Turning Personal Loss into Purpose with Darryl Rodgers

Ever grappled with the harsh reality of addiction within your family? Struggled to find the strength to aid your loved one on their long road to recovery? We engage in a heartfelt conversation with Family Recovery Coach, Darryl Rodgers who takes us on an emotional rollercoaster of his personal journey from confronting his son's addiction to becoming a beacon of hope for other families entangled in similar scenarios.

Having experienced the ravages of addiction firsthand, Darryl enlightens us on the initial struggles with drug abuse, the criticality of intervention, and the unyielding battle to maintain sobriety. He articulates the profound effects of addiction on marriage and the significance of setting high, yet achievable expectations for recovering individuals. Darryl’s  narrative underlines the importance of allowing our children to learn from their own mistakes and not live vicariously through them.

In an inspiring about-turn, Darryl reveals how he transformed his personal tragedy into a force for good. He shares how his faith served as a sanctuary in times of grief and loss, and how he used his painful experience to guide others, by becoming a Family Recovery Coach and a public speaker. In this journey, he discovered the power of forgiveness and the impact it can have on the process of healing and recovery. This episode is a testament to the human spirit's resilience and its capacity to turn adversity into a life mission. So, join us on this enlightening discussion about loss, addiction, purpose, and the liberating power of forgiveness with our insightful guest, Darryl Rodgers.

To contact Darryl, please visit:
The Family Recovery Coach

Intervention On Call
For $150 a professional interventionist will coach you on helping your loved one to get help

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

If you don't mind, I will begin at the beginning.

Speaker 2: 0:03

Life too short, man. You don't want to hold no grudge. Man, I thought maybe you're gonna let little bygones be bygones. Man, I couldn't believe that son of a bitch had the balls to say that You're traumatized. White ass Probably needs to look at your own stuff. I'm in a very great spot I have a therapist.

Speaker 3: 0:19

I've had a therapist for months. And I apologize to anybody who really does have ethics and cares about their patients and want them to succeed. If you have felt insulted or belittled by me, that was a good time I was doing.

Speaker 2: 0:35

bro, Very proud of this. I'm proud of this moment. ["the Party Wreckers Podcast"].

Speaker 1: 0:41

Welcome to the Party Wreckers Podcast, hosted by professional interventionists Matt Brown and Sam Davis. This is a podcast for families or individuals with loved ones who are struggling with addiction or alcoholism and are reluctant to get the help that they need. We hope to educate and entertain you while removing the fear from the conversation. Stay with us and we'll get you through it. Please welcome the Party Wreckers, Matt Brown and Sam Davis.

Speaker 3: 1:17

All right, here we go Off to another episode. Here we are. My name is Matt Brown. I'm here with my co-host, sam Davis. I am located in Oregon, on the West Coast. Sam is all the way across the country on the East Coast and Virginia, and we are two full-time addiction interventionists. We work in private practice. We also work on an online platform called Intervention on Call, and we work with families around the country, helping them to navigate that difficult time when you have a loved one who's not willing to get the help that they need, and so that's just kind of a quick introduction on us. Sam, how are you?

Speaker 2: 1:56

I'm good Matt, Good to be here today. I just got back from Colorado.

Speaker 3: 2:00

Yeah, you went out there to see a treatment program. Yeah, how'd that go.

Speaker 2: 2:03

Yeah, I went out there to see a program. A bunch of other interventionists were out there and we all decided we were gonna go fly fishing. And we're all in this river and just beauty all around. And I'm with the guide and I said look, you know you were just fishing here. You know it's your job, it's what you do, but just want you to know that every single one of us on this river right now are not supposed to be here, we're supposed to be dead. And just that I get to go off and do things like that, that I get to experience that 14 years ago, if you'd asked me, would I be in Colorado fly fishing? I'd been like nah, there's no way. I couldn't see it. There weren't enough pills to get me out there and get me back. You know I couldn't have put as many pills necessary in a check bag to get me out there and get me back, you know, but it was a great experience.

Speaker 3: 2:48

I think there's a maximum security federal penitentiary in Colorado. That might have been one of the only reasons we might have been in Colorado before we got sober.

Speaker 2: 2:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it was like gold metal fishing rivers. It was on the frying pan river and that's what they say is like gold metal fishing, and it really was.

Speaker 3: 3:04

Well, you sent me a picture of a pretty nice brookie that you caught.

Speaker 2: 3:07

Yeah, that's all I caught was brooks. I mean, I wasn't, you know, I don't mean that, you know. Well, it's all I caught Caught six of them. The one I sent you was the smallest. Oh, really, and you're being humble. Now Another guy with us, yeah, yeah, tyson Stark. He caught a rainbow, Nice, yeah, it was a great time. Great time. Glad to be back, though. Yeah, yeah, glad to have you. So tell me who we have today. Man, we've got a guy. And there's the thing about TikTok. Everybody thinks that TikTok is a bunch of young kids out doing dances and doing these trends. And you know, I have met some amazing people on TikTok, you know.

Speaker 2: 3:42

I'm on it a lot it's. I'm putting up content just about every day and it's really been a valuable tool in connecting me with people. And I have been honored to be connected with this guy, darrell, who has had some ups and downs in his life and around addiction with his son, and I hope we're going to get more into that. I don't want to spoil the show here by telling you all about it. I'd rather hear him do it, but he's based out of North Carolina and he operates and is known as the Family Recovery Coach and he has lived the experience and now is on the other side of it and I think it would be beneficial to everyone to hear his story and I'm honored to have him on here today. So get your tissues ready, because Darrell Rogers everyone.

Speaker 3: 4:34

Welcome, darrell. Welcome, thank you, thank you. Well, why don't you start out about by telling us just a little bit about yourself and how your journey and your path led you to do what you do?

Speaker 4: 4:49

First of all I want to say I'm really envious of Sam getting to go on that fly fishing trip in Colorado. I love to fly fish. I haven't been in a while but I've never been out west. I've done all my fly fishing in farm ponds from a float tube or a little bit of salt water fly fishing. So anyway, we'd like to do that sometime. Well, I'll have to get you out to Oregon, We've got plenty of that out there.

Speaker 4: 5:17

Yeah, oh man, yeah, I can imagine that would be great. So yeah, I'm a preacher's kid. My dad was a Southern Baptist preacher, grew up in the church small little churches in South Carolina and I would just say my parents were really. I had really good parents and only one sibling, my older brother, 18 years older. I really looked up to him a lot growing up almost like having another dad in some respects and he became a. He went when I was four years old. He was flying helicopters in Vietnam flying combat missions. He flew a Huey gunship and when he got back he started into. He eventually became a flight instructor in civilian life and I was a teenager right about that time and I was really interested in that and so I got started really early, right out of high school and into aviation. But he was a big influence on my life.

Speaker 4: 6:30

But you know my dad, he was pretty good from the pulpit but he was an even better counselor. He was really good at counseling people and he dealt with a lot of alcoholics over the years. But you know, I wasn't privy to all of that. He, you know he didn't talk about it a lot when he came home. I knew a little bit, but not a lot of people who had issues with drugs back then. You know it was mostly alcoholism, but you know he just. I guess what I'm getting at here, what I'm driving at here, is that I didn't have any experience with addiction in my family and very little outside of that, had not really seen addiction, and so when I started having issues with our oldest son, he just caught me completely off guard.

Speaker 2: 7:25

So let me, when you said you got into aviation early, you, as I remember, when we met in Raleigh you were speaking of you, used to fly Apache helicopters in your commercial airline, pilot Both of those very demanding occupations that require a lot of problem solving, a lot of assertiveness and a lot of quick decision making. You were in control of that stick you and you only right yeah.

Speaker 4: 7:51

Yeah, yeah, you know I flew for American Eagle, which was a commuter airline for a real short period of time. But yeah, I mean, you know there's pros and cons there, right, and there are a lot of things that I learned from flying that I've carried over into other things that I do, and you do have to be able to make quick decisions. Certainly, I learned a lot about that and I learned that one of the things I learned in simulator training was that usually when I diagnosed a problem, you know they would give you different types of emergency situations. It could be an engine failure, engine fire, whatever electrical system failure. I was never I've never been really that mechanically oriented, but I understand the basics of how systems work and you know you'd have to make a diagnosis really quick, like what's going on? You'd have different caution lights and things coming on your instrument panel. You know what's going on, what's failing here, and then you'd have to take the corrective action. What I found out was when I went with my gut and I was decisive, I got it right nine times out of 10. If I second guessed myself, I screwed it up nine times out of 10, right. So I learned that you know once you've been trained, once you have enough repetition, if you've been trained in something, to go with your gut, you know, on things like that and not to second guess yourself. But yeah, that was that I had a.

Speaker 4: 9:31

The military was a big influence on me too. I went through Army Flight School a little bit later on. I was in my late 20s when I went through Army Flight School. I was in as a medic before that, had gotten in when I was 17 and was a medic, combat medic Never saw any combat, just never got deployed, you know, but anyway it certainly the military had a big influence on my life.

Speaker 4: 10:06

Yeah, chase, you know he started having issues in probably middle of the 10th grade when he really started exhibiting and, as you know, a parent with my first teenager, my first thought was well, maybe this is just what teenage boys go through sometimes. You know, the symptoms were very similar and I really still don't know for sure exactly when he started. He told his mom of course he wouldn't have been necessarily truthful about this either, but he told his mother he started using, started experimenting. After he moved, I transferred him. I had him transferred to a military school. Middle of his junior year of high school I felt like the structured environment would be would be good for him. He struggled a little bit with ADHD, not a, not you know, on the on the spectrum he was towards the lower end of the spectrum but certainly could be impulsive at times, certainly could be hyperactive at times and just had some focus issues in the classroom.

Speaker 3: 11:15

Well, let's, let's back up for a second, darrell, if it's okay, like you said, you said that you started to see some changes in his sophomore year and for those families that might be listening, that are asking themselves okay, so what do I look for? If I'm, if I think I'm, starting to see some changes, what is it that I need to be looking for? What did you start to see?

Speaker 2: 11:33

Well, because I've got a kid that is going into 11th grade and I've been trying to pick out. I've got another one that's 21 and I've been trying to pick out alcoholism and addiction in them since they were four years old. You know, based on my history and that's, yeah, I'm, I'm interested.

Speaker 4: 11:51

Well, like I said, you know it's. It's hard to tell, you know, because the, the, the, their hormones are raging and and they're going through a lot of life changes, trying to figure life out anyway, and so it's a tumultuous time for people, you know, going through those teenage years. But he was, he. All of a sudden, his grades were dropping. He'd never been a stellar student, but he was slightly above average. And now he's, he's failing his grades.

Speaker 4: 12:17

The way he was dressing, just the way he was behaving, just pushing back a little bit against any kind of any kind of structure and getting in a little trouble with girls. You know, just you know. And then I caught him in lies. That was, that was a really big thing for me, because he, as a kid, he would not lie about anything. It didn't matter if he knew he was going to get in trouble, and he was. Even if he told the truth and he knew it would get him in trouble, he would tell you the truth every single time. And then it just blew me away.

Speaker 4: 12:55

The first time I caught him in a lie, and then it was just little things, but it began to add up over time. You know, more and more lies. I was catching him in, I think I you know. In hindsight I can look back now and say I think I pushed him in the wrong direction a little bit, because, instead of backing off and and allowing him to make some mistakes and allowing him to come to me, I was really overbearing, like hey, what are you doing? What's going on here? And I was really trying to control things too much.

Speaker 3: 13:24

And I think that you know, certainly you know, speaking for myself. I'm sure, sam, you have similar experiences where families that we work with want to give themselves this idea that there's some control to be had here. And and you know it's really. You know what the way I tell it to families is you only have the illusion of control. That's right. You know. The fact that it's happening under your roof, where you can see it and it's a little bit more visible, only gives you the illusion of control. And as you're now working with families, darrell and your coaching business, do you see a lot of the same patterns in families or do you feel like this is something that was just unique to your situation?

Speaker 4: 14:02

Yeah, I definitely see it a lot. This is probably the biggest issue that parents face is once they, you know, regardless of what the relationship was like before and sometimes there was too much of that controlling going on before but regardless of that, once they find out they have a child who is using drugs and may be addicted to drugs, they, the fear comes into play and that fear drives them to try to control the situation and it typically has the opposite effect. You know, you guys know who Jaco Wellink is. Sure do I was.

Speaker 4: 14:45

I listened to him a little bit off and on, not not regularly, but a little here and there, and I really like him especially. You know, both of us have military background and I was listening to him the other day and I was really surprised at some of the things that he said. I thought his children were a little bit younger. I looked up to see and his children are in their early to mid twenties now, at least a few of them and he was saying that you know he was. He was talking about the same thing that illusion of control.

Speaker 4: 15:18

You would just saying that, you know, nobody likes to be told what to do, even if you're, you know he was talking about. If you're driving, you said if I'm driving somewhere, my wife says, hey, you're following too close. Or he actually flipped it the other way around because his wife doesn't like to be told how to drive either. Nobody likes a backseat driver, you know, and people don't like to be told what to do. So you have to play the long game, as a way he says it. You know you have to be willing to influence through your, the way you live, through your actions, and not try to control. And sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't, you know, but you have to be willing to let go and that's that's the game you have to play, not not trying to control, because you get more of what you don't want when you try to control.

Speaker 3: 16:04

Yeah, and for those that don't know who Jocko Willink is, he's a. He's a former Navy SEAL. He now runs a leadership company with one of his SEAL teammates. He's written a few books, one of which I really love called Extreme Ownership. If you ever get a chance to read that fantastic, fantastic book, all right. So you're starting to see these, these patterns. Of course, the first move it sounds like you made at least the most significant move is moving him to military school. Now, obviously you've got a background in the military and I'm guessing that you found some benefit in, in, in that kind of discipline and and rigorous living, for lack of a better way of saying it. Just having not been in the military, just an observation. But what? What did you hope that would do for your son?

Speaker 4: 16:53

Well, I sort of thought that the you know, with his ADD diagnosis, I sort of thought that the structured environment and the discipline would be good for him and yeah, he did bring his grades up while he was there and graduated. You know, we we're a football family too. We love football and, and both my boys played high school and college football. Both were Eagle Scouts too, by the way, he um, you know he was kind of a small fish in a big pond at the school he was at and I knew he was better than what he was getting credit for and every parent thinks that right. But he really did shine at the military school. He really did have a good senior year of football. And you know, there's one story I love to tell. I'll give the short version of it today. I'll give the short version. But he broke his foot in the first quarter of the game, didn't tell anybody, didn't know it was broken, just knew it hurt really bad, played through the pain, played the whole game, played an outstanding game, played in defense, mostly in special teams, and came in at the end. We had one minute left to play. We're behind by a touchdown and he hadn't played one snap on offense all day long. They brought him in and lined him up at wide receiver and he caught a 60-yard pass. Put us in with a broken foot, no less. Beat everybody, caught a 60-yard pass, put us in position to be able to win the game, tie the game up and we ended up winning in triple overtime. He made first team, all conference, honorable Mentioned, all state and he did end up getting the opportunity to play at an NAIA school Different conference, not in NCAA, but NAIA school was kind of on a D2 level, but he did. You know, that's where the wheels really fell off. At college he began to hang out with people who were abusing drugs and alcohol and he started down that path. And I was really snooping on him at that point because I knew he was headed in a bad direction and all of my worst fears, you know, were being realized there. He was, you know, experimenting with other drugs. I knew he was experimenting with Molly. I don't know what else he experimented with while he was there, but I know he was using some Molly.

Speaker 4: 19:31

He dropped out early in the second semester of his freshman year, came back home, immediately, gravitated to a rough crowd here at home and you know I'm just totally freaking out Like what am I going to do with this kid and the long story, how it ended up here. But he, you know, eventually I decided I need to have an intervention for him. And through the intervention and by the way, during the intervention, during the intervention, and Sam's heard this story, he, the whole time he's shaking his head. No, no, no, I don't have a problem, I don't need to go, no, I'm not going to treatment. And then finally he agrees yeah, I'll go to treatment if it'll make you all happy, but you know I really don't need to go and I know what's going to happen. I'm going to get down there and they're going to drug test me, they're going to find out. I'm finding you're sending me back home and you better give me my car when I get back home.

Speaker 4: 20:23

You know, that was kind of his attitude. And so he goes back because I had a car that had been my parents had left for him, but my brother, having power of attorney, had signed it over to me. So the title was in my name and I had withheld it because I didn't think he was ready for a car. And so, anyway, he goes back to his room. In the intervention. This is like following back there, following back there, you know, and I come in and he's like writing something on his arm, you know, and what was that all about? And then he goes to the bathroom. I wasn't going to follow him into the bathroom. He goes to the bathroom, close the door, I hear the water turn on and I'm like, oh yeah, turn the door, knob this lock, and he had gone out in the bathroom window. So I'm sure that happens. I'm sure that's not the first story like that.

Speaker 3: 21:17

No, sometimes I have to park an uncle outside of the bedroom or the bathroom. I think that's going to happen. Yeah, so how old is he at this point? When the intervention happened?

Speaker 4: 21:25

19. 19. Okay.

Speaker 3: 21:28

So he's had one year of college.

Speaker 4: 21:29

Then he only had just a little over a semester.

Speaker 3: 21:35

Yeah, he dropped out. Yeah, and what kind of conversations happened between you and your wife and him and anybody else? What kind of conversations happened and maybe weren't so successful before you decided that an intervention might be needed? What kind of response were you getting from him?

Speaker 4: 21:51

Hmm, Well, I was still pushing pretty hard and he had. I threatened to take the car away from him and so that's when he moved out. Okay, Because I had let him, I had caved in and let him have the car and I threatened to take the car away. So he had moved out and we were. It was just a rocky road. I would just say that it was a rocky road. We were kind of up and down with our relationship at that point.

Speaker 3: 22:19

Just not a, so not a whole lot of productive conversation.

Speaker 4: 22:23

No, no, no. There was no productive conversation really. He was just continuing to spiral downward and losing weight pretty rapidly. Just before the intervention he had moved out and then was losing. I was keeping track of him on social media losing weight rapidly. He wasn't very big to begin with. Now he's as skinny as he can be and pale, very pale, glassy-eyed. In photos I was seeing with him and just I'd see him. You know pictures, him and a whole group of other kids hold up in a hotel room. Look like they're all just like laying all over the place. You know, like this is not good. What did you?

Speaker 2: 23:02

feel when, when you would see that.

Speaker 4: 23:04

Hmm.

Speaker 2: 23:06

When you were watching that on social media and you were far away from him, man, I went through your head. Yeah, what did you want to do?

Speaker 4: 23:13

What did I want to do?

Speaker 2: 23:15

Yeah, and how'd you feel and what did you want to do? And just walk us through that, if you can.

Speaker 4: 23:20

Yeah, oh sure man, I was scared to death. I wouldn't admit it at the time, but yeah, I was scared to death. I thought he was going to die. You know, didn't know much about drugs, but I just thought you know the people he's hanging out with, you know there's some criminal activity going on there. He's going to end up in jail or prison, or you know he's going to get killed somehow with all these drug dealers around, or you know something else bad is going to happen. He's going to overdose or something.

Speaker 4: 23:49

And I didn't know what he was using, but I just knew it wasn't good, it wasn't a good scene. And so you know, I'd describe it like this a lot of times. I'll say it's like you have butterflies in the pit of your stomach that never go away, never seem to completely go away. Yeah, and when you don't know where your kid is, but you know wherever they are is probably not good. You know what they're doing, but you know it's probably not good. And the phone rings late at night and the first thing that pops in your head is is that the police? And are they calling to tell me he's in jail, or are they calling to tell me he's dead. You know it is just. You get hyper focused on it and it's hard to it's difficult to go through your daily life and be productive and it just takes over your life. You're just consumed with you know, what am I going to do to save my child's life?

Speaker 3: 24:50

Well, let's talk about that for a second, because I think that's a lot of times things that families will neglect is to kind of check in and say, ok, how much power does this have over me and how is this affecting how I manage my life? What started to happen with you, both professionally and personally, during this time, if that's not too personal a question?

Speaker 4: 25:08

No, no, you know I was kind of hopping from job to job at the time and doing different things. I was self employed a lot, so working from home. When I was working and when my when our youngest son was born, my wife was doing really well financially and with her work, and and she said why don't you just come home, be a stay at home dad, so we don't have to put him in daycare? And so I had been a stay at home dad for a while too. So you know, I had a good bit of flexibility, unlike her. So it affected us in different ways, but certainly I think I don't know the best way to describe it other than to say I was consumed with trying to save his life.

Speaker 3: 26:08

Well, let me ask you wait to let me ask you a different question then did you find that you and your wife were always on the same page and kind of pulling in tandem with each other, or did you find that this also put a strain on your marriage?

Speaker 4: 26:18

I would definitely put a strain on our marriage. Yeah, I think there was more tension in our household than at any other time, more tension between us. You know, he would tend to go to his mother when he had something he needed, when he needed something. And you know, I could be that guy, I could be that military guy, I was the disciplinarian when they were growing up, but I was the guy that was worried, all that. I was the one who was worried, I was the one who was trying to control everything and she was just kind of like, well, you know he made those decisions, heck with him. You know she was. She was almost like taking that tough love approach and I was the one who was doing the majority of the enabling.

Speaker 2: 27:08

I would say at that point, enabling, you know, not setting healthy boundaries do you think that, with him becoming an Eagle Scout, with him going to military school, with your background, do you think, unknowingly, you may have established some expectations of what his future was going to hold, or you had sort of mapped out what his future should be or where you thought it should go?

Speaker 4: 27:33

yeah, I think so, absolutely yeah, I think I think. You know I can't say what he was thinking, but I think maybe he was kind of like well, dad set the bar too high for me. You know, dad, dad, dad's expecting me to do this, dad's expecting me to do that, and I can't live up to that, those expectations. You know. I would say that I kind of dragged him across the finish line to become an Eagle Scout. You know, he was a life scout and he did it all on his own. And you know, and this happens to a lot of kids that go through scouting programs, they get to life scout and then girls and cars and all that in the picture.

Speaker 3: 28:12

And that's what happened with me.

Speaker 4: 28:14

Yeah, I thought that life yeah, a lot of people are, you know, life scouts for life. So, yeah, I feel like I dragged him across the finish line, kicking his screaming, and I'll never forget he made a post somewhere on social media that I remember seeing. He was like, yeah, I got my Eagle thingy today. You know it's how much it meant to him. It did. It meant absolutely nothing to him. So you know, when you, when you do that, when you push that hard and you're doing it for yourself, you're not doing it for your kids. You know, and I can I can look in a mirror now and see that in hindsight and that's so. Hopefully there's some other parents out there listening to this that will, that will, heed my warning. You know, let your kids, let them fail, let them fall, let them fail often and early and let them experience the the consequences of that so they learn and so they can be their own person well, and his three dads talking here today.

Speaker 3: 29:11

I think you're hitting on a few things that we all look at in our kids and the families that we work with. You know you talk about weight, you talk about grades, you talk about athletic achievements, those kinds of things, and you know to to a teenage kid. You know those are kind of the benchmarks that we look at on, you know, on the normal spectrum of things, like, okay, things are going okay. But then when things start to slide, what I start to hear from families is, well, if they would just apply themselves in school more, if they just eat healthier, you know, if they would just, you know, get a job or, you know, get back into sports and somehow the activity will somehow create a remedy for for the problem. Why do you think that so many families focus on the achievement, part of it, or or these, you know these metrics, whether it's Eagle Scout or getting straight A's or you know whatever that is, what do you? Why do you think families focus so much on metrics?

Speaker 4: 30:05

I don't know. I think maybe part of it is. I think parents want for their kids things that they weren't able to achieve themselves, and I think we do tend to, whether we want to admit it or not. I think we do tend to live vicariously through our kids. Sometimes I would say that I was aware of that potential and tried to make sure that I didn't do that, but I still think I did it to to an extent, and you know I was. I would keep you know.

Speaker 4: 30:39

After the issues I ran into a chase. I would keep asking my younger son like no, you don't have to do this, you don't have to play football if you don't want to. You know, I want to play football, dad. Are you sure I'm not, you're not playing football just because, no, dad, I want to play football. You know, and I would, I would keep you know, reinforcing these things with him. You sure you're not doing this because I want you to know, dad, and so you know. I think it is important, though, that that, as parents, we have to really really check ourselves to make sure that we're not taking our kids in a direction that we think they need to go. You know, you want to be a good influence. You want to be a positive influence. You want to instill certain values into them when they're younger. But as they grow and they're going through those teenage years, we have to let them become the person that they were created to be.

Speaker 3: 31:35

We have to let them and it may not be that idea that we had of what we thought they would become- okay, sam, I wanted, I want to pick up, you know, post elopement out of the window over the bathroom there at the intervention. Do you have any, any questions about any, anything up to this point, anything you want? To follow up on now, okay, well, there, let's. Let's pick up. Then, where you know, you hear the water going in the bathroom, doors locked. He's gone out the window. What happens next?

Speaker 4: 32:10

so I had a good friend here that was part of the intervention that I'd known for years and the interventionist had tasked him with. You know, if anything happens and he bolts, you're supposed to go after him. So I come running back in the living room and I'm like he's gone. He went out the window and my friends like oh my god, he runs out the door and he starts running down the street. I'm like where you going? We don't even know where he went, you know.

Speaker 4: 32:34

And I got in the car with him and we drove all around looking for him, going to the places that we thought he would end up going. And while we were out looking, they got a call back here at home and and the word was, hey, he's just, he's coming back home, just drive on back home, he's, he's decided to come back home, he's going to treatment. So we come back and sure enough, he shows back up and he did go to treatment at that time. He was in treatment in South Florida, deerfield Beach, delray Beach I think Delray was where he went, first for 30 days and then to a halfway house. I think that he ended up at a halfway house in Deerfield.

Speaker 3: 33:17

We went down to visiting while he was down there, and he did, you see, any shift in his commitment to his recovery while he was there?

Speaker 4: 33:26

a little bit. Yeah, seemed like he was. He was moving in a better direction. You know you could still see some of the rebellious nature there.

Speaker 4: 33:33

But you know, when I say that, like we went, when we went down to visit, you know, he had like died his hair and had like a Mohawk or something. It was a crazier. So he was like he was saying, hey, dad, this is me and this is how I'm gonna be, and I don't care. And it wasn't him, you know, he would just say, and this is me and this is how I'm gonna be, and I don't care if you like it or not. And I just the whole time we were there, I completely ignored it, like I didn't even notice it. You know, it was the hardest thing to do, but I never said a word about that hairdo, you know, or any had an earring or something to you know, and going on and I'm just like, okay, I'm just not gonna say a word, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna completely ignore it and we're gonna go out and have a good time. And he had met a girl there in treatment, cute little red headed girl, really petite, and we went out on the beach with them, you know, and hung out for a while and then we we went down a lion country safari, up in a West Palm, took them on that, you know, and we just we spent some time down there with them and had a good time, but he, he did seem to be headed in a better direction and he sort of engineered his, his exit from the halfway house down there. He had bounced around to several different halfway houses I think some of it was him, obviously, and some of it may have been. Some of the houses weren't, you know, be managed real well, but he had landed in one that was pretty good and he met her, or he had met her in treatment and got her to come to that house and then she was gonna go back home and he decided it was time for him to leave. And they had these plans, you know, between the two of them, for they had these plans for when they got out of treatment.

Speaker 4: 35:26

And the guy that was running the halfway house called me one day and said Mr Rogers, you gotta come get Chase, said. He said some really terrible things to my wife, he was really mean and he said I'm kicking him out right now. He said he has no place to go. He's gonna be on the street tonight. Well, in the meantime, somehow Chase had called an older guy that he had known from treatment, that lived down there and had his own apartment and and I was able to connect with him and he said hey, just Come on down, get down here as quick as you can, chase can spend the night with me. Come on down here and pick him up, okay. So I get in my truck and I drive down to Florida. I get down there and pick him up, get him back home and honestly, he was doing a lot better when he got back here.

Speaker 4: 36:16

He got a job. He was just working at a pet store, but you know he's working, he's got a job and he's like working 30, 35 hours a week, something like that. And he made a deal with me, basically Says you know, dad, hey, I really want my car and he kept begging me for that car. I still wasn't sure it was a good idea, but I decided that, look, you get a job. I talked it over with my wife and I decided you get a job, you show me and you can keep your job. You go to IOP two nights a week. You know you can have the car. And he did all that, he met all those requirements. So I gave him the car. So you know, we were, you and I were getting along a lot better. I had learned to back off more and, you know, was not imposing on him as much and things were headed in a better direction. Were you doing anything?

Speaker 2: 37:13

for your own self care. What were you doing? Were you talking to professionals or were you just kind of winging it right now still?

Speaker 4: 37:19

I was just winging it, man. You know the interventionist when Chase went to treatment had mentioned to me. He said you know you should join Alinon, you should join, get in an Alinon group. And I said okay, yeah, I'll do that. And but I just didn't take the initiative to do it. And I remember he called me one time and said, hey, did you join an Alinon group? And I said no, I said but I will. And he's like okay. Then you know, like seat yourself. And you know I didn't know anything about Powell then either, but I just didn't think it was important. You know I didn't realize the importance of it. My whole attitude because I didn't know anything about addiction, my whole attitude is my son has a problem, I'm fine, my son has a problem, I'm sending my son to treatment, they're supposed to fix him and send him back. You know I didn't really think quite, I wasn't quite that simple minded, but it was that sort of mindset that I had, you know.

Speaker 3: 38:14

Well, hindsight's always 2020. And as you look back at the experience from the treatment center that you chose, from the sober livings and just kind of the dynamic and how, the structure of the experience overall, what would you have changed, if anything, you know, in some of the choices that you made in terms of the types of care he got post-treatment care, those kinds of things?

Speaker 4: 38:38

Well, I would have sent him to a longer term program for sure. I think it would have been better, even 12 month program you know why.

Speaker 3: 38:45

Why do you say that I mean, I'm only quite elite from 30 days to 12 months. So I mean there's a reason that you're thinking that way. I'm just curious, so that other families understand the logic behind that. Why do you think a longer term program would have benefited him?

Speaker 4: 38:58

Well, I think the brain needs more time. 30 days is not enough time for the brain to heal and get back to normal and start getting. You know you're just starting good with that. And then the other thing is that needs more time to develop those healthy coping mechanisms you know, to learn those skills and to kind of get out of that environment for a little while. You know, be away from that environment where number one family can't interfere as much, they can't be as much enabling and rescuing and all that. And he's got to learn to live life on his own terms that way. And so I think a longer term program is better for that.

Speaker 3: 39:38

Do you think and this is gonna sound like a judgmental question, I really don't mean it this way, but do you think that having him in a coed program or he got the distraction of, you know, getting a little Twitter pated while he was in treatment do you think that may have somehow inadvertently sabotaged the process for him?

Speaker 4: 39:57

I don't know that that necessarily sabotage the process, but I think it definitely that's probably the wrong word to use.

Speaker 3: 40:03

You're right.

Speaker 4: 40:04

Yeah, but it's okay. But I think it definitely. I think it would have definitely been better for him to be in a program that was not coed, where he did not have that potential for distraction. Look, one of the reasons I sent him to military school was to get him. You know, he was really being distracted by girls and I thought, you know, if we can eliminate that one distraction, maybe he can graduate from high school. And little did. I know. There was a boarding school for wealthy girls, or for girls from wealthy families, a mile down the road and he connected with a girl on Facebook and it was just like, oh my God, you know he got in so much trouble over that.

Speaker 3: 40:48

Anyway, Well, correct. So he's back at home, he's working, he's going to IOP. He earns the privilege of having the car back. What's next?

Speaker 4: 41:00

He's beginning to relapse and I didn't know what was going on. I sort of I suspect that he was relapsing, but I didn't. Like I said, no experience with addiction, so I can tell there's something's different, something he's changing. You know, his behavior is demeanor different. And he came to me one day and said, dad, you know, I'm headed in a bad direction again At least this is the way I remember him saying it. I'm headed in a bad direction, hanging out with a rough crowd, I don't know how. I know I need to get away from these people. I don't know how to do that except to move. And he told me I've taken a job, transferred to Florida, back to the area where I was in treatment. Here's when I'm planning to leave.

Speaker 4: 41:45

Well, my wife made him promise that he would come by and have a meal with us before leaving and he was headed back to Florida and the day came he was supposed to come by and eat with us and he didn't show up, and it was getting later in the afternoon and so we were just sitting around in a living room kind of hoping he would call or show up. We're trying to call and trying to text him, not getting any kind of response and I'm sitting around with my wife and our younger son, who was in the eighth grade at the time. We're all sitting around just watching a little TV, chatting a little bit, and I had a phone call from one of my friends and I didn't want to disturb my wife and my other son with my phone conversation with my friend. So I go outside it was May 29th 2014, really nice weather. So I'm standing out there in the front lawn and police crews are pulled up the curb in front of our house and saw the officer get out of the car, starting around the front end of his car and he's got a clipboard in his hand. I'm like, oh, he's coming to see me. Chase must be in some kind of trouble. So I told my friend hey, I got to go. Looks like Chase is in some kind of trouble. And I hang up and I go to beat the officer. I met him in our driveway and that's where he told me that there'd been a bad wreck out on I-40. And he said Chase had died at the scene. And man, right there, right there where we were standing I can't tell you how many times I would throw him passes. You know throwing the football, throw him just out of reach just to watch him. You know, uses athleticism to dive in catches and you know, I'm just I'm sort of reliving all of that.

Speaker 4: 43:30

You know, in the moment, as I'm standing there talking to this officer, and there was a little bit of confusion when he first arrived. He thought he was at a different house because there were several people on his list, because there were three in the car, and so now that just planted a seed in my mind that I must have misunderstood what he said. It wasn't Chase, it was one of the other kids, or. You know, he's not dead, he's in the hospital. And finally I look at him and I ask him he's dead? And he kind of dropped his head and shuffled his feet a little bit and he said, yes, sir. And he asked me, he said is there anyone inside? Do you like me to know? And I said, well, my wife and my other son are in there, but that's my job, let me do that. Man, I would have loved to have handed it off to him, you know, but I just felt like that was my responsibility as the dad and as the husband, you know. So he asked me if he could go in with me for support and I agreed to that. And so we go in through the front door of our home and I go in first and the officer comes in behind me split second later and I look immediately to my right and here's my wife, kim. Make eye contact, lerner. The officer comes in behind me and when he does, man, I can see expression on her face change because she knows whatever I'm about to say is not going to be good. Right, and I just had to come out and tell him there's been a bad wreck and Chase is dead and man.

Speaker 4: 44:59

We all cried for a long time and finally got settled down and began to ask him questions about what had happened, and he didn't really have a lot of answers. Right then we heard a rumor that there had been a going away. I'm pretty sure it's accurate. There had been a going away party the night before and Chase and all of his bunch of his buddies all consume alcohol and drugs cocktail of things at that party and they woke up late the next morning. They're feeling hungover.

Speaker 4: 45:27

So they decided hey, let's go to the park and smoke some weed. Well, there's a park just with them, walking distance of my home it's real close here and they did go there and they did all smoke marijuana together there. And then he let her get behind the wheel of his car. He got in the front passenger seat, another kid got in the back. They left that park. They made one quick stop grab a bite to eat.

Speaker 4: 45:50

Right out on I-40 headed eastbound, rush hour traffic Hell. He made it a couple of miles and she lost control in a curve running about 70. I think she drifted over on somebody and they blew the horn and startled her and she over controlled, oversteered and lost control, hit a tree. They were still traveling about 60 by the time they impacted. The tree hit on the driver's side rear door and then it rolled up on its side and when it did, the tree came right across where Chase was sitting on the opposite side of the car and he died at the scene.

Speaker 4: 46:28

Like I said, about almost an hour later I think it was about 50 minutes they got him out, got him to the hospital where they recovered over the next several weeks and then recovered enough that they could come home. Come back home and then seven months later, just a few weeks prior to it would have been her first core appearance. The girl that had been driving died after a fire broke out in her apartment. Fire chief said that based on their investigation, they believe that she poured gasoline all over the floor for apartments, stood in the middle of it and ignited it. There was two suicide notes were found, one online and one physical note Rough story?

Speaker 3: 47:12

huh, it is. It is, and you know you certainly talked to some degree about Chase on social media. This is the first time I'm hearing you know the story. You know in as much detail as you're sharing today and can't even begin to understand what that must have been like for you and your family. And you know so many of us have lost loved ones to addiction over the years. But to lose a child, I don't know that there's a parent that could hear this and not feel that sorrow and that empathy. I'm so sorry. Thank you. Yeah, I'm just trying to imagine how I would have reacted and I don't know that, and it's probably not your first move at this point. But how in the world did you end up coming to have a heart to now start coaching families? Because I don't know that I'm the kind of person that would have been able to shake off the anger and the resentment and all of that and then turn that corner to start saying you know what, okay, it's time to start helping others. How did you do that?

Speaker 4: 48:26

Hmm, that was a process, you know, and I can't take much credit for that. I've got to give credit to God for that. You know it's. I am a Christian and I'll say this for me that doesn't mean I'm a religious person. In fact, if somebody's I've had people introduce me before a couple of times over the years say this is my friend Darrell, he's very religious, I'm like, no, I'm not, I'm not religious. I'm like you don't get it. I have a relationship with God, and I do, and for me that is through his son, jesus. And you know, and I do read the Bible and I believe the Bible, I'm a Bible believer, but it's all, it's all relationship for me it's not. You know, I don't have a set of rules that I have to do exactly this way, you know, and rituals that I have to go through, nothing like that. But but I believe that that relationship is what gave me the strength and I have to credit my parents for that, you know, and still in that in me at an early age. But it gave me the strength to be able to cope with this and I'm not gonna say it still wasn't easy.

Speaker 4: 49:42

I had a lot of anger early on. You know, everybody goes through everybody grieves differently, and I would never diminish anyone else's grief. In other words, you know, I've known people who lost a parent or a sibling and were just as torn up as I was over losing my child. So, you know, a lot of people say, well, there's nothing worse than losing a child. Well, for me that was true and I think for a lot of people that's true, but maybe that's not true for everybody. I bet I will say that it was the most intense pain, emotional pain, I've ever felt.

Speaker 4: 50:20

And in somehow, you know, I just just I was like very, very angry when the, when the driver died. You know, this is terrible to say, terrible to say, and I, you know, I was trying to work on how can I forgive her and how can we come to some sort of, you know, meeting of the minds over this. And I just wasn't there yet when she decided to take her own life. And I think if we had gone through the court process, you know, maybe we would have gotten there at some point because I would have had more face-to-face interactions with her.

Speaker 4: 50:53

I wasn't seeing her in person, I never saw her in person and so, you know, it's easy to have a lot of anger in your heart towards someone when you, when you've not seen them in person and you've got not gotten to know them one-on-one and understand the battle that they're waging and she was waging a battle, there's no doubt about that. So but when she died, it sort of released me of any of that anger. I mean, I'm just being honest, just being brutally honest here. Just it just released me of that anger and I began seeking my own forgiveness, you know, in all of this, and asking God like you know what is in this, you know what it. Where's the good in this?

Speaker 3: 51:39

what was the answer to that? What? What? I mean, I think that's a probably of anything anyone could ever ask from the situation. That's the, that's the million-dollar question right there. And so what? What was the good in it for you?

Speaker 4: 51:52

I had to figure out a way to help other people. I had to figure out a way to to take this story out there and and have a positive impact on people. And so it started out with I wrote a book in 2015. I wrote a book about Chase's life and when I wrote that book, it was part of the healing process for me.

Speaker 4: 52:16

I didn't understand anything about addiction. I was very judgmental and I just blasted people in that book. Man, I mean, I let people have it and but I needed to do it from. You know, I had to get this stuff out and, for whatever reason, that book is resonated with a lot of people in summer recover. You know people that are in recovery that they're just like how honest I was, I guess, with the book and so anyway, but I went from that to I started speaking.

Speaker 4: 52:47

I got some invitations to speak and then they just started. I started getting more and more of those types of invitations and did a lot of a lot of public speaking, prevention, speaking but I was just. I just kept looking for how can I make a difference? Where can I make a difference? And I reached out to the interventionist who did Chase's intervention. He's the one that steered me towards pal pal. His parents abdicted loved ones peer support group for parents and that's where I started working with parents and started on a.

Speaker 4: 53:24

Just you know, I joined the local pal group that had just formed the lady that started it. She eventually left. She had asked me if I would be a co-facilitator and so I became a co-facilitator and she had been working part-time. I went back to work full-time and asked me if I could take over the group and I've been doing that ever since. So that's kind of the direction everything went. And then I decided to start coaching because it's good as pal is. I realized that some parents needed more than that. So but that's been part of the healing process for me. I get a lot out of the speaking when I speak, because I have people come up to me afterwards, sometimes as people who are battling addiction actively, sometimes as people who you have a sibling or leather loved one in addiction or someone who's in recovery, sometimes a parent. But I hear from people and I get a lot of love from people and that just kind of keeps me going, you know and I hope that's the case with people listening today.

Speaker 3: 54:31

I hope that they can get from this the the impact that I know that Sam and I are feeling today. So as we, as we have just a few more minutes here, sam, and I apologize, I know I've just you know me like I'll get questions and I just start peppering people with questions and so you know I'm I don't want to, I don't want to keep you from speaking here, sam, but here we are now nine years, or ten years, eight or nine years on the other side of this. He passed in 14, yeah, okay, so so yeah, we're, we're nine years on the other side of this. What does life look like today in in your home, your relationship with your younger son, your relationship with yourself? What? What does life look like today?

Speaker 4: 55:19

It's great. It really is, you know, and when I say that I mean it's not like, you know, it can always be better, right, but my relationship with my wife is good. She's very supportive, she's always been really supportive of all the things that I've done. And with my younger son the relationship is really good. I learned from my mistakes with Chase, and he was a lot more headstrong than Chase, you know, like he was going to do his own thing and he would push back against me, but I learned to back off and it totally flipped the script so that, you know, he would call me and say hey, Dad, what do you think about this, what do you think about that? And that's the way you want the relationship to be, you know, versus trying to control your child and, out of fear, you want it to go the other way around. So, yeah, it's really good.

Speaker 4: 56:14

And you know, I was just listening to Victor Frankel. You know I'm sure you'd know about him and it's all about. You know, bad things happen to all of us and it's all about taking the things that happen and finding the meaning in life. You know, what can you learn from this? And then how can you use that to help other people and I think, no matter what you're going through, if you can take that one little nugget, I think that will. That can help transform your life.

Speaker 2: 56:50

There's a lesson in everything. We're either going to come out of a bad experience more wounded, ready for the next thing to come along and kick us in the ass, or we're going to grow from a more prepared for the next thing that's going to come along and kick us in the ass.

Speaker 4: 57:03

That's right.

Speaker 2: 57:05

Now, Darrell, this has been a pleasure. Well, thank you so much.

Speaker 4: 57:08

It's an honor.

Speaker 2: 57:10

I mean it's I don't want to say pleasure, because it was a very, very raw, very, very honest, very tough, but it's an honor to be here sitting with you today and having you share that and it's. I'm so grateful for TikTok for putting us together.

Speaker 4: 57:31

I am too.

Speaker 3: 57:32

Well, and likewise I have enjoyed your content on on TikTok, and now to have this conversation and to have some, some additional context for why your message is the way that it is, it just makes me appreciate it all that much more. And for those families that are hearing you today and and want to reach out to you and maybe, you know, get some professional help from you, how can they do that?

Speaker 4: 57:54

They can go to my website and there are various ways to contact me through my website and that is thefamilyrecoverycoachcom. They can can reach me through my email, d Rogers, as D-R-O-D-G-E-R-S. 61 at hotmailcom. Follow me on TikTok. There's a lot of good content there and and I've connected some good people like Matt and Sam here. You guys, you guys set the bar high for me and I appreciate it. Really good content out there.

Speaker 3: 58:29

I'll put all your contact information in the show notes so people can go there afterwards and click some links. You're a courageous man.

Speaker 2: 58:38

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 58:39

You know to most most of us, I imagine would run the other direction and never want to say the word addiction again, let alone help another family go through this and and to confront this, to heal from it, to forgive yourself and others, that's nothing but courage, and I appreciate you for being here today.

Speaker 4: 59:03

Thank you so much. I appreciate you guys having me.

Speaker 1: 59:09

Thanks again for listening to the party records. If you liked what you heard, please leave us a rating and a review. This helps us get the word out to more people, to learn more or to ask us a question we can answer in a future episode. Please visit us at partyrecordscom and remember don't enable addiction ever. On behalf of the party records, matt Brown and Sam Davis. Let's talk again soon.