Save Your Relationship: How to Help an Addicted Husband
How to help your husband stop using drugs? How to make him stop destroying himself and his life, challenging the closest people? Millions of relatives of addicts are asking these questions. Many women seeking to change the behavior of their husbands, deny the power of some couples rehab centers treatment, and try extraordinary methods but end up with nothing. The results are far away from expectations. All these measures, if they act on addiction, may give a short-term and unstable effect. But how can you help an addicted person?
Treatment of drug addiction requires a planned integrated approach, especially if it is your loved one. Any negligence can negate all previous efforts. The psychological attitude is especially important here, aimed at creating a motivational way of thinking for the patient to treat. Only this way, your husband will have the opportunity to get rid of drug addiction. Addiction leaves a massive imprint on all areas of family life. It is impossible to delay treatment, otherwise physiological and mental disorders that develop as a result of constant drug use may become irreversible. First of all, it is necessary to convince your husband of the need to see a doctor and only after that find an addiction treatment program for couples.
How to make your husband undergo treatment for drug addiction
In the beginning, your loved one will deny the very fact of taking drugs, then the existence of addiction to them, and then the need for going to a hospital. To resolve the issue faster, you’d better:
- Developing a single-family position on couples treatment. If some relatives insist on placing in a hospital, while others insist on protecting from treatment, this will only aggravate the situation.
- Choosing a clinic or rehabilitation center suitable for conditions and prices in advance. To achieve the consent of the addict to treatment, try to convince him to go to the clinic at least for a short while.
- Talking about such an opportunity as anonymous drug addiction treatment. Attract a professional motivational psychologist who may come home and talk with both of you.
Feeling of guilt instead of responsibility
Both the addict and his wife most often do not realize and do not fully understand how drug addiction affects relationships. How the meaning of the feelings that guide them in their actions. A special role in the development of addiction and relations with the addict is guilty. The sense of guilt of the addict is so strong and leading to the sober state that does not push him to take responsibility for his behavior but inclines him to take another dose to get rid of depressing feelings as soon as possible. The sense of guilt between loved ones causes an irresistible desire to shield and cover the addict and take responsibility for his behavior.
The illusion of control
Guided by love and sincerely wanting to save their loved ones, partners often fall into the “illusion of control” – as if, if they control the behavior of the addicted person, they will save him from drug abuse. But many forget that it is impossible to keep a person and make him happy against his will. External control often not only does not help the addict to recognize his illness but also causes him to create a protest behavior mechanism, the desire to defy, outwit the controller, and do everything his way.
Violation of personal boundaries and disrespect in the family
Not only the addict in a state of intoxication but also his relatives do not respect each others boundaries and allow violation of both physical (encroachment on money, personal property) and psychological, own barriers (insults and humiliations in the communication).
Besides, insulting and reproaching your addicted loved one for what he does under the influence of drugs and subsequent weakness by relatives may only worsen the situation. The very first step for close friends and family to take is to admit that drug addiction is a severe disease.
So is it possible somehow to help your husband? Or is the only way out, as others often advise, to abandon it and forget?
Drug addiction therapy
People who have never faced any drug abuse before may believe that physical treatment can magically heal the patient once and for all. Unfortunately, it does not work this way. Such a result is only possible after a detoxification course and allows you to stop the consequences of a potential breakdown. But this cannot be used as a primary way of treatment. All procedures should be taken in the hospital, as far as some of them are very stressful for the person to overgo at home. Physical detoxification course usually takes from five to ten days. Then a person can try to socialize, but the desire to use drugs often remains. Thus the rehabilitation period is required to be spent under the supervision of loved ones. This takes about three months on average.
Step aside
To step aside with love is the main principle of helping an addict. This is necessary for you to see and restore yourself and your boundaries, to regain respect and understanding. It is extra important to step aside not with hatred – but with patience and respect, no matter how strange it sounds. This is obvious, but do not threaten or scare a person by talking all the time about how bad drug addiction is. The only best thing you can do for a person who is important to you is to provide him with adequate information and competently argue his position so that he understands which risks exist. Explain to him how to behave in case of an overdose, what to do if he will be detained by police officers, how HIV and hepatitis are transmitted. Just do not submit all this information in the format of horror stories. Do not turn away from the person, even if everyone else did. Do not be fooled by stigma and be around.
It is not necessary to break up with your partner, get divorced or something. Though for some, it is the only possible way people can establish a safe distance between them and restore normal relations. But do not forget that if your loved one has difficult times, the worst thing to do is leave him alone. Well, each person has the right to choose what to do with life. Even some insistently want to turn it into hell, you should not suffer and do the same thing to save your relationships. Understand the situation, be reasonable and consistent in your requirements, stop patronizing the sick, and keep maintaining a healthy couple.