For families of the Addicted
You can’t keep living like this…
…not anymore!
Someone in your life, within your circle of Most Important People, is living in unsustainable ways.
There’s someone you care deeply about who struggles with a life-controlling substance or behavior.
We know you love them. That’s why you’re here. You’re looking for help!
And help for you and yours may be long overdue.
Your “Loved One” lies… about everything.
Even about things that don’t matter.
Money or possessions are missing. When you ask you hear, “I don’t know. It wasn’t me.”
How about your “Loved One’s” friends. How often do you call them looking for your “person?”
Have they changed, right before your eyes?
Or did the changes occur over such a protracted period, it took a long time to notice?
Maybe you feel like you’re waking up from a fog, and you still can’t see clearly, but you know things are probably worse.
You love your “person.” We know it.
You’re afraid to ask how bad things are for your “Loved One,” because you wouldn’t know what to do if you did know.
There used to be times when your “person” did not come home when they said they would. Oh, they had great excuses. Now, they don’t come back until the next day or three days later; is it more than three days at-a-time?
Have you found drug paraphernalia or residuals you had to look up with Google, so you knew what to call those things?
You would do anything to save this person from themselves.
When was the last time you thought about kicking them out or tried to kick them out, but somehow, they still live with you?
How much money have you spent on treatment for them? Have you spent five thousand, ten, twenty or more? Have you taken a second mortgage to cover their legal fees or treatment or damages to property?
They’re in jail, again? Your heart breaks for your loved one.
Whose heart breaks for you?
Not theirs (understandably, their heart can’t right now).
Are you going to bail them out? How many times have you bailed them out? What about calling in sick for them or paying their bills? Bills that in your soul you know they should pay.
Are your savings disappearing?
And then there are your prescription meds. Do they disappear? Have you bought a safe to lock them up?
Life is intolerable.
It used to be good and maybe even great, but not anymore.
Did you start putting your wallet and keys in the safe the instant you get home and until you leave again? In a moment of perceived safety or forgetfulness, did you leave your keys on the bed only to find your car taken without your permission?
Is their name along with yours on the title of the car or house? Now you cannot report something stolen because in Arkansas half of it belongs to them.
Is your work affected by all your stress?
So, you report the missing vehicle, and the police tell you they will keep a lookout. Three days later, it’s recovered. But now, it needs over two thousand dollars in repairs, and it will never be the same.
How many times have you gone to a pawn shop to recover your spouse’s wedding ring and they only got one hundred and fifty dollars?
Have you watched them dying, and, only by the grace of God, paramedics arrive in time to administer Narcan because you found an empty torn-open Fentanyl patch in their trash can?
Exhausted yet?
What about 12-Step recovery? Have you dragged or threatened them into attending? Did you attempt to go with them to group, so you knew they were “working their program?”
Any chance you‘ve had them committed to drug treatment only to find out the caseworker saw no reason to keep them and released them to their recognizance?
Against Medical Advice (AMA), how many times have they left treatment?
Have you’ve tried every strategy you can think of and nothing has worked?
Every example you just read is from my life with my wife and children.
And nothing I did helped. Why? Because I was in the way.
My efforts to save my Most Important People resulted in prolonging their inevitable.
I know you’ve heard the Bible quoted, “you reap what you sow.” Check your life? You see the principle of sowing and reaping in full bloom. Death and destruction create death and destruction.
I’ve also seen life spring forth out of death.
As I faced impossible situations in the past, I had no plan. Chaos does not want you to have a plan.
What if you had a plan and the help we could give you in carrying out your ideas?
We help people devise a plan that works for them. It comes in four stages.
Stage 1: Create a Circle of Safety Around the One You Love.
The help I needed in my past was a crystal-clear group of my Most Important Person’s family, friends, and possibly coworkers coming together. I needed their unmatched and untapped power to help the One They Love decide to change – this is the Circle of Safety.
Stage 2: Deliver the Invitation to Change.
Some people call this an intervention. We do not subscribe to that language. An intervention sounds like an attack and demand session. You love this person, we know you do. Rather than an intervention, we call it a family meeting. In the family meeting, the Circle of Safety delivers a kind and loving invitation to change.
THIS IS NOT EASY, but it’s doable.
Stage 3: Champion the Change
The Circle of Safety circles the wagons, so to speak, waiting to see what their “Loved One” does. From one perspective, if nothing immediately changes, the Circle can get the feeling the family meeting failed. From our perspective everything is perfect. You now have a plan. If the Circle stays together in support of their Most Important Person changing, something new, different, and maybe even better is in play. You may have to keep championing the change; this is normal.
Stage 4: Those in the Circle Exercising Good Self-Care
Taking care of you is something you may have set aside. So much of your focus became laser-like in the direction of your loved one. You deserve care. If you aren’t taken care of, how do you have anything left for anyone else, including you?
How we help.
The “we” I’m referring to is me, and possibly my son, BJ. He’s a former alcoholic and drug addict with seven years sobriety and clean living.
BJ is also a Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselor. More than that, he has dedicated his life to rescuing and serving those with life-controlling addictions as Director of the Men’s Program at the Little Rock Union Rescue Mission. He lives and fights for people’s lives every day.
BJ and I know how to help you. We’ve lived our version of your story.
While we don’t know your story and how you have been affected, we can empathize and offer sound, professional, life-experience-informed, research-backed support and help.
You don’t have to keep living like this!
We specialize in helping highly distressed families.
Call today (501) 205-4570 – why wait any longer? Let’s end this misery.