Who can be sicker than an addict?  Sit in for a few minutes on a staff meeting of any treatment center and listen intensively to the comments made by the professionals.  After a few minutes you will quickly realize that addiction is truly a family disease, and many of the families that we treat are even "sicker" than the addict they have placed in our care.

Often when a patient is placed into treatment, the family leaves with the unspoken (and sometimes even implicit) order to "Fix Them"! This in and of itself is not an unreasonable request.  The behavior of the addict has become out of control, they are destroying themselves and in the view of the family everyone else around them.

Thirty, sixty, ninety or more days later, after having attended a myriad of sessions, a plethora of groups, a gaggle of twelve step meetings, the identified patient returns from the world of treatment and is full of expectations for a new life.  Unfortunately, our new and changed addict is returning, in most cases, to a world that has not changed since he/she left.  For years the addict has conditioned those around him to expect what can be best described as a set of addictive behaviors.  Furthermore, typically the family not having had the benefit of the treatment experience, but having altered their behaviors to meet the formerly dysfunctional behaviors is with the best of intentions going to be working at counter purposes to the patients recovery.

It is perfectly understandable that many family members identify the problem in the addicts behavior rather than their own.  I am not suggesting blame, but rather a need to learn to accommodate the new situation and address it with a new and different set of behaviors that better fit the new environment.

Here are some suggestions which have proved helpful to many of the patients' families who have attended our C.A.R.E. facility.

• Understand that the job of recovery is the addict's.  You were unable to control their addiction prior to treatment...and you are not going to be able to control their recovery post treatment. They have to do it for themselves.


• Recovery is their responsibility.  It is none of your business whether or not they are attending meetings, going to see the therapist, showing up at work, etc.  When you ask, you are implying they are not doing the "right thing" and will often make them feel that "If I am not trusted,  I may as well use...because what difference does it make anyway?"


• Don't walk on eggshells.  Your life should go on as usual.  The returning addict should be included in that life.  It is their responsibility to take care of themselves.  Not going to restaurants, stopping drinking and/or not permitting anyone to drink around them is not your responsibility.  It will only lead to resentments.


• Make yourself smart and build your own support system in your own recovery.  Yes, your recovery.  If you had a storm tear up your home, you would say you are recovering from the storm.  Now you are going to start your recovery from the storm of someone else's addiction.  Go to 12 step support groups like Al-Anon, Al-Ateen, Narconon etc.


• Understand the difference between enabling and love.  Love is what we give unconditionally.  Acts of love are things that we do because we want to.  Enabling is providing things to either make or stop someone from doing something we don't want them to do. e.g..  I pay for my son's tuition because I want to give him the gift of a college education.  That is fatherly love.  I will buy him a new car, so that he won't buy himself a motorcycle.  That is enabling.

Welcome your graduate home.  Lets hope that both of you can leave your addictive behaviors behind.  His/her addiction and your addiction to controlling him/her.