The problem with loving an addict is that sometimes the things that will help them are the things that would seem hurtful, cold and cruel if they were done in response to non-addicts. It’s likely that in our lifetime, if we don’t love someone with an addiction, we’ll know someone who does, so this is an important conversation to have, for all of us. Addicts can come from any life and from any family. It’s a human condition with human consequences, and being that we’re all human, we’re all vulnerable. Nobody intends for a behaviour to become an addiction, and if you are someone who loves an addict – whether it’s a parent, child, partner, friend, sibling – the guilt, the shame and the helplessness can be overwhelming.Īddiction is not a disease of character, personality, spirit or circumstance. He will have an army of people behind him and beside him when he makes the decision, but until then, I and others who love him are powerless. What I do know is that when he is ready to change direction, I’ll be there, with love, compassion and a fierce commitment to stand beside him in whatever way he needs to support his recovery. It’s taken many years, a lot of sadness, and a lot of collateral damage to people, relationships and lives outside of his. I realised a while ago that I couldn’t ride in the passenger seat with someone at the wheel who was on such a relentless path to self-destruction. With all of our combined wisdom, strength, love and unfailing will to make things better for him, there is nothing we can do. What I’ve learned, after many years, is that there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to change him. I feel regularly as though I have nothing left to give him.
It’s been exhausted and stripped back to bare. I would be lying if I said that my compassion has been undying. It’s been even more heartbreaking to watch the effect on the people I love who are closer to him than I am. I have someone in my life who has been addicted to various substances.
I’ve worked with plenty of addicts, but the words in this post come from loving one. That’s when you’ll know, from the deepest and purest part of you, that you just can’t live like this any more. It will come when you’re exhausted, heartbroken, and when you feel the pain of their self-destruction pressing relentlessly and permanently against you. The relationships and the world around you will start to break, and you’ll cut yourself on the jagged pieces.
If you love an addict, it will be a long and excruciating road before you realise that there is absolutely nothing you can do. Not because they won’t, but because they can’t. If you can’t say no to the manipulations of their addiction in your unaddicted state, know that they won’t say no from their addicted one. If you’re waiting for the addict to stop the insanity – the guilt trips, the lying, the manipulation – it’s not going to happen. You might stop liking them, but you don’t stop loving them. You dread seeing them and you need to see them, all at once. Your love and your need to bring them safely through their addiction might see you giving money you can’t afford, saying yes when that yes will destroy you, lying to protect them, and having your body turn cold with fear from the midnight ring of the phone.
When addicts know they are loved by someone who is invested in them, they immediately have fuel for their addiction. The fallout from an addiction, for addicts and the people who love them, is devastating – the manipulations, the guilt, the destruction of relationships and the breakage of people.
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