#019 Sam Davis & Darryl Rodgers

Sam Davis: [00:00:00] What is desperation? What is surrender? We talk about surrender. We talk about desperation. I know for me and for countless others that I know in a process when you're giving up, you have to surrender old ideas. You have to surrender old beliefs. You have to surrender old habits. That is no different than surrendering when you're an army in a war.

Sam Davis: Yeah. Or in combat. Surrender is surrender. I have never yet seen through history and I love history. Where an army or a country surrendered until they were desperate.

B Reeves: That's a great point.

Sam Davis: Exactly. So desperation is required. Yes. In order to surrender to, at the time such a foreign concept is recovered.

Sam Davis: You know how foreign that is to, to us that our brain is telling us that if we don't have that substance in the next two minutes, we're gonna die.[00:01:00]

B Reeves: All right welcome to another version of Finding New Waters. I am sitting here today with Sam Winston Davis, who is an interventionist in Darrell Rogers, who is a family recovery coach. And I'm glad to have both of them here. I recently, I met Sam over the phone. A few months ago we were working on a case together and we hadn't met in person.

B Reeves: And then I had the opportunity to have lunch with him recently. And while we were talking I thought he would be a great guest for our podcast. And in our conversation before we met in person, he had told me about Darryl. And so I had Darryl come in one night and do a tour and have and come to our family group, which we do on [00:02:00] Wednesday nights.

B Reeves: And then he came back cause he had never met Sam in person today to have lunch and do a tour. Then we roped Darryl in to be on this podcast with Sam. So anyway, I'm gonna shut up for a second and I'll start with Sam. Just tell us a little bit about what you do.

Sam Davis: I'm an interventionist, and what that means is a lot of people think it means that we come in with sabers, rattling, loaded for bear, ready to just wrangle up their loved one, say some profound words and haul 'em off.

Sam Davis: Or either yell at 'em, scream at 'em, point fingers, tell 'em they're an alcoholic and they suck and they need to go to treatment. That's what happened to me, but that my family did that. But that's not what an interventionist does. That's not what an intervention is. I'm there to guide families and provide strategy and options and a path for them to follow and to bounce things off of and to really just lean on and talk 'em out of the trees and just keep 'em on the path as best I can and help 'em, guide them through this.[00:03:00]

Sam Davis: Rocky road of addiction. It's when we are all emotionally wrapped up into something, we can't see things very clearly. So you need someone that can, that's not emotionally attached to sit there and talk you through it. And that's what we do. Cool. We do in person. And there's nothing I'd rather be doing when I'm sitting in a family's living room, knee to knee,

B Reeves: I hear you. And I love that feeling of feeling like I'm not working. I catch myself sometimes and I, cuz I feel like I'm not working. I'm overcome with a little bit of anxiety. Cause it's a familiar feeling from, about five and a half years ago, I had that very same feeling, but I, it was because I wasn't working and I was supposed to be, but this doesn't feel like work cause I love doing it.

B Reeves: What about you? What do you do, Darryl?

Darryl Rodger: Like you said, I'm a family recovery coach and my primary role is helping families understand what their proper role is in the recovery process. I think that a lot of times parents there's some enabling behaviors, rescuing behaviors, things like that, that they fall into.

Darryl Rodger: And that's a [00:04:00] normal thing. It's normal when your child is in trouble that you want to help. But there are right ways to help and ways to help that aren't so good, that aren't healthy for for the person who is dealing with the addiction or for the family. And I help them work on that and provide some accountability.

Darryl Rodger: Thank you. Would you mind

B Reeves: sharing with us how you found yourself in this

Darryl Rodger: world, so to speak? Yeah, so I made my own mistakes in that arena and so parents can, and I don't mind sharing those and parents can learn from that and. My oldest of two boys, chase, died in 2014 in a drug impaired wreck.

Darryl Rodger: After struggling with addiction for about a year and a half, and I began doing prevention. I wrote a book that came out in 2015, began doing drug prevention speaking after that. And I just was looking for other ways to help families and it was actually interventionist that directed me towards pal, which is parents of Addicted loved ones.

Darryl Rodger: It's a peer [00:05:00] support group for parents that have a child that is addicted to drugs or alcohol. And through the, through my volunteering with pal, I learned a lot about what families need in terms of education around dealing with their addicted son or daughter.

B Reeves: How'd you get into this

Sam Davis: line of work?

Sam Davis: Man, I did a lot of cocaine, took a lot of methadone, smoked a lot of weed, and ate a lot of pills. I hear you. That's how that happened. I had been to several treatment programs. My family didn't really know what to do with me, and I knew that I was created to be something different than a bottomed out crack head.

Sam Davis: I had no idea how to figure that out or how to make that happen. My family stepped in, got the education they needed, began to take action, fired me from the decision making as best they could with an interventionist, which was very effective. And I ended up in long term truly individualized care. And when I left there, [00:06:00] I knew that the message that I had received and the transformation that I had made, I knew then that there was a lot of families.

Sam Davis: I. That needed some support, that needed a true message, that needed hope and needed a path, and it was just something in me. It wasn't of me, but it was in me because I'm, as an addicted individual, I was a very selfish, self-centered person, and I can still be very selfish and self-centered. So that's why I know that it was something within me, not of me, that has just laid this in my lap, who was like, this is what was supposed to happen.

Sam Davis: And I went and got trained, and that was 12 years ago and hung out in my little shingle and been doing it ever since.

B Reeves: That's awesome. I remember when we talked, I was asking you what you know, I don't know too much about I'm not an interventionist. I work with interventionists like yourself, but I know I'm speaking, I'm confident.

B Reeves: I'm speaking for lots of people who will hopefully hear and see this. They see the, what they see on tv and it's only that [00:07:00] surprise. And I asked you, what you do and you seem to have a, your own kind of methodology that combines. Can you talk a little bit about that? About

Sam Davis: Yeah. I mean there's the arise, there's the invitational model of intervention, and then there's the more classic surprise model of intervention.

Sam Davis: I like to combine the two now most of the time on my interventions. They're on a need to know basis and right then and there, the individual doesn't need to know that's for their own good. It's not like we're trying to be deceiving or lying or anything. Like it's just a flat out, they're on a need to know basis and right now they don't need to know.

Sam Davis: That's a large majority of them. But if I can find an opportunity to weave in an invitation without outright saying, Hey. We'd like you to come over next Wednesday evening and discuss your heroin problem, or discuss your drinking problem with the rest of us and our family issue. We don't really outright say that, but if we can wiggle in an invitation, we'll do [00:08:00] that.

Sam Davis: Yeah. I'm doing a session where the individual is, was invited into the process. And I've done that several times. We'll invite them into the process and we'll slow the role of an intervention sometimes. That's more so really for the family. A family is it's very fearful of what an intervention would entail, which fear is a big liar.

Sam Davis: Fear is fantasy. It's gonna show you worst case scenario. But we have to meet the families where they are and where their willingness and to set boundaries. And hold boundaries because you don't want 'em to set a boundary that they're not gonna hold. We'll do sessions with 'em an hour at a time, but we've, we're moving a lot of people to treatment without having to do that formal sit down intervention.

Sam Davis: Now, nothing takes the place of that. There's a magic when the family sits down, their family's scared of death. They're always worried that their loved one's gonna run out and kill themselves, or they're gonna get angry and run off, that they're gonna get violent. All of these things that their fear tells 'em, right?

Sam Davis: What it really is a very magical moment. It's a very powerful experience that no one in that living room or wherever you're having the intervention will ever forget. [00:09:00] I never forget 'em. I may lose track after years of, or may slip my mind, but if that family calls me to update me or just say Merry Christmas or whatever, which happens a lot, and they say their name and so many years ago today, you stepped in, it'll come right back to me.

Sam Davis: They're extremely powerful experiences. It's a, it's an op, it's a place where families come in with love and support, but firm and direct and honest communication in a kind and loving way. And also direct. It's so powerful. I just, I can't explain it well enough how powerful of an experience it is.

B Reeves: What, at what point in your, as a family recovery coach, I. Do you get to a point where you realize, hey, you're not holding boundaries as a family unit. I think you may need to talk to somebody like Sam. Have you had any experience like that you

Darryl Rodger: could talk about? Yeah. I see.

Darryl Rodger: I see parents get hung up on the decision making process a lot, where they're just overcome with fear. [00:10:00] And They need some help making that decision to either to give their child, an an option, either go to treatment and we'll pay for it, or you're gonna have to pack your bags and move out.

Darryl Rodger: And I've seen situations where the child is living at home in their thirties and right on, and still using drugs and there's no, there are no changes taking place. And that's not good for the parents, not good for the child. And it is really about helping them make that decision to take some action and make a change.

Darryl Rodger: Yeah,

B Reeves: Both of you have mentioned fear and both of you think of both said boundaries, and that's something that we talk about all the time in recovery all the time on this podcast. I talk about it all the time In my personal life, in recovery, I. And I just talk about the creating of is one thing.

B Reeves: It's like when somebody asks for help that's great, but then it's really all about the receiving [00:11:00] of the help. And then it's then the same thing with the boundaries. It's not for me to ever say those boundaries are for a family. And I'm, again, I'm not an interventionist, but I do have these conversations on a, very basic level of creating the boundaries.

B Reeves: But then the next, the real magic is then the sticking to the boundaries. Can you talk a little bit about on how you advise families on what those boundaries are and what those kind of degrees of boundaries

Sam Davis: are? I can tell you that when we first start working with the family, we're not coming out of the gate saying, Hey, you're gonna tell them to, it's this or the highway.

Sam Davis: Because, You look at boundary, a boundary like a muscle, it has to be exercised and you just can't go start dead lifting a thousand pounds. You gotta start off with a little lightweight. So when it just, when someone, there's a lot of. Misinformation. Or misunderstanding around an intervention.

Sam Davis: Cuz we've gotten a lot of calls through the years where they'll call and, Hey, can you be here this afternoon and intervene? And it really doesn't work that way. We want time to plan with the family and strategize and I [00:12:00] like to get 'em started on the intervention process starts as soon as they engage us.

Sam Davis: We want them to start exercising that boundary muscle on a little smaller scale. Get the feel of it, feel the weight a little bit, feel. Figure out how it feels in your body. And express that boundary and watch how all of that fear that you had around setting that boundary didn't come true.

Sam Davis: Starts building some confidence and they can set another boundary and another boundary. Plus, we want the individual to know when we walk in on them, the day of the intervention the loud one. That they have sensed already that some things have changed with the family. So this is not just something that they're pulling today.

Sam Davis: Just another thing. Like they're serious. My family is very serious about this.

B Reeves: That's interesting cause I've never heard it expressed like that kind of, leading, like building up to, when working the muscle, because that's such a great point. If all of a sudden these people who've just been enabling and enabling, and they don't mean to, my parents certainly didn't mean to, my parents are great and I should retract my statement.

B Reeves: They didn't look at me and point a finger and say, you're an [00:13:00] alcoholic, you suck. They were worried sick and crying and sad and doing, just couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. And I was, I was probably gonna be intervened upon soon, but I went willingly. But But did you know these who have been enabling and giving and bailing out, and then all of a sudden one day they're just supposed to do a complete 180 and say, you're cut off, we're done.

B Reeves: It's this or the highway, like you said. That's a great point. I've never heard it said like that. Like with the, one little thing. No, we're not gonna do this one thing that you're asking for. So just to plant the seed that things are changing, that the wheels are in motion that we are changing as a family unit because that's something that people.

B Reeves: I talk to families every day about this. A lot of 'em see it as a sentence and a punishment for them. They're like, what? Why my kid or my husband or my wife, they're the one who has, they have the problem. Why do I have to change my ways? And what I've learned in my personal recovery and in this, in working in this field, Is that it's a kind of a gift for the families too.

B Reeves: Even they don't have to go through what I went [00:14:00] through and what you went through to be, active alcoholics and addicts to get help and get better. These families in going through this process with you and with you, they not only get to help their son or their daughter or whatever, loved one it is, but they get to start healing themselves,

Sam Davis: so then one very simple, yet very profound experience is to begin with, no. Yeah, it's a complete sentence. Complete sentence. And we'll find ourselves wanting to justify why we're saying no. Because internally it has nothing to do with them. It's about us, but just no.

B Reeves: And just getting through that fear.

B Reeves: Just feel that,

Sam Davis: yeah, but feel with that set, that, sit with it. Notice through the experience that the skies aren't parting and the earth isn't crumbling and your loved one is maybe a little angry, but you're still surviving, and so are they. Yeah. You be, have to, you can have all the information, but you need to have an experience.

Sam Davis: I can sit on the phone with somebody for 12 hours a day talking about an intervention and talking about this [00:15:00] and talking about that, but it's, you have to experience it. And it's really not something you wanna just dive right into the intervention day. You want to have the experiences leading up to it.

Sam Davis: They build on each other.

B Reeves: And so when you're prepping for an intervention and they can go from. A month out to what's the, the, tell me, what's the timeline?

Sam Davis: I'd say average time's about five days. Okay. But it's, we're seeing some more complicated cases. We're seeing some more complex family systems.

Sam Davis: Multiple substance use disorder, family members, lots of trauma. Covid hadn't helped We're, I'm, I am, I can only speak for me. I am, I don't know about other interventionists. It's starting to be a little bit longer process of the coaching and the prep work and the understanding and all of that. You know

B Reeves: what I'll start with you. What, in terms of just substance what are, what do you [00:16:00] see the most?

Darryl Rodger: In terms of like my,

B Reeves: I, Darryl, my son is on.

Darryl Rodger: Yeah, that's interesting. When first started it was opioids a lot. And now a lot of parents coming to me, it's marijuana is the main issue, is I think it's the increase in the potency of the marijuana that's out there now in, in in obviously different.

Darryl Rodger: Forms, if you're smoking dabs or some other wax extracts, you can really high TC content then. Yeah. A lot of issues with that. Do you include Delta eight

B Reeves: and Delta

Darryl Rodger: nine in that? Yeah. And when I first started hearing about Delta eight parents in my group were telling me their children were experiencing, when I say children, teenagers, young adults obviously, but they're experiencing.

Darryl Rodger: Some psychosis issues Yeah. Around Delta eight. Absolutely. And when they first started talking about [00:17:00] Delta eight, they were ahead of me. I was like what are you talking about? And I had to start doing my research on Delta eight, yeah. But but yeah I think a lot of people who are, there are people that I hear about who are trying to recover, and maybe they've been to treatment and.

Darryl Rodger: And they're staying off of their substance, that's their go-to, that's their primary substance. But then they think Delta eight, that's not so bad and besides is legal. And so they'll go start experimenting with that a little bit and just something to take the edge off.

Darryl Rodger: And I don't know, it'd be better if they were just completely sober, but if you're a parent, would, you'd rather they would be smoking Delta eight than shooting up heroin or something like that. For sure. Know for

B Reeves: sure. But that, but it's, there's this myth that, marijuana, even though it's not legal in North Carolina, it's legal in so many states.

B Reeves: It's been normalized for so long that. The general consensus is it's harmless. [00:18:00] Yeah. And it's absolutely not harmless. Yeah, that's correct. And like you said, the dab and the oil and the, all that makes it so much more potent. The, with the real withdrawal effects of that and Delta eight and Delta nine causing.

B Reeves: Full on psychosis. And so it is funny though because that argument, it's basically, it's legal or, cuz the Delta eight and delta nine can be bought in a, a gas station. But so can beer and wine and booze, nobody really rights says that's harmless, what about you? What do you see the most of in your interventions in terms of substance?

Sam Davis: Man, what is flooding? The news channels and social media and everything is fentanyl, right? You hear that everywhere and it's killing people. It's a very dangerous drug and there's a lot of 'em.

Sam Davis: It's a bad thing. Horrible, but in my experience, what I'm seeing the most of, I certainly get the fentanyl cases and the Xanax and the cocaine and I get all of those, but by far it's marijuana and alcohol.

B Reeves: Yeah. Here it's. I was sure that we were gonna see, probably 60 40, [00:19:00] if not, 60, 40 alcohol, 40% drugs, mainly opiates, specifically fentanyl.

B Reeves: And we get, like you were saying, we get all that, but it's mostly, 80 to 90% people or people of people here are here for alcohol. We have plenty of benzos and. We get people here just from Delta eight and weed and all that, but it's mostly alcohol. It's still king alcohol.

B Reeves: I wanted to change gears for one second because y'all met. I want you to talk about how y'all met each other. In this modern way,

Sam Davis: man. I'm sitting there scrolling, TikTok. This handsome fellow pops up, starts talking about a message that resonated with me. He spoke my language. And a lot of people don't understand how big sober TikTok is and recovery TikTok, and everybody thinks it's about, kids dancing and doing silly challenges and things like that.

Sam Davis: I started putting out some content about a year and a half ago, and I like being [00:20:00] creative. I feel I. I had stifled that for so many years, and the longer I'm sober, the more I'm authentic me. And I don't make apologies for that. And it goes along with that internal drive of there was a, It was a message to be given.

Sam Davis: I started putting out some short form content on TikTok and grew pretty well and I've just met him on TikTok. We got the message and back and forth and all. Yeah, that's, and then

B Reeves: here we are. Yeah. I don't know, and as you were telling me, just made me think, we're all, we all work in this, call it an industry.

B Reeves: I feel dirty sometimes calling it that, but it is. And but I was just thinking, I wonder how many. Bankers would be like, Hey, why don't you know, you come. They're just, they're the collaboration. Unless it's for absolute profit, you don't find that in anywhere else, I don't think, we just, we just all want to help people and it's it's a beautiful thing to see people find each other in these as far as I can tell, none of us are teenage girls and yet TikTok, brought us together here today.

B Reeves: Yeah. Yeah. And another I'm looking at your [00:21:00] hat. Says for the people who can't see us. Rule 62. Tell '

Sam Davis: em what, tell 'em about Rule 62. This one came from TikTok. I fell outta Georgia sent it up to me. I think it's from Georgia Hat Company. Okay. And he was in sobriety, he said, sent it with a note and said, Hey, I've been digging your message and your content.

Sam Davis: Here's your hat. And I make 'em for some people that are sober. Rule 62 means don't take yourself so damn seriously. Yeah. And I have to, when I wear it, it's not wearing. Yeah. As much outward as when I'm looking in the mirror in the morning, looking in the mirror when I'm getting dressed, it's man, don't take yourself so damn seriously.

Sam Davis: You're really not all that important. Yeah. And let's just go along with the flow of things

B Reeves: today. Yeah. I need to see that. I need to hear that every day of my life. And so you tell me a little bit about what you do locally, like on a day-to-day. You have, you, you have a day job, right?

Darryl Rodger: Nope. Okay. Then what, tell me about what you do on your day there. So actually, I, when I, what brought me to this area, I was a pilot. I flew for, okay. I flew for American [00:22:00] Eagle and I flew a commuter airline. Yeah. Right here outta Raleigh. And I flew a Apache Helicopters in the Army National Guard.

Darryl Rodger: When we first moved here, I wanted to be close to the airport. Moved into Cary. And and we've been here ever since. But I've owned several small businesses over the years and when my son died, I wrote a book about his life and then I started getting some opportunities to do some speaking, public speaking.

Darryl Rodger: And so I started doing drug prevention speaking, and I still do that. But started working with the parents in the Powell Group on a volunteer basis. And I'm also, I'm on the board for North Carolina Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. Against Drunk Driving, let me get that right against Drunk Driving, not against Drunk Drivers.

Darryl Rodger: I'm on their board and and I do some speaking for them. And I was just doing some of the volunteer work and just realizing that parents, a lot of parents need a lot more than just that one. Meeting of [00:23:00] a peer support group one night a week. They need more accountability.

Darryl Rodger: They need a structure that helps them move forward in the family recovery process. I'm launching a online group coaching program for families, four parents who need the. The help understanding their role in the family recovery process and then having that accountability, like I said, that they need.

Darryl Rodger: I always tell parents that they don't have any control over what their son or daughter does, but they give their son or daughter their best opportunity to recover when they. Work on themselves. When they work on their own personal development, their own personal growth, their own spiritual growth their own self-care.

Darryl Rodger: When they work on that, they're putting their child in the best position they can to recover.

B Reeves: Love it. What so you being an interventionist and somebody in recovery, what do you see? [00:24:00] Just as what are we doing wrong? What can we be doing better as just. There's one thing you mentioned earlier that I want you to touch on, but if there's anything else, but, so we need to be, do more connecting, not as much selling.

B Reeves: Is that right? Expand on that one.

Yeah.

Sam Davis: You Google treatment, drug treatment. Just Google it. Bad idea, by the way, for everybody listening. Yeah. Horrible idea, right? Just Google it. Yeah. You'll see. Yeah. Healing pines by the seashore, the tranquility life of Serenity Springs. Of the hope of love.

Sam Davis: They can handle all of your needs. They'll say you've got, we handle cocaine addiction. We have a methadone track, a methamphetamine track. We have a marijuana track. All these different tracks. There's too much selling and not enough connection because I can tell you what's going on from my eyes.

Sam Davis: When you look at the success rates of treatment center, we were talking about this earlier today, and it's been coming up for the last couple of days. When you look at success rates of, sometimes they [00:25:00] range, what, three to 15%? Yeah. Success rates, it's not good. And we have the public, and I'm not, I don't mean to sound like I'm putting all of this on the population in the public.

Sam Davis: But we have to own our role in that. If you're looking at three to 18%, or three to 13, three to 15, whatever it is, either one of 'em are low, none of 'em are acceptable. You've got a population of people where I want to go out on a limb. I don't have the research to about it. I'm gonna only go by my experiences of what I've seen in the last 12 years.

Sam Davis: And what is self-reported to me from families is that 90% of the families out here and individuals that are in treatment and families that put them in treatment have don't really know down at the level necessary. Internally why their loved one is in treatment. They think that it's just to learn how to cure them of drug addiction or cure them of alcoholism or learn, teach 'em how to say no.

Sam Davis: And they don't know the role they can play in their recovery [00:26:00] through boundaries. So they, what's that word? You have 90% of fam of the public. Doesn't know really why they're in treatment or why they sent their loved one to treatment you, but they're saying treatment centers are horrible, which there's a lot of bad players, but there's bad players in every industry.

Sam Davis: Yet the industry has an overall better s success. Like plumbing has some bad players in it, but I'm pretty sure that they can fix your leak if you call a plumber a hundred percent of the time. More than likely, right? Yeah. There's good, there's lots of great addiction treatment around the country.

Sam Davis: The people are saying these success rates suck. If you can lower the number of families, the percentage of families that don't know really why their loved one, or they're sending their loved one to treatment or why they're in treatment, if you can lower that, you're gonna increase those success rates.

Sam Davis: It's, we have the treatment industry needs to take some ownership and, hey, how are we giving information to the public? We're doing too much selling and not enough [00:27:00] connecting. And the public needs to recognize and be more aware of, hey, the more educated we get, the more boundaries that we set.

Sam Davis: And the more we utilize our family power, the more success we're gonna see in our loved one when they go to treatment.

B Reeves: I think about these stats a lot cuz they're not good. And I wonder, and I would love to hear y'all's thoughts on this. I, part of this is just my own personal take on this, is while it's a, it couldn't be it.

B Reeves: It's a great thing. That the stigma is pretty much removed from addiction and alcoholism, it's not but is

it

Sam Davis: though? But is it though? Because, pretty much because I, you hear when people are snapping at the industry talking about treatment programs or run by, you'll see some of these articles come out and I find it alarming because they appear to, and they.

Sam Davis: They're screaming that they're advocating for the poor, sick, and suffering addicted individual. And then they'll get in there in the same breath and say that treatment centers are run by former addicts and they say it in a shaming way, like that's a bad thing. I know. Recovering addicted individuals that are [00:28:00] flying your loved one across the country in an airplane.

Sam Davis: I know. Recovered individuals that are operating on your son or operating on your grandmother in the hospital.

B Reeves: Yeah. There's no one I trust more than somebody in recovery. Yeah. No, but what I, but I will retract pretty much the stigma's been removed, but it's way less than it was.

B Reeves: Sure. 50 years ago or more. But let's say, and I don't want to mention the specific type of recovery that I'm in, but we can guess what it is, that was founded in 1935 and the odds then, And the stats, then the chances of recovery were triple what they are now. And I wonder if part of it is because now it's so socially acceptable to be, to go to treatment.

B Reeves: And that there, that it's not just the shame of that is lessened. Not saying it's gone, the stigma's not gone. But it's way, it's lessened by, significantly. And the fact that it's so accepted, I wonder if. It, there's not the [00:29:00] severity of needing help that there used to be when people would get to that level when they did find sobriety and recovery.

B Reeves: But now it's, that's why we see so many people that are in and out, frequent flyers we call 'em in these places, and I just wonder if that has something to do with it, where it's a good thing that the stigma's been lessened so much, but yet it's so acceptable to go to treatment that it's not, doesn't seem like that big a deal anymore.

B Reeves: Am I crazy to think that?

Darryl Rodger: That's a tough one. Yeah, there, there's a balance, there that we need to strike. Yeah, I think you may be onto something there. My views have changed, since, when my son when I first found out he had a problem, I was very judgmental of people who had a drug or alcohol problem.

Darryl Rodger: I didn't understand. And certainly I would say that the stigma has been reduced. I see both sides of it. I see both sides of it and it's hard to say. I. Is that playing into people, maybe it is so much more acceptable [00:30:00] now. I don't know. I can't really answer that definitively.

Darryl Rodger: Yeah. I just

B Reeves: What

Sam Davis: do you think? I can tell, and when this thing first kicked off in 1935, it was hard to get to the grocery store in 1935. There were grocery stores all over the country. Yeah. You know what I mean? It wasn't a comfortable ride. It was, it was 1935. Yeah.

Sam Davis: This thing that you're talking about just was just created. It wasn't everywhere. It wasn't broadcast everywhere. Judges weren't sending people to it. There weren't treatment centers in every town. Yeah. There were sanitariums, and the sanitarium was not a place you really wanted to go. It sounds cool.

Sam Davis: Kind of sounds like aquarium. Which is cool, but a sanitarium, my friend is not a comfortable place. Yeah. So none of that was good. And then you went to find your butt in a seat. Yeah. At one of those meetings. Yeah. From the thirties to the sixties or whatever. Yeah. There was some desperation on your part, to seek out that meeting and go in there and sit down. There was some desperation. I [00:31:00] think desperation is the key. Yeah. Yeah, because now you can just wave your hand and say, whoa, oh, go to treatment. Yeah. That's a great point. Hey. The judge says, Hey, you got, or sentence you to sentence me.

Sam Davis: Yeah. What,

B Reeves: so judge from the judge that, but that you're, that, that's a great point. There's so it's more accessible and it's more. It might be more acceptable, but yes. It's not like you, people don't have, the bottoms have been rising as well. Yeah. Whether and it's not always up to the person what that bottom is like.

B Reeves: What we all do too. That as far as I know, there weren't real interventions then. There were 12 steppers, going to 12 step people, but not, there wasn't, there just weren't so many places to go and so many and Right. The accessibility of not just booze, but. Now, be online.

B Reeves: People can be, have a pharmacy in their house in, 24 hours. Yeah. But anyway, I just think about those stats. Cause they're not good. And but you're right. And it was such a smaller sample size

Sam Davis: too back then. And you think about it. Yeah. Like you walk into a meeting [00:32:00] today.

Sam Davis: At the end of that meeting, this is just for an example. This is one example, maybe a weird example, but I'm gonna throw it out there. You walk into a meeting today, at the end of the meeting, you circle up and you sing. You say the Serenity Prayer, and everybody just sings it off, right? Grammy, the Serenity accepted things.

Sam Davis: I cannot change the courage to change the things I can, and we all seem to do this, and the willingness to know the difference and then we go on. It's like this thing in the meetings today. It's just become so. What's the word I'm looking for? Desensitized. Yeah. Like transactional? A little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Davis: Like it's just something that we're doing probably back in the day. They're saying, Hey, you want a little bit of serenity to get you through until the next meeting so you're not jumping out of a window or jumping in front of a bus or suck starting a 12 gauge. If you want to be granted a little bit of serenity, hey, maybe you need to really sit in silence in the morning before you get cranking up.

Sam Davis: And say to accept the things I cannot change. And then you sit there for a little while and try to figure out what are the things [00:33:00] that you cannot change. And then after you've done that young man, you're gonna wanna sit there for a little bit, the courage to change the things I can. And you're gonna wanna sit there and think about what can I change?

Sam Davis: And then you're gonna really be seeking through the day the wisdom to know the difference. See that's some action that was put in that can that's action steps. And back in the day when you couple that with some des more desperation that people add back then. You're gonna get better results.

B Reeves: And I'm glad you brought up desperation too, because all of this to me, what I see, what really gets people to get to make a change is the g o D gift of desperation. Because we can. Lead a horse to water and we can have interventions and we can get 'em there. And like I, it wasn't, I tell people this all the time.

B Reeves: We can go get sober for anybody, but we can only stay that we have way for ourselves. And I don't think, I don't see a lot of people finding, I. Lasting recovery without desperation. That gift of desperation. And I hope I never forget how [00:34:00] desperate I was.

Sam Davis: What is desperation? What is surrender, right?

Sam Davis: We talk about surrender. We talk about desperation. I know for me and for countless others that I know in a process when you're giving up, you have to surrender old ideas. You have to surrender old beliefs. You have to surrender old habits. That is no different than surrendering when you're an army. In a war.

Sam Davis: Yeah. Or in combat. Surrender is surrender. I have never yet seen through history and I love history. Where an army or a country surrendered until they were desperate.

B Reeves: That's a great point.

Sam Davis: Exactly. So desperation is required. Yes. In order to surrender to, at the time, It's such a foreign concept is recovery.

Sam Davis: How foreign that is to, to us. That, that our brain is telling us that if we don't have that substance in the next two minutes, we're gonna die. Even though that's not true, our mind is just about [00:35:00] telling us that, and we're buying at hook, line and sinker. Yeah. It's like we're, you're asking us to stop breathing air.

Sam Davis: So in order for us to embrace that step requires surrender. And that's really what an intervention is about too, is to help create some desperation. As long as I got options, I'm not getting well. I don't care. I don't care what, how many massages I'm getting, how many, how long I'm gonna be gone or how little I'm gonna be gone, or what state I'm gonna be in.

Sam Davis: I'm not going and I'm not gonna get, if I don't, if I perceive I have options to stay, what? Stay the same. Yeah,

Darryl Rodger: man. I'm thinking about how all of this applies to the parent side of things, and he's talking about desperation. What I tell people, it's when you have a child that's addicted to drugs or alcohol, I. It is like you have these butterflies in your, in the pit of your stomach. They never go away, never completely go away. And you're always, there's always this little fear in the back of your mind and just takes one little thing to trigger you really, [00:36:00] to really set you off like the phone rings late at night and the first thing you've tried to suppress all these fears, right?

Darryl Rodger: But the first thought that pops in your head is that the police, what do they want? But parents, that desperation drives them to control. And that's the one thing they have to get so desperate that they realize they have, they don't have any control and they have to give up those attempts at control.

Darryl Rodger: And I use this visual of an archer and imagine. Your child is an arrow and you place an arrow in the string, the target that you're aiming at is a general target in that I just want them to be successful and happy, and successful in terms of finding that thing that they love to do and being good at it.

Darryl Rodger: And and you aim at that target, you draw that arrow back and you release that arrow with that string and. Guess what? It happens. A lot of times their parents pull back and they get that arrow [00:37:00] back there. They find their anchor point and they don't wanna let go. And the longer you hang on, guess what happens?

Darryl Rodger: Your muscles start to burn. You start to quiver, you start to shake. You don't get a smooth release. You're less likely to hit your target, but that sensation of those muscles burning, that to me that's like. That's that stress that parents are feeling when they're still trying to hang on because there is this transition process from childhood through the teenage years to adulthood.

Darryl Rodger: And I don't know that anybody's really taught how to do that as a parent, especially when you have, when your first child comes along and like they're going through the teenage years and there's all this turbulence and you're going. Is that just what teenagers go through or is there something else going on here?

Darryl Rodger: And a lot of times it's hard to tell is it, I was going through that with our son. Is that, is this is this just him going through his teenage years or is he using drugs? And anyway they've gotta get to that point where they're so desperate [00:38:00] that they are and that they're coached up on this, where they can let go of that arrow and then it's in God's hands.

Darryl Rodger: And your child's hands because that, this arrow has a brain. And it can go wherever it wants to go, but yeah, a wind can come along and knock it off course, or it can hit a low hanging branch or whatever. Different things can happen in that arrow along the way, but it's not, There's nothing you can do about it.

Darryl Rodger: You, it's up to that arrow and God at that point. And you just have to say I did my best, I did my part right? And now the rest is up to them. And it's that, trying to hang on is what causes so many problems for families.

B Reeves: That's a great analogy. And just that whole, we're in the footwork business, not the results business and just, letting go and letting God Love that.

B Reeves: Anybody got any final thoughts?

Sam Davis: Oh shit. I had a ton of them until you

Darryl Rodger: asked me.

B Reeves: This is awesome. Y'all are great guests.

Darryl Rodger: It's great to be here. I appreciate you [00:39:00] inviting us in. Yeah. Thank you. It's pretty

B Reeves: fancy,

Sam Davis: Yeah. I thought I was sitting, what's that show? Between two

B Reeves: fires? Between Two fires? You thought I was just gonna insult you. The, it looks like the set come back for the nine 30 show.

B Reeves: It gets a little blue. Ooh. Alright, we will, like I said, we will put all your pertinent information and post all your links and email and contact information. But anyway, just thank y'all both so much. This was awesome. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Thank you for coming

Sam Davis: down. Thanks for being on this with me too, man.

Sam Davis: Thank you.

Darryl Rodger: I appreciate you. I appreciate you guys inviting me in. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

In this insightful podcast episode, Sam Davis and Darryl Rodgers delve into the intricate complexities of addiction recovery, focusing on key themes of surrender and desperation. Drawing from their rich experiences as an interventionist and a family recovery coach respectively, they offer a trove of advice and wisdom to help individuals in their pursuit of recovery, encouraging them to discard old ideologies and habits for a path to wellness. Throughout their dialogue, they stress the pivotal role of acknowledging the need for assistance, urging listeners to seek support throughout their recovery journey. They further unpack the integral functions of interventionists and family recovery coaches in navigating families through the recovery process, establishing boundaries, and formulating strategies for effective interventions. Their conversation also shines a spotlight on the myriad challenges encountered during addiction treatment, encompassing the potency of substances like marijuana and alcohol, as well as issues surrounding treatment accessibility and stigma. The duo explores the critical role that self-awareness, support, and accountability play in the family recovery process. To further illuminate these aspects, they recount personal narratives, underscoring the necessity for families to retain a sense of humor and flexibility during the recovery journey. They broach the topic of parents transitioning from caretakers to guides, emphasizing the significance of relinquishing control and having faith in the recovery efforts. In essence, this podcast serves as a comprehensive guide for individuals and families who are maneuvering through the intricate labyrinth of addiction recovery. By tuning in, listeners can glean a profound understanding of the crucial role of surrender, support, and self-awareness in the recovery process, while also getting an overview of the potential obstacles and opportunities they may encounter along the way.

Sam Davis Links:

⁠https://interventiononcall.com/⁠

⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@samdavisinterventions/⁠

⁠https://www.instagram.com/interventiononcall/⁠

⁠https://www.facebook.com/InterventionOnCall⁠

Darryl Rodgers Links:

⁠https://www.thefamilyrecoverycoach.com/⁠

⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@thefamilyrecoverycoach⁠

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For more information, to submit a question for our show, or to explore our affiliated detox center, visit the Finding New Waters website at ⁠⁠https://www.findingnewwaters.com⁠⁠ and the New Waters Recovery Center at ⁠⁠https://newwatersrecovery.com⁠⁠. Join us on this transformative journey!