There are so many ways to learn about the disease of addiction.
There are so many teachers that offer a variety of styles, from brain science to billboards along the highway showing before and after pictures of addicts.
Today, you will hear from Tom, a friend and a substance use disorder counselor. Tom shares his experience, strength, and hope. Tom uses truth, humor, and his personal and professional experience. Tom shares about the evolution of the Tiger Talk.
A mission for my podcast has been to get family stories shared and heard, so people feel less alone. I also am passionate about bringing people to the podcast who inspire and teach me.
Tom is one of those people!
See full transcript of episode below.
00:01
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.
00:18
Intro: Welcome back. I am so thrilled to introduce you to Tom, a friend, a colleague, a person with a passion to treat people with the disease of addiction. Tom created the tiger talk as a powerful analogy for understanding this baffling disease. Today, Tom shares about his journey of long-term recovery and how the tiger talk came to be. Let’s get to Tom.
00:58
The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast.
01:11
Margaret: Alright, so do you have a little cup of coffee or a little drink, beverage?
01:16
Tom: I don’t. (laughter)
01:18
Margaret: Oh Tom! Okay, well, we always wet our whistle, Tom, because it sounds better if we do.
Tom: Okay.
Margaret: And it’s funny, I always feel kind of weird starting my podcasts that way, because I’m talking about alcoholism, but it’s always coffee or water from what I can tell if my guests to so we’re all good. So, I’m thrilled that you agreed to come on here and share. Tom, I know my audience, some know you and have heard you because I’ve heard them refer to the tiger talk. But there’s a lot of people that haven’t heard your Tiger analogy around this disease. And I think it is a blessing for anyone to hear it, especially if they’re a visual person, because it helps really understand the disease in a way that makes it really clear. And so, I’m excited to have you share that with the audience. But before we dive into that, Tom, can you share with us how you came up with the tiger talk? Like it’s something you’re known for? Because it’s reached so many people and you do it in such a great way. But how did it come to be for you? Like Where did that come from?
02:18
Tom: Yeah, now I feel really blessed. Well, thank you very much for having me here in first place. And I feel really blessed that people do connect with it and seem to identify with it. The origins of it really. I know, in my own personal journey, I really struggled with the disease concept of addiction. As it says in the Big Book, nobody wants to think their bodily and mentally different from their fellows. And yet we are, statistically 9 out of 10 people have one reaction, 1 out of 10 of us have this other reaction to drugs and alcohol, which sets off this crazy obsessive thought process that invariably everyone around us family and friends starts becoming collateral damage. And then keeping instead of keeping us sober, it’s usually so overwhelming, we use more. And that’s where it doesn’t follow any kind of logic. But a but I mean, the origins of it, actually, I was, I work in a treatment center, and I was doing a group on one of the units, I was trying to think of a way to externalize it. And to be honest, I wanted to use a dragon because I’m a guy and we like things that blow up and explode. (laughter) But it just didn’t fit as well. But I’ve always thought tigers are absolutely beautiful animals. And, the whole idea is the progressive nature of the disease, it gets bigger. And once it’s fully grown, it’s fully grown, which is part of the thing I had kind of the back of my mind. But with tigers, I’ve always had this weird thought of sleeping with a tiger, not in any kind of kinky way. But just literally sleeping with one but you know, it occurred to me that I probably wouldn’t actually enjoy the experience kind of like when we think about drugs and alcohol, the idea of it’s better than the usual reality of the end. And you know, while I’m laying there next to a tiger, I would be just terrified the whole time, like reach over rip off my face. And it’s the same kind of thing with addiction, you know, we think of this beautiful sleep, a wonderful animal, but it’s highly dangerous, highly unpredictable. And it takes a while for us, you know, and unfortunately, that’s where a lot of us have to suffer some severe consequences to finally get our attention that you know, I can’t control this. And that’s really kind of the bottom line with the disease of addiction or trying to control something we can’t control. And so that’s basically the in a nutshell.
04:16
Margaret: That’s a great nutshell. And I’m going to deep dive in a few points of that cuz you bring up some brilliant stuff already. So, you had an infatuation, for lack of a better word with tigers, there was an appeal to them. Speaks to the nature of this disease, when a person starts using and this is one of the things baffling family members and people I think with the disease, when a person starts using there is a payoff to it. There is something about it that’s appealing. There’s something that works for us.
Tom: Yeah.
Margaret: And then it turns, and it takes over. So that’s what I’m hearing the tiger even though the appeal of it and the beauty of it and the magnificence of it appealed to you. There’s also that piece of your brain that went but if it turns on me, I’m done.
Tom: Yeah, absolutely.
Margaret: Do you think that that is something when you say I struggle with a disease concept? I’m right there with you? Do you think that’s something that is with the people you’ve cared for over the years a common struggle?
Tom 05:17
Absolutely. You know, frankly, most of the people I work with are smarter than me but I’ve got a fully functioning limbic system so point to Tom but you know, it is a brain disease judgment, rational, logic all get impaired and you know, a lot of people I work with have been extremely successful in other areas of their life and then they try to apply that same tenacity to this and they just fall on their face left and right and that was my story too. And it really something I focus on with the people I work with is just you know, the internal damage you know, I think as addicts, alcoholics, we are generally trying to solve the wrong problem which is not getting caught. Rather than looking at what actually happens when I use does it actually help my anxiety? Does it help my depression? Does it help my relationships, my social standing anything? And by the end, usually, all those things are a disaster. And I know for myself over the years, it started just destroying my self-confidence, self-esteem, which just made it even more appealing to go back out. Or appealing is not the right word, but necessary almost.
06:16
Margaret: So, let’s play that one out too. Because I think that’s really very helpful for families who just like how you can see your world is falling apart. How can you not see this is killing you or hurting you at least and hurting us? What’s your theory on that? I mean, you’ve just kind of said it, but like, what is it that blocks a person who wants like you say a fix of either anxiety or whatever it is that they originally are trying to?
Tom 06:42
I mean, I think a lot of us we start you know, self-medicating, I stand alone depression that predated my chemical use, and, initially alcohol and other things I was into, really did wonders, it stopped my perfectionistic mind from rambling too much into worst case scenarios and stuff, it kind of gave me this, you know, a nice bubble. But you know, drinking a massive amount of the depressant, strangely enough, starts affecting depression. A lot of people, you know, anxiety and such. And I started having anxiety, frankly, because one of the major withdrawal side effects of alcohol and stuff is that, you know, cocaine and benzos, you know, more depression and everything else. And so, a lot of us then end up getting caught in this catch 22, where, what worked initially is no longer working, but I keep doing it, because it should work. And then it’s, you know, and something I emphasize a lot is, the chemical addiction is a standalone deal, a lot of us are spending a lot of time asking why so because of my depression, because of my trauma history, because of this, because of that. No, you know, I had serious issues with multiple chemicals. But I also have standalone depression, you know, they certainly exacerbated the crap out of each other, but they don’t cause each other, which I think a lot of people struggle with, too. But I have a feeling that was not even your question.
07:55
Margaret: No, that was good. It doesn’t matter. This, these are such organic conversations, because they go where they go, and I trust that whatever is meant to come out, will come out. I think that you speak to another struggle very clearly, which is the why. Right? How many people stay in the using? Because they’re stuck in trying to solve the why?
Tom 08:14
Yeah, and the Why is not so important as what do I do about it? Sometimes I use kind of extreme examples. But you know, for instance, if somebody’s shooting at me now, it’s probably not the time to walk over and go, excuse me, is that something I said? Are you mad at me, what happened? Now’s the time to take cover, I can figure out why you’re shooting, if there’s even a rational answer later. But you know, I think a lot of us spend a lot of time and effort just you know why, you know, because it was my high school years, or this or that, or something that happened, whereas my whole life is falling apart right now, you know, what can I do to do something about it here?
08:45
Margaret: No, that’s a great way of saying it. And yes, you do use some dry humor and great, dark examples. And I’m fine with that. Because I think that everybody reaches people differently. And that’s what’s so wonderful about the many, many people working in the field of addiction, that we’re not cut out of the same cookie cutter. And that makes it magical because somebody can work with you. And you can reach them where they may not be able to be reached by me in the same way. You know. When it comes to the family side of this, because many of my audience are people who love someone, right? That’s the whole concept of The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast, is reaching family members. When it comes to people who love someone with this disease. They struggle also to separate the person from their disease, right? You have someone in your face saying the most insane things and you’re going down this rabbit hole with them, and you don’t think it’s them, but you don’t know how to separate them. So, can you share at all about your own journey? Did anyone in your family have the magic word or solution to get to you to help you understand this was getting out of control?
Tom 09:51
Well, they had many magic words, but I wasn’t willing to hear them for quite a while. Yay, I think I think it’s almost worse for the families you know because at least when I was in active addiction and doing all the crazy and hurtful things I wasn’t fully there for it frankly and I wasn’t fully emotionally connected to it or this kind of stuff and my family was and I kind of rationalized and justified like a lot of us that I wasn’t hurting anyone but myself in this kind of crap but just like I couldn’t shut down my brain regarding the chemical they can shut down their brain around me. You know, and I think a lot of us we also misinterpret what’s happening you know, I used to think of hurting someone as walking over and punching a face or something. Whereas when you approach me, and you told me something important about your day and I completely forget it. Or I have a completely abnormal reaction you tell me something sad I burst out laughing or this or that and what happened to me with my family is they started backing away because and I thought you know in my adult mind that I was getting better at hiding it they were just tired of getting lied to. They were tired or getting you know treated with disrespect things that I wasn’t fully aware of at the time and you know when I sobered up you know I thought I knew the whole picture which I think most people do but really throughout the years I figured out, at the beginning I think maybe saw at most 70% of it, because there was a whole bunch of stuff that my family shared with me later. Situations I hadn’t remembered or ways you know that they’ve been hurt and things like this that I probably would relapsed over in the beginning if they told me right away. Whereas once I was solid in my recovery in my brain had a chance to heal you know it just gives me more motivation to stay sober because I’m not that guy but an active addiction Yeah, I become a lunatic and I get kind of tired of that.
11:33
Margaret: And that’s exactly how families report feeling this is not my person they’re in there. I see glimmers but this is not them. How do I reach them?
Tom 11:42
Yeah, and that’s the whole problem with a disease of addiction I mean the brain disease piece of it, it overrides everything. And I’ve worked with pregnant women that couldn’t stop using it just rips them up, and I’m not sure if there is a stronger bond frankly.
And you know, I mean, addiction has a terrible stigma because you know we are screaming at the ground at 10,000 miles an hour we always have this naive notion that we can pull up at the last second and a lot of us have to go slamming into the ground at high speed to finally get our attention, You know, they talk about this as being the disease of yets in AA and NA you know, I haven’t lost a job yet, I haven’t lost a relationship yet etc. And you know, my first treatment I lost one job by my last I was completely unemployable. I couldn’t even stay sober long enough to show up to a job interview. And lost you know relationships and a house, and all this kind of stuff and it was like what does it take? But my family you know, they kind of go through the same kind of denial period to because just you know in the progressive nature of it in the beginning, we might drink at a holiday we’re making like a fool of ourselves but the incidences are far enough apart that they don’t connect the dots. By the time the dots are getting connected I see my loved one he’s looking in the eye or she is looking in the eye and their eyes are all messed up and they can smell the vodka on their breath and they’re telling you no, I didn’t drink today, there’s no way or whatever. And we want so desperately to believe them we kind of fall for this and that’s what I mean it drives us crazy, because we lie to ourselves. We lie to other people and the brain disease piece of that, that’s why addicts and alcoholics are so convincing because frankly I believed half the stuff that was rolling off my tongue while I was saying it.
13:16
Margaret: Absolutely, so I can just picture right now my audience and my clients screaming at me saying. Ask him what finally made the difference for him to get help. Because they’re living it right now. They’re loving people who are combusting in front of them.
Tom 13:36
Yeah, well I mean a combination of things I mean; the bottom line is my, I forced my family into some hard choices. You know, we talk about enabling sometimes versus supporting and enabling frankly comes from a place of love. People don’t want their loved ones to suffer etc. and for years you know, I would borrow money. I had a safe place to go if, you know things fell apart. I had to move back in with my parents a couple of random times and things and basically, they saved me. You know, um, and essentially by the end they started going to Al -Anon, they started realizing that you know, these efforts to help me in the short term were frankly just killing me in the long term. And so, at the very end essentially you know, after I kind of lost everything in Cleveland, the only people that were still speaking to me um, were my parents and so I moved in with them and promptly you know, stole a credit card and started using again, and all this kind of stuff. And they basically said you can go to homeless shelter, or you can go to one last treatment, and you know, they basically put down a firm boundary that they weren’t willing to put up with it anymore. And kind of rolling the dice that you know, if things go south and then they’re going south anyway.
So, at the time frankly, I hated them you know, I was so sick I didn’t really see it and but thank God they did because otherwise I’d be dead. You know, it took me a while to kind of start seeing things clearly again. But to answer your question I ran out of options.
15:03
Margaret: But you answered it in a nutshell for the families out there who need to hear it.
Tom: Okay
Margaret: Your family stopped enabling your disease.
Tom: Yeah.
Margaret: Your family stopped letting your disease hold them hostage.
Tom: Yeah.
Margaret: And yeah, as you said so eloquently, you are already going down to the worst place, the scariest place for a family member. And yes, that decision to say homeless shelter or treatment center probably at their core devastated them to have to say however, had they not said it you would have continued down the path under their roof and they would have had to watch that happen.
15:42
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Tom: I mean the problem is you know in active addiction give me an inch I will take a mile, and that’s where I think a lot of times family members can’t quite understand that. They think, you know we were choosing you know drugs or alcohol over them, which is not the case. It just basically is more powerful unfortunately. The great news is once we sober up and our brain heals that reverses again and we can be capable of loving relationships, everything. But when we’re in it, it comes before everything before my family, my friends, career aspirations whatever which again, you know, starts destroying self-esteem, self-confidence and then perpetuates this whole cycle because our distress tolerance gets very low and I’m not used to sitting with emotions for very long, and it’s terrible.
16:29
Margaret: Right? And to the self-loathing which fuels the disease, which fuels the use, and round and round we go into your example of a mother and her bond with her unborn child. You know I’ve heard from more children than I care to claim, why don’t why don’t I matter? Why is my love not enough to stop my mom or dad?
Tom: Yeah.
Margaret: And that’s the pain of the family side, that they believe your love for them should supersede the power of this illness, and it can’t.
Tom 17:05
Yeah, and it’s kind of like on the addict side you know, willpower can’t keep us sober. And on the family side, love unfortunately can’t, and that’s where yeah, a lot of us, we all suffer you know. I’m on both sides of this coin You know, I’ve got relatives and friends and family and everything else and on the addiction side I can shut my brain around the chemical on the family side it’s like you’re about to walk in the house and it’s like, who am I going to encounter. Is Tom going to be happy, glad, mad, sad peeing his pants, yelling at the moon? Which person, and being on eggshells all the time, is its own kind of hell.
17:39
Margaret: And I think the other piece of it is when you when you work in the profession of treating people with this illness, then the pain of that reality because we can’t make them change either. You know, on the professional side.
Tom: Yeah.
Margaret: You can offer the resources, offer the support, the tools, the education, the compassion, they have to do the work?
Tom: Yeah.
Margaret: So, the Al-Anon components come up even in our work environment when we care and work with people suffering in this illness.
Tom 18:08
Yeah. And I think that’s one of the things too you know, where unfortunately addiction has the terrible stigma, because most people don’t stop when it’s kind of bad. We stop when everything is terribly bad and a lot of times, we take the family and friends along for the ride with that. And that’s again coming back to boundaries and setting the standards that you know; I will support you but not the disease. They talk about in Al-Anon separating it and yeah, it’s really important.
18:37
Margaret: Mm hmm. And it sounds like in your story that was a life changing moment that your parents did exactly that.
Tom 18:44
Yeah, I mean they had I put them through hell for years
18:48
Margaret: Can I just interject? This is my language Tom, and you’ve probably heard me say this in other places but one of the things I say a lot to my family’s is your disease put them through hell.
Tom: True
Margaret: Your disease drug them along.
Tom: Yeah.
Margaret: And I think it’s really powerful to hear you say it in that way because I think that even the people who have the most education and recovery, we can still lose sight of the fact that the disease is the thing that controlled and destroyed us and hurt everyone we love!
Tom 19:22
Oh yeah. Yeah, and that’s the thing is you know even and that’s how powerful it is though this you know, whole piece of denial that we can’t really see what the truth is, and you know. The definition of denial is the inability to see the truth that doesn’t mean people are necessarily lying on purpose. I mean, some people are of course, but you know, like I remember, when I hit my first treatment I was still doing okay you know, at work and this and that and I was telling the counselor there the you know, that I was functional and this and that. And they started asking me some pointed questions, just say what about the diarrhea? What about this, you know, things I hadn’t even disclosed and I’m like, how do you know about the gastrointestinal stuff? How do you know about and you know, basically when people are drinking on a daily basis, the amounts I was drinking, I mean, you can’t help but have some, physical health issues, some mental health issues, difficulty functioning, dry heaves in the morning, all sorts of stuff that is almost always par for the course whether we talked about it or not? And when he started pointing out these things where your functional, but you know, I bet you probably had to go out to your car a few times a day, just so you didn’t start shaking at work? And I’m like, how did you know about that, you know, um, because we get very secretive, you know, because on some level, we’re completely embarrassed about the way we’re living. And we just have this naive notion that we’re the only ones struggling and the only one’s suffering. And that’s again, on the family side, the exact same thing. You know, it keeps everyone kind of locked in these cages, where we don’t even recognize there’s tons of people out there suffering with the same thing. But we’re all afraid to talk about it.
20:45
Margaret: So, you bring up a point about, you know, lying to ourselves, I remember my very first client I ever worked with, everybody in the family knew when they were in relapse, because the lights would get turned off, and the different things would happen. And this person lived alone. And they had cut out a hole in their drywall and put all their mail in it when they were drinking. And would hide every bottle. Who from? But themselves, to see the truth was just too painful. You know, and I wonder to speak to the people that go on the offensive, defensive rather than lie and try and keep you at bay kind of grandiose, getting your face because that does also happen with this illness, right?
Tom 21:31
Oh yeah.
Sometimes we don’t even put together the dots when we’re doing it. But you know, I could easily get combative with people or turn the tables on them and blame them for stuff. And it’s your fault, because, whatever. Because it gave me an excuse to go back out, you know, I was justified in my using because you’re being a jerk.
Even though I was the one that set the whole thing in motion. And that’s something they talk about a lot in 12 step recovery, you know, we step on our fellows’ toes, and they retaliate. And a lot of times, as addicts and alcoholics we don’t even realize how we’ve stepped on the other person’s toes. You know, I mean, the simple examples, they start lying to you, and over months and months, I’m lying to you, and you finally have had enough, and you yell at me, and then I get pissed at you for yelling at me, even though I set the whole thing in motion by lying to you in the first place.(laughter) That kind of stuff, which these days, I’m much more conscious of what’s going on. Whereas there, you know, half the time, we don’t even remember what lies you told. So, we’re legit when I never said that, we actually don’t believe we said that, even though we did. Which is again with family members, you know, they can feel like they’re going crazy, because like I was there last night, I know this happened and we’re telling you flat out to your face that no it didn’t. Yeah.
23:03
Margaret: Yeah,
Tom: It’s bad.
Margaret: Well, I think that’s you bring up a point that I heard recently, we’re a family was putting together an intervention and incredibly scared to do it, as many families are when they get to that point. And they had to be dishonest to get the person to their location.
Tom: Oh yeah
Margaret: And a week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks go by because they chose not to take the offer of treatment. Unfortunately, they’re getting mad at them for lying for them lying to them to get them to the intervention. (laughter)
Tom: Yeah.
Margaret: Like talk about insanity.
Tom: Yeah,
Margaret: Right. We in our disease lie, non-stop, consciously or unconsciously, to survive in active addiction.
Tom: Right.
Margaret: And how dare a family member use a dishonesty to try and get us help. And the indignity of that, the disease eats on and fuels off of and takes us back down to using,
Tom: Right
Margaret: that fast.
Tom 24:01
I think I mean; a big thing and I use this example a lot is, in general terms as addicts and alcoholics, we look at singular events, the time I crashed my car, the time I fell down the stairs, the time I yelled at my kids or my spouse or whatever. Whereas friends and family are walking on eggshells all the time, which person is showing up. and basically coming down from kind of opposite ends of the spectrum. Whereas you know, like the example I sometimes use is, if we speak 10 times, and one of the 10 times I lie to you, but you’re never quite sure which time I’m lying. Would you believe anything I said? Whereas on the addict alcoholic side, I’m looking at this one time I’m not lying. I’m not drinking today. You know, I’m ignoring the 10 days before this, that I’m stumbling around the house falling down the stairs, slurring my words, whatever. But right now, I’m sober, so how dare you not believe me? We just can’t see the bigger picture initially, a lot of times. I know I couldn’t.
Margaret: No, no, that’s a great example of exactly what it feels like on both sides of the coin of addiction.
Outro: I hope you appreciated the way Tom uses his quick wit, vast knowledge and experience to help explain the disease of addiction in his unique, wonderful way. Come back next week to actually hear Tom’s powerful Tiger Talk. You won’t want to miss this.
25:30
I want to thank my guest for their courage and vulnerability and sharing parts of their story.
Please find resources on my website
embracefamilyrecovery.com
This is Margaret Swift Thompson.
Until next time, please take care of you!
