You Caught Them Drinking… Now What?

So your loved one's telling you they're sober and everything seems to be going good for the last several weeks, but all of a sudden you're taking out the trash and you find an empty bottle. Or maybe you're cleaning out the dirty laundry from the closet and underneath a pile of stinky socks, you find evidence that tells you something's going on. Naturally, you're going to have a lot of feelings about this. You're going to be hurt. You're going to be angry. You're going to be scared that everything's going to spiral back into exactly the way it was before. And all of these emotions are completely normal and valid, but deciding what to do with this information is a little tricky. It's a delicate situation for sure. So in this video, I'm going to walk you through exactly how to handle the situation without making things worse for them or you. For those of you who are new here, my name is Amber Hollingsworth. I've been helping people and their families overcome addiction for more than 20 years now, and this YouTube channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction from multiple perspectives, from the perspective of a person who maybe has the problem and from the family, because our goal is to help you get your life and your family back on track before you lose everything. If you're new here, let us know that in the comments below so we can say hi and welcome. And if you're not new here, you're coming back for more wisdom, hit the like button or leave me a little wave emoji so I can say hi to you too. So, okay, here we are. You find evidence. Maybe it's an empty bottle, maybe it's paraphernalia. Maybe it's a receipt or even something else. Of course, you're going to be furious, not just because they've had a relapse, but also because you're being lied to. And probably being lied to is the most frustrating part of all. You're not overreacting. This is a big deal. But before you confront them, take a deep breath because this situation can backfire on you in a hurry. You might have the instinct to leave the evidence on the kitchen table so that they know that you know. But that can be a little passive-aggressive. And what do you do if they just ignore it and pretend like they didn't see it? Now, what are you going to do? You still have to confront the issue. Maybe you want to grab it up, throw it in their face and say, what the heck is this? Or you want to take a picture of it and send them a text and say that. Or maybe you're having the instinct to do the whole, let me set a trap for you and say something like, is there anything you want to tell me? But none of those ways are the best way to confront this issue. All of those things are likely to trigger more lying, more defensiveness. Which is just going to upset you that much more. So take a deep breath and let's think through together how to handle this. The first thing you want to do is you want to think in your mind, am I sure that this means that they have relapsed? Honestly, chances are it probably does, but when you confront them with it, there's a strong likelihood that they could have an excuse or a reason for it. Maybe it's true or maybe it's just an excuse, but they're definitely going to have some excuse to throw at you. Usually that excuse is, that's old. I found it in my truck and I was just getting rid of it. Or, I found this, I had some leftover in the garage and I didn't want to tempt myself, so I poured it out and got rid of it. I thought you'd be proud of me. And then when they say that, your mind's going to start racing and you're going to think, well, maybe they're telling the truth and am I just being a big jerk? And why is it that I always jump to a negative conclusion? You're going to start the whole second-guessing thing. So if you're not 100% sure, you may want to hold off on it. But either way, you want to be real strategic about how you enter this conversation. And warning here, as much as you may want to, Try hard not to go full detective CSI mode. I know that you're used to that. It's going to be really easy to want to dig through everything and look for more evidence to try to figure out, does this really mean they're using? But if you do that, it's going to be like, now you're in a relapse. Now you've gone back to doing all the things that you used to do, which is going to put you back in that same old emotional state, which is very likely to get that same old emotional reaction out of them. And remember, but we're not doing that anymore. We're staying 5 steps ahead of it. That's what we do on this channel, we're thinking about not just what am I going to do to deal with this crisis today, but how do I get ahead of the one tomorrow and the one 3 weeks from now? And finding more evidence really is going to be helpful. There are a few situations where I would encourage a family member to not say anything, but there are other situations where I think it's really important to bring it up. So let's pull apart the pieces there a little bit. When I might encourage you to not say anything is when you're pretty sure they're in a lapse or relapse and you know that they're still in a bargaining state. If you haven't heard me talk about that, check out my on stages of change, but they're still in this, like, I don't really think I have a problem and I think I can do it a little bit, this or that. If you think that they're still in that state and you find one little piece of evidence, one thing you could do is just not do anything. You could let that situation unfold because when someone's in a bargaining state of mind, the best thing you can do is let them figure out that that bargain doesn't work and the faster the better. And so you don't really want to do anything to try to put the brakes on that. I know that sounds really counterintuitive, but it's always about how do I get this person to get to the next state of mind that I need him to be in? That's what I mean by 5 steps ahead. You're not dealing with this crisis. You're thinking down the road, how do I get them where I want them to be? How do I get them to really understand that they have a problem and they're going to have to quit completely? Helping them slow down isn't going to get us there. This is a situation our family coach Campbell, she calls this game on as in game on. Let's see what happens next. Now, if you're in a situation where your loved one knows that they have a Like they really are trying to do the recovery thing. They're not just trying to figure out if they can drink less or stop to make you happy or something like that. They're really trying here. Then you probably do want to bring this to the surface because in the world of addiction, secrets keep you sick and it may be really hard for them to get the brakes on it when no one knows. So that's the kind of situation where you do want to bring it up. Again, we're going to be careful about how we bring it up, but we need to address it. And the way I want you to do that is to come at it with a really calm tone of voice with some humility and want you to just say clearly and transparently, hey, I found this. Maybe it's nothing. It could be old. I know I might be overreacting, but I just wanted you to know I found it because I know we're trying to be honest with each other. Is this something I should be worried about? They may or may not tell you the truth at this point, but even if they don't tell you the whole truth right here, knowing that you know is going to get their attention and it might just be enough to get them to get the issue under control, especially if it's just a little lapse. Lapse is slightly different than relapse. A lapse is like a quick, brief period or going back to your old behaviors, but getting it back under control really quickly. It's like you mess up, you shut the door on it, you get right back on track. That's a lapse. A relapse is you open the door to it and now things are getting right back where they used to be. It's been ongoing for a while. You can see their mindset shifting. All the old behaviors are back. That's a full-on relapse. So if this is early in that process, it might help to contain the situation to just a little lapse, but you do need to bring it to the surface. And if you know your loved one, they tend to be kind of people pleasing and you don't think they're going to tell you the truth when you say this, hey, I found this, maybe it's nothing. Is there something I should worry about? And then they tell you, no, it's old or whatever, but you really don't believe them. You can say, okay, I trust you. But if it is something going on and you just don't want to tell me, I hope that you'll talk about it with your sponsor, with your coach. Encourage them to talk about it somewhere else. Believe it or not, sometimes people will come back after the fact and say, you know what? I lied. This was really what happened because their initial instinct is to lie. And when they think about it, they think to themselves, what? I really am trying to do better. Sometimes they'll come back and tell you the truth. If they do that, please be real chill. Don't freak out and say, you lied to me again. Say, you know what? I know it's hard to be honest about these things. I appreciate you coming to tell me. It takes a lot of guts. That's what I want you to say. Despite the fact that you may be feeling doubly mad because it's now, it's like double lies here. Because if you get doubly mad, you're just going to promote more lying. And that's not what we're trying to get here. We're trying to get some honesty because that's the only way to get sobriety. Now, you might be worrying if you bring it up or you call them out on it, that you're going to push them away. And of course, that's a valid concern. A lot of people get kind of defensive about these topics even when they know they're in the wrong. But if you handle yourself with kindness and empathy and a good tone of voice, they may get initially defensive, but they're going to get over it and they're going to realize that they messed up. Even if it is a case that they found an old bottle somewhere and they threw it out and they really didn't drink, the fact that they were dishonest with you about it is something that they're going to know they probably should have told you. They just avoided telling you because they didn't want to deal with an uncomfortable conversation. And what you're trying to train them on is we can talk about this and it not end up in a big fight. We're on the same team here. It's not, I'm the probation officer and you're the parolee and I'm trying to catch you. That's not the deal here. We're conquering this problem together. So your interactions need to reinforce that as best possible. Of course, sometimes you have to set some solid limits, especially when it comes to safety and that kind of thing. And if you're worried that's an issue, watch this video because it addresses that. Some people though are just easily defensive no matter how you approach it, no matter how you say it. And it's because they feel so shameful and guilty about it. As long as you know you If you've handled yourself well, then you have done what we call keep your side of the street. If you've kept your side of the street clean, you can feel good about it no matter what, because the purpose of surfacing the information isn't to say, haha, I caught you. It's to bring it into the light to hopefully help them to damage control it and get control of it. It is a helpful measure, not a, I'm right and you're wrong and I caught you and you're the bad one and all that kind of stuff. Remember, we're getting out of that cycle. If you're trying to help an addicted loved one, that's not going to get you anywhere. Now, if you're feeling trapped in this cycle of they do good and they do bad, I find it, we get in a fight, round and round, and you can't seem to get out of it, that's exactly what we do here. We help families with that issue and we try to help the whole system. We look at it from both sides and try to bring everybody onto the same page. To learn more how to do that, I want you to watch this video next. I'll put the link right up here for you.