Drug tests. Revolving doors of rehabs. On and off the street. Judges, and parole officers — to families waiting and hoping for something to change. When a loved one’s treatment is dictated by external forces, why doesn’t it “work”, and what does it look like when it does?

Dr. Sheila Vakharia — researcher, social worker, and author of The Harm Reduction Gap — has worked inside outpatient treatment centers, drug courts, and needle exchange programs, giving her a rare, ground-level view of what actually helps people survive addiction, what gets in the way, and the power families have.

Together we dig into:

• Why addiction is the only health condition where people are expected to be "cured" before treatment even starts

• The stigma around methadone and buprenorphine — and why they're not "trading one drug for another"

• How the criminal legal system can be both a lifeline and a barrier to real care

• Why courts, insurance gaps, and fear-based messaging keep failing families

• What families can actually do — from local pharmacy advocacy to sharing your story with lawmakers and media

📘Download our FREE, sibling e-book: 6 actions to help navigate a sibling’s substance use journey

🤝Join our FREE and PRIVATE sibling-focused community: Siblings For Love of Recovery

📲Connect with FLOR: Instagram and TikTok

🎙Guest speaker: Dr. Sheila Vakharia, author and Deputy Director of the Department of Research and Academic Engagement at the Drug Policy Alliance 

Episode resources:

• Sheila’s book: The Harm Reduction Gap: Helping Individuals Left Behind by Conventional Drug Prevention and Abstinence-Only Treatment

• Read how you can advocate for your loved one: One parent’s story
  

When someone you love is struggling with addiction, it's easy to feel like you only have two options: fix it or walk away. But there's a third path—and it starts with understanding that while you can't force recovery, you're not powerless either.

In this episode, I'm joined by Pam Lanhart, founder and executive director of Thrive Family Recovery Resources, a nonprofit supporting families affected by substance use and addiction. Pam is the daughter, sister, and mother of loved ones who have struggled with addiction, and after losing her son Jake, she's dedicated her life to helping families create the conditions for lasting recovery through compassionate, evidence-based approaches.

Together, we discuss:

• Why "tough love" often creates more chaos than change
• What CRAFT and Invitation to Change are—and how families can use them
• The role shame plays in relapse, especially during family visits
• How to set firm boundaries without damaging the relationship
• What ambivalence really means—and why it isn't the same as not wanting recovery
• The neuroscience behind behavior change and building new neural pathways
• Practical ways to respond during moments of crisis without becoming the fixer or crisis manager

Whether you're a parent, sibling, partner, or friend, this conversation will help you better understand addiction recovery, communicate more effectively, and support your loved one without losing yourself in the process.

If you've ever felt like you were failing someone you love, this episode is for you. You're not powerless—and you don't have to navigate family recovery alone.

📘 Download our FREE, sibling e-book: 6 actions to help navigate a sibling’s substance use journey

🤝 Join our FREE and PRIVATE sibling-focused community: Siblings For Love of Recovery

📲 Connect with FLOR: Instagram and TikTok

🎙 Guest speaker: Pam Lanhart, founder and executive director of Thrive Family Recovery Resources

Episode resources:

• Join Thrive’s Family Support Facebook Group

• About the Invitation to Change (ITC) method

• About CRAFT 
  

When one child is struggling with addiction, the fear and focus can consume everything — but what happens to the other kids in the house, the siblings who are angry, the ones who seem fine but aren't?

In this episode, Kathleen Cochran, a mother and founder of Moms For All Paths to Recovery talks about one of the hardest and least-discussed realities of family addiction: how do you show up for all of your children when one of them is in crisis?

Kathleen speaks honestly about the impossible triage of parenting under pressure — protecting one child while not losing another, supporting the siblings who are angry, grieving, or quietly holding everything together, and recognizing the weight carried by the child who always seemed fine.

She also opens up about the guilt that comes with realizing you unintentionally forced your other children to grow up too soon and carry the burden of being the parentified child.

This episode is for parents in the thick of trying to save their child but realize their other children need their support too, and parents who are ready to rebuild their relationship with their kids.

📘 Download our FREE, sibling e-book: 6 actions to help navigate a sibling’s substance use journey

🤝Join our FREE and PRIVATE sibling-focused community: Siblings For Love of Recovery

📲Connect with FLOR: Instagram and TikTok

🎙Guest speaker: Kathleen Cochran, founder of "Moms for All Paths to Recovery" Group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/momsforallpaths/ 

Join our live discussion on July 1st at 4pm EST / 7pm PST 

Learn about how Narcan (Naloxone) saves lives: https://www.cdc.gov/opioids/naloxone.html 

Is Al-Anon and 12-Step the best approach for families navigating their loved one’s addiction? The pressure to issue ultimatums or cut them off entirely can feel like the only path forward. But what if the advice you've been given is outdated, incomplete, not for you, or just wrong?

In this episode, Jane Mackey, CEO and founder of We The Village and certified family coach, challenges what families are told about loving someone through addiction, and how to move beyond the 12-step approach used in Al-Anon and Nar-Anon. 

Jane found CRAFT (Community Reinforcement and Family Training) after desperately searching for real tools to help someone she loved, and has since built an accessible family coaching program around it.

Together, we get into:

• Why "tough love" and "rock bottom" became the default, and where they actually fall short

• The enabling myth: how to tell the difference between hurting and helping

• How to respond to their substance use without losing control

• Why cutting someone off makes it harder for them to get help and can reduce your influence over their recovery

• Whether CRAFT and 12-step can coexist, or if they're fundamentally at odds

• How families report feeling less anxious and depressed through CRAFT — even when their loved one never gets help

If you've ever felt like you're choosing between abandoning someone you love and losing yourself entirely, this episode is for you.

We The Village is offering listeners 20% off their programs — use code FLOR at wethevillage.co

📘Download our FREE, sibling e-book: 6 actions to help navigate a sibling’s substance use journey

🤝Join our FREE and PRIVATE sibling-focused community: Siblings For Love of Recovery

📲Connect with FLOR: Instagram and TikTok
🎙Guest speaker: Jane Macky, founder and CEO of We The Village

This episode is for anyone navigating a sibling's addiction, early sobriety, or the complicated road of family recovery.

A year ago, I wasn't sure where my brother Justin would be today — or if he'd make it to his 21st birthday.

This episode, releasing in honor of National Sibling Day (April 10th), is one I've been waiting to record for a long time. Justin is 21, one year sober, and six months into a long-term young adult treatment program — and for the first time, he's sharing his story of addiction and early sobriety in his own words.

We recorded this together during a family visit upstate, and what came out of it was more honest, more raw, and more hopeful than I could have scripted.

We talk about:

• What the past year of young adult addiction recovery has actually looked like — the hard parts and the proud ones
• How drug addiction shaped his relationships, his sense of self, and what friendship even means
• The loneliness and shame in early sobriety that don't get talked about enough
• What he wishes people understood about addiction before judging someone going through it

📘Download our FREE, sibling e-book: 6 actions to help navigate a sibling’s substance use journey

🤝Join our FREE and PRIVATE sibling-focused community: Siblings For Love of Recovery

📲Connect with FLOR: Instagram and TikTok

🎙Guest speaker: Justin Dajer

Related content:

• Episode: My brother’s addiction: Learning how to be his sister—not mom
  

Addiction is hard. But the stories we tell about it can make it even harder.

When someone you love is struggling with substance use, the questions feel endless: 

Do they deserve my love right now?

Am I enabling them?

Should I cut them off?

In this episode, we unpack one of the most dangerous parts of addiction — the narrative around it. Because sometimes what harms our loved ones isn’t just the substances. It’s the shame. The labels. The fear-driven decisions. The belief that love must be earned.

In this episode with Joseph Green, a person in recovery and spoken word artist, we explore 5 powerful mindset shifts that can change how you show up:

• Moving from “deserving” to inherent worth

• Treating addiction as a mental health condition — not a moral failue

• Reframing “enabling” vs. compassionate care and harm reduction

• Rethinking cutting someone off vs. being there when they’re ready

• Choosing people-first language over labels like “junkie” or “addict”

If you’ve ever felt torn between protecting yourself and loving someone through addiction, this conversation will challenge you to look at the story you’re telling — about them and about yourself.

📘Download our FREE, sibling e-book: 6 actions to help navigate a sibling’s substance use journey

🤝Join our FREE and PRIVATE sibling-focused community: Siblings For Love of Recovery

📲Connect with FLOR: Instagram and TikTok

🎙Guest speaker: Joseph Green

Related content:

• About LMS Voice: https://lmsvoice.com/productions/

• Start WIth Hope stories: https://startwithhope.com/stories-of-hope

• Take the Stories of Hope course and own your story: https://ncmwpic.learnupon.com/store/4553158-stories-of-hope-a-value-centered-approach-to-storytelling
  

If your sibling is sober, or you’ve finally put those boundaries up, but you still feel on edge, you’re not alone.

Many siblings experience lingering anxiety after addiction—even when life finally feels calm. The chaos may be gone, but your body hasn’t caught up.

In this episode, Shahem McLaurin digs into what happens after the crisis phase ends: why your nervous system stays on high alert, how years of unpredictability create hypervigilance, and why “nothing happening” can feel unsafe. We also explore boundaries, trust, and learning to feel safe again in recovery—at your own pace.

This conversation is for siblings who are tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop and want language for what they’re feeling.

📘Download our FREE, sibling e-book: 6 actions to help navigate a sibling’s substance use journey

🤝Join our FREE and PRIVATE sibling-focused community: Siblings For Love of Recovery

📲Connect with FLOR: Instagram and TikTok

🎙Guest speaker: Shahem Mclaurin

Related content:

• Book: “It Didn’t Start With You” by Mark Wolynn 

What does it mean to grieve a parent who is still alive—but was never able to show up the way you needed?

In this episode, Marci Hopkins shares how childhood abuse, emotional neglect, and a parent’s addiction quietly shaped her relationship with alcohol—and how drinking became a way to survive grief she didn’t yet have language for.

For years, Marci’s drinking didn’t look extreme or chaotic. It looked normal. It looked functional. It looked like coping.

As many people enter Dry January questioning their own relationship with alcohol, this conversation offers a deeper lens—one that moves beyond willpower or labels and into the emotional roots of why we drink.

We talk about:

• How alcohol can become a socially acceptable way to numb unresolved trauma
• Grieving the parent you needed, not just the one you had
• Why addiction often masks deeper grief and unmet childhood needs
• Letting go of the hope that someone will one day become who you needed them to be
• Finding peace and sobriety without the closure you thought you’d need
  

This episode is for anyone who has loved someone struggling with addiction, questioned their own drinking, or felt the quiet, complicated grief of losing someone—while they’re still alive.

📘Download our FREE, sibling e-book: 6 actions to help navigate a sibling’s substance use journey

🤝Join our FREE and PRIVATE sibling-focused community: Siblings For Love of Recovery

📲Connect with FLOR: Instagram and TikTok

🎙Guest speaker: Marci Hopkins

Related content:

• Marci’s book: “Chaos to Clarity: Seeing the Signs and Breaking the Cycles”

• Family resources: Shatterproof

• Find a family group: Al-Anon Family Groups

What if everything you’ve been taught about recovery is wrong?

What if the thing your family fears —medication—might actually be the one thing that could help save your loved one’s life?

You might recognize names like methadone, suboxone, sublocade, buprenorphine, and others.

In this episode, we strip away the sugarcoating and talk honestly about how these work, and what exactly medically assisted treatment (MAT) is: what it does, why it works, and why so many families still judge it. We dig into the hard truths—how detox alone sets people up to fail, how shame keeps loved ones stuck, and how MAT creates the chemical stability that recovery literally cannot happen without.

We confront the biggest stigma head-on: “Isn’t this just swapping one drug for another?” And we break down, in real language, why that belief is not only outdated—but dangerous.

If you’re a sibling or family member watching someone you love fight addiction, this episode gives you the clarity you’ve been craving and the honesty you deserve.

You’ll walk away with:

• The real science behind MAT and why it stabilizes the brain when nothing else does
• A breakdown of the biggest stigmas, including why the “one drug for another” myth does more harm than good
• What recovery actually requires beyond detox, tough love, or willpower
• Clear ways to support your loved one without shame, judgment, or outdated beliefs

📘Download our FREE, sibling e-book: 6 actions to help navigate a sibling’s substance use journey

🤝Join our FREE and PRIVATE sibling-focused community: Siblings For Love of Recovery

📲Connect with FLOR: Instagram and TikTok

🎙Guest speaker: Dr. Sarah Nasir, DO

Related content:

• Watch Dr. Nasir break down “Opioid Addiction & 3 Phases of Treatment”
• Download her Opioid Recovery Guide
  

“How’s your brother? How are your parents?”

Sound familiar?

If you’ve ever felt like people are quick to ask about the loved one struggling with substance use—but rarely ask how you’re doing—you’re not alone. Or maybe they jump straight into offering advice.

I know that feeling well. In this episode, I’m answering the questions I get asked most about my brother’s addiction—and the ones I wish people asked instead.

The ones I hear all the time sound like:

• “Do you think he’s ready for treatment this time?”

• “What caused him to use?”

• “Is your family doing better now?”

But those aren’t the questions I wish people asked.

Because it’s not about blame—it’s about being seen.

This episode is for every sibling who’s tired of being the messenger, the fixer, or the spokesperson. It’s for the ones who want to talk about their relationship with their sibling as they see it—not through the lens of addiction, but through love, boundaries, and truth.

📘Download our FREE, sibling e-book: 6 actions to help navigate a sibling’s substance use journey

🤝Join our FREE and PRIVATE sibling-focused community: Siblings For Love of Recovery

📲Connect with FLOR: Instagram and TikTok