Relating to Your Addicted Loved One

Happy Easter! 

In this series of posts, I wanted to share how three of my relationships have gone through a transformation. In each relationship, I had to ask God to help me see that relationship as it was in reality rather than the way that that relationship had been unconsciously disfigured by fear. Let’s begin with the first one: my relationship with the addict/alcoholics in my life.

Before my dad retired from his job, he began buying little fixer upper homes. He loved cleaning them up to rent or sell to first-time homebuyers. After he retired, this became his full-time job. He loved taking an old house and giving it new life.

He had two rules for his renters that were non-negotiable. The first was that there were no pets allowed. He’d seen too many people fail to care for their animals and this was a costly problem for a landlord. The other rule was the most important to him– no partying was permitted. As a child of an active alcoholic, he had seen enough.

Because he always used the term ‘partying,’ I unconsciously assumed that when people used drugs and alcohol, it was only done to have a good time. Growing up during the time of The Andy Griffith Show reruns, the character Otis Campbell made drinking look funny. That seemed to confirm the idea that drinking was a partying sport.

As I got older, drugs were becoming a bigger national problem. Drug use wasn’t portrayed as funny. It was illegal and users were often referred to by dehumanizing terms like junkies, dope fiends, potheads and a host of other derogatory terms. There was the national campaign, ‘Just Say No’ going on at that time which made it seem as if an addict could make a choice to say no to drugs and that those who didn’t were just selfish or perhaps immoral.

These two extremes were what I had to draw from when we were faced with the addiction of a loved one. I was so afraid. There was so much that I didn’t understand. And, I was worried about how the stigma of addiction would affect my family members.  Have you found yourself in this same position?

Soon after addiction affected our family, we began going to 12-step meetings where we started to learn about the disease of addiction. Seeing that addiction is a disease instead of a choice allowed us to understand that our loved one was suffering as much as we were. The physician, Gabor Mate suggests that we “Don’t ask why the addiction, but why the pain?” 

That one question moved my perspective from a place of judgment to the side of compassion. Seeing addiction as a disease that someone suffers from helps you to reframe the whole problem. For me, I tried to separate my loved one from their disease. I would love my family member and stand up to the addiction that held them hostage. 

Then I began going to open AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) speaker meetings. During a speaker meeting, a recovering alcoholic tells their story by answering 3 questions: How it was, what happened and how it is now.

When you go to these meetings, you begin to hear common stories about people who didn’t feel like they fit in or never felt comfortable in their own skin. You hear about difficult family situations. You hear human beings share very human experience. And then you realize how wrong the stigma of addiction really is.

Once you hear these recovering alcoholics/addicts speak, you see people who are working on their relationships with their higher power, their relationship with themselves, their relationship with friends and family members. You also see people who are helping other addicts and alcoholics find their way to sobriety.

It has been a gift to know all of the alcoholics and addicts in my life—and after all these years I know so many that I am proud to call friends. They are some of the most thoughtful people that I know. It is my hope that you prayerfully revaluate what you believe to be true about your addicted loved ones. Ask God to show you what you need to see. I pray that you are able to replace fear with love. Because love is what heals us all.