How to Talk so Someone With Addiction Will Listen (families)

“All my friends drink,” someone says. There’s a reason for that.

They qualify for the diagnosis, but have not yet experienced the sort of problems that are usually required to motivate a serious attempt to abandon drug use.

…provoking is behavior that encourages a return to use.

There’s an ongoing search among users for ways to either improve the high (which escalating tolerance threatens to steal away) or suppress the withdrawal symptoms.

Colleges know their students are drinking, often heavily.

If there’s one drug we’re all reluctant to give up, it’s our prejudices.

If addiction really is a brain disorder based in complex adaptations to a substance, then who’s to say those adaptations won’t occur with a different drug?

…struggles can actually serve as a disincentive to someone who knows you and is now beginning to peer uncertainly up their own long and bumpy road of life change.

Money is a tool that allows some to delay the inevitable. They construct a protective bubble that minimizes the risk of getting caught and the other consequences that follow addiction.

Ralph nailed it. He’s right- what’s in the past and what’s in our future is nothing compared to what is ultimately inside us.