Addiction, just like anything else in life, is a journey. It’s a journey of learning and growth, but it’s one that must completed by the person experiencing the journey while taking their own level of responsibility for their choices and actions.
If the one on the journey does not take full responsibility for their choices and actions, they will not take away the necessary lessons from the experience to achieve the learning and growth they are supposed to in order to move forward in life.
Without learning and growth, they will inevitably stay stuck in the same pattern endlessly.
What’s also extremely important to understand is the role of those that are connected to and supporting the person in the addiction process.
Loved ones of those actively in addiction SHOULD NOT ENABLE. I CANNOT stress this enough.
As a person connected to and/or supporting someone who is actively in the addiction process, enabling them in such a way that it makes it comfortable and easy for them to continue their lives without achieving the necessary learning and growth from it only damages them and extends the process far beyond what it needs to be.
Enabling, in some cases, can even be extremely dangerous.
Depending on what it is the person is addicted to, enabling them could actually send them further down a path that could seriously hurt them or possibly even kill them. This may not be the case with all addictions, and it entirely depends on the severity of the problem and what the addiction is, but if one does not allow and accept the lessons they are to learn from their journey, the lessons and the messages will only get louder and louder until they can no longer ignore them.
The best way to help anyone who is in an addiction process, or anyone dealing with any type of ongoing issues, is to support them in a way that allows them to work through them on their own, in the way they need to.
Anything else only prohibits their learning and growth and keeps them from healing.
If you truly care about the person in need of healing, the very best thing you can do for them is support them in seeking out the healing they both need and deserve. It can be one of the most difficult things to watch someone go through difficulty and be in need of healing and want to help. It’s always appropriate to offer options and ideas for healing, but you should never carry the weight of the problem for them or be overly accepting of the fact that they are not able to heal. It will only prolong the problem.
Every single one of us can make a choice to heal and move forward at any time. Receiving healing is everyone’s right and it is always possible to heal. Remember that.