Jordan’s Struggle for Sobriety

Dr. Travis Stork: Todd was here earlier talking about how tough it is to give tough love to your kids because you love them. What has been it like that tough love that you have to show?

Mike: It has been terrible. You don’t know if kicking them out of the house is going to fix it. There is always that worry that that’s going to work, always that fear where it’s -- so it’s one of the worst things.

Male: But I will tell you're enabling is killing.

Dr. Travis Stork: Exactly.

Cary Quashen: When we enable people to do what they’re doing. We’re cosigning their deaths so what you did was probably one of the things that actually save your kid’s life.

Dr. Travis Stork: So Jordan you said you want your family back. You want to reestablish that relationship. It has been three weeks.

Jordan: Yes.

Dr. Travis Stork: How are you doing right now?

Jordan: I'm just happy to be clean and I don’t want to go back on that world ever again. I don’t want to --this is the first time I’ve seen that video. I'm disgusted with myself. But I'm just going to keep following the program and I'm going to go sober living after this for 10 months, so.

Dr. Travis Stork: Todd, is there anything when you were three weeks out that--

Todd: Yeah, you feel fabulous. You’ll ruin a day is kind of you're not going to feel fabulous. And that’s why the choice is going to be yours where you didn’t go back after that.

Jordan: Yeah.

Todd Bridges: But always remember that you will feel better the next day. Just give yourself the next day. Obviously I just want you used to until tomorrow and then you don’t -- you go to the next day and it’s crazy. I'm not looking at yesterday. You know and I’ve moved my days so far now that I’ve got 17 years. I keep—every day is a different day for me and I don’t expect it to be great everyday but also I'm okay if it’s bad. You know that’s just life. I can’t -- I’ve got to live life on life’s terms. I can’t expect it to be changes for me.

Dr. Travis Stork: And quite honestly, Jordan you're dealing with something that a lot of other people don’t deal with. I thought you doing the break. Todd didn’t have medical issues when he was addicted to drugs. You do. You have asthma and we have Dr. Warner Carr with us today who is a specialist. And Jordan, one of the things people do when they’re addicted to drugs is they ignore their medical problems. He has underlying lung problems.

Dr. Warner Carr: Yes, Travis. You have a chronic inflammatory lung disease. It’s like having a burn in your lungs. And by putting these chemicals in your lungs it’s like throwing fuel on the fire. That’s why you can’t breathe that well.

Let me show you what’s going on in a normal lung. This is somebody that’s breathing normally. Now you see the smoke coming in. That smoke is causing damage to the inside of your lungs and the inside of your lungs are the airways. This is how you feel when you're breathing rapidly and you can’t let breath out of your lungs and you can’t get it into your lungs.

Look at how those mucus and this inflammation is swelling up in your airway and then it causes that narrowing, that makes you feel like you're suffocating, that trapping right there. So we have to get this under control.

Dr. Travis Stork: And you did some tests on Jordan before the show.

Dr. Warner Carr: We did some tests on Jordan before the show and let’s talk about that. You're 22 years old, correct?

Jordan: Yeah.

Dr. Warner Carr: So every year, part of normal ageing is you lose a little bit of lung function. Your lungs today at baseline, is the lungs of a 33-year-old. The other thing we did was give you a breathing treatment, a nebulizer. What that nebulizer does, it only lasts for a couple of hours. It opens up your airway and sees how much of that is reversible. How much of that you can get back if you stop and you gained back 25% of your lung function.

Think about that for a second. That’s like half of one lung. That’s a huge improvement so the good news is that there is room for improvement here. Stop putting these chemicals in your body. Take your asthma medications and then keep doing the hard work you’ve been doing with your recovery, okay.

Jordan: Thank you.

Dr. Travis Stork: So Jordan, I just get back to you. Are you ready to turn your life around, throw drugs away, be healthy and embrace this new life?

Jordan: Oh yeah.

Dr. Travis Stork: Well, we’re all behind you. We wish you the best of luck.

Jordan: Alright, thank you.