Personalized parent coaching and effective intervention strategies offer a vital lifeline for families grappling with addiction, paving the way for hope and healing. In this episode, we’re honored to feature Christopher Doyle, the dedicated Founder of Why Intervention, who brings an authentic and deeply compassionate perspective to the complexities of addiction recovery. Chris, a retired New York City firefighter and former Head Substance Abuse Counselor for the FDNY’s Employee Assistance Program, shares his unique journey and the impactful “Stop Dreaming Framework” and “Four-Part Connection Formula” he’s developed to guide families through crisis. Tune in as we delve into the realities of addiction, the power of leverage, and the crucial role families play in leading their loved ones toward a path of sobriety and a brighter future.
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Beyond Tough Love: Christopher Doyle’s Radical Intervention Strategies That Actually Work
We’re joined by Christopher Doyle, a seasoned interventionist and Founder of Why Intervention. Chris has dedicated his life to helping families navigate addiction and guide their loved ones towards recovery. A retired New York City firefighter, Chris served as the Head Substance Abuse Counselor and Interventionist for the FDNY’s Employee Assistance Program. Through his personalized coaching and interventions, he has helped hundreds of individuals find sobriety.
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Chris, it’s a pleasure to have you here on the show. Thanks for being here.
Thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here.
From Firefighter To Full-Time Interventionist: The Journey Begins
He focuses on delivering personalized parent coaching intervention services, offering compassionate and effective support tailored to each family’s needs. We’re going to talk more about that later. I’m excited to have you here. You and I met at Michael Bernoff’s event, Core. It was a couple of years ago, right?
Yeah. I want to say April 20, 2023.
You’re in Joe Polish’s E.L.F. Coaching program as well. I reconnected you with Joe back then. It’s awesome. When I first met you, you were getting started, and you had retired from the fire department. Is that correct?
I was getting started on the new phase of what I was going to be doing full-time. I was doing interventions.
That’s right. You were doing it part-time, and then you rolled into doing it full-time.
That’s right. I retired in June of 2023.
The Pivotal Moment: How Christopher Achieved Early Sobriety
Give me a little bit about your background, your experience, your strength, and your hope. What was it like? What happened? Why did you end up getting into this type of work?
I got sober when I was seventeen years old, as a result of my mother saying the right thing at the right moment to get me to get to my first program of recovery. If she hadn’t said what she said, I wouldn’t have wound up in a meeting that day. It took me probably fifteen years to realize how monumental that moment was, that if my mom didn’t say something, I wouldn’t go. That led to three and a half years of pretty solid sobriety, at which point I relapsed a couple of times. I had some ups and downs, and then eventually got sober again at 23.
I became a firefighter at 24. I got on the job sober, and I stayed sober for the entirety of my career. I’m still sober. I celebrated eighteen years. Halfway through my career, there was an intuitive message coming from one of the people who worked at the EAP. It was a guy who was working there for many years. His name’s Drew Kane. It was basically, “I’m not going to be here forever. Some people are going to have to step up and grab the torch here on what we do.”
I heard it, and it was in the back of my head. I was on the job maybe 1 or 2 years at the time, and then I had my first knee injury. I had a total of 5 surgeries over my career, but in the first 5 years, I had 4. I had 4 surgeries within the first 5 years of being a firefighter. Due to that, when the opportunity presented itself where we needed to get a new counselor at the counseling unit for the Employee Assistance Program within the FDNY, they called my number.
Why are you so passionate about being an intervention and helping other people?
I was never a professional. I was like everybody else. I was like you. I’m sure before you became a professional or before you got into the addiction recovery space, we had our ideas of what it is that we do that helps people. It is experience, strength, and hope. We do what we can. They’ve got to be ready. I thought those very same things that most of us do.
When I got in front of people in a counseling session, one of the first times, I had a client whose reason being there was that a boss asked him to be there. He got jammed up at work, so the boss said, “Why don’t you go down and speak to someone?” He is sitting across from me. This was early in my career. I had probably gotten 10 to 20 people into rehab by then in the course of these types of sessions. I’d have one-on-one sessions. A guy needs help but isn’t necessarily willing to get help, but we’re going to get them over the hump. We’re going to get them connected to something.
Intervention: A guy needs help but isn’t necessarily willing to get help, but we’re going to get them over the hump. We’re going to get them connected to something.
This particular individual was so resistant and so full of denial. He was so strong-willed against it and knew the game here. He knew, “I’m showing up because my boss asked me to be here, and I’m not required to do anything after this.” He’s going to be able to go back to his boss and say, “Boss, I did what you told me.” I do a full assessment, and this guy is a full-blown alcoholic. He’s got a wife. He’s got 4 kids at home, all under 10. I saw the whole picture, the whole scene, and was like, “I am not getting through to this particular guy.
The fact that he was sitting across from me, I was like, “I have him here. I know if I don’t get through to him, this could very well be the last time I see this guy ever.” I have no leverage. I have nothing more that I can do other than plant seeds. I talked to Drew Kane, and he said, “Sometimes, all we can do is plant seeds,” because I was bothered by the fact that we couldn’t get this guy.
I was like, “Drew, I’m not a farmer. I had him here. I’m more of a firefighter when I got my hands on this guy. Let’s get him out of the burning building,” but we didn’t have any recourse to do that. I didn’t like being in that position. That’s what set me off on this, “I got to figure something out.” I thought I was going to have to develop something or create something new, but thankfully, interventions have been in existence for decades and have a pretty high success rate when you know what you’re doing.
Training With The Best: Earl Hightower And Intervention Methods
Who do you follow, or which method do you use?
I trained with Earl Hightower.
Awesome. I love Earl.
Earl’s great. I did extensive multiple training sessions with Earl, which is also unique because of how things aligned. Earl is in the original Johnson model. Much like a counselor is going to say everybody’s going to have their own style, everybody’s going to have their own approach, and you’re going to develop your own methodology within the framework of what counseling looks like, it’s similar when it comes to intervention. Most people’s picture of intervention is the TV version. They immediately associate it with tough love, punitive, consequential, and all of those sorts of things. It’s a far more loving and caring approach that is highly effective, at least in the model that we are practicing.
“Sometimes, all we can do is plant seeds.” Share on XHow many of your interventions end up where all the family members and everybody come together, like the show intervention? How many of your actual interventions end up getting to that point?
For me personally, because of my background, unique experience, and what I got to do with the fire department, I’d say 10 to 20%. Most of what I’m doing is coaching families on how to shift the dynamic in their home and different things that they can do and say in order to get through to their loved one to get them to take that first step towards getting help in a similar way that my mother did.
More accurately, what I would do with all of these firefighters when they would come and they were resistant, not interested in getting help, and were there because they’re saying it’s stress or they have family issues, job issues, or whatever it might be. As soon as I’d shift the conversation to alcohol or substance use, we’d start getting to the heart of things. Typically, by the end of that session, they’d be on their way to rehab. That skillset is what I’m looking to have.
Primarily, I’m focused on parents having that because that’s where my heart is. It’s hard for me to accept that. If you know what to look for, you can identify addiction early. If you understand what addiction means, it’s that this person can’t stop on their own. They’re not going to seek help. They don’t believe they need help. Nobody’s going to solve a problem that they don’t believe they have.
If you understand that your loved one has an addiction, are we going to give them a couple of decades of runway in the hopes that at some point, they’re going to come to their senses? As they continue using substances, they’re getting worse. Their brains are deteriorating from substance use. It’s not becoming more likely that they’re going to do something about it. It’s becoming less. The earlier we can identify and intervene, the better.
Why Coaching Families Is Key: A Unique Approach To Intervention
Is the approach more about dealing with the family and coaching the family on how to have the conversation with the person that’s addicted, or are you dealing with the person that’s addicted directly? How would you describe your approach?
I work primarily with the family. I rarely speak with the addicted loved one. In fact, some of my best interventions, the ones where I am involved, coaching the family, boots-on-the-ground, and present for it in the room, I’m not saying a word to the evicted loved one. All I’m doing is coaching the family because I’m there for the family. I’m the representative of the family. I’m advocating for the family in all of this, the impact that addiction is having on them.
Does that mean that most of your work is done via telephone and virtually? How much of it is in person versus virtual?
It’s hardly in person. If we get to the point where it’s in person, it’s solely and only because we’re doing an intervention that day with multiple family members and everything. What I typically do is I’m coaching parents. If over one, two, or maybe three sessions, they’re getting to a place where everything that they’ve tried before hasn’t worked, ideally, we drive their child to a decision point, and we’re making it so that this is an obvious choice.
In your opinion, what’s the biggest problem with our approach to dealing with addiction as a society?
I alluded to it by saying that when you understand what’s going on in the mind of a person who has an addiction. I know that you have been in recovery for as many years as I’m in recovery. When we were in it, how many mornings did we wake up saying, “I’m done,” or, “I’m never going to do this anymore. That’s it. I can’t live like this. I swear to God.” We’re not promising anybody else in the room. It’s us. In the quiet of my own mind, all on my own, I’m saying, “I’m not going to do this ever again. I’m done.” How many mornings did that happen, and then you drank or did drugs again?
All the time. Constantly.
The number one answer is countless.
“I’m never going to do that again. I feel guilty. I feel ashamed. I feel terrible about myself. I feel terrible about my decisions. What was I thinking?” Constantly.
It’s a fundamental understanding that you had an addicted brain, and so did I. That is a question I’ve asked well over 1,000 people who are in recovery. The number one answer to that is countless mornings, which means here we are, ready, wanting it, perhaps “hitting bottom” the night before. We are incapable of taking action on that desire at the moment.
We need someone. We need some external factor to step in to get us the help that there we are, ready and willing to get, if only an opportunity for recovery was presented and additionally, if there was enough leverage to get you over the hump to do it. Once you understand that, it’s like our approach is waiting for that person to call the 1-800 number to get help on their own. That’s not what typically happens.
If that person gets on the phone, your admissions department is receiving those phone calls. When they pick up the phone, I promise you that in 99 cases out of 100, it’s because something is prompting them to make that phone call. It’s not because they made that promise at 8:30 in the morning. There must have been something different that had nothing to do with them for why they called that day. Once you understand that, you realize our entire approach is off because we’re waiting for that person to call for help. We’re imploring them, “Raise your hand. Ask for help. That’s all you have to do.” No one is going to ask for help for a problem that they don’t believe they have.
Stop Dreaming Framework: The Secrets To Intervention Success
You wrote a book where you discuss your Stop Dreaming Framework and your Four-Part Connection Formula. These are simplified as what to stop doing and what to do instead. Let’s talk about this. Can you explain to me what the Stop Dreaming Framework means, or what it is in detail?
Yeah. I’ll explain it briefly in categories here to make it easy, but it’s going to feel maybe a little overwhelming. You want to stop denying, rationalizing, enabling, arguing, minimizing, investigating, negotiating, or guessing. If you clean up those areas, you’re going to be fine.
Intervention: You want to stop denying, rationalizing, enabling, arguing, minimizing, investigating, negotiating, or guessing. If you clean up those areas, you’re going to be fine.
That’s the addict.
That’s the family. When you’re working with parents or significant others, there’s almost a parallel degree of denial that’s happening for the family, as is what’s happening for the addicted loved one. My book and everything that I’m doing is for the families. It’s directed at the families. It’s how you are being impacted by your loved one and what you’re going through, the pain points. It’s like, “Here’s what’s happening.”
Stop dreaming because you can have a plan. You can turn this around. That’s the Four-Part Connection Formula. Maybe we’ll get there. As far as the Stop Dreaming Framework goes, the first part of it is to admit that what your loved one is struggling with is addiction. Adopt the premise of what we’ve been discussing so far. If you recognize that your loved one has an addiction, they are highly unlikely to seek help on their own.
That’s not just me saying that. It’s my personal experience. It’s my professional experience also, but the National Survey on Drug Use and Health is a study that’s been going on for over 50 years. It is not a fly-by-night study. The data has been there annually for decades. In 2022, 94.7% of people who met the criteria for addiction did not perceive the need for help. If you are banking on them falling in that other 5%-ish window, it’s so slim.
Back to the society piece, if you take a look at that statistic, in any given year, 10% of people who struggle with addiction get help for it. 90% are never crossing through the door marked Help anywhere. They are in their addiction. That’s 90%. When you think about the problem as a whole, the fact that we have 50 years of data, you’d think that maybe we’d start paying attention. These people are not getting the help.
If you take a look at that statistic, in any given year, 10% of people who struggle with addiction get help for it. 90% are never crossing through the door marked Help anywhere. Share on XThe reason only 10% of people get help is not for any of the reasons that you hear. Do they contribute? Sure. Does stigma contribute that much? You can say, “Fine, but I didn’t care what people thought of me when I was drunk on the bathroom floor in the bar. I wasn’t stigmatized in any way. I didn’t care. That’s not what’s preventing me from getting help. What’s preventing me from getting help is the belief that I don’t need any because I don’t have a problem.”
Once a family comes to terms with that, they’re like, “We’re not going to deny that this is what’s going on. We’re going to accept that my loved one has an addiction, and that all of these other problems and symptoms are connected to the fact that they are addicted.” Once you have that foundation, the rest of the Stop Dreaming Framework can begin to fall into place because you recognize, “I’m not going to try and rationalize with someone who doesn’t believe they have a problem.
I’m not going to try to convince him that he has a problem. I don’t need to convince him he has a problem. I need to convince him that I’m convinced he has a problem.” It’s a huge difference. The rest of the Stop Dreaming Framework goes through all of the various different changes, mindset-wise, and then how you can begin to shift the dynamic is what happens with the Four-Part Connection Formula.
Tell me about the Four-Part Connection Formula.
If you go through that and you’ve come to grips with the fact that your loved one is addicted, then that means that they do need help, and they’re not going to get that help on their own. Primarily, you want to find what the options are for help for your loved one. What are your preferred options? You want to research it. You want to come up with your A, B, and C.
Camelback Recovery, let’s say, is on the list. We got Camelback Recovery. We do the research, and Camelback is appropriate for our loved one. What if we can’t get them into Camelback? What’s option B? What’s a step-down from the inpatient rehab setting? What’s a step-down from option B? I want to have at least three options.
Intervention: I don’t need to convince him he has a problem. I need to convince him that I’m convinced he has a problem.
If we’re talking about a sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen-year-old all the way up until their twenties, getting started doing something is better than waiting for them to do nothing. When you start doing this, you’re not trying to change them forever. You’re not trying to make it so that they never drink and do drugs again. What you are attempting to do is to bring them to a decision to do something at the end of this conversation.
In my background, it was, “Would you be against going to a meeting today?” or, “Would you go to a meeting with me?” That is what my mother asked me. That was the right thing to say to me at the right moment because I came in on Sunday at 11:00 in the morning with my head hung low, embarrassed from whatever it was that happened the night before. I was seventeen years old. I was at a keg party. I threw up all over the kids’ stairs. I blacked out. I disappeared. I had no idea where I was for about 1 hour to 1 hour and a half. I wind up back at this kid’s house, and I pass out on his couch.
I did all that before midnight. The party didn’t even get going. That was another embarrassing thing. As my head begins to fall because I’m passing out, I see the clock, and it’s 11:55. I’m like, “That doesn’t make any sense.” One kid was over here. He had two girls under his arms. He’s sitting on the couch, pointing, laughing at me, and saying, “That kid’s an alcoholic.” I was like, “If I could get up, I’d kick him,” but there I was, passing out. I fully passed out.
When I found out about the blackout, it was very embarrassing because they were looking for me to clean up the stairs. He was very upset that I threw up all over the place, but I had disappeared. I was like, “What do you mean I disappeared? I threw up on your stairs. I apologize. I’m sorry that happened. I went into the living room and I passed out.” He was like, “You were gone.” That’s when I had this evidence of, “I blacked out.” Since I had seen the time before I passed out, I knew it for a fact. I knew they weren’t lying to me. It was something like I couldn’t even deny in the moment to myself, which we’re also capable of doing very often.
When I walked in the door on Sunday morning at 11:00 AM, my mother didn’t know any of these details. She doesn’t have any of this background. She doesn’t know what happened. She can take a look at me and see the emotional state that I was in. She saw the opportunity to bypass everything and said, “Would you like to go to a meeting with me?” I said, “Okay.” This could seem so subtle, but I was seventeen years old. That led to 3 and a half years of no drinking and no drugs from 17 to 21. Who knows what could have happened to me from 17 to 21 if I hadn’t started going to meetings with my mother that day?
How did your mom know to bring you to a meeting?
She’s been sober for 50 years.
That’s a good reason.
It wasn’t 50 at the time. This is a lot about what I focus on in the book. What my mother knew and what my mother did is not rocket science, but because of her background, she had a leg up. That’s what I’m trying to translate to parents. I’m like, “If you read my book, you’re going to have as much information as Debbie Doyle did, and you’re going to be able to do the same thing.”
What my mother did is what I break down in the Four-Part Connection Formula. There are four pieces there. My mother knew her son was likely an alcoholic, likely an addict, and was going to need help. She was biting her time, waiting for that moment that she was going to seize and then present the opportunity and get me through the door. That’s exactly what happened.
Beyond “Rock Bottom”: The Truth About Addiction And Recovery
That brings me to another question. What was your rock bottom?
I probably have a contrarian take on this than most because the rock bottom is more of an internal thing that I come to after I’m already separated from the substances. Everybody’s rock bottom is the same when you’re dealing with addiction. Eventually, you come to terms with the fact. Suddenly, one day, you go, “I do have this problem. I didn’t think I had the problem.” How many people are sitting in your program where what you’re dealing with is them saying, “I don’t want to be here. I don’t need to be here. This is stupid. These other people have a problem. I don’t have a problem. I’m ready to go home now.”
That was me when I first got sober. It was, “I don’t need to be here. I’m not like these people.” That’s what a lot of people say. To clarify, I believe everybody has lots of rock bottoms. I got lots of rock bottoms. I don’t even think my rock bottom was my lowest bottom, but it was the bottom that got me sober. I’ve got one specific rock bottom that I share when I talk to people.
That rock bottom that you share, would you say that wasn’t even your worst night?
No way. It wasn’t my worst night.
That’s the thing that is so important as a clarifying statement for family members to hear. The family, when they’re listening to us, to anybody, or any social media person or celebrity that’s sharing their story where they’re saying, “I couldn’t do it anymore. I hit rock bottom. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, so I made the phone call. I had enough,” a family member listens and they say, “When is that going to happen for my loved one? How come that’s not happening for my son, my daughter, my husband, my wife, my mom, or my dad? Why hasn’t that happened for them?”
Here’s what’s critical. That’s not likely what happened. They’re sharing their internal experience of what it feels like to have hit rock bottom, but it wasn’t even their worst night. What happened was likely something outside of them prompted them to make that phone call, go to the rehab, go to the meeting, see the counselor, or whatever. In the retelling of the story, it’s, “I made the call. I was miserable. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
That’s fine from an individual perspective. The story doesn’t have to change. From the families who are hearing it, please know, if you’re a family member, that there are significant details that are being left out of that version of the story. I don’t know what happened to get you sober this time, but was there anything or anyone within the 24 to 72-hour period before you got sober this time that had they not done or said what they did, you would not have gotten sober that day?
For sure. I got sober because my wife at the time said, “I’m leaving you. The only way I’ll consider taking you back is if you never drink again and you go to rehab.” I said, “I’m not going to go to rehab. I don’t think I need to go to rehab.” I went to AA. Quite honestly, I went to AA to get her off my back. I wasn’t planning on staying sober. I went to AA, and I was like, “I’ll go to AA for a little bit. I’ll do this thing. I’ll get her off my back, and then I’ll go back to living my life the way that I want to live it.”
For me, life got better. I embraced the program. I worked the steps. I believed in a higher power that was greater than me. I came to believe. I got a sponsor. I went to meetings. I took all the suggestions. I did all the things that they recommend. My life got better, and my life continued getting better. I was like, “This is what I want to do.”
I fully embraced it. I went to 1 or 2 meetings a day for my first two years. I did lots of service work. I went to the meeting before the meeting. I went to the meeting after the meeting. I chaired meetings. I shared at meetings. I sponsored guys. I called my sponsor every day for at least the first couple of years. I took suggestions. I would say that my wife leaving me after a weekend of shenanigans with a good friend of mine was why I got sober, for sure.
That was the catalyst. That’s the starting point. That’s what is so important for families to hear. Everything that you shared is critically important for a guy like me to hear. I’m someone who struggles with addiction, so I want to hear that story from Tim. From a family perspective, when a family member hears, “I hit my rock bottom,” they don’t know all that background. They don’t know that none of the things that Tim described would’ve happened if his wife hadn’t prompted him to start.
If she hadn’t put that boundary down, it wouldn’t have happened. We ended up getting divorced anyway. I remember at one point, she came to me and said, “You’re not even doing this for me. You’re doing this for you.” I’m like, “That’s the only way it’s going to work.” She wasn’t happy that I was putting so much of my energy into AA. It was like, “This is the only way it’s going to work.” We ended up getting divorced. I believe she’s a lot happier now. I’m a lot happier now. There was too much wreckage anyway, but regardless, I have to thank her. She’s the reason why I got sober.
That’s amazing. You would not clarify your own story as having been, “Tim was intervened on.” If you look at the broad general sense of the word, that someone stepped in or someone did something or said something that had it not happened, Tim wouldn’t get sober that day, that’s the intervention.
It was definitely an intervention. This is the thing. She had leverage, which I believe is pretty important in getting somebody to get sober. It doesn’t matter how somebody gets sober. Even if they don’t want to get sober, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter why they get sober. Eventually, they can get sober because their significant other is going to leave them, your parents are going to cut you off, or you’re going to get fired.
There are lots of reasons why someone can get sober. If someone has leverage and they use that leverage, it’s a good thing. The person getting sober has to eventually get to a place where they’re getting sober for themselves. That’s the key. Without them wanting to get sober for themselves, it’s not going to work. It’s not going to stick. It doesn’t matter how they get sober originally.
The way that I explain that is there’s a difference between getting sober and staying sober. No one in the history of sobriety has ever stayed sober without first getting sober. The point that I like to make for families is that they can be the catalyst to help them get sober, so that they can then run with the ball to stay sober. Whether they stay sober or not is largely outside of the family’s influence, but just because there’s a possibility that you might not stay sober, you don’t have great grounds to say, “I’m not even going to make an effort to help them get sober.”
They’re never going to stay sober if they don’t first get sober.
That’s it. If you understand addiction, 94.7% of them are not going to get sober.
You’ve got to help them get sober. As a family member or as a loved one, your responsibility is to help them get sober in whatever way. Don’t enable them. I see people enable like crazy. You’re not helping.
As an aside, a lot of the people who do get sober by way of any of the things that you mentioned previously, whatever the leverage was, oftentimes, they’re only sharing the internal version of their story. The leverage, whoever that is in this circumstance, it’s not like they did it with any kind of preparation. It’s not like they did it with a plan. It’s not like they did it with some guidance. Your wife did it because at that moment, who hit bottom? She did.
Good point. I’ve never thought about that. It was her bottom. She was fed up. She had had enough.
We’re waiting for the wrong person to hit bottom. What it comes down to as a family member is, have you had enough? If you’ve had enough, with a little bit of guidance and planning, it’s not that hard to get us sober. That’s the other contrarian thing. The family has to get out of the mindset of a lot of the myths and misconceptions that they have been told, which are, “They have to want it. They have to be ready. They have to hit bottom. Ultimately, there’s nothing you can do to help an addict because the addict has to want it themselves. The decision to stop drinking is up to them. Mind your own business. You focus on your choices. Let them focus on their choices, and you should go do this for yourself.”
Ultimately, there's nothing you can do to help an addict because the addict has to want it themselves. Share on XAll of that does not help your situation. You are the one who is dealing with an ongoing active addict or alcoholic in your orbit. Your world is being impacted by this person’s addiction. If you’re waiting on them to do something about it, it’s not going to happen. What most people typically get to is that they either stay and accept it, or they go. There’s an in-between. That’s where intervention comes in.
The Family Disease: Roles & Active Participation In Recovery
That’s it. Addiction is often called a family disease. How can families play a more active role in the recovery process?
If I bring it to the Four-Part Connection Formula, we have it pretty well covered as far as what your role is. The active role is if you choose to accept it. You don’t have to. Lots of people are going to make the decision or choice where they’re going to say, “I don’t want to do this anymore.” That’s fine also in some circumstances. With parents, it’s unlikely. With parents, there’s the obligation that comes from, “I’m Mom. I’m Dad. I’m going to do anything I can to help my kid.”
What needs to happen? You maintain a singular focus that your child needs help. What’s the help going to be? Research the help. Have it lined up. Know that your child is going to need to be connected to that help. Our friend Joe Polish likes to say the opposite of addiction is connection. From the interventionist standpoint, know that your addicted loved one is not going to make that connection on their own.
The final piece of the Four-Part Connection Formula is to make the connection. Bring them to the place. You are not enabling them by researching treatment options. There are lots of other ways that families enable. You are not in the enabler category by helping them get through the door, whatever that is. In fact, the only thing that you should be doing as far as your efforts are concerned is anything that’s going to support the possibility of recovery.
Part 2 of the 4-part connection formula is to shift the dynamic. You begin to shift the dynamic between you and your loved one in various different ways that I cover at length in the book. It’s primarily focused on teens or young adults who are living at home and still dependent, things that you can do to shift the environment, and what you do and say. You’re looking to make it uncomfortable or difficult for the addiction to continue.
How do I create an environment that’s more supportive of recovery and is not so good for addiction? How do we make it hard? How do we make it obvious that this is a problem? How do you set them up in these mostly inconsequential ways, but ways that can be emphasized, highlighted, and almost embarrassing, if you will? You schedule them for an appointment at 8:00 AM on Saturday morning, and then you let them oversleep through it. You start to build a track record of various different things that are being impacted, not because your kid is a screw-up, irresponsible, lazy, or a procrastinator. You start to link everything to, “It’s because of his addiction.”
We’re operating from the standpoint that addiction is going on. You’ve admitted that there is an addiction here. You don’t want to make it about them. You don’t want to make anything about them. You want to separate them from their addiction. Put the addiction in the blame position at all times. Say, “I know that you would’ve liked to have shown up. I know that you would’ve liked to have done that thing I asked you to do.” In your mind, it’s, “I know that this is all because of your addiction.”
At some point, you might schedule a conversation. This is part of an intervention process where you get a little bit more formal, where you’re going to have that conversation where you’re going to be able to point to a lot of evidence-based examples that are directly connected to their substance use. You are going to convince them, like, “All of these problems are connected to your addiction. We are willing to do whatever we can to help you with the addiction.” When you think about shifting the dynamic, it’s like, “We’re not going to be doing a lot of the things that we were doing prior when we didn’t know what we know now.”
In your experience, what’s the most challenging part of an intervention, and how do you guide families through that challenge?
The most challenging part of an intervention is that you’re going to be dealing with resistance. You’re going to hear them say no. You’re going to feel like you’re doing the wrong thing when you’re not. You feel like, “This is wrong,” or, “We shouldn’t be doing this,” or, “We’re going behind their back,” or, “Is this going to damage our relationship?” You have all of this self-doubt that is keeping you from doing what is the very best thing that you can possibly do, because otherwise, the addiction goes on. It continues uninterrupted. As that happens, it continues to get worse.
The most challenging part of an intervention is that you're going to be dealing with resistance. Share on XThe challenge is getting over all of the kinds of emotional tugs in the various different directions that all family members can find themselves in. That’s where getting your own support, getting your own recovery program, and going into your own clinical programs to deal with the challenges of having these types of conversations. It’s necessary when you come to terms with it.
What do you think is the most common misconception people have about interventions?
That they don’t work. It has a 90% success rate. The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, I believe, did a study that showed that a professionally-led intervention is successful over 90% of the time. When I trained with Earl, I had no idea that Earl was an interventionist. I just knew Earl. When that happened, I said, “I need to come up with a solution here. I need to be able to break through that guy’s denial.” That kind of resistance was so heavy. I was like, “How am I going to pierce through that?”
The answer that I came up with is what you said earlier. It’s leverage. What I didn’t have was leverage. The reason why I was able to get so many guys into treatment was because of leverage. Families have leverage in abundance. You’ve got to learn how to use it. When I trained with Earl, and there were some other interventioners in the room, there was a guy named Bob Marier. There was another guy named John.
I asked these guys, “This is my first training. How many interventions did you do last year?” Earl had over 100, which is insane. That’s what Earl does. Bob had 54, and this guy John had 9. I knew John from my neighborhood. He did 9 interventions, and I knew that he had trained with Earl 7 months prior. I said to Earl, “How many did you get into treatment?” He said, “104.” I talked to Bob, “How many people did you get into treatment?” He said, “54.” I asked, “How about you, John?” He said, “Nine.”
I never would’ve imagined that these would be the answers. Interventions, when done well, are like a recipe. It’s how you communicate with an addicted person to get them to do something that they otherwise would not do, which is beneficial for them to do and is helpful for them to do. You thanked your ex-wife for your sobriety. That’s where this goes. You think that you’re doing the wrong thing or the hard thing, and emotionally, it swings this way or that. It is the right thing, and hopefully, eventually, they’re going to end up thanking you for it.
With all your experience, what’s the one piece of advice you would give to someone who’s early in recovery or considering getting help?
For someone who’s early in recovery, it is to follow directions. The moment you start thinking to yourself, stop. That’s the key direction. You don’t want to be in your head taking directions from yourself any longer. If you can line yourself up with someone who seems like they know what they’re doing, is further ahead than you, and you trust that they can probably show you what they did, take direction from them, and do what they say. Commit to it in a sense of, “I’m going to do this out of spite and see, like a science experiment, whether this works or not.” Follow every direction. Do it for 90 days or for 1 year, and then get back to me. They would always say, “If it doesn’t work, we can refund your misery.”
As they say, “My best thinking got me where I am today.” I went to Joe Dispenza’s retreat. He talks about how our decisions are typically based upon all of our past experiences, our past decisions, and our feelings from the past. That person who’s making the choices got me to where I am. Why would I expect that person to get me to a different place, the person who’s making the choices and the decisions and taking the actions? That’s what I did. I took directions and suggestions. The people who are successful, the people who get sober, are the ones who take suggestions. They do what other people tell them to do. To your point, do it for 30 days. Even if you think it’s a bad idea, do it, and let’s see what happens.
From the family perspective or societal perspective, they’re not going to want to do that.
Especially someone who has had some success. People who haven’t lost everything yet are a little bit harder to crack sometimes. People who are smart are harder to crack sometimes because they think they know everything.
Most people that are ending up in rehab are not people who are like Skid Row addicts and alcoholics. They’re people who are successful, who have businesses, and who have jobs. Every single guy I got into rehab was gainfully employed. I was working for the fire department. Every single one of them wasn’t bottomed out. They still had families. They still had jobs. They still had income. They still had everything, and there they were. They were alcoholics and addicts needing help.
From the family perspective, what I wanted to say on that point is it’s the boundaries and constraints that keep your loved one in the seat long enough for that collective bottom that I mentioned to happen. When they’re sitting there, whether it’s 17 days in, 33 days in, or 49 days in and they’re like, “I don’t need to be here. I don’t have a problem,” whatever it is at some point, because of the boundaries and constraints that are in place and are active in their life, they know, “If I leave here, if I don’t do this, if I don’t keep going, or if I don’t follow these directions, then XYZ thing is likely going to happen. That’s some painful route I don’t want to explore, so I’m going to keep my butt here, even though I don’t think I need to be here.”
All of a sudden, there’s a popping sound, and that’s their head popping out of their ass. They suddenly realize, “I’ve been an alcoholic or an addict all these years. I have this problem, and I need to do this.” That’s the bottom. It’s this internal recognition epiphany or this realization, “I do have this problem. I need to do this because I do need help.” Once you get there, that person has an opportunity to stay sober because they want to.
Triumph Through Tragedy: Doyle’s Hope In Life And Recovery
Let’s go back to your experience, strength, and hope. Let’s talk about your hope. What does your life look like as a result of being clean and sober?
I have a wife, 3 beautiful children who are alive and well, and 1 child who is in Heaven. The fact that in November 2023, my wife and I could have our third son, Connor, and have him die during delivery, and have that sudden unexpected death happen, but here I am, still sober. I didn’t drink, and I didn’t use drugs. That was something that, within a week of it happening, leading up to the funeral and everything else, I was able to lean on all of the tools of recovery that I have been given.
It was not because I was struggling with the idea of drinking, using, or anything like that. That was the furthest thing from it. It was about how you emotionally get through something like this. It’s an odd thing to say that a gift of recovery is the fact that I was able to get through that and not tarnish the purity of the grief that we were feeling by going and getting high or getting drunk. Not even having that be a thought in my brain is a real gift.
If you take it from there and everything else that you could possibly imagine, in my world, things are supremely better than they were when I was in active addiction. It doesn’t even compare. There is also the opportunity to be helpful, to serve people, to be of service, and to do good work in the world. To do what we can to save lives is pretty great.
We’re coming up to the end of our time together. I appreciate you spending time with me. How can people find you? How can they learn more about you, your book, and your program?
Visit WhyIntervention.com. It’s the easiest thing. Make use of the free resources. We have a podcast as well, the Why Intervention Podcast, where we go into depth on a lot of the Addiction 202 material, stuff that you’re not going to be able to Google and find easily. We are talking about different aspects of this that you don’t hear every day. Make use of the free resources, and if you need help with anything, we are there. We are approachable and reachable, so feel free.
That wraps it up with Chris Doyle of Why Intervention. Thanks again for your time.
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About Christopher Doyle
I’m the former Head Substance Abuse Counselor and Interventionist for the New York City Fire Department, where I dedicated myself to making a positive impact on the lives of my fellow firefighters. In 2008, I became a firefighter, and it didn’t take long for me to recognize the pressing need for assistance within our ranks when it came to substance use.
As you can imagine, drinking isn’t just acceptable for firefighters, it’s encouraged. I became the go-to guy to speak with proud, strong-willed, heels dug-in firefighters who didn’t believe they had a problem. I’ve heard every imaginable excuse and objection. Many were ambivalent about getting sober. Some were outright defiant and resistant. But despite these obstacles, I managed to help countless individuals see the severity of their addiction and guide them towards the path of recovery. Whether in my role within the FDNY or in my private work with families, I’ve had the privilege of assisting hundreds of people to get the help they needed to overcome their addiction.
Now retired from the New York City Fire Department, I provide family coaching and addiction intervention services. My extensive intervention training was under the guidance of Earl Hightower, a seasoned expert with over 40 years of experience in the field. My approach ensures that you receive unparalleled guidance and direction as you navigate your loved one’s journey from addiction to recovery.
