Alcohol addiction is a significant cause of stress and depression. When the habit gets more robust, it impacts every aspect of the addict’s life and relationships. Family and friends may convince the addict to attend a rehab, which might take longer than perceived.
Photo, Tim Mossholder.
Whilst waiting for someone to recover, you can help them in the process just at home. While this can be challenging to everyone, it can be an easy process if conducted by following the proper guidelines. Here are some of the approaches you can follow.
Educate Yourself Concerning Addiction and Recovery: Addiction is complicated, and recovery can be challenging since it depends on the habit of the addict. Before helping someone recover from addiction, you need to educate yourself first on addiction and how to live with an alcoholic in recovery. It would be quite ok if you educated yourself on several factors, including health issues, potential triggers, enablement, psychological changes, and the entire recovery process. With such crucial info, it will be easier for you to take the addict through the recovery process.
Understand All the Problems and Get Prepared for Them: Addiction comes with issues, both to the person addicted and also the family members. Some of these problems are long-lasting and might even take a toll on their lives. When you commit yourself to take someone through the recovery process, you need to understand all the problems that come with it and be prepared to tackle them. Some of these issues include lack of expenses, serious diseases such as HIV/Aids, relationship problems, and lack of trust. Relapse can also be a possibility for anyone suffering from addiction, so you have to prepare for it.
Don’t Have Unreasonable Expectations: The main purpose of carrying someone through the recovery process is to see them well again and sober. Most people hope that all issues linked to addiction will be gone when someone gets well, including their everyday life and relationships. Unfortunately, some of these never happen, and people often get disappointed at one point or another. The situation becomes worse when things like relapse occur to a recovering individual. The best way to avoid such disappointments is to prevent having unreasonable expectations. Expecting something and then failing to happen will also make the addict lose hope in recovering.
Photo, Taylor Hernandez.
Makes Changes to Support Recovery: If you have planned to help an addict recover, there are things which you need to consider changing to aid the recovery process. Some of the things that support sobriety include removing all alcoholic substances in the house, avoiding social gatherings where alcohol is served, sober activities and hobbies, focussing on new aspects of life, and building relationships with sober friends. When things get done right, the addicted person will start seeing life positively and won’t go back to drinking again.
Helping someone recover isn’t an easy process. You have to be committed and create more time for the addicts. However, it would help if you put a limit. You shouldn’t go so far that you forget yourself. It would help if you took care of yourself, too, during the process.
