Transforming the Holiday Season: Prioritizing Recovery and Renewal Over Tradition

Can the holiday season be a catalyst for change? Discover a perspective that challenges the conventional wisdom of delaying recovery efforts for loved ones struggling with addiction. This episode sheds light on the misconception that suicide rates skyrocket during the holidays—while depression does increase, suicides do not. You'll learn why prioritizing recovery over traditional holiday gatherings could be the gift that keeps on giving, turning this festive time into an opportunity for positive transformation. We invite you to explore the emotional and psychological benefits that can far outweigh the temporary loss of family moments.

As families face the daunting decision of choosing health over holiday traditions, overcoming fear and codependency becomes essential. We talk about the delicate balance needed to support a loved one's journey to sobriety. Therapists, often more equipped with specialized training than physicians, offer a viable route for families seeking help. You'll gain insights into the systemic barriers doctors face, such as the lack of institutional support despite addiction being a recognized medical disease.

As 2024 approaches, we emphasize the urgency of seeking timely intervention amidst a critical shortage of treatment options. With 49 million Americans meeting criteria for a substance use disorder diagnosis and only 13 million receiving help, timely action is crucial. We explore the unmet promises of state-funded programs like Oregon's Medicaid system, urging families to act now. Let this holiday season be a time of renewal and potential, setting the stage for a brighter 2025. Thank you for your continued support—your ratings and reviews help us spread this vital message far and wide.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Party Wreckers podcast, hosted by seasoned addiction interventionist, Matt Brown. This is a podcast for families or individuals with loved ones who are struggling with addiction or alcoholism. Perhaps they are reluctant to get the help that they need. We are here to educate and entertain you while removing the fear from the conversation. Stick with us and we will get you through it. Welcome the original party wrecker, Matt Brown.

Speaker 2: 0:51

Welcome back everybody. My name is Matt Brown. I am your host. I am so glad to be here with you. I'm glad you've decided to listen in. Today. This is the week of Thanksgiving 2024.

Speaker 2: 1:10

And there are some things I think that are important to talk about. During this time of year, a lot of families are going to be getting together and for some families, that's a more difficult situation than it is for others. I also think there's a lot of myths floating around there about what happens during the holidays in terms of depression, in terms of increase in self-harm and suicide rates. So I want to really dive into some of that tonight, not to be pessimistic and not to necessarily make this a difficult episode to listen to. My hope would be is that we talk about this, we take away some of the fear that sometimes surrounds the holidays for families that are struggling with addiction and really empower you as families to look at this time of year differently than I think a lot of people do.

Speaker 2: 1:53

As an interventionist, this is the time of year that I really start to get slow. No one wants to send their loved one to treatment from about the end of Halloween as we get into November and people start ramping up for the holidays. And then Christmas comes December 25th and then my busiest week for phone calls every single year is December 26th through New Year's, and I think the reason for that is just because nobody wants to have their loved one go into treatment before the holidays, or they think that their loved one go into treatment before the holidays, or they think that their loved one would be resistant to the idea of getting into treatment because they'll miss the holidays. But of course nobody wants their alcoholic or addicted loved one around for the New Year's Eve parties, and so that's a time of year that I think things for us in this field start to get a little bit busy.

Speaker 2: 2:42

But one of the things that I think families get most concerned about and I hear this a lot, especially during this time of year is that suicide rates go up during the holidays, and as I was doing a little bit of research for this episode, I found that that's actually not true. I went and did a number of different searches on what does the increase in self-harm and suicide rates look like during the holidays, and in almost every search that I did with a combination of different keywords, what I found was that there is actually not an increase in the rates of suicide and self-harm during the holidays. There's an increase in the rates of depression, but the time of year that actually has the most significant increase in suicide is actually spring and summer, and the age group that's most affected by changes in the I don't know if it's changes in the season, but the most at-risk age group and gender group for suicide is men over the age of 65. And so for most of the people that I work with, most drug addicts and alcoholics don't survive to 65 in the first place if they continue on an active addiction or alcoholism. So that kind of weeds out that age group immediately from the population that we're talking about here right now. According to the American Psychological Association, there's about a 38% increase in the rates of depression during the holidays, in November and December, versus other times during the year, but that doesn't necessarily correlate to an increase in the rates of suicide, and so I think that a lot of families get worried about. Well, we don't want to intervene or we don't want to have our loved one go to treatment because we're taking them away from our family during the holidays, or we're asking them to sacrifice time with their families, times with their kids or with brothers and sisters or parents, loved ones. We don't want to ask them to sacrifice that because there's an increased chance that they're going to become depressed or there's going to be a psychological effect that's negative in addition to going to treatment. The reality is not getting help is going to have a much more profound psychological and emotional effect than asking somebody to go and actually improve that condition by getting treatment, even if it means spending time away from family. Because here's the reality of it, and I'm looking at examples from my own life as I talk about this as well One of the last Christmases that I celebrated with my family before getting sober, this was probably when I was about 28, 27 years old.

Speaker 2: 5:35

My siblings I'm the oldest of six kids in my family we were back home in my family home in Arizona where I grew up, and I remember everybody kind of opening presents and you know some of my siblings had kids already and you know the grandkids went first and they opened presents and then some of my siblings started open presents and you know, of course, me being the selfish and self-centered individual that I was at the time, I'm kind of looking around going, huh, where are all my presents? And, and there at the end, um, my dad reaches behind the Christmas tree and pulls out one present for me and I'm the oldest, I'm 27, 28 years old at this point and I open it up and it's a football. Um, and you know, here I was thinking, wow, what a letdown. You know, my, my parents, as parents as a grown man, got me a football for Christmas. And the reality is I've never actually spoken to them about this, but I can only imagine that they were trying to show me that they didn't forget about me. They were absolutely thinking about me during the holidays, but they also didn't want to get me something that was expensive, that I could go pawn or hawk and then use that money to buy drugs. Because they knew exactly what was going on with me at that time. They didn't know the extent of it, they didn't know all the details, thank goodness but they knew enough to know that if they got me anything of value, that it was going to end up getting pawned, it was going to end up getting sold off and I was going to use that money to procure drugs and alcohol. And so they did the best they could at the time and they got me a football and it stands out as a memory to me because I know now, looking back, as angry as I was at the time, feeling like man, what a bunch of cheapskates. Everybody else got something. They were protecting me from myself at the time and as I work with families now, sometimes I will share that story, because there's this sense of almost fantasy that surrounds families and I include my own family in this, when it was me in this situation.

Speaker 2: 7:48

Families want to hold onto this idea that maybe somehow this will still be a good experience. Maybe somehow just being around family will allow our loved one to connect with the fact that there's something bigger to be a part of here that they're missing out by not living a sober life and maybe just by being present at family functions we can have an effect in a positive way on what's going on. And more times than not, what ends up happening is the individual arrives late. If they arrive at all, they arrive impaired on some level, level because of the behavior that surrounds addiction. We create distractions, whether it's conflict, whether it's impaired behavior, intoxicated behavior. We will without being intentional about it, but we will distract from the occasion and in most cases, it ends up being frustrating for the family members that aren't living in active addiction, but are living with active addiction, and it creates resentment and it creates hurt and it creates memories that would have better not been made in the first place.

Speaker 2: 9:01

And so I guess, as I'm talking about this, I want to encourage families that are on the fence. Do we try to ask our loved one to get help right now, or do we wait until after the holidays to do this? I want to encourage everybody who's listening to this right now to really consider not waiting, because the reality is we're dealing with a fatal disease here. We're dealing with something that, given a long enough timeline, it will take the life of every single person who goes down this road, or it will take the freedom away from every single person that goes down this road. It will land us in jail, it will land us in prison, it will land us in medical compromise, it'll end relationships, it'll destroy relationships between parents and children and spouses and loved ones, and there's nothing positive that comes from waiting.

Speaker 2: 9:58

If someone needs help, I think sometimes, as loved ones who may err on the side of codependency and I include myself in that because I've been there, we will give ourselves a number of reasons as to why now is not a good time. Well, I don't want to take this opportunity away from them or I don't want this to be the memory that they associate with Christmas or with Thanksgiving and sending the message as a family, in a very loving way, to really be able to say we care more about your health and your happiness than we care about you spending Christmas here with us this year or we spend you being here in Thanksgiving with us this year. We want to salvage every Christmas and Thanksgiving that is yet to happen, and we're willing to sacrifice the one that's happening this year in 2024 to make sure that we get all the future ones that we possibly can have with you and that those memories are as wonderful as we hope that they will be. Because you've decided to get sober and because, as a family, we have decided to rally around you and help you make this decision, to get the help that you need. We want to see you happy, we want to see you healthy and, as a family, we are no longer willing to walk in fear because we are trying to avoid conflict or we are trying to avoid what happens in relationships when feelings get hurt or we are trying to avoid what happens in relationships when feelings get hurt and the minute that, as family members, we can allow that fear to, we can disarm, that, we can take away the weapon that sometimes fear gets used as and it can lose its power and we can, in a loving way, approach that loved one and say we care too much about you to be quiet anymore, and there's never a good time to do this, but right now is the best time to do this.

Speaker 2: 11:57

If you guys understand my meaning and as, as you contemplate this, there are a number of different ways that families can go about getting help, and that's the other thing that I was thinking about as I was preparing for this episode is where do most families start when they start looking at, okay, how do we get our loved one help? There's really two avenues that I think a lot of families will look at first as kind of the front lines, and the first one would be a therapist or a psychiatrist. I think that a lot of times, and rightly so, families will look at this and say, well, if we can just get them into therapy, maybe that will help them start to turn the corner, and I think that that's a better alternative than the other one that I'll start to talk about here in just a minute. I think that most therapists have a much more significant amount of training when it comes to addiction recovery and certainly mental health wellness, than physicians, and that's the other group I think that families will turn to when it comes to okay, what do we do? Because addiction is a medical disease.

Speaker 2: 13:08

I believe that it's a medical disease, it's certainly in the DSM-5, and it has been categorized as a medical illness for years, for decades Institute on Drug Abuse, nida, and if you guys want to reference this study, this article, the title of it is Doctors Reluctant to Treat Addiction Most Commonly Report Lack of Institutional Support as Barrier. So I was really looking at okay, what keeps doctors in particular from being able to treat addiction more effectively? If we look at this as a medical issue, the frontline medical providers, the family practitioners, the internal medicine docs what tools do they lack to be able to treat this more effectively? And so what this article talks about is over the course of the last 61 years, they pulled from 283 studies, and we're talking about data that has been collected from about 66,000 doctors over the course of 61 years Now the number of studies that were done, about 97% of them have been done since 2000. So you know, the first 41 years of that, or 40 years of that, there wasn't a whole lot of research or studies done on addiction compared to what's been done in the last 24 years.

Speaker 2: 14:45

But of the doctors that were surveyed, those 66,000 doctors, what they found most commonly the number one reason that was cited and this is coming from 81% of the studies that were done. Out of these 283 studies, 81% of them cited that the biggest reason that doctors didn't feel like they could treat addiction in their office setting or in the medical setting that they practiced in, whether that was a medical group or a hospital, 81% of them reporting lack of institutional support. And what that means is, according to what I read here, institutional environment refers to factors like lack of support from physicians, institution or employer, insufficient resources such as staff and training, challenges in organizational culture and competing demands. So those were the reasons cited when they talk about, or the detail that was cited when they talk about, lack of institutional support. I think again, as I read between the lines there, what I'm reading is there's a lack of funding, whether it's in a hospital environment, whether it's in a medical group, that there was just a lack of profit to be made in treating addiction recovery.

Speaker 2: 16:06

Now the next two most commonly cited reasons why doctors were reluctant to treat addiction 74% cited lack of cognitive capacity to manage a certain level of care, so it was too demanding on their mental abilities to treat addiction. And 72% reported inadequate knowledge, so they didn't understand addiction well enough to be able to effectively treat it. To me, that was astounding that here are our frontline providers. These are medical doctors treating a medical disease, and 72% of them cited a lack of knowledge as one of the reasons why they didn't treat addiction in their office settings or in their clinic settings. Around 66% of the studies cited negative social influence or beliefs about public or community acceptance of addiction care.

Speaker 2: 17:07

So this stigma around addiction, that addiction has this moral component to it. Around addiction, that addiction has this moral component to it that it's not necessarily viewed as a medical disease like diabetes or cancer or some other chronic illness. There's a negative stigma that surrounds it. How do they put it? Negative social influences, negative social influences. And so when you look at this, this is really where I think doctors as a whole lack the knowledge, the support in their own environments to be able to treat addiction effectively. And so you get what we have now in this country, which I think, to be quite frank, is very, very effective, and that is treatment facilities where you have specialized facilities where people can go and find help for whether it's an outpatient program where they're going several times a week, whether it's an inpatient program where they're going for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days or longer and getting very specialized care, dual diagnosis care for the co-occurrence of mental health issues along with substance use issues. This is where I think a lot of people look at this and say, oh well, you know this is just a money grab, or you know treatment centers are charging way too much for this. The reality is, when you look at it purely from an economic standpoint, demand far outweighs supply when it comes to this.

Speaker 2: 18:49

According to a 2022 study, there were 49 million people in the United States that met the criteria to be diagnosed with substance use disorder or alcohol use disorder. 49 million Around 13 million received help within the previous year. So when they surveyed these people in 2022, one of the questions that they ask is in the previous year have you received any kind of treatment for substance use? And that was a very, very broad range. It didn't have to be inpatient. It could be therapy, it could be medication-assisted treatment, which didn't necessarily require people to receive clinical services like therapy or counseling. So 13 million out of 49 million people received help in the previous year.

Speaker 2: 19:48

So you're looking at a system that can't handle the demand, quite frankly, and especially when you're looking at a system like we have here in Oregon that's state-funded. Oregon has a very robust Medicaid system, more so than most states that I have found. The problem is and I don't want to make this political and I'm not intending to make this political but Oregon is one of the states very early on in the process that legalized recreational use of marijuana. One of the promises that was made in order to get this legislation passed is that they were going to use some of the tax revenue to create more treatment opportunities for people to get help here in Oregon. That did not happen, certainly not to the degree that those that were pushing this legislation had promised, and so what we have now is a demand that far outweighs the supply when it comes to people's ability to get help and the availability of good quality resources for people to receive that help, and so, again, this is just another reason why I think families really need to consider not waiting.

Speaker 2: 21:06

There are people that need help, and it may be your loved one here that I'm talking about. There are people that need help, and it may be your loved one here that I'm talking about. There are people that need help, and while most of the time, especially in privately run facilities, availability generally isn't the problem, when you have a private insurance policy or heaven forbid you're paying out of pocket to go to treatment, there's generally going to be availability If you're working with Medicaid, or I've had a couple of cases in the last couple of years where somebody over 65 was using Medicare to be able to get into treatment. There are some facilities out there that take Medicare for those that are on Medicare over the age of 62 or 65, depending on when you start getting it, but most of the time we're talking Medicaid, which is which is state funded treatment, and the those beds are in short supply. They really are, and the other thing about that is that most facilities that take Medicaid because of the high demand, their tolerance for in adherence to rules or lack of compliance or lack of participation in the program is very, very low. They don't have a whole lot of tolerance for that at all, and so what'll happen is people go into treatment and they push back and they don't want to be there. The staff members at programs that are state funded typically they know that there are people out there that want to have that spot that that person is occupying, who may not necessarily be taking full advantage of it, and so they'll discharge that person and make room for somebody else to come in. If that person isn't showing the commitment that they feel like they need to show, um, they'll, they'll remove that person from the program and bring somebody else in who's willing. And I get it. I do. I understand why, but we're working in a system that obviously needs some revision, it needs some improvement. But I say all of this to really reinforce the idea that there's no value in waiting and there are resources out there.

Speaker 2: 23:20

I know I just got done talking about the lack of resources and the lack of availability. I think that a lot of times people just don't know where to look. There's a number that just came out this year and most people refer to it as the suicide hotline, the suicide prevention hotline. It's 988. It's not just for suicide prevention, it's not just for that kind of crisis. It is a general crisis hotline and it is for people who are family members of someone who's struggling. It is for people who are looking for resources for somebody who's struggling, whether it's with a mental health issue or an addiction issue. All you have to do is pick up the phone, dial 988. And somebody on the other end of that line can help you find resources, if that's what you need. Another is a website called findtreatmentgov and it's a website where, in your area, especially if you are needing to use Medicaid or Medicare to find a state funded facility, you go to find treatmentgov and you will be able to find a list of treatment providers in your area that will take Medicaid, no-transcript.

Speaker 2: 24:54

I've put clients in treatment programs all over the country. I have relationships, not financial relationships, of course. I don't have financial relationships with treatment programs, but I do have good working relationships with treatment providers. And if families have a combination of insurance and private funds, or if a family says, hey, we don't have insurance, but we've got this in our budget, we can afford to pay this for treatment. What can I do to make this work? Many, many times? Myself or other people in my profession can help to email me at matt at partyrecordscom.

Speaker 2: 25:34

I am more than happy to take a look and see what I can do to help you find resources, especially during this time of year. Like I said, this is generally a slower period of time and I've got more time to dedicate to helping with things like this. I know treatment centers their censuses tend to drop during this time of year, and so there's more availability of beds in private facilities. So I want to make sure that everybody understands that there are resources available, even though I've been a little bit pessimistic about this and some of the things that I've said today. There are resources out there. It's just a matter of making sure you get connected with the right people and find what you need people and find what you need.

Speaker 2: 26:17

The kind of questions that I would ask you if you were to reach out to me is provide me with their age, their gender. If they do have a mental health diagnosis, how long is their addiction history? What does that look like? Have they had previous attempts to get sober before? Have they been to treatment before and, if so, what did that look like? That'll help me narrow down some things on my end to help you find the right resources. So, in conclusion, guys, I just want to encourage you to not wait until the end of the holiday season. This is a wonderful time of year for somebody to start over and look at a new start as they enter into 2025. We can put 2024 to rest as a year where somebody gets sober and somebody does the hard work to make 2025 the best year ever, and I appreciate you guys listening to this. If there's anything that I can do to be of assistance to you again, the email address is matt at partyrecordscom. I look forward to hearing from you. I hope you guys have a wonderful wonderful holiday season.

Speaker 1: 27:22

Thanks again for listening to the Party Wreckers. If you liked what you heard, please leave us a rating and a review. This helps us get the word out to more people, to learn more or to ask us a question we can answer in a future episode. Please visit us at PartyWreckerscom and remember don't enable addiction ever. On behalf of the Party Wreckers Matt Brown and Sam Davis. Let's talk again soon.