How to Help a Loved One With Drug Addiction

Dealing with someone struggling with substance use disorder or addiction can be very confusing, frustrating, and heartbreaking. This is especially true of the person is a loved one. Learning how to help a drug addict who doesn’t want help can be daunting. Not being able to help a loved one get the treatment they need to heal and recover from the disease of addiction can make you feel defeated and hopeless as though there’s no solution. This is something that many families, friends, and other loved ones deal with daily. Beaches Recovery can guide family and friends through how to help a loved one dealing with addiction and then get that loved one the treatment necessary.

Drug Addiction Is Difficult to Address

There are many misconceptions about alcohol and drug addiction. Perhaps the most common and damaging is that the person dealing with the dependency is merely making very poor decisions. While this is true, it’s not as simple as you may think. The addicted person has lost the power of choice. The person’s brain is functioning in a way that is extremely difficult to comprehend. One of the core parts of the brain that is not functioning properly is the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for:

• Empathy
• Logical decision making
• Impulse control
• Self-awareness
• Fear modulation

When dealing with someone with an addiction, you’re dealing with someone who lacks self-awareness. These men and women are unknowingly in denial, which is why many people get defensive when confronted. Their lack of empathy makes it hard for them to understand how addiction affects their loved ones fully. The other primary issue is that the brain feels like it needs drugs to survive.

Understanding the Pleasure System

How to help someone dealing with an addiction who doesn’t want help is trying to break the person’s natural survival instincts. There’s a part of the brain that prioritizes different things like food and water so a person can sustain life. The problem is that long-term addiction results in improper prioritization, so drugs take priority. The person’s brain legitimately tells him or her that they need drugs to survive, so quitting sounds crazy.

How to Help Someone Struggling with Drug Addiction

An informal intervention is the first way to help a drug addict who doesn’t want to help, and it’s a simple approach. It’s hard to believe, but the idea of quitting drugs may have never crossed your loved one’s mind. An informal intervention is when you bring the idea up to the person and see if they are interested in getting addiction help. If the person is in the early stages of his or her addiction, this type of subtle intervention can work.

When to Have a Formal Intervention

There comes the point when a person has become so dependent on drugs that they refuse to quit. Many people in their addiction could not sustain drugs if it weren’t for help from loved ones. Different forms of help may include giving the person a place to live, money, and unconditional love. The person continues to stay in his or her addiction because they know their loved ones will always be there.

A formal intervention is where you draw very clear boundaries, and most importantly, you stick to these boundaries. Having the closest people in an addicted person’s life stating they will no longer provide support can save his or her life. It’s best to consult an addiction professional beforehand for advice, though. It’s also beneficial to have an interventionist mediate because tensions can run high.

Discover How Beaches Recovery Can Help

If your loved one finds the clarity and willingness to give drug treatment programs a try, allow Beaches Recovery to help. We provide treatment for people in the early stages of addiction and those who have been using it for years. Our goal is to help people get sober, stay sober and help the whole family heal. Call now at 866.605.0532, or contact us online to begin the healing process.