Q+A How to Handle An Addict Who Tries to Normalize Their Addiction
How To Handle An Addict Who Tries To Normalize Their Addiction
In this compelling episode, we dive deep into the intricate and often challenging world of dealing with addicts who attempt to normalize their addiction. Whether it’s a family member, friend, or colleague, understanding how to approach these situations with empathy and effectiveness is crucial. Join us as we unravel the complexities of handling such delicate conversations.
Tune in to learn about:
How to Talk to Someone in Denial: Explore practical strategies and communication techniques to engage with individuals who are in denial about their addiction. Discover ways to break through the walls of resistance and encourage self-awareness.
People Who Use Their Achievement to Justify Their Use:We’ll discuss the common tactic of using personal achievements or success to justify addiction. Learn how to challenge this rationalization constructively and foster healthier coping mechanisms.
Why the Messenger Matters: Delve into the psychology of trust and credibility in these situations. Understand the pivotal role that the person delivering the message plays in shaping receptiveness and acceptance.
What People Really Need to Hear in This Situation: Uncover the core messages that can make a difference. Explore how to express concern, care, and support in a way that resonates with those struggling with addiction, and ultimately, guides them toward recovery.
Join us as we equip you with the tools and insights to navigate these difficult conversations and help your loved ones find the path to healing and recovery.
To find other similar episodes by topic, click here.
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Episode Transcript
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You are listening to The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. We are a community of recovering people who have overcome the odds and found the courage to change. Each week, we share stories of recovery, from substance abuse, eating disorders, grief and loss, childhood trauma, and other life-changing experiences. Come join us, no matter where you are, on your recovery journey. Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. My name is Ashley Loeb Blassingame, and I am your host. And today, we have a Q&A. Scott, what do we got?
Scott Drochelman:
Q&A. Was I supposed to come with something today?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Mm-hmm.
Scott Drochelman:
That was my job?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know.
Scott Drochelman:
Right, right. No, I got one. I got one. I’m just messing with you. I’m just messing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You got dad jokes?
Scott Drochelman:
Yeah, that was just a funny bit. It was hilarious, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, it was good, because I didn’t, and then, I did.
Scott Drochelman:
Did you ever start a bit and you kind of hate yourself halfway into it, and then, you can’t back out?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
All the time. All the time.
Scott Drochelman:
I have to finish, I have to.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You got to commit. You’re committed, so you’re going in, but man, it feels bad as you go down that hole.
Scott Drochelman:
You got to take the full swing. You do. You don’t have a choice.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Take the full swing, but midway through the swing, you’re like, “This is a miss.”
Scott Drochelman:
You go, “I’ve got a sense not good.” There’s a little sweat coming. Your body’s telling you. It’s trying to say, “Eoh,” but you can’t, you can’t do it. Well, our Q&A for today is how to handle an addict who tries to normalize their addiction. So this would be somebody who they’ve got all the excuses, they’ve got all the logic, they’ve been able to prove their point in a million different ways, that what’s going on right here is perfectly normal, perfectly normal, nothing to worry about.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Perfectly normal.
Scott Drochelman:
Ashley, what do we do when somebody comes to us like this? This can be a tough customer to get through to, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, I just want to say, I don’t think I’ve met an addict who didn’t, at some point in time, try to normalize their addiction, alcoholism, whatever their substance of no choice is. But usually, let’s do a vignette with it, so Johnny is telling you that it’s super normal to drink the way he drinks, and usually, it’s “Everyone I know is blacking out, all my friends,” or whatever. “I’m actually the best out of my friends.” That’s my favorite. And what we’re taught in recovery and what we know is that we seek out people where we’re not going to be the worst one.
That’s not typically where we hang out and we seek like companions. So me saying, “Oh, all my friends drink the way I do,” well, yeah, I’m going to find people who drink the way I do or use the way I do, because otherwise, it’s an uncomfortable feeling. When a person is using that as an example, typically, they have opted into a group where that’s going to be the case, where people drink or use the way they do, and maybe they’re not even as bad. And that’s going to be the metric with which they start to count themselves. But it’s by design. It’s a self-selecting process. And this question really gets to, what do you say to somebody when they’re standing there saying this to you? Like, “Well, I’m not as bad as my friends.” If you’re the person on the other end of that comment, what might you say?
What I think is the best route is not to attack the friends, that won’t get you anywhere, and not even to get into the details of how much is too much or what the metrics for a problem are. I think the best way to go about it is “I continue to be concerned and I hear what you’re saying. And I hear that you feel like you are not as bad as your friends,” so you can repeat back what you heard them say. “I hear that you feel like you’re not as bad as your friends and that blacking out is normal. I continue to feel that your drinking is problematic, and I’m concerned about it, even if your friends also drink that way.”
Scott Drochelman:
What about the achievement variety, so the person who has found the math to cancel out what’s happening through high achievement? What do we do with this particular? This is not Johnny. This is Jim. This is a very different person.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, hello, Jim.
Scott Drochelman:
Jim.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Jim says, “But I have a job. I have a car. I have this hot wife. I have these great kids. I have all these things. I’m not losing anything. In fact…”
Scott Drochelman:
They do Ironmans even, believe it or not.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They do. Oh yeah. Those are my fave.
Scott Drochelman:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So what do you say to that? So for the people who hold up their achievement as the benchmark for why it’s okay, in my personal, I’ll give you some examples, the calls I’ve had with some of these people are like, “Well, I’m drinking a handle of vodka every three days or whatever it is, but I run a marathon every Friday and I drink green juice and I cleanse and I blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”
And my comment to them is, “It seems like you’re so focused on health and wellness. Why is it that, when it comes to this one area of your life, you’re willing to make unhealthy decisions, when it’s such a value of yours? It’s clear that it’s really important to you to do well and to have a family and to have all these things. My concern is not that you’ve lost them already, but that you’re putting those things at risk by drinking as much as you do. Alcohol or drugs make you act in a way that I’m concerned you may lose some of those achievements or it may hurt some of the achievements that you clearly care so much about.”
Scott Drochelman:
What do you feel like are the most effective ways to get into those reality questions? So I feel like that’s often at the heart of anybody’s experience is “I have sensory tools that are trying to tell me the truth about my world, and they’re calibrated in a particular way. And so, the world around me that I see, I see it that way.” And so, to try to convince somebody not to trust those mechanisms, those things that are like their navigation tools, how do you find that you’re able to get through when it seems to be sort of sometimes maybe a conversation about perception of reality?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So it’s unlikely that you are going to convince someone, who has a very strong interest in convincing themself and they’re working hard at it, that you’re going to be able to convince them that you’re right and they’re wrong, particularly as it relates to addiction. Because once it’s off to the races, it’s much more powerful than the logic. So having the conversation is often futile, in the way that most people have it, to be perfectly honest. You’re not really going to convince them. But what I do find powerful, and I have done it in my personal life, I actually have someone in my personal life, where I do this with currently, which is they start talking and they start describing the problem, being something other than what I know it is. So let’s just pretend that it’s alcohol. And they’re describing, they’re saying, “Well, I have these car problems, and I just don’t know what to do. And can you believe all cars are made terribly?”
In reality, you know that they have car problems, because they drink so much that they keep hitting things or whatever. They’re telling you it’s really that all cars are made badly. And what I do for that is I say that, “Hey, listen, I hear that you think that all cars are made badly. I really believe that you are putting yourself in danger by being intoxicated in these cars. And I love you very much. And so, I’m going to ask that we talk about a different topic, because I’m not willing to sit here and listen to that topic. I hear that that’s what you believe, and I understand that, and I don’t expect to change your mind. But my boundary is that I don’t want to talk about that topic.” What’s powerful about it is that you’re not telling them they’re wrong.
You’re not telling them that you’re not going to talk to them, which you can do, but you’re saying, “I’m not going to engage in this conversation in this topic. I don’t want to talk about this topic. You know where I stand. Respectfully, you know where I stand, and I’m not going to have the conversation. So if you’re sitting there telling me how all the police are corrupt and everything’s corrupt and whatever, and the reality is that the police are catching you with illegal substances, and that’s why you think all… We are no longer going to talk about the police, because I don’t want to get into it and I don’t want to be part of that conversation.”
And what it does is it forces that person to hear you without getting into an argument with you about the topic, because you’re not arguing about the topic. You’re saying, “I’m not going to discuss it, because I respectfully don’t agree.” But you have to not discuss it, if that makes sense. I don’t know if I’m making sense. You have to not get into it. If you are like, “I’m not going to talk about it,” and they’re like, “Why?” And then, you take the bait, then forget it.
Scott Drochelman:
Yeah, yeah. No, that makes sense. But I want to take the bait, Ashley. Can’t I just take it, because I’m right here?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You can take it all day long.
Scott Drochelman:
I’m right, at the end of the day.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, good luck with that.
Scott Drochelman:
But I’m right though, Ashley.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know. It’s a very normal part of addiction to negotiate and try to make sense of your own behavior. And typically, with your loved one, they, certainly in the early stages, they have control over all these other areas of their life, but when it comes to this one area of substances, their behavior is uncontrollable and it gets worse and worse over time. It is extraordinarily confusing, having been that person, to be like, “Okay, so I’m able to use my logic to manage everything else in my life successfully, except this one thing, my logic doesn’t work, my logic does not work.” That’s a very hard concept to swallow.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Why would my brain be a problem solver in every other facet of my life, except this one? Then even when you do start to get your arms around it, it’s hard to stop doing it, because you’re trying to fix your broken brain with your broken brain. So it’s normal to try to normalize your addiction, your substance use, as the person struggling. Since you’re not probably going to convince that person that they’re wrong and that life and circumstances are going to have to do that, you being unwilling to give them a place to spew the denial is a really helpful thing. It’s one less place that they can say these lies to themselves and other people.
Scott Drochelman:
What about, so I know there are no magic words, there’s no magic phrases, but can you recall specific phrases that people said to you that did have a hang on quality to them, they were something that you couldn’t throw away, they hung around and they stuck with you, for some reason?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
People said, “Well, it’s not normal to wonder if you’re an alcoholic. It’s not normal to joke about being an alcoholic.” I would say, “I’m not an alcoholic. I’m a drunk. Alcoholics go to meetings, ha ha ha.” “And it’s not normal to consume as much as you consume. It’s not normal to change. Most people change their behavior to meet their goals. It’s not normal to change your goals to meet your behavior.” I remember they told me that it wasn’t normal to black out all the time, which I genuinely didn’t know, although, again, it gets weird when you get into college age and teenagers and all this stuff. There is some amount of discernment here that’s tough. But I did not know that it wasn’t normal to black out. I didn’t know that. I thought it was part of drinking like, “Woo, where are we going to end up?” And choose your adventure, except you don’t choose. So when I started to hear about the things that weren’t normal, like, “Oh, it’s not normal to make a joke about being addicted or being whatever. It’s not normal to black out. It’s not normal to wonder.”
That kind of stuff, I was like, “Oh, I didn’t know that.” And then, my boyfriend, I’ve famously talked about this on the podcast, where the first time I ever knew I had a cocaine problem was that my boyfriend challenged me to stop, and I genuinely thought I could. No idea that I couldn’t stop, and so, there were things people said to me that caused me to reflect. But no single thing undid the chemical grip, the change in neural pathways, that had been there already, but it certainly, I remember, I’ve brought that with me over time, but no silver bullet.
Scott Drochelman:
What role does the messenger play, as in the form the messenger takes? Does that go into the accounting of things, anything like that? Did you find that you could only accept it from people who, when you finally started going to meetings? Or were there other people that you were able to hear what they were saying better or worse?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Unfortunately, nothing my parents said went anywhere. I don’t even remember most of it. The stuff I do remember, I remember not taking it seriously. So I think the messenger does matter. You’re not going to listen to your parents, because typically, you feel like they have a motive. There’s so much baggage there. I think there’s value when the person doesn’t have a lot of baggage with you, when they can say something to you, and whatever feeling that creates is not mixed with other experiences. That can be an aunt or an uncle or a cousin or a friend, depending on what their experiences are. But certainly, people who’ve been there, had the experience that I had, I listened to more. It is pretty difficult to listen to people who don’t know what it feels like.
And there’s a credibility you automatically have when you’ve been to the same depths, and it’s kind of like going to war. It’s going to be hard to take advice or take feedback from someone who hasn’t been to war, when that’s what you’ve… And being in the throes of addiction and making choices, using against your will, drinking against your will, if you don’t understand what that’s like, then talking to me about my choices doesn’t feel relevant, because you don’t know what it means to not have a choice.
Scott Drochelman:
What about if this person never gets the opportunity, but they’re listening right now? What would you say to listener who is, we don’t know everything about them, but we know that these thoughts have been entering their mind, they’ve been wondering? What would you have to say to them right now?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know what it feels like to not be able to live with it and not be able to live without it. It feels like there’s no future, no past, that you’re stuck in this purgatory and this washing machine of lack of choices, combined with bad choices, and wanting to just disappear off the planet. And I know what it feels like to want to stop more than anything and to be able to use your sheer will to move heaven and earth for everything else in your life, except this one thing.
Those are the feelings of being in addiction, of being in alcoholism, of feeling like you can’t live with it, you can’t live without it. It’s the one thing you have no ability to use your willpower on, and the embarrassment or the almost disbelief that that could be possible, and yet, it is. The sooner I was able to admit that to someone, someone who had been there, someone who’d gone through the things that I had gone through, and ask them how to get out, what the path out of this horrible spin cycle was, the sooner I got well. And you have to take somebody else’s word for how to get better.
You are not a bad person trying to get good. You are a sick person trying to get well. And you are not going to fix your broken brain with your broken brain, and you’re certainly not going to do it by yourself. Ask for help, and you will save yourself a lot of consequences. Because this condition is progressive. It gets worse, not better. So if you leave it untreated, if you continue where you are, if any of these feelings resonate with you, it is not going to get better. It’s going to get worse. So please, please reach out. If you’re not sure where to reach out, you can always reach out to me. My email is Ashley@lionrockrecovery.com. You can check out Lionrock’s professional services, lionrockrecovery.com. You can check out our community. There are free 12 step meetings on there and other nondenominational meetings at lionrock.life. If none of those things are appealing, feel free to email me, and I can point you in the right direction. I hope everyone is having a wonderful day, and I will see you next time. Thanks for listening.
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