Meeting Addiction Support with Love and Compassion with Melissa Sue Tucker

Today on the show is an interview with Melissa Sue Tucker of the Addiction Support Podcast. She’s an inspirational and spiritual teacher, and her desire to support those with addiction comes from having two brothers who both have struggled with addiction. If you find yourself in a similar position you may wish to search “what are the best physical rehab centers in San Diego?” depending on whether you live in the local area. This can be a painful process but please understand that you are not alone and it will get better. After seeing the impact that their struggle has had on her family, and her own life, Melissa decided to focus on how to make things better. She believes that healing is possible, and she has discussions each week on her own show about the inspiring stories of people who have struggled with addiction or supported those people who have. It takes a lot of courage and commitment to go through detox Seattle, or wherever it is that you do it. I hope you enjoy listen to Melissa Sue Tucker discuss meeting addiction support with love and compassion.

Her approach is truly heart centered, and her departure point for her show is: “Whatever we focus on we’re going to create more of. I wanted to focus on success and I wanted to focus on people who are in recovery and doing really amazing things. And, on people who love people who are in recovery and doing really amazing things.”

I understand how hard addiction is to overcome and it’s something that stays with the individual for the rest of their life. But, by getting the right help from places like Klinic (https://klinic.care/) and using the helpful resources on Melissa’s blog, they will find it much easier as they have the support and care they need. Fighting addiction alone makes it ten times more difficult than if you have a support system. If you are interested in addiction and, in particular, success stories of those who have overcome their addictions, then you will probably want to read ARC’s blog. As for Melissa, I think you’ll really love her point of view and her take on life. I really enjoyed witnessing her courage, compassion, and love of life.

Here is what Melissa and I talk about:

[4:30] Melissa’s earliest sparks of joy, growing up in Indiana
[4:25] Melissa’s favorite books growing up: Judy Bloom and comic books
[4:55] Her natural inclination to teach her four younger brothers things as the oldest child
[6:15] Melissa’s current work: a wife, mother, a podcaster at Addiction Support Podcast, sister
[7:05] Her curiosity and compassion around her two brothers’ addiction, and what inspired her to start her podcast and learn more about addiction
[4:45] Her daily podcast, 60 Seconds of Solitude
[8:25] The journey that led to starting the Addiction Support Podcast
[10:45] The power of creating her own reality around the kind of relationship she desired for her life
[13:35] Co-dependency and how ingrained it is in the addiction
[14:55] Setting boundaries when there is addiction within a group, whether that be a family or group of friends
[16:15] We talk about the books Essentialism and Loving What Is
[18:25] Melissa explains her take on “responsibility” coming from the root of respond
[19:30] How to determine if your family has “Co-dependent” aspects to it
[20:15] We talk about the book Codependent No More
[21:45] I share about my experience witnessing co dependence in a family I ultimately left (had married in to)
[22:25] How codependency can be generations deep, and why it’s hard to break “the code”
[23:35] Why addiction is hard to defeat and how healing is possible
[24:30] I share about “Women, Food, and God”
[26:15] What to do if you’re feeling obsessed about what someone with addiction and how to be calm and free of that
[28:00] What Melissa does if someone she knows is in a dark place with addiction
[30:15] How Melissa found her passion: by getting in touch with something that brought up anger and negative emotions (and she knew she wanted to change)
[31:00] An example of change and passion that Melissa and her son found from getting upset about how something was being managed politically, related to addiction (making naloxone legal)
[34:05] How “Sixty Seconds of Solitude” got it’s start and how it works (and we chat about Wayne Dyer a bit.)
[39:15] Melissa’s thoughts on how to bring your dreams into action (hint: think about how you want to feel when the dream comes true)