Support your newly sober family member home for Christmas

Okay, go. Okay. Hey, Cadre. Chris Edrington here, going live with a nice Christmas message about this is for family members who have somebody coming home for Christmas that may have just gotten out of treatment, or they're sober. Maybe they're sober a while. Maybe it's still uncomfortable. Who knows? I'm gonna give some tips on how not to create a big, emotional, dramatic problem for everybody. And I want to start from the perspective of what should the family members do or not do? And so the first one I would say is, don't freak out.

Don't take all the alcohol out of the house over to your cousin's house. Don't lock up the closets where the knives are. Don't do crazy stuff, because it's really unnecessary. If somebody is in that place where they can't even see alcohol in the house, then they're not ready to come home for Christmas, and they're probably in treatment anyway. So I know I'm making some generalities here, some general statements. A lot of people are, this is a early sobriety is a messy, clumsy, hilarious, a lot of times, part of life, and, you know, and it's difficult to put a framework or a structure on it.

So. But if you're trying to set up, how do I create an atmosphere where my loved one's coming home, my husband, my kid, my daughter, my cousin, doesn't matter. And you want them to feel comfortable, do everything you can to have a normal holiday. Because here's the thing addicts crave normalcy, inclusion, validation. And when you're using, you get the opposite. So they want things to be normal. Now, sometimes, yeah, somebody might come home and they're like, why isn't everyone making a fuss about me?

I think they should. And that's a different thing. That isn't necessarily because they're alcoholic that they're doing that. So the more normal you can make it and don't have the topic of conversation be. So tell us about treatment. If they want to talk about it, let them talk about it. But it's. It's. It's so much more healthy for everyone to not marginalize them. Don't treat them with kid gloves. Don't walk, you know, follow them around the house. Like, are they. Are they going to go in the closet and drink or shoot up?

You will create all kinds of static with that. And although some addicts are, we're sneaky bastards, and we will do crazy s***, and that's true. But this is, like I said, some general advice for the family members. So they can set things up. So if you're looking for what to say to them, say, you know what? I'm your mom, you're my kid, I'm your dad, you're my daughter. I love you, period. And I'm not loving you differently. I'm not treating you differently. You're not having a special Christmas. I understand that some addicts in families create a lot of problems, a lot of havoc, and they've created a lot of damage.

And if you're in a place where it's just incredibly uncomfortable, then they shouldn't be there and they should make other plans, or maybe some members of the family shouldn't be there. Another thing that's really good advice is don't step into their twelve step program and say, hey, where's my amends? Where's my apology? I wanna know that you're getting better. Where's the proof you're getting better? I wanna know, are you taking urine tests? I bought one at Walgreens on the way over here. And I want you to take a test in the bathroom.

That's crazy, right? You can't be the counselor and the urine tester and the sister at the same time. And you're just creating all kinds of problems for both of you. So stay out of the counselor bucket. Be sister, be mom, be dad, be cousin, be son, be daughter, whatever it is. And try to keep the subject matter around that. I have another video with advice for the addict going home about things that they should do to try to keep the peace and keep it cool. I think it's really, really important to understand where brand new recovery people are coming from.

They're shedding a layer of skin. They're scared, they're changing. A lot of people don't like change. They're changing a lot of stuff. So they're scared and it's new. And, you know, maybe it's their 6th time in treatment, but once you get to a certain point in recovery, it's all new anyway, so let's have some respect for that. Another thing that I think a lot of families might think is really helpful, where they call the one person they've known since college who's sober for 300 years and they're going to come over and help make your kid more sober.

Not really. Not really. They will meet those people in the meetings. That doesn't mean that that couldn't happen. But that's not. It's like I'm asking the families not to play program coordinator and set things up for your loved one. That you think they should do in their recovery, because they're hearing about what they should do in their recovery forever, every minute in treatment. And then if they're in a secondary program like sober living or outpatient, they're hearing more of it. And if they're doing their recovery well, that means they're in the conversation a lot with a lot of people in their lives, and that really is to shift over a little bit.

The medicine is the other people and those connections and those modelings. And I say this a lot, but those opportunities are there. So if your loved one has made some plans to have a couple of meetings while they're at home, hopefully not in the middle of dinner, and they don't have to bust out. But look, if they had a bust out of dinner a little early, don't make a big deal about it. They don't have to go to meetings every other hour. That's not necessary. A couple of meetings during a four day break at Christmas is great.

I remember my first one with my family, and I could hear whispers in the hallway, and, you know, my sister kind of whispers at me on the way to the bathroom, like, you okay? You know, and I'm like, I'm fine. So I'm not trying to say that we have to walk on eggshells around an addict. That's not the message. The message is, think about what the addict or alcoholic is trying to do, the advice that they're given and what people are telling them they should do, people like me, and that is go build a life full of good people around you, of the things you want to do.

Be the person you want to be. Treat people the way that you want to treat people. They're trying to change the person, not just the behavior. They're not trying to just not shoot up or not drink. They're trying for much more than that. And so if the family can maybe even get together before they show up and say, look, we need to be on a united frontier where we're not whispering in the hallways, we're not following them everywhere they go to make sure they're not using or drinking, just be as normal as you can.

And if something happens, if something pops off, then it pops off, and you got to deal with it when you deal with it. But I think it's really helpful so that everybody in the family can have a Christmas or have, you know, for me, it was like, you know, four days. We get there on the 22nd. We have all kinds of dinners and all kinds of stuff, and then the big dinner and then the big day and then everybody leaves. I think what's, what's helpful more than anything is to try to get a perspective from your loved one's side about how are they thinking about this thing and not what you think they should be thinking about.

Because like I said earlier, they're getting an awful lot of that from every, from left and right from all over the place. And those people that are giving them that advice know what they're talking about. And a lot of times moms and dads and cousins and sisters do not, even though, you know, they're just trying to say I love you in a way of, you know, by asking about your program. So the message is just tell them that you love them and you want them to have a nice Christmas. And don't ask about how sober are you.

It's really not a thing. So some good advice for families to keep the peace. There's a thousand other things we could talk about around that front. I hope that was helpful. I hope everybody has a fantastic Christmas. And I hope all those addicts and alcoholics out there go home and just for Christmas and just do the dishes and take the trash out and keep their mouth shut and have some turkey and tell everybody I love you and have a wonderful Christmas. Because we don't need to make a big deal about this.

Sobriety is not about a big emotional play. It's about a repurpose of a lifestyle. And the more normal and the more accepting and the more means, it's more valid. And we are desperately seeking for some validity. We want, we want to be accepted and we want to be seen as normal to the extent that we can. So I hope this is helpful in that goal. And merry Christmas everybody. Take care.