When helping becomes enabling

If someone you love has an addiction, you’ve probably spent months or years looking after them. You may have lent money or told half-truths for them, covering for them because you’re worried about what will happen to them if you don’t. Maybe you got here by searching for “advice on helping an addict”. That’s not a word we use at Oasis Runcorn, because nobody is only their addiction. But we understand why people type it. This page is about the real question behind it. When does helping cross the line into making things worse?

What is enabling addiction?

When professionals talk about enabling addiction, they mean anything that protects a person from the consequences of their drinking or drug use. Maybe you pay the debt, so they never feel it, or clean up after the binge, so by Monday it’s as if nothing happened. None of it comes from a bad place. Families enable out of love, fear, and hope, usually all three at once. Most do it for years without ever hearing the word. The simplest way to tell the difference is to ask who you’re protecting. If the honest answer is the addiction rather than the person, that’s enabling.

The signs of enabling behaviour

Most signs of enabling look like kindness, which is why they’re so easy to miss. We hear the same examples from families every week. A mother rings her son’s work to say he’s ill when the truth is a hangover. A husband pays a credit card bill and doesn’t ask what the money went on. Sometimes it’s a daughter clearing the bottles away before visitors arrive, or a friend driving over at 2 am to pay for the taxi and help someone inside. Nobody calls any of that rescuing, because at the time it always feels like an emergency. And in thousands of homes, everyone keeps the conversation light, because nobody wants another row about it.

Some enabling behaviour is harder to spot. Perhaps you’ve taken over the school run and the shopping because they can’t manage them any more, and the house ticks along as if there were no problem at all. It keeps the peace today, and it takes away one more reason for them to stop.

Why enabling behaviour is hard to recognise

Enabling begins with one completely justifiable decision at a time, like paying one bill or driving someone home after a bad night. This can become a pattern, which you only see when you stand back.

The difficult thing is that enabling often works, at least for a little while. The acute crisis passes, and things around the house or in your relationship are calm. When you’re frightened or worried all the time, those few days of calm can be a huge relief, even if deep down you know the problems are still there under the surface.

Hope can also trap you in enabling behaviour. If something you did for them has helped them stay sober for a week or two, you may keep telling yourself they could do it again. While you’re hoping, it’s easy to justify what you’re doing and ignore how they’re really behaving.

The link between codependency and addiction

The closer you are to the person with a substance abuse disorder or behavioural addiction, the harder it gets. That’s one of the cruellest things about addiction and relationships.

Some families get so wrapped up in each other that one person’s drinking decides what kind of day everyone else has. At Oasis Runcorn, we see codependency and addiction together all the time, and both need to be considered at once.

Codependency means you only feel okay when they’re okay, and they lean on you the same way. If your mood rises and falls with theirs, and saying no feels like a betrayal, you’re no longer living your own life. Enabling them so you don’t upset them or make their life temporarily harder can therefore also seem to help yourself.

The emotional impact on families

Adfam, the UK charity for families affected by addiction, estimates that more than five million people in this country are affected by someone else’s drinking or drug use.

Having someone in your life with an addiction takes a serious toll. You might be anxious when the phone rings and anxious when it doesn’t. You might resent them, then feel guilty for resenting them.

Many people tell us they feel responsible for someone else’s recovery, as if one wrong word could undo everything. We work with family and addiction, and we see what that strain does to families’ physical and mental health. If you’re struggling, that’s a normal response to very hard circumstances.

Supporting someone with addiction without enabling them

When you’re supporting someone with addiction, the most useful thing you can do is tell them, calmly, that you think they need professional treatment.

You can offer to drive them to visit treatment programmes, listen without judging them, explain why you can’t give them money, and when the next crisis comes, let them face it. It sounds harsh, but facing the consequences may be what finally makes them accept they need help.

Setting boundaries with an addict

You cannot make another adult stop drinking or using drugs, and no amount of love or watching over them will do it for them. What you can do is decide how you respond and set boundaries.

A boundary is a rule about what you will do, but it only works if you keep it. This includes “I won’t give you cash because you’ll spend it on substances” but also, “I’ll pick you up, but I won’t tell your mum everything’s fine again”.

If you announce a rule and drop it after a couple of days of pressure, they learn that pushing back against the boundaries works. That’s why you should only make rules you can keep. It helps to decide your rules, explain them calmly, and stick to them.

Addiction support for families

Families need looking after as well, in part because this will help you provide better support to your loved one.

At Oasis Runcorn, we work with families as well as the person in treatment. If your loved one comes to us, we provide family sessions as part of all our drug and alcohol rehab programmes. This helps families begin to repair things with a therapist in the room.

You can also call us before they’ve agreed to getting help, for honest guidance on your situation. Charities like Adfam also run groups across the UK, where you can meet others in the same position, and your GP can help if your physical or mental health has suffered.

Professional help from Oasis Runcorn

If you’ve read this far, it’s a sign that you’re trying your absolute best in difficult circumstances. You’re looking out for someone you care about who can’t do that for themselves yet. If you’d like to talk about treatment, or about setting boundaries with an addict who isn’t ready to stop, contact Oasis Runcorn today. Most people who contact us aren’t sure what they want to happen yet. We’ll listen to your situation and be honest about whether alcohol or drug rehab could help.