100 Pedals

Recovery for Parents Dealing with Addiction in their Families

## The Five Questions Parents most asked regarding Addiction, Family, Recovery

December 29, 2025 by Dave Cooke

We took a unique break from our traditional format. Instead of having a guest on this podcast, we opted to ask our parent listeners to provide issues and struggles for host, Dave Cooke, to reflect on. The response was tremendous. Thank you! From your submissions, we selected five questions that best reflected the general tone of all your questions.

Today’s podcast focuses on the following topical areas:

1. Dealing with a child who is not ready to embrace recovery; yet is at tremendous risk if they don’t.

2. The challenges of finding effective recovery programs for our children.

3. Inspiring a child to get on with their life, post recovery.

4. Responding to societal related issues of family, friends, relatives -judgement, scorn, ignorance - who just don’t understand the roller coaster pain of a parent’s addiction journey.

5. Handling family divides, especially between siblings, that result from everyone’s respective addiction related experiences.

Thank you to the parents who submitted questions. We will do this again. My son has offered to participate in our next Q&A session to bring someone with personal addiction experience and perspective into the conversation.

Next week (January 8) we will resume our series of guest interviews. In the meantime, enjoy and many blessings to you and your families through this holiday season and into 2015!

Check out this episode!

Filed Under: Addiction Conversation Podcast

## Ibogaine - An Intelligent Process, Not simply a Quick Cure

December 18, 2025 by Dave Cooke

About this Podcast:

Having heard much enthusiasm for Ibogaine Treatment from parents across the country, it was hard to say “no” to Crossroads Treatment Center when they asked to be part of The Addiction Conversation.

While I didn’t really hear the word “cure” to describe the experiences of parents whose children received Ibogaine treatment, they came close. Reluctantly agreeing to host the team from Crossroads, I was pleasantly surprised at what I learned and heard.

I am hoping that those with addictions and family members of people with addictions will listen very closely to the entirety of this interview.

What you will hear and learn:

Ibogaine is one critical, valuable step in the Crossroad treatment program. Ibogaine provides great benefits in clearing the mind and eliminating the craving. Ibogaine alone would not be enough. The “drug” is not the only piece to this puzzle. There are two other critical steps in the CrossroadsTreatment Center recovery program. These steps are, in many respects, essential to anyone searching for a path to their recovery.

The key to their recovery program is in how the other two steps leverage the benefit of the Ibogaine treatment. Without this three step approach, the “drug” component of this program would not be nearly as successful. The three steps are: Pre-treatment, Detox, Post-treatment.

There are parallel insights in this interview which offer wonderful educational perspectives on the keys to effective and successful recovery, in general.

Examples of the insights contained in this podcast include:

- The easy step to treating addiction is the detox component, the challenging task is aftercare and sustained recovery.
- P eople know what they need. By creating an authentic space where they can be safe, vulnerable and speak their truth, they can begin to layout and embrace their own recovery plan.
- When a person comes into a treatment program in a mindset of commitment and dedication to change and not tied to the program to make the change for them, they are much more likely to be successful.
- Planning and envisioning your future prepares the patient to start working on their future.
- A patient cannot go into treatment without first cleaning up and changing their environment before they go - otherwise they simply come back to the same stuff.

Key links:

“The Ibogaine Experience” (article)

Crossroads Treatment Center (website)

Video Testimonials

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Check out this episode!

Filed Under: Addiction Conversation Podcast

## PEACE!

December 15, 2025 by Dave Cooke Leave a Comment

Recently I experienced the joy of my little girl, now 30, giving birth to her first child, my first grandson. Babies are an incredible gift and truly a miracle of life. Upon arrival every parent is reminded of their child’s precious innocence. We are witness to a fragile, simple beginning where all our child seems to need is food, shelter, and love. What appears easy at the start becomes more challenging and complicated as they get older. Unchanged in this journey is a parent’s love for that little bundle of joy. If anything that love just gets stronger each and every day they are part of our lives.

There is nothing is more powerful than a parent’s love for their child. While every parent does their best to provide wisdom, coaching, encouragement, and support, the only perfect, pure and lasting gift is our love for our children. It is all we have; and we give it with every ounce of energy available.

Unfortunately, many parents are currently living in the painful reality that there are times when a parent’s love is not enough. No matter how much we love, coach, encourage, support, pray, and teach our child they can and do get lost to their life choices. Nothing hurts a parent more than when they are hit head-on with that reality. As much as every parent desires to fix a mistake, solve a problem, or erase the past in our children’s life, there is little we can do to protect them from making bad decisions or to alter the outcomes of many of those choices.

In this holiday season, it is my prayer that every parent who is suffering find their peace on their journey. While it is hard to imagine peace is possible, I firmly believer it is. Regardless of what goes on around you, no matter how difficult the storm, peace can and will be found from deep within your soul.

In this holiday season, please take a moment to thank God for that wonderful gift of your child or for each of your children. Be thankful for their “presents” in your life. Regardless of where they are today, they made you the person you are - one who loves, lives, teaches, and feels. They may not be physically here with you today and their absence is a great source of disappointment and pain. But, they are also very much with you in your memories, your experiences, your personality and your personal evolution - each of which is a gift from them to you.

May you find peace in this holiday season regardless of where you heart is. May you find joy in the gift of your life. And, may you find gratitude for all of your life experiences as each has made you wiser, stronger, and more loving than you realize.

Merry Christmas and Peace!

Filed Under: Parenting, Parenting & Addiction Tagged With: addiction, addiction and parenting, embracing peace, finding peace, hope, love, parenting, parenting and hope, peace, recovery

## Lorelie Rozzano: A poignant, insightful conversation from someone with personal addiction experiences from all angles

December 12, 2025 by Dave Cooke

Our guest: Meet Lorelie Rozzano. Seventeen years ago, she entered into a local treatment center. Less concerned about recovery and more committed to playing the game in order to get back to her addictive ways, she received something she didn’t expect to find - recovery.

She finally discovered in recovery what she had been searching for in alcohol and drugs.Having grown up in an alcoholic home she understands first-hand, the importance of a healthy family. Since her recovery, she has become a successful author, mother, wife, daughter, grandmother, foster parent, counselor, sister and friend. Her passion is to help others recover from the effects of addiction in their lives.

As a writer she shares an authentic and insightful honesty to educate and enlighten families, parents, and those who are addicted. It is her quest through the honesty found in her books and in her blog, that those in addiction and their families will be inspired to search for the help they need. She wants everyone to discover and know there is hope for their situation!

What you will hear and learn:

You cannot apply logic to an illogical situation, you cannot apply reason to an irrational mindframe, you cannot bring a healthy person to an unhealthy person and get that unhealthy person well. All that will happen is a healthy person will become sick when continually exposed to the habits of unhealthy behaviors.

A parent can’t love a child well and can’t reason a child well. The underlying issue of addiction goes beyond simply the addiction. Its a family disease, no one gets there alone. The family has to also be willing to ask and go through anything they are asking the addiction person to go through.

Key takeaways:

- Eight symptoms of addiction
- Ten examples for parents and family members of “Going Too Far” to assist or help the addicted person in your life
- Lessons and guides for enabling and the stress parents feel in this situation

Helpful Links:

Lorelie’s website: Jagged Little Edges

Gracie’s Secret (book for children dealing with addiction)

Check out this episode!

Filed Under: Addiction Conversation Podcast

## Stop the Insanity

December 9, 2025 by Dave Cooke Leave a Comment

empowerment: the giving or delegation of power or authority; authorization

enabling: “when helping your child is hurting you more than it is helping them…”

Every parent wrestles with “what to do” when it comes to the behaviors of a child with an addiction. We want so much for them to embrace a recovery program and be successful in that endeavor. We are committed that we cannot lose them or give up on them as they battle their addiction related issues. We believe that our love, our hope, and our encouragement will somehow facilitate the outcomes we desire. And, we will never give up on those beliefs, desires, or commitments as long as we have breath in our lungs.

What we don’t realize is that every time we look past their behaviors as we focus on our dreams, we are hurting ourselves and we are not helping them. We hurt ourselves because we experience a crushing emotional and sometimes physical blow with every relapse, deception, altercation, overdose or arrest. We are not helping them because we do everything in our power to help them avoid all the truly painful choices of their decisions.

There are two simple words that every parent needs to bring into their vocabulary. Every parent needs to understand what these words mean and recognize which behavior facilitates any potential for recovery and which one delays it or prevents it.

1. Enabling: We all fear the results and outcomes associated with our child’s addictive ways. Their addiction often flies under the radar until they are caught, overdose, or run out of money. Once we discover the problem, we go into rescue and cure mode. We are going to save our child. We equate keeping them out of jail, off the streets, and safely protected in our homes as s critical means to the end. Yet, we are disappointed and crushed time and again to discover through theft, deception, arrest that the addiction lives on. Our commitment to protecting them from the mistakes of their addiction and us from our fears of loving them overrules our intellectual choices. Instead we continue to save the soul that is lost to their addiction.

“When helping your child is hurting you more than it is helping them” you are enabling your child. You are slowly destroying yourself and you are unintentionally allowing them to experience the true outcomes of their choices. If you want to end the insanity in your life and offer your child any hope of recovery you must eventually stop enabling them.

2. Empowerment: At some point every child, addicted or not, needs to accept responsibility for their life. They need to experience and learn from their choices and decisions. They need to discover how to apply these lessons in order to develop and evolve. Whether they are dealing with an addiction or not, this is reality. Whether we like it or not, we parents need to embrace this reality.

Empowerment is the act of giving our children authority over their life. It is also the act of taking authority and control over our life. Our children will only learn when they have responsibility for their life and we can only find peace in our life when we take back control of it.

3. Take Action:

- When you look at your life and wonder what to do with your addicted child ask yourself this question: Am I enabling my child or empowering them?
- If your answer is enabling, ask yourself why?
- Ask yourself, how that choice is helping both you AND your child.
- Challenge yourself to map out a course of action that empowers your child to live the life they have chosen to live and helps you reclaim authority over your life.

It won’t be easy, but it is the better than living the insanity you are dealing with right now. Peace!

> 100Pedals has recently released two FREE programs for parents. (1) “Addiction and the Family: Four Guidelines to Embrace” is an audio program that provides parents perspective for dealing with addiction in the family. To obtain your digital download click here. (2) “Addiction Conversation” is a weekly podcast where Dave Cooke interviews parents, those in recovery, counselors, and legal experts to provide their perspectives from their experiences with addiction. To listen to an individual session click here or to download the podcast to I-Tunes click here.

Filed Under: Managing Adversity, Parenting, Parenting & Addiction Tagged With: addiction, addiction and parenting, dealing with adversity, dealing with conflict, empowering ourselves, empowerment, empowerment and addiction, enabling, hope, love, parenting, recovery

## She had a choice - Let her son’s addiction kill her or Make changes in her life

December 4, 2025 by Dave Cooke

What happens when a mom does everything she can, on her own, to save her son from his addiction?

When she realized it made no sense to try to take her son into a recovery “battle he is not willing to fight”?

What she did once he decided it was time to change his life!

- Learn how this mom experiences a massive transformation in her life.

Discover how she went from a place of complete self-denial, even protecting her family from the truth and reality of her son’s addiction, to a incredible wake-up call in the form of a heart attack. Today, mother and son are sharing a different, more inspiring, hopeful story about love, parenting, and addiction.

From “I am that mother who sits in church and says I don’t care what happens to me, please take care of my child.”

To “Its not okay to put your child before you at any cost…”

Links of interest:

Anita Devlin’s Website and Blog

Addiction: Video Series

Addiction Video #2: “The Voicemail”

Check out this episode!

Filed Under: Addiction Conversation Podcast

## The Secret to Taking Back Control of Your Life

December 1, 2025 by Dave Cooke 8 Comments

“Any man can…decide what shall become of him - mentally and spiritually ~ Viktor E. Frankl

I have been reading “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl. If you are not familiar with Frankl’s story, his memoir was written about his lessons and experiences in a World War II concentration camp. Regardless of all the difficulties experienced in my life, nothing compares with Frankl’s life and death experiences. Despite this incredibly torturous existence, he offers the reader incredibly insightful perspectives for living our lives. Today’s quotes are from those writings.

As a parent with an addicted child I routinely struggled with the my choices and decisions relating to my son’s behaviors. I became so obsessed with his recovery - whether he was using or not or what “the right thing to do was” - that I ignored my own needs and lost complete control of my life. Even though I felt powerless to control or influence his life choices, I still did everything I could to manage them anyway. By constantly reacting to his addiction driven life, I unconsciously surrendered the ability to control the one thing I actually did have control over - my life.

I finally discovered how insane my behaviors were and the impact it was having on my life. With that realization I made some very clear decisions about how I was going to manage my life in the face of this adversity despite my son’s actions. It was not easy, but it was incredibly effective. What many outsiders see in the way I live my life today reflects the ultimate outcomes associated with my commitment. Not visible to most observers is the actual work over time involved to succeed in this mindset.

> The first step in our recovery is to make that declaration that I am not powerless, I am not helpless, and I will not be a victim to the events that occur in my life. I will control what I have control over and I will let go of what I can’t and trust in those outcomes.

You are not powerless to live and celebrate the life you desire. You ARE powerless to make your children live the life you desire for them; even more so for a child with an addiction. While you will forever be connected to the lives of your children, there comes a point where you cannot attach the outcomes of their lives to how you live or enjoy yours. When you do this, you give them control over your life. When you let you child’s action define how you live your life, it makes no sense to act as though you don’t understand how your life has gotten out of control - you chose to lose control when you turned over authority for your life to their behaviors.

You have a choice. If you want to control and define the outcomes in your life, do it. Choose to the live the life you desire and make a commitment to embrace that path. It will not be easy, you will stumble and sometimes completely fail. When you are clear about your commitment and your outcomes for your life, you will move toward that destination and away from the drama, the chaos, and the disruptions. You are not helpless, powerless or a victim - you are in control. Take control over your life, turn over control of your child’s life to them, and avoid confusing the two. When you do this, you will find more strength and confidence in your decisions and your actions. Peace!

> 100Pedals has recently released two FREE programs for parents. (1) “Addiction and the Family: Four Guidelines to Embrace” is an audio program that provides parents perspective for dealing with addiction in the family. To obtain your digital download click here. (2) “Addiction Conversation” is a weekly podcast where Dave Cooke interviews parents, those in recovery, counselors, and legal experts to provide their perspectives from their experiences with addiction. To listen to an individual session click here or to download the podcast to I-Tunes click here.

Filed Under: Inspirational Perspectives Tagged With: addiction, drug addiction, parenting, recovery, taking control, Viktor Frankl