An enabler, unfortunately, many times is facilitating addiction through their well intentioned desire to help the addict or alcoholic.
How does this occur?
Consider the role of the addict; their intention is to continue the using behavior at all costs. What better way to continue that use than to enlist someone to ‘help’ him?
Without the enabler or codependent, the addict would have to start facing consequences of his actions, and that might interfere with use continued use. The well intentioned enabler, out of love for the addict will ‘protect’ him from consequences and himself.
I watched an episode of the TV show “Intervention” where a mother gave her son, living at home, in his mid twenties money for Heroin, drove him downtown to buy the drugs and back home so he could use ’safely’.
She was afraid he might have uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms or get hurt in a dangerous part of town. That was one of the more dramatic examples of addiction enabling I have seen.
Are you lying, making excuses, and creating alibis for your loved one? These are signs that you may have crossed the line from helping into enabling addiction.
Enabling behavior usually starts out very slowly and gradually with trying to smooth things out with others outside the relationship or family. There is a desire to keep family secrets or not rock the boat. Part of enabling, just like active addiction, is denial. In the beginning the enabler will make all sorts of rationalizations and try to minimize the problem; ignore it and hope it goes away. This does not happen.
The vicious cycle of enabling and addiction works something like this. The chemically dependent person is being shielded from the negative consequences of their use. Since these consequences are not hitting home, they can continue to use, or increase their use even more. The ‘job’ or driving purpose in life for an addict or alcoholic is to continue to use. The emabler in trying to ‘protect’ the user, is simply facillitating increased use.
This means the enabler gets drawn even deeper into the web by having to deal with ever increasing chaos. The increasing chaos in the home can be just the excuse the dependent person needs to keep on using.
Where and how does the madness end? For the enabler, though there may be fear and shame about the situation, it usually ends in anger. The enabler typically tries to hold things together and keeps the mounting frustration and anger bottled up…until one day the explosion occurs. They opt out of continuing the excuses.
A more commonly recommended solution is ‘detaching with love’. This type of detachment will be dealt with in a future article.
Paradoxically at this point, with the rug pulled out from him, the user may encounter the crisis that will be motivation to seek treatment. Pain is not pleasant, but it is a wonderful motivator. People who seek addiction treatment usually come from one of two camps.
1. They simply get sick and tired of being sick and tired. They get worn out. More commonly is the second option:
2. A crisis occurs that hits them with the force of a 2 x 4 in the side of the head.
Being protected from crisis may simply be doing nothing more than preventing engagement in addiction treatment and delaying the entry into addiction recovery
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Some people forget that when a loved one goes into recovery that the people around them may need to get some help as well. Family members may feed of their loved ones addictions and become co-dependent. It can be hard for them to find their own identity again once the drama of the addicted person is no longer there for them.
“There is a desire to keep family secrets or not rock the boat. Part of enabling, just like active addiction, is denial. In the beginning the enabler will make all sorts of rationalizations and try to minimize the problem; ignore it and hope it goes away. This does not happen.”
This is more of a problem then people are really realizing. And this works in all area of like not just addiction. Eventually causing more chaos than the (enabler) person is willing or wanting to have. It can cause problems in areas of their lives and before they know it they are not sure what they can or should do to stop this.
I did see that episode of intervention. I can see the mother’s point of wanting her son to be safe but she couldn’t let him get healthy because of the withdrawls. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I was a mother in that situation, but I know that a mother’s instinct is to protect.
I think the big issue is people don’t realize that they are enabling their loved ones addiction. The person who needs rehab is obviously the one with the addiction, but I think the whole family and loved ones of that person should be included in that rehab/therapy. I think that is the only way someone will stay clean, that is to have a strong and structured support system.
Unfortunately I have seen that lots of times. Loved ones fear that their addict will get killed trying to get the money themselves, or they just don’t want them to be in pain. I have never been in that situation before, but I can imagine that it is not a pleasant thing to go through at all.
I do however, have a friend who is giving her sister in law money all the time to go party on because she threatens all the time to take her kids far far away if she can’t have money. Her reasoning is that she cannot make ends meet in the town she lives in, but yet when given money the first thing she does it waste it all on partying.
I’ve actually had people tell me that if their kid was on drugs that they would allow them to live at home so at least they knew where the kid was. You think you’re doing the person a favor but you’re really not. I just hope and pray that I never have to cross this bridge.
I was the queen of enabling for 18 years. One night I had a dream that I was 70 and my life was insane, and then I woke up and I realized that if I did not change I would be 70 years old and my life would be that same insanity. I was 41. I changed. I am so much happier. Now I am 50 and I am the first to tell you that you are in denial and you are enabling. Now whose living a life of insanity!