While it may seem like what you’re doing is helping your loved one, you may in fact be enabling a drug addict. At Evolve Indy, we provide treatment programs for individuals struggling with addiction and offer intervention services and family therapy in Indiana for you to get help for your addicted loved one.
Through our intensive treatment programs, loved ones can work on rebuilding themselves and their relationships. Contact Evolve Indy today to see how we can help you and your loved one battle addiction together.
How Do People Enable a Drug Addict?
Enabling drug use or enabling an addict is defined as a loved one knowingly or unknowingly providing opportunities to continue substance abuse. Enabling most often occurs out of love but can lead to resentment, codependency, and abuse.
Continually supporting a loved one with an addiction can lead to resentment. Individuals may despise how a loved one treats them or others in their family unit. Resentment can lead to other more serious concerns that need to be addressed in Family Therapy or can lead to divorce or separation from a family member.
Codependency can also stem from enabling an addict’s actions. Codependency with an addict often ends with the loved one feeling that they are the only one who understands and can take care of the addict while they continue to use.
Lastly, enabling an addict can lead to abuse of the loved one. When an addict is high, they may be more prone to violence and less likely to think things through and take advantage of a situation. Therefore, when you enable this type of person, you may be at a higher risk of being on the receiving end of this person’s violent outbursts or destructive behaviors.
What are the Signs of Enabling a Drug Addict?
Individuals may enable an addicted loved one through several very basic loving actions. But unfortunately, through these supportive actions, you are helping their addiction and allowing it to continue.
Giving money is one of the first and most common ways that individuals enable drug addicts, and it often occurs without knowing. In the early stages of addiction, individuals might not recognize their loved one’s addiction. Then, when asked to support them or help them in a tight spot financially, the money is given freely and lovingly. This can, however, turn into a detrimental cycle. Giving a loved one money when they have a known addiction can further enable use. By setting boundaries and refusing to support their habit financially, you can safely stop enabling their addiction.
Another way that individuals commonly enable addiction is by supporting their loved one’s irresponsibility. By picking up the slack, doing what they said they would and didn’t, or taking care of things that the addict doesn’t, you are enabling their habit. Unfortunately, actions have consequences, and sometimes, addicts have to live with the results of their actions. Setting your boundaries and not picking up their slack lets your loved ones know that you do not support their habit and will not enable their behavior.
A final way that loved ones enable an addict is by making excuses for them. Whether these excuses are made out of love or embarrassment, they do the same thing. They paint the addict as incapable and provide an excuse for their behavior. This encourages others to make excuses for unacceptable behavior and can perpetuate drug abuse. When you stop making excuses for your addicted loved ones, you can accept that their behavior is related to substance abuse and work towards getting them help to address it.
How to Get an Addict to Seek Help
To get an addict to seek help, it is crucial to stop enabling their use. By setting personal boundaries that do not allow the individual to take advantage of the situation, you can offer them information about treatment that is available to them.
At Evolve Indy, we work with individuals through outpatient programs to help them get back on track. We structure our Indiana treatment programs around the client’s needs through personalized treatment and can even include family therapy as part of the treatment process.
At Evolve Indy, we believe that each individual is capable and can achieve sobriety with education and support.
Contact Evolve Indy at 1-855-495-1063 to get rehabilitation information for your loved one.