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Addiction and the Family: A Father’s Story of Pain, Boundaries, and Hope · Recovering Out Loud

• 0:00
  Hello everybody, welcome back or welcome to Recovering a loud
• 0:03
  podcast, the podcast where we get real about addiction and
• 0:07
  recovery. Today, Rob L joins us in studio
• 0:10
  to share a deeply personal and powerful perspective.
• 0:13
  What it's like to walk the path of recovery when you're not the
• 0:16
  addict, but the father of two daughters who are.
• 0:18
  Coming from a culture where alcohol was always present, Rob
• 0:21
  was no stranger to substance use.
• 0:23
  But everything changed when both of his girls began struggling
• 0:26
  with addiction. One daughter is now in strong
• 0:28
  recovery, the other is still trying to go it alone.
• 0:32
  In this episode, Rob opens up about the heartbreak, the
• 0:35
  helplessness, and ultimately the healing he found in his own
• 0:38
  recovery journey as a support person.
• 0:41
  We discussed the emotional toll of loving someone through
• 0:43
  addiction, what boundaries and support really look like, and
• 0:47
  how recovery can reshape the lives of those on the sidelines.
• 0:51
  I learned a lot today and I hope you do too.
• 0:54
  Enjoy the show. If you or someone you know is
• 0:57
  struggling with a loved one in addiction, please reach out for
• 1:00
  help. Send me a message and I can
• 1:02
  connect you with someone who may help.
• 1:19
  Rob, I appreciate you coming down man, Thank you so much.
• 1:23
  Thank you. For having me.
• 1:24
  We've been in contact for a while now yes.
• 1:28
  You're a friend of my mom's. My mom introduced me to you and
• 1:31
  she says nothing but good things about you very kind.
• 1:34
  I appreciate that you know, you've been you've been
• 1:37
  listening and sending me messages as well, saying that
• 1:40
  you appreciate the content that means a lot to me.
• 1:42
  You know, when anyone messages us, you no matter, no matter
• 1:46
  what it is the the fact that it kind of touched you in some way.
• 1:50
  I, I appreciate that because that's why I wanted to start to
• 1:53
  do this thing. And, you know, those messages go
• 1:55
  a long way. So thank you.
• 1:57
  I, I, I also too, I really wanted to, I think this, you
• 2:02
  know, loved one, the, the, the loved 1 of addicts, loved ones
• 2:07
  of addicts are an important voice.
• 2:10
  I want them to be an important voice in this podcast.
• 2:13
  It doesn't get talked about enough, right?
• 2:15
  So we were at a wedding last night, my wife and I, and it was
• 2:19
  a good friend of mine and one of my buddies, you know, we were
• 2:22
  talking about at the table and this podcast came up and I, it's
• 2:25
  funny, I'm still, I'm at a point right now, I, I don't know about
• 2:29
  you, but I have AI. I'm getting better at it.
• 2:31
  I have a hard time taking compliments and taking good
• 2:35
  words about me. And that's something about
• 2:36
  myself worth I'm still healing from, you know, hating myself
• 2:40
  for so long. I'm getting a lot better at it
• 2:42
  now where I can just kind of like listen to what somebody
• 2:44
  says and instead of get like uncomfortable, like I'm not, you
• 2:48
  know what, he's wrong. I'm not a good person, right?
• 2:51
  This kind of uncomfortability, I just accept it and I'm, I'm
• 2:54
  grateful for it today, right? So last night we started talking
• 2:56
  about it. And addiction at a, at a wedding
• 3:01
  dinner table is not, you know, the most comfortable subject to
• 3:05
  talk about. For me, I'm OK because I can
• 3:08
  talk about. I've started doing this.
• 3:09
  I enjoy talking about it, right? But there's like 3 or 4
• 3:12
  strangers at the table and I'm like, what must they be thinking
• 3:16
  about this conversation, right? We started talking about some
• 3:18
  pretty heavy stuff, right? And I really want to get your
• 3:21
  opinion on this and we'll jump into it.
• 3:23
  But my friend, one of my really good buddies, and I'm so
• 3:26
  grateful for this. He looked at my wife and he
• 3:28
  just, he kind of said, how are you doing?
• 3:31
  How are you? And I find that that gets missed
• 3:35
  a lot in this conversation. We, we don't really realize how
• 3:38
  much addiction touches the loved ones and, and this kind of
• 3:43
  vicious, precarious, you know, butterfly effect that addiction
• 3:48
  has on. And so I was thinking about it
• 3:52
  this morning. I kind of drew it out on in my
• 3:54
  notes. If there's one addict and
• 3:57
  there's three loved ones of that addict that are suffering, you
• 4:02
  don't think about this as much as maybe we should.
• 4:04
  But if there's even just, let's just say three more people that
• 4:09
  love that loved one of the addict, now that's 12 people
• 4:14
  thinking about the addict, right?
• 4:16
  Because it's this kind of like spider web, this kind of like
• 4:19
  trickle down effect. So now you have three loved ones
• 4:22
  worried about the addict and you have, let's just say 3 loved
• 4:25
  ones of that loved one worried about the loved one.
• 4:28
  It's, it's pretty, you know, it's pretty intense, right?
• 4:32
  Yeah, there's a there's a lot to take from that.
• 4:34
  It's the way that you just described that kind of reminded
• 4:36
  me of. You're probably too young to
• 4:39
  remember this, but there was a shampoo ad when I was a kid that
• 4:44
  it's, it had a woman and talking about this, this product that
• 4:48
  she was using. And then I told two friends and
• 4:51
  then they told two friends and then they told two friends and
• 4:53
  so on and so on. And it was like the, the, the
• 4:57
  screen kept splitting to more and more people in like little
• 4:59
  boxes, you know, like like the Hollywood Squares or something
• 5:04
  like that. So it's, you know, you make a
• 5:07
  really good point. It is something that, you know,
• 5:13
  and we're, we're all hopefully lucky to have people in our
• 5:17
  lives that care about us, right? And when you are lucky enough to
• 5:22
  be surrounded by people who care about you, those things which
• 5:27
  are causing you the most consternation and the most
• 5:31
  trauma, often times, for better or for worse, become the
• 5:36
  prevalent topic of conversation. Every time that you see one
• 5:39
  another, right? So many times, the first
• 5:43
  question will be, so how's your daughter, right?
• 5:46
  Right. How you know?
• 5:47
  So how are you? And I think it's a natural thing
• 5:51
  because people who love you just want you to be OK.
• 5:57
  But yes, to your point, I think that often times, and we were
• 6:08
  talking about this a little bit before, you know, we turned on
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  the equipment that the person who is, you know, in in active
• 6:18
  addiction, the person who is experiencing the trauma that
• 6:20
  they are their issue feels more immediate.
• 6:26
  It feels more real. It feels more like a like a
• 6:29
  clear and present danger, right? Whereas the person, the, the
• 6:34
  support network, the loved one, it feels kind of secondary.
• 6:39
  But often times people like that are suffering in silence, right?
• 6:46
  And then the question becomes out of that is, how are you
• 6:48
  going to deal with it, right? Because on my Rd., I've made a
• 6:53
  lot of mistakes along the way, you know, And in some ways I'm
• 6:58
  glad for that because the clear path was brought to me.
• 7:05
  And in other ways, I still carry some baggage with it, right?
• 7:09
  That I'm like, oh man, what was I thinking?
• 7:12
  That I dealt with this by doing XYZ, You know, like, rookie
• 7:16
  move, dude. Yeah.
• 7:18
  So you have two daughters? Yes, one is in currently in
• 7:23
  active addiction, in the throes of action active addiction and 1
• 7:26
  is in recovery, right? Correct.
• 7:28
  Can you tell us a little bit about your story and, and, and
• 7:31
  get into that a little? How far back do you want me to
• 7:34
  go? As far back as you want to
• 7:37
  today, I would say like what you know, maybe I'll just whatever
• 7:44
  you think is prevalent. I don't.
• 7:46
  I don't. OK.
• 7:48
  Yeah. So I guess for myself, I grew up
• 7:55
  in AI, grew up in a household where alcohol was just sort of
• 8:04
  accepted as a constant presence, the same way that, like milk or
• 8:10
  bread or, you know, anything else was.
• 8:12
  I don't ever want to get the impression that my folks abused
• 8:16
  it, but my father was a Scottish immigrant.
• 8:21
  My mother was from Northern Ontario, but came from Irish
• 8:23
  stock, so Scottish and Irish. Insert joke here.
• 8:30
  You know about whiskey and you know, Guinness and beer and you
• 8:33
  know everything in between. So, you know, my folks were very
• 8:38
  hard workers. But on the weekends, you know,
• 8:43
  when Saturday night came, they, you know, really enjoyed a few.
• 8:50
  So, you know, alcohol to me was something that I just kind of
• 8:57
  accepted. And it's funny because, you
• 8:59
  know, I was thinking about this when we set up our session here,
• 9:05
  when I hit my teenage years, as all kids do, and I started
• 9:10
  fooling around with things that, you know, the law said I wasn't
• 9:14
  yet ready. And, you know, and, and also at
• 9:19
  the time, you know, things that were not legal, right?
• 9:21
  Like, you know, so obviously I'm talking about alcohol, weed.
• 9:27
  And, you know, this is like late 80s that we're talking that I
• 9:30
  sort of came of age. So hash, mushrooms, acid, little
• 9:35
  bit of cocaine. And whenever I got pinched and I
• 9:43
  was very obviously drunk, often times it was Dad, you know, he
• 9:47
  was just like, he's just blowing off steam, It's fine.
• 9:51
  When it was something else. Do you know how much you're
• 9:55
  going to ruin your life? You know?
• 9:57
  Yeah, Yeah. Because it.
• 9:59
  But it was just wasn't part of their world, right.
• 10:01
  You know, drugs was something that had to do with the
• 10:04
  counterculture and, you know, dirty hippies and, you know,
• 10:07
  stuff like that. So I sort of, I got all of that
• 10:14
  out of my system. I'm not going to say that when
• 10:19
  like I'm at a concert or a sporting event or a club or
• 10:22
  something like that, that I don't drink because I do.
• 10:25
  But it also doesn't have the same end result on me as what it
• 10:28
  does on people that I care about, right.
• 10:33
  So alcohol and you know, other substances were they were never,
• 10:42
  you know, particularly prevalent in my relationship with my
• 10:45
  children as they were growing up.
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  I am, I'm divorced and you know, my ex wife's family is Italian.
• 10:56
  So, you know, wine was always a very big deal.
• 10:58
  Like even just like with a daily like a Wednesday night meal,
• 11:01
  right? Not irresponsibly, just present.
• 11:06
  So I couldn't say how that really affected the the sort of
• 11:15
  acceptance of alcohol in my kids lives.
• 11:18
  I think that you know, like that's their story, right?
• 11:23
  But I think so, I guess this is so this, this would probably be
• 11:33
  like the if, if I had to on the road map of where we've come to
• 11:37
  this point, if I had to like define an exact moment.
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  And I'm I'm going to talk broadly just because I'm not
• 11:48
  sure that I completely understand what potential legal
• 11:50
  ramifications there could be in this.
• 11:52
  But my kids were involved in a very, very bad accident when
• 11:57
  they were teenagers, and they, as a result, received a lot of
• 12:06
  money which was put into their hands right after they had both
• 12:11
  turned 18 years old. Being 18 years old, that means I
• 12:17
  have no legal recourse by which that I can instruct them right
• 12:22
  now. I don't know about you, but when
• 12:25
  you were 18 years old, if you were handed 1/4 of $1,000,000,
• 12:33
  do I? I don't really need.
• 12:35
  To I'm just I'm thinking about all the stuff that I would do at
• 12:38
  18 and none of it is responsible.
• 12:40
  So yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow.
• 12:43
  So I that, that was really sort of like, I think a, that was
• 12:48
  putting propane on the, on the BBQ right there, right.
• 12:53
  I had noticed with my youngest that there were already some
• 12:56
  issues at that point that were a little outside of what would be
• 13:01
  normal teenage angst. My oldest, she like, it was
• 13:08
  always like school boys, you know, Do I have the coolest pair
• 13:13
  of Uggs? Like normal stuff, right?
• 13:17
  Whatever normal means. But I, I, I can't, I don't know
• 13:21
  that I can necessarily put a defining point on it.
• 13:23
  But I noticed that with my youngest, there was something
• 13:28
  deeper and more profound and you know, dare I say darker that was
• 13:33
  going on with her. I still don't.
• 13:40
  You don't really understand what that is.
• 13:41
  But again, that would be her story.
• 13:46
  And so, you know, that influx, you know, this massively
• 13:56
  lucrative influx of money really, you know, helped to fuel
• 14:04
  where things went. Now, my oldest, she had taken
• 14:11
  some advice, I believe it was from her mom, and she had said
• 14:16
  you should get, you shouldn't take some of that money and put
• 14:18
  it in real estate. You know, good idea, good idea,
• 14:21
  right? It's the only thing that there's
• 14:24
  never going to be more of. And so she bought a condo
• 14:29
  downtown. And the thing was, is that I I
• 14:34
  believe she was 19 when she got it right.
• 14:38
  Imagine being 19 years old and owning like a prime real estate,
• 14:42
  you know, downtown Toronto. Yeah, downtown Toronto, you
• 14:45
  know, burgeoning neighborhood. It's.
• 14:47
  A mecha of, you know, use and and alcohol.
• 14:50
  Yeah. So what happened was because she
• 14:55
  was young, because she had no existing credit profile, she had
• 15:01
  said, will you cosign for me right now?
• 15:04
  I had no reason to think that like, this seemed like money in
• 15:10
  the bank as far as she was concerned that I was just
• 15:12
  helping her out with, you know, building something at a really
• 15:17
  young age. And she had a serious leg up on
• 15:20
  where like 99% of the rest of the population would not.
• 15:27
  And then probably about I would. My timelines are a little fuzzy,
• 15:34
  but about two years later, this was during lockdown, which, you
• 15:41
  know, as, you know, probably exasperated a lot of people's
• 15:45
  tolerance. And mental health in general,
• 15:47
  yeah, but yeah, you're. Right.
• 15:51
  I had left my job at the time. I had found myself in a pretty
• 15:57
  good position in in many different ways, like, you know,
• 16:00
  financially, mentally, emotionally.
• 16:04
  And I was like, you know what, considering that the world is
• 16:08
  shutting down, I'm actually going to kind of try to make
• 16:13
  lemonade out of lemons. And I left my job for a year and
• 16:20
  I wrote a novel during that time.
• 16:22
  Wow. Now there's something very
• 16:25
  almost like a almost like a like a movie moment here where the
• 16:33
  Friday afternoon that I had finished, that I had written the
• 16:37
  end, I came bounding down the stairs, excited beyond all get
• 16:43
  out. You know, the world is my
• 16:45
  oyster. I'm I can go anywhere from here.
• 16:49
  There's a knock on the door, right?
• 16:51
  I get served with papers that the mortgage has been defaulted
• 16:56
  on, that I had cosigned for, that I owned, you know, 0.5% of.
• 17:03
  So that was when I came to the realization, fuck, like things
• 17:12
  have gone seriously wrong under my nose.
• 17:19
  Yeah. So that was that was sort of
• 17:21
  like the pinpoint defining. Moment had you?
• 17:23
  Had you had like hints along the way or was this a complete
• 17:26
  shock? Yes.
• 17:28
  But I always thought that, you know, there was a level of, you
• 17:32
  know, maybe common sense and sensibility that existed there
• 17:35
  that she wouldn't get pulled into this, right?
• 17:42
  But, you know, as we both know, it isn't necessarily always
• 17:45
  about common sense and sensibility.
• 17:48
  There's something, you know, deeper that always goes on
• 17:50
  there, right? And so I think maybe a month or
• 18:00
  two after that, after that it happened, you know, the, the
• 18:04
  timing on that is something that I always look back on as being
• 18:08
  like disturbingly profound, right?
• 18:11
  Like it's like I was, I was in a moment of, you know, incredible
• 18:16
  creative high. I had also been fortunate enough
• 18:22
  that I, you know, I just bought my dream car as well, too.
• 18:25
  And it was like everything was just going to lining up so
• 18:29
  fabulously, right. And I'm not, I'm not saying
• 18:34
  that, you know, to make anybody involved feel worse as a result.
• 18:40
  You know, maybe just to kind of illustrate the point of exactly
• 18:43
  where I was at that point in my life.
• 18:44
  But so maybe, you know, a month or two after that, I had
• 18:51
  received a phone call one morning from the police that she
• 19:00
  had taken a serious beating from a guy that was in her life at
• 19:03
  the time who had kind of introduced her to the world of
• 19:11
  hard, dangerous narcotics and that she was in a detox
• 19:16
  facility. She was in treatment.
• 19:19
  And so, you know, she got in touch while she was there and
• 19:24
  said, you know, can you come and pick me up on Saturday after I'm
• 19:30
  fully detoxed, you know? Yeah.
• 19:34
  So that's, that's my oldest daughter's story, you know, and
• 19:41
  that was brutal, man. That was that was brutal that
• 19:45
  Saturday that I went downtown to go pick her up and she came out,
• 19:50
  you know, through the front door and she was, you know, attended
• 19:53
  by one of the people who worked there.
• 19:58
  I, you know, I looked at this like just emaciated rake of a
• 20:05
  child, you know, face just black and blue.
• 20:10
  You know, I'm like, who did this to you?
• 20:13
  You know, like your first instinct is just like.
• 20:17
  I want to kill everybody that you have had any contact with
• 20:21
  over the course of the last year, year and a half, You know,
• 20:24
  something like that. Yeah.
• 20:29
  But you know, that was an eye opener, man.
• 20:33
  That was an eye. So that's my oldest.
• 20:34
  That's my oldest story. And with one exception, she has
• 20:43
  trod the road of, you know, sobriety and recovery.
• 20:49
  And, you know, in many ways, this kid's my hero.
• 20:53
  Yeah. So my youngest, I have less
• 21:02
  clarity on how that went. I, I know that there was always
• 21:13
  a propensity with her for whatever reason.
• 21:18
  And again, I, I wouldn't ever want to try and dissect it
• 21:21
  because it's not my story. But there's always been a
• 21:25
  tendency to maybe surround herself with people who I
• 21:31
  suspect deep down she knows are not good for her.
• 21:36
  And if I were to offer a theory, I would say that when you allow
• 21:41
  yourself to be attended by people who you perhaps know are
• 21:44
  not good for you, it gives you an excuse to behave in a way
• 21:54
  that is destructive. That is not good for you, right?
• 21:56
  Yeah, it kind of yeah. And I can relate to that a lot.
• 22:00
  I hung out with, you know, in in one of our literatures that we
• 22:03
  work with it, it talks about this idea of lower companions.
• 22:08
  And what I've learned from my perspective is you, you nailed
• 22:11
  it on the head. It's like I used to hang out
• 22:13
  with these people that were, quote UN quote, worse than I was
• 22:17
  doing worse than I was. And I I always had this, you
• 22:19
  know, in addiction, we do this comparison thing where it's
• 22:21
  like, well, I'm not as bad as him.
• 22:23
  I'm not doing heroin yet. I'm not using needles yet.
• 22:25
  I'm not smoking meth. Yeah, I'm only snorting meth.
• 22:29
  And it kind of key. It fuels this.
• 22:30
  It's it's OK, buddy. Like you're you're OK.
• 22:33
  You're not that bad, right. So yeah.
• 22:35
  Yeah, that's that. That is a.
• 22:38
  That is a dangerous graph to find yourself trying to
• 22:42
  navigate, you know, related but perhaps opposite.
• 22:47
  You know, one of the things that I had an epiphany about in my
• 22:51
  own recovery and in my own program is there is no point
• 22:57
  system with us, right? You know that it's like it like
• 23:02
  the absolute ego to sit in a room with other people, you
• 23:08
  know, who are all suffering their own traumas and say, yeah,
• 23:12
  but my trauma is worse than yours.
• 23:15
  You know, like it's it's not, it's not about that, right?
• 23:19
  And what may seem like nothing to somebody is the end of the
• 23:24
  world to somebody else, right? All of our lives are are tweaked
• 23:28
  a little bit differently and we are shaped by experiences that
• 23:32
  are unique, right? So going back to my youngest,
• 23:43
  it's I, I think there was, you know, she has gone up and down,
• 23:49
  struggled. There was an incident where she
• 23:57
  was missing for a long weekend a couple of years ago.
• 24:05
  It was Labour Day weekend and, you know, her phone was off.
• 24:12
  Her mom had a key to her apartment, which was only a few
• 24:16
  blocks away. And like, like, her bank card
• 24:26
  had been left behind. And, you know, anything that
• 24:28
  would have given her any sort of connection to resource.
• 24:32
  Her cell phone was gone, though, so that was maybe a good sign.
• 24:36
  But it wasn't on. There was a huge search by the
• 24:40
  police. Eventually, you know, she was
• 24:45
  found. She was OK, a little worse for
• 24:47
  wear. I don't entirely know what
• 24:50
  happened over the course of that long weekend.
• 24:53
  I don't know that I want to know it.
• 24:55
  You know, in fact, it's probably best that I don't.
• 24:59
  But there were some serious, hard conversations after the
• 25:02
  fact. And it was like, look, we'll
• 25:05
  figure this out piece by piece. We're going to get you, you
• 25:12
  know, cleaned up and you know, we'll, we'll take it from there.
• 25:18
  We'll take it from there, right. So she ended up going to rehab.
• 25:27
  We sent her to what seemed to be a fantastic rehab out on the
• 25:32
  East Coast because as I'm sure that, you know, rehabs here are
• 25:37
  pretty overtaxed, right? It's hard and, you know, not to
• 25:45
  make it about money. But, you know, not everybody can
• 25:48
  afford, you know, some of the resources that are available
• 25:52
  here, myself included, like, some of them are pretty steep,
• 25:55
  right? So she came back.
• 25:59
  The rehab didn't take for whatever reason.
• 26:04
  Again, that's her story. And, you know, we had hit a
• 26:11
  point where it was like you're you're, you're living with us
• 26:20
  now. Your behaviors haven't changed.
• 26:22
  I can see that you're on a bad slope.
• 26:26
  And this is also one of the things that I have learned as
• 26:29
  time has gone on about acceptance and dealing with it
• 26:34
  is, you know, I'm always here for you, right?
• 26:39
  I am totally team you 100% of the way, but I don't have the
• 26:44
  strength that I can watch you do this to yourself, right?
• 26:49
  And so the response to that was to kind of disappear again, go
• 26:55
  on a Bender, and Long story short, there was an overdose and
• 27:07
  she, over Christmas a couple of years ago, was in a coma for
• 27:12
  five weeks. That was easily, you know, and
• 27:24
  this includes, you know, the death of people that I have lost
• 27:27
  around me through my life, you know, including my folks and a
• 27:33
  brother-in-law and, you know, and other people that that was
• 27:36
  like the sorry, man, that was the worst period of my life, you
• 27:43
  know. But, you know, there was a
• 27:46
  little bit of a miracle in that. She woke up on Christmas
• 27:49
  morning, you know, and I said to her like, you know, you know,
• 27:52
  what day it is today, you know, and she'd been intubated, you
• 27:56
  know, so very raspy and, you know, and, and, you know, could
• 28:00
  only speak like in kind of like a a growly whisper.
• 28:04
  But you know, she was like, it's Christmas, you know, it's like,
• 28:07
  you know, I'm getting really emotional, like just thinking
• 28:10
  about it, you know. So the, you know, from there
• 28:20
  that I am aware of, there has been at least one other
• 28:28
  experience that she has like, legally died in the medical
• 28:36
  sense, right? Like pale blue lips, you know,
• 28:41
  stopped breathing, you know, that whole shebang, right?
• 28:47
  And it makes a person wonder, like, what is it going to take,
• 28:52
  right? But that is also not my decision
• 28:56
  to make, right? Yeah, Yeah.
• 28:59
  Thank you. I really appreciate you sharing
• 29:02
  that. Rob, I know it's it's not easy
• 29:04
  for you to come down here and open up about the stuff because
• 29:08
  it is still ongoing and there's a lot of pain and in talking
• 29:16
  about it. But that kind of and it, and it
• 29:19
  for me, it begs the question like, because you've, you've
• 29:23
  been pretty adamant about about coming on here and I really
• 29:26
  appreciate that. You know, what, what is my
• 29:29
  pleasure? Like what, what, what, what
• 29:32
  makes you want to to kind of do this and talk about it and open
• 29:35
  up and get get vulnerable. I think that there's maybe a few
• 29:40
  different reasons for that. I think that one is I find, you
• 29:48
  know, I had mentioned earlier about that, you know, at one
• 29:51
  time I had worked in the film industry.
• 29:54
  I've, I've always, you know, all of my endeavors, whether they've
• 29:58
  been personal or professional on some level, have always had a
• 30:01
  level of creativity to them. And I find that, you know, the,
• 30:05
  you know, at the risk of sounding like pretentious or
• 30:07
  whatever, the artistic process, you know, by thinking things
• 30:12
  through helps me, right. So, you know, I promise, you
• 30:18
  know, to anybody in my life, if you've ever, you know, seen me
• 30:20
  like, you know, talking to myself, I'm, I'm working
• 30:24
  something through, I'm not nuts, you know, like I, I, I'm, I'm,
• 30:28
  you know, like, well, what if I do this?
• 30:29
  And what if I, Oh yeah. But you know, this could be the,
• 30:31
  the best way for this to work out.
• 30:32
  And I find that it applies to a lot of facets of my life, right.
• 30:36
  So I think that a lot of times and you know, you know that I'm
• 30:41
  in a recovery program for, you know, support of people who have
• 30:46
  addiction issues. And I find that going and
• 30:50
  listening and talking these things through and interacting
• 30:53
  with people, it is a huge boon to my own well-being and mental
• 30:57
  health. And then also, like I had said
• 31:02
  to you in one of our first interactions with one another,
• 31:06
  is it one thing that I have found and learned in my own
• 31:10
  recovery is that life is servicemen.
• 31:13
  And if and, and I, I, I'm assuming that you probably feel
• 31:19
  the same way in, you know, in doing the podcast and, you know,
• 31:23
  everything else that you do with your, with, you know, anything
• 31:26
  that has to do with your recovery.
• 31:28
  If I can help one person, you know, if one person can hear my
• 31:33
  words or, or, you know, understand my situation and they
• 31:37
  can pull something from that and it makes them say, you know,
• 31:40
  maybe that'll work for me. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm truly
• 31:45
  blessed to be able to do that. It is legit.
• 31:48
  My pleasure. Absolutely.
• 31:50
  And a big part of that too, you know, I get emotional just
• 31:53
  thinking about that too, because when I was in when I was in
• 31:59
  active addiction, I didn't even have that bone in my body to be
• 32:03
  able to do that. And I'm just, it's the when I
• 32:05
  cry like this, it's like a, it's truly out of gratitude because I
• 32:10
  wouldn't, I wouldn't be here if, if everybody that came into
• 32:15
  recovery didn't think like that, right?
• 32:19
  I wouldn't be here if that first meeting I went to, which was
• 32:23
  like one of the scariest moments of my life, somebody hadn't come
• 32:26
  up to me and shook my hand and said, Hey, we're happy, you're
• 32:30
  here, welcome. You know, have a seat, grab a
• 32:33
  coffee. You're going to be OK, right.
• 32:36
  I, I wouldn't be here if that didn't happen.
• 32:37
  So if I can, if I can do that and replicate that at even a, a,
• 32:42
  a 8 tenths of a degree to somebody else, I've done my job,
• 32:46
  right? And it's a, it's a truly a
• 32:48
  beautiful thing. I often say this recovery thing
• 32:51
  is like the pyramid scheme without the scheme, right?
• 32:53
  And I talked about that in the beginning, this, you know, in a
• 32:56
  negative connotation of this kind of butterfly effect of how
• 32:58
  the addict effects so many people.
• 33:01
  Now I just have to do that the other way around, man, right?
• 33:03
  I just have to, to, to affect the butterfly effect to, you
• 33:07
  know, implement that in a positive way.
• 33:10
  And it doesn't have to be, I often say this doesn't have to
• 33:13
  be this like profound speech from a hilltop.
• 33:16
  In fact, that doesn't work in my experience.
• 33:19
  It's just simply me talking about what I went through, how I
• 33:23
  got through it and my experience, strength and hope
• 33:25
  that maybe somebody else can say exactly what you said.
• 33:28
  I love that is like, hey, maybe that'll work for me.
• 33:31
  Maybe it won't. But I'm going to open my mind
• 33:33
  and try it either way. So you're on your own healing
• 33:37
  journey right now. You talked about that a little
• 33:39
  bit. I think, you know, in talking to
• 33:42
  my therapist who's also in sobriety, she says, like, bar
• 33:45
  none, the hardest thing for her to do is to get the loved ones
• 33:49
  of addicts to, to go into their own recovery program.
• 33:52
  And there's like, well, why do I have to change?
• 33:56
  It's their fault, right? And that's, you know, oh.
• 33:59
  Man, like I, I almost did with you saying that I almost just
• 34:02
  like it felt like a, you know, a metaphorical punch in the
• 34:05
  stomach. If, if I have any regrets about
• 34:13
  the way that I have handled things with my kids, recovery
• 34:18
  and when the severity of their issues came to the forefront
• 34:25
  with me, Oh man, I, I know, I know I got to, I know I got to
• 34:31
  let this go. I know forgiveness is, you know,
• 34:32
  and letting go and all variations of that kind of
• 34:36
  notion are very important to recovery, not just recovery, but
• 34:40
  your own, you know, personal journey in life as well too.
• 34:42
  But I remember and then, you know, subtopic, I should say as
• 34:49
  well too, that you know, a lot of, and this is where we started
• 34:55
  our conversation, a lot of support.
• 34:58
  And what you find comes from being lucky enough to have
• 35:02
  people around you, you know, that love you and they and they
• 35:07
  support you and they just, they want to do what whatever it is
• 35:11
  that is going to, you know, help bring you to a better place.
• 35:13
  I have a fabulous, fabulous partner in my life who has taken
• 35:17
  this journey with me as well too.
• 35:21
  And, you know, I don't want to talk too much, you know, because
• 35:27
  she has her own story, but she's one of those people who kind of
• 35:35
  makes everybody around around her better.
• 35:40
  You know, I'm a recognizing, excuse me, I'm very blessed in
• 35:46
  that regard. But one of the worst things that
• 35:53
  I have, you know, experienced in my time or that, you know, as
• 35:56
  the severity of this situation was rearing its head, was that
• 36:02
  my oldest, she could see that I was really struggling with.
• 36:10
  Like, how could you allow yourself, you know, to get to
• 36:14
  this point, You know, all of those bullshit old fashioned
• 36:20
  notions of I didn't raise you to be this person, you know, and,
• 36:26
  you know, we both know, as do a lot of people who are probably
• 36:28
  listening and watching and in recovery.
• 36:32
  One thing has nothing to do with the next, right?
• 36:36
  And she had, she had seen that I was, you know, really having
• 36:44
  trouble getting my head around a lot of this stuff.
• 36:49
  And she had said, you know, maybe you might want to think
• 36:53
  about going to a meeting, right? Because there are meetings that
• 36:57
  exist for people who are affected by a loved one's
• 37:02
  addiction, right? And anything I got to tell you,
• 37:06
  man, like it's it probably one of the most shameful moments of
• 37:09
  my life that I had said, listen, kid, you're the one with the
• 37:14
  problem. It's not me, right?
• 37:17
  And you know, as you know everything that I have just said
• 37:21
  in the last 2025 seconds, wrong, wrong, wrong, right, all a
• 37:26
  mistake, all a mistake, right? And, you know, there's a lot of
• 37:33
  ego in addiction, and there's a lot of ego surrounding
• 37:37
  addiction. And, you know, part of finding
• 37:40
  that is you have to strip yourself of a certain amount of
• 37:44
  it. I don't necessarily agree with
• 37:46
  the notion that you need to strip yourself of all your ego.
• 37:50
  It's certain breeds of ego that need to go.
• 37:56
  Yeah. So.
• 37:58
  I, I think this, this idea of ego deflation is entices me,
• 38:01
  right? It's like, you know, it's, it
• 38:03
  doesn't have to completely disappear because it's some of
• 38:07
  us, some of it serves us right, It drives us to be better.
• 38:10
  But there's certainly this over inflation of ego and addiction.
• 38:14
  And I hadn't thought about it like that.
• 38:15
  That's I'm, I'm happy that you brought that up because ego does
• 38:19
  surround addiction too, right? There's this I'm fine, you need
• 38:23
  to change idea and and you, you kind of you answered it already,
• 38:27
  but there is, you know that that moment seems to be the the
• 38:31
  moment where you were like, huh, Maybe I have a part in this,
• 38:34
  right. I didn't 'cause it I I can't
• 38:36
  control it. And I can't cure.
• 38:38
  It thank you. I can't cure it, but maybe I do
• 38:42
  have a part in this. So can you talk a little bit
• 38:44
  about, you know, and I guess your part in it, like what, what
• 38:51
  is your part in it? I don't know that I have a fully
• 38:57
  formed answer yet. You know, We're all on our own
• 39:01
  journey of discovery. I, you know, because you go back
• 39:09
  and I think reflection is important.
• 39:16
  I think that regret is overrated.
• 39:20
  I just came up with that right now.
• 39:21
  That's not bad. That's not bad.
• 39:24
  I'm going to clip that for sure. I might, I might, you know, I'm,
• 39:27
  I'm, I might hold on to that one.
• 39:28
  I might put that on a sticky pad.
• 39:31
  But it's one of those things where it's like, so, you know,
• 39:37
  we've talked about a lot today, like even off mic, like as we
• 39:41
  were, you know, just sort of like getting to know one
• 39:42
  another. Not only am I like, you know, a
• 39:45
  big movie guy, a big music guy, a big sports guy as well, too.
• 39:49
  I still have a bone to pick with you and Caleb about the CFL.
• 39:53
  That'll be for another time. But you know, I'm, I, I'm lucky
• 39:59
  enough that you know I'm, I'm, I'm a season ticket holder to a
• 40:01
  couple of different sports franchises in the city.
• 40:04
  And, you know, there were times when, you know, I would bring my
• 40:08
  oldest to a game. My youngest, you know, at this
• 40:11
  point in her life really doesn't have a whole lot of interest.
• 40:13
  But my oldest, you know, I would bring her to a game every once
• 40:16
  in a while. And it would be like, you know,
• 40:20
  I would, you know, buy her like a small, like 8 oz beer, you
• 40:24
  know, just be like, don't tell your mom, you know, like that
• 40:27
  kind of thing. Like maybe it's 16, you know,
• 40:30
  and like 1, you know, but then in retrospect, when you see how
• 40:36
  things have worked out, it's like, shit was I did that moment
• 40:42
  that we were having like, you know, sort of a bonding.
• 40:45
  Did I contribute to that? You know, I, I, I, I don't know
• 40:50
  what the answer to that is, but I think also, you know, because
• 41:03
  my kids grew up in two different homes, no matter how hard you
• 41:09
  try and regulate that, there's always going to be some level of
• 41:15
  disjointed parenting. And I don't know if that helped.
• 41:20
  I know that it certainly wasn't intentional because I you know,
• 41:24
  I always remained hyper, hyper cognitive to I want my kids
• 41:33
  lives to be as normal as they possibly can, despite the fact
• 41:38
  that they live with their mom here and they live with me here,
• 41:41
  right? And you know, you do your best,
• 41:47
  right, You do your best. I know like, so going back to
• 41:52
  music for a second, you know, one of my guys is Springsteen,
• 41:55
  right? And he grew up with, at the time
• 42:00
  an undiagnosed bipolar father, right?
• 42:03
  There's a movie about his life coming out in the in the fall.
• 42:05
  So I'm sure that they'll touch upon this.
• 42:08
  And his father later in life, you know, had received his
• 42:15
  diagnosis, he had received treatment, He had received
• 42:18
  medication. He got his condition under
• 42:20
  control. And his dad, you know, later in
• 42:24
  his life had had a moment where he said, you know, I was
• 42:28
  probably pretty hard on you growing up, son, you know, and
• 42:33
  Bruce had said to him, Dad, you did the best that you could with
• 42:38
  the tools that you had at the time.
• 42:39
  I love that, right? And, you know, not only does
• 42:42
  that show an amazing sense of forgiving, you know, and of
• 42:47
  acceptance, but it's. Yeah, I, I'm.
• 42:58
  So I don't know how to end that you.
• 43:00
  Know what and I want to clarify something too.
• 43:02
  I, I kind of posed that in a wrong way, that question.
• 43:05
  What, what I fully want people to, to understand, if anything,
• 43:10
  out of this whole entire episode in the healing journey that
• 43:17
  you're on now, what, what is, what is your part in healing
• 43:22
  from this? Because I really and I, you
• 43:24
  know, to answer your question, I think a lot of parents maybe do
• 43:28
  think that they contributed more to the addiction than they did.
• 43:31
  I want to tell you right now, and I sure I'm sure you know
• 43:33
  this, but I want to confirm it. Nothing my parents did made me
• 43:37
  an addict at all. I was bound from day one.
• 43:39
  I fully believe that I had an amazing household growing up.
• 43:43
  I had amazing childhood. I had everything a kid needed,
• 43:46
  wanted, could have asked for. There was no abuse in my
• 43:50
  household. You know, nothing on paper
• 43:53
  should have contributed to the the life that I ended up in,
• 43:57
  right? I was bound from day one, like I
• 44:00
  said, but I think that what I, what I really believe in is that
• 44:07
  you have a problem here now, right?
• 44:09
  And I'm not saying that you have a problem or just hypothetically
• 44:12
  you're you're addicts. There's something on the table
• 44:14
  the. Person in your life is
• 44:15
  struggling with this, right? You have two choices.
• 44:18
  You can shame them to high hell and tell them to change and and
• 44:22
  beat them into oblivion, or you can kind of take this other Rd.
• 44:26
  which you're clearly taking. And I, I noticed that in from
• 44:29
  what my mom talks about you, but in even just in talking to you,
• 44:32
  this kind of this acceptance that you mentioned, what is your
• 44:36
  part in the healing journey of this, of this in your, your
• 44:40
  daughter's lives? Yeah.
• 44:41
  So, yeah, yeah, that's, that's, you know, kind of like a, that's
• 44:48
  kind of like a Pandora's box question.
• 44:51
  One thing that I do know, and this is, you know, a, a, a, a
• 44:54
  thought process that I've gotten a lot of mileage out of is that
• 45:00
  there is a prevalent belief that exists still within modern
• 45:05
  society. Everything that we know going
• 45:06
  through the opioid crisis, you know, alcoholism, you know,
• 45:11
  picture poison. There is still, you know, a very
• 45:15
  incorrect belief system out there that says these people are
• 45:21
  choosing to do this, right? Right.
• 45:25
  That's like saying to somebody, hey, you know what?
• 45:30
  It's a real problem for me that you've got lupus.
• 45:34
  I need you to stop having lupus. It's really inconvenient for me,
• 45:38
  yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:41
  And it's like, it, it, it, it, it, it isn't that easy, right?
• 45:45
  It's it like it's, it's actually preposterous to to look at it
• 45:48
  from that perspective. And until you're able to get
• 45:52
  your head around that concept, you are going to stay in
• 45:55
  neutral, right? And that took me a long time to
• 46:03
  recognize that I can certainly tell you a lot of the mistakes
• 46:06
  that I made in the beginning. So, you know, in an instance
• 46:13
  where like, you know, a creditor was calling up and saying you
• 46:21
  owe X amount of dollars because of an unpaid utility bill, you
• 46:27
  know, you're behind on this, you know, whatever, I was taking
• 46:32
  care of all of those things, right?
• 46:35
  And it's like, you know, so another, another rule, for lack
• 46:43
  of a better term, that I have recognized in recovery is
• 46:47
  there's a lot of stuff that you're going to be asked to
• 46:50
  embrace that completely goes against every instinct that you
• 46:58
  have as a parent, right? Every single one.
• 47:03
  You know, it's like, you know, I was, I was, I was driving, I was
• 47:11
  driving along in my neighborhood last week.
• 47:16
  And, you know, because of the time of year that it is, I saw a
• 47:24
  a Canada goose that had just given birth to a whole nest of
• 47:30
  baby geese. And you know, they're just like
• 47:32
  in the cartoons, like they're all walking in a row along a
• 47:35
  sidewalk, right? And somebody was trying to get
• 47:40
  past, I think, you know, to get to work or to get to the bus,
• 47:42
  you know, or something like that, right?
• 47:44
  And the mother just lost her shit, right?
• 47:47
  And I think that, you know, a lot of our instincts as parents,
• 47:52
  they go back to like, you know, our more primitive roots.
• 47:55
  But it's like you see your child being threatened if there's if
• 47:58
  there's any perceived threat that is in their proximity, you
• 48:02
  just you want to go DEFCON 5 about this, right?
• 48:06
  And a lot of the stuff that you learn in recovery is that you
• 48:09
  need to let those things go, right?
• 48:11
  Because in the long run, in a very ironic, sometimes cruel,
• 48:16
  but ultimately real way, you can't meddle, You can't get
• 48:22
  involved because there there is something on their journey that
• 48:27
  they need to find themselves. You know, I had been, you know,
• 48:33
  to one of my fellow travellers, you know, in in recovery.
• 48:36
  I had been having a conversation a little while ago about, you
• 48:43
  know, a little despondency about how that my abilities to help,
• 48:49
  to foster a better path for my kid was had had been quite
• 48:57
  fruitless. And this person had said to me,
• 49:02
  you know, you maybe need to accept, Rob, that you are not
• 49:08
  meant to be the vessel to impart that wisdom in this section of
• 49:14
  her journey. And as a parent, that is a
• 49:21
  really, really jagged, bitter pill.
• 49:26
  Absolutely, Yeah. I love that.
• 49:28
  Yeah. I, I mean, you, you nailed it
• 49:31
  with that. I think letting go goes is so
• 49:34
  counterintuitive to parenting, right?
• 49:36
  And I don't have any kids and I can't even begin to imagine what
• 49:39
  that's like. But I've seen my mom go through
• 49:41
  it, right? And she's talked about it
• 49:42
  openly. So I want to and I want to close
• 49:46
  with this. If there's one thing you could
• 49:48
  say right now to a parent that's that's struggling with her kid
• 49:50
  or a loved one that's struggling with an addict in their life,
• 49:53
  what do you say? I think that, you know, maybe
• 50:02
  tying in with what it was that we were just talking about.
• 50:06
  And as hard as it is and you know, for some people, this is
• 50:09
  unfortunately going to be an impossibility.
• 50:14
  You need to let go of the notion that you're the solution, right?
• 50:21
  This is bigger than you. And you're not, you're not a
• 50:25
  medical professional, You're not, you're not an addiction
• 50:28
  specialist. And do what you can, but you
• 50:35
  also need to set some healthy boundaries for yourself that,
• 50:45
  you know, there's something that I learned very, there was a, you
• 50:50
  know, like a little fable, for lack of a better expression that
• 50:55
  we learned very early in recovery about, you know, the
• 50:59
  one about the parent and the child who are on a plane and the
• 51:03
  oxygen masks drop. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's a common
• 51:06
  one, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's a good one.
• 51:09
  So, you know, for anybody who is watching or listening who
• 51:11
  doesn't know it, you know, let's say, you know, it's a movie
• 51:14
  scene, right? And there's a parent and a child
• 51:19
  and they're sitting on a plane together and for whatever
• 51:22
  reason, the auction masks go down.
• 51:24
  You know, all the red lights start flashing in the plane.
• 51:27
  There's announcements that come over the PA system, you know,
• 51:30
  saying that, you know, we're experiencing this.
• 51:32
  Put the mask on. You know, now as a parent or as
• 51:35
  a loved one in general, your natural, you know, DNA bred
• 51:42
  instinct is I need to get that mask on my kid right now, right?
• 51:49
  The problem is though, that because of lack of oxygen that
• 51:53
  may happen as a result of decompression or the plane going
• 51:56
  down or whatever, you could pass out while you are fumbling to
• 52:00
  get that kids mask on, right? Ergo, you're no good to anybody,
• 52:05
  right? Suddenly the person who really
• 52:07
  relies upon you doesn't have you as a resource anymore, right?
• 52:12
  And they're left to fend for themselves.
• 52:15
  So you need to figure out, and every instance I believe is
• 52:18
  unique, you need to figure out what that moment is for you,
• 52:25
  right? And then maybe the last thing
• 52:27
  that I would tack on to that as well too.
• 52:30
  You need to find something for yourself that is going to give
• 52:35
  you some sense of a stability in your own thinking, right?
• 52:41
  Something positive. I want to be very clear on
• 52:44
  saying positive, you know, you know, whether it's, you know,
• 52:49
  something as simple as, you know, getting on an exercise
• 52:52
  bike for 20 minutes a day, you know, good book.
• 52:57
  I know that this sounds really simple, but like it's seriously,
• 53:00
  this stuff is important. You know, it really is.
• 53:04
  You know, you got to and I have also found that we have, you
• 53:09
  know, sometimes a need for immediacy with whatever problem
• 53:14
  it is that comes up. And I have found that I have
• 53:17
  gotten a lot of mileage out of this is important.
• 53:20
  I understand that this is important.
• 53:23
  I don't have the capacity in this exact moment that I can
• 53:28
  help you reason this through. Give me some time and I'll get
• 53:33
  back to you on it. Yeah.
• 53:34
  There's nothing wrong with doing that, right?
• 53:36
  You know? Yeah.
• 53:37
  Love that. Take care of yourself, right?
• 53:41
  Yeah. Thank you so much, Rob, for
• 53:42
  coming. I.
• 53:43
  Appreciate it, man. And you know what?
• 53:44
  You and Caleb keep doing what you're doing, man.
• 53:46
  I I learned a lot today and I I hope that one person did as
• 53:50
  well. Thank you, Rob.
• 53:51
  You're the best man. Thank you.
• 53:52
  Thanks for listening. Please help us grow the channel
• 53:55
  and like, share and subscribe for more content.
• 53:58
  The discussions and stories shared on this podcast are for
• 54:01
  informational and motivational purposes only.
• 54:03
  This content is not a substitute for professional medical advice,
• 54:07
  addiction treatment, or therapy. If you or someone you know is
• 54:10
  struggling with addiction, please consult A licensed
• 54:13
  physician, addiction specialist, or mental health professional.
• 54:17
  You are no longer alone.