Addiction: How Can I Help a Family Member?

Addiction: How to Help your family?

As a family member and related to someone with drug addiction, you can help in many ways. Even if you’re not related to the drug addict, you can do something beneficial. Below are a few tips to family members or close friends to someone with drug addiction or who may be alcoholic.

The first thing to know is that drug addicts, including alcoholics, know down deep they need help, and in most situations, the user doesn’t want to live this way. But they also do not have an immediate solution. Often we hear “the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem,” now this may or may not be true. There is one certainty, though, and that is that if the person is going to admit he has a drug problem, he or she also realizes they were wrong. People do not like to be wrong; most of us enjoy the idea of being right in our decisions and actions. At any time you admit you were wrong, you also state that you were not in control of your life in your actions and decisions.

Many people struggle with addiction, which means anyone abusing drugs from pot, cocaine, crack, heroin, painkillers like Tylenol, Perks, Oxycontin, beer, or hard liquor. There is a common trait that will be observed in every case, and that is they are not tracking in the same time frame as the rest of us. Most drug addicts are in a world of their own, so you generally don’t make much sense to them when you speak. You can observe a child on drugs being talked to by his parents or relative go “ya, hum, ya, ah…ya…um, I know…” yet the seriousness of their condition is below their awareness. But there is something you can do.

From a counsellor’s point of view, they are aware of the drug addict’s condition and will get to their level of what is REAL to them. You can be sure of what is the most real to any drug addict or alcoholic, and that is the substance being abused. If you begin to show interest in what they are doing, they will have a good chance to respond. If you do not know the effects of cocaine, ask and listen, be supportive, and get to know what this person is living. They will soon open up to you, but only if you are nonjudgmental, nonabusive, and especially genuinely interested in what they have to say.

But you are not a trained addiction counsellor, and your help will only go so far, so this tip above is to bring the person into a safe relationship with you where they can express their need for help, that’s when you contact a professional drug addiction counsellor to take over. Don’t feel helpless about someone’s addiction; you can help, you are there; you can do something. If you know someone with this situation, call us for assistance in resolving their addiction, call 1-877-909-3636