March 25, 2025 • 60 mins
Raising Drug Resistant Kids with Elisa Fortise Christiansen
Elisa Fortise Christensen joins RTM to discuss her 30-year history of addiction with prescription drugs which she developed after a back injury. She has been clean for many years but that addiction spurred her on to examine how to protect her kids from the same fate. Elisa is an American author, poet and public speaker who has been through some real-life challenges but who lives her life with gratitude, love and passion. She has written 8 books all of which focus on approaching life with what she calles “crazy courage and deep gratitude.” We sat down to discuss the material she has outlined in her book “Teen Warrior: Raising Drug-Resistant Kids”
You can find more information about Elisa at https://www.authorelisa.com
Music by Jelly Roll and Shari Ulrich
Elisa Fortise Christensen joins RTM to discuss her 30-year history of addiction with prescription drugs which she developed after a back injury. She has been clean for many years but that addiction spurred her on to examine how to protect her kids from the same fate. Elisa is an American author, poet and public speaker who has been through some real-life challenges but who lives her life with gratitude, love and passion. She has written 8 books all of which focus on approaching life with what she calles “crazy courage and deep gratitude.” We sat down to discuss the material she has outlined in her book “Teen Warrior: Raising Drug-Resistant Kids”
You can find more information about Elisa at https://www.authorelisa.com
Music by Jelly Roll and Shari Ulrich
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Vancouver called Radio cfr oh one hundred
point five FM. We're coming to you from the unseated
traditional territories of the Squamish, muscream and slavey tooth nations
around Vancouver, BC. I'm your host, Bernardine Fox, and this
is this show that dares to change how we think
about mental health. Welcome to Rethreading Madness.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Ween, have ever been further?
Speaker 3 (00:30):
No?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
What the hell I'm gonna do when I can't see
a fine away under over.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
You're listening to Rethreading Madness on Vancouver called Radio cfr
oh one hundred point five FM. I'm Bernardine Fox speaking
with Elisa Fortiz Christensen about her book entitled Teen Warrior,
raising addiction resistant kids and folks who know where I'm from.
We're here in Vancouver, BC, which has a huge population
(01:04):
of people who have difficulties with addiction, and so it's
always an issue that's on my mind here Alis. How
did you write this book?
Speaker 4 (01:13):
What happened? Well?
Speaker 3 (01:16):
I think it was it was a personal journey for
me as a follow up to my first book, which
was titled The Sentinel Warrior.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
How I got off and stayed off opiates.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
And that book was born out of my own journey
after being on doctor prescribed opiates for thirty years after
breaking my back. I started a hairline fracture in my
early teens falling off a skateboard, and then as a
young as an adult, I became a triathlete and all
(01:54):
of the pounding from the running caused my fifth lambar
to fracture all the way through and I ended up
having to have two level fusion surgeries. And all of
that that I went through landed me on you know,
first viking in and then I graduated to percocet and
then to dilaud it, and eventually I ended up on
(02:17):
sentinyl patches. So it was on opiates for about thirty years,
building up a tolerance that eventually landed me on fentanyl
patches for about eleven years, and throughout that I finally
did get off of them. And when I finally got
off of them in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
And I started thinking about my next book. I at
the time had an eleven and a twelve year.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Old boy that were I was raising, and I became
acutely concerned about what we could do as parents, especially
in the United States, where we have such a rampant
problem with addiction, and especially with young addicts and alcoholics
that are abusing alcohol and drugs, and I wanted to
(03:09):
find out what I could do as a parent, but
also what I could what information I could gather, not
just from this country but from around the world, What
other countries and other parents were doing better than us
to help prevent our young young daughters and sons to
run head first into addiction.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
What could we do, What are.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Other parents around the world doing better, and what could
we put in place? What kind of preventative measures could
we put in place? And when do we need to
do it and how do we need to implement it
to help make or help build addiction resistant kids as
much as we could.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
So that was the motivation behind the Teen Warrior.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
And so I just want to emphasize is that, you know,
it's a hidden drug addiction problem. I think in some
ways is that there are many many people who are
prescribed painkillers and end up addicted to them, and it's
kind of sanitized because a doctor gave it to you,
and so it's not seen as the same kind of
addiction as somebody who perhaps is using street drugs. But
(04:22):
it is in fact, the same addiction. It's the same
process that happens in our brain.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
Right absolutely. And you know, I've.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Unfortunately, and I have a feeling after talking to you
for our pre interview, and I've talked to actually I've
done a lot of these interviews with Canadians, so I
have a pretty good understanding of what's going on up
there too.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
There's the stigma, you know that addicts are you know less, You.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Know that that addiction is a character flaw, or that
you know only addicts or you know, shooting up behind
dumpsters at seven eleven's or whatever.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
But that's not the case. First of all, addiction is
not a character flaw. And second of.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
All, I was just as addicted to opiates as a
heroin addict, because if I lost a patch or missed
a doctor's appointment, I would start going into withdrawals just
like a heroin addict. After about three days, and I
was rendered completely dysfunctional and miserable and was going through
(05:32):
the same set of withdrawals that a heroin addict would
go through. The only difference between me and a heroin
addict was that my dealer was in a white coat
and had a stethoscope around his neck. I was never
abusing them or anything, but it didn't make it any different.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
And so.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
You know, it's and it wasn't a character flaw. And
we really need to as a species get over this
judgment and start treating this as a disease. Just like
we don't judge people with cancer or diabetes or brain tumor.
We shouldn't judge people who have an addiction, as you know,
(06:15):
as if there they have a character flaw, because it's not.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
We do judge other people though. We judge people who smoke.
We judge people who may have extra weight on them
according to how we judge what is extra or not
extra right, And so we have we have little pockets
of people in our communities where we've somehow society has
given people permission to judge. And those are just another two.
(06:41):
So you I remember from talking with you before, but
you came up with a way to get off the
drugs you were taking, and I did.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
It was not the best way, but I had finally
reached my limit.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
I just couldn't take it in more.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
I had been you know, I had gotten off of
them multiple times over the course of my life, like
you know, when I knew I was going to get pregnant.
You know, both of my pregnancies with my sons were planned.
I was in my thirties, and you know, I would
I would, you know, lean down off the opiates, and
(07:24):
you know, everything was monitored.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
By my doctors. I was very careful and.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
All of that, and then I would, you know, but
I would always end up back on them. But the
last time, in twenty seventeen, I was on the highest dose.
It was one hundred mcg patches every three days I
would change them of fentanyl. And then on top of that,
I was taking percocet, and they also had me on Soma,
which was a muscle relaxant that was actually you know,
(07:50):
introduced in the fifties as a kind of a sedative
for what they thought was anxious housewives.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
It's a really, really bad had drug.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
And I had all of that in my system on
a regular basis, and I chose to go cold turkey because.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
I just never wanted to go back on any of
it again.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
So I kind of almost by design, did it the
most painful way I could think of, and it was
horrific and I barely survived it. And I would not
recommend it. It's not something you should do without medical supervision.
I should have been in a hospital under doctors supervision,
but I didn't do it that way. I got off
of it. But the most important thing that I got
(08:34):
from that experience was.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
That I really had to completely.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Change my mindset about not just the drugs that I
was on, but about my entire life. And I really
made a decision that I was no longer going to
be in victim mode in my own.
Speaker 5 (08:53):
Life, and I had to really take stock of all
of the chyofs and past that was going on in
my life and take responsibility for it and accept the
fact that about ninety eight percent of it was due
to the fact that I was just continually drugged and
(09:14):
get rid of the drugs out of my system, get
rid of it all out of my life, and become
a warrior in my own life story and quit playing
the victim.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
And so it was a whole mind shift, in addition
to getting sober and clean and making a one hundred
percent commitment that from now on I was going to
take full responsibility for my life, both my failures and
my successes, and really examine my life as a whole
(09:44):
and move forward with a completely new mindset.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Right, And that's the sort of foundation of why you
also moved forward and writing this book and looking at
ways to help your children not end up where you
ended up.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Yeah, I really you know that.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
I think that that shift in mindset and an approach
to life really was the springboard for writing The Team Warrior,
because I, you know, as I went through that, I
started thinking about, you know, OK, that was great, and
it was really hard, and it was like, if I
could teach my kids what I learned from this process,
(10:23):
but if I could teach it to them on the
front end, so they didn't have to come.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
Through all this this torture and lose.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
All this time that I did, you know, numbing out
to the pain of the human condition self medicating, you know,
not just to the physical pain, but to the mental
pain which I had to face the fact that that
I was using the opiates for that too. Oh and
by the way, when I got off all the opiates,
strangely enough, about eighty five percent of my physical pain
(10:53):
went away. Because it turns out that the human brain
will create phantom pain to keep getting those opiates. I
did not know that, Yeah, yeah, because right. So I
went off the opiates and about eighty five percent of
my pain went away. The rest of it, I've been
able to manage with self care and yoga and getting
(11:16):
plenty of rest and exercise and eating right and you know,
occasional advol and time and all. I mean, it's it's
opiates are not They are not at all a viable
solution for chronic pain.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
They are just not.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
The side effects are just horrific. And you know, sure,
if you're you know, in a war and you get
your arm blown off, absolutely you know, morphine is a
great solution if you have you know, if you have
major surgery and for the you know, ten days after surgery, absolutely,
you know, opiates are great. But long term pain solution,
(11:53):
it's it's just a horrific option.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
And so that was great too to learned that once
I gave those.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Up, I was actually way better able to manage my pain.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
So after I.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Learned all this, I was like, look, I got to
figure out a way to teach my kids how to
avoid this altogether. So I started researching, and I found
out that like in Europe, they don't use opiates like
we do in the States at all, like.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
They are not opiate dependent.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
They don't give opiates after dental work, they don't give
opiates after minor surgery. They don't give opiates for chronic
back pain, like that's their last, last last resort that
they go to.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
They have all sorts of other.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Solutions before, like, they do not choose opiates. That's not
even in their top ten choices to treat pain.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
And so I would like, what is going on? You know,
why are they able to.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
Treat pain successfully without jumping it, jumping on the opiate train.
And why is it that they don't have such a
binge drinking problem like we do? Why aren't their children
you know, why don't they have so many car accidents
to do alcohol?
Speaker 4 (13:09):
And why don't they have drug abuse like we do
over here? So I started researching that, and I had
so many questions, like, you know, to tell or not
to tell it? Has research shown that.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
It's better to lie to your kids about your drug
and alcohol experimentation when you were their age?
Speaker 4 (13:29):
Or is it better to be honest with them?
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Turns out it's better to be honest without you know,
glamorizing it, you know, but they it's better to be honest.
And so I started studying this and I was like,
what is it that we can do or provide for
our children that will give them the best chance of
(13:52):
getting through adolescens? And when do we need to start
talking to them? You know, kids are maturing so much faster.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
Than we are than we did in their you know, when.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
We were their age. And there's so many other drugs
out there. Like I thought I knew all the drugs
on the market, there's stuff that I had no idea.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
About when I started writing this book. And there's new
drugs coming out every day. So I learned so much
through the process of writing it.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
And I found out that there are some formula. There
is a formula, there's things that you can do.
Speaker 4 (14:29):
And one of the.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Main things is, you know, as children are going through
pre adolescents and we need to start talking to this.
You know, Americans are so up, We're such prudes compared
to like Europeans and Canadians, and you know, we get
all freaked out about talking to our kids about drugs
(14:49):
and alcohol, you know, and we're like, oh, we need
to wait until they're seniors in high school. No, we
need to start talking to them when they're nine or ten.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Yeah, Actually, they've discovered that kids are first for drugs
between the ages of eight and eleven. So up here,
our fourth pillar in our drug program is about prevention.
But all they've done is piggybacked on programs of around
drug use, talking about drug use to kids in high school,
and of course by the time they hit high school,
(15:19):
they've already been given drugs, they may already have a problem.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
So you remember Nancy Reagan just saying no to drugs.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
That was the biggest fail of like any social program
that we've ever tried to launch this country. Like, I mean,
it was ridiculous, and you know, it doesn't It's so
it's like, Okay, telling them what to do doesn't work.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
I just scare them straight straight doesn't work. So you
know what what is going to work?
Speaker 3 (15:49):
And what I found through my research is that one
of the most important things you can do for these
kids is help them I get an identity and a
purpose early on.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
Because not all of us kids, and we know this for.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Certain, a very small percentage of us, you know, have
the luxury of being able to latch onto our identities
early on. I mean there's maybe five percent of us
that end up the jock, you know, the you know, valedictorian,
the smart one, the you know, the funny one, the
(16:31):
pretty one, the you know whoever. And and those kids,
you know, they're lucky.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
You know, you end up with the you.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Know, the super musical one, the super talented one.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
Those kids are lucky, you know, right out of the gate,
they have their identity and it's great.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
But the rest of us are flailing around like fish
out of water.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
And it's never more awkward or painful than when we're
going through junior high and high school. We have no
idea who we are.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
We feel completely awkward, we hate ourselves, and we're trying
to find out what our value is. And so as parents,
as I was researching this, it was like it became
acutely obvious to me that if we can step in
and intervene with our young ones at that point and
(17:20):
help them identify some sort of value doesn't have to
be locked in for the rest of their lives, but.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
If we can help them, like find something.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Of value that they can they can be a part of,
whether it's like volunteering or like with my sons, I
started a little business for them on this Mountain and
it became really valuable to the community, and they the
community just kind of started treating them like rock stars
because they were out picking up litter on the weekends
and they were helping seniors and they were like, oh
(17:53):
my god. You know, they developed an identity within the
community doing these small things, and they loved it, and
it became part of their identity and it helped them
avoid sliddling around like a little fish out of water
while they were going through this very fragile time.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Christ need to stop for a second and go to
a couple PSAs, but we'll be right back.
Speaker 6 (18:21):
Folks here, turn up quigate Euons Queen Sna Hi, everybody,
my name is quigate Yuon's. I'm a member of the
Squamish nation and the Yagolanis Klan of the Hyda Nation.
You're listening to co Op Radio cfro O one hundred
point five FM. We live, work play and broadcast from
the traditional ancestral and unseeded territories of the Musquiam, Squamish
(18:43):
and Slave Tooth nations.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
You're listening to Rethreading Madness on Banks. We call up
Radio cfr OH one hundred point five FM. I'm Murderdine
Fox and I'm talking with Elisa Fortiz Christiansen about her
book Raising Addict Resistant Kids. A. Lisa, you were talking
about having done some research about other countries. Can you
tell us a little bit more about what you learned
about what they did. I know you talked about them
(19:07):
not not hiding you know, well, but sure that's what
you said, but you tell us, you tell us so.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Yeah. So I started looking at why the United States
specifically had such a.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
Problem with binge drinking specifically, and.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
That of course, that kind of abuse of alcohol led
to you know, other risk factors like you know, using
harder drugs, and you know, there is a link there obviously.
And and what I found was that like in European
(19:51):
countries specifically, like in you know, Spain, Italy, France, they
took a very nonchalant approach to drinking wine. For instance,
you know, twelve thirteen, fourteen year olds even you know,
in some families younger, they would have wine with dinner.
(20:14):
And the children in those age groups would have you know,
a small glass of wine with their parents at dinner.
And what the research showed was that it took that
stigma out of the alcohol.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
The wine, so that it was no big deal.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
It was not this you know thing that the teens
wanted to go out and try because it was you know,
a forbidden fruit that they wanted to go out and
try with their peers. And of course, in the US,
you know, we have this drinking age where you know,
(20:56):
we can.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
Ship you off to war.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
You know, you can sign up for the military at eighteen,
you can get married at eighteen, which means you're old
enough to parent a child at eighteen, but you're not
allowed to legally drink alcohol until you're twenty one. It just,
you know, it makes it this big deal. And so
what happens is is that it creates the stigma that
(21:20):
children want to go out and you know, get away
with it, and so they do it in a big,
bold way that creates a situation where they're going to
do it unsafely. And in Europe that doesn't happen. They
don't have they have a much lower drinking age. In
(21:41):
many cases it's sixteen or eighteen. And in many cases
these kids have been drinking wine with their families and
since they were twelve or thirteen, and they just don't
have the problems that we have over here, So let
me just.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Jump in, let me just jump in for half a
sec here. That all makes sense to just sort of
normalize the idea of drinking. And therefore you are around
your parents and learning about, you know, their role modeling
for you, maybe responsible drinking. What happened? What happens then
with And I'm not an expert on addiction, so it
(22:16):
is maybe a really stupid question, but what happens to
the idea that certain people in certain families have a
gene that creates the addiction or the alcoholism?
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Right, And by the way, I am not an expert
on addiction either.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Let me say that I'm just I just did a
lot of research for this book over the course of
two years, and it was driven by my my own path.
I you know, have addiction running in my family and
alcoholism running in my family on both sides. And my
brother was a speed addict all of his life. My mom,
you know, was an alcoholic. My dad's dad was an alcoholic.
(22:56):
So you know, I had it running on both sides
of my family.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
And your question is a good one, and yeah, I
mean it, it happens, you know, even.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
It doesn't matter culturally or you know, methodically how you
you know, raise your kids if you have it running
in your DNA, if it's coming, it's it's trickling down
through your family.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
You know, like there's certain cultures.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
That just have just really struggled with alcoholism. You know,
the Irish culture is known for, you know, having a
more severe problem with alcoholism.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Absolutely, you know, it's it's a it's a problem. And
when you and I did our.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Pre interview, we talked about epigenetics that they've recimply come
across and how you know if if two addicts are alcoholics,
raise a child in a in an attic, in an
addiction seeped environment, even if that child does not have
any addiction running in their DNA, it can create a
(24:02):
change in their actual DNA for them to be more
prone to addiction or alcoholism. So we're seeing that environment
can actually change our DNA code to be more susceptible
and vice versa. You can take a child that has
a lot of addictive DNA or genetics running through their blood,
(24:27):
you know, back generations, and if you if you give enough,
give it enough time, and you raise them in around
behaviors that don't have any addictive tendencies, you can.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Actually correct that over time.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
So yeah or not, it's not guaranteed, but we are staring. Yeah,
we are seeing that behavior and environment and upbringing really
does have the power to have an impact on our DNA,
which is is huge. You know, that's amazing, And they're
just discovered that. I mean, that was brand new when
(25:02):
I was writing this book, and it was fascinating to me.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
I have heard again, I'm not an expert on drugs.
I don't use drugs other than you know, my tileel
and i'd be profen.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
But I have heard.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
That drugs are being designed to be addictive on the
first try. So in my age group, we were brought
up to believe that if you just tried something once,
that was no big deal. If you tried it over
and over and over, your body would would build up
an addiction to that particular drug and you would find
(25:42):
yourself addicted. Same kind of thing. I don't know if
it's the same kind of thing happens around cigarette smoking
and nicotine, or whether it is a build up that
creates the addiction. I don't know. I do know that
one of the things that I read was that drug
dealers and people who make these drugs are working at
making sure that the drugs are addictive on the first try,
(26:04):
so kids don't even get a chance to even experiment
or try something or think maybe they could just test
it out. Is that true or is this not true anymore?
This bad information that I got a while ago.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Well, I think the drugs have gotten more powerful and
stronger in.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
Some ways and in some ways not.
Speaker 7 (26:25):
You know.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
I mean back when I.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Was growing up, my brother was twenty years older than me.
But I've been told and I've seen some research to
indicate that, you know, the speed that was going around
back then was a lot more pure and more addictive.
But you know, there's debate on that because the methamphetamine,
(26:48):
the street methamphetamine that's going around.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
Today, has a lot more crap in it.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
You know, they're cutting it with things that you know,
who knows if that's more addictive or not will tell
you this. I did research a lot, a lot of
the brain chemistry and how different drugs and behaviors actually
affect our brain. I was actually researching it from the
standpoint of gambling addiction at the time, because I had
(27:16):
someone in my life that was the second gambling addict
to go through my life like a wrecking ball. And
I was really curious because I could actually see physical
changes in him when he would step through the door
of a casino, and I wanted to know what was happening,
and so.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
I started researching it.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
And what I found out was that anytime you get
a behavior like gambling, an addictive behavior, or a drug
or an alcohol on board, it takes your brain about
two weeks to reestablish homeostasis with that new behavior, drug
or alcohol on board.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
Your brain is always trying to establish its best functioning capacity,
and the term for that is homeostasis. So, for instance,
if you're just a clean slate, you're not doing anything right,
but you you know, eat a Snickers bar, you start
eating a Snickers.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Bar every morning, because sugar is a drug too. You know,
After about a week and a half to two weeks,
your brain is like, okay, so this is how we're
gonna do it. We're gonna have a sugar you know,
we're gonna have this sugar rush every morning. And after
about two weeks, then your brain has re established homeostasis,
getting used, you know, with that sugar on board every morning.
(28:34):
So then on the tenth or twelfth day, you cut
that snicker Bars out of your routine, and you're gonna
feel it, You're gonna crave it, and you're gonna be
cranky and off balance because your brain is gonna now
have to swing that pendulum back the other way and
re establish a new homeostasis without that snicker bars snicker
(28:56):
bar on board.
Speaker 4 (28:57):
Same with a drug, same with a behavior, same with alcohol.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
And of course those are withdrawals, that's what you know,
that's why they're so severe.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
And depending on the strength of the drug or the
behavior or you know, whatever's going on.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
I'm the same thing when like when we fall in love,
you know, and then we you know, all of.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
A sudden break up and we go into it, you know,
depression in a sadness. It's it's the same thing.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
Our brain is re establishing a new home stasis about
that kit of love on board.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
So people don't don't often cross over from the use
of substances as an addiction to that how that same
process can impact you in other areas of your life.
So for instance, I do a lot of work around therapy,
abuse and exploitation when I'm not on the radio, and
one of the things that's become clear in that is
(29:50):
that the abuse of therapists in those situations are in
fact creating a profound dependency on them in their clients really,
and in that profound dependency is a very corrupt form
of attachment, so that when that person is no longer
in their lives, they literally go through withdrawal, just as
(30:11):
you're talking about, from not being able to access that
person or being around that person. So even if it's
their choice, like all of us who decide to quit
something that's not good for us, it doesn't mean it's
just not clean life. It just doesn't come in nice,
neat packages. So even though they may be the ones
that said no, this isn't good for me and left
(30:33):
like somebody who's stopping using a drug that's not good
for them, they end up having the same kind of
physiological responses to that.
Speaker 4 (30:42):
It's yeah, it's a withdrawal from a toxic code dependency.
And So what I tried to do with the teen
war year and well, before I tell you.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
What I try to do, the tools I part I
tried to pull together in this book for my own
sons and for other parents to give their kids.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
Tools I had.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Gotten the book written, and I was just feeling like
it didn't have enough teeth. So I actually found six
young young people that were in the early twenties that
had gone through addiction and were in recovery, and I
interviewed them, which really really made this book everything I
wanted it to be. But before I even did that,
(31:25):
I really searched for tools that I could, like, I
built a toolkit that I could give my sons and
that other parents could give their son their children to
help them deal with.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
The human condition. Because I've always been really honest with my.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Boys, I'm like, look, guys, life is going to be rough.
It's going to batch you around like a ping pong ball.
So let me help you build tools that you can
get through life with so that you don't go towards
the path of trying to numb out to the human condition,
(32:05):
to the human pain and in destructive ways. In other words,
so you don't pick up a joint or a pipe,
or a line of coke or a bottle of alcohol,
or you don't start, you know, watching porn or working
out excessively or eating excessively. Let me help you develop
some healthy skills coping skills so that you have them
(32:30):
in your pocket and when you need them, you can
pull them out and use those instead. And the most
healthy thing that I could I could find in this
world to give them with meditation. It's something you can
do anywhere, at any time. It costs them nothing, and
it's a skill that's fairly easy to learn, and they
(32:53):
can if they keep up with it. It's like any
any muscle or any skill. You have to kind of,
you know, stay in practice with it. But they can
pull it out while they're in court, you know, getting
a divorce or paying for a traffic ticket, or they
just got in a car accident, or they're you know,
at a job interview and they're freaking out and their
anxieties through the roof for whatever their situation is where
(33:16):
they need to calm themselves, or they just got broken
up with by what they think is the love of
their life, whatever their situation is, that's gonna they're gonna
need to self suze and put a little layer of
comfort between them and the world.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
I wanted to give them that so they didn't.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Try to self soothe in a destructive way. And that
seemed from all my research to be the one thing
that would help them the most and wouldn't cost them anything,
and they could carry with them anywhere they went. And
so I did teach them to meditate, and I've been
using it a lot lately too, because I've been stressed
(33:54):
out too, and so you know, I have to put
my money where my mouth is and show them in
real time every day how it can be used to
manage the human condition and manage the human life. And
it seems to be the most effective way. And then
the other thing that really I think, really I got
(34:14):
a lot and they got a lot out of me
writing this book was asking after I interviewed these six
young people, three young men and three young women who had,
for whatever reason, had gone through a difficult time in
their lives that had triggered them ending up going down a.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
Path where they ended up addicted to drugs or alcohol.
And these were kids that were from like pretty.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
White, picket sense middle class families. These, you know, these
were kids being raised in the ghetto and Pompton.
Speaker 4 (34:47):
You know, these were like pretty average run in the
middle American families.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
And something happened when they were about twelve thirteen fourteen,
where either parents had gone through divorced, so they'd had
a financial upheaval or a death in the family, or
something had happened where things had just gone a little
sideways on them and it had triggered them to go
(35:14):
down a path that had led to them getting addicted
to drugs or alcohol.
Speaker 4 (35:20):
And it was just shocking to hear their stories because
it was.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
You know, like these ballerinas and football players and they
were headed to Betorian and get scholarships and they were
like picture perfect, and then all of a sudden, like
two years later, they're shooting up behind a dumpster, or
they were overdosing on heroin or smoking crack pipes in
the ghetto. And it's like, oh my god, I want
(35:48):
to know what happened, and I want to know how
I could prevent my child from doing that.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Okay, so let's talk about that in a couple of minutes.
When we just come back.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
We'll go back.
Speaker 8 (36:14):
Somebody saved me, me from myself husband, so long living
and here they saved my life style.
Speaker 9 (36:35):
It's bad.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
From my head. It's the only thing.
Speaker 8 (36:44):
That seems to hear.
Speaker 10 (36:50):
Hall up is drinking and smoking.
Speaker 8 (36:53):
It's hopeless, but feel like it's solving.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
I need.
Speaker 10 (36:58):
Something is shid M means broken. Now hold on to
anything that sets me free? How much loss cars baby,
don't waste your time on me. I'm so damaged beyond repent.
(37:20):
Life is shattered my hopees in my drenk.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
How'm a loss car.
Speaker 4 (37:28):
Baby, Don't waste your time on me.
Speaker 9 (37:32):
I'm so damaged beyond repent. Life is shattered, my hopes
in my dreams.
Speaker 11 (37:58):
Wadning Scott.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
Was missing the move. There was no shooting start to us.
Speaker 12 (38:11):
Mission on you.
Speaker 4 (38:15):
And all of my song.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
I just watched them down.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
You see all the peas I've ever found. The hold
up is drinking and smoking.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
It's hopeless, but feel I can solve it.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
I mean.
Speaker 9 (38:43):
Something inside of is broken. I hold on to anything
that sets me three.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
I'm a lost call.
Speaker 9 (38:55):
Maybe, don't waste your time home made so damash beyond
free pin Life is shattering my hows and b drink
coma lo baby, don't bes comcast Johnny.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
I'm so damns been john be bad.
Speaker 9 (39:21):
Life is shattered, my hopes and my dream.
Speaker 12 (39:49):
If you want to listen to us anywhere you travel,
you can go into your Google Play Store and then
download the Radio Player Canada app and you can then
you can listen to your favorite radio station, co Operating
CFR one hundred point five F.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
You're listening to Rethreading Madness on Vancouver call up Radio
CFR or one hundred point five FM. I'm Bernadine Fox,
and I'm speaking with Alisa Forty's Christiansen about her book
on Teen Warriors, Raising Addiction resistant Kids. So, Alisa, you
were just telling us about these kids that you interviewed.
(40:23):
What was the common factor for them that you discovered
in talking to them.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
It was fascinating because each one of their stories were
eerily similar. They were all different, you know, they had
all had different upsets at critical primary points in their lives.
You know, usually it was around eleven, twelve, thirteen. Some
you know, pretty significant, like a death in the family
(40:51):
of a parent or a you know, an important aunt
or uncle. Sometimes it was just like, you know, a
financial upheaval or a divorce. A couple of them didn't
have anything in particular. But there was one thing that
they all answered very similarly that I thought was fascinating,
(41:15):
and it was when I asked them this one question
at the end of each one of their interviews. I said,
if your parents could have done one thing differently that
you believe could have made a difference and kept you going,
kept you from going down this dark path that led
to you getting addicted to drugs and alcohol. What could
(41:36):
they have done? And each one of them answered me
in almost the exact same way. They first said, I
don't blame my parents or hold them responsible for anything.
Speaker 4 (41:50):
It was my response. It was my doing. I made
the choices that I made, which I thought was.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
Really cool that they had all gotten to the point
in their recovery that they took full responsibility for their
addictive behavior and where it led them.
Speaker 4 (42:08):
That seemed really healthy to me. It felt really healthy to.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
Me that they were taking full responsibility. But they also said,
if I could go back and ask one thing of
my parents, it would be that they didn't shut down
communication with me.
Speaker 4 (42:24):
They said, I understood why they did it.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
They were trying to protect me because they were going
through pain, and they were going through stress and difficulty,
and they thought they were protecting me by not talking
to me about it.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
But what it did was it it shut down the
communication both ways, and so I no longer felt like
I could talk to them either.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
That was a very profound thing. For kids. You also
talked about Norway or having done some research, and maybe
Norway was in our conversation prior to the interview here. Yeah,
you described to me something that Norway does around addictions,
and I thought was really amazing and me, well, I
(43:10):
won't say anymore. You tell us what does Norway do
when somebody has an addiction?
Speaker 4 (43:15):
So, yeah, the Scandinavian countries do things really differently.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
You know, where where the US is banning books right now,
Scandinavian countries are teaching middle school. In middle school, they're
teaching empathy, they're teaching how to spot you know, fake
news or you know.
Speaker 4 (43:38):
Articles or stories generated by AI.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
You know, they're just they're on a different wavelength than
we are, and I really wish we'd learn more from them.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
But specifically when it comes.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
To addiction, they have an amazing success rate, especially comparatively
to the US, we have about an eight percent success
rate when we try to treat addiction.
Speaker 4 (44:05):
We you know, throw if you.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
Are lucky enough to have money in the US, you
might be able to get into a detox and rehab
program that lasts maybe one to three months.
Speaker 4 (44:15):
Then we kick you back out on you know, on this,
you know, out of.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
The rehab program back to where you were at, and
you're usually right back to where your friends that you
used with are, and you know your dealers are and
your triggers are, and we're like.
Speaker 4 (44:31):
Good luck. You know, don't call us, we'll call you.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
And that that generates about an eight percent success rate
in Scandinavian countries.
Speaker 4 (44:40):
I think it was it was Norware Denmark. I apologize
for not knowing.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
But the way they do it is they take the
person and they first relocate them to the other side
of the country so there is far away from their plugs.
You know, their their drug dealers, there, friends that they
used with their triggers, you know where they bought and
what reminds them of that lifestyle as they can get them.
(45:09):
Then they treat them for a year and they detox them.
They put them through rehab. They teach them everything that
they could possibly know about their addiction, how their brain works,
how the physiology of it, everything they need to know
about addiction. Then and here's the real kicker, the here's
(45:31):
the key to it all. They provide them with two
things that I think is the absolute core.
Speaker 4 (45:39):
Of why we get addicted.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
In the first place, why this is such a chronic
disease within our species. They help them establish a purpose
in life, So they find out what they love to do,
what they're good at, and they train them in it,
and they let them develop a career and for whatever
(46:03):
they love to do.
Speaker 4 (46:05):
Then they help them.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
Establish genuine, authentic relationships, friendships with new people that our
real solid friendships. And the reason why they're doing that
is because they have figured out, and it's so simple
when you think about it, that the two things that
(46:28):
the human spirit cannot withstand the pain of is not
having a purpose in life and not having authentic connections
with other humans. Those two things cause us so much
pain that we will do anything to numb out to it,
even if we know it's going to kill us. So
they provide solutions to that, and their success rate of
(46:53):
keeping people from going back to their addiction is in
the ninety percentile.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (47:01):
And why we can't learn from them, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
You'd think we'd wake up and look at our neighbors
across the.
Speaker 4 (47:10):
Pond and say, Wow, that's interesting. They're really it's really
working over there. What are they doing? Why is our
success rates so low?
Speaker 13 (47:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (47:20):
But that's what they're doing. And it's so simple and
it makes so much sense.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
But I think the reason why the US isn't doing
it is because the US is being run by Big Pharma,
the most profitable year after year corporation in the United States.
Speaker 4 (47:40):
And of course they don't want us to get sober
and clean because it's so lucrative if we don't.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
Well, that would be true in your case where you
were on prescribed medication. The question then becomes, why might
drug rehab programs. I'm going to say this out loud.
I can't believe it wanted to drug rehab programs basically
maybe not want to have people get clean and not
use drugs. And of course, you know, one could get
(48:10):
really cynical, and I do at times get very cynical
about it and see it as you know, a place
where they lose their customers. You know, if you're in
a for profit business and your customers have drug addictions,
then in some ways you can't afford to have a
program that works.
Speaker 3 (48:30):
So you know what they charge down here at these
halfway houses, you know, and and drug rehabs. I think
it's twenty five dollars per you're in tests and they
test up every single day and they usually have like
fifty beds I think is the average size, So do
the math.
Speaker 4 (48:51):
And they're riddled with drug abuse.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
Like you go to any one of these drug houses,
like you know, rehab houses down here, they're supposedly, you know,
they're treating these people for drug addiction. And you know,
if you want to find street drugs, that's where you
find them.
Speaker 4 (49:10):
It's it's it's all a game.
Speaker 3 (49:12):
It's all a big ruse, and it's all part of
the system. And the big pharma knows that it's the
sicker they keep us, the more money they're going to
continue to make. If we get healthy, if we actually
figure out that, you know, we can actually heal our
(49:32):
bodies with our minds and do all of that, if
we actually come out from underneath that fog that is,
you know, over top of us and has so much
to do with illegal drugs and pharmaceutical drugs and all
of that. If we get out from underneath that fog
and we actually start thinking clearly and realize just how
much we can heal ourselves with our own minds as
(49:53):
long as we're not drugged.
Speaker 4 (49:55):
There, they're going to be out of business.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
Yeah, yeah, true. So toolbox, let's talk about your toolbox
for kids. What's in it?
Speaker 4 (50:07):
So, yeah, that's the outline of this book. It's really
the chapter outline.
Speaker 14 (50:13):
So I started this book by listening a lot of
statistics that people that parents need to know and the
risk factors that make your team more susceptible.
Speaker 3 (50:24):
But then and I talk about role of family, heredity
and history. But the Toolbox really involves a few simple things.
It involves the importance. I talk about the importance of
importance of stability. Nobody has a perfect family. I raised
my boys after I got them back after a horrific
(50:47):
custody battle. I you know, was a single mom struggling.
And but there's even with you know, the less than
optimal condition, you can still do this. And you know,
it involves making sure you're paying attention to emotional connection.
(51:08):
And like these these young people in recovery said, keep
that level of communication open with them, keep an eye on.
Speaker 4 (51:19):
Getting them engaged. You know, boredom is really a challenge, and.
Speaker 3 (51:27):
We have too much, in my opinion, we have too
much simulation with social media and TikTok and you know,
scrolling on their phones. Get that you know, I think
it's important to get them outside if you can, and
get them working. And I know that's not always an
you know option. I mean, I was lucky I raised
them on top of the mountain. I wasn't raising them
in you know, a big city. But also pay attention
(51:53):
to how you, as a parent are processing your emotional
pain and your stress and your boredom. Because trust me,
everything that you're doing they're watching and you're teaching them
how to do it, and so they you know, really
pay attention every day. You don't have to be perfect,
(52:14):
but let them watch you learn new skills.
Speaker 4 (52:19):
And healthy skills for you dealing with the human condition.
And I think it's really that's the real key is
letting them watch you deal with life in the.
Speaker 3 (52:35):
Human condition and taking personal responsibility for regulating your own
emotions in.
Speaker 4 (52:41):
A healthy.
Speaker 11 (52:44):
Way so that you are approaching your own life as.
Speaker 4 (52:47):
A warrior and not a victim.
Speaker 1 (52:50):
Right right, That makes sense.
Speaker 11 (52:56):
That is so huge because that gifted mentality, so that
they understand that their life is up to them and
no matter what happens to them, it is the way
they respond and react to it emotionally, and that they have.
Speaker 3 (53:14):
Control over that if you can get that message to them,
that will help them avoid being.
Speaker 4 (53:21):
A victim and they will become a warrior.
Speaker 3 (53:25):
And then they will if you give them that tool
and that mentality, and then you teach them how to
regulate their emotions, that will help them avoid needing.
Speaker 4 (53:35):
To numb out to the human condition and self medicate.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
Yep, that makes sense. Thank you Alisa for coming and
chatting with us about this. It's an very important topic.
And I know so many people who have drug addiction
in their family and worry about this kind of thing constantly,
and unfortunately, there isn't a lot of information out there
about how to help your kids not turn to drugs
(54:04):
in society that makes it so readily available to them
as a coping skill. So thank you much.
Speaker 4 (54:12):
You're welcome.
Speaker 3 (54:13):
And I've got I've got one that just turned twenty
this last week, and my eighteen year old is just
about to graduate high school, and you know, knock on wood,
I think I've just about got them to adulthood. Although
you know, boys, I don't know. Certainly, I'm hoping I've
gotten them there in one piece. And it has not
been a perfect journey. But and no parenting ever is
(54:36):
so please, parents, if you're if you're listening to this,
be gentle with yourself. It really I you know, I've
made tons of mistakes along the way. Love yourself and
give yourself some grace as well. And if you would
like to get this book, you can reach you can
get it on author Alisa dot com A U T
H O R E L I s A dot com.
Speaker 4 (54:59):
That's my web. Thank you so much for honoring me
with this interview. I so appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (55:04):
Brittany, Welcome, Elisa. I'm so happy to have had you
come and chat with us about this very very important topic.
So thank you and we'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (55:11):
Folks.
Speaker 7 (55:13):
Hi, folks, this is Steve ferguson your twenty first century
schitzoid Man, and I'm coming to you on behalf of
prog Rock Alley. We are hitting up your airwaves every
Tuesday night at seven o'clock PM, running that whole hour
bringing you the very best of progressive rock that includes
art rock, math rock, experimental, alternative, a little bit of everything,
and sometimes I just sneaking a favorite song of mine
(55:35):
just for the hell of it, because I can every
Tuesday night at seven pm if you want it. I
got it, just name it out played. That's Prog Rock
Alley on CFIRO one hundred point five FM.
Speaker 1 (55:46):
I'm Bernadine Fox and that's our show. My thanks to
Elisa Fortiz Christensen for coming and chatting with me about
her experience being addicted to prescription fentanyl and her book
Teen Warrior, Raising Addiction Resistant Kids, where she outlines how
to give your kids tools to cope with life without
turning to drugs. Music today was by Jelly Roll and
(56:07):
Cherry Ulrich. And to you, our listeners, you are why
we do this every week. Thank you for joining us today.
Stay safe out there. You've just listened to Rethreading Madness,
where we dare to change how we think about mental health.
We air live on Vancouver co Op Radio CFRI one
hundred point five FM every Tuesday at five pm or
(56:28):
online at co opradio dot org. If you have questions
or feedback about this program, I want to share your
story or have something to say to us, we want
to hear from you. You can reach us by email
Rethreading Madness at co opradio dot org. This is Bernardine Fox.
We'll be back next week.
Speaker 2 (56:46):
Until then, will ever been firdn? What the hell, I'm
gonna do w I can't sing find my way.
Speaker 4 (57:03):
Under or over to.
Speaker 2 (57:08):
Just when I'm ready to give up the fight, they
are when we turn out the lights and it's all right,
it's all right.
Speaker 4 (57:21):
Don't you really be alright?
Speaker 3 (57:27):
Why do I always believe but when you're.
Speaker 13 (57:31):
Telling me everything's gonna be out right?
Speaker 1 (57:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (57:43):
Why don't I wonder how you know? Surely you don't
have all of the facts.
Speaker 3 (57:53):
You could be just making it up.
Speaker 2 (57:58):
Why don't I think of that? It's some God imagine
in the words that you read saying, baby, take it from.
Speaker 4 (58:11):
Me, it's all right, it's all.
Speaker 15 (58:15):
Right, don't too real, be alright?
Speaker 9 (58:22):
But while always believe that when you.
Speaker 13 (58:26):
Tell everything's gonna be a right, everything's gonna be all.
Speaker 2 (58:35):
Right anyone else it's such a cliche, just words people
say to be.
Speaker 4 (58:46):
Nice somehow, and.
Speaker 3 (58:51):
Far from you.
Speaker 2 (58:54):
I'm convinced you're.
Speaker 15 (59:19):
When I'm weary and so tired, when I'm worn out
and done, when I fall off the why again, no
more strange thing?
Speaker 1 (59:36):
Get back on?
Speaker 2 (59:39):
There you are with that voice in my saying the words,
and even hit it's all right, it's all right, don't.
Speaker 4 (59:54):
Really alright?
Speaker 13 (59:58):
Quite a while where they.
Speaker 11 (01:00:04):
Everything's gonna be all right.
Speaker 13 (01:00:08):
Everything, it's gonna be all right, everything's gonna be alright.
Speaker 15 (01:00:17):
Gay
You're listening to Vancouver called Radio cfr oh one hundred
point five FM. We're coming to you from the unseated
traditional territories of the Squamish, muscream and slavey tooth nations
around Vancouver, BC. I'm your host, Bernardine Fox, and this
is this show that dares to change how we think
about mental health. Welcome to Rethreading Madness.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Ween, have ever been further?
Speaker 3 (00:30):
No?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
What the hell I'm gonna do when I can't see
a fine away under over.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
You're listening to Rethreading Madness on Vancouver called Radio cfr
oh one hundred point five FM. I'm Bernardine Fox speaking
with Elisa Fortiz Christensen about her book entitled Teen Warrior,
raising addiction resistant kids and folks who know where I'm from.
We're here in Vancouver, BC, which has a huge population
(01:04):
of people who have difficulties with addiction, and so it's
always an issue that's on my mind here Alis. How
did you write this book?
Speaker 4 (01:13):
What happened? Well?
Speaker 3 (01:16):
I think it was it was a personal journey for
me as a follow up to my first book, which
was titled The Sentinel Warrior.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
How I got off and stayed off opiates.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
And that book was born out of my own journey
after being on doctor prescribed opiates for thirty years after
breaking my back. I started a hairline fracture in my
early teens falling off a skateboard, and then as a
young as an adult, I became a triathlete and all
(01:54):
of the pounding from the running caused my fifth lambar
to fracture all the way through and I ended up
having to have two level fusion surgeries. And all of
that that I went through landed me on you know,
first viking in and then I graduated to percocet and
then to dilaud it, and eventually I ended up on
(02:17):
sentinyl patches. So it was on opiates for about thirty years,
building up a tolerance that eventually landed me on fentanyl
patches for about eleven years, and throughout that I finally
did get off of them. And when I finally got
off of them in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
And I started thinking about my next book. I at
the time had an eleven and a twelve year.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Old boy that were I was raising, and I became
acutely concerned about what we could do as parents, especially
in the United States, where we have such a rampant
problem with addiction, and especially with young addicts and alcoholics
that are abusing alcohol and drugs, and I wanted to
(03:09):
find out what I could do as a parent, but
also what I could what information I could gather, not
just from this country but from around the world, What
other countries and other parents were doing better than us
to help prevent our young young daughters and sons to
run head first into addiction.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
What could we do, What are.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Other parents around the world doing better, and what could
we put in place? What kind of preventative measures could
we put in place? And when do we need to
do it and how do we need to implement it
to help make or help build addiction resistant kids as
much as we could.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
So that was the motivation behind the Teen Warrior.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
And so I just want to emphasize is that, you know,
it's a hidden drug addiction problem. I think in some
ways is that there are many many people who are
prescribed painkillers and end up addicted to them, and it's
kind of sanitized because a doctor gave it to you,
and so it's not seen as the same kind of
addiction as somebody who perhaps is using street drugs. But
(04:22):
it is in fact, the same addiction. It's the same
process that happens in our brain.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
Right absolutely. And you know, I've.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Unfortunately, and I have a feeling after talking to you
for our pre interview, and I've talked to actually I've
done a lot of these interviews with Canadians, so I
have a pretty good understanding of what's going on up
there too.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
There's the stigma, you know that addicts are you know less, You.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Know that that addiction is a character flaw, or that
you know only addicts or you know, shooting up behind
dumpsters at seven eleven's or whatever.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
But that's not the case. First of all, addiction is
not a character flaw. And second of.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
All, I was just as addicted to opiates as a
heroin addict, because if I lost a patch or missed
a doctor's appointment, I would start going into withdrawals just
like a heroin addict. After about three days, and I
was rendered completely dysfunctional and miserable and was going through
(05:32):
the same set of withdrawals that a heroin addict would
go through. The only difference between me and a heroin
addict was that my dealer was in a white coat
and had a stethoscope around his neck. I was never
abusing them or anything, but it didn't make it any different.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
And so.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
You know, it's and it wasn't a character flaw. And
we really need to as a species get over this
judgment and start treating this as a disease. Just like
we don't judge people with cancer or diabetes or brain tumor.
We shouldn't judge people who have an addiction, as you know,
(06:15):
as if there they have a character flaw, because it's not.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
We do judge other people though. We judge people who smoke.
We judge people who may have extra weight on them
according to how we judge what is extra or not
extra right, And so we have we have little pockets
of people in our communities where we've somehow society has
given people permission to judge. And those are just another two.
(06:41):
So you I remember from talking with you before, but
you came up with a way to get off the
drugs you were taking, and I did.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
It was not the best way, but I had finally
reached my limit.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
I just couldn't take it in more.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
I had been you know, I had gotten off of
them multiple times over the course of my life, like
you know, when I knew I was going to get pregnant.
You know, both of my pregnancies with my sons were planned.
I was in my thirties, and you know, I would
I would, you know, lean down off the opiates, and
(07:24):
you know, everything was monitored.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
By my doctors. I was very careful and.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
All of that, and then I would, you know, but
I would always end up back on them. But the
last time, in twenty seventeen, I was on the highest dose.
It was one hundred mcg patches every three days I
would change them of fentanyl. And then on top of that,
I was taking percocet, and they also had me on Soma,
which was a muscle relaxant that was actually you know,
(07:50):
introduced in the fifties as a kind of a sedative
for what they thought was anxious housewives.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
It's a really, really bad had drug.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
And I had all of that in my system on
a regular basis, and I chose to go cold turkey because.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
I just never wanted to go back on any of
it again.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
So I kind of almost by design, did it the
most painful way I could think of, and it was
horrific and I barely survived it. And I would not
recommend it. It's not something you should do without medical supervision.
I should have been in a hospital under doctors supervision,
but I didn't do it that way. I got off
of it. But the most important thing that I got
(08:34):
from that experience was.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
That I really had to completely.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Change my mindset about not just the drugs that I
was on, but about my entire life. And I really
made a decision that I was no longer going to
be in victim mode in my own.
Speaker 5 (08:53):
Life, and I had to really take stock of all
of the chyofs and past that was going on in
my life and take responsibility for it and accept the
fact that about ninety eight percent of it was due
to the fact that I was just continually drugged and
(09:14):
get rid of the drugs out of my system, get
rid of it all out of my life, and become
a warrior in my own life story and quit playing
the victim.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
And so it was a whole mind shift, in addition
to getting sober and clean and making a one hundred
percent commitment that from now on I was going to
take full responsibility for my life, both my failures and
my successes, and really examine my life as a whole
(09:44):
and move forward with a completely new mindset.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Right, And that's the sort of foundation of why you
also moved forward and writing this book and looking at
ways to help your children not end up where you
ended up.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Yeah, I really you know that.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
I think that that shift in mindset and an approach
to life really was the springboard for writing The Team Warrior,
because I, you know, as I went through that, I
started thinking about, you know, OK, that was great, and
it was really hard, and it was like, if I
could teach my kids what I learned from this process,
(10:23):
but if I could teach it to them on the
front end, so they didn't have to come.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
Through all this this torture and lose.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
All this time that I did, you know, numbing out
to the pain of the human condition self medicating, you know,
not just to the physical pain, but to the mental
pain which I had to face the fact that that
I was using the opiates for that too. Oh and
by the way, when I got off all the opiates,
strangely enough, about eighty five percent of my physical pain
(10:53):
went away. Because it turns out that the human brain
will create phantom pain to keep getting those opiates. I
did not know that, Yeah, yeah, because right. So I
went off the opiates and about eighty five percent of
my pain went away. The rest of it, I've been
able to manage with self care and yoga and getting
(11:16):
plenty of rest and exercise and eating right and you know,
occasional advol and time and all. I mean, it's it's
opiates are not They are not at all a viable
solution for chronic pain.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
They are just not.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
The side effects are just horrific. And you know, sure,
if you're you know, in a war and you get
your arm blown off, absolutely you know, morphine is a
great solution if you have you know, if you have
major surgery and for the you know, ten days after surgery, absolutely,
you know, opiates are great. But long term pain solution,
(11:53):
it's it's just a horrific option.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
And so that was great too to learned that once
I gave those.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Up, I was actually way better able to manage my pain.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
So after I.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Learned all this, I was like, look, I got to
figure out a way to teach my kids how to
avoid this altogether. So I started researching, and I found
out that like in Europe, they don't use opiates like
we do in the States at all, like.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
They are not opiate dependent.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
They don't give opiates after dental work, they don't give
opiates after minor surgery. They don't give opiates for chronic
back pain, like that's their last, last last resort that
they go to.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
They have all sorts of other.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Solutions before, like, they do not choose opiates. That's not
even in their top ten choices to treat pain.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
And so I would like, what is going on? You know,
why are they able to.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
Treat pain successfully without jumping it, jumping on the opiate train.
And why is it that they don't have such a
binge drinking problem like we do? Why aren't their children
you know, why don't they have so many car accidents
to do alcohol?
Speaker 4 (13:09):
And why don't they have drug abuse like we do
over here? So I started researching that, and I had
so many questions, like, you know, to tell or not
to tell it? Has research shown that.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
It's better to lie to your kids about your drug
and alcohol experimentation when you were their age?
Speaker 4 (13:29):
Or is it better to be honest with them?
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Turns out it's better to be honest without you know,
glamorizing it, you know, but they it's better to be honest.
And so I started studying this and I was like,
what is it that we can do or provide for
our children that will give them the best chance of
(13:52):
getting through adolescens? And when do we need to start
talking to them? You know, kids are maturing so much faster.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
Than we are than we did in their you know, when.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
We were their age. And there's so many other drugs
out there. Like I thought I knew all the drugs
on the market, there's stuff that I had no idea.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
About when I started writing this book. And there's new
drugs coming out every day. So I learned so much
through the process of writing it.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
And I found out that there are some formula. There
is a formula, there's things that you can do.
Speaker 4 (14:29):
And one of the.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Main things is, you know, as children are going through
pre adolescents and we need to start talking to this.
You know, Americans are so up, We're such prudes compared
to like Europeans and Canadians, and you know, we get
all freaked out about talking to our kids about drugs
(14:49):
and alcohol, you know, and we're like, oh, we need
to wait until they're seniors in high school. No, we
need to start talking to them when they're nine or ten.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Yeah, Actually, they've discovered that kids are first for drugs
between the ages of eight and eleven. So up here,
our fourth pillar in our drug program is about prevention.
But all they've done is piggybacked on programs of around
drug use, talking about drug use to kids in high school,
and of course by the time they hit high school,
(15:19):
they've already been given drugs, they may already have a problem.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
So you remember Nancy Reagan just saying no to drugs.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
That was the biggest fail of like any social program
that we've ever tried to launch this country. Like, I mean,
it was ridiculous, and you know, it doesn't It's so
it's like, Okay, telling them what to do doesn't work.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
I just scare them straight straight doesn't work. So you
know what what is going to work?
Speaker 3 (15:49):
And what I found through my research is that one
of the most important things you can do for these
kids is help them I get an identity and a
purpose early on.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
Because not all of us kids, and we know this for.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Certain, a very small percentage of us, you know, have
the luxury of being able to latch onto our identities
early on. I mean there's maybe five percent of us
that end up the jock, you know, the you know, valedictorian,
the smart one, the you know, the funny one, the
(16:31):
pretty one, the you know whoever. And and those kids,
you know, they're lucky.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
You know, you end up with the you.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Know, the super musical one, the super talented one.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
Those kids are lucky, you know, right out of the gate,
they have their identity and it's great.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
But the rest of us are flailing around like fish
out of water.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
And it's never more awkward or painful than when we're
going through junior high and high school. We have no
idea who we are.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
We feel completely awkward, we hate ourselves, and we're trying
to find out what our value is. And so as parents,
as I was researching this, it was like it became
acutely obvious to me that if we can step in
and intervene with our young ones at that point and
(17:20):
help them identify some sort of value doesn't have to
be locked in for the rest of their lives, but.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
If we can help them, like find something.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Of value that they can they can be a part of,
whether it's like volunteering or like with my sons, I
started a little business for them on this Mountain and
it became really valuable to the community, and they the
community just kind of started treating them like rock stars
because they were out picking up litter on the weekends
and they were helping seniors and they were like, oh
(17:53):
my god. You know, they developed an identity within the
community doing these small things, and they loved it, and
it became part of their identity and it helped them
avoid sliddling around like a little fish out of water
while they were going through this very fragile time.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Christ need to stop for a second and go to
a couple PSAs, but we'll be right back.
Speaker 6 (18:21):
Folks here, turn up quigate Euons Queen Sna Hi, everybody,
my name is quigate Yuon's. I'm a member of the
Squamish nation and the Yagolanis Klan of the Hyda Nation.
You're listening to co Op Radio cfro O one hundred
point five FM. We live, work play and broadcast from
the traditional ancestral and unseeded territories of the Musquiam, Squamish
(18:43):
and Slave Tooth nations.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
You're listening to Rethreading Madness on Banks. We call up
Radio cfr OH one hundred point five FM. I'm Murderdine
Fox and I'm talking with Elisa Fortiz Christiansen about her
book Raising Addict Resistant Kids. A. Lisa, you were talking
about having done some research about other countries. Can you
tell us a little bit more about what you learned
about what they did. I know you talked about them
(19:07):
not not hiding you know, well, but sure that's what
you said, but you tell us, you tell us so.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Yeah. So I started looking at why the United States
specifically had such a.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
Problem with binge drinking specifically, and.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
That of course, that kind of abuse of alcohol led
to you know, other risk factors like you know, using
harder drugs, and you know, there is a link there obviously.
And and what I found was that like in European
(19:51):
countries specifically, like in you know, Spain, Italy, France, they
took a very nonchalant approach to drinking wine. For instance,
you know, twelve thirteen, fourteen year olds even you know,
in some families younger, they would have wine with dinner.
(20:14):
And the children in those age groups would have you know,
a small glass of wine with their parents at dinner.
And what the research showed was that it took that
stigma out of the alcohol.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
The wine, so that it was no big deal.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
It was not this you know thing that the teens
wanted to go out and try because it was you know,
a forbidden fruit that they wanted to go out and
try with their peers. And of course, in the US,
you know, we have this drinking age where you know,
(20:56):
we can.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
Ship you off to war.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
You know, you can sign up for the military at eighteen,
you can get married at eighteen, which means you're old
enough to parent a child at eighteen, but you're not
allowed to legally drink alcohol until you're twenty one. It just,
you know, it makes it this big deal. And so
what happens is is that it creates the stigma that
(21:20):
children want to go out and you know, get away
with it, and so they do it in a big,
bold way that creates a situation where they're going to
do it unsafely. And in Europe that doesn't happen. They
don't have they have a much lower drinking age. In
(21:41):
many cases it's sixteen or eighteen. And in many cases
these kids have been drinking wine with their families and
since they were twelve or thirteen, and they just don't
have the problems that we have over here, So let
me just.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Jump in, let me just jump in for half a
sec here. That all makes sense to just sort of
normalize the idea of drinking. And therefore you are around
your parents and learning about, you know, their role modeling
for you, maybe responsible drinking. What happened? What happens then
with And I'm not an expert on addiction, so it
(22:16):
is maybe a really stupid question, but what happens to
the idea that certain people in certain families have a
gene that creates the addiction or the alcoholism?
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Right, And by the way, I am not an expert
on addiction either.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Let me say that I'm just I just did a
lot of research for this book over the course of
two years, and it was driven by my my own path.
I you know, have addiction running in my family and
alcoholism running in my family on both sides. And my
brother was a speed addict all of his life. My mom,
you know, was an alcoholic. My dad's dad was an alcoholic.
(22:56):
So you know, I had it running on both sides
of my family.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
And your question is a good one, and yeah, I
mean it, it happens, you know, even.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
It doesn't matter culturally or you know, methodically how you
you know, raise your kids if you have it running
in your DNA, if it's coming, it's it's trickling down
through your family.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
You know, like there's certain cultures.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
That just have just really struggled with alcoholism. You know,
the Irish culture is known for, you know, having a
more severe problem with alcoholism.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Absolutely, you know, it's it's a it's a problem. And
when you and I did our.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Pre interview, we talked about epigenetics that they've recimply come
across and how you know if if two addicts are alcoholics,
raise a child in a in an attic, in an
addiction seeped environment, even if that child does not have
any addiction running in their DNA, it can create a
(24:02):
change in their actual DNA for them to be more
prone to addiction or alcoholism. So we're seeing that environment
can actually change our DNA code to be more susceptible
and vice versa. You can take a child that has
a lot of addictive DNA or genetics running through their blood,
(24:27):
you know, back generations, and if you if you give enough,
give it enough time, and you raise them in around
behaviors that don't have any addictive tendencies, you can.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Actually correct that over time.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
So yeah or not, it's not guaranteed, but we are staring. Yeah,
we are seeing that behavior and environment and upbringing really
does have the power to have an impact on our DNA,
which is is huge. You know, that's amazing, And they're
just discovered that. I mean, that was brand new when
(25:02):
I was writing this book, and it was fascinating to me.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
I have heard again, I'm not an expert on drugs.
I don't use drugs other than you know, my tileel
and i'd be profen.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
But I have heard.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
That drugs are being designed to be addictive on the
first try. So in my age group, we were brought
up to believe that if you just tried something once,
that was no big deal. If you tried it over
and over and over, your body would would build up
an addiction to that particular drug and you would find
(25:42):
yourself addicted. Same kind of thing. I don't know if
it's the same kind of thing happens around cigarette smoking
and nicotine, or whether it is a build up that
creates the addiction. I don't know. I do know that
one of the things that I read was that drug
dealers and people who make these drugs are working at
making sure that the drugs are addictive on the first try,
(26:04):
so kids don't even get a chance to even experiment
or try something or think maybe they could just test
it out. Is that true or is this not true anymore?
This bad information that I got a while ago.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Well, I think the drugs have gotten more powerful and
stronger in.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
Some ways and in some ways not.
Speaker 7 (26:25):
You know.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
I mean back when I.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Was growing up, my brother was twenty years older than me.
But I've been told and I've seen some research to
indicate that, you know, the speed that was going around
back then was a lot more pure and more addictive.
But you know, there's debate on that because the methamphetamine,
(26:48):
the street methamphetamine that's going around.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
Today, has a lot more crap in it.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
You know, they're cutting it with things that you know,
who knows if that's more addictive or not will tell
you this. I did research a lot, a lot of
the brain chemistry and how different drugs and behaviors actually
affect our brain. I was actually researching it from the
standpoint of gambling addiction at the time, because I had
(27:16):
someone in my life that was the second gambling addict
to go through my life like a wrecking ball. And
I was really curious because I could actually see physical
changes in him when he would step through the door
of a casino, and I wanted to know what was happening,
and so.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
I started researching it.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
And what I found out was that anytime you get
a behavior like gambling, an addictive behavior, or a drug
or an alcohol on board, it takes your brain about
two weeks to reestablish homeostasis with that new behavior, drug
or alcohol on board.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
Your brain is always trying to establish its best functioning capacity,
and the term for that is homeostasis. So, for instance,
if you're just a clean slate, you're not doing anything right,
but you you know, eat a Snickers bar, you start
eating a Snickers.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Bar every morning, because sugar is a drug too. You know,
After about a week and a half to two weeks,
your brain is like, okay, so this is how we're
gonna do it. We're gonna have a sugar you know,
we're gonna have this sugar rush every morning. And after
about two weeks, then your brain has re established homeostasis,
getting used, you know, with that sugar on board every morning.
(28:34):
So then on the tenth or twelfth day, you cut
that snicker Bars out of your routine, and you're gonna
feel it, You're gonna crave it, and you're gonna be
cranky and off balance because your brain is gonna now
have to swing that pendulum back the other way and
re establish a new homeostasis without that snicker bars snicker
(28:56):
bar on board.
Speaker 4 (28:57):
Same with a drug, same with a behavior, same with alcohol.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
And of course those are withdrawals, that's what you know,
that's why they're so severe.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
And depending on the strength of the drug or the
behavior or you know, whatever's going on.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
I'm the same thing when like when we fall in love,
you know, and then we you know, all of.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
A sudden break up and we go into it, you know,
depression in a sadness. It's it's the same thing.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
Our brain is re establishing a new home stasis about
that kit of love on board.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
So people don't don't often cross over from the use
of substances as an addiction to that how that same
process can impact you in other areas of your life.
So for instance, I do a lot of work around therapy,
abuse and exploitation when I'm not on the radio, and
one of the things that's become clear in that is
(29:50):
that the abuse of therapists in those situations are in
fact creating a profound dependency on them in their clients really,
and in that profound dependency is a very corrupt form
of attachment, so that when that person is no longer
in their lives, they literally go through withdrawal, just as
(30:11):
you're talking about, from not being able to access that
person or being around that person. So even if it's
their choice, like all of us who decide to quit
something that's not good for us, it doesn't mean it's
just not clean life. It just doesn't come in nice,
neat packages. So even though they may be the ones
that said no, this isn't good for me and left
(30:33):
like somebody who's stopping using a drug that's not good
for them, they end up having the same kind of
physiological responses to that.
Speaker 4 (30:42):
It's yeah, it's a withdrawal from a toxic code dependency.
And So what I tried to do with the teen
war year and well, before I tell you.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
What I try to do, the tools I part I
tried to pull together in this book for my own
sons and for other parents to give their kids.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
Tools I had.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Gotten the book written, and I was just feeling like
it didn't have enough teeth. So I actually found six
young young people that were in the early twenties that
had gone through addiction and were in recovery, and I
interviewed them, which really really made this book everything I
wanted it to be. But before I even did that,
(31:25):
I really searched for tools that I could, like, I
built a toolkit that I could give my sons and
that other parents could give their son their children to
help them deal with.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
The human condition. Because I've always been really honest with my.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Boys, I'm like, look, guys, life is going to be rough.
It's going to batch you around like a ping pong ball.
So let me help you build tools that you can
get through life with so that you don't go towards
the path of trying to numb out to the human condition,
(32:05):
to the human pain and in destructive ways. In other words,
so you don't pick up a joint or a pipe,
or a line of coke or a bottle of alcohol,
or you don't start, you know, watching porn or working
out excessively or eating excessively. Let me help you develop
some healthy skills coping skills so that you have them
(32:30):
in your pocket and when you need them, you can
pull them out and use those instead. And the most
healthy thing that I could I could find in this
world to give them with meditation. It's something you can
do anywhere, at any time. It costs them nothing, and
it's a skill that's fairly easy to learn, and they
(32:53):
can if they keep up with it. It's like any
any muscle or any skill. You have to kind of,
you know, stay in practice with it. But they can
pull it out while they're in court, you know, getting
a divorce or paying for a traffic ticket, or they
just got in a car accident, or they're you know,
at a job interview and they're freaking out and their
anxieties through the roof for whatever their situation is where
(33:16):
they need to calm themselves, or they just got broken
up with by what they think is the love of
their life, whatever their situation is, that's gonna they're gonna
need to self suze and put a little layer of
comfort between them and the world.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
I wanted to give them that so they didn't.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Try to self soothe in a destructive way. And that
seemed from all my research to be the one thing
that would help them the most and wouldn't cost them anything,
and they could carry with them anywhere they went. And
so I did teach them to meditate, and I've been
using it a lot lately too, because I've been stressed
(33:54):
out too, and so you know, I have to put
my money where my mouth is and show them in
real time every day how it can be used to
manage the human condition and manage the human life. And
it seems to be the most effective way. And then
the other thing that really I think, really I got
(34:14):
a lot and they got a lot out of me
writing this book was asking after I interviewed these six
young people, three young men and three young women who had,
for whatever reason, had gone through a difficult time in
their lives that had triggered them ending up going down a.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
Path where they ended up addicted to drugs or alcohol.
And these were kids that were from like pretty.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
White, picket sense middle class families. These, you know, these
were kids being raised in the ghetto and Pompton.
Speaker 4 (34:47):
You know, these were like pretty average run in the
middle American families.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
And something happened when they were about twelve thirteen fourteen,
where either parents had gone through divorced, so they'd had
a financial upheaval or a death in the family, or
something had happened where things had just gone a little
sideways on them and it had triggered them to go
(35:14):
down a path that had led to them getting addicted
to drugs or alcohol.
Speaker 4 (35:20):
And it was just shocking to hear their stories because
it was.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
You know, like these ballerinas and football players and they
were headed to Betorian and get scholarships and they were
like picture perfect, and then all of a sudden, like
two years later, they're shooting up behind a dumpster, or
they were overdosing on heroin or smoking crack pipes in
the ghetto. And it's like, oh my god, I want
(35:48):
to know what happened, and I want to know how
I could prevent my child from doing that.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Okay, so let's talk about that in a couple of minutes.
When we just come back.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
We'll go back.
Speaker 8 (36:14):
Somebody saved me, me from myself husband, so long living
and here they saved my life style.
Speaker 9 (36:35):
It's bad.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
From my head. It's the only thing.
Speaker 8 (36:44):
That seems to hear.
Speaker 10 (36:50):
Hall up is drinking and smoking.
Speaker 8 (36:53):
It's hopeless, but feel like it's solving.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
I need.
Speaker 10 (36:58):
Something is shid M means broken. Now hold on to
anything that sets me free? How much loss cars baby,
don't waste your time on me. I'm so damaged beyond repent.
(37:20):
Life is shattered my hopees in my drenk.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
How'm a loss car.
Speaker 4 (37:28):
Baby, Don't waste your time on me.
Speaker 9 (37:32):
I'm so damaged beyond repent. Life is shattered, my hopes
in my dreams.
Speaker 11 (37:58):
Wadning Scott.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
Was missing the move. There was no shooting start to us.
Speaker 12 (38:11):
Mission on you.
Speaker 4 (38:15):
And all of my song.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
I just watched them down.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
You see all the peas I've ever found. The hold
up is drinking and smoking.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
It's hopeless, but feel I can solve it.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
I mean.
Speaker 9 (38:43):
Something inside of is broken. I hold on to anything
that sets me three.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
I'm a lost call.
Speaker 9 (38:55):
Maybe, don't waste your time home made so damash beyond
free pin Life is shattering my hows and b drink
coma lo baby, don't bes comcast Johnny.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
I'm so damns been john be bad.
Speaker 9 (39:21):
Life is shattered, my hopes and my dream.
Speaker 12 (39:49):
If you want to listen to us anywhere you travel,
you can go into your Google Play Store and then
download the Radio Player Canada app and you can then
you can listen to your favorite radio station, co Operating
CFR one hundred point five F.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
You're listening to Rethreading Madness on Vancouver call up Radio
CFR or one hundred point five FM. I'm Bernadine Fox,
and I'm speaking with Alisa Forty's Christiansen about her book
on Teen Warriors, Raising Addiction resistant Kids. So, Alisa, you
were just telling us about these kids that you interviewed.
(40:23):
What was the common factor for them that you discovered
in talking to them.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
It was fascinating because each one of their stories were
eerily similar. They were all different, you know, they had
all had different upsets at critical primary points in their lives.
You know, usually it was around eleven, twelve, thirteen. Some
you know, pretty significant, like a death in the family
(40:51):
of a parent or a you know, an important aunt
or uncle. Sometimes it was just like, you know, a
financial upheaval or a divorce. A couple of them didn't
have anything in particular. But there was one thing that
they all answered very similarly that I thought was fascinating,
(41:15):
and it was when I asked them this one question
at the end of each one of their interviews. I said,
if your parents could have done one thing differently that
you believe could have made a difference and kept you going,
kept you from going down this dark path that led
to you getting addicted to drugs and alcohol. What could
(41:36):
they have done? And each one of them answered me
in almost the exact same way. They first said, I
don't blame my parents or hold them responsible for anything.
Speaker 4 (41:50):
It was my response. It was my doing. I made
the choices that I made, which I thought was.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
Really cool that they had all gotten to the point
in their recovery that they took full responsibility for their
addictive behavior and where it led them.
Speaker 4 (42:08):
That seemed really healthy to me. It felt really healthy to.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
Me that they were taking full responsibility. But they also said,
if I could go back and ask one thing of
my parents, it would be that they didn't shut down
communication with me.
Speaker 4 (42:24):
They said, I understood why they did it.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
They were trying to protect me because they were going
through pain, and they were going through stress and difficulty,
and they thought they were protecting me by not talking
to me about it.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
But what it did was it it shut down the
communication both ways, and so I no longer felt like
I could talk to them either.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
That was a very profound thing. For kids. You also
talked about Norway or having done some research, and maybe
Norway was in our conversation prior to the interview here. Yeah,
you described to me something that Norway does around addictions,
and I thought was really amazing and me, well, I
(43:10):
won't say anymore. You tell us what does Norway do
when somebody has an addiction?
Speaker 4 (43:15):
So, yeah, the Scandinavian countries do things really differently.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
You know, where where the US is banning books right now,
Scandinavian countries are teaching middle school. In middle school, they're
teaching empathy, they're teaching how to spot you know, fake
news or you know.
Speaker 4 (43:38):
Articles or stories generated by AI.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
You know, they're just they're on a different wavelength than
we are, and I really wish we'd learn more from them.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
But specifically when it comes.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
To addiction, they have an amazing success rate, especially comparatively
to the US, we have about an eight percent success
rate when we try to treat addiction.
Speaker 4 (44:05):
We you know, throw if you.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
Are lucky enough to have money in the US, you
might be able to get into a detox and rehab
program that lasts maybe one to three months.
Speaker 4 (44:15):
Then we kick you back out on you know, on this,
you know, out of.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
The rehab program back to where you were at, and
you're usually right back to where your friends that you
used with are, and you know your dealers are and
your triggers are, and we're like.
Speaker 4 (44:31):
Good luck. You know, don't call us, we'll call you.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
And that that generates about an eight percent success rate
in Scandinavian countries.
Speaker 4 (44:40):
I think it was it was Norware Denmark. I apologize
for not knowing.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
But the way they do it is they take the
person and they first relocate them to the other side
of the country so there is far away from their plugs.
You know, their their drug dealers, there, friends that they
used with their triggers, you know where they bought and
what reminds them of that lifestyle as they can get them.
(45:09):
Then they treat them for a year and they detox them.
They put them through rehab. They teach them everything that
they could possibly know about their addiction, how their brain works,
how the physiology of it, everything they need to know
about addiction. Then and here's the real kicker, the here's
(45:31):
the key to it all. They provide them with two
things that I think is the absolute core.
Speaker 4 (45:39):
Of why we get addicted.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
In the first place, why this is such a chronic
disease within our species. They help them establish a purpose
in life, So they find out what they love to do,
what they're good at, and they train them in it,
and they let them develop a career and for whatever
(46:03):
they love to do.
Speaker 4 (46:05):
Then they help them.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
Establish genuine, authentic relationships, friendships with new people that our
real solid friendships. And the reason why they're doing that
is because they have figured out, and it's so simple
when you think about it, that the two things that
(46:28):
the human spirit cannot withstand the pain of is not
having a purpose in life and not having authentic connections
with other humans. Those two things cause us so much
pain that we will do anything to numb out to it,
even if we know it's going to kill us. So
they provide solutions to that, and their success rate of
(46:53):
keeping people from going back to their addiction is in
the ninety percentile.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (47:01):
And why we can't learn from them, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
You'd think we'd wake up and look at our neighbors
across the.
Speaker 4 (47:10):
Pond and say, Wow, that's interesting. They're really it's really
working over there. What are they doing? Why is our
success rates so low?
Speaker 13 (47:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (47:20):
But that's what they're doing. And it's so simple and
it makes so much sense.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
But I think the reason why the US isn't doing
it is because the US is being run by Big Pharma,
the most profitable year after year corporation in the United States.
Speaker 4 (47:40):
And of course they don't want us to get sober
and clean because it's so lucrative if we don't.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
Well, that would be true in your case where you
were on prescribed medication. The question then becomes, why might
drug rehab programs. I'm going to say this out loud.
I can't believe it wanted to drug rehab programs basically
maybe not want to have people get clean and not
use drugs. And of course, you know, one could get
(48:10):
really cynical, and I do at times get very cynical
about it and see it as you know, a place
where they lose their customers. You know, if you're in
a for profit business and your customers have drug addictions,
then in some ways you can't afford to have a
program that works.
Speaker 3 (48:30):
So you know what they charge down here at these
halfway houses, you know, and and drug rehabs. I think
it's twenty five dollars per you're in tests and they
test up every single day and they usually have like
fifty beds I think is the average size, So do
the math.
Speaker 4 (48:51):
And they're riddled with drug abuse.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
Like you go to any one of these drug houses,
like you know, rehab houses down here, they're supposedly, you know,
they're treating these people for drug addiction. And you know,
if you want to find street drugs, that's where you
find them.
Speaker 4 (49:10):
It's it's it's all a game.
Speaker 3 (49:12):
It's all a big ruse, and it's all part of
the system. And the big pharma knows that it's the
sicker they keep us, the more money they're going to
continue to make. If we get healthy, if we actually
figure out that, you know, we can actually heal our
(49:32):
bodies with our minds and do all of that, if
we actually come out from underneath that fog that is,
you know, over top of us and has so much
to do with illegal drugs and pharmaceutical drugs and all
of that. If we get out from underneath that fog
and we actually start thinking clearly and realize just how
much we can heal ourselves with our own minds as
(49:53):
long as we're not drugged.
Speaker 4 (49:55):
There, they're going to be out of business.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
Yeah, yeah, true. So toolbox, let's talk about your toolbox
for kids. What's in it?
Speaker 4 (50:07):
So, yeah, that's the outline of this book. It's really
the chapter outline.
Speaker 14 (50:13):
So I started this book by listening a lot of
statistics that people that parents need to know and the
risk factors that make your team more susceptible.
Speaker 3 (50:24):
But then and I talk about role of family, heredity
and history. But the Toolbox really involves a few simple things.
It involves the importance. I talk about the importance of
importance of stability. Nobody has a perfect family. I raised
my boys after I got them back after a horrific
(50:47):
custody battle. I you know, was a single mom struggling.
And but there's even with you know, the less than
optimal condition, you can still do this. And you know,
it involves making sure you're paying attention to emotional connection.
(51:08):
And like these these young people in recovery said, keep
that level of communication open with them, keep an eye on.
Speaker 4 (51:19):
Getting them engaged. You know, boredom is really a challenge, and.
Speaker 3 (51:27):
We have too much, in my opinion, we have too
much simulation with social media and TikTok and you know,
scrolling on their phones. Get that you know, I think
it's important to get them outside if you can, and
get them working. And I know that's not always an
you know option. I mean, I was lucky I raised
them on top of the mountain. I wasn't raising them
in you know, a big city. But also pay attention
(51:53):
to how you, as a parent are processing your emotional
pain and your stress and your boredom. Because trust me,
everything that you're doing they're watching and you're teaching them
how to do it, and so they you know, really
pay attention every day. You don't have to be perfect,
(52:14):
but let them watch you learn new skills.
Speaker 4 (52:19):
And healthy skills for you dealing with the human condition.
And I think it's really that's the real key is
letting them watch you deal with life in the.
Speaker 3 (52:35):
Human condition and taking personal responsibility for regulating your own
emotions in.
Speaker 4 (52:41):
A healthy.
Speaker 11 (52:44):
Way so that you are approaching your own life as.
Speaker 4 (52:47):
A warrior and not a victim.
Speaker 1 (52:50):
Right right, That makes sense.
Speaker 11 (52:56):
That is so huge because that gifted mentality, so that
they understand that their life is up to them and
no matter what happens to them, it is the way
they respond and react to it emotionally, and that they have.
Speaker 3 (53:14):
Control over that if you can get that message to them,
that will help them avoid being.
Speaker 4 (53:21):
A victim and they will become a warrior.
Speaker 3 (53:25):
And then they will if you give them that tool
and that mentality, and then you teach them how to
regulate their emotions, that will help them avoid needing.
Speaker 4 (53:35):
To numb out to the human condition and self medicate.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
Yep, that makes sense. Thank you Alisa for coming and
chatting with us about this. It's an very important topic.
And I know so many people who have drug addiction
in their family and worry about this kind of thing constantly,
and unfortunately, there isn't a lot of information out there
about how to help your kids not turn to drugs
(54:04):
in society that makes it so readily available to them
as a coping skill. So thank you much.
Speaker 4 (54:12):
You're welcome.
Speaker 3 (54:13):
And I've got I've got one that just turned twenty
this last week, and my eighteen year old is just
about to graduate high school, and you know, knock on wood,
I think I've just about got them to adulthood. Although
you know, boys, I don't know. Certainly, I'm hoping I've
gotten them there in one piece. And it has not
been a perfect journey. But and no parenting ever is
(54:36):
so please, parents, if you're if you're listening to this,
be gentle with yourself. It really I you know, I've
made tons of mistakes along the way. Love yourself and
give yourself some grace as well. And if you would
like to get this book, you can reach you can
get it on author Alisa dot com A U T
H O R E L I s A dot com.
Speaker 4 (54:59):
That's my web. Thank you so much for honoring me
with this interview. I so appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (55:04):
Brittany, Welcome, Elisa. I'm so happy to have had you
come and chat with us about this very very important topic.
So thank you and we'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (55:11):
Folks.
Speaker 7 (55:13):
Hi, folks, this is Steve ferguson your twenty first century
schitzoid Man, and I'm coming to you on behalf of
prog Rock Alley. We are hitting up your airwaves every
Tuesday night at seven o'clock PM, running that whole hour
bringing you the very best of progressive rock that includes
art rock, math rock, experimental, alternative, a little bit of everything,
and sometimes I just sneaking a favorite song of mine
(55:35):
just for the hell of it, because I can every
Tuesday night at seven pm if you want it. I
got it, just name it out played. That's Prog Rock
Alley on CFIRO one hundred point five FM.
Speaker 1 (55:46):
I'm Bernadine Fox and that's our show. My thanks to
Elisa Fortiz Christensen for coming and chatting with me about
her experience being addicted to prescription fentanyl and her book
Teen Warrior, Raising Addiction Resistant Kids, where she outlines how
to give your kids tools to cope with life without
turning to drugs. Music today was by Jelly Roll and
(56:07):
Cherry Ulrich. And to you, our listeners, you are why
we do this every week. Thank you for joining us today.
Stay safe out there. You've just listened to Rethreading Madness,
where we dare to change how we think about mental health.
We air live on Vancouver co Op Radio CFRI one
hundred point five FM every Tuesday at five pm or
(56:28):
online at co opradio dot org. If you have questions
or feedback about this program, I want to share your
story or have something to say to us, we want
to hear from you. You can reach us by email
Rethreading Madness at co opradio dot org. This is Bernardine Fox.
We'll be back next week.
Speaker 2 (56:46):
Until then, will ever been firdn? What the hell, I'm
gonna do w I can't sing find my way.
Speaker 4 (57:03):
Under or over to.
Speaker 2 (57:08):
Just when I'm ready to give up the fight, they
are when we turn out the lights and it's all right,
it's all right.
Speaker 4 (57:21):
Don't you really be alright?
Speaker 3 (57:27):
Why do I always believe but when you're.
Speaker 13 (57:31):
Telling me everything's gonna be out right?
Speaker 1 (57:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (57:43):
Why don't I wonder how you know? Surely you don't
have all of the facts.
Speaker 3 (57:53):
You could be just making it up.
Speaker 2 (57:58):
Why don't I think of that? It's some God imagine
in the words that you read saying, baby, take it from.
Speaker 4 (58:11):
Me, it's all right, it's all.
Speaker 15 (58:15):
Right, don't too real, be alright?
Speaker 9 (58:22):
But while always believe that when you.
Speaker 13 (58:26):
Tell everything's gonna be a right, everything's gonna be all.
Speaker 2 (58:35):
Right anyone else it's such a cliche, just words people
say to be.
Speaker 4 (58:46):
Nice somehow, and.
Speaker 3 (58:51):
Far from you.
Speaker 2 (58:54):
I'm convinced you're.
Speaker 15 (59:19):
When I'm weary and so tired, when I'm worn out
and done, when I fall off the why again, no
more strange thing?
Speaker 1 (59:36):
Get back on?
Speaker 2 (59:39):
There you are with that voice in my saying the words,
and even hit it's all right, it's all right, don't.
Speaker 4 (59:54):
Really alright?
Speaker 13 (59:58):
Quite a while where they.
Speaker 11 (01:00:04):
Everything's gonna be all right.
Speaker 13 (01:00:08):
Everything, it's gonna be all right, everything's gonna be alright.
Speaker 15 (01:00:17):
Gay
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!