January 26, 2017 • 20 mins
Have you or someone you care deeply for ever tried to love someone out of an addiction? Did you try everything in your power to save that person to the point of losing your own serenity? If so you are not alone. Addiction doesn't discriminate. It affects both rich and poor, male and female, parent and child. Join us in this discussion by listening first and then sharing your thoughts to stories@delilah.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
I hope you have the enjoyed our previous podcast. I
gotta tell you I love doing these I love love
love being able to talk to you from more than
a couple of minutes at a time. I love sharing
my heart. And although this podcast is free to you,
it's not free to produce or to deliver. We have
a whole team of folks working on these. Before we
(00:26):
get any further into this conversation, I wanted to talk
about our sponsor. I shared a great movie with my
kids last week. We got to see A Dog's Purpose,
the movie that opens Friday. It's a movie that sort
of sees the world through the perspective through the eyes
of a dog. It was such a great movie. It
took at least one box of clean X, maybe two
(00:47):
between all of us. We have five dogs in our
house every day. They are a huge part of our lives,
so seeing life through the eyes of a dog made
this great for my family. It's going to pull your
heart strings, it's gonna make you cry, but it's got
such a good ending, a happy ending. The movie opens
this Friday in theaters everywhere. So I was saying thank
(01:10):
you for joining us, and thank you for downloading this podcast.
We decided to talk about bold love on the air
the last few weeks starting this year with boldness, living boldly,
taking chances, stepping outside of your comfort zone. And and
you wrote to me and said the most bold things
(01:31):
she's ever done, She said, I brought a homeless woman
home to live with me. I set her up in
an apartment, my friends and I filled it with donated
items between another woman and myself, we ended up spending
a bunch of money filling her fridge and cupboards with food. Unfortunately,
this woman met a guy and walked away from it
(01:53):
all because she wasn't allowed to have him live in
the apartment with her. Now she's in it up back
on the street again. And thank you for sharing that,
and thank you for sharing bold love, even if the
result wasn't what you would hope it would be. I
(02:13):
can't tell you and how many times I have stepped
out on faith, stepped out in love and done the
very same thing you did, provided a home for somebody
who was homeless, taken in people off the streets. When
my daughter Sheila was a baby, I met a listener
(02:33):
who was a prostitute and she had a broken nose
from her pimp. And she was such a beautiful and
kind and sweet young lady, and my husband and I
decided to help her out and found her safe place
to live and brought her into our hearts and into
(02:55):
our homes, and she got clean and sober, She detoxed
off years of drug abuse. She was young, but she
had been using drugs and alcohol since she was like
twelve or thirteen years old. She was such a sweet lady,
such a good heart, but she was so broken, so fragile,
(03:18):
and she got frustrated because she got a job as
a waitress and she was making minimum wage and not
not very much tips. And one night one of her
old clients contacted her and offered her a great deal
of money, and she decided to go back, and she
told herself it was just going to be that one time.
(03:38):
Well guess what happened That one time led to another time,
led to another time, led her back to the crack
pipe and back to the streets. And I don't know
if she ever found her way home again. I don't
know if she ever made life choices. And that has
happened dozens of times with people that I've loved, and
(04:02):
it used to frustrate me and break my heart to think,
after all I've done, how could you do this? But
then I realized that it's not about the outcome. It's
about showing someone there's a better way, and whether they
choose to take that way or not. I am still
(04:23):
going to choose to love my husband. My friends, they
all said, d when are you going to stop? When
are you going to realize that you're wasting your money,
You're wasting your time, You're wasting your energy trying to
help people that don't want to be helped. And if
somebody says they don't want to be helped or shows
me they don't want to be helped, that's fine. But
(04:45):
when somebody shows me that they want to change, they
want a better life, I am always going to extend
my heart and love I am. I don't ever want
to become bitter or cynical, or are frustrated or feel
used up. I still want to love. Maybe I'll do
(05:07):
it a little more wisely in the future, but and
maybe I will instead of trying to help, will do
what I what I try to do now, which is
to give more tools for them to make the change
and make the choices and to do what needs to
be done. But always love honey, don't and don't get frustrated.
(05:30):
That she is back out on the street is heartbreaking,
But you don't know. Maybe you have planted a seed
in her heart and maybe one night she will go
to bed and she will wake up and go I
don't want this life anymore. I don't want the streets anymore.
I don't want the drugs. I don't want the abuse.
I don't want to be addicted to men that destroy me,
(05:53):
or drugs that take my health and take my sanity.
You don't know. You planted seed, and that's how God
calls us to do. So don't get discouraged, and don't
stop loving. Maybe you are like Ange, and you give
and give and give of yourself, and maybe a give
(06:14):
too much. Maybe you've got a son or a daughter
that makes promises time and time again, and each time
you fall for it, and then they steal your car
or your checkbook or your credit card, and your heart
is shattered all over again. Maybe you need to read
a little book called Boundaries. It's by a doctor Cloud
(06:36):
and doctor Townsend. It's been in print for twenty years.
I don't know how long. But it's a great, great book.
If you're a giver and you're always giving to others
and they take and take and take until there's nothing
left to give, maybe you need to set healthy boundaries.
Oh that's so hard to do. Do you have an
(06:57):
adult child, a sister or a brother. Maybe it's your
spouse that simply can't won't or can't get sober and
get clean, get off the whatever it is they're addicted to,
stay away from the casinos. I know an adult young woman, beautiful, smart, talented,
(07:22):
oh so talented, but keeps destroying herself because she can't
stay away from the casinos. She is addicted to gambling.
It's a real thing. You're like, how how could you?
How could you get addicted to throwing your money away?
It's true, lots of people do it and spend billions
of dollars every day behind that addiction. If you have
(07:44):
a hard time setting boundaries with others, try try looking
into that book Boundaries by Dr Cloud in Doctor Townsend.
And if you're the one that you have a hard
time setting boundaries with, if you're if you can't set
boundaries with yourself, if you make promises to yourself, I'm
never going to do this. I'm never going to do that,
and then you turn around and do it. Then you
(08:08):
need to be the one looking into a twelve step
group to fix whatever it is that you keep doing.
I know so many people that have addictions, addictive behaviors,
and they make promises to themselves, they make promises to
their kids, and then they don't they don't follow through.
(08:31):
That's what makes it an addiction. That is the definition
of addiction, doing the same thing over and over and
over and expecting different results. Silly you think, well, I'm
not really an alcoholic because I still have a job.
I'm not an alcoholic because I don't go to the
bars and drink. I just sit here and down a
bottle of wine or two, or a six pack of
(08:52):
bear or two. Don't be silly. Come on, are you
really in that deep of denial. I have a dear
friend of our family who finally made his way to
a twelve step meeting about six months ago after he
had destroyed his life in behind crack cocaine. And he's
not a young man. I'm not talking to eighteen year
(09:14):
old or five year old. This man's in his sixties
and he had been off the drugs for twenty years
and went back thinking he could control it, thinking he
could handle it, thinking it wasn't really an addiction. But
that's the definition of addiction. If you know that you
(09:37):
have a problem and you can't stop, get help, get help,
ask for help, raise your hand and say, um, delila,
I need to talk to you. I don't know what
to do because I can't stop going to the casino
and I've ruined my credit and I can't pay my
rent and I can't even buy food right now. But
I can't let anyone know there's help. They're is there's help.
(10:01):
Several years ago when I first found my way to
the twelve step programs because my husband was an alcoholic
and my father was an alcoholic, and I found out
there was a twelve step program for people who love
people who drink too much, and I refused to go.
I wanted nothing to do with it because I said,
I'm not the one with the problem, And somebody said, really,
(10:23):
because I think you're the one that just got out
of the hospital because you were beat up by a drunk.
That means you have a problem. Now. My problem is
I need to get them to stop drinking. I said,
so many of us think that our problem is we
got to fix somebody else. In just a moment, I'm
going to share a phone call that I took on
(10:43):
my show from somebody who's trying to fix her son.
And his addiction isn't one that's talked about or even recognized,
because it's not chemicals. He's not addicted to crack or
heroin or alcohol. He's addicted to the Internet, and his
gaming has become his whole life to the point where
(11:04):
he has no other relationships. I'm gonna share my words
of wisdom with his mama and see if I can't
help her find peace in her life. Hi, Cindy, Welcome
to the Delilah Show. How's your New Year's going so far? Um,
It's it's a challenge. I'm I'm I'm just more so
(11:25):
worried about my son. He was twenty two. I had
a birthday on Christmas. I had nice presents for him
that I had saved over several months and got them,
knew that he could use them. And it's just very
sad because I cooked dinner and made a real nice dinner,
(11:46):
and usually what his father had been alive, he would
have helped me clean the kitchen, which he always did.
But I always cooked on my birthday because that's the
way I always did. And my son, it didn't offer anything.
He just says, thanks for the dinner. It was good.
It Um. After the gifts were open, of course, I
didn't get anything because he didn't have anything to give me,
(12:06):
which is fine. He made me a birthday cart and
that means more to me probably than anything. And um,
he uh, he's he's incessantly and grossly addicted to game stations.
It's combat. It's across the boat, pons around the world,
and he cannot sit and converse with me or talk
(12:29):
to me on the phone when I call him, ask
him how his day is, and he said, I'm busy.
So well, were you busy with? Are you cooking or
cleaning or what? Can I come and help you? No, mother,
I'm busy. And I said, well, you know, I just
wanted to call him wish you a happy New Year.
And I just hope and pray that God directs you
(12:50):
on the right path this year and you follow and
you make the wisest decisions that you could ever make
as a young man. Well, when I said that, he
not funny. I'm very, very upset because I love this
young man more than anything. With his girlfriends leaving them
after a year living with them, she is absolutely so
(13:12):
dissatisfied with his behavior, his immaturity. Okay, stop stop, stop, stop,
stop right there, okay, and take a deep breath, and
I am going to share something with you that I
want you to to write it down or to impress
it on your heart. Okay, sure, are you ready? Yes?
(13:35):
In the beginning of this conversation, you said, my son
is terribly addicted to these games, and he is. My
son is too. I have an eighteen year old son
that I don't know if he's going to graduate high
school because he is addicted to the games, and so
are thousands and millions of his friends and other kids
(13:55):
their age. So here's what I want you to hear.
Are you ready, yes, ma'am. It's called the three CS
of addiction. Number one, You did not cause his addiction.
Whether a child's addiction is to the Internet, gaming, to gambling,
to drinking, to drugging, to heroin, to pornography, to eating disorders, whatever,
(14:22):
whatever the addiction is that is stealing their life from
them and stealing them out of your arms. You did
not cause it. Number two, you cannot control it. So
saying things like I'm going to pray for you that
(14:42):
you'll make wise decisions, or I'm not going to give
you any money to buy alcohol, or you're on your
own if you end up in the street from shooting heroin.
There's nothing you can say or do to control another
person's addiction. Trust me, I've tried. And the third see
(15:04):
is you sure as hell cannot cure it. I know
he has to. He has to admit his his addiction.
He has to come forward and say I'm going to
stop this. He lives on his own and his girlfriend
lived together. She got so sick and tired of him
the first six months. She has done with them. She
dates other people, She works sixteen hour days, she stays
(15:24):
with some friends once so well, because she cannot stand
his stilth Um I asked him. I said, the only
thing of Evan, if yet you can give me is
um um is a nice Christmas tree decorated. So I
got my ornaments that I gave him, and Um, I said,
that's all I want. When I come into your apartment,
(15:47):
then you can have the tree decorated. And and so
a friend the daughter. But do you listen, do you
hear what you're saying. You're talking to an addiction. You're
not talking to your son. You know what he decorated
Christmas morning? When I got there, and for Christmas afternoon,
I said, also, you don't want to decorate a tree.
(16:07):
You're gonna leave it like this? And he said, no,
I thought we were going to do it. And then
his girlfriend's mother was there um giving giving her gifts,
and she said The mother said, that's all he did
was play game stations. He has not even attempted to
decorate the tree. And I said, I cannot believe this.
He only cost me what he wants. But you can
(16:28):
believe it because you've been living through it. This isn't
a new something. This has been going on for a
long time. But you can believe it. You're frustrated that
you can't fix it. What you can't believe is that
you have no power over it. You do not have
any power over your son's addictive behavior. You don't have
(16:48):
any power over your son period. You know, once a
child hit thirteen fourteen, fifteen sixteen, were pretty much powerless
over what we can and can't do in directing them, well,
I unplug. He had a game station when he was younger,
and I am plugged in, took the cord and I said,
you're done for the next five days. You start showing
me some responsibility here and I can return this. But
(17:10):
now I can't. I wish I could go in there
unplug it and then he but, honey, you sound think
of all the thousands of moms and dads said, I
wish I could just take the heroin needle out of
their arm. I wish I could just go in and
take the heroin out of their out of their pocketbook,
out of their briefcase, out of their I wish I
could just go take that bottle and dump it down
the sink. And we try those things, but it doesn't work.
(17:33):
For I drank or smoke, and he drinks a little bit,
and when he gets a little wine under him or something,
going out to dinner or something with some friends, which
I had taken him out for his work because he
doesn't have a car yet and he's not He doesn't care.
He just drives his bike across the street where he
works and rides it back home. And he works um
(17:53):
with children which he is absolutely fantastic doing his job. Honey,
you're not listening to a word I'm saying. I am. No,
you're not. You're rallying on and on and on about him.
It's not about him. He's an adult. He gets to
make his choices. This is about you, Mom. It's breaking
my heart, and you need to learn the Serenity prayer.
(18:17):
I know that I used to read it all the time.
I grabbed my head and hanging up on the wall. Okay,
reading it is great, but you need to get it
into your heart and your mind and your soul. God
grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
You have not accepted at all that you cannot fix
your son. I have no qualms dealing with anything, but
(18:39):
the fact is I just want to be closer to
my son and be him to be a kinder, more
giving individual. But but you've got to accept that you
cannot change your son one iota. All you can do
is love him and do not enable him, and let
(19:01):
him make the choices he's going to make, and pray
that before it's too late, God gets a hold of him.
I hope, so, Delilah, I really hope. So Cindy, you
speak for so many of us who are trying to rescue, rescue, ranger,
rescue a loved one from the darkness of addiction. I
(19:23):
can hear the love and the desperation you feel to
try to fix this. You can't just love someone through this,
trust me, many have tried. However, there is a bold
enough love, but it's not an earthly love. Doesn't mean
we give up, doesn't mean we stop loving, doesn't mean
we stopped praying, doesn't mean we stopped doing kind things.
(19:46):
But there are some very practical things and ideas that
we can put into place so that the attic doesn't
destroy us while the addiction is destroying them. I hope
to bring the theme of a addiction to several of
my podcasts this year. I'm going to invite real people
who have been on every point of addiction, people who
(20:07):
have been addicted and come out on the other side,
people who have seen their loved ones through, people who
have lost their loved ones because of addiction. We're going
to share these experiences and our strength, hope, and love
right to me by going to my website Delilah dot com,
or you can find me on Facebook. I'd love to
(20:29):
hear your thoughts, your stories, your experiences again. This podcast
has been brought to you by the producers of the
film A Dog's Purpose, a great movie to see with
your whole family. Thank you for spending this time with me.
So down and love some love,
I hope you have the enjoyed our previous podcast. I
gotta tell you I love doing these I love love
love being able to talk to you from more than
a couple of minutes at a time. I love sharing
my heart. And although this podcast is free to you,
it's not free to produce or to deliver. We have
a whole team of folks working on these. Before we
(00:26):
get any further into this conversation, I wanted to talk
about our sponsor. I shared a great movie with my
kids last week. We got to see A Dog's Purpose,
the movie that opens Friday. It's a movie that sort
of sees the world through the perspective through the eyes
of a dog. It was such a great movie. It
took at least one box of clean X, maybe two
(00:47):
between all of us. We have five dogs in our
house every day. They are a huge part of our lives,
so seeing life through the eyes of a dog made
this great for my family. It's going to pull your
heart strings, it's gonna make you cry, but it's got
such a good ending, a happy ending. The movie opens
this Friday in theaters everywhere. So I was saying thank
(01:10):
you for joining us, and thank you for downloading this podcast.
We decided to talk about bold love on the air
the last few weeks starting this year with boldness, living boldly,
taking chances, stepping outside of your comfort zone. And and
you wrote to me and said the most bold things
(01:31):
she's ever done, She said, I brought a homeless woman
home to live with me. I set her up in
an apartment, my friends and I filled it with donated
items between another woman and myself, we ended up spending
a bunch of money filling her fridge and cupboards with food. Unfortunately,
this woman met a guy and walked away from it
(01:53):
all because she wasn't allowed to have him live in
the apartment with her. Now she's in it up back
on the street again. And thank you for sharing that,
and thank you for sharing bold love, even if the
result wasn't what you would hope it would be. I
(02:13):
can't tell you and how many times I have stepped
out on faith, stepped out in love and done the
very same thing you did, provided a home for somebody
who was homeless, taken in people off the streets. When
my daughter Sheila was a baby, I met a listener
(02:33):
who was a prostitute and she had a broken nose
from her pimp. And she was such a beautiful and
kind and sweet young lady, and my husband and I
decided to help her out and found her safe place
to live and brought her into our hearts and into
(02:55):
our homes, and she got clean and sober, She detoxed
off years of drug abuse. She was young, but she
had been using drugs and alcohol since she was like
twelve or thirteen years old. She was such a sweet lady,
such a good heart, but she was so broken, so fragile,
(03:18):
and she got frustrated because she got a job as
a waitress and she was making minimum wage and not
not very much tips. And one night one of her
old clients contacted her and offered her a great deal
of money, and she decided to go back, and she
told herself it was just going to be that one time.
(03:38):
Well guess what happened That one time led to another time,
led to another time, led her back to the crack
pipe and back to the streets. And I don't know
if she ever found her way home again. I don't
know if she ever made life choices. And that has
happened dozens of times with people that I've loved, and
(04:02):
it used to frustrate me and break my heart to think,
after all I've done, how could you do this? But
then I realized that it's not about the outcome. It's
about showing someone there's a better way, and whether they
choose to take that way or not. I am still
(04:23):
going to choose to love my husband. My friends, they
all said, d when are you going to stop? When
are you going to realize that you're wasting your money,
You're wasting your time, You're wasting your energy trying to
help people that don't want to be helped. And if
somebody says they don't want to be helped or shows
me they don't want to be helped, that's fine. But
(04:45):
when somebody shows me that they want to change, they
want a better life, I am always going to extend
my heart and love I am. I don't ever want
to become bitter or cynical, or are frustrated or feel
used up. I still want to love. Maybe I'll do
(05:07):
it a little more wisely in the future, but and
maybe I will instead of trying to help, will do
what I what I try to do now, which is
to give more tools for them to make the change
and make the choices and to do what needs to
be done. But always love honey, don't and don't get frustrated.
(05:30):
That she is back out on the street is heartbreaking,
But you don't know. Maybe you have planted a seed
in her heart and maybe one night she will go
to bed and she will wake up and go I
don't want this life anymore. I don't want the streets anymore.
I don't want the drugs. I don't want the abuse.
I don't want to be addicted to men that destroy me,
(05:53):
or drugs that take my health and take my sanity.
You don't know. You planted seed, and that's how God
calls us to do. So don't get discouraged, and don't
stop loving. Maybe you are like Ange, and you give
and give and give of yourself, and maybe a give
(06:14):
too much. Maybe you've got a son or a daughter
that makes promises time and time again, and each time
you fall for it, and then they steal your car
or your checkbook or your credit card, and your heart
is shattered all over again. Maybe you need to read
a little book called Boundaries. It's by a doctor Cloud
(06:36):
and doctor Townsend. It's been in print for twenty years.
I don't know how long. But it's a great, great book.
If you're a giver and you're always giving to others
and they take and take and take until there's nothing
left to give, maybe you need to set healthy boundaries.
Oh that's so hard to do. Do you have an
(06:57):
adult child, a sister or a brother. Maybe it's your
spouse that simply can't won't or can't get sober and
get clean, get off the whatever it is they're addicted to,
stay away from the casinos. I know an adult young woman, beautiful, smart, talented,
(07:22):
oh so talented, but keeps destroying herself because she can't
stay away from the casinos. She is addicted to gambling.
It's a real thing. You're like, how how could you?
How could you get addicted to throwing your money away?
It's true, lots of people do it and spend billions
of dollars every day behind that addiction. If you have
(07:44):
a hard time setting boundaries with others, try try looking
into that book Boundaries by Dr Cloud in Doctor Townsend.
And if you're the one that you have a hard
time setting boundaries with, if you're if you can't set
boundaries with yourself, if you make promises to yourself, I'm
never going to do this. I'm never going to do that,
and then you turn around and do it. Then you
(08:08):
need to be the one looking into a twelve step
group to fix whatever it is that you keep doing.
I know so many people that have addictions, addictive behaviors,
and they make promises to themselves, they make promises to
their kids, and then they don't they don't follow through.
(08:31):
That's what makes it an addiction. That is the definition
of addiction, doing the same thing over and over and
over and expecting different results. Silly you think, well, I'm
not really an alcoholic because I still have a job.
I'm not an alcoholic because I don't go to the
bars and drink. I just sit here and down a
bottle of wine or two, or a six pack of
(08:52):
bear or two. Don't be silly. Come on, are you
really in that deep of denial. I have a dear
friend of our family who finally made his way to
a twelve step meeting about six months ago after he
had destroyed his life in behind crack cocaine. And he's
not a young man. I'm not talking to eighteen year
(09:14):
old or five year old. This man's in his sixties
and he had been off the drugs for twenty years
and went back thinking he could control it, thinking he
could handle it, thinking it wasn't really an addiction. But
that's the definition of addiction. If you know that you
(09:37):
have a problem and you can't stop, get help, get help,
ask for help, raise your hand and say, um, delila,
I need to talk to you. I don't know what
to do because I can't stop going to the casino
and I've ruined my credit and I can't pay my
rent and I can't even buy food right now. But
I can't let anyone know there's help. They're is there's help.
(10:01):
Several years ago when I first found my way to
the twelve step programs because my husband was an alcoholic
and my father was an alcoholic, and I found out
there was a twelve step program for people who love
people who drink too much, and I refused to go.
I wanted nothing to do with it because I said,
I'm not the one with the problem, And somebody said, really,
(10:23):
because I think you're the one that just got out
of the hospital because you were beat up by a drunk.
That means you have a problem. Now. My problem is
I need to get them to stop drinking. I said,
so many of us think that our problem is we
got to fix somebody else. In just a moment, I'm
going to share a phone call that I took on
(10:43):
my show from somebody who's trying to fix her son.
And his addiction isn't one that's talked about or even recognized,
because it's not chemicals. He's not addicted to crack or
heroin or alcohol. He's addicted to the Internet, and his
gaming has become his whole life to the point where
(11:04):
he has no other relationships. I'm gonna share my words
of wisdom with his mama and see if I can't
help her find peace in her life. Hi, Cindy, Welcome
to the Delilah Show. How's your New Year's going so far? Um,
It's it's a challenge. I'm I'm I'm just more so
(11:25):
worried about my son. He was twenty two. I had
a birthday on Christmas. I had nice presents for him
that I had saved over several months and got them,
knew that he could use them. And it's just very
sad because I cooked dinner and made a real nice dinner,
(11:46):
and usually what his father had been alive, he would
have helped me clean the kitchen, which he always did.
But I always cooked on my birthday because that's the
way I always did. And my son, it didn't offer anything.
He just says, thanks for the dinner. It was good.
It Um. After the gifts were open, of course, I
didn't get anything because he didn't have anything to give me,
(12:06):
which is fine. He made me a birthday cart and
that means more to me probably than anything. And um,
he uh, he's he's incessantly and grossly addicted to game stations.
It's combat. It's across the boat, pons around the world,
and he cannot sit and converse with me or talk
(12:29):
to me on the phone when I call him, ask
him how his day is, and he said, I'm busy.
So well, were you busy with? Are you cooking or
cleaning or what? Can I come and help you? No, mother,
I'm busy. And I said, well, you know, I just
wanted to call him wish you a happy New Year.
And I just hope and pray that God directs you
(12:50):
on the right path this year and you follow and
you make the wisest decisions that you could ever make
as a young man. Well, when I said that, he
not funny. I'm very, very upset because I love this
young man more than anything. With his girlfriends leaving them
after a year living with them, she is absolutely so
(13:12):
dissatisfied with his behavior, his immaturity. Okay, stop stop, stop, stop,
stop right there, okay, and take a deep breath, and
I am going to share something with you that I
want you to to write it down or to impress
it on your heart. Okay, sure, are you ready? Yes?
(13:35):
In the beginning of this conversation, you said, my son
is terribly addicted to these games, and he is. My
son is too. I have an eighteen year old son
that I don't know if he's going to graduate high
school because he is addicted to the games, and so
are thousands and millions of his friends and other kids
(13:55):
their age. So here's what I want you to hear.
Are you ready, yes, ma'am. It's called the three CS
of addiction. Number one, You did not cause his addiction.
Whether a child's addiction is to the Internet, gaming, to gambling,
to drinking, to drugging, to heroin, to pornography, to eating disorders, whatever,
(14:22):
whatever the addiction is that is stealing their life from
them and stealing them out of your arms. You did
not cause it. Number two, you cannot control it. So
saying things like I'm going to pray for you that
(14:42):
you'll make wise decisions, or I'm not going to give
you any money to buy alcohol, or you're on your
own if you end up in the street from shooting heroin.
There's nothing you can say or do to control another
person's addiction. Trust me, I've tried. And the third see
(15:04):
is you sure as hell cannot cure it. I know
he has to. He has to admit his his addiction.
He has to come forward and say I'm going to
stop this. He lives on his own and his girlfriend
lived together. She got so sick and tired of him
the first six months. She has done with them. She
dates other people, She works sixteen hour days, she stays
(15:24):
with some friends once so well, because she cannot stand
his stilth Um I asked him. I said, the only
thing of Evan, if yet you can give me is
um um is a nice Christmas tree decorated. So I
got my ornaments that I gave him, and Um, I said,
that's all I want. When I come into your apartment,
(15:47):
then you can have the tree decorated. And and so
a friend the daughter. But do you listen, do you
hear what you're saying. You're talking to an addiction. You're
not talking to your son. You know what he decorated
Christmas morning? When I got there, and for Christmas afternoon,
I said, also, you don't want to decorate a tree.
(16:07):
You're gonna leave it like this? And he said, no,
I thought we were going to do it. And then
his girlfriend's mother was there um giving giving her gifts,
and she said The mother said, that's all he did
was play game stations. He has not even attempted to
decorate the tree. And I said, I cannot believe this.
He only cost me what he wants. But you can
(16:28):
believe it because you've been living through it. This isn't
a new something. This has been going on for a
long time. But you can believe it. You're frustrated that
you can't fix it. What you can't believe is that
you have no power over it. You do not have
any power over your son's addictive behavior. You don't have
(16:48):
any power over your son period. You know, once a
child hit thirteen fourteen, fifteen sixteen, were pretty much powerless
over what we can and can't do in directing them, well,
I unplug. He had a game station when he was younger,
and I am plugged in, took the cord and I said,
you're done for the next five days. You start showing
me some responsibility here and I can return this. But
(17:10):
now I can't. I wish I could go in there
unplug it and then he but, honey, you sound think
of all the thousands of moms and dads said, I
wish I could just take the heroin needle out of
their arm. I wish I could just go in and
take the heroin out of their out of their pocketbook,
out of their briefcase, out of their I wish I
could just go take that bottle and dump it down
the sink. And we try those things, but it doesn't work.
(17:33):
For I drank or smoke, and he drinks a little bit,
and when he gets a little wine under him or something,
going out to dinner or something with some friends, which
I had taken him out for his work because he
doesn't have a car yet and he's not He doesn't care.
He just drives his bike across the street where he
works and rides it back home. And he works um
(17:53):
with children which he is absolutely fantastic doing his job. Honey,
you're not listening to a word I'm saying. I am. No,
you're not. You're rallying on and on and on about him.
It's not about him. He's an adult. He gets to
make his choices. This is about you, Mom. It's breaking
my heart, and you need to learn the Serenity prayer.
(18:17):
I know that I used to read it all the time.
I grabbed my head and hanging up on the wall. Okay,
reading it is great, but you need to get it
into your heart and your mind and your soul. God
grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
You have not accepted at all that you cannot fix
your son. I have no qualms dealing with anything, but
(18:39):
the fact is I just want to be closer to
my son and be him to be a kinder, more
giving individual. But but you've got to accept that you
cannot change your son one iota. All you can do
is love him and do not enable him, and let
(19:01):
him make the choices he's going to make, and pray
that before it's too late, God gets a hold of him.
I hope, so, Delilah, I really hope. So Cindy, you
speak for so many of us who are trying to rescue, rescue, ranger,
rescue a loved one from the darkness of addiction. I
(19:23):
can hear the love and the desperation you feel to
try to fix this. You can't just love someone through this,
trust me, many have tried. However, there is a bold
enough love, but it's not an earthly love. Doesn't mean
we give up, doesn't mean we stop loving, doesn't mean
we stopped praying, doesn't mean we stopped doing kind things.
(19:46):
But there are some very practical things and ideas that
we can put into place so that the attic doesn't
destroy us while the addiction is destroying them. I hope
to bring the theme of a addiction to several of
my podcasts this year. I'm going to invite real people
who have been on every point of addiction, people who
(20:07):
have been addicted and come out on the other side,
people who have seen their loved ones through, people who
have lost their loved ones because of addiction. We're going
to share these experiences and our strength, hope, and love
right to me by going to my website Delilah dot com,
or you can find me on Facebook. I'd love to
(20:29):
hear your thoughts, your stories, your experiences again. This podcast
has been brought to you by the producers of the
film A Dog's Purpose, a great movie to see with
your whole family. Thank you for spending this time with me.
So down and love some love,
Host
Delilah
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