Mini Series 10 - What We Do For Love

Love has this wonderful ripple effect, emanating its warmth and power from you to your family and well beyond, and it seems miraculous in its infinite ability to heal.

Think for a moment about unconditional love: loving someone regardless of what they look like, what they do for a living, how much money they have, or whether or not they are doing what you want or expect them to do.

This kind of total love - the unconditional kind – is put to a severe test when it comes to loving someone who is a substance abuser. When you think about it, it’s almost impossible to invoke unconditional love when the abuser abuses not only drugs, but also causes needless pain and worry on the entire family. They, not the addict, bear the consequences.

There is no use in trying to leverage love, as in: “If you loved me, you wouldn’t be doing this.” Addiction cares only to feed itself. Love has no influence over it.

We often tell parents of addicts that even though their actions were often based on love; even though they thought they were doing the right things, their actions were well-intended, but they were misguided.

They were acting on the illusion that they had some control over the trajectory of their loved one’s disease while also not recognising that protecting their loved one from the worst consequences was simply feeding the addiction.

It was the highest form of enabling: feeding the addiction by providing shelter, food, money and the freedom to come and go. With zero consequences.