You Can’t Parent Your Child Out of Addiction, Here’s What Actually Works with Christopher Doyle

When your child is spiraling into addiction, the first instinct is to hold on tighter: plead, negotiate, or wait for them to “hit bottom.” 

But what if those instincts are exactly what are keeping your child in danger? What if addiction isn’t about waiting for readiness, but about stepping in before the fire spreads?

As parents, we often believe we’re failing when our kids won’t accept help. We blame ourselves, soften boundaries, or hope things will change on their own. 

But that thinking is not only wrong, it’s dangerous. Addiction is defined by one simple truth: can’t stop. And someone who can’t stop doesn’t suddenly wake up one morning and choose recovery. They keep going until something or someone interrupts the cycle. Without intervention, the trajectory almost always gets worse, not better.

Christopher Doyle knows this from experience, both as someone who battled addiction from a young age and now after decades of helping hundreds of families pull their loved ones back from the brink. 

His method flips the script on everything we’ve been told about “waiting until they’re ready” and shows parents how to intervene early, with clarity, compassion, and boundaries that stick.

How do you know you have an addiction issue on your hands? What actually gets someone to accept help? 

In this conversation, Chris breaks down the myths that keep families paralyzed, the role of parents in creating leverage for change, and why setting boundaries when your child is in pain is the most loving act you can do.

What is The Bad Mom Podcast: Parenting The Anxious Generation?

The Bad Mom Podcast is where raw parenting stories meet real solutions for raising resilient kids in today’s anxious, digital world. Hosted by humanitarian and Just Like My Child Foundation founder, Vivian Glyck, each episode blends unfiltered conversations, expert insights, and lived experiences to help parents swap guilt for grit—and discover how imperfect parenting can still support and encourage strong, thriving humans.

Bad Mom - Christopher Doyle
You have no responsibility in the fact that your child has an addiction. Think about addiction prevention like you would think about fire prevention. That would be like saying you can parent your way out of your kid having a shrimp allergy.

The fastest two-word definition for addiction is can't stop. They say it's your fault, but the system is what's broken. Real talk for parents fighting for their kids in a world built to break them.

Where we're left trying to parent the anxious generation with our hands tied behind our backs. Your kid isn't broken, they're under attack. Welcome to the Bad Mom Podcast, Parenting the Anxious Generation with Vivian Glick.

This is The Resistance. Hi, Chris Doyle. Hi, Vivian.

Welcome to the Bad Mom Podcast. I am so excited to have you here. I'm excited to be here.

Thanks for asking me. You are this very unique bird out there. When I talk to people, I've talked to so many people now about the Bad Mom Podcast, about my experiences, about what motivated me to start this.

I always talk about this interventionist that we brought in and whom I worked with. And I would love if you could just tell us a little bit about what is an interventionist? What is your role? And then I want to hear a little bit about your background. Thank you for asking me to come on.

I'd be happy to answer any questions you have. As far as the interventionist, what that person's role is, is helping a family navigate a loved one's addiction, ideally for the purpose of getting their addicted loved one to accept help, where otherwise their addicted loved one is resistant and maybe defiant and in denial, in delusion. And all of that is, of course, by definition, what addiction looks like.

Anybody that struggles with an addiction, the two main delusions that they have is, I don't have a problem and I don't need any help. Facing that kind of resistance, most families then arrive at the conclusion, as they have multiple conversations and make mobile multiple attempts to be helpful, you know, and find no success. They feel discouraged and as if there's, you know, there's no way to get through to them.

There's nothing we can do. And then they arrive at the kind of the big kind of misconception, conclusion that there's nothing you can do to help someone who struggles with an addiction. And thankfully, there are interventionists who exist.

And for a family like yours and, you know, but a small percentage of families who become open or receptive to, well, maybe there is some other way, maybe there is something that we can do. Maybe it does just look like what we've attempted so far wasn't going to be effective because we, you know, you learn this after the fact, but with addiction, it's an entirely different game. So what you have to do to deal with addiction is kind of like a completely different set of circumstances than just typical, ordinary, our child has a problem that we need to deal with.

It doesn't respond in the same way. And so but once you know that, then an interventionist just kind of guides you on how to have a more effective conversation that'll get you the outcome you're after, which is ultimately, I want to help my child. Yeah, but I think that from our vantage point, what you brought to the table when we were going through so much as a family and with our own kid was that objectivity.

And it's sort of where the whole Bad Mom podcast comes from. The whole name is Bad Mom podcast, parenting the anxious generation. I felt like I was doing everything wrong because I wasn't getting the outcome that I so desperately wanted, which was for my kid to be happy, to understand that they were facing an issue and a predicament, to want to take part in their own well-being and self-care, etc.

And I think that the unique vantage point that you brought was that, forgive me for saying this, you were like, Vivian, you're listening to a lot of shit. You're talking to somebody who does not want to change and who doesn't want to deal with what's going on. And you gave us, and we were so afraid of pushing him away farther, which I think so many people probably are like, oh, if I do this, if I set those boundaries, which I think is such a huge part of what we need to talk about and not intuitive.

I mean, setting boundaries is not intuitive when you have a kid who's in a lot of pain. But I think that you gave us the courage to, I think I want to say, pull back the bullshit and to see what was really going on and how, you know, on purpose or inadvertently, our kid was gaslighting us in some ways. And I think that a lot of people face that.

And you can tell me a little bit more about it. But what you did for us to be able to hold the boundary and to be super clear was invaluable. I will never, ever forget.

And I will never. And I have so much gratitude for the role that you played because we're in a completely different place now as a result of it, which I didn't see as possible in that moment. So why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? I know you have a background as a firefighter.

You faced your own issues and kind of what got you here. And then what is your, what's your model? What are the modules that you use in order to do this work that you do? Yeah. All right.

So a lot to unpack there. So I started drinking and using drugs when I was 15, 16 years old, which is a pretty late start by my neighborhood standards. A lot of my peers had already started drinking at keg parties, probably at eighth grade graduation parties.

And the reason I had that late start was probably a healthy fear that came from both of my parents being people who were in recovery from addiction already. And so I had some semblance of an idea of the possibility that drinking could be a problem before I ever did it. Having said that, it didn't stop me.

It just kind of, it delayed me, if anything. Once I started, I struggled with alcoholism and addiction. And that's just the thing that, you know, means that there's something that happens to me when I put this substance in my body.

There's a reaction, and that reaction is a craving for more. And then my brain starts to very quickly work on me to convince me that I don't have a problem. You know, so the denial becomes standard for anybody who then has an addiction.

But if you notice, it didn't take me like a lot of consequences or a lot of quantity or a lot of use cases before I became an alcoholic. I was essentially alcoholic from the very start. So the advantage, you know, in my upbringing, and I think to what your point is in saying, like, I feel like a bad mom, if I were to point out what one of my mother's advantages was, is that she never made herself responsible for the fact that I had alcoholism.

It wasn't ever a matter of something that she did wrong or something that she did or didn't do. It had absolutely nothing to do with her. And she understands that at a fundamental basis because she was someone who struggled with alcoholism herself.

And by the time I was 17, my mother already had over 20 years of her own recovery. For any moms and parents who are listening, you got to let yourself off the hook because you have no responsibility in the fact that your child has an addiction. Think about addiction prevention like you would think about fire prevention.

Right? There's fire prevention to prevent fire, right? But does anybody actually think that if you have fire prevention methods in place, that means that you're guaranteed to not have a fire? Absolutely not. Yeah. So the fire prevention is actually more accurately fire detection.

It's early detection and it's early mitigation. It's about getting to the problem early. It's like, let's deal with this when it's still smoke, not when it's a five alarm blaze.

And so when you're dealing with addiction, the only thing that can kind of hurt you as a parent is being completely oblivious to the fact that it's a possibility that you think that you're going to parent your way out of the possibility of it happening. That would be like saying you can parent your way out of your kid having a shrimp allergy. It doesn't make any sense.

You're not going to parent your way out of your child having a reaction to a substance that once they put it into their body, they form an addiction. Whereas nine out of every other 10 kids, they put the same substance in their body and they don't become addicted. It's a luck of the draw kind of thing.

And so to make yourself responsible for it is, obviously, it's a natural human thing to do as a parent. Parents feel guilty just, you know, by the fact that you're a parent, you know, and a lot of things and second-guessing and wishing you would have done things differently. For sure, for sure.

And that may be true, but still, none of your screw-ups have anything to do with why your kid has a shrimp allergy. And in the same way, none of your screw-ups have anything to do with why the action of alcohol on your kid's body is they have alcoholism, right? Or they smoke weed and they really smoke weed versus, you know, the ordinary teen experimentation and natural phases that, you know, comes from just kind of risky teen behavior. Identifying that, of course, is difficult.

But going back to what I was saying, just if not only is it, it's not useful to make yourself guilty for it, it's actually preventing you from doing what would actually be helpful. Because you're spending so much time trying to make things right that are kind of irrelevant for dealing with the problem. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about your, how do you, like, how do you know? Like, how do you know you think someone you love is having a substance use issue? You know, is it a problem? Isn't it a problem? Will they grow out of it? Won't they? Like, what are the questions that you get beleaguered with every day by parents? Well, it's, you know, funny that you ask in that way, because I'm not going to get quite, parents that are reaching out to me are beyond the point of whether it's a problem or not.

They've, now they've fully arrived at the problem. It's, but the question might be, is it or isn't it? And what I'm helping parents do and families do is not really focus on you being the person that's going to determine it. It's more about assuming that it is and thinking about it from the fact of, if you make an addiction and you're wrong, you're, there's no downside.

If you don't put addiction on the list of possibilities of what's going on here, and it is addiction, that could have fatal consequences. So if your child, here's the three questions that you want to ask yourself. Okay.

Number one, do you know for a fact that your child has tried any addictive substances? If that's a yes, do you know for a fact that they've been drunk or high at least once? Now, again, I'm thinking more of like teenage years, right? So if you have a 14 year old, 15, 16, you know that they've been high or you know that they've been drunk. You know it for a fact because of something that's happened. Well, then you ask yourself the third question, which is, have they experienced any consequences as a result of their substance use? Anything that's even remotely connected to substance use.

If you have that, then you have to put the possibility. They get arrested for something that's substance related, or they get suspended from school, or they have a relationship breakup that you suspected was because of, you know, activities that were happening at a party at one o'clock in the morning. You know, like anything that could even loosely be associated with were substances involved or not.

Right. And if they were, that's the kind of thing that raises to the level of your conscious awareness or should anyway, as a parent, because most teens, believe it or not, right? Like a lot of them aren't even using substances. So to go back to the first question, it's like many aren't even doing it yet.

Then for the ones that do, it's like, are they drunk? Like, is there anything that has like pointed to your daughter having ever been drunk or high? And oftentimes it's like, no, like it's not even something that you're consciously aware of that it's happened. But if it raises to the level of consequences, this is what I'm warning parents on is that the natural tendency would be to shrug that off and say that that's normal teenage behavior to just kind of like, you know, this is probably a phase and they'll grow out of it. And guess what? You have like an 85% chance of being right.

If you're in the 15% that's wrong, again, it has fatal consequences if you just shrug it off. Most kids, even if they drink and even if they get drunk or high or whatever it might be, they're not going to get themselves jammed up with a consequence that's going to be visible. That's going to be like neighborhood aware.

You know, like you're getting a call from the neighbor and saying like, you know, Joey was over here. He hopped in our pool at two o'clock in the morning. He wasn't supposed to be here.

You know what was going on there? And was that normal? But then you know that he was high because of, you know, something you found, you know, that was visible on his dresser. And, you know, like, so you put these pieces together and it's time to start paying attention because, you know, like, for instance, what you and I, what we worked on together, right? It's not like it was rocket science as soon as you became aware and open to the possibility of what was going on. And then you were like, OK, let's follow directions and give this a try.

So it's not like hard. In my personal story, my mother never had any conversations with me about having a problem or, you know, that I was doing anything wrong or anything like that. She waited for a moment when I looked like I was particularly emotionally beat up from a night out, you know.

And so on a Sunday morning, I came walking in the door and she didn't yell at me. She didn't, you know, like make me a bowl of soup because she saw how sad I looked. It wasn't she didn't have any details about what happened.

She just sees the look on my face and she says, would you like to go to a meeting with me? And I said, OK. So she bypassed all of the like, like, do I have a problem? You're an alcoholic. You got to you got to stop drinking.

There wasn't any of like conversations like that. And what was in her control was to connect me to the people who could help me identify for myself that alcoholism was a problem I had. She didn't tell me.

She she just made the connection. And so for families, it's about influencing that decision. It's about facilitating that connection.

It's it's you're not going to be the convincer. If I could like one thing I like to say often is you're not trying to convince your child that they have a problem. If it gets to the point where you're going to have a conversation where that's necessary, like was necessary in your case, right? It's I'm convincing them that I'm convinced this is a problem.

And now it becomes on them, it's like, OK, well, is it a problem? Is it not? Well, it's like, well, here's all the data we have. Here's all the examples we have. And then they're going to push back against that.

But as you have this open dialogue back and forth, it's basically going to arrive at a binary choice, which is I'm either going to get help or I'm going to start to face what continuing to use, despite it getting very uncomfortable because my parents are now very problem aware. Is this going to be worth my continuing to use or am I going to tap into the truth here? Because I've been in a lot of pain for a long time anyway. Well, I really want to kind of double click on that, on what you said about that you're that as a parent, you're just clearing the path for them to have to get help from someone else rather than the parent, right? Like I'm not going to convince my kid or be able to tell my kid how to handle the situation or the circumstance.

And I think that's a huge leap. It really is like this is out of my control. I'm no longer going to try to fix it myself.

To your point about that doesn't make me a bad mom. But we I think we do end up feeling that way if we don't have the resources to fix our kid's problem, then, you know, the automatic assumption in this society is, well, what are you doing wrong? You know, that's not happening to this kid or that kid or this kid. That is just super powerful.

So when you are brought on as an interventionist, like what is generally the circumstance you find? Like what would be the sort of not that any of it is average, but what is the sort of average circumstance? There's been consequences from the from the use. It's messed up some part of their lives. I'm sure you could be brought in when all hell has way broken loose or it's sort of you're still early on.

Yeah, probably better than 50 percent of the time, which is the part of the story that I would love to somehow change and crack the marketing code on. You know, like how do you get people to help when it is just smoke instead of waiting for it to be a five alarm blaze? Yeah, I'm not getting the phone call until it is a three, four or five alarm blaze. Right.

And so at that point, it's there's at least one family member, probably one or two people removed. Right. So it would be like a sister of a mom.

So like the aunt is calling me. Right. And the aunt is calling me and is no holds barred about what the problem is going on with her nephew.

But her sister isn't quite bought in. So now I have to work my way from the aunt to mom to dad and then get everybody on the same page and kind of educate everybody on what's really going on here. Essentially have them all arrive at the same conclusion.

So like what we've been talking about here right now, there's no downside to treating this like it's addiction. Also going through the case history and kind of like pulling examples from them and having them link it on their own to this is addictive behavior. This isn't ordinary and showing them that it's not ordinary.

And then to your point, kind of rolling back the BS that they might have heard because, you know, they have to want it. They have to be ready. They have to hit bottom that ultimately there's nothing that they can do until they decide to get help is a lot of misinformation.

Yeah. Let's talk about that because I think that that was a, I kept waiting for my kid to ask for help, like to hit bottom. And say, I'm ready.

And, you know, I, I struggle, you know, it's, it's his story. This is something I go back and forth with, with this, but he was not healthy. Right.

I mean, it was a scary situation. Tell me like unpack it for me. What is that? Oh, they'll hit bottom.

How do you, and we had a lot of resistance because he hadn't hit bottom. So it was a very, very arduous process to, to talk him into at least a first step. So where do you stand on that whole thing? I know you talk about it a lot.

Well, again, by definition, the fastest two word definition for addiction is can't stop. So if someone can't stop. The fastest two word definition is can't stop.

And so a lot of wasted time and energy goes into efforts to get them to stop. When they can't. And so then people arrive at the conclusion that, well, nothing that no one can help them because everything we've tried hasn't worked.

Everything you've tried hasn't worked because it was never going to work. You're dealing with addiction, which means the train doesn't have any brakes. The train has left the station.

The train is rumbling down the tracks and it can't stop. They need to be extracted from the train in a moment where they're going to be receptive to do it. And so kind of, I mean, that's where the metaphor gets a little bit extreme when you think about it in that way, but it is going to be about like, Hey, that was pretty scary back there.

Maybe it's time for you to take the help and the offer of support that we have here. We, we can get you off of this ride. You don't have to go down these tracks anymore.

You can continue to do this, but I mean, you know, wouldn't it be better to do this? And if then you're going to have this dialogue back and forth and they're going to say, no, no, no, I can stop whenever I want to. And you're not getting into trying to convince them about that. You're not, you know, that they don't have any brakes.

They don't. They're not going to know that they didn't have any breaks until they're already receiving the help. So what I say often in, you know, kind of response to all of those misconceptions is, is that there's a difference between getting sober and staying sober.

And when someone is an active addiction, they can't get themselves sober. And then you'll have all of the people that want to talk about like, yeah, but my uncle Larry, he stopped cold Turkey and he was this and that, you know, and, and people want to get into all of those stories. And inevitably, if you dig around long enough, when nobody cares to do this, I'm the only person that cares to do this because I'm an interventionist and it's something I find fascinating and interesting.

So I dive into these details. Anybody that I'm, that, that I have spoken to who was in recovery inevitably has some kind of precipitating external factor or motivation that had it not happened when it did, they would not have gotten sober the day that they did. It wasn't because they sought help.

It wasn't because they, they saw the one 800 number flash by on the commercial and then frantically wrote it down to call the rehab. Oh my God, I need help. That's not what's happening.

It's like, if, do you need help for alcohol or drugs and alcoholic or an addict says, nope, and keeps it moving. There's there you're, it's like, you're talking to someone else. You're not talking to me.

So in my own personal story, it's not, I didn't go to my mother and seek help. And I knew there was a place to go for help. And I was suffering for, I was suicidal now suicidal in an alcoholic sense.

I wasn't really like planning anything, but I didn't want to wake up. And so I could certainly have the feeling of saying I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I didn't want to live this way anymore.

And I woke up on countless mornings saying, I'm not going to drink or do drugs anymore. And I promised myself in the quiet of my own mind, I'm not going to do this again. And I did it over and over and over again.

And still knowing there was a place to go for help. I never said anything to anybody cause it never occurred to me because the conclusion I'm always arriving at is I'm fine. I don't have a problem.

And next time will be different. And next time will be different is something that the streets are littered with that conclusion. People are on the sidewalks now believing it, it's going to get better.

And next time will be different. And this isn't so bad. And it's like a delusional optimism that people in addiction can have that so that they can shrug off the circumstances of their life.

Because what else are you going to do? It's insane to come up with a reasonable expectation for why I'm living on the sidewalk. So I have to come up with something irrational. Yeah.

So just in terms of what's going on with young people, adolescents, young adults, I mean, what are you seeing as is the rate of addiction increasing? Do you think that the sort of all the social media and anxiety, depression, isolation, are you seeing these are as, as predictors or sort of the fuel? Because, you know, you give a two-year-old an iPad and there's start scrolling through and all of a sudden you're stimulating all of all of this dopamine. Like, what are what are you seeing? Yeah. This is so I might have a contrarian opinion here on this, right, because of my understanding of addiction.

What I would say is, is that we're likely seeing an onset of more mental health concerns than more addiction, per se, right? So because addiction, by and large, if you were to follow the National Home Survey on Drug Use and Health, those numbers don't change. It's relatively like based on the substance, anywhere from 10 to 25% based on whatever particular substance it is that you're looking at, right? The suffering that can come from like kind of being exposed to some things that can become, you know, like addictive. But so this is the this is the thing that's contrarian.

If you were to look in a bar in a college town and, you know, and you're able to look and say, okay, here's a bunch of it's Friday night, and there's a whole bunch of 18, 19, 20 year olds in the bar. And there's 500 people in there. And I would tell you there's 50 alcoholics.

Which ones are they? You're not going to be able to tell just by looking in the window, because everybody looks like they're alcoholics, right? Right, because you're in a college town. And the thing to do is drink. And everybody there is doing that.

And so and that's just what's happening at the bar. And then you can start to have a conversation about, well, how many people are in the dorm room studying? And how many people so so whether it's like more or less, like, I don't know about like, how you get into that kind of conversation, other than to just kind of point out that most people who use addictive substances do not become addicted to them. There's more people who are dependent.

And then there's an even larger category of people who use substances who don't even form dependence. So if you were to look at, you know, 10 people, about five of them are normal substance users, three to four of them percentage wise, are going to maybe have dependence at various different lengths of time. And that's what points to like my answer to your question, like, they could be feeling all sorts of, you know, social anxiety and, you know, whatever, whatever experiences they might have had because of, you know, social media exposure and the anxieties and just depression and the pressures of life and whatever traumas they might have experienced.

And that, yeah, using substances right now is helping them cope. And it could look like addiction, but it's not. And then when you have people tell a story and they say, oh, I quit cold turkey, or now they're an influencer on social media.

And they say, like, I, you know, I did dry January and I just decided to keep it going, you know, well, oftentimes like you, those weren't necessarily people with addictions from the start. And so their ability to, so put it like this, going back to our trade analogy, it's like they, they always had brakes. They just weren't using them.

Yeah. Yeah. They can't stop.

I really like that. But the people that are dependent can stop. They're just not.

Right. They're just rumbling down the tracks because they're upset. They're in grief.

They're traumatized. They're whatever. And so they're, they're doing risky stuff right now, but the moment it becomes like you need to slow down and if it really strikes them, they can pump the brakes because they have brakes and then they can stop or slow down.

So they never lose the ability to do that, but they look a lot like the addicted people. And it's important to know the difference because the addicted people can't pump the brakes. They don't have them.

Yeah. That's a great, great distinction. So I have to ask you because, you know, I've been in this world for a while now and had a lot of exposure since you and I even connected.

What do you see going on with, with weed? Yeah, it's, it's become more acceptable. And it's the, so the attitude is become like laissez-faire and you have a lot of parents who, unfortunately, because of their own weed usage, also, they might have a little bit of a, an acceptability to it that they shouldn't, you know, like it should be treated in the very same way that alcohol is treated. You know, I, I'm always kind of surprised, but not when I hear from a parent who calls me and says, you know, my child is 16 or 17 or 18 and they're dealing with this or that or whatever.

And that they've been smoking weed and the parent is aware that they're smoking weed and is not even challenged by it. They're calling me because they suspect that they're using cocaine now. Or they're calling me because they, they think they're using opiates.

And then I, you know, on, you know, get a history and it's like, oh yeah, he's been smoking weed, but that's because he has social anxiety. And it's just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're not, we can't normalize a 15 year old smoking weed for social anxiety.

We just can't do that. It needs to be treated. It's not legal anywhere for anyone under 21 in the entirety of the United States.

Okay. So treat it the very same way that you treat alcohol and have a conversation with your child and have it early and have it often. It doesn't have to be one big whammy conversation, but it needs to be initiated by saying like, under no circumstances, is it okay for you to use any substances such as alcohol or weed or cigarettes, vaping, no chewables, no, no edibles, you know, like nothing until you are of legal age to do so.

Use the legal system to your advantage in that way to like have that conversation. Yeah. And, and, and one of my questions also about weed is the, the potency of it.

Right. And it, it is, it isn't what it was. It's not our dad's weed.

For sure. Yeah. It's dangerous.

It's dangerous, but it's, you know, the reason I, I approach it in that way is that it's, it's always been dangerous for a teenage brain. So if you just start there, it's now it's accelerated. Now it's like we have the fentanyl of weed.

Totally. You know, and, and some weed might have fentanyl mixed into it, you know, which is just, you know, another kind of dangerous aspect to this where, you know, you, you really want to have conversations with your kids about not using substances at all until they're of legal age to do so. And then use that as a jumping off place for the, for future conversations.

Well, and that's, that is, you know, not to go off on that rabbit hole, but that's kind of where I am with, with technology and social media. You know, we know how harmful it is. And yet we're convinced that we need to give our kid the equivalent of a bottle of vodka, like eight years old.

Right. Like, but you can use it because we don't have collective bargaining powers, parents to say, well, that's illegal. You know, it's illegal for you to, you remember porn magazines.

I mean, they were, it was illegal. Couldn't have a kid stole it from their father or whatever, from under the mattress. And you could stand behind that.

And now that's such a big thing to, to me, to how can this be happening? That kids, we know how detrimental this is to mental health, to your point about there are more mental health issues. So I, I want to just, I want, I want to be respectful of your time and, you know, so what are the, what are the top three? I know that you, you said this, like can't stop. There's an, there have been consequences to the use, et cetera.

What are three guidelines or points that you would offer parents where it's very, very clear that they are in a position where they could take action? On a scale of one to 10, you are both at an eight, nine, 10 of worry and concern, and also able to rate whatever the latest consequence was that's related to their substance use. So for example, if they've been arrested for a DWI, that's a 10, 10, and you should be taking action at that point. That, that should look like a definitive guided conversation, because if you don't have a conversation with them, that will just be another missed opportunity to get them the help that they need.

Each consequence is an opportunity. Like, so, you know, I remember speaking with a mom who, again, situation was like, I forget who it was. It was a friend, a friend was telling me about her friend's son.

And so I wind up getting in touch with the mom and I speak with her at length for probably two or three different phone calls. And then I never get to her husband because her husband is the minimizing type. He is minimizing the problem.

It's not a big deal. Don't worry about it. And I had left her with this.

I was like, okay, well, if he, if he gets arrested or is hospitalized or something, then that's going to be an opportunity to get him help. Not at the time. She told me this later.

She took almost offense to me saying it in that way, but she didn't. She kept that to herself. Five months or seven months later, when he got into a car accident and he was now in the hospital, it clicked.

Oh, this is my opportunity. And she called me and within 10 minutes, we had someone on the phone with him who was able to get past all of the resistance that she just had trying to convince him to get help. And so that person, you know, I had him speak to a friend of mine, Danny, who got on the phone with him and was able to use this as the leverage to get him into a treatment program and thus began his recovery journey.

If that doesn't happen, do you think he's walking out of the hospital to go to an AA meeting on his own or to check himself into rehab? That's not happening. That's not happening because of the nature of addiction itself. So it's, it's recognizing that these types of things are going to happen.

And unfortunately, they're not going to stop happening unless someone connects them to the helpful resource. They're not going to do it on their own. It's like the most extreme version of if you've ever seen the movie Rocky IV, there's a scene where Apollo Creed is in the ring and he's getting pummeled by the Russian.

I mean, the Russian is just, you know, like killing him in the ring. He's just destroying him. And Rocky is holding the towel and all Rocky has to do is throw the towel in, but Rocky's not doing it because Apollo is looking at him and saying, don't throw in the towel.

Don't throw in the towel. You're hoping that your addicted loved one is going to give you the go ahead and say, throw in the towel. They are not.

They're not going to do it. They're going to die in the ring. Instead.

And not only that, it's even what they're convinced as they're getting pummeled. I'll get out. I'm going to beat this thing next time.

That wasn't so bad as they're getting iced up in the corner that, okay, we got this. That's what's going on in their brain. So you have to throw in the towel for them.

And what that looks like is seizing these opportunities as they present themselves. And, you know, because if, if Rocky throws in the towel, Apollo lives. Yeah.

Is Apollo pissed at first? Sure. But that's worth it because he's alive. Right.

Right. Right. Right.

That is so, God, that's such a great metaphor. I did that for so long. I'm like, you're going to throw in the towel, aren't you? I know you are because you're sure not letting me do it.

And yeah, that is so powerful. So how, um, well, you are just such a gift, Chris, and your skills, your skill level. And I think just kind of your, your, your courage and commitment, because I know you deal with a lot of stuff every day and a lot of stories, and I'm sure some of them are really, really tragic and sad.

And you've probably forestalled many of those stories with the work that you do. But if somebody wanted to find out more about what you do and what your resources are and how to work with you, what would they, what would they look for? Visit yintervention.com. So that's a W-H-Y intervention. Yep.

W-H-Y intervention.com. I have a bevy of free resources there that I want you to read through. And I don't even, I'm not even looking to capture emails or anything like you just click on it and read through the stuff and you can start to, uh, utilize those materials. Um, I have the connected response method, which is the approach that I kind of, uh, insinuated in, in our conversation just now.

That will be, that's, that will be free. So if you visit the website and go to the free resources, you'll be able to get access to that also. That's a free mini course, um, with scripts and everything on how to have the conversation.

And then beyond that, it's like, as you start to move up the scale of what's going on, ideally, again, where my heart is, is kind of changing the paradigm on how we deal with this. And I want you as a parent to deal with this when it's still smoke. You know, like if your house is on fire, you don't spend any time at all denying that it's a fire.

Right. And it doesn't have to be a five alarm blaze for you to call for help. You call at the first signs of smoke.

And, and so, you know, if you listen to my podcast, the why intervention podcast, if you take my story to heart, there are so many stories of people who are addicted in their teens. It's not the, you know, the Bowery being on the street takes 30 years to get to, we have, we're addicted right now. And there's a possibility that all things could look great for your loved one and they could be addicted right now.

And, and so if you just make use of the resources, many of them free, and if you need more help, just reach out, we're there to help. So it's why intervention.com and you are this unique bird. There are, I didn't find a lot of you, an interventionist.

And if someone is meeting those criteria that you laid out, it's a really, really great resource. And you're so generous with your time and your knowledge and information. So thank you so much, Chris Doyle.

I have a feeling I'll have you back on if you'll jump back on. Absolutely. We can maybe have like a Q and A, because I know that of all of the people I've spoken to, all of these experts, I get the most questions about you.

Oh, wow. Well, I would be happy. I would love to do a Q and A. It's one of my favorite things to do.

Okay. That sounds awesome. Thanks so much, Chris.

You're very welcome. Great to see you. Talk to you soon.