When a member of your family is in trouble, you want to help. You’ll bail them out of jail or make them food when they’re sick or watch the kids while they’re dealing with an emergency. No task is too big or too small when a crisis hits your family. But what about when the crisis is substance abuse? How do you help your loved one when they’re fighting a solitary battle against addiction?
Well, while you can’t fight their cravings for them, there’s still a lot you can do for your family member in addiction recovery. Supporting a loved one in addiction is possible with these practical tips for families.
When a loved one has a substance abuse problem, helping them can be a challenge. You want to assist them in ending their addiction, but it can be all too easy to instead simply fall into a pattern of enabling the problem. Giving them money will just end with them spending it on feeding their addiction. Taking a drink with an alcoholic family member, even if you don’t have a problem, only serves to seemingly condone their own behavior. Trying to talk to them can fall on deaf ears.
The process, instead, should start with observing, rather than confronting outright. Make sure they do in fact have a problem. Talk with others in the family and determine that others agree with your assessment. Only then act.
The intervention is the next step. It’s not always a comfortable process, but it can be vital. Just chatting with the addict will likely prove no results. Instead, by confronting them in a group, letting them know multiple people feel this way and want them to seek help, you can better break through their self-deceptions and excuses and try and get to the root of the problem and push them to seek help.
Contacting a rehab center for advice can help and, if the intervention is successful, you can possibly already have a spot ready for your loved one when they choose to enter rehab.
Once they’re out of rehab, though, they still may need help, but it can be hard to know how. So much of the battle against addiction is an inner struggle, it can be difficult to know where to begin as an ally.
But it doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be as simple as just being available to talk when they need a friendly ear, or being present when they need to be around someone they trust while trying to resist a craving. So much of helping an addict is just BEING THERE for the addict. They can win the battle. They just need to know they have people behind them ready to support them if necessary.
At Good Landing Recovery, patients are encouraged to find a support network and by letting your loved one know you and the family are in their corner, you have helped them find such a ready-made support network where they most need one.