Episode Transcript
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Unknown (00:00):
Welcome back to the
unbreakable boundaries podcast
with your host myself, JenniferManeely. It is been a little
while since I have last posted apodcast, that guy just needed a
little bit of a break somefocus, figure out, once again,
you know, where do I want to go?
What direction do I want to takethis podcast into, and I started
doing something a little newer,I have it started on my YouTube
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channel, which if you are intoYouTube, you can go check out.
It's the unbreakable boundarieschannel, I think you can just
search for that channel, and itshould pop up. And what I
started doing is reading some ofthe Reddit stories that I came
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across, I listened to a lot ofthe other YouTubers and stuff,
reading off these stories, and Iget so interested in. But it got
me thinking though, what a greatway to kind of listen to
someone's story, maybe provide alittle bit of insights based on
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the information that they'regiven me, because I'm sure that
a lot of the stories that Ipicked are pretty common
examples of what happens whenyou have a loved one with
substance abuse issues. It'salso like, hey, we don't really
have to feel so alone in this,you're not the only one dealing
with this. There's whole Redditwhat do they call them threads
and stuff. And it's just it, Ijust thought it would be a cool
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way to present information alittle bit differently. So
that's what we're gonna startdoing for a little while here,
at the very least until Iprobably need to take another
break at some point and seewhat's next. And what's new. So,
in today's story, the title isparents of live in adult
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children struggle strugglingwith addiction, how do you cope?
What a great place to startwith, because I know that this
is something that is such astruggle. And my first reaction
just to the title to nothingelse is,
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you know, I am I pretty muchwhen I'm working with families
and stuff, I really steer clearof giving any sort of advice or
telling people, what boundariesthey need to be setting, and all
of that. But there is one thingthat I am pretty clear about
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when it comes to having a lovedone with substance abuse issues.
And what is one of theboundaries to just kind of start
with and that is,for me, personally, I don't
think it's ever a good option tolet the child come back home to
live in with the parents underthese circumstances. And I'll
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tell you all the reasons why aswe continue to unfold this
story. So I want to read alittle bit of this story. And
I'll go into a little bit moredetail about why that is no, I'm
not just being an ass oranything like that. I just,
it'll make sense. It'll makesense. So here's the story. My
only son has dealt withaddiction since he was 17. He
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left home of his own volitiondays before his 18th birthday
and has come back home twice at19 and 21 after stints at rehab.
The second and most recent time,he spent 10 months in treatment
beforehand in detox rehab andthen at a sober living facility
doing PHP, which is partialhospitalization and IOP, which
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is intensive outpatient.
In both instances, he was cleanfor about two months after
coming home, at which point therelapses became more and more
frequent, until they becamecommon behavior after a
particularly destructive bout ofin sobriety. Recently, I warned
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him that living here was anopportunity to get his life
together. It was not a safetynet to navigate the waters of
finding acceptable levels ofintake for quote, functioning
addiction. If he chose tocontinue taking drugs, he would
need to move out and pave hisown way. That was three weeks
ago and he he's been called outon and admitted to being high on
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drugs for the last two nights.
I've reached the end of mytolerance for the situation. And
the consequences of continueddrug use have been made clear
the entire time he's been homecontinue doing drugs I will no
longer subsidize his lifestyle.
I feel awful about the wholesituation. I don't like either
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avenue I see available to us. Idon't think he's ready to stand
on his own two feet. But stayinghere with parental subsidies
clearly isn't helping him. Heis using our support to get
bummed out of his mind insteadof working towards self
sufficiency. Redditors, have youdealt with adult children
struggling with addiction? Howdid it go? How would you proceed
in this position? So back towhat I was kind of saying about
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why I don't really particularlythink it's necessarily a great
idea to have your loved one comeand live with you.
under circumstances like this,it's your we're inviting, like
unhealthy people that don't havea lot of coping skills to deal
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with life into our house. And onthe best of circumstances, the
very best of circumstances, it'sstill really challenging to have
an adult like parent,living with their adult kid,
because that adult kid willnaturally have a tendency to
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kind of go back into thatchildlike state, it's so hard to
adult under your parents roof.
And it's almost impossible notto parent, your adult kid under
these circumstances, and so itcan, those dynamics can be very,
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very challenging, under the bestof circumstances, and we're not
talking about the best ofcircumstances here. Now,
there's so many reasons whyparents allow their kids to come
live with them, right? Theybelieve that there are there is
no other option and their kid isgoing to go be homeless. And in
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some cases, that may be true. Inmost cases, though, there are
plenty of other resources outthere that kids will also adults
can go to. The problem is, isthey don't want to do it. They
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all want to do and live up toall of the structure and the
rules that a lot of places have,when it comes to
you know, living in, like somesort of sober house or
like a column Oxford houses,which are like three quarters,
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houses all of these transitionalhouses, out of rehab, and they
just don't want to do it. Buthere's the thing.
They don't want to do it,because they don't want to live
in the structure. And they thinkthey can get away with more
living with their parents. Imean, that's the trick of it,
right? So it's just a reallychallenging, dynamic. And it's
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like, there are other optionsavailable to them. And those are
probably going to be the betteroptions in the long term, even
if they don't want to do it inthe short term for both the
parents sanity, and quitefrankly, the kids sanity as
well, because it's, it's justreally hard to start learning
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how to have these coping skillsunder your parents roof as well.
It just adds such a complicateddynamic that it ends up being.
And like this post said,he left home on his own volition
before his 18th birthday, andhas come back home twice, at 19.
And at 21. After since thatrehab,
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the second most recent time, hespent 10 months in treatment
beforehand. That means he knowswhat to do. He has enough
information, and he's making achoice to not do what he needs
to do for his sobriety.
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And then we end up in thesituation that this this poor
mom, I'm assuming, I'm assumingit's a mom, there's no gender
identifying here.
So just the way that it'swritten, it kind of sounds like
it's, it's more than likely amom. Um, so then, let's see, now
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she's stuck. Or these parentsI'll just say these parents are
now stuck in a situation wherethey're having to make a choice
of do I put my kid out on thestreet, which he wouldn't have
to go out on the street and thisis the thing is a lot of times
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parents often assume that that'sthe option that they're there's
kids are gonna go live in thegutter somewhere on the street.
They can't they just can't dothat to him, but they have other
choices. One of the thingsthings that I do recommend for
parents in these situations thatif we do get to the point where
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maybe let's say they're alreadyliving with you say, like you,
you haven't met me yet, they'realready living with you. And
you're kind of in thissituation. Well, what I usually
recommend is that the kid andyou know, whenever I say kid, I
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really mean this adult, thisadult, child, kid,
your loved one.
If you're there already in thehome,
one of the great places to startis put an end date on how long
they can stay there, I usuallyrecommend 30 days, if they don't
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have a job, and they haven'tbeen saving money and they're at
zero, well, then they have otheroptions, it may not be the
options that they want, like,they may not be able to go and
find their own place somewhere,and get everything that they
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want. Right. But this isn'tabout what they want. This isn't
about how they want to livetheir life. This is about what
they need in their life. Andsometimes they need a little bit
of a push to get out and startfending for themselves and
figure out their own ways ofdoing things that doesn't
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involve their parents. And inthe short term, they may have to
suck it up and go into some sortof recovery community, a
transition house find roommates,it, you know, it's up to them,
especially with someone that hasalready been to rehab twice, has
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spent 10 months in treatmentbefore. This is someone that
has, has met enough people andunderstands the way of how
recovery works, that he could goand find a house to go stay in,
that's a safe place for him ifthat is what he chooses. A lot
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of times people don't want to dothat, though, because they want
to continue getting high, ordrinking or whatever it is they
want to continue that behavior.
And I think this parent here isreally wise and I and I hope I
don't know what ended uphappening. But I hope that this
person stood by the mindset thatsaid, I will no longer subsidize
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his lifestyle.
And I feel for this parent, whenthis parent says I don't like
either avenue I see available tous, I don't think he's ready to
stand on his own two feet. Butstaying here with parental
subsidies clearly isn't helpinghim. I think that's a really
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wise statement, it clearly isn'thelping him.
I don't think he's ready tostand on his own two feet,
here's here's the rub of itis the only way they get ready
to stand on their own two feet,is to go and stand on their own
two feet.
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It's the only way as long as theparent is kind of interfering.
And making it a softer, easierapproach or taking care of them
in some way. I like what shesays subsidizing the lifestyle.
As long as the parent issubsidizing the lifestyle that
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allows them to continue doingand living the life that they
want. That's the life thatthey're going to
go do this is just going tocontinue to be a cycle over and
over and over again.
Andif if your loved one is trying
to convince you that they'regoing to be homeless and out on
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the street, they're only goingto be homeless and out on the
street, because they choose tobe homeless and out on the
street because of theirlifestyle choices.
And I want to say that wordagain, their lifestyle choices,
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their choice choosing to go liveon the street, if they end up
living on the street, and that'sa really hard one for
parents to kind of get theirheads wrapped around and a lot
of this comes from maybe someguilt and shame that the parent
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may be holding on to maybe theyare taking some sort of
unconscious responsibility fortheir loved one
Is life and they feel like it'stheir responsibility to fix it.
We are not always thinkinglogically like, logically I get
it like, like, we know that thisis not, you know, the parents
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fault. But sometimes theunconscious guilt and shame kind
of creep up, I just kind of wantto go through and read some of
thesecomments that were had. Here's
one, your post is very relatableto me because long story short,
my 27 older brother 37, who isrecovered, alcoholic, drug
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addicts schizophrenic lives athome with our dad.
And my mom, we went through alot of periods of what you're
going through with your son. Andunfortunately for us, it took
him being forced into a mentalhospital to get sober and get
help. It's a horrible thing tosend your kid away. But are
there any local services thatcan help him find subsidizing
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housing, or some sort of grouphe could go find some help from?
Now? Oh, P commented back tothis one. And I think this was a
reallyinteresting comment. Oh, P
stands for original poster. Theyare always long stories, right.
This isn't the half of the lastfour years worth of dramatics. I
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believe that. Unfortunately, Idon't know of any subsidized
housing options available forsingle adult men in my area, my
son has had four stays atinpatient psychiatric
facilities. In his many years inour experience, they drag him
heavily through his time thereand release him with minimal
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support structure, once theinsurance coverage runs out, he
did best in the long term rehaband outpatient care. But he is
not willing to do that again.
And at his age, I cannot forceit. If anyone is aware of
suitable group homes in Atlantaarea, I am all ears. Now I can
tell you that Atlanta has a lotof resources available. Or even
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if he has to temporarily moveout and go find somewhere else.
That's always an option. And Iwant to I want to just say this,
again, he did best in the longterm rehab and outpatient care.
But he is not willing to dothat. Again.
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I just want to say that this isa choice. So the place that he
did the best athe didn't want to go through all
that his willingness isn'tthere. That means that the
struggle that he needs to getthere.
Ah, the cop, there's someonethat commented
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on that, too. So I'm not inAtlanta, I'm in Alabama, but I
run a homeless shelter, andhousing agency and see lots of
people that come through thatare in the same situation. If he
ends up homeless, he may qualifyfor a couple of different
programs, like Rapid Rehousingor permanent supportive housing.
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I know it sounds tough. Butsometimes hitting rock bottom is
the only way people truly canstart recovering. It can be
really hard with dual diagnosis,but there is help out there.
What I want to say, you knowwith that is
it's the struggle that makespeople desperate enough to do
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the things that they need to doand become willing. Because when
you're desperate enough, you'llstart doing a thing, including
going into places that at onepoint seemed to be doing well,
but then the journey stopped. Asfor whatever reason it doesn't
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really it's not very clear whyhe stopped the long term stuff.
Maybe he just transitioned outand then went back to his old
ways. And because maybe heneeded a little bit of a
different transition. Maybe hewasn't scared enough, maybe
whatever it was, right? We don'twe don't know. But I think you
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know, it's really important tounderstand that sometimes being
homeless and left out on, youknow, to be put out on the
street, so to speak,is the struggle that someone
needs to say, I don't want to dothis anymore. This can't be my
life. I don't want to do thisand living in the parents house
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even if it's not ideal.
It's still going to allow themto live to comfortably. Oh, I
don't want to do this. Oh, no,that's not gonna work for me or
whatever. And all the meantime,the parents
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sort of left with theconsequences of this person's
behavior, and not just theirperson's behavior, but the lack
of willingness to do somethingdifferent. The parents are now
sitting in a situation in whichthey have to deal with the lack
of willingness to be out ontheir own two feet. Right?
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Because that's all that is. Theyare choosing not to stand on
their own two feet. And it's,that's, that's what that's the
case that we're dealing withhere. Here's a another comment,
which I found reallyinteresting. And I'm going to
kind of justput my own two cents on this on
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this comment, because I havesome thoughts. My other brother
was an addict for a long timestayed with my parents until he
was 26. He got thrown out andwas forced to find help took a
while, but he maintained thesober path after finding God and
a support group. I was also anaddict until I was 24. Bad
teenage years and years oftrauma kept me wanted to be
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effed up out of my mind to nothave to deal with reality, every
situation is different. I knowit sucks. But if you can try and
find the cause of why he enjoysdrugs, it'll help you to support
him to get away from it. If youpush too hard, you're just going
to make his habit worse. Becauseadded stress to someone who is
already having big issues won'thelp at all just my two cents.
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But a lot of parents mindspecifically didn't try to find
out why they just said don't doit, or you gotta go. So
I do definitely have a couple ofthoughts. Now I'm in recovery
myself, right? I don't know howlong this person has been in
recovery.
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But I'm in recovery, myself, andI just have a little bit of a
different, just a differentperspective. I'm not saying that
this person is right, I'm notsaying this person is wrong.
I don't think that it's good forparents to always like, feel
like they have to tiptoe. Stressis a part of life, like we have
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to deal with our stuff. And wehave to start creating coping
mechanisms to deal with thestress that life brings us. So
when whenever I hear someonesays, saying something about,
like, Oh, don't put any addedstress, like so you're just
going to make it easier andsofter for them to continue
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subsidizing their lifestyle,when they're making bad choices.
So they're stressing themselvesout by making the decisions that
they're making. And so I don'tfind that to be necessarily
accurate, right? Like, I don'tthink just making it easier and
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softer. And in kind ofsupporting the lifestyle, so to
speak,is ever really a good idea. I
think sometimes stress is kindof necessary, because they need
to, they need to, they need toget their stuff together. You
know, to put it bluntly, theyjust need to get their shit
together. And sometimes theyneed a little bit of a push,
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even if it's uncomfortable, butit's the uncomfortable
desperate, the Hard Knocks thatthat makes them start becoming
willing to do the things thatthey need to do. So that's one
of the things that I wanted toaddress. And nor do I think that
it's the parents responsibilityto find out the cause of why he
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enjoys drugs, here's the deal, Iwould have to be quite frank
with this.
Drugs, feels good. Life,sometimes doesn't feel good.
Drugs can make the life thatdoesn't feel good, feel better.
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That's why we use drugs.
I mean, it's that simple. Sonow, what is he running from?
What is he hiding from? There'salways going to be that with
with whatever person that hasturned to drugs or alcohol. I
think we have common knowledgethat they're running from
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something they're hiding fromthemselves and all that the only
person's responsibility tofigure out what that is,
is the person that is doing thesubstances. I don't think it was
my like my mom's job to figureout why I was doing drugs
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and then to try to support me Ithink she did the best that she
could I think thatYou know, they, I had some
things happen. And growing up, Ihad to go to the therapies and I
had to go do all of thesethings. And I think she really
tried. But I think at the end ofthe day,
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that came to me, and that's beena journey in and of itself for
me in recovery,where I'm trying to heal myself
to figure that out, not while Iwas still using not not, then
that's the port, that's kind ofthe point of the recovery is,
uh, you know, kind of go figureout why and sometimes, you know,
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what, there's just a lot ofreasons why there's not like a
pinpoint, I think there'ssometimes this belief that if I
just understood why they weredoing this, then I could somehow
tackle this,this thing, and remove it and
fix it and solve it. Like, if Ijust understood the problem, I
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could figure out a solution, andthen it wouldn't be a problem
anymore.
And with a lot of things, oops,sorry, I hit my microphone, if
you heard that, with a lot ofthings. That works, we have a
problem, we come up with asolution. And everything is
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solved, right? Addiction doesnot run like that.
Unfortunately, I wish that itdid, because it would have made
my life a whole lot easier. Butit doesn't work like that, if
this is not a problem that oncewe figure out really what the
root of the problem is, and thenwe can tackle the solution. So
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that's something else that Ikind of was like,
This is my two cents. Again,I've I'm wrong a lot, I'll be
honest with you, this is justthe way that I am viewing this
the way that I've learned how tokind of measure this my two
cents, right? Someone else isgoing to have a very different
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opinion than me. But it is anopinion based on a lot of
experience not only for myself,but also in you know, because I
mentor a lot of people as well.
I mentor a lot ofpeople that are in recovery, as
well as I work with a lot offamilies. So I can kind of see
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both sides of things for sure.
And one of the things that I'mvery clear out about working
with both of them is that thisis not on the parents
responsibility. It doesn't meanthat parents can't support and
help in other ways.
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But it's it's what is theparents responsibility and what
is the recovering or the addictsyou know, responsibility in all
of this. Soit's, it's very different. And
I that was mypost for today. I am very
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excited to continue sharing, Ihave some great future posts
lined up including things fromAi TA, which is anyone that is a
redditor very popular threads.
It's mid aihole course they saythe s s but mid aihole is a very
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popular thread and I've pulledsome from that thread for the
art my future posts. My next onewill be something in the AI ta
Reddit thread, which is alwaysvery interesting to me. It's one
of my favorites. So I'm reallylooking forward to sharing that
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with you guys in our nextpodcast together.
Thank you for listening to thispodcast. If you want to listen
to more or find more informationout about this podcast and more
of what I do to help familiesyou can go check out my page at
unbreakable boundariespodcast.com. It's full of other
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great podcasts just like thisone and other great resources to
look through. You can also checkout my main website which is
Maneely consulting.com. Maneelyis spelled ma N e L ey
consulting.com. You can also seeall the other things that I do
to help families that have lovedones with substance abuse
issues. And please remember toshare this podcast with others.
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You never know who may need tohear this people are often
hiding their battles in thisarena. And sharing is a great
way to provide this valuableresource to a person you may not
even know who needs it. Anddon't forget there is always
hope even when things seem themost hopeless