The 12 Steps
No Enabling No Addiction
A common question we often hear from family members at Mark Houston Recovery is this: 
“What can I do to help my loved one who suffers from the disease of alcoholism or drug addiction?”
To properly answer question first requires an understanding of how families enable the addiction. Below is a typical situation that illustrates a family enabling the alcoholic/addict.
Problem: An addict has been to a 30 day rehab three times and has yet to succeed with this treatment.
Solution: The family offers a longer length of stay program -- he does not want to go.
Enabling: The family actually listens to the sick alcoholic/addict as though they are capable of making a sane and logical decision. He tells his family what they are going to do in terms of getting clean and sober. In doing so he regains control and thus is enabled by their lack of control over the situation. Here are some other examples.
- Families not having strong boundaries around the financial support they will provide and having that support tied into a daily course of recovery action.
- Families not endorsing sober living homes for extended periods of time instead of going back to the town where they used.
- Families unwilling to seek the counsel and guidance of professionals before pursuing a course of action regarding the addict.
- Families wanting treatment centers; rehabs; or recovery centers to change their rules to suit them or the addict.
- Families being unwilling to do their own work via Alanon or therapy.
Acceptance And Staying The Course
It’s imperative among anything else that no matter how unsettling it may be, that families understand and accept that the alcoholic/addict has a life long disease. The longer the continuum of care from the very first day in recovery the higher the success rate. What that often looks like is getting detoxed; doing a 30 day rehab stint; going to an extended care program for a period of time; going into a sober living home with a lot of accountability during this whole process. Of course much of will depend on many factors but for men with relapse history this course of action produces much higher outcomes, and they stay clean and sober. Once enabling stops entirely the process of recovery truly begins to take shape. Mark Houston Recovery can help you stay the course and hopefully succeed at recovery because if families can stop enabling, then there is no room for addiction and a lot of room for recovery.
