What can we do to Help an Addict?
How can we give addiction help to a struggling drug addict or alcoholic?
To begin, one of the first things you need to do in your relationship with the addict is to change your own behavior. The whole point is to be firm but fair and supportive without enabling, which of course can be a very fine line at times. This means that you might have to take a stand on some issues and put your foot down in cases where in the past you might have helped them. For example, if a struggling addict has children and they come over and beg for money so that they can provide for their children – do you give it to them? Some people might think it is compassionate to give them money because it’s for their kids but this is actually hurting the addict and their children in the long run. Because they are actively using drugs and alcohol, the money you give them is actually supporting their habit, even if indirectly. Just because they played the “kids” angle on you does not mean that they are not still wasting money on dope.
So there are usually codependency issues involved when it comes to a struggling addict and the best thing for the people involved is to get healthy and set some boundaries. Make it very clear what your boundaries are by telling the addict what you will not allow in your life and also tell them what you will do if these requests are ignored. If you are confused about how to go about setting boundaries then you should start by going to an Al-anon group. The people there can help you with dealing with a struggling addict and they can show you how to behave in a healthy manner so as not to enable them at all.
Helping an addict can be unnatural to some because in most cases we need to put our foot down and let them experience some pain in their life instead of rescuing them whenever they run into trouble.
