If your loved one suffers from addiction to alcohol or drugs, you have probably heard the word “enabling.” Maybe you have been accused of enabling your loved one’s addiction, or maybe you know you’re enabling them but don’t know how to stop. Here’s a hard truth: if you are the spouse, partner, or parent of a person suffering from addiction, you have, on some level, enabled that addiction.
Should you beat yourself up and labor under shame and guilt? Of course not. Another truth: most of us don’t know when we’re enabling someone. In our minds, we’re doing our best to love them and protect them. If your loved one is addicted, and you are regularly feeling tired, confused, angry, and anxious, you are stuck in an enabling pattern. Let’s take a closer look at what enabling is and how we can choose a different path.
What Does it Mean to Enable Someone Who is Addicted to Alcohol or Drugs?
The dictionary definition of “enable” is simple: “to provide with the means or opportunity; to make possible, practical, or easy.” When we enable someone in their addiction, we make it easy for them to continue their drug or alcohol use. Now, very few people who love an addicted person want to make their addiction easier. But the ways in which we try to “help” the addicted person are too often doing just that: making it easy for them to continue in their addiction.
Here are some specific ways loved ones enable:
- Giving money – paying for rent, groceries, and bills because the person is either unemployed because of their addiction or is spending most of their income on alcohol and drugs
- Giving time – taking care of children or pets, cleaning the house, driving them places when they are too drunk or high to drive themselves, etc.
- Making excuses for them – telling their employer, friends, extended family, children that they are too busy, tired, or sick to show up for work, family functions, dinner, bedtime, etc.
- Turning a blind eye – ignoring the symptoms of addiction and choosing to believe their promises and trust their word even when something feels off
- Letting yourself be manipulated – choosing to accept the blame for their problems because it’s easier than confronting them
- Making substances accessible at home – continuing to keep alcohol and drugs in the home and maybe even using substances with the addicted person
What Does it Mean to Help My Loved One?
It’s understandable to feel confused about how to help your addicted loved one if you can’t do the enabling behaviors listed above. The point to remember is this: Helping an addicted person means motivating them to seek treatment. Truly helping your addicted loved one means letting them experience the natural consequences of their behavior. You still love them, you still feel compassion for their situation, but you don’t step in to protect them from themselves.
Al-Anon, a support group for families and friends of people with substance use disorder, calls this “detaching with love.” The book How Al-Anon Works for Families and Friends of Alcoholics explains it this way: “Knowing that we didn’t cause the illness, and can’t control or cure it, we learn to let the alcoholic face the consequences of his or her actions. We detach enough to not be overprotective or cover up for the alcoholic. We stop making excuses to friends and relatives for his or her behavior […]. We learn to not let someone else’s drinking interfere with our own plans. We do our best to accompany our detachment with genuine compassion…”
Compassionate detachment sounds so simple. But how does it work, in practical terms?
How Do I Stop Enabling When My Loved One Needs Me So Much?
To stop enabling an addicted loved one can feel dangerous–like exactly the wrong thing to do. What if they lose their home, their children, their job? What if they drink themselves to death? What if they overdose? What if they put up a big fight? What if they stop loving you?
If we’re honest with ourselves, we might realize that our biggest motivation for enabling our loved one is not to help them but to keep our own lives from changing too much–or to protect our image of ourselves as the responsible, self-sacrificing one. These are issues to work through with a group like Al-Anon and/or with a therapist. We enable for a reason, and that reason is usually more about our own issues than about the person we’re enabling.
To the more practical question of how to stop enabling, consider these tips:
- Explain to your loved one that you will no longer allow substances in your home. If they must drink or use drugs, they must do so outside of the home.
- Explain to your loved one that you will no longer lie for them. You won’t lie to their employer, their children, their friends, or other family members.
- Explain to your loved one that you will no longer pick up the slack for them, with your time, energy, or money.
How Can I Offer Genuine Support to My Loved One?
Not enabling your loved one does not mean abandoning them. Explain to them that your goal has changed: rather than help them function in their addiction, you want to help them get treatment for it.
You can offer to help them find a medical detox and residential treatment center. Depending on your situation, you might offer to help pay for treatment or to help with childcare or pet care while they are gone. And when they return home from treatment, you can help them stay on track in their sobriety.
If you love someone who is addicted to alcohol or drugs and aren’t sure how to help, contact Las Cruces Recovery Center in New Mexico. Our compassionate team will listen to your concerns, answer your questions, and help you determine the next best step for yourself and your loved one.
