You're listening to the Love Over Addiction Podcast.

Hello, hello, how are you?

Today we are going to be talking about mind games.

And you guys know, loving someone that struggles with addiction can sometimes result in a lot of mind games.

Now, today I'm going to be reading a little bit from one of my favorite authors on the subject of loving someone suffering from addiction.

I highly, highly recommend all of her work. She's a social worker and her name is Toby Rice Druse.

You can find her books. They are still in print on Amazon.

And the title of most of her books and there's multiple volumes is called Getting Them Sober.

Now, that's a very catchy title. I have a difficult time believing that Toby Rice Druse actually thought of that title or because I know she's an incredibly intelligent woman.

And she says so in her books that there is nothing we can actually do to get them sober.

I've said that over and over again. So I think it's a catchy title.

I just don't want to set up your expectations because when I was in love and married to a good man who struggled with addiction, that title caught my eye many, many years ago.

And I thought, that's exactly what I need. I need to get him sober.

And this book is going to tell me how. And it doesn't.

It gives you excellent advice on what to do and how to manage.

But it does not at all help them get sober because we know that if they want to get sober, they will.

And if they don't want to get sober, they won't. And it's just that frustratingly simple.

And so the illusion, we need to break that illusion that it's up to us.

Then in some way we are responsible for finding the secret that lives outside of them to the key to their sobriety.

That that's a myth that there is no secret outside of themselves. There is no magic word. There is no answer that's up to you to find or seek.

It's not your life's purpose to get them sober.

They have to want to do it on their own and they want to have it, have to have the grit and determination and courage to want it more than anything else in the world because it's scary.

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