Finger-Pointing Doesn’t Help

“Whose fault is it that I’m an addict?” Depends who’s doing the asking… Many people with the disease of addiction or alcoholism believe they are born that way. Please note, this blogger does not intend to go into any kind of deep psychological essay about the nature of addiction or physiological aspects of the disease. I am here to share to my experience and strength and hope; that an addict, any addict can stop using, lose the desire to use and find a new way to live. That’s it. I, personally, do believe that I was born with this disease.

When I first came to the program of Narcotics Anonymous in the spring of 1995, I had no idea I was an addict or that I even had a disease. I learned in Step One that I’m powerless and that my life is unmanageable. Come to find out, I have a disease, not a moral deficiency. The disease model, in the NA definition, works for me (and countless others) in that we can see ourselves more humanly. We were slaves to the drugs. Rather than me being a bad person, I was a sick person that made bad choices. I have a disease that tells me that I don’t have disease. It is also the only disease which I can self-diagnose. The First Step frees me: Every day, I admit I’m powerless over my disease.

One of the most difficult things to do, especially for a loved one, is to watch them battle addiction. For many of us, our first instinct when seeing someone in trouble, especially for parents, is to help. But many times this “help” is actually hurting – and you could be enabling addictive behavior.

How do you know? Like many issues dealing with drug or alcohol abuse, there are no easy answers. What’s worse, realizing that you are enabling addictive behavior is a difficult emotion to deal with – and many enablers make excuses for their own -- and their addicted loved one’s behavior.