Beyond Addiction’s Carrie Wilkens: using science and kindness as motivation for change in your child's substance use

“If you expect your kid to come out of rehab and be sober for good, that's like asking your kid to play a Chopin etude and they've never played the piano. What's actually happening is your kid needs to take piano lessons with a beginning instructor. He's going to earn some learn some easy pieces and work really hard. He's probably going to learn some stuff wrong and he's kind of have to, like, relearn it. At some stage he might have to get a different teacher because that's, he outgrew that teacher. He's going to have to practice more things. He's going to have to find the music he likes to play, you know, where does he like to play it? Does he like to play by himself? Does it like to play? You know, like there's so much learning. We have so much compassion for the learning process in other areas, we don't have a ton of compassion for the learning process when it comes to behavior change around addiction and substance use problems.”