One of the most significant challenges in life is figuring out how to help a drug addict who doesn’t want help. Recovery from drug addiction is challenging, even when those in need of assistance are ready and willing to work toward sobriety. It’s even harder when they don’t want your help and have no interest in an inpatient drug rehab center. It is important to express care, concern, and support for your friend or family member without enabling them. These tips and suggestions can guide you when seeking to help a loved one struggling with addiction.
Get Educated About Drug Addiction
One of the most important things you can do to help is to learn about drug addiction. If you want to know how to help a drug addict who doesn’t want help, you should first understand what they are struggling with.
Drug addiction is an illness. It’s a diagnosable disease with many causes, some of which may be genetic. Individuals struggling with addiction are ultimately responsible for their behavior, but they didn’t choose addiction. Similarly, drug addiction isn’t a reflection of morality or character. Naturally, there are many addictive substances–drugs and alcohol are the most common. While a heroin addict and an alcoholic undoubtedly have different experiences with addiction, they both are suffering from a disease and have lost control of their lives to the addiction.
The biggest misunderstanding about addiction is that the individual can just stop using drugs or alcohol as if it is simply a matter of willpower or choice. Dependency on drugs or alcohol means that your body and mind have been rewired to need that addictive substance in order to function normally. Without the substance, withdrawal symptoms will occur, and they are often uncomfortable or even life-threatening.
By learning about drug addiction, you may be better able to spot symptoms. You may also be in a better position to offer treatment options and real-life solutions to those who need it most.
Set Limits and Avoid Enabling
Often, people struggling with a drug addiction want help but not recovery. They may ask for financial assistance, comfort, or a place to stay. While you may wish to assist them, setting limits is essential.
Enabling someone’s addiction can take many forms, almost all of them well-meaning. Some examples include:
- Offering cash
- Offering a place to stay
- Offering to help hide the addiction from friends, family, or co-workers
- Paying bills that they misplace, forget, or ignore
- Picking up their slack if they are a co-worker
- Giving them rides to or from locations that are clearly not related to school or work
This could be beneficial in the short term, but it will ultimately hinder their desire to seek true recovery and sobriety. By enabling an individual, you reaffirm that there really is no accountability for their choices and behavior and that someone will always swoop in to bail them out. Oftentimes, those struggling with addiction become master manipulators for precisely this reason.
How To Help A Drug Addict Who Doesn’t Want Help? Stage an Intervention
Staging an intervention can be a good step to help a drug addict who doesn’t want help. An intervention is a meeting where multiple loved ones, colleagues, or family members gather to encourage an addict to seek help. Interventions can be a surprise to the person struggling, or they can be planned.
Many individuals with drug addictions embrace an element of denial. They may not want to admit that there’s a significant problem at play, or they may not be ready to seek treatment. An intervention forces them to confront the impact of their addiction on those around them. This may be enough to encourage treatment sooner rather than later.
How to Help a Drug Addict Who Doesn’t Want Help Seek Recovery
If you do stage an intervention, be prepared to follow up immediately. Prepare the logistics to make it easy and quick for addicts to begin treatment. This might include providing immediate transportation to a treatment facility.
Another way to coordinate recovery is to consider the financial aspect. Gathering information about health insurance and looking for availability at a treatment facility can be excellent ways to help a loved one.
Substance Addictions Treated at San Antonio Recovery Center
At San Antonio Recovery Center, we treat a wide variety of substances. No matter your substance use disorder, we’re ready to help you start your road to recovery. From alcohol to cocaine to prescription drugs, San Antonio Recovery Center has the treatment you need to succeed. Substance addictions treated at San Antonio Recovery Center include but aren’t limited to:
- Adderall
- Alcohol
- Ambien
- Benzo
- Cocaine
- Crack
- Crystal Meth
- Fentanyl
- Heroin
- Hydrocodone
- Klonopin
- Marijuana
- MDMA
- Methadone
- Opiates
- Opioids
- Oxycodone
- Percocet
- Polysubstance Addiction
- Tramadol
- Valium
- Vicodin
Helping someone confront a drug addiction when they are in denial or don’t want help is challenging. It takes a combination of compassion and firm boundaries to ensure you are actually helping a loved one and not enabling their addiction from well-meaning intentions. At San Antonio Rehab Center, we’re ready to help those in need of drug addiction treatment. The sooner you get them help, the sooner they can regain control of their life.
Call 866.957.7885 right now if you’re seeking a true means of recovery for yourself or a loved one.
