Enabling Addiction: Key Warning Signs for Loved Ones

Is your loved one struggling with addiction? If so, no doubt you want to help them get better. You would do anything for them. But what if the help you think you’re providing is actually hurting your loved one instead? In reality, you could be enabling addiction further in their daily life without knowing it. Let’s explore common ways that enabling an addict actually occurs, as well as how to help an addict without enabling. 

What is Enabling, Anyway? 

According to the American Psychological Association (APA), enabling is the process of contributing to the continued maladaptive behavior (such as addiction) in another person. Essentially, you’re helping your loved one continue their self-destructive patterns and behaviors, while also protecting them from facing the consequences of their actions and choices. You may even think you’re helping your loved one and be wholly oblivious to the reality that you’re enabling instead. 

Enabling addiction is a common struggle among friends and family members who know the addicted individual. Perhaps that person is about to hit rock bottom. So, a loved one steps in to protect them, kicking the can down the road while the addiction remains. 

Considering the nature of the relationship, enabling can frequently be driven by love. After all, you don’t want to see your loved one suffer the consequences of their actions. Instead, you do what you can to make them happy or keep the peace among the family. Short-term relief may follow, but your loved one’s addiction only entrenches further.

4 Enabling Addiction Warning Signs

How do you know if you’re enabling an addict? Enabling addiction can take on many forms, but there are a few that are most common. Sometimes subtle and sometimes obvious, here are a few key warning signs that you’re enabling addiction in others:

1. Minimizing or Explaining Away

Does this sound like you? Instead of admitting that your loved one abuses substances, you think they don’t have a problem at all. You choose to live in denial instead. You may think their drug or alcohol use isn’t really an issue or keep telling yourself that it could be worse. Perhaps your addicted loved one is even aware that you don’t find their behavior concerning, so they’re not motivated to get help themselves, either.

You may also make excuses for your loved one’s addictive behaviors. “He’s doing it to help him unwind at the end of the day,” or “She uses alcohol to relax or take a break from a tough situation” could be just a few of the ways you justify their actions to others. You may explain away other people’s concerns about the issue.

2. Avoiding the Issue

Is there an elephant in the room? Perhaps you know your loved one has an addiction, but you don’t want to bring it up. Your silence speaks louder than words, ultimately enabling addiction even more. Deep down, you may consider having a hard conversation about the issue, sharing your heart, and guiding your loved one to seek holistic rehab. But you say nothing and avoid the issue, as it’s easier to do in the moment. Perhaps you hope one day they’ll figure it out on their own or someone else will finally talk to them.

3. Fixing Things or Meeting Needs

Sure, we all help out our loved ones in a time of need. However, lending money to an addicted loved one, letting them live with you, or cleaning up their literal and figurative messes only encourages them to keep their addictive behaviors going.

Why is providing help actually enabling addiction instead? If you go about fixing your loved one’s life or making things easier for them, they’ll never face the consequences of their actions. A life without burdens allows them to continue with their substance-driven ways. Instead of getting a job, paying rent, or knowing what it’s like not to have money, they’re able to use your help to fuel their addiction (and they’re likely using your money to buy more drugs or alcohol).

4. No Real Accountability

Perhaps you’ve actually said something to your addicted loved one. You’ve warned them about their actions and laid out some ground rules for them to follow. But when they do nothing as a result of your conversation or break your rules, you don’t enforce any consequences. You don’t hold them accountable. Your bark is worse than your bite in the end. Instead, you bend to their wishes, and they don’t learn from their mistakes.

How to Help an Addict Without Enabling

Do you resonate with any of these enabling behaviors? If so, what can you do to learn how to stop enabling an addict? Though you may have been enabling addiction, there are practical ways to actually help your loved one instead. Some of the steps you can take to steer your loved one toward sobriety include:

• Talking about the addiction: Address the elephant in the room. Having a conversation with your loved one about their addiction — in a tactful, supportive way — helps them see that they need to change. 
• Set and uphold boundaries: To prevent further enabling, it’s time to set boundaries around your relationship with your loved one. If they don’t respect your boundaries, you need to enforce any consequences. 
• Find treatment for your loved one: Talk to your loved one about getting professional addiction treatment, but also help them find the right rehab center. They’ll need you in their corner along the recovery journey. 

Professional Addiction Help in Nashville

If you truly want to support your loved one, then help them find professional help for their substance abuse challenges. At Integrative Life Center in Nashville, Tennessee, our treatment programs offer a full continuum of care for every step of the addiction recovery journey. To learn more, call our team today. 

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