I’m excited to welcome Christopher Doyle today, an interventionist and the head substance abuse counselor for the New York City Fire Department.
Welcome, Christopher!
Watch my interview with Christopher here:
Or you can read it here:
Christopher, can you tell us about your family’s story and let us know what led you to the work that you’re doing right now?
Fortunately for me, I grew up with two parents who were in recovery from alcoholism and addiction already. My father relapsed when my mother was pregnant with me. He wound up getting sober when I was about five years old. I have good memories of my father, even though they were divorced, I had a very good relationship with both parents. They were sober. And so, they were positive influences and modeled recovery in that way. I, of course, later on, became an alcoholic myself.
I got sober pretty young. And then, after working with peers and helping people get sober, I became a firefighter. The fire department had counseling services that they provided for firefighters and first responders. An opportunity became available. I completed schooling to become a counselor and eventually became trained in intervention because I saw the need.
I’m curious about your role at the city fire department. So what has been your experience with the head substance abuse counselor? You mentioned that drinking isn’t just acceptable for firefighters; it’s encouraged.
Alcohol use is central to a lot of professions, as I have found out over the years, which is a surprise in a way and also not surprising. But I think when it comes to firefighting, most people share the perspective that firefighters are doing a lot of drinking.
And I think that is accurate. As far as alcoholism or addiction, I don’t think it’s any more prevalent amongst firefighters than any other segment of society There might be a bit of an increase, so if it’s 10% for everyone, it’s maybe 12 to 13% for firefighters. The difference, though is just the sheer number of people who are drinking.
So that’s where, for a person who has alcoholism, they’re surrounded by a culture where everyone else is drinking too. It becomes even that much more difficult to recognize or be willing to accept the possibility that maybe I have a problem because everyone’s doing it.
People with alcoholism tend to surround themselves with people who are drinking similarly so that they can shield themselves from having to look at themselves and say, maybe I have a problem,
So can you talk a little bit about intervention? For a family concerned about a child, what stage is an intervention helpful?
One thing that I’m quoted as saying is if you were dealing with cancer, would you want to deal with it at stage four or at stage one? And it’s the same concept with addiction.
The problem with addiction is that it’s not always easily identifiable. It’s more easily deniable might be the more appropriate way to look at it. It’s scary for a parent to consider that my son might have an addiction or my daughter might be an alcoholic, or that she’s addicted to some medication that was prescribed. To go down that pathway can be very scary.
However, it’s necessary to have addiction on the same list of possible considerations. Whenever you start to identify something is wrong, oftentimes in working with parents and clients in general, it’s as though there’s a willingness to admit that this is anxiety, depression, social anxiety, bipolar disorder, Or anything else, but not addiction.
Addiction needs to be on that list too. It needs to be a consideration because if it’s not, that’s what allows addiction to continue to progressively get worse. As a parent, if you can get over the fear of the possibility that this is an addiction, and identify it, you could start to see red flags earlier in the process. You can begin to address it at stage one addiction, rather than waiting for it to get so bad that family members become unreachable. The communication gets difficult, the longer the addiction is allowed to progress.
My mother, because of her background and being someone who was in recovery from addiction herself, started to spot that in me, and it wasn’t something that she was shying away from. It wasn’t something that she was afraid to admit was possible. And the advantage for her was that she knew that there was an answer.
There was a recovery plan and options. This is part of the reason why I started Why Intervention. Most families are misinformed and terrified of the possibility that if their child has an addiction, there’s nothing they can do. There’s no help, and because of the common misconceptions, they have to want it and be ready to hit bottom, and there’s nothing that anybody can do to help. Nothing can be further from the truth. That’s what the intervention process is all about.
What would you say to a parent who is concerned about their child? What advice do you have for parents who are just learning about this?
The obvious one is to be open to the possibility that addiction is potentially here. There seems to be this like, not my kid, right? Like no way, she’s a good girl. It gets breezed right past like it’s an impossibility. The truth is we are addicts almost from the very start. We get addicted when it’s still fun. It’s not like we drink and drug our way to this place called addiction.
It happens almost instantaneously. And what happens is that much like the firefighter experience, or in college, it’s welcomed and accepted. Everybody looks like they’re drunk, getting high, and partying. It’s just this normal experience.
85 to 90% of those kids that were partying start to grow up, start families, jobs, and have various successes. They grow out of that lifestyle.
That is the experience that happens for most. There’s this kind of gradual minimization of things that shouldn’t be minimized. As time goes on, you’re able to minimize more. You’re able to minimize greater and greater consequences that should be setting off alarm bells. Because you don’t know what you’re looking at, or you’re not even considering the possibility that this is a problem, that’s where all of a sudden ten years go by and you go, I don’t know how she got here. Well, there were signs all along if you would have known what to look for.
I’ve spoken in high schools. You have people that do wonderful work going into high schools and delivering a message about addiction and recovery, and what’s possible.
You can have one of the best speakers in the world, talking to freshmen. Let’s say you can guarantee that all 100 freshmen in the room have never taken a drink or a drug at that point. This person explains what happened to them, and all of them go, I don’t want that to happen to me. They’ve been educated.
Now they understand something about addiction from this person’s experience. Then let’s say the next year, all 100 of them have a drink for the first time. Ten of them are likely going to be an alcoholic. That’s just statistically a fact.
Are the other 90 more responsible because of that speaker’s message that they remembered, and these ten are irresponsible or immoral? They don’t remember that speaker’s message? They’re just throwing that speaker’s message out the window? They don’t care?
No, it’s just the alcohol. They’re addicted to it, right? That’s what happens. When you ask any of those speakers, “Do you think you could have prevented your alcoholism by listening to any of those speakers when you were in high school?” We always say no.
In our personal experience, you’re not stopping alcohol. The thing that you have would have a shot at somehow preventing is that first drink. It’s about having an open and honest conversation with your children because studies show that they do care about parent input. They want their parents to have those kinds of conversations with them. They appreciate that.
The honest, upfront talk will do far more than just saying to avoid it or don’t ever do that. You hope that they’re going to listen. At least as a parent, it may be something useful you want to be on record with your position about substance use. And hopefully, the position is you shouldn’t use substances in your teenage years because all of the studies show that if you are going to be an alcoholic, you have a 90 percent chance that alcoholism starts because you started drinking in your teens. Pushing it until you’re in your twenties will highly reduce your risk.
What is your process as an interventionist? How does it work?
What I do privately starts with family. I’m speaking to a parent, spouse, or in some cases, a child because their father or mother has an alcohol or drug issue.
The intervention process is getting some coaching on how to have an effective conversation. By effective, I mean, we have an outcome that we’re after we’ve identified that this is addiction. And for this person to stop their substance use, they’re going to need help. They’re not going to seek that help on their own.
They’re not seeing it. They don’t understand it, they deny it, or they don’t want help. They say they got this, or they’ve got it under control, and they can stop whenever they want to. All of those sorts of things, family members are well versed in. We recognize that if we don’t help him stop, he’s not going to stop.
That’s the very nature of addiction. The recognition that something really needs to be done here.
Again, it comes down to an effective conversation, which will get them the help they need, even though they don’t want it. The other side of getting the help is when it clicks, hopefully, the help and the resources are appropriate for them.
What you’re hoping for is the epiphany. I needed help all along. It’s not waiting for this person to hit bottom. It’s not waiting for them to be ready or want it because all of that is irrelevant. When we’re talking about a person in active addiction, they need help. The initial stopping is the challenge of addiction. Addiction means continuing to use despite negative consequences. Many negative consequences have happened to your loved one over and over again. And they haven’t stopped.
It’s not like the next one’s going to be the magic one. It’s less and less likely they will stop because the addiction is getting progressively worse. The intervention is an effective conversation.
That’s really it. If the person is deeply entrenched in their addiction and it’s severe, we might have to bring in mom, dad, siblings, and anybody who will have some power, influence, and leverage.
They’re coming in with the right spirit, with the intention to be helpful. It’s a loving and caring conversation. It’s a wonderful thing when it comes together, and it’s done well.
But what I want to leave parents with is that you can become aware far earlier than what I just described that’s required for stage four addiction.
My mother got me to go to my first meeting when I was 17 years old. She did that all by herself. It’s not like what my mom did was something special. When you’re armed with the facts, and you’re armed with that skill, you’re just ready and waiting for the moment.
That’s going to break through the denial at that moment. It’s not intuitive. It’s something that you do need some coaching around. But once you get the coaching, it’s so simple that if more people knew it, we’d be doing far better as a society in dealing with addiction. Things are going in the wrong direction over these last couple of years. I believe that the answer is to start with family.
Any final thoughts for family members? Where can people reach out to you?
People can find me at Why Intervention.com. I have resources and free tools there that anybody can download and use. The Why Intervention podcast is over 60 episodes of very helpful information that people have told me has been game-changing. It contributes to the mindset shift that I’m hoping to accomplish.
There are things that families can do to help. Unfortunately, the experience of most people is that everything they’ve tried hasn’t worked.
It becomes learned helplessness. It becomes a belief there’s nothing they can do. And then apathy sets in. And that’s where it gets sad to witness. Families feel stuck and think there is nothing t they can do. They get stuck in a mindset because addiction is baffling and tough to deal with.
But if you get some outside help, not for them, but for you as the family member, you can begin to shift the dynamics in your relationship. When you shift those dynamics, inevitably, they’re going to have to change what they’re doing too. It’s not going to be the same game. I want to convey that it is simple to begin to change.
Oftentimes I’ve had one conversation with someone, for a half hour, 45 minutes. And then the next thing you know, you’re getting a phone call from them that their husband’s going to treatment.
Suddenly, they see things from a different perspective. They changed something they’ve done every single time in response to something that happens with their husband or with their child.
And, and then suddenly you think you need to do something about this, like some miracle, but it’s available to everybody. You have to be willing to do the investigating yourself. The more educated you can get about this, the better.
Also, be sure to check out the podcast episode that Chris and I did on the Why Intervention Podcast:
Christopher Doyle is the host of the Why Intervention Podcast, a person in long-term recovery from alcoholism and addiction, and is also a New York City Firefighter. Given his background, Chris believes lives that lives can be saved need to be saved. Since becoming an interventionist and counselor, Chris has helped convince hundreds of fellow first responders and private clients to accept help for addiction through individual and family interventions.
