It’s so hard for loved ones of people struggling with addiction to understand that until the addicts themselves are willing to shift and change, nothing much will change. When addicts are enabled and feel too comfortable in their addiction, the chances of them doing anything differently are slim to none. That’s why boundaries and consequences are important – so that we can help the addicts we love become less and less comfortable staying in active addiction.
I am a proud Canadian and an even prouder Vancouverite. But when I heard that our government was going to “help” drug addicts by making possession of a small amount of opiates and other street drugs legal – ostensibly so that addicts would use together instead of in isolation and somehow, someway, protect each other from overdosing – I felt absolutely enraged.
My immediate question for them was “Is this the best you’ve got?” THIS is their solution to the toxic drug overdose epidemic we’ve been battling for far too many years?
These “leaders” (who WE elect and whose salaries WE pay) have continued to try everything – everything, this is, except to do what will actually work. In order for addiction to stop, we need to get underneath it, to determine why people feel the need to blotto out their lives, and then provide some help for THAT! It isn’t going to help to make possession of small amounts of drugs okay so that addicts don’t feel the ‘stigma’ and will hopefully use together more often, so there are fewer isolated deaths. [Read more…]
Focusing all of your attention on the addict in your life – especially if they are still choosing to stay in active addiction – is not good for either of you. When we consistently do for them what they can – and should – be doing for themselves, we enable them by robbing them of the feeling of knowing their own resiliency. This keeps you in a state of worry and keeps the addict stuck in addictive behaviours.
When an addict becomes “comfortable” remaining in active addiction, they will have no real incentive to do anything different. When we take care of their needs – financial, physical, and emotional – so that they are not required to do much, if anything, for themselves, then we also take away their chance at a real and lasting recovery.
