She’s thankful her loved one is no longer using, but his finances are a mess. Should she allow natural consequences for his past use even if it means losing his job or should she support his current efforts toward sobriety and pay his job rent?
Our member is facing a big transition. It looks like her loved one will be asked to leave the house in a few weeks. Read on about a sound approach for embracing this transition with grace and compassion.
The courts failed to enforce treatment for her daughter, once out of jail. Now her daughter’s life is a real mess. Take a look at how Dominique Simon-Levine lays out an approach to help this family member stay on track.
Her son is struggling with withdrawals from a recent relapse. As the family anticipates another job loss, and possibly more, this mom wonders how to proceed. CRAFT examines key considerations for this sensitive time.
She’s fed up with her son’s patterns of non-communication. Whenever his use is addressed, he withdraws and shuts off communication. When he does reach out, it always seems to be on his terms. How do you take the wheel when it feels like your loved one is used to calling all the shots?
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.
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