You usually don’t realize when someone is enabling your addiction. They’ve got your best interests at heart, after all. Right?
But when you see someone who is giving an addict money with a blind eye, you might think that they don’t really understand what they are doing, or how they have become an enabler, even when you desire to quit. It’s a tricky cycle, that involves effort on the part of the enabler to be introspective and figure out how they manged to become this way. No one learns how to enable; in many cases, the tendency is second-nature.
What are different examples of enabling?
- Giving the addict money. Even when the addict has good intentions and maybe even wants to spend money on something decent for themselves, they are still an addict. They can’t help but purchase drugs and or alcohol, no matter how much they’d like to heal.
- Giving the addict a place to live. An addict can’t learn how to live until they are kicked to the curb. If their living situation is supported unconditionally, they can still use.
- Allow the addict to call the shots. If an addict is the one saying that they need the extended support of another person, they’ve got the wrong idea in their head. Most addicts don’t develop the desire to stop using until they have no other choice than to stop—whether this is related to health, finances, or something else. Unfortunately, enablers tend to support this lack of desire—they just want the addict to stay alive, to be okay. But it’s often at the expense of longer-lasting recovery, which is delayed.
What should an enabler ask themselves? In the same way that an addict must confront themselves at some point, either before or during addiction, an enabler must confront their own behavior, whether with the assistance of a medical or treatment professional or another person.
