We are all coming to see, and tragically many of us experience the destructive force of drugs.
They are killing and imprisoning those we love at a devastating rate.
What is not spoken about enough, is the ruins addiction injects into the family unit.
If you are connected emotionally with someone who is self-medicating, you are in need of treatment as much as they are! I know this doesn’t make sense. You are likely feeling out of control, angry, and reacting in ways that cause you to feel shame and regret for your behavior. It is crazy making. You are hiding something in hopes it will go away-it will not!
The addict is numbing the pain, but you are aware of the chaos. You cannot fight the addiction, and normal communication is not effective. At all costs, addiction is willing to lie and manipulate in order to thrive. You are perplexed at the thought of your loved one not being forthright, you are insistent they are not lying. You do not understand your loved one has been taken over by the drug. The drug is a liar and knows perfectly how to manipulate the addict to stay connected to the source.
Though you are not using, it feels like you are losing your mind. Often the addict looks normal while you are trying to figure out why everything is spinning out of control.
Addiction is a seam cutter, systematically destroying the integrity of the family quilt, stitch by stitch. While some are grasping at threads to hold the family heirloom together, trying to make things look how they once did or how they hope it should; the power of untreated dependency is a force that wreaks havoc in the most loving of homes. Untreated addiction ends in death.
Everyone in touch with the addict requires treatment,
whether they are using or not.
Children, siblings, spouses, parents and loved ones who are suffering from the confusion need a place where truth and transparency can exist.
Addiction threatened my sanity in the past, as denial swept the obvious under the rug, all for the sake of the illusion that things were not being inebriated from the inside out. If I pretended hard enough, then many things would actually change. That only leads us deeper into destruction.
AL-ANON was the place I began to regain my sanity.
As addiction threatens my family once again and denial overrides common sense for many, I will seek to find a local AL-ANON family.
If we can accept what is, and not try to make things look the way that we think they should, we will begin to heal truly.
I am sharing this because no one talks about what goes hand and hand with addiction.
For every addict we hear of who has perished, there is:
- a family who has agonized and done everything imaginable to help their loved one.
- a family who has begun to viciously fight one another in disagreements about what is best.
- solid relationships of those not using substances, finding themselves stretched to the point of destruction.
Addiction affects the entire family.
Everyone needs treatment though NO ONE wants to get it.
I am sharing because I have learned that taking care of myself is the very best thing I can do for my family.
Are you caring for yourself? Are you hiding peculiar behavior because you desperately want to believe that what your gut is telling you, is wrong? If you do not step aside from the chaos behind your closed doors, you will lose your mind. Don’t let the devil steal everyone’s soul, get help, so you can be there for others.
By your getting help, it will help all, including the addict.
“GOD GRANT ME THE SERENITY
TO ACCEPT THE THINGS I CAN NOT CHANGE,
THE COURAGE TO CHANGE THE THINGS I CAN,
AND THE WISDOM TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE”
http://al-anon.org/
Connect with me and consider a FREE 30-minute coaching session. I’d love to introduce S~E~E~P™ to you and share how you can find Wholeness for your Soul though Balance. What are you doing right now to care for yourself?
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