Effective Addiction Support with Bobby Newman:

The KingMexico Podcast hosts Bobby Newman, Substance Abuse Counselor, Prevention Specialist and Intervention Professional. Bobby discusses what sets his treatment program apart from other conventional programs out on the market, shares some success stories of some tough cases, and how an addict can hold themselves accountable and seek help. Bobby also shares some tips on being a parent and speaking with your children early on, and how to support someone suffering with addiction as their friend.

Bobby Newman is a Certified Substance Abuse Counselor, Prevention Specialist and Intervention Professional with a 90% success rate of getting people into treatment. He is a former addict, so knows all the whys and hows that prevent the addict from getting clean and sober.

Bobby has developed a “25 Tips for a Successful Intervention” guide and an online course consisting of a series of videos to How to Do An Intervention and get your loved one into treatment NOW.

Transcript

Speaker 1:
Welcome everybody to the King Mexico podcast. And today we have a very special guest. It’s not going to be all jokes today. It’s more of awareness… a little bit of life coaching, addiction. So, we’re going to take a serious note on this one and go ahead, introduce yourself, let everybody know who you are.

Bobby Newman:
Hi there. My name is Bobby Newman. I am a substance abuse counselor prevention specialist, as well as an intervention professional. And what I do is I help people with… struggling… family members with loved ones who are struggling with addiction, help them get their loved one into treatment, or I help people who are struggling, who are looking for help themselves, find the right treatment program based on their needs. So that’s who I am and overcame my own battles about 20 years ago… a little over 20 years ago. And now I have a purpose in helping other people.

Speaker 1:
Great. That’s how long have you been doing this for?

Bobby Newman:
Over 20… well, I went to rehab in August 2000 and I’ve been helping people since about January 2001, so just a little over 20 years.

Speaker 1:
Oh, nice.

Bobby Newman:
Yep.

Speaker 1:
So since you said you came over yours, did… I know you have firsthand experience. So you basically do have firsthand experience, meaning, you know what everybody’s going through and how to, I guess, help out, because I know everybody sometimes tries to help out and they don’t know what they’re going through and it’s pretty difficult when you’re, oh, I understand, I understand when you have no prior hands on experience.

Bobby Newman:
Right. Well, one of those things is that that was my problem years ago when I was looking for… needing help. I mean, I struggled with substance abuse forever and… or for a while, and then I would go and get help and I’d finally got, how do I stop this madness? How do I get out of this rut that I’m in? I hated my life and I would go to professionals and I didn’t feel like they had the reality. I didn’t feel that… not that they… sorry.

Speaker 1:
No, it’s alright.

Bobby Newman:
So not that they weren’t trying to help, that they weren’t well intentioned people. It’s just, for me, I didn’t feel that they really knew what was going on. I mean, without having… it doesn’t mean that you have to come from that background or have that previous experience to be a good counselor. Just means for me, it wasn’t real that the person could help me or understand what I was going through.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. So when you do… do you first help out and then life coach, or sometimes can you do both at the same time?

Bobby Newman:
It’s usually by the time the person gets to me, it’s right before they go over the cliff. And so the life coaching is not something that’s going to be doable for most folks. Now there are some… so usually they need to go into… get stabilized in a treatment program for a while. And then the life coaching and sober coaching would be after they come out of the program. They’ve been stabilized, they’ve kind of reset everything. And then we can now move forward with life because the hits just keep coming. I mean, the hits in a bad way is… even after you go to rehab, it’s not like when you get tempted, it’s not if you get tempted, it’s when you get tempted.

Bobby Newman:
I mean, it’s come… almost you’ve parted. You’ve separated yourself out from all the things in your life that’s causing your problems. And then as soon as you go right back into it, they just come crashing in and the temptations are there and you’ve got to be ready to handle those. And you’ve got to kind of keep yourself moving. And I always talk about outrunning… I mean, there’s so many different cliches or things that you can say that would help people identify with what I’m talking about, but you really have to be prepared for those situations that you’re going to be encountered with.

Speaker 1:
Alright. So also, is it the step program you offer or is it different from other programs out there?

Bobby Newman:
Well, I work with programs that are… the program that I went to was a completely holistic program, more of a life improvement program than it was anything else. Wasn’t a 12 step program. It was a handling the physical part of addiction first, handling the therapeutic objective, pulling a person out of the past, painful, traumatic experiences they’ve had, and then helping them work out for themselves how to move forward in life. A lot of people use the 12 step program. I’ve had friends that have had success with that. I think if that’s what it is for a person, great. Some people use cognitive behavioral therapy. Some people use a mixture of both. I happen to work with programs of different methodologies, modalities, but I focused on ones that are not pharmaceutical driven.

Bobby Newman:
In other words, where have to rely on antidepressant or anti-anxiety pills or things of that nature. Obviously if you have a health problem, diabetes, high blood pressure, things of that nature, you would need to take the medications appropriate for that. But I try to stay away from the heavily pharmaceutical approaches where… because you’re really… it’s going to be hard to modify behavior with chemicals. It just is. And there’s… I can go into that more and more, but, and again, I’m not a doctor, I don’t try to take the place of a doctor, but I do know a lot of physicians that I follow their advice in that regard.

Speaker 1:
Nice. So with this whole COVID, right, has it been a little bit more difficult for some people to reach out and kind of turn left when they’re going on the right path?

Bobby Newman:
It has been. I mean, the meetings have been all but shut down and they’re trying to do Zoom meetings and things like that. And matter of fact, I had a lot of other professionals in the intervention business that were doing interventions via Zoom or FaceTime or whatever, which, I’ve done things over on… I’ve done things over the phone and things like that out of necessity, but it’s really kind of, you got to step up your game and get creative with these guys that are trying to reach out to these folks just being virtually.

Bobby Newman:
And so it has made it more difficult and the accessibility to alcohol and drugs were… it was made easier because they literally started delivering the alcohol to your house. And then so the alcoholism and drug addiction has skyrocketed, meanwhile, the access to treatment has been limited, but a lot of people would have that, oh, I don’t want to go into a rehab center because of COVID. And the truth is the rehab center was probably the safest place to avoid COVID than there is because they’re the most sterilized. They’re going through the protocols and everything to avoid that happening. So there for a while, I was kind of not busy at all. I was… when COVID first hit… but then after things started, my… actually the traffic started picking up towards the last two thirds of the year, last year, so. It kind of ebbed and flowed, but it did have an impact for sure.

Speaker 1:
I’m sure a lot of people that were probably on the right path… and it’s I can’t take this. I can’t go outside. I have to put on a mask, because at the beginning we were all, what is really going on? We didn’t have that clear coat information. So it’s, what do you do? And then they’re comparing it to the Spanish flu. So, our psyche’s going to get up there where it’s going to start freaking us out. And we’re, what can we do? And if you’re already on a path going the right way, now you’re going to swingle back to your old habits to get that comfort.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah, that’s right.

Speaker 1:
And I think that’s right and I think that’s where a lot of misinformation got started and it went downhill from there, but hey, we’re going towards the right path right now. And what can you say? It’s starting to look brighter.

Bobby Newman:
Yes.

Speaker 1:
Not 100%, but we’re looking a little bit brighter. We’re able to go outside depending on the state you’re at, you get to have a little bit more fun than other states. You’re currently based in Florida, correct?

Bobby Newman:
No, I’m actually in… the person that reached out to you is based in Florida, but I’m actually based in Kansas City. And we were out there… we have a thing in Kansas City called First Friday and first Friday of the month, they have downtown in the arts district, they have open houses and things like that and a lot of people milling around downtown and went to some parks. And so, yes, it was very refreshing to see people back out on the streets and they’re not totally a opened up, but they’re opening up. And it was like there was a lot of people out around and, enjoying the day. It was beautiful weather, and I know for me flying, I flew to three different cities in the last 10 days, and the planes are definitely full. So there’s no social distancing. And I mean, they try this social distance getting on the plane, but those things are… the planes are packed full right now.

Speaker 1:
So yeah. So that’s my… I agree. It’s like alright, so you’re going to the social distance before you got on the plane and then all rules go off the window when you on the plane. Sound like, what’s going on, what’s going on. Or when you go out to eat, it’s, you got to wear a mask while you wait, you got to social distance. But then when you’re at the table, don’t worry about it. You can take it off. I’m, alright, go for it.

Bobby Newman:
I definitely… it’s confusing.

Speaker 1:
It is confusing. Hey, much credit to a lot of states like Florida, Texas, and other states that have been on their own.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah.

Speaker 1:
And they’re doing their thing. And as you can see, they’re hosting concerts, UFC fights, and it’s not going that bad over there, you know?

Bobby Newman:
Right.

Speaker 1:
Which, hey, I tip off my hat to them. If other states want to take it another way, hey, to each his own at the end of the day.

Bobby Newman:
Right, right, right. Exactly. Statistically speaking, they’re going doing things the right way. They’re also… for us in the treatment industry, we called it, the pandemic within the pandemic, because people… it was definitely… addiction skyrocketed during this time. And there was no help for those folks. And so it was the forgotten few. It was almost they didn’t… I mean, I can’t say that people didn’t necessarily care, but they didn’t have their attention on it. They were more worried about the COVID than they… and you’re, I mean, again, I wouldn’t want anybody to pass away from it. I just know that you have a 95% chance of surviving it, or maybe even more. Maybe even 97% chance of surviving it if you catch it. So it’s kind of like they were saying, the cure can’t be worse than the ill, so. Anyway, so the cure was actually causing problems in other areas. Anyway, enough about that.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. So what do you do on your free time?

Bobby Newman:
Me? Well, I don’t really have a lot of free time, but when I do, I like to go out and do… I’m always doing things with my family or, I like to go to the gym. I’m on this kick now to where, I’ve joined this fitness class and I’ve got some goals set there and then, we to go to the movies or, which is another thing… the movie theater, I was checking it out the other day to see if we can get back in there and go enjoy the movies. But we just like to hang out as a family. And I have a son that’s 29 years old that lives in Miami, but I have another son that’s 10 and he’s into football and sports. And so we do that. We just spend a lot of family time. That’s what we do.

Speaker 1:
That’s great. The outdoors… me on this side is, I’ve been going up, since I’m in New York, so I’ll go to the Catskills. So it’s a three hour drive, mountain space, not really much people out there, and everybody’s pretty down to earth and you are not going to see a house within miles. You’re probably going to have to drive to the mall, to the nearest convenience store. But at the end of the day, it’s quiet, it’s nice… fresh air, none of this bumper to bumper traffic, then you get on the train, then it’s so much going on in the city. So just going up, getting a relaxed… just letting go is amazing. I tell a lot of people start going out, leave the city, get your mind out of this whole chaos and stuff. Enjoy the outdoors.

Bobby Newman:
That’s one of the things that I’ve been fortunate enough to do is be able to go all over the country and see different places and places like that. Upstate New York is one of the most beautiful places in the country, if you ask me and the people, like you said… I’m from Southern Oklahoma originally. So, back in the day when I was from the hicks, the hills or the plains of Oklahoma, going to New York city was a big… oh my gosh, I’m going to go up there to the big city and east of the Mississippi.

Bobby Newman:
But I went up there in 2001 and I actually went up into the Catskills and I was really pleasantly surprised. It was really beautiful. And the people were really nice. So it was… and going out there and, we’d see… I was, man, this is awesome up here. So yeah. I mean, it could be very therapeutic just to go out and look around and meet people. I mean, even if it has to be at a distance, I mean, we all like to socialize. And so, but being up and there, I can imagine… it’s very beautiful, so.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. And the falls, because I never knew they had falls in New York until, I ended up there and they had the falls and they have little creeks and little rivers. I’m, oh wow. It’s so much more to see than just four walls and cement and concrete and grass growing out the concrete.

Bobby Newman:
Right, right, right.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. So what has… what’s the fact that you think that has been the most difficult to when you’re trying to help someone?

Bobby Newman:
Sorry about that.

Speaker 1:
No, that’s cool.

Bobby Newman:
Well, that’s a great question because getting people to confront this problem, and once they see a person start struggling and you’ve got all these things in your life that you use as a gauge to see how well a person’s doing. I never really, when I was younger, I’m, ah, what do you need a credit rating for? And I don’t care I have any points I have on my driver’s license or… all those are little indications of how a person’s doing in life, and how others… there’s the measurement of what other people could look at you and go, what kind of character is this person? And they’re just measuring tools. And so if you see those things in your life that you are… a person’s just not quite doing well, there’s going to be markers. There’s going to be indicators.

Bobby Newman:
It’s kind of, I always talk to people about the road signs. If you’re going down the road, and you see the orange signs on the side of the road and you happen to be, not be paying attention to those. And then you get up to the… whether either there’s construction going on or the road’s closed or something, and oh, now it’s a big surprise. Well, you’ve been warned all along, a long time before you got to that point that there was something wrong there, something was coming. And that’s the same way with a person’s behavior. There’s things that are just indicators that we need to pay attention to so we can stop the behavior sooner than later, because by the time you have to call in somebody like me, it’s usually been going on for 10 or 12 years. It’s quite significant. I mean, it’s huge. The things that are in… the mounting problems that have now happened.

Bobby Newman:
So… and even with my oldest son, I did an intervention on him, when he was 14 and he didn’t even… I didn’t even have any evidence of him using drugs. So I just knew he was going down on the wrong path and he was making everybody’s life miserable. And so… and himself was miserable. He would tell me, I’m not happy. I’m not happy with my family. I’m not happy with this.

Bobby Newman:
And so we were able to get him the help that he needed to be able to figure it out at an early age. And he was able to enjoy his high school versus having years of criminal behavior, and he went to college and now he lives in Miami, recently got married. He’s doing great, but had we not addressed that at the time, as sooner than later, it could have been years of just pain and misery where people have to… and sometimes these people that are struggling with abuse, they’re very dynamic people. They’re usually common denominators, are they’re very intelligent. They’re very energetic. They’re very big… what I call big beings. They’re going in the wrong direction at 100 miles an hour. So we’ve got to be strong enough to get them turned around and headed in the right direction at 100 miles an hour.

Bobby Newman:
You see a lot of these successful people out there that have had their own issues in the past, with substances or whatever. And then once they got turned around and they could focus all that energy in the right direction, they literally are unstoppable. And that’s where getting people to realize that, wait a minute, we got to turn this person around. It’s going to take some doing. It’s not going to be easy. We can’t sit around and just have a conversation with a lot of these people. We’ve got to put some things in place for ourselves and our family to be able to get this person turned around and put in the right direction. So getting people to be able to confront the problem is the hard part for me.

Speaker 1:
Do you think having little sit downs here and there with a child, right? Just to have a touch base, hey, how are you? How’s everything going? How you feeling? Even at a young age, would you advise that’s a good start point just to have that one on one, just to see how the child is feeling or an adult that you might know. And you’re hey, how’s everything. How are you feeling? How’s your mood? Just to, I guess, because what you were just speaking about, oh, maybe I should start having those little talks here and there just to see where the level is, before it goes too far.

Bobby Newman:
Well, yeah. One of the pieces of advice that I could give to parents is, not that anybody’s perfect at being a parent, you just try your best, you try to do your best. And I know I’m not perfect, but I know, I try to learn for my mistakes and things, but make it safe for the person to, even a child, to come and talk to you. If they come and talk to you and they’re trying to open up and even if they’ve done something wrong, if you, at that moment, punish them and admonish them or scold them and they’re trying to talk to you, then the likelihood they’re going to, if you do that, make it where they don’t feel safe, the likelihood they’re going to do that again is not good.

Bobby Newman:
So when they start doing things, making bad decisions, they’re going to start veering away from you to where, if you ask the person… it’s like with my little one, I always say, look, if I ask you and you tell me the truth, we’ll work it out. The likelihood you’re going to get in trouble is not that great. We just need to… we’ll just have to work it out. He said, I might get upset. I might get a little bit angry, but probably not going to, if you tell me the truth, we’ll just work… we’re just going to have to work it out.

Bobby Newman:
And we’ve tried to do that with him. And so I would just advise people to where they will want to talk to you. Make it where they want to talk to you and you can be a person for them to come and to, but it doesn’t mean you can give them a… if they are not making good decisions, you try to get them to see, to take responsibility and get them on the right path and make the right decision and put things in place that’s going to allow them to decide for themselves how to correct it themselves. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1:
Yeah. It does. So in other words, don’t really try to reward them, but hold them accountable, for their actions and then let them know the good and the bad. And just being honest is actually better than lying.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah. Yeah. If I say, son, did you break the jar? And he says, yeah, I’d say, alright, well let’s clean it up and how’d you break the jar. Okay, and he’ll tell you, and then you say, okay, well, let’s figure out how we… I mean, if it was an accident, you say, well, what did you do? And let’s see what we can do to fix where the jars… you don’t don’t continue to do that. Did you… if you did it on purpose, then that’s a different matter, but why’d you do… then we got to fix that problem. But I would just make it… because people… when the kids start making… if they start withholding things from you, it’s only going to push them further away.

Bobby Newman:
People don’t understand sometimes while they’re really close with their kids to a certain age, and then they become separate and then they’re not close. It’s when those kids start committing transgressions that they know that they shouldn’t do, then they feel they have to hide it from their parents and maybe their parents aren’t handling it right and maybe their parents are… they don’t want to tell them for fear of the punishment or something, you know? So they’re not in good communication with their kids.

Bobby Newman:
So, I try to talk to them. Even with my little one, I’ll sometimes get angry at him and I’ll have to go back in there later and try to sit down and talk to him and explain to him, you know? Yeah. Maybe I shouldn’t have got so angry, but here’s what’s going on. Here’s what we need to fix and get… and ask for his help for him to do that with us. So it puts him more kind in the driver’s seat of how things are going to go but he’s definitely… I don’t let him get away. I mean, I don’t cut him any slack if he doesn’t have any slack coming. Not I’ve given him a pass. I tell him sometimes look, man, I’m just not going to let that ever happen. So you get that out of your head. It’s not happening.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. That’s good. At the end of the day, we all have to set boundaries and limitations.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah, that’s right.

Speaker 1:
Even in relationships at the end of the day, even as adults, we all have, we have to set those boundaries right away and limitations, because if not, people tend to take advantage and then it’s too late, then what can you do? Then you’re, oh wow. I created a monster.

Bobby Newman:
Right. How’d I let this happen. What happened here?

Speaker 1:
Yeah. So just to go into a little bit more on your location, where you’re located and also you have a partner, correct?

Bobby Newman:
I do have.

Speaker 1:
Works with you… is Bobby as well.

Bobby Newman:
Huh?

Speaker 1:
The other person on the site, I saw his name is Bobby as well.

Bobby Newman:
No, no, no. Well, my on my website is Bobby Newman. I’m Bobby. And then I have a guy that I’m collaborating with to start a life coaching program.

Speaker 1:
Okay.

Bobby Newman:
Where it’s called Angel Life Coaching.

Speaker 1:
And that’s where I got the background from.

Bobby Newman:
Huh?

Speaker 1:
That’s what I got the background from.

Bobby Newman:
I see that. But yeah, Angel Life Coaching. We want to reach out to people and help. We try to get them on the right path and advise them. I mean, we’ll help them however we can. I mean, we’re here as a resource to help people. There is a fee for some of our services, but most people reach out. We spend a lot of time with them anyway, just because we want to help them and we don’t… the fees are… we’re not… we’re here to help people. So we have a lot of stuff that we can give away. Information that we can give away and information we can provide.

Bobby Newman:
But Barry is the guy who I partner with and we have another executive director that came on with our nonprofit, named James, who’s also very well versed at these type of issues and helping people improve their life after… having improved his own life. And James and I have known each other for 20 some odd years, Barry and I have known each other for probably 12 years. But we want to just reach out to people and provide them really common sense guides to help them overcome whatever issue that they’re having in their life to help them become better people, primarily focused around substance abuse, but anything else, I mean, there’s a lot of things that kind of fall into that. So.

Speaker 1:
Nice. Is there, besides the website, do you have a Instagram, a Facebook?

Bobby Newman:
Yeah, we have, well, we have two websites. My website is Newman interventions.com.

Speaker 1:
Okay.

Bobby Newman:
And then there’s AngelLifeCoaches.org, which is where our life coaches come from. And we have people that will, work with… whether it be myself or James or whomever that would… if somebody needed some direction. I’m working with the girl that, she’s not using drugs right now, she’s had a substance abuse problem, but she now wants to kind of move forward with her life and start setting goals and have a better relationship with her family and kind of regain some trust and stuff that. And I’ve got another kid I’m working with that’s… he’s had a few relapse issues, but he’s wanting to try to get his kids back. So, we got to define where they’re at right now and where they want to be in a year, where they want to be in five years, and we start putting plans together to try to work that out.

Speaker 1:
Sounds great. Sounds good. That’s a lot of help out there you guys are giving and I’m pretty sure a lot of people appreciate that.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah.

Speaker 1:
Then I’m pretty sure there’s one thing you don’t want to see is once you leave, then you come back. I’m pretty sure you do see that. But if you don’t see someone for a while that means that the job was done, correct?

Bobby Newman:
Yeah, yeah. Sometimes even families will tell me after an intervention, they say, well, thank you very much for your help. We hope we don’t have to talk to you anymore.

Speaker 1:
I know this is one profession where you’re like right. We don’t need… we hope we don’t see you anymore because you know what I mean? It’s like oh, we’re back.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
It’s funny, because normally, you want your customers to come back. This is a profession, alright, we don’t want to see you again.

Bobby Newman:
And I tell them, I hope you don’t have to call me, too. If you call me, it’s just to say, hey, how you doing?

Speaker 1:
Yeah. Everything’s going fine. Thank you. You know what I mean?

Bobby Newman:
Yeah.

Speaker 1:
Those are the calls that you’re expecting more often.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah. That’s what we want. We don’t want them… because people, I get on the phone with them, they’ll ask me how I’m doing. I’d say yeah, I’m doing okay. And I would ask you how you’re doing, but I know already. You wouldn’t be talking to me if things were going well, so I know, they suck.

Speaker 1:
So yeah. So with that, anything else you want to share with us?

Bobby Newman:
Well, the theme of this is that people get into this whole thing about, I used to smoke marijuana by the bales, and I used to, I got into, I was drinking alcohol, smoking weed, and then it got into methamphetamine and other things and other criminal activity. But I always just caution people to become more aware of the adverse effects of any chemical that you’re ingesting. You know? I mean, yeah, we could say weed’s not as bad as alcohol and probably it’s true. I mean, I can’t argue that point. I mean, alcohol kills half a million people a year, over for various reasons… traffic accidents, liver problems, over to, whatever, half million people a year, but it doesn’t mean that now marijuana is going to be good. Especially the potency of marijuana.

Bobby Newman:
I’m not telling people to do or don’t smoke it. I’m just telling you that really kind of educate yourself and don’t believe all the hype because I used to be on the pro advocate of smoking marijuana side. And I looked back at my life and for me, it just led me to other things. So I always look at that for me. I can’t say that’s going to happen to other people. I just… I do know the biophysical effects of pretty much all the talk… all the drugs out there and how they affect the brain and how they affect the body and what nutrients are burned up, how they contribute to depression, and how they make a person feel after the fact, and the statistics on how many people become addicted. But, for people that want to smoke, I would just say become better informed about any chemical that you’re choosing to ingest. Be better informed.

Speaker 1:
Especially now that more and more states are legalizing it. And soon seems it’s going to be federalized as well.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. It’s like alcohol, just educate yourself and know what you’re doing, know what you’re intaking into your body.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. That’s the main thing. That’s the main thing you have to… at the end of the day, you’re the consumer and you need to educate yourself on the company that’s producing these goods.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah. Yep. That’s right.

Speaker 1:
You’re not going to go and drink moonshine from across the street that they just made and be like oh, this should be good. And then next thing you know, you have a negative side effect, but you got it somewhere where it was not reliable.

Bobby Newman:
Right, right. Right. And the theme it is, is that, people are out to make money and we all want to believe that, oh, people wouldn’t do that. People… you look at the Purdue Pharma… I just read an article about them. There’s a documentary coming out soon on HBO about Purdue Pharma and all the politicians that greased their own pockets to make it possible for people like Purdue Pharma, which produced Oxycontin and made all the billions of dollars and killed over 400… I think, close to 500,000 people from that drug alone, not including those that went on to heroin and everything else, but people are out to make money. And so you have to look at who’s where… follow the money and see where it’s coming from before you just blindly take somebody’s word for it. So that’s about… that’s the only advice I can give you. I mean, not the only advice, but some advice, because I get it as an argument of what people want to argue with me about smoking weed. I’m just not willing to have that conversation. They got to make up their own mind.

Speaker 1:
Yeah, because there’s always going to be nonstop oh well, this and that and this, and you’re just going to be back and forth for who knows how long. But at the end of the day, it’s up to you.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah. That’s right.

Speaker 1:
The person who’s going to inhale it or smoke it or do whatever is yourself. You can’t ask for somebody’s advice. And then you want to hear the answer you want to hear just to justify-

Bobby Newman:
Your own behavior.

Speaker 1:
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Just to justify your behavior, but no, at the end of the day, you need to be responsible for your behavior. If you go get in the Lamborghini and you go 200 miles per hour, and there’s a wall in front of you and you don’t break, that’s your fault. You can’t blame the car.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah.

Speaker 1:
The car was doing its job.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That’s right.

Speaker 1:
And that’s a lot of right now that I have noticed in today’s age that a lot of people like pointing the finger elsewhere when they need to point the finger at themselves.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah. Yep.

Speaker 1:
And responsibility. A lot of people, oh, it’s not my fault. It’s the government’s fault. No, you have to look at yourself. It started with you. You just looking for a scape goat for your behavior and it’s not like that. And I think that’s where we’re going towards and that it’s real sad to see that a lot of people don’t want to take responsibility for their actions. A lot of folks are like that. Even adults are starting to act the same way. And it’s, what are you doing? You’re an adult. You know what you went through as a child and you were held responsible. Don’t bring that same attitude to your child. And now you’re creating a monster. It’s kind of the same effect. You’re raising a … you wasn’t a monster. You became a monster and now you’re raising a monster. So what you think is going to happen to that monster that you’re raising and they have a child now?

Bobby Newman:
That’s right. That’s very common. It’s so true, because I deal with addicts and their frame of mind is… and I mean, it’s common. It doesn’t make they’re bad people. It’s just, you got to switch their viewpoint and bring it into focus. But they, oh my dad abandoned me when I was three years old and I never got… I have abandonment issues and yet they themselves have their own kids and they’re abandoning their kids. And I’m, oh, so your solution to that is to go out and do drugs. And now abandon your own kids. This is where we… at some point we’ve got to rein this in. Yeah, that happened. Yes, it’s sucked. But it shouldn’t have happened, but where do we stop it? It’s got to stop with you and your decisions about how you deal with that.

Bobby Newman:
And so you don’t affect yourself and other people negatively. Another example of that is my… when I was 19 years old, I worked with a guy… I was an apprentice, a sheet metal worker. And I worked with a guy who was about to retire as a sheet metal journeyman, but he was a tail gunner in a bomber in WWII. And he got shot down and he was the only one that survived out of his plane. He jumps out of his plane, his shoot opens. He hits the ground. He hits the ground about the time the shoot opens, broke both his legs. He was behind enemy lines for three days. He got put into a prisoner of war camp and he would talk about everything all the way up until he was put in the camp. And then he would not talk about it.

Bobby Newman:
But he came home from the war. He was in the POW camp for three years in Nazi Germany. And you can imagine, the horror of that experience. And he comes out of there. He come home and he got married, had five kids and went to work and became a very religious guy and did pretty well. And now there’s a lot of people didn’t come out of it handling it that way. They had very horrific experiences and my grandpa being one of them. He was a tank driver in the Battle of the Bulge. And he came out and was a raging alcoholic and walked away from his family. My dad didn’t know his dad from the time he was 13 years old. And so, people can… have to take responsibility for how they’re going to deal with things.

Bobby Newman:
And they need to be able to seek the proper help to be able to put things behind them and move forward because you really start, like you said, you start weighing the, oh, it’s because of this. And oh, because of that. You’re assigning whatever that is, the power over your own ability to direct your own life. You know? And that was the one thing about myself is that I always thought my dad, well, my dad’s trying to control my life. Well, if I hadn’t been in control of my life, and that was just, I mean, that was just me not taking responsibility. But once I… the reason my dad was trying to control my life is because I was not controlling it. I was out of control. So he’s trying to do what he’s doing, or my other family members were involved too, but I, so yeah. You got to take responsibility for your situation, whatever it might be. Yeah. Those things could happen to people and you could be victimized, but to remain a victim is your decision, you know? So anyway, I could go on about that.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. But yeah, completely agree on all those factors right there. And it’s hard even when you know someone close to you, who’s… when it knocks on your door.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah.

Speaker 1:
A lot of people don’t understand that it is very difficult to get the person out.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
Very, very difficult. They don’t… it’s firsthand experience at the end of the day. You see it in a different light from my experience, I had it as well. I had somebody close. Addiction was, whoof, hard, hard. When I say… it got down to the point where they were on the street and it was, yo, you got to come back home. But at the end of the day, this person was, no, I can’t do this to you guys. I know what I’m going through, but I don’t want to affect you on your daily base.

Bobby Newman:
Right.

Speaker 1:
And they were, yo, when I’m ready, I’m going to come home.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah.

Speaker 1:
And we were always, yo, whenever you’re ready, just come home, because we’re here for you. You get in, take a shower, get a set of clothes and you’re going to start.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah.

Speaker 1:
But at the end of the day, you have to know when you’re ready. And that day happened. They came, knocked the door, took a shower. And then from there it was like all… everything just clicked and little by little. Yes, it was difficult. You would see the withdrawal and it’s sad, at the end of the day, but it’ yo, you got to toughen up as well, because you can’t give in. You have to let them know that you’re with them and you’re not going to let them fold.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
Because if you fold and you let them go back out there, then they just well you wasn’t any help because you told me all this and then I come back and you let me go back out.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah.

Speaker 1:
And then they start looking for other people to try to get the help.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
And you’re the closest person to them who could have the most help to them.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah. Right. Yes. I just did an intervention on a family up in California… is about two hour hours north of Los Angeles. And this girl was 25 years old, full blown heroin addict and… Spanish family. And I sat down with the family and I said, this is going to be a battle. This is not going to be something where… because this girl was a very… she kind of would tell people how things went. And it was she was the one addicted to drugs. And so I said, you guys have to be willing to take control of this. And I mean, I’m telling you, it was there for a couple hours. It was a knock down drag out.

Bobby Newman:
But the family was not willing to give up on her. They said, you know what? We’re going to, we’re going to, and they… she finally gave in and said, okay, I’ll go, and she’s now at the rehab center. And she’s wants to be with her family. She really wants to, but the drugs were just… had her, were controlling her. But the family’s like no, we’re going to fight through this. And they literally, once they got her in the car, her uncle put her in the car and locked the doors where she couldn’t open the door and jump out the car.

Bobby Newman:
And I said… I asked him, because me, she was mad at me because I’m the guy that came in there was directing the family. And so now I’m the bad guy, which happens sometimes. But I said, so I look at the uncle, I said, are you going to get her to the center? Because I’m going to be in front of you, but I need to know you’re not going to give in. And the uncle, he looked at me in the eye, and he said, she’s going, she’s going. I had to come off work to come and get her. She’s going, she’s going. I said, you’re my guy. Then you’re the guy I need.

Bobby Newman:
And he drove her up there but once she got there, she got through that initial withdrawal and the cravings and everything. And she’s been up there three or four days now. And the director called me and said, she really wants help. And she wants to be with her family. She loves her family. She wants to be a part of it. She wants to be happy. She doesn’t want to use drugs. And so… but you would’ve… if they hadn’t been willing to fight through that, she wouldn’t be where she’s at right now. She would still be out using.

Speaker 1:
So remember guys, support. Support is a big thing and a big factor and just letting them know you love them. And you’re there. The support is the most… is the key, the support. Once they see you have the support and they see you’re not going to fold and you’re there for them, that’s what sometimes they’re looking for as well is just to be shown that they’re actually cared for and loved for. And they have help. A lot of them just looking for love, help, or some type of, acknowledgement. Acknowledgement is a key one, too. They feel nobody cares about them. They’re not acknowledged at all. They’ve been kicked to the curb and stuff and that’s where it goes. And at the end of the day, just remember just stick by it.

Bobby Newman:
Yes it is. And that is a big thing. What you just said is acknowledging the person. Sometimes we look at somebody and they think, well, their problem is their problem. And to them, it’s a problem. And you may not think it’s a problem, but to them it’s a problem. And so when they give it to you, acknowledge it, say, okay, I got it. I understand. And let it… and that right there is therapeutic for the person. Acknowledgement. What you said is very true.

Speaker 1:
With that said, let’s just kick it off from there. And then anything else you want to say? Any events you got coming on?

Bobby Newman:
You can come to our… we have… we’re very excited to get our Angel Life Coaching, Sober Coaching program going. Would definitely want people to reach out to us, angellife coaches.org. And then my website, Newmaninterventions.com. We’ve got… we don’t have any particular events, because we’re just getting things developed. I’ve been in business doing interventions for a long time, but this Angel Life Coaches is a new thing for us and we’re really excited to get it going. So, just reach out to us and if you need help, you have questions, have a comment, anything, we’d definitely to hear from you for sure.

Speaker 1:
Don’t forget on their site they have a Contact Us and they’ll have a number, as well, provided and you can reach out and if you’re looking for help and you seize help, they’re there to help you guys.

Bobby Newman:
Yeah, that’s right. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. And with that said, thank you guys for listening and ya’ll take it easy.