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?
They’ve always opened their home to him when he’s trying to get clean but he has now started taking advantage of his parents. He is getting high in their house, stealing from them, enjoying a warm bed and food while using. He’s not really interested in going into treatment. He knows what he needs to say to get through the door.
What if, in a moment of conflict, you were able to pause and recall some positive trait you appreciate about your loved one? How well are you able to separate the illness of addiction from the person you love?
He’s just out of treatment for heroin addiction and now at home smoking pot. His mother is very worried and unsure how to react. Should she let it slide and just focus on his recovery from heroin addiction? Or are there small steps she can take to try to reduce the pot smoking?
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.
When setting firm boundaries and maintaining them, so often it feels like ‘Tough Love’ that may backfire and lead to a worse situation. Using the CRAFT approach, one’s influence is more ‘Smart Love’ with real results.
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.
A mother doesn’t know what she should do when one of her sons asks for money and cigarettes while in treatment. He claims he can only get through this with smokes. Is this a reasonable request after all that has happened?
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.
When an addicted loved one is exhibiting increasingly alarming behavior, first of all, don’t take it personally. Remember, it is not directed at you. This, unfortunately, the face of addiction.
You might be grumbling. You might be accusing, guilting or complaining. Or trying desperately to prevent them from going out. You might be brooding in a cold silence. This might be hard to believe, but your presence and your conversation, however negative, are something your loved one counts on, and expects from you.
Treatment doesn’t see its role as helping the newly sober person to manage financially. They rarely ask the question, “So where is the job?” … “How is this person going to pay for the sober house?” … “How is this person going to get to their appointments?” They certainly don’t see their role as providing inpatient treatment until such time as the person is financially stable.
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!
What a relief when a loved one agrees to go into treatment. But right behind this relief there may follow several nagging thoughts: What’s next? What if it doesn’t work? Please don’t let him come home……
Here are 7 ideas for creating the ideal home environment for your adult child in recovery. While supporting them in this phase, establish very clear boundaries. While you can provide a comfortable environment for them, try to make it something that you can easily revoke, should they begin using again.
When your loved one is using drugs almost continuously, there are few opportunities to reward non-use. You are right about this. You are also correct in not rewarding moments of withdrawal, that period you describe when your son first gets up and is agitated and verbally abusive.
An Allies in Recovery member recently shared the story of her adult son who lives “out of reach” in another state with his addiction, mental illness to the point of suicidal tendencies, credit debt, etc. In this post, we explore whether the CRAFT principles can be applied at a distance.
Your Monday evening dinners are a great example of setting the stage for “coaxing the little scared animal out of the woods.” The hard part with this coaxing, and as you describe with that dinner, is this overwhelming urge as a parent to force your way into the woods, by getting heavy and asking your son about his hidden life.
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…..
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