How to Keep Your Sanity While Living With an Addict
Essential lessons to bolster self-preservation and safeguard your independence
There’s a narrow Christmas tree in the corner. It’s vaguely human shaped and a little unsettling. It’s not quite uncanny valley level, but I find myself glancing over to it more and more. It’s about the same size as the guy leaning on a sliding window asking for a pee test — he’s ‘gotta pee anyway.’
On an impossibly hot day 131 days ago my best friend and I came to Rochester, New York with only a backpack and a duffle bag. We’ve been staying in a spare bedroom at his parent’s house surrounded by abandoned toys and empty decorative boxes. It’s the same house he left behind over two decades ago.
The week we arrived he said to me, “I havn’t hit rock bottom.” This becomes a one act play we workshop until there’s no life in it. I always start first, “This is rock bottom, we are in your parent’s house.” The lines never change.
There’s snow on the ground and I want to go home to our Brooklyn apartment. We’re now $6,000 behind on rent.
Yesterday he added a second act, “We’re stuck here because of you!” I respond, “Grow up — sit in a waiting room and talk to a doctor.” I’m a quick study.
Twenty hours later, I’m in that waiting room eying metal arms and plastic fingers cloaked in a chain garland of faded construction paper and Scotch® tape.
Everyone gets it wrong
I keep learning the same lessons again and again. Recovery is a process, and so is learning how to live alongside it.
I’ve found many clinicians know how addiction works, but they don’t truly understand.
Clinics are measured on racking up compliant patients. They’re so eager to up their numbers, they don’t understand the lengths an addict will go through to appear compliant.
They especially underestimate how much discomfort an addict is willing to endure to use drugs.
I’ve seen my friend go through withdrawal every weekend for months to keep his habit going.
Predictably, his habit outpaced his weekend ritual and he missed a string of required appointments. The clinic wanted to believe he was compliant — otherwise they’d have to squeeze him in before holiday vacations. Instead they changed his treatment plan to reduce his required appointments to one appointment a month.
He began storing pee in our fridge. His habit eclipsed everything.
Days before we left for Rochester he showed up to the clinic three weeks late to his now ‘monthly’ appointment.
His medical team gathered. They were impressed with how well he was following the program — thanks to his impeccable pee tests.
They called him a success case , a model example.
We laughed as we walked to the pharmacy down the street.
If you hear someone say, “I know they aren’t going to use (drugs).” that’s when it’s clear they don’t understand. That’s the time to be most alert.
Pay attention, but don’t turn into the drug police — it’s futile and counter productive.
Retain whatever trust you have left and enjoy your relationship, with both eyes open.
Only an addict can manage their addiction
You might be thinking, fuck off lady — EVERYONE knows that.
But do you believe it? Do you truly deeply believe the addict is the ONLY person who CAN manage their addiction?
When you get angry at your best friend for spinning some bullshit lie that’s not even a GOOD lie — believe only an addict can manage their addiction.
When you go into the bathroom to sob after you’ve learned a person you love is back on junk — believe only an addict can manage their addiction.
When you stay up all night, slapping your partner each time they stop breathing — believe only an addict can manage their addiction.
It’s easy to slip into a management role — a professional partner, sibling, parent, or friend. But you can’t manage anyone’s anything, except your own.
If you feel a twinge of ownership or even pride in your outsized role, or you hear yourself thinking or talking like a martyr — beware, feeling needed can be enticing. Eventually, you might even feel like your relationship depends on you always being there to mitigate addiction pitfalls. If that happens, you can become desperate to be needed and territorial about your role as a pseudo manager.
Leave the professional title to the independent, unemotionally involved paid professionals. Don’t fall into the thankless abyss of needing to be needed. Spread the emotional and physical labor around.
Enjoy your freedom, you deserve it.
Everything you do is enabling, no exceptions
Buying groceries — enabling. Rationing drugs — enabling. Helping avoid withdrawal so they don’t lose their job — enabling.
Let me disabuse you of the idea that you’re actually helping. Right at this moment, an addict does not need food, or to stretch out their drugs until payday, or to keep their job. What they need is to NOT die.
Helping an addict defer rock bottom is the definition of enabling.
If these ideas make you want to scream at me, you might have already slipped into codependency. Codependency is beyond enabling it’s entrapment.
Failure is essential, so stop being so goddamned helpful.
It’s not about you, and it never will be
I’ve seen spouses, children, partners, friends — all make the same mistake repeatedly, directly placing the addict at dire risk.
I hear again and again, “How could they do this to our family?” “How can they give all this up and throw it away?” “If they loved me/us/them they wouldn’t do this!”.
It doesn’t matter how much love there is, it’s not about love. It doesn’t matter how much history you have, it’s not about history. It’s not about the strength or value of your relationship, it’s not about relationships.
When your spouse nods-out at work, it’s not about you. When your friend lies to you about why they need extra cash, it’s not about you. When your sibling ransacks your things and steals from you, it’s not about you.
Stop asking ‘how can it be… ?’ And ‘How could they… ?’. It is and they did, because IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU.
What’s happening is addiction. It’s independent, ruthless, indiscriminate, and a monster. It’s not personal. There’s nothing personal about it.
It might seem deeply sad to think about it this way. Do not be sad. This knowledge is your strongest weapon in the endless fight with addiction, and it is the superpower that will save YOU.
Because you need to be saved.
On planes, the attendants tell you to secure your air mask first so you can help others. You’re no good if you’re immobilized.
Save yourself first, it’s the only way to help anyone else.
Resources
REVERSE an opioid overdose
Naloxone (also sold under the name Narcan®) is a non-addictive, life-saving drug that can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose when administered in time.
If you can use a nasal spray, you can use Narcan®.
You can get Narcan® (naloxone) without a prescription at your local pharmacy in most states. Many clinics now give them for free if you ask.
There is one dose per kit, but it can take two doses to save someone’s life.
Put it in your bag, in your first aid kit, in your glove compartment — just get one, better yet get two.
Find Substance Abuse Treatment
Talk to your doctor or call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)National Helpline at 1–800–662-HELP or go to SAMHSA’s Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator.
Additional Resources
- Local Health Centers for substance abuse services
- Buprenorphine Treatment Practitioner Locator
- Opioid Treatment Program Directory by state, providing methadone
- Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) combines behavioral therapy and medications to treat substance use disorders.
- Handbook: Decisions in Recovery: Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder pdf
- Symptoms of codependency
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