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Addiction - How to live with and love an addict with Intervention Specialist Rob Lohman

In this episode of The Fallible Man, Rob C Lohman uncovers the hidden depths of addiction and helps us understand the nuances of living with and loving an addict, and how to recognize when someone is struggling with a dependency on something.
 
You w...

In this episode of The Fallible Man, Rob C Lohman uncovers the hidden depths of addiction and helps us understand the nuances of living with and loving an addict, and how to recognize when someone is struggling with a dependency on something.

 

You will learn:

1. What is the most important thing if you think you may have a struggling addict in your life?

2. How to Reach them BEFORE they hit Rock Bottom

3. How can we create healthy boundaries around addictions, dependencies, and misuses?

 

Rob C Lohman is an intervention specialist and author of the book "Addiction Intervention: A Guide to Helping Loved Ones Get Help". He works with men to help them put their lives back together, from those in the prison system to those recovering from addictions. Rob Specializes in Family Interventions and is the host of Lifted from the Rut and Beyond the Bars Radio

 

Rob's new book:

The Addiction Intervention Book: 11 Breakthrough Strategies for Professionals and Families to Help Clients and Loved Ones Discover FREEDOM From Addiction

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B5NTC6T1/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1657482142&sr=1-1

 

www.RecoverWithRob.com

https://liftedfromtherut.com/

 

 

 The video version of this show is available on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@thefalliblemanpodcast

and Rumble! https://rumble.com/c/c-2176422

 

Register for our Live or Virtual Conference “The Phoenix Men’s Conference”

https://www.thefallibleman.com/thephoenix

 

Fallible Man Coaching Services:

If you need some help conquering your goals, building a plan and seeking the life you want to live you can find me at www.thefalliblmean.com/coaching and schedule a discovery call and work with me directly.

 

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Transcript

[00:00:00]


Rob, what is the most important thing you want people to take away from this conversation? If you're asking the question of do I have a pRoblem? Or does my loved one have a pRoblem, it's pRobably time to start looking at solutions. So reach out to someone in your local community. Reach out to me.


[00:00:16]


But if you're asking the question, there's pRobably a pRoblem. Here's the million dollar question. How do men like us reach our full potential potential and grow into the men we dream of being while taking care of our responsibilities, working, being good husbands, fathers, and still take care of ourselves? That's the question in this podcast will help you with those answers. My name is Brent, and welcome to the Fallible Man Podcast.


[00:00:42]


Welcome to the Fallible Man podcast. You're home for all things man, husband and father. Big shout out to the The Fallible Man LLC. You guys make the shows possible. And a warm welcome to our first time listeners.


[00:00:51]


My name is Brent, and today my special guest is author, coach and speaker Rob Lohman. Rob is not visiting the show for the very first time. Rob has been on our manly Monday show, but today we're really going to dig in with him on the podcast and get into this. So, Rob, welcome to the show. Hey, excited to be here?


[00:01:09]


For sure, man. Always good to see your face and excited for what you're doing, so keep up. Good work. Rob, I'm excited to have you on. We did a Q and A on the live stream, and that was great, and I really appreciate you answering questions for my audience and helping them out there.


[00:01:23]


I'm looking forward to digging in a little more here on this setting, but I don't give a big introduction because it just doesn't tell people who you are. So, in your own words, who is Rob Lowman? Let me grab my bio real quick so I remember who I am. Yeah, I love that, too. It's just kind of free flowing, and that's great.


[00:01:39]


First and foremost for me, I come from just an awesome history of chaos and have learned how to navigate that chaos, but the roles I get to play here on Earth, a father. I've been married 16 years to celebrate 16 years. I'm sorry. I'm a husband. I celebrated 16 years.


[00:01:56]


I'm a father, and I have a 15 year old son and twelve year old daughter, and they're just awesome kids. My son just started driving, so pray for me, which is one of those scenarios, and I'm just a recovery advocate. I've been through a lot myself, and we'll get into that, but just I have a heart for helping people get out of their ruts in life and just live a better life because we're made for something better than we believe that we are. So, yeah, I'm just passionate about helping people. Awesome.


[00:02:23]


Rob, the important question on the show. What's your favorite ice cream. Oh, mint chocolate chip. Actually, cancel that, because right now it is bluebell peppermint ice cream. I just saw it at King Supers recently for the holidays, and that is my favorite all time, but it's only seasonal.


[00:02:39]


But outside of that is mint chocolate chicken. You hate that seasonal thing. It's a small grace for some of us, right? If they had some of that ice cream all year round, it'd be a lot bigger. Well, the thing is, it used to not come out until, like, a couple of weeks before Christmas.


[00:02:55]


It's November, whatever it is, and it's already here. It was kind of sad to see it here this early because it's kind of the excitement. But I have freezer space, so we'll keep some of the rest of you. I walked by the beer section just not an hour ago. I was at the supermarket with my daughter.


[00:03:10]


She's like, what are you looking for, dad? I said, when it starts getting cold, the dark brews come out, and that's what Daddy likes anyway. So she's like, Why only when it starts getting cold? I was like, that's a great question, honey, but apparently it's a seasonal thing.


[00:03:25]


How old is your daughter again? The oldest one is ten. There you go. She knows what beer I drink. I don't drink a ton, but she knows when I drink beer.


[00:03:35]


I only drink really dark beers. But she thought it was just hilarious that there was seasonal beer. She understands seasonal flowers and stuff, but seasonal beer kind of like that's weird. Yeah. Have you ever had nitro coffee?


[00:03:52]


Yes. Being so over 20 years, I had my first nitro coffee. It was a hot summer day. I was sitting with a client outside this coffee shop, and I got a nitro beer. And I swear, like, three quarters of the way into it, I'm still trying to convince myself it's not beer.


[00:04:07]


I was Guinness. It was my thing. And I'm drinking. I'm like, this has to be beer. It's not.


[00:04:11]


But anyway, so I love nitro. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm not a big Starbucks fan, but they're nitro coal brew, dude. It is.


[00:04:21]


It's Guinness in the cup first thing in the morning. It's amazing. Yeah. Good stuff. I love it, and I just like the flavor, and I don't feel bad about it that way.


[00:04:31]


Yeah. There you go. Rob, you got two podcasts. Tell us a little bit about your shows. Yeah, beyond the Bars Radio was one that started about four and a half years ago, which is actually featured in Podcast magazine, which was really humbling and really cool.


[00:04:44]


And Addiction, Freedom, and Faith is when I started in 2020, and I love that one as well. Okay, now, Rob, you have an incredible story. So to really tee up the rest of the episode, just take us through and crash course through your story. I will. And hey, can I give your audience a free gift real quick and while you get in the story.


[00:05:07]


Yeah, absolutely. Because I know some people tap in, look at recovery stuff, and it's whatever. So it's go to free recoverybook.com. Just go to free recoverybook.com. It'll change throughout the years.


[00:05:19]


But there's something cool there right now. Yeah, but I'm going to give people my rap sheet. So if you were to look at the history of my life, which, thank God, I'm not defined by my past, I'm not defined by my past at all, but it shaped me to who I am today. But if you look at my wrap sheet, we have divorce, double bankruptcy, we have substance abuse, addiction, suicide, prison, incarceration, freedom, recovery, transformation, living an awesome life. So it's a big chaos where people can find some identifying points in that as well.


[00:05:48]


But, yeah, my life was riddled with addiction, and thank God it's not riddled with addiction anymore. So that's where it all started, was way back when. I'm a cornucopia addict is what I was. So, yeah, I had a whole bunch of bunch of addictions. Okay, you managed to define cornucopia addict for me.


[00:06:06]


Yeah, cornucopia is like when you go to Thanksgiving, right, and they have that little thing out in the middle of the table, and it has, like, the grapes and the orange and just like, this cornucopia fruits and stuff. It's just a plethora. So that was kind of my life. I'm like, I'll take a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and it was ugly. It was ugly for way too long.


[00:06:26]


Now, if you could have a conversation with anybody in history, past, present, future, live or dead, who would that be and why? Well, the story I wrote about in college once is I wanted to meet Flipper, the Flipper of the Dolphin. If anybody ever saw that one, that was who I really wanted to spend time with and actually got a little award for it when I wrote the article, which was really cool. But really, for me, if I were to sit down with anybody in history and thinking through that kind of hardcore, I would love to sit down with Jesus and just talk to Him. That would be ideal for me, just based on how I'm made up.


[00:07:02]


But just a year, like, what was he thinking? All the aspects of that. And there's a lot of interesting things about him in the journey of his life. So that's who I would love to sit down with. And if we're getting more, like, kind of not faith driven and all that stuff, I think I would like to sit down with gosh, that's a great question.


[00:07:20]


Well, I'm blanking right now. How many people actually know the answer to that question when you ask? I've gotten Jesus, like, three times in a row with that one. That's the winning answer. Yeah, well, he's on my shirt right now.


[00:07:31]


I got that going there right but I would love to. I don't know. I'm going to have to come back. I have to think about that one. That's crazy.


[00:07:39]


I'm drawing a blank. I'm usually more creative than this, but I guess I'm not today. But that would be my start. Let's go with Jesus. There you go.


[00:07:46]


That's fair. I laugh because now doing this for a couple of years now, right. I've been in the hot seat enough times that I have an appreciation for some of the questions I ask. And one of my guests was like, well, I'm figuring out who would you sit with? And I was like, no, I get it.


[00:08:04]


It's a hard question. Yeah. Because there's so many things that start flipping through your head, like, no, that guy is still alive. That guy's still alive. That guy's still alive.


[00:08:11]


Since we're talking about people that are dead, I'm like, gosh, I don't really. Know anybody in history, past, present, future. Living or dead, anybody. Okay. I usually go history, and I go to death, and that's kind of like, boom.


[00:08:25]


What would that be like? But I love to sit down with Jack Nicholas and talk to him about his life. The guy has lived a pretty interesting life. Yeah. I always liked following, but yeah, just what a fascinating person.


[00:08:36]


And just all that he's done and just kind of follow his son on social media a little bit, too. But that'd be kind of cool. Okay. Yeah. I mean, there's no wrong answer.


[00:08:45]


It's one of those things that you just like, oh, man, there's a lot of really interesting people out there. You think of all the people who have come and gone, the Einstein, the Teslas, Lincolns, all these amazing people in history, how much of our life world is affected by DaVinci? Right? There's no wrong answer. I will spend the question and say, who wouldn't I want to sit down with and see how long that list gets really fast.


[00:09:20]


I don't want to be in a room with that guy, that girl, that guy. Anyway, so thank you for the pondering question. I think about a lot more tonight. Oh, I wish I would have said this when we were talking today, but. It'S one of those you're going to sit up in the middle of night, like the perfect answer was the perfect answer.


[00:09:35]


And I'm going to email you and say, here you go. If it happens, I'm going to shoot you an email. You do it. I'll update it in show notes. And Rob email me at 130 in the morning.


[00:09:47]


And this is what he said. It's the perfect answer. Yeah. There you go. Rob, you know, you do you do work with men who are trying to put their lives back together.


[00:09:58]


Everyone from men who have spent time in jail or may still be around prison system, men who are recovering from different kinds of addictions. There is a lot out there right now that is just hammering at our lives. We were talking before we started rolling the camera about addiction. Used to be something you thought about as alcoholics or drug addicts, but there's just so much fighting for our time and so many things that are just hitting those dopamine centers and grabbing people. Social media, porn, addiction.


[00:10:31]


How do we square with it all?


[00:10:36]


What is something that will help us not even start down some of those roads? Yeah, it's fascinating because there's, like, substance abuse addictions, and then there's process addictions and substance abuse. We got to put something in our body. Heroin we got to put in our body. We have to get drunk to experience being drunk.


[00:10:54]


But when you deal with things like sex, porn, shopping, gaming, things like that, they all stem from the same reward center, process center of the brain. But the unique thing about those is I can't get drunk if I don't drink. Right. I can't get high if I don't go smoke pot right. But with food, people have food addictions.


[00:11:16]


We still have to eat. So it's learning. How do you have a healthy relationship with food? It's about relationships and gambling addictions. It's how do you learn how to have a healthy relationship with money?


[00:11:27]


Because we still got to pay bills and use money to pay things right? And then the other thing, when you have, like, sex porn and intimacy addictions, we still have to be in a relationship with people. So we have to learn how to have healthy relationships around all those kind of different avenues. And social media, it's around TVs. They're around.


[00:11:45]


But how do we have healthy boundaries? And some people don't like the word addiction. I don't know about you, but it's like, I'm not an addict. I don't have an addiction. And the way I spin that, when I do interventions or coaching, I say, okay, maybe you don't have an addiction, but do you have a dependency on, whatever, your phone?


[00:12:03]


Do you have a dependency on TV? Do you have a dependency on alcohol or drugs? We have a dependency on it, but I'm not an addict. I was like, all right, we got a starting point, got a foot in the door. Let's start the conversation there, and then we'll get to the addiction part.


[00:12:16]


Maybe later, right? Let's start with, okay, well, maybe you spend a little much time on it. We will say addicted, but maybe a little. That was a wake up call for me. And I think I told you I ran the numbers and commands and found that I spent three years of my life playing one certain game.


[00:12:34]


That's a shocking number, isn't it? Dude, I can't even fathom three years of my life just gone on that. And I mean, that was sobering. I stopped playing that day. I was done.


[00:12:46]


That was enough to get my attention. But I had no idea that I was spending that kind of time on it. I had no idea that I was playing it that often that I felt, like, compelled to play. I was just having fun, but I didn't know. But it became really just blatantly obvious when I looked at that number.


[00:13:06]


It was like, oh, this is pRobably not the best choice of my life right now. Wow. Right. So no one goes into thinking into something going, I'm going to get stuck on this. I'm going to develop an issue with this.


[00:13:24]


Right? Yeah. And then the Addiction intervention book I published this year, I came up with a chart in there, and it talks about how it's just kind of fun. Like drinking is kind of fun or whatever. Looking at porn is kind of fun or over shopping is kind of it's kind of fun in the beginning.


[00:13:41]


Right. Innocent. And then it becomes this kind of dependency. Right. It's like, Well, I got to have it.


[00:13:46]


I got to do it. Or what happens? I'm running out or the Internet went out. What do I do now? The liquor stores are closing.


[00:13:54]


I got to get to the store. So this kind of dependency starts happening, and then we have this misuse, and then before we know it, yeah, we're full on addicted, or it's just taken over our life. And then what happens? It's either someone's going to intervene in your life, whether you it's kind of the thing of either you can make the choice to change or someone else will make the choice for you. And I would personally rather make the choice myself instead of the cops, my wife, my neighbor, someone else making the call.


[00:14:26]


And of course, I get that all the time in the intervention work I do. It's like well, it's like someone else is going to make that decision for you today. So if people are kicking the can around a little bit too much, reach out for someone locally for some help and just say, hey, I may have a pRoblem, and start nipping it right now instead of waiting until someone else intervenes in your life for you. Rob can we pause for a second and talk about because we do have some people don't like the word addiction. We have this negative connotation, and we automatically prejudge into some really bad ideas and images.


[00:15:00]


Can we stop for a second and talk about where addiction starts, why people get addicted to things? What is your experience with that? Yeah, there's definitely a range. I mean, some people start drinking or using or whatever because they've had some serious trauma and they're just afraid of what's going to happen, so they just numb it. And it feels good to numb it.


[00:15:21]


Right. And it's a numbing mechanism. I'm starting to feel the trauma of what happened, and I'm drunk because I don't have to think about it. But obviously the pRoblems there in the morning again. So for some people, it's something real traumatic and they don't know how to handle it in drugs and alcohol or whatever it might be.


[00:15:37]


Really bring a place of peace for them and just, okay, I don't have to think about it anymore. I'm just going to sit in this moment right now. And so that's what a lot of people think about, is something happened. Therefore we started over drinking and now we're an addict or drunk or whatever all the time. But for some people, it just starts out I mean, for me, it started out with this allure of just drinking.


[00:16:01]


It was just fun. I saw my parents do it and people at the lake house, and it was just this fun thing, right? And then I had to start sneaking it around. So then that becomes a pRoblem because I'm starting to sneak. I don't know about you, but I used to take the cooler's light in the front of the refrigerator, and there was another one in the back of the refrigerator, and I would move it to the front of the fridge so my parents couldn't tell someone, drink a cooler's light or something.


[00:16:25]


And it was just that idea. So if people are doing that right now, obviously there's some kind of pRoblem because we're starting to hide things and starting to lie. So that would be the initial part of if you're hiding stuff, it might be time to start looking at it now instead of waiting until you're just hiding it all the time. I think that's a really great idea. If you feel like you can't share it and be open about it, then maybe you need to start asking questions.


[00:16:53]


I smoked for years. I didn't realize how much I needed it until I tried to quit. I didn't take a pack of cigarettes with me one night to work. One of my colleagues was going to bring me back of those electronic blue cigarettes because he knew I wanted to try and quit. And he was like, well, hey, you can have mine.


[00:17:09]


I paid for the whole set up with the charger and everything. They weren't for me, but if you haven't tried that before, I was like, yeah, man, that'd be great. So he said he was going to bring it in. He forgot to bring it in. Oh, no.


[00:17:22]


And that was the supervisor. And like an hour and a half into our shift, my three guys that worked under me were like, george is going to the store because if you don't get a cigarette, you're going to kill us or we're going to kill you. We're not sure which because we just can't deal with you right now. And I was like, oh, guys, I'm so sorry. I'll run to the store.


[00:17:46]


My friend was like, no, I told you I bring this. I would take care of it. This is on me. So I'm going to go get you a pack, and tomorrow I will bring you those ecigarettes. But, you know, I didn't I never knew.


[00:17:58]


Right? I didn't know I needed needed it until I tried to not need it. It was just something I did at work. It was something that made me feel a little better at time to stress down. So it's amazing how things creep in, but it's never I wasn't smoking because I wanted to smoke, necessarily.


[00:18:19]


I liked cigarettes. I was smoking because I needed to bring the stress down. It was a coping mechanism for the stress environment. And so I think we get ahead of ourselves sometimes when we see people struggling, especially if we don't have an addict in our lives, to know the story behind that a little more, that we want to go, oh, well, they made their choices. That's how they got well, there were a lot of choices you don't know about to happen there.


[00:18:49]


Yeah. Challenge family members. A lot of times when they call me up for an intervention and say, hey, my husband's smoking too much or shooting too much dope or whatever, whatever the thing is right again. And I'll say, well, okay, as we're going through this, let me ask you a question. They lean in a little bit, like, okay, what's this question going to be?


[00:19:06]


I'll say, Is there something in your life that you can't go without? Oh, diet coach. I love dark chocolate every morning. Like, just something they can't go without. And I'll challenge them.


[00:19:17]


Coffee. Yeah. I'll say I'll challenge them. I'll say, okay, right now, today, as we're approaching to help your loved one, I want to encourage you to don't eat any chocolate today. I'll be like, or don't have any coffee today.


[00:19:29]


Why? That's exactly what we're asking your loved one to do right now, is to don't use the thing they're dependent on, and you have six Diet Cokes a day. Okay, so don't have any Diet Cokes today. And it's like crickets. They start freaking out.


[00:19:44]


I said, just so you know, this is the same journey your loved ones getting ready to go through. I know it's harming them, but they're dependent on it, just like you are with that, and it's a big eye opener. Like, I never thought of it that way. So yeah, so it's not that easy to just go, just quit drinking. Just turn off your phone and quit looking at porn.


[00:20:05]


Just don't go to the casino. It's just not that easy. So I try to open family members eyes, too, and kind of like, I didn't think of it that way before. I don't think a lot of us realize that most of us have those seemingly harmless things in our lives. Right.


[00:20:25]


I drink a ton of coffee, and I can go days without drinking coffee. I don't like to, but I can. I'm not dependent on it, and I cannot drink it. I prefer to have it because I like coffee. Right.


[00:20:38]


But I mean, we all have those things as like, oh, wait, you want me to get rid of that? Oh, wait, we don't think about it. We don't think about it as a pRoblem or an addiction because we don't see the harm in it. People scrolling through their phone unendingly. How much of your life are you missing while you're scrolling through that phone?


[00:20:55]


And if I ask you to stop, I love challenging people to take like just a tech dark weekend or something. No phones, no tablets, no TV, no computer, just read a book, go for a walk. And people just can't do it these days. They come unglued. It's like, well, maybe your text is a little too prevalent in your life, man.


[00:21:19]


Well, there's so much freedom to shut it off too. Like the men's group I'm a part of, we go on these silent retreats every year, two or three a year, and maybe go to one or two of them a year, but it's the silent retreat center here in Colorado. And you go down literally, it's like, I mean, this sounds funny. If someone farted in the building, you would hear it because it is just dead silent. There's no phones.


[00:21:40]


People aren't walking around like this. And it's the thing of go to unplug. And I love it because I put a thing on my email and says, I'm not checking emails during this time frame. It might even be during the week. And I'll say, if you send me an email during this time, the auto responder says, send it to me again on Monday because I'm not going to read it.


[00:21:57]


And I don't literally emails will come in and I'll just have this autoresponder or a voice text and say, send your message again or call me back on Monday. And I just unplug. And it's incredible. But it's weird the first several hours to just kind of I don't know, I got to call my wife, or I was like, they know where I am. They can call 911 if they really need me.


[00:22:19]


So, yeah, kudos to you for recognizing that too. But just that moment where you're like, but you said you were going to bring the thing and I can't smoke. And here you're freaking out and but you don't. You're in your own little bubble, right? And the people watching you were like, okay, let's stay away from him for the night because he's kind of being an ass.


[00:22:36]


Oh, yeah, it was bad. I apologize profusely to those guys. So I've worked with him for a long time and it was like, man, but guys, we've been getting to know Rob a little bit so far and talking kind of I wanted to talk with Rob about some general idea of dealing with addiction and where they come from, just to get it in perspective. For the second half of the show, we're going to go ahead and enroll to our sponsors. And when we come back, we're going to get into living with and loving an addict with Rob.


[00:23:07]


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[00:23:29]


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[00:23:48]


All right, guys, we're back with Rob looming, and we're talking about living with and loving an addict. Now, if you have someone in your life who you think might be struggling with some sort of addiction, there's more to that story. And so I encourage you to listen to what Rob has to say today, because it's a bigger picture than a lot of us realized at the time. And Rob has some incredible insights and years of experience in working in interventions and with addicts and with addiction himself. Guys, write these insights down, share this with a loved one who is struggling, and let's get back into it.


[00:24:28]


Rob, what purchase have you made in the last year? $100 or less has had the biggest impact on your life. I'm trying to see which book I have over here. I love to read books, and I don't have it over here right now. Actually.


[00:24:45]


Yeah, hold on a second. Let me pull it out of here. Actually, it's even though I've been cleaning so over 21 years, I'm always trying to grow and learn. But there's this awesome book called Freedom From Addiction by Neil Anderson, and it was one of those moments, like, I got to read this book. I'm excited I had to read it.


[00:25:00]


And then he's one of my all time mentors who's a guy I'd like to meet. This is the guy I wanted to he came to Colorado, and I actually got to sit down with the guy that wrote this in a bunch of other books, but this is the guy I always wanted to meet, and I got to meet him. But his Freedom From Addiction book is, like, awesome rock star material that people could read. That was kind of a cool thing. Yeah.


[00:25:20]


So that was a guy I always wanted to meet, and I got to meet him. So there's one of the answers to the earlier question, but yeah, and that was, what? $21. Book. I hear books a lot, and I get it.


[00:25:33]


I got, like, four of them in front of me off camera that you can't see right here. There's, like, a stack of four books I'm in right now. So books are always a good answer, but it's amazing. You know, some people I had one guy who found a particular brand of shorts, and he bought, like, 14 pairs because he bought one for under $100. That's pretty cool.


[00:25:53]


Well, no, he bought one for under $100. Okay, got you. Anyway, so amazing that he actually bought, like, a dozen plus more pairs of this. I was like, well, how much they cost? He's like, oh, they're only, like, $60.


[00:26:04]


Yeah. What pair of shorts is that? Amazing that you buy over a dozen pairs at $60 a piece. He's just a dirty guy, too.


[00:26:18]


Here's one more thing over here. I'm going to grab it off my wallet and show you. Yeah, I'm still here, but it's the boomerang. The boomerang. All right, we're back on now.


[00:26:27]


So I bought this boomerang. Okay. It came from Lithuania. And on the boomerang, it just has my business ministry logo, but just as restoring hope, identity, and purpose to the addicted. So I invested a lot of money into a business coach that was not under $100, but he's like, everything you do in your life, for all your business people out there, it should boomerang people back to you.


[00:26:53]


Back to you for business. Back to you to help provide resources to people to go get help from other people. So I have this thing on my wall right now. I've not thrown it because I don't want to break it, but it's the first boomerang I ever purchased, and it's actually really cool. So anytime I go to, like, events or something, I have people sign the back of it.


[00:27:12]


But it's on my wall. Right here is a reminder that not just to bring people back to me for business, but to bring people back to me so I can get them to people that can help them in the areas of the country that they're in. Okay. Very symbolic. Very cool.


[00:27:26]


Yeah, it's a cool concept. Thanks. One of the things that caught my attention when we first started talking was your focus on the people around the person struggling with addiction, whether it's family or their friends, whatever loved ones are surrounding them, your devotion to helping them. And this is more important now, as we talked about, there's just more and more things that people are struggling for as they recoil from their life for whatever reason. And so the chances are most of our listeners right now know somebody who is struggling with some kind of addiction, whether they realize it or not, right?


[00:28:08]


Yeah. And some people who just don't have experience are going to go, well, it's easy to spot an addict. I would know if my friend was struggling, but I don't know that it's always that simple. So what are some of the signs that we can watch for if we think someone we know is struggling with some kind of addiction to help us recognize it earlier on and be able to move into a position to where we can support them and encourage them better? Well, I can give you all the answers in the Addiction intervention book I just published, but it's one of those things.


[00:28:49]


So some of the simplest things people can look out for is, why is your loved one pulling away from things they used to be passionate about? That's one big thing is you're not playing your guitar as much as you used to. What's going on? Everything okay? Is your hand hurt or whatever?


[00:29:04]


You used to love to go to Billy's house for the holidays, but even for birthdays, but now you don't want to go. Are you doing okay? What's going on? And so when people start pulling away from things they're interested in, could either be addiction or maybe depression or some other mental health stuff going on. But I see that with a lot of people, a lot of parents that have kids that are starting to smoke pot.


[00:29:26]


You see that a lot with younger kids that are just starting to pull away from things they used to have interest in. So I'd say that's maybe one big thing and then just irritability discontent, things that are going on just change in behavior that's not their normal. Again, it doesn't always mean there's addiction, but it's just something to start exploring and asking those questions. Like, I've just noticed you're not doing this as much. Are you doing okay?


[00:29:50]


And then just listen. Don't judge. Don't I do that. I knew you were smoking too much. Like, they're never going to talk to you again.


[00:29:55]


So that's a big entry point for people to start focusing on. I got to sit down with a father daughter combination last season. That was just an incredible story, and I won't go through with the whole thing. But she had a traumatic experience as a teenager, and that was the big red alert for her dad, is she started pulling back from her normal life and then she started abusing other substances to try and tamp down that memory. But he said that was one of the things what he saw was first she started getting into some things that she shouldn't necessarily be getting into at that age, but then she started getting withdrawn and pulling back and changing the way she acted and behaved, just withdrawing entirely.


[00:30:40]


And like you said earlier, it's stinking around and I mean, it is just an incredible story and she's back on a better path now. It's a really amazing story, but I'm listening. You talked about it's like, yeah, these are things I've heard from other people. And so I want people to understand that there's always something behind it, and it may be something as simple as harmless. Like you said, it was fun, right?


[00:31:07]


You saw people drinking. It looked fun. It looked like a good time, or it might be something else, but we need to tune in. You said it's relational, right? We need to tune in to the people around us.


[00:31:22]


Everything is very relational.


[00:31:26]


Yeah, totally. My mind is thinking about a couple of really interesting, funny things that there are things you wouldn't think about, right? Again. There was one case, I remember a guy called me up, and he was just concerned about his wife and drinking. He's like, she's not drinking anymore, but there are so many bottles of Listerine in the trash.


[00:31:44]


So his wife literally went out and bought, like, cases of Listerine. It was just trying to get drink as much as she could from the alcohol into Listerine. Yeah. And so weird stuff like that. And I'm not making fun of this, but you think about this, like, those big bottles of Listerine, right?


[00:32:04]


And there's just cases of it coming to the house, and she was saying stuff like, well, I'm doing some work with the homeless population, and I'm putting in little bottles to take it to them. And it was just the creativity, right? And then another one was this instance of a family started seeing a bunch of the computer spray things. You can spray the dust off your car. So Endust, like, cases of Endust or just empty bottles of End dust.


[00:32:30]


It was like, why are there so many empty bottles in here? They would be in a few in this trash can, some in that trash can, and just kind of trying to spread out the chaos, right? And literally, their loved one was doing with it and just, like, turn it upside down and just what people understand is literally freezing your brain, man. But it gives them a chance to escape in the moment, to list dream. She drank enough of it.


[00:32:54]


She caught a buzz. She was feeling fine. I'd pRobably be throwing up like crazy if I was drinking. I imagine drinking that stuff. Yeah, but that's the creativity that we get as people with addictions is, okay, I know they're caught onto me over here, so now I'm just going to smoke a little more pot than a drink, or I'm not going to buy the Jack Daniels.


[00:33:15]


I'm just going to start drinking vodka because you can't smell it. And so the creativity is pretty fascinating. So those are things you can start looking for as well, because sometimes it's about harm reduction. Like, man, just drink a beer today instead of twelve. Cool.


[00:33:30]


Celebrate that. One beer. Great. But then all of a sudden, you start finding needles somewhere or burnt spoons, and you're like, what the heck is this all about? So, yeah, just a little tangent there.


[00:33:41]


But people with addictions will get creative, and, you know, kids with their phones and apps and stuff. It's like parents start looking at a friend of mine does a lot of screen time addiction work and it's fascinating. Listen to her, how creative kids are with burner phones and the way you can do different widgets to hide certain things on your phones that parents don't even know about. So if you suspect something, go find someone in that field and start watching their webinars and stuff and start picking up some tools like, oh, now that kind of makes a little bit of sense. Get educated yourself, family members, because then you can start catching on and start creating healthy boundaries to encourage your loved one to seek help, but they don't even know you're encouraging them because you're getting smarter and learning those skills yourself as a family member or spouse or something.


[00:34:30]


So I wish I could say I didn't have first hand knowledge with the whole indus thing. That was a bad deal when I was still in the military. Yeah, yeah. And after I passed out in a car in the middle of a parking lot and woke up several hours later along with the other three people who were in there doing it with me, it's like, we might have taken this a little too far. What time is it?


[00:34:55]


But you know what you know, right? Yeah. We found out we've been out for a couple of hours and it's like, pretty sure it shouldn't do that. This may be a little worse than we thought. Yeah.


[00:35:07]


I looked at people things and go, I don't know how I survived that. But we hear people even say, well, my loved one learn more about addiction going to treatment than they did before they went in because you learned all these different skills. And I have some people say, bob, you shouldn't really talk about that because that's going to give someone another idea. Like, well, if I say something, it gives an idea that fast. They're already looking for the idea.


[00:35:33]


Or people will share from stage sometimes and they'll say, please don't talk about that because we don't want to trigger anybody. And I understand that, but I'm just sharing experience, strength and hope. So if I say something that's going to trigger somebody, there's a deeper issue going on that we need to look at. Like, maybe we need to do some serious counseling and some therapy because all we're doing is looking, oh, that's a good idea, I'm going to go do that. And they blame the speaker or someone sharing like, well, I wish you would have told my kid that.


[00:36:01]


Well, they're already looking for the opportunity. If that's what they heard. Yeah, that's why I heard from somebody that you could do that and now they blame the person they heard it from. And I'm thinking, well, you can't really blame someone. It's this disbursement of blame.


[00:36:16]


Right. And I'm not going to be accountable for myself. So I'm going to blame everybody else, but we get to a point where 100% accountable for me. I can't blame anybody else. It's on me.


[00:36:27]


I did it. It's me. It's me. And I need to do something to get out of this. Well, out of what you said, if that's what they took away from it, that's the path they were already on.


[00:36:37]


Totally. 100%. But it's easy as a family member to look for excuses for our loved ones to say, well, okay, well, that's why they do that. I have to I just got to tell you I just got to tell you that I got to buy groceries for them because if I don't buy their groceries, they're not going to eat well if you get hungry enough. Anyway, I keep on a full tangent about that thing, and I don't like the word enabling, but family members are doing the best they can to keep their loved one alive.


[00:37:06]


Can't blame them for that at all. But once you learn new information, then you have to decide if you're going to use it or keep going down the same pathway you're going to go down. So family members are a lot of times harder to work with than someone suffering from the addiction. You talked about people getting triggered by what you said. People.


[00:37:25]


Sorry, this is a pet peeve, man. I actually had a huge falling out with someone I was doing collaborations with because their group got triggered because on a separate show, not related to their group, not related to the work we were doing together. I talked about sex on my podcast with Men, and I talked about in the context of men having innovative issues with their spouses and trying to repair that, and their whole community went nuts because there are people in the community who have abuse in their history and stuff like that and trauma. It's like, you shouldn't talk about that. It's like, I thought this was a place of healing.


[00:38:05]


If you're getting upset about it, you're not trying to heal. You're trying to look for a reason to be upset at this point, because if you listen to the context, it was a very healthy conversation. But I think we abuse the concept of triggered way too often anymore. People are looking for an excuse to be triggered these days, and it's driving me nuts. Yeah.


[00:38:29]


If this is a recalibration, that's what he is, a recalibration. I want to share one crazy stat with you about sex addiction. Okay. All right. So I learned this because I used to kind of do some outreach and work for a program here in Colorado that was really focused on sex, porn, and intimacy issues.


[00:38:46]


Right. And again, they are different. Of course they got different nuances to them. Right. But one of the crazy statistics, because I didn't know much about the sex and porn addiction world until I worked with this one group.


[00:38:57]


So the craziest thing I heard was that guys that are 26, I think it was 32 or 33. Do you know what the one of the number one things they struggle with is? Intimacy. Not intimacy, but erectile dysfunction. 26 to 33.


[00:39:13]


Yeah, because of the they could have a beautiful wife or a beautiful husband. Right. And the wife just isn't into it. Or the husband isn't into it. But it's this whole thing of fantasy world is much more attractive than the person in front of them.


[00:39:29]


That's a beautiful body, a beautiful person, and they'd rather have sex with which is a weird thing to say with themselves than they would with the beautiful person in front of them, because sex and porn has taken over their life. But yeah, erectile dysfunction is a huge pRoblem for guys that are 26 to 32, I think, or 33. But I was shocked by that statistic that it was just that high. For guys that age, you think about the eight year old guy. That just old, but that's not a pRoblem with anyway, so warning guys right now, if you're starting out 15 year olds, if you're starting out or whatever, and you're exploring this, it will impact your relationships down the road, and you have no idea why.


[00:40:10]


And that is a big pRoblem for people these days. Like I said, I worked with two porn addiction counselors now, and prepping for those shows and talking to those guys, it's like some of the statistics I came across, the amount of guys who abuse porn on their phone at work, it's like 63% or something. Staggering, isn't it? I try again. Say what?


[00:40:34]


Yeah, I got way too much free time at work, apparently. Yeah. But yeah, that's his own rabbit hole, because it builds on itself, because the more you do it, the farther down the hole you have to go to get the same stimulation. And that's how we end up. I did some work with a group that tries to they work in intervention for sex trafficking, minors specifically.


[00:40:59]


And talking to them is like, what do most offenders look like? And he's like, a lot of them. This is how it starts, right? And first it starts with soft porn, then it gets harder porn. Then it starts getting really crazy stuff, and soon that's not enough.


[00:41:11]


Now they're buying sex, and then it goes from there to trafficking. It's just a crazy rabbit hole. If you're getting something out of the conversation, be sure and share this with somebody who needs it. Give us a, like, thumbs up. If you're on YouTube, leave us a comment and review.


[00:41:28]


I'm deeply appreciative of all the people who have been leaving reviews on the podcast that helps keep doing these shows. And be sure and follow up with Rob. He's got a lot of great material besides an awesome book. If this is something that is very important to you, if this is something that you need some help with, guys? Just read the reviews on the book.


[00:41:46]


They're amazing. People are just going nuts is like, finally there's something to help us through this. So follow up with Rob, and we'll have all his links, as always, in the bio. Blah, blah, blah, all that good stuff, right? All the social media things.


[00:42:01]


Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, but find something you like and grab a hold of it. Rob, what are the questions we need to ask ourselves as loved ones as we come face to face with these possible situations in our lives? I think a big one is, what's the fear of me stepping in to help to say something to my loved one? There's a lot of fear to confront somebody because if I do this, then they will do that.


[00:42:29]


But, yeah, if you don't do something, then they'll do that anyway. At least I asked people to explore, what do you have to lose by saying something to your loved one and talking to them? And a lot of the fears, they're legitimate things of, well, if I say something, they don't talk to me ever again, then I lost. Aren't you losing them right now? Anyway?


[00:42:50]


But it's the right things to say in the right manner, not an attack. But you do it from love. So just encourage you to explore, like, what's the fear behind not saying something and what's the fear behind continuing to do what you're doing? What's the risk there if you don't do anything at all? Scary questions, for sure.


[00:43:08]


Yeah. I wanted to bring it back to how do we do that? Right? Because you've got to ask yourself some questions if you're going to step into that loved one's life even farther in a possible complicated situation. But it's asking the right questions, right?


[00:43:23]


Because like I said, we get some of those prejudgments. It's like, oh, well, obviously if they're struggling with this and this no, stop judging. Stop assuming. You know why. Ask yourself the questions Rob's talking about and how are you going to step in that role?


[00:43:43]


How are you going to support them? Yes, because some people, you look at it and I have, like, a ton of questions in the book, the Addiction Intervention book, that really guide people through what should we ask? Because you can look at someone and go, but yeah, but she's so successful. So she snorts a lot of cocaine and stuff, but she's operating at a high level. So some people think it's the low bottom drugs and it's the high performers that are just doing so much cocaine because they're so brilliant that just going like this, I got to do this.


[00:44:11]


But when you take it away, guess what? You're not as effective. They think, I have to keep this going because I operate a high level with cocaine. Have you ever seen the movie Limitless? Yeah.


[00:44:24]


It's like they got to keep getting it because it opens up their brain. And now we're talking about what? I won't go down that tangent right now, but I remember sitting in a meeting in the New York once. I was going there to write my first book, and it was all about not settling for your life and about people's stories, just about entrepreneurship. And I'm sitting at the AA meeting, and it was awesome because I'm sitting there and there's a guy to my right, highfalutin, just well to do guy.


[00:44:50]


He owned this huge clothing line worth billions of dollars, right? Sitting in a meeting. And here I am, and the guy next to me is literally like picking out maggots out of his beard off the street homeless guy. But here's addiction, right? But here's recovery.


[00:45:07]


We got the multibillion dollar Rob, the guy that wants to be a multibillionaire, myself, and then the guy that next to me couldn't put two words together, but he's sitting in a meeting and we're getting help, and we're talking about a solution. And that's addiction, that's recovery, that's hope, that's desperation, that was all of it in three different kinds of genres of life. And I was just cracking up when I left that meeting. I'm like, man, this is it right here. This guy could literally buy this guy a house and change his life.


[00:45:34]


Next to me, the homeless guy, if he wanted to. So you never know what package it's coming in, but it's definitely coming there. And one of the things I was going to say about it we can talk about if you want to or not but all the psychedelics and all the new ways that things are coming out to, ways to help people and stuff like that too and there's two sides to it and I don't know which one is right or wrong. But the bottom line is, if we don't get to the root issue, right, of why do we use substances? If we don't get to the root issue, then people are going to have a really hard time living a healthy life that's transformed, because all we're doing is we're recovering from a friend of mine said this.


[00:46:15]


I love it. I'm stealing it from him. I don't remember who said anymore because now I own it. So I'm just going to say it's my thought, right? That's what they say.


[00:46:22]


The first time, you got to quote the guy. The second time, you say, I think I heard this on a speaker event or podcast show, and the third time, it's yours. So this is my phrase. But it's like, why are we focused so much on recovering from something? We're recovering from the thing.


[00:46:38]


So if we're covering from something, it's always in our mirror. We're looking at it, we're afraid of it, and there's fear. But if we're recovering to something, if we're covering towards what we want, this other thing is naturally going to go away. And so I would say, what are we recovering towards? We're covering towards living a better life, towards living a life free of substances, towards living where are we going?


[00:47:00]


Instead of from where do we come? Because we focus too much on the past, but we want to go forward. So a friend of mine once said, hey, Rob, you're like a rubber band. You bounce back all the time. You went to prison.


[00:47:14]


You bounce back. You broke free from this addiction. You bounce back. And I'm like, Dude, I don't want to go back to where I was. I don't want to go back.


[00:47:21]


I want to go forward. So I literally got a visual out, and I cut the rubber band behind my back. I was like, Now I'm going forward in my life. And it really changed the direction direction I was going in a mindset. It was totally awesome, but I just had to listen, and it was such a cool day, and just literally just reached around, like, sniff, and I'm like and I went for a run that day.


[00:47:40]


It was so cool and never looked back.


[00:47:44]


Rob stupid little things can change our life. Oh, yeah, for sure. And sometimes you just need that physical action to adjust the mind. Anyway. Yeah.


[00:47:53]


Rob, I saw in some of your notes that well, I don't even know how to ask this right. I want you to dispel a myth, okay? You hear it all the time. Well, you got to let him hit rock bottom. Yeah, I cringe at that a lot of times, because here's the deal.


[00:48:10]


If you look out into a body of water, like in a raging sea, and your husband, wife, loved one kid, somebody, your coworker, and they're just flailing and they're drowning, and you're holding a life preserver, and you just look at it like, well, let's just wait till they get too tired, and then we'll go get them. They think they're done. They're gone. You can't find them. So my whole philosophy on intervention work that I do, which is one of the big reasons I wrote this book, is to educate people on the fact that why don't we just bring the bottom up to your loved one today?


[00:48:44]


Let's bring the bottom up to your love. And what I mean by that is I hear people oftentimes, and a bunch of the questions I write in the book, too, talk about, well, we're just going to wait until he gets a DUI. Then maybe he'll change. Or we're just going to wait until they get divorced or CPS gets involved or finally they run out of money and then maybe they will change. Well, chances are, if we can present it in a loving package, it's like a big gift and say, hey, here you go, Fred.


[00:49:15]


Here's the gift we want to give you today. We want to give you a chance to change your life today. Now, you can choose to keep going down the pathway. You can choose to go hit bottom. But the fascinating thing about addicts, alcoholics, drug addicts, whatever you want to call everybody, gambling addicts, shopping addicts, is we have this incredible ability to take the elevator all the way to the bottom and somehow it keeps going below the bottom and goes negative floor.


[00:49:44]


So I just want to say that there's two things I don't like hearing from people in the recovery field and people with addictions is we're just going to wait for them to hit bottom. Well, then it could be too late and they could be dead. So you have a chance to put something together in a very loving way so that you, the family members, know this is the whole point. I just want people here. You have a chance to show your love in such a way that you will have no regrets.


[00:50:12]


Your loved one is going to do what they're going to do. But at least you, the family members, can say we love you so much that we're here today. And you have a choice. You have maybe one, two or three choices a day. You're, you get to choose which door you want to go down.


[00:50:26]


You can go to treatment and get help. We're willing to help you and support you in your recovery today. That's how much we love you. Two. You can choose option B, which we don't know what that is at the point.


[00:50:36]


Or C could be you can do nothing and unfortunately, we can't support you in your addiction anymore. So here's our new boundaries. And now you have a choice so that person can look back on that day and say, wow, my family actually did give me the best choice possible, but I chose Dorsey, which could be dor. D could be death for a lot of people. And so that's a big thing about me.


[00:51:04]


I don't like that phrase. The other phrase I'm just going to throw in there, I don't like is when people say, hey, relapse is part of recovery. So what am I thinking? If I'm starting to get sober, I got to cross relapse is part of recovery. So I'm just going to go relapse and I pray to God and make it back.


[00:51:22]


But relapse, people listen to me, does not have to be part of your recovery. Now if you do relapse, then that's hopefully you make it back. But to go into recovery with a mindset of I don't have to do this again, if I don't have to do this again, just make a declaration. I don't have to do this again. And do everything you can to not if you fall short, yeah, obviously you can come back.


[00:51:47]


It's not like you're kicked out of the club. But in my phone here, I'm at thousands of names on my cell phone and I get my phone number out all the time on radio. Shows, all this stuff for people to call me. But there's friends of mine in Bloomington, Indiana. Fort Wayne, Indiana.


[00:52:01]


Fort Worth, Texas. Their numbers and names are still on my phone, but they're dead because they went back out and didn't make it back to the rooms. And that's the fear. You can try it if you want. And people say to me, well, Rob, you always say that Jesus freed you from your addiction, and if Jesus really did free you from that, couldn't you just have a beer since you're freed from the addiction?


[00:52:23]


I'm like, I'm not dumb enough to try it out. I don't want to figure that one out. But I just know, for me, I choose to not drink or drug anymore or shoot tobacco. Do people shoot tobacco? I don't think so.


[00:52:36]


Yeah, I'm pretty sure I would have tried it if it was possible. Well, if someone tries it wants to come on your show and tell them how it was, love to hear from you, but I wouldn't recommend shooting tobacco. I'm not sure that's going to work real well for you in the long run. Somebody pRobably did it. Oh, I'm sure someone's tried, for sure.


[00:52:54]


It's like that golden rule, right? Someone tried it. Yeah, someone tried it. They didn't necessarily survived it, tell anybody, but someone tried it. Yeah.


[00:53:04]


Rob, what's next for you? You've written a book, you have two podcasts. You're out speaking. What's next for Rob Levin? Oh, man.


[00:53:10]


Well, highly focused on the speaking platform right now. Just finished up some new kind of marketing material to send out. So I'm getting ready to send out about 100 books to men's groups all around the country and say, if you're looking for a speaker, I'd love to come out and figure out what they're looking for. Right. What's the message they want to hear?


[00:53:28]


And the core things I'm talking about are about hope, identity, and purpose, and that can fit into any talk anywhere. So speaking is a big deal. And saying this out loud right now, my business coach would kill me if I said this out loud, but I'm saying it right now. So hopefully James doesn't listen to this because he says you can't write another book until you make at least $100,000 with your current book. Okay, well, all that's in motion, so we're just going to call that forward.


[00:53:57]


I can't tell you the title of this other book because I'm still working on the title, but I got something coming out for the holidays that it's a humorous book in a way, but it's a serious book. It's about addiction. Can I talk to myself? Can I share the title yet? I can't share that.


[00:54:12]


When it comes out, I'll let you know. I was going to say the shows won't air till spring. No, February, I think. February, okay. Yeah.


[00:54:20]


So there is a new book coming out, and maybe I'll tell you the title now and then if it's not there, no one will find it. How does that sound? Okay, but it's going to be called 101 Ways or 101 Reasons to Quit, which is crossed out and says keep. So. 101 reasons to keep getting drunk during the holidays.


[00:54:46]


So that's coming out soon might already be out. I don't know. Do you edit this stuff out if it doesn't even happen to leave it in? Yeah. So leave it in.


[00:54:55]


So we're just talking right now, but 100. But the holidays happen all the time, right? Right, exactly. We got Thanksgiving, we have St. Patty's Day.


[00:55:02]


We got Valentine's Day. Whatever it is. The big drinking holidays are just in a line, right? I think we decided that every holiday is a big drinking holiday these days. There you go.


[00:55:10]


So it's 101 Reasons to Keep Getting Drunk During the Holidays, the working title of the book right now, and it's going to be pretty entertaining. Subject to change. Subject to change. Speaking is my big deal. People go to Rob.


[00:55:24]


Lohman speaks. L-O-H-M-A-N. RobLohman Speaks to that's where most of my stuff is going to be posted to get around the country and just speaking at conferences, men's retreats workshops, breakout sessions just out there. That's my goal for 2023 and beyond, is just to be speaking a ton physically in front of people and helping them out with some good messages. All right, where can people find you?


[00:55:47]


Where's the best place? Well, Rob Lohman speaks.com is where I'm guide most people, too. But everything I do is actually out at lifted from the rut.com. You can find podcast, things, media. I mean, just all the stuff I do is going to be at Lifted From The Rut.com and just post some pretty cool stuff there.


[00:56:06]


So I put a whole new treatment directory on there that people can go look at. There's just a lot of content. A lot of webinars will be out there. And the first page just has stuff you can click on for interventions and coaching and whatever. But it's going to be a fun year.


[00:56:20]


Like, I'm all in. I've been all in. But now I'll tell you this. When I invested in a business coach for Lifted From the Rut, because I'm kind of like a business ministry, and things just got so clear and narrowed because you and I are idea guys, right? And it's like, we can do so much, but when we start focusing on the next 30 days, it's helped me out so much.


[00:56:46]


And when you pay that much money for coaching your shares, he'd better listen for this, like, the dumbest investment ever. Yeah, I had a couple. That is like, I feel really stupid now because I spent all that money then I didn't actually go through the whole thing. Yeah, why do we do that to ourselves? Done that in the past.


[00:57:05]


I'm like, man, I just spent, like, $6,000. I didn't even do finish it. I'm like, man, all in. My wife will hear me going, you listen to James again? I was like, Heck, yeah, I'm listening to James.


[00:57:15]


He's on the front cover of my book. He's on the back cover of my book. Like, this guy, he used to be on ABC's Secret Millionaire. And so his brain and my brain are a lot of, like it's just he has, like, $20 million buying his brain. He liked to have $20 million on your net.


[00:57:30]


Yeah, it's on the board. I mean, heck, that crazy powerball this time of day, like, $1.5 billion, right? And you know what? Okay, gambling addiction. I've broken free from that.


[00:57:41]


Is that really gambling if I buy one ticket, or is that investing in a potential crazy moment to be determined? I always tell my wife, if the God wants me to win the auto, he'll let me find the ticket, because I can't tell you how many, like, scratchers and stuff I picked up off the ground and scanned in a gas station. And one, like $2 or $3. It's too embarrassing to go in and cash in a two dollar ticket for the gambling guy. I mean, I'm telling you right now, for the guy who used to gamble and buy a lot of scratch tickets, I didn't want to go in with the dollar.


[00:58:13]


One, I literally would not cash in dollar tickets, which is so dumb, because I'm like, Well, I will cash in the 20 $20.01, but I go back in at some point. But it was just like, it's just a dollar. But that dollar, that could be the one that has 100 grand to it, right? So you got to keep going back. But thank goodness I don't do that anymore either.


[00:58:33]


Rob, what is the most important thing you want people to take away from this conversation? If you're asking the question of do I have a pRoblem? Or does my loved one have a pRoblem, it's pRobably time to start looking at solutions. So reach out to someone in your local community. Reach out to me.


[00:58:50]


But if you're asking the question, there's pRobably a pRoblem. Rob, thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for sharing with us. And, guys, I will have all of Rob's contact information below in the show notes and in the description, wherever you're watching this, on each of my websites so that way you can connect with Rob, and that way you can get to all of his links. If you know somebody who needs this podcast, if you think you know somebody who needs this episode, please, please be proactive and share this with them.


[00:59:23]


Make a difference in their lives as someone who cares about them. Guys, as always, be better tomorrow because of what you do today. And we'll see you on the next one. This has been the fellow man podcast. You're home for everything.


[00:59:36]


Man husband and father. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a show. Head over to www.thefallibleman.com for more content and get your own fallible man gear.

Rob C Lohman Profile Photo

Rob C Lohman

SPEAKER, AUTHOR, COACH, PODCASTER

Sober since 2001, Rob Lohman currently helps people suffering from substance abuse to find freedom from addiction and incarceration. He does this through sharing his testimony, Professional Interventions and Recovery Coaching, Advocacy, Self-Published Author and being the host of Beyond The Bars Radio Podcast and Addiction, Freedom & Faith Podcast

Rob has been through the ringer, AND continues to press on! His rap sheet includes alcohol and drug addiction, gambling addiction, divorce, bankruptcies, mental health and suicide ideation, prison, recovery and transformation.

Rob’s drinking career started at age 14 which lead to some very dark places in his life. The climax of Rob’s drinking career happened on June 7, 2001 with a suicide attempt interrupted by the compassion of his dog Jake. Upon a divine intervention, Rob was freed from his substance abuse addiction which began a rollercoaster ride in recovery…to which Rob has yet to take another drink or drug since that day.

In year eleven (11) of his sobriety journey, Rob had an emotional nervous breakdown which lead to a thirteen (13) year prison sentence, to which he was released in 10.5 months to a halfway house where he started to rebuild his life, along with his two children and wife who decided to remain married to Rob after the breakdown.

Rob is now invests in the lives of those wanting to see positive change, whether it is coming out of addiction, prison or just wanting more for their lives. He is a dynamic speaker and shares an extremely powerful journey of persistence, f…