Loved One Left for Treatment
The long time wished and hoped for event occurs and your loved one is finally in treatment for his addiction or alcoholism. The waiting time for this to happen seems endless if you look back, a time full of worries, tears, broken hopes and shattered beliefs. But things look like they are falling in place now and your son, daughter, spouse, friend or parent finally admitted to his problems, agreed on getting help, and left home towards a new future. The addict has arrived! Arrived at his next stop in a lifelong battle and hopes are high that it might come to a good ending now. Just there is that feeling of emptiness today, an unexplainable void you have, because you want to do something and don’t know what you should do now. What is next on the agenda? You are so used to worrying each day that something is missing. You want to let yourself float in the relief, but you still have doubts. Does that sound familiar?
First of all, please take a deep breath and relax. I imagine that when you read these lines and are interested in this subject, you have done your homework prior to the admission and have chosen a safe and good place for residential care. The addict is safe today, maybe really safe for the first time in a very long period, and you don’t have to worry about his life or well-being today. He is not having a fun time going through withdrawals, Delirium Tremens, discomfort, pain and more, but he is safe. We care at this moment more for his life than for his feelings and he will appreciate that later in life, maybe not today. He may have left in fear, maybe in anger, but I am sure he has hopes, too. If you believe in God, praying for the addict would be a great thing to do at this moment. He is going through hell and back and will never forget these days in his life. He is maybe extremely upset with you at this moment, but this is okay. You cannot help the recovering addict by giving into his or her pain. The addict has to experience the pain himself and work through it in recovery, using the techniques and tools learned during treatment.
Regardless of what lead to the decision, if it was the addict himself, a family intervention, outside circumstances like court orders or similar, or if you used the help of a professional interventionist, the cards are on the table and we deal with what we have and the new situation. Now it really doesn’t matter how he got there, just that he is there. Maybe you want to jump up and do ‘something’, because that’s how your life lately used to be, but there is not much you can do at this point but continue a supportive thought and trust the process. It is time to claim a little bit of your life back and do what you need or want to do. It is a good time to let off some steam yourself, in exercise, hobbies or friendships. Be good to yourself, you deserve it. A good treatment center will keep you well informed about progress, milestones and any steps that need to be done from your side. No news is usually good news when the treatment center is properly working. If you used a professional interventionist, he will work with you now on things that can be done for yourself, your family and for later support and guide you with some suggestions.
If you haven’t been to any meetings for family members of addicts yet, you may want to consider trying some. There is Al-Anon, AlaTeen, NarAnon or ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) most likely in your city or nearby and many treatment centers offer free ongoing family support groups to accompany the addict’s recovery. It’s worth going to those meetings and the relief is phenomenal if you hear yourself sharing, “My son entered treatment last week”. There are people to be found who went through exact the same situation in life and know lots of tips and tricks about how to use the next weeks or month the best. But, most of all, there are people that understand what you have been through. Talk freely at those meetings about the addict and his treatment, but be mindful in everyday life. Do not run around and tell everybody who knows him where he’s at. Leave that decision to him later, how and whom he’d like to tell it. Don’t talk him down and don’t brag about it. It’s his life and his job to decide how to handle the anonymity or deal with explanations. Facebook is not the place to talk about his progress in therapy, respect privacy.
Maybe there is paperwork to be done to help the addict limit damage in life, like the FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) to be filed, bank accounts to be looked at, bills to be paid, landlords contacted, homes to be cared for or things to be stored away. The addict concentrates on his recovery and has no connection to these outside problems. He needs now the support of family and friends to take care of those things and inform who needs to be informed about his whereabouts and stay. If everybody in the family takes responsibility for a certain task, it is not so much for one individual. It is a great time to share joyful moments as well as duties to be done. Everybody in the support network can participate to get the Addiction out of the family and integrate the one in recovery again at his return. If his signature is needed for anything, the case manager at the treatment facility is usually helpful in getting this for you, but usually we like to keep as much as possible away from him and let him focus on a drug- and alcohol free life and his therapy. A professional interventionist will also be somebody that can help with experience on how to proceed with certain issues you are facing. Ask for help if you are overwhelmed.
After all of the important things are taken care of, and before the addict returns home, there is a major thing to do: cleaning the house. I do not mean dusting the bookshelf when I say that. I talk about getting rid of hidden bottles or drugs in the complete environment before he comes home again. Only God knows where those hiding places are. Alcoholics and addicts are very, very creative. It would be great to have a sniffing dog, but lacking one there is a lot of searching to do. In my own recovery, my husband went through our home, then I told him about certain places that I remembered and still I found bottles a year after I got back from treatment… amazing! There is nothing worse than the seduction of finding that loved bottle of scotch by accident once you freshly return from treatment! This search and rescue mission also includes all prescription medication that might not be needed anymore (ask his physician and get online to find collecting dates and sites, please do not flush them in the toilet), alcoholic mouthwash, alcohol containing food items like vanilla extract or soy sauce. If you think you got it all, come back a week later and look again. A thoroughly detailed search includes toilet tanks, flower vases, coffee mugs in the cupboard, shelves behind books, under couches, behind picture frames, inside socks and shoes, air ducts, workshops and outdoors, only to name a few. I used to have premixed vodka tonics in the fridge. They look harmless, but they were ‘loaded’. Yes, I agree, it’s a major intrusion of privacy, but it needs to be done by somebody to help the newly recovered towards a better future. Drugs are powerful and if in hand again unpredictable. What to do if you find drugs? Get rid of them, don’t keep them. It is a time-bomb as long they are in the house. You might forget about them and kids find them. Poor the alcohol down the drain, you don’t need it anymore. Most likely the wine bottles found are not worth giving anybody as a gift. Just before treatment most alcoholics drink the lowest and cheapest liquor available.
Even you don’t have a problem with alcohol, as long you live in the same home with the addict your life needs to be free of drinks for a long time as well. The addict is not cured when he comes home, he is probably facing triggers and withdrawals, ask him about that. Let him talk to you about what bothers him and makes him want to have a drink or drug once he is back. Ask anybody in the support network to lock up any drugs, medication or alcohol in their house, so that the addict has no access in case he goes and visits them after his return. Addiction is a family affair and all need to hold hands and go through it together. Family resilience is a strength that is very high on the scale of factors that help the addict to come to a life in long-term recovery and freedom from substance abuse. Change doesn’t happen overnight, but now is a good time to get started what was long time suppressed or secretive.
Some family members are dealing with some kind of a trauma situation themselves. They were just too busy to think of their own problems, while caring for the addict. Since he is gone and getting the care he needs we can think of what care we need for ourselves. Do we need to see a therapist to help us over some issues? Is there a codependency running across our family that needs to be addressed? Now is the perfect time to get help for ourselves. If the treatment facility is near you, they may have a list of therapists who are dealing with those issues as often seen in family members. Many treatment centers offer conference calls together with the addict and his primary care therapist to address family issues and also some selected treatment centers have a family weekend, where you learn more about the disease and how to handle the upcoming further recovery for the addict and yourself. If at all possible, enroll in the family recovery program well before the addict completes treatment and returns home. Understanding addiction, learning about codependency, recognizing unhealthy habits and building of an ongoing support network are often other issues learned in those family support programs. How to stop enabling an addict or being manipulated by him is a key problem to be learned by all support network members.
Whatever your problem might be, do not hesitate to pick up the phone and ask people about advice. You are entitled to get help as well, not only the addict. Addiction is often an inter-generational disease and requires deeper healing and care for several family members, as there might be a long forgotten trauma that caused the addiction to enter the family. It is now time to heal the family as a unit and not only the one member that had the worst symptoms and is in treatment at this particular moment. Take this as a chance to look into details and heal the family from within.
Give yourself kudos for what you have done so far. The work it takes to be a family in recovery is tremendous. Acknowledge your own work and appreciate yourself. You did all this out of love, now it will be time to harvest the fruits of this hard labor soon. Never let the thought ‘I should have done it earlier’ dominate your thinking. There is a time and a place for everything. Certain things take a lot of time to fall into place and the fact that the addict is today in treatment is the success of a long effort. The cards are dealt new and the addict and family alike will face, in a short time, a completely new situation, which will hopefully lead to long-term recovery and a life in freedom. Never compare today’s situation to yesterday’s situation. If the addict happened to be in treatment before, it was a different time, a different mindset, other circumstances and different approaches. Just because one treatment was not a long-term success does not mean that this one will be the same way. Everybody has a new chance with new tools to work with. As every addict and every addiction is unique, each approach into recovery is different too. There is not a ‘better’ or a ‘worse’, it is just about the fact if it fits right at this moment. The percentage rate of success is in the hands of you and the addict today. I wish you 100% success and a life-long recovery in happiness and serenity for all involved.
Make the re-entry into life for the addict smooth. If possible pick him up in person from the treatment center, take him home to some good food and let him talk if he wants to. He got discharge instructions from the treatment center and might have informed you already. There might be Intensive Outpatient Treatment to follow, or maybe just regular visits with a Therapist and 12-step meetings. Encourage the newly sober one to follow these instructions, but don’t scare him or distrust him right from the beginning. Give it a few days and see what he starts on his own, where he asks you for assistance or what he determines to be the next step. The most worrisome thing would be isolation or going back to meeting old friends who are using or drinking. Talk together and try to find a good aftercare solution. Be part of his recovery and let him be part of yours. Be mindful, but not too controlling.
I hope these few thoughts might help somebody over the first weeks. Family groups can be your biggest support as other parents might see something in the behavior that you miss. Your fear is justifiable; just don’t let it run your life anymore. Nobody can control somebody else’s life. We can just support each other.
In case you are the addict reading this article, be open and tell your family what you need from them in form of support. Do you need rides to meetings? Or do you need somebody to walk with you every day for a couple miles? Does it disturb you that somebody at home drinks? Be open, not secretive, and talk about recovery. Addiction is a disease, but the resilience of the addict and the family can help to control it. Just as a diabetic might have trouble to be around sweets, you can tell your family that you don’t like to go to a certain restaurant, because the bar makes you feel shaky. Share your milestones and your hopes with them as well.
If you are a family member of an addict or alcoholic, somebody who is either already in recovery or not at this point yet, I would be so glad if you would share your feelings and experiences here on our page with others. We can all learn from each other, as there is not a ‘perfect way’, but many different people need a different approach. Or if you are the addict in recovery, would you share your experience with the support you had? You can either click on the ‘share’ button on the top right or you send me an email with your story as a draft to my personal email and we put it together into a great story of recovery and support for others to read. Real recovery needs real stories. They are our best tools to understand what might be a good idea and what might be a mistake. I would love to hear from you at susuegypt@hotmail.com.
Please share a short message on how support worked for you right here, it would be much appreciated. Was it your mother or your spouse that helped you most? Or what did you do to help an addict in your family? Did you stop drinking yourself? Did meetings help?
Yours,
Susanne Johnson