Enabling An Addict

Enabling, put quite simply, is the actions someone takes or doesn’t take that allow or help an addict to continue drinking or using. Oftentimes, with the best intentions and through love and caring, we inadvertently strengthen the addiction of a loved one when what we really intended to do was “help them to stop”. This process usually begins slowly over time and almost always with the intention to help. The alcoholic is hung over and we call him off work because we don’t want him to lose his job, or we lend the drug user money because he is “just a little bit behind this week”. As untreated alcoholism and drug addiction progresses, so too can our enabling behaviors progress. We find ourselves tolerating more and more outrageous behaviors that we never would’we put up with years or even months ago. We begin to compromise our own sense of morals and dignity. Our focus becomes more and more on the addicted one and we, very often, begin to lose ourselves in the process. Emotionally, spiritually, mentally and financially we end up drained. At later stages, the addict’s behavior can even begin to affect us physically after the anxiety and stress of a hundred sleepless nights begin to add up. In the end it is usually only anger, frustration and hopelessness that is left. Sometimes we become so frustrated we give up, but some of us hang on to the bitter end, always asking ourselves, “Just why won’t he get help?”

Why won’t he get help?

The answer is pretty simple. Because right now his drug and alcohol use is more comfortable at some level than seeking treatment. With all the negative consequences that we see, it may not appear so comfortable to us, but it’s the truth. And the reason that it is more comfortable for him is because we have helped to make it that way. It is common for us to find a loving family completely encircling an addict. He has no job because the family loans him money, he has no apartment because the family lets him stay with them “just until he gets on his feet”, he is not in jail because the family has bailed him out, he drives drunk because no one confronts him, his grandparents do not know because the family keeps the addiction a secret, and he is not in prison because they didn’t want to give him any more legal problems even though he has stolen from them time and time again. Of course these are extreme examples but enabling even occurs towards those who haven’t quite bottomed out and are still highly functional in society. For us to more greatly understand our role in the lives of an addicted one, it is best if we break down the basic types of enabling behaviors, understand the effect this actually has on our loved one and look back into our past and see if we have exhibited any of these behaviors.

Do not worry if you have done or currently possess any of these enabling characteristics. As we like to say, the more enabling factors that are currently present, the better...if you change them. As long as all the factors around an addict remain the same he will continue to behave as he always has. If we change our behaviors then so must he in response. We need the addict to feel the negative consequences of their lifestyle choice, perhaps for the first time in his life.