Douglas T. on the Multifactorial Disease of Chemical Dependency

About This Speaker Tape

Douglas T. maps out the anatomy of chemical dependency as a multifactorial disease—part medical part psychiatric and part social. He dismantles the myth that children are too young to be affected recounting the heartbreaking stories of five-year-olds ashamed to bring friends home and the crushing guilt of a daughter praying to a Higher Power to just once have a 'real mother.' The core of the talk focuses on 'spousalic,' a term he coined for the disease of the partner.

He traces the spouse's descent from the 'solicitous caretaker' who maintains a conspiracy of silence to the 'arrogant controller,' and finally to a state of true grief akin to terminal illness. He warns the addict about the 'time lag,' noting that spouses often lag nine to twelve months behind in their own recovery creating a dangerous friction that can trigger relapse if the partner's illness isn't treated alongside the addict's.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Douglas T. defines chemical dependency as a multifactorial disease.
• 4:15 Discussion on the 'disease of spousalic' and the impact on partners.
• 8:30 Heartbreaking accounts of children's experiences with alcoholic parents.
• 12:45 The story of the 14-year-old girl and the realization that 'drunk men aren't funny'.
• 17:20 The narrative of Ed and Jane and the 'velvet box' relapse.
• 22:10 Stage One: The solicitous caretaker and the conspiracy of silence.
• 26:40 Stage Two: Isolation, poor hygiene, and the 'arrogant controller'.
• 31:15 Stage Three: True grief and the comparison to Kubler-Ross's stages of dying.
• 35:50 The 'time lag' warning: why the spouse's recovery speed matters.
• 39:10 Closing thoughts on weathering the storms and the 'rainbow of serene sobriety'.