Addiction can take many forms, from mind-altering substances to mood-altering behaviours, and almost everyone on the planet today is either affected by addiction—their own or someone else’s—or they know someone who is.
For an addict to have a chance to recover, changes need to happen with their loved ones first. Until a friend or family member changes what they’re doing, it’s unlikely that the addict in their lives will.
Loved ones need to let their addicts know that they will not support them in active addiction but that they will support them when they are ready for active recovery. When loved ones develop the wisdom and the courage to stop enabling addicts, positive changes start to happen.
Here are the top 10 reasons to stop enabling the addict you love.
#10 – Enabling Keeps the Addiction Going
An enabling behaviour makes it too easy for your addict to continue to stay in active addiction. This can look like giving money with no accountability or driving the addict to the liquor store for their next bottle. It’s always a good idea to take a look at what you’re doing if the addict you love is stuck in the chaos of addiction. Is what you’re doing helping or is it enabling?
Change needs to start with you because as the saying goes “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.”
#9 – Enabled Addicts Lose Faith in Their Resilience
Are you doing things for your addict that they can and should be doing for themselves? Are they sleeping all day while you’re out earning a living to support them or doing their laundry and cooking their meals? If so, you’re working way harder than they do.
Loved ones often do these things because they’re afraid of what will happen if they don’t. As you do more and more for your addict, they get the unspoken message that you have lost faith in them, and they begin to lose faith in themselves. Why would they have any sense of their abilities or resiliency if you keep doing everything for them? It simply leads them to depend more and more on you, which is not a healthy outcome for anyone.
#8 – As a Loved One, You’re Only Meeting Your OWN Needs
If you are enabling an addict, you are only meeting your own needs. Addicts in active addiction generally need assistance to stop—but no addict needs to be enabled.
Have you considered setting and maintaining boundaries? It’s likely a scary thought for you, just as it would be for the addict you love. But if you are letting this fear and anxiety stop you from doing so, your addict is unlikely to change.
#7 – Enabling and Self-Respect Cannot Co-Exist
It’s scary to make changes, but unless you’re willing to do that, your vitally important self-respect will take a hit.
When you do things that you shouldn’t be doing—such as enabling to avoid conflict—you’re not respecting yourself. Self-trust and self-respect are earned by doing the next right thing, one step at a time.
When you have self-respect, you role model that to the addict you love because you’re behaving in healthier ways.
#6 – Addicts Do Not Respect Enablers
Addicts know when their loved ones are enabling them, and on some level, they wish you would stop doing that and hold them accountable for their actions. They may never tell you that because having you change your behaviour is just as scary for the addicted person as it is for the enabler.
We now understand that children feel more loved and secure when there is a healthy, loving structure in the home. The same is true for addicts in active addiction. You need to hold them accountable and present solid, healthy boundaries and consequences so they understand you care enough about them to do that and that you haven’t given up on them.
#5 – Others Around You Are Watching What You’re Doing
When we deal with an addict of any kind, there are always ripple effects that occur—positive or negative. For example, other children in the home may view your enabling behaviours with the addicted child as you favouring them. This could result in those children acting out themselves because they feel resentful, and they begin to believe this is the only way to get your attention.
If the addict in your life is your partner—and if you are minimizing, making excuses, blaming, and putting up with inappropriate behaviour from them—you are undoubtedly teaching your children how to handle this situation. Because it’s what they’ve seen, known, and feel comfortable with, there is a good chance that they will either choose partners who hide from life by using addictions or live that way themselves.
But you are at choice—you can stop enabling and heal from unhealthy behaviours—thus role-modelling something different.
#4 – We Cannot Control Anyone but Ourselves
We all get to choose what we will and won’t do, and what kind of life we want to have. This is true for addicts and their loved ones.
There is no magic wand that will give you the ability to “make” the addict behave differently. The only person you can change or have any control over is YOU—and life gets easier when you surrender to that truth.
That doesn’t mean you are powerless. You can set and maintain boundaries and outline consequences if your addict chooses not to comply. You can make the necessary changes around your enabling behaviours, which is courageous because it’s often difficult to change ourselves. It’s also courageous to accept the reality that you are powerless over anyone else’s choices. For some loved ones, this is one of the hardest inner shifts.
#3 – Enabling Only Creates More Drama
Loved ones need to stop making it so easy for their addicts to depend on them in ways they shouldn’t. Stop making it so comfortable for them to behave badly and continue to engage in their addictive behaviours without any real consequences. Instead of getting caught up in the drama and chaos of their addicted lives over and over again, put your life back on the front burner and model healthy behaviours instead.
#2 – Enabling Keeps Everyone in Their Comfort Zones
“Comfort zones” are aptly named because their function is to keep us emotionally comfortable. Addiction of all kinds is also used to keep us emotionally—and sometimes physically—comfortable. It’s easy to see how the two can so often go hand-in-hand.
People use addictive behaviours so that they won’t have to face the reality of their lives. They don’t want to have to feel what they’re feeling, so they hide in an addiction. The only way to stop an addictive behaviour is to allow ourselves to be uncomfortable for a time. We need to be open to learning new ways to cope with whatever the addiction was allowing us to hide from.
The same is true for loved ones. You need to role model a better way to deal with life by becoming willing to come out of your comfort zone. It’s not going to work if you expect the addict you love to be the only one struggling to reach that ‘new normal.’
There is a great saying—“Life begins at the end of our comfort zone.” This is true for enablers as well as anyone else with an addiction. We simply cannot live our best lives if we continue to choose to be chained to any behaviours that do not promote our health and self-respect. You can choose instead to love your addict enough to raise the bar for both of you so that everyone can become healthy.
It’s an act of courage to come out of denial and do what needs to be done—especially when it’s uncomfortable.
#1 – Enabling an Addict Is Never a Loving Act
Trying to rescue someone from themselves more often hinders than helps. Enabling is a classic lose-lose.
If addicts continue to be rescued and enabled—especially when they can make different decisions and begin to look after themselves—why would they try to be productive and self-respecting? If we take that possibility away from them on an ongoing basis, how is that helping them?
It’s not loving to spoon-feed someone who needs to start figuring out their own life.
Instead, help them learn how to help themselves.
When the enabling stops and the addicted person is ready to face their demons, that is when you can step in and help. To the best of your ability, you can support that person to shift into active recovery, whether that’s emotionally or financially.
We need to love the addicts in our lives enough to do what is right for THEM. And we need to recover along with them so that healthy relationships can be forged.
We need to do things differently and do our part to stop the addiction in its tracks. That’s being courageous, compassionate, and wise for the addicts in our lives.
Leave a Reply