Many times, over and over again if you'll hang around long enough to listen! Is their chemical use your fault? Absolutely not! It's nobody's fault . . . chemical dependency is a disease (see my 1st addiction blog for details about this.) You can honestly trust that that disease is much, much bigger than you and your loved one put together! So, if you're at the stage of toying with the idea of an involvement with someone who abuses drugs, what should you do? Run away as fast as you can!!!!!!! (While there is still time for you to think clearly!) If, on the other hand, you are married to an addict/alcoholic or living with one, these are some helpful strategies that you can choose to use:
- Don't make excuses for the person. Allow the person to take responsibility for their own actions (even if you think it's going to kill you to do this!)
- Don't destroy their alcohol or drug supply. They'll only go out and get more where that supply came from! (Unless the drugs are of the "illegal" kind - in which case you have every right and must make it clear that the drug will not be allowed in your home and that if it is brought into your home you will call the police to come and confiscate them!)
- Don't scream at them or name call. Would you scream at someone for having cancer? Of course not. Your loved one is every bit as ill as anyone suffering from cancer!
- Don't make threats of leaving the individual unless you fully intend to follow through by doing so! Empty threats only destroy your credibility and add fuel to his or her resentments toward you! Whenever you scream and/or threaten you place yourself in the unrealistic light of being the bad-guy! (I say "unrealistic" because your drug abusing loved one's thinking is quite distorted but very real to him, nonetheless!
- Seek help from a professional who is skilled at performing an intervention. Most Chemical Dependency Treatment Centers can assist you with locating this professional. If you've already tried this and weren't successful, you may want to consider legal commitment proceedings so that your loved one will be forced into treatment. Will he hate you? Yes, for a little while. But once he's had the time to begin to see things more clearly, the time will come when he will undoubtedly thank you.
- Does he (or she) become physically abusive toward you or someone else in the family when under the influence? If so, call 911! Along with assuring everyone's safety, please be aware that many an addict has found the help he (or she) needed for his illness of addiction with a little help from the courts!
- Most importantly, and as I mentioned in my earlier article about addiction, Get help for yourself! Find yourself a healthy Al-Anon Meeting and go there every week! Just go to the yellow pages of your telephone directory and look under "A" for Alcoholics Anonymous. Call that phone number and ask where to find the nearest and very next Al-Anon Meeting! Then, when you go to that meeting, seek out a meeting that is not a blame-session of the drug addict. Seek instead, a meeting where members utilize the twelve steps to help themselves and each other maintain the strength, courage and autonomy to become and remain emotionally healthy!
Paradoxically, your addicted loved one may just decide to follow suit after he or she sees that you are truly content in your own life and no longer trying to change theirs! God bless and good luck to you always!
