24: I Found Drugs in My House, What Should I Do

Steve Coughran: 0:00

52 million Americans okay, 18.4% of Americans over the age of 12 have deliberately misused prescription drugs at least once in their lifetime. This is the Addiction Recovery Podcast with Steven T Ginsburg, founder of Restore Detox Centers in sunny California. Enjoy experience Lets say Steven you walk into your kids' rooms. I know how much you love your kids. You have a son, and daughter. I love them so much too. They're like such great kids. But you walk in. Let's just say you walk into your daughter's room and you find a bag of weed in her dresser. What do you do?

Steven Ginsburg: 0:45

First thing I do for sure is pray. That is my number one, because I am going to completely have to be pulled out of the ceiling. The second thing I would do is go to my daughter. Go to our daughter and sit down with her and present it to her and ask her why it's there and what it's all about, and ask her to tell me what's going on. I would confront it directly from the get-go and ask her to explain herself to me, and then I would do my best that I could within the moment to really really listen.

Steve Coughran: 1:17

Okay, and now let's talk about what about from a spouse or a partner perspective. As a husband, you find drugs in your wise vanity. What do you do?

Steven Ginsburg: 1:31

I think the most important thing and I think these are great questions, really good topic to look at these things do happen. People discover things. People discover pills they didn't know were there. People discover marijuana, to your point before. People sometimes discover what they think is a water bottle and it's got vodka in it. These things all occur and I think the most important thing to do, if we're going to trace it back to whom we think it's from, is first of all, without being accusatory, ask them is it theirs? And then give them the opportunity to come clean with us. And then, when they do, I think it's important not to shame. I think it's important not to blame. I think it's important not to disparage. I think the imperative part here, Steve, is to find out what is going on, like what is hurting you, what is happening and how can I help. Can I help you?

Steve Coughran: 2:29

And when you're saying shame, what are you talking about? Like going into your kids room, be like what the heck is this?

Steven Ginsburg: 2:33

I mean completely. There's already something going on. There's some degree, there's some element of pain, there's something that's occurring that is causing them to need this substance to make it through their day or their days. What good is it gonna do if we're gonna throw gasoline on that fire when we need to nurture and love and never shoot our wounded. And sometimes our children, who are so precious to us all, are our wounded, or sometimes our spouse, who's so precious to us all, is our wounded, or sometimes it's a parent that is struggling. And we've got to really build people up and realize in this moment of need we're not gonna be able to help them bridge the gap by demeaning them or shaming them. There's enough shame they're carrying around that they're having to use or abuse. Whatever it is that we found.

Steve Coughran: 3:25

And I love that and I think that's so important not to shame somebody. I completely agree with you and I especially like how you talked about pain and I have tattoos. You know that. I have tattoos of my arm and on my back and so on and so forth. But when I see other people with tattoos, oftentimes I'll think to myself whether this is right, wrong or indifferent. I'll think to myself I wonder what their pain is, because oftentimes we get tattoos. Maybe we wanna get a tattoo because it's fun or out with our friends, and we always wanna get that giant sailor anchor on our bicep or whatever it may be.

Steve Coughran: 3:58

That's right on our back the tramp stamp, whatever. Maybe that's the case, but sometimes I think people they do these things to release, like to create this release because they're dealing with pain, and what's crazy is that I was looking at some stats here and about 17% of all people will self-harm themselves during their lifetime and about 45% of those that do self-harm they cut themselves as this method of self-injury. And so I think that's really fascinating, because we deal with pain as human beings. We all are inflicted with pain at some point in our lives, and I always joke.

Steve Coughran: 4:36

I have this trial and tribulation right now. Should I like ask for it to be removed? Or maybe I'm good with it because I don't know what the next one's gonna be? But we're constantly dealing with this pain, this emotional pain, physical pain, whatever. I mean, that's this world. We deal with pain, but sometimes people don't have the coping mechanisms to deal with that pain appropriately, or maybe they just don't have the people in their lives to be supportive and to be loving and therefore they have to find an outlet, but unfortunately they turn to drugs and alcohol or self-harm or some variation thereof. What are your thoughts on that? What have you seen, steven?

Steven Ginsburg: 5:10

It's just very much akin to what you're discussing. There's hurt and all sorts of hurting going on and rather than starting to face and process through the issues or face and start to process through the things they're carrying around that are longstanding resentments, they are trying to anesthetize what's bothering them and it's actually just making the issue magnify and scope and spectrum and the very element they're using to take that pain away. They're creating greater pain and greater disparity in their lives and in their walks and in their paths and in their families. It's just completely counterproductive, but unfortunately it's not counterintuitive. We're always looking to something to fix, something, to make it better and at the end of the day, no matter which way you turn, the whole thing is an inside job. It's about processing through the truth. It's about facing and understanding that the emotions and the feelings, that's not what's gonna kill any of us. It's any element of drug abuse or use or alcohol use or abuse that ultimately can be what kills us, not the feelings behind it that we're trying to evade.

Steve Coughran: 6:27

Yeah, I agree. I agree with you. So let's go back to this idea of finding drugs and alcohol in our homes, and this could be quite a shock, especially if you think your son isn't drinking and you find a bottle of whiskey hidden in their dresser drawer, whatever it may be. But here's a problem that I see that's way bigger than just finding a bag of weed or cocaine or a bottle of whiskey, whatever it may be. 52 million Americans okay, 18.4% of Americans over the age of 12 have deliberately misused prescription drugs at least once in their lifetime. You live in California, Stephen. That's where our store detox centers is. 39 million people live in California. Okay, they call it 40 million. All right, all the people in California have stooked out entire population. That's how many people and then some in 10 million more misuse prescription drugs at least one time in their lifetime, and that's a massive problem. And that stuff's right in our medicine cabinets or under our sink in the bathroom.

Steven Ginsburg: 7:37

And doctor prescribed very often and unfortunately all too often, completely misused, abused, and it leads to far greater issues. And the scariest part to all that, Steve, is eventually, when the doctors will no longer write the script or when they can't find the methods or the means to continue to gain the prescription in the right capacity they're supposed to have it, they will go and hit the street for pills, and that's where you can catch a pill of fentanyl on it and that is a death sentence. That's what's so frightening about prescription abuse and use.

Steve Coughran: 8:13

Yeah, and if you haven't listened to that podcast episode, we do one exclusively on fentanyl. It's called what the F? Make sure you check that out because that is scary stuff. I totally agree, absolutely, absolutely Okay. So going back to we find drugs and alcohol in our house. Let's say it's our kids. So we find drugs hardcore drugs that say, do you kick them out? What do you? Do you let that exist in the house, especially when you have other siblings and other kids in the house? What are your thoughts on that?

Steven Ginsburg: 8:43

Oh, it's a zero tolerance scenario. I mean the drugs that have to exit immediately and have to be done away with immediately. And then it has to become a very quick turn to assessing the situation, finding out what's going on, finding out the history. Strongly recommend at that point you run out to the drugstore and you buy a panel test those are readily available, any drugstore, anywhere, almost at any store anymore Walmart, Target, et cetera and find out if there's other things that are using that you haven't discovered yet. And you've got to get right into that mode where you've got to really get a good grasp of what's happening. Is this a one-off? Is this an anomaly? Is this an ongoing occurrence? What's driving the use? And then what is the solution gonna be? To eradicate that use, Because we can't enable that behavior, because enabling that behavior can end us up very quickly to where we're at the memorial service for a loved one.

Steve Coughran: 9:40

Yeah, and speaking about enabling, you know, when I grew up, I was three years old and I remember my mom telling me stories, not when I was three but later on in life about how us kids there's five of us at the time we were playing around in the house and my brother would find like a bag of cocaine in the couch between the cushions and it was from my dad and my mom finally went to him and said look, you know I'm tired of this, I'm done with these shenanigans. You choose drugs for your kids and unfortunately he chose the drugs. But I admire my mom for standing up and putting these boundaries in place and I'm so glad that she did, because if she didn't, she'd just be enabling him and guess what? He would have never got sober. He didn't even get sober when she kicked him out of the house and he went down this path. Eventually he died. He died of health related issues, from a life full of drug and alcohol abuse, and you know, he died alone and he was like living under a bridge in California and it's like what kind of life is that? And it's not because my mom kicked him out, it's because that was the path he was gonna choose regardless.

Steve Coughran: 10:45

If he lived in the home, he would probably destroy, you know, his kids' lives. I mean, who knows what if my brother got into like the bag and it caused, like him, to die, god forbid. So I think we have to be wise and protect our households, because our homes are these sanctuaries out in this world. That is like broken and fallen, but it's hard too, because it's not like you wanna like kick your 15 year old out of the house if you find drugs on them. There's gotta be some type of boundary there. I like how you mentioned going and getting this drug test and I know you're a huge advocate on that. You talk about that all the time, about drug testing your kids. But there's gotta be boundaries, whether it's with your kids or with your spouse, where you're like, hey look, this isn't coming into my safe zone and what I mean. What are your thoughts about that, steven? And like how do you, you know, still love people, but put boundaries up in place it's.

Steven Ginsburg: 11:36

It's a non negotiable and and you're just so spot-on. We're talking about life and death and we're talking about what hangs in the balance, and we're talking about the sanctity and the safety of our homes and other members of the household not being endangered. And Look, let's, let's be really transparent. And, and on top of our business here, it gets the point where there's a discovery made and it's a complete shocker and there's some sort of a surprising discovery and there's some sort of illicit, illegal narcotic involves. There's pretty good chance that there's a problem there that's gonna be uncovered. And it's got to be on us to do the hard work and be realistic and roll up our sleeves and jump into Transparency and the ask to be sharing good information, shared with us, and find out what's going on. And then from there we create boundaries that are airtight and it's very simple. It all stops or you have to go, or you go get help, or you have to go, or all of the above. Any and everything involves help. That pattern of destruction stop in its tracks.

Steve Coughran: 12:40

Yeah, I love how you said that and I love how you mentioned boundaries. As you're listening to this, navigate over to restore detox Centers. com. Go to the website. We have this e-book called how to love and set boundaries without enabling addiction. It's a great resource. You could get that for free on the website, so I highly encourage you to check that out. Steven, great talking with you about this important topic today.

Steven Ginsburg: 13:02

You, thank you so much. As usual, shining light on elements and pathways to the truth. We're doing our best to offer a hope in the solution to save lives a day at a time and a topic at a time. So thank you so much for your part, I.