When Drinking Stops Being a Habit (And Becomes Addiction)

What if I told you that the same thing that makes someone an alcoholic is the same thing that has your kid unable to put their phone down, or the same thing has you checking Instagram at 2:00 AM in the morning when you probably shouldn't? Let's take the word probably out, but you definitely shouldn't at 2:00 AM. Today we're going to look at the actual criteria that mental health professionals use to diagnose addiction And we're going to hold it next to some of the most common everyday habits that people have. You hear this all the time. You hear people say, my kid's addicted to their phone, or I'm addicted to social media, or my husband's addicted to gaming. And while these addictions aren't officially listed in what we call the DSM, which is the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, which is what clinical professionals use to actually diagnose, these are not addictions listed in there. We all kind of have this thought that they are addictions because the pattern holds pretty consistent, even with substance use addiction, things like gaming, things like pornography or sex addiction. You can see some very similar patterns between all these genres. Today we're going to break down what makes something a bad habit versus what makes something addiction. And the line between those things where you cross that line, it can be kind of gray. So we're going to pull apart some of those pieces and talk about what is actually an addiction and what falls more into the bad habit category. And I think some of you are going to be pretty surprised by how that actually lays out. Some of you that may be using the word addiction for some of these habits are going to realize that maybe it's not addiction. And some of you may realize when you thought you had a bad habit that you actually do meet the criteria for someone who has an addiction. Now, one of the things that got me thinking about this, honestly, I was listening to a podcaster or a YouTuber that I listen to a lot. Her name is Lisa Bilyeu. I don't know if anybody watches her or knows who that is. If you do, put your hand up in the chat. I really like her. She has great guests. And, um, yesterday I was watching one of her guests, and this was a sexology expert, and I really liked what she had to say. I mean, I thought it was super interesting. I agreed with almost everything she said, but at some point she made this comment which wasn't really necessarily what the topic or the show was about. It was just sort of a side comment that she made, and I was like, how about that? Because The comment that this guest made was she said, I don't think that sex is an addiction, that I don't think you can have a sex addiction. And the reasoning she gave for that was that she said, think about it. You don't go into withdrawal if you don't have sex. And I had to stop and think about that for just a moment because the actual criteria for addiction withdrawal, and we're going to talk about the criteria, That's one of them, but there are actually 11 criteria, and that's just one of them. And you don't need all 11 to meet the criteria for addiction if it was a substance. So I don't even really feel like that reasoning holds solid. But beyond that, I'm not totally sure that there's not any withdrawal from that. And we'll talk about that too in just a second about why that is. That's kind of what prompted me to want to talk about this because it's not just specifically sex addiction, but other behavioral type non-substance addictions like gambling, gaming, social media, these things that we're hearing talked about all the time. So whether you're watching this because you think maybe I have a problem with one of those things or my loved one, or maybe you're watching this because you're thinking maybe I have a problem with a substance, drugs, alcohol, or something like that, by the end of this video, you're going to have clarity on what makes someone something an addiction, What makes something a habit? What makes something a bad habit? You know, where do these lines fall? And hopefully this gives you a little bit of clarity. And I also have a link in the description, which I'll remind you of again later, but it will let you take our quiz on how severe an addiction is. And so if you still want even more clarity than what we're talking about, we got that down there for you and that'll help you even more. All right, before we dig in too much, I want to say hello to To all of our people watching live, and I want to say hello to all of you that are watching on the playback. For those of you who are new here, my name is Amber Hollingsworth. I'm an addiction expert. I've been working with people struggling with an addiction for more than 20 years. And this YouTube channel, Put the Shovel Down, is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction so that you can get ahead of it, so that you can actually stay 5 steps ahead of it and get your life back on track or help your loved one get their life back on track. All right. So today, let's, let's dig into it. If you are watching live, go ahead and put your comments and your questions up in chat, because after we go through these criteria and talk about this a little bit, I'm going to be taking your questions and your comments. So go ahead and put them in there. We have our moderator in the back, Bree. She's watching out for them and she's going to pop them up on the screen so we can look at them together and you can get some feedback. All right. So let's start with that DSM, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual that healthcare professionals use to diagnose substance use disorder. And one thing I'll tell you about this is that with a substance use disorder, when you look in the official manual, they have it broken down. They have alcohol use disorder, cocaine use disorder, marijuana, you have all the different substances broken down. But if you looked at the criteria, There are little differences, but not much. So we're going to talk about the criteria in general, and you can just take the blank and insert the word there that you want to put, whether it's a substance, a drug, a behavior, whatever it is. You can actually interchange those words because the criteria that you're looking at for addiction, they're not 100% the same, but they're probably like 98% the same as far as what makes something an addiction and what— Doesn't. So feel free to interchange those words. Now, before you tune out, I want you to know that this isn't just about substance use. This can be about gaming. It can be about your husband's drinking. It can be about your own tendency to go into an Instagram vortex or a TikTok— what do they call it? The black hole of TikTok where you can't get out. You can apply these criteria to any of those. And you actually only need 2 of these criteria to qualify as an addiction. So the way this works is you count how many of them you have. There's 11 of them. You count how many you have. If you have more than 2, you're in the category of addiction. If you have 3 or 4, it's like a moderate addiction. If you have like 5 or more, that qualifies as a severe addiction. So as we go along, you can count on your fingers, whatever thing that you're thinking of, insert your word there, and you'll figure out whether or not you or the person you love actually would qualify for addiction level if they were talking to like a clinical professional. Now, keep in mind, behavioral addictions are not officially in the manual now, but I think that they probably will be pretty soon. All right, here are the 11 criteria. Number 1, Using more than was intended. Like for example, if the issue is drinking, you tell yourself, I'm just going to have a couple of glasses of wine at dinner and then that's it. It's just to relax me at the end of the day or something like that. And so you make these little promises to yourself or you say, I'm only going to smoke when I'm with my friends at a social event, but you break your promises to yourself. So you end up using more than you intended. Now we can apply that to behavioral addictions, right? End up like spending a lot more time on social media than was intended. You know, you tell yourself, oh, I got 5 minutes to kill. You know, you're just scrolling through, you're looking at whatever, and the next thing you know, it's 2 hours later and you're late to your event, or you haven't gotten any work done, or you stayed up all night and now you're not going to get the sleep you need to function well for tomorrow. So you can see how these sort of apply across genres, right? You can look at this no matter what the issue is and figure out, am I doing more than intended? Am I making promises to myself and then breaking those promises? Now let's look at what the second criteria is. Give me just one second. I'm looking at my notes here because I remember them, but when I try to do them off the top of my head, I get lost. All right. Criteria number 2 is the persistent desire or failed attempts To control it, stop, or cut back. Right? So it's like you make even more promises to yourself that you're not going to do it anymore, or that you're going to stop for 30 days. Like you're going to do Dry January or Sober October or something like that. And you make these promises that you're going to either not do it as much anymore. You're only going to do it on certain days or in social events or in certain situations. And you're not going to do it longer than a certain amount of time or bypass a certain amount of money you're spending on it, something like that. And you may get some success in that, some short-term success. It's not like you can't get any success, but you don't get consistent success. And so you go back to it and that's why it says persistent desire. It's like, I keep wanting to get this under control, but it keeps passing and crossing over those lines. And I really don't have control of it as much as I want to. With drinking, you can think of it like how many times have you or your loved one says, I'm going to slow down, or I'm not going to drink this week. How many times has that actually happened, right? Sometimes it might happen, but a lot of times it don't. With things like social media, screens, gaming, how many times have you told yourself that you're going to spend less time on your phone, or your kid said they'd limit their gaming to an hour? How did that go? Does that consistently play out that way, or a lot of times does it not? All right, now criteria number 3 is spending a lot of time Obtaining, using, and recovering in the manual from the effects of the substance, basically. But you can apply these to other things as well. So like, for example, with drinking, this is a person who plans their whole day around drinking or smoking or whatever it is. It's like, when can I have my first drink? And everything else you're doing is basically just like stuff that you're doing. in between till you can get to what you really want to do. And because in the idea of drinking or substance use, it's like, how long until I'm going to feel normal? And so everything else is just this stuff that you're trying to rush through. You're not really all that present for because most of your thought process and your time and energy is around using, obtaining, engaging in whatever this is, this addictive behavior. Now with something like social media, gaming screens, those behavioral addictions, think about how much of your mental energy goes towards those screens, planning when you can check your phone, thinking about what you're going to post, staying up late because you can't stop scrolling. So again, you can apply this criteria. If it's pornography, if it's sex, if it's gambling, it's the same criteria, right? All right, let's look at criteria number 4 this time. Cravings or strong urges to use. With drinking or drugs, it looks like you're almost like you're white-knuckling it. You really want to, you probably feel irritable when you're not, you're watching the clock and everything else feels wrong and crappy until you get that substance. With like social media type addictions, you know that feeling when your phone is in the other room and you feel really unsettled, or when you can't get on social media and you feel really anxious about it, that's like a craving, right? Like maybe you made a post on social media and you're at work or you're in the middle of a conversation with someone and you're like obsessing about, I wonder how many likes I had, or I wonder how many views I have, or I wonder how many people commented on my post. And you have this urge, it's like a craving, right? And it's hard to, resist going to look at that, right? And sometimes you might find yourself doing that at times when you shouldn't, which is going to be one of the other criteria. So stay tuned and keep listening. All right, next criteria that— now this one is number 5— is a failure to fulfill major role obligations. Now, major role obligations, I like to put them in buckets, right? You can look at like family obligations, work obligations, school obligations, community obligations. These are basically like your responsibilities or the things that you've agreed to do or the things that you're expected to do, right? And you're dropping the ball on some of these. It's not, maybe not be that you're dropping the ball all the time, but you're missing work. You're forgetting to pick up the kids. You forgot that your son had the soccer game that you were supposed to show up to, or that you're supposed to bring the snacks. Not just once, right? That can happen to anyone, but like— Frequently. On a decently regular basis, like way more than you should, way more than the average person. We can all drop the ball sometimes, but you're going to find that when it's an addiction, you're dropping the ball and it's something related to the substance. Maybe you were told about that event when you were drinking and you don't remember it because you were intoxicated at the time. Or maybe you're feeling really hungover all day and you forget about it and you drop the ball because you just don't feel up to it. Or you're feeling so bad that you're in the bed all day. Or maybe it's because you're in withdrawal. Like if it's a pain pill addiction, maybe you remembered it, but you can't show up to work consistently because when you have the drug, you can function. And when you don't have the drug, you can't function. And so your work life, your work performance, that's the word I'm looking for, is really inconsistent or unstable. That's what it looks like when I say failure to fulfill a major role obligation. That can be because of the using, because of being hungover, because of the stress it causes, because you're locked up in jail, any of those reasons. With some of the behavioral addictions, it might be homework that doesn't get done. It might be a parent who's physically present but constantly scrolling through their phone and their job performance slips because of it. Right now, moving on to criteria number 6 is continued use despite social or interpersonal problems. To me, this is sort of another bucket of one of those major Life role sort of things, but it's not necessarily like a responsibility obligation, but it's like a responsibility that you have to your friends. These are your social responsibilities, right? Basically, what it means is: Are you screwing up your relationships because of this addiction? Is someone or more than someone upset with you because of your drinking, using, your gambling, your gaming, your pornography use? Something like that. Maybe you've had arguments with them over and over. You've had lots of conversations and these conversations are when you do all those promises that you break. Remember that was one of the other criteria. When it's drinking, you've had the conversation multiple times. The relationship is suffering. They know it's a problem, as in the person, as in you know it's a problem, but you still keep doing it. Now you're making the promises, you're telling yourself you're going to cut back, but it just doesn't really play out. With some of these other behavioral addictions, maybe you told your kid that their gaming is affecting the family. Maybe mom and dad are constantly fighting with each other about how much time the son can be on the video games. Maybe your wife just had a baby and she's constantly frustrated with you because you're not helping out the baby because you're always gambling. You've been told to put your phone down at dinner 100 times and it's causing problems in those relationships. So that's the one about interpersonal relationships. Now moving on to, let's look at number 7, and that's giving up important activities because of this addictive behavior. Like things you used to like to do, like hobbies and interests. Like you used to maybe always go bowling, or you were always into baseball or collecting stamps. It doesn't matter whatever it is. Or maybe you're a craft kind of person, or you used to write music or play guitar or do pottery, whatever these things are that used to bring you a lot of joy, you either stop doing them completely or you slow down doing them, or you, maybe you still do them, but you try to bring either the substance on board if it's a substance addiction, or maybe you're doing them, but you're constantly interrupted. So you're not doing it as well at it anymore. So you just start to see. All these other things that used to bring you joy start to kind of wane away. It's not an overnight thing, but it's these things start to drop off just a little bit at a time as time goes on. And pretty soon, you know, you've quit the softball team. Pretty soon you quit, you know, showing up to dodgeball or whatever the thing was. And maybe you have a lot of excuses and maybe some of those excuses make sense and it seems reasonable, but this is where you got to check in with yourself. Here's the thing I would tell you to ask. Do you have a hard time enjoying things that don't involve the addiction? That's the case. And that's why these hobbies drop off. And that has to do with brain chemicals, right? You don't get the same brain chemical, the good brain chemical jolt when you do these things anymore. The dopamines, the serotonins, all the good things, you don't get them anymore. So you become less and less interested in them. You stop seeing the friends you used to see. The things you care about just slowly get replaced by the addiction. If it's somebody that's addicted to a screen, maybe they used to play sports, they used to have friends over, but now they just want to stay home and game. They don't even want to go on family vacation. They don't even want to go to the amusement park anymore. They just want to game. And whatever amount of time they're using, they make these promises again and they're breaking them. All right. Criteria number 8 is continues use or engaging in a behavior in situations where it's physically hazardous. Now, when it comes to substances, that's a little cleaner, clearer, easier to sort of weigh out because it's like if you're drinking and driving, right? That's pretty clear. If you're getting really high and you're operating heavy machinery at work, right? Another way to think about that though is like if you're really intoxicated and you're supposed to be watching small children, I would consider that using or engaging in the behavior in situations that can be dangerous, especially with small children. So when it comes to substances, like I said, it's a little clearer to figure out. When it comes to behavioral addictions though, it still counts. You can still have this criteria. Like, for example, compulsively checking your phone while you're driving, right? And you know you shouldn't be doing it, but you can't. Or gaming until 3 when you have to be up at 6:00 AM and you have physically a job where, I don't know, you fly airplanes or something. I don't know, something really important. You're a truck driver and now that puts you in danger. Maybe not because you're doing it in that moment, but because you're— And withdraw from it, or you couldn't put it down in time and now you haven't had any sleep. You can see how this can play out in a number of ways. All right, we're moving on to number 9. And remember, there are 11 of these. So criteria number 9 is continued use despite knowing it's causing problems. Right. So it's like, I know this is causing me maybe Physical health problems, psychological problems, emotional problems, but I keep doing it anyway. So examples of that could be, um, you know that your drinking is causing your blood pressure to be terrible. You know that your pornography use is causing your depression and your anxiety to get out of control, right? You know that this is making some problem you have worse and you're continuing to do that. Sometimes in the beginning it's making a problem worse, but you don't even recognize that that's why it's happening. Like you don't recognize that it's the gaming, pornography, the gambling, or whatever it is that's causing your physical or emotional problems to get worse. But at some point you start to figure that out. And even when you have that insight, you're still doing it, right? That's what it's like. You're knowingly doing it. When it's causing you a lot of problems. Now with social media, screens, gaming, stuff like that, it could be your kids know that gaming is affecting their grades, right? Or you know that doom scrolling before bed is wrecking your sleep, but knowing it just doesn't stop you from doing it. Moving on to number 10. Okay. 10 is about tolerance. And it means needing more of something to get the same effect. When it comes to substances, that's a little clearer, right? Like used to, I could drink 4 beers and get this effect, but now it takes me 6 beers to get that same effect. It's pretty easy to see I need more of it or I need to use it more frequently, right? That's kind of clear and easy to look at. But these things also apply to any kind of behavioral addiction too. Like with pornography, the way that you see tolerance happening is People tend to go to more and more and more sort of what I would call out there, extreme, more and more extreme types of pornography that they're looking at, which would be similar to someone going from drinking beer to drinking liquor to drinking whatever it is. And eventually they're drinking straight vodka because it's clear and they think people can't smell it. And anyway, that's a whole nother talk. It's like an escalation to getting, you know, like maybe if you're using cocaine and then you just move to using crack cocaine, or, and sometimes with the substances, it's like you go to using it one way, like opiates, maybe you're swallowing a pill, but now all of a sudden you're snorting it or you're smoking it or you're injecting it. That's, that also counts as tolerance. It's like, I'm changing the way I'm using it to get it in my system faster. I'm using more like intense versions of it. And so it can be the same thing with gaming, pornography. You can absolutely apply this to sexual behaviors, right? You get more and more extreme. You need it more frequently. You can see that when it comes to sex addiction, going back to that hazardous situations, you can see where these behavioral addictions follow pretty cleanly these same lines that substance addictions follow. The amount just starts creeping up on you, right? So whether it's the behavior, whether it's the substance, it feels like, remember when 30 minutes of social media might've felt like a lot and now it's 2 hours go by and it barely registers? The stimulation threshold just sort of keeps going up. Moving on to number 11. Now we need 1 and 2 together. 10 and 1, 11, right? Physical or emotional symptoms stop or start if you stop doing it. So this is the withdrawal category. This is the one that I mentioned before when I was listening to Lisa's podcast that the sex addiction person was talking about that you don't have withdrawal symptoms. Now, again, with substances, just easier to cleanly see, right? Like if you stop drinking, You're going to be shaking, sweating, you may be vomiting. Heck, with alcohol, you could be having hallucinations. With opiates, you have restless leg, you have pain, you have flu-like symptoms. Those are easier to imagine because we know with chemical addictions, you have this certain set of physical withdrawal symptoms, but you can definitely have those with non-substance addictions as well. Right? Because you're going to notice that you can't sleep, that you're anxious, that you're irritable, that you're edgy, that you don't want to eat. And you may not even be counting those in the category of physical withdrawal symptoms, but you know, just ask yourself this, if I'm not doing it, do I feel really terrible? Because depending on what substance you're doing, that's going to determine what those withdrawal symptoms are. So the withdrawal from alcohol is different from the withdrawal from opiates, which is different than the withdrawal from marijuana. But the point is, is like your body is so used to doing it that it literally doesn't function properly physically when you don't have that anymore. And if you ask anyone who considers themself, um, like a gambling addict or a pornography addict, they'll tell you that there is a level of withdrawal. Now, maybe they don't need to go to medical detox, you know, they don't need to necessarily check into detox facility, but a lot of times we can sort of underestimate or minimize these other withdrawal symptoms. Maybe we don't even recognize them as withdrawal symptoms, but that irritability, edginess, anxiety, restlessness, can't sleep, can't eat, all of those things count. And you know it's like when you're not doing it, you feel these things start to come on. Now, Those are the 11. Told you there are 11, right? What does your score mean? So now that you've heard them all, I want you to count in your head how many of them do you have? Or if you're watching this because you're concerned about someone, how many do you feel like your loved one has? But little public announcement here, right? If you are watching this because you're concerned about someone else, here's what I don't want you to do. I don't want you to call them up and say, hey, I heard the 11 criteria and you have all All 11 of them. You have 10 of them. You have 8 of them. Whatever it is, it's not going to be helpful for you to confront someone that way. And if you're not new to this channel, then you already know that. If you're here watching because you're concerned about someone else, there are a ton of videos on this channel that talk about how to help someone who has an addiction. And if you check out those videos, you'll know that I would not ever advise you to use like a video to be directly confronted with people. So. If you have it in your head like, oh, I'm going to send this video over my son because he's got a gaming problem and he's going to then he's going to listen to Amber name these off and then he's going to know he has it. That's not what's going to happen. They're just going to get defensive. It's going to put you in the bad guy role and it's going to make things worse. So don't do that. Okay, unless they're asking you, unless they say, I think I have a problem. What do you think? And the window's open for it. Yeah, share the video, but don't use my videos as a weapon because it's just going to backfire. My little public service announcement. I have to throw that in there every now and then when I know I'm talking about something and I can just imagine somebody being like, oh. I'm going to send this over to so-and-so because now they're going to hear all this and they're going to get it right. I told you how to score this at the beginning, but let's go over it again, right? If you have 2, if you have like 2 or 3 of these, that's a mild addictive disorder. If you have 4 or 5, it's a moderate addictive disorder. If you have 6 or more, that's a severe problem. You see, you really only need to have half of these to be qualified as having a severe problem. And that's why I said when I watched that interview with the sexologist and she was saying, well, sex can't be an addiction because you don't have withdrawal. Number one, I'm really not sold on the idea that you don't have any withdrawal. That's a whole— we could probably do a whole video on that one day. But even if that's the case, even if we say, okay, you don't have withdrawal, that's really just one. Of the 11 criteria, and you don't need all 11 of them to have an addiction. So hopefully this helps you frame in your mind a little bit better, bad habit versus addiction. But the thing I want you to understand, this isn't about labeling someone. This isn't about calling your loved one an addict or telling your kid that they're broken. It's about understanding what's actually happening in your brain so you can respond to it correctly. Because the thing is, when you treat a bad habit like it's an addiction, you make it worse. Let's say you have a bad habit, but it really isn't an addiction, but you're telling yourself it's an addiction. It makes you feel like you can't solve the problem. When you have an addiction, but you're minimizing it and you won't admit that it's addiction, you're calling it a bad habit or something like that, then you're making it worse because you're not recognizing it or dealing with it. So it is Important to kind of figure out exactly what am I dealing with, right? Because that's going to determine what do you need to do about it. You don't want to come in too hard on these things because it's just going to create shame and defensiveness, and it's going to push you into addictive behavior more or possibly your loved one. But if you underestimate it and you think a conversation or a willpower should fix it, and then it doesn't, you get more frustrated. And feel even more shame, and that just continues the cycle. So knowing the difference changes everything about how you respond to the problem. Having a correct label can be helpful in a lot of ways. Now, what does this mean for families? If you're watching this because someone you love is struggling, whether it's drinking, gaming, their phone, whatever it is, I want you to hear this, right? I want you to understand the reason that your conversations haven't worked is probably not because what you said was wrong. It's probably more because you didn't know what you're actually dealing with, or you don't understand that when you confront it that way, you're really just causing someone to defend their actions, which actually keeps people stuck in denial even more. Speaking of that, We have every month or two, we have something called the Denial Breakthrough Challenge. So if you feel like your loved one has an addiction, but they're sort of still functioning and you can't get them to see it's a problem, the Denial Breakthrough Challenge is definitely for you because we talk about how do you address these issues? What do you say and what do you not say to get someone to see that it's a problem? Which I think is particularly important and it's different When someone is still really functional, because someone is, you know, going to work and they're paying their bills, or they're a highly successful athlete or something like that, and you're trying to tell them they have a problem directly, they're just going to look at you like you're crazy. If you have a loved one in that situation and you want to know what to do without starting an argument, getting in a fight, making it worse, then check out our Denial Breakthrough Challenge. I set the dates for the next one. Uh, it depends on when you're watching this, but the next one, if you're watching this, um, in real time, the next one is coming up in June, June 1st through the 4th, I think. If you're watching this at some later date and maybe it's way past that time, that's okay. We have it every so many weeks. Check the description, you'll get the link and it'll tell you when the next one is. And you can, you can get your spot. You can hold your spot for that. All right. That's a lot of information I've given you. Don't forget, you have the link in the description. To the quiz if you want to take the quiz and find out exactly where you're at. That can be really helpful. It's probably hard to remember all the 11 that I just went through, but it'll walk you through the situation and help you think through how many of these do I have? Where am I at on this continuum? All right. We're about to that time where we're going to have some conversations with our people that are watching live. Bree's back there behind the scenes. So hopefully you've popped your questions, your comments, your concerns up in the chat. And let's have some conversations about it. Love to hear what you think, what your experience with these things are. Go ahead and get them up there. And if you're watching on the playback and you have questions, concerns, and you want to be live, we are live every Thursday at 1, and we would love to have you here to join. All right, Bree, what do we got? We got some good questions right there. All right, here's our first one. Um, here we go. Question is, is it possible for me to be addicted to keeping up with my husband's Keeping up with my husband drinking, how much he's drinking, is he hiding it, and how much has he had while he drank today? We say all the time, you've probably heard me say it on this channel if you've been around for a while, you can absolutely be addicted to your loved one's addictions because what happens is you get obsessed with figuring out what the problem is. And if you were listening to those criteria, you could probably Relate to someone, right? You could probably count. Yeah, I got some of those, right? It's get— maybe it's interfering in your relationship, right? It's making them mad, or maybe it's making other people in the family mad. Are you spending a lot of time in it? Are you like literally driving down the road and you're putting yourself at risk because you're stopping and checking the bank account to see if they spent money on alcohol or whatever it is? So is it officially diagnosable? No. But if you ask anyone in the addiction field, is that a thing? I think you're going to hear yes, because I would say, yeah, that's the thing. You can be addicted to that and it can cause you just as much distress and life problems as having a chemical addiction has. So official answer is no. Unofficial answer from Amber is for sure, yes. And I bet there's some people on here, raise your hand if you feel like that's a yes for you, if you can relate to being addicted to chasing down someone else's addiction. What else we got, Bree? All right. Next question is, is it completely off the table to ask your loved one how things are going in sobriety? I believe the answer is not at all, but can I ask? This is a good question. And I'm glad that you're asking me this question because this can be delicate, right? I think it depends on your relationship with that loved one. And is this a conversation that you can have? Or do you know that if you bring it up, it's going to blow up on you? The other thing is you don't really even need to ask the question, especially if you live with this person. Just like you can look at what's going on with someone and their behaviors and their unmanageability and just all those cues that you probably know how it's going. Because you said, even in this question, you said, I believe the answer is not at all, but can I ask? And one of the kind of guidelines or rules that I have is, or recommendations, I guess it's not a rule, but don't ask a question that you know the answer to, to someone who has an addiction, because you're just going to get lied to and then you're going to get angry. If you really want to bring it up, which I want you to think about whether it's going to be helpful or not, but if you want to bring it up, just say, it seems like fill in the blank. It seems like maybe this is happening or whatever, and make a statement as opposed to a question, because almost immediately People just have a self-protection reflex to lie, and that's just going to make you worse. It's going to make you even more mad when you get lied to. What else we got, Bree? All right, here's one. Any advice for helping my son's dad understand addiction without making it seem like I think my son is innocent? Let me think about that for a second, because usually I get asked this question when there's 2 parents. It's like, Usually the parent that's asking the question is like, I know it's an addiction, but my partner or my ex-partner, they just won't get on board. They're in denial. They think it's not an addiction. But the way you're asking this question makes me think that you feel like it's not an addiction. Any advice for helping my son's dad understand addiction without making it seem like I think my son is innocent? Here's the way I advise when there's other family members involved, which is usually the case, and maybe one person's been doing a lot of studying and understanding about it, but other people in the family are either making it worse by whatever it is that they're doing, and you really want them to understand. What I would do is I would approach it the same way I tell you to approach a person with an addiction that's in denial. I would use those same strategies towards the family member. So you can go back and look at my videos and my advice on recommendations on how do you deal with someone in denial. Because it's the same, right? If it's a family member and they're in denial, maybe they, whichever way that denial is, they think it's a problem, it's not, or whatever that is, you want to approach them in those same denial techniques because these techniques work no matter what the issue is, whether it's substance addiction or the family making it worse or whatever. If you come at them directly, they're going to get defensive and it's not going to go well. The same as if you're dealing with an addict or an alcoholic. What else we got, Bree? All right. Question, can you speak to food addiction? It's hard when you need to eat to live. I totally agree with you here, Kaylin. Some of the addictions, like for example, like phone addiction, sex addiction, food addiction, these are things that we, in our minds, we put it in that addiction category, but the answer is not so simple because when it comes to like substances, Typically we think the answer is just to quit, right? But you can't quit with food. Now, officially, like I said before, like food addiction isn't in the DSM, as in the clinical manual. There are eating disorders in there, but there's nothing in there like that they're calling food addiction. They have like anorexia, bulimia, those kind of things, but not something called food addiction. But if you can go through those criteria and you feel like, yeah, I'm meeting a lot of those criteria, or my loved one is related to food, then I would in my mind think about it as it can be an addiction. I think particularly sugary foods, I don't think you have the same spiky burst of the good chemicals and then the withdrawal symptoms like you do with sugary food. You don't get that with things like protein foods or even fat foods. You don't crave them the same way. So yeah, I think that that's definitely a real thing. And it is complicated on how you treat that because you need to eat to live. So I don't talk about food addiction on here a lot. I also don't talk about nicotine and some of those because I just don't feel like it's my wheelhouse. But what I would say is I think mostly with food addiction, a lot of it revolves around sugar. And so when it's food addiction, it's about Either staying away from or really managing those carbohydrates and that sugar? Because it's usually not all foods, right? Here's our next question. How difficult is it to get into coaching? My husband has had change talk and mentioned wanting to pursue coaching, but I haven't seen any action and I'm trying to wait patiently and not push. This is a really good question. And you're really thinking about this. In a smart, strategic, insightful way, right? And I can tell you know something about what you're talking about because you're using words here like change talk, right? I know you know, you either learned from this channel or somewhere else and you're on it here. When your person mentions it, when you're having that sort of moment of clarity or that change talk is out, that's a really good moment for you to, hey, hey, do you think this would help? Or what kind of coach do you think would help? Or you can say, oh, I heard about this coaching program over here. I'll send you some information if you want. So I think it's okay to kind of, or even you can even say, oh, like I know someone that's really good. If you want, I'll call and find out if they have appointment. You can even help with the setting it up as long as you're asking if that would be helpful to them. And then they're like, yeah, that's okay. Then go ahead and like put some of those things in place. It's kind of like that little window of change, that change talk. It opens and it doesn't stay very long, right? Like it can stay from a few hours to maybe like a few days and you need to, the person needs to take action in that window if they really want to solve this problem. So you can help with that, but just be not overly pushy about it, which I know that you already know, but it's okay to say, hey, let me send you some information on this coach or this video from this coach or something like that. Tell me, let me know what you think. If you like them, this might push into action a little bit further than just saying, yeah, I know I need to do that, or that would be helpful. It kind of moves the Fall a little bit further down the field. Next question is, when is it appropriate to push your addicted, your alcoholic partner or loved one to take Antabuse? All his docs recommend it, but he's scared. I think all the other meds have failed. Okay. So a lot of you watching this, you may not know what Antabuse is. Not a doctor. I cannot make recommendations on medicines, but I can tell you guys what Antabuse is. I've had a lot of clients on Antabuse. And it's a medicine that you can't drink on. It's basically a chemical that doesn't interact with alcohol well. And if you take this medicine and you drink on it, it'll make you sick, right? So people take Antabuse as a prevention methodology. So it's like they know if they're taking the medicine, they're not going to drink on it. Now, people can decide that they want to drink and stop taking the medicine and come off of it, you know, like so many days or whatever, and then decide to drink. But that's what I call, I call that a premeditated relapse. But it's really great for helping with the impulsive relapse. Just like if you're just having a bad day or you just have an opportunity or whatever in that moment and you know you're taking the medicine, you're not likely to drink on it because it's unpleasant. It's like food poisoning. So that's what it is for those of you who don't know. When is it appropriate to push? It's only really appropriate to pushing, and even then really gently when that window is open and they're talking about it. And I would do that in the same way. The advice I'll give you on that would be the same advice as I just gave the other person with the coaching question. How you handle that is really difficult. And if they have concerns, it's important to listen to their concerns and take it seriously and say, yeah, you could be right. Let's figure out what this is. We don't want to jump into something. And then maybe collect some information if they're open to seeing it and send it to them if they're open to it. But it could be they're just saying, I don't want to take this medicine. I'm scared of a side effect when they really just don't want to take it because they want to keep drinking. It's kind of hard to know because some people, they really are like, I don't know about that. What if I accidentally eat a salad dressing that has alcohol in it or something like that and I have a bad reaction? I've not really seen that happen. I can tell you that the clients I've had that take interviews. Like I said, I can't tell you what medicine to take or not take. I can tell you that clients I've had, like occasionally you might, I don't know, I don't know, get something in your system that has a little alcohol, mouthwash, I don't know, tequila lime chicken wings or something, I don't know. And, um, but you're not really gonna get yourself super sick on just that because you get what I've been told is you get like a warning. Like if you get something that has alcohol in it, it's going to taste really funny. You start to feel hot, your face gets kind of red, you get flushed. It's almost like warning out. Whatever this is, don't do it. That's what I've been told. I haven't had anyone use a shampoo with some something in it and have any kind of crazy reaction. But people do worry about that, especially if your person tends to be anxious and they tend to worry about things like that in general. That could be totally legit. Sometimes they just need to talk that through with people. Next question: My 33-year-old son is addicted to alcohol and cocaine. He never has enough to pay his rent. His rent is eating into my retirement, but if I don't pay, he will be on the street. Should I pay or not? This is a good question. And we run into this all the time with people with addicted loved ones, particularly parents of young adults who have addicted children, sons and daughters, right? The thing of it is, is like, I'm never going to tell someone to put their kid out on the street, but I'm just listening to you and you're telling me this is eating into my retirement, which sounds like I can't just keep doing this forever and ever. And it's probably causing you to have a lot of resentment, right? Because you're dealing with their responsibilities, you know, helping someone occasionally, you know, that's your kid. Of course you're going to do that. But when it's a constant problem, it's going to ruin your relationship with them. You're going to be resentful. And the worst part about it is not that you're going to be resentful with him, but he's going to be resentful with you and you're going to end up in the bad guy role, even though you're the one paying the freaking rent. That's the worst part about it. It's like, how am I the bad guy? And they're mad at me and I'm the one paying it. Right. But that's the thing that happens almost always in every situation. So I think at some point you're going to come to the line where you're just like, this just isn't feasible for me. Even if you could afford it. And I say this all the time to people, like, I don't care if you're a bazillionaire, at some point you're going to feel resentful about doing that. And sometimes it's about money because you just can't afford it. And sometimes it's not about money, but either which way, when you have a conversation with someone about it and you've decided to either stop doing it or only do so much or whatever it is, um, I would advise you not to say, I can't afford it. Uh, and the reason I do that is because like, let's say you go on vacation next month or you buy a purse or you pay a lot for a haircut, then your person's going to be like, I thought you couldn't afford it. And they're going to be confronting you about spending your own money. And that's not what it's about. It's about, I don't think that I'm responsible for that. Or I feel like it's enabling you. You don't have to say those things. I'm just encouraging you not to say necessarily, I can't afford it. The issue, if you do need to draw that boundary, is just to say, hey, I'm not comfortable with it. Or I'm willing to do this much, but not this much or whatever to set that boundary. But You keep paying it and paying it and the problem isn't getting better. So eventually you're going to run into needing to set a boundary. I think if you really want some help on this, Campbell is the perfect one to help you with this. She's really good at these situations, this whole tapering my adult child off of the financial support. She's really good at it. So if you haven't ever talked to Campbell, I would suggest that you do. You can Figure out how to get like a consult with Campbell from our website, which is familyrecoveryacademy.online. I'll put that in the description for you. All right, everybody, that's all the time we have for today. You guys ask excellent questions. Thank you for everyone who showed up live, and we appreciate those of you showed up here for the playback as well. And maybe we'll see you next time on the live videos every Thursday at 1. There are resources for you in the description, and we release videos every Tuesday morning. I'll see you guys soon. Bye, everybody.