The Nitty Gritty of Natural Consequences In Our Family

Photo credit: Lucas Allmann

Allies’ writer Isabel Cooney has been applying CRAFT skills and methods to her situation for many years—although her Loved One’s substance use disorder arose before she learned about the CRAFT approach. In the last of a three-part series, she shares case studies in natural consequences taken from her own experience, and follows up with a review of the most important considerations when substance use and natural consequences arise. While the moments she recalls can be painful, her insights are many, revealing a lot of hard-earned wisdom about this key aspect of CRAFT.

If you’ve been following along with this three-part series on natural consequences, you know the back story: how I experienced my then-husband’s struggle with alcohol. How I tried to manage without much knowledge about addiction, let alone skills and approaches like CRAFT that could have helped me respond. And how I eventually did learn CRAFT and benefitted from it greatly, even though my marriage by then was over.

You’ll also have read a lot of my thoughts and reflections on natural consequences. What follows are some examples of situations I encountered during my Loved One (LO)’s active use (and our shared custody of our children) in which there were plenty of opportunities to allow natural consequences to occur.

In each case, I’ll aim to identify: 1) the circumstances; 2) the boundary that was crossed; 3) the effect it had on me, my LO, and/or our children; 4) the natural consequence I identified; and 5) how it all played out.

So here they are: six case studies in natural consequences:

First case: a sleeping bull

1. The girls were with their dad at his family’s country house. I was in a different part of the country, trying to find solace at a yoga retreat. I got a call from my eldest daughter, who tearfully told me how he had been sleeping for hours and hours in the middle of the day, and how my youngest (10 at the time) tried to wake him up with a question. He growled and shouted, and actually kicked her.
2. For my daughter, a boundary of personal safety had been crossed, and also a boundary relating to feeling secure in her home.
3. For myself, this was a mama bear boundary. I felt my anger welling up—the injustice of using a small child as a punching bag!
4. The natural consequence that was possible at that time was for me to contact his sister and his brother, who also happened to be visiting the family homestead that weekend. I also told my eldest girl to speak to her aunt directly about what had happened. It’s never easy to play the role of messenger, because facts can get changed or misinterpreted. But letting other family members know that there had been an incident would potentially alert them to the problem in their midst.
5. How this incident worked out says a lot about my LO’s family’s impressive capacity for denial. They weren’t particularly helpful to my kids that day, and they kept their eyes closed about his substance use for many years after that. One silver lining is that ten years later, when my LO finally went to his first treatment center, the aunt who had minimized her brother’s problem for years made a formal apology to my daughter.

Second case: I can see it in your eyes

1. It was a Sunday evening and I was dropping off the girls and their voluminous bags at their dad’s house for the next week or so. His car was in the driveway, but when we rang the bell there was no answer. We called his phone, we rang the bell a hundred more times, we knocked on all the windows and doors, and we threw pebbles at his bedroom window. I was scared but trying to stay cool. After some 40 minutes, he opened the door, and his bulging, bloodshot eyes said everything. He seemed both inebriated and confused (I later learned he had taken a dangerous mix of pills and alcohol).
2. The boundaries that were crossed for me were my need to trust and count on him to meet his responsibilities as the co-parent of our children, and my need to know that our daughters were safe and properly taken care of in his home.
3. I felt scared, seeing him that way, and my mama bear energy kicked in once more. The girls were also scared, worried and unsettled. They also expressed disgust around their Dad’s behavior.
4. The easiest natural consequence would actually have been for me to leave after three minutes of ringing the bell, taking the girls back home with me. When he finally woke up on his own, he would immediately realize he had messed up. 
   However, all three of us were worried, which led us to stay outside and keep trying to get some sign of life from him. The natural consequence I did favor, once we knew he was not in danger, involved a bit of “intervening” on my end. Otherwise, the girls would have either been locked out of the house for hours or in an unsafe situation. After seeing his eyes, I quietly told the girls, “Get back in the car, you’re staying with me tonight,” and Craftily, I just let their dad know, “You’re clearly not yourself right now, they can stay with me tonight and we’ll check in tomorrow.”
5. The girls were extremely relieved to go back to my place, after seeing what state their dad was in. Read on to see how this particular evening played out, and how I was called upon to allow other natural consequences to occur.

Third case: please go home now

1. Following the event I just described, my LO actually followed us back to my house in the neighboring town. I instructed my kids to go inside and lock the door. I stayed outside and asked him to leave, but when I saw how aggressive he was being, I locked myself into the car. He proceeded to attempt to convince the girls, who had come to the window, that he was perfectly fine and that they should come with him. I asked him to leave the premises many times and he ignored me. The girls said they’d see him tomorrow, told him to go home and get some rest.
2. My LO was crossing my own “personal space” boundary by refusing to leave the premises of my home. He was also crossing boundaries with the girls, begging and insisting that they go with him when they had clearly stated they’d be more comfortable at my place that night.
3. I was scared. He was extremely aggressive with me and unrelenting with the girls. Not to mention causing a ruckus on my street. He was still under the influence of various substances. I was also MAD, wishing he would just accept the consequences of that day’s substance use and leave us alone.
4. I called the cops. This truly was a natural consequence of being confronted with aggression and an unsafe situation. By the time they arrived, he had finally left. They asked me and the girls some questions.
5. The next day, I filed an official complaint. This didn’t come easy, and I only got the idea from Allies’ Learning Modules. Though there weren’t any legal repercussions for my LO, he did get a visit from a policeman informing him of the complaint. I know it served as a glaring reminder that there was a problem requiring his attention. He was mad at me for doing it, but I was truly proud of myself for my courage. His behavior had simply been out of line, and this was a strong way of saying, “I’m no longer playing your game of pretending everything is OK.” I would have called the police if any man had been outside my house, growling at me and trying to lure the kids away when they had already said no. Just because that man was their dad and someone we all loved didn’t mean we had to accept his crossing the lines.

Fourth case: a trip to the ER

1. Many years later, when our children had already flown the coop, my ex-husband and I were on much better terms. Much of the love abided, and I was doing my best to apply CRAFT as much as possible to help him. After two days of not managing to reach him (usually a sign of relapse for him), I finally received a text with one word: “Help.” My sister and I rushed to his house (she was visiting from out of town). When we arrived, he appeared quite drunk and was sobbing constantly. The things he managed to say were dark. He seemed afraid of his own suicidal tendencies, and of what could happen if he kept drinking.
2. My own personal boundaries weren’t really being crossed here; I acted more for his own safety, as the suicidal tendencies were welling up and putting him in danger.
3. The effect? Well, you can probably imagine. I felt heartbroken, seeing my LO so deep in his misery, hearing him weeping, expressing hopelessness and fear of dying, seeing him sitting there alone in his home in the middle of the day in his underwear, feeling as lost as any human could feel. I was scared of what might happen next (further drinking, suicide attempts, stupid accidents…).
4. The consequences I allowed were, first, calling his general practitioner, insisting that his receptionist let me speak to him, giving him a snapshot of the scene, and asking his advice. Second, armed with the GP’s professional guidance (luckily, he was fully aware of my LO’s struggles with SUD) I got my LO dressed, and my sister and I took him to the ER.
5. My LO kept asking, “is this really necessary?” and we kept answering, “Yes, absolutely. Your doctor feels it’s best. You need to be in the care of professionals right now.” The first ER sent us to another, equipped with a mental health unit. There they tested his blood alcohol level, which was quite high. They admitted him and kept him all day until he was sober enough to have a serious conversation. A doctor talked to him about his struggles and suggested possible medication to help him detox from the alcohol while controlling the anxiety. His GP had been alerted to the situation and thus had more ammunition for future attempts to send my LO to treatment. And my LO spent one long, uncomfortable day in a crowded and noisy mental health ward, with no phone or book to help him escape the reality of the day’s events.

Fifth case: no farewell this time

1. Our teenage daughter was visiting from overseas where she had gone to study. The plan was for her to spend her last night back in the states with her dad. Instead, they talked a little, he paid for her to order food, and then he started drinking alone in the kitchen. The next morning, as I was on my way to pick her up for the run to the airport, she texted me a photograph of her dad passed out in his boxers on the cold stone floor. When I arrived, he was unable to communicate, clearly quite inebriated.
2. Again, his putting himself in danger and being unable to communicate affected us both very much, but this particular situation was less about our own boundaries and more about his safety and well-being.
3. My daughter and I were both very upset. She wouldn’t be seeing him for at least half a year, and although he was in the same room, he wouldn’t be able to hug her goodbye or tell her he loved her. She was leaving the country with her stomach in knots and an indelible image printed on her mind: her father unconscious and sprawled on the floor. I was so sad for him (usually these events did not happen in my presence, so I was quite shaken) and also so sad for my daughter.
4. Considering that my LO was way too inebriated to be safe, and because we had to leave, I called in the first responders.
5. They arrived just before we left for the airport. As we walked out the door, we heard him telling them in slow, slurred speech that he was perfectly fine, that there was nothing to worry about. They brought him to the ER but he was released not long afterwards. He didn’t exactly have a “wake-up call” experience like the previous ER visit, but I knew that this was one additional piece of information/experience that he would have to add to his growing collection. While it’s often easy to ignore a family member telling you that your situation is grave, it’s much harder to ignore your own lived experience of being plopped down by first responders in the ER because you drank dangerous amounts of alcohol.

Sixth case: a taxi is on its way

1. One day (again, in the era after our children left home and we grew closer), it came to my attention that my LO was drinking vodka at work. I was on the phone with him and he was not making a lot of sense. He was planning to drive his motorcycle to my place.
2. I’m not sure if this was a personal boundary of mine or just a desire to keep him and others on the road safe, but I knew I couldn’t let this happen.
3. I was shocked and worried at the way his drinking kept creeping into all areas of his life—he had successfully compartmentalized for so many years. But now things were at an all-time low: drinking in his office, and potential driving under the influence. It was an awful thing to realize.
4. Rather than letting the natural consequence occur, which would have put my LO and all sorts of other people in danger, I decided I had to intervene. I acted swiftly and told him I was on my way to pick him up, and repeated a dozen times that he should under no circumstances drive anywhere. In reality, I was putting my young daughter (my third, not his child) to bed and couldn’t drive anywhere. I called a friend/neighbor who was a taxi driver and asked him to go straight to my LO’s office and pick him up.
5. The outcome was that my LO did not get on his motorcycle that day. My friend dropped him off at my apartment and I let him sober up alone. The whole story also left him with the knowledge that I and other people were aware that he was drinking at work and potentially driving drunk.

I hope it has been helpful, perhaps instructive, for you to read about the situations I encountered and how I handled them. Of course, your own experiences will differ from these, just as each of these cases differed from the others. Any instance of substance use, and the natural consequences that may follow, requires us to reflect carefully on the specific situation and make an informed decision.

Natural consequences: keep these notes in your pocket

Fortunately, there are some guiding principles when it comes to natural consequences. Wherever you may be on your journey with your LO, it may help to keep these in mind:

• Natural consequences and boundaries go hand in hand. It’s easier to allow a natural consequence to occur if you’re holding the line on your own boundaries.
• Only allow a natural consequence to occur if it is safe for everyone, and if you can handle it.
• We are not seeking to punish our LOs but rather to step out from between their actions and the consequences that may help them become more aware of the problem.
• Start small and with what’s doable. Work your way up to larger challenges.

You can watch the natural consequences module here and here and fill out the related Key Observations exercise.

Rooting for you and your Loved Ones, as always. – Isabel