Spiritual River | How to Stop Drinking Alcohol and Get the Addiction Help You Need

10 Reasons Why Addiction Treatment is the Bargain of a Lifetime

Some people believe that addiction treatment is rather expensive. They might even be outraged that addiction treatment services could possibly cost so much money, and not understand why the success rates are not higher than what they are.

But quality treatment is actually the deal of a lifetime. Here’s why:

1. Continuing to use drugs and alcohol is a huge financial drain to the individual.
2. Good treatment for addiction can yield tremendous spiritual growth.
3. Relationships are eventually restored following successful treatment.
4. Life experience is enriched as recovery puts the focus back on learning.
5. There is a focus in recovery on personal growth and continuous self improvement.
6. Those who succeed in recovery learn to do more with less, enjoying the benefits and spiritual gains from humility, simplicity, and a new sense of gratitude.
7. People in recovery have a renewed sense of energy for life, and can thus tackle new growth experiences that were previously closed to them.
8. When treatment is successful, it multiplies our success in other areas of our lives.
9. Healthy people in addiction recovery will naturally embrace holistic health, learning to treat their mind, body and soul with great care.
10. The successfully recovering addict or alcohol can now, in turn, help others to recover.

Continuing to use drugs and alcohol is a huge financial drain to the individual

The cost of drug addiction and alcoholism is absolutely staggering. Most drug rehabs do an exercise whereby they have everybody take out pencil and paper and attempt to calculate everything they have spent on drugs and alcohol. But actually they have them go a step further and have them total up all of the money that was spent due to their addiction in general. This includes incidental costs such as legal fees, wrecked cars, lost homes, and so on.

The outcome of such an exercise is always shocking. Every single person underestimates what their addiction has cost them. It is only through carefully adding up the full, true impact that their disease has had on them that they can really see what it has cost them. Most people who have been using drugs and alcohol for several years have spent at least a quarter of a million dollars on their disease. Some people who have been using for decades have spent over a million dollars.

Unbelievably, some people who do this exercise that have been homeless and living in the streets for years come to learn that they spent more on their addiction than what it costs to live quite comfortably in modest housing.

All of this points to an obvious truth about addiction and money: continuing to abuse drugs and alcohol is expensive, and the costs accumulate rapidly over time.

Good treatment for addiction can yield tremendous spiritual growth

What price can you possibly put on your soul, and on your spiritual welfare? None, of course. The benefits and gains that you get from a life changed from addiction to one of spiritual quest are absolutely enormous. Upon seeking a spiritual path, the recovering addict will:

1) Learn to appreciate the small things in life, and find enjoyment in their fellow man rather than in getting wasted or accumulating things.

2) Become happy to be able to help others, and receive benefit themselves from doing so.

3) Learn to accept reality for what it is and stop struggling against the nature of existence. Change will be driven internally and lead to personal growth, rather than trying to manipulate the world.

4) Become infinitely happier overall, as the spiritual experience will wake them up to a life they never knew, and one that they did not think was possible for them.

5) Lead to joy in recovery as they continue to grow along a spiritual path, finding delight in helping themselves and helping others.

If you could pay money to achieve a spiritual transformation of this nature, without having to do any hard work, the line of customers would be miles long. As you can guess, it just doesn’t work that way. When we check into treatment for addiction, we are paying for the opportunity to experience this new life. Much of the motivation, willingness, and conviction must come from within, and will be the deciding factor as to how desperately we seek this spiritual life.

The price of this spiritual journey is paid more with our ego than with our dollars. Most addicts and alcoholics will not understand this at first, but will be able to see the transformation when they look back one day. This is why they say we have to “surrender to win.”

Relationships are eventually restored following successful treatment

Again, what price can we put on restoring our damaged relationships to amicable levels? While it is not a given that you will instantly be able to right all of your wrongs in recovery, most alcoholics who earnestly work on themselves following treatment can honestly say that all of their relationships have improved in a major way.

This success with our relationships with others is based first and foremost on our new found abstinence. Using drugs and alcohol on a regular basis undermines our relationships with others by isolating us, leading to manipulation, and pushing the alcoholic to lie and be dishonest. In order to even make a start on repairing any of this, a baseline of abstinence must be established and the alcoholic has to earnestly push themselves to grow as a person.

It is not enough, in recovery, to stop drinking and using drugs and then apologize. The act of reconciliation must come from a positive change in who the alcoholic really is at a fundamental level. In other words, the person must be actively growing as a person and seeking to help others if they are to restore their relationships.

For those who have followed this path in recovery, and grown as a person in positive ways and found their relationships healing over time, what do you think the value of this transformation is in their lives? Clearly, the value is priceless, and our deep and growing connections with our friends and families becomes a huge part of what we grow to cherish in our recovery.

Life experience is enriched as recovery puts the focus back on learning

When you first check into rehab and start your new journey in recovery, what do you really know about staying clean and sober?

Answer: Not a darn thing.

If we did know anything about it, we probably would not need rehab to begin with, right? And of course, it is not so much that we need to know what to do, it is that we need to learn the mechanics of recovery and experience then in our daily lives.

And so, our path in early recovery is defined by an enormous amount of learning. While this may sound tedious at first, it is actually an enriching experience that opens your life up to all sorts of possibilities.

We have to learn how to live clean and sober, and avoid chemicals. We have to learn how to deal with everyday stress in our lives without resorting to self medicating. We have to learn how to ask for help and find support in our life. We have to learn how to manage our relationships. And of course, we have to learn how to deal with our feelings and our emotions without using our drug of choice.

And all that is just for starters! Our quest for more learning will run much deeper than this as we continue to stay clean and sober. Eventually, every event in our lives becomes a learning tool. Even seemingly “negative” experiences become an opportunity to learn something valuable about ourselves.

Even if you managed to stay sober without this learning focused type of recovery, your life would not be nearly as fulfilling. Addiction treatment helps to put you on a more enlightened path because they emphasize learning and experience as a means of recovery.

There is a focus in recovery on personal growth and continuous self improvement

The incremental power that is derived from a lifetime in recovery is absolutely astounding. Imagine two people in addiction recovery: one of them does not go into rehab, stops drinking and using drugs cold turkey, and basically lives out the rest of their life merely abstaining from chemicals, but without really giving much thought or effort to their recovery. They simply abstain and are what we might refer to as a “dry drunk.”

The other person goes to rehab and learns about the joy, positive learning experiences, and spiritual journey that can be such a central part of their recovery. This person lives out the rest of their life in a state of continuous learning, constantly seeking to help others in recovery, and pushing themselves to a be a better person through continuous self analysis. They abstain from chemicals but their focus is really on becoming a better person through a spiritual quest and the push for constant self improvement.

Which person do you think will have a better, happier, and more fulfilling life?

Focusing on personal growth in recovery makes a lot of sense–not only from the standpoint of happiness and contentment, but also from the perspective that it will help to insure continued sobriety. We are much more likely to stay clean and sober if we are always pushing ourselves to become a better person and reaping the benefits of doing so.

Those who succeed in recovery learn to do more with less, enjoying the benefits and spiritual gains from humility, simplicity, and a new sense of gratitude

The spiritual gains that we make in recovery allow us to appreciate the simple things in life. What used to be boring to us now becomes meaningful and even delightful when we are clean and sober. We start to care about things that we had lost touch with in our addiction.

Part of this spiritual transformation comes from our renewed sense of humility in early recovery. We come to realize that we have to learn from every new experience in recovery and use this knowledge to help us stay clean. But another part of this spirituality comes from our new focus on gratitude, in that we start to appreciate how much better our life has become now that we no longer have to self medicate and lie to ourselves and to others.

Thus, our spiritual growth in early recovery really takes off in several different dimensions, and this renewed spiritual connection is priceless in value. Ask any person who has achieved long term sobriety how much they value their spirituality, and you can bet that they will say it is the most important thing in their lives today.

People in recovery have a renewed sense of energy for life, and can thus tackle new growth experiences that were previously closed to them

Recovery gives us the energy to pursue new things, and actually encourages us to do so. In our active addiction, most of use became closed off to new experiences in our lives, and we were content to get our drug of choice and simply stay isolated and medicate ourselves with it. The addict is trapped in a cycle, and is basically stuck from getting out in their life and experiencing new things.

Recovery turns that all around by stripping the drugs and the alcohol away entirely, leading the recovering addict to question: “What next?” And as their body starts to heal from the detox process and the fog starts to lift from their mind, the recovering addict will–with renewed energy and spirit–start to pursue the things in their life that they were once passionate about.

All of us had things in our lives that slipped away from us as the drugs and the alcohol took over our lives. We all let go of dreams, passions, and goals that we wanted to achieve. The amazing thing about recovery is that all of that stuff comes back to us, and takes on all the meaning that it previously held for us.

Of course, this may not happen on the first day of recovery or even in the first month. Restoring passion to our life is a process that has to unfold in its own time. But anyone who stays clean in recovery and seeks to better their life will find themselves returning to their goals, their passions, and even their childhood dreams. The world becomes your oyster in recovery, as your sharpened mind and heightened sense of clarity allow you to achieve the things that you thought had slipped out of your reach forever during active addiction.

When treatment is successful, it multiplies our success in other areas of our lives

The positive gains from recovery have a cumulative effect. Holistic growth in recovery tends to breed even more success. There is a synergistic effect from experiencing personal growth in so many different areas of your life at the same time.

In other words, when things start getting good, they get really good!

What are some examples of this? Picture the addict or alcoholic in recovery who….

….explores their spirituality, and in doing so, makes close connections with a support group that can help them stay clean.

….exercises on a regular basis, and in doing so, overcomes depression and also develop the motivation to quit smoking cigarettes.

….attends 12 step meetings, and in doing so, finds others in recovery that they can reach out and help, strengthening their own recovery in the process.

….learns to be accountable to others in recovery, and in turn, applies this responsible attitude to their own personal relationships, thus improving their family life.

….gains the discipline needed to stay sober during tough times, and in doing so, gains the knowledge needed to overcome other challenges in their life.

….starts to practice gratitude on a regular basis, and in doing so, improves outcomes in nearly every aspect of their life due to an improved attitude.

And so on.

The benefits that we gain in recovery transfer to every area of our life. When start to live healthier in recovery and continue to network with other healthy people, our general direction will always be positive if we are pushing ourselves to improve.

Healthy people in addiction recovery will naturally embrace holistic health, learning to treat their mind, body and soul with great care

Recovery from addiction is an exercise in improving our health. We can define it in other ways, of course, but one way to look at it is strictly in terms of living healthier. It is healthy to stop dumping toxic chemicals into our bodies on a regular basis.

But as we have hinted at already, the real gains in recovery come from an holistic approach to overcoming addiction that addresses every aspect of life. So physical fitness and nutrition should not be neglected. Nor should mental health or emotional well being. Nor should spirituality or our relationships be overlooked.

The ideal treatment for addiction is always going to be holistic in nature, because that is the only solution that is truly comprehensive. Every other approach to addiction treatment is going to leave gaps and holes that the addict may slip through at some point.

One good example of this is in observing health related relapses in recovery. Researchers have studied people who have relapsed in recovery and found that a surprisingly high number of them actually relapsed as a complication due to injury or illness. The person got sick, and this eventually–somehow or in some way–led them back to their drug of choice.

This should be a strong indicator that holistic health is an important aspect of recovery. We have to go beyond spiritual health and include our physical well being. We have to start exercising and stop smoking cigarettes, and so on. Seeking overall health in our recovery should always be a priority, because poor health–regardless of the cause–can be a contributing factor to relapse.

The successfully recovering addict or alcohol can now, in turn, help others to recover

One of the biggest payoffs of treating addiction is that the recovering addict or alcoholic can now help others in recovery. In fact, this is one of the key factors in maintaining sobriety, and is probably the strongest activity that someone can engage in during their recovery to help insure continued abstinence.

But the real value is in spreading the message of hope, and having people in recovery help others who are struggling. An army of addicts helping addicts, help given to the newcomer with nothing expected in return. This creates a wave of positive influence that ripples out to anyone who is willing to ask for help.

So the real value in going to rehab is that you get yourself back. You gain the whole world in recovery, and then you get to give it back to others. This is how it all comes full circle.

If you are struggling with addiction, get the help that you need today.

It’s worth it.

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Convincing a Friend, Husband, Wife, or Family Member to Go to Drug Rehab or Seek Addiction Treatment

Many people struggle to convince their friends, spouses, family members, or others to make a change in their life and get help for their addiction or alcoholism. What are some things that we can do to help convince others to change? What are some strategies we can employ that will actually make a difference? Keep reading for some answers.

Sections:

* Supportive and caring approach rather than intimidating and threatening.

* Help them on your terms to avoid manipulation and codependency.

* Problem number one: piercing their denial.

* Problem number two: motivating them beyond depression or other issues.

* Moving them closer to surrender.

* Informal interventions.

* Formal interventions and hiring outside help.

* Putting your foot down: setting limits and boundaries.

* Be ready with a solution for them.

Supportive and caring approach rather than intimidating and threatening

It can be somewhat natural to want to threaten the alcoholic or addict in your life to try and get them to go to rehab. It is perfectly normal for you to feel a lot of anger and resentment toward the person, their behavior, and their addiction. It is not uncommon to want to use force, threats, or any type of manipulation in order to get your loved one the help that they need. The old approach to interventions followed along with this line of thinking. They used our natural emotions to approach the situation in a very confrontational way. The idea was almost to bully the addict into treatment.

Over time, the experts slowly realized that this approach was not working well. So they shifted to a more loving and caring approach that seemed to get better results across the board. So the suggestion here is that if you are trying to convince an addict to go to rehab, you might be better off by being supportive and showing real concern, rather than by trying to force them into treatment with brute anger.

Most addicts and alcoholics, when threatened or faced with confrontation, will simply withdraw themselves further into isolation, become more depressed, use more drugs, or simply medicate the situation away. They do not, as a whole, respond well to someone trying to bully them into treatment. Remember that the thing that prevents the addict from changing is fear.

What to do when this approach fails: People are different. Some addicts and alcoholics do respond well to threats and fear-based arguments. So you might try a more confrontational approach later of if the “caring and loving approach” continuously fails for you. As they say in recovery, do not just keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results.

Help them on your terms to avoid manipulation and codependency issues

Struggling addicts and alcoholics need help. Friends and family members are sometimes there to provide them with help, but it is not always the best thing for them. Sometimes when we think that we are “helping” someone, we are actually enabling them.

How to tell the difference? I have a very simple method that has served me well since I have been trying to help others in recovery: only offer them help on your terms. Never offer them help on their terms.

What does this mean?

It means that if the struggling addict or alcoholic in your life comes to you and asks for help in some way, then you should only offer them help that directly assists them in getting clean and sober. Do they need money for groceries? Sorry, can’t help you. Do they want to check into rehab? Yes, I will help you with that. Sit down, let’s get out the phone and call some places that can help us find a treatment center. Now we are talking! We want to see them get professional help and change their life, not just put more money in their pocket and give them a pat on the back.

In a lot of cases when an addict or alcoholic asks for help, it turns out to be manipulation that furthers their disease or aids them in getting high. Even if they need money to feed their kids, they are still basically manipulating you to get more drugs, because the money that they should have spent on food already got spent on drugs. If you “bail them out,” then it is enabling them to continue to get high. They know they can count on you when they are really desperate. This has to change.

So offer to help them on your terms only. That will generally mean getting them professional help for their addiction only. You can be willing to assist them with this, and nothing else.

What to do when this approach fails: Stand your ground. Do not give in to enabling them again. Sometimes the addict has to go through a lot of pain and misery until they become willing to change. If you continue to extend help, but only in the form of treatment, this can help move them closer to true surrender.

Problem number one: piercing their denial

What if an alcoholic or addict does not even realize that they have a serious problem? What if, upon suggesting that they seek help for their addiction, they look at you like you are crazy and they insist that they can stop any time that they want to? What do you do then?

If this is the situation then you have to withdraw your support until they can see through their denial. All you can really do, as a player in the addict’s life, is either help them to maintain their denial, or stop helping them to maintain the illusion. So what you must do is that in every opportunity to do so, you must not help them to maintain their denial.

How can you do this in real life? The first step is to let them suffer the natural consequences of their addiction. Do not bail them out of anything, do not soften any blow for them, do not apologize for them in any way, to any person. Let them crash their way through life without your trying to pad the walls for them in any way. If they are ever going to see through their denial, they have to get to a point where they are alone with their disease and they cannot shift the focus to anyone or anything else.

You can help be a small part of this process by withdrawing your support. You may be afraid that you are pushing the addict to isolate themselves. This may be a necessary step. When I finally surrendered and broke through my denial, I was alone. The people who were usually around me had left (on vacation) and all I could do was to try and medicate myself into oblivion. It wasn’t working so great and I was stuck having to examine my life and what it had become. This was the moment that I finally broke through my denial, and realized that it “really wasn’t all that fun anymore.”

If my enablers had still been in the picture, patting my back and soothing my depression, then I would not have broke through my denial. It was only when these people withdrew their emotional support that I was forced to really look at my miserable life, and thus break through my denial.

What to do when this approach fails: Can you yell at someone loud enough, or long enough, to make them see past their denial? No, you cannot. Sometimes the best you can do is to step back and let the addict experience their own misery. This may be the isolation that pushes them to finally come to grips with their problem.

Problem number two: motivating them beyond depression or other issues

Let us say that your friend or loved one is now past their denial, and they admit that they do, in fact, have a problem with addiction. Are all of your problems solved? Not yet.

I have personally been at the point where I was past my denial and could readily admit that I was an addict. I knew this to be true, yet I still could not embrace a solution or find the secret to changing my whole life. To be honest, I was just too scared. I was living in fear, medicating myself with drugs and alcohol, but I was also too scared to face life sober again and try to deal with emotions, feelings, and relationships without having the crutch of drugs and alcohol.

Getting them to admit to their problem is one thing. Getting them to take real action in order to remedy that problem is something else entirely. So how can we make the leap necessary to get them to actually get motivated for real change?

There is no single magic bullet that will work for everyone. I stayed in this particular stage of denial for several years, and was too scared and depressed to try and face life sober. Nothing that anyone could say or do would have really accelerated this process for me. I had to work through my fear and become willing to take action on my own.

So how can you help to facilitate this? One way is by practicing the basic principle of healthy relationships, and making sure that you are not enabling the person at all. Stay loving, caring, and supportive, letting them know that you will always help them to find professional help or drug rehab, whenever they become willing (and that you will help them with nothing else).

What to do when this approach fails: Some addicts and alcoholics may have certain mental health issues that can block them from recovery. In these cases, you might also encourage them to seek help for depression, anxiety, or mental illness, in the hopes that they will have a better shot at sobriety once they get their mental health issues sorted out.

Moving them closer to surrender

There is a point that any addict or alcoholic might get to where they finally throw up their hands and say “That’s it. I cannot keep going on like this. I am ready to try something different. What I have been doing is not working for me.” This is the point of surrender.

One thing that is crucial to understand is that any attempt to help the person is not going to do much of anything unless they have already reached this point of surrender. You will know when they “get there” because they will stop trying to manipulate everything and they will be willing to try just about any suggestion in order to get help. They will become willing to take suggestions from other people.

So how can we get them closer to this point? How can we move them closer to surrender?

Again, it all comes back to how we behave in relationship to the addict. Are we enabling them in any way? Are we being supportive in the right way, by offering to help them get professional help only? Are we withdrawing our emotional support, so that they are forced to face themselves as they really are, and see their addiction for what it really is?

Sometimes we have to let them screw up on their own. We have to get out of their way and let them get into trouble. Addicts and alcoholics tend to be motivated by pain. They do not choose to get clean and sober when everything is going good in their life. It is only when they are really suffering that they will get closer to surrender. Do not deny them of their pain!

You do not have to be malicious and try to make the person miserable. They will do this all on their own if you just get out their way. Withdraw your emotional support so that you are not enabling them to endure more misery. Withdraw your financial support so that you are not enabling them directly. Do not bail them out when they get into trouble. Let them pave their own path to surrender, without your interference.

What to do when this approach fails: You might consider trying a more organized form of intervention, although this should be carefully considered in terms of the possibly backlash and resentment that might be created. At some point, you may throw caution to the wind out of concern for the person’s well being, in that you can see them rapidly self destructing due to addiction. At that point, you may decide to put together some form of intervention.

Informal interventions

An informal intervention is any time that you make a non-organized effort to try and convince the addict or alcoholic to get help. This could be as simple as a chance conversation that you had not even planned on, or it might be something that you have thought about, prepared for a bit, but is pretty much just you doing a straightforward one-on-one conversation with the person. The main difference here is that you are not bringing in any outside professional help, nor are you probably going to get lots of people involved. Those techniques are reserved for a more formal intervention.

Now just because this type of intervention is informal does not mean that it can not work. You can expect that at the very least, you can at least demonstrate to the addict that you do care about them and want to see them get better.

Depending on your unique situation with an addict or alcoholic, you might try an informal conversation with them with the following goals:

1) Get them to admit that they do have a problem.

2) Convince them that they probably need professional help in order to solve their problem.

3) Get them to commit to taking action in getting that professional help.

It is not uncommon to get stuck at any of these 3 stages during any type of intervention. For example, the addict might admit that they have a problem, but they may argue that they do not really need professional help to fix it, as they could do it on their own “if they wanted to.” So they are stuck at the second point. Or, they might be stuck on the first point, and argue that they do not really have a problem at all. And of course it is possible that they will admit to anything, but simply be unwilling to commit to professional help, even though they know and can agree that they probably do need it.

When you find in your discussions with the addict that you are getting stuck at one of these 3 points, is there a magic wand that you can wave? By now you must understand that there is no such trick, and the best we can do in some cases is to set healthy limits and boundaries so that we do not feed into their addiction. In the end, we can only change our own behavior, not someone else’s.

What to do when this approach fails: You might try a formal intervention or get more people involved (such as friends and family). But be cautious when doing so, because it is possible for such an organized effort to backfire and create even more resentment and tension. Really think about how the addict or alcoholic will respond to an organized intervention. It can be overwhelming for some personality types.

Formal interventions and hiring outside help

A formal intervention is where you do either of the following 2 things, or both:

1) Get very organized and involve several friends and family in confronting the addict or alcoholic.

2) Hire a professional interventionist to help you persuade the addict or alcoholic to get help.

The first point of caution I want to mention here is that this is not a magic bullet for success. Sometimes it feels like hiring professional help is going to give you a major edge in convincing someone to change, but really, this is not the case. What is more important is the person’s willingness to change, not the details of the intervention.

How close are they to surrender? Have they truly hit bottom yet?

These questions actually point to one of the important truths about an intervention: timing is everything. You can hire the best interventionist in the world, but if the addict is stuck in denial and not ready for change, then it makes no difference. There is no magic wand. However, you may be able to make a significant impact by doing an intervention at just the right moment.

For example, say that a person has just lost their job because of their drinking. Or maybe they just spent a few days in jail due to a drug possession charge. These are possibly opportune times to confront them and try to convince them to get help.

If the timing is wrong, then nothing you do will make a difference. If the timing is good, then just about any effort on your part will be met with willingness and real action.

Now if you do decide to do an intervention, either formal or informal, make sure that you have a specific goal planned out. It does no good to get a vague commitment for change from the person. Better is to have a rehab visit all planned out and ready to accept the person. For most interventions, actually getting the person into a drug rehab should be the ideal outcome. So make sure you have a clear and specific goal in mind when you confront the person.

What to do when this approach fails: Back to the basics and working on changing the things that you can change, which is your own behavior and attitude. Remember that it can take time to move a person closer to surrender, and that you must keep up with your efforts at not enabling them while still offering support. Sometimes they need time to process what has happened.

Putting your foot down: setting limits and boundaries

If you are continuously angry and frustrated with the addict or alcoholic in your life, then you probably need to set some sort of boundary with them. Doing so will benefit both of you, and possibly help to move them closer to their moment of surrender.

Say, for example, that your boyfriend or girlfriend continues to abuse alcohol. You decide that you can no longer be around them if they have been drinking, so you set this as a boundary. You might tell them simply: “If you have been drinking, I will not be around you. I will leave the situation.”

Then, you follow through with that. Every time, without fail. You do exactly what you said you would.

This is not said to try and get them to stop drinking, necessarily. It is a boundary for you to set, to regulate your own behavior. Follow your boundary perfectly and things will start to change. If not for you, then for both of you. But definitely for you.

Maybe you have more leverage than this, and are in a position to make an ultimatum. Only do this if you are willing to follow through with the consequences. “If I catch you with drugs in my house again, I am going to call the police on you.” Don’t say this unless you mean it, and will actually do it.

Once you are serious about your boundaries and will enforce them without fail, the relationship will start to change. You have to be strong enough to set healthy boundaries and then stick by them, no matter what. If you can do this, then you will reclaim much of the sanity in your own life, and it may also help the addict to start to change.

What to do when this approach fails: When done properly, setting boundaries never fails. It may not make someone clean and sober overnight, but it is the way of healthy behavior that can help move both of you closer to the moment where they decide to change. Failure to set healthy boundaries will only keep them stuck in active addiction for longer. Setting limits and boundaries is something that you have to keep working at, and practicing.

Be ready with a solution for them

My recommendation to anyone who is trying to help a struggling addict or alcoholic is to be ready to help them when they finally surrender.

Let’s say that the struggling addict in your life comes to you tomorrow and says “I can’t go on like this any longer. I am ready to try something different. What can I do?”

My hope is that you can be ready for that moment, when it does arrive. There really is not a huge danger of screwing things up, so long as you are caring and supportive and do what you can to get the person professional help. There are professionals you can call that will help them to find a rehab center that best fits their needs and can help get them started on their path to recovery.

Remember not to try too hard to force things. Get help for yourself as well. The addict will be ready to change when they become ready, and not a moment sooner. Be ready for the moment and practice the principles outlined above so that you can help move them closer to surrender.