Parallel Recovery: What If Helping Your Loved One With Addiction Begins With Healing You?

What if helping someone you love through addiction starts with healing yourself? That single shift reframes everything—your boundaries, your tone, your scripts, and the way your home holds stress. Dr. Casey Grover sits down with family coach and author Lisa Katona Smith to unpack Parallel Recovery, a values-driven approach that gives families actionable tools and a steady process for change without the burnout of fixing or the coldness of detachment.

Lisa shares how a personal crisis led her to blend educator skills, CRAFT principles, motivational interviewing, and trauma-informed strategies into a practical toolkit. We explore values and their shadow sides—how devotion without limits becomes resentment, and humor under pressure turns into sarcasm—and why clarity about who you want to be drives better boundaries. You’ll hear the “hamburger boundary” story, a low-stakes, high-impact example of retraining family dynamics; a phone-blocking repair script that turns punishment into invitation; and simple ways to separate the person from the behavior so conversations stay human.

We also look at the reality of nervous systems under stress and why sustainable change means concepts over checklists: consistent limits you can keep, language that calms, and agreements on how to raise concerns after treatment so families don’t slip back into super-sleuth mode. Lisa explains why families are the first and final connection in recovery and how parallel support—one guide for the family, one for the person—reduces conflict and opens the door to readiness. If you’ve felt stuck between carrot and stick, this conversation offers a third path: redesign the relationship so change has room to grow.

To learn more about Lisa and her work: https://lisakatonasmith.com/

To contact Dr. Grover: ammadeeasy@fastmail.com

Transcript

Opening And Today’s Focus

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Addiction Medicine Made Easy podcast. Hey there, I'm Dr. Casey Grover, an addiction medicine doctor based on California's Central Coast. For 14 years, I worked in the emergency department, seeing countless patients struggling with addiction. Now, I'm on the other side of the fight, helping people rebuild their lives when drugs and alcohol take control. Thanks for tuning in. Let's get started. Today's episode is on how to help families dealing with addiction. Now, not the person in the family with addiction, but their loved ones. This is an interview with Lisa Katona Smith, who is the author of the book Parallel Recovery. And the subtitle of her book is A Guide for Those Who Love Someone with Substance Use Disorder. And she created her unique approach when trying to help one of her own family members who was dealing with addiction. Lisa's website has this quote at the top of the page and it really sums up her approach to helping families with addiction. What if helping them starts with healing you? Meaning that people who are trying to help a loved one with addiction need to start working on themselves rather than just trying to fix their loved one. This was a fantastic conversation about a very difficult part of addiction treatment. So let's dig in. All right. Happy Friday. Why don't we just start by you telling me who you are and what you do?

From Crisis Mom To Family Coach

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Yeah, thanks. Lisa Katona Smith. I am a family coach and I support families who are loving someone struggling with mental health and or substance use issues to engage in their own recovery process and invite their loved one to do better. How did you get into this work? I got into this work as a mom, honestly, who was navigating my oldest son's challenges. And over the course of our journey and him getting help, it became very clear that every time he came back to our family system, things would start to unravel again. And, you know, ultimately got to a really serious point where I realized that he might not make it out of this alive. And if that wasn't going to be the case, was I okay with what he was taking away of me? And it wasn't. That was a hard day. And came to really dive into trying to find help for myself, which there was very little that was impactful or that sat well with me, right? There's the typical detach with love, step back, or the opposite, which is just like over-entangle. Neither of those things was good. All of those were focused on an outcome of him getting better. None of them were focused on a more sustainable journey for all of us. While he didn't get better, like if he didn't get better, or while we waited for him, I came across a lot of different modalities and approaches. I was an educator for 23 years, and educators are notoriously famous for being able to pull things together and create something that works for the audience, for the students. And so I did that for myself and then was like, why isn't this being offered? Because there is research and data around when family systems are supported in very structured ways, the recovery rate of those people struggling is exponentially bigger. So that's how I got into this. I decided to provide what I was not provided.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

How long did this journey take you?

SPEAKER_01 4:04

It's an ongoing journey, still. I still have to navigate my way through things. But I would say probably the last year of his really bad act of addiction, we had gone through so many treatment centers, so many family programs, so many opinions about what we needed to do to help our son. And nobody ever stepped into what we needed to do to become better people, to love our son better. And so that was the process. But I have a TEDx talk, and at the very beginning of my TEDx talk, I talk about a story where my son walked out of our house. He was living with us in active addiction at the end of kind of all of this before we started to create some parameters around that. And he left the house and we locked eyes, and I knew that I was not going to be okay with what he saw, felt, and heard from me. And that if he didn't make it out of this, he was going to be leaving knowing that he broke his mother and that wasn't okay with me. So step one was looking at myself and saying, What can I control? What can I do from the bottom up to change this dynamic? So at very least, he knows his mom's okay.

Rethinking Boundaries And The “Carrot Or Stick”

SPEAKER_00 5:22

It's funny, I get phone calls all the time of how do I help my loved one? They're not ready, they don't want help. And I often talk with my patients that we can motivate people with two ways. There's the positive reinforcement or the carrot, and then there's the negative reinforcement or the stick. And in addiction, I see that holding people accountable is more the negative side and being accommodating, catching them when they fall is the positive side. And I just, there's no right answer on planet Earth that I've ever found on where that balance is. And I'm assuming it's individually person to person. How does that land with you? Where did you find that balance between accommodating and accountable?

SPEAKER_01 6:04

I think I'd argue that the balance is not either one of those. The balance is in the relationship. And so you're not accommodating or you're holding the carrot, but the carrot is not a transactional relationship, but this is how I can love you. This is what I'm going to need in place for me to be able to show up in this relationship. And everybody wants the relationship. So that's the sweet spot. But in my kind of philosophical approach, it isn't about always set a boundary around this or always hold a carrot around this. Like that, that's not what it's about. It's understanding and reading the nuance of the dynamic of the situation, right? Like some people can have a loved one living in their home in active addiction. Some people can do that. I don't know how many successfully do it, but some people can accommodate that. Let me give you an example. This happened this week, actually. A family called me and they had worked with an interventionist who had guided them to block, phone block their son. And I said, okay, so step one, we're gonna unblock. Because the blocking is a very passive way of abandoning somebody. And that's what's being read. And it probably doesn't feel very good. And she goes, it feels terrible. So she blocked and then would unblock and then block and then unblock. And she was going back and forth. And I'm like, that's a very confusing message to him because he can't read when he can enter this. So you need to teach him when he can enter and when you're gonna respond. So first thing you're gonna do is unblock and then you're gonna say this. Hey, look, I've been blocking you, which probably hasn't felt very good. It hasn't felt good for me either. And I've done that because I didn't know how to handle what I was feeling when you were reaching out to me 57 times a day in what seemed like crisis. So here's what I want. I want to be a part of this. I want to be a part of you. I want to relate to you. I want to hear what you have to say. And I'm only going to respond these times a day, or if the language is such that I can feel safe. And we came up with a script that was based on her situation. And lo and behold, he went, thanks, mom. That's an invitation. Why would we block someone and then not tell them why we're blocking them and how we can show up in those conversations and then invite them to be that person? Everybody's capable. It might take a minute or a week or a month or six. It might, especially this has been going on for a really long time. But everybody is retrainable. I don't think that anybody wants to suck at their life. Sometimes people just don't know how not to. And we have to train them.

The Phone Blocking Story And Repair

SPEAKER_00 9:03

It's funny, I say the same thing just differently. I go to a lot of schools and do drug and alcohol education. And if I ask the fifth graders I'm going to speak to, what do you want to be when you grow up? No one says in rehab. No one says homeless injecting fentanyl. Yeah. So I'm realizing now that your book, Parallel Recovery, is about working on yourself to be there for your loved one who's the one that's struggling.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Yeah. And at the very end of the book, I actually say you basically you've probably realized that this isn't a fix-your person guide. That's not what it is. This is an invite your loved one to be a part of this journey with you and model the way. And here's what we know: the families, whether families are healthy or not, they are the first and final connection with that person. And so why would we not train the families to be a part of the treatment team to learn how to do this differently? They're the willing participants most of the time. Sometimes they're not willing, but they're usually more willing before the person who actually might need to go to a supportive treatment center.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

So if I may ask then, and you and I, it sounds like we each have our scripts that we use when we talk to clients and patients. Let's say you have a family sit down with you and they're like, we're frustrated. Lisa, we saw your TED talk. You tell us how this works. How do you introduce your work to them?

Parallel Recovery Explained

SPEAKER_01 10:31

Yeah. Essentially the step one is looking at yourself and asking yourself, who have I become that I'm not proud of? Who do I show up as? And who do I want to be in this relationship? Who have I become in the disorder? Who do I want to be in the relationship? And then I talk about the shadow side of our values. For example, someone who has a value of devotion, that can get really hijacked and become a like being a doormat or just a yes man, just always yes, always yes. And I'm like truly devoted people have to fill their cup. They have to step back. Otherwise, you can't be devoted. You're just resentful. So if you're showing up resentful, you may have a value of devotion and you aren't creating boundaries around your devotion. And now you're resentful. That's the shadow side, right? I use examples of myself. I have a value of humor. My shadow side of humor is sarcasm. So when I'm feeling unheard or unwitnessed, I get sharp with my tongue. And that's not mean. That's not actually funny. I can play it off and say, oh, it was just a joke, but it doesn't feel like a joke when you're on the receiving end of it. It's just me. So that's my shadow side. So my job is to recognize, hey, I feel like I'm screaming underwater and nobody's listening. How can I say this different? How can I ask for what I need in this relationship? Because it is a relationship, not just a one-way street. How can I ask for what I need so that the other person can be more successful in this relationship? That's that's basic step one. So personal reflection, which people usually want to start with. How do I set boundaries? And I'm like, who do you want to be? Because I can't tell you what your boundary is. There's a story in my book. I say, what's your hamburger? And it truly came from a family that I worked with who had, I'm sure, never set boundaries in their whole entire raising of their young adult son, who was in very serious, dangerous active addiction living in their home. And he was volatile. And the mother was just like, I can't do that. I can't do that. I'm not gonna do that. And I was like, okay, so let's start with food. Let's start with dinner. She made dinner every day. And I was like, so how about this? Every day you're gonna send out the family chat text and say, Hey, I need to know by three o'clock who's gonna be home for dinner. And if you don't let me know, I'm gonna assume you're not and I'm not gonna make you dinner. And of course she had the, oh, but it's not a big deal to make another hamburger. And I was like, no, you're right, it's not. But this is a low-stakes way to practice this retraining process by setting boundaries. Day one, it was hamburgers. She made hamburgers. Her son did not respond to the chat by three o'clock. And I held her hand to not make him a hamburger. And I was like, There's food in your house. He's not gonna die. He can eat. You're not saying you don't get to eat, you're just saying I'm not making you dinner. He came home, was like, Where's mine? Threw a fit, through a chair. She was like, shoot, hopefully tomorrow you let me know because I'm happy to make you stuff tomorrow. He left. The next day, he let her know. That was it. That was the start. That's all she needed to go. Okay, maybe I'll go further. Maybe more than hamburgers, I can say no to. Or maybe more than hamburgers, I can actually show up and say, Hey, in order for this relationship to work, this is what I need. This is how I can love you with hamburgers. I need to know by three.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

What's step two?

SPEAKER_01 14:11

This is important. It's not about steps, it's really about concepts that ultimately come together into a philosophical approach. What do I need today? What do I need to implement today? So there's a process of understanding your loved one. Once you understand yourself, you can understand them a little bit more. So understanding kind of the psychoeducation around what's going on in their brain that again, they're not trying to suck. They are trying to protect a maladaptive coping skill that they don't have a solution for or want to use another solution for right now. So, how can you understand that the person is lovable, even if you hate the behavior and being able to separate those two things? So stop talking about connecting the person to the behavior. Stop talking about the you when you do this, when you do that, when you do this. It's more like, hey, look, when I'm being yelled at, I can't hear you. And I think what you're trying to tell me is important, but I can't hear you. Can we take a pause? I'm gonna walk the dog, come back, and then maybe it'll be a better time for me to be able to hear you. And we're taking responsibility because we've done that self-work around showing up better and inviting them to show up better. And if they decide they can't today, let them know maybe next week or maybe on Sunday when we get together again, we can talk better about this because it's really hard for me to hear you when I'm being ill at. I'm interested in the person, in the relationship. I'm not interested in the thing that's in the middle.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

So, in terms of letting people decide which behaviors they want to work on with their loved one, that are the behaviors we're trying to change, how do you help them choose what to start with?

SPEAKER_01 16:06

It's generally what's causing the biggest pain point in your life. And so I th like I say it goes slow to go fast, right? So it's not about, hey, let's go to treatment, hey, let's go to treatment, hey, let's go to treatment. The first question might be what happened before this weekend that led up to that situation? What happened? I'm interested in what happened. I'm interested in your human experience, not what you did to solve the human experience. It's not about changing someone's behavior. It's about helping, it's motivational interviewing. It's about helping them see what they want to change. That's what it is. It's just motivational interviewing brought home.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

I was just gonna ask if you ask open-knitted questions. Yes, I got the motivational interviewing theme. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Yeah. So motivating somebody else to get their inner thoughts to the outside. And then you going, wow, that's really insightful.

Step One: Values And Shadow Sides

SPEAKER_00 17:10

And from your work again, a parallel recovery being yourself and your loved one, do you have them take these motivational interviewing style questions to themselves, that initial self-exploration?

SPEAKER_01 17:24

I usually do that far. I got it. Yeah, because it's really hard. There's their nervous system is firing that it's really hard. It's hard enough to say, what's your imprint on this person? Like they can get that. What's your impact? How are you being received? But to ask themselves, why am I afraid? We do get there. We absolutely do get there. But usually it's me baby stepping those questions and talking about family of origin. I work with genograms and discuss with people where is this coming from? I do internal family systems. So really working on who's showing up right now, who's protecting you in this situation. And do you possibly have the ability and the skill set today to not need that protection and to do this different? So there's there's a lot. There's a lot of kind of modalities that are brought into the work I do with the families to get them to essentially become who their loved one needs.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

And let's imagine it's a husband and wife and they have a son. Do you work individually with the husband and the wife and together? Or do you have a particular way that you approach it?

SPEAKER_01 18:32

Usually it's the family, whoever's showing up together. But there are times, Casey, when it's important to separate. And that's usually when there's sort of one person that's always driving this. And it could be the mother or the father, it varies, but for various reasons, their fear is just so heightened that they can't let anybody else have a thought or an altering experience. And then I'll maybe suggest that we um split up. And so that person who's being silenced can have a voice too and can start feeling confident. And honestly, what usually starts to happen is okay, so that person who's been silenced, step one is you're gonna work to your spouse, then you're gonna work together to the person of concern, like your son, right? So that person who is has been so heightened can start to calm down and trust that they have a partner in the process, and then maybe be open to just some alternatives.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

So it's almost like you, as the facilitator, are playing a little bit of detective to get a sense of what the relationship and the dynamic is to help them do some of the self work. Does that sound right? Yes, totally. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

Yeah. And it's the nuance and really the tricky part is having it be nonjudgmental. Because, like you said, when people come to you or give you a call, they say, Help me fix my person. And they say the same thing to me. And I say, okay, we're gonna do that. I can't fix them, but I'm gonna help you do this differently because what you've been doing is not working. And we're gonna look at you and really inviting them into that process very slowly. Some people are ready for it. Some people come to me and they're at their quote unquote rock bottom. They're like, I can't live like this anymore. That was me. I can't live like this anymore. It actually had nothing to do with my son at that point. But I most people aren't there. Most people are like, fix them. And I'm like, how about if we make this better for you? It's not going to be skipping through the daisies because you love somebody who is hurting and that is hard, but it doesn't have to be this hard. It doesn't have to feel this bad, can feel less bad.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

What I'm picking up from you is that people come to you and I and they want specific actionable items. And it sounds like you're helping people build a process. Does that also sound right?

The Hamburger Boundary And Practice

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Yes, which is the sustainability piece, right? If you don't have a process, I'm just plugging a hole. And eventually another hole is gonna come out. I was an educator for 23 years, and a good teacher does not teach content. A good teacher teaches how to learn through content. So that's what I do. I teach people how to keep doing this. You shouldn't need to keep coming back to me. It is good to have a support group and have a community and really continue to work on yourself because just like somebody who is in recovery from substance use disorder, they need to continue to work on keeping those bad patterns out of the way and building themselves and growing. And families do as well. But you should not ultimately get to another crisis where you don't know how to navigate this. I just did a book study of my book with my support group, and we had just finished it this week, actually. And someone said, I feel like I need to read this like every six months because where I am today is not the same place, and I'm gonna be in six months. And I'm like, exactly. There's like level two. I have a couple of books. One of them is Brene Brown Braving the Wilderness. I read it frequently and I've read it with various kind of pain points in my life and gotten different things out of it. It's the same words, but to apply it to different situations. This is really about finding a new road that you can continue to walk on, not just solving what is a bad thing right now. And this was run-on sentence there, but it made me think I think what families are offered generally from treatment professionals, treatment centers, not because they're trying to do a bad job at this, but because it dealing with the families is a whole nother, it's a whole nother thing. Like it needs to be, they need to go to treatment. I'm gonna one day I'm gonna wave my magic wand and that's gonna happen. But today it's not the case. But they don't go to treatment. And so at the end of a stay, you have a family weekend. The family's done no work. None. All they've done is exhaled, which is good. That's a good thing. They've exhaled and but they might come back angrier because they might start realizing exactly what had been going on. And then they come into this family weekend, and families think that it is a bow on top of an ending. And it is an unwrapping. It's the beginning, it is not the end. And they're sent away with no tools, none, for this to look different.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Yeah, I often explain to my patients, you'll hear someone share their story at, say, an AA meeting. And the language is very specific. I got sober though. It wasn't a thing. It was like a four-year journey. And so a lot of times when my patients are really demoralized, I remind them like this is an ongoing process.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

And I love how you say that it's for the families too. Because I feel like you you nailed it. It's, oh my gosh, Bob went to rehab. We got him sober.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

And then there's this void of what happens next. Yeah. Wow.

Concepts Over Steps: Build Process

SPEAKER_01 24:15

Yeah. When families come to me and start working with me, I give them an assignment. And that assignment, so step one is in values, but step one is I want you to contact your person and I want you to say, we have really been struggling with how to do things better. And we have been focused on you and we realized we needed to start focusing on us. Share the burden. And I want you to tell them that you're working with me because I guarantee you they're gonna hear really quickly some language shifts. And if they know that it's because you're trying to do some things different, so that the relationship is better, so that they can regulate, so that they can come back to you better. They're going to be like, curious about that. They may not like it because there could be some boundaries in there, but they're gonna be curious about this. Sounds a little different. I have one client who says her son says everything was fine until Lisa came around. And and I always tell her, because her son is actually in recovery for quite a while now. I always go, you're welcome. Things changed when I showed up, and so did you. Like you got better too. But the other thing I was gonna say is on the way home from treatment, right? So a person has been in treatment for 30, 60, 90 days, however long, and you're sitting in a in an exit case management meeting or family therapy, even, I want you to say to your person, hey, how can we bring up if we start noticing things that feel off to us or concerning, or we start feeling uncomfortable with anything in this dynamic? And ask that person how to bring it up because inevitably, even if nothing's wrong, they're gonna come home, you've changed nothing, and you're gonna super sleuth. Because that's what you've been doing for I don't know how many years, right? You've been sniffing out the what's going on, where are they tracking, tracking? And how long are they in the bathroom? What's going on, looking through rooms? I'm just doing laundry. All of that's gonna start happening again. And inevitably you're going to get concerned or have a question. And if you have that conversation with your person ahead of time, you can say, Do you remember before you left treatment when I brought up, how can I bring up something that worries me or concerns me? I would like to bring something up. Is now an okay time. So you're inviting them to engage in this like reflective process. Again, we have a problem and we can solution it. You aren't a problem. So in that instance, I'm I have a problem. I'm uncomfortable with something. And it could just be me. I'm uncomfortable with my own fears creeping back up. But that invites the person to not be defensive and to say, so it's not your job to manage my recovery, but thank you for being interested. And starting to use and practice their skills with their family members.

SPEAKER_00 27:21

Do you see the family only, or do you see the family and the person with addiction?

SPEAKER_01 27:28

Generally, I don't see the person with addiction. I usually work with groups of people so that we work together as a team and everyone has their people so that everyone's got people. We needed help, we got her. You needed help, you got them. And it's generally in terms of partners that I will see two people because those are two willing people in the relationship that like they can choose to leave. Like families, you can say you're done, but you're not really done. Once in a while, I do like to come in and create an agreement or to work on hearing the perspective of the person I'm working with and being able to unpack some of that. I will occasionally help with that. But as a general rule, no.

SPEAKER_00 28:10

The only reason I ask is because family visits for me, I'm usually ref. Yeah, the person with addiction has their perspective and their frustrations and their criticisms of their loved one, and then the family member has just the exact opposite. And it's just kind of like the verbal assaults are going back and forth of she did this and she did this and he did that. And I could I was gonna guess that working with just the family probably was a lot more effective, just because then you're not playing that referee role, and it sounds like that's how you approach it.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

Totally. And I think when people come into family therapy, they're not ready for family therapy, really, if we're gonna be real. And so when you're playing ref, it's because one or all parties need to be right. And that's not what this is about. This isn't about being right. This is about being about being in relationship. And relationship requires compromise and boundaries.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

I met a therapist named Amber who was on my podcast a little over a month ago, and she was talking about trying to diffuse that complicated family dynamic. She will have one therapist work with the person with addiction and one therapist work with the family, and then they come in the room and then the therapists negotiate rather than the family. They call it lawyering up, just because then they're not actually like verbally exchanging, but they can agree and compromise and move forward. I thought that was really cool.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Yeah, yeah. I work with a great collaborative partner and we work, we do interventions together, and they're family-focused interventions. And nine out of 10 times, unless it's just an absolute acuity intervention, it's exactly that. I'm assigned to the family, someone else is assigned to the person, and that and contact is made, right? So contact isn't made, oh, by the way, we're going into an intervention, but contact is made as and the family goes to that person and says, Hey, we've not been doing okay, and we've hired some people, and there's a person for you, and there's a person for us. And you're gonna get a phone call or a text message, right? And so we try to make that contact. And a lot of times we can. And then when we get into that intervention, it's just like that, right? I'm there to support the family, to speak from the family's perspective, to quiet them down, to ask questions about what they heard, or give them space to listen. And the other person is there for the person of concern to invite them and also to really allow space for them to have a voice too.

SPEAKER_00 30:32

Once people begin using your parallel recovery approach, how long before you start to see some noticeable differences in the progress that they made and then the progress with the relationship with their loved one with addiction?

Working With Families And Dynamics

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Yeah, I think that if they're open to small shifts, they see progress quickly. They don't see a solution quickly, but they see a dynamic change very quickly. And it can be as simple as I'm unblocking you and I'm telling you why, and I'm telling you how to engage differently. Thanks, mom, right? Like it's that's a shift. All of a sudden, oh, you mean he's not screaming at me? No, because he doesn't have to. He doesn't have to. So very quickly. Now, in terms of the outcome that everybody wants, that's case by case, right? But the numbers are out there for other modalities that I use, I just expand on, for example, crafts, community reinforcement and family training. There is data out there, and that data says that within six months, families engaging differently with some really good skills can expect to see a 64% success rate in reduced use or complete abstinence. And I think you can stick mental health challenges in there as well, because all of this is behaviors that you're shifting, right? And curiosity and motivational interviewing and understanding what's going on also applies to other maladaptive behaviors that follow mental health challenges. So, anyways, going back to the numbers within six months, industry does not like this number, but treatment's getting about an 11% success rate of longer-term recovery. It's not good. And that's not because treatment's bad, it's just because the brain is really tricky, it's very hard. And addiction is difficult. So if we went from 11 to 64 and I told you unblock your son, okay, give me that one. I'll take that number. I'll take that number. And I asked you some hard questions about yourself and what your fear is covering up. And talking about what is real that you're grieving that's showing up as reactivity because you are grieving some really big things. This doesn't look like you thought it was going to.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

How much do you find that loved ones of a person with addiction have post-traumatic stress disorder?

SPEAKER_01 33:07

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

Yeah. And then the person with addiction also has post-traumatic stress disorder. Yeah. That was something I didn't realize when I came into addiction medicine. I came in, oh sure, I'll just prescribe some naltrexone or suboxone and that'll take care of it. And then when people would continue to use, I was like, what am I missing? And a lot of it is PTSD. And I describe addiction medicine as basically when pharmacology and psychiatry meet, right? We have all these unaddressed mental health issues and we have to understand the pharmacology of the substances. I was just looking at your website and just seeing, yes, 10% of people with an addiction receive treatment. In America, we're not doing a very good job.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

So I like to grab on to the quotation that says, we need to stop pulling people out of the river. We need to go up the river and figure out why they're falling in. And I add on to that quotation and say, who's up the river? Families. Before they get to treatment professionals, they have their families. What if we entered the system of recovery through the family? We would talk about catching people before they get to crisis, potentially. I think it's possible. But we've got to activate families first. There's lots of reasons why that's challenging. One is it's not generally billable, like for insurance and stuff like that. So, you know, that number of 10% of people who need treatment actually receive it. Some of that is access to care as well.

SPEAKER_00 34:32

What's next on your to-do list of things that you want to work on?

SPEAKER_01 34:36

I'm really expanding into creating programming for treatment centers that's really actionable and tool-based and skills-based, and being able to license that. I'm working on a workbook and a facilitator guide for my book so that support groups and smaller programs that don't have a family program, but maybe run family meetings can utilize the book as a guide with not a whole lot of training and just really expanding my partnerships to reach more people.

SPEAKER_00 35:05

You said you run a support group. Is that something I could refer one of my families to?

SPEAKER_01 35:10

Yeah, absolutely. Can have a conversation about it. It's about us, the family members. There's a topic every week that I write and we discuss it, and it's a place of safety and softness. We use our people's names and we love them wherever they are.

SPEAKER_00 35:28

Do you do it virtually?

SPEAKER_01 35:30

Yep. It's held Wednesday nights.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

There you go. And of the people I know, I can obviously text them your website or send that to them. What's the best way to find out about your work?

SPEAKER_01 35:40

Yep. My website is lisakatonasmith.com. I my book is on Amazon. It's called Parallel Recovery. And I'm most active on Instagram, parallel underscore recovery. And always just reach out via email, Lisa at parallelrecovery.org.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

A lot of what I find happens with addiction is a lot of hopelessness. And particularly with families, if someone's listening today and their loved one is struggling, what advice would you give them as they try to pick up the pieces and find out where to start?

Interventions With Dual Support

SPEAKER_01 36:12

Yeah. I would say that first of all, hopelessness is a lack of intention. Hopelessness is feeling out of control. Like you don't have intention behind your actions. And while I can't provide an ultimate goal solution, I can provide you hope through giving you actionable things that you can do that are going to make an impact. It's they're going to make an impact in your loved one feeling loved and wanting to connect with you. And they're going to make an impact in how hard this has been for you. It doesn't have to be this hard.

SPEAKER_00 36:51

It's almost like harm reduction for family relationships.

SPEAKER_01 36:55

Totally.

SPEAKER_00 36:56

Wow. Very interesting. I have to say, after the how my week has been, I will be sending several people information about your work. Any last words that you want to leave us with as we wrap up?

SPEAKER_01 37:08

Just family members that are listening, you are needed in this in this dilemma of how to address substance use disorder. Our numbers can be smaller than they are. There's way too many people impacted and dying. And if family members can just exhale and say, okay, I'll try something different. We can make those numbers change.

SPEAKER_00 37:36

Doing something different. I love it. Because so often people come to me and they want to do the same thing over and over again. I'll just go to rehab again. I love it. Lisa, I have to say I am super impressed. I was looking at your credentials. You have a master's in education. Yeah. It I've not had anyone approach it this way. And I love the idea of being an educator and applying it to recovery. Nicely done. Thank you. Before we wrap up, a huge thank you to the Montage Health Foundation for backing my mission to create fun, engaging education on addiction. And a shout out to the nonprofit Central Coast Overdose Prevention for teaming up with me on this podcast. Our partnership helps me get the word out about how to treat addiction and prevent overdoses. To those healthcare providers out there treating patients with addiction, you're doing life-saving work and thank you for what you do. For everyone else tuning in, thank you for taking the time to learn about addiction. It's a fight we cannot win without awareness and action. There's still so much we can do to improve how addiction is treated. Together, we can make it happen. Thanks for listening. And remember, treating addiction saves lives.