12 Step Family

Welcome to the 12 Keys series of blog posts which will, month by month, explain the 12 Keys of Sanity and give you detailed ideas and activities to help you bring them alive in your life. This post is the fifth in a month-long series on Key Four. This Key is known as the Four C’s: “You Didn’t Cause It, You Can’t Control It, You Can’t Cure It. BUT, You DON’T Have to Contribute To It.”

The ability to Be A Loving Mirror (BALM) takes motivation and understanding. Last month we learned about the three relationships (that with God, self, and others) and how to develop them to help you regain your peace and sanity. Next, There are four cornerstones to help you build the understanding you need to move forward through the four foundations to the goal of Being A Loving Mirror. The first cornerstone is the Four C’s. Learn the 4 C’s well. They will play a KEY role in allowing you to experience the sanity of family recovery. This post, Beginning to Understand Addiction and Co-addiction is part five of a serialization of my chapter on the 4 C’s in my upcoming book Chaos to Sanity: Transform Your Life with the 12 Keys to Sanity.

Understanding Addiction

Addiction
As explained in previous posts, and as newly understood by the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), addiction is a brain disorder, not a moral or behavioral problem.

It is biological in that compulsive use of a substance or compulsive repetition of an addictive behavior often changes the way the brain responds to stimuli. It is often environmental in that you can find families where addiction of one sort or another has been present for generations.

And in many cases, it has shown to be genetic, in that when separated twins have been studied where alcoholism, for instance, was present in the family of origin, often both twins are afflicted, regardless of the alcoholic predisposition of their adopted family. The Alcoholics Anonymous textbook quotes their founding physician Dr. Silkworth who called alcoholism “an obsession of the mind and an allergy of the body” In other words, for whatever reason, alcoholics have become unable to metabolize the alcohol and yet cannot stop seeking it out and drinking it. Sadly, over time this compulsive use of the substance destroys the body and the mind of the addict. The AA text also refers to the alcoholic as being “like a hurricane” running through the lives of the people around him or her – as any co-addict knows from their own experience to be true.

Co-Addiction

Co-addiction shares many of the traits of the addiction itself. It shows up in brain studies as a behavior that changes how the brain reacts to stimuli. In other words, the codependent behavior itself becomes an addiction that the brain rewards and its absence creates a longing and seeming withdrawal in the reward pathways of the brain that can make the co-addict feel particularly anxious unless behaving co-dependently.

It is often environmental in that parents married to or who are children of addicts model codependent behaviors that their children pick up on and pass down through the generations.

There has not been a genetic link found to codependent behavior…yet.

Co-addiction, too, is an obsession of the mind and over time becomes as difficult to stop as any addiction as it has become the way the co-addict thinks about and relates to the addict. And, ultimately, because codependent thoughts chain us to a need to fix others, co-addictive behavior is harmful both to the addict and the co-addict him or herself.

Of course this brief introduction is just that, brief and an introduction to addiction and co-addiction. But it is only meant to help you further understand why the 4 C’s are so important for you to understand. In our next post, we will talk about recovery for the addict and the family member. See you then!

This Wednesday evening, September 21, 2011, from 8:30 to 9:30 PM, I will be leading a discussion on the Four C’s on my free monthly Loving Mirror Teleseminar. Please click here to participate in what promises to be a lively, informative discussion. Bring your questions and let’s look at this important Cornerstone of Family Recovery: The Four C’s. Would love to ‘see’ you there!

–
Beverly A. Buncher, MA, PCC, CTPC

ICF Professional Certified Coach

Recovery – True Purpose – Career – Life

www.beverlybuncher.com
www.12stepfamily.com
786 859 4050

“Imagine a world where every addict has the opportunity and support needed to build a sober lifetime one moment at a time, and every family has the benefit of a coach to help them blaze the trail to sobriety in their home. Imagine a world without relapse.”
Join an ongoing coaching group and practice your Loving Mirror skills. Go to www.beverlybuncher.com/lovingmirror/ to register today!

Author of the forthcoming book Chaos to Sanity: Transform Your Life with the 12 Keys to Sanity

If there is a using addict in your life, download my free e-book on how to transform the chaos to sanity at www.theempowermentcoach.net and read my blog at www.12stepfamily.com

Enjoy my weekly newsletter Life Purpose in Recovery delivered right to your email and gain access to materials on the 12 Keys to Sanity for Family Members! Sign up here: http://forms.aweber.com/form/11/885999311.htm

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Welcome to the 12 Keys series of blog posts which will, month by month, explain the 12 Keys of Sanity and give you detailed ideas and activities to help you bring them alive in your life. This post is the fourth in a month-long series on Key Four. This Key is known as the Four C’s: “You Didn’t Cause It, You Can’t Control It, You Can’t Cure It. BUT, You DON’T Have to Contribute To It.”

The ability to Be A Loving Mirror (BALM) takes motivation and understanding. Last month we learned about the three relationships (that with God, self, and others) and how to develop them to help you regain your peace and sanity. Next, There are four cornerstones to help you build the understanding you need to move forward through the four foundations to the goal of Being A Loving Mirror. The first cornerstone is the Four C’s. Learn the 4 C’s well. They will play a KEY role in allowing you to experience the sanity of family recovery. This post, BUT YOU DON’T HAVE TO CONTRIBUTE TO IT is part four of a serialization of my chapter on the 4 C’s in my upcoming book Chaos to Sanity: Transform Your Life with the 12 Keys to Sanity.

But You Don’t Have To Contribute To it

By now, perhaps you are feeling a combination of relief and hopelessness. I’ve told you it’s not your fault your addict uses (Whew! What a relief!) But I’ve also told you that you can’t control or cure the using no matter what you do (Oh no! So now what do I do?).

The way you may be feeling right now, is why I’ve never felt the three C’s are enough information to help family members in their recovery. Fortunately for me, when I first got into recovery I learned about the fourth C and it has made ALL the difference in my life and the life of my family. Once we understand that we didn’t cause it, we can’t control it, and we can’t cure it, it is time to look at our own behavior.

When family members first come in contact with a recovery coach , coaching group, treatment center or Alanon meeting, they can often be heard saying, “Why do I need help? I’m not the one with the problem?” My answer in response to that can be found in the 4 C’s, especially the fourth one: You don’t have to contribute to it!

Though we didn’t cause it, can’t control it and cannot cure it, there are things we can do that could either make the situation better or worse and it is our choice as to whether we want to contribute to our addict’s disease process or to their potential recovery.

By the end of this month of posts, you will know exactly what those things are! Meanwhile, as background to understand this, stay tuned to my next post, where we will begin to understand addiction, co-addiction, and recovery for both the addict and the co-addict.

If you are finding yourself unable to wait, click here for the full chapter (in an older edition) and lots of other 12 Keys handouts, recordings, and information.

–
Beverly A. Buncher, MA, PCC, CTPC

ICF Professional Certified Coach

Recovery – True Purpose – Career – Life

www.beverlybuncher.com
www.12stepfamily.com
786 859 4050

“Imagine a world where every addict has the opportunity and support needed to build a sober lifetime one moment at a time, and every family has the benefit of a coach to help them blaze the trail to sobriety in their home. Imagine a world without relapse.”
Join an ongoing coaching group and practice your Loving Mirror skills. Go to www.beverlybuncher.com/lovingmirror/ to register today!

Author of the forthcoming book Chaos to Sanity: Transform Your Life with the 12 Keys to Sanity

If there is a using addict in your life, download my free e-book on how to transform the chaos to sanity at www.theempowermentcoach.net and read my blog at www.12stepfamily.com

Enjoy my weekly newsletter Life Purpose in Recovery delivered right to your email and gain access to materials on the 12 Keys to Sanity for Family Members! Sign up here: http://forms.aweber.com/form/11/885999311.htm

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Welcome to the 12 Keys series of blog posts which will, month by month, explain the 12 Keys of Sanity and give you detailed ideas and activities to help you bring them alive in your life. This post will is the first in a month-long series that will post on Developing Relationships with Others.

Recently I received this post from a reader:

Dear Bev, after being married to an alchoholic for 20 years, I got divorced, I met a wonderful man I was dating for almost 5 years. We only saw each other on the weekends. As we became closer it became clear he is also an alchoholic and partier & to top it off his 2 adult children are drug users. I am devistated. I feel duped and stupid. How did I miss the signs this time? – Feeling betrayed…

Dear Betrayed,

First of all, thank you so much for your note and question. Your willingness to put out there the exact dilemma that so many ex-spouses of alcoholics/addicts face will help many others better understand the seeming insanity of what has happened to you.

Many people who marry an active addict the first time around often find an equally dysfunctional person the second time around (and in some cases the 3rd, 4th, and 5th time as well…).

So, what is that about and what does this have to do with the 3rd Key to Sanity: Developing Loving Relationships with Others?

Everyday of our lives, we are bombarded with images of what the ideal mate looks like, talks like, acts like. We see, on television and in the movies, people with perfect bodies, perfect jobs, perfect smiles, and lots and lots of money and we see what they have as what we really want, but yet, the only place we see life playing out like that is on fictionalized shows and in movies. We may go to church, temple, mosque or synagogue and get a different perspective on what good and perfect mean and begin to develop ideals that compete with those of the media and culture around us.

Then, deep inside of us are the tapes we’ve been playing since our childhood of what we are worth, who we deserve, what we can get in life and what kind of life we will live. If our parents were dysfunctional in anyway and/or if they abused us emotionally or physically, we carry those tapes of being less than. If we were sexually abused by anyone, in our family or outside of our family, we carry those tapes of shame and unworthiness.

When we look for a mate initially, we carry all of these competing views of ourselves and others along for the search. Unless we have developed a very strong relationship with a Higher Power along with a very healthy, sense of self and a relationship with ourselves that consciously and subconsciously knows what is best for us and will accept nothing less than that, chances are, our choices may have been less than ideal. Then, once we have a marriage, we begin to think of ourselves in certain ways and to see our lives in certain ways based on what we experience in relation to our mate. And if that mate is an active alcoholic/addict, we may feel extremely isolated, confused, lonely, and afraid. How did this person who we loved so much turn into such a_________________ (you fill in the blank- monster, meanie,etc.)

So, there we are in a marriage with another person who at first appeared to be very much in sync with who/what we wanted in life, but now, as we look deeper, has lots of issues that we have no idea how to cope with. Being stuck like that, many of us put the dysfunctional coping mechanisms we learned at home into place. We cry, sulk, scream and yell to get them to behave better toward us. When these don’t work, we ignore, get bitter, put our interests and energy elsewhere, and, if we don’t have the means or guts to GET OUT, or if our religious beliefs encourage us to stick it out NO MATTER WHAT, we ENDURE.

Perhaps you can relate to that scenario. Your story may be quite different. If possible, find a piece of it that works for you and stay with me here.

So, after awhile, six months, six years, 12 years, 20 years, 35 years later, you change your mind. You are done enduring and decide to get the heck out of this unendurable marriage and start over. So you do. Maybe your spouse did the unspeakable: cheated on you, and that was your breaking point. Or maybe after the 16th time they cheated on you, you realized this was not going to get better and you left. Or maybe they left you for the other woman/man. Anyway, you get the picture. The marriage is OVER, done, finished.

You are out on your own, finally out from under the thumb of this person who “made you so miserable.”

Now what?

For many who find themselves in this position, it’s lonely! Even though the marriage was lonely, someone was at least THERE. There was a warm body on the other side of the bed or in the next room and not everything about the marriage was bad, etc., etc., …Of course, not everyone is that upset. The freedom can be intoxicating! the chance to meet others and have a good time is grand.

But now what?

All of the above is written to set the scenario for meeting partner #2. After whatever amount of time you have taken to ‘get over’ the last one, you begin to look for your next mate. Perhaps you hardly have to look at all and they find you…or perhaps you spend years looking. Either way, the hunt is on.

Finally, you meet. Certain that this time will be different, you find someone who is not an alcoholic, not an addict, not a…the list goes on. Or so you think. So you get together to live happily ever after. Sometimes the honeymoon lasts weeks, sometimes years. But eventually, it comes out: They may not be an alcoholic, but they may instead take pills or have a sex addiction or a gambling addiction. And there you are again in your own new version of the same Hell you endured the last time around…or maybe something even worse…

What went wrong?

The reason Key 3: Developing Relationships with Other People comes 3rd and not 1st, is that without good strong inner work on ourselves, our relationships with others will often come up short. What I’m saying here is that the relationships we have with others are much more about us than about them! and the kinds of people we choose to have in our lives are also much more about us than about them!

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that life with an alcoholic or addict is easy. I’m not saying that if you aren’t yet married and you find that your partner is deeply troubled (sex addict, drug addict, gambler, alcoholic, etc.) you shouldn’t run as fast and as far as you can.

What I am saying is that when you look at who you are involved with, who your friends are or aren’t (if you don’t have any), or who you choose to end up with as a partner, the most important person in the relationship vis-a-vis these choices can be found right in your own mirror.

So, what does this all mean?

As shared at the beginning of this post, all kinds of outside input from society, school, friends, and parents, contribute to how we see ourselves and what we think we are worthy of in life. When we really want the perfect mate, but on some level feel we aren’t worthy of him or her, the feelings will often win out. Getting our insides congruent with our outsides, our feelings congruent with our desires, is one piece of the puzzle of finding the right person. Jerry and Esther Hicks write about this in all of their books about the Law of Attraction.

Another key to becoming congruent on the level of feeling, is to do the deeper work of healing the sorrow of a less than perfect childhood and unhappy1st marriage. This can be approached through therapy, 12 step work, parts work, voice dialogue, and/or other emotional healing modalities.

Life choices happen on so many levels, many of which are below the surface of our conscious awareness. Once we are in a difficult situation, it can be much more difficult and complicated to get out of it than it was to get into it in the first place.

For those who are not yet involved in a first or second dysfunctional relationship, yet have a history of family dysfunction behind them, the best advice is to do the inner work first. I remember being given that advice and feeling too anxious to get my life moving toward the future, marriage, kids, etc… Maybe you remember that feeling too?

But wherever you are planted, it is never too late to begin the inner work of healing. The 12 Keys of Sanity which culminate in Key 12 “Being a Loving Mirror” provide a series of recovery principles designed to help you see yourself as the person you need to change in your life in order to make your life better! This may be a harsh pill to swallow, but it is true.

For some, these principles alone provide a good foundation. For others, the support of others is crucial…This can come in the form of a recovery coach to help you move in the direction of your dreams while looking honestly at what is going on in your present life that you may want/need to look at in order to get there!
For others, who have experienced severe trauma or distress, the help of a coach can be supplemented by that of a therapist.

Many find help in a group setting. There are Alanon and Naranon meetings all over the country and all over the world. Once you start going, get a sponsor and begin the 12 steps of recovery, where tremendous healing can be found. I work the steps daily and have found tremendous strength and healing in them. But for me and many others, more help was needed.

To add to your recovery by combining the help of a group with that of a coach, feel free to join a Loving Mirror Coaching Group. For 12 weeks, you will gain the insights and professional guidance of a Family Recovery Coach, along with the support of a group of others who have decided to take the lead in their lives in learning how to improve their relationship with themselves and the others in their lives. It’s an inexpensive way to have both a coach and a support group, all in one and the meetings are as close as your phone! A new group starts tomorrow, Wednesday, 8-3-11 at 8 PM ET. To learn more, click here.

So, dear reader, there you are with your boyfriend of five years who turns out to be a drinker, a partier and the parent of 2 adult drug addicts. Only you can decide if you have hit the jackpot in a negative or positive way. Only you can decide if your best bet is to cut your losses and GET OUT or to stick around and play the song again.

If you decide to stay, if you do the INNER work, this time CAN be different. That may mean he will decide to get well due to your example OR it may mean your interests will become so blatantly dissimilar, that one or both of you may leave the relationship.

If you decide to leave, AND are willing to let go of relationships for awhile while you do the INNER work, next time CAN be different!

If you simply keep blaming this whole repeat performance on the OTHERS, chances are, you WILL keep bringing dysfunctional people into your life – to repeat the performance again and again….and only once you realize that the only constant in the play of dysfunctional people in and out of your life is YOU, will you start to decide it is time to begin an inner journey of your own.

By building a relationship with yourself first, your chance at building a great relationship with others will be greatly enhanced.

If I can be of further help to you on your journey, give me a call and we can set up a time to talk further.

All the best,

Coach Bev

Beverly A. Buncher, MA, PCC, CTPC

ICF Professional Certified Coach

Recovery – True Purpose – Career – Life

www.beverlybuncher.com
www.12stepfamily.com
786 859 4050

“Imagine a world where every addict has the opportunity and support needed to build a sober lifetime one moment at a time, and every family has the benefit of a coach to help them blaze the trail to sobriety in their home. Imagine a world without relapse.”
Join an ongoing coaching group and practice your Loving Mirror skills. Go to www.beverlybuncher.com/lovingmirror/ to register today!

Author of the forthcoming book Chaos to Sanity: Transform Your Life with the 12 Keys to Sanity

If there is a using addict in your life, download my free e-book on how to transform the chaos to sanity at www.theempowermentcoach.net and read my blog at www.12stepfamily.com

Enjoy my weekly newsletter Life Purpose in Recovery delivered right to your email and gain access to materials on the 12 Keys to Sanity for Family Members! Sign up here: http://forms.aweber.com/form/11/885999311.htm

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When I first got into the program, my sponsor taught me that my only obligation to another adult human being is to be a loving person. I didn’t get it. I didn’t want to get it, really. It made no sense to me. I wanted to do more than just love my addict. I wanted to completely alter his perception of reality, to take him from his addictive ways and get him to see things my way.

But alas, I could not. No matter how much I tried to talk, scream, cry, persuade or convince, I could not get my addict to stop using.

So, I looked at that statement again. What does it truly mean to love another person? Didn’t it mean trying to get them to change and doing ‘whatever it took’ to make them see things ‘as they really are’?

Over time, I learned that truly loving another person did not mean trying to change them, but rather, accepting them exactly as they are. That it did not mean to judge or criticize them, but rather, to look for the good in them and emphasize that goodness in my mind and heart so that I could look at them lovingly and speak to them with dignity and respect.

Truly loving an addicted loved one does demand ‘doing whatever it takes’ but not in the way I originally thought. Rather, it means learning new ways of being, of thinking, of speaking, of acting in relationship to myself, the addicted person, the rest of the family and often in relationship to coworkers and friends as well.

Sure, you may say, why should I change? I am not the one with the problem. I’m not ruining this family or skipping work days or embarrassing my children with philandering, or wasting the family fortune on drugs or alcohol.

But still, there is a problem in your family, isn’t there? Someone in your family is suffering from an addiction that is ripping their life apart, ripping your heart out and ripping your family apart. And you say it is not your problem…

I say it is…

I have learned over the years that every time I judge or criticize or dismiss someone I love, I reveal a weakness in my own character that not only hurts them but hurts me as well. AND when my goal is for them to get and stay sober and I treat them with disrespect, I am contributing to their addiction by giving them an excuse to use again. “After all,” they may say to themselves, “if you were treated as badly as I am, you’d drink, too.”

No, I’m not making an excuse for the addict. I’m demonstrating an understanding of how a tortured person’s mind works. An addict will do whatever it takes to use, even if that means using the frustrated ways we treat them as an excuse.

So, what is the solution? How can I truly help, truly go all the way to help my addict get sober, to help them come back from a relapse or stay sober when they’ve never been able to for very long at a time? How can I do ‘whatever it takes’ and what, after all is said and done, DOES it take to help an addict get sober?

Well, if you’ve been reading this blog or any of my other writings over the years, you know by now that I believe that YOU, the family member, are your addict’s BEST chance of getting and staying sober, just not in the way you may think you are!

What I mean is, by focusing on your own recovery, you become a model of serenity and sanity that serves as a beacon of light for those you love. The way in which you are living your life is that which makes all the difference, AND the way in which you learn to communicate with them gives them food for thought about what they are doing with their lives and what they could be doing to get off of the treadmill of addiction that has them running in place day after day and year after year…I call this new way of communicating Being A Loving Mirror and it is so simple that it is often overlooked, though it is one of the most powerful ways to impact your own and potentially your addicted loved one’s life.

Beginning on April 20th, I’ll be offering a 2 part free teleseminar on how you can learn to Be A Loving Mirror with your addicted loved one and if you are determined to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to help your addict and your family enjoy a more peaceful and serene way of life, you will want to join us on that call!

To sign up today, go to my website at http://beverlybuncher.com/being-a-love-mirror/

I’m offering this class in response to so many of my readers who have asked for my Being a Loving Mirror report, which you will also receive upon confirming your attendance at the teleseminar.

While we are powerless over the addict, when we take power over our own recovery, we are empowered beyond belief.

Let’s talk more about it next Wednesday on the teleseminar. To sign up today, go to my website at http://beverlybuncher.com/being-a-love-mirror/

I’ll be looking for you on the call!

All the best,

Coach Bev

Beverly A. Buncher, MA, PCC, CTPC

ICF Professional Certified Coach

Recovery – True Purpose – Career – Life

www.beverlybuncher.com
www.12stepfamily.com
786 859 4050

“Imagining a world where every addict has the opportunity and support needed to build a sober lifetime one moment at a time, and every family has the benefit of a coach to help them blaze the trail to sobriety in their home. Imagining a world without relapse.”

Join me for my upcoming 2 session free teleseminar Being A Loving Mirror. To sign up today, go to my website at http://beverlybuncher.com/being-a-love-mirror/

Author of the forthcoming book Chaos to Sanity: Transform Your Life with the Four Foundations of Family Recovery

If there is a using addict in your life, download my free e-book on how to transform the chaos to sanity at www.theempowermentcoach.net and read my blog at www.12stepfamily.com

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If you have ever asked yourself the following questions…

How can I get through to my loved one?
How can I maintain a sense of normalcy in the face of her chaotic behavior?
How can I make this situation improve?
What steps can I take to re-build a life that seems so broken?

…my upcoming teleseminar on Being A Loving Mirror can help you!

If you attend, here is what you will learn:
1. What works and what doesn’t when communicating with an addict
2. A direct plan for communicating directly and effectively with the addict during or soon after a crisis
3. A clear understanding of what it takes to operate sanely in the middle of a chaotic situation
4. A vision of what recovery from family addiction looks like and how to bring that first into your life and potentially into the lives of all those around you.

Here is a note one of the enrollees wrote and my response:

Bev,

I could use some help with communicating with my wife from whom I am separated though we continue to share a house. I am the addict in the relationship, and I recently had to restart my sobriety, because of drinking. Step 4 above really resonates with me.

I see a counselor weekly and go to group therapy once a week as well. I am also a recovering sex addict and am working my 12 step programs as best I can, including attending conventions where the recovery is intensified. I am doing the best I can at any given time, but I’m always feeling like I could be doing something more, as I put my wife through hell.

The mirroring thing sounds wonderful. I do attempt, albeit a bit feebly, to do this. But not very well, so I will listen and see what goes.

Thanks,
Daniel

Dear Daniel,

I hear your dilemma and I salute you for all of the inner work you are doing and pursuing. After relapse and recovery, things can be delicate in the coupleship for awhile – sometimes a long while. Each partner has their role in healing the relationship, but sometimes it falls on the one who is more conscious at that moment (or more able to do the work) to initiate or move things forward. Your acknowledgement of your role in her current pain is a good start. Then there is a process of letting go and mirroring that can help not only her, but also you, to heal further.

I’d say the Being A Loving Mirror (BALM) Teleseminar is a good choice for you at this point. You mentioned that you are separated but living in the same house. You might invite her to the tele-seminar as well, but an invitation is freely given without expectations. Your learning the tools and modeling them is powerful as well. BALM will give anyone who comes, tools to heal from the family addiction hell that often overtakes the addict and everyone close to him or her.

Once the addict is sober, there is a lot of codependence on both sides that needs healing. Your willingness to clean up your side of the street in this area certainly will help. If nothing else, it will increase your peace and sanity. The beautiful thing about Being A Loving Mirror (nicknamed BALM because its practice is soothing and healing) is that it is a practice that is appropriate for all relationships – not only with addicts, but with anyone we love or interact with.

The challenge is that it is a completely non-judgmental practice. Should judgment seep in, such as “Yes, I know I hurt you, but aren’t you over it yet?’, things can get stickly and the BALM can lose its healing power.

It doesn’t require perfection, because it is, as in all things in recovery work, a practice. And the more we do it with the aim of total non-judgment in mind, the better we get at truly being there as a loving mirror for the other person. That’s why it helps so much to study and learn and practice these concepts in groups, so others can give us feedback and help us get better at ‘being there’, present and lovingly, for the people in our lives, and for ourselves.

I’m looking forward to seeing you in the teleseminar and working with you on this!

All the best,
Coach Bev

Beverly A. Buncher, MA, PCC, CTPC
ICF Professional Certified Coach
Recovery – True Purpose – Career – Life
www.beverlybuncher.com
786 859 4050
Author of the forthcoming book Chaos to Sanity: Transform Your Life with the Four Foundations of Family Recovery

Click here join in on my upcoming FREE Teleseminar series: Being A Loving Mirror (BALM)!

If there is a using addict in your life, download my free e-book on how to transform the chaos to sanity at www.theempowermentcoach.net and read my blog at www.12stepfamily.com

If you are an addict in recovery looking for ‘more’ in your recovery and in your life, let’s discuss how you can do so by finding your life purpose in recovery. For more information, check out my blog at www.lifepurposeinrecovery.com .

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Note to my readers:
Lately, I have been receiving more and more letters from readers concerning their individual situations involving an addicted loved one. With their permission, I will be sharing summaries of their letters along with my answers to those letters. If you would like to have a situation of yours answered, please feel free to send me your questions at recoverycoachbev@theempowermentcoach.net. I will let you know if I plan to answer your letter in this blog and will do my best to provide you with an answer to your questions either in the blog, by email and/or by phone.

Read below for details on how to get this week’s give-away: How to Be A Loving Mirror to Your Addicted Loved One

Dear Coach Bev,

My daughter was on heroin for two years, and, after going through treatment twice, and not having been able to maintain abstinence from heroin, she is now heroin free, but is using marijuana on a daily basis. The way I am experiencing her now is as someone who is part of the family again. She is not stealing, violent, or out of it. She is pleasant to be around and is experiencing a sense of hope about her life again.

Yet, the treatment world and AA perspective seem to say she is still doing the wrong thing. I’m just so grateful to see her behavior improving, and I’m trying to reconcile what I’ve learned about the importance of total abstinence with the new reality in our home of someone on a less severe drug functioning better than she had before.

Other people throw their kids out of the house for marijuana use, yet, in our case, things are better than they have been in a long time. Can you help me understand what is going on in my home and how to help me best help my daughter?

Thanks for your help,
A Mom Who Wants the Best for Her Daughter

Dear Mom,

Thank you so much for your willingness to write. I am of the mind that recovery looks different for different people, and that for young people, the process is often a windy road rather than a straight one. It is more common than not for young people in particular to find themselves going in and out of treatment centers for years before they finally get. They are young, the world around them is so tempting, and completely saying ‘no’ feels too hard for them or is simply not something they wish to do.

This is not an excuse or a statement of approval for that perspective. Rather, it is a statement of what is.

In terms of the effects of marijuana on your daughter over the long run, there are some important facts for you to be aware of. The marijuana of today is so much more potent than it was 20 or 30 years ago and it definitely can become psychologically addictive. It is illegal and toxic (it has over 100 chemicals in it that could lead to all of the illnesses one can get from smoking cigarettes, only much faster). Smoking grass regularly can lead to infertility and it slows reaction time, whether one is riding a bike or driving a car.

One of its main psychological drawbacks is in how it demotivates regular users. The image of a 20 year old pothead waking up one day 20 years later and seeing that nothing in his/her life has changed is perhaps hyperbole for the occasional user, but for the daily user, motivation to change or improve one’s life is significantly impaired. While it has value medically when used as prescribed, it can be a dangerous drug, particularly for people in the throes of depression. In such cases, marijuana can cause a psychotic break and result in violent behaviors.

On the other hand, just as marijuana is seen as a gateway drug on the way into addiction, it can also, at times, serve as a gateway drug on the way out of addiction. To get a better idea of what I mean as well as the process your daughter may be going through, I’d like to introduce you to some of the writing on harm reduction and stages of change.
Harm reduction is very big in Europe and just gaining traction in this country. It is about being open to a person taking steps to reduce the harm from their addictive tendencies to themselves and/or to society, and can be seen in things like Amsterdam’s clean needle initiative, alcoholics measuring their drinks and limiting the number they have each day, ‘don’t let a friend drive drunk’ campaigns, drug addicts moving to cigarettes, etc.

There are lots of books written about it. One written for the general community that I recommend is Over the Influence: The Harm Reduction Guide for Managing Drugs and Alcohol by Patt Denning PhD, Jeannie Little, and Adina Glickman.

While the treatment field is often not open to anything but total abstinence, recovery coaches work both with totally abstinent clients, and with clients who are resistant to total abstinence, to help them find out if harm reduction could be something that would work for them. Harm reduction does not work for everyone. Some people just need to stop completely or they will continually bounce back and forth between their drug of choice and other substitute drugs. Others can stop everything in the long run if they reduce harm in the beginning (heroin to marijuana for instance).

This is very controversial, but provides an important alternative for the many that just can’t make it in the all or nothing world of total abstinence. The key is to not judge, but rather, to observe and be open to the process of your addicted loved one.

The Six Stages of Change are explained in Over the Influence as well as in another book I would highly recommend for you and your daughter to read: James Prochaska’s Changing For Good. Prochaska’s dad died of alcoholism after a long unsuccessful struggle. This led Prochaska to study psychological models to find out what, if any, models worked to help people break destructive habits. He and his team interviewed scores of people in the throes of or who had beaten their cigarette addiction (since this is one of the widest held addiction in society today) to find out what worked and what didn’t.

What they found was that there are six stages of change every person trying to change a habit goes through (regardless of what the habit is) and that different types of interventions and psychological models work at some stages for the person trying to quit but NOT at other stages. The stages he outlines are: pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance and termination (or recycling if the person does not complete the change).

He posits that while most people see the action stage of breaking the habit as the defining factor of the change, the preparation and maintenance stages are just as important as the action of change itself. This model states that if people do not prepare well for the change, and then once they’ve changed, if they do not do things to maintain the change, the change most likely will not be sustained.

My course, The Four Foundations of Family Recovery: Simple Ideas to Turn Chaos to Sanity, includes lessons on harm reduction, stages of change and addiction switching that could also give you further insight into what your daughter is going through and how her process is working. (www.theempowermentcoach.net/4-foundations-of-recovery.html )