Hopestream: Parenting Kids Through Addiction & Mental Health

When my son Enzo was using fentanyl and Xanax and blowing up every structure I tried to build around him, I kept asking the wrong question. What I wasn’t asking was what was happening inside him that he couldn’t put words to. He was a teenager with an unmedicated ADHD brain, getting more reinforcement and belonging from the drug world than anywhere else in his life, and he had no way to tell me that.
Enzo is back on the podcast today with something specific: the things kids who are actively struggling can’t necessarily say but really wish their parents understood. When I asked what he would have wanted me to know back then, Enzo told me about a kid he recently mentored who, when asked the same question, said the only thing he wanted his parents to know was, “I’m trying.” And Enzo realized that was exactly it. Not that the drugs were working. Not that his choices were okay. Just that from inside his brain, he was doing something that felt like trying.
Enzo is now the founder of Life Strategies Mentors, a mentoring program for young men navigating recovery and reintegration. He’s in his late-twenties, expanding his team, building a life that not long ago did not seem survivable.
This conversation covers a lot of ground, from the fish love parable that reframed how I think about parental expectations, to what ADHD does to the brain’s relationship with substances, to why kids sometimes listen to a near-stranger before they will listen to their own parents. That last one is not a failure of the relationship. It is biology. Knowing that changes something.
If you have been watching your kid and thinking they are not even trying, this one is for you.
YOU’LL LEARN:
The fish love parable, and the question it forces you to ask about your own parenting
Why “I’m trying” is the one thing a struggling kid most wishes their parents could hear
What ADHD actually does to the brain’s relationship with substances, and why warnings don’t land
The biology behind why kids listen to mentors before they listen to parents
The one skill Enzo says made the biggest difference when he was finally ready to change
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Life Strategies Mentors website
Fish Love story on YouTube
Enzo on Hopestream podcast episodes #251 and #185
ADHD Resources:Dr. Gabor Mate’s book, “Scattered Minds”
Dr. Russell Barkley on YouTube
Dr. Ned Hallowell on Hopestream episode 99 (ADHD as a Superpower)

This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:
There are moments in this journey when your coach isn't available, your therapist can't be reached, and the community is quiet. It's just you and whatever is unfolding in your relationship with your child,, and you need a way through. This episode has been sitting with me for over a year, and I'm glad it's finally here.
What I've seen, in my own experience and in watching parents in our community, is that the biggest shifts come from asking yourself the right question and having the honesty to sit with what comes up. That's what CRAFT and the Invitation to Change have taught me, and it's what I tried to distill into these ten questions.
These aren't soft prompts. Some are uncomfortable, which means they're working. They ask you to look at your own role in the family system, your behaviors, your responses, your beliefs, because that is the lever you actually control.
I walk through all ten, share why each one matters, and give you the context to use them. 
YOU’LL LEARN:
The question I put first, and why it's the hardest one
What the hot stove analogy reveals about your child's behavior
How most parents accidentally reinforce what they most want to stop
The difference between self-care and self-preservation
What it means to be addicted to your child's addiction
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Episode 263 on Natural Consequences
Episode 17 on Natural Consequences
Tara Brach on Radical Acceptance
Episode 276 on acceptance
Episode 321 on taking care of yourself
Episode 324 with Rawly Glass on codependency
Helping Families Help - find a CRAFT trained therapist
This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:
Dr. Wes Robins sent me a text a few weeks ago, and I stopped what I was doing and read it twice. It was a piece he had written at his kitchen table while his daughters worked on an art project beside him, and it was one of the most honest and beautiful things I have read in all the years I have been doing this work. It started with four words: you are not broken. And it kept going from there.
Wes has been a guest on this show before, and I have always admired how he shows up. No pretense, no pedestal. Just a real human being who has done his own hard work and now walks alongside young people and families who are doing theirs. Since we last spoke, he made the gut-wrenching decision to close the treatment center he poured five and a half years into, and what he learned on the other side of that loss is something I think every parent who has ever watched someone they love struggle needs to hear.
He is back in private practice now, seeing clients out of a cool 60’s ranch house in Alpharetta, GA. He works with young people, with parents, and with families who are trying to figure out how to stay present through things that feel impossible to witness. He’s a Ph.D, but has officially taken on the designation of Soul Nurse, and once he explains it, you’ll understand exactly what that means.
This conversation goes places I did not expect. We talk about the piece Wes wrote for parents, and he reads it aloud, and I am not going to pretend I held it together. We get into the difference between empathy and presence, why watching your child suffer might be asking something of you that has nothing to do with them, and what it actually means to be the flight attendant when your kid is in turbulence.
If you have ever felt like you were failing simply by not being able to fix this, this one is for you.
YOU’LL LEARN:
The wise words Dr. Wes wrote at his kitchen table that stopped me cold
How to think about psychedelics and plant medicines when your child is asking (or using them)
The difference between empathy and presence, and why it matters
Why your child's struggle may be your greatest spiritual teacher
What being the flight attendant actually looks like when you are terrified yourself
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Website
Dr. Wes Robins Youtube Channel
Dr. Wes LinkedIn Profile
Email address: drwes@eternalstrength.com
Psychology Today
"When The Map Burns" 
This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:
Lacey Tezino grew up believing her biological mother was dead. That’s what her family told her in the ‘80s when she was adopted, and she carried that story until she was 19 years old. Hungover on just one more motherless-Mother’s Day, Lacey somehow found the nerve to call ‘information’ to see if that was true. Her mother picked up the phone. That call became a decade-long relationship that Lacey describes as beautiful, heartbreaking, and nothing she was prepared for.
The complications didn’t end with the reunion. Lacey’s mother had her own life, her own rhythm, and her own relationship with alcohol. So did Lacey. And when her mother received a stage four lung cancer diagnosis, the urgency it created forced them both into a kind of honesty they had never quite managed before. They sat through chemo appointments and asked the hard questions. They talked about what they’d each been holding. And Lacey has spent the years since wondering why it took running out of time to get there.
Lacey is the founder of Passport Journeys and the author of Therapy After Mom Died. She now works with mothers and daughters to help them heal together before a crisis forces their hand, matching them with therapists, building structured connections, and asking the eight questions that reveal exactly where a relationship has come apart.
This conversation goes somewhere I don’t hear talked about often enough: the way our kids watch us reach for a drink at the end of a hard day, and what they quietly absorb from that. Lacey tells the story of her own Friday night ritual, margaritas that offered tired parents decompression, the moment she realized her children were watching all of it, and what they might be learning. 
If you have a daughter - or son - you love and a relationship that feels like it’s missing something you can’t quite name, this one is for you.
YOU’LL LEARN:
What Lacey said when her mother, who she thought was dead, picked up the phone
The unhealthy Friday night ritual she couldn’t unsee once she saw it
The gap she keeps finding between what moms believe and what daughters feel
Why, as a parent, you have to connect before you correct
What it took for Lacey and her mother to finally be honest with each other
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Passport Journeys website
Therapy After Mom Died - Lacey’s book 
This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:
Brad was 17, sitting in a psych ward for the second time, when a stranger told him about a program in Tennessee. He said no. He ran from a rest stop on the highway, and the police caught him a few hours later. That moment tells you everything about where he was: a kid who had never learned to stay, never learned to feel, and hadn’t yet found anything worth staying for.
What followed was more than a decade of trying to outrun himself. Percocet. Heroin. A methadone clinic he drove to every morning with no car and no money. A felony conviction at 18. A deportation to Canada with a lifetime ban from the US. Brad doesn’t tell his story like a cautionary tale. He tells it like someone who finally understands what his brain was looking for, and what it took to stop running long enough to build something worth keeping.
Today he hosts Sober Motivation, a top 0.5% podcast globally with more than five million downloads, and runs an online community for people in recovery. He started it from his basement not because he had the answers, but because he knew what it felt like to be alone in this.
This conversation is for every parent who has watched their child go through treatment and wondered if anything is actually landing. Brad says something I’ve believed for years but have rarely heard said plainly: sobriety is the starting line, not the finish line. What he built after that line, and why it held, is what this episode is really about.
If you’ve done everything right and it still isn’t working, this one is for you.
YOU’LL LEARN:
How Brad went from two psych ward stays and a felony to host of a top recovery podcast
Why sobriety was never his problem, and what the real work looked like
The question he asks every person about the night before they get sober
What getting back on ADHD medication at 38 finally showed him about himself
What it means to build a life you have something to lose in
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Sober Motivation Podcast
Sober Motivation Community
Brandon Novak Memoir, Dreamseller
This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.