I don’t need to tell you just how devastating it is when someone you love is an addict. If you’ve lived through a relationship overshadowed by it, or you’re navigating your way through one now, then you already know.
From a scientific standpoint, we are understanding more and more about what causes addiction and what sustains it. But there are still no easy answers when it comes to successfully solving it. We now understand how boundaries, love, patience and education can serve as powerful forces to loosen the grip of addiction. And while rehab has no guarantees, it can provide very real possibilities for some.
But as daughters, sisters, wives, mothers and friends, what do we do when our hearts are broken and our heads are still spinning with desperation? How do we eek out any semblance of a balanced, productive life when we’re overwhelmed by someone else’s addiction?
There is no easy answer. No matter how many self-help books you read or how much meditation you practice, and in spite of countless years in therapy and 12-step groups, I’m here to tell you: there is no easy or surefire way to help an addict.
I spent more than 30 years married to an addict. I know what it’s like to hope and pray for the addiction to end. And I know how it feels to watch a marriage fall apart around it.
Looking back at those years, I see that my greatest struggle was always within myself. The hardest part of life with my ex-husband wasn’t trying to figure out how to deal with his drug use. Instead, it was figuring out how to be honest with myself about my role in it.
Because the emotions we have when coping with a loved one’s addiction are so similar to those of trauma or grief, it’s not hard to understand why we feel so compelled to “fix” the addict. Their addiction signals the death of our own dreams for a healthy partnership. Allowing ourselves to face that reality is not an easy task.
How I Took Care of Myself In the Process
Here’s what I do know. Before I could ever offer real and sustainable help, I had to take a hard look at myself. I had to acknowledge my reality, my pain and my willingness to accept that pain and make painful choices. Here’s what I mean.
1. I acknowledged my present reality, and differentiate it from the one I wished I had.
Imagine for a moment: Your best-loved vase (a family heirloom) falls to the floor and shatters into a million tiny fragments. As it does, you remember the moment your mother gave this vase to you, saying “It has been handed down for five generations.”
Instantly, despair washes over you. There is no way this vase can be restored, and now the family legacy it stood for is gone. The heirloom will not pass to your own daughter. You feel devastated.
Then it occurs to you. Even though your mother is gone, you know what she would have said. “It was a very precious thing, sure. But it’s just an object. We’ll just find another reminder of those we loved.”
Your perception is reshaped.
Your heart still aches. The vase is still shattered glass, but through your heartache, you begin to understand how a single moment is capable of delivering two very different realities: the reality you actually have right now (the vase shattered) and the one you wish you had (the vase still intact).
When someone you love is consumed by addiction, your hopes, dreams and expectations are shattered. And despair works overtime to consume you. However, when you allow yourself space to acknowledge reality as it truly is, you create the opening to find meaning, purpose and direction, in spite of the pain. And it is only here, with this clear perception, that you can truly begin to deal with the addiction in a constructive way.
Allowing yourself to acknowledge reality as it truly is creates an opening to find meaning, purpose and direction. Click To Tweet2. I acknowledged my authentic pain.
Guilt bullies us into believing if we just give the addict what they want from us – what they say they need – it will help somehow. We tell ourselves the money they ask for won’t go directly into the pocket of the pusher. That the cover we provide when they can’t get out of bed after a bender will help them keep their jobs (and our financial security). If we hide the booze or flush the substances down the toilet, we can hold back the tide. Or if we bail them out of jail, pay the fine for their DUI or loan them the money to pay the rent, it will prevent them from going deeper into crisis.
Our own fight-or-flight response kicks in, tricking us into believing that if we just work harder, love more or hang in there long enough – we can save the addict, even liberate them from addiction. At the time, you don’t see this thinking and behavior as a distraction from your pain. You see it as the solution.
There are painful truths, waiting to be acknowledged. There are authentic pain emotions, held back: anger, confusion, despair and fear of what might happen if you choose to stop enabling the addict.If you don’t acknowledge the truth, your shame, blame, guilt and outrage, your pity for the addict and your self-pity continue to drive the destructive cycle of co-dependence. Unwittingly, all your well-intentioned “help” is actually enabling the addiction.
You’re not only locked in a cycle that shields the addict from the consequence of their choices. You’re also prevented from seeing the reality of the broken pieces of the life you wanted. And as long as you remain a prisoner of your misperceptions, you’ll never find the space to grieve what has been lost (and what may never be regained).
This means you’ll be unable to open the door to the possibility that growth and healing can occur.
3. I acknowledged that acceptance is not pain-free and neither are my choices.
You’re probably familiar with the 5 Stages of Grief – an approach to understanding the stages we go through when we’re grieving. In this model, the final stage is acceptance. If you’ve gone through grief, then you know that well-meaning friends and family often associate acceptance with happiness. As a result, we put unfair and unrealistic expectations on our behavior. We believe that emotions like sadness or anger signal we’re doing something wrong.
But acceptance doesn’t really mean any of those things. I talk about dealing with grief here, and those same principles apply REGARDLESS of what you’re grieving.
So often, we get held back from making self-valuing decisions for ourselves because we get caught up in the expectations of others.
Just leave him.
It’s time she figures out how to do this on her own.
You should be there for her – no matter what.
What kind of mother would abandon her child like this?
People are always going to have opinions about what you should and shouldn’t do, but your happiness depends on listening to your own inner wisdom, a guidance that is only available to you when you accept what is painful about reality.
We can choose to embrace the pain of no longer enabling the addict. Of course, that doesn’t mean we wake up every day, confident in our choice.
Acceptance doesn’t make our authentic choices pain-free. It just means that we have seen reality; we recognize our role, and we’re handling a very painful decision the best way we know how.
If you’re living life with an addict, I encourage you to seek out help. This isn’t a weight you should ever have to bear on your own. There is great support to be found in an authentic community of those who’ve been through what you’re encountering, guided by those who are trained to help you address the natural instinct to enable when the addict is someone you love.
Watch my Video Take good care : ) Meg
Powerful message, Meg.