Loving the Addict: While Taking Care of Yourself First

By Carolyn Booker-Pierce

Loving people that are unstable is not always easy, but we love them anyway. That love doesn't automatically go away due to an addiction. When a family member, friend, or someone close to us, has an addiction, how do we love them? What does that love look like?

What are we to do when our loved one is lost and stops taking care

• Language: English
• Publisher: J Merrill Publishing Inc
• Release date: Dec 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781950719587

Carolyn Booker-Pierce

Carolyn Booker Pierce is a licensed social worker, teacher, mentor, and spiritual leader born and raised in Columbus, Ohio. After leaving a career of almost 20 years in accounts payable and claims auditing, Carolyn followed her passion in the area of social services. She then graduated with a BA at Capital University to become a licensed social worker. Carolyn gravitates to chemical dependency counseling as a substance abuse group and individual counselor. Later she took her years of experience as a substance abuse counselor into her local county jail to serve inmates struggling with substance abuse, alcoholism, and family relationship problems. She is known for listening to others without judgment as they process their everyday life problems. Carolyn desires to help people grow, heal from their past, and move on to a healthy future. She enjoys spending time with her family, church worship center, traveling, writing, and empowering others.

Book preview

Introduction

Okay, so I am going to really date myself by saying this, but at this point in my life, I am grateful to still be alive living and breathing.

There was a film, and a song from the fifties (I will at least say it came out before I was born) called, Love is a Many Splendored Thing. I remember as a little girl how that song would make me feel.

I didn’t know a thing about love back then. I was too young to understand the meaning of love, let alone the context of which it was being used in the song or the movie. However, I sensed the words love and splendor used in the same sentence must have been something good for both words seemed and felt positive.

The movie, however, was about a disapproved interracial romance between an American reporter, Mark Elliott (William Holden), covering the Chinese civil war while being separated from his wife, and an Asian widowed physician, Dr. Han Suyin (Jennifer Jones) from mainland China. The film was criticized back then, which was not a surprise.

There was the issue of casting Jennifer Jones as an Asian, who was clearly not Asian. Then there was the issue of an interracial couple who were in a love affair to top things off. I thought about this song as I thought about people who love those suffering from addiction.

Loving people that are not emotionally available and sometimes unstable is not easy. It can also be hard when you are judged for loving who you love and criticized by outsiders looking in. People can love and be in love with anybody they want, including those struggling with addiction. This happens all the time when the relationship is with a family member or someone intimately close. Those types of people usually are easy to love with genuine love.

In the eighth chapter of the book of Song of Solomon, the scripture says, love is strong as death. When a person truly loves someone like family members, partners, or a good friend, love doesn’t just automatically go away due to the loved one having an addiction.

It may seem wrong to love someone who would lie to you a thousand times, cheat on you, steal from you as many times as they can, and take your car to a store returning it days or weeks later without an apology. Addicts, most of the time, are only concerned with their next fix, getting drunk or getting high. They are rarely concerned about betraying the trust usually lost in most relationships.

Love should be a many splendored thing when it comes to your marriage partner, children, family members, and friends. However, loving an addict can be everything but a many splendored thing.

Loving an addict can be a very trying thing, which causes trust to be broken. Like losing sleep at night or losing your money. Why do you think so many people stay in relationships with their addicted loved one? Especially when loving the addict and trying to help, simultaneously, can be challenging and a lot of times hurtful to the one lending their support.

Compassion for a loved one can run deep. The bottom line is loving an addict happens all the time. However, that may mean having to protect your heart and the things you deem valuable because most addicts can’t be trusted with things that are not of value to them.

You see, it can be hard to value something that belongs to someone else if you did not work for or pay for it. To protect your heart and possessions from the abuse of an addict, it would be wise to use tough love when necessary. It will help to aid in setting healthy boundaries to shield against the negative behaviors of an addict.

Having to say No multiple times may become a daily practice because addicts can be persistent when it comes to getting what they want, which is a fix. Therefore, while you may genuinely love the addict in your life, it is more important to love yourself.

Love yourself enough to say, No. You must be persistent when it comes to saying no to unwanted advances, at least while they are actively using their drug of choice. That could be alcohol, drugs, gambling, or engaging in other types of addictions.

Addictions are habits that are compulsive, uncontrollable, and chronic. Merriam-Webster ¹ defines addiction as the following, a compulsive, chronic, physiological or psychological need for a habit-forming substance, behavior, or activity having harmful physical, psychological, or social effects and typically causing well-defined symptoms (such as anxiety, irritability, tremors, or nausea) upon withdrawal or abstinence: the state of being addicted, alcohol addiction, an addiction to prescription, pain killers drug addictions gambling addiction.

Just looking at the compulsive part of the addiction, most addicts struggle with being driven or compelled to use at any given time, depending on the type of addiction or level of use. I will discuss various reasons why some of our loved ones become addicted and out of control in this book. The addiction can become so unmanageable that the addict may seem unrecognizable to those who know them well.

Loved ones of the addict are sometimes amazed at how the addict can be okay one minute, and the next minute off chasing after a high or a fix. That is why, at the beginning of the addiction, love and trust are given. The strong urge may have forced them to lose constraint while being on their way to the grocery store. They can leave with intensions to pick the bread and milk, but a strong urge to use can trigger the addict to go into the opposite direction of the grocery store. Leaving the partner, family member, or friend waiting, but the addict shows up a day or maybe weeks later without it.

After that happens several times, the