Question about addicts.....What have you learned?
 

What is your piece of advice to pass down?

I have been reading a lot of post lately on this site and I am amazed on all the really great advice people have on everything from how to leave your addict, how to live with your addict, how to understand your addict and how to get over you addict.

Out of all the advice from just living with your situation and reading all the forms, what is the biggest lesions you have learned the most or words of wisdom do you have for people going through all this?

:c031:

No one can love the addiction away.

The biggest thing I learned had nothing to do with my AW, it had to do with me.

That was, I don't need anyone else to complete me, to make me whole or anything else. I have learned to love me, to respect me and to take care of me.

Your friend,

I learned to just expect my alcoholic will lie.

Someone here at SR told me that, and it has been the single most helpful piece of wisdom.

that happiness is really an inside job and so is loving yourself.

1. Addiction expands into the tolerance that surrounds it.
   
   
2. Addiction is a black hole that consumes all of a family's financial and emotional resources, and then still demands more.
   
   
3. Addicted people will maintain their addiction until they can no longer get away with it, down to the wire.

— From a PhD (Phormer Drunk)

I second this. I'm still trying to unravel the lies that my AH has told to me and to other people.

People will show you who they are. Believe them. Listen to their actions, not their words.

Hope is not a strategy.
A goal is not a plan.

Ive learn all of this:

Cant play the piano (me) when the lid is down.

I'm responsible for my own life.

Detachment is not detaching from the person whom we care about, but the agony of involvement.

Whose problem is it?

This is my life, is this where I want to be?

I was more alone with the alcoholic, than when I am without him.

Dont expect anything more out of the alcoholic than he is capable of, and he is not capable of anything.

Learning to forgive and let go or it will eat me up inside.

My sponsor told me to "Give the alcoholic the dignity to go to hell if they chose to and that is the only place they will go if they continue to drink. Alcoholism can take you places (hell) that you would never dream you'd go"

All of the above........

We cannot control anyone but ourselves.

The biggest thing(s) I have learned about addiction-
I didn't cause it
I can't control it
I can't cure it

We are not powerless, but rather powerful.

We are not powerless over alcohol/drugs, but rather powerful.

totally AGREE with this for MOI too

That they won't quit until they're good and ready, and I am powerless to help them get to that point.

sometimes, when you say what you think, they bury their heads in the sand and imagine that others can't think for themselves either and try to bury other peoples heads too.

God made him...
 

God will take care of him. Let go and let God.

The biggest thing I learned was about myself, and not about the addict. I learned that I've spent my life looking to others for happiness by seeking their neverending adoration and love. It wasn't until that got me in a relationship with someone who could never offer it that I learned I will be much happier if I stop thinking I need it.