What should I do?
Knowing how to deal with what you are going through is complicated and difficult. This is a good place to start.
How can I cope with their behaviour?
It is normal to feel helpless, frustrated, worried and upset by someone’s substance use. Drug and alcohol users can have very erratic behaviour, and it can be difficult to know how to act around them. Their substance use encourages them to act in very distressing ways. They may become aggressive, angry and violent, or distant and cold. They might commit crimes and go to prison.
Each family copes with substance use in their own unique way. However, there are recognised stages that families tend to go through when there is serious use:
- Denying - ignoring the problem, hoping it will go away
- Enabling - inadvertently enabling drug/alcohol use to continue by paying debts, lying to cover up for the user, tolerating very difficult behaviour, buying drugs/alcohol for the user, etc
- Controlling - taking control of the user’s life and drug/alcohol use in an attempt to make them stop using
- Apathy - withdrawing, casting the user out of the family home, giving up.
Note that a family doesn’t have to go through all of these stages if it gets the right help and support; also different family members can be at different stages at the same time.
For more detailed information and practical advice see our free info sheets on coping with conflict and setting and keeping boundaries, or see our what can I do to help? section.
follow support+ rss