Today Congresswoman Madeleine Dean and Harry Cunnane are back! This mother and son duo who wrote ‘Under Our Roof’ share more about their recovery journey. They answer the questions and offer so much more through their story.
Harry introduced me to a powerful quote I had never heard ‘while in addiction, trust is lost in buckets, and in recovery gained in drops!’
It is so helpful to hear how Mad and Harry navigated this truth about a symptom of the disease of addiction. This disease requires dishonesty for a person to survive in active use.
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See full transcript 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.
Intro: Welcome back! I so admire Mad and Harry’s gut level honesty. This duo has fought the stigma, shame, and judgment through sharing how they came to terms with the disease of addiction. I am inspired by them, and I know you will identify and relate to both of them, while learning from them as they share.
Wait until you hear the exploration around triggers on both sides of this coin!
Let’s get back to Harry and Mad.
The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast
Margaret 01:14
So, when you think back Mad as Harry’s mother, watching the disease take him. Do you remember a pivotal moment when you got a more honest truth of what that was? Do you remember that moment in the journey when you knew something was up before as you describe with a fire in the wall, but you couldn’t pinpoint it or get a good handle on it? You remember when that changed for you?
Madeleine Dean 01:38
There were a couple of moments. And I think two of them that I’m thinking of are in the book. One was when our next-door neighbor, Sean Flynn, our dear, dear friend, lived next door to us for 16/17 years, our kids all grew up together, the kind of guy that didn’t knock on the door as he came in your house. I mean, I wouldn’t let anybody else do that. (laughter)
But Sean had that spirit, one day he knew we were struggling and battling, and Harry was flunking out of school or doing something. And he said to me, I remember standing out on the front porch, and he said, Harry does look good. Charlotte thinks it’s drugs. In that moment, I thought it was drugs, but I didn’t want that reflected at me. I was actually wounded by that. It hurt, it stung. Because it, it made me think oh my gosh, they think my kid’s an addict.
Margaret:
Right.
Madeleine Dean:
It’s a harsh word.
Margaret 02:30
So, there’s many people listening who are experiencing the same thing. I’m a mom, I’ve worked my whole life to raise my children the same way. I’ve done everything I could to be that parent, and somehow if there’s a child within my system that has this illness, people are going to assume I did something or it’s going to reflect on me. That’s a hard one to hurtled through. How’d you find your way there?
Madeleine Dean 02:58
I guess some part of it was, Oh, God, it’s a reflection on me, on PJ, on our family. But I actually felt more wounded for Harry. That they saw him that way. But he had the courage to say that to me, I’m sure that was hard for him to say. And I was thinking of your listeners. What do you do when you think your friend’s child is in deep trouble? Do you say it to them? Of course, it could be lifesaving.
Margaret: Yes.
Madeleine: But it could also be friendship ending. It could divide a world.
I guess in by saying very clearly that the fact that Sean reflected in his eyes, the thought that my son was an addict, even though I’m drug testing, I’m sure we got a serious problem here. You’re right. I think I was trying to learn and absorb that truth. And I remember when you went to treatment, I taught writing – words matter. Having to deal with him saying I’m an addict. It’s a very harsh word. So, as I said to see it reflected that way, was very painful, but I think very loving on the part of my friend
Margaret 04:10
And courageous as you said,
Madeleine: yes, yeah.
Margaret: What a mirror your friend held up to you.
Madeleine: Correct.
Margaret: And I do think that’s the truth of what Harry was referring to with being around people like him in his active use, that was a mirror but worse, a little witch gosh, I can relate to because then I don’t have to look at me.
So, on the family side, it’s really important for people who care to share even though it’s scary, because it might be that moment of that validation or that awareness of okay, what I’m feeling is real. And I have someone else showing me that so now we figure out what to do next.
Madeleine Dean 04:47
Yeah, another moment of truth and reality. I knew I was grappling and grappling, and a very dear friend said you know what? Our neighbor and friend has been dealing with this for a couple of years with her own child. And so, I asked to have coffee with her. And I had by now gone to a couple of meetings of family support. And I would hear many of the same stories that I was living. He didn’t know I was doing this, but that I was living and experiencing. And so, I had coffee with her. And she really taught me a quick lesson.
Because I said, I can’t stand the people he’s hanging with. He’s lost all his old friends. And he’s hanging with these people that you don’t want to be with. He’s hanging with, as though they were lesser than he. And she said, why do you think he is? What are you doing? Like they were bad influence on him? She said, what do you think their parents say about Harry, don’t be blaming the other kids. They are an influence on themselves, they are choosing to do this. And it’s not just, he was hanging with some bad kids. He was a part of this trap that they were getting into.
And so that notion of it must just be peer pressure. That ignorance was taken away from me in that coffee. She just called me up short and said, what do you think their parents think of Harry? I was like, oh, you’re right. I’m just living in an ignorant moment here. And I had to recognize they were all in this in a very serious way.
Margaret 06:19
And give yourself compassion. Who doesn’t in these situations look for somewhere to put the blame? Because it’s our beloved person who we feel is being taken astray?
Madeleine: Yeah,
Margaret: I’m curious Harry when you hear your mum share that story? Do you have any reflections of your own experience being in it?
Harry Cunnane 06:37
I have many. (laughter)
Mad: One you might tell.
Harry: I think that being in it. And this was one of the things that was fascinating about when we did come back and start to read each other’s writing. I had no idea that she was doing any of this. I knew that she was on to me, but I thought they were much more, and I said they meaning both of my parents. I thought they were much more in the dark about what was happening. Our experience was that I was, I guess, pretty good at hiding it. Because I was never really caught red handed. And I think that that added a lot of challenges for my mom. And not just challenges but opportunities to sort of fuel denial, because I wasn’t being caught red handed. I wasn’t sort of giving her the answers on a silver platter. She could see everything; it was all happening in front of her eyes. But for me, I held on to that, right. She had never found drugs. She never really, really caught me.
But I say all of that. And I think it’s always important from my perspective, in that moment was I knew I had a problem. I knew I was in trouble. I knew my mom loved me. But I also was overwhelmed by this sense of shame that I felt towards myself.
Margaret: Yep.
Harry: And as a mechanism, you know, in a bad one, but a mechanism to try to shield my parents from that shame that I felt for me. I wanted to hide it.
Margaret: Yes.
Harry: Because I thought if they knew what I was doing and how I was living, then they would feel that same pain that I felt, because then the truth would be out there that they would know who I was. And it would devastate them. And that cycle is something that I think a lot of people find themselves in. There’s so much shame, so much denial, so much pain just swirling around. And what I’ve found is it only sort of heals through exposure, through putting it out there and recognizing that they weren’t in this to punish me. They weren’t in this to do anything other than try to love me. And in my twisted way, I thought that if I could hide it, that would make it easier for them to love me because how could anyone love someone like me? Because I can’t love me.
Margaret 09:05
Right? And again, my words, that’s the disease’s messaging.
I am a screw up; I am a failure. I am a fraud. I am unlovable, I am whatever. The only solution to survive that amount of pain is to continue to use. And to your point. I think what you just shared is really valuable on both sides of this coin.
So, my terms, Monkey Chatter is what Mad you were living in of worrying about, thinking about every possible scenario trying to figure it out, trying to catch, it trying to identify it, trying to you know, just bla, bla
Your two examples were friends who pointed out your Monkey Chatter to you. Like put a light on it, diffused the power it held over you.
And when we live in the disease, the disease is always talking to us in similar ways of why we need to, what we should, how we’ll get away with it dadada and all those bad things that it tells us about us, in our own voice, which makes it even more complicated. Shedding light on that diffuses the power of that. Letting someone in not necessarily family, because that is a hard bridge to go over. But letting another person who is in the disease has the recovery, our sponsors, our fellows. It diffuses the power the disease holds over us which we can then grapple into some of those solutions that are out there for us. Would you agree?
Harry: Absolutely.
Madeleine Dean 10:31
I was thinking of what you’re saying, you’re right, there is this chatter. I remember, every time they’d be quiet in my own life, this spinning wheel would go on, the chatter of is this normal experimentation adolescence, am I really just too hard on him.
Because the manifestation, of course, of his hiding, and me challenging was both of us fighting.
Margaret: Right.
Mad: The worst thing you can do to a mother is to threaten her child. And the manifestation is just, you know, like a mother in the wild, you’re just going to be aggressive. And so, I was aggressively fighting what was going on here. And of course, he was mad at me, trying to cover and so we spent way too long, a lot of time, fighting in the house. Which wasn’t easy on everybody else. I often think of that, and my husband trying to play a mediator in between us and try to say Mad, you’re overreacting Harry, you’re being too hard on your mom, or whatever that attempted mediation was. But when you’re dealing with this disease, it’s interesting how your roles become solidified, covering, and fighting it.
Margaret 11:40
And the triggers for family members are just as raw and real, as triggers are for a person with the disease of substance use disorder and other addictions. I’m guessing some of your triggers were times of night, where maybe Harry wasn’t there when he should have been curfew braking or who he was with? Or did he get up for work? Or go to school? Or you know, like, the nonstop triggers?
Mad: Yeah. All of those.
Margaret: Do any still exist, Mad? Like, do you notice there’s anything even to this day, though, Harry’s actively recovery and doing well in his program and living his life much more fully than he was before? To notice that there’s any little weird where your gut goes, whoop, and your head starts to go, even to this day.
Madeleine Dean 12:29
Almost 10 years in recovery no, or not that I can think of. But now you’re gonna make me aware of it, watch out Har. But certainly, in the first years, just coming in late and be like, oh, what’s going on?
You can imagine in active addiction, he was chronically unable to get up in the morning, effectively go to work. And I would say, My God, it’s like, we’re back in junior high, you’ve got to be kidding me. But I will say now, no, I don’t have, that I’m aware of any of those triggers. But the first year to three, there were little things that I would just look twice, like, why is he in the bathroom that long? You know.
Margaret 13:11
The fans going off too long, or
Mad: Oh, yeah
Margaret: a certain area of the house or a certain mannerism that was more typical and use that just lingers.
Because I find that one of the biggest struggles for family members in early recovery. And Harry I’d love your perspective as the person with mums experience. Even though the person sober, the triggers, elicit the same response and family, if they’re not getting their own help. They don’t know where to go with those triggers, if they don’t have their sponsor, their fellows, their friends, their peers, their partners to talk about it with.
For example, the sound of a popcorn opening that sounds like a beer. If somebody has been a beer drinker, and you’re at a family event, and there’s stuff around and everybody’s kosher, it’s been discussed, and then you hear that sound. And there’s this visceral response and it’s like, okay, what do I do in this moment? Do I call turnaround and challenge? Do I? Do I look, do I pretend I don’t care? Do I run out of the room? Do I attack the person verbally? Like, it happens in a nanosecond.
Mad: Yeah.
Margaret: But on the flip side of that, the person with the recovery and early recovery. When you have those trigger responses, hairy people in your life are like hyper vigilant still or reactive. What’s the story? What happens for you?
Harry Cunnane 14:31
So, for me, the initial reaction was, come on, can’t you see doing this and I think that’s where surrounding myself with other people in recovery to sort of remind me. Because it is a profound miracle when someone is capable of going from substance use disorder and daily use, constant use, to one day, two days, three days. He’s like that is, and for the person that’s experiencing that, your third day, your fifth day, without using, It’s often still very painful. But it’s incredibly profound. And you want people around you to recognize that. And for me, there were a couple of things that were pieces of wisdom that were given to me, the one expression that I love, and we use all the time is that trust is gained in drops and lost in buckets.
Madeleine Dean 15:31
I may have used that in an impeachment. (laughter) He taught me that one.
Margaret: I love that one.
Harry Cunnane 15:36
But to sort of come into that realization, having other people in recovery that were like, look, yes, this is a huge deal. Don’t take it for granted. But recognize you’ve been lying. You’ve been deceiving. You’ve been trying to cover up what you were doing for so, so long, that how could they trust you yet? Because how many times did you say before you weren’t doing it? So, it has to be about actions. And that, for me was, was difficult because I wanted to fix everything right away, I caused this incredible wreckage and not just the relationships with my parents, but in all of my relationships, and I wanted to fix it. But what I learned from others who had been through this who had, maybe they had six months, maybe they had a year, maybe they had 25 years; was if you keep just putting one foot in front of the other and trying to do the right thing, that eventually it gets better. Doesn’t mean every relationship is going to be fixed. Some aren’t salvageable. And that’s okay. But if you continue to do those things, then eventually you’ll be able to look back and see that the trust has been rebuilt. And that’s what’s happened for us.
Madeleine Dean 17:00
It is the droplets. You’re right? It’s time after time after time of his being truthful, being just honest about himself and what he was doing that it was regained. But you know, at the point, you actually recognize that we’re in this world, and the moment I really got it, that was really what scared me so much. Number one, can we save his life? But number two, will we ever trust each other again? And I’m here to tell youboth are back.
Margaret: Yeah.
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Margaret 19:00
And I think that’s the other piece. I think that when we’re in the mire of it and the misery of it, there’s no way to believe we can get trust from anyone else because we don’t even think we can trust ourselves.
And the other piece of it is that I try to remind people in early recovery of this is someone who loves you at your core. They will regain trust in you if your words and actions match over time, you will regain their trust.
But until their substantial time with words and actions matching
As a survival mechanism in active addiction, we have to be masterful at dishonesty, and pushing people away, and keeping everyone from getting in our face who might actually love us enough to say something. So, to think that that’s just going to be an on off switch when we suddenly get sober is a setup for us.
Did you rely Harry on people? Like when you were triggered by that reaction. Because we do right in early recovery. It’s raw. Did you go to your people and talk it out and say I was just with mom or whoever and this happened and when will they stop doing that or whatever?
Harry Cunnane 20:02
Yes, I relied heavily on finding a community of people that had been through this, that I could go to that would sort of talk me back off of the ledge. And I think that the important thing that I needed to recognize and learn was just being able to stop the use was sort of the foundation for everything else.
But what I had accumulated through my substance use disorder was a lot of really bad habits. It’s honesty, just inability to manage my time wake up early, my schedule, and my routine was built in a way that supported substance use disorder. And I think it’s important for someone who’s early in recovery, but I think it’s also really important for family members to recognize. That it’s not just one causes all of the other, and that all of those behaviors would disappear right away. It’s learned practice. Right, learning how to be honest again, learning how to wake up, learning how to show up on time. And early on little things like if, you know, I say, I’m going to do the dishes,
Margaret: I do them.
Harry: I didn’t do them because I’m using again. My habits need an overhaul. And that,
Margaret: well said,
Harry: that’s a really hard time for families. And it’s a really hard time for the person in recovery. And that’s where I found that I needed that guy with 25 years to sort of remind me of how silly, some of it will be in the long run. Because when I was there, it’s all consuming. It’s how do they not see that I’m doing so much better? It’s like, well, are you doing that much better, if you’re still lying about what you’re doing, or you’re not being consistent in your follow through? I relied heavily on other people. But I think that that’s just such a hard time because those triggers are so raw. And what the person in early recovery is doing is constantly triggering the family. And when the family is triggered their reaction, their response is then triggering the person who’s in early recovery, to feel that pain again. And it’s just a very delicate time. And I think that’s why it’s important for me to have that community. But you know, in the work that you’re doing, I think it’s so important that families have that, right,
Margaret: I agree
Harry: Where I am, it’s just we always say that you have to heal the family system. If you put one person back, that sort of into treatment and is in recovering, you put them into that same sort of broken system that has all of these trapdoors, and triggers. Maybe they’ll get through it, but it’s going to be really, really hard unless everyone in that system is open to healing.
Madeleine Dean 23:01
I really think back on your early recovery, and I remember I didn’t do it totally consciously. But thinking for example, if Harry said he was going to load the dishwasher, and he didn’t, that that was a measure of his recovery, that that must mean always not fulfilling the recovery things, too. I didn’t really even think about it before. But just those daily things of routine, I’m thinking of the book that a general wrote, and the title was make your bed. Just that discipline of make your bed, get up on time, go to work well dressed, load the dishwasher. I do remember in those early months and years, thinking if he didn’t live and fulfill that small detail of the day, is that some measure of oh, God, he’s slipping away again. Strange, I didn’t think of it.
Margaret 23:54
I don’t think that’s strange, Mad. I think that makes total sense. We’ve watched someone go off the rails to a point that we’ve been worried about their life, we get them to a point where they’ve gone to treatment and they’re engaging in recovery. We have no marker to compare that to it’s a whole new world. And so, what do we compare it to “normal” things we would look for in progression of responsibility. And the Monkey Mind, my term, will take us to dishes aren’t done. Oh,oh that’s a bad sign. That means that he’s not actually going to his meeting, when he says he’s going to meeting, I maybe need to GPS track him to make sure he’s actually doing that. Because if he’s not doing that, then he’s not doing this. And if he doesn’t do the dishes, which is something he says gonna do it, you know, that’s what happens. And so that voice kicks in and we go to high alert and we’re in fear and flight and then we’re reactive and to Harry’s point earlier. It’s such a raw time when someone gets newly into recovery and this one thing, they’ve dependent on for decades potentially to survive life day by day is no longer there. There are walking open wound and raw. And so, the reactivity I called myself a porcupine in early recovery, you came close to me, I’m like, you know, because I didn’t know what to do with those feelings. And I think that’s true on both sides, so grace is one of the words I try to incorporate and working with my family’s. Grace for ourselves. Because you love this person, you want nothing but the best for them, grace for them that they’re really raw and vulnerable, and are learning and you can’t be their teacher, which is hard. And to find a path where you both get help.
You know, it’s kind of like that visual. When we start our recovery path. We already feel like we’re this far apart because the disease is in the middle. It’s very true in couples. When we start our own recovery, it almost feels we go further apart before we come together, but that’s the perfect storm because when we go further apart, Harry’s reaching out to his guy, 25 years recovery, who’s like, whoa, Harry, you know, that’s right size you buddy. You know your heads a little off the charts here. Mad you go to your friend who’s also gone through this with their loved one and they’re like, wait a minute, what about the friends, right? Like, they’re all doing the same thing. That’s that beautiful component that if we can embrace the community of recoveries for both sides of the coin, it actually allows us to develop a healthier relationship and rebuild that trust. Hard to do though.
Mad: Hard to do.
Outro: I am so grateful to stay open to learning and feel blessed to have been in the company of Mad and Harry because I have found their sharing and explanations of this disease a continuation of my growth and education around the family disease of addiction.
Come back next week, you won’t want to miss the treat of hearing Harry and Mad when they pick a part of their book to read to us, and another teaser they’ll share about their other book they wrote together!
I want to thank my guest for their courage and vulnerability in sharing parts of their story.
Please find resources on my website.
This is Margaret Swift Thompson.
Until next time, please take care of you!
