It is not uncommon to know someone who is struggling with addiction. But knowing how you can help your loved one battle the addiction and start their journey toward recovery can be confusing. The reason is that when someone is struggling with addiction, it affects almost every aspect of their life. Their behavior changes, their habits transform, and they become more reckless and often even violent. These changes affect their relationships, education, work, etc. But the fact most people ignore is that addiction doesn’t only ruin the life of its user but also hurts the people around them. Therefore, if your loved one is an addict, their addiction may negatively affect you.
However, the most challenging part is to separate your struggles from their own and recognize ways you can help your loved one get better. Understandably, knowing what steps you need to take to urge them towards treatment and an addictions counsellor who can help you with the recovery. But for that reason, we are here to help and make the process easier for you by discussing ways you can help your loved one with drug addiction.
1. Encourage them to seek help
The first step is to encourage your loved one to seek help for their drug addiction. It doesn’t have to be a strict treatment approach because some rehabilitation centers believe that gentle encouragement and support can do the work just as well. So, for this reason, you can provide support by giving them the means to acquire treatment. For starters, you can visit substancerehabilitation.com and find possible treatment options for their addiction. Then, determine which facility is nearest to you, and provide your loved one with the means to acquire treatment at that facility.
2. Offer support but do not enable
Often, people confuse support with enabling behavior that can be more harmful than beneficial for your loved one already struggling with drug addiction. Therefore, you must first step back by understanding and recognizing habits, actions, and behaviors that allow their addiction to carry on. Remember that you must help them come out of this destructive state.
Apart from that, understand other enabling behavior in yourself and others around you. Because enabling can be something as simple as giving your loved one money or making excuses for their behavior to cover up their mistakes. At times, you may even need to get harsh in your approach, and it may seem cruel to deny someone you love your care and protection, but that step is crucial to push them towards the path to recovery.
3. Establish boundaries
Once you have decided that you are not going to enable the addictive behavior of your loved one, it is now time to set some boundaries. Arguably, it is one of the most challenging steps you will need to take, but it is the one that is crucial for their recovery. Establishing boundaries and enforcing them can be tricky. But first, you must make sure that the boundaries you set are realistic. To understand that, outline why you set that particular boundary and what will motivate you to enforce it. For example, if these boundaries are set for the protection and health of your family, the motivation is healthier and can act as a constant reminder of why you’re doing this.
However, you will have to prepare to face your loved ones’ negative reactions when they learn about these boundaries. That can be one of the most emotionally vulnerable moments for you and them. Therefore, you must hold your ground for your and their sake.
4. Have compassion
Keep in mind that addiction is nothing short of disease, and just like you wouldn’t fault someone for getting sick, you shouldn’t fault them for having an addiction. Instead, you should be willing to help your loved one, be compassionate with them, and support them through their illness and recovery.
Compassion is necessary because most people don’t disclose their addiction or how it affects their lives because they are afraid of judgment. But if you show compassion for their situation, they may be more willing to open up to you regarding their addiction and may even reach out to you for help.
5. Avoid lecturing or shaming them
One of the main reasons addiction results in destructive behavior is the complicated family relationship issues with a loved one struggling with drug addiction. Because if you make them feel cornered, scared, hurt, or undermine their struggles, it will only aggravate the problem even more and feed into the vicious cycle of addiction, especially if they have not come to terms with it yet. This aspect can be entirely off-putting for them if they are defensive and can have worse consequences. Keep in mind that drug addiction recovery requires your support, compassion, love, and empathy. But most importantly, it also requires the user’s willingness to recover from that addiction. But most importantly, it also requires the user’s willingness to recover from that addiction. You lecturing them or guilting them to attend treatments will fail in the long term.
6. Be involved in the treatment and recovery process
Helping a person heal from drug or alcohol addiction is the responsibility of everyone around them. Because if your loved one is finally on the road towards recovery, your lack of support and involvement in the process can hinder their progress. Therefore, supporting them in these critical times is crucial for their health. For this purpose, you can also look into family programs where you and your loved one work on the problem together and try to eradicate the critical triggers that lead to drug addiction. Because often, some family issues become the root cause of this problem. By breaking the cycle, you will also help your loved ones work through their problems and break their cycle of addiction. For this reason, look into family therapy and accompany them throughout the healing and recovery process.
Conclusion
Having a loved one dealing with drug addiction in your family or friends can be emotionally challenging. But don’t forget that they are suffering a lot at the hands of this addiction, and you can’t blame them for the problems and complications arising as a result. Therefore, guilting them, intimidating them, or shaming them won’t have any positive results that you may be hoping for. In fact, these matters can be managed with love, care, compassion, and understanding. Most importantly, showing that you are willing to support them gently and with love can deliver better results than any other approach.
