4 Signs it's time to get help
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Help your loved one
by knowing when its time to seek professional help.
*Pharmacotherapy
Pharmacotherapy is the treatment of health conditions by using pharmaceutical products (drugs) as medication. 2. When the health condition is a drug dependency, pharmacotherapy involves replacing the drug of dependence with a legally prescribed substitute.
*Counseling
The utilization of special skills to assist persons with addictions, and to assist such persons' families and friends to achieve resolution of addiction through the exploration of the disease and its ramifications, the examination of attitudes and feelings, the consideration of alternative solutions and decision making, as these relate specifically to addiction. Evaluation and assessment, treatment including treatment plan development, crisis intervention, referral, record keeping and clinical consultation specifically related to addiction are within the scope of addiction counseling. Additionally, at the clinical level, addiction counseling includes independent practice and the diagnosis and treatment of substance use disorders.
When you have a loved one who is struggling with substance use disorders or in active use, sometimes it is so difficult to know how to properly help them. Many people make the mistake of enabling their loved one’s addiction (out of love) rather than helping them face their addiction. If these signs below sound familiar to you, you may be enabling your loved one to continue their addiction. Addiction is not a conscious decision a person makes, helping them understand treatment is not a punishment but a tool to the other side will benefit their road to recovery.
- Loving someone is the greatest gift in life, but if you find yourself enabling your loved one while they are in active use by providing a safe place to live, while you feel you are coming from a good place, it doesn't help the person take accountability in their addiction. It is extremley important for family members to take an active role in supporting their loved one in their recovery process. Accountability is a necessary step in the recovery process.
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Providing Housing
- People struggling with addiction would not be able to maintain their unhealthy habits if they were not receiving financial assistance from friends or loved ones. Drugs are costly, and sustained use typically leads to an inability to function and break their addiction. Because of this, they rely on the kindness of those around them for food, housing and money to purchase more drugs. The pattern of stealing from loved ones has also been seen to have money to support their habit.
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Funding the Addiction
- One of the most unhealthy signs of enabling is when a family member or friend provide their loved one with excuses to continue to their active use. They attempt to rationalize by saying their loved one is going through a lot, or that they are 'only using a little because they need the take the edge off' from the struggles of life or issues they are facing. We all face stress and struggle with problems. Using drugs as an escape typically just causes more problems.
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Rationalizing Their Behavior
- It is human nature to want to care for, help, and support those we love. Sometimes, that makes us place that other person’s needs before ours. The more helpless and in trouble those people are, the more we want to help. For a parent with a small child, this makes sense, we need to provide the food and shelter they are unable to provide for themselves. However, if someone is able to take care of themselves, but choosing to abuse drugs, which are then making them unable to meet their basic needs, it is enabling them to do anything that allows them to continue that behavior. Ultimately, this tends to create resentment in the enabler and creates a very unhealthy relationship between the two parties.
Family members must learn (although that is easier said than done, we know) that they cannot place the needs of the individual who is choosing to continue their active use ahead of their own needs. Placing their needs ahead of your own just increases their dependency on you and could enable the unhealthy behavior.
Putting Your Loved One Before Yourself
*MOUD
Our phone is answered 24 hours to assist patients with questions about our treatment program. We are here when you are ready to begin your journey to recovery.
If you or someone you love has symptoms of an overdose, please get to the nearest emergency room, do not wait. Click the links below for directions to the ER near you.