The Insider Confession: What Addiction Was Really Doing While You Were Rescuing

If you’re the mom, dad, or spouse who has become the detective, the cleanup crew, and the emotional first responder, this one is for you.
In this solo episode, Jason Coombs sits down with the families who are exhausted from organizing their entire lives around someone else’s addiction. He shares the one shift that changes everything: your loved one’s recovery begins when you change first.
Jason is not speaking from theory. He is speaking from both sides of this. He was the addicted son. Four felonies. Homeless. Five treatment programs. Heroin, meth, and crack. And now, fifteen years sober, he has spent his career walking with families through the same fog he once put his own family through.
This episode is the permission slip you didn’t know you were waiting for.
What you’ll hear:
(01:08) The mothers who have become detectives, cleanup crews, and emotional first responders
(06:54) Laura’s story: five years, a daughter’s addiction, and the gap between knowing and doing
(11:47) Jason’s own story: felonies, homelessness, heroin, and five treatment programs
(17:32) The insider confession: how addiction studies the room and uses the family’s responses
(19:11) The sentence that changed everything: “Jana, Doug, get off the beach”
(22:57) Placing his son Nathan for adoption and the promise that became Jason’s turning point
(29:34) Why “wait for rock bottom” is some of the most dangerous advice in recovery
(41:31) The five-stage framework for living unhooked
The Insider Confession
Before Jason was the one teaching this, he was the reason his family needed it. And he is honest about what was happening on his end. Addiction studies the room. It learns who responds to fear, who caves to tears, who needs hope. Every rescue delayed his consequences. Every softened landing delayed his pain.
“Every time somebody helped me avoid the full weight of what I had created, it kept me insulated from the very thing that might have made me ready.”
Get Off the Beach
A therapist in Jason’s first treatment program told his parents: Jason is out in the middle of the lake dropping boulders. By the time those ripples reach the shore, they are tsunami-sized waves crashing over your heads. Get off the beach.
His parents changed the locks. They drew clear lines. And they did not wait for Jason to get sober before they started healing. They started healing while he was still sick. He noticed.
“Their commitment to reclaiming their life and their peace sent the message I needed to hear. I needed to see it in their actions.”
The Goldfish Bowl
You don’t fix the fish by yelling at it or pulling it out for a lecture and dropping it back into dirty water. You clean the bowl. The tone in the home, the boundaries, the access, the secrecy, the panic level: that’s the water. Change the water and you change the conditions that keep the disease alive.
Takeaways for families:
Stop waiting for rock bottom. You are the one who can move the

Transcript

Brick House - Ep. 56

[00:00:00] ​

[00:00:59] Jason Coombs: If this is your first time hearing my voice, welcome and if you've been with me before, welcome back.

[00:01:08] Jason Coombs: I do not take your time lightly. I know that listening to something like this is not casual. For some of you, it took finding a pocket of time between crises. For some of you, it took talking yourself into hoping one more time, even though maybe your hope has hurt before, and maybe you've even lost hope before.

[00:01:33] Jason Coombs: So let me start here. You are in the right place. If you love someone who's struggling with a, an addiction, and your life has started orbiting around their choices, their moods, their relapses, their lies, their promises, and their broken promises, their silence and avoidance, their emergencies, then you definitely are in the right place in the right community.

[00:02:02] Jason Coombs: If you're tied up in the chains of their addiction and you're tired in your bones, and if you're waking up with dread, and if you're scared to relax because the phone might ring, or if you feel guilty when you help and guilty when you stop helping, then you're definitely in the right place. And I.

[00:02:26] Jason Coombs: Especially feel for the mothers listening right now. The mothers who've slowly become the detectives like my mom when she found out that I was struggling. Maybe you feel like you've had to become the cleanup crew or the accountant managing their finances. You know, and the prayer warriors or the emotional first responders, the mothers who know in their brain that something has to change.

[00:02:56] Jason Coombs: But maybe your heart keeps running back to the fire. The mothers who keep saying, maybe this time, maybe this treatment, maybe this promise, maybe this conversation, maybe if I see it softer, maybe if I see it harder or more direct, you know, maybe if I just love them better, or maybe, maybe I'm being too soft.

[00:03:19] Jason Coombs: Like if that's you, I need you to hear me, that you are not weak and you're not crazy, and you're not a bad mother, you're human, and you're trying to survive a brutal situation with a map that was either incomplete or flat out wrong. Now, my name is Jason Coombs, and I'm a person in long-term recovery. I have been sober and unhooked from the chains of substance use disorder since March 19th, 2009.

[00:03:54] Jason Coombs: I am also the founder of Brick House Recovery, a faith-based outpatient treatment center in Idaho. I wrote a book called Unhooked because families kept asking me the same question over and over and they would ask, how do I help my addicted loved one recover without losing myself in the process? And before any of that, I was the addicted loved one.

[00:04:20] Jason Coombs: You know, I was the son that was putting my mother and my father and my family through hell. And that brings me to the one thing I need you to hear today. I. If I can get you to believe one thing, just one, it's this, your addicted loved ones. Change begins when you change first. Their progress is contingent upon you.

[00:04:45] Jason Coombs: Now I know that can sound backwards. It can sound even unfair to some because, you know, part of you wants to say, Hey, wait, hold on, Jason. They're the one using, they're the one lying. They're the one whose probation officer is mandating them to get sober or go to treatment. They're the one disappearing.

[00:05:07] Jason Coombs: They're the one relapsing and manipulating and blowing up the trust. They're the one wrecking the family. Why do I have to change? First, this was my dad's reaction and the answer is simple. ' cause you are one who is here. You are the one who is here. You are the one listening. You are the one who can move the needle today.

[00:05:33] Jason Coombs: And because addiction loves a hooked family, it loves when the whole house gets organized around the disease. It loves when fear makes you feel confused and lost. It loves when it turns you against each other. It loves when it turns. You into a rescuer. It loves when your peace is held hostage. So if I can help you see that today, I can really see it.

[00:06:08] Jason Coombs: Then the rest of this starts making sense because now we're not waiting for them to get ready before life can begin again. No, now we're not standing on the beach any longer letting waves decide whether we get to breathe the waves that have been crashing over our heads because of the effects of the addiction.

[00:06:33] Jason Coombs: Now we're talking about getting off the beach, and if you've read unhooked, you know how my parents learned about getting off the beach. We're talking about changing the water, not just. Screaming out there to the fish who aren't listening or, or the addicted loved one who are not listening.

[00:06:54] Jason Coombs: And I look before I tell you why that became so real to me when I heard the story about Laura. Now Laura is a mother who shared this with me a few years ago. Her daughter is 22 and her daughter had been battling addiction for five years. Five years, five years. And if you've lived even five months like that, then you know that time moves differently.

[00:07:27] Jason Coombs: In a family with addiction, five years is not five normal years, five years. And just the, the number of times where you've had a hit in your stomach, five years of trying to tell the difference between honesty or deceit. Five years of thinking that having a normal day is right around the corner, but then you just are waiting for that one text ' cause you know that the other shoe's gonna drop and it feels like it changes the entire weather system in your family.

[00:08:02] Jason Coombs: Like the whole house turns on a dime and you start to deal with that, that familiar pain, as my mom described it, it's like a cloud that's hanging over her head. And every day is a cloudy day. Now, Laura, she, she did what was smart and what loving, determined mothers do. She read everything. She read addiction books, codependency books, enabling books, articles, resources.

[00:08:33] Jason Coombs: She had done the homework and she understood the language. She knew in theory what enabling was. She knew in theory what boundaries were. But when the phone rang, when the crisis hit, and when the chaos showed up, knowledge collapsed under the weight of that love and under the weight of fear. She said something that just hit me and she said, cleaning up her messes has become my self appointed full-time job for five years now.

[00:09:08] Jason Coombs: That's what this does. One day you realize your whole life has quietly become damage control for someone else's addiction. And then she said this, I know in my brain that this is enabling and not helpful, but my heart hasn't listened.

[00:09:26] Jason Coombs: There it is. That's the gap. Not information, permission, not one more explanation of enabling not one more expert voice saying you need to hold a boundary. She already knew that in her brain. What she didn't have was permission to heal without feeling like healing meant she had to abandon her daughter.

[00:09:49] Jason Coombs: That was the missing piece. Permission to get off the beach, permission to love her daughter and still let natural consequences do what natural consequences do. Permission to stop making her daughter's addiction, her full-time identity, permission to face the worst fear and still choose to live. And when that clicked, she said, Jason, I am so grateful to finally see a path to healing that isn't tied to a specific outcome.

[00:10:23] Jason Coombs: That is such a huge aha moment for her because almost everything families get handed still has a hidden hook in it. If you do this right, maybe they'll change if say this, right? Maybe they'll hear you. If you set this boundary perfectly, then maybe this will be the moment. And all of that keeps you nervous and it keeps you chained to an outcome that you can't control.

[00:10:55] Jason Coombs: And Laura called the book Her Compass and her Roadmap, and I love that because that's what families need. That's what my mom needed. Not more shame and not more theory. A compass a roadmap. Something to hold onto when that fog comes in. And that cloud is just causing you to, to not be able to see your path forward.

[00:11:24] Jason Coombs: And look, if Laura's story feels a little too familiar, then I want to tell you why. Because before I was the guy teaching this, I was the reason that my family needed this. I grew up in a good home, loving parents, good people, food on the table. I had support structure. I was offered opportunities of education.

[00:11:47] Jason Coombs: And inside me, there was still a storm that I could not name. And back then I didn't know that I had anxiety or a DHD or depression, but I, I do know I had big emotions. I felt restlessness. A nervous system that always felt like it was just running hot like redlining all the time. I didn't have language for what that was back then.

[00:12:12] Jason Coombs: I just thought something was fundamentally wrong with me. And when I found things that quieted that noise, I held onto them. First it was behaviors became an adrenaline junkie and then it was substances. And you know, that's the confession. I self-medicated because it worked and it worked until it stopped working.

[00:12:37] Jason Coombs: Later I got pulled into, this is fast forwarding quite a ways, but. For the sake of time, I, I got pulled into the largest opiate drug ring in Utah where I was living and where I grew up. And this was through a shady pain management clinic. And I was working in the television industry. I had a marriage, I had a house, I had a professional life that looked put together on the outside.

[00:13:06] Jason Coombs: And then I got busted. You see the DEA and the insurance fraud division, task force raided the pain management clinic. My supply got cut off and when the supply disappears, you know, addiction doesn't leave with it. It actually increases. Because the stress as stress increases, so do cravings. This is a stress response disease.

[00:13:35] Jason Coombs: It's an important piece that you know that. So a lot of what we do here is learn how to operate in a way that that minimizes needless stress on the behalf of the addicted loved one, which will help lower cravings. So I moved to the streets. My ex-wife divorced me. I became addicted to heroin and meth and crack cocaine.

[00:14:04] Jason Coombs: I was eventually served felonies. And living homeless on the streets was one of the hardest seasons of my life until I ended up getting locked up. And I was incarcerated for a year. And I went from looking like a guy who had it all together to becoming exactly the phone, call. Every parent fears.

[00:14:28] Jason Coombs: And I went, I ended up going to five treatment programs. I mean, think of that, five of them. And every one of them was court ordered until the very last one. Now let me tell you what was happening. At my parents' house while all of that was unfolding. Yes. My mom's first instinct when I told her I still remember in calling my parents after I got charged with these felonies, be after the, the DEA raided the doctor.

[00:15:01] Jason Coombs: And I began to tell them the story and it was a watered down version of it. Which is another principle to keep in mind that when your addicted loved one cracks open and begins to share some of the truth, remember that it's some of the truth. I have rarely seen a case, if ever, where 100% honesty comes out all at once.

[00:15:25] Jason Coombs: It's usually a, a series of testing the waters, seeing how you'll respond, and also breaking through the denial that I had in in my own mind and in our own minds because we oftentimes believe the very lies that we've been formulating in our minds to protect us. Now, my mom's first instinct was denial.

[00:15:48] Jason Coombs: And this wasn't because she was foolish, it was because she was terrified. She would say, you are not an addict, Jason. Don't talk like that. In fact, don't say addict. She would, she would say he's just stressed. He's just hanging around the wrong people. And that doctor, the doctor's the problem. Yeah. You know, he just needs to get his feet under him and we need to get past this and then we'll, we'll get back to normal.

[00:16:17] Jason Coombs: And that's not stupidity. that's grief and pain and shock without a map and without any direction. And my dad went into fix it mode. You know, what do we need to do? Which attorney should we hire? Which program do we need to get you into? What bills can I help cover While you do this, just, just tell me the move.

[00:16:41] Jason Coombs: And again, like, I'll do it. Not because he didn't care it, it's because he cares so much. He needed to take action. Like a lot of, a lot of men I know do. It's like, I'm, I'm gonna fix this. And both of them wanted secrecy. Don't tell people, don't let the family know. Don't let the neighbors know. Don't let the church members know.

[00:17:07] Jason Coombs: They thought that secrecy was protecting us. They didn't wanna ruin my reputation, and they definitely didn't wanna ruin theirs. But, you know, secrecy is a fishbowl with no filter. Everything gets cloudy faster in the dark, and sickness grows in secret. And here's the insider confession. I wish every family could hear from the mouth of someone who lived it.

[00:17:32] Jason Coombs: I was the addicted person and I knew exactly what I was doing. Not in some evil like cartoon villain way, but

[00:17:43] Jason Coombs: when you have this disease, the addiction studies the room and it learns who responds to fear? It learns who caves to tears. It learns who needs hope. It learns which promise buys more time. You know, every rescue delayed my consequences, every softened landing, delayed my pain. And every paid bill gave me one more day to not deal with reality.

[00:18:15] Jason Coombs: Every cover story, every saved reputation, every time my parents called my boss and covered for me, every lawyer that they hired, every time somebody helped me avoid the full weight of what I had created caused by addiction, it kept me insulated from the very thing that might have made me ready, you know, and hope that was a lever.

[00:18:41] Jason Coombs: I, look, I hate saying that, but it's true. If I could give them just enough false hope to say the right things, just enough movement with the right sincerity and tone, then the system stayed open. And addiction loves a hooked family. Then everything changed when a therapist said one sentence and that one sentence changed everything.

[00:19:11] Jason Coombs: I was in treatment. My parents were in the family program, and this was my first treatment program. And this therapist looked at them and said, Jason, it's like he's out in the middle of the lake and he's dropping boulders with every addict decision he makes. It sends a ripple towards the shore and by the time those ripples hit the beach, there are tsunami sized waves and Jana, Doug, those waves are crashing over your head 'cause you're standing on the beach and you're calling out to him and he can't hear you.

[00:19:42] Jason Coombs: Jana Doug, Get off the beach. That was the sentence that changed everything. My parents had thought that love meant standing there, you know, watching the, the horizon, bracing for impact, trying to stop the waves. But you know, that's not love. That was love driven by fear. And it was never supposed to look like that because they were drowning with me.

[00:20:12] Jason Coombs: But that changed everything. And they changed. They changed the locks on their house. We had a conversation I still remember at the Cracker Barrel, and we were sitting at the table and they were sharing with me some of the things that their therapist taught them. And they told me they get off the beach metaphor.

[00:20:35] Jason Coombs: And then they took a deep breath and my mom said things were going to be different. And they proceeded to tell me I was not allowed in their home unless invited. If I came over, I was only allowed in the common areas. No more free access, no more treating their house like a gas station for addiction. And I hated it.

[00:20:58] Jason Coombs: My response was not, not good. You know, I gaslighted them, made them feel guilty for cutting me out. And yeah, of course I hated it because addiction wants access, access to all the help that they were giving me. But what mattered wasn't just the locks on the house. It was the shift. They stopped organizing their whole life around my disease.

[00:21:27] Jason Coombs: You know, they started taking trips again. They started sleeping again. Their marriage started breathing again. They stopped arguing all the time about me, you know, and hear me on this. They did not wait for me to get sober to start healing because I didn't stay sober after that treatment program. They started healing while I was still sick.

[00:21:50] Jason Coombs: And that is the key. That part matters so much you guys, because some of you are living like your life is in a waiting room. I'll breathe when he changes or when she gets sober. I'll rest when she gets help and checks into treatment. I'll travel when things are stable. I'll be okay when this crisis ends, when we could just move past this and get our lives back to normal.

[00:22:22] Jason Coombs: And addiction will keep you in that waiting room for years and years if you let it. Now, here's where it got deeply personal for me. So in 2008, excuse me, 2007, my son Nathan, was born during that difficult season of my, my life, as I was in and out and in and out of sobriety and jail and treatment, and I had to face the most gainful experience and truth of my life.

[00:22:57] Jason Coombs: I could not give my firstborn child the life he deserve. I couldn't even manage my own life. So how could I take care of a baby? So his birth mother and I placed him for adoption That. Chest pain, that soul pain,

[00:23:15] Jason Coombs: shame at a level I didn't know a person could feel.

[00:23:20] Jason Coombs: And I remember a promise that was forming in me. It was, it was small, it was barely alive, just like a fleck of hope. But it was, it was still there. Like promise was one that I made to him after he was born. And it was written in a letter that I gave to his parents that adopted him for him to read someday.

[00:23:47] Jason Coombs: And it basically said. I'm gonna change my life for you,

[00:23:51] Jason Coombs: not because the courts are making me, not because the parents are begging me, or my ex-wife is giving me an ultimatum, but because for the first time there was something bigger than my addiction. Love for that boy. Like real love, clean love, unconditional love, the kind that isn't driven by fear. And years later, Nathan and I reunited,

[00:24:17] Jason Coombs: which is one of the sweetest redemptions of my life now, because it erases the pain. It, it doesn't, but because it reminds me that, you know, even when we burned our entire lives down, redemption is still possible. I.

[00:24:32] Jason Coombs: Now, all of that, the, the reuniting and, and the connection that I have today with my birth son, who is now almost 19 years old and we have a phenomenal relationship. In fact, I just went and visited him last week and we got to hang out

[00:24:53] Jason Coombs: is all because of what happened on March 19th, 2009, which is my sobriety date. Now after I got sober. I wanna tell you a story that was significant and what brings me here today. I was working at a hotdog stand outside of Home Depot. I was starting over. It was humble work, but it was honest work and I was grilling up.

[00:25:19] Jason Coombs: They were actually braw, I feel a little better saying they were braw because they're a little higher end than your, your typical ballpark, frank or hotdog. But anyway, he, he ordered up a, a hotdog and he asked me how I was doing and I gave him the full, what I call the addict overshare. And, you know, this is before the, the filter gets healed and our brains heal, which is oftentimes it gets us in trouble.

[00:25:49] Jason Coombs: When I was like. In that moment. Oh yeah, how am I doing? I'm doing great. I'm 72 days sober off crack cocaine and heroin, and I am still in treatment. I just got out of my fifth rehab and I was just dumping my life story on this guy, this poor customer, while I was grilling him up this, this browett. And he looked at me and he said, you know, my son is struggling with drugs.

[00:26:17] Jason Coombs: Do you have any advice for a dad? And you know, we, we talked for 45 minutes right there by the hot dog stand. And something happened in that conversation. Purpose found me. I realized everything my parents had lived, everything that I had put them through, all the pain and all the learning. Maybe it wasn't just to survive the addiction, but maybe it was for

[00:26:45] Jason Coombs: purpose. My purpose in life, maybe all of that that my parents went through that I went through are now maybe there. It's our credentials, it's our credibility, it's our expertise. ' cause we've walked it just like you. You have specific expertise in your experience that others need.

[00:27:09] Jason Coombs: From that moment, I kept learning I realized that I could. Do this for a living. Maybe, maybe I could help people for a living. Like I helped this dad. He, he gave me a big hug at the end of our conversation and I don't know what ended up happening with him or his son, but, you know, I had the privilege of being connected to and mentored by Dr.

[00:27:32] Jason Coombs: Kevin McCauley, who changed the field of addiction and addiction treatment through his DVD pleasure Unwoven. And he wrote the forward to my book, and I learned from another mentor, bill Vogel, who has incredible wisdom around human behavior and change. I went back to school and I, I earned a master's in professional communications.

[00:27:59] Jason Coombs: ' cause I wanted to share my story with the world and share my, my parents' story with the world to help others avoid the same pitfalls or to help them crawl out of the pit if they found themselves in it. And, you know, my wife and I, we built brick house recovery. We have served hundreds, well actually at this point, probably closer to a thousand families over the last 15 years sitting across from parents, you know, especially mothers hearing the same exhausted heartache, you know, come out, coming out in different words.

[00:28:37] Jason Coombs: But I can tell you that we all share a, a very similar story. It's just different actors and different scenes, but. This, I could tell you this, with total conviction that people recover in relationships, not in treatment centers, not in courtrooms, not in meetings or buildings, but in relationships.

[00:29:03] Jason Coombs: The environment matters.

[00:29:05] Jason Coombs: The the people in the environment matter more.

[00:29:10] Jason Coombs: Which brings me to the three things that I want to leave here with today. And the first one is this. Waiting for rock bottom is some of the most dangerous advice that I hear. In addiction recovery. I know it sounds wise, you know, let them hit rock bottom. There's nothing I can do until they hit rock bottom, until they want it.

[00:29:34] Jason Coombs: You know, let them get desperate. Let them be ready. And I understand why people say this, but families hear that and translate it into paralysis. This is that waiting room. So they wait and while they wait, they keep rescuing a little, controlling a little bargaining, a little monitoring, a little praying and panicking, and cleaning up the messes and chalking it off to love.

[00:30:00] Jason Coombs: But all the while hope is deteriorating

[00:30:03] Jason Coombs: and apathy sinks in. And that gray cloud that my mom described as like every day is a cloudy day is how she felt.

[00:30:13] Jason Coombs: So

[00:30:14] Jason Coombs: the old way that people deal with an addicted loved ones disease or chaos, they all, like, all the people and, and resources that, that are, are, are in their old mindset that's outdated. They all aim at the wrong target. Rescuing aims at the wrong target. Waiting around aims for the wrong target.

[00:30:41] Jason Coombs: Controlling aims at the wrong target. Tough love when it's just anger in a boundary. Costume aims at the wrong target. You know, bargaining aims at the wrong target. Even praying and waiting if it leaves the family fully hooked, is aimed at the wrong target too. And all of those methods are trying to change the addicted person while leaving you, the family member hooked.

[00:31:09] Jason Coombs: And that's why I teach what I call the goldfish framework. You know, you. You do not have to fix the fish by yelling at the fish. You don't have to fix the fish by pulling it out for a lecture and then dropping it back into the dirty water. No, you clean the bowl, you change the water, you change the environment, and the environment is the intervention.

[00:31:40] Jason Coombs: That means the tone in the home matters. The boundaries matter. You know, the, the panic level that you experience matters.

[00:31:49] Jason Coombs: The access you give them matters. The money you give them matters. The secrecy matters. You know, you do not have to wait for them. To be ready before you start cleaning the water in the fishbowl. In fact, families who start there often become the very reason readiness shows up. And I've watched this over and over.

[00:32:12] Jason Coombs: A family member gets clear, it gets calmer, it gets more consistent, stops bleeding energy all over the beach. It stops making fear-based decisions. And suddenly the, the whole emotional climate changes in the family system and the addicted loved one feels it, it might fight it at first. It might not be ready to change like I wasn't.

[00:32:40] Jason Coombs: But it's noticed. And that, that notice that observed change in the family.

[00:32:48] Jason Coombs: I, I definitely noticed the change in my parents. I noticed they were happier. I noticed that they were taking back their life. I noticed that they, what I call had their emotional raincoat on, so my, my gaslighting or manipulating or attempts to play off my mom's fear or, guilt my dad in his anger, those attempts didn't work anymore and that sent a huge message to me way more than the lectures they used to give me.

[00:33:22] Jason Coombs: Way more than the lessons that they would try to teach me. Their actions and their commitment to getting unhooked from my addiction and reclaiming their life and reclaiming their peace and their their power, sent the message that I, I needed, I needed to hear it and I needed to see it by watching their actions.

[00:33:48] Jason Coombs: And that's secret number one. Stop waiting at the wrong address. Like the family led approach creates measurable change before they're ready, because it starts with the person who actually can change today. And that's you. And that brings me to the second thing. If my mom could do it with every strike against her, you can do it too.

[00:34:12] Jason Coombs: See, my mom was not set up for an easy win. Her son had four felonies, homeless, sleeping on the streets, in and out of legal chaos and incarceration. Never once chose treatment voluntarily until the very end. You know, every fear a mother has, my mom had, and her biggest terror was the same one that you probably have or many of you have, which is, if I set boundaries, he'll die

[00:34:44] Jason Coombs: Or. If I stop rescuing him or helping him, he'll feel like I've abandoned him. If I get off the beach, the wave will take him out, and that fear is real and I need to validate that before I teach anything else, because you're not being dramatic for feeling it, and you're not irrational for feeling it, especially if you've seen overdoses or psychosis, or you've dealt with jail or violence or, you know, missing your loved one overnight and you couldn't sleep, or the, you know, the stolen money or the broken promises like.

[00:35:25] Jason Coombs: Of course, your body and your mind remember all of those feelings, and it learns to believe that catastrophe is going to happen and that it's just one decision away. And it's not a decision that is in your, your court. It's in your addicted loved one's court, you know, and that, and that all makes sense to me.

[00:35:48] Jason Coombs: But here's what my mom did, and what her story proves is that boundaries did not kill me. Clarity did not kill me. Consequences did not kill me. They helped expose the pain that the addiction. Not only kept numbing, but their comforting and their rescuing was denying me of like that pain. I believe that we change at the speed of pain.

[00:36:17] Jason Coombs: My mom was not special. She just became willing. And that's different, you know, she found the right vehicle and once the vehicle changed and her target was fresh and new, and she aimed for that target, everything changed. Not overnight, but, but structurally and the whole family system began to move. The right way.

[00:36:45] Jason Coombs: And I've watched that happen in so many families since then. You know, Anna found peace in the middle of a storm, not after the storm. In the middle of it, my friend Tiffany came in completely lost and found something sacred. Stacey learned to see her son again instead of just his addiction. And that is the miracle to stop seeing only the disease and start seeing the human who is sick and suffering.

[00:37:15] Jason Coombs: They are not bad and need to get good. They are sick and need to get well. And that changes the approach and that changes the relationship. So if part of you is thinking, well, Jason, you know, maybe this works for stronger people. Maybe it works for people who are less busy or less tired. Maybe it works for people whose situation isn't this far gone.

[00:37:42] Jason Coombs: I wanna push back on that with love. You know, my mom had every reason to believe that she was disqualified and she wasn't. She was exactly the right person to begin. That means you may be exactly the right person to begin to, and then there's the third thing. You do not need more time. You need to stop spending all of it on the beach.

[00:38:07] Jason Coombs: It's exhausting you. It's killing you. This is one of the biggest objections that I hear. I don't have time for one more thing. Jason. I'm exhausted. I'm already underwater. I'm trying to keep the family together. I can barely think straight and I get that. But can I also be honest with you, the addiction already has your calendar.

[00:38:30] Jason Coombs: The crisis already owns your time. The emotional labor is already eating your life alive. The monitoring, you know, think of the reacting, the replaying conversations, the detective work, the money cleanup, the frantic texts, the bad sleep, you know, bad sleep or sleepless nights. The obsessive thinking that is the most consuming thing in your life.

[00:38:55] Jason Coombs: So the irony is you think the chaos is non, like, non-negotiable. Your own healing is optional. It's the reverse. The chaos is what is stealing your life. Learning how to get off the beach does, it does not add one more thing to your schedule. It replaces the most exhausting thing on your schedule. ' cause when you begin to unhook, you get time back.

[00:39:24] Jason Coombs: But more than that, you get your mind back. You get your body back, you get your sleep back, you get your spiritual connection back. You get your relationships back. You stop living. Like every day is a hostage negotiation with the addiction and peace. Look, it's not, peace isn't a. A luxury here. This is strategy.

[00:39:52] Jason Coombs: It is a calm, is also the strategy. A clarity is a strategy. Consistency is strategy. Wearing your emotional raincoat is strategy, and most of you have been walking around. It's like you're walking into a hurricane with no raincoat at all. Every text they send soaks you and every lie soaks you and every relapse drenches you because you take it all on personally.

[00:40:27] Jason Coombs: Every manipulation, you know, and then you wonder why you are feeling like you're drowning or you're overwhelmed. Of course you are. Of course you are. Anybody, I mean, anybody would be. So I'm here to help you rebuild your life, starting with putting on an emotional raincoat and getting off the beach, not so that you stop loving, not so that you become cold and distant, but so that you can stay dry enough to think, so that you can stay steady enough to respond instead of react.

[00:41:04] Jason Coombs: So you can stand in weather without. Becoming the weather, so to speak. And that's actually the perfect bridge into what I wanna teach you Now. I don't have time today to go into everything that, that is going to help you live unhooked and to get off the beach. But I do want to just give you a quick five stage framework of unhooking.

[00:41:31] Jason Coombs: Okay. Stage one is wake up. That is recognizing that the water in the fishbowls dirty, it's recognizing that you're hooked and maybe you didn't even know it, and that the addiction has become your normal. But it's not healthy. Stage two is suit up. That is building your new foundation and putting on an emotional raincoat and daily practices that protect your mind, your body, your spirit, and your re relationships, your decision making, so that you're not getting knocked down on the beach by every wave.

[00:42:10] Jason Coombs: Stage three is standup, and that is learning to hold boundaries without guilt, fear, or cruelty,

[00:42:18] Jason Coombs: not soft for the sake of peacekeeping, but clear, kind and firm boundaries. And stage four is show up, and that's becoming the calm, clear, consistent influence that actually catalyzes change. Because people recover in relationships and when your presence changes, so does the relationship. And stage five is live unhooked.

[00:42:45] Jason Coombs: That is the identity shift, the place where your peace is no longer contingent on their choices. The place where you stop asking permission to live and it's, breaking free from feeling like you're on probation when you didn't commit the crime. And in those five stages, you will find the freedom that you seek.

[00:43:09] Jason Coombs: Now, if anything that I shared today hit you in the chest or in the heart. If you saw yourself in Laura's story, if you saw yourself in my mom's story or my dad's, or if you recognize that you've been spending your whole life lately on the beach trying to stop the waves from crashing over your head with your bare hands or your words, then the next step is showing up for yourself and not feeling guilty about it.

[00:43:41] Jason Coombs: I want to express my gratitude for showing up today and for showing up for yourself.

[00:43:47] Jason Coombs: Not, not, not because you're showing up for me. Like, I have learned this stuff, I know this stuff, but it's different when it hits your old family member. And I'll share something with you guys. It's hitting differently for me because I recently learned about.

[00:44:05] Jason Coombs: I loved one and I want to keep it vague on purpose. And although I know all of these concepts, I teach others every day, it is so different when it's your own family member. And so this is helping me refreshing my commitment and renewing my commitment to these principles because I know they work, work 100% of the time.

[00:44:30] Jason Coombs: If we apply them, if we learn them and commit ourselves to them, does not mean it's perfect. It does not mean that the outcome is going to be what you expect, but. I will say that it work because when Target is reclaiming your life and reclaiming your peace and your strength and your serenity, then that's the right aim because that's attainable, that's achievable regardless of where your addicted loved one is or isn't.

[00:45:03] Jason Coombs: And I'm learning that in real time. Again, thank you so much for joining.

[00:45:08] Jason Coombs: ​