Addiction Help for Struggling Drug Addicts

How can we give addiction help to addicts who are struggling with addiction?

The real secret to this is all about encouraging the struggling addict to become enthusiastic about their own life in recovery. But how can we actually do that? It is a hard lesson to learn, but we cannot directly control another person, no matter how badly we want for them to not self destruct. Addicts are prone to doing that and so it can be tough to help them when they are not willing to change.

The first thing you will want to do when trying to help an addict is to examine your own behavior. Are you enabling them to continue using drugs in any way? If this is the case then you should consider changing your own actions first so that you’re not part of the problem. For example, if they are drinking or using and they end up in legal trouble over it, and you are the one who is bailing them out of jail all the time, then this is enabling behavior on your part. How? Because you are not allowing them to experience the natural outcomes of their destructive behaviors.

If you are “putting pillows under them” when they screw up, then you might actually be contributing to their ongoing use of drugs instead of helping them to make a decision for change. Another situation might be when they are at a party all night and get completely wasted and you end up covering their bases for them by calling off at their job. Doing things such as this might seem helpful at first, but you are actually enabling them to continue to use drugs. If they are really going to make any sort of major change in their using behavior then they will have to go through some pain initially in order to motivate that change.

The moment of surrender is when the addict is willing to accept help on someone else’s terms. This is when you know that the drug addict is ready for change because they will no longer try to deceive you or trick you by asking for “help”. When they ask you for help in the form of guidance and direction about how to live, then you know they are ready for real change.

Pushing the addict to this point is difficult and there is not a whole lot a person can do to induce the state of surrender. The critical thing here is that you cease enabling them so that they can hit their natural bottom and start the process of surrender. The less frequently that you try to intervene and save their skin the faster they will be driven to real change.