How to Love Someone With a Substance Use Disorder
Addiction not only rips apart a life, it does the same thing to the relationships and loved ones held most dear by the person with addiction.
It is a very difficult thing to watch a loved one slip into addiction. Suddenly, someone that you once knew so well has become a completely different person, a person that you can’t trust, a person who seems to resist every helping hand and seek out every harmful situation they can possibly find, a person who pushes away love, a person who pushes away you. You know that this is the addiction working, taking control, but you can’t help but be affected by it. You can’t help feeling hurt, angry, helpless. You can’t help feeling like you want to give up.
And, unfortunately, many people do give up. They try and try until they’ve had enough – enough betrayal, enough rejection, enough hurt. Their person with addiction loved one has hurt them so many times, maybe even betrayed their trust as well, that the need to protect themselves from more hurt and more harm has overtaken the love that they feel for this person who has been changed so drastically by addiction. And they give up. They cut ties, they banish, they forget, they toss aside.
