Living with a drug addict is a complicated situation. The addict may be dearly loved, but their addiction may have also marred aspects of their personality to the point where it’s difficult to know how to interact on a daily basis and how to help them start healing. Figuring out how to live with an addict can be fraught with decisions, such as cutting off access to money, that seem unlike how you would normally treat someone you care about. It’s important to remember to take care of your own physical and emotional health and realize that while an addict can’t be forced into recovery, the support and concern of loved ones can be a powerful motivator toward the right decision.

What Is Living With an Addict Like?

In the early stages of addiction, changes in daily life may be easy to overlook. However, as time goes on, living with an addict can result in the decline of a home’s financial and emotional stability. The addict may display more frequent and unpredictable outbursts of aggression or paranoia. For the sake of maintaining peace, it can be tempting to excuse or participate in the addiction. However, ignoring the issue only encourages further harm to the entire household. Drug addiction can lead to severe physical and mental consequences, including the death of the addict, and can tear families apart.

How to Live With an Addict

A key element of living with an addict is learning the difference between supportive and enabling behavior. For example, avoiding discussion of drug abuse may be meant to demonstrate respect for and faith in the addict’s choices, but that inaction only serves to enable addiction. Those living with a drug addict need to recognize that the addict may not be able to get sober on their own and that addiction may lead them to disregard the needs of the family. Based on this knowledge, the family can take preventative measures, such as restricting the addict’s access to family savings.

Be aware that one of the hardest things for a supporter to do is make the decision to stop enabling them. The natural urge of a loving family member is to ease the addict’s suffering through any means. This could include providing money for drugs or offering food and a safe place to stay. As well-intentioned as these acts are, they allow an addict to continue their addiction in relative comfort and ease, which does nothing for the ultimate goal of helping them recover.

How to Help an Addict Seek Treatment

One of the most important aspects of learning how to live with an addict is figuring out how to help them find treatment for their addiction. Sometimes, this is achieved through an intervention encouraging the addict to acknowledge the negative impacts of their addiction. At BetterAddictionCare, we can help you find the right outpatient or inpatient treatment program to help facilitate a successful recovery for someone you care about. Our pre-screening assessment will search our nationwide recovery network of top alternative rehab programs to find the best match for you or a loved one. In rehab, clients will receive a medically assisted detox to keep them comfortable through withdrawal. The facilities in our network are always accepting new patients, and our team of client care specialists can help coordinate transportation and public or private insurance requirements.

If you’re living with an addict or suffering from addiction yourself, let us help you end the cycle. Call today or fill out our contact form to locate a professional addiction recovery program near you.