Pro Interventionist Tells How to Save Loved Ones Before its Too Late

Transcript

This transcript provides a detailed and insightful conversation between Anthony, a rehab coach, and Bobby Newman, an interventionist. They discuss various aspects of dealing with drug and alcohol abuse, focusing on the role of interventions and the dynamics within families and individuals struggling with addiction.

What you or another are doing, enabling drug or alcohol abuse? Well, we’re going to find out the two vital certainties a parent or friend must know and do to save their kids or a friend’s life from drug or alcohol abuse. The second thing we’re going to do, does loving and addict work while they’re using drugs or alcohol? We need to find out. My name’s Anthony Recovery Coach Professional, and I’m here with Bobby Newman, outstanding interventionist. I have actually something Bobby May not remember. I met your dad and he was giving me some tips about how he was doing interventions. So interventions run in the family, and you have a credible story about how when your dad got you into rehab, he ended up getting off the booze after I don’t know how many decades. So there’s just an incredible, beautiful family dynamic there, Bobby. Anyway, it’s great to see you again buddy. Yeah, so tell me some stuff. What’s happening?

Bobby Newman:
I’ve just been rocking and rolling here. I’ve moved all over the country. We obviously keep track of each other via social media, but I’m just still out there in the trenches trying to help as many people as I can, so

Anthony – Your Rehab Coach:
That’s beautiful. I was just curious about something, and I’m sure the audience audiences too. Why are you doing interventions while you could be spending time with your loving family or just going for big income business? I mean, why are you still doing interventions, man?

Bobby Newman:
Well, the biggest reason is because there’s a lot of people out there that could be doing interventions that are capable, but they’re not. I happen to be very good at it. I happen to have a knack for it. I’ve saved a lot of lives. I know many people would be dead now if it weren’t for me doing what I do. But the unfortunate part about it is there’s a lot of people out there that although they’re capable, they’re just not doing it.

Anthony – Your Rehab Coach:
Well, I tell you, that’s a big deal. There’s a couple of things that I know and I want to quote. This is not a Mark Twain quote, by the way. This is an anonymous quote, but it’ll ring true for anyone in the Midwest in the south and hopefully in Canada too, where I am from a, it ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure. That just ain’t so. And my gosh, parents and friends and even drug abuse and alcohol abusers, that is the exact mechanism that keeps them using or keeps them basically enabling their kids or their friends to continue using, but they don’t even know it because they think that’s the right thing to do. Have you seen that in parents or people you’re working with?

Bobby Newman:
It’s almost a constant. I mean, one of the first things I do when I go to work with a family is to find out who the enabler is, who’s contributing to the addiction. And the truth is, as an addict, once they become a full-blown addict rarely has the ability to survive on their own. They have to depend on someone to prop them up. And it kind of evolves over time to where the person gets kind of rolled into a trap of, well, I just want to help ’em. And they end up, oh, I’m just going to help ’em get a car. I’m going to help ’em get a job. I’m going to help ’em get an apartment. Then it’s like, oh, now they’re paying their bills and they stop doing all the things that they’re supposed to be doing, and you get wrapped up into this thing and it becomes, there’s actually some codependency is a big problem. And I actually just put out a blog on that on my website a couple of weeks ago because I had a client call me whose son had we got into rehab and the brother went and picked him up. Him and the brother were very close, and the guy went and picked him up after a week of being there and the guy went into alcoholic

Anthony – Your Rehab Coach:
And

Bobby Newman:
The coma for two years. So

Anthony – Your Rehab Coach:
Anyway, it is brutal for me. I’ve seen it at gives a mom a call who’s the enabler or the brother or the father, whoever the enabler is, and says, oh man, they’re not treating me right. There’s people doing drugs here. You got to get me out of here. And it’s like, and they do. And you go, oh, so let’s get right into this first big question. What are the two vital certainties a parent or friend must know and do that save their kids or friends’ life from drug or alcohol abuse? And these are the two vital certainties. They just got to, if they’re not doing this and knowing this, it ain’t going to work. So what are they, Bobby?

Bobby Newman:
One is it’s never too soon to do an intervention. It’s always too late. I go by. That’s one. And two is when you truly decide to do something, you’ve decided, and regardless of any pushback that you get from friends or family or even the addict themselves, you yourself have made up your mind. You’re going to do everything you can to help save this person’s life. And those are the two things that I stand by. I have many others, but those are the two main ones.

Anthony – Your Rehab Coach:
Cool. Let’s get into the first one. So never too soon to do an intervention. I mean, okay, so the kid, he’s 18, 19, and he’s in Canada, so he’s already been smoking pot since who knows when, but now he’s going for it and he’s already seeing the demons, the psychosis is already running in, but he just promises his parents, I’m just going to chill out. I’m going to do a little bit less, and I got this under control. Or the parent finds out maybe there’s something else going on, but they don’t want to infringe on the kids’ autonomy. What do you say? What do you do?

Bobby Newman:
I just tell him about myself. I did an intervention on my son when he was 14 years old and I didn’t even know he had a drug problem. I just knew he, yeah, he was 14. He was either late 14, early 15, he’s 32 now. But I just knew he was on the path and knowing my history as someone when I started, I said, I’m nipping this in the butt. He’s on the path. I had no evidence of him using drugs at all. He was just making a lot of bad decisions and fortunately we were able to get him squared away and he was able to finish high school. It turns out that he had tried drugs and alcohol four or five times, but there was no addiction problem. He was just four or five times. He had went out two or three times. He’d got drunk a couple times, he’d smoked weed, but there was no consistent use of substances.

Anthony – Your Rehab Coach:
This is what I’ve also seen, Bob, thanks for enlightening this because we both did drug prevention education in schools, and one of the things that the kids, this was uncomfortable, especially when I started. The kids were telling me they’re not doing drugs. And I said, well, is there someone you could help with this information? The information I just gave you that they’re now certain about? They’re like, I don’t know, 10, 12, 14 years old that yeah, my mom, my dad, my parents, my older brother, and I’m going, geez, we have to accept the reality that drugs and alcohol are very much a family institution. They’re in the family. What are we going to do? I mean, that’s where I come in as a rehab consultant or recovery consultant or coach, wherever a person’s at, we can get better. We can move it forward, we can move it up, and they don’t need to go to rehab if they’re willing to do something about it and see it get some help from someone else. But as soon as there’s this pushback and it’s like, oh, get out of my life.

In my opinion, the sooner you get in a professional interventionist the better. Because if you think it’s going to get better, you are sadly mistaken. I’ve probably coordinated a thousand interventions and you’re one of the genius interventionists that has helped me. What do I do? How do I do it? And really formulate that plan. So we’re going to move into the next piece of this, which is you said making a decision. The second certainty, you make a decision and you move forward no matter what. Now, what if it’s the wrong decision, Bobby, how do you know mean? How do you know it’s the right decision? Is there a process a person should go through before they make this decision that hell or high water, they’re not getting off the path on meaning going to be, they’re going that way to burn the ship’s phenomenon. So is there something the person should do or with themselves, but to get to that point of certainty? Because once they’re committed, it’s kind of like you’re saying, stake in the ground. That’s it, and we’re moving forward. That’s it. So any tips they should do to get to that place of certainty?

Bobby Newman:
Well, you may hear sometimes as a family member, oh, you’re overreacting. That’s not that bad. And the truth is you can never overreact. You can only underreact, let’s say you overreact. Let’s say that you overreact and you say, stop this kid who’s maybe tried weeded three times and you want to do this thing, you want to consult the person’s understanding. But unfortunately, if a person is like a full-blown addict, rationality does not exist with that person’s mindset because they have developed a thing called a drug personality or they become a different person. So because of the drugs, there’s a whole biological reason behind that. There’s a whole list of things that I’m not going to go into that caused that. But the truth is, is that you overreacted, you stop the person and they straighten up and they get, well, I didn’t like the way mom handled that.

Anthony – Your Rehab Coach:
Well, I got it. Maybe I overreacted, but okay, I got the result because there was no doubt in my mind about what I expected and I demanded and I wanted, when I went through rehab years ago, I made a decision. My friends do not do drugs and alcohol. My friends do not break the law. I don’t have friends that do those things. So I’m damn sure, excuse my French, but I’m damn sure not going to have a family member that’s in my immediate vicinity doing it either. So that’s the decision I made a long time ago and I’m sticking to it. So that’s when I decided you were firm in your decisions. And if you have doubts about, I’ve had to go and get coaching on dealing with my loved one.

Bobby Newman:
So I was like knowing that because your emotions get involved and you don’t think rationally when you’re involved emotional. So I had to get somebody that I could lean on to help guide me through it. And I do this for a living with other people. So

Anthony – Your Rehab Coach:
Yeah, that is

Bobby Newman:
Matter of factly. And if person, you want to consult the person’s understanding, you want to sit down and talk to them and say, look, but you’ve got to be very stern in your message. You want to be loving, but at the same time, you want to maintain your position like, this is who I am and this is what I stand for. And there is nothing else. And you don’t necessarily have to be mean about it, but you don’t reward negative bad behavior by continuing to do the same thing. You reward good things and you penalize bad things. If you reward good things or bad things, then you’re going to get more bad things.

Anthony – Your Rehab Coach:
Does that make sense? Oh yeah. And vice versa, if you reward good things, expect more good things. So be aware of what you’re rewarding is my strongest piece of advice to parents because when you reward it, you’ll get more of it. So if you want to reward their freedom and their laissez-faire attitude about doing whatever and not having any responsibility by covering their butt, by taking care of where they dropped the ball, you’re going to get more of that, right? That’s right. You’ll get more.

Bobby Newman:
Well, that actually, that’s a hundred percent correct. And I look around to people. I’ve been to a lot of conferences where leadership conferences and entrepreneur business conferences and all the successful people, they will tell you, you find a mentor, you find somebody who has done the things that you want to do and successfully and are good ethical people, and you emulate and you learn as much as you can from that person. So you find somebody who’s done it and you’re around that person. And the truth is anybody, particularly something of this nature with addiction, if you’re not seeking help for that, you’re sinking your own ship. Because even the Alabama football team, I don’t know if most of your public or your audience is in Canada or not, but there’s a football team in United States, Alabama, and it’s a university and they’re very successful and there’s a motivational coach for that team.

Bobby Newman:
And he was on one of the podcasts I was listening to one time and he said, and the guy interviewer for the podcast said, how many coaches do you have? He said, I have two coaches. He’s the motivational coach for the Alabama football team. He said, I have two coaches. I have one for this and I have one for that. And if I was going to try to do this, I’d go find somebody that knew how to do that. So it’s like you have to have someone that is going to help push you and keep you inbounds and help you to achieve your goals. I’ve had people help me with my son. I’ve had help. People help me with my marriage. A couple of years ago was not a couple years ago, but we needed some help. I mean, a marriage is a continually evolving piece of work.

Anthony – Your Rehab Coach:
You have to work at it. So we needed some help. We go and get some help, and we work through some stuff, and it’s going on 17 years now, and there’s no chance. I don’t think it’ll ever be, it’s not going to be 30 years or however long we live, but my point is always seek help. There’s no shame in it. And people sometimes with addiction, they want to, oh, I’m embarrassed. Well, you know what? You let that embarrassment in your feelings get in the way of you saving your son’s life. Then you have nobody to blame, but if something happens to ’em but yourself,

Bobby Newman:
Because the help is there. I think the message that you’ve made really clear, Bobby, is that there are experts who know their area so well and beyond their area so well that they can guide a very confused situation that seems like completely out of your, if I’m talking to a parent or a person who’s using drugs or alcohol, it’s completely out of your ballpark, man. It’s like there’s no way you could handle it. And that’s an every day of the life for me when talking about drinking or coming off drinking or dealing with what apparently look like very complex situations. I’ve been clean and sober, completely clean for 40 years. I’ve been completely sober and clean, completely straight out to nothing for over 17 years. I’ve learned a few things along the way, really, and I’ve been a professional in the field for 22 years. Bobby, how long have you been a pro in the rehab field?

Bobby Newman:
It’s been over. I went through rehab 23 years ago and immediately got involved, I would say probably 21 years or so. I’ve been helping families and drug through various means.

Anthony – Your Rehab Coach:
Yeah, so it’s 20 years. It’s like, guess what? We learned something in this time. We learned a law and we can help anybody. Believe it or not, anybody I really request and I recommend sooner is better. If you’re thinking about it, please call us now. Really, I’m laughing, but it’s like, please call us now. Don’t wait until that life intervenes with the hospital or the police or the drug dealer at your house or the gunshot wound or now is good, right? You’re thinking about it now is good. So Bobby, how can people get in touch with you? I will be adding links, so don’t worry. If you’re watching this and loving it, go into the info box and we’ll have links for Bobby, but tell the audience how they can find you and so on.

Bobby Newman:

Well, they can call our hotline at (866) 989-4499, or they can go to my website@newmaninterventions.com. That’s www.newmaninterventions.com. And that’s interventions with a “S” on the end. So newmaninterventions.com.

Anthony – Your Rehab Coach:

Beautiful. Okay, so you got the phone number and I will get that on the link. It’s been a great conversation, Bob. It is awesome to see old friends and we got to talk about new things, which is awesome because longer we talk, eventually the stories will come up. But what’s really interesting, I think right now are the new stories we’re making and from what we’re doing now is really more interesting. Although I have to admit, we had a very interesting, the projects we got involved in were awesome, but we’re not doing those now. We’re helping you guys. So thanks a bunch. I’m going to call it an interview. Thank you so much, Mr. Bobby Newman, pro Interventionist.

Bobby Newman:

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. It’s been great.