Drug and alcohol addiction does not only affect the person who is directly experiencing it, but it also causes difficulties for the people around them. When you have a close relationship with someone who is struggling with substance use dependency, it’s easy to get wrapped up in their cycles.
Wanting to do all you can for someone you love is the most innate and natural reaction. The issue is not respecting your own mental health and enabling behaviors that are destructive to your loved one.
Although it’s difficult, it’s important to understand what you need to look out for, and how to move forward with your actions.
We are the leading experts in addiction treatment in the Los Angeles, California area. Call us today to get started.
Understanding How You Are Enabling Addiction
When grappling with enabling habits, it’s important to really understand why recovery from drug and alcohol abuse includes you.
How Does Addiction Affect Family?
When a family member is addicted to any substance, the entire family is affected in some way. Addiction can be considered a family disease that stresses the family unit to the breaking point.
Understanding that addiction is a family disease, the recovery approach must involve other family members and help them understand how to support without enabling. This is the first step in treatment, as it allows the family to be fully present in their loved one’s efforts to make fundamental changes in their own life without doing the work for them.
Related: Addiction in Families
What is Enabling?
Running to your loved one’s aid is second nature. However, enabling goes a few steps beyond trying to help someone. When you help, you’re assisting someone with a task that they truly cannot perform themselves. Enabling on the other hand is assisting them with something they can do and should be doing themselves.
When genuinely helping changes into frantically solving problems, then you enter dangerous territory where you may have become an enabler.
If you are wondering how to stop enabling someone struggling with addiction, here are some warning signs and things you can do to provide support without actively encouraging their addiction and destructive habits [1].
Warning Signs of Enabling
Enabling goes beyond supporting the person battling addiction through their tough time, and strays into behavior that is harmful to you and your loved one. When you enable someone with substance use dependency, you are providing them with the opportunity to use their addiction as an excuse or lean deeper into their dependency.
It’s easier than people realize to become an enabler. If you fear this is your situation, it’s important to remember that you are not the cause of your loved one’s addiction. You simply care about them and want them to realize they need to seek help. These are valid feelings and concerns.
With that in mind, here are some common examples of enabling behavior that parents, family members, and close friends often find themselves performing:
- Rationalizing the person’s irrational behaviors and actions
- Giving or loaning them money
- Making excuses for them
- Paying their bills or legal fees
- Cleaning up after them, especially consistently
- Lying for them
- Blaming yourself in some way for their behavior
- Turning a blind eye while they abuse drugs
- Continuing to give them “one more chance”
- Threatening actions against them but never following through
- Covering up for them with work, school, etc. to avoid embarrassment
- Sacrificing your own needs to provide for them
All of these behaviors are common and understandable, but they are all also inherently enabling problematic behavior. It can be difficult to stop these behaviors even after you have discovered you do them. Many people find themselves slipping back into these enabling habits as they try to support their loved ones.
The most important thing to remember is that you cannot “fix” their addiction. All you can do is abide by your boundaries and urge them to seek help.
How to Support without Enabling
Now that you know some of the major signs of enabling, here are some steps you can take to find the balance of helping without hurting.
1. Stop Making Excuses for Them
This can be the most difficult habit to shake, as it often becomes second nature to defend the addicted person or keep all prying eyes away. Frequently the things you are making excuses for are incidents that occur while they are intoxicated or high. Usually, they don’t remember what happened the next day. They might even expect you to make excuses for them and they’ll continue to not take accountability for their actions [2].
This is harming not only their recovery but their development as an overall person [3]. Accountability is one of the most important growth tools that humans possess. The excuses have to end, and the lights need to come on, for everyone in the room.
2. Participate in Family Therapy
During some recovery programs, family therapy tends to be included. Going to these therapy sessions if the person suffering from drug abuse is a family member, is critical. Your attendance and willingness to learn how to support your loved one can be life-changing when they see the support firsthand.
Related: The Role of Family in Addiction Recovery
3. Have more open communication
When your loved one is early in their recovery, they will be facing many challenges. To best support them, it’s important to create a space for some open and honest communication. To do this, letting your loved one know you are fully available for conversations about the difficulties they are going through will give them comfort.
It’s important that you are not judgmental or confrontational when they confide in you. Make sure to guide them to use relapse prevention tools, such as calling a sponsor, reaching out to a mental health professional, attending a meeting, or distracting themselves through exercise or other activities.
Related: How to Talk to Someone with an Addiction or Mental Illness
4. Learn more about addiction
It is very common to have misconceptions about addiction and substance use disorders, this can bring some feelings of surprise when your loved one cannot stop using drugs or alcohol. Therefore, family members should strive to become more educated about how addiction works and how it affects the brain. The knowledge will also help you better understand how to support your loved one through recovery and sobriety [4].
Related: What is Drug Addiction — and How Can it be Treated?
5. Enjoy healthy activities together
It’s difficult for anyone to establish a new sober lifestyle and with this comes a lot of varying emotions. Some may be sad due to having to give up certain relationships and activities in their new sobriety.
A way to ease this is by spending significant time with them, so they can distract themselves and have fun. Simple activities like going for a hike, watching a movie together, or going out to lunch can help them create memories and experience joy on their new sobriety journey.
You Can Be the Change
When enabling addiction, it doesn’t seem like a big deal while it’s happening, especially since it does come from a place of love. However, it quickly becomes very dangerous, and results in harming yourself and your loved one. When you know the signs, you can catch it and stop being an enabler, which will be the first steps on the journey to your loved one’s recovery, and yours.
How can Clear Behavioral Health help?
Once you understand that your enabling contributes to your loved one’s self-destructive habits, it’s important to change the narrative and have them reach out to Clear Behavioral Health for help. Our addiction treatment programs embody an all-encompassing continuum of care that targets every aspect of a recovery journey.
Drug and Alcohol Detox and Rehab
If needed, our detox treatment program will have around-the-clock medical professionals assisting with managing your withdrawal symptoms. This will take about a week before they are moved to our residential level of care.
Once moved to our drug and alcohol rehab, your loved one will have one-on-one therapy to get down to the root of why they turn to substance use, learn about their upbringing, background, and participate in a treatment plan specifically aligned to them.
Group therapy is an essential component of treatment that provides opportunities to connect with others who may be going through similar emotions and situations. This helps with socialization during a time when your loved one may want to withdraw.
We also offer holistic modalities like meditation, yoga, and other calming methods that can help reconnect the body and mind. This is important to learn in tandem with mental health therapies since they all teach you valuable coping mechanisms.
Related: The Glow Up Journey: Using Residential Rehab and Alcohol Detox Facilities for Lasting Change
Outpatient Program
After the residential program is complete, sometimes your journey doesn’t end at that point. There is the option to participate in our outpatient substance abuse program, especially if you feel like you’d like more time in a structured space that offers therapeutic services.
The outpatient program has the same modalities like one-on-one therapy, group therapy, and holistic modalities. The main difference between an outpatient and residential is you have flexibility with your schedule since you won’t be living in the residential center any longer.
If you do complete the outpatient program or the residential program, we can connect you with aftercare support groups. This is a resource that can help with ongoing sobriety and creates a space to find support in your sober network.
Learn more about our addiction treatment programs in the Los Angeles, California area. Contact our experts today.
Stop Enabling and Start Helping
If you feel you have created healthy boundaries with your loved one, and they are ready to get the help they need, reach out to Clear Behavioral Health. You’ll be able to learn more about our various addiction treatment programs in the Los Angeles, CA area including drug and alcohol detox in Redondo Beach, inpatient rehab in Gardena, and outpatient substance abuse programs. Get your loved one connected today to see what program is right for them.
References:
- Clinic, C. (2024, July 15). 4 Signs of enabling and how to stop. Cleveland Clinic. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/enabling
- Stairway to Recovery: Enabling Behaviors. (n.d.). https://www.uphs.upenn.edu/addiction/berman/family/enabling.html
- Forum, A. P. (2023, February 21). Enabling vs Helping and How to Set Boundaries. APF. https://www.addictionpolicy.org/post/enabling-vs-helping
- Supporting someone through recovery – Alcohol and Drug Foundation. (n.d.). https://adf.org.au/talking-about-drugs/family-and-friends/supporting-recovery/
