When you know a loved one is struggling with addiction, your natural instinct is to help them in some way. But the nature of that help can sometimes work at cross purposes to the best interests of the addict.
When you're doing something to try and help your loved one, you must ask yourself, are you helping or enabling?
All too often, people recognize that their loved one has an addiction, but they’re not sure how to fix it. What they end up doing is enabling the problem instead of fixing it. Through both their thoughts and behaviors, concerned friends and family prevent the addict from realizing the consequences of their substance abuse.
As a result, everyone loses respect for each other. Unfortunately, this self-generated situation is a win-win for the addict: they see that their “concerned” caregiver has a permissive attitude toward addiction, which means they can continue living the lifestyle they want and never have to seek treatment.
To truly make a difference in your loved one’s life, you must find a way to help them without merely enabling them and their addiction.
First, you must realize your decisions can make a difference, if you make the right choice. The choices you make right now are the difference between your child living successfully and independently or being an “adult child” in active addiction living in your basement. How you approach the person facing addiction could very well dictate whether they live or die.
It’s vital you reach out to your loved one and ensure they know the problem they face in their addiction – and that you, and the rest of their family and other loved ones, know about their addiction and are there to help them.
You cannot make excuses for them or cover for them. These are enabling decisions that can ultimately lead to further addiction, health problems and, eventually, possibly even death.
You must instead make the decision to confront them, lovingly but firmly, in an intervention designed to push them into getting help.
No matter how great your intentions are, enabling the addict’s problem is not what true love looks like. Genuinely loving someone with a substance abuse problem means you have to make difficult, life-altering decisions at the expense of temporarily straining the relationship.
You must find a way to help them and love them by reaching out.
With the right approach and help from loved ones in staging the intervention, you can hopefully convince the addict to enter a recovery program rather than continue to indulge and feed their addiction.
Good Landing Recovery can help with that process and turn the enabling of an addict into true, life-changing help. Their faith-based, Christ-centered recovery approach is designed to make a difference in any client’s life and help them find true relief from addiction and freedom from the bondage of their burden.
Stop enabling your loved one’s poor behaviors and start helping them by finding them the help they need to end their addiction with Good Landing Recovery.