Recovery in the time of COVID-19

Intro: Welcome to Addiction and the Family, “Episode 3: Recovery in the time of COVID-19.”

Casey Arrillaga: How has addiction affected your family?

Female Speaker: It robbed me of my father.

Female Speaker: Addiction's affected my family in absolutely every way.

Male Speaker: It has caused a lot of turmoil.

Female Speaker: It goes back to what I understand is at least three generations.

Female Speaker: It robbed my daughter of her mother. It robbed my mother of her daughter.

Female Speaker: Addiction has made our family quite challenging.

Male Speaker: Addiction has affected my family tremendously.

Male Speaker: It's affected my relationship with my sister where I wouldn't – I'd go for months without talking to her. It's a very difficult thing for everybody involved. It doesn't just affect the one individual. It's a disease that affects the whole family.

Male Speaker: Addiction is spread not only genetically through some of my relatives and I assume ancestors.

Female Speaker: It's generational.

Female Speaker: I think of him every day.

Casey Arrillaga: Welcome to Addiction in the Family, a podcast by and for family members of anyone with an addiction. My name is Casey Arrillaga, and I'm a social worker and addiction counselor at both Windmill Wellness Ranch and InMindOut Emotional Wellness Centers in Texas. I've led hundreds of family workshops, but I've also lived the experience of being family to addiction as both a child and adult. My wife, Kira, and I were in our addictions together for over a decade and now have been in recovery together for almost 20 years. Join us as we offer experience, strength, and realistic hope about how you and your family can find recovery together.

Casey Arrillaga: Welcome to Addiction and the Family. My name is Casey Arrillaga. I’m a licensed master social worker and addiction counselor at both Windmill Wellness Range and Inmindout Emotional Wellness Centers in Texas, and I’ve been facilitating family workshops since 2009, but just as importantly, I’m a family member like many of you. Addiction shows up throughout my family tree. I was raised with addiction. I embraced it for decades of my own life. I’m married to someone with addiction, and I’ve been in recovery since 1998.

It’s from all of these perspectives that I want to offer you experience, strength, and realistic hope. Join me as we explore addiction in the family and how to find recovery together. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about recovery in the time of COVID-19, something that was barely on our radar when we released the last episode. Since then, the entire country has gone on lockdown, and there’s practically nothing else on the news. Kira decided to produce this special episode talking about how to find and maintain recovery for both people with addiction and their family members. Without further ado, here she is.

Kira Arrillaga: Captain’s log, star date 42020.5. After six unsuccessful missions, we have finally procured a supply of toilet paper. The ships food stores are once again full, but the crew seems to be suffering from a combination of fear and boredom as a deadly virus infects the surrounding fleet. Our only recourse is to hold steady and wait for the science team to find a cure or a vaccine.

Casey Arrillaga: One of the things that Kira did in terms of this outbreak was to immediately start thinking in terms of talking to people in recovery, both people with addiction and their family members, about what’s worrying them and what’s working for them. Among those interviews, she and I sat down and talked for a bit. We’ll hear all of this and more after a quick break to get a message from one of our sponsors.

Welcome back. Let’s start in with a little bit of that interview that Kira and I did together.

Kira Arrillaga: I decided I wanted to do a supplemental podcast because we are going through the 2020 COVID-19 coronavirus global pandemic right now, and we’ve never seen anything like it, and when I say we, I mean you, me, everybody else in the entire world has never seen anything like this before. It’s stressful. It’s weird. It’s uncomfortable. It’s scary, and I wanted to talk about it and bring experience, strength, and hope to this situation as best I can in the only format I have to do that, so I’m here with Casey.

Casey Arrillaga: Hey, everybody.

Kira Arrillaga: I’m going to ask him a couple questions.

Casey Arrillaga: By all means.

Kira Arrillaga: Alright, number one. What is the hardest thing about this pandemic for you personally?

Casey Arrillaga: Fear.

Kira Arrillaga: Fear.

Casey Arrillaga: Fear is the biggest thing, yeah, and it runs in many directions. One direction, of course, is just personal in the sense of, like anybody, I’m thinking what does this mean for me? What’s it going to mean for my family? Are we going to be okay, our little family? I found I was worried for my daughter first and foremost, which is ironic because she almost never leaves the house. She’s got her own mental health stuff going on. I’ve noticed she’s been affected – like her lifestyle’s been affected almost the least of anyone I know, but she also does not have the world’s greatest immune system, and she tends to get things, so from the very first get go when I heard about that, I went into some fear for her. She’s a young adult. When we sat down and talked about it, frankly, she said she’s been worried for me because I leave the house, and she was saying what would my life be without my dad, so there’s some of that personal fear.

I had some financial fear. How’s this going to impact our finances and our career, and I discovered that like a lot of people that I’ve been talking to professionally and personally and especially people in recovery, a lot of the old childhood stuff is coming up. A lot of issues that I thought had been laid to rest or put to bed or were good enough, those guys have been coming back up, the fear of abandonment, the financial thing. If my family’s not doing well, then I must be blowing it. I didn’t cause the pandemic, but the thought still comes up. If things aren’t going well, then it’s me. Some of that’s my old childhood stuff rearing up its head that I’m going to lose the people I love or that I’m going to make some mistake that I can’t see coming, and I won’t realize that I’ve done it until it’s too late.

A lot of those things have come up, and then my fear for everybody else, that little kid part of me that – the little boy that just wanted everybody to be okay, and I can’t do it I couldn’t do it then. I can’t do it now, but I’m a social worker, and I’m an addiction counselor, and I’m a man in recovery. I’m not trying to overblow it but really dedicated my life to trying to help other people be okay in really difficult circumstances because that’s what we’re dealing with with addiction. We’re dealing with this disease that people get that can kill them, and the whole time they don’t think they even have it, and so here comes another disease out in the headlines here, and you could get this, and it could kill you, and you could walk around, and you don’t even have it, and you could be giving it to the people you love. All those things hit pretty hard, so that’s been the most difficult thing has been that sense that I need to make sure the people around me are okay, and I need to stay okay for the people around me. Then on a purely selfish level, I just want to be okay.

Kira Arrillaga: Yeah. Yeah, the fear does bring up those childhood issues for me as well with things that I kind of thought I had handled. I’m 53 years old, and I’ve done so much work on myself and yet these things will still come up. I went ahead and asked a few other people what their fears are in the midst of this pandemic. Here’s what they had to say.

Male Speaker: I think the hardest part for me personally is thinking about my family and worrying that they might get sick and the lack of feeling like there’s some kind of control because there is no control other than the precautions we can take, so it’s been pretty difficult.

Female Speaker: Just the uncertainty of it, and there’s no way of knowing how long it’s going to go on and when things are going to start changing again, so yeah, that’s challenging for me, the waiting part.

Female Speaker: As a person with number one, food addiction and number two with a DNA and genome that requires certain types of foods in order for me to continue to have brain and body health, the hardest thing for me has been the fear of not being able to get the types of food that I think I need as well as having the supplements and medicine, which brings up a second fear of not being able to continue to live a thriving and meaningful life if that happens.

Kira Arrillaga: One thing that’s changed for me, Casey and I used to play out – as musicians we had these jazz shows that we would play twice a month, and we don’t get to do that anymore. We’re not playing those shows anymore. The last one that we played, we had no idea it would be the last one that we were going to play, and the next one that was booked, our keyboardist called and said are you guys going to do it, and we had to say no.

In our first episode, we interviewed a guy named Steve, and he mentioned the three Cs of Al-Anon: I didn’t cause it, I can’t control it, and I can’t cure it. I think of that as something that can be used in a lot of areas including this pandemic. I didn’t cause the pandemic either. It wasn’t you. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t any of you people out there. I can’t control what is coming. I can’t cure it. People are working on that, but I personally am not working on a cure, so I can’t just work harder and make it happen. The only thing I can do is either contribute to it or not contribute to it.

What do you think is getting in the way of your serenity right now during the pandemic?

Female Speaker: That’s a huge thing. I’m not going to my regular meetings, and that obviously affected my recovery. I really do have a good close community of sober recovery friends, and not seeing their faces, personally has had an effect on my recovery, but being at work and the fact that I work in the recovery field has helped that aspect a lot. I do stay connected to my sponsor.

Male Speaker: Not being in meetings for me means I miss out on hearing and staying in tune with the message and the solution, and I’m definitely someone that needs those constant reminders. My inner pessimist will take over if not.

Female Speaker: I have to wear a hoodie. I have to wear sweatpants. I have to wear tennis shoes, gloves, and mask because my mom, she has hypothyroid, and my step-dad also used to have bone marrow cancer, so if they catch it then they’re most likely going to pass, and I don’t’ want that.

Female Speaker: Other than not being able to be face to face with people at meetings and hugging people, that’s a little challenging. Sometimes I will have thoughts of wanting to eat something I’m not supposed to or use one of my food substance of choice, but it’s pretty temporary, and so far at this point, it’s not been too much of an issue.

Male Speaker: I have the tools to use and the knowledge of how to stay sober long-term, so it hasn’t affected my recovery that much other than maybe digging a little deeper into my tools for my emotional sobriety, keeping the positive attitude despite what’s going on.

Kira Arrillaga: What are some things that you, Casey, have done or have seen other people do that seem to be more part of a solution?

Casey Arrillaga: Thank you for asking that. Probably the biggest thing that I’ve seen is I’ve really seen the recovery community rally around each other, around anybody who’s struggling because let’s face it, with this added level of anxiety – one of the fears I didn’t mention as much – I talked about wanting everyone to be okay, but I’m really worried for anyone out there in active addiction, in early recovery, people that might’ve been okay enough without all this but then with this happening, and on top of it for our listeners in the US, the US government is saying okay, everybody stay home. We’ll send money.

Kira Arrillaga: The best thing you could possibly say to an addict.

Casey Arrillaga: Then in one or more states, we’re going to close down liquor stores, and between all those things, there’s going to be some people that just go on a tear. There’s going to be some people that say alright, this is it. Load it up. There’s going to be people that overdose and die. There’s going to be some family members who don’t know where their loved one is or what’s happening, and I worry for the family members who have enough to worry about somebody in their family with addiction without all this other stuff piled on.

What I’ve seen that’s been the most helpful is I’ve seen lots of meetings popping up, switching over to phone meetings, switching over to – not endorsing any particular service, but out here it seems to be Zoom a lot, but also Skype, FaceTime, Google Meetup, whatever it is that’s out there, people are using it to find and spread recovery and gather people together that otherwise wouldn’t be able to gather, people that are in isolated communities who didn’t have any great meetings to go to can suddenly link into a meeting in another city in another part of the country and watching – one of the recovery fellowships that I attend had a meeting last night and previous to that last week, the first two times we’ve done it on video. I’ve seen people who attended that meeting months ago who have moved to other states, moved to other cities, but I think we had at least three major cities represented here in Texas and then somebody coming in from out of state who’d moved away, who I thought I might never see again and still may never see again in person, and yet we got to have a meeting together.

Just seeing our local Al-Anon group saying hey, here’s how you link into all of our Zoom and video meetings. I know Smart Recovery’s been doing video meetings all along. They’re like hey, we’re right over here. There’s already six or eight of them happening a day. There’s been meetings for Smart Family, which is the Smart Recovery program for family members that those resources are working overtime to make sure that recovery’s available to anybody that needs it in this time. Like I said, I think more people are going to need it now than ever.

Kira Arrillaga: Yeah, I’m with you on that one.

Casey Arrillaga: That’s probably the biggest one, and even some of that overlap. I have a morning phone meeting that I’ve been going to for years that I’m on almost every day, and the continuity of that going has been fantastic, so I found a lot of it for my recovery has been maintaining that continuity. I get up, I pray, I meditate, I read from a daily reader that I find helpful, I journal, I do a little bit of yoga or a light workout. Maintaining those routines in this time where everything else is changing and everything seems uncertain, that’s a lifeline for me, but I’ve also been getting out on social media, and I’ve probably been feeling more inspired.

I quite honestly joined Twitter, which by the way, the Twitter handle @addictionfamily, or you can look up Addiction and the Family on Twitter, and I’ve been tweeting for the first time in my life. Tweet tweet. I started that just a few weeks ago to help promote this podcast and get the word out there, and then I watched the conversation start to shift from just people saying I’ve got this much time sober or I’m worried for a family member. All of the sudden people are, of course, talking about the pandemic, but they’re talking about where are the online meetings, and people are giving out resources, things like that.

I found myself really noticing that when I’m posting online, noticing the tone, I’d like to think I would’ve been uplifting anyway but really going out of my way to say how can we look for the person who’s struggling and give them a hand up, give them a kind word because a lot of people are posting things like with all that’s going on, I really want to drink, or I really want to use. Can somebody please give me a reason not to? I’m watching that person get 10, 20, 30 replies within minutes, so I’m trying to be part of that, and also, sounds kind of funny, but I’ve been posting the occasional funny video, and I’m normally not like a cute cat video or a cute puppy and baby video, but –

Kira Arrillaga: I can attest to that. He’s not.

Casey Arrillaga: Yeah, that’s true. Recently I’ve found myself going like you know, maybe we just need to take our mind off that, and it reminds me of stories I’ve heard from the great depression when despite all the things going on, people would go to the movie theater, and they would watch Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, one of those people who could just lift your spirits in a time when the spirits were not feeling so lifty all by themselves, so trying to be part of that, and doing this right here with you.

Kira Arrillaga: Thanks, Casey.

Casey Arrillaga: Absolutely.

Kira Arrillaga: I asked some friends and coworkers what they’ve been doing to stay positive. Here’s what they had to say.

Female Speaker: Truly, I’ve had opportunity to be even more dedicated time each day for prayer and meditation as well as readings and OA and Al-Anon and then different spiritual reading. Those keep me grounded when I do that in the morning. The thing that I did today, I brought out my [19:05] to myself, and I’m keeping it where I can read it from now on.

Male Speaker: Just doing things I normally do like my prayer, meditation. Reaching out – definitely reaching out more to people in recovery.

Female Speaker: I just really trying to stay connected to my sober community.

Female Speaker: Definitely, I continue to do my morning prayer and meditation and daily readings of program literature, and I’m doing online virtual meetings twice a week, so that is helping me to continue with working my program and staying connected.

Female Speaker: For each and every meal, I consciously take time to pray in awe and gratitude for God’s power in my life that keeps me healthy with foods. [19:48], eating habits and also, healthy in my relationship with others.

Female Speaker: Helping others, doing service work. That’s’ been a great help.

Female Speaker: I attend phone meetings, and when I attend Zoom meetings and can’t get my Zoom to work because of our inadequate internet service, I read the acceptance prayer to help me manage expectations with a very – just it is an inadequate internet service, and it’s the best we can have at this time, so there we go. I’ve reached out more by phone instead of texting. I’ve adjusted my way of sponsorship, but I keep giving myself in sponsorship just doing it in different ways than face to face. I exercise four to five days a week, release anxiety as well as to keep me strong physically and mentally, and above all, I use the slogan one day at a time. I just have to do this today.

Kira Arrillaga: Captains log supplemental. We are now three weeks into the lockdown. The science team seems to be no closer to a cure for the virus, but there is hope to be found in kindness, in community, in the knowledge that we are indeed in this together.

Casey Arrillaga: After a quick break to hear from one of our sponsors, we’re going to check in with some people about where they’re finding hope and recovery during this time. Stay with us.

Welcome back. Kira went ahead and interviewed a number of people about where they find hope and strength for their recovery during this time Let’s hear what they have to say.

Kira Arrillaga: Where do you find hope?

Female Speaker : I find hope in talking to people. Just this morning I was at the grocery store standing in line to get in, and there was a woman behind me, and we were having the greatest conversation about all of the kindness that we’re seeing from people and all of the good things that are coming out of us being in this situation, and it was nice to be able to connect and hear somebody else saying yeah, I’m doing a lot of spiritual introspection at this time, taking the time to do that. That gives me hope that even though this is really challenging and really terrible for a lot of people, it’s also bringing out the best in a lot of people, and that gives me hope.

Male Speaker: I live in San Marcus, and there’s been some pretty good examples of community outreach from different business leaders and people that I know that are attached to them doing things like delivering groceries to people that need it even if that’s not what their business is. If they sell food, they’re taking part of their kitchen order and making boxes of groceries rather than doing menu items for sale, which I think is cool. Then people getting better here. What’s going on outside of here? You still see people come in here at a very low place and slowly get back to remembering who they were, what drives them, what motivates them, what they care about, and they leave with hope. You can see it on their face, in their mood, in their interactions with people, and so you get to witness from when they come in low to leaving with hope, and you’d have to be pretty hard-hearted to not be hopeful when you see that.

Female Speaker: It’s been good to spend time with my family. It feels like things have slowed down a little bit. It’s feeling like going back to the basics, what’s most important, and that’s my little family and home, so it’s been a very good thing.

Female Speaker: I find hope in my mom, and I find hope in God. That is my two main things because my mom is my rock, and God is who I talk to every night before I go to bed.

Female Speaker: I’ve been so delighted in how supportive my husband and our daughter who lives near in Austin have been in helping me to find foods that are not available online, and so I have really felt a whole new level of understanding and support from each of them, and that’s created a deeper intimacy and connection in our relationships, and so that’s a pretty big treasure to get from this.

Female Speaker: It’s been wonderful having teenagers quarantine because they actually have to hand out with my husband and I. We get to spend time with them. They’re outside more. They’re not as distracted as they would be by their friends because they can’t hang out with them, so it’s been a very good bonding time right now.

Female Speaker: I actually am in two or three groups on my Facebook, AA, Quarantined, 12-Step Quarantine recovery, and people are sharing their recovery dates, their locations, things like that, and so I’m actually learning about people all over the United States. That’s really cool. It’s really bringing people together that normally wouldn’t have been brought together, and people actually who are new into recovery and only have a couple months or a couple weeks or a couple days sober are reaching out and maybe they wouldn’t have normally reached out before, then the responses to those people are wow, yeah. People are commenting, liking to those people, and I think that’s pretty awesome and amazing. People in recovery are really supportive of each other, and you can see that on social media, and so I find a lot of hope in that.

Casey Arrillaga: Where I’m seeing hope is, again, where people are coming together, and I guess the hope that I’m carrying around that is that we’re going to hold onto that spirit, that that spirit of teamwork, of unity, of compassion, of being able to put a hand out to someone whether we vote the same way, whether we care about the same things, whether we listen to the same music – the polarization that’s happened in this country, which is, I believe, part of a natural breathing pattern that we do. We become more polarized. We become more unified. We become more polarized. We become more unified. At least speaking for America as a society – although it’s certainly not unique for us – we become more unified as a culture, as a society when we’re in crisis.

We have an opportunity to hold onto that, and typically, after the crisis ends, we hold onto some of that unity for a while. Sometimes for a full generation, we will hold onto that idea. That’s what I’m hoping for right now is that as bad as this is, it brings us together, and I feel like I’ve seen some of that. I’ve seen more friendliness. I’ve seen more compassion. I’ve seen more kindness. I’ve seen people able to set differences aside and talk, and the other place I find hope is that as so many meetings have started up online or moved online, planning on going to a recovery fellowship tonight where the – this is the first one of the meetings that we’re starting in the local area that wasn’t a physical meeting that’s starting up a virtual meeting. It's just starting a virtual meeting, and the guy who started it said we don’t know what’s going to happen after the pandemic dies down. My hope is that it keeps going and that we’re still gathering people from all over the place that can come together for recovery. I have a lot of hope for that.

Kira Arrillaga: We end this episode with an excerpt from an essay Casey wrote called maintaining recovery in quarantine. Humans thrive on connection and struggle without it. Connection has been recognized as one of the most important factors in recovery from addiction, including addiction to alcohol and other drugs, sex and love, gambling, spending, overeating, or anything else people turn to for escape. As many people shelter in place during this crisis, it’s easier than ever to isolate and to turn to addictive behaviors for temporary relief. For those who already suffer from addiction, this is a most dangerous impulse. For family members, the fear of a loved one’s addiction only adds to the burden of anxiety so many are facing right now Many people recovering from addictions rely on the connections they find through recovery fellowships. When we are told to avoid gathering together, how can these connections be maintained?

Casey Arrillaga: Luckily, we live in a connected time and place. Phone and internet recovery meetings and social media groups are thriving for 12-step groups: Smart Recovery, Celebrate Recovery or any of the other many recovery fellowships. Family members of people with addiction similarly relay on groups like Al-Anon, Celebrate Recovery, and Smart Recovery Family & Friends. Remote meetings for these exist as well. Many phone and internet meetings have been around for years while many others are springing up from scratch while folks in recovery struggle to maintain their sobriety and serenity in times that push in the other direction.

Additionally, most recovery fellowships publish literature in paper and online formats. From daily readers to in-depth how-to guides on recovery, there’s a deep catalogue of recovery reading to be done for those who suddenly find themselves with time on their hands. There are recovery speakers to be heard on YouTube and a great number of recovery podcasts, including this one. Connection with self is equally important now as always. This can be done through meditation, journaling, regular gratitude, yoga, and mindfulness.

Kira Arrillaga: Another great way to feel connected is to be of service to others. There are social media groups forming in many communities in which people in need post about the help they need, and those who can help support them. Service can also be as simple as posting positive and supportive messages on social media. Remember that social media and news algorithms are constantly refining what you are shown based on what you click and respond to, so if you’re constantly reading about the worst news, your feed will fill with the worst stories. If you click and respond to positive stories and recovery posts, you will start to see more of those in your timeline.

Casey Arrillaga: Preparing and eating a healthy meal is a reminder that you value yourself while giving yourself what your body needs to keep going in best health. Speaking of which, don’t neglect your mental health. If you need help, it’s more important than ever to reach out now. Facilities like Windmill Wellness Ranch offer support for people struggling with addiction, and many outpatient providers such as Inmindout Emotional Wellness Centers are offering counseling by video and phone to help support people with addiction and their families. Links to the online meetings for recovery fellowships for both addiction and for family members are in the notes for this episode on our webpage at addictionandthefamily.fireside.fm.

Kira Arrillaga: May you find experience, strength, and realistic hope wherever you are today. Whether you’re at home doing very little or working harder than you’d like, let’s all keep supporting one another. We are all in this together.

Casey Arrillaga: Thanks for being with us for another episode of Addiction and the Family. In this episode, we discussed some of the ins and outs of recovery in the time of the pandemic and heard the voices of some of you out there talking about how you are coping. As they say in many recovery meetings, take what you liked and leave the rest. Go out and explore the possibilities for recovery in your life, and give your loved ones the space and dignity to make their own choices. If you like this podcast, please subscribe. It means a lot to us. If you know anyone else who could use what we have to offer, please tell them about Addiction and the Family. If you have comments about this podcast, have a question you’d like answered on the show, or want to contribute your voice, or just want to say hi, you can write to us at addictionandthefamily@gmail.com. We’re also happy to be your friend on Facebook, and we can be found tweeting on Twitter.

Kira Arrillaga: Addiction and the Family is produced, written, and engineered by Kira and Casey Arrillaga, with music by Casey.