Families

If you’ve made friends among people who share your experience and are willing to listen, you’re miles ahead of most family members, who still have no place where they can safely vent their own problems.

Family programs like Al-anon and Alateen can help us learn ways to recover from the effects of someone else’s addiction, and help us contribute to their recovery

The more emotional the topic, the more subjective we tend to be. And when something threatens us, it can be a real struggle to detach enough to come to a rational decision.

Where real support is the result of caring, enabling usually springs from guilt, fear, or a misplaced sense of responsibility for someone else.

Takes a while to become really good at it, but most do. Addicts are not always great manipulators — that would be somebody so skilled you never realized you were being manipulated — but they’re bold, persistent, and creative when it comes to getting what they want

A primary enabler is someone whose well-established pattern of enabling permits the alcoholic or addict to continue drinking or drug use.

Even if such arguments have stymied you for decades, it’s quite possible, with a little coaching, to deal with them effectively in future.

We can’t control the alcoholic/ addict, but we’re not powerless. Some things we can do (and stop doing) to help them listen to something besides the addiction…

So the professional’s real value to an intervention is as a guide. One who can offer something the family really does need: a degree of informed objectivity.

Pretty soon we’re having a big argument which ends with me feeling miserable and him gone to the pub.