1. Don’t Enable and Don’t Sympathize

Posted by Tony Bylsma on February 16, 2010 under How to Help a Drug Addict | 4 Comments to Read

Don’t Enable–Encourage. This is the oldest and most often mentioned fact about helping a drug addict, because it is completely true. The world will bring the consequences of drug abuse and addiction home to the drug user pretty quickly. To shield them from those penalties is not going to help them quit drugs, and there are more consequences coming down the pike. Protecting the user from these is a never ending battle which takes its toll on everyone, including the enabler and the enabler’s bank account.

Addiction is painful. Shielding a son or daughter from that pain is a natural urge for a parent, but doing so creates a false sense of safety which can lead to even more dangerous drug behavior in the future.

Don’t Sympathize—Guide. Sympathy should really be one of the seven deadly sins.  It is one thing to understand the troubles of another, but to sympathize means to be in agreement with their actions and emotions. To sit down and cry with a person who is experiencing severe grief is not helping them to overcome their problem, it tells them that they’re right. It says that crying is the solution. When we sympathize we don’t help the troubled person to rise up, we go down there with him or her and join them in their misery. Don’t sympathize, guide them.

The addict has lost his way, even if they don’t yet realize that fact, he is headed in a self-destructive direction and cannot see it.