2695: How Family Members Enable Their Addict Loved Ones | Rock Recovery Center

22:19Justin Andrews:I had to look in my text thread. January 2nd of this year. Her husband just got to us three days ago and we're in late August. It's a process like this takes time. And a lot of it is just coaching and, you know, how to enter into these conversations. Because the second point that we wanted to make, we have the financial aspect, which we know, but the acting on emotion. We have to try and eliminate the emotion from the situation. Let's just look at it for what it is, you know, because if you, if you look at somebody else's situation, you would probably give them the same advice that we're giving you.

23:04Adam Schafer:Is it, do you give advice like this around? Cause how do you deal with that? Is it like, look, before you say or do anything, call me so I can help you through this process. Does it look something like that?

23:15Rock Recovery Center:Exactly like that. And I, I literally use this example all the time. I look at myself, I'm an expert in addiction. You know, personal, I've gone to school for it. I've been working in the field for 13 years now. First-hand experience. And I say this all the time. If I have to go through this with my kids, with all my knowledge on this, with all my experience, the first thing I'm going to do is turn it over to somebody else. Still outsource it. Outsource it. Because I'm emotionally attached to this situation. and I and even with with my insight to addiction I'm blinded and I've had situations like that in my life where I've had close family members where I've had to like kind of push it off on somebody else and say hey I want to stay involved in this situation but can you kind of take the reins on this because at the end of the day emotion will completely kill this process that makes sense are

24:10Sal Di Stefano:Are there patterns that you guys see? Like, for example, like you talked to so many people that are dealing with this and based off of how much, you know, financial support they're getting from, say, a family member or not. Can you tell early on how difficult this is going to be for you guys? For example, like maybe there's this addict who is, you know, may just barely scrape and buy and is addicted, but he doesn't have any sort of support or help from family. No enabling is going on. that person, you're talking to that person versus the person who's living at home still for free rent or whatever with mom and dad.

24:45Sal Di Stefano:And they're out like, does there, is there a clear difference on the success rate of those or how easily you're going to get that person to adopt some of this? Or is it, is it different for every individual?

24:55Rock Recovery Center:I would definitely say it's different for every individual. Cause there's so many factors that go into this, where if you have the, the one that's at home living with mom, mom could be the obstacle. But just to call it what it is, we've had clients in situations where they're completely homeless and they've become so comfortable with being homeless.

25:16Sal Di Stefano:It's not even a motivator for them. Exactly.

25:18Rock Recovery Center:So it's crazy. You literally have to become an expert at navigating every situation. This thing is not black and white whatsoever. Why to Sal's point, it's so important to bring it to somebody else.

25:31Justin Andrews:Yeah. Well, Ben says it all the time. You have to be kind of the best manipulator in the room because that's a lot of times it takes one to know one, right? And, and a family member oftentimes don't know. And a lot of what Ben and I do is it is manipulation in a way, but we're manipulating you into a good life. Like the second half of your life. We're manipulating you into a new opportunity and we're good at it because we've been there. I was manipulated into treatment. Ben was manipulated into treatment. I was manipulated into staying in treatment. I was manipulated into going into sober living.

26:16Justin Andrews:I didn't want to necessarily do any of this stuff because I was comfortable. I was fine drinking every day doing all that stuff but i was manipulated and now knowing what i know now like obviously you know my dad had to get extremely uncomfortable he didn't want to have to do all this stuff he didn't want to have to throw me out of the house fire me from my job my own father had to call me and fire me. Did he get support from outside to do this with you? So not really. And, you know, my dad is, you know, it was just him and I just grown up and, and we were here last July and my story's there. So people can go back and listen to that, but not really.

27:09Justin Andrews:He just, for whatever reason, he kind of had like this internal, like instinct. Well, I mean, if we're speaking honestly here and today he says that the day before he was praying that something would happen for me. And he says, and I don't know how true this is, but he said that he picked up the phone book and went into the yellow pages and found like Alcoholics Anonymous and called that number and it diverted to a treatment center. i don't know either way he did what god instructed him to do at that time and you know i was on a one-way flight to florida to go to treatment but no he didn't attend any al-anon or support groups you know because it was a very kind you know he didn't know anybody that really struggled with that stuff but all to say because he didn't have the resources and stuff that's why ben and i spend a lot of our time and energy into really kind of coaching families on what to do i was just going

28:17Adam Schafer:to ask how much of the obviously a lot of this is working with the addict right they come they're getting treatment you're helping them how much of it is helping the family well so probably most of

28:30Sal Di Stefano:I mean, I would think the enabling part is probably one of the biggest parts of all this.

28:35Justin Andrews:You got two sides to this. You got when Ben and I were in treatment and any of the people that come into our program, they have a licensed clinician. They have drivers. They have all the food that they can eat, all the coffee that you can drink, you know, transportation to and from whatever doctor's appointments, all this case management. We're really going to come alongside you and help you, you know, kind of get through this stuff. Family members, a lot of times are just told, well, you know, go to an Al-Anon meeting, go to your local church and see what support that you can get. So not a lot.

29:25Justin Andrews:but prior to getting somebody into treatment that is where like ben and i spend a lot of time and energy with the families and to getting them into a program whether it's ours or any other program doesn't make a difference to us but also like continuing to help them through that process how often does that involve you guys kind of coming in having to do some kind of structured

29:51Adam Schafer:organized intervention type setting or is i mean obviously you talked about this is a long process

29:57Sal Di Stefano:of talking and coaching the the family members to get to the point where they agree to the treatment right but at what point is it like it has to happen and then there has to be this like sort of family confrontation so the i'll say this um for instance a lot of people are familiar with

30:16Rock Recovery Center:the show intervention yeah i think it's it's to be honest with you pretty misleading i would imagine i figured as much yeah you know um i i have heard on the back end i don't know if this 100 factual but the addict actually gets paid a certain amount of cash i've heard that number but in case i'm wrong i don't want to say it but um with that being said the majority of interventions so to speak are able to be done remotely because what we're doing is we're coaching the family into the right moves, showing them what cards they have in their pocket to be able to influence the decision to getting there.

30:53Rock Recovery Center:And I'll say this, Tom and I, we're making a real effort to kind of change how much help families, they need to realize how much help they need. A lot of families, to call it what it is, are like, oh, he's the alcoholic addict. If he gets better than I'm better. But that's not the truth. What we end up finding out is a lot of times the family's sicker than the addict alcoholic themselves. If you call it what it is, my mom suffered the same misery I was suffering in my active addiction, but she lost out. She didn't even get to get high. I got to get high. I'm like, oh, this feels good. So essentially, she's losing sleep she's losing time energy and resources and she's dying inside and so what it comes down to is to tom's point he was talking about how we take our clients and we we literally bring them to outside meetings like we introduce them to people we have the the therapy at our center they get the one-on-one sessions with their therapist the the group the group counseling a parent or loved one or you tell them hey just go to this meeting and we kind of have the same expectation that they're going to be able to go into that meeting and fruitfully come out of it on the other side where why do they need less than what the alcoholic addict needs like they need somebody to hold their hand and walk them into that meeting and that's something that that tom and i have been trying to implement like through our podcast the whole point in our podcast Real Recovery Talk is that we started it because we realized like, hey, we're here helping clients, but nobody's paying attention to the families.

32:37Rock Recovery Center:The families are in the dark. Most centers, they're lucky if they get a phone call from the therapist every two weeks, just say, hey, your loved one's safe and they're still here. And they're like freaking out, not knowing what's going on. But the thing is, is they need to do their own work. Going back to, I ask parents all the time, kind of tongue in cheek. I'm like, I'll be like, what's your drug of choice? And they're like, well, I don't do drugs. I don't drink. And I'm like, and I switched the question, who is your drug of choice? They're like, oh, Joey is. I'm like, because they're so busy.

33:12Rock Recovery Center:It's all about control. Addiction, alcoholism, it has so much to do with control. And the families and loved ones are trying to control the situation with their addict when in fact they're powerless. So we've, we got to get them to help to see like, Hey, you're powerless in this situation. You can be influential, but it's up to Joey, whether or not he's going to decide that he wants to get sober.

33:34Adam Schafer:I got to ask you guys this. Cause I can't imagine what you guys, I mean, what you guys do is so it's such a incredible calling. It's so challenging. And I can't imagine what it must be like when you guys work with someone and it just doesn't work or somebody ODs. how do you guys how do you guys keep going because i i love i think what you guys do is incredible i couldn't do it i i couldn't do it because that would just what is that like for you guys how do you guys help each other through that process because it's not 100 success rate there's no way

34:09Rock Recovery Center:can i touch on this one yeah yeah i might cry talking about this all right um we had a client that he went to a detox and I'm good for we're good friends with the people that run this detox and they had a young man it was their childhood best friend um they grew up with and they reached out to us and said hey man we got this guy Blake um and Blake ended up going to their detox and they asked me if I would come over and speak with Blake the reason being Blake was into fitness He played semi-pro football He's from jersey and um Just really fit the bill for what we do at rock with all the adventure experiential therapy the fitness stuff And I go over there.

34:54Rock Recovery Center:We sit down him and I we connect right? There was just in some cases sometimes there's just something different about a client As far as the the that personal relationship, you know, I think all our clients are special I love them all, but once in a while you come across somebody that just something is different. And he ends up going through our program. And at the time, I was coaching my son's peewee football. My son's been playing football. He's 15 now, but he started when he was eight, and he was playing at Palm Beach County Youth Football League. And I got, you know, they asked me to coach, so I coached for three years.

35:31Rock Recovery Center:but because he played semi-pro ball when he was done with this treatment part and living in our sober house his therapist and i sat him down and said hey man why don't you come coach football with me and um he ended up coming out and coached with us for that season we made it all the way to super bowl well lost but my son and him came became so close i mean my son looked up to to Blake, I can't even put it into words. He was an absolute mentor for him. Blake was a beast on the football field and just one of the most kind, intelligent, loving people. You look at him and you're like, this guy, fentanyl, it didn't even add up.

36:14Rock Recovery Center:Didn't add up whatsoever. But he ended up getting over a year of sobriety and ended up working in the field in treatment. And out of nowhere one day I get a phone call working at the treatment center did a line of fentanyl, locked in one of the offices, and they weren't able to resuscitate. Oh, man.

36:38And to answer your question, the drive to keep going on,

36:43Rock Recovery Center:the first thing we did, because we're a tight-knit community, man. People in recovery, they're family. I have family members that aren't blood that would literally do anything for them. People like Tom, man. I got a bunch of other guys that I could list off, but we showed up to a meeting that night when we got the news. And I just remember sitting in this meeting and I raised my hand and shared. And I was just so angry at the disease of addiction, right? But in that moment, I told myself, I'm going to do everything that I can to make sure that this doesn't happen to somebody else. And now do I have all the power in the world?

37:23Rock Recovery Center:No, I'm powerless again, just like any parent or loved one. But becoming that close to somebody, sometimes I feel like these things happen for a reason. And don't get me wrong, man, like I wish this never happened. But it's situations like that, that hurt so bad, that just give me the drive to say, you know what, I'm going to continue doing this. because if I stop, how many other parents are going to lose their kid, right? That's where that drive comes from. I touched on earlier, like Mark, getting the phone call a couple weeks ago, how great he's doing. But then when we see these situations, while they're absolutely gut-wrenching, especially when you've got to talk to the parents afterwards, his mom comes down and visits with us probably about three times a year and tells us, she's like, I come down and I hang out with you all because this is the place where I feel closest to my son.

38:27Rock Recovery Center:Was with us, not at home in Jersey, but with the people that he spent his last year of sobriety with. That's how amazing this journey can be. Right? The connections that you make and those outcomes, man, like I said, they're gut-wrenching.

38:51Rock Recovery Center:But God gave us a purpose. Anybody in recovery, man, anybody in active addiction, alcoholism, God gave us a free purpose card, right? We do this thing, and then we go out and we carry a message.

39:09Rock Recovery Center:And I truly believe in my heart God gave me that purpose card and doesn't want me to throw it away, no matter how bad it hurts sometimes.

39:19Adam Schafer:Yeah. God bless you guys for that. That's tough. Yeah. I had to ask that because it's just, you guys do such an incredible job and it's so hard. I can't even imagine.

39:27Sal Di Stefano:Well, it brings you closer though, to the, to the, the Mark story though, like a story like that, cause you know that he could have been that. Right. So I would imagine this, the swings of emotion, like you've seen the darkest of dark, but then you have the, like, man, this guy could have been that guy. And we, we kept that from happening. So I would think too, that one of the other biggest mistakes that happen is family members that are like on the fence or people that are on the fence. Like how often is that one of the biggest mistakes is, you know, uh, you're kind of aware your family member or person's addicted, but they're also managing it at the same time.

40:04Sal Di Stefano:And so it's like, you know, do we step in now? Is it that important? I would, I would imagine there's a lot of that. I mean, I know that personally from our, my personal experience in family is like well i mean he still was taking care of himself and doing other things and so nobody's really forcing him to go anywhere or do anything because he hasn't done anything so crazy he almost died yet and you know he is kind of managing this addiction he still can do other things so is that common where people just kind of are in that idle place i think that

40:36Justin Andrews:there's there's you know with alcohol yes with marijuana yes i do think that there is a sometimes people enter into the treatment process probably prematurely and the truth of the matter is sometime you you know you enter into the treatment process for you know if you're a young guy or a young girl and parents just freak out oh my gosh i caught johnny with a i mean i guess now it would be a thc pen or something he's 18 years old and you know we found this thc pen does it constitute shipping him off 1500 miles away into a treatment center where he's going to be introduced to people that are iv fentanyl users yeah this goes back to ben's point don't ever try and figure this out on your own because we could come back and be like hey it's it might do johnny a disservice to put him in into a treatment i never even thought about

41:47Sal Di Stefano:that and i'm sure that happens you got to have parents that need your reaction because of something and then and then they go send them to a place where there's a higher percentage of people addicted to worse things yeah are also unsuccessful sometimes like very influential yeah i think about

42:03Rock Recovery Center:that as a challenge well that's where it takes ethics in our field too i was just gonna say because you're talking about to turn that business away yeah yeah a hundred percent you know so i'm gonna just call it what it is there there's places out there you know we found we found a nickel bag dragging Johnny's sock drawer. Johnny needs to come to rehab or he's going to die, right? Like, it's like, come on, man. You know, at the end of the day, these are human beings, right? And doing right by these families is because I have some very specific examples of premature intervention. When I very first started working in treatment, I was behavioral health tech, which is like frontline, you're driving the vans around, probably favorite job I ever had in treatment to be honest with you incredible spending just all day hanging out with clients but we had a young man that i think was from michigan smoking weed ate a xanax bar one time blacked out did some weird behavior mom ships him down and all of a sudden he's introduced this young man who is in treatment for crack next thing you know he talks his kid into leaving ama against medical advice to go try smoking crack the kid is in florida for two weeks lets a crack dealer borrow his car and it was at the gardens mall it was on the news and stuff but he tried to get his car back from the crack dealer crack dealer shot him in the head in the parking lot oh my god so a parent out of out of straight fear this kid wasn't i'm gonna venture to say he was probably experimenting like any other kid is my professional assessment of it it wasn't at the point of of needing professional intervention whatsoever but out of fear mom sent him into treatment introduced crack so it does have to be evaluated on the front end like and in most cases if 99 of the time if somebody's reaching out for treatment it's at the point where they i was just

44:08Sal Di Stefano:I was going to ask you, give me a number of like, you know, a hundred people call or 20 people call. How many are the kid who just smoked weed a few times and probably shouldn't come or that you have to turn down? Is that a.

44:18Justin Andrews:Well, here's the interesting thing about weed. And I kind of like because I've heard you guys talk about this on the podcast before. And like, I love hearing the conversations you guys have around it. Marijuana is very kind of. It's accepted. It's accepted in a way. Right. and a lot of times you know people are like oh there's no harm in marijuana oh there's no harm in kratom kratom is the new thing which we could spend a few minutes on that yeah but marijuana like if you yes you find a nickel bag in johnny's sock drawer okay fine like you know we're we might tell you listen alice just chill out for a little bit you know we're gonna stay in contact with you and to see if this progresses into anything but what we see a lot of with marijuana especially heavy marijuana use is the mental health aspect of it that is where things get really kind of

45:16Adam Schafer:spicy oh yeah you use it a long time a lot of it you the odds of paranoia schizophrenia just distorted beliefs and depression yeah so go through the roof yes and that is what a lot of

45:29Justin Andrews:the navigating we're doing like if somebody's seeking out treatment for marijuana use a lot of times we're we're going down the mental health road you know what so is there a mental health diagnosis and and you see this a lot with young men uh in their late teens early 20s and there's studies that have proven a lot of this that you know heavy heavy pot use will bring about you know the schizophrenic tendencies and stuff so it's really kind of a balancing act but i do want to draw attention to the idea that marijuana is not in any capacity if you're somebody like myself and ben it is not a viable option because you give me a joint or a thc vape pen or whatever you give Ben one Ben's going to be shooting heroin by the end of the day and I'm gonna I'm gonna be bottom up in a bottle of Jim Beam you know because it just go it we go right back to that I'm looking for an external solution for an internal problem that I maybe didn't even realize was there until I ingested that THC and in fact Florida there was a little bit of a period of time they were doing like these marijuana maintenance programs and for four addicts yeah

46:52Rock Recovery Center:interesting they've recently come out with legislation it's now illegal in the state of florida to have marijuana in a substance of your treatment center yeah and i think that that that

47:03Justin Andrews:has done very well for for the state of florida because how important is it to look because

47:09Adam Schafer:Because not all substances are equal, right? Caffeine's a drug. So is nicotine. You got marijuana. You got alcohol. You got to treat them all differently. And they all have different risks. And I think what you're saying is 100 % correct. I think they used to call it a gateway. I used to laugh at that. It lowers your inhibitions. I used to laugh at that.

47:29Rock Recovery Center:And now I'm like, actually, I think that's true. Well, let me elaborate, too, where for me, alcohol is my slippery slope. I got one of the metabolisms. I take one sip of alcohol. oh, I instantly test positive for crack every time.

47:45Rock Recovery Center:But, you know, a lot of people don't look at the indirect causes either. Like Tom made the statement, if I smoked weed, I'd be shooting heroin by the end of the day. Is that true? I honestly, I'm going to argue that. I don't think so. All right, seven days. Here's the problem for me with marijuana is that I got sober and I'm surrounded by people who are sober, who I need to continue to be around to stay off of my drugs of choice, you know, the alcohol, the meth, the heroin, the Coke. When I start smoking weed, all of a sudden I'm not part of that circle of people and the resources that help me to where I got today.

48:27Rock Recovery Center:So a lot of times there's an indirect cause. I'm not going to show up to a 12-step meeting if I'm smoking weed because I'm going to feel shame. I'm not going to sponsor somebody. and practice a 12 step.

48:38Adam Schafer:Hiding and lying is a slippery slope. I lie about this and I can lie about the next thing. And next thing you know, my integrity is out the window.

48:44Rock Recovery Center:So there's direct and indirect. And I always like to bring that up because I have to educate our clients on that. They're like, oh, it's not a big deal. I'm like, yes, but is it going to take you away from everything that you were doing to get to your success today? Really good point.

48:58Adam Schafer:Let's talk about Kratom because I've struggled with Kratom. um uh in fact at the moment i'm coming off of it uh and you know my wife confronted me about it and it's not i'm not going crazy with it but it's got a grip i had a grip on me um is that something that we need to talk about worry about i know it acts on the opiate receptors and this that and the other and there's fitness people that sell it in fact they tried to sponsor us at one point we said no yeah let's talk about that is this a is this becoming an issue well there's different

49:30Rock Recovery Center:different types if you will um actually in the state of florida a week or two ago yeah it wasn't long ago they actually made the the 70H so they've they've essentially taken kratom leaf and made

49:41Adam Schafer:these extracts and they're even stronger turned it into heroin basically correct so it you know

49:48Rock Recovery Center:like any good addict we make we figure out how to make something stronger yeah so essentially it It becomes, we're seeing a huge uptick in people ending up in detox because of kratom. Wow. And it's because the strength and the potency has increased. Yeah. So, and just to kind of hit home the point, I'd say probably five, six years ago, if you called an insurance company and said, hey, I got a client that needs detox from kratom because of the physical withdrawals, they'd say no. So when insurance companies started paying for detox for Kratom, you know, there's a problem. Yeah, there's a problem with it.

50:24Rock Recovery Center:So and essentially what we're seeing, and I generally, I try not to look at too many studies as far as substance abuse and alcoholism because they can be skewed in whatever direction. I really focus on what I see firsthand at Rock because we get to work with so many people. but the amount of people that we're seeing seek treatment for kratom has skyrocketed. Really?

50:48Justin Andrews:Wow.

50:49Rock Recovery Center:Absolutely skyrocketed. And the withdrawal symptoms as the potency has increased has become brutal for some of you would think that they were coming off fentanyl. Wow. In fact, now I don't have anything to back this other than personal. my mother actually just informed me a few weeks ago that there's a young man that she's friends with through alan on um whose drug of choice is kratom she my mom knows his mom and he actually made a and had an instagram page basically educating people on kratom because he was addicted to it and he was he had like a year off of it but he actually just overdosed and passed away from Kratom and they said the only thing in his system was that was that oh so and then I just heard of a second death to strictly Kratom I would imagine that has to be the 70H though

51:44Sal Di Stefano:just because the amount of pills you would have to take in the traditional form like that means someone's getting the concentrated which is why they led to that right because to feel that much from the like regular powdered you'd have to be taking a hundred pills to fill with the 70H or

51:59Rock Recovery Center:whatever is right correct and i want i want to be careful you know being on air to not like speak something that's not true but this stuff is just happening so recently that i don't think the the the stats are coming out so to speak they were selling it as a way to get off of opiates

52:15Adam Schafer:opiates like oh you know what this is like you just get on this and you know the withdrawal is

52:20Justin Andrews:no big deal and whatever well here's here's my take on this and i'm gonna throw out chris bell's name yeah mark bell's brother yep yeah um he did the documentary a leaf of faith right yeah he has double hip replacement opioid addict yep um big fan of kratom yep now at the time of him creating this documentary this probably would be i'm gonna guess 10 years about 10 years it was vastly different then it was just the plant it's a plant you know dried out crumbled up, you mix it in some hot water and you drink it. Okay, fine. But here we are 10 years later and I actually did an Instagram reel on this and just kind of, I was cheering the fact that Florida banned 70H and the amount of people that were like, that's BS, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

53:18Justin Andrews:Like the, the, the reason I did this was because you could walk into any given gas station, Like, and look at the packaging of it. You know, my, my nine year old son could walk into this gas station and think that it's sour candy. You know, there's a reason that this stuff is so, um, it's packaged the way that it's packaged. It's marketed the way that it's marketed. And the problem is, is that when you have somebody like myself and Ben that are addicts, we're not going to do anything, you know, in a small way, right? We're going all in. I'll speak from personal experience.

54:04Adam Schafer:Like any classic drug, you take a certain amount, you feel it, very quickly you build up a tolerance and you need more. And it's a very slippery slope. Three pills becomes six pills becomes 12 pills, and you just need more and more and more. And the logical step is the stronger stuff. Now, man, I'm taking 25 of these a day or 30 a day, which regular Kratom users will oftentimes use. Thankfully, I never got that high, but often. So they'll say, oh, you know what? Instead of taking 30 of these, I'll take two of these strong ones, and I get these great effects, except you build up tolerance to that as well.

54:43Adam Schafer:And then that ramps up. And next thing you know, it's cheaper and easier to go inject it.

54:48Sal Di Stefano:It's the same progression that you get how you get to. I remember I used to always think, and this was pre me, because I've withdrawn from both Kratom and withdrawn both from Vicodin. So I know what it's like to be addicted to both of those. And it's the same. And I used to always think like, how could someone ever shoot a needle into their arm for her? But when you are around people, which I was when I was popping those pills, you start to see, oh, this is how it starts. It starts off with a cup of Vicodin. And then a cup of Vicodin turned into 20. you're taking handfuls of them at a time and you start going like dude i'm taking 30 50 these is expensive oxycontins will give me you know 20 or one oxycontin will give me what 20 vicodin felt like so then i take one of those and then i start taking those and go oh well now i'm taking 10 of those like at this point shooting heroin is actually better for my liver and cheaper so that's it's literally that's that's exactly how and then i go then i went oh you don't just start at heroin.

55:44Sal Di Stefano:You start, and then it actually becomes the logical progression because of how many of these pills you're doing. And then you actually make that, you have that conversation, oh, this is, it would be healthier for me to stab the needle in me than it would be to take these 20 pills that are so potent and expensive. And so it's a no brainer. So it's a similar progression. And the fact that it's legal makes it super scary and dangerous because a kid or any person who thinks, I mean, this is why we wouldn't promote it. I was already aware of the addictive properties that came with it because I'd already experienced it.

56:19Sal Di Stefano:And I remember telling these guys like, oh, wow, that felt a lot like coming off of my Vicodin felt like, like it was, it was that difficult to come off it. Now it wasn't quite as strong, but I could easily see how like you could get that way. And this, I had never heard of until recently the 70H that was literally just a concentrated form of that so it's the it's the oxycontin of vicodin in the similar family you know yeah and if you look at it from someone who's

56:46Rock Recovery Center:attempting to be in recovery if if i come in for fentanyl and that receptor it you know i introduce cratum which works on the same receptor chances are it's going to kick that back into gear and i'm going to want the fentanyl again because you're firing up that receptor again those

57:03Adam Schafer:neurons that fire together wire together.

57:04Justin Andrews:Sal, can I ask you a question? Yeah. Okay, so you came on our podcast. This would have been, I don't even remember. Was this two years ago now?

57:13Adam Schafer:Might have been a year and a half. It was when it was at NCI.

57:15Justin Andrews:Yeah, yeah, yeah. The NCI conference in Orlando. I distinctly remember in that episode you had talked about really just getting in. You had talked about getting into Kratom. yep why i can't remember exactly why um and now here we are today you're saying that you're struggling coming off of it yep i i think that this makes i i'd be curious to know from your perspective if you're okay sharing it yeah kind of how this progression worked for you easy so i i

57:50Adam Schafer:just love taking supplements yeah so if it's a supplement uh then i'm probably gonna experiment with it we got introduced by bell i believe that was his yeah magic bullet yeah and i um Um, uh, fitness has prevented me from probably becoming addicted to other things. Uh, so I've become addicted to fitness, which has its own separate problems, but I, I, I used it once and I'm like, this puts me in a good mood and it's a herbal supplement and I could just take it whenever. And it wasn't that big of a deal. It was like the occasional, whatever, uh, the occasional turned into a, I want to feel like this, you know, more often.

58:26Adam Schafer:And then I want to feel like this all the time. And then that doesn't work. And so you take more. So I've taken it and come off of it probably three times. So I've taken it, come off of it, and then gone long enough period of time and then be like, you know, typically a challenging thing. So recently, I started using it again because my uncle passed away, who I was very close to. And I drove up to, they were up in Roseville. So I drove up in Roseville. It's about two and a half hours away. Very difficult time for the family. This is my godfather, very close to him. A lot of tears. Just very challenging.

58:57Adam Schafer:and I was getting ready to drive home and I'm in the car alone by myself. And it's really hard for me to be alone with those kinds of feelings, especially in a car driving for whatever reason. It's just really difficult. And so, and I'm like, I'm going to get sleepy. This is really tough. I don't got nobody to talk to. You know, just it'll keep me awake. I'm going to go to the smoke shop because that's where you get them here. And I'm just going to grab a single dose of it. That's how I talk myself. I'm just getting a single dose of this so I can make the drive home. I'm not going to get sleepy.

59:33Adam Schafer:It'll keep me awake. And I'll just, you know, put me in a better mood. And so that's what I did. And then, of course, the, you know, we had the funeral. And then we had the, you know, where we bury them. And so it became this, like, kick the can down the road type of thing. And then since then, it became this kind of, like, daily thing. And for me, I'll speak again personally. it's easy to, it was, it became easy to justify like, oh, you know, today it's just me and the kids all day long. We're going to the park. I want to be in a good mood so I can hang on my kids and play with them and be super present.

1:00:06Adam Schafer:So not a bad, that's not a bad thing, but it became like an everyday thing until, you know, recently, um, you know, I was sitting with my wife and now I wrestle with things a lot more just after I became a Christian. So now I see things differently, or Or should I say he helps me see things differently? And we were going to bed and my wife asked me point blank if I was using it. And I lied to her. And I said, no, I'm not. I went to bed and I immediately repented, prayed, just felt terrible. Got no sleep. I just, I felt just convicted. Like I got to tell her the truth. I'm like, she's going to hate me.

1:00:42Adam Schafer:And I told her and she gave me grace right away. And so through that, you know, talking to her and I'm like, all right, I'm going to work my way off of it now. This is like the third time now. where I've taken it and come off of it. I've taken it and come off of it probably 10, 15 times,

1:00:57Sal Di Stefano:way more times.

1:00:58Justin Andrews:What's it feel like when you go back on it?

1:01:01Sal Di Stefano:After you've been off of it? Because what happens when you've been on it for an extended period of time is it just normalizes. You're no longer, at one point -

1:01:10Adam Schafer:Thank God, I've never gotten to that point, thank God.

1:01:12Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, at one point, and that's typically when I know it's time to go the other way, which is like, okay, I don't even feel it anymore. It's like, I'm just having to take this to not be in a bad mood. Or in my case, where it gets really difficult is sleep. It'll disrupt sleep, which was all, this is all similar feelings as the, when I had Vicodin way back in the day was the hardest, one of the hardest parts of kicking that, that addiction is how much it Fs up sleep. I mean, it just, which I'm sure that's for some alcohols. If you go really high in alcohol, it probably disrupted sleep when you had to come off of it like that.

1:01:45Sal Di Stefano:That's the most miserable part is like the daytime. I can deal with the runny nose and the same similar feelings that you feel from any other opiate, but it's the, at night where you're trying to sleep and it's like, oh God, I just need to sleep. I need a couple of these to sleep. And so it ends up being, you're taking it just to get sleep or be normal. That's the hardest part.

1:02:02Rock Recovery Center:You touched on the normalization and Sal, something that you said really jumped out to me too with you. You're taking the kids to the park.

1:02:09Adam Schafer:Yeah.

1:02:10Rock Recovery Center:What a lot of people don't realize, like if you're, if you're a family member, loved one watching your addict alcoholic, what they don't realize is my perception of me shooting heroin. When I'm on heroin, I'm a better parent. I'm that parent at the park playing with my kid because I have the energy. What a lot of people from the outside looking in don't see that our perception is, I actually felt like drugs and alcohol enhanced me, right? I use them for enhancement. One of the examples that I use when I, my first job working in a gym was with LA Fitness in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, but it was a pill mill state.

1:02:49Rock Recovery Center:This was probably in 2003, about when the Oxycontin was, and the Roxycodones were everywhere. But when I first started taking Roxycodones at LA Fitness, my sales shot through the roof. And I remember the manager saying to me, whatever you're doing keep doing it okay but then then my paycheck couldn't keep up with my habit because my tolerance went up yeah next thing you know like i'm in all kinds of trouble with la

1:03:19Adam Schafer:fitness sin feels uh like heaven until you stop until you try to stop that's the hard part too

1:03:23Sal Di Stefano:i think for probably uh family members i understand i was explaining this to katrina because we have family that battle with addiction and stuff like that and uh i was explaining to her that she she would be like oh he must be on one because he's being an asshole i go the opposite is probably true he's probably trying to come off right now which is why he's an asshole and irritated and short and all those things that when you see him all happy and he's all good he's probably on one it's the opposite and so what a tough thing too for both the family and the addict to try and navigate is because a lot of times the addict is trying to pull back or trying to do that thing and they're miserable and it's rough and and they're going through it and they everyone else and the family may think that's the time when he's high.

1:04:03Sal Di Stefano:It's like, no, the opposite is true, is when he's chill and happy and having a good time, he's probably on one. And then when you see him irritable and some of that, maybe he's trying to come off right now.

1:04:12Adam Schafer:You said it earlier about control. That's the illusion. That's for me the illusion, is that I'm managing. I can manage it. And boy, can I lie to myself. I do a good job. I don't take more than this, and I'll back it down. I'll weave into it and weave out of it. It's all bullshit. Or we try and justify it to ourselves. It's all bullshit. Absolutely. And yeah, I never used a lot or whatever, and I'm fine and all that stuff. But it's definitely there. And so I can see the blessing side of it, I guess, that I'm starting to see now is I can understand a little bit of how people go down that path and just keep going, keep going down that path.

1:04:46Rock Recovery Center:Yeah, I can support total loss of control.

1:04:48Adam Schafer:That's it. Yeah, total illusion.

1:04:50Justin Andrews:I don't know how much time we have left, but I want to make sure we had a couple other points to cover. Yeah, I do. One of the things that we see a lot, and I kind of alluded to this with the lady that I spoke to at first on January 2nd, and then he's just now getting to us on late August. A lot of times we tend to kick the can down the road as family members and loved ones and kind of just hope and pray and stick our head in the sand and just like that all this stuff is just going to work its way out like magically. magically. And that's one of the, one of the biggest struggles that Ben and I have to handle and deal with.

1:05:34Justin Andrews:Is it like helping them come to the realization that this isn't going to just go away? In fact, it's going to get worse. And I have another example and I'm not going to use names, but it's a listener of the Mind Pump. And I've been talking to this family since February, and it's really sad from my seat to see where this is heading. And the situation that is happening right now is the husband is, he's having a real hard time drawing boundaries with his wife. And he has a lot of guilt and a lot of shame. And he doesn't want to send his wife away for help. And it's very apparent that she needs it.

1:06:25Justin Andrews:And so the reason I want to bring that up is because from a family member's perspective, you have to do your best and do whatever you can to try and think logically through this. and that goes to the emotional side of it. Oftentimes we allow our emotions to dictate our next move, but a lot of times there is no next move and it's just, I'm just going to stick my head in the sand and pretend that this isn't happening. And that's one of the most frustrating things is because Ben and I know there is a solution here. We have the solution for you and we're here to help you gain this, you know, the solution.

1:07:12Justin Andrews:And for me, that's one of the, the biggest struggles that I have is just this kick in the can down the road. I just want to like, I've offered to some people, I'll literally fly to where you're at, facilitate an intervention, whatever we got to do, you know, to get them here because that's how strong I feel about it. But a lot of times family members and loved ones, they can't get out of their own way.

1:07:39Sal Di Stefano:Ben referred to something that, and this is like the third or fourth time on the podcast, I have forgotten the name. There's a term for it. And maybe Doug can help me find it because I know I've done this before on the show. And I've got to memorize this because there's been so many times in conversation where, and forget what it's called, but it's like where if something is close enough to walk, you'll walk to it. And then there's a distance that's just outside of that. remember when i was trying to explain this uh it's a it's a fallacy yes paradox or something yeah it's a paradox and it's like uh you know if something is within you can walk it's like let's say a mile and it takes you 20 minutes to walk it you're gonna walk it and then if it's uh three miles or five miles you get in the car and drive but if you're right at the the the two and a half is that's the paradox motivated yeah you're not quite motivated to get in the car and go drive that way or whatever.

1:08:33Sal Di Stefano:There's an actual term for this, but this is what you're talking about is that it's not quite bad enough yet to get them to make a decision. We see this in fitness all the time. People are like, oh, I know I should get in shape. It's like, the doctor hasn't told them they have a critical thing going on or they haven't got obese or whatever. And so they're in this weird paradox where they don't move. And it would actually almost be better for them if it got really bad or worse. And I feel like there's probably that a lot with addicts is it's bad, but it's not that bad. It's not bad enough yet where they've done something that's really scared us.

1:09:06Sal Di Stefano:And so I would imagine this is a problem where you get stuck in this paradox all the time where it's not bad enough yet to make a move.

1:09:13Rock Recovery Center:Well, there's a saying, we have the only disease that tells us we don't have it that has to be self-diagnosed. I got another one for you after he's done here's the thing like it doesn't matter what any family or loved one is telling me until the day that i sit down and say yes i'm an alcoholic and addict and i diagnose myself so like a lot of times families will go you know the opposite of what tom's saying putting their head in the dirt they'll just go directly at them and give them all these speeches right yeah at the end of the day this is what we do guys like tom and i who who are addict alcoholics through and through, self-diagnosed, we are uniquely qualified to help.

1:09:56Rock Recovery Center:Because until I had an understanding that the guy sitting in front of me understood what I was talking about, the conversation was going nowhere. So as a loved one, if I have a loved one barking at me that my alcoholism addiction is a problem, I'm going to give you every justification in the world as to why it's not. What we do on our end, I'll sit in front of an alcoholic and addict, and I'm going to tell you about my problem. And then I'm going to wait for you to tell me you have the same thing through relating, so to speak, rather than me coming at you and saying, I will never, ever go to somebody and say, you're an alcoholic.

1:10:33Rock Recovery Center:You are a drug addict. I 1 ,000 % never do that. I allow them to tell me through telling them about myself.

1:10:42Sal Di Stefano:Is that why at the AA meetings, like the famous way you introduce yourself always is by saying, i am adam i'm an alcoholic or what is that part of the is that the reason is like they need to they need to practice saying to themselves they're admitting that they are is that is that why that's uh in a process like because i've seen is that or is that not true is that not happened yeah that's

1:11:00Rock Recovery Center:not true because it's it's actually the only required for membership is a desire to stop drinking yeah so by calling yourself an alcoholic you're basically qualifying yourself to be at that meeting with everybody okay it's more of a qualification thing yeah but there we do it's funny you bring it up because a lot of people hear that and they're like, I'm not going to sit in a meeting and call myself an alcoholic. That's like admitting defeat, right? And one of the things that pissed me off to no end when I was first getting sober, you get some like old dude with like 20 years of sobriety, he would sit down and say, I'm a grateful recovered alcoholic.

1:11:34Rock Recovery Center:And I'm like, grateful for this? Like, what are you talking about? Where prior, I didn't want to call myself an alcoholic today, I am grateful and I'm not afraid to shout it out through the hilltops. I'm an alcoholic. Why? Because as we discussed earlier, I look at it as a superpower now. Going back to, thank God I crossed that line, completely reevaluated my life, started living my life in a different way. We call it a design for living, so to speak. So essentially, we're not teaching you how to get off of drugs and alcohol. We're teaching you how to live life to the point where you don't need it.

1:12:13Justin Andrews:So I forget what you said. It's a disease that you have to. Yeah, there's a saying. I got it, Ben. You ready for this? When the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of change will change. That's kind of what you were alluding to. Doug looked it up,

1:12:31Sal Di Stefano:but it's called a different paradox. Missing the middle? You know what I'm talking about, don't you guys? I do, I remember. Yeah, there was a great interview that Chris Williamson did with somebody and they talked about it and it is a paradox but it's similar to what you're trying to find but that's the point right there

1:12:46Adam Schafer:can you logic an addict into recovery? can you sit down and just break down the facts?

1:12:56Justin Andrews:Ben I feel like we're going to have a differing of opinion here you go first then I don't think you can logic it no I do think when I'm talking to family members and loved ones And Adam, you alluded to this a little bit. I'm always looking for leverage points. Can I logic somebody into recovery? No, but I can leverage them. And the reason I say that is because you oftentimes hear this, oh, well, there's no point in going through all this if they don't want to get clean and sober. If they don't even think that there's a problem, then what's the point in even doing any of this? well that's like me saying you know i don't necessarily believe i i don't believe the doctors that that i'm a diabetic so i'm just gonna keep eating the way that i'm eating right i'm just not gonna do anything no it's silly when i went into treatment i didn't want to go into treatment i didn't want to do any of that stuff you know i was kind of strong-armed into it through leverage points the people around me that cared about me the most that loved me when i couldn't love myself said, look, you have options here.

1:14:05Justin Andrews:Just one is going to be a lot more uncomfortable than the other. You can either be homeless and you can figure out how to live your life moving forward, or you could hop on an airplane and take a one-way flight to Florida. The choice is entirely yours. And fortunately, I chose to go to Florida and get treatment. So it is in a way like I was leveraged in, but I used my own logic to think that, okay, I'm going to go do this. I'm going to go to treatment for 45 days and I'm going to return back to Pennsylvania and I'm going to drink like a gentleman. That's honestly what I thought I was going to do.

1:14:46Justin Andrews:And so this is where I push back on people that say, well, if they don't want it, there's no point in trying. That's the biggest line of BS. Because when I entered into the treatment process and I got surrounded by people like Ben and like every other man that had sobriety time that I didn't have. I became a product of my environment. Right. And, you know, it's you show me your friends. I'll show you your future. You are the average of the sum of the five people you hang around with and stuff like that. I didn't want to go to treatment. I didn't want to get sober. I didn't have a choice, though, in the sense.

1:15:25Justin Andrews:But I put myself in the center. And by doing that, seeds were being planted. And then I started to see, I can do this. And I did.

1:15:37Rock Recovery Center:Short answer, logic, no. There's a line in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous that says, logic is great stuff. We like it. We still like it. But logic only got us so far. And what I'll elaborate on is a guy like me, consequences are not what, that's not what classifies me as an addict and alcoholic. look, consequences won't keep me sober. I mean, I've met people who have seven DUIs, right? Or they've overdosed five, 10 times. And they're like, haven't you had enough consequences? Consequences don't do it. What it has to be, I believe, through my experience for any addict alcoholic is an internal spiritual bottom.

1:16:18Rock Recovery Center:When I'm completely spiritually broken, internally broken is when I make the decision to turn my will and my life over, right? Like the logic thing doesn't work. It was until that day where inside, I just knew I couldn't go on any longer the way that I was. And there's something that we talk about. There's two options. We can die an alcoholic junkie death or accept spiritual help, right? And if you're a guy like me, a lot of times, Neither one sounds good. It's like a dilemma. A dilemma is like two kids are drowning. I can only save one, right? But I'm at that fork in the road. I have to make a decision.

1:16:57Rock Recovery Center:Like I'm going to continue on blotting out my existence the best I can. That's intolerable. Or I'm going to accept spiritual help. And what that looked like for me at the time was just saying to myself, I can't do this on my own. I need somebody else's help. I used somebody else's plan. My sponsor would always say to me, Ben, you know what makes a good plan? I'm like, what, Freddie? He's like, a plan that's not yours, right? Any plan of mine is doomed to fail. And the funny thing is, and speaking to my own personal journey, I found God when I wasn't even looking for God. All I wanted to do was quit drugs and alcohol.

1:17:40Rock Recovery Center:But for me, working 12 steps, and there's all other avenues people can take. I'm not like 12 steps house a monopoly on sobriety. That's not the case. I see people get sober all kinds of ways. But for me, I ended up working these things called 12 steps that are spiritual in nature, and they're very palatable, right? Like I simply, you know, admit that I've been defeated. I'm paraphrasing these. Admit that I've been defeated. I take a moral inventory of myself. The word moral means truth. So I'm taking a good, deep, hard look at who I really am. and then I get to find all those negatives, those shortcomings, those character defects, and I have to ask myself, am I really willing to cast those out?

1:18:24Rock Recovery Center:Because to call it what it is, I had a street survival kit. Lying, manipulating, stealing, all that stuff kept me alive at one point, right? Kept me, I was able to get my drugs because of those things. Do I really want to get rid of them? But again, coming back to that spiritual bottom, I can either cast this out or hang on to it and continue doing what I'm doing. And, you know, I look at it like this. I always talk about the 12th step, which is having had a spiritual awaken as a result of these steps. We tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs, right?

1:19:03Rock Recovery Center:So every step that I worked gave me an opportunity to have what I refer to as a spiritual experience. If I have enough of these spiritual experiences, I will eventually have a spiritual awakening where it's become permanent, right? And here's the thing. A lot of times I was told, like, I would be told even in sobriety circles, Ben, don't give up before the miracle happens, right? I'm a guy who was jamming a needle in my arm up to 50 times a day, and all of a sudden one day I made it 24 hours without doing that. Here I was waiting for a miracle. The miracle already occurred. What I came to realize is God had already intervened.

1:19:46Rock Recovery Center:It was impossible for me to stop, and then somehow I made it 24 hours. I couldn't explain it. I couldn't tell you what was different. But what ends up happening, I worked these 12 steps. Working 12 steps or working any recovery program doesn't get you to the point where a miracle happens. It gets you to the point, it wakes you up to the miracle that already occurred. Right? And that's where, like, my spirituality grew. And I ended up finding a God of my own understanding that I now rely on. And going back to that purpose card I was talking about earlier, now just carrying that message. And I believe that's God's will for me.

1:20:22Rock Recovery Center:You know, the word will means future plans. There's no doubt in my mind that God had a plan for me to continue to help other alcoholics and addicts. And that's where, like, I find my purpose today. and that's the way that God like speaks to me and that's what I feel in my heart longest journey ever took was from my head to my heart right I was trying to figure out this whole God thing and at the end of the day I end up sitting down with my sponsees and I read them the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous we're both breaking down in tears I'm like why the hell are we crying we're hugging each other and in that moment a man who felt useless who had nothing to contribute to the world all of a sudden I realized in that moment I'm like here I've been trying to to figure God out in my head when God just showed up in my heart in that moment.

1:21:09Rock Recovery Center:You know, and it's, so answer your question, logic, logic only gets you so far with this thing. Yeah.

1:21:15Adam Schafer:Yeah. So well said. Good. Well, God bless you guys. Thank you so much for what you guys do. And yeah, I appreciate you guys. I appreciate you reaching out, letting me know when people, you know, of course, with their permission are coming through and it's super, super encouraging for us.

1:21:29Justin Andrews:Yeah, I just want to do a couple homework items before we wrap this up. I do want to shout out the detox. So with our program, we don't do detox, right? So that's going to be your first seven to 10 days, right? When you're kicking whatever it is. So there's a detox facility right by us. It's called Haven Detox. They're the ones that have really come to the calling of anybody that we get, you know, from mind pump listeners and stuff like that, that they're they're doing the scholarships. So and just to put a frame of reference, detox is not cheap. You're looking at about ten thousand dollars for a 10 day detox.

1:22:07Justin Andrews:And as we are sitting here, I got confirmation from and he won't care if I use his name. His name is Clifford. Next Thursday, he's flying into Palm Beach International at 9.30 p.m. And he's the guy with the liver transplant. Oh, wow. He sent me his flight itinerary. So he's coming next week. So he'll go to Haven. He'll go there seven to ten days. And then he'll get over to us and he'll be with us for six months and then hopefully get that liver. All right. And the only other thing that I want to do is just, you know, talk about our podcast. Like this, it's really, we've been doing it for eight years and it's been eight already now.

1:22:56Justin Andrews:Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And I've, I love it. You know, it's, it's, it's something that gives me joy. It gives all of us joy. Myself, Ben, Dr. Tambini, because Dr. Tambini is an addictionologist. So we often refer to ourselves as just two bozos on the bus, me and Ben, right? We're not doctors. We have the experience. And Dr. Tambini has the medical side of it. If you're a family member or a loved one, go there and just start consuming this stuff. And no matter where you're at on the journey, you're going to get something out of it. And then we recently started about eight weeks ago, we started what it's called the Family Reconnect Program.

1:23:43Justin Andrews:And so what we're doing is every Tuesday night at six o 'clock, we go live with the members of the Family Reconnect Program. And right now, I think we have 15 or 16 moms. It's all women. It doesn't have to be. It's just the way that it's shaping out because men generally don't want to talk about this stuff. um, moms, spouses, girlfriends, you know, coming on, have access to myself, Ben, Dr. Tambini, other experts in this field and just giving them support, direction, guidance and stuff like that. And, um, it's been phenomenal. I mean, it's, it's for us, it's great. So it's every Tuesday night, uh, six o 'clock Eastern time is when we, we go and that's at real recovery talk.com forward slash FRC for details on that.

1:24:33Justin Andrews:That's awesome. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah.

1:24:36Adam Schafer:Yeah. This has been great. Again, we appreciate you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Keep doing it, man.

1:24:40Justin Andrews:Yeah. Thanks for having us.

1:24:42Adam Schafer:Thank you for listening to mind pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB super bundle at mind pump media.com. The RGB super bundle includes maps, anabolic maps performance and maps aesthetic nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by sal adam and justin to systematically transform the way your body looks feels and performs with detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos the rgb super bundle is like having sal adam and justin as your own personal trainers but at a fraction of the price the rgb super bundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com if you enjoy this show please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on itunes and by introducing mind pump to your friends and family we thank you for your support and until next time this is mind pump