What Moms Carry: The Science of Letting Go, Alcohol & Raising Resilient Kids with Jessica Lahey

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
When we ask parents why they think kids turn to drugs and
alcohol, parents tend to say peer pressure.
However, when you ask kids the same question why they would
turn to drugs and alcohol, they say stress and anxiety.
That was Jessica Leahy, and thisis ROAR.

(00:22):
Hi everybody. This is Danielle Davies, the
host of Roar. Today's guest is Jessica Leahy,
teacher, writer, podcast host, speaker, all around good person
and author of The Gift of Failure and the Addiction,
Inoculation. Her work explores resilience,
failure and what kids actually learn from the adults around
them. Work that's helped so many women
rethink what it actually means to show up as a parent.

(00:45):
Because while we say we want to raise independent, capable kids,
a lot of us, myself included, feel this constant pressure to
step in, smooth things over and get it right.
And for parents, moms especially, that pressure can
show up in ways we don't always talk about shaping how we
parent, how we cope, what our kids are quietly absorbing from
all of it. So today, we're talking about
that tension and what happens when we start, if we can, to

(01:07):
loosen our grip. Jas, I'm so glad you're here.
Thank you so much for being here.
I'm so happy to be here. I'm, I'm just absolutely
thrilled. I'm going to jump right in
because I have a lot of questions for you.
And like I, I preempted by saying this almost feels like a,
a therapy appointment for myself, but I think it probably
feels like that for a lot of listeners and a lot of parents.

(01:28):
Everybody's like get get to my question because if you're a
parent, your highest stakes, your highest stakes endeavor is
your kids, right? So, so a lot of your work
challenges that an instinct to step in and fix things and
prevent struggle. That instinct is so strong for
parents. Why is it so hard to let our
kids fail? It's, I mean, I talk about this

(01:52):
from a neurological perspective.It just feels like our kid is in
danger. It's, I mean, put really, really
simply, the way our brain deals with the information that
something's going wrong with ourkid is it's just like, oh,
emergency, emergency, step in, do something, fix it.
But that that trigger for when that gets turned on has so moved

(02:13):
into a place where like, Oh my gosh, fix it.
You know, my daughter, I have two kids.
My eldest is 27 and my youngest is 22 and just starting to apply
for jobs. And I'm overwhelmed by how often
I want to step in. Like, like there were little
things just dumb. I mean, and I can't believe I'm

(02:34):
going to admit this kind of stuff, but let me just admit
this kind of stuff so that you can hear that the person who
wrote a book about the gift of failure, about letting your kids
fail and learn from those mistakes, how bad it is in my
head sometimes. Because so there are a bunch of
jobs. I have opinions and it's so hard
to get a job right now. And she and her girlfriend are

(02:55):
both just applying, applying, applying interview and not
getting hearing anything back. It's just, it's a lot.
And then a job came up. I found a job listing that
happened across my my desk and I'm like, Oh my gosh, that's
amazing. That's perfect.
Can I pretend to be her to ask about like when the start date
would be, you know, like all these dumb insane thoughts of

(03:18):
like, wait, you're talking in your own head about pretending
to be your daughter so that you can communicate with that
organization, find out what the start date is so that she can
get a That's bananas. And you would, if you heard
about that coming from someone else, you would be like, what,
what are you doing? So having this constant like

(03:40):
conversation with myself, I haveto, I have a mantra that sort of
comes up, which is do I want this to be done my way or the
perfect way right now? Or do I want her to be able to
do it herself next time? And obviously, obviously she's
22. Obviously she's this is her,
this is even more so than college, which was her thing.

(04:02):
Getting a job like this is not only is this about getting a
job, this is about learning how to get a job.
And I can't be within 1000 yardsof that.
That's, you know, I'm here for advice.
I'm here for proofreading a resume, but I cannot be anywhere
near that. So it's, it is a constant

(04:23):
struggle. Even when my kids are 22 and 27,
I'm constantly like, you know, just churning with how I can
over insert myself and make things happen for them.
It's not it's crazy. I'm glad you actually said it
because I've, I've actually beenlike looking things up for
myself recently where I'm like enmeshed, like parent enmesh me,

(04:44):
like all this stuff because and I'll, I generally try not to
talk about my kids too, too much, but my son is in College
in Hawaii and we live in New Jersey.
So that was like a really big, I'm like, I got this down.
Like I let him go to Hawaii likeI am, I am so proud of myself,

(05:04):
but it's actually made it so much worse because I'm like,
you're even driving when I'm asleep.
Like there's no time that I'm not overly invested in your
safety and well-being so that anytime he calls, you know, he
he might just call to be like, Hey, had a great day.

(05:24):
But if it's anything at all negative, I'm because of the
distance we're or that's just exacerbated it.
But it's it's just interesting because you can make all these
strides, then just one little thing you can, you can step back
and be like, how can I facilitate this for you or
better? Facilitate it.

(05:45):
Here's here's something that happened a couple years ago.
So my husband and I were in San Francisco and got a text from my
eldest said can I call you? And it turns out my eldest got
in a car accident. It was minor, it was nothing,
but it was in a rental car. And he didn't realize we hadn't
had the conversation about how insurance works with rental

(06:07):
cars. And because he thought he was
still on our insurance, he didn't get insurance.
And so he had to. He was asking a lot of
logistical questions about how to handle this.
This is like at the accident scene.
And I said we need to loop your sister into this text thread
because this could happen to herand she needs to learn from this
too. So how can we maximize?

(06:29):
So yeah, we're going to talk youthrough some of this stuff and
help you think about, you know, here's how this works.
And of course, there's so much to be learned from this.
So now, like Ben learned, you know, yeah, you get the car
insurance and you, you know, this is how rental cars work.
And he actually learned a ton from that experience.
And it was, you know, luckily noone was hurt.

(06:50):
But my daughter, if she had missed that whole text thread,
if we hadn't moved that to our group chat off of an individual
chat, then she wouldn't have learned everything that her
brother learned. And that was really important
information for her, too, because in a couple years, she's
going to be eligible to rent cars, too.
So why not make it, you know, a big let's learn from each
other's mistakes kind of situation, too.

(07:12):
So there are so many times when,you know, my first thought,
inevitably my daughter got stuckin our car somewhere.
She, I can't remember what happened.
It was probably a flat tire or something.
Yeah, it was a flat tire. My first thought was I must get
in the car and drive there, You know, like I have to go now to
go rescue her from this. And she ended up learning so

(07:35):
much and being so resourceful and figuring a whole bunch of
different things out and it was great.
It ended up being a great experience.
The person she was going to pickup also learn some stuff about
figuring out an alternate way toget home.
It was like it was great all around.
Was she really nervous and anxious at the time?
And was I nervous and anxious atthe time?
Yeah, and sitting on my hands athome and keeping my car keys out

(07:59):
of reach was. But it was really, really
important. And now she has so much more
confidence around being able to handle stuff.
She. That's less of a worry.
It's it's crazy too, because youcan see it happen when they do
when you do manage to step back and and like how they respond

(08:20):
and there is so much more confidence there.
And I'm thinking of so many instances.
But my son had to bought a new car, bought up new to him car in
Hawaii. And my husband was really like,
don't do it. I don't think it's a good idea.
You're going to you're going to get you don't know what you're
looking for. Like don't do it.
And of course he did it. He bought the car and he needed

(08:42):
it. He and I'm, I'm actually glad
that he bought the car. But almost immediately he called
me and was like, dad was right. The tires have I got to get all
new wheels? I'm like, well, wait, it might,
it might just be low. Like let's, let's start with,
let's start there. And I was like, just call and he
was in a rush and he, you know, he didn't know his way around
and he got and he while on the phone with me, he managed to,

(09:06):
you know, find a garage, drive over to the garage, get air in
his hair. He actually said, he's like, I
have never felt like more of an adult.
And I'm like, yeah, which is so that's what he had to go to
Hawaii. He had to go for his own self
protection because otherwise I'dbe like circling around him.

(09:26):
Well, and I want to weave in, you know, you talk about
parenting and, and this idea of stepping back or, or, you know,
obviously letting kids learn things on their own, But you
were also very you're an expert in addiction and you've written
the addiction inoculation. So I want to kind of weave this
in early and say, you know, you talk not just about prevention
and your own experiences, but also about what kids learn from

(09:49):
the adults around them. How did your understanding of
addiction shape the way you think about parenthood
specifically? You know you're a mom.
Yeah, and actually, I want to back up just a second and make
sure your listeners know. So I'm actually, before I wrote
Gift to Failure, you know, I wasin the classroom for 20 years,
middle school, high school, taught every grade from 6 to 12,
was an education journalist at The New York Times, The

(10:11):
Atlantic, The Washington Post, had a column at The New York
Times for three years on the intersection of parenting and
education. So even though I'm telling all
these anecdotal stories, that's not where my expertise is coming
from. So I'm an expert in, you know,
learning education, that sort ofstuff.
So the what was interesting about the addiction inoculation

(10:33):
is that in the interim between writing the Gift of Failure,
which I got the contract for in 2013 and then it came out in
2015, as soon as I got the contract for the Gift of
failure, I had to get sober. I just, it was time my dad just
confronted me and was like, you know, you're definitely an

(10:55):
alcoholic because he knows because he was raised by 1.
And I talk about substance use prevention as being like a 100
piece puzzle and that 100 piece puzzle of like dropping all
these little clues into place, real information around
substances and what they do to the brain and, and all that sort
of stuff is also part of prevention.
So substance use prevention plays double duty as both

(11:18):
substance use prevention, but asgiving people the information
they're going to need in order to get to recovery faster.
Because you don't that one, that100th piece of the puzzle drops
into place and you realize, oh, I'm in deep Doo Doo.
I need to start, I need to get better.
I'm ready. You know, it can't fall into
place and lose pieces one through 99 are there and so much

(11:42):
of substance use prevention are those pieces.
So my kids, because they were born to my my biological
children are at a higher risk ofdeveloping substance use
disorder. It's just, you know, genetics
and epigenetics are about 50 to 60% of the risk picture.
And so my kid with my kids, it was particularly urgent.

(12:03):
This wasn't a like, oh, I don't need to worry about that.
No one needs it gets to be in the boat of, oh, I don't need to
worry about that. But I really had to get on the
stick and start dealing with it.So a ton changed when I got
sober. And then I looked at my kids and
I'm like, crap. If I grew up with many
generations of people with substance use disorder and I'm

(12:24):
just the latest one, what does that mean for them?
Like I didn't, I didn't know I couldn't find a great resource
that covered both the best practices for parenting and best
practices for education. So I'm very fortunate I got to
write that book. So I did a couple of years of
research before I even started writing that book.
Because the way non fiction publishing works is you have to

(12:45):
sell a proposal and that proposal is a really deep
outline of a book with chapter summaries and a sample chapter
and all that stuff. So it took me about two years to
research and write the proposal and sell the book.
And that's been, I think I'm very proud of the gift of
failure, but I think the addiction inoculation was the

(13:05):
book I was meant to write. That's like my, that is what has
become my life's work and getting to, to help people talk
about substance use prevention, even the people who don't want
to talk about substance use prevention to find ways into
that conversation to ease that burden, to ease the, that first
hurdle into the conversation that's become sort of my life's

(13:28):
work again. And, and I absolutely love it.
And I absolutely adore not just talking to the.
So when I go into like a school or community organization, I
often get to talk to the kids during the day.
And then sometimes I'll talk to teachers in the afternoon at a
school and then in the evening Italk to community.
And my job is to start conversations, to give people

(13:50):
the vocabulary to have conversations about these
really, really important topics like substance use prevention.
And those two things go hand in hand with gift of failure.
I mean, there's a, I'm sorry to mix so many metaphors, but
there's a dovetail between gift of failure and addiction,
inoculation around competence, self efficacy, self advocacy,

(14:11):
the feeling that the actions youtake can affect change and
having making a mistake or not being able to do something and
having to struggle to learn how to do it and then mastering it.
That feeling right there of mastery, competence, self
building, self efficacy is really preventative against

(14:31):
substance use disorder and it's an amazing source of dopamine in
the brain. So when you achieve something
that you didn't think you could do or that you've had to work
hard to figure out, the dopaminejust gets released in the brain.
And that's a wonderful natural source of dopamine, rather than
having to go look for it somewhere else.
OK, real quick, if you're listening and thinking more

(14:52):
women should be hearing conversations like this, the
best way to support the show is just to follow or subscribe
wherever you are. It really does help it reach
more people. Thanks so much.
OK, back to the show. Let me ask you a question.
So I know and, and, and I know like, and I appreciate that you
have all the science background and that you're actually able to
speak about it both ways, right?Because if I had an audience who

(15:14):
is a scientific audience, you could speak about it that way.
And I, if I don't and I, and since I'm not, I imagine my
listeners aren't either. You're able to talk about it
anecdotally and and kind of. And I mention it.
I mention it very specifically because I think there are a lot
of people who put themselves outas experts on topics and then
are absolutely willing to, you know, whether it's an expert who
speaks outside of their expertise at that I think is

(15:38):
just as damaging as someone who's willing to just put
themselves out there as an expert and doesn't have, you
know, the research cred behind them.
So I just like to make sure it'snot me talking out of my butt.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
No, I, I'm glad because I didn'tinclude that and I think that's
really important specifically asI ask you the next question,

(15:58):
because especially regarding addiction.
Well, both of these things really, there's a real pushback
from just every woman that I know, you know, I know so many
women who are first of all, likechecking their kids 60,000
grades. Are they did they ask this
teacher that? They're all over it and it's
hard to be a parent, you know, Imean, again, this is totally

(16:18):
anecdotal. This is no research.
This is just my experience. It is hard.
It is no joke. It is a lot of work and and I
think any parent will say that, but the addiction part also,
there's pushback because we are a culture that that really touts
the use of alcohol. And we have normalized so much

(16:38):
things like I need a drink aftertoday or wine mom culture.
I mean, yeah, I haven't drank ineight months.
And just last night I said to myhusband, I'm like, you know what
I could really use right now? He's a really big glass of wine.
I was like. Really not gonna do it.
It's really complicated not having an escape hatch.

(16:59):
I've had to, yeah, I've had to learn all kinds of stuff.
But we actually, it's funny you say that because I was, you
know, I get a lot of questions about sort of the mom, mommy,
wine culture, all that sort of stuff.
But then one, you stop drinking.And especially when you learn a
lot about marketing and you learn about how alcohol is
marketed to us. Occasionally you'll be watching

(17:20):
a show or a movie and you're like, whoa, that's just, that's
a lot, not just a lot of drinking, but a lot of messaging
that, that is the obvious answer.
And so, OK, so my, my guilty pleasure watch lately has been
the show, the Madison. It's set in Montana.
It's just, it's light and, and nothing and wonderful and, and

(17:41):
it's, it's sad, but it's also anyway, at every single turn,
when anything gets a little bit hard or complicated, someone
will reach into a bag and pull out like tiny airplane.
Like, here's how I got through my divorce.
And she pulls like 6 little vodka bottles out of her purse,
you know, in order to go to therapy, she and her therapist

(18:03):
get drunk together. It's like and, and fine.
And I have no problem with people who don't have a problem
with alcohol drinking. On the other hand, it's really
worrisome to me that kids are getting the message that that
that is the obvious first stop to managing.

(18:25):
You know, you go to therapist, you're going to drink with your
therapist, you have problems that you got to handle a grown
up problem. You drink at it.
And that's what worries me. And to step it back and sort of
give it to you from a real worldperspective.
So whenever I speak at a school or community organization, I
make a little welcome video and I give everyone my e-mail
address so that they can ask me questions ahead of time or tell

(18:47):
me what they want me to talk about.
And I get tons and tons of questions.
And then when I'm doing the event, I give people my e-mail
address again. And inevitably the most amazing
questions come from the kids. Lately I've been getting a lot
of questions about is it OK thatmy parents give me melatonin
every night to sleep? And is.

(19:08):
And so that's really two separate questions.
Is there a problem with taking melatonin every night to sleep?
And the answer is it's not the worst thing in the world, but
also your body will will change its melatonin release in order
because you're supplementing. But the real could, the real
issue for me there is when you give kids something every single

(19:29):
night in order to have a normally bought normal bodily
function, something that is normal and natural and something
we're supposed to be able to do.What you're telling them is
here's a medication for this AB so that you need to have for
this absolutely normal human function.
And a lot of parents are giving melatonin in lieu of looking at

(19:52):
sort of evening bedtime sleep hygiene.
By the way, my very, very favorite book about this is by
Lisa L Lewis and it's called TheSleep Deprived Teen.
It's fantastic. But yeah, those things worry me.
And it's not just messaging about like drink at that
problem. It's messaging of you're nervous

(20:14):
on a flight, you take a Xanax, you're nervous about this, you
do that. You know, those sorts of
regular, totally normalized messaging, especially around
alcohol, because why on earth are we talking about drugs and
alcohol? Alcohol is a drug.
Why aren't we just talking aboutdrugs?
Somehow alcohol gets moved out of that box because it's so
normalized in our society, especially around things like

(20:35):
sports or, you know, dating. And, you know, there's all sorts
of places where alcohol is just an totally accepted, totally
normal part of our human existence.
And some of those things just you were modeling some weird
behaviors for kids, some maladaptive behaviors for kids.

(20:57):
Yeah, and part of me and I, I have to say, you know, you're
it's funny. You're talking about seeing it
on a show years ago when I was involved in politics, I used to
love the show Scandal. Talk about taking a break from
your daily. Let's just continue stressing
out about this. But she was famous for always
pouring a, a humongous glass of red wine and eating popcorn.

(21:18):
Well, I, I mean, it was like if the show was on, it was so,
yeah, it was marketed so well. It seems like this is.
And I feel like every time I watched it, I had a glass of red
wine and I skipped the popcorn. Of course, that was not nearly
as compelling, but I just and and I'm a grown adult who sees

(21:39):
what's happening. So when you when you aim this
towards children or when they see us, you know, I've seen, God
forbid, my own kids have said tome, oh, mom, you should have a
glass of wine. Like, you know, that's that's
probably well, that's surely notsignaling anything good.
Can I ask you a question? I know that in other countries,
this is not anything that I was planning to ask you.

(22:00):
So bear with me. In other countries, you know,
alcohol is particularly wine is like a much more universally.
You know where I'm going. You're you're dancing into one
of the best, most beloved questions that I get So and the
biggest myth I. Yes, bust it, bust it.
Oh, OK people. They'll say kids drink alcohol

(22:21):
when they're 16. Kids drink and the pub in
Ireland or have wine with their lunch in Italy.
Yeah. Yeah, OK, so if you, so this is
if anyone's going to get mad at me about anything.
And keep in mind I work very hard to push people just a
little bit to think in a new way.
But if people get angry at me, then they stop listening and

(22:42):
then I'm not doing my job well, right.
So I, I work really hard to balance that.
The thing the people get most upset with me about is the idea,
and I write about it in the addiction inoculation that, you
know, a lot of people have theirtwo big myths in parenting and
one of them around alcohol. And one of them is that if you
give your kids sips that they'llgrow up to be moderate drinkers,

(23:04):
that somehow, if you model moderation for them, that it
will be no big deal and they won't flip out and go nuts and
drink a ton the first time. It's available to them freely.
And I 100% bought, bought into that and was a fan of that.
And you know, I'm a very, because I love to read.

(23:25):
I'm a very sort of, I've romanticized alcohol and I talk
about this in the addiction inoculation as well.
And in fact, one of the hardest things for me is when I'm
watching a show and I'm watchingsomeone have a glass of wine to
relax. I don't miss the wine exactly,
but I miss that hatch. I miss that, you know, I miss my

(23:46):
ability to have that. But I can't have one glass of
wine. That's just not how I work.
OK, so the European moderation myth.
Here's the problem with the European moderation myth.
According to the World Health Organization, Europe, Europe has
the European region as a whole has the highest rates of disease
and death attributable to alcohol.

(24:06):
So when you look at disease burden attributable to alcohol
and death cause of death, all cause of death alcohol, they
they get both of those awards, right.
If you look at the highest drinking, the heaviest drinking
countries in the world, seven out of the top ten are in the
European region, however, are. So then people get very heated.

(24:29):
I made a video about this. I have these like 400 different
videos at my website on all topics from both books.
So I made the videos, by the way, that's awesome.
They're really short. They're like 90 seconds.
I made that video. And then I had to make like 6
follow up videos because people were so pissed off with me and I
had to break down like every country.
And who's the exception? And so you brought up a couple

(24:50):
interesting things, which is #1 yes, there are exceptions.
What's fascinating about the exception countries is that
they, generally speaking, it's not acceptable to be really
falling over drunk in public. That's just not a thing.
So for example, Italy has one ofthe higher rates of daily

(25:11):
drinking in the world in the, inthe European region, sorry, but
one of the lower rates of disease and death attributable
to alcohol. So what you're seeing there is
more of a moderation culture than than, you know, imbibing
until you fall over. Whereas if you look at places
like the UK, when you look at places like, you know, Ireland,

(25:35):
when you look at places like, you know, some of the other
countries that have a heavier disease and death burden, You
know, I was in, I was in Northern Ireland a bunch of
years ago when I was still teaching full time.
And I had like my parent and mother hat on watching these
kids who have essentially alcohol poisoning laying in the

(25:57):
street on a weekend night. And I just want to scoop them
all up and take them to the hospital.
And I went to school in England for a couple of years.
I, you know, it's just a part ofthe culture to get really
hammered and, and drinking is a big part of the social thing.
So when you look at the exceptions, what we're talking
about are places that have created culture where it's just
not cool to be falling over drunk.

(26:18):
And that is sort of proof that we can build cultures on the
family level, on the state level, on the school level, on
the community level around alcohol, right?
The other thing we have to keep in mind here is that just
modeling moderation for someone like me who can't learn
moderation is not going to have any effect.
Like you can model moderation for me all day long and it's not

(26:41):
going to have any effect on whether or not I can moderate
alcohol. Plus I have this genetic
predisposition and all sorts of other things.
The other big myth is, by the way, is the kids are going to
drink anyway. And so therefore I might as well
have them to my house, take awayeveryone's keys, they'll be
safe. They can drink here, no one can
drive. And the problem with that is
that kids who do not, kids who grow up in a family without any

(27:04):
consistent messaging around drinking, like the fact that
it's not that you're not supposed to drink, most people
say until it's legal for you. I like to stay away from that as
a reason because that's a just because answer.
And teenagers aren't big into just because answers.
I like to say until your brain is done developing, which
happens in the early to mid 20s.So no, you can't drink until we

(27:27):
don't drink in this house. Until your brain is done
developing. Kids who don't grow up with that
message are 70% more likely to start drinking early.
This is based on the study that just came out about 6 weeks ago
from a huge data set. The other thing we know is
generally speaking, kids who grew up in a in a family with a

(27:47):
consistent and clear message of no, not until your brain is done
developing and kids have information on what's happening
with their brain. Those kids just have much lower
rates of of alcohol use, drug and alcohol use.
Whereas kids who grew up in a permissive atmosphere around
drugs and alcohol have much higher rates of developing
substance use disorder and drinking early are using early.

(28:10):
And the reason for that is that the younger a kid is when they
first start using, the higher their lifelong risk of
developing substance use disorder by big numbers, not by
small amounts. So understanding that the reason
I repeat constantly delay, delay, delay is not just about
brain development, which is super important because

(28:31):
adolescent drinking and drug useis not the same thing as adult
drinking and drug use. Once that brain is done
developing, it's much less dangerous for the brain to use
drugs and alcohol. But when the adolescent
cognitive development is happening, which again doesn't,
that door doesn't really creak shut slowly until the early to
mid 20s. It's much more dangerous short

(28:53):
term and long term damage to thebrain.
We see it in lots of different substances and lots of different
studies and brain studies. Anyway, lots of reasons that
those two myths and when you're doing the thing with, you know,
having other people's kids over to drink in the basement, when
you take the keys away, not onlyare you raising your own kids
risk of developing substance usedisorder over their lifetime

(29:15):
because they're more likely to start early, you're raising
their peers risk as well. Because peer cohort is such an
important part of the substance use prevention picture.
Not just because kids are more likely to do drugs and alcohol
if their friends are more likelyto do drugs and alcohol and or
sorry if their friends are doingdrugs and alcohol.
Your kids perception of how risky it is drops if they see

(29:41):
their parents or their friends doing drugs and alcohol.
And I haven't seen these studies, but I would love to
know if kids are seeing it on Scandal and the Madison and all
these different places and they're seeing that that's a
legitimate coping mechanism. Does their perception of the
dangers of alcohol and drugs drop?
Probably. I mean, it's we know if they see

(30:02):
it in their own family and in their peer group that it drops.
So, you know, we want them to have a healthy understanding of
the actual risk, not the anyway,we want them to understand the
real risks. OK, this leads me to two
questions. Sure, questions Based on that,
I'm going to ask you the first one first.

(30:22):
There's I, I feel again, this isnot scientific.
This is my own observation. I feel like I see a connection
and I don't tell me what you think when you look at it.
Do you see this connection between parents, the pressure to
do it right, to not fail your kids to have them have the best

(30:42):
go at it, whatever that looks like for you.
And how we cope with that pressure, IE possibly turning to
drink. It almost feels it feels like it
feeds into it because you know, and and then if your kid has a
bad day, that pressure is even more of I think I'll have a
drink because you're, you're kind of coping with your own

(31:03):
failure or theirs or your perceived.
Research. Yeah, please.
So a couple of years ago, we have a couple of really huge,
wonderful data sets. We have the Monitoring the
Future data set that comes out of University of Michigan.
Love it, love it, love it. Big dork.
Every time that study that that survey comes out, it's comes out
in a big report once a year. I'm like, woo Hoo, let's read it

(31:26):
all. And then there's a new, there's
a cohort that's been going for acouple years called the ABCD
survey. That one's massive.
That's going to give us so much amazing research as we move
through. So we're getting data out of
those. We're getting papers out of
those data sets all the time. And what?
And just in the last year, what we know is when we ask parents

(31:50):
why they think kids turn to drugs and alcohol, parents tend
to say peer pressure. We would love to believe it's
because the bad kid influenced my kid, right?
Oh, totally, totally right. And peer cohort is definitely
part of it. It's the reason there's an
entire chapter on peers in the addiction inoculation.
However, when you ask kids the same question, why they would

(32:13):
turn to drugs and alcohol, they say stress and anxiety.
So when you look at then if you start looking at what's causing
the stress and anxiety for them,that feeling of needing to be
perfect and needing to succeed, needing to fulfill their parents
hopes and dreams and wish for what they want their kids to be,
all that sort of stuff, living up to.

(32:35):
And then, you know, for their own part, you know, being
financially self-sufficient, that's really scary.
Adulting is really scary. You know, we're also
specifically talking about a group of kids that's just come
out of COVID. My 22 year old, you know, spent
a lot of high school in, you know, doing COVID stuff and not
being able to go on dates or seefriends or do all that stuff.

(32:58):
So if that's true, if that you know, when we ask kids and they
say, yeah, it's stress and anxiety then, and I am not one
of those people who's like, oh, let's eliminate all stress and
anxiety. But what I do know and thank
goodness for books like Lisa Damore's Under Pressure,
wonderful book about helping reframe stress and anxiety for

(33:19):
kids. Is this stress is an anxiety our
part of what keeps us moving forward motivation.
So I use the analogy a lot with kids like yes, sometimes, like
when I'm on deadline, I am stressed out because I have a
deadline. But what I also know is that I'm
better with the deadline. I'm sharper.

(33:40):
I'm more on task. So I have a literary agent and
she's wonderful and she doesn't tend to pressure me, but what I
will do is e-mail her and say I will have chapter 6 to you by
Friday. That's I made that deadline up.
It's totally of my own making, but she's gonna hold me to it.
And that's why I also have two friends.

(34:02):
I have a rabbit behind me and wecall it our accountability
Bunny. I love that.
It's accountability buddy. I have two, not only do I have
two best friends who will hold me to deadlines if I ask them
to, I also have a larger group of sort of colleaguey peer
friend group who once a year we sort of talk about deadlines and

(34:24):
goals and things like that and they'll hold me to them.
And those are all really important.
Is it stressful that I and especially when I was hosting
the podcast a lot, I was constantly talking about my
goals for the year. And then so I'm putting like my
own personally made deadlines out into the world.
It would be a a lot less stressful if I would tell no one
about that because then if I screw it up or if I don't make

(34:46):
it, I'm less embarrassed. I guess fewer people will hold
me to it. But it's really helpful for me.
So if we can model for our kids that some stress is really,
really useful and it's very important.
The other thing we need to thinkabout is, and when we talk about
risk factors, a lot of parents say, well, I don't want to tell
my kid that they have a genetic predisposition for substance use

(35:07):
disorder because that'll freak them out, right?
Or they might think, well, it's going to be this way anyway, so
I might as well just do it. We would never talk that way, by
the way, about like risk for hypertension or diabetes or, you
know, all of these other health risks that it's important that
we know what our risk factors are so that we can eat well or

(35:28):
choose to exercise or whatever that thing is.
The other, but the other thing is that when we, I talk about
this a little bit in the addiction inoculation that we
moved during a really risky period of time for my daughter,
transitions are a riskier time for developing, for use,
starting to use substances. And I was talking to doctor Dan

(35:50):
Siegel, one of my heroes, and I told him how worried I was about
my particular child's risk factors and the fact that we
moved her during this particularly risky time.
And he said, Jess, I feel like Ishouldn't have to remind you
that one of the main purposes ofadolescence and the adolescent
brain development that's going on is to seek out novelty.

(36:11):
And every time you achieve something new, every time you
learn a new skill, every time you go out there and become
competent in something new, which is what adolescents are
driven to do naturally, you not only get that wonderful hit of
dopamine, but you build your sense of competence and self
efficacy and mastery. And that's really great.

(36:32):
So you can choose to keep framing this as a negative as
risk, risk, risk, risk, which you're definitely transmitting
to your kid. Or you could choose use this as
an opportunity to think about like what novel experiences can
I push her toward to help her develop more competence and more
mastery and more feelings of self efficacy.

(36:52):
And just to define my term, selfefficacy is the feeling, the
understanding that something around you is not the way you
want it to be. This relationship isn't working
for me. My teacher doesn't like me.
Whatever and feeling like if youtake believing that if you take
action that you can affect change.

(37:12):
It's like a cross between like hope and competence.
Self efficacy is the belief thatI that my world whatever can be
better and that I have the powerto change it if I take action.
And kids who ended up in my rehab classroom, I taught in a
rehab for adolescence for five years.
The kids in my rehab classroom all had incredibly low levels of

(37:34):
self efficacy. Like, why bother?
Why bother staying sober? Like nothing in my world is
going to change. I can't, I can't affect change
in my life. I'm stuck in this group home.
I have abusive parents. I don't know where my next meals
coming from. And none of that comes down to,
you know, my ability to change anything.
So the more self efficacy we cangive kids, the better.

(37:54):
That was a very long winded answer.
To your no, no, no, I I'm lovingit, I'm loving it.
I may, I'm like writing notes down everywhere.
And then the other question thatI wanted to pull out of that
first thing that you said is, you know, you were talking about
the sips and giving the sips of alcohol and it's proven to not
actually be a great thing at all.
And So what about the parents who've already done that?
What if we're what if we're doing this?

(38:16):
Yes, like myself, obviously. This is why I want to know.
What about the parents who've already said, oh, a couple sips
here? You know you, you know you.
You're going to be responsible about it though.
This is how we learn to be responsible.
What do you do when you feel like you've already messed the
whole thing up? The entire premise of The Gift
of Failure is that we do the best we can.

(38:37):
This is what we want to model for kids and teach kids.
We do the best we can with the information we have and if we
learn how to do better, we say we apologize if we need to or
we, you know, explain if we needto and then we move forward with
the new information doing better.
So yes, my eldest was allowed sips.

(38:58):
I put some wine on his tongue. Excuse me, I think as a baby
because it was a really nice bottle of wine and I figured,
you know, he the first taste of wine should be this really nice
bottle of wine. So what I did, and really who it
affected was my daughter becauseshe was still in the house.
My son was off at college at thetime, I think, or yeah, at

(39:18):
college. And for my daughter, you know,
it kind of, she felt it was a little unfair for her because
the rules changed. And I didn't just RIP the carpet
out from under her and say, RIP the rug out from under and say,
you know, hi, ha ha, new rules. What I did was teach her what I
know about the adolescent brain and the damage and the risk

(39:39):
factors and the statistics and said, and therefore the rule in
this house is no open containersin our house like sitting around
because that's what my husband does for me.
Just as a because he cares aboutme and he doesn't want me to
have to think about an open container.
So if he has a beer with dinner,he finishes it or pours the rest

(40:01):
out and. No, you can't use drugs or
alcohol until your brain is donedeveloping because you know what
I know? And here's all this great
information on that you need to have in order to make good
decisions. And did it feel a little unfair?
Maybe. But and then there were all
kinds of things I was worried about.

(40:21):
Like, am I just, you know, she had a she had a friend come home
for Thanksgiving from college with her one year.
And this friend lives in a country somewhere else where the
drinking age is 18. So we're having my my husband
and my dad are having a little champagne.
My mom doesn't drink, I don't drink.

(40:44):
My eldest has been drinking age for a bunch of years.
And so when it came to pouring champagne glasses, I said to the
friend, I said, I'm, you know, Iknow this is a little weird
because the drinking age in yourcountry is 18.
But in this house, we don't drink until we're above the
legal age. And therefore your brain is

(41:04):
she's done developing. I was petrified about this.
And you could see the tension inmy daughters face.
She's like, is this gonna be weird?
Oh my God. Oh my God, my mom is such a
freak. And I was like, the kid was
like, okay, it just wasn't a deal.
It wasn't, it wasn't a deal. I don't know.
Maybe there was lots of talk back at the college once they

(41:26):
were back there about what a freak Phoebe's mom is.
But. But I don't care.
That's our rule, you know? And I would love to be the fun,
you know, we all want to be likethe, the fun cool parent with
the cool hangout house. And wouldn't it be more likely
the kids would hang out at our house if we were a little more
LAX about drugs and alcohol, especially since, you know, weed

(41:50):
is legal in this state? Yeah, maybe.
But you know, I'm sorry, the risk to my kids is just too
high. But given their genetics, and
given what I know about the adolescent brain and substance
use, it just is. Quick pause because if you're
listening to Roar, I have a feeling you're exactly the kind
of person I write for. I send out a sub stack

(42:10):
newsletter where I go a little deeper, more personal stories,
behind the scenes thoughts, and honestly some of the things we
don't always say out loud here. If you want to stay connected
between episodes, you can find it at Roar with
danielledavies.substack.com. I'd love to have you there.
And now back to your regularly scheduled podcast.

(42:31):
How do you like, why am I not finding the word?
I don't know menopause, The how do you find the middle ground
between, you know, having a house where you're like, I am so
off topic, but having a house, but I need to know how do you
have between, you know, being the house where you're like,
we're not going to drink until our brains are fully developed

(42:52):
And the fact that sometimes, youknow, I'm constantly like, you
will not text and drive. You will not text and drive,
right? Seeing driving is bad.
You're a danger. Then I find out my kid texted
and drove and I'm like, you know, I, I lose my mind.
So sometimes they're going to dowhat I don't want them to do.
They're going to, we're going togo against my wisdom and I

(43:13):
always am like I'm the house. I will pick you up.
I will not ask any questions because I would rather obviously
they live through through their mistake.
How do you kind of find that middle ground?
So taking there's, I compare it to Here's what we don't want to
do. What we don't want to do is use
like language from purity culture of like my husband grew

(43:37):
up in Utah and he a lot of the girls he grew up with, we're
told something to the equivalentof losing your virginity makes
you like a used piece of gum. No one's going to want to chew
on that used piece of gum if you've lost your virginity.
So that's what we don't want. We don't want this all or
nothing for, let alone that that's all made-up BS, whatever.

(43:59):
What we do want is for kids to understand that, yeah, we, we
screw up. Like this is a really important
message also in the recovery world, because in for
adolescents who are recovering, relapse is just part of it.
Like they just do relapse. The, the number of kid people
who get sober young and never relapse is really small.

(44:21):
So what we need kids to understand is that's not, that's
not a fatal error. A friend that I've been sort of,
I text back and forth with, I sort of helped them get to a
place where they knew they needed to get better and, and
stop drinking. And they relapsed a lot at the
beginning. And they were always ashamed.

(44:42):
But they would text me and I would say, OK, what'd we learn?
What did we learn from this relapse?
Like you, you know, you feel like you've just lost
everything, but you haven't, youlearned so much in the interim,
let alone you learned what it feels like when you move toward
a relapse so that you can maybe now build some skills to sort of

(45:02):
intercept, intercept those thoughts that weird, like many
of us find that we were in our our addicted brain way before we
ever pick up that first drink torelapse or that first whatever.
So for kids, it's really important for them to understand
that to come at it without judgment because what we really,
really need is to keep keep communication going.

(45:24):
We do not want to shut down communication.
So this is not OK. But I love you.
I support you. Thank you for making a really
good decision about calling me like that means the world to me.
I would much rather you make this mistake and yet, and trust
me and your safety so that we keep having this conversation.
But this is not a fatal flaw. You're not like ruined now.

(45:49):
It just means we're going to tryto take what we learned from
this experience to try to do better next time.
And you know, if if they're really talking to you, which
would be great and both the giftof failure and the addiction
inoculation talk a lot about keeping communication going.
There's also a wonderful book byRobin Silverman called talk to

(46:09):
kids about any how to talk to kids about anything.
And she includes a whole bunch in there about, you know, all
the normal things that are really hard to talk to kids
about. There's a couple of great books
on that. Making sure that you're
preserving the communication is super important because that's
their lifeline to you. And even in college, college

(46:32):
kids report that they still trust their parents advice
around health decision making. And this falls under decision
making around health. So and my favorite part,
frankly, of the gift of the addiction inoculation isn't
technically one that I came up with on my own.
I asked a whole bunch of young adults and adolescents to give

(46:53):
me their favorite excuses that they use when they don't want to
use or drink at a party or when they're out or one with their
friends. And, and, and not feel like a
big dweeb. And so there's like 2 1/2 pages
of these excuses that kids came to me with for, you know,
understanding that no is a complete sentence.

(47:14):
And that's cool. But other excuses that they've
used or could use that they've sort of loaded up for if they
don't want to lose face, but they also just don't want to
use. And it's, they're really good.
They're really cool. That is awesome.
I, I, well, first of all, I'd love to see that.
And it's funny because I actually have a college reunion
coming up this summer and everybody's like, we're going to

(47:36):
go here and we're going to go there and it's walking distance
to the bars. You know, I'm like, I, I and
it's actually, and I, I'm actually like thinking in my
head, do I say I don't drink? Do I just not drink?
I just, it's, it's interesting because it comes up no matter
what your age like and especially for kids.
Yeah, it came up on threads justthe other day.
Someone said, what do you say when you don't want to drink?

(47:58):
And all these people had like these cryptic whatever.
I'm like, I just say I'm an alcoholic, you know, and then
but I also don't want, you know,for me, it's just I've, you have
to understand if you read addiction inoculation, you
understand that I was raised in a household with someone with
substance use disorder where we were not allowed to talk about
it. In fact, we were gas lit.

(48:19):
We were told that what we were seeing was not what we were
seeing. And I think that has put in me
this need to be really honest and also recovery.
You have to be really honest when you're a recovery.
And I'm not saying that means you go out there and you make
other people feel uncomfortable.But for me, every single time
I've ever in public said that I'm an alcoholic or that I'm in

(48:40):
recovery, that has led to at least one conversation.
And sometimes way down the road,someone remembers, oh, that that
just like he, that author personI saw at that thing and she gave
us our e-mail or I could find her on her website.
I'm just going to reach out to her.
And there are a bunch of conversations that I'm having
with people right now who through text or e-mail that just

(49:02):
reached out and some of them aren't ready to say why they've
reached out yet, but I know why they reached out.
The person I was talking about who kept relapsing, he texted me
or DM Ed me through social mediaof someone I knew from my
childhood for, I don't know, twoyears before he finally admitted
that the reason he had reached out to me was that he knew he

(49:23):
needed to stop and he just didn't know how.
And then two years in, he was finally ready.
And that's, you know, that's an incredible honor for me being
really honest about that has been and I feel like as a white
woman of privilege. And, you know, there are so many

(49:44):
people who can't say it. It's just another strike against
them. Like if I was a single mom of
color, like so many people mighthold that against me.
And it's, and I feel like if I can make it easier for someone
for whom saying that they have substance use disorder is a
massive hurdle for them. I'm going to keep saying it

(50:06):
until it's OK for everybody to say it.
It it. If it's OK for me, then I need
to be saying it more and more and more so that I can pave the
way for other people to be able to say it.
I feel like, you know, so much of your work is obviously for
the next generation. You're thinking about children
and raising them in your historyas an educator and as a parent
and, and all of this, it's, it'sto pay it forward, right?

(50:30):
These kids, you want to, we wantto do our Best Buy them.
But it's also you're helping theoriginal people, the parents
that the generation who's could do better or worse or could, you
know, learn from our mistakes, Ifeel.
Like, and it's, it's a real thing in a family because if, if
my kids and my niece's, let's say hypothetically, none of them

(50:50):
end up developing substance use disorder.
Like it doesn't mean that it's not in their genetics or their
epigenetics, but it does mean that that's been interrupted,
right? So I grew up with someone with
substance use disorder and it was not fun.
It was not a good thing. But at least for my niece's,
because my sister does not have substance use disorder, at least

(51:12):
for my niece's and for my kids, that's been interrupted because
I got better when my kids were fairly young.
So they have not had to witness an alcoholic parent, right.
So, and by the way, and I'm going to borrow this in the
borrow it in the sense that I amso intrigued and respected and
hopefully not in a sense of cultural appropriation, but I

(51:34):
get to learn so much when I go to these big conferences about
substance use prevention and recovery.
And I just came home from 1:00 one of those conferences and
they were talking about recoveryin tribal and indigenous
communities. And recovery there looks a
little bit different from recovery for someone like me,
because what they're trying to do there is make people whole

(51:59):
again. And that includes returning them
to their culture. And they have a real belief
around, they have this seven generation idea that the things
we're trying to do today will affect people 7 generations
down. And this substance use
prevention cannot be like we cannot have a short, we can't
have a short term lens. That's not even how you say

(52:22):
that, but this is something thatchanges slowly over time.
But look how far we've come. I mean substance use, if you
look at the, I have all these tables of statistics around like
lifetime abstaining from drugs and alcohol and past month use
and all that sort of stuff for adolescents.
We are, we have been in a / a decade long decline in substance

(52:46):
use among adolescents, not so much emerging adults, but among
adolescents. And that's because we know
prevention works. But ten years ago it would have
been, you know, if we look just at each year's incremental
change, that's frustrating. We got to look over longer
periods of time, whether that's 7 generations and I love that
idea or whether that's just interrupting it with my

(53:09):
generation so that my kids, kidscan have a better shot at not
developing substance use disorder during their lifetime.
We have to be thinking head, this has got to be about them.
Do you think that it's helpful that there are so many at first
of all, there's like this whole sober curious moment going on.
And I think that's great. But I also so my sister, who

(53:30):
won't mind that I'm sharing thisis an addict.
And so she's been in recovery for years and she can't.
OK. And I just, I don't drink, but
our reasons for this are very different.
So I didn't really have a, a problem, so to speak.
I felt like it added to my anxiety.
And I was like, you know what? This is just not helpful in my

(53:51):
life, so I'm just gonna knock itoff.
And that was that. My sister, however, had a
problem with it. And so she through struggle,
stopped having a problem with it, which just stopped using it
always has a problem. But there's a lot of mocktails
on the market, right? And I love a mocktail.
I'm like, and I and it, it kind of gives you that sense of it's

(54:14):
almost like if you're drinking adecaf coffee, you're not really,
you're not. It's the, it's the act of it.
It's the ritual of I'm going to sit down and have this, this
warm drink. And so I love a mocktail for
that, that feeling, whereas my sister is like, I'm not having a
mocktail because that feeling isnothing I should be near ever in

(54:34):
my life. Do you see that in any way
helping or hurting? How, how, what do you think of
that? I'm just curious.
The evidence on that is really not clear.
We don't have great studies on it.
It's really an individual thing.So for me, mocktails.
So I did a lot of my drinking while I was preparing dinner

(54:54):
when before my husband was home,so I could get a really good
buzz on before he ever got home.So for me, drinking something
fancy while making dinner is a thing for me.
So now I, I live on, I have a very, very, very small farm
slash very humongous garden and I make a lot of like syrups,

(55:17):
Berry Berry syrups and things like that.
And I, I am a massive seltzer drinker.
So put something fizzy with the Berry syrup.
That's my fancy drink. That's really important to me.
On the other hand, I also I'm a big non alcoholic beer fan.
I, you know, for me, that's, I've been sober now for almost
14 years. So far that has not been a

(55:40):
trigger for me. It scratches the itch of I like
the taste of beer. I love the taste of a fancy sort
of mixed thing. And I totally appreciate the
fact that a lot of restaurants are, are developing mocktails.
It's fantastic, but if you a lotof people, especially people in
12 step recovery are like absolutely not mocktails, non

(56:02):
alcoholic beer, that is the thinend of a wedge.
I think there are, there are a lot of fights between factions
in recovery and the reality is it really comes down to what you
know about yourself and staying sober.
The problem is, is that I know that my brain is broken when it

(56:24):
comes to using substances. So I mean, maybe I've been
tricking myself for 14 years about whether or not I can have
non alcoholic beer. But, and my, I also have a
spouse who keeps a super close eye on me because because, and
he's very careful and he's very conscientious about, like I

(56:44):
said, about having open containers.
They just, that's not a thing inour house.
So it's a very individual decision with the caveat that we
have to be really careful because our judgement about what
is getting us in trouble and what's not getting us in trouble
can be broken sometimes. Yeah, I was just curious about
that because it's it. They're everywhere now, which?

(57:05):
Which to me is a. Well, and that leads to the
second-half of this, which is I,what's been really cool, what's
been really amazing is for millennials, Gen.
Z's, it has been much, much moreacceptable to choose sobriety.
And not even just not even sobriety, but just not really
into drinking just because it's a choice that they're allowed to

(57:27):
make as opposed to, oh, I have aproblem, I have to stop
drinking. Lots and lots of kids are
telling me it's just a choice that they've decided to make
because they're learning more. You know, it's only been in the
last generation that we've been able to look inside the human,
the human brain while it's working and know what's
happening in there. And so all this information we
have about what alcohol and drugs do to the human brain and

(57:49):
especially what they do, the adolescent brain, this is all
new information. And as it trickles down to the
people whose brains are concerned and the decisions they
make around drugs and alcohol, you know, if you know that using
weed on a regular basis can render it can make it so that
your hippocampus is smaller thanit would be in, for example,

(58:11):
that we know that the hippocampus, which is right
where the receptors are for the cannabinoids, the active
ingredient in weed, we know thatthose kids tend to have smaller
hippocampuses. And hippocampus is the seat of
memory formation and consolidation.
And there's a reason that peopleon weed have bad short term
memory and it's because of that proximity to the hippocampus.

(58:33):
So if I tell a kid who has big goals for her future around, I
don't know, going to Med school and having to learn a ton of
stuff, and I tell her that if she is a regular user of weed,
her short term memory just won'tbe as good, that can be a really
important lever for helping kidsunderstand that.
And so a lot of kids are now that they're beginning to

(58:53):
understand that schools are working really hard to get that
information down to them. They can make more informed
decisions and they are, they aremaking more informed decisions.
They just are. I'm seeing it over and over and
over again. And the surveys, risk surveys we
see tell us the same thing. It's awesome to think of.
And you're right too. You know, just thinking back

(59:14):
anecdotally to being a, you know, I graduated high school in
1992. You didn't, it wasn't if you
were at a party, you drank a beer.
It wasn't. There was somebody who opted
out. You just didn't go.
So if you wanted to be in the social setting, you did what you
did in the social setting. Whereas now I do think that the
kids are, they're so they're coming so much further along,

(59:35):
thank goodness. Like they, I feel like leaps and
bounds. You know, I watch my kids and
I'm like, my God, you do so manymore impressive or you handle
yourself in AI mean not all the time.
By the way, I just want to give that caveat every so often my
husband's like will they ever not make stupid decisions?
I'm like, well, not yet. They're about 25.
When their frontal lobe is done developing and they've they're

(59:58):
filled in, yes, they. Will I?
Actually, yes. Go ahead from a Since your
podcast is for women, I just want to make sure that we cover
a few things about women and alcohol, please #1 We are
lacking an enzyme that allows usto breakdown alcohol as
efficiently as it breaks down inmen's bodies.
So all other things being equal,which it's really hard to make

(01:00:19):
all other things being equal because our bodies are built
different proportions of muscle to fat.
So water, more water content in men's bodies than in women's
bodies. So we automatically are breaking
down alcohol more slowly, but we're also missing this enzyme.
So we break down more slowly. Girls, women who drink in order
to manage anxiety. Which is very much why I drank

(01:00:43):
because I drank in the evening, because I had trouble falling
asleep because of my anxiety which ha ha jokes on me, alcohol
make anxiety worse. Also you will wake up.
Let me just pipe in yes. Yes, you will wake up around
2:30 or 3:00 in the morning having an anxiety attack and

(01:01:05):
that's because alcohol messes with your sleep.
Sleep and drugs and alcohol havea bi directional effect on each
other. People who get too little sleep
tend to use more drugs and alcohol.
People who use more drugs and alcohol tend to get too little
sleep. So that's all important to know.
But if women drink in order to manage their anxiety, they are

(01:01:27):
more likely than not to develop substance use disorder.
So if you are drinking to manageyour anxiety, not only does that
not work, it feels like it worksin the short term.
It works so great in the short term.
This is as so many things with drugs and alcohol.
It works until it doesn't work anymore.
And when it doesn't work anymore, it's awful.

(01:01:49):
And also, you're just if you're drinking to manage anxiety,
you're more likely than not to start having a problem, to
become a problem drinker, to have a problem with alcohol, to
start misusing alcohol, to use all of the euphemisms.
Anecdotal story here when you just said that my SO my sister's
drug of choice was heroin for a while and God I hope that was OK

(01:02:11):
to say. Anyway, the point is she
actually, well, not. Great for anxiety either,
although no. But but OK, so my sister all all
my my children were very little and my sister was a young mom.
This is when it all happened. She was the most she was fun
Aunt Michelle. She was so much fun and my kids
like they were like all and she'll watch us.

(01:02:33):
I mean, I would come home, she would have them out and they
would have sharpie written all over them.
I'm like, there's a million kidsmarkers.
Why would you put sharpie? Why would you let them?
You know, she just but she was so much fun.
She's making tunnels, she's making four.
She's so relaxed and I'm like barrel of nerves.
Welcome to find out she's on heroin and and she's on.

(01:02:55):
Also, they're not her kids. That's just, I don't know, she
grandkids. That's why grandkids are so much
more fun than your own kids. Because they're not your kids.
You can give them back you don'thave to deal with.
Well, she had her. Kid there too.
She had her child there too. I do have to give her credit,
but but the the point is that once she stopped using drugs and
she had to contend with being a sober parent, I was like, we are

(01:03:18):
very, we are actually very similar.
Like I didn't know all the because her, her addiction
started so young and we didn't realize that this was part.
We assumed it was her personality, but it wasn't.
It was this addiction. And so it turns out that she's
actually pretty anxious. Also.
She's, you know, got her own setof anxieties and this was a
coping mechanism. And she actually said at one

(01:03:39):
point when I was saying that I was on anxiety and I was being
treated for anxiety and she's like, oh, don't use heroin
because it really, you know, it's like really helps at 1st.
And I was like, I'm not going to, I was like, I was just, you
know, thinking possibly Zoloft, but I'm not going to jump to
that. But it's just interesting

(01:04:01):
because anyway, that was my anecdotal, but it didn't
obviously doesn't work these. Things and and when our kids see
us not coping with our anxiety in a healthy way, then they're
less likely to cope with their anxiety and healthy way.
And on top of all of that, you have to remember one of the
important things to remember about people who start using

(01:04:23):
drugs and alcohol when they're really young is this is a bit of
an overstatement, but also kind of generally true is that their
coping mechanisms and development their their
emotional development gets arrested at the age pretty much
when they started using. So in the sense that they don't
continue to they don't have coping mechanisms because the

(01:04:46):
drugs have been their coping mechanism, right.
So I could have learned so much more about managing my anxiety
if I had gone to see a therapistand talked about my anxiety or
had a regular mindfulness practice, which is why I talked
about that in the addiction inoculation.
You know, I tried to get my my daughter to do a mindfulness
practice with me and she grudgingly did it with me and

(01:05:09):
then basically referred to it asdumb.
She didn't like it. But then I come to find out she
developed her own mindfulness practice that she continues to
this day. It's just it she needed the one
that worked for her, not mine. So help giving kids, helping
guide kids toward healthier outlets for whatever it is
they're feeling and wanting to self medicate is one of the most

(01:05:32):
important things that we can do.And they're not going to like we
don't like give them a solution.They're like, oh, thanks mom,
yes, I'm going to go use your solution in order to manage my
issues. But they're at least seeing us
doing some of the problem solving about how to manage our
stuff or giving them ideas or giving them a starting place to
think about, Like the mindfulness thing.
Like, and that wasn't her favorite way to do it, but she

(01:05:55):
has a different favorite way to do a mindfulness practice.
And it's become incredibly important to her.
And it does not resemble mine atall.
But yay that she has one. Absolutely.
And all of this. Well, first, I know you said you
had something else to say about women.
I didn't know if you if I cut you.
Off That was it. That was pretty much all of it.
Oh no, one last thing. So I hey, just finished

(01:06:19):
treatment for breast cancer and we know drinking raises the risk
of breast cancer. So when I talked to my nieces
about substance use prevention, you know, I talked a lot about
their genetics and we talked a lot about traumatic things that
have happened to them and the fact that, you know, it can be

(01:06:40):
really tempting to manage those things you don't want to think
about with drugs and alcohol. I don't know if my drinking
caused my breast cancer. We can't know that.
But isn't it interesting that I drank and I ended up with breast
cancer? And it's just, if we think about
the way kids make decisions, they tend to, when people say

(01:07:02):
adolescents don't make good, don't understand the
consequences of their actions, that is not true at all.
What we do know about adolescentdecision making is they tend to
weigh the possible positive benefits of a decision heavier
than the possible negative outcomes of a decision.
So it's on us to help them, you know, understand the actual,

(01:07:23):
real risks, whether that's theirgenetics, whether that's they
have a hockey tournament tomorrow and they're going to
feel really crappy when they wake up for that 5:00 AM, you
know, report to the hockey rink thing or, you know, geez, breast
cancer is also one of those things floating out there.
And I know that alcohol is a carcinogen and can and can
increase risk for breast cancer.I don't care as long as I'm

(01:07:44):
being honest about the risk factors and it's coming from a
place of evidence. I'm going to put as much out
there as I can to help kids way,you know, really think about
that possible negative outcome side.
Definitely, because while it maynot have caused your breast
cancer, it certainly doesn't help, right?
It's not it's a poison. We're anyway, I'm sorry but but

(01:08:07):
I think that's the. Other thing I think that's
that's going to become a much bigger part of the conversation,
the more we understand about thedamage that this drug does just
from the moment it enters our mouth to our throat and the
caustic effect it has on our throat.
Like throat cancer only happens mainly only happens in people

(01:08:30):
who smoke and drink because those two things together really
make the throat vulnerable to the carcinogens in both tobacco
and, and you know, all that sortof stuff.
So, you know, there are, we're going to look, I think the next
20 years is, I think we're, I hope that in terms of marketing

(01:08:51):
to kids, in terms of marketing alcohol, in terms of
understanding the real risks of the human body around alcohol, I
think we're in a bit of a big tobacco moment with alcohol.
We'll see. I'm hopeful, but I just want
people to have the right information.
I don't want them to look at scandal and say that's how you
deal with your bad day at work. I want them to have at least a

(01:09:12):
balanced understanding of the risk to a woman's body.
That's maybe not due to that onemassive glass of, by the way,
the glasses I had for wine towards the end of my drinking,
I could fit most of a bottle of wine.
I don't know if you've ever seenthe Amy Schumer.

(01:09:32):
It's a satire on Friday Night Lights and the wine glass starts
out like this big, but by the end she's got a wine glass that
she's kind of got a hold with both arms because.
That's. Awesome, because the the wife
and that the woman, the male female lead in that show drank
so much alcohol, so much wine. I just want a balanced view and

(01:09:53):
and for kids especially, I want them to be able to make good
decisions. And if marketing is shouting at
them really, really loud about all the possible benefits of
having this brand a beer, you can look like this.
You can be on the beach having abonfire and have great looking
girlfriend or boyfriend and all that stuff.
I at least want to give them theother side of that same coin and
explain how they're being manipulated by the media.

(01:10:15):
Explain how they're being manipulated by brands and what
their brand loyalty is worth in dollars to that company because
it's a lot. All of these things I just want
them to have, you know, I've spent my entire adult life
working with kids and I just want them to have the best
information possible to make thebest decisions they can so they
can make it to adulthood with their brains and their mental

(01:10:37):
health intact. And I don't think as parents,
there's anything we want more than that.
But this is the last thing I wanted to ask you.
You know, so much what? First of all, you're obviously
highly educated in this field. You've done all your research,
you know, all these things. You can talk about it backwards
and forwards, which is awesome. For a lot of people who aren't
educated in this, it might seem they're, you know, there are

(01:10:59):
people in the grind of their life, whatever their life is, if
they're driving a truck or they're maybe a cleaning person
and this isn't necessarily what they're thinking.
They're they're getting through.They're thinking about dinner
and how are we going to do this and we're paying the bills.
Or it, it seems like it requiresa lot of self-awareness and self
introspection even to say, Hey, I don't, I hate the term

(01:11:23):
helicopter mom, which my son always calls me and I'm like, I
am in New Jersey and you're in Hawaii automatically that takes
that away from me. Like, I am definitely not a
helicopter mom, but it, I just think it, it requires some
self-awareness for us as adults.Do you have any recommendations
about that? And I know this isn't
necessarily your area of expertise, but how you step back

(01:11:46):
to even get to the point where you're like, Hey, of course I
want the best for my kids, but I've got, you know, I don't
know, whatever your challenge is, everybody's got challenges.
Whatever it is to step back enough to recognize, to look at
yourself, whether it's your the alcoholism you're bringing to
the table or if it's your sense of perfection and, you know,

(01:12:09):
fixing them over fixing and and helping them.
Do you have any suggestions for how you even get to that first
step? To even, you know, pick your
book up? Because it's, yeah, it's such.
Valuable information in it when I, you know, we first hopped on
the call before we recorded, I was like, Oh, I got stressed
because what do I what do I want?
I want the best for them and andany possible way that I have not

(01:12:34):
provided the best for them will as an anxious person just
continue to feel my anxiety. So I'm curious how you what your
thoughts are on that. I said not so.
What anxious mom? I think one of the hardest parts
of, you know, my job is to teachpeople about this stuff and to
be to get in the room. Sometimes I have to be a little

(01:12:59):
tricky and talk about like, oh, this is a talk about learning in
the brain gift of failure. But I'm going to sneak a little
bit of substance use prevention in there because some people are
just really resistant to it either because they have their
own issues. Like I'm not going to a
substance use prevention talk when I was drinking like that.
That would make me the the shameand guilt would be too much.
Lots of people say they don't want to come to my in person

(01:13:20):
events because they're especially in their community
because they don't. What if someone sees them and
thinks, oh, she's worried about her son Sam?
Like what about that? Or you know, whatever.
So there's lots of hurdles to getting in the door to learn
about this stuff. So I try to make it as easy as
possible. So the book is out there.
I read the audiobook version. If you want to listen to it in

(01:13:40):
the car, listen to it with earbuds so no one can even and
you can do other stuff while youlisten to it.
Then a friend of mine who I really respect, she I was
lamenting how hard it is to get people to come and listen to
talks about substance use prevention.
Just like it's hard to get people to come to like how to
have the sex talk or how to havethe talk about porn or whatever.
I started she's like, you don't mind doing video?

(01:14:02):
So I started doing these 92nd videos that are on my Instagram
reels but also indexed on my website because my friend was
like, look, maybe people just want to consume this stuff
privately and in very small chunks so it's not overwhelming.
I'm like, great. So I made almost 400 videos
about every aspect of the addiction, inoculation, gift of
failure. And now I'm doing a whole series

(01:14:24):
on student and parent questions.I don't care how you get the
information. I just want you to have really
good evidence based, research backed information.
And so if you have an idea aboutanother way to get it to people,
toss it to me. I think the conversation is so
important and yet so scary for so many people that to ease them

(01:14:47):
into it. I mean, lately my entire
marketing strategy strategy has been how do I get people to come
to this who wouldn't normally come to this?
And especially with schools who feel like they have a duty to
get this information to parents and yet no one shows up.
If it's a straight up substance use prevention talk, I'm fully
willing to wheel in my Trojan horse like at a gift of failure

(01:15:10):
talk and explain that one of themost important, like when I get
to that competence section and explain the competence, self
efficacy, mastery, all that stuff which is so important to
gift a failure is also really important to substance use
prevention. So I do a lot more virtual gigs
so that people can register and be anonymous and just listen to
it while they're cooking dinner or whatever.

(01:15:32):
You know, we've had to get really creative about meeting
people where they're at. And sometimes that means that,
you know, I have to be a little sneaky to get in the door.
But I'm willing to do that only because I feel like this is so
important and I go and speak at places like I speak at AI speak
at Canyon Ranch, which is a hoity toity spot.

(01:15:52):
And I've done that for the past.Oh, I don't almost 10 years.
And I usually get a very small group of people who are there
trying to get healthy. And sometimes it's a really
great place for them to dip their toe in and say, huh, as
part of the Wellness picture, I wonder.
And because there's no alcohol at Canyon Ranch, it gives people
a really great opportunity to say, I miss wine more than I

(01:16:15):
thought I would. What's going on?
And there are also daily meetings at 12 step meetings at
Canyon Ranch because the founderof Canyon Ranch was in recovery
as well. So, you know, I'll, I speak at
schools, I speak at conferences,I speak at, you know, Canyon
Ranch if they'll have me. And I think that's just a part
of trying to find a place that'sless scary for people to start

(01:16:39):
listening. And I think you, you said it
right too, like going in as the church and horse, especially
for, you know, when you said youwouldn't have listened to a talk
on substance abuse when you weredrinking.
Because the guilt, I mean, and Ithink there's so much guilt and
shame in so much anything you doas a as a mom, whether you from
the very beginning, did you breastfeed?

(01:16:59):
Did you not breastfeed? Do you have guilt about that?
Like there's so many things you can think of that you can take
on as I didn't do this right, I didn't do this right.
Somehow I have failed. How can you work your way around
it? And I, I love your Trojan horse
metaphor because that's, that's it.
Just sneak it in and it and it is good.
And I especially love, by the way, the last take away.

(01:17:20):
I want to say that. And it's your words was that if
you well, it's your thoughts, ifyou fit, it's at the end.
Like it like just like what you say to your kids.
If you've messed this up, we're going to go forward.
This isn't the end. It's OK.
There's more than one day to raise a human.
It doesn't happen that one time or the that one year, hopefully.

(01:17:42):
So, yeah, thank you for that. I think it's good, reassuring.
Absolutely. It's it's the around gift of
failure stuff or around addiction inoculation stuff.
You can say, you know what, sweetie, I'm really sorry.
I have been underestimating whatyou can do for yourself and I've
been doing too much for you. And that's going to stop today.
So let's pick homework. I'm no longer going to nag or

(01:18:02):
remind about your homework. That's you.
And by the way, I've already letyour teacher know that I'm
backing off. This is something that I used to
have to do when my kids were in school.
I don't use the portal as a parent.
So I would get in touch with theteachers and say, by the way, I
don't use the portal. I'd rather just have actual
communication with my kids. So I won't be checking up on
anything on the portal. And so here's the best way to

(01:18:23):
reach me if things start to circle the drain.
And you know, your first line ofcommunication should be with my
kid. So it's not a matter of like,
I'm going to stop reminding you about homework and that's it.
You're on your own. There's a little bit of a you
know, you're it's in education. We call it scaffolding here.
It's sort of like training wheels.

(01:18:44):
You know, you're you're you're pulling back, but you're also
letting people know the best wayto get in touch with you.
And here's I prefer that you talk to my kid first, but here
are some ways that we could stepin and there's anyway, it's all
in gift of failure and and in addiction inoculation.
Same thing. You know, it's sweetie, I didn't
fully understand risk factors when it comes to substance use

(01:19:04):
like drinking or using weed. And I learned some stuff.
And so we're going to change some of our house rules around
substance use. And here's what they are.
And here's why the why is so important.
And you know, I'm sorry I got itwrong before, but now I'm going
to move forward with the information I have and try to do
my best. That was awesome.
Thank you SO. Much for being here.

(01:19:26):
I'm welcome. I'm so grateful for so many
reasons. It was awesome.
You are the best. Thank you.
So grateful to you too. Thank you so much.
I really appreciated this conversation with Jessica Leahy,
especially the way she challenged so much of what we
carry as moms, That pressure to get it right, to do more, to
step in before anything goes wrong.

(01:19:49):
Next week, we're stepping into another tough but really
important conversation. We're talking about prevention,
power, and what it actually takes to address sexual assault
before it happens with Jess Laddand Kristen Hatcher of The Fun
to Prevent Sexual Assault. In the meantime, if this episode
made you think of another mom inyour life, send it to her.
That's how these conversations keep going.

(01:20:11):
Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week on ROAR.

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