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What if being labeled an “addict” kept people from seeing the pain underneath?
Explore the connection between childhood trauma, emotional pain, and addiction and how behaviors often develop as attempts to survive, regulate, and cope.
This conversation looks beyond labels and asks what addiction may be trying to protect, soothe, or communicate rather than reducing people to their struggles.
Through this lens, addiction becomes more than a diagnosis, it becomes an opportunity to better understand trauma, disconnection, and the path toward healing.
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#addictionrecovery #childhoodtrauma #traumahealing #mentalhealthawareness #adaptablebehaviorexplained
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0:00
I'll start by saying I don't identify as
0:03
an addict.
0:04
And even to say that is extremely
0:07
powerful. My history as born into super
0:11
dysfunctional family. I know we've had
0:13
past episodes where we've talked about
0:15
some of that stuff, but my father,
0:17
rightly so, identified as an alcoholic.
0:20
He was an extremely abusive alcoholic.
0:23
In the 70s, when my mother, who also had
0:26
her own mental health challenges, was
0:29
trying to become free from that abuse,
0:33
she found Al-Anon.
0:35
And I think it likely saved her. I I
0:38
grew up with a suicidal mom and she did
0:40
not end up committing, right? So, it was
0:42
largely, I think, beneficial in giving
0:45
her
0:46
a supportive environment where
0:49
she could learn to stand up for herself,
0:51
have boundaries, seek treatment, and
0:53
things like that. And Al-Anon became a
0:56
very, very big part of her life for
0:59
probably 60 years.
1:00
>> And as someone who loves an addict,
1:03
that gave her a support system to
1:05
understand that those behaviors in him
1:08
were not about her, which probably
1:10
helped her to feel less isolated and
1:11
things like that.
1:12
>> I think isolated, but to also have
1:16
community, right? She grew up in an
1:17
environment where you didn't talk about
1:20
what was going on in the family. And so,
1:23
I think there's one, you know, whenever
1:25
you have a forum where you can share the
1:27
good, the bad, and the ugly, I think
1:29
it's very helpful to go in and be able
1:30
to say, you know, I am being abused or
1:33
this is how someone is behaving and have
1:35
other people just go like, "Yeah, that's
1:38
not good." And then, you know, that
1:39
there's some type of framework for for
1:41
support. I mean, primarily, like, you
1:43
know,
1:44
the term codependency came from Al-Anon
1:47
in a way to describe how people that
1:49
live around
1:51
people typically identified as addicts,
1:53
right, or abusers,
1:55
learn to walk on eggshells and learn to
1:57
change their own behaviors and learn how
1:58
to manage the feelings and outcomes for
2:01
other people to create safety, right?
2:02
So, if we step back from that, she was
2:05
learning how to not be codependent, how
2:06
to not be a victim, and all of that. And
2:08
I was just a boy. I I bring this up
2:10
though to say that I was in Al-A-Tot
2:13
at like 8 years old. I was learning 12
2:16
steps from an Al-Anon perspective in the
2:19
language of little children. And then I
2:21
went into Alateen, and I remember her
2:23
dragging us to conference. And I think
2:25
in her perspective it was trying to give
2:28
support to this new emerging family
2:32
system that's like free of addiction.
2:35
The challenge for me was it's kind of
2:38
like once you see it, you can't unsee
2:40
it. And so my mom began to see
2:43
everything
2:45
through the lens of addiction,
2:48
addictive behavior,
2:50
and how to a protective lens for her.
2:53
So, as I go into preteens, and this will
2:57
kind of circle back when we talk about,
2:59
you know, the environments that that
3:00
addiction or addictive propensities kind
3:03
of emerge,
3:05
uh was that I I would say I had given
3:07
the environment that I lived in, the
3:09
neighborhoods I lived in, the background
3:10
that I had,
3:11
you know, there experimentation with
3:13
like marijuana or or drinking or, you
3:16
know, monkey see, monkey do. What does
3:17
my What does my father do? And and and
3:21
uh I quickly was labeled an addict way
3:25
before like any addiction.
3:27
>> you were when that label came toward
3:29
you.
3:30
>> Yeah, so, I mean, and granted, right?
3:33
This is a spectrum.
3:35
>> Right.
3:35
>> At 10 years old, I was smoking a pack of
3:38
cigarettes a day.
3:40
>> I'll never forget when you told me that,
3:41
and our son was 10. And I was like,
3:45
"What the [ __ ] was your parents [snorts]
3:47
doing?" Because you told me You said,
3:50
"My mom said just don't take your dad's,
3:52
and make sure you go outside."
3:54
>> dad Yeah, so my dad was don't take dad's
3:56
cuz those are his smokes. My mom was
3:59
just smoke outside. I'm allergic.
4:01
>> At 10.
4:02
>> So, you know, even even prior to 10,
4:05
right? I You know, it was very common to
4:08
get sent to the store with a note from
4:10
my grandma. You know, I can remember
4:12
probably 7 or 8 years old getting sent
4:15
to the store with a note from her to
4:16
pick up smokes. And they would just hand
4:19
me the cigarettes and I would bring them
4:20
back. And so, eventually, right?
4:22
Everybody smokes and you know, pretty
4:24
soon you're out with with the friends
4:26
and everybody's copping a smoke. And
4:28
what I realized is all of my friends
4:29
were getting in trouble for smoking and
4:32
I was just told to smoke outside.
4:35
And so, I was you know, it was safe. And
4:37
so, when we think about coping with
4:39
anxiety, stress, things like that, you
4:42
know, medicating right off the bat. And
4:44
then, we think about the circles that
4:47
you're in when you're the one that can
4:49
freely have a pack of smokes. You know,
4:52
they sold for a buck a piece in the
4:53
'70s, right? That was a lot of money or
4:56
a quarter, you know, to your friends.
4:57
And so, you know, you start being kind
4:59
of in those circles. So, there's
5:01
experiment, you know, there was always
5:03
alcohol
5:04
around. My father thought it was a badge
5:06
of honor. I remember the first time he
5:08
got me drunk was probably age 9 at my
5:11
sister's wedding.
5:13
>> Notice the words the first time my
5:15
father got me drunk.
5:16
>> That my father got me drunk cuz it was
5:18
it was funny, right? So, when you grow
5:20
up in these environments and then you
5:22
learn that you see people coping or
5:24
just, you know, what would be
5:27
normal, even if a typical behavior in a
5:29
family system, monkey see, monkey do.
5:32
You just start kind of doing that. And
5:34
then, so,
5:35
you know, then it started being
5:36
experimentation with marijuana, of
5:38
course, drinking. Um I'm not saying that
5:41
any of that was healthy.
5:42
>> Right.
5:43
>> But based on the level of supervision
5:44
and what was going on in society.
5:46
>> of?
5:47
>> Right? It was it wasn't a problem until
5:51
through how my mother manifested
5:53
behavior when she came up against normal
5:57
teenage, broken household
6:00
a very traumatized young man with no
6:02
guidance and those problems, she was
6:05
very quick to label those addictive
6:08
behaviors. So, as opposed to being
6:10
somebody that she was trying to help
6:12
with Al-Anon and all of this stuff
6:14
now that the abuser was out of the
6:16
house, I was the identified abuser and
6:19
therefore
6:20
>> You're an addict.
6:21
>> So, even though I had never had
6:23
cigarette smoking aside
6:26
uh I'd never had
6:27
any
6:28
legal trouble, trouble at school, I'd
6:31
never been caught with drugs, I
6:34
she'd never even seen me with drugs
6:36
when I was
6:38
14, uh I was removed she'd sent me to go
6:42
live with my very abusive father. She
6:44
was trying to restart her life.
6:46
And that didn't end very well. My own
6:49
medicating increased a lot to deal with
6:52
the constant abuse of living in that
6:54
house and eventually I was removed by
6:57
law enforcement and put back into her
6:59
custody, which really didn't fit into
7:01
her schema of what her new life was
7:04
like.
7:05
And so then any behavioral stuff that
7:06
came up for me, it must be because I'm
7:09
secretly a drug addict or an alcoholic.
7:12
And so one day I was put in the car and
7:14
I was told we were going to visit a
7:16
relative who was in the hospital.
7:18
And we walked in and we went up to
7:21
somebody met us in the lobby and we got
7:23
in the elevator and we get up to
7:25
whatever floor we're on and we come out
7:27
and they're like, "Hey,
7:28
this is your new home. You're you're
7:29
actually I got tricked into this like
7:31
rehab." And uh and that started a cycle.
7:34
It's kind of like when you when you hear
7:35
about
7:37
people putting chill, you know, somebody
7:38
in jail and it becomes like a warrior
7:40
academy.
7:41
>> Mhm.
7:41
>> You just me in like drug addict academy.
7:44
Like, you know, this was kind of West
7:46
Hollywood.
7:47
And so, you know, the kids that were in
7:49
there with me, they were runaways,
7:52
street urchins, you know, they'd had all
7:53
of these legal problems. And I was just
7:56
a kid from the suburb who
7:58
there wasn't even any evidence of that
7:59
had smoked some weed or or drank. And
8:02
so, um So, that was really really rough.
8:05
I I say all of this in that, you know,
8:07
there's there's multiple periods. That
8:09
was just the start of this journey
8:11
until, you know, for the next few years
8:13
till I got uh to adult age
8:15
>> Right.
8:16
>> of being identified as an addict. So,
8:19
whether, you know, I left that program
8:21
and went into an intensive outpatient,
8:23
you know, even when I was in rehab, we
8:24
went to seven to nine meetings a week. I
8:26
won't unpack my entire history with
8:28
this, right? There was uh several years
8:31
of in and out of
8:33
rehab facilities, programs,
8:36
mother-mandated treatment, uh group
8:40
homes, foster care.
8:41
>> And I remember you told me at the
8:43
beginning of our relationship that when
8:46
I was getting sub-therapy and going to
8:48
therapy and all of those things, you had
8:50
a really negative bias towards therapy
8:53
because as a young child, you learned
8:56
just say what you need to say to get you
8:58
to the next point
8:59
>> Yeah.
8:59
>> and become an excellent, you know, kid
9:02
in recovery so that you said all the
9:04
right things. And your words, I think,
9:06
were something to the tune of, I know
9:08
exactly what I need to say so that I can
9:10
move out and be done with it. And so,
9:11
therapy's not going to work for me. I
9:13
remember you said that.
9:14
>> Well, you said a couple interesting
9:15
things there. And I'll circle back to
9:17
the word recovery. I think that that's a
9:19
really loaded
9:20
question.
9:21
>> Mhm.
9:21
>> If you're participating in a program
9:23
>> Mhm.
9:24
>> versus being in recovery, that's like
9:26
saying if you're falling and you haven't
9:29
quite stopped moving, you're in fall
9:31
recovery. I don't think like recovery is
9:34
like fall is complete, I'm getting back
9:36
up, I'm brushing myself off. But that
9:38
aside,
9:39
you know, going into these programs and
9:41
having been so well versed in Alateen,
9:44
Al-A-Tot, you know, Alanon, all of this
9:47
stuff,
9:48
you know that there's a language, but
9:50
then you realize that the lens is being
9:52
applied to you. And so, I remember in
9:55
the first facility, you know, now I'm
9:57
lost. I'm outcast from my family. I'm
10:00
locked up in a
10:02
in a hospital.
10:04
And
10:05
you know, we would have meetings and we
10:06
would have group. And you weren't going
10:09
to progress through the program unless
10:10
you admitted to what your addiction was.
10:13
>> Mhm.
10:13
>> You know, so I started identifying
10:15
>> Mhm.
10:16
>> as an alcoholic or I started identifying
10:18
as a drug user. And then eventually it
10:20
was like, "Oh, you can go to a meeting
10:21
and you can get a chip and everybody's
10:22
proud of you when you get 30 days." I'm
10:24
like, "How am I not going to get 30
10:25
days? I'm locked up in a hospital. I
10:27
can't even like get dessert." Right? So,
10:29
then you get the chip and you know,
10:31
there your identity becomes really
10:32
wrapped up in this addiction. So, the
10:34
way people see you
10:36
is somehow tied to the label that you're
10:39
given
10:40
or you you acquire, right? That you you
10:43
assign to.
#People & Society