Are you helping or hurting your addicted loved one?
Drug Addiction Has No Mercy
Thread Starter
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Milwaukie Oregon
Posts: 875
Are you helping or hurting your addicted loved one?
We admitted that we were powerless over our alcoholism/addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.
This is step one for the alcoholic/addict in the 12 steps ...
When I think about the above ... I know what it feels like to feel that way ... as an alcoholic/addict I came to feel like that ... I arrived at that place ... and I was done ... I was tired, I was beat up ... I had spent years and years and years using ... I lived to get high and got high to live ... My addiction was so strong I couldn't separate the two ... but when I arrived at the end of myself I knew I could no longer live with my addiction and one of us had to go ... I had tried and tried to quit on my own so many times before and failed so I was sure that I didn't have the strength to do it on my own ... I knew I just couldn't keep livin' like I was livin' because I was full on miserable with myself and my life and life around me ... I seriously thought about killing myself ... I was going to take my life because I thought that it was the only way out of the hell I was living in.
I was allowed to reach that place because there were no more enablers to enable me, there were no more fixers trying to fix me, no one was pushin' me to get clean ... I was free to use without anyone bitchin' at me anymore ... I had out run all the people who tried to run along side me and love me out of my addiction ... they had run the marathon long enough and had finally ran out of breath and endurance ... and had finally admitted to themselves that they were powerless over me and my addiction and that their lives had become unmanageable from trying to save me ... and they had let me go and gave me to God ... and began their own recovery ...
The alcoholic/addict has to be free to arrive at step one ... We have to let him/her ... if we are always rescuing, fixing all their problems, enabling them ... it stands in the way of them arriving at this step because you are shielding them from their lives becoming unmanagable ... and in the process your life becomes unmanagable from trying to save the alcoholic/addict ... and you bear the burden of their addiction allowing them to feel no consequences (the very thing that the alcoholic/addict needs to begin to break them down) alcoholic/addicts don't like pain ... and they use to kill pain, but when the we stand back and allow them to suffer the consequences of their behavior and their addiction then it becomes the burden on their shoulders ... and no matter how much they use the burden may fade for a high or two, but believe me when burden upon burden piles up and the booze and or/dope ain't killin' the pain no more, but now everything is intensified ... Now when they get high they can think on how miserable their life is and start looking for ways to change it ... and most realize the culprit that got us their was our addiction that we NOW can admit that we have ... and the behavior that stems from our addiction is an accessory to the problem and we can come to a place within ourselves that we reconize the need for recovery and begin to seek it.
Its all a process ... You can either be a partner in the process to allow them to hit rock bottom without delaying it ... "thats raising the bottom" so they hit it sooner
Or you can be a hinderance in the process in delaying the inevitable ... and the longer you delay the inevitable the more the damage is to your alcoholic/addicted loved one and to yourself.
If you knew today that all your efforts to help your alcoholic/addicted loved one hurt them instead of helping them ... and that if you didn't stop enabling them ... their bottom would be death ... Would you stop? No matter the intention ... if you are enabling the alcoholic/addict you are part of the problem and not the solution ... Sometimes even our best intentions is nothing but a nail in the coffin ... Their already killin' themselves .. We don't gotta help em ...
(and that is the painful truth).
Just a lil something to think about,
Passion
2006
This is step one for the alcoholic/addict in the 12 steps ...
When I think about the above ... I know what it feels like to feel that way ... as an alcoholic/addict I came to feel like that ... I arrived at that place ... and I was done ... I was tired, I was beat up ... I had spent years and years and years using ... I lived to get high and got high to live ... My addiction was so strong I couldn't separate the two ... but when I arrived at the end of myself I knew I could no longer live with my addiction and one of us had to go ... I had tried and tried to quit on my own so many times before and failed so I was sure that I didn't have the strength to do it on my own ... I knew I just couldn't keep livin' like I was livin' because I was full on miserable with myself and my life and life around me ... I seriously thought about killing myself ... I was going to take my life because I thought that it was the only way out of the hell I was living in.
I was allowed to reach that place because there were no more enablers to enable me, there were no more fixers trying to fix me, no one was pushin' me to get clean ... I was free to use without anyone bitchin' at me anymore ... I had out run all the people who tried to run along side me and love me out of my addiction ... they had run the marathon long enough and had finally ran out of breath and endurance ... and had finally admitted to themselves that they were powerless over me and my addiction and that their lives had become unmanageable from trying to save me ... and they had let me go and gave me to God ... and began their own recovery ...
The alcoholic/addict has to be free to arrive at step one ... We have to let him/her ... if we are always rescuing, fixing all their problems, enabling them ... it stands in the way of them arriving at this step because you are shielding them from their lives becoming unmanagable ... and in the process your life becomes unmanagable from trying to save the alcoholic/addict ... and you bear the burden of their addiction allowing them to feel no consequences (the very thing that the alcoholic/addict needs to begin to break them down) alcoholic/addicts don't like pain ... and they use to kill pain, but when the we stand back and allow them to suffer the consequences of their behavior and their addiction then it becomes the burden on their shoulders ... and no matter how much they use the burden may fade for a high or two, but believe me when burden upon burden piles up and the booze and or/dope ain't killin' the pain no more, but now everything is intensified ... Now when they get high they can think on how miserable their life is and start looking for ways to change it ... and most realize the culprit that got us their was our addiction that we NOW can admit that we have ... and the behavior that stems from our addiction is an accessory to the problem and we can come to a place within ourselves that we reconize the need for recovery and begin to seek it.
Its all a process ... You can either be a partner in the process to allow them to hit rock bottom without delaying it ... "thats raising the bottom" so they hit it sooner
Or you can be a hinderance in the process in delaying the inevitable ... and the longer you delay the inevitable the more the damage is to your alcoholic/addicted loved one and to yourself.
If you knew today that all your efforts to help your alcoholic/addicted loved one hurt them instead of helping them ... and that if you didn't stop enabling them ... their bottom would be death ... Would you stop? No matter the intention ... if you are enabling the alcoholic/addict you are part of the problem and not the solution ... Sometimes even our best intentions is nothing but a nail in the coffin ... Their already killin' themselves .. We don't gotta help em ...
(and that is the painful truth).
Just a lil something to think about,
Passion
2006
Member
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: the shire
Posts: 379
thanks for sharing nytepassion.
when you mentioned that no one was there to enable and fix you anymore...does this mean that you are already all alone...as in you really are by yourself?
my xabf claims that he is helping himself to sobriety but he has a gf now (who is also an alcoholic, smoke weed and a recovering coke addict, my xabf's doc is cocaine). i have a feeling that she is enabling him still since he owes 2 months rent on his place. its been 3 months since they got together, and only missed a weeks work. does that mean he is on the road to sobriety?
thanks.
when you mentioned that no one was there to enable and fix you anymore...does this mean that you are already all alone...as in you really are by yourself?
my xabf claims that he is helping himself to sobriety but he has a gf now (who is also an alcoholic, smoke weed and a recovering coke addict, my xabf's doc is cocaine). i have a feeling that she is enabling him still since he owes 2 months rent on his place. its been 3 months since they got together, and only missed a weeks work. does that mean he is on the road to sobriety?
thanks.
Drug Addiction Has No Mercy
Thread Starter
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Milwaukie Oregon
Posts: 875
Originally Posted by mrsbrownie 
when you mentioned that no one was there to enable and fix you anymore...does this mean that you are already all alone...as in you really are by yourself?
my xabf claims that he is helping himself to sobriety but he has a gf now (who is also an alcoholic, smoke weed and a recovering coke addict, my xabf's doc is cocaine). i have a feeling that she is enabling him still since he owes 2 months rent on his place. its been 3 months since they got together, and only missed a weeks work. does that mean he is on the road to sobriety?
thanks.
my xabf claims that he is helping himself to sobriety but he has a gf now (who is also an alcoholic, smoke weed and a recovering coke addict, my xabf's doc is cocaine). i have a feeling that she is enabling him still since he owes 2 months rent on his place. its been 3 months since they got together, and only missed a weeks work. does that mean he is on the road to sobriety?
thanks.
Yes, I was alone with the exception of my addict friends who partied right along side of me. Free to party as much as I wanted to and I did. I partied myself right into the waiting arms of God who I cried out to, to save me from myself and He did.
To be honest with you it does not sound like to me that your xabf is on the road to sobriety. It sounds as though he has found himself someone who will party right along side him. A recovering addict who wants to stay a recovering addict will not get into a relationship with someone who is currently using. If she is smoking weed and drinking she is not in recovery. Sounds to me like birds of a feather, flocked together and the two became one.
Passion
Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: The Jungle
Posts: 5,435
Thank you. I stopped running along side of my son and turned him over to God. It is the hardest thing I have ever done. I haven't seen him since....I don't know....the end of February. Today is his birthday. Days like this are particularly difficult....your post was a gift for me today. Thank you.
gentle hugs
ke
gentle hugs
ke
Getting there!!
Join Date: Mar 2012
Posts: 5,750
Great post Nyte...as always!! You are very inspiring to a "codie" like me. Thank you.
KE, you are in my prayers today. I pray you watch for all the blessings God has for you today (and ever day). They can be easily missed when we are so distracted.
I hope you do something extra special for YOU today. xoxox
KE, you are in my prayers today. I pray you watch for all the blessings God has for you today (and ever day). They can be easily missed when we are so distracted.
I hope you do something extra special for YOU today. xoxox
Member
Join Date: Oct 2011
Posts: 1,698
Thank you Nyte, this post is reinforcing the hope I have that my AS is in that place where all enablers have fallen to the side and he alone faces his addiction. We have let go, we are done running after the addict. Now we pray and live in hope of the day they decide to stop running and fall to grace.
Hugs,
Teresa
Hugs,
Teresa
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