It’s not hard to become an addict, and it’s certainly not easy to get sober again. Although there are a wealth of addiction treatment options available, recovery it’s usually as simple as just going to rehab. Like a puzzle, there are many individual pieces to recovery, and those pieces vary greatly from one person to another. However, while the details change, there are a number of components that tend to be consistent across the board: a person overcoming an addiction needs to address his or her physical and bodily needs, his mental and emotional needs, and even some type of spiritual or existential needs as well.
Again, the road to recovery is a different journey for everyone. Each addict responds differently to different treatments and different types of programming, and there are many different types of support groups that provide the encouragement to persevere through addiction recovery. But one of the essentials of a successful recovery is having friends to be supportive of the addiction recovery process. It’s important for recovering addicts to have the encouragement they need, but when you’re the friend trying to offer support it can be tricky. How exactly do you encourage a person’s recovery?
Speak up and Make Your Support Known
Addiction is one of those things that can be difficult to talk about. When you have a friend who’s either suffering from addiction or recently recovered, most people are unsure of how to bring it up in conversation or whether to mention it at all. But when it goes unaddressed, it becomes the big, addicted elephant in the room. And as hard as it might be to be the friend who would rather shy away from the topic of the other person’s previous exploit, avoiding the topic altogether is only going to continue to make things weird.
Instead, tell your friend that you support him or her and only want the best for them. If they’ve not yet begun the recovery process, tell him or her that’s you’re there to help, but you can’t enable a downward spiral. If he or she is in early recovery, it would be beneficial to mention how supportive you are of him or her and how you’re there for whatever the person might need. It’s good for the person to see you as a pseudo-sponsor, someone he or she can vent to or ask for help whenever necessary to protect newfound sobriety.
Learn All You Can About Alcoholism, Drug Addiction, and Recovery
Another reason why it’s often difficult to discuss addiction with our recovering friends is because many of us who have not personally experienced addiction know very little about the disease beyond our assumptions and misconceptions based on the media. We can help but to associate them with the criminal addicts that we see on TV, but that’s not fair nor is it accurate. By learning about the disease of addiction, you’ll get a better idea of the circumstances that lead to addiction, how the disease works, and how best to lend your support to a friend in need. If your addicted friend has very little support, your encouragement could be the difference between sustained recovery and a relapse.
When You’re Concerned, Make Sure You Tell Him or Her
Most of us want our friends to give it to us straight rather than sugar-coating the truth. Especially when it means the difference between recovery earned and recovery lost, it’s important to be able to tell the people we care about when they are behaving in ways that are concerning. Therefore, if you have a friend who have been in recovery and who has begun to exhibit behaviors that seem to indicate a possible relapse in the near future, express your concern to him or her. Make sure you clarify that your concern isn’t simply an excuse to be critical or to nitpick; instead, explain that you’re only expressing concern because you’re genuinely concerning and don’t want your friend to fall back into the throes of addiction.
Don’t Lie or Make Excuses for Him or Her
In recovery, many people learn that they had loved ones who either knowingly or unknowingly enabled their substance abuse problems. Enabling is a very complicated situation that often occurs in codependent relationships; the addict uses a loved one as a means of sustaining his or her substance abuse while the loved one is willing to be used so as to remain relevant and important to the addict. When an addict is in recovery, these types of situations should be rooted firmly in the past and should not still be occurring. However, if there comes a point when your recovering friend is asking you to lie for him or her, or to cover for him or her, you must ask yourself what it is that the individual has done that requires deception. If the friend hasn’t yet relapsed, this type of arrangement will surely make it much easier for him or her to relapse in the near future.
Help Him or Her to Maintain a Stable, Substance-Free Environment
After getting sober, one of the most important components of a long-lasting recovery is having a safe, stable, alcohol- and drug-free environment. Although part of the responsibility for maintaining this safe and substance-free environment is on the addict him or herself, a recovering addict needs help with this task. In early recovery, when an addict is confronted by alcohol or drugs it’s incredibly difficult to resist due to the temptation. Therefore, having a friend in recovery means helping him or her to keep a distance from alcohol and drugs as well as people, places, things, and circumstances that might threaten his or her sobriety. Of course, it’s not your responsibility for him or her to remain sober, but you also should avoid putting him or her in tempting situations.
Drug Treatment Center Finder Can Help You Get Sober
If you or someone you love would benefit from a free consultation, call Drug Treatment Center Finder at 855-619-8070. Our team of recovery specialists are available day and night, seven days per week, to help you or your loved one take the first step toward lasting sobriety.