If you have a loved one struggling with meth addiction and you want to help them break the addiction, be prepared for it to take up a lot of your time. Throughout the process, you must ensure that your loved one does not fall into a codependency pattern.
There is such a fine line between helping and enabling. This line is kept in place only by you knowing what is right and wrong and doing your best to help a loved one overcome their addiction. Under no circumstances can you allow the needs and wants of your loved one to supersede your own.
As soon as a codependent relationship is established, you will become an enabler instead of a helper to your loved one. You may fear that your loved one will not need you as much when they resolve their addiction. This will cause you to block any real attempts your loved one makes to get help.
Codependency and Addiction
Intense cravings, compulsive behaviour, and physical changes in brain function characterize meth addiction. If you have confirmed that your loved one is addicted to meth, you may experience an overwhelming urge to help them. The problem is that this urge may lead you to do things that support their addiction instead of recovery.
Codependency refers to a relationship dynamic where one person excessively relies on a friend or partner in an emotional or psychological sense. When it comes to meth addiction, codependency can mean that you become so focused on what your loved one needs that you neglect your own relationships, boundaries, health, and happiness.
For instance, you may want to shield your loved one from the consequences of their addiction. By doing this, your loved one will never truly learn how devastating and harmful their addiction is and continue using meth.
How You May Be Enabling Your Loved One Without Realizing It
You love the person you are trying to help, and you want to protect them from harm. However, if you prevent them from feeling the impact of their addictive behaviour, they will never recognize that they need to change.
You may be enabling their addiction by preventing them from feeling the destructive impact of addiction through the following ways:
- Financial support: You may give your loved one money so they can cover bills, groceries, and other expenses. However, the chances are 100% that they will use the money to buy more drugs. This type of financial support only serves to enable their addiction.
If your loved one does not experience the financial consequences of spending all their own money on drugs, they will never have a reason to stop doing it. Moreover, they will have no incentive to seek professional help.
- Making excuses: As soon as you start making excuses for your loved one’s unusual behaviour, you establish a codependency. When you lie to others about where your loved one finds themselves or you cover up their mistakes, you make it harder for them to see that they need help.
Covering up for them may shield them from immediate consequences, but it will keep the reality of their addiction from them.
- Taking on their responsibilities: This is one of the worst things you can do. If you take care of your loved one’s children or manage their household while they get high, you take away the burden of their actions. You are simply allowing them to continue using meth without even having to worry about the fallout of neglecting their responsibilities.
- Avoiding confrontation: You cannot use an aversion to confrontation to allow your loved one to carry on using meth. If you never address the issue because you are scared of how your loved one will react, your silence will enable their addiction.
Your Wake-Up Call
It is not always easy to recognize a codependent relationship when you are in one. And, suddenly, realizing that you are enabling your loved one’s addiction can be incredibly painful. Still, you must consider the following wake-up call moments and decide whether they apply to your situation. If they do, it is time to re-evaluate your actions.
- Your Life Revolves Around Your Loved One’s Addiction
If you constantly worry about your loved one or rearrange your life and work schedule to suit their needs, you are far too involved in their problems. This is a clear sign of codependency.
- You Experience Feelings of Resentment
You would never say so to your loved one, but their addiction is wearing you out and making you feel exhausted, drained, and resentful. When you start feeling like you are losing yourself in helping your loved one, you have crossed into enabling territory.
- Their Addiction Continues Despite Your Help
If your loved one’s addiction continues unabated or gets worse despite your efforts to help, you may be enabling instead of helping.
- Others Are Expressing Their Concern
If your friends and family are concerned about your involvement, it is worth considering their perspective. It often takes an outside viewpoint to recognize the signs of codependency.
What You Should Be Doing Instead
If one or more of these wake-up call moments apply to your situation, it is time for a change. You must set clear boundaries for your loved one. Let them know what you are willing and not willing to do to help them. This should include not giving them money or covering for them when they miss work.
You must encourage your loved one to seek professional help for their addiction. This may include inpatient or outpatient programs offering therapy and other rehabilitation forms.
Let HARP Help Your Loved One Break the Addiction Cycle
Hills & Ranges Private (HARP) offers seamless counselling services and recovery centres to help your loved one break their addiction cycle. At HARP, your loved one will finally get to see the destruction their addiction has caused through various intensive therapy sessions.
They will receive compassionate and clinical support to guide them through this realization and towards recovery. HARP focuses on personalized therapies, including the highly successful 5i curriculum to help patients overcome addictions. The therapies focus on physical, mental, and emotional recovery to prevent a relapse.
If your relationship with your loved one is a codependent one, book a confidential family support call with HARP today to get the help both you and your loved one need.
