Sep 25, 2026 · 43 min · 11 segments
We explore myths and facts about addiction, all with the goal of letting go of shame and blame, and increasing the chances of recovery for the whole family…
Casey ArriagaHost
So I'm going to tell you up front, a lot of this is based in my first book, Realistic Hope.
But I've also gone through and just looked at some of these ideas and seen if there's anything I can update.
So we'll just be kind of freestyling a little bit, but also referencing some things out of that book.
Right off the bat, I want to say, in order for any family to get through all the stuff that goes around addiction, we need to talk about what it is and what it isn't.
So I've seen a lot of families, including mine, get really caught up in some of these things because...
It's easy, even if we know the facts, to still get caught up in the emotions around it.
It's really easy to take addiction personally, and it's understandable if we do, but it's also important to recognize where we can step back from that and not take it on as something that is ours to carry, that we have to think, okay, they're doing this because of me, or if they would just love me, they would stop.
And we've all been in that position, right, of saying to ourselves or to somebody else, why can't you just stop? We can get frustrated.
And how could somebody love other people and still hurt them and keep going this way? And this can lead to anger.
And I've seen my own family go through all of those things, sometimes in the same day.
I grew up around addiction with family members having trouble with compulsive behaviors.
And then as I grew up, I got into addiction myself, arguably for my entire life, really from the earliest days, kindergarten, you name it, but really jumping into it headfirst by the time I was 10 or so.
And just seeing it ramp up from there, it was very hard to look at by the time I was 30 and say, okay, that's me.
And in between the time where I started and the time I realized it, let alone got into recovery and tried to turn things around, there was a lot of conflict within my family, a lot of anger and misunderstanding.
And so that's one of the things that inspires me to do the work that I do, to try and help others get out of this, hopefully faster than we did.
So I'm going to tell you up front, a lot of this is based in my first book, Realistic Hope.
But I've also gone through and just looked at some of these ideas and seen if there's anything I can update.
So we'll just be kind of freestyling a little bit, but also referencing some things out of that book.
Right off the bat, I want to say, in order for any family to get through all the stuff that goes around addiction, we need to talk about what it is and what it isn't.
So I've seen a lot of families, including mine, get really caught up in some of these things because...
It's easy, even if we know the facts, to still get caught up in the emotions around it.
It's really easy to take addiction personally, and it's understandable if we do, but it's also important to recognize where we can step back from that and not take it on as something that is ours to carry, that we have to think, okay, they're doing this because of me, or if they would just love me, they would stop.
And we've all been in that position, right, of saying to ourselves or to somebody else, why can't you just stop? We can get frustrated.
And how could somebody love other people and still hurt them and keep going this way? And this can lead to anger.
And I've seen my own family go through all of those things, sometimes in the same day.
I grew up around addiction with family members having trouble with compulsive behaviors.
And then as I grew up, I got into addiction myself, arguably for my entire life, really from the earliest days, kindergarten, you name it, but really jumping into it headfirst by the time I was 10 or so.
And just seeing it ramp up from there, it was very hard to look at by the time I was 30 and say, okay, that's me.
And in between the time where I started and the time I realized it, let alone got into recovery and tried to turn things around, there was a lot of conflict within my family, a lot of anger and misunderstanding.
And so that's one of the things that inspires me to do the work that I do, to try and help others get out of this, hopefully faster than we did.
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