I don't know if it's OK for me to post here. I am myself an addict, the "enemy" camp, although of course I understand we are all on the same side. And I have lost my brother to the disease.
I don't know if this will help but have found that to understand my own problem even the merest little bit, I had to read the basic text of AA. The book is intended for family members as much as alcoholics/addicts.
The books says that the truth is we have no more idea why we do what we do than you do. It describes those of us rushing from jail cell to crack house, as "a baffled lot."
We give those who care about us -- and mostly ourselves - "any number of threadbare excuses" for our behavior. We THINK we mean those excuses too, but they don't make any sense "in light of the total destruction" caused by our disease.
We don't quite get that we do what we do BECAUSE we are addicted and there is nothing more to it. It's a complete, closed circuit. There's no opening, no wormhole for logic to reach in. The problem is impervious to logic.
I'm sure I don't need to describe "total desctruction" in this forum but imagine a Cocaine Anonymous meeting I went to. I saw men, mostly at this one, and I saw: crutches. Wheelchairs. Missing arms. Missing legs, Missing teeth. Can you imagine anything, ANYTHING, that would be so compelling a reason to you personally, any possible high or feeling, that could compel you watch your own teeth falling out? To stand up and see your severed limb on the ground - then rush out and do it again?
(losing my husband felt not unlike that to me - like someone was removing my heart and kidneys through my mouth.)
Survival is the primary instinct of any human being. If you go to some open AA meetings you'll very soon hear someone describe the mulitple times they have even technically died, repeatedly died, and been resucitated. Or if you could take a survey, Have you ever been suicidal as a result of the disease, I think you'd see about 90% of the hands raise.
So, I wonder for a relative, what "relative value" can you imagine there to be, then, in a relationship, any relationship, even the most sacred one of parent to child?
I can tell you: I did NOT create this. I didn't cause it. And I can't cure it either. I think the only c I see left above is control. I'm trying to do that. But most people like me, we can't and we die. That's the reality. Marcus Aurelius said if you want to understand something, ask first "what is it's nature?" -- and look it square in the face.
I accept that in this forum, the more salient nature of addiction is the way in which it causes pain to family members. And I learned in the rooms of AA that as an addict, I will never feel hurt as much as I have hurt.
Know that I still love and care deeply about how my actions affect my family.
I think it's Corinthians that says something about "I can speak in tongues of men and angles but without love I am nothing."