Disabling Enabling - Drug Addiction

08/24/2009

Enabling must be one of the most misused words in the lexicon of addiction.

Let's say for example that you have a mother providing money or rent or whatever to her drug addicted son, knowing full well that he's using. Then let's say that the guy's sister and brother go to their mom and tell her, "You've got to stop enabling Johnny. You have to cut him off." This is where reality usually breaks in two and the word, "enabler" is, in my opinion, misapplied. On one side are the siblings; angry, angry at their brother for being a deceptive, thieving addict, and now angry at their mother for not cutting him off. They figure that at the end of the day, the situation is pretty simple; cut Johnny off and he will at some point agree to get help. However, on the other side is Johnny's mom, and mom has her own reality on the subject. Mom is running scenarios through her head (and Johnny is helping to illuminate these assured pathways to death and doom in order to keep mom in fear and his supply of money coming in). She's thinking, "Okay, so here's my son Johnny, using drugs, not functioning, not able to take care of himself, and my other children are telling me that the solution to this is to cut him off...and this is supposed to somehow solve the problem." She sees Johnny as too bull-headed to ever submit (and he's certainly acting the part), so her reality is that if she cuts Johnny off, that he'll die, or become worse, more criminal, more addicted or whatever.

So what's the missing piece?

Each person in an intervention needs a solution that makes sense to them. The problem that Johnny's siblings ran into is that they were trying to push their solution onto their mother by making her wrong, and not really thinking through the best way to get her on board. This is not usually successful. What Johnny's mother really needs is a professional interventionist; someone to go over the larger picture and is able to give her a game plan that includes compassion, and strategies that make sense to her, so that when the time comes to cut Johnny off, she'll be able to do it, by maintaining a loving, open door to a way out for them both, knowing that the interventionist won't let any harm befall her troubled son in the process.

Johnny's mother wants him to get help, but she needs help getting to the point to where she can do what she needs to do, and making her wrong is not the path to take.

Listening and coaching is the key.

If you have a loved one who needs help, you can rely on my deep understanding and experience.

Please contact us for more information and to speak with an intervention specialist that will work with you and help determine the exact steps that are needed to get your loved one into treatment. You can also be sure that we will approach the situation with care and dedication for results.

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