What in the world do you do when you have more than one
addicted person in the household? Unfortunately it's not that uncommon
for those of you who are new here welcome to put the shovel down I'm Amber Hollingsworth and this
YouTube channel is all about helping you understand the science
and psychology of addiction so you can get your life
or your family back on track get back out there and live the life that you want to live
as always we try to look at addiction from every angle and today we're actually going to
be answering a viewer letter about a situation where there's more than one person having an
addiction issue in the house so first we're gonna take a look at the letter and then I'll give my
response feedback maybe even a little advice about the situation
so if you see me looking over here it's cuz I'm reading the letter so you can read along
with me if you want "My husband is currently in rehab for alcoholism for the second time
he was in law enforcement for 15 years and had a very public DUI several years ago
he went to rehab for the first time and stayed sober for over two years
he's been a binge closet drinker he would hide it from me in the last two years
he will fall into a depression and drink and leave for days at a time
to the woods with no communication on December 30th he left for five
days when he came back he asked me for help and decided he should go to rehab
he's now been there for a week he sounds good and I'm hoping he is gaining what he
needs to help himself get through this for our relationship it's obvious we do not have any trust
he is a good man a hard worker loving when he doesn't drink
the person we all want him to be again he's a binge drinker and does it by himself
I love him so very much because I know what a good heart he has and he is my best friend
I'm also afraid of getting hurt again but I also want to have faith that he's going to
do this and we can move on with our lives together and I'm scared to death of going
through another binge and him drinking and driving or going out to the woods
and never coming back again I honestly don't know where to put myself which leads me to my son
my son is currently 16 when COVID hit he stopped doing sports
and school and started hanging out with some of the kids that did a lot of drugs
he was sneaking out lying stealing and violent towards us
there was a suicide attempt as well last March I sent him to wilderness therapy for
three months to clean his system out and to help him process his own behavior
his father went on a binge for eight days the week after our son left
when our son came back he was doing fantastic getting school caught back up playing football
and being great at communicating about what he was doing and where he was going
we were going to therapy and working very hard to maintain our communication
we saw a light in him we hadn't seen
about three months ago football ended and he started hanging out with the kids that
I don't know very well and started smoking weed he refused to go to therapy because he didn't need it
and he doesn't have a problem we have a problem
he has now changed his path and stopped trying at school he's also constantly
just leaving and not coming home except for short burst of time he's also smoking weed
all of the time he's very angry with me all of the time I've set my boundaries with him
I know he's going to smoke I don't approve
we have advised that we will no longer help him with getting a driver's license
due to the liability he is barely passing his classes due to always ditching
and also for a lack of effort as he doesn't need it he's also just mean he hasn't become violent
he just leaves and doesn't come back and there's usually an "F you" on the way out the door
I do want to do therapy with him or for him to have therapy on his own but he refuses
I know there's likely a correlation between my husband and my son
I want to be honest with my husband if he is sober I want to have my kind good natured son back
I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to do I love them both very much we also have
daughter in college so she doesn't have to be around this most of the time and she's going
down her own path she's pretty easy going and hasn't had any of these behaviors she
also surrounds herself with positivity and I keep her from being around or dealing with any of this
with all that being said it would be great if you could lead me to videos
classes that might help me in the long run how to process my own
thoughts and reactions that would be great fYI I do go to my own therapist
do Al-Anon and religiously have been watching your videos for the last month since I came across them
thank you for taking the time to read this" All right so as you can see this viewer has
a pretty complicated situation not only is her husband struggling with an alcohol
problem but her son is clearly struggling with an addiction as well now as you might imagine
having more than one addicted person living in the house can make things a bit complicated
so let's sort through this and take it piece by piece because one of the main things that
I'm gonna recommend to this viewer is to try hard to separate the two situations
and make strategic choices about those situations separately I can see where it
would be really easy to get overwhelmed dealing with both of these situations at the same time
so since you started by writing about your husband let's take a look at that situation first
one of the really positive things that caught my attention about this scenario is the fact that
he's previously been to rehab and got two years sober I like to say once you've had recovery you
can't unknow it you can try to shove it way down and forget it and pretend it doesn't apply to you
but once you know the truth you can't unknow the truth probably what happened
somewhere in that two year period your husband maybe started thinking oh I might can have a
drink every now and then or you know I'm not gonna let it get outta control like it did before
even though I'm sure he was taught in rehab that it won't work that way
almost everyone or I might say everyone that I've ever treated in the past eventually has this
thought process that this time will be different and I'm guessing that had something to do with
where the relapsing started from now you mentioned in what you wrote that
your husband has these periods of depression and then we'll go
off for days at a time and drink in the woods with no communication which I'm sure is scary
and maddening at the same time but I'm kind of wondering you know What comes first?
Is it the depression? And then the drinking? Is it the drinking? And
then depression you're saying that he's a binge drinker I'm also wondering how long
in between the binges a lot of the people that we see in our office really don't drink every day
but once they start they have a hard time stopping
and this is another thing that can contribute to someone being
in denial about having alcoholism because they think I don't drink every day
you know I don't need to drink in the morning I don't have the shakes if I don't drink
what a lot of people don't realize is that this is actually just a stage of alcoholism
in fact it's stage three which is kind of hallmarked by binge drinking and difficulty
stopping once you start and it and all kinds of problems in your life
which I think we could all agree definitely this situation meets that criteria now the
other really really positive thing is is that your husband is decided again that he
needs to get this under control and has become willing to take the steps necessary to do it
the fact that he's taking himself back to rehab is a really good sign and I know it sucks but
unfortunately it is the case in most situations that people sort of like go
to rehab or they go to counseling they learn all the stuff but they think it's gonna be
different or it doesn't apply to them or somehow their situation is special unique
and most of them kind of like your husband end up having to go out there and sort of
prove that yes the universal laws of addiction apply to them as well
hopefully that's what's happening in the case with your husband now moving on to
your son? I think that one is gonna be a bit more complicated mostly because of his age
because his brain is still developing and he doesn't have the emotional maturity
he's likely to be even less insightful about the situation although I will say
he has a very similar positive as I said before about your husband he has been to treatment and
you've seen what he's like when he's not using he's a whole different person what stands out
to me about your son is how dramatically his personality changes how his priorities change
and honestly that's what lets me know that this probably likely is addiction and not
just a phase of life obviously I've never talked to your son or your husband so I can't really
make these diagnosis but what I'm doing is of speculating based on what you're saying the fact
that he started smoking weed again and then his whole life fell apart is not just teenager stuff
now what you didn't talk about in the letter that you wrote is the dynamics between
your husband and your son and honestly that's probably the part I would be
most interested in hearing do they blame each other for the relapsing? Do they use each other's
addiction issues as a way to rationalize or justify their own behavior?
I don't know if this is going on in your house but I have to say that
in situations where there's more than one person in a house with an addiction
it's commonly the case now while your husband is clearly in an active stage of change your
son probably the precontemplation stage yes what he learned from rehab is still in there
but at this point based on what you're writing it's shoved way down there
and and this point he's trying to ignore it when you're dealing with
someone who's back in denial like that you have to kind of change your strategy
with dealing with them I know it's really hard because not that long ago they were
like a different person and they were saying different things and
and now everything they're doing is against what they said and what they believed not that long ago
so it's hard to have that switch with them now the best at least most proven effective
way to get someone out of denial is to use the craft method that's C R A F T and we talk about
that and teach that actually in our invisible intervention course which I will leave a link
to in the description below but that's all about how to get someone out of denial or into recovery
and I think additionally it can be useful even in your husband's situation where maybe he's moving
out of denial and into action steps because it's all about using positive reinforcement and how to
support someone through the change process so in your situation the thing I would recommend
is looking into the craft method approach because you can use it in both cases
now I know that your big question at the end was how do I process my own feelings but it
does sound like you have some really good outlets for that you have a therapist and you're going to
and you're watching my video so you're really using the tools at your disposal so hopefully
all this helps you get a little perspective and maybe even a little strategy on the situation
thank you so very much for taking the time to write in and for allowing all of us to learn
from your situation I'll put those links that we talked about in the description
below and up next I'm going to connect you to this video about the craft method