If, as family members, we wait around for a 100% commitment from our loved one, we will almost certainly be waiting a long time. Family members must make decisions and take actions in an environment of probabilities.
Tough love, I was told, was the only hope I had left. So I tried it and things got worse. I hated it and it didn’t even work. Then I developed a personal strategy that I called Smart Love.
She agreed to treatment for alcohol and is heading home soon. But she’ll need transportation when she starts working again. Where does CRAFT stand on letting a loved one borrow the car to get to work? What about installing a breathalyzer?
The period of early recovery is fragile, even dangerous. As important as it is to remove the drugs, it is even more important to add things in that take the place of the drugs, providing meaning, guidance, and supporting recovery and health…
Allies’ founder and director, Dominique Simon-Levine, responds to questions from our Content Editor about the Key Observation exercises in our eLearning Center. This Q & A provides a clear explanation about how important these exercises are and how they help families understand their loved one’s addiction in order to successfully guide them to treatment.
A mother called the police when her addicted daughter stole her car. Now the daughter is in jail and furious, blaming her parents. What next?
When an addicted loved one alludes to or even threatens suicide, the family can feel paralyzed. Is the risk real or are they being manipulative? How do you respond?
Recovery is a bumpy process and relapse is very often part of it. Sticking with the CRAFT approach will help your loved one reach their goal of continuous sobriety.
Unity in a family is hard to orchestrate, especially where addiction is present. Sometimes this is because parents are elderly or a family member is too angry, or too overwhelmed to take in new information. But this shouldn’t stop a family member from taking steps to guide their loved one toward treatment.
When drugs and alcohol take over, the family is drawn into the needs of the addiction, blamed when resources come up short, attacked when they refuse to provide the “help” requested. It is so hard to know what to do or what “helping” looks like. Come out of the gray area and learn how to respond to your Loved One’s addiction.
How do you walk the line between protecting your addicted loved one from potential danger while allowing the natural consequences that can lead them to want to make a change? While there are definite limits to what a family can do, there are actions that can be taken.
Why is it that setting and maintaining boundaries is so difficult to do? Nowhere does this breakdown become more apparent than when we are confronted with life’s difficulties, feeling lost in chaos and despair. This is a time when we are most in need of these self-preserving strategies and yet, our limit-setting abilities are likely at their weakest.
Annie Highwater offers a mother the tools she learned at Allies in Recovery: CRAFT, and watches in real-time the positive results. The son has checked into treatment. A family’s hope is reignited — during the holidays!
When your loved one is high all day long, without ever seeming to sober up, it might seem impossible to reach them and have any influence on their behavior. The CRAFT method lays out three steps to take.
Special guest Rob Koebel, actor, writer and award-winning journalist joins Annie and Laurie to talk about about his descent into alcoholism starting at an early age, and the decades that went by without anyone noticing there was a serious problem. His journey to recovery has been a long struggle but one which he is putting to good use by helping others understand the reality behind the “Good-time Charlie” drinker.
How do you keep from encouraging further drug use by raising the bottom and protecting your loved one from overdose? How as a family member do you live with the dangers your loved one is facing, day in and day out? How do you avoid depleting your energy and becoming obsessed with the circumstances of your loved one’s life?
It is critical that you, as your addicted loved one’s ally, understand that you can’t create motivation. And it is equally critical that you know there is something you can do!
A central question to ask yourself is this: is the car supporting non-use, by keeping your loved one working, or has it become an important source of money for drugs and for a bailout when they get him in trouble?
Everyone who had an addiction problem and managed to stop, started out by putting hours of non-using together to equal ONE DAY. What made that day so different? A negative consequence usually lights the flame…..
Overdose deaths are skyrocketing and Narcan has become THE focus. But for the family of the opiate using loved one, Narcan is a double-edged sword.
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