JessicaLives

thanks

JessicaLives

Im confused, if help along these lines is being used then why are a lot of the posts so angry about what the author and the guy who posted are sharing? If its something family can do, then why the hostility towards it? Im not sure I understand.

Gamaur

That's a great suggestion, and would have prevented the confusion here completely. Not making a distinction or clarifying the message better was an error of judgement, which will be fixed in a re-write.

While we may be at odds in opinion on a few things, that's a bloody good post, and thank you. I believe I've answered or agreed with many of your objections already, particularly regarding to the need to recognise and empathise with the supporters perspective as well as the addicts, but it's becoming clear that the angle of my post was a misguided one.

Please remember, no-one is trying to make anyone else feel like they've done anything wrong; the intention is purely to help. I appreciate any suggestions you can make to improve that.

I'll rewrite this over the next few days to be more universal and with greater context, sources and reasoning, and will also request it be moved to a more suitable forum more focused on strategy. Another error I've made, as pointed out by 'cynical one', is that I didn't consider that the primary purpose of this particular forum is to offer support to the supporters perspective. The passionate response thus far makes perfect sense.

Chino

I (temporarily) gave myself high blood pressure, irritable bowel syndrome, and made worse my already existing PTSD. I was managing my own life and it's individualized stresses quite well. But I just about lost it when I tried to manage my adult daughter's life too. She was not willing.

Something always has to give when any individual attempts to manage another's life. I eventually decided the opioid dilaudid was not worth sacrificing my sanity and life, and think the suggestion otherwise is insane.

Gamaur

Being victim to the tyrannical abuse of an alcoholic or a withdrawal-ridden addict can be one of the most traumatic life experiences in our entire society, and if children are involved, the trauma becomes exponential. It's terrifying, dangerous, and psychologically debilitating in ways nearly impossible to understand without going through it personally.

Even though much of the OP has been bypassed, I can completely understand why someone's emotions would be triggered when reading a suggestion of them being at fault. It's how the OP was written and framed-up: the perspective of people in severe situations should have been at the forefront. It was my mistake to not be sensitive to this; not their mistake to misunderstand me as a result.

Your situation, however, sounds well within the spectrum where the ideas being discussed may give benefit. Take the ideas as thinking points, and explore any other avenue of strategy you can find. Every addict and addiction is different, and there's no-such thing as a 'catch-all' solution. You may need to think laterally and 'pick & choose' what suits best.

Also, it's never too soon to see a professional for guidance. If you have questions piling up, I would strongly suggest speaking to someone sooner rather than later. As you can see, it can be a difficult thing to source helpful information on an internet forum.

JessicaLives

why would you have been trying to "manage" her life? If someone is sick the normal action is for them to get help for it, or if someone is chronically sick then at home you will have to adjust to it, help them where you can. Im not sure its like being someone work manager who is accountable to you.

I dont see any of that stuff, only want to discuss this with him 1st step. and not have it turn into a bad scene.

JessicaLives

what to do is confusing. I feel like maybe Ive been enabling him because I was ok with his smoking weed for anxiety when Ive known all along he should see a doctor. Its still not my fault, but maybe I havent helped right the situation by encouraging proper normal healthy reaction to dealing with anxiety, andd now its got worse and hes trying harder drugs.
But I dont blame myself , and I was furious at him but now Im feeling more like it evolved in a sneaky way? Reading is like opening a box and its full and I dont know where to start. I feel like I need to be more certain whats going on, some proof? but then was reading someone say you dont need proof, if you feel things are off then its enough to discuss.

maybe you need to work on it, but I like what you shared and its helpful to me. maybe we are not in as bad a place as some people here?

Chino

A highjacked brain cannot manage itself so I attempted to do it for her by encouraging and managing aka enabling. That was before I learned to stop banging my head against the wall.

Once she chose to stop shoving needles in her arms, encouragement towards her continued recovery was and still is completely appropriate.

AnvilheadII

for those of us who have TRIED every means and method under the sun to GET our addicted loved ones to STOP without result, to see yet another article or post encouraging families to do MORE and MORE can really grate on the nerves. because there is then the implication for families whose loved ones are still using that THEY are then at fault, that THEY did not do enough and THEY are to blame at least in part.

my mom was an alcoholic. i was 5 years sober when she died a very ugly painful death as her liver ceased to function. i was her only child. i had her only grandchild. i could not get her to stop, get her to WANT to stop, i evidently FAILED.

no one is saying that offering help or support to an addict about options for getting clean and sober is a BAD thing. but what many ARE saying is don't make this YOUR life's work. you aren't the addict, there is no WE in their recovery. addicts are not completely helpless - it takes a lot of moxy and resourcefulness to be a full time addict - be that shooting heroin, taking pills, drinking or smoking crack. an addict will do ANYTHING for that next hit.....but until they attack recovery with same resolve, they are not likely to succeed.

Chino

Jessica, with much respect and kindness, if he's using heroin then he's in a very very very bad place right now and his life is forever changed. His brain will have developed extra opiate receptors and it's permanent; there are no exceptions. It's something that will forever have to be managed every single day.

That doesn't mean he's a lost cause, though; that's all up to him. My daughter has been in recovery now for several years.

I should warn you though, that you're not dealing with the 'real' him, if he's using heroin. His brain is on autopilot and not very much is genuine except for the search for the next high.

I wish you all the best.

JessicaLives

thanks, Im scared because of what Ive been reading about heroin. What kinds of things did you do you felt were enabling? above you mentioned encouraging was enabling? I want to encourage him to see a doctor and get help for his anxiety and however bad his drug use is maybe rehab? I dont think this is enabling. but Im feeling like accepting his weed use maybe has been even though it hasnt caused problems except a few arguments over the smell, then he stopped smoking in the house.
but this is different, way worse, makes me feel dirty sleeping next to him, and I know its stupid but heroin is a street drug. I cant believe he would even try it.

Chino

My daughter took every good suggestion and encouragement as permission to continue using. "Do something good for yourself" and "go ahead and sleep in" and "take a long hot shower and relax" and "go for a walk in the park" translated into "time to get high" in her brain. "Please go to detox/rehab" was met with tolerance. She did it to shut me up then when right back to using.

Every extra dollar she had went towards her drug. If I paid her cell phone bill, she used the money for drugs. When I quit paying her bills she started stealing money from us at home and pawning whatever she could carry out of the house. Things like that are the normal experience, not unusual.

It's OK to be creeped out by heroin. Unfortunately my daughter wasn't when she met the guy who introduced to that world.

JessicaLives

I was thinking about this. Its easy to do stuff and think its being nice and will help, but telling someone to sleep in, or go for. walk. Those are only words, someone will sleep in if they want. My fiance has always made time to smoke a bowl. I know if I say go relax then he will smoke. I dont think of it as encouragement myself. I know your right about the money, but I dont do that, he doesnt ask for money either. he might if hes on opiates now.

FindingMe2

This is such a confusing and triggering subject for me. My STBXAH asked for help, went to therapy, meetings, etc, etc...all while I stayed loving and supportive. Problem was, he, by his own admission, was just pretending he wanted help. He just wanted me off his back. And I bought his recovery efforts hook, line and sinker.

After I left him, he found his own help and continues to stay sober today. He didn't need me after all. Imagine that!!

cynical one

4 Things Johann Hari Gets Wrong About Addiction

By Andrew Dobbs 07/29/15

Outed as a lying plagiarist in the UK, the disgraced journalist Johann Hari has remade himself as an addiction expert. Or has he?

Johann Hari, a journalist and presenter of the June 2015 TED Talk, “Everything You Know About Addiction is Wrong,” has popped up on many a recovering addict’s social media feeds in recent weeks. Hari challenges the carceral model of dealing with addiction, making him another welcome opponent of the War on Drugs. But for those who know addiction from the inside, his title is condescending, especially as Hari has no training on the topic, is not himself an addict, and is infamous for a high-profile plagiarism scandal which cost him his job at The Independent newspaper in 2011.

More troubling, some of Hari’s arguments fly in the face of both common sense and the lived experience of addicts. Here are a few of the things Johann Hari may not know about addiction.

1. Addiction Has a Real Physical Component

Hari spends much of the talk exploring the so-called “Rat Park” study, a late 1970s experiment by psychologists at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. The experiment sought to correct shortcomings in previous addiction studies in which rats—deeply social creatures—were isolated in tiny cages where they proceeded to kill themselves with overdoses of opium water. The Canadian scientists—led by Bruce K. Alexander—built instead a “rat park” which created an inviting, socially-rich environment for the rats. The researchers found that rats there did not typically become addicted to opium or overdose. The implication is that “the real cause of addiction” is social isolation, not any physically compelling nature to the drugs themselves.

“Professor Alexander began to think there might be a different story about addiction … What if addiction isn't about your chemical hooks? What if addiction is about your cage?” Hari says. “Human beings have a natural and innate need to bond, and when we're happy and healthy, we'll bond and connect with each other, but if you can't do that, because you're traumatized or isolated or beaten down by life, you will bond with something that will give you some sense of relief.”

Such as drugs or alcohol.

While 12-step movements have claimed for decades that addiction is rooted in a “spiritual malady” much like what Hari describes, it is obviously wrong to deny that addiction has a very real physical component on top of its socio-spiritual roots. Hari is right to object to the scare-mongering, drug war-justifying notion that drugs themselves have “hooks” which can make everyone who uses them a hopeless addict. At the same time, certain people—it seems—have a physical predisposition to addiction, and if they use certain substances it can trigger an addictive cycle regardless of how “connected” they may be.

This should be obvious to everyone familiar with one of the world’s most addictive drugs: nicotine. Most people smoke a cigarette or two at some point in their lives, and many people smoke somewhat regularly for at least a little while. The vast majority of these people do not become addicted to nicotine. Some people, however, do become addicted and cannot quit without tremendous effort. Some others continue smoking even after it gives them a fatal illness, and even when it exacerbates painful symptoms.

Does Hari think that only the socially or psychologically isolated become addictive smokers? What about caffeine? The same facts exist for this, even more socially acceptable addiction—clearly the people who can’t function without coffee throughout the day are acting out a physical condition, and not merely a yearning for lovingkindness that only a latte can fill.

Nobody who has been addicted to narcotics or alcohol would ever deny that loneliness is maybe the most important feature of our malady. There are many lonely people, however, who use for a time and give it up easily, and there are many otherwise well-adjusted people who develop serious drug and alcohol problems. The determining factor is almost certainly physical and/or genetic. Hari oversimplifies this situation.

2. Enabling is a Real Threat to Addicts

Hari decries, at one point, the television program Intervention and addiction interventions generally.

“So what they do is they take the connection to the addict, and they threaten it, they make it contingent on the addict behaving the way they want,” Hari said. “And I began to think, I began to see why that approach doesn't work, and I began to think that's almost like the importing of the logic of the Drug War into our private lives.”

Hari adds that he encourages the addicts in his own life to reach out to him for companionship. “And what I've tried to do now… is to say to the addicts in my life that I want to deepen the connection with them, to say to them, I love you whether you're using or you're not. I love you, whatever state you're in, and if you need me, I'll come and sit with you because I love you and I don't want you to be alone or to feel alone.”

This is a powerful, beautiful statement, and it is right. There is also ample room for debate on the value of traditional interventions, but Hari misrepresents the logic behind them. While he is correct in noting that interventions threaten addicts and, in effect, punish them into treatment, this is not their true purpose. Their logic is one that recognizes that for all of the isolation associated with addiction, it is a disease which spreads from addicts to their families and friends, and can only persist through enabling, which itself becomes a compulsion for those who get trapped in it. Interventions are supposed to give the addict’s enablers the opportunity to collectively, publicly establish the healthy boundaries which have been missing in their relationships.

It is also irresponsible for Hari to speak to a general audience—more than 1,000,000 views online already—about the need to deepen their relationships with the addicts in their lives without an accompanying warning about addicts’ tendencies to blow through boundaries and take advantage of the people who seek to help them. Maybe Hari assumes that people already know this, but the tens of millions of people enabling the millions of addicts in our society indicates that the word hasn’t gotten out. If Hari had asked me to call him on my worst days, I would have tried to manipulate him for money or other resources until he said no, or until I had borrowed too much to ever pay back. Then I would have been the one cutting him off.

3. Sobriety IS Connection

This brings us to another important point where Hari is not so much incorrect as he is incomplete. Hari’s final line is this: “The opposite of addiction is not sobriety; the opposite of addiction is connection.” What this line packs in rhetorical power, it lacks in real value.

The point is that the most important, most indispensable tool used by the recovery community is connection itself, and that often the only place that a low-bottom addict can find connection is in the community of sober addicts. Working with others is a fundamental principle of every 12-step program, and the traditional response to a particularly unhealthy share from an addict in a meeting is not “you need to leave,” but rather “keep coming back.” To set off connection and sobriety as opposing or separate concepts is to demonstrate a profound ignorance of sobriety and the connections it provides.

Here’s a story to prove the point. My friend Frank died this week. Frank was in his 60s, a transplant to Texas from New York, and he went into cardiac arrest on a city bus last weekend. When he got to the hospital, his wristband said John Doe, and it turned out that Frank had no family left—he had no next of kin to make the crucial end-of-life calls. Frank was an addict and alcoholic, and many of us die isolated, alone, our families gone, unremembered by anybody, totally unmourned. Frank, on the other hand, had so many visitors during his final coma that the hospital staff was almost overwhelmed. Frank’s affairs have been attended to by sober alcoholics, and his memorial service will be full of people who consider him a dear friend. Most of us didn’t even know Frank’s last name until he passed. But we knew his story, and in his sobriety, he found real connection, and we found it in him. Frank died clean and sober, with just over 10 years when he passed.

4. What Hari Knows About Honesty is Wrong

In the end, it turns out that Hari’s plagiarism scandal matters more than he might like in this attempted comeback. The connection and bonding that can produce authentic sobriety like Frank’s can only be reached in a spirit of what 12-step types call “rigorous honesty.” All that boundary busting we did in our active addiction means we’ll need to practice some powerful contrition if we ever want that level of truthfulness; it means taking responsibility for our wrongdoing in an unflinching way. The fellowship of other recovered addicts both demands and makes possible such humility.

Hari, on the other hand, responded to his own serious wrongdoing with excuse-making, minimization, and dishonesty. Hari’s plagiarism was unique—when his interview subjects did not say what he wanted them to, he lifted quotes of theirs from other publications without attribution. He was also caught creating a fake online identity in order to make slanderous changes to his critics’ Wikipedia pages, and accused of making up an atrocity he reported on in the Central African Republic. Hari admitted to all but the last charge, was fired from the Independent—one of the UK’s largest newspapers—and stripped of a major journalism prize.

These are serious wrongdoings by Hari, major violations of the trust the public is supposed to put in journalists. Hari’s “apology,” however, was riddled with excuses and half-hearted “humblebrags”—his career had taken off far too quickly without proper journalism training; it was really all his interview subjects’ fault for not speaking more clearly; he was the victim of a witch-hunt from powerful interests he’d targeted in his reporting, and on and on. Frankly, if a friend of mine in recovery proposed amends of the sort Hari has made, I would think that their sobriety was at risk for lack of honesty.

Perhaps Hari has failed to explore the facts of 12-step recovery because he fears the power of the rigorous honesty he has so far been incapable of. This has not prevented him from becoming a quick new darling on the addiction and recovery circuit, but in light of his other ignorances, maybe it should.

Recovered addicts believe in forgiveness, but Hari still seems to be selling others’ ideas as his own. He believes he’s saying something innovative by suggesting that addiction is rooted in isolation, but every addict knows this in a way Hari will hopefully never comprehend. We also know things he appears to be ignorant about, like that opening up to an addict without clear boundaries is an invitation to disaster. And for millions of us, we know that the opposite of addiction is a sobriety gained through connection, acceptance, grace, and love, all of which are rooted in radical honesty.

At best, Hari’s TED Talk patronizes recovered addicts, and at worst, he is seeking a return to journalism on the backs of people too marginalized to protect themselves. We may be powerless over our addictions, but nobody should deny us what we’ve learned about our disease; these truths are the most important facts of our lives today. They are, in the end, the real ideas worth sharing.

Andrew Dobbs is a writer, activist and recovering addict based in Austin, Texas.

CodeJob

Ah Yes! Cynical One this is the reponse to Hari I wanted to find yesterday! Thank you!

alterity

"for those of us who have TRIED every means and method under the sun to GET our addicted loved ones to STOP without result, to see yet another article or post encouraging families to do MORE and MORE can really grate on the nerves. because there is then the implication for families whose loved ones are still using that THEY are then at fault, that THEY did not do enough and THEY are to blame at least in part."

THIS

DoubleDragons

I am the daughter of an alcoholic mother and I have serious issues with alcohol. I am sober going on two years in September. The only thing that got me sober was me and God and the terrible example of my mom's addiction. Truthfully, I drank from age 15 until I was in my early 40s, with plenty of dangerous, sickening, embarrassing episodes and no one I loved called me on it. Not my husband, not my kids, not my extended family nor my friends ever shamed me. I think if someone had taken me to task on it, I would have broken through my denial sooner, but hindsight is 20/20. Like everyone else here, I have tried everything imaginable to get my alcoholic mother to quit drinking and for my enabling father to stop enabling her and nothing has worked. Denial is the strongest, worst part of addiction. Almost two years sober and I am still getting epiphanies about how wrong my thinking was about just about everything. Personally, I think enabling an addict is just adding to the denial. I know, in my case, that fact that everyone still "loved me" after one of my drunken episodes was proof to me that my problem wasn't that bad. And because I felt bad about myself and my "weakness", I gave myself away in a very codependent way, even in sober times, to make up for my embarrassments and shortcomings, only adding to the vicious cycle. Bottom line is no matter what is going on outside of them, addicts can only decide for themselves when "enough is enough" and that is an internal, spiritual shift (imo) that has very, very little with what is going on externally. So, bottom of line, each individual has to decide for themselves how they are going to have a relationship to the addict in their lives and that is a very personal decision, as well. The key is not being attached to any outcomes.

cynical one

Trying to help someone with the disease of addiction to get and stay clean is like trying to help a morbidly obese person with Type II Diabetes to diet, exercise, and control their disease. You can bring only healthy foods into the home, you can encourage them to exercise or offer to exercise with them, you can cook them only healthy meals, you can remind them to take their insulin shots or oral medications, you can make doctor appointments for them and then take them and sit in on their consultations, you can try to keep their environment positive and stress-free, you can monitor the scale for a daily weigh-in, and you can reward them for every pound lost. You can also learn everything you can about obesity, diabetes, and exercising. Additionally, you can get their family, friends, coworkers and employers involved in their cheer and concern camp. And yet, you still can’t control them from super-sizing everything at the drive-thru, exercise for them, or shove needles or pills into them.

While I agree that when first finding out about a loved ones addiction, most families do not react in a way that is helpful. They immediately go into rescue mode and their focus is on trying to save their loved one. This can go on for weeks, months, years, or decades until we are financially, physically, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted. Along the way, most have tried everything they can think of on their own, everything they have read, and everything that has been suggested by professionals in the field.

We have also stuffed our own feelings down, accepted unacceptable behaviors, ignored our own health problems, tried to keep reality away from our addicted loved one and put on that oh so happy face. We don’t eat or we overeat, we don’t sleep or we can’t get out of bed, we have cried ourselves to sleep, or punched pillows to release the anger. And, it’s not our addicted loved one they we angry at most of the time, we are angry at ourselves because we are unable to save them. So, to be told that our focus needs to be 100% on the addicts depression, or 100% on building up the addicts confidence, or 100% on reinventing ourselves and other members of the family to fit in with the addicts wants and needs…I call ********. 100% of our focus needs to be on ourselves. We make ourselves suffer more than an active addict will ever acknowledge, much less understand. Our responsibility is to work our recoveries for as long as needed, not work theirs for the rest of their lives.

As far as learned helplessness, I couldn’t agree with you more. We teach addicts well. By all this doing for, and rearranging our lives to suit theirs, by taking over their responsibilities, by not allowing them to handle life’s ups and downs, we feed into their “I’m not capable” attitude. And, I shamelessly think that some on our side do this intentionally to feed our own ego and need to be needed. If we make someone 100% dependent on us, then they won’t leave us. I think the most important aspect in all of this is to see and treat the addict as the adult that they are (I’m not talking about children or minors, so don’t go there), and if there is any confidence building needed- give them the dignity of knowing that we believe that they are very capable of saving themselves.

“Be strong in maintaining your focus, and you’ll not only succeed, but grow infinitely as a person yourself.”

If and when an addict does the hard work of getting and staying clean it is THEIR success, their moment to be proud, their achievement and accomplishment. Never take that away from them.

hopeful4

I am walking a very thin line here LOL. There are a lot of people who think the CRAFT method is much to enabling. Maybe it is, I don't really know for sure. In my opinion, it can be used for someone who is actively seeking recovery. It really heats up the coals when people suggest that this can make someone want recovery. It's a very misunderstood thing in my opinion.

Nothing can make him want to recover. He has to want that, and to seek it himself. Once he does, that is where the encouragement can come in. If he mentions that maybe he needs to see a dr., to encourage him to do so. Enabling him would be making the appointment for him. Let him do so himself. I hope that makes the difference clear.

H is a very scary drug that is very hard to recover from. I am not trying to scare you, but more so let you know why so many see this as controversial. So many have tried these methods and they have not worked, b/c the addict did not want recovery for themselves.

It's a sad truth for sure.

Many, many hugs to you. Keep reading, keep posting. SR is a place of great support.

XXX