You did the grind. You learned about boundaries and enabling, you researched treatment options, you got your loved one through the front door of a program, which is hard enough on its own. They finish...
Almost nobody sets out to enable someone they love. The people the treatment world sometimes calls the chief enabler are rarely careless or naive. Usually they are the opposite. They love so deeply th...
There is a parallel Ryan Soave has watched play out again and again in his years of treating both people with addiction and the families around them, and once you see it, you cannot unsee it. The way ...
Most of us grew up with a simple idea about anger and rage: that they are the same thing at different volumes. Anger is the dial at four, rage is the dial at ten. Author and counselor John Lee says th...
The moment a family hears the phrase addiction is a family disease, something happens in the room. And it usually goes one of two ways.
Some people fold inward. They hear family disease and immediate...
If you love someone struggling with addiction, you have almost certainly asked the question, some nights out loud and some nights only in your head: why can't they just stop?
It is the right question...
The quiet disappearing act
When someone we love is in trouble, our whole world reorganizes around them. Their needs become the only needs. Slowly, without deciding to, we stop doing the things that u...
It usually starts with something small and loving. You pay the phone bill so they can stay reachable. You call their boss and say they have the flu. You cover rent one more month, you hire the lawyer,...
If you love someone struggling with addiction, you have probably been told you need "better boundaries." It is some of the most common advice given to families, and some of the least explained. What i...