SUMMARY KEYWORDS

drinking, people, kid, problem, women, substance, alcohol, struggling, addiction, approach, wine, parents, behavior, feel, strategies, good, self compassion, ambivalence, talk, change

SPEAKERS: Casey McGuire Davidson + Carrie Wilkens, PhD

00:02

Welcome to the Hello Someday Podcast, the podcast for busy women who are ready to drink less and live more. I’m Casey McGuire Davidson, ex-red wine girl turned life coach helping women create lives they love without alcohol. But it wasn’t that long ago that I was anxious, overwhelmed, and drinking a bottle of wine and night to unwind. I thought that wine was the glue, holding my life together, helping me cope with my kids, my stressful job and my busy life. I didn’t realize that my love affair with drinking was making me more anxious and less able to manage my responsibilities.

In this podcast, my goal is to teach you the tried and true secrets of creating and living a life you don’t want to escape from.

Each week, I’ll bring you tools, lessons and conversations to help you drink less and live more. I’ll teach you how to navigate our drinking obsessed culture without a buzz, how to sit with your emotions, when you’re lonely or angry, frustrated or overwhelmed, how to self soothe without a drink, and how to turn the decision to stop drinking from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

I am so glad you’re here. Now let’s get started.

Hi there. Today we’re talking to Carrie Wilkens, PhD, the co-founder and Clinical Director of the Center for Motivation and Change. She co-authored an award winning book Beyond Addiction: How Science and Kindness Help People Change, and co-wrote a user friendly workbook for parents, The 20 Minute Guide: A Guide for Parents about How to Help Their Child Change their Substance Abuse. 

 

I love the approach that Carrie uses in the Center for Motivation and Change because the invitation to change your approach is full of techniques that work with a ton of research behind them in place of the stigmatizing understandings of addiction that are so common and so harmful. The ITC responds to substance abuse, with evidence-based methods for improving communication, strength, training, motivation, reducing or stopping the use of substances, and practicing compassion and self care to create the conditions for change. 

 

So I’m excited about this interview because I think it is so important to improve the understanding of evidence based ideas and strategies for professionals for you if you’re struggling with substance abuse, or people you love, as opposed to the previous black and white understanding of what it means to have an issue with alcohol or drugs. So Carrie, thank you so much for being here.

 

02:58

Thank you for having me excited to talk to you and see if we can be helpful to your listeners.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  03:03

Oh, I’m sure you can. I know you can. Because I’ve been reading your materials and listening to you on podcasts. But just to start out with you tell us a little bit about what made you go into this work?

 

03:18

Yeah, I mean, it’s, I think every treatment professional has a little bit of an interesting personal history that lands them where they end up whether we’re conscious of that or not. You know, I just to full disclosure with you, I grew up in the middle of nowhere in western Kansas and have some very dear women in my life who struggled with alcohol problems as I was growing up. And, you know, in the generations prior to me, and you know, there were no options, and they suffered and struggled and so I just was familiar with it. 

 

And then I went to graduate school, and I was familiar with it and mad at how they were treated. Like I remember very distinctly feeling mad at how people talked about these women. How did people talk about the women, you know, just being mad at them for drinking, being mad at them, you know, just they were just angry with them. You know, I mean, that was, it was still that old confrontational, You’re not being a good mother, you’re not being a good this, you’re not being a good that, like lots of shame, shame base stuff. 

 

And then I went to graduate school and it wasn’t actually interested in substance use at all, but I had, you know, as your graduate students, you have your initial clients that you’re working with, and I worked with this woman for a year she was one of my last training plants and you know, she was incredibly traumatized. And my supervisor, we were talking about the trauma and we were talking about having ongoing trauma and she was late to our sessions. Often she was always sweaty and you know, just the variety of issues. She had the goreaphobia, she had a hard time leaving her house just all sorts of stuff that as a new clinician, you’re trying to understand and trying to be effective and trying to help this person. 

 

My last session with her she told me that she was drinking two bottles of wine a night. I had never been trained to ask about substance use. So this is 25 years ago when I was in graduate school 20 years ago, whatever it was, it hadn’t been trained to really assess. It had never come up in supervision, you know, as a thing to ask or be curious about. And I realized she was an alcohol withdrawal. Like so much of the stuff that I was seeing was alcohol withdrawal. The sweatiness, the shakiness, everything that got my supervisor and my training had kind of glommed on to this is all trauma, this is all anxiety, which of course it was, but it was amplified by the drinking, which, like not asking, you know, I’m sure I’m sure she would have told me, you know, I really, I think she probably would have told me but I wasn’t trained to ask. 

 

And I just was like, ah, that can never, that made me so mad, I was so furious. I was, you know, ready to go on internship at that point. And on internship, there was a substance use rotation. So I made sure I got in that rotation, because I was like, I gotta actually know how to manage this better, and then decided to stay on and worked in the substance use treatment program for a postdoc, and then just fell in love with it. And, and here I am.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  06:05

You know, one of the things that I mean, I told you, I drank like a bottle plus of wine a night, like 365 nights a year, unless I was trying to like, quote, unquote, moderate or take time off when I would get to like four days, and then be like, Oh, I’ve had a hard day, a good day, whatever, I’ll just have a glass. And I’ve been not surprised at all that as I do this podcast, as I talk to women, as they write to me that drinking a bottle or more a night is not unusual at all. I mean, so many women do this. And I’m sure men, I just talk to women more. 

 

And yet, you know, I know I went to my doctor, my psychologist forever. And, you know, they asked you to fill out the form. Do you smoke? Do you do drugs? Do you drink? How much? And I’d be like, couple glasses a couple times a week, right? Not a bottle of wine. You know, I think that the first time I ever wrote down the actual number was after I had quit. And I was so proud of myself. And it was like, How much do you drink? And I was like, not at all, but can’t believe I did this. Months ago, I was drinking 35 to 40 drinks a week. And guy was like, what? And I was like, no, no, no, I’m not drinking now. You know what I mean?

 

07:28

Yeah. Well, but that little part of you that had such a hard time acknowledging that, you know, classically, like people would say you’re in denial, you were in denial, you didn’t like, or whatever people toss that phrase around, I’m like, really, because most of the people that I work with, like, they know, oh, and they’re actually like, really upset by it. And they’re frustrated with themselves, and they’re struggling and they’re suffering. The problem is in our society, and you know, going back to my original anger at how people were treating these women that I love, there’s so much shame and stigma attached to substance use problems, you know, nobody wants to. And the reality is like, if you acknowledge that you’re drinking that much, you would have instantly gotten a label of like, well, you’re an alcoholic, you need to do X, Y, and Z, right? And nobody wants that label, which is all it is. It’s a label that makes most people say, No, I’m not. I’m not that, right. I’m not that.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  08:19

And I’ve heard a couple of things. I’ve heard, either, oh, my God, you’re an alcoholic, and you need to go to AA. Or you’re not an alcoholic, you just need to cut back, or you’re not an alcoholic. Don’t worry, don’t be so hard on yourself. Like I’ve heard, Yeah, my key is therapists. And doctors say that to people who actually finally admitted that they’re worried about their drinking.

 

08:46

Yeah. And I mean, it just, I mean, we could have a whole discussion just on the fact that that word, just that label activates so many different things, right? It’s like nobody wants that label, including the doctors who don’t want to give you that label, right? They’re saying you’re not an alcoholic, I don’t want to give you that label. We end up, like, skirting around the issue and creating a platform where people can actually talk about, yeah, I’m doing this thing that makes me feel not so great. And I don’t really know why I do it. I think I know why I do it. And I really tried to stop and then I don’t know how to stop and I keep going back to it even though it makes me feel terrible. Like that’s what people need to be talking about. Like, like, I literally never use the word addiction. I never, I have never once in my professional life said to somebody or an alcoholic or an addict. I just don’t use those words. It’s just doesn’t.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  09:34

I never say, I mean, I don’t even know if I consider myself an alcoholic. I just say I quit drinking and I feel a lot better. And by the way, alcohol, it’s addictive, you know, right. 

 

09:46

Well, I think there’s something there. I will say though there’s an, when we’re working with family members who are trying to help someone, you know, family members will often say to somebody, you’re an alcoholic, go get treatment, you know, like, as if that’s going to help, right? It does, it does since it sets up a platform for people to say, No, I’m not. But I do like if somebody is going to the 12 step fellowship, and they identify with that in a way that’s helpful to them. And if it joins them to a community that they feel like, okay, I’m part of a community, and this resonates with us, it can be an incredibly powerful thing. 

 

But it’s a chosen, it’s self chosen. This works for me, it’s not my job as a treatment professional to tell you who you are, right? It’s my job as a professional to help you go on a journey and try to speed up that journey. Like I’ve got some tools that I can use that help you speed up that journey for yourself. But I’m on the journey with you to help you try to figure out what your values are, what kind of life you want to live, what are you struggling with? Are there skills that you can use that will mitigate those struggles? It’s not to tell you who you are and attach to this big label that means so many things to people like it’s just yeah.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  10:55

And to tell you that you have a character defect and that that’s one of mine, right.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  11:01

Well, so I know, when you started, you know, a 12 step was sort of the only approach that were the best known, you know, that people referred people to and you said that when you started your business, people would actually refer people to you, who basically weren’t, quote, unquote, ready to be 100% abstinent or you know, rehabs would say, come back, when you’re ready to admit you’re an alcoholic or something like that?

 

11:33

Yeah, so evidence based treatments have been around for a very long time, actually. And then and one of the reasons why we started the Center for Motivation and Change is because we were trained in these evidence based strategies. But we were working in treatment systems where nobody was using them, you know, there was this big divide between what was happening in academic research settings where they were trying to identify, like, what helps people make behavior change, right, like there’s, there’s decade’s worth of experience evidence around something called motivational interviewing, right is a therapeutic approach, where you’re working with somebody to really try to activate their internal motivation, right? It’s not a power dynamic. You’re trying to help them work with their ambivalence, understand their ambivalence, and you’re not taking a, I’m the expert, you’re the client, that let me tell you what to do approach. It’s really like, I’m curious about you. And I want to help you get to where you want to go to write, that has so many positive effects for many things, including substance use disorders, but like, it helps people take their Medicaid, if you take that approach it takes helps people take the medication more willingly, like it helps with lots of things. 

 

But it was never used in addiction programs, you know, in addiction programs, which is, you know, people with substance use issues, they struggle with ambivalence, right, that that the substances work in some way that is quite meaningful. So to ask somebody to give that up, you’re gonna have ambivalence, right? They’re gonna be like, yes, I want to give it up. And no, I don’t, because it works for me in some way. So you’ve got to be able to work with that ambivalence somehow. And the weirdest thing is that in addiction treatment programs, the model, for sure, 20 years ago, I think it’s changing now, was this very confrontational approach, you know, like you got to confront, you got to confront that denial, you’ve got to tear people down to their core, in order for them to get better. They’ve got to address those character defects. They’ve got to hit rock bottom, like all of these concepts that are like, Oh, how did we end up there? 

 

You know, so we were trained in all these other approaches, and we just were like, We got to create a treatment program that uses these approaches and prove that people get better. And people like in the real world, and but there was, I say to people all the time, like we did not make this stuff up. This was  in the world, it was available, it’s available to every treatment provider. The problem is people don’t pick it up. And that’s the profound disservice. Again, I think things are changing, thankfully. But it’s been a pretty hard fought battle. And you know, the, the abstinence versus the harm reduction. You know, it used to be the only success with addiction problems or substance use disorders was abstinence, right? Like, yeah, that’s really successful for a lot of people. And some people really need to decide to get there. 

 

There’s a lot of people who like, really want to abstain from alcohol, but they want to have pot in their life. Okay, like, maybe that’s something that you need to work through and make that decision for yourself. I want to help you collect that evidence, be thoughtful about it, be intentional about it and keep it above the surface. Because I think what people do with substances, there’s so much shame and stigma, they go underground. Oh, no. And they think they can’t talk about it. They, they try to work it out all by themselves. Versus like getting into whether it’s a therapy relationship or a friendship relationship or relationship with somebody like you were there listening to these ideas of like, oh, I can actually I can say this out loud. I can talk to somebody about it. I can say like, oh, this is what I tried this week. It didn’t work out like I thought it was going to or I thought I already had great success, I moderated all week. Yeah, I was able to moderate all week. And I got to kind of see what happened that week that allowed me to do that so successfully, and can I do it again? You know, or do I moderate successfully for two months at a time, and then I have a binge that is so horrific, that I never want to do that again. So I have to take drinking off the table, because I always end up having that binge, you know, for whatever reason, and I have to get myself to where I’m not going to drink because I don’t want that to happen. Even though I moderated successfully the rest of the time, you know, like, people have to make like very deep personal choices that works for their life that works for their values. And it’s, it’s a process, it’s a learning process.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  15:41

And love that you said that about ambivalent because I don’t know anyone, myself included, who has finally decided to take alcohol off the table after loving it, like you said, it works for certain things and you know, works better in the beginning than it does at the end. But who hasn’t gone through that ambivalence, that debate? They know? And then yes, and then no. And then yes. For years, I mean, I worried about my drinking and read drinking a love story by Carolyn Knapp, and wrote myself a letter saying, Oh, shit, I think I have a real issue with alcohol. Eight years before I finally stopped, and just to look at that ambivalence, I literally typed out in a word doc, oh, my God, I’m really worried about my drinking. I think I have a problem. Maybe I’m an alcoholic, I have to stop on a Tuesday. Went back to the same document on Thursday and wrote up top. Just kidding. Definitely. Problem, nothing to see here. Like in, in evidence in black and white, just that going back and forth.

 

16:51

Yeah, and for me, if I were working with you, I’d be like, okay, so what happened between writing that list and that decision, Thursday night, when you were like ready to have the wine again, there were probably 50 different variables that contributed to you going from upset to and I’m actually really ambivalent. And then the other thing is like, so in the invitation to change approach, one of the ways that we talk about things is that behaviors make sense, right? So it works in some way. And it can be quite powerful, actually. 

 

And that’s true for any behavior, right? We repeat things that work for us in some way. You add substances, especially alcohol, like that’s actually impacting the brain, which are then impacting your dopamine receptors. So if you’re kind of artificially hitting your dopamine receptors with a couple glasses of wine, and it’s more complicated, I’m oversimplifying it to say it’s just dopamine, but comes with the pleasure receptors in the brain, but you’re artificially giving yourself something that feels good, right? So that chemical is impacting your neurotransmitters, when you take that chemical out, your neurotransmitters are like, hey, what? How do I get that again? 

 

So you have these craving states so that if you don’t put a new behavior in there, you know, if you don’t replace it with something, and it’s not like, you can you have one behavior that replaces your drinking behavior, right, you probably have 15 different behaviors that replace your drinking behavior, that that takes a long time to learn, takes a long time to figure out, you know, you’ve got to be able to like, appreciate, like, I’ve had to learn a whole, if I’m drinking, because I’m managing my stress, you know, or I’m kind of winding down at the end of the day, I got to find other ways to do that. Which might mean I have to change my work relationship, it might change what I do, when I come home from work, it might change what I eat, it might change what time I go to bed, it might change how I interact with my partner at the end of the day, like there’s so many things that go into, I’m trying to have no alcohol at the end of the day. 

 

So it’s, I think people also like when we talk about substance use problems, people try to simplify it down to am I drinking or not drinking. Like, it’s so frickin complicated, and to actually have compassion for yourself in that I have a lot of stuff I got to learn, and I’m not going to be perfect at it, and it’s going to take me some time. And yeah, I’m going to be ambivalent. Yeah.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  19:13

And it’s a process right? Like you said, there is a reason that you want to drink whether it’s you’re stressed, you’re bored, you’re overwhelmed, you feel like you need a reward you want to celebrate and it is difficult to figure out other ways to meet those needs especially in our, like, time compressed world.

 

19:35

Yeah, and you know, there’s also you know, what got you into the behavior in the first place, you know, so how it quote unquote worked for you in the beginning. That’s going to be very different once it’s become a habit. So then there’s also then the habit component of it of like, it’s so on autopilot. I just do it out of autopilot. I’m not even thinking about it anymore. So that’s a whole thing to figure out and you know, the reality is like a lot of people who have substance use issues? Like they’re struggling with something else, you know, you know, whether it’s like I’m struggling with deep anxiety or depression or relationship issues, or I don’t know how to take care of my body or whatever it is, you know, so it’s not just about drinking or not, it’s okay, what’s, what else is going on there? And how can we help you with that, too? 

 

And how can you attend to those needs, because women in particular, you know, studies show that women in particular drink their triggers, or more frequently anxiety and depression, you know, so and then our bodies like we don’t metabolize alcohol in the same way men do, you know, we don’t, we have more fat in our body, so, and we have less water, so our bodies absorb it more, so it’s in our organs longer, which has a greater impact on our physical states, you know, our hormones are a part of it, you know, there’s studies show like drinking increases for women during menopausal periods of life, because so many women alike end up drinking in response to perimenopausal symptoms, you know, like, I’m not sleeping, couple glasses of wine might help me sleep, I’m irritable, couple glasses of wine might take that edge off, right. So there’s just for the female body, in particular, alcohols, like, pretty complicated. In terms of its impact, I think women just should be aware of that, too.

Casey McGuire Davidson 

Hi there. If you’re listening to this episode, and have been trying to take a break from drinking, but keep starting and stopping and starting again, I want to invite you to take a look at my on demand coaching course, the sobriety starter kit.

 

The sobriety starter kit is an online self study sober coaching course that will help you quit drinking and build a life you love without alcohol without white knuckling it or hating the process. The course includes the exact step by step coaching framework I work through with my private coaching clients, but at a much more affordable price than one on one coaching. And the sobriety starter kit is ready, waiting and available to support you anytime you need it. And when it fits into your schedule. You don’t need to work your life around group meetings or classes at a specific day or time.

This course is not a 30 day challenge, or a one day at a time approach. Instead, it’s a step by step formula for changing your relationship with alcohol. The course will help you turn the decision to stop drinking, from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

You will sleep better and have more energy, you’ll look better and feel better. You’ll have more patience and less anxiety. And with my approach, you won’t feel deprived or isolated in the process. So if you’re interested in learning more about all the details, please go to www.sobrietystarterkit.com. You can start at any time and I would love to see you in the course 

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  21:25

And not only that, what I see too, is like, alcohol is sort of the most prescribed drug by friends and family and society and advertising and sort of it’s this acceptable drug to take and not only acceptable, encouraged, like, if you’re having a bad day, or you’re stressed, or whatever the common advice from your friends, your mother, your husband, whoever is like here have a glass of wine, then were you to admit that you drink too much. For women, especially for mothers, it’s one of the most shameful things that you can do to have, you know, an issue with alcohol, to drink too much as a mother.

 

22:08

Oh, for sure. Because if you get labeled as having a substance use problem that inherently means you’re out of control, and being an out of control mother is really not okay. So, and you know, the burdens of motherhood are part of why women drink, right? You know, women, especially now, have a lot of roles. You know, add on like, maybe I’m taking care of aging parents, I’ve got kids, I’m trying to work full time, like the role demand on women as caretakers is massive.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  22:38

I was curious when you mentioned this, I haven’t asked you before, about perimenopause, about women and motherhood and that sort of crunch time when you’re caring for aging parents, as well as kids. And so many of us work now in terms of women in the workplace, and children that are having children later. I have seen all the statistics, and I don’t think this is new, that the biggest drinkers are Baby Boomers and Gen Xers and I’m, I’m a Gen Xer. And I see that amongst all my friends that millennials and Gen Z’s drink much less and less often than us. And I wonder if it’s very complex, both in terms of the culture we grew up in, of encouraging alcohol, it’s when you know, the French paradox and wine and everything came about where you know, good for your heart, or wine is or whatever that crap medical advice was, but also the aging factor. I haven’t thought of that before.

 

23:39

Yeah, no, there’s I can’t remember who I was talking to. And I’m, I became a therapist, because I can talk about feelings, and I cannot hold numbers in my head. I’m terrible at it. So I’m not going to get the years right. They did studies about women in drinking, and it was in the early 2000s, and how women alike caught up with men with binge drinking, and just drinking in general. So it was like, as gender roles changed, and as women got more in the workplace, and you know, like got more, yeah, autonomy and power and access to things like that, they caught up with drinking too, which is like, not good. Like, we caught up in equality in some ways, and then caught up with drinking, which wasn’t so good for us. 

 

But I think it’s just, it’s stress. I mean, I think, like, it’s big for women in particular and for men in different ways. It’s, you know, drinking is what a lot of people do in response to stress and stress shows up for different reasons and in different ways. You know, there’s stress associated with racism, there’s stress associated with living with childhood trauma, there’s stress associated with being a woman in the world because things are still not equal, you know, like, sexuality. I mean, there’s like, so depending on how much stressors you have, based on your standing in our culture, you know, alcohol can be really appealing to silence at all. 

 

And then depending on your resources, you know, it’s nice to say like, yeah, don’t have a couple of glasses of wine, just go to the gym. What if I have to get childcare, I can’t afford to go to the gym, I, you know, like, I come home from work, I’ve got like, 45 minutes to feed my three kids and then got, you know, I mean, it’s just like, people are juggling a lot of stuff. So even a bunch of self care, ideas, like they cost money, they take time. And I think a lot of women just don’t feel like they have any time at all to tend to themselves. And so that’s another big component of the invitation of change approach, which, like the research on self compassion has really come out in the last decade. 

 

You know, when I was in graduate school, that wasn’t even a concept that was discussed in this wonderful woman named Kristin Neff and her partner, Chris Cromer, have done a lot of work on self compassion, which is very different than self care, like self compassion is really figuring out how to bring kindness to yourself and treating yourself as you would a good friend. And I think women being caretakers, we take care of everybody else, like we’re paying attention to everybody else, you’re putting yourself last most of the time. What’s the woman I talked to? And being really critical, internally critical, and I think a lot of women with substance use issues, their internal critic is brutal. The things that they feel about themselves and say about themselves, for having the problem that they have. It’s horrible.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  26:31

Oh, my God, I used to wake up and the very first thing I would think to myself, despite in theory, outwardly looking really good was what the fuck is wrong with you get your shit together? Literally. That was the thing that would go through my mind every morning. And now I wake up, and I’m like, Oh, my God, The coffee smells good. And, you know, my hip kind of hurts and whatever, like, but at that point, I mean, I’ve met you for one hot second, but I bet if your girlfriend who you love dearly, or a sibling you love dearly said, I’m really like worried about my drinking, you probably wouldn’t look at them and be like, What the hell? Get your shit together. What is wrong with you? 

 

27:16

Yeah, exactly. 

 

You know, so I think the self compassion piece of it is really being able to end you know, the studies on self compassion are the people who practice self compassion, and actually really develop that as a skill. They’re more able to stick with tough stuff and hard things. Because they can, they relate to the learning process differently. You know, so when you, I mean, anything we learn, right? We’re not good at it to start, we screw it up. We like, don’t get things exactly right. And we, most things we keep, we have the capacity to keep learning, right? 

 

There’s something about substance use, because there’s so much shame about it, that people think, Oh, I screwed up. That must mean I’m a real screw up. Or maybe I’m not serious. Or maybe I don’t really want this or if anyone knew, if anybody knew exactly, there’s a bazillion thoughts there. You know, if you can bring some self compassion to that and be able to be like, well, I, I had this plan for Friday night. It didn’t work out that way. I did x, y, and z instead. Wow. And I’m really suffering this morning. I feel really bad this morning. How do I go back and try to understand what happened? So I can actually try to have that not happen again. And like, maybe talk about it with somebody so I can learn something else, because I actually don’t know what I’m doing. 

 

And that’s okay to not, when it’s okay to not know what you’re doing. Which I think is another thing that a lot of women struggle with is to like, just acknowledge, like, I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s okay. Of course you doubt. Okay. That’s why you listen to a podcast like this, or this. That’s why you like, talk to somebody about what you’re struggling with. There’s just so much pressure to be okay all the time and have it all together, which is just well.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  29:03

So let’s talk about the invitation to change approach, because I want to dig into like, what it is and how you move through it, and what’s the evidence-based skills? So say someone comes to you like that woman, maybe without all the underlying trauma, say, you know, I come to you and I’m sure there were lots of brief and I drank and I say, I’m drinking a bottle, a half a wine and I promised myself I’m going to take a break, I make it maybe four days and I’m pissed and irritable the entire time. And where do you start with the invitation to change approach?

 

29:37

Well, so I’ll just give you and your listeners a little background on the invitation to change approach. So we have our treatment program, the Center for Motivation Change, but we also have a nonprofit called the CMC Foundation for Change. And in that we’ve been working with family members for you know, the last decade developing this strategy to try to help them be able to help a loved one because we know family members are on you. You know, the front lines when they have somebody that they love, who’s got a substance use problem that they want to help, and they don’t know how to help. And they typically get really bad advice, you know, the whole, like, let your loved one bottom out, use tough love, confront them, do an intervention, all of these things, right? It’s just like, there’s actually other things you can do to help your loved one. 

 

So we developed the invitation to change approach to help them and then we turned it, we used it to shift some of the things that we’re doing with the person who’s coming to us with the actual problem, because it’s based on cognitive behavioral strategies, dialectical behavioral strategies, self compassion, acceptance, and commitment therapy, which is all about like understanding your values, and figuring out how to make decisions based on your values. So it’s all these evidence based concepts in like this very flexible model that we can work with people wherever they want to start, you know. 

 

So if you came to me and said, Yeah, I’m not drinking for four days and I’m really irritable, and I drink for three days and I feel really bad about it and I want things to be different. You’re very different from somebody who’s coming in to me and saying, Yeah, my husband thinks I have a drinking problem. Like, I didn’t want to talk about it, he’s such a nightmare, I want to talk about my husband, right. So I’d be working with those two people very differently, right. And I may know, the person whose husband’s worried about her, probably is struggling with her alcohol use, but I’m not going to start there, I’m going to try to work with her on what she actually wants to work on. And we’ll get to the odds are, we’ll get to the drinking. All right. Let’s start with ambivalence with her right? 

 

With you, it would be more like, let’s understand how your behaviors makes sense. Let’s really do a cost benefit analysis of like, every part of alcohol, how alcohol like is the benefits to you and your relationships, in your work with your work, how you spend your time, your friendships, how you deal with your emotions, like all the benefits, like everything that you get from it. I also want to know how it’s impacting you in not such great ways, because those are probably there too. And we’re going to talk about those too. But if I understand the benefits, I’m going to be able to then be like, okay, so you’re irritable in those four days and that wears you down, so by the time you get to Friday, you’re like, I need to drink after being irritable for four days. If we can understand what’s contributing to that irritability, and then be able to figure out like, Are there strategies or things that need to be happening to help you reduce that irritability? Is that stress? Is that conflict is it you don’t know how to resolve conflict, you know, like, you’ve got emotions that you’re not expressing, like irritability can be a bazillion different things, right?

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  32:31

So if it’s just alcohol withdrawal, right? Like, I’m, you’re…

 

32:35

Totally. Well, I was just gonna say like, and it may be that you’re drinking a little bit more on those weekends, and stopped drinking, and really are having post acute withdrawal, you know, four or five days in and your brain saying a drink is going to make me feel better. Let’s go back to drinking. So I would for sure be, you know, assessing that and being trying to figure out like, Okay, other things that would help you with that in the short term while you learn the behaviors? You know, because there’s a lot like I’ve said before, like, there’s a lot of behaviors we have to learn to learn. 100% of the NSA does to family members, sobriety is a learned behavior. You’ve been sober for seven years, you’ve learned how to do that.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  33:14

Yeah, every day. We’re about that, because that’s interesting that sobriety is a learned behavior. I haven’t heard that before.

 

33:22

Yeah, I mean, week one, do you feel like you knew what you were doing? No.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  33:28

I had a coach. So she was like, telling me what to do. But not in the same way that a 12 step program was right, like, go to a meeting every day, you know, do all this stuff. But you know, she was like, go to bed early, you’re gonna crave sugar, eat something at 4pm, get the alcohol out of your house, like, you know, that was telling you what to do.

 

33:52

Right? And then you started to learn how to do that, right? You started to learn how to eat differently, go to bed at a different time. You know, like, somebody had to give you a bunch of strategies, you had to decide which ones you were going to pick up and then you had to practice them. Yes. You know, like, not eating sugar. Like if that was the only thing you did, probably wouldn’t have worked. No, you did seven different things. Week one through month three, then at month three there was probably a whole bunch of other stuff that you’re like, Oh, I gotta figure this out, too. Oh, my God. Yes. Oh, I gotta figure out how to go to parties. And oh, I gotta figure out what to do with Thanksgiving dinner when Aunt June is intoxicated beside me whenever my mother comes at Christmas.

 

34:35

So like, you just have to keep learning how to deal with all of these moments that previously were associated with alcohol. You’ve got to learn how to deal with them. Yeah. 

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  34:45

I like that a lot. 

 

Yeah, well, because I mean, so the other part of the invitation to change approach is really helping people think of this as a behavior that you have to learn. You learned how to drink, right? You didn’t just have one drink and become a problematic drinker, you learned over years that alcohol works for this, and alcohol works for that. And alcohol is here and it’s there, like all of those learning things, right? So then you have to learn your way out of it. And all of that takes practice. 

 

And the other thing that we’re intolerant of, is like, when somebody has a substance use problem, we just want them to cut it out, we just want them to stop having compassion for it, this person actually has to practice and to practice, they have to, like, be able to screw up, they have to be able to like, not know what they’re doing, and get back on the horse, and have compassion for like, oh, okay, he didn’t know how to do that, let’s, let’s figure that out. And then like, just this idea of like, we have a lot of tolerance for practicing other things. We don’t have much tolerance for practicing how to change a substance use problem, and it takes a ton over a long time for most people. 

 

You know, and I disclose too, sometimes I just will to you, because I like you, you know, like I didn’t, I’ve never had a drinking problem. But I had a terrible binge eating problem all the way through college or whatever. And I’ve got, I’ve got cues, like, if I’m stressed, if I’m, like, struggling with somebody, if I’ve got whatever, and I’m stressed, like I don’t keep my trigger foods in my house to this day, I haven’t thrown up in 25 years. But I don’t keep that stuff in my house. Because like, you put the perfect storm around me, I’ll know that that behavior works. I don’t want to put myself, I don’t want to put myself at risk for doing that. Like I just take it off the table for myself. But that’s like, do I ever think about it? I never think about it. It’s not like I think like, am I gonna binge and throw up today or not? Like, it’s not even in my head anymore? Because it’s been so long. But I’ve made a lot of changes to my life, that protect me and make it so that it’s not in my head ever, you know, and that took a long time.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  36:49

Yeah, I mean, to this day, it’s kind of funny, when you mentioned that I don’t keep any wine in my house. My husband was like, alright, I’ll drink beer, he still drinks. But for me, that’s not, I’m never somehow tempted to drink his beer, I have a ton of non alcoholic beer. But like wine for me, it would just be the elephant in the room, I would always know it was there. And therefore, even though I don’t drink, I would have to exercise willpower, it would occupy this space in the back of my mind. And it’s just when it’s not there. I don’t think about it, you know?

 

37:24

Yeah. And that’s one of the components of the self, of the invitation to change approach is something that I would call understanding with self awareness, to really like, understand, be self aware of like, what, so you did the work there, right? You’re like, I register how I feel, and what’s on my mind When there’s a bottle of wine in my house. Yeah. And it’s different for me, than when there’s not a bottle of wine in my house. So instead of pretending like that’s not happening, you’re able to be like, okay, that happens for me, I’m gonna make the decision to not have wine in the house. Because I don’t want to deal with how it makes me feel, you know? What, so that’s like self awareness coming to the table to help you make good decisions for the behavior that you’re trying to keep in place.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  38:08

So science and kindness, kindness, meaning, self compassion, behavior change over time, is that the science that you mentioned, Kristin Neff, like, researched and said works or what else is within that?

 

38:26

Well, so people often ask about that, when we put those two things together of the evidence based strategies in the invitation to change and just our approach, they all include kindness, you know, like so the the motivational interviewing, I was talking about like, that is very different than a confrontational approach, right? That the moment when you’re like, using motivational interviewing as a strategy, you’re deeply caring, what the other person thinks, and what they feel, and why they’re doing what they’re doing. And you’re not bringing your judgments to the table, actually, like, it’s not my job to judge you. It’s my job to create a space where you feel safe enough to talk about what you’re really struggling with. So that we can do that together. And you can actually get all this stuff to the surface, right? Because it’s so frickin buried because you feel so much shame about it. If I’m confronting you, if you, if I’m challenging you like, and you feel shame, you’re not going to share that shame with me. It is not going to do it. 

 

So like, all the approaches in this and like the acceptance and commitment therapy, it’s all about values, it’s really being able to say it’s like what you value in your life and what it’s like, when you’re hopefully 99 years old, and on your deathbed. What you want to be remembered for is going to be different than what I want to be remembered for, you know, and being giving people permission to be like, bring your values to the table, you know, bring what your community values, what your family values like and get in touch with that so that you can use it to inform your decisions because you know, people come from different family cultures people come from too Brent, norms and expectations and you know, just be compassionate for our differences versus what traditional addiction treatment has been, which is like, this is the right way. And if you’re not going to do it the right way, you’re wrong. And there’s a problem with you, versus the treatment system being able to be like, here’s a bunch of things. Let’s help you figure out the thing that works for you, in your life, with your resources, with your family, like with that…

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  40:25

With your system.

 

40:29

Yes, system. Exactly. Exactly. And all your different identities, you know, I mean, that you bring to the table. So I mean, I think and then the Kristin Neff piece of it, you know, like, and I even reacted to it, when I first was learning self compassion, I was like, because I can be pretty, I can be pretty hard. I’m a pretty driven person. And I was like, that’s like, too, so I’m like, I don’t want to do any of that self compassion stuff. Like, that sounds too hippie dippie, I don’t want to do it. It got me through the pandemic, you know, I did my first training like right before the pandemic, I don’t think I would have been able to do what I did through the pandemic, if I didn’t really shift and start to think about myself and think about my work through that lens. It’s quite powerful. And, you know, the science part of it is she’s actually done research. And like giving people strategies and comparing them to people who weren’t using those strategies, you know, and the differences between those two groups, you know, so we now have some evidence that like, Okay, actually, it is impactful. It really does change how people approach problems, so we shouldn’t do it.

 

I did. Oh, my gosh, I’m pretty driven to and hard on myself. And, but the one thing is, I’m kind of like I described myself as a Gold Star Girl. Like, I’m just like, I like my pats on the head. And if I have a job, I like to get it done really well. And so my coach was like, every night you go to bed without drinking, I don’t care what else you do. If you cry, your kids watch TV, you, you know, eat all the Oreos, she was like, you get a gold star. So I was like, wow, yes, I’m getting all the gold stars. Yeah.

 

41:58

Well, that’s so, that is coach of the year, coach was using good science with you. Because, you know, we punish people with substance use problems, we punish them verbally, we punish them. We lock them up in jails, we confront them, we do all sorts of reinforcement for positive behavior is the most powerful thing. Yeah, for behavior change. You know, I mean, it’s like people, if you’re reinforcing them for positive behaviors, they will do more of them.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  42:25

And we do that with our kids like in your you know that with your kid? Yes. With your pets, right.

 

42:32

Yes, exactly. Exactly. But again, I think it’s just because substance use problems are so stigmatized. Yeah. Relate to put it differently. And, you know, and this is true for people who struggle with weight issues. You know, that’s another very stigmatized problem. You know, I mean, there’s just, there’s just certain things that we judge, there are things that are acceptable to judge if that person is morally deficient or doesn’t have willpower, right. We are lazy. There’s all these Yeah. And somehow, like, weight and substances are two things that that people feel very entitled to judge Pete. 

 

Yeah. And it’s unfortunate.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  43:11

Yeah, and others too. But those of you that I think, suffering, yeah, yeah. Well, and so the other thing that I definitely wanted to ask you about, there’s so much, but I know that some of your evidence based approach are around based on the use of medication. Can you tell me a little bit about those options? What works? What, what does help some people versus others?

 

43:37

Yeah, so I’m a psychologist, so I’m not actually prescribing medications. But you know, we, we are able to kind of say, hey, these might be options. And here’s this lovely psychiatrist who can work with you on that or go talk to your GP. So this is like, I can talk about a bunch of things that your listeners should then go talk to an MD about it. But you know, there’s a range of medications. 

 

You know, one that is incredibly helpful to people is something called Naltrexone . It’s an interesting medication. It’s an opiate receptor blocker. So you know, if somebody’s struggling with opiates, and they’re taking Naltrexone, it sits on that receptor and blocks the effects of opiates. So it makes it so they don’t feel anything, which kind of takes the fun out of getting high. Right. So that’s helpful to people with that struggle. What they’ve found with people with alcohol issues is and it doesn’t, it’s a peculiar medication, it either works incredibly well or kind of doesn’t work at all. And you kind of know pretty quickly if that, what it’s going to do for you. So it’s, for a lot of people, it’s worth a shot, but for people who take it, who it works for, it reduces alcohol cravings, it just seems to kind of like take it off your mind. Some you know, so for people who are really walking around like thinking about drinking all the time, it can soften that variance. And then you know, in Europe actually it’s used as a moderation medication. A lot of people they will prescribe it, because people will drink less on it. 

 

I had a guy who, you know, we worked really hard for about a year and a half. He drank six beers every night. And he really wanted to change and we tried everything behaviorally I swear to God, we tried. And he was really trying the whole time. And we didn’t make that much. It didn’t make that much difference. And he finally agreed to go see a psychiatrist and got on naltrexone. And when he started it, he said, you know, it kind of changed beer into Coca Cola. He’s like, I would never sit down and drink six Coca Cola ever. And so it just kind of made the beers be like, Yeah, I only kind of want to, I don’t really want, I don’t need or want more. So like he was an example of it had a dramatic effect on him, like it just like took that he just didn’t want to keep drinking. So it’s worth a shot. It’s, you know, it doesn’t have a ton of side effects for people. And so I always say to people, it’s worth a shot.

 

You know, there’s another medication that works in some like completely differently, but also works on craving states, which is something called campral. Which, again, some people really benefit from, but it’s a hard medication because it’s like, three pills three times a day, which nobody’s compliant, always compliant medication, that’s just a lot. There’s this whole firm, which is anti abuse, which people get scared to hear and abuse, you know, like, because it used to be used in this very, like controlling way these people very high doses on it, you know, for people who are really motivated. So, an abuse, if you’re taking it, and you drink. It makes you feel very unwell. So you, you stopped drinking, and it’s a real deterrent to want to drink, like a hangover times 10, or this sudden case of food poisoning and the flu combined, you know, like people just get sweaty and have a headache and turn off a kid just because they’re like, then it’s off the table. 

 

Like if I’m going to be on a girls weekend and I don’t want to drink if it’s going to be hard for me, I know if I take Antabuse, I just can’t.

 

46:54

Well, so that’s a perfect way to take it. You know, and like, one of the ways that I describe it to people is if you’re somebody, like what you were describing yourself, where you’re like, really motivated, right, like in the morning to not drink. But by the, by the end of the day, I’ve changed my mind, because I’m stressed or people are inviting me to drink or I’m dealing with all these triggers all day long. If you take that medication in the morning, the decision has been made, right? Like drinking is off the table you’ve decided, which really can help people then go face that thing that’s kind of triggering for them with the decision to drink off the table. So then they can start to figure out other things of like, how do I actually cope with this? Or how do I decide I don’t want to kind of maybe I don’t want to go to this because it’s not fun or whatever. But a lot of people walk around with a lot of chatter in their head of like, am I going to drink? Am I not going to drink, am I going to drink? Am I not going to drink? You know, which is just stressful. So, so Antabuse for a lot of people can just be a way to make that stress go away. It’s just done.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  47:54

A lot of people are kind of scared of it. What are sort of, because I’ve heard that too. And I’ve heard people be like, Oh, God, I don’t want to ask my doctor for Antabuse, they’re gonna put something in my chart. What do you think about like, what are the downsides? Or are there?

 

48:11

Well, again, like, if you go online, and Google in about four seconds, you’re going to like, find all sorts of horror stories on the Internet, right? So there’s all that scary stuff, which that’s true for anything now, if you Google it, but, and there’s some doctors who, you know, aren’t particularly educated about it, and may have, you know, not great reactions to it. You know, addiction psychiatrist, can be really helpful to seek out if you happen to have access to them in your community, or access to somebody who’s specialized in addiction, because, like, I, one of the ways I describe it is like, they’re just not afraid of anything. They’re very trained to be like, Oh, okay, that’s Tell me about your drinking. You know, they just don’t have that like, Oh, my God, you’re drinking how much response which some people at some psychiatrist and doctors can. So it’s always good to just kind of look in your doctor’s bio of like, do they have any addiction exposure or treatments? And if they don’t, and you don’t feel comfortable? Maybe having a console with somebody who does?

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  49:11

But yeah, I remember my first psychiatrist therapist, my first therapist, who I ever told about my drinking, I specifically chose him because on his page he had listed anxiety and addiction is some of the things he dealt with. And so of course, I went in there and I said, Oh, my God, I’ve got so much anxiety, my boss, my job, my kids, my business travel XYZ. And I said to him, by the way, I’m drinking a bottle of wine each night. And he said, All right, let’s talk about your drinking. And I was like, nothing, though. You didn’t hear about my boss. Mean, but it was helpful. I mean, that’s why I chose him. I just didn’t want to deal.

 

49:55

Yeah. Yeah. And if you’ve done your research, feel like it might be helpful to you, and it’s something you want to talk about, and you interact with a provider who shames you in some way, or makes you feel like, that felt like a terrible exchange, like, give yourself permission to try somebody else. Like, that’s not the provider for you. You know, I mean, I really encourage people to trust their instincts. You know, if somebody’s making you feel bad in any way, when you’re talking about this stuff. Keep looking. You know, like, there’s a lot of people who will approach it differently, and you deserve not to not to be shamed in any way.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  50:31

One, hopefully, I’m hoping this podcast lets people hear so many different voices where it’s more normalized and not, you know, the end of the world, like bringing on people like you, I think is so helpful just to hear that there are other approaches and, and ways that might resonate more with the way they want to change their behavior.

 

50:51

Yeah, and we talked about it a little bit before we got on. I mean, I think the self help resources and options have just expanded so much. I mean, it’s just so cool. Like, you know, I’ve gotten like, there’s Dharma recovery, there’s refuge recovery, there’s women in sobriety, there’s, you know, we were talking about Tempest, you know, I mean, there’s just, you can Google, I want to help with my drinking now, and then up with, like, 10 different like, things to try, which is great. You know, because you just kind of keep trying, you know, like, just don’t give up on the process. And you don’t let the shame consume you.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  51:28

Well, and I know, we’ve talked about a lot, but I’m, a lot of your work is around the families or loved ones of someone who’s struggling. And obviously, most of the people who listen to this podcast or women who are thinking about themselves, I would say that’s the vast majority, but a lot of times they don’t know how to communicate with their family, their spouse, their friends, often they’re either worried about them, or their spouse, family, friends are big drinkers, too, and don’t want them to stop drinking. Any suggestions on how to view that approach?

 

52:07

Yeah, sure. So beyond addiction, how science and kindness help people change, our book is written for the family member, okay. You know, that’s like literally like a soup to nuts. Like, here’s how to approach your loved one. So I’ve had clients who’ve given that book to their spouse, or to their parents and said, Hey, I’m struggling, it would be helpful to me, if you took a look at this book, our most recent book, which is the Beyond Addiction Workbook, for family and friends, is just a shorter, like, easier, like, here’s the invitation to change approach. And it just, it’s all about helping people like understand the problem from a different lens, you know, instead of thinking, My partner’s a horrible person, because she drinks too much, you know, or a terrible mother or whatever. Like, let me actually like, step back and be like, Hmm, wonder why she’s drinking so much. So let me be curious, let me be curious about that. 

 

It’s full of communication strategies to help people figure out how to talk about things without instigating a bunch of defensiveness, right? Because we could make each other defensive in about four seconds, depending on how we ask a question, that tone of voice we use, like all sorts of stuff, right? But when it comes to talking about addiction, most people use a lot of strategies that make the other person defensive. They lecture, they don’t ask questions. I mean, it’s, it’s intense. So we try to give the person on the other side, there are effective ways to help the person that they ultimately care and care about and want to help. They just don’t know how, because they’re also in our culture, which is telling them they’re codependent. They’ve got to be tough. They’ve got to, I mean, the tough love concept. I’m like, I don’t even know what that means. Like, how I don’t know what that means.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  53:50

So describe to me what the bad advices that I mean, tough love, they have to hit bottom. So just just give me what the wrong things to do are just at the high level in case people have heard this kind of stuff.

 

54:05

Well, the thing that I would love to eradicate and have never be said, again, is this concept of like, people can’t change until they bottom out. Like, that’s not true. And actually that can result in death. Like, like, I don’t know about you, but I would say there’s a million things I would rather do to try to be helpful to my loved one than let that happen. And you know, one of the things that we say to family members is, so I went to school for this, right? I went to school for many years, I’ve got lots of training. I’ve been exposed to a lot of stuff. My job can be pretty hard. Sometimes I get scared about my clients. I get like, it’s really scary sometimes what people will do to themselves. I get a lot of support. I get a lot of training to deal with that. Family members are on the front line, seeing their loved ones doing pretty risky things sometimes or like really not taking care of themselves. They don’t have any training, they don’t know what they’re doing. Like, nobody, they didn’t go to school for this, right? So can we give them so our mission is to give them these evidence based ideas packaged in a way that lay people can be like, Oh, that makes perfect sense to me, I’m going to do it this way, so that they can and have compassion for themselves too. 

 

Because like, they get a bunch of labels, like the whole codependency thing, which is just another label, like you line 10 people up and ask them what codependency means you’re gonna get 10 different answers. Like, it’s just this is another, it’s not a diagnosis, it’s not a real thing. You know, it’s a different set of behaviors for you know, and like wanting to help your loved one and maybe even being panicked, trying to help your loved one, like, that’s all pretty normal human behavior. And if you give that person the skills, they need to be more effective. And they’re motivated to pick those skills up, okay, then they could actually really have a potentially positive impact on the problem that their family’s facing. 

 

And I promise you, your women listeners who are struggling with alcohol, I bet a significant portion of them have somebody in their life who has a substance use problem that they’re really worried about, or they’ve been on the receiving end of or are witnessing or grew up with, or whatever. Like, it’s probably back there somewhere. Right. So the invitation to change approach from the other lens of maybe I’m struggling with my drinking, but I’m also really worried about my husband’s drinking, or, you know, my sister’s, been to rehab three times and can’t stop drinking, or whatever it is, you know, I mean, the strategies from both sides for women, I’ve had lots of women that I’ve worked with, who change their behavior, and then use the invitation to change approach to help a loved one.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  56:48

Yeah, yeah, I know, I listened to, Brenda Zane is a friend of mine, we both live in Seattle, and I heard you on her podcast, called Hope Stream. And when you were talking about people having no support and not knowing to deal with their loved one, her podcast is all about, it’s for parents of kids with substance use issues, you know, with fentanyl, or drug abuse or whatever. And, you know, I can only imagine that as a parent, how terrifying and helpless he would feel. And also how talking with people who don’t get it could feel shame, or even more helpless, because they’re like, oh, you know, like, they feel like you should be blamed, or they’re just happy. It’s not their kid, or, you know what I mean? Like, finding that support is so important.

 

57:43

Yeah, no, parents, if your child has a substance use problem, as a parent, whether you’re saying it out loud or not, you think you caused the problem. Like, you know, like, there was something, something you did or did not do, like parents walk around with so much burden when their kids are struggling. And, you know, I’ve always said, like, I wish I wish to be on addiction was like mandatory reading for parents of 13 year olds, like if you if you understood this stuff, when your kids are going into adolescence, so that you can respond and think about the problem in this, like, more effective way. Because I mean, parents do completely understandable things, right? They, they hope the problem goes away. They’re like, Ah, just a stage, they’re gonna grow out of it, you know, you know, or they walk it down and want to control them and punish them and ground them, you know, like, all of those are completely understandable. Responses, right. 

 

But you got to question whether or not they’re effective, right? Because the pushing it away, hoping they grow out of it and not talking about it. All sorts of bad stuff comes out of that approach, right? The, I’m gonna punish you, lock you down, that tends to be like, okay, those behaviors are just gonna go down deeper, it’s just going to go way out and talk to you about they’re not going to talk to you. So the invitation to change approach is really helping parents figure out like, what are the mostly conversational strategies? Like, how do I get my kid talking? How do I reinforce those healthy behaviors? How do I let natural consequences play a role here, there’s a bunch of strategies in that, that you can just use over. Because what you need to do with your 14 year old is very different than what your 22 year old needs. And it’s very different than what your 35 year old needs if your parents cover those different ages. 

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  59:25

Oh my gosh, yeah, I have an eight year old and a 14 year old. Yeah. So and I know so many women who listen to this are parents and worried about what they’ve modeled for their children or how to talk to you know, they sometimes feel hypocritical, saying anything, and that’s hard to or they want to stop drinking, because their kids are noticing or they have regrets because they drank through their kids, you know, formative years in high school and now they’re gone and you know, they wish they hadn’t?

 

1:00:00

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I think that’s happening for a lot of parents, like especially around cannabis and things like that, like, you know, oh, I smoked pot as a kid, it’s fine. Cannabis is a very different ballgame now, like the stuff your kid is using now. It didn’t exist when we were smoking pot.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:00:20

Can you say something a little bit more about that? Because I know when you said okay, some people are drinking, but they’re not quite ready to give up their cannabis use or talk a little bit about cannabis today and how it’s different.

 

1:00:32

So it’s just been a, it’s legal in a fair number of places.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:00:37

I live in Washington state here. Yeah.

 

1:00:41

You know, just the different strains, the different, you know, potencies, the different ways to consume it, you know, used to be like, you could tell your kid was smoking pot, because they would smell like pot and the room would smell like pot in their clothes. It’s not like pot, right? Like, it was hard to hide it. Now your kid gives me in their bedroom, smoking vape or eating edible? And you would never know. So I think the, how do I actually monitor my kid, the complexities of that have just changed so much, you know, scare me to death. That’s probably a lot of your stress as parents, it’s just, I mean, manage all of that. 

 

But, you know, we think the invitation to change is just about giving you communication strategies and ways to think about the behavior. So like, if my kid is smoking pot? Sure, I can be mad at them and be like, Don’t smoke pot in my house, and you’re not living the family values or whatever. Or I can be curious and be like, okay, like, what is my kid getting out of that? See, really struggling with social anxiety? Is he feeling really easy struggling in school, and he’s feeling really bad about that. And so, smoking pot as a way to numb out you know, like, if you can really be compassionate and try to understand the behavior, then as a parent, you can go about like, okay, like, what are the things I need to help my kid with, so that they don’t turn to the substance to manage their feelings, which is, you know, that’s what substances do for most people is that it helps manage our feelings, right? It either amplifies things or it numbs things out, or we’re just altering, altering our emotions in some way. You know, so if a kid is doing that early on, they’re not learning how to regulate their emotions, you know, on their own, they’re learning how to use a substance to regulate their emotions. And that will be problematic if that becomes a habit.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:02:32

Yeah, I love just putting it in that way, that they’re using a substance to regulate their emotions, which is what I did, but every, you know, many, many people do that. And over time, that’s going to become problematic.

 

1:02:47

Yeah, yeah. Cuz you gotta have other strategies. Because then like, if a, if a kid is a daily pot user starting at 14, and or, you know, sometime in the, those developmental years, and they stop smoking pot when they’re 24. There’s so much I just did an evaluation on a kid that this was true for it. And like, it’s like, he’s emotionally kind of stunted. Like, he actually doesn’t know, he doesn’t know what his emotions are, he doesn’t know how to deal with his emotions, because they’ve been muted by daily pot use. Like he just now he’s like, this big, gigantic raw nerve at 22 years old. Like, he just, like, feels like he’s on fire, because he’s feeling his emotions for the first time. You know, and it’s, like, painful. You know, and, you know, he was a, he was a kid who like, a lot of it was underground, his parents didn’t know he was a good students, you know, like, he was popular. He was like, and so there wasn’t like obvious problems, you know, but he was managing a lot of emotions with a substance. So and now he’s got to figure that out, starting from scratch.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:03:56

I feel like we’ve covered so much ground, that’s incredibly helpful for me, and I know it will be for so many of our listeners. How can people get this book, follow up with you, learn more about your center, all that good stuff?

 

1:04:10

So the most recent book, that workbook that has the invitation to change, it’s just the invitationtochange.com. It’s pretty straightforward. Our nonprofit is CMCffc.org. So that has a lot of free content. It has all sorts of free resources for family members, you know, so if you have a family member who you would like to have a little bit more awareness of how to approach you or collaborate with you. The foundation is a great place to send them. And then the motivation changes, the website for the different treatment options, and the book is Beyond Addiction: How Science and Kindness Help People Change.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:04:52

Very cool. Well, I will put all of those links in the show notes and I also you know in preparing For this read a fabulous interview with you about all this in the New York Times, so I’ll link to that as well. But thank you so much for taking the time to come on.

 

1:05:10

I’m so glad you’re doing this and for everybody listening, just keep at it.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:05:16