Dealing with drug users

[Faithless]

In your family or who are friends.

At what point do you get involved and try to set them straight? And what point do you tell them to "fuck off"?

Are there degrees of drug use that are more easy to accept than others? Alcohol, eh. Pot, ummm. Coke, crack, meth -- shit!

If they're friends, it might be easy to tell then to get some help, then decide when to cutoff the friendship and then semi-permanently ignore them.

But what about SO's? Or family members?

SO's -- you might be able to treat them like your friends, unless you've got some financial or other mutual arrangement in common.

Family members maybe a little different.

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And man, can the patterns of addiction be the same or what?

Fucking, hiding away and doing that shit. Lying about it, getting defensive about it, or trying to defend it with lame excuses. Running away from it or hanging out with others that do it.

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I'm sort of callous in some ways, so I don't think I would have a problem with even cutting all contact with a family member -- blocking them out of my life and saying, "They can die for all I care."

I'd even measure my involvement to some degree.

[rice cracker]

You should watch that show, "Intervention." I think it's on A&E.

Anyway, I don't think there is a cookie cutter way to handle a person with an addiction. You could do what my family does, complain behind the person's back and then ignore their behaviour when they're around. It solves nothing, but holiday dinners are much less tense.

[kimpossible]

My two cents:

Decide first thing how involved you are willing to get and if you're square with losing the person with addiction to death, imprisonment or street life. With true addiction of hard drug as the addict's main drug of choice, you are dealing with a life or death decision up front. Hesitate and you might as well sign off any action you were willing to take.

It's hard, time consuming, expensive and in many cases ineffective in the long term. Relapse is a reality. Develop your own gut and trust that because the addict behavior is based on lies and manipulation to use. And on that note, decide how far you're willing to go, how much you're willing to sacrifice because a full blown addict won't give a shit about who goes down with him or her. My advice is to do all you can but *never* sacrifice other loved ones or too much of yourself. You have to keep reserves or you become another casualty of the addiction.

I'm not sure what you mean by saying drug users and not addicts. For the most part, people who experiment or use in their younger years grow out of it. Those that don't are addicts, regardless of the drug of choice and in fact, most abuse substances unilaterally.

My one last comment on addiction and lies is that the addiction is not responsible for every last shitty personality trait an addict has. You can be an asshole and an addict.

[Boy_Hong]

At one time, I was renting out a house and actually let two of my friends with drug problems dry out at my place. The biggest thing that I learned was:

You cannot help someone who does not want to be helped.

One friend was able to turn his life around. The other just fell further into his addiction. Unless you're trained in some sort of rehabilitative medicine, you can only provide the tools to beating addiction, and the rest is upto them.

Also, don't feel guilty if you can't help. It's not your fault. I felt guilty for having to kick out my friend, but then after finding a 2L bucket of HCL acid he had stolen from university in my basement and was probably planning to use in meth production, I didn't feel as guilty anymore. Go figure.

[Faithless]

I don't know about imprisonment or street life, but I think slow, self destruction is entirely possible.

You can be an asshole and an addict.

However, some addicts are complete assholes.

It's sort of a laugh and a shame, when one hides away to toot away, and then they get caught / confronted.

And their pathetic reaction to being caught is defensiveness -- a la, "Well, you're too demanding! Your standards are too high."

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I guess if it was the first time down that road, I'd be a little more understanding, but to be a repeater and drag down my loving friend.

Motherfuckah wants to sell the house they bought together.

[kimpossible]

Okay. I'm not really sure why you'd be mad at an addict for the addiction itself. If this is the case and you asked us what to do, in your position I'd just cut ties because it doesn't sound like you're either in a position to aid in recovery or have any interest in attempting to aid in a recovery.

Otherwise I'd suggest you read up on it on your own or contact NA/AA to find a support network. You have to learn about addiction before you could ever attempt to help someone... assuming they are ready to help themselves first.

[Faithless]

Maybe, what I was seeking was help for the co-dependent, really.

In my area, there is NAR-ANON. Not to be confused with Narconon. I was totally happy to hear that she had heard of it and was deciding if she should go.

We said she should, definitely! It helps when you're as head-strong as she.

[SunWuKong]

i don't have any direct family or very close friends that are addicts. outside of that close circle though, my experience has been that the question was not when i should "get involved". they kind of involve you when they want and then after a while it becomes a decision of how you want to handle it.

[mizhi]

Originally Posted by Boy_Hong

You cannot help someone who does not want to be helped.

Agreed; and even if they do want to help themselves, they are almost certainly going to have relapses. I have immediate family with alcohol problems. Everytime one of them attempts to stop, he falls off the wagon in a few months and drinks until he decides he needs to stop. The cycle repeats. It's hard to take since I can't take the other option that faithless was talking about and cut them out of my life altogether.

[Chad]

some people can't do drugs without becoming annoying. i get irritated a lot since usually if i want to use drugs i have to be around people who piss me off, they never shutup "blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah" forever. i dont believe i become annoying because i never ask anybody to help me out or bug people to "go in on it" with me and i can usually chill out and just enjoy the experience without talking. id rather go out dancing than sitting around with some losers and talking about my problems.

[Faithless]

I should have more compassion.

There are a lot of reasons why people do drugs. And once you get hooked, god help you.

I wonder if most people know some drug user(s) in their families.

I only know of a couple of alcoholics. And man -- the pain their families went through. It's hard to keep those things private when their alcoholism shines through rather glaringly.

But then you realize they're not really assholes, as much as, sadly addicted nice people. It breaks your heart. You talk to them when they're sober and you notice that they've got a lot to offer intellectually. And you can only imagine the embarrassment they must be hiding as they realize some in the family know what they are going through / struggling with.

Hate is an ugly emotion and one I will resolve to leave-out when thinking about these family members. They've probably got enough self hate to deal with, already.

[eos]

my uncle was an alcoholic. started when he was pretty young, i think, those facts are a little fuzzy to me. it was never talked about, at least not in front of the kids. at family gatherings, you could tell he was already plastered and i was sooooooo scared of him. i would cry and cling to my mom, and thinking back, i get mad cuz they forced me to show affection, pretending like nothing was wrong, like there was something wrong with me instead. everything was met with nervous laughter, "oh. joanne's shy again. come on, don't be scared. that's your uncle." i just remember hearing bits and pieces of his behavior when drunk: violence, beating my aunt, screaming, etc.
then one day he passed away. his heart stopped and he died in his sleep. my mom told me and i felt sad, i guess. after maybe about an hour of silence, i told my mom i wanted to go back to school and play with my friends. she all but beat me, yelling, "your uncle just died and that's all you can think about?" i was a little happy that he was gone, i didn't have to be scared anymore. but i also felt confused and pissed.
so that's my experience with a drug user.

[Chad]

i had two uncles who drank themselves to death. one of them was found dead in a gutter, frozen and dead from liver failure. your family probably remembered what your uncle was like before he was an alcoholic and still loved him. alcoholics see their death in the future and know they're getting closer and closer but don't stop drinking cuz they know that death is just where everyone ends up anyways, they're just getting there a little faster.
even if u dont drink and never use drugs, all kinds of shit can happen: car accident, cancer, sudden illness, etc.. i seen a 14 year old kid die from cancer who never used drugs and died a virgin. poor little bastard. life is very temporary.
i have kicked drugs for now but i still drink. i can easily say that the worst drug to be around is meth. the people who are addicted to that are the worst.