This is part of a new comment on, Why Alcoholics Hurt People:
“I thought my love would be enough, I thought my love and caring would fix her. The problem with the addict: the more you love, the more they take of you and everything else, until there’s nothing left to give.”
This is a guy who gets it. I don’t sit here and turn things upside down for no reason. If you have a real alcoholic or drug addict in your life, you will eventually come to realize that there is no amount of time, energy, love or money you can sacrifice that will fix him or her, so you might as well not spend your life fighting so hard or making war with someone’s addiction. All you will do is burn yourself out. You will become emotionally, mentally, psychologically and physically exhausted, sick, torn and depleted. That’s what addicts and alcoholics do to people.
But as I explained in the old post, we do this because addiction and alcoholism is #1 in our lives… until it isn’t. Drugs and alcohol are the loves of our lives and we will stop at nothing to get what we want and use to our little hearts’ content, even if that means lying to you, deceiving you, hurting you, abusing you and breaking your heart day after day after day.
So, ask yourself honestly, do ‘Science and Kindness‘ change addicts and alcoholics? NOPE. Addicts and alcoholics need to get worse, so once they’ve crossed over that line, don’t stop them. The worse we get, the closer we get to getting better. The worse we get, the closer we get to coming home to God, one way or the other. Addicts and alcoholics need God.
Here is the gentleman’s full comment:
“Wish I had read this a year ago. 3 weeks ago I had enough and for my own mental health walked out. She has no idea how much she hurt our relationship with her drinking. I’m left with the guilt of calling it quits and the pain of seeing her downward spiral in extremely dangerous lifestyle choices.
Everything you mentioned in your article is so true. To anyone even contemplating a relationship with an alcoholic: RUN, run as fast and as far away as possible. I didn’t want to run. I thought my love would be enough, I thought my love and caring would fix her. The problem with the addict: the more you love, the more they take of you and everything else, until there’s nothing left to give.”
I think that everyone living with addicts would benefit from your blog. My husband drank and drugged himself to death. I thought if I just had the right words I could save him but he was happy with an empty life and didn't care about me and our children. It was all about him. You are helping me understand it was never about me. Bless you, Charlie.
Hey no problem. You are so welcome. I forgot to mention that even when I got better, it was still all about me. I didn't get better for anybody else. I got better because I wanted to get all lit up on spiritual stuff and God instead of booze and junk. I got better because I wanted to challenge myself not to be an f'ing wimp. I actually began to welcome suffering as an opportunity to walk through it. Anyway, it was only after the novelty of my spiritual experience and whatever pink cloud I was on wore off that I continued to get better and work hard just to do the right thing for those in my life etc., to love them better and so forth…
Bless you, too.
Rereading your old blog posts to get me through the day. Its like a hammer to my forehead and a knife through my heart. I do feel its diff when it is your child b/c how do you walk away? I always think…THIS time she is improving, getting better, working, acting normal – whatever, but it never actually turns out to be THIS time. Never.