This episode is for anyone navigating a sibling's addiction, early sobriety, or the complicated road of family recovery.

A year ago, I wasn't sure where my brother Justin would be today — or if he'd make it to his 21st birthday.

This episode, releasing in honor of National Sibling Day (April 10th), is one I've been waiting to record for a long time. Justin is 21, one year sober, and six months into a long-term young adult treatment program — and for the first time, he's sharing his story of addiction and early sobriety in his own words.

We recorded this together during a family visit upstate, and what came out of it was more honest, more raw, and more hopeful than I could have scripted.

We talk about:

• What the past year of young adult addiction recovery has actually looked like — the hard parts and the proud ones
• How drug addiction shaped his relationships, his sense of self, and what friendship even means
• The loneliness and shame in early sobriety that don't get talked about enough
• What he wishes people understood about addiction before judging someone going through it

📘Download our FREE, sibling e-book: 6 actions to help navigate a sibling’s substance use journey

🤝Join our FREE and PRIVATE sibling-focused community: Siblings For Love of Recovery

📲Connect with FLOR: Instagram and TikTok

🎙Guest speaker: Justin Dajer

Related content:

• Episode: My brother’s addiction: Learning how to be his sister—not mom
  

Addiction is hard. But the stories we tell about it can make it even harder.

When someone you love is struggling with substance use, the questions feel endless:

Do they deserve my love right now?

Am I enabling them?

Should I cut them off?

In this episode, we unpack one of the most dangerous parts of addiction — the narrative around it. Because sometimes what harms our loved ones isn’t just the substances. It’s the shame. The labels. The fear-driven decisions. The belief that love must be earned.

In this episode with Joseph Green, a person in recovery and spoken word artist, we explore 5 powerful mindset shifts that can change how you show up:

• Moving from “deserving” to inherent worth

• Treating addiction as a mental health condition — not a moral failue

• Reframing “enabling” vs. compassionate care and harm reduction

• Rethinking cutting someone off vs. being there when they’re ready

• Choosing people-first language over labels like “junkie” or “addict”

If you’ve ever felt torn between protecting yourself and loving someone through addiction, this conversation will challenge you to look at the story you’re telling — about them and about yourself.

📘Download our FREE, sibling e-book: 6 actions to help navigate a sibling’s substance use journey

🤝Join our FREE and PRIVATE sibling-focused community: Siblings For Love of Recovery

📲Connect with FLOR: Instagram and TikTok

🎙Guest speaker: Joseph Green

Related content:

• About LMS Voice: https://lmsvoice.com/productions/

• Start WIth Hope stories: https://startwithhope.com/stories-of-hope

• Take the Stories of Hope course and own your story: https://ncmwpic.learnupon.com/store/4553158-stories-of-hope-a-value-centered-approach-to-storytelling
  

If your sibling is sober, or you’ve finally put those boundaries up, but you still feel on edge, you’re not alone.

Many siblings experience lingering anxiety after addiction—even when life finally feels calm. The chaos may be gone, but your body hasn’t caught up.

In this episode, Shahem McLaurin digs into what happens after the crisis phase ends: why your nervous system stays on high alert, how years of unpredictability create hypervigilance, and why “nothing happening” can feel unsafe. We also explore boundaries, trust, and learning to feel safe again in recovery—at your own pace.

This conversation is for siblings who are tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop and want language for what they’re feeling.

📘Download our FREE, sibling e-book: 6 actions to help navigate a sibling’s substance use journey

🤝Join our FREE and PRIVATE sibling-focused community: Siblings For Love of Recovery

📲Connect with FLOR: Instagram and TikTok

🎙Guest speaker: Shahem Mclaurin

Related content:

• Book: “It Didn’t Start With You” by Mark Wolynn

What does it mean to grieve a parent who is still alive—but was never able to show up the way you needed?

In this episode, Marci Hopkins shares how childhood abuse, emotional neglect, and a parent’s addiction quietly shaped her relationship with alcohol—and how drinking became a way to survive grief she didn’t yet have language for.

For years, Marci’s drinking didn’t look extreme or chaotic. It looked normal. It looked functional. It looked like coping.

As many people enter Dry January questioning their own relationship with alcohol, this conversation offers a deeper lens—one that moves beyond willpower or labels and into the emotional roots of why we drink.

We talk about:

• How alcohol can become a socially acceptable way to numb unresolved trauma
• Grieving the parent you needed, not just the one you had
• Why addiction often masks deeper grief and unmet childhood needs
• Letting go of the hope that someone will one day become who you needed them to be
• Finding peace and sobriety without the closure you thought you’d need
  

This episode is for anyone who has loved someone struggling with addiction, questioned their own drinking, or felt the quiet, complicated grief of losing someone—while they’re still alive.

📘Download our FREE, sibling e-book: 6 actions to help navigate a sibling’s substance use journey

🤝Join our FREE and PRIVATE sibling-focused community: Siblings For Love of Recovery

📲Connect with FLOR: Instagram and TikTok

🎙Guest speaker: Marci Hopkins

Related content:

• Marci’s book: “Chaos to Clarity: Seeing the Signs and Breaking the Cycles”

• Family resources: Shatterproof

• Find a family group: Al-Anon Family Groups

What if everything you’ve been taught about recovery is wrong?

What if the thing your family fears —medication—might actually be the one thing that could help save your loved one’s life?

You might recognize names like methadone, suboxone, sublocade, buprenorphine, and others.

In this episode, we strip away the sugarcoating and talk honestly about how these work, and what exactly medically assisted treatment (MAT) is: what it does, why it works, and why so many families still judge it. We dig into the hard truths—how detox alone sets people up to fail, how shame keeps loved ones stuck, and how MAT creates the chemical stability that recovery literally cannot happen without.

We confront the biggest stigma head-on: “Isn’t this just swapping one drug for another?” And we break down, in real language, why that belief is not only outdated—but dangerous.

If you’re a sibling or family member watching someone you love fight addiction, this episode gives you the clarity you’ve been craving and the honesty you deserve.

You’ll walk away with:

• The real science behind MAT and why it stabilizes the brain when nothing else does
• A blunt breakdown of the biggest stigmas, including why the “one drug for another” myth does more harm than good
• What recovery actually requires beyond detox, tough love, or willpower
• Clear ways to support your loved one without shame, judgment, or outdated beliefs

📘Download our FREE, sibling e-book: 6 actions to help navigate a sibling’s substance use journey

🤝Join our FREE and PRIVATE sibling-focused community: Siblings For Love of Recovery

📲Connect with FLOR: Instagram and TikTok

🎙Guest speaker: Dr. Sarah Nasir, DO

Related content:

• Watch her break down “Opioid Addiction & 3 Phases of Treatment”
• Download the Opioid Recovery Guide
  

“How’s your brother? How are your parents?”

Sound familiar?

If you’ve ever felt like people are quick to ask about the loved one struggling with substance use—but rarely ask how you’re doing—you’re not alone. Or maybe they jump straight into offering advice.

I know that feeling well. In this episode, I’m answering the questions I get asked most about my brother’s addiction—and the ones I wish people asked instead.

The ones I hear all the time sound like:

• “Do you think he’s ready for treatment this time?”

• “What caused him to use?”

• “Is your family doing better now?”

But those aren’t the questions I wish people asked.

Because it’s not about blame—it’s about being seen.

This episode is for every sibling who’s tired of being the messenger, the fixer, or the spokesperson. It’s for the ones who want to talk about their relationship with their sibling as they see it—not through the lens of addiction, but through love, boundaries, and truth.

📘Download our FREE, sibling e-book: 6 actions to help navigate a sibling’s substance use journey

🤝Join our FREE and PRIVATE sibling-focused community: Siblings For Love of Recovery

📲Connect with FLOR: Instagram and TikTok

What does it really mean to love someone through addiction — and how do we move beyond the idea that rehab is the only way forward?

The answer is rarely simple. We want to show up, to help, to protect — but sometimes our love feels heavy, confusing, or not enough.

Joanna and I talk about the complicated love of siblings — the guilt, the hope, the heartbreak — and how stories like hers and mine can remind us that none of us are alone in this.

In The Opioid Trilogy, Joanna brings these stories to life with unflinching honesty: Brother captures her intimate phone calls with her brother as he navigates the fragile cycle of recovery; Do No Harm follows Raina McMahan’s 17-year struggle with heroin and the healing power of connection over punishment; and Coming Home traces Tahira Malik’s journey of rebuilding after addiction and incarceration, and her creation of a safe space for women reentering society.

Together we dig into:

• The complicated love of siblings — the guilt, the hope, the heartbreak

• Paths to recovery beyond rehab

• The failures of the rehab industry

• How to help and support a loved one in early recovery, or sober curious

• And what it means to love someone through addiction, even when you don’t have the answers

If you’ve ever wrestled with the idea of tough love, or questioned, “Am I loving them the right way?” this conversation is for you.

📘Download our FREE, sibling e-book: 6 actions to help navigate a sibling’s substance use journey

🤝Join our FREE and PRIVATE sibling-focused community: Siblings For Love of Recovery

📲Connect with FLOR: Instagram and TikTok

🎙Guest speaker: Joanna Rudnick

Watch The Opioid Trilogy’s short films:

• Ep 1: Brother

• Ep 2: Do No Harm

• Ep 3: Coming Home

“Rat Park,” explained:

• TED Talk: “Everything you know about addiction is wrong” by Johann Hari

What happens to the child who’s always told to “be good” while all the attention goes to their sibling? They grow up invisible. They become the Glass Child.

In the third and final episode of our Parentification Series, I talk with TEDx speaker Alicia Meneses Maples, who coined the term glass child, about what it’s really like to be the sibling who carries the burden quietly. We go deep into:

• The crushing pressure of being “the good kid”

• Parents leaning on you like their therapist

• The silence and shame of having no space for your own emotions

• How it all shows up later in toxic relationships and burnout

• And what healing, boundaries, and acceptance actually look like

If you’ve ever felt unseen in your own family, this one will hit home.

📘Download our FREE, sibling e-book: 6 actions to help navigate a sibling’s substance use journey

🤝Join our FREE and PRIVATE sibling-focused community: Siblings For Love of Recovery

📲Connect with FLOR: Instagram and TikTok

🎙Guest speaker: Alicia Meneses Maples

Related content:

• Alicia’s TEDx on recognizing the “Glass Child”

• “The parentified child: Why they’re often the eldest daughter”