The Recovered Life Show

[Announcer]
You're listening to The Recovered Life Show, the show that helps people in recovery live their best recovered lives. And here is your host, Damon Frank.

[Damon Frank]
And welcome back to The Recovered Life Show. I'm so pleased to have Pat Olson on with us today, a seasoned journalist, author, and respected voice in the addiction recovery community. Pat has contributed to publications like The New York Times and co-penned the insightful book Sober Siblings, which we're going to get into a little bit, and recently authored an article for Psychology Today entitled The New Definition of Sober.

She joins us to unravel this question. Has the definition of sober changed? Welcome to the show, Pat.

[Pat Olsen]
Thank you, Damon.

[Damon Frank]
So great to have you on today. I loved your Psychology Today article, and I was thrilled when I reached out to you and you were, you know, willing to come onto the show to discuss this. Wow, what a topic.

You know, I've seen recovery change so much, Pat, you know, over the decades. You know, I'm just going to ask you this. What made you write that article?

Like what was the inspiration behind that article?

[Pat Olsen]
I write about sober siblings for Psychology Today, and I had two brothers, both of whom were severely addicted to alcohol or suffered from alcohol use disorder, and they informed my life from an early age. They're both gone now, and they still inform my life. I started reading about addiction early and became a journalist and still am very interested in the field, and so I still write about siblings.

And one of the things I've noticed is that so much has changed in the last few years when it comes to language. And it's important, as one expert in the article said, because language affects policy and other things too. So I wanted everybody to know, or, you know, those who don't know, to know that language has changed, starting with substance use disorder and alcohol use disorder, even though we still all use the word alcoholism and alcoholic.

[Damon Frank]
Yeah, you know, I've found it to be, you know, I made the statement to a family member yesterday, I said, you know, addiction recovery, addiction has become morphing into mental health, right? The whole discussion of it is becoming more of a mental health discussion, which I'm really pro on. You know, I've seen, and we were talking before the show about how I identify myself as a recovered alcoholic, but a lot of people now wouldn't pursue the sober journey to try to get sober, to have any kind of abstinence using that label alcoholic.

And when I first came in, I came in through a 12-step program. If you didn't say the word alcoholic, you know, you weren't pursuing recovery. That was really the view, even though people didn't say it.

You had to say the word that you were an alcoholic, right? Not so much now, what, you know, your article is that, do you find that that word alcoholic stops people from really pursuing getting sober?

[Pat Olsen]
I don't think it's that word particularly. It's when they attach other words with it. I saw a headline recently, near do well brother, should he throw his brother out or not?

And I thought, did I have to use that word near do well? Because you know, or I was expecting that I would read about someone with a drinking problem and I thought if they would only save that, the fact that he has a drinking problem for the article itself, it would help remove stigma. But now usually if the word is alcoholic, there's something bad attached to it unless you are, you know, in tune with the times and know that it has changed.

[Damon Frank]
You know, the thing is, is that I was very against this approach, honestly, in recovery because working with people through 12-step programs or having friends or even doing a little sober coaching over the years, I found that I looked at it much more like an all or nothing thing. But then we had a member of our of our immediate family who didn't catch on to the traditional way of getting said, not the way that I did it right. And over the years, I had to be open with the fact that like, OK, sometimes it's too much for people to do total abstinence.

It's just too much. Right. And so I'm looking at this much more not from a Puritan view, right, saying that, well, you're sober or you're not sober.

Like my definition of sober hasn't changed. You're not, you know, you're not smoking marijuana. You're not, quote, California sober, which you had in there.

You're not occasionally drinking. You're sober or you're not sober. But I do believe there is this transitional period, which I think that you have here, which is not hammering people.

You know, they were maybe doing fentanyl three months ago, but now they're, you know, occasionally smoking marijuana. They're not there yet, but they're not. But it's massive harm reduction.

[Pat Olsen]
Right. And it blew my mind when I first heard even a friend say that her son's therapist said that he yes, it was OK for him to be smoking pot to help him stay away from heroin. I thought, what?

And that's news to me. And when I back in the early 2000s, when I wrote this book with an addiction expert, he said abstinence, what was the way to go? It was the only measure of success for any treatment program.

But that's not true today. It's changing.

[Damon Frank]
It's not. It's not. You know what?

And I have I have really changed my opinion on this, like I said, because one of the things that I have noticed in addiction recovery is that it is an unfolding. I look at recovery, Pat, you know, as an unfolding. And there are a lot of things like, for example, I've realized that, you know, I was a big sugar abuser.

You know, I was my first addiction was escapism. My second addiction was sugar. And then I found alcohol.

Right. Like so over the 30 years of being. Pat, like I have abused sugar a lot now, you know, now I'm at the point now where I don't abuse sugar, but it is taking me 30 years of struggling to do that.

Right. To be able to get to that, to be able to get to that point. But I was, quote, sober the whole time.

Right. But emotionally, I just wasn't I wasn't there yet. You know, I'd love to hear from your perspective of living.

You know, you came from a family that had alcohol use disorder. You had siblings. You've written a book on this.

How do you think this approach, looking back on dealing with family members in their recovery journey or attempts at recovery, how would this approach.

[Pat Olsen]
Maybe helped soften the drama and the blow of all of this, I'm not sure, because as you and I were talking, I felt very rigid about it at the time and my brothers were so entrenched. I don't know that I could have even entertained the thought that there was help for them. And that's one of the questions I still deal with.

Of all the people's brains so enmeshed that they can say that they want to recover, but they really don't. I don't think an addiction expert has answered that for me yet, and I don't know if it's possible to answer it. So, yes, I have had to come a long way in this thinking, too, but it's such a great way to think about it for most people that there is hope with harm reduction now.

[Damon Frank]
You know, I think I think one of the keys is is that I got from your article and also from life, Pat, is that we don't know a whole lot like we think we know a whole lot, but we don't know a whole lot. And I always tell like I love the book Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I'm not I'm not endorsing that way for everybody.

It's not for everybody, but for me, it works really well. And I think the book is really great. And, you know, somebody was commenting the other day in my friend group saying, well, you know, I was really outdated.

This is really outdated. And I said, you know, if you look at phones in the 1920s and 1930s, which is really the context of that book. Right.

You know, really, it's a 20s, 30s and 40s. When you look at the evolution of phones used, no one had phones. You had to go to a place to have a phone.

They were huge. Right. You'd have this massive infrastructure.

Now you literally can you know, you have a phone on your wrist. You could have a phone embedded on you. You know, like it's it's crazy, the evolution of phones.

But if you look at addiction recovery, really not a ton has changed in the fundamentals of it from that period of time. You know, we're talking about trauma now. We're talking about a lot of things that we weren't talking about in the 20s and 30s because there typically wasn't a language for it.

And, you know, people didn't talk about trauma. They were all coming back from the war. They didn't you know, it's just not something that people openly discussed then.

What do you think as far as like the future of recovery is going to look like, especially with people who may be listening to this that are maybe dealing with the family member that has, you know, a pretty crippling addiction issue?

[Pat Olsen]
Well, look at psychedelics. I mean, whoever would have thought that they would have a say in this matter. And yet the experts are studying them.

There are studies that have shown that they are successful in treating trauma and addiction. So, you know, that's something to still get used to that it's possible.

[Damon Frank]
Yeah, I think it I think it is possible. You know, I'd love to hear your thoughts on, you know, your personal experience and, you know, techniques for people that are listening here that are maybe struggling with somebody in their family or a friend group or significant other husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend that is trying to get sober and struggling doing it, because, you know, I have a lot of compassion. It's not easy for people to get sober.

You know, I think what I think that what a lot of people don't understand is, although I did not admit this right off the bat, looking back on it, getting rid of alcohol for me was really a death sentence because it was my best friend. It got me through a lot. So when alcohol turned on me, it was very, very, very difficult.

And when alcohol is in my system, it's I don't really have a choice. Right. And what I want to do, it's very difficult.

There's windows where I had a choice. And thank God I took one of those choices. But for people who are dealing with people that are going through this, what advice would you give them as far as the patience of maybe this person's relapsing a lot?

They're going through a lot. You know, it's not perfect, but they seem to be. What's your experience with this?

[Pat Olsen]
I would say keep up the communication and understand that people need boundaries. So if your family member seem if you are the person with the problem and your family member seems to be pulling away or setting boundaries, try and understand that it's for their well-being as well.

[Damon Frank]
Yeah, I think, you know, I think a lot of the keys for especially younger people, you know, I find that people who are especially in their early 20s down to teens, it's much harder for them to look at abstinence as a lifestyle forever. For you know, I know even in the mid 20s when I came in, forever was a long time. You know, much different than being 56 now.

Forever isn't as much of a longer time. But, you know, it I didn't have the life experience or the emotional maturity at the time to be able to say, yeah, I'm going to quit forever. I love the 12 step version of it's really a day at a time, you know, that we're committing to this.

I think that that's a really effective thing. You know, going back to your article a little bit, I want to dive back into the vocabulary a lot. I think when you're talking forever, when you're talking labels, when you're talking, you know, because we know so many people come in with also mental health issues, co-occurring disorders.

How do you change that vocabulary? If somebody is listening to this and they're dealing with somebody, you know, I always say stop acting mean to that person. They're having a they're having a mental health struggle and probably a physical health struggle.

Being mean, you know, if you had cancer and you threw up on somebody's rug, they wouldn't beat you to death for it, right? Like so what do you think is the best approach when dealing with people with this?

[Pat Olsen]
I would say vocabulary. Discuss the problem with them and discuss the change in vocabulary. And if if you slip, apologize, because I shouldn't have said that.

It's so much of it is to me is about being closed as opposed to being open. Willing to share feelings, which, you know, you've said several times, is very difficult when you're going through the trauma.

[Damon Frank]
Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of it is just this personal unfolding, as we were talking about before, about how. Just, you know, things that were OK in early sobriety for me now then are not OK for me now. Right.

You grow and you learn. And I think it's an evolution to this. You know, can we talk a little bit about your book that you wrote?

Because I find this interesting, having siblings that are, you know, you know, growing up in this and seeing people that you're very close to in love with this addiction thing. You wrote this book. Can you tell us a little bit about the book and, you know, what people can get from it?

Sure.

[Pat Olsen]
It's a very different relationship from a parent child relationship. One of the things I often say is that you mirror a sibling and you're extremely close. There's no other relationship like it.

So it's very difficult. The word, the old word was called dependent, where you get too involved in someone's life who has a problem. But that word has changed also, I understand.

So often the sober sibling desperately needs therapy as well to understand, to set boundaries, to know how not to enable a sibling, but also to open communication.

[Damon Frank]
Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things that, you know, I have learned is like I like the word codependent because I think it's right. You know, I always say in The Recovered Life Show that I've never met a really good alcoholic that hasn't been surrounded by a bunch of good codependents.

[Pat Olsen]
Right.

[Damon Frank]
And I think it's this dynamic. And I'd love for you to speak about this dynamic, because, you know, codependency, you know, we look at in The Recovered Life Show, we look at codependency as an addiction as well, because it's this addiction pattern of having to change outside things for you to be OK inside, which is exactly the evolution that people who have alcohol use disorder have to have. Right.

It's they're trying to change things inside by using that. And the codependents are using people in order to do that. Can you talk about that?

And, you know, the whole idea of codependency, especially when it comes to this definition of being sober, I think there's so much juice that people that suffer from codependency get from the control over whether the person's going to use or not use in their life.

[Pat Olsen]
Right. My co-author, Dr. Livonis, was famous for saying support anything in your sibling's life that promotes sobriety and stay away from anything that doesn't. For example, if someone needs a ride to a meeting, fine.

If someone needs money again, that's a no, no. You don't want to promote they're continuing to do what isn't healthy for them.

[Damon Frank]
Yeah, I think making that judgment call for you, for your situation, how did you do that, Pat? Like, you know, really diving into this, like, really, like to get real here. I think it's so difficult.

And I think that's one of the reasons I wanted to do this episode, because it's not necessarily for the people who are going through recovery because they're going to get there or they're not going to get there. And the people around them are going to have very little to do with it. In my opinion, it's really going to be they can help.

They can support. But ultimately, it's going to be a personal decision about what you actually want to do once you get the freedom to be able to do whatever you want to do, right? Like, so it's the same thing with raising kids.

You want to teach them how to, like, be able to make good decisions early on because there's going to be some point where you're not going to be making those decisions for them. How do you do that when you're looking at them making not so great choices all the time?

[Pat Olsen]
Part of it is boundaries with my brothers. I knew that there would be a time when my younger brother would don't ever call me to bail you out. I would rather see you working on your health than bail you out of jail.

Actually, I was honest with him and it was something I had to do for myself. And he did call and I did tell him I wasn't going to bail him out, partly because I had no idea about the bail process. And if I'd ever get the money back with my older brother, it was a little different.

He was stopped for a DUI once and needed a ride home or the police wanted someone to drive his car home. I did do that that night, but I also told him, this is your one and only time I will ever do this. Don't ever ask me again.

I don't know why I saw the two differently, other than my younger brother had a worse problem than my older. I don't know, but I had to take steps like that in my own self-interest, and I went as far as I could to help them that I thought I could.

[Damon Frank]
Yeah, I think I think one of the good things about your article and one of the good things about recovery now is that there is more acceptance and I think there's more patience. You know, I think I think this morality judgment call with people who are suffering from addiction is misplaced. You know, and not that people are not responsible for what they do.

But, you know, there was always something when I came in, I know to a 12 step group, they said, you know, if you were a horse thief before you came in, you're just going to be a sober horse thief. Right. I think people sometimes people don't separate.

Some people's personality and kind of what they do. Right. And then the addiction, they kind of lump it all together as some big moral play.

And there are, you know, people steal for drugs. People still that would normally would not. You know, people do things like like drink and drive and, you know, hurt people, domestic violence.

There's all these things that people do that they wouldn't necessarily do if they were, quote, in their right mind. And I and I love this idea that we're kind of having a better understanding that although a lot of people don't consider it a disease, necessarily, other people do. Right.

That still something's going on, whether you want to call the personality disorder, mental health crisis, whatever it is, there's something that's going on and being able to have some grace for people and give them the ability to mess up and to be able to come back and repair it, I think, is so important.

[Pat Olsen]
Yeah, I still kept a relationship with my brothers after those two events. But another thing that gives me hope recently with the changes is these sober things like the sober months. Where somebody can cut back if they think they might be having a bad problem in the future, where they can say, yes, I can get some control for a month.

I can do that. And they show themselves that they can.

[Damon Frank]
Absolutely. You know, I always tell people that relapse. I had a friend who had 25 years and relapsed, and it was a lot of time and he had a lot of shame coming back and trying to get help because he was out for sober for so long and productive in his life for so long.

And, you know, one of the things he came to the realization was is that there was no shame in the fact that he had relapsed. He didn't want to do it again. But he said, you know, Damon, he goes, I won the Super Bowl 25 years in a row.

And, you know, and yes, I lost the Super Bowl. You know, I did make it to the playoffs two years. And he goes, but now I have an additional 10 years of winning the Super Bowl.

And that's a lot of Super Bowls to win. And I thought, you know, that is such a great analogy, because recovery is not always all or nothing. The optimal, obviously, is not to take drugs and alcohol.

But if it is part of your path so you don't kill yourself, then it's part of your path so you don't kill yourself. Like, that's where I have that's where I have come to.

[Pat Olsen]
I love meeting people like your friend, because they almost always have tips on what has helped them, and they're so positive.

[Damon Frank]
Absolutely. You know, Pat, final thoughts here. Anything you would like to add, maybe to somebody who's listening to this and struggling a little bit or a family member that's struggling with somebody who's struggling.

Final thoughts here on the new definition of sober.

[Pat Olsen]
Don't give up hope. Change with the times.

[Damon Frank]
Absolutely. Pat, thank you so much for coming on The Recovered Life Show today. Thank you, Damon.

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