How can you best help a drug addict who may be struggling with addiction or heavy drinking? How can you encourage a person to seek help for their problem? Is it even possible to motivate someone else to take action in getting help for their condition? Is it even worth trying?
Lots of questions out there when it comes to this topic, because it can be quite a challenge to deal with a friend or a loved one who is struggling with addiction. One of the best ways to get them the help that they need is to simply encourage treatment. But what if they are not even receptive to hearing this suggestion? In that case you might:
* Give them the space to make their misery grow even more. People become willing to change when they get miserable and desperate, not when things are going well. So let them dig themselves into a deeper hole if they will not listen to reason.
* Do not enable them, for the same reasons as listed above. If they encounter more pain due to their addiction, it means that they might actually change. If you “help them out” and deny them this pain in their life, then they will keep using their drug of choice.
* Never offer to help them with anything other than professional treatment services. If they want to go to rehab, you will help them. If they want money for groceries, tough luck. Make it crystal clear that you will never help them with anything in their life other than getting them to rehab.
* A professional intervention is always an option, but usually it is not a very good one. Why not? Because they do not generally work, for the most part. They can work at times, of course, but it is a bit like catching lightning in a bottle. When they do work, it is probably more because the person was coincidentally finally ready to change their life. Willingness is key. If you have to organize an army to help motivate someone, then it is not likely to work out real well.
* Getting yourself to Al-Anon meetings should become your number one priority, if this person’s addiction is having a strong negative impact on you. There you will gain support and also learn how to best approach the addict in your life so as to maximize the chances that they will ask for help. How do you do that? By learning how to stop enabling them, and setting healthy boundaries so that you are steering them closer to surrender. If you are stressed out over someone else’s addiction in any way, then you should probably go to Al-Anon. If you do go to a meeting and you don’t like it, find a different meeting. Keep going until you find the support you need. There is no excuse for not doing this, and it is the single most important action step that you can learn from this article. Go to Al-Anon.
* Some addicts and alcoholics might have tried to get help in the past and failed. Or, they might have some exposure to treatment and say that it is “not for them” and so they are not willing to go. In cases like this, it is important to see these lies and weak defenses for what they are, and persist in encouraging professional help. I know this to be true because at one point I was that addict with every excuse in the book, I had been to rehab and I had been to meetings and I had been to counseling and none of it worked for me, so I had a million and one excuses as to why I should not try again. But you know what? At some point I got desperate enough, and miserable enough, and I was willing to give rehab another shot. And it worked.
So don’t give up hope.
