Your Attitude to the Addicted Person

(excertped from Chapter 8, 'When Someone You Love is Addicted to Alcohol or Drugs' www.yourselfhelpprocess.com/summaries8.htm )

The attitude 'I know best' is often a difficult one to overcome, simply because, it is obviously best for the addicted person to go in to recovery and you do know this. And, you are actually in a better position to come to terms with things because you are not in the grip of a powerful, chemically-created self-delusion. Having read this book, having become willing to look at yourself and your attitudes, perhaps having attended Al-Anon or Nar-Anon meetings, your obviously have some grasp of what is required. The problem here is that if you let the fact that you do know this become part of your self-image (me who knows best) or your attitude, it will give you the manner of being a little superior, a little above the addicted person. You will appear as the person who's trying to be in charge. To the addicted person, you won't appear just as one person talking to another, but as a slightly superior being.

Addicts being locked in self, are highly attuned to attitudes. It's their territory and they know how to battle it out, how to win, or, simply how to dismiss it. For this reason, your attitude is very important. Look at the case of Bruce, now a recovering addict, and see what an important part the attitudes of others played in his recovery:

'I remember sitting in a doctor's office with my wife and they were talking about whether they should give me shock treatment again, or a lobotomy or whatever. It was like I wasn't there. The doctor turned to me and said, "you know if you gave up the drink and the drugs that things will be better." I thought, "stuff you, mate." People think they can frighten you into going straight. They don't know you've got this magic substance that stops you being frightened. They think they can bully you or push you. But they can't. You score and you're immune.'

You can see how easily Bruce dismissed the 'I know better' attitude of the doctor and his wife. But, the 'I know' attitude is one people often find hard to let go of. One way of helping yourself to do this is to ask yourself how much credit you can take for not being an alcoholic or addict. None, of course! It's just the luck of the draw that you didn't have the predisposition or the susceptibility. Or, if you find yourself slightly superior about the fact you don't drink, or control your drinking easily, remind yourself of the reason you are able to do so. It's a combination of all sorts of factors operating on you that made you into that kind of person. It's not as if you generated your own qualities and made yourself a particular kind of person. Bruce explains that when someone got through to him, it was not someone who knew better, but a non-judge mental statement by a concerned stranger: 'One night I was lying in the gutter in the city and this guy nearly drives over me. He got out of his car, really shaken. I was totally unable to move and he rolled me onto the pavement. I can remember him looking down at me, with this scared look and he said, "You shouldn't be here mate, you shouldn't be here." Something touched me and I began to think, no, I shouldn't be here. I'd been lying in gutters and worse for years, but it hit me that night. It really hit me. I got to the point where I was prepared to admit someone might know better.'

Or take the case of Alana, an alcoholic, who didn't see the reality of the situation until after her husband stopped trying to make her admit to her problem. As long as Alana had someone to fight against and at the same time to support her, she was able to keep the focus away from the realities of her own behaviour and inability to manage herself. Here's what happened to her when her husband left after four years of marriage:

'We fought, mainly over my drinking. I'd tell him I could stop, I prove to him I could stop, anytime I wanted to. I'd stop for an afternoon or a day or whatever. Once, for two months. All it proved was I was right and he was wrong. He couldn't hack it in in the end and left. Six months later I was out of a job and living in a single room. I was too scared to move. One day, it hit me. I couldn't stop. I knew I really couldn't stop. There was just me and the four walls and I knew I was powerless.'

With both Bruce and Alana, reality penetrated when they could not use their interactions with other people to divert attention from their own knowledge that something was very wrong with them. It is probable that the people close to them could have helped them come to this point earlier had their attitudes been different.

Excerpted from When Someone You Love is Addicted Alcohol or Drugs (Revised Edition).

Copyright © 2001 Jim Maclaine and Helen Townsend. Excerpted by permission of Random House Australia. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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