We're Out of Time
Inside Intervention: Candy Finnigan on Alcoholism, Family, and Recovery
16 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What inspired Candy Finnigan to become an interventionist?
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Candy Finnegan. Richard Tate. How are you?
Well, I think I'm okay.
So everyone... Candy Finnegan is a world-renowned interventionist, but not just a world-renowned interventionist. She is, what, the first or one of the first?
One of the first three women interventionists.
One of the first three. How long have you been doing this for?
32 years.
32 years. And we do it completely differently, but we'll talk about that later. But what I want to hear is, did you have a drug problem yourself?
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Chapter 2: How did Candy's personal experience with alcoholism shape her career?
Knee-walking, tongue-chewing alcoholic, as I used to say. I stopped drinking Jameson's. And because people told me I was obnoxious. I don't think so. But I tended to be more maudlin, like, I love you so much. One of those which people didn't enjoy. And I went to become a wino. And so... I think if I detoxed off of anything, it was sugar because there's so much sugar in wine. Right.
I was still high functioning. My mother-in-law was a social worker from Ohio. My husband was from Ohio. And she came to visit and busted me. I hid my wine in the back of the toilet tank. It was always cool. No one could see it. And she caught me. And so she was going to take my kids away. And I'm adopted.
Your mother-in-law.
Taking my kids away.
Your mother-in-law. Good woman.
Never, ever said anything to my husband, her son.
Right.
Because he wasn't raising the kids. Right. So that's where the journey started. What a great woman.
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Chapter 3: What pivotal moment led Candy to seek sobriety?
She was 6'1". My husband, you know, was 6'7". I'm 5'2". Well, I'm probably 5'1 now, but, you know, she... She just wasn't messing around. She was the bailiff, the welfare participant, the divorce investigator. Oh, yeah. You were finished. I mean, she's in a small town. Good for you. Good for her. Yeah, of Dayton, right outside of Dayton. And she was not messing around.
How are your kids today?
My kids are spectacular. My daughter is a nurse and she just moved back last week.
I needed a nurse.
Why didn't you call me? From Portland, Oregon. And she moved home with me and my son is another musician.
That's fantastic. Yep. That's fantastic.
And neither one of them belonged to my club because I would have had to kill them.
Well, also because when you have a mother... That, you know, you got your shit together when your kid was six, six and three. Right. So the three year old doesn't even remember you drinking. And the six year old has an idea, but doesn't really remember. So you got there in the nick of time.
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Chapter 4: What powerful stories does Candy share from her time on the show Intervention?
Well, and I think the other thing, too, for me, Richard, is that. I was so frightened to ever relapse because I'm the egomaniac and, you know, Wonder Woman. And I knew I would never go back.
Yeah.
Because I thought, I'm not getting another one of those poker chips. Are you out of your mind?
Yeah, that wasn't my, as you know, that wasn't my thing. I've had more sobriety dates than there are dates on the calendar. But I want to hear the funniest stories about your interventions, the ones you've done. No names. Oh, no. But I need to hear it.
Well, I'd have to say memorable much more than funny. Okay. I had some funny things happen, but... One of them was on the show Intervention that I had a privilege of being on. And he was a lightweight champion. And he was at this point living in New Canaan, Connecticut at the 7-Eleven. Actually, I think it was the Circle K. And the mailman is the one who asked the show if they would intervene.
Wow. Which never we allowed before it had to be immediate family. We actually brought him to where his ex-wife and twin boys lived, who he hadn't seen since they were 11 days old. And he'd had a stroke, of course, not getting any medical care. Because we didn't think it was fair to not kind of preserve the best of him because he lived on the streets.
He basically had no clothes and no shower, no hygiene. So we actually, which was very unusual for us, kind of. Let him get acclimated in a hotel and bought him some clothes. Because the show never meant to embarrass anybody.
And... No, it's not Celebrity Rehab.
Oh, okay.
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Chapter 5: How does trauma impact individuals struggling with addiction?
Okay, I know. Don't even get me going. Thank you, God. Don't even get me going.
Yeah, don't get me going. So really what happened was we... Dude, come on the show and explain yourself.
I'm dying to hear it. One of the field producers...
kind of acclimated him and made sure he was, because he wasn't physically very stable. And so we got him a hotel room and he got to pick out the cutest velour jumpsuit. I said, are we really going to live? It was kind of a moss green color. But anyway, he walked in to the, we'd done a pre-intervention. We had his sister.
The twin boys, one of them had just graduated from Howard and the other one, Grambling.
Wait, wait. He had two twin boys?
Yes. And he hadn't seen them since they were 11. Oh, my God.
Hold on.
Hold on for a sec. 11 days old. He hadn't seen them. Okay, go on. They were so beautiful. One of them was 90% deaf, but he had graduated the top of Howard University. And his sons didn't know his name. They called him Champ. So we got the boys in.
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Chapter 6: What emotional weight do interventionists carry after a failed intervention?
One of them was getting married in three months, and they were 22 years old, and they wanted some kind of lineage. They wanted to know. The mother always never bad-mouthed him, even though he had left her. And then... Two days before the shoot, we found another son that lived a quarter of a mile away from the other boys, and they didn't know that they existed.
And I don't remember, but I don't think camp knew that this other boy existed. So we brought him and the boys bonded. It's spectacular. So when he walked in and saw these people, he didn't know who they were. It still breaks my heart. And he introduced himself and shook hands. We'd gotten him a cane because he was so unstable. He wouldn't use a walker.
And he introduced himself to the boys, and they got up and just melted. And I can't say that he was certainly an alcoholic, but, and he certainly was not cognitively all there anymore, but I don't know whether it was alcohol or the stroke. So he sat down and wanted to tell all of us who he was. Which we, of course, never happened in a regular intervention.
And there was a woman sitting in a chair kind of to the left. And he got up and said, excuse me. I'm so sorry. I was rude. I want to introduce myself. And she jumped up bawling and she said, I'm your sister, Evelyn. I mean, it was just like.
What's going on with him today?
He died.
But how did it go after that?
He he went to a treatment center in Louisiana that had professional athletes. We always joked because when you drove in, it looked like a moat and we'd always say, can't leave. There's alligators.
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Chapter 7: What is the core philosophy behind effective interventions?
And he believed us. And so I felt so badly. He was there eight and a half months. And I think it was not only sheltering him, but it was a safer environment. He did go to his son's wedding. And he and he had. Richard, he had this cry, this catawalling cry that was so guttural that.
It was like a primal scream of what he, for an instant, even in his cognitive delay, realized what he'd done to his family to be champ. And so we allowed him. I didn't take him to treatment that day. We allowed him to spend time with his kids. Good. And we allowed him to spend time with his sister. Good.
And then a nephew of his from another sister, he had a large family, and I think they were from Seattle. They came in. So it was like two days of family reunion time. Because he was not used to sleeping in hotels and having soap. But I have to tell you, 90% of everybody that walked into this Circle K in New Canaan, Connecticut, went over and talked to him.
He was that special.
And gave him money and called him champ. And he'd lost his belt and he had no idea where. And the show was able to get it replaced. The show was more gentle and kind than probably with anybody else we ever did.
Well, he needed it more.
Well, he just couldn't believe what had happened to him. because he had been very ruthless, had no money, was running off with women in pink Cadillacs. And, you know, he was small in stature. I'd say he was maybe five foot eight. But his dad, when he was six weeks old, his dad started calling him Champ.
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Chapter 8: How can listeners support those struggling with addiction?
So it was one of those situations where he had no choice. He was going to be this. And he started training at six and a half years old to be a boxer. So talk about brain injury. And the punishment was extreme if he didn't win. And, I mean, we found all of this out from his sister. He had no recollection of it, and there wasn't any reason to go back and dig it up.
So he lived about, and then after he got out of treatment, he went to live with his sister. Oh, that's fantastic. And he kind of didn't remember ever drinking. Good. But he knew he'd been a bad person and a bad dad, and he tried to make it up to his kids.
I'm not sure what the extension of the relationship was with the children, with the boys, but I do believe they stayed in touch with him, of course.
How long did he live after that, do you know?
I'd say maybe six years.
So he had six good years.
Yes. Well, they were good because he wasn't drinking.
Well, they were good because he went ahead and he made his living amends to his family.
Yes. And they made their living amends to him.
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