Breaking the Cycle of Addiction and Codependency

I know that no matter how I say this people who want to take it the wrong way are going to take it the wrong way so I'm just going to say it without filter and I hope that I'm not socially punished for being too blunt and honest all can you pull up our next caller Lee hello hi there uh first thank you for taking my call yeah um and thank you for the good work you do this is my first time calling in um to a show um uh and some of your short videos you put on have given me great comfort um so I just wanted to call in just to discuss the situation that I'm dealing with at the moment that's very heavy yeah with me um um do you want me to go through it yeah I mean yeah quickly yeah tell us the gist of the situation the gist of it is I've got a family member who lives with me who's um in deep depression um and who's drinking very heavily and who's rejecting all support and who's in a very dark place and I'm trying to figure out a way of of reaching them on some of your clips about addiction and and alcohol being the solution and the problem being something deeper about the S and the ego really resonated with me um but he's in a very dark place and I'm trying to bring the family in and I was just I was just going to seek some guidance on on how to approach you know somebody that's like a rock somebody that's shut themselves in in a way just to kind of yeah I it's a very difficult place to be absolutely okay let me speak to that and if you're still with us you could stay on the line uh and I might bring up your uh volume in a minute but let me just speak to this so first of all thank you for your vulnerability I I I'm just amazed Always by the The Bravery and the vulnerability of the callers on this show we have such high quality callers you can hear the people who are calling in these are intelligent thoughtful people it takes a lot to to share like this in this type of environment so let's let's speak about this first of all standard disclaimers apply I'm not an addiction counselor I'm not a therapist I'm not a clinician of any type I do not have any type of credentials or degree I'm a rabbi okay I'm just a Rabbi happen to be a rabbi who has hung around addiction uh and I know a little bit about it but really really really I'm not an expert I'm not an expert I'm not an expert I'm not an expert I'm not an expert do not rely on anything I say okay I'm putting it out there just as food for thought but really don't don't rely on me this is just food for thought one of the most frustrating situations in the world is loving someone who is in the throws of addiction because it is so hard if not impossible to reach them it's almost like until the addiction is ready to loosen its grip this person is just not going to be able to hear you and we try everything we try bargaining and we try threats and we try more love and we try more toughness and we try uh calling in the experts and we call in the law and we try throwing money at it and we try everything everything and I'm not saying that nothing works but what I will say is I'm not sure anything works until this Magic Window opens up and I don't think we have a button that we can push that makes that magic window open up I think there's a moment and it's not once in a lifetime I think there are many times that it happens where the addict hits bottom and they are reasonable for a moment sometimes for a very fleeting moment but when that window's not open it's almost like there's nothing you can say or do so here's what I often tell people who call me with a similar call as yours and I've probably had this experience hundreds of times where someone will call up it's interesting by the way you say that you're your uh loved one one I'm not sure if you mentioned the relationship it doesn't matter uh is is in is is drinking so I I don't know this is purely anecdotal this is just my personal experience but in the hundreds of phone calls that I've had about specifically about alcohol about drinking I would say 95% were from friends and family like it's almost like maybe a few times somebody called me up and said I'm drinking too much I'm worried about it yeah interesting I've had a lot of people call me up and say they were sex addicts that I get a lot that it's almost like 5050 the addict or the addict spouse regarding uh sex addiction but with alcohol alcohol is like 95% if not more friends and family calling me with the problem and maybe 5% of the time if not less the person self-identifying as the alcoholic so what does that tell me again this is purely anecdotal but it tells me that there's a lot of self-deception and it reinforces what I was saying before that that window of honesty and willingness and openness is usually closed it's usually closed so then what do I tell people who call me with with this type of call well you know one thing I could do I want to be careful how I say this um I want to be careful how I say it and yet I know that no matter how I say this people who want to take it the wrong way are going to take it the wrong way so I'm just going to say it without filter and I hope that I'm not socially punished for being too blunt and honest if I wanted to well if I had no conscience and no Scruples and I wanted to cash in on people's desperation what I would do is tell people give me $10,000 $20,000 I make a name a price it wouldn't matter you know people mortgage their houses for this stuff I could say give me $50,000 and I'll come down and I'll talk to your loved one um now why don't I do that because like I just said I don't believe that at least I don't think I can say anything to someone who's not ready I don't think I can say anything to someone who's not ready so but but people are so desperate they're going to pay anything on that hope on that lottery ticket on that lottery ticket that maybe the the alcoholic will will will hear them um so let me tell you what you can do without spending 10 $110,000 you can do this for free um any self-respecting Oldtimer in AA will pay a 12 step call and they'll come down and they will not try to get the alcoholic to stop drinking they will just talk about their own drinking and they'll leave and if the alcoholic wants to pursue that as a solution they will and if they still need to continue suffering before they're ready to pursue the solution then that's what's going to happen but probably the most effective um I if you want to pursue this course of action the most effective conversation that you could facilitate would be to get an old time in AA to come down and I'm telling you right now they're not going to force this person to go into treatment they're not going to schlep them even to an a AA meeting they're just going to come down and talk about their own story and allow your loved one to identify or not identify to relate or not relate with what they just heard all right but then let's say they don't relate to it let's say they just decide well that's not me you don't understand my story is different which is the typical answer you know you don't understand my story is different so now what are you going to do now what are you going to do when I've had this conversation and as I said I've had this conversation hundreds of times what I will often say to friends and family of an alcoholic is answer please the following question I'm assuming that your life is on hold right now because you are dealing with absolute Insanity so the following question please answer honestly if there were a way for you to regain your sanity regardless of whether or not your loved one gets well would you be interested in hearing how that might be done that's the question that I ask if you would you be interested in regaining your sanity regardless of whether or not your loved one gets well now I'm going to ask people out in YouTube land I let's say I've had this conversation 300 times I'm just making up a number but it's probably around that number what percentage of the time do people say yes I'm interested in that tell me how to regain my sanity okay you want to guess all right so I'll tell you less than 10% less than 10% and I'm pointing this out because codependency is an addiction as well in fact in some ways codependency is a more Insidious addiction than addiction itself because the person whose addiction is to drugs and or alcohol it's pretty obvious what they're doing is killing themselves the person who's addicted to saving the addict which we call codependency it's so Insidious because it looks like you're doing something Noble and you can't stop you feel you have a moral obligation to continue with the insanity so less than 10% I would guess anecdotally tell me they're even interested in this concept of regaining their own sanity most will tell me I'm not interested in that not interested no no and if I'll push the issue and be like well why wouldn't you want to regain your sanity I mean the person may or may not get well if I push the issue and times when I've pushed the issue the answer is usually something to the effect of like I don't have a right to be sane while my loved one is suffering or it wouldn't feel right it wouldn't feel appropriate to be Sayan to have serenity to have my life back while my loved one is still suffering so it's kind of amazing what a grip the addiction has not just on the identified patient but on the entire family and just like I said the addict isn't ready to stop until they're ready to stop the codependent is not ready to stop until they're ready to stop and what does it mean the codependent is ready to stop well just like the addict is ready to stop when you're sick of when you're sick and tired of being sick and tired then you stop so when the codependent says I can't do this anymore I've reached the end of my rope I can't do this anymore I still love this person I'm still going to do what I can to be compassionate toward this person but I need to get my life back that's called being sick and tired or being sick and tired then recovery can happen for the codependent and that's what I want to suggest to you I want to suggest to you this is counterintuitive and I know that you may not be able to accept this this is not what you want to hear but what I want to suggest to you is the following the higher priority right now is not your loved ones sobriety but your sobriety your sobriety you're going to say to me my sobriety I'm not the one drinking no but you're emotionally drunk if you are in this orbit of the insanity of addiction then you are also drunk you are drunk on the illusion of Godlike power that we think that we can exercise over our loved one and there are programs such as alanon which is for the friends in family of the alcoholic just like alcoholic synonymous is for the alcoholic so then there's alanon for their friends and family and they follow the exact same 12 steps and they pursue the exact same spiritual solution and what I have found is that when the friends and the family of the alcoholic pursue their own recovery in a parallel program such as alanon and they become sane and they get their life back then it may not make the alcoholic get sober but nothing can make the alcoholic get sober what it does do is it removes a lot of the insanity that you didn't realize was feedback Insanity you know there's that core of insanity and then there's the feedback of insanity bouncing off of itself the Ricochet effect so to speak and when the people in the orbit of the alcoholic become sober emotionally sober through a program such as alanon then at least a lot of that Ricochet effect is going to be minimized and there's not the extra uh debris field so to speak of The Echoes of insane Behavior you sort of just contain the insanity to one place and you're not playing off it anymore you're not exacerbating it you're not amplifying it through your own unhealthy reactions so my suggestion to you would be that you and everyone in the family should go to a program like alanon and have a spiritual awakening and it may or may not help your loved one get sober it definitely will not make it harder for them to get sober if anything it will increase the likelihood of they're getting sober but at the very least it will make the home less of a crazy place right now the home is being held hostage the whole home is under a dark cloud so if you pursue your recovery in a program such as alanon then the home becomes a healthier place and it increases the likelihood or the availability of something positive happening for your loved one although it's certainly not a guaranteed outcome because again we do not control people okay I don't know if you're still with me I'm just going to turn up the volume and see if you're still with me over here but uh lee you're still with me yes yes okay does anything I'm saying thank you for hanging in there with me does anything I'm saying resonate with you as possibly being true or applicable uh a lot of it is true particularly the feedback bit um and um I not thought about the codependency element of it like that I hope my call isn't too bad hopefully the quality is better no it's fine it's the static that's why I muted it before it's fine but I just want to check in with you that you understood my message and what I'm suggesting to you is the the the wisest course of action in my estimation right now at this point you get you get what I'm saying no no absolutely I get what you're saying and both points I've made the not to that which is you know get the Oldtimer from AA to come in which is useful and get a program for the family for myself um and my wider family to have our own yeah yes you got it you heard me loud and clear okay so God willing there should be healing in your family and your loved one should uh should find healing but you know at the end of the day we're not in control we can only do what we can do and God is in control okay that was really I really thank you for that call that was perfect thank you thank you uff thank you thank you that was really important stuff okay I have other calls coming in one second one second yeah hi are you calling in right now okay try again on that number that I gave you oh actually wait can you call me back in like f no one second no no on that other number that 516 number wait can you call me in 15 minutes is that okay okay um one second Michael welcome Michael's on the show Rabbi how are you bem thank God how are you doing I'm doing very well glad to hear it hi Melissa welcome hello hi there hi thanks for having me on tonight it's our pleasure welcome to the show thank you Rabbi great to be here hey there how you doing uh doing well long time listener for some caller thanks for taking me hello hey there you're on the Ed we'd like to extend a special thank you to mendle Simon and 9x9 tech for powering this call-in show and making it possible for us to connect with our amazing audience 9x9 Tech offers a One-Stop service for all your communication needs along with personalized Tech Solutions catered specifically towards your business visit 9 by9 tech.com today that's 9x9 tech.com thank you mandal and the team for your incredible support hey this is shase tab you were just watching a clip from this class if you want to get the full context the full class that this clip that you just watched was from you watch right here click right here here