, seven days at a time, then it's not a withdrawal issue necessarily. Beth says I recently asked my husband to move out. Very civil between us, he comes over frequently to visit our 6 year old daughter and me. I found him drinking. Then during those visits, sneak drinking and hiding, do I ask him to leave or ride it out? I feel like this is why I asked him to leave in the first place. That's a really good question because it's a really, it's a boundary question that a lot of spouses run up against. When you have this issue, just to ask him to leave because he's drinking probably isn't going to be all that helpful. You got to ask yourself why? Why do you want to set that boundary? My guess is because you want to protect your six year old, right? Like you don't want to subject your 6 year old to something not great. If he's coming over to visit, then I'm assuming you or someone else is there. If he's over and he's visiting and he's like intoxicated to the point that he's problematic, that he's not acting right, that he's. That something's actually happening that you don't want your daughter exposed to, then I would say, hey, why don't we try this another day or something like that. But if it's just because I know he had a beer or something like that, and I'm trying to, like, put my foot down about it and prove my point, that's not exactly the great reason to do that. How long do you think it takes a family member to restore brain chemistry after getting away from an active, abusive alcoholic? That is a really advanced question. I'm actually kind of impressed with your question. The reason why that's an advanced, impressive question is because it tells me, like, not only do you understand addiction, you understand addictive family system. The answer to that question is it's kind of like the alcoholic and withdrawal. Once they stop the drinking or the drug use or whatever it is, the brain starts to heal with the family member. It's a little bit harder to measure because it's. When do you stop letting yourself obsess? You can keep obsessing for years and months, and your brain is not going to heal. And if you do that for, like, long, long, long time, it's really hard to get off of that track because you're creating neural pathways. You. You literally, you know, thinking becomes a habit, negative thinking, bad memories. It literally, like, solidifies neural pathways, and it makes it hard to break the cycle. So the question is, is you will start to feel better as soon as you stop the best that you can, letting yourself go down that deep, dark rabbit hole. Remember when think about. Bring up resentments, bring up fears. Every time you go down that rabbit hole, it's like the same thing as them having a drink as far as brain chemistry is concerned. So it just depends on when you can make that addictive behavior stop. If you can't make it stop and you've tried really hard, then that may be. It's a sign to, like, go see a doctor again. I'm not a doctor, but I have seen it. People that have anxiety and stuff so bad as the family member that they literally need to be put on antidepressant to be able to shift the gear out of it. I'm not telling you to take antiperson. Just tell me you. If you find that you can't stop going in the rabbit hole, talk to your daughter about it or your counselor or your recovery Coach, tiny face McGee. I like your profile name question what if the loved one won't admit it is really social anxiety that is driving the alcoholism? If they won't admit that part, how should I help? It doesn't matter if they admit that part. In fact, a lot of times people, they'll say it's because of my social anxiety and I have to drink. Like sometimes people admit it and they'll grab onto it like it's an excuse and they won't let go of it. And that actually keeps the drinking longer. It they don't have to admit what's driving the alcoholism. If you can get them to admit that there's an alcohol problem, that's great. That's actually more important than the other because you can't fix the other until the substance problem is addressed. Anyways, Question. Does end stage alcoholism mean certain death or just they are so far into it they passed all the other stages. Alcoholism is a terminal illness. So if you don't deal with it, it's going to get you one way or the other. It gets you in a lot of ways that sometimes people don't associate with alcoholism. Like. Like, if you die of liver failure, people are like, oh, that's because of alcoholism. But a lot of cancer is caused by alcohol. A lot of other things is caused by alcohol. So you got these secondary effects that's still related. So. Yeah. Could something else kill you? Yeah, you could, like be on a bus and get in a bus accident and die. That wouldn't be related to the alcohol. But if nothing else happens to you, you keep drinking like that. Yeah, it's going to kill you unless you address it and stop. Is there more questions, Bri, or is that. Oh, I thought there was more. Hey, Steven. Hi, Amber. I was so confident about my sobriety that I was sure I could go back to my spouse that is a heavy user. Made it 14 days. I was hoping that my falling so fast would be a wake up call for her. Stephen, you see this little look I'm giving you? You know better than this. You're. This is like a. This is like a mix up of addiction, your addiction, and then like the family member addiction. I feel bad because you're literally like, it's like double addiction, like dual diagnosis. Because you're literally saying, I was hoping that my relapse would be a wake up call for them. Whoa, dude, that's scary. I don't want you thinking that. That's. Yeah. When you're still thinking thoughts like that, you're not ready to go back in because what's happening is you're so worried about this other person, which is understandable. Anybody in the family world understands that. But you're also so fragile because of the addiction that it's like you get this thing under control, you go back into that situation, it sends you spiraling again. So I'm glad that you have that insight. You're going to have to separate that out. And I know you want it. I know you want you both to figure this out and get on the same path, because who wouldn't? But it. Normally, to figure it out at the same time is very rare. Maybe one and then the other. Usually just one. But at the same time, it's really hard to make that happen. Steph says, when I stop going down the rabbit hole and focus on keeping my sanity, my spouse says I'm pulling away and being selfish. Is there any point that I can tell him why I'm doing that? If so, how. I'm thinking about how to word this stuff? Yes, you can tell him that, but I want you to be careful about how you tell him that. I don't want you to say, I'm doing this because of your drinking or whatever it is. I want you to say, I'm actually just trying to have better boundaries because I find that when I don't, I start acting controlling or resentful or get too anxious, and that hurts our relationship. So I'm just trying to be healthy so we can be good. So it's how you frame it. You're saying, I'm doing this for me or even for us. Not. Not any kind of anything that has any tinge of, well, I have to do this because you're whatever. Because that will just backfire on you. But, yeah, they notice, like, when you back up, they complain when you're all hovery, and then you back up and they're like, what's wrong? It's like, you can't win. DJ says, I feel like a lot of advice out there for family members is just focus on yourself. Focus on yourself. But not really solid advice or solid advice for, okay, how do we do that? Can be frustrating. It is frustrating because it's like. And I. Even when I say to people, like, you got to take care of yourself, I realize that even when I say it's like saying, like, I know you're in a house and it's like, burning down to the ground, but I just want you to be cool. Like, really, it's almost insulting. I get that our advice is a combination of, yes, it's focused on Yourself, it's like, do a better job of meeting your needs, but it doesn't mean you have to, like, completely let go of this person. And because we like to say, focus on yourself. And then we also, like, give you strategies on how to talk to that person or how to help that person and come around to it. So we personally feel like if you want the relationship to stay, like, if you're in a marriage or something like that, and you're trying to keep the marriage together, then, yes, it's a balance of focusing on yourself while helping that other person. But you do kind of have to, like, back up, like, two notches, because when you're too close to the flame, you keep getting burned. You keep getting pulled back into it. And then a lot of times, inadvertently, like, you're just being sucked into it and you're fueling it and you don't even mean to. So you do have to back up two steps. But it doesn't mean you have to just be like, I'm not even thinking about you at all. I'm just thinking about me. Because that's not really possible. You're right. More Campbell videos, please. I know, right? We gotta get Campbell on here. Bre, you hear that? Write that down. Tell Campbell. Hi from. Is that Michigan? If my boyfriend is idolizing drug use, but talking to me, should I worry? My instinct is to panic, but I'm trying to remember your advice. Hold on, I'm going to read that again. I don't think I understand if my boyfriend is idolizing drug use. Idolizing, using drugs, but talking to me. Understand the idolizing drug use part, but I'm not understand the talking to you part. If what you're saying is, should I worry if I'm in a relationship with someone who's idolizing druggies? The answer to the that is, yes, you should worry. That is not a good sign. Because we. Whatever our attention goes to, whatever we are focused on is what we attract. It's part of the human makeup. What you think about and what you focus on is what will happen. It is what you will bring into your life. So, yes, you should worry. I think. I think that's what you're asking. But you could possibly be asking, like, he's being sober and we're talking and things are good, but he's still idolizing drug use. And if that's the case, same answer as before. Steph says, how do I know when it's time for my loved one to see you? How would that be brought up? That is A really good question, because whether they see me or they see someone else or another addiction counselor, whatever. So this just applies to how do I know when it's time for my person to seek help or see anybody? The better you set it up, the faster and easier that it works. I'm so glad you're asking this question. If it's me specifically, what I like to do is see if you get them to watch one of my videos, or maybe even. Maybe they'll agree and they'll get, like, my free 30 day jump start series or something. And because that almost, like, introduces them to me, and then they can decide if they like me or not. If they come back to you and say, that woman's crazy, she said she don't know what she's talking about, then don't bring me up. Bring up somebody else that they don't think it's crazy. They're like, yeah, all right. And they're like, watch another video or something. Then when the moment is right and you have, like, one of those windows open, then you say, you know that lady from the video, like, she actually, like, will, like, do a virtual session with you. Like, man, you want me to set you up a session? Bring it up like that. So it's almost like they get a chance to get to know me specifically first. If it's not me and it's another counselor, you have to wait until that right window where they're saying, I want to get help or I need to do something different. Don't ask the question of, like, do you want to get help? Say, is it okay if I make you an appointment with X, Y, or Z? Or you could say it like, well, what kind of counselor do you think would help you? Would you do better with X, Y, or Z? And because their brain immediately, like, starts to answer that question, if you say, do you want to get help? No one wants to get help, so don't ask it that way. Hope that helps. Is that our last one, Bri? All right, I want to say thank you so much for everyone who joined us live. I appreciate you guys have asked super good questions today. And I can tell some of y' all have been watching a long time because y'. All. Y' all asking some advanced questions. I am gonna have to get Campbell on here to answer them. Up next, I will put our playlist up here for you that is specifically about conquering an alcohol problem. And I will see you guys next week. Next Thursday at 1. Bye, everybody.