Voiceover: Welcome to the Options Save Lives weekly live stream, where we spend an hour each week exploring life improving topics through the lens of alcohol recovery, and the Sinclair Method. Every week we take on a new question, topic or common challenge to empower people to either build a better relationship with alcohol, or to eliminate it completely. Episodes are filmed live on Twitch at twitch.tv/cthreefoundation, and the audience is encouraged to ask questions and engage with the host and guests. The Options Save Lives weekly stream is hosted by Executive Director Jenny Williamson, and is produced by the C Three Foundation with the support of R Street Institute and other generous sponsors. For more information about the C Three Foundation, or the Sinclair Method, visit our website at cthreefoundation.org.

Jenny: Hello, everyone. How is our sound today? I think I've got all the check boxes marked. It's one of those days already. So thank you for turning in, tuning into the Options Save Lives weekly live stream. As always, I'm Jenny Williamson, Executive Director of the C Three Foundation and your host for the next hour. How is everybody doing today? We're broadcasting live from the C Three Foundation office in Fort Myers, Florida. Love to know where you guys are watching from, so go ahead and put that in the chat, and any first timers to the stream, if you're out there, definitely say “Hello” and welcome.

So this week we are going to talk about supporting your loved one on the Sinclair Method with none other than Claudia Christian. Too often when a person expresses that they have a loved one who struggles with alcohol, they're given this piece of advice - Practice tough love, or else you'll be branded as an enabler. How many people have heard similar advice? If you've heard that kind of advice, go ahead and put that in the chat. We're gonna run our Q&A and comment as things go today, so definitely keep up the chatter. So basically, if your loved one is on the Sinclair Method, or really using any kind of harm reduction method, support, just like treatment itself, is not a one size fits all scenario. So as I introduce Claudia, go ahead and definitely put in the comments some of the ways you think are good to help people on the Sinclair Method.

Claudia: And maybe some of the ways you think are not so good as well. We can explore those.

Jenny: We definitely have some first timers out there Claudia. We've got some, we've got Seattle, we've got Vero Beach, Florida. We've got our regular audience, which is awesome. So for those of you out there, joining me today is the C Three Foundation founder and CEO Claudia Christian.

Claudia: Hey everybody.

Jenny: Known in TSM circles as the most recognized advocate of the Sinclair Method, Claudia became a TSM activist in 2010, after using the Method for her own drinking issue. She is the author of Babylon Confidential and Journeys, two books that show the power of the Sinclair Method. She launched the C Three Foundation, produced the award winning documentary film, One Little Pill and delivered a powerful TEDx talk seen more than 3.3 million times. Claudia also created the Your Sinclair Method coaching program for people on TSM, after earning her certification as a national Certified Peer Recovery Support Specialist. Claudia continues to act in television and film and has an active voice-over career. She writes fiction novels and teaches cooking classes in your spare time, all while passionately fighting for the rights of people around the world with alcohol use disorder.

Claudia: That's right, and I'm never gonna stop fighting, Jenny. I am never going to stop fighting and I love today's topic. I have learned so much over the past decade. I have seen people with the best intentions and I've seen people with no intention whatsoever try to deal with their loved one, and I love what you said in the beginning. It's not just applicable to TSM. This is applicable to any form of recovery. I would even say, go so far as to say this, some of the lessons that we might talk about today would even apply themselves to people suffering from other diseases or loss in their life. It's a way of putting yourself in the individual's shoes but also opening your heart and not being judgmental, not stigmatizing. And there's a real fine line as you said earlier between; Am I being a martyr? Am I being self-indulgent? Might, is tough love the way to go. And I think I know that we want to sort of do this organically today, so I'd like to get my tough love story out of the way so we can start with the worst of the worst if that's okay,

Jenny: Let's go ahead and start with our icebreaker. We start every episode with an icebreaker.

Claudia: Okay.

Jenny: And so this one, I'm really curious to see what your answer would be. If you were a day of the week, which day of the week would you be and why?

Claudia: Oh, that's, that's a no brainer. That's easy for me. I'm a Sunday gal, definitely. I love Sundays. I love Sundays. I’ve done certain things Saturday winding down from the week, but Sunday is really the only time psychologically that I allow myself to read books, to kind of really play I guess you would say. Listen to music, like actively listen to music, do things that I just don't, that I would feel too guilty about during the week. So Sunday is also an indulgent day for me food wise, I just allow myself to have whatever, whatever sparks my fancy at whatever time I want it. And it's, for me it's just the best self-care day of all and it's, psychologically it's the day of reflection. I can start Monday with clear mind. I try not to use my phone on Sunday much. I try to meditate, pray. So it's a really calm, calming reboot for me. So if I was a day I would be Sunday. What would you be Jenny?

Jenny: Honestly, I think I would be Thursday. I would be a Thursday. I feel as though Thursday is one of those days where you stop and say, “Holy crap, how did we get this far?” while still saying, “Look at all that stuff that's still left to do.”

Claudia: On Friday (laughs)

Jenny: I feel like I'm stuck in a perpetual state of Thursday mentality.

Claudia: I get it.

Jenny: Wow, okay. I've been churning, churning, churning. I can pause long enough to say “Wow, a lot’s gotten done,” while still seeing I'm not there yet. And I feel like, I am just a Thursday person.

Claudia: Thursday person. I love, I like Thor's day as we say Viking vernacular or Old English.

Jenny: Yes. Maybe we'll just stop calling Sunday, Sunday, and calling it Claudia's Day.

Claudia: Claudia's Day sounds great. I'm honored.

Jenny: Alright, so alright, let's go into tough love, which is, [sigh] there's no scientific basis behind it.

Claudia; No, no. There’s no proof that it works. I even in my TED talk, I quote Dr. Keith Humphreys. If punishment helps there would be no addiction you know. So this is a, it's a rather convenient road to go down, and I'm gonna really speak freely here because I don't feel any judgment and I can be honest. I think that a lot of people who carry out these commands of using tough love against a loved one are people in the addiction or recovery world that aren't terribly happy in their own recovery. And um, that's a very broad statement, but it's something that I've found in my own recovery experiences, especially in the rehab facility that I attended.

They were all about tough love. All about just breaking somebody's spirit and telling them they're just a piece of you know what, and you have, you’re a loser. I mean, it was really, they encouraged, it was odd, they encouraged parents to come visit but then encouraged the parents to cut everybody off that was in the program. Just cut them out. Don't enable them. Don't give them any support or funding or this or that. And it was really sad because some of the women that were in my program had nothing when they came out, and it would have been so much easier for them to stay abstinent had they had a little cushion or a balloon or a parachute or somebody to love them, and instead they were cut off completely.

So my own personal experience, which was really honestly the worst of the worst, was a fellow family member who was also ironically, in recovery, who advised my then partner, my boyfriend, to lock me out of my own house. My house that I paid for, that I paid all the bills on, my home. And this family member advised my boyfriend to not only lock me out of my house, but throw my clothes and toothbrush and everything, not even in a bag, just take, just pick personal belongings, throw them on the curb, and have Claudia be homeless for a while, because that'll teach her a lesson. That was the advice and thank God that my boyfriend at the time thought, even though he did not understand substance use disorders, addiction, whatever you want to call it at all. he did not understand it at all and was lost and scared. But thank God he said, this seems a little cruel. I'm really utterly grateful to him because he thought that that was very strange. and he even said it's really even stranger coming from someone who is an addict, who suffers from addiction. So this is really, really weird that this person is advising me to be so heinous to this woman that I love and I'm scared for. So that was one example of tough love. However, I want to couple that with my anecdotal experience of dealing with parents and spouses and children of people suffering from alcohol misuse, who have done so much, so much, that they are quite literally enabling the individual, because they're not setting any boundaries whatsoever. They're taking their word for it that the person has taken the pill on TSM. They're not asking for any accountability. They're not looking at the drink log. They're just giving them free rein, keeping the alcohol out there, even though they know the person is not doing TSM properly.

Jenny: And so you said something that I want to zero in on, and I know you and I know the differences in this, but our audience may not. Explain the difference between setting boundaries and tough love.

Claudia: A huge difference. Tough Love is doing something to just get the person out of your life, or out of the house, or to punish them in some way. Boundaries are learning experiences, and they're helping the individual be accountable and mindful. A boundary would be saying, tough love would be saying, “If you don't comply, you're out. You're out of the house. I’m kicking you out, you'll never see your children again.” That's tough love. A boundary is saying, “Look, I know you're struggling with compliance. So let's do this together. At four o'clock, you're going to take the tablet in front of me and we're going to keep the drink log together.” That's a boundary. That's saying I, maybe I don't trust you completely doing it yourself. So the boundary is that you're going to have to take the medication in front of me, and that's healthy. If the person is obviously not complying and it's adversely affecting your life, it would be enabling and destructive, and being martyr, a martyr yourself, if you just allow that person to not take their tablet and drink freely. Tough love would be, I don't trust you anymore. Get the hell out of the house. A boundary would be, I'm going to help you through this, but you're going to have to take it in front of me. I'm going to have to see you actually take the tablet and we're going to wait the hour together until you get back on track with medication adherence.

Jenny: Right. Additionally, tough love creates a barrier.

Claudia: Sure.

Jenny: Tough love disconnects, so it does the opposite of what's needed which is connection and support. A boundary is not only good for the person that you're helping support, but that's also protective of your own mental and physical and emotional health. Because you and I have seen this as well Claudia, where people get so caught up in their loved one's addiction because they're afraid, because they have that history of disappointment, of trauma and all of that. But then they wrap their whole identity into fixing the other person, with little to no self-care of their own, which starts to make the others recovery about them, and not the person who needs recovery. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Claudia: I've run into that a lot, of people who have caretaker burnout, but what they're doing is they're not exploring the fundamental why's with the individual who has this issue with alcohol. So I think it's very hard for someone to logically understand that – the way we used to describe it is – a woman would say, “He's choosing the alcohol over me and the kids.” That was the classic refrain. And I have to explain to those people that there is no choice when it comes to this and in the compulsive behavior, choice is eliminated, so let's take choice out of the picture. Are you exploring with the individual why they're doing this in a non-confrontational, loving manner, and that is the difference between taking on all this person's pain and being angry at the individual for not getting better faster on your timeline and also by being that martyr who's just doing everything in their power to clean up after the person, take care of the children, take all the responsibility on, but you're still avoiding because you don't understand the difference between a compulsive behavior and what you view as a choice. This is an individual's choice to drink. So once you eliminate the fact that it's not a choice, you say, okay, now it's not a choice. So then that person, the loved one, the caretaker has to ask themselves, what is it? What exactly is this driving you to drink? And that's where I think a lot of people skip that step, and this is the most really, truly the most important step is why, and not done in an aggressive manner, not an in your face manner. But the simple question of saying, why do you feel compelled to drink? and when that feeling comes up, can you describe it to me so I can better understand?

Jenny: It's employing a little bit of empathy.

Claudia: A lot of empathy and compassion and understanding and love, an open heart and even the tone of your voice, because let me tell you something Jenny, had somebody said to me early on, you know, Claudia, I love you and I think you're wonderful but I'm concerned about your drinking, and I don't want you to get defensive because I don't know anything about alcoholism or whatever, but I just want you to know that not only am I here for you, but I'd love to know why you feel this need to drink so much. I think if somebody would have said that to me, a light bulb might have gone off in my head, because instead all I heard was, “you drink too much, you're gaining weight, you're puffy, you look like shit, you blah, blah, blah,” all these negative, negative, negative stuff which of course hurts you to the core and makes you want to drink more.

Jenny: Right because there's shame that gets attached.

Claudia: There’s total shame.

Jenny: There’s shame, there's guilt, there's the feeling that you've disappointed someone.

Claudia: Yes, and how do you stifle that? With a little more booze.

Jenny: Exactly. That's why one of the, I don't say many stock things, but one of the things that I find myself saying over and over and over again, after someone has had a rough night - Be gentle with yourself. You cannot change what you did last night. You can be accountable for it. If you did something you need to apologize for, you need to apologize for it. If you really screwed something up with someone, yes, you should work to make that better and be accountable. However, if you just sit there and beat yourself up and “I'm a failure. Why did I do this? What's wrong with me? What happened?” You know, “Why is this happening again?” All that does is cause you to spiral and stress. Stress makes people who aren't even addicted want to drink, so if you're addicted, you're going to want to drink that much more.

Claudia: Oh, the committee can cause major relapses. That committee of that, “What did I do last night? What did I say?” Oh my god, you know, all the horror and all of that stuff. I've constantly, I’ve stopped people right in their tracks of the story and say, it doesn't matter. You learn from it. You chalk it down to experience. You forgive yourself first, and then you clean up the garbage and you move on. And just like you said, you apologize to people you need to apologize. You assure them that you're working on your recovery. You apologize for whatever behavior that hurt them. You then forgive yourself and I mean really sit down and say, “Okay, it's not going to help me in any way, shape or form to dwell on this and I know it's hard and I feel shame. What can I do to not feel shame? Take a long walk, get that heart rate up, get a little natural endorphins and dopamine, calm down that cortisol, be in nature, call a good friend and say you know I really screwed up and um, do you have 10 minutes? I'll do this for you anytime as a return favor, but can you just hear me vent?”

Jenny: We see that all the time on the peer support groups too, you know, and people will chime in and say “Hey, I've been there. I've done that, you know.” If you can learn from it, even if it's just one thing that you can take to try to avoid having the same thing happen in the future, then it's not a total failure, because it's part of the learning process, and as long as you're committed to getting better. And I think that's something that it's so hard for family members, because they, it's a shared trauma, addiction is, so it can be difficult as a loved one to not want to react when your loved one has a bad night or a bad few nights.

Claudia: Here's the thing, Jenny, is that I think a lot of people don't really, they hear this but they don't, they don't absorb it. We've said it a million times. The reason why there are so many chaotic voices in the addiction recovery world, the reason why there are so many books on the subject, so many memoirs that differ wildly from each other is because every single person's recovery experience is different. It's not linear. It's not the same. There's no guarantees. They could have six months of beautiful abstinence and they could have the worst bender of their life the next, you don't know. And because it's so, it's the great unknown with each individual, the loved one doesn't have the ability to compare it to anything else. And unfortunately what they sometimes do is say “Well Linda's husband got sober, and he's been sober for eighteen years”. Well, they don't know what Linda's husband went through to get 18 years of sobriety. Linda's husband could have almost killed somebody on the road or have some, you know, or has liver disease and chose to live. You don't know. We don’t know. And if your loved one is going through bumps in the road, that's normal. That's normal. It's just up to you to learn how to not only navigate it, protect yourself, protect the children if there's children or other people involved that are exposed to it. But also learn why. Why? Why is this person feeling compelled to drink? What are they feeling when they turn to the bottle? What are the cravings? What are the cravings feel like? What triggers it? If you can learn an individual's triggers. If I could have spoken up for myself and said you know what, when you tell me that I look like I've been drinking, it actually makes me want to drink more, and sometimes I haven't even been drinking, I'm just exhausted from this horrible thing that I'm battling. And instead of pointing out the way I look, maybe you could just ask me how I am. But I never had the voice to say that because I was living in shame and all that stuff.

Jenny: One of the earliest addiction conferences that I went to with C Three, I was sitting in a completely unrelated and otherwise unhelpful panel. But there was literally one gem that I took away from it and, censor warning, you know we're just being real here, so I'm just gonna say it. The presenter said that there was a poll taken and the number one reason why people relapsed, especially after a period of success, was because something came up, and they had a “Fuck it” response. “Fuck it all, I'm just gonna do it.” And that was, that was the sentiment of, and that's, you get to that point because you're overwhelmed. Whether it's your regular triggers or life or stress or the people around you or a situation where you just like, “I can't deal with any of this, so I'm just going to drink.”

Claudia: You know the surprising thing is that there are clients of mine who will say apologetically, they will say to me “Well, my drinking has increased because my son died. I lost four family members during COVID. My marriage has dissolved; my marriage of 40 years is over.” I'm like, what are you apolog- well, you've just been through five wars.

Jenny: And what would it have been like before the Sinclair Method? What would it have been like before treatment? Yeah, it went up but how much? You may have drank yourself to death, in another situation.

Claudia: To death. Exactly. Why are you apologizing? This is the only coping mechanism you've learned so let's learn new ones. You don’t have to apologize.

Jenny: And I think that's something that family members and support systems, it's easy to lose sight of that, because as soon as you see an uptick in drinking, as soon as you see that one bad night, the old trauma comes in, and this is why in my opinion, one of the most important things you can do as a support system is to take care of your own mental and emotional health, because if you don't have, if you don't have it yourself, you're an empty cup. You have nothing left to really give to support someone else. And it can feel counter intuitive to say, I cannot fix another human being, I can work on myself, even when you're terrified that that person you love could literally die. But if you can't, if you can't be within yourself, grounded, then it becomes very difficult to help someone else. And for those of you who don't know, and I feel like this is one of the reasons that you and I make a really great team because you have walked the path of addiction and recovery, I have not. A lot of times I'll go to addiction conferences and I'll hear someone say, “Oh, well, you're just promoting harm reduction because it gives you the license to drink.” And it's like no, no, no, no, I'm not doing this because it gives me a license to drink or other people like me. I'm doing it because I've seen it work. I've read the science. I've seen it work in thousands of people over the years. I've seen people who have gone through just life destroying situations post TSM, and been able to walk through that and through those difficult feelings and say, “I'm not even tempted to drink right now.”

Claudia: Yeah. Yeah.

Jenny: So for those of you who are out there who are supporters of loved ones on the Sinclair Method. I'm saying this as someone who has seen family members go through addiction. I'm someone who just got really lucky and dodged the bullet myself. So we're also, we're not trying to look at you and say, “Well, you're not supporting your loved one right.” What we're doing is saying there are ways that are more beneficial. And there are ways that you might have been told are beneficial, but really aren't. And it's not your fault that you were given wrong information.

Claudia: Yeah, and let me also jump in here with some little disclosure. There are times when I'm coaching people, and I have to check my own impatience. And I don't want to say anger, that's a little strong, but my own impatience, because I've heard all the stories. I've been there myself. I know the excuses and I hate saying that. I have to be compassionate. But there are times that it's testing. It's trying on me when somebody says, “Well, I mean, I drank 30 minutes after taking the pill because I didn't think it was a big deal” and I'm like, “Look we've talked about this a thousand times. It is a big deal. You need to wait the hour,” but I have to breathe and be calm. So I understand completely if your loved one is not recovering as quickly as you want them to, or not listening to directions as clearly as they should. I understand the frustration. I understand the impatience. I know you want that person back to the person that you fell in love with, or the person that you adore, or the child that you knew before the addiction crept in. I get it. And I know how hard it is. And I can only imagine living with that 24 hours a day. I had to live with myself 24 hours a day when I was going through it, and it almost killed me. And I'm lucky that I didn't have to care for my other loved ones. They had spouses that would care for them, or family members that cared for them through recovery. So I haven't had to care for anybody except myself through recovery.

So I get it, because I’m now caring for other people and even in the limited time I spend with them, I get frustrated, because I can hear the lies. I can see the excuses and it frustrates me because I care for them. I want them to get better, but I understand that nothing’s going to come of it if I am disappointed in them or if they can smell my disappointment or feel my disappointment. So instead I have to do it through a loving, laughing manner and identify with it, say “I understand what you’re doing because I did it myself.” Now the loved one of someone on TSM might not have the experience that I have being on TSM for nine years and abstinent for over three years, so clearly, especially if they’ve never had any sort of addiction themselves, they can find themselves in an area where they have no idea how to understand not only the wily behavior of someone who's drinking or sneaking or maybe not telling the truth about things, but also the whole program, TSM. So it's a lot to take on. It really is a lot to take on. That's why I want to remind you just to constantly check in with the why. If you've known the individual before this happened, let's say you meet somebody and they develop alcohol use disorder throughout your relationship. Let's say your dad was a great dad until he was in his 60s and then he started drinking heavily. Okay. That is the time to say, “You know that your drinking has changed. And I know your drinking has changed you,” and remind them of the good things. You are such a wonderful father, you are such a wonderful father and I love you deeply. And I'm concerned because I care about you. And I'm just wondering why you feel the need. I'm not judging you. I'm not shaming you. I just, I'm just, I want to get down to why, so that I can help you. So that I can not only understand but maybe help you get out of that place in your mind that's making you want to drink. Maybe we can take a walk and talk about it, or all of that openness is so hard for human beings. We have such a difficult time communicating and communication is the only way we can learn what the other person needs. We're not mind readers and some people just need to sit. I remember asking my brother, I said, “I just need you to come over and sit with me.” I just wanted someone to be quiet and to hold my hand. And so that's what I needed, but I was luckily strong enough at that point to ask for what I needed. Most people who are suffering are not strong enough to ask for what they need, at all. They're just, they're scared. They're filled with shame and disappointment in themselves. They can see all the faces on them and feel that negative energy towards them. It's like why isn't he getting better faster? Why isn't she getting better faster? And that makes them want to drink more. So an open line of communication is paramount to recovery. If you are supporting a loved one on TSM, you've got to open those lines of communication and you have to do it when you're feeling able to communicate in a loving manner.

Jenny: And there's a book that also has a series of videos on YouTube called Crucial Conversations. And I recommend that to anyone who wants to strengthen their ability to have open communications. Basically what the book centers on is how to re-frame conversations in your mind to take the emotion and the emotional knee-jerk response out of your communications, so that they, so that you can have a more open two-way conversation.

Now we’ve got some good stuff going on here in the comment area Claudia, so I want to switch over there. A couple of good suggestions. One suggestion from mudforce. “I was my mum's carer in the last few months of her life, and I had to go for a walk and leave her on her own for short periods of time so I didn't lose it mentally. Sometimes that, talk a little bit about how just creating, even if it's not out of the house, even if it's just into another room to kind of decompress, talk about how helpful that can be.

Claudia: I have a really strong inner monologue with myself when dealing with people and that is, am I capable of giving love right now? And come, constantly coming from a place of love? and if I'm not, then taking a moment to do a breathing exercise or meditate or say a prayer, whatever rocks your boat, going for a quick walk as mudforce says, making yourself a cup of tea, and just taking a moment for yourself and maybe even rehearsing the conversation in your head. I would do that a lot. When I'm dealing with elderly people, especially where there's a myriad of hearing, lack of hearing and also slight dementia. I've dealt with a few family members in the recent years that I, it can be extremely heartbreaking. And you want to say the right thing but sometimes it becomes really frustrating, because they become childlike and I don't have much patience for toddlers anyway. So when you see this person that you love and respect and who was a powerhouse in your life, I'm sure, mudforce, you can agree, that is reduced to, you know, childish behavior at times or forgetfulness or lack of ability to function on a basic level, it's so heartbreaking. And you want to be kind but you also want them to not hurt themselves, and you start to sound parental, you know, “Don't touch that.”

So I would have to literally take a deep breath and rehearse it in my head and not speak to them like a child, you know that’s just derogatory in some fashion of treating an adult like a child. But also not treating them in a condescending manner. So with respect saying, “I know you know this, but if you play with that wire, you could get electrocuted and that's going to ruin both of our days.” So I always try to rehearse it with humor in my head and love in my head and get them to laugh, because the second you turn the conversation with any sort of “Don't do that,” it just, it makes them feel shamed. It makes them feel humiliated. It makes them feel bad, and then they retreat. And it's the same thing with someone in recovery. If you make them feel bad, they're going to retreat back into the bottle. If you make somebody who's suffering from another ailment, mental illness or physical disability, if you shame them, they're going to retreat into their own mind and take a step back from human communication and they're going to go further and further and further away from communicating with people until they're completely by themselves and living in their head, and we do not want that. We want, this is why, keep bringing it back. So I think taking that small break to yourself to reboot yourself a little, you know, for me, it's a little piece of chocolate, and also to rehearse the conversation in my head so that I know that the tone that I'm using is loving and humorous, even if the situation is embarrassing. A soiled diaper, a this, a that, you have to come from a place of humor and love. If you don't have the patience at that moment, walk it off and don’t come back until you do, because that person already feels so vulnerable and they're in such a vulnerable state. You can't bring your own crap into that. You're the one, the able bodied one that has to say, I need to come in there with love and humor and grace.

Jenny: And here's a great question. How do you feel about the supporter drinking? She says “I don't have a drinking problem. However, I feel like a hypocrite while he's in this program, drinking when he's in this program.”

Claudia: If the person that you're referring to is on the Sinclair Method then, and if his goal is to drink at normal levels and to reduce his drinking, harm reduction, then normalizing your own alcohol, drinking in front of him is fine, as long as you have that conversation. If you say, look, are we going to... I had a boyfriend who drank, let me give you this analogy, when I was on TSM, and what he would do and it was quite lovely. I said, we're going to be invited to things periodically and on occasion we're probably going to want to make a nice meal. So why don't we decide in the afternoon at some point, I could, we text each other or just say, “are you going to take your pill tonight?” because we're going to blah, blah, blah. That way it's out in the open. We know that we're both going to have a drink and that's that. When you come home and you feel like a glass of wine, you could say to your partner who's on the Sinclair Method, “I feel like having a glass of wine. Have you taken your pill? Or would you like to take your pill and I'll wait an hour with you?” Or however it works. As long as, and if you feel like that's too tight of a noose for you, to not be spontaneous in your own drinking, then I still encourage you to communicate and say, are you comfortable with me drinking whenever I want to drink? Because the last thing I want to do is trigger you while you're on the Sinclair Method. And the other last thing I want to do is trigger you to want to drink without first taking your medication and waiting an hour. So let's figure out a way to say, “it's Thursday night, we've had a long couple of days, I'm going to make a really beautiful meal. Do you want to have some wine with me?” And then if so, why don't you take your pill at six? And you're in it together.

Jenny: And that's something that you and I bounced off each other earlier in the week. We love that people come to us and say, “Hey, how can I help my loved one?” We love that people show up in the peer support areas and say, “How can I help my loved one?” The one question that really needs to be asked, first and foremost, especially if your loved one is already on the Sinclair Method, is look at him or her and say, “How can I help you?”

Claudia: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Jenny: Everybody is different. I mean, for instance, what I believe is passive aggressive and what my wife believes is passive aggressive are two totally different things. I'll do something that I think is just, you know, helpful for her and she thinks... Like, I'll fold the clothes and I'll put them on her pillow so that they're right there and she knows where they're at, she can put them away. And she saw that, we had to have a conversation, because she thought I was all like “You need to put this away now!” and the placement of the clothes on the bed was actually very stressful for her, because she thought it was a silent way of nagging her to do it now. And it's like no, like that was never actually my intent.

Claudia: See, you communicated.

Jenny: And that's the thing is, you've got to communicate, because just because you don't think it's passive aggressive and you don't mean it passive aggressively, and you have 100% just the full intent of being helpful and supportive, it doesn't mean that your loved one is going to take it that way. So what you need to do is, you really need to sit down and say, “I support you on this, but I don't know what it is that you need me to do to be supportive. So how can I help you?” Because as Claudia mentioned earlier, maybe helping with compliance is, and saying “have you taken your pill today?” is something that your loved one needs in order to follow the protocol. And there are other people that if you say “have you taken your pill?”

Claudia: Oh, oh it'll trigger them. Let me throw...

Jenny: That will be the worst thing you can do. So you really have to have those open conversations. Again. I mean, it really goes back to that. Have them during sober periods if possible, because again, if you're drinking, if your partner's drinking, and that's when you're having the conversation, that may already not be a good time to have an in depth conversation.

Claudia: All right, I have two difficult scenarios for you, Jenny. One scenario is the person's on the Sinclair Method. The partner’s at home and it's like two in the afternoon and the person on the Sinclair Method comes home and reeks of alcohol. What do you as the partner do? You just said “Did you take your pill?” Now, if that person walks through the door reeking of alcohol and somebody, if that was me and somebody would have said “Did you take your pill?” I would have gone... (laughs). Okay, so how would you handle that? Joe Blow just walked in here.

Jenny: Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay is going to be in that moment probably one of the most powerful things you can you can ask. Because if you are concerned whether or not they took their pill first, right now in that moment is not the time.

Claudia: No.

Jenny: Afterwards the next day, you can say, Hey, you know, how you feeling? You had a kind of rough day yesterday. Did you at least take your pill beforehand? But that's a next day conversation. That's definitely not in the moment.

Claudia: Well, the “Are you okay?” Let’s say the person walks in reeking of alcohol and the first thing you say is Are you okay? What if they say, I'm great! I had three beers with Bob because I just got a promotion. Okay. You don't know. That might be, and then they might say and “Yes, I took my pill and I had a few too many. I should have only had one, but I got a promotion.” You don't know.

Jenny: Right

Claudia: You don't know, you have no idea what happened? But if you immediately target them and say, did you take your pill? It's gonna…

Jenny: Or, how many did you have?

Claudia: How many did you have? All of those questions are triggering.

Jenny: It's a very triggering question for a lot of people, unless ahead of time you and your loved one have sat down and they have said, “I want you to ask me these questions for accountability.”

Claudia: Yes.

Jenny: Then absolutely ask the questions because they're looking at you not just as support but as accountabilabuddy. I forget where I heard that accountabilabuddy.

Claudia: Accountabilabuddy.

Jenny: It's a mouthful.

Claudia: I also want to go back and give a little acting lesson here. There's many ways to say Are you okay? We're not going to do it this way. Are you okay? That’s not gonna do it.

Jenny: And if they say no, and they storm off and they're pissed off and they go into another room, this is where having boundaries is actually a self-preservation tool for yourself. Let them calm down first. If they're, if they say “no” and storm into another room they're not ready to talk. If you push, it's not going to go well. It's never gonna go well.

Claudia: Yeah. I had a pre-written note that I used to… I was dealing with one individual that was going through a very hard time and would have, alcohol would make them extremely angry. And since I had sort of been there, although I got more depressed than angry on alcohol, I wrote up a little, a little note that I would pass to him. And the note just said, “I love you and I'm here when you need me. I hope everything will be okay.” And when that would happen I’d just hand the note over. It became sort of a joke because the note would be passed back and forth. And eventually it was like it settled in that, okay, I understand what you're going through. Or I’d leave it on a voice recording or something when I knew he was suffering. But yeah. It is. It's difficult at the time, but just you have to continue to remind yourself. Okay, let's go back to the person who said, I feel uncomfortable drinking in front of my partner who's on the Sinclair Method. What if that individual who's not on TSM but wants a drink, comes home, and the partner on TSM says you know what, I think I'm gonna have an alcohol free night. I'm really feeling like I can do an alcohol free night. Okay, now, what is the person who's not on TSM who's a Normie do? Do they just crack open a bottle or do they discuss it first or ask permission? What do they do?

Jenny: Well, I think at that point, the first thing you have to ask yourself is, “if I'm supporting someone else who's struggling with alcohol, why am I compulsively feeling like I must have alcohol today when they're not?” I would first do some introspection there. But my other thing, and if you guys haven't seen last week's episode about non-alcoholic beverages, we could have gone for another three hours. I could have talked to Brian all day. There are so many alcohol free beverages and spirits out there right now, even though there's a very large vacancy and vacuum in the wine department. Keep non-alcoholic stuff in the house, because a lot of it actually tastes like the full on alcohol stuff right now. So if you feel like you want that taste of a beer, and your loved one doesn't, why don't you both crack a non-alcoholic or you know, or you can have one that doesn't have the alcohol and leave it that way. But you can also then, if you do things, like if they say I want to do a 30-day alcohol free challenge. Great. Even if you're not addicted and you're just supporting somebody, alcohol is a dose dependent risk factor for so many different things. It'll do you good to have a month off of alcohol too. No one's saying you can never touch it again. Like literally, as they continue to decrease, if you decrease with them you're just helping your own health whether you have a quote unquote, alcohol issue or not, you know. So think of it as being healthy together.

Claudia: Oh, yeah, I mean, you'll lose weight, your energy will increase, your sleep will improve. I mean there are so many health benefits to drinking less or not drinking at all it's not even funny. Your skin looks better, everything. And if you are that individual that is drinking but doesn't feel that they have a problem, but you feel you deserve it at the end of the day, and your partner is struggling. Just like Jenny said, you might want to ask yourself, “why do I feel the need?” Is it an in your face kind of thing? Is it sort of a like, well, I'm going to drink whether or not, you know, you're going to drink and just because you're on TSM doesn't mean you're going to affect my ability to drink, you know. I very much doubt that that person who mentioned the question is coming from this place of passive aggressiveness.

Jenny: I can tell from the comments that that is definitely not the case.

Claudia: I have seen people do that. I mean I've spoken to a loved one saying why should I change my habits and behaviors because he's got the problem? And I'm thinking, wait a minute. What if he was 200 pounds overweight? Would you be making spaghetti and meatballs every night? I mean, come on, man, what, we're talking about a health issue in addition to everything else, but come on. You wouldn't be making birthday cakes and serving pudding. You'd be making healthy food because you want them to live. You want them to lose weight.

Jenny: And one of the most absolute heartbreaking things I have seen over the years, and while I'm glad it doesn't happen on a regular basis, when it happens it's just absolutely horrible, is, we'll see somebody who has struggled with alcohol for so many decades. And they find success on the Sinclair Method and the more, the closer they get to reaching their reduction or elimination goals, the more they realize that they are in a destructive, toxic relationship. And it can be absolutely horrifying for people to realize that they've been married to somebody for 30 years who…

Claudia: Who likes them drunk.

Jenny: Yes, who likes them drunk; who encourages their drinking; who is angry that they're drinking less; who is trying to sabotage their success.

Claudia: That’s very common.

Jenny: And it's one of those things that there's, there is no good advice. It's, you know, you have to figure, you know, is your marriage worth saving? Like, is that really who you want to be with? Do you need to go to marriage counseling? Do you need to say “it's time for me to just put my life first?” And it's such an overwhelming thing, because with people like that you see that they have totally turned their lives around, and they’ve realized that one of the most central parts of their life is one of the most toxic. And that's why it's so important that if you love, if your loved one, if you truly care about them, you find ways to support their success; to celebrate their success; to do those dry challenges with them; to mix in the non-alcoholic drinks. If you're sitting there with them having a drink at night, say “okay, well we've had our glass of wine, why don't we have a glass of water now?”

Claudia: Yes, or saying you know, “Hey, we're gonna go to Mexico, do you have your medication with you so we can enjoy a few cocktails?” Or texting in the afternoon and saying, “Do you feel like having an alcohol free day or do you want to take your pill? Let me know. And you know, we'll plan the evening accordingly.” Just making it a natural, normal, normalizing it. That's the thing is when I started TSM it wasn't, there was nothing normal about it. Nobody was on Sinclair Method. Nobody was popping a pill before going to a dinner party. I mean, unless they had dairy intolerance, you know. I mean, seriously, nobody, it made no sense to anybody that I had to take a medication before going out. And yet, I found ways to normalize it by saying, you know, “why don't you ask me?” I just told my partner, whoever it was, okay, just asked me if I've taken my pill and then it sets the tone for the evening. And don't let it dictate your, you know, if you feel like drinking and I feel like an alcohol free day, I'll be the designated driver. But this, all of this comes from a conversation. You're not going to get any information, and you can't, you know, the one thing people complain about is, “Well I can’t be spontaneous.” Well you can be spontaneous, but you got to plan. That's it. And the planning doesn't entail like deep thoughtfulness. You can still be spontaneous and say I think I want to do this tonight. But just the act of communicating then sets your partner up for understanding what's going to go on. You have to have respect not only for the person on TSM, but for the person loving them.

Jenny: A couple episodes ago, Katie talked about that a little bit in the shifting habits episode, for anyone who happened to miss that one. She talked about how she’d set these plans, and sometimes she would follow the plans, sometimes she wouldn't, but that that was also okay. At least having the plan helped to keep her on track when the plans deviated.

So I know that it seems as though this hour has flown by, but we are definitely going, we have so much that we didn't cover Claudia, we're going to do a follow up to this one later in the season. We are almost out of time. So audience you guys have been wonderful as always. Thank you for spending the last hour with us. Please, please, please, if you have, if you want additional information on this, we will do a follow up. We'll set a date later on. But we still have so much more to cover in how people can be supportive of their loved ones on the Sinclair Method. So you can email us those questions.

Claudia: And maybe some experiences that you’ve had.

Jenny: Yes, definitely let us know, because we've got so much more we can talk about in this area. But thanks for being here. And, you know, join me in thanking our wonderful guest, Claudia Christian. It's always so wonderful.

Claudia: My pleasure.

Jenny: I mean, honestly, I don't think I've even talked to you face to face digitally, virtually on Zoom since the last time we did an episode and that was November.

Claudia: I've been out of the country. I've been out of commission, out of the country, out of this, out of that. Luckily, COVID-free.

Jenny: And there's a note in here says “Thank you, Claudia. YOU were my husband's inspiration.”

Claudia: Oh.

Jenny: And they're like, the chat’s. you know, filling up with thank yous and appreciation for you being here today. If you guys have come in late, r if you want to share or watch the stream again, we're going to have today's video up on our website, on YouTube, Vimeo, Anchor and Spotify, all hopefully by the end of the day. And as soon as we're able to, we'll add the transcripts and closed captioning as well. Next week, we're going to be joined by Dr. Michelle Perron, one of the TSM coaches on Your Sinclair Method website and we're going to talk about building a TSM recovery toolbox.

Claudia: Nice.

Jenny: So start thinking of those questions now. If you’ve found value in the broadcast, we hope you'll hit the donate button in our profile, or head over to our website and make a donation at cthreefoundation.org/donate. You can follow our channel to get broadcast alerts, and if you subscribe to our channel, you get to go ad free and you get some bonus emoji to use. If you're an Amazon Prime member, you can subscribe to our channel for free. And you can do all of the typical Twitch things like send gifts or subscriptions to other viewers, cheer, drop bits, you can host our channel to your own followers, all of that. If you'd like to suggest a guest or a topic for future broadcasts, we've got a link to a Google form that's been dropping in our chat area and it's also on the main schedule page on our website. And if you're on the Sinclair Method looking for more peer support, or you just want to join the C Three Foundation community, we have you covered with free groups on Facebook, Discord and the Options Save Lives forum.

So it's hard to believe, but that's it for today. That was a lot of information packed into a single hour. But I hope everybody has a wonderful weekend. Be gentle with yourself and with others, and I will see you right here again next week. Same time, same channel, here on Twitch. Bye everybody.

Claudia: Bye. Thank you.

Voiceover: You've been watching the Options Save Lives weekly live stream hosted by Executive Director Jenny Williamson, and produced by the C Three Foundation with the support of R Street Institute and other generous supporters. For more information about the C Three Foundation or the Sinclair Method, visit our website at cthreefoundation.org. If you have a question you want answered live on air, to make guest suggestions, or to support the show, let us know. You can reach us through our website, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or on Discord. Join us each week as we continue to discuss more ways to help you build a better relationship with alcohol, or to eliminate it completely. Because recovery from alcohol use disorder is not a one size fits all process. Options are available and Options Save Lives.