Loving An Addict

the movie that opens Friday. It's a movie that sort of sees the world through the perspective through the eyes of a dog. It was such a great movie. It took at least one box of clean X, maybe two between all of us. We have five dogs in our house every day. They are a huge part of our lives, so seeing life through the eyes of a dog made this great for my family. It's going to pull your heart strings, it's gonna make you cry, but it's got such a good ending, a happy ending. The movie opens

this Friday in theaters everywhere. So I was saying thank you for joining us, and thank you for downloading this podcast. We decided to talk about bold love on the air the last few weeks starting this year with boldness, living boldly, taking chances, stepping outside of your comfort zone. And and you wrote to me and said the most bold things she's ever done, She said, I brought a homeless woman

home to live with me. I set her up in an apartment, my friends and I filled it with donated items between another woman and myself, we ended up spending a bunch of money filling her fridge and cupboards with food. Unfortunately, this woman met a guy and walked away from it all because she wasn't allowed to have him live in the apartment with her. Now she's in it up back on the street again. And thank you for sharing that, and thank you for sharing bold love, even if the

result wasn't what you would hope it would be. I can't tell you and how many times I have stepped out on faith, stepped out in love and done the very same thing you did, provided a home for somebody who was homeless, taken in people off the streets. When my daughter Sheila was a baby, I met a listener who was a prostitute and she had a broken nose

from her pimp. And she was such a beautiful and kind and sweet young lady, and my husband and I decided to help her out and found her safe place to live and brought her into our hearts and into our homes, and she got clean and sober, She detoxed off years of drug abuse. She was young, but she had been using drugs and alcohol since she was like

twelve or thirteen years old. She was such a sweet lady, such a good heart, but she was so broken, so fragile, and she got frustrated because she got a job as a waitress and she was making minimum wage and not not very much tips. And one night one of her old clients contacted her and offered her a great deal of money, and she decided to go back, and she told herself it was just going to be that one time.

Well guess what happened That one time led to another time, led to another time, led her back to the crack pipe and back to the streets. And I don't know if she ever found her way home again. I don't know if she ever made life choices. And that has happened dozens of times with people that I've loved, and it used to frustrate me and break my heart to think, after all I've done, how could you do this? But

then I realized that it's not about the outcome. It's about showing someone there's a better way, and whether they choose to take that way or not. I am still going to choose to love my husband. My friends, they all said, d when are you going to stop? When are you going to realize that you're wasting your money, You're wasting your time, You're wasting your energy trying to help people that don't want to be helped. And if somebody says they don't want to be helped or shows

me they don't want to be helped, that's fine. But when somebody shows me that they want to change, they want a better life, I am always going to extend my heart and love I am. I don't ever want to become bitter or cynical, or are frustrated or feel

used up. I still want to love. Maybe I'll do it a little more wisely in the future, but and maybe I will instead of trying to help, will do what I what I try to do now, which is to give more tools for them to make the change and make the choices and to do what needs to be done. But always love honey, don't and don't get frustrated. That she is back out on the street is heartbreaking,

But you don't know. Maybe you have planted a seed in her heart and maybe one night she will go to bed and she will wake up and go I don't want this life anymore. I don't want the streets anymore. I don't want the drugs. I don't want the abuse. I don't want to be addicted to men that destroy me, or drugs that take my health and take my sanity. You don't know. You planted seed, and that's how God calls us to do. So don't get discouraged, and don't

stop loving. Maybe you are like Ange, and you give and give and give of yourself, and maybe a give too much. Maybe you've got a son or a daughter that makes promises time and time again, and each time you fall for it, and then they steal your car or your checkbook or your credit card, and your heart is shattered all over again. Maybe you need to read a little book called Boundaries. It's by a doctor Cloud and doctor Townsend. It's been in print for twenty years.

I don't know how long. But it's a great, great book. If you're a giver and you're always giving to others and they take and take and take until there's nothing left to give, maybe you need to set healthy boundaries. Oh that's so hard to do. Do you have an adult child, a sister or a brother. Maybe it's your spouse that simply can't won't or can't get sober and get clean, get off the whatever it is they're addicted to,

stay away from the casinos. I know an adult young woman, beautiful, smart, talented, oh so talented, but keeps destroying herself because she can't stay away from the casinos. She is addicted to gambling. It's a real thing. You're like, how how could you? How could you get addicted to throwing your money away? It's true, lots of people do it and spend billions

of dollars every day behind that addiction. If you have a hard time setting boundaries with others, try try looking into that book Boundaries by Dr Cloud in Doctor Townsend. And if you're the one that you have a hard time setting boundaries with, if you're if you can't set boundaries with yourself, if you make promises to yourself, I'm never going to do this. I'm never going to do that,

and then you turn around and do it. Then you need to be the one looking into a twelve step group to fix whatever it is that you keep doing. I know so many people that have addictions, addictive behaviors, and they make promises to themselves, they make promises to their kids, and then they don't they don't follow through. That's what makes it an addiction. That is the definition of addiction, doing the same thing over and over and

over and expecting different results. Silly you think, well, I'm not really an alcoholic because I still have a job. I'm not an alcoholic because I don't go to the bars and drink. I just sit here and down a bottle of wine or two, or a six pack of bear or two. Don't be silly. Come on, are you really in that deep of denial. I have a dear friend of our family who finally made his way to a twelve step meeting about six months ago after he had destroyed his life in behind crack cocaine. And he's

not a young man. I'm not talking to eighteen year old or five year old. This man's in his sixties and he had been off the drugs for twenty years and went back thinking he could control it, thinking he could handle it, thinking it wasn't really an addiction. But that's the definition of addiction. If you know that you have a problem and you can't stop, get help, get help, ask for help, raise your hand and say, um, delila,

I need to talk to you. I don't know what to do because I can't stop going to the casino and I've ruined my credit and I can't pay my rent and I can't even buy food right now. But I can't let anyone know there's help. They're is there's help. Several years ago when I first found my way to the twelve step programs because my husband was an alcoholic and my father was an alcoholic, and I found out there was a twelve step program for people who love people who drink too much, and I refused to go.

I wanted nothing to do with it because I said, I'm not the one with the problem, And somebody said, really, because I think you're the one that just got out of the hospital because you were beat up by a drunk. That means you have a problem. Now. My problem is I need to get them to stop drinking. I said, so many of us think that our problem is we got to fix somebody else. In just a moment, I'm going to share a phone call that I took on my show from somebody who's trying to fix her son.

And his addiction isn't one that's talked about or even recognized, because it's not chemicals. He's not addicted to crack or heroin or alcohol. He's addicted to the Internet, and his gaming has become his whole life to the point where he has no other relationships. I'm gonna share my words of wisdom with his mama and see if I can't help her find peace in her life. Hi, Cindy, Welcome to the Delilah Show. How's your New Year's going so far? Um, It's it's a challenge. I'm I'm I'm just more so

worried about my son. He was twenty two. I had a birthday on Christmas. I had nice presents for him that I had saved over several months and got them, knew that he could use them. And it's just very sad because I cooked dinner and made a real nice dinner, and usually what his father had been alive, he would have helped me clean the kitchen, which he always did. But I always cooked on my birthday because that's the way I always did. And my son, it didn't offer anything.

He just says, thanks for the dinner. It was good. It Um. After the gifts were open, of course, I didn't get anything because he didn't have anything to give me, which is fine. He made me a birthday cart and that means more to me probably than anything. And um, he uh, he's he's incessantly and grossly addicted to game stations.

It's combat. It's across the boat, pons around the world, and he cannot sit and converse with me or talk to me on the phone when I call him, ask him how his day is, and he said, I'm busy. So well, were you busy with? Are you cooking or cleaning or what? Can I come and help you? No, mother, I'm busy. And I said, well, you know, I just wanted to call him wish you a happy New Year.

And I just hope and pray that God directs you on the right path this year and you follow and you make the wisest decisions that you could ever make as a young man. Well, when I said that, he not funny. I'm very, very upset because I love this young man more than anything. With his girlfriends leaving them after a year living with them, she is absolutely so

dissatisfied with his behavior, his immaturity. Okay, stop stop, stop, stop, stop right there, okay, and take a deep breath, and I am going to share something with you that I want you to to write it down or to impress it on your heart. Okay, sure, are you ready? Yes? In the beginning of this conversation, you said, my son is terribly addicted to these games, and he is. My

son is too. I have an eighteen year old son that I don't know if he's going to graduate high school because he is addicted to the games, and so are thousands and millions of his friends and other kids their age. So here's what I want you to hear. Are you ready, yes, ma'am. It's called the three CS of addiction. Number one, You did not cause his addiction.

Whether a child's addiction is to the Internet, gaming, to gambling, to drinking, to drugging, to heroin, to pornography, to eating disorders, whatever, whatever the addiction is that is stealing their life from them and stealing them out of your arms. You did

not cause it. Number two, you cannot control it. So saying things like I'm going to pray for you that you'll make wise decisions, or I'm not going to give you any money to buy alcohol, or you're on your own if you end up in the street from shooting heroin. There's nothing you can say or do to control another person's addiction. Trust me, I've tried. And the third see is you sure as hell cannot cure it. I know he has to. He has to admit his his addiction.

He has to come forward and say I'm going to stop this. He lives on his own and his girlfriend lived together. She got so sick and tired of him the first six months. She has done with them. She dates other people, She works sixteen hour days, she stays with some friends once so well, because she cannot stand his stilth Um I asked him. I said, the only thing of Evan, if yet you can give me is um um is a nice Christmas tree decorated. So I got my ornaments that I gave him, and Um, I said,

that's all I want. When I come into your apartment, then you can have the tree decorated. And and so a friend the daughter. But do you listen, do you hear what you're saying. You're talking to an addiction. You're not talking to your son. You know what he decorated Christmas morning? When I got there, and for Christmas afternoon, I said, also, you don't want to decorate a tree. You're gonna leave it like this? And he said, no,

I thought we were going to do it. And then his girlfriend's mother was there um giving giving her gifts, and she said The mother said, that's all he did was play game stations. He has not even attempted to decorate the tree. And I said, I cannot believe this. He only cost me what he wants. But you can believe it because you've been living through it. This isn't a new something. This has been going on for a long time. But you can believe it. You're frustrated that

you can't fix it. What you can't believe is that you have no power over it. You do not have any power over your son's addictive behavior. You don't have any power over your son period. You know, once a child hit thirteen fourteen, fifteen sixteen, were pretty much powerless over what we can and can't do in directing them, well, I unplug. He had a game station when he was younger, and I am plugged in, took the cord and I said, you're done for the next five days. You start showing

me some responsibility here and I can return this. But now I can't. I wish I could go in there unplug it and then he but, honey, you sound think of all the thousands of moms and dads said, I wish I could just take the heroin needle out of their arm. I wish I could just go in and take the heroin out of their out of their pocketbook, out of their briefcase, out of their I wish I could just go take that bottle and dump it down the sink. And we try those things, but it doesn't work.

For I drank or smoke, and he drinks a little bit, and when he gets a little wine under him or something, going out to dinner or something with some friends, which I had taken him out for his work because he doesn't have a car yet and he's not He doesn't care. He just drives his bike across the street where he works and rides it back home. And he works um with children which he is absolutely fantastic doing his job. Honey, you're not listening to a word I'm saying. I am. No,

you're not. You're rallying on and on and on about him. It's not about him. He's an adult. He gets to make his choices. This is about you, Mom. It's breaking my heart, and you need to learn the Serenity prayer. I know that I used to read it all the time. I grabbed my head and hanging up on the wall. Okay, reading it is great, but you need to get it into your heart and your mind and your soul. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

You have not accepted at all that you cannot fix your son. I have no qualms dealing with anything, but the fact is I just want to be closer to my son and be him to be a kinder, more giving individual. But but you've got to accept that you cannot change your son one iota. All you can do is love him and do not enable him, and let him make the choices he's going to make, and pray that before it's too late, God gets a hold of him.

I hope, so, Delilah, I really hope. So Cindy, you speak for so many of us who are trying to rescue, rescue, ranger, rescue a loved one from the darkness of addiction. I can hear the love and the desperation you feel to try to fix this. You can't just love someone through this, trust me, many have tried. However, there is a bold

enough love, but it's not an earthly love. Doesn't mean we give up, doesn't mean we stop loving, doesn't mean we stopped praying, doesn't mean we stopped doing kind things. But there are some very practical things and ideas that we can put into place so that the attic doesn't destroy us while the addiction is destroying them. I hope to bring the theme of a addiction to several of

my podcasts this year. I'm going to invite real people who have been on every point of addiction, people who have been addicted and come out on the other side, people who have seen their loved ones through, people who have lost their loved ones because of addiction. We're going to share these experiences and our strength, hope, and love right to me by going to my website Delilah dot com, or you can find me on Facebook. I'd love to

hear your thoughts, your stories, your experiences again. This podcast has been brought to you by the producers of the film A Dog's Purpose, a great movie to see with your whole family. Thank you for spending this time with me. So down and love some love,