Addiction has more in common with conditions like asthma, diabetes, and high blood pressure than you may think at first glance. Just like these conditions, addiction is a chronic disease. Just like these conditions, addiction can be managed with treatment, to the point of remission. As with other chronic conditions, a patient can relapse and once again find themselves in the grip of life-destroying symptoms.
What's more, just like environmental factors and things a person does can put them at risk of other chronic conditions, they can make someone vulnerable to addiction, too. We don't often go around shaming someone with type 2 diabetes for living an unhealthy lifestyle, even if it contributed to their condition — but we do exactly this to addicts.
Yup, to develop a substance addiction, someone first has to start drinking or experimenting with drugs. That's not all on the person themselves, though. Tough circumstances can play a role in getting a person there. So can neighborhoods and family cultures in which drug and alcohol abuse are normalized, and access to these substances early in life.
The kinds of relationships a person has in their life can play a tremendous — even essential — role in the development of addiction, in other words. Can healthy relationships also boost their odds of breaking free and building a life away from substance abuse?
How do an addict's personal relationships impact their recovery process?
The science is clear, though most of it pertains to substance use disorders rather than behavioral addictions.
What's more, addicts with supportive family members suffer fewer mental health struggles as they fight to recover. Like the relatives we're born with, the families we create by choice — friends, of course — can also play a crucial role in recovery.
While healthy relationships with people who care, people who hope to see an addict reach full remission, make positive outcomes more likely, other kinds of relationships can do the exact opposite. Addicts who are still surrounded by people who use drugs or alcohol, and those who live in environments where addiction is normalized, face additional challenges as they try to recover and build a life without substance abuse.
Addiction recovery isn't impossible without family support. The relationships recovering addicts build with peers in treatment programs, with spiritual leaders, and with therapists can, in a very real way, be a good substitute. But if one of your relatives is currently working hard to get and stay sober and clean, your support can make a very real positive impact.
How can you support a relative as they go through addiction treatment?
Knowing that healthy relationships can make all the difference, however, you might want to see if there's anything you can do to help.
If your relative still isn't in treatment, you can only point them in the right direction — but addiction treatment programs do require an addict's active participation to work. Refrain from making excuses for their behavior, don't give them negative messages that reinforce the idea that they can never reach remission, and don't do anything to perpetuate the addiction, like buying them drugs or alcohol.
By the time an addicted relative says they're committed to entering treatment and getting clean and sober, you'll probably have heard it all before — and may not believe that your relative will ever change.
Can you support an addicted relative as they go through treatment, while also staying safe and sane yourself? You could consider:
- Entering family therapy — often an integral part of addiction treatment — together with your relative. This kind of therapy isn't all about the person with the addiction, but also about your own pain. You can both, in a supervised setting, start to process and heal the bonds that were broken. Making amends for the hurt an addict caused is often an important part of recovery.
- Attending a support group for the relatives of addicts — people who understand exactly what you are going through, from whom you can learn, and to whom you can vent away all you like.
- Asking your relative's treatment team how you can help, and then deciding if you'd be willing to take that step.
- Learning what you can do to stop enabling the addiction.
- Verbally expressing that you are proud of your relative for entering treatment, that they're doing the right thing, and that you believe they can succeed.