5 Tips: How to Help Someone Who is Struggling with Addictive Behavior
It is both heartbreaking and incredibly frustrating when you love someone who is struggling with addiction. It is also confusing as heck to navigate how you might help them. As an addiction specialist for thirteen years, I have been working with clients who love people who are struggling with addictive behavior, and these are my top 5 tips that I strongly recommend.
Tip #1: Educate yourself on addiction
Educate yourself on addiction. Learn how the brain gets hijacked, learn about how addiction impacts memory and impulse control. The addiction is one part of the person you love, and that “part” is progressively taking over the other parts over time. Get mad at the addiction—not at the whole person.
Tip #2: Stop smoking the HOPE-IUM
Stop smoking the HOPE-IUM (get it—like opium but with Hope). Learn to distinguish between Real Hope and False Hope (denial). Your loved one with addiction is smoking the HOPE-IUM when they are repeating the same pattern over and over, “hoping” that it will be different.
You can get stuck in this pattern as well. Real Hope comes when there is evidence—real evidence—of change happening.
Real Hope is NOT:
—Last week he only had a few drinks so maybe that will stick.
—O