Chain of Care

Hi this is a heart-to-heart video that we would on a regular basis, and we want to talk to you today about what we call our chain of care.  For some time now, certainly the last couple of months, I’ve really had this feeling that we should make Bottled Up free.  So, I shipped this piece of information with Lou and she’ll tell you what her reaction was to it.

I am always respectful of John’s kind of suggestions, but I had a really strong reaction to this one actually and I had to go away and think okay, what was all this strong reaction about?  I think, first of all, we’ve always given.

Can I just stop you there and say it’s a strong negative reaction.

So, I think the history we’ve always given this free to drinkers, because we want drinkers to get sober, and a lot of people did get sober through the website and they had a donate button and they just rarely used it.  They’d get on the forum and say oh I’ve saved so much money now, for this and that, so that was kind of hard.

Can I say a few people did donate, but not nearly enough to make it a viable Website.

So the other thing is I found myself actually crying and saying to John, how much more must I give?  I gave my marriage my, well-being, my children are being traumatized by it. This has cost us a lot of money to put the website and therapy together.  If you know anything about web sites, you’ll know that, so I thought I was always being asked to give sacrificially and that was kind of happening again.  But the more I thought about it, the more I just really thought it was the right thing to do. Yeah so, we’ve been headed towards this for some time.  We’re kind of quite excited about it.

Can I just say, I’m really proud of my wife, because she worked her way through that.  And I think I think it’s important that she didn’t dismiss it out of hand.  She said, I’m not sure about that one but she worked her way through it, and at the end she came back and said, yeah I agree we must give it free and that’s what we’re doing.  So now Bottle Up is now a free website, both for drinkers and for families.

 And the bottom line how do I got there was you!  And I feel quite choked up actually as I’m saying this.  Because we’ve done this enough and had feedback from people

Enough, to know the horrible situations that people are in when they come to this website.  And this matters to us, it really does, you matter to us.  You will learn this.

 So, what we’ve come up with, and really thinking this through, because actually just giving it away free I think is not necessarily right and good in terms of people taking responsibility.  So, we’ve come up with this thing called the Chain of Care.

 The first thing we want to say is, this website is absolutely free and, if that’s how you want to stay and use it you will get it with our blessing.

 So, it is free there are no strings attached.  If you want to you use it free, use it free.  If you want to come to the next level that’s another matter.

 In England we’ve kind of had this thing called ‘buy one get one free’.  And sort of what we’re trying to approach here is ‘get one free and maybe think about sponsoring somebody else’.  What we are asking you to consider doing is exactly what we are doing to you now.  We are sponsoring you and we’ve raised money to do it, because we want you to be helped, as we know the situation you’re in.  But there are going to be hundreds of hundreds of other people who are coming, who will need funding to get this kind of care.  So, we’re asked if you would consider sponsoring one other person who’s going through exactly what you’re going through – we’ve left it really kind of loosey-goosey.  You can do a one-off donation.

I just want to say we’ve raised some money, great.  That allows us to do this but it’s a finite pot and it will run out and when it runs out, then, if nobody is taking any responsibility then bottled-up will cease to exist and that would be sad.  Not just for us, but for all the people who have got help from it and who continue to get help from it.  So that’s why we have instituted this chain of care.  But as we said if you want to use it free then user it free, that’s up to you.  But if you want to actually join with us, partner with us, partner with other people who are in the same boat as yourself, then be part of this chain of care.

I think in terms of a value system. the value system, and I think society is just beginning to really get behind this, is that if you think of someone else then there’s something kind of happens in your own life.  It’s almost like you get a bigger hole to be inputted and blessed by life.  You did a bit of research there didn’t you?

Yeah, I mean I’m a psychologist and there’s always been this psychology of altruism, you know thinking about other people.  And what people have found is that there are lots of benefits from actually trying to help other people.  First of all, it takes you out of yourself.  You start to trust other people a bit more, and you certainly respect people  more you know and you develop a generosity of spirit.  And some people have even talked about an ‘altruistic high’ which basically is, that by helping other people you actually get a wee bit of a buzz yourself, because you feel like you’re doing some good.

But one of the things that is very important is, that for people who are involved in addictions, there is a closing down of their world you know.  And what we are asking is, you start to open that back up again.  You know start open up to the rest of the world but starting with people who are in the same yourself.  We’ll explain more about in the website and as we go along.

This is particularly true for drinkers, I mean it’s kind of a bit of a reflection one of the steps actually isn’t it?

Oh, it is. it’s actually a reflection of quite a few of the steps.  You know it’s the same steps in al-anon as well.  You know so there’s no great difference there.   As you know your world does close down whether you’re a drinker or whether you’re the family of a drinker.

Yes, you stop conserving and not preserving you just stop.

Yes, you pull up the drawbridge, the battlements on manned to keep the world out.  You know, this is about trying to reverse that process.  It’s part of the recovery process.

So, we’ve really tried to make this as easy as possible if you want to do this. You can donate in any currency, which is great, you can do a one-off donation, and kind of what we’d love is for you to donate a little bit each month.  You can decide how much you donate, and you can stop it and start it whenever you want.  We’re not taking control of this.  Hear our hearts.  We’ll continue to try and get funding but in the UK there’s a lot of charities seeking funding and very little money to go around with them.

So, we leave that with you and I hope you hear our heart in this but it will be a Chain of Care we would invite you to join it and become part of it.  And we promise you we don’t make money out of this, you know we just don’t, so it will go into people like you, it’ll go back in to investing in bringing people out of isolation and giving them hope which is one of the things we do in this.  One of the main kind of solutions offered to families of drinkers, was leave him/her.  It was kind of one of the main bits of advice.  And, yeah, we’ve learned over the years, there’s lots of people out there who aren’t ready to do that and we say in our website, even if you are it would be good to know that you’ve really tried your best to turn this situation around.   And we really will back you in that.  But if you want to leave, we will back you in that as well you know.   So, we try to meet you where you are.

But I think it’s probably I think that’s probably enough.   So again, thank you for listening to us.  There are more videos like this in the website and we will continue to do them.  We’d love to get to know you and as we build up this new kind of website we will be looking at hosting some webinars. So, thanks for listening.