 A little over two years ago, my best friend was dying of his drug addiction and alcoholism. And in this video, I'm going to teach you how I helped him get clean over two years ago. So stay tuned. What's up, everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul, where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And yes, today I'm going to tell you about my best friend in the world and how he got sober, how I helped him get sober. I wrote a book called Caught in the Crossfire, a how-to guide for anyone affected by a loved one's addiction. It's available on Amazon. You can check the link below. But in this video, I'm going to share our story about how I helped my best friend get clean. So five years ago, on June 23, 2012, I got clean. I was heavy into prescription, painkillers, alcohol, cocaine, and pretty much whatever else I can get my hands on, and I was about to die. So my mom helped me get clean. You can check my other video about my story. And when I was about two weeks sober, I was in California, and my best friend calls me from Las Vegas. He just got his first DUI, and he called me, and he's like, Chris, Chris, Chris, help me. I need to get sober. How do you do it? How do I do this? And to be honest, I was like, hey, man, I don't know. I don't even know how I'm staying sober right now. I had two weeks clean, and it was very hard for me to help him. And I talked to his parents and stuff. They didn't know what to do and all that kind of stuff, but it's difficult. And just real quick side note, this is one of the reasons why I tell newly recovering addicts, find somebody with more clean time to help you in these situations. Because if I would have tried helping them at that point, it would have just been the blind leading the blind. After staying clean for about a year and three months in California, I decided I was going to move back to Las Vegas, be a father to my son, get a job, get back in the real life and do this thing sober. And I had destroyed so many relationships with everybody in my life that the only couch I had to crash on was my buddies. And he was still in his addiction. And I had to do it. And whether or not this was a good decision, I couldn't tell you. For me, it was fine, but we often don't recommend that somebody else does this. I will say this right now. The point I was at in my recovery, rather than it tempt me, it actually kind of made me remember why I don't want to ever do that again. Just his whole apartment was constantly filled with beer cans and liquor bottles. And he was coming home drunk and all sorts of stuff. And I'm just like, yeah, I don't really want that. And I stayed with him for about a month or so before I finally got a job and moved out. And here was the hardest thing. And this is difficult for anybody, especially if you're in recovery. Like, we need to talk about how to help your friend who has a drug addiction without enabling them. Because enabling is one of the reasons why we stay sick for so long. And sometimes that enabling goes for so long that the person actually dies because nobody was there to get this person help. And a question I get all the time from my clients is, like, I can't just stop hanging out with my best friend. They're my best friend. I've known them since I was a kid. And I always tell them, like, the hell you can't. Like, after I moved out of my friend's apartment, like, I had to distance myself from him. And he knew why. You know, he was upset. I was upset, you know, and I wanted to go be with him. But, like, I had to put my own recovery first because the only time me and him ever really hung out, we were going to the bar. We live in Las Vegas and he is a bartender. So whenever we would go, even if we went to go get food, it was at a bar. So if I would have kept hanging around him, chances are I would have relapsed. And this carried on for the next couple years. I had to keep my distance away from my best friend. He would call me or he would text me, extremely drunk. And I could tell things were getting worse for him. And one of the things that we're not supposed to do is talk to somebody while they're intoxicated or while they're high. And I teach this to people, but it's something that I did with my best friend when he was drunk or high and he would call me like, I would sit on the phone with him for 30 or 45 minutes. And the reason we don't do this is because 99.9% of the time, the next day, he had no idea that we even talked. So I was getting emotionally drained by trying to help him while he was intoxicated and none of that was retained in his brain. So two years ago, back in 2015, things were getting worse. They were getting progressively worse. And I was afraid that my best friend was going to die. He was calling me more often. Bad things were happening. He had a newly born daughter. He has a fiance who is now his wife. And things were getting bad. He was calling me. He was basically talking like he was suicidal. He didn't want to live anymore. He didn't know how to do this. And all I could do was say, hey man, if you want help, let me know. And he was very reluctant to this. He was very, very reluctant to this help. And finally, he got a point, a point that a lot of us have to get to where he was backed into a corner. Things were getting progressively worse with his fiance and his family and all these things. So knowing that my best friend had a severe addiction, I knew he needed inpatient treatment. I knew this. See, my friend and I, we actually started drinking and using together. We were the kids in high school who never drank or used. So look at that. That's us right there. See how I used to look? Anyways, we started drinking and using together and we both kind of progressed together and it was hard. It was difficult. I had to trick him. I knew he needed residential inpatient treatment. But he was afraid to commit to that. He didn't want to commit to that. And before I even started working for the rehab that I work for now, I knew about the company because I had done some work for him in the past. And I said, look, dude, look, I know you don't want to go away for 30 days because his insurance would have only covered him in California. I said, how about you at least do outpatient treatment? Just do that. And he agreed to do that. He came with me. We met with the lady who was doing intake and we sat and talked. And he agreed to do it. Now, I 100% knew that he was going to fail. He was going to fail. I knew this was going to happen. And he did. The whole time he was in outpatient, which was for about a week, he was getting high and drunk the whole time. The first time they asked him for a drug test, boom, he took off. And I knew he was going to fail. But I also knew that I had to just have him dip a toe. I knew that he would have to fail at that to really understand that he needed to go a step further and go to inpatient treatment. So after he relapsed and left the outpatient facility, things got worse again. And he couldn't stop drinking and using. He was calling me more, his depression and suicidal thoughts. And here is some of the best advice I can give you for anybody watching this who has a friend who is struggling with addiction. I sat there and I thought about it because he always said, no matter when he called me, no matter how drunk he was, he said, just don't tell my parents. And his parents were like family to me. And he's my best friend, so I'm not going to tell his parents. But I sat there when I thought about it and I said, you know what? If this dude dies or if this dude kills himself, am I going to be able to live with the guilt that I never told his parents how bad he was actually getting? And when I sat and thought about that, I'm like, nope. Sorry, brother, you can hate me for the rest of your life, but I am not going to have a guilty conscience if you die. So I ended up calling his mom, which was one of the hardest things I had to do because his mom was like a mom to me. When my mom was a drunk for 20 years, his mom and his whole family was there for me. I went over there for Thanksgiving. And Christmas, all the holidays, like they took me in as one of their own. But I called his mom and she was extremely sad and upset. I got my mom on the phone because she helped me get sober and we talked. And then I started talking to my friend's fiancee and they were asking me, they were going to plan an intervention, but this is what they did. So they were going to have an intervention for my friend and like, next thing I knew, he was ready to go to treatment. So before I explained to you how he went to treatment, let me say this, like, I have people come to my treatment center all the time, like they lied to me, they lied to me on the phone when I was coming to treatment, like, a lot of times you have to get lied to. My mom lied to me. She said I was only going to go to sober living for 30 days. And then she said, oh no, I was lying to you. You're staying there for at least 90. And same thing happened to my friend. My friend's fiancee got together with his boss who was also in recovery and they made my friend believe that he was going to lose his job if he didn't go to treatment. And that never actually happened. But it helped him go to treatment. So like if you're watching this, like pro tip, lie to them, lie to them, do whatever you got to do, trick them into getting the help that they need. But anyways, my best friend calls me on, I believe it was a Saturday night when I had my son and he calls me up and he says, Chris, I'm ready to go to treatment. Can you drive me out to California tomorrow morning? And without even hesitating, I said yes. And I just want you to think about that for a second. As far as I pushed him away during his addiction, the second he asked for help, I was right there to do it for him. And it's important to realize that because a lot of us addicts, we sit in our addiction and we think that the whole world is against us. But the second we're ready to get help, people will do whatever it takes to help us. So I called my son's mom because I have my son on the weekends and I was like, hey, my buddy wants to go to treatment. I got to bring Dylan back tonight and I got to take my friend to treatment tomorrow morning. And without hesitating, she said yes because she knew how it changed my life too. So that very next morning at about four o'clock in the morning, my friend showed up in my house. We hopped in the car. We drove down to Murrieta, California. It was a somewhat awkward car drive. My friend's on his way to rehab and we're just making small talk. But yeah, we dropped him off there. And we dropped him off there. I just felt this sigh of relief. Whenever somebody goes to treatment, it is a huge sigh of relief for everybody involved because we know for a fact that now they're safe. Now they're in the hands of people who can help them if something happens. So I felt this sigh of relief. And as I drove back to Las Vegas, I was just smiling and singing. It was the best day of my life. And my friend managed to do 30 days and I can make another video about it. I'll make one with him maybe sometime. But I'm so proud of him. I'm so proud of everything he's done. Whenever any of us get sober, like all of us are just waiting. We're just waiting for that person to fail. And when he was leaving treatment, I was more nervous for him than ever. Like, is he going to do what they told him to do? Is he going to, you know, stay clean? Does he realize that he can't pick up a drink or a drug? Is he going to quit his job? Because as I mentioned, he is a bartender. And I often call him a unicorn. You might've realized I use a lot of unicorn references. But like, most people cannot be a bartender and stay sober after they leave treatment. But my friend, he is still a bartender. And his family, you know, they have him back. His parents have their son back. He has two sisters and a brother. They have their brother back. Best of all, his daughter has her father back. He is now married. That is no longer his fiance. They're married now. And I have my best friend back. Like, I decided to make this video because I went over there today and one of our friends from Florida and we all used to be roommates and party together and stuff. Like, we all got together today and I'm like, you know what? Like, this is amazing. Like, me and my best friend, we should both be dead right now. And we're not. We're both living in recovery. I'm like, I have my friend back. Like, we can talk. We go to the gym together. We do all sorts of stuff. And it's amazing. So what I'm getting at is, if you are somebody who is in recovery or even somebody thinking about getting sober, the best way that you can help your friend get sober is by simply staying sober yourself. I often think about how I could have never helped my friend if I was still getting loaded. Like, was he gonna turn to me and say, hey, can you take me to rehab? And I'm sitting there like snorting pills or drinking the whole way to California? No, absolutely not. Like, part of my motivation to stay clean was if my friend ever wants help, I need to be there for him. And that helped me stay clean. So always remember that. Like, some days you have to stay sober so you can help the next person. And that's exactly what I did. And it took three years of my sobriety until he decided to get clean and take that step. But if you have a friend or family member or anybody in your life who is a drug addict or an alcoholic and you don't know how to help them, please check out the link below. My book on Amazon is only $3, okay? It's a short book. In that book, I talk about not only different ways that you can have an intervention or ways that you're supposed to talk to an addict or alcoholic that can help them realize that they need to go get help. But I also talk a lot in this book about how you, how you can make sure that your mental and emotional health are okay while your friend or family member is in their addiction. So please check out my book, called on the Crossfire. It's right down in the link below. And if you have any questions, let me know, leave them down in the comments. Like, I'm always here to help. My email is on the about page. I'll put it in the description too. And like, get ahold of me. Also, check the info cards. Whenever I'm posting these info cards, check them. Because if your friend or family member does not have health insurance, I have a video up there about how they can still get treatment. And if they do have insurance or they want to pay for treatment, like, get ahold of me. I work for a national drug addiction and alcoholism recovery company. Like, we have facilities all over the country. Like, the two ways that I stay sober. The reason why I have this YouTube channel is because the two ways that I stay sober and live my amazing life that I live today is that I help people get sober and I help people stay sober. So I'm here to help you in any way that I can. So please feel free to get ahold of me. If you like this video, give it a thumbs up. If you know somebody who has a friend or family member who is addicted and you just happen to stumble across this video, please share it with them to give them some hope. But anyways, if you're new here and haven't yet, click that little round subscribe button right below because I'm always making videos about addiction, how to help people, as well as your own mental health or mental illness. I'm talking about depression and anxiety and all that stuff. So check out the thumbnails to the left of me. Check out the other videos. Thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.