There is a person that suffers from the disease of addiction in almost everyone’s life. For a long time it was thought that undesirable actions such as substance abuse, compulsive gambling, and unsafe sex was the result of a moral deficiency. Doctors now recognize that addiction is a disease, and that is good news for those who suffer from addiction. Rather than giving those of suffer from addiction an excuse for how they act, thinking of addiction as an illness offers optimism. Due to the acknowledgement that addiction is a disease, addicts are able to seek ways to get better through addiction rehab and become productive members of society.
The very first thing that family members and friends should do to create hope for those with the disease of addiction in their lives is to entirely refrain from enabling the person’s addictive behaviors. Often it is the addict’s parents or spouse that will feel helpless and guilty, and end up providing the resources for the person to continue using, but it could be any person the addict knows. Addiction makes addicts do things they don’t want to do, to get things that they don’t want to get. This can even include manipulating the very people they care about the most, so that they can continue their self-destructive behavior. Once the enablers in an addict’s life stop being a part of their loved one’s disease, the suffering addict has no choice but to confront the harsh reality of their disease. This is often a painful period for friends and family as they observe a person they love deeply experience pain and can not offer help, but it is crucial for addiction rehabilitation that they refuse step in and offer a more comfortable way.
This is a time when the people in an addict’s life must comprehend that they too are powerless over their loved one’s addiction. When an addict has run out of devices to get more and is ready to get help, that is when the friends and family who have been standing by can step in and start helping them recover. Addiction is an insidious disease and the last person to realize how bad things are is often the addict themselves. Addicts are masters of justification, rationalization and selective memory. Many people suffer through decades of addiction while believing that it’s “not that bad”. Any help offered before the addict arrives at a point of desperation and reaches out for help on their own is usually futile. Recovery can begin, however, when the point of willingness is reached. The best thing that concerned family and friends can do at this point is to help the person they love enroll in an addiction rehab groups.
Besides helping addicts endure detox, spending time in an addiction rehab gives addicts several other resources for their recovery. Becoming a member of a recovery group within the treatment center gives the addict in recovery a feeling of belonging and shared experience that they most likely haven’t felt long since their addiction commenced. The treatment center workers give hope and guidance, especially in counseling sessions when the recovering addict has a chance to vent and explore issues that they may have kept hidden due to fear or shame. Perhaps most importantly, time in a rehab can prepare the addict to go back to society, by exposing them to supportive groups like 12 step fellowships.