Addiction Help for Drug Addicts

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Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed

How can we give drug 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. In what way can we do that? It can be a hard truth to accept, but we can’t really convince another person to change, no matter how much we desire for them to be clean. Addicts are prone to doing that and so it can be tough to help them when they are not willing to change.

The first step when it comes to helping a drug addict is to first look at your own actions when it comes to their drug use and it’s consequences. Are you allowing them to continue their destructive habits or behaviors 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 their drug use lands them in jail, and you automatically bail them out of jail, then you are probably enabling them. 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 example might be if they are out all evening drinking or using and you call in to work for them the next day to cover for them. Doing these things might seem like the right thing to do, but in fact you might be damaging their chances at getting clean. 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 for help and also ask for direction, then they are ready to make a real change in their life.

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 important part is that you no longer enable the addict and therefore allow them to hit bottom. The less frequently that you try to intervene and save their skin the faster they will be driven to real change.

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