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LoveWithBoundaries

Covid, Addiction – and You: You’re Not Alone

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Covid, addiction and you

Just like most of us these days, I’ve been getting email after email – from all the lists I’ve ever been a part of and from many I never signed up for – all about the corona virus – complete with reminders to wash our hands and maintain social distancing. This article will not tell you to wash your hands – because you already know that. It will not tell you to self-isolate or to stay 6’ from each other – because you know that too.

What I do want to talk about today is what it’s like to have an addicted loved one – specifically, one who is still in active addiction – in this period of such uncertainty. Struggling with addiction in your family is heartbreaking enough. But now, with everything that’s happening out there – the stakes have become much higher.

And, it seems, this won’t be over any time soon. I so wish I had better news – for you, for me – for all of us.

COVID-19 IS IMPACTING ADDICTION

Many of us have been hearing about the recent spike in addiction, especially with drugs and alcohol. There are several ways that all things Covid-19 are affecting families dealing with addiction. One is that you might not be in contact with the addict in your life – you may not even know where they are, how they’re doing.  Are they sick? Will they contact you? What if they do contact you – and what if they don’t?

Or you may know where they are, but you can’t be with them. They may live in a different city or country – or just down the block. But you don’t know whether they’re practicing self-isolation or out there using, so it’s dicey to have them come to your home. Maybe you can be in touch online sporadically, when they occasionally reply to your phone calls, texts or emails. And even if they are abusive and disrespectful when you’re able to communicate, you find yourself continually hungry for more contact.

Some families live under the same roof with their addicts – and the self-isolation is making everyone and everything more chaotic than usual. Is your addict behaving in abusive or aggressive ways? Are they abusing substances (or playing video games or gambling online, etc.) each and every day, sometimes all throughout the day and night? Have you been able to set any boundaries, and if so – how are you doing with maintaining those? Maybe you’re already getting to the end of your rope – and we’re really only a few weeks into what could last a much longer time.

WHAT DO YOU DO – HOW DO YOU COPE?

I wish I had a magic answer for all of these issues. I wish I could say to you “If you just do this, all will be well.” But the reality is that things are likely not going to get better for a while, as we all figure out our own ways to deal with our new normal.

There are, however, some things I do know – and I thought I would share those with you today. The first thing I absolutely know is that you are not alone – even though it can totally feel like you are. There are millions of families just like yours, for whom this coronavirus is bringing its own share of unique and problematic issues to deal with.

Some families have become used to not knowing where their addicts are. Some addicts have moved away from home and are choosing to not be in touch on any regular basis. Others have been on the street for a while – sometimes because they haven’t liked the healthy, respectful boundaries their families have set for them. They may have developed a new community of people they’ve come to see as their family – which can feel quite hurtful to their actual family members.

If you don’t know where your addicted loved one is, you may have a few options. One might be to go out and look for them, driving through streets where they may be living, asking people if they’ve seen them – trying to seek them out. But once you find them – IF you find them – then what? Will you ask them to come back home, hoping that things can be different this time – even though the problems that led them away haven’t yet been resolved? And if you can’t find them, will you be able to go on with your own lives without resorting to the familiar obsessive thinking about them – in essence, going into a ‘relapse’ of your own?

Such a difficult situation.

Maybe you’re all too aware of where the addict in your life is – especially now, in this reality of “self-isolation” – because they are living with you and creating problems as a result of being underfoot 24-7. When people who are in active addiction begin to have feelings they don’t want to deal with (such as fear of becoming ill or dying from a virus), they invariably begin to use their addiction even more. As time goes on – with people not being able to get away from each other – it is very likely that addictive behaviours will start to skyrocket.

As terrible as this all can be, there actually is hope. I know you probably can’t see it at this moment – but stay with me, and we’ll get there.

This is the usual scenario in most families dealing with addiction: You love the addict – to the point where it hurts both yourself and them.  And because you’re not sure what else to do, you do your best to avoid whatever conflict you can. Any boundaries you’ve set are allowed to be trampled upon. Any self-care you’ve been practicing flies out the window as you just try – to the best of your ability – to keep those turbulent waters calm. As a result, the addict begins to understand that they call the shots and their sense of entitlement goes off the rails.

LOVE VS. ENABLING

When we allow this to happen, we find ourselves in the cycle of enabling. And when we give in to enabling our addicted loved ones, we inadvertently lead ourselves right into codependency and self-abandonment. You obsess about them incessantly, you’re so worried about them – you love them so much – that you abandon yourself in the process.

But we have to ask ourselves, is that REALLY love? Does love really hurt that much? How can we love others and stay healthy ourselves?

One thing that codependent people are very good at is remaining loyal to the point of lunacy. We can go for long periods of time truly believing that “My love can save them” – so we try and try and try and try to do just that. But the truth is that it is only when an addict chooses to stop using and to recover, that they can be saved from addiction. That is not a decision any of us can make for them.

And we know today that an enabled addict does not recover, because if all their needs are met – why should they even try?

When we’re loyal to that point of lunacy, we’re not looking after ourselves. We are, in fact, giving our personal power away to somebody else – usually to a person who will abuse that power. In order to love an addict and stay healthy, we need to learn how to take care of ourselves – holistically – from many different angles.

Your mission – should you choose to accept it – is to be as gentle with yourself as you can be during this difficult time. Maybe you can write a list of ‘gifts’ you can give yourself so you can begin to feel even a little better. And if you’d like to share that with us, my team and I would love to hear your list of self-offerings.

If you subscribe by following the link below, you will receive additional articles in this series. In my next article, we’ll explore 5 ways you can begin – or continue – to actively love and care for yourself. You’ll learn how important this is for your own emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual health – as well as learn some wonderful strategies for kick-starting your own personal self-care.

I hope you’ll join me!

Just click this link to subscribe and to send us your thoughts about how you’ll begin to treat yourself better, starting right now!

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“Should I Stay or Should I Go?” The Dilemma of Addiction

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In the early 1980s, a musical group called The Clash released a song whose title went on to become almost an anthem for many people in a variety of situations. The song was called “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” and it truly sums up the multitude of dilemmas that people experience in life.

Today we will be looking at how this simple question presents itself when focusing on addiction – both for the addicts and for their loved ones.

Is Addiction Actually a Disease?

As many of you know, I am an addict. I have been in active recovery for the last 32 years, with no relapses and no time off for good behavior. I have also been working as an Addiction Therapist exclusively with addicts and their families for approximately 27 years – and I am the loved one of addicts, so I know addiction from all different angles. As a result, I have moved away from believing that addiction is a disease – also known as the “medical model,” which is espoused by the 12-Step programs I attended for many years (such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, CODA, and Al-Anon), and still widely believed by a variety of addiction doctors.

The people who believe in the medical model also call addiction a “brain disease” – perhaps an apt description because all addictive behaviors affect our brain chemistry, especially mind-altering addictions like alcohol or drugs. But I also know that if I raise my little pinky and move it up or down, there is brain involvement in that too. That’s how we’re wired as human beings – there is brain involvement in everything we do.

I have difficulty seeing addiction as a disease for two simple reasons:

1.   I have a medical disease. Diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease in 1973, I was told that it is incurable and that I’d have it my whole life. Although this has basically been true, after many years of being in active recovery from addiction and learning how to take really good care of myself, I’m happy to say that some days I forget I have Crohn’s – that’s how much better it is much of the time.

But I can’t just say to myself “I think I won’t have Crohn’s anymore.” People with medical diseases like cancer, diabetes, and many others can’t just decide not to have them anymore. It doesn’t work that way.

However, as I found out early into my recovery, we can do that with addiction.

2.   In my considerable experience in working with those struggling with addiction, what I know to be true is that when we tell an addict they have a “disease,” we generally get one of two responses. One response is that they say, usually with a lot of aggressive and arrogant attitude, “I have a disease, I can’t help it – get out of my face and leave me alone!” The other is that they say basically the same thing, but in a much more whiny tone of voice displaying much more of a victim mentality: “I have a disease, I can’t help it, stop bothering me.”

Either way, they feel like they are giving up all their personal power and have no other choice than to continue the addiction.

Contrary to the belief that we are “powerless over our addiction” – which is what we are told in Step 1 of the 12 Steps, I see it differently and have for a long time: I see addiction as a choice. Let me explain what I mean.

I don’t think that anyone chooses to become an addict – I know I didn’t. In fact, most people think they can handle whatever addictive behavior they are regularly using. “It’s not me who will become addicted,” they convince themselves, “because I’m special and unique.” They believe it’s the other guy who’ll have a problem – not themselves. That is, until they find themselves floundering right in the middle of that very insidious problem.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Like the caterpillar who intuitively knows it must change into that spectacular butterfly or die, there comes a point in every addict’s life when they know that there is something very wrong in their lives. They see other people living what they consider to be better, more productive, more successful lives than the ones they, as addicts in active addiction, are living. They know their relationships are suffering, their health issues are getting worse, they can’t hold down a job – and can’t seem to go a day without using the addictive behavior, even though in some cases it could very easily kill them.

It is when that realization strikes, that the addict is in the throes of making a choice. Am I going to stay in active addiction and feel awful about myself, or am I going to shift into active recovery and develop some self-respect? That is the choice point. Do I stay or do I go?

The good news and the bad news are the same: no one else can make that decision for an addict.

The Same is True for Loved Ones of Addicts

Family and other loved ones of people struggling with addiction are essentially in the same boat as the addict. Many loved ones “enable” the addicts they love because they don’t know what else to do. They often feel like they’ve tried everything – to no avail – and they don’t have a clue what to try next.

If you’re the loved one of an addict, there will come a time in your life when you know that what you’ve been doing isn’t working. In the midst of your frustration, anger, fear and resentment, you may wonder whether you even want to continue being in relationship with them at all – or if it’s best to just cut them off. This kind of decision is extremely difficult and often heartbreaking for families – and it usually presents itself after all other avenues they can think of have been tried.

What generally happens for most loved ones, early on, is that they begin to work harder than their addict is working – trying to make things better just so that this nightmare will end. But what they don’t understand is that, as they enable the addict, they actually contribute to the addiction continuing.

Learning how to set and maintain self-respectful boundaries is the best thing families can do when dealing with an addicted person – that kind of “helping” (instead of enabling) is what assists the addiction to stop. But until families learn this – and how to actually do this – they keep trying to change and control people and situations that they simply can’t change or control.

Think about it: if loved ones could control their addicts, they would be doing that already. Instead, they waste a lot of their precious energy until their own vitally important self-care becomes depleted. That is generally the time when they begin to ask themselves – in response to their relationships with the addicts they so dearly love – “Should I stay or should I go?”

Remaining in any kind of active addiction, whether to drugs, alcohol, or to another person, is never a good idea. Poisoning ourselves with toxic substances, or hurting ourselves with other addictive behaviors such as overspending, internet addiction, gaming, sex addiction, disordered eating, or codependency is never a healthy, self-respecting choice.

And enabling an addict – contributing to keeping the addiction going – is NEVER a loving act.

Whether as an addict still entrenched in addiction or as the loved one of someone struggling with this issue, when asking yourself “Should I stay or should I go?” it is important to remember that life begins at the end of your comfort zone. However the choice point shows up in your life, if you’ll be doing what needs to be done in order for you and those you love to be healthy, then that is the gauge you’ll want to follow.

And if you’re not sure how to follow a different and better path – whether as an addict or a loved one – please be sure to find a professional like myself who can help you through this process.

Asking yourself “Should I stay or should I go?” could ultimately be the best question you could pose to yourself – it shows that you’re tired of the same-old, same-old actions you’ve been doing and that you want a change. Be sure to listen to your inner answer carefully and to take action in as positive a way as you can – and as soon as you can.

This article was first published on Recovery.org.

“A Star Is Born” and “Beautiful Boy”: Two New Films about Addiction are Released

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SPOILER ALERT!

Read no further is you haven’t seen these movies—but are planning to do so.

But—for all of you who have seen them both . . . keep reading!

MY OPINIONS (aka “I’m just sayin’ . . . ”)

I’ll begin by saying that these are my opinions and I understand that yours may be different. That’s okay with me—it’s fine for us to have our own points of view, and to agree to disagree. Addiction is a subject that triggers a lot of people and can cause many rifts, and I believe that there are as many ways to work a program of recovery from any addiction as there are people working those programs. So, as the saying goes, if you do have a different opinion from mine, let’s do our best to disagree without being disagreeable.

The truth is that I rarely choose to see movies about addiction. Not only do I work with addicted clients and their families almost every day in some capacity, I also have the responsibility to keep my own addiction at bay—which I’m happy to do one day at a time. Those days have rolled into a total of 30+ years clean and sober, long enough for me to be clear about how I view addiction. But I felt like it was important for me to see these films—and now I’m really glad I did.

“A Star is Born”

I saw these two films a week apart, starting with “A Star is Born.” I had seen the version with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson in 1976, long before I realized that I, myself, was at that time in the throes of my own opioid addiction from the prescription drugs being given to me for my Crohn’s Disease. I don’t remember much about that movie, but being a Streisand fan, I’m sure I enjoyed it.

I’m also a fan of both Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, and I’d heard good reviews about “ASIB”, so I was looking forward to seeing it. It’s not that I didn’t like the movie—it was glossy, professional, and easy to watch. The acting was as good as I expected it would be, and the music was great. But—by the time the film was over and the credits rolled, I had quite a few mixed feelings about it, overall.

In my opinion, this movie could have been a lot more powerful in terms of the story it was telling about addiction—but it missed the point several times. By the time Cooper’s character goes into rehab, he has already dangerously relapsed several times, and yet there is little shown to us about what actually transpired in that treatment process. Basically, we see him at a very posh, expensive, country-club style rehab centre, swimming in the beautiful pool, telling stories to the person I assumed was his therapist there, only to see them laughing together at his past antics. When he arrives home, with no aftercare treatment plan that we are privy to, he predictably relapses yet again—and is told by his wife, “It’s your disease, honey, it’s not your fault.”

This, to me, is a very dangerous message to give any addict—and certainly not a healthy one to purport in a film that millions of people will see all over the world. I know that a lot of people think that this is a romantic love story—the friends I saw this movie with thought exactly that. But in my opinion the message she gives to the man she loves is anything but loving, as it gives them both a free pass on personal responsibility. She sets virtually no boundaries, and does not say anything about either of them having a choice to do things differently—a choice that every addict has, both in active addiction and in recovery.

Choosing to stay clean and sober one day at a time is the only way any of us accumulate any sobriety—and deep down, I believe we all know this despite what we’re told by any other source. And although I will not give away the ending, I was increasingly disappointed by the choices this character continued to make. Maybe he thought he was indeed “powerless”—which perhaps he’d been taught while in treatment. He certainly acted as if this is what he believed.

As Hollywood-slick as this movie was, and as good as Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper both were in it, I found the premise predictable and disappointing.

Beautiful Boy

“Beautiful Boy”

“Beautiful Boy,” on the other hand, shows the realistic story of what happens in a family that is negatively affected by addiction—over and over again. Based on a true story, the father (amazingly portrayed by Steve Carell) courageously shows us the terror he feels about his beloved son (flawlessly played by Timothée Chalamet), who continues to use crystal meth and other drugs and alcohol way past the point of ‘insanity’—as often happens until the bottom is finally reached.

Despite the desperation that follows the film from start to finish, the messages in this movie are much more realistic, healthy, and empowering. Here are a few examples:

  • Although Nic attends Narcotics Anonymous as well as several 12-Step based rehabs, he himself says this about his addiction: “It was a choice. I got myself here.”
  • Nic’s sponsor asks him what his problem is, and Nic says “I’m an addict and an alcoholic.” The sponsor tells him, “That isn’t the problem. That’s what you’re telling yourself the problem is—that’s only how you’re defining it. The problem is deeper.”
  • After Nic is allowed by his parents to come back home several times, only to relapse again and again, he behaves obnoxiously by continuously lying, stealing money from his younger sibling, physically shoving his family members around, and using very foul language when speaking to them. After being kicked out of the family home yet again, Nic calls his father to once again beg to come back. The father’s response this time? “That’s not going to happen.” After doing the same things over and over and expecting different results, David finally decides to try something different—and that boundary veers the family into a whole new direction.

I think it’s very interesting that these two distinctly different films about the same subject are being shown in theatres at the same time. I’m not sure what the reasoning was for that, but I’m very glad that “Beautiful Boy” was made and released. My hope is that everyone involved will be validated for their contributions, and that as many loved ones of addicts as possible will make the choice to see it.

And by the way—be sure to stay for the credits—they warmed my heart.

How to Enjoy the Holidays When You or 
Your Loved One Has an Addiction

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This post was originally published in December 2014.

Holiday season: sitting by the fire

Another year has gone by and “The Holidays” are fast approaching—although if you’re anything like me, you’re still wondering where September went!

The time has come when we are once again seeing commercials on TV and in magazines about how wonderful the Christmas season is, that it is better to give than to receive, and how warm and loving families are, especially at this time of year.

But the reality is that, for many of people, this is not a time of peace and joy…

However, because there is so much shame associated with not having positive holiday times, most people don’t talk openly about how difficult this time of year can be for them. This can lead to intense feelings of loneliness, disappointment, and even shame.

And when any form of addiction is thrown into the mix, this season of the year can be anything but jolly.

If you can relate to any of the following, then this article may give you some helpful tips for getting through the holidays. [Read more…]

Virtual Counselling in Addiction Recovery:
It Works!

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As we are all aware, the Holiday Season is coming fast upon us and, for many people, this time of year has shifted from a season of peace and joy to a period of misery and confusion. This year, unfortunately, addiction will be an unwanted guest for more families than you might imagine.

If you feel like you need someone to talk to who can guide you and your family through these often treacherous waters—but you’re also aware that accessing in-person counselling could be difficult for you—help is on the way!

Is Virtual Counselling the Best Option for You?

When most people think about getting counselling, they imagine going to see the therapist in person and having appointments in an office environment. However, there are many reasons why these kinds of in-person therapy sessions don’t work for everyone. For example, some people need to travel for work and are therefore often not home or available to meet in person. Others may live in small communities where seeking counselling might be problematic, either for privacy issues or because there may be no qualified therapists in the area. As well, some people may have health issues that keep them from being able to attend sessions in person, while others may live a long distance away from the professional they would ideally like to work with.

If you’ve been thinking about reaching out for help but have been putting it off because attending sessions in person would be challenging for you, you might want to consider telephone or Skype counselling as an alternative.

As an Addictions Therapist in private practice, I have been providing clients all over the world with telephone and Skype counselling for a number of years. These clients receive the same benefits as those I see in person. In fact, many people prefer the advantages of virtual support for a variety of reasons. [Read more…]