Addiction robs people of choice, and its impact extends far beyond the person with the addiction. Watching a loved one lose herself in drugs or alcohol can make friends and family feel powerless to help.There is certainly a long journey ahead, but your desire to support your loved one in recovery is one of the most powerful resources she has.
Even if you don’t always know what to say or do for your loved one, your participation as she practices recovery makes a tremendous impact on the process. Research has shown that compassion plays a vital role in addiction treatment. Compassion has the potential to change how our brains operate and even how our genes are expressed! Compassion is also incredibly effective at rooting out shame, one of the main causes of addiction and impediments to recovery.
These findings overturn the old “tough love” and “action stopping” myths and give friends and families many more options when it comes to participating in recovery. You are not expected to be an addiction professional, but there are some tried and true guidelines you can follow to make the best possible impact.
Many of these tips are drawn from information by the National Council on Alcohol and Drug Dependence (NCADD). This article will focus specifically on addressing addiction before rehabilitation as the first part of a series on the contributions you can make at each stage of addiction and recovery.
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- Learn more about addiction. There is plenty of information out there that can help you understand what your loved one is going through. You will find great information through family support groups like Al Anon and Nar Anon, and, of course, on the Waypoint Recovery Center blog.
- Express your care. Addiction can lead to or even arise from low self-esteem. Someone struggling with addiction may truly believe that he is useless or unloved. Think about how hard it would be to seek recovery if you did not feel capable or worthy of a different life. Every time you can show your loved one that you care for and value her, you are making the voice of addiction a little quieter.
- Set boundaries. There are limits to what you can do, are willing to do, and ought to do for your loved one. Know these limits and be open about them. Remember these boundaries come out of love and are merely statements of what you can and cannot handle, not ultimatums. Defining your role is an important element to keeping yourself balanced, and it does not in any way diminish your love and care.
DON’T
- Ignore the problem. One of the worst things you can do is to make addiction a forbidden topic of conversation. Your loved one may be trying to hide her addiction, so creating an air of secrecy around it will only make things worse. Addiction thrives in silence. You don’t have to be her therapist (nor should you be), but you can make yourself a safe person to talk to in times of hardship.
- Shame her. Just as compassion helps to stifle the inner voice of addiction, shame fuels those same negative voices. When you are angry about the behaviors that come along with addiction, it can be easy to fall into preaching, lecturing, threatening, bribing, or moralizing. Sometimes it seems like shame is the only way to break through to your loved one, but ultimately, shame only makes people more adamant in rejecting recovery. It is far better to encourage her to take charge of her own recovery and to keep your role to caring.
- Do for her what she could do for herself. Paying bills or taking care of everyday tasks for your loved one is actually enabling behavior and can feed into the addiction. What you mean to be a form of care might be perceived by her as a lack of faith in her abilities. Although she may seem grateful for the assistance in the short term, enabling behavior can lead to a greater sense of personal shame and can therefore contribute to the addiction in the long term. Your belief that she has the ability to cope on her own is a much better gift to her recovery.
Even with all of this information and the best of intentions, there are sure to be situations that you do not feel equipped to handle on your own. So, DO remember that you are entitled to a comfort zone. If you feel that something goes beyond that comfort zone, consider enlisting the help of an individual therapist, a family therapist, or an interventionist. You are not alone in this struggle, and with your help, your loved one will realize that they are not alone either.
Social support has been linked to better health outcomes for cardiovascular disease and other physical illnesses. The same has proven true for mental illness, where social support has been shown to lead to greater resilience to stress. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this trend holds true for addiction recovery.
Addiction treatment programs (both in- and outpatient) have a much higher rate of success when families are involved in recovery. Even so, your role in that recovery after intervention can be less clear, especially if treatment is taking place in an inpatient facility. This second installment of “Do’s and Don’ts” will help you to participate in your loved one’s rehabilitation and to set healthy habits for you both throughout the recovery process.
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- Educate yourself on the options. Depending on your relationship to your loved one, she might want or need your advice on her treatment options. Learn about current practices in addiction treatment. When your loved one is trying to make decisions between treatment philosophies and inpatient and outpatient care, your knowledge could be a tremendous resource to her.
- Be alert to changes in behavior. You are the expert on your loved one’s behavior. If you have noticed changes, speak up. Voicing your concern is especially important for successful outpatient care. You are in the position to notice changes in behavior more readily than a support group could, and your participation could greatly reduce the chance of relapse.
- Make use of available resources. At Waypoint, you’ll find many resources available to you as a member of your loved one’s chosen family—including Multiple Family Group Therapy (MFGT), therapy for single families, and a family counseling program. Not only will these programs help you to become more involved in the process of recovery, especially if your loved one is in inpatient care, but they will also give you the tools to make life with addiction more manageable for you.
DON’T
- Judge. Shame can be devastating to the addiction recovery process. Not only could judgment set shame in motion and set your loved one back in his road to recovery, it could also deprive you and your loved one of a valuable opportunity to change the family dynamic. In recovery, your loved one is learning new ways of interacting, not only with his addiction but also with his social circle. Be open to the ways your relationship might change. Often unconsciously, friends, family, and coworkers make changes to their behavior to compensate for the addiction. Your open-mindedness to the process could ultimately help to give you both a healthier and more satisfying relationship.
- Drop off the face of the earth. Whether your loved one enters an inpatient or outpatient treatment program, keep up the love and care. Just because a recovery center is helping your loved one with the addiction does not mean that she needs you any less. Work with your loved one and the treatment facility to determine the best path for you. Your continued presence in her life could provide much needed motivation to keep going down her new path.
Creating a support structure of family and friends can sustain your loved one during the treatment program and throughout recovery. Many of these resources (like Waypoint as well as Al-Anon and Nar-Anon, two of the top addiction support groups for families) can help you too as you continue to discover your role. Reach out, show your care, and make a difference to the person in your life who needs you the most.
Most professionals in the addiction recovery community agree that there is no cure for addiction. Still, studies seem to show that each year of sobriety makes relapse less likely. Of those in their first year of sobriety, two out of every three people will relapse. In the second year, that figure drops to one out of two people—nearly a 17% decrease. By year five, there is only a 15% chance of relapse.
The high initial rate of relapse should not be taken as a sign that the newly sober are in any way uncommitted. Treatment programs require an incredible amount of self-work. After an initial “detox” period, people in recovery strive to identify the underlying causes of addiction, a process which requires deep emotional investment.
But, as challenging as such programs can be, the period immediately following the treatment program is often far more stressful for those in recovery. In your loved one’s treatment program, he was in a setting where everyone had similar experiences and goals. In the general community, he may feel isolated without that regular mutual support. Whereas inpatient treatment programs provide a healthy routine, the lack of structure in the outside world can threaten those newfound healthy habits.
Without a safe community, environment, or schedule to fall back on, the business of staying drug and alcohol free becomes much more complicated. So, it is all the more important for trusted friends and family like you to remain active, to be her “safe place” on the outside. There are some simple steps you can take to support your loved one in the lifelong process of recovery.
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- Communicate how you would like to help. Of course you want to be there for your loved one, but your tacit support might not be so obvious to him. Whether you want to serve as an unofficial sponsor (available for whatever, whenever, wherever) or just express your general support and openness to talk, these things need to be said aloud. In his treatment program, your loved one has been working on communicating openly and honestly. By starting with openness and honesty yourself, you are setting the tone for your relationship and helping him to apply hard won skills outside of the treatment program.
- Include her in group activities. Think about how your friend/family group socializes. Now, how much of that group time involves substance use or other potential triggers? It is wonderful that you want to strengthen your one-on-one relationship with your loved one, but not having her needs considered in group activities could make your loved one feel rejected and excluded.
Setting up some regular activities that do not interfere with your friend’s sobriety can be a very powerful change. There are many lists of fun, new, and adventurous sober activities out there (like this one) and even a social network connecting people with substance-free activities and events. Pick as many ideas as you want, and pitch them to the group. There is no need to say why you are suggesting a change in routine. Just go with it, and your loved one is sure to feel that love!
- Encourage growth and discovery. Researchers believe that social connectedness can significantly diminish the chance of relapse. Voice your support when your loved one makes changes to ingrained physical and emotional patterns. If your loved one joins a club, starts applying for jobs, or alters his response to known relapse triggers (e.g., hunger, anger, loneliness, tiredness; or, H.A.L.T. for short), recognize and reinforce those changes in behavior. If your loved one can find happiness in human connection, substance use loses one of its strongest psychological appeals.
DON’T
- Fall into old, unhealthy routines. Interpersonal dynamics adjust to accommodate addiction. You may be unconsciously giving your loved one’s addiction room to thrive if you fall back into these old patterns of behavior without realizing it. On top of everything else, it can be hard to change the very way you interact with your loved one. But by cutting off your own enabling behaviors, you are ultimately building a stronger and healthier relationship with your loved one.
- Get discouraged by relapse. As the statistics suggest, for many people in recovery, relapse is simply part of the program. After addiction has already taken such a toll, relapse can be emotionally draining for friends and family, not to mention the person in recovery. Practicing recovery does not come easily. Knowing that, treat your loved one’s relapse as you would any other painful setback they might experience. Ditch the toxic shame, and encourage everyone involved to seek the extra support they need (your loved one, your family, and yourself included!).
A person in recovery is never fully out of the woods, but lifelong recovery is possible because of your loved one’s bravery and determination, the support of the addiction recovery community, and you. Addiction recovery is a long, winding journey, but your loved one is lucky to have such a compassionate person by her side.
