Intervention: Couple Spends Over $2k a WEEK on Drugs | A&E

[somber music] My name is Carlee. I'm 26 years old. Quit trying to bite me so much.

My name is Cody. I'm 28. We've been together for 15 years if you think about, like, friends from knowing each other to now.

But together, maybe, like, four years. They seem to love each other, but they both They seem to love each other, but they both are addicted to crack cocaine. It's just something that we do just like if you play Parcheesi.

Like we're watching TV. It just intensifies our love, I guess. Carlee and Cody ended up stealing lots and lots of money from family.

And she steals from anywhere she can to help support her habit. And she steals from anywhere she can to help support her habit. I have confronted Cody and Carlee both about their drug use many times, but they don't care.

both about their drug use many times, but they don't care. They're enjoying this. They're living life to the fullest so they think.

He's so skinny now. His body is just shutting down. He has become violent.

He has no control. Cody, what's the matter? I don't feel like I can save my son.

I'm watching my son die. Yeah, a little bit. All right.

Carlee's relationship with Cody I think is what started a lot of this addiction. CARMEN: She was on painkillers from a very young age. And then one day, she bumped into Cody.

In the last three years, her drug abuse has escalated. And she's now having seizures, and she is 75 pounds soaking wet. She has lost a majority of her teeth and what teeth are there are just falling apart.

She's been in jail several times now for shoplifting. She's going further down closer to death. They are almost obsessed with the other.

I've had a crush on her since the day I met her. [serene music] Carlee first met Cody when she was about 13. I moved in her neighborhood, and that's when I got introduced to her.

No. Never. I was hoping to god, we would, but no, I didn't get that fortunate.

What actually brought us back in touch with each other again was when I ran into her mom. She gave me Carlee's number and told me to just call her, so I did. And we decided to hang out again.

CARLEE: That was four or five years ago. CODY: Yeah. I would just stop talking to Cody for three days because I didn't know what crack was.

And he told me that he was doing it. Then I googled it. And realized that it was coke.

And so, I told Cody if it was good enough for him, it was good enough for me. Anytime that I would try to call her or talk to her, if I did get her, it would be on speakerphone, and he would be in the background talking over her. He was someone who was already struggling with addiction.

And I think she was willing to do whatever to be able to latch on for someone to love her. And slowly she just disappeared. I lost all contact with her until one random morning, I get a call.

And all she says is, you're an aunt. AMY: About two years ago, Charlee was born. And Cody and Carlee agreed it would be best for me to legally adopt her.

She's been with me since the day she came home from the hospital. And then a year later, Carter was born two months early. And we got some wonderful months with him.

And then one day, he just went to sleep and he never woke up. And he definitely took a piece of everybody's heart with him. I feel like they're in denial.

And I think they use the drugs to numb the pain. Hey. CHUCK: Hey.

Nice little van. Huh? Nice what?

The van up there. Yeah. [chuckles] Yeah, I'm going to go in here real quick.

You got it? You good? Staying out there?

But I wish I would come and stay more. They have no time to talk, no time to sit, always in a rush, rush, rush. And I hate that.

But I love my son. Me and Cody have always had a wonderful relationship. [serene music] When Cody was a child, he wanted to be by me all the time.

AMY: Cody was always a very fun child to be around. So energetic, so loving. Smiles for days.

CHUCK: Amy and I shared a lot of the responsibility in taking care of Cody, but we just-- I don't know, couldn't be together, I guess, couldn't get along. [somber music] AMY: We did joint custody. Cody's father and I did not have a healthy relationship.

And that has remained true even up to this day. But for the sake of Cody, we did try to be civil with each other. Cody was around quite a bit of fighting with my wife at the time.

When Cody moved to Brighton, he was isolated. At that point, Cody seemed emotionally just beaten and began using drugs to self-medicate. I thought it's just a phase, you know, because, I mean, who didn't try a little crap when he was young, you know.

But his was different and worse. I had heard rumors that Cody was using, but I never actually caught him in the act, so I guess I didn't want to believe that. I finally had a talk with Cody when he was about 17 years old.

And he admitted that it was cocaine he was using and that it was over. He wasn't going to do it anymore, but that obviously was not very true. He dropped out of high school his senior year.

He couldn't hold down a job. Any job he had lasted maybe a couple of weeks to a month. Long enough for him to get a good paycheck.

And once he got the paycheck, he would go buy drugs. And then the cycle started completely over again. I've done it so long that it's become my personality.

It has gotten very serious. CODY: I know that, Dad. CARLEE: We're leaving.

All right, yeah, we're going. All right. Chuck and my mom have most definitely ignored and enabled Cody's behavior.

I love you, Dad. I'll come back by in a little while or something when we get done doing all this stuff. - Yeah, later on.

Yeah. My mom has developed a very strong backbone when it comes to telling Cody no. Because of that, Cody's options for who he can go to, to get what he wants have narrowed down to one person, and that's Chuck.

I love you. I love you. CODY: See you later.

As far as Cody's addiction, I blame myself. It's always hard for me to be hard on him. Even now, probably still just giving them money and everything they want.

Cars and money and the house where he ain't really got to pay nothing or do nothing. So I guess, it's all my fault. Carlee and Carmen grew up very, very close with each other.

[serene music] Their family always had all the things. And everything they did always seemed so much fun because they weren't really on a schedule. They just kind of walked to a beat of their own drum.

We were very wealthy. We were very well off. Carlee's parents, they had their own vacuum cleaner business where they sold these really high-end vacuum cleaners.

They were living the dream. When Carlee was growing up, she was fine. She was in gymnastics.

And she could have probably gone places with that. But when she was 12 years old, Carlee started having a plethora of health issues. [ominous music] The surgery was botched.

It did not go according to plan. And the doctor that actually did that has left the States. And we haven't been able to find anybody that would be willing to touch it.

CARMEN: Right around the same time as Carlee's surgery, my parents lost their business. And I remember being so poor. We just started bouncing from house to house to house.

Neither one of them could work at that point. They hadn't worked any other job but that. And it just went downhill from there.

CARMEN: Things got really bad. We didn't know if my mom was going to be doing heroin in the kitchen or what. Carlee was exposed to all kinds of drugs.

And she was so used to having to lock down her medicine because if Carlee had pain management drugs, her mother is going to go and use them. CARMEN: Our household was pretty volatile. Our bedroom was our safe space.

So we had, like, food hoards and stuff like that so that we would make sure that we wouldn't have to go out. My family went really bad south and everything. Carmen, she's probably the only reason that I was even sane.

It was me and Carmen against everything. HOPE: Carlee kind of became the mother hen of who she is in helping take care of Carmen. They became incredibly close.

And they were just trying to make it out and figure out what to do to eat or where they were staying and just kind of keeping up with the chaos. [serene music] Aunt Shannon helped to kind of rehab her up from all the things the doctors had her prescribed. Got her completely off all the pain medicine and had her on nothing but Tylenol and ibuprofen.

She was working at a store in downtown Memphis. And she was on her way to, like, management. She did not want to take the same path as other family members did, particularly her mother.

[ominous music] We had mourned her for years because she hadn't been our mom in years. I think we were both pretty-- pretty disconnected. I think she was not, you know, depressed over her mom's loss because she had everything going for her for the first time.

because she had everything going for her for the first time. We started making plans about buying a house together or at least renting a house together. And then she bumped into Cody.

And I don't know who she is anymore. AMANDA MARINO: Thank you all for being here with us today. My name is Amanda Marino.

And I'm Darren Hobbs. I got the pleasure of working with Cody's family yesterday. We got two lives to save.

We've also got a grandbaby, so we've got a lot of work to do. And Cody seems to have all of that going on right now. We're going to initiate a phone call to Cody and Carlee.

And we're going to invite them to a family meeting that's scheduled for tomorrow mid-morning. OK, we're just wanting to talk to you, so can we pick you up at 10:30 tomorrow? We got to-- we got to go, but I'll see you at 10:30.

OK. DARREN HOBBS: Good work. Good work.

Good job, guys. CARMEN: You did so good. All right, guys.

I wouldn't know. AMANDA MARINO: OK, can you not contact Cody and Carlee tonight and not respond to anything? Can you give us all that word?

Yeah. Yeah, I won't. DARREN HOBBS: OK.

I won't. AMANDA MARINO: OK. [ominous music] Logan, what's up, dude?

I've got you on speaker with Amanda. Hey. LOGAN (ON PHONE): Hey.

Damn it. Oh, my god. I knew it.

No, that's absolute-- you were here. - No. - You heard that.

- Thank you. - Thank you, Logan. Good work.

AMANDA MARINO: Thank you. You're amazing. Hey, Chuck.

Hey, man, I just wanted to check on you. Make sure you're holding to the boundaries we agreed to. Yeah What concerns me is that we made an agreement that there was going to be no conversation tonight.

- At all. At all. And if we've already-- if we're already breaking our word, then that gives me concern for the outcome tomorrow already.

AMANDA MARINO: We need you to please not have any more contact until tomorrow no matter what. Please. It's, like, life or death that you stick to this.

Chuck, can we have your word again? Will you keep it this time? CHUCK (ON PHONE) [sighs] [dramatic music] DARREN HOBBS: Chuck, I need you to be strong today, dude.

A lot of pressure, I know, but I think you can pull it off. So did they attempt to contact you any further last night? The plan as of right now, I'm going Which house is it?

This one right here on the left. DARREN HOBBS: There is no car in the rear of this house. Let's see, Cody.

Darren just sent a screenshot. He wrote to Cody and Carlee's cell phone. "Hi, Cody and Carlee, my name is Darren, I'd like to offer you a life-changing experience of treatment.

Would you be interested in a fresh start in life? Can meet anywhere you feel safe. Dad and Logan would love to meet and talk.

" He wrote back, "Hi, Darren, bye Darren. Life's a bitch. Be a bitch back.

[bleep] off and have a nice day. Stop calling me. " [somber music] I'm very disappointed.

AMANDA MARINO: OK. CARMEN: How dare you! You called them!

I looked you in the eyes and I chose kindness! You don't deserve the kindness that I gave you last night! You're [bleep] killing my sister, and you're killing your son, and you killed your grandson!

You looked at all of us and promised! You promised to set boundaries and you did [bleep] all! [shouting] No, no, no, no.

No, [bleep] you! Yeah, you're [bleep] killing your own son and you're OK with it! My mom's dead because of it!

I'm going to have to bury another [bleep] family member because of it-- because of you! Yeah. You are the sole provider of this issue.

It is you! If you didn't give them anything, if they continued to do it, it'd be of their own volition, but you're allowing it. Cody and Carlee to be ready?

There's no way that they can be ready until you are. and they're exploiting that. You're being played by a bunch of addicts.

When every single person in your life, including all the professionals are telling you a message, this is real, regardless of what your brain tells you. This is the way it has to be or they're going to die. Mm, yeah.

AMANDA MARINO: So we need to move on today. And we need to send them a message-- unified message. And we need to take some action steps today.

Chuck, are you really going to do this [bleep]? I need to know. I'll do my best.

The commitment of doing your best is not going to help anything. Cody and Carlee cannot be helped until you're helped, until you're 100%. Look, guys, I understand.

It's a lot of pressure all at once. Just please, god. - It's life or death.

- I know. And there's already been a baby dead. This is life or death.

So, like, you're not taking this [bleep] seriously. You're not hearing cries. You're not hearing-- You're stupid with this [bleep], man.

Chuck. It's just too stupid with the [bleep], man. It's not stupid, it's the truth.

We'll learn how to deal with [bleep] better. Help me better. Not talk like [bleep] idiots.

They tried talk to you nice yesterday. I'm out of here. I'm off.

[bleep] y'all. [pensive music] DARREN HOBBS: I'm back in Memphis for Cody and Carlee to make another offer of treatment. Get in front of these guys and, um, give them a chance to change their lives.

Right now, we know Cody and Carlee are stuck at a tire shop. Broke down in North Memphis. They're hoping and waiting for a Cash App from Amy, Cody's mom, to come through.

So with that information, Eric and I are headed over there right now to see if we can have a conversation with them. Is the blue car there? That's them.

LOGAN: Yeah. No [bleep]. DARREN HOBBS: They've seen this truck.

Look there, they're moving. They're moving. Let's see where they go.

Coming back this way. He's driving, right? Yes.

[tires screech] [car accelerates] He might just come visit us. [tires screech] Let's do it. [dramatic music] A lot of [bleep] talk.

Yeah. How much of that did you see, Logan? All of it.

Cody opened his door just long enough to look me in the eye and what I saw was end-stage addiction. I saw a dead man looking back at me. That's it.

No more phone calls, no more tax messages until you're clean. If he comes to your house. I want you to call me, and I'm going to lead you to get an order of protection.

They both feel like they're invincible and untouchable. And this lifestyle will catch up with them. I mean, it's already started to.

I'm sorry we couldn't have done it different. I really-- I really am, dude. I'm really sorry.

I hate it. We're going to get her. I know that you will.

I hope that we look back and say that was the day things changed. I hope so. She knew you guys were here.

She did. She knew it. Yeah.