Today I want to introduce you to Bob. A friend, a colleague, and a fellow traveler.
As you will hear in Bob’s story, he’s a man who’s committed to growing, healing, and working on his own recovery. Bob candidly admits that witnessing his son’s hard, scary work of recovery inspired him to do his own work in recovery.
Bob has an incredible memory for quotes that have impacted him and helped him learn healthier ways to live, love, and move from the why my beautiful son to what am I to do now?
See full transcript of the episode below.
You’re listening to The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast, a place for real conversations with people who love someone with the disease of addiction. Now here is your host Margaret Swift Thompson.
Welcome back! Today I want to introduce you to Bob. A friend, a colleague, and a fellow traveler. As you will hear in Bob’s story, he’s a man who’s committed to growing, healing, and working on his own recovery. Bob candidly admits that witnessing his son’s hard, scary work of recovery inspired him to do his own work in recovery. Let’s hear from Bob.
The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast
Margaret: So, we’re going to just chat. First thing we’re going to do is wet our whistle as I do every podcast.
Bob: Alright
Margaret: So, thank you for doing this Bob
Bob: I’m honored.
Margaret: You are a fellow traveler in the recovery world but you’re also person who works in the field of addiction, so I think that offers us some interesting perspective. So, one of the first things I ask everyone who comes on is who’s your qualifier if you’re willing to share.
Bob: I’m honored.
Margaret: So, one of the first things I ask everyone who comes on is who’s your qualifier if you’re willing to share.
Bob: Yes, it would be my now 31-year-old son David.
Margaret: And one of the things I find really interesting to ask family members is when did you first get an inkling something was wrong? What was that?
Bob: Yeah, that’s a good question. I would say it was probably 11th, his 11th grade of high school and at that point um you know my reflection now looking back, I was really in kind of a mode of you know really denial, minimizing, wishful thinking, misinterpreting. Kind of you know when I looked at some of his lifestyle that you know revolved around using that I had gotten wind of. I interpreted as well; the old man was kind of a knucklehead in high school too, over at Cretin High School back in the 70s man.
I got into it early in 9th grade. I started you know drinking, smoking pot doing other things, really throughout high school. So, my interpretation of my misinterpretation of my son situation was oh he’s just like me and he’ll wake up and get tired of it at some point like I did, not realizing that he was part of the 10 or 12 or 15% today that you know suffers from the disease. Which I didn’t, I was an abuser, he had an addiction.
Margaret: And so, people find that confusing right. How can some people abuse, not go down that path of destruction and other people that switch is flipped, and off to the races? What’s your perception of them for you and your son?
Bob: Yeah, it’s really part of it’s a mystery I think Margaret, because I had all the right markers you know I had genetically, I have alcoholism on both sides of my family. Both my mother and my father’s family were steeped in you know, alcoholics. I experienced early childhood trauma uh, I started using at a young age. So, I had all the markers, and all the reasons to be an alcoholic or an addict and mysteriously I’m not. And I can’t and I don’t understand why, and you know that my son as it turned out it is. You know I guess you could say the same things to a certain extent about him. Obviously, we come from the same genetic pool at least half of him does. So, I’m not I’m not exactly sure. I know for him, his struggles with anxiety and depression I think really led him to look for some relief and you know of course that’s the insidious nature of this because I think for a lot of people who do suffer with a mental illness, and there can be some initial relief that someone experiences by using a mood-altering substance. But unfortunately, that’s part of the cunning, baffling, powerful nature of the disease.
Eventually it snags them. So, I’m not sure if I exactly answered your question.
Margaret: No, yeah, you did. Because I think there is no great answer, that’s kind of where I was curious where you would go with it, because one of the things that I’ve come to appreciate about recovery was letting go of the why. Hard to do ’cause we all want an answer or an explanation or somewhere to blame uhm or understand how one child has it and others don’t, or I was spared, and they are not. So, I think that’s a really interesting perspective I think that one of the pieces that we can get tripped up on in recovery is the why. You and I both have seen many people who are seeking treatment for chemical dependency struggle with the why and stay stuck until they get to a point of letting go of that not being answered.
Bob: I really like that Margaret and I think that’s true, and I think what I had to do in my life in terms of asking the whys and kind of you know getting stuck there, and why my beautiful son? Why our family? Yeah, I think the important thing that I need to do is make that shift from why to what. What am I to do now? As I accept the reality of our situation and as I begin to you know, as it says in the recovery world live life on life’s terms? What is life asking of me, that was the more important question. What am I to do? How am I to get healthier? How am I to show up in my relationship with my son, and in my family because as a family we suffer from this disease.
Margaret: How long did that take from that 11th grader who you were thinking might outgrow it. Doing what I did. To a place of OK this is not the same and, I need to get past the why to the what and find my own recovery. What’s that journey been like for you Bob?
Bob: Yeah, embarrassingly Margaret, it took me awhile. You know my denial runs pretty deep, and I think just part of behind the denial was probably some shame of you know not my family, please. I kind of enjoyed life on the family pedestal for you know for quite a while. So, you know part of the process for me was seeing the ego in that. There’s a great saying that I’m sure you’ve probably heard me say it before, but it fits here of course. That’s Thomas Merton who said, most people live lives of self-impersonation and that is one extremely powerful touchstone statement in my life. And I think part of the process of coming to accept that, you know a beloved family members suffered from a disease was for me coming to terms with not wanting to live a life of you know self-impersonation and pretend like we’re this perfect family and we’ve got it all together. And to really just except the painful reality, the scary reality, of what he and what we were facing as a family.
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Margaret: I just think it’s really important for the average listener out there, who’s not a counselor, who’s not educated in this field, to understand that journey is true for all of us no matter our experience. because I’m sure you can attest to it Bob when it happens in our home we’re just as human as the next person even with our education and experience.
Bob: And I think what I didn’t realize at the time particularly when my son came to me in his worst moment and told me that he had basically partied away a semester, his drinking was out of control and that he had set a date to kill himself. I didn’t realize it in that moment, but I was having a trauma reaction. You know as I mentioned briefly there, it took me into my 50s before I really came to understand how, what a traumatic childhood I had. I kind of did the same thing with my traumatic childhood as I did my son’s addiction. I kind of minimized it. Did a little bit of spiritual bypass with it. And you know, so I was having a trauma reaction I think to my son’s addiction and my trauma reaction, part of my trauma reaction was a belief that everything basically always falls apart, and goes to
Margaret: Crap!
Bob: Dodo, yes. And I think you know that trauma reaction was part of what was causing me to hesitate to accept the truth. And I think the other lie that I believed was that if I really delve in, and accept, and embrace the most painful, scary thing in my life, it’s going to kill me to do that. So, I’ll self-impersonate, I’ll pretend, I’ll minimize. So, a big piece of this for me, and it was really my son’s courage cause he went before me and really started to deal with you know his life, that is he modeled to me his bravery of looking at everything in his life. It came time for me I had a decision to make you know. I love that line from Viktor Frankel in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, where he says, “when we can no longer change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves” and you know it was at that time as my son was doing his hard, scary work, that I kind of decided; I remember saying to friend, well I can either join two bowling leagues, three softball teams and just play my life away or I can really choose to get healthier mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually and really devote the time and energy to it.
And I’d always been a seeker of wanting freedom and truth and to live a whole life. But I never really found the resources until um we I got introduced to the recovery world and that became the doorway for me to find really the right resources I needed. Through referrals and people just saying something a meeting that would lead me to read a book or have a conversation or take a seminar and all these things just kind of came together. It’s like my heart’s longing of 50 plus years in the course of two or three years I had all these amazing resources come into my life that were really able to help me process my trauma, uh and all of its impact that were still manifesting itself in my life, even in my 50s. You know it says in the big book in the promises that it you know if we seek it, and we want it, but it will always happen, sometimes quickly sometimes slowly. You know to wake up and to live more consciously at 55 is somewhat painful. Cause I wish it would have happened at 25 or 35 or 45 but I’m grateful that though I’m a slow learner, you know working a recovery program eventually has led me to uhm kind of bring into the consciousness what was unconscious, in terms of driving my thinking and behavior and by working you know with program of recovery. The healing has happened in significant ways for me, that I’m so grateful for. So, I’ve got more freedom today and a sense of self and I’ve ever had before very grateful for that.
Margaret: I’m sure. And it’s one of the hopes I have for everyone out there who maybe tunned in and who has a loved one with this illness. That they can hear in your story that absolutely we want our loved one to find their healing, but the switch is, the beauty is, the healing is your own work which you’ve obviously embraced.
Bob: Yeah, I think it’s the greatest gift we can give our loved one who suffers from this disease Margaret is to take care of ourselves and get healthy ourselves on those levels mentally emotionally physically and spiritually. Because then we’ll be able to support them in a healthy way. Otherwise for me my fear was driving my attempt to care for my son. And fear leads to control or the illusion of control and that’s where I’ve always went in my life. When I was fearful, I became more controlling and of course I was deathly afraid of losing him to this disease, so I became you know ubercontrolling. Trying to manage, trying to fix him, and it’s all an illusion.
Margaret: Can you give examples Bob? Both of things that you did before you found your way into your own recovery. Ways you tried to control manage and fix.
Bob: Yeah, I mean, I kind of laugh now but even when he was a little guy, he was kind of a sports guy. So, he played baseball, and I’m the kind of person that I’m gonna always find the best resource for someone. So, I found this coach, name is Coach Mackenzie. I said Hey David you wanna during the wintertime, the non-baseball season, you want to get some sessions with Coach McKenzie to help you improve your hitting in the batting cage, teach you how to throw better, and just work on all your mechanic. Sure, Dad I’d love to. So, David did that for about three or four months in the winter and he had a phenomenal baseball season the next summer.
He was a high school wrestler, and he was struggling and of course Dad ran into a former Olympic wrestler Margaret. So, I talked to this guy, he said sure I’d love to workout with your son. Hey David, you wanna workout with this guy sure Dad, so I throw a wrestling mat in my basement and this former Olympic wrestler comes in helps my son become a better wrestler for a number of months.
So, uh you know when he was in his early recovery before his first relapse, I had come across a recovery coach. So, I’m in the same mindset, hey David I found this recovery coach, he’s a really good guy I think he could really help you in your recovery. You interested? Mm, mm, not really. I mean I wasn’t getting the response I had hoped for. But of course, I forced the issue made him go meet with this guy, it was a disaster. David didn’t like him; I think resented my pushing him. So it was that that it was kind of the classic you know I was in the Al- Anon worldwide in meetings and meeting erase that as they say were double winners, meaning they’re in recovery themselves but also in a relationship with someone they loved who suffers from disease, so they would be at an Al-Anon meeting. I’d say things like hey do you know where there’s a great meeting? Or you know and try and scope out those types of things for my son and pass on that great information.
So, you know David was the kind of young guy that would never get mad, or you know really voice his displeasure. He would just show me by his inaction or getting quiet basically and then never following through basically on any of my great plans. That was his way of communicating to me that he didn’t appreciate my trying to run his recovery.
Margaret: So, you and I both know the value in getting that understanding. That we cannot run someone else’s recovery. I can only imagine there are parents out there who are in the midst of this who are hearing all the things you said you did around the wrestling, and around the sporting, and then around the recovery coach. And they’re going that’s brilliant. That’s exactly what you should do! That’s a loving father, square that up for them how does that not work?
Bob: Yeah, I mean I think it’s coming to first of all, I have to understand the nature of this disease and to realize that the right answer when it comes to this disease and our loved one’s struggling with it, is counterintuitive to every parent fiber within us and even rationally in some ways it doesn’t make sense. That it just so happens that when it comes to this disease, unless our loved one chooses recovery and makes it the priority of their life um we’re stuck, and there’s really, that’s where our powerlessness I think is, and things become unmanageable as it says in the first step for those of us on the family side, when we jump in and try and manage, and try and fix and control and not give our loved one the dignity of their own journey and recovery. And I think it also ties into just this culture today that you know we’re kind of a whole generation of helicopter parents, and the last thing that we want is our loved one to suffer, and you know we’re going to try and protect them from any suffering or any pain.
A. I don’t think we can do that, and B. how arrogant of me.
Can I, that was me, you know, that I that I want to somehow protect my son from his own life and his own journey. And oh, by the way what’s had the profoundest and most important impact in my life. It’s been my pain, my suffering, my difficulty, my failures. Painful as they are, without them, I would be you know where I’m at in my journey today, if I had had helicopter parents and I didn’t. it was a different generation. Um so we, there’s somehow a disconnect there I think for a lot of us that we think are, I think we’re confused on what our job description is as parents. That it’s not to protect our children from the pain in their life but to support them and let them know that we were behind them, and we have confidence, and we believe in them. And that we trust the third journey through the pain and the heartache is going to be part of what’s going to form them into an even more amazing, whole and free person.
Margaret: And don’t you think a big part of why that is so torturous for family members and parents in particular, is because it’s a great avoider of looking at our own pain. By jumping in to rescue whomever it is that suffering.
Bob: Absolutely
Outro: Bob is a perpetual student, and it offers so much to everyone he touches in his life. His memory for powerful quotes has been a gift to me, and I hope you feel the same.
Join us again next week where Bob will continue to share his story and he will also talk about the tools that have helped him on his recovery journey.
Until next time, take care of you!
