Welcome to Back from the Abyss. I'm Dr. Craig Ecock. We're back with the season

four opener, and I'm really excited for you all to hear this story.

It basically includes all of my favorite back from the abyss themes.

Addiction, hopelessness, alienation, shame, parenting, finding connection and meaning, psychedelics,

emerging hope, redemption. Well, it doesn't include running,

but the next episode does, so I am relieved by that. Today we have the story of Lydia,

currently 18 years old, who struggled with addiction ever since middle school, and also her

mother, Juliet, who's

forged her own brutal journey.

I recorded them separately and then Chris wove their narratives together.

I was hoping that separate recordings would allow each of them to go deep and speak from

the heart.

And as you listen, I think you'll agree. This is a mother and a daughter,

raw and open and at their most vulnerable. I really believe we are the stories we tell. So I'm

very thoughtful and mindful about the stories I tell.

And of course, the logical way to tell this story is in a linear fashion.

But when I kind of stepped back and thought about how to share this life that I'm living, really, in a family that's experiencing

the things that we're experiencing, one of which includes the story of my daughter Lydia.

When things in our family started to careen out of control, like a station wagon on black

eyes, in about 2015, I was, as you might imagine, any parent might be just clinging on desperate to stop the madness, to fix things, to find the answers.

And I was in such the grip of fear.

And I was in such an acute state of shame that I just couldn't function.

...