Calling An Addiction Intervention Specialist

I just did it one day. I called the Addiction Intervention Specialist. lAfter reading Why Don’t They Just Quit: Hope for Families Struggling with Addiction, I just picked up the phone and called Joe Herzanek.

I sat on that ordinary day with no big crisis looming and listened to Joe talk truth to me.  Joe introduced me in his own gruff unique way to the concept of “raising the bottom.”

An Alanon slogan “You didn’t cause it,  you can’t cure it, and you can’t control it” was already rolling around in my head.  If I accepted that none of the “C” options above were available to me, then what?

In his book, Joe says “Taking the blame for another person’s poor decisions solves nothing.” (pg 96)

Ok, I am ready to let go of all the blame! Joe patiently explained to me that making everything look alright inside and outside the family was classic addict family behavior.

“Stop picking up the pieces, covering the bills, taking on all the family responsibilities.  Let your daily life reflect what is actually happening.  Stop the secrets”, Joe told me.

I told Joe I already belonged to an Al-Anon group where I let it all out.  I aired my hurts, worked on my codependency issues and did not keep secrets.  Joe agreed that the community support, while important, was not going to end the addiction in my household.

He stressed that my present action of cleaning up after problems caused by addition just allowed the addict to keep using.  While I could not force my husband to quit using, I could “raise the bottom.”

Bad times have a scientific value.  These are occasions a good learner would not want to miss.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rasing the Bottom with Clear Boundaries

My desperate need to control this pretend family peace actually kept my husband and I stuck in our addictions longer than necessary. For mine and my husband’s health, I needed to stop taking care of everything.  “Let life look like it really is not what you would like it to be,” Joe said.

Many men and women will fight with their alcohol/addiction problem until they are mentally and physically depleted.  That is when the recovery process will begin. (pg 103)

Exhausted, I thought, “Yes, I can’t keep handling everything, the children, work, the big, big house, and 300 chickens!”

Helping can be harmful, if you are doing for someone else what they could and should do for themselves.

Then Joe said, “Now you need to ‘raise the bottom’ with clear boundaries.”

“OK,”  I thought, “Al-Anon talks a lot about boundary setting. I can do this.”  At this point at least inside the family, my husband’s addiction was no longer a secret.   We were at a standoff, he was not living without his substance of choice and I was not going to live with it.  Neither of us had made a physical move to do anything about it other than argue and blame each other.

Joe, a veteran addiction intervention specialist, strongly recommend that I draw up separation papers; then ask my husband to either leave the house or get help.  Thus, putting teeth behind my statement that I will not live with him as long as he is using.

“Let him figure out what is most important in his life rather than you telling him,” Joe, the addiction intervention specialist, said firmly.

My mind went blank. Yet another failed marriage this one with two children.  I can’t fail again my mind screamed!  I politely thanked Joe for his time and got off the phone.

“Crap,” I thought, why is it always up to me to make a big move?  Why do I have to do everything?”  From the distance of years, I certainly see that my pride, my fear of failure, and my need to prove to God and everyone that I can make this family run smoothly smothered my opportunity to get free from mine and my husband addictions.

I began to apply many of the principles Joe and Judy talk about in their book “Why Don’t They Just Quit,” but I was not ready to stop my enabling, controlling behavior that allowed both of us to dig deeper into our unhealthy habits.

Houses are Projects Not Men

I learned that men were not fixer-upper projects in my first marriage, but I could not seem to apply it.  “Raising the bottom” by stating that I would leave, if he did not get sober exposed too much of my own failure for me to face.

I stayed in the marriage not for him or even for the kids, but because I could not face myself.  At that time, I had just started reaching out to God.  His words were just beginning to show me how much he loved and valued me even with all my mistakes and failures.

I was stuck, I had made this marriage bed now I  was going to lie in it.  I already knew the high emotional price of divorce.  Sheer stubbornness forced me forward day after day as I cried out to God.

Many men and women will fight with their alcohol/addiction problem until they are mentally and physically depleted.  That is when the recovery process will begin. (pg 103)

I heard those words over in my head again and again. I did not realize I had the choice for my healing of hurts, habits, and hang-ups sitting squarely on my shoulders, not my husbands.  Whether he ever got sober or not, I needed to focus on my issues.

Exhausted and depressed I cried out to God on early morning walks with my boxer for over two years.  I poured it all out to God pleading that I was too broken and weak to move out of the house.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12: 9-10