You're listening to the Love Over Addiction Podcast.

Hello, hello. How are you? Okay, so you all know I'm taking this class at Stanford and I'm trying to pass along the information that I find super interesting, which actually is like everything in this class.

I am trying to pass this on to you and I'm trying to do it in an entertaining way, but I'm kind of feeling a little self-conscious because I don't know if I'm succeeding at that or not.

It's a little bit of a departed style. Normally I'm trying to explain things and I just riff and tell you, you know, give you a pep talk and encouragement, which I think is so needed.

But I'm these kinds of podcasts are a little bit more research-based, but I think that's important, right? Because we want to know the latest research on what's going on in our home and I think the research empowers us to make really great decisions about our future.

So as I've said before, most of these podcasts are typically all about you. I don't really venture into the pool of addiction research.

But I'm going to do that in the next couple of podcasts just because I think, you know, you feel crazy. You feel like you live in another planet when you love someone struggling with addiction.

Your struggles are so much different from like the neighbor across the street who's struggling on how to pack lunches, healthy lunches for her, you know, elementary school kid.

Like for those of you that have elementary school kids, I get it. That's still a struggle. But there's also very real and really painful things going on in your house that you're struggling with.

Like, is your loved one coming home tonight, sober? What's your bank account look like? How much drugs and drinking is, you know, or is that costing you financially?

Are they lying again? Are they letting you down again? Did they break their promise to say sober again? Are they having an affair? Are they addicted to pornography?

And, you know, are they wanting to be intimate when you're like disgusted and non-interested anymore? Should you tell your, their parents or your parents will do people judge you?

Like, it's exhausting. I remember going to so many birthday parties on Saturday mornings and looking around at the women and parents that were there at the birthday parties with the kids and thinking, of course, my husband was passed out in bed from drinking the night before.

And I remember thinking, these people have no idea that right now, my husband is probably lying on the couch, might have a nose bleed from the cocaine he just did. And if they only knew.

And here's where addiction is super duper tricky. Because addiction wants you to believe that. Addiction wants to isolate you, make you feel bad, make you feel ashamed, make you feel embarrassed, and make you feel like you can't share.

But when I finally realized those were all manipulative lies that addiction tries to use to keep power over you. And I actually started using my voice and not giving a hoot about what people fought of me or my life. And I started sharing, yeah, you know, I love a guy who's, you know, most of the time not sober.

I've got three kids with them. I'm trying to make my life work. And it feels like it's about to fall apart every five minutes. As soon as I actually said that out loud to people, you like people were like, oh, me too. Or my dad did that. Or my brother has an addiction. Or my actually I have an addiction. It's amazing that if I were to go back in time thinking about standing in that birthday party room with all those kids and all those adults.

If I had just like grabbed a mic and gotten on a table, stood up and said, I struggle in my family with addiction. Raise your hand if you do too, that a bunch of hands would go up. Like a bunch of those men that were at that birthday party were probably where they at the stage of addiction that my husband was in. No, where they had an earlier stage where they were really looking forward to getting wasted that night with their buddies at the bar. Yeah.

Like a lot of hands would go up. This isn't a really big worldwide issue. And if we just start talking and sharing, I think addiction would lose a lot of its power.

So today, what are we talking about? All right. I'm learning about three different reasons why people are more prone to addiction than others.

And I touched on a little bit about this earlier in another podcast. But this one we're going to go into three major theories. Okay.

I find this fascinating. And I think you will too because don't you wonder why? Like I have drinks and I don't crave more. Like I am too and I'm good to go. I'm actually down to one because I'm getting old.

...