Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 107

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

Traditionally, Fridays are for rapid-fire Q and A... Today there are only two topics, both relatively heavy.... The school shooting in Texas... Alcoholism...

Well, hello, everybody. It's Friday, and of course you know what that means if you're tuning into the podcast, because I've been doing this every Friday for over two years now. Q&A and slightly heavier topics for today. As you can imagine, given the circumstances of what happened in Texas, my inbox has been very flooded with people asking me to address it and provide any potential solutions that I may have. Spoiler alert, I have far more questions than I have answers. and I'm actually always very hesitant to actually talk about these things before more information comes to light, because I feel that the first information generally reported is the least accurate. And then from that light topic, we're going to move over to a little bit of alcoholism.

So, yeah, a little tougher one for this Friday, when did a couple of hours of jiu-jitsu to try to get my mind right. get some of the tension out of the body, you know, try to choke and kill some of my closest friends. It's the way it's, I choose to relax. So don't judge me. But how about I shut up? We get into the Q&A. Full out of Friday, 107 coming right at you.

I'm looking at danger close now. All right, everybody. Here we go. Like I said, I have two topics for today. One of them is something that I wish that I never had to talk about again. And that is a mass shooting. at a school by an 18-year-old that went to an elementary school. And then we'll move on to some substance abuse issues.

I probably 100 emails, people asking me very specific things. So instead of trying to answer or pick one or two, I pulled three emails out that kind of, you know, there's a Venn diagram of where they overlap question-wise so I can. read them and then just give my thoughts. But like I said at the beginning, on this one, you know, things like this, an 18 year old that feels that the appropriate actions, or anybody for that matter, that feels that appropriate actions would be to go into a school, an elementary school, not like it would be better if it was a college, but an elementary school and execute teachers and kids, I don't understand it. My mind doesn't work that way. I don't understand how somebody's mind could get to that place, and I'm left with far more questions than answers. So let's get into

these three emails, and then I can provide my very limited thoughts for those that have asked. Since you're a prominent voice in the two-way world, and I'm going to actually stop right there, I don't feel like I'm a prominent voice in the two-way world. I think I have a different relationship with firearms based off my occupational use of them, but I'm also, I don't, man, I appreciate the Second Amendment. I think it's essential. But I don't know if I'm a prominent voice because I can only speak from my experience. The legalities associated with that, the differences in laws in every state, whether they be state or federal. I'm not an expert in those things.

So I hope people understand when it comes to this podcast. I can only provide my perspective and my opinion. And when asked for my advice, I will give it on certain topics. But if you think I'm a prominent voice, I can accept that. I personally don't think of myself that way. I'm a 72-year-old, I am a 72-year-old, two-A guy, neither conservative nor liberal, living in or near Carbondale in the Central Colorado Mountains. Here's my idea. Here's an idea for federal gun safety legislation that might actually get bipartisan support.

A statute requiring all gun purchasers below the age of 30 to provide prior to purchase from a federal firearms licensed dealer, proof of completing the National Rifle Association's Guns, safety seminar and home protection course. And depending on the type of firearm being purchased, either the NRA basic pistol course, basic rifle course, or basic shotgun course. Think about it. Instead of endlessly fighting with the NRA and 2A community, the federal government could partner with them to establish a framework for self-policing and safety education by America's gun owners and the industry that supports them. Instead of always being on the defensive, the NRA could take the lead in addressing America's mass shooting problem without infringing on the rights of responsible gun owners.

Include the opportunity, but not the obligation for NRA's instructors to red flag mentally unfit prospective gun owners. The NRA has great safety courses. Who could complain about requiring young gun owners to get this essential training? What do you think? And you know, maybe I'll just address these emails one at a time so I don't get some things that are lost in there. My initial thought on this is I think that the NRA is the wrong organization.

I believe that the biggest threat to the NRA and oftentimes second amendment advocates is actually the NRA. And I say that based off of their positioning and their language and the actions that they take. I think if the federal government was going to partner with an organization, I almost, and again, this is me thinking through this in real time. I think there would need to be the establishment of a new organization because I think, and again, my own personal opinion that the NRA has actually pigeon hold themselves a little bit too far into the corner to be able to fill this role. I think it might be better to actually start from the ground up and start something new. My personal thoughts on firearms and courses associated with firearms.

For me, one of the first things that I ask people when I'm going to have a conversation about firearms, I will ask them, what are they designed for? Some people will say that firearms are designed for defense, and I believe that to be personally and intellectually dishonest position to hold. Guns are designed to kill. They're designed to take life. That's why we choose them to hunt. that's why we arm police officers with them. That's why we purchase them and train with them for self-defense. Now, can they be used to defend?

Yes, they absolutely can. They can be used to defend yourself, and a lot of the times it can compel people to either stop an action or take an additional action, something that you may want as the armed individual, because of the threat of what they're capable of doing. That threat of taking life can really motivate people who find themselves on the working end of a firearm. So when I talk to people about firearms, I always try to start with that foundational position. Firearms in my mind are designed to kill. And that's not something, and maybe people don't want to use those terms because they feel like it puts it into a tenuous

situation. Maybe they feel like it gets people ammo metaphorically, oh, well, we shouldn't have anything around that is designed to kill. And I don't feel like that's the case at all. For me, firearms are a tool and that more about the person that's holding the tool than the tool itself. But education and courses associated with those tools, I think they're essential. I think to me, it's a very, they're very common sense. Now, requiring people to take those courses, again, you know, there are, there is, there are a group of people who take the shall not be infringed philosophy exactly as it's written. And I've heard arguments about, you know, the Constitution it's supposed to be taken exactly that way. I don't feel like going down into a constitutional

argument or conversation about this. But there are people out there who would say, well, you know what, that's infringing on my right to go in and purchase a firearm when I want to. And again, that's, for me, that's not the point in, this isn't the point in time to have that conversation. What I'd rather reinforce is that if you can come to the realization or come to the the station or position that what firearms are actually designed for, then it makes total sense to treat them in a manner befitting what they're capable of. And then, of course, educate yourself and maintain your currency and competency. You know, vehicles can be used to kill people, and there are examples of that. Plenty of examples of that. There's not what they're designed to do. And they're a

privilege in the United States. Your driver's license and owning a vehicle is a privilege, but people learn how to drive a vehicle. They ensure themselves. They take training courses. I mean, there's even rally courses out there. You can go as far as you want to. But the point in all that is it's something that requires responsibility if you're going to get behind the wheel of a vehicle. So we train and we educate people who are coming of age being able to drive. It's a common sense thing for me. I don't know if it's ever, if mandating it is necessarily the right course of action. to me, though, owning a firearm and training on a firearm, becoming current on a firearm, and educating yourself, again, common sense. So I like the idea of that. I don't know if it would ever fly in this country. You know, the red flag ability when it comes to the instructors or anybody for that matter. I am not an expert on red flag laws or the ones that have been proposed. I've seen some that seem a little bit docile and I've seen some that have some real teeth associated with them.

I think there should be a mechanism. And I don't know how to define what that would look like. But there should be a mechanism where if people are legitimately concerned for the mental sanity or the mental fitness of an individual or of a gun owner, that something should be able to be done about that. Again, I don't know what that should necessarily look like. And, you know, in the veteran world, I've more than one example of other veterans reaching out. And I actually know of some very concrete examples of people from my own community who called friends and said, I need you to come over and get my gun. So I guess in that instance, they were reporting on themselves.

They didn't want their guns to be gone forever, but they realized that they were in a place that they could make a bad decision. so they had somebody come over and secure them for them. I think that would be the best case scenario. I would like to see something exist where if you had cause, you could take action. Could that be, could that system, if it were ever to be created, be manipulated and used for the wrong reasons? Yes, it absolutely could. That would, of course, be the extreme side. Never being able to address anybody or talk about these things would be the other extreme side.

I think there might be a solution somewhere in between. So courses I think would be great, whether or not to require them. I don't know if that would ever pass legislation. Email two. Long time listener here, I'm a father of two young children. I'm asking you to help me wrap my head around protocol that keeps law enforcement from apprehending a shooter. If the reports are true and then four bullet points to follow, police car chase occurred. Shooter ran into the building.

Parents were being detained outside of the school. shooter wasn't apprehended until 50 minutes later. What the hell, man. So this one I grabbed because I did a little bit of research and I can't actually determine with any level of certainty that I'd feel comfortable, you know, if I had to make a bet with everything I had on yes or no, I can't determine whether or not a car chase actually occurred. And this goes right back to my opening point at the intro is I'm always hesitant to talk

about these things specifically until more information comes out because you get a few laps around the sun and unfortunately things like this happen or you just watch the news cycle and you watch what leads when something first comes out and then what eventually the story morphs itself into. So if the reports are true, I don't know. Maybe a police car chase did occur and maybe the shooter did run into a building. As far as the parents being detained outside of the school, I did see a few news articles where they were talking about. that. And what I'll say is, one, I'm not a law enforcement officer. But what I understand about the law enforcement community is that they have policies that they follow. And I suspect that a lot of

the time those policies are not actually set by the individual officers or the responding officers. having a parent run into a building with and I don't know if this person was supposedly armed or unarmed or whatever it may be. I can imagine situations where armed civilians rushing into that school could have made things worse. I could also imagine a situation where they could have ended the incident faster if it had gone, if it actually went to 50 minutes, which is a number that I have seen thrown around and some news out. outlets, it could make it better or it could make it worse. I suspect the policy of the police department, though, is to separate anybody who has not directly involved in the incident so they can determine what their appropriate response is going to be. What I can say is tactics change over time. The tactics that we used overseas in the early 2000s to find, fix and finish

targets overseas is probably unrecognizable in 2022, in mid-2020. And the reason for that is that what we were seeing on the ground from our enemy was causing us to change our tactics. It's a game of chess. We would make a change. They would make a change. And it continues to move along. The policy at this organization or the organizations, because I'm not exactly sure the municipality that this falls in, probably drove the actions that they took. Were there people who would probably want to rush into that? Yes. Were there people who, Think that it would be better if everybody stayed out of it, probably. And I'm not here to say which one is right or wrong. What I'm here to say is that the policy is going to dictate the actions. As far as the shooter not being apprehended until 50 minutes later, I don't know. I don't know how to describe the chaotic nature and uncertainty of a of a tactical situation where gunfire is being exchanged. And I think in a situation like this, it would be even more complex. Like overseas, it's like, yeah, we expected to encounter resistance of some kind. We, you know, we were going and at the time of day or night that would give us the most advantage and approaching from the terrain that would give us the most advantage and prosecuting the target based off the topography or geography that would give us the advantage.

And we had planned for days, days beforehand, primary, secondary, tertiary. What ifs? All of these things that we were going to work our way through. And then still, it can get chaotic on target. Because especially when you cross the threshold of a structure, you can look at satellite imagery from above and you can hypothesize about what it's going to look like. You step foot through the threshold of the door and shit can get wild. You can get turned around on yourself. There's plenty of incidents of blue on blue in the Socom and JSOC community. And by that, I mean people shooting each other, friendlies, maybe getting turned around and you start.

are working your way back towards the trainer people coming in. There's ways that it can happen. It shouldn't, but it does. My point in saying all of that is, I have absolutely no doubt that the responding officers on the scene did the absolute best that they could. From my understanding, this person was barricaded. They probably had to determine where they were barricaded.

They had to pull everybody else out. From what I can tell, you know, police were doing everything they could to get people out of the building, breaking windows, pulling students out. And then eventually they were probably able to determine exactly where this person was. It sounds like they beat through the door and ended his life, which, I mean, how would you do? It's a brave thing to know that there is somebody who is armed with the intent to kill you on the other side of a door, a locked door. And you stand there and you burst your way through it knowing you're probably going to take some rounds. So I have nothing but the utmost respect for the individuals who crossed that threshold.

The amount of risk that they absorbed willingly is hard for me to describe. And I'm sure everybody would like to hear that, you know, somebody ran into the school so the officers just pursued on foot directly. And maybe that wasn't even possible. If that person was able to get inside of the school and maneuver through that school in any way and then barricade themselves, running in there haphazardly, you'd think that it might save a bunch of people's lives. It actually may not. It may make things worse. And that's where that time component comes in.

But again, the time component is it probably driven by policy. I don't know what the policy is of this organization, but I guarantee you they did the best that they possibly could. Question three. From a Canadian. I'm not sure if this is the correct email for a fallout of Friday. I apologize if it's not, but I wanted to get your opinion on this. Full disclosure, I am living in Canada, which I consider to be the top hat of America. So my understanding on gun laws in the U.S. is probably not great.

However, as far as I can tell, unlike Canada, you do not require a course or any education to own any kind of firearm. I think you're right. I don't know if any courses are required depending on how fringe you get on the firearms, but I think you're correct. Before you or any of your audience freaks out, I'm not claiming that Canada has great firearm laws. In my opinion, it's actually not great currently. That being said, I do think a course provides some good things. I think that course could provide a first line of defense in the form of the educators to people that just seem off and do not seem like they are safe to own a gun. Also, it could be a way of enforcing some sort of gun training on people who otherwise would never take the time to educate themselves.

Anyway, basically, I'm asking what, in your opinion, are the pros and cons of some sort of gun safety course that is required before obtaining a firearm? So this ties in a little bit to the first one, but again, this is like the Venn diagram of where they all overlap. People who have true malicious intent, like true sociopaths, they can make their way through a course, just so you know, for people who think that by having somebody attend a two-day course or do something that's remote, that it's going to really, it's going to ferret out the individuals that might be problems. I don't think so. And I also don't think that those individuals who somehow fucking arrive at a headspace that murdering elementary school children, they're not really going to worry too much about gun laws and educational requirements.

One thing I'm going to add now before I forget about this, and this is something that I did not see in any of the emails that came in, and this is something that I have to reinforce. So murder is illegal, obviously. It happens every day in the United States of America, with firearms and of course without. I couldn't agree more. And I think the Second Amendment is essential for this country. Like I defined what a firearm is designed for, the taking of life. I personally believe that if you are going to own firearms, you should be required to own a gun safe. Because people who are hellbent on doing this will source a weapon from somewhere else. Or, well, actually, yeah, They will source it from somewhere else.

And that maybe could come through petty crime on the street. Plenty of people out there who like to have a truck gun and it just sits there in broad daylight, sometimes sitting in the cup holder of their vehicle. Not awesome, by the way. Or unsecured firearms in their home. And there have been plenty of instances where people have been involved in situations like this, and they got the firearms from other family members. It's really easy to not allow that to happen.

And that starts with a good gun safe. And in this modern era, like, I'm not saying. say don't carry a gun on you. I'm saying when it's not positively being controlled by, you put it into a gun safe. I'm friends with a lot of the law enforcement in the valley. The theft of weapons in the Flathead Valley is a real thing. It's a real thing because they use it as their source of money. And then by that, I mean in the form of trade for narcotics, largely. And where those guns go after that, anybody who fucking knows, right? But they find their way into places that probably are not going to be used with anything other than malicious intent. And I think that is avoidable. So if you're

going to own a firearm, I absolutely believe that you need to own a secure storage device as well. So I don't know how this email reminded me of that, but that's where I kind of came to that. So again, I the Venn diagram of all of these things, people have asked me about what do I think the solutions are. Should we have an armed veteran in every school? I've been asked that question before. And my baseline answer to that is, I don't know if that's the best idea. Serving the military, regardless of your capacity, is an amazing thing. And I am thankful for everybody who has ever made that decision. It doesn't necessarily suit you or make you suitable for that person to be thrown into a tactical environment, they're now protecting children.

The vast majority of the military does not engage in direct combat operations. The vast majority. Do they come from a system that should, in theory, have a better understanding of discipline, of integrity? Yes, they do. But there needs to be an additional level of vetting, an additional level of training. So I think it could help. It's not a turnkey solution. People reached out over email, well, we should, you know, I'm from Australia.

And, you know, there was a shooting, I believe it was in 1996 and the government did a 180. And they took back firearms. And I understand that. But you also have to put into context of difference between Australia and the United States. Australia has a population that is less than the state of California. It's also less than the state of Texas. I think it would land at number like three or four. And four and five, those states are a couple million people behind.

You also have to look at the number of guns that have been in circulation, how long they've been in circulation for. And when I look at for solutions, I look for is it practical and is it reasonable? I don't think it is practical nor reasonable for the United States of America, given that there's over 300 million guns in circulation to do an, about face on that. I don't know what organization would do it. I've heard people say, it would say, yeah, you would just, you would suffer with your taxes and this, that, or the other, or an IRS agent's going to come to your door, or local law enforcement. I don't know. I don't think, I think it fails the sniff test of being practical to me. And so what other solution does that, does that give us? You know, so this was apparently an AR, which I'll say this, because some people

still don't know this, AR does not stand for assault rifle. It actually stands for Armolite rifle. You know, maybe get rid of those platforms. And what I would say is go and look at gun violence statistics. What you're going to find is that an AR platform type rifle is nowhere near the actual top. The number one tool used when it comes to weapons-based violence is pistols, which makes sense. They're highly concealable. They're portable, smaller magazines, smaller print, right? You can carry them on you. So removing the AR platform rifle does not solve an issue like what happened in Texas. And when people ask me what does solve it, the only answer that I have is that I don't know. I don't know what we can do to stop something like this from

happening. I was having a conversation yesterday. And I was asking the person, I was trying to remember when did things like this start happening so I could chronologically maybe work myself backwards and identify some changes and shifts that could lead to something like this. You know, I remember stories my dad telling me they would take shotguns to school and put them in lockers and you go hunting afterwards. So it's not like there weren't access to firearms for previous generations. There are obviously more firearms now, but there are more people now as well. so I don't know if the ratio has gone up or has gone down or has stayed the same. But I don't think it's an access to a firearm.

I do believe that there is an element of mental health and mental illness associated with this. It's the only logical conclusion that I can come to when I sit and try to put myself in the headspace of an 18-year-old that goes, okay, I'm going to shoot my grandma first. then I'm going to go to an elementary school and kill kids. I, maybe my brain doesn't work correctly. I feel like the only way that that happens is if you're fucking crazy. And I think maybe we need a better definition of what mental illness is. So we could, if, you know, people are going to do things like red flag laws or have that be a possibility.

And again, I'm not advocating for or against that. It needs to be based off of. a definition, some type of quantifiable definition. It can't be subjective. It needs to be objective. And in a few days since this has happened, you know, I still have school-age kids. I have a son who's getting ready to start a senior year and my daughter's getting ready to start in freshman. This is a very real issue for me. As it is for any, it's a very real issue for everybody in the U.S. because you may not have kids in school, but I bet you know somebody who does. So you're like a degree of Kevin Bacon away from probably being directly associated with this.

my first thought is that we one something shifted and it has taken time for these things to accelerate so i don't think that there is a light switch solution that's going to turn them off i think it should be expected that for the same amount of time that this has been increasing in nature it's going to take that much time to unwind it um i think and again this is just in my personal opinion and i'll be the first person to tell you that I consider myself to be an idiot is that it's a generational problem that we are going to have to solve. We are failing in how we are parenting or preparing people to deal with life and adversity, in my opinion. And I think it'd be easy to go, oh, it's Instagram and it's social media and it's all the,

it's violent video games and it's violent movies. And like I was exposed to all that stuff. And yeah, I had a very unique job, but I'm also not sociopathic in going into a fucking elementary school and shooting people, nor are the vast majority of people who are exposed to those things. Could it have some correlation? Maybe. I'm not smart enough to know that. And I would say, I would guess it probably does to a certain degree. But it's easy to point at that, but I don't think that's the root cause of the issue. I think as a society, we're failing each other. I think we need to put the time and energy and effort in to really look at what it means to be an American at this point, what it means to be a parent, what it means to raise and teach and mentor and mold responsible human beings.

And even if we do all of that, things like this are probably still going to happen. My hope is they would happen infrequently. You know, the number one thought I have when I think about stuff like this is just absolute sadness and empathy for the parents that are involved in this. I mean, you drop your kids off at school the last thing that you were going to expect, especially in elementary school. I don't know why that one is so just horrendously bad is that you're going to get a call that there is somebody there who's executing your kids. I mean, so with the people reaching out to me and asking for my solutions, I wish I had better ones for you. I don't. I'm just so heartbroken that something like this would happen that it continues to happen. And I wish that as a country, we could invest that time, energy, and effort to figure out where it is that we are failing. I don't think it's the gun's fault. I don't think it's the social media's fault. I don't think it's the violence that, you know, younger generation may be exposed. It might be all of them. of those things and then even more. But that is where I think we need to invest our time, energy,

and effort in that exploration. So I wish I had better answers for the people who reached out and wanted to know my opinion on this. My opinion is it's terrible. I wish it would never happen again. And God, I couldn't feel worse for those parents that are directly involved. Question two, shifting to a lighter subject of alcoholism. This one I'm going to probably take a paragraph at a time. Long time listener, first time caller. That phrase will date me. Anyhow, for the past four years, I've been in love with a wonderful woman who unfortunately also battles alcoholism. I was only recently made aware of her battle as she did a great job of hiding her pain from me. I'm going to stop right there. You and her may describe her alcoholism as pain, but that's an excuse. It's an addiction and she'll probably say she drinks because she is in. pain. What I'm going to tell you is that there are far more healthy and beneficial ways to deal with your pain than numbing them with booze. So I would caution you against using enabling language like saying she did a great job of hiding her pain from you. Now she did a great job

of hiding her alcoholism from you. She lives about an hour away so I would stay with her three to four days per week. And when I was with her, she'd only drank socially. She has had several traumatic episodes in her life that have taken their toll. I'm going to stop there again. We all have shit that happens to us in our life. You have zero control over most things that happen to you in your life. You have 100% control over how you react and deal with those things. You have control of yourself.

People have horrendous shit happened to them. How about the last, I don't even know how long I talked about what happened in Texas. How about that situation? that would be the perfect excuse for somebody to lose themselves in alcohol. I mean, my nightmares are about something happening to my kids and I'm not able to be there to do something about it to help them. It'd be so easy to say that that episode on life has taken its toll and just lose myself in the bottle.

That's not the way to handle that. People have shit that happens to them in their life. How you deal with it is the only variable. You can deal with it in a healthy manner or an unhealthy manner. Saying that they have taken their toll and because of that she is in pain and because of that she's an alcoholic is bullshit. She has never sought treatment counseling. I've been recommending counseling since I first met her, but she has always avoided and refused it. In hindsight, I think she refused counseling because she was not strong enough to be honest about her trauma and alcoholism.

You're probably right there. But you know what? You might be able to separate the two. and people who specialize in what happens between your ears would probably be able to help with that. She was carrying more than I knew. I'm going to stop right there. Most people, when they are carrying a heavy burden to use a rucksack or a backpack as an example, or I guess in this, it would be a metaphor, they are the ones who are loading it.

So if you have had trauma in your life and you are choosing to avoid finding a healthy way to work on it and then through it, and instead you are drowning it in alcohol, all you're doing is putting bricks in your backpack. And it's really easy to say, you know what? The world is doing this to me. But it's not. Most people, to include myself,

when I find myself with a burden, the rough realization is that I'm the one that put the weight in the backpack. And guess who can take it out? Me. I'm actually the only one that can take it out. And that's the same thing for her. I had no idea how heavy it was.

There are lots of reasons I missed the alcoholism, from being in denial to her doing a great job of lying and hiding it from me. She was an occasional drinker in front of me. She would at times get very drunk with me present, but I took that as an occasional peccadillo. I'm going to look that word up later. I need to start using it. Like the first world life is easy, idiot, I am. I attributed all of this to trauma and health issues.

So it sounds to me like you actually had a glimpse of this, but you wrote it off, and you probably wrote it off because you were looking at it through the lens of love and the lens of imperfection, which we all are, and I can get that. but there's going to be a point in time, and I feel like, because I'll continue to read this email, you might have reached that point in time where actions need to be taken and boundaries need to be set. The last couple months have accelerated her collapse. Her depression became clinical. She stopped effectively hiding her drinking.

She stopped working regularly. She has last out in anger only to collapse in a heap of despair. She lied under direct questioning, etc. Rock Bottom was a week ago. I received a call from one of her colleagues. He told me that he was at her house and that she was at her house and that she was was drunk. I went to her house to babysit, still not realizing the gravity of the situation. I thought she was a rookie alcoholic, not a seasoned veteran. A very long night of drunk person

arguing and yelling followed. Or yelling, yelling, followed. The next morning, she was the sweet woman I had grown to love. I sat down to work. I have a first world life is easy. This idiot can work from anywhere job. And she was going about her day, another missed day of work for her. At about 10 a.m., I wandered into the kitchen and checked her large stainless steel coffee mug. It was 32 ounces of vodka. I poured out the vodka and asked her to sit and talk with me. I told her that I love her. I told her that I poured out her vodka, that I was sorry that I'm an idiot and I didn't realize how much trouble she was in. Okay, I'm going to start stop right there. I appreciate your level of extreme ownership to use a jaco term. And it's great, but it can be taken too far

because you are attempting to take accountability for her behavior. You said it earlier in this email. You thought she was a rookie alcoholic and not a seasoned veteran. Guess what, buddy? If she's got a 32-ounce redneck guzzler of fucking vodka at 10 a.m. in the morning, she is well into the veteran stage. She might be in the All-Star stage at this point. And claiming that you are an idiot or, you know, apologizing to her and feeling like you're an idiot,

because you didn't realize how much trouble she was in, is excusing away the fact that she was intentionally and 100% lying to you on a daily basis to hide this behavior. Don't enable this person. If you actually want to be with this person and help her, you need to hold her accountable and not enable her. You told her that I will help her get herself healthy if that is what she wants. I'm going to stop you right there. You cannot help her get herself healthy. She is the only person that can get herself healthy. You can help create an environment where she could flourish if she takes the right actions, but you cannot do it for her. You told her that I will support her through this as she does the work.

That if she chooses to not get better, that I can't be a part of that and that I would leave. And that she needs to get better for her, not for me or her children, and that she needs to make choices. She needs to make the choice of her own free will. within an hour she had contacted a facility and made arrangements to voluntarily enter treatment for a month. She told me about the decision, and I asked what we needed to do before she left the next morning. She said that she needed to go to Target and get some things that the facility told her she needed to bring. So she got in the car and left the house around noon. I spoke with her via phone several times over the next 10 hours.

She kept making excuses for not coming home. She needed to get away. She was on the phone with family, on the phone with the facility, talked. talking with work, talking with her mom, et cetera. By about 8 p.m., I was talking to an obviously inebriated individual. At 10 p.m., her children and ex-husband didn't see that coming, did you? Neither did I. Dropped her off.

I was angry at her for lying again, and I was angry at me for trusting her. I didn't say anything, but my face impostor showed how angry I was. Cue the final fight. I really did try to stay calm and just convince her to sleep it off. But four hours later, she finally passed out. The next morning, she was the sweet woman I had grown to love, asking me for forgiveness and telling me that she was going to get healthy and be the best woman ever for me. I told her that she needs to be the best woman for her, not for me. She got on a plane to enter treatment.

I think that last statement right there that you said to her is critical. You told her that she needs to be the best woman for her, not for you. Now to the question. What do I do now? The relationship has obviously changed. It can't go back to the way it was. Can a relationship step back and or start over? I don't think it can, but I'm often wrong.

Can I trust her again? Should I trust her again? I was part of the problem, an unwitting part for sure, but my ignorance contributed and enabled her alcoholism. Is it selfish of me to want to continue this relationship? Is ending the relationship abandoning her? And if I do decide to end the relationship when and how to pull that shit off? Who, wow.

Okay. Can a relationship step back and or start over? Yes, I think it can, and you mentioned it just a little bit later in the following sentence. Can I trust her again? I think it's based off of trust. Before I forget, if I were you, I'm assuming you know which treatment facilities she went to, I would go ahead and call and double check to make sure that she's actually there. And that hasn't decided somewhere along the way, maybe just get fucked up on the airplane and just go on a bender somewhere else.

or check in for a little bit. It sounds like detoxing is going to be a large issue for her. So I would stay in very direct contact with that facility just to make sure that the person you seem to love is actually following through with what they said. Because if they're not, then no. There's no way that this relationship could continue on because she's violated your trust multiple times. The fastest way, in my opinion, to violate trust and remove trust to a point where it just never comes back is to say one thing and do another. Right? How do you build trust? You say one thing and you do that thing over and over and over again. That's a deposit in your trust account. Withdraw would be say one thing, do another. So check in on her. Is it selfish of me to want to continue this relationship? No, I don't think so. I'm sure that she has her moments. But when you describe her as the sweet woman that you fell in love with, that may not actually be who she is anymore. alcoholism can get its hooks into people and the glimpse of the sweet woman might be who she actually

wants to be, but depending on how deep she is because she can't maintain that, it's not who she is anymore. So I can understand wanting to say with that person, what I think you need to do is a risk versus reward matrix on what it's worth to you. And the biggest piece of advice that I'll give you is you need to set boundaries. And when they are, are crossed, if they are crossed, you need to hold fast to what you said that you were going to do. I've said this so many times on the podcast, do not light yourself on fire to keep somebody else warm. She has to go through this journey. Can you go through it with her? No, you can't go through it with her, but you can be there while she is going through it and you can be there to support her.

But if you enable, if you ignore warning signs, all you're doing is lighting yourself on fire to try to keep her warm because you care for her. I can understand looking at it through that lens. You're like, God, I love this person so much. I want to do everything I can to help. But the things you may be doing might actually be very destructive towards them. You have to set boundaries and you have to hold those boundaries. Is ending the relationship abandoning her? No. If her behavior doesn't change, that's her abandoning you. That's you looking out for the only thing that you can control, which is yourself. And I would hope that if you do that, you try to find a way to become the most healthy, happy, and empowered version of yourself.

So no, it's not abandoning her. You know, there's only so much you can do for people. And what I'll tell you is, and this is a, this happens in real life. What do drowning people do? They try to pull other people down with them. There are plenty of people who have gone out to try to rescue somebody who is drowning that ended up getting pulled under with them. Don't be that person.

If you decide the end of relationship, when and how do you? you pull that shit off? How about very directly? This is who I am. This is who I thought you were. This is what I thought we were going to be. You have shown that you are unable of being that person, and I'm out. Turn around, walk off, and live your fucking life. And that's all I got for Friday.