When someone struggles with a substance use disorder, that person is generally not the only one who suffers. Family members and other loved ones also suffer because they often do not know how to help. In 2014, 21.5 million American adults (aged 12 and older) battled with substance use disorder of some kind. With those numbers, chances are good someone in your family is struggling. Here are three ways to help a family member that doesn’t want help for addiction.
Be Prepared to Help
Just because your loved one does not want help for addiction now does not mean they never will. One of the very best things you can do for yourself and your loved one is to be prepared for when they do. One of the most important things you can do is to face the fact that abusing substances is not something an individual can merely “quit doing.” Only 3% of recovery happens without any formalized treatment program. If you genuinely want to help your loved one, you need to be prepared to help them seek treatment.
Being prepared can mean many different things. This includes finding a few appropriate treatment facilities or treatment options for your loved one, meeting with addiction counselors and therapists who can help you understand how to proceed when the time comes that your loved one asks for help for addiction and even exploring insurance options or how to pay for treatment.
Just breaking free enough to reach out for help for addiction is challenging enough. The longer they have to wait actually to get help, the more likely they are to be pulled back into their habit before they can receive the reinforcement they need to fight it. The more quickly you can act when your loved one seeks help, the more likely you will be to help them break free.
Don't Pressure Your Loved One to Get Help for Addiction
Most often, people who struggle with addiction often want to believe that they are hiding their addiction well. By even bringing the subject up, you let them know that they are not hiding it nearly as well as they thought. This knowledge can often serve only to drive them further away and deeper into their addiction.
As difficult as it may be to watch your loved one suffer, it is vital to gather information and resources to be ready to help them when they are ready. If you want to be the person they reach out to when they need help, it’s important to be supportive and let them do what they need to do on their side to reach that place.
Why You Should Act Quickly
When and if the time comes that your loved one is ready to receive help for addiction, it is highly essential to act quickly. In some cases, this may be the result of a carefully planned and timed intervention, and in other cases, your loved one may ask for help entirely unexpectedly. This is why it is so important to be prepared.
There is no telling precisely what circumstance or event can be a breaking point for an individual struggling that causes them to reach out for help for addiction. It could be right in the middle of a workday or the middle of the night without warning.
Helping a Loved One Overcome Substance Use Disorder
The more prepared you are in advance, the more quickly you will be able to swing into action to help them get the help they need. Being prepared could include having a list of critical contact numbers or possibly even the means to buy a plane ticket to get them out of state. In many cases, the sooner and further you can remove a person struggling with addiction from their comfortable environment, the better the chance you stand of getting them the help they need.
When dealing with a person struggling with addiction, the most important thing to remember is that they have to be ready to face their addiction, it’s not something you can do for them. Overcoming substance use disorder is a long, painful process that requires a great deal of work – work that you cannot do for them. To have any chance to help them at all, you have to wait for them to be ready to do the work. And then act quickly.
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