Living with Addiction

Addiction doesn’t just affect the person with the addiction, it affects family members and significant others. It’s especially difficult for someone who lives with a person who is addicted to a drug — a husband, a wife, a son, a daughter, a father, a mother – because they experience the chaos and insanity on a regular basis. I’ll simply call the person living with the addict the loved one.

The addict makes promises she/he can’t keep. It’s not necessarily that the person is purposefully deceiving a loved one. Often the addict truly intends to change. It seems like a betrayal of trust to the loved one who has their hopes dashed over and over. After a while, the loved one becomes cynical and stops believing the empty promises, unless the loved receives counseling or attends a support group in which they learn the true nature of addiction.

It’s very important for the loved one living with an active addict to get help for themselves, regardless if the person addicted gets help or not. The loved one can get sick, too, living in a toxic environment of anger, fear, hopelessness and confusion. If the loved one receives help from someone who understands the relationship dynamics of addiction, the loved one can put the situation in perspective and, if they choose to continue living with the addict, take actions that might help the situation. Too often, a loved one who hasn’t received help tries in vain to help the addict at the expense of other relationships.

If the loved one can take steps to remain as mentally and emotionally healthy as possible, they can keep from spiraling downward with the addict into the sickness of addiction. The main thing is too maintain a proper perspective, to stay as strong as possible and to realize the person is sick — but also realize  hard decisions might need to be made at some some point if the addict can’t, or won’t, change. There’s not always a happy ending, but often there is a happy ending, The loved one can protect their own mental and emotional health, though, no matter how it turns out.