Hopestream for parenting kids through drug use and addiction

Brook McKenzie's personal story of addiction and recovery Brook McKenzie's journey into addiction began around age 13 or 14. By 15 he needed treatment, and he went through three adolescent treatment programs between 15 and 17. His brother took a very different path — college, career, marriage — while Brook's life looked nothing like that through his adolescent years and well beyond. He did not get into long-term recovery until he was in his 30s. Reflecting on that time, Brook says the suffering his family experienced may have been greater than his own. 'The terror, the confusion, the guilt, all of the fear that my mom and dad and brother and extended family experienced defies description.' His family made decisions in isolation with no real community or guidance available to them. What finally changed things, he says, was that the people who loved him most eventually allowed him to fully experience the consequences of his own decisions. 'They finally took a loving step back and said, you know what, we're gonna allow Brook to experience fully the consequence that he creates.' Until that happened, he was always waiting on them to solve the problems he created. Why parenting from fear keeps everyone stuck Brook describes a cycle where both the addicted loved one and the parents are each seeking relief. The loved one reaches for a substance. The parents reach for what he calls their own lever — doing something, fixing something, paying something — to get relief from the fear or guilt they feel in the moment. 'Everyone's just trying to feel better. Everyone's trying to feel relief. Everyone's trying to feel and access more comfort. In my experience, as long as my family was pursuing that, I was never getting better.' — Brook McKenzie He describes fear as having just two faces: being afraid of losing something you have, or being afraid of not getting something you want. Any parent, he says, can look back over the past 48 hours and recognize one or both of those at work in a recent decision. The illusion of control and the ineffective contract Brook has seen parents do a great deal of talking and telling — explaining to their child why they need to change, trying to find the right words to inspire them. He says he has worked with thousands and thousands of families and has never, not even once, seen that approach produce a good result. What he has seen work is parents shifting to simply stating what they will do and what they will not do, and leaving it there. When parents start doing that, he says, the results can come in weeks or months, not years. He also describes what he calls an ineffective contract that families get locked into — an unspoken arrangement where fear and guilt on one side produce rescuing and enabling on the other. 'The families that do the best, I mean there's no comparison, are the families that make a decision and say, you know what, I'm willing to feel. I'm willing to feel the discomfort, the trepidation, the pain, the guilt, and the fear. I'm willing to walk through it.' Disabling versus enabling: how lowering the bar harms the loved one Brook prefers the word disabling over enabling, because he says it more accurately captures what happens over time. When families continuously do things for the loved one that the loved one could do for themselves, they are sending a message — not an intentional one, but a message all the same — that they do not believe the loved one is capable. 'Every time someone who loved me did something like that for me, they were demanding that I acknowledge I'm not capable of doing these things. I'm not capable of basic responsibilities. I'm not capable of accountability. I'm not capable of being responsible for really any aspect of my life.' — Brook McKenzie He also talks about how the bar drops for the addicted loved one while staying in place for siblings. The goal, he says, is to get that bar back up as quickly as possible and to be honest with the loved one about what is expected and what the family will and will not do. What parents can actually do differently When asked what ends up in the two columns — what we will do and what we will not do — Brook keeps it simple. What parents will do is support access to recovery and treatment. What they will not do is lie, make excuses, or pay debts the loved one created through their own choices and decisions. He also encourages parents who are in therapy to go in with a specific purpose: to explore how fear and guilt are shaping their parenting decisions. 'Go in, be honest, authentic, and say, hey, I've become very curious about how my fear and my guilt is influencing my parenting decisions. Can you help me with that?' For parents wondering why their child pushes back or threatens or withdraws love the moment a parent starts holding firmer, Brook has a clear answer: 'They do that because it works. That's the only reason.' And the good news, he says, is that once the loved one sees that tactic no longer works, they stop doing it almost immediately. His final message to parents: you must go first. The families waiting on their loved one to change are, in his experience, unlikely to see results. The families who make changes in their own behavior, get into community, and are willing to feel the discomfort of doing harder things — those are the families he sees get good outcomes.

Episode 341 ABOUT THE EPISODE: You‘ve probably watched your child make a decision so obviously terrible you could not understand how it made sense to them. Darren Hobbs can tell you exactly how it looked, because he made that decision. He had done treatment. He had a sponsor, a home group, a year chip. Then he took some cash he made, drove back to his old dealer, and fully believed he could be the sober cocaine dealer in a small college town. His story starts at 14, with a Vicodin prescription after surgery and the discovery that with substances in him, everything was better, easier and more fun. It runs through years of drinking and cocaine, wrecked cars, stolen money, and parents who kept trying to love him out of it. It ends, or maybe begins, on the floor of a Nashville bar with undercover detectives on top of him, staring at 20 years in prison. What changed him was not the arrest. It was a phone call from his mother, and one sentence she said that I know broke her heart - and drove his recovery. Darren is a Certified Intervention Professional, founder of The Firm Addiction Consulting in Nashville, and a cast member on A&E's Intervention. He has taken hundreds of families through interventions, and he is blunt about what parents do that keeps their kids stuck. He also told me the most extraordinary story of divine timing I have heard on this show. If you watch on YouTube, you will see the goosebumps on both of us. This is the first of four recovery stories this month, and I started here because Darren says out loud the things our kids cannot. If you are watching your child choose the things that will hurt them and cannot make sense of it, this one is for you. YOU'LL LEARN What Darren told himself the day he decided he could sell cocaine and stay sober The one sentence his mother said on the phone that did what years of crime, jail and chaos never did Why he says parents are the ones who installed the buttons their kids know how to push The two things he sees in almost every family who calls him at crisis point The tool he calls an industry guarded secret for families who cannot get in a room together EPISODE RESOURCES: The Firm Intervention and Addiction Consulting, Nashville, TN Darren on Instagram Die Sober Podcast, hosted by Darren Hobbs and Zach Livingston: https://www.thefirmaddictionconsulting.com/podcast The Stream, free two-week trial: https://hopestreamcommunity.org/try Worried Sick free ebook: https://hopestreamcommunity.org/worried This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream CommunityLearn about The Stream, our private online community for momsFind us on Instagram hereWatch the podcast on YouTube hereDownload a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and AlcoholHopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

Why parents struggle with boundaries Before she understood what boundaries were, Brenda described feeling invisible — like a doormat — with rules that nobody followed and no way to enforce anything. 'I felt like I was invisible, like I was a doormat, like none of my rules were being followed,' she shared. That frustration didn't stay contained. It boiled up into anger, resentment, and eventually moments she wasn't proud of — like unplugging an Xbox and throwing it across the room. Cathy recognized the same pattern in herself. She called herself 'the marshmallow.' The harder her husband got with their kids, the softer she became. And she was honest about why: fear. Fear that if she said 'no drugs in this home,' her kids would walk out and never come back. 'The reality was that's happened without me setting that boundary,' she said. They left anyway. 'There's so much resentment. Not only with your kids, but seems like with everybody. That just like you said, that anger, to me, it overflowed to everything.' — Cathy Cioth Both hosts were clear that this kind of overwhelm is common and worth naming directly. When you don't have boundaries, resentment builds. Anger spills onto everyone. You find yourself trying to hold together a version of yourself that looks fine on the outside while everything at home is falling apart. And sometimes, you snap. What a boundary actually is The most important thing both hosts wanted listeners to understand is that a boundary is not an ultimatum. An ultimatum is an attempt to control what someone else does. A boundary is about what you need and how you will respond. Cathy described her mental image of a white picket fence around a small plot of green grass. 'Your boundaries are for you,' she said. 'What you need to be safe, what you need to feel healthy.' There is a gate in the fence — people can come in, and you can go out — but the terms for entering are yours to set. 'When you learn how to create a boundary, when you realize who they're for, and once you do it and you have a little bit of success, it feels so good. And then you want to keep doing it, you want to build on that. It's like you're exercising this amazing muscle and it gets stronger.' — Cathy Cioth Brenda added that boundaries always start with 'I' — 'I need this,' or 'I feel this way, and therefore this is what I'm going to do.' They are not 'you can't do this.' That distinction matters. Real examples of boundaries in the home Cathy shared how she and her husband addressed finding drugs in their home. They called drugs 'software' and the implements used to take them 'hardware.' After talking it through together — not in the middle of a confrontation — they decided: no drugs in the home. If found, they would be disposed of, and their son would not be able to stay the night. 'Oh boy, that was such a tough one for me, honestly,' Cathy said. Her son stayed out of the house many times. It felt defeating. But she and her husband had agreed on it together, communicated it calmly in advance, and held it. 'When we first set out that boundary, my son took it really well.' Brenda shared a boundary she held for herself first — stopping herself from waking her son up for school. She knew the only way to break her habit of going downstairs to check on him was to physically remove herself: a walk with the dog, or a shower. 'At first, it was just painful. I'm in the shower, just did it feel so forced,' she recalled. But eventually he started getting himself up. The harder boundary came during a family move. Brenda had set conditions for her son to move with them — going to therapy, not using in the home, packing his room, being out by eight in the morning for showings. He did none of them. On moving day, with the pods in the driveway and the house empty, he was in a sleeping bag in the corner of his room saying he wasn't leaving. She had to bag up his childhood belongings and tell him he could not come with them — and could not know their new address because she was scared of the people he was involved with. 'That took a lot of therapy to be able to do that,' she said. 'If you are at the point where you have to hold a boundary that severe, get yourself some support. Don't try to do that alone.' — Brenda Zane Emotional and attitudinal boundaries Brenda was clear that boundaries aren't only about your child — they are also about protecting your own emotional state. These include things like deciding not to scroll social media during prom season or graduation if it's painful, setting aside time to exercise, or arranging meals so you can actually nourish yourself when you don't have the mental bandwidth to cook. Cathy spoke specifically about setting a boundary around social media during hard seasons: 'Give yourself that grace, set a boundary around social media or whatever that is that might be affecting you because I think it's just so important. Those are some really tough times emotionally.' Boundaries with family members Brenda also walked through how boundaries extend to siblings, extended family, and even well-meaning relatives who always have an opinion about what you should do with your child. She described the example of a sister who brings up your struggling child every time you're together: you might set a boundary that says, for a while, that topic is off the table when we see each other. If she can't do that, you may need to spend less time together in person. Cathy added that boundaries don't have to be all-or-nothing. 'Maybe you could say to your sister, hey, look, five minutes we could chat about it. But after that, I just really want to enjoy this holiday with the family.' Tweaking a boundary so it still works for you is completely allowed. And boundaries can change over time — what worked or felt necessary a year ago may not need to be the same today.

The pressure to get your kid across the finish line By the time a struggling teenager reaches senior year, most parents have already been through so much that graduation itself feels like a personal accomplishment. As Brenda put it, 'I got my son graduated from high school. I should get the diploma because I'm actually the one who got them graduated.' Kathy said the same thing happened with her son: 'I was sitting there thinking, oh, we did it. Not he did it, we did it.' That exhaustion matters when it comes to the college decision, because it can make parents more likely to push forward even when something feels off. Kathy was direct about this: 'We really needed the break because it was just a lot at the time.' What can go wrong between graduation and move-in day Both hosts described the stretch between the end of high school and the start of college as a particularly risky window. There is often money already committed — tuition paid in advance, housing deposits made — and family expectations that feel impossible to walk back. Brenda noted that there can be a kind of magical thinking that things will self-correct once a kid gets to campus. 'I think for me it was like, I had to stop trying to control everything' — But what both hosts actually described was the hope that college itself would fix things: 'Once they go to college, they kind of even out, they naturally have to take more responsibility. That was our thought.' — Kathy Cioth Brenda was candid that for kids who are already struggling with substances, that natural correction is less likely given how much stronger what is available now is compared to what previous generations encountered. Kathy's son later told her there were far more drugs and far more variety at his college than he had ever seen before. Warning signs to watch for once they are away Kathy described a gradual unraveling: her son's calls became more frequent, she could see he did not look well at parent weekend, and she was learning through social media and others that he had been dropping classes. 'He would always kind of recover. And so we thought, well, it's okay.' But by mid-November, his calls changed tone entirely. He kept saying he needed to get out. When her gut told her to go, she flew to Arizona, rented a car, and picked him up herself. 'I knew it was the right thing to bring him home.' Brenda echoed this with a story about a friend whose son's opioid use skyrocketed at college. Her friend flew out unannounced because something felt wrong. 'When you have a gut feeling, follow it. You know when something feels wrong.' Steps to take before they leave Kathy encouraged parents to reach out to the university before move-in day to ask what crisis resources and recovery supports are available on campus. She described recovery clubs, peer support groups, and crisis centers that now exist at many schools, much of which expanded after COVID. 'If you are in that situation where you're sending off your kid right now, please go to the university, reach out to them.' Brenda added a practical step that most parents do not think about until it is too late: getting a medical waiver or medical power of attorney signed before the child leaves. She described standing in a hospital after her son's second overdose and being told by nurses that they could not share any information because her son was 19. 'If they go off to college and they're 18 and they're in a car accident and they're in the hospital and you call and try to get information, they will not give it to you because they're an adult.' Both hosts also talked about setting clear expectations before writing the check: what grade average you expect, whether they will work or volunteer, whether they will have access to a car or a set allowance. Kathy's family decided no car freshman year. Brenda described it as a major financial exchange that deserves real terms on both sides. Alternatives to sending them right now For families who are not sure their child is ready, both hosts were enthusiastic about options that do not get talked about enough. Deferring for a year was described as a way to work on mental health and build a stronger foundation without closing the door on college entirely. 'You're not telling your kids you can't go. You're just saying hey, we're just saying one year.' They also mentioned local community college, a nearby apartment arrangement, and therapeutic gap year programs. Brenda referenced a website called allkindsoftherapy.com as a place where parents can search for gap year options with different filters. An educational consultant was also mentioned as a resource for navigating these options. Both hosts were also clear that the timeline pressure around college is worth examining. Kathy's daughter is working on her degree at 26. Brenda's son started a master's program at 28. Her younger son never went to college and runs a successful business. 'College doesn't have to happen in between the ages of 18 and 22 folks. Let's normalize that.' Grieving the experience you imagined One of the most honest parts of the conversation was about grief. Kathy described stopping going to the college care package gatherings her friend group did every few weeks, feeling like she could not explain why she no longer had a kid at school. 'It made me feel so bad. And I couldn't even tell everybody.' Brenda named it plainly: when you do not get to make that drive, set up the dorm room, wear the sweatshirt, and go to parent weekend, the loss is real and it deserves to be acknowledged. But she and Kathy both said that years out, the story looks very different. 'Having the experiences that we have now with our kids, these healthy, healthy, vibrant relationships, I mean, oh my gosh. I'll take it any day over a 100% cotton university of wherever sweatshirt.' — Kathy Cioth Brenda added that perspective is everything, and that a few years down the road this will not feel the way it feels today.

What psychological testing actually is — and is not When Brenda first heard the term 'psych eval' during her son's time in wilderness therapy, she had never encountered it before. That unfamiliarity is common, and it's part of why Dr. Graham Husick wanted to start with a baseline. Testing, he explained, spans many areas — academic, forensic, and more — but the kind most relevant to families navigating substance use is the psychological evaluation designed to build a profile of the whole person, not just arrive at a diagnosis. 'The idea is, before we launch into all these different kinds of treatment, all these different kinds of settings... can we get basically a psychological profile of this person? Not of their diagnosis, but of this actual person.' — Dr. Graham Husick He used a medical comparison that stuck: a surgeon doesn't open someone up because they have stomach pain. They do an MRI first. Psychological testing, he said, is meant to serve that same function before families and clinicians decide on wilderness programs, residential treatment, therapeutic boarding schools, or any other path. Treating the person, not just the problem One of the clearest ideas Dr. Husick offered was the difference between treating the problem within the person versus treating the person with the problem. When everyone zeroes in on the substance use itself, he said, the understanding of the human underneath often gets lost. He pointed to depression as an example — research shows it is a nonspecific symptom, something like a fever in physical health, with many different pathways to it. If clinicians just treat depression without understanding which pathway applies to this particular person, they may not be treating anything meaningful. The same applies to substance use. Dr. Husick noted that a long list of diagnoses picked up across multiple programs often tells clinicians so much and in reality so little at the same time. He observed that when he reviews evaluations that kids have had in the past two or three years, the diagnosis list has hopefully narrowed, but the recommendations that come out are usually copy-pasted — matching a diagnosis to a standard approach — without actually helping the family or the young person move forward. What good testing looks at beyond diagnosis Dr. Husick described several psychological capacities he examines in a thorough evaluation. One is reality testing — how well someone's perceptions line up with what others generally perceive, including the conditions under which that breaks down. Another is reasoning patterns, including what he called confabulation, where a person starts with a conclusion and builds reasoning around it rather than the other way around. This matters because it shapes what kinds of therapy a person can actually engage with. He also discussed emotion regulation and what tends to tip someone into dysregulation, IQ testing — which he said he always includes because the peaks and valleys in someone's abilities can be shocking and directly affect how therapy works — and how someone approaches relationships, including whether they tend to see people as whole or in a more split, all-good or all-bad way. 'The point of testing is to be able to tell things about a person that they're not able to just vocalize to us themselves.' — Dr. Graham Husick He also described something he called facilitation — where a person who is generally calm becomes rageful when drunk, not because the alcohol created the rage, but because something in them has had trouble finding expression. He gave a detailed example of a patient who, outside her awareness, was using alcohol to try to revisit and remaster a traumatic experience. This kind of dynamic, he said, is not something usually talked about or understood in substance use treatment, and yet sometimes it makes all the difference. What the substance someone uses can reveal Dr. Husick said the drug itself is useful information, though not the only piece. He drew a clear contrast between opiates and cocaine as an example. 'You hear this often, the idea of like opiates being like a warm hug... That's telling us something very different from the person who loves cocaine in that way. Cocaine doesn't usually feel like a warm hug for people. It usually feels like they are king of the castle kind of thing. And that's gonna tell you something different about somebody's personality and what it might be essentially substituting for in that way.' — Dr. Graham Husick Beyond the substance itself, he pointed to what the use is doing for the person — whether it's modulating an unusually high need for stimulation, filling a social and identity role, or facilitating access to an emotional experience the person can't reach otherwise. Why insurance coverage is a real obstacle Dr. Husick was direct about the tension between what thorough testing requires and what insurance will pay for. His testing process involves multiple sessions — meetings beforehand, one or two major testing days, feedback sessions, and ongoing support afterward — totaling roughly 15 to 20 hours per case. Insurance, he said, typically pays for about six hours. That gap forces clinicians to either do more with less or work outside the insurance system, which means fewer families can access it. He said he has never seen insurance properly reimburse the full extent of what testing can do, and that the incentive structures are basically just broken when it comes to this.

Parenting out of fear — and not even knowing it Cathy described the first time she heard the phrase 'parenting out of fear' and admitted she didn't know what it meant. 'All I knew was I was just doing the best that I could,' she said. It wasn't until a therapist walked her through it — pointing to specific behaviors like driving around looking for her son's drug dealer, trying to keep him home, making decisions out of panic — that she understood. Both Brenda and Cathy reflected that this fear-driven approach was something they'd lived inside for so long it started to feel normal. When one person holds the family hostage One of the most honest observations in this episode is about what happens when a child's emotional state runs the entire household. Brenda described it directly: 'My son's emotional state dictated my emotional state. I did not have the skills to separate those two things, so if he was highly dysregulated, aggressive, angry, whatever, I matched him toe-to-toe.' Both hosts described how this plays out in practice — avoiding confrontation, giving money for a job not really done, letting a 15-year-old set the rules of the house — all to prevent a blowup. Cathy said she 'ceded all her authority' to her kids. The result, Brenda noted, is that one person ends up holding the entire family hostage with their actions and emotions, and the parent loses their footing entirely. Why emotional sturdiness — not just regulation — is the right frame Brenda explained why she deliberately chose the word 'sturdiness' over 'emotional regulation' when preparing for this episode. Regulation is important, she said, but sturdiness and durability capture something harder — the ability to have a young person raging at you and not pick up the rope with them, to hold a boundary even when your child is presenting things back to you in a way that makes you want to give in. 'We wanted to convey the fact that we understand how hard it is, and that it really is more about this sturdiness and durability and the ability to deal with situations that most people don't have to deal with.' This is also, both hosts emphasized, something that is 100% in your control — which matters enormously in an experience where so much is not. The flip side: what your instability costs your child Brenda offered a story about a former boss who was emotionally unpredictable. She would time her office visits for after lunch. She would read the room before going in. She was always bracing herself. 'That is a terrible place to be,' she said — and then connected it directly to what struggling kids experience when their parent is the unpredictable one. Cathy added that it is genuinely hard to put yourself in your child's shoes in this situation, but that this analogy makes it more accessible. If a child never knows what version of their parent they are going to get, they are less likely to come to that parent in a moment of openness. What building emotional sturdiness actually looked like Cathy described several things that shifted for her: learning that boundaries are for herself and not a tool to control her kids, prioritizing a scheduled walk or coffee even when a minor situation was happening at home, and using a practice of questioning her own spiraling thoughts by asking herself, 'Is this true? And if it is true, do I have control over it?' She also described bookending her days with prayer and gratitude, and noticing that when that practice slipped — along with her physical movement — her brain started to spiral even when nothing was actually wrong. Brenda said that for her, reading about what addiction actually is helped her feel more regulated, because she finally understood what was happening in her child's body. She also described learning that there is no expiration date on when to deal with a situation — stepping away, cooling down, and coming back later rather than responding in the heat of the moment. 'I realized that just because something had happened didn't mean I had to respond to it at that time. It gave me a chance to cool down, to ask myself some questions.' Both hosts recommended starting with awareness of where dysregulation shows up in your body — chest tightness, brain fog, tingling hands, a tight throat — and then having simple practices ready: intentional breathing (counting in for four, out for four), stepping away from screens, movement, journaling, calling a friend, or connecting with others in a supportive community. They also suggested practicing these tools in low-stakes situations, like getting annoyed at other drivers, so they are available when a high-stakes moment arrives. They were also clear that this work is not always simple. People come to this experience carrying their own history — past trauma, loss, unsafe homes, a parent with a substance use disorder — and that history will shape how you respond. Working with a therapist, they said, is strongly encouraged alongside community support, and newer therapeutic approaches mean you do not necessarily have to relive difficult memories to begin healing them.

The Apology Parents Don't Need to Keep Making Brenda opens this solo episode by naming something she hears parents repeat constantly: I'm sorry I didn't catch this sooner. I'm sorry I wasn't a better parent. I'm sorry this is happening to you. Her message is direct — it is time to put that speech down. The episode draws a clear line between two very different things that parents often collapse together: real accountability for things that actually happened, and blanket self-blame for things that were never theirs to own. Real Accountability vs. Blanket Self-Blame Brenda is clear that taking accountability for specific things you actually did — maybe not handling your emotions well, or not responding to a request for help in the way you wish you had — is valid and important. She says she had to apologize several times for her own behavior. But she draws a firm line at taking responsibility for a child's choices, their biology, life's timing, a medical condition, or a disease you did not cause. 'Taking on those things is a futile effort and it robs you of the energy that you need to deal with the difficult things sitting right in front of you.' — Brenda Zane When parents jumble these two things together, guilt becomes a permanent hum in the background — always there, always getting in the way of actually helping their child. Why Guilt Feels So Loud Unlike anger, which Brenda notes can hide and get buried, guilt and shame are typically loud and constant. Parents will say unprompted how they failed, how this is probably their fault, how they wish they had done everything differently. Brenda describes spending a lot of time in what she calls the 'wish I could rewind zone' — a chronic loop of unanswered questions and frustration. She points to a few reasons this happens: a hindsight bias that pulls parents into 'if I had known then what I know now' thinking; cultural messaging that a child's struggle reflects the parent's skill level; and the sheer helplessness of a situation where you are looking for somewhere, anywhere, to place the feeling. 'I used to think if I caused it, then I must be able to fix it. And of course that isn't true.' — Brenda Zane She names what she sees parents actually carrying underneath the guilt: grief or fear. These feelings are easy to mistake for guilt, and naming what you are actually experiencing is part of untangling it. Guilt as Misdirected Responsibility Brenda shares from her own life when her son went to his first treatment at the age of 16. She describes the weight she felt — a boulder, maybe a mountain, of shame and guilt — asking herself what kind of mom ends up in this situation. She spent weeks and months in what she calls 'self-flagellation mode' when what she really needed was self-compassion, presence with her other kids and relationships, and attention to what her son was actually experiencing. 'I could do none of that. Because I was so consumed with guilt.' — Brenda Zane She describes that excavating the past felt easier than looking at her current-day actions and responses. It became, in her words, 'kind of like an escape hatch that I would go down as a distraction from the work I really desperately needed to do.' She also notes plainly: there is no award for being the most guilt-ridden parent. Carrying constant guilt makes you less steady and less useful to your child, not more devoted. A Concrete Exercise to Untangle the Guilt Brenda offers one practical step. Write down the exact sentence of self-blame that is running through your head. Then cross out every word that is not a fact you controlled. What remains is usually very short — or it might actually be empty. Her litmus test for any guilt you are carrying: if the thing you are apologizing for is something you could not have known, or a choice that was not yours to make, that is not an apology. It is self-punishment. If there is a specific, nameable thing you did that can be repaired, make that apology sincerely, make it clearly, once — and do not let it linger for years. 'You can care enormously and genuinely and still not owe an apology for a struggle that isn't yours.' — Brenda Zane The invitation for this week: catch yourself when you start an internal apology. Ask whether it is yours to own. Then go back to the writing exercise and cross out anything that is not a fact.

Episode 335 ABOUT THE EPISODE: There's an emotion most of us are carrying that we don't talk about, because we're pretty sure we're not allowed to feel it. Anger. Anger at where our kid's choices have led our family. Anger at what they're doing to themselves. And underneath it, a heavy layer of guilt for feeling any of it at all. In this solo episode, I'm getting honest about it, starting with a distinction that changes everything: anger at your child is not the same as anger at the situation. One of them usually isn't anger at all. It's grief wearing a really convincing mask, and it needs a completely different response. There's a cultural script that says good parents don't get angry at a struggling kid. We're supposed to be endlessly patient, compassionate, calm. I have yet to meet one person who pulls that off all the time. So the anger goes underground, and it leaks out sideways: sarcasm, silence, blowups over nothing, or shame that quietly eats at you while you look perfectly fine on the outside. I'm also telling you my McDonald's parking lot story, the day my anger completely took the wheel and I said things to my son I never meant. I'm not exempt from any of this. Nobody is. Then I'll walk you through a different way to see anger entirely, one that turns it from something that owns you into something that informs you, plus real things you can do with it starting today. If you've been carrying anger and beating yourself up for feeling it, come listen. You are so.not.alone. YOU'LL LEARN The one distinction that determines whether your anger needs a boundary or something much softer Where buried anger actually goes, and who ends up paying the price for it A reframe that turns anger from a character flaw into useful information What happened in a McDonald's parking lot that taught me how emotional reactivity can wreck a moment (or longer) How to tell the difference between releasing your anger and just avoiding it EPISODE RESOURCES: The Dance of Anger, Harriet Lerner Hopestream Resources Episode 174 This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream CommunityLearn about The Stream, our private online community for momsFind us on Instagram hereWatch the podcast on YouTube hereDownload a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and AlcoholHopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

A mom's experience navigating THC-induced psychosis Lynn, an active member of the Hopestream community, joined the episode to share what she has lived through with her oldest son — now in his mid-twenties — who was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder following what she believes was THC-induced psychosis. Her son had been diagnosed with ADHD in third grade, was a bright and energetic kid, and began using substances in high school. By the time he was away at college, his use had escalated significantly. When he returned home, the household became volatile. Lynn described extreme emotional sensitivity, explosive reactions to small things, holes in walls, and a painful push-pull dynamic where her son would say devastating things and then come back with love and apologies. She spent a long time trying to figure out whether what she was seeing was his ADHD, normal teenage behavior, or something else entirely. 'I was constantly like, is this his mental health? Is this normal for other families? Like, I just didn't know. He's always been my hard kid.' — Lynn The clearest sign that something more serious was happening came when her son began having conversations with himself — aggressive, pacing conversations in the backyard. Later, during a period when he was homeless and had gone without sleep for about three days, he called and told her he could not speak openly because 'they' were listening. He was eventually diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder at a mental health-focused residential program. At the time of this episode, he had been in treatment for eight or nine months and had just stepped down to a lower level of care. When asked what she had learned that she would pass along to other parents, Lynn said the biggest shift for her was in how she listens. 'I honestly don't think I was a very good listener. And I oftentimes would listen with my own agenda, and I think being way more open-minded, just, like, really trying to put myself in his shoes has changed our conversations. It's allowed me to let go of control, which I never had in the first place.' — Lynn What THC-induced psychosis actually looks like Dr. David Rowe, Director of Neuropsychology at United Assessments, helped clarify what parents are actually observing when they see psychotic symptoms. He pushed back on the idea that psychosis only looks like dramatic hallucinations — the cinematic version most people picture from movies. Psychosis exists on a spectrum, he explained, and can include paranoia, suspiciousness, delusional beliefs, feeling detached from reality, and — at the more severe end — hearing voices or seeing things others do not see. He described psychosis as essentially a rejection of the outside world and a strong belief in one's internal world. 'If you believe that someone is out to get you, your conviction in that belief is indicative of the severity of that psychotic level of thinking.' — Dr. David Rowe Dr. Rowe also stressed that this can become a medical emergency. Parents sometimes assume a young person is just high or just being dramatic, but if someone is experiencing hallucinations, severe paranoia to the point of delusion, or a break from reality, he said that warrants an immediate medical evaluation. Why today's THC products are a different drug entirely Stefan Bate, who has been working in substance use treatment for about 18 years and is co-CEO of Jay Walker Lodge, was emphatic on this point: what is being sold today should not even be called marijuana. It is, in his words, an engineered THC product. 'Fast-forward, you know, as we sit here today, marijuana flower is now 20-plus percent. The THC products that you can get can be upwards to 90% THC. That is an incredible amount of increase in how much drug is in your system. That on top of you can use it all day without anyone knowing.' — Stefan Bate He walked through the combination of factors that make the current landscape so different from what previous generations encountered: dramatically higher potency, much easier access due to legalization, and delivery systems — vapes, gummies, wax, concentrates — that are discreet, flavorful, and allow a young person to be exposed to high-potency THC all day long without anyone knowing. He pointed out that the same product innovation that happens in any industry once it becomes legal and commercialized has happened here, driven by a multi-billion dollar industry. Stefan also noted that in his treatment setting, whereas 15 years into the field he might have seen two or three people per group who had experienced some level of drug-induced psychosis — usually from stimulants — today it is nearly every client who uses THC who has experienced or is still dealing with some level of ongoing psychosis. How the developing brain is affected Both Dr. Rowe and Stefan Bate described why young brains are especially vulnerable. Dr. Rowe explained that the systems responsible for judgment, impulse control, emotion regulation, and reality testing are all still developing in adolescence and young adulthood, and THC interferes with those developing neural pathways. Stefan described where cannabinoid receptors live in the brain: the prefrontal cortex, which governs executive functioning, concentration, and regulation; the hippocampus, which handles memory and processing; and the amygdala, which handles emotional regulation. When a young person is using high-potency THC all day, all three of those areas are being affected simultaneously. He described the results as a noticeable drop in working IQ, concentration, memory, and processing speed, along with an inability to understand what is happening emotionally. He used a striking analogy to describe the difference between a 40-year-old using these products versus a 14-year-old: 'When I am 13, my prefrontal cortex is not formed... And my brain is very susceptible to experience. Now I'm taking a 90% potency THC substance. That is like we are, you know, dropping a boulder from the Empire State Building into a pond.' — Stefan Bate Stefan also made a point directly to parents who themselves use THC products and feel conflicted about asking their child to stop. His response was that the conversation is not about the substance in the abstract — it is about what is happening in that specific person's life: the drop in functioning, the disappearing relationships, the self-esteem, the paranoia. Those are consequences the parent is not experiencing, and that is the distinction. Neuropsychological testing and what parents should know Dr. Rowe described neuropsychological testing as a way to bring concrete, empirical data to a situation that can otherwise feel impossibly nebulous. Testing can help identify what is driving the bus — whether it is the substance use, the mental health, a combination — and can give a family a roadmap. He addressed a common misconception: young people do not need to be 30 days sober before being tested. They should not be actively intoxicated during the testing itself, but waiting for full sobriety is not a requirement. He also confirmed that testing can be done remotely, with research showing the results are the same regardless of administration method, and that some people actually do better remotely because they are more comfortable in their own environment. For parents wondering how to raise the idea with a resistant young person, Dr. Rowe offered two approaches depending on the child: pitch it as a chance to get a full picture of their strengths and what is working for them, or — for someone who insists everything is fine — frame it as an opportunity to prove it. He described this as assessment as intervention, where the data itself can help a young person gain insight they might not otherwise be willing to seek. 'Relationships remain one of the most powerful protective factors in a young person's life. Even when you can't control the outcome, you can continue to strengthen connection, and connection creates opportunities for healing, for influence, for hope.' — Dr. David Rowe

When You Confiscate Substances and Things Explode One of the most common scenarios parents face is taking away a substance — a vape pen, pills, alcohol, weed — only to have the situation escalate rapidly. Kids may become aggressive, threaten to hurt themselves, or say things that are genuinely frightening. Brenda and Cathy are clear that the first self-coaching question in any of these moments is the same: am I safe right now? 'If they will not calm down and will not leave, then you have to leave. We would always rather have them leave, right? 'Cause your home is kind of your sanctuary. But if you have to, you have to.' — Brenda Zane Getting physical distance — even just stepping outside or going to another room — can allow things to de-escalate. Calling someone to have another person on the line, even just to help you breathe and talk through what is happening, can also help. And if your child has been to treatment before, Cathy noted that role-modeling your own coping tools — like saying out loud that you need a few minutes to breathe — can actually invite them to do the same. Holding Boundaries and Allowing Natural Consequences This is described as one of the hardest situations parents face. When you hold a boundary and do not rescue your child, you may watch them end up in the hospital, in jail, or in other painful situations. Cathy was honest about her own history of bailing her son out, and what it cost her. 'I knew I was robbing him of the opportunity to grow and to learn, but I kept doing it because it was easier on me to not have to feel the ick that I felt when I let him suffer the natural consequences. So it was on me. Like it was 100% on me.' — Cathy Cioth The self-coaching questions here are: does my decision align with my values? And: am I rescuing my child, or am I helping them avoid natural consequences? Cathy and Brenda both shared that people in recovery frequently say the turning point came when their parents stopped making things easier. Brenda put it simply: 'The data is in.' When Your Child Threatens Suicide to Get What They Want Suicide threats used as negotiation — to get money, avoid a consequence, or pressure a parent — are something many families in the community experience. The advice Cathy and Brenda share, which they say comes from professionals they have worked with, is unambiguous: always take it seriously, every time, no matter how many times you have heard it. Calling 911 is the recommended response even when you believe it is a manipulation tactic, because it sends a clear message that this is not an acceptable strategy — and because parents in their community have found, after calling, that the threat was more serious than they thought. Beyond the safety question, the related self-coaching question is: am I taking this personally? Cathy described it this way — you are the first ring around the stone thrown in the lake. You feel everything first. But the person saying these things is a hurting human being trying to get what they need, and what is coming out of their mouth is often the substance speaking, not your child. Vacations, Family Events, and Active Addiction With this episode airing in summer, Brenda and Cathy addressed a timely question: should you bring your child who is in active use on a family vacation? Both had tried it. Neither recommended it without serious advance planning. 'We have this vision of how things used to be when the family was all together on vacation. We want that desperately, not just for our kid who's struggling, but also for their siblings.' — Brenda Zane The self-coaching questions here are: have you communicated your expectations and boundaries around behavior in advance? And: what are your own expectations — are you bringing them for appearances' sake? Cathy noted that it is okay to simply say 'it didn't work out for her to come this time' without a full explanation. Getting creative — like one parent taking the siblings on a trip while the other stays home — may serve everyone better than forcing an experience that is likely to fall apart. The Strain on Siblings and Your Partner Running through every scenario is the impact on the rest of the family. Siblings often feel like second-class citizens. Partners drift into living like roommates. Cathy was transparent that she and her husband were 'not very good at this' and that she carried enormous guilt about doing anything enjoyable while her son was struggling. The self-coaching question for siblings is simple: what can I do today to let them know they are seen and loved? It does not have to be an outing. It can be a hug, eye contact, and saying 'I see you. This is really hard.' The same approach applies to a partner. As Brenda put it — wash, rinse, repeat. A short walk, a note, undivided attention without phones. Small things matter. 'There is no expiration date on using your skills. So if it takes you three days to get it together, to talk to your coach, to come join us in the community and start sorting it out, that's okay.' — Brenda Zane And finally — these self-coaching questions are not about finding your child's dealer, going through their phone, or figuring out the perfect consequence. They are about grounding yourself so that when you do respond, you respond in a way that is calm, clear, and aligned with what you actually value.

When a Child in the Community Is Lost Brenda and Cathy open this episode by acknowledging something deeply painful: a child of one of the moms in their community had recently passed away as a result of complications from substance use. They were honest about their hesitation to share it, not wanting to add to the trauma parents already carry or to use fear as a motivator. But they decided to talk about it anyway, because, as Brenda put it, 'this is reality. This is a situation that our kids are in. They have a life-threatening illness.' Cathy spoke personally about the family, noting that they had done everything possible with grace and beauty, and that the young man knew he was loved. She reflected on a broader truth she has witnessed in families who have experienced this kind of loss: 'I think they could say pretty confidently that their relationship with their child was beautiful, and the fact that their child knew how much they loved and cared for them.' — Cathy Cioth Why Treatment Isn't Always the End-All This young man had been to treatment and sober living, and Cathy was direct about what that means: treatment is not a guaranteed fix. 'Sometimes it doesn't,' she said, referring to recovery holding. 'Sometimes there are complications from the actual substance.' Brenda added that parents are arriving for help with children who are far more acute than they used to be — not at a four or five on a scale of difficulty, but at a nine, a 9.5, or beyond. Both Brenda and Cathy were clear that they are not speaking from a position of having gotten it right themselves. 'Brenda and I aren't sitting here saying you need to do this,' Cathy said. 'We also have been there.' But Cathy's son, now in sobriety, told her something that shifted her perspective entirely: 'Mom, it just prolonged my pain.' — Cathy Cioth, quoting her son The Real Danger of High-Potency THC A significant portion of the conversation focused on high-potency THC, which both hosts say is now at the center of nearly every conversation they have with treatment professionals. 'I would say the majority of our conversations are all about high-potency THC and the devastating impact it's having on their kids' mental health,' Brenda said. They described how today's THC landscape is different — teens are using vape pens constantly throughout the day, not occasionally. And what's in those pens is often a synthetic, lab-grown version of THC, not naturally grown marijuana flower. Cathy described how the adolescent brain is particularly vulnerable, and how the substance can act like a finger pulling the trigger for a child who already has a mental health condition — even one that hasn't been diagnosed yet. She also described the trap kids fall into: the substance helps at first, so they use more. Then it stops working, they need more to get the same effect, and eventually they can't stop because they feel sick without it. 'That can be a slippery slope very quickly,' Cathy said. 'Like months, not years.' Vicarious Trauma Your Child May Be Carrying Brenda introduced the topic of vicarious trauma — not what parents carry from the helping professions, but what their children are absorbing from the world around them. 'If you're having a hard time understanding why your child's behaviors make sense,' she said, 'their behaviors do make sense.' She listed the things happening around kids that parents often don't see: bullying happening entirely on phones, sextortion, violence and sexual assaults in school bathrooms, school shootings, friends overdosing — fatally or not — suicidality among peers, and self-harm. Kids don't bring these things to their parents, Brenda said, because they know how their parents are likely to react. And the phone makes it worse: even if none of this is happening in a child's school directly, they are watching it happen somewhere, on a device in their hand. 'If it's not happening in their school, they are watching it happen on their telephone. It is a little like a handheld violence machine.' — Brenda Zane Putting Down the Rope: How to Have Hard Conversations Both Cathy and Brenda were honest that they avoided hard conversations for a long time — not out of indifference, but because they didn't know how to have them without a blowup. Cathy described the impulse to react: 'I couldn't understand why it never worked, but I loved to pick up the rope, because I felt like I had to.' Picking up the rope — yelling, negotiating, blaming, shaming — is tug-of-war, and it doesn't move anything forward. The alternative they described is to pause on yourself rather than telling the child to calm down. Say something like: 'I need a break. I am not going to be able to talk to you in a way that's really conducive to going anywhere right now, and I see you're hurting. Just give me some time. I will get back to you on this.' The episode closes with a reflection from a former community host who lost his own son. He told Cathy: think about the next time you see your child, and think about the words that come out of your mouth as if they are the last ones your child will ever hear from you. 'If these were the last words that went into their ears,' Brenda said, 'would you feel good about that?'

Episode 331 When Beth Hillman's son came home from wilderness treatment, the first crisis didn’t come from him. It came from her. Standing in the driveway, anxious and spiraling, she watched her teenage son look at her calmly and say, "Mom, look at me. I'm gonna be okay." Her first thought was not relief. It was, oh! I’m in big trouble. Her son had come home with more access to his thinking brain than she had. He also came home to a mother who had not yet done her own work and was carrying expectations she could not even name. When he finally told her, "Mom, your expectations of how this is gonna go are going to wreck me," Beth had to get honest about what she was really asking of him. Today Beth is a double certified life and parent coach, host of the Parenting Post-Wilderness podcast, and a familiar voice in our community, where she leads sessions and groups for parents in the fragile season after treatment. In this conversation, we get real about the first 90 days after a child comes home, from both sides. Why kids may agree to everything just to get home, why pushback on a home plan might be the best sign you can get, and what your child is actually walking back into when they return to the house where the holes in the doors are. Beth names the piece most home plans are missing, and I think it will change how you prepare. If your child is coming home from treatment soon, or is already home and wobbling, this episode was made for you. YOU’LL LEARN: The driveway moment that convinced Beth she was the one in trouble Why kids check every box to get home, and why that is not manipulation What her son said about her expectations that stopped Beth cold The green flag most parents mistake for defiance The almost too simple practice Beth reached for when her brain went offline EPISODE RESOURCES: Beth’s website - www.bethhillmancoaching.com Beth’s podcast, Parenting Post Wilderness Beth on Hopestream podcast episode 279 Information on PAWS (post-acute withdrawal syndrome) This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream CommunityLearn about The Stream, our private online community for momsFind us on Instagram hereWatch the podcast on YouTube hereDownload a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

Episode 330 ABOUT THE EPISODE: There are days in this journey when the weight of it all becomes almost too much to carry. You are still showing up, still trying, still breathing through a kind of pain most people around you will never fully understand. A few years ago, I sat down and wrote something for you, for the mom and the dad and the grandparent in the thick of it, and I tucked it away. Today I pulled it back out. This piece first appeared on Insight Timer, and it became the most-listened-to content there. I dusted it off because I needed something creative, and because I believe these words may land with where you are today. The world I recorded it in and the community we are now are not so different, and what I felt then, I still feel now. This is not an interview. There is no guest, no framework, no five-step plan. It is just me, speaking out loud the things I wanted every struggling parent to hear in a heavy moment. In this episode I ask you to set down, just for a few minutes, the weight you have been carrying. Not forever. Not in denial. Just long enough to breathe, to remember who you are outside of this fight, and to hear something true: this is not your whole life. You are still in there. And you are stronger than this feels right now. If you are exhausted and need someone to remind you that you are not alone, this one is for you.EPISODE RESOURCES: Free ebook Worried Sick Brenda’s content on Insight Timer This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream CommunityLearn about The Stream, our private online community for momsFind us on Instagram hereWatch the podcast on YouTube hereDownload a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and AlcoholHopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

If you have been watching your child blow up their life and wondering why nothing reaches them, this episode will change how you see what is happening inside them. Brenda Zane's son Enzo Narciso -- founder of Life Strategies Mentors and a young man who survived two fentanyl overdoses -- returns to the podcast with something specific: the things kids who are actively struggling cannot say to their parents but wish they could. The fish love parable: what kind of love are you offering? Enzo opens with a story told by Rabbi Adam Tversky: a man at a river says he loves fish -- yet what he actually does is trick the fish, drag it from its home, and eat it. The question lands: do you love the fish, or do you love yourself? For parents, the parable is not an accusation -- it is an invitation to ask whether their expectations for their child are about the child or about the parent's own need to feel okay. Unconditional love and conditional approval are different things. When a kid reads the signals and concludes that parental love depends on performance, something quietly breaks. 'If you love the fish and you love to fish so much, you would go to the river and you would enjoy the view of the fish passing by, and you would throw some food into the river and feed them and let them enjoy their life.' — Enzo Narciso The one thing your kid most wishes you knew: 'I'm trying' Enzo recently mentored a young man and asked him: if there were one thing you could tell your parents, what would it be? The answer stopped him. The kid said: I'm trying. Enzo recognized it instantly as the same thing he would have said during his own worst years. From a parent's vantage point, a teenager using fentanyl and Xanax does not look like someone trying -- they look like someone self-destructing. But from inside that brain, something different is happening. They have found the one domain where they get consistent signals that they are good at something -- belonging, reinforcement, a sense of being valued. 'I'm sorry that my way is not the way that you guys want, but I'm trying something, and I just don't know.' — Enzo Narciso That is not a defense of the choices. It is a window into the experience. And for a parent who has been certain their child is not even trying, it is a window worth stepping up to. What ADHD actually does to the brain's relationship with substances Enzo describes himself as patient zero for ADHD, and draws a direct line between an unmedicated ADHD brain and the pull toward substances. The ADHD brain is already low in dopamine. When a substance arrives and floods that system, the experience is not the same mild pleasure a neurotypical person might feel -- it is an overwhelming sense of finally feeling right. The reinforcement is instant, massive, and real. This is why warnings don't land. The part of the adolescent brain that projects into the future is not yet developed. A parent can say until exhausted that this will end badly -- the kid genuinely cannot see it. ADHD impulsivity on top of an undeveloped prefrontal cortex makes even the most logical argument nearly impossible to absorb. Dr. Gabor Mate's book Scattered Minds and Dr. Russell Barkley's YouTube channel can help parents understand what is actually happening in their child's brain -- and stop interpreting it as defiance or moral failure. Why your kid listens to a mentor before they listen to you (it's not personal) Enzo describes a concept that reframed everything for Brenda. Adolescents are subconsciously aware that their parents are from a different generation and will die before them. The brain assigns lower weight to parental guidance -- not out of disrespect, but out of a primal drive to gather input from people who will walk alongside them for the rest of their lives. People who are slightly ahead in age -- a cousin, a mentor, a near-stranger who has been through something similar -- carry a naturally higher weighting. When Enzo was at his worst, he would not listen to his mother. But he would go have coffee with a mentor. It was not a failure of Brenda's relationship with him. It was biology. For parents who have tried everything, understanding this dynamic removes the sting of rejection and opens a practical door: finding a mentor who has been through it and come out the other side can reach a kid in a way that no parent, no matter how loving or skilled, can fully replicate. The one skill that made the biggest difference in recovery When Brenda asks what single skill made the biggest difference, Enzo's answer is immediate: mindfulness. Not as a wellness trend, but as the ability to step outside a moment, become a third-person observer, and ask whether this is actually an emergency or whether the spiral in his head is outrunning reality. That skill came flooding back when he was learning to walk again after his overdose. Everything absorbed in wilderness therapy and programs -- seemingly rejected for years -- was still there. The investments parents make in treatment are not wasted. The concepts stay, waiting for the moment the door opens from the inside.

There are moments in this journey when your coach isn't available, your therapist can't be reached, and the community is quiet. It is just you and whatever is unfolding in your relationship with your child, and you need a way through. In this solo episode, Brenda Zane distills a year of thinking into ten self-coaching questions drawn from CRAFT (Community Reinforcement and Family Training) and the Invitation to Change approach — questions designed to help parents examine their own role, interrupt unhelpful patterns, and become a more effective agent of change. Why self-reflection is the starting point CRAFT and the Invitation to Change both ask parents to look at the whole family system, not just the child. That means examining your own responses, beliefs, and behaviors as contributing variables. This is not about blame; it is about locating the lever you actually control. As Brenda puts it, these questions are uncomfortable on purpose — if they sting a little, they are working. 'What is my role in some of the problems that my child is facing? ITC asks us as parents to look at our own behavior as part of the system, not just our child's behavior.' — Brenda Zane Starting here — with question number one — sets the tone: am I contributing to the dysfunction, or am I helping to calm and regulate it? That single question can shift a parent's entire orientation. Reinforcement, consequences, and the hot stove Questions two and three address one of the most concrete and actionable CRAFT skills: removing positive reinforcers for use and allowing natural consequences to land. CRAFT research is explicit that most parents dramatically under-reinforce positive behavior and over-respond to negative behavior. At the same time, shielding a child from the natural fallout of their choices — out of love, out of fear of their reaction, or because the parent cannot bear to watch — removes the very feedback loop that motivates change. Question four takes a different angle: do you understand the underlying reason your child is using? Brenda uses the hot stove analogy — people do not touch hot stoves unless they are getting something from it. Drawing on Gabor Maté's framing, the question is not “why the addiction” but “why the pain” — and mapping those triggers is the foundation of CRAFT's functional analysis. Modeling, reinforcement, and emotional regulation Questions five through seven turn the mirror more directly on parent behavior. Am I modeling the behavior I want to see? CRAFT includes specific guidance on your behavior as a lever because children watch what their parents do, not what they say. Emotional regulation, distress tolerance, willingness to try new things, engagement in your own life — all of it is visible to a child, even one who looks entirely distracted. 'Your child is watching and they will do what you do, not what you say to do.' — Brenda Zane Question six surfaces a well-researched CRAFT principle: positive reinforcement for non-using behavior. What gets rewarded gets repeated. The shift from a home environment dominated by negativity, tension, and reactivity to one where positive behaviors are noticed and named is not soft — it is evidence-based. Question seven asks whether you are picking up the rope in emotional tug-of-war, and what you are doing to stay calm and respond with intention instead of reacting. Acceptance and self-preservation Questions eight and nine address the interior work that makes all the external tools possible. Acceptance — not approval, not resignation, but the willingness to see clearly where you actually are — is a prerequisite for effective action in both CRAFT and motivational interviewing. You cannot use CRAFT tools effectively if you are bargaining with reality about where your child is. Question nine asks whether you have neglected your own wellbeing by attaching yourself entirely to your child's struggle. Brenda draws a clear line between self-care (a practice for when the boat is mostly stable) and self-preservation (what you do when the boat is tipping). CRAFT treats caregiver self-care as a clinical necessity, not a luxury — there is an entire module dedicated to it, and research shows that caregiver burnout directly undermines the consistency required to help someone with a substance use disorder. Separating your identity from your child's story The tenth question is perhaps the hardest: am I able to separate my identity from my child's, or have I lost myself in their story? It is very common for parents to become what Brenda calls “addicted to their child's addiction” — all brain space, all soul, all spirit consumed by the child's struggle. Your child is not your report card. Enmeshment — the “talking in the we” pattern — can feel like devotion but actually reinforces the fusion that makes it harder for both parent and child to move forward. Used together and revisited regularly, these ten questions give parents a structured way to do the self-examination that CRAFT and the Invitation to Change ask of us — even on the days when no one else is available to help.

If you have ever felt like a failure simply because you could not fix what your child is going through, this episode of Hopestream is for you. Brenda Zane sits down with Dr. Wes Robins, a licensed professional counselor, PhD, and self-described Soul Nurse practicing out of a 1960s ranch house in Alpharetta, Georgia. Since his previous appearance on the show, Wes made the gut-wrenching decision to close the treatment center he built over five and a half years, a loss that became its own kind of portal. What came through the other side is a perspective on parenting struggling children that is honest, grounded, and deeply freeing. You Are Not Here to Fix Your Child Wes wrote a piece at his kitchen table while his daughters worked on art beside him, and Brenda asked him to read it aloud. The piece, titled When the Map Burns: Notes for Parents Walking Through the Fire, opens with a line that stopped Brenda cold: you are not broken. From there it builds into a gentle, fierce refusal to reduce parenting to a set of outcomes to control. 'You are not here to fix your child. You are here to walk beside them, to meet them in their chaos, not control it, to love without needing to rescue. Your child is not broken. They are an unfolding soul.' — Dr. Wes Robins This is the frame everything else in the episode hangs on. Your child's pain is not a problem to be solved. It is, in Wes's words, a portal. And when you stop trying to engineer the outcome, something opens up for both of you. Your Child's Struggle Is Your Spiritual Teacher Wes is frank about his own path: from substance use at seventeen through three arrests, then a PhD in consciousness and society, a published book, a treatment center, a breakdown, and a return. He draws on Eckhart Tolle, Ram Dass, Carl Jung, and Dr. Shefali Tsabary to make a case that is worth sitting with: your child's struggle is not happening to you, it is happening for you. That reframe does not minimize the pain. It does something harder. It asks parents to recognize that the child's difficulty stirs old wounds and awakens what has been buried. That is not failure. That is invitation. 'Pain and suffering is what teaches us all. It is the great portal of transformation. If somebody took away my pain and my suffering from me, I would be half the person that I am today.' — Dr. Wes Robins For parents, this means getting genuinely curious about your own fear, rather than trying to manage it into the background while you fix your child. The Difference Between Empathy and Presence One of the most practically useful distinctions Wes draws is between empathy and presence. Empathy connects you to another person's experience. But presence is what actually supports healing. Joining in the suffering does not lift it. Witnessing it does. He borrows from Dr. Shefali: a parent's greatest fear is a child in pain, but a child's greatest disservice is a parent who cannot witness that pain. The difference matters enormously in the room. Your child does not need you to drown alongside them. They need you to stay on the bank, solid and available, so they can find their way to shore. The Flight Attendant Principle Wes returns again and again to a simple image: imagine you are on a plane and turbulence hits. The first thing every passenger does is look at the flight attendant. If she is calm, passengers relax. If she grabs the seat and goes pale, everyone panics. Like it or not, you are the flight attendant on your child's journey. That does not mean pretending everything is fine. It means doing the internal work to stay regulated so that your nervous system does not become another emergency your child has to navigate. This is counterintuitive because it asks parents to prioritize their own grounding at exactly the moment every instinct screams to focus on the child. But a dysregulated parent adds suffering to an already difficult situation, while a grounded parent creates the stable field their child can find their way back to. Choosing Love Over Fear, Again and Again The through-line of everything Wes shares is a choice that sounds simple and is anything but: choosing love over fear. Fear swallows you whole. It consumes your presence and turns care into control. Love, by contrast, is not peace or perfection. In his words, love is wild, messy, and showing up again after the slammed door, the silence, the relapse, the shutdown. He offers parents a short list worth returning to: you cannot control other people, the economy, the past, every thought, every trigger. What you can control is whether you stay, whether you breathe, whether you soften, whether you repair. That is not resignation. That is the hardest and most effective work available to a parent right now.

If you have a daughter and a relationship that feels like it is missing something you can't quite name, this episode of Hopestream may be the conversation you have been waiting for. Brenda Zane talks with Lacey Tezino, founder of Passport Journeys and author of Therapy After Mom Died, about adoption, reunion, generational patterns around alcohol, and the single insight that changed how she parents: you have to connect before you correct. A reunion nobody was prepared for Lacey grew up being told her biological mother had died. When she was 19 and hungover on another motherless Mother's Day, she called information on a whim. Her mother picked up the phone. What followed was a decade-long relationship she describes as beautiful, heartbreaking, and nothing she was prepared for. 'When she picked up the phone and I heard her voice for the very first time at 19 years old, and me having to say like, "I think I'm your daughter," was like beyond. Like the little emoji with the brain exploding. There's like no words, no explanation for just like telling someone at that point, like, you know, on the phone, "I think I'm your daughter," is wild.' — Lacey Tezino The reunion gave Lacey something she had never had: a sense of being tethered to a parent. But it also placed enormous expectations on a woman who was unprepared for a daughter to suddenly arrive in her life. They struggled, cycled through the same conversations, and leaned heavily on alcohol to get anywhere honest together. How alcohol became the bridge and the barrier Both of Lacey's biological parents were daily drinkers. Drinking was the connection point she and her mother shared from the start. Margaritas on Friday nights, wine over hard conversations, tequila lowering the barriers so they could finally say what they meant. When her mother received a stage four lung cancer diagnosis, urgency replaced alcohol as the catalyst for honesty. Sitting through chemo appointments, they finally asked the hard questions. Lacey found herself wondering: why did it take running out of time to get there? That question became the seed of her life's work. What parents model without realizing it Lacey describes a Friday night ritual she could not unsee once she saw it. She and her husband both had high-pressure jobs. Every week they would pick up the kids, head to the Mexican restaurant, hand the children toys to keep them busy, and order margaritas. As the drinks arrived, the tension left their bodies. The kids watched every bit of it. 'Was I modeling to them that I needed that to bring the day down, to now be able to have this fun connection with them? And I was just like... it started making me really sad, to be honest. It made me super sad, and I had a lot of guilt.' — Lacey Tezino She also recalled coming home from a stressful day and telling her kids, oh my gosh, mom needs a glass of wine, and then I can deal with blah blah blah. It never occurred to her in that moment that this framing might be quietly teaching her children something about what alcohol is for. Seeing her own parents through this lens had already given her a preview of where that road leads. The gap between what moms believe and what daughters feel Through Passport Journeys, Lacey now works with mothers and daughters using an eight-question relationship scale that measures trust, respect, and quality time at the start of a program and again at three and six months. The pattern she keeps finding is both surprising and painful. On the question I feel like I understand my daughter, mothers almost always score themselves high. On the mirror question, I feel understood by my mother, daughters score it low. They are passing ships, each convinced the other has the full picture, each missing the other entirely. The teen years are particularly damaging: hormonal, identity-laden, and almost impossible to navigate without some outside support. But the clients who show up most often at Passport Journeys are 30- to 40-year-old daughters who want to revisit those years with a therapist present. They are not there because love is absent. They are there because healing never happened. Connect before you correct The principle that anchors everything Lacey does came from one of her therapists. A lot of parents try to fix or correct their child, the therapist explained, but they are not connected to their child first. The structured bonding activities Passport Journeys assigns between therapy sessions are not just busywork: they are building the safety that makes correction possible. You have to connect before you correct, the therapist said. And Lacey heard it as both a parenting truth and a generational one. Her mother could not correct what she did not understand. Lacey could not heal what she could not name. Therapy, structured connection, and the courage to ask hard questions before time runs out: that is the through line of this episode, and of Lacey's work in the world.

If you have ever watched your child go through treatment and wondered whether anything was actually landing, this episode of Hopestream will feel like a permission slip. Brenda Zane speaks with Brad McLeod, host of Sober Motivation, a top 0.5 percent podcast globally with over five million downloads. Brad was seventeen when he sat in a psych ward for the second time. He ran from a rest stop on the way to treatment. He accumulated a felony conviction, a methadone dependency, and ultimately a deportation to Canada with a lifetime ban from the US. He tells none of it as a cautionary tale. He tells it as someone who finally understands what his brain was looking for, and what it actually took to stop running. Why kids turn to substances before they know they're struggling Brad grew up in Canada, moved to Waco, Texas at six, and spent his childhood quietly trying to figure out where he fit. Undiagnosed ADHD drove suspension after suspension. Therapists, psychiatrists, and a rotating roster of medications filled his calendar, yet the one thing missing was any language for what he was actually experiencing inside. 'I think I was just in a, trying to figure out who I was. I never knew who I was. I never felt comfortable from the outside looking in, you probably wouldn't notice that but the behavior started this kind of spiral out of control.' — Brad McLeod When Brad first tried cocaine in college, the attraction was immediate and logical from his perspective: the world stopped feeling so heavy. The substance was not the problem. It was the first solution that worked. Every parent who has heard a child say it just made sense will recognize this. Substances solve a real problem, even when they create far larger ones. The ADHD piece parents often miss Brad's relationship with ADHD medication is a thread worth pulling for any parent navigating similar terrain. He was diagnosed young and placed on Adderall. At sixteen he deliberately stopped taking it, hiding the change from his family, because going off it made him feel socially alive for the first time. The risk-taking escalated. The dopamine gap widened. Within a couple of years he had moved from Percocet to heroin, not because he sought danger but because heroin was cheaper and the need kept growing. This is not an argument against ADHD medication. Research consistently shows that properly managed ADHD medication lowers the risk of later substance use. Brad's own story loops back to this: at 38, recently re-starting medication, he finally began to understand the full shape of how his brain worked, and how much energy he had been spending managing it without support. Sobriety is the starting line, not the finish line Brad uses this phrase deliberately, and it lands hard for parents whose entire focus has been on getting the substance out of the picture. He points out that he got sober many times involuntarily: running out of money, landing in jail, or cycling through detox. The substance was never really the problem in isolation. 'Getting sober was never my problem anyway. I mean, I would run out of money, I'd be in jail. Like I would sober up. How could I stay sober? And I think that's what I had to zoom out a little bit and figure out like how do I begin to build a life that is more valuable than the alternative life?' — Brad McLeod What changed was not sobriety itself but the construction of what he calls recovery capital: things worth losing. Relationships. A sense of identity. Work that connected to purpose. Once there was something to protect, the calculus shifted. Parents waiting for a clean drug test as the sign that everything is resolved are looking at the wrong metric. What it means when treatment doesn't seem to stick Brad spent time in a wilderness program outside Knoxville, a locked residential facility, jail, and multiple detox programs. Looking back, he is emphatic that none of it was wasted, even the stretches where he was not cooperating. The skills and frameworks he encountered kept surfacing years later, once he was finally ready to implement them rather than simply accumulate them. For parents who have watched a child walk out of a program and immediately relapse, this matters. The knowledge went in. The timing was wrong, not the intervention. Brad also noted something about the question he asks guests on his podcast: the night before they got sober, did they have any idea it would be their last night? Almost universally the answer is no. Change can arrive without announcement, and previous treatment is part of what makes it possible when it does. Building a life worth staying sober for The identity work Brad describes is the unglamorous part of recovery that rarely gets discussed. He graduated as an addiction counselor, worked with teenagers in a residential setting for eight years, and eventually launched Sober Motivation from his basement not because he had the answers but because he knew what it felt like to be alone in the question. Community, purpose, and accountability that he did not expect all played a role in the shift. For parents, the invitation here is a reframe. Rather than focusing exclusively on abstinence, the deeper question is: what does your child have to live for? What are they building that they would not want to lose? Helping create conditions for that, even incrementally, is some of the most powerful work a parent can do alongside the more visible interventions.

If you have ever been handed the word codependent and felt it didn't quite fit, this episode of Hopestream will feel like a relief. Brenda Zane talks with Rawly Glass, LCSW, a therapist and parent educator who spent years turning the codependency label over in his hands before setting it down and looking for something truer. What he found reframes a concept most of us were handed without enough context, and it has real implications for parents trying to support a child through substance use without losing themselves. Why 'codependency' never quite fit Glass grew up in a home full of violence and, at sixteen, made a pact to do things differently. He earned a master's in social work and built a career in private therapy, yet something from his history kept surfacing. When someone handed him the codependent label, he turned it over and put it back down. 'I'm looking at codependency, it doesn't quite fit, and I start trying to figure out what else is out there... that's the beginning of what I ultimately began to call external dependency.' — Rawly Glass His instinct is worth sitting with, because the codependency framework, as commonly taught, is a behavioral label, a list of things people do. Glass became convinced the behavior was the surface, not the source. What 'external dependency' means The reframe Glass offers is external dependency. Rather than describing a person who loves too much or can't stop helping, the term names a pattern in which we orient almost entirely outward, trying to manage and control what we can see, because we have lost reliable access to what we feel inside. This is the part that lifts shame rather than adding it. Codependency, taught as a behavioral defect, can pathologize one of the most beautiful things about people: the capacity to be gentle and caring. External dependency locates the problem differently, not in the caring itself, but in a disrupted relationship with the self underneath it. Trauma and the lost relationship with self Glass draws on Terry Kellogg and on Dan Siegel's work on the developing brain to make sense of this. When a child is chronically focused on where the next blow is coming from, the developmental machinery that builds a relationship with the self doesn't get to form the way it should. 'It's actually the absence of a relationship with self, and when I first read that, I'm like, what in the world? That doesn't even make any sense to me. How can you not have a relationship with self?' — Rawly Glass It took Glass years to absorb the idea. Trauma, even the quiet kind, interferes with that inward orientation. When the inside feels inaccessible or unsafe, controlling the outside becomes the only available strategy, and that is exactly the pattern parents recognize when a child is in crisis. Why self-care often fails This reframe also explains why so much standard advice falls flat. Parents are told to practice self-care, but if the relationship with the self has been disrupted, bolting on bubble baths and yoga doesn't reach the actual gap. Glass argues that real change starts further upstream, by rebuilding the capacity to orient inward, notice what is happening in your own body and emotions, and stay with it. For parents, this is not abstract. The same external-dependency pattern that drives constant monitoring, fixing, and controlling of a struggling child is the one that leaves a parent depleted and disconnected from themselves. What real recovery looks like for parents Recovery, in this framing, is less about stopping a list of 'codependent' behaviors and more about building a relationship with yourself, the developmental work that got interrupted. Glass describes aspects of that relationship most of us are missing, and frames healing as a gradual return to inward orientation rather than a one-time fix. For a parent walking alongside a child's substance use, the invitation is gentle but significant: the goal is not to care less, but to stop outsourcing your entire sense of okay-ness to whether you can control your child's choices, and to begin coming home to yourself.

If your young adult has been through treatment and come home only to stall, not ready for college, not ready to live independently, but clearly not thriving on the couch either, you are in one of the most disorienting places a parent can occupy. In this episode of Hopestream, Brenda Zane talks with Will White, a licensed clinical social worker who has worked in behavioral health since 1989, co-founded the wilderness-therapy program Summit Achievement, and helped launch a trades-based program for young adults called The Trade. His view of the bigger picture, built over nearly four decades, is that the young people who are struggling today are different from those of a generation ago, and that the help they need looks different too. The shift from acting-out kids to anxious, frozen ones White describes a clear change in who shows up needing help. The young person of the 1990s and early 2000s was often an externalizer, someone expressing anger, frustration, or pain loudly by breaking things, slamming doors, or walking away. Today he sees far more young people who are anxious, inward, and frozen, who won't leave their room or the house at all. 'The young residents there, a lot of them had become so overwhelmed with anxiety that they were no longer leaving their homes.' — Will White He points to several forces behind the shift: the rewiring effect of always-on screens and social media, the aftermath of COVID, and a steady diet of alarming news that raises anxiety for parents and kids alike. Notably, he points out that overall drug use among adolescents is actually lower than in past decades, even as anxiety diagnoses have climbed. Why traditional treatment models are breaking down White borrows the term 'the polycrisis' to describe an era in which many traditional models are breaking apart at once. The wilderness-therapy field, he notes, contracted sharply in a short span, and behavioral health moved rapidly online during COVID. None of this is purely good or bad; his point is that the old assumption of a single standardized program that fits everyone no longer holds. He is candid about his own evolution. Trained as a licensed clinician who once dismissed coaching, he now uses a coach himself and sees the value of matching the right young person to the right kind of help, whether that is licensed clinical care, coaching, or something experiential. The throughline of his career is a conviction that doing alongside people often helps more than talking at them across an office. The over-accommodation trap for parents One of the most useful ideas in the conversation is what White calls over-accommodation. Loving parents of an anxious young person often try to keep the peace by quietly rearranging family life around the anxiety, and that instinct, however caring, can backfire. 'Parents would over-accommodate in trying to be a caring parent, and at the same time it would backfire, because it would get worse and worse.' — Will White His counterintuitive guidance is that an anxious young person usually needs encouragement to do hard things, not protection from them. Spending time outdoors or taking on real activity tends to lower anxiety, even though every parental instinct says to shield the child from discomfort. What experiential, trades-based programs offer That philosophy is the foundation of The Trade, the nonprofit program White helped launch in rural New Hampshire for young adults of all genders, roughly ages 18 to 30. It is deliberately not a primary treatment program. Many participants, called apprentices, have already been through treatment and don't need more talk therapy; what they want is experience, structure, and a path toward independence. Apprentices are exposed to many trades rather than just one, mentored about 40 hours a week by skilled tradespeople, and supported by full-time staff who live alongside them. White frames the goal as learning to be both independent and interdependent, knowing when to ask for help and when to rely on your own skills. The lessons, he argues, are lifelong: how an engine works, how to paint a room, how to show up and work hard. Why getting paid from day one changes everything What makes the model unusual is that apprentices are paid from day one and expected to work a real 40-hour week, with onboarding and even retirement-account options, like any new job. For many, it is the first paycheck of their lives. 'I did that. First of all, I didn't know how to do it, then I learned how to do it, I did it, and I got money for it.' — Will White, on what a first paycheck does for a young person That sequence, learning a skill, doing the work, and being paid for it, is a profound self-esteem builder, especially for young people who are anxious or neurodiverse and arrive with little confidence. White's closing message to exhausted parents is gentle and grounded: this too shall pass, stay connected to a safe community, lead with love, get outdoors, and take it one day at a time.

If you are a parent trying to figure out how serious your child's substance use really is, you are making one of the most consequential assessments of your life without a reliable framework. In this solo episode, Brenda Zane borrows a powerful concept from medicine, staging, to give parents the clarity they have never been handed. The result is a four-stage map that helps you stop reacting to incidents and start responding strategically. Why parents have been navigating without a map Medicine has long used staging to give patients and families a shared language for urgency and appropriate response. Parents of children who use substances have received nothing comparable. As Brenda puts it, parents are expected to assess a situation that clinicians in other fields spend years learning to read. This episode is an attempt to close that gap by borrowing the staging concept, not because addiction is like cancer, but because staging is one of the most useful ideas medicine ever produced. Two things that change everything about today's substances Before walking through the four stages, Brenda sets the landscape with two facts that are categorically different from twenty years ago. First, substances themselves have changed. THC concentration in cannabis averaged around 2% in the 1960s and today commonly exceeds 12% in flower, with concentrates reaching 60 to 90 percent THC. Second, fentanyl contamination of the street drug supply is now essentially complete. 'If your frame of reference is, my kid is just experimenting like I did, you're comparing two completely different chemical realities. Even moderate use of today's THC or something that has fentanyl in it carries huge risk that even the use of 10 years ago does not compare to.' — Brenda Zane Brenda also flags a dangerous and counterintuitive pattern: the young person who is quietly at home, withdrawn, self-medicating anxiety and depression in their room. The absence of a visible crisis is not evidence of an absence of a problem. The four stages of substance use Drawing on the DSM-5 spectrum of mild, moderate, and severe substance use disorder, Brenda maps four stages parents can actually use. Stage 1: Experimentation and early use. Social, curiosity-driven use at parties. The brain's reward system is being introduced to artificial dopamine spikes, but most people who try substances do not develop a disorder. The appropriate response is connection-based conversation, not panic, not silence. Stage 2: Regular use and developing pattern. More frequent, more intentional use; sometimes alone. Mood shifts, changing friend groups, disrupted sleep, withdrawal to a room. Tolerance is building. This is the stage where parental approach matters most, because influence is still significant and CRAFT-based skills can alter the trajectory. Stage 3: Problematic use and moderate to severe SUD. Substance use is now organizing your child's life. They may be using just to feel normal, not to feel good. Professional support is no longer optional. As Dr. Gabor Maté frames it, the question is never why the addiction but why the pain. Stage 4: Severe SUD and crisis. Medical risk is real. Overdose, withdrawal complications, complete breakdown of functioning. Safety comes first, but the relationship is not abandoned. The critical difference between cancer and addiction staging Unlike cancer staging, which is largely linear, addiction staging is not. People move in both directions. Early and long-term recovery are real: SAMHSA data shows 72% of Americans who have ever had a substance use disorder are in recovery. This is also the stage where the cancer comparison earns its keep: the intensity of the response must match the reality of the situation. '94% of the time, they don't believe they have a problem, or they don't know, or they're too ashamed, or they just think that they don't need help yet. So this is where your role as a parent becomes very important, uniquely important, because you, my friend, are the biggest and most influential factor in your child's willingness and ability to get help.' — Brenda Zane How to use this framework right now Brenda walks through a practical assessment process: look at observable markers, not just at the substance itself or the absence of obvious crisis. Track functioning, frequency, consequences, secrecy, isolation, and mental health. Map communication strategy to the stage your child is actually in, not the stage you hope or fear they are in. And do not wait for a crisis to get your own support. The stream community, one-on-one coaching, and a personal therapist are not luxuries at this point. They are the infrastructure that keeps a parent ready to move when the window of opportunity opens.

There is a specific kind of searching that happens at 2am when you are a parent in the thick of it, typing half-formed fears into a search bar because you cannot say them out loud to anyone in your life. In this episode of Hopestream, co-founders Brenda Zane and Cathy Cioth sit down to answer the four questions they hear most from parents in the community, including the ones that arrive with a quiet residue of shame just for asking. Both are nine and ten years out from the hardest seasons of their own journeys, and both are trained in CRAFT (Community Reinforcement and Family Training). Nothing in this conversation comes from a textbook. Does my child have to go to formal treatment to get better? This question stops many parents cold. The answer is more nuanced than most families were told. According to the Recovery Research Institute, roughly 60% of people who have resolved a significant substance use disorder did so without any formal treatment at all. That figure does not mean treatment isn't valuable, but it does mean it is not the only door. 'There are so many ways to get better. Does it involve thousands of dollars and a big intervention? That's what we imagine in our minds, but the beauty of this recovery world right now is so great because there are so many different options.' — Cathy Cioth Brenda also recalls Jo Colette, a guest who became an IV heroin user as a teenager, drove cross-country in active withdrawal, and never set foot in formal treatment. She simply reached her gift of desperation and stopped. The data and the stories together tell the same story: the path to recovery is wide. Your job as a parent is to maintain connection and stay ready for when your child is willing to accept help, in whatever form that takes. What is PAWS, and why does early recovery feel so hard? Post-Acute Withdrawal Syndrome, known by the acronym PAWS, is the thing nobody warned you about when your child finally got sober and you expected life to start looking better, and it did not. PAWS shows up as brain fog, low motivation, irritability, poor sleep, and anxiety, all symptoms that look a great deal like using behavior. That confusion is exactly what makes PAWS so dangerous, for the parent who fears relapse and for the young person who may not understand what is happening inside their own body. Brenda and Cathy note that PAWS can persist for a year or longer and is simply a reflection of a body actively trying to heal. The brain, which bore the chemical brunt of substance use, does not snap back in a week. Physical support matters here: nutrition, sleep, access to a doctor with a good bedside manner around addiction, and gentle physical activity can all help the brain heal faster. Why self-care feels impossible and why it matters anyway Neither Brenda nor Cathy had heard the term self-care when they were in the thick of their own journeys. Cathy remembers pulling into quiet neighborhoods and sleeping in her car for two hours because the exhaustion was absolute. Brenda recalls losing weight she could not afford to lose, fighting pain that radiated down both legs, and barely being able to walk around the block. 'When your child says they need some help, you want to be at the ready. Healthy. You've had breakfast, you've had water, you've walked around the block, so that when that moment comes you can step in grounded, not freaking out, with a plan.' — Cathy Cioth If thinking about self-care as a gift to yourself is too abstract, try this frame instead: you are the most valuable asset in your child's life right now. Shoring up that asset is a strategic act, not a luxury. Start impossibly small. A five-minute walk. A glass of water. One real meal. Those tiny steps build the consistency that will hold you when the moment arrives and your child needs you grounded. How to handle a young adult child who is out of contact or not living at home Warrior Moms, the Hopestream group for parents of adult children, is consistently the most active in the entire community. The reason is not hard to understand: having a 20-something or 30-something in active addiction who may barely be in contact is a mentally excruciating situation. Every rare interaction feels loaded with urgency, as if you must spill every fear and resource and plea before the window closes again. The CRAFT approach says the opposite. Keep it neutral, warm, and brief. You are building a bridge, not crossing it all at once. Positive reinforcement still works at a distance: notice when they show up for work, acknowledge a healthy relationship, send a picture of the dog. And allow natural consequences to do their work. Those consequences belong to your child, not to you. Rewarding non-using behavior and the art of doing nothing One of the most misunderstood CRAFT procedures is rewarding non-using behavior. It sounds counterintuitive: why be warmer and more connected when your child is not using? Because what gets rewarded gets repeated. When life with you feels better, more connected, lower friction during periods when they are not using, you are quietly shifting the cost-benefit math and making sobriety more attractive, not through lectures or ultimatums, but through your presence. The flip side is equally important. When a child is using or is aggressive or oppositional, that is not the time to make dinner, offer a ride, or engage in a long argument. Even conflict, Brenda and Cathy remind us, is a dopamine hit. Picking up the rope in a tug-of-war is a reward for the behavior you are trying to reduce. The hardest and most effective thing you can do is sometimes to simply put down the phone, step away, and let the world deliver its own lessons.

When you're parenting a child through substance misuse or addiction, the focus naturally turns to their recovery, their treatment, their next steps. But what about you? Therapist Maya Kruger, who works with mothers navigating these exact challenges, offers a refreshing and compassionate perspective: your healing doesn't have to wait. Understanding Anxiety as a Process Addiction One of the most striking insights Maya shares is how parents can develop their own form of addiction in response to their child's substance use. She explains, 'We become addicted to our kids' addiction. Yep. We become addicted to trying to control everything in our world around us.' — Maya Kruger This isn't about judgment - it's about understanding. When your child is engaging in dangerous behaviors, anxiety is completely appropriate. The challenge comes when that anxiety becomes a loop you can't exit, a pattern that feels as compulsive as any substance use disorder. Why Your Behaviors Make Perfect Sense Maya offers a perspective that can lift tremendous shame from parents who feel like they're failing: your responses, even the ones you're not proud of, made sense at some point. 'Any behavior when we look at the context is brilliant because it serves a purpose, doesn't have the best consequences.' — Maya Kruger Those controlling behaviors? They were adaptive survival strategies. The constant monitoring? It came from a genuine need to keep your child safe. Understanding this context doesn't mean these patterns are working now, but it does mean you can approach changing them with self-compassion rather than self-criticism. Creating Distance From Overwhelming Feelings When anxiety feels overwhelming, Maya suggests a deceptively simple practice: get curious and create distance. She recommends observing your anxiety like you're reporting the weather - noting it, naming it, but not becoming it. This practice of 'parking yourself next to yourself' allows you to sit with difficult feelings until they pass, rather than being consumed by them. The Power of Presence Over Fixing Perhaps the most liberating message Maya offers is this: 'It's never about fixing. It's about presence, and I think it's for inner parenting and for outer parenting as well.' — Maya Kruger This applies both to how you show up for yourself and how you show up for your child. The impulse to fix is understandable, but presence - the simple act of being with someone in their struggle - is often more powerful and certainly more sustainable. Modeling Emotional Health for Your Children Maya encourages parents to give language to their emotions in front of their children instead of hiding their struggles. This isn't about burdening your child with your feelings, but about modeling that humans experience difficult emotions and can work through them. When you show your child that you're working on your own healing, you demonstrate that recovery and growth are lifelong processes, not destinations. Inner Parenting and Self-Healing A central theme in Maya's work is the concept of inner parenting - tending to the younger parts of yourself that may be asking for attention when anxiety gets loud. She asks parents to consider: what younger part of you needs care right now? This isn't separate from parenting your child through addiction; it's essential to it. As Maya notes, 'I think postpartum is for life. You know? A hundred percent. You're not the same person.' — Maya Kruger The transformation of becoming a parent, and especially of parenting through crisis, changes you fundamentally. Healing isn't about returning to who you were before - it's about caring for who you are now, with compassion and presence.

Episode 319 ABOUT THE EPISODE: Hunter Clarke-Fields was a painter. She had a graduate degree in art education, a high school teaching job, and what looked from the outside like a creative life. What nobody could see was that she was white-knuckling her way through it, cycling between intense highs and pits of despair she could not explain, having panic attacks in the hallways before she had any tools to handle them. She reached for yoga, then for books on mindfulness, and read about it for years before she finally, at 27, sat down and actually tried. She set a timer for 10 minutes and sat there thinking the whole time. She was certain she was doing it wrong. But two months in, she looked back and realized she had not fallen into a single pit. Not one. For someone who had been cycling into darkness every couple of weeks for most of her adult life, that was not a small thing. It was everything. And it sent her down a path she never expected, one that eventually turned her into the Mindful Mama Mentor, a podcast host, a mindfulness teacher, and the bestselling author of Raising Good Humans. Hunter now teaches mindfulness to parents all over the world, with over 20 years of meditation practice behind her and two daughters who, she will freely admit, grew up slightly allergic to the whole thing.  I wanted to have this conversation because I think mindfulness gets written off as vague or soft, and Hunter makes it anything but. She explains what is actually happening in your brain when you blow up at your kid, why longer exhales are not just a cliche, and what she calls the Three R's, a framework so simple you will remember it in the worst moment. She also says something about feelings being like toddlers that I keep coming back to.  If you have ever thought that mindfulness is not for you, or that you are too far gone to start, this one is for you. You'll learn: Why Hunter spent two months certain she was meditating wrong. The part of mindfulness most people skip that changes everything. Her Three R's for the moments you most want to lose it. What she says feelings are like, and why it reframes everything. The one thing she would tell a struggling parent to try today. EPISODE RESOURCES: Hunter Clarke-Fields website Raising Good Humans Book Mindful Mama Podcast This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream CommunityGet our free, 4-video course, Hope Starts Here, and access to our Limited Membership hereLearn about The Stream, our private online community for momsFind us on Instagram hereWatch the podcast on YouTube hereDownload a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and AlcoholHopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

Episode 318 ABOUT THE EPISODE: When Marie's son was diagnosed with ADHD at eight, she did what devoted parents do. She learned everything and got to work. By the time weed entered the picture in his teens, she had already lined up CRAFT counselors, drug and alcohol specialists, an at-risk youth petition, even a street artist mentor. She is a school psychologist. She had the frameworks, the language. None of it stopped what was coming. What followed were years of watching him cycle through residential treatment, partial hospitalization, therapeutic boarding school, sober living, and inpatient care, all before nineteen. When he came home and relapsed within days, Marie and her husband made the call she'd been bracing for: he couldn't live with them anymore. And something unexpected happened inside her. Today, her son has a job. He calls. He showed up to his dad's birthday and ate cake with relatives he hadn't seen in years. Marie listens without lecturing. She is only now learning what it means to help herself. This is one of the most honest accounts I've heard of doing everything right and still feeling unsure. If you've done everything you can think of and you're still waiting, this one's for you. You’ll learn: The moment Marie felt a significant shift inside her after her son relapsed and had to leave home What “active waiting” looks like in practice, and how that doesn’t mean ‘letting go’ The specific kind of change talk Marie started hearing from her son, and what it signals about where he is in his process How Marie and her husband are thinking through the next housing crisis before it happens, including a practical tool for staying grounded when everything hits at once The shift from parenting mode to consulting mode, and what it looks like to give your child a voice in solutions without solving everything for them EPISODE RESOURCES: Clear30 App - helps people take a 30 day break from weed Jessica Lahey’s “The Gift of Failure” This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream CommunityGet our free, 4-video course, Hope Starts Here, and access to our Limited Membership hereLearn about The Stream, our private online community for momsFind us on Instagram hereWatch the podcast on YouTube hereDownload a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and AlcoholHopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

Episode 317 ABOUT THE EPISODE: When Sally Harris’s middle daughter started down a dangerous path at 14, she did what most devoted mothers do. She fought hard to fix it. Boarding school. Rehab. Anything and everything she could think of. What she did not expect was that the hardest decade of her life was still ahead, or that the coping mechanism she reached for would quietly become a crisis of its own. Her daughter’s story wound through some of the darkest places a mother can imagine, and Sally will tell you she did not handle it with grace. She handled it the way most of us do: imperfectly, desperately, and often in ways that made things worse. What turned everything around was not something she did for her daughter. It was something she finally did for herself. Ten years later, her daughter is back. They speak together publicly. They laugh about things that were anything but funny at the time. Sally now coaches moms who are somewhere in the middle of their own version of this, and she brings the kind of clarity you can only get from having actually lived it. This conversation goes to places I do not hear enough people talking about honestly: what it does to a mother when her child goes silent, the ways we unknowingly push them further, and what it actually looks like to do the work on yourself while your child is still out there struggling. Sally asks one question of every mom she works with, and I think it will stay with you. If your child has asked for space, cut contact, or simply drifted somewhere you cannot reach, this one is for you. You’ll learn: The coping mechanism Sally reached for and what finally made her put it down for good Why honoring a requested pause is harder than it sounds, and what happens when we do not What Sally means by "father wounds" and how often they show up in the families she works with The one question she asks every mom she coaches, and why the answer changes everything A practical tool she calls a personal board of directors, and why your friends probably should not be on it. EPISODE RESOURCES: Sally Harris YouTube Channel Sally Harris website This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream CommunityGet our free, 4-video course, Hope Starts Here, and access to our Limited Membership hereLearn about The Stream, our private online community for momsFind us on Instagram hereWatch the podcast on YouTube hereDownload a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and AlcoholHopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

Episode 316 ABOUT THE EPISODE: Tough love. Two words that get thrown around constantly in the addiction world, and yet nobody can quite agree on what they mean. Kick them out. Cut them off. Save yourself. That’s the version I heard early on, and I couldn’t do it. Not because I was too soft, but because something about it felt fundamentally wrong - especially with a teenager. In this episode, Cathy and I get practical on the topic of this illusive thing called “tough love.” We walk through the nine actual actions we took with our own kids, in order, from the very first steps all the way to the hardest ones (ones we call “strong love”) as a way of demonstrating action, not theories. Just two moms who were figuring it out as we went, without the language, community or support we needed at the time. YOU’LL LEARN: What Dr. Gabor Maté said about tough love that stopped me cold Why I stopped using the phrase “tough love” and what I call it instead Nine “strong love” actions Cathy and I took with our own kids, and what we wish we had done differently The thing every person in recovery has told me about what finally changed things for them The two books I recommend to every parent, no matter where you are in this   EPISODE RESOURCES: Heather Hayes on Hopestream episode 111 Mary Crocker Cook on Hopestream episode 223 Jessica Lahey on Hopestream episode 163 Trish Ruggles on Hopestream episode 313 Safe Enough To Change course in Hopestream Community’s Limited Membership This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream CommunityGet our free, 4-video course, Hope Starts Here, and access to our Limited Membership hereLearn about The Stream, our private online community for momsFind us on Instagram hereWatch the podcast on YouTube hereDownload a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and AlcoholHopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

Episode 315 When I first heard about a woodworking apprenticeship as an addiction recovery program, I was skeptical. And then I sat down with Jeremy French, founder of Making Whole in Asheville, North Carolina, and everything I thought I knew about what recovery has to look like got turned on its head. Jeremy got sober at 17 after stolen cars, drug runs to Florida, and a flop house he describes as straight out of a Netflix series. He's been in recovery nearly 30 years, never finished high school, and built one of the most remarkable programs I've come across. Men build high-end furniture together, share a daily meal with the community, and are never forced to stay. Of the 55 men through Making Whole since 2018, 30 of the 33 who completed the program will tell you they are exactly where they want to be. That is not a number you hear in this space. You'll hear about: Why Jeremy credits drugs with solving nine out of ten problems in his life, and what that means for your child The two things true in every recovery success story Jeremy has witnessed, without exception The decision his parents made that changed his life more than anything else Why stepping back sends a different message than you think What addiction is actually solving, and why treating it as the problem keeps everyone stuck What parents who have lost a child would give anything to do, and what that means for right now EPISODE RESOURCES: Making Whole website This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream CommunityGet our free, 4-video course, Hope Starts Here, and access to our Limited Membership hereLearn about The Stream, our private online community for momsFind us on Instagram hereWatch the podcast on YouTube hereDownload a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

Episode 314 ABOUT THE EPISODE: I recently stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon and found myself thinking about change, why some people make it, why others don't, and what actually separates the two. It's a question I think about constantly when I look across the Hopestream community, because what I see is that some families are seeing real transformation while others seem stuck in the same Groundhog Day loop, month after month. This solo episode is my attempt to provide some answers to that question directly - why some people see greater change than others. Drawing on 6+ years of watching hundreds of moms and female caregivers move through this process, some gaining traction, some spinning their wheels, I’m sharing the 10 most common reasons why parents who are doing the work aren't getting the results they desperately want. It's an honest, no-fluff audit of what might actually be holding you back, and it comes from my heart - from someone who has been neurotic about results my entire career for good reason: there are no more important results than a healthy family. If you've been at this for a while and feel like things aren't moving or worse, like they're sliding backward, this one is for you. You'll hear about: The foundational piece most parents skip without realizing it. Why doing more things at once often backfires. The timing factor that determines whether any skill actually works. The fastest path forward when communication has broken down. Why inconsistency isn't a character flaw. What going it alone is really costing you. EPISODE RESOURCES: Hopestream Playlists - Start Here Playlist Jennifer Ollis Blomqvist on using Motivational Interviewing, Hopestream episode 306 Dr. Emily Kline on using Motivational Interviewing for hard conversations, Hopestream episode 160 Using Motivational Interviewing and CRAFT as a double punch effort to create change in your family, Hopestream episode 256 CRAFT family resources and providers with Helping Families Help Using CRAFT, MI and Acceptance & Commitment Therapy together to help your child, Hopestream episode 260 Stages of Change workshop Stages of Change downloadable cheat-sheet here  Hopestream podcast episode 66 on the Stages of Change This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream CommunityGet our free, 4-video course, Hope Starts Here, and access to our Limited Membership hereLearn about The Stream, our private online community for momsFind us on Instagram hereWatch the podcast on YouTube hereDownload a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and AlcoholHopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

Episode 313 ABOUT THE EPISODE:  When parents hear "wilderness therapy," their minds often race to worst-case scenarios: punishment, boot camps, kids forced to survive in harsh conditions. But Trish Ruggles, who spent over a decade as a field guide and wilderness therapist before becoming an educational consultant, has a different story to tell. After 21 years in the field and working with countless families through Pathfinder Consulting, Trish knows that wilderness therapy has evolved dramatically from its origins. What makes wilderness therapy effective isn't the outdoor skills or fresh air - though those certainly help. It's magic lies in the complete removal of 'noise.'  When you take a struggling adolescent out of their always-on life and place them in the wilderness, the volume goes down on everything that keeps them from thriving. No bedroom door to close, no delivery apps to summon food, no distractions to buffer the work of actually facing themselves. And there are immediate, natural consequences their adolescent brain can actually understand. Trish's approach is refreshingly honest and practical. She'll be the first to tell you wilderness therapy isn't for everyone, but for the kid who's stuck in their room, the one running wild in the streets, or the treatment-experienced individual who knows how to game the residential system, wilderness creates something that can't be replicated indoors: a space where you can't phone it in, where every action impacts your group, and where real-life consequences teach more than any lecture ever could. You'll learn: Key myths and facts about today's outdoor behavioral health offerings The critical, natural consequences that wilderness experiences provide in real-time How wilderness has evolved from its primitive roots Why adopted kids and those with attachment challenges often thrive in wilderness despite parents' fears The truth about getting kids to agree to, and actually go to an outdoor, adventure or wilderness program EPISODE RESOURCES: Website Trish Ruggles  Trish on Hopestream episode 202  Will White’s Hopestream podcast episode 14  ‘Safe Enough To Change’ course in Hopestream  This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream CommunityGet our free, 4-video course, Hope Starts Here, and access to our Limited Membership hereLearn about The Stream, our private online community for momsFind us on Instagram hereWatch the podcast on YouTube hereDownload a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.