Being the loved one of someone struggling with drug and alcohol addiction isn’t easy. Patience, endurance, and unconditional love are the ultimate challenges. Here are the hard truths you only know if someone you love has a drug and alcohol addiction.
You Cannot Force Them To Stop
The decision to stop abusing drugs and alcohol is a standalone decision. Despite pleas and bribes, offers and ultimatums, opinions and arguments, ultimately a loved one has to make the decision themselves. You won’t be the one to convince them to stop, or the change in their brain which empowers them not to pick up that next drink or drug.
When your loved one finally decides to stop, they will decide on their own. However, that decision has to be instantaneously supported. Love, support, encouragement, and treatment, are what your loved one needs to succeed with their decision to get clean and stay sober.
Change Takes Time
Chemical dependency on drugs and alcohol doesn’t develop in a day. Likewise, recovery from chemical dependency doesn’t happen in a day. It might not even happen thirty days, the standard time for residential inpatient treatment. Friends and family members often make the mistake of assuming that the changes in recovery are immediate. Don’t be mistaken, there are endless gifts and miracles in recovery, brought about by tremendous changes.
An often used saying is nothing changes if nothing changes and that the only thing we have to change is everything. Change is imminent, but change does take time. You’ve waited and been patient. Keep waiting for the miracles to happen!
You Don’t Have To Feel Shame
Rapidly, shame about addiction, alcoholism, and mental health is becoming a thing of the past. You do not have to be ashamed that someone you love is addicted to drugs and alcohol. Chances are at some points you will. In the least, you certainly have experienced shame in the past.
Addiction and alcoholism are mental health issues which means that a loved one has become ill due to the effects of drugs and alcohol. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Instead, focus your energy on providing support and encouragement to your loved one in their recovery.
Lakehouse Recovery Center offers residential detox and treatment services in addition to a twelve month after care program for both men and women. Welcoming the comforts of life into treatment from our lakefront property to our swimming pool, our private rooms to our open pet policy, Lakehouse is the solution for treatment. Call us today for more information, at 877.762.3707.