The best way to help a loved one is to take care of yourself.
Alcoholism and drug addiction is a family disease. Living with the effects of someone else’s alcohol or drug addiction is too devastating for most people to bear without help.
Support for Family and Friends
Midway encourages families and friends of alcoholics and drug addicts to seek assistance through the form of a support program, regardless of whether your loved one seeks help or even recognizes the existence of a problem. These programs include:
Membership for these groups is voluntary, requiring only that one’s life has been adversely affected by someone else’s alcohol or drug problem. Groups are able to both give and receive comfort and understanding through shared experiences, strengths, and hope.
Recovering from the adverse effects of the disease of addiction is difficult. With recovery tools such as detachment, family members can begin to take care of themselves. Detachment is neither kind nor unkind. It does not imply evaluation of the person or situation from which we are detaching. It is simply a means for you to recover and look at situations realistically and objectively, thereby making intelligent decisions possible.
Some people find themselves in a situation where they have become an enabler. In the social or family setting, enablers are persons who genuinely care about an individual who has a problem such as alcoholism or substance abuse. Their love and care, unfortunately, often lead them to do things that actually help the substance maintain their destructive lifestyles.
They “cover” for the abuser; inventing excuses for them. They “save” the substance abuser by taking on the abuser’s responsibilities or sharing in the denial of the problem. In their attempts to help, enablers, in fact, encouraging destructive behavior by shielding the abuser from consequences of his/her actions. Confronting the user with the truth and allowing them to “feel” the consequences is the only way to wake them up.
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