Modern Divorce - The Do-Over For A Better You

Surviving a Family Member's Opioid Addiction

June 02, 2022 Attorney Billie Tarascio Season 4 Episode 11
Modern Divorce - The Do-Over For A Better You
Surviving a Family Member's Opioid Addiction
Show Notes Transcript

What would you do if you discovered your partner had a secret drug addiction? Katie McHone-Jones of the Boy Problems Podcast shares her story on the Modern Divorce Podcast on her husband's addiction to heroin and how she supported him on his journey of recovery. 

Boy is a street name for heroin, which sounds benign but is anything but. In fact, all street drugs are likely to come laced with potentially fatal amounts of fentanyl. That could affect any age addict, and it may put teenagers, who are experimenting with street drugs, at high risk for an overdose, or worse.

Are you ready to talk to your kids about what this could mean for them if they experiment with drugs? Where do you start? And can you hold a family together even when someone is melting down?

For more information about Katie, check her recovery website and podcast here


Billie Tarascio: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Modern Divorce podcast. Today is going to be a really fantastic guest, very different, really. I'm just very interested to dive into this conversation. Um, and today we're going to be talking with Katie McKown Jones. 

Katie McHone-Jones: Katie. Welcome to. Hi, thanks for having me, 

Billie Tarascio: Katie, you are the host of a podcast called boy problems.

Correct. And one of the first things I asked [00:01:00] you and cause I was reading your bio and 

Katie McHone-Jones: you're a girl, mom. Yup. 

Billie Tarascio: Girl, mom. So I was trying to figure out like why. What does it mean boy problems. So can you, can you explain that? 

Katie McHone-Jones: Yeah. So our podcast is Boy Problems podcast. Um, very simply, um, boy is the street name for heroin.

So me along with my cohost, uh, all of our partners, we met in a rehab, um, and all of our partners have, uh, heroin opioid use disorder. 

Billie Tarascio: Got it. 

That is what we're talking about today is opioid addiction, heroin addiction. It's a heavy, heavy topic that I think we all avoid, but we should be talking about it a lot more, a lot more, I think.

And you probably know better than I do, but I think more teens have died of. Opioids than Corona virus and it's not [00:02:00] even close. Is that right? 

Katie McHone-Jones: Yeah. I, I don't know the facts on that, but I do know, unfortunately right now, um, fentanyl is just there, there is no heroin. There is like, if you're buying an Oxycontin pill, you're not buying an Oxycontin pill, it's a fentanyl.

Like, you don't even know like what you're getting anymore. And so, um, for the teens who might be experimenting with pills, like you can't even trust. Unless you're stealing them from your parent who gets prescribed them. Like you can't even trust what you're getting on the street. It's just, it's really, really awful.

Unfortunately. 

Billie Tarascio: So you and your co-host and both of your spouses. All met in rehab. 

Katie McHone-Jones: Yeah. So our guys went to rehab for at the same time, coincidentally, and then there was a family support group just in the room next door. And I was, you know, there's so much shame and stigma that comes along with this disease.

And so, you know, I could be private in a rehab where I was safe and I could tell my story. Like they were [00:03:00] there and I was like, Hey, and I'm like outgoing. So I'm like, Hey, you want to be my friend? Like, we're all going through this really awful thing. And so we started to meet for dinner and here we are seven years later kind of doing this.

Okay. 

Billie Tarascio: So you are an addiction and recovery specialist. 

Katie McHone-Jones: I mean, probably lived for, from lived experience. We've not done any formal training, but we've been through the trenches with it, unfortunately. 

Billie Tarascio: Well, that's what I want to talk about today for our listeners who have a. Child or a spouse who's an addict or maybe you yourself are an addict.

Um, I wouldn't even know where to start. So where should someone 

start? 

Katie McHone-Jones: Oh, um, yeah, so I think there's tons of help lines. There's tons of. Places and resources out there for those who are struggling with the disease of addiction. Um, for us, what we found [00:04:00] as a family member, is there a few resources for those who are walking this path with a loved one, which is why we started boy pumps, podcast.

And so hopefully your loved one, there's tons of rehabs out there and helplines. To go to Hazelden. Betty Ford of course is a wonderful resource. And so family members can go there. So there are a few family member resources, but I'm probably getting into a facility. Um, you know, if you're an alcoholic or an alcoholic is kind of where you are, you can not detox by yourself.

Like you have to be under medical care opioids. The other ones like you won't necessarily die. Like you'll feel terrible, but alcohol, please do not detox by yourself. Go to a medical facility to do that because it's deadly. Unfortunately. 

Billie Tarascio: That's crazy. And I don't think that people really necessarily understand that or understand why. Can you explain why, why is it so dangerous to detox from alcohol? 

Katie McHone-Jones: Um, so [00:05:00] I don't know the science of that. I just know, like for heroin and stuff. 'cause and that's, my more specialty of heroin is like, you just feel terrible. You get the chills, you have headaches, body aches, that type of stuff. Um, but I do know, unfortunately I have a few people who tried to detox by themselves and unfortunately passed away just thinking that you can dry up or their family members think that you can just dry up like normal.

You know, I get drunk, wake up in the morning. I'm fine. Like that is just not how the body works with alcohol. 

Billie Tarascio: Got it. 

Okay. Um, all right, so you are a mom and you find out that your spouse is an addict and they go into rehab. Yeah. What is that like? 

Katie McHone-Jones: So it's a really awful feeling. So I am fortunate enough that, I had just gotten pregnant.

When I found out my husband was an addict, it was a secret addiction. I had no idea. I had been with him from nine years. [00:06:00] Life had really kind of tanked and I didn't know why. Um, and so it's a scary feeling. And I distinctly remember the moment of when I, you know, I found out I was pregnant, you know, found out about this addiction.

And I was like, I made the decision that I'm okay to do this by myself. Like if, if our relationship does not work. If he dies, like, I feel like I can do this by myself. And so it's just, uh, you know, a heavy feeling and, and even today, my husband, thankfully is six years in recovery. Um, I still have that part of me that I'm protecting of, I may have to do this myself because as I stated before, fentanyl is just out there and.

Like he could just die immediately. And so now I have two children and so that's just a really scary, it's just really scary and how to talk to the kids. You know, I have a, an alarm system it's like, if you can't wake up daddy, if, if anything bad happens, like I'm having conversations with my three, four year old to like hit the police [00:07:00] button.

If that, if that's a situation. 

Billie Tarascio: Wow. 

Katie McHone-Jones: Yeah. 

Billie Tarascio: So even six years in recovery, you are aware that at any moment, there could be a relapse and it could be deadly. 

Katie McHone-Jones: Oh, for sure. That that will be my forever. 

Billie Tarascio: That will be your forever. 

Katie McHone-Jones: That will be my forever. 

Billie Tarascio: Wow. Um, w looking back, what were some of the signs that you were unaware of that your husband was struggling with addiction?

Yeah, so people ask me this all the time, because it was right in front of my face, um, money that thousands of dollars we're like, we are a budget people. And so we go line by line in our account and he would say, Oh, this goes for union dues. This is for this, this is for this. Um, he buys our groceries. Like he's the main person who cooks and gets groceries at our house.

Katie McHone-Jones: So his, um, our grocery bills, like just for the two of us, we're just like really [00:08:00] big. And I was like, you know, what's going on? Um, what I didn't know is, you know, he was buying a gift cards for drug dealers and he was taking his drug dealers to the grocery store to buy them groceries. Um, so our grocery bill was high.

I mean, it's just so you get, so they like beat you down, like the gaslighting, like, no, you're crazy. Like you spent that money at Kroger or you spent that money at McDonald's and it's like, I don't remember that, but maybe he was sleeping all the time. What? I didn't realize, like I would come home most days towards the end and he was blue, like up to his wrists and I was like, oh, he has sleep apnea.

I put his. C-PAP machine on. And I would just like sit and watch him breathe and he'd come back to color and whatever, like that was, that was our reality for a long time. And I didn't know what that was. I thought just a sleep apnea was so severe that he, that that was happening. I didn't know that he was slowly overdosing.

Every day when I was getting home, [00:09:00] um, I saw like, I would see, um, he didn't inject, um, he mostly snorted and so I would see like white residue kind of coming out of his nose. And he was like, oh, I shot allergy, you know, shots up my nose. And it's that residue. Um, Yeah, so money him just not, and like, we didn't talk at the end probably for the last couple of years, like we hardly spoke, like he just wouldn't talk to me.

We'd. I mean, it was terrible. It was really, really awful at the end. 

Billie Tarascio: It sounds terrible. But I'm telling you like, the things that you're telling me are super helpful because I have teenage boys and. Um, I want to know like what to look for, because they don't always talk to me. They don't always want to hang out, 

you know?

Yeah. 

So what, what are we looking for? Like, because this is a very real thing. So follow the money. That is a key, you know, you can always follow the money. Although like there are things [00:10:00] people can do. To get drugs that don't involve money. So, right. It's not the only 

thing .

Katie McHone-Jones: On the stock pawn slips. Like if they're stealing like yours, it's like they're stealing from the house or if they're stealing.

I know I have two girls coming and I'm like, oh man, I'm just not looking forward to the teenage years. 

Billie Tarascio: Wow. 

And, okay, so what else have you learned? Was there something that made him susceptible to becoming an addict or how did that even 

happen? 

Katie McHone-Jones: Yeah, so it's, it's definitely a family disease and so on both sides of his family.

Addiction is in there. And so, um, he has a sister. She just like, doesn't like, like you just kind of either have the genes or you don't. And so he has them. And, um, unfortunately like, you know, his dad died when he was young. And so he started with pot, which then led to shrooms, which then led to, you know, he just kept going, I think, to mask his feelings, [00:11:00] um, And so that's kind of how, how he started.

So basically from 16 to 30, he was using, but I didn't know, like even dating. Yeah. Even dating. I didn't, he would slip pills in, like he went into pills. Um, he would slip pills and I wouldn't know, like when we were partying, like, it was like, oh, we're just drinking, but he would always go to the next. I didn't get it.

I always go to the next level, 

Billie Tarascio: but that's helpful. That's, that's something that we can look for is somebody who needs kind of more and more. Meet their needs when they're partying. And then does he take any medication now that makes, that helps. 

Katie McHone-Jones: Yeah. So not now, but definitely. Um, we are big champions of like medically assisted medical assisted treatment.

So like mat drugs. So like Suboxone, Vivitrol. What we would, I just recently learned as methadone. Unfortunately, if someone is dealing with the fentanyl, [00:12:00] you can't get on Suboxone or Vivitrol or Antabuse, like you have to do methadone. 

Billie Tarascio: Can you talk to me about the difference between those. 

Katie McHone-Jones: Yeah, uh, kind of, um, so I know a Suboxone and Vivitrol, like you have receptors in your brain.

And so what that does is it blocks the receptor. So if you do do drugs, it will just skip your receptor. So you won't get high, so you can do drugs, but it will, um, skip that over. I think that methadone does about the same thing. They just have different like chemical properties. 

Billie Tarascio: Okay. So it's going to block.

Opioid receptors. So you will not feel high. It can still kill you. 

Katie McHone-Jones: Yeah. If you take enough. Yeah. 

Billie Tarascio: Yeah. So hopefully people don't take it because they're not feeling the effects of dopamine or whatever. I don't know exactly what happens chemically when we take heroin or 

opioids. 

Katie McHone-Jones: Yeah. I mean, you can still get high on that.

Like you can still get drunk. You [00:13:00] can still do Coke and meth, like opioids. Yeah. Right? Yeah. 

Billie Tarascio: Yeah. Okay. Uh, so he took an, an opioid blocker for some period of time and then 

stopped. 

Katie McHone-Jones: Okay, long process. And so it was a couple of years of, we went to Suboxone, he was on it for a couple of years, tapered down.

There's a really small window. There's 10 days where you have to detox from Suboxone because that's still has opiates in it. And you have to be clean, completely clean for 10 days. There are so many relapses and so many deaths in that 10 days before Vivitrol, unfortunately. Um, and then you get Vivitrol and then that's, you only get a shot once a month.

Suboxone was once a day. Like goes for 30 days. 

Billie Tarascio: Okay. And then what happens when you are done with all those? 

Katie McHone-Jones: Uh, hopefully you have had time enough away from the drug that you can work on yourself or, you know, [00:14:00] maybe you go to meetings, maybe, um, whatever your recovery looks like, because there's no one right answer.

Um, so you have your recovery community. Like you have those things built up. So when you have those cravings where you want to go back out, you can call somebody, but you can stop it. Like it's not an automatic, like my husband said, he'd wake up at 5:00 AM. The first thought he would think of is how am I getting my drugs today?

Right before he went to bed. That was his last thought, like, how am I gonna get my drugs? Wow. That's just to stop the brain from thinking that. 

Billie Tarascio: So he used some sort of drugs from 16 to 30. 

Katie McHone-Jones: Yeah.

Billie Tarascio: What type of behavior or like, how does, how do you replace that?

Katie McHone-Jones: So it just, I mean, I, I don't know how he does it. I mean, it is an every day decision for him to not do drugs. 

Billie Tarascio: This is really frightening because what I've read about [00:15:00] willpower is that you only have so much of it and it will fail you every. 

Katie McHone-Jones: Oh, that's so interesting. I mean, no, I mean, it's, I mean, the, the thoughts of drugs get less and less.

I mean, but in the beginning, I mean, it is like power, 

Billie Tarascio: well, power now, but it's still every single day takes willpower not to take drugs. 

Katie McHone-Jones: Yeah. You just got to stay away. 

Billie Tarascio: Okay. So how you've already told me that you live every day, wondering if this will be the last day with your husband, how do you mentally stay sane?

Katie McHone-Jones: I think for me, it was a lot scarier in the beginning. Um, but now like going off of the six years of recovery, like, it feels good. Um, unfortunately one of my co-hosts like her husband, you know, he's been on this path for. For the six, seven years, like my husband, um, he just had kind of an up and down road to recovery.

So, I mean, he [00:16:00] just relapsed, um, had a slip up, you know, maybe six, eight months ago. So, um, you know, I just, I can't bog myself down with that because if I did, like, I just remember like the codependency, like. Just trying to control everything he did. And if I didn't say something, or if I said something that made him mad, he was going to go out and use, or that's not the case.

Like he he's willing to use, if he's going to use, I can't do prevent him or make him use drugs in any way. And so for me, it's kind of maybe like an out of sight out of mind, cause it would be very overwhelming. 

Billie Tarascio: Okay. So you are still married. You have managed to have, you know, an intact relationship. How have you done that?

How do you, how do you, how have you been able to trust and talk to me about that? 

Katie McHone-Jones: Yeah, so I will, uh, the group, the support group for me was amazing. And so. I had to do my own personal work. He had to do [00:17:00] his own personal work. And then obviously we had to do work together. Um, somebody one time said like truth plus time equals trust.

And so it, it, it, I mean, we are still what he took so much money from our bank accounts. Like I shot him down from our bank accounts and probably five years, or probably like last year, I finally let him back on the accounts. I mean, so that's taken quite some time. Um, so it just, it's just like little things like.

I don't like, I know, I know he's to me like, oh, I went to Wendy's, but he actually went to McDonald's and it's like, well, why did you lie? Like that just doesn't make sense. And so just, I made him give me receipts, like physical receipts of where he was, um, to prove the truth. I know a lot of my friends, they put GPS trackers on their phones, like.

You're just allowed to track your partner. Like, that's just a way like, oh, I can see you're at the meeting. I can see you went to X friend's house. I can see you at work. Like that's how some people build back trust. Um, for us it was just really slow and just the personal work, I [00:18:00] think growth for myself.

Um, and him is probably the biggest thing that has helped us like maintain a role we've been together for 19 years now. Like I met him when I was 19. Like that's crazy. 

Billie Tarascio: It is crazy. It sounds. Like a burden that most of us don't even understand because the relationship that you would need to have at that point, Would not be a partnership.

It would be more parental. It would be more, here's what you're allowed to do. Like you're allowed to do X, Y, or Z, and you need to report to me and that's not a marriage, that's not a partnership. So how do you deal with that? 

Katie McHone-Jones: Yeah, that was Rocky in the beginning. Um, you know, we have this like marriage, we started out with like a marriage contract, um, of like boundaries and it was really boundaries for me.

I think boundaries was probably the biggest thing and, and realizing I can't control him. I cannot control anything that he does. Um, but it was like, Hey, did you do this? [00:19:00] Hey, did you do this? And you know, he went to jail and got in so many car accidents and like at a certain point, it's just like, you have to raise your hands.

And I think, thankfully for me getting pregnant, like right in line with, when I found out he was using drugs, like. He's not my problem. Like, I have to worry about this little baby. Like my, my girls are my everything. Like I left him, I want him to be my partner. I want him to be healthy and I will maintain, I will still be with him, but like, I have to protect these two little ones because they don't have a choice.

I have choice. 

Billie Tarascio: So you really did become sort of a single mom who stayed married. 

Katie McHone-Jones: Yeah. I mean for, yeah, for, for a little while. Yeah. Now he's fantastic. I mean a one dad, but, but in the beginning, I mean, you know, there's just so many stories that we know and that we hear that are just so sad of like single parents and, you know, people dying and leaving their little ones.

I mean, it's just, it's really sad. Unfortunately, 

Billie Tarascio: it is. So what are some [00:20:00] of the hottest topics that people in your situation want to discuss on your podcast? 

Katie McHone-Jones: Yeah. Uh, 

early recovery that's when we get a lot of 

questions about like, how do you navigate building the trust and all of that, um, understanding that it's a disease.

I think that's always difficult for people of understanding that, um, that it's kind of like, I always acquainted to like, diabetes, right? So, um, You, you see a diabetic person eating cake, like you don't like, look at them and like, they're terrible people. However, people who see my husband relapsed like, oh, you know, he's a terrible person.

Like people telling you to, like, people told me all the time, like I should leave him. Why would you stay? He's never going to get into recovery. Um, there's just so much shame and stigma. So many people live in the shadows. And so my hope is that by spreading the word. For basically the first year and a half of our podcasts, we went under aliases [00:21:00] just recently came out with our names and our faces.

Um, and so hopefully by doing that, people can see. We are everyday people like Mike, I thought heroin users were just homeless people under the bridge with needles in their arm. And that is absolutely not the case. Yeah, 

Billie Tarascio: absolutely. Especially today. Okay. So I've also read about a new mental health treatment.

Um, ketamine, um, other types of microdosing, like you probably know all about that stuff, right? 

Katie McHone-Jones: So I know a little bit, we have some really great podcasts with a wonderful doctor. I'm here from Indiana, she's at a treatment center. And so, um, we just did a fantastic podcast about methadone because we knew nothing about methadone.

Um, and. She was talking about how, like, how she's trying to tell other physicians to microdose with fentanyl. Like even if they come in microdose of fentanyl so that you can get onto the [00:22:00] methadone. Um, it was just, it was absolutely fascinating. Absolutely 

fascinating. 

Billie Tarascio: Because when you say it's a disease, it's a disease of the brain and it's a disease of brain chemicals and adequate amounts of dopamine and responding.

Your body responding, your brain responding. And we don't know a lot about the brain, right. But you know, diabetics get to take insulin. You know, they have something. If they eat cake, if they choose to ate cake, they can take 

insulin and not die. 

Katie McHone-Jones: Right. Right. 

Billie Tarascio: But the addiction in our brain is harder and there is more and more information about mental health treatment.

There's even like I was reading about some. Electro we've used electro therapy for a long time. And it's, it's thought of as like horrific, but I don't think it's always horrific. And I think that there are actually. 

Um, good outcomes. 

Yeah. I think I've heard of that. Like, we heard a [00:23:00] radio story about that and I met a woman whose husband was kind of doing it to himself.

Katie McHone-Jones: I don't know. It's a weird thing, but yeah. Um, but he was saying he was cured. He was an alcoholic. And did I don't, I don't know what he did, but, but we have heard about that and it's very interesting. I'd love to see the studies on those. Yeah. 

Billie Tarascio: Yeah. It seems to me like there's not enough focus on fixing the underlying disease.

If the, if the outcome is, you know, just don't do it. That's a really, I don't want to rely on that. No, 

that's not even a fair. 

Katie McHone-Jones: Yeah. Just say no is terrible. Like that's not real. 

Billie Tarascio: So bad, so bad. 

Katie McHone-Jones: The war on drugs, like that just makes people who do drugs, like be bad people. They're not bad people. Totally.

Billie Tarascio: Absolutely. Absolutely man. And then the other thing I think is, um, figuring out early intervention is probably important. I don't [00:24:00] hear people talk about that. Is that something that's talked about in the addiction world? 

Katie McHone-Jones: Yeah. So w what's recently kind of come up is like harm reduction, which was new for me.

Uh, so when, uh, my husband is going through it like six years ago, it was like, don't, you know, just don't do drugs, however, People now are like, okay, well, instead of doing, I'm going to make these numbers up, you know, a gram of heroin just do like five eighth of heroin and just kind of trying to slowly trickle down or Hey, instead of doing heroin, can you just try drinking?

Like, you know, and, and it's so interesting because then you, I don't know all of it, but it's, it's so interesting. Like the harm reduction is like the craft method, um, which is so different than. Go to meanings 90 meetings in 90 days and do the 12 steps. And there's just so many different shades of recovery now.

Billie Tarascio: Yeah. So there's not one way to recover. No, um, [00:25:00] prevention has to be more than just say no. Yes, probably it needs to be a whole lot more education. So that absolutely when people are trying things or they choose to try things, they truly understand the risk and. You know, if it, if it affects you at a certain way, this is what this means for your future.

Right? This is going 

to be harder on you than somebody who doesn't 

love this. 

Katie McHone-Jones: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And usually like you were talking about the mental there's usually co-occurring mental. Like you're usually just, not just an addict, like maybe you have bipolar disorder, maybe you have anxiety know there's, there's typically something else it's never really just, you are.

Billie Tarascio: Yeah. So my I've got, um, kiddos with ADHD and my oldest, we got his brain scan at the amen clinic when he was 11. And it's not a simple case of ADHD. And his brain showed like a lot, a [00:26:00] lot going on something called ring of fire ADHD. Like his brain was not in great shape. And one of the things that the doctor told us is like this brain is going to be highly susceptible to addiction.

Oh, he was 11. 

He's 11. I mean, he's 17 now and he's doing really well. And I think his brain's probably looking a lot healthier. I want to scan it again, but, um, but you know, so we started talking to him about that, like, okay, you know, your brain, you know, might really, really be prone to addiction. And what does that mean and how much more important is it for you to.

guard this. how much more dangerous is it? So was that the right thing to do? I don't know. What can we do? What are you going to do? What are 

you going to do with your girls? 

Katie McHone-Jones: Yeah, I think being open and upfront letting them know, because I also have it on my side, so they just have like a double whammy. Um, so I have addiction on my side as well.

And so I think being as open because my [00:27:00] husband's mom always, they had alcoholics. Don't drink alcohol, blah, blah, blah. So he never thought he would ever have a problem with drugs. Sure. Right. So now for me, we are going to be able to, um, talk to our girls about it. We don't have to get into all the details.

Like there are things called open meetings. My husband that's a part of his recovery is to go to meetings every week. And so showing them that, um, you know, take them to a couple open meetings so that they can see where it is. And hopefully, you know, we can't control. But hopefully them knowing that their dad is in recovery and that their mom would support them no matter what, that I hope that they would feel comfortable enough to come to me and say, I can't stop drinking.

I love it so much. And then, and then we can walk that path with them and it will probably be a Rocky path, but I would hope that they would know that our doors are open. Um, we understand it's a disease and they don't have to hide. That's what I don't want them to do is to [00:28:00] hide, to hide it. 

Billie Tarascio: Absolutely.

Definitely. Do you think that had you known earlier there would have been a different outcome or do you think you just got there when you got there? 

Katie McHone-Jones: So like with my husband, I don't think. It was, I mean, the last, the last time that he got, um, high, like right before he went to jail, he got in a wreck with a semi, he got home, he was such a jerk and I was packing my bags to leave and he went into recovery.

Right. Then if a few years before that he would have told me about it. I don't think he would have gotten into recovery. He wasn't. He wasn't ready. Um, I don't really like the phrase rock bottom, but I think he had hit a pretty low, low for him that he was ready to make a change. He never saw his future without drugs.

And so that was kind of a hard, um, future to see, even when he got into recovery, he was like, I [00:29:00] will stop doing heroin, but I won't stop drinking. Yeah. 

Billie Tarascio: And so for him, it's better to not use any substances, not use marijuana, not use drinking, not use heroin, 

nothing. Nope. He will go from zero to a hundred.

Katie McHone-Jones: He can not have one drink. He can not smoke pot. I would not feel comfortable. He couldn't just have casually do that. He would go hard. I mean, he did a couch to 5k. Like he was like, oh, let me just see if I can start running. He's a marathon runner. Like he's doing marathons all the time. So when he runs, 

that's what I was wondering.

Billie Tarascio: Like, because exercise is one way to get your body, those chemicals, like correct. You, you need to do something to give your body what it needs to function. Like the drugs are providing something to your body that it desperately wants. Are there other ways to do it? Exercise can be one of those ways. So he's see now addicted to 

exercise.

Katie McHone-Jones: I mean loves running. 

Billie Tarascio: That's amazing. 

Katie McHone-Jones: Yeah, it is. I mean, he just [00:30:00] runs forever. He runs forever. Yeah. Wow. Anything else looking to ultra marathons of just crazy. 

Billie Tarascio: Are there, are there other, um, things that he does to give his body that kind of stimulation? 

Katie McHone-Jones: No running is running is kind of the thing. Um, you know, I think we've noticed recently that he probably has a lot of anxiety, so like keeping the house neat and tidy kind of a thing.

And so. Doing that, but I mean, our secret sauce, he was going to six meetings a week when we first started, like he has to even seven years into, this has to go to three meetings a week. If he does not go to three meetings a week, it just makes life difficult. So that that's our secret sauce for us 

meetings and running.

Billie Tarascio: I do wonder, like, so if it seems like, um, addiction is sort of related to [00:31:00] obsessive compulsive disorder. Seems related to me. So it seems like maybe obsessive compulsive treatment could 

help? Or I think, I think also Welbutrin has been used to help with addiction and helping people quit smoking Centrix or something like that.

Katie McHone-Jones: Um, I've not heard that. No, I've not heard. I've not heard any of that before. Just so much to be studied and done. And it 

Billie Tarascio: seems like we should be farther along on the journey to helping addicts and maybe it hasn't been a priority and maybe it really 

needs to be. 

Katie McHone-Jones: I think people think it's a moral failing. Yes, it is not a moral failing and. I th I think the shame and the stigma for, for, um, even when we first started the podcast and I was like, oh, you know, heroin is boy problems.

Like, you're like, oh man, like I was on another podcast and she, she didn't, she was [00:32:00] like the H. And I was like, you can say it like it's okay. 

Yeah. From 

Billie Tarascio: Harry Potter. 

Katie McHone-Jones: Yeah. So, um, I think just like normalize it, like talk about it, talking about it openly. Like, I mean, it has helped me immensely. I know that for sure.

And, um, just sharing my stories, opens people up to tell me their awful stories. Cause this is awful. I mean, what I went through is awful. My friends that's awful and everybody knows that. Everybody knows an addict. 

Billie Tarascio: Yeah. Well, you know, I appreciate you so much for spreading awareness for answering my questions to the best of your ability and for just being very, very real.

If you all have enjoyed this podcast, download it, share it with your friends, like it. Leave a comment. And talk about it more. Just talk about it more. And Kate, thank you so much for [00:33:00] coming on the show today. I really appreciate 

it. Yeah. Thank you for having me. Thanks.